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 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 
 
 liY 
 
 HERMAN MERIVALE. 
 
 LONDON. 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN. 
 
 18G5. 
 
 0''
 
 PREFACE 
 
 SOME of the Essays contained in this vohime have 
 already appeared in periodical publications ; others 
 have been altered from their original shape, or nearly re- 
 written. Several are now published for the first time. 
 I have thought it sufficient to mention this, without 
 specifying to which class each belongs. 
 
 By way of introduction to the first series, ' On some of 
 the Precursors of the French Eevolution,' I cannot do 
 better than transcribe the nervous sentences in which 
 Louis Blanc has summed up the career and influence of 
 those men of the eighteenth century who, in their several 
 capacities, contributed to bring about the croAvning event 
 wliich was accomplished at the end of it. 
 
 ' The apostles of the doctrine of calm inquiry intro- 
 duced in these days, into their worship of Thought, the 
 enthusiasm and the passions of sectaries. Prodigious 
 labours to be undertaken, a thousand dangers to be run, 
 tyranny to be cajoled or braved, the moral education of 
 whole races of men to be effected over again, tlie luunan 
 conscience to be liberated from uncertainty and from 
 terror, nothing of all this made them hesitate : because,
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 after all, they too had a faitli of their own : they beheved 
 in Eeason. Such, tlien, was the work of this century. 
 AikI all were engaged in it : writers, artists, noblemen, 
 magistrates, ministers, sovereigns themselves. For a mo- 
 ment only, the new spirit found itself master of society, 
 from foundation to summit : when it had penetrated into 
 the Court of Prussia, through Frederic of Austria, through 
 Joseph II. : of France, through Turgot : of Eussia, 
 throusrh Catherine : into the Vatican through Clement XIV. 
 Insomuch that philosophy insinuated itself even into close 
 contact with kings : it enveloped them ; it subjugated 
 them ; it dictated to their hps words of strange meaning ; 
 it drove them on, excited by the praises they received, 
 even to the destruction of those altars which had for so 
 long a period been used for the support of thrones.' His- 
 toire de la Revolution Fran9aise, vol. i. 346, 
 
 Anyoiie who should undertake in earnest the task of col- 
 lecting and analysing in one work the great subject of which 
 the democratic historian has here only indicated the out- 
 lines: who should endeavour to distinQ;uish the several schools 
 of political thought which existed among the so-called philo- 
 sophers of that century; to define the limits to which each 
 was conducted by its own independent line of argument : 
 to mark the point where each bold forerunner, like the 
 athletes of old, as he stepped out of the course, handed 
 his torch to another ; to assign also their due meed of 
 honour to those among them, statesmen and sovereigns as 
 well as mere writers, who were really actuated by an 
 ardent longing for the improvement of the condition of 
 mankind, and who expended their lives, and risked their 
 fame on the pursuit of that object ; would embark on
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 one of the most important historical undertakings which 
 remain to be performed for tlie intellectual benefit of this 
 generation. He would complete the History of the French 
 Revolution itself — which has been so abundantly elabo- 
 rated by the ablest writers, each contributing his separate 
 pleading for his own favoured side, and thereby conveying 
 more of truth to the reader than could have been 
 derived from any single record, however careful and im- 
 partial — by adding to it a preface scarcely less instructive 
 than itself, and without which the narrative of subsequent 
 events cannot be really understood or appreciated. 
 
 For my own part, I have attempted nothing more than 
 to illustrate that subject by a few desultory sketches. 
 They have not been executed with the view^ of supporting 
 any particular theory in philosophy or politics ; and the 
 student, who may be attached to any such theory, is only 
 requested to use the facts and the views which he may 
 perchance draw^ from them, as far as he pleases, for the 
 nourishment of the favourite child of his own imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 The rest of the volume consists merely of unconnected 
 essays on various topics, chieily of the antiquarian order. 
 And when I see them collected together, I feel as if I owed 
 such readers as I may find an apology for laying before 
 them such a packet of flying leaves. My only excuse, 
 to myself, for having indulged in such disjointed specula- 
 tions as the present specimens seem to indicate, is that 
 they have but furnished the occasional amusement of 
 years of an occupied life, and a relief to the thoughts in 
 many seasons of trouble. 
 
 And in borrowing from the French the title ' Histori-
 
 vui prefacp:. 
 
 cal Studies ' for my volume, I have intended, without 
 affectation of modesty, to convey the simple truth, that its 
 contents are for the most part but incomplete essays, the 
 attempts of a learner to assist fellow learners with 
 himself.
 
 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 
 
 JOSEPH 11. 
 
 The world has judgecl this excellent though unfortunate 
 sovereign, as it usually judges, by success. Because he 
 failed, he has become a byword. Had he carried into 
 execution the scheme of policy which he conceived, he 
 would have been regarded as the greatest, as well as the 
 most beneficent, monarch who ever swayed the destinies 
 of the human race. And had not hi^ early death inter- 
 vened, it is hard to say whether a large portion of that 
 scheme might not have been realised. We cannot safely 
 pronounce on what might have been, nor decide whether 
 his death only prevented a general rebellion, as the 
 popular notion is, or whether it cut short the career of 
 one who was beginning to learn by experience the true 
 means towards his magnificent ends, and who would in a 
 few years have changed much more than the surface of 
 European politics and society. 
 
 But however this might have been — without fartlier 
 speculation on that favourite but idle field of historical 
 theory, the contingent past — the test of mere success is 
 one which ought to be utterly disclaimed, when judging 
 of a character such as his. It claimed, in reality, not tluit 
 
 B
 
 Z JOSEPH II. 
 
 sort of contemptuous pity whicli tlie world commonly 
 accorded it, but veneration akin to that with wliich we 
 regard the memory of the few real heroes, the still fewer 
 real saints, Avho have rendered our nature glorious. 
 That one brought up in an atmosphere of bigotry, court 
 stupidity, and aristocratic pride, should, through all the 
 years of his youth, have been acquiring for himself a 
 distinct perception and appreciation of the iniquities and 
 oppressions under which the vast majority of his kind 
 were condemned to suffer by the institutions of his time ; 
 that he should have realised the depth of popular igno- 
 rance, the crying injustice of noble privileges, the canker 
 of idle monachism, the countless sufferino;s of the en- 
 slaved multitude ; that he should have formed within his 
 mind tlie deliberate resolution, — These things shall not 
 endure : they are simply evils, as crimes against person and 
 property are evils, and they must be extirpated, even if 
 my power is torn up by the roots along with them ; if my 
 own ease and popularity, and life itself, are shattered to 
 pieces in the encounter with them : that he should have 
 issued at once, as soon as the crown of Selbstherrschaft 
 (independent government) was on his head, like Thalaba 
 among the enchanters, without parley or preparation, rely- 
 ing on his own good right alone, and resolutely cutting away 
 liis only chance of retreat ; — all this amounts, in point of 
 a priori moral probability, to little less than a miracle. It 
 were a likelier task for nature to produce another Napoleon 
 than another Joseph II. Yet he is generally passed over 
 with the cursory sentence, that he was one who formed 
 great projects, but lacked judgment, tact, and moderation 
 to put them into execution. That he did lack those whole- 
 some diluents is certain ; but it is equally certain that a 
 man possessed of them to any large amount would never 
 have entertained such projects in earnest at all. It would
 
 JOSEPH II. O 
 
 be just as much to tlie purpose to complain of tlie want of 
 judgment and moderation exhibited by Luther and Knox. 
 And, at all events, his was what even Luther's was not — 
 a life of all but pure and absolute devotion to what he 
 esteemed the good of mankind. The words of his beauti- 
 ful epitaph, ' saluti publicie vixit non diu sed totus,' ex- 
 pressed very httle more than entire truth : a little more, 
 no doubt, for a character without an alloy of self is a mere 
 monster. How many inferior qualities go to make up a 
 mind Hke that of Joseph — how much there may have 
 been of vanity, and desire to astonish, and love of power 
 — any one may endeavour to ascertain from the copious 
 materials for his biography. For all higher purposes, the 
 purity and loftiness of its chief elements dispense with 
 the duty of examining how much of grosser clay are 
 mingled in the composition. 
 
 Of the finer part, a great portion was surely derived 
 from his mother. She was undoubtedly, after all the de- 
 ductions which a just condemnation of many parts of her 
 pubHc life renders necessary, a noble-minded woman, 
 possessed of many high qualities, botli of heart and un- 
 derstanding. But her disposition in some respects, her 
 predilections and prejudices in many more, were strongly 
 contrasted with those of her son : and they presented a 
 spectacle, not very uncommon in life, of parent and child, 
 cast in the same mould, endowed with the same natural 
 excellencies, but contrary in their tastes, and travelling all 
 their lives on divergent roads. Joseph's natural abilities, 
 tliough by no means inconsiderable, were not brilliant. 
 lie learnt slowly, but his memory was tenacious. And 
 his mind developed rather late, under the care, it must 
 be fairly added, of tutors seemingly as stupid and pedantic 
 as ever set fairly to sleep intellects of a less persevering 
 order than liis. He was reckoned by his mother, probably
 
 4 JOSEPH II. 
 
 with truth, exceedingly obstinate : ' mein Starrkopf,' she 
 used to call him. Some said she spoilt him by over-in- 
 dulgence, and that under severer discipline some of the 
 faults of his nature would have been corrected : it seems 
 more probable that she never thoroughly understood his 
 character, and that the tenderness natural to a loving 
 nature like hers was mingled with fits of injudicious 
 severity. Among the numberless domestic scenes repre- 
 sented in water-colours by the Empress-Queen herself — 
 homely and home-loving in all her grandeur — which still 
 cover the walls of a room in the palace at Schonbrunn, 
 there is one which exhibits the whole family in council, 
 while a court lady, birch rod in hand, is leading out the 
 little Joseph, in a childishly indignant attitude, to summary 
 execution. Whether, however, it was from the method 
 of education pursued, or from his natural bent, Joseph 
 took an early distaste to learning and literature in their com- 
 mon acceptation. The only knowledge which he acquired 
 was that of facts ; he valued only the positive and the 
 practical. Edinburgh or Geneva could not have produced 
 a mind more intensely utihtarian. He had no eye for art, 
 and no more respect than Dr. Johnson himself for those 
 who possessed any. The ' belles lettres ' he treated with 
 somewhat more respect, but without taking any personal 
 interest in them. It was perhaps only under a fit of ill 
 temper al: some of the absurdities perpetrated by the 
 Vienna press, in its first freedom from censorship, that he 
 classified together ' the book-trade, the cheese-trade, and 
 other employments ' in one of his recorded conversations : 
 but the expression was long quoted as characteristic. His 
 real respect was only bestowed on such studies as appeared 
 to him immediately conducive to the happiness of men, 
 or the power of the state. 
 
 But the main impulse which drove his mind in a con-
 
 JOSEPH II. 5 
 
 trary direction to that which had hitherto prevailed in tlie 
 Austrian court, was his determined and ahiiost fanatical 
 hatred of fanaticism. The bigotry which prevailed in his 
 mothers' court and liousehold, the servility with which her 
 powerful mind gave way on tliis point alone to the 
 meanest or most mischievous influences, had no doubt 
 their effect in urging a high-minded, but self-willed, youth 
 in the opposite direction. For there was no tincture of 
 irreligion in Joseph's rehgious hberahsm. Averse from 
 what he considered idle speculation on all subjects, he 
 was especially so on what concerned revelation. He 
 almost made a parade of his dislike to Voltaire ; while 
 he professed a respect for Eousseau, whose utterances 
 passed with many in those days for a new edition of 
 Christianity. He always declared himself an humble 
 behever in revelation : ' I am a soldier, and not a 
 theologian,' he said with some affectation ; ' but I believe 
 there is only one road to heaven, the religion of Jesus 
 Christ.' And his Hfe, allowing for all his weaknesses, 
 gave testimony to the sincerity of his profession. But 
 then, with him, Christianity, like everything else, must be 
 exclusively practical. His detestation of priestly power, 
 of refined dogmas, ceremonies, legends, superstitious 
 images, and the popular accompaniments of religion in 
 general, had more of the fierceness of the Puritan than the 
 contemptuousness of the ordinary infidel. 
 
 It was the necessity of keeping in subjection this, and 
 other prevailing impulses of his mind — during the many 
 years for which he nominally shared the empire with his 
 mother, but was, in reality, only her jealously watched 
 chief subject — which gave him, in the opinion of some un- 
 favourable observers, a tendency to dissimulation ; which 
 nourished (as others have pointed out with more trutii) 
 a kind of fitful cynicism in his character, such as may
 
 6 JOSEPH II. 
 
 not iirifrequently be observed in gentle and enthusiastic 
 natures thwarted by disappointment. He was consumed 
 Avith eagerness for action, and yet could not move a hmb 
 against the pressure of the courtly bonds which were 
 effectually woven around him. He felt himself getthig old 
 in this impotence of movement, and the world going on in 
 its evil course around liim ; and the impatience produced 
 heart-sickness, with something of its accompanying mis- 
 anthropy. Domestic causes, also, had their effect in in- 
 creasing these morbid sensations. With great capacities for 
 innocent happiness, his life was a succession of disappoint- 
 ments. As a youth he was, it is said, painfully conscious of 
 holding only a second place in the love of his mother ; her 
 favourite was her more attractive second son, Charles, who 
 died young. Before he was twenty, Joseph married a 
 princess, Isabella of Parma, to whom he became passion- 
 ately and devotedly attached. She left him a widower 
 after a few years, and it was said that their short union 
 was clouded by her constant anticipation of an early 
 death. It was, indeed, a current story * that his own sister, 
 the Archduchess Christina, pitying his inconsolable con- 
 dition, revealed to him that the deceased princess had 
 confessed to her that she never loved her husband ; 
 that her heart was entirely fixed on heavenly things, and 
 that she could never vanquish her regrets at the state 
 compulsion which had forced her to exchange the convent 
 for his palace. She left him one child ; but his little 
 
 * See the memoirs of the authoress, Caroline Pichler, who held a sul)- 
 nrdinate office about Maria Theresa's court. Isabella, according to the same 
 tale, when still a girl, kneeling at the deathbed of lier mother, prayed that 
 she might not long survive her. She fancied slie heard a A'oice utter the 
 word 'Three,' and accepted it joyfully as a presage. Rut when three days, 
 three weeks, and three months, had successively passed, and the impression 
 of the occurrence grew fainter, she was induced by her family to consent to 
 lier proposed union with Joseph, and died just three years after she had 
 received the warning.
 
 JOSEPH II. 7 
 
 ' madel,' too, was taken from liim at the age of seven. 
 He married again to please his mother ; but the object of 
 her choice, a Bavarian princess, was a poor victim of here- 
 ditary disease, whose early death was a release for both. 
 Thenceforward, with strongly domestic tastes, and no 
 relish for the ordinary dissipations of a court, he was left 
 alone in the world ; a circumstance to which, no doubt, 
 was owing his passion for locomotion, indulged, during 
 the life of his mother, and even afterwards, to such an 
 excess that he mifjht almost have rivalled Lord Peter- 
 borough's boast of personal acquaintance with all the 
 crowned heads and postillions of Europe. 
 
 It was in this long and sorrowful period of apprentice- 
 ship that Joseph, like Frederic the Great, acquired, and 
 in some degree deserved, that character of a ' sceptred 
 cynic ' which Lord Byron pronounces so peculiarly in- 
 appropriate for crowned heads. But in Joseph this was 
 partly affected ; not real and deep-rooted, as in his Prussian 
 model : and as he possessed nothing of Frederic's peculiar 
 aquafortis style of wit, his exhibitions of contempt for 
 mankind were tactless and unpleasing. He did himself, 
 perhaps, more injury by his laboured smartnesses against 
 religious fraternities and persons— ulem as and fakirs, as 
 lie thought it clever to call them — than by suppressing 
 their convents. There is something singularly provoking, 
 even now, to the reader of his correspondence, in the 
 affected facetiousness with which he replies to men in 
 earnest, like the Cardinal- Archbishop of Treves, who were 
 defending to the best of their abihty the alleged rights of 
 their church. His nobility could more easily have forgiven 
 his attacks on their privileges, and his attempts to diminish 
 their importance by pitchforking into the class a herd of 
 insignificant people — civil functionaries, municipal autho- 
 rities, and the like, the notorious ' Bagatelladel' of Vienna —
 
 8 JOSEPH II. 
 
 than his parade of scornful maxims about the equahty of 
 mankind. It was in truth only uncivil and ungracious, 
 though admired by repubhcans as an exhibition of noble 
 sentiment, when he would turn away, on his travels, from 
 some noble provincial lady who approached him with the 
 style and ceremony which she thought befitting both their 
 stations, to talk ostentatiously with his landlord's daughter. 
 Even some of his best recorded sayings in the philosophic 
 style, if happy in tlieir general application, were needlessly 
 offensive to those whom he addressed : as when he an- 
 swered an appeal of some of the Vienna fine people to have 
 the pubhc kept out of a portion of the Prater, in order 
 that they might consort with their equals^' If 1 were to 
 seek to consort with my equals, I must go down into the 
 vaults of the Capuchin church.' These trifles even lost him 
 more of real support than they gained of showy popu- 
 larity ; still more, no doubt, the grim satisfaction with 
 which he gave his subjects, by way of corollary to his 
 maxims, the spectacle of a count who had forged bank 
 notes sweeping the street iti chains, a grey-haired colonel 
 of the guards who had plundered his military chest 
 exposed in the pillory, and a weU-born Magyar offender 
 towing a barge at the* same rope with the lowest cri- 
 minals of the vassal Sclavonic and Eouman races ; while, 
 as a set off, a half savage Wallachian thief, caught exer- 
 cising his vocation in the capital, was merely sentenced, 
 like the colonel, to ' simple exposure,' in order to operate 
 on his sense of shame ! To the infinite amusement of tlie 
 Viennese, he could not be made to compreliend tlie 
 nature of the ceremony, and wondered what he had done 
 to attain such honour. 
 
 That philanthropy is a somewhat revolutionary virtue 
 we know; excessive love of justice in a sovereign is scarcely 
 less so. ' L'art de bouleverser les etats (says Pascal) est
 
 JOSEPH 11. 9 
 
 d'ebranler les coutumes etablies, en sondant jusque dans 
 leur source, poiu- marquer leur defaut de justice : il faut, 
 dit-on, recourir aux lois fondamen tales et primitives de 
 I'etat, qu'une coutume injuste a abolies. C'est un jeu siir 
 pour tout perdre : rien ne sera juste a cette balance.' His 
 strong conscientiousness Joseph inherited from his mother, 
 but the passion for ideal justice was his own. There can 
 be no stronger instance of it, than that he assumed the 
 power, unknown to sovereigns of Western Europe, of 
 sharpening as well as remitting the sentences of criminal 
 courts. Undoubtedly he was right in principle. Beccaria 
 and Bentham expended almost a needless amount of 
 acuteness in showing the absurdity of the feudal custom of 
 pardon. If the executive does exercise the power of inter- 
 fering with the sentences of the judicial body, it should 
 unquestionably be with the object of correcting mistaken 
 lenity as well as severity. But that a ' King's face should 
 give grace ' was a prejudice far too deeply rooted for 
 Joseph to shake, and this innovation, founded on the 
 purest intentions, was one of the first which he was com- 
 pelled by public opinion to withdraw. 
 
 Closely allied with these peculiarities were an occasional 
 roughness of manner, carried to affectation, a harsh and 
 dictatorial air ; an assumed outside, whicli covered 
 singular delicacy as well as strength of sentiment, and 
 feehngs tremblingly alive to every variation in those of 
 the persons wliom he loved ; an eager, inquisitive, but 
 attractive bearing ; a special fondness for refined, and 
 particularly female, society — his only relaxation in later 
 years, and in which he appeared to great advantage ; 
 being described by the minister, Kaunitz, in his barbarous 
 Frenchified dialect, as ' ein ganz aimabler perfecter cava- 
 lier.' Baron Eeitzenstein, author of a ' Journey to Vienna ' 
 (1789), describes not amiss this double aspect of Joseph's
 
 10 JOSEPH II. 
 
 outward demeanour. ' When I entered the room,' lie 
 says, * the Emperor was still speaking to a gentleman 
 to whom he gave some orders. His tone was so rough, 
 so harsh, his pronunciation so Austrian, that the impres- 
 sion made on me was unpleasing in the highest degree. 
 Immediately afterwards, two French ladies were intro- 
 duced to him : how polite, refined, and soft his manner 
 at once became ! The imperious monarch disappeared : 
 the most prepossessing attractive man of the world stood 
 before me instead.' One of the most touching of the 
 many pieces of his writing which remain is the billet of 
 adieu to the Princess Francis Lichtenstein, written just 
 before his decease, and addressed ' Aux cinq dames reunies 
 de la societe, qui m'y toleraient.' 
 
 And in either character — whether under his assumed 
 air of abruptness, or his natural geniality of manner — all 
 agree as to the effect produced by the glance of his 
 attaching and sympathetic eye. ' Kaiseraugenblau ' was 
 for a time the fashionable colour of the ladies of Vienna. 
 It was an eye which seemed to recognise and speak to 
 every one. There was something in Joseph's softness of 
 heart, and also in the scrupulous earnestness with which he 
 regarded his duties, which rendered it impossible for him 
 to assume that official look of half-notice which every one 
 must so often have observed in the optics of the powerful. 
 It is a glance which seems compounded out of the fear 
 of affronting some one who may be entitled to acknow- 
 ledgment, and the fear of encouraging an address which 
 may lead to inconvenient solicitation, or at least to the 
 loss of valuable time. I cannot at all agree with that 
 charming writer of travels, Aubrey de Vere, who, happen- 
 ing to meet the Sultan in a stroll through Constantinople, 
 and being apparently a little discomposed by a look of tliis 
 description, thus describes it : ' That gaze in which there
 
 JOSEPH II. 11 
 
 is nothing of recognition, and in which no distinction is 
 made between animate and inanimate objects, appears 
 pecuhar to the East ; perliaps to absohite power in the 
 East.' It is just as much occidental as oriental, and any- 
 one who wishes to realise it has only to go into the lobby 
 of the House of Commons, and try to catch the eye of a 
 minister, or other much preoccupied public man. 
 
 Such were the general characteristics of the sovereign 
 on wliom the task of regenerating a chaotic assemblage 
 of dominions, unconnected except by the personal tie of 
 sovereignty, and offering every possible variety of sense- 
 less misgovern ment, rooted abuses, mutual prejudices and 
 jealousies, devolved on the death of Maria Theresa. 
 The sovereign of Austria was, in Austria itself, a native 
 prince amidst a loyal population, but controlled by an 
 enormously w^ealthy clergy and aristocracy ; in Tyrol, he 
 was the chief looked up to by an independent peasantry ; 
 in the Netherlands, the political head of a nest of mediae- 
 val commonwealtlis with clashing rights and usages ; in 
 Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, he was a foreign potentate, 
 governing an indifferent and sullen population with the 
 aid of a nobility chiefly foreign hke himself and an exotic 
 hierarchy : in Hungary, the feudal suzerain of a nation of 
 nobles, interposing their proud will and their impracticable 
 constitution between him and the millions of oppressed in- 
 ferior races who vegetated in the background ; in Galicia, 
 Lombardy, and other outlying regions, a conqueror ruling 
 absolutely by right of the sword. To wield an empire 
 of such discordant materials was the problem laid before 
 the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg in 1780, and remains the 
 same problem still : for if in some points the difficulty 
 may have diminished, thanks chiefly to the achievements 
 of Josepli himself — through the comparative reduction, 
 for instance, of the nol)le and clerical power — it has in
 
 12 JOSEPH II. 
 
 other respects increased, by the augmented strength of 
 the democratic element, and the great impulse given of 
 late years to those antipathies of races which constitute the 
 worst canker of modern polity. This problem has been 
 differently dealt with at different periods : by flattery and 
 management of the more powerful elements, so as to 
 induce them to comljine against the weaker, as had been 
 the pohcy of Maria Theresa, and was that of Metternich 
 in his better period ; by jealous military and pohce 
 repression, as in the worst times of the long reign of 
 Prancis ; by the bold experiment recently made of con- 
 structing a central representative body, which seems to 
 be as yet in suspense. All these have their several share 
 of worldly wisdom, but all have hitherto failed to achieve 
 more than a mere temporary success. Joseph under- 
 took the task beyond his, and probably beyond human 
 strength, of cutting the knot which so many able hands, 
 both before and since him, have failed to untie. His 
 scheme was no less than to consolidate all his dominions 
 into one homogeneous whole ; to abolish all privileges 
 and exclusive rights ; to obliterate the boundaries of 
 nations, and substitute for them a mere administrative 
 division of his whole empire ; to merge all nationalities, 
 and establish the German language as the only recog- 
 nised one; to establish an uniform code of justice ; to 
 raise the mass of the community to legal equality with 
 tlieir former masters ; to constitute a uniform level of 
 democratic simpHcity under his own absolute sway. ' It 
 was his object,' says Schlosser, 'to effect, by force, that 
 which it is the object of other monarchical states to 
 prevent by force : and he consequently came into colli- 
 sion with the people, and with the spirit of the age, on 
 precisely opposite grounds from other autocrats. lie 
 wanted to alter the administration, government educa-
 
 JOSEPH II. 1 
 
 o 
 
 tion, religious constitution, legislation, and legal proce- 
 dure of his states. This could not possibly be done witli- 
 out a revolution, and without taking the people into 
 council; and Joseph was determined not to invoke the 
 people. His history is therefore only the long and sor- 
 rowful story of a prince animated by the best intentions, 
 engaged in a contest with things as they were, without 
 finding or even looking for, supporters and allies. He set 
 his own sound good sense m opposition to rooted prejudice, 
 to absurdity, to so-called policy, to pedantry, to jurispru- 
 dence, to reigning superstition, to old constitutions and 
 charters : and he was thus compelled, against his own will, 
 to become occasionally a tyrant, before he could carry 
 through even those few successful measures of his reign in 
 which all rational Austrians rejoice even at the present day/ 
 Never, assuredly, was so complete a sweep made of old 
 institutions and usages, as far as mere change of law 
 could do it, as in the five first years of Joseph's reign. 
 Even that effected by the French Eevolution itself was 
 less rapid and extensive, especially when regard is had to 
 the different genius, and state of preparation, of the two 
 communities. It w^as like the sudden advance, in the loco- 
 motion of the same country, from the old Eilwagen crawl 
 of four miles an hour, without intervening improvements, 
 to the speed of the railway. It takes away the breath of 
 those accustomed to the bit-by-bit proceedings of consti- 
 tutional countries, to recite the mere catalogue of Joseph's 
 reforms. In the short space of time above mentioned, 
 exclusive rights, privileges, monopolies, were clean done 
 away with ; serfdom, and compulsory feudal dues and ser- 
 vices ceased in point of law to exist ; all men became, in 
 theory, equal under the sovereign. The old constitutions 
 of his several kingdoms and states, including that of 
 Hungary, with which his mother had dealt so warily, were
 
 14 JOSEPH II. 
 
 abolislied, at least on paper, or violently invaded : tlieir 
 very boundaries were obliterated from the maps, and a 
 division of the whole monarchy into thirteen great depart- 
 ments, with a civil minister at the head of each, substituted. 
 Half the convents in the country were suppressed ; great 
 innovations introduced in the relation of church and state ; 
 the ordinary popular religion interfered with by the 
 abolition, or discontinuance, of processions, pilgrimages, 
 and the like ; universal religious toleration, or ratlier 
 equality, established ; education was made national ; the 
 press rendered free ; the old and ingrained ' unwesen ' (to 
 use a very German word) of guilds and corporations in the 
 towns, and other restrictions on internal commerce, utterly 
 abolished ; tlie superstructure of ages razed down to the 
 very foundation. 
 
 It need liardly be said that a great number of these 
 changes remained in the form of decrees only, and never 
 attained a practical existence. Yet he actually performed 
 much ; energetically, but intemperately, and without the 
 slightest trace of that politic respect which might have 
 been shown for interests injured, or feelings wounded, in 
 the process. Regis ad exemplar, the subordinates who 
 were intrusted with the execution of the Emperor's inno- 
 vating decrees set to work with a revolutionary violence 
 which seems hardly credible in a civilised state. In fact, 
 much of what we read of the Austrian reforms of 1780-85 
 resembles far more than is usually suspected the scenes 
 which were exhibited ten years later in France. Convents 
 were spoliated with merciless violence, their goods dissi- 
 pated, the precious contents of their libraries destroyed or 
 scattered, the bones of the dead disturbed by official riflers 
 of the graves. At the Chartreuse of Vienna the mum- 
 mied corpse of Albert the Wise was ejected from its 
 leaden colIin for the sake of the metal, and lay for months
 
 JOSEPH II. 15 
 
 exposed to tlie curiosity and insults of the populace. An 
 order was issued at one time for the conversion of that 
 grand old pile, the Hradschm at Prague, into barracks, to 
 be executed by a given day. Instantly a band of vandals 
 was let loose, to strip it of the accumulated relics of cen- 
 turies. The mysterious treasure-chamber of the star-gazing 
 Emperor Eudolph was despoiled of its renowned anti- 
 quarian collections. ' The statues were sold off : a torso 
 found no purchaser,' (says Yehse) ' it was thrown at last 
 out of the A\andow into the garden ; an oculist of Vienna, 
 Earth, bouo:ht it for sixteen " siebzehner." It was sold 
 at the Congress of Vienna to the then Crown-Prince Louis 
 of Bavaria, for 6,000 ducats. It is the Ilioneus of the 
 Glyptothek at Munich. The antique coins were sold by 
 weight. An inventory of the contents of the treasury 
 was made, which is preserved in the Schonfeld Museum 
 at Vienna : a Leda of Titian figures in it as a " naked 
 woman bitten by an enraged goose." Yet, after all this 
 mischief had been done, Joseph was induced by the mur- 
 murs of the Bohemians to revoke his order ; a strong 
 proof of the truth of Frederic's sarcasm, that he " always 
 took the second step before the first." ' 
 
 But these were superficial excesses. Tlie substantial 
 changes effected or commenced by Joseph during these 
 first years of his reign are of sufficient importance, not 
 merely for the liistorian of Austria, but in their bearing 
 on the general progress of mankind, to require a more 
 discriminating notice than they have generally received. 
 
 Perhaps the most beneficent, and certainly tlie most 
 successful, were those which he introduced in tlie rela- 
 tions between peasant and proprietor. These relations 
 partook everywhere of the inveterate abuses of serfdom ; 
 but more especially in Hungary — where, however, some- 
 thing in tlie way of amelioration had already been effected
 
 16 JOSEPH II. 
 
 -by the Enipress-Queeii — in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia. 
 In these latter provinces, the peasantry were chiefly 
 Sclavonic, the landlords of mixed origin, descended mainly 
 from successful military leaders of the Thirty Years 
 and other wars, with little tie of kindred between them- 
 selves and their tenantry. Absolute serfdom in some 
 instances, compulsory services (Frohndienste) in others, 
 were the lot of the vast majority. It is the common 
 law of this institution of slavery, or quasi-slavery (a law 
 strangely forgotten by those who in om^ day have under- 
 taken the hopeless task of apologising for the slave 
 institutions of the Southern States in America), that if it is 
 not in course of improvement and mitigation under wise 
 laws and humane habits, it is certain to be in the opposite 
 course of deterioration. There is no standing still on so 
 fearful a declivity. Unless progressive emancipation be 
 the object kept in view, and known to be in view, sus- 
 picion, and its concomitant restrictions, and repression of 
 light and knowledge, and cruelty and injustice, and the 
 sophistries by which men's consciences are seared until 
 what was tolerated by the fathers as an unavoidable evil is 
 maintained by the sons as a beneficent institution, must 
 steadily advance.* And, on the whole, it is at least ex- 
 
 * ' We may learn from such high authorities as the letters of Washington 
 or the travels of De Tocqueville, that till within the last thirty years the 
 force of the general arguments against slavery and the slave trade was not 
 denied in [America], and the planters of the South, with few exceptions, 
 relied, as they j ustly might, on the particular ground for caution and delay. 
 But since that time there has been taken a large step in advance. Slavery 
 is no longer excused as an existing evil rendered necessaiy by especial 
 circumstances, and to endure only for a time, but is rather vindicated as a 
 laudable and lasting institution. Nay, there are even found among them 
 some clergymen so keen and thoroughgoing as to say — and not only to say, 
 but to preach — that slavery, as a permanent system, is perfectly consistent 
 with, or rather enjoined by, the leading principles of the Gospel.' — Lord 
 Stanhope, Life o/Pitf, vol. i. p. 373.
 
 JOSEPH II. 17 
 
 tremely questionable wliether tlie actual sufferings of the 
 servile or quasi-servile classes, in the less advanced parts 
 of Europe, did not increase rather than diminish from the 
 sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. The 
 mere increase of commercial activity, the greater al^iuid- 
 ance and importance of ready money, had their share in 
 producing this result. In the middle ages the lord had 
 estimated his vassals and his peasantry for the material 
 support which they gave him, and the dignity which they 
 were supposed to confer on him ; in later times, and as 
 luxury and habits of city life increased, chiefly for their 
 pecuniary value. So much the better for those few who 
 could emancipate themselves, by pecuniary sacrifices 
 wliich the lords were generally ready to accept. But 
 so much the worse for the many who could not. For 
 these, the ancient feudal rights of the lord, originally 
 conceived with a view of enforcing suit and service, 
 were turned into a means of extortinsi: the uttermost 
 farthing in money, or its equivalent labour. And thus, 
 if we may believe in the description given us by those 
 German writers (and they were many) who engaged from 
 1750 to 1790 in thecause of 'Aufklarung' (enlightenment), 
 the condition of the serf peasantry of Southern and 
 Eastern Germany was in their time rather retrograde 
 than improving. But it is a characteristie common to all 
 evil political institutions, that, while they are in course of 
 natural amelioration, gradual measures for their extinc- 
 tion may be successfully undertaken ; when tliey are be- 
 coming gradually worse, such measures are impracticable, 
 and, if they are to be reformed at all, it can only be by 
 an arbitrary and sweeping policy. Such was the state of 
 things when the revolutionary Emperor took in hand tlie 
 entire abolition of these usages, as well as of their abuse, in 
 liis dominions. And, at least as to great part of them, he 
 
 c
 
 18 JOSEPH II. 
 
 actually acliievod it. In three or four years, serfdom, 
 properly so called, was absolutely extinguished in the 
 German provinces. ' Frohndienste,' or compidsory ser- 
 vices, were rendered redeemable on very easy terms. 
 For the first time — at least since the reiajn of Sobieslas 
 the peasant prince, ' der Bauern-Konig,' in 1175 — the 
 enjoyment of the fruits of the earth seemed to be 
 guaranteed to him who produced them. It was in 
 reference to some of these innovations that the Bohemian 
 Count Chotek, one of Joseph's prime favourites, remon- 
 strated, and declared that the peasants ought to pay, 
 and must be made to pay. ' I fancy, dear Chotek,' 
 Joseph wrote in reply, ' that physical force is after all on 
 the side of the Tiers-etat ; and if it ever should happen 
 that they will not pay, what is to become of us all ? ' 
 The greatness, and the value, of these reforms, will be 
 best appreciated by reading the demands of the Estates of 
 Bohemia on Leopold, Joseph's successor, when the period 
 of reaction had set in, for the reestablislmient of all the 
 old tyrannical privileges which Joseph had abated. These 
 will be found in the first chapter of Springer's work on 
 the modern history of Austria. Happily for itself, as well 
 as for mankind, the government of Leopold, forced as it 
 was to undo much of Joseph's work, was able by tem- 
 porising and management to retain this portion. In 
 point of fact, it would have been unsafe to make even the 
 attempt to undo it ; for the peasantry were aware of the 
 advantage they had won. It was said that nine tenths 
 of the compidsory dues in Bohemia had been redeemed 
 by the end of Joseph's reign. 
 
 One more of Joseph's achievements was permanent 
 and complete, having withstood all serious encroach- 
 ment, even dining the several flood-tides of reaction 
 which have followed. This was his Toleration Edict,
 
 JOSEPH ir. 19 
 
 tlic Magna Cliarta of Austrian religious liberty. It must 
 be remembered that, at the period of his accession, 
 Protestantism, once widely spread over the German 
 portion of his dominions, had been trampled down for 
 an hundred and fifty years ; it had no longer any legal 
 existence, and its few professors were barely allowed to 
 subsist under the unavowed protection of functionaries 
 less severe than the law which they administered. On 
 the other hand, in Hungary and Transylvania, both 
 Protestants and Greeks were numerous, and possessed of 
 recognised rights : but the whole influence of the clergy, 
 and of the Court under Maria Theresa, was directed to 
 the gradual breaking down of these rights, and towards the 
 * reconciliation' of these sectaries to the dominant church, 
 through that kind of persecution which is of all others the 
 most bitter ; that, namely, which is carried on by overbear- 
 ing power, not so much contrary to law as beside the law, 
 and in mockery of it; such persecution as was exercised by 
 the government of Louis XIV. against the Hug;uenots while 
 still a recognised body, before the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes. The historian Mailath, himself the member 
 of a powerful Transylvanian family, gives some few de- 
 tails on this subject, under the reign of Maria Theresa ; 
 involved as it is in obscurity through the absence of a 
 press and public opinion in that remote corner of Europe. 
 ' In one village belonging to the Mailath family,' he says, 
 ' the inhabitants w^ere Magyars, and of the Helvetic 
 confession. Tlie proprietor settled a few Catholic Scla- 
 vonians on the land, brouglit a Franciscan friar into his 
 house, and shut up one morning the Calvinist church : 
 it was turned into a Catholic one, and has remained so 
 ever since. The most powerful branch of the BanfTy 
 family, so widely spread throughout Transylvania, con- 
 sisted of two persons, brother and sister. When and 
 
 c 2
 
 20 JOSEPH II. 
 
 ]iow the brotlier became Catholic, I cannot tell. The 
 sister, a yoimg girl, belonging to the Helvetic confession, 
 was brought up in the house of a relative in Transyl- 
 vania. The Empress had her carried off by the military, 
 taken to Vienna, and educated as a Catholic' Omitting 
 the introduction of the military, we might almost imagine 
 we were reading; the narrative of events likely to have 
 taken place — changing the denominations of persecutor 
 and persecuted — in Ireland about the same period, or a 
 little before it. But the difference, as I liave before said, 
 consisted in the fact that the Hungarian Protestants w^ere 
 before the law the recognised equals of the Catholics, 
 and that the protection of the law had been rendered by 
 the Empress and her agents a cruel delusion. These 
 sectaries — in Hungary persecuted, though under appear- 
 ance of legality — in Bohemia barely allowed to exist as 
 the remnant of a body on which persecution had done 
 its Avorst — in the German provinces scarcely existing at 
 all, or the victims at once of legal privations and of a 
 liostile populace — were raised on the instant, by the most 
 daring act of innovation perhaps ever accomplished by a 
 monarch, not merely to a state of toleration, but of absolute 
 equality before the law with the religion of the state ; or, 
 rather, the institution of a dominant religion, in the full 
 sense of the word, was altogether abrogated. And although 
 the church afterwards recovered in the main that supre- 
 macy of which Joseph had deprived it, the legal, and, 
 generally speaking, the practical, freedom of those who 
 dissent from it has ever since remained secure. 
 
 There were, no doubt, imperfections even in this grand 
 and comprehensive scheme, and it was oddly inter- 
 mingled with some freaks of absolutism. Certain simple 
 sectaries, called 'Deists,' but who seem rather to have 
 aimed at a kind of primitive Christianity, were not only
 
 JOSEPH II. 21 
 
 exempted from it, but incurred, in case of contumacy, 
 the classical Austrian penalty of twenty-five 'stockprligel,' 
 or blows with a stick. The Jews, though relieved from 
 some degrading penalties, Avere so incensed at the inter- 
 ference of government with some of their peculiar 
 institutions — compelhng them, for instance, to resort to 
 the estabhshed state authorities instead of their own 
 rabbis, in cases of marriage and divorce — that they 
 almost regarded the benevolent monarch as a persecutor. 
 The fierce Calvinists of Hungary, on the other hand, 
 were no sooner relieved from oppression than they 
 seemed much inclined, in districts where they prevailed, 
 to turn oppressors in their turn, and seize on the Catholic 
 churches by force. But these shght excesses and mis- 
 understandings, though made the most of by the oppo- 
 nents of the great change, did not substantially interfere 
 with its beneficent results. 
 
 With regard to the establishment of freedom of the 
 press, neither the views nor the acts of Joseph appear 
 very clear or consistent ; the shortness of his reign and 
 hurried sequence of events, and the multitude of regu- 
 lations w^ith which he was wont to encumber every pro- 
 ceeding, leave this, as well as other subjects, in rather a 
 confused state for the purposes of the enquirer. He was 
 imable, apparently, or unwilling, to remove the prohi- 
 bition which existed against unauthorised novelties in 
 ]:)liilosophical or rehgious discussion ; but he offered full 
 liberty to political writers, and ostentatiously invited, by 
 the language of his decree, criticisms on himself and his 
 government. And he kept his word with the pam- 
 phleteers of the day, though ratlier against the grain. 
 Catherine despised such attacks from real greatness of 
 mind, Frederic from inbred and acquired cynicism, 
 Joseph partly from principle, and partly in the spirit
 
 22 JOSEPH II. 
 
 of imitation ; but, unlike his models, he was thin-skinned, 
 and the stings of the insects which he had himself 
 warmed into existence almost irritated him to violence. 
 The good people of Vienna, accustomed under the 
 maternal government of their Empress to the cautious 
 supervision of a censorship which left them scarcely 
 any literary food but books of devotion, were terrified 
 at discovering that under Joseph no less than 400 
 ' Schreiberle,' scribblers hving on their wits, were 
 enumerated among the inhabitants of the capital. And 
 while the domestic products were of the worst possible 
 character, libellous, offensive, or insignificant, foreign 
 works of value were, by a singular perversity, almost 
 excluded from importation. On the whole, therefore, 
 the Austrians seem to have rejoiced, as if delivered from 
 a scandal, when, after the death of the Emperor, the old 
 suspicious regime gradually recommenced. Yet there is 
 no doubt that what they had witnessed was but the first 
 overboiling of long-delayed freedom, and that the con- 
 tinuance and enlargement of Joseph's system would have 
 been the truest policy. 
 
 In political economy, Joseph was a disciple of the 
 school of the ' physiocrates, ' and nourished ideas of 
 resting the whole taxation of the empire on the land. 
 It was with this view that he attempted an enormous 
 and simultaneous ' cadastre ' of his vast dominions — land 
 measuring and surveying were always among his hobbies 
 — Avitli such overspeed that most of the work executed 
 in the first haste had to be mended at leisure. He dis- 
 liked foreign trade, and was disposed to throw impedi- 
 ments in its way. But with respect to tlie internal trade 
 of his dominions, his ideas, and measures, were most 
 comprehensive and liberal. He abolished utterly, after 
 his root and branch fashion, all authoritative interference
 
 JOSEPH II. 23 
 
 ill tlie way of privilege, license, ' maximum,' or monopol}^ 
 with the price of articles of consmiiption supplied to the 
 j)ublic. The very people whom he benefited were 
 frightened by his liberality. The classes which lost 
 were loud in their complaints ; the pubHc scarcely under- 
 stood what they had gained. The rumour ran that the en- 
 franchised sellers supphed unwholesome food, that several 
 villages in Moravia had been infected with the plague 
 through meat killed by unlicensed butchers. The govern- 
 ment which succeeded his found little difficulty in setting 
 up most of the old abuses again. ' The markets have been 
 placed again under the old laudable course of superin- 
 tendence,' writes a Viennese conservative some years 
 later, approvingly, ' and, nevertheless^ horses', dogs', and 
 cats' flesh is eaten at Vienna, and the tradesmen and 
 artisans are being ruined, while the bulk of the poorer 
 classes are actually starving ! ' 
 
 But by far the most important innovations effected by 
 Joseph, and of which the history is most fraught with 
 interest to the student who traces the progress of events 
 in moulding the institutions and the fortunes of civilised 
 Europe, were those which concerned the relation of church 
 and state. 
 
 Nothing appears easier in theory than to establish a 
 complete distinction, in Christian pohty, between temporal 
 and spiritual affairs. In that state of tilings which the 
 poet Dante attributed, more poetically than historically, 
 to the Christian period of the Eoman Empire, the two 
 swords of spiritual and temporal justice were wielded by 
 separate authorities, which interfered in no respect with 
 each other : 
 
 Soleva Roma, die '1 ])ti()ii mondo f(5o, 
 Due Soli aver, clie 1' una e 1' ultra strada 
 Dritta fuceaii, di Cesare e di Ueo.
 
 24 JOSEPH If. 
 
 A legislator, imenciimbered by prcceckut, would have 
 no didiculty iii framing a similar system, in which the 
 ecclesiastical government of the several Christian com- 
 munities should be left entirely to their respective in- 
 ternal authorities ; in which tlieir censures and commands 
 should have the sanction only of voluntary obedience ; 
 and in which, on the other hand, they should be free to 
 utter those commands and censures, unrestrained by any 
 control on the part of the state. Nor need the possession 
 of corporate property by the church, or churches between 
 which the people may be divided, interfere with the full 
 application of this principle of freedom, not even (as 
 Archbisliop Whately was one of the first to point out) if 
 such property is constituted by state endowment. A 
 religious community may possess property either through 
 such endowment, or from the voluntary contributions of 
 its adherents, or from accumulated benefactions. In either 
 case, it is the busuiess of the legislature and the tribunals 
 to see that this property is respected. The community 
 may permit the use of this property, under its own in- 
 ternal regulation, by spiritual teachers who are bound to 
 inculcate particular doctrines ; or, in the shape of charities, 
 by lay members holding those doctrines. If teacher or 
 layman contravenes the doctrines deemed by his own 
 church essential to membership, the temporal power, repre- 
 sented l)y the tribunals, will enforce the implied contract 
 by dei)riving him of his share of the use of the property, 
 just as it would do in the case of an association for volun- 
 tary purposes not religious. And in order to ascertain what 
 are in fact the rules of church membership, the tribuuids 
 win ill ordinary cases accept the evidence tendered by the 
 rehgious governors of the body. To this extent, tem- 
 poral interference is quite consistent with the perfect 
 preservation of religious freedom. But any state inter-
 
 JOSEPH II. 
 
 25 
 
 fereiicc wliicli goes beyond this point ; which alTects to 
 punish or reward on account of rehgious behef ; or to 
 give tlie sanction of temporal punishment (except by sucli 
 unavoidable deprivation of property as aforesaid) to the 
 laws and orders of the governing body of a churcli ; or, 
 on the other hand, which affects to control that church in 
 its choice of officers ; or to prevent it from making such 
 laws and orders without state sanction ; or to control 
 religious persons and bodies in their communication with 
 associates and superiors at home or abroad ; — any inter- 
 ference of either of these several classes, whether to aid or 
 to repress the spiritual power, whether sought to be justi- 
 fied for reasons of faith or reasons of state, is inconsistent 
 with religious freedom, and contravenes its principles. 
 
 And on no subject does transgression of the rule on 
 one side more inevitably beget transgression on the other. 
 Great part of the history of modern Europe consists in 
 the details of the struggle of civil potentates to appoint to 
 spiritual offices. Nothing, judged on abstract principles, 
 more unreasonable. But when bishops claimed (as in some 
 regions they still claim) extensive authority in temporal 
 matters, such as the law of marriage and the disposal of 
 civil property, as well as in those mixed matters (such as 
 education) which have at once a religious and a civil side, 
 they justified, by arrogating to themselves functions beyond 
 their proper province, what Avould have otherwise been 
 usurpation on the part of the state. Nor is such hiconsistency 
 peculiar to Episcopal churches. No men could be more 
 eloquent, or more convincing, in denouncing the wickedness 
 of Erastian rulers who interfered with the freedom of reli- 
 aious assemblies to meet and act, than the Covenanters 
 of Scotland ; but as the same Covenanters habitually hi- 
 voked the aid of the legislature and tlie courts to enforce 
 their notions of Sa1)l);ith observation, of cluu'cli penance,
 
 2G joscrii II. 
 
 and other matters analogous, or deemed analogous, their 
 excellent arguments had very little effect. 
 
 All this seems plain enough to the general reasoner ; 
 but hi point of fact no country of the civilised world 
 has adopted the principles thus shadowed out to their 
 full extent, except the United States of America. And 
 as in those States no established church ever existed at 
 all, and the present state of things is the result, not of 
 dehberate policy, but of the inevitable compromise 
 between sects wholly independent of each other, the 
 example, whatever its value, can scarcely be made to 
 bear with exactness on the case of countries in which 
 the institution of an established church prevails, as it 
 does in all those of Europe. 
 
 In the British dominions, or at least in the European 
 portion of them, we have not gone quite as far as this. 
 And yet it must be remembered that for the whole of 
 our population, except that comprised within the es- 
 tablished churches of the three kingdoms, the system of 
 absolute freedom from legal restraint in spiritual matters 
 prevails as completely as in America. And it will be 
 found, moreover, that the political education of tlie last 
 fifty years has very nearly extirpated from the popular 
 mind all opinions, and even all passions, inconsistent with 
 the complete estabhshment of that freedom, as regards 
 all religious persuasions. The laws and practices, in 
 strictness inconsistent with its application, which still 
 ])revail, have no root in popular affection. They seem 
 to exist only because they are so interwoven with the 
 curious fabric of our old constitution that it is difficult 
 to suggest any mode of getting rid of them without 
 making unseemly and dangerous rents in that fabric. 
 Some of tliem, moreover, wliile generally defended, in 
 [)ublic, on grounds which are in truth obsolete, really re-
 
 JOSEPH II. 27 
 
 commend themselves to our minds on grounds which 
 are not perceived, or not avowed ; as convenient make- 
 shifts : just as an old suit of clothes, though cut out in the 
 most antiquated and ungraceful pattern, seems at least to 
 fit better than one embodpng all the mathematical skill 
 of the tailors of Laputa. Thus, for instance, Parliament, 
 by an anomaly utterly inconsistent with religious freedom 
 in the abstract, remains in law the sole legislature for the 
 Church of England ; yet the extreme reluctance of Par- 
 liament to act in that character shows how widely dif- 
 ferent the legal doctrine is from the existing practice. 
 No reason which will bear the test of theoretical argument 
 can be given for bishops sitting in the House of Lords ; 
 yet most dispassionate men would be sorry to see them 
 expelled, merely — though the reason is, perhaps, only un- 
 consciously admitted — because any device which secures 
 the introduction of a few well-educated professional 
 persons in a body of hereditary legislators, has its ad- 
 vantage. Nor can the appointment of bishops by the 
 crown — that is, by the prime minister — be justified on 
 any scientific principle. Yet, in point of fact, most of 
 us feel that it is highly expedient that the people itself 
 should, in some way or other, interfere in the choice 
 of these important functionaries ; that election by the 
 clergy would probably be the worst mode of appoint- 
 ment of all ; that popular election, unless surrounded 
 by safeguards difficult to devise, and impossible to main- 
 tain, would be very little better ; that nomination by a 
 high functionary, himself controlled by the represen- 
 tatives of the people, affords a rough and unscientific, but 
 a tolerable, solution of a perplexing question. So, again, 
 it would be difficult to rest on any sohd ground of prin- 
 ciple the law under which the decision of ecclesiastical 
 questions, including questions of religious orthodoxy, is
 
 28 JOSEPH II. 
 
 left to an ordinary civil tribunal appointed by the crown. 
 But the anomaly appears to be, on the whole, a popular 
 one ; because it is felt that nothing could be more unsafe 
 or unjust than to leave such cases to the judgment of 
 heated partisans, and no other device for securing im- 
 partiality has been imagined. There are, it is true, some 
 few other rehcs of the old system — chiefly, in our days, 
 in the shape of state control over tlie ministration of the 
 clergy — which it is not easier to defend on grounds of ex- 
 ])ediency than of principle. Why, for instance, should 
 tlie State compel clergymen to baptise, or to bury, with 
 particular religious ceremonies? The answer usually 
 given is, because they are functionaries paid by the State 
 to perform these duties, and whom the State has, there- 
 fore a right to compel ; an answer betraying a con- 
 tinuance of that confusion between the temporal and 
 spiritual, from which, as has been already said, the 
 British mind has almost freed itself. For, allowing that 
 the State, in a broad sense of the words, may be said 
 to pay the clergy, it pays them, in sound reason, only 
 for the performance of duties according to, and subject 
 to, the customs of their church : when it interferes to 
 prescribe or enforce those customs by the secular arm, 
 it is violating the broad principle of religious freedom as 
 fundamentally, though not as grossly, as it did when it 
 lent the use of that arm to the church to enforce ex- 
 communication by civil penalties. 
 
 These, however, are but exceptions to tlie general 
 system of our modern legislation, and the general course 
 of Britivsh political reasoning. On the continent of Europe 
 the case is widely different. There, it may be said in tlie 
 most sweeping terms, that the separation of the spiritual 
 fiom tlie temporal government not only exists nowhere 
 in ])ractice, but that it has hardly presented itself to the
 
 JOSEPH 11. 29 
 
 public mind in theory, except in the speculations of a 
 few insulated and not very consistent philosophers. The 
 Continent possesses a legion of political reasoners who 
 are perfectly ready for the abolition of all churches, root 
 and branch. It possesses hardly any, on the liberal side, 
 who would support the existence of churches independent 
 of the State. But it has ultramontane Catholic writers of 
 deserved popularity, whose idea of religious freedom is to 
 impose on the State the duty of carrying into effect the 
 decrees of the church : and some Erastians, as they would 
 have been called in former times, who mean by the same 
 phrase the weakening of clerical control, and the active 
 intermeddlmg of the government in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 Until the age immediately preceding the Eeformation, 
 little doubt or difficulty had arisen concerning the rela- 
 tions of the temporal and spiritual power, except in the 
 minds of a few premature reasoners. Even the quarrel 
 of hivestitures, long and widely as it agitated Europe, 
 was in truth superficial only. The church had not only 
 the unrestrained use of the arm of the state in order to 
 suppress illicit opinions, but it had also acquired, through 
 the ramifications of the canon law, an intricate grasp on a 
 great portion of the civil relations of life. Temporal 
 sovereigns were, for the most part, willing associates, or 
 servants, of this mighty commonwealth. Wlien they 
 engaged in opposition to it, this was generally on ques- 
 tions of personal ambition or interest — of dignit}^, or 
 patronage, or revenue — rarely, or never, in revolt against 
 any of its substantial encroachments on civil freedom. 
 
 The effect of the Eeformation was to change both the 
 form and the spirit of these relations in countries which 
 became Protestant : the spirit, though not the form, 
 almost as extensively in most of those which remained 
 Catholic. At first the storm seemed to blow from all
 
 30 JOSEPH II. 
 
 quarters at once, and to assail the palace as well as the 
 cliurch. There was abundant reason for politicians, lay 
 or ecclesiastical, to recognise the value of the cunning 
 Italian ^neas Sylvius's maxim, 'Papam Imperatoris et 
 ImperatoremPapa3 auxilioindigere; stultum esse illi nocere, 
 cujus expectes opem.' But, in the long run, the secular arm 
 was the gainer by the convulsions of the period, the 
 spiritual the loser. The power of the church in tem- 
 poral matters received a stroke from which it has never 
 recovered, followed by a period of gradual thougli irre- 
 gular decline. The correlative usurpation on the other 
 side, the power of civil government in relation to the 
 church, increased in proportion. In Protestant countries 
 the church became an institution paid, defended, main- 
 tained, governed by the sovereign ; its doctrines fixed 
 indeed by established confessions, but the practical enforce- 
 ment of those doctrines left to the executive. Luther, 
 with his broad natural sense, had a clear perception 
 of the distinction between the two authorities ; but seems, 
 on the whole, inclined to acquiesce in temporal as a 
 less evil than spiritual encroachment. 'Noblemen and 
 squires (Edelleute und Junker) want now to govern 
 consciences and to be concerned in the church. But if 
 the clergy get once more on their legs, they will take 
 away again the sword from the laity, as was the case 
 under the Papacy.' Dissent was consequently dealt with, 
 in Protestant countries, as a state crime partakuig of the 
 sin of rebellion. 
 
 In CathoUc countries, owing to the existence of a head 
 of the Church beyond the jurisdiction of each several 
 state, the contest between the two powers was carried 
 on with more wavering success, and greater varieties of 
 fortune. There were countries termed, in jurists' language, 
 ' Lands of Obedience,' in which the rights of Rome were
 
 JOSEPH II. 31 
 
 unfettered by any renunciation of tliem (Spain, Portugal, 
 &c.), and ' Lands of Freedom,' where these were Hmited 
 by arrangements in the nature of a concordat (such as 
 France). Occasionally popes might be found willing to 
 barter away portions of the spirirual supremacy still left 
 them, for support in their various schemes of temporal 
 ambition : not unfrequently sovereigns ready, from motives 
 of superstition or policy, to give way to that party which 
 was always advocating the increase of Papal or episcopal 
 jurisdiction. Sometimes the resolution of an mibendino- 
 pontilT, such as Paul V., who all but drove Venice into 
 heresy, and who stickled so undeviatingly for the rights' 
 of his see that, when the republic of Lucca, in its zeal 
 for religion, enacted a law against correspondence with 
 certain exiles who had become heretics, he insisted on 
 its being expunged from the records of the state as an 
 encroachment on his authority ; or the temporary suc- 
 cesses of an ambitious community hke that of the 
 Jesuits ; had the result for a time of stren^theninir and 
 setting up again the pretensions of Eome to interfere in the 
 functions of civil government. At other times, a monarch 
 of determined will, like Louis XIV., with the advantage 
 of a long reign, and setting the example to contemporary 
 kings, would not only redress the balance, but depress it 
 strongly and permimently on the temporal side. On the 
 whole, the tendency of events was in favour of the State 
 as against the church : its resources increased, while hers 
 diminished ; for faith was growing weaker, and standin*'- 
 armies stronger. But amidst all these changing features 
 of the long strife, scarcely the slightest overture seems to 
 have been made towards that which, to our apprehension, 
 seems the simple solution of all these difficulties, — the 
 abnegation by the church of all interference in matters 
 temporal, by the state in matters spiritual. Li France,
 
 32 JOSEPH II. 
 
 tlie so-called Galliccau liberties were notliing in reality 
 but a transfer of a certain amount of the mixed and 
 confused jurisdiction exercised by the Church over men's 
 purses and hberties, as well as consciences, from the control 
 of the Pope to the control of the sovereign. In Catholic 
 Geinnany, no prince, until the time of Joseph II., having 
 been powerful enough to establish any system similar 
 to the Gallican, opposition to Eome assumed, in the 
 eighteenth century, rather the form of oligarchical revolt 
 than of royal aggression. The spirit which produced it 
 was chiefly at work in the bosom of that numerous, 
 wealthy, and by no means unlearned, religious aristocracy 
 which grew up under the shadow of the three spiritual 
 Electorates, the other sovereign spiritual estates (bishop- 
 rics and abbeys), and the great ecclesiastical foundations ; 
 classes among which the court of Eome found at once its 
 strongest opponents and strongest partisans. 
 
 In 17G3 was published in Germany the remarkable 
 book entitled ' Febronius de Statu Ecclesia3.' The author's 
 real name was Von Hontheim, a suffragan of the Arch- 
 bishop of Treves, and bishop m partibus of Myriophj^ta. 
 The object of the writer was that which has been aimed 
 at, in renewed attempts, century after century, by one 
 party in the Catholic church : to reduce the supremacy 
 of the See of Eome to a primacy ; to preserve strict 
 orthodoxy in doctrine, and at the same time to establish 
 national churches, free from the direct control of Eome. 
 It is a work in which the positions taken up are main- 
 tained with spirit, and fortified by a respectable collection 
 of authorities. But the purpose of its reasoning, the 
 liberation of the church, amounts to no more in reality 
 than subjecting the church to a change of masters. In 
 the most remarkable of his chapters, tliat ' De Mediis 
 rccii])erandie Tjibertatis Ecclesiastica?,' the means enume-
 
 josErii II. 33 
 
 rated are, first, the improvement of education ; secondly, 
 the summoning of general councils ; thirdly, in default of 
 these, of national or provincial councils ; in order to re- 
 strain by constitutional means the encroachments of Eome. 
 But he shows that these objects can only be attained 
 through the aid of the temporal sovereign. And he points 
 out, with truth, the advantage which the absolute govern- 
 ment of the French king gave in this respect over the 
 very limited authority of the German kaiser ; Avhom, never- 
 theless, he exhorts to do his best, ' ut et Germania, toties 
 sua credulitate et Italorum machinationibus delusa et pressa, 
 pristinam libertatem recuperet.' The arguments of his 
 supposed ultramontane antagonist, ' has res ad sascularium 
 principum auctoritatem minime pertinere,' are met by 
 an answer which, ad hominem, is complete enough : the 
 court of Eome, he says, which is continually calling on 
 the secular arm to enforce her decrees in foreign coun- 
 tries, cannot complain if those who wield that arm insist 
 on their due share in controlling the promulgation of 
 those veiy decrees. But of any real attempt at solving the 
 great problem of the relative position of the two powers 
 according to reason and not to precedent, the volume of 
 Febronius is entirely destitute. 
 
 Such as it_ is, it fell in with a prevailing tendency of 
 the age, and excited a violent though now forgotten con- 
 troversy. Clement XIII. placed it in the Index, and the 
 author, at eighty, was ultimately driven into an unwilling 
 retractation, but not until after some years of popularity. 
 During the life of his mother, Joseph carefully avoided 
 any positive encouragement of ' Febronianism.' He re- 
 fused, on a visit to Treves, even to be introduced to Von 
 Ilontheim. But the feelings and ophiions which this 
 controversy stirred up were eagerly embraced by his 
 tenacious disposition ; and no sooner had he attained 
 
 D
 
 34 JOSEPH II. 
 
 inclGpcudent sovereignty, than he proceeded at once to 
 carry the conchisions of the Febronian school into execu- 
 tion in his hereditary dominions, with a revolutionary 
 audacity far beyond the boldest dreams of the authors. 
 
 So far as his innovations merely curtailed the autliority 
 of ecclesiastical tribunals in civil matters, or superseded it 
 by that of imperial functionaries, they were unquestion- 
 ably in the right direction. But they went much farther. 
 All appointments to high ecclesiastical offices were placed 
 in the hands of the government. All bulls and other 
 instruments emanatins; from the court of Eome were 
 rendered null and void within the hereditary dominions, 
 unless approved and published by the civil authority. 
 All rehgious bodies and persons throughout the do- 
 mions, were prohibited from carrying on any communi- 
 cation with their superiors or other authorities established 
 at Eome, or elsewhere in foreign parts, except through the 
 medium of the government. The two first were measures 
 which had been enforced by the sovereigns of other coun- 
 tries on Eome, but were to a great extent new in priest- 
 ridden Austria. The last struck a heavy blow at the in- 
 dependence of the great religious orders, whose superiors 
 were established at Eome. Both, it is hardly necessary 
 to say, were contrary to the real principle which separates 
 spiritual from temporal authority. The directions issued 
 from Eome to the faithful in general, or to the members 
 of diflerent religious bodies, were, or ought to have been, 
 binding on men's consciences only. If in any instance 
 such directions had compulsory legal force, through the 
 incorporation of the canon law with that of the empire, 
 the right course was to untie the knot of the canon law, 
 not to complicate it farther by state interference. But 
 the view on which Joseph acted was dictated by the 
 same fundamental fallacy which pervades the doctrines of 
 the Febronians and of the Galilean school, and of the
 
 josErii II. 35 
 
 permanence of which in men's minds we have seen so 
 many instances in our own day. Because a foreign Pontiff 
 exercises a vast power over the subjects of a state, there- 
 fore, it is concluded, the state has a right to dictate in 
 what instances and in what manner that power shall be 
 apphed. But so long as the power in question is ex- 
 ercised only over the conscience, while the arms wielded 
 by the state are those of temporal com]3ulsion, this argu- 
 ment is as unsound in principle as it is mischievous in 
 application. And yet so far is the public mind, on the 
 continent at least, from having attained as yet anything 
 like a due perception of these truths, that no part of the 
 Josephine reforms has been so lauded in Germany as that 
 which imposed restrictions on intercourse with Eome ; 
 and it is still the law of Austria if (as I apprehend to be 
 the case) the reactionary concordat of the present emperor 
 remains as yet in most repects a dead letter. 
 
 According, therefore, to our ideas, the Josephine re- 
 forms were erroneous in their basis. They tended to 
 diminish the power of the church over the laity, but 
 only with the view of increasing, proportionally, that of 
 the state over the church ; not, in any important degree, 
 towards unloosing the involved ties which rendei'ed 
 each the slave of the other. But, as has been said, 
 public opinion in his own country judged them, and 
 still judges them, very differently. Those who supported 
 them, called the substitution of state for church au- 
 thority freedom ; those who opposed them called it 
 slavery. And this is so still. 
 
 Much eloquence, and much sound argument, have been 
 expended since the times of Joseph, by a few Catholic 
 writers of eminence, towards the establishment of ' re- 
 ligious freedom' in their sense ; that is, the emancipation 
 of the Catholic Church from state fetters. But they 
 
 j> 2
 
 36 JOSEPH II. 
 
 have produced an impression far less profound than 
 might have been expected ; chiefly because, in general, 
 their reasonings have been wholly one-sided. Nothing 
 is easier than to point out the anomahes of the consti- 
 tution of France, where the Council of State possesses, 
 and has even lately exercised, through the famous pro- 
 cess of the ' appel comme d'abus,' the right of compelling 
 ecclesiastics to confer the sacraments, and perform other 
 strictly spiritual offices. Nothing is easier than to point 
 out the gross error of the government of Prussia, when, 
 in 1838 and the following years, it proceeded in the 
 most unjustifiable manner — though, unfortunately, with 
 the approval of many Protestants — to use coercive mea- 
 sures against the Archbishop of Cologne, because he 
 would not disobey the order of his church by allowing 
 its blessing to be conferred on mixed marriages without 
 prescribed stipulations respecting the religion of the 
 children. But then, in order to play the part of the 
 philosopher, and not the mere advocate, it is necessary 
 to be — what these writers are not — equally honest in 
 denouncing the excesses of the spiritual against the 
 temporal authority. I do not speak merely of the rare 
 instances of persecution, of which Spain and Italy still 
 furnish us with occasional examples ; nor even of such 
 enormities as the miserable case of the Jewish child 
 Mortara, where all the power of church and state in 
 combination was called into exercise in order to violate 
 the sacredness of domestic ties — of all great public crimes 
 of our days, that which has broug]it liome tlie most 
 sudden and sharp retribution, and yet whicli the blind 
 obstinacy that perpetrated it has contrived to repeat ! 
 But my observation refers rather to those substantial 
 encroachments on civil rights by church usage wliich 
 are still embodied in the jurisprudence of many countries.
 
 JOSEPH 11. 37 
 
 Few are aware, because it is a subject on which habit 
 dulls perception, of the extent to whicli these encroach- 
 ments go. The Church of Eome, for instance, makes 
 clerical cehbacy a rule of disciplme. That she should 
 enforce that rule by spiritual censure, degradation, excom- 
 munication, is consistent ; but that the state should pro- 
 ceed farther to enforce it by making the marriages of 
 persons in orders null, and the issue iUegitimate, is in 
 truth inconsistent and absurd. Nothing can illustrate 
 the chaos of ideas out of which modern jmisprudence on 
 these subjects has arisen, better than the two following 
 paragraphs, which stand almost consecutively in a com- 
 mon French law book (Bousquet, ' Dictionnaire du 
 Droit,' art. ' Mariage ') : — ' Notre Code ne voit dans le 
 mariage qu'un contrat social. . . .' 'L'engagementdans les 
 ordres sacres forme, dans notre legislation, un empeche- 
 ment au mariage.' So, again, religious vows, including 
 that of abnegation of property, ouglit to be matters of 
 voluntary engagement only. Any law wliich enforces 
 them by civil penalty, or incapacity, is in truth an abuse ; 
 yet they are so enforced, as a matter of course, in most 
 countries. These are among the departures from prin- 
 ciple which writers of the Montalembert school, to bo 
 consistent, should signalise ; for what is needed for their 
 purposes, if they honestly avow them, and at all events 
 for the purposes of civilisation, is not the victory of one 
 power over the other, but the mutual recognition and 
 observance by each of the other's mdependence.* 
 
 * There cannot be a stronger proof of tlie one-sidednoss of the ordinary 
 partisans of church emancipation, than is to bo found in the Austrian Con- 
 cordat of 185G. Half of its articles are directed towards freeing the church 
 from the restraints imposed by the Josephine laws ; tbc other half, towards 
 enforcing by civil coercion its authority in the; matters of marriage, censor- 
 ship of tlie press, education, and so fcn-tli ; half towards unloclung the prison 
 doors of the church, half towards double-locking those of the laity.
 
 38 JOSEPH II. 
 
 Of Joseph's remaining attacks on ecclesiastical power, 
 his sweeping suppression of convents and religious bodies, 
 it is not necessary to speak in connexion with this par- 
 ticular subject. For such acts are not necessarily en- 
 croachments on rehgious hberty, although they have 
 been often represented as such by a common artifice. To 
 curtail the power which private individuals may possess 
 under any existing legislation of bestowing property to 
 chiu-ch uses, is an exercise of the legislative power 
 merely analogous to that which more or less prevails in 
 every country for restraining testamentary dispositions. 
 To limit the number of rehgious houses, to suppress con- 
 vents and secularise their property, are steps to which all 
 Christian governments have been driven at one period or 
 another by supposed state expediency ; and the common 
 sense of justice, no less than policy, recognises the prin- 
 ciple, that to turn to public uses the goods of a corporation, 
 provided the interests of individuals are preserved, is a 
 measure requiring far less cogent reason to justify it than 
 the appropriation of those of an individual citizen. And, 
 at all events, an act of the State depriving the abstraction 
 called the Church of a portion of its property — nay, 
 depriving individual clergymen of their property — may 
 be a robbery, but cannot be rightly called an uitrusion 
 on the spmtual province. Joseph's measures were radical 
 enough, but they restored to circulation a vast amount of 
 land Avhich had been shut up in mortmain, and restored 
 to industry and civil life many thousands of very idle 
 monks ; and it is justice to him to say that the ' Eeli- 
 gionskasse,' or religious finid, produced by these measures, 
 wliicli he devoted to certain specified objects of public 
 utility, as well as paying the pensions of the ex-religious, 
 seems by the best accounts to have been conscientiously 
 administered.
 
 JOSEPH II. 39 
 
 As was natural, it was in reirard to these ecclesiastical 
 reforms that the pohcy of Joseph encountered the first 
 and most violent, if not most determined, resistance. The 
 leader of the ultramontane opposition was Cardinal 
 Migazzi, Archbishop of Vienna ; no saint, but more re- 
 sembling Thomas a Becket before he began to exhale the 
 odour of sanctity : one who passed for a handsome and 
 gallant man of the world, and been a great intriguer under 
 the former reign. It was under the influence of the re- 
 presentations of Migazzi and his party that Pius VI. deter- 
 mined on his memorable journey to Vienna in 1782. 
 
 It was in truth a memorable journey, and w^e of the 
 third generation after it are now, for the first time, able 
 to perceive its fidl significance. It is scarcely an exaggera- 
 tion to call it one of the turning-points in the history of 
 the world. Eome on that occasion renewed her youth by 
 touching her mother earth. The successor of the apostles 
 became, for a moment, the brother and companion of that 
 mass of mankind from which his first predecessor sprang. 
 In earher days, during the life and death struggle of the 
 Eeformation, the value, not of popular adhesion only, 
 but of downright popular agitation, with all its vulgar 
 incidents, had been thoroughly understood by poUticians. 
 To know how and when to let loose with success the 
 passions of the populace, Idcher la grande leviHere^ as the 
 chiefs of the League were wont to call it, was then an im- 
 portant element in the art of the religious leader. But 
 the age of enthusiasm had now apparently passed ; and in 
 Germany especially, where the Thirty Years' War de- 
 generated from a great quarrel of principle into a struggle 
 between rival mercenary armies, the importance of the ple- 
 beian element in church politics was practically forgotten. 
 Of the intriguing and diplomatic statesmen- popes of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not one would have
 
 40 JOSEPH II. 
 
 thought of descending from his pedestal to invoke the aid 
 of the masses in an emergency, any more than he would 
 have thought of preaching a crusade. 
 
 For does it appear probable that Pius VI. for a moment 
 entertained the notion. He was a good and zealous 
 churchman, but neither wiser nor more original in his 
 views than cardinals of his time in general. His only idea 
 seems to have been that of making a personal impression 
 on Joseph, partly by his own persuasive powers — for 
 there entered no small amount of vanity into his compo- 
 sition^ — partly by the help of that traditional aid from 
 above which had made Attila quail before Leo. In this 
 sense alone his project was judged, when his advisers 
 strongly urged him against it, and the wise men of the world 
 taxed him with consummate folly. ' I was almost begin- 
 ning to believe in the Pope's infalhbihty, said Frederic 
 to the Sj)anish minister at his court ; 'but this journey to 
 Vienna ! ' Nor did the adoration of the multitudes which 
 threw themselves at his feet in sudden enthusiasm through- 
 out that long Alpine journey, or of those who flocked from 
 far and near to Vienna to idolise him, insomuch that a 
 famine was apprehended durmg his stay, however they 
 miglit alTect the feelings of observers, alter the general 
 estimate of his undertakino-. Even now some liberal his- 
 torians, like Schlosser, affect to doubt the reality of its 
 effects, and assert that the great South-German ' revival ' 
 of 1782 evaporated in smoke. They fail to perceive the 
 new impulse wliich was then given to the minds of men, 
 if not to the immediate marcli of events. The progress 
 of religious democracy since tliat time in Catholic coim- 
 tries is but too marked a feature in modern history. The 
 Vendee of France, the Armies of the Faitli of Naples 
 and Spain, the Catliolicand Eepeal associations of Ireland, 
 and many similar phenomena of more or less significance,
 
 JOSEPH II. 41 
 
 only attested its farther development. There was a kind 
 of unconscious prophetic significance in the emblematic 
 medal which the leojate at Munich caused to be struck 
 on the occasion of this journey, representing Religion as 
 Cybele, drawn by lions in her car among the prostrate 
 bodies of men. 
 
 The Pope, indeed, gained no immediate advantage by 
 it, as is well known. Joseph received him with some- 
 thing of that bad taste which has been already noticed in 
 his correspondence ; the affectation of keeping at a distance 
 one bent on serious communication by an assumed frivohty. 
 Kaunitz, his veteran minister, thought it politic to treat 
 the unwished-for visitor with peculiar rudeness, as if in 
 contempt of his supposed power ; received him at his villa 
 in morning dishabille, talked of nothing but statues and 
 pictures, and pushed his visitor into all kmds of places 
 and postures that he might examine them more closely ; 
 insomuch that the high-bred Itahan, at once pontiff and 
 patrician, remained ' tutto stupefatto.' Joseph even gave 
 his imagined victory something of a comic turn, by paying 
 his Holiness a return visit at Eome, where the populace, 
 always anti-papal, whatever the prevailing sentiment 
 may be elsewhere, received him with shouts of ' Long live 
 the Emperor-King, siete a casa vostra, siete il j^ctdrone' * 
 But the work of resistance to his reforms was not less 
 effectively commenced. The cause of reaction had ob- 
 tained a moral aid, worth more than myriads of bayonets. 
 Joseph was taught how thoroughly he liad undervalued, 
 in his calculations, the influence of the ulemas and fakirs — 
 
 * Joseph is said, on tliis occasion (but on no very clear autliority) to 
 have consulted ^vitll tlu' most 'advanced' lieada of the time as to the feasi- 
 bility of breaking altogether with the Sec of Konie, and to have been de- 
 terred by the representations of the Frenchman Do Bernis and the Spaniard 
 Azara.
 
 42 josErii II. 
 
 the objects of his scorn — over those masses which he deemed 
 formed to obey a beneficent despot. He learnt that there 
 was a power within his states greater than that of the 
 Emperor ; that half the allegiance, and more than half 
 the reverence, of the multitudes, belonged to another. His 
 pride was no less wounded than his purpose thwarted. 
 And the blow was fatal. 
 
 Then commenced that reaction which completes, as it 
 were, the dramatic unity of Joseph's ten years of reign. 
 Continual opposition in church and state made him in no 
 degree alter his main purposes ; but it rendered him im- 
 patient and violent, and apt to exercise his power more 
 stubbornly in trifles, because he found himself bound by 
 a thousand invisible chains whenever he attempted any 
 greater movement. He became suspicious : and Vienna 
 swarmed with government agents, noble and plebeian 
 spies, instruments of the secret police, who poisoned his 
 ear with suggestions of imaginary plots, and led him into 
 the commission of acts of injustice towards some of his 
 most faithful subjects. And hence originated, in reahty 
 or in popular belief, that fearful system of the employment 
 of agens provocateurs to stir up the opposition of classes 
 and races with which Austrian policy under several reigns 
 has been reproached. When the Hungarian nobles were 
 in organised passive resistance to the attacks on their con- 
 stitution (1784), a Wallach boor, Horya, became the 
 leader of a peasant insurrrection against them. His sup- 
 posed complicity with government agents was never 
 proved ; but he had tokens to show which worked 
 strongly on the imagination of his followers — a golden 
 chain with a picture of the Emperor, a writing in gold 
 letters, which he called an imperial patent ; he mustered 
 fifteen thousand armed followers, and styled himself ' Eex 
 Dacite.' The revolt was accompanied with great atrocities,
 
 josEni II. 43 
 
 and repressed with equal cruelty. Ilorya was broken on 
 the wheel, a hundred and fifty of his people executed 
 ' after their country fashion,' that is, we are told, impaled 
 alive. These horrors affected powerfully the sensitive 
 mind of Joseph, which was by this time relapsing into 
 fixed distrust and weariness of hfe. 
 
 It was mainly to shake off the pressure of disappoint- 
 ment at home that he rushed into the Turkish war, only 
 to see thousands of his soldiers perish of fever in the 
 marshes of the Lower Danube, and an Austrian army, 
 for the first time since the rescue of Vienna, retreat in 
 disorderly dispersion before the unbelievers. Then came 
 the successful progress of the Belgian revolt — a revolt of 
 which the cause was as undeniably just as the conduct 
 and agents were contemptible ; begun by the drunken 
 students of Louvain shouting for ' better beer, bread, and 
 tobacco, and orthodox doctrine and discipline,' continued 
 by a coalition of priest-led zealots and empty democrats. 
 There is no occurrence of importance, in modern Euro- 
 pean history, of which the accounts we possess are so 
 imperfect and obscure as those of this movement in the 
 Netherlands. Its memory was, in truth, soon waslied 
 away by the flood of greater events ; the agitators who 
 conducted it having only succeeded in maldng plain the 
 way for the French revolutionary armies, which made 
 one contemptuous sweep of the 'Joyeuse Entree,' the 
 seminaries and convents, and all tlie other usages and 
 institutions for which so stout a fight had been made 
 against the House of Lorraine. But in general it may 
 be said — however contrary this truth may be to senti- 
 mental views of politics — that national struggles for the 
 maintenance of old institutions, sucli as, for instance, tlie 
 Basque, Castilian, Hungarian, and Belgian history ex- 
 hibits, liave been conuuonly barren of great results. TJiose
 
 44 JOSEPH II. 
 
 movements only have been fruitful which, although they 
 may have commenced as mere endeavours to maintain 
 old rights, have expanded into contests for progress and 
 emancipation, such as the Swiss, Dutch, English, and 
 American revolutions. 
 
 Conquered at last, Joseph had to withdraw reforms and 
 restore privileges, even with greater precipitation than 
 he had evinced in the first part of his career. His 
 •'revocation,' in 1789, of his unconstitutional acts affect- 
 ing his kingdom of Hungary, was perhaps the most 
 painful sacrifice he ever made. ' Non de nobis sine 
 nobis ' was the proud maxim of the Hungarian magnates, 
 and they now enjoyed to their heart's content the victory 
 of obstinate conservatism over the reforming autocrat. 
 They returned to the full inheritance of their venerable 
 and most obstructive constitution. The saying attributed 
 to Thiers, that ' self-government means the privilege of 
 doing badly for yourself what others could do well for 
 you,' seems as if it was uttered on purpose for this chival- 
 rous nation. The liberated Magyars made bonfires of 
 all the plans, drawings, and registers of the attempted 
 land-surveys, drove away the police, and obhterated the 
 street numbers which had been painted on their houses. 
 Philosopher as Joseph was, or thought himself, his 
 compulsory abandonment of one outward sign of empire 
 by restoring to Buda the Crown of Hungary wdiich he 
 had in an arbitrary way removed from it, seemed to 
 inflict on him the heaviest blow of all. He could not 
 survive his broken hopes and outraged authority. Ey 
 whatever name his last disease might pass in the phy- 
 sician's catalogue, over-exertion, dropsy in the chest, 
 malaria fever brouf>]it home from the Turkish frontier — 
 the true cause, a broken heart, was plain enough to all. 
 And his death is said to htive l^ecn accelerated by his
 
 JOSEPH II. 45 
 
 passionate grief at the loss of his favourite and loving niece, 
 Elizabeth of Wurtemberg, first wife of Francis II. He 
 remained to the last true to the fundamental heroism of 
 his character, and to his conviction of the righteousness 
 of his cause. ' I know my own heart,' he wrote ; ' I am 
 convinced in ray innermost soul of the purity of my 
 intentions, and I hope that when I am no more, posterity 
 will examine, aye, and judge, more considerately, more 
 justly, and more impartially than the present age, what 
 I have done for my people.' 
 
 ' Here hes Joseph II.' (is his well-known self-composed 
 epitaph), ' who failed in everything he undertook.' They 
 Avere the words of disappointment, not of truth. It 
 is not too much to say that if his people would have 
 allowed their sovereign to carry into execution his de- 
 signs, which they called his dreams, Austria would now 
 have been the most powerful and the happiest of Euro- 
 pean communities. Although this could not be ; although 
 what he executed, or could have executed, was but a 
 tithe of what he conceived ; yet the greatness of his 
 achievements has been under-estimated, only because 
 measured by the gigantic scale of his projects. The 
 two great measures above particularised would alone 
 have sufficed to estabhsh his fame ; the hberation of the 
 Leibeigeners, which has remained a fact, and the Edict of 
 Toleration, which, however it may have appeared at times 
 to be menaced, has never as yet been seriously encroached 
 upon. But it must be added that much which he was 
 forced to retract was lost in form only, and preserved in 
 substance. As his biogi\apher, Gross-Hofinger, remarks 
 with much truth, the spirit of reaction which set in at 
 his death was a very different tiling from that ancient 
 spirit of bigotry which he liad destroyed. Independently 
 of mere pohtical theory, the importance of his adminis-
 
 46 josErii II. 
 
 tmtive reforms is fully recognised by modern statesmen, 
 who know the practical necessity of unity of action on 
 the part of the central power. The obstinate and com- 
 pact strength opposed by Austria to the invasions of 
 Napoleon is mainly attributed by some to the solidity 
 which Joseph's measures communicated to the executive. 
 Count Ficquelmont, a conservative of the strongest cha- 
 racter, in his recent writings, appeals to the occurrences 
 of 1848 as bearing the most decisive evidence to the 
 correctness of the revolutionary sovereign's judgment of 
 his country's prospects and requirements.* The present 
 advisers of Francis Joseph are but attempting to achieve, 
 by slower and more constitutional methods, what Joseph 
 essayed with too great confidence in his own good will 
 and absolute authority. The national system of education, 
 often admired by those least in love with Austrian institu- 
 tions, is mainly the result of his regulations. The advan- 
 tages which he conferred by even a partial removal of 
 feudal and municipal obstructions to industry can scarcely 
 be over-estimated. The revenue of Austria doubled in 
 the ten years of his reign ; its population is said (though 
 probably this is an exaggeration) to have increased one- 
 fourth. But whatever may have been the amount of 
 good which he effected at home, the world at large owes 
 him a greater debt of gratitude. While dying a martyr 
 to over-zeal for the welfare of those over whom he was 
 
 * ' As soon as tlie tempest of Joseph's days had aloated, the ^feneration over 
 whose head it had passed became aware of the chan<?e which it had made, 
 and felt its beneficial effects. That the public welfare had gained enor- 
 mously by the extii-pation of serfdom ; that agriculture, manufacturing 
 industry and trade had received a iniglity impulse ; that the power of the 
 state had been greatly increased ; and that a beneficial excitement had been 
 produced in all the provinces of intellectual life, was then first fully per- 
 ceived when the natural hardships of the revolution itself had been for- 
 gotten.' — Ilausaer, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. i. p. 153 : 18G1.
 
 JOSEPH II. 47 
 
 appointed to rule, he was, in truth, unconsciously pro- 
 moting, as perhaps no other sovereign has ever promoted 
 them, the interests of that common humanity of which 
 lie was the champion. He would have done all for, 
 though not by, the people of Austria ; he prepared the 
 way to the final emancipation and self-government of all 
 peoples. ' I said, I will water my best garden, I will water 
 abundantly my garden-bed ; and lo, my brook became a 
 river, and my river became a sea.' 
 
 Has posterity yet attained that impartiality respecting 
 him for which he prayed? Placed beyond the sym- 
 pathies of both the great leagues of modern thinkers, he 
 has been stigmatised by liberals as an absolutist, by the 
 partisans of reaction as a demagogue. With courtiers 
 and statesmen it has been the ordinary fashion to satirise 
 him as a mistaken, though sincere, visionary. There 
 was, at all events, one class by which his memory was 
 long and fondly cherished ; and it was that to the sym- 
 pathies of which he would have best loved to make his 
 appeal. The Austrian peasantry of German blood are 
 at once an eminently loyal race, and one on which 
 affection and kindness are rarely thrown away. They 
 were never misled in their judgment of him. Even 
 when kneeling before the carriage of the Pope, they had 
 no idea that tliey were assuming an attitude of opposition 
 to their friend and emperor. No royal name hves 
 among them at this day, in reverential tradition, so tndy 
 as that of Kaiser Joseph. Their estimate of him cannot 
 be better expressed than in the simple apologue which is 
 still current m Austria. Tlie peasantry of a Styrian 
 village are met to discuss the news of Joseph's death. 
 They will not believe it. It is a lie of the court nobles, 
 the lawyers, the lazy friars. While they are debating, 
 information is brought of the revival, l^t by bit, of the
 
 48 JOSEPH II. 
 
 old order of things : the Carthusians have returned to 
 the neighbouring abbey, the Capuchins have resumed 
 their rounds ; the Forstmeister and the gamekeeper have 
 reoccupied their lodges, and the steward is sitting at the 
 receipt of feudal dues. The oldest peasant rises and 
 takes off his hat — ' Then Joseph is dead indeed ; may 
 Heaven have mercy on his soul ! ' * 
 
 * ' The public and solemn proof that true liberty would not destroy Catho- 
 licity, is this : that her sincere enemies fear nothing so much as to see her 
 altogether free. For three centuries past, hare they done anything else than 
 conspire, under more or less adroit disguises, against our liberty ? Is it not 
 true that ever since the great revolt against the church, the genius of error 
 and of evil has used his every effort to deprive Catholicism of the light, the 
 air, and the sun of freedom ? Have we not, for the last three hundred years, 
 and especially the last hundred years, seen the most determined enemies of 
 the chui-ch endeavouring in all countries to make themselves masters of the 
 hands of kings, in order to use them as instruments for confining hers ? Yes ; 
 those maternal hands which sought only to bless them, those sacred and pro- 
 tecting hands which would fain have defended the cause of order by de- 
 fending that of truth, those very hands the powerful of the earth thought it 
 prudent to enchain. Men had told them that the church was jealous of 
 their authority ; and they therefore fastened her right hand and lier left 
 hand, by I Imow not how many knots, to the cross of her Divine Master : 
 and she, with her two hands bound, still did all she could, saying to her 
 numerous enemies, '' If you wish to know what I can still do to subdue 
 error and save humanity, deliver me from these bonds and you shall see ! " 
 And her enemies answered, " No ; if j^ou were free, you would be stronger 
 than we are : you shall not be free ! " ' 
 
 See the Discoiirs du Rev. P. F^lix, delivered at the recent Congress at 
 Malines (Corrcsponflanf, Sept. 25, 18G4) ; an eloquent and stirring address 
 in favour of the absolute freedom of the church from state control, accord- 
 ing to the ideas of the Montalembert school. But if tlie Reverend Father 
 had inserted one word condemning the temporal power of the Pope, and 
 the various penal sanctions by wliich the temporal law, in continental coun- 
 tries, enforces the decrees of the church, he would have produced much 
 more eifect than by all his vague generalities against usurping sovereigns, at 
 least on really impartial readers.
 
 49 
 
 CATHEEINE II. OF EUSSIA. 
 
 It is tlie common lot of the great arbiters of the destinies 
 of their i^ace to be remembered far more distinctly for 
 the abuse which they may have made of their power 
 than for the benefits which they have conferred through 
 its employment. The name of the Empress Catherine is 
 more familiar to European ears as that of the sanguinary 
 destroyer of Polish independence, than of the second 
 founder of Eussian greatness. And to many readers, 
 perhaps, it is a name which calls up even more readily asso- 
 ciations of a simply ignominious character. European 
 history has preserved no other record, certainly not since 
 the days of the Csesars, of such utter obliteration of moral 
 sense and self-respect in habitual profligacy, as were ex- 
 hibited especially in the later years of her reign. It was 
 a state of things in which a so-called civilised and Christian 
 palace seemed reduced for a period to the level of more 
 than savage licence ; self-indulgence of every kind was 
 without hmit or disguise, and scandal itself — that which 
 furnishes the daily interest of ordinary courts, and the 
 common link between that class of society which swims 
 and tliat which sinks — had almost ceased to exist, because 
 the sensibilities in which it originates were altogetlicr 
 blunted, and the observer had ceased to be scandalised at 
 anything. But with the disorders of the Czarina's private life 
 we need have no concern on tlie present occasion, except in 
 so far as they affected her conduct of ])ubllc affairs; and 
 so, in the name of common decency, ^^'(^ will let the curtain 
 
 E
 
 50 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 drop on Catlieriue the woman, and rise on Catherine the 
 ruler. 
 
 Her training was one of no common severity, and calcu- 
 lated to develop to the utmost the gifts of a mind of first- 
 rate power, as well as tact and acuteness. It is singular 
 that the three great cotemporary rulers of Eastern Europe, 
 who founded, or reestablished, its three great monarchies, 
 had to undergo in this respect a similar probation — broken 
 to the collar by years of bondage in youth, and only 
 emerging on the scene of independent action in middle age, 
 with chastened and sharpened faculties. What Frederic 
 the Great suffered under his father is well known ; Joseph 
 II. was subject all his youth to the more affectionate, 
 but jealous and importunate, sway of his mother, Maria 
 Therese. But the trial which Catherine underwent was 
 of a still more searching nature. She was brought a 
 mere child from Germany, to be dehvered to a husband 
 whom she, and those whom she inspired, may have 
 painted in too dark colours ; but who certainly seems, 
 from all we know of him, to have been little above a 
 cunning idiot in intellect, and a brute in propensities. 
 She had to live for some years in dangerous proximity of 
 rank and position to her predecessor, the Empress Ehza- 
 beth, whose mind, though not originally weak, was im- 
 paired by habitual self-indulgence : not an ill-natured 
 l^ersonage, nor ill-affected toAvards herself, but irritable, 
 gusty, suspicious, and only to be propitiated by watcliful 
 cajolery. Handsome, audacious, and intellectual, Cathe- 
 rine passed the best years of youth in a court composed 
 of drunken uneducated men and frivolous women, whose 
 range of ideas was confined to show, except when it 
 extended to intrigue 'and partisanship. And the conse- 
 quences to be dreaded from a single false step amidst tlie 
 pitfalls through which her path lay, were not merely
 
 CATHEEINE II. OF EUSSIA. 51 
 
 court disfavour, or loss of influence ; the convent amidst 
 the snows of Archangel, the prison vault below the 
 level of the Neva, Siberia, the scaffold, these were in 
 daily, and hardly in distant, prospect. By the time her 
 husband ascended the throne, he and she had become 
 mortal enemies ; he had thrown her aside for others, and she 
 had been notoriously and all but avowedly unfaithfid to him. 
 Thenceforth it became a struggle for existence between 
 the two. Had she ^not accomplished the revolution of 
 1762, her life or liberty would have been assuredly for- 
 feit. Had his life been spared after his dethronement, 
 the next turn of the wheel would have placed her again 
 at his mercy. Whether she was actually guilty or cogni- 
 sant of his murder, is an unsettled problem : and those 
 who are inclined, may give her the benefit of the doubt, 
 for it is probable that those who accomplished the design 
 would have deemed themselves more likely to be embar- 
 rassed than protected by her participation in it. But 
 she made it her own by adoption of its results, and by the 
 strongest devotion to its perpetrators. 
 
 Whether the very curious fragment lately published by 
 Herzen, under the title ' Memoires de I'lmperatrice Cathe- 
 rine,' be genuine or not, I have no means of conjecturing. 
 It appears to have been handed about for many years in 
 manuscript in the circles of St. Petersburg. Considering 
 that it all but directly establishes, by the avowal of tlie 
 empress herself, the illegitimacy of her descendants, it might 
 seem strange that it has attracted no government notice and 
 no efforts at suppression. But the absolute indifference with 
 which the Eussian authorities have treated it is certainly 
 a great proof of their practical good sense, and has done 
 much towards rendering the work innocuous, nnd inclin- 
 ing people to dispute its authenticity. It appears, however, 
 to be admitted without doubt by most of the writers who 
 
 e2
 
 52 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 have concerned themselves with the reign of Catherine since 
 its appearance. And it certainly is proof against one test 
 by which false autobiographies are said to be detected : 
 namely, that the impostors who compile them never venture 
 to impart to the reader anything which he might not 
 derive from known sources ; for its revelations are as new 
 as they are strange, and betoken either authenticity or a 
 singularly inventive genius in the way of romance. From 
 these memoirs we learn one result of her forced mental 
 insulation in the middle of that coarse barbaric society, 
 for which her subsequent life might indeed have prepared 
 us. ' I had always a book in my pocket,' she says, ' and 
 read it whenever I could find an opportunity.' * Adver- 
 sity first made her a student ; and then her strong imagi- 
 nation, always dwelling on the part she might one day 
 have to play, combined with her craving for mental 
 employment to increase her passion for books, especially 
 such as might afford nourishment to the future ruler of 
 men. Plutarch, Tacitus, Montaigne, Voltaire, were ner 
 early favourites. And she was a reader of that class in 
 whose powerful memory whatever they acquire becomes 
 a fixed possession. She had gone into that purgatory of 
 her youth a girl, mth scarcely opened mind and childish 
 tastes ; she came out of it fit to correspond on equal terms 
 w4th Voltaire and Diderot, and to discuss public affairs 
 with the most experienced members of her council. 
 
 • I have remarked a pai-tial coincidence between tlie Memoir and the 
 Empress's correspondence with Voltaire (printed in the works of the latter) 
 which seems to me to afford a ciu'ious indication of authenticity. In the 
 Memoir she says that for a year after her marriage she read nothing but 
 novels; that the first book which called her attention away from novels was 
 ^Madame de Sdvign^ ; and then the works of Voltaire. In one of her letters to 
 Voltaire, she says, 'avant 1740 je ne lisais que des romans,' and, ciffencanh, 
 his writings. The omission of the intervening book (Madame de S(5vign^,) 
 in the desire to please the philosopher, seems extremely natural. If the 
 writer of this passage in the Memoir be a forger, he is a clever one.
 
 CATHErjXE II. OP TiUSSIA. 53 
 
 Another and even more important result of this iron 
 disciphne, was the singular equanimity which character- 
 ised Catherine, not merely in special conjunctures, but 
 throughout the whole of her long and chequered reign. 
 The gift of a good-natured and forgiving disposition — 
 gutmiithigkeit, the favourite German name, is that which 
 best expresses it — had been improved by the lessons of 
 necessity. Inured to rebuffs, sHglits, mortifications, she 
 had learnt to bear opposition of all kinds with a calmness 
 strange in any one, most strange in a proud woman and 
 absolute sovereign.* Inured to win her own way to her 
 ends through patience and tact, slie carried into the 
 council-room and senate the same long-suffering good 
 humour, much enduring of violence, selfishness, and tire- 
 someness, wliich had been so precious to her in the early 
 trials of her married childhood. ' Jamais,' says Major 
 Masson,f no partial observer, 'jamais on ne la vit 
 s'emporter a la colere, ni s'abandonner k la tristesse, ni se 
 Hvrer k une joie immoderee. Les caprices, I'humeur, la 
 petitesse, n'eutraient pour rien dans son caractere, et moins 
 encore dans ses actions. Catherine sut quelquefois re- 
 compenser, eUe ne sut jamais punir.' Her public ser- 
 vants, like those of our Elizabeth, might have reason to 
 fear lest they should be sacrificed to the overwhelming 
 influence of a favourite, or to promote a political intrigue, 
 or to save appearances ; but they were in none of that 
 danger which the others incurred from gusts of passion or 
 
 * The Prince de Ligne told lier that her special quality was to be ' im- 
 perturbable.' jVnd she used to sign her letters to him playfully 'Votro 
 imperturbable.' 
 
 t Author of the Atemoires Secrets svr la liussie et siir Ics Hhjnes de Cathe- 
 rine et Paul II., a scandalous work in many respects, but written with more 
 intimate knowledge of facts, and more acuteness of judgement, tlian are 
 usually met with in books of tliat clinrnctcr. It liad ovidonlly formed 
 part of Byron's I'eading just before he wrote some cantos of ' Don Juan.'
 
 oi CATIIERIXE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 feminine instability. And even a sense of injustice could 
 not free them from the enchantment which her favour 
 had thrown around them. There can be no stronger 
 proof of her power in this respect, than is afforded in 
 that remarkable biography of Count James von Sievers, 
 which has just appeared, and which throws so strong a 
 lio'ht on some of the traits both of her character and her 
 government. Sievers was one of those solid and indus- 
 trious German administrators whom Catherine loved, but 
 who never fully understood her, nor exercised over her 
 any influence beyond what their usefulness gave them. 
 Her correspondence with him is familiar, playful, and en- 
 couragino; to such a desree as so render the absolute 
 devotion with which he served her quite intelligible. 
 After enjoying her confidence for many years, he lost it 
 through the hostility of Potemkin. Again called into 
 activity after the favourite's death, and intrusted with the 
 conduct of those negociations which led to the fall of 
 Poland, he was again forced into retirement, and this 
 time, at least in his own opinion, made the scapegoat for 
 the offences of others. And yet he seems to have wor- 
 shipped her memory to his dying day, and his last act on 
 his deathbed — when imperial favour or disgrace could 
 touch him no farther — was to burn three or four hundred 
 of her letters. 'It is a debt,' he said, ' which I owe to 
 my empress.' 
 
 Her lenity as a ruler was however no sentimental 
 weakness ; it was a deliberate habit, founded on her esti- 
 mate of the best means of dealing with mankind. ' Ab- 
 solute justice,' she says in one of her letters (quoted by 
 Senac de Meillan) ' is not justice ; and lenity alone is 
 adapted to human weakness.' It was also no doubt due, 
 in part, to her courageous disposition, which rendered her 
 inaccessible to personal fear, the meanest and perhaps the
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 55 
 
 commonest incentive to cruelty. This tendency to indul- 
 gence was indeed sometimes imputed to her as a fault ; 
 and it was alleged that local oppression and corruption 
 were promoted by the reliance of the ill-doers on her 
 constant reluctance to punish. Probably there was some 
 truth in the charge. But how far greater things did she 
 on the whole achieve with her subjects, thus gently led, 
 than those of her predecessors and successors who em- 
 ployed on them in such abundance the more forcible 
 methods of government ! ' Ce ne fut qu'en laissant abuser 
 de son pouvoir,' says again Masson, ' qu'elle parvint a 
 le conserver ; ' an observation quite borne out by the 
 facts ; for no one can study her manoeuvres without 
 observing that she rehed mainly on two elements of 
 success — the one, the principle of ' reculer pour mieux 
 sauter ; ' the other, that of buying off antagonism by acts 
 of calculated generosity. Her disregard of libellous attacks 
 which affected only herself — hbels on her government were 
 state affairs, nor did she habitually interfere • with the 
 measures taken for their repression — she practised in com- 
 mon with many high-minded rulers, but she carried it 
 even to an extreme. ' Puisque cela ne regarde que moi,' 
 she said, when the censorship brought to her notice some 
 publication in which she was likened to Messalina — 
 ' qu'on le distribue.' 
 
 Her conduct towards her eldest son, afterwards the 
 Emperor Paul, has indeed been often cited in refutation of 
 her claim both to magnanimity and fearlessness ; but by her 
 enemies. Some French and German writers have gone 
 farther, and given vent to the atrocious suspicion that, in 
 her jealousy of a successor who might, on small provoca- 
 tion, anticipate the period of his succession, she dehberately 
 took measures to stunt his intellect and brutalise his dis- 
 position. It is far more probable that she was well aware
 
 56 CATHERINE IT, OF RUSSIA. 
 
 of ]iis weakness of mind, ending, as it did, in undoubted 
 insanity ; and that she did the best she could for him, by 
 keeping him habitually apart from public affairs, and 
 under watchful superintendence. 
 
 But perhaps her strangest display, if not absolutely of 
 greatness of mind, at least of impassiveness, and at the 
 same time of exemption from some of the ordinary quali- 
 ties of her sex, was to be found in the patience with which 
 she endured, not only the insolence, but the neglect and 
 infidelities, of her successive ' favourites.' The popular 
 stories of her vindictiveness towards one or two of them 
 seem to have had no foundation. When they deserted 
 or betrayed her, the parting was always accompanied with 
 some magnificent largess : ' Jamais aucun d'eux n'en- 
 courut ni sa haine ni sa vengeance.' 
 
 In this particular, and indeed in some of the better and 
 many of the worse points of her character, we can trace 
 a stronoj resemblance with that of a sovereign who cer- 
 tainly very little deserves to be compared with her in 
 essentials — our own Charles IT. Both were voluptuaries, 
 serving their appetites with a slavery disgraceful to a man, 
 but most repulsive in a woman. Both were content to 
 ' saunter ' through life — as far as their domestic existence 
 was concerned — the willing vassals of a succession of fa- 
 vourites of vulgar manners and mean capacity. Both had 
 that fundamental good nature, mingled with a pococu- 
 rantism about many things which agitate and over-occupy 
 common minds, implanted by nature, and strengthened by 
 the training of a youth of adversity, which made them 
 affable, placable, and personally popular even witJi those 
 who trusted them least. Both had in no common degree 
 that kind of acuteness which is popularly termed common 
 sense. Both possessed in high perfection the power of 
 conversation, but with a difference, partly of sex and partly
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 57 
 
 of temperament. The talk of Charles abounded in wit ; 
 that of Catherine, thougli easy, flowing, and attractive, 
 was not remarivable for brilliancy. ' Elle ne montrait ' 
 (says De Segur, a very favourable judge) ' qu'une ima- 
 gination mediocre. Sa conversation meme etait peu 
 brillante, hors les cas rares oil elle se laissait aller k parler 
 d'histoire et de pohtique : alors son caractere donnait de 
 I'eclat k ses paroles.' So far, however, the parallel may 
 hold. Beyond this point, it fails altogether. The king 
 was effeminate and weak ; the empress, emphatically ' a 
 man : ' Catherine le Grand, as the Prince de Ligne termed 
 her. She displayed in her general demeanour that ' cer- 
 tain species liberalis,i'noTe easily understood than explained, 
 and felt than defined,' which Bohngbroke recommends as 
 ' to be acquired and rendered habitual ' by his ideal Patriot 
 King. ' If I may use such an expression,' says she, or 
 the author of her autobiography, ' I was a straightforward 
 and honourable gentleman (cavalier), of a spuit more 
 masculine than feminine, but without masculine manners. 
 People found in me the character of a man, combined 
 with the charms of an amiable woman.' 
 
