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Essays,
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL,
POLITICAL, SOCIAL, LITERARY,
AND SCIENTIFIC.
BY
HUGH MILLER,
AUTHOR OF " THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," " MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,' 1
"THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS," ETC., ETC.
\
EDITED, WITH A PREFACE,
By PETER BAYNE, A.M.
NEW YORK:
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,
530 Broadway.
1882.
TJNUSrAJ as it is to republish newspaper articles, no
apology i3 deemed necessary in presenting this volume
to the public. At the time of Mr. Hugh Miller's death,
it was felt that a large proportion of his contributions
to the " Witness " deserved a permanent place in the
literature of his country. They were recognized as
distinguished, both by their literary merit and their
sterling value, from the fugitive and ephemeral produc-
tions of every-day journalism.
Assuming ihe conduct of a newspaper in the matu-
rity of his pc <vers, and in the plenitude of his literary
and scientific information, Mr. Miller's habit of compo-
sition was entirely different from that of ordinary
ready writers of the press. As was correctly remarked
at the time of his death, " he did not work easy, but
f\A ANr,
VI PREFACE.
with laborious special preparation." He meditated his
articles as an author meditates his books or a poet his
verses, conceiving them as wholes, working fully out
their trains of thought, enriching them with far-brought
treasures of fact, and adorning them with finished and
apposite illustration. In the quality of completeness,
those articles stand, so far as I know, alone in the
records of journalism. For rough and hurrying vigor
they might be matched, or more, from the columns of
the " Times ; " in lightness of wit and smart lucidity
of statement they might be surpassed by the happiest
performances of French journalists, a Prevost Par-
adol or a St. Marc Girardin ; and for occasional bril-
liancies of imagination, and sudden gleams of piercing
thought, neither they nor any other newspaper articles
have, I think, been comparable with those of S. T.
Coleridge. But as complete journalistic essays, sym-
metrical in plan, finished in execution, and of sustained
and splendid ability, the articles of Hugh Miller are
unrivalled. For the most part, the topic suggesting
them was but the occasion for a display of the writer's
PREFACE. VII
thought and imagination, the fly round which the
precious and imperishable amber of Mr. Miller's genius
was accumulated.
I am not prepared to say that these are the most
striking or powerful articles published in the " Witness"
by Mr. Miller. He conducted that paper for sixteen
years ; and, on a moderate computation, he wrote for
it a thousand articles. Having surveyed this vast field,
I retain the impression of a magnificent expenditure of
intellectual energy, an expenditure of which the world
will never estimate the sum. By far the larger portion
of what Mr. Miller wrote for the " Witness " is gone
forever. Admirable disquisitions on social and ethical
questions, felicities of humor and sportive though tren-
chant satire, delicate illustration and racy anecdote
from an inexhaustible literary erudition, and crystal
jets of the purest poetry, such things will repay the
careful student of the " Witness '*file, but can never be
known to the general public.
Having done my utmost in the way of compression,
there still remained about three volumes of articles,
1*
VIII PREFACE.
between the claims of which to republication I could
not decide. This most difficult and. delicate task was
performed by Mrs. Hugh Miller, in a way which com-
manded my entire approval, and which will, I have
no doubt, give satisfaction to the public.
Should the present volume meet the reception which,
in my humble opinion, it deserves, its issue can be fol-
lowed up by that of others of closely corresponding
character and value.
PETER BAYNE.
CONTENTS.
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
I
PAOB
The New Year 13
II.
Eotal Progresses, Recent and Remote 16
m.
The Infant Prince 80
IV.
Remains of Napoleon 84
V.
Jean D'Acre 87
VL
The Cromwell Controversy 42
VII.
The Third French Revolution ........ 62
VIII.
The Duke of Wellington 60
IX.
Earl Grey 70
X.
Lord Jeffrey 78
XI.
Fire at tie Tower o London 88
X CONTENTS.
XII.
PAOI
The Centenary of " The Forty-Five "....... 94
XIH
The Half-Century 103
XIV.
The Echoes of the World 110
XV.
Glen Tilt Tabooed ...124
XVI.
Edinburgh an Age Aoo .....183
xvn.
The Burns Festival and Hero Worship 144
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
L
Our Working Classes 164
n.
Peasant Properties ...160
m.
The Franchise 168
IV.
A Five-Pound Qualification 176
V.
The Strikes . ....183
VL
The Cottages op our Hinds 197
VIL
The Bothy Systeh . .210
CONTENTS. XI
VIII
PAGE
The Highlands 218
IX.
The Scotch Poor-Law 227
X.
Pauperism ...........* 240
XL
Pauper Labor 245
xn.
The Ceime-Making Laws 252
xni.
Is Game Property? . . . . 262
XIV.
The Felons of the Country ......... 273
XV.
The Legislative Court 282
XVL
The Peace Meetings 293
xvn.
t.iteeatube op the People 300
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
I.
Parting Impressions op the Great Exhibition 809
II.
Criticism for the Uninitiated ........ 827
m.
Geology versus Astronomy 870
XII CONTENTS.
IV.
MM
Tee Spaces and the Febiods 88ft
V.
Unity of the Human Races .894
VL
Norway and its Glaciers 404
VIL
The Amenities of Literature 412
VIII.
A Strange Story, but True 425
IX.
The Idealistic School .......... 488
X.
The Poesy of Intellect and Fancy ....... 448
XL
The Untaught Poets 457
XH.
Our Novel Literature 469
xm.
Eugene Sue ...483
XIV.
The Abbotsford Baronetcy . . 498
ESSAYS.
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
I.
THE NEW TEAR.
Ere our sheet shall have passed from the press into the
hands of our readers, we shall have entered on a new
year. It is barely ninety degrees distant from us at the
present moment. It landed on the eastern extremity of
Asia as the 1st of January, 1845, just as we were rising
from our breakfasts in Edinburgh, on the 31st of December,
1844; and it has been gliding westwards towards us, in
the character of one o'clock in the morning, ever since.
In a few hours more it will be striding across the back-
woods of America, in its seven-league boots, and careering
over the Pacific in its canoe. And then, at some unde-
finable point, not yet fixed by the philosopher, it will find
itself transformed from the first into the second day of the
year ; and thus it will continue to roll on, round and round
like an Archimedes screw, picking up at every gyration
an additional unit, until the three hundred and sixty-five
shall be complete. 1
The past year has witnessed many curious changes, as a
dweller in time ; the coming year has already looked down
on many a curious scene, as a journeyer over space. It
has seen Cochin-China, with all its unmapped islands, and
2
14 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
the ancient empire of Japan, with its cities and provinces
unknown to Europe. It has heard the roar of a busy
population amid the thousand streets of Pekin, and the
wild dash of the midnight tides as they fret the rocks of
the Indian Archipelago. It has been already with our
friends in Hindostan ; it has been greeted, we doubt not
with the voice of prayer, as the slow iron hand of the city-
clock indicated its arrival to the missionaries at Madras ;
it has swept over the fever jungles of the Ganges, where
the scaled crocodile startles the thirsty tiger as he stoops
to drink, and the exposed corpse of the benighted Hindoo
floats drearily past. It has travelled over the land of pa-
godas, and is now entering on the land of mosques. Anon
it will see the moon in her wane, casting the dark shadows
of columned Palmyra over the sands of the desert, and
the dim walls of Jerusalem, looking out on a silent and
solitary land that has cast forth its interim tenants, and
waits unappropriated for the old predestined race, its
proper inhabitants. In two short hours it will be voyag-
ing along the cheerful Mediterranean, greeting the rower
in his galley among the isles of Greece, and the seaman in
his barque embayed in the Adriatic. And then, after
marking the red glare of iEtna reflected in the waves that
slumber around the moles of Syracuse, after glancing on
the towers of the Seven-hilled City, and the hoary snows
of the Alps, after speeding over France, over Flanders,
over the waves of the German Sea, it will be with our-
selves ; and the tall, ghostly tenements of Dun-Edin will
reecho the shouts of the High Street. Away and away
it will cross the broad Atlantic, and visit watchers in
their beacon-towers on the deep, and the emigrant in his
.g-hut among the brown woods of the West ; it will see
tie fire of the red man umbering with its gleam tall trunks
and giant branches in some deep glade of the forest ; and
then mark, on the far shores of the Pacific, the rugged bear
stalking sullenly over the snow. Away and away, and the
Tast globe shall be girdled by the zone of the new-born year.
THE NEW TEAR. 15
Many a broad plain shall it have traversed that is still
unbroken from the waste, many a moral wilderness on
which the Sun of Righteousness has not yet arisen.
Nearly eighteen and a half centuries shall have elapsed
since the shepherds first heard the midnight song in
Bethlehem, " Glory to God in the highest, peace on
earth, good-will to the children of men." And yet the
coming year shall pass, in its first visit, over prisons, and
gibbets, and penal settlements, and battle-fields on which
the festering dead moulder unburied ; it will see the
shotted gun and the spear and the crease and the mur-
dering tomahawk, slaves in their huts, and captives in
their dungeons. It will look down on uncouth idols in
their temples ; worshippers of the false prophet in their
mosques ; the Papist in his confessional ; the Puseyite in
his stone allegory ; and on much idle and bitter controversy
among those holders of the true faith whose proper work
is the conversion of the world. But the years shall pass,
and a change shall come : the sacrifice on Calvary was
not offered up in vain, nor in vain hath the adorable Saviour
conquered, and ascended to reign as King and Lord over
the nations. The kingdoms shall become his kingdoms,
the people his people. The morning rises slowly and in
clouds, but the dawn has broken ; and it shall shine forth
more and more, until the twilight shadows shall have
dispersed and the sulphurous fogs shall have dissipated,
and all shall be peace and gladness amid the blaze of the
perfect day.
16 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
II.
ROYAL PROGRESSES.
A banquet-hall gay with lights and crowded with
revellers, and the same banquet-hall lying silent in the
dim gray of morning, the lights all extinguished, and the
revellers all gone, such is the contrast which the Edin-
burgh of the present week presents to the Edinburgh of
the last. The living tide is receding even more suddenly
than it arose, ebbing by its hundred outlets, roads,
canals, railways, and the sea ; and already do our streets,
in both the ancient and modern portions of the city, pre-
sent the characteristic aspect of the season. In the older
thoroughfai"es, long appropriated to trade and labor, the
current flows languidly, save at the hours when warehouses
and workshops pour out their numerous inmates. In the
more fashionable streets and squares it has altogether
ceased to flow ; and as solitude ever seems deeper amid
sunshiny lines of deserted buildings than among even
rocks and woods, however lonely, in no parts of the city
or its neighborhood have the late scenes of noisy bustle
and excitement been followed by scenes of more striking
contrast than amid the more splendid streets of the New
Town, with their few unemployed chairmen here and there
sauntering about corners, or their single domestics here
and there tripping leisurely along the pavement. Parade
and pageantry seem over for the time ; and the royal visit
to Edinburgh has taken its place among other royal pro-
gresses of the past, as a thing of history, as an event to
which future chroniclers will refer, agreeably to their
character as writers, either as a trivial fact, deserving of
but its single brief sentence, or as interesting incident,
ROYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 17
suited, from its picturesque accompaniments, to relieve
the dry narrative of contemporary occurrences.
Viewed in connection with the character of the respect-
ive ages to which they belong, these progresses form no
uninteresting passages in our annals. We find them pecu-
liarly impressed by the stamp of their time, and linked in
most instances with the main events and more striking
traits of the national history. We see a series of them
rising in succession before us even now, like a series of
pictures in a show-box. Shall we not just once or twice
pull the string, and exhibit some of at least their more
prominent features to our readers ?
A youthful monarch wends his way northwards through
a wild, trackless country, surrounded by a band of cowled
and shaven monks. His lay attendants have doffed the
gay attire of the court for dingy black or sober gray,
for the stole of coarse serge and the shirt of hair. The
monarch himself is meanly wrapped in robes of the order of
St. Francis, bound with a girdle of rope, and with a huge
belt of hammered iron pressing uneasily on his loins. In
that lugubrious assemblage all is assumed heaviness and
well-simulated sorrow : not a trace of the splendor of roy-
alty is visible. For the gratulatory shout, or the joyous
burst of music, we hear only the sound of the whip plied
in self-inflicted flagellation, or the chant of the penitential
psalm. To what very distant age can this royal progress
belong ? Surely to the dark obscure of history, to
some uncertain era, at least a thousand years back. Not
at all ; not further back than one third of that period.
That becowled and begirdled bigot is the grandfather of
the royal lady whose progress we witnessed on Saturday
last, her grandfather just ten times removed. We see
James IV. passing on his pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
Dothus, to do idle penance, in the far wilds of Ross, for
the unnatural part taken by him, in well-nigh his child-
hood, against his unfortunate father at Bannockburn. Nor
are the effects of the deplorable superstition which has
2*
18 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
stamped its impress on that mean pageant less palpably
evident in the uncultivated wildness of the surrounding
country, or in the servile condition and savage ignorance
of the inhabitants, than in the royal progress itself.
Wherever superstition wakes, intellect and industry slum-
ber. Popery, wherever it obtains, overlays the national
mind like a nightmare ; not only inducing sleep, but also
rendering hideous the sleep which it induces. And what
is the nature of the morality which grows up under its
fostering influences ? Look on that pageant. Could the
repentance which bemoans itself in the confessional, and
then expends itself in sore penances and long journeys,
be in any instance more sincere? The haircloth, the whip,
the iron belt, the shoeless foot, the weary pilgrimage,
these are all realities. In a few brief days, however, the
season of penance will be over, and that devoted prince,
laying down his repentance with his cowl, shall have en-
gaged, undisturbed by a single compunctious qualm, in all
the grosser debaucheries of an immoral and semi-barba-
rous court. And such is invariably the sort of connection
which exists between the religion of penances, pilgrimages,
and masses, and purity of life and conduct.
The scene changes, and a lady, as now, has become the
centre of the pageant. The rank dew lies heavy on grass
and stone ; a deep gloom hangs over the landscape, a
thick, unwholesome fog, unstirred by the wind ; but we
can see the huge back of Arthur Seat faint and gray amid
the haze, with the unaltered outline of the crags below ;
and yonder are the two western towers of Holyrood, and
yonder the Abbey, with its stone roof entire, and the
hoar damps settling on its painted glass. The scene is
that of the pageant of Saturday last, in all its more prom-
inent features: nought has changed, save man and his
puny labors. Nature seems to have no sympathy with the
general joy. The sun has not shone for five days, nor
the moon for five nights ; the boom of the cannon from
the distant harbor, where the French galleys lie, falls dead
ROYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 19
and heavy on the ear, like the echoes of a sepulchral
vault; the mingled shouts and music from the half-seen
crowds sound drearily amid the chill and dripping damps,
like tones of the winter wind in a ruin at midnight ; and
yonder comes the pageant of the day, enwrapped in fog,
like a drifting vessel half-enveloped in the spray of a lee-
shore. Mark these gay and volatile strangers, the elite
of the French Court. Yonder are the three Maries, and
yonder the two Guises; and here comes the Queen herself,
encircled by her iron barons. And who is that Queen?
Mary, the gay, the fascinating, the exquisitely beautiful,
a true sovereign of the imagination, a choice heroine
of poetry and romance, a woman whose loveliness
still exerts its influence over hearts, a monarch whose
misfortunes and sorrows still command tears ; Mary,
the loose, the voluptuous, the unprincipled, alike fitted
to enchant a lover or to destroy a husband, the victim
of her own unregulated passions, the canonized martyr
of Popery, in no degree less surely the martyr of adul-
tery and murder. But none of the darker traits yet
appear; and with all the enthusiasm of the national char-
acter, the Scotch welcome their Queen. And yet motto
and device speak to her in a strange language as she passes
on : the very signs that indicate the general joy at her
arrival are fraught with unpalatable truth. Nor will she
be left to guess merely at their meaning when, after matins
shall be sung and the Host elevated in yonder chapel,
the echoes of that ancient High Church a building so
peculiarly associated with all that is truly great in Scottish
history shall be awakened by the stormy indignation
of Knox ; nay, in the very presence-chamber shall the
sovereign be told that her reformed people have deter-
mined to brook no revival of the blood-stained idolatry
of Rome. Mary's grandfather rode unquestioned on his
pilgrimage, to mumble unprofitable prayers over the bones
of dead men, to prostrate himself before stone saints, and
to worship flour wafers. And yet, though thus blind and
20 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
ignorant himself, he possessed a power of controlling and
prescribing the beliefs of his subjects. But a principle
of tremendous energy has arisen among the masses,
a principle destined to convulse empires and overthrow
dynasties, to curb the tyranny of rulers, and to spread
wide among the people the blessings of freedom and the
light of civilization. Kings are no longer to prescribe the
beliefs of their subjects ; subjects, on the contrary, are
virtually to prescribe the beliefs of their kings. Monarchs
are to profess the religion of their people, or to resign
their thrones. Is the doctrine challenged ? Mary might
well challenge it ; nor was she left long without the op-
portunity. It darkened her brief reign, and rendered the
gloom of that dreary pi*ocession exactly what a few mel-
ancholy spirits had deemed it, a gloom too significantly
ominous of the long troubles which followed. It convulsed
the country for more than a century, reddening many a
battle-field, and staining many a scaffold, from the scaffold
of the infatuated monarch who died at Whitehall, to that
of our noble covenanting peasants and mechanics who
suffered scarce two hundred yards from where we write,
and whose honored bones moulder in the neighboring
churchyard. But whatever it might be in Mary's days, it
is surely no disputable doctrine now. It is the doctrine
of the "Protestant Succession," of the " Coronation Oath,"
of the "Revolution Settlement." Except for this doctrine,
the royal personage whose progress through the city on
Saturday drew together so vast an assemblage, would not
now be the Queen of Great Britain. She could have
come among us merely as a highborn, but not the less
obscure, Continental lady, whoj were she to be pointed
out to some curious spectator, could only be pointed out
as the niece of a German prince.
The progress of James to the borders, to hold justice
courts at the head of an army, sufficiently indicated the
wild and unsettled character of the age. It was an age in
which all power, judicial or monarchial, existed in its first
ROYAL PROGREbJES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 21
elements; the authority of the judge, though a king, was
nothing apart from the terrors of the military. Nor were
the scenes of sudden execution which followed scenes
the recollection of which still survives in song and ballad
in any degree less characteristic. Even justice itself,
infected by the savageism of the period, seems to have
existed as but a stern principle of violence and revenge.
The progress of Mary to the north bears a similar impress.
It seems pregnant with the character of the age. We see
the royal escort dogged in its course by the retainers of a
turbulent and ambitious noble ; scarce a dell without its
ambuscade, scarce a hill-top without its hostile horde of
observation and annoyance; royal fortresses shut against
royalty, until reduced by siege ; chiefs and their septs
hastily arming either to assail or to defend the sovereign ;
and the whole terminating in a hard-contested and bloody
conflict, execution, confiscation, and exile. There is scarce
a prominent trait in the old character and condition of the
country, or scarce an influential event in its history, which
some one of the royal progresses does not serve to illus-
trate.
There were none of them more characteristic, however,
than the progress of Charles L, when he visited Scotland
in 1633, to "reduce the kirk to conformity." James IV.
brought his shavelings with him to the far north, to patter
masses and chant matins. Charles brought with him a
much more dangerous man than all the shavelings of James
united. He brought with him, the Pusey, the Newman,
the Ai-chdeacon Wilberforce of those days, he brought
with him Archbishop Laud. Rarely in Edinburgh has
there been a more profuse or tasteful display of all the
various symbols by which the public indicate cordial joy
and welcome, than on the evening of Friday. There was
the rich firework, the brilliant device visible by its own
tinted light, the motto, the bonfire, the blaze of torches,
lamps, and tapers. The age of Charles, however, was,
much more than the present, an age of mysteries and em-
22 HISTORICAL AXD BIOGRAPHICAL.
blems; it was tlie age of the masque and the allegory,
an age in which even a Bacon could write of such things,
and a Quarles of scarce anything else ; and we question
whether Edinburgh was not. as interesting a sight when
Charles visited it rather more than two hundred years ago,
as when Victoria visited it last week. "The streets on
both sides," says Stevenson, " were lined by the citizens in
their best apparel and arms, from the West Port to Holy-
rood." At one " theatre, exquisitely adorned," where the
Lord Provost presented the keys to his Majesty, there was
a "painted description of the city." At another, near the
Luckenbooths, were arranged the portraits of all the kings
of Scotland, from Fergus downward. A fountain at the
cross ran with wine for the benefit of the lieges ; and
Bacchus, large as life, superintended the distribution of the
liquor. The Muses made themselves visible in Hunter
Square ; the heavenly bodies danced harmoniously at the
Netherbow. Bells chimed, cannons rattled, and " all sorts
of music that could be invented " mingled their tones with
the booming of the guns, the pealing of the bells, the mel-
ody of the planets, the speeches of Fergus, Bacchus, and
the Provost, and the songs of Apollo, the Burghers, and the
Muses. "We are further told that the streets were actually
" sanded," and that the " chief places were set out with
stately triumphal arches, obelisks, pictures, artificial moun-
tains, and other costly shows." It must have been alto-
gether a bizarre scene. Parnassus, with all its rocks, trees,
and fountains, leaned against the old weigh-house. When
the Muses sung, the nymphs of the Cowgate joined in the
chorus ; the genius of Scotland discoursed of war and
conquest in the middle of the West Bow ; classic arches
of lath strided over the odoriferous Cranes ; festoons of
flowers hung romantically above the unsullied waters of
the Nor'-Loch ; obelisks of pasteboard shot up their taper
pinnacles among the gray chimneys of the Grassmarket ;
the entire city must have not a little resembled its
defunct patron saint of blackened wood, " old St. Gyle,"
EOYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 2i5
when bedizzened on a holiday with colored glass, tinsel,
and cut paper. And then, the handsome, imperious, mel-
ancholy Charles, with violent death impressed, according
to the belief of the age, in the very lines of his countenance,
and the withered, diminutive Laud, perplexed by some
half-restored recollection of his last night's dream, or bent
to the full stretch of his faculties in originating some new
religious form suggested by the surrounding mummeries,
or in determining whether his cope might not possibly be
improved by the addition of a few spangles, must have
looked tolerably picturesque as they passed along the lines
of the grave, whiskered burghers stretching on either hand,
surmounted by all the beauty of the place, as it hung gaping
and curious from the windows above. On Sunday, Charles,
unlike our present monarch, attended the High Church.
We fain trust the presence of the one and the absence of
the other did not indicate the same thing. " The ordi-
nary reader began to sing, as usual," says the historian ;
" whereat his Majesty, displeased, despatched the Bishop
of Ross to turn him out. And the bishop straightway did
so, with no few menaces, and introduced into his place
two English choristers in their vestments, who, with the
help of the dignitaries, performed their service after the
English manner." " That being ended," adds the historian,
" Bishop Guthrie of Moray went up to the pulpit to preach ;
but, instead of making divine truth his theme, he had
little else than some flattering panegyrics, which made the
king to blush, mingled with bitter scoffs at those who
scrupled the use of the vestments." Poor, hapless king !
With so many flatterers and so few friends, with the
Bishop of Ross for his very humble servant, the Bishop of
Moray for his chaplain, and the Archbishop of Canterbury
for his adviser, was it a wonder he should have lost his
head ? The storm broke out only four years after, broke
out in that very High Church, which overturned both
throne and altar.
Surely, a curious subject of reflection ! The reigning
24 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
monarch derives her lineage, not from Charles, but from
the sister of Charles. The legitimate branch was lopped
off, and left to wither and die, and the collateral branch
grafted in. Why? What could have led to an event
so contrary to the first principles of the law of succes-
sion, as embodied in statute by our legislative assem-
blies, and expounded in our civil courts ? A question
easily answered. The germ of the whole transaction might
be seen in the royal progress, in which Laud and the infat-
uated Charles passed down the High Street together, and
in the scene enacted on the following Sunday in the High
Church. The abdication of James VII. was not less inti-
mately connected with the infection communicated by the
Archbishop, than the troubles and death of James's father.