 I have spoken of that peculiarity of highly cultivated 
 common sense which was, perhaps, more than any otlier 
 characteristic of her genius. No prejudice, no sophistry, 
 none of the common delusions which intercept the view 
 of practical truth to ordinary minds, seemed to have any 
 hold on that singularly clear and unencumbered intellect. 
 Most women, say the critics, cannot reason at all. But 
 the few who can are apt to vanquish in fair controversy 
 the ablest men : and tliis is chielly because they see dis- 
 tinctly what they aim at, and can clear the premises of their 
 argument from those conventionalities of which masculine 
 reasoners, long trained in word-fencing, cannot well get rid. 
 Such women are apt to ai-gue as the Bourgeois Gentil-
 
 58 CATIIEKINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 liomme's maid fenced : ' Tu me pousses en tierce avant 
 que de pousser en quarte, et tu n'as pas la patience que je 
 pare.' It is remarkable how this peculiar feature stands 
 forth in such relics as we possess of Catherine's conversa- 
 tion and correspondence. She seems to see intuitively 
 through the fallacies which closed the minds even of her 
 ablest intimates ; and yet to hesitate, with the modesty of 
 true talent, before settmg her own quiet doubts against 
 their pompous assertions. Voltaire, in his letters to her, 
 had been indulging in some of his favourite theories, 
 grounded on the Jesuit narrations, about Chinese morality 
 and civilisation. 'I cannot help thinking,' says the em- 
 press, ' from such official correspondence with our Chinese 
 neighbours as has come under my knowledge, that they 
 are very inferior to what is said of them : ' ' mais il ne faut 
 pas nuire h son prochain : ainsi je me tais, etj 'admire les 
 relations des delegues de la Propagande, sans les contre- 
 dire.' So — contrary to the far-fetched fancies of the same 
 ingenious philosopher — the discovery of fossil remains in 
 Siberia leads her at once to the rational conclusion, ' que 
 le monde est un peu plus ancien que nos nourrices ne le 
 disent.' Voltaire harangues her on the danger to civihsa- 
 tion from the approach of the Oriental plague, and ex- 
 horts her to a strict maintenance of quarantine ; she 
 promises to do whatever the faculty and her neighbours 
 require, but avows her own scepticism as to quarantine 
 being of any service in the matter. A vessel had caught 
 fire in the harbour of Cronstadt ; some of the sailors were 
 seized on and about to be executed as incendiaries ; there 
 were doubtful circumstances about the case ; Catherine 
 remembered what she had read of spontaneous combus- 
 tion, instituted an enquiry into the nature of the cargo, 
 and the men's fives were spared in consequence. Fond as 
 she was of the society and correspondence of the learned
 
 CATUERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 59 
 
 of her day, their solemn assumptions met with no more 
 mercy from her than the vulgar prejudices of the multi- 
 tude. ' Que je les plains, ces pauvres savans ! ils n'osent 
 jamais prononcer ces quatre mots, je ne sais pas, qui sont 
 si commodes pour nous autres ignorans, et qui nous em- 
 pechent quelquefois de prendre des dangereuses decisions.' 
 She judged of men and events with as little of prejudice 
 as of passion, and really seems to have been — what can 
 hardly be said of any other mighty ruler, unless Frederic 
 be also excepted — absolutely free from superstition in 
 any shape.* 
 
 This absence of preconceived opinions — this freedom 
 from idol-worship — formed an essential part of her cha- 
 racter as a sovereign, and rendered her peculiarly fit to 
 take her place as one of the precursors of that great 
 change which civilisation was about to undergo. Im- 
 posing names, theories, traditions, had no prestige for her. 
 She valued the institutions of her country — the vast state- 
 church of which she was the head, the compact and 
 powerful nobility and ' bureaucracy ' of which she was 
 the chief — simply for what they might be worth as imple- 
 ments in her hand for securing that in which alone she 
 took an interest, the welfare of the empire in general, 
 through her own instrumentahty as absolute governor. 
 She had at bottom, let her errors have been what they 
 may, a strong feeling of indignation and repulsion toward 
 oppression ; a strong sense of the w^orth and natural 
 equality of men ; a strong passion for enlightenment, 
 toleration, freedom, civiHsation. Slie did not see clearly 
 her way to all these objects ; but she saw clearly enough, 
 and estimated truly enough, the nature and extent of the 
 
 * Unless wo believe an idle story that was ciuTent in the Russian court, 
 of her having been frightened by some meteoric appearances just before her 
 death.
 
 ■60 CATIIEKIXE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 obstacles which the selfishness of the powerful classes has 
 everywhere raised to their accomplishment. She would, 
 if she could, have redressed the balance of human good 
 and evil. She longed for, encouraged, urged on, educa- 
 tion as far as the means at her disposal for such a 
 purpose allowed ; welcoming it as the very dew of 
 heaven on the thirsty ignorance of her land. She has 
 been reproached with irregularity and want of perseve- 
 rance in this design ; with having spent large sums on a 
 few fancy establishments, leaving schemes of general in- 
 struction unattempted ; but this was part of her practical 
 disposition ; she despaired of great results at once, but 
 thought they might be achieved in time, through the 
 creation of a few model institutions which might serve 
 as patterns for subsequent imitation. She had no dread 
 of the extension of political rights ; at least, not until her 
 last years, when the French Eevolution had, in her view, 
 consohdated the remaining sovereigns of Europe into a 
 mutual assurance company. ' I am a sincere repubhcan 
 at heart,' she says somewhere in her correspondence ; and 
 she meant it. The courtier De Segur records the surprise 
 "with which he heard her and Joseph discussing, at 
 Cherson, in 1787, the practicability of reviving in modern 
 Greece the classical republican institutions. Had the suc- 
 cessors of these two sovereigns, forty years afterwards, 
 been as bold and sagacious as they were, how much of 
 disgrace would have been spared to European diplomacy, 
 and what an age of political atrophy to the unfortunate 
 Greek nation, which that diplomacy took under its ill- 
 advised protectorate ! And it must be added, in real jus- 
 tice to the noble part of her nature, that those tendencies 
 which in later life degenerated into mere lust of conquest, 
 were mingled in the beginning with a strong desire for the 
 jjromotion of the supposed good of mankind. The war-
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 61 
 
 like instinct, which pointed out to her the road to Con- 
 stantinople, was not unmingled with the spirit of the 
 philosophical crusader. The original motives with which 
 she entered on that course which ended in the destruc- 
 tion of Poland, were those of the champion of rehgious 
 freedom, however they may have afterwards deteriorated. 
 Pubhc opinion has now almost forgotten — perhaps it is 
 fair that we should forget and forgive — those sins of the 
 Pohsh commonwealth which first drew down the light- 
 ning from Eussia. There was a moment in the history 
 of the anarchy of Poland when some millions of Dissi- 
 dents,* Greek and Protestant, were knocking at the door 
 of the constitution ; when the opening of that door 
 would not only have saved the state for the time, but 
 have rendered its bulwarks proof against foreign assault. 
 But when the Archbishop of Cracow, Gaetan Soltyk, in- 
 duced the Diet to rise as one man, and vow never to 
 extend toleration to schismatics an mch farther than had 
 been already conceded by their predecessors, that mo- 
 ment was past ; and the successful ultramontane party 
 had only the office left them of assisting as mourners at 
 the obsequies of the commonwealth, as they have done at 
 those of many a monarch, dynasty, and state, both before 
 and since. 
 
 The same independence and boldness of thought, and 
 disregard of mere conventional servitudes, characterised 
 her in lesser as in greater matters. It was very con- 
 
 * In the provinces of what is officially called ' Western Russia,' those of 
 which Poland was deprived by the first and second disuiembernients, only 
 one-fourth of the inhabitants, according to Russian computation, are now 
 Catholic, or 'United ' Greek ; of the remainder, the <^-eat majority belong to 
 the ' oi'thodox ' Greek faith : and, although something may be allowed for 
 political conversions, the proportion is not likely to have been verv dis- 
 similar in 1772. But these Greeks were all unenfranchised inhabitants of 
 Poland, and eager clients of Russia.
 
 62 CATIIEIIINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 spicuous in the etiquette of her court. The ceremonial 
 of that of Eussia, when she was introduced to it, had 
 been a mixture of barbarism and pompousness. That of 
 the German sovereign houses, fi^om which she sprang, 
 was pedantic in the extreme. She had scarcely been a 
 year on the tlirone before she had placed it on a footing 
 which charmed all observers, by its union of ease with 
 dignity. A German envoy (Sacken) cannot disguise his 
 astonishment at it. He writes of the habits of the resi- 
 dence at Czarsko Selo, in 1774 : ' People appear there 
 without swords or ribands ! The empress goes into her 
 cabinet, and comes out again, unnoticed ; and it is not 
 the custom for any of her attendants to appear as if they 
 observed her, or to pay her the slightest obeisance as she 
 passes.' And for many years her demeanour in daily 
 society continued to exhibit the same graceful absence of 
 constraint. But the truth is, that burdensome court cere- 
 monial can only be thrown aside with safety where the 
 sovereign is personally qualified to rule among men when 
 brought into close contact with them. Potentates of 
 mean abihties are wise in keeping observation at a re- 
 spectful distance. Those of dissolute manners soon allow 
 the ease of the ckcle to degenerate into licence. The 
 perfection of that around Catherine diminished with her 
 own self-respect. Sir James Harris thought he had him- 
 self perceived the change. ' Her court ' (he says in 1778), 
 ' from being conducted with the greatest dignity and 
 exterior decorum, has gradually become a scene of depra- 
 vation and immorahty. Their progress has been so rapid, 
 that in the short period since I have been here, the 
 manners and habits are essentially changed.' Others, 
 however, assert that the outward respectability of her 
 court was maintained even in the most degraded period 
 of her life.
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 63 
 
 Such was Catlierine, regarded according to some of 
 the most saUent points of her personal character. Her 
 pohtical career requires a separate investigation. It is 
 difficult for minds, familiar only with the ordinary vicis- 
 situdes of hfe, even to imagine the wild burst of exulting 
 pride "with which a spirit like hers must have welcomed 
 the reahsation of her long day-dream of empire, cherished 
 through years of obscurity and danger. She had expe- 
 rienced, as fully as ever mortal did, what Manzoni's 
 burning words describe as 
 
 L' ansia d' im cor, clie indocile 
 
 Ferve pensando al regno, 
 E '1 giunge, e tiene un preuiio 
 
 Ch' era follia sperar ; 
 
 uniting gratified love of power with the ardent hope 
 of effecting immense reforms, and amehorating the lot 
 of humanity over a large portion of the earth's surface. 
 ' C'est presque un monde,' she says to Voltaire, ' h 
 creer, k unir, k conserver.' And the activity of the first 
 few years of her government seemed to partake of tlie 
 supernatural. She accomplished the secularisation of the 
 vast estates of the clergy — a work conceived by Peter 
 the Great, and undertaken by her husband, but of which 
 the execution was left to herself. She commenced, and 
 made some progress with, a general code* of jurisprudence 
 for her empire. She laid the foundation of great schemes 
 of national education. She planted her favourite German 
 colonies in the south. And (by far the most important 
 undertaking of all) she launched into the vast project of 
 
 * The principle, which seems in one way or another to have established 
 itself in the jurisprudence of most countries, that an accused person should 
 have the protection of three successive investigations of the charge hy dif- 
 ferent authorities, was specially introduced into this code, and the reasons 
 given, by the Empress hersell'.
 
 C4 CATIIEEIXE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 emancipating the serfs. ' Elle se laissait engager,' says 
 Eulliiere, ' par la facilite des premiers pas dans les plus 
 audacieuses entrep rises, avec la confiance que son bonheur 
 et son adresse la sauveraient de tous les embarras.' But 
 she had, in addition, her own special gift of common sense, 
 so sorely needed by many reformers, to warn her when a 
 too daring enterprise must be adjourned or abandoned. 
 Her first essay towards serf emancipation was through a 
 scheme for conferrmg gradual liberty on crown peasants. 
 But the senate were opposed to her views. Her difficulty 
 was peculiar. It was by flattering the old Eussian party 
 that she had risen to the throne ; and the old Eussian 
 party contained, naturally enough, the most bigoted op- 
 ponents of domestic reform. She renewed the attempt 
 on a greater scale, combining it with another experiment 
 of equally bold character. She assembled, in 1767, a 
 kind of States-General of her empire, consisting of elec- 
 tive deputies. It is somewhat strange to read that it was 
 necessary to bribe the deputies to attend, by such induce- 
 ments as rendering them exempt from torture and cor- 
 poral punishment for the rest of their lives. But attend 
 they did ; and they took their duties much more in 
 earnest than the Czarina herself had probably anticipated. 
 The minor nobles, who chiefly composed the body, had a 
 shrewd suspicion that they were called together princi- 
 pally to decide ' with what sauce they would be eaten.' 
 They scented serf emancipation in every project submitted 
 to tliem. They were willing to humour their sovereign 
 in any other matter ; but on this they were immovable. 
 The favourite expedient of munificence was tried on them 
 in vain. One young conservative drew his sword, and 
 tlireatencd to run it through tlie first man who should 
 broach the subject. She only found one distinguished 
 supporter, the Piince Scheremetov, who passed for the
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 65 
 
 largest owner of serfs in Eussia, and who declared himself 
 perfectly willing to risk the experiment. Catherine was 
 not the woman to endanger her crown for an idea, how- 
 ever attached to it. To anticipate a saying of her grand- 
 son Alexander, she perceived that she was only a Em^opean 
 accident in an Asiatic community. She silently withdrew 
 the proposal, nor was it renewed during her reign. That 
 she kept it in her mind — she of whom it was said that 
 'jamais elle n'abandonna ni un ami ni un projet ' — we 
 need not doubt ; but circumstances did not favour any 
 fresh attempt ; and she who had planned this w^ork of 
 hberation ended by giving away serfs, by tens of thou- 
 sands, as the readiest mode of paying those who had 
 ministered to her pleasures, and bribing those whose 
 assistance she needed. Still, she accomplished as much 
 as was, luider her circumstances, possible, if it is true 
 that she established that kind of communal organisation 
 of the serfs in villages, under their own ' starosts,' which 
 has been often remarked on as one of the most useful 
 and conservative institutions of Eussia. 
 
 The States-General passed into oblivion, along with the 
 great design which they were apparently designed to 
 cover.* And the other projects above enumerated, of 
 which the execution had been commenced, were for the 
 most part either interrupted or confined within very narrow 
 limits by the exigencies of the Tinkish and Polish wars. 
 These occupied the second and most considerable portion 
 of her long reign : a most unfortunate change for humanity, 
 
 * ' That this project was not realised, notwthstandinp the enormous means 
 which the undertakers had at their disposal, allords a painful piece of 
 evidence on the side of those who assert that no great state can pass through 
 a revolution without hloody conflicts. Nevertheless, the results of the mere 
 attempt were most extensive. If Russia has ever since that time made 
 steady propi'ess in internal development, slie owes especial thanks for it to 
 this work.' — Life of Sivvers. 
 
 F
 
 66 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 however gi^at the results for the external power of Russia. 
 It was said of her, coarsely but truly, that she would have 
 been great indeed but for the excess of two qualities — 
 the love of man, and the love of glory. Then the easy 
 successes, and singular brilliancy, of the first Turkish 
 campaigns excited her enthusiastic spirit. The ' road to 
 Constantinople' seemed indeed more nearly open to her 
 in 1770 than even to her grandson in 1853. It was only 
 by degrees, and after many a defeat, that the slow but 
 obstinate energies of the Ottoman race were awakened, 
 and the struggle became one of exhausting duration, in 
 which Eussia sustained no repulse of consequence, but 
 could only make way, step by step, through endless ex- 
 penditure of men and treasure. During great part of her 
 reign, the Eussian empire was so denuded of both by the 
 constant drain of Turkish, and, in a less degree, of Polish 
 warfare, that improvements could not be even seriously 
 endeavoured in an internal administration which had 
 become an engine solely devoted to the purposes of raising 
 troops and levying taxes. 
 
 Such was the price at which her brilliant conquests 
 were achieved. Her arms were, of course, not uniformly 
 victorious ; but she was the only conqueror of modern 
 times who never sustained a serious defeat, nor ever had 
 to restore an acquisition. ' I came to Eussia a poor girl,' 
 she once said,* ' and Eussia has dowered me richly. But 
 I have paid her back with Azof, the Crimea, and the 
 Ukraine.' De Segur recounts how, on her return from 
 her famous Crimean expedition of 1787, he was one day 
 in her carriage with Fitzherbert, the English ambassador. 
 She appeared overcome with the heat, and they thought 
 her asleep: and began to talk politics, Fitzlierbert (Lord 
 
 * ' Avec truis ou quatre robes et iiuc douzaiiic de chemises/ says llie auto- 
 biography.
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 67 
 
 St. Helens) was using arguments, fomiliar enough now 
 but strange in those days, to prove that England would 
 even gain in wealth and power througli the mdependence 
 of the United States. ' I was not asleep,' she said, rousing 
 herself, ' but I wanted to hear what you had to urge. For 
 myself I can only say, that had I lost, witliout hope of 
 recovery, any one of the thirteen provinces with which 
 King George has parted, I should have shot myself.' 
 
 Catherine's chief apology to herself for indulging in the 
 conqueror's passion was not without seeming, possibly real 
 truth. She was inclined to believe, as Peter the Great 
 had believed before her, that the only practical mode of 
 developing the valuable parts of the half-savage Eussian 
 character was through the discipline of war. She was 
 even deceived by the momentary impulse which it gave 
 to commercial activity. ' La guerre,' she says proudly to 
 Voltaire, ' a des momens bien bons.' ' Chaque guerre a 
 ete chez nous la mere de quelque nouvelle ressource, qui 
 donnait plus de vivacite au commerce et a la circulation.' 
 The too visible arrest or rather decline of the well-being 
 of her empire, toward the middle of her long career, must 
 have taught so acute a mind a sounder lesson. But by 
 this time she had become the victim of circumstances : 
 and more than this, the vassal of other spirits far meaner 
 than her own. It is strange to trace the Nemesis of out- 
 rao-ed womanhood in this last trait of her character. She, 
 the most masculine of her sex, was subject equally with 
 the weakest to what has been called the female necessity 
 of being some one's slave. Nor was tliis slavery a mere 
 consequence of her grosser failings. At her court, the 
 minion of the hour was usually one, the permanent ruler 
 anotlier. In fact, for the greater part of her life she was 
 governed l)y two men in successi(3n, neither of whom had 
 tlie titlie of her abilities, but who mastered her imagination 
 
 V 2
 
 68 CATHERINE 11. OF EUSSIA. 
 
 by tlieir tyrannical force of character : Gregor Oiiof, and 
 Potemkin. Tlie first was not witliout nobleness of disposi- 
 tion, but eccentric, morose, pursued as it were through life 
 by the furies of his murdered sovereign ; and ultimately 
 insane. He was the only man, perhaps, whom she ever 
 tridy loved ; and her treatment of him in his last calamity 
 (1782) furnishes a striking exemplihcation of much which 
 has been said in these pages respecting her character, 
 fearing nothing, not even madness, and gentle from tliat 
 very absence of fear. ' Her conduct towards him ' says 
 Sir James Harris, ' has been one of the most boundless 
 regard, carried even to weakness. She absolutely forbids 
 any harsh methods to be employed ; rejects all ideas of 
 confinement and discipline ; and hoping, against all prece- 
 dent, to restore him by gentleness and indulgence, she 
 suffers him not only to visit and be visited, but admits 
 hini at all hours and in all dresses, whether she is alone, 
 or in company, or engaged in the most important concerns, 
 to her presence.' 
 
 Potemkin, on the other hand, as is well known (for few 
 portraits have been more characteristically drawn, or by 
 better artists), exhibited a strange mixture of extrava- 
 gance and buffoonery with a good deal of cunning, and 
 some real sagacity. It is difficult to ascertain how far 
 he really imposed on his doting mistress, and how far 
 she consented to the imposture, knowing it, but not 
 daring to betray her knowledge. Who that has read De 
 Segur's delightful narrative of Catherine's Crimean tour, in 
 1787, has not felt that it was one of those pageants of 
 history which he would have been charmed to gaze 
 on, and to follow in its course, an unsuspected observer ! 
 The centre figure of the picture is a mighty Empress, but 
 at the same time, in society, one of the most attractive 
 of women ; pleased with herself, happy to see others
 
 CATHERINE II. OF EUSSIA. 69 
 
 pleased, susceptible to flattery and to badinage, ever 
 affable, and yet ever dignified, equal in conversation to 
 the keenest spirits among her male associates, and yet 
 with a touch of genuine modesty when measuring her 
 intellect with theirs. She and her chosen company start 
 in the almost constant night of a Petersburg mid-winter, 
 but the night is to them as the day : the forests are 
 thinned along the line to make vast fires at every few 
 hundred yards, which keep up a continuous illumination. 
 At every halt some public building or other has been 
 converted nito an improvised winter palace, to receive 
 the Empress and her most distinguished fellow-travellers 
 of diplomacy and the court. The inseparable inmates of 
 her carriage are the reigning favourite (who happened 
 to be Yermolof, one of the most insignificant of the 
 lot), and one very confidential dame de compagnie. 
 But there is room for more, and places are offered 
 alternately to de Ligne, de Segur, Fitzherbert, and others, 
 the elite of their time, and the best calculated to wile 
 away the hours with converse, including those com- 
 prehensive, but not pedantic, speculations on social 
 science and politics, to which she chiefly inclined. And 
 so southward, for weeks, day after day, until tlie snows 
 vanish, and the green earth comes out ; until they ex- 
 change their carriages for a fleet of luxurious galleys on 
 the spring-swollen Dnieper, and sun themselves at last in 
 early summer on the sheltered Crimean coast of the 
 Euxine. But the strangest figure on the canvas is that 
 of Potemkin. He joins the progress only in the south ; 
 and from that time seems to take upon himself the part 
 of welcoming his sovereign as if to the domains of some 
 great feudal vassal. She could not surely liave been the 
 dupe of the ludicrous deceptions which he played off upon 
 her — the sham fleet and fortifications, tlie pasteboard
 
 70 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 villages raised in deserts, the fresh-caught Cossacks and 
 Tartars dressed up as a theatrical peasantry. And yet, if 
 not, she acted conviction admmibly well. Potemkin 
 had bragged (among other things) of certain corps of 
 local cavalry, which he professed to have organised in the 
 Ukraine. Some grumblers at St. Petersburg!! had denied 
 their existence. She reviews them on her road ; and writes 
 to the Governor of Moscow, praising Potemkin for his public 
 spirit and expressing her satisfaction, that the mouths of 
 his detractors will now be stopped. And yet the men re- 
 viewed were not the ' local corps ' at all, only some 
 hussars of her own escort, whom Potemkin had dressed 
 up in fancy uniforms ! It might be almost deemed a- 
 retribution for this real or affected creduhty, when, on her 
 return from this triumphant expedition, the interior of 
 her empire was suddenly smitten witli famine and sickness, 
 and all the assiduity of her flatterers could not keep 
 hidden from so acute an observer the evidences of a 
 misery which she could neither bear to look on, nor help 
 to obviate. Alexei Orlof, who, like his brother, had 
 something of barbaric grandeur in his composition, is said 
 to have read her a terrific lesson, by leading her, at 
 Moscow, into a room in which were laid out the corpses of 
 all those who had died of hunger on the day of her festal 
 entrance into the city. 
 
 The worst result, Jiowever, of the favouritism of her 
 latter years, as regards the internal management of her 
 empire, was not so much the direct interference for evil 
 of the favourites themselves, as that of the number of 
 meaner spirits, favourites' favourites, hangers-on of each 
 minion of the time, who crept by their means into place 
 and power. This was especially the case under the reign 
 of Potemkin. The correspondence of Sievers is full of 
 complaints — so harshly worded that it must have taxed the
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 71 
 
 patience of the empress to read and answer them, as she 
 imiformly did — of the mischief done by this class of inter- 
 lopers in the public administration. On one occasion she 
 deals her well-meaning servant a rebuke whicli was not 
 perhaps quite unfounded. He had been lamenting over 
 the rash and warlike propensities of ' young ministers and 
 soldier-of-fortune generals.' ' If,' replies his mistress, 
 ' the young ministers and adventurer generals of whom 
 you speak, are, as you say, inclined to war (which is often 
 unavoidable), on the other hand, old ministers and well- 
 born generals have theu* own disadvantages : under their 
 hands affairs of state do nothing but dawdle ; and when 
 pubhc affairs do not go forward, they are, in my opinion, 
 going backward. That is the sum of my experience 
 on the point.' * 
 
 The history of the connexion between Catherine and 
 Potemkin is, in truth, full of anomalies, such as puzzled 
 the minds of experienced statesmen, more accustomed 
 perhaps to see their way through diplomatic riddles than 
 through those of the human heart in its perversity. Sir 
 James Harris, with all his shrewdness, seems to have been 
 
 * This same work (Tlie Life of Sievers) gives a curious instance of the 
 Empress's insiglit into character, and her way of choosing her agents, in 
 special cases, for herself. She was in want of a governess for the two young 
 Crown Princes, Alexander and Constantine. Many candidates were of 
 course pressed on her from influential quarters. Sievers bethouglit liim of an 
 Esthonian widow lady, Frau von Lieven, who was living at Riga in very re- 
 duced circumstances. But she was most unwilling to undertake the trust. 
 Count lirowne, the governor of the province, had to pack her almost by force 
 into a travelling carriage and send her ofl' to Petersburg. She came to the 
 palace somewhat discomposed, and poured her complaints and griefs into 
 the ear of a private secretary of the Empress. This oflicia] listened to her 
 respectfully, and drew her out adroitly in conversation. Tlieir discourse 
 was growing more and more animated, wlien the lOmpress suddenly stepped 
 from behind a curtain and said, ' You are the lady for wluuu I have been 
 seeking ; follow me.' She followed ; and the subsequent history of the 
 Lievens is well known.
 
 72 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 
 
 the dupe of tlie misrepresentations of the empress' 
 character and abihties, which her infatuated favourite, 
 whether from pohcy or in Hi-humour, was continually 
 pouring into his ear. Even while he attributes them to 
 pique, he cannot help repeating them, and laying much 
 stress on them. He speaks — evidently from Potemkin's 
 dictation — of her ' mutability, and her failure of resolu- 
 tion in the hour of trial.' Potemkin already assured him, 
 as early as 1781, that ' she was fallen off beyond concep- 
 tion ; she never remained a day in the same sentiment ; 
 she was ignorant of the interests of her empire; she sus- 
 pected her friends and trusted her enemies ; she was so 
 jealous of her own opinion that she never would receive 
 advice unless it was conformable to it ; she was become 
 insensible even to glory, and listened to nothing but the 
 most contemptible flattery. In a word, her character 
 was of a nature to be operated on by the first gust of 
 passion, and wholesome counsel and systematic reasoning 
 were lost on her.' There could not be a greater miscon- 
 ception, as the event showed. For it was under the 
 influence of such delusions that Potemkin, like his 
 prototype, Essex, ventured on his last attempt to seize 
 absolutely on the reins of power ; and he and those who 
 had listened to him were no doubt equally astonished 
 at the result. ' Catherine understood him thoroughl}^,' 
 says the biographer of Sievers : ' she knew what she 
 might venture against him, and when the hour arrived, 
 threw him overboard with the greatest gentleness.' His 
 last mission to the south was a disgrace ; but had not 
 the Moldavian fever intervened to cut the knot of the 
 entanglement between him and his mistress, it is most 
 probable that her invincible indulgence woidd have 
 allowed him to resume once more his perilous seat behind 
 the throne.
 
 CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA. 73 
 
 As it was, no more remained of a name and in- 
 fluence once so gigantic than of the unsubstantial shows 
 with which his dexterity had amused his sovereign in the 
 wilderness. And scarcely more durable, some writers have 
 added, were most of the monuments of her past activity 
 which this illustrious woman herself left behind her. 
 Death surprised her, after thirty-four years of constant 
 successes, still planning further schemes of aggression and 
 aggrandisement — designing to trample out both the 
 Mussulman and the Jacobin ; with Constantinople, Paris, 
 and Teheran, and Stockholm, full in view, as the objects, 
 no longer to appearance remote, of her daring ambition. 
 But the loftier purposes of her youth, her essays at 
 material and moral civilisation,were not indeed abandoned ; 
 she never lost sight of them ; but adjourned, as it 
 proved, indefinitely. ' Avant la mort de Catherine,' says 
 Masson, ' la plupart des moiiumens de son regne ressem- 
 blaient deja h des debris ; legislation, colonies, education, 
 institut, fabriques, batimens, hopitaux, canaux, villes, 
 forteresses, tout avait ete commence et abandonne avant 
 d'etre acheve.' Nor could it be said, great and popular 
 as her name had been among the Eussians, that she 
 had effected any substantial change in the national 
 character ; but she had effectually aroused the national 
 spirit. She had inspired them with that thorough martial 
 confidence in the valour of their armies and the star of their 
 destiny, which has since carried them, either triumphant or 
 at least unbroken, through so many a struggle. Except in 
 this particular, the generation which saw her buried, boyars 
 and serfs ahke, was probably much the same, in habits, 
 tendencies, and education, with that Avhich had beheld 
 her mount the throne. Her hand was not equal to the 
 Avork of stripping any large porli(»ii of t lie aged rind fi'oin 
 the rich fruit within. Iler influence on her era was very
 
 74 CATHEEINE II. OF KUSSIA, 
 
 great ; but it was indirect, and more felt perliaps by the 
 world at large than by Eussia in particular. Her achieve- 
 ments were those of a clear, decisive intellect and gene- 
 rous spirit, unseduced by the common shows of things, 
 and unterrified by vulgar dangers, which could establish 
 the theory of monarchy on the naked utilitarian basis 
 of the ' greatest good of the greatest number ; ' which 
 could carry to the throne, and practise on the throne, 
 but with prudence, the maxims of a few mere thinkers, 
 despicable in the eyes of ordinary pohticians, and could 
 astonish the latter by proving that neither state nor church 
 fell down in consequence, but seemed to attain additional 
 security. Slie dared follow to its results that fearless 
 optimism, which habitually assumed the best respecting 
 men and their motives, and deemed harsli punishment 
 and violent coercion simply evils in themselves, unadapted 
 to the real exigencies of human nature, imperfect instru- 
 ments of which the use required apology. Tliese were 
 the merits which gave her an authority not limited by 
 mere Eussian geography in her own day, and which, 
 notwithstanding all that is on record against her — the 
 sins of her private life, the fraud and violence under which 
 Poland perished, the sacrifice of countless multitudes 
 to the lust of conquest — entitle her to her place in history 
 amongst that band of kindred intellects, on the throne 
 and in the study, who in the last century made ready 
 for us of the present day the world in which we dwell.
 
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 There is a peculiar kind of zest, as Walter Scott observes 
 ill the introduction to Eob Eoy, attaching to biographical 
 narratives ' which bring the highest pitch of civihsation 
 closely in contrast with the half-savage state of society.' 
 It was his perception of the artistic value of this element 
 of contrast, which led the great novelist to Ihiger with 
 such obvious pleasure over those creations of his fancy 
 which placed his poetical Highlanders m contact with 
 the eccentric products of civihsed and peaceful life in the 
 two last centuries ; Fergus with Waverley, Eob Eoy wdth 
 the immortal Bailhe of Glasgow, the savage children of 
 the Mist with the pedant-soldier Dalgetty. Something of 
 this special interest has always attached to a name, for a 
 moment the most popular in Europe, long borne up by 
 the echoes of that temporary fame, now nearly forgotten, 
 save on his own native hills, where it is to this day 
 rehgiously cherished — that of the celebrated General 
 Paoli. The sober, staid, gentlemanly soldier-philosopher, 
 whose figure was well known in the London drawing- 
 rooms of our grandfathers' days, the favourite of blue- 
 stockings, and the welcome associate of literary people, 
 was the same man who had passed years of life in the 
 fierce vicissitudes of guerilla warfare, and whose dreams, 
 after a day of well-conditioned civic existence, were ever 
 recurring to his mountain glens, his own wild and faitliful 
 followers, and their hopes of a despcraLc revenge. Out- 
 wardly, a man of placid manners, and engaging, though
 
 76 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 not forward conversation, and calculated to command 
 respect, whether met in a Corsican macchia or a tea-party 
 at Mrs. Thrale's. But under tliis quiet exterior there 
 lurked a singularly vivid imagination, a restless contriv- 
 ing mind, and a youthfulness of feeling which survived 
 equally the disenchantment of political supremacy at 
 home, and twenty years of exile abroad. Such were a 
 few of the traits which characterised one of the ablest 
 and most virtuous men of his own or any time : a hero 
 and a patriot in the truest acceptation of both words ; 
 one who needed but a larger stage, and a more propitious 
 fortune, to rank in sober reality wdth the ideal great of 
 classical renown. Any reader, whom mere hterary curi- 
 osity, either to complete his gallery of Johnsonian cotem- 
 poraries, or to study the most remarkable facts in the 
 history of a secluded and singular people, may induce to 
 take up tlie life of Paoh, wiU rise from it possessed with 
 a much higher appreciation of human nature, and fortified 
 for the time against a common infection of our day — the 
 cant of sneering at mere virtue, and professing to respect 
 nothing but energetic and successful selfishness. 
 
 Herr Klose's ' Memoir of Pascal Paoli, the Corsican 
 Chief (1853), may be mentioned rather as the newest 
 compilation on the subject than for any other special 
 value which it possesses. He is a conscientious writer, 
 and free from prejudice ; but there, we fear, commenda- 
 tion must end. He is confused and dull, with little of 
 the spirit of searching German analysis which sometimes 
 counterbalances these formidable defects. His knowledge 
 of his subject seems to be chiefly derived from ordinary 
 sources, and with many of these his acquaintance is very 
 imperfect. In his Preface he says that no special bio- 
 grapliy of Paoli had been written before his own ; and 
 does not mention, or appear to have seen, the circum-
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 77 
 
 stantial life of liis hero by Arriglii, superintenclant of the 
 Paoh College at Corte, published in two volumes in 1843 : 
 a work far more complete than Klose's, although too full 
 of particulars of Corsican feuds and intrigues to be attrac- 
 tive to the general reader. Much better also than Klose's 
 memoir are the incidental notices of Paoli in Gregorovius's 
 entertaining volumes of personal travels in Corsica — the 
 best hand-book which we as yet possess for tliis rarely 
 visited island. 
 
 Few contrasts are more striking; than that Avhich forces 
 itself on the notice of the traveller, when transported in a 
 few hours from the populous shores of Southern France to 
 the coast of Corsica, especially that of the country di la 
 de' 3Iont{, the western and wilder half of the island. At 
 first sight, a range of dark and solemn mountams, rising 
 for three-fourths of the year far above the limit of snow, 
 appears to occupy the whole horizon, and leave no room 
 for cultivation or inhabitants. Gradually the lower ridges 
 become visible ; vast land-locked basins appear, in which 
 fleets might ride; with shores of beautiful mountain form, 
 soft<3ning into rich undulations of plain and valley ; but 
 all is desolate : for miles and miles of brown arid looking 
 coast, neither house nor tree seems visible, and the 
 scenery will remind him of a Highland or Irish loch, 
 tinged with the colouring of a southern climate. The 
 jiill sides are bright with every variety of the Mediter- 
 ranean flora of the waste, and tlie air absolutely heavy 
 with its aromatic perfume ('I'odeur du sol,' which the 
 liome-sick Napoleon described at St. Helena as sufficient 
 ' pour faire reconnaitre, les yeux ferines, la terre foulee 
 par les premiers pas de son cnfimce ') — but the hand of 
 man seems almost wanting there. If the visitor inquires 
 the reason, he will be vaguely told of want of population, 
 and neglect by Government ; a strange confusion of
 
 78 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 effects and causes, but the only method of accounting for 
 the fact wliich suits the native philosophy. By and by 
 he will become acquainted with the few towns, and their 
 distinct population of continental origin ; with the ham- 
 lets embosomed in chestnut groves, wliich lie scattered on 
 the mountain slopes ; and with the productive valleys oc- 
 curring here and there amidst the wilderness of 'macchie,' 
 (Frenchified into ' makis ') — spots or patches of green cistus 
 and other brushwood, said to cover three-fourths of the 
 soil, the favourite resort of the numerous outlaws and 
 enemies of justice. Further inland, he will find moun- 
 tain scenery on a very grand scale, and all but virgin 
 forests, often many hours' journey in extent ; and, after 
 crossing these, great open plains, abandoned to wild foAvl 
 and wild boars from the prevailing malaria. The 
 northern districts, indeed, comprise one or two narrow 
 tracts of densely peopled country, where much labour is 
 bestowed on the cultivation of the vine and orange, re- 
 sembling the best parts of the opposite coast of Italy ; 
 but these are mere exceptions to the general aspect of 
 the island, which is of a singularly austere and even 
 melancholy character. 
 
 As is the country, so the people — simili a se gV ahita- 
 tor produce. There is so much of the rude and primitive 
 about them, that it is difficult to remember that their 
 country is one of the most anciently inhabited portions of 
 Europe, and that their forefathers were those warlike 
 savages whom the Carthaginian andEoman slave-hunters, 
 two thousand years ago, regarded as the least profitable 
 part of their stock ; because, like the Eboes and some 
 other African tribes, they turned sullen in servitude, and 
 were always meditating suicide or revenge. They appear 
 more like some new and half-reclaimed race, than one 
 with so many centuries of gloomy history. That liistory
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 79 
 
 records a perpetual struggle against foreign oppression ; 
 ever renewed, ever approaching to success, and yet never 
 attaining it. Carthaginians, Eomans, Saracens, Pisans, 
 Genoese, all occupied the island by turns, and none ever 
 subdued it, or subjected it to regular government. 
 
 The Geneose Kepublic first became nominally mistress 
 of Corsica in 1347, by the overthrow of the Pisans ; but 
 sixty years later she transferred its disturbed and much 
 contested dominion to a company of merchants — the 
 Bank of St. George ; perhaps the first instance of the 
 exercise of a sovereign, or quasi-sovereign, rights by a 
 mercantile body. Li 1460, the Company, having con- 
 quered or bought over the Signori, or feudal lords of the 
 soil, assumed and exercised for nearly a century, though 
 with much interruption, the rights of absolute sovereignty. 
 In 1553, Henry II. of France, being engaged in war 
 with Charles V., bethought himself of the possible im- 
 portance of Corsica as a point d'appui for his Mediter- 
 ranean expeditions. The Marshal cle Thermes was 
 dispatched there at the head of an invading squadron and 
 army, but the soul of the enterprise was Sampiero, a 
 Corsican, of a peasant fiimily, of the village of Bastelica, 
 who had achieved great military reputation in the French 
 service, and had sworn eternal hatred to Genoa. They 
 met at first with general success, for the name of France 
 was, and long remained, popular with the Corsicans ; but 
 the Genoese of tliose days, under an Andrew Doria and 
 a Spinola, were capable of defending witli tenacity tlieir 
 ancient possession, even against France herself, and 
 Corsica ultimately fell back under the company of St. 
 George. The fortunes of the brave Sampiero, the 
 greatest military character wliom tlie island has produced; 
 his murder of his beautiful wife Vanniiia, detected in 
 political intrigues with the Genoese ; liis adventurous
 
 80 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 invasion, and singlehanded, but temporary, recovery of 
 his island, and liis ignoble fall in a private vendetta, are 
 among tlie traditions which the memory of the Corsicans 
 preserves with the greatest fondness. 
 
 The wars of the last half of the sixteenth century 
 exhausted the island : the chronicler Filippini gives a 
 dreary list of places which had become uninhabited in 
 his time ; and the population appears never to have fully 
 recovered itself. For the whole of the seventeenth it 
 remained passively annexed to the dominions of the 
 Eepublic, though never really incorporated with them. 
 Arrighi enumerates the successive decrees by which, in 
 the course of that century, native Corsicans were rendered 
 ineliOTble, even to the lowest civil offices. Continued 
 misgovernment was accompanied by a yet greater evil 
 from without — the constant incursions of the Barbary 
 pirates, from which the Genoese were wholly unable to 
 protect the disarmed and miserable population. Of all 
 the social calamities of modern historical times this was 
 perhaps one of the greatest, as it is one of the most 
 forgotten. It is now scarcely realised in remembrance, 
 that within little more than a hundred years, and for two 
 centuries previously, the northern and western coasts 
 of the Mediterranean were kept in constant alarm by an 
 active, indefatigable enemy, half warrior and half robber, 
 with whom there was no truce or compact possible ; that 
 for years together families went to rest in exposed places 
 almost as unsafe as American villages on the Indian 
 border ; that in many towns there was hardly a house- 
 hold of repute which had not to mourn the disappearance 
 and presumed captivity of sons in the galleys, or 
 daughters in the harems, of the dreaded Barbaresques. 
 Yet tlie fact is known to us still better from the popular 
 fictions than the histories of those times — the romance
 
 PASCAL PAOLT. 81 
 
 writers, from Cervantes and Lesage down to Madame 
 Gomez and IVIrs. EadcliiTe, found in tliese corsair incur- 
 sions a ready machinery for effecting the disappearance of 
 inconvenient personages, a storehouse of wonderful 
 recognitions and unexpected returns ; and no part of 
 their inventions was more greedily devoured in their 
 own times, though none perhaps appears now more 
 insipid and unnatural. In Corsica the traveller can 
 still trace the results of that long-continued plague. 
 Population has been driven even from the healthy parts 
 of the coasts, and the hamlets, closely packed for self- 
 defence, stand high and conspicuous on the slopes of the 
 mountains, in sight of the little watch towers on the shore, 
 from which the sentinel might easily notify the first 
 approach of the sails of the infidel. 
 
 It was not until about 1730 that the Corsicans re- 
 covered heart and energy enough to resume their ancient 
 attitude of hostihty to the Genoese. Then began 
 their last and most famous rebelhon of forty years, 
 which ended only by the transfer of the rights of the 
 republic to France, and the ultimate suppression of 
 Corsican hidependence by the latter power. It was 
 a struggle carried on by the Genoese with a dis- 
 regard of all that is ordinarily deemed sacred or 
 binding, even hi the bitterest strife, which would seem 
 incredible, were it not that the repeated and circumstan- 
 tial charges brought against them on this score have 
 never, so far as appears, been refuted, or even answered. 
 Their successes were signalised by bloody military execu- 
 tions, and more deliberate punishments with every refine- 
 ment of torture ; their failures repaired by an unlimited 
 recourse to treachery, bribery, and assassination. Tlie 
 resistance of the Corsicans was no doubt ferocious as well 
 as obstinate; but its worst characteristics arc almost 
 
 G
 
 82 PASCAL TAOLI, 
 
 forgotten in the singular display wliicli they made of mi- 
 llinchuig courage and patriotism. They showed them- 
 selves unconquerable in reverses ; but it cannot be said that 
 the determination never to be conquered was seconded 
 by an equally obstinate determination to conquer. 
 On the contrary, in reading their history, we are con- 
 tinually struck with the fact, that while constantly on the 
 point of victory, they never thoroughly achieved it ; that 
 their union or their perseverance seems to have failed 
 them over and over again, unexpectedly and at the 
 critical moment; that partisanship, treachery, and Genoese 
 gold continually interfered at last to turn the current of 
 the most successfid enterprise. This is a plienomenon 
 equally remarkable in similar passages of history else- 
 where ; the obstinate and yet never complete resistance 
 of the Higlilanders, for instance, and of the Irish, to 
 Saxon supremacy. It was seized on with characteristic 
 acuteness by Dr. Johnson, wdien bent on plaguing Boswell 
 in the heio;lit of his Paoli mania. ' Sir,' said he, ' what is 
 all this rout about the Corsicans? They have been at 
 war with the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and 
 have never yet taken their fortified towns. They might 
 have battered down their walls, and reduced them to 
 powder in twenty years. They might have pulled the 
 walls in pieces, and cracked the stones with their teeth 
 in twenty j^ears.' ' It was in vain to argue with him,' 
 adds poor BosweU, ' upon the want of artillery ; he 
 was not to be resisted for the moment.' Probably the 
 Doctor was in the right. Had the Corsicans been as 
 determined to conquer as they were not to submit, 
 a few ill-constructed fortifications, manned by cow^ardly 
 mercenaries, would not have formed, as they always did, 
 a bar to tlie union and independence of the country. 
 It is easy to trace the influence of tins melancholy, yet
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 83 
 
 not ignoble, national history in the strongly marked 
 character of the little people with whom we are noAv 
 concerned. Constant warfare made them essentially 
 warlike— as throughly so as the Highland clans or the 
 Austrian 'Borderers.' Every village contributed its bat- 
 talion to the national force, and every man knew his post 
 and his duty. Absence of all real government from with- 
 out made them essentially a self-governing people ; the 
 necessity for mutual combination, a people of strong 
 ftimily ties. The spirit of clanship overpowered almost 
 all other social sentiments, because only by close adhesion 
 and mutual protection could men preserve themselves 
 from daily aggression. But it was not, as elsewhere, a 
 spirit of feudal dependence. The old 'signori' of Corsica, 
 never very prominent in its affairs, seem to have been 
 nearly extirpated in the earlier Genoese wars. The 
 numerous inferior nobility, or so-called ' caporali,' whom 
 the Genoese are said to have encouraged to the detriment 
 of the former, were but little distinguished from the 
 commonalty. Families of distinguished descent may still 
 be found, chiefly in the western region, 'beyond the 
 mountains ; ' but few of large possessions, or occupying 
 the position of the modern landed nobles of the neigh- 
 bouring continent. Men were Unked together, therefore, 
 not by the common tie of subjection to a superior, but 
 by the mutual tie of family or locality — as in those parts 
 of Ireland whence the old families have been expelled, 
 and Avhere the Saxon influence has never acquired 
 strength. To this day, the Corsican peasant, in marriage, 
 pays more regard to the name and lineage of his w^ife, 
 and the number and strength of her connections, than 
 either to her person or her fortune ; and to this day the 
 landed families elude the disi)osition of the French law 
 by agreements that only one brother of a family shall 
 
 G 2
 
 84 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 many, and the others restore their portions at their death 
 to the common stock. Hence the bloody ' vendetta,' 
 transmitted from one age to another ; and the scarcely 
 less destructive lawsuits, which eat into the wealth and 
 peace of generations of litigants. Hence, too, in great 
 measure, the want of population in many parts ; for so 
 ingrained is the habit of living close together for mutual 
 support, that peasant families can scarcely be hiduced to 
 move down from their crowded eyry on the cliffs to the 
 spacious plains beneath them. 
 
 The social ideas of the Corsican stray but little there- 
 fore beyond his family and village ; but when they do, 
 it Avill easily be conceived that they are still essentially 
 republican. The nobility, such as it is, has always been 
 far less distinguished from the plebeians than in other 
 Italian communities. The peasant-born Sampiero married 
 into the high-descended house of Ornano ; Paoh's father 
 was roturier, his mother noble : and there are, we beheve, 
 many well-known families, of which it is doubtful whether 
 they belong to the one class or the other. In lural 
 society they mingle habitually on terms of equality. Tlie 
 head of one of the oldest and richest noble houses in 
 Corsica may sometimes be seen forming one of a regular 
 circle of gossips, seated in his shoemaker's shop — his 
 custom, it appears, always of an afternoon. Simplicity 
 of manners was carried in the last century to a point of 
 affectation, of which there remain some rehcs still. Just 
 before the French occupation, it was said that there was 
 not in all the island a wig, a hat, or a wheel carriage. 
 It is recorded of Paoh, that when he returned to Corsica, 
 in 1755, he found the windows of his paternal house 
 glazed — a point of civilisation achieved in his absence — 
 upon Avhich he broke all the panes with his stick, declar- 
 ing himself determined not to adopt luxuries unknown to
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 85 
 
 his father : ' and the Avooden blinds are there,' says 
 Gregorovius, ' to testify to the tradition to this day.' On 
 another occasion, however, the old Giacinto is reported 
 to have read his son a lesson of the same kind. The 
 general, when at the head of affairs, wrote to his father to 
 send him some plate for his table. ' Is old Sohman dead 
 then, who used to make wooden spoons and forks?' 
 answered the elder patriot. 
 
 Many other mihtary virtues have taken root in Corsica. 
 The peasantry are sober, temperate, and continent in 
 their habits : little addicted to the indulgence of any 
 passions, except those of the violent order ; an earnest 
 and rather a silent race, with httle of the cheerfulness cf 
 continental Italians, and none of their epicureanism and 
 buffoonery. Their imagination seems excited only by the 
 terrible and the mournful. The national poetry consists 
 almost exclusively of their ' Voceri ' or ' Lamenti,' dirges, 
 chanted by the females on the decease of a member of 
 the family ; and three-fourths of these are wails over the 
 bloody grave of some one slain in vendetta, with promises 
 of revenge. Their women are degraded by labour and 
 hard usage, yet pass for models of family self-devotion ; and 
 the warlike annals of the country are full of their Spartan 
 spirit ; in the last struggle with the French they fought, 
 not single but in whole troops, with a Signora Serpentini 
 for tlieir commander, by the side of their husbands and 
 brothers. The great and favourite vice of the Corsican, 
 liis revengefulness, is based, we are told, on a perverted 
 notion of natural justice. But it is connected also with a 
 fearful tendency to overmastering fits of anger and hate. 
 These are common to all southern Italians ; the rage of 
 the Eoman, says Dr. JSTewman, in an apologetic way, is a 
 kind of faUing sickness, Avhicli seizes on him without the 
 action of his will ; but the passion of the continental is
 
 86 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 but ' liglit straw on fire ' compared witli the intense fury 
 wliich calcines the stronger nature of the Corsican. 
 Proud, content with httle, and indolent as a savage in his 
 intervals of fierce action, he will submit, in most parts of 
 the island, only to the hghtest agricultural labour. That 
 of the roads and public works, as well as the cultivation 
 of the plain country on the eastern coast, is annually per- 
 formed by a few thousand Tuscan immigrants, Lucchesi, 
 as they are popularly called, who come over in October 
 and return home in the spring, and are regarded with 
 unmeasured contempt by the islanders. Yet when oppor- 
 tunity presents itself, as in foreign service, the Corsican is 
 remarkable for energy and activity. The great name of 
 Napoleon has so effaced all others, that few are aware 
 how many distinguished men of action, administrators, 
 diplomatists, and soldiers, this httle spot has given to 
 Europe since its conquest by France. It is true, never- 
 theless, that the ordinary Corsican has but an indifferent 
 character abroad : nor is this difficult to account for — his 
 principles, his point of honour, being all local, he quits all 
 recognised restraint when he leaves his native village, and 
 takes only the worst half of himself into foreign parts. 
 
 In January, 1735, a general consulta or assembly held 
 at Corte placed their coiuitry ' under the protection of the 
 Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin,' and under 
 the temporal government of a triumvirate — Andrea 
 Ceccaldi, Lodovico Giafferi, and Giacinto Paoli. The 
 latter was a landed proprietor of Morosaglia,* in the 
 
 • There is mucli confusion in the Corsican local nomenclature, owing to 
 the peculiar divisions of the rural districts, analogous to that in the northern 
 counties of England into hamlets, townships, and extensive parishes. In 
 Corsica an aggregate of small hamlets (' paesi ') constitutes generally the 
 village (called by the French commune), and an aggregate of villages the 
 ' pieve ' or parish (now canton), Pascal Paoli was born iji the hamlet of 
 La Stretta, village of Morosaglia, and pieve of Rostino, and each is occa- 
 sionally named as his birthplace.
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 87 
 
 eastern part of the island ; a man of cultivated mind, a 
 physician by profession, and whose whole career was tliat 
 of an enlightened patriot. But all the efforts of the tri- 
 umvirate were unable to achieve much success, until the 
 expedition of the famous adventurer, Theodore Baron von 
 Neuhof, in 1736, partly fitted out by English sympathisers, 
 but chiefly by Dutch merchants, on whom he had strangely 
 prevailed to embark in so unpromising a speculation. 
 Then followed the curious episode in history of his eleva- 
 tion to the throne of Corsica by the unanimous voice of 
 the people, his disappearance and his two reappearances, 
 with the final abandonment of his not ill-played part. His 
 character was one of those which irresistibly captivate the 
 mass of mankind ; and it was impossible to persuade his vo- 
 luntary subj ects that he was in reality only a needy proj ector, 
 and not the princely deliverer whose triumphant return 
 they long continued to expect, even while he was slowly 
 dying on the debtors' side of a London gaol. His inter- 
 ference, however, while it did good but brief service to 
 the cause of the patriots, had the effect of dividing them : 
 Giacinto and other enlightened men held aloof from him, 
 and by doing so lost much of their popularity. 
 
 In 1737 France, under the administration of Cardinal 
 Fleury, interfered as a mediator, invoked by the Genoese 
 Eepublic. Her interference w^as backed by a force of 
 3,000 men, under the Conite de Boissieux. But there 
 was at this period no fixed project, on the part of the 
 French government, to wrest the sovereignty from the 
 Genoese. They required, on the contrary, unconditional 
 submission to the Eepublic. Giacinto Paoli and Giafferi, 
 who had at first inclined to the French side, now took 
 arms together with the more zealous adherents of King 
 Theodore. After a short but gallant resistance to Marshal 
 Maillebois, the patriots recognised the impossibility of
 
 88 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 prolonging the struggle. By arrangements with the 
 marshal, twenty-two of their leaders Avent into voluntary 
 exile ; among these were Giafferi and Giacinto Paoli, 
 who took with him his younger son Pasqiiale, a boy of 
 fourteen (born in 1725), leaving Clemente, the elder, to 
 take care of his property and keep alive the influence of 
 his name. 
 
 After their departure, a still thicker darkness seemed to 
 settle over the fortunes of their unhappy country. In 1741 
 the French, who had done some good there, abandoned 
 the island through a change of pohcy. The Genoese 
 immediately recommenced the oppressions which the 
 French had abolished, and the insurrection broke out 
 afresh. It was chequered by new French and Sardinian 
 temporary interventions, but assumed more and more the 
 character of inveterate hatred between the two principals 
 concerned. The next Corsican general was Giampetro 
 GafTori of Corte, a man moulded in the fashion of Plu- 
 tarch's Spartans. They still shoAV his house in the old 
 ' Place ' of Corte, riddled with the sliot fired at it by the 
 Genoese from the chff-built citadel above. This house 
 was afterwards the residence of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, 
 when Paoli's secretary, with his wife Letitia, for several 
 months before the birth of their son Napoleon. On one 
 occasion the garrison captured Gaffori's infant child, and 
 suspended him out of an embrasure overhanging the 
 torrent which rolls some hundred feet below the castle 
 precipice, exposed to the balls of the assailants. Undis- 
 mayed, GafTori ordered the assault, captured the citadel, 
 and recovered his child unhurt. He died in 1753, mur- 
 dered by a band of assassins hired by Genoa, including his 
 personal enemies, the Eomei of Corte and his own brotlier 
 Anton-Francesco. The latter was taken and broken on 
 the wheel, the execution taking place, according to tradi-
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 89 
 
 tion, in a room of the castle of Corte, and in the presence 
 of the widow of the murdered man. 
 
 The patriots were pressed hard after the death of 
 Gaffori, but his power was intrusted by the Consulta to a 
 supreme magistracy, composed of ClementePaoH and three 
 others, who inaugurated their government by a solemn 
 appeal to the sympathies of civilised Europe. ' We have 
 unanimously sworn by the hving and true God, Him to 
 whom nothing is equal or can approach, that we will all 
 perish rather than open negotiations, much more rather 
 than submit to the Eepublic. And that we may not all 
 become together the victims of murder and rapacity, 
 Ave will either fight and conquer or die together m 
 our despair, emulating in a general desolation that great 
 example which the people of Saguntum once gave the 
 world.' 
 
 Clemente Paoli was a man of singular and noble cha- 
 racter. His mmd took early a strong bias towards 
 rehgious enthusiasm. His wife died young, leaving him 
 an only daughter ; he then associated himself to the 
 Tertiary Order of Franciscans ; lived chiefly at their con- 
 vent in his native village Morosagiia ; passed many hours 
 together in devotional exercises, and indulged in long- 
 retreats from the world. But all his devotion did not 
 hinder him from becoming, in battle, the very Ajax of 
 tlie Corsican army — the man whose extraordinary per- 
 sonal courage and daring raised to the highest pitch tlie 
 warlike spirit of his countrymen, and led them on to the 
 most desperate actions. According to Boswell's quaint 
 description, he ' would frequently offer up a prayer to 
 heaven for the person at whom he was going to fire ; say- 
 ing he was sorry to be under the necessity of depriving 
 him of hfe, but that he was an enemy of Corsica, and 
 Providence had sent him in his way in order that lie might
 
 1)0 PASCAL TAOLI. 
 
 be prevented from doing further mischief.' Or, as an island 
 poet has expressed the same view of his character, 
 
 Quando 1' immancabile mosclietto 
 Al nemico drizzava, iu aria pia 
 Sembiava che dicesse : Iddio vel dia ! 
 
 He once captured a French officer with a copy of Helvetius 
 'de r Esprit' in his pocket. 'I return you your sword,' 
 he said to his prisoner ; ' I respect you too mucli to re- 
 turn your book.' He was in mihtary affairs the right arm 
 of his brother Pasquale, whom he loved with the most 
 perfect devotion. He was thoroughly disinterested : not 
 only indifferent to power, but almost to fame, and jealous 
 only of that of his comrades ; ' nee unquam per alios gesta 
 avide intercepit,' says Arrighi, applying to him Tacitus's 
 praise of Agricola. It was with his perfect concurrence, 
 if not on his instigation, that the Supreme Magistracy, 
 recognising the want of a single leader, and at the same 
 time the impossibility of finding at home one whom his 
 jealous competitors would obey, determined on offering 
 the command of the national forces to his exiled brother 
 Pasquale. 
 
 Giacinto Paoh had betaken himself to Naples in his 
 banishment, where king Charles HI. made him colonel of 
 a Corsican regiment in his service. Thus placed in a 
 secure and honourable position, the banished leader was 
 able to devote himself with great assiduity to the educa- 
 tion of his younger son. Pascal completed his studies 
 under the care of Genovesi, then professor of jurisprudence, 
 who is said (according to the common story on such occa- 
 sions) to have prophesied the future greatness of his 
 pupil. In those unsuspicious times, when kings had not 
 yet begun to be afraid of socialist novelties, great freedom 
 of speculation prevailed in places where it might least 
 liave been expected : and Naples — ' oil diable la philoso-
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 91 
 
 pliie ne va-t'elle pas se nicher ? ' — was the seat of a school 
 of economists in pohtics and latitudinarians in rehgion : 
 comprising men such as Vico, Galiani, Filangieri. Such 
 Avas the class of minds from which that of Paoli derived 
 its early nourishment. He became, and remained, a 
 specimen, and an admirable one, of the statesmen-philo- 
 sophers of the eighteenth century : of the class to Avhich 
 Pombal, Turgot, Joseph II., and Washington belonged 
 — men whose date is now past, but who effected pro- 
 bably a greater amount of good to humanity than any 
 other ' chque ' whom history has recorded. Gregorovius, 
 in describing a portrait of Paoli, has noticed the apparent 
 personal resemblance of so many of the great men of this 
 school ; similarity of costume may possibly have aided or 
 excited the fancy ; but there is certainly something in the 
 broad clear forehead, the expression of gentleness in the 
 eye combined with the resolution indicated by the lips, 
 which speaks of a brotherhood, even of physiognomy, 
 established by common education and thought among 
 children of widely different races. While thus prepared 
 for civil affairs, Pascal obtained his military education in 
 the Neapolitan service, and especially in some campaigns 
 against the bandit-insurgents of Calabria. But neither 
 father nor son ever lost the ' unconquerable hope ' of the 
 liberation of their island, and they maintained a constant 
 correspondence with the patriot leaders. 
 
 Pascal Paoli landed in Corsica, in April 1755, preceded 
 by great anticipations, which his singular personal advan- 
 tages, his bearing, eloquence, and consummate judgement, 
 more than satisfied, and he soon converted the popular 
 feeling in his favour into the strongest and most durable 
 attachment. Nevertheless, his first military enterprises 
 were not very successful. It was only slowly, and with 
 alternations of defeat and success, that he drove back the
 
 92 PASCAL TAOLl. 
 
 Genoese behind tlie walls of Bastia and Calvi, from wlucli 
 lie was never able to expel them. At first, he appeared 
 anxious to share the military chieftainship with one Em- 
 manuel Matra, a popular leader of considerable influence ; 
 but the suspicion of Genoese influence under which the 
 latter lay, prevented the arrangement from taking effect. 
 The Matra family fled the island, but returned in 1756, 
 threw off the mask, and raised a military insurrection 
 which brought the General to the brink of ruin. At 
 Bozio, Pascal had to throw himself into a convent with 
 fifty resolute supporters, and defend himself against a very 
 superior force. Thomas Cervoni, another popular leader 
 (father of the well-known French general) was in the 
 neighbourhood with an armed body ; but he had con- 
 ceived some personal offence against Paoli, and stood by 
 in sullen neutrality. His mother urged him to hasten to 
 the assistance of the patriots. ' But my insult,' murmured 
 Cervoni, ' What matters your insult, when the freedom 
 of Corsica is at stake ? Forward ! or I will curse the 
 blood and the milk which 1 gave you.' Cervoni obeyed, 
 and attacked Matra, who was slain on the field, and the 
 insiurrection quelled at once. Other partial risings were 
 overcome, and by the end of 1756 the ' general ' (to which 
 title, with powers of a dictatorial kind, he had been raised 
 by a decree of the Supreme Magistracy, confirmed by a 
 ' Consulta ') was completely master of the island, with the 
 exception of the fortified Genoese posts. 
 
 The period of his government is comprised in twelve 
 years (1756 — 1768), and, by those who will be content 
 to forget the extreme smallness of the scene for the great- 
 ness of the dramatic interest, it may be truly deemed a 
 most remarkable one. In reading of it we are tempted, 
 — like Paoli's own contemporaries, as they watched the 
 experiment with strong sympathy, from England, France,
 
 PASCAL PAOLl. 93 
 
 Italy, and even tlie remotest north, — to sliut our eyes to 
 the little spot occupied on the map by Corsica, with its 
 barren mountains and indigent population, and dream of 
 an Oceana or an Utopia, with an ideal patriot-monarcli 
 and model institutions. But, apart from all the aid of 
 imagination, a mere catalogue of what was achieved and 
 projected by Paoli, is sufEcient to show not only the com- 
 prehensiveness of his ideas, but his real and very remark- 
 able administrative abilities. 
 
 Of his ' constitution ' for Corsica it was the fashion to 
 think much, in the simple times when people believed in 
 constitutions. Few would take the same interest in it 
 now. Its best point would seem to be, that it was strictly 
 based on the national predilections for local as well as 
 general self-government ; ' framed,' says Gregorovius, ' on 
 the model of the existing franchises of the " Terra del 
 Commune" the most republican part of the island.' But 
 Arrighi, himself a Corsican, finds fault with it on the con- 
 trary, as representing nothing national, and being purely 
 a philosophic creation. It was based on that principle of 
 double election which characterised the medigeval republics 
 of Italy — the only models well-known to an Italian, The 
 ' Consulta ' was elected by universal suffrage, with the 
 addition of special deputies of the clergy, and certain 
 pubhc officers. The Consulta elected annually out of 
 itself the supreme council (also termed / Nove^ the Nine 
 Men, representatives of nine provinces), and, biennially, the 
 five Syndics or Five Men, with a kind of censorial autho- 
 rity. The Consulta likewise elected the ' General,' wlio 
 held office for life ; he was the head of the executive, but 
 in some respects controlled by the syndics. Here we trace 
 the notion, which appears also in sundry of the constitu- 
 tions spun out of Abbe Sieyes' fertile brain, of establishing 
 a kind of balance of power by rendering the legislature
 
 94 PASCAL TAOLI. 
 
 temporary and the executive perpetual, though both 
 chosen by the same constituency ; a scheme which could 
 only end, according to the ordinary course of pohtical 
 aflairs, in the instant or gradual absorption of one of the 
 two powers by the other. These institutions, however, 
 never underwent any real trial. So long as Paoli remained 
 in the island, he was the State ; and this from no usurpa- 
 tion on his part, but from the people's attachment and 
 sense of necessity. His influence over his countrymen, 
 said Napoleon, was unlimited. 
 
 Was he ever tempted by ambition to convert this posi- 
 tion of acknowledged supremacy into that of a sovereign ? 
 The simplicity and straightforwardness of his character 
 repel the supposition. Nevertheless, it is a charge which 
 has been constantly brought against him by hostile French 
 writers. On one occasion — so runs the island tradition — 
 the supreme council, assembled at Corte, and waiting for 
 the General, were startled by the removal of a curtain from 
 before a recess, in which was placed a chair of novel 
 shape and dimensions, covered Avith crimson velvet ; and 
 the General presently appeared, as if expecting a courteous 
 invitation to seat himself upon it. The blood of repub- 
 lican Corsica mounted at the sight. The Nine Men drew 
 back, disconcerted ; and Paoli, recognising the failure of 
 his attempt, turned it off, and did not again renew it. 
 But this is probably a distorted story, originating in a 
 mere suspicion entertained by jealous observers from some 
 innocent circumstance. 
 
 The remainder of Paoli's efforts at legislation, and the 
 establishment of a better system of jm^isprudence, may be 
 passed over, as not possessing sufficient interest for readers 
 of our time. If it be true that he succeeded in all but 
 extinguishing, for the time of his government, the master- 
 passion of the Corsicans — the propensity to family quarrels
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 95 
 
 and revenge, — that he succeeded in making tlie vendetta 
 disgraceful, and planting the colonna infame over the 
 graves of assassins, — tliis proves how far more the moral 
 influence of one noble character could effect, when 
 seconded by a corresponding exaltation in the national 
 spirit, than successive governments have done by means 
 of penalties and disarmings.* 
 
 * The Corsican propensity to private revenge has formed a marked feature 
 in the character of the people ever since they were first described. They 
 cherish it as a virtue. ' Why do your countrymen never pardon ? ' a Corsican 
 "was asked. ' Because/ was the answer, ' we do not easily take offence.' In 
 the sixteenth century the Abbate Filippini deplored the introduction of 
 those accursed machines, wheel-lock muskets, which had added so much of 
 deadliness to his coimtrymen's quarrels. The Abbate had personal reason 
 to deprecate them, if the Corsican tradition be true, that he used to com- 
 pose his quaint ' History ' in his vineyard at Vescovato, sitting in a corner 
 between two walls lest he should be shot from behind. In om* days the 
 ' vendetta ' has been used as a material for literary romance, until matter- 
 of-fact people have begim to doubt its real existence. Unfortunately there 
 is too much evidence of the affirmative. In a country where crime against 
 property is very rare, life is to this day fearfully imsafe. The following are 
 a few of the latest details, given by competent authorities. Ninety-nine 
 miu'ders were committed in the first seven months of 1851, (^Gh-egorovius.) 
 Two himdred and twenty-five condemnations par contumace were on record 
 in 1852 : the subjects of them were mostly living as bandits in the mountains, 
 where some have been for fifteen or twenty years, keeping the witnesses 
 against them, and the officers of justice in perpetual fear. No 'benefit of 
 clergy ' is recognised. Vignale, the priest who received the dying confession 
 of Napoleon, was murdered by persons to whom he had lent money — the 
 produce of an imperial legacy — on usury. In 1850 the curate of Venzolasca 
 was shot in a private feud as he was leaving the altar. lie who has enemies 
 of this description to fear shuts himself up in his house, stops up the win- 
 dows, and fortifies it as well as he can, and never leaves it except ai'uied and 
 in company : but Gregorovius heard of instances where men thus circum- 
 stanced liad not ventured out of doors for ten or fifteen years, Tlie old 
 point of honour, which imposes the duty of revenge, still subsists in all its 
 force : it is a common saying, that he who has received an insult has his choice 
 between the three esses — Schioppetto, Stiletto, Strada ; in other words, 
 he must cither kill his enemy or fly the country. The French government 
 resorted, once more, in 1853 (the experiment had been often tried before) 
 to a general and rigorous disanning of the populiition. Notwithstanding the 
 complaints of unfortunate sportsmen, the measure seems to have been even 
 popular among the better orders of the peasantry.
 
 96 PASCAL TAOLI. 
 
 One of the first of Paoli's undertakings was to establish 
 the ecclesiastical affairs of the island on a new footing. 
 The church of Corsica was nominally' governed by four 
 bishops, Genoese absentees, living on the continent, and 
 drawing a revenue of 80,000 livres from the island. Paoli 
 succeeded in obtaining from Clement XIII. a ' Yisitatore 
 Apostohco,' the Bishop of Segni, to reside and fulfil the 
 duties of the episcopate ; and thus fortified, he proceeded 
 with little ceremony to appropriate the revenues of the 
 old bishoprics to sundry temporal as well as ecclesiastical 
 purposes. Of course the Genoese party anathematised 
 the sacrilege ; but with the Pope as weU as the people on 
 his side, he could afford to disregard their denunciations. 
 It is, indeed, observable, that although the Corsican is 
 devout in his way, much addicted to observances, and 
 especially fond of those church fetes and ceremonies which 
 form the only epochs of his uneventful life, he seems to be 
 very little under sacerdotal influence in temporal matters. 
 Neither in the long wars of independence, nor in the dis- 
 sensions which followed the French revolution, do we find 
 the priests forming or directing any party ; a singular cir- 
 cumstance in the history of a people of Italian race. 
 
 Paoli was, however, himself — whatever might lla^'e 
 been conjectured from his education — sincerely and unaf- 
 fectedly religious. His was one of those happy and most 
 vmusual natures which could embrace all that was good 
 in the latitudinarian tendency of his age, its large pliilan- 
 thropy, its exalted views of human nature, its liberal 
 politics, its aversion for all bigoted exclusiveness, religious 
 or civil, and yet remain attached to the creed of his 
 fiithers, without perplexing his mind with too anxious 
 endeavour to reconcile the old faith with the new philo- 
 sopliy. All his recorded conversations bear ample testi- 
 mony to this point of character. Even in his short career
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 97 
 
 of cliieftainship, he contrived to snatch weeks and months 
 from his absorbing occupations, to spend them in devo- 
 tional ' retreat ' with his brother Clement, in the convent 
 of Morosaglia, He encouraged, too, the pious zeal of his 
 men, which he believed calculated to enhance their value 
 as soldiers. He estabhshed a little order for the reward 
 of mihtary merit, of which the cognisance was a Maltese 
 cross with a figure of St. Julia, patroness of the island. 
 It excited the utmost enthusiasm among his wild subjects. 
 ' K you see your enemy ' was their saying, ' holding your 
 father, chsarmed, with one hand, and the cross with the 
 other, save the cross and leave the rest to God.' Some 
 French officers were rallying the two brothers on the very 
 unsoldierhke practice of their troops, in halting at the 
 door of every chapel where mass was performing. ' So 
 much the better,' said Clement. ' They who fear God 
 will never fear death.' The priests were generally ardent 
 patriots. ' The convents,' said Paoli, ' were our places of 
 meeting ; the monks our hospital attendants.' An Abbe 
 Mariani was once inciting the people by a warlike oration. 
 ' Where did your reverence learn to preach fighting ? ' 
 asked a Genoese partisan. ' In the books of the Macca- 
 bees,' rephed the ecclesiastic. The last leader who held 
 out in arms against France was a certain curate of Guagno, 
 known by the bandit name of II Circinello. He was 
 tracked by the gendarmes from one hiding place to another, 
 and found at last in a cavern dead of fatigue and exhaus- 
 tion. 
 
 Few of Paoli's good deeds are still so affectionately 
 remembered as his patient exertions in the cause of edu- 
 cation. The university of Corte, which he founded, and 
 on which he rested his hopes of the regeneration of his 
 country, perished with the loss of independence. He left 
 on his death-bed a legacy — the savings of some years 
 
 II
 
 98 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 out of his English pension — to re-estabUsh it; and apromis- 
 ing college was founded by means of this capital in 1836, 
 though little favoured by the French, from the memories of 
 independence which it suggests. This, and a high school 
 at Morosaglia, founded equally at his expense, and now 
 containing 200 scholars, were long his only, and are now 
 his fittest monuments. 
 
 In military affairs, Paoli had the good sense to let well 
 alone. Though himself a regularly trained soldier, he was 
 of opinion that a standing army was utterly unsuited to 
 the wants and habits of Corsica. It had the bravest 
 militia in the world — composed of men who had defeated 
 innumerable times the mercenaries of Genoa — who with 
 a few battalions had annihilated an armv of German sol- 
 diers in 1732, at Calenzana, — who had only yielded their 
 ground foot by foot to the Frenchmen of Boissieux and 
 Maillebois. He left its organisation untouched ; adding 
 only a few hundred Swiss and other mercenaries, to form 
 the nucleus of an artillery corps. He had also his own 
 body guard of stout mountaineers ; not to mention the 
 five or six Corsican dogs, his constant companions, of 
 which Boswell speaks. Strangely enough, some Corsican 
 writers have chosen to disbelieve the story of these pre- 
 cautions of their hero, apparently regarding it as injurious 
 to the national honour. But had not the idol of his 
 countrymen — Sampiero Corso, the Corsican, as he is called 
 among them par excellence — fallen by the hand of his own 
 kinsmen, the Ornanos ? and Gaffori by that of his brother ? 
 And the life of Paoli was exposed often enough to similar 
 dangers, both from the Genoese and from hostile country- 
 men. 
 
 Much has been written for and against Paoli in his 
 own country, but very little respecting his personal habits 
 and character ; the Corsicans are little addicted to memoir
 
 PASCAL PAOIJ. 99 
 
 « 
 
 writing, or ' anthropology ' in any shape ; and his conti- 
 nental historians have found themselves reduced to draw 
 largely on a well-known English book of gossip, James 
 Boswell's ' Visit to Corsica.' The young Scotch advocate 
 made his pilgrimage there in 1764, partly moved thereto by 
 juvenile sympathy with a people struggling for freedom, 
 partly by the lion-hunting propensity Avhich afterwards at- 
 tached him to the skirts of Samuel Johnson. The chief 
 interest of this little book has now passed away, except for 
 those who are curious in Corsican afiairs : yet it is amusing 
 enough in other respects, as displaying the miique oddities 
 of the writer's own character. The reader will smile over 
 his anxieties before embarking for these savage parts, — 
 his fears of Corsican muskets, and still greater apprehen- 
 sion of the stern moral supremacy of Corsican heroes, — 
 his sinkings of heart at the sense of his own deficiencies : 
 — ' I felt how small were my abihties, and how little I 
 knew. Ambitious to be the companion of Paoh, and to 
 understand a country and people which roused me so 
 much, I wished to be a Sir James Macdonald ! ' He feel- 
 ingly describes the renewal of his misgivings on approach- 
 ing the presence of the great man at Sollacaro,* lest he 
 ' should not be able to give a proper account why he had 
 presumed to trouble him with a visit, and should sink to 
 nothing before him ! ' He almost makes us partake his 
 reassurance on finding an agreeable man of the world, 
 when he seems to have expected something between a 
 classical hero and a brigand ; his ' elation of mind in see- 
 ing Paoh delighted with the sayings of Mr. Johnson,' and 
 his still greater elation as one familiarity succeeds another, 
 
 * This place, on the ■western coast, contained an old house of the Colonna 
 family, often used as Paoli's head-quarters. It has been chosen by Dumas 
 as the site of his famous romance Lesfrbres Corses, best known in England 
 through the acting of Mr. Charles Kean. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 and he finds himself at last promoted, like an Eastern 
 favourite, to ' ride out on Paoli's own horse, with rich 
 furniture of crimson velvet, with broad gold lace, and my 
 guard marching along with me.' ' The true title of this 
 part of Boswell's work,' said sarcastic Gray, ' is a dialogue 
 between a Green Goose and a hero. But' (he adds) ' it 
 proves what I have always maintained — that any fool may 
 write a most valuable book by chance, if he Avill only tell 
 us what he heard and saw with veracity.' Many whom 
 the world calls fools certainly might, and many wise men 
 could not ; Gray himself, had he repeated religiously all 
 he had heard and seen, would never have approached to 
 the excellence of Boswell, for the simple reason that his 
 ears and eyes were never a tenth part so wide open. It 
 is from Boswell, almost exclusively, that we learn what 
 Paoli was in his personal habits, such as we have above 
 described them ; that we learn also his social qualities, — 
 his enthusiastic turn of feeling combined with coolness of 
 judgment, — his passion for fame and a noble popularity 
 — his fondness for Livy, Plutarch, and the other classical 
 chroniclers of great exploits, and great men, — his discur- 
 sive, eloquent conversation on matters of general interest, 
 — his physical and mental restlessness, — ' I can scarcely 
 write ten minutes together on one subject,' he used to say, 
 ' la testa mi rompe,' — points in many of which the reader 
 will trace a resemblance to his great countryman Napo- 
 leon, though no two natures could be fundamentally more 
 different. Accustomed as he was to deal all his life with 
 hard matters of fact, his mind never lost a certain tinge 
 of romance which commonly dies out in youth. All 
 mountaineers are superstitious ; the Corsicans as much as 
 any ; their solitary valleys are full of visions, and omens, 
 and seers, and ' airy tongues, that syllable men's names.' 
 The dead assemble at midnight, so we are told, under the
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 10] 
 
 windows of those about to die, in the spectral habit 
 of the Frati della Misericordia, and go through tlie mimic 
 show of raising and carrying a bier. They will also call 
 the living ])y name ; but no one dares answer, for whoever 
 answers is doomed soon to join them. Paoli, too, had 
 his visions ; the belief in his powers of second sight was 
 generally spread, we are told, through tlie island. ' I can 
 give no clear explanation of this,' he said : ' I only tell 
 you facts. Sometimes I have been mistaken, but in 
 general these visions liave proved true. I cannot say what 
 may be the agency of invisible spuits. They must cer- 
 tainly know more than we do : and there is nothing absm'd 
 in supposing that God should permit them to communicate 
 their knowledge to us.' His whole character, and that of 
 his age, in which such pretensions were much more likely 
 in the long run to produce ridicule than respect, forbid 
 the supposition of deceit.* His visions, however seem to 
 have furnished a text for his enemies, when in later times 
 he fell out with the Jacobins. Marat in one of his denun- 
 ciations calls him a ' vil intrigant qui se fit sorcier pour 
 tromper le peuple.' 
 
 Paoh never married. ' I have not the conjugal virtues,' 
 he said to Boswell, doing himself injustice if he spoke 
 seriously, for his strong family affections and the simplicity 
 of his life are presumptive evidence to the contrary. 
 Nothing would tempt him to marry, he told the same 
 visitor, unless he could find a woman wlio should bring 
 him an immense dowry, with which he might assist his 
 country. But though he liad little opportunity for the 
 cultivation of female society, he found his Egeiia in the 
 
 * ' IIo was a charlatan without knowing it/ saya de Lamherg, in liis 
 gossiping volumes Meniorial (run Mondain, 177(1. This Austrian grntlcnian 
 visited de Marboeuf at Bastia, in 1770, iniinediatnl}' altor the French oonf^uest 
 of the island, and recounts many curious anecdotes respecting Paoli, re- 
 garded from a French point of view.
 
 102 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 Countess Maria Eivarola, a virtuous lady of good birth, 
 attached to some rehgious order ; his correspondence with 
 La Signora Monaca is preserved, but it all turns on doU- 
 tical affairs. 
 
 It is worth while to note a few more of the achieve- 
 ments of Paoli's brief administration, if only to show the 
 extraordinary resources of the man. He estabhshed the 
 first printing press in Corsica, and brought out the first 
 newspaper. He created a maritime force, and 'annexed' 
 the rocky islet of Capraia, where the Genoese had esta- 
 blished a post which annoyed the country. He founded 
 a town at Isola Eossa, perceiving the advantages of its 
 port, and wishing to establish a rival to the city of Calvi, 
 always faithful to the Genoese — ' civitas Calvi semper 
 fidehs.' His sagacity has been proved by the event ; for 
 Isola Eossa is a flourishing place — unlike most towns 
 built for a purpose — and Calvi has declined. It is difficult 
 to imagine how schemes of such comparative greatness 
 could have been conceived or executed amidst constant 
 guerilla warfare, with a population of 160,000, and a 
 revenue of 40,000/. a-year. It is true that Paoli received 
 some succours — we know not how considerable — from 
 Enghsli and other foreign sympathisers. His enemies have 
 indeed accused him of tampering with the currency, and 
 that to the profit of some members of his family. The 
 fiourishing condition of his commonwealth, and his own 
 honourable poverty, are answers enough to all serious 
 imputations. When he left the island the French General 
 de Yaux put up his personal property to auction, which 
 fetched 1,700 francs ; three communes divided between 
 themselves one of his old green coats ' per conservar I'idea 
 del padre loro.' 
 
 Boswell returned from Corsica in the autumn of 1765, 
 to stir up English sympathies, already sufficiently eager in
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 103 
 
 favour of his hero, to enjoy the honours wliich belong in 
 London society to him who has seen and conversed with 
 a foreign Hon in his den, and to tie a ribbon inscribed 
 with ' Corsica Boswell ' round his hat at the Stratford 
 Jubilee. He had left Paoh at the height of his fortunes : 
 their great and ftital reverse was already impending. Even 
 before the peace of 1763 the Due de Choiseul seems to 
 have entertained the ancient French hankering after 
 dominion over Corsica. He cherished it the more as a 
 means of repaying his o^vn pride, and that of the nation, 
 for the humiliation of that peace. His envoy, the Duke 
 de Nivernois, obtained from tlie Eno-hsh Government the 
 issue of a proclamation forbiddmg intercourse with ' the 
 Corsican rebels.' In August 1764 Avas signed the treaty 
 of Compiegne between France and Genoa, by which 
 France engaged in the consideration of an acquittance 
 for certain sums due to the Eepubhc, to hold the fortified 
 places of Corsica for four years, but distinctly refused to 
 carry on the Eepublic's war with the natives. At the 
 very same time, Choiseul, it has since appeared, was in 
 correspondence witli Paoli himself on a proposal for 
 making the French King protector of the new Corsican 
 commonwealth. Whatever doubts Paoli may in his heart 
 have entertained of the sincerity of purpose with which 
 the French battahons were posted in the fortresses of his 
 country, he preferred — indeed, he could not well have 
 done otherwise — to regard them as friends. A period of 
 long and anxious negotiations followed. It was not until 
 conviction stared them in the face that the patriots would 
 admit the fatal truth, that the island was sokl by Genoa 
 to France. Eegiment after regiment landed from Toulon, 
 and on their arrival the Genoese functionaries left the 
 island ; the flag of France was planted at Ajaccioand else- 
 where ; the surrender by tlic Pepublic of her fatal and
 
 104 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 inolorioLis dominion was consummated on tlie 15tli of 
 May, 17G8, by a treaty wliicli was for some tmie kept 
 secret from Paoli himself. 
 
 The General appealed to his countrymen, and the 
 Consulta unanimously supported him in the desperate 
 resolution of making armed resistance to the greatest of 
 European powers. He has been censured for not aban- 
 doning the cause of independence when it could only be 
 maintained by so hopeless a course. It is difficult to say 
 when a brave man will abandon a cause as desperate in 
 which he has once determinately embarked : 
 
 Che spesso, ov' i rimeclj sono scarsi, 
 Fu a molti salute il disperarsi. 
 
 But the Corsican leader had strong reasons for hoping a 
 turn of fortune if he could prolong the struggle for awdiile ; 
 and these arose partly from abroad, and partly from cer- 
 tain features in the affairs of France herself. 
 
 In France the position of Choiseul was anything but a 
 secure one. The aggression on Corsica was httle gratify- 
 ing to the national pride. It furnished a handle for the 
 minister's numerous enemies. The philosophic chque in 
 particular had taken Choiseul in aversion, and Corsica 
 under their especial protection. Eousseau had extolled 
 her new constitution and lawgiver in the highest language 
 in his ' Contrat Social.' 'J'ai le pressentiment,' he had 
 said, ' que cette petite ile etonnera un jour I'Europe : ' 
 words which, in days long after, when the name of Corsica 
 had, indeed, become of mighty omen, were quoted as 
 prophetic. 
 
 For then he was inspired, and from him came, 
 As from the Pythian prophetess of yore, 
 Those oracles which set the world in flame. 
 
 Profiting by the opening thus afforded him, Paoli had
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 105 
 
 thought it worth while to enter into correspondence with 
 so influential a personage, and offered him a refuge in his 
 island from his real or imaginary persecutors. The 
 philoso])her had too much method in his madness to 
 accept so uncomfortable a proposal ; but he declined it 
 in terms still more high-flown than his original praise. 
 But there were not wanting soberer counsellors than the 
 philosophers, who urged on Louis XV. solid objections to 
 his proposed conquest — objections which subsequent years 
 have confirmed ; the nullity of its supposed advantages as 
 an advanced post in the Mediterranean ; the very hmited 
 fertility of the island, and its want of mineral wealth, 
 wdiich would render it (as in truth it has been) a constant 
 burden to the finances of France ; the impossibihty of 
 really incorporating the Corsicans into the nation — and to 
 this day they are Frenchmen by pohtical connection only, 
 Italians by blood, and simply Corsicans by choice ; '■hanno 
 hel dire i Francesi, ma Corsica e Italia.'* The few 
 French employes and other residents still call themselves 
 ' the colony.' These considerations so wrought on a 
 mind much less wanting in sagacity than in energy, that 
 Louis is said to have been on the point of recalling his 
 troops ; but the stronger will of his minister prevailed. 
 II y allait de son honneur. And thus Corsica fell, to 
 gratify the obstinacy of a dechning statesman. Could 
 she have prolonged the struggle another year, she might 
 have had the honour of being rescued by Madame du 
 Bairy. 
 
 With respect to foreign powers, those habitually in- 
 fluenced by jealousy of French aggrandisement were by 
 no means likely to be unconcerned spectators of tlie 
 struggle. From Austria and Sardinia, in particular, 
 
 * A curious passage on the intensely Italian spirit of the Corsicans, as late 
 as 1830^ will be found in the Political Work^ of Joseph Mazzini (\o\ i.J.
 
 106 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 remonstrances, if not active interference, were to be 
 expected. But the principal hopes of the Corsicans were 
 fixed on England. 
 
 It has been seen that the ordinary sympathy of the 
 Enghsh people with oppressed nationalities, as they are 
 now termed, particularly those who are struggling for 
 civil freedom as well as independence, had been long at 
 work in favour of the Corsicans. There was much of good 
 feehng and admiration, and not a little of active private suc- 
 cour. But when France thought proper, first to enforce 
 the Genoese claims, and then to appropriate them, all the 
 national spirit took alarm. The concession made by 
 Government to France, in the proclamation declaring the 
 Corsicans ' rebels,' was looked on as derogatory at once 
 to our honour as freemen, and our foresight as enemies of 
 French encroachment. That the Duke of Grafton was 
 suspected of discouraging all assistance to Corsica, because 
 her case might be thought too nearly to resemble that of 
 our own discontented American provinces, was a circum- 
 stance by no means calculated to diminish public distrust 
 of him and his measures. The real feeling of the country 
 on one point was sedulously improved, as usual, by the 
 miscellaneous assailants of Government on others. The 
 result was a loud and general Corsican ' cry,' to the great 
 encouragement of Paoli, who had studied the theory of 
 our institutions under Genovesi, but had probably only 
 an imperfect idea of some parts of their working, and did 
 not comprehend the process now-a-days called ' making 
 political capital.' If it be true that he offered a regiment 
 to John Wilkes, he must have been simple indeed in such 
 matters.* His expectations, however, did not rest solely 
 
 * That grotesque patriot had even a greater vogue abroad than at home. 
 The simple-minded Clement Paoli told de Lamberg that his brother wanted 
 Eousseau to legislate for his people : but, for his own part, he should have 
 preferred Wilkes !
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 107 
 
 on popular favour. The Ministry itself was mucli divided 
 on the subject of Corsica. Lord Chatham was said to 
 have pronounced strongly in her favour. The ' Corsican 
 affairs,' writes Mr. Whately to George Grenville, in May, 
 1768, 'add to the general distress. A Cabinet was held 
 on the subject on Thursday night, to which I know the 
 Ministers went with great anxiety and doubt upon their 
 minds ; the result of their deliberations I know not, but 
 I take it for granted no determination was agreed to, and 
 in the meanwhile the French are sending twelve battalions 
 in addition to those troops already there.' Lord Shel- 
 burne's resignation in the same year was generally attri- 
 buted (as the readers of Junius know) to the disavowal 
 by the Duke of Grafton to the French Minister at this 
 Court, of certain extraordinary instructions on the subject 
 which his lordsliip had sent to Lord Eochford at Paris. 
 But Lord Stanhope gives us, in his ' History,' the Grafton 
 version of the transaction. 
 
 The Earl of Eochford, as ambassador at Paris, was instructed 
 to make, and did make, the strongest remonstrances — stopping 
 short only of a declaration of war. At one time, he was con- 
 fident of prevailing, but in his interview of the next week with 
 Choiseul, he found the favourable tone of the French Minister 
 altogether changed. ' In a private letter to me,' adds the Duke 
 of Grafton, ' he attributed this strange alteration in Choiseul to 
 the imprudent declaration of a great law-lord (Mansfield) when 
 at Paris, at one of the Ministers' tables, that the English JNIinistry 
 were too weak, and the nation too wise, to enter into a war for 
 the sake of Corsica.' Thus disappointed, the Duke of Grafton 
 determined on another course. He despatched on a secret 
 mission to Paoli, Captain Dunant, a gentleman horn at Geneva, 
 and trained in the Sardinian service. The General pressed 
 especially for a supply of arms and ammunition. No time was 
 lost in England, and several thousand stand of arms were im- 
 mediately sent from the stores of the Tower ; sent however, in
 
 108 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 secret, and in such a manner as to give the Due de Choiseul no 
 pretext to complain. But meanwhile, large reinforcements 
 being forwarded from France, Paoli, notwithstanding a most re- 
 solute resistance, was overpowered. Although many exaggerations 
 were no doubt current at this time, — although Burke might go 
 the length of exclaiming ' Corsica a province of France is ter- 
 rible to me ! ' it was even then discerned that the object at 
 stake had not been such as to warrant us in renewing hostilities. 
 That was the feeling of the House of Commons when the sub- 
 ject came to be discussed. Then only eighty-four members 
 voted against the Grovernment on a general motion for papers ; 
 and only one. Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, was willing to say 
 plainly, that ' it would be better to go to war with France, than 
 consent to her retaining possession of Corsica.' 
 
 And so England remained with the double discredit of 
 having fomented under-hand hostilities against a power 
 with which she was at peace, and having done so too late 
 to be of any service, — one of those incidents which Eng- 
 lishmen are ready enough to forget, but which continental 
 pubhc writers only too accurately remember. 
 
 All that can be said, therefore, is, that Paoh may have 
 fallen into a delusion common among continental patriots, 
 and estimated the magniloquence of political sympathisers 
 in England, and the bouderies of French drawing-rooms, 
 at a good deal more than their real value. But whether 
 he entered on his last conflict in hope or despair, no cause 
 ever died more honourably. For months, and on all 
 points of the northern half of the island, the patriots 
 maintained their ground with unflinching bravery. Mar- 
 boeuf, with 5,000 men from Bastia, had occupied the dis- 
 trict of Nebbio. Pascal and Clement collected a few 
 thousand militia to oppose him ; but their utmost efibrts 
 could not prevent the reduction of the northern district 
 of Capo Corso, and Chauvelin landed with 15,000 more 
 Frenchmen to support Marbceuf Greatly outnumbered, and
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 109 
 
 opposed by a whole army, the two brothers continued the 
 unequal conflict. Every village in the northern districts 
 became a fortified post, and either held out until destroyed 
 or succeeded m repulsing the French, who seem to have 
 committed the great error of breaking their force into 
 detachments. Clement came up from the south and beat 
 bacli a French advanced party from the banks of the tor- 
 rent Golo. They fell back on Borgo, a picturesque 
 village on the mountains overhanging the road from 
 Bastia to Corte, with 700 men, and fortified it. Pascal 
 assaulted their lines on October 1, 1768. Chauvelin 
 moved with the bulk of his army from Bastia to support 
 them : Clement opposed Chauvehn, and the action was 
 engaged at all points. ' Three times,' says Gregorovius 
 ' the whole strength of the French army came desperately 
 to the attack, and three times they were repulsed. The 
 Corsicans, greatly inferior in number, and a mere raw 
 militia, broke in pieces the serried ranks of an army 
 deemed, since the time of Louis XIV., the best organised 
 in Europe.' Chauvelin fell back with heavy loss on 
 Bastia : Borgo, its garrison and stores, fell into the hands 
 of the patriots. 
 
 The engagement at Borgo was the most glorious of the 
 war, and may fairly rank with the boldest achievements 
 of Greek or Switzer in the cause of liberty ; but it pro- 
 cured the victors only the respite of a winter. In the 
 following spring the French took the field in renewed 
 force, under the Comte de Vaux, an officer of merit. 
 Paoli was driven out of the north, and compelled to con- 
 centrate his force on the hills of his native Eostino. A 
 sohtary bridge, Pontenuovo, on the road from Bastia to 
 Corte, marks the spot where his lieutenants, Sahceti and 
 Gentih, underwent the last decisive overthrow. Paoli 
 might yet have prolonged a mere guerilla struggle, but lie
 
 ] 1 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 felt that this was the resource rather of a hunted brigand 
 than a statesman. He escaped, with some of the most 
 compromised of his partisans, by way of Vivario, into the 
 central mountains ; then sought shelter in the maremme 
 of the eastern coast, like Shelley's Mazzenghi — 
 
 In tlie roofless liuts of vast morasses, 
 Deserted by tlie fever-stricken serf, 
 And where the huge and speckled aloe made, 
 Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade ; 
 
 and, finally, on board an English vessel at Portovecchio, 
 on June 13, 1769. The French (so at least Marboeuf told 
 de Lamberg) connived at his escape. He landed in Tus- 
 cany, where he was received rather as a triumphant hero 
 than an exile ; and after a very short sojourn in that 
 country proceeded to London in September. 
 
 His brother Clement fought to the last, covered Pascal's 
 retreat, and then made his way in like manner to Leghorn ; 
 he remained for some time the chief of the Corsican exiles 
 in Tuscany, dispensing among them such assistance as 
 Pascal contrived to send them from London ; then had 
 recourse to the hospitality of his religious brethren at 
 Vallombrosa, and lived for twenty years a forgotten monk 
 under the Franciscan cowl. 
 
 Their principal followers were either driven into exile, 
 or into temporary retreat. Among the latter was Carlo 
 Buonaparte. He and his beautiful Letitia escaped from 
 Corte on horseback, and had to seek refuge among the 
 goatherds of the Niolo, and in the flanks of Monte Eotondo, 
 until a French pass enabled tlicm to reach Ajaccio in 
 security, where, as the Corsicans love to recount, she gave 
 birth, just two months after Paoli's departure, to the des- 
 tined annihilator of Genoa and subjugator of France. We 
 nmst not forget the famous (and apparently endless) con-
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. Ill 
 
 troversy about the authenticity of tliis date, but the behef 
 of the island certainly seems to adopt it.* 
 
 Those who have witnessed the welcome given by 
 London to Garibaldi in 1864, will find a foreshadowing 
 of it in tlie cotemporary accounts of that afforded to 
 Paoli in 1769, such was the universal burst of admi- 
 ration with which he was received, and the kind of senti- 
 mental interest which his presence excited. IMinisters 
 followed the impulse, by conferring on him a pension, 
 first of 800/. and afterwards 1,000/. per annum ; a kind 
 of conscience-money for their own sins towards Corsica, 
 and at the same time the best means which they knew of 
 to buy off an apprehended tribune of the people. They 
 might have spared the expense, as far as this latter object 
 was concerned. Never was there a man less incHned 
 thus to misuse his season of popular favour than Paoh ; 
 nor, as far as can be judged from his correspondence, 
 have there been many who had less value for mere per- 
 sonal distinction. The somewhat romantic pride of his 
 character — una superhia indicibile^ he called it himself — 
 preserved him to a great extent from the coarser infection 
 of vanity. In the Court of St. James's, and in the world 
 of London, he seems to have preserved his usual placid 
 equality of demeanour, and thereby to have disappointed 
 some admirers, and encouraged some observers of the 
 depreciating class. 
 
 I saw him, writes Horace Walpolc in his 'Memoirs of the 
 Reign of George III.,' soon after his arrival, dangling at Court. 
 He was a man of decent deportment, vacant of all melanclioly 
 reflection, with as much ease as suited a prudence that seemed 
 the utmost effort of a wary understanding, and so void of any- 
 
 * One popular tradition is against it — that Paoli was Xapoleon's pod- 
 father. ]iut this rests on no evidence. Paoli himself told a friend of the 
 writer, that he believed lie was godfather to cither Joseph or Napoleon, but 
 did not remeniher which.
 
 112 PASCAL PAOLT. 
 
 thing remarkable in liis aspect, that being asked if I knew who 
 it was, I judged him a Scottish officer (for he was sandy-com- 
 plexioned and in regimentals) who was cautiously awaiting the 
 moment of promotion. All his heroism consisted in hearing 
 with composure the accounts of his friends being tortured and 
 beheaded, while he was sunk into a pensioner of that very 
 Court that had proclaimed his valiant countrymen and associates 
 rebels. 
 
 Horace Walpole was just tlie man so to judge of Pascal 
 Paoli. But besides bis ordinary prejudices, there is a 
 good deal of a very un-English feeling in this passage. 
 The influence of Madame du Deffand and the Duchess de 
 Choiseul, not to mention his affected personal opposition 
 to Eousseau, speak in every line. If Paoli did not com- 
 mit suicide, or walk with his eyes open into the Bastille, 
 as apparently Walpole would have had him do, his corre- 
 spondence gives proof enough of the deep sympathy with 
 which he continued to regard his associates in battle and 
 exile, of his recognised leadership among them, and of 
 the devotion of his means, including the 'pension' in 
 question, as far as possible to the relief of their necessities, 
 ' comprising,' says Herr Klose, ' the less worthy, that is, 
 the ungrateful.' 
 
 From 1770 to 1778, there appears to be a gap in his 
 correspondence : he speaks of the danger of writing 
 through the post ; possibly his communications with the 
 continent were confined to special occasions and private 
 channels. In England, we all know that he lived on 
 friendly intercourse with the best literary society of the 
 day ; with Johnson, Goldsmith, Eeynolds, and Burke, 
 but not (it is necessary to caution Herr Klose's readers) 
 with the poet Dryden, as that biographer supposes. It 
 is singular that our principal knowledge of him during 
 this interval should be again derived from his quondam
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 113 
 
 worshipper Boswell, now chiefly interested in the general 
 as a kind of collateral appendage to his greater hero, 
 Dr. Johnson. Johnson had mnch respect for Paoh — he 
 honoured his simple and sincere character, his rehgious 
 turn of mind, his taste for classic and Italian literature ; 
 perhaps also he appreciated the fact, that the general's 
 imperfect knowledge of England and its subjects of in- 
 terest, made him more of a listener than an antagonist. 
 ' At Paoli's ' (he wrote to Mrs. Thrale) ' I love to dine ; ' 
 but whether the sage was moved to this emphatic avowal 
 by the charms of the general's conversation, or by certain 
 merits of his cuisine, to which Boswell bears honourable 
 testimony, it beseems us not too curiously to inquire. 
 
 Time passed on, and Corsica was almost forgotten, 
 except by her own exiled children. As far as appears, 
 the question of re-establishing her independence was not 
 even mooted during the American war ; and newer ob- 
 jects of interest had superseded her in the mind of the 
 English nation. Twenty years had thus glided away, 
 like a long sleep after a short and agitated day, Avhen 
 Paoli was roused from his life of retirement by the out- 
 break of the French Eevolution. He took immediate 
 and cordial interest in its progress ; though not from 
 any hopes of the social and political regeneration of the 
 world — of which his expectations were reasonable enough, 
 as appears from his correspondence. His first ideas seem 
 to have reverted to his cherished schemes of Corsican 
 independence ; but the rapid course of events soon swept 
 these away, and he was not the man to oppose an intrac- 
 table pertinacity to the Eates. In November, 1789, the 
 Assembly declared Corsica an integral part of France ; 
 and in the same month, on the proposal of iMirabeau, 
 decreed the recall of licr political exiles. A dcpulrilioii 
 of his (■ountrymen waited ou the general (o iiiduc'c liim 
 
 1
 
 114 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 to avail himself of the indulgence. He seems, however, 
 to have delayed his departure for some months, and to 
 have felt his way very cautiously before leaving the home 
 of his long banishment. The popular party, he saw, were 
 anxious to obtain him as a notable card to play in their 
 game against royalism ; his own anxiety was to obtain in 
 return the best terms he could for the compact between 
 the province of Corsica and the rest of the kingdom. 
 He arrived in Paris in April, 1790. It was a busy spring ; 
 the period of what Mr. Carlyle has quaintly entitled ' The 
 Muster ' — the collection from all quarters of friends of 
 the human race, who had played some strange part before, 
 in France or abroad, and who now assembled to witness, 
 or to share in, the birth of a new world, and to receive 
 themselves the fraternal compliments of a not very fas- 
 tidious Assembly — ' all manner of mimetic, half-original 
 men ; ' Dumouriez, Miranda, Claviere, Tom Paine, Baron 
 Trenk, Paul Jones, and Anacharsis Cloots. Among this 
 motley gathering, Pascal Paoli, with his reality of charac- 
 ter and singleness of purpose, had also to exhibit his 
 theatrical qualities ; to witness reviews of the National 
 Guard by the side of Lafayette, sittmgs of the ' Amis de la 
 Constitution ' by that of Eobespierre ; to call the day of 
 his reception in the Assembly ' the happiest of his life,' 
 and to be promenaded round the ruins of the Bastille. 
 All the pomp of his welcome made singularly little im- 
 pression on one so habitually regardless of personal dis- 
 tinction. What seems to have interested liim most in 
 France, was precisely what his patrons would have been 
 glad to keep out of view — the mode of life and senti- 
 ments of the royal family, and the king in particular. 
 His popularity, however, was confined to no class or 
 party. He was named by common consent Lieutenant- 
 General of Corsica ; and, invested with this honour, the
 
 TASCAL TAOLI. 115 
 
 veteran of sixty-five touched, and once more kissed with 
 enthusiasm, the earth of his native island, where lie 
 landed in the summer of the same year. 
 
 His progress through the island, it need hardly be said, 
 was a continued jubilee. The descriptionof it may be read 
 in the memoirs of Lucien Buonaparte, the son of his old 
 secretary, who, with his two elder brothers, and the other 
 young zealots of modern hberty, vied with the surviving 
 soldiers of independence in saluting one whose presence 
 was the symbol at once of so many memories and so 
 many hopes. The Electoral Assembly of Corsica, no 
 longer the ' Consul ta,' was met at Orezza ; thither Paoli 
 proceeded ; he was hailed by orations of an eloquence 
 savouring of Rousseau, especially one from Joseph Buo- 
 naparte, who seems to have aimed at representing the 
 patriotism of the country di la cW monti ; and he was 
 named commander of the civic guard of the island by 
 387 voices against 1 — an adjoint in command being given 
 him, on his own urgent plea of ill-health. Thus he was 
 left, with powers and popular confidence almost as great 
 as in 1708, to work out the problem of the revolution in 
 Corsica — he, the man of a former generation. 
 
 That he felt himself unfitted for the task, that a spirit 
 of lassitude and disappointment soon came over him, is 
 in no degree matter of surprise. There was truth in 
 some of the young Napoleon's remarks on tJie romantic 
 side of Paoli's character, remarks uttered in 1791, in that 
 fiery and confused ' letter to Count Buttafuoco,' which 
 boars date, as if of imperial augury, ' from my cabinet at 
 Milelli ' — the ' cabinet ' in question being a garden-house 
 in a little vineyard of the Buonapartes — ' Constantly sur- 
 rounded with enthusiasts and dreamers, lie cannot imagine 
 that men are actuated by any other ])assion tluui the 
 fanaticism of liberty and independence.' The newer 
 
 1 2
 
 116 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 cosmopolitan notions, those of 1790, lie but imperfectly 
 realised, and distasted. ' I found,' lie wrote to one of his 
 correspondents, ' that Corsica had not altered its place. 
 The Tavignano and tlie Liamone still flow in their old 
 beds ; Monte Eotondo stands where he did, towering 
 over the other mountains ; but in manners and senti- 
 ments, what a change ! I soon discovered that between 
 1769 and 1790 there was the distance of a century. 
 Patriotism had ceased to be a vulgar virtue, and become 
 a superhuman exertion.' The exaltation of national feel- 
 ing had no doubt disappeared with that Genoese oppres- 
 sion which excited it. Under the mild reign of Louis XVI. 
 Corsica had been on the whole indulgently governed, and 
 had derived at least the advantage of considerable French 
 expenditure from tlie connection. Independence, under 
 these changed circumstances, was at best a doubtful prize 
 to the sober-minded, wdiile the zeal of the noisier patriots 
 had taken the very opposite direction of universal fra- 
 ternity. And it must be added that Paoli, whatever 
 expressions he may have let fall in his disappointment, 
 was in reality fully aware cf the position of things ; that 
 he laboured honestly and loyally to preserve the connec- 
 tion with the French monarchy, so long as that monarchy 
 existed. With its bloody overthrow in August 1792, 
 began a new era for him. And, about the same time, he 
 began to admit to his councils an influence which Cor- 
 sicans agree in deeming singularly fatal both to liimself 
 and his country — the influence of one whose remarkable 
 destinies deserve a page apart in this rapid narrative. 
 
 Wlioever has visited Ajaccio, and performed the usual 
 pilgrimage to the birthplace of ISTapoleon, will have 
 noticed, only a few doors from the modest little Casa 
 Buonaparte, a fresh-looking, respectable imitation of a 
 Genoese palazzo, with painted facade and ponderous
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 117 
 
 Jirmorial bearings ; seeiuing to look down purposely on 
 its bumble neighbour. This house was built, in the days 
 of his prosperity, by one who owned a name then almost as 
 widely known as that of Napoleon himself — Carlo Andrea, 
 Count Pozzo-di-borgo. His family was of ancient and 
 (for Corsica) distinguished nobility ; a branch, apparently, 
 of the wide-spreading Italian house of Montecchi (the 
 Montagues of Shakspeare), wdiich took its own special 
 name from a mountain overlookmg Ajaccio. Carlo 
 Andrea was one year older than Napoleon, and brought 
 up on terms of early intimacy with him and Joseph. He 
 signalised himself, together with the latter, at the meeting 
 of Orezza — got himself named, in November, 1790, one of 
 the extraordinary deputies sent by Corsica to Paris, with 
 the report of that meeting — and led for some time a rest- 
 less life of patriotic missions between the island and the 
 metropoUs. In 1792, on his return after the dissolution of 
 the ' Constituante,' he found matters widely changed. His 
 former friends had advanced far on the road to Eepub- 
 licanism. Paoli and the conservative part of the people 
 were holding back. His own family had quarrelled with 
 the Buonapartes and the club of Ajaccio. He now threw 
 all his weiizht and theirs into the scale of the Paolists, and 
 became, at twenty-four, Procureur-Geueral of Corsica and 
 Syndic. Those were the days for enterprising youth. 
 
 It was, indeed, a critical time. The party of tlie 
 ' Mountain ' were daily increasing in audacity and power. 
 They numbered, not only the advanced liberals, but all 
 those who were attached to the connection witli Fiance 
 a tout prix, and beheved the policy of Paoli likely to end 
 in submission to England ; and, in addition, not a few of 
 the old Genoese and aristocratic party, who hated the 
 practical equality of Paoli's administration, and were 
 impelled by the usual vertigo to join tlie other extreme
 
 118 . PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 against tlie juste mUieu. The two exasperated factions 
 of the community could not long remain in peaceful 
 opposition. The Eepublican Club of Toulon formally 
 accused Paoli before the Convention of various acts of 
 incivism ; and that assembly, on the report of one 
 Escudier, issued on April 3, 1793, a mandate to him and 
 Pozzo-di-borgo to appear at its bar, and a decree of ^ prise 
 de corps ' to enforce their attendance. 
 
 Even the most violent republicans were a little alarmed, 
 on reflection, at having precipitated this rupture with the 
 Corsican leader, whose influence was now so high, that, 
 according to a passage in King Joseph's memoirs, the 
 Convention had offered him the command of the army of 
 Italy, in order to secure or neutralise him. The Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety endeavoured to impede the exe- 
 cution of the decree against him, but it was too late. The 
 commissaries of the Convention — at their head the notorious 
 Christopher Saliceti — had already departed for Corsica. 
 They performed their errand bravely, although they 
 found, as themselves reported, four-fifths of the people on 
 the side of the General. Saliceti threatened him with 
 the thousands of troops, and millions of money, at the 
 command of the Convention. Paoli answered (says 
 Arrighi), ' qu'il n'avait en son pouvoir qu'un ecu de trois 
 francs, et une poignee de mouches ; mais qu'avec ces deux 
 moyens, il mettrait bientot en deroute les commissaires et 
 leurs bataillons.' He refused to go to Paris, and appealed 
 for protection, not to the authorities of the new Eepublic' 
 but to the old institutions of his island. A thousand and 
 nine deputies met in consulta in the httle irregular 
 'Place ' before the Franciscan convent at Corte. Paoli him- 
 self opened the proceedings. The Procureur-General 
 harangued the meeting — from the branches of a tree, says 
 tradition — and his eloquence, or the authority of his chief,
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 119 
 
 carried all before it. Troops, authorities, and citizens 
 were forbidden to obey the commissaries, who shook off 
 the dust of their feet against the rebel capital, and made 
 the best of their v/ay to Bastia. The General's old sup- 
 porters — the armed mountaineers of the interior — soon 
 assembled in midtitudes to protect his person, and execute 
 revenge on his enemies. The two families of Buonaparte 
 of Ajaccio and Arena of Isola Eossa were declared traitors, 
 but left expressly to the punishment of their own infamia 
 — a mercy, as the result showed, hke that of calling ' mad 
 dog ! ' and leaving the animal under the imputation. 
 The Convention, in return, denounced Paoli and Pozzo-di- 
 borsjo. 
 
 It has been said that the early importance of the 
 Buonaparte family and Napoleon himself in Corsica, has 
 been exaggerated by their own vanity and the partisanship 
 of others. The decree above referred to, and the testi- 
 monies of Corsican writers, show that this was by no 
 means the case. Of the young Napoleon's relations with 
 Paoli many different stories have been told. But the 
 narrative as given by himself in his conversations with his 
 physician Antommarchi agrees in tlie main A\nth other 
 accounts, although somewhat disfigured by his own fail- 
 ures of recollection, or the stupidity of the dottoraccio. 
 Napoleon had been nourished by his father in enthusiastic 
 admiration of the veteran hero. At sixteen he wrote a 
 history of Corsica — as we are informed by himself— full 
 of republican and classical hero-worship. At twenty-one, 
 he welcomed home the idol of his youthful entliusiasm ; 
 he accompanied Paoli in his ovation, visiting with him 
 among other places the fatal field of Pontenuovo. His 
 decided and energetic character soon gave theyoung officer 
 the lead in his native town. He obtained his election for 
 tlie command of a battalion of the National Guard, aiiainst
 
 120 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 the Pozzo-di-borgos and other wealthy famihes. When 
 Napoleon returned from Paris in September, 1792, he was 
 forced to choose his part between the French and Paolist 
 interests. Family partisanship, and a mind brimful of 
 obscure but far-reaching political ideas, determined his 
 choice of the former ; yet his veneration for Paoli himself 
 remained so strong — and the fact does him honour — that 
 although deeply engaged on the Eepublican side, he wrote 
 an address to the Convention, vindicating the General 
 from the charge of treason. He had long conferences with 
 Paoli at Corte, in which the latter strove, in vain, to 
 detach the young man from his political views. They 
 parted enemies. Napoleon remained some time in Corte 
 after the breach with France ; then, finding his personal 
 security menaced, he made for Ajaccio.* Paoli's moun- 
 taineers were on his track. In the Alpine village of 
 Bocognano, at the entrance of the great forest of Vizzavona, 
 they beset the house in whicli he was lodged ; and he is 
 said to have escaped by descending from a window on the 
 shoulders of some faithful partisans. He got away from 
 Ajaccio with difficulty, after hiding a night in a cave near 
 the Cappella de' Greclii. The family followed in a day 
 or two, taking bye paths across the mountain torrents and 
 through the macchie. ' Madame Letitia held the pretty 
 little Pauline by the hand ; Fesch took care of Elise and 
 Louis. Before them marched a troop of partisans from 
 Bastelica (Costa, their leader, is mentioned in Napoleon's 
 will), behind them the men of Bocognano, armed with 
 musket and pistol.' Tliey embarked at Capitello on tlie 
 Gulf; and Madame Mere landed her young brood of 
 future ■ sovereigns safely in France. Napoleon assisted a 
 short time longer in the last struggle of the Eepublicans, 
 
 ' 111 some iiccounts this adventure is said to have occurred to Napoleon 
 in an endeavour to join the Frencli party at Bastia,
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 121 
 
 and tlieii followed Lis mother to the continent, to pursue 
 his destiny. The property of his family was sacked and 
 plundered by the reactionist mob. 
 
 Napoleon and Paoli had thus mutual wrongs to dwell 
 on ; but the Emperor seems soon to have forgotten his 
 old Corsican enmities. It was only in the last decHne of 
 life that the memories of these early days rose vividly 
 before him, as the dust and smoke of many an intervening 
 battle-field subsided. His boyish admiration for the single 
 hero of his little country then revived. He. felt the reality 
 of that lofty virtue, the visionary nothingness of those 
 provincial quarrels, once so w^armly embraced, which had 
 risen hke shadows between him and its possessor. His 
 eulogies of Paoli are well known, and as discriminating as 
 sincere. ' II combattait, gouvernait, avec une sagacite, 
 un tact, que je n'ai vu qu'a lui.* PaoH, on the other 
 hand, when in his second retreat in England, could not 
 disguise the interest which he took in the fortunes of his 
 young compatriot ; and is said to have oifended the Alhes 
 by his enthusiasm for the First Consul If he entertained 
 a spite against any of the Buonapartes, it was Lucien — 
 
 * Napoleon, like a true Corsican, particularly prized tlie dexterity ex- 
 hibited by I'aoli as a guerilla chief. Un one occassion (he told Las Casas) 
 he had himself sent a clever emissary, disguised as a beggar, to convey some 
 intelligence. This man was arrested by Paoli's gendarmes, but they could 
 make nothing of him, and brought him to the general. ' How ? ' said he. 
 ' Un misei-able qui court les champs pour demander de I'aumone ? C'est im 
 ^missairc. Allez,clierchez; il a quelque message. — Impossible; nous avons tenu 
 ses vetemensfil afil ; nous avons tout d^sassembl(5. — Sa mission est done ver- 
 balc, car il en a unc ; cherchez, questionnez encore. — Nous avons tout i'puis(5. 
 — Ciu'a-t-il sur lui ? — Une petite gourde. — Ca.?sez-la. — On lo fit. Outrouvales 
 conmiissions : Paoli n'etait pas un facile homme a surprendre.' Lambergsays 
 that he seldom carried on written correspondence. He would send a mes- 
 scngerto the person from whom he wanted intelligence. 'Describe particularly 
 the objects in his room, and let me Icnow.' The messenger would report: 
 There was a cap, stick, snufl-box, in such and such a positiou. That Avas the 
 answer.
 
 122 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 quel hricconcello, as he called him ; and Liicien paid him of! 
 in his Memoirs, which contain nearly all the ill-natured 
 things which could be said on his account. 
 
 The Eepublicans held out against the Paohsts but a 
 short time in the field, and were soon confined within the 
 walls of Bastia and Calvi. Their defeat was signalised by 
 the usual excesses of revolutionary crises ; and Paoli was 
 accused, seemingly not without reason, of looking on too 
 passively. In the meantime, it became necessary to take 
 a decided part between France and England. Indepen- 
 dence was now out of the question. Paoli's early admira- 
 tion for British institutions had lost nothino; of its streni^th 
 from twenty years of residence under their safeguard. 
 He willingly acceded to the proposal of the Consulta that 
 he should enter into negotiations for the purpose of 
 placing the island under British protection ; and its sove- 
 reignty was provisionally accepted by George III. in 
 April, 1794. 
 
 Bastia held out a month longer ; and capitulated to Eng- 
 land after a gallant resistance, well known to us from its 
 connection with the life of Nelson. That of Calvi was still 
 more protracted. Hundreds of island refugees assembled 
 at Marseilles, Toulon, and the neighbourhood, to add to 
 the fierceness of the Eepublican party in those quarters, 
 and to wait their own time of vengeance. 
 
 Among the families expelled from Bastia on this occa- 
 sion were the Viterbi, to whose history a peculiar tragic 
 interest attaches, though belonging to a later period thim 
 we are now concerned with. The Viterbi were blood 
 enemies of the Frediani, who had embraced the Englisli 
 side. Many violent deeds on both parts signalised their 
 emnity, and each used the political success of its party 
 for the oppression of the other. After the restoration of 
 1814, Luc' Antonio Viterbi, a man. of education and
 
 PASCAL PAOLT. 123 
 
 talent, but fierce and determined character, who had been 
 at one time accusateur public at Bastia, was sentenced to 
 death for comphcity in the murder of a Frediani. The 
 evidence was doubtful, but pressed against him with 
 hereditary malignity ; the Cour Eoyale of Bastia, after a 
 trial of fifteen days, sentenced him to the guillotine. He 
 appealed to the Court of Cassation, but resolved to starve 
 himself to death in the interval, to avoid the ignominy of 
 a pubhc execution. He kept a journal of his sufferings 
 for more than twenty days : one of the strangest records 
 in existence of the power of the human mind under such 
 circumstances. Its authenticity has been doubted, but it 
 is credited in the island. He could not resist the violence 
 of thirst, and reheved himself on several occasions by 
 swallowing great quantities of water from the pitcher left 
 purposely in his prison : this prolonged his existence and 
 his agonies. Mr. Benson, who published the journal in 
 the appendix to his work on Corsica, represents him as 
 having ultimately succeeded in his determination ; but the 
 belief on the spot is that he was finally despatched by 
 poison obtained from his relations. He left behind him 
 some poetical remains, chiefly written in prison, of no mean 
 power in their kind. The following exhortation to his infant 
 son to revenge him on tlie First President of the Cour 
 Eoyale, may serve as a specimen, and indicate also the 
 dillicidties which impede justice in Corsica : 
 
 Scaiina 1' iniquo capo, e fa man bassa 
 
 Suir infame progenie, e i sanguinosi 
 
 Coi-pi tutti in iin cumulo rammassa ; 
 Guardarli e seppellirli alcuu uon otsi : 
 
 Ma sien di pasto, pei spietati esempio, 
 
 Ai crocidanti augei nero-piuraosi. 
 
 Corsica was thought, in 1794, a valuable acquisition by 
 the Englisli, and obtained from Mr. Pitt, in order to 
 satisCy the inhabitants, a constitution of extreme and
 
 124 PASCAL TAOLI. 
 
 almost democratic liberalism. The sovereign was to be 
 I'epresented by a viceroy. Foreign writers regard it as a 
 great fault on the part of the English Government that 
 this post was not immediately conferred on Paoh, and 
 attribute it to the sinister intrigues of Pozzo-di-borgo, the 
 principal agent in effecting the union. There was, no 
 doubt, a good deal to be said on the other side, in favour 
 of appointing an impartial and eminent foreigner, in lieu 
 of a native who, though adored by part of his fellow 
 citizens, was detested by the remainder : and Sir Gilbert 
 Elliot, afterwards the first Lord Minto, was made viceroy. 
 But, after all, this was not the bold or magnanimous line 
 of policy : and it failed. Pozzo-di-borgo became President 
 of the Council. When Paoli presented to Elliot the wild- 
 looking, bright-eyed, lanky, gipsy-like youth, Elliot, it is 
 said, could not refrain from asking, ' Is that your President 
 of the Council ? ' ' Yes,' replied Paoli, ' and I answer for 
 him as a man equally fit to conduct a government and to 
 keep goats in the mountains, or to dislodge an enemy a 
 coups de carabine.'' It is less easy to believe — though the 
 anecdote does savour of the General's vein — that Elliot 
 said to him some time later (when pressed to discharge 
 his president, as he finally did), ' I hear nothing but com- 
 plaints of Pozzo- di-borgo : remember that I took him on 
 your recommendation as a capable man.' ' Yes,' said Paoli, 
 ' I gave him you as one gives a razor, with which a bar- 
 ber shaves a beard, and a monkey cuts a throat.' 
 
 ^ut such a man as Paoli, if too ]:)owerful for vice- 
 royalty, was still more dangerous in retreat. He could 
 not conceal his deep dissatisfection at the turn things were 
 taking under the new government, and the evils wrought 
 among his countrymen, as he believed, by English guineas 
 and Pozzo-di-borgo's intrigues. ' Cettc idee,' he says in a 
 letter, ' me poursuit comme un remords. Les republicains
 
 PASCAL PAOLI. 125 
 
 sement la terreur sous leurs pas, les Anglais la corniption.' 
 His name became once more — and with no co-operation 
 of his own — a rallying point for the various factions dis- 
 contented with the government, the Jacobins uniting for 
 the nonce with his own ' Eoyalists ' against the Britisli. 
 This state of things could not last long. On the advice of 
 Elliot, Paoli was invited to England once more by a com- 
 phmentary letter from the king. He hesitated long before 
 obeymg, and called a meeting of his friends at Morosagiia 
 to counsel and support him. Arrighi describes him stand- 
 ing at a window with a spyglass in his hand, and calling 
 to the veteran captain of his guard, Jean-Charles Sahceti, 
 ' Are they coming ? How are they dressed ? What have 
 they on their heads ? ' ' They wear foreign hats and 
 forei2^n-cut coats.' ' So much the worse — so much the 
 worse,' murmured the old man. These were not his faith- 
 ful mountaineers, the men of the cowl and capote. He 
 had no taste for recommencing the construction of a party 
 at seventy, with such materials. He bade a lingering 
 adieu to the chestnut-covered mountains that surround 
 his paternal village, and on October 11, 1795, left for 
 tlie last time the shores of Corsica. 
 
 The cause of England certainly gained no advantage by 
 his retirement. The only name which connnanded respect 
 beins removed, thino;s went from bad to worse. The 
 English complained of Corsican deceit, the Corsicans 
 seemed to have no moti\^e but that of making the most in 
 a pecuniary way of a connection ()l)viously so precarious. 
 A year after Paoh's retirement, Buonaparte, having con- 
 quered Lombardy, sent Antonio Gentili with a small foi-ce 
 against Corsica. The precipitation with wliich the Anglo- 
 Corsican Government broke up was unexaiuplc'(l. It was 
 an universal sauve-qui-peut The French power was re- 
 established in a few days. GentiU ])roclaimi(l a Ibrmal
 
 120 PASCAL PAOLI. 
 
 amnesty, but popular fury made, as usual, its exceptions, 
 and the family of Paoli was one. Clement was dead ; lie 
 had lived to see his brother's return, and to rejoin him ; 
 and now lay interred in his own convent of Morosaglia. 
 An aged sister was left ; she was summoned before the 
 authorities at Bastia. She refused to go : ' If the French 
 would depute some one to kill her in the house of her 
 ancestors,' she said, ' she would meet her fate becomingly.' 
 She was left to die in peace. 
 
 Pozzo-di-borgo had already gone to London, and had 
 commenced that career of diplomatic activity which after- 
 wards led him so far. In the service of England, Austria, 
 Eussia, in exile, disgrace, and power alike, he made the 
 downfal of Napoleon the one constant aim of his existence, 
 meddled in every intrigue of every coalition, patiently 
 took up the threads of one negotiation after another as 
 they were cut by the sword, and carried into the great 
 struggle of European politics the untiring inveteracy of 
 his native vendetta. Napoleon once demanded his extra- 
 dition, and Alexander assented ; but the diplomatist 
 remembered the fate of Patkul, and escaped to London. 
 He stood opposed to his great enemy at Waterloo, and 
 witnessed that unequalled rout with all the satisfaction of 
 gratified hatred. ' It was not I who killed him,' he said, 
 after Napoleon's embarcation for Saint Helena, ' but I 
 have thrown the last shovelful of earth on his head.' Yet 
 he, too, fidl of years and outward honours, was doomed 
 to feel the Nemesis of a hfe which has outlasted its single 
 object. He died, in much weariness of soul and com- 
 parative disgrace, in 1842. One of his nephews, of the 
 same name, who inherited much of his great property, 
 was murdered near Ajaccio a few years back by private 
 enemies.* 
 
 * ' He was the dispenser of the charities given by the count, his uncle,
 
 PASCAL TAOLI. 127 
 
 Of Paoli himself little remains to be said. He survived 
 more than ten years the period of liis last retirement, en- 
 joyed even to the last the full possession of his faculties, 
 and continued to take a deep interest in the political events 
 which were passing around him. His pension had been 
 raised by the English Government to 2,000/. a year. There 
 are those hving (1855) who yet remember his house in the 
 Edgeware Eoad, and the cheerful society of the venerable 
 man. The MS. memorandum of one who visited him in 
 1803, speaks of his vivacity of gesture and the variety of 
 expression of his countenance, his frank address and 
 polished manners, and his eloquent communicativeness 
 respecting his own career, in terms recalling the descrip- 
 tion of Boswell forty years before. He died on 
 February 5, 1807, and was buried in Old Saint Pancras 
 Chiurchyard, then the ordinary place of sepulture of dis- 
 tinguished Eoman Catholics : his friends raised him a 
 monument in Westminster Abbey, among the memorials 
 of the great men of the island which adopted him, and 
 which he loved next to his own. 
 
 If this slight sketch of him contains little but panegyric, 
 it is not for want of authority for depreciation ; he was tlie 
 object of hostile criticism enough from writers of the 
 
 and had made liimself hated on account of injustice in the distribution. I 
 was told, also, that he had seduced a girl, and hesitated about paying tho 
 high rate of compensation demanded by the family. The injured parties 
 resolved on his death. As he was driving iu his carriage one day from his 
 villa to Ajaccio, they surrounded it, and cried to him, " Nephew of Carl' 
 Andrea Pozzo-di-borgo, step out ! " lie came out and confronted them 
 boldly. They efiectcd their purpose in cold blood, in full day and on tho 
 highroad, as if it had been an act of justice against a malefactor. Their 
 shots did not kill him on the spot. The murderers placed him in the car- 
 riage, and told the coachman to drive back, that the nephew of Carl' Andrea 
 might die iu his bed. Then they fled into the "macchic," where, after 
 some time they were killed in a conllict with gvndarmes.' — Gregorovius, 
 Corsica, ii. 1G4.
 
 128 PASCAL TAOLI. 
 
 French party, botli iu his hfe and since ; but we must 
 adopt Herr Klose's defence : — 
 
 Scarcely anything is said of PaoH in my present pnbhcation 
 which is not to his honour : but this arises simply from the cir- 
 cumstance, that I have found in him and his actions scarcely 
 anything which was not praiseworthy : and even his weaknesses 
 — and weaknesses he must have had — have escaped my careful 
 inquiries, unless we are to regard as his weak side the ease with 
 which he allowed himself to be led away, more than once, by an 
 active imagination and zealous patriotism, into deceitful hopes, 
 and through those hopes into some inconsistencies of conduct.' 
 
 And so his conntry has judged of him : — 
 
 The remembrance of Paoli, says Grregorovius, is sacred 
 among the people. Napoleon fills the heart of the Corsican 
 with pride, for he was his brother ; but if you mention Paoli to 
 him, his eye lights up like that of a son to whom one names an 
 honourable departed father. It is impossible that any man can 
 be more thoroughly reverenced and loved after his death than 
 Pasquale Paoli : and if posthumous fame is a second life, then 
 does this greatest man of Corsica and of Italy in the eighteenth 
 century live a thousandfold in the heart of every Corsican, from 
 the aged man who knew him to the child on whose soul his great 
 example is impressed. There is no greater name than that of 
 Father of his country. Flattery has often abused it and made 
 it ridiculous : in the land of the Corsicans I felt that it might be 
 a truth. 
 
 There remains but little personal memorial of him 
 except his letters, of which many have been preserved, 
 and one or two indifi'ercnt pictures. Monuments to their 
 great men were little appreciated among the Corsicans of 
 tlie old time ; they preferred that their deeds should be 
 preserved by the singularly tenacious memory of tJie 
 people. Puoli liimself largely shared in tliis feeling. 
 When the Le<2;islature under the British Government 
 applied for his bust to place in their hall of meeting, he
 
 PASCAL PAOLl. 129 
 
 consented, not only with reluctance, but with a sort of 
 haughtiness, reminding them of his own fixed principle, 
 that such honoiu's, if they must needs be paid at all, should 
 be paid after death only ; — a principle which received full 
 illustration when the same bust was dragged round the 
 hall in contumely by Gentili's republicans. But the French 
 fashion has prevailed in recent times, and the people 
 of his native canton of Eostino have erected to him 
 (1854) a bronze statue, in the new Place of his romantic 
 httle metropolis Corte. It is not ill imagined. The 
 General stands in the sort of half-military costume which 
 he Avore, with broad-skirted coat, and hottes a revers, in 
 act as if about to address an assembly. The execution, it 
 must be confessed, falls somewhat short of the conception, 
 and the hero has rather the air of a ' bourgeois endimanche.' 
 But it is the pride of that secluded district, far and near ; 
 and among the many sturdy, wild-looking mountain figures 
 which you may observe around it, indolently gazing for 
 hoiurs, you will find scarce a man who will not recount to 
 you, with more or less of detail, the main outlines of the 
 life of the great Generale e Gobernatore della Corsica, who 
 expelled the Genoese and the French, raised his country 
 to independence, led its sons to battle as a chosen cham- 
 pion, governed and judged it as a chosen sovereign, and 
 left the savings of his poverty to educate its children. 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 VOLTAIEE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE.* 
 
 On August 28, 1849, and tlie following days, Germany 
 celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of her 
 greatest writer. All the literary capitals of that land of 
 literature vied with each other in inventing ceremonial 
 observances for the national jubilee. In accordance with 
 the prevailing musical tendencies of the people, operatic 
 representations formed the leading features of the several 
 festivals. The dramatic chefs d'oeuvre of the poet were 
 produced with every accompaniment which modern skill 
 in music and decoration could supply ; his lyrics — 
 solemn, festive, and satirical — were performed in the 
 most brilliant manner by mixed choruses of professionals 
 and amateurs : Schumann, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and 
 the other living or recent composers of Germany, furnished 
 their sweetest strains for the great occasion. All the 
 hterary and philosophical celebrities of the day contri- 
 buted their quota of odes, speeches, and sentiments. 
 The veteran Alexander von Humboldt officiated as 
 Coryplia3Us at Berlin, and led the way in an address 
 full of his own brilliant generalisations, of which the most 
 characteristic specimen that we can find is a comparison 
 
 * Most of tliis essay appeared originally in the Edinha-gh Revictv in the 
 form of a critique on some works produced, by the Gcithe Jubilee of 1849 
 Since then Mr. Lewes's masterly life of that author lias appoared, and has had 
 a gi'cat efiect in forming and modifying- ]uii;li;<]i opinion respecting him. 
 But after reflection, I have ventured on republishing my own views not- 
 ■svithstanding.
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 131 
 
 of the lives of men of genius to ' the appearance of those 
 everlasting liglits of celestial space of wliich the greater 
 orbs are sometimes dispersed like sporadic existences in 
 the measureless ocean, sometimes united in brilhant 
 groups.' Nor were the proper attractions wantmg for the 
 inferior orders of the cultivated world. There were 
 triumphal arches, fountains, scenic decorations, transpar- 
 encies of Gothe surrounded by every attribute of allegory 
 — Gothe as 'Dichterkind' on a griffin, Gothe as 'Dichter- 
 jiingling' on a Pegasus — dinners, polkas, illuminations, 
 and fireworks. 
 
 Yet it seems that the celebration, everywhere ahke, was 
 regarded as a failure. No corresponding inspiration was 
 Idndled in the audiences by the laborious enthusiasm of the 
 stage-managers. The multitude Hstened, dull, spiritless, and 
 uninterested ; or, at best, they applauded the music, and 
 gazed on the show, as they might on any other occasion ; 
 but without any notice of the peculiar significance of the 
 day. The Fates tliemselves appeared to take a pleasure 
 in mocking the solemnity. It was marred everywhere by 
 cross accidents. At Berhn the contractor for the banquet 
 miscalculated the number of his guests, and the assembled 
 votaries had to endure four mortal hours of a dinner 
 which was Httle better than nominal, the intervals between 
 the speeches not being duly enlivened by courses of more 
 substantial diet. At V/eimar, so long the poet's residence, 
 liis OAvn family refused to take any part in the business ; 
 owing, it was said, to some quarrel with the numicipality 
 about the property in his relics. At Frankfort, his birth- 
 place, the burghers were insolvent, and out of humour ; 
 the populace savage and sore from the recent chastisement 
 of their neighbour radicals of Baden by tlie Prussian 
 bayonets. They voted tlie whole affair a i)iece of aristo- 
 cratic impertinence ; and wlien the managers got u}) a 
 
 K 2
 
 132 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 nocturnal serenade in front of the old house of the Gothes, 
 the mob interrupted it, and put the performers to flight 
 with a chorus of ' Katzenmusik.' 
 
 No doubt the period at which the jubilee fell was an 
 luifortunate one. Men's minds, reeking with political 
 excitement, were little disposed to take interest in the 
 payment of a somewhat pedantic homage to mere literary 
 greatness. The failure of so many cherished schemes of 
 German freedom and union had engendered among the 
 more enthusiastic a spirit of fierce disappointment, which 
 was ready enough to vent itself in bitterness against the 
 memory of the idols of the last generation. The attacks 
 of Borne and his school had, moreover, indisposed the 
 sentiments of many of the younger class towards Gothe. 
 The cherished author of tlie higher cultivated circles had 
 been represented, with very little reason, as opposed to 
 the pohtical rights of the lower orders ; and, with a 
 good deal more, as having laboured to repress that spirit 
 of hopeful activity out of Avhich alone political reforms 
 could arise. His reputation, in short, had become a kind 
 of battle-field between democrats and conservatives ; and 
 the former, although for the moment the defeated party, 
 were as yet the loudest. But, beyond all these tem- 
 porary obstacles to the success of the commemoration, it 
 cannot be denied that a sense of unreality, a blank dis- 
 satisfaction, weighed on minds capable of calmer and 
 more elevated judgment. The worship which was once 
 paid, sincerely if blindly, to the living man, had become, 
 they felt, mere conventional idolatry of tlie dead. Gothe 
 was no longer what he ]iad been, nor was liis Germany 
 the same. It was not the fame of the ' Artist ' whicli was 
 in question : tliat was established. In that character, 
 ' notliing could touch liim fmther ;' tlie Book of Fate had 
 closed on the page which recorded his name. But Gothe
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 133 
 
 had been much more than this to Germany. For many 
 years he had been regarded as the first practical philoso- 
 pher of his day — the Liberator of the age from prejudice 
 and barbarism : — the great Teacher, from whom men 
 were to learn how to direct their energies aright, how to 
 achieve that perfect balance or harmony of the faculties 
 and passions in which he placed the supreme good of his 
 system. It was in tliis capacity tliat he had been reverenced 
 with an enthusiasm unparalleled in modern days, and 
 which nothing but its honesty preserved from absohite 
 ridicule. Each of his greater works had been overlaid 
 with multiplied gloss and commentary, in which critics 
 vied with each other in extractmg from their subject the 
 greatest amount of recondite learning. Every trivial 
 saying which he chose, after his half- solemn half-mystify- 
 ing fashion, to propound as oracular, had been treasured 
 and expanded as a relic of inspiration. Where was all this 
 glory now ? Where was the vaunted ' world-philosophy ' 
 of the accomplished Epicurean? Had it not become 
 as vain and wearisome as the systems of those former 
 schools which it had been held to supersede ? Was not 
 there a painful suspicion that much of the weakness and 
 degeneracy of the higher classes — much of their impo- 
 tence to resist the torrent of those Mse principles and 
 exaggerated sentiments in which they had long ceased to 
 share — was owing to the enervating influence of doctrines 
 once admired as exalting man to tlie ethereal serenity of 
 angelic natures r" 
 
 All these were unsettled questions at best. Tlie world 
 had not yet arrived at that point in its progress from 
 whicli it might survey with judicial clearness llic cliarac- 
 tcM- of the mighty deceased ; nnd liis spirit, evoked 
 untimely from its recent grave for this solemnity, was 
 viewed by numbers as a spectre of questionable shape —
 
 134 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 a crowned phantom, the legithnacy of whose title was 
 still under just debate. 
 
 The time has assuredly not arrived for a fuU apprecia- 
 tion of Gothe. The pecuHar spirit of that age in which 
 his mind was formed as yet clings too much to our 
 generation, to render us truly competent and impartial 
 judges. But the time has perhaps arrived, when it 
 behoves us to question ourselves as to the results of that 
 long and brilliant career on modern society. It is time 
 to examine what Gothe has done for us, what is the 
 nature and tendency of the train of thought which he has 
 left behind him, what school he has founded, what is the 
 general relation of his philosophy on those which pre- 
 ceded it, and its bearing on those which are yet to come. 
 These, no doubt, may seem questions of more immediate 
 importance in Germany, and on the Continent generally, 
 than for our solitary and self-sufficing society. But the 
 contagion of a genius so searching as his is to be kept out 
 by no quarantine of English prejudices and indilTerence. 
 The subject is not disposed of by the mere statement that 
 English people read little of Gothe ; if, indeed, the fact be 
 so. They read him at second or third hand ; they meet 
 with some portion of his spirit alike in the abstruser 
 specidations of modern religion and ethical ])hiloso})hy, 
 and in the common literature of the day. No one can 
 well over-estimate the influence which a single mind, 
 possessed of great original powers, and turning them 
 in a popular direction, exercises in our day of ra})id 
 interchange of thought ; or the speed with which that 
 iiifhience is conveyed, by a thousand ramifying channels, 
 to the very extremities of the educated community. 
 
 And this must be the apology for foreigners, like our- 
 selves, when we venture to pass criticisms on great names 
 hkc his, apparently so far removed from our judgments
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 135 
 
 by peculiarities of language and habits of thought. It is 
 an apology which conveys at the same time a far higher 
 compliment than any which literary flattery could devise. 
 When we are told that we cannot understand Gothe, our 
 answer is, that he has made himself understood. Line 
 upon line, precept upon precept, his writings liave forced 
 their way into our own literature, and he is as much one 
 of the fathers of the present educated generation of 
 Englishmen as our own Gibbon, or Johnson, or Words- 
 worth. We are, therefore, not only entitled, but bound, 
 to examine and to judge of him, and to say for ourselves, 
 with whatever consciousness of uncertainty in our judg- 
 ments, what is the nature and extent of this power which 
 is at work among us, and how far its operation is for 
 good or for evil. 
 
 That Gothe's writings do involve a peculiar view of 
 hfe, its duties, and its objects — that he has furnished 
 mankind, not only with new subjects of thought, but 
 with new ways of thinking and feeling — is declared at 
 once by his multitudinous admirers, and by the deter- 
 mined band of opponents who in later years have been 
 raised up against him in his own country. And we must 
 still further trespass on the reader's indulgence for some- 
 what antiquated criticism, if, in order to estimate still 
 more fully the position from Avhich he started, the ground 
 which he traversed, and the direction which he has given 
 to those who are to continue the race, we go still further 
 back, and concern ourselves awhile with celebrities still 
 more out of date. For as three great names — Voltaire, 
 Eousseau, and GiJthe — represent, in succession, the 
 different phases of the social philosoj^hy (^f au entire 
 century, so tlie three owners of llic ikiuu's iwc connected, 
 not solely by tho l:iw ol" lilci'iiry dciK'ndciicc, but l)y tliose 
 of reaction imd (■()iilr;i>t. Il is impossiMc in any degree
 
 136 VOLTAIKE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 to understand the functions exercised by Gotlie in the 
 European commonwealth, without taking into view those 
 performed by his two predecessors ; not merely because 
 his mind was of course in great measure formed by theirs, 
 but also because his philosophy is just what was looked 
 for by a generation which, hke his, had been taught by 
 Voltaire and Eousseau, and had become dissatisfied with 
 its teachers — partly a complement of their doctrines, 
 partly a protest against them. 
 
 It scarcely seems necessary to go higher than to Vol- 
 taire in tracing, for popular purposes, the parentage of 
 modern continental philosophy. For his most extraordi- 
 nary gift vv'as that of assimilating, combining, and repro- 
 ducing the thoughts of others ; so that, with little origi- 
 nality of his own, he was able to pass off his second-hand 
 inspiration as genuine. Clear, subtle, daring, with every 
 quality but depth, he obtained all that sway over the 
 public mind which is seldom acquired by the real origi- 
 nators of thought — too conscious, in general, of the inade- 
 quacy of their own judgments to be able to impose them 
 with the tone of a sovereign. Fcav indeed looked through 
 Voltaire, at Bayle and Pascal, who stood behind liim. He 
 seemed to France, and Europe in general, to occupy the 
 extremity of the visible horizon — the father of authorship 
 — tlie oracle alike of politics, philosophy, and literature — 
 the living 'We' of journalism before journalism had 
 acquired its present substantial existence. He deserves, 
 tlierefore, to rank as the first of the great priests of the 
 modern creed of Negation. There were poets before 
 Homer, and sceptics before Voltaire ; and it may be a 
 profitable as well as curious research to enquire after botli : 
 but for us, whose object is only to trace in some degree 
 the course of popular thouglit nnd writing in later days, 
 Voltaire is tlic beo-innini^r of all tliinii-s, 
 
 Co o
 
 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 137 
 
 To many, indeed, the examination of peculiarities in 
 his character seems superfluous. Voltake was an infidel 
 and an arch-teacher of infidelity ; and as such to be cast 
 aside with one general mark of reprobation. But we 
 would ask those who imao;ine that the mere fact of 
 his infidelity dispenses with all serious enquiry into his 
 tenets and motives, by implpng utter perversity and 
 worthlessness of judgment, what else they would have 
 had him, with such a mind and such an education, 
 but an infidel ? He was endowed with a resolute 
 spirit and a penetrating genius : he could not have re- 
 mained among the nameless milhons who live and die in 
 nominal belief. Was he to be a zealous Eomanist of his 
 own time and country ? Was he to acquiesce in the religion 
 a la Maintenon which was in fashion in his young years, 
 that lowest and worst of hypocrisies — when coarse, de- 
 liberate vice, unexcused by passion, was not only var- 
 nished over by outward decency, but actucdly intruded 
 among religious observances, with the respectful acqui- 
 escence, at least, of the prelates and saints of an age which 
 the Due de Noailles, a Christian writer, is not ashamed to 
 indicate, in his recent ' Life of Madame de Maintenon,' as 
 a model for ours ? Would they have had him reverence 
 Christianity under the cardinal's hat of Dubois, or Alberoni, 
 or Fleury? or in the wretched series of lo^v intrigues, 
 craven tempers, and obscure nmbitions, which character- 
 ised the last years of the company of Jesuits before their 
 dissolution .? Was he to join one half of the sincere 
 believers of Paris in persecuting the otlier half, in the 
 afliiir of the Jansenists ? or was he to take ]):irl witli the 
 martyrs in tlu'ir one-sided orthodoxy, mingled as it 
 was Avitli credulity of the most contemptible order ? 
 All this was impossible. There was, no doubt, an 
 alternative. There was then, in France, as there has
 
 138 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE 
 
 been, and ever is, in Christian countries of whatever 
 persuasion, the small company of God's chosen servants — 
 of those to whom it is given to extract truth even from 
 the midst of bewildering errors — of those who are rarely 
 known to the world, and can but seldom even know and 
 recognise each other in it. But to say of any one that he 
 was not a member of this invisible Church is scarcely a 
 reproach ; and between this and unbelief there was no 
 resting-place for a mind hke Voltaire's, and in his day. 
 
 The open and literal character of his unbehef, wherein 
 he differs from all other really great men, was a conse- 
 quence of a certain necessity both of his moral and intel- 
 lectual nature. He could never utter half his thought. 
 If he could have done so, he might have avoided his 
 thirty years of exile, or have spent them under the 
 shadow of royalty at Berlin. And his tliought went 
 always directly to its point. When once the apparent 
 logical truth was reached, he had no conception of the 
 possibility of error from too wide generalisation in the 
 premises, and entertained the greatest contempt for all 
 who suggested it. It was utterly impossible that he 
 should frame for himself any of those more or less hazy 
 atmospheres of mixed sentiment and reasoning — mixed 
 faith and incredulity — in which so many minds of a dif- 
 ferent, perhaps a superior order, have been and are in- 
 volved. In attacking the letter of the Bible, he had no 
 doubt whatever that he w^as dealing direct blows at the 
 fomidation of all revealed religion. His reasoning on the 
 one side was as concise as the popular reasoning of that 
 day, and of ours, on the other. There is a revelation from 
 God, says the common syllogism : therefore every word 
 of the Bible is true in its literal sense. Mucli of the Bible 
 is demonstrably false in its literal sense, says Voltaire, there- 
 fore there is no revealed religion. His judgment needed
 
 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 139 
 
 no further proof tlian this : his conscience never awakened 
 to the void whicli so many feel whose judgment has been 
 led astray. He had no shrinking whatever from the 
 abyss of negation, which opens on most men when revealed 
 truth is discarded. It was filled up to liis perfect satisfac- 
 tion by natural rehgion. There was no doubt, no mystery, 
 about his God of Nature. A few trivial deductions from 
 design and contrivance — a few probabilities turned into 
 axioms — were quite enough to satisfy him. It might be 
 said of him, as Heine says of his offspring, the ' Genevese 
 School : ' ' They made of the Deity an able artist, who has 
 constructed the world much as their fathers manufactured 
 watches.' The being of God was, in his view, if not quite 
 as strictly demonstrated as the falsehood of the Bible, at 
 least firmly established on the basis of convenience ; and 
 an Atheist was nearly as absurd a person as a priest. What- 
 ever may have been his occasional fits of complaisance 
 towards thorough-going friends who outstripped him in 
 their unbehef, his own judgment always repudiated Athe- 
 ism. He also dreaded it. 'If,' said he, in 1765, 'the 
 world were ever to be governed by Atheists, we might as 
 well be under the empire of those infernal beings who are 
 represented to us as savagely tormenting tlicir victims.' 
 
 But Voltaire is commonly called an immoral as well as 
 an irreligious writer ; and the saying is true of course, but 
 not true in the sense, or to the extent, usually intended. 
 Immoi'al he was, as a writer, as far as an imagination as 
 lively as it was depraved, great regardlessness of tfuth, 
 much jealousy and much arrogance, and these all obtruded 
 on the world with an utter absence of self-restraint, could 
 make him. But immoral in the sense of an Impugner of 
 the laws of morality he was not : herein, ag;iiii, diffenng 
 from the great men wlio followed liiin. lie never attacked 
 those laws directly : never indirectly on purpose, whatever
 
 140 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 may have been the ejSect of his reckless ridicule. On the 
 contrary, he upheld them, even ostentatiously, as the foun- 
 dations of his system, which had only the defect, quite 
 imperceptible to his eyes, of containing nothing on wliich 
 the foundations themselves might rest. It was enough for 
 him that the excessive incommodiousness of a world without 
 morality was demonstrable. ' The Supreme Intelligence 
 which has formed us willed that there should be justice 
 on the earth, in order that we might be able to live on it 
 a certain number of years.' ' La morale vient de Dieu, 
 comme la lumiere.' Thou shalt not do murder, like the 
 Dominicans ; nor be ambitious, hke the Jesuits ; nor licen- 
 tious, like the Capuchins : such were his daily edicts. 
 Why not ? Because the God of Nature has willed it ; 
 and I, Voltaire, am his prophet : and if you preach aught 
 to the contrary, you are a Lametrie, a ' Yelche,' a barbarian. 
 The same hard clearness in his outlines of thought 
 equally distinguishes Voltaire in other points, in which he 
 comes closely within range of the thoughts and feelings 
 of his readers. His very egotism is of this description. 
 It is as superficial as his ethics and his religion. Egotism, 
 Avhich is the greatest attraction of other leading writers 
 with whom he is commonly compared and contrasted, in 
 him only provokes our propensity to ridicule. He is no 
 self-anatomisor. He never dreams of bringing before you 
 the man Voltaire, with his intimate thoughts and sympa- 
 thies. He introduces you to Voltaire tlic liistorian, the 
 tragedian, the literary oracle of his age. He drapes 
 himself, and poses before you in every variety of attitude : 
 but you never for a moment imagine yourself Voltaire, or 
 enter with him into that deep communion of spirit 
 ^vhich turns books into living men. His whole life v/as 
 representation, and he never seems to have conceived 
 life; under any other aspect. And this is the reason
 
 YOLTAIEE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 141 
 
 why, unlike almost all other great men, he is perhaps 
 less himsell" in his epistolary writings than anywliere 
 else. Nothing makes the reader less intimate with 
 Voltaire than his letters. They have spuit enough, but 
 no body. They disclose nothing, because their author 
 had no secrets, and put his soul, such as it was, quite as 
 much into his Philosophical Dictionary, or his fugitive 
 criticisms, as into his closest correspondence. It was an 
 odd comphment paid by an Austrian princess to Voltaire's 
 familiar verses, that, addressed as they often are to the 
 highest correspondents, and playing with the most 
 delicate subjects, she never detected an expression in 
 them contrary to etiquette. 
 
 So, again, with regard to his political philosophy, if 
 such it can be termed. He, who may be more justly 
 called the chief precursor of the Fi^ench revolution than 
 any other man, not only exhibited himself in general as 
 exempt from revolutionary tendencies (in politics, taken 
 apart from religion), but evidently felt at some times 
 fear, at other times considerable contempt, for those 
 whose aspirations for change disturbed his equanimity. 
 His flatteries of kings and courts may have been insincere 
 enough : but he never flattered ' the people ' at all. He 
 seldom speaks of republics in any other way than by 
 dweUing on the excesses of democracy. ' He was not 
 the man,' says Louis Blanc, ' to expect the salvation of 
 the people from a political and social revolution. As for 
 changing totally and profoundly the material conditions of 
 the state and of society, it was a possibility of which he 
 did not dream ; and he only turned his attention in that 
 direction at all toAvards the end of his career, when 
 Diderot, d'Holbach, and Eaynal, were begimiing to make 
 themselves heard. In the 6,950 letters which compose 
 his correspondence, as well as in most of liis works, tlic
 
 142 VOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 reader is struck witli the general absence of political pre- 
 occupations.' If he had an Utopia of his own, it was one 
 in which wise and tolerant kings should govern commu- 
 nities, each having a philosopher or two, by way of 
 du^ector, at his elbow. ' Like Luther and Calvin,' he 
 preached at once revolt against the spiritual and submis- 
 sion to the temporal authority. And, it must be added — 
 and this is the chief cause of complaint which writers of 
 the school of Louis Blanc have against him — he was in 
 politics an ' individualist ' in the highest degree. He cer- 
 tainly formed to himself no idea of political or social 
 happiness, except through the action of individuals, 
 free to compete with and check one another. If any 
 scheme of socialism had been evolved out of the brains 
 of the thinkers of his day — Kousseau's bold but vague ten- 
 dencies that way can hardly be reckoned as such — it would 
 be easy to conceive the storm of ridicule which it would 
 have elicited from the egotist philosopher of Ferney. To 
 sum up his character as a politician, he was too well satis- 
 fied with the world, such as he found it, its comfortable 
 inequalities and amusing basenesses, to wish for a change : 
 and when his saa;acitv foresaw that this might come too 
 rapidly, he shrank from the prospect. There cannot be a 
 better instance of this than the charming little apologue, 
 ' Le Voyage de la Eaison,' one of the very last of his 
 works (1774). Eeason and her daughter Truth, encou- 
 rnged by the promising aspect of affairs under so many 
 reforming sovereigns, have come out of their well to 
 make a tour through Europe. They visit France last. 
 They find all the French eagerly anticipating reforms in 
 the state : remission of taxes, uniformity of jurispru- 
 dence, abolition of priestly celibacy, of torture, confisca- 
 tion, and so f(3rth. Truth is enclianted, and proposes to 
 Reason to take record of all these things : ' l)ut I will
 
 VOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 143 
 
 write nothing down, mother, except under your dictation.' 
 Eeason answers, ' Daughter, you know well tliat I too wisli 
 for all these things, and for a good deal besides. But 
 matters like these demand time and reflection. I liave 
 been always satisfied when, in my troubles, I have ob- 
 tained some part of the relief I wished for. To-day I 
 am only too happy. Do you remember the period when 
 almost all the kings of the earth, being in profound peace, 
 amused themselves with playing at riddles, and when the 
 beautiful queen of Slieba came to propound puzzles to 
 Solomon ? ' ' Yes, mother : those were pleasant times, but 
 they did not last.' ' Well,' replies her mother, ' these 
 are much better times. The only object then was to dis- 
 play a little wit ; and I see that, for the last ten or twelve 
 years, Europe has now been applying herself to acquire 
 those arts and those necessary virtues which soften the 
 bitterness of life. It seems, in a general way, as if all the 
 world had come to an agreement to think more solidly than 
 
 had been the fashion for some tens of centuries 
 
 Well, daughter, let us enjoy this fme season ; let us stay 
 here if it continues : if storms come on, let us get bach 
 into our well.' 
 
 But yet the extremely multiform character of tliis 
 ' Proteus of men's talents ' must needs make us pause 
 before we ascribe to liim too confidently any consistent 
 course of thought. Except where he was really and 
 savagely in earnest, as in his warfare against priests, it is 
 never easy to ascertain, in him, whether the features wJiicli 
 he may chance to wear are those of the man or of tlie 
 mask. Was he in earnest when he flattered kings, and 
 mocked at the talk of equality among men, or when liis 
 usually cold and measured muse bui'st into the most in- 
 spired tribute to political freedom wliicli the language of 
 his coimtry affords : —
 
 14-1 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 Mon lac est le premier ! C'est sur ces bords lieureux 
 
 Qu'habite des humains la Deesse ^ternelle, 
 
 L'anie des grands travaux, I'objet des nobles vceux, 
 
 Que tout mortel emhrasse, ou desire, ou rappeUe, 
 
 Qui vit dans tous les coeurs, et dont le nom sacre 
 
 Dans les coiirs des tyrans est a bas adore : 
 
 La Liberte ! J'ai tu cette D(5esse altiere 
 
 Descendre de Morat en habit de guerriere, 
 
 Les mains teintes du sang des tiers Autricbieus, 
 
 Et de Charles-le-Temeraire .... 
 
 Had lie the ma.sk on, or not, when he penned those 
 powerful verses ? We, for our part, beheve tliat he had 
 not ; and that they contain the covert protest of a mind 
 far too clear-sighted and experienced in the lessons of 
 history to be hoodwinked on the real merits of the ques- 
 tion, against the slavish doctrines which expediency, and 
 the habit of flattering the powerful, and the desire to keep 
 aloof from the vulgar company of ordinary demagogues, 
 had induced liim usually to adopt. 
 
 Such was Voltaire in some of his most sahent features, 
 and being such, it may be matter of surprise with some that 
 his influence should have been not only so extensive in 
 his own day, but so permanent with later generations. 
 Quahties of style, and the other faculties of the ' artist,' 
 will not account for this. His wit, unrivalled as it is, 
 might maintain his popularity, but could not perpetuate 
 his empire. The unequalled conversational beauty of liis 
 style, by which the reader is carried, as in a pleasant 
 journey on an easy road, over, or past, all the difficulties 
 at which deeper reasoning would stumble, is also a quality 
 rather to excite pleasure than to ensure admiration. Nor 
 has the good which Voltaire really worked in his own 
 time much to do with his present position. As an assailant 
 of some past abuses he may be entitled to gratitude ; but 
 so are the impugners of witchcraft, and other respected but 
 forgotten benefactors. We must therefore seek for the
 
 VOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 145 
 
 real ground of his supremacy elsewhere ; and we find it 
 in the close adaptation of his philosophy to the require- 
 ments of a large portion of mankind. How many are 
 there — and especially men whose business makes them 
 much conversant with the world, statesmen, men of 
 business, and the like — to whose minds scepticism hke 
 that of Voltaire is not only a natural element, but one in 
 which they feel contented, and out of which they seek not 
 for escape ! Dogmatism has no attractions for them ; but 
 mysticism is even more adverse to their dispositions. The 
 first will not satisfy their shrewd and cautious natures ; 
 but the second always produces on them the effect of 
 imbecility, or cheatery. They find the world full of 
 problems, and compel themselves to take the first and 
 simplest practical solution. ' II faut prendre un parti ' 
 (the motto of Voltaire's latest defence of natural rehgion, 
 1772) is the principle on which they adopt their creeds : 
 but criticism, not faitli, is their natural element. They 
 have a clear perception, if not a keen sense, of moral 
 right and wrong ; and none of the sophistry by which 
 minds of a different class seek daily to obscure it has any 
 effect upon them. Such men are true Voltairians ; and 
 it matters not whether they are sceptics in the ordinary 
 sense of the word, or whether they have deliberately 
 chosen a rehgion, rather by an act of the will than of the 
 intellect — rather as a thing to be received than believed. 
 While such men exist, and have, as they must have, a 
 marked share in the conduct of the affairs of mankind, 
 their great master, whether his influence be felt direct or 
 at second-hand, will remain one of tlie literary sovereigns 
 of the world. 
 
 But such minds will always constitute a minority, how- 
 ever important a one, among thinking ;nid feeling men. 
 T1k> nudtitude of those to whom (;iil1) is ;i necessity is 
 
 L
 
 14G VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AXD GOTIIE. 
 
 much greater. It would far exceed the present purpose 
 to examine, how the VoUairian influence required and 
 called into existence by inevitable reaction a counter- 
 balancing power ; and how this was furnished by a spirit 
 of a very different character, one far inferior in those 
 points wherein Voltaire's supremacy lay, but as infinitely 
 superior in others, and great above all in his own weak- 
 nesses : — one too who resembled Voltaire at least in this, 
 that he adopted and attracted, and effaced by the splen- 
 dour of his own genius, the converging tendencies of many 
 minds anterior to his own. With none of Voltaire's 
 advantages — low in origin, coarse in tastes, repulsing the 
 intimacy and outraging the self-opinion of literary folks, 
 wayward in heart and understanding to a degree which 
 amounted to unquestionable insanity — Eousseau swayed 
 the world by two prevailing qualities. He was the great 
 poet of the universal passion — love. He was the great 
 prophet of the doctrine most universally seductive to the 
 human intellect — the perfectibihty of man. He introduced 
 man to a new guide — a guide who might serve either as 
 a substitute for revelation or a companion to it ; teacliing, 
 that every man was indeed a law unto himself. If not 
 absolutely the first to proclaim this doctrine, he was the 
 first to clothe it sometimes with the seductive graces of 
 refined voluptuousness, sometimes with the still more 
 powerful attractions of asceticism and self-denial, borrowed 
 from a severer creed ; oftener still, with the charms of 
 philanthropy. This was, in truth, as has been often ob- 
 served, a consummation for which the world had been 
 long preparing. The practical sense of man's corruption 
 throng] 1 original sin, the moving principle of so many 
 religious reformations, had long been dying away. Eome 
 had preserved it dogmatically ; but mingled as it was in 
 the view of Homanists with the tenets of a denounced and
 
 VOLTAIKE, EOUSSEAU, AND' GOTHE. 147 
 
 unpopular school, it was daily more and more lost sight 
 of in tlieir general teaching. Pohte Calvinism was thrust- 
 ing it into the background as fanatical, the Church of 
 England as methodistical. The principles of Eousseau 
 had at the utmost to break down, or rather to sap, the 
 fence of a few traditionary dogmas, and appeared to 
 numbers of unsuspicious behevers fit to take their place 
 side by side with such diluted Christianity as they pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 Accordingly, the influence of the ' Gospel of Eousseau,' 
 as it has been called with greater force than is generally 
 contained in a mere sarcasm, spread with electric rapidity 
 over Europe and America. It became at once the sole 
 religion of multitudes, the subsidiary religion of multitudes 
 more. Christianity itself — that is, the Christianity of the 
 world — seemed, as we have said, to embrace and admit 
 it ; much as Christianity had in early times appeared to 
 admit the popular infusion of Platonism ; less, no doubt, 
 in England than elsewhere ; but to an extent we seldom 
 realise, even among our own insulated and unsentimental 
 people. If it entered most powerfully into the new 
 Catholicism of the Stolbergs, Schlegel, and the rest, on 
 the Continent ; if it penetrated among the Pietists of 
 Protestant Germany, where, as Gothe himself says, 'as 
 soon as the belief in good works and their merit ceased, 
 sentimentalism took its place ; ' it was not less distinctly 
 traceable in the tendencies of many popular religionists 
 among ourselves. It insinuated itself among the (Quakers 
 and Unitarians ; it made way even among tlie children of 
 Knox and Cameron ; nay, the very names of our Howards 
 and Wilberforces, of which Peligion is so justly proud, 
 cannot be altogether disengaged from the ties of partial 
 allegiance to that of Piousseau. Anglicanism tilone — 
 strong in its calmness, perhaps its coldness — seems to
 
 148 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AXD GOTIIE. 
 
 liavc rejected the specious importation almost wholly, and 
 from the bemnninQ;. 
 
 The time of that intermixture has nearly passed by. 
 The two streams, apparently commingled for a period, 
 have run themselves clear again. The adherents of Ee- 
 velation, taught by the brief duration and shameful fall 
 of that j)alace of self-righteousness and vain-glory which 
 Eousseau and his followers raised, have returned in great 
 measure under the severer discipline of ancient belief. 
 Among all the conflicts of modern religious schools, this, 
 at least, seems to us discernible, notwithstanding some 
 recent and partial appearances to tlie contrary, that the 
 sense of the corruption of human nature, the strong Anti- 
 Pelagian view of man and the world, however various the 
 shapes which its conclusions may assume among Catholics 
 and Protestants, gains ground, and becomes more and 
 more characteristic ; that the sects and shades of thinkers 
 which hold by the more indulgent doctrine, become more 
 and more distinctly marked off from the body of believers 
 and thrown into afliuity with tliose who reject Eevelation. 
 But the system of Eousseau, though no longer the reign- 
 ing one either in philosophy or religion, is still, perhaps, 
 the most generally popular of all. Examine througliout 
 Europe the life of courts and cities, the most commonly 
 read literature of the day, the received social theories of 
 the middle classes, and the feelings of women in particular, 
 and wherever strict religious views do not prevail, it will 
 be found that the ordinary substitute is still the ' Gospel 
 of Eousseau.' 
 
 And, to pass from the subject of his philosophical or 
 religious to that of his political influence, the doctrine 
 of liiiinaii perfectibility lay at the foundation of his views 
 oil til is as well as on kindred subjects. Opposite in this, 
 as ill ;ill oilier phases of mind, to Voltaire, his thoughts
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 149 
 
 }md a prevailing political bias. The regeneration of states, 
 through changes in their institutions, was the subject of 
 his daily dreams. Alone of great contemporary writers — 
 by the intuition of genius, say his admirers — he clearly 
 discerned the coming revolution many years beforehand.* 
 
 * ' You rely on the existing order of society, "witliout suspecting that this 
 order is subject to inevitable revolutions, and that it is impossible for you to 
 foresee or to prevent that which may concern your own children. The 
 great becomes small, the poor becomes rich, the monarch becomes a subject ; 
 are changes of lot so imcommon, that you may reckon on being exempt 
 from them ? We are approaching the state of crisis, and the era of revolu- 
 ti(in. ... I hold it impossible that the great monarchies of Europe can 
 last much longer : all of them have been brilliant, and what is brilliant 
 is near its decline. I have reasons more particular than this maxim for 
 entertaining my opinion : but this is not the place for recording them, and 
 every one may perceive them only too well.' — Emilc, Book III. text and note. 
 
 It would be not an unprofitable task to collect and analyse the so-called 
 prophecies of the French Revolution, to which the wise men of the 
 eighteenth century gave utterance. Thej' were in truth very few ; men's eyes 
 saw very indistinctly what was so near at hand. Voltaire's soothsayings are 
 too numerous, and too reckless, to be worth much : but on one occasion he 
 forecast the Revolution almost as plainly as Rousseau himself. 
 
 ' Everything that I see is full of the seeds of a revolution which will infixl- 
 libly liappen, and which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The 
 French arrive at everything late, but they arrive at last. Light has now been 
 propagated so rapidly fi'om one point to another, that there will be an explo- 
 sion on the first occasion: and then there will be a pretty disturbance! 
 (un beau tapage). Happy are the young ; they will see iine things.' — Letter 
 to the Marquis de Chauvclin, April 2, 1704. 
 
 Among Englishmen, Lord Chesterfield is commonly cited as a seer in re- 
 ference to the same event : but his famous saying, ' I foresee that, before tlie 
 end of this century, the trade of both king and priest will not be half so good 
 a one as it has been,' does not amount to mucli when taken with the context. 
 He had been reading pieces relative to the dispute between the French king 
 and the parliament, and was dreaming of parliamentary resistance on 'what 
 we call here Revolution principles.' — Letter to his Son, yipril l.'i, 1752. 
 
 A more curious jiropliecy — but omitting the Revolution, which lie missed 
 — is that hazarded, partly in jest but more in earnest, by a clever tliiukcr 
 among the minor philosopliers, the .Abbe (liiliani, in 1771, ' Siir I'l'lat qu' 
 aura I'Europe dans cent ans d'ici.' 
 
 'The general result is, that in a Inindrcd years we shall resenilde (lie 
 Chinese much more than we do at present. Tlicre will be two very distinct 
 religions, that of the great, and that uf thi' people : the latter will lie di\i(le(l
 
 150 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 And it is plain enough that, as he founded his hopes of 
 this regeneration on his behef in the fundamental ex- 
 cellence of man's nature, which required only good insti- 
 tutions and good education — and these rather negative 
 than positive, to strip away the crust of abuses which has 
 grown around him, and reduce him more nearly to the 
 ' state of nature ' — so he deemed that, in their improved 
 state, men would learn to perform their work in life as bro- 
 thers through co-operation, not as rivals through compe- 
 tition. In this sense, and to this extent, he is very justly 
 claimed as the originator of modern sociahsm. He did 
 not, indeed, endeavour to plant it as a full-grown tree, an 
 experiment in which so many have absurdly failed. But 
 he deposited its seeds deep in that fermenting soil of 
 France ; seeds watered since by the blood and tears of 
 three generations ; of which the real germination, for good 
 or for evil, has yet to take place. 
 
 To compare the influence exercised by these two on 
 
 into three or four sects, living on good terms together. Priests and monks 
 will be more numerous than now, moderately rich, ignored, and peaceable. 
 The Pope will be only an illustrious bishop, not a prince : they will have 
 pared away his States, bit by bit. There will be many troops on foot, and 
 veiy little war. The soldiers will manoeuvre admirably on parade : but 
 soldiers and oiiicers will be neither great nor brave : they will wear plenty 
 of lace, and that is all. The fortresses will fall into ruin, and tho walls of 
 towns will be turned everywhere into handsome promenades with alleys of 
 trees. The chief sovereign of Europe will be the Prince of the Tartars : that 
 is to say, he who will possess Poland, Russia, and Prussia, and command iu 
 the Baltic and the Black Sea. For the people of the North will always be 
 less cowardly than those of the South. Tho other sovereigns will bo mas- 
 tered by the policy of this predominant Cabinet. England will become divided 
 from Europe, as Japan has from China. She will unite herself with her 
 America, of which she will possess the greater part, and command the trade 
 of the rest. There will be despotism everywhere ; but despotism without 
 cruelty or bloodshed : the despotism of chicane, founded always on the in- 
 terpretation of old laws, and on the cunning devices of the tribunals and the 
 lawyers : and this despotism "wall only attack the income of individuals. 
 Happy the niilHonnaires, who will then be our mandarins.'
 
 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 151 
 
 Eurojjeau tliouglit would, be an endless task. So far as 
 Englishmen may venture to pass judgment on such a 
 point, we should, say that, in a mere literary point of view, 
 the influence of Voltaire had been almost wholly for good, 
 that of Eousseau simply mischievous. Nor is this diffi- 
 cult to account for. The best points of Voltaire were 
 precisely those in which it was most easy to follow him. 
 His wit was eminently national, and differed only in 
 degree from that possessed by numbers of his compatriots. 
 His clearness of expression, his critical acuteness, and the 
 charms of his narrative, are all qualities in which he 
 leaves a model more or less easily imitable. And accord- 
 ingly most of the better class of French historical and 
 philosophical works, ^^Titten since Voltaire's day, savours 
 of Voltaire in every hne. Eousseau, on the contrary, is a 
 writer from whom the Horatian phrase — exemplar vitiis 
 imitabile — appears to have been invented. His worst 
 points are those most easily seized, and most tempting to 
 the imitator. His peculiar genius, which redeems them, 
 is unapproachable. Men and women of lively but 
 shallow ftmcy, ready rhetorical talent, and a supeificial 
 warmth of feelino; catch and exas'o-erate the tone of 
 
 o' Co 
 
 Eousseau with ftital facility ; and thus are produced the 
 popular sentimental -writers whose foshion culminates, de- 
 clines, and vanishes almost within a generation — the Saint 
 Pierres, Chateaubriands, Lamartines, and the like. 
 
 But if we turn from the world of letters to that of life, 
 as exhibited in modern political history, we shall meet 
 with a very different result. Among those whose mental 
 character and culture carry us back to Voltaire, we shall 
 lind many distinguished men ; but occupiers in general of 
 second-rate, though eminent situations. Tliis is the school 
 which furnishes states and society witli such leaders as 
 Condorcet, Talleyrand, Metternich, Thiers, Cavour ; but
 
 152 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 the real masters of men, those who have moved milhons 
 by the force of a contagious enthusiasm, have always had 
 a touch of the spirit of Eousseau : such men as Mrabeau, 
 Eobespierre, Napoleon, Nelson, Garibaldi — however start- 
 hng the juxta-position may appear. 
 
 As, in the history of a single human life, relaxation of 
 energies is sure to follow their unnatural tension ; as, with 
 men of intellectual character, a youth of enthusiasm, full 
 of strong purposes and exaggerated impulses, is commonly 
 followed by a gradual disenchantment, until the care of 
 self and its interests seems to become the only reality ; as 
 such men learn to smile at their past delusions ; to look 
 with an indulgence, half contemptuous and half tender, 
 on their younger companions who are possessed with 
 those longings of which they have proved the vanity ; 
 as they gradually retreat from one advanced position to 
 another, until understanding, and wit, and cultivated 
 sensibihties, and all the powers which once ' wandered 
 through eternity,' are tamed and disciplined to the house- 
 hold business of smoothing their owner's progress througli 
 the troubles of the world : such were the changes which 
 came over the philosophical mind of Europe when 
 Eousseau was dethroned, with the fall of his extravagant 
 child, the Eepubhc. Thenceforward- the spirit wliicli he 
 had aroused passed to the outer multitude of thinkers and 
 readers, the ordinary preservers of the last by-gone fashion. 
 Among the more advanced class, the pretensions of liis 
 imitators were received only witli ridicule. Something 
 new was wanted. Voltaire had exhausted for the time 
 intellectual scepticism, and Eousseau sentiment. Voltaire 
 had mocked at ordinary human nature ; Eousseau had 
 deified it. What was left, for those who had witnessed the 
 decline of i)oth, except the philosophy wliicli turns from 
 the unsolved enigmas of man's general nature and destinies
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 153 
 
 to the cultivation of self ; wliicli strives to eliminate, as far 
 as possible, the various impulses which lead to extrava- 
 gance ; which passes by religion with a bow, and philan- 
 thropy with a sneer, and teaches men that the real aim of 
 his existence in this world is refined enjopiient of it? 
 When the time for a new religion has arrived, a prophet' 
 has never been wanting to place himself at the head of it; 
 and that eminence, in the present instance, was reserved 
 for Gothe. 
 
 Gothe was born in 1749, consequently ten years earlier 
 than Schiller and the others whom we commonly regard as 
 his contemporaries. The habit of attaching himself more 
 closely to younger men was one of his characteristics, as 
 we shall see presently ; and this circumstance, together 
 with others, tends to make us forget his natural age, and 
 rank him lower down in his century than his proper place. 
 Nor is the distinction without importance ; for Gothe 
 being ten years older than his companions of whom we 
 speak, received the full tide of the irruption of Eousseau 
 into Germany in a soberer and less impressionable mood 
 than they. His early youth passed away under the 
 dominion of Voltaire ; and he has recorded in liis con- 
 versations with Eckermann the deep impression which 
 the philosophy of that school made on him. He says 
 himself that he resisted its influence successfully. It is 
 probable that he was scarcely so much exposed to its 
 contacjion as he imaci'ined. There were Teutonic facul- 
 ties and deficiencies about him witli wliich Voltairianism 
 was incompatible: too mucli real deptli of tliought and 
 feelhig ; an a})petite for mysticism, tliough rather intel- 
 lectual than of tlie heart : a wonderful ])enetration into 
 the mental condition of other men, and powci- oC seeing 
 Avith others' eyes, such as few ri'enchmen ever possessed, 
 and Voltaii'iiiu Frenchmen least of ;ill : ;i (IrHcicncy, we
 
 154 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE, 
 
 , a.»wv^.-^K^i^;.i^, 
 
 cannot but add, in tlie quality of wit — whatever his coun- 
 trymen may think of the matter — most strange in a mind 
 so richly furnished with other gifts. We are apt, therefore, 
 on the whole, to interpret those other passages in which 
 he attributes so much of his own mental cultivation to 
 Voltaire, as savouring a little of the common perversity of 
 men of genius in judging of themselves ; the same which 
 made Byron vihpend the romantic school, and pronounce 
 himself the follower of Pope ; a shght affectation of con- 
 temning the qualities in which they excel, and praising 
 those in which they fall short. Thus far, however, is true, 
 that some results of Encyclopedic teaching, combined 
 with some natural coldness of disposition, and with a 
 certain pride in superiority to mere enthusiasm, such as 
 that of Schiller, enabled Gothe to resist the pressure of the 
 ' Sturm mid Drang Zeit,' and the more powerful seduc- 
 tions of the Theophilanthropic social philosophy, which 
 made conquest of Germany in the years immediately 
 preceding the French Eevolution. 
 
 At a later period, Gothe's literary and personal friend- 
 ship with Schiller became one of the warmest feelings of 
 a heart not much addicted to expansive sympathies, at 
 least with the masculine division of humankind. Yet it 
 is difficult to suppose that his admiration of the younger 
 poet as an author, however sincere, w^as of any very liigli 
 order. As a man of the world and a courtier, Gothe had 
 always something of a JByronic contempt for mere men 
 of letters ; and Schiller was one of the most cliildlike of 
 the species. Both as a critic and keen observer of life, 
 he was thoroughly alive to the unreality of Schiller's 
 poetical world, and the defects of dramatic studies 
 elaborated from books, not from life. Moreover, the 
 impartial judge must plainly admit that there was no 
 sympathy in Gothe's heart with that singular purity of
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 155 
 
 feeling, that unsuspecting romance of character, which, 
 with the unsophisticated and uncritical, is Schiller's greatest 
 charm. 
 
 In fact, the connection of Gothe with Schiller is one 
 of the passages in the elder poet's life which we dwell on 
 at once with pleasure and regret. Nothing can be more 
 attractive than the honest admiration of the established 
 favourite for the rising one — the elder brother's fondness 
 with which he at once cautions him against error, and 
 defends him against attacks — while poor Schiller, though 
 made a little sore sometimes by his accomplished friend's 
 social distinction, court favour, and 2,000 thalers a year, 
 yet remained on the whole true and loyal to him. 
 Schiller's popularity for a time eclipsed Gothe's ; j^et 
 appears to have been as thoroughly enjoyed by Gothe as 
 if it had been his own. The early death of the former 
 alone put an end to a literary friendship which, under 
 the circumstances, may almost be termed unexampled. 
 
 And yet all the time we feel a painful consciousness 
 tliat the men were divided from each other by a ' mon- 
 strous gulf,' in Schiller's own words ; a more ' dreary 
 gulf than that of literary jealousy. We do not speak of 
 mere inequality of powers, although Schiller's place, as it 
 appears to us, is at best only an elevated one among the 
 Di minorcs of literature ; Gothe's, perhaps, a low one in 
 the scanty list of the superior Divinities ; but from the 
 lowest of these last to the highest of the second-rates, the 
 distance is greater than 
 
 From tlie centre thrice to the utmost pole. 
 
 But their moral aims and instincts were wholly op]x^site. 
 It may be said emphatically of" Scliillcr, that he was the 
 only great writer of a cultivated age who ever dared to 
 burst through the restraints which worldly philosophy
 
 156 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 casts around us, and to appeal freely and without reserve 
 to the common sympathies of the honest part of man's 
 nature — the love of the beautiful, the love of glory, 
 virtue, patriotism, devotion — all the impulses with which 
 we sympathise in the young, even when our own hearts 
 have become chilled by advancing years, our judgment 
 warped by long familiarity with the habitual sarcasm and 
 irony of the cultivated world. ' Yirginibus puerisque ' 
 is the fitting epigraph of all the works of his maturer age ; 
 and he had courage enough to show men that, in order 
 to appreciate and enjoy him, they must become as children, 
 and put on afresh the natural simplicity which they had 
 cast aside as the garment of their boyhood. And he 
 succeeded, with more than mere literary success. ' The 
 mighty charm of his song not only touched the ima- 
 ginations of men, but also their consciences.' He made, 
 indeed, no durable impression on his age ; the glow 
 excited by his popularity was faint and transient : yet, 
 such as it was, it seemed for a moment to produce a 
 superficial thaw on the ice of a thousand years, and to 
 briufv men back to the times of which we dream rather 
 than read, when genius, and virtue, and crime itself, wore 
 the colouring of romance. 
 
 To Gothe all this transparent singleness of enthusiasm 
 was as foreign as to his own Mephistopheles. Even in 
 his best moods, his feeling for it was only that of an 
 artist for a beautiful model. His disposition was not, 
 indeed, mocking, nor had he the turn for burlesque and 
 ridicule ; his efforts in this line being among the least 
 jiiippy of his compositions. But he had attained a higher 
 degree in tlie science of negation than Mephistopheles 
 himself. He had attained to that profounder sophistry by 
 which men, instead of acting the common part of devils' 
 advocates, to pull down ordinary sainthood, create artifi-
 
 VOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 157 
 
 ^, ^..^^.^^j^.aj.iv., 
 
 cial virtues out of the weaknesses of bumamty, and 
 canonise saints of a new and questionable order. He 
 studied by preference the foibles and shortcomings of his 
 fellow-mortals ; varnished them over with the brilhancy of 
 style and sentiment ; and, while professing all respect for 
 ordinary doctrines and ethics, sought to prove that the 
 real religion of man's heart, and the real end of his exist- 
 ence, he in the refined cultivation of the mind and affec- 
 tions, and in subjecting all irregular impulses to a course 
 of disciplined self-indulgence. 
 
 To Gothe, therefore, Schiller's heroes and heroines 
 were mere unrealities — creatures of the poet's fancy. 
 Schiller, he saw, was no observer of nature, and never 
 depicted either human life or things external as he 
 found them. He was conscious, on the other hand, of 
 his own powers of observing both. And this funda- 
 mental difference between their two habits of mind ap- 
 pears to us to be Avhat he originally meant to express 
 by the phrase, that 'Schiller's genius was "subjective," 
 his own " objective." ' A phrase which had also some 
 apparent foundation in Schiller's Kantian notions ; and 
 which G(3 tile's supremacy has absolutely imposed on 
 German criticism, until the epithets 'objective,' 'many- 
 sided,' and such like Teutonicisms, have become almost 
 as inseparably attached to tlie name of Gothe, as 'judi- 
 cious' to that of Hooker, or 'venerable' to tluit of 13ede. 
 It is a bold thing to controvert such received canons ; but 
 less bold than it would be if Gothe himself had not l)eeii 
 the original propounder of them — Gothe, who, like many 
 others, was never so little infallible as when he judged of 
 himself. We cannot but think that if the two epithets 
 had been reversed, they would more accurately have 
 described the two personages. 
 
 That Schiller never reproduced Nature is tru(^ ; but he
 
 158 YOLTAIKE, ROSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 never reproduced himself. He saw Nature at second-hand 
 — through books. He studied the classics till he raised 
 for himself a new Olympus, with all its starry deities. He 
 studied history until its characters arose before his fancy 
 hke Hving beings, only in that glorified state in which — 
 
 Strengtli was gigantic, valour liigli, 
 Aucl wisdom soared beyond the sky. 
 
 All his creations, therefore, were drawn from an imaginary 
 world ; unless Wallenstein, who has more of compound 
 human nature like our own than the others, be made 
 an exception ; but still it was a world wholly external to 
 himself. His characters may be brilliant phantoms, if 
 you will, but assuredly they are not so many Schillers. 
 Schiller's personality scarcely enters more into his poetry 
 than Shakspeare's or Scott's. 
 
 We believe, on the other hand, that those who are in 
 earnest in their love of Gothe, will generally agree with 
 us as to the great source of his power ; namely, that it is 
 strictly subjective, in the most intelligible sense of that 
 word. It has its origin in that strong predominance of 
 the egotistical and self-analytic tendencies, which at once 
 tempted and enabled him to transfer his own personality 
 to the characters with which his imagination was dealing, 
 and to call forth, in doing so, the corresponding egotism 
 of the reader. If Gothe's situations are often dramatic, 
 his characters are seldom so. When called on to exhibit 
 energy or passion, they are apt to respond either -witli 
 weakness or ranting. It is with the incomplete, the 
 vague, the purposeless in human nature, that he seems by 
 preference to concern himself ; and for tliis very reason 
 he addresses himself directly to the large majority of the 
 educated classes of mankind. What Shakspeare has done 
 with one or two characters only, and as an exception, Gothe
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 159 
 
 does with all those in which his genius delights itself. 
 Truly did Hazlitt remark, that the charm of the character 
 of Hamlet Hes neither in dramatic power, nor in external 
 resemblance to Nature, but in the strange manner in 
 which its every working corresponds with our own, — ' It 
 is we who are Hamlet.' How thoroughly this saying 
 is applicable to Gothe, every day's additional study of 
 his works will reveal to his admirer. None of his best 
 remembered impersonations have the force of will, the 
 power of action, which are commonly exhibited by 
 dramatic artists in their leading cliaracters. They are' 
 capricious, dreamy, and for the most part even unim- 
 passioned creatures, — acted upon, rather than acting, me- 
 ditating on life rather than taking part in it. But they 
 are ourselves. It is the reader who is Faust, who is (or 
 was, alas!) Werter — who is the real Wilhelm Meister. 
 And it is impossible not to feel that the reason why the 
 poet succeeds in so wonderful a manner in thus delineat- 
 ing us to ourselves, is because the features are in reality 
 drawn less from observation than from self-inspection ; 
 that he has brought forth the secrets of his own heart in 
 order to ehcit those of ours, and to make us conscious of 
 a thousand hidden tendencies and feehngs in ourselves 
 of which we had only a dim perception, until they were 
 thus evoked by the representation of their shadows.* 
 
 This main characteristic of Gothe's genius is obvious 
 enough. It is not so easy to detect (but the examination 
 well repays itself) the singular manner in which it mingles 
 with, and gives completeness and strength to, the other 
 
 * Mr. Lewes — thougli he adopts to the full the common language of criti- 
 cism about Gothe's 'objectivity' — goes still fartlier, and tolls us that in tlio 
 
 Wahlvencandtschaften, the poet * has represented himself under the two dif- 
 ferent masks of the impulsive Edward, and the reasonable strong-willed 
 
 Captain. These characters are drawn from the life — drawn frmu liimself.' 
 
 If so, where is the * objectivity ' ?
 
 IGO VOLTAIRE, EOUSfeEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 powers which he so largely possessed. No one denies 
 him the faculty of observation, both of human nature 
 and also of the external world. And yet, even with 
 respect to the latter, and much more the former, his 
 observation is comparatively cold — his description inani- 
 mate — unless he can, in a manner, project himself into 
 them, and insinuate his own heart and mmd into his 
 analysis of those of others — his own way of perceiving 
 JSTature into his portraits of Nature herself. According to 
 his owm confession, and the researches of his admirers, 
 there is scarcely one of his stories of life which is not 
 founded on real incident. Those inserted in Wilhelm 
 Meister are said to be all examples. Power of inventing 
 a plot he seems to have had little or none. His way was 
 either to take one from books, or, still more commonly, 
 from actual occurrences. Characters which struck him, 
 and adventures of which he was cognisant personally or 
 from hearsay, make up the staple of his narratives. And 
 yet he rarely appears to be painting character simply, 
 and as external to himself. Take certain circumstances 
 of life, certain qualities of mind and heart, to form an 
 imaginary person — how would the individual Gothe 
 think and feel, were he that person ? This seems to be 
 the invariable problem which he sets himself to solve. 
 Nay, we must apply the same test even to his descriptions 
 of outward nature and events, if we wish to appreciate 
 them thoroughly. The forests of the Ilarz, the gorgeous 
 cloud-land of the liigh Alps in winter, the lakes of 
 Lombardy, the bay of Naples, the march of an invading 
 army, the vicissitudes of a siege — few liave represented 
 these in Avord-painting with greater skill and fidelity. 
 P)ut the pictures lose the greater part of their cliarm 
 unless the reader has made himself familiar with the mind 
 of the author, and can see them with the eyes of Gotlie
 
 VOLTAIKE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 161 
 
 himself, and partake in his sensations. Wieland saw 
 this thoroughly, when the herd of German critics were 
 praising Gothe's supposed 'objectivity' and 'realism.' 
 'The specialty' (says he, speaking of the 'Swiss Travels') 
 ' which here, as in almost all his works, distinguishes him 
 from Homer and Shakspeare, is that the " I," the " Ille 
 Ego," glimmers through everywhere, although without 
 ostentation and with consummate delicacy.' Gothe him- 
 self was, at the bottom, no less aware of it. It was (no 
 doubt) a real perception of this leachng peculiarity of his 
 own genius, though he often affected to disguise it from 
 himself and others, which made him sometimes recognise 
 that the bulk of his writings were in truth addressed to 
 particular classes only. ' My works,' he said to Ecker- 
 mann, ' never can be popular : they are not written for 
 the midtitude, but only for individual men whose pursuits 
 and aims are like my own.' 
 
 A curious exemplification of this leading peculiarity 
 will be found in the history of the composition of the 
 ' Sorrows of Werter,' about which many stories have been 
 told; but the latest and most authentic seems to be given 
 by Herr Diinzer in his ' Studies on the works of Gothe.' 
 After Gothe's disappointment of the heart in the matter 
 of his fair Alsatian, Friederike, he fell into one of those 
 states of tender melancholy, in which a youth of twenty- 
 three generally resorts to the society of the first fair 
 sympathiser whom he can find, purely for friendly con- 
 solation. Such a comforter he soon found in a somewhat 
 bourgeoise young lady, whose paternal a])pellatioii now 
 appears to have been Miss Charlotte Buff. To her he 
 confided his sorrows, and from her he exacted sympathy 
 and advice, at such unwarrantable length, that poor 
 Charlotte, who had no objection to a bit of romance, 
 provided it ended in tlie orthodox form ol" ;i |)roposal, 
 
 .M
 
 162 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 grew tired, and entered into a prosaic engagement with 
 a very matter-of-fact friend of both parties, Christian 
 Kestner. The discovery of this treason made Gothe quite 
 certain that he was actiiahy in love with the lady to whom 
 he had never chosen to commmiicate his feehngs, and 
 threw him into all the despair of rejected and betrayed 
 attachment. Just at this crisis of his history happened 
 the tragic adventure of young Jerusalem — him of the 
 bulT waistcoat and yellow breeches — whose fatal passion 
 is recounted in the ' Dichtung- und Wahrheit.' The two 
 events combined — his own disappointment and Jerusalem's 
 — engendered the ' Sorrows of Werter.' Werter is Jeru- 
 salem and Gothe at once ; he wears the costume, he 
 undergoes the sufferings, he talks in many instances the 
 very language (borrowed from his posthumous papers) 
 of that too fascinating foreign-office clerk ; but he is 
 throughout what Gothe would have been, had he been 
 Jerusalem ; the imaginary transposition of the poet into 
 the perplexities and distresses of his acquaintance. And 
 thus a work which, let critics speak of it as they may, 
 has excited the fancy and controlled the hearts of 
 numbers of mankind, is spun out of the brain of a poet 
 from materials which consist simply of his own heart and 
 imagination, placed in circumstances of idealised truth ; 
 for ' Jerusalem ' seems, after all, to liave been only a 
 young attache of considerable solemnity and self-respect, 
 — his flame, the real Charlotte — according to the testi- 
 mony of the Prince de Ligne, — was not worth knowing ; 
 and lier double^ Charlotte Kestner, nee Ihiff, must have 
 been little better, judging from the cold manner in which 
 G(3the speaks of her, whom he occasionally met in after 
 life* 
 
 * See Diinzer, p. 89, &c. It seoms that Ilerr Kestner was not particularly 
 pleased with the part of the philosophic husband assigned to him in
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 163 
 
 But if tlie real tendency of Gothe's genius was thus 
 thoroughly subjective or egotistical, so much the less was 
 he a dramatist in tlie peculiar sense of the word. Por- 
 traiture of character, independent of self, he has really 
 
 'Wei-ter/ and that Gothe was forced to retoucli the character considerably 
 in the second edition, without succeeding in thoroughly pacifying him ; 
 but Gothe was by this time deep in his new passion for the fashionable 
 Frankfort belle, Miss Schiinmann, and ' Werter ' had become weariness and 
 vexation to him. It must have been with some malicious pleasure in 
 mystifying his admirers, that Gothe emerged from the gloom of ' Werter ' 
 into the graceful pleasahtry of his various poems to * Lili : ' such as those 
 exquisite lines in which he complains of her tyranny in di'awiug him from 
 the dreamy voluptuousness of a poet's study into her favourite evening 
 parties : — 
 
 Warum ziehst du mich imwiderstehlich, 
 Ach ! in jene Praeht ? 
 
 War ich guter .Tunge nicht so selig 
 In der cideu Nacht ? 
 
 Heimlich in mein Zimmerchen verschlossen 
 
 Lag im ]\Iondenschein, 
 Ganz von seiuem Schauerlicht durchflossen, 
 
 Und ich dammert' ein. , 
 
 Bin ich's noch, den du bei so viel Lichteru 
 
 An den Spieltisch haltst ? 
 Oft so unertraglichen Gesichtern 
 
 Gegeniiber stellst ? &c. &c. 
 
 For the benefit of the unlearned reader Mr. Lewes's translation is added : 
 a tolerable attempt at an impossible task. 
 
 Wherefore so resistlessly dost draw me 
 
 Into scenes so bright ? 
 Had I not enough to soothe and chai'm me 
 
 In the lonely night ? 
 Homely in my little room secluded, 
 
 Wliile the moon's bright beams 
 In a shimmering light fell softly on me 
 
 As I lay in dreams. 
 
 Can it be, I sit at yonder table 
 
 Gay with cards and lights, 
 Forced to meet intolerable people 
 
 Because 'tis she invites ? 
 
 This is the song which Giitlie heard poor Lili singing, the last lime he 
 wandered up and down under her window after their parting.
 
 164 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 little enough. This the reader can best appreciate by 
 reflecting how few of the secondary figures in Gothe's 
 plays or novels he can realise to himself, or regard with 
 the smallest interest. The only exception of which we 
 are aware proves the rule in the strongest possible 
 manner. He is said to be particularly successful in the 
 delineation of a certain class of female characters, in 
 which he has met with many imitators ; beings whose 
 attraction lies in their simple and trustful dependence on 
 man as a superior, — Mignon, Clara, Margaret. But the 
 true charm of these imaginary beings lies less in them- 
 selves than in their relation to us — in the feelings of 
 protection and supremacy to which they appeal — in the 
 flattery they administer to masculine vanity and self- 
 glorification. 
 
 We will only add, in order to dispose of an objection 
 to our view which might be taken, that it is by no means 
 inconsistent with what has been already said, to recognise 
 Gothe's great excellence in one pecuUarly dramatic point, 
 — that accuracy of keeping which represents everything as 
 seen and felt by the party introduced, not as seen and felt 
 by the describer. It is, in fact, not diflicult to detect the 
 real connection between this quality and that strong per- 
 sonality which we have already attributed to him. It was 
 precisely because Gothe projected so much of himself into 
 the characters and scenes of his writings, that he made the 
 events described develope themselves always from the point 
 of view of his own dramatis personw^ never as they would 
 be perceived by a third party observing from without. 
 This is a point on which great objective talent — great power 
 of ])icturesque description, for instance, — is apt to lead its 
 possessor astray, unless balanced by predominant egotism. 
 A criticism of Gothe's on a passage of Walter Scott, though 
 it relates in terms only to a matter of pictorial effect, will
 
 YOLTAIKI::, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 165 
 
 illustrate our general meaning also. It has reference to 
 the scene in ' Ivanhoe,' where the Jew of York enters 
 Cedric's hall. The costume of the Jew is minutely 
 described, and, among the rest, the dress of his legs and 
 feet. Now this, says Gothe, is wrong ; for you are to 
 suppose yourself in the position of Cedric and his guests : 
 they are sitting at a table, with lights ; and by persons 
 so placed the details of the lower limbs of one who enters 
 the room are not remarked, and, in fiict, are hardly dis- 
 tinguishable. A similar instance of forgetfulness, more 
 glaring because the narrative is thrown into the first 
 person, occurs in ' Mazeppa.' 
 
 The sky was cold, and dull, and gi'ay, 
 And a low breeze crept moaning by ; 
 I could have answered with a sigh. 
 
 The breeze was perceptible enough to Byron's muse, no 
 doubt ; but how could it possibly be felt by a man carried 
 through the air, at full gallop, on horseback ? And errors 
 of the same class, in relation to things of more import- 
 ance than pictorial effect — the development of thought 
 or passion — will constantly be found in writers of the 
 highest order of what is commonly called dramatic power. 
 The poet is substituted for his subject. We should be 
 surprised at meeting with such instances in Gothe. Not 
 only are they contrary to his careful touch, but he trans- 
 forms himself for the time far too completely into the 
 person whom he introduces — whether as an agent or a 
 mere observer — to forget that imaiiiimry existence which 
 lias become his own. 
 
 In thus endeavourmo; to delineate some of the strono;- 
 est literary characteristics of this great writer, \vc are 
 conscious of havhig made a long digression from <»iir 
 immediate purpose, which was to regard him as a social 
 philosopher, and with reference to his moral influence on
 
 166 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AXD GOTHE. 
 
 the European mind. But, in truth, tlie one subject bears 
 materially and directly on the other. If we have 
 laboured, perhaps at unnecessary length, to show that an 
 intense and refined egotism was among the principal 
 elements of Gothe's literary genius, it was in order to 
 illustrate his philosophic character ; with the view of 
 showing how his very excellences, considered from the 
 point of view of hterary art, fitted him for the distinc- 
 tion of being the ablest and most successful of modern 
 teachers in the school of Epicurus. Nor were the pecu- 
 liarities of his temper and habits different from what his 
 writings would lead the reader to anticipate. His whole 
 history shows how abundantly he practised what he 
 preached ; how Self was the single divinity worshipped 
 by him, with a refined and chastened worship, no doubt, 
 during his long eighty years of life and activity. 
 
 ' Gothe,' says Menzel, with much the same meaning as 
 ours, ' adhered, in his writings, to nature ; to the nearest 
 nature ; to his own. His own nature stood in exactest 
 harmony with that which had become the reigning 
 character of the modern world. He was the clearest 
 mirror of modern life, in his own life as well as in his 
 poetry. He needed only to delineate himself in order 
 to dehneate the modern world, its turn of sentiment, its 
 
 inclinations, its worth, and its worthlessness The 
 
 talent of outward life, the arts of convenience, ease, and 
 refinement, daintiness of enjoyment, were his talismen in 
 reality, and, again, appeared to him the worthiest object as 
 of poetry ; inasmuch as lie only mirrored the advantages 
 which his own life and person represented.' 
 
 Menzel's splenetic tone and coarse inflation of style 
 have detracted from the real value of his criticisms ; but 
 the justice of this sentence will scarcely admit of dispute. 
 Not that Gothe was a selfish man in the vubar sense.
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND OOTHE. 167 
 
 His disposition was, in the main, amiable and tolerant, 
 and widely different in these respects from that of liis 
 French predecessors, with whom we have associated him. 
 He was averse from giving pain, as well as peculiarly 
 averse from encountering it himself. But all this was 
 consistent in him, as it is in many others, with habits of 
 mental self-indulgence carried even to the extreme. From 
 his youth upward, he loved to live in an atmosphere of 
 his own, and found himself most at his ease in the com- 
 pany of those whose position, in respect of age, talents, 
 or sex, induced them to look up to him as a superior. 
 He remarks, in his own memoirs, on the peculiarity 
 which led him to surround himself with younger 
 dependents, often to his ultimate inconvenience, since 
 they became burdens to him, as Mignon did to Wilhelm. 
 ISTor was this unconnected with a manner of affected 
 importance and superiority which, notwithstanding his 
 popularity, always placed a kind of barrier between him 
 and men of his own age and social position. Kestner 
 remarked of him wdien only twenty-four : ' Gothe is a 
 genius ; yet he has in his disposition a great deal which 
 may make him a disagreeable man. But among children 
 and women he is always well received.' Farther ac- 
 quaintance with life, and a strong determination to succeed 
 in the world, modified to a considerable extent these pecu- 
 liarities of his youth ; and he was never so [)0})-alar or 
 so successful, personally, as during the years wliich in- 
 tervened between his estal)hshnieiit at Weimar aFul liis 
 Italian journey (1775 — 1787). Those were hapj)y years. 
 Few poets have ever enjoyed so miirli of lilV'. There 
 was all the excitement of winning his way into the 
 favour, the confidence, the intimate rricii(lslii|), of the 
 young Grand Duke and Duchess. Theie was the easy 
 rivalry with the oilier literary heroes of the time, whom
 
 168 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 he could beat at their own weapons as an author, while 
 in all the qualities which ensure social success he was 
 incomparably their superior. There was the gentle 
 round of court Hfe, as practised by the free and easy 
 sovereigns of that day who had thrown aside German 
 etiquette ; — the life to which Catherine now and then 
 imperially condescended, which poor Marie Antoinette 
 tasted with timid and stealthy delight, but in which 
 the potentates of Weimar might revel without fear of 
 strangling or decapitation ; — hunting parties, gipsy ex- 
 cursions, serenades, picnics, theatricals, from January to 
 December. There was just the show of state business 
 for him, as the Grand Duke's intimate privy-councillor, 
 which might serve either as a diversion from courtly 
 dissipation, or an excuse for it. There was all that 
 refinement of the social circle which Gothe praised so 
 highly ; a little, perhaps, in the spirit of a parvenu, but 
 also with a poet's admiration for external elegance and 
 beauty : which he carried to a strange extent, according 
 to his disciple, Varnhagen von Ense, who remarks that in 
 later life Gothe's principal associates were all tall and 
 handsome men, like himself, and that he had a decided 
 antipathy to plain people. There was, above all, full 
 leisure for the development of his growing genius, 
 and his surpassing mental activity : while his bodily and 
 mental health alike profited by the opportunity. 
 
 But this enjoyment palled upon him from its very excess, 
 and also from the want of what Byron called, ' something 
 craggy to break upon ; ' — some one powerful and engross- 
 ing occupation of tlie mind. For his literary pursuits 
 were up to this time singularly broken and inconsequent. 
 When the world of Weimar was conquered — when his 
 own position was fairly attained, and tlici'e was no longer 
 any object to be gained by exerting himself to please 
 others — the tendency to insulation came back upon him
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 169 
 
 with redoubled force. The restraints of Weimar hfe, the 
 ties of society and office, became intolerable. It was in 
 order to get rid of them at once and definitively, that he 
 planned and executed his Italian journey, in that strange 
 manner which he has himself related so well ; partly also 
 (we suppose we must add, since the pubhcation of his 
 correspondence with Frau von Stein) to break through 
 the trammels of one of those tender friendships, of ante- 
 diluvian prolixity, in which the literati of the last century 
 were apt to involve themselves. 
 
 From very early youth, the desire to see Italy had 
 been incessantly present to Gothe's mind — a desire of 
 which the eagerness amounted to pain. No man has 
 described so well what no one ever felt more acutely — 
 that indefinable, unconquerable sentiment, which seems 
 an original passion in many minds — that yearning after 
 change of place — that attraction towards the distant and 
 unseen, which envelopes foreign scenery in hues of ima- 
 ginary brightness. This feeling had thrilled incessantly 
 within the heart of the youthful poet, exciting the same 
 wild longings which his own Faust expresses, when wan- 
 dering forth, a wearied student, from his closet, to feel the 
 influence of the sunset, and imagine himself journeying to 
 new lands in the train of the departed luminary — 
 
 For matter aids not with coi-poreal wings 
 
 The Spirit's swift imaginings : 
 
 Yet to each soul that restless pulse is gi\ en, 
 
 That voice which beckons onwards and away, 
 
 When o'er our lieads, lost in flio hhie of heaven, 
 
 The lark ent lines her tlirilling liiy ; 
 
 When sweeping o'er the piny hrake 
 
 The eagle's mighty pinions strain. 
 
 And o'er fiat heath and marshy lake 
 
 Speeds to his houie llx- Ixiuded crane. 
 
 And it was exalted and dignilied, willi respect to Italv, 
 by the desire to behold the source of nearly all which 
 makes life ideal. In the (l;i}s bel'ure I'ailways had [)ut
 
 170 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTHE 
 
 , iiw^Kj^-^^xi^, 
 
 an end to all this chapter of romance, there was never a 
 student with a soul in the slightest degree elevated above 
 the mere routine of classical instruction, in whose mind 
 at one period or another of his life the wish to visit the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, and to worship the spirit of 
 the past in its holiest shrine, the City of the Soul, had not 
 amounted to an importunate longing. But among the 
 greater number of those who were not early enabled to 
 fulfil their wish, the cares and manifold distractions of 
 the world gradually deadened the edge of this peculiar 
 sentiment, until its acuteness survived in recollection only. 
 It was, on the contrary, a singularity in Gothe's mind, 
 that in him the enthusiasm of youth retained all its fresh- 
 ness at a time of life when most look back upon it as a 
 loss past recalling, and others, who still possess, are rather 
 apt to conceal it, from habitual fear of ridicule. Perhaps, 
 too, the quiet and almost collegiate character of the little 
 circle in which he lived tended to keep alive these 
 juvenile feelings, which are so soon stifled among the 
 bustle of more active society. He felt and wrote like a 
 schoolboy when, at the age of seven-and-thirty, his long- 
 cherished hope of seeing Italy was at last on the point of 
 fulfilment. He longed, hke his own JVIignon, after the 
 land of the orange and myrtle ; he coimted the degrees of 
 latitude as he advanced, and fancied that every southern 
 breeze brought with it the airs of a more favoured climate. 
 ' God be thanked,' he writes from Venice, ' that I am 
 enabled once more to love all which I have valued from 
 my earliest youth. How happy I feel myself in venturing 
 once more to approach the classical authors ! For I may 
 now unburden my mind, and acknowledge my own weak- 
 ness. For many years I have not dared to look into any 
 Latin Avriter, or to contemplate anything which renewed 
 the idea of Italy in my mind. If such an impression was
 
 VOLTAIKE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 171 
 
 produced by accident, it caused me the most acute suffer- 
 ing. Herder often used to taunt me with learning all 
 my Latin out of Spinoza, for he had remarked that this 
 was the only Latin book which I read : he did not know 
 how sedulously I was obliged to guard myself from the 
 ancients ; how 1 took refuge from the very anguish of my 
 spu'it in those abstruse generalities. Had I not taken the 
 resolution which I am now fulfilling, I must have gone to 
 utter ruin : to such maturity had the desire to see these 
 objects with my own eyes arrived in my mind. Historical 
 knowledsre availed me nothino; : the tliino;s themselves 
 stood only at a hand's-breadth from me, but parted by an 
 impenetrable wall. And now the impression which they 
 produce on me is scarcely as if I saw them for the first 
 time, but rather as if I were revisiting them.' ' At last,' he 
 writes a few weeks later from Eome, ' I have reached the 
 
 capital of the world ! The desire to arrive 
 
 at Eome was so great, increased so strongly with every 
 moment, that all attempt at delay was vain, and 1 re- 
 mained only three hours in Florence. Now I am here 
 and at rest — tranquillised, as it seems, for the rest of my 
 life. For it may well be said that a new life dawns 
 within us, when we see that with our eyes as a whole 
 which we knew before only by fragments and l)y rote. 
 All the dreams of my youth I now behold in at^Lual life : 
 the first copperplate prints whicli 1 remember (my fiither 
 had the views of Eome hanging in an ante-chamber) are 
 now become a reality, and all whicli I have long known in 
 pictures and etchings, prints and woodcuts, })la>lor and 
 cork, stands collected before inc. Wherever I go, I fall 
 in with some acquaintance in a new world : it is all as 1 
 had imagined it, and yet all new. Even the same I can 
 say of my own observations and ideas. 1 have had no 
 absolutely new thoughts — liave fonnd nothing entirely
 
 172 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 strange ; but my old ideas are become so pronounced, so 
 lively, so connected, that they may pass for new ones. 
 When Pygmalion's Elisa, whom he had fashioned to the 
 fullest resemblance of his wish, and to whom he had 
 given as much truth and existence as the artist can, at 
 length came before him and exclaimed, " I am she ! " how 
 different was the living creature from the sculptured 
 stone ! ' Naples affected liim, if possible, still more power- 
 fully. ' When I attempt to write words, pictures only 
 will present themselves to my mind ; the fruitfid land, the 
 free ocean, the vapoury islands, the smoking mountain; 
 and I do not find within myself the organs wherewith to 
 reproduce all this in description. I have seen much and 
 thought much more : the world opens itself farther and 
 farther, and all which I have long known becomes now, 
 for the first time, truly mine. How early man knows ; 
 
 how late he is enabled to use his knowledge ! 
 
 And yet the world is but a simple wheel, similar to itself 
 in every point of its revolution, and appearing to us so 
 strange and multiform only because we are ourselves 
 carried round with it.' 
 
 This journey was, in many respects, the turning-point 
 of his life. For him, as for most men, the river Lethe flowed 
 on the other side of the Alps. He forgot his former sense 
 and being on the farther shore. During his eighteen 
 months in Italy, he satisfied one great want of his exist- 
 ence, by the acquisition of a permanent object ; for it was 
 then he conceived, or at least matured, those peculiar 
 views of natural philosophy which occupied him so much 
 and so happily during the remainder of his days. But 
 how far his genius gained in its higher qualities by the 
 change which it then underwent is a question on which 
 critics are widely at issue. Meantime, however this may 
 be, it is certain that the habits which he acquired tended
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTITE. 173 
 
 in no degree to cffiice the moral weaknesses of his charac- 
 ter. Freed from the restraints imposed on him by the 
 usages of the Weimar Hterary repiibhc, and left mucli 
 to himself, or to the company of one or two artists and 
 travellers, he relapsed into habits of self-contemplation 
 and self-worship, until they became unconquerable. Even 
 one of his greatest admirers. Chancellor von Mliller (the 
 author of 'Gothe in seiner praktischen Wirksamkeit'), 
 is forced to confess that he came back from Italy a man 
 altered for the worse ; colder, less expansive, more self- 
 important. Nor did he ever get rid of these defects, and 
 return to the more attractive self of his earlier days, 
 notwithstanding the beneficial results produced on his 
 nature for a time, as already said, by contact with tliat of 
 Scliiller : a nature assuredly far more generous and 
 unworldly than Gothe's own, although the latter has 
 chosen to say, with that singular affectation, or paradoxi- 
 cal turn, which so often disconcerts his readers : — ' Schiller 
 had i'ar more knowledge of the world and tact than I 
 liad ! ' It must be added that he went there the cavalier 
 servente of the sentimental Frau von Stein, and returned to 
 be the slave of the pliunp and burlesque Christiane Yiilpius, 
 who turned her fastidious lover into a Benedict at last. 
 
 On the later years of Gothe's life we confess tliat, for 
 our own parts, we dwell with little pleasure. We do not 
 complain of liis biographers, wlion ihoy naturally dilate 
 on the glories of his venerable old age, — his exalted posi- 
 tion as the living oracle of German intelligence, — the 
 honour, love, obedience, and tioops of friends llial waiird 
 on him to the last. All this is externally Irue ; and yet, to 
 us, his friends, with a few grand exceptions, seem cliicdy 
 to have belonged to the class of flatterers, Boswells, and 
 ' correspondents of leading literary journals;' his oracular 
 dignity to have degenerated into a (rick of niysteriousness,
 
 174 YOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 involving the most trivial commonplaces in solemn affecta- 
 tion of importance; and the chief pleasure of his life to 
 have lain in the conduct of semi-sentimental correspond- 
 ences with women for whom he cared not an iota, but 
 wdiom it was his delight to lead on, by flattering mutually 
 tlieir vanity and his own, until the consummation was 
 reached of involving them in something hke a romantic 
 passion for the great unapproachable. 
 
 It is a true remark of Menzel's — and connected with 
 much that we have said above — that in almost all Gothe's 
 works that peculiar view of the relations between the 
 sexes, under which man is the courted party, and woman 
 the submissive worshipper, is brought out in the principal 
 characters. Wliether, in the odd vicissitudes of the world, 
 the element introduced by chivalry into these relations 
 has expended itself, and later refinement is likely to bring 
 us back from adoring Gloriana and Angelica, to being 
 adored by Chryseis and Briseis, we will not undertake to 
 foretell ; though the popularity of such writers as Gothe 
 and Byron would certainly seem to point that way.* His 
 'Faust,' ' Egmont,' ' Edward ' in the Wahlverwandtschaften, 
 ' Wilhelm Meister,' are all either condescendinix divinities 
 or mere male coquettes ; and his most attractive female 
 characters seem all to belong to poor Helena's sect : — 
 
 Thus, Indian-like, 
 Religious iu mine error, I adore 
 The Sun, that looks upon his worshipper, 
 But knows of him no more. 
 