The Laudism of the one terminated in the Popery of the
other. No one thinks it at all strange that the Puseyism
of a Sibthorp or a Miss Gladstone should land them full in
the Romish Church. A hundred other such conversions
of the present day from Puseyism to Popery show us that
such is the natural tendency of the rivived doctrines ; they
constitute no resting-place; they form merely a passage from
one state of mind to another, a sort of inclined plane,
by which reluctant Protestantism scales inch by inch the
transcendental heights of Popery. It was exactly a similar
process that produced one of the most remarkable revolu-
tions recorded in history. Two princes, educated in the
transition beliefs of the king, their father, followed up
these to their legitimate consequences, and so died mem-
bers of the infallible Church. They did exactly what Sib-
thorp and Miss Gladstone have done. The one, a careless
debauchee, declined sacrificing anything for the sake of a
creed loosely held by him at best, and which, in his gayer
moods, he occasionally abandoned for the indifferency of
infidelity ; the other, an honest bigot, acted up to his
adopted, beliefs, and so forfeited the crown. And hence
the claim and standing of the high-born lady who now oc-
cupies the supreme place in the government of the country.
ROYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 25
Can there be a more legitimate object of solicitude to all
in a time like the present, to all, at least, who are at
once loyal subjects and true Protestants, than her pres-
ervation from the dangerous contagion of the transition
beliefs and doctrines, and from that perilous process of
change which produced of old so great a national revolu-
tion, and which is so palpably operative in the apostasies
of the present day? If, as indicated by the course of
events, popery be fast rising by the deceitful slope which
Puseyism supplies, and rising, as prophecy so clearly inti-
mates, only to fall for evei-, it were well, surely, that the
daughter of our ancient kings should be on her guard
against its insidious approaches. It involved princes of
her blood in its former fall ; nor is it a thing impossible
that, misled by the counsel of other Lauds, other princes
may share in its final ruin. But we digress.
There is little of an intrinsically pleasing character in
the visit of George IV., and not much in it particularly
characteristic, except perhaps of the monarch himself. It
was much a matter of show, a masque on a large scale.
There was little that was real in it, save the enthusiasm of
the people. It was, however, a masque enacted under the
superintendence of a great genius, the first scene-painter
in the world, not very worthily employed, perhaps, in
designing mere tableaux vivans, as on this occasion, but not
without an apology of Bacon when he wrote of " Masques
and Triumphs." " These things are but toys," said the phi-
losopher ; " but yet, since princes will have such things, it
is better they should be graced with elegance than daubed
with cost." What was chiefly remarkable in the visit of
George was the tact with which the monarch avoided every
occasion of offence, and how, trading on so very slender a
stock of real worth as that which he possessed, and in the
face of so large an amount of adverse feeling as that which
he had previously excited, he should have contrived to
render himself popular by the exercise of the " petty mo-
ralities" alone. Never did the "mere gentleman," ab-
3
86 HISTORICAL AXD BIOGRAPHICAL.
stracted from the good, great, generous qualities of our
nature, accomplish more. He came to Edinburgh only two
years after the trial of Queen Caroline, and, without ex-
hibiting anything higher than the urbanity of a thoroughly
well-bred man, he taught all Scotland to forget for the
time the result of that trial. We regret that Sir Robert
Peel should not have availed himself of the advantages of
having served under so accomplished a master in the art
of pleasing. George IV. came to Edinburgh under every
disadvantage, and regained there much of the popularity
which he had previously lost ; Sir Robert came to Edin-
burgh in the train of his royal mistress, a monarch in
whose favor the partialities of the nation had been largely
awakened ; and after losing well-nigh all that remained of
his own popularity, he would have lost for her, had the
thing been possible, her popularity too.
The recent royal progress through Edinburgh has had
its many striking scenes ; but the chronicler who may have
to concentrate himself on one description as a specimen of
the whole, would do well to select the scene of Saturday
last, as exhibited in the upper part of the High Street,
when her Majesty, after just receiving the city keys, passed
on to the Castle. As a pageant the thing was nothing ; it
had the disadvantage, too, which the Queen's passage
through the city on Thursday morning had not, of being
artificial, a projected piece of parade, with but the
parade itself for its ostensible object. The Queen rode
along the streets just that people might see the Queen.
There is sublimity, however, in the appearance of vast
multitudes animated by some overpowering feeling ; and
we know not that crowds could be better disposed for
effect, or in a locality richer in historic recollection, than
along the High Street of Edinburgh, with its old Parlia-
ment Hall, its venerable High Church, and its double line
of tall, antique houses, some of which must have cast their
shadows over the pageant of Mary, and not a few of them
over the pageant of Charles. The morning, though not
ROYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT ABB REMOTE. 27
bright, was pleasant; the rack flew high over head, showing
that a smart breeze blew in the upper regions, but all was
comparatively calm beneath. Xow and then an occasional
gleam of the sun lighted up the tall gray fronts on the
western side, or played among the fantastic tracery and
lofty pinnacles of St. Giles ; but it passed as suddenly as
it flashed out, and the general tone was a subdued, smoky
gray. A dense and ever-increasing crowd occupied the
space below ; direct through the middle there ran a narrow
passage, that reminded one of a river, with steep, erect
banks, winding its way through a flat alluvial meadow.
At one point it expanded into what seemed a small lake :
'twas where the city magistracy awaited her Majesty, clad
in long scarlet cloaks of office ; and here a few dragoons
flitted across the open space, or paced along the winding
passage, the shallops of this lake and river. Every
window was crowded, story on story, from the windows
immediately over the street to the casements of the attics
eighty feet above head. Even the roofs had their cluster-
ing groups. We marked a few ragged boys perilously
grouped round a chimney full ninety feet from the pave-
ment ; and to this dizzy eminence the urchins had con-
trived to bring with them the tattered fragment of a flag,
which ever and anon they waved with huge glee. The
group was one in which a Hogarth would have delighted.
The roof of St. Giles's seemed scarce less densely occupied
than the street below ; and the effect of the whole was
striking in the extreme. Blair, in his " Grave," speaks of
u overbellying crowds." The spectators of the scene of
Saturday must have been able to appreciate the picturesque-
ness of the phrase. The living masses, hanging from every
corner and coigne of vantage, seemed, if we may so express
ourselves, to project the antique architecture of the High
Street against the sky. Almost every snugger corner, too,
had its temporary scaffold or balcony. There was in par-
ticular one scaffold that greatly gratified us ; the object
of its erection showed both good taste and good feeling. It
28 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
had been raised for the accommodation of the boys and girls
of Heriot's ; and never was there a group of happier faces
than that which it exhibited. Such was the scene, when,
shortly after eleven, a solitary horseman came spurring
up the street, and, pausing for a moment in the centre of
the open space where the magistracy of the city were
assembled, he intimated that the Queen had reached Holy-
rood. The whisper passed along the crowd, and was
caught from balcony to window, and from window to roof.
The bells of the city had been rung at intervals from morn-
ing ; they now broke out into a merry peal ; and the near
boom of cannon from the neighboring Castle suddenly
awoke the echoes of the High Street. There was a move-
ment in the close-wedged crowds beneath, a murmur
expressive of the general excitement, a swaying to and
fro ; and then for a space all was still as before. From our
point of observation we could catch a view of the roofs
and upper stories of the tenements in the lower part of the
street, with their dimly-seen groups of spectators. We
could mark a sudden waving of handkerchiefs, a deep,
though distant cheer; a cry of "The Queen, the Queen,"
passed along the crowd. The masses opened heavily and
slowly, as if compressed by the lateral weight ; a train of
coaches was seen advancing : there was the gleam of hel-
mets, the flash of swords ; the shout rose high ; and as the
vehicle in front moved on, there was a fluttering of scarfs
and kerchiefs at every casement and in every gallery, as if
a stiff breeze had swept by and shaken them as it passed.
The city magistrates, in their scarlet robes, had formed
a group in front of the Exchange ; and here the royal
vehicle paused, and the Lord Provost went through the
ceremony of delivering the city keys into the hands of the
sovereign. We sat within less than twenty yards of her
Majesty at the time, and employed ourselves in marking
how thoroughly the countenance is a German one, how
very much of Brunswick there is in it, and how Ifttle of
the Stuarts. It bears trace of the Guelphs iu every feature
ROYAL PROGRESSES, RECENT AND REMOTE. 29
and lineament. As a family face, it has its historic associ-
ations speaking of Revolution principles and Protestant
succession. The pageant moved on, and disappeared as,
passing from where the street terminates in front of the
Castle, it entered on the esplanade.
Such is a faint and imperfect outline of the one promi-
nently-striking scene connected with the recent progress.
We have said that the progresses of James, Mary, and
Charles were characteristically impressed by the stamp of
their time, and linked to the main events and more striking
traits of the national history. May the recent progress be
regarded as also characteristic ? Time alone can show. It
may be found to speak all too audibly of the revived super-
stition to which the troubles of Charles were mainly owing,
the superstition which conducted him ultimately to the
front of Whitehall, and his younger son to a French palace
in St. Germains. But we shall meanwhile hope for the best,
without, however, attempting to conceal from ourselves
that one cloud more seems to have arisen on the already
darkened horizon of the Church of Scotland.
8*
30 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
III.
THE INFANT PRINCE.
A prince born to the throne of Great Britain ! The
firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, the crackling of lire-
works, the blazing of bonfires, holiday dresses and holiday
faces everywhere, all testify to the general joy.
We are reminded of a day which must have mingled
with the first recollections of even the most aged of our
readers, and which men in the prime of early manhood are
quite old enough to remember too, that happy fourth of
June, the birthday of the good George III., on which, for
two whole generations, and a little longer, there used to
be such waving of flags and flashing of gunpowder, and,
notwithstanding all our wars abroad and all our difficulties
and troubles at home, so large an amount of hearty national
enjoyment. Is the ninth of November to be just such
another day to the generations of the future ? Shall flags
be flaunting gaily in the sun to welcome the birthday of
the reigning monarch, the child of our Victoria, at a
time when our tombstones shall be casting their shadows
across the withered November sward of silent churchyards;
and shall bonfires be blazing on the hills, as the stars
twinkle out one by one from amid the deepening blue to
look down upon our graves ?
The future belongs to One only, to that adorable
Being who has made His great goodness so manifest to our
country for ages and centuries, and rarely more vividly
manifest than in the present happy event. He alone sees
the end from the beginning, and He more than sees it ; for
in His unchanging righteousness, and infinite goodness and
wisdom, has He ordered and determined it all. Our his-
THE INFANT PRINCE. 31
tories relate to but the past ; in His the chronicles of all
the future are also recorded. We write in ours as their
latest event, that there has been born an heir-apparent to
the British crown, and our remoter hills still reverberate
the echoes which our gratulations have awakened ; in His
the circumstances of the birth are not more minutely laid
down than the details of the funeral. There is a coffin in
the distance that lies in the gloomy solitude of a royal
vault; and the golden tablet that rests on the lid bears a
date and an age well known to Him, for His own finger
hath inscribed it. To us all is dark ; but what so natural
for creatures whose birthright is hope, whose privilege and
whose nature it is to look both before and behind, to dwell
upon the past, and anticipate a hereafter ! What so nat-
ural for them as to let their thoughts out upon the future,
and to imagine where they cannot see !
Our children are around us, the bright eyes, and
silken locks, and rosy cheeks of infancy. Is there no
pleasure in saying to them, Listen to. these sounds, to
that distant peal of the city bells, and that measured,
sullen boom of the cannon : there has been a king born
who is to be your king, though, we can trust, not ours, for
we are old enough to remember the birth of the Queen,
his mother. But he is to be your king, and in happier
days, we would fain hope, than those of either the present
or the past. The world will not be always what it has
been ; misery will not be for ever the prevailing state, nor
unhappiness the o'ermastering feeling, nor evil the domi-
nant power. There is a time coming, foretold by the Spirit
of God, when wars, and violence, and crime, and misery,
shall cease, when men shall live together as brethren,
as the children of one family, and the knowledge of the
Lord shall be everywhere. That time cannot now be far
distant ; and if good and wise men have calculated
aright, studious and venerable fathers of the church,
who, in poring over the sacred oracles, have arrived, each
apart, at conclusions singularly alike, the dawn may
32 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
break with no doubtful flush of promise during the reign
of the monarch at whose birth three kingdoms are now
gladdened ; the eastern sky may be reddened by the first
glories of that millennial light which shall continue to
shine more and more till the perfect day shall have arisen ;
and even he himself, made wise through the teaching of
the Spirit, may be one of those nursing fathers of the church
whose happy reigns prophets have foretold. Are these but
the wild dreams of the enthusiast? We may, indeed, err
widely in attempting to fix the time, but be it remembered
that God himself has fixed the events.
It were little wonder though men should weary of the
present. There are, we doubt not, some of our readers who
can look back on the events of sixty years. How has the
space been filled ? A sullen and doubtful peace bad just
succeeded the disastrous we must add unjust war with
our American brethren. It was broken by the fierce and
bloody tumults of the French Revolution. Atheism and
murder stalked abroad ; nation rose up against nation ;
Europe bristled over with arms ; and for eighteen years
together, during which millions perished by famine, fire, and
the sword, manslaying was the trade of the civilized and
Christian world ! Men, as little wise as their rude ances-
tors, were playing at the old vulgar trick of hero-making,
and the progress of the species stood still till the d : sas-
trous game was finished. In our own country, times of
hardship and discontent succeeded, and poor, hunger-bit-
ten men, maddened and blinded by their misery, snatched
hold of uncouth weapons, in the vain hope of bettering
their condition by violence. The madness passed, and a
period of political heats and animosities ensued. Civil
right was regarded as but another name for national hap-
piness. The delirium of this second fever is over for the
time. The rights have been gained ; but the poor, over-
toiled man who wrought sixteen hours every day ere the
struggle began, works sixteen hours still, and hunger and
the sense of hapless degradation presses upon him as
THE INFANT PRINCE. 33
sorely as ever. The present, in the main, is assuredly
no happy time. Never were there such frightful accu-
mulations of misery in our cities, and rarely have the
sullen murmurs of the masses evinced deeper discontent.
In our own country we have witnessed the revival of the
evils of an earlier period, superstition stalking abroad
unquestioned ; persecution assailing the truth ; the spiritual
nature, the eternal concerns of man, made the game of
quibbling lawyers impressed by no true sense of a hereafter;
consciences outraged ; and the care of souls transferred
by an abuse of law to the charge of wretched hirelings.
It is well to believe there are better times in store ; that
the right shall eventually prevail, whatever may be the
fate of those who contend for it in the present ; that Christ
reigns ; and that the day is assuredly coming, though it
must rise on the tombs of the present generation, when
his sovereignty shall be universally acknowledged, and
the influences of his Spirit everywhere felt.
34 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
IV.
EEMAINS OF NAPOLEOK
There are no people in Europe who bear a better
marked character than the French, and no people whose
peculiar tastes and dispositions seem to have been so
closely studied by their more sagacious statesman. They
are employed at present, heart and soul, in adding, at the
suggestion of Thiers, a supplementary paragi*aph to the
posthumous history of Napoleon. The wily politician has
applied to our English Government for permission to re-
move the remains of the great hero of France from St.
Helena to Paris ; the English have acceded to the request
with the best possible grace ; and the French people,
brimful of sentiment and enthusiasm, and on tiptoe expec-
tation of the coming pageant, are lauding Thiers to the
Bkies as the best possible of all good ministers, and the
English as the most generous of all old enemies, made
friends for evermore. When a Roman general wished to
conciliate the people of Rome, he turned loose a score or
two of wild beasts in the amphitheatre, or hired a few
hundred gladiators to fight together till the one-half of
them were dead. One general, however, was content just
to imitate another general ; and though they squandered
their bronze and silver in immense sums, there was no
expense of invention. Thiers is immensely more original :
he has got a dead Napoleon for the French to bury, and
will probably command majorities, on the strength of their
gratitude and respect, for a twelvemonth or two to come.
Even the classes with discernment enough to see through
his policy will admire him for the great tact and ability
which it displays, and there is perhaps no civilized
REMAINS OF NAPOLEON. 35
people in the world whom the mere admiration of talent
or of greatness influences more. The French as a people
are followers rather of great men than of great principles.
Nature does not seem to have intended them for republi-
cans; they were content of old to be little individually
that their kings might be great ; and in after days they
were equally content to lose their individuality in the
glory of Napoleon. But is it not well, for the sake of
peace, that the policy of Thiers tells, on the present occa-
sion, as powerfully in favor of the English Government as
in that of the sagacious politician himself?
It matters little whether the remains of Napoleon lie in
a gorgeous sepulchre amid the multitudes of Paris, or
raised high over the sea on a lonely rock of the Atlantic,
like an eagle dead in his eyry. The scourge which vexed
the nations has been laid by ; the purpose of mingled wrath
and mercy which it was called into existence to accom-
plish has been fully performed. The last lesson taught
regarding it was to show how utterly passive and power-
less a thing it was in itself, when flung aside by the Om-
nipotent Hand which had wielded it. The melancholy
prisoner of the rock, the fretful invalid, so unhappy
in society, and yet so unfitted for solitude, the petty
squabbler with officials and underlings about forms of
etiquette and modes of address, was the terrible Napo-
leon, the hero of a hundred fields, the dispenser of crowns
and sceptres, the warrior who bad borne down the con-
gregated soldiery of civilized Europe, the conqueror of
powerful kingdoms, whom the united might of a Caesar
and an Alexander might have assailed in vain. Never was
there greatness so great, or littleness on a smaller scale ;
and it will be long ere the people of France find for his
dust so sublime and appropriate a monument as the huge
rock of St. Helena. Its dark walls of a thousand yards,
compared with which the walls of great Babylon were as
hillocks raised by the mole, the unceasing surge that idly
frets itself against its base, the vast surrounding sea,
36 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
with its dim and distant line, the sublime o'erarching
canopy, the minute and speck-like tomb rising towards
the clouds on a pedestal not its own, where else will
it be felt with such soul-stirring effect that man is so very
little, and God so very great? Not among the mingled
palaces and hovels of Paris, or amid the half-infidel, half-
idolatrous veneration of its frivolous and theatrical people.
" Change grows too changeable," says Byron, when
referring to the state of matters twenty years ago. " In
what circumstances, think you," says Dr. M'Crie, in ad-
dressing a correspondent, " if you and I were to retire for
two years to some sequestered island, would we find our
native country on our return ? " The amount of vicissi-
tude and revolution spread over centuries in the past has
been concentrated in the present within the compass of a
single lifetime ; and there are perhaps few things more
interesting than those tide-marks, if we may so express
ourselves, which, like the measure of Thiers, show the ebbs
and flows of circumstance and opinion, and the wonderful
suddenness of their rise and fall. Who would have said
twelve years ago that a minister of France would have
set himself to court popularity and to strengthen the
kingly authority by finding a tomb for the Emperor in
Paris? And who that remembers- that the remains of
Henry IV. Henri Quatre the beloved of the people,
the theme of their tales and their songs, the hero of their
only epic were torn by these very people from the sep-
ulchre, and cast ignominiously into a ditch, will venture to
say that another and very different chapter may not yet be
added to the posthumous history of Napoleon ? The cur-
rent that sets in so powerfully in one direction to-day, may
flow as powerfully in a different direction to-morrow ; and
the half-idolatrous respect that more than canonizes the
memory and the remains of a great warrior and statesman
now, may be soon exchanged by a fickle and varying peo-
ple, ever in extremes, for a detestation equally strong, and
6urely not less rational, of the despotic subverter of popn*
JEAN D'ACRE. 37
Iar rights, the destroyer of a million and a half of crea-
tures with souls as undying as his own, the cold-hearted
and selfish calculator, who made human lives the coin with
which he bought and sold, and who could reckon out his
tale of these, and pay them down, as coolly, for some
definite extent of wall or trench, or some certain amount
of territory, as the land-agent or the merchant could the
common circulating medium, when employed in their re-
spective professions. We are afraid there still awaits a
discipline of despotism, suffering, and blood for the people
*-\hose admiration can rise no higher than the greatness of
a "Napoleon.
V.
JEAN D'ACRE.
The fortress of Jean d'Acre, the main stronghold of the
Levant, is now connected a second time, within the course
of forty years, with the history of Great Britain. And in
both instances the national success has been very signal,
and the objects attained of a strikingly similar character.
Europe was first taught before the ramparts of Jean d'Acre
that the greatest of modern conquerors was not invincible.
The history of Napoleon, until he took up his position in
front of this eastern fortress, was summed up in a series of
victories; nor could one so familiar with conquest have
anticipated defeat here. The garrison consisted mainly of a
semi-barbarous and half-disciplined soldiery, who were fast
losing their ancient military character ; the fortifications of
the place belonged at the time to that obsolete and less
approved school of defence whose peculiar defects had been
first detected, more than an age before, by the countrymen
of the assailants, of all military men the most skilful in
4
38 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
carrying on such warfare. The walls yielded to an inces-
sant storm of shot and shell ; and the best troops of France,
under the command of by far her ablest general, were led
repeatedly to the attack. But they returned time after
time baffled and broken. Jean d'Acre, tottering apparently
to its fall, and half-dismantled and half-garrisoned, resisted
their utmost efforts. A mere handful of Englishmen
fought in the breach ; and He who can save by many or by
few had willed that their efforts in every instance should
be crowned with complete success. The siege was raised ;
the key of Palestine passed not into the hands of Napoleon ;
the besiegers fell back upon Egypt ; disaster followed
disaster ; Nelson annihilated their fleet at the Nile ; their
leader slunk away from them ; the army of Abercromby
cooped up their forces amid the sand-hills of Alexandria ;
and their scheme of eastern conquest finally terminated in
so inglorious an abandonment of the enterprise that they
owed their very safety mainly to the sufferance of the
British. Napoleon afterwards opened his trenches before
stronger fortresses, and they fell. A single campaign threw
open the cities of Prussia to him; he gave law to the
armed millions of Spain, Austria, and Holland : but on the
solitary wastes of Judea there awaited another destiny ;
and the stars in their courses fought against him and pre-
vailed, when his scheme of conquest led him there. His
enterprise, and the apparently inadequate means through
which it was defeated, remind one of the old Grecian story
of the open space left by the countrymen of Ajax in the
forefront of their armies, long after the hero's death, but in
which they believed he still continued to take his stand.
A famous warrior of the enemy, it is said, espying the
opening in the heat of battle, rushed into it to make his
way through, but he was instantly felled to the ground by
some invisible antagonist, and then dashed back upon his
friends. Judea, so long trodden under foot by every en-
emy, however mean or contemptible, seems in the present
century to represent that open space.