 Nay, the curious reader may even remark, in connection 
 with this subject, on the fondness of his heroines, par- 
 
 * It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that this was written before 
 the later productions of Tennyson had attained tlieir enormous popularity. 
 Their first and most obvious peculiarity is the careful delineation and high 
 exaltation of the female character, and the reduction of the masculine to 
 insignificance. And the same is the leading characteristic of popular modern 
 fiction.
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 175 
 
 ticularly in ' Willielin Meister,' for assuming male attire — 
 a topic on wliicli Varnhagen von Ense has a luculent 
 dissertation, sliowing that it is connected with some of the 
 deepest historical meanings of the eighteenth century, the 
 Eeformation, and the Eevolution ; but which may also be, 
 in part, an expression of the same prevailing view of the 
 female nature as imitative and dependent. And we may 
 pursue the same pervading thread of imagination in the 
 most dramatic specimens- of Gothe's ballad poetry, such 
 as the ' Bride of Corinth,' and the ' God and the Bayadere.' 
 Such, in some of the more important points of his 
 character, was the man for whom Destiny had reserved so 
 marked a place, in an age when the fiercest passions and 
 wildest enthusiasm were at work in the European world, 
 recasting its social institutions and remodelling the temper 
 of its inhabitants. ' The greatest men,' saith the fair 
 blue-stocking of the Wahlverwandtschaften, Ottilia, in 
 her Diary, ' are always connected with their age through 
 some one weakness.' If this can be predicated of Gotlie, 
 his weakness rather lay in an intense desire to shrink from 
 its violent emotions — to combat in himself all tendency to 
 share in its passions — to let the storm pass by, and avoid 
 meddhng with those who attempted to direct it. And 
 this it is, more than any other quality, which has rendered 
 liiiii unpopular, through a not unjust reaction, with great 
 part of the generation wliich lias succeeded his own. It 
 is felt that he owed a corresponding debt to the country 
 which worshipped liiiii, and that lie died without dis- 
 charging it. It was not through mere accident or the 
 force of mere scholastic causes, that the sect of the Epicu- 
 reans prevailed at Eome during the last agitated centuiy 
 of its Eepublic, while Stoicism became the reigning 
 intellectual fashion nndcr the em[)ire. Eoi' refined and 
 cultivated minds, when looking i'nv shelter from tlie evils
 
 176 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 
 
 of tlie times in a world of tlicir own, naturally try to 
 make that world as unlike as possible to the external one. 
 They seek refuge in philosophic self-indulgence from the 
 furious passions and exaggerated sentiments of an age of 
 civil turmoil ; while, on the same principle of contrast, 
 they court, at least in imagination, the excitements of 
 ascetic virtue, amidst the corrupt stagnation of despotism. 
 To preserve the tranquillity of Epicurus in the busy poli- 
 tical times on which he had fallen, was Gothe's constan 
 and patient endeavour. The French Eevolution came to 
 disturb the dreams of art and imaginative science, in 
 which his Itahan sojourn had lapped him. He had no 
 sympathy with its principles, and hated its agents. But 
 to call out another enthusiasm to oppose it was utterly 
 alien from his feelings. His trumpet sounded, indeed, a 
 note of defiance — but a very faint one — in Herman and 
 Dorothea. But what is the moral of the poem, as 
 summed up in the energetic hues which close it ? Seek 
 stedfastness during days of political trial in self-reliance, 
 and take good care of your property : — 
 
 Desto fester sey bei der allgemeinen Erschiittrung-, 
 Dorothea, der Muth. Wir wollen halten imd dauern, 
 Fest UDS lialten, und fest der schonen Giiter Besitzthiim. 
 
 But when the tumult of revolution had ended in 
 military supremacy, and Germany lay prostrate under 
 the armed might of its conqueror, then it was, in tlie 
 hour of his country's greatest need, that he most deeply 
 disappointed the hopes of the ardent and pure-minded 
 portion of its people. Not a generous sentiment es- 
 caped him ; hardly even an exhortation to high-minded 
 endurance. Keep to yourselves, was the answer of 
 the oracle to inquiring millions ; let the evil days pass 
 by ; use whatever of aesthetic and social enjoyment the 
 victor has left you. Even the oppressions which tlie 
 gallant German spirit of his intimate friend, the Grand
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 177 
 
 Duke of Weimar, had to endure from Napoleon, called 
 forth from him scarcely a feeble spark of indignation. In 
 his ' Tag und Jahres Hefte,' his skeleton memoirs of his 
 life during all this period, there is a studied abstinence 
 from all allusion to political events ; an affectedly exclu- 
 sive attention to the trivial vicissitudes of the sta2:e and 
 criticism at Weimar. He never concealed his admiration 
 for the tyrant himself, whom he professed to venerate as 
 one of the ' Damonische Manner,' — the Genii of the earth, 
 and encouraged a kind of worship of Napoleon in his own 
 family ; — Napoleon, who had done liim the honour of 
 suggesting some corrections in a forthcoming edition of 
 Werter ! — ' How could I have taken up arms without 
 hate ? ' was his defence of himself to Eckermann, ' and I 
 never hated the French. How could I, to whom nothing 
 is of importance except cultivation and barbarism, hate 
 one of the most cultivated nations in the world, and one 
 TO which I owe so large a portion of my own develop- 
 ment ! ' It is really a relief to reflect on the revulsion 
 which followed — on the sense of weariness and self- 
 abasement with which the poet must have come forward 
 in 1815, as the old hack laureate of Germany, to dedicate 
 odes of courtly patriotism to the AUied Sovereigns, and 
 compliment the nation on the ' waking of Epimenides.' 
 
 Such Gothe remained during the less violent but more 
 deeply seated disturbances of poHtical society in his later 
 years. We are not among those who quarrel witli him 
 for not having been a democrat, or a German-Unionist, 
 from 1815 to 1830 — reproaches whicli, however ]iopular 
 some years ago, have since lost some of their force, at 
 least with thinldng men. Nor do we think it necessary 
 to assume the indignation with which Genii;iii lil)i'r;ilism 
 regarded his conduct in tlie matter of the prosecution of 
 Oken, the editor of the Isis, :iiid liis opposition to tlie 
 
 N
 
 178 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND OOTIIE. 
 
 freedom of the press. In this, as on the occasion of 
 Fichte's expulsion from Weimar in 1798, Gothe, probably, 
 did no more tlian his official duty, although he certainly 
 seems to have done it with no reluctance. His real offence 
 consisted, not in adopting this or that class of opinions, 
 but in repressing all pohtical faith whatever ; in encourag- 
 ing, as far as in him lay, men of thoughtful disposition 
 to keep aloof from all public movement as unworthy of 
 them, or, at best, to substitute for pohtical activity a kind 
 of dilettante meddling with the organisation of labour — 
 (a notion, by the way, into which entered a good deal of 
 Socialism, according to Gothe's particular manner of con- 
 ceiving it, w^hich he had learnt from Eousseau) ; and in 
 teaching them to consider this, as well as all other con- 
 cerns, far subordinate to the grand object of developing 
 their own powers of enjoyment, and so turning up the 
 soil of the heart and intellect as to enable it to receive to 
 the best advantage all the genial influences of life. It 
 was the popularity of this doctrine, more, perhaps, than 
 any other cause, which kept back talent and honesty from 
 state affairs, handed over in 1848 the multitudes of the 
 German population exclusively to the control of fanatical 
 or interested demagogues, and leaves the country even 
 now without the formation of any strong and massive 
 public opinion, between democracy on one hand and 
 bayonets on the other. 
 
 Gothe's unpatriotic spirit lias been severely commented 
 on in later times by his enemies, and scarcely defended by 
 his admirers. Nothing but the amiable simplicity of a 
 biographer could find in it an overflow of feehiig, too big 
 to vent itself in words, or could extend the same apology 
 to his coldness on subjects of religion and ethics. ' In 
 the depths of his heart,' says Dunzer, ' there pulsated the 
 warmest feelings for a free, united, and powerful Germany.
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 179 
 
 That he did not display this sentiment ostentatiously to 
 the world, but kept it close within himself, as fearing to 
 desecrate it by any publicity, is to be explained by the 
 same reservedness of disposition which hindered him from 
 giving outward expression to all liis other hohest feehngs 
 — beUef in God, hope of immortahty, love of his wfe — 
 whence mahcious misunderstanding has often enouirh 
 been pleased to deny him these feelings altogether ; and 
 in particular his profound respect for the sanctity of the 
 connubial tie ; as to which (to tlie astonishment of 
 OberhofjpredigerEeinhard) he held the severest principles.' 
 It is not, however, in respect of his connexion with the 
 mere political movements of the time that Gothe has to 
 render before the tribunal of posterity a serious account 
 for the good and evil use made of his extraordinary 
 genius. His is a far heavier responsibility. It is on the 
 interior relations of society, and on the moral progress of 
 man, that the peculiar and fatal characteristic of his phil- 
 osophy, the deification of Self, has had far more extensive 
 and enduring effect. No one well acquainted with his 
 writings, and uninlluenced by that strong delusion which 
 he contrived to throw round those who entered within 
 his Castle of Indolence, can be misled by the deceitful 
 show of virtuous feeling with which he invests the merest 
 selfishness ; the Pantheistic colouring which he gives to 
 the merest irreligion ; or his own pompous assertions of 
 his virtuous tendencies, and declamations on the beauty of 
 those ethical laws of which he was, consciously or not, 
 sapping the very foundations. What is ' Wilhelm Meister,' 
 — purposeless, unmeaning as it is as a simple work of art, 
 a collection of stories ill strung together by a disjointed nar- 
 rative, and of dramatis persona3 without plot or action — 
 this ' menagerie of tame animals,' as Niebuhr called it — 
 but an elaborate exposition of the vanity of all aspirations 
 
 N 2
 
 180 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 of the soul beyond itself: a long lecture on tlie duty 
 of cultivated and rational enjoyment, of subjecting every 
 irregular impulse to the grand object of harmoniously 
 blendincf sensual and intellectual deli£*;hts in the nicest 
 proportions ? ' Wilhelm Meister ' (such was the oracle 
 which Gothe delivered to Eckermann) ' is a most incalcu- 
 lable production ! I myself can scarcely be said to have 
 the key! The critic seeks a central point, which is in 
 truth hard to find ! ' Others, guided by very simple 
 instincts, thought they ' found the key ' without difficulty. 
 Some rehgious men (Leopold Stolberg, and Gbthe's own 
 brother-in-law, Schlosser) were weak enough to deem it 
 worthy of an Auto-da-Fe ; Stolberg, however, excepting 
 from the flames the sixth book, Avhich he bound by 
 itself as a manual of Pietism. Other admirers of the 
 poet have taken similar pains to find out a moral 
 tendency in the ' Wahlverwandtschaften ; ' Gothe himself 
 was pleased to say (to the astonishment of others besides 
 Oberhofprediger Eeinhard), that it was an 'act of homage 
 to the sanctity of the conjugal tie;' but sounder-hearted 
 readers will probably pronounce with the literary his- 
 torian Vilmar, that its leadmg thought merely is, tliat 
 'subordination to duty is mental disease, obedience to 
 sentiment is mental health ; ' a ' leading thought,' of 
 which, since Gothe's death, eminent female writers, both 
 French and German, have been the chief propounders. 
 
 From such moral absurdities as these, when thus ex- 
 hibited as mere fragments of a system, many honest 
 minds will turn away, not only witli aversion, but 
 without even that kind of interest which bolder profligacy 
 inspires. But to judge of the real power of Gothe in 
 this respect, the reader must be familiar with his writings 
 in general, and impregnated with that pecuhar sympathy 
 wlik'h genius sucli as his will, in the long run, elicit in
 
 VOLTAIEE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 181 
 
 those who become penetrated with it. Then it will be felt 
 that of all false religions his is the most subtle, the most 
 tempting, the most attractive, from its very approximation 
 to the truth. It flatters the evil nature of men, not, 
 primarily, through appeals to his passion, or his intellect, 
 or his generous feelings, but that which is clearer than 
 either — his pride : the pride of conquest, to be achieved 
 over himself and the world alike : the pride of exclusive- 
 ness, hke that felt by the initiated of those ancient 
 mysteries from which the dull in mind and the feeble 
 in courage were contemptuously excluded ; the pride 
 of becoming, in imagination, as a God, knowing good 
 and evil. 
 
 Your victory, says this philosophy to its catechumen, 
 must first be over yourself. You are beset by the 
 temptations of the world and the flesh, the lust of the eye 
 and the pride of life. These are not of themselves evil ; 
 nor is the utmost enjoyment of them in itself in- 
 consistent with that transcendent tranquillity, the chief 
 good and object of our earthly pilgrimage. All evil lies 
 in the opposition between our own natures, imperfect as 
 we are in our perceptions, capricious in our longings, 
 unreasonable in our expectations, and that orderly reality 
 which, under manifold appearances of contradiction, 
 prevails in things without. 
 
 Dcnii alio Kraft drinpt vonviirta in die Weito, 
 
 Zu leben und zu wirkon hier und dort : 
 Dagegen engt und lieuiuit von jeder Suite 
 
 Der Strom der Welt und reisst uus mit sicli I'm-l. 
 In diesem innern Sturm und aiissern Streito 
 
 Vemimmt dor Mensch v'm scliwor vorstandcu A\'()rt : 
 Von der Gewalt, die alio Wesen bindot, 
 Befreit der INIensch sich, der sicli iiberwindet.* 
 
 * For all Power presses forward into the distance, to live and to work here 
 and there : on the other hand, the stream of the world constrains and pressfs 
 us in on either side, and tears us along with it. In this internal storm and
 
 182 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 
 
 Sobriety, watchfulness, discipline, above all a thorough 
 understanding of ourselves, a knowledge of what we can 
 do and wherein we must fall short of our aims — these 
 are the true means of victory which Nature has placed 
 within the reach of all. But few there are who learn to 
 use them. Few are they who, like the candidates for 
 knighthood of old, can endure the long hours of fasting 
 and prayer within the nightly chapel, though morning is 
 to welcome them to all the bright and joyous activity of 
 their new vocation. 
 
 But this once achieved, the world is thine. Thine are 
 all the blandishments of sense ; for thou canst use 
 without abusing them. Thine the gratifications of the 
 intellect ; for thou knowest the limits of its fimctions, and 
 canst therefore enjoy its fullest exercise, without that 
 blank disappointment which the sense of unsatisfied aims 
 brings to less chastised minds. Thine the delights of 
 sentiment, by whatever name it be called — love, enthu- 
 siasm, generosity ; nay, the sterner pleasures of asceticism 
 and self-discipline ; for thou canst separate the true from 
 the seeming, the reahty of the sentiment from the false- 
 hood of the idolatry which underhes it^ and canst savour 
 the one without chewing the bitter ashes of the other. 
 All that Pagan philosophies have imagined of their sages 
 and adepts, all that esoteric Christian sects have held of 
 the spiritually emancipated — all these things in their in- 
 most sense are true of thee. Thus fortified, life will be to 
 thee one uninterrupted career of advance and of progres- 
 sive happiness ; and as for death, who must come at last — 
 
 O selig der, dem er im Siegesglanze 
 
 Die blutigon Lorbccrn urn die Scliliife windet, 
 
 Den er, nach rasch durchrastom Tanze, 
 
 In eines Miidcliens Arnien findct ! 
 
 cxtomal conflict, Man loams a saying hard to comprehend: From the power 
 which hiuda fast all creation, that man liberates himself who conquers 
 himself.
 
 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GOTHE. 183 
 
 But happier than either, he who passes, fiilly prepared 
 and fearless, into that state of existence which, unless 
 our deepest sympathies deceive us, can but afford the wise 
 a sphere for widening exertion and more comprehensive 
 enjoyment. 
 
 This, we are well aware, is a very imperfect exposition 
 of the general tendency of Gothe's view of hfe ; yet we 
 think that most readers — most English readers at all 
 events — will accept it as not an unjust one ; and the more 
 so in proportion to their familiarity Avith the author. 
 And, if so, they will assuredly agree with us, that genius 
 of the highest order was never employed in developing 
 a system more seductive to human weakness, nor one 
 which more forcibly reminds us of the ominous words 
 Avith which Bunyan concludes his allegory : — ' Then saw 
 I that there is a way to Hell even from the gates of 
 Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction.' 
 
 And its effects have been proportionally great. Con- 
 sidering the sphere of Gothe's operations from a mere 
 literary point of view, it can, indeed, scarcely be said 
 that he has formed a school of imitators, like his 
 predecessors Voltaire and Eousseau. As a poet his 
 followers of note have not been numerous nor (with the 
 exception of Elickert) very successful. His peculiar tone 
 as a novelist seems, as we have already remarked, to 
 have been chiefly caught by female writers ; and we have 
 no wish on the present occasion to break lances with the 
 admirers of sundry countesses and citoyennes, .who enjoy 
 a very respectable amount of popularity. But in his 
 more important functions as a moral philosopluM- (luic 
 can be no doubt that his labours have fructilicd nhiiii- 
 dantly, and that his eclecticism, if sucli it may be called, is 
 continuing to make its conquests at ihc expense of the 
 mechanical Deism, and the unreal l)ut generous Senti- 
 mentalism, of a former generation.
 
 184 VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AXD GOTHE. 
 
 That there has been a great reaction against it is also 
 true ; but the reaction of bitterness, of wild and im- 
 potent disappointment, not of sound faith or sohd 
 principle. The school of Borne is quite as destitute of 
 either as that of Gothe himself. Nay, some of the 
 latter's successors and antagonists have endeavoured to 
 place humanity, if possible, on a still lower stage than he 
 did. He only taught us, at the worst, to cherish and 
 cultivate those middle impulses of our nature which seem 
 to occupy a doubtful place between the divine and the 
 bestial ; some of these seem bent on persuading us that 
 our grossest animal appetites are equally sacred with any 
 other portions of our deified selves. 
 
 From such a chaos as this— the hitherto final result 
 from a century's labour of those great sovereigns who 
 have thus successively reigned in moral philosophy and 
 literature — the mind turns anxiously towards a future 
 which must assuredly arrive, although as yet there are no 
 signs of its approach. The pride of false system must be 
 thoroughly mortified, ingenious sophistry must have 
 exhausted its last shifts, disappointed aspirations after 
 superhuman greatness must have ended in utter self- 
 abasement, before men will deign to retrace their steps, 
 and submit to the humiliatmg but inevitable palinode, 
 'Incende quod adorasti, adora quod incendisti.' Many a 
 revolution, social and political, must first pass over tlic 
 European world. In rehgion, in ethics, in mental science, 
 men's minds must long continue to oscillate, as they do 
 now, between tlie most abject superstitions and tlic 
 wildest infidelities, and find scanty resting-place in the 
 intervals. So it must be, until some single or collective 
 voice speaking with authority shall rouse them once 
 more, by selecting all that is true in modern moral 
 philosophy, and incorporating it with the one leading
 
 VOLTAIRE, EOUSSEAU, AND GOTIIE. 185 
 
 principle of man's relation to God — not as a portion to a 
 whole, a fraction of spirit to some great Anima Muncli in 
 which it originates, but as creature to Creator, subject to 
 Sovereign, responsible agent to his Master, weak and 
 imperfect nature to Him who can purify and exalt it.
 
 186 
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON 
 / MAEAT. 
 
 The ' secret of Junius ' has been kept until, like over-ripe 
 wines, the subject has lost its flavour. Languid indeed is 
 the disposition of mind in which any, except a few 
 veterans who still prefer the old post-road to the modern 
 railway, take up an essay or an article professing to 
 throw new light on that wearisome mystery, or to add 
 some hitherto unknown name to the ghostly crowd of 
 candidates for that antiquated prize. And yet there is 
 a deep interest about the inquiry, after all, to those who, 
 from any special cause, are induced to overcome the 
 feeling of satiety which it at first excites, and plunge into 
 the controversy with the energy of their grandfathers. 
 The real force and virulence of those powerful writings, 
 umivalled then, and scarcely equalled since, let critics say 
 what they may ; the strangeness of the fact that none of 
 the quick-sighted, unscrupulous, revengeful men who 
 surroimded Junius at the time of his writing, who brushed 
 past him in the street, drank with him at dinner, sat 
 0[)posite him in the office, could ever attain to even a 
 probable conjecture of his identity ; the irresistible 
 character of the external evidence which fixes the author- 
 ship on Francis, contrasted witli those startling internal 
 improbabilities which make the Franciscan theory to this 
 day the least popular, although the learned regard it as all 
 but established — the eccentric, repulsive, ' dour ' character 
 of Francis himself, and the kind of pertinacious longing
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 187 
 
 which besets us to know the interior of a man who shuts 
 himself up against his fellow-men in fixed disdain and 
 silence : — these are powerful incentives, and produce an 
 attraction, of which we are sometimes ourselves ashamed, 
 towards the occupation of treading over and over again 
 this often-beaten ground of literary curiosity. 
 
 Never have I felt tliis more strongly, than when acci- 
 dent led me, several years ago, into Leigh and Sotheby's 
 sale-room, when the library of Sir Phihp Francis was on 
 view previous to auction. I know not whether any 
 reader will sympathise with me in what I am about to 
 say : but to me there is a solemn and rather oppressive 
 feeling, which attends these exposures of books for sale, 
 where the death is recent, and where the owner and 
 collector was a man of this world, taking an interest in 
 the everyday hteratiure which occupies myself and those 
 around me. There stands his copy of a memoir of some 
 one whom both he and I knew well — he had just had 
 time to read it, as I see by the date, and with interest, as 
 I judge by the pencil marks — in what mysteriously sepa- 
 rate relation do he and I now respectively stand towards 
 that common acquaintance? There is his copy of the 
 latest volume of Travels — he had only accompanied the 
 adventurer, I see, as far as the First Cataract — wliat 
 matters now to him the problem of the source of the Nile? 
 There is liis last unbound number of the ' Quarterly ' — he 
 had studied it for many a year : at sucli a])age, the pn[)cr- 
 cutter rested from its work, the marginal notes ended, 
 the influx of knowledge stopped, the eliain of thouglit 
 was snapped, the mental perceptions darkened. Can it 
 be, that the active mind of our fellow-worker ceased 
 then and there from that continuous exertion of so many 
 years, and become tliat we wot not of — a living Intelli- 
 gence, still of ourselves it may be, but removed into another
 
 188 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 sphere, with which its habitual region of labour — the cycle 
 in which it moved and had its being — had no connection 
 whatever ? Must it be (as Charles Lamb so quaintly ex- 
 presses it) that ' knowledge now comes to him, if it comes 
 at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no 
 longer by this familiar process of reading ? ' 
 
 I3ut I do not wish to dally, here and now, with fancies 
 like these. I only introduced the subject, because Sir 
 Philip Francis' library was a good deal calculated to 
 suggest this class of tliouglits. He was a great marginal 
 note-maker. He criticised all that came under his eye, 
 and especially what related to political events, even to his 
 latest hour. And — singular enough, yet in accordance 
 with much that we know of him, and with all that we 
 must suppose, if Junius he was — he had avoided keeping 
 up, ui this way, his connection with the time in winch his 
 sinister anonymous fame was achieved. So far as I 
 remember, his books of the Junian period were little 
 noted. He seemed to have exercised his memory and 
 judgment on the records of Warren Hastings' trial, the 
 French revolution, the revolutionary Avar — not on those 
 of Wilkes and Chatham. 
 
 This, however, is all by the way, and I must crave 
 pardon for the digression. I was reminding the reader 
 that the subsidiary features of the Junian controversy have 
 now become much more interestmg than the old question 
 of authorship itself, and that it is an admirable exercise 
 for the intellectual faculties to trace the way in which 
 different hues of reasoning, wholly distinct and yet sever- 
 ally complete, converge towards the ' Franciscan ' con- 
 clusion. 
 
 In one of the early letters of Woodfall's collection, under 
 the signature Bifrons (April 23, 17G8, vol. ii. p. 175, of 
 Bohn's edition), the writer, after accusing the Duke of
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 189 
 
 Grafton of being a ' casuist : ' proceeds as follows — ' I am 
 not deeply read in anthors of that professed title, but 
 I remember seeing Busenbaum, Snares, Molina, and a score 
 of other Jesuit books, burnt at Paris, for their sound 
 casuistry, by the hand of the common hangman.' 
 
 I shall assume at once that Bifrons was the same writer 
 as Junius. The general reasons for the assumption are 
 familiar to those versed in the controversy. And even were 
 these general grounds of identity less strong tlian they 
 are, every one would allow that to prove that Francis 
 was Bifrons, would go a long way towards proving him 
 Junius, 
 
 A passage so pregnant with suggestion has of course 
 provoked abundant comment : but all of the loosest 
 description. No one seems to have taken the pains to 
 follow out for himself a hint pointing to conclusions of so 
 much importance in the controversy, both negative and 
 affirmative. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Smith, the recent editor of the ' Grcnville 
 Papers,' thus presses it into the service of his theory, 
 attributing the authorship of Junius to Lord Temple : 
 
 ' The ceremony here alluded to pivhably took place in 
 or about the year 1732, when the disputes between the 
 Kmg of France and his parliaments, relative to the Jesuits, 
 had arrived at the highest point of acrimony. Several 
 burnings of obnoxious and prohibited books and writings 
 are described by contemporary authorities at this time; 
 and as Lord Temple, then Eichard Grenville, was in 
 France, and cliicfly at Paris, from the autumn of ITol to 
 the spring of 1733, he had, consequently, nuiiiy opjior- 
 tunities of witnessing the ceremonies of the buining of 
 " scores of Jesuitical books " by the connnun hangman, as 
 described by Junius.' (Litroductory Notes relating to llie 
 Authorship of Junius, ]). cxliv.)
 
 190 A FEAV WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 Mr. Smith is scarcely so familiar with the details of 
 French as of English history. No doubt books were 
 pubhcly burnt in Paris about the time he mentions : but 
 the books were Jansenist, not Jesuit : the letters con- 
 cerning the ]\iiracles of the deacon Paris, the Nouvellcs 
 Ecclesiastiques, and the like — not the works of the 
 Casuists. In 1732, the Jesuits were the executioners : 
 their turn, as victims, came a generation later. 
 
 A writer, who endeavours to estabhsh a claim for 
 Lord Lyttelton, is nearer the mark ; but unluckily just 
 misses it : — 
 
 ' We may assume,' says he, ' that this burning took place 
 in 1764, as it was in that year that Choiseul suppressed 
 the Jesuits. Thomas Lyttelton was on the continent 
 during the whole of 1764, and for part of the time 
 resided at Paris.' 
 
 The burning of books, so accurately described by 
 Bifrons, took place beyond a doubt, as we shall presently 
 see, on August 7th, 1761. Now this date raises a curious 
 question, which is indicated, but in a very careless 
 manner, by Mr. Wade (in his notes to Junius, Bohn's 
 edition) : — 
 
 ' It may be doubted, indeed, whether Bifrons was an 
 Enghshman, or even an Irishman ; he certainly could not 
 have been a British subject in 1761, unless he was a pri- 
 soner of war ; for in that year ice were at war with France. 
 But if a prisoner of war, how unhkely that he could be 
 at Paris to witness an auto-da-fS of heretical works : he 
 would have been confined in the interior of the kingdom, 
 not left at large to indulge his curiosity in the cai)ital.' 
 
 Now, assuming (as all these writers do) that Bifrons- 
 Junius actually saw what he says he saw, how does the 
 circumstance bear on the claims of the several candidates ? 
 
 What was Lyttelton in August 1761 ? An Eton boy, 
 enjoying his holidays.
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 191 
 
 Wliere was Lord Temple ? At Stowe (see the ' Grenville 
 Letters ') caballing with Pitt. 
 
 Where was Burke? At Battersea, preparing to join 
 Gerard Hamilton in Lreland. 
 
 Where were Burke the younger, Lord George Sackville, 
 and the rest of the illustrious persons imphcated in some 
 people's suspicions? Not in Paris, we may safely answer, 
 without pursuing our inquiry farther. 
 
 But it is undoubtedly possible that Bifrons-Junius, after 
 all, did not himself see the auto-da-fe in question : he 
 may have heard of it, or read of it, and may have 
 described himself as an eye-witness, either for effect, or by 
 way of a flourish, or even by way of false lure to throw 
 inquirers off the scent. 
 
 It would then only remain to inquire, in what way, by 
 what association of ideas, Bifrons-Junius came to give so 
 circumstantial a description, and in so prominent a manner, 
 of an occurrence which had passed in a time of war 
 almost unmarked by the English public, and which had 
 excited in England but very httle attention or interest 
 since ? 
 
 Now let us see how either supposition bears on the 
 ' Franciscan theory.' 
 
 Francis was a very young clerk in Mr. Pitt's department 
 (which answered to the Foreign Office of these days) in 
 1759. In that year he accompanied Lord Kinnoul on his 
 special mission to Portugal. His Lordship returned in 
 November 17G0, with all his staff, and the youth Ciil 
 Francis (in all probabihty) returned to his desk at the 
 same time. 
 
 He was certainly at work in the same office between 
 October 1761, and August 17G3 ; for he says of himself 
 ('Pari. Debates,' xxii. 97), that he 'possessed Lord 
 Egrcmont's favour in the Secretary of State's Office.'
 
 192 A FEW WORDS ON" JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 That nobleman came into office in October 1761, and 
 died in August 1763. In the latter year Francis was 
 removed to the War Office, where he remained until 1772. 
 
 Wliere was he in August 1761 ? 
 
 According to all reasonable presumption, at work in 
 Pitt's department. 
 
 And yet Lady Francis, in that biographical account of 
 her husband which was pubhshed by Lord Campbell — an 
 account evidently incorrect in some details, yet authentic 
 in leading particulars, as might be expected from a lady's 
 reminiscences of what she heard from an older man — 
 says, ''He was at the Court of France in Louis XV 's 
 time, when the Jesuits were driven out by Madame de 
 Pom'padour^ 
 
 This, it will be at once allowed, is a strange instance of 
 coincidence between Bifrons and the lady. The more 
 striking, because the particulars of disagreement show 
 that the two stories do not come from the same source. 
 But how can we account for either story ? How came 
 Francis to be in Paris — if in Paris he was — in time of 
 w^ar ? 
 
 With a view to solve this question to my own satisfac- 
 tion, I once consulted the State Paper Office. It happens 
 that during the summer of 1761, Mr, Hans Stanley was 
 in Paris, on a diplomatic mission, to negotiate terms of 
 peace with Choiseul. He failed in that object — 
 folks thought Mr. Pitt never meant he should succeed 
 — and returned home in September of that year. His 
 correspondence with Pitt, as Secretary of State, is pre- 
 served in the office aforesaid. He seems to have had 
 the ordinary staff of assistants from Pitt's department ; 
 but I could not fmd any record of their names. His 
 despatches are entirely confined to the subject of the nego- 
 tiiition on which he was engaged, with one exception. He
 
 A FEW AYOEDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT, 193 
 
 seems, for some reason or other, to have taken much 
 interest in the afilxir of the Jesuits. On August 10, he 
 writes at length on the whole of that matter. To his 
 despatch is annexed a careful precis, in Downing Street 
 language, of the history of the Jesuits' quarrel with the 
 parliament : evidently drawn up by one of his subordinates. 
 Enclosed in this precis is the original printed Arret de la 
 Cour die Parlement du 6 aout 1761, condemning Molina 
 de Justitid et Jure ; Suares, Defensio Fidei Catholicce ; 
 Busenhaum, Theologia Moralis ; and several other books 
 of the same class, to be laceres et brides en la cour du Palais. 
 And a MS. note at the foot of the arret states tliat the 
 books were burnt on the 7 th accordingly. 
 
 Tims much, therefore, is all but certain ; some member 
 of Mr. Stanley's mission, or other confidential subordi- 
 nate, was present in the Cour du Palais when that arret 
 was executed, and reported it to his principal, who 
 reported it to Mr. Pitt : and Francis was at that time a 
 clerk in Pitt's office, which was in constant communica- 
 tion with Stanley's mission. We do not know the names 
 of the individual clerks who were attached to that mission, 
 or passed backwards and forwards between Paris and 
 London in connection with it. But we do know tliat 
 Francis had been twice employed in a similar way (to 
 accompany General Bhgh's expedition to C'herbourg, 
 and Lord Kinnoul's mission to Portugal). Evidently, 
 therefore, he was very likely to be thus employed agtiin. 
 lie may then assuredly have witnessed A\itli 1ils own 
 bodily eyes what no Englishman, uncoiinccted uilli tliat 
 mission, could well have Avitnessed — may have stood on 
 the steps of the Palais de Justice, watched the absiir.l 
 execution taking place in the court-yard below, and 
 treasured up the details as food for his sarcastic spirit ; or 
 (to take the other supposition) he may have read at his 
 
 o
 
 194 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 desk ill tlie office that curious despatch of Mr. Stanley's ; 
 may have retained it in his tenacious memory ; and, 
 writing a few years afterwards, may have thought proper, 
 for some of the reasons which I have above suo-o-ested, to 
 represent himself as an eye-witness of what he in truth only 
 knew by reading. 
 
 All this I once detailed to Macaulay, whose interest in 
 the subject of Junius generally, and of the ' Franciscan ' 
 theory in particular, is well known to those who remember 
 his conversation. He had himself contributed two of the 
 most remarkable by-proofs which help to fix the author- 
 ship on Francis : the curious mistake of the English War 
 Office clerk, respecting Sir William Draper's Irish pension ; 
 the personal hostility of the Francis family towards the 
 Irish Luttrells, which accounts for the bitterness of his 
 attack on such obscure offenders. He was much struck 
 b}'^ the argument, and took an eager part in discussing it. 
 But one circumstance (I said) perplexed me, and seemed 
 to interfere with the probabilities of the case. How came 
 Junius, whose excessive fear of detection betrays itself 
 throughout so much of his correspondence, and led him 
 to employ all manner of shifts and devices for the sake 
 of concealment, to give the public, as if in mere bravado, 
 such a key to his identity as this little piece of autobio- 
 graphy affords ? 
 
 The answer is plain, replied Macaulay on the instant, 
 with one of those electric flashes of rapid ])erception which 
 seemed in him to pass direct from the brain to the eye. 
 The letter of Bifrons is one of Junius's earliest productions 
 — its date, half a year before the formidable signature of 
 Junius was adopted at all. The first letter signed Junius 
 is dated in November 1768. In April 1708. tlie writer 
 had neither earned his fame, nor incurred his personal 
 danger. A mere unknown scatterer of abuse, he could
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 195 
 
 have little or no fear of directing inquiry towards him- 
 self. 
 
 But (lie added) I much prefer your first supposition to 
 your second. It is not only the most picturesque, but it 
 is really the most probable. And unless the contrary can 
 be shown, I shall believe in the actual presence of the 
 writer at the burning of the books. Eemember, this 
 explains what otherwise seems inexplicable, Lady Francis's 
 imperfect story, that her husband ' ivas at the court of 
 France ivhen Madame de Ponqmdour drove out the Jesuits.'' 
 Depend on it, you have caught Junius in the fact. Francis 
 was there. 
 
 Francis sailed from England in 1773, and left the soil 
 behind him full charged with those seeds of revolutionary 
 combustion which he, in undesigned concert w^ith many 
 otliers, had done his best to deposit there. To such a pass 
 had the country been brouglit by the agitation of pre- 
 ceding years, that it may be doubted whether 1774 
 would not have witnessed serious popular movements 
 in England, if the revolt of tlie American colonies, com- 
 menced at that very time, liad not roused the national 
 spirit and drawn it in another direction. We have seen 
 the youthful aspirant after success in pohtical life, destined 
 to acquire it in so sinister a manner, indulging in 17G1 
 his vein of satirical observation in contemplating the 
 angry conflict of ecclesiastical party spirit in Fi-ance. In. 
 1774, a young foreigner, still more obscure and insignifi- 
 cant tlian he, devoted like him to the iiiircinitting exercise 
 in tlie dark of mixed pul^hc and i)ersonal malignity, 
 but mai'ked out by fate to ])lay a nuich greater part 
 in the drama of European revolution, and achieve a 
 much greater preeminence in evil [\\\\n\ was conlcin- 
 plating as curiously the rapid movement by which Eng- 
 lish society then seemed to be involved in the [)olilical 
 
 o 2
 
 196 A FEW WOEDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MAKAT. 
 
 vortex. Nor was he contemplating it only ; lie was taking 
 part in it to tlie best of his ability. Seized himself by the 
 revolutionary mania, he was doing his utmost to inspire the 
 stran2:ers amonf^ whom he hved with that dark fanatical 
 passion which afterwards led him so far. The early hfe 
 of Marat was chiefly spent in this country, and affords 
 problems on which his French biographers have thrown 
 but scanty light, and which may provoke an attempt at 
 investigation. 
 
 I will here sum up briefly what is known, or surmised, 
 of the career of Marat in England and Scotland.* I have 
 not the space, nor is it perhaps worth while, to endeavour 
 to discriminate between knowledge and surmise. When 
 his ominous name had acquired such strange significance 
 throughout Europe, it is very possible that it was misused 
 by the anecdote-mongers of the day, and rendered respon- 
 sible for a series of acts of vulgar criminality on slender 
 evidence of identity, or none at all. My present object is 
 only to endeavour to trace that portion of his career which 
 his own writings partially authenticate — his connection 
 with the ' Wilkite ' party in England, at a period when 
 he was still a young man, a poor and nameless Swiss 
 adventurer. 
 
 Marat was born at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, in 1744. 
 After attainins; the a^e of manhood, he led what has 
 been described as a ' stranG;e sort of skulkino; life.' If we 
 are to understand in their most obvious (but rather 
 improbable) sense, certain expressions in his ' Chains of 
 Slavery,' which bears the date of 1774, he had at that 
 time already lived ten years in England. Ten years on 
 the spot, he seems to say, had given him suflficient oppor- 
 
 ■ • My authorities for tliis purpose are chiefly collected from a uotice of the 
 subject in Mr. R. Chambers's Booh of Days, vol. ii. p. /ju.
 
 A FEW WORDS OX JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 197 
 
 tiiiiity to learn the merits and the vices of the British 
 constitution. (' Chaines de rEsclavage,' p. 324.) 
 
 According to the stories which were in circulation 
 respecting him after his death, he was at Edinburgh, 
 apparently as a French teacher, in 1775. He was also an 
 usher in the academy at Warrington, in which Dr. Priestley 
 was a tutor.* He le-ft Warrington or Edinburgh for 
 Oxford. And he is conjectured to have been the same 
 person with one Le Mair or Le Maitre, apprehended 
 in 1776 for a robbery of gold coins committed in a 
 museum in that place. The result of the trial does not 
 seem to have been ascertained. After all which, it should 
 seem — but the dates are confused — he was thouixht to 
 have taught tambouring at Edinburgh for some years, 
 under the name of John White, to have cheated his 
 creditors, and been imprisoned in that city : which brings 
 down his history nearly to 1787, when we find him in 
 Paris as ' medecin des ecuries du Comte d'Artois.' 
 
 Add to these more or less doubtful stories, that he 
 appears to have published, while in England, the follow- 
 ing works : — 1. ' A Philosophical Essay on Man, being an 
 attempt to investigate the principles and laws of tlie re- 
 ciprocal influence of the soul and body.' London, 1773. 
 Anonymous, but afterwards published iu France with his 
 name, in 1775. 
 
 2. A pamphlet entitled ' The Chains of Slaveiy,' of which 
 more presently. 
 
 3. In 177G (dated from Church Street, Solio), 'An 
 Inquiry into tlic Nature, Cause, and Cure of a singular 
 Disease in the Eye,' by J. P. Marat, M. D. 
 
 To return to tlie second of tliese works. 
 
 * If this be literally true, lie must Lave come early to luiglaiul ; for 
 Priestley left Warrington iu 1707.
 
 198 A FEW WOKDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 After the 10 th of August, 1792, Marat seized, as his 
 share of the spoils of the clay, four of tlie royal printing 
 presses — a kind of retribution for the many occasions on 
 which his own had been carried off by the pohce. He 
 also asked the minister Eoland for 15,000 francs to enable 
 him to print some manuscripts. On Eoland's requesting 
 to see them, he sent, says Madame Eoland, ' un fatras de 
 manuscrits dont la seule vue faisait peur ; il y avait un traite 
 des " Chaines de I'Esclavage ; " je ne sais quoi encore 
 marque k son coin : c'est suffisant pour I'apprecier.' The 
 ' Chaines de I'Esclavage, par J. P. Marat, Ami du Peuple,' 
 accordingly came out, in the well-known handsome type 
 which had been consecrated to Government purposes. It 
 is a compilation of several distinct pamphlets and frag- 
 ments, confusedly thrown together, occupying 364 pages: 
 namely, 
 
 1. The preface, or 'notice,' containing particulars 
 respecting himself, to which I will advert presently. 
 
 2. An ' Adresse aux Electeurs de la Grande Bretagne,' 
 purporting to be the translation of an English document 
 so entitled, and to have appeared before the election of 
 1774. 
 
 3. A short introduction. 
 
 4. 'Les Chaines de I'Esclavage;' a long revolutionary 
 rhapsody of 300 pages, vague and diffuse, but iUustrated 
 in the notes, almost throughout, with examples and 
 precedents from English history. 
 
 5. Tableau des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise, 
 presente en aoiit 1789 aux Etats-Generaux, comme une 
 s^rie d'ecueils a eviter dans le gouvcrnement qu'ils voulaient 
 donner k la France.' Also styled ' Discours adresse aux 
 Anglois le 15 avril 1774.' Preceded, also, by a curious 
 ' Letter to the President of the States-General.' This short 
 pamphlet (30 pages) is on subjects of purely Enghsh in-
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 199 
 
 terest: a Wilkite publication of tlie ordinary cast, com- 
 plaining of close borouglis, the abuses of recruiting, of the 
 poor laws, the fees demanded of persons acquitted of mis- 
 demeanours, the septennial act, the civil list, jobs, patron- 
 ages, and general warrants. ' Pour ne pas manquer son 
 but,' he says in a note, ' I'auteur y parle comme s'il fut ne 
 Anglois : c'est pour la meme raison qu'il a fait traduire son 
 ouvrage.' But it is all but impossible to read it, and not 
 suppose that it Avas originally written in English by an 
 Englishman, and translated by Marat into French, 
 
 6. A short declamatory ' Discours adresse aux Anglois 
 le 1 aoLit 1774.' 
 
 Let us now return to the 'Notice' at the head of 
 the work. ' A citizen of the world,' he says of him- 
 self, 'at a period when the French as yet had not a 
 country, cherishing that liberty of which I was always 
 the apostle and sometimes the martyr, trembling lest I 
 should see her banished from the whole earth, and anxious 
 to assist in her triumph in an island which appeared to me 
 her last asylum, I resolved to consecrate to her my days 
 and nights. A parliament decried for its venality was 
 approaching its termination; the moment for electing a 
 new one was at hand ; on this all my hopes rested. It was 
 necessary to penetrate the electors with the duty of 
 choosing enlightened and virtuous men.' 'For this pur- 
 pose,' he says, he determined to publish a work ' in wliich 
 the evil consequences of tyranny, as deduced from English 
 history, should be fully represented.' ' To devour lliirty 
 mortal volumes, to make extracts fi-om them, to ;i(l;ipt 
 them to my work, to trrfii slate and 1<» piinl il, \v;i^ ;iii 
 affair of three months. . . During this period I laboured 
 regularly one and twenty hours a day; I scarcely allowed 
 myself two for sleep, and in order to kcc]) myscir awake, 
 I made such an excessive use of collce without milk that
 
 200 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MAEAT. 
 
 it nearly killed me, and injured me more than the excess 
 of work. . . When I had sent it to the pubhshers, thinking 
 I had nothing more to do than to wait quietly for its 
 success,! fell into a kind of mental annihilation or stupor; 
 all the faculties of my soul were stricken down ; I lost my 
 memory and intelhgence, and remained thirteen days in 
 this state, from which I was delivered only by the help of 
 music and rest.' 
 
 On his recovery, he says, he found to his surprise that 
 his pubhshers had failed to perform their engagement. 
 He tried others, who put him off in various ways. He 
 offered it to Woodfall (Junius's printer), and then was 
 informed, for the first time, that it was possible that the 
 ' Address to the Electors of Great Britain,' with which it 
 commenced, might be the reason for its non-appearance. 
 The newspapers also refused his advertisements. At last, 
 he says, ' The eagerness of Mr. Becket, the Prince of 
 Wales's bookseller, to get his name erased from the list of 
 subscribers as soon as the work appeared ' (should appear, 
 seemingly), ' put me on the right scent. I discovered, too 
 late, that the minister had bought up printer, publishers, 
 and newspapers. I had no difficulty in tracing this to its 
 source.. . . My printer was a Scotchman, attached to 
 Lord North, to whom he transmitted the sheets as they 
 came from the press. . . . Instructed by the example 
 of Wilkes of the outrages which an audacious minister 
 might venture on against me, I had for six weeks a pair 
 of pistols under my pillow, well resolved to receive 
 properly the Government messenger who might come 
 to carry off my papers. He came not: the minister, 
 informed of my character, deemed it best only to employ 
 cunning .... Indignant at tlie difficulties phiced in tlie 
 way of my publication, I adopted the course of sending 
 almost the whole edition, in presents, to the patriotic
 
 A ^E^Y WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MAEAT. 201 
 
 clubs of the north of England, which passed for the 
 purest in the kingdom. The copies addressed to them 
 were punctually delivered by the carriers.' 
 
 The narrative now gets wilder and wilder. Lord North 
 set spies to watch Marat, bribed liis landlord and servant, 
 and intercepted his letters. To put the persecutors off 
 the track, he went over into Holland, and came back to 
 London by the north of England, visiting by the way 
 the clubs to which he had sent his book. He stayed three 
 weeks at Carhsle, Penrith, and Newcastle. Three clubs 
 sent him letters of admission in a golden box, which an 
 emissary of the minister stole ; that of Newcastle published 
 a new edition of his work ; but the appearance of this 
 edition was delayed by Government at an expense which 
 — a member of Parliament afterwards assured him — did 
 not fall short of 8,000 guineas. It was not allowed to 
 appear until after the elections, and thus the author's in- 
 tention of influencing them was altogether disconcerted. 
 
 He completes this wonderful history by informing his 
 readers that in order to remedy abuses, he, Marat, had 
 proposed in his work to the Englisli to pass four bills as 
 fundamental laws : 1. To merge close boroughs in the ad- 
 joining county representation ; 2. To take away from the 
 Crown the right of making peers, and confer it on Par- 
 liament under certain restrictions ; 3. To turn placemen 
 out of Parliament ; 4. To render the accounts of the 
 State subject to examination and audit, on the motion 
 of any three members. The appearance of liis work 
 (he concludes by saying) caused a general fermentation ; 
 it produced a sudden demand for Parliamentary reform, 
 which became, in consequence, ' tlie favourite toast of tlie 
 popular clubs.' Tlie lliiid of his proposed measures 
 passed ; so, he adds, will the other tliree in good time. 
 
 The reader will probably set do^\ ii these fragments of
 
 202 A FEW WOKDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 
 
 Marat's autobiography as either mere gasconade, or the 
 illusions of a distempered brain. There may be a mixture 
 of both in them : but some truth there certainly is, as will 
 appear from the following facts : — 
 
 In Woodfall's paper, the ' Public Advertiser,' May 3, 
 1774, is announced 'The Chains of Slavery' — 'a work 
 wherein the clandestine and villanous attempts of princes 
 to ruin hberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of 
 despotism disclosed.' To which is prefixed, ' An Address 
 to the Electors of Great Britain. In order to draw their 
 timely attention to the choice of proper representatives in 
 the next Parliament.' It is advertised as printed for 
 Almon, Payne, and Eichardson and Urquhart ; in quarto, 
 price 125. — a large sum for a pamphlet of 200 or 300 
 pages. 
 
 The book is advertised in similar terms in the ' Gentle- 
 man's Magazine ' for May 1774, as printed hj Becket ; and 
 in the ' Scot's Magazine ' for the same month. In the 
 latter it is said to be ' executed in a manner that will re- 
 flect credit on the author's abilities,' from which notice it 
 would seem as if the writer was known personally or by 
 reputation to his Edinburgh critic. 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all this luxe of advertisements, 
 I have never myself discovered a copy of the work in 
 English, nor any notice of it, in any periodical of the 
 time, subsequent to its appearance. 
 
 This circumstance certainly points to the conclusion 
 either that the work never appeared at all, or that, if it 
 did, it was subsequently withdrawn, and lends some plausi- 
 bility at least to the main features of Marat's story, that 
 it was in point of fact suppressed either by the agency of 
 Government or (and more probably) through the caution 
 of printers and pul)lishers. 
 
 Woodfall's reasons for such caution are evident enough,
 
 A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 203 
 
 since in the same year (1774) he was once in custody of 
 the Serjeant-at-Arms, for printing in the ' PubUc Advertiser ' 
 Home Tooke's ' Letter to the Speaker,' and once convicted 
 and fined for allowing; a seditious libel on the ' Glorious 
 Eevolution of 1688 ' to appear in the same paper. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, I think it is apparent on the 
 evidence that Marat learnt the theory and practice of 
 revolutionary agitation in tlie Wilkite days in these 
 kingdoms ; that, as an obscure foreign adventurer, he was 
 mixed up to some extent in the designs of the concealed 
 democratic party here ; and that the story of the intended 
 publication of the ' Chains of Slavery,' to influence public 
 opinion in that direction, is substantially true. But, as 
 above said, I certainly suspect from internal testimony 
 that the concluding piece of the volume, the ' Tableau 
 des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise,' is not his own, but 
 translated from some Enghsh original which he happened 
 to have in his possession. 
 
 Marat appears to have visited his revolutionary friends 
 on this side of the Channel for the last time in 1790. On 
 May 19 of that year he announces his return in his ' Ami 
 du Peuple,' and informs his readers that he had received 
 the most positive assurances of sympathy in England 
 ' from those clubs by which I had witnessed, in 1770, the 
 despatch of men and money to the assistance of Boston 
 and Philadelphia.' At the sanu' time he started a new 
 journal — 'Le Junius Franyais ' — ol' wliicli, however, only 
 a few n Limbers appeared.
 
 204 
 
 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTEE. 
 
 A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Franklin. I am glad to have the opportunity of ex- 
 changing a, few words with a pohtician so celebrated in 
 his own day — and not very long after mine — as the Count 
 Josepli de Maistre. I reverence in him that rarest of 
 phenomena among the political thinkers both of my time 
 and his — one who had a principle, and throughout his 
 speculations adhered to it. Our respective positions were 
 indeed on the very opposite extremities of the platform : 
 and yet I think, though neither of us is very likely to be 
 convinced l3y the other, each may learn from the other. 
 That is, if the Count will honour a simple citizen — for 
 whose countrymen, and their constitution, I am afraid he 
 entertained in life not much respect — by exchanging 
 ideas Avith him in this limbo of ours below. 
 
 De Maisti'e. Monsieur Franklin, the envoy of a great 
 people, and the honoured guest of the Court of France, 
 need not trifle witli a very poor Savoyard gentleman by 
 assuming such airs of modesty. But you are indeed 
 mistaken in tlie sentiments which you attribute to me 
 respecting your country and her institutions. That the 
 theory of popular rights, professed among you, is founded 
 in error, I know full well : but it is not your theory only. 
 Other communities, possessing so-called liberal institutions, 
 profess it, and act upon it, as I have always said, with less 
 of consistency and therefore with inferior success ; because 
 they have been always endeavouring to fit on to their 
 trumpery structures, based on mere assumptions or on
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEril DE MAISTKE. 205 
 
 mere hazard, sometliiiig of the majesty and inviolabihty 
 which appertain solely to that pohty which is from on 
 high. You have been ever too steady in your utilitarian 
 faith to fall into this self-contradictory fallacy ; or at 
 least until lately : for if the rumours which reach us 
 respecting the strife whicli now convulses your country are 
 true, some of your statesmen seem to be already invoking 
 the theory of divine right in favour of your fire-new 
 Federation. For the rest, I never preferred absolute to 
 free institutions. I perceived the practical value of self- 
 government as clearly as any republican among you. 
 Every nation (I have said it) lias in the long run that 
 government which it deserves. Yours dared nobly, and 
 deserved highly, and earned its reward. I never quarrelled 
 with the superstructure of your political edifice ; but I 
 denied, and deny, that it, or any other raised on the theory 
 of popular sovereignty, has a foundation, or can possibly 
 endure beyond a short season. I deny that these popular 
 franchises, of which I by no means undervalue the bene- 
 ficial effects, can be rested on any secure basis except 
 that of concession from the ruler; for that higher political 
 authority which by the supposition concedes them, can 
 alone restrain the abuse of them. So long as its control- 
 lino- power is kept out of sight or denied, the world can but 
 witness the recurrence of that dispiriting, never-ending 
 round, of freedom degenerating into licence, and licence 
 begetting tyranny. And surely, if anythinu- of truth 
 reaches us here, the period for the accomplisliuu'iit of my 
 very unwihing prophecies, as regards your counliy, seems 
 near at hand. 
 
 Franklin. You allowed us, I tliink, even a much shorter 
 period, when you occupied the prophetical puli)it. If I 
 remember rightly, you expressed yourself ready to wager 
 a thousand to one that our then projected metropolis
 
 20G BEXJAMIX FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 would either never be built, or would not be called 
 Washington, or that Congress would never sit there. 
 
 De Maistre. Alas ! where is the prophet among us who 
 can endure the test of a hteral verification of his con- 
 jectures respecting events close at hand ? Not I, assuredly. 
 I was always too much dazzled by the vividness of that 
 light in which, as I believe, I contemplated the ultimate 
 goal of the course of human society, to have a clear 
 vision of near objects on either side of the road to it. I 
 have always thought that one of tlie strange notions of 
 the poet Dante* respecting the state of souls in this limbo 
 of ours was applicable, in life, to a class of thinkers to 
 which I myself belonged. We were like those people of 
 imperfect eyesight who see things at a distance in out- 
 lines of preternatural sharpness, very imperfectly things 
 near them ; and are forced to rely for their knowledge of 
 these latter on the reports of more practical observers 
 than themselves. You, I suspect, belonged to the opposite 
 category : at all events, without pronouncing uncourt- 
 eously on your power of presaging the distant future, I 
 may be allowed to recognise the singular precision of 
 your judgment as to occurrences soon to liappen. Eut, 
 having prefaced thus much, I stand by my prophecy. The 
 first alternative has substantially come true. Washington 
 has never been built. It is an encampment — not a city 
 in any true sense. It is a mere political fungus spreading 
 on the surface of the soil — not an abiding centre of 
 human enjoyment or industry rooted in it. And— pardon 
 the thought, it is no now one, and uttered in sadness and 
 not in sarcasm- — what Washington is among cities, your 
 Eepublic will prove among polities. 
 
 * Noi veggiam come quei ch' lia mala luce, 
 Le cose, disse, clic ne son lontano . . . 
 Quaiido s' appressano, o son, tutto c vano 
 Nostro intelletto, e s' altri uon c' apporta, 
 Nulla sappiam di vostro stato umano.
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 207 
 
 Franklin. Through wliat outward phases of pohtical 
 being my beloved country may have to pass, I am cer- 
 tainly not the seer to foretell. But thus much I will 
 confidently anticipate: the substantial advantages which 
 she has won for herself, and taught the rest of the world 
 how to win, will never be lost. Political wisdom may, 
 for aught I know, run back in other things ; but not in 
 this. It was her destiny to prove to mankind, that man- 
 kind need not be governed by classes, nor for classes ; that 
 men in the long run are capable of conducting their own 
 affairs ; that there is no hierarcliy, whether resting its 
 claims on di\ine right or on imaginary compacts and 
 surrenders, charters or protocols, in government, whatever 
 there may be in religion. She has taught the world how 
 to get rid of all these impostures : if the world will for a 
 while let them still subsist, in obedience either to a blind 
 fear of revolution or to tlie sophistries (pardon the ex- 
 pression) of learned men who try to weave their fears and 
 scruples into theories, she at least has shown the better 
 way. Democratic progress is henceforth quite as assured 
 as scientific progress ; and men Avill one day smile as 
 serenely over the reactionary fallacies which impede the 
 first, as over the prejudices which retard the latter. If 
 you must have divine right to base your system, seek it 
 here. I was a versifier in my youtli, though you would 
 hardly think it ; and I remember well the hold wliicli some 
 rough lines of a rhymster of my day took on my imagi- 
 nation ; men laughed at tlieni and liim, for he was an 
 Irish Lord, a courtier and a jobhrr — 
 
 Superior virtue, wisdom, mi^'-lit, 
 Create and mark the ruler's rij^lit, 
 
 So Nature's laws conclude : 
 Theu Thine it is, to whom l)el()n<r 
 The wise, the virtuous, iind llir strong, 
 
 Thrice glorious Miillilnde.
 
 208 BEXJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 I have learnt since to frame my own model Eepublic 
 on a lower principle, that of expediency : but the words 
 ring in my ears hke the note of a clarion notwith- 
 standino;. 
 
 De Maistre. If I thought you in earnest, I might be 
 tempted to ask, what is the value of having collective 
 virtue and collective wisdom at the head of affairs, if 
 individual wisdom and virtue are almost invariably either 
 slandered, or bullied, or hustled by mere brute force out 
 of all leading functions in the conduct of those aflairs ; 
 which is no mere calumny of us monarchists, but the 
 constant 'complaint of those who live under a democracy, 
 and not the least (unless I am misinformed) of the more 
 intelligent of your countrymen ? 
 
 Franklin. I will answer you, at all events, in plain 
 earnest. I admit the charge ; it was true to some extent 
 in my time ; it is no doubt truer now, when democracy 
 has richer prizes to offer to those who will condescend to 
 flatter its weaknesses. But admitting it fully, I am utterly 
 at a loss to understand the importance with which ordinary 
 thinkers invest it. I cannot but think they confound 
 altogether the means with the end. The end is simply 
 that the vast mass of mankind may live happy, contented, 
 industrious, and, above all, progressive. If the preeminence 
 of a few wealthy hereditary statesmen, or a few of the 
 most refined talkers and writers, is necessary towards 
 this end, then I fairly admit that America is in a bad 
 way. But what if this, the only real end of government, 
 is no such deep mystery after all ? what if it is really 
 attainable by the efforts in common of a number of not 
 very distinguished people, rouglily but effectively trained 
 by their very circumstances, working on and quarrelling on 
 and jobbing on as members of democratic bodies usually 
 do ? What does it matter, in that case, if the philosopher
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTEE. 209 
 
 and the millionaire cannot occupy precisely the station 
 to which they conceive themselves entitled? Much to 
 them, doubtless ; they naturally bewail their insulation 
 in very touching language, and get a nmnberof congenial 
 spirits to condole with them : and to chorus the common 
 saying, that America is not the country for gentlemen. 
 One is half tempted to wisli that she might never become 
 so. But I am not one of those who undervalue the 
 character of the gentleman, or rejoice in its ostracism, if 
 such is its real lot under democracies. I should be glad 
 to see the most cidtivated intellects at the head of affairs. 
 Only, if this is incompatible, at least at present, with the 
 possession of self-government by the uncultivated, I would 
 rather lose the tirst advantage than the second. I believe it 
 to be far better that the million should arise every day to 
 the assured enjoyment of competency and freedom, and the 
 consciousness of assured improvement in their own condi- 
 tion and that of their children, than that the ablest and 
 loftiest minds of the country should have the barren satis- 
 faction of ruling that million as hopeless and grovelhng 
 proletaries. You love France, Monsieur De Maistre, and 
 hold her people, political changes notwithstanding, for thci 
 leading nation of Europe at all times : in your bold hyper- 
 bole, ' The kingdom of France ranks next to the kingdom 
 of Heaven.' I loved her dearly also, under that ' ancien 
 regime ' with which I was familiar ; partly, because she w;is 
 the friend of my struggling country (and, for this reason 
 in great measure, I scarcely wished as strongly ns a true 
 democrat should for the success of that Ivevoliilion nf 
 which I saw the commencement) ; but more inr Jur 
 intrinsic qualities, for the ineffable charm of lier Jiigh 
 society in which I, an obscure stranger, was received as a 
 guest of honour: for the extraordinary brillinnry nf tlmsc 
 leading spirits of iicrs wliidi llien gave tlic step (o ;il! \\\r. 
 
 r
 
 210 BENJAMIN FEANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTEE. 
 
 civilised world. If a community were liappy in propor- 
 tion to the comparative eminence of those who were re- 
 cognised as its chiefs, assuredly France was at the height 
 of social prosperity. Such men as Quesnay,Turgot, Necker, 
 not only counselled, but controlled more or less, her econo- 
 mical policy. The impulse to the abohtion of abuses, 
 the improvement of institutions,, was given by the great 
 school of whom Voltaire passes as the nominal head, though 
 not then the most influential among them. And if their 
 tendencies were too precipitate, these were held in check 
 by a Church which, after all that could be said against it, 
 was pure in the main in conduct and elevated in senti- 
 ment ; by a noblesse whose pohsh could not be overrated, 
 whose substantial good qualities, the honour, temperance, 
 and philanthropy which distinguished great numbers 
 among them, have hardly received due justice. All this 
 I saw, and admired. But what lay beneath it ? ' The 
 effect of this kind of society' (as I said at tlic time) 
 ' appears to be the depressing multitudes below the 
 savage state, in order that a few may be raised above it.' 
 The France of that day probably held some fifteen millions 
 of human beings, out of her twenty-five millions, whose 
 condition was abject to such a degree that if the well- 
 meaning courtiers and philosophers who argued daily 
 about it had actually realised it by personal know- 
 ledge, their very blood w^ould have been chilled within 
 them. These wretches existed on the merest pittance 
 which could keep body and soul together, and maintain 
 that amount of physical strength which could furnish the 
 requisite surplus wealth to the owners of their soil. Their 
 very appearance read an awful lesson to the serious observer. 
 They were dull, suspicious, sullen of aspect. Their occasional 
 gaiety, of which so much was said, w^as almost a more 
 melancholy spectacle than their misery. Their religion
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 211 
 
 was a trifling superstition. Their law was the scourge, the 
 torture,* and the wheel. The few among them who 
 possessed abihties sufficient to emerge in any degree from 
 imder such a weight of evil, used their wit only to grasp 
 together, and conceal from the eye of the tax-gatherer,f 
 any wretched store which they might contrive to 
 accumulate, and cherished at the bottom of their hearts 
 an unappeasable hatred towards those whose superfluity 
 mocked their nakedness. Their women — as richly endowed 
 at birth with the capacity to charm, as the loveliest sylphs 
 who fluttered at Versailles — were turned, in a few years 
 of their young lives, into mere haglike drudges, from whom 
 the eye of the passer-by turned away. Their children . . . 
 But I need not pursue so repulsive a subject. You know, 
 and Heaven knows, that I do not exaggerate. We are 
 told that the Eevolution of which we have spoken has in 
 some degree permanently raised the condition of these 
 
 * It is commonly supposed tliat torture was abolished by Louis XVI. : 
 but this is a mistake. The ' question preparatoiro ' was got rid of ; but tlie 
 ' question prealablo,' the more ciiiel of the two (to extort the names of 
 accomplices), remained mitil the Revolution ; not indeed with the goodwill 
 of the king, but in consequence of the opposition of the lawj'-ers to reform. 
 As late as 1788, two councillors of the Parliament at Rouen assisted at the 
 torture of a woman, which seems to have lasted several hours. See Berriat 
 Saint Prix' remarkable essay 'Des Tribunaux et de la Procedure au grand 
 Criminal,' 1850. It has been the fashion of late among English writers to 
 represent our criminal jurisprudence of the last century as peculiarly bar- 
 barous. Those who read the hideous details contained in this essay, liow- 
 ever they may be prejudiced against the memory of tlio Georges, will 
 acknowledge that our usages were Inimanity itself compared with what 
 then prevailed in gi-eat part of the continent. 
 
 t *Un dlu (an official) est venu dans lo village ou est ma mnison do cam- 
 pagnc, ct m'a dit que cette paroissc devait etrc fort augmentt^'e a la tnillo 
 cette anuee : qu'il y avait remarquo lo paysan plus gnva qu'aiUeurs, qit'il 
 y avait vu sur le pas des poHes des plnmar/cs de volaille ; qu'on y faisait done 
 bonne chere, qu'on y (5tait bien. . . . Voila co qui dtScourago le pavsan : voila 
 ce qui cause les malhcurs de la nation : voila sur quoi pleurernit bien Henri 
 Quatre, s'il vivait encore.' — JoudkU dti Manj. d\iy(/ensou, vol. ii. p. 2oG (in 
 1750). 
 
 p 2
 
 212 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 children of the soil : and if so, that is its justification in 
 the eyes of reason and humanity. But much, apparently, 
 still remains to be done ; and until these millions are blest 
 with enjoyment for their present, and [what I regard as 
 still more important] hope for the future, does it really 
 avail a single atom that the political writers of France are 
 the clearest of logicians, her statesmen unrivalled in wit 
 and resources, her ' upper ten thousand,' or upper miUion 
 if you please, the cream of the world ? Give me instead 
 the Pennsylvania of my youth, with her people luxuriating 
 in present afEuence and in the anticipation of greater, 
 though their election 'tickets' had no better names to 
 show than those of the merest Jonathan and Ezekiel who 
 ever figured on a stump ; or give me (if you please) the 
 herdsmen of Lucerne and Uri, or the burghers of a Dutch 
 province ; who have succeeded for centuries in conducting 
 their own affairs tolerably well, though they never pro- 
 duced a statesman of whom I have heard, and suffered 
 under a lamentable deficiency of laced coats. To this day, 
 when the French nation, or even the Enghsh nation, is 
 spoken of, the mind of the speaker is really fixed, in nine 
 cases out of ten, only on the higher and more cultivated 
 class in each community. When men speak of the Ame- 
 riccin nation, they mean the whole people. 
 
 De Maistre. You forget, or you leave out of sight, the 
 two main circumstances which distinguished your position 
 in America from that of the older communities of the 
 world, and have up to this time enabled you to enjoy 
 great material progress, without its being necessary for you 
 to check m any way the development of your equalising 
 institutions. I mean your abundance of fertile land, which 
 rendered political discontent free from danger ; and the 
 existence of slavery, which furnished you with a supply 
 of labourers without political claims or rights.
 
 BENJAMIX FRAXKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 213 
 
 FranUin. As to your first circiimstance, I need only 
 point to tlie condition of eastern Europe in reply. There 
 are vast unoccupied regions there, under the government of 
 Austria and Eussia, possessed of great fertility of soil, and 
 a climate substantially as good as that of our Northern 
 States : and whose rulers have been for a century or so 
 enlightened enough to desire immigration, and encourage 
 it by privileges. And yet they cannot succeed. Of the 
 vast overflow which annually takes place from the over- 
 peopled parts of Europe, scarcely a few driblets filter 
 eastward : and these driblets only stagnate in consump- 
 tive, unsuccessful colonies, in the forest or the steppe. 
 The rest finds its way chiefly to our shores ; and why ? 
 Simply, however your politicians may dislike it, from the 
 invincible attraction of freedom : from their preference of 
 a state of things in which every one helps to govern 
 himself in a rough and ready way, to one in which he is 
 governed, and cared for, by princes, nobles, Chambers, 
 doctrinaires, officials, and professors. The remainder of 
 these dumb seekers, who can scarcely name what they 
 want, but the real object of whose inarticulate desires is 
 liberty, proceed to establish themselves under British colo- 
 nial efovernment, England — monarchical and aristocratic 
 as she vaunts herself — wdth that thorough practical good 
 sense, which in her seems to accom.pany a thorougli 
 deficiency in logic — while at home she listens witli com- 
 placency to those who vituperate democracy, allows it 
 to estabhsh itself, absolutely without control, in all the 
 regions under her sway to which her children resort. 
 The first thing an English colonist does is to set up a 
 newspaper, in ^vliich he l)oasts that lio is the member of a 
 creat empire, the inheritor of an ancient constitution, and 
 not a mere anarchist, noi* even as these Americans; and 
 tlien he proceeds to establish his commonwealth on tlic
 
 214 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 unadorned platform of naked universal suffrage. Sound 
 instinct leads him in that direction, and he easily puts his 
 so-called convictions, which tend the other way, into his 
 pocket. As to the other circumstance, which quahfies, as 
 you say, the character of our democracy, namely, the 
 existence of slavery, I need surely not remind you that 
 it has never existed at all, or never to any such extent as 
 to be of the slightest importance as a social element, in 
 three-fourths of our union. In those portions of which 
 it has become, unhappily, the characteristic institution, 
 it has been ever the greatest obstacle, instead of en- 
 couragement, to the fair development of free institutions. 
 I speak not from the experience only of those most 
 miserable events of which we hear, but from that of my 
 own days. Slavery, such as it existed in my country, 
 is an abomination on grounds of religion and morality ; 
 but as a mere political institution, an utter mistake. It 
 is a consolation to me, under much consciousness of error 
 in the part I took in human affairs, that my last pohtical 
 efforts, like those of Washington, were devoted to tlie 
 endeavour to mitigate the effects of that terrible evil, and 
 to prepare the way for its ultimate abolition. 
 
 De Maistre. Here, at least, we meet on even ground. 
 My abhorrence of slavery in all forms, but of the slavery 
 of colour in particular, fully equals your own. Whether 
 I am right or wrong in fancying that it lias contri- 
 buted to the ephemeral success of your constitution, 
 doomed whether with or without slavery to speedy decay, 
 is of not much importance. It is at all events historically 
 true, that no fj-ee government of antiquity could subsist 
 without slavery, and that (as I have always thought*) the 
 only ]iractical metliod, in modern society, of preserving 
 republican institutions without it has been opened to us 
 
 * See especially the Soirees de St. Pvtershourg.
 
 BEXJAMIN FRAXKLIN AXD JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 215 
 
 through Christianity ; that is to say, througli the Church. 
 ISFo Hberty without obedience and subordination. Either 
 the freedom of the few throucrh the forced obedience of 
 the many, or the freedom of all in combination with the 
 submission of all to that transcendental authority of 
 which the seat is in Church and State enthroned 
 together. And for this reason the Catholic Church has 
 ever been foremost to promote the emancipation of the 
 slave, and the protection of inferior and subjugated races 
 of men, because it alone could do so in perfect con- 
 sistency and without fear of consequences. 
 
 Franklin. If that be so, it is the best thing I ever heard 
 of the Catholic Church. But you must pardon me if, in 
 politics, I cannot help following the guidance of practical 
 experience rather than of theories, however elevated. I 
 never heard, in my day, that the Catholic planter of 
 Louisiana, or of St. Domingo, or of Brazil, was one whit 
 superior to his Protestant fellow-trader in men of the 
 Carolinas or the British Antilles, as regards humanity or 
 justice towards his unfortunate chattels. And, generally, 
 I confess that it is with profound distrust that I hear 
 disputants of any religious creed endeavouring to ' make 
 capital ' out of any of the great social evils which afflict 
 manlvind, by elaborate attempts at proof, either statistical 
 or sentimental, that their own persuasion makes them a 
 little less bad in those respects than their neighbours. I 
 am afraid a sarcastic writer, who belonged to none, hit 
 the truth more nearly when he said that ' the use and 
 abuse of religion are feeble to stem, they are strong and 
 irresistible to impel, the stream of national manners. 
 But pardon me if I offend you. 
 
 De Maistre. ' La v(3rite, en combattant I'errcur, ne se 
 fache jamais.' But we shall hnrdly convince each other 
 on religious questions. Your theology is too progressive
 
 21G BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 for mc. If I remember riglitly, you have made attempts 
 towards improving the EiigHsh liturgy ; and the Lord's 
 Prayer.* And, in the way of hatred to slavery, we liave 
 nothing to learn from each other. I would rather direct 
 your attention to another subject. You have no doubt in 
 your own mind, of the lawfulness of your resistance to 
 Great Britain. It is one of the first articles of your 
 pohtical creed. You had a right — on popular principles 
 — to separate from the mother country, and to establish 
 an independent commonwealth. You hold that Great 
 Britain had no right to endeavour to retain you in sub- 
 jection by force. I ought perhaps to apologise for the 
 use of so ambiguous a word as ' right,' and to say that, in 
 your view, Britain was not morally justified in doing so. 
 I want to know to what extent you carry that doctrine. 
 Have portions of your Federation, constituting in the 
 aggregate only a minority, the right to separate them- 
 selves from the remainder for such a cause as may seem 
 sufficient to themselves, against the will of the majority ? 
 If they have not, in what way do you distinguish their 
 case against the majority from your case against Great 
 Britain ? If they have, on what ground can you, re]ire- 
 senting the majority, claim a right to retain them by force 
 in union with you ? 
 
 Franklin. I am ready to answer the question to the 
 ])est of my ability ; and yet, I think, it might in some 
 degree clear our ground of controversy, if you were to 
 favour me with your own opinion first, whether we did 
 possess the alleged right of revolt against Britain. 
 
 De Maistre. It is an issue upon which, regard being 
 had to the leading principles of my doctrines, it is scarcely 
 necessary for me to give any definite answer. For by the 
 necessity of my logic I am compelled to hold all goverii- 
 
 * Life of Franklin by Sparkcs, p. 77.
 
 BENJAMIN FR.\XKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 217 
 
 ments, whicli reject divine right as tlieir base, as disen- 
 titled to enforce obedience on tlieir subjects jure divino : 
 and the British government and your own, lay equally 
 under this disabihty. I know, indeed, that the order of 
 things under which we live must needs be respected by 
 the citizen who fears God ; I know that even an arbitrary 
 and a persecuting ruler has serious claims on that submis- 
 sion which the Apostle pointed out as due to the tyrants of 
 Eome. But it is another question (and not one for mere 
 students in divinity, but for pohticians of common sense) 
 how far such a submission can be consistently claimed by 
 a government which founds itself, like that of England, 
 avowedly and explicitly, on the will of the people, not on 
 God's law. When your rebellion took place, the state of 
 England had long dissolved its connection with the church, 
 and made alhance instead with the school of Hobbes and 
 Locke. It demanded obedience of you on an absurd 
 theory of virtual representation. And its lawyers were 
 compelled to contend against your lawyers that you were 
 in fact represented in its parliament, and were parishioners, 
 I beheve, of Stepney, in the county of Middlesex. It was 
 not only patriotism, but common reason and conscience, 
 that revolted ac^ainst nonsense like this. And those who 
 directed the affairs of France, and who have been much 
 accused of prostituting the forces of legitimacy to sup- 
 port rebellion, may have had some justification for holding 
 that, if they were lending aid to the establishment of a 
 dangerous precedent in the shape of your new Eepublic, 
 they were at all events dissolving its connection with a 
 power equally lawless in its origin, and more menacing 
 1() themselves in its mode of developniciil.ii;inioly, that of 
 your mother country. 
 
 Franklin, You remind me of a story whicli I once 
 lieard in England, concerning a worthy Quaker who
 
 218 BENJAMIX FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 lived in a country town there. The Friend was rich 
 and benevolent, and his means were put in frequent 
 requisition for purposes of local charity or usefuhiess. 
 The townspeople wanted to rebuild their parish church, 
 and a committee was appointed to raise funds. It was 
 agreed that the Quaker could not be asked to subscribe 
 towards an object so contrary to his principles ; but then, 
 on the other hand, so true a friend to the town might 
 take it amiss, if he was not at least consulted on a matter 
 of such general interest. So one of their number went 
 and explained to him their project: the old church was 
 to be removed, and such and such steps taken towards 
 the construction of a new one. ' Thee wast right,' said 
 the Quaker, ' in supposing that my principles would not 
 allow me to assist in building a church. But didst thee 
 not say something about pulling down a church ? Thee 
 mayst put my name down for a hundred pounds.' You 
 seem to me to attribute to France, m earnest, a motive of 
 action which the Quaker only pretended as an excuse for 
 his munificence. But I presume the real feelings which 
 actuated both her government and her people were, a 
 mixtureof jealousy of England, supposed self-interest, and 
 a considerable dash of chivalry — what they are said now 
 to call ' making war for an idea.' 
 
 De Maistre. Whatever their motives, both rulers and 
 nation suffered severely enough in the way of retribution. 
 I said that something might be urged for them in the way 
 of apology : I by no means undertook to justify them. I 
 must repeat what I said before. The government of 
 England no doubt founded its demand on you for sub- 
 mission on claims which would bear no strict investigation. 
 It was idle for a king to declare that he reigned by the 
 will of his people, expressed in a 'revolutionary settle- 
 ment' made not a centuiy earlier, and at the same time to
 
 BENJAMIN FrvANKLIN AND JOSEril DE MAISTEE. 219 
 
 insist on his moral riolit to retain an ofislioot from that 
 people in unwilhng subjection. Eut, for all that, if rebel- 
 lion is in itself a sin, not against this or that individual 
 prince, but against God's order in the government of the 
 world, then in that sin France made herself an accompHce. 
 It is the safest view, to say the least of it, that the ruler 
 under whom we individually are placed has divine autho- 
 lity as regards ourselves. The extreme cases which may 
 doubtless justify resistance to him cannot be defined on 
 general principles. If j^our resistance was grounded on 
 real oppression, such as ought not to be borne, such as 
 may shake the allegiance of a steadfast man ; if the ele- 
 ments of self-seeking and personal ambition, of faction and 
 spite, of dishonest desire to repudiate engagements, of the 
 various other bad motives which violently hurry or gradu- 
 ally seduce citizens from the path of civic duty, were either 
 absent from it, or at least not present in preponderating 
 force, then you stand absolved before the tribunal of con- 
 science. Whether this was so or not, must be judged of 
 by men better acquainted with the true springs of action 
 on both sides than I am. But tliis I must say : while my 
 own convictions keep me aloof from both parties, my sym- 
 pathies go more naturally with that brave and pertina- 
 cious people which was content to encounter half Europe 
 in arms, and to fight till it could fight no longer, rather 
 than abandon any portion of what it was taught to regard 
 as its just inheritance, than with its successful opponents, 
 who did but play, with whatever amount of merit and 
 skill, the vulgar game of revolution. My answer to 
 your question, under all these circumstances, cannot be 
 a very categorical one. But I liave good ground for 
 demanding some more peremptory reply from yourself, 
 when I ask again : If England had no riglit (in the usual 
 sense of that slip]iery phrase, wliicli will suit our present
 
 220 BEXJAMIN FEANKLIN AND JOSEril DE MAISTRE. 
 
 purpose) to keep her colonies in subjection against their 
 will, what right can one portion of your Union have at any 
 time to retain another portion in unwilling connection ? 
 
 Franhlin. The ultimate principle on which such 
 questions have to be decided, appears to me to be that of 
 celf-defence. A nation is justified in resisting the govern- 
 ment ; a portion of a community forming a minority is 
 justified in separating itself from the majority; and either 
 is justified in appealing to force for the purpose ; when 
 rationally persuaded that it suffers from that government 
 or that connection substantial grievances, and that these can 
 obtain no other redress. When the desire for separation 
 is notoriously deliberate, and no mere popular passion of 
 the hour, the majority are then justified in forcibly resist- 
 ing it, in one case only ; namely, when the separation would 
 diminish their own security, and thus interfere with tlieir 
 prosperity. No mere lust of empire, no mere exultation, 
 however excusable in itself, in the grandeur and extent of 
 a dominion, will authorise the shedding of blood for its 
 maintenance. But the obligation of self-defence author- 
 ises it beyond cavil or dispute. Wlien this test is applied, 
 I cannot imagine that there is any great difficulty in 
 assigning respectively their real merits to the great move- 
 ments of this description which have from time to time agi- 
 tated portions of the civilised world, or in saying whether 
 it was right or wrong to suppress those movements. I 
 condemn King George's government for their obstinate 
 endeavour to subdue America, because I hold it clear 
 that no real interest of England — neither her safety nor her 
 prosperity — was involved in the maintenance of her 
 American supremacy. I hold tlic same government to 
 have been perfectly justified in suppressing by force the 
 (.'fforts of Ireland to make herself independent, because 
 England with an independent Ireland, or, to speak more
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 221 
 
 probably, an Ireland dependent on some other power, 
 would be in a constant and intolerable state of insecurity. 
 And, in like manner, I hold that a majority of American 
 States, in power or number, would be justified in prevent- 
 ing by force the secession of the remainder, on the pure 
 ground of self-defence. For such a disruption, once begun, 
 would all but inevitably proceed until our Eepublic was 
 split into fragments, not merely to the destruction of its 
 glory and grandeur (objects for which civil war would not 
 on my theory be justifiable), but to the destruction of all 
 safety from foreign aggression, and the hindrance of all 
 development of internal prosperity. No maxim of ' Hve 
 and let hve,' however reasonable under ordinary circum- 
 stances, can make it compulsory on the citizens of a 
 commonwealth thus to sacrifice the happiness of themselves 
 and their children to the demand of independence which 
 it may please sections of that commonwealth to put for- 
 ward. The answer to such demands must be : it is on 
 account of our own highest interests, and not by reason 
 of any ideas we may entertain about your duties or our 
 rights, that we cannot let you go : we acknowledge 
 ourselves bound to treat j^ou with justice, hberality, con- 
 sideration, to guard as sacred your right to absolutely 
 equal privileges with ourselves under the same govern- 
 ment : we esteem ourselves bound by these obhgations 
 even more strongly than we other\vise might be, since it 
 is avowedly for our own advantage (though we beheve it 
 to include yours also) that we retain you in connection. 
 But we will release neither you nor ourselves from the 
 mutual tie, so long as we are strong enough to maintain 
 it in force. Such are the views which I should have 
 professed and endeavoured to support, had any section of 
 our union sought in my day to estabhsh its independence 
 of the rest. And if the men of a later generation a("t
 
 222 BENJAMIN FKAXKLIX AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 solemnly and deliberately on these views, I for one 
 absolve them of blood-guiltiness, and will not stoop to 
 measure the righteousness of their conduct by its success, 
 wliatever that may be. 
 
 De Maistre. Perhaps I miglit agree with you, if I could 
 eliminate from the discussion those higher considerations 
 of right and wrong to which you have not once adverted. 
 As it is, the only objections I -will now offer to your 
 reasoning are these : it makes the duty of a citizen, which 
 should be so plainly described that he may run who 
 readeth, depend on the opinion which the citizen himself, 
 or somebody else for him, may entertain on what is often 
 a very intricate political problem ; namely, whether the 
 loss of a member of the community would or would not 
 affect the security of the rest ; and, in the next place, it 
 makes every state, or government, or majority, tlie judge 
 in a cause wherein it is also a party. 
 
 Franklin. The last, at all events, an absurdity, if such 
 you choose to term it, which does and must attach to tlie 
 practical decision of all political questions, until some great 
 international tribunal of arbitration is established; in other 
 words, until all civilised nations are one. 
 
 De Maistre, A winding up which appears even more 
 distant than that resjeneration of the world throusfh the 
 prevalence of popular institutions which you ■were lately 
 predicting. Do not suppose, however (to revert to 
 our former subject), that I mean to speak slightingly, 
 or even doubtingly, of tlie actual advance and probable 
 ascendancy of the democratic element in European com- 
 munities : the only power in a state, as the Cardinal 
 de Eetz said long ago, which is able to perform whatever 
 it thinks it can perform. Ever since faith grew cold, and 
 the only solid pillars of human society, the fundamental 
 maxims of the divine appointment of rulers, and tlie ex-
 
 BEXJAMIX FEAXKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 223 
 
 istence of rights and francliises only as concessions from 
 those rulers, ceased to have any living influence ; the 
 system of political equality has been gaining ground, not 
 merely from its accommodation to many riding propensi- 
 ties of the human mind, but also because it really affords 
 the only other satisfactory resting-place, even in appear- 
 ance, for human speculation. No earnest mind, possessed 
 of the lights of the present day, can long amuse itself with 
 these intellectual toys, the theories of social compacts, 
 ' riglits transferred and powers reclaimed,' which satisfied 
 the more child-like inquirers of former times ; still less 
 w^ith those mere Epicurean notions of the formation of 
 political fabrics by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and 
 their maintenance by shifts and expedients, Avhich seem to 
 furnish the ordinary stock-in-trade of our modern optimists. 
 Such minds search lower beneath the surface, and find no 
 apparently sohd basis except that of absolute equahty of 
 pohtical rights and powers between man and man. But 
 along with these convictions they acquire the uneasy and 
 ever-present suspicion, how utterly unsuited institutions 
 constructed on these, the only principles which social 
 atheism has left us, would be to the requirements of 
 modern society. They witness the enormous accumula- 
 tions of individual wealth ; the singular facilities whicli 
 recent discoveries, both physical and economical, if I may 
 use such a phrase, have afforded to these accumulations ; 
 they mark the daily increasing refinement and artificial 
 character of life, the daily increasing strength of the ties 
 of common understanding which seem to bind togetlier the 
 upper few as a class apart from the lower many ; and they 
 shrink, appalled, from the idea of entrusting the manage- 
 ment of this too delicately-framed texture to tlie coarse 
 hands of a numerical majority. Tliey liave the spectre 
 of Socialism, of a state of things in wliich competition
 
 224 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 
 
 will have to give way to cooperation, and the rights 
 and enjoyments of individuals to those of the abstract 
 multitude, continually before their eyes : and they cannot 
 abide the aspect of the phantom Avhich their imagination 
 has raised. They do not see that this ultimate destiny of 
 European communities (if such it be) can be accomplished 
 only under the controlling influence of some authority 
 which may be able to enforce the laws of fraternity by 
 more than human sanction, as the Church alone can do 
 and has done : witness not only the system of the early 
 Christians and of the great monastic communities, but 
 even the rough attempts of the Anabaptists of Germany, 
 and the Shakers of your own country. To this great 
 truth, which sheds such a ray of cheering light on the 
 remotest speculations of the religious thinker, the political 
 sceptics of whom I speak are necessarily blind. They 
 see in democracy the only consistent solution of the 
 social question ; and they fear, at the same time, that 
 it would brino; to ruin the social fabric itself. Conse- 
 quently they would find an escape through the adoption 
 of ingenious expedients for coaxing his majesty the 
 Demos into relinquishing a portion of that supremacy with 
 which their theory inevitably invests him ; constitutions 
 in which cunningly contrived breaks and delays shall be 
 interposed between the expression of the popular will and 
 its execution ; schemes for graduating the number of 
 votes according to property ; schemes for the so-called 
 representation of minorities, whereby these may, under 
 certain circumstances, by a dexterous juggle, outvote 
 majorities ; and the like ; schemes as delusive as an 
 attempt to stay running water by dams of water. The 
 first instance in which electoral statistics fairly showed 
 tliat the numerical majority was on one side, the consti- 
 tutional majority on tlie other, woidd bring the whole
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. 225 
 
 paper structure to the ground. The ordinary downward 
 progress of democratic institutions may be held long 
 in check by trifling obstacles of estabhshed law or usage, 
 submitted to from superstition or feelings akin to it 
 (as in ancient Eome), from reverence, from the strong 
 influence of legal tradition, or from mere habit. But it 
 is impossible that it can be held in check by devices in- 
 tentionally constructed for the purpose, unless the people 
 are themselves so highly educated, and so penetrated with 
 a sense of the advantages of self-denial, that they will vo- 
 luntarily curtail the exercise of their own franchise. And, 
 if we can suppose the people educated up to such a pitch 
 of asceticism as to be ready to part with a portion of 
 their power for their own good, then the devices in ques- 
 tion would become wholly unnecessary ; for a people so 
 advanced would be fit to be trusted with uncontrolled 
 sovereignty. By the very supposition, a community which 
 can make and keep laws restricting the rule of the majority, 
 is one in which the majority may safely rule. All systems 
 of a partial, balanced, restricted democracy (barring, as I 
 have said, those which rest on ancient authority, that is, 
 on some fragment of faith, not on mere reason), are de- 
 monstrably either impracticable or useless. 
 
 Franklin. I will not pretend to solve the dilllcuhy 
 which you have suggested; but. I think I can cap it. 
 The system of government by divine right may rest, lor 
 aught I know, on arguable grounds a priori. But in 
 practice it could never be maintained (force apart), except 
 among a people who really and honestly believed in 
 divine right : believed, that is (to use the old whig's defini- 
 tion), that the larger part of mankind come into the world 
 bridled and saddled, and the small(M' part booted and 
 s]nirred to ride them. But the people who believed these 
 things ill old days, believed tliem on authority only : 
 
 Q
 
 226 BEXJAMIX FE.iNKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTEE. 
 
 because their fathers, or their church, had taught them so 
 to beheve. That is now impossible. One who noA¥-a- 
 days beheves in divine right and non-resistance must do 
 so on convictions arrived at for himself, and in dehberate 
 opposition to the general current of the world around 
 him. To reconstruct, therefore, a state on these doctrines, 
 you must first have instructed a community, enlightened 
 for good and evil by modern education, into a thorough 
 and rational belief in them. But when you have trained 
 a community up to this point, it might quite as well be left 
 to govern itself; for it would be a repubhc of pious 
 philosophers. Although therefore it be but a common- 
 place mode of disputing, I must retort on your theocratic 
 Utopia the sarcasm with which you visit my democratic 
 one : if it were possible, it would be unnecessary. 
 
 De Maistre. I never valued the privilege of the last 
 word much in the upper world ; and it is of still less im- 
 portance in the leisure of the shades. Be it so, therefore ; 
 it seems that you and I may yet witness many a genera- 
 tion involved in similar profitless disputes, before society 
 shall emerge out of the mists of that narrow valley of 
 bewilderment in which it has hitherto wandered up and 
 down, to the higher grounds on either side, with their purer 
 atmosphere ; too pure, as some think, for mere mortals to 
 breathe in.
 
 II. 
 
 SKETCHES FEOM THE IIISTOEY OF THE 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 
 
 1. THE STREETS OF PARIS. 
 
 2. A VISIT TO LtJTZEN. 
 
 3. A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 Q 2
 
 229 
 
 THE STEEETS OF PARIS IN THE SEVEN- 
 TEENTH CENTUEY.* 
 
 No city has been so fortunate in its special historians as 
 
 Paris. It is a consequence of the intense love which 
 
 Frenchmen have towards their great capital, that writers 
 
 above the ordinary stamp have taken a pleasure in 
 
 dwelling on those details of its annals which are 
 
 generally left to dry and laborious topographers. Paris 
 
 has passed from the hands of Corrozet, Dom Brice, 
 
 Sauval, and the rest of her old-fashioned chroniclers, into 
 
 those of authors who have illustrated her monumental 
 
 history and actual life, with wit, feehng, and philosophy. 
 
 Saint Foix is respectable, and sometimes amusing. 
 
 Mercier, in his two Tableaux de Paris, has given a 
 
 specimen of a singular thinker, not without genius, 
 
 though strangely deficient in style ; and wliose pages rivet 
 
 the reader's attention in spite of hhnself, unpleasing as 
 
 both matter and manner often are. Dulaure, no doubt, 
 
 owed most of his popularity to mere vulgar Jacobinism ; 
 
 yet he, too, is readable, though abundantly superficial. 
 
 In our own times, Charles Nodier employed his light and 
 
 elegant pen on sketclios of I^arisian topography ; and tlie 
 
 two volumes of M. Lurinc contain tlie contributions of 
 
 some thirty or forty writers, several of them distinguished, 
 
 which form a kind of History of Paris by streets, ilhis- 
 
 trated with woodcuts in the modern style. The work is a 
 
 • Part of this essay was originally published as n review of a publication 
 by Louis Luriue, * Les Hues de l*uris,' 1844.
 
 230 THE STREETS OF TARIS 
 
 bookseller's speculation, and somewhat carelessly got 
 up — abounding in that diffusion and repetition which 
 its method of composition ensures ; yet there is much of 
 talent scattered over its pages, which are full of interest 
 to uncritical readers, and especially to those who have a 
 fondness for the memorable scenes and streets of the 
 great continental metropolis. 
 
 It is not, however, to be expected that French writers 
 of the modern school, disciples of Victor Hugo, and 
 worshippers of ' Notre-Dame de Paris,' should approach 
 the ' middle-age ' part of their subject without drawing 
 amply at second-hand from the stores of a master, whose 
 own inspiration was second-hand at best. Victor Hugo 
 himself, we are bound to confess it, fond as we are of 
 antiquarianism almost in every shape, failed altogether, to 
 our thinking, in overcoming the barrier which existed 
 between the mind of the age he was endeavouring to 
 portray, and his own. His heroine is to us a mere 
 Mignon without poetical soul — his priest and his captain 
 are mere personages of the Ann Eadcliffe order, dressed 
 up in the ill-fitting costumes of the fifteenth century — 
 and his only real force is expended on Quasimodo, a 
 creation of some imaginative power, but of the low^est 
 and most material kind. But of his followers, one and 
 all, we are forced to say that their productions leave 
 scarcely any impression on the mind except that of the 
 laborious and undigested cramming which they must have 
 undergone to compose them. We ought to except Paul 
 Lacroix, a writer with antiquarian lore enough to eclipse 
 Walter Scott himself, who, after all, was chiefly dis- 
 tinguished by his extraordinary faculty for realising and 
 assimilating knowledge not very extensive or complete ; 
 but then all Lacroix's learning poorly compensates his 
 utter want of imagination, and gross sins against good
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 231 
 
 taste. One and all, they force us back on our unavailing 
 regret for the loss of the truly great master whose genius 
 created this style of composition; — too superficial, too 
 commonplace, it is now the fashion to say, for these days, 
 when all thought must be profound, and all feeling 
 intense : but how strangely true, how touching, how 
 natural, we only know when we have toiled through tlie 
 volumes of dreary exaggeration which his successors 
 inflict upon us. 
 
 One reason for this want of success may be, that the 
 French have long and thorouglily divorced themselves 
 from the middle ages, and broken off all connection with 
 tlie distant past. They have to learn its language now, 
 like one of the classical tongues. They have little or 
 none of the lingering feudalism of England and Germany, 
 or the lingering mediaeval rehgion of Spain and Italy. 
 To them the pages of Froissart are no more living records, 
 tlian those of Thucydides. Now, the very same pecu- 
 liarities of mental constitution which make Frenchmen 
 such indifferent travellers — which render them so home- 
 keeping by nature, so indisposed to extensive locomotion, 
 so ill at ease when compelled to it, so thoroughly French, 
 whether encountered on the Ganges or the Plata, at Ota- 
 heite or on the borders of the Sahara — seem to disqualify 
 them in a similar manner for that kind of intellectual 
 expatriation which is requisite to the historical novelist. 
 They travel on the surface of the past only ; they rarely 
 penetrate into its being : tlioir souls are with the present, 
 just as the inner man of the wandering Parisian is ever 
 clinging to the Quais and the Boulevards. It is the con- 
 dition of their existence. The very facidties which exist 
 in their uttermost perfection in France alone, are cramped 
 and distorted when used in ilic niiiiatural laboui-. No 
 one can tell a story as well as a Frenchman ; no stories
 
 232 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 are so utterly dull and powerless as those of French 
 historical romances. The very same author who could 
 thrill the inmost heart with the simple adventures of a 
 peasant and a grisette, or a dandy and a ' lioness,' is 
 paralysed when his puppets are termed a knight and a 
 chatelaine. He can only put them through a series of 
 stiff, artificial jerks, instead of graceful motions ; and 
 make them compensate for the wretched dulness of the 
 rest of their performance, by sinning and dying in some 
 violent and unnatural attitudes. 
 
 Moreover — which is more immediately to the present 
 purpose — though France be the native country of feudahsm 
 and chivalry, yet the Paris of the middle ages is not a 
 veiy interesting city to the imagination. It wants a 
 distinct historical character. It has no monuments of 
 splendid civic aristocracies, like those of Italy ; nor of 
 the higher order of burgher-hfe and independence, hke 
 the cities of the Netherlands ; no sacred corner, like 
 Westminster, with its overpowering tide of national re- 
 collections. It scarcely showed any signs of the turbulent 
 freedom of the old Communes, except once, in the fero- 
 cious period of the Burgundian and Armagnac massacres ; 
 unless we are to add the time of the League, with its 
 coarse and sanguinary fanaticism. For a city of such 
 antiquity and importance, moreover, it is remarkable how 
 little Paris has, or ever had, to show of the architectural 
 splendour of the ages in question. Except the Saintc 
 Chapelle, no first-rate specimen of ecclesiastical archi- 
 tecture, as far as we are aware, ever existed there ; none, 
 at least, of Parisian origin and character. Notre-Dame is 
 after all a poor specimen of the art of the glorious four- 
 teenth century. The absence of steeples and pinnacles in 
 te distant view of Paris — the peculiar features of most 
 old northern cities — is very noticeable ; nor were they
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 233 
 
 ever miicli more numerous than at present. Nor are 
 we believers in the tales which Parisian antiquaries very 
 pardonably credit, of the ancient splendour and wealth 
 of their capital. We have little faith in the 275,000 
 inhabitants whom Bureau de la Malle crowds within its 
 narrow cu'cuit in the reign of Philip le Bel : and scarcely 
 believe in the 40,000 w^ell-armed soldiers whom it turned 
 out, if we listen to Monstrelet, in the middle of the famines 
 and miseries of the fifteenth century. Compared with 
 other famous towns of Europe, for the seven long cen- 
 turies after Charlemagne, it must apparently have been 
 a poor and gloomy city; not incorrectly represented, 
 perhaps, by such wretched outskirts as the Faubourg 
 Saint Marcel in later times, by which Candide entered 
 it, and ' thought himself in the most miserable village 
 of Westphalia ;' which banished all Alfieri's illusions, 
 and seems to have left so indelible a first-impression on 
 the wayward Italian, that he could notice nothing in 
 the French capital but the poverty of the public buildings, 
 and the Iriittissime faccie delle donne. Its slow and often 
 interrupted improvements seem to have been generally 
 the results of royal command, ill-obeyed — rarely of civic 
 or national spirit. There w^as no pavement until the royal 
 stomach of Phihp Augustus was turned, as he looked out 
 of his mndow in the Cite, by the odours proceeding from 
 a wagon ploughing up the mud of the streets ; and the 
 mandate which issued thereupon must have been slowly 
 executed, for years elapsed before the perambulation of 
 the streets by pigs was forbidden, when a son of Louis le 
 Gros had been thrown from his horse by one of these un- 
 toward animals. Things, moreover, must soon have fallen 
 back to their ancient condition ; for the modern ]inve- 
 ment of the Cite is said to be six feet above the level 
 of that of Philip Augustus. From Philip le Pel, who
 
 234 THE STREETS OF TAEIS 
 
 built the first quay, down to Napoleon, who completed 
 the double hue within which the waters of the Seine 
 are imprisoned, the chroniclers scarcely mention one 
 popular name, among the long series of monarchs to 
 whom Paris owes these indispensable constructions. 
 
 We are conscious of only one exception to the gene- 
 rally unattractive character of the annals of ancient Paris : 
 it is to be found in the history of its venerable University 
 — rich in strange events as well as striking characters. 
 The University was a nation of itself, with all the spirit 
 and independence of a nation : it was the great corporation 
 of learning and instruction ; and, by whatever names its 
 existence has been preserved, however great the changes in 
 the subject-matter of its employment, it remains the same 
 nation still. The Priesthood of learning was and is a 
 caste apart — the only surviving caste of modern days. 
 More or less influencing the world around, more or less 
 elevated and prosperous, it has ever been true, in the 
 main, to its vocation — ever proud and self-dependent. 
 The ancient University, the Sorbonne — nay, the Jesuit 
 colleges — often remodelled and interfered with, never were 
 the slaves of Kings or Popes, but sometimes their masters. 
 And it so happens that the venerable quarter of the Pays 
 Latin, still peopled by students, retains at the present day 
 more of tradition, more perhaps of substantial antiquity, 
 than all the rest put together. You may see at the Col- 
 lege de Dainville, the very window — or that which has 
 passed for centuries as such — from which the body of 
 Peter Eamus, murdered for denying the infallibility of the 
 Pope and Aristotle, was thrown on the pavement below. 
 Hard by stands the old College des Cholets, where Buridan, 
 that sage of equivocal reputation, rescued from his sack 
 and the Seine, maintained for a whole day the thesis that 
 it was lawful to slay a Queen of France. The neighbour-
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 235 
 
 hood of tlic Sorbonne contains tlie College or Hotel de 
 Cluny ; not liistorically celebrated, but the most beautiful 
 specimen of Gothic art extant in Paris. It was utterly- 
 unknown and neo'lected for aores. Dom Germain Erice 
 only says of it, that ' it is remarkable for nothing but its 
 solidity ; and such is the arrangement of its rooms, that 
 great alterations must be made if it was necessary to ren- 
 der it suitable for the modern fashions ; ' and of the neigh- 
 bouring chapel he adds that, ' Gothic as it is, it produces 
 a certain recreation, by disposing the eyes to remark the 
 difference between the gross and rustic style of building 
 of past ages, and the correct and studied manner of these 
 latter times.' David had his studio close by the Hotel de 
 Cluny — and never caught one breath of its inspiration to 
 correct his proud classical coldness. It is now preserved 
 with the utmost care, as a museum of moyen-age anti- 
 quities ; every grotesque ornament is worth its weight in 
 silver ; yet it may be doubted whether, in this tide of 
 fashion, the old hostel is much more really appreciated 
 than it was by Brice and David. 
 
 But if the earlier history of Paris is thus comparatively 
 scanty in topics of interest, the era which commences with 
 the revival of letters makes abundant compensation by tlie 
 wealth of its recollections. Paris is emphatically the centre 
 of light, intelligence, society, and refined life ; and its his- 
 torian begins to breathe his proper atmosphere, as soon 
 as he has issued from the gloomy and stifling air of the 
 middle ages. Then the great city began to expand her 
 arms, and embrace the spacious demesnes, royal and noble, 
 which had hitherto lain idle without her gates. Tlicn the 
 edifices erected witliin those demesnes began to change 
 their character ; and instead of her castles of the olden 
 ime — tlie heaviest of all castles, witli tlieir cylindrical 
 owers and extinguisher roofs — arose all the diversified
 
 236 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 splendour of the Renaissance. The sixteenth century, of 
 ^vhich we have scarcely any memorials left in London, is 
 the date of many of the most remarkable buildings of 
 Paris ; the Tuileries, part of the Louvre, the Hotel de 
 Ville, and many churches and still surviving hotels. 
 Others, of greater magnificence, have passed away ; — such 
 as the Hotel de la Eeine, built by Catherine de Medicis 
 on the site of the present Halle aux Bles, perhaps the 
 finest private building of its age : its elegant tower alone 
 remains. The sixteenth century began by emancipating 
 kings and their dwelhngs from the constraint of feu- 
 dalism ; and was, at least in Northern Europe, peculiarly 
 the era of palaces and courts. It ended by achieving 
 a greater work, and laying the foundations of modern 
 domestic society ; — the great embelhshment of hfe, and 
 highest of its cultivated pleasures. And as France was 
 the first in the career of social refinement, and set the 
 example to all other nations in this department of civilisa- 
 tion, so the history of Paris becomes of universal interest, 
 as soon as the age of modern society opens, at the conclu- 
 sion of the wars of religion, and accession of Henry IV. 
 
 If the reader would obtain a view of the spot which 
 may almost be called the cradle of social civilisation — if 
 he would at a single glance realise, to a certain extent, 
 the external world of that delightful era of chivalry and 
 literature, wit, buffoonery, extravagance, and imagination, 
 which is portrayed in the French Memoirs of the seven- 
 teenth century — he should travel in a direction in which, 
 probably, not one in a thousand of our countrymen in 
 Paris ever bends his steps, and, leaving the squalid bustle 
 of the Eue Saint Antoine, turn by a narrow street into the 
 Place Eoyale. The aspect of its solemn old houses — so 
 stately and gentlemanlike in their decay, so well preserved 
 in their exterior, their silent rows so strangely contrasting
 
 IS THE SEVEXTEEXTII CENTUEY. 237 
 
 with the busy and dirty region in their vicinity — will 
 strike forcibly the imagination, even of one unacquainted 
 with their history. They seem like palaces abandonetl 
 for a season, not tenantless — waiting for the return of their 
 noble and courtly owners, gone on a far journey. But 
 much more powerfully will it affect the visitor, if he knows 
 even superficially the history of the spot ; and is aware 
 that the first existence of fashionable city life — of society 
 such as he sees it among the better classes of any capital 
 in Europe — may be traced back to those now deserted 
 habitations. This is the Hght in wdiich they have been 
 viewed by Jules Janin, in his contribution to the work 
 before us ; for, allowing for the flutter and affectation of 
 style wdiich belongs to the prince of Feuilletonists, there is 
 both feeling and truth in his description. 
 