JEAN D'ACRE. 39
Forty years have passed since the discomfiture of Napo-
leon before the walls of Jean d'Acre. A new scene of
things has arisen. The conqueror, after performing the
part to which he had been appointed, was conquered in
turn, and died in captivity and exile; and another con-
queror has arisen, a man of far inferior power, but with
immensely inferior powers to contend with. Hall of Lei-
cester, in one of the most sublime of his compositions, has
compared the terrible Napoleon to an eagle burying its
beak and talons in the quivering flesh of living victims,
tearing the still sentient nerves asunder, and drinking the
warm blood. Mehemet Ali may be regarded rather as a
vulture, who attacks but the dead and dying. He has
been dissevering the limbs of a victim somewhat less than
half alive. A great empire seems passing into extinction ;
and the Pasha of Egypt sagacious, energetic, brave
is exactly one of those characters, so frequent in history,
that become at- such periods the monarchs of the minor
states which spring up in the room of the great departed
power, just as the place of a mighty oak or chestnut comes
to be occupied, when it had sunk into decay, by whole
thickets of inferior growth. He had appropriated Egypt,
and the claim of the successful soldier had been fully recog-
nized by at least all possessed of power enough to challenge
it. Syria lies adjacent; and of Syria, by far the most
interesting portion is comprised in that land, so peculiarly
a land of promise, of which prophecy is so full, and which
has been the scene of events compared with which all in
the course of human affairs that have taken place in the
other lands of the globe sink into utter insignificance. And
Syria, apparently as defenceless as the blank space in the
ancient Grecian army, seemed to lie even more open to
Mehemet Ali than to Napoleon. He possessed himself of
Jean d'Acre, the key of the country, the identical fortress
which a few dozen Englishmen, assisted by a half-disci-
plined horde of Turks, had maintained against the greatest
general and the best soldiers of France. He strength-
40 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
ened the fortifications on the most approved principles ;
he surmounted them with nearly two hundred cannon ; lie
stored the magazines of the place with supplies for at least
a six months' siege ; he furnished it with a garrison of six
thousand veteran troops. A few British vessels cast
anchor before it, under the fire of at least a hundred and
twenty cannon and twenty huge mortars, and bombarded
it for three hours. What has been the result ? An
unseen hand was raised in the conflict, and the fate of
Syria decided at a single blow. In the heat of the engage-
ment a terrible explosion took place within the fortress,
that shook the earth and the walls like an earthquake ; a
huge cloud shot up over the place, fold beyond fold, till it
seemed to reach the central heavens, and then passed
slowly and heavily away ; and when it had cleared off, it
was found that one third of the city had been utterly
destroyed, as if by the earthquake predicted in the Apoca-
lypse, and nearly one third the garrison buried in the ruins.
There was scarcely a house left habitable within the walls.
The principal magazine had caught fire ; and thus the ruin
of the fortress has been signal in proportion to the means
taken for its defence. The firing slacked immediately
after, and then finally ceased ; and at midnight the surviv-
ing portion of the garrison stole silently out of the place,
which was taken possession of about daybreak by a party
of the besiegers. They found it a terrific scene of devas-
tation, covered with shattered ruins, sprinkled with blood,
and strewed with dissevered limbs and dismembered car-
casses. An immense hollow, like the crater of a volcano,
occupies the place where the magazine lately stood ; and
for the space of a mile around nothing appears but the
broken fragments of what were once buildings, scathed and
blackened by fire, and the mangled bodies of men and ani-
mals piled in heaps upon cinders and rubbish. In the
course of the day, a portion of the garrison, amounting to
about seven hundred infantry, intimidated apparently by
the mountaineers, marched back to the place, and, delivering
JEAN D'ACRE. 41
up their arras, surrendered themselves prisoners of war.
There are more than two thousand prisoners besides ; and
of the whole garrison, not one sixth part is said to have
escaped. The loss of the assailants amounts to but twenty-
three killed, and about fifty wounded.
One inevitable result of this important and very remark-
able event will be the signal diminution, perhaps the
thorough annihilation, of the aggressive power of Mehemet
Ali. If possessed of sagacity enough rightly to estimate
his position, a position not unlike that of Napoleon
when he rejected the terms of peace proffered him after
the disaster of Moscow, he may still retain the sove-
reignty of Egypt ; but it is impossible that he can now
become the conqueror of Syria. He has entered the gap,
like the old warrior, and been struck down, just as Napo-
leon, when he attempted entering upon it, was forced
back. The space, for that great purpose at which the
6nger of Revelation has been pointed for nearly the last
three thousand years, has been kept clear, and the time
of the accomplishment of this purpose seems fast approach-
ing. Is there nothing remarkable in the fact that the two
great conquerors of the nineteenth century should have
made their attempts upon it, the one backed by the
identical means which had been employed against the
other, and that what the one found so powerful in
resisting him should have proved of no avail in the other's
defence ? Napoleon was to be resisted, and Jean d'Acre
became impregnable ; Mehemet Ali was to be dispossessed
and turned back, and Jean d'Acre fell in three hours.
And yet it seems to be a mere gap among the nations, a
solitary and empty space, that has been thus defended,
a few skeleton cities, a few depopulated villages, a few
sandy plains, a few barren hills, the long valley of the
Jordan, Gennesarct, Galilee, Jerusalem, and the rocky
eminence of Calvary. A great nation seems dying away
froni amid the wastes of this more than classic country,
leaving the place well-nigh tenantless. Others have arisen
4* "
42 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
to take possession in their room, but they have been vio-
lently held back. The land still waits unoccupied for the
appointed inhabitants.
VI.
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY.
Our readers must have remarked, with some degree of
amusement, the progress of the controversy still raging
regarding an important clause in the Marble History of
England now in the course of being chiselled, at the
national expense, in the new House of Commons. Every
one agrees that, in order to impart to the record any
degree of truth at all, it must contain a vast number of
clauses that will do no honor to the marble, and that will
be unable to receive honor from it. It will contain the
Marian clause, in the form of a grim, ugly female, smelling
horribly of blood and fire ; and the Henry VIII. clause,
in the shape of a puffy-cheeked, truculent bully, surrounded
by a group of skeleton wives, some of them bearing their
dissevered heads under their elbows ; and the Charles II.
and James VII. clauses ; and a great many other disrepu-
table clauses besides, some of them of more modern, some
of them of more ancient date, on the insertion of which
all are agreed. The entire dispute hinges on the singu-
larly brilliant clause Oliver Cromwell, respecting the
insertion of which there are, it would seem, many diverse
opinions. Some assert that the clause Oliver should, like
the clause William the Conqueror, or the clause Richard
III., be introduced in full ; others maintain, on the con-
trary, that it should not be introduced in full, nor intro-
duced at all, and that there should be even no hiatus left
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY. 43
to indicate its existence, but that the flat, moody clause
Charles I. should run in without break, as printers say, with
the miserable clause Charles II. ; while a third class, content
to halve the difference, recommend that the clause Oliver
should not be inserted, but that its place should be repre-
sented by a wide blank, suited to serve the purpose of a
line of asterisks in a piece of abridged narrative. Now,
doubtful as the fact may seem, there is actually some
meaning in this controversy. In its ostensible relation to
a bit of marble, it merely involves the not very important
question, whether the new House of Commons is to be
adorned by some sixty statues or so, or by only fifty-nine ;
but in its true relation to principle it involves a question
of somewhat greater magnitude, the existing amount
of liberal opinion ; and its producing springs lie deep
among the great parties of the country.
One very important party in the transaction is the Book
of Common Prayer. Among the 'Presbyterians of Scot-
land, as with the better English historians, Charles I.
does not stand high. Such was the character of his
government, that they had as one man to take up arms
against it ; and it is known that, save for their success on
that occasion, the Star Chamber would have become as
permanent an institution in England as the Bastile did on
the opposite side of the Channel; that the new mode of
raising ship-money would have formed the model for
levying all the other taxes ; and that the English House
of Commons would have shared exactly the same fate as
that of the nearly contemporaiy French Chamber, the
States-General, under Louis XIII. The British Govern-
ment would have ceased to be representative ; the religion
of Laud would have become for a time that of the two
kingdoms, and then have merged into the Romanism of
the third ; and the state officers, assisted by the bishops,
would have meanwhile carried on the agreeable amuse-
ment of shutting up honest men for life in dungeons,
confiscating their properties, and cutting out their ears, or,
44 . HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
if the ears had been previously cut out, of grubbing up
the stumps. Nor do we estimate more highly the persona]
character of the man than his principles of government.
He was a kind husband, and amiably suffered his popish
wife to influence the national councils, which was, of course,
something in his favor ; and, when unfortunate, he had a
profound sympathy for himself and his family, the true
way of eliciting the sympathy of others ; and this was
doubtless something in his favor too. But we decidedly
demur to the titles of Saint and Martyr, in their ordinary
and unqualified meanings. We must at least be permitted
to regard him as the unique saint, who, according to the
old Scotch chronicler, " swaire terribly," and played golf
on the Sabbath ; and as the extraordinary martyr, whose
head was cut off because his word could not be believed.
Such, pretty generally, is the Presbyterian estimate of
Charles ; but in the estimate of the Book of Common
Prayer there are no such qualifications. He is there the
glorious martyr and the blessed king ; and Episcopacy
still fasts once a year in all her churches, to avert the
judgments that may be still impending over the land for
his death. Much, of course, depends on being used to a
thing; and there are, we doubt not, devout men who can
join in the hymn which she sings on the occasion with
much earnestness ; but to us it has ever appeared to be
considerably more akin to the parodies of Hone and Carlile
than to the greater part of the compositions which Hone
and Carlile parodied. There can be no mistake regarding
the slain man to which it refers ; the title fixes that : it is
a hymn " to be used yearly upon the thirtieth of January,
being the day of the martyrdom of the blessed King
Charles the First, to implore the mercy of God" "that
the guilt of that sacred and innocent blood may not at any
time hereafter be visited upon " the people or their chil-
dren. The slain man is unequivocally the man Charles ;
and yet it is thus we find him spoken of in the hymn,
a bizarre piece of mosaic, it may be mentioned in the
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY. 45
passing, composed of a curious mixture of gems filched
from the Scriptures, and of bits of paste broken from off
the Apocrypha :
" O my soul ! come not thou into their secret ; unto their assem-
bly, mine honor, be not thou united ; for in their anger they slew a
man. Gen. xlix. 6.
" Even the man of thy right hand : the Son of man, whom thou
hadst made so strong for thine own self Ps. lxxx. 17.
" In the sight of the unwise he seemed to die ; and his departure
was taken for misery. Wisd. hi. 2.
" They fools counted his life madness, and his end to be without
honor ; but he is in peace ! Wisd. v. 4 and iii. 3.
" How is he numbered with the children of God ; and his lot is
among the saints ! Wisd. v. 5.
" But, O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, thou God to
whom vengeance belongeth, be favorable and gracious to Sion.
Ps. xciv. 1 and li. 18.
" Be merciful, O Lord, unto thy people whom thou hast redeemed,
and lay not innocent blood to our charge. Deut. xxi. 8."
Charles I., the man of God's right hand ! the Son of man,
whom God made strong for himself! It is not wonderful
that the church which can thus continue to appropriate to
the wretched Charles the glory of the adorable Redeemer,
should exert some little influence in preventing the apo-
theosis of the Pilate who put him to death. 1 The revival,
too, of the old Canterburian party in England, true
representatives of Charles's infatuated advisers, who,
amid the light of the present day, can regard the revolu-
tion to which her Majesty owes her crown as simply the
Rebellion of 1688, has of course its effect on the contro-
versy. The special admirers of the " Blessed Charles the
Martyr " still* muster stronger within the pale of the
English Church though they seem fast quitting it for a
more congenial communion than they have done for at
least a century previous ; and we may be well assured that
l The fast of the royal martyr ia no longer celebrated.
46 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
in their hands the "form of prayer and fasting for the
thirtieth of January " will be no dead-letter. In no other
churches will the hymn from which we have quoted be
sung with half such energy as in the churches that have
got their crucifix-mounted altars perched up under the
east window, and in which the priest prays with his back
to the people. There is a story told by Franklin of the
good old Puritans of New England, which the more
rational members of the English Church might perhaps
do well to ponder. The poor people, forced from their
homes by the fierce intolerance of the blessed martyr,
whose martyrdom led to the blessings of toleration, felt
at first exceedingly melancholy in the savage country
of solitary wilds and deep forests in which they were
compelled to sojourn, and for a series of years kept the
anniversary of their arrival as a fast ; and the oftener
they fasted, the more melancholy they became. At length,
at one of their meetings on the eve of an anniversary,
when the usual fast had been proposed, an honest farmer
rose and moved an amendment. They were all getting
very comfortable, he said, if they could but see it. Their
farms were improving and extending, their crops becom-
ing every year more weighty and the country less wild ;
they were living in peace, too, and enjoying liberty of
conscience; and he moved, therefore, that, instead of
holding their anniversary as a fast, they should forthwith
convert it into a day of thanksgiving. The suggestion
approved itself to the judgment of the meeting ; the fast
was suffered to drop, and the day of thanksgiving sub-
stituted in its place ; and from that day forward the
colony continued to prosper. Now, we are of opinion
that the Church of England has fasted quite long enough
for the martyrdom of Charles. It was an event of an
exceedingly mixed character ; it had party-colored sides,
like the gold and silver shield in the story; and the
church, regarding it on merely the unfavorable one, has
now been fasting for it nearly a, hundred and ninety years.
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY. 47
She should now by all means try to get a glimpse of it on
the other side, and, like the worthy New England Puri-
tans, convert her fast into a thanksgiving. We are pretty
much assured the country would be none the worse for
the change. There are weightier national sins for which
to fast than the sin of the martyrdom ; and were we but
grateful enough for its benefits, we might avoid, among
other perils, all danger of committing the great national
folly of excluding from our marble records the name of
our greatest ruler.
The question at issue in this case is unquestionably a
British one, Scotch as well as English ; but it strikes us
that the Scotch are in more favorable circumstances for
arriving at an impartial decision regarding it than their
neighbors in the south. In England the two great parties
still exist, with many of their old predilections and antip-
athies undiluted and unchanged ; the one of which Crom-
well led on to victory, and the other of which he defeated
and threw down. The question regarding him is still a
party question there, argued on the one side in many a
goodly volume, and sung once every year in their churches
by the other, in music set to the organ. Scotland, on the
other hand, dealt more with Crmowell as a nation : the
Protesters stood widely aloof, and did not take up arms ;
but the great bulk of the nation all its Resolutioners and
all its Cavaliers joined issue against him on behalf of
Charles II., and got heartily drubbed for their pains. We
are nearly in such circumstances as the English themselves
would be were the question, not whether Cromwell should
have a statue in the British House of Commons among the
other supreme rulers of England, but whether Napoleon
should have a statue in the French Chamber of Deputies,
among the other supreme rulers of France. True, Crom-
well beat us, and we don't much like the memory of
our defeats ; but we flatter ourselves that it was only be-
cause our "Committee of Church and State," contrary to the
judgment of Leslie, was a little too eager to beat him.
48 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
We solace the national vanity, too, by remembering that he
himself was half a Scotchman : we can still point out, from
the burgh of Queensferry, the old house on the opposite
side of the Frith in which his mother, Elizabeth Stewart,
first saw the light ; and, further, we call to mind that the
blood of the Bruce flowed as purely in the veins of the
plebeian Cromwell as in those of the royal martyr himself,
and that he represented the indomitable hero of Bannock-
burn immensely better. Above all, we remember how very
different the treatment which we received from the man we
fought against, from that which we received from the man
we fought for. And so we at least deem ourselves impartial,
and marvel how there should live Englishmen in the present
age who could so much as dream of excluding the record of
the Protector from the general record of the country, as
exhibited in its house of representatives. Save for Pusey-
ism, High Churchism, and the rather equivocal service in
"our most excellent Prayer B,ook," the question could never
have been mooted. We have seen it virtually decided in
children's toy-books that were written half a century ago.
Some thirty years since, when we kept our library in a chip-
box six inches square by five inches deep, we were in the
proud possession of two tall volumes, four inches high by
three inches across, the one of which, for the use of good
boys and girls, contained notices and woodcuts of all the
Scottish monarchs, from the Davids down to James VI. ;
and the other, notices and woodcuts of all the English ones,
from William the Conqueror down to George III. And each
little book, we well remember, had its single uncrowned
figure, and its single notice, pretaining to a great monarch
that wanted the kingly title. The figure in the one case
was that of a mailed warrior trampling on a lion, and the
figure in the other that of a warrior, also in mail, with
a marshal's truncheon in his hand. The legend affixed to
the one was " Sir William Wallace, Protector of Scotland,"
and that borne by the other, " Oliver Cromwell, Lord Pro-
tector of England ; " and such was the interest attached to
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY. 49
the prints and the notices, that the little books at length
learned to open of themselves at the pages which exhibited
the uncrowned warriors ; for the one, with scarce a single
exception, was the greatest and noblest of the Scotchmen,
as the Bruce, though of a heroic nature, was less disinter-
estedly a patriot ; and the other, with scarce a single excep-
tion, was, as far as we know, the greatest and noblest of
the Englishmen ; for, though the figure of Alfred looms
large in the distance, the exaggerating mists of the past
close thick around him, and we fail to ascertain his true
proportions through the cloud. Here, we contend, in the
child's books, and by the child, the grave question at issue,
of statue or no statue, was fairly decided. The child's
books found fitting space in their pages for the effigies of
the two Protectors; and the child soon learned to give
unwitting evidence that the effigies of none of the others
had at least a better right to be there.
But Cromwell, it is urged, was not a king : he said no,
though he might have said yes, when offered the crown ;
and his statue ought to be excluded on the strength of the
monosyllable. We would be inclined to sustain the objec-
tion had it been proposed to erect Cromwell's statue, not
in the British House of Commons, but in the Herald's
Office. But history is a thing of veritable facts, not of
heraldic quibbles. King is a simple word of four letters,
and Lord Protector a compound word of thirteen ; but,
translated into their historic meaning, their import is
exactly the same. They just mean, and no more, the su-
preme governor of the country. The only real difference
between Cromwell and the Charleses on either side is, that
he was a great and good supreme governor, and that they
were little and bad ones. Ah ! but Cromwell, it is urged
further, has no legal existence in our chronicles. A statute,
still enforced, effaced his name from the constitutional
annals, by giving his years and his acts to his successor.
History, we reply, is no more a thing of legal fictions than
of heraldic quibbles. By a legal fiction Cromwell may bo
5
50 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
merely a bit of Charles II., and we know that by a legal
fiction husband and wife are but one person ; but we also
know that the historian who should represent George
IV. and his wife Caroline as merely the two halves of a
single individual, would make sadly perplexed work of
the " Queen's Trial." If Charles II. was also Cromwell, he
was assuredly the most extraordinary character that ever
lived much more emphatically than Bacon, as described
by Pope,
" The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind; "
and his statue, if that of the Protector is to be excluded,
should by all means indicate the fact. Let him be repre-
sented as an eastern sept represent one of their gods,
the " man-lion," as a compound monster, half-brute, half-
man, with double fore-arms articulated at his elbows ; or
let his effigy be placed astride that of a tall figure in a
cloak, like the Old Man of the Sea astride the shoulders
of Sinbad ; or, to render the allegory complete, let there be
no human form placed on the pedestal at all, but simply a
good representation in stone of iEsop's live ass and dying
lion. For the sake of truth, however, the lion would re-
quire to be exhibited, not as dying, but dead. Cromwell
was dead, and, as if to make all sure, cold, for considerably
more than a twelvemonth ere a monarch or lawyer dared
to raise the assinine heel against him. " They hung your
father, lady," was the ungenerous taunt dealt, many years
after the event, to one of his daughters. " Yes," was the
proud reply, " but he was dead first."
We do not think the statue of Cromwell should be as-
signed its proper niche, were it but for the sake of the
associations which it is fitted to awaken, and the lesson in
behalf of supreme governors in general which it is suited
to teach. Quivedo, in one of his Visions of Hell, as quoted
by Cowper, requested his black conductor to show him the
jail in which they kept their kings. "There" said the
guide, " there you have the whole group full before you."
THE CROMWELL CONTROVERSY. 51
"Indeed!" exclaimed Quivedo, "they seem but few!"
" Few, fellow ! " replied the indignant guide, " few ! they
are all that ever reigned, though." Cowper objects to the
undiscriminating severity of the wit, and names one or two
kings, such as Alfred and Edward VL, who could hardly
be regarded as inmates of Quivedo's prison ; but certainly,
were all kings of the type of the royal martyr, his father,
and his two sons, the British kings of nearly an entire
century, be it remembered, the objection would scarce
have been lodged. It would be of importance, surely, as
suited to produce the moral effect of Cowper's exception,
to have inserted full in the middle of the line one supreme
governor who was not a scoundrel, and who was not a fool.
Very different indeed would be the associations that would
hang on the central effigy, from those which the two effigies
on either side must of necessity suggest. The smell of
blood rises rank from these miserable Stuarts, and it is
invariably the blood of the best of their land, the blood
of honest patriots and of godly men. We find the insen-
sate marbles associated with a dark record of crime, and
cruelty, and monstrous infatuation; they are suggestive
of the melancholy of protracted exile, the gloom of dun-
geons, the agonies of torture, and the pangs of death, of
the blood of God's saints shed on the hills like water, or
flooding the public scaffolds, of Scottish maidens tied to
stakes-Hnder flood mark, to perish amid the rising waters,
and of venerable English matrons burnt alive. It speaks
of national degradation and impotency ; of ever-recurring
defeats, and inefficient, disastrous wars ; of unavenged
insults to the British flag; of English fleets chased into
the Thames by the victorious enemy; and of English
towns burnt unavenged on its shores. Surely it were well
to have some means of relief at hand from such thick-
coming forces. The antidote of the central marble is im-
peratively required. It opens up, amid the darkness on
either hand, a vista of surpassing glory. We see England
throned in the midst of the nations, her armies victorious
52 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
in all their battles ; her navies sweeping the seas invinci-
ble ; her voice of thunder resounding all over the world in
behalf of religious liberty and the rights of man, and all
over the world feared, respected, and obeyed ; good men
everywhere living in peace, however little friendly to the
magnanimous Cromwell; and the sword of persecution
dropping from the terror-palsied hand of the Papacy.
VII.
THE THIRD FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Was there ever an age of the world like the present !
The painted scenes in a theatre do not shift before the
eyes of the spectators more suddenly, or apparently more
on that principle of strong contrast on which the poet and
the artist rely for their most striking effects, than dynas-
ties and forms of government in the times in which we
live. The biography of Louis Philippe could belong to but
one period in the history of the species.
It will be eighteen years, first July, since the writer was
employed, on a clear beautiful evening, in the immediate
neighborhood of a busy seaport of the north of Scotland,
all alive at the time with the turmoil and bustle of the
herring-fishery; and a few neighbors, whose labors for the
day had closed, were lounging beside him. There were
two French luggers in the harbor furnished with crews of
stout English-looking seamen from Normandy, crews
at least thrice as numerous as the herring speculation in
which they were engaged could ever pay; but the Gov-
ernment of their country, still as anxious as in the days of
Napoleon to create a navy, made up, by what was nomi-
nally a very extravagant bounty on fish, but in reality a
THE THIRD FRENCH REVOLUTION! 53
bounty on sea-faring men, the amount necessary to render
their undertaking remunerative. And so there, in the
middle of a group of fishing-boats and small craft of the
British type, lay the two hulking-looking foreigners, one
of which rejoiced in the august name of " Le Charles
Dix" with their bare brown masts and their dark, half-
unfurled sails, and crowded with seamen attired in dirty
Guernsey frocks and red nightcaps. The post came in,
and a newspaper, still damp from the press, was handed to
a neighbor. He opened it, and repeated, with an air of
mingled astonishment and incredulity, a few magical words,
"Revolution in France! Three days' fighting! Flight
of Charles X. ! " We were sensible, as the words were
pronounced, of a thrilling sensation similar to that produced
by an electric shock. Nothing could be more evident than
that the consequences of an event so truly great could not
be restricted to France. A new epoch had arrived in the
history of civilization and of man ; but what was to be its
character? The curtain had arisen literally at the ringing
of a bell ; and the stage, at the opening of the piece, as at
the close of some tragedies, red with blood and cumbered
with dead bodies, presented the imposing spectacle of a
falling dynasty. But who could predicate regarding the
nature of the plot on which the general drama was to turn,
or anticipate with aught of confidence the outlines of
even its next scene? The poor Frenchmen of the two
luggers, with just enough of bad English to bargain for
herrings, but not enough to understand the details of a
revolution, were sadly perplexed by the intelligence, of
which the townspeople present, in as plentiful a lack of
French as they manifested of English, could but commu-
nicate to them vaguely enough the general result. They
got hold of the newspaper, and scanned it with all the
eager excitability of their nation, though apparently to little
purpose. They could merely here and there pick out a few
Norman words which the conquest of William had served
to naturalize in our language, and pronounce them with
5*
54 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
tremendous emphasis after the French mode ; but all they
succeeded in picking out of the broad sheet seemed to be
summed up in the emphatic heading of the editor's article,
Revolution Francaise Trois Jours de Combat La
Fuite de Charles Dix! They learned quite enough, how-
ever, to exhibit in a small way how slight a hold French
kings have in these latter times on the affections of the
French people. One of the masters, seizing a lump of
chalk, stepped to the stern of his vessel, and, with great
coolness, blotted out from the board the name of Charles
Dix. He did in the harbor of Cromarty, on a minute
scale, what his countrymen had just done in Paris.
And now Paris has witnessed yet another revolution.
The bell has rung ; the scene has shifted ; drama the
second has come as suddenly to a close as drama the first ;
and the after-piece begins, like its predecessor, with fight-
ing and bloodshed, and the masque-like pageant pictur-
esquely symbolical of the whole event of an empty
throne paraded through the streets, and then dashed down
and burned at the foot of the " column of July." The
effacing chalk has been applied, and the name of another
monarch blotted out. And amid the general thrill of
undefinable electric interest and restless anxiety, there
obtains exactly the same uncertainty regarding what is to
come next. It is not unworthy of notice, that the three
French revolutions have in reality all turned on one
pivot, and that some of the shrewdest of our contempo-
raries have been led egregiously into error in their calcu-
lations on the present occasion, simply by losing sight of
it. Nay, a similar disregai'd of this hinging-point, and of
its controlling principle, seems to have been the fatal error
of Louis Philippe himself. "It will require a most ex-
traordinary and unforeseen combination of circumstances,"
said the Times, in an article on the Parisian outburst,
"before any government, supported by an army of one
hundred thousand men, under the command of Marshal
Bugeaud, quartered with great skill in the outskirts of
THE THIRD FRENCH REVOLUTION. 55
Paris, perfectly prepared for action, and backed by eighteen
fortresses, will be compelled to capitulate to a popular in-
surrection. We suspect, however, it will turn out that no
serious popular insurrection is even probable. The people
have been stirred, but not inflamed. They are shaken, but
not irritated ; they are unarmed, and no preparation for
insurrection had been made. Under such circumstances
the result is certain. But if lives are lost in this misera-
ble brawl, the reckoning will be heavy, not only on those
who inconsiderately commenced an agitation which they
had no power to bring to a successful termination, but on
those whose obstinate resistance to a well-founded de-
mand rendered such an appeal to the populace successful."
Such were the anticipations of the Times ; and not a few
of our other contemporaries followed in its wake. Had
they taken into account in their calculations the principle
to which we refer, a principle first pointed out at a time
when there had been but one French Revolution from
which the necessary data could be derived, they would
have reckoned less securely on the hundred thousand sol-
diers and the eighteen fortresses. France is emphatically
the great military nation of Europe. But though it pos-
sesses what are in reality the sinews of war, that is, great
military ardor and many people, for to regard money as
such is an idle unsolidity, which, while it has the dis-
advantage of being commonplace, wants the balancing
advantage of being true, while France possesses, we
say, a warlike people, it is wanting now, as in the days
of Napoleon, and at every former period of its history, in
the wealth necessary to purchase their service. Its rulers,
therefore, in order to raise those great armies on which
the power and character of the nation depend, must
always appeal to its warlike sympathies ; and the armies
thus formed ai-e, in consequence, what armies, in at least
the same degree, arc nowhere else in Europe, merely
armed portions of the people, most formidable, as all
modern history has shown, for purposes of foreign aggres-
56 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
sion, but in the hands of a despot, unless like Napoleon,
the idol of the soldiery, dangerous chiefly to himself.
This appai-ently simple, but in reality profound principle
on which all the French revolutions have hinged, and
which Louis Philippe, untaught by experience, so entirely
forgot, was enunciated for the tirst time by Sir James
Mackintosh, when the seventy thousand soldiers brought
by Louis XVI. to invest the " Legislature and capital of
France, felt that they were citizens, and the fabric of
despotism fell to the ground." "It was the apprehension
of Montesquieu," said the philosopher, " that the spirit of
increasing armies would terminate in converting Europe
into an immense camp, in changing our artisans and culti-
vators into military savages, and reviving the age of Attila
and Genghis. Events are our preceptors, and France has
taught us that this evil contains in itself its own remedy
and limit. A domestic army cannot be increased without
increasing the number of its ties with the people, and of
the channels by which popular sentiment may enter it.
Every man that is added to the army is a new link that
unites it to the nation. If all citizens were compelled to
become soldiers, all soldiers must of necessity adopt the
feelings of citizens ; and the despots cannot increase their
army without admitting into it a greater number of men
interested to destroy them. A small army may have sen-
timents different from the great body of the people, and
no interest in common with them ; but a numerous soldiery
cannot. This is the barrier which nature has opposed to
the increase of armies. They cannot be numerous enough
to enslave the people, without becoming the people itself."
It was on the unseen rock so skilfully marked out here
that Louis XVL, Charles X., and Louis Philippe made
shipwreck in turn, and that led to the error of our con-
temporaries. They took note of the hundred thousand
men and the eighteen fortresses, but not of the all-influ-
ential principle which, in the revolution of last week,
rendered them of no avail.
THE THIRD FRENCH REVOLUTION. 57
Event3 have exhibited the influence of the second
French revolution on this country as, in the main, whole-
Bome. It furaished the moving power through which
parliamentary reform was carried, and the representation
of the empire placed on a broader and firmer basis than
at any former period. It formed the primary cause of the
abolition of slavery in our colonies ; destroyed monopoly
in the East Indies ; reorganized our municipal corpora-
tions ; and, above all, gave to the people a standing-r.oom
virtually, though not nominally, legislative, through which,
in the character of a league such as that which carried
the great free-trade question, they can constitute them-
selves into a kind of outer chamber, whose decisions, if
there be in reality a clamant case to give union and eneigy
to their exertions, the two inner chambers must ultimately
be content to register. And if, after all, it did not do
more, it is only because all merely external reforms,
whether political or personal, are in their nature unsat-
isfactory, and because men can only be made happier
by being made wiser and better. It was through the
inherent justice of the second French revolution, be it
remembered, and the great moderation manifested in
turning it to account, that this amount of good was pro-
duced. Never, on the other hand, was there an event less
friendly to the progress of civilization, and to the true rights
of man, than the first French revolution. Its atrocities,
through the violent reaction to which they led, served to
prop up every existing abuse, by rendering whatever
professed to be the cause of reform suspected and unpop-
ular. It was Robespierre and his colleagues, more than
any set of men the world ever saw, that imparted to the
cause of a blind, undiscriminating conservatism,* not merely
the character of sound policy, but also of justice. They
arrayed the moral sense of mankind against their measures
in the mass; and hence many an antagonist abuse was
suffered to exist, which would otherwise have been singled
out and swept away. The general war, too, in which the
58 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
revolution terminated, and which was so peculiarly marked
by the rise of one of the greatest military despots the
world ever saw, militated against the progress of the spe-
cies, and nowhere more powerfully than in Britain. The
general effect of the first French revolution was as dis-
astrous as that of the second was favorable. But what
is to be the character and tendency of the third ? We
have our serious misgivings and fears. It is no doubt
well for our country that, since the revolutionists have
been successful, Louis Philippe should have been so deci-
dedly in the wrong. Had he fallen five years ago by an
assassin, and had Paris, in the distraction consequent on
the event, been overmastered by the mob, the case would
have been different ; the sympathies of the British people
would have been with the king and his family ; Toryism
would have profited in consequence, and Tory councils
would have acquired a dangerous ascendancy. But there
will be, in the existing state of the case, little British
sympathy on the side of Louis Philippe. The policy of the
later years of his reign has belied the premise of its open-
ing, and he falls enveloped in the weakness inherent in
whatever is palpably selfish and unjust. Still there is
much cause for fear. There may be yet a reaction in
France in favor of wiser heads and more moderate meas-
ures ; but, for the present at least, the destinies of the
country and the peace of Europe seem to be in the hands
of an unthinking and reckless mob.
To what are we to attribute the singularly mistaken
policy of Louis Philippe during the last few years, so
unlike, in at least the degree of sagacity which it evinced,
that of the earlier portion of his reign ? "Forget," said
Napoleon, "in urging one of his generals to exert all the
energy of his more vigorous days, " forget that you are
fifty." Has the ex-king of the French been unable to for-
get that he is considerably turned of seventy ? Has that
peculiarly solid understanding for which in his more vig-
orous years the man was so remarkable, been gradually
THE THIRD FRENCH REVOLUTION. 59
giving way during the last few years of his life ; and are we
to recognize in the gross imprudence to give it no harsher
name which led to the present catastrophe, as in his
shameless attempts to aggrandize his family in Spain, and
his homologation as national of the revoltingly unjust
assault on Tahiti, the signs of a decaying intellect, no
longer able to control, as formerly, the selfish instincts of
his nature, constitutionally very strong? And is this wisa
and brave man to be regarded as forming one illustrious
example more of that class of the wise and brave so well
described by Johnson ?
"In life's last scene what prodigies surprise!
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show."
Certainly the latter scenes of the drama of his reign, to
whatever they owe their peculiarity of character, read a
fearful lesson. By virtually ceasing to be what the
title conferred on him exclusively recognized " King of
the French," and by setting himself, on the effete princi-
ples of the ancient regime, to be a king on but his own
behalf and that of his family, he has ceased to be a king at
all. It is noticeable, too, that he should have fallen a vic-
tim to a spirit evoked, indirectly at least, by that second
French revolution to which he owed his throne. Save
for that revolution, and its more immediate consequences,
the Anti-Corn-Law League of Richard Cobden would
have been altogether an impracticability, even in Britain.
It was in order to prevent any such quiet but powerful
combination of the British merchants from thwarting his
plans in France, that the monarch's ill-judged stand
against the reform banquet was so uncompromisingly
taken. He resolved that no French league formed on the
model of that of Britain should give law to him ; and to
that rash determination the third French revolution owes
its origin.
60 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
VIII.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
" Trust not," says an ancient English writer, " to the
haleness of an old man's appearance, however stout and
hearty he seem. He is a goodly tree, but hollow within,
and decayed at the roots, and ready to fall with the first
blast of wind." The country has received a startling illus-
tration of that enhanced uncertainty of tenure by which
men hold their lives when they have passed the indicated
term, and " fallen due to nature," in the death of one of
the most extraordinary men of modern times. A goodly
but ancient tree has suddenly yielded to internal decay
when no one looked for its fall ; and the echoes of the
unexpected crash resound mournfully, far and wide, through
the forest. The consideration will, we are afraid, form
but a doubtful solace to Britons of the present generation,
that they will scarce again witness the fall of aught so
goodly or so great.
The Duke of Wellington was the last, and at least one
of the greatest, of that group of men whose histories we
find specially connected with the history of the first French
revolution. He pertained to a type of man so rare that
we can enumerate only two other examples in the great
Teutonic family to which he belonged, George Washing-
ton and Oliver Cromwell. Of spare and meagre imagi-
nation, and of intellect not at all cast in the literary or
oratorical mould, they yet excelled all their fellows in the
possession of a gigantic common sense, rarer, we had
almost said, than genius itself, but which, in truth, consti-
tuted genius of a homely and peculiar, but not the less high
order, and which better fitted them to be leaders of men
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON". 61
than the more brilliant and versatile genius of a Shak-
peare or of a Milton would have done. The ability of
seeing what in all circumstances was best to be done, and
an indomitable resolution and power of will which enabled
them to do it, constituted the peculiar faculties in which
they surpassed all their contemporaries. With more im-
agination they would have perhaps attempted more, and,
in consequence, have accomplished less. Napoleon pos-
sessed powers which in Cromwell, or in Napoleon's great
rival and ultimate conqueror the Duke, had no place.
Neither the Lord Protector nor "Wellington could have
gloated over the overwrought sentiment and vivid de-
scription of an Ossian ; nor yet could they have entranced,
by their extempore tales, brilliant parties of thoroughly
cultivated taste, and familiar with the best literary models
of the age. But then, neither Cromwell nor the Duke
would have sealed their ruin by a Russian campaign. Had
the Lord Protector been in Napoleon's place, misled by no
high imaginings, and infinitely less selfish than his great
antitype, he would have restored their ancient indepen-
dence to the Poles, erected their kingdom into a powerful
barrier against the Czar, taken his revenge on Russia, not
by attempting to dictate to it from its ancient capital,
but by undoing all that Peter the Great had done, and
shutting it up from the rest of Europe. Whatever he at-
tempted he would have performed ; and, instead of dying
in exile, a solitary prisoner at St. Helena, he would have
expired at Paris, Emperor of the French, and his son would
have quietly succeeded him. The three great military
doers of the Anglo-Saxon race were all alike remarkable for
their sobriety of mind and spareness of imagination, and for
exactly knowing much in consequence of that sobriety
and of that spareness what could and what could not
be accomplished. And so, unlike many of the great men
of antiquity, or of the more volatile races of the world in
modern times, they rose to eminence and glory by com-
paratively slow degrees, and finished their course without
6
62 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
experiencing great reverses. There is a still rarer type of
greatness, of which the entire history of man furnishes
only some one or two examples, in which the imagination
was vigorous, but the judgment fully adequate to restrain
and control it ; and we would instance Julius Caesar as one
of these. By far the greatest man of action of the age in
which he lived, he was also one of the greatest of its orators
second, indeed, only to perhaps the greatest orator the
world ever saw ; while as an author his work takes its
place in literature as one of the ever-enduring classics. By
the way, has the reader ever remarked how thoroughly the
features of Wellington, Washington, and Caesar were cast
in one type ? Had they all been brethren, the family like-
ness could not have been more strong. There is the same
firm, hard, mathematical cast of face, the same thin cheeks
and prominent cheek-bones, the same sharply-defined
nether jaws, the same bold nose, in each case an indented
aqutline, and the same quietly keen eye. And in the
countenance of Cromwell, though more overcharged, as
perhaps became his larger structure of bone and more mas-
culine frame, we find exactly the lineaments, united to a
massiveness of forehead possessed by neither Washington
nor Wellington, and only equally by that of Caesar. Cha-
teaubriand's graphic summary of the character of the Pro-
tector is in singular harmony with his physiognomy. " To
whom among us," he says, in drawing a parallel between
the first French revolution and that which in England led
to the execution of Charles, " can we compare Cromwell,
who concealed under a coarse exterior all that is great in
human nature, a man who was profound, vast, and secret
as an abyss, who hid in his soul the ambition of a Caesar,
and hid it in so superior a manner, that not one of his col-
leagues, except Hampden, could dive into his thoughts
and views ? "
Wellington, like the other great men with whose names
we associate his, was remarkable for seeing, in his own
especial province, what even the ablest and shrewdest of
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 63
his contemporaries could not see. Jeffrey and Brougham
were both able men, talkers of the first water, and, even
as judges and reviewers, not beneath the highest average
found among men ; and yet we have but to take up those
earlier numbers of the " Edinburgh Review," in which
these accomplished judicial critics discussed the Peninsula
campaigns, tc find how utterly ignorant they both were
and, with them, all the party which they represented
of that simple but veally great idea which formed the basis
o\ Wellington's operations, and which ultimately led him
to results ko brilliant and successful. Nor was the medio-
cre ministry of the day, though they lent him from time to
time their driblets of sapport, at first most meagrely and
unwillingly, until compelled to liberality by his successes,
less in the dark regarding it than their opponents. Once and
again unable to make out a case for him, and gravelled by
what seemed the unanswerable arguments of their antag-
onists, they had to throw tho entire responsibility on their
indomitable general ; and Wellington was content to bear
it. Nor was it in the least wonderful that they should
have found the case of the Peninsula a peculiarly hard one.
Appearances, as all ordinary, and even almost all superior
observers, were able to remark them, seemed sadly against
the British. The brilliancy oi Napoleon's military tactics
above all his splendid powers of combination had
astonished the world. His marshals had learned in his
school almost to rival himself; they were, besides, under
his direct guidance ; and they had three hundred thousand
French soldiers in the Peninsula. The British there at no
time amounted to sixty thousand. They had allies, it is
true, in the Portuguese and Spaniards, but allies on which
they could reckon but little ; and yet, such was the appar-
ently inadequate force with which Wellington hal deter-
mined to clear the Peninsula. What could the man mean?
Was he possessed of the vulgar belief that " one English-
man is a match for five Frenchmen at any time ? " No :
Wellington was perfectly sober-minded ; and with a confi-
64 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
dence in the native prowess of the well-disciplined Briton
such as that which Nelson possessed, a confidence that,
if opposed, man to man, on equal terms of position and
weapons, the Englishman would beat the Frenchman, just
as a stronger mechanical force bears down a weaker,
he was particularly chary of risking his men against over-
powering odds. On what, then, was his confidence founded ?
He saw better than any one else the true circumstances of
the Peninsula, and the true difficulties of the French.
Spain, and especially Portugal, had their strongly defen-
sible lines, which a weaker force, if through neglect it gave
the enemy no undue advantage, and if liberally supplied
with the munitions of war, might defend forever against a
stronger. The successes of the British navy under Nelson
had given it the complete command of the sea; and sg to
a British army these indispensable munitions could be
supplied. On the other hand, the base-line from which
the French had to carry on their operations was distant.
The wild Pyrenees, and with them wide tracts of rough
and hostile country, stretched between the French armies
and their native France. They could not be supported in
consequence by munitions drawn from their own country;
and the hostile country in which they encamped was by
much too poor to enable them to realize that part of Napo-
leon's policy through which he made hostile countries
support the war which wasted them, and to which he had
given such effect on the fertile plains of Germany. Spain
could not support great armies; and so great combinations
could be maintained within its territories for only a few
days at a time, and then fall apart again. Wellington,
from behind his lines, marched out now upon one separate
army, anon upon another ; now upon one strong fortress,
anon upon another; never opposed himself to overpower-
ing odds; and, when the odds were not overpowering, or the
fortress not impregnable,. always carried the siege or gained
the battle. He broke up in detail the armies of France.
When they effected one of their great combinations against
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 65
him, he fell coolly back on his lines ; sometimes, as he saw
opportunity, stopping by the way, as at Busaco, to gain a
battle, and to convince the enemy that he was merely
retreating, not running away. And then, when the com-
bination fell to pieces, as fall to pieces he saw it could not
fail, he again began to beat piecemeal the armies of which
it had been composed. Time after time were the best-
troops of France poured across the Pyrenees to bear down
the modern Fabius, and time after time did they sink under
the peculiar difficulties of their circumstances and the
tactics of Wellington. At length a day came when France
could spare no more troops to the Peninsula ; all its armies
were required for the defence of its northern frontier, for
the army of Napoleon had been broken in his disastrous
Russian campaign, and the allies were pressing upon their
lines. And then Wellington, taking off his hat, and rising
in his stirrups, for he saw that his time had at length
come, bade farewell to Portugal. He broke the power
of the French in Spain in one great battle ; repressed and
beat back Soult, who had rushed across the Pyrenees to
oppose him ; and finally terminated the war at Toulouse,
far within the frontiers of France. He had wrought
out his apparently unsolvable problem by sweeping the
Peninsula of three hundred thousand French troops that
had held it; and, though once so inexplicable, it now
seems in the main an exceedingly simple problem after all.
But Christopher Columbus was the only man in a certain
company who could make an egg stand on end ; and the
only man of the age who could have swept out of Spain,
with his handful of troops, the three hundred thousand
Frenchmen, was Arthur Wellesley. At least none of the
others who attempted the feat including even Sir John
Moore had got any hold whatever of the master idea
through which it was done ; and we know that some of
our ablest men at home held that there was no master idea
in the case, and that the feat was wholly impracticable-
As a statesman, the Duke of Wellington held a consid-
6*
66 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
erably lower place than as a warrior. With bodies of men
regarded simply as physical forces, no man could deal more
skilfully ; with bodies of men regarded as combinations
of faculties, rational and intellectual, he frequently failed.
He could calculate to a nicety on the power of an armed
battalion, but much less nicely on the power of an armed
opinion. And all the graver mistakes of his career we find
in this latter department. Latterly he is said to have
taken, sensible of his own defect, his opinions and judg-
ments in this walk from the late Sir Robert Peel ; and it
has been frequently stated that he intermeddled but little
with politics since the death of his adviser and friend.
But, though immeasurably inferior in this department to
Cromwell, and even to Washington, for to these great
men pertains the praise of having been not only warriors, but
also statesmen, of the first class, few indeed of the coun-
trymen, and scarce any of the party, of the deceased Duke
equalled him in the shrewdness of the judgments which
he ultimately came to form on the questions brought before
him. Even some of his sayings, spoken in bootless oppo-
sition, and regarded at the time as mere instances of the
testiness natural to a period of life considerably advanced,
have had shrewd comments read upon them by the subse-
quent course of events. It seemed to be in mere fretful-
ness that he remarked, a good many years since, in opposi-
tion to some new scheme for extending the popular power,
that he saw not how in such circumstances "the Queen's
Government could be carried on." But that strange
balance of parties in the country which leaves at present
scarce any preponderating power on any side to operate
as the moving force of " the Executive," has, we dare say,
led many to think that the old man saw more clearly at
the time than most of his critics or opponents. Though
of an indomitable will, too, he was in reality too strong-
minded a man to be an obstinate one. He could yield ;
and the part which he took in emancipating the Roman
Catholics, and in abolishing the corn laws, are evidences
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 67
of the fact. Further, it is not unimportant to know that
had the advice of the Duke of Wellington been acted upon
in our ecclesiastical controversy, no disruption would have
taken place in the Scottish Church, and the Scottish
Establishment would have survived in all its integrity, as
the strongest in Britain. Wellington's ability of yielding
more readily was based on his ability of seeing more
clearly than most of the other members of his party ; they
resembled the captains of Captain Sword, in Hunt's well-
known poem ; but he was the great Captain Sword him-
self. When the peaceable Captain Pen threatens to bring
a "world of men" at his back, and to disarm the old
warrior, the poet tells us that
" Out laughed the captains of Captain Sword,
But their chief looked vexed, and said not a word ;
For thought and trouble had touched his ears,
Beyond the bullet-like sense of theirs;
And wherever he went he wa'srVare of a sound,
Now heard in the distance, now gathering round,
Which irked him to know what the issue might be,
For the soul of the cause of it well guessed he."
In his moral character the Duke was eminently an honest
and truthful man, one of the most devoted and loyal of
subjects, and one of the most patriotic of citizens. His
name has been often coupled with that of the great mili-
tary captain of England in the last century, Marborough;
but, save in the one item of great military ability, they had
nothing in common. Wellington was frank to a fault.
One of the gravest blunders of his political life, his open
declaration in Parliament that the country's system of
representation possessed the country's full and entire con-
fidence, and that he would resist any measure of reform
go long as he held any station in the Government, was
certainly cgregiously impolitic ; but who can deny that it
was candid and frank ? Marlborough, on the other hand,
was one of the most tortuous and secret of men. Welling-
68 HISTORICAL AXD BIOGRAPHICAL.
ton was emphatically truthful; Marlborough a consummate
liar. Wellington would have laid down life and property
in the cause of his sovereign ; Marlborough was one of
the first egregiously to deceive and betray his royal master,
who, however great his faults and errors, was at least ever
kind to him. Wellington was, in fine, a thoroughly honest
man ; Marlborough, a brilliant scoundrel.