 Believe me, even to the lightest, and, apparently, most 
 frivolous dispositions, it is a melancholy task to search under 
 these cold ashes for the few sparks which they still cover : it is 
 a melancholy task, after the lapse of two generations so full of 
 life — the life of wit, grace, genius, beauty, and courage — to pass 
 over the same spot, now ahandoned to nameless old men, to 
 children, to invalids — to every thing which is silence, oblivion, 
 repose. When you walk on these sounding flagstones, the noise 
 of your steps terrifies you, and you turn round your head to see 
 if some one of the heroes of old days is not following you — La 
 Tremouille, Lavardin, Conde, Lauzun, Benserade. In the midst 
 of this darkness and silence, you ask yourself, why have not the 
 people of M. de la Rochefoucauld, of Gabrielle d'Estrees, and 
 JMadame de Montespan, lighted their torches to show the way to 
 the carriage or the sedan of their mistress ? Hush ! from whence 
 came that sound of music and petits violons ? It came from the 
 Eue du Pare ; and this crowd of eager-looking citizens, whither 
 are they going ? They are following the invitation of their friend 
 Moli^re ; they are hastening to the Comedy, the new source of 
 excitement which attracts them : they are bound for the Hotel 
 Carnavalet, where Georges Dandin is acted to-night. And all
 
 238 THE STREETS OF TARIS 
 
 the great hotels which I see here, of which the gates are closed 
 and silent — and all these lofty windows, where no one shows 
 himself except some servant-girl in rags — how were they called 
 heretofore ? These were the Hotel Sully, the Hotel Videix, the 
 Hotel d'Aligre, the Hotel de Kohan, the Hotel Rotroii, the Hotel 
 Guemenee — noble dwellings turned into ill-furnished lodgings, 
 against which the cobbler of the corner, and the public scribe, 
 have reared their squalid stalls ! What may these aristocratic 
 walls think of seeing themselves thus decayed, silent, disdained ! 
 What stillness in these saloons, once so animated with powerful 
 conversation ! What sadness on these gilt ceilings, all charged 
 with loves and with emblems ! What incessant change — what 
 ultimate wretchedness ! And does it not need some courage, 
 once more be it said, to trace out all the remembrances of this 
 fair spot, in which lived, and thought aloud, the rarest wits, the 
 noblest geniuses, the most delightful satirists, the most excellent 
 characters of that singular age which preceded so closely, as if 
 to foreshadow it, all the French seventeenth century ; great 
 names before which every one bows with reverence ; illustrious 
 frequenters of the Place Royale, and component parts of its 
 history ? Nevertheless, this evocation of old times is thus far 
 useful, that it may help to console us for the oblivion and silence 
 which threatens us in turn. When we think of how few years 
 the glory, and renown, and popularity of this world are composed, 
 we end by troubling ourselves a little less about them.' * 
 
 * M. Janin, in his brilliant but careless way, seems to place the Hotel 
 Rambouillet in the Place Royale, which was not the case. There were two 
 hotels of that name. The original town-house of the family was pulled 
 down in 1629 ; it formed part of the site of the Palais Cardinal (Palais 
 Eoyal). The later Hotel Rambouillet, the mansion of ' Arth^nice,' the ren- 
 dezvous of Parisian literature and fashion, was originally called the Hotel 
 Pisani, having belonged to the Marcliioness's family. It was situated Rue 
 St. Thomas du Louvre, No. 15, a street long demolished. The curious reader 
 may consult a note of the Baron do Walckenaer, in liis Manoircs sur Ma- 
 dame de Sevigne, in which this matter is thoroughly sifted. To the list of 
 hotels eminent in the annals of Parisian society, which were situated in or 
 near the Place Royale, may be added the house of the fair Marion de rOrmc, 
 with its interior decorated by Solomon de Cans, who, as his countrymen say, 
 communicated the discovery of the steam-engine to the Marquis of Wor- 
 cester. Cardinal Richelieu lived at No. 21.
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 239 
 
 This famous Place Eoyale, of which the buildings have 
 been a little retouched since Janin thus describes them, 
 occupies the site of the ominous Hotel des Tournelles, 
 built, or rebuilt, by an Englishman, the regent-duke of 
 Bedford, when the English counted on the permanence 
 of their dominion in France — the scene of the splendour 
 and the crimes of the house of Valois — the site of the 
 tournament where Henry II. received his mortal wound — 
 pulled down in consequence, it is said, of superstitious ter- 
 rors, by his son Charles IX. The Place Eoyale was built 
 by Henry IV., and its style of architecture served as the 
 model of our own Covent Garden, as well as many other 
 civic constructions of the same age. Fashion soon se- 
 lected its magnificent hotels for her abode ; from which 
 it has now departed for many generations. We can re- 
 member, however, the residence of a minister in the Place 
 Eoyale under the Eestoration : when this solitary memo- 
 rial of past grandeur ceased, we do not know. 
 
 Under the reign of Louis XIII. , however, this silent 
 square was the centre of the best society of Paris, and of 
 the world. It is scarcely too much to say, that the dis- 
 tinguishing tone of modern civilisation had its origin in 
 that circle which assembled first round Madame de Eam- 
 bouillet and her daughter Madame de Montausier, and of 
 which Madame de Sevigne was afterwards the life and 
 ornament, a society which arose, flourished, and decayed 
 in the period of not many years which succeeded the 
 autocracy of Eichelieu, and preceded that of Louis XIV., 
 and cannot be well understood without reference both to 
 what preceded and succeeded it. 
 
 Cardinal Eichelieu, take him for all in all, was perhaps 
 the ablest, if not the greatest of Frenchmen (for Nai)oleon, 
 it nuist be recollected, was not a Frenchman by birtli) ; 
 and he was the most essentially French. Capable of the
 
 240 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 greatest scliemes of statesmanlike ambition, the smallest 
 personal interest or personal pique lay ever more closely 
 at his heart. Even while planning his vast combinations 
 of foreign and domestic policy, the bulk of his time and 
 thought seems to have been occupied with cares of the 
 most trifling description : with amorous and literary enter- 
 prises, having nothing but the gratification of vanity for 
 their object : with elaborate devices of mystification and 
 buffoonery, childish rivalries, womanish intrigues, and the 
 tricks of a malicious monkey. He had none of the sym- 
 pathies, few of the prejudices, of his age. Neither sacred 
 things, nor consecrated impostures, had any empire over 
 him. King, Pope, and Parhament, were to him mere 
 names, representing pieces in the game of politics. Yet 
 the same man was the slave of the paltriest impulses, when 
 his conceit or egotism was piqued. If we read of him 
 one day as guiding the sword of Gustavus, stemming 
 the Eomish reaction, founding the absolute monarchy of 
 France ; the next day, he figures as on a level with poor 
 Dr. Goldsmith, when he wanted to exhibit his agility in 
 jumping over a stick against a showman's puppet. This 
 is no idle comparison. Brienne has recorded how Mary 
 of Medicis, making sport of her clerical lover, then Bishop 
 of Lu9on, persuaded him, by adroit reflections on his skill, 
 to dance a new saraband in lier royal boudoir, with cas- 
 tanets in his hands, and in the costume of an Andalusian 
 majo — amidst the suppressed convulsions of laughter of 
 certain spectators posted behind the arras — laughter which 
 Eichelieu, when he discovered the trick, never forgot or 
 forgave to his dying day. 
 
 But Eichelieu was in truth, what Napoleon only affected 
 to be, as vehement and assiduous in the smallest matters 
 as the greatest. Wlien Napoleon dictated from Moscow 
 orders respecting the opera at Paris, it was only for effect ;
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 241 
 
 but Eichelieu was really as thoroughly at home and occu- 
 pied in a green-room intrigue or a literary quarrel, as in 
 adjusting the balance of Europe ; for such was the force of 
 his imagination, that to hiin the immediate subjects which 
 excited his temperament always seemed the most impor- 
 tant of any : he would risk a political enmity to raise an 
 ill-natured laugh, and found a mischievous pleasure, to 
 which he was ready to sacrifice honour and interest, in 
 setting afoot a scandalous story respecting some court 
 lady, or blowing up the coals of enmity between a 
 couple of irritable poetasters. When Tallemant des 
 Eeaux compiled his collection of reminiscences (about 
 1G57), Itichelieu had been some years dead. Yet the 
 prevailing terror of him had scarcely ceased, and his 
 grim spectre seemed still to haunt Parisian society. Many 
 of the stories which Tallemant has to tell of the Cardinal 
 relate to his absurd literary vanity ; many to his despotic 
 habits ; some to the strange mocking humour which 
 made him more enemies than his pohtical sins ; * some to 
 his undoubted, though no doubt much exaggerated, moral 
 profligacy ; not a few, it must be added in justice, to his 
 substantial munificence, especially towards literary men. 
 On the one hand, father Joseph, the masked politician, the 
 secret coimcillor of all the deepest plans of Eichelieu's 
 ambition ; on the other, Bois Eobert, the unfrocked atheist 
 and liufToon — these are the contrasted figures with which 
 that of Eichelieu seems inseparably connected. On the 
 whole, great as he was, there is something fundamentally 
 
 * His courtiers "were always at work to hunt up some ridiculous clioractor 
 on whom the Cardinal might vent his bitter pleasantries. On one occasion 
 they fetched for his amusement a certain Mademoiselle de Gournay, a crazy 
 authoress from the CDuntry. She soon perceived the ohject for which sho 
 had been brought. ' You nienn to mnlie a fool of tlu^ old woman,' slio 
 said ; ' hut laugh, great genius ! laii^li ! it is just thai all the world should 
 contribute to your diversion.' The reply procured her a pension. 
 
 K
 
 242 THE STREETS OF TAEIS 
 
 odious in his character, which makes him one of the most 
 uninteresting great men of history. Like Voltaire, whom 
 he so strikingly resembled in many points of character, he 
 was spiteful, hard-hearted, and cruel. He hated the 
 Queen, who had rejected his impudent suit. He hated all 
 whom she favoured. His political victims were not many, 
 but they were hunted out with peculiarly cold and care- 
 ful cruelty. He could be generous towards those who had 
 committed offences against him : there is a striking story 
 told by Tallemant des Eeaux, who may be behoved when 
 he speaks well of any one, of his conduct towards a thievish 
 secretary ; but he could not forgive an insult, a jeer, or 
 the slightest mortification to his vanity, or opposition to 
 his projects. His death was felt by France like the relief 
 from a nightmare — from the king to the lowest rhymester 
 of the ruelles^ all joined in the burden of the couplets 
 which proclaimed it — 
 
 II est parti, il a plie bagage, 
 Ce cardinal ! 
 
 But it is remarkable that a man so hateful, so destitute 
 of all faith and all loftiness of purpose, should have left 
 such durable impressions on the world. Scarcely does 
 Paris itself, which is full of his relics — the Palais Eoyal, the 
 Library, the street which bears his name — speak more 
 plainly of Eichelieu, than that fabric of modern European 
 policy, of which ho has, scarcely with exaggeration, been 
 termed the founder. 
 
 But while Ptichelieu broke down the feudal power of 
 the nobles on the one hand, his jealous rule prevented the 
 formation of any brilliant court on the other. Nor was 
 the character of Louis XHI. suited to render him the 
 centre of a sparkling circle, or the leader of the fashion of 
 his kingdom. These circumstances, together with the 
 eager appetite which began to l)e felt for the new delights
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 243 
 
 of taste and literature, contributed to the formation, for 
 the first and only time in French history, of what may be 
 termed an independent society. For the first and only 
 time, men breatlied and moved in circles of their own, and 
 had scope to form their tastes, and exercise their under- 
 standings, unfettered by prevailing influences from without. 
 The short interval between tiie establishment of Eichelieu's 
 power and the wars of the Fronde — especially the latter 
 part of it, the ' tems de la bonne Eegence, tems ou regnait 
 une heureuse abondance,' commemorated with tender re- 
 collection by St. Evremond in his old age — was the period 
 when France entered on a career which, continued, would 
 have placed her in substance as well as in seeming at the 
 head of European civihsation. It was an age of bold and 
 independent aspirations ; of chivalry, refined by the pohsh 
 of literature ; of literature, as yet vivified in some degree 
 by the unexpired genius of chivalry. Pedantry there 
 might be, but it was almost of a gracefid cast, before it 
 had been touched and stiffened by the chilhng breath of 
 sarcasm ; originality of demeanour, as well as opinion, was 
 still tolerated, and added to the entertainment of the most 
 pohshed circles. Jesuitism had not yet begun to recover 
 its lost ground ; thought was therefore freely interchanged 
 on the highest subjects ; and while there was a strono" 
 and earnest feehng of rehgion in the better class of society, 
 it was unusually exempt from the miserable jealousies of 
 fashionable orthodoxy. Corneille, Bossuet, Pascal, were 
 all at home in companies like these, where the playful con- 
 versation of the hour alternated — nor was the mixture 
 thought affected or pedantic — with disquisitions on 
 ecclesiastical history, and arguments on tlie inunoi'tality 
 of the soul. 
 
 We have no doubt advanced beyond tlie simplicity of 
 those days. We have found out tlic ridiculous side of 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE STEEETS OP PARIS 
 
 learning, seriousness, chivalry, enthusiasm of every kind ; 
 and ridicule is a quiet, irresistible master of the ceremonies, 
 Avho noiselessly removes all such unsuitable guests from the 
 conversational circle. But, after all, the philosophy of 
 society, like other branches of practical philosophy, aims 
 at something higher than is ever realised. That the or- 
 dinary converse of fashionable drawing-rooms might be 
 made conducive to the high interests of man, and progress 
 of his race ; that the sexes might meet on equal terms in 
 the field of grave discussion carried on side by side with 
 gossip and raillery — these were the dreams of a youthfid 
 and adventurous age, like the art of flying and the universal 
 language. We know better now ; and, amidst all the 
 revivals of old fashions on which modern taste makes 
 experiments, the least likely to be attempted is that of the 
 Hotel Eambouillet. 
 
 It need scarcely be observed, that our description 
 apphes only to a small and exclusive, though influ- 
 ential, section of the society of the seventeenth century 
 at Paris ; and the evil times, unhappily, prevented the 
 seed sown in the best of these reunions from comino; to 
 maturity. The most brilliant epoch of the Hotel Eam- 
 bouillet, as has been said, and as Sainte Beuve more 
 fully shows, was from the death of Eichelieu to the 
 Fronde (1642-1648). The anarchy of the Fronde was 
 the too natural successor of the freedom of the years 
 immediately preceding. Ordinary history shows only the 
 half romantic and half ludicrous incidents of that period 
 — the caprices of tlie lady leaders of armed parties, the 
 valour of Conde, the genius of He Eetz, and the real vanity 
 and nothingness of the actors, one and all, except Turenne 
 and Mazarin, who came forward turn by turn in the childish 
 struggle. But the Memoirs of the times, while cliieil}^ 
 occupied by these frivolous details, give nevertheless
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 245 
 
 occasional glimpses of tlie general decline produced by 
 this civil conflict, and the long Spanish wars whicli im- 
 mediately followed it, down to the death of ]\Iazarin 
 (1648-16G1). Not that Paris externally suffered. On 
 tlie contrary, her society was more thronged than ever. 
 Not only was the great city the headquarters, during 
 great part of the struggle, of the princes, who commanded 
 a much more brilliant following than the crown ; but it 
 became the refuo-e of all those who were driven from the 
 provinces by the license of hostilities. It was crowded by 
 the highest clergy — Louis XIV. found thirty bishops in 
 Paris, at one of his earlier levees, a rare sight in a Catho- 
 lic country — by the provincial noblesse, by all the classes 
 who had anything left to spend. But the tone of that 
 society became lower. The hazards of war, the dan- 
 gerous and painful realities of the day, had the effect 
 so often witnessed in times of revolution — they stripped 
 life of its romance. The more refined spirits gradu- 
 ally deserted Stoicism for Epicureanism, romance for 
 buffoonery ; — always tlie prevailing taste in periods of 
 civil war, when ' let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die,' becomes a practical motto. The sentimental drama 
 was over, the farce had begun. This was the moment of 
 Scarron and burlesque. The reunions of the Hotel Eam- 
 bouillet were at an end. The Marquis and Marchioness 
 were dead ; the Princess Julie married to the Due de Mon- 
 tausier, who was engaged in levying war for the crown, 
 and only returned to Paris to become a suitor i'or couit 
 employment, like so many others ruined by tlie troubles. 
 It was in the salons of the Countess de Suze, Mademoiselle 
 Scudery and a few other ladies of fantastic wits, llml the 
 old lliio;(nin2; Piambouillet modes were maintained, exap-- 
 gerated, and rendered lii(licr<tiis ; mid there, and not in
 
 246 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 the circle of Artlienice,* Moliere picked up the models for 
 his play of the Precieuse Ridicules ; which did not, as 
 critics are in the habit of asserting, demolish a triumphant 
 fasliion by its ' unpitying irony.' Comic writers seldom or 
 never perform such execution — their easier task is to catch 
 and appropriate the ridicule of that which is just becoming 
 ridiculous. The poor wits of the Eegency — their solemn 
 humour — their long-drawn sentiments — were at a sad 
 discount. Menage and others wished to leave the country, 
 and find out some region which might better answer to 
 their conceptions of the Pays du Tendre^ and similar pas- 
 toral kingdoms, on the other side of the Atlantic, just then 
 rendered interesting by the discoveries of Champlain and 
 Lasalle. 
 
 As for the morals of society, it is difficult to describe 
 the pitch of extravagant license at which they now arrived. 
 The contrast is startling between the apparent prudery still 
 maintained in salons of good company, and the reckless 
 wdldness which prevailed out of those guarded doors, 
 Timandre, Cleante, and the other shepherd-heroes of the 
 drawing-room, after passing the day in sighing sentiment, 
 and capping verses, with Clarice and Corisante, would ad- 
 
 * Tlie Marquise de Rambouillot was so well known by this fanciful 
 adopted name that Massillon actually employs it in her funeral sermon : ' La 
 mort nous a ravi cette adorable Arthenice/ &c. But there was a mixture of 
 worldly fashion with lofty spirituality in the choicest pulpit eloquence of 
 Ihat fige, which has a strange sound to om* discriminating cars. Bossuet, in 
 his cloge on the Prince de Coudd, compares two generals about to engage in 
 a pitched battle to two men of courage going to fight a duel : * comme deux 
 braves en champ clos.' It will be remembered that Louis XIII. made the 
 declaration of his passion to Mademoiselle d'llautefort at a court sermon : 
 and the proceeding was thought extremely gallant. The beauty was seated 
 on the floor with the other maids of honour, in obedience to the very xm- 
 comfortable etiquette of the time. The king sent her his own velvet 
 hassock to sit upon. 'Elle re^-ut ce cadeau avec un air si modeste, si 
 respectueux, ct grand tout ensemble/ &c. &c. Sec llie curious contemporary 
 memoir published by Victor Cousin iu his biographical work on this lady.
 
 m THE SEVEXTEEXTII CENTURY. 247 
 
 joiirn to spend the niglit in orgies, to which the boldest of 
 later days were tea-table recreations. There are sins con- 
 genial to high fashion at all times, and probably, with an 
 equal amount of wealth and luxury, always pretty equally 
 prevaihng ; but the peculiarity of the seventeenth century 
 in France was, that the ordinary distinction between crime 
 and gentlemanly vice was lost sight of. In the honest ori- 
 ginaUty of the day, sins against one commandment were 
 regarded as scarcely more discreditable, in a social point 
 of view, than sins against another. Of course we are not 
 surprised when we read in the memou-s of the time of a gen- 
 tlemanly duelHst, ' qui tua admirablement bien son monde ' 
 (this was the Chevaher d'Albret, who killed the Marquis 
 de Sevigne) ; nor very much when we are told of the 
 Chevaher de Guise, who ' tua un peu en prince,' that is to 
 say, killed his adversary, the Baron de Lux, while he was 
 alighting from his carriage ; or of the Marechal de Breze, 
 who had his valet assassinated at the corner of a wood as 
 they were looking out for game together, and ever after- 
 wards, according to Tallemant, imagined that he saw 
 a white hare running across his room ; or of the 
 dashing voies de fait^ by wliich ladies of rank sometimes 
 revenged themselves on spies and rivals; such as Ma- 
 dame d'Aiguillon's design to have a bottle of ink broken 
 over the face of Madame de Chaulnes ; an effectual 
 receipt, she thought, for demolishing beauty — for the 
 glass cuts, and the ink entering into the wounds is in- 
 delible. All these were but rehcs of the fashionable 
 lynch-law of the middle ages. We speak of vulgar crimes, 
 such as bring the offender within the ordinary grasp of 
 penal law, and yet did not then altogether exclude a i)er- 
 son ' comme il faut ' from good society. IV'ople did not 
 scruple much about associating with tliose wlio wci-c 
 notoriously guilty of them, until convicted ; or a1)()iit
 
 248 THE STREETS OF PAEIS 
 
 paying tliem proper attention afterwards, until tlieir exe- 
 cution. In the early part of Louis XIII.'s reign the ordi- 
 nary frolic of the evening was to rob pedestrians, in the 
 dark streets of Paris, of their cloaks. There is a well- 
 knoAvn story in Eochefort's Memoirs, of the adroitness of 
 Gaston, Duke of Orleans, at this exercise ; and of the 
 ill-luck of some of his comrades, who attempted to 
 hide themselves behind Henry IV.'s statue on the Pont 
 Neuf * But what Gaston practised in the spirit of aris- 
 tocratic sport, others perpetrated from simpler motives. 
 The Sieur Desternod avows that, in his poverty, he fre- 
 quently thought of this resource, but was deterred by fear 
 of capture. Bussy-Eabutin was robbed by two ' filous de 
 
 * The Pont-Neuf, the very Paris of Paris, as it was considered in old 
 times — tlie spot to wliicli every traveller directed his first footsteps, on 
 which the philosopher lingered longest to observe the ways of mankind — 
 where, according to Mercier, a man in search of anyone else was sure to find 
 him in the course of an hour— only obtained its trivial name from the people, 
 who persisted in calling it so. Various names seem to have been intended 
 for it, and it was christened for a shoi't time the ' Pont Saint Germain.' Under 
 this title it figures in a ghost-story of the century, which is worth quoting 
 in order to show the curious way in which such legends propagate themselves, 
 with slight changes of circumstances, from one generation to another. 
 
 Man}' of us have probably read Alexandre Dumas' ' Femnie au collier de 
 velours.' But Alexandre Dumas has only taken the tale, without change 
 and without acknowledgment, from Washington Irving's narrative of the 
 'German student.' And Moore, in his Diary, declares that he, the poet, first 
 told the story to Irving. It may be so ; but the original of the legend is 
 much older. Here it is, as told by old Sandys, in the note to his transla- 
 tion of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' book xi. : — 
 
 ' By a French gentleman I was told a strange accident which befcl a 
 brother of his : who saw on Saint Germain's bridge, by the Louvre, a gentle- 
 woman of no mean beauty, sitting on the stones (there laid to finish that 
 worke), and leaning on her elbow with a pensive aspect. According to the 
 French freedom he began to court her; whom she entreated at that time to 
 forbear ; yet told him if he would bestow a visit on her at her lodging about 
 eleven of the clock, he should find entertainment agreeable to his quality. 
 lie came, she received him ; who found her touch too cold for her youth ; 
 when the morning discovered uuto him a corse by his side, forsaken by the 
 sonle the evening before.'
 
 IN THE SEVENTEEXTIl CENTURY. 249 
 
 qiialite,' by no means ' pour rirc,' but in good earnest. 
 Saint Ange, a desperado of some fosliion, was condemned 
 to be broken on the wheel, apparently for this offence. 
 ' Many people,' says Tallemant, ' went through curiosity 
 to see him finished (pour le voir faire), for he had a fancy 
 to explain on all occasions, even in common conversation, 
 how he should behave when laid on the St. Andrew's 
 cross ; and he used to arrange the chairs in the room to 
 exhibit upon. ' II ne fit pas pourtant la plus belle fin 
 de pendu qu'on pouvoit faire.' His Avife, Madame de 
 Marolles, had his heart embalmed, and a kind of chapelle 
 ardente made for it, with a priest to say prayers in it 
 night and day, and she slept there herself. Coining was 
 not altogether an ungentleman-like or unlady-like accom- 
 plishment. In the same veracious author we read of a 
 Breton lady, 'qui faisait de la fausse monnoye,'and of the 
 peculiar spell to which she resorted to find out a good 
 alloy ; and of a pair of lovers, reduced by hard necessity 
 ' a faire de la fausse monnoye dans les montagnes vers 
 Narbonne.' Nor must it be supposed that these strange 
 records of the lawless habits of the times rest on no 
 better authority than that of TaUemant and a few memoir 
 writers. Flechier's often quoted work, ' Les Grand Jours 
 d'Aiivergne,' portrays a still more anomalous state of 
 tilings as subsisting in the distant provinces of the south. 
 It is quite enough for the present purpose to refer to his 
 account of the Marquis de Canillac and his son, both exe- 
 cuted in effigy on that occasion. The former was the terror 
 of the country round ; he not only insulted, but robbed 
 and imprisoned his neighbours for many years with com- 
 plete immunity, with the help of his ' twelve apostles,' 
 famihar bravos, ' qui catecliisoient avec I'epee et le baton 
 ceux qui etoient rebelles it sa loi.' Tlie son was a young 
 gentleman of very attractive manners ; 'his pohteness,' says
 
 250 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 Flechier, ' his generosity, and even his gentleness, are in 
 everyone's mouth. Still there is a stain on his character 
 of which he has never been able to clear himself ; though 
 it is true that in Auvergne a man who has only been 
 guilty of one crime may pass for very innocent.' He had 
 only murdered a priest, who had detected him in an in- 
 tiigue ! The English ' bloods ' of Charles the Second's 
 reign were timid, as Avell as gross and clumsy, imitators of 
 the men of fashion of the preceding generation at Paris ; 
 for Buckingham and Eochester tried to import, not the 
 improved style which prevailed hi France at the date of 
 their experiment, but what they themselves remembered 
 of the rough licentious days of their exile during the 
 Commonwealth ; so that in this instance, as usual, England 
 was picking up the cast-off rags of her neighbour's fashions. 
 The correspondence of Bussy-Eabutin with Madame de 
 Sevigne furnishes a singular instance of the juxtaposition 
 of extremes, common in that age, and the mutual toleration 
 which vice and virtue, dissipation and pedantry, seem to 
 have exercised towards each other. Bussy must have 
 been esteemed a scoundrel, according to the rules of almost 
 any conceivable society. He had outraged a helpless 
 woman by a forcible abduction. It is true he had been 
 deceived as to her inchnations, but this was because he 
 was betrayed by her confessor, whom he had bribed. He 
 was notorious, not so much for his triumphs over his fair 
 acquaintances, as for his propensity for ruining their repu- 
 tation and exposing them to the world. ' He loved no 
 one,' says St. Evremond, ' and never won the affections of 
 anyone.' He seems to have been shunned for his ques- 
 tionable dealings in transactions of honour among men, 
 almost as much as he was admired for his brilliancy in 
 female circles. He had published an infamous hbel, in 
 which he recounted the scandalous histories of most of
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 251 
 
 the women of his acquaintance. He had laid siege to the 
 honoiu" of his cousin, Madame de Sevigne, for many years. 
 Disappointed in his pursuit, he had slandered her grossly 
 among the rest ; yet the princess of letter- ^vriters not only 
 forgives all his sins against herself and mankind, but con- 
 tinues through all her volumes her sentimental corre- 
 spondence with this contemptible reprobate. Platonism, 
 philosophy, literatm'e, and scandal, are all discussed with 
 perfect good-humour. She enters into all his projects ; 
 witness her sympathy with him through one of his lawsuits, 
 which was neither more nor less than a disgraceful attempt 
 to corrupt justice and oppress an innocent party. Much 
 may be allowed for the passion of clanship, which bound 
 the fair prude to the head of all the Eabutins ; it has been 
 suggested also, that fear was at the bottom of her forbear- 
 ance ; but, after all, the connection hardly says much, we 
 will not say for the reality, but for the profoundness of 
 her moral and rehgious feelings. A greater than Bussy, 
 La Eochefoucauld, composed his own memoirs, and allowed 
 them to appear in print anonymously, full of scandalous 
 attacks on the character of his male and female acquaint- 
 ances. A great outcry was made. The Duke de Saint 
 Simon (the father) went to the publisher's, and wrote with 
 his own hand the words ' here the author lies ' opposite 
 a passage reflecting on himself, in every copy he could 
 get hold of. La Eochefoucauld felt compelled by public 
 clamour to disavow the authorsliip ; but nobody beheved 
 him, and nobody seems to have thought much the worse 
 of him. 
 
 Everyone will remember Charles Lamb's ingenious and 
 not altogether sophistical defence of the characters in 
 the English ' middle comedy ' of Congreve and his suc- 
 cessors, namely, that no reader takes them, and tlic ficti- 
 tious world iu wliich tliey arc i)laced, for realities ; that
 
 252 THE STUEETS OP PARIS 
 
 they move in an atmosphere of their own, to which we feel 
 the recognised morahty of the everyday world to be in- 
 appropriate. It is with almost the same feeling that one 
 approaches the Memoirs of the Fronde and the Eegency 
 of Anne ; the records of the men and women wdio were 
 the real prototypes of those English profligates from Avhom 
 Congreve's characters were taken. It is difficult to realise, 
 and still more to describe, the impressions produced by a 
 world in which all seems, at first sight, to have been show 
 and representation. Every man lived, literally, not for 
 himself, but for and in that world. Conventional habits 
 threw into the background substantial interests and 
 passions, and brought forward into exaggerated rehef 
 the most unsubstantial frivohties ; and the result is, 
 that in the records of those times there seems to be 
 almost as much reality in the last as in the first. The 
 strongest feelings, the profoundest calculations, use the 
 same language, wear the same dress, with the fantastic 
 impulses of fasliion. Mortal hate demeans itself just like 
 wounded punctilio ; the passion of a life like the gallantry 
 of an hour ; the struggle for political supremacy like the 
 rivalry of a game at biUiards. Men and women put on 
 their shepherds' hats, and talk couplets or sonnets to each 
 other, with quite as much solemnity as they use in dis- 
 cussing their most important interests. Nay, to speak of 
 more serious matters, ladies and gentlemen set about 
 ' making their salvation,' as if they projected a party to 
 the baths of Bourbon. All seems a pageant ; the people 
 masqueraders ; or rather, masques with no faces under 
 them ; or as if France had been peopled with creatures 
 resembhng the Sylphs and Undines who tlien came into 
 literary fashion, — brilliant and beautiful, with aU the 
 outward attributes of humanity, but unprovided with souls. 
 In notliing is this- curiously superficial character of life
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 253 
 
 more evident, according at least to the notions which 
 prevail in times of steadier thought, than in the ac- 
 counts which our memoir-writers give us of the liigh 
 ecclesiastics and otlier religious characters of the time. 
 We do not speak of the profligate and degraded among 
 them ; these may have been not more numerous than at 
 other times ; but of those who passed in the world — and 
 doubtless with reason, as the world was quite satirical 
 enough — for men in earnest. The loosest possible notions 
 of chgnity and decorimi seem to have prevailed even 
 among the more respectable of the order, and to have 
 occasioned no kind of scandal. M. Godeau, Bishop of 
 Vence, was a prelate of high reputation : he was particu- 
 larly popular among Huguenots who wanted to be con- 
 verted in a fashionable manner ; yet we find him described 
 as a dangler about the Hotel Eambouillet, and familiarly 
 designated as the ' Princess Julia's dwarf ' (Mademoiselle 
 d'Angennes). Gombauld,the poet, was almost a Protestant 
 in opinion, 'Huguenot a bruler,' though in Catholic 
 orders : he had, moreover, fought several duels, two in 
 the same liom^ — a feat of which he was extremely proud. 
 Yet Godeau, being unable to hold the bishoprics of Grasse 
 and Vence together, wanted to get the former transferred 
 to Gombauld ! Wlien.we find that bishops and dignitaries 
 held themselves so cheap, we are not surprised tliat tlie 
 Avorld treated them with no great reverence ; and we 
 are the less scandahsed when we read, that a Bisliop of 
 Glandeve was put to tlie torLm-e in Bordeaux for some 
 intricues in which he had been concerned duriiiii' tlie 
 Fronde; or that De Sourdis, Archbishop of IJoideaux, 
 had been twice caned during his prelacy (by the Duke 
 d'Epernon and Marshal de Vitry), and ' ])ouvoit se 
 vanter d'etre le prelat duuionde qui avoit cLe le plus 
 battu!' if one otlier bisliop were excc[)ted, who, when a
 
 254 THE STEETS OF PARIS 
 
 diplomatic chaplain, was reported to have had the 
 bastinado at Constantinople. 
 
 Nor were the Protestants of that day — the grand- 
 children of that ever-memorable race of giants, the Colignis, 
 Daubignes, Lanoues, of whom Niebuhr remarks that 
 France seems to have lost the seed — less remarkable for 
 the easy way in which their rigorous religion generally 
 sat on them, or the singular facility with which they were 
 wont to abandon it when the occasion moved them. 
 Conversion, indeed, was a kind of epidemic among Pro- 
 testants. It was the only mode of attaining rank and 
 promotion ; and this alone was quite sufficient to seduce 
 by degrees the greater part of the Protestant noblesse. 
 ' The rehgion you have left must necessarily be the best,' 
 said Eoquelaure to an officer who had obtained a govern- 
 ment by turning Cathohc, ' since you have taken change 
 for it ! ' But even far lighter motives suffered to bring over 
 numbers of the ordinary class ; as far lighter motives than 
 principle, or even the point of honour, restrained others 
 from abandoning their creed. The great Turenne, as is 
 well known, remained a Protestant a long time from mere 
 affection for his wife and sister. And in the memoirs of the 
 time, conversions are spoken of in the slightest possible 
 terms, as occurrences of every day, more frequent and 
 causeless than changes of politics. Attachment to a lover 
 or mistress ; the wish to get plausibly rid of a husband or 
 wife ; the chance of a fortune ; the hope of a legacy ; 
 family arrangements ; family quarrels, — all were reasons 
 sufficient in an age which was characterised, after all, 
 rather by licentiousness and carelessness than by infidelity 
 in a positive sense ; for few were so liberal as the wit 
 Dcs Barrcaux, whose old Huguenot uncle left away his 
 property from his branch of the family (being Catholics) : 
 ' You,' he said to his pious sisters, ' have at least the satis-
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 255 
 
 faction of believing that he is damned, but I have not 
 even that consolation.' 
 
 We may find some interest, though of a painful kind, 
 in tracing the destinies of the immediate descendants of 
 those leading Huguenot soldiers and statesmen who have 
 been mentioned above. Coligny, son of the Admiral — a 
 man of gallantry about Paris — was slain in a duel by tlie 
 last Guise, himself a brave but most boyish adventurer all 
 his life. His son, better known as Marshal Chritillon, 
 was the greatest personage of his religion : his name alone 
 would have raised 4,000 armed gentlemen ; and his wife 
 was adored by their ministers and devout people — she was 
 called ' the Incomparable ' by the Earl of Carlisle. But, 
 says Des Eeaux, ' cette femme n'etoit pas si grand' chose 
 qu'ondisoit; c'etoit une devote qui, par affectation, se mettoit 
 toujours h prier Dieu quand il falloit diner : afin qu'on dit, 
 elle est en oraison, et la faut laisser achever.' But tlie 
 Marshal, though a man of no personal consequence or 
 judgment, was steady, brave, and a good Frenchman. 
 His son, the last Coligny of the direct line, abjured 
 Protestantism, and was killed young at the battle of the 
 Porte Saint Antoine. Of his daughters, one was married by 
 her family perforce to a Gennan prince, to prevent her from 
 changing her rehgion ; the other was the celebrated beauty, 
 Henriette, Countess de la Suze, whose languid poetical 
 graces and sentimental coquetries formed the amusement 
 of Paris for half a century. She too abjured, in order, 
 people said, never to meet her husband again in this world 
 or the next. The particulars of her life must be left to 
 the scandal-mongers of her time ; she seems indeed to 
 have studied how best to exemplify the startling mnxini 
 wliich occurs in one of her letters, — ' All the duty in the; 
 world is not wortli so mucli as a single ftuilt committed 
 through allcction ! ' She died l)ankni]it in (•haracter and
 
 25 G THE STEEETS OF PARIS 
 
 fortune ; and so ended the line of the noblest of French 
 patriots. As for the high-principled and chivalrous Lanoue, 
 the comrade in arms of Henry IV., he had a son ' brave 
 comme son pere, et vetu de chamois comme lui. Ces 
 deux hommes etoient toujours a la guerre, et ils ne juroient 
 jamais,' adds Tallemant, with due astonishment. But of 
 the next and last inheritor of the name, it is enough to 
 say that he was called Bras-de-Laine, to distinguish him 
 from his grandsire Bras-de-fer. His sister, the Marechale 
 de Themines, was the last survivor of their family. She 
 changed her religion iwice^ and was a lady of higli fashion 
 and much adventure into the bargain. As for the Pro- 
 testant historian D'Aubigne, his son, as all the world knows, 
 was a ruined gambler, whose daughter married a poor 
 hump-backed poet in order to escape from more intolerable 
 poverty, and became consort of the king of France, and 
 the executress of the divine judgments on the people of 
 her own race and religion. 
 
 Paris, at this time, it must be remembered, though the 
 greatest city of Europe, yet resembled in many respects 
 what, in the nineteenth century, we should term a large 
 provincial town. Hemmed within its old walls (converted, 
 on the north bank of the Seine, into the present interior 
 Boulevards only in 1GG8), with their grotesque coronet of 
 windmills, and swelled by all the political causes which 
 at this period drove within its gates the inhabitants of the 
 provinces, the population was numerous beyond all 
 reasonable proportion to the narrow compass in which it 
 was contained ; for if some spaces, then encumbered with 
 narrow streets, have since been cleared, as in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Louvre, other and much larger spots 
 w^ithin the circuit of the Boulevards, now built on, were 
 then the demesnes of convents and ])alaces. Three great 
 convents — those of the Assumption, the Feuillans, and the
 
 IX THE SEVEXTEEXTH CEXTURY. 257 
 
 Capucins — occupied the site of the orighial Eue Eivoli, and 
 streets which branch from it. The site of Mazarin's palace 
 was so extensive, that on one half of it (bought by Louis 
 XrV., and given to the East India Company) the Eue Vivi- 
 enne and Place de la Bourse are situate. The sanitary con- 
 dition of the city was as bad as possible ; worse, probably, 
 than in the middle ages : owino; to the greater accumula- 
 tion of people, and increased height of the houses.* Even 
 the ordinary habit of leaving the city in the summer was 
 interrupted for thirty or forty years in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century ; — at first, from the general insecurity 
 of the country ; afterwards, through habit, and because, 
 in Louis -XIV. 's earlier wars, while a portion of good 
 society was absent on the frontier, those who stayed at 
 home preferred remaining in Paris, for the sake of obtain- 
 ing intelligence ; and no Versailles had as yet arisen to 
 eclipse the capital. The aristocracy of the nation were 
 collected in quarters almost as narrow as those in which the 
 company at a large watering-place now meet each other. 
 Packed closely together in this steaming atmosphere, the 
 higher classes lived and moved in a perpetual fever of 
 society. The fashion of alcoves and ruelles dates from the 
 beginning of this period. The alcove, as is well known 
 to those who are familiar with old-fashioned domestic 
 architecture, was the space, generally dome-shaj:)ed or 
 vaulted, and highly decorated (tlie word is Arabic, and 
 signifies a vault), at the end of the bed-chamber, forming 
 a kind of second room enclosed in a larger one. Here 
 the bed of the lady was placed, on its estrade, or elevated 
 dais, on which, as a throne, she received her morning 
 
 * About the year IGOO, a medical observer remarked that his brass door- 
 handhis, in rooms loolviiif;- on the street, became covered witli verdiirris every 
 morning'; which continued until some attempts were made at drainnye iu 
 the quarter. 
 
 S
 
 258 THE STREETS OF TARIS 
 
 visitors. Tlie ruelles, or alleys, were the narrow anes left 
 between the estrade and the walls, in which the crowd of 
 visitors assembled ; — filled, from early day to afternoon, 
 in illustrious houses, with a succession of gay cavaliers, 
 prim or saucy men of letters, and soft ecclesiastics. Ee- 
 tirement and privacy were neither sought nor appreciated 
 as luxuries. There are some curious remarks in Saint 
 Simon on the results of the invention of bells in houses ; — 
 a new thing when he wrote, at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. The want of them in earlier times 
 rendered it almost necessary for a lady to have assistance 
 at hand ; common people had their servants within call, 
 whence arose the familiar and pleasant domestics of 
 Moliere ; those of higher rank were waited on by females 
 of birth and education, who were not thought to demean 
 themselves by performing these indispensable offices. 
 Bells had a great share in reducing us to that seclusion — 
 pleasant, but unsocial — in which we now live. The chief 
 promenade of the afternoon was the Cours la Eeine, on 
 the south side of the Tuileries' gardens, from which the 
 mechanical public was excluded. Here Marie de Medicis 
 paraded in her globe-shaped Coche ; and Bassompierre ex- 
 hibited the first carriage witli glass windows. When ' the 
 great Mademoiselle ' was asked what she had regretted 
 most during her pohtical banishment from Paris, she 
 answered — the masquerades, the fair of St. Germain (a 
 kind of fashionable bazaar, which was held in February 
 every year), and the Cours. But Paris, though rich in 
 convent and palace gardens, was at this time very ill-pro- 
 vided with sj)aces for pubhc recreation. In the hot 
 afternoons, it was no uncommon fashion for gay society to 
 assemble in the Seine, like the company at old-fashioned 
 baths. Evelyn (1G51) was startled by the apparition of a 
 bevy of ladies thus publicly bathing, at Conflans, attended
 
 IN THE SEVENTEEXTII CENTURY. 259 
 
 by their cavaliers. Tlieii followed the theatre ; the new 
 amusement of the age, and enjoyed with all the zest 
 which novelty lent as yet to the noblest of public diversions 
 — a diversion which not onlv amused the senses, but 
 opened a new world to the heart and intellect, and which 
 promised greater things than in the subsequent course of 
 events it has performed. Noav that the dramatic art is 
 everywhere on the dechne — its national existence, it 
 should seem from all history, being necessarily brief — it is 
 difficult to reahse the importance which it once possessed, 
 or the essential benefits which, be it said, in spite of all 
 purists, it once rendered to society : and nowhere was this 
 so much felt as in Paris. Much mii^ht be said of the 
 effect of the drama as not only an accompaniment, but a 
 cause of increasmg refinement in manners ; but as to its im- 
 mediate influence on order and decency in that city, it is 
 sufficient to refer to a saying of M. de Sartines, the minister 
 of poHce of a later period, that during the three weeks 
 when the theatres were not open, he found it necessary to 
 double the watch. Last came the night, with its train of 
 endless gaiety and extravagance. The fetes of Mazarin 
 and his contemporaries equalled any similar displays of 
 later days in luxury, while they were unrivalled in wild 
 and grotesque hcense ; the whole soul of society was 
 poured out in the extravagant orgies of the masquerade ; 
 while ladies were parading, by day, at the head of armed 
 brigades, female costume was a fashionable evening dis- 
 guise for gentlemen. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was cele- 
 brated for the grace with which he wore it ; and among 
 the strange adventures of the Abbe de Choisy, afterwards 
 a zealous dignitary of the church, who chose for several 
 years to assume that dress in general society, it is perhaps 
 the strangest, that he used to attend, in woman's atth-e, 
 at the church of St. Medard, and present the pain hcni to 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE STREETS OF TARIS 
 
 Ms acquaintances.* This fantastic irregularity was finally 
 put a stop to, like so many others, by Louis XIV., as his 
 notions of decorum advanced — when, after many years' 
 solemn devotion to the mysteries of the ballet — after 
 enacting Benserade's gods and demigods, heroes and 
 knights, shepherds and savages, until flattery was fairly 
 exhausted, and could scarcely spin out a couplet more in 
 his honour — the great monarch became slowly ahve to 
 the idea that he was laughed at, and abolished the fashion 
 for ever. 
 
 In ^uch a state of things (still speaking of the time 
 preceding Louis XIV. 's majority, when there was no 
 recognised, or no powerful Court to discipline manners), 
 there was naturally a great confusion of ranks and classes ; 
 nothing had its settled place or precedency. Even the 
 profound distinction between noble and citizen was per- 
 haps less marked than in the better marshalled society of 
 fifty years later. Such a phenomenon as Madame Pilou, 
 the wife of a procureur, who had succeeded in obtaining 
 the confidence and favour of the hio;hest ladies in the 
 realm, and set a kind of fashion in the metropohs, was 
 remarkable in Tallemant's time, but would perhaps have 
 been impossible half a century afterwards. Every evening 
 reunited this mixed society in ladies' apartments for con- 
 versation, varying from the most transcendent pedantry to 
 the lowest merriment, buffoonery, and jeux de societe, until 
 Mazarin brought in cards, which rapidly swallowed up all 
 
 * *Ne nous plaignons jamais ties moeurs de notre terns, qtiand nous lisons 
 le r(3cit de cellos qu'on n'intcrdisait pas absolument a Taljbo de Choisj'. II 
 put, pendant des mois ou des anni^es, s'etablir dans le faubourg St. Marceau, 
 y prendre maison, carrosse, avoir un banc a la paroisse, y suin'e les offices 
 avec honneur, etre memo un jour pri6 de faire en C(5r<5monie la queteuse, et 
 tout cela sous I'habit et le nom de la comtesse de Sancy, bien qu'on soup- 
 ^onnat fort ce qu'il etait reellenient II ne fut adnioneste par rautorit(5 
 eccl^siastique sup^ricuro qu'a la demiere extrdmitd.' (Sainte-Beuve, 
 Causeries.)
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 261 
 
 minor follies. Dancing was the order of the evening, when 
 'les vingt-quatre violons,' the fiddlers of the royal estab- 
 lishment, the Strauss or Jullien band of their epoch, Avere 
 to be procured ; and a busy life they must have had of it. 
 Few grandees, hke Mademoiselle de Montpensier, kept 
 their own 'violons.' And what dancing! The art lost 
 half its spirit and attraction, when the graceful fashion of 
 the seventeenth century — that of the lady choosing her 
 partner — came to an end. But not only its spirit, but its 
 high importance and dignity, were as yet unabated. We 
 are misled by our own modern notions, when w^e marvel 
 at Sir Christopher Hatton, the dancing Chancellor ; or at 
 Ehzabeth, for being smitten wdth his attractive movements ; 
 or at the venerable fashions of our Inns of Court, when 
 ' the ancient reader, the music being begun, called to him 
 the master of the revels ; and at the second call, the ancient, 
 mth his white staff, advanced forward, and began to lead 
 the measures, follow^ed first by the barristers, and then the 
 gentlemen under the bar, all according to their several 
 antiquities ;' — a practice, possibly, absurd, but eacli age 
 has its absurdities. Li France, at all events, all the 
 world danced, from the King to the Savoyard with his 
 monkey. We have seen Eichelieu's performance with 
 the castanets ; but conceive the great and grave Sully 
 indulging in similar exhibitions ! Yet, if we may be- 
 lieve Tallemant des Eeaux, the custom of his household 
 was, that ' every evening until the death of Henry IV., 
 a certain La Eoche, valet-de-chambre to the king, used 
 to play on his lute the dances of the time ; and M. de Sully 
 danced by himself, with an extravagant kind of cap ou 
 his head, which he generally wore in his cabinet. The 
 spectators were Duret, afterwards President de Clievry, 
 and La Claville, afterwards Seigneur de Chavigny ; who, 
 with some women of indifferent reputation, were in the
 
 262 THE STKEETS OF PAEIS 
 
 liabit of buffooning every clay with him.' Does not a 
 graver even than Sully — the great Jansenist Abbe Arnauld 
 — recount, with some embarrassment, how he was forced 
 to dance at the court of Modena ? ' It is true,' says he, 
 putting the best face on the circumstance, ' that, properly 
 speaking, we did not dance, but only walked in cadence 
 without even taking off our cloaks.' 
 
 The extremely close quarters into which the fashionable 
 circles were packed, gave, as has been said, a certain air 
 which we should now call provincial even to this, the 
 finest society of Europe. There were the same sets, 
 jealousies, caprices, cabals, which are found in provincial 
 assemblages. Newspapers were scarcely known ; Loret's 
 odd rhyming ' Gazettes of the elegant world ' were indeed 
 a kind of versified ' Morning Post,' as minute in their des- 
 criptions, but less fresh in intelhgence ; but their places, as 
 far as scandal and gossip were concerned, seem to have 
 been more amply supplied by the extraordinary custom 
 of the ' couplets ' or ' noels,' which circulated from drawing- 
 room to drawing-room. Not an adventure or misadventure 
 could be reported or suspected, of a fair lady or cavalier 
 of honour, but it was immediately tagged into verse, and 
 found its way in this shape first into the hands of the 
 gossips, then into those of the street musicians. Many of 
 these innumerable epigrams have wit and smartness ; 
 many more an astonishing effrontery. But no kind of per- 
 sonality was forbidden in an age in which no one dreamt of 
 privacy. Bussy's fancy for hanging the walls of his chateau 
 with the likenesses of living beauties, vidth biographical 
 sketches and his own satirical comments by way of in- 
 scriptions, was so far from exciting any indignation, that 
 many ladies gave him their own portraits, in the hopes of 
 obtaining a flattering notice. In Boileau's satires, as they 
 at first came out, livino; individuals, even those accused of
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. 263 
 
 gross offences, were attacked by name, — a license which 
 was abandoned in his later editions, under a severer 
 government and stricter manners. 
 
 The absolute all-importance of ' society ' seems never 
 to have been so completely recognised ; duty, etiquette, 
 decent observance — all were postponed to its calls. 
 When Marshal Bassompierre was dressing for his char- 
 acter in a court ballet, ' on lui vint dire sottement (says 
 Tallemant) que sa mere etait morte. "Vous vous 
 trompez," repliqua-t-il. " elle ne sera morte que lorsque 
 le ballet sera fini!'" And Tallemant's own intimates, 
 the fair philosophers of the Hotel Eambouillet, seem to 
 have considered gaiety as the essential purpose of their 
 existence, quite as seriously as the emptiest coxcomb 
 of their acquaintance. It seems that the Marquis 
 de Eambouillet was very bhnd, but would not acknow- 
 ledge it, and therefore always went out to parties, which 
 was a great relief to his family, says Tallemant, as other- 
 wise somebody must have staid at home to take care 
 of him ! And the reasons which induced his daughter, 
 the princess of all precieuses, the fair Julia herself, to 
 lay aside at thuly-six her platonic antipathy to mar- 
 riage, were quite of the same description. 'Je pense 
 pourtant qu'elle considerait aussi que d'une vieille fdle 
 elle devenait une nouvelle mariee, et telle jeune femme 
 qui ne lui eiit pas cede, et ne Vedt pas crue, la regarda 
 aussitot comme une personne de qid elle pouvait ap- 
 prendre k bien vivre ; et puis, comme j'ai dejii remarque, 
 cela la remettait tout de nouveau dans le monde, et elle 
 aime fort les divertissements ! ' But, in fact, retreat 
 from the world Avas impossible, except into a convent ; 
 and not even there, under the discipline of some 
 gay abbesses. For even these devotional ' retreats ' 
 appear to have partaken pretty largely of the free and
 
 264 THE STREETS OP PAIUS 
 
 easy character wliicli belonged to other social freaks. 
 When Madame de Sable thought proper to ' faire son 
 salut,' she removed to the convent of her particular friends, 
 the austere nuns of Port-Eoyal. Her apartment was 
 close to the choir of their Church, and only a step or two 
 from their ' parloir.' Her reduced establishment was 
 composed of her physician, steward, dame de compagnie, 
 ' an eminent cook,' and some servants : she had, at first, 
 her carriage and horses. And thus, her biographer com- 
 placently remarks, she contrived to get up a good deal of 
 society about her, although the famous convent of Port- 
 Eoyal was situated at the very end of the Faubourg St. 
 Jacques, close to the present site of the Observatoire. 
 How could she have hved without it in a world like hers ! 
 People were born in public — married in public, the 
 bride receiving all the world in her alcove the day after 
 the wedding — and died in public. Death was but the 
 last scene of the play, to be performed with a theatrical 
 bow and exit. The young beauty, perishing of dissipation, 
 made her adieus to the world in appropriate costume and 
 sentiments. The worn-out statesman might not turn his 
 face to the wall in peace, but was surrounded by a whole 
 court in full dress, and talked on until his husky accents 
 could no longer convey the last of his smart sayings to the 
 listeners.* 
 
 All this wild pageant was soon to close, and a new act of 
 the historical drama to commence. At the conclusion of the 
 Fronde, the several parties threw themselves at the feet of 
 the young Louis XIV., like a set of dancers tired out with 
 their own mad exertions. And the observer cannot foil 
 
 * See the well-known print of Mazarin's death-bed, surrounded by ladies 
 at cards. According to Grimm, the Mardcbale de Luxembourg and two of 
 her friends played at loto by that of Madame du Dcflaud till she expired, 
 Piut at that time the proceeding was at least thought singular.
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 265 
 
 to draw two very important lessons from tlie result : the 
 one in favour of the hereditary principle of government ; 
 the other showing the conquests whicli may be achieved 
 by a strong will and decisive temperament, even with 
 the most moderate degree of ability. An usurper might 
 undoubtedly have restored order to France at tliis crisis, 
 and, by using dexterously her scattered elements of great- 
 ness and the turbulent zeal of her people, might have 
 raised her at once to a preponderating rank among the 
 states of Europe. But to effect this he must have pos- 
 sessed the genius of Eicheheu, Cromwell, or JSTapoleon ; 
 he must have cemented his authority with the blood and 
 ruin of the noblest famihes of France ; and his power, 
 when once established, would have been personal only, 
 and would have fallen to pieces on his demise, if not 
 earlier demolished by adverse contingencies ; for its ori- 
 ginal foundation would have rested on one principle only 
 — the need of order and stabihty felt after an age of 
 revolution. But the hereditary prince had for him, in 
 addition to that same need, which ralUed round him the 
 statesmen and sound thinkers of the nation and the indus- 
 trious classes, the strong prestige of the riglit of succes- 
 sion and the force of politico-religious feeling, securing 
 for him the far more rooted adherence of the body of 
 tlie people. If power, at this crisis, had fallen into the 
 hands of an imbecile prince, or of a careless and purpose- 
 less ruler, the opportunity would have been lost, peril aps 
 for ever ; France would soon have fallen back under the 
 dominion of favouritism, or of powerful aristocratic fac- 
 tions. But Louis XIV. was one of tliose happy accidents 
 which have so often preserved monarchies ; he was pre- 
 cisely the man for his hour, and lu' was nothing more. 
 Without a spark of genius. Avitlioiitsliiiiing abilities of any 
 kind, he possessed just the necessary qualities — love of
 
 266 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 order ; an indefatigable activity of mind and passion for 
 business ; sound health and a wonderful digestion ; graces 
 of person and demeanour ; reasonably good sense, and 
 unimpeachable manners ; and, far beyond all these, pride 
 without bounds, which could acknowledge no favourite or 
 master (favourite of the male sex Louis never had any, and 
 even the dominion which the last and wisest of his mis- 
 tresses exercised over him was partial and incomplete), and 
 that unsubduable will and obstinacy of purpose which 
 have ere now made heroes of less able men than he. 
 
 This was the conqueror of the age ; the personage who 
 was raised up to trample genius, strength, and individual 
 daring under foot, as if in mockery of their brilliancy. 
 And although the reader of the history of Louis XIV. has 
 his attention powerfully drawn ojBT to the grand spectacle 
 of comls and camps which it exhibits on the surface, it is 
 worth while to trace the under-current of national feeling, 
 especially during the first years of it. This is not very 
 easy to do with respect to an age of which courtiers were 
 the only historians ; yet the materials are not altogether 
 wanting ; and it is particularly curious to compare the 
 language of the men who witnessed both the first or rising 
 period of his fortunes, and the second, that of their full 
 splendour, when writing at those different eras. It would 
 be a mistake to suppose that the spirit of independence was 
 extinguished easily, or at once, notwithstanding the popu- 
 larity of Louis, and the unpopularity of the aristocratic 
 disturbers of the peace who had played their gambols for 
 so many years with impunity. On the contrary, it will 
 be seen that the first steps of absolutism were watched 
 witli dislike and conunented on with sarcasm ; that the 
 haughtiness of the king disgusted many of the upper 
 classes; tliat the stringency of his measures, particularly 
 in tlie financial department, pressed heavily on many
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 267 
 
 more. Nor were tlie sterner murmurs of republicanism 
 altogether wanting. The following sonnet (untruly at- 
 tributed to Boileau) is a specimen of many similar pieces 
 which circulated in secret from hand to hand in the period, 
 in question : — 
 
 Cc peuple que jiidis Dieu gouvernait lui-memc, 
 
 Trop las de son bonliem*, voulut avoir iin Iloi. 
 
 11^ bien, dit le Seigneur, peuple ingi'at et sans foi, 
 
 Tu sentiras bientot le poids du diademe. 
 
 Celui que je niettrai dans le pouvoir supreme 
 
 D'un empire absolu voudra reg-ner sur toi : 
 
 Ses seules volontds lui serviront de loi, 
 
 Et rien n'assou\dra son avarice extreme. 
 
 II cbercliera partout millc nouveaux moyens 
 
 Pour te Ynxiv Thonneur la liberty, les biens; 
 
 Tu te plaindras en vain de tant de violence. 
 
 Ce peuple en vit I'efFet, il en fut tjtonnd. 
 
 Ainsi regno aujourd'hui par les vceux de la France 
 
 Ce monarque absolu qu'on nomme Dieu-donue. 
 
 Let us carry our eyes thirty years onwards from his 
 accession, and how complete is the change ! The language 
 of independence is absolutely gone ; it had sunk into a 
 dead tongue in less than a generation : the sentiments 
 of patriotism and chivalry whicli spring from the heart of 
 Corneille are become mere prett}^ phrases in the mouth 
 of the personages of Eacine. Those who disliked the per- 
 son of Louis XIV., and contemned his abilities, are the 
 loudest among his twenty millions of worshippers. Nothing 
 is visible to indicate to the observer that the brilliant and 
 solid edifice which he contemplates has not lasted for 
 ever, and will not last for ever ; and every Frenclunan 
 seems to say of his monarchy, like the townsmen of (lie 
 city visited by Chidher the Wanderei-, — 
 
 Die Stadt stebt ewig an diesem Ort 
 Und ewig wird sie blcilx^u lort. 
 
 Whence arises this change, mihI especially in ihe senti- 
 ments of individual men — of ^vl•ilers who do not seem to
 
 268 THE STKEETS OF TAKIS 
 
 be attempting to deceive us, but to be themselves subju- 
 gated by the enchantment ? M. de Barante, who lias so 
 profoundly analysed this portion of his country's history, 
 shall answer ; and there is something in his answer which 
 seems prophetic of other times besides those of Louis. 
 
 'C'est que le succes est un grand maitre. Pour 
 presque tons les hommes, il est le jugement de Dieu, 
 Lorsqu'on voit reussir ce qu'on a blame ; lorsqu'on voit 
 durer ce qui avait paru fragile et ruineux ; lorsqu'on voit 
 tout se ranger, s'etablir, se discipliner tons le joug qu'on 
 avait voulu secouer, on se resigne aussi, et la pensee elle- 
 meme obeit, comme la volonte.' 
 
 Tlius — not all at once, but still with remarkable 
 rapidity, considering the greatness of the evil — chaos was 
 subdued, and. the social state of France reduced to a 
 degree of order and outward compactness such as no 
 European community had as yet attained. Take the best 
 era of Louis XIV. — the commencement of the reign of 
 Madame de Maintenon — and compare society as it then 
 existed with that of the days of the Queen-mother and 
 Mazarin, and the first impression will be that of prodi- 
 gious improvement in every particular. But when we 
 examine more closely we shall see that this miprovement 
 consists mainly, almost entirely, in the substitution of 
 definite views and orderly habits for the most perfect 
 negation of purpose and order which ever subsisted in any 
 great country. Take the instance of religion as one of 
 the most prominent. We have seen the strange inconsis- 
 tencies of the preceding generation. France was ruled 
 in succession by two princes of the church, and yet avowed 
 infidelity was no obstacle to ecclesiastical promotion and 
 favour, as in the case of Boisrobert, or to success and 
 high esteem in society, as in the case of Patru ; and the 
 dignitaries of the establishment afforded the oddest ex-
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 2G9 
 
 amples of life and manners wliicli France could furnisli. 
 In 1680, not only were the ordinary manners of the clergy 
 regular and their conduct free from reproacli, but 
 Eomanism had assumed in pubhc the most decorous and 
 dignified character (in contradistinction to superstitious) 
 which it has ever exhibited in its long history ; while an 
 avowed infidel was a thing banished and proscribed. So 
 in literature, the arts, manners and customs ; the change 
 was universal and equable. 
 
 One singular instance of it will occur to the reader. 
 In Voltaire's time it was the fashion in France to repre- 
 sent the Eno;hsh as a nation of ' humourists ' or ori^-inals. 
 And it was doubtless true that the superior independence 
 of our habits at that time allowed greater scope for per- 
 sonal eccentricities ; that men had more of individual 
 character here than in France, where the uniform tone given 
 by good society, and the preponderance of court and 
 fashion, had imparted a conventional and commonplace 
 air to the mass of the people. Now, in 1650, the French 
 nation abounded in ' originals.' Individual oddities of 
 manner and conduct — some proceeding from independ- 
 ent ways of thinking, some from mere carelessness — 
 were plentiful. The provinces were not yet emptied 
 of fine old gentlemen, nourished in the seclusion 
 of their greatness, and each riding his favourite hobby 
 with much indifference to Parisian taste. The literary 
 circles swarmed with extravagant poets and paradoxical 
 thinkers ; private studies with mad mathematicians and 
 seekers after the philosopher's stone. There were still 
 numbers who preferred to dress, amuse themselves, talk, 
 make love, live and die, according to tlieir own humour. 
 The reader may consult Paul de Mussct's amusing series 
 of papers entitled ' Les originaux du Dixscptieme Siecle,' 
 which are indeed mainlv ad;n)ted from Tallemant. Now
 
 270 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 Louis XIV. extinguished eccentricity : it was an assump- 
 tion of liberty which affronted him : and from that day it 
 has been comparatively rare in France. 
 
 But the reign of Louis XIV. (from his majority) com- 
 prehends two full generations of men. Now the first 
 peculiarity which will strike the observer of its mere 
 chronology is this, that all the really great names which 
 distinguish it are those of men who had attained to early 
 manhood at its commencement ; that is, men whose minds 
 were formed in the period of individuality and turbulence, 
 disciplined by the acquired habits of the period of com- 
 bination and order. It is so in literature, the state, theology, 
 arts, and arms. These were the men who really welcomed 
 the spirit of absolute government as a tutelary angel, to 
 preserve them from license ; who ranged themselves in 
 order of their own accord, and did not form mechanical 
 parts of a Une dressed by others ; who hved under self- 
 disciphne, not discipline imperiously imposed on them : the 
 broadest difference which can exist as re2:ards the formation 
 of character, and yet constantly forgotten by superficial 
 observers. The second generation was composed of men 
 who grew up under rule and line ; and never were child- 
 ren more inferior to their parents. And thus, as we pur- 
 sue the history of the most brilhant of monarchs, the 
 seductive phase of despotism gradually disappears, and 
 its dark and repulsive features become prominent. Of the 
 generous flames of former years, that of patriotism goes 
 out first : it expires with Marshal Vauban, not again to be- 
 come a light in France for a century, until the appearance 
 of Turgot. Theology shrinks into monotonous feebleness 
 after Protestantism has been destroyed, and Jansenism, the 
 more real expression of the piety of the age, persecuted into 
 retirement. Chivalry still burns on in capricious, fitful 
 flashes, but less and less conspicuous and pure as we pass
 
 m THE SEVEXTEEXTII CENTURY. 271 
 
 from Guise to Laiizun, from Laiizun to the Duke de 
 Eiclielieu. Loyalty itself, the only political virtue of 
 slaves, is extinguished at last; it can endure oppression, 
 slaughter, famine : but it is not proof against the jealousy, 
 the capricious ill-humour, the determined inaccessibility to 
 remonstrance, of a worn-out and unsuccessful despot : and 
 the o;reat Louis was rescued from utter abandonment on his 
 death-bed by nothing but the force of etiquette. And when 
 Saint Simon has conducted us through the last period of 
 decline, we cannot but ask ourselves — what did France 
 gain by the sixty years' experiment of her greatest king, 
 even in those respects in which, if in any, such an experi- 
 ment should have succeeded ? As to the condition of the 
 people, had it not terminated in misery ? As to literature, 
 in mediocrity ? As to morals, in depravity ? As to reh- 
 gion, in mere hj^^ocrisy ? Was not the France of the 
 Orleans regency, although more orderly, yet much more 
 corrupt and vicious in heart than the France of the Fronde? 
 Such were the phenomena of the growth of autocracy 
 under Louis XIV. How far they have been repeated under 
 other phases in later times, future historians of France 
 will have to say. But we must not exaggerate the truth, as 
 Mr. Buckle did when he pronounced that ' the simple fact 
 is that Louis XIV. survived the entire intellect of the French 
 nation' (p. 652). Under that rhetorical phrase there lurks 
 a deception. In the later years of the great monarch, 
 there was no outer development of intellectual greatness. 
 This was absolutely repressed by the jealous spirit of his 
 government. But under the ashes of the old and apparently 
 extino;uished volcano the lire of French ^jjenius burnt with 
 all its ordinary force, and more than its ordinary concen- 
 tration. The very repression of its energies added to 
 their strength, as such repression alwaj^s does wlien not 
 carried to tlie rigorous extreme of extinction. In the last
 
 272 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 decennium of that reign, especially, tlie minds of the young 
 were steadily ripening, for good or for evil, so as to be ready 
 to take advantage of the inevitable change, whenever it 
 should occur. The education of Jesuit colleges and a bi- 
 goted court was forming young freethinkers and democrats. 
 Food was accumulating under despotism for the mental 
 consumption of a generation licentious in its freedom. 
 The proof of this is to be easily found with a very little 
 attention to dates. It is very certain that, exceptions apart, 
 the intellect of a man is formed, and his fitness for future 
 development ascertained and completed, by the time he 
 has attained the age of twenty or twenty-five at the latest. 
 Wliat he acquires in after life is experience, and the con- 
 sequent power of making use of his trained faculties. 
 The faculties themselves have been formed before. Now 
 Montesquieu was twenty-five years old when Louis XIV. 
 died ; Voltake, twenty ; Saint Simon, forty ; and other 
 instances might be added to these, of minds destined to 
 exercise in various ways enormous influence over the subse- 
 quent period of development which, in truth, were formed 
 under the period of repression. It is in this way, more 
 perhaps than in any other, that tyranny is its own Ne- 
 mesis, and sows the dragon's teeth from which its own 
 future destroyers are to spring. 
 
 Of this long reign, the first years only were brilliant for 
 the metropohs. While the Spanish war lasted, Paris, as 
 we have seen, held continual festival. But after the peace 
 of the Pyrenees, and the death of Mazarin (1G60), the 
 king and court began to remove, first to Fontainebleau, 
 afterwards to St Germain's, and ultimately settled down in 
 the stateliness of Versailles. This great change in the 
 habits of the higher classes was very injurious to Paris 
 considered as a centre of society. The Marais, or 
 neighbom^hood of the Place Eoyale, continued long to
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. 273 
 
 be the fashionable quarter. The quays of the left bank, 
 whose architectural embellishment dates chiefly from this 
 reign, became popular as promenades : the world of fashion, 
 for a few years, used to parade u[) and down the broiling 
 pavement of the Quais des Theatins and Malaquais. 
 Here Mohere lived (Quai Conti) ; and here, for a short 
 time, his troop was established. But the eastern end of 
 the Faubourg Saint Germain was ultimately selected in 
 1687, after many delays, as the head-quarters of the 
 Comedie Francaise^ driven from the Palais Eoyal by Lully's 
 Opera company, the newest and most successful speculation 
 of the day ; for Lully, after fourteen years' directorship, 
 died worth 030,000 hvres in gold— a fact almost incredi- 
 ble, and solitary in the annals of managership. Eacine 
 has detailed the difficulty which the poor comedians found 
 in lodging themselves, from the opposition of scrupulous 
 clergymen and purse-proud citizens. A troop of robbers 
 could scarcely have been chased from site to site with 
 greater pertinacity than these, the most active promoters 
 of French, and therefore European civilisation. At length 
 they were planted in the Eue des Fosses St. Germain, now 
 Eue de TAncienne Comedie ; where Procopio the Sicilian 
 established his Cafe, the grandfather of all Cafes, and 
 the ancient rendezvous of tlie literary and theatrical world ; 
 which still exists — furnishing collee and dominoes to a 
 few students — to testify of the site of tlie most flourishing 
 and famous of all European theatres : for, taking all things 
 together, the drama has never, in modern times, risen to 
 such importance as within those walls. The theatre was 
 closed in 1770, and is said to be now a restaurant. Marat's 
 last lodging was close by: he had l)t'('n driven fi'om den to 
 den, almost as assiduously as the poor actors. 
 
 It was not until the reign of Louis XV. tliat the Fau- 
 bourg Saint Germain became the aristocratic (piarter, — a
 
 274 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 glory wliicli may now be said to have nearly abandoned 
 those monotonous walls, to kradiate, for the present, the 
 gayer roofs of the Faubourg Saint Honore, and the still 
 newer quarters to the westward. 
 
 In the absence of the court from Paris, the Bourgeoisie 
 and the Professions rose out of comparative insignificance, 
 thus preparing the Eevolution from afar ; and, hrst and 
 foremost, the profession of the law. The melancholy 
 quarter of the He Saint Louis, which arose out of a build- 
 ing speculation of the seventeenth century, was for a time 
 a favourite resort of second-rate fashion, and legal fashion 
 in particular. It had been a rural pleasance belonging to 
 the Chapter of Notre-Dame. In its gardens the last 
 crusade was preached by the Cardinal Legate Nicholas, in 
 1313, when Phihppe de Valois, Edward II. of England, and 
 many lords, both French and English, took the cross — an 
 empty parade, for the spirit of Saint Louis became extmct 
 in the generation which succeeded him. The same 
 gardens were the scene of the famous single combat between 
 the dog of Montargis and the murderer. In 1614, the 
 construction of the quarter was begun ; but the litigious 
 propensities of the Chapter ruined three successive sets of 
 adventurers before it was completed. When it rose — 
 smart, white, and uniform — from the muddy waters of the 
 Seine, it attracted at once a portion of the richer classes of 
 the metropolis ; for the fear of malaria had not yet begun 
 to remove the habitations of the wealthy from the river 
 borders, — those favourite haunts of earlier times. But it 
 became especially the head-quarters of legal families, by 
 reason of its neighbourhood to the Palais de Justice. The 
 Hotel Bretonvihiers, planted on the eastern extremity of 
 the isle, where the Seine first divides on entering Paris, is 
 termed by Tallemant des Eeaux, in an ecstasy of Cockney 
 admiration, ' tlie most fmely situated building in the
 
 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 275 
 
 world, after the Seraglio ! ' Tlie Hotel Lambert, built 
 for a President of tliat name, dreary and l)egrimed as its 
 exterior now appears, contains within a perfect treasury 
 of curiosities for those fond of the details of social life 
 long since departed. Under a succession of rich and 
 fashionable owners, it received nearly all the literature 
 and art of Paris for a century, down to Voltaire and his 
 Marchioness. There is a world of Parisian art half choked 
 in its venerable dust — ceihngs by Lebrun and Lesueur 
 (though his finest paintings have been removed) ; archi- 
 tectural details by Levau, sculptures of Francois Perier — 
 but all is decayed, and with difficulty preserved from 
 imminent collapse. It stands a vast ruin in a decayed 
 quarter. Dyers and printers seem now the most numerous 
 occupants of the Isle St. Louis ; and it wears the singular 
 aspect of a French provincial town of the dullest class, 
 inserted, as it were, bodily into the centre of the turbulent 
 metropolis. 
 
 The Orleans Eegency saw the birth of the Quarter de la 
 Chaussee d'Antin, of which the four or five well-known 
 streets have more abundant and more various history to 
 record than any similar spot in Europe of the same age. 
 Before 1720, a marshy, uneven, ill-kept-up cross-road, 
 conducted from the Boulevards to the scattered fields of 
 Clichy and Les Porcherons, on tlic north-west of Paris. It 
 was the popu1;ir line of comnuuiicatioii with suburbs sin- 
 gularly rich in (juinguettes, rural taverns, and a variety of 
 retreats abundantly frequented by the fashionable youth of 
 tliat moral epoch. On y allait (jris, on en revenait ivve. 
 Oil Sundays, half tlie idle population of Paris turned 
 out in the same direction. Tlie (idds Avere especially 
 thronged with parties of the military and (heir female 
 companions. Tf llicre was a markml absence at the evening 
 muster of the Dragons de la Keine or the Gardcs-Suisses, 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 it was only necessary to march a patrol across the common- 
 fields of the Porcherons, and soldiers were gathered in 
 abundance. But, on week-days, more fashionable visitors 
 were supposed to throng the dirty lane from the Porte 
 Gaillon to the same village. Many a squalid hackney- 
 coach was suspected of conveying a load of rank and 
 beauty to some mysterious rendezvous. Many times 
 aristocratic rapiers were crossed against the blades of 
 plebeian intruders in out-of-the-way corners ; for, ' tons les 
 vilains,' as St. Simon condescendingly observes, ' n'ont pas 
 toujours peur.' Where the Eue de la Chaussee d' An tin 
 now crosses the Eue de Provence stood, in those days, a 
 rickety bridge across the sewer or Euisseau de Menilmon- 
 tant : it was called the Pont d'Arcans. Here it was that 
 the Comte de Fiesque (le petit hon of Madame de Sevigne) 
 encountered M. de Tallard, each having a fair friend in 
 his company ; but Madame de Lionne and Mademoiselle 
 d'Arquien threw themselves between the combatants like 
 the Sabines of old, and they parted, each exchanging a 
 cursory embrace with the lady who did not belong to him. 
 In 1720 the municipality was authorised to open a new 
 street along this popular line of road ; and the ground on 
 each side was rapidly occupied by suburban hermitages, 
 succeeded in their turn by gay hotels. It has had a 
 greater succession of names than any other in fickle Paris. 
 It was first Eue de la Chaussee Gaillon ; then De I'Hotel 
 Dieu (from passing over some ground belonging to that 
 foundation) ; then De la Chaussee d'Antin. This name it 
 derived from the Hotel d'Antin, the celebrated residence 
 of the well-known voluptuary, the Duke de Eichelieu ; 
 which stood, and still stands (though it seems to be threat- 
 ened with demohtion by the projected Eue de Eeaumur), 
 near the southern side of the Boulevard, facing the entrance 
 of the street ; — commonly called Pavilion dc Hanovrc,
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTir CENTUEV. 277 
 
 because the funds for its constructluii Avere said to liave 
 been mainly drawn from the pockets of the people of 
 Hanover during the Duke's mihtary occupation of the 
 Electorate. Under this name the street rose and throve ; 
 at first as a street of a certain fashion, thouijh of a rather 
 equivocal description ; from which position it grew by 
 degrees into the choice seat of commercial opulence and 
 lettered dignity ; and ultimately into the head-quarters of 
 the transitory aristocracy of the Empire. Here was the 
 hotel of Madame Montesson, who attained the honour of 
 marrying a Prince of the Blood. Here lived Madame 
 Eecamier. It was in the same street that the fair Gui- 
 mard raised herself an enchanted palace, with the money 
 of her sultan-like adorer the Prince de Soubise. But le 
 squelette des graces w^as better skilled in ruining princes 
 than enriching herself She sold her hotel by lottery. It 
 was won by the Countess Dulau, who sold it to Pcrregaux 
 the banker, for 500,000 francs. Here Perregaux' daughter 
 was married to Marmont ; and Perregaux' clerk, Jacques 
 Laflitte, laid the foundation of the fortune which furnished 
 the sinews of war in those memorable days which ruined 
 both Marmont and himself. The glory of the hotel is de- 
 parted ; the bank subsists, but tlie residence is gone ; and we 
 rather think that an apothecary's shop occupies the front 
 of the tem})le of the hooped and powdered Terpsichore. 
 
 In 1791 the street took the name of Mirabeau, who 
 lodged in it, at No. 42. It was Irom hence that one 
 hundred thousand mourners escorted the corpse of the 
 miglity demagogue to St. Genevieve. In 1703, the memory 
 of Mirabeau was already proscribed ; his ashes Avere btiii- 
 ished from the Pantheon; and the street took the namcoC 
 MontBlnnc, llie Pepublic having recently taken ihc honldc 
 of annexing Savoy for the (irsi time lo its dominions. 
 It was under tliis name that it shared so laigely in tlie
 
 278 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 glories of the Empire. Madame Tallicn (afterwards more 
 uneasily lodged as Princess de Chimay, among the dowa- 
 gers of the Faubourg St, Germain), Cardinal Fesch, and 
 others shed a brief lustre on its annals. Next to Fesch lived 
 Ney, and afterwards Caulaincourt ; and next again Sebas- 
 tiani. But 1815 came, and swept away the name of Mont 
 Blanc, and the fortunes and glories of the age of Napoleon. 
 The street resumed its ante-revolutionary title. It struggled 
 with decaying prosperity against the tide of fashion, which 
 gradually drifted the monied aristocracy into more distant 
 quarters ; and, unlike its sister streets of the neighbourhood, 
 1830 brought it no relief, either in change of name or 
 chanoe of circumstances. Vulojar commerce has invaded 
 it — upstart omnibuses have replaced the equipages of old 
 times — ^it is become already a modern antique ; — the de- 
 serted metropolis of M. Scribe, which still seems to the 
 imagination peopled with wealthy financiers, their senti- 
 mental ladies and interesting secretaries, magnanimous 
 colonels of the Empire, rich uncles in ailes de pigeon^ 
 and cravats of the fashion of the Directory, and all the 
 other dramatis personoe of that amusing Vaudeville-world 
 which Avas the delight of our youth. 
 
 The streets immediately adjoining partake of the same 
 character ; the whole quarter is full of memorials of the 
 very quintessence of recent history. Other districts have 
 monopolised more of aristocratic dignity and dulness : the 
 very life of the world has pulsated in these narrow avenues. 
 Where the street just described abuts to the north on the 
 Kue St. Lazare, stood a well-known tavern, famous in the 
 bacchanalian stanzas of Vade, and his brother poets, under 
 the name of the cabaret Eamponneau ; — celebrated, also, 
 for the visits paid it occasionally by personages scarcely to 
 be expected in a cabaret ; where, as some strange rumours 
 say, Madame de Genlis her.self, more than once, in frolic-
 
 IN THE SEVEXTEEXTII CEXTURV. 279 
 
 some disguise, shared in the revehy of lackeys and guards- 
 men. Close by, enveloped in its discreet shrubbery, 
 stood the Pavilion de Fronsac, another residence of the 
 Marshal Duke of Eichelieu, whose name is almost as inti- 
 mately connected witli the history of modern Paris as that 
 of the Cardinal. This pavilion became, under the Con- 
 sulate, the retreat of the beautiful Creole, Madame Hamelin, 
 — the queen of fashion for a short season ; who may 
 be said to have had the honour of cooperating with 
 Napoleon in reducing the wild exuberance of the Eepublic 
 to decency and order. Under her soft influence, the orgies 
 of Madame Talhen and her contemporaries gave place to 
 the rather stiflly brilhant style of the JSTapoleonic era. In 
 her reign the contre-danse returned, and the epoch of the 
 waltz began. Although satirists were not wanting — 
 although some coarse rivals insinuated that the fair West 
 Indian disseminated des miasmes de negresse, and others 
 would compare her features to those of Eustan, the 
 Emperor's Mameluke — yet her triumph was complete : 
 contractors and marshals — the demigods of the day — 
 Ouvrard, Perregaux, Montholon, Moreau, sighed at her 
 feet ; and rumour, for a moment, whispered unutterable 
 things of Ca3sar himself : it then died away, and, with its 
 decay, soon ended Madame Ilamelin's ephemeral reign. 
 Her pavilion was preserved by its owner, the Duchess 
 of Vicenza, amidst the general demolition which has taken 
 place of the suburban habitations of this quarter ; most 
 of which were erected either by ladies of the oj^era or 
 financiers. ' Tivoh,' once so well known to idlers in 
 Paris, situated close to the northern end of tlie Pme de la 
 Chaussee d'Antin, was originally tlie garden of one of these 
 favourites of fortune, the farmer-general La Bouxiere, who 
 spent enormous sums on its construction. 
 
 The Eue Lallitte, haul by, was oi-iginally clnisteiifil
 
 280 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 Eue d'Artois in 1770; in lionoin- of the ill-fated prince 
 whom, after sixty agitated years, Laffitte was to drive 
 from the throne. While the street was still fresh in the 
 glory of its white unmeaning facades, one Cerntti, a Pied- 
 montese, took a lodging in an entresol. He had been a 
 Jesuit ; had written in defence of the Jesuits, and made 
 noise enou"'li in their cause to cjet his book condemned to 
 the flames by the j^fii'hament of Paris, But times were 
 altered ; disappointments in love and politics had turned 
 the ex-Jesuit into a democrat ; and Cerutti soon set up a 
 revolutionary journal — La Feuille Villageoise. Mirabeau 
 and Talleyrand were his chief contributors. The journal 
 succeeded ; Cerutti pronounced Mirabeau's funeral oration ; 
 and these services to the nation secured for him the most 
 evanescent of French honours. The street became ' Kue 
 Cerutti ' in lieu of d'Artois, At the end of the street rose 
 tlie magnificent Hotel Thelusson — a residence of the 
 Genevese banker, the patron of Necker ; whose fortune 
 and less ambitious popularity survived those of his more 
 celebrated j unior partner. This was such a palace as might 
 have been built out of Sevres china, to be inhabited by 
 shepherds and lap-dogs, a la Louis XV. In the short in- 
 terval of wild bacchanalian excitement which followed the 
 downfall of Eobespierre — when tlie violently -repressed 
 habits of a licentious age and j^eople burst furiously forth — 
 it became the head-quarters of the luxury of the day. The 
 Hotel d'Augny, in the same neighbourhood (afterwards the 
 residence of M. Aguado), had been the scene of the first 
 Bals a la Victime. But the Bals Thelusson surpassed even 
 the nodes Neronisjam medias, — the Luxembourg festivals 
 of Barras. Here was the rendezvous of the Incroyahles 
 and Merveilleuses. While Madame Tallien, the princess 
 of tlK^ Luxembourg, affected the Eoman style and costume, 
 tiie rival salon of Madame Thelusson was peopled by
 
 IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 281 
 
 Atheniennes^ equally undressed, and less ornamented. 
 But all the wit and talent of the day frequented it, with 
 one remarkable exception — Madame de Staiil did not 
 appear there : pride, on one side or the otlier, banished 
 the daughter of the junior partner from the drawing-room 
 of the widow of his quondam associate. 
 
 Here it was that Bonaparte first dreamed of fashionable 
 life. The young, unpolished, but all-observing provincial 
 lieutenant, living in his quiet lodgings of the Eue du Mail, 
 after the Coniite de Salut Public had turned him out of 
 active employment, upon his refusal to serve in La Vendee, 
 met Madame Beauharnais in this society, on which Ave 
 may imagine him to have looked with a kind of envious 
 admiration. However this may be, he and his family 
 evinced a marked partiality for the Chaussee d'Antin. 
 After his conquest of the Sections, he removed to a charm- 
 ing httle house hard by, in the Eue Chantereine — now, in 
 his honour, Eue de la Victoke — where he lived until the 
 hour arrived for his occupying the palaces of the Bourbons. 
 Murat took the Hotel Thelusson. Not long after he left 
 it, it fell into the hands of a spirit congenial with his own 
 — an army tailor. M. Berchut had made a fortune by 
 selling iniiforms, in days when their first owners seldom 
 had the good luck to wear them out. He invested it in 
 building speculations. He demolished the celebrated hotel, 
 w^ith its arcades, gardens, artificial rocks, and all the recol- 
 lections that belonged to the spot — and the street became 
 dull and uniform as any of its fiat-faced neighbours. 
 But its political destinies were not accomplished. Here 
 lived Jacques Laffitte. Hither, on the 20th July 1S:)0, 
 when the battle was well-nigh decided, llueked the cc )uit ins 
 of his provisional majesty, the populace, who seemed on (lie 
 eve of a defmite reinstatement in his annrchical rights. 
 The sordid intriguer, tlie waiter on Erovidenee, the timid
 
 282 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 capitalist who sought protection rather than promotion, 
 crowded these approaches, now so sohtary, with eager 
 advice and covert sohcitations. It was a tremblinf»; and 
 unchgnified assemblage ; for the result of affairs out of doors 
 yet hung in the balance ; the fear of being too late was in 
 ludicrous conflict with that of being too early : at any 
 moment, a few files of infantry might direct their step 
 towards the Kue d'Artois, become the focus of insurrection 
 — and then the game was up. It is due to the worthy 
 banker to say, that he stood firm, as became the represen- 
 tative of the great monied interest in this its crowning 
 struggle against feudality. M. Louis Blanc assures us, that 
 on one occasion the sound of musketry in the neighbour- 
 hood actually cleared the hotel of all its visitors : it proved 
 to be only the discharge in the air of a regiment fraterniz- 
 ing with the mob ; but Laffitte remained at his post, and 
 ] profited by the interval to get his sore leg dressed. One 
 by one the guests returned, and complete triumph was 
 announced by an unerring prognostic — the arrival of Tal- 
 leyrand. Did it occur to the veteran to remember the 
 meetings at his friend Cerutti's, and the Feuille Villageoise, 
 and the concoction, forty years before, of the first act of 
 the drama still in course of performance ? 
 
 But we are trespassing far beyond the bounds of our 
 sober antiquarianism. We have been dreaming of old 
 Paris, in the middle of a world too active and awake to 
 suit with the temper of such reveries. The endeavour to 
 fix the attention on the past has even something painful, 
 and out of place, in full view of a present so busy and 
 changeful as ours. Centuries of stationary ease, or slow 
 advance, seem those in which the spirit of man most fitly 
 addresses itself to look backward, and to indulge in his- 
 torical inquiry. Now, when we are plainly commencing 
 an era of changes in the fortunes of our race, the speculator
 
 IN THE SEVENTEEXTII CENTURY. 283 
 
 who turns round to contemplate the past vicissitudes of 
 things seems ahnost Uke the man who should busy himself 
 in meditating and recounting the dreams of the night, at 
 his entrance on a day of active and brilliant exertion. 
 New Paris, the centre of a great Empire, with its lines of 
 railway connection, will outgrow the limits of the city of 
 our day, even more rapidly than the existing city has 
 swelled beyond the old boundary of the Eomans in their 
 paUsaded island. The dense centre is being cleared out ; 
 whole quarters of the city of Philip le Bel are swept away, 
 to make elbow-room for the new generation ; while the 
 displaced mass is spread far and wide over the plains, 
 which seem to invite its dispersion. The fortifications of 
 1841, constructed on the principle of 'keeping the outer 
 enceinte at a distance from the city, properly so called,' 
 will become Boulevards in their turn ; and the fashion of 
 some future age will make its promenades of those speci- 
 mens of the wisdom of the Orleans reign. 
 
 Already (1864) the eye of the passer-by, looking from 
 the southern bank of the Seine, sees only a few dozen old 
 houses left opposite him, with their fantastic fronts and 
 forests of chimneys, between the corner of the Louvre and 
 that of the Pont Neuf, as fra2;ments of his beloved old 
 Paris. They will soon disappear, and tlie river flow 
 between two Hues of uniform, self-satisfied-looking-barrack- 
 like fronts, with smooth faces and lofty roofs, types of tliat 
 monotonous level of character and those centralised insti- 
 tutions — so say the satirists — whicli liave I'cplaced the 
 Gothic variety of the feudal ages, and the romantic splen- 
 dour of the Eenaissance. * 
 
 * It is idle work to criticise details wliere the general result is so magnificent 
 as in the case of modern Paris, such as tlio lavish architectural profusion 
 of the last ten years liave rendered it. The universal apphiuse of the wcirhl 
 would rebuke tlie caviller. Nevertheless, an auti(|uarian must be permitted
 
 284 THE STREETS OF PARIS 
 
 to regret the perpetration of a few sins against sentiment and a few n gainst 
 taste, such as might easily have been avoided, and may perhaps, to a certain 
 extent, yet be remedied. 
 
 1. Alexis de Tocqiieville, whose fine taste was almost as remarkable a 
 quality as his political sagacity, used to say that a great opportunity was lost 
 when the recent constructions of the Louvre were commenced on their present 
 plan. The old pile consisted of the work of two several ages : that of the 
 Renaissance, of which the finest specimen, perhaps, is to be found in the so- 
 called Galerie d'Apollon and adjacent buildings ; and that of Louis XIV. 
 The architect had to select between these two for his model. Unhappily, 
 ho chose the latter, and by far the inferior ; nor will the modern Louvre, 
 tliough grand as a whole from a certain massive uniformity, exhibit anything 
 like the almost ideal beauty of detail which might have been achieved if 
 the daring essay of the genius of the sixteenth century had been adopted 
 and embellished by the trained taste of the nineteenth. 
 
 2. Another error, as I caimot help considering it, was committed (and 
 similar errors are in coarse of commission every day in England) when, in 
 the desire to bring some fine monimients of architecture into more con- 
 spicuous observation, and more into keeping, as it was supposed, with the 
 enlarged space and increased scale of building around them, the improvers 
 pulled down the masses of building which hemmed them in, and exposed 
 them to the public gaze in open spaces. It was forgotten — it is, as 1 have 
 said, every day forgotten — that the original builders did not intend them to 
 stand in open spaces. We may be well assured that these men of genius 
 had calculated duly, and made their allowance for the point of proximity at 
 which they intended their elevations to be seen. Look, for instance, at the 
 so-called Colonnade of the Louvre : the beautiful work of the brothers Per- 
 rault, the most pleasing perhaps to the eye of all specimens of Parisian 
 architecture, whatever fault the men of precedent may find with it. (Sec, 
 for the respective shares of those two remarkable men in its execution, . 
 a passage in the Causeries du I^undi, vol. v. p. 211.) It is reasonable to 
 suppose that they had in view the eflect which it would produce on 
 spectators seeing it from the point from which most of them would naturally 
 see it ; that is to say, from the pavement close to the line of houses which 
 then stood opposite ; c;onsiderably in advance of tlie present line, and of 
 tlie church of St. Germain I'Auxerrois. Seen at that angle, its proportions 
 were satisfactory to the eye. Now, the view ordinarily obtained of it 
 from the modern ' trottoir ' opposite, is at nearly twice the former distance. 
 And the result is that the entaldature appears dwarfed and insignificant, and 
 the eye seems to require an addition to the height of the building which 
 would nevertheless spoil it. 
 
 So, again, the tower of St. Jacques la Boucherie is a fine specimen of 
 
 late Clothic ; and in former days, as it rose picturesquely from the mass of 
 
 dark lieavy-roofed houses which pressed close against the lower part of it, 
 
 there was something very imposing in its appearance. It is, of course,
 
 IN THE SEVEXTEENTII CENTUllY. 235 
 
 still striking from a distance : but from a distance only. By 'wnj of ini - 
 provemeut, all the surrounding buildings have been cleared away, and it 
 stands, naked, dismal, and out of place, like a solitary tooth left in an unfur- 
 nished jaw, in the middle of its prim little green area. The greatest kind- 
 ness which could be done to it would be to cover its nudity by piling up 
 masses of masonry against its sides again.
 
 \ 
 
 
 286 
 
 4' 
 
 \\' 
 
 
 
 
 
 „■■» 
 
 / 
 
 ir' 
 
 
 
 
 
 %■' 
 
 
 A 
 
 VISIT TO 
 
 LUTZEN 
 
 
 October 1 
 
 .862. 
 
 
 The Battle of Llitzen, 1632, still affords one of tlie most 
 interesting (JiaptSi^m^miTitary history, notwithstanding 
 all the gigantic additions which the annals of the last and 
 present century have made to it. Though not precisely 
 one of the ' decisive' battles of history, fof'^it 'occurred just 
 half-way in the period of the Thirty Years' War, yet it 
 w^as, in truth, the turning point of that contest: up to that 
 day, the event in debate was the annihilation of une party 
 by the other ; after it, the terms oi separation only. To 
 "the soldier it Ts'T.SSiiorable as CKe last field in wliich the 
 old system of tactics — that inherited from the ancients by 
 I the men of the ' Eenaissance ' — was fairly pitted against 
 I the modern ; for the modern military art may be truly 
 described as a development only of that introduced by 
 Gustavus Adolphus. But it is more famous as tlie 
 occasioiiT of victory and death to one of the few leading 
 spirits of the Avorld's history — one of the lew in whom 
 nobleness of heart and purpose, and preeminence "of 
 o;enms, were so fused together as to constitute the true 
 character of the hero. 
 
 It Avas Avell, no doubt, for a curious posterity, that an 
 action of this importance occurred in a civiHsed period, 
 and in the heart of much-endurino' and much-writinui; 
 Germany, the home of ' la nation ecrivassiere.' But the 
 result is nevertheless somewhat perplexing. The literature
 
 A VISIT TO LiJTZEN. 287 
 
 of Lutzeii would alone furnish out a small catalogue. The 
 presses throughout Germany, France, and Italy seem to \ 
 have gone to work simultaneously and immediately on the 
 receipt of the news. ' Flying sheets,' containing professed 
 descriptions of it, swarm in every library. Preachers, ] 
 Protestant and Catholic, improved the occasion from a ^ 
 thousand pulpits, and every one of them, that could afford j^ 
 it, resolved that the world should not lose the benefit of j 
 his pious eloquence. Then the caricaturist and the ballad- "j 
 monger got hold of it, whose fugitive but sometimes au- 
 thentic hints must be studied in the bulky repubhcations 
 of modern antiquaries. Nor did the interest cease when 
 the graver class of authors came on the stage. Political 
 historians, religious historians, dynastic historians and 
 genealogists, topographers, biographers, all had something 
 to say on so renowned a catastrophe, and every one was in 
 duty bound to add something new, of fact or speculation, 
 to what had been ascertained by his predecessors. Next, 
 in the last century, followed the herd of German professors 
 and other literates, whose quaint little Latin dissertations in 
 quarto darken so many a question, and deepen so many a 
 paradox. These attached themselves, by predilection, tt) 
 minute and curious questions of fact or credulous tradition : 
 tlie mode of the King's death ' de dubid ccede Gustavi 
 Adolplii Regis,' furnished materials for many — and I have 
 the titles of two at least under my eyes, about the king's 
 magic sword : ' de gladio magico, quocum Gustavus 
 Adolphus inprcelio apud Liltzen pugnaverit' Lastly, tlie 
 Wallenstein mania, for which Schiller has to answer, 
 procltrc?;^~in"oLir times such a number of biographies of 
 that personage, and of controversial essays on the ques- 
 tionable points of his history, garnished with oi-iginal 
 correspondence and extracts from arcliivcs, that these 
 alone furnisli a mass formidable to c()nteni[)latc. 
 
 ^ *»«M-^rhM*n«>'<>i' *^ *
 
 288 A VISIT TO LiJTZEN. 
 
 The writer of these pages must not pretend to any tiling hke 
 an extensive acquaintance with the vast corpus historicum 
 of which he has just sketched (and skimmed) the circum- 
 ference ; but he has read enough to find himself bewiklered 
 by the utterly irreconcilable accounts of every main feature 
 of the day. It was a stand-up fight, with little of previous 
 manoeuvring, fought between midday and sunset, by two 
 armies drawn out in a perfectly open held. ' Daylight and 
 champian,' one would have thought, could ' discover no 
 farther.' And yet this swarm of ingenious penmen have 
 succeeded in obscuring the story with a multitude of con- 
 tradictions. Almost everything is disputed : the number 
 of the combatants (to the extent of 100 per cent.); the 
 number and arrangement of regiments, and names of their 
 commanders ; the hour, place, and circumstances of the 
 King's deatli ; the hour of Pappenheim's arrival on the 
 field (the critical point of the contest) ; nay, even the 
 important questions, whether Wallenstein was in a litter 
 or on horseback, with his stirruj5~' wrapped up in silk to 
 alleviate the pressure on his gouty limb — a device of 
 Charles V., according to his autobiography ; and whether 
 Gustavus's charger was white, 'brown-black,' or 'apple- 
 grey.' Having referred to these contradictions, the writer 
 intends to waive further discussion of them, and to compile 
 the best account he can by comparison of authorities. 
 And he can only recommend to anyone w]io may be as 
 curious as himself, two measures : the first to procure, if 
 he can, F. E. F. Phihppi's ' Death of Gustavus Adolphus,' 
 printed at Leipzig in 1832 — it consists only of a hundred 
 pages, and the author was ' Steuer-rath ' at LUtzen, and 
 had a pair of eyes ; the next, to carry Phihppi in his 
 })ocket, and visit the battle-field, which is easily reached 
 and may be soon explored.
 
 
 '^ -f 
 
 u 
 
 A VISIT TO LtJTZEX. /z8,9 
 
 The little town of jjutzcii \lies between several inter- 
 secting lines of raikoaS; and at some distance from each. 
 Tlie ordinary tourists' approach to it is consequently by 
 carriage or omnibus from Leipzig, ten or twelve English 
 miles away. But, for my own part, I walked to it from 
 the station at Corbetha, on tlio hue between Halle and 
 Weimar — a pleasant two hours' stroll, along footpaths and 
 cross-roads, through a land of teeming fertihty, alive with 
 the whole population of the neighbourhood busy at their 
 potato harvest. The pedestrian crosses the Saale by a 
 rope-ferry — here a sullen deep stream, cutting its way 
 through strata of diluvial gravel, about the size of the 
 Severn at Worcester ; passes the pretty bowery village of 
 Vesta, witli its aged hndens ; and thence traverses the 
 open plain which extends to the neighbourhood of Leipzig, 
 and in the middle of which Llitzen is placed. A rich 
 and joyous-looking expanse of land, studded with villages 
 and tall ungainly church steeples ; here and there, bedded ~ 
 in the soil, one of those problematical boulders of dark- 
 red granite which the glaciers transported hither, accord- 
 ing to modern belief, from distant Scandinavia, and which 
 now chiefly serve as landmarks : far in the south, the 
 first blue outlines of the Erzgebirge faintly show them- 
 selves. Such is the aspect of the vast battle-field of 
 Northern Germany, the scene of the greatest military 
 events of modern history v -of which it ifiay be said, with 
 even grSaterTfiith than of tlie plains round Flein^us and 
 Waterloo,-that 'not an ear of corn is pure from the blood 
 of men.' For from tTiat elevated station at Oorbetha, or, 
 stilr~better, from tlie old castle tower at Merseburg, the 
 eye embraces at once the site of that ancient victory 
 obtained by Henry tlie Fowler over the Huns in a.d. 934 ; 
 of the two battles of Lei})/ig (or Ihx'itenfeld), in tlie 
 
 u 
 
 1> t » 
 
 /
 
 290 A VISIT TO LUTZEiN". 
 
 Thirty Years' War ; of Lutzeii, of Ivossbach,* of Gross- 
 Gorsclieii, vulgarly called the second battle of Lutzen, in 
 ' 1813 ; and may identify the church towers of some of 
 those villages which blazed one by one that same year, 
 in the three October days of the ' Battle of the Nations,' 
 when, for the first and last time in authentic history, half 
 a million of men were ranged against each other in a 
 pitched field. 
 
 Approaching Lutzen on this (western) side, the traveller 
 is able to estimate the optical error which, as we shall 
 presently see, misled the Swedes, and partly disconcerted 
 their plans. The lofty old towers of the church and 
 castle, and the high-pitched roofs, rising in an open 
 field, and on the farther side of a slight depression in the 
 ground, seem much nearer than they really are. 
 I Lutzen itself is a thoroughly old-fashioned forgotten- 
 ' looking little Saxon town, with walls and fosse partially 
 I preserved, and the open country on all sides extending 
 • close up to them. It has now about 500 houses, and is 
 traditionally believed to have been more considerable in 
 old times ; as indeed must have been the case, or else the 
 municipality indulged in a fine spirit of local exaggera- 
 tion when, in a report dated 1651, they mention that 
 Wallenstein's troops, before the great battle, set fire to the 
 ' suburbs of their city ; ' represented now by two or three 
 beer-houses only, and one or two farm-granges. Passing 
 the town, and following the road to Leipzig, for about 
 three-quarters of an English mile, the traveller sees on his 
 left sometliing like an obelisk, which his imagination will 
 fix on at once as a monument of the battle, but which is, 
 in truth, only the chimney of an abandoned shaft for 
 
 * Those of Jciiia and Aucrstadt, tboujjb not actually in sight, may be 
 added from their proximity.
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEX. 291 
 
 digging peat, here found in large deposits beneath the 
 gravel. But, presently afterwards, he discovers, close on 
 the right hand of the road, the central object of his search 
 — the 'Swede's Stone.' It stands, as we shall see, not 
 exactly oTT'the spot where the Idng is supposed to have 
 fallen, but within a few yards of it. The stone is a rough 
 porphyritic boulder, of the kind already described ; and 
 bears on its northern face, fronting the road, the inscrip- 
 tion, 'G. A. 1G32.' It is surrounded, after the kindly 
 German fashion, with a Httle shrubbery and gravel walk, 
 and surmounted by a Gothic arch of cast-iron, placed 
 there some twenty years ago by subscription ; executed 
 in very fair taste, but injuring the simplicity of the stern 
 old monument. It was a bold assthetic thoufrht of his 
 majesty's equerry and fellow-soldier, Jacob Erichson — 
 though carried out with something of the roughness of 
 execution belonging to the age — when he harnessed thir- 
 teen boors of the neighbouring village of Meuchen to 
 this stone, which lay at some distance, and made them 
 drag it ' wdth sweat and tears ' to its present site, from 
 whence it looks eternally over the northern plain of 
 Germany towards the hero's own distant Scandinavia. 
 'Yet this is not the exact spot where the king fell,' adds 
 the narrative (Vulpius, Megalurgia Martisburgiea, i. e. 
 the Marvels of Merseburg), ' but their strength was 
 exhausted.' 
 
 Arrived at the Schwedenstein, the visitor may make 
 himself master of the details of the action with l)ut 
 little difficulty, thanks to the level character of the 
 ground and absence of hedges. No doul)l tliero are 
 ciceroni to be had; but, for my own i):irt. I IouikI (liat 
 a two-groschen-piece and a shake of ilic liainl. ad- 
 ministered to a beautil'ul iiyiii[)h of seven, wlio was out 
 
 u 2
 
 202 A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 
 
 potato-gathering with her family, sufficed to l:)riiig about 
 ' me enough of lier friends and admirers to impart all the 
 information I wanted, and more than I could understand — 
 although the pure Saxou dialect is a civilised one, and 
 comprehensible, with some attention, by one who possesses 
 only the ordinary allowance of book-German. 
 
 Ill order to make the battle intelligible, it is not ne- 
 cessary to weary the reader with much preliminary dis- 
 sertation. It is enough to remember that in September 
 1G32, Gustavus and Wallenstein, having exhausted the 
 ■] country about Nuremberg, and lost great part of their 
 '; armies in vainly confronting one another, parted as it 
 I were by mutual consent. The Swede moved into Bavaria ; 
 the Austrian into Saxony, where his hope was to negotiate 
 with and win over the wavering Elector of that country. 
 Alarmed lest this scheme should succeed, Gustavus re- 
 traced his steps with singular rapidity to Nuremberg, and 
 thence through Thuringia to Erfurt, Avliich he occupied 
 at the end of October, just as Wallenstein was reducing 
 Leipzig and its neighbourhood. On November 1, tlie 
 king arrived at Naumburg, a town on the Saale, offering 
 a commanding position, of which he prepared to avail 
 himself by intrenchraent. WaUenstein was then at 
 Weissenfels, a few miles below, on the same river. 
 Satisfied, by this proceeding of the king and by the 
 lateness of the season, that he had no cause to dread 
 immediate attack, he detached Pappenheim with a con- 
 siderable portion of his army to Ilalle, in order to open a 
 communication with the country beyond ; and himself fell 
 back from Weissenfels to Liitzen. Pappenheim was 
 detached on the 4th, and on the same "day the king 
 was made aware of it through an intercepted letter. 
 On the evening of November 4,' therefore, matters
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 
 
 293 
 
 stood thus : WalleiL^tciii was at Lutzen, covering the 
 approacli from the west to Leipzig, with a force variously 
 estimated, but probably not less tlian 25,000 men ; * 
 
 AAA New road to Leipzig. D D D Imperialist line, 
 
 ABA Old road to the .same. E E E Swedish line. 
 
 CC Pappenheim's advance from Ilalle. F The wiinlmills. 
 
 Gustavus at Naiimburu',' sixteen En*ihs]i miles south-west 
 of Lutzen as the crow Hies, witli perhaps au equal number ; 
 Pappenheim at Ilalle, sixteen miles north-west oi'LUtzen, 
 
 * Protestants say 40,000; Catholics 20,000. The latter number seems 
 very improbably low. Tlie detachment of Pappenlieini to Halle was a 
 gro.ss blunder at best ; but we may .sifely a.ssunie that "Walh'u.steiii -would 
 not have ventured on it in the face of the redoubtable Swede, if his army 
 had been thorebv reduced below the number of the latter.
 
 294 A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 
 
 with 15,000 or 20,000 ; the Saxons at Torgaii, forty miles 
 north-east of Llitzen, with a force variously estimated at 
 from 8,000 to 10,000, Under these circumstances, there 
 were not wanting timorous councihors to advise the king to 
 outmanoeuvre the slow Wallenstein, turn him by the south, 
 and join the Saxons. The king at once rejected the 
 counsel. Had he attempted it, Pappenheim and Wallen- 
 stein reuniting might have caught him in a trap ; liad he es- 
 caped this danger, the fidelity of the Elector was doubtful. 
 It Avas obviously his business to fight Wallenstein at once, 
 before Pappenheim could be recalled from Halle. With 
 Gustavus, to decide and to act were almost simultaneous. 
 He might yet surprise Wallenstein before that leader's force 
 was concentrated after its march from Weissenfels. At 
 midniglit of the 4th the king began to move. At ten in the 
 morning the towers of Llitzen were in siglit. But his inten- 
 tion of giving battle immediately was frustrated, in tlie first 
 place, by the unexpected resistance of Isolani's Croats and 
 some artillery on the brook at Eippach ; next, as Harte 
 avers, by the optical mistake I have already mentidiied, 
 which made the Swedes beheve themselves netirer Llitzen 
 than they really were. Consequently, he could not arrive at 
 his chosen ground, east of Llitzen, until too late for action. 
 Had it been otherwise, November 5, old style, woukl liave 
 added one more to its Protestant commemorations, and 
 Wallenstein might liave descended to British posterity as 
 a supplementary Gruy. 
 