There seemed to be but little of the soft green of hu-
manity about the recently departed warrior. He was, in
appearance at least, a hard man, who always did his own
duty, and exacted from others the full tale of theirs. He
had seen, too, in his first and only disastrous campaign,
that of the Duke of York in the Netherlands, the direful
effects of unrestrained license in an army. Enraged by
numerous petty acts of violence and plunder, the people
of the country became at length undisguisedly hostile to
their nominal allies, and greatly enhanced the dangers and
difficulties of their frequent retreats. And Wellington,
taught, it is said, by the lesson, was ever after a stern dis-
ciplinarian, and visited at times with what was deemed
undue severity the liberties taken by his soldiery with
the property of an allied people. And so he possessed
much less of the love of the men who served under him
than not only the weaker but tender-hearted Nelson, but
than also the genial and good-humored Duke of York,
a prince whom no soldier ever trusted as a general, or
ever disliked as a man. But never did general possess
more thoroughly the confidence of his soldiers tlian Wel-
lington. Wherever he led, they were prepared to follow.
We have been told by an old campaigner, who had fought
under him in one of our Highland regiments in all the
battles of the Peninsula, that on one occasion, in a retreat,
the corps to which he belonged had been left far behind
in the rear of their fellows, and began to express some
anxiety regarding the near proximity of the enemy. " I
wish," said one, " I saw ten thousand of our countryfolk
beside us." " I wish, rather," rejoined another, "that I saw
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 09
the long nose of the Duke of Wellington." A few min-
utes after, however, the Duke was actually seen riding
past, and from that moment confidence was restored in
the regiment. They felt that the eye of Wellington was
upon them, and that all was necessarily right. Nor,
with all his seeming hardness, was Wellington in any
degree a cruel or inhuman man. He was, on the contrary,
essentially kind and benevolent. The same old cam-
paigner to whom we owe the anecdote, a gallant and
kind-hearted, but, like many soldiers, thoughtless man,
had, notwithstanding a tolerably adequate income for his
condition, fallen into straits ; and he at length bethought
him, in his difficulties, of availing himself of that arrange-
ment made by the Whigs about twenty years ago, when
they first came into office, through which he might sell
his pension. The proposed terms, however, were hard ;
and poor Johnston, wholly unconscious of the politics of
the day, wrote to his old general, to see whether he could
not procure for him better ones from his Majesty's minis-
ters, recounting, in his letter, his services and his wounds,
and stating that it was his intention, with the money
which he was desirous of raising, to emigrate to British
America. And prompt by return of post came the Duke's
reply, written in the Duke's own hand. Never was there
sounder advice more briefly expressed. "The Duke of
Wellington," said his Grace, " has received William John-
ston's letter ; and he earnestly recommends him, first, not
to seek for a provision in the colonies of North America,
if he be not able-bodied, and in a situation to provide for
himself in circumstances of extreme difficulty ; secondly,
not to sell or mortgage his pension. The Duke of 'Wel-
lington has no relation whatever with the King's ministers.
He recommends William Johnston to apply to the adju-
tant-general of the army. (London, March 7th, 1832.)"
The old pensioner did not take the Duke's advice; for he
did sell his pension, and, though, in consequence of his
wounds, not very able-bodied, he did emigrate to America,
70 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
and, we fear, suffered in consequence ; but it was not the
less true humanity on the part of his Grace to counsel so
promptly and so wisely the poor humble soldier. But,
alas ! his last advice has been given, and his last account
rendered ; and it will be well for our country should the
sovereign never miss his honored voice at the Council
Board, nor to borrow from ancient story the soldier
ever " vehemently desire him in the day of battle."
IX.
EARL GREY.
On Saturday last, the body of Charles, Earl Grey, was
committed, to the tomb of his ancestors ; and his lordship's
existence in relation to the present scene of being ranks
but among the things that were. His political life extends
over the long term of sixty years. Its beginnings pertain
to the annals of the last age. History has long since pro-
nounced judgment on the illustrious group of his earlier
friends and opponents, on Pitt and Fox and Burke,
Windham, Sheridan, Erskine, and Dundas, and the por-
tion of our literature in which they are celebrated, or which
we owe to them, is a literature that has descended to us
from our fathers. Were William Pitt still living, he would
be but four years older than the late Earl Grey. It may
seem fanciful ; but the prolonged existence of this veteran
statesman, so influential in the councils of his country at
a period when his years had well-nigh reached the full
tale indicated by the psalmist, taken in connection with
the imperishable associations of his early history, has served
to l-emind us of what we have sometimes witnessed beside
the waters of a petrifying spring : we have seen tufts of
EARL GREY. 71
vegetation, with their upper sprigs green and flourishing,
and the lower converted into solid stone ; the vital influ-
ences vigorous in the newer portion of the plant, while the
old<* were imperishably fixed in marble.
There are various deeply-interesting aspects in which the
political career of his lordship may be viewed. When he
first entered public life, the dissolute court and infidel
literature of France were busily engaged in sowing the
seeds which germinated and bore fruit as the first French
revolution. It was a gay winter in Paris, that of 1786,
when the Earl then Mr. Grey was first returned to
Parliament for his native county, Northumberland. The
Chevalier de Boufiiers was engaged in making charming
songs on the" new fashions ; the Queen had just pensioned
her milliner, and had got nine hundred thousand livres of
the public money to pay some of her own " small debts ; "
the courtiers, who had been inconsolable for some time,
for the most accomplished opera dancer in the world had
sprained her ankle, had recovered their spirits again, for
the ankle had also recovered ; and, though thousands of
the industrious poor were starving, and speaking omin-
ously, in their distress, of America and its revolution, and
though even the ladies had begun to wear bonnets a la
Hodney, no one could see how trifles such as these should
bear with sinister effect on the general hilarity. Nor
could the young representative of Northumberland have
possibly seen aught in them with which he, as a public
man, had anything to do. Nothing more certain, however,
than that the emphatically important portion of the his-
tory of Earl Grey which so peculiarly belongs to that of
his country is entwined with the history of France. We
could not better illustrate the influence which, in these
times of advanced civilization, the destinies of one great
European country exert on those of another, than by
instancing what his lordship at one period of his life at-
tempted, but signally failed to perform, and so completely
accomplished at another. The special work of the life of
72 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
Earl Grey that which now gives him a distinguished
niche in British history was the work of parliamentary
reform. In 1793 he first introduced into Parliament his
celebrated motion on this subject, and found, in a house of
two hundred and twenty-three members, only forty-one
supporters. The revolutionary tornado in France had
reached its extreme height at the time, and had prostrated,
in its fury, the king, the aristocracy, and the church;
French principles were spreading among ourselves ; some
of the more infidel writings of Paine had just appeared,
and were circulating among the people by thousands and
tens of thousands ; many of the more timid Whigs,
alarmed at the very appearance of change, hung back from
their old allies ; with this timid class the great bulk of the
more sober portion of the British people made common
cause ; and so the motion of Earl Grey was negatived by
a majority that served not only to extinguish the measure
for the time, but to leave scarce any hope of its ultimate
success. The terrible storm raised in France blew full
against it, and bore it down ; and it was not until a more
salutary storm arose in the same country nearly forty
years after, that it fairly righted again, and, under the in-
fluence of the now auspicious gale, bore into harbor. His
lordship held the helm in both cases ; and the tempest that
so signally baffled him in the one, and the gale that carried
his bark so directly into port in the other, blew from off
the same land.
When Earl Grey introduced into the House his first
unsuccessful motion for parliamentary reform, he was in
his twenty-ninth year. Thirty-eight years passed ere he
originated the motion on the subject which was to be
ultimately successful, and he was now in his sixty-seventh.
In the long intervening period, the change so common to
the mind of man, which modifies the Whiggism natural
to youth into the semi-Toryism natural to age, seems to
have taken place to some extent in the mind of Earl Grey ;
and his second measure was much less sweeping and ex-
EARL GREY. 73
tensive than Ins first. The first was based on the principle
of household suffrage, and involved a return to the origi-
nal scheme of triennial parliaments. The means, too,
which he originated to give the cause a popularity and
strength outside the walls of Parliament that might find
it favor and secure it attention within, partook of a bold-
ness characteristic of an early stage of vigorous and san-
guine manhood. He took a prominent part in the form-
ation of the "Association of Friends of the People," with
associates such as Whitbread, Erskine, Cartwright, and
Macintosh, men almost all of whom lived long enough
considerably to modify their views ; and it was in the
character of the leading organ of this body in the House
of Commons that he brought forward his first motion on
reform. There were, however, some few points in which
his earlier scheme excelled that which he lived to transfer
to the statute-book as part and parcel of the Constitution
of the country. It gave single votes to individual elec-
tors, and single votes only ; and provided that the elec-
tions, on a dissolution of Parliament, should take place
simultaneously all over the empire. In order rightly to
estimate the value of these provisions, we have but to look
at what is perhaps the greatest defect, both in principle
and practice, in the scheme of parliamentary reform which
he afterwards carried. A single individual may at the pres-
ent moment hold votes in at once every represented county
in Scotland, and in every burgh or district of burghs that
returns a member. On this principle, it is not the hold-
ers of property that vote, property being regarded, as
it ought, as a mere qualification that fixes the status of
the individual and establishes his stake in the country,
but the property itself. It is the voice of the house, field,
or farm that votes, the same voice serving for several
houses, fields, or farms, just as the same voice in a
puppet-show serves for Punch, Judy, and the Constable.
And thus it is not men, but things, that select the law-
makers of the country. Such seems to be the objection,
7
74 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
in point of principle, to a provision in Earl Grey's second
scheme of reform, which his first scheme repudiated ; and
in practice we find this provision more objectionable still.
It forms the basis of the whole corrupt machinery of
fictitious votes, and these, in turn, the support of not a
little of the profligacy in public life that can indulge in
the eye of day in its true colors, despising the wholesome
restraints of general opinion, because altogether indepen-
dent of them. It is at once a copious source of corruption
among the representatives of the country, and of legalized
perjuries among the represented. We know of no defect
in the measure at all deserving of being placed in the
same class with this grand one, save, perhaps, the provi-
sion that extends the political franchise to tenants-at-will.
Legislation cannot give independence to the mind of a
voter ; but it should at least provide, in every possible
case, that independence should be communicated to his
circumstances.
There is another interesting point illustrated by the
long political life of Earl Grey. His lordship was un-
questionably a very able man, but he did not possess one
of those gigantic minds which mould and fashion the
destinies of nations. He resembled rather an index-hand
attached to the great political machine, than its moving
power. No one can say how the civil war would have
terminated in England in the seventeenth century had there
been no Cromwell, or what complexion the present poli-
tics of France and the Continent generally would wear
had there been no Napoleon. Had the one great man
never been called into existence, it is probable that on the
death of Hampden prerogative would have triumphed,
and Britain have sunk to the level of the contemporary
despotisms of the Continent. It is possible that, had the
other great man never lived, an allied army would have
marched to Paris ere the present century began, and that
humbled France, restored to the despotic sway of the
Bourbons, and with no proud recollections of victory to
EARL GREY. 75
reinvigorate her, would have witnessed no second revolu-
tion. Cromwell and Napoleon belonged to the class of
men to whom the destinies of their age seem intrusted ;
but in the career of Earl Grey we see rather the move-
ments of an intelligent index of the course of things than
the operations of a power originating and setting them in
motion. And hence an interest of a particular kind in
contemplating his history. We see in it the growth of
popular opinion, like that of vegetation in a backward
spring, now shooting forth in green vigor, now checked
and prostrated by the chilling influence of great political
storms, now yet again recovering itself, now again thrown
back, and finally reaching, in the decline of the year, a late
and somewhat blighted maturity. First come the terrors
of the French Revolution ; then the untoward influences
of the long French war ; then an intermediate period, in
which the power acquired during the two 1 previous seasons
by the antagonists of all political change is employed in
depressing their opponents ; and then, when opinion,
long cherished in its growth, and often thrown back, has
arrived at the necessary degree of ripeness, a reaping-time
arrives, and Earl Grey, as little able previously to control
the heats and chills of the political atmosphere as the
husbandman to control the weather, on which all his
interests depend, reaps the harvest of his political life. It
is not our present purpose to speak of the great measure
which will be ever associated with his name in the history
of our country. With all its defects, it indisputably did
much for the letter of the Constitution, and nowhere so
much as in Scotland. It everywhere extended the basis
on which the liberty of the subject rests ; and nowhere
else had that basis been so narrow as in this northern
kingdom, and nowhere else had it been so unsound. It
is, however, the "spirit," not the "letter," that " maketh
alive ; " and it is not from statesmen, however enlightened
or honest, that the spirit can come. They can construct
the framework of constitutions ; they can mould them out
76 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
of the humble materials of which laws are made, as the
body of Adam was moulded from the dust; but virtue in
the people is that alone breath of life without which they.,
cannot become "living souls." The people of Scotland
had scarce any political standing in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and yet, animated by a right spirit,
they accomplished much. One of these centuries wit-
nessed the Reformation, and the other the Revolution.
During the last twelve years our people have possessed, on
the contrary, ample political standing ; but it would not
be quite so easy to say what great work they have accom-
plished.
The personal character of the nobleman over whom
the grave has so lately closed seems to have been truly
excellent. He was a Whig of a high type ; and we cer-
tainly think none the less of him from the circumstance
that, while he struggled to extend the privileges of the
people, his leanings were aristocratic, and that he stood
determinedly by his order. He exerted himself with a
life-long exertion to do what he deemed justice to one
class of the community, while his feelings and predilections
were mainly with another. There are incidents not a
few in his biography that tell remarkably well. On the
character of Fox there rests the unhappy stain left by his
public denial of the marriage of the Prince Regent, after-
wards George IV., to Mrs. Fitzherbert, though of that
marriage Fox himself is said to have been a witness.
Earl (then Mr.) Grey is known to have been exposed, in
the case, to a similar temptation to that in which his
leader was wanting, but he stood it vastly better. " Mr.
Fox," says one of the Earl's biographers, " being authorized
by the prince, had denied the marriage with Mrs. Fitz-
herbert. The lady was naturally offended, and, to appease
her, the prince tried to restore the matter to the uncer-
tainty which had previously hung over it. He wished,
therefore, to have some ambiguous or equivocating remark
made, as if from authority, in the House of Commons;
EARL GREY. 77
and, with singular want of discrimination, Mr. Grey was
applied to for the purpose. But the unaccommodating
young senator spurned the dishonorable office, and gave
offence which was never forgotten or forgiven." It is
further to the honor of Earl Grey, that though by no
means indifferent to the pleasures of place or the possession
of power, he held office, during his long political life of
more than half a century, for little more than five years.
He had many opportunities of being in place presented to
him, had he chosen to sacrifice principle for its sake ; but
he did not choose it. Very different indeed would be the
present position of the party to which he belonged, had
they but imitated their leader in this important respect.
In these times of reaction on old Toryism, none the wiser
or better for all the experience of the past, they would
be by far the strongest, not what they now are, one of
the weakest parties in the country.
7*
78 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
X.
LORD JEFFREY.
The most eminent of our Edinburgh literati a man
who for nearly half a century has enjoyed European celeb-
rity as first in the realms of criticism, and a reputation at
least coextensive with his native country as a politician
and a lawyer has passed from off the stage of mortal
existence, and now lives but in the unseen world. On the
evening of Saturday last, Francis Jeffrey, the philosophic
and tasteful reviewer, the accomplished advocate, and
judicious and honest judge, died, after a few days' illness,
at his Edinburgh residence in Moray Place, in the seventy-
eighth year of his age.
Lord Jeffrey may be properly regarded as the last Scot-
tish survivor of that group of eminent men, contemporary
with Napoleon, to which Chalmers and Sir Walter Scott,
Wordsworth and Wellington, Goethe, Cnvier, Humboldt,
and Chateaubriand belong. Professor Wilson, though fast
descending into the vale of years, we regard as the member
of a somewhat later group, that of Lockhart, Carlyle,
and Macaulay, Lamartine, Arago, and Sir David Brewster.
It was the last Scotchman of that elder group of distin-
guished men who achieved celebrity or influenced opinion
as early as the beginning of the present century, or nearly
so, that quitted this scene of things on the evening of
Saturday. And he has left to the biographer, in the story
of his life, much that is of signal interest and impor-
tance in the legal and political history of our country,
and much in the history of its literature that is better
represented by his career than by that of any other in-
dividual. He represents a mighty revolution in letters,
LCVRD JEFFREY. 79
which has perhaps considerably lessened the number of
books, but increased, beyond all calculation, the number of
brilliant articles. Not a few superior men have passed
away in consequence, and left no permanent mark behind
them ; but that literature of the periodic press which forms,
perhaps too exclusively, the staple reading of the age,
which occupies men's minds and influences their opinions
to-day, but which is in great part forgotten ere to-morrow,
and which, in this as in other respects, forms that daily
bread of the republic of letters which cannot be wanted,
and which, once used up, is never more thought of, has
been immensely heightened in its tone and power, and
become a great engine, without whose potent assistance no
cause can succeed, and no party prosper. Previous to the
appearance of perhaps the only " Edinburgh Review "
known to the great bulk of our readers, there had been
men, who, in calibre and literary attainment, at least
equalled the ablest of its contributors engaged in writing
for periodicals. We do not refer to those diurnal, or
hebdomadal, or semi-hebdomadal publications of the last
century, which may be regarded as commencing with the
" Tatler " and Sir Richard Steele, and terminating with
the " Lounger " and Henry M'Kenzie, works which con-
tain some of the finest writings in the language, but
simply to the newspapers and magazines. For these, com-
pelled by stern necessity, Goldsmith wrote for several
years. His "Citizen of the World" one of the most
exquisitely written books in any tongue first appeared
as a series of essays in the " Public Ledger;" and he wrote
criticisms for the "Monthly Review," and articles for
the "British Magazine." Smollett conducted for about
seven years the " Critical Review ; " Burke wrote for the
"Annual Register;" and Johnson labored for years for
the "Literary Magazine," the "Gentleman's Magazine,"
and the " Universal Visitor." And about half a century
previous to the appearance of that second " Edinburgh
Review" with which the name of Jeffrey must be foiwer
80 HISTORICAL 4ND BIOGRAPHICAL,
associated in the history of letters, there existed for about
a twelvemonth a first " Edinburgh Review," conducted by
Blair, Robertson and Adam Smith. But there were no
periodicals of sustained effort, or (with perhaps the excep-
tion of this first " Edinburgh Review ") all of whose con-
tributors were men of nearly equal standing and power.
Burke, Johnson, and Goldsmith were associated in their
compelled labors with dull amateurs, or the scribblers of
Grub Street ; and Smollett, in his description in " Hum-
phrey Clinker " of a dinner of authors, is known to have
drawn, in the hair-brained mediocritists which he portrays,
some of the nameless contributors associated with him in
his periodical. Even when, as in the Edinburgh instance,
all the writers were superior, they seem to have given but
half their mind to their work of article-writing. The first
"Edinburgh Review " is a respectable, but not a very bril-
liant production. Its writers were engaged at the time on
works which still live: Robertson on his "History of
Scotland," Smith on his "Theory of Moral Sentiments,"
and Blair in maturing the thinking of his " Lectures on
Criticism and the Belles Lettres ; " and they could spare
for their occasional critiques merely the odds and ends of
their cogitations. " No man ever did anything well," says
Johnson, "to which he did not apply the whole bent of
his mind ; " and it was reserved for Jeffrey and his associ-
ates at once to render, by their equality of talent, a peri-
odical all of a piece, and, in generous rivalry, to do for
it the very best whicli they were capable of performing.
Robertson and Adam Smith could, and did, immensely
exceed themselves in all they had done for their " Review ; "
whereas Jeffrey and Sydney Smith did all they were capa-
ble of doing for theirs ; and so on no other occasion or form
did they exceed what they had accomplished as periodical
reviewers. And hence the great revolution in periodical
literature which they effected. Without once designing
any suqh thing, they succeeded in raising its platform from
LORD JEFFREY. 81
the level of Grub Street to very nearly that of the stand-
ard of literature of the country.
We say, without once designing any such thing. Cha-
teaubriand shrewdly remarks of Napoleon, that, " by lead-
ing on France to the attack," that is, by bringing armies
into the field some five or six times more numerous than
had wont to be employed under the old school of strategy,
" he taught Europe also to march : the chief point which
has since been considered is to multiply means; masses have
been balanced by masses. Instead of a hundred thousand
men, six hundred thousand have been brought into the
field ; instead of a hundred pieces of cannon, five hundred
have been employed." And such was the effect produced
by that introduction of first-class talent into the field of
periodic literature with which we associate the name of
Jeffrey. The " Edinburgh Review " was a Whig periodical ;
and the interests of the opposite party imperatively de-
manded that its park of artillery five hundred strong should
be met by an antagonist park in which the guns should be
as numerous and their calibre as great. And hence the
origination of the " Quarterly Review," edited by Gifford,
and to which men such as Southey and Sir Walter Scott
contributed. And then the magazines caught the high tone
communicated by the Review ; and in this race, as in the
other, Scotland assumed the lead. The " Christian Instruc-
tor," edited by Dr. Andrew Thompson, and supported by
Dr. M'Crie, Dr. Chalmers, and Dr. Somerville, started first
on the new table-land of elevation ; though its theological
character, and its restriction to the old Presbyterianism of
Scotland, served greatly to limit both its influence and its
fame. " Blackwood " followed, and took at once a place in
literature which no magazine, at least as a whole, had ever
taken before. It was supported by the contributions of
Lockhart, Gait, DeQuincey, Moir, and Alison, and con-
ducted, it was understood, for many years by Professor
Wilson. The "New Monthly" followed, with Thomas
Campbell at its head; and about much the same time,
82 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
Byron, Shelly, and Leigh Hunt originated their short-lived
periodical the " Liberal." The newspapers had partaken
at even an earlier period of the induced elevation. Like
the magazines and reviews, they had been the occasional
vehicles of very powerful writing at a comparatively earlier
period. The "Letters of Junius " had appeared in the "Gen-
eral Advertiser." Coleridge had, for a short time about
the beginning of the present century, conducted the "Morn-
ing Post." Sir James Macintosh had, at a rather earlier
date, written copiously for several of the liberal papers of
the day. But it was not until the " Edinburgh Review "
had fairly entered on its career, that that general elevation
of the newspaper platform took place which is now one
of the marked characteristics of periodic literature. Edin-
burgh has been in this respect far behind London ; but a
very great change has taken place during the last forty
years even in Edinburgh. There are men still connected
with our newspaper printing-offices who remember when
papers by the management of which fortunes were realized
were conducted either without an editor at all, or by some
printer or mere man of business, who would be unfitted in
the present time to perform the duties of even a sub-editor
or reporter. It was mainly through that indirect influence
of the labors of Lord Jeffrey and his f n?u 1" *~ *vhich we
refer that Edinburgh has reckoned an -ug >:> a wspaper
editors, during the last thirty years, wi_. ;j rftux tS M'Cul-
lock, M'Laren, Buchanan, Dr. James Brown, Alexander
Sutherland, and John Malcolm. The provincial news-
paper press has also caught the general tone. Had there
been no "Edinburgh Review," newspapers such as the
"Dumfries Courier" and the " Inverness Courier " would
have been prodigies. No later than the day on which
Lord Jeffrey died, a gentleman of business habits, who had
been for some time unsuccessfully engaged in looking out
for an editor to conduct a weekly paper established in a
large town, remarked to us, that of all men an efficient
newspaper editor was perhaps the most difficult to find.