 Wallenstein would rather have avoided fighting ; but 
 this day's delay gave him time to prepare lor the contest, 
 by sending messengers to hurry Pappenlieim's return, and 
 by intrenching his position as well as he might. His 
 army was drawn u[) on a line of about a mile and a 
 half: its right, to the soutli-west, resting on tiie town of
 
 A VISIT TO LiJTZEN. 295 
 
 Lutzeii, Avliich was an impediment to liis being turned on 
 tliat flank ; liis left, north-east, on the western bank of 
 the ' Flossgraben,' a deep drainage ditch and mill-stream 
 (not a ca"nal"~to float timber, as Mitchell supposes) ; his 
 front covered by the high-road from Llitzen to Leipzig, 
 of which he had deepened both the side ditches, and filled 
 them with musketeers. But it is important to observe 
 (what neither Harte nor Mitchell w^as aware of, but 
 Philippi distinctly shows) tliat this high-road did not 
 coincide exactly with the present. It diverged from the 
 straight line of the present highway close to the Schwe- 
 denstein, curved to the south, and swept back again into 
 the present road near the point where this crosses the 
 Flossgraben. The country-people still point out the old 
 road, rising in a slight ridge on the corn-fields. The 
 consequence would appear to be, that the two armies, 
 being separated by this winding road, were not drawn up 
 in straight lines, but the Imperialist front slightly concave, 
 the Swedish convex ; giving the latter something of that 
 advantage which Marlborough turned 'to such decisive 
 account at " Eamillies. The most salient part of the 
 Swedish Tnie would, on this supposition, have been close 
 to the Schwedenstein. 
 
 Wallenstein's position was, however, not a bad one, for 
 an army of equal force acting on the defensive ; but his 
 order of battle Avas inconceivably perverse, even according 
 to contemporary critics. He seems to have been actuated 
 by a resolution to proceed in dii'cct opposition to the 
 lessons Avhicli the Swedish victories had taught his pro- 
 fession, lie took a step back, (owards'tlic tactics of the 
 okTITetherland Avars. He is said to have'conceived that 
 Tilly lost the balllc ul' lA'ip/.ig (hioiigh adapting too loose 
 Mi order : though Tilly's solid scjuares of infantry, or
 
 296 A VISIT TO LtJTZEX. 
 
 ' tercias,' were 2,000 strong. His own foot was drawn up 
 in five such solid squares, of luige dimensions : four in the 
 centre, one on his right, near the windmills. The reader 
 may be spared the involved mathematical calculations on 
 which these were constructed ; suffice it to say that, if 
 complete, every such square would consist of 5,000 
 men, pikemen and musketeers in equal numbers, and 
 would have at the angles small projecting bastion-like 
 formations of musketeers, so as to be shaped exactly 
 like an ordinary quadrangular redoubt. ' The manner 
 in which the armies went to work,' says Colonel Mitchell, 
 'in the hour of battle, with their mixed masses of 
 spearmen and musketeers, is a difficulty which historians 
 have left undecided, and which, at this distance of time, 
 we are not well able to explain. What were the spearmen 
 doing, exposed, without any power of reaction, to the 
 shots where the musketeers were en2;ao;ed ; and what 
 became of the musketeers when the battle came to push 
 of pike?' Perhaps the difficulty does not so strongly 
 present itself to the imagination of the civilian as of the 
 military writer ; at all events, this intermixture was 
 regularly practised in drawing up the infantry of European 
 armies from the invention of tlie musket down to that of the 
 bayonet. Marshal Saxe, as we know, preferred the pike, 
 thus supported, to the bayonet itself; concerning wiiich 
 ' rickety zigzag,' our own eccentric Colonel exclaims, 
 ' What will be deemed of the military intelliirence of an 
 age which could tolerate the tactical |)uerilities founded 
 on the presumed use of a toy that has been brandished 
 with bombastic fierceness for upwards of a century, imd 
 has never yet, in fair and manly figlit, inflicted a mortal 
 woimd on a single man ? ' 
 
 In thus uniting spearmen with musketeers, WallensLein 
 
 »~., .,.,.ri«li.i"ll""lll"" 
 
 MM .. » II « ' "» V.«-
 
 A VISIT TO LUrZEX, 297 
 
 ouly followed the fashion ; but his enormous squares, 
 constructed, no douBt, with a view to resist tlie dreaded 
 impetuosity of the Swedes, seem to have been condemned 
 even in his own age as pedantic and unwieldy. They 
 formed, in fact, the last appearance, on any modern stage, 
 of the classical and mediaeval phalanx ; ca]:)able, no doubt, 
 of resisting cavalry attacks, but unable to move themselves 
 in attack or pursuit, and exposed to utter destruction 
 w^hen artillery coidd be brouglit to bear on them. His 
 own artillery consisted of about eighty heavy pieces, 24 
 to 48-pounders, as some inform us : it was disposed in 
 front of his troops along the whole line of the road. 
 His cavalry were on the flanks, consisting (as then usual 
 in the Austrian service) of lour classes : cuirassiers, as 
 they were termed, but who wore, in addition to tlie 
 cuirass, the vizored helmet, gorget, brassarts, and cuisses ; 
 carbineers, wdth cuirass and carbine ; dragoons, few in 
 numb'CT; and light horse, then termed Croats, as in later 
 times Hussars, oiT'lhe" extremities of the line — troops 
 wdiose special genius lay in the line of plundering, which 
 they executed with a vigour perhaps unequalled in mih- 
 tary history. His riglit wing was strongest, as he ex- 
 pected on the left the almost immediate reinforcement of 
 tlie Pappenheimers. His front was covered by mus- 
 keteers in the deepened ditches on both sides of the way. 
 Notwithstandinii; all tlie successes of tlie Swedes, the 
 spirit of his army ran high. Wallenstein w^as still to tliem 
 the unconquerable one, who had baflled, if not defeated, 
 the Swede himself. Gorged witli ])lunder, and made 
 frantic by tlie promise of more, inihimed with that 
 ])eculiar pride of mercenaries, who feel themselves for the 
 hour elevated into the masters of princes and governments, 
 they swore (so, at least, said their enemies) that ' if tliey
 
 298 A VISIT TO LiJTZEJV. 
 
 did not win tlic battle, tliey would drive God out of 
 
 heaven with their cudgels.' 
 
 It might be asked why Gustavus, with his skill as a 
 
 I tactician and his well-trained army, did not out- 
 
 : manoeuvre and take in flank Wallenstein's helpless masses, 
 
 instead of attackincf them in front ? But the answer is 
 '■ . . . 
 
 ])lain. Time was wanting for the purpose. It w^as necessary 
 
 for him to gain his victory before Pappenheim came up. 
 Pappenheim was to him what Blucher was to Napoleon 
 at Waterloo ; and he had not even a Grouchy to o]:)pose 
 to him. To have turned Wallenstein's right, with Pappen- 
 heim coming up on Wallenstein's left, would have been to 
 I march head foremost into a snare. There remained only 
 i the front attack, and for this, bloody as it must prove, he 
 . prepared liimself at once. 
 
 The king passed the night of the 5th — 6th in his 
 
 carriage, in the open field, west of Liitzen. At daybreak 
 
 he crossed the country behind, or south of, Liitzen, and 
 
 drew up his army in a double line, facmg that of Wallen- 
 
 stein, and south of the hiii;li-road so often mentioned. In 
 
 order to effect this, part of his force had to cross the deep 
 
 ' Flossgi-aben ' which forms a curve from a point south-east 
 
 of Liitzen to the bridge where it is (and was) crossed by 
 
 the hicfh-road so often named. Here it would seem as if 
 
 Wallenstein might have checked his adversary by a bold 
 
 advance ; but his defensive tactics rendered this imprac- 
 
 I ticable. The Swedes passed the mill-stream, and their 
 
 ] army was drawn uj), in ' battalia,' while the morning fog 
 
 ' yet concealed the enemy. 
 
 The Swedish army was the very opposite of the Austrian. 
 Everything was done to promote rapidity of movement 
 and promptness of execution. The infanti y (in the centre) 
 was not, liowever, formed in line, according to modern 
 ideas : that invention was reserved for the ' old Dessauer,'
 
 A VISIT TO LtJTZEN. 299 
 
 as tlie Germans call liim, a century later. The system of 
 Gustavus consisted rather in macadamizing the great 
 blocks of the ancient army into small and compact, but 
 still solid masses, drawn up in geiiefal six deep. The 
 front rank was formed by the famous Swedish black, 
 yellow, green, and blue brigades, concerning which the 
 accounts are contradictory, whether they were so denomi- 
 nated from the colour of their casques, or of their jackets. 
 Colonel Mitchell says, ' The blue brigade were composed 
 of British ; ' but, it is to be feared, Avithout authority. 
 The British, especially the Scots, formed a very important 
 portion of the so-called Swedish army, but they are not 
 particularly mentioned in the accounts of Liitzen. The 
 second line, or reserve, was chiefly composed of German 
 infantry. The cavalry Avere placed on the flanks : Swedes 
 on the right, towards the Flossgraben ; Germans on the 
 left, nearest to Liitzen. The Swedes seem to have had 
 only two classes of cavalry : cuirassiers, armed with the 
 light cuirass, carbine, and broadsword ; dragoons, Avith 
 musket and sabre. The German horse are described as 
 carrying, in addition to other Aveapons, a hammer hooked 
 at one end, to drag the enemy oflT his horse. Platoons of 
 musketry, 100 to 150 strong, Avere posted between the 
 squadrons ; and this is the only rational sense in Avhich Ave 
 can understand the plan of ' mingUng cavalry Avith infan- 
 try,' attributed by some military Avriters to Gustavus — a 
 plan wliich, if carried out in any literal sense, could only 
 have had the effect of crippling the movements of tlie 
 cavalry altogether. Tlie artillery Avas stationed along the 
 front, and consisted of only twenty heavy jjieces, and 
 about eighty of the common Swedish 'Hying artillery,' 
 4-pounders only, A\^e are told.* In like niamici-, the pikes 
 
 * The king's famous 'leathern cannon,' -wlucli have puzzled modem 
 tacticians almost as much as they astonished his enemies, do uot seem to
 
 300 A VISIT TO LiJTZEX. 
 
 of tlie Swedes were five feet shorter tliau tlieir antagonists,' 
 and the carbines and muskets hghter. The whole army 
 is variously estimated at from 11,000 to 16,000 infantry, 
 0,000 to 12,000 cavalry. 
 
 Bernard of Saxe Weimar, and Marshal Knyphausen, 
 commanded the Germans. The Swedes were led on by 
 the King in person. A more gallant army never entered 
 into action ; and yet its experienced generals remarked 
 with reg-ret, that these were not the same invincible 
 Swedes who had crossed the Baltic and conquered at 
 Leipzig, Battles and marches, detachments and garri- 
 sons, and, above all, the camp-fevers of Nuremberg, had 
 thinned the ranks of those veterans, and they were 
 replaced by recruits who had learnt little as yet from their 
 comrades, except their martial ardour. 
 
 The heavy fog lasted until eleven in the morning : it 
 may easily be conceived with what impatience the King 
 watched for its disappearance, exjoecting Pappenheim on 
 his right flank every hour. Meanwhile, morning prayer 
 was held, and the Kmg rode along the line to encourage 
 his men. With the Thucydidean speeches which sundry 
 historians put in the mouths of both generals, it is unne- 
 cessary to trouble the reader. It is more to the purpose 
 to note that the Swedes sang Luther's Ilymn, and that 
 other, well known in Lutheran Germany, which begins — 
 
 Verzage nielit; du Iliuiflein klciii, / 
 
 Fear not, thou little chosen band, / 
 
 of which the words are traditionally said to be Gustavus's 
 own. 
 
 At eleven in tlie morning tlie heav^^ fog dissipated, and 
 each army beheld the foces of the other. Tlic artillery 
 began to play, but seemingly with no great effect. Wal- 
 
 have been used at Liitzou. Probably the invcntinn never got bej'^ond the 
 character of an experiment.
 
 A VISIT TO LiJTZEN. 301 
 
 lensteiii's cannon, we are told, were pointed too high, and' 
 harmed the Swedes but Uttle. The Swedish were doubt- 
 less better served, but it is singidar that so little is said of 
 the havoc wliicli tlicy might be expected to have made 
 in Wallenstein's helpless quadrangles. At length the 
 Swedish infantry charged in the centre. They forced 
 their way across the ditches^anTrihe road, broke by the 
 suddenness of their attack t^vo of Wallenstein's squares, and 
 endangered a tliird, when the cuirassiers of Wallenstein's 
 right wing charged in support of their infantry; the | 
 Swedes wavered, were driven back across the road, and a 
 battery of seven cannon, immediately east of the Schwe- 
 denstein, was taken by the Imperialists. Gustavus now 
 placed himself at the head of Stenbock's Smaland regiment 
 of cuirassiers — its commander had just fallen — which was 
 stationed in the right wing, nearest to the inftmtry. He 
 called out to his favourite. Colonel Stahlhantsch, a soldier 
 of fortune, who had risen from the condition of a serving- 
 man, 'Charge those black fellows (Piccolomini's cuirassiers), 
 else they will do us a mischief ;' crossed the road, galloped 
 on before his m en, and threw himself on the flank of 
 another cuirassier regiment. The spirit of tlie religious 
 champion, the Gideon of Protestantism, had in tliis liis 
 last hour sole possession of his fiery nature : he exclaimed, 
 ' Now, in God's name, let us at them ! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, 
 let us fight for the honour of Thy holy name ! ' and dashed 
 at the enemy. At tliis moment, four comrades are noticed 
 as lKi\ing been at his side, besides one or two grooms : 
 these were, IIof-Marschal Kreilslicim. Cliamberlain Trucli- 
 sess, a young Nuremberger named Lobelhng, of ^\•hom we 
 shall hear more presentl}^ and Duke Francis Albert, of 
 Saxe Lauenburg. This last, of sinister name, was a cadet 
 of one of the oldest and ])oorest sovereign Iioiises of North 
 Germany, connected ratlier neaily with tlie royal blood
 
 302 A VISIT TO LiiTZEN. 
 
 of Sweden. He had taken arms, a mere adventurer, 
 
 inider Tilly ; but, on the arrival of his royal kinsman in 
 
 Germany, changed sides, went over to the Swedes, and 
 
 obtained a pension from Gustavus, with whom he lived 
 
 on terms of intimacy. They were at once enveloped in 
 
 the hostile ranks. The Swedish cuirassiers, stas^ffered for 
 
 a moment by the fire from the ditches, followed in hot 
 
 haste ; but too late : a pistol-shot broke the King's arm. 
 
 . He continued at first to encourage his comrades ; but, his 
 
 \ strength failing him, he turned his horse's head, and mut- 
 
 \ tered to the Duke, 'Mon cousin, tirez moi d'ici, car je suis 
 
 I fort blesse.' As he turned, an Austrian trooper marked the 
 
 I action, cried out, ' Art thou here ?" -f4i'ave' long sought 
 
 for thee ! ' and discharged his carbine into the King's 
 
 shoulder. The King fell from his horse, witli the last 
 
 words, ' My God ! ' The doer of the deed was instantly 
 
 ' beaten down with a storm of arquebusades ' by the 
 
 Swedes ; but it was reported that he was a Lieutenant 
 
 von Falkenberg, who had become acquainted with the 
 
 King's person while a prisoner. A desperate struggle 
 
 now took place around the body. Those next to the 
 
 King were killed or mortally wounded, except Lauenbiu^g 
 
 alone, who contrived to ride unhurt out of the melee. 
 
 The actual spot of the death is fixed by Philippi, conjec- 
 
 turally, just within the angle formed by the divergence of 
 
 the new and old roads to Leipzig. The body, stripped and 
 
 \ mangled, was found at last by his victorious countrymen. 
 
 / It was brought in the night into the village church of 
 
 \ Meuchen ; the troopers who escorted it did not dismount, 
 
 but rode by torchhght round the altar, before which it was 
 
 deposited. Thence it was finally carried to rest with the 
 
 remains of his ancestors in his own land. 
 
 Such, or nearly such, seem to be the circumstances of 
 the royal soldier's death. But the belief that he perished
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 303 
 
 by treachery became in after years so general, that it is 
 impossible to avoid referring to it, even in the most 
 cursory narrative. More is unnecessary ; since Schiller, 
 in his well-known history, has said nearly all that need be 
 said respecting this once favburife historical puzzle. 
 There is no affirmative evidelice w]'ia!evef"in favour of 
 the supposition tliat the deed was perpetrated by Francis 
 Albert of Saxe Lauenburg, or any other traitor. The 
 negative evidence against it consists mainly in tlie fact 
 that no eye-witness of tlie battle, and no immediately con- 
 temporary writer, refers to it. The suspicion arises 
 afterwards, and makes way to the light from various and 
 distant quarters — first as a vague report, afterwards as a 
 definite charge — until at last it becomes universally re- 
 ceived, if not absolutely believed, among the Swedes, and 
 has great currency even among the Germans. ' He who 
 ate my bread,' so ran the mystic verse in the mouth of 
 the people, ' hath lift up his heel against me : thus did it 
 befall Gustavus from the fourth man, who entered the 
 enemy's lines along with him.'* No doubt the ill fiune of 
 Francis Albert himself, and his repeated iTesertions of both 
 causes, made him a not unnatural object of such suspicion ; 
 but one circumstance, ^vhicll Gfrorer has acutely pointed 
 out, must be taken into account on the other side ; he 
 was arrested by the Imperial Government as an accom- 
 pUce in Wallenstein's treason, long imprisoned, and ulti- 
 mately discharged — a course of conduct which they would 
 have hardly adopted towards a hired assassin of their own, 
 such as the story makes him. I'he verdict, in short, on 
 such evidence as we have before us, must be, not simply 
 not proven, but not guilty; and all that remains is that 
 
 * Wer moin l»i'od isst, dor init Fiisse.u micli (ritt; 
 So gpschali OS Gusluvo vdii doiu Viortoii, 
 Der mil iliiu ins liULii'r rintrilt.
 
 . r>OJ: A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 
 
 iiiipalpable cloud of doubt of which, when once raised, it 
 is so difficult to disembarrass the mind. 
 
 It was not until 1790, after Schiller's history had 
 appeared, that a document was published by Murr, in 
 his ' Contributions to the History of the Thirty Years' 
 War,' which has at least a negative bearing of some im- 
 portance on this problem. It is a narrative of the King's 
 death, obtained by Colonel von LiJbeliing, fatlier of the 
 3"outh who has been mentioned as one of Gustavus's com- 
 rades in his last charge, from the lips of his son ; but at 
 second hand only. This gallant lad was not a page of 
 the King's, as he is commonly represented, but a volim- 
 teer, who followed his person in a hearty boyish passion 
 of admiration for the hero. The father tells his story 
 touchingly enough, in the language of a soldier-saint of 
 those times. The youth, he says, saw the King surrounded 
 by enemies ; saw him fall from his horse ; dismounted 
 and offered his own. 
 
 / Then the king raised both his hands towards him ; but my 
 
 \ son was not able alone to Uft him on horseback, and his majesty 
 
 could not help himself. Thereupon * came up some of the 
 
 I enemy's cuirassiers, and wanted to know who it was ; but neither 
 
 I the king nor my son would say : one of them, on this, fired a 
 
 pistol through the king's head, who then said, ' I am myself the 
 
 king of Sweden,' and so fell asleep. . . . They gave my son 
 
 two shots and three stabs, stripped him to his shirt, and left 
 
 him for dead.' 
 
 The poor fellow was brought to Naumburg, where he 
 died some days after. 
 
 'And thus,' adds the father, 'did this young cavalier, whose 
 whole age was only eighteen years, seven montlis, and twenty- 
 three days, truly wait upon his late majesty in that bloody 
 
 * The clfAil's advocate mig-ht have a word to put in here. If the cuirassiers 
 only came up ' thereupon,' it was not a cuirassier who lired the original shot.
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEN". 305 
 
 fight, although he was not in his royal service ; stayed by him 
 until his blessed end, and was the last of all at his side. ... In 
 his sickness he never complained of pain, was very patient, and 
 often said it was for his king's sake he had received those 
 wounds, and would willingly suffer all over again on his account ; 
 and, if he might live a hundred years longer, he would not wish 
 to do so.' * And he prayed his attendants to write to his heart's- 
 loved father and his relations and beg us not to sorrow for him, 
 for that he had lost his life in his calling on a Christian and 
 honourable occasion, and had fought gallantly by the side of 
 his majesty of Sweden for Grod's word and glory.' 
 
 This account, whatever its value as to minute particulars, 
 is at all events important on the question of the murder. 
 It purports to have been given by the young man to his 
 attendants at JSTaumburg, who conveyed it to liis father, 
 who ^Tote it down a few weeks after tlie battle. Had 
 the story of murder been then current, it must have 
 ri!T;ured some how in the recital. 
 
 Such a suspicion was hardly needed to embitter the 
 universal feeling of inconsolable grief. ' The sorrow,' says 
 Philippi, ' which the death of the King occasioned througli- 
 out Protestant Germany and in Sweden is depicted by 
 contemporaries in the liveliest colours. Country and 
 town, citizen, peasant, and soldier, all united to mourn the 
 irreparable loss. They wandered about like a flock 
 without a shepherd, loudly bewailing the death of their 
 prince, their liberator ; for such was Gustavus Adolphus 
 to them all. Never was a sovereign more revered, more 
 loved, or more wept for. Every one would have his 
 portrait, and there was not a cottage in Germany where 
 it was not- to be found.' And that popular impression 
 was as' deep and enduring as it was general. As late as 
 1796, when Christian Fischer travelled that way, the Saxon 
 postilion would take off his hat as he passed the Schwc- 
 denstein. And if traditional reverence has since crrown 
 
 o 
 X
 
 30 G A VISIT TO LtJTZEX. 
 
 I fainter, that wliicli arises from Avider education and an in- 
 creased love of religious and political freedom lias taken 
 its" place, and the memory of Gustavus Adolphus abides as 
 life-hke as ever. 
 
 , And most deservedly. History has grown cold and 
 ( critical : the Clio of our times seems to have an old- 
 ( maidish pleasure in decrying the subjects of our early en- 
 thusiasm, in lowering by a few pegs the special heroes of 
 ; our imaginations. She has not ventured even to attempt 
 this operation on Gustavus Adolphus. A halo of some- 
 thing like superhuman dignity surrounds him. So it was 
 even with his contemporaries. Those wlio saw him every 
 day seem still to have regarded him rather as an agent of 
 Providence — the embodiment of a great purpose — than 
 an ordinary man. He was thus marked by destiny from 
 the beginning : when his father, Charles IX., exhorted in 
 council to designs to which he felt unequal, would lay his 
 hand on the fair hair of his boy, and ^^cj^^TH'e' faciei; ' 
 when he relinquished the love of Hs youffi and all the 
 temptations of a throne, married for reasons of state, and 
 set himself doggedly to the task of taming, one by one, 
 his hard-mouthed neighbours of the North, as a prepara- 
 tion for the mightier destinies which he alone foresaw. 
 Such he appeared to the Germans among whom he came 
 as a deliverer ; on whom his noble features, his bright 
 blue eyes, his floating golden hair — il re cVoro, the Italians 
 called him — produced the effect of an angelic messenger. 
 Not that he was affectedly superior to other men, or had 
 anytliing of the prophet in his demeanor ; on the con- 
 , trary, every account represents him as simple, affable, 
 I freespoken among his associates, even to a fault. The 
 Jesuits of Munich recounted with pride how he had dis- 
 puted with them for an liour or so ' concerning^ transub- 
 stantiation and communion sub utftlque.,* ciiding, as they
 
 A VISIT TO LfjTZEX. / 307 
 
 Kvere pleased to assert, with liigh compliments to their 
 order. The peasants of Bavaria would long tell the tale 
 how, as he forced them to drag his artillery, he would 
 come among them with kind words and instructions how 
 to place the lever, accompanied with occasional florins. 
 But, in truth, he was an example, such as some of us 
 may have witnessed in life, of that class of men whose 
 exceptional superiority of character is such that no fami- 
 liarity -(('111- to diminish the distance between them and 
 others. ]\Iue]i of this was, no doubt, owing to that deep 
 religious conviction which, when openly avowed and con- 
 sisttnuly acted on, always awes minds conscious of their 
 own falling short. Cromwell could not have been more 
 convinced of his own divme" vocation7of more fearless in 
 ] lis expression of reliance on it; but there" is something 
 f the earth, earthy, in the zeal of Croi^Lwell c\eii when 
 
 () 
 
 taken a( its best, whicli contrasts unfaVourably with the 
 earm-t, manly, single-minded piety of Grustavus. And 
 the consequence is, that, while (3imnweTFs'~ehemies made 
 liim out a h}^ocrite, and have left great part of the 
 world persuaded that he was one, no detractor has ever 
 endeavoured to fasten the like imputation on the Swede. 
 With him, as with Cromwell, the constant sense of re- 
 ligion led to a familiarity of utterance respecting it which, 
 to the cars of our reserved generation, seems almost 
 startling. ' Pray constantly : praying hard is fighting 
 hard,' was his favourite appeal to his soldiers. ' You may 
 win salvntion under my command, but hardly riches,' 
 was his encouragement to his officers. He ' preached,' in 
 short, so much — though without the shadow of affectation 
 — that a Michelet might perhaps say of him, as of our 
 Henry V. at Agincourt, 'le plus dur pour les ]irisonuicis, 
 c'etait d'entendre les sermons de ce rui dcs pretres, 
 
 s luimilites 
 
 /f 
 
 /, 
 
 d'endurer ses moralites, se 
 
 ^■'s '" 
 
 X '1
 
 308 A VISIT TO LiJTZEN. 
 
 But he was not content with preaching : his conduct 
 was throughout a noble exemphfication of the rchgion 
 ■ whicli he professed. To take one trait only : his strict 
 ' maintenance of discipline. The Thirty Years' War was a 
 hideous time, in wliich the military were not only per- 
 mitted to indulge in every excess, but encouraged in it as 
 a matter of policy ; — it being the received principle of 
 noted leaders to employ their armies as a scourge, not 
 not only to intimidate the enemy, but to keep in order 
 doubtful allies or personal foes, through the system of 
 ' free quarters.' Of the unhappy agent of this system — 
 the soldier — it might be said, in the language of the 
 Norfolk Island convict, that when he entered the service 
 ' the heart of a man was taken from him, and there was 
 given to him the heart of a beast.' From the beginning 
 . of his wars Gustavus set himself determinedly to the task 
 [ of extirpating an evil which had become unendurable, 
 \ while every campaign seemed to root it more firmly in 
 i the land. And he succeeded to an extent which seems 
 almost miraculous. No army under his command was 
 ever disgraced by unpunished enormity ; and it was not 
 until long after his death, when his example had ceased to 
 act, that the Swedish forces became equally a terror to 
 the country with the Imperialist. 
 
 Had so noble a character the alloy of earthly ambition ? 
 
 ; Was it his purpose to extend the Swedish dominion, or to 
 
 ' become the first Protestant Emperor of Germany, or to 
 
 achieve supremacy in Western Europe ? It may be so. 
 
 He was a conqueror by profession— an absolute monarch 
 
 ; by divine right. 'The devil' (he told his chaplain, who 
 
 j found him one day readhig the Bible) ' is very near at 
 
 hand to those who are accountable to none but God for 
 
 i their actions.' But of this much we may be certain : 
 
 with some 'men, a great purpcjse serves as the cover of
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEX. 309 ,>^ 
 
 personal ambition; by others, personal aggrandisciiuMit is 
 sought nurely us auxiliary to a great purpose— and so it 
 was witli Gustavus. If he ever had dreams of empire, 
 it was for the greater glory of what he deemed the 
 truth. 
 
 If, in fact, religious zeal had a rival in his tempera- 
 ment, it was not ambition, but warlike ardour. He was- 
 passionately devoted, if such a phrase may be used, to 
 military science. In his short hfe (he died at eight-and- 
 thirty)~he had leisure almost to reconstruct the art of 
 ^varr And the art of war, as understood and practisecTby 
 him, comprehended everything, from the conception of a 
 campaign to the construction of artillery-harness or camp- 
 kettles. That minute attention to detail which seems 
 to us pedantic was then almost unavoidable ; for he 
 lived in an age when the art of carrying on war on 
 a grand scale had been long forgotten; when, conse- 
 quently, the division of labour in the soldier's profession 
 was comparatively unknown ; and no one would have 
 passed in the eye of the world as a great commander who 
 was not also an accomplished corporal. And hence some 
 of his critics have thought that his chief superiority lay in 
 the lower part of his vocation ; tliat he was ' a greater 
 tactician than strategist.' But the highest authority is 
 against them. Napoleon placed Gustavus among the 
 eight great captains of tlio world ; that hst of colossal 
 celebrrETes which begins with Alexander TTTid " ends witli 
 himself 
 
 Nevertheless, one thing we have against him ; and that 
 was a fatal imperfection, venial as we may deem it. Ilis 
 ungovernable impetuosity of temper manifested itself in 
 various~WTry5"r"lre"cbuld not command himself, when lie 
 had righteous cause of anger, or \\ lnii lie had danger to 
 encounter, lie confessed hmiself guilty of the first charge.
 
 ^ 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 310 A VISIT TO LiJTZEX. 
 
 \ All commanders, he said, had their weaknesses ; sucli a 
 ] one his drunkenness ; such a one his avarice ; his own was 
 I choler ; and lie prayed men to forgive him. He was 
 sometimes terrible to behold in one of these fits ; the old 
 fury of the sea-kings seemed to come over him : eye- 
 Avitnessesso described him in a scene at Nuremberg, when, 
 in wrath against plunderers, he dragged forth a delinquent 
 corporal by the hair of his head, exclaiming, ' It is better 
 tliat I should punish thee, than that God should punish 
 thee and me and all of us on thy account ; ' and ordered 
 liim off to instant execution. But his intemperance of 
 courage, in exposing his person in action, was a greater 
 sin than his intemperance in anger. No prayers, no re- 
 presentations, could wean him from his constant habit of 
 taking the foremost place in time of danger. And he 
 was singularly unlucky into the bargain. While Wallen- 
 stein, the favourite of fortune, who, however inferior in 
 other respects to Gustavus, did not lack personal courage, 
 seems never to have received a wound, the King, like the 
 Napiers, scarcely ever went into serious action without 
 , being hit. His fate at Lutzen was but in accordance 
 I with this habitual disregard of sterner duty. He perished 
 in a blaze of glory, which by its very excess 'of light 
 dazzles the historical inquirer, and converts into a martyr- 
 dom that which was in truth both an errof and a crime. 
 There have been generals as prudent as brave, A\ho have 
 nevertheless risked their lives by daring exposure, delibe- 
 lately, because the rallying of a broken army, or the 
 I necessity of personal presence at a menaced spot, seemed 
 "- to require it. Gustavus had no such excuse. His Sina- 
 landers needed no such prodigality of life to encourage 
 lliem in the charge. His place was not at their head, 
 l>ut at that of his whole army; He ran on almost certain 
 j death, in tlie mere animal spirit of valiant intoxication,
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZI^N. 311 
 
 like the Berserkar of okl, or the savage Malay. ' Died 
 Abner as a fool clieth ? ' The traveller who stanclsljy 
 the Swecles^^tone may not without reason put this ques- 
 tion, and feel his enthusiasm damped by the reflection 
 that Gustavus, a victor at Llitzen, might probably have 
 brought the war at "once"tb a successful termination. The 
 sixteen'^ears of~misery which followed, ending, indeed, 
 in the rescue of Protestantism and liberty at last, but as 
 by fire only, and under trials the most unfavourable to 
 their healthy developement ; the decline of Sweden from 
 her high estate ; the deterioration of the pohtical and 
 social spirit of Germany — consequences which Europe 
 feels to this day, and our children are hkely to experience 
 for generations yet unborn — all these followed from that 
 momentary yielding to the furious impulse of a noble but 
 uncontrolled nature. 
 
 The death of the King was soon known, but seems to 
 have had no effect in damping the ardour of the Swedes. 
 On the eastern side of the field, and in the centre, the road, 
 with its ditches, and the battery of seven cannon, were soon 
 recovered, and the neighbouring Imperialist squares once 
 more assailed and brought into utter disorder. Wallen- 
 stein's cavalry behaved ill, except some of the cuirassiers ; 
 as he afterwards complained.* Numbers of the carbineers 
 turned their hors6s heads as soon as they had discharged 
 their pieces, and fled in the direction of Leipzig. As for 
 Isolani's Croats on his left wing, they executed a brilliant 
 stroke in their own professional way. Avoiding the charge 
 of the Swedes, they crossed the Flossgraben, wheeled to 
 
 • lie issued, in consequence, two remarkable orders : one enjoining more 
 strictly the use of the cuirass ; one depriving part of the horse of thoir fire- 
 arms, lie said that the trooper's hahit was to discharge his carbine and 
 pistols as soon as he came near the ononiy and then to ' caracole,' that is, 
 wheel round, aud get out of danger. Neither order had any permanent 
 ofiect.
 
 312 A VISIT TO LtJTZEX. 
 
 tlie right, turned, and rode completely round, the Swedish 
 rio;ht ; made a dash for the villao-e of Meuchen, two miles 
 in the rear, where the Swedish baggage lay, and plun- 
 dered it to their heart's content ; while, at the same time, 
 Wallenstein had the satisfaction of hearing that another 
 troop of his runaway Croats had made their way to the 
 Gallows Hill, in his rear, and were employed in the same- 
 agreeable way in ransacking his baggage and camp equip- 
 age ; where, no doubt, they found loot of greater value 
 than their brethren in the quarters of Gustavus. 
 
 But, on the west, the battle was doubtful. Here, as we 
 have seen, the Imperialists had set lire to the buildings 
 about Liitzen, with the view of impeding the enemy in 
 any attempt to turn their right wing ; and under the lurid 
 cover of the conflagration and the fog, they i-epulsed Duke 
 Bernard of Saxe Weimar's repeated charges, drove him 
 -, back across the road, which, with the windmills beyond 
 \ it, he had for a moment won, and endangered the whole 
 I left flank of the Protestant army. Eightly judging, how- 
 ever, that the real way to victory was to follow up the ad- 
 vantage obtained by the Swedes on the east, Bernard, as 
 soon as he heard of the King's death, moved in person to 
 that quarter, leaving the command of the left to Nils Bralie, 
 whom the King had named as the best qualilied to com- 
 mand an army of all his countrymen except Torstenson. 
 AndBrahe justified the confidence reposed inhim by driving 
 the Iniporialists once more from their windmills, and turn- 
 ing their own cannon a!:!;ainst them. Bernard hastened to 
 Knyphausen, who commanded the reserve, and informed 
 him of the King's death. Knyphausen,^li~c6bl veteran, 
 simply replied that his troops were in good order, and could 
 make an excellent retreat. ' It is the hour of revenge, not 
 letreat,' was Bernard's answer, as he hastened to place 
 himself at the head of the same Smaland regiment which 
 
 i
 
 A YISIT TO LiJTZEN. 313 
 
 Gustavus had led into action. Only just in time ; for Pap- 
 penlieim now appeared, bringing' lii- atItiMc c.ivaliy, six or 
 seven thousand mon, to- strengthen Wallenstein's left, but 
 leaving his infantry still On the march. The accounts of the 
 exact period of Pappenheim's arrival vary singularly. The 
 old French contemporary narrative, translated and re- 
 printed in the ' Harleian IVIiscellanj^,' says expressly that it 
 was between, two and three o'clock ; but this seems too late. 
 Wallenstein, in his short report to the Emperor, ingeni- 
 ously implies, without actually asserting it, that Pappen- 
 heim was with liim at the commencement of the action — 
 evidently a Qh/io draw off attention from his own blunder 
 in having detached him two days before. And now the 
 Swedes had to draw up once more their shattered brigades, 
 with their backs, as it should seem, to the high-road which 
 they had crossed, and abide the furious charge of Pappen- 
 heim's cavalry. Pappenheim himself led them on, exclaim- 
 ing, ' Where is the king ? ' but at the very first onset fell, 
 pierced with two bullets, and was carried out of the field 
 only to die. The last hasty oi'der whicli'Tie had received j 
 to rejoin Wallenstein was found beneath his gorget, \ 
 stained with his blood, and is now preserved in tlie 
 archives of Vienna. Such was the end of tlie noblest | 
 among the servants of the Kaiser • not "Only brave to a » 
 fault, but displaying in his subordinate capacity higli 
 qualities of generalship. Gustavus himself emphati- 
 cally termed him ' the soldier ; ' the learned called him, 
 I'rom his prodigious personal strength, the Telamon of tiie 
 Imperial army. His soldiers adored him, and the ])()pii- 
 ]ace bestowed on liini that superstitious awe with wliich, 
 in tliose days, they loved to encompass their favourites ; 
 he was born on the same day with Gustavus, they observed, 
 and -f?tTbjcctrtD"i;hG s^[ilne""stellar influence ;" "his foreliead 
 was marked with two cross swords, which came out llciy
 
 i 
 
 314 A VISIT TO LtJTZEN. 
 
 red ill moments of excitement ; nay, the evidence of his 
 nurse was gravely invoked, to estabhsh that he cried 
 when he was first washed, and never afterwards in the 
 whole course of his life ! Out of the field as well as in it, 
 he passed for a model of old-fashioned chivalry ; a devout 
 and humble Cathohc, of blameless life, and strong 
 domestic attachments. There is extant the tenderest of all 
 possible new-year's letters to him (printed by Forster, in his 
 Wallenstein's Prozess : antiquaries will print everything) 
 from his wife, ' her loveliest angel's submissively obedient 
 maid-servant Anna Ehzabeth,' who describes herself as 
 dying ' vor langer Weile ' in his absence. Pity that her 
 lord's hand, which she ' kisses many million times,' was 
 still red with the blood of Magdeburg, shed in participa- 
 tion with the ferocious Tilly. 
 
 Under the cover of this reinforcement, Wallenstein 
 rallied part of his troops ; and then began the fiercest 
 struggle of this day of many vicissitudes ; one which 
 every witness and every historian describes as of unex- 
 ampled severit3^ The question was, in Wellington's 
 words, which of the two shattered armies ' could pound 
 the longest.' Nils Brahe was killed, his brigade beaten 
 back across the road; the whole Swedish infantry, of 
 the first line, was almost cut to pieces. In half an hour, 
 says one writer, the entire yellow regiment lay on the 
 ground, in order, where they had stood before. The fog, 
 towards the close of the day, descended thicker than 
 ever ; but it suddenly cleared again half an hour before 
 sunset ; and then Bernard, reduced to the last straits to 
 hold Ids ground, discovered, to his infinite satisfaction, 
 that Knyphausen's reserve remained in unbroken order, 
 as yet untouched by the enemy. The sorely-thinned 
 remnants of his first line rallied in the intervals of the 
 second, and Kynpliausen'scliarge decided the day. For the
 
 y 
 
 ,y 
 
 V'VISIT TO LUTZEX. 315 
 
 lust lime tlie'' road was crossed by the victors ; the 
 Iiiiperiahst cannon captured. And now tlie early No- 
 vember darkness came on. Just at this crisis arrived 
 Pappenheim's infantiy, six regiments strong. Had they 
 cliarged the Swedes, the event of the day would probably 
 yet have been different. But they took no part in the 
 action. According to the common account, they were 
 prevented by the darkness. But among the Imperiahsts 
 the notion spread, that the advance of these battalions 
 was arrested by the order of Marshal Hoik, wdio, at this 
 crisis, commanded Wallenstein's leltiTarfd who was thought 
 to have been long meditating treason. This question, 
 like many others raised in that age of dark suspicions, 
 must remain undecided ; for Hoik died shortly afterwards, 
 and ' made no sign.' 
 
 Waltenstein retreated on Leipzig under cover of the 
 night. He left, it is said, 8,000 or 9,000 of his troops, 
 with 5,000 or 6,000 Swedes, killed or wounded on the 
 field of battle. The Swedes remained masters of that 
 field, and in possession, after many vicissitudes of taking 
 and retaking, of most of the enemy's heavy cannon. 
 G alias, in his report of the battle, makes an excuse for 
 tlTiFloss which is curious, and may be true : he says the 
 artillery-drivers were peasants, impressed, with their 
 horses, from the neighbourhood of Leipzig, whose heart 
 was on the other side, and who, as soon as they fomid 
 opportunity, cut the traces and abandoned their charge. 
 Wallenetein, however, at first claimed the victory in his 
 despatches, chiefly on the strength of the king's dcalli. 
 But his own exasperation at his defeat was intense. 
 According to one story, as soon as he arrived at Leipzig, 
 he 'shut hini^clf up in a room iiiid swore for ;iii hour;' 
 which, says rhilip[)i, oddly enough, ' is scarcely credible, 
 considering his well-known disposition to silence.' At
 
 316 A VISIT TO LUTZEN. 
 
 all events he allowed his mortification to rankle, deeply 
 and grimly, in his breast. ISTot until he had rallied his 
 beaten army as well as he coidd, and estabhshed it in 
 winter-quarters in Bohemia, abandoning Saxony to the 
 victor, did he proceed, in cold vindictiveness, to hold his 
 'bloody assize' on those who had misconducted them- 
 selves in the action. His wrath Avas particularly directed 
 against his cavalry officers, who had fled from the field. 
 About a dozen, colonels and others, were executed, and 
 many sentenced to inferior punishments. ' Good people,' 
 I said one young colonel to the crowd, at his execution, ' I 
 ? am come here to die for running away together with my 
 I generalissimo.' At the same time, with his accustomed 
 " liberahty or pohcy, he made magnificent presents, on his 
 own part and not the Emperor's, to those who had clis- 
 tinguished themselves. 
 
 For my own part I must say, though quite aware of 
 the storm of Teutonic indignation wliich such an avowal 
 is likely to provoke, that I never could get rid of the 
 impression that the magnificent Wallensteiri was in truth 
 , a great impostor — a charlatan of enormous pretensions. 
 ; Ilis whole demeanour savours of that intimate'^cbmbina- 
 ■ tion of enthusiasm with jugglery which imposes most 
 I successfully on mankind. He was an actor through life. 
 I A subtle Itahan spy, set to watch him in 1628, describes 
 liis ' bizarre ' and violent manners as nothinc^ but a trick, 
 assumed in order to deceive at once the multitude by an 
 appearance of power, and his superiors, by persuading 
 them that one capable ol" such extravagance could not be 
 capable of connected designs. In addition, he could im- 
 port at will into his proceedings that touch of the mystic, 
 that smoke-flavour of the supernatural, which especially 
 influences his wonder-loving countrymen. Of the real 
 genius of tlie general or the statesman, I cannot find that his
 
 A VliSIT TO LUTZEX. 317 
 
 life exhibits a single trace. But he was, above all things, 
 fortune's favourite. I do not remember where I fell in 
 with a pretty piece of criticism on a picture of Gerard's, in 
 the French division of the International Exhibition of 1862, 
 not so interesting from its execution as from its quaint 
 fimcy. The goddess Fortune — arridens nudis infantibiis 
 — has fallen in love, beside a village well, with a charm- 
 ing infant bo}^. Her wheel is resting at her feet — her 
 cornucopia is pouring out its neglected treasures — while 
 the saucy little idol is laughing in her face, and fencing 
 with her hand as it caresses his dimpled cheek. The 
 affairs of this unstable world are at a stand still while she 
 indulges in her fancy ; and, as for the unconscious child, 
 he may be anything he pleases — cardinal, pope, emperor, 
 Wallenstein, Napoleon. Tliose whom the blind goddess 
 thus selects have about them something da3monic, as the 
 Germans express it. Wallenstein's hfe, so dazzling in its 
 mid-career, is veiled in mystery both at the beginning 
 and the end. The cadet of a poor though noble 
 Bohemian house, the third son of a sixth son, his parents 
 addicted to the Protestant persuasion, his prospects 
 of risino- in the Austrian service misjht have seemed 
 slender enough ; but just as he is entering on the world, 
 both of these parents are removed out of his way by death. 
 He falls under the guardianship of a rich Catholic uncle, 
 delighted to make a convert of so promising a relative. 
 He travels no one exactly knows how, nor where ; becomes 
 famihar with many parts of Europe ; and like the Lady 
 of Buccleugh's father, ' learns the art that none may 
 name,' at Padua, under a professor of astrology. At five 
 and-twenty, he makes, like Macaiilay's Marlborough, a 
 prudential investment of his personal charms, but in a 
 more legitimate way ; marrying a rich widow of twice 
 his age, who becomes desperately jealous, nearly kills him
 
 318 A VISIT TO LUTZEX. 
 
 Avitli a love-potion, dies forthwith, and leaves liini h(M^ 
 fine estates in Moravia. The uncle immediately follows 
 her, and bequeaths him seven first-class lordships in 
 Bohemia. At thirty, the adventurer is the richest subject 
 of the Kaiser ; yet not so rich as to account at all for his 
 subsequent gigantic expenditure. He marries another 
 fortune, and a court lady of high influence into the 
 bargain. In the death-strufrcle of his native Bohemia 
 he takes no part ; but, immediately after the battle of 
 
 ■ the White Mountain, he comes forward with seven million 
 1 florins — nearly a million sterling — to buy up from the 
 
 court of Vienna tire confiscated lands of his countrymen 
 
 * and relations. ' His extraordinary command of money,' 
 says his English admirer, Colonel Mitchell, ' still remains 
 an enigma in his history.' But the land, it is added, was 
 worth five times the money. He is now a prince, and, 
 unlike other princes of that day, a man of ready millions 
 
 ^ into the bargain. He raises forty thousand men at his 
 own expense ; gives away fortunes ; builds castles, palaces, 
 
 ■ towns ; lords it over North Germany, from the Mayn to 
 the Baltic ; continues his vast system of landed invest- 
 
 • ments, taking care, however, to set off his ' military ex- 
 penses ' against the purchase-money, and thus reducing 
 the actual cash received by his imperial vendor to a 
 fraction. His property is now estimated at thirty millions 
 of florins, or four millions sterling — a sum which must be 
 
 { trebled or quadrnpled to suit modern calculations. He has 
 I become the first man in Europe for wealth and prestige, for 
 I the power of ruling mankind, and overawing them by the 
 i exhibition of grandeur and sternness ; hot to omit tiiose 
 qualities so dear to the German liearf,'his' glorious con- 
 tempt for Jesuits, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, and 
 Welschen of every colour, and his solemn prctcflsions to 
 supernatural knowledge.
 
 A VISIT TO LUTZEX. 319 
 
 Yet all this time, liis exploits, in a military sense, were 
 as nothing. He never won a pitched battle, properly so 
 called, in his life.* TTi-< campaign on the Baltic, an- 
 nonnced with such flourishes of trumpet throughout 
 Catholic Europe, proved a wretched failure. He kept 
 his armies together — it cannot be said kept them in 
 order — merely by the assiduous use of the two coarsest f 
 stimulants : the terror of sanguinary disciphne, the at- 
 traction of unlimited plunder. For the execution of his 
 purposes he shrank from no cruelty whatever : and 
 Wallenstein, who, in good sooth, was quite free from 
 religious zeal, and cared no more for the Pope than for 
 Luther, left among his contemporaries a name as deeply 
 stained by savage excesses as that of the fanatic Tilly 
 himself — ' unmerciful in his executions, inexorable in his 
 commands, incessantly thirsting for money : ' 'odium et 
 nausea generis human!,' ~so he is designated by his court 
 enemies. These enemies, and the cry of oppressed 
 provinces, prevail against him. In 1631, he is super- 
 seded from his command, and submits to his fall with 
 that curious composure sometimes met with in over- 
 bearing men, when fairly mastered ; for he was ' timid,' 
 as our sharp Italian described him, ' towards those wlio 
 show their teeth ; ' and this philosophy of resignation , 
 whicli iiis biographers term magnanimous, may, if read 
 by the light of his subsequent history, be interpreted as a 
 kind of moral collapse. ' You may read it yourselves in 
 the stars,' he said to the astonished envoys who brouglit 
 
 * Viel Kriegsmaclit hat er ziisammenpebmclit, 
 Doch nie ireliefert reclit eiue Schlacbt,' 
 
 says one of his jingling epitaphs. His action witli^Mansfeld's army at thts 
 bridge of Dessau, though very important'Tri its results, wfls^irot a pitched 
 battle m the careful language of tacticians. In fact, it is only in modern 
 popular writing that the name of battle is lavished on every skirmish, e.g. 
 the ' Battle of Dalaklava.'
 
 320 A VISIT TO LUTZEX. 
 
 liim the news of his dismissal, and who expected a violent 
 
 scene, ' that the Genius of the Elector of Bavaria* 
 
 » dominates just now over that of the Emperor.' And he 
 
 I retired without a murmur into private hfe — but that of a 
 
 f Diocletian. Called once more forth in the disastrous 
 
 position of Austria after the battle of Breitenfeld, he 
 
 I rallies at once round him all the Cathohc elements of the 
 
 : Empire — raises a hundred thousand men, contrives some- 
 
 ! how to pay them, and takes the field against Gustavus ; 
 
 ] but, when there, the marvellous adventurer subsides into 
 
 a general of very ordinary quality. His most distinguished 
 
 achievement consisted in judiciously declining to fight 
 
 the Swede at Nuremberg, with seventy thousand against 
 
 fifty thousand, and preferring a war of intrerichments — 
 
 a commendable policy, doubtless, but whicli "ended only 
 
 in the decimation of both armies, and'"Tn"']iis own 
 
 crowning defeat at Lutzen. His tactics in that battle 
 
 have been described, and their consequences. But slowly 
 
 and, as it were, reluctantly, did Fortune abandon her 
 
 strang-e favourite. The death of Gustavus o'ave him more 
 
 than he lost by defeat. He became again, and more than 
 
 ever, sole master of his own side in Germany ; but he lost 
 
 his vantage in the vain endeavour to become wliat the 
 
 stars could not make him — arbiter between the two sides, 
 
 and reconciler of parties fighting for convictions which he 
 
 could scarcely comprehend. And now the want of real 
 
 * ' Ilir Herren, aiis den Astris konnt ilir es selbst solien, A&ss des 
 Kurfursten von Baiern Spiritus doniiiiirt iiber dcs Kaisers seiuen.' Such 
 was the wonderful jargxm which Wallenstein, as well as other distinguished 
 Germans, then wrote, and, as it seems, sj^oke. Here is another specimen, 
 from a report which he made to the Emperor of an action against Gus- 
 tavus : ' Der Konig hat audi darait sein Volk iiber die Massen (lecorm/irt, 
 
 dass er sie so hazanlosamcnte augef uhrt,dass sie in vorfallenden occcisionen ihm 
 desto weniger trauen werden, — und ob Ew. Maj . Volk vnhr und courage 
 zuvor iiberflussig hf t, so hat docli diesc occasion sie mehr assicwirt.''
 
 A VISIT TO LtJTZEX. 321 
 
 stamina, of which I have spoken as the negative basis of 
 his character, becomes painfully apparent. Whatever 
 doubts may have formerly prevailed, recent discoveries 
 seem to place it beyond a doubt, first, that his schemes 
 included treason to his sovereign and ingratitulle to his 
 benefactor ; next, that they were both conceived and 
 carried out with an imbecility of purpose which takes 
 all grandeur from his crime. Then — when detected 
 and exposed, when chief after chief deserted him, and 
 the net of destruction was drawing closer and closer round 
 him — his presence of mind and fertihty of resource seem 
 to have failed him altogether. He opposed to his destiny 
 nothing but a kind of proud but dull self confidence, 
 which partook less of dignity than of the fatuity of 
 despair, and exposed his bosom to the halberts of his 
 military executioners only when absolutely at his wits' 
 end to fmish the drama by any other catastrophe. 
 
 Such was the Wallenstein of history, according to the 
 best of my judgment. How strangely different from the 
 Wallenstein of poetry ! And yet while the historical 
 'Duke of Friedland ' is only a vague remembrance in 
 men's minds, except those of a few painful antiquaries, 
 the hero of fiction lias become a reality, as far as the 
 sympathy of thousands of readers can make him so. The 
 subject is a threadbare one now : yet it is scarcely possible 
 to dismiss him l"rom our thoughts without letting them. 
 dwell ;i while on that incomparable Avork of art, the 
 Wallenstein of the drama, the central figure of Schiller's 
 magnificent trilogy. Not that he is a character of the 
 highest dramatic order, properly so called. He is not 
 life-like, as is a hero of Shakspeare— one whom we seem 
 to have known, and could recognise in the street ; there is 
 something vague about him. Perhaps the sharpness of out- 
 hne has been a little rubbed ofl' by too elaborate execution. 
 
 y
 
 322 A VISIT TO LtJTZEN. 
 
 He is less an individual man than an embodiment of a 
 thousand thoughts, instincts, emotions. But then — and that 
 is the secret of his triumph — these thoughts ancl emotions 
 are our own. Different as our sphere of destiny may be 
 from Wallenstein's, the texture of life, whether the fabric 
 be small or great, has its warp and woof of the same hopes, 
 fears, meditations, disappointments ; and Wallenstein has a 
 word suited for every mood of him who is struggling to 
 attain success in life, or struggling to keep his position 
 there. It is we, in short, who are Wallenstein. And it is 
 in this point oFview that the thread of superstition, which 
 Schiller took from his historical authorities, is so wonder- 
 fully interwoven in the poet's design. That superstition 
 seems almost an anomalous trait in a spirit so refined and 
 cultivated as the dramatic Wallenstein's : it has no over- 
 powering influence ; he can throw it at times altogether 
 aside : but it is a pervading agency, mixing with all others, 
 and making him, not inferior — as in the hands of a less 
 skilful artist he would have become — but superior to his 
 fellows, men trained only in this world's ordinary cunning. 
 Now, for us, or most of us, in this waning nineteenth 
 century — for those, at least, who cannot get up any 
 interest in material communications with the invisible 
 world conveyed by table-turning and spirit-rapping, cold 
 hands under green baize, and ghosts playing accordions — 
 such vague and shadowy impulses as those which haunt 
 the mind of Schiller's hero, rather than influence his firm 
 judgement, constitute the last influences whereby the 
 ' anarch old ' Superstition still maintains a relic of her 
 dominion. Who is there among us whose heart has not 
 seemed to move in unison with his, when he exclaims 
 that— 
 
 There are moments in the life of man 
 When he is nearer to the world's great Spirit 
 Tliiin is his wont, uiul may at pleasure ask
 
 A VISIT TO LtJTZEN. 323 
 
 One question of his Fate. 'T was sucli a moment 
 When I, upon the eve of Liitzon fight, 
 Leaning against a tree and full of thoughts, 
 ' ■ Gazed forth upon the plain P 
 
 or, when, in the ominous darkness of the night of his 
 murder, he longs for one ghmpse of Jupiter — ' 
 
 Methinks 
 Could I hut see him, all were well with me ; 
 He is the star of my nativity, 
 And often marvellously hatli his aspect 
 Shot strength into my heart ? 
 
 And SO farewell to Wallenstein and to Gustavus ; 
 characters Over which the imaGjination Iing;ers, thoufjh one 
 was assuredly both worse and lower than his reputation ; 
 the other so far elevated by fate and his high purpose 
 above the ordinary sons of men that he loses something of 
 mere human interest. Such as they were, they left no 
 successor" behind them. Except the short-lived hero, 
 Bernard of Saxe Weimar, no subsequent personage of that 
 war hasTnade any appreciable mark in history. Uncon- 
 trolled by master spirits, the contest lingered on, bloodier 
 and more indecisive, till, out of the two parties, the one 
 bent on subjugation, the other on independence, a mere 
 confused and mangled residue remained, witli scarcely 
 voice enough left to expend in feeble groanings for peace 
 at any price. Famine, sword, and pestilence had uj^irootcd 
 a whole generation. Equal horrors may have occurred in 
 barbarous countries, but never, assuredly, in a civilised 
 and Christian comniiiuity like that of Germany, where 
 numberless active pens were engaged in chronichng tliem. 
 Its population, say some authorities, shrank from sixteen 
 or eighteen milUons to foui- millions. WIicduM- this be 
 accurate or no, one curious evidence of the extent ol" 
 depopulation is to be fniind in i(s foicst history. The 
 couutiy li:id lliiiven so greatly iu the lifteenth and 
 
 I
 
 324 A VISIT TO LiiTZEN. 
 
 sixteenth centuries, that its vast sylvan riches were be- 
 ginning to show symptoms of exhaustion. In North 
 Germany numerous edicts were issued before a.d. IGOO 
 for the preservation of tlie woods. It is recorded of a 
 certam Duke Augustus of Saxony, that on his wans:s, he 
 always carried a hollow brass rod fdled with acorns, to 
 drop one by one into the ground. There are three things, 
 Melanchthon used to say, which will fail before the end of 
 the world comes: good friends, good money, and fire-wood. 
 The Thirty Years' War effectually adjourned the last of 
 these complaints to another age. The forest covered 
 again whole tracts which had been under cultivation. 
 What with the diminution of people, and what with the 
 increase of wood, no need of the old kind seems to have 
 been again felt until the middle of the eighteenth century ; 
 and it is said that the forests had then become so over- 
 grown, that the tempestuous seasons which prevailed 
 in, 1780-1790 destroyed many square miles of them. 
 Germany went back in cultivation, and in public spirit 
 and independence, even more than in mere numbers ; it 
 required a Frederick the Great to raise her again after a 
 hundred years, and that but partially ; and even the 
 Germany of the nineteenth century, in which political 
 lags so far behind every other class of thought, bears 
 the impress of that long reign of darkness and terror 
 which broke down the media3val spirit of self-govern- 
 ment. ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 M 
 
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 \/'-' ' / 
 
 M 
 
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 U^ 
 
 
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 V ■ - f 
 
 / 
 
 !1 i 
 
 A VISIT TO MAESTOX MOOE, 
 
 Mat 1861. 
 
 The two bloodiest battles ever fought on English ground, 
 and between Englishmen, took place in the plain south- 
 west of York, and witliin a few miles of each other. The 
 first on that snowy Palm Sunday of 1461, at Towton, when 
 Edward, at the head of his soutliern armyT'dlscomfited 
 the Lancastrians of the north with such a slaughter, that 
 South ey was almost justified in his lam^eate-like vaunt--= 
 
 Half the blood -wliich there was spent 
 Had sufficed to win again 
 Anjou and ill-yielded Maine, 
 Normandy and Aquitaine. 
 
 The second in the long Midsummer twilight of July 2, 
 1644, when Fairfax and Rupert, tired of manoeuvrings for 
 which neitlier had genius nor appetite, met on Marston 
 Moor to have it out, like two schoolboys in the ' fighting- 
 ground,' and left some four thousand Britisli dead as the 
 evidence of their brilHant but unnecessary valour. The 
 name of Marston Moor appeals, perhaps, more to tlie 
 imagination than tliat of any other field of our great civil 
 war : partly from a certain amount of poetry and romance 
 wliich has been expended on it ; })artly because it was 
 (though indirectly rather than directly) the most important 
 action, and turning-point of the contest ; wliile at the same 
 lime its i^atures are very confusedly represented in ordi- 
 iiMiy ii;ii r;ilives. This is owing in great mensnrc to the 
 brief and lieree character of the struggle, ^\•hicll, \vith its 
 
 I 
 \
 
 326 A VISIT TO 3IARST0X MOOR. 
 
 many changes of fortune, was fought out between seven 
 o'clock and night : somewhat also to the w^ant of historians. 
 All the penmen were absent : Clarendon with the king ; 
 Whitelock in London ; Ludlow in the south ; all too distant 
 to get accounts of the engagement, except from hearsay 
 some time after. We have the stories of some eye-wit- 
 nesses, such as the EevcKMid Mr. Ashe, chaplain with Lord 
 Manchester's force ; the Scottish Captain Stuart, who gives 
 the Presbyterian version ; Leonard Watson, scoutmaster to 
 Oliver Cromwell, who tells his tale in a way satisfactory 
 to the Independents ; and the unfortunate Eoyalist, Sir 
 Henry Slingsby, who afterwards died for his cause on t!i^ 
 scaffold. Sir Henry lived close by, at Eed House, in Moor 
 Monkton, and his notices of the ground, with which he 
 was so familiar, are valuable. There is also Fairfax's own 
 modest and spirited account ; and a few rather indistinct 
 passages cited by Eliot Warburton, in his ' Prince Rupert 
 and the Cavaliers,' IronT'lHe so-called ' Diary of Prince 
 Pupert.' But each witness saw only that portion of the 
 battle-piece in which he was himself engaged ; no j^trac- 
 tised writer of the day took the trouble to condense and 
 analyse the narratives. Modern accounts, says Carlyle, 
 are ' worthless ;' poor Eliot Warburton's only a spirited 
 romance ; Mr. Forster's vivid incidental sketches too slight 
 for our present purpose. But an exception must now be 
 made for Mr. Sanford ('Studies and Illustrations of the 
 Great Eebcllion'), wdiose accuracy in describing the ground 
 I have had occasion to test, and whose copious historical 
 narrative can scarcely be more than abridged. Some por- 
 tions of it, however, are not easy to understand, and some 
 of his authorities seem questional)le. 
 
 The readiest approach to tlic battle-field at this day is 
 from Marston station, six miles from York, on the Knares- 
 Ijurougli line. Hence a lane leads for about two miles
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOR. 
 
 327 
 
 SS.W. until it strikes the village of Long Marston. It 
 passes over ground whicli in the time of the civil wars 
 
 was unenclosed, and ionncd i)art of a large tract of level 
 waste, partly marshy and [)aril}' sandy, but allurdnig lirni
 
 328 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 footing for cavalry at Midsummer ; known in various parts 
 of it by the names of Marston, Tockwith, Hessam, and 
 Monkton Moors. Westward from this Lane Hes the scene 
 of action. 
 
 The lane ends at the western extremity of Long Mars- 
 ton ; a straggling place, as its name implies, built along a 
 road running nearly east and west ; that is, nearl}^ at right 
 angles to the said lane. It is a village more pleasing to 
 the eye of a member of the Antiquarian Society, than of a 
 sanitary reformer. Its detached, poor-looking red-brick 
 cottages, with thatched roofs higher than the walls, its 
 two or three granges, alehouses, and blacksmiths' shops, 
 present an appearance very little different from that which 
 they must have exhibited to Fairfax's troopers : nay, many 
 of them have doubtless stood wdth little chano;e since the 
 battle. From the west end of Marston, the road (or, 
 rather, broad country lane) continues in the same direc- 
 tion, a httle north of west, for nearly a mile and a half, 
 until it reaches Tockwith, another strao-o-lino; hamlet. 
 Going from Marston to Tockwith, the visitor has on his 
 left (south) a slightly rising ground : this is the 'hill ' of 
 the contemporary narratives, on wdiich the Parliament's 
 army was drawn up. This rising ground is covered now, 
 as it was then, with corn-fields ; but now enclosed, then 
 ' open arable.' In its higher part, a field, with a single 
 conspicuous tree, called Clump Hill by the neighbours, 
 served, according to tradition, as the head-quarters for the 
 rebel leaders. On his right (north), the traveller has the 
 square enclosures whicli occupy the level ground, formerly 
 the Moor.* And the road in question (which we will call 
 
 * The exact division between moor ami Held it is not easy to trace. It 
 is important in the account of the battle, because the Royalist line was 
 protected, in front by the enclosure, ditch, &c., wliich constituted this division. 
 In ririffiths's large Map of Yorkshire (1771) ]Marston Moor proper is repre-
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOR. 329 
 
 for brevity's sake, the Tock^vitll Eoad) pretty nearly divides 
 Avhat was arable from what was waste. 
 
 At about a quarter of the distance from Marston to 
 Tockwith, a green lane, called ' Moor Lane,' diverges to 
 the right. It enters at once on the quondam moor, crosses 
 a deep ditch — provincially ' foss ' — at one or two hundred 
 yards, and comes shortly after to an open space called Four 
 Loans' (i. e. lanes) Meet, which seems to have been left as a 
 carrefour at the time of the enclosure. Beyond this, and 
 at the distance of a mile northward from the nearest point 
 of the Tockwitli Eoad, a wood of a few acres of tall trees 
 catches tlie observer's eye : this is Wilstrop or WilsthorjDC 
 Wood, much mentioned in tlie accounts of tlie battle. 
 And now, if we draw a line from Marston to Tockwith, 
 and lines from the west end of Marston an(t east end of 
 Tockwitli respectively to the southern end of Wilstrop 
 Wood, we shall describe a triangle, not very far from 
 equilateral, within which boundary the field of battle of 
 that second of July is nearly confined. 
 
 In order to make its history intelHgible, it is necessary 
 to recapitulate briefly the events which led to it. Three 
 Parliamentary armies — Lord Leven's Scotchmen, the 
 northern force of Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, 
 and tlie Earl of Manchester's levies I'rom the associated 
 counties — were besieging York. It was defended by the 
 King's chief adherent in tlie North, the Marquis of New- 
 castle, ' a very respectable commander foi' an amateur;' 
 with a garrison raised cliiefly by his own efforts, and at liis 
 own expense. Rupert came from Lancasliire — liolding, 
 much to tlie Marquis's disgust, tlic king's commission as 
 
 sented as enclosed : but largo Iracts of uiux'flaimed ground remain, callpd 
 Poppleton, Ilessy, and Tockwith floors. Tlin last contains a considerable 
 portion of tlie field of battle, and extends even a lillli' t(i tln' soiilli of (b<> 
 lane here called the Tockwith Itoud.
 
 330 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 eneral — to relieve the place, if possible. The rebels 
 moved from their leaguer to intercept him, aud took post 
 on Marston and the adjacent moors ; commanding the 
 roads leading westward, both to Wetherby and Knares- 
 boroiigli. But Eupert, by a manoeuvre, for the cleverness 
 displayed in which his best friends would not have given 
 him credit, having advanced from the west by the Wetherby 
 Eoad, instead of attacking the enemy, executed a flank 
 movement to the left, crossed the Ouse at Poppleton, and 
 entered York by its left bank, to the great satisfaction of 
 townsfolk and garrison. Here he remained a day ; which 
 he and the Marquis made as uncomfortable by their dis- 
 sensions as they could. Meanwhile, the Eoundhead chief- 
 tains were still less agreed. To keep together twenty-six 
 thousand meif, Scots, Presbyterians, and Zealots (as the new 
 Cromwellian soldiery were beginning to be styled), was no 
 easy task. The English wanted to fight ; the Scots were for 
 leaving Eupert in possession, and marching southward. 
 And (as usual in councils of war) the most peaceful sug- 
 gestion prevailed. By the middle of the second of July, 
 they were moving from Marston, south-westward, over 
 the open corn-fields ; the van of the Scotch had almost 
 reached Tadcaster, when the news suddenly arrived that 
 Eupert liad marched out of York in pursuit of them, and 
 had drawn up his battalia on the ground abandoned by 
 them, namely, on Marston Moor, in a line of nearly two 
 miles in leno:th. Then the 'rebel leaders took brief counsel 
 togetlier ; the army lialted, faced about, and soon occupied 
 in battle array the northward slope of ' the liill ' toward 
 t]ie Tockwith Eoad : a slope then covered with rye nearly 
 ripe, which almost rose to the soldier's faces. 
 
 If Napoleon's maxim, tliat one bad general is better 
 tlian two good ones, be of any value, the odds were greatly 
 against the Parliamentarians ; for Newcastle, thougli sorely
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 331 
 
 grumbling, could not but respect Eupert's commission 
 whereas the Eoundheads had half a dozen generals at 
 least. The Fairfaxes, father and son, always ' stood 
 together in their chivalry,' and may be counted as one ; 
 but they had no control over Leven or Manchester; 
 while the two latter were sorely ' hadden down,' as the 
 Scotch express it, by their respective subordinates, David 
 Leslie and Cromwell. But Eupert is alleged by strategists 
 to have committed two great mistakes. The first was in 
 fmhtino; at all. Had he left the Eoundheads to continue 
 their march, it is probable that their own dissensions, and 
 the loss of prestige consequent on their retreat from York, 
 would have broken up their force ' without hand.' To 
 this charge, Eupert invariably made answer by showing a 
 letter from the king, which, according to some biographers i 
 he kept inliis'pocket for that purpose to his dying day ; j 
 but which letter, duly considered, seems rather a warrant | 
 for fighting than an absolute order. His second alleged ' 
 mistake was, that he waited for the enemy on Marston 
 Moor, instead of taking the initiative, following them in 
 their march on Tadcaster, and delivering on their rear or 
 flank such a blow as that administered by Wellington to 
 Marmont, at Salamanca. But when we examine the ques- 
 tion and the ground, this accusation must in fairness be 
 withdrawn. Eupert could liardly have ventured on so 
 bold a move with his own force only (scarcely 16,000 
 strong), and that ofNewcastle wasnoton the field until the 
 evening. Nor indeed was Eupert himself. What detained C 
 him ? Alas ! the prosaic cause which makes so many a f 
 gallant enterprise ' lose the name of action.' Eujiert was ^ 
 money-bound, in York. We learn this, much the most 
 probable solution of tlie question, from Aitliiir Trevor, a 
 lively special correspondent of that day, whose letters arc 
 to be found in ' Carte's Life of Ormonde.' ' The army,'
 
 332 A VISIT TO MAESTON MOOK. 
 
 She says, ' continued within the play of the enemy's cannon 
 till five at night, during all which the prince and marquess 
 ;' were playing the orators to the soldiers in York (being in 
 : a raging mutiny in the town for their pay), to draw them 
 forth to join the prince's foot, which was at last effected, 
 but with much unwillingness.' Newcastle himself seems 
 to have partaken largely in this unwillingness, but his 
 better spirit prevailed ; he swallowed the affront of sub- 
 ^ mission, and followed his leader to the field, like a grand 
 ; seigneur as he was, in his coach and six. 
 
 It was drawing towards sunset, therefore, when the prince 
 arrived on the moor. Up to this time nothing had passed 
 except an occasional interchange of cannon-shot, and a 
 skirmish for the possession of a ' rye hill,' which it is not 
 easy to identify. It must not be confounded, as even Mr. 
 Sanford seems to confound it, with the great ' rye-field ' 
 occupied by the main forces of the Parliament. It lay 
 probably a little north of the Tockwith Eoad, and near 
 the west end of the position. The Eoyalist arni}^, though 
 on the lower groiuid, was well posted. Its right rested on 
 the enclosures in front of Tockwith, its left on those about 
 Marston ; in front it had the enclosures betv^^een the moor 
 and the open corn-fields, and along most of the line a deep 
 and wide ditch, so wide that it was in part filled with 
 musketeers, serving as a natural trench. The land having 
 been subsequently enclosed and drained, it is not easy 
 to identify this important feature in the accounts of the 
 enD-afrement. Mr. Graina-e, in his ' ]3attlcs of Yorkshire,' 
 supposes it to have been a drain, or foss, which he calls the 
 ' White Syke ;' but tliis, if the Ordnance Map be correct, 
 would place it too far to the north, thi'usting the front line 
 of the Eoyalists much too far back. Tiiere is another cut 
 between this and the Tockwith Eoad, and nearly parallel 
 with the latter, wdiich may represent the ' ditch ' in ques-
 
 A VISIT TO MAKSTOX MOOR. 333 
 
 tion. Tlie rebels, on the other hand, occupying the brow 
 of the south hill, had, according to Master Ashe, the advan- 
 tage of the sun (though tliis could not be much, facing as 
 they did NX.E. in the evening of a midsummer day), and 
 certainly of the ground. 
 
 As to numbers, we may venture on the following 
 estimate as probable : — Royalists — 16,000 foot, 7,000 
 horse ; all English, except a troop or two of tremendous 
 ' Iiish papists,' held in utter fear and aversion by their 
 godly enemies. Eoundheads — 19,000 or 20,000 foot, 
 7,000' horse ; more than a third probably Scotch. 
 
 When finally drawn np on both sides, the armies pre- 
 sented something like the following disposition : in de- 
 scribing which, I shall venture to borrow tlie peaceful 
 nomenclature of the Post-office, instead of encountering the 
 endless confusion of language occasioned by using the 
 description of ' right and left wings.' 
 
 On the west, the Parliamentary line was bounded by a 
 ' cross ditch,' which I take to be the stream flowing down 
 from Bilton past the east end of Tockwith village ; west 
 of this were only a few Scottish dragoons under Colonel 
 Frisell. 
 
 Then followed — 
 
 West : 
 Cromwell's and Manchester's horse, B\Ton's horse, Irish horse, Rupert's 
 with three Scotch troops under Les- Life Guards, 
 lie ; opposed to 
 
 West Centre : 
 Manchester's foot. Rupert's foot. 
 
 East Centre : 
 Fairfax's foot. Newcastle's foot. 
 
 East : " 
 Fairfax's horse. Goring and Urry's horse. 
 
 Lord Leven's horse. 
 
 Besides reserves of lout oi' both sides.
 
 334 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOR. 
 
 Some twenty or thirty field-pieces on eacli side played 
 against each other awhile, but with little effect. ' They ' 
 (the Puritans), says Slingsby, ^ after four shots, give over, 
 and in Marston corn fields fall to singing psalms.' One of 
 the Eoyalist shot, however, mortally wounded Cromwell's 
 nephew, young Walton, concerning whom OliverVtouch- 
 ing~and; soldier-like letter may be read in Carlyle. It is 
 very observable, that though Marston and Tockwith must 
 have both been defensible villaijes, with o-arden walls and 
 enclosures, no attempt seems to have been made to secure 
 either. In an encounter between modern armies,; they 
 would have been esteemed the ' keys of the position,' and 
 taken and retaken half a dozen times in the day. Such 
 was not the strategy of those times ; they fought more 
 willingly in the open, in order to employ their cavalry, 
 which was then used in far larger proportions than in 
 modern warfare,* as well as from deficiency in military 
 skill, which, at least until Naseby, was of the lowest order. 
 The nobility and higlier gentry of England, which 
 furniihedrteadeTS to both parties, produced only a succes- 
 sion of brave bhmderers ; the captains trained in the Dutch 
 and 'GTerman wars, on whom these leaders relied for 
 support, proved, for the most part, as Macaiday remarks, 
 ] extremely inefficient ; tlie business was carried on by a 
 V, repetition of purposeless onslaughts and skirmishes all 
 
 * The proportion of horse was even greater in other actions of the civil 
 war. At Naseby the king had 5,000 horse to only 4,000 foot. At the second 
 l)attle of Newbury, LiuUow saAV 7,000 horse and dragoons in one body on 
 tlie side of the Parliament — the largest, he says, which he ever observed in 
 the war — out of an army of 10,000. Compare these figures with those of 
 modem war. Generally speaking, the cavalry in a pitched battle now vary from 
 a fifth to a tenth of the whole force. At "Waterloo, where the cavahy played 
 a great part, that of the French was 12,000 out of a total of 75,000 : those 
 of the British and allies about the same in proportion. It would, probably, 
 not be now easy to assemble 15,000 horsemen, even in Yorkshire, in a single 
 action.
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOR. 335 
 
 over the country, and, had it not been for the ultimate 
 operation of the ' self-denying ordinance,' it is difficult to 
 see, on military grounds, how it could ever have come to 
 an end. Those times, fertile as they were in warlike 
 incident, produced only four men with any pretensions 
 to goueralshipT'and those of very different degrees — i 
 Croiuwell, Montrose, Monk, David Leslie — of whom two 
 were Scots, Ireton might be added, ' si qua fata aspera 
 rumjKit;' but he had not the opportunity to conquer 
 fame. 
 
 It was now seven o'clock, when the Puritan leaders, 
 having completed their dispositions, descended from their 
 vantage ground to charge Eupert's line at once, along the 
 whole length of the edge of the moor from Marston to 
 Tockwith. For the purpose of recognition, they wore 
 white ribbons or bits of paper in their hats : the Eoyalists 
 fought without band or scarf. ' Our army moving down 
 the hill,' says Master Ashe, ' was like thick clouds, having 
 divided themselves into brigades consisting of 800, 1,000, 
 1,200, 1,500 men a piece ; and some brigades of horse, 
 consisting of three, and some of four troops.' But on most 
 parts of the line the Eoyalists did not wait for the charge 
 but met it midway. The shock of some forty thousand 
 men, horse and foot, burning with zeal and rendered fu- 
 rious by delay, meeting breast to breast on a line a mile and 
 a half in length, must be left rather to the imagination than 
 collected from meagre fragments of narrative. ' The 
 most enormous hurly-burly, of fire and smoke, and steel 
 flashings, and death tumult,' saitli Carlyle, ' ever seen in 
 those regions.' It must have been like the desperate en- 
 counter of that not dissimilar day when the Scots Kinu" 
 James led his army through ihe mist and smoke, down 
 Flodden bent, to charge 'Sun-ey's fofce along its whole 
 front ; when, in tlie words of him who eould depict the
 
 336 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOR. 
 
 animal joy and cli'iinkenness of battle better than any other 
 since Homer, 
 
 Such a shout was there 
 As if men fought on middle earth, 
 
 And fiends in upper air : 
 O, life and death were in that shout, 
 Recoil and rally, charge and rout. 
 And triumph and despair ! 
 
 The violence of that collision, as of two massive bodies 
 meeting, was such as to crush and pulverise at once both 
 the opposing forces. We just get a ghmpse of them 
 joining battle in complete array, and the next shows them 
 scattered, broken, straggling across moor and field on 
 both sides, in utter bewilderment. Only the few who 
 succeeded in keeping their ranks are left to finish the 
 day's work. 
 
 ' There were three generals on. each side,' writes Principal 
 Baillie, ' Lesley (Alexander, Lord Leven), Fairfax (the old 
 Lord), and Manchester ; Eupert, Newcastle, and King 
 (Newcastle's second in command). Within half an hour 
 and less, all six took them to their heels ; this to you alone.' 
 And see further, the description of the scene by Arthur 
 Trevor, whom we have already quoted ; he was engaged 
 in a vain search over tlie field for Prince Eupert : — 
 // 'The runaways on both sides were so many, so breatli- 
 ^' less, so speechless, and so full of fear, tliat I should not 
 have taken them for men but by their motions, which still 
 served them very well ; not a man of them being able to 
 give me the least hope where the prince was to be found ; 
 both armies being mingled, both horse and foot, no side 
 keeping their own posts. In this horrible distraction 
 did I coast the country, here meeting with a shoal of Scots 
 crying out " Wae's us, we are all imdone ! " and so full of 
 lamentations and mourning, as if tlieir day of doom had 
 overtaken them, and from which they knew not whither
 
 A VISIT TO MAKSTON MOOR. 337 
 
 to fly. And anon I mot a ragged troop reduced to four 
 and a cornet ; by and by a little foot-officer, witliout hat- 
 band, sword, or, indeed, anything but feet, and so much 
 tongue as woidd serve to inquire the way to the next 
 garrison, which (to say the truth) were well filled with 
 the strao:2clers on both sides within a few hours, thoui>-h 
 they lay distant from the place of the fight twenty or 
 thirty miles.' j^ 
 
 Such was the general aspect of the field in half an hour 
 from the commencement of the battle ; but, in recounting 
 more particularly what occurred in each section of it, the 
 narrator is under the unavoidable disadvantage of de- 
 scribing as successive, incidents which in truth took place 
 along the whole line simultaneously. 
 
 1. On the extreme west, Cromwell, with Manchester's 
 horse, and David Leslie's three troops, came, as our local 
 baronet, Sir Henry Shngsby, says, ' off the cony-warren, 
 by Bilton Bream ;'* that is, he must have descended ' the 
 hill ' nearly along the line of a lane leading from Bilton, 
 and joining the Tockwith road just at the entrance into 
 Tockwith. The ditch in front was here a formidable 
 obstacle, well fined, as it was with musketeers. It might 
 have tried the steadiness even of the Ironsides to pass it 
 in order ; but they were spared the trouble by the folly of 
 their opponents. Lord Byron, abandoning his vantage- 
 ground, charged, with his horse, across tlie ditch, was met 
 in full tilt by Cromwell, beaten, and driven back m con- 
 fusion over his own slaughtered musketeers, and across 
 the ditch again. ' In a moment,' says Oliver's scoutmaster 
 Watson,f who was in this charge, ' we were past the ditch 
 on to tlie moor, upon equal terms with the enemy, our 
 
 * Perhaps a misprint for ' break ' or ' brake.' 
 
 t Watson's account appears not to have been printed, and i c^uote it on 
 the authority of Mr. Sauford'a book. 
 
 Z
 
 338 A VISIT TO MAESTON MOOR. 
 
 men joining in a running match.' Anotlier portion seem 
 somehow to have turned the ditch. One more hard tussle 
 with Grandison's horse and Kupert's Hfe-guard followed. 
 Cromwell himself was slightly wounded ; and then the 
 right wing of the Eoyalists was irrecoverably broken. 
 The poor ' Irish Papists ' were nowhere ; we hear nothing 
 further of them. The fugitives ' fled along Wilstrop Wood 
 side,' says Slingsby ; that is, seemingly, along the south- 
 eastern edge of the wood, where there is a way conducting 
 in the direction of the Ouse, at Poppleton. Part of Crom- 
 well's cavalry followed, and did execution on the fliers 
 even as far as the Ouse : the remainder formed ao;ain on 
 the ground, and ralhed around them such of their foot as 
 were serviceable. 
 
 2. On the west centre there was ' a plain,' says Captain 
 Stuart, between Manchester's foot and the enemy ; the 
 obstacles of ditch and hedges were slighter ; and here the 
 fighting seems to have been indecisive ; but Manchester's 
 foot maintained their ground, thougli he seems himself to 
 have abandoned the field. 
 
 3. But on the east centre, Fairfax's foot had to use 
 a lane, with enclosures on each side, in which only three 
 or four could walk abreast (says Stuart), as their line for 
 entering on the moor. There are two or three ways, 
 turning ofi" from the Tockwith Eoad on the north, which 
 might answer this description ; but Sanford supposes, and 
 I think with reason, that it was ' Moor Lane,' already de- 
 scribed. Here the advancing Yorkshiremen were picked 
 ofi" by the musketeers on both sides of the way ; those 
 wlio struggled to the end of tlie lane met with the ditch, 
 and, on the other side of it, Newcastle's famous foot regi- 
 ment of ' white coats,' whom his lordship had lately new 
 clothed in uniform of undyed clotli, whence they were 
 popularly denominated his ' Lambs.' These brave fellows
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 339 
 
 had been levied, not iVoni among the marquis's tenantry, 
 as stated in poptdai' accounts, but in the border counties ; 
 many of them (as his duchess tells us) ' bred in the moorish 
 grounds of the northern parts.' As fast as the head of 
 Fairfax's column debouched on the moor, its files were 
 knocked down or beaten back by these white-coated 
 opponents, until at last they were driven in confusion to- 
 wards their riglit hand, to increase the disorganisation of 
 all that side of the Parliament's army. 
 
 4. For, on the east, and close to Marston village, the 
 horse of the Cavaliers had utterly beaten Lord Leven's 
 Scottish cavalry, had ridden through his and Fairfax's 
 infantry, and chased the broken remnant all up the corn- 
 fields, even to the top of ' the hill.' Seldom was a com- 
 pleter example made, than of the poor Covenanters on 
 that day. But Walter Scott — in whom the instinct of 
 antiquarian genius, which made him reproduce the past 
 with unequalled vividness, was mingled with a most 
 poetical and hopeless habit of inaccuracy as to particulars 
 — makes Bertram Eisingham, in ' Eokeby,' lie like a 
 trooper, when he tells Oswald that — 
 
 Many a bonny Scot, aghast, 
 Spurring liis palfry northicard, past. 
 Cursing the day when zeal oi" meed 
 First lured their Leslie o'er the Tweed. 
 
 It is difficidt to say what could have dictated these 
 verses, except the vague idea, not corroborated by uniform 
 experience, that a Scotchman in difTicidties would make 
 for his native country. To achieve this feat Sawney must 
 have ridden rii^-ht throun;h the ranks of the victorious 
 Eoyalists. Sawney did nothing of the sort. He fled south- 
 ward, scattering across the country in the direction of 
 Tadcaster; his general. Lord Leven, ' never drew bridle 
 till he got to Leeds,' where, according to a story which 
 
 z 2
 
 340 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 the Eoyalists repeated with intense pleasure, he was 
 taken up by the parish constable. The real facts, how- 
 ever, are recounted in the ' Memoirs of the Somer- 
 villes :' — ' The earl himself, being much wearied, in the 
 evening of the battle, with ordering his army, and now 
 quite spent with his long journey in the night, had cast 
 himself down upon a bed to rest ; when an express from 
 David Leslie arriving, he awoke, and hastily cries out 
 " Lieutenant-Colonel, what news ? " " All is safe, please 
 your excellence ; the Parliament's army has obtained a 
 great victory ;" and then he dehvers the letter. The general, 
 upon hearing this, knocked upon his breast, and says, " I 
 would to God I had died upon the place !'" Old Ferdi- 
 nando. Lord Fairfax, for his part, ran away as far as Cawood, 
 where, says Warburton, he too, ' like a sensible old veteran 
 as he was, went to bed ; there being no fire or candle in 
 the house.' This story Mr. Sanford discredits, because 
 his lordship dated as of the 2nd July an official letter to 
 the Mayor of Hull, announcing the victory. But the 
 temptation to antedate was strong. 
 
 The younger blood was hotter. Thomas Fairfax, ac- 
 cording to his own account, was returning from a success- 
 ful charge, when he got involved in the disaster of his 
 infantry, and was driven by Goring's attack among the 
 enclosures by Marston, where death or capture seemed 
 inevitable. He and Lambert (afterwards Cromwell's 
 famous Major-General) took the white ribbon out of 
 their hats, got together some twenty or thirty horsemen, 
 cut right through Goring's troopers, and escaped — Fairfax 
 with a slash in the face — to join Cromwell on the open 
 moor. " 
 
 Did Prince Eupert head in person this successful charge 
 of the Eoyalist left ? Clearly not. Eupert is a mythical 
 personage in history. Wherever a ' fiery charge,' doing
 
 A VISIT TO ilARSTON MOOR. 341 
 
 more harm to friends than foes, is to be perpetrated, poet- 
 ical fitness requires that it be laid at Eupert's door. Tra- 
 dition, even from the earhest times, selected this as one of 
 the instances. Defoe, in his ' Memoirs of a Cavalier ' (in 
 which the account of Marstou fight is as lifehke as any- 
 thing which ever proceeded from his pen, but the flim- 
 siest romance notwithstanding), confirmed and popularised 
 that tradition. Walter Scott, and poets and romancers 
 in general, have taken it up without hesitation, and 
 Eliot Warburton, in his biography of Prince Eupert, en- 
 deavours to establish it, on the authority of ' Whitelock, 
 Fan-fax, and the event.' Whitelock wTote on hearsay, and 
 that so imperfect, that he says the battle began at ' seven 
 in the morning.' Fairfax says nothing about it. Proba- 
 bihty is all against it. Eupert, for the first time in his 
 unlucky life, was sole in command in a pitched battle. 
 Even he would scarcely have so far suffered mere pugna- 
 city to get the better of every other duty, as to charge 
 with Goring's cavalry at the very extremity of the field. 
 Scoutmaster Watson avers, indeed, distinctly to the con- 
 trary, that Eupert rode at the head of his own life-guards, 
 on the west of the field, and engaged in all but personal 
 conflict with Cromwell. Watson, however, only gives the 
 behef current at the moment among the soldiers on his 
 side ; and he seems, moreover, in this portion of his story, 
 a little romantic, and addicted to magnifying his leader. 
 In truth the prince's whereabouts, in this scene of fearful 
 tumult, is not positively ascertained. That he was some- 
 where in the thick of the melee we may well believe, were 
 it only from the circumstance that the Eoundheads 
 discovered his favourite dog, 'Boy,' among the slain^ 
 
 .* 
 
 * A Roiiiulhead piimphlet, in doggerel verse, entitled 'A Dogg's Elegy, or 
 Rupert's Teares,' raises liiiii In llic raiili of aii imp, or dog-fieud. The
 
 342 A VISIT TO MAESTON MOOE. 
 
 ' more prized by his master tlian creatures of miicli more 
 worth.' The next glimpse we get of Eupert shows him 
 doing a general's last duty, by covering the retreat of his 
 broken forces into York. 
 
 The credit of this successful cavalier charge must, as it 
 seems, be divided between Goring and him to whom Kush- 
 worth expressly ascribes it — namely, Sir John Urry — who 
 afterwards changed sides twice, and got hanged at last 
 for his pains. 
 
 Of Newcastle's prowess on the field we know more, 
 thanks to his fond and fantastic biographer, ' the thrice 
 noble, illustrious, and excellent princess, Margaret Duchess 
 of Newcastle.' She informs us that, having descended from 
 his coach-and-six, he was surrounded by his followers, 
 'to whom my lord spake after this manner : — "Gentle- 
 men, " said he, " you have done me tlie honour to chuse 
 me your captain, and now is the fittest time that I may 
 do you service ; wherefore, if you'll follow me, I shall 
 lead you on the best I can, and show you the way to 
 your own honour." They being as glad of my lord's 
 proffer as my lord was of their readiness, went on with the 
 greatest courage ; and, passing through two bodies of foot, 
 engaged with one another not at forty yards' distance, 
 received not the least hurt, although they fired quick upon 
 each other, but march towards a Scots regiment of foot, 
 which they charged and routed ; in which encounter my 
 lord himself killed three with his page's half-leaden sword, 
 for he had no other left him ! ' . . . In short, it is plain 
 
 frontispiece represents poor Boy lying on the field of honour; his four legs in 
 the air 5 under which are these verses: — 
 
 Sad Cavaliers, Rupert in\-ites you all, 
 
 That do survive, to his Dog's funeral ; 
 
 Close mourners are the Witch, the Pope, the Devil, 
 
 That much lament your late befallen evil.
 
 A VISIT TO MAllSTON MOOli. 343 
 
 that liis lordship would have won the battle, in his wife's . 
 opuiion, witli his own hand, had it not been for the I 
 obstinacy of one unlucky Eoundhead. 'At last, after 
 they had passed through this regiment of foot, a pikeman 
 made a stand to the whole troop : and though my lord 
 charged him twice or thrice, yet he could not enter liim ! ' 
 — (get within his guard, the lady means) — 'but the troops 
 despatched him soon.' 
 
 Darkness, or rather moonlight, was now drawing near, 
 and matters stood thus. Not only the beaten wings, re- 
 spectively, but ' the gross' of both armies, were flying, 
 distractedly, in all directions. Cromwell's and David 
 Leshe's horse, seconded by the best of Manchester's foot, 
 were m possession of the western part of the moor, and 
 had changed their front : then- backs were now towards \ 
 Wilstrop wood, their faces towards Marston village : 
 rallying to them Fairfax, and such fragments of his force 
 as were capable of being raUied. We may almost ima- 
 gine Ohver addressing Fairfax in the words of Desaix to 
 NapoleoiTat Marengo : ' The battle is lost ; but there is 
 time left to win another.' The nearest unbroktii (li\isi()ii 
 of the' t'luiiiy U) iliom consisted of Newcastle's 'Lambs.' 
 These seem to have held the same ground on which they 
 had repulsed Fau-fax's front attack — the spot in question, 
 termed ' a small parcel of ground, ditched in,' being, as I 
 conjecture, at or near the point called ' Four Loans' Meet.' 
 Cromwell's flrst onset on them was repulsed with musketry. 
 But small chance had these stubborn Borderers, in their 
 new serge doublets, with their unwieldy pikes, taken, as 
 they now were, in flank, against the repeated rush of the 
 L"onsides. They stood their ground to a man, and were 
 simply cut t(3 i)ieces. ' They were killed in rank and file,' 
 says Duchess Margaret. ' When the horse did enter ' (says 
 Lilly, the astrologer, in his ' Life and Times '), ' they would
 
 344 A VISIT TO MAESTON MOOR. 
 
 have no quarter, but fought it out till there was not thirty 
 of them living. Thosle whose hap it was to be beaten 
 down upon the ground as the troopers came near them, 
 though they could not escape their wounds, yet were so 
 desperate as to get either a pike or sword, or a piece of 
 them, and to gore the troopers' horses as they came over 
 them. Captain Camby, then a trooper under Cromwell, 
 and an actor, who was the third or fourth man that entered 
 amongst them, protested he never, in all the fights he was 
 in, met with such resolute, brave fellows, or whom he 
 pitied so much ; and said he saved two or three against 
 their wills.' * 
 
 And now Goring's and Urry's horse had returned from 
 chasing the Scots, had descended 'the hill,' and, covering 
 the few Eoyahst infantry who remained unbroken, faced 
 round towards Cromwell, on the edge of the moor near 
 Marston ; so that, in the language of the eye-witnesses, 
 each army — that is, what remained of it — occupied nearly 
 the reverse position to that which it had held when the 
 fight began. The crisis had come, and was determined 
 by sheer superiority of discipline — the great moral of 
 Marston day. ' That difference,' says Clarendon, in his 
 account of Naseby fight, ' was observable all along in the 
 discipline of the king's troops, and of those which marched 
 under the command of Fairfax and Cromwell (for it was 
 
 * The historian of the Somervilles claims for Colonel Frizells Scots horse 
 the glory of having been the first to charge the White Coats. But as the said 
 historian was at the time in close attendance on the fugitive Leven (to 
 whom he lenthis drap-de-beriy cloak to ride off in), his patriotic suggestion 
 cannot bo cited as an authority. The few surviving White Coats seem, 
 like; FalstafT's raganiuffins, to have repaired 'to the town end ' to beg, or 
 worse, for life. The duchess has a story how a Royalist officer, crossing to 
 the Continent, was set upon at sea by certain ' Picaroons,' who discovered 
 that ho knew the Marquis of Newcastle; whereupon they 'did not only 
 take nothing from him, but used him with all civility, and desired him to 
 remember their humble duty to their general, for they were some of his 
 White Coats that had escaped death.'
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 345 
 
 only under tliem, and liad never been remarkable under 
 Essex or Waller), that though the king's troops persisted 
 in the charge, and routed those they had charged, they 
 seldom rallied themselves in order, nor could be brought 
 to make a second charge again upon the same day.' So, 
 in the present instance, Cromwell's troopers came on in 
 regular array. Goring's could hardly be brought to form 
 at all, and advanced in mere disorder. Under such cir- 
 cumstances, the upshot was inevitable. The shock of the 
 last encounter seems to have been short, the loss of hfe 
 slight; but the moonlight pursuit was bloody. 'We 
 followed them, ' says Watson, ' to within a mile of York, 
 cutting them down, so that their dead bodies lay three 
 miles in length.' The battle was finally won and lost, and 
 the Parliament forces remained masters of the carnage- 
 cumbered moor, with some fifteen hundred or two thou- 
 sand prisoners, besides artillery, stores, and standards, as 
 the prize of victory. * 
 
 Cromwell (ably seconded by David Leslie) was there- 
 fore tlTc! true hero of the day. For once, the mythical and 
 the real history coalesce. It is strange that Warburton 
 should say that ' Cromwell was then comparatively un- 
 known, and that very little is proved to have been done 
 by him at this battle.' As to the fact of his achievements, 
 the eye-witnesses speak plain enough. As to the estimate 
 made of them at the time, there is overwhelming tes- 
 timony. It is enough to cite canny Principal Baillie, who 
 cannot conceal his disgust at the impudence of the Inde- 
 
 * These 'standards' throughout the Civil War served, among- other 
 pui-poscs, that of political caiicatures ; and very quaint are the descriptions 
 recorded of them. The following, talc(>n at Marston, must have taxed the 
 fingers of tlie fair Royalists who wrought it pretty severely : — * A blue, and 
 on it a cro'^ni toAvard.s the top, with a mitre boneatli the crown, witli the 
 Farliatnent -piui\\ii\ mi llu; i^idu ; iiml llii^ niuttd, '' Nolite taugero Christos 
 meos ! "' (to wit, the cruwn and tin' niilic).
 
 346 A VISIT TO MAKSTON MOOE. 
 
 pendents in declaring that 'they and their Major-General 
 Cromwell had done it all their alone,' to the disparagement 
 of godly officers, of his own covenanting colour ; and 
 
 I envious Hollis, who says 'he had the boldness to as- 
 sume much of the victory himself, or rather, Herod-like, to 
 
 i suffer others to magnify and adore him for it.' In truth, 
 the name of Cromwell rather seems brought prominently 
 forward, in contemporary accounts, earlier than his actions 
 would appear to justify. ' The spirits of great men,' hke 
 those of great events, often 'stride forth before the events.' 
 Mankind early recognise theu" coming masters. Such 
 
 I figures as those of Csesar, Cromwell, Eobespierre, rivet 
 the attention of the bystanders even before the hour of 
 their full development has arrived. At all events, the 
 names of Cromwell and Marston are now righteously in- 
 separable to the end of time. So I thought as I walked 
 through the village, and entered a tidy new schoolhouse, 
 where some twenty or thirty tall and clever-looking York- 
 shire-men and women of the future were undergoing 
 a questioning by their master in English history. I fol- 
 lowed them through the disasters of Eobert Bruce, and 
 heard how that hero could not find a roof to lay his head 
 under — from whence a digression to the respective merits 
 of slates and tiles for roofing, on which point I am not 
 certain that the class were quite orthodox. But when I 
 
 i craved leave to put a question for myself, and asked, 
 ' Who fought the great battle in the fields between this 
 
 I and Tockwith ? ' I was answered at once by the shout 
 
 I of a queer-faced urchin near me, followed by a chorus 
 
 I of his fellows, ' Oliver Crummle ! ' 
 
 L'buniLlc luit dans deux cents aus 
 N'aur.i plus d'autre histoire. 
 
 As to the events which followed the battle, my tale 
 must be short. Rupert retreated on York ; and, after a
 
 A VISIT TO MAKSTON MOOR. 347 
 
 day or two's fierce recrimination with Newcastle, marched 
 into Lancashire, mipiirsued, at the head of his dimini^licd 
 army. The marquis having fully weighed what was due 
 to himself against what was due to King Charles — and 
 finding, moreover, tliat he had only ninety pounds left in 
 his pocket, a small residue for one whose rent-roll amounted 
 to the then enormous sum of 23,000/, a year — abandoned 
 the cause, and took ship for the Continent. IIow lie 
 begged and borrowed his way there, through sixteen 
 meagre years of Koyalist exile — now driving about Ger- 
 many ' in a coach and nine horses of a Holsatian breed, 
 for which horses he paid 160/. and was afterwards offered 
 for one of them 100 pistoles at Paris '* — now so hard up 
 for a dinner that he was fain to request his lady to make 
 ' her waiting maid, Mrs. Chaplain, now Mrs. Topp, pawn 
 some small toys which she had formerly given her ' — 
 how he returned at the Eestoration a much poorer, but 
 very little wiser man, was made a duke, and told long 
 stories of his campaigns for the rest of his days — for all 
 these things the reader must be referred to his duchess's 
 Life of him, already quoted ; which if he does not happen 
 to know, he Avill thank me for introducing him to a store 
 of old world amusement. 
 
 As for the victorious party, they spent the following 
 days on tlie moor, in much privation, endured with great 
 constancy and discipline, rallying their scattered forces as 
 well as they might ; and then resumed the siege of York, 
 which shortly surrendered. I need not recapitulate the 
 names of the men of account who fell on both sides ; tliey 
 will be found catalogued in all the authorities. But it is a 
 
 • His Grace's fondness for horseflosb ought to redeem some of liis absur- 
 dities. ' So gi'eat a love/ says his consort, ' had my lord for good horses ; 
 and certainly I have observed, and do veiily believe, that some of them had 
 a particular love for my lord ; for tliey seemed to rejoice whenever he came 
 into the stables, by their trampling action, and the noise they made.'
 
 348 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 picturesque bit of story, and as such may be recommended 
 to artists in search of a subject, how, on the day after the 
 fight, the victors led their prisoner, the cliivah^ous Sir 
 Charles Lucas, over the field, in order that he might 
 identify the bodies of the Cavaliers, whom their white 
 skins denoted as belonging to the ' quality ;' that they 
 might receive burial apart. But he could not say he knew 
 any one — or, as they thought, would not, lest he should 
 increase their triumph — except one gentleman, who ' had 
 a bracelet of hair about his wrist.' Sir Charles desired the 
 bracelet might be taken off, and said, ' An honourable lady 
 would give thanks for that.' So the slain men were simply 
 thrown together, gentry and commonalty, into deep trenches 
 dug by the country folks on the field. Some of these (ac- 
 cording to Ashe) told the soldiers that they had bmied in 
 this way 4,150 bodies.* These trenches would naturally 
 be dug at the points where the greatest slaughter took 
 place. According to local tradition, these were chiefly 
 at the spot called Four Loans' Meet, and at another a little 
 west, marked in the Ordnance Map as ' White Syke's Close ;' 
 while other graves were traceable in the last century along 
 Wilstrop Wood side. Many researches have been made 
 by the curious ; but the harvest of death has not been 
 
 * This number, according to modern proportion, would imply, at the very 
 least, 20,000 hors de comhat. It may however be believed, that the pro- 
 portion of killed to woimded was gi'eater in the civil wars than in modern 
 battles, in which great armies ' pot ' at each other from a distance for whole 
 days with cannon and musketry. Men were in earnest in those times, and 
 struck home. Still the sura is probably exaggerated. Putting together the 
 numbers admitted on each side, the whole did not exceed a thousand killed 
 outright. 
 
 'The battles of our civil wars were tournaments,' says a clever 'Times' 
 coiTespondeut from America, contrasting them with the supposed magnitude 
 of modem conflicts. Taking the killed and wounded at Marston'at six or 
 seven thousand, and proportioning numbers to population, this would repre- 
 sent a l)attle in the United States between 250,000 men on the two sidea 
 with .30,000 killed and wounded I
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 349 
 
 fully disinterred, nor will be till tlie day of judgment. 
 Bullets and similar trifling relics are still picked up. I 
 was told, that within these few years, ' many skellingtons 
 hke ' had been struck upon in making a drain on the lands 
 of Wilstrop Grange Farm, but I could not ascertain the 
 exact spot. And an old dame, a cottager at Wilstrop 
 village, informed me that her son had picked up and 
 brought home ' a lot of teeth,' but she made him throw 
 them away, ' for fear them as they belonged to might come 
 for them.' Other memorials of the fight there seem to 
 be few. In York Museum are some swords and cuu^asses 
 taken from the field — one of the latter of magnificent pro- 
 portions, which had resisted the deep dmt of a bullet, 
 but had not defended its stalwart wearer against some 
 other mortal wound. 
 
 The battle of Marston Moor, though it led to no im- 
 mediate consequences beyond the capture of York, was, 
 as has been said, the turning-point of the first civil war. 
 The king was enabled to prolong it for a year, cliiefly by 
 reason of Montrose's successes, which paralysed the Scots, 
 and prevented them from co-operating with Parliament in 
 the south. But, on the other hand, it was through the 
 destruction of the king's party in the north of England, 
 that Leshe was able to return to Scotland a year after, and 
 deal Montrose the last blow. Both Naseby and Philiphaugh 
 Avere, therefore, the legitimate fruits of the day which 
 I have endeavoured to describe, with the zeal, perhaps 
 with the trilUug particularity, of an itinerant antiquary. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The accounts wliicli we possess of the number of cavalry omployod in our 
 civil wars tend to prove, what other circumstiinces would lead us to believe, 
 that the number of horses bred in England was much larger in proportion 
 to the population in the seventeenth century than now. In truth, though
 
 350 A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 •we are wandering rather far from Marston field in making the remark, the 
 reader of history will find it necessary to make much correction in the 
 current statements respecting the enormous increase which has taken place 
 since that time in our amount of stock, and in agricultural produce. Figures, 
 in the hands of able arithmeticians, like the late Mr. MacCulloch, for instance, 
 germinate into the most prolific deductions ; and if we were to swallow in 
 the mass, and withoiit digesting, their several calculations of the increase 
 of acreage under cultivation, the increase of imported produce, the multi- 
 plication of produce on eveiy cidtivated acre, the multiplication of animals, 
 the doubling of the size of every animal, and so forth, we should find our- 
 selves ineiatably driven to account for the consumption of the inordinate 
 mass of provisions which we have thus created, by supposing that every 
 Englishman eats twice or thrice as much as his forefathers. Macaulay, who 
 had a tendency to depreciate the social condition of past times, went so far, in 
 his famous ' Chapters on England in the Reign of Charles II.,' as to indorse 
 the loose statements of the writers of the day, that half of England was 
 waste, consisting, in his picturesque expression, of ' moor, forest, and fen,' 
 and that, ' a fourth of England has been in little more than a century turned 
 from a wild into a garden ! ' This somewhat reckless calculation he rests 
 on the statistics of enclosures. But its fallacy arises from the circumstance 
 that MacaiUay confounds enclosure of ' common field,' that is, of arable laud 
 already cidtivated, though doubtless ill-cultivated, with enclosure from what 
 he terms ' the wild.' In a note to a subsequent edition he professes to make 
 a correction on this account ; but the correction is quite insufficient. 
 The following details will show the inaccuracy of the supposition. 
 