LOUD JEFFREY. 83
It occurred to us not long after, on hearing of his lord-
ship's death, that, in all probability, had he never lived, the
difficulty would not have existed
This indirect influence exercised on periodic literature
by Lord Jeffrey was perhaps more important in the main
than that which he wielded as a political writer or a critic.
And yet in both departments he stood very high. His
influence as a politician is of course mixed up with that
of his associates, and must be regarded generally as that
of the "Review" which he conducted. For about thirty
years, as we had once before occasion to remark, the
" Edinburgh Review " labored indefatigably with various
political objects in view, mainly, however, to repress the
dreaded growth of despotism, and to assert the cause of
constitutional reform. And for at least the latter half
of that period its exertions were accompanied by very
marked success. During the war with France, the current
ran strongly against it. It was thrown out in its calcula-
tions, both by that infatuation of Napoleon which led to
the Russian campaign, and by the military genius of
Wellington. The consequent issue of the great revolu-
tionary struggle was a struggle which it had not foreseen.
There was, besides, a principle elicited in our state of war
which ran counter in its influence to that of the "Review."
The resentments of the people were so enraged with their
enemies abroad, that they had comparatively little indig-
nation to spare for their rulers at home. But a period of
peace told powerfully in its favor. Men found leisure to
look through the spectacles which it furnished at the
defects of existing institutions ; its politics spi'ead and
gathered strength; a second French revolution, achieved
under immensely more favorable circumstances than the
first, wrought as decidedly in favor of the Liberal cause in
Britain as the first French revolution had wrought against it;
and Whiggism at length saw its favorite scheme of political
reform embodied into a bill, and passed into a la\* And
in producing this result the "Edinburgh Review " had a
84 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
large and sensible share. But then, Jeffrey was simply-
one of several powerful-minded men to whom the period-
ical owed its- political potency. Regarded, however, in
its purely critical character, and as a leader of the public
taste in poetry and the belles lettres, the case was
otherwise. Though Sir James Macintosh occasionally
contributed a paper, such as his critique on the Poems
of Rogers, which in this department fully sustained the
general character of the periodical, Jeffrey to all intents
and purposes was the Edinburgh Review." And in this
his peculiar province he took his place, we have no hesi-
tation in saying, as the nVst British critic of the age. He
had his prejudices and his deficiencies, and occasionally
put out in his reckoning by what the poet beautifully
describes as "glorious faults, which critics dare not mend "
he committed, as in the case of Wordsworth, grave mis-
takes ; but, take him all in all, where, we ask, is the critic
of the present century who is to be placed in the scale
against Francis Jeffrey ? His peculiar fitness for his task
resulted mainly from the exquisiteness of his taste, his
fearless hongsty, and the integrity of his judgment. His
few mistakes arose chiefly from certain partial defects
in faculty. These, however, were important enough to
prevent him, if not from taking his place as the first of
contemporary critics, from at least entering those highest
walks of British criticism in which a very few of the
master minds of the past were qualified to expatiate, and
but these few exclusively. There are snatches of criticism
in the prefaces and dedications of Dryden, in Burke's
" Ti aatise on the Sublime and Beautiful," and even in
Johnson's " British Poets " (though there were important
faculties which Johnson also lacked), which Jeffrey has
not equalled. But that man rises high in an intellectual
department, who, though not equal to some of the more
illustrious dead, is first among his compeers. "We know
not at t>nce a better illustration of what Jeffrey could do,
and what he failed in doing, than that furnished by his
LORD JEFFREY. 85
article on the Sense of the Beautiful. There is scarce
a finer piece of writing in the language ; and yet it
embodies, as part of its very essence, the great sophism
that, apart from the influence of the associative faculty,
there is no beauty in color. We know of but one other
sophism in the language that at all approaches it in the
elegance and delicacy of its form, and which resembles it,
too, in its perfect honesty and good faith ; for both
authors wrote as they felt, and failed in producing more
than partial truth, which is always tantamount to error,
simply because they both lacked a faculty all-essential to
the separate inquiries which they conducted. Both were
fully sensible of the immense power of association in
eliciting images of delight ; but the one, insensible to
the beauty of simple sounds, from the want of a musical
ear, attributed all the power of music to association alone;
and the other, insensible to the beauty of simple colors,
attributed, from a similar want of appreciating faculty, all
their power of gratifying the eye to a similar cause. All
our readers are acquainted with the article on the Beauti-
ful ; but the following fine stanzas, the production of John
Finlay, a Scottish poet, who died early in the present
century, when he had but mastered his powers, may be
new to most of them :
" Why does the melting voice, the tuneful string,
A sigh of woe, a tear of pleasure bring?
Can simple sounds or joy or grief inspire,
Or wake the soul responsive to the wire?
Ah, no ! some other charm to rapture draws,
More than the finger's skill, the artist's laws;
Some latent feeling at the string awakes,
Starts to new life, and through the fibres shakes;
Some cottage-home, where first the strain was heard,
By many a tie of former days endeared ;
Some lovely maid who on thy bosom hung,
And breathed the note all tearful as she sung;
Some youth who first awoke the pensive lay,
Friend of thy infant years, now far away;
8
8G HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
Some scene that patriot blood embalms in song;
Some brook that winds thy native vales among,
All steal into the soul, in witching train,
Till home, the maid, the friend, the scene, return again.
'Twas thus the wanderer 'mid the Syrian wild
Wept at the strain he caroll'd when a child.
O'er many a weary waste the traveller passed,
And hoped to find some resting-place at last,
Beneath some branchy shade, his journey done,
To shelter from the desert and the sun ;
And haply some green spot the pilgrim found,
And hailed and blessed the stream's delicious sound.
When on his ear the well known ditty stole,
That, as it melted, passed into his soul,
' O, Both well bank! ' each thrilling sound conveyed
The Scottish landscape to the palm-tree shade;
No more Damascus' streams his spirit held,
No more its minarets his eye beheld:
Pharpar and Abana unheeded glide,'
He hears in dreams the music of the Clyde;
And Bothwell's bank, amid o'er-arching trees,
Echoes the bleat of flocks, the hum of bees.
With less keen rapture on the Syrian shore,
Beneath the shadow of the sycamore,
His eye had turned, amid the burst of day,
Tadmor's gigantic columns to survey,
That sullenly their length of shadows throw
On sons of earth, who, trembling, gaze below.
'Twas thus when to Quebec's proud heights afar
Wolfe's chivalry rolled on the tide of war,
The hardy Highlander, so fierce before,
Languidly lifted up the huge claymore;
To him the bugle's mellow notes were dumb,
And even the rousing thunders of the drum,
Till the loud pibroch sounded in the van,
And led to battle forth each dauntless clan.
Onrush the brave, the plaided chiefs advance;
The line resounds, ' Lochiel's awa' to France! '
With vigorous arm the falchion lift on high,
Fight as their fathers fought, and like their fathers die."
Long as our extract is, there are, we suppose, few oi
our readers who will deem it too long. Independently,
LORD JEFFREY. 87
voo, of its exquisite vein, it illustrates better both the
merits and the defects of Lord Jeffrey's theory of beauty
than any other passage in the round of our literature with
which we are acquainted. For there are scores whose
degree of musical taste compels them to hold that there
is a beauty in "simple sounds" altogether independent
of association, for the single individuals whose sense of
the beauty of " simple colors " is sufficiently strong
to convince them that it, like the other sense, has an
underived existence wholly its own.
We have left ourselves but little space to speak of the
distinguished man, so recently lost to us, as a lawyer, a
statesman, and a judge. He will be long remembered in
Edinburgh as one of the most accomplished and effective
pleaders that ever appeared at the Scottish bar. It has
become common to allude to his appearances in the House
of Commons as failures. We know not how his speeches
may have sounded in the old chapel of St. Stephen's ;
but this we know, that of all the speeches in both Houses
of which the Reform Bill proved the fruitful occasion, we
remember only his : we can ever recall some of its happy
phrases ; as when, for instance, he described the important
measure which he advocated as a firmament which was to
separate the purer waters above from the fouler and more
turbulent waters below, the solid worth of the country,
zealous for reform, from its wild, unprincipled licentious-
ness, bent on subversion ; and, founding mainly on this
selective instinct of our memory, we conclude that the
speech, which is said to have disappointed friends and
gratified opponents, must have been really one of the best
delivered at the time, perhaps the very best. As a
judge, the character of Jeffrey may be summed up in the
vigorous stanza of Dryden :
" In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch, and easy of access."
88 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
All accounts agree in representing him as in private life
one of the kindest and gentlest of mortals, ever surrounded
by the aroma of a delicate sense of honor and a transpar-
ent truthfulness, equable in temper, in conversation full of
a playful case, and, with even his ordinary talk, ever
glittering in an unpremeditated wit, "that loved to play,
not wound." Never was there a man more thoroughly
beloved by his friends. Though his term of life exceeded
the allotted threescore and ten years, his fine intellect, like
that of the great Chalmers, whom he sincerely loved and
respected, and by whom he was much loved and respected
in turn, was to the last untouched by decay. Only four
days previous to that of his death he sat upon the bench ;
only a few months ago he furnished an article for his old
" Review," distinguished by all the nice discernment and
acumen of his most vigorous days. It is further gratifying
to know, that though infected in youth and middle age
by the wide-spread infidelity of the first French revolu-
tion, he was for at least the last few years of his life of a
different spirit : he read much and often in his Bible ; and
he is said to have studied especially, and with much
solicitude, the writings of St. Paul.
FIRE AT THE TOWER OF LONDON. 89
XI.
FIRE AT THE TOWER OF LONDON.
Three of the most interesting ancient buildings of
Britain destroyed by fire within less than ten years !
" Are such calamities as these really unavoidable ? " asks
a writer in the Times, " and ought we to make up our
minds to hear of the conflagration of some great national
treasure every five or ten years as a thing that must be ? "
Treasures of at least equal value still survive to England,
Windsor, Hampton Court, the British Museum, and the
great University Libraries. How are they to be pro-
tected ? Increased vigilance and care are recommended
by this writer. Fires smoulder for hours ere they burst
forth so as to be detected by the watchmen outside ; and
they have then, in most cases, become too formidable to
be got under. But by stationing careful persons within
our more valuable buildings, instructed to visit every
apartment and passage once every hour, might not the
mischief be detected at a stage when it could be easily
overmastered ? Statistical fact, however, comes in to show
that the suggestion is less wise than obvious ; buildings
so watched are found more liable to destruction from fire
than those for whose safety no such precautions are taken.
The private watchman has to use a light in his rounds ; in
cold weather he requires a fire ; though essential that ho
be of steady character, there is a liability to be deceived,
on the part of the employer, considerable enough to tell
in the statistical table as an element of accident. Even
when there is no unsteadiness, inattention is apt to ci-eep
on men watching against an enemy that has just a chance
of visiting what they guard once in five hundred years.
8*
90 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
In short, the result of the matter is, that insurance offices,
founding on their tables, demand a higher premium for
houses guarded in this manner than for houses left alto-
gether unprotected. To meet with the evil thus indicated,
the writer in the Times suggests that the watchmen, in
order to keep up their vigilance, should be changed once
every two years ; that each at the end of his term should
have to look forward to some certain promotion as a reward
of his diligence and care; and that none but active, pru-
dent, trustworthy men should be chosen for the office. The
scheme, of course, lies open to the objection just hinted at;
the inevitable liability of employers to be deceived in
chai-acter would in not a few cases render the precaution
useless. We question, too, whether the attention of a
watchman who visited every part of a large building some
ten or twelve times each night for two years together,
could be. so continually kept up that more than a balance
would be struck between the dangers he introduced and
those he prevented. It is doubtful, we say, whether, even
by a scheme thus improved, the statistician would find that
the watchman did more than neutralize himself.
One suggestion, however, may be made on the subject,
which we are convinced the practical man will at once
recognize as sound. The causes of the three great fires
which within the last seven years have inflicted three
great calamities on the country, seem, so far as they can
be ascertained, to have been all pretty much alike : they
all appear to have been connected with the overheating
of flues. The buildings were all ancient ones, none of
them at least less so than the times of William III. ; and
they have all been destroyed by accidents originating in
the modem mode of heating houses by stoves and metal
flues. Any one practically acquainted with the subject
must see that in every such case the liability to accidents
of this nature is inevitably great. In building a house,
the workman can take the necessary precautions as he
proceeds. He can take care, for instance, that no beam
FIRE AT THE TOWER OF LONDON. 01
or joist, or other piece of wood, approach any flue nearer
than a foot, the distance specified by act of Parliament ;
but in altering a house, he can, in striking out his flues,
take no such precautions. In cutting through the hard
walls, there may be wood within an inch of him, of which
he can know nothing, wood covered up at times by a
mere film of mortar ; and no possible care can guarantee
him against accidents. He is of necessity a worker in the
dark ; nor, in the circumstances, can it be otherwise.
Still, however, one very effectual kind of precaution may
be taken. A medium for heating such a flue may be
employed through which fire cannot be communicated.
A metal flue, heated in the ordinary manner, becomes
not unfrequently red hot, and sets fire to whatever wood
may be in contact with it ; and hence, we doubt not,
the destruction of both Houses of Parliament, the Royal
Exchange, and the National Armory. But steam, when
employed as the heating medium, is restricted to a certain
temperature, above which it cannot rise, and which cannot
set fire to wood or any other substance employed in
architecture. We would therefore suggest it should be
laid down as a rule, that in all ancient buildings heated
by metal flues, the heating medium should be steam, and
that the furnance should always be in a fire-proof outhouse,
disconnected from every other building. Simple as the
precaution may seem, we are certain it would diminish
the chances of accident from fire by full two thirds of
their present amount.
It is melancholy enough that in so brief a period three
of the most interesting public buildings of England or
the world should have thus perished. Each of the three
has been associated for centuries with the history of
Britain, in all for which Britain is most famous. Her
emporium of trade is still a heap of blackened ruins,
the noble and venerable pile that served to connect her
commerce of the present day, spread over every land and
every sea, with her commerce of three hundred years ago,
92 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
when a few adventurous traders struck out in quest of
yet undiscovered shores, into oceans still undefined by the
geographer, and whose remoter skirts seemed as if bounded
by lines of darkness ! Her halls of legislation perished
next, erections the history of which is that of civil
liberty, not in Britain only, but over half the world,
places suggestive of every great English name that mingles
in the history of the lengthened contest between right
and prerogative, from the days of Pryne and Hampden
down to those of Chatham and Fox. And now the
national magazine of trophies and arms has fallen a prey
to the devouring element. The building representative of
the wars and victories of Britain has shared the same fate
with her halls of commerce and legislation ; and much
has perished, as in the other cases, which cannot be
estimated at a money value, and which money cannot
replace ; the relics of Blenheim and of Waterloo, the
remains of the two rebellions in Scotland, the arms of
Tippoo Saib, the bows employed at Cressy and Agincourt,
the spoils of the Armada and of Trafalgar, much that
linked together the names and triumphs of many of our
greatest warriors, by exhibiting their exploits, if we may
so expi'ess ourselves, on one platform, that grouped
together the memories, as well as the trophies, of Blake
and of Nelson, that associated Henry the Fifth with
William of Orange, and brought into close juxtaposition
the names and histories of Marlborough and of Wellington.
The loss is a national one, and we fear we would but lay
ourselves open to a charge of extravagance were we to
say at how great a rate we estimate it. Some of our
readers must remember the instance given by Thomas
Brown of the force with which distant existences or
events are sometimes impressed on the mind through the
medium of objects in themselves trivial and uninteresting.
He relates the case of some English sailors moved to
sudden tears by thoughts of home and their friends, on
finding on the bleak coast of Labrador a metal spoon with
FIRE AT THE TOWER OF LONDON". 93
the name "London" stamped on the handle. Such is the
constitution of the mind, that the seen and the tangible
impart to whatever we associate with them impressiveness
and reality. The armor worn by an ancient king sets
him much more vividly before us than the chronicles of
his reign, however minute ; the trophies of a battle enable
us better to realize it than the most graphic descriptions
of the historian, or, rather, they give to the descriptions
a new sense of truth, by rendering them in some degree
evident to the senses ; they are the stone and earth by
which we enfeoff ourselves in them as matters of solid
belief. There is an interest, too, in such relics regarded
in their connection with classical literature, as a sort of
goods and chatties of cultivated minds. Who acquainted
with letters, whether in our own country or abroad, did
not regret, in the destruction of both Houses of Parlia-
ment, the loss of the old and faded tapestry which sug-
gested to Chatham his eloquent and impressive appeal ?
Or who interested in Shakspeare does not feel that England
was richer for possessing what it possessed only a week
ago, the identical apartment in which Clarence was
smothered in his Malmsey ? Whatever is intimately
associated with the great names of a nation forms a
portion of the national wealth. The feeling that it does
so, says an eminent writer of the last age, is a feeling
implanted by nature; "and when I find Tully confessing
of himself, that he could not forbear, at Athens, to visit the
walks and houses which the old philosophers had frequented
or inhabited, and recollect the reverence which every nation,
civil and barbarous, has paid to the ground where merit
has been buried, I am afraid to declare against the general
voice of mankind, and am inclined to believe that this
regard which we involuntarily pay to the meanest relic
of a man great and illustrious, is intended as an incite-
ment to labor, and an encouragement to expect the same
renown, if it be sought by the same virtues."
94 HISTORICAL AXD EIOGRAPHICA.L.
XII.
THE CENTENARY OF " THE FORTY-FIVEP
The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland
held its first meeting at Inverness on Thursday the 21st
ult. ; and on Tuesday the 19th, just two days before, a
party of gentlemen and ladies, accompanied by half a
dozen pipers, visited Glenfinnon in rather showery weather,
and called their visit the "Centennial Commemoration
of the Gathering of the Clans." A great reality, and the
meagre ghost of what had been a great reality a hundred
years ago, entered upon the stage at nearly the same place
and time, but with a very different result from that which
almost always takes place in the ghost scene in Hamlet.
Hamlet the living a thing, as he himself informs us, of
" too, too solid flesh " attracts but a small share of
attention compared with that excited by the unsolid
spectre of Hamlet the dead ; the shadow fairly eclipses
the substance. But here, on the contrary, it was the sub-
stance that fairly eclipsed the shadow. The solid reality
so occupied the mind of the Highlands that it had not a
thought to spare on the unsolid ghost ; and so the ghost,
all drooping and disconsolate, passed off the stage unap-
plauded and unseen. We could find no room at the time
for the paragraph that formed the sole record of its en-
trance and exit : our columns were occupied to the full
with matters which the " clans " deemed of more serious
concernment than the centenary of their gathering in
Glenfinnon, -r- among the rest, with the very grave fact
that not a few of their present chieftains are grossly out-
raging their rights of conscience, and chasing them, when
they meet to worship God on the brown moors and bleak
THE CENTENARY OF " THE FORTY- FIVE." 95
hillsides of their country, to its exposed cross-roads and
its wild sea-beaches. But we have found room for it now,
not as a piece of news, for, after the lapse of a month,
it has become somewhat stale, but as the record of an
event which, though but a trifle in itself, is at least inter-
esting in what it indicates. A feather has been held to
the lips of dead Jacobitism, to ascertain whether there
was breath enough left within to stir the fibres, and not a
single fibre has moved ; and the paragraph on the " Cen-
tennial Commemoration " records the experiment and its
result.
There are curious mental phenomena connected with
the history of the decay of Jacobitism in Scotland. Like
the matter of decomposing bodies, it passed, at a certain
stage in its progress, from the solid to the gaseous form,
and found entrance in the more subtle state into a class
of minds from which, in its grosser and more tangible
condition, it had been excluded. We are introduced in
the letters of Burns to an ancient lady, stately and solemn,
and much a Jacobite, who boasted that she had the blood
of the Bruce in her veins, and who conferred, in virtue of
her descent, the dignity of knighthood on the poet. We
learn further, that the poet and the ancient lady, during
the evening they spent together, agreed remarkably well :
she would scarce have knighted him otherwise. She pro-
posed toasts so full of loyalty to the exiled family that
they were gross treason against the reigning one ; but,
notwithstanding their extremeness, the poet cordially drank
to them, and, in short, seemed in every respect as zealous
a Jacobite as herselfT But there was a wide difference
between the Jacobitism of Burns and that of the ancient
lady. Hers was of the solid, his of the gaseous cast.
Her mind was of the order in which effete opinions and.
dying beliefs are cherished to the last ; his of the salient
order, that are the first to receive new impressions and to
take up new views. She would undoubtedly have died a
Jacobite of the old grim type, that were content to forfeit
96 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
land and life in the cause of a shadowy loyalty ; he, on the
other hand, only a few years after, incurred the suspicion
and displeasure of Government by sending a present of
artillery to the French Convention, to assist in defending
a people who had deposed their king, against all other
kings, and the Jacobites of their own country. The
Jacobite of one year, who addressed enthusiastic verses to
the "revered defenders of beauteous Stuart," and composed
the " Chevalier's Lament," had become in the next the
uncompromising Jacobin, who wrote " A man's a man for
a' that." Now, through the very opposite classes of minds
represented by the old lady and the poet has Jacobitism
passed in Scotland, in its progress to extinction. The
class of true Jacobites the men in whom Jacobitism
was a solid principle died with the generation that
fought at Culloden, and they were succeeded by the class
to whom Jacobitism formed merely a sort of laughing-gas,
that agreeably excited the feelings. These last bore ex-
actly the same sort of relation to the race that preceded
them, that our admirers of earnestness in the present day
bear to the earnest men of a bygone time whom they
admire. Their principle was ineffective as a principle of
action : it was purely a thing of excited imaginations, and
of feelings strung by the aspirations of romance ; and
died away, even when elevated to its highest pitch, in
tones of sweet music, or the wild cadences of ballad poetry.
But this Jacobitism of the middle stage of decay had
at least the merit of being a reflection of the real Jaco-
bitism that had gone before. It was Jacobitism mirrored
in poetry. Not such, however, the character of yet a
third species of Jacobitism, that exists at the present in a
few calculating minds wretchedly unfitted for the work of
calculation. We have heard of an English divine of the
last century, who, having grafted on his theology the phi-
losophy of Bolingbroke and Pope, used to assert in his dis-
courses that whatever was was right, and who was urged
after sermon, on one occasion, by an individual of his
THE CENTENARY OF " THE FORTY-FIVE." 97
congregation, a little, thin man, formed somewhat like
the letter S, with one shoulder greatly higher and one leg
greatly shorter than the other, to say whether he was
all right. " Oh yes, all right," was the unhesitating reply
of the reverend doctor ; " you are quite right for a crip-
ple." Now, the middle stage of Scotch Jacobitism was in
like manner quite a right thing of its kind : its legs and
shoulders were not equal ; it stumped about on a Jacobit-
ical leg to-day, and sometimes, as in the case of Burns,
stood on a Jacobinical leg to-morrow ; but then it was
all quite right for a cripple, and, if it could do nothing
more, produced at least some pretty music and some
exquisite song. The existing Jacobitism, or, rather, the
Jacobitism not existing, but merely supposed to exist, a
shadow of a shade, a cripple a thousand times more
lame than the Jacobitism its immediate predecessor, for it
has got no legs at all; and not only no legs, but it can
neither sing nor make poetry, is rendered ridiculous by
being represented as all right absolutely, and not as a
cripple, as one of, not the fantasies, but the forces, of
the country, as one, not of its mere night-dreams, but of
its waking-day realities, as not a phantom, but a power.
The grand mistake of the Times on this subject must
still be fresh in the minds of our readers, as it took place
little more than three years ago, during the time of her
Majesty's first progress through Scotland. The Scotch
Lowlanders, said this journal, usually so sagacious in
its estimates, but sorely bemuddled in these days by its
Puseyism, were no doubt a nai'row-minded, fanatical,
puritanical, selfish set, all agog about non-intrusion and
the independence of the Kirk ; but very different was the
spirit of the Highlands. There the old generous loyalty
still existed entire ; the long-derived devotion to hereditary
claims, and the ancient implicit subjection to divine right.
There, in short, ambitious Puseyism, eager to fling its
shoe over Scotland, was to find in existing Jacobitism such
a friend and. ally as the " king over the water " had found
9
98 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
in it a century ago. The Times has since been undeceived
But there still exist quarters in which Highland Jacobitisra
continues to be fondly clung to as an actual power, and a
religious party that regard it as a bona fide ally. We
found, when in the Western Highlands last summer, that
the approaching commemoration was regarded as a popish
movement at bottom ; and it would be certainly not un-
interesting to know what proportion of the some three or
four hundred Highlanders that are said to have turned
out on the occasion belonged to the Romish communion.
Certainly, if Rome wished, by masquerading at the Cen-
tenary in the romance of " The Forty-five," to make an
impression on the more active imaginations of the country,
she has not been very successful. There is vastly more of
the bizarre than of the solemn in the trappings of the
Jacobite domino, as accident and pretension have conspired
to trim it. It has got bells to its cap. We see it cham-
pioned by " Young Scotland," a personage recognized
by the half-dozen that ever heard of him as very young
indeed, and headed by a Percie Shafton, the undoubted
descendant of the royal Stuarts, that edits tartan patterns,
the strips of which had been preserved in manuscript in
the library of the Scotch Church at Douay, and trembles,
meanwhile, lest some unlucky bodkin should establish the
maternal relation of old Overstitch the tailor. Happy
modern Jacobitism ! It is no more a great-grandson of
the Pretender that you can boast of as the central figure in
your picturesque group, but the Pretender himself, whole
and entire.
Yes; the river, with its deep pools and eddying currents,
has turned into a different channel from that in which it
flowed a century ago ; and it is but idle work to be wan-
dering along the deserted course, with its few stagnant
Bh allows, where a handful of landlocked minnows await the
droughts that are to lay them dry, as if the water and the
great fish were still there. The tide of Highland devotion
has long since set in, in a direction entirely opposite. The
THE CENTENARY OF " THE FORTY-FIVE." 99
meeting at Glenfiunon was a meaningless pageant, and, it
would seem, a miserably poor pageant to boot. Its enthu-
siasm, warmed up specially for the occasion, and but luke-
warm after all, had no more truth or reality in it than that
of the ancient Pistol in the play. The heart of the High-
lands was to be found beating elsewhere. It was at the
Assembly at Inverness, to which from distant valley and
solitary hillside the earnest-minded Celtae had congregated
by thousands, that the enthusiasm was spontaneous and
the devotion true. There beat, with all its old truth and
warmth, the heart of the Highlands. But alas for the
poor Highlanders ! It seems to be their destiny as a peo-
ple to give evidence of their earnest and truthful natures
by endurance and suffering. Such was the evidence they
had to tender of old of their devotion to the Stuarts, and
such the evidence which they have to tender now of their
devotion to the cause of evangelical religion and a preached
gospel. We saw the stalwart Camerons of Lochiel, whose
country a century ago had been wasted by fire and sword,
and themselves chased to the rocks and hills, for a loyalty to
a hereditary king, again chased from the tombs of their
fathers and their little holdings to the oozy sea-beach, and
there worshipping God under the tide-line ; and the Grants
of Strathspey, of all our Highland clans the clan that last
manifested, after the old type, its devotion to its hereditary
lord ; for, little more than twenty years ago, on learning
that his person was endangered in some electioneering
contest in the Lowlands, five hundred of its fighting men
marched down from their hills to protect him ; these poor
clansmen, over a wide and exposed district, denied a place
of shelter, have to worship in the open air. And in both
cases the persecutor of the clan was its chief, anxious, ap-
parently, that his hereditary followers should be his fol-
lowers no longer, nor run any further risk of getting into
awkward collisions with the law for his sake. We have
heard wonder expressed that a single century should be
sufficient to effect in the Highland mind so great a change
100 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
as the revolution indicated by the opposite aspects of the
" Centenary of the Forty-five " and the Inverness Assem-
bly. We do not see that there is much cause for wonder.
The Presbyterian Highlander of the present day is removed
further, by some ten or twelve years, from his popish
ancestor who fought at Culloden, than the Presbyterian
Covenanter of 1638 was removed from his popish ancestor
who fought at Pinkie. It does not require centuries to
effect the change in opinion and character which evangel-
ism, when once introduced into a country, is sure always
to induce. One peculiarity, however, of the Highlander's
position, in reference to the comparative^ late introduc-
tion of evangelism among his hills, seems not unworthy of
mention. Unlike the Southern Scot, who recognizes the
old Covenanter as his ancestor, and is, in some instances, a
Free Churchman in virtue of the fact, the Highlander of at
least the Western and Midland Highlands has no heredi-
tary associations on the side of his beliefs. His hereditary
associations, on the contrary, are ranged on the side of
Jacobitism. But he is not the less, but the more earnest in
his Free Churchism in consequence. His feelings are more
fresh, direct, and simple. He is no mere admirer of the
Covenanters ; he is what the Covenanters themselves
were.
Alas ! how the short-lived childi"en of men press on to
the tomb! A century has "now passed since the clans
mustered in Glenfinnon ; and there are few Scotchmen in
middle life to whom that event does not stand as a sort of
beacon in the tide of time, to indicate how wave after
wave of the generations of the past has broken on the
silent shores of eternity, arid disappeared from the world
for ever. The writer of these remarks was born within the
present century, and yet even he can look back on some
three or four several generations of men, peculiarly marked
in their neighborhood by the epoch of the rebellion, who
have passed in succession from this visible scene of things,
lighted up by the sun, to the dark land of forgetfulness.
THE CENTENARY OF u THE FORTY-FIVE." 101
First, we remember a few broken vestiges of a generation
that had beea engaged in the active business of life when
the field of Culloden was stricken. We attended, when a
mere boy, the funeral of an old Highlander, a Stuart, who
had fought in it on the side of the Prince. We knew
another old man, who had been a ship-boy at the time in
a vessel with some government stores aboard, that, shortly
before the battle, was seized by the rebels ; and have heard
him tell how, when joking with them, for they were by
no means a band of cut-throat-looking men, he ventured
to speak of their Prince as the Pretender, and was cau-
tioned by one of them to use a more civil word for the
future. We remember, too, being brought by two grown-
up relatives to visit an old man on his death-bed, who,
like the first, had fought at Culloden, but on the side of
Hanover. He had been settled in life at the time as the
head gardener of a northern proprietor, and little dreamed
of being engaged in war ; but the rebellion broke out ; his
master, a kindly man, and a great Whig, volunteered in
behalf of his principles under Duke William, and his at-
tached gardener went with him. At the time of our visit,
when stretched on the bed from which he never after-
ward rose, he had outlived his century. He had been an
extremely powerful man in his day ; and the large wrin-
kled hand, and huge structure of bone, and deep, full voice,
still remained, to testify, amid the general wreck, to what
he had once been. His memory for all the later events of
his life was gone, so that the preceding forty years of it
seemed a blank; but well did he remember the battle, and
still more vividly, and with deep execration, the succeed-
ing atrocities of Cumberland. These vestiges of the age
of Culloden passed away, and the generation immediately
behind them fell into the front ranks, ancient men and
women, who had been mere boys and girls at the time of
the "fight," but who vividly remembered some of its
details. We knew one of these, an aged woman, who, on
the day of the battle, had been tending some sheep on a
9*
102 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
solitary moor, separated from that of Culloden by an arm
of the sea, and screened by a lofty hill, and who had sat
listening in terror to the boom of the cannon and the rattle
of the musketry, scared as much by the continuous howl-
ing of her dog, which she regarded as coupled with some
supernatural cause, as by the deadly " thunders in the
moors." We intimately knew another who witnessed the
battle, though in no very favorable circumstances for mi-
nute observation, from the Hill of Cromarty. The day, he
has told us, was drizzly and thick ; and on reaching the
brow of the hill, where he found a vast group of the towns-
folk already assembled, he could scarce see the opposite
land. But the fog gradually cleared away ; first one hill-
top came into view, and then another, till at length the long
range of coast, from the opening of the great Caledonian
Valley to the promontory of Brugh-head, was dimly visible
through the haze. A little after noon there arose a sudden
burst of round white cloud from the moor of Culloden, and
then a second burst beside it, and then they mingled to-
gether, and went rolling slantways on the wind towards the
west ; and he could hear the rattle of the smaller firearms
mingling with the roar of the artillery. And then, in what
seemed a wonderfully short space of time, the cloud dissi-
pated and disappeared, and the boom of the greater guns
ceased, and a sharp intermittent patter of musketry passed
on towards Inverness. Such was the battle of Culloden,
as witnessed by the writer's maternal grandfather, then a
boy in his fourteenth year. The years passed by, and he
and the generation to which he belonged followed the
generation that had gone before ; and then the front rank
in the general march to the tomb came to be occupied by
those so long known in Scotland as the Culloden-year
people, a class of persons who stood in no need of con-
sulting records and registers for the date of their birth, for
the battle had drawn, as if with the sword-edge, its deep
score athwart the time, so that all took note of it. But the
Culloden-year people passed from the stage also ; every
THE CENTENARY OF " THE FORTY-FIVE." 103
season in its flight left them fewer and feebler ; and we
now see the front rank composed of their children, a
gray-haired generation, drooping earthwards, who have
already spent in their sojourn the term so long since fixed
by the psalmist. And thus as wave succeeds wave, storm-
impelled, from the ocean, to break upon the shore pass
away and disappear the generations of man. It were well,
6ince our turn must come next, to be distinguishing in
time between- the solid and the evanescent, the things
which wear out like the old Jacobitism of the past, and
become sorry shows and idle mockeries, and the things
immortal in their natures, which contumely cannot degrade
nor persecution put down.
XIII.
THE HALF-QENTURY.
The first fifty years of the nineteenth century terminated
a few hours ago, and we have now entered upon the sec-
ond fifty. As last night's clock struck twelve, the most
important half-century of modern history came to its close,
and a half-century which threatens to be scarce less event-
ful began its course. The general progress made by Great
Britain during the lapsed period has been great beyond
all former precedent ; but there is one special department
in which it is ominously, fearfully great ; and should the
same ratio of increase continue throughout the succeeding
fifty years, there will be problems for our country to solve,
compared with which those of the present day, difficult
as they may seem, may be regarded as the tasks of children.
At the commencement of the half-century just closed, the
population of England and Scotland united did not much
104 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
exceed eight millions of souls ; in 1841 it considerably ex-
ceeded eighteen millions ; and, as the census of the present
year will by and by show, it now exceeds twenty millions.
For every two Britons that existed on their native soil
when the century began, there now exist five, and in fifty
years there has taken place in the population an increase
of a hundred and fifty per cent. ; and at the close of the
nineteenth century, should the same rate of increase con-
tinue, the soil of Great Britain will be encumbered by fifty
millions of human creatures. How the privileges of pro-
prietors, as now defined, are to be made good in such a
state of things should such a state of things ever arrive
against the pressing claims of the crowded masses, it is
at present difficult to see ; but in this element of increase
alone an element which the inadequate expedient of
emigration, that, when most active, sends only one abroad
for every additional three born at home, may in vain ex-
pect to counterbalance we recognize a disturbing agent,
suited, even did it stand alone, to give more than employ-
ment enough to the philanthropists and statesmen of the
future. Since the death of Chalmers it has not been cus-
tomary to press much on this topic ; but considerably less
than half a century will serve to show how entirely he was
in the right regarding it.
Fifty years form a large proportion of the period as-
signed to man ; and those whose powers of observation
were active at the beginning of the present century, and
their opportunities of exercising them considerable, must
now be far advanced in life. We, however, reckon among
our readers individuals who can compare from personal
observation the Scotland of 1801 with Scotland in the
present day, and who can tell how, over wide areas, the
face of the country has changed. We ourselves, though
born within the half-century, are acquainted with exten-
sive localities in which, within our recollection, the breadth
of corn-land has fully doubled. We have seen it slowly
advancing over moory waste and brown hillside, till,
THE HALF-CENTURY. 105
where only heath and ling and unproductive brushwood
used to grow, every autumn mottles over the landscape
with shocks of corn. In proportion as the population was
increasing were the means of their support in these locali-
ties increasing also. But it was chiefly in lowland districts,
or in districts which merely bordered on the Highlands,
that we witnessed this change for the better taking place.
Much of the Highlands themselves has been the subject
of a reverse process. During the last half-century many a
sheltered glen and fertile valley have given their cultivated
patches back to waste; and where human habitations once
stood, and happy communities once lived, we find but
moss-covered ruins and the solitude of a desert. And it
would seem as if this state of management had already
produced its crisis. Where the corn-land has more than
doubled its area, or, what amounts to the same thing, more
than doubled its produce, there is food and employment
for the more than doubled population ; whereas in the
Highlands, on the contrary, famine stares the unhappy
inhabitants full in the face, and Lowland Scotland is
told, that, unless it exert itself greatly in their behalf,
thousands of them must perish. It will be a question for
the next half-century practically to determine whether, as
the population is growing, and seems destined to grow,
the Highlands must not be compelled in the general be-
half to sustain their own portion of it. There is another
question which this continued increase in the numbers of
the people will at length render all potent. Men have
wondered how, in a country such as China, where the tone
of morailty is low and the government is corrupt, education
should have such honors and privileges attached to it, that
it forms the sole means of rising into place and affluence.
The true secret of the matter is to be read in the fact that
China, with its three hundred millions of inhabitants, is
the most populous country on the face of the earth.
Ignorance, therefore, cannot be tolerated in China ; and
knowledge, including, as a matter of course, a thorough
106 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL,
acquaintance with the arts by which men live, is at a
piemium there. However unacquainted with what most
ennobles man, the Chinese cannot be left ignorant of how
to use their own homely phrase "men are to get their
rice." Were the case otherwise, they would of necessity
have to eat one another ; and so in this vast nation, still in
some respects a semibarbarous one, a certain measure of
education is universal ; and its cheap literature, notwith-
standing its block-printing and its difficult character, is
the most immense in the world. And, on a similar princi-
ple, the growing population of Britain will force upon
the country the question of an adequate education for
the people. It is difficult to overpeople any nation with
a taught and industrious race of men. China is not over-
peopled with its three hundred millions. Ireland, that
has not half the number of inhabitants to the square mile,
and the Highlands of Scotland, that have not the one-
fortieth part the number to the square mile, are, on the
contrary, greatly overpeopled ; and the difference consists
mainly in this, that whereas the Chinese have, with all
their many faults, been taught hosv to " get their rice," the
poor Highlanders and the Irish have not. But, in this
special department at least, the extreme limits of the "let-
alone system " have been well-nigh reached ; and the next
half-century will see knowledge more largely spread abroad,
as a matter of necessity in which the very existence of
the nation is involved, than any former age of the world.
The time has at length come when "many shall run to
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."
But though knowledge during the last half-century did
greatly increase, so that there are now single periodicals
that possess a larger circle of readers than composed in
the previous half-century, according to the estimate of
Burke, the whole reading public of Great Britain, there
is another, and, as has been generally supposed, antago-
nistic principle, that has increased in a still greater ratio.
Popery reckons, at the close of the first half of the nine-
THE HALF-CENTURY. 107
teenth century, about ten times the number of adherents
within the two kingdoms that it reckoned when the cen-
tury began. In producing a result so disastrous, Puseyism
has no doubt had its share. There are but two elements
in the religious world of Europe, the Popish and
the Puritanic; and when, some fifteen years ago, a zeal-
ous and influential section of English Episcopalians set
themselves to reinvigorate their Church by revivingthe
ceremonies and doctrines of a Christianity absolutely an-
cient, but comparatively modern, for it dates at least
three hundred years later than the age of the New Testa-
ment, they had inevitably committed themselves, little
as they might be aware of the fact at the time, to the
popish element. And we now see the fruit of the com-
mittal in the perversions which are taking place almost
every day in the English Church. But these, though of
mighty importance to Rome, have done comparatively little
to swell her numbers. She owes the vast increase which
has filled the dingier dwellings and poorer lanes of our
larger towns with her votaries, to the overflowings of the
miserable population of Ireland. The Romish Church has
been no doubt much encouraged by the revival of the
ancient Christianity within the pale of the English one ;
and, save for this encouragement, it is not in the least
likely that the aggression of the past year would have
taken place ; but there can be as little doubt that it is the
poor, neglected Irish, sacrificed generation after generation
to the Erastian secularities of Protestant Episcopacy, and
latterly expatriated by the potato disease, that popery owes
its increase in Britain. There will be work enougli in this
department for all the Protestant churches of the country
for the coming half-century, if they would escape defeat
and disgrace at their own doors. The last half-century
has shown how difficult it is to calculate on the strength
of churches. Its first decade witnessed the dethronement
of the Pope by Napoleon ; its terminating decade, his flight
from Rome under the terror of his revolutionary subjects.
108 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
And yet popery possesses at the present time a vast
empire in the minds of men; and it has just dared to per-
petrate, in consequence, one of its boldest aggressions on
the most powerful empire in the world. And that aggres-
sion has brought out the great strength of another church,
which, about the time of the passing of the Reform Bill,
was deemed so far from stroug that statesmen of no incon-
siderable calibre held that almost any sort of liberty might
be taken with the status of her dignitaries, or with her
property. It seems unquestionably true, that the present
powerful anti-popish movement, which has done what the
zeal of Dissent could never do, stirred the nation to its
very depths, has arisen among the English Episcopa-
lians, and has been a direct consequence of what the Dis-
sent of England and the Presbyterians of Scotland regard
as a very inconsiderable element in the matter, the en-
croachment on the domains of the English bishops. We
recognize in the fact the correctness of the impression
made upon us when residing for a short time in England
a few years ago. We crossed the borders in the belief,
pretty general, we are disposed to think, among Scotchmen,
that the active power of nonconformity in the southern
kingdom was not much less than a match for the mere
passive power of its Established Episcopacy : we came
away full under the conviction that the two powers are so
very unequal that it is scarce wise to name them together.
Established Episcopacy in England represents the soldiers
of a vast army leaning silently on their arms ; whereas
Dissent may be rather likened to the handful led by
Gideon, making great show and much noise, but, unless
miracles be wrought in their behalf, not destined to make
a very considerable impression on the country. And so
evangelism in Scotland has a much larger stake in the
doctrinal soundness of the English Church than it seems
to be aware of. Judging from present appearances, the
religion of the English Church, whatever that may come-
to be, bids fair to be also the religion of the English Con-
THE HALF-CENTURY. 109
stitution ; and therefore, though we respect many of the
honest and good men who seem determined at the present
crisis to do battle both with popery and Established Epis-
copacy, we cannot think they have by any means fallen on
the best way of dealing with the emergency. They will,
we are afraid, find either opponent quite a match for them ;
and should they set themselves to fight against both at
once, neither Protestantism nor themselves will gain any-
thing by their coming into the field.
Another mighty increase has taken place during the
lapsed half-century in the numbers of the poor. It is
generally, and, we think, justly held, that that enormous
amount of pauperism in Scotland which, at the time of
the Revolution, Fletcher of Saltoun could deem so formi-
dable, was, in great part at least, a result of the previous
persecution. There can be at least as little doubt that it
was the termination of the church controversy, not in an
equitable adjustment, suited to place under the control of
our civil courts all the temporalities of the church, and
under her courts ecclesiastical all her spiritualities, but in
the Disruption, an event gilded by the glory of con-
scientious sacrifice, but not the less, but rather the more,
on that account a calamity to the country, that brought
the pauper question to a crisis, and saddled upon Scotland
a crushing poor-law. It is a surely not uninstructive fact,
that the proprietors of the country have paid for the
support of the poor, since this event, a sum as large as
would have purchased all their patronages three times
over, a sum which previous to the collision they had not
to pay, and which, had they urged the question to a
different issue, they would not have to pay now. The
settlement which the controversy received has been, eco-
nomically at least, a very bad settlement for them. But
there is no party that need triumph in such a result.
Free Churchmen, as certainly as Established Churchmen,
puffer in consequence ; and the hard problem subjected to
the country through the event it may take the whole of
10
110 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
the next half-century to solve. It is something, however,
that it is already compelling attention, and that Carlyle'a
" Condition of the People Question " is recognized as the
great question of the day. These are but desultory re-
marks, and, withal, sufficiently prosaic ; but the magnitude
of the subject oppresses us ; nor dare we attempt condens-
ing into an article what, could we devote a whole volume
to the survey, would require -J,o be even then greatly
condensed.
XIV.
THE ECHOES OF THE WORLD.
DR. CHALMERS.
Has the reader ever heard a piece of heavy ordnance
fired amid the mountains of our country ? First there is
the ear-stunning report of the piece itself, the prime
mover of those airy undulations that travel outwards, circle
beyond circle, towards the far horizon ; then some hoary
precipice, that rises tall and solemn in the immediate
neighborhood, takes up the sound, and it comes rolling
back from its rough front in thunder, like a giant wave
flung far seaward from the rock against which it has broken ;
then some more distant hill becomes vocal, and then an-
other, and another, and anon another ; and then there is
a slight pause, as if all were over, the undulations are
travelling unbroken along some flat moor, or across some
expansive lake, or over some deep valley, filled, haply, by
some long withdrawing arm of the sea ; and then the more
remote mountains lift up their voices in mysterious mut-
terings, now lower, now louder, now more abrupt, anon
more prolonged, each, as it recedes, taking up the tale in
THE ECHOES OF THE WORLD. Ill
closer succession to the one that had previously spoken,
till at length their distinct utterances are lost in one low,
continuous sound, that at last dies out amid the shattered
peaks of the desert wilderness, and unbroken stillness settles
over the scene, as at first. Through a scarce voluntary
exercise of that faculty of analogy and comparison so nat-
ural to the human mind, that it converts all the existences
of the physical world into forms and expressions of the
world moral and intellectual, we have oftener than once
thought of the phenomenon, and its attendant results, as
strikingly representative of effects produced by the death
of Chalmers. It is an event which has, we find, rendei'ed
vocal the echoes of the world; and they are still returning
upon us, after measured intervals, according to the distan-
ces. First, as if from the nearer rocks and precipices, they
arose from the various towns and cities of Scotland that
possess their periodicals ; then from the great southern
metropolis, and the other towns and cities of England, as
if from the hills immediately beyond ; from Ireland next;
and next from France and Geneva, and the European Con-
tinent generally. And then there was a slight pause. The
tidings were passing in silence, without meeting an intelli-
gent ear on which to fall, across the wide expanse of the
Atlantic. And then, as if from more distant mountains,
came the voices of the States, and the colonies, and the
West Indian Islands. It was no uninteresting task to un-
robe from their close brown covers, that spake in color
and form of a foreign country, the Transatlantic journals,
and read tribute after tribute to the worth and intellectual
greatness of the departed ; and to hear of the funeral ser-
mons preached far away, on the very verge of the civilized
world, amid half-open clearings in the vast forest, or in
hastily-erected towns and villages that but a few twelve-
months before had no existence. Nor have all the echoes
of the event returned to us even yet. They have still to
arise from, if we may so express ourselves, the more dis-
tant peaks of the landscape, from the Eastern Indies,
112 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
Australia, and the antipodes. Every more remote echo,
while it indicates how great the distance which the original
undulations have traversed, and how wide the area which
they fill, serves also of necessity to demonstrate the far-
piercing character and greatness of the event which first
set them in motion. Dryden, in describing the grief occa-
sioned by the death of some august and "gracious monarch,"
describes it as bounded, with all its greatness and extent,
by his own dominions :
"Thus, when some great and gracious monarch dies,
Soft whispers first and mournful murmurs rise
Among the sad attendants ; then the sound
Soon gathers voice, and spreads the news around
Through town and country, till the dreadful blast
Is blown to distant colonies at last."