 In 1797, a Committee of Parliament on waste land reported on the num- 
 ber of Enclosure Acts and of acres enclosed since the beginning of Queen 
 Anne's reign (or nearly from Macaulay's standpoint). They made the total 
 2,800,000 acres : and as three counties are omitted, we may raise the num- 
 ber to three millions, or about one-hcelfth of the sm-face of England and 
 Wales for the whole eighteenth century. 
 
 But, in the next place, that the great bulk of these enclosures were merely 
 from common field, not waste, is evident from the following considerations. 
 By far the largest amount of them, relatively speaking, had taken place in 
 the eastern and central counties, where the quantity of waste laud had 
 never been great, and the quantity of common field land was veiy large. (A 
 clergj'man of my acqiiaintance, deceased a good many years ago, could re- 
 member riding in his youth from Bury St. Edmund's to Leicester across com- 
 mon fields the whole way.) Thus in the small county of Northampton 
 200,000 acres had been enclosed ; in Lincoln, 400,000 ; Leicester, 200,000 ; 
 Berkshire, 100,000. While in tlio large counties of the North and West, 
 where great wastes existed, but where the common field system never pre- 
 vailed, the amount of enclosure during that whole century had been very 
 small indeed : in Lancashire, under 30,000 acres ; Shropshire, 20,000 ; 
 Somerset mider 50,000 ; Dorset, under 20,000. I'roof positive that the pro-
 
 A VISIT TO MARSTOX MOOK. 351 
 
 cess of making a ' g-arden out of a wild ' was during that whole century 
 quite imaginary. 
 
 In truth ' the cultivation of what was previously real waste only began on 
 any scale of importance under the stimulus of the high prices of the latter 
 years of the French Revolutionary wai-s. The total amount enclosed since 
 1797 amounts, I believe, to four or five millions of acres. Now, the Com- 
 mittee of 1797 estimated (conjectiu-ally) the quantity then left in common- 
 field at 1,200,000 acres. These have been for the most part enclosed since 
 1797. The balance, whatever it may be, shows what has been actually 
 reclaimed from the waste since the same year. Putting the elements of this 
 rough calculation together, it seems probable that between the reign 
 of Charles II. and the date of Macaiday's history, about one-eighth of the 
 surface of England and Wales was actually reclaimed ; a much larger por- 
 tion improved. While, on the other hand, the great increase of towns, and 
 of regions once rural, and now wholly abandoned to manufacturing or mining 
 industry (as in Warwickshire and Stailbrdshire), has taken from the plough 
 some extent of domain which in 1680 was submitted to it. Nor will the sta- 
 tistics of consumption, when tested by common sense, lead us to any 
 different conclusions. The population in Charles II. 's reign did not much 
 exceed a fourth of its present amoimt. But it must be remembered — 1. That 
 the retm-n of the soil per acre was undoubtedly much less considerable than 
 now. 2. That the whole population was fed on home produce ; whereas 
 now, including importations from Ireland and Scotland, a very large pro- 
 portion of our consumption is supplied from abroad. 3. That the whole 
 population was clad in articles (woollen, linen, leather) manufactured from 
 home produce, whereas almost the whole of the raw produce of which its 
 clothing is made is now produced abroad. 4. That England not only then 
 supplied herself, but was, communihiis annis, an exporting country, to some 
 extent, of corn, cattle, and wool. 5. That the population and stock then 
 existing required, owing to the inferiority of agriculture, a comparatively largo 
 area to produce, their nourishment. If all these circumstances be fairly 
 weighed, it seems to follow that the amount of produce, and still more the 
 productive sm-fiice of England, two centuries ago, were very much larger 
 than statisticians or historians who dwell exclusively on ' progress ' have 
 supposed.
 
 III. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 1. SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 2. THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, AS DELINEATED 
 
 IN THE POjVLPEIAN PAINTINGS. 
 
 3. A VISIT TO MALTA, 1857. 
 
 4. THE ANGEL OF BYZANTIUM. 
 
 A A
 
 SCENEEY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL.* 
 
 The writer who attempts to make the pubhc acquainted, 
 in liowever summary and imperfect a manner, with the 
 historical characteristics of Cornwall and Cornishmen, 
 has to encounter a disadvantage not very common in 
 English topographical labours. Notwithstanding tlie at- 
 tention which this interesting reixion deserves and has 
 amply received from mere cursory visitors, and notwith- 
 standing the profound attachment professed for it by its 
 own children, it is absolutely destitute of any work de- 
 serving tlie name of a county history at all. All that 
 can be done is to point out the materials, bulky in appear- 
 ance, but very meagre in substance, to which its future 
 historian, whenever he may appear, must look for as- 
 sistance. 
 
 Eichard Carew, Esquire, of Antony, author of the 
 ' Survey of Cornwall,' and one of the earliest English 
 topographers, is to be mnnbered among those personages, 
 fortunate alike in print and in social life, wlio have the 
 art of placing us at once on terms of pleasing personal 
 fomiharity with themselves. His gentlemanlike and kindly 
 portrait, at the head of Lord, de Dunstanville's edition of 
 his Survey, seems a very accurate index of the (qualities 
 of the man. He was furnislied with every grace to adorn 
 a landed esquire of the best days of the Maiden Queen. 
 
 * This essay ia cliiefly reprinted from an article which appeared a.s one of 
 a scries, by dilterent writers, on Imi-IIhIi counties, in the (ii«ir/cr/>/ liccicw 
 in 1857. 
 
 A A -2
 
 35G SCEXEEY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 His mother was an Etlgcombe, daughter of that Sir 
 Eichard whose famous demesne of Mount Edgcombe was 
 ahnost as widely known and admired in those days as in 
 ours, and was coveted, according to tradition, by the 
 Duke of Ossuna, the chief of the Armada, as it was in 
 later days by Napoleon when seen from tlie 'Belle- 
 rophon.' He fondly records that he ' disputed ' in his 
 academic days with Sir Phihp Sydney at Christchurch ; 
 he calls himself ' poor kinsman ' to Sir Walter Ealeigh in 
 a very gracefid dedication. In his youth (according to 
 Anthony Wood) he accompanied his uncle Sir George 
 Carew in embassies to Denmark and Sweden, and 'was 
 sent by his father into France with Sir Henry Nevill, who 
 was then ambassador lieger unto King Henry IV., that 
 he might learn the French tongue, which, by reading and 
 talking, he overcame in three quarters of a year.' How- 
 ever tliis may be — and it seems pretty clear that Wood, 
 in the last part of the story, has mistaken a son of our 
 Carew for' the father — it is certain that he was a very 
 considerable modern linguist : attempted a translation of 
 Tasso, forming (truth compels to avow) one of the very 
 harshest specimens extant of the Ehzabethan octave 
 rhyme ; evinced glimpses of the Hamiltonian system in 
 an essay on ' the true and ready way to learn the Latin 
 tongue, in answer to a qua3re whether the ordinary way, 
 by teaching Latin by the rules of grammar, be the best 
 way to learn it ? ' His praises are celebrated by Camden, 
 Spelman, Fitzjeffry, and other choice Latinists of the time, 
 in language which they could hardly have pitched higher 
 if they had been discoursing of Lord Bacon. He was a 
 member of that primordial College of Antiquaries which 
 met, in the later days of Elizabeth, at tlie house of Sir 
 Eobert Cotton, and was suppressed, as was asserted, 
 through some pedantic dislike or suspicion conceived
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 357 
 
 against it by lier successor. In his own country he seems 
 to have been an active, hearty, and loyal gentleman, par- 
 ticularly interested in the maintenance and exercise of 
 the Cornisli militia force, of not less than six thousand 
 well-armed men, which the danger of Spanish invasion in 
 that quarter had called into existence : a sportsman, a 
 skilful archer, and an enthusiastic ' hurler,' as is evident 
 from the impassioned description he gives of the game ; 
 a discreet justice, and (it is said) one of the first agricul- 
 turists of his day in England. Nor are there wanting in 
 his gossiping Survey plentiful touches which disclose his 
 own social and friendly mode of life among his country- 
 men of all classes — such as the affectionate notice of ' my 
 friend John Goit,' the -WTestling champion of Cornwall ; 
 and of the ' old fellow wliom I keep for alms, and not 
 for his work,' who executed those ingenious devices in 
 the construction of his favourite fishpond to which he has 
 devoted sundry pages of prose and verse. His Survey is 
 very pleasant reading, in sound vernacular English, with 
 many passages of spirited and picturesque description ; 
 but it must be confessed that both its natural history and 
 its details of pedigree savour of the gentlemanly amateur 
 rather than of the painstaking observer or antiquary. 
 There is, in plain truth, little to be learnt from his enter- 
 taining pages except wliat relates exclusively to his own 
 particular time and personal observation. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a stronger contrast than 
 that between the amiable esquire of Antony and our 
 next native Cornish antiquary of any note, Mr. William 
 Ilals, of Saint Wenn. Tliis gentleman, of an old Devon- 
 shire family transplanted into Cornwall, was engaged for 
 at least half a century (from 1G85 to 173G) in collecting 
 materials for a parochial liistory of the latter county. A 
 printer of Truro undertook to publish them about 1750,
 
 SS«^ SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 find brought out ten numbers in folio, comprising seventy- 
 two parishes. These have become excessively scarce, for 
 the ' publication is said to have been suspended,' accord- 
 ing to Lysons, ' for want of purchasers, occasioned by the 
 scurrilous anecdotes which it contained, and reflections 
 thrown on some of the principal famihes.' Assuredly the 
 strangest reason ever given for a book not selling. Certain 
 it is that the publication of these remains of Master Hals, 
 and the fear of more behind, occasioned a good deal of 
 excitement through the county : and no wonder ; for 
 although, we are told, the printer exercised very careful 
 supervision, enough has found its way into the printed 
 numbers to justify the terror and wrath which they 
 aroused in sundry manor-houses and country towns — 
 hints of mysterious and undetected crimes ; old domestic 
 jars raked up, and family foibles exposed ; the weak 
 points of valued pedigrees carefully displayed ; stories of 
 secret burials, and uncanonical marriages, and discredit- 
 able ghosts haunting houses of repute — revelations, in 
 short, which threatened the comfort or wounded the 
 pride of many a powerful kindred, and particularly of all 
 whose forefathers had in any way got into collision with 
 the family of Hals in social or pecuniary matters. The 
 author seems to have been a splenetic and spitefid per- 
 sonage. His contemporary and fellow-topographer, Mr. 
 Tonkin of Trevaunance (who likewise unsuccessfully 
 attempted a history of the county), had evidently quar- 
 relled personally with Hals. ' As his method,' says he, 
 ' is quite different from mine, and that I have some other 
 reasons not necessary to mention for not corresponding 
 with him, I can safely say that in this present work of 
 mine I have not made use of one single line out of his 
 compositions.' 'I shall make it my particular care,' he 
 says elsewhere, in evident allusion to Hals, ' to avoid any
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 359 
 
 personal reflections, and mucli more so not to throw any 
 scandal, pretended judgment, old wives' tales, &c., on any 
 one family whatever ; but where I cannot say all the 
 good that I wish for, to be very careful at least to forbear 
 the saying any ill, as keeping in mind that saying of 
 honest Andrew, "Pray eat your pudding, friend, and 
 hold your tongue,"' 
 
 Hals's manuscripts appear to have got dispersed, and to 
 have fallen into sundry hands. The late Mr. Davies Gilbert 
 collected them, as far as he was able, and published them 
 (but mutilated with most provoking caution), together 
 with the collections of Tonkin, and sundry additions of 
 his own, in four octavo volumes, in 1837. Such as they 
 are, they constitute the best foundation which we possess 
 of Cornish family history, though very far inferior to the 
 materials available in many other counties. 
 
 A curious specimen of Hals's scandalmongering propen- 
 sities may be found in his mode of treating the Killigrew 
 family history ; and we may reproduce it without the fear 
 of fresh Cornish feuds before our eyes, since the last of 
 that clever and courtly lineage has been mouldering in 
 the dust for more than a century, and their property at 
 Falmouth has passed through several family descents to 
 a flourishing race from the east of England, i.e. tliat of 
 Wodehouse. One of this family. Sir John Killigrew, in 
 the reign of James L, was the founder of Falmouth — an 
 enterprise which he prosecuted successfully against the 
 united interest in the Council of the neighbouring corpo- 
 rate towns. The same Sir John is said to have burnt his 
 own fine house at Arwennack, close to Falmouth, to pre- 
 serve it from falling into the hands of the rebels. In 
 the next age the family rose into high fjxvour under the 
 Restoration : two or three of its members are recorded 
 as the authors of very indifferent plays ; one (Thomas
 
 SCO SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 Ivilligrew) lives in tradition as the best talker of the 
 wittiest of English courts ; another (Anne Killigrcw) was 
 Dryden's 
 
 Youngest virgin daughter of the skies, 
 Made in the last promotion of the blest. 
 
 Yet the family, though thus distinguished in the higher 
 circles of society, never throve, according to their con- 
 temporary Hals, in their own Cornish soil. 
 
 ' The stock is ancient,' says he, in his satirical vein, * and 
 divers of the branches have grown to great advancement in 
 calling and livelihood by their greater deserts. Though I could 
 never understand that any of them ever served their prince or 
 country in any public capacity, as parliament-men, justices of 
 the peace, or sheriffs for this country : out of a politic and secret 
 reserve for themselves, as not thinking it prudent to do other 
 men's business at their own proper costs and charges, or to be 
 puffed up or pleased with the tickling conceit of making them- 
 selves popular in their country with any office they did not get 
 money by. Wherefore, generally, they were courtiers and fa- 
 vourites of their princes, and got many boons thereby of great 
 value.' 
 
 But a judgment hung over them, says the same con- 
 siderate authority. About the end of Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign, while the war with Spain continued, Jane Lady 
 Kllhgrew, with an armed party, boarded two Dutch 
 vessels laden on Spanish account, which had been driven 
 into Falmouth harbour, killed two Spanish merchants, 
 and carried away two barrels of pieces of eight.* For 
 which foul fact she was in danger of her neck, and 
 escaped only by dint of great interest, while her associates 
 were hanged at Launceston, 'lamenting nothing more 
 than that they had not the company of that old Jezebel 
 
 * The recent researches of Mr. Forster, publislied in his ' Life of Eliot, the 
 Patriot,' have thrown hitherto unsuspected light on the prevalence of piracy 
 on the western coasts of England as late as the reign of Charles I.
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 361 
 
 Killigrew at the place, and prayed for a judgment on 
 lier.' This strange story succeeding local writers have 
 thought it tlieir duty to repudiate with pious horror ; but 
 it can scarcely be altogether unfounded, since Hals names 
 his own ancestor, Sir Nicholas Hals, the governor of Pen- 
 dennis, as one of those whose influence was exerted in 
 the lady's behalf. A curious relic of this fair buccaneer 
 was long preserved by the corporation of Penryn, in tlie 
 shape of a silver cup, with the inscription, ' From maior 
 to maior of the town of Penryn, when they received me 
 that was in great misery. J. K, 1613.' The 'judgment' 
 descended a few years later, when the last Killigrew of 
 Arwennack was killed in a tavern scufile, in the same 
 town of Penryn, by one Walter Vincent, a barrister, 
 shortly before the close of the century, which Hals 
 (through whose whole narrative the colour of some pri- 
 vate grudge, or feud, may be distinctly traced) records 
 with grim satisfaction. 
 
 A little later than Hals, the Pieverend Dr. Borlase, 
 rector of Ludgvan, member of a good Celtic family, de 
 la vieille roche^ devoted himself to the task of illustrating 
 both the natural and antiquarian history of his native 
 country ; but, except a strong attachment to the subject, 
 and a certain quaint originality of thought and expression, 
 it cannot be said that he brought any very eminent quali- 
 ties to the task. His antiquarianism soon loses itself in 
 the mazes of Druidical and I'hucnician controversy, which 
 he was quite incompetent to unravel — his scientific know- 
 ledge in old women's stories, such as the learned Koyal 
 Society was very apt to indulge in during the earher 
 period of its activity. The good Doctor was in repute as 
 an 'ingenious' provincial personage, and cc)rrcs[)()ndcd 
 from his nook with Pope, wliom he furnished with mine- 
 ral specimens for the construction of his Twickenliam
 
 3G2 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OP CORNWALL. 
 
 grotto. ' I have placed them,' says the poet, prettily, 
 ' where they may best represent yourself — in a shade, but 
 shining.' One merit, however, the Doctor possesses, which 
 better antiquaries and profounder philosophers too com- 
 monly want — he is very readable. His folios are still in 
 request, and far worse entertainment may be found than 
 in turning over their pages in the leisure of a Cornish 
 manor-house or town librarj^ 
 
 Of other topographers, such as Norden, Tonkin, C. 
 Gilbert, and Davies Gilbert (whose Parochial History is a 
 poor compilation, very unworthy of the writer's ability), 
 further mention need not be made ; and scarcely of the 
 Eeverend Eichard Polwhele, to whom, indeed, we owe a 
 certain kindness for his preservation of a vast amount of 
 legendary story and social gossip, which would have 
 perished without him, but whose egotism, literary vanity, 
 tastelessness, and wonderful prolixity are past all pardon. 
 Trashy as his ' History of Cornwall ' is in every respect, it 
 preserves its place on the shelves and keeps up its price, 
 for want of a later and better. This slight essay will 
 have produced some benefit, if enough has been said to 
 set some of those few who have sufficient learning and 
 patience — those who have zeal in the cause are abundantly 
 numerous — on devising the best means of supplying this 
 deficiency. A history of Cornwall, such as we can con- 
 ceive, would be a more attractive work than almost any 
 other county could furnish, combining the account of very 
 curious physical phenomena and highly striking scenery 
 with that of a most important branch of our national 
 industry, and the records of a distinct people and language 
 of mysterious antiquity with those of many stirring events 
 of modern times, and fiimily annals unusually rich in 
 variety of character and incident. 
 
 When Gilpin, the autlior of ' Forest Scenery,' wrokte his
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. obo 
 
 Tour in the West of Eng-land towards the close of the last 
 century, lie disposed of all Cornwall in the following brief 
 paragraph : — 
 
 From Launceston we travelled as far into Cornwall as Bodmin, 
 through a coarse, naked country, and in all respects as unin- 
 teresting as can well be conceived. Of wood, in every shape 
 it was entirely destitute. Having heard that the country be- 
 yond Bodmin was exactly like what we had already passed, we 
 resolved to travel no farther in Cornwall, and instead of visit- 
 ing the Land's End, as we had intended, we took the road to 
 Lescard, proposing to visit Plymouth on our return ! 
 
 ISTor can we blame the accomplished writer, who only 
 saw nature according to his lights, that is, with the trained 
 judgment of a landscape gardener. If he had continued 
 his journey to the Land's End, he would equally have 
 found all barren. The seventy miles from Launceston to 
 Mount's Bay make the dreariest strip of earth traversed 
 by any English high road. In the eastern portion, indeed, 
 the rough granitic tors and boulders, and the greater 
 height of the hills, lend something of a wild interest to 
 the scene ; but, after passing Bodmin, the Cornish moor- 
 land appears in its true character — the most impracticable, 
 as well as desolate, of all British wildernesses. For its 
 desolation is not that of nature alone. The whole surface 
 has been excavated, dug into hillocks, disturbed and 
 turned over and over again, sometimes by the primeval 
 stream-works of the ' old men,' as the ancient miners are 
 termed by those of our time, sometimes by more modern 
 labour, in search of metaUic wealth. Off the roads it is 
 utterly impervious on wdiecls or on horseback, and only 
 to be walked, or rather floundered over, by jumjiing from 
 patch to patch of firmer land. Flat, or slightly undu- 
 lating, and bounded towards the horizon by low rounded 
 hills of similar character to itself, it stretches almost from
 
 3G-i SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 sea to sea, a most uuclassical ' Campagna,' covered with 
 tJie ruins of obscure industry. 
 
 Such is the region which gave Cornwall its ancient 
 fame and character, wlien chiefly traversed by tourists on 
 their way abroad, rolling along its only high road to Fal- 
 mouth, the Atlantic postern- gate of England. We will 
 take a very difFerent course, and endeavour to conduct 
 the traveller with us, as compendiously as possible, along 
 the two convergent shores which stretch, bay after bay, 
 towards the setting sun ; beginning with the Northern. 
 
 The lonor ranoje of mural cliffs which commences at 
 liartland Point in Devonshire, extending to Tintagel in 
 Cornw^all, faces due west with scarcely any interruption. 
 Owing to this exposure, whether aided by the violence of 
 the converging currents of the Bristol and St, George's 
 Channel, or by some other unexplauied cause, the sea 
 breaks on it with a sustained violence unequalled else- 
 where, it is said, in these islands. Not on the Land's End 
 itself — not on the outer line of the Hebrides — not even 
 on the iron-bound coast of Clare in Ireland, do the long 
 rollers of the Atlantic march in with such stupendous 
 weight and force as along this portion of Cornish shore. 
 The enthusiast for marine scenery has only to take his 
 stand on the breakwater at Bude, when a spring-tide is 
 rising even in calm weather, in order to enjoy the full 
 effect of this magnificent exhibition of the power of ocean. 
 Near the bold headland crowned by Tintagel Castle the 
 line of coast changes its general direction and faces more 
 to the north ; it becomes more broken in picturesque 
 inlets ; and still farther west, from Padstow haven to the 
 'Towans,' or sand-dunes, of Perran, the hard schistose 
 rocks, of which it is chiefly composed, become almost 
 horizontally stratified. This peculiar formation exposes 
 them to the action of tlie billows at their base, and wears
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 3G5 
 
 them (like clifTs of secondary sandstone elsewhere) into a 
 thousand fimtastic shapes — flat-topped islands and penin- 
 sulas standing out like enchanted castles against the 
 horizon ; gigantic staircases, stacks, columns, turrets, 
 caverns, and ' bellows-holes ' of every conceivable shape 
 and character. This last-mentioned portion of the Cornish 
 sea-board is perhaps on the whole the most picturesque, 
 if not absolutely the grandest in its features, and it is the 
 least accessible and the least known. 
 
 Bare, bleak, and solitary as this north-western coast 
 may be, it is enUvened by the numerous and beautifid 
 ' combes ' or valleys which open into it, and which nearly 
 all pursue an absolutely straight course, east and west, 
 from their orio-in in the moorlands to the sea. We must 
 call on the author of ' Westward Ho,' who writes with 
 all the enthusiasm of a native, to aid our powers of 
 description : — 
 
 Each is like the other, and each is like no other English 
 scenery. Each has its upright walls, inland of rich oak wood, 
 nearer the sea of dark green furze, then of smooth turf, then of 
 weird black cliffs, which range out right and left far into the 
 deep sea, in castles, spires, and wings of jagged iron-stone. 
 Each has its narrow strip of fertile meadow ; its crystal trout- 
 stream winding across and across from one hill-foot to the other ; 
 its grey stone mill, with the water sparkling and humming 
 round the dripping wheel; its dark rock-pools above the tide- 
 mark, where the salmon gather in from their Atlantic wander- 
 ings after each autumn flood ; its ridge of blown sand, l)rigl]t 
 with golden trefoil and crimson lady's finger ; its grey hank of 
 polished pebbles, down which the stream rattles toward the sea 
 below. Each has its black field of jagged shark's-tooth rock, 
 wliich paves the cove from side to side, streaked with here and 
 there a pink line of shell sand, and laced with white fn.-iiii from 
 the eternal surge, stretching in parallel lines out to the westward, 
 in strata set upright on etige, or tilted towards each other at 
 strange angles by primeval eartli()uakes. iSuch is the 'mouth,'
 
 366 SCENEKY AND ANTKiUlTlES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 as these coves are called, and such the jaw of teeth which they 
 display, one rasp of which would grind abroad the timbers of the 
 stoutest ship. To landward, all richness, softness, and peace ; 
 to seaward, a waste and howling wilderness of rock and roller, 
 barren to the fisherman and hopeless to the shipwrecked 
 mariner. 
 
 One characteristic feature is not noticed in this descrip- 
 tion. From tlieir straight course and their opening due 
 west, these long ' combes ' admit the sunset at their 
 extremity for a great part of the year. Few scenes of 
 the simpler kind remain better impressed on the memory 
 than the prospect down one of these tranquil vallej^s, with 
 its rippling mill-stream and rich enclosures, when the red 
 ball of the autumnal sun just sinks between its soft sea- 
 ward portals of sloping turf, lighting up the line of golden 
 sand which forms its bar, and the intense blue of the strip 
 of ocean beyond. A north-looking shore has, doubtless, 
 its disadvantages — nothing, indeed, can repay us fully in 
 our latitudes for the privation of our rare and precious 
 sunbeams ; but it has one great compensation — the colour- 
 ing of the sea, at almost all hours, is incomparably deeper 
 and more various than on coasts where the spectator faces 
 the meridian lig-ht. 
 
 One of these combes, in a singular insulated position, 
 north of Bude, contains the site, we can hardly say the 
 remains, of the original Stowe, held for 600 years by the 
 brave Cornish Grenvilles, or Granvilles, not to be con- 
 founded with the more eminent family of Wotton ; for 
 thouo;h jrenealoscists have invented a connexion between 
 them, their arms as well as history arc different. No 
 family ever acquired so strong a hold on popular affec- 
 tion in Cornwall as this gallant race. ' You are upon an 
 uncommon foundation in that part of the world,' says 
 George Grenvillc, the poetical Lord Lansdowne, in a
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 3G7 
 
 letter to his nephew, William Henry Earl of Bath, in 
 
 1711:— 
 
 Your ancestors, for at least five hundred years, never made 
 any alliances, male or female, out of the western counties : thus 
 there is hardly a gentleman, either in Cornwall or Devon, but 
 has some of your blood, as you of theirs. I remember the first 
 time I accompanied your grandfather (Sir Bevil Grenville) into 
 the West, upon holding his parliament of tinners as Warden of 
 the Stannaries, when there was the most numerous appearance 
 of gentry of both counties that had ever been remembered 
 together. I observed there was hardly anyone but he called 
 cousin, and I could not but observe, at the same time, how well 
 they were pleased with it. 
 
 He proceeds to advise his nephew always to make 
 Stowe his principal residence : — 
 
 From the Conquest to the Kestoration your ancestors con- 
 stantly resided among their countrymen, except when the public 
 service called upon them to sacrifice their lives for it. Stowe, 
 in my grandfather's time, till the wars broke out, was a kind of 
 academy for all the young men of family in the country : he 
 provided himself with the best masters for all kinds of education, 
 and the children of his neighbours and friends shared the 
 advantage with his own. Thus he in a manner became father 
 of his county, and not only engaged the affection of the present 
 generation, but laid a foundation of friendship for posterity, 
 which is not worn out to this day. 
 
 It was in this spirit of maintaining the county interest 
 of the family that Lord Lansdowne forced his pretty 
 prude of a niece, Mary Granville (finally Mrs. Delany), 
 into marrying the drunken old Jacobite Squire Pendarves. 
 Nevertheless, she continued to look up with mucli 
 respect to her uncle ' Alcander,' as she calls him in her 
 fantastic nomenclature. 
 
 Himself one of the last enthusiasts and sufTerers for 
 the Stuart cause in England, he lived to see the extinction
 
 368 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 of his lineage. Their estates passed to co-heiresses, and 
 their place knew them no more. The Carterets, who 
 followed, pulled down the Palladian palazzo built by 
 John Earl of Bath, when it had stood scarcely half a 
 century ; many of the finest materials were transferred 
 to the namesake ' Stowe ' of the Buckinghamshire Gren- 
 villes ; and a very indifferent ' Elegy written among the 
 ruins of a nobleman's seat in Cornwall,' by the first poet 
 Moore, is all that remains of the glory of the western 
 family. 
 
 Yet this famous residence (where the intrigues of the 
 Eoyalists with Monk, which led to the Eestoration, were 
 mainly concocted) stood far from high roads and market 
 towns, in a situation so strangely secluded and remote 
 from objects of convenience and interest, that, with 
 modern ideas, it is difficult to conceive its occupation by 
 any family of distinction. The truth is, however, that it 
 is not easy for us to place ourselves exactly in the position 
 of our forefathers, or to adopt the notions arising out of 
 that position. To be near some great thoroughfare now 
 seems to us nearly indispensable. But when there were 
 very few such thoroughfares, when almost all places were 
 accessible alike only through by-roads, and on horse- 
 back or in private conveyances, one place was in reality 
 scarcely more out of the way than another, or at least the 
 difference was far less notable than in our time. Many 
 districts which we now term hardly ' liveable ' were well 
 inhabited by gentry of old. The fiivourite spots round 
 which country-houses are now congregated had in those 
 times no attraction from superior accessibility, and love of 
 the picturesque was as yet unborn. 
 
 A more remarkable site among these northern combes 
 is the beautiful Vale of Lanherne, which stretches in a 
 direct line from the town of St. Coliiinb to the lonely
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNAYALL. 369 
 
 little ' Forth,' or cove, in which it terminates, presenting a 
 succession of lovely views, the groves of Carnanton, once 
 the seat of Noy, Charles I.'s able though miserly and 
 crabbed attorney-general (his heart at his death was found 
 shrivelled up, say his biographers, into the substance of a 
 leathern penny purse) ; the grey Convent at Lanherne, 
 formerly the manor-house of the Arundels, devoted by 
 one of the family to the reception of nuns driven here by 
 tlie first French Eevolution ; the old church-tower of 
 Mavvgan, embowered in its grove of lofty Cornish elms 
 (the small-leaved variety, strangely neglected in other 
 parts of England), making together a scene which exliibits 
 all the softness of a rich inland valley, while the roar of 
 the very fiercest surge of the ocean is rarely unheard 
 within its hmits. 
 
 All Cornwall, and its northern shore in particular, is 
 swept by the constant blasts of the Atlantic-, and so 
 extreme is the fury of the gales, that even the tomb- 
 stones in the chm'chyards are here and there supported 
 by masonry as a prop against the wind. The whole 
 northern coast is of a singularly desolate and uninhabited 
 character : it possesses only two or three wretched har- 
 bours, and the bordering villages nestle away from the 
 blast mider the landward slope of the cliffs. The tra- 
 veller may scramble for many a mile over rocks which 
 seem abandoned by man to undistm^bed mp'iads of their 
 own primitive popidation, as they are described by a 
 native writer, possessed of much poetical feeling, Mr. 
 Stokes, in his ' Vale of Lanherne ' : — 
 
 The graceful terns sldui o'er the heavinp- (loop, 
 lAke winged fleets that elflu hands uiiyht frame, 
 Or hang in clusters round the headlands ytcep : 
 Of rarer beauty, though of harsher name. 
 The choughs for glossy plumes the raven shame, 
 
 B r.
 
 370 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 With vermeil-tinted legs and briglit red beaks, 
 Ilaimting remotest cliffs where sea-pinks flame ; 
 Guillemots and gulls with hubbub fill the creeks, 
 But hastening from the shore for storms the petrel seeks. 
 
 Yet there are occasions on which these untrodd.cn 
 shores are crowded with a noisy population, puzzling the 
 observer to conjecture how, in so desert-looking a country, 
 such swarms are recruited. Some idea of its density may 
 be attained by watching the files of farmers' carts in the 
 mornings descending to the accessible beaches to collect 
 the sea-sand, drifted by the north-west winds along this 
 exposed coast, for manure. But the great opportunities, 
 which seem to call the very cliffs into life, are those of 
 the fishery, and particularly the pilchard fishery : — 
 
 Impetuous pour 
 By every sheep-path steep the ruddy swarm 
 From woodland cot, green field, and heathy moor ; 
 And from the earth's deep chambers, dank and warm, 
 The pallid miner comes, "with spare but sinewy form. 
 Heaps upon heaps, upon the shelving beach. 
 The scaly captives gasping, glistening lie. 
 Scarcely above the empurpled waves' wide reach : 
 A^Taat clamour blithe of those who sell and buy ! 
 The voice of woman and the urchin's cry 
 Shrill mingling with man's rough sonorous tone : 
 The busy bulkers in the cellars high 
 Up-pile the fish : no savoury task they own. 
 While bay-salt o'er each layer with lavish hand is thrown. 
 
 Our local poet seems in this passage to have in his eye 
 the early pilchard fishery of June and July, carried on by 
 the drift-boats, which take the fish far out at sea, and 
 bring their catch for disposal to the shore. But later in 
 the summer the great shoals of pilchards begin to close 
 in with the shore itself. 
 
 "When the corn is in the shock 
 The fish are at the rock, 
 
 says the Cornubian rhyme ; and then begins the far more
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OP COENWALL. 371 
 
 exciting, and far more important, season of the seine 
 fishery : a most precarious harvest, for nothing can be 
 more unaccountable than the annual variations in the 
 habits of these migratory fish. But the Cornish pilchard 
 fishery, like Cornish mining, would seem to demand a 
 treatise apart. The fish are cured simply by pressure, in 
 layers strewn with bay-salt ; but the Spaniards, imagining 
 them to be smoked, called them ^ f urn ados ; ' whence, 
 apparently, the highly inappropriate Cornish name of 
 ' fair maids ' for these lean and juiceless rehcs of the ocean. 
 The southern coast is very different from the northern 
 in character, thouo;h rich in attractions of its own. Here, 
 from some geological cause not explained, the strata, 
 though similar to those already described in the north, 
 are in general nearly perpendicular instead of horizontal, 
 a circumstance which entirely changes the character of 
 the scenery. Instead of plateaux and castehated promon- 
 tories, and mural cliffs undermined at the base, we find 
 long jagged ranges of razor-backed precipices projecting 
 into the sea, ' aiguilles ' and pmnacles of splintered rock, 
 and branching estuaries between. Notwithstanding its 
 more favourable south-easterly exposure, this coast is as 
 bare and desert as the other wherever it fringes the open 
 sea ; l)ut from its geological construction it is far richer 
 in harbours, from the noble havens of Falmouth, Plymouth, 
 and Helford, to the numerous deep and narrow creeks 
 Avhich shelter the viUage fishing-boats. These southern 
 estuaries run far inland, and their steep wooded banks 
 furnish the most visited and admired scenery of the 
 county, though perhaps a little monotonous in their 
 beauty. They were scarcely accessible in former days, 
 except by separate and laborious visits ; but a general 
 judgment of their character may now be formed in u run 
 along the Cornish railway. Cornwall is on the whole by 
 
 n u
 
 372 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 no means the naked country wliicli is commonly supposed : 
 it is even said that its surface of woodland is relatively 
 greater than that of any other county ; but then by far the 
 greater portion of this is covered with mere oak coppice, 
 which thrives luxuriantly. Timber trees are, on the 
 whole, a failure ; they grow well at first, but when they 
 attain a certain height the ruthless sea-blast drives them 
 to leeward, and their growth becomes slow and their 
 shape distorted. Boconnoc, the ancient seat of the 
 Mohuns and Pitts, has almost the only Cornish park which 
 exhibits the forest-like features of the old demesnes of 
 middle England. Fruit ripens but indifferently ; and 
 although the climate is singularly favourable to flowers, 
 the peasantry, at least in the mining districts, seem to have 
 httle taste for horticulture, and the tourist soon misses 
 the lovely tressure of myrtle, fuchsia, and still more deh- 
 cate plants with which the commonest Devonian cottage 
 is so often girdled. Some imported trees flourish very 
 extensively, like wild native plants, in the western region. 
 The pinaster, introduced by Praed of Trevetho early in 
 the last century, forms an ordinary feature in the land- 
 scape around Mount's Bay : the more recent ' Pinus 
 Austriaca,' a tree of similar habits, seems to brave the 
 Atlantic blast with equal vigour. The tamarisk, also an 
 importation, now forms a copious and beautiful underwood 
 in the sequestered combes of the southern coast, espe- 
 cially in the region of serpentine rock which stretches to- 
 wards the Lizard lights : — 
 
 Those ever-burning fires, which smile 
 O'er night's bleak ocean many a mile, 
 To welcome Albion's truant child 
 From Indian shore, or western wild. 
 
 But the indig-enous shrubs of this remote corner of 
 England surpass all exotics in tlieir profuse beauty ; such
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNW2VLL. 373 
 
 as the two species of heath pecuUar to Cornwall — Erica 
 vagans and Ciharis, tlie latter the most graceful of the 
 tribe — and the Cornisli double-flowering furze, of singular 
 size and richness, which blooms almost all through the 
 year, but most abundantly in that season when nature 
 seems to stand most in need of gay attire, and covers the 
 bleak hill-sides in early spring with an expanse of 
 gorgeous yellow carpeting. 
 
 South and North meet in the low moorish plateau 
 which divides the Hayle estuary from Mount's Bay, 
 almost united in spring-tides ; and beyond it the traveller 
 greets at last the amphitheatre of dusky hills which 
 constitutes the Land's End promontory — the Bolerium of 
 old times, the very Cornwall of Cornwall, the last 
 stronghold of the old Celtic tongue and tlioughts, and to 
 this day the most intensely national portion, so to speak, 
 of the peninsula. It is a bleak and bare region to the 
 eye, except only the sheltered coast of Mount's Bay ; but 
 abounding in life, wealth, and mining and commercial 
 activity ; while its soil, strange to say, is among the most 
 fertile, and its agriculture among the most profitable in 
 England, London being mainly supplied with early 
 vegetables from the district about Penzance, while the 
 very last wheat-fields in England, near the Land's End, 
 produce on their warm bed of ' growan,' or decomposed 
 granite, from thirty to forty bushels to the acre. To the 
 stranger, however, tlie chief attraction of the district is 
 in the magnificent cliff scenery which stretches round it 
 in a semicircle from St. Ives to Mount's Bay. The Land's 
 End is itself an impressive scene, but nuicli surpassed in 
 grandeur and picturesqueness by many points of tlie 
 vicinity — the greenstone cliffs of Zennor, the headlands of 
 Tol-pedn-penwith, Castle-Treryn, and the Logan. The 
 vast expanse of ocean, from these heights, is at all times
 
 374 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 a grand spectacle ; it is terrible wlien a fierce westerly gale 
 seems to level before it the whole floor of the sea, driving for- 
 ward one blinding sheet of foam even to the smiimits of the 
 Land's End precipice ; but it is yet more solemn in its quieter 
 mood, when, with little wind stirring, the vast billows, 
 propagated from some centre of storms far in the Atlantic, 
 come slowly to break on the rocks in measured cadences 
 of thunder, the very types of enormous power in repose. 
 
 Such is the land of the ancient Cornu-Britons, that 
 small but strongly-characterised Celtic people, about whom 
 so much has been dreamed by the learned, and so little is 
 really knoAvn. That they were a distinct race, and had a 
 pecuhar language, is certain; but the particulars which 
 are recorded respecting the annals of the one, and the 
 genius and literature of the other, seem in the last degree 
 vague, shifting, and mythical. Of one tradition, care- 
 lessly repeated by one historian after another, the 
 shghtest inspection of the country, or even a good map, 
 is sufficient to prove the unsoundness. This is the story, 
 that the Cornubians occupied in the last century of Saxon 
 dominion a considerable portion of the kingdom of 
 Wessex ; that they were expelled from Devonsliire by 
 Athelstan, and the Tamar fixed as the boundary of the 
 races, only as late as a.d. 936. If Athelstan's successes 
 are correctly reported, they probably amounted only to 
 a reconquest of territory which the Cornubians (aided by 
 the Danes) had for a short time wrested from the Saxons. 
 But the real national boundary between Celt and Saxon 
 was assuredly fixed many generations before the reign of 
 Athelstan. Nor was the Tamar ever that boundary. A 
 military frontier it may have been, a national limit never. 
 The proof of this assertion will be found in the fact that 
 the names of villages and farms on both banks of the 
 Tamar are equally Saxon. The limit between Celt and
 
 SCEXERY AiVD ANTIQUITIES OF COENAYALL. 375 
 
 Saxon, as unerringly ascertained by the test of nomencla- 
 ture, passes not along the Tamar, but (in accordance with 
 the general law of ethnography) nearly along the head- 
 waters of the streams flowing from the west into it — a line 
 crossing the peninsula transversely from a little Avest of 
 Plymouth to the neighbourhood of Tintagel. To the east 
 of this line the map discloses very few Cornish names ; to 
 the west, scarcely a single Saxon. Now it must be remem- 
 bered that at the date of Domesday, or reign of Ed^vard 
 the Confessor, these local names were almost entirely the 
 same as now. The inference is inevitable, that the geo- 
 graphical division of Celt and Saxon followed that line ; 
 and the farther inference is almost irresistible, that a line 
 so definitely marked must have been the same for genera- 
 tions, probably for centuries, before. Without, therefore, 
 going deeper into the subject, it is enough to express 
 concurrence with those who believe that the last sub- 
 stantial struggle between the two nations took place at afar 
 earher period ; that the Cornubians Avcre finally driven 
 by the Saxons into their remote and permanent quarters 
 in the seventh century, the date of a.d. 647 being posi- 
 tively fixed by some autliorities. This supposition leaves 
 untouched the vexed question whetlier King Arthur, 
 who, if real, must have flourished in the sixth centiuy, 
 was a mythical or an historical personage. Tlie conquest 
 seems to have been accomplished not without hard fight- 
 ing ; for antiquarian research seems to disclose faint 
 records of a stand made against the invaders on the Exe, 
 and again on the Tamar; nor without the expulsion of 
 the royal house and chief nobility of Cornwall, wlio 
 migrated, it is said, into Armorica. Subsequently to tliis 
 time the political boundary may Ikiac varied, as has been 
 said, OAving to ])artial successes of the Dano-Cornish 
 forces, but the national lioundaiy Avas then fixed for ever.
 
 376 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 Nor have the Cornish race remained permanently 
 owners of the soil, even within the narrow hniits thus 
 assigned to them. The 'pride of ancestry was, indeed, 
 in former times intense in Cornwall, and is a rooted feelino: 
 even at the present day, unfavourable as are our modern 
 habits of thought to its maintenance. There are two 
 things, it is said, of which every tradesman and small 
 farmer west of Truro is thoroughly persuaded — the one, 
 that he will some day or other make his fortune in a 
 mine ; the other, that he is in some way descended from 
 King Arthur. That mysterious potentate was equally 
 familiar in the Cornish pedigrees of older time. In the 
 Scrope and Grosvenor controversy under Edward the 
 Third, one of the witnesses deposes to having seen the 
 shield of the Scropes hanging over an hostel occupied by 
 a Cornish knight of the family of Carminow (azure, a 
 bend or, is the proper cognisance of that house), and that 
 the owner, on being questioned, affirmed that the 
 bearing in dispute was granted to his fjimily by Kino- 
 Arthur ! Some pedigrees, indeed, are still more boldly 
 imaginative. The Vivians of Truro are derived by certain 
 genealogists from one Vivianus Annius, a Eoman general, 
 and son-in-law to Domitius Corbulo. In short, the pro- 
 verbial extravao'ance of Cambrian descents finds its coun- 
 terpart among the kindred race south of the Bristol 
 Channel. And yet a somewhat closer inspection of 
 history is but little favourable to the Celtic ]:)retensions. 
 It seems clear from Domesday Book and the later recen- 
 sions of tenants in capite, that before the Conquest 
 Saxons, and after the Conquest Normans, were the owners 
 of the soil, with very shght exception, from the Tamar to 
 the Land's End. It may be feared that scarcely any 
 properly Cornish lineage can estabUsh, on fair grounds, a 
 connexion with those named in Domesday, except Tre-
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 377 
 
 lawney and Trevelyan — the latter no longer inhabiting 
 the county. The Dinhams, IMohuns, Bassets, Blanch- 
 minsters, Grenvilles, who parcelled out the land under 
 the Earls of Cornwall, looked down on the indigenous 
 gentry with the same contempt which (as we are now 
 told) was measured out to them in return by the real old 
 Norman families, who, though descendants of sea kings 
 themselves, had grown too proud and too lazy to take 
 much part in such a fihbustering business as the invasion 
 of England by Wilham the Bastard. But their period of 
 triumphant supremacy was (in Cornwall at least) a very 
 limited one. Wars and feuds, forfeitures, outlawiies, 
 mortgages, and more perhaps than any other cause, 
 premature marriages and ' fast ' lives, devoured the proud 
 blood of the Conquerors. Some, indeed, of the great 
 Norman races of the county were only extinguished in 
 the last century; but the great majority had died out 
 long before, and the Celtic gentry — the men of Tre, Pol, 
 and Pen — slowly emerged from under the debris of Saxon 
 and Norman, and, boldly ignoring their period of depres- 
 sion, assumed (like Carminow aforesaid) the position of 
 direct descent from the chivalry of the Pound Table. 
 These families, like their kindred in Wales, seem to have 
 been very long Avithout proper family names. The 
 Cornish, says Carew, ' entitle one another with his own 
 and his father's name, and conclude with the place of liis 
 dwelling, as John Thomas Pendarves,' &c. And when 
 the branch of a family obtained a new seat, it changed 
 its name accordingly. This practice, says Tonkin (in 
 1736), was in use within a century of his time. 
 
 The Cornish title to the honour of a distinct written 
 language and literature is, after ah, scarcely less apocry})hal 
 than the pedigrees of the native aristocracy. Of course 
 the extreme antiquity of tlie language is undeniable, and
 
 378 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF COENWALL. 
 
 its close kindred to the Welsh. ]3ut the authenticity of 
 its supposed literary monuments is very questionable, and 
 the whole subject of them is involved not only in ob- 
 scurity, but, it may be suspected, in a good deal of mys- 
 tification. The Cornish have been at all times a little 
 mclined to play on the credulity of ' foreigners ' in this 
 matter. The learned Daines Barrington was sadly hoaxed 
 by the wits of Mount's Bay, on his search after Celtic 
 antiquities in 1773 ; and as he tells us that he went about 
 offering money for Cornish words, he certainly laid himself 
 open to such liberties. At an earlier time it seems to 
 have been a favourite exercise of ingenuity to compose 
 pseudo-antique remains of the Cornish language, in which 
 it is impossible now to disentangle what is ancient from 
 what was invented. Cornish was last used in divine 
 service (it should seem) in Landewednack, the southern- 
 most parish of England, about 1680. It was currently 
 spoken in the parishes west of Penzance for a generation 
 or two later. There its authentic history ends. The few 
 posterior instances of its use commonly cited are very 
 doubtful. The traces of it which ingenious people have 
 detected in the modern English dialect of Cornwall are 
 almost wholly imaginary. Many words of the latter have 
 been noted by eager ethnologists as Celtic wdiich are in 
 reahty good, but obsolete, Saxon. Modern Anglo-Cornish 
 is, in truth, a rather superior provincial dialect, abounding 
 in sound Shakspearian and even older expressions, and 
 more intelligible than some of those spoken farther east. Of 
 true Celtic it has scarcely anything except what may be 
 termed words of art, such as the nomenclature of the 
 rocks and their phenomena, in use among the miners. In 
 fact, it may be doubted whether the production of a 
 hybrid language (such as modern English) is not confined 
 to times when written literature abounds. Pi'imitive
 
 SCENEEY AND AXTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 379 
 
 tribes appear rarely or never to mix languages. It seems 
 to be the case tliat the French peasants, conterminous 
 with the Bas Bretons, speak a dialect as free from Cel- 
 ticism as those of Touraine ; the Walloons of Liege, 
 surrounded by Flemings, have little tincture of Flemish 
 in their pecuUar French ; the Alsatian has little French 
 in his bad German. One pecuharity, quaintly noted by 
 old Carew in the Anglo-Cornish, may still be observed ; 
 it had not above two or three of what he calls ' natural 
 oaths,' but this want was ' relieved with a flood of most 
 bitter cm^ses and spiteful nicknames.' To this day, a 
 Cornish scolding is most profuse and exuberant in flowers 
 of eloquence, for which little authority can elsewhere be 
 found. 
 
 It has been seen that the Norman families obtained, 
 with few exceptions, but a shght and temporary hold of 
 territorial power in Cornwall ; and, notwithstanding their 
 secluded position and their love of long-descended pedi- 
 grees, the Cornish have been, on the whole, less feudal in 
 their notions, less led and swayed by aristocratic in- 
 fluences, than the inhabitants of most English counties. 
 The bulk of tlie people rose against the Government in 
 three several and very remarkable insurrections — twice 
 under Henry the Seventli and once under Edward the 
 Sixth ; and on neither occasion do we find that any lead- 
 ing family was engaged in the rebellion. And at the 
 present day, if any political partisan were to seek to rouse 
 the passions of the western population, he would find his 
 purpose much better answered by enlisting in his cause 
 a few Methodist teachers and a few mining ' captains,' 
 than through the gentry of the district. Tliis is not in- 
 consistent with the exercise of great local inlhience, here 
 and there, by individual gentlemen avIio stand high in 
 ]uiblic estimation as benefactors of the county. No race
 
 o 
 
 80 SCENEEY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 estimate services of this kind more highly, or repay them 
 more cordially than the Cornish. Some few among the 
 leading men of their landed gentry have of late years 
 exercised a kindly authority among them hardly surpassed 
 by that of tlie Grenvilles and Trelawneys of old times. 
 But the homage was tendered rather to the xdxog xa) 
 ayrxSos, as a Greek repubhcan might have expressed it, 
 than to the suysvyig. 
 
 The main reason for this inferior force of the feudal 
 principle was to be found, doubtless, in the commercial 
 and self-relying habits of the people. Those habits, on 
 which we shall have presently to dwell more at lengtli, 
 are rooted among them from an antiquity far exceeding 
 that of the oldest family annals. The industry of our 
 ports, our manufacturing provinces, our coal dLstricts, 
 almost that of London itself, are mere products of recent 
 ages, compared with the trade of tlie Cornish tinner. 
 For it must be remembered that owing to the profound 
 freedom from war and revolution enjoyed at all times by 
 this secluded corner of the world, and its monopoly of an 
 indispensable commodity, that industry has never been 
 interrupted. Since Diodorus Siculus wrote his account 
 of the dealings in tin between the Britons and the traders 
 from the Mediterranean on that isle of Ictis which nothing 
 but antiquarian perversity could place elsewhere than at 
 St. Michael's Mount — a spot which answers the descrip- 
 tion alone and exactly — the ore has been raised, and 
 wrought, and bartered without the intermission probably 
 of a single generation. The tourist wlio reaches Falmouth 
 by sea may look with respect on that bare, brown moun- 
 tain which rises to the left, mangled as it is with tlie 
 scars and seams left by the mining operation of successive 
 ages ; for Carn Menelhs has never rested from the strokes 
 of the miner's pick, nor its neighbouring creeks from the
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 381 
 
 clash of the trader's oar, ' since first the old Phoenicians 
 came.' This primtcval subterranean corporation, with 
 perpetual succession, is but slightly affected by changes 
 in the ownership of the soil above ground, and recks 
 little of the revolutions of noble or gentle houses — things 
 of yesterday. 
 
 But another reason for the comparatively small influence 
 of o-reat Cornish families is to be found in their own want 
 of durabihty. In most secluded districts and extremities 
 of our kingdom famiUes and descended honours are com- 
 paratively of long continuance ; from causes too natural 
 to need explanation. But Cornwall forms an exception. 
 Names and titles seem to arise and to vanish, as we turn 
 over the pages of its county history, as rapidly as the 
 fleeting vapours of its ever-changing climate. There are, 
 no doubt, families of very respectable antiquity, but these 
 have for the most part to make out their pedigrees and 
 inheritances through singularly comphcated female descents. 
 Constant intermarriages may have tended in some degree 
 to produce this tendency to decay. The Grenvilles, as 
 we have seen, called cousins with almost all the county. 
 The commercial prosperity of the people, and compara- 
 tive abundance of ready money, have also contributed to 
 frequent changes of property, by facilitating its alienation. 
 Something must Hkewise be attril3uted to a certain tincture 
 of migratory habits, restlessness, and love of adventure, 
 whicli seems to belong to the race, high and low ; ' partl}^' 
 to quote our friend Carew, ' for tliat their issue male, little 
 affecting so remote a corner, hked better to trans])lant 
 their possessions to the heart of the realm.' But the 
 natives themselves have a more compendious way of 
 accounting for the phciinmcnon, by the 'doom ' supposed 
 to attend Cornisli lioiiours. ' Peerages ])laiili'(l in Corn- 
 wall,' says Borlase, ' have seldom been long-lived ; tliey
 
 382 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 have seldom arrived at the third, never at the fourth, 
 generation. VicV gaudet tertius lioeres! Titles have been 
 multiplied since Borlase's time ; but there seems to be 
 at this moment only a single exception to his rule, in the 
 noble house of St. Germain's. It may be suspected that 
 the landed property of most of the county has changed 
 hands within the last half-century with a rapidity well 
 calculated to keep alive the popular superstition on this 
 subject. A singular amount of this change in earher 
 times was brought about by premature deaths and tragic 
 catastrophes, contrasting oddly with the very peacefid 
 history of the county in general. The house of Grenville 
 was absolutely cut off in war, in the field or by camp 
 sickness. The last Lord Mohun, the last Lord Camelford, 
 fell in celebrated duels — the last Killigrew, the last JSToy, 
 in tavern brawls. These Avere all ' strong bloods,' as the 
 Scotch phrase it ; and peculiar energy in one generation 
 is apt, says Aristotle, to degenerate into wildness and even 
 madness, in succeeding ones — a fancy which Cornish 
 family legends would seem to corroborate. But readers 
 of history will remember the lieavy cloud which hung 
 over the youth of the patriot Eliot, high principled and 
 self-possessed as he was, after he had drawn his sword 
 in a moment of passion on his kinsman Mr. Moyle. 
 
 Some surprise may be felt at the bold assertion of Mr. 
 Kingston, an Enghsh antiquary of distinction, that Corn- 
 wall is 'probably richer in antiquities of every kind 
 than any other county ; ' unless, indeed, the ingenious 
 writer means to include in the term ' antiquities ' the 
 multitudinous remains which fancy has classed as British 
 or Druidical. Speculation on these real or imaginary 
 rehcs, wliich were the favourite toys of the learned some 
 generations since, have almost ceased to interest the more 
 sceptical scholarship of our day. Cornwall, it may rather
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 383 
 
 be said, is not peculiarly rich in ' antiquities ' of the more 
 modest mediaeval sort, but what it has are very character- 
 istic and very interesting. Few districts have their archi- 
 tectural remains, such as they are, so well preserved. The 
 hard grey moorstone (i. e. granite) of which they are 
 mostly built seems almost indestructible by time, and 
 preserves its edges mth wonderful firmness, notwith- 
 standhig the damp saltness of the cHmate. The lover of 
 domestic architecture especially may revel in the study 
 of rehcs wliich seem to bring back past times and past 
 modes of thought and action far more vividly than those 
 of less unfrequented districts, where decay has been more 
 rapid and the spirit of restoration more rampant. Begin- 
 ning with the very earliest Christian times, his eye may 
 range, from specimen to specimen, through the long 
 Plantagenet centuries, and tlirough what the author of 
 ' Crotchet Castle ' somewhere calls ' that blissful middle 
 period, after the feudal system went out, and before the 
 march of mind came in.' The old castles of Launceston 
 and Eestormel seem to requke comparatively but little 
 labour to make them habitable once again, and to revive 
 the short and precarious feudal splendour of the duchy 
 of Cornwall. The towered edifice on St. Michael's 
 'guarded' Mount — half convent, half fortress — is but 
 little changed inside or out (allowing for a slight amount 
 of modernising for domestic purposes) since the wars of 
 the Eoses. Cotele, the lovely and unique seat of the 
 Edgcombes among the hanging woods on the banks of 
 Tamar, has been preserved with punctilious accuracy, a 
 perfect model of a gentleman's mansion of tlie Tudor 
 times ; even the furniture sedulously kept up in the same 
 antique character. Farther in the inteiior of the county, 
 and out of the way of tourists, hes the beautiful and as 
 perfectly preserved house of Lanhydrock, built by the
 
 o o 
 
 Si SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OP CORNWALL. 
 
 first Eobartes Lord Eadiior, in 1636-1641, as the inscrip- 
 tions testify, but wearing a far older appearance ; for, no 
 doubt, novelties in architecture travelled slowly into the 
 West in those times. Cotele has been maintained by 
 reverential care, Lanhydrock by a fortunate neglect ; for 
 until the time of the present possessor no one seems to 
 have cared to meddle with its gray walls or its primitive 
 decorations and furniture. It stands almost untouched, 
 as if it had been buried alive since the days of the Puri- 
 tans, whose head-quarters it formed dming the campaign 
 of 1644 in the civil war. Lord Eobartes, its builder, was 
 a stanch Presbyterian ; and the library collected by him- 
 self and his chaplain — one Hannibal Gammon — stands on 
 the old shelves of the long gallery as if its Eoundhead 
 purchasers had been using it only yesterday — rare old 
 tomes of scholastic divinity and philosophy, nungled with 
 the controversial tracts of the day, and acts and proclama- 
 tions of the Long Parliament uncut from the press — a 
 large part seasoned with many a bitter MS. marguial note 
 against prelacy and popery. An avenue of old sycamores, 
 now decaying, leads from the beautiful insulated portal 
 in front of the house across the park. That avenue was 
 planted under orders sent by Lord Eobartes from London, 
 when he had become Conservative, and had been clapped 
 by Oliver Cromwell into the Gatehouse more than two cen- 
 turies ago. Except the house of the Pophams at Littlecotc 
 (where the identical swords and steel caps of Cromwell's 
 Ironsides hang romid the hall), we knoAV no spot which 
 as vividly brings back the memories of tlie Great Eebel- 
 lion, so pecuharly attractive to the Enghsli mind. 
 
 Except in the north-eastern angle of the county, the 
 commonalty are undoubtedly in the main of the old Celtic 
 stock ; but they have become far more a mixed race than 
 their kinsfolk in the Iliglilands, Ireland, Wales, or Brit-
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF COENWALL. 385 
 
 taiiy ; not from invasion, but from the gradual infusion 
 of other blood through commerce and the demand for 
 labour. This is proved by the considerable mixture of 
 English with Cornish family names throughout the country- 
 To this cause is probably to be attributed the circumstance 
 that they have less of a marked national physiognomy 
 than is usually found in secluded districts. Physically, 
 they are a very fine race, well fed, sturdy, and laborious ; 
 in some remote districts (such as the extreme southern 
 peninsula of Meneage) greatly exceeding the usual stature; 
 peculiarly broad-shouldered everywhere ; a Cornish regi- 
 ment of militia is said to cover more ground than the 
 same number of men from any other county. They are 
 long Uved also, when the underground population (pro- 
 bably not exceeding from 10,000 to 20,000) is left out of 
 the estimate. The life of the poor miner himself is a 
 short and a painful one. Continuous labour in an intensely 
 heated atmosphere (the internal warmth of tlie earth 
 increasing rapidly, as is well known, as we descend below 
 the surface) is aggravated by the great additional exertion 
 of ascending to ' grass ' from a depth of perhaps 2000 
 feet at the end of the day's work. The invention of the 
 ' man-engine,' or Uft, for relieving the miner of this 
 terrible drain on his strength, made very slow progress, 
 though among a people so singularly ingenious and full 
 of resource, and seems to be still but partially employed. 
 But the ' mining population ' generally, including the 
 families of tlie underground labourers, and the mnnbers 
 who find employment in connexion with the mines above- 
 ground, are as liardy and well-grown as the rest. The 
 general prevalence, however, of an ungainly, sloucliing 
 carriage, renders the appearance of this athletic race 
 far less promising than the icality justifies, and strikes 
 forcibly any one who is at all accustomed to the iii)ri<dit 
 
 c c
 
 386 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 bearing of the drilled populations of the Continent. On 
 the dehcate subject of female beauty it is dangerous to 
 venture. Observing a sage moderation, let it only be 
 said, that good looks, if not absolutely prevalent, are very 
 common among the better half of the Cornish nation ; 
 that in youth they are often attended with a pecuhar 
 smoothness and clearness of complexion not so easy to 
 describe as to appreciate, which the learned derive from 
 the fish-eating propensities of the maidens in question ; 
 but that the traveller must not raise his anticipations too 
 high. He will not be often delighted with those visions 
 of wild and exquisite attraction which seem to greet him 
 from the flower-canopied porches of a thousand cottages 
 in the sweet shire of Devon. 
 
 Speaking generally, it may be said that the Cornish — 
 though, happily, not a warlike people, nor hkely to 
 become so for lack of example, while order is maintained 
 among this dense and active population by a detachment 
 of some thirty or forty soldiers at Pendennis — are a 
 peculiarly brave one ; brave, even beyond the common 
 standard of the quahty claimed by Englishmen ; with a 
 touch of the reckless and lavish courage of their Celtic 
 ancestors : strengthened, doubtless, by the constant habit 
 of risking life in the adventures of the sea and the mine. 
 This quality they showed abundantly in the old fighting 
 days, the records of the ' Cornish armies ' disclosing a suc- 
 cession of dashing exploits against superior odds. In the 
 Civil War, Colonel Fiennes's Bristol garrison surrendered 
 almost without a blow from mere terror of the wild 
 Cornish, who liad the character of running like cats up 
 walls and earthworks. They were still more formidable 
 from the ease with which they were (and still are) trained 
 into soldiers upon occasion, owing to the habits of dis- 
 cipline and of common action whicli their modes of life
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 387 
 
 give tliem. In fact, tlieir impulses, tastes, and pleasures 
 are almost all gregarious. In old days they met, quar- 
 relled, and fraternised, in faction-fights like those of 
 Ireland, wrestling matches, hurling matches, and similar 
 amusements. The gentry seemed to have lived in a 
 social, Castle-Eacki^ent Idnd of fashion of their own. ' A 
 gentleman and his wife,' says Carew, ' will ride to make 
 merry with his next neighbour, and after a day or two 
 these two couples go to a third ; in Avhich progress they 
 increase hke snowbaUs, till through their burdensome 
 weight they break again.' Long after the time of Carew 
 the late Mr. Beckford gave a singular picture of Cornish 
 hospitality in 1787, in his account of his reception at a 
 seat near Falmouth, when w^ndbound before his voyage 
 to Portusal : — 
 
 '&" 
 
 We had on the table a savoury pig, right worthy of Otaheite, 
 and some of the finest poultry I ever tasted ; and round the 
 table two or three brace of Cornish gentlefolks, not deficient in 
 
 humour or originality About eight in the evening six 
 
 game cocks were ushered into the eating- rooms by two limber 
 lads in scarlet jackets ; and after a flourish of Growings the noble 
 birds set to with surjjrising keenness. Tufts of brilliant feathers 
 soon flew about the apartment ; but the carpet was not stained 
 with the blood of the combatants ; for, to do Trcfusis justice 
 he has a generous heart, and takes no pleasure in cruelty. The 
 cocks were xmarmed, liad their spurs cut short, and may live to 
 fight fifty such harmless battles. 
 
 It is however just to add, what Beckford does not, that 
 the Squire Trefusis of this sketch (afterward Lord Clinton) 
 was at the time a youth of three-and-twenty. Cock- 
 fighting it is presumed is now extinct. Wrestling is 
 almost discontinued, except as a pubhcan's speculation. 
 Hurling is kept u[), though with less spirit than formerly. 
 But tlie spirit of aggregation rather linds a vent in canip- 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 meetings, temperance-parties, and monster tea-drinkings ; 
 liow much for the better or Avorse must be left to others 
 to say. Tlie Cornish motto of ' One and All ' is true 
 enough as expressing this propensity, though absmxlly 
 false when quoted (as it commonly is) in self-laudation for 
 a supposed spirit of national unity. Never was a small 
 people more curiously and readily divisible into factions, 
 or more disinclined (one is sorry to say it) to really 
 useful co-operation. The railway history of the last few 
 years with its violent feuds and ruinous litigation, not only 
 among the usual class of speculators but among the 
 natives themselves, gives abundant and melancholy proof 
 of the truth of this assertion. 
 
 It is rather singular that a hotblooded people thus 
 easily excited by local quarrel should be comparatively 
 indifferent to political agitation ; but such appears to be 
 the fact. Notwithstanding the density of population, and 
 the habits of association which belong to the labouring 
 classes, they have taken but little share in the public 
 movements of late years ; leagues, and unions, and 
 Chartists gatherings have had small attraction for them, 
 nor has any merely political cause found numerous and 
 sanguine adherents in Cornwall. Mucii, no doubt, is 
 owing to their geographical position, which almost cuts off 
 the contagion of ' foreign ' zeal. There prevails also among 
 them an amount of self-education in political matters, 
 arising from circumstances in their social economy, which 
 makes them far less easily the prey of mere agitators than 
 operatives in general. Through companionship in mining 
 adventure — throufih the working of the ' tributer ' 
 system of mining labour, which Mr. Babbage considered 
 so excellent a thin<j^ that he has uro;ed its extension to 
 other branches of industry, and on which Stuart Mill has 
 commented, as giving an indication of the true road to
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OP CORNWALL. 389 
 
 future prosperity for our labouring classes in general — 
 through the usage of conducting fishing operations ' on 
 shares,' in Avhicli all the crew take part — Cornishmen are 
 familiar from their youth with the principle of co- 
 operation, and consequently have not much to learn 
 either of the strength or w^eaknessof the Socialist scheme. 
 Strikes seem to have been hitherto unheard of in the 
 county. Doubtless, also, the scenes with which they 
 were familiar for centuries in the elections for their twenty 
 boroughs, and the habit of seeing ' ocuhs fidehbus,' the 
 principle of representation reduced to a most homely and 
 bibacious contract between vendor and purchaser, Avere 
 not without their effect in diso-ustinf? the better class 
 with the whole subject, Hke the periodical excesses of the 
 Helots at Sparta. But one may trace something of this 
 comparative indifference to politics even in their earlier 
 history. It is true that the Cornish took a very impor- 
 tant share in the Great Civil War. Twice they may be 
 said to have rescued the royal cause — in the campaign of 
 1643, by the victories of Stratton and Lansdowne ; and 
 again, in 1644, when Lord Essex was drawn into 
 Cornwall by the representations of Lord Eobartes and 
 other Koundhead gentlemen — whose object, says the 
 Eoyalist Sanderson, was to collect their arrears of rent : 
 which imputation is denounced by his lordsJiip, in a mar- 
 gined note on the passage in his library at Lanhydrock, 
 as a ' base lie.' This time the county was more divided : 
 a good many sided with Essex ; but the Royalists again 
 prevailed, and the Presbyterian leader was forced to avoid 
 a ruinous surrender by a discreditable Ihght. King 
 Charles's manifesto of thanks to the county for its services 
 on these occasions was placarded in every village church, 
 and may still be seen in some of them. But notwith- 
 standing these exploits, there seems to have been but
 
 o 
 
 90 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 little permanent or passionate loyalty ; the county sub- 
 mitted very quietly to the law of the strongest, and 
 showed no vehement monarchical predilections afterwards. 
 Local historians remark with how little personal feeling 
 or asperity the war seems to have been carried on in 
 Cornwall ; by all, perhaps, except the fierce old Cavalier 
 governor of Pendennis, Sir John Arundel of Trerice, who 
 took the matter in earnest, and neither gave nor asked 
 for quarter : one of his four sons was killed in single 
 combat by a Eoundhead captain at the siege of Plymouth, 
 and the victor had the assurance to demand of Sir John, 
 as a magistrate, the reward which Parliament had offered 
 for every slain Eoyalist officer. In later times the only 
 political movement with which the Cornish name is 
 much associated is that occasioned by the imprisonment 
 of the seven bishops, one of whom (Trelawny, of Exeter, 
 afterwards of Bristol and of Winchester) was the chief of 
 his ancient family. The famous ballad, — 
 
 ' And sliall Trelawney die ? 
 There's twenty thousand underground 
 Will know the reason why ' — 
 
 is, it may be feared, with the exception of the burden, 
 the modern invention of a local poet, the Eev. Mr. Hawker 
 of Moorwinstow. But the bishop, besides his descent, 
 had precisely the character which commands the popular 
 favour, always inchned to smile on the strongwilled and 
 arbitrary. ' It is an old saying in our county,' observes 
 the poet Lord Lansdowne, ' that a Trelawney never 
 wanted courage, nor a Godolphin Avit, nor a Grenville 
 loyalty.' And neither ordination nor consecration had 
 extingjuished in Sir Jonathan tlic ' savage virtue of his 
 race,' though compelled to exhibit it in the courts of law 
 instead of the field. As visitor of Winchester school he 
 put down by his summary will some of those servile
 
 SCEXERY AXD iVNTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 391 
 
 customs (the only discredit of Wykeham's magnificent 
 foundations) whicli the scholars were compelled to ob- 
 serve. As visitor of Exeter College, it is matter of Oxford 
 tradition how he drove up to the gate in his coach-and- 
 four, and seized on and suspended, ipso facto, an Arian 
 president and six senior fellows. It was he who won for 
 bishops, by dint of litigation, that privilege of examining all 
 clerks presented for institution in their diocese, which has 
 proved of late years a somewhat dangerous prerogative. 
 Peace be to his manes ! — but he left but little of that com- 
 modity, it may be suspected, in the three dioceses which he 
 successively administered. Since his time, there seems to 
 have been no political leader round whom the sympathies 
 of Cornishmen have rallied, nor any pohtical cause which 
 has produced much excitement among them, except the 
 cider-tax. 
 
 Every one who visits Cornwall must needs go down a 
 mine ; but unless he is professionally interested in this 
 matter, he mil find little under ground to gratify curiosity. 
 The excavations are ' generally so low and narrow as to 
 admit the passage of one person only at a time, and that 
 in a stooping posture. The miner, too, like the mole, is 
 solitary in operation, and is often discovered alone at the 
 end of a gallery, in a damp and confined space, boring 
 the solid I'ock, or breaking down the ore, by the feeble 
 light of a candle.' From the httle work entitled ' Corn- 
 well, its Mines and Miners,' it appears that the number 
 of people employed directly or indirectly by tin and 
 copper mines (the latter now by far the most important), 
 including those of the neighbouring part of Devon, which 
 have recently risen once more into consequence, may 
 probably reach 80,000 or 90,000. The wages of ' tribu- 
 ters,'* in 1857, averaged 585. 3^. per month; those of 
 
 * The tributers receive a proportion of the proceeds aiising from the sale
 
 392 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 ' tutwork ' (taskwork) men 53.s. Sd. The total dividends 
 of sliarelioklers in British mines varied in the ciizht 
 years ending 1853, inchisive, between 130,000/. and 
 330,000/. The same vohime gives the following account 
 of the characteristics of the mining population : — 
 
 The superiority of the Cornish miner to the agricultural 
 labourer may he at once inferred. The latter is confined by 
 habit to a set task. He is never thrown on his own resources 
 in the progress of his occupation, and he goes through life as a 
 mere human machine, performiug exactly the same thing from 
 youth to age, neither increasing nor diminishing his scanty 
 stock of ideas. But the miner is the reverse of all this. He is 
 engaged mostly in work requiring the exercise of the mind. He 
 is constantly taking a new ' pitch ' in a new situation, where his 
 judgment is called into action. His wages are not the stinted 
 recompense of half-emancipated serfship, but they arise from 
 contract, and they depend upon some degree of skill and know- 
 ledge. In fact, the chances of the lode keep alive a kind of ex- 
 citement, and foster a hope of good fortune that never altogether 
 deserts the miner. If at all imaginative, he dreams in the 
 underground darkness of becoming suddenly rich. He is a 
 kind of subterranean stockjobber, and, doubtless, the excitement 
 such gentlemen feel on the London Stock Exchange, in ' making 
 a price ' of Consols or of North -Westerns, is paralleled near the 
 Land's End, in the heart of the humble tributer or tutworker. 
 
 From the absence of traditions as to the original pecu- 
 liarities of the Cornish miners (adds the same writer), I infer 
 that they have always been a milder and more mannerly race 
 than the northern pitmen 
 
 As to games and sports of bowls, and donkey-races, and 
 cock-fighting, and dog-baiting, I never heard of an}^ of them in 
 the western mining districts. In these, too, you find few or 
 no characteristic amusements at night. Music is welcome, and 
 you may find a few local bands composed chiefly of miners, but 
 
 of the ore, the value of wliicli varies from Or/, to l^s. 4d. in the poniul, and 
 it is the chance of hitting upon a rich and high-pi'iced lode that keeps them 
 in a constant flutter of speculative life.
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 393 
 
 they are not general. I gave some instances of the peculiar 
 fondness for mathematical stitdies amongst the northern pitmen. 
 I found few or none such in Cornwall. Neither mathematics, 
 nor any other branch of study, is fervently pursued there, and 
 any instance of excellence in any other branch of science stands 
 out as singular. 
 
 The characteristics of the mining class apply with 
 scarcely less truth to the rest of the population. For the 
 intermixture of employments is great ; in all the mining 
 and maritime part of the county, the small trader and the 
 farmer are habitually speculators in mines and fisheries. 
 That strange-looking individual, wliom you, an eastern 
 visitor, may observe in swallow-tailed coat, rusty silk hat, 
 black trowsers and stockings, and low-quartered shoes, at 
 work in his croft of potatoes, or cultivating a pretty luxu- 
 riant tw^o-acre field of wheat, in the half-reclaimed flats 
 about Tregonning Hill or St. Agnes' Beacon, seems a very 
 heterodox specimen of the British agriculturist ; but, if 
 you knew his history, you would probably find that he 
 has, or has had, shares in a drift-boat, a seine, and a 
 neighbouring mine or two, and his soul is at this moment 
 far aAvay from his dirty acres, wandering in Eldorado. 
 He has seen a common miner of one year driving 
 his carriage and pair of greys the next, and the moral 
 of the third year, in which the miner in question has 
 passed the Insolvent Court, is lost on him. It is strange 
 that a ])opulation unusually orderly and sober, and 
 reasonably honest, should be also one of habitual gam- 
 blers, active or speculative. In all probability this 
 kind of poison, like others, loses its deleterious eflect 
 on the constitutions of those who are thoroughly 
 inured to it. It must be added, that, with llie spirit of 
 self-reliance which this kind <>(" life engenders, it creates 
 also a very considerable amount of self-opinion. The
 
 394 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 thoroiigli Cornishman's respect for liis owii shrewdness 
 and til at of his clan is unbounded, or only equalled by 
 his profound contempt for ' foreigners ' from the east ; a 
 class created for his benefit — given over to him for a 
 prey. And this feeling increases ludicrously in intensity 
 as we advance further west, until we reach the Land's 
 End parish of St. Just, in which the despised ' East ' com- 
 prehends all the rest of England. It must be owned that 
 the Cornubians have daily and abundant proof of the 
 gullibility of the men of the east, and the Londoners in 
 particular ; the opening of a new undertaking, by what 
 they term a ' hearty set of adventurers ' fresh from the 
 metropolis, is a great opportunity for local jubilation. It 
 lias been calculated that on a long term of years the 
 balance sheet of Cornish mining, taken together, presents 
 a loss instead of a gain. This seems hardly credible, but 
 there can be no doubt that the entire trade fully illustrates 
 Adam Smith's proposition, that profits, in a business par- 
 taking of the nature of a lottery, are habitually somewhat 
 lower than in others, owing to the innate gambling pro- 
 pensity of mankind. 
 
 One more quality must be alluded to, as partly arising 
 from their economical circumstances, partly, perhaps, in- 
 nate in the race — the great predominance of the imagi- 
 native faculty. It may seem strange to assert this of a 
 county which is totally without poetical legends — a county 
 which has never produced a single English poet, hardly a 
 few third-rate versifiers. So hard-driven have the Cornish 
 been to add a few bards to their very handsome list of 
 local divines, lawyers, and men of science, that they have 
 endeavoured to make a laureate even out of Peter Pindar ; 
 but though that eccentric personage (Dr. Wolcot) much 
 affected the character of a Cornishman — though he calls 
 on himself, in one of his odes, to
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF COENWALL. 395 
 
 'Answer ! for Fame is with conjecture dizzy — 
 Did Mousehole give thee birth, or Mevagizzey ? ' 
 
 • 
 
 thougli he passed his best years in Truro, where his talk 
 made him at once the scandal, terror, and pride of the 
 sober Httle town : he was in truth a Devonian, by birth 
 and parentage. Nor can an exception be made for two 
 poets of the present day, Mr. Stokes and Mr. Hawker, 
 who have been mentioned in these pages, for both are 
 but recently established in Cornwall. But the faculty in 
 question is not less marked and powerful, althougli its 
 usual manifestations are not of the poetical order, and it 
 connects itself more readily with the practical. The sense 
 of the vague and indefinite, which is of the essence of 
 poetry, mingles greatly with that restless aspiration after 
 change of place which makes the Cornishman one of the 
 most locomotive of mankind. Emigration has been so 
 large of late years as to keep the population almost sta- 
 tionary, notwithstanding a flourishing state of domestic 
 industry : in all parts of tlie new world, in North and 
 South America and Australia, knots of Cornish emigrants 
 will be found, generally, but not always, attracted by 
 their peculiar mining industry, and generaUy prosperous, 
 though more through speculative qualities tlian the cool 
 and thrifty determination of the sons of the north. The 
 very recent outburst of tlie old English colonising ardoiu', 
 Avhicli lias founded for us a fourth empire in the seas of 
 the south, found its representatives and interpreters 
 in Sir W. Molesworth and Charles Buller— Cornish- 
 men both. Sometimes tlie same imaginative tendency 
 tinges rehgious zeal : as in Henry Martyn, the Cornish 
 missionary, the most imaginative, and by reason of that 
 very faculty the most influential, of that noble band. 
 Sometimes it colours the pursuit of science, as in Sir 
 Humphry Davy — the most eminent of modern Cornisli-
 
 396 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 men — in whom undeniable genius, as well as great prac- 
 tical shrewdness, were united with a good deal of the 
 visionary, and something — the words will out — of eharla- 
 ianerie and pretension. Oftentimes we hnd it hovering 
 on that undefined border which lies between enthusiasm 
 and imposture, and leaving us uncertain whether he who 
 exhibits it is really deceived or a deceiver. Easily affected 
 by the wild and mystical, the Cornish seem calculated to 
 become at once the frequent victims, and frequent origi- 
 nators, of imposture. They rose twice in rebellion for 
 that enigmatical personage, Perkin Warbeck — in whom, 
 were he true prince or pretender, no other part of the 
 nation seems to have taken the smallest interest. The 
 pseudo Sir William Courtenay, who led the blind Kentish 
 peasants, a few years ago, to confront with naked breasts 
 the muskets of the soldiers, came from Cornwall ; so, if 
 we are not mistaken, did Joanna Southcott ; and many 
 more of less note might be named, of whom to pronounce 
 with certainty whether they were crazed themselves, or 
 the wilful producers of craziness in others, would be a 
 difficult task. 
 
 Under all the changes in their ecclesiastical history, 
 the Cornish have been, as may well be supposed, a people 
 peculiarly liable to devotional influences. Tlieir anti- 
 quaries have devoted many a weary page of illustration 
 to those meagre legendary traditions which speak of the 
 immigration from Ireland into their peninsula of that 
 series of saints, male and female, who have given strange 
 names, unknown to other hagiologies, to the parishes of 
 lialf the county. They were an apocryplial set at best, 
 and their so-called histories seem as baseless as those of 
 Uther Pendragon or Corineus the Trojan. Nevertheless, 
 scanty as our proofs are, it is reasonable to believe 
 that this western region was tlic seat of a flourishing
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 397 
 
 Cliristian community long before the anival of Augustine 
 in Kent ; a community which ignored Eoman tradition 
 and disciphne, kept Easter after tlie Greek fashion, and 
 derived its distant origin from that oldest mother of 
 Churches, the patriarchal seat of Jerusalem. The most 
 interesting relic of that early period (as it may be some- 
 what confidently named) was discovered about tliirty 
 years ago — the buried church or oratory of St. Piran. 
 The parish of Perranzabuloe, or Perran in the Sands, as 
 its name imports, extends over a large tract of towans or 
 dunes — the word seems to be both Celtic and Saxon — 
 moveable hills of blown sand, driven continually inland 
 by the fury of the north-west wind. Twice, according to 
 the traditions of the place, the inhabitants had removed 
 their parish church before the march of this invader. 
 The very site of the first church had long been forgotten. 
 The second was deemed to be protected by a running 
 stream — for a loose sand-hill can no more cross a runnino; 
 stream than a witch can perform the same feat ; and in 
 this very parish a drift may be noticed of nearly one 
 hundred feet high, divided by a mere rivulet of water 
 from the green pastures to leeward, over which it has 
 seemingly impended for many years without being able to 
 reach them. But the rill which protected the second 
 church of Perran was diverted for mining purposes ; the 
 sand began to overwhelm it, and the inhabitants reluctantly 
 removed the ornamental masonry in 1803 to a third site, 
 two miles off. At last, in 1835, the original church itself 
 was brought to sight by the shifting *of the sands — sur- 
 rounded by hundreds on hundreds of skeletons, ranged in 
 orderly ranks ; for the sanctity of the spot rendered it a 
 favourite cemetery for centuries after the church itself 
 had been abandoned. Tliis last event nuist luive taken 
 place, according to some Cornish ecclesiologists, before
 
 398 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 the invasion of Athelstan in a.d. 936, tlioiigli it would be 
 hazardous to indorse all the conclusions which enthu- 
 siastic men have drawn from these ' withered skulls, and 
 bones, and heaped-up dust,' and the rude walls of unce- 
 mented stone around which they lie. Both the little church 
 itself (only 25 feet long) and these remains of mortality 
 have suffered much from Vandal spoilers since their dis- 
 covery. But it is yet a singular and a solemn sight, that 
 small fragment of the hoariest Christian antiquity, with 
 its roundheaded doorways, its distinct nave and chancel, 
 and the ancient human remains still bleaching in the dry 
 sand near it, as the traveller comes suddenly on them in 
 the utter sohtude of the ' towans,' which spread like 
 undulating waves for miles around. He must be a very 
 philosophic, or a very reckless observer, whose heart is 
 not stirred with a strong sense of that coming day when 
 those mouldering relics are to meet and join together, 
 ' bone to his bone,' and shall ' live, and stand upon their 
 feet, an exceeding great army.' 
 
 A very large number of the Cornish country churches 
 are of one period, namely, the first half of the fifteenth 
 century ; sohd and simply ornamented edifices of moor- 
 stone or killas, chiefly remarkable for their large sym- 
 metrical, though somewhat heavy, towers. Standing for 
 the most part on elevations, and uniform in size and 
 shape, they rather bewilder than direct the stranger as 
 they are seen peering over the wide sweeps of dreary, 
 treeless enclosures. More remarkable perhaps are those 
 of later construction, such as the twin Tudor churches of 
 Launceston and Bodmin, carrying the style of that period 
 almost to its highest point of ornament, and striking from 
 the execution of all that ornament in the hard granite of 
 the neighbouring moors. The people long remained 
 zealous and somewhat turbulent Catholics ; they rose in
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 399 
 
 1547 against Protector Somerset, under tlic nominal 
 leadership of Humplirey Arundel of the Mount, but in 
 reahty under priestly inspiration, as is very obvious from 
 the curious set of demands which they served on the 
 royalist officer Lord Eussell at Exeter, in wliich his 
 Majesty was required to abide by ' all the decrees of tlie 
 general councils,' and, moreover, to take the advice of 
 ' Arundel and the mayor of Bodmin. The suppression of 
 this rebellion, and the severities used towards the insur- 
 gents, were long among the best preserved Cornish house- 
 hold traditions. The unfortunate mayor of Bodmin, who 
 had been so ambitious of ' advising ' the King, was hanged 
 at his own door ; his wife had been moved to petition for his 
 life, ' but ' says satirical Hals, ' to render herself the more 
 amiable petitioner before the Marshal's eyes, this dame 
 spent so much time in attiring herself and putting on her 
 French hood, then in fashion, that her husband was put 
 to death before her arrival.' We hear no more after- 
 wards of religious disturbance in Cornwall : the reformed 
 faitli quietly prevailed. Puritanism, however, took but 
 little hold of the people ; nor did George Fox, the 
 Quaker, although he often perambulated this remote 
 peninsular region, and had evidently a liking for it, pro- 
 duce any very extensive awakening among them. But 
 his journals (or rather tlie compilation which goes by 
 that name — for Fox, 'hero ' though lie may have been, 
 was utterly incapable of penning them) give a very 
 terrible account of the kind of justice and correction 
 administered in Cornish local courts and local prisons of 
 that day. Take the following recital of the adventures 
 of himself and companions among tlie ' dark, hardened 
 people ' of Launceston : — 
 
 Now the assize being over, aiul Ave settled in prison upon 
 such a commitment as we were not likely to be soon released,
 
 400 SCEXERr AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 we broke off from giving the gaoler seven shillings a week for 
 our horses and seven shillings a week for ourselves, and sent our 
 horses out into the country. Upon which the gaoler grew very- 
 wicked and devilish, and put us down into Doomsdale, a nast}^ 
 stinking place, where they used to put witches and murderers 
 after they were condemned to die. 
 
 The description of Doomsdale which follows is far too 
 horrible for insertion, but will scarcely be deemed in- 
 credible by those famihar with the history of prisons in 
 England : — 
 
 This head-gaoler, we were informed, had been a thief, and 
 was burnt both in the hand and the shoulder; his wife, too, 
 had been burnt in the hand. The under-gaoler had been burnt 
 both in the hand and in the shoulder ; and his wife had been 
 burnt in the hand also. And Colonel Bennet, who was a 
 Baptist teacher, having purchased the gaol and lands belonging 
 to the castle, had placed this head-gaoler therein. 
 
 The conversion of the people of Cornwall from what is 
 called in religious works their state of spiritual apathy, 
 denied to George Fox, was reserved for a greater man, 
 the renowned John Wesley. His biographers have never 
 explained what particular cause directed Wesley to select 
 this country as one of his principal fields. The first visit 
 to Cornwall recorded in his journals took place in 1743, 
 the latest in 1781, when he preached for the last time 
 from his famous stand in tlie natural amphitheatre, or 
 ' pit,' at Gwennap, which is still the anniversary-meeting 
 ground of his followers. ' I believe,' he says, ' two or 
 
 three and twenty thousand were present I think 
 
 this is my ne phis ultra. I shall scarce see a larger con- 
 cfregation till we meet in the air.' 
 
 Very great, doubtless, was the change effected by 
 Wesley in this western region in the space of a generation. 
 His preachings began at a time when the outward dis-
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 401 
 
 regard of reliuion was cfreat in Cornwall as elsewhere ; 
 the churches were neglected, their services few and ill 
 attended ; the very phraseology of popular piety, so 
 familiar to the ears of a former generation, had become 
 nearly obsolete. ' I asked a httle gentleman at St. Just,' 
 says Wesley, 'what objection there was to Edward 
 Greenfield ? ' — a pious tinner, on whom the constables had 
 seized. He said, ' Why, the man is well enough m other 
 things, but his impudence the gentlemen cannot bear. 
 Why, sir, he says his sins are forgiven ! ' In those pre- 
 Wesleyan times, and partially indeed long after, the 
 manners and habits of the Cornish populace seem (as has 
 been partly seen) to have strongly resembled those of the 
 Irish, without the rehgious fervour which characterises 
 the latter. There were the same clannish propensities, 
 the same faction fights, the same riotous fairs and noisy 
 funerals, the same disposition for turbulent encounters 
 with the established authorities on every local occasion. 
 Drunkenness must have been nearly universal : we can 
 hardly realise the extent of the change througliout 
 society, and in both sexes, which has occurred in tliis 
 particular. ' A lady of a distant county,' says the gossij) 
 Polwhelc, ' lately observed to me that Cornwall, and tlie 
 west of Cornwall particularly, are remarkable for beau- 
 tifid women. The girls are very pretty, she said, up to 
 the age of tliirteen ; after which their compleMons are 
 soon spoilt by brandy-drinking^ and their liealth impaired ! ' 
 The inhuman practice of wrecking, of wliich so many 
 stories are told, continued in full vigour. ' At no great 
 distance from St. Anthony,' says the same authority, ' a 
 wreck liappening on a Sunday morning, tlie clerk 
 announced to the parishioners just assembled, tliat 
 " Measter would gee tliem a holladay." This is a fact ; 
 but whether measter cried out, as his Hock were rushiiiur 
 
 D I)
 
 402 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 from tlie churcli, " Stop, Stop ! let us start fuir ! " I will 
 not aver.' * 
 
 About the time of which Polwhele writes, a charge 
 was rife (says Mr. Bedding) against a man of a certain 
 position in society of having ' tied up tlie leg of an ass at 
 niglit, and liung a lantern round its neck, and driven it 
 himself along the summit of the high cliff on that part of 
 the northern coast where he lived, in order that the halt- 
 ing motion of the animal might imitate the plunging of 
 a vessel under sail, and thus tempt ships to run in, from 
 imagining there was sea-room, where destruction was 
 inevitable.' 
 
 Such were the materials out of which Wesley, and his 
 associates and followers, constructed one of the most 
 orderly and civilised societies in the world. Mr. Mann's 
 tables, which must be cited with every allowance for the im- 
 perfections ascribed to them, give 45,000 adult members 
 of the Church of England in Cornwall against 110,000 
 Protestant Dissenters ; but if the western and industrious 
 part of the county were taken by itself, the proportion of 
 the latter would be still further increased. These Dis- 
 senters are almost entirely Methodists ; the old connexion 
 forming about one-half No other form of Protestant 
 dissent has taken much root in Cornwall. The Churcli 
 
 * The ' Sir Balaam ' of P(ipe is enriclied by two shipwrecks which ' bless 
 the lucky shore ' of his Cornish lands. ' The author,' says the poet in a note, 
 ' has placed the scene of these shipwrecks in Cornwall, not only from their 
 frequency on that coast, but from the inhumanity of the inhabitants to those 
 to whom that misfortune arrives. When a ship happens to be stranded there 
 they have been known to bore holes in it, to prevent its getting oil"; to 
 plunder, and sometimes even to massacre, the people. Nor has the Parlia- 
 ment of England been yet able wholly to suppress these barbarities.' This 
 was written in 17-'^2, The Cornish are fond of asserting that the ' wrecking ' 
 propensity is now wholly obsolete. No recent instances have become public, 
 but it is not so sure that the spirit is absolutely extinct. The agent for a 
 county candidate was very lately asked, when canvassing a coast district, 
 ' what Mr. thought about wrecking ? '
 
 SCENEKY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 403 
 
 of England maintains her ground but hardly against the 
 current of popular impulse ; and the causes which have 
 lately filled so large a proportion of her pulpits, in this 
 part of England, with staunch ' ritualists ' and clergy of 
 very exalted opinions, have given her for the time even 
 less chance of success than heretofore, notwithstanding 
 all her awakened zeal and activity.* 
 
 Thus far, could AVesley revisit the earth, he would find 
 that his labours had been crowned with outward success ; 
 but Avhether the character of the rehgious faith which 
 now bears his name in these western parts would meet 
 his entire approval, may be doubted. Eanaticism (using 
 the word with as httle tendency to disrespect as possible) 
 can scarcely take strong hold of the popular mind, except in 
 one of two shapes ; namely, either under the guise of priest- 
 worship and ritualism which satisfy the fancy, or of that 
 
 * A gentleman not long- ago settled in Cornwall, and rented of its owner 
 a little estate ou a wild part of the coast. Having a taste for antiquities, lie 
 was delighted to discover in his neighbourhood a few fragments of what he 
 believed to be an ancient chapel, where service had been performed for the 
 bodies of seamen wrecked in the bay. He show^ed them to many, and their 
 fame was spread abroad. One day, on returning from au absence, he dis- 
 covered, to his great annoyance, that the whole had disappeared. It seems 
 that the fanner, on whoso ground the ruin stood — an old Wesleyan class- 
 leader — incensed at the respect paid to sucli shreds of poperv, had obtained 
 permission from the unsuspecting owner to remove ' a few loose stones otf the 
 farm,' and had accordingly pushed them over the cliff. Violent proceedings 
 were threatened against the iconoclast : but he died soon after, perfectly 
 satisfied with the last of his good w^orks. In out-of-the-way parishes, 
 however, the Church will sometimes be found holding a very exclusive 
 tenure of popular aflection. A visitor looking into a cliurch ou the coast 
 a few years ago, observed the clergyman (an excellent man, since deceased) 
 performing some occasional service in a comfortable arm-chair. He asked 
 the cluu'chwarden the meaning of this singular ecclesiastical usage, and 
 was answered, tliat tlio parson had mrt witli a bad accident the other day 
 among the cliffs, that ho proposed to get a curate, but that tlio parish 
 were determined against dissent and novelties of all kinds, and did imt 
 feel comfortable under the proposal; that they had tlierefore Ijoggfd liiia 
 to go on as before, doing just us much duty as he pleased, when he pleaseil, 
 and how he pleased. 
 
 1) D 2
 
 404 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 strong preclestinarianism which masters and engrosses 
 tlie intellect. Any revival which (like Wesley's) rests on 
 neither of these principles, so deeply rooted in human 
 nature, is usually, it may be feared, short-lived in the full 
 extent of its fervour, although it may long survive in 
 name. The Calvinism of Whitefield had made an im- 
 pression in Cornwall, contemporaneously with Wesley's 
 preaching, much greater than is to be measured by the 
 number of his nominal adlierents. Wesley seems to have 
 had himself a suspicion that his own favourite Arminian 
 tenets were scarcely strong meat enough for the eager- 
 minded population whose spiritual hunger he had excited. 
 ' The more I converse with the believers in Cornw^all,' he 
 says in 1762, ' the more I am convinced that they have 
 sustained great loss for want of hearing the doctrine of 
 Christian perfection clearly and strongly enforced.' The 
 general tendency of Cornish popular Methodism, whatever 
 its more orthodox teachers may maintain, is probably, 
 notwithstanding the high moral character of the people, 
 towards Antinomianism of sentiment at least, if not of 
 doctrine. 
 
 If the fatalist theory tends also to engender spiritual 
 pride — and in Cornwall, as in Wales, it is impossible not 
 to be struck with the prevalence of that failing in its 
 coarsest forms — it adds at the same time a peculiar vigour 
 to the native virtues of courage and endurance. Many 
 are the records of unassuming bravery, contained in the 
 annals of Cornish enthusiasm. When the Anson frigate 
 went to pieces, years ago, on the terrible beach of the 
 Loe Bar near Ilelston — where, as the people of the 
 nei'dibourhood affirm, the bodies of the drowned, if re- 
 covered at all, reappear stripped of their very clothing 
 by the grinding of the rollers on the shingle — the only 
 assistance that could be given was by rushing as far as
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 405 
 
 possible into the surf, and snatching at tlie bodies as the 
 breakers carried them strugghng towards shore. A poor 
 niethodist teacher, whose name is unrecorded, volunteered 
 for the service ; he rode twice into the sea and rescued 
 two sailors, but on the third venture both horse and rider 
 were swept away. A more remarkable story, of a few 
 years back only, has met with a distinguished lot, by 
 falling into the hands of Mr. Carlyle, who has dressed it 
 up as an illustration of heroism ; but the fact is true, and 
 the scene was a mine in the neia;hbourhood of Liskeard. 
 Two men, an older and a younger, were at work blasting 
 in a level. Not till the fuse was lit for effecting their 
 purpose did they discover that tlie ' kiddle,' or basket, 
 which was let down to carry them out of danger, was 
 only large enough for one. The elder man, a class- teacher 
 it is said, insisted on his younger companion mounting 
 without him, because, as he said, he had himself as- 
 surance of salvation, while his comrade might risk soul 
 as well as body. He crouched down in a corner, and the 
 explosion passed safely over his head. Such a story is 
 far best left to make its impression without rhetorical 
 aid ; but tlie reader may compare, if he will, the terrible 
 narrative in Sir Walter Scott's journal in the Orkneys, of 
 the three cragsmen suspended by a rope, of which the 
 strands were visibly parting overhead : the topmost man 
 convinced tliat it must break with the weii>ht of the 
 three, deliberately cut it asunder below himself, and 
 launched his father and brotlier into the abyss. 
 
 Of Cornish superstition, too nearly akin to Cornish 
 devotion — corruptio optimi pessima — one hardly ventures 
 to say all that the subject suggests. It is so prolific tliat 
 pages might be filled, not witli mere legends wrouglit up 
 for literary purposes, but witli serious accounts of the 
 wild delusions which seem to liavc lived on fi'om tlie
 
 40G SCEXERY AND ANTIQL'ITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 vciy bii til of pagan antiquity, and still to hold their in- 
 fluence among the earnest and Christian people of this 
 corner of England. Stripping off the romantic and the 
 amusing, it is in truth rather a humiliating topic to dwell 
 on. Superstition lives on, with little abatement of 
 vitality, in the human heart ; in the low^er classes, it 
 wears its old costumes witli very slow alteration — in the 
 higher, it changes them with the rapidity of modes in 
 fashionable circles ; as the annals of society of late years 
 abundantly testify. Sarcastic Londoners may therefore 
 feel rather ashamed of professing superior wisdom to 
 their Cornish friends ; but the subject is too characteristic 
 to be wholly omitted. Certainly the Celtic races stand 
 pre-eminent among mankind in the variety and strange- 
 ness of their intimacy wdth the invisible world. It seems 
 the growth of their very climate and geographical position 
 among the mists of the Atlantic — 
 
 Placed far amid the melancholy main — 
 
 in a region with ever-varying aspects of land and sea, 
 and sea-born vapour, producing fantastic appearances 
 unfamiliar to the denizens of those drier and warmer 
 countries where the bright aerial perspective remains 
 imchanged through months of sunshine, and where the 
 storm, when it comes, envelops all at once in unmitigated 
 darkness. Optical delusions are rare under that trans- 
 parent canopy, save in a few excepted cases, such as the 
 pretty spectacle of the Fata Morgana. And mental de- 
 lusion on spiritual subjects, or ' demonomania,' though 
 by no means unheard of in the south of Europe, is 
 seldom a prevalent or lasting epidemic where mere 
 material hfe is so self-sufficing. Our Celts, on the other 
 liand, are probably those very Cinnnerians of whom 
 Homer had that sublime, because indefinite conception —
 
 SCENEKY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 407 
 
 dwellers on the confines of the living and dead, themselves 
 wrapt in eternal and death-like gloom — ilspi xa) vst^sy^jj 
 xsxa7s.u ixixsvrn ; which idea Claudian has materialised and 
 degraded, in the well-known lines — 
 
 Est locus extremum qua pandit Gallia litus, 
 Oceani prtetentus aquis .... 
 lUic uuibrarum tonui stridore volantum 
 Fiebilis auditur questus ; simidacra coloni 
 Pallida, defunctasque vident exTare figuras. 
 
 This conversion of the vaguely sublime Cimmerians 
 into gross, matter-of-fact, provincial ' coloni,' scot-and-lot 
 payers of Aquitaine and Armorica, living among ghosts, 
 meeting ghosts daily on their excursions, and hearing 
 them squeak as they flit by, is no doubt of a deep order 
 of bathos, and strongly exemplifies the difference between 
 the inspired bard and the rhetorical versifier. And yet 
 the Claudianic description, in its prosaic nakedness, does 
 express, in an uncouth way, the curious terms of familia- 
 rity in which the Celtic population have lived, from time 
 immemorial, with the spirits of the dead, and the elvish 
 races of middle air. ' Paul Zealand ' (says Moore, in a 
 note to the Irish melodies) ' mentions that there is a moun- 
 tain in some part of Ireland, where the ghosts of persons 
 who have died in foreign lands walk about and converse 
 with those whom they meet, like living people. If asked 
 why they do not return to their homes, they say they are 
 obliged to go to Mount Hecla, and disappear immediately.' 
 Tlie mythology of Ireland, the Highlands, Wales, and 
 Brittany, has long furnished food for romance : Cornish 
 superstitions have been less wrought up for the market, 
 partly because less known, and partly because less at- 
 tractive from what w^c have termed the cssentiall}- un- 
 poetical spirit of the people, which has never invested 
 tliem with any kind of legendary interest. But they are 
 grotesque enougli, and glouniy eiiuugli, to serve the turn
 
 408 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 of any compiler of such lore ; and, moreover, of a very 
 practical character to this day. 'Within my remem- 
 brance,' says Polwhele in 1826, 'there were conjming 
 ]:>arsons and cunning clerks ; every blacksmith was a 
 doctor, and every old woman was a witch. In short, all 
 nature seemed to be united — its wells, its plants, its birds, 
 its beasts, its reptiles, and even inanimate things — in 
 sympathising with human credulity ; in predicting or in 
 averting, in reheving or in aggravating, misfortune.' Holy 
 wells — not the least graceful rehc of paganism — have 
 pretty nearly lost their influence in Cornwall, after long 
 ages of popularity ; yet there have been instances of 
 rehef sought in this way within these few years. Many 
 a spell and amulet still survives, and many a strange tra- 
 ditional cure ; though it is questionable whether rheu- 
 matism is still treated with ' boiled dunderbolt ' (thunder- 
 bolt or Celt), as Polwhele says it was in his time. The 
 Pixies, or rather ' piskies,' are still favourite subjects of 
 half-credulous talk, if not so implicitly believed in as 
 formerly : readers may find in the papers on Cornish 
 Folk-lore in ' Notes and Queries ' the pretty story of the 
 Pixy-led schoolboy, who was carried, on pronouncing- 
 certain magical words, with a host of the little people, 
 from Polperro through the air to Scaton Beach, and 
 thence, if we recollect rightly, to the King of Prance's 
 cellar — a tale of yesterday. But the gloomy and the 
 malevolent superstitions have, unhappily, the most tena- 
 cious hold. Drowned men are still heard to ' hail their 
 own names ' in stormy weather, near the spot where they 
 perished. The ' Death-ship ' still stands in to shore — 
 tall, dark, square-rigged, with black sails, beating up 
 aorainst wind and tide — as the omen of remarkable de- 
 ceases. Sturdy sailors, their limbs distorted by cramp or 
 rheumatism, will even now ascribe their sufferings — ay,
 
 SCENERY AXD AXTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 409 
 
 and swear to the tale in Court — to tlic wicked practices 
 of some old woman whom they have met on the hill- 
 side, waving her stick in the air. Miners, almost as 
 superstitious as sailors, are not precisely vexed hke their 
 brethren in Germany, with visitations of Kobolds and 
 Berg-Geister ; but they hear underground the noise of 
 the ' knockers,' the imprisoned spirits of Jews, sent to 
 work in the mines by the Koman emperors, — so at least 
 Mr. Kingsley tells us ; it may, however, be doubted 
 whether the notion has not a more modern origin, un- 
 known to the miners themselves, and is not connected 
 with those Jews who commonly farmed or wrought the 
 mines under the Plantagenet kings. A stranger may 
 hardly venture to catalogue among superstitious practices 
 the use of the divining rod, provincially termed ' Dowsing,' 
 frequently resorted to at this day to discover metallic 
 veins, lest some even scientific readers should tax him 
 with presumptuous unbelief. But the most inveterate 
 and most mischievous of surviving delusions is that of 
 ' ill-wishing ' and ' overlooking,' which is nearly identical 
 with the evil eye of the East, the Jettatura of the Neapo- 
 litans. A sinister look, or a muttered expression of dis- 
 content, is carefully treasured up by the object of it, and 
 any mischance which follows set down to the score of 
 ' ill-wishers.' And, precisely as at Naples, the fiiculty is 
 thought to be hereditary. Not many years ago, a gang 
 of gipsies were driven from tlieir breezy encampment 
 near the Land's End, and scarcely escaped personal vio- 
 lence, not from any prosaic objections to their thievish 
 habits, but because they were reputed to ' ill- wish ' the 
 neighbouring popidation. The exhibition of a horseshoe 
 is still the favourite proplij'lactic* They have been seen 
 
 * It may not be generally known that the virtue of tlio liurscshoo re- 
 sembles that of tbo ' pentagram ' with one angle left open, into which Faiiat
 
 410 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 within these few years nailed on cottage doors, vessels, 
 omnibuses, and vans, and in one instance on the gate of 
 a borough gaol. The gaoler, when questioned, affected 
 a philosophic sneer, but ascribed the horseshoe to the 
 weakness of his wife ; she fancied, he said, that her 
 husband might have ' ill-wishers ' inside the gaol ; which 
 was likely enough. 
 
 Of Cornish traditions the most famous, for many a 
 generation, was, perhaps still is, that of Tregeagle, or 
 ' Giant Tregeagle,' a personage round whom, as round 
 the Grecian Hercules, all the scattered fragments of popu- 
 lar fiction seem to cono-lomerate. The real John Treo;- 
 eagle, of Treworder, Gent., one, &c., and Justice of the 
 Peace, was, it seems, steward to the Lord Eobartes whom 
 we have already mentioned, and must have belonged to 
 the sceptical party, inasmuch as he was the author of 
 the commitment and prosecution for cheating of Ann 
 JejTerys, a maiden who pretended to have dealings with 
 the Pixies ; nevertheless, he figures in the legend as a 
 conjuror. After his death, his ghost was called as a wit- 
 ness, at Launceston assizes, to prove some issue in a civil 
 action in which his landlord's family were concerned, 
 which purpose he laudably fulfilled, but, having done so, 
 dehberately refused to quit the court, and was only dis- 
 lodged at last by the spells of a more powerful magician. 
 But his conqueror, it seems, like Michael Scott, only 
 obtained the phantom's submission at the price of always 
 finding him some work to do. Thenceforward his story 
 becomes a hazy tissue of nightmare-like legends — of in- 
 cessant labours at ghostly and impi\acti cable tasks, such 
 as we attempt in dreams. Sometimes he is found occupy- 
 
 enticed ^Ic^pliistoplieles. Tlic Evil one, it sooms, has a tciiclonoy to moving' 
 in circles, and consequently, when once enclosed in the horseshoe, cannot 
 easily get out at the heel.
 
 SCENERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 411 
 
 ing a particular room in the old manor-house of the 
 Eobartes family, working all night at endless accounts, in 
 which there is always a sixpence wrong. Sometimes he 
 is damming the mouth of the Loe-pool with sand, which 
 the high tides and the land floods regularly wasli away. 
 Sometimes he is draining Dozmery Pool, a desolate lake 
 on the moors, with a limpet-shell having a hole in the 
 bottom ; a legend, by the way, which is equally current 
 among the Devonshire moormen respecting Cran Mere 
 Pool in the centre of Dartmoor. 
 
 An endeavour has been made in these pages to repre- 
 sent our Cornish fellow-citizens such as they are conceived 
 to be, in the strength as well as the weakness of their 
 character, without selecting merely those points on which 
 they are accustomed to compliments, and, at the same time, 
 without any attempt at satire or any conscious misrepre- 
 sentation. No one can have lived among them on terms 
 of famiharity, much less of intimacy, without acquiring per- 
 haps an undue bias in their favour from their hearty and 
 hospitable ways, and from that peculiar raciness of cha- 
 racter which always belongs, for good or for evil, to people 
 whose land is ' no thoroughfare ; ' and yet removed by 
 their industrious habits and great commercial activity 
 from the apath}^ and contented barbarism which are apt 
 to prevail in districts so circumstanced. A deeper interest 
 also attaches to strong provincial peculiarities in our day, 
 when they are doubtless on the verge of disappearing. 
 They cannot long coexist with our modern rapidity of 
 communication — long, that is, in an historical sense of the 
 Avord ; though tliey will as yet survive through some 
 generations ere they are replaced by that uniformity of 
 thought and action, and extinction of mere local inlhienccs, 
 which seems destined to be tlie ultimate result of our 
 present course of improvement. Whatever sentimental
 
 412 SCEXERY AXD ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 regrets some may entertain for the past, it cannot be 
 doubted that anomalies of this kind do substantially act 
 as so many obstacles, so much unnecessary friction, in 
 the way of the machinery of civilisation, and that the 
 power of combined action on the one hand, the power 
 of human thought itself on the other, will gain enor- 
 mously by their entire removal. But this, as has been 
 said, is a consummation as yet far off, even in our 
 small island and intensely active society. In the mean 
 time, it affords the purest and highest gratification to 
 observe, that as from time to time the research of the 
 antiquary fixes on and endeavours to portray these features 
 as they exist in his own day — as we pass from the page 
 of Carew to those of Hals, Borlase, Polwhele, and the 
 other authorities to whom we have referred, and thence 
 to the results of our own contemporary observation — 
 we trace, throughout, evidences of the substantial ad- 
 vance of good and decay of evil ; the coarser, darker, 
 and more repulsive features of the social organization 
 tend the most clearly and rapidly towards disappear- 
 ance. A century ago the inhabitants of the county which 
 has been here described were, as a people, very careless 
 of religion, if not irreligious ; they are now notorious for 
 the prevalence of devotional feeling, with a strong ten- 
 dency to the enthusiastic. They were all but universally 
 addicted to drunkenness ; intemperance is now exceptional 
 among them. They were pugnacious and turbulent ; 
 they are now orderly and peaceful (notwithstanding their 
 habits of association in great numbers), in a degree 
 surpassed by no civihsed community. They were 
 wreckers and smugglers ; they are now distinguished 
 for their humanity and courage on tlie occasions of 
 the many .shipping disasters along tlieir coasts ; and 
 smuggling (though probably from other than moral
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 413 
 
 causes) is comparatively a trifling evil. Tliose who 
 view thinirs on the dark side will have it that these un- 
 deniable improvements have been efTected at the cost of 
 much loss of tlie rough but sincere morality of earlier life ; 
 that criminal offences, particularly of the fraudulent class, 
 have multiplied, and tlie breach of some common moral 
 laws has become more ordinary. It may be so : but little 
 confidence can be placed in statistical comparisons between 
 the amount of crime at one period and another, by those 
 Avho know the many causes which lead to uncertainty in 
 such comparisons ; and, however some may reject the 
 notion as a paradox, the amount of legal crime is probably 
 a very imperfect index of the general morality of a district 
 or people. We should look rather to the tone of puljlic 
 opinion. If that be manifestly improved in the great 
 mass of the community, — if many a practice, formerly 
 regarded as venial at best, be now looked on with dis- 
 favour, if not with contempt and abhorrence, — if there 
 is a general and increasing admiration of that which is 
 good, though mixed with much false sentiment and 
 visionary enthusiasm, a general and increasing detestation 
 of vice in the abstract, though it be accompanied witli 
 much of cant and self-rigliteousness, and with much of 
 weakness in practice, — the heart of the people is sound, 
 and their dehverance from bondage is proceeding. 
 
 If these views of the gradual but decided advance 
 of tliis little portion of our community in morality and 
 in real intelligence are well grounded, it is satisfactory 
 to dwell on them, not for tlu^ mere purpose of tickling 
 the ear of the reader witli the commonplace panegyrics 
 on ' progress,' of which modern popular pliilosopliy is so 
 profuse, but for deeper reasons. 
 
 How far the world may be improving in tliese respects, 
 and for how long any such improvement may be counted
 
 414 SCENEEY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWALL. 
 
 on, arc questions of another order. But the special 
 interest which attaches to this narrow portion of a great 
 subject, arises from the circumstance that no people present 
 more markedly than this secluded Cornish race the cha- 
 racteristics of that practical republicanism and self-govern- 
 ment which appear hkely to establish themselves over 
 so large a portion of the world, as the ties of feudal 
 subjection wear out, and the stronger bonds of those 
 systems of centralised authority, which now so extensively 
 prevail, snap, as it seems probable they will do, from over- 
 tightening. If we endeavour to picture to our imaginations, 
 a people liberated for good or for evil from these ancient 
 restraints, we are apt to conceive it as habitually managing 
 its own affairs : little disposed to place itself under the 
 guidance of leaders, except such as it selects from its own 
 body, and subjects to very jealous control ; ready in com- 
 prehending, and adapting, the minor devices which enable 
 men to act more easily in concert ; addicted to industrial 
 co-operation, and mercantile adventure in partnership ; 
 with no great appreciation, it may be feared, of aiisto- 
 cratic polish and refinement, such as flourished in the older 
 world, but capable through self-education and self-respect 
 of attaining a certain amount of both. Such, according 
 to the estimate which now prevails in many minds, may 
 probably be the republicans of the future, under whatever 
 form of external government their democracy may subsist : 
 and such, to a great extent, are our Cornishmen, and 
 similar races of industrious men dwelhng somewhat apart 
 from the great centres of productive industry, at the 
 present day. IIow the prevalence of such a state of 
 society can be reconciled, or whetlier it ever can be re- 
 conciled, with our huge accumulation of individual wealth 
 and the habitual luxury of our few, is a question tlie so- 
 lution of which may tax the wisdom of some generations
 
 SCEXERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF CORNWAl.L. 415 
 
 yet to come. Eut in the mean time, every evidence 
 which a comparison of the past with tlie present affords 
 of the increase of self-restraint, self-respect, self-government 
 in its various forms, in that class of our people who are 
 on the whole removed alike from the influence of wealth 
 and fi'om the pressure of want, is not only a good sign for 
 the present, but of happy augury for the great undeveloped 
 future.
 
 4.16 THE LANDSCAPE OF .V^'CIENT ITALY, 
 
 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, AS 
 DELINEATED IN THE POMPEIAN PAINTINGS. 
 
 Und aber nacli zweitausend Jahren 
 Kam icli desselbigen Wegs gefahi-en. 
 
 Et puis nous irons voir, car decadence et deuil 
 Viennent toujom-s apres la puissance et I'orguei], 
 Nous irons voir .... 
 
 We are so much accustomed to depend on the four great hte- 
 rary languages for the whole body of our information and 
 amusement, that it occurs to few to consider that ignorance 
 of other European dialects involves any inconvenience at 
 all, except to those who have occasion to visit the countries in 
 which they are spoken. Yet there is much of really valu- 
 able matter which sees the light only in the minor tongues, 
 especially those of the mdustrious North, and with which 
 the world has never been made familiar through trans- 
 lation. Joachim Frederic Schouw, tlie Danish botanist, 
 is one of the writers of our day who has suffered most 
 prejudicially both to his own fame and to the public from 
 having employed only his native language. For his 
 writings are not only valuable in a scientific point of view, 
 but belong to the most popular order of scientific writing, 
 and would assuredly have been general favourites, had not 
 the bulk of them remained untranslated. His ' Tableau 
 du Chmat de ITtalie ' has, however, appeared in French, 
 and is a standard work. A little collection of very brief 
 and popular essays, entitled ' The Earth, Plants, and Man,' 
 has been translated both into German and English. One of
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE TOMPEIAN PAIXTIXG3. 417 
 
 these, styled ' The Plants of Pompeii,' is founded on a rather 
 novel idea. The paintings on the walls of the disinterred 
 houses of that city contain (among other thmgs) many land- 
 scape compositions. Sometimes these are accessory to his- 
 torical representations. But they often merely portray the 
 scenery of ordinary out-door life. As to their merit, the 
 old decorators of the Pompeian chambers have indeed left us 
 some of the most charming specimens of ancient art which 
 the world possesses.* Still there is a singular contrast 
 between the exquisite sense of beauty which pervades 
 their compositions, reproductions no doubt to a great ex- 
 tent of older models, and the coarse and perfunctory way 
 in wdiich they are often executed. Tlie daubers among 
 them had an evident taste for those trivial tricks of 
 scenic deception, which are still very popular in Italy. 
 Their verdure, sky, and so forth, seem often as if meant 
 to impose on the spectator for a moment as realities ; and 
 are, therefore, executed in a ' realistic ' though sketchy 
 style. ' Consequently,' says Schouw, ' the observation of 
 the plants which are represented in these paintings will 
 give, as far as they go, the measure of those which were 
 familiar to the ancient eye, and will help to show the 
 identities and the differences between the vegetation of 
 the Campanian plains a hundred years after Christ, and 
 that which adorns them now.' 
 
 * Is not the world of ' high art/ at least in sculpture, really limited, and 
 can we do otherwise than repeat the masterpieces which we possess ? Most, 
 at all events, of what is popularly received as original, is in truth mere 
 imitation. Since the time of Canova, there have been three female figfures 
 executed by sculptors, we dare not say of surpassing merit, for fear of en- 
 countering controversy, but certainly of surpassing popularity : Dannelcor's 
 Ariadne ; Kiss's Amazon ; Powers's Greek Slave. Of the first, tlio ' motive ' 
 — we might almost say the model — is to be found in that well known Pom- 
 peian fresco, of sti-ange loveliness, the ' Girl on the Chimera.' Of the second 
 in a small bronze Amazon from Ilcrculanenm : figured in yn]. 'Pi, plate 4.'', of 
 tlie Tleale ;^^useo Borbonico. While tlio third only transfers the familiar type 
 of the Antinou.-: to the other sex. 
 
 J-: !•:
 
 418 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 Let US now follow the Professor through this confined 
 but elegant little chapter of his investigations. But by 
 restraining ourselves to this alone, we should be deahng 
 with only part of a subject. In most regions, two thou- 
 sand years have made considerable changes in the a[)- 
 pearance of the vegetable covering of the earth ; but in 
 that land of volcanic influences in which Pompeii stood, 
 great revolutions have taken place, during that time, in 
 the structure of the ground itself. Sea and land have 
 changed places ; mountains have risen and sunk ; the very 
 outlines and main landmarks of the scene are other than 
 what they were. Let us for a moment imagine ourselves 
 gazing with Emperor Tiberius from his 'specular height' 
 on precipitous Capri at that unequalled panorama of sea 
 and land formed by the Gulf of Naples, and note in what 
 respects the visible face of things has changed since he 
 beheld it. 
 
 The central object in his view, as in that of the modern 
 observer, was Vesuvius, standing out a huge insulated 
 mountain mass, unconformable with the other outlines 
 of the landscape, and covered then, as now, with its broad 
 mantle of dusky green. Then, as now, its volcanic soil 
 was devoted to the cultivation of the vine. But in other 
 respects its appearance was widely different. JSTo slender, 
 menacing column of smoke rose perpetually from its sum- 
 mit. Nor was it lurid, at night, with that red gleam of 
 the slow river of fire, 
 
 A cui riluce 
 Di Capri la marina 
 E di Napoli il porto e Mergcllina. 
 
 It was an extinct volcano, and had been so for unknown 
 ages. Nor did it exhibit its present characteristic cone, 
 nor probably its double top ; Vesuvius and Somma were 
 most likely one ; and the deep half-moon- shaped ravine
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE POMPEIAN PAIXTIXGS. 419 
 
 of the Atrio del Cavallo, whicli now divides tliem, 
 is thought to be a rchc of the ancient crater. That 
 crater was a huge amphitheatrical depression, several miles 
 in circuit, filled with pasture-lands and tangled woods. 
 Spartacus and his servile army had used it not long before 
 as a natural fortress. But this feature was scarcely- 
 visible to the spectator at Capri, opposite the mountain, 
 to whom the summit must have appeared as a broad flat- 
 topped ridge, in shape and height very similar to the 
 Table Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 At the time in question, scarcely a few vague traditions 
 remained to record the fact that the mountain had once 
 'burnt.' The fiery legends of Magna Graicia related to 
 the country west of Naples, where volcanic action liad 
 been more recent : the Phlegra3an fields, the market place 
 of Vulcan (Solfatara), the cone of Inarime (Ischia), 
 through which the imprisoned Tj^^hoeus breathed flame ; 
 from whence he has been since transferred to Vesuvius, 
 as a Genoese monk informed us wlieu we and he first 
 looked on that volcano together. Vesuvius awoke from 
 his sleep of unknown length, as every one knows, in 
 A.D. 79, when he celebrated his resumption of authority 
 by that grand 'extra niglit' of the 24th August, whicli 
 has had no rival since, in the way of pyroteclmical en- 
 tertainment, except on the distant shores of Iceland, the 
 West Indies, and the Moluccas. His period of activity 
 lasted nearly a thousand years. Tlien he relapsed into 
 lethargy for six hundred. In 1G31, he had resumed 
 (as old prints show) something nearly resembhiig tlie form 
 which we have attributed to him in classical times. His 
 top, of great height, swollen up by tlie slow accumulation 
 of burning matter without a vent, was a level [)lateaii, 
 with a ])it-like crater, filled ^vitli a forest of secular 
 oaks and ilexes: only a i'ew 'fumaroles,' or smoke lioles, 
 
 K ii 2
 
 420 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 remained here and there to attest his real character. Even 
 the leo;ends of his conflao;rations had become out of date. 
 The old 'Orearch' or mountain spirit, Vesevus, is por- 
 trayed by the local poet Pontanus in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, as a rustic figure, with a bald head, hump back, and 
 cincture of brushwood — all fiery attributes omitted. Even 
 his terrible name was only known to the learned: the 
 people called him the 'Monte di Somma,' The suburban 
 appendages of a great luxurious city, convents, gardens, 
 vineyards, hunting-grounds, and parks of the nobility, had 
 crept again up the sides of the mountain, until they al- 
 most mingled with the trees on the summit. The ap- 
 proaching hour was not without its premonitory signs, 
 many and strange. The phenomena which Bulwer makes 
 his witch of Vesuvius recount, by way of warning, to 
 Arbaces, are very closely borrowed from contemporary 
 narratives of the eruption of 1631. Nor were the omens 
 of superstition wanting, accommodated to the altered 
 feelings of the times. At the Plinian eruption, the people 
 imao-ined that the old eriants buried in the PhleQ-ra^an 
 fields had risen again, and renewed their battle with the 
 gods : ' for many phantoms of them,' says Dio Cassius, 
 ' were seen in the smoke, and a blast, as of trumpets, was 
 heard.' In 1G31, carriages full of devils were seen to 
 drive, and battalions of diabohcal soldiers to gather in 
 marching array, along tlie precipitous flanks of the moun- 
 tain. The footsteps of unearthly animals were tracked 
 on tlie roads. 'A peasant of tlie name of Giovanni 
 Camillo' (so we are informed by the Jesuit Giulio Cesare 
 Eecupito, a contemporary), ' liad passed Easter Eve at a 
 farm-house of his own on the mountain. There, without 
 having taken a mouthful of anytliing, he was overtaken 
 by a profound slumber, from ^vliicJi awakening suddenly, 
 lie saw no longer before his ej^es the likeness of the place 
 where he had fallen asleep, but a new heaven, a new soil,
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE TOMPEIAN TAIXTINGS. 421 
 
 a new landscape : instead of a hill-side covered with wood, 
 there appeared a wall crossing the road, and extending on 
 each side for a great distance, witli a very lofty gate. 
 Astonished at tin's new scene, he went to the gate to 
 inquire where he was. There lie found a porter of the 
 order of St. Francis, a young man in appearance. Many 
 conjecture that this was St. Antony of Padua. The porter 
 at first seemed to repulse him, but afterwards admitted 
 him into the courtyard, and guided him about. After a 
 long circuit they arrived at a great range of buildings 
 breathing fire from every window.' In short, the poor 
 peasant was conducted, after the fashion of such visions, 
 tlirough the mansions of hell and purgatory, where he saw, 
 of course, many of his acquaintance variously tormented. 
 'At last, on the following day, he was restored to himself, 
 and to Vesuvius: and was ordered to inform his country- 
 men that a great ruin was impending over them from that 
 mountain: wherefore they should address their vows and 
 prayers to God. On Eastei' Day, at noon, he came home, 
 and was observed of many with his dress sprinkled with 
 ashes, his face burnt black, as if escaped from a fire.' 
 This was two years before the eruption, and during the 
 interval Camillo always told tlie same story; wherefore, 
 after passing a long time for either mad or drunk, he was 
 finally raised to the dignity of a prophet. For at last, on 
 the night of 15th December, the ancient volcano sig- 
 nalised his awakening by a feat of unrivalled grandeur. 
 In forty-eight hours of terrific struggles, he blew away 
 the whole cap of the mountain; so that, on the morning 
 of the 18th, when the smoke subsided, the Neapolitans 
 beheld their familiar summit a thousand feet lower than it 
 had been before: while its southern fiice was seamed by 
 seven distinct streams of fire, slowly rolling at several 
 points into the sea. 
 
 Since ICol, the frequency, if not the violence, of tlie
 
 422 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 eruptions seems to have graclLuiUy increased, and Vesuvius is 
 probably more 'active' now, in local language, than at any 
 former time in his annals, having made the fortunes of an 
 infmity of guides and miscellaneous waiters on Providence 
 Avithin the last fifteen years, besides burning a forest or 
 two, and expelling the peasantry of some villages. But 
 his performances on a grand scale seem for the present 
 suspended. Frequent eruptions prevent that accumulation 
 of matter which produces great ones. Indeed the late 
 Mr. Laing, whose 'Notes of a Traveller' show him to have 
 been that identical 'sturdy Scotch Presbyterian wdiig' who 
 visited Oxford in company with Lockhart's Eeginald 
 Dalton, ' reviling all things, despising all things, and puff- 
 ing himself up with all things,' deliberately pronounced 
 the volcano a humbug, and believed the depth of its 
 subterranean magazines to be extremely trifling. Still, 
 the curious traveller, like that fabulous Englishman who 
 visited the lion-tamer every night for the chance of seeing 
 him devoured, cannot help looking with a certain eager- 
 ness for the occurrence of those two interesting catas- 
 trophes, of which the day and hour are written down in 
 the book of the Fates — that combination of high tide, 
 west wind, and land flood, which is to drown St. Peters- 
 burgh ; that combination of south-east wind and first-class 
 eruption which is to bury Naples in ashes. This finale 
 seemed nearer in that recent eruption of December 18G0 
 which spent its fury on Torre del Greco, than perha]:)s on 
 any former occasion ; but once more the danger passed 
 away. 
 
 To return, however, from tliis digression, wliich has no- 
 thing to excuse it except the interest which clings even to 
 often-repeated stories respecting the popular old volcano. 
 Other features in that wonderful panorama, seen from 
 Capri, have undergone scarcely inferior changes since the
 
 AS DELINEATED IN THE POMrEIAN PAINTINGS. 423 
 
 time of Tiberius. Yonder rich tract of level land at the 
 mouth of the Snrno, between Torre dell' Annunziata and 
 Castellamare, did not exist. The sea has retreated from 
 it. Tiberius saw, instead of it, a deep bay washing the 
 walls of the compact little provincial city of Pompeii. 
 But the neiglibouring port of Stabiee is gone : not a ves- 
 tisre of its site remains. Above it to the riii;ht, Monte 
 Sant' Angelo, and the limestone sierra of which it forms 
 a part, remain, no doubt, unchanged by time. Only that 
 marvellous rauQ-e of Eoman villas and o;ardens which lined 
 its foot for leasfues, almost rivalhno: the structures of the 
 opposite Bay of Baia3 for magnificence has disappeared, 
 no one knows how or when. The diver off the coast of 
 Sorrento can touch with his hand the long ranges of foun- 
 dation-work, brick and marble, which now lie many feet 
 beneath the clear water. It was a strange fit of short- 
 lived magnificence, that which induced the grandest of 
 millionaires, the chiefs of tlie Augustan age, to raise their 
 palaces, all round the Gulf of Naples, on vaulted ranges of 
 piles laid within the sea, so that its luxurious ripple should 
 be heard under the rooms in which they lived. Niebuhr 
 Avho, with all his curious insight into the ways of antiquity, 
 was not superior to the temptation of finding a new reason 
 for everything, asserts that they did so in order to escape 
 the malaria. But this would have been idle, as that mys- 
 terious evil infiuence extended some way beyond the shore. 
 The country craft will, even now, keep as far as they can 
 in the summer nights, off the coast of the Campagna, 
 while the quiet land-breeze is wafting death from tlie in- 
 terior. The real causes were, doubtless, wliat tlie writers 
 of the time disclose. The laud close to the sliore was 
 dear and scanty, and ill-accommodated for building from 
 its steepness. The first new-comer wlio set tlie fashion 
 of turning sea into land, was imitated by others in the
 
 424 THE LANDSCAPE OP ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 mere wantonness of wealth, until nearly tlie whole shore 
 of what is now called the Bay of Naples became hnecl 
 with palatial edifices, like the Grand Canal of Venice, 
 but not so durably. These classical structures fre- 
 quently delineated with more or less detail in the Pom- 
 peian frescoes, Avere as beautiful and as transitory as those 
 of our dreams; or like the vision which Claude Lorraine 
 transferred to canvas in the most poetical of landscapes, 
 his 'Enchanted Palace.' Judging from the singular phe- 
 nomena exhibited by the Temple of Serapis, and from 
 other topographical records, geologists have concluded 
 that land and sea, in this volcanic region, wax and wane 
 in long successions of ages. Thus the sea rose (or rather 
 the land sank) on the coast of the Bay of Naples for about 
 eleven centuries previous to a.d. 1000 ; then the reverse 
 movement took place until about a.d. 1500 : and the land 
 is now sinking again. If so, these marine palaces must 
 have gradually subsided into the sea, and their owners 
 may have been driven out by the invasion of cuttle- 
 fish and sea-hedgehogs, and other monsters of the Medi- 
 terranean shallows, in their best bedrooms, even before 
 Norman or Saracen incursions had reduced them to deso- 
 lation. But whatever the cause of their disappearance, 
 they had vanished before modern history began : nor has 
 modern luxury, in its most profuse mood, ever sought to 
 reproduce them. Their submarine ruins remain as me- 
 morials of ages when men were at all events more daring 
 and earnest in their extravagance, and the 'lust of the eye 
 and the pride of life' were deified on a grander scale, than 
 at any other epoch of the world's history. 
 
 Naples herself, the 'idle' and the 'learned' (for the an- 
 cients called her somewhat inconsistently by both epithets, 
 nor had she as yet acquired her more recent soubriquet 
 of the ' beautiful '), formed by a far less conspicuous ob-
 
 AS DELINEATED IN THE POMrEIAX TAINTINGS. 425 
 
 ject in the view than now; it was a place of some twenty 
 or thirty thousand souls, accordmg to Niebuhr's conjec- 
 tural estimate ; confined between the modern Mole on 
 the one hand, and the gate del Carmine on the other; 
 and nesthng close in the neighbourhood of the sister city 
 Herculaneum. The lofty line of the houses on the Chiaia 
 — of which you may now almost count the windows in 
 the top storeys from the sea-level at Capri, through that 
 pellucid atmosphere, while the lower storeys are hidden 
 by the earth's curvature — did not then exist. But instead 
 of it there extended the endless terraces and colonnades, 
 the cypress avenues and plane groves, of that range of 
 fortress-palaces erected by Pollio and LucuUus, enlacing 
 island, and beach, and ridge, even to the point of Posi- 
 hppo, with tracery of dazzling marble ; almost connected 
 with Puteoli, then a greater city than Naples, and cover- 
 ing with its buildings the hill-side from whence it has now 
 shrunk to the shore. Here, however, the mere natural 
 changes have been small, except that an island or two 
 (hke Megaha, on which now stands the Castel dell' Uovo) 
 has since been joined to the continent. But farther west, 
 round the Bay of Baia3, fire and water have dealt most 
 fantastically with the scenery. Scarcely a prominent fea- 
 ture on wdiich the Eoman eye rested remains unchanged. 
 Quiet httle Nisida was a smoking semi-volcano. Yonder 
 level dun-coloiu:ed shore, from Pozzuoli to the Lucrine, 
 was under water, and the waves dashed against a line of 
 cliff now some miles inland. That crater-shaped Lake of 
 Agrano, now the common resort of Neapolitan holiday- 
 makers, did not exist ; it must have been formed by some 
 inirecorded convulsion of the dark ages. Yonder neatly 
 truncated cone, rising live hundred feet above the j)Iain, 
 seems as permanent a feature in the landscape as any 
 other of the 'everlasting hills ;' but it was the creation of
 
 426 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 a few days of violent eruption, only three centuries ago — 
 as its name of Monte Nuovo still indicates — ^whether by 
 'upheaval' or by 'ejection' philosophers dispute. But 
 the beautiful Lucrine Lake, the station of Eoman fleets 
 and the very central point of Eoman luxury, disappeared 
 in the same elemental commotion; leaving a narrow stag- 
 nant pool behind. Only yon slight dyke or barrier of 
 l)cach, between this shrunken mere and the sea, deserves 
 respect; for that has remained, strange to say, almost un- 
 altered throughout. It is one of the very oldest legend- 
 ary spots of earth ; doubtless the very road along Avhich 
 Hercules dragged the oxen of Geryon ; the very ' narrow 
 shore ' on which Ulysses landed in order to call up the 
 melancholy shades of the dead. Farther inland, again, 
 Avernus remains unchanged, in shape at least; but many 
 and strange are the revolutions which it has undergone in 
 other respects. We first hear of it as a dark pool, sur- 
 rounded by forests; the bed, doubtless, of an ancient 
 crater filled with water, and retaining much of volcanic 
 action; but not (as commonly supposed) fatal to the birds 
 that flew over it. That notion is not classical; or rather, 
 it is founded on a misconception of classical authorities. 
 The pool is not called by the best writers 'lacus Avernus' 
 I )ut ' lacus Averni, ' the lake of the Avernus. What is an 
 Avernus ? Lucretius tells us that it is a spot where noxious 
 gases escape from the earth, so tliat tlie birds which ily 
 over it fall dead on the earth, or into the lake, if there 
 liappcns to be a lake below them. And Virgil's description, 
 accurately construed, gives exactly the same meaning. 
 
 Spelunca alta fuit, .... 
 
 .... tuta lacu nigro, nomorumque tenebris : 
 
 Quam super (not quern super, over the cavern, not the hxlvc) liauil ulhi3 
 
 poterant impune volantes 
 Tendere iter pennis ; . . . . 
 Unde locum (not lacutn) Graii dixerunt nomine Aornon.
 
 AS DELINEATED IN THE TOMPEIAN PAINTINGS. 427 
 
 It was the exhalations from the mysterious cavern tliat 
 were deadly, not those from the lake. Such an ' Aver- 
 nus' is the 'Gueva Upas' or Valley of Death, in Java, to 
 which condemned criminals were formerly sent to perish ; 
 whence the romance about the Upas Tree. And such 
 an Avernus, on a small scale, still exists on the shore 
 of the peaceful little Lake of Laach in Germany, also an 
 extinct crater; there are spots on its beach where bird- 
 corpses are to be found in numbers, killed by mephitic 
 gases. But — to return to our lake — it must at that 
 time have lain at or (like some other extinct craters) be- 
 low the level of the sea ; for Augustus's great engineering 
 operation consisted in letting the sea into the lake. 
 
 Tyrrlienusque fretis immittitur sestus Avernis. 
 
 Fifteen lumdred years afterwards, and just before the 
 Monte Nuovo eruption, the place was visited by that 
 painftd old topographer, Leandro Alberti, the Leland of 
 Italy. The channel made by Augustus was then gone ; 
 but the lake was still on a level with the sea, for Alberti 
 asserts that in storms the sea broke into it : and the 
 water, as he expressly affirms, was salt. Now, its level is 
 several feet above that of the sea, and the water is fresh. 
 The upheaval must have been gradual and peaceful, for 
 tlie outline of the lonely mere is as perfectly rounded 
 now as in the poet Lycophron's description of it ; — but a 
 portion only of that bewildering succession of changes of 
 which this coast has been the theatre; the latest vibration 
 of that vast commotion figured in the legendary war of 
 the giants. Nor is it quite so wild a conjecture as some 
 have deemed it, that tlie tradition which peopled tliis 
 bright coast with Cimmerians — those dwellers in the 
 everlasting mist, on the border-land between tlie dead 
 and the living — had its origin in the tales of primeval
 
 428 THE LANDSCArE OF ANCIENT ITALY 
 
 navigators, who liad visited the neiglibomiiood during 
 some mighty and prolonged eruption, covering sea and 
 shore with a permanent darkness which ' might be felt : ' 
 like the coast of Iceland in 17 S3, when for a whole sum- 
 mer continual eruptions arose from the water as well as 
 the land ; Avhen ' the noxious vapours that for many 
 months infected the air, enveloped the whole island in a 
 dense fog which obscured the sun, and was perceptible 
 even in England and Holland.' Still farther westward in 
 our panoramic view, the confusion between past and pre- 
 sent becomes even more undecipherable. Baia3 has dis- 
 appeared; a stately city of pleasure, which, to judge by 
 its remaining foundations, rose on a hill-side in terraces, 
 something like its British counterpart Bath, but with its 
 foot washed by the Mediterranean instead of the Avon: 
 so has Misenum, with its naval station: and not only are 
 these towns gone, but the land on which they stood 
 seems so to have changed its shape, through earthquakes, 
 marine encroachments, and the labour of men, that its 
 very outlines are altered, until the eye rests at last on 
 the peak of Ischia, which ends the semicircle. 
 
 Thus much by way of introduction to the more imme- 
 diate point of our inquiry; the changes in the general 
 aspect and character of the earth's vegetable covering 
 whicli have taken place in the same period of two thou- 
 sand years, and in the same locality. 
 
 One of the greatest features of interest to the scientific 
 botanist, and even to the less instructed lover of nature, 
 which Italy presents, consists in the circumstance that tlie 
 nortliern and southern types of vegetation — to s})eak 
 more closely, the northern-temperate and tlie sub-tropical 
 . — meet together, especially in its wanuer I'cgions, in 
 stronger contrast than probably anywhei'e else. Tlie 
 same remark is true, to some extent, of the Mediter-
 
 AS DELIXEATED IN THE POMPETAX PAIXTIXGS. 429 
 
 raneaii shores in general : but those of France and of 
 Turkey approach more to the general northern aspect; 
 those of Barbary to the tropical: in favoured Italy the 
 two types seem sometimes to blend and sometimes to 
 contrast in ever-changing and ever-striking variety. The 
 same was doubtless, to some extent, the case in ancient 
 times. But the northern character was probably far more 
 prevalent then than now. The early Greek settlers landed 
 on a forest region, where the common deciduous trees 
 of the north, now driven back to the scantily clothed 
 gorges of the central Apennines, flourished in great abun- 
 dance. Such a nature as this may still be observed in 
 the few forest patches left in tlie higher Abruzzi, the 
 Sila of Calabria, and so forth. ' The beech-forest,' says 
 Scliouw, ' is called the symbol of the Danisli character. 
 But I have wandered in Calabria through large and beau- 
 tifid beech-woods, on the higher plateaux of the Apen- 
 nines, where the vegetation as well as the bracing air 
 constantly reminded me of my home.' Probably the 
 wild shores of Corsica, or those of Dalmatia, with their 
 shaggy growth of northern forest and their undergrowth 
 of mixed northern and Mediterranean shrubs, present an 
 aspect more resembling what the followers of Ulysses and 
 zEneas beheld wlien they landed, than may elsewhere be 
 found. We may notice historical traces of the continued 
 existence of this ruder and fresher nature not only hi the 
 agricultural writers of the Eomans, avIio speak far more 
 of deciduous trees than of the evergreen, now deemed so 
 characteristic of Italy, but in the well-known pages of 
 Viroil. There is not in o-eneral much of 'local colour' in 
 the 'Eclogues' and 'Geo rgics :' tliat is a poetical artiliceof a 
 later day. But what tliereis represents the jihysiognomy, 
 not of the Lombard [)lains where lie was lioni, but of 
 the neighbourhood of Naples in wliicli lie li\ed. Even
 
 430 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 his sea-sand is ' black,' not brown or yellow, like tliat of 
 all other bards, — the volcanic sand of the bays of Baia3 
 and Naples — very coal-dust in appearance.* And yet 
 the general idea which the verses of Virgil convey of the 
 region with which he is concerned, is that of a sylvan 
 country — not, emphatically, the ' land of the cypress and 
 m}Ttle,' but of the oak, ash, hnden, wych-elm, beech, 
 characteristic citizens now a days of the great Transal- 
 pine forests only.f Some of the trees of which he cele- 
 brates the grandeur have since not only become scarce in 
 his country, but it is difficult to ascertain with accuracy 
 their real character. The mighty tcsculus, for example, 
 the noblest denizen of Latian forests, which formed of 
 itself great woods, 'lata a3sculeta,' is a mere puzzle for 
 antiquarian botanists: no one knows what it was, and 
 there may be some question whether it has not disap- 
 peared from the face of earth, or whether it survives only 
 in some nearly extinct variety of oak. J 
 
 Man has doubtless done much towards the effecting of 
 this change, the more valuable plants of the south having 
 been gradually introduced, and the indigenous woods 
 cleared for their reception; but it seems at least a pro- 
 
 * Virgil's climate is indeed here and tliere almost sub-tropical ; as where 
 he recommends the farmer to place his hives near a ' palm-tree, or a huge 
 oleaster ' to swarm upon : advice which he might as well have tendered to a 
 Scythian, as to a colonist of his native Mantua. But we can never be sure 
 that lie is not translating some Greek original. 
 
 t The same may have been true of Greece also, but at a still earlier period. 
 The forests of the northern part of Asia Minor are still magnificent. On the 
 European shore of the'Bosphorus, the extensive forest of Belgrade is preserved 
 with care as what the Swiss call a ' Bannwald,' for the sake, it is said, of 
 maintaining the watersprings which supply Conslantinople. In it tlie i)iiie 
 grows side by side with fine specimens of both the common and Turkey oal<, 
 the small-leaved mountain elm (Homeric Ptelea), chesnut, plane and other 
 deciduous ti-ees. 
 
 X Ileldrcich (autlior of ' An Essay on the Useful Plants of Greece ') finds 
 it in a single oak forest in Elis.
 
 AS DELIXEATED IN THE POMPEIAX PAINTINGS. 431 
 
 l)[ible conjecture, that Nature has doue much of herself. 
 In the remaining woodland districts of maritime Italy — 
 such as the Maremme of Tuscany and the Latian Cam- 
 pagna — the evergreen species seem to be gradually sup- 
 planting the deciduous, the foreign the indigenous. We 
 talk famiharly of the hardy vegetation of the North ; but, 
 where the two meet on conditions of climate endurable 
 by both, the children of the southern sun seem to show 
 the greater hardihood, and to come out survivors in the 
 long battle for existence. Their very aspect, their rougli 
 bark and leathery leaves, seem indicative of a stronger 
 vitality than that which animates the more majestic but 
 more delicate structure of the leafy giants of the northern 
 temperate zone. A similar law — if the analogy do not 
 appear too fanciful — seems to govern the migrations of 
 trees and shrubs, and of the human family itself. The 
 North produces the races of more commanding aspect ; it 
 sends them forth conquering and to conquer ; they estabhsli 
 empires, they subjugate the so-called feebler races of the 
 South ; but, in the midst of their conquests, they sicken 
 and perish, and become extinct. The populations of the 
 South gradually penetrate northwards, and by their own 
 more prolific nmltiplication, as well as by crossing or in- 
 termixture in which their more essentially vigorous nature 
 attains predominance, they efface the type of the Northern 
 races, and cause it ultimately to disappear. What has 
 become of the descendants of those hordes which swarmed 
 from the populous North, in the decline of the Eoman 
 Empire, over all the regions adjacent to the Mediter- 
 ranean ? They have vanished, or are scarcely recognised 
 by antiquaries in a few problematical instances, where 
 small insulated communities, thought to be of Teutonic 
 or Gothic origin, maintain a precarious existence among 
 the descendants of their former subjects. Where are the
 
 432 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY 
 
 historical Gauls, with their tall figures, their Heshy frames, 
 their golden hair, and eyes of truculent blue ? A few of 
 them, possibly to be found in Flanders; but anything less 
 like the Gaul of antiquity than the sinewy, nervous, agile, 
 undersized, brown-skinned, and black-haired biped, who 
 now inhabits some eighty out of the eighty-fi.ve depart- 
 ments of old France, can hardly be imagined. Wliat is 
 become even of the purer Northern breed of Germany 
 itself? Scarcely to be found, except on the shores of 
 the Baltic : elsewliere the ordinary European type pre- 
 vails, olive skin and cheveux chdtains. 'I souij;ht for tlic 
 fair population of classical Germany in vain,' says 
 Niebuhr, 'until I found it in Scandinavia.' On the other 
 hand, the Greek in Provence, the Moor in Spain, South- 
 rons, transplanted into those countries in no very great 
 numbers, have impressed their type on the general popu- 
 lation, and, as it were, changed the very breed. When 
 dark and fair intermix, the odds seem to be greatly in 
 favour of the dark complexion prevailing in the offspring. 
 We heard lately of a society formed in France for the con- 
 servation of the 'Xanthous' or yellow-haired variety of the 
 human race, which they regard as the true aristocracy of 
 nature, and rightly conceive to be threatened with ex- 
 tinction: their object to be attained by portioning from 
 time to time blonde maidens who might take to them- 
 selves husbands of the same complexion. Even so — to 
 return to our trees — the meridional vegetation gradually 
 drives back that of the North in the battle-field of species. 
 If we figure to ourselves the appearance of the plains of 
 England two thousand years ago, with their indigenous 
 vegetable covering only — without tlie common elm, the 
 linden, plane, sycamore, poplar, acacia, chestnut, friiil- 
 trees of every kind, and cultivated plants in general — 
 without, probably, a single species of pine or fir, or
 
 AS DELINEATED IN THE TOMPEIAN PAINTINGS. 433 
 
 indeed any evergreen but box, yew, and liolly — and re- 
 member that every foreign plant has displaced a native — 
 we may gather some idea of the conquests which the 
 South has effected even here, not indeed without the aid 
 of human industry, but in part by sheer physical supe- 
 i-iority. But on the Mediterranean coast these conquests 
 have been much more marked. Take the following de- 
 scription of the change which those two thousand years 
 have made in the common flora of Greece, from the work 
 of a German botanist (Fraas, Klima mid Pflanzenwelt): — 
 
 ' The following species from the flora known to Theo- 
 phrastus have either entirely disappeared from Greece, 
 or have emigrated from the habitations which he assigns 
 to them, and withdrawn into the moister climate of its 
 more northerly regions: the varieties commonly known 
 to the ancients of the Linden; the Yew, that child of 
 damp and shady hill-sides, of which rare and dwarfed 
 specimens only are now to be found on the highest moun- 
 tains ; the hornbeam, the beech, and alder of Homer ; 
 and, with scanty exceptions, the 'spear furnishing' Cornel 
 and the tall ash. Instead of tliese, another class of 
 l)lants has conquered for itself greater space in the vege- 
 table realm — thick-leaved, hard-leaved, down-covered, 
 thorny and pjickly bushes, evergreen for the most part 
 and adding, by tlieir rich flowers, great beauty to the 
 spring. This vegetation, analogous to that of the Ame- 
 I'ican savannas and Asiatic steppes, has now replaced the 
 ancient flowery meadows, resembhng those of mkldle 
 l<]urope, with wastes of heatli and pines, carob-trees and 
 grey oleasters. Together witli these we have the various 
 kinds of arbutus, myrtle, oleander, philyreie, })istachios, 
 kermes oaks, rosemary, thyme, and the flora of dry moun- 
 tain regions in general. ' 
 
 Let us now see how Car the historical indications 
 
 F P
 
 434 THE LANDSCAPE OF AXCIEXT ITALY, 
 
 furnished by the Pompeian rehcs corroborate what has 
 been ah^eady said respecting this 'intrusion of the chmate 
 of the South,' as Fraas terms it, into the regions north 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 In order to ascertain the plants known to the citizens 
 of Pompeii, says Schouw, two records remain to us — 
 namely, the pictures discovered in its ruins, and the dis- 
 interred remnants of plants themselves. But, he adds, 
 the use of the first requires some care: — 'Many repre- 
 sentations of plants are naturally so little precise that their 
 particular species cannot be ascertained, as would be the 
 case in modern pictures of tlie same kind. And, if the 
 plant be recognisable, it does not follow as certain that it 
 was known at Pompeii, for the plants of foreign countries 
 are also occasionally represented. Thus the Nile-nature 
 is often delineated — marshy landscaj^es, with the lotus 
 and the nelumbium, the hippopotamus, ichneumon, flocks 
 of geese, and date-palms at the water's edge; as, for in- 
 stance, in the lower rim of the famous mosaic supposed 
 to represent Alexander and Darius, Frequently, also, 
 the representations are fanciful ; for instance, a laurel 
 growing out of a date-palm, and even appearing to rise 
 out of it as a shoot from the same root — a physiological 
 impossibility, unless, perhaps, it has reference to that 
 strange practice of the ancients — the planting of different 
 kinds so close to each other that they might appear to 
 the eye connected.' 
 
 After making these allowances, we may safely arrive at 
 the following conclusions. Among the trees which gave 
 the Neapolitan landscape its character were then (as now) 
 the stone-pine and the cypress. The former is frequently 
 represented in the frescoes, with its peculiar branchless 
 stems and cloud-like head — the product not only of close 
 planting but of actual pruning in nurseries, as may now
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE POMPEIAN PAIXTINGS. 435 
 
 bo noticed in the neiglibourliood of Naples. This tree 
 was cuUivated for its edible nuts ; and pine cones have 
 been found among the charred objects in the shops of 
 Pompeii. The elegant cypress also often occurs in these 
 paintings, not unfrequently mingled with the pine, and 
 gracefully combining with the outhnes of the fanciful 
 viUas and temples represented. It is Gilpin, we think, who 
 points out the peculiar adaptation, by contrast, of the 
 spiral cypress and poplar to the long horizontal lines of 
 southern buildings; while the square masses of the hme 
 and elm combine well with the pointed Gothic. The 
 ^Pinus halepensis,' adds Schouw (one of the common ma- 
 ritime pines of Italy), is also found in these pictures. The 
 vine, of course, occurs constantly — so does the ohve. 
 They were, no doubt, as universal then as now ; and pre- 
 ferred respectively, as they do now, the volcanic and the 
 calcareous hills in the vicinity of Naples. Preserved 
 olives were found in Pompeii, which even retained some- 
 thing of their taste. Tiie myrtle, and the beautifid ole- 
 ander, or laurel-rose, as the French call it — common 
 shrubs of to-day — are also delineated. Add to these 
 the bay tree {Lauras nobilis) and others of the laurel 
 tribe, the ilex, fig, pomegranate, the 'Arando donax' 
 or (vio-antic reed — cultivated then as now for its various 
 uses, and covering the marshy grounds with its dense 
 brake, strange to the northern eye; add the large iris or 
 flag, its broad rich leaves generally represented as orna- 
 mentally twined along the dado which runs round an 
 apartment. These are all more or less abundantly recog- 
 nisable in the pictures. And we are enabled to say that 
 tlie common vegetable forms on which the eye of the 
 Pompeian citizen rested were, to this extent, similar to 
 those on which his descendant gazes now. 
 
 But there were many species, now coninR>ii, tlicn rare 
 
 F r
 
 436 THE LANDSCAPE OF AXCIEXT ITALY 
 
 or unknown, some of which are mentioned by Schouw in 
 the httle essay before ns ; others we are able to add from 
 different sources. The aloe or agave, and the Indian fig 
 (or figue de Barbaric), are now among the familiar plants 
 of maritime Italy. The former vigorously protrudes itself 
 in every stony, solitary spot, from the old ramparts of 
 Genoa to the lava-fields of ^tna ; the latter is half-culti- 
 vated in a careless sort of way for its luscious fruit ; and 
 the two seem, in many places, to have almost extirpated the 
 older vegetation. Both of these lusty children of the South 
 are of quite modern origin in Italy, having come over 
 from America. Some have fancied that the pine apple is 
 represented in one Pompeian fresco. 'But this,' says our 
 Professor, 'is undoubtedly the edible crown of a young 
 dwarf palm, or Chamcerops humilis.' 
 
 A much more important want of classical ages was that 
 of tlie whole tribe of Agrumi, as the Italians call them — 
 the orange, lemon, citron, and so forth. 'Italy was not 
 tlien,' says our Professor, ' the land 
 
 Wo die Citronen bliilin, 
 Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-orangen gliibn ; ' 
 
 and was consequently without one of tlie favourite fea- 
 tures with which a3sthetic Northerns adorn their notions 
 of it. Tliey are of course absent from the frescoes. Tliey 
 were known to Pliny as foreign plants only. The ' Median 
 Apple' (citron) was cultivated in Italy no earlier than the 
 third century after Christ; lemons came from the Sara- 
 cens ; oranges, last of all, were brought by the Portuguese 
 from the East. 
 
 The white, or silk-worm mulberry, now the connnonest 
 of all trees in the richer parts of Italy, was also unknown 
 to the Pompeians. Its cultivation in the peninsula began, 
 according to Schouw, in the sixth century. Silken fabrics 
 were scarce and expensive, and imported by the Eomans
 
 AS DELIXEATED IX THE TOMrElAX TAlNTIxN'GS. 437 
 
 from the East. Voltaire somewhere makes the great 
 superiority of a fern me de chamhre of Madame cle Pompa- 
 dour over the Empress Agrippina consist in the unhmited 
 enjoyment of silk stockings. It may, however, be ques- 
 tioned whether the Empress would have appreciated such 
 a luxury, or whether, as the audacious Erench traveller, 
 Monsieur ISTodier, asserted respecting the Glasgow ladies 
 not many years ago, she would not have got rid of such 
 incumbrances whenever free from the restraints of com- 
 pany. The picturesque Q>m:ovib'AivQQ,{Ceratonia siliqua)^ 
 which now forms groves along many parts of the Italian 
 coast, is also probably of modern introduction. We may 
 add another more important plant which the Professor 
 has omitted — the chestnut. Kot, of course, that this 
 magnificent native of Thessaly was unknown to Eomau 
 antiquity. It was, on the contrary, extensively cultivated 
 in ancient Italy for its fruit. Naples w^as particidarly 
 famous for the excellence of its chestnuts — 
 
 Quas docta Neapolis creavit, 
 Lento castaneas vapore tostas — 
 
 such as Martial appetisingly describes, and such as that 
 jidneur of a poet had doubtless often purchased, scalding- 
 hot, from the tripod of some hag-granddaugliter of Cani- 
 dia or Sagana, in the alleys of the learned city. But it 
 was probably as yet a fruit-tree only. Introduced but 
 two centuries before Christ,* it had not had time to form 
 forests ; to become, as it now is, the characteristic tree of 
 the lower Apennines, supplanting its ancient but thriftless 
 relative, the beech, and driving the latter back to the nar- 
 row domain which it still occupies on the top of Mt)ntc 
 Sant' Anirelo. The crnarled and twisted chestnut trunks, 
 
 * According to the prevalent opinion j the high authoi-ity of Dccandollo is 
 the otlier way ; he believes it indigenous in the south of Europe generally ; 
 hut the contrary evidence is very strong.
 
 438 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 with tlieir pointed foliage, under which Salvator Eosa 
 studied his art when sojourning among the brigands at 
 the back of Amalfi, have no counterpart in the drawings 
 of Pompeii any more than in the poetry of Virgil. 
 
 Of cultivated crops, wheat and barley are represented 
 in the Pompeian frescoes, and grains of them have been 
 discovered in the houses. In one pretty sketch a quail is 
 picking at an ear of barley ; in another at a kind of millet. 
 Other less known cereals seem to have been familiar to the 
 ancients. But two of the most important, both in an 
 economic and picturesque point of view, are missing from 
 these sketches — maize and rice. Both are of modern in- 
 troduction. The ' polenta ' of the classical peasant was of 
 barley.* Cotton, it need scarcely be added, is of very 
 recent origin in these parts ; it now covers extensive fields 
 at the southern foot of Vesuvius ; as does the Eicinus or 
 castor oil plant, with which Pompeian childhood was un- 
 acquainted. 
 
 After this long list of acquisitions, we must turn to 
 some few instances of vegetable forms familiar to the 
 ancient eye, and which the modern misses. The absolute 
 extinction of a species is indeed a rare thing. Decandolle 
 in his ' Geographic Botanique,' likens the changes in vege- 
 tation to those which take place in a language ; the appear- 
 ance of a new word, or a new species, attracts observation 
 at once ; the disappearance of an old one is very gradual, 
 and seldom total. We have already spoken of the com- 
 parative scarcity at present of deciduous trees, and of one 
 — the a3sculus — whicli modern botanists have been unable 
 to define. ]jut one or two ornamental foreigners, intro- 
 duced in old times, have also disappeared, or nearly so. 
 
 * So it is generally understood. But a contributor to Messrs. Clianibers' 
 ' Book of Days ' declares that maize is clearly represented iu some of the 
 frescoes at Pompeii.
 
 AS DELIXEATED IN THE POMPELAX PAINTINGS. 439 
 
 The most remarkable of these is tlie oriental Plane. 
 Every Latin scholar is well aware of the modish passion 
 for these trees which prevailed among the wealthy Eomans, 
 a preference not wholly assthetic ; it was partly a fashion, 
 borrowed hke other fashions from the despotic East, in 
 days when repubhcan millionnaires at Kome, like those of 
 Washington, had begun to discover that everything really 
 meritorious came from lands possessing a ' strong govern- 
 ment.' The Platanus had been from hoary antiquity an 
 object of veneration to Persian monarchs and Grecian 
 heroes. No other tree had anything hke the same amount 
 of historic and flibulous tradition attached to it. Marsyas 
 was hanged on one, when duly skinned, by Apollo ; Aga- 
 memnon and Menelaus planted a couple, each of which, a 
 monstrous relic, was shown to Pausanias in his travels. 
 Xerxes had caused his whole host to halt before a noble 
 specimen in Lycia. ' He was so enamoured of it,' says 
 old Evelyn, ' that for some days neither the concernment 
 of his expedition, nor interest of honour, nor the necessary 
 motion of his portentous army, could persuade him from 
 it. He styled it his mistress, his minion, his goddess ; and 
 when he was forced to part from it he caused a picture 
 of it to be stamped on a model of gold, which he con- 
 tinually wore about him.' As it has long been the glory 
 of Ispahan and Shiraz, so it was of the Greek cities of yore. 
 The groves of the Academe and Lyceum were composed 
 of it. 'By the Plane Tree' was the favourite oath of 
 Socrates : tlic more shame to him, said his accuser Melitus, 
 that he should blaspheme so fine a tree. The famous 
 plane (or rather group of planes) of Buyukdere on the 
 liosphorus is popularly said to serve even now as a tent 
 for the Seraskier when he encamps there. The Eomans 
 took to it, as we have said, with tliai extravagant enthu- 
 siasm which characterised their follies ; 'the only tree,
 
 440 THE LANDSCAPE OF AXCIENT ITALY, 
 
 says Pliny, in Ins sententious stoical way, ' which ever was 
 transplanted for the sake of its shade alone.' Julins Csesar 
 himself planted the first specimen in Spain, at Corduba ; it 
 was a noble tree in Martial's time, and flourished, as he 
 says, by being irrigated with wine. 
 
 Crevit et affuso Isetior umbra mero. 
 
 It became so common in the Eoman pleasances, that 
 groves of plane, as well as of laurel, are spoken of by the 
 same poet as the ornaments of every citizen's place of 
 ordinary pretensions. 
 
 Daphnones, platanones, et aeriee cyparissi. 
 
 Undoubtedly, in fashionable Campania, it must have 
 been so common as to form a familiar feature in the land- 
 scape. But it perished with the remainder of that luxu- 
 rious civilisation. In a convent garden at Naples — so a 
 traveller teUs us — there remains one enormous specimen, 
 of an antiquity which can only be conjectured : the 
 grandcliild, it may be, of some forlorn ornament of a 
 ruined villa, which had seen the Goths on their march 
 through Italy. We have heard of no others of the 
 genuine race. Of late years, indeed, the plane has begun 
 to resume its popularity as an ornamental tree, and for the 
 same reasons as of yore — its delightful shade, namely, and 
 its adaptation to the atmosphere of great cities; being 
 able to throw off the noxious residuum of smoke by the 
 peeling of its bark. Planes are now the common trees of 
 the market place in Southern Europe, as they are in our 
 London squares. But, unhappily, the variety almost 
 always seen is of new importation, not of the old stock ; 
 not the princely Oriental, but its plebeian cousin the occi- 
 dental, or button-wood of the United States; faster in 
 growth, taller, stronger perhaps, but incomparably
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE POMrEIAX TAINTINGS. 441 
 
 Uglier : a melancholy instance of the encroachments of 
 modern democracy. 
 
 To the Oriental plane we must add the date palm ; not 
 indeed as strange now to the Italian eye, nor as very 
 abundant in classical times ; but as certainly more abundant 
 then than now ; an exception to the general law which we 
 have indicated of tlie increasing prevalence of Southern 
 forms of vegetation. The date palm in Italy is, after all, 
 but an occasional exotic. Mayer, the painstaking German 
 author of a book on ' Naples and the Neapolitans,' says 
 there are scarcely a dozen or two of them in the gardens 
 of that city and its suburbs. There are eight or ten only 
 in Eome, says M. Ampere. It does not ripen its fruit. 
 It dwells uncomfortably, in the uncongenial neighbourhood 
 of the pine ; for in America and other unsophisticated 
 refi'ions, the natural limit of the palm ends where that of 
 the pine begins. Picturesque as its solitary form often is, 
 in the villa garden, or behind the convent Avail, we cannot 
 look at it without thinking of some poor captive Saracen 
 maiden, shivering in the court-yard of a Northern baron re- 
 turned from the crusades. Even on the coast of the Eiviera, 
 where it appears to thrive the most, it affords a melancholy 
 si"ht when writhing under the icy Mistral, which ever and 
 anon turns the flank of the precarious barrier of the 
 Maritime Alps, and whirls its blasts of snow-dust against the 
 broad leaves. It appears in many of the Pompeian 
 frescoes. Schouw suggests that this does not prove it a 
 native, as the scenes represented may be foreign or sym- 
 bohcal. P)Ut the caution is unnecessary. The date-j)alm 
 was certainly common of yore in maritime Italy, though 
 no doubt in single specimens.* ' Vulgo in Italia, sed 
 
 * It -was noted as something semi-prodigious that a pnlni-tree took root 
 at Rome, in the temple of Jupiter, on the Cnpilol, during the war witli 
 Perseus ; and another in the pavement of Augustus's house on the Palatine.
 
 442 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 steriles,' says Pliny, who accurately distinguishes it from 
 the dwarf- palm or chama3rops, then, as now, more character- 
 istic of Sicily. We have already noticed the use for whicli 
 Virgil recommends it in the ' Georgics.' Varro, ' De Ee 
 Eustica,' is still more to the point, when he classes the 
 fibres of the palm along with flax, hemp, and reeds, among 
 materials grown on the farm, which may be turned to ac- 
 count for making cordage. 
 
 ' Thus we perceive, ' concludes our naturalist, ' that the 
 vegetable w^orld, and in particular the list of cultivated 
 vegetables, has undergone many changes since the age 
 when Pompeii flourished ; and that while the ancient Pom- 
 peians possessed a great superiority over the moderns in 
 respect of many enjoyments of life, particularly those arising 
 from the arts, they lacked nevertheless some very valu- 
 able plants which increased geograpliical knowledge and 
 extended commerce have procured for their descendants.' 
 
 But however this may be, no one can well contemplate 
 in earnest these relics of a most curious and refined civi- 
 lisation, in some respects perhaps the most curious and 
 
 — Ampere, ' L'llistoire Romaine a Rome.' The comparative abundance of 
 this tropical plant seems at first sight to lend colour to the speculations of 
 those who imagine the climate of Italy to have deteriorated. But there 
 is no reliable evidence either in favour of this supposition, or of the contrary 
 and more popular one that it has improved. As commerce and communica- 
 tion advance, each country gi'adually ceases to produce those useful vege- 
 tables for which its climate is least suited, and which consequently cannot 
 stand the competition of those imported from abroad. This is beyond doubt 
 the real reason — and not any change of climate— that led to the abandon- 
 ment of vine cultivation in England, which had been common enough in the 
 middle ages. In France, it is asserted that oranges and lemons were com- 
 monly grown at Pei-pignan, Aix en Provence, and Marseilles, as late as the 
 seventeenth century. The climate has not changed since ; but cheaper fruit 
 can be obtained from abroad ; it has ceased, therefore, to be remunerative to 
 grow plants wliich were sure to perish from frost once in every quarter of a 
 century. It is said that these affrumi are now cultivated in the neighbour- 
 hood of Nice, their northernmost habitat, only for the sake of their flowers j 
 the fruit docs not pay.
 
 AS DELINEATED IX THE POMrEIAX TAINTIXCiS. 443 
 
 rcfincJ which tlie world lias ever seen ; and return with 
 satisfaction to the coarse generalisation of the disciples of 
 universal progress in the affairs of hiniianity, with whose 
 speculations we have been lately surfeited. The feelings 
 wdiich such classical inquiries excite are assuredly more 
 akin to those with which they inspired the proud and 
 melancholy Leopardi, when he turned from them, and from 
 the wealth of conception and nobleness of sentiment with 
 which the ancient world abounded, to gaze on that long 
 degradation of subsequent ages, out of which hmnanity 
 is in truth only now emerging. Very grand, though pro- 
 foundly sorrowful, are those lines of his, entitled 'Bruto 
 minore,' in which he portrays the expiring patriot, not as 
 bewailing his present catastrophe, nor calling on the gods 
 for present revenge, but as brooding, in utter hopelessness 
 of spuit, over ' the dark forward and abysm of time' — the 
 Erebus-like blackness of that prospect of coming degene- 
 racy and decay ; the trance of ages, into which the human 
 soul was about to fall. 
 
 In peggio 
 Precipitano i tempi : e mal s' affida 
 Ai putridi nipoti 
 
 L' onor d'egi-egie menti, e la suprema 
 De' miseri vendetta. 
 
 For the duration of that era of decline was indeed such 
 as we are sufficiently accustomed to measure backwards, 
 in historical reflection ; but such as, when contemplated 
 as a future, the conception shrinks from Avith a painfid 
 sense of incapacity. Thirteen centuries were to elapse 
 ere the first Italian could stretch liis hand across the chasm 
 to the last Eoman. As the paradise of cultivation, in 
 which those Campaninn cities nestled, was separated from 
 the fertile aspect of the same region in nitxlein times by 
 a formidable blank of centuries oi' duration, so was the 
 ancient civilisation lium the inudern by a similar space of
 
 444 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY 
 
 intellectual desert ; and in each instance alike, the suc- 
 ceeding age can scarcely appreciate its predecessor as a 
 reality. 
 
 Credetne virum ventura propago, 
 
 Cum segetes iterum, cum jam hajc deserta virebunt, 
 
 Infra iirbes populosque premi. 
 
 And yet there are those who persist in cramming us 
 with that dry formula of Positivism, that each generation 
 enjoys the ' accumulated knowledge' of preceding ones ! 
 Ask those countless millions of Chinese who vegetate, 
 generation after generation, in the vast interior of their 
 empire apart from all foreign influence, how much of ' ac- 
 cumulated knowledge' their community has gathered since 
 the days of Confucius ; ask the black nations of the heart 
 of Africa what amount of 'progress' distinguishes them 
 from their ancestors known to Herodotus or to Leo Africa- 
 nus ; ask the wretched remnants of tribes which wander 
 over the American wilderness whether their progenitors, 
 the sons of those who came thither over the ocean, were 
 fewer and feebler and more ignorant than they! For 
 those who seek truth and not phrases, ' progress ' as the 
 term is used in social science, is an attribute not of man- 
 kind, but of the European family alone ; and of that family 
 only since the discovery of printing.* What that incom- 
 parably greatest of all merely human events may have 
 done toAvards fixing the elements of social improvement, 
 and converting into a permanent advance that which was 
 before only a precarious, oscillatory motion, we need not 
 now consider. It may be that the so-called triumphal 
 
 * ' They have remained ' (says Mr. Gifford Palgrave of the Wahahites of 
 Arabia), 'so to speak, fossilised in the midst of a changing world. . . . They 
 have not gone back, they have not gone forward, thoy have not advanced, so 
 far as I can judge, in civilisation, from the accounts which I have; of Arab life 
 at the time of Mohammed, nor yet have they retrograded. With the fixity 
 pecnliar, I believe, to the Semitic families, . . . they have remained exactly 
 at the })oiiit they were.'
 
 AS DELTN'EATED IX THE TOMPEIAX PAINTINGS. 445 
 
 march of liumaiiity is now secured from repulse, and tliat, 
 as some of our latest speculators seem to hold, the powers 
 of nature which we employ will begin of themselves to 
 decay before our capability of employing them abates ; 
 and it may be (though this is a still bolder assumption) 
 that moral and intellectual improvement must advance 
 along with material civilization. But all this, if so, 
 does not annul the melancholy record of previous 
 periods of torpidity or retreat. It is extremely 
 difficult, no doubt, for us to delineate those periods to 
 ourselves. It seems contrary to our notion of the order 
 Avhicli governs the world to admit their reality. But we 
 err in this, from applying to that governing order, whose 
 laws appear to be beyond our sphere of research, our 
 own limited notions of the expedient and the probable. 
 Geology dimly reveals to us a succession of uncounted 
 ages, during which this planet, rich as now in all other 
 appliances of nature, was inhabited, and its lavish wealth 
 enjoyed, by none but the lowest animal tribes. Astronomy 
 seems to indicate, at least to the judgment of some of 
 our acutest observers, the probable existence of enormous 
 worlds lighted by the same sun as our own, in which 
 animal life, such as we conceive it, cannot exist at all, or 
 only in its feeblest and most torpid types. These specula- 
 tions may be rectified by future discoveries. But the 
 lesson which they teach will remain the same — that vast 
 exhibitions of creative power may exist, for whicli our 
 purblind doctrine of final causes can imagine no utility, 
 and can find no place in its scheme of providence. 
 History, by assuring us of the reality and duration of sucli 
 mournful periods as those above mentioned, only contri- 
 butes her share to the same great lesson. In our healthy 
 exuberance of life we can hardly conceive a state of chronic 
 y)olitical ebb or decline — a state, that is, iu which each
 
 446 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, 
 
 generation, instead of profiting by the ' accumulated 
 knowledge' of its predecessors, lets something of the re- 
 sults of that knowledge drop from its enfeebled grasp ; 
 is reduced in numbers, less provided with the external 
 comforts of life, weaker against aggression, poorer in 
 substance, feebler in spirit, inferior in mental acquire- 
 ments ; nevertheless, such periods have been beyond all 
 doubt. The history of the Byzantine empire furnishes 
 one well known to all ; and many such have rolled 
 drearily away in the dimmer ages of early time. But 
 let us take the most familiar, and at the same time the 
 truest, instance of what we mean, and which happens also 
 to be most germane to the matter in hand. Could a 
 modern really do what many a visitor to Pompeii has 
 striven to do in intense eagerness of fancy ; could he re- 
 store those truncated columns and repeople those desolate 
 streets, and actually converse with some cultivated con- 
 temporary of Pliny and Juvenal, or Cicero and Horace ; 
 one can fancy that the feehng on both sides, after the first 
 strangeness of the meeting had been got over, would be 
 one of surprise, that two specimens of humanity of such 
 distant origin could have so much in common. In moral 
 and social philosopliy ; in political speculation ; in appre- 
 ciation of eloquence, hterature, art ; they would really find 
 themselves — some exceptions apart which would give zest 
 to the conversation — almost on the same ground. In re- 
 spect of matters of still more intimate interest — the inner 
 clothing, as it were, of civilised existence — in the estimate 
 of physical and mental pursuits, tendencies, weaknesses, 
 pleasures, and pains, and their relation to each other — 
 each would feel that he understood his companion ; each 
 would be conscious, as it were, of possessing a key to many 
 of the other's inmost feelings. This would be partly owing, 
 no doubt, to the circumstance that the ancients liave been
 
 AS DELIXEATED IX THE POMPEIAX PAIXTIXGS. 447 
 
 our tutors, and that mucli of our mental furniture is 
 derived directly from tlieni ; but also, in a great measure, 
 to mere similarity of circumstances, Avliich engenders 
 similarity of ideas. Civilisations so nearly resembling each 
 other, even in many points of minuteness, as those of 
 modern Europe and of the Eome of Cicero or the Athens 
 of Demosthenes, must, from the necessity of the case, have 
 strongly corresponding spiritual and mental emotions, and 
 corresponding language wherein to express them. 
 
 Now let us alter the picture ; let the man of the nine- 
 teenth century wake up under the shadow of Winchester 
 or Canterbury Cathedral, such as the Saxons had reared 
 them, and, to give Mm the best company of tlie day, let 
 him consort with a baron or an abbot of the time of the 
 Norman conquest. Except the subject of religion, of 
 which we would not now speak, what single topic could 
 they have in common ? Would they not be separated 
 from each other by a barrier as high and strong as any 
 which divides contemporary civilised from savage man? 
 What object (except possibly horses and dogs) could they 
 appreciate together? What points of morals or science 
 or politics, small talk, sentiment, or humour, would suit 
 them both ? How could they argue on premises which 
 one would assume as certain and tlie other would treat 
 with contempt ? The mediaeval wight would certainly 
 rate the modern at a very different value from his own 
 estimate of himself; and if the modern escaped with a 
 Avhole skin from the interview, which is greatly to be 
 doubted of, he would find liis romantic respect for the 
 baron, or veneration for the ecclesiastic, very little in- 
 creased. They would be denizens of alien spheres, and 
 would converse in utterly dissonant tongues. 
 
 And yet the Norman was our coimtryman ; was nearer 
 to us by many an age than the Eoman ; and ouujlit to
 
 448 THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY 
 
 have had over tlie latter the advantage of the 'acciimida- 
 ted knowledge' (had such a thing really existed before 
 the invention of printing), of many an intervening gene- 
 ration. But these were in truth generations of dechne 
 not of advance ; a decline often hardly sensible, or arrested 
 for a time, but on the whole prodigious. And if the en- 
 thusiastic disciple of progress chooses to count these ebbs 
 as insignificant exceptions to his general theory of flow, 
 let us remember that a space of a thousand years, how- 
 ever unimportant to a geologist, is a considerable fraction 
 of the historical existence of man. 
 
 And this, as many have said, though not many truly 
 feel it, is one of the most real advantages of classical study, 
 and one of the charms which make us turn back to it 
 with recurring affection, after resultless wanderings in 
 company with the 'Positivists.' He who has imbibed its 
 lessons deeply can hardly find his judgment much affected 
 by those metaphors turned into arguments which pass 
 commonly current, hkening the youth, manhood, and old 
 age of the world to those of an individual ; nor will he 
 readily adopt the formulas of a recent clever writer of 
 the Positive school, that 'we may expect to find, in the 
 history of man, each successive age incorporating into it- 
 self the substance of the preceding,' and that 'this power, 
 whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of 
 the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, 
 whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judg- 
 ment. ' Classical study made men pedants, after a fashion, 
 two centuries ago ; at present its effect is to preserve 
 them from an equally tasteless and less innocent pedantry. 
 By bringing clearly before our view that magnificent 
 phantasma of great communities entombed, and great 
 conceptions buried with them, it weakens the ordinary 
 temptation to overvalue ourselves and our age. It displays
 
 AS DELINEATED IN THE PO^irEIAN PAINTINGS. 449 
 
 to US the vast ocean of moral and intellectual being such 
 as it really is, subject to a3ons of rise and fall, and not a 
 steady onward current continually gaining ground ; and, 
 by so doing, administers a reasonable check to that 
 ambitious tendency which elevates but often misleads 
 us — an undiscriminating confidence in the destiny and 
 powers of our species. 
 
 G G
 
 450 
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 1857. 
 
 WiiEN" I visited the island, it was under the govern- 
 ment of my old acquaintance Sir William Eeid, the 
 well-known author of the 'Law of Storms.' A noble 
 specimen he was of the British veteran soldier of the 
 better stamp. In saying this, I of course imply that he 
 possessed, in addition to a high sense of honour, a cour- 
 tesy of manner, gentleness, and consideration for others, 
 which are essential to my conception of that character. 
 But these, in him, were combined with somewhat rarer 
 qualities. Possessed of varied accomphshments, and dis- 
 tinguished for general scientific knowledge, besides that 
 of the very learned branch of his profession to which he 
 belonged, he was withal a man of singular modesty ; 
 almost too deferent to the opinion of others in trifles, and 
 too diffident of his own ; though he had a fund of quiet 
 obstinacy, too, on points which appeared to him to involve 
 a principle. He had the warmest love of justice in 
 the abstract : and (as happens not unfrequently with men 
 of his stamp) when he judged wrongly, it was generally 
 from the strong sense of some idterior right, interfering 
 with his perception of the immediate right. His sense of 
 duty towards those whose government he administered, 
 amounted almost to a passion : and so did his hatred 
 of oppression exercised, or arrogance exhibited, towards 
 them ; the first happily rare in English dependencies, the 
 latter only too common. I never saw his cnlm temper
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA, 451 
 
 moved except when speaking on that subject ; and tlien 
 the shrunken check would flush, and tlie dhn eye dilate, 
 as he dwelt on some outrage, as he deemed it, in Avord or 
 conduct, committed towards the natives of his island, 
 especially by persons placed too high for his authority 
 to restrain. All that he could do for the Maltese, 
 by encouraging their efforts at education, estabhshing 
 libraries, promoting agriculture, and so forth, was most 
 zealously performed ; and it was evident that the Maltese 
 loved him in return : but he wanted that versatihty of 
 mind and knowledge of men which were necessary to 
 make him intimate with them ; he laboured under the 
 deficiency for which his countrymen are satirised, of 
 enjoying or comprehending humour — tliat great solvent of 
 antipathies and incompatibihties between men of different 
 races. He had, too, another deficiency, far more common 
 and less excusable, in meu called to the multifarious 
 duties of our foreign empire : to the best of my recollection 
 he spoke no language but his own. There was some- 
 thing melancholy in the sight of that stooping and feeble, 
 though gentleman-hke, figure, with the halt of an old 
 Peninsular wound, occupying in solitary grandeur (he 
 was broken in health, and had been left lately a widower) 
 a corner or two of that statehest of palaces, built by the 
 most luxurious bachelors of Europe for their Grand Master, 
 the president of their noble club. But though ill calcu- 
 lated from health and temperament to keep up what is 
 called the dignity of a governor, he was not the less a 
 fitting representative of England's rule in its aspects of 
 beneficence and equity, and consideration for the governed. 
 It was also difficult to remember, when on iamiliar terms 
 with him, that this quiet and unassuming man was in 
 reality a singularly original observer, almost a discoverer, 
 in science. During his long residence in ihc Uermudas, 
 
 G G '2
 
 452 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 he had wrouglit out in his own mind, and ahnost ripened, 
 that theory of storms which seems to have been received 
 as one of the latest acquisitions of the human intellect. It 
 was amusing to go up with old King iEolus to his lofty- 
 citadel, the observatory at the top of the palace, far above 
 the house roofs and church towers of rock-built Valetta, 
 and hear him descant on weather, past and future. The 
 wind, he would explain to my ignorance, is at SE., for 
 instance, with a touch of sirocco — I am quite uncertain 
 whether I remember my lesson accurately, — but from cer- 
 tain calculable causes, it will veer in the night to the S., 
 and so to the W., and in forty-eight liours we shall have 
 sometliing like a gale from the II^. And as he said, so it 
 would come to pass. 
 
 Sir William was a great reader of Scripture ; and as 
 some veterans are said to be specially partial to the war- 
 like books of Joshua and Kings, so he, for his ])art, had 
 certainly a predilection for those chapters which contain 
 the narrative of St. Paul's tempestuous voyage. The first 
 place he took me to in Malta was the well-known httle 
 bay, or rather creek, known by the name of the Saint. 
 Under such guidance as his, the absolute and unmistakeable 
 identity of the spot with that described in the Acts flashed 
 irresistibly upon the mind, and all sceptical notions about an 
 Adriatic ' Melita ' were dispelled at once. There was the 
 very point on which a vessel, driven along the northern 
 side of the island by stress of ' Euroclydon,' and find- 
 ing the precise soundings specified in the narrative, would 
 naturally be driven. There was the ' creek with a shore,' 
 ahnost the only beach of sand on that rocky line of coast. 
 There was the ' place where tAvo sens,' caused by the pro- 
 trusion of an insulated lock just in the entrance of the bay, 
 ' met,' close to the 'shore ' aforesaid. Under his description, 
 every incident of the tale seemed as if enacted before the
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 453 
 
 cj^e. We scarcely needed, to excite our imaginations, the 
 singular experience which befel a friend of mine on this 
 spot, when a serpent dropped from a fagot of brushwood 
 which he had casually taken up. There could be no 
 doubt in our minds that the Maltese had established a right 
 to their old patron, whose favour they have thought proper 
 to barter, of late years, for the more distinguished but less 
 appropriate protectorate of the Virgin. 
 
 Another time we drove to Citta Vecchia, the old capital 
 and metropolitan seat, supposed, on mere guess of course, 
 but not improbable guess, to have been inhabited by the 
 ' chief man of the island whose name was Publius,' whose 
 household expanded, according to tradition, into the early 
 church of Malta, cut off in the dark ages by the Saracen 
 irruption from the opposite continent. And thence we 
 proceeded to the ' back ' of Malta, its precipitous south- 
 western shore, rarely visited by the lazy denizens of the 
 city, Malta, both in its external construction and in a 
 geographical point of view, is a singular counterpart of 
 the Isle of Wight. Its beds of modern limestone and 
 shale dip north-eastward, sinking under the sea at Va- 
 letta and the neighbouring bays, which may represent 
 Newport and Eyde. They crop out on the opposite or 
 south-western coast, which consequently falls in a preci- 
 pitous escarpment, from a height of 700 or 800 feet, 
 exposing sections of the entire stratification of the island ; 
 sandstones and softer beds forming a little fringe of 
 ' undercliff,' and resting on a fundamental formation (jf 
 semi-crystalline limestone, broken into many a headland 
 and cavern l)y the dash of the Libyan sea. 'J'he landsca[)e 
 of Malta is dull no doubt, featureless and tame ; but there 
 are minds on which colour makes a deeper impression 
 tlian form; and there is something in the contrast between 
 that burnt yellow soil, the intense white of the limestone
 
 454 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 where exposed, the dark verdure of the caroubier and 
 other scanty trees, and the gorgeous tints of sea and sky, 
 which leaves its mark on the memory when the vividness 
 of far fairer scenes has faded away. It was an autumn 
 day, cool and grey, and with that incomparable transparent 
 clearness which I have sometimes noticed as the concomi- 
 tant of such days, not particularly remarkable for other 
 atmospheric phenomena. I have observed it in a long mid- 
 summer evening on the top of Malvern, when the sun seemed 
 to travel round from county to county, and every point from 
 the peaks of Nortli Wales to the Mendips of Somerset 
 looked as if traced on a map ; and on the heights above 
 Sorrento, when the eye ranged without a break over 
 every stretch of shore from Terracina to Pa3stum ; and, 
 still more remarkably, from Santi Deca of Corfu, when all 
 the details of an hundred miles of Turkish coast appeared 
 as if brought without any effort into the sphere of vision. 
 I suppose, like most other skiey phantasms, it betokens 
 ' change of weather ;' nevertheless, tlie very exceptional 
 limpidity of which I speak is something less startling, 
 more natural, and more pervading than that sudden and 
 hard clearness and apparent proximity which the outlines 
 of a landscape are apt to assume before rains. And then 
 came on a sunset over those African waters, of that intensely 
 glowing gold which Claude and Both alone, of all painters, 
 have realised to me. And so Ave returned to the governor's 
 villa at Sant' Antonio, the one sheltered oasis of semi- 
 tropical verdure on that arid and wind-swept island. 1 
 may be pardoned these reminiscences, however trivial, as 
 it was my last day in Malta, and my last witli ray old 
 friend, whose dominions I never saw again. 
 
 But the recollections of that visit could not pass away 
 without awakening afresh in my mind the spirit of com- 
 mentary on tliat great topic of rehgious history, the hfe
 
 A VISIT TO :\IALTA. 455 
 
 and character of the Apostle whose footsteps I liad reve- 
 rentially traced ; and the subject connected itself, in my 
 mind, Avitli the popular speculations of our days on the 
 mu'aculous characteristics of revelation. What bearinor 
 have the biography and the written records of St. Paid 
 on that controversy ? 
 
 To the apprehension of Christians in general, the resur- 
 rection of the Saviour is the cardinal miracle of Christianity; 
 that which completes, and may almost be said to sum up, 
 the series of mmiculous interpositions by which it was God's 
 will to introduce his revealed law to mankind. It is the 
 leading fact on which liis early disciples staked the credi- 
 bihty of the message which they delivered to Jews and 
 Gentiles. Its truth is the truth for which they laboured, 
 preached, suffered, and died. It is the truth, which, 
 however incredible or startling it must have been to ordi- 
 nary men, they never, under any ' economy,' any calcula- 
 tion of the easiest method of persuading or eliuling 
 objectors, ceased to inculcate in season and out of season. 
 I think it may be said, that to the great majority of reli- 
 gious minds, the records of other supernatural exertions 
 of power, in the histories of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, however sincerely they may be believed in, appear 
 of minor importance in our generation, except so far as 
 they lead the mind onward to that sovereign act of 
 Divine miixht in which the whole series of miracles cuhni- 
 nates. 
 
 Suppose, therefore, a question raised as to the value of 
 the evidence for any particular section of miraculous 
 history ; the narrative of the Deluge, ibr example. To 
 the thinker who has armed himself by strong prevention 
 against receiving any miraculous narrahxc at all — wliose 
 principle, whether held avowedly or unconsciously, is, 
 that any amount of evidence is to be I'cjected, rather
 
 456 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 than any interference with tlie laws of nature admitted — 
 one alleged miracle is like another ; if he attaches himself 
 by preference to the disproof of those over "which the 
 victory seems easiest, such as that of which I have spoken, 
 it is rather in the spirit of the controversialist, who 
 naturaUy selects the weakest point for attack, than because 
 there is really any gradation in his disbelief of all such 
 occurrences. To the honest but unsatisfied enquirer, who 
 cannot a -priori reject miraculous interposition, but who 
 has not made up his mind to rest in conviction on any one 
 particular miracle, triumphant objections against this or 
 that portion of biblical narrative cause pain and disquiet, 
 not so much from any particular value he may attach to the 
 detail which may happen to be in question, but because he 
 feels it as a shaking, to however slight an extent, of the 
 credibility attaching to other leading facts of which his 
 feelings recognise the importance, and the fact of the Ee- 
 surrection in particular. But, lastly, to him who, under 
 wdiatever stress, either of evidence or of choice, Trpoaif^so-ig, 
 self-will if you please, has adopted and embraces the one 
 chief miracle of the Eesurrection, and allows his mind to 
 dwell constantly on it as a reality, all discussion respecting 
 the evidence of other portions of supernatural story becomes 
 of necessity unimportant — I might almost venture to say, 
 unmeaning. If Christ certainly rose from the dead, what 
 does it matter whether the sun stood still or not before the 
 host of Joshua? No man, admitting the truth of one 
 miracle, can logically deny the possibility of any other. 
 But it is perfectly possible for him to receive some portions 
 of a miraculous narrative and to remain sceptical as to 
 others ; to hold, as matter of probability, that God in 
 his wisdom has seen lit to allow legendary figments, or 
 inaccurate historical narrative, to become incorporated 
 in lliosc records through which lie has nevertheless opened
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 457 
 
 to US tlie knowledge of truth itself. Either way, it seems 
 impossible for one who starts from a conviction of tlie 
 reality of the chief miracles of the Faith to feel his mind 
 much affected by objections to minor miracles, if I may 
 so call them for my present purpose, perhaps to engage 
 his intellect very seriously in their discussion. 
 
 What then is the evidence on which the Christian Church 
 receives her fundamental miracle ? This treasure of evi- 
 dence, like all human treasures, is but contained in earthen 
 vessels. We possess the several narratives of the Four 
 Gospels. But it is unnecessary for my purpose to do 
 more than refer to the difficulties with which their tes- 
 timony is beset. The objector urges upon the believer, 
 in attacks which every generation sees renewed in one 
 form or another, that three of these four, which pass in 
 popular belief as independent histories by contemporary 
 writers, are in truth nothing of the kind ; that internal 
 evidence shows them to be either copied in grejit measure 
 the one from the other, or all of them derived, with varia- 
 tions, from some lost original ; that the external evidence 
 to their date and their authenticity is in truth not mucli, 
 and, wliat there is, open to question ; that the fourth 
 Gospel, while bearing stronger marks of genuineness as 
 regards its date and probable authorship, has also 
 stronger mnrks of adaptation to a purpose ; and, fmally, 
 that the accounts ojiven bv these several authors of the 
 Eesurrection itself, and its attendant events, are incon- 
 sistent and suspicious. I am not now concerned with the 
 force of these objections, or of the answers which are or 
 have been made to them. But they are such as the de- 
 fenders of revealed religion have always had to meet, and 
 must continue to meet, even to the end of this great con- 
 troversy. 
 
 But amidst this sea of doubts and eoiiteiitions tlieie is
 
 458 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 at least firm laud to be found iu one quarter, on winch 
 objectors and defenders may meet in common. I suppose 
 that the evidence in favour of the authenticity of the body 
 of St. Paul's Epistles may be assumed as open to no 
 reasonable denial. I suppose it may be assumed that in 
 those epistles we have the actual writings of Paul of 
 Tarsus, the opponent, and afterwards the propagator, of the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ. They are therefore contemporary 
 records of the Saviour, as nearly, for instance, as the Avritings 
 of Plato and Xenophon are of Socrates. And although, un- 
 like Plato and Xenophon, their Avriter never had personal 
 acquaintance with his Master, he was certainly familiar 
 with the persons, teaching, and counsels of those who were 
 nearest to that Master during his life. In addition to this, 
 I shall venture to assume, though aware of modern con- 
 troversies on the subject,* that the narrative of the writer 
 of the Acts (for my present purpose I speak of the latter 
 half of the book only) is that of a contemporary and 
 familiar associate of St. Paul ; that (in Paley's words) ' we 
 have a history purporting to be written by one of Paul's 
 
 * Tlie argument on the otlier side appears to be mainly (though not ex- 
 clusively) founded on alleged discrepancies of detail between dili'erent portions 
 of the Acts, and between the Acts and Epistles. This is not the place for 
 entering into such a discussion. But it has always appeared to me that this 
 kind of reasoning, on alleged discrepancies, is apt to be pushed to a very 
 uncritical extent. All question of inspiration apart, to expect that two eye- 
 witnesses will tell the same story, or that one will tell the same story 
 twice over, is to place reliance on one of the rarest of human qualities, 
 exactness of memory ; particularly in tlie case of writers who trusted their 
 own memories alone, and had no documents to refer to. I had once occasion 
 to consult the two narratives left by the Abb6 Edgwortli of the death of 
 Louis XVI. in the ' Dernieres Heures,' and in a Ictti'r to his brother. I 
 found such discrepancies, not indeed important, yet very singular in stories 
 written by the same man about the same time, that, applying the canons 
 (if the Tubingen school, 1 halt" persuaded myself tliat the ' IX'rnieres Ikuircs ' 
 (which appeared after the Abbe's deatli) Avas a forgery. But soon after- 
 wards I lit on indisputable evidence of its genuineness.
 
 A VISIT TO JIALTA. 459 
 
 fellow-travellers, and appearing, by a comparison with 
 those letters, to have been written by some person well 
 acquainted with the transactions of liis life.' Paley's 
 proofs of this position, however satisfactory, are hardly 
 necessary ; for no student of common intelligence could 
 well fail of arriving at the same conclusion ; even those 
 who are most paradoxically determined to assign to the 
 Acts in their present shape a later date, being forced 
 to regard them as compiled out of fragments of original 
 records. The Acts and Epistles of St. Paul must be, in 
 legal phrase, ' read together ; ' and, so read, they form 
 the oldest part of the Christian Scripture, and in their 
 general outline (T do not of course speak of particular 
 details) the least open to external cavil. 
 
 This being the case, the manner in which St. Paul treats 
 the subject of the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ must 
 needs possess the deepest interest, both for those who 
 believe in the miracle, and for those who are curious to 
 learn how so gross a fable, as they must needs deem it, 
 obtained such early and such extensive currency among 
 mankind. 
 
 The author of these epistles, whether inspired or not, 
 or in whatever sense inspired, was assuredly one of the 
 most extraordinary men who have ever transmitted their 
 thoughts to posterity. For us who have been, so to speak, 
 nourished on his writings ; who were, almost all of us, 
 bred up in that religious veneration for him which no 
 doubt colours any judgment we endeavour to ibrm re- 
 specting him ; who have, many of us, resorted to his 
 writings through long portions of our life for comfort in 
 sorrow, encouragement in faint-heartedness, instruction in 
 doubt, and have welcomed every defmite principle we 
 extracted from them as liglit from heaven itself; it is of 
 course extremely difficult to throw aside our })redilections
 
 4G0 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 and to endeavour to frame and express a critical estimate 
 of him, as we should of any ordinary teacher of men 
 without claims to inspiration. But, supposing this done, 
 we should find in him a master of his marvellous Greek 
 tongue, equal, or nearly so, in power and in dexterity to any 
 who ever employed it ; using a dialect of tliat tongue, not 
 indeed commending itself to the scholar's perception like 
 the strictly classical, nor equal to it in refinement, but 
 superior in copiousness and in energy, and particularly 
 adapted, even by its Eastern admixtures, to the purpose 
 of religious oratory. We should acknowledge that his 
 eloquence, in many passages, equals, to say the least of it, 
 that of the greatest of profane orators ; that in tlie mere 
 power of reasoning (forming deductions I mean, clear 
 and cogent, from assumed premises) he is as fully their 
 match; that in loftiness of imagination, in vehemence of 
 incitement and rebuke, above all in passionate tenderness 
 of appeal, he is assuredly their superior ; that where he 
 is obscmx^ and confused — the principal faults which, as 
 a mere Avriter, can be laid to liis charge — these defects 
 seem to arise from' mere superabundance of matter 
 overmastering his power of expression, not from any 
 want of clearnes.5 in conception. Above all these qua- 
 lities we should rank that which most of all evinces 
 greatness of intellect — the power of expressing vast and 
 grand thoughts, reaching far beyond the limits of tliis 
 world and its concerns, in language adequate to theheiglit 
 of liis great argument. Such, I say, is to my mind tlie 
 judgment which one worthy of judging would form of 
 St. Paul, if he could form it without any reference to his 
 supposed claim of inspiration. I know not if my suppo- 
 sition will'appear to any an exaggerated one ; if so, they 
 will make such allowance as they may think proper ; l)ut 
 they will needs agree witli me as far as is necessary for my 
 present purpose.
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 461 
 
 But the next, and no doubt more important question, 
 is, great as this man may be as a writer in the ordinary 
 sense of the word, wliatis he as a rehgious teacher ? Wliat 
 are the essential characteristics of his mind 7r=pj to SbIov, in 
 regard to the relation between him, and those whom he 
 addresses, and the Supreme Being in whose name he 
 addresses them ? And here also, to the best of my abihty, I 
 try to disengage my thoughts from the traditional opinions 
 and sentiments which I have received from others, and to 
 endeavonr to view him, face to face, as if I were judging of 
 any author without a recognised claim to supernatural 
 authority. 
 
 He is, in tlie first place, an enthusiast. Wliatever effect 
 that circumstance may have on the credibihty of tlie 
 message which he delivers, such is his undoubted cha- 
 racter. His powers of reasoning on given premises are, 
 as I have said, of a very elevated order ; but the pre- 
 mises themselves are supplied by the spirit of enthusiasm. 
 His zeal for the person and honour of his Master, for the 
 truth of the doctrines which he seeks to establish, for the 
 work which he has in hand, transcends and throws into the 
 background all mere intellectual qualities and tendencies. 
 The disposition of his mind is essentially dogmatic. Every 
 theory, every opinion, seems to shape itself, as if in- 
 voluntarily, or even against the action of the will, into a 
 doctrine. If he directs Timothy to appoint intercessory 
 prayer in the churcli, it is because God will have all men 
 to be saved, ' for there is one God, and one Mediator be- 
 tween God and man.' The simple direction to the same 
 disciple to ' exercise himself unto godliness ' expands in 
 the next verse into an article of belief; 'for godliness 
 hath tlie promise of the life wliicli now is and of that 
 which is to come : this is a faitliful saying, ;iii(l wurLliy 
 of all acceptation.' The mere exhortation to servants to
 
 4G2 A VISIT TO MALTA, 
 
 honour believing masters, leads to the assertion that all 
 men ' are partakers of the benefit,' and that this is the 'doc- 
 trine which is according to godliness.' And as the course 
 of his lofty reasoning leads him from one step of conviction, 
 one dogmatic assertion, to another, it seems as if the 
 world before him grew more and more a shadow to him, 
 and that towards which he is tending more and more the 
 reality ; as if he had already almost exchanged his present 
 vision ' as through a glass, darkly,' for that which he 
 anticipates in the world to come, ' face to face.' And not 
 in devotional sentiment only, but in imaginative word- 
 painting, in passionate appeals, in exhortation, denuncia- 
 tion, self-assertion, the temperament of the enthusiast, who 
 ' lives by the faith of the Son of God the life which he 
 now lives in the flesh,' breaks out in every line. 
 
 But, although in matters pertaining to religion thus 
 intensely enthusiastic, he is not in the slightest degree 
 credulous. By credulity, in religious matters, I mean 
 that tendency of the mind which leads it to accept alleged 
 supernatural manifestations of Divine power on shght 
 evidence, and to dwell on them with predilection. It is a 
 common tendency among men at all times : it is peculiarly 
 so in ages such as that of the Christian Apostles, when 
 old behefs and superstitions are shaken as by a mighty 
 wind, and new ones are seeking reception among man- 
 kind. Credulity, thus defined, is of two kinds. There 
 is the credulity of honest simplemindedness, which loves 
 signs and Avonders on their own account. There is 
 the credulity of fanaticism — not equally honest, for it is 
 not wholly intellectual, but founded in part on a perver- 
 sion of the will — which gladly embraces them, and makes 
 the most of them, and endeavours itself to submit to them 
 as well as to enforce them on others, for the sake of some 
 supposed truth to which they are made to bear witness.
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 4G3 
 
 In neither shape, and in no sliapc, does it seem to have 
 characterised the mind of Pan]. Its absence (I continue 
 of course to speak from a merely human point of view) 
 is something quite pecuhar, and scarcely accountable. 
 The priest, and most enthusiastic preacher, of a re- 
 ligion grounded on miraculous agencies, he never (except 
 in the one great, solemn, and singular instance, of which 
 I must speak presently) dilates in his writings on miracu- 
 lous agency at all, and hardly ever refers to it. The 
 person, teaching, character, of our Lord, are the sub- 
 jects on which above all others he loves to dwell. 
 But (unless my memory is at fault) he never once men- 
 tions or alludes to a single miracle alleged to have been 
 performed by Him. He does indeed claim most ex- 
 plicitly, for himself and for other favoured disciples, the 
 power of working miracles. But he does so in the most 
 cursory, bushi ess-like manner (so to speak), merely as part 
 of the argumentative proof which he seeks to establish for 
 his or their authority. ' He that ministereth to you the 
 spirit (he says to the Galatians) and worketh miracles 
 among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the 
 hearing of faith ? ' And wlien he enumerates the power 
 of working miracles as one of the gifts of the Spirit, he 
 catalogues it, as if puiposely, along Avith the ordinary 
 gifts of preaching and government. No wonder wrong] it 
 by himself, or by any of lii.s fellow-labourers, is ever 
 described or dwelt on, or even noticed, I beheve, in any 
 portion of his writings. 
 
 In order to appreciate the more accurately this very 
 peculiar aspect of St. Paul's cliaracter, it is well to compare 
 his autobiograpliy, as deducible from his own epistles, 
 with the narrative of his single-hearted comjianion, the 
 author of the Book of Acts. That nair;itivc is simple, 
 unpretending, and free from all inllation: nevertheless tlie
 
 4G4 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 author (speaking of him again with the freedom of ordi- 
 nary criticism) has his fair share of the common propen- 
 sity of mankind for dwelhng on exhibitions of miraculous 
 power ; they are of frequent occurrence in his pages, and 
 often introduced in such a premeditated manner as to show 
 that he was either attracted by the subject, or deemed it 
 essential to his argument. Nothing can be more in contrast 
 with the calm and almost stern reticence maintained by 
 Paul, even when deahng with strictly parallel portions of 
 narrative or reasoning. 
 
 Nor does it constitute any real exception to this view 
 of the character of the Pauline writings, that the Apostle 
 avows, over and over again, his belief in the supernatural 
 character of the warnings or visions experienced by him- 
 self. He was present in heaven, whether in the body or 
 out of the body he knew not ; he heard things which it is 
 not lawful for man to utter ; he has seen the Saviour, 
 tliouQ-h not on earth. But the remarkable feature in these 
 deliberate statements is, that he nowhere, even indirectly, 
 confirms these claims to supernatural revelation by refer- 
 ence to supernatural proof, sensible to others ; to miraculous 
 agency as commonly understood ; to lights, voices, and 
 such outward manifestations. Ilis convictions are only his 
 own ; the proofs internal, subjective, not objective. Any 
 reader, however determined against miracles, may, if he 
 pleases, receive every word of Paul's written statements 
 on these subjects, just as he may those of Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, George Fox, or Jacob Behmen ; beheving only, 
 that the Apostle gave, in his zealous frame of mind, a 
 special significance to impressions produced by his own 
 imagination. Now this I take to illustrate, closely, the 
 difierence between the workings of enthusiasm and those 
 of credulity. If any one tells me that he has supernatural 
 revelations confined to himself, warnings, presentiments.
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 4G5 
 
 motions of the spirit, and the hke, I set liiui down (if 
 satisfied of his honesty) as an enthusiast. If he tells me 
 of external events and phenomena contrary to the laws of 
 nature or human experience, and appears to me either to 
 receive them readily on insufficient proof, or to dwell on 
 them with peculiar pleasure, I set him down as possessing 
 that class of mind which I have termed credulous. The 
 two qualities, enthusiasm and creduhty, may be and often 
 are found together ; but, unless I am deceived, they are 
 also very commonly found separate, and many a spirit 
 strongly pervaded by the first seems to be almost un- 
 susceptible of the second. 
 
 And yet, is it consistent with this view of St. Paul's cha- 
 racter, that he, naturally averse from any manifestation of 
 creduhty in the ordinary sense, should have been, pre- 
 eminently, the preacher of Faith ? that he, first and fore- 
 most among men, should have indicated and bodied forth 
 to mankind that quality or faculty which unites, as it 
 were, the submission of the intellect to proof, and the sub- 
 mission of the will to the truth proved ? that he should be 
 the propounder of that mysterious doctrine, so difficult to 
 understand, so easy to abuse, and yet commending itself 
 so intimately to the lunnan heart in its deepest springs, 
 that by tliat very faith we are justified unto salvation ? 
 Yes : it is jK'rfectly consistent, if we will examine for 
 ourselves ^vliat St. Paul means by faith, and not accept 
 without inquiry those coarser and readier meanings with 
 which others have overclouded his idea. The fidtli of St. 
 Paul, that which removes raountahis and justifies to salva- 
 tion, is ' the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
 of things unseen ' (to use the words of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, which, whether his or not, certainly express liis 
 teaching). It is a reliance on the promises, the ])ro- 
 phecies ; it is faith hi God's person. His attributes ; a iMitli 
 
 11 II
 
 4G6 A VISIT TO MALTA, 
 
 ill the mission, the divinity, the approaching advent of the 
 Saviour. Nowhere, unless I am much deceived, is it spoken 
 of in connection with mere ' receptivity,' so to speak, of 
 miraculous narration. Of faith in this vulgarest, yet per- 
 haps most popular of all senses with some classes of 
 behevers — a meritorious propensity to believe in accounts 
 of miracles, when performed on the right side — not an in- 
 dication will be found throughout these epistles. It is a 
 conception as foreign to the purpose of St. Paul as to his 
 nature. Certitude — so we are told by one received among 
 many as an eminent theologian, when apologising for a 
 belief in ecclesiastical miracles — certitude is a ' habit of 
 mind,' it is ' the result of an assemblage of concurring 
 and converging probabilities.' (A habit of mind the result 
 of an assemblage of probabilities !) To have such certitude 
 may, he adds, in given cases and to given individuals, be ' a 
 plain duty ;' while, in other given cases and persons, it may 
 be equally a duty ' to have about a fact an opinion of a 
 definite strength and consistency,' and so forth. I know 
 not what other authority there may be for this ingenious 
 amalgamation of what is and what ought to be, which 
 seems at first sight to remind one of the philological defi- 
 nition under which Home Tooke was accused of veiling 
 a sceptical insinuation — that truth is ' that which a man 
 troweth.' But certain 1 am, that authority is not St. 
 Paul's. It was not by cobwebs hke these that the early 
 Gentile converts were caught. 
 
 And yet — to point out, and merely point out, what I 
 meant to be the scope and purpose of this very imper- 
 fect attempt towards elucidating certain features in the 
 character of the great Apostle's writings — there is, as I 
 have said, one great exception to the seemingly constitu- 
 tional negligence with which he treats the supernatural, 
 as evinced in ' sights nnd wonders ' and miracles, in the
 
 A VISIT TO MALTA. 467 
 
 ordinary sense. Tlie single Chiistian miracle on which he 
 dwells — the only one which he an3r\vhere even mentions — 
 is the Resurrection of our Saviour. And it is quite super- 
 fluous to point out how minutely, repeatedly, incessantly, 
 he dwells on it : how he returns to it again and again, 
 wdth all its earthly and human characteristics, from his 
 flights into the highest empyrean of pure theology: how 
 he grounds on it his own belief in the religion he 
 teaclies, and his own hopes of a life to come, and how 
 sedulously lie labours to inspire his liearers with simi- 
 lar sentiments. It was to him no legendary event, esta- 
 blished in belief by traditional sanctity : it was a fact, 
 alleged to have taken place in his own middle age, 
 probably in Jiis own immediate vicinity, reported by 
 sundry men personally known to himself, credited by 
 great numbers equally known to himself But in itself 
 (humanly speaking) it was a fact utterly incredible. It 
 was no half-miracle, to be accounted for in the usual way 
 by compounding a certain number of grains of good faith,, 
 enthusiasm, and deception. If untrue, it was either an 
 inconceivable delusion, or a gross imposture. And it was 
 open to all the world to believe it either. In point of fact, 
 it was or had been, as we know, the established belief 
 among what the world would call right-minded people, 
 tliat it was an imposture. And St. Paul was, as lias been 
 seen, one of the least credulous of men in tlie sense in 
 which I have been using the word ; the least disposed 
 to dwell on miraculous agency, or to be moved with 
 enthusiasm by the narration uf it. Now, under these 
 mingled and conflicthig circumstances, lie speaks of Christ's 
 resurrection throughout as of a fact as unquestionable as 
 the very existence of Christ on caitli. lie, the reasoner, 
 never condescends to reason on it, save as to its conse- 
 quences : he, the philosopher, nevei- apologise.^ I'oi iIk-
 
 4G8 A VISIT TO MALTA. 
 
 apparent childishness of receiving it : he, tlie incredulous 
 by temperament, never hints at a doubt of it, never skims 
 it over or passes it by. Judging of all this, as far as we 
 are able to do so by mere canons of criticism, I cannot 
 but think that the case is without a parallel. To those, 
 however, who receive revelation as really containing a 
 record of supernatural occurrences, the solution may not 
 be immediately easy, but it is deducible, I tJiink, by study 
 and attention ; and the considerations Avhich it opens are 
 of incalculable importance.
 
 469 
 
 THE AXGEL OF BYZANTIUM. 
 
 Watciiiman, what of the night ? 
 
 Heavy the clouds roh by : 
 Bhick and heavy they pall on the sight, 
 And there glitters no streak of the faintest liglit 
 
 On the rim of the eastern sky. 
 
 Here for ages, in vain, 
 
 I have gazed from my "watch-towcr height ; 
 From the snows of Eussia, the vineyards of Seine, 
 Hither their eyes through the darkness they strain, 
 
 To ask me, what of the night. 
 
 For the legend lies deep. 
 
 Deep in the heart of the world. 
 That when o'er the nations enveloped in sleep 
 The last great Conqueror's banner shall sweep, 
 
 Here it must first be unfurled. 
 
 Here, from night's bondage released. 
 
 The first rays of that dawning must sliine. 
 Which shall wake the tribes of the boundless East, 
 Subject and sovereign, people and priest. 
 To bow at a single shrine. 
 
 Therefore the heir of old Eome 
 
 Here, to the Wisdom on ITigli, 
 Fit for the w^orship of ages to come. 
 Poised on its arches the stateliest dome 
 
 That ever spanned the sky.
 
 470 THE AXGEL OF BYZANTIUM. 
 
 For this the Crusader might pray, 
 
 Wariior of saint-hke fame, 
 WJio marshalled his myriads of Christian array 
 In yon green valley of Buyukdere 
 
 To die for their Saviour's name. 
 
 Such was the vision which glowed 
 
 Fierce Mahomet's soul before, 
 Even wlien in blasphemous triumph he rode 
 Eight tJirough the breach to the altar of God, 
 
 And dashed his red hand* on the door. 
 
 They and their hopes are dust : 
 
 'Twas not for such to scan. 
 Souls dark with pride or with earthly lust. 
 The secrets withheld from the pure and the just; 
 
 The seasons of God with man. 
 
 Ere my vigil is spent. 
 
 Earth and her rulers must learn 
 To break the shrines where their fathers liave bent, 
 To raise new altars with purer intent, 
 
 Christ's gold from man's dross to discern. 
 
 From the altar of prayer and of praise 
 When the vapours of earth are driven, 
 
 Smoke of incense, and costly rays 
 
 From storied crystal, and golden haze 
 That floats between man and heaven ; 
 
 When Eastern and Western strife 
 
 Are swept into darkness away, 
 And their fifteen hundred years of life, 
 With hatred, and falsehood, and tyranny rife. 
 
 Like the Crescent of yesterday; 
 
 * The so-called mark of the bloody hand of Sultan Mahomet is still 
 shown in Saint Sophia.
 
 THE ANGEL OF BYZANTIUM. 471 
 
 Then on my mystical tower 
 
 Glances the sunrise : till then — 
 Eapt in His presence which melts in its power 
 Ages of time to a single hour — 
 
 I turn to my watch again. 
 
 Constantinople, 1861.
 
 472 
 
 NOTE TO JOSEPH 11. 
 
 Since these pages were in the press, the Encyclical Letter of 
 the present Pope has appeared, together with the catalogue of 
 errors appended to it. The latter condemns several propositions 
 which affirm the right of the civil power to interfere in spiritual 
 matters ; and, at the same time, condemns some propositions 
 which deny the right of the Church to interfere in temporal 
 and mixed matters, and its right to employ the temporal power 
 to enforce spiritual decrees. And thus it would appear as if the 
 problem of Church emancipation were adjourned by the highest 
 ecclesiastical authority to another age. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 PllIMlliD IIY SPOTTISWOODE A M J) CO. 
 
 NEW-STREET SQUARE
 
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