There have been no such limitations to the sorrow for
Chalmers. The United States and the Continent have
sympathizingly responded of one mind in this matter, as
of one blood, with ourselves to the regrets of Britain
and the colonies. We have few men left whose names so
completely fill the world as that of Chalmers.
The group of great men to which Thomas Chalmers
belonged has now well-nigh disappeared. Goldsmith has
written an ingenious essay to show that the " rise or decline
of literature is little dependent on man, but results rather
from the vicissitudes of nature." The larger minds, he
remarks, are not unfrequently ushered into the world in
groups ; and after they have passed away, there intervene
wide periods of repose, in which there are only minds of a
lower order produced. " Some ages have been remark-
able," he says, " for the production of men of extraordinary
stature; others for producing particular animals in great
abundance ; some for excessive plenty ; others, again, for
seemingly causeless famine. Nature, which shows herself
so very different in her visible productions, must surely
THE ECHOES OP THE WORLD. 113
differ also from herself in the production of minds ; and,
while she astonishes one age with the strength and stature
of a Milo or a Maximian, may bless another with the wisdom
of a Plato or the goodness of an Antonine." In glancing
over the history of modern Europe, and more especially
that of the British empire, civil and literary, one can scarce
fail to mark a cycle of production of this character, which
now seems far advanced in its second revolution. The
seventeenth century was in this country peculiarly a period
of great men. Cromwell and Shakspeare were so far
contemporary, that when, little turned of fifty, the poet
lay on his deathbed, the future Lord Protector, then a lad
of seventeen, was riding beside his father, to enter as a
student the University of Cambridge ; and the precocious
Milton, though still younger, was, we find, quite mature
enough to estimate the real stature of the giant that had
fallen, and to deplore his premature death in stanzas des-
tined to live forever. And when, in after life, the one
great man sat writing, to the dictation of the other, the
well-known noble letter to Louis in behalf of Continental
Protestantism, the mathematician, Isaac Newton, sat en-
sconced among his old books in the garret at Grantham ;
the metaphysician, John Locke, was engaged at Oxford in
his profound cogitation on the nature and faculties of mind ;
John Bunyan was a soldier of the Commonwealth ; Cowley
was studying botany in Kent ; Butler was pouring forth
his vast profusion of idea in the dwelling of Sir Samuel
Luke ; Dryden, at the ripe age of twenty-seven, was mak-
ing his first rude efforts in composition in Trinity College ;
Sir Matthew Hale was administering justice in London,
and planning his great law works ; and, though Hampden
and Selden were both in their graves at the time, the for-
mer, had he escaped the fatal shot, would still have been
in but middle life, and the latter was but four years dead.
The group was assuredly a very marvellous one. It passed
away, however, like all that is of earth ; and there arose
that other group of men, admirable in their proportions,
10
114: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
but of decidedly lower stature, that all in any degree
acquainted with English literature recognize as the wits
of Queen Anne. To this lower but very exquisite group
the Popes, Swifts, and Addisons, the Gays, Parnells, and
Priors belong. It also passed ; and a still lower group
arose, with, it is true, a solitary Johnson and Burke raising
their head and shoulders above the crowd, but attaining
not, at least in the mass, to the statui-e of their immediate
predecessors. And they themselves were well aware of
their inferiority. Is the reader possessed of a copy of An-
derson's "Poets?" From its chronological arrangement,
it illustrates very completely the progress of that first great
cycle of production from the higher to the lower minds to
which we refer ; and with the works of the Jenyns, the
Whiteheads, the Cottons, and the Blacklocks, the collec-
tion closes. And then the cycle, as if the moving spring
had been suddenly wound up to its original rigidity, begins
anew. The gigantic figure of Napoleon appears as the
centre of a great historic group; and we see ranged around
him the tall figures of statesmen such as Pitt and Fox ;
of soldiers such as Soult, Ney, and Wellington ; of popular
agitators such as Cobbett and O'Connell ; of theological
writers and leaders such as Hall, Foster, and Andrew
Thomson ; and of literary men such as Goethe, Chateau-
briand, Sir Walter Scott, and Wordsworth. The group is
very decidedly one of men large and massy of stature ;
and to this group, great among the greatest, Thomas Chal-
mers belonged. It has, we repeat, nearly passed away.
Wellington, Wordsworth, and Chateaubriand all well
stricken in years, turned very considerably, the young-
est of them, of the threescore and ten alone survive.
Immediately beneath these, and bearing to them a relation
very similar to that which the wits and statesmen of Queen
Anne bore to the Miltons and Cromwells, their predeces-
sors, stands a group, the largest of their day, including as
politicians the Peels and Russells, and as literary men the
Lockharts and Macaulays, of the present time. Happily
THE ECHOES OF THE WORLD. 115
the Free Church, though its great leader be removed, does
not lack at least its proportional number of these. They
may uc uescnbed generally, with reference to their era,
as men turned of forty ; and, so far as may be judged
from the present appearance of things, the younger and
succeeding group, just entered on the stage, are composed,
as during the middle of the last century, of men of a third
class, that seem well-nigh as inferior in height and muscle
to those of the second, as the second are inferior in bulk,
strength, and massiveness to those of the first. The third
stage of the second cycle of production is, it would ap-
pear, already full in view. In the poetical department of
our literature this state of things is strikingly appai'ent.
Ere the Cowpers and Burnses arose to herald the new and
great era, the latter half of the last century had its War-
tons and its Langhorns, true and sweet poets, but, it
must be confessed, of somewhat minute proportions. The
present time has its Moirs and its Alfred Tennysons; and
they are true poets also, but poets on a not large scale,
decidedly men of the third era.
In glancing over the various tributes to the memory of
Chalmers, one is struck with a grand distinction by which
they may be ranged into two classes. Belonging, as he
did, to two distinct worlds, the worlds literary and
religious, we find estimates of his character and career
made by representatives of both. In the one, the appre-
ciation hinges, as on a pivot, on a certain great turning
incident in his life ; in the other, there is either no reference
made to this incident, or the principles on which it occurred
are represented as of a common and obvious, and not very
important character. Is it not truly strange, that the
most influential event that can possibly take place in the
history of individual man which has lain at the found-
ation of the greatest revolutions of which the annals of
the species furnish any record, and which constitutes the
main objective theme of revelation should be scarce at
all appreciated, even in its palpable character as a fact^
116 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
by the great bulk of the acutest and most intelligent
writers of the present age ? That change in the heart
and life which sent the apostles forth of old to Christianize
the world, and the Reformers at a later time to re-Chris-
tianize it, which, forming the charm of the successes of
Cromwell, preserved to Britain its free Constitution, and
which altered in toto the destinies of Chalmers, that
change, we say, is rightly appreciated, in even its obvious
character as a fact, by none of our purely literary men ;
or, at least, if we must make one exception, by Thomas
Carlyle alone. It constitutes a mighty spring of action,
by far the mightiest in this world, of which the rest are
ignorant. Regarded in this point of view, the following
extract from the " People's Journal" a periodical con-
ducted chiefly, it is understood, by Unitarians is not
uninstructive. It refers to the conversion of Chalmers, and
describes that event as occurring on a few obvious com-
monplace principles :
" A new era in the development of Chalmers' mind commences
with bis engagement upon the article ' Christianity.' The powerful
devotional tendency of his mind had hitherto, to all appearance,
lain dormant. The protracted and unintermitting attention to re-
ligious questions which, in the compilation of that essay, he was
compelled to bestow, was favorable to the formation of a devotional
habit of mind in one who, like all men of poetical temperament,
was eminently liable to take the tone and color of his mind from
the element in which he lived. The Leslie controversy, too, had
bridged over the gulf Which had hitherto intervened between the
higher orders of minds among the literati and the orthodox clergy
of Scotland. The Dugald Stewarts and the Jeffreys on the one
hand, the Moncreiffs and Thomsons on the other, had, while acting
!i. concert, learned to know and appreciate each other's peculiar
merits. The sentiment of political independence, and that liberal
tolerance, the most uniform feature of superior minds, had infused
permanent feelings of mutual good-will into minds which by their or-
ganization were irreconcilably different. Chalmers, who had been
thrown among the purely intellectual class in a great measure by
the accident of position, was now attracted to the religious class,
THE ECHOES OP THE WORLD. 117
with whom his natural sympathies were, if anything, still greater.
He devoted himself more exclusively to the duties of his ministerial
office, and, carrying into the pulpit the same buoyant enthusiasm,
the same Herculean powers, he soon became one of the most dis--
tinguished inculcators of ' evangelical ' views of religion."
Among the numerous funeral sermons of which the
death of Chalmers has proved the occasion, we know not a
finer, abler, or better-toned than one of the Transatlantic
discourses. It is from the pen of Dr. Sprague, of Albany,
United States, so well known in this country by his work
on revivals. His estimate of the great change which not
only expanded the heart, but also in no slight degree
developed the intellect, of Chalmers, differs widely, as
might be expected from the general tone of his writings,
from that of the Unitarian in the "People's Journal." It
is strange on what analogies men ingenious in misleading
themselves when great principles are at stake contrive to
fall. We have lately seen Cromwell's love of the Scrip-
tures, and his diligence, according to the divine precept,
in searching them, attributed to the mere military instinct,
gratified, in his case, by the warlike stories of the Old
Testament, as the resembling instinct was gratified in that
of Alexander the Great by the stories of the Illiad.
" He [Dr. Chalmers] removed to Kilmeny," says Dr. Sprague, " in
1803, where he labored for several years, and where occurred at least
one of the most remarkable events of his life. It was nothing less,
as he himself regarded it, than a radical change of character. Pre-
vious to that period he seems to have looked upon the duties of his
profession as a mere matter of official drudgery ; and not a small
part of his time was devoted to science, particularly to the mathema-
tics, to which his taste more especially inclined him. But having been
requested to furnish an article for the " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia "
on the evidences of divine revelation, in the course of the investi-
gation to which he was led in the prosecution of this effort he was
brought into communion with Christianity in all its living and trans-
forming power. He not only became fully satisfied of its truth, of
which before he had had only some indefinite and inoperative im-
118 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
pression, but he discovered clearly its higb practical relations ; ho
surrendered himself to its teachings with the: spirit of a little child ;
he reposed in its gracious provisions with the confidence of a pen-
itent sinner ; and from that time to his dying . hour he gloried in
nothing save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He stood forth
before the world strangely unlike what he had ever been before.
There was a sacred fervor, an unearthly majesty, in all his utterings
and all his writings. Scotland, Britain, the world, soon came to look
at him with wonder, as one of the brightest luminaries of his time,
as destined to exert a controlling influence upon the age, if not to work
an epoch in the world's history. It was quickly found that there was
a far higher effect produced by his ministrations than mere admira-
tion, that the sword of the Spirit, wielded with such unwonted
energy, was doing its legitimate work ; for worldliness could not bear
his rebuke ; scepticism could not stand erect in his presence ; while
a pure and living Christianity was constantly reproducing itself in
the hearts of some one or other of his enchained hearers."
Dr. Sprague's estimate of the intellectual character of
Chalmers seems eminently just, and, formed at the dis-
tance of more than three thousand miles from the more
immediate scene of Chalmers' personal labors, for dis-
tance in space has greatly the effect in such matters of
distance in time, it may be regarded as foreshadowing
the judgment of posterity.
" The intellectual character of Dr. Chalmers was distinguished
chiefly by its wonderful combination of the imaginative, the profound,
and the practical. If there be on earth a mind constituted with
greater power of imagination than his, we know not where to look
for it. And because he was so preeminent in respect to this quality,
I am inclined to think that some have underrated his more strictly
intellectual powers, his ability to comprehend the more distant
bearings of things, or to grapple with the subtilties of abstract phi-
losophy ; and they have reached their false conclusion on the ground
that it were impossible that a mind so highly gifted in one respect
should be alike distinguished in the other. But if his productions
may be allowed to speak for him, I think it will be difficult to show
that he was not equally at home in the depths as on the heights ;
and some of his works, particularly that on Natural Theology, ex-
THE ECHOES OP THE WORLD. 119
Libit the two qualities blended in beautiful proportions. I hesitate
not to say, that any man who could reason like Chalmers and do
nothing else, or any man who could soar like Chalmers and do
nothing else, or any man who could contrive and execute like Chal-
mers, as is evinced by his connection with the whole Free Church
movement, and do nothing else, would be a great man in any country
or in any age ; but the union of the several faculties in such propor-
tion and such degree constitutes a character at once unparalleled
and imperishable."
Among the various references to this genius of Chalmers
for the practical, which, according to Sprague, would have
constituted him a great man even had it been his only
faculty, we know not a finer or more picturesque than
that which we find in a truly admirable article in a late
number of the " North British Review." The picture
for a picture it is, and a very admirable one exhibits
specially the inspiriting effect of the quality in a time of
perplexity and trial. It is when dangers run high that the
voice of the true leader is known : the storm in its hour
of dire extremity exhibits the skill of the accomplished
pilot.
" When the courts of law revoked," says the reviewer, " the lib-
erty of the Scottish Church, much as he loved its old Establishment,
much as he loved his Edinbui'gh professorship, and much more as he
loved his two hundred churches, with a single movement of his pen
he signed them all away. He had reached his grand climacteric ;
and many thought that, smitten down by the shock, his gray hairs
would descend in sorrow to the grave : it was time for him " to break
his mighty heart and die." But they little knew the man. They
forgot that spirit which, like the trodden palm, had so often sprung
erect and stalwart from a crushing overthrow. We saw him that
November. We saw him in its Convocation, the sublimest aspect
in which we ever saw the noble man. The ship was fast aground ;
and as they looked over the bulwarks, through the mist and the
breakers, all on board seemed anxious and sad. Never had they
felt prouder of their old first-rate, and never had she ploughed a
braver path, than when, contrary to all the markings in the chart,
and all the experience of former voyages, she dashed on this fatal
120 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
bar. The stoutest were dismayed ; and many talked of taking to
the fragments, and, one by one, trying for the nearest shore ; when,
calmer because of the turmoil, and with the exultation of one who
saw safety ahead, the voice of this dauntless veteran was heard
propounding his confident scheme. Cheered by his assurance, and
inspired by his example, they set to work ; and that dreary winter
was spent in constructing a vessel with a lighter draught and a sim-
pler rigging, but large enough to carry every true-hearted man who
ever trod the old ship's timbers. Never did he work more blithely,
and never was there more of athletic ardor in his looks, than during
the six months that this ark was building, though every stroke of
the mallet told of blighted hopes, and defeated toil, and the unknown
sea before him. And when the signal-psalm announced the new
vessel launched, and leaving the old galley high and dry on the
breakers, the banner unfurled, and showing the covenanting blue
still spotless, and the symbolic bush still burning, few will forget the
renovation of his youth, and the joyful omen of his shining counte-
nance. It was not only the rapture of his prayers, but the radiance
of his spirit, which repeated, ' God is our refuge.' It is something
heart-stirring to see the old soldier take the field, or the old trader
exerting every energy to retrieve his shattered fortunes ; but far
the finest spectacle of the moulting eagle was Chalmers, with his
hoary locks, beginning life anew. But, indeed, he was not old.
They who can fill their veins with every hopeful, healthful thing
around them, those who can imbibe the sunshine of the future,
and transfuse life from realities not come as yet, their blood need
never freeze. And his bosom heaved with all the newness of the
Church's life, and all the bigness of the Church's plans. And, best
of all, those who wait upon the Lord are always young. This was
the reason why on the morning of that exodus he did not totter
forth from the old Establishment a blank and palsy-stricken man,
but, with flashing eye, snatched up his palmer-staff', and, as he stamped
it on the ground, all Scotland shook, and answered with a deep
God-speed to the giant gone on pilgrimage."
Of all the tributes to the memory of Chalmers which
we have yet seen, one* of at once the ablest and most
generous is that by Dr. Alexander of this city. 1 Belong-
i A Discourse on the Qualities and Worth of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. LL.l>,,
etc. By William Lindsay Alexander, D.D.
THE ECHOES OF THE WORLD. 121
tug to a different family of the church catholic from that
whose principles the illustrious deceased maintained and
defended, and at issue with him on points which neither
deemed unimportant, the doctor has yet come forward, in
the name of their common Christianity, to record his es-
timate of his character and his sorrow for his loss. It was
one of the points worthy of notice in Chalmers, that none
of his opponents in any controversy settled down into
personal enemies. We saw, among the thousands who
attended his funeral, Principal Lee, with whom he had the
controversy regarding the Moderatorship ; Dr. Wardlaw,
his opponent in the great controversy on establishments ;
and the carriage of the Lord Provost, as representative of
the Provost himself, with whom he had the controversy
regarding the Edinburgh churches and their amount of
accommodation, and who was on business in London at
the time. And to this trait, and to what it indicated, Dr.
Alexander finely refers. The doctor was one of Chalmers'
St. Andrew's pupils ; and his opportunities of acquaint-
anceship at that period furnish one or two singularly in-
teresting anecdotes illustrative of the character of the
" Sometimes it was my lot to be his companion," says the doctor,
"to some wretched hovel, where I have seen him take his seat by
the side of some poor child of want and weakness, and patiently,
affectionately, and earnestly strive to convey into his darkened mind
some ray of truth that might guide him to safety and to God. On
such occasions it was marvellous to observe with what simplicity of
speech that great mind would utter truth. One instance of this I
must be allowed to mention. The scene was a low, dirty hovel,
over whose damp and uneven floor it was difficult to walk without
stumbling, and into which a small window, coated with dust, ad-
mitted hardly enough of light to enable an eye unaccustomed to the
gloom to discern a single object. A poor old woman, bedridden,
and almost blind, who occupied a miserable bed opposite the fire-
place, was the object of the doctor's visit. Seating himself by
her side, he entered at once, after a few general inquiries as to her
health, etc., into religious conversation with her. Alas ! it seemed
11
122 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
all in vain. The mind which he strove to enlighten had been bo
long closed and dark that it appeared impossible to thrust into it a
single ray of light. Still, on the part of the woman there was an
evident anxiety to lay hold upon something of what he was telling
her ; and, encouraged by this, he persevered, plying her, to use his
own expression, with the offers of the gospel, and urging her to trust
in Christ. At length she said, Ah, Sir, I would fain do as you bid
me, but I dinnaken how : how can I trust in Christ ? ' ' Oh, woman,'
was his expressive answer, in the dialect of the district, 'just lippen
to Him.' ' Eh, Sir,' was her reply, ' and is that a' ? ' ' Yes, yes,'
was his gratified response ; 'just lippen to Him, and lean on Him,
and you'll never perish.' To some, perhaps, this language may be
obscure ; but to that poor, blind, dying woman it was as light from
heaven ; it guided her to the knowledge of the Saviour ; and there
is good reason to believe it was the instrument of ultimately con-
ducting her to heaven."
We had marked for quotation various passages in this
admirable discourse, unequalled, we hold, by aught that
has yet appeared, as an analysis of the mental and moral
constitution of him whom Dr. Alexander at once elo-
quently and justly describes as "a man of brilliant genius,
of lovely character, of sincere devotion, of dignified and
untiring activity, the most eminent preacher our country has
produced, the greatest Scotchmen the nineteenth century
has yet seen." We have, however, much more than ex-
hausted our space, and so must be content for the present
with recommending to our readers an attentive perusal of
the whole. One passage, however, we cannot deny our-
selves the pleasure of extracting. It meets, we think, very
completely, a frequent criticism on one of the peculiarities
of Chalmers, and shows that what has been often in-
stanced as a defect was in reality a rarely attainable
excellence :
44 In handling his subjects Dr. Chalmers displayed vast oratorical
power. He usually selected one great truth or one great practical
duty for consideration at a time. This he would place distinctly
before his hearers, and then illustrate, defend, and enforce it through-
out his discourse, again and again bringing it up before them, and
THE ECHOES OF THE WORLD. 123
nrging it upon them. By some this has been regarded as a defect
rather than a merit in his pulpit addresses ; and it has been ascribed
to some peculiarity of his mind, in virtue of which he has been sup-
posed incapable of turning away from a subject when once he had
hold on it, or, rather, it had laid hold on him. I believe this criticism
to have been quite erroneous. That his practice in this respect was
not an accidental result of some mental peculiarity, but was purposely
and designedly followed by him, I know from his own assurance ; in-
deed, he used publicly to recommend it to his students as a practice
sanctioned by some of the greatest masters in oratory, especially the
great parliamentary orator Charles James Fox ; and the only reason,
I believe, why it is not more frequently adopted, is, that it is immeas-
urably more difficult to engage the minds of an audience by a
discourse upon one theme, than by a discourse upon several. That
it constitutes the highest grade of discourse, all writers on oratory,
from Aristotle downward, are agreed. But to occupy it successfully
requires genius and large powers of illustration. When the speaker
has to keep to one theme, he must be able to wield all the weapons of
address. He must be skilled to argue, to explain, persuade, to apply,
and, by a fusion of all the elements of oratory, to carry his point
whether his audience will or no. Now these requisites Dr. Chalmers
possessed in a high degree. He could reason broadly and powerfully ;
he could explain and illustrate with exhaustless profusion ; he could
persuade by all the earnestness of entreaty, all the pathos of affection,
and all the terrors of threatening ; he could apply, with great skill
and knowledge of men's ways, the truth he would inculcate ; and he
could pour, in a torrent of the most impassioned fervor, the whole
molten mass of thought, feeling, description, and appeal, upon the
hearts and consciences of his hearers. Thus singularly endowed,
and thus wisely using his endowments, he arrived at a place of the
highest eminence in the highest walk of popular oratory."
124 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
XV.
GLEN TILT TABOOED.
A rencounter of a somewhat singular character Las
taken place in Glen Tilt between the Duke of Atholl,
backed by a body of his gillies, and a party of naturalists
headed by a learned professor from Edinburgh. The gen-
eral question regarding right of way in Scotland seems fast
drawing to issue between the people and the exclusives
among the aristocracy, and this in a form, we should fain
hope, rather unfavorable to the latter, seeing that the
popular cause represents very generally, as in this case,
that of the sentiment and intellect of the country, while
the cause of the exclusives represents merely the country's
brute force, luckily a considerably smaller portion of
even that than falls to the share of even our physical force
Chartists. Should thews and muscles come to sway among
us, the regime must prove a very miserable one for Dukes
of Leeds and of Atholl.
From time immemorial the public road between Blair-
Athole and Braemar had lain through Glen Tilt. In most
questions regarding right of roadway witnesses have to be
examined ; the line of communication at issue is of too
local and obscure a character to be generally known ; and so
the claim respecting it has to be decided on the evidence
of people who live in the immediate neighborhood. Not
such, however, the case with Glen Tilt. There is scarce in
the kingdom a better-known piece of roadway than that
which runs through the glen ; and all our ampler Guide-
Books and Traveller's Companions assume the character
of witnesses in its behalf. Here, for instance, is the Guide-
Book of the Messrs. Anderson of Inverness, at once one
GLEN TILT TABOOED. 125
of the most minute and most correct in its details with
which we are acquainted, and which has the merit of being
derived almost exclusively from original sources. It does
not indicate a single route which the writers had not trav-
elled over, nor describe an object which they had not seen
and examined. And in it, as in all the other works of its
class, we find the road running through Glen Tilt which
connects Blair-Athole and Braemar laid down as open to the
tourists, equally with all the other public roads of the coun-
try. The reader will find it marked, too, in every better
map of Scotland. In the " National Atlas " a work
worthy of its name it may be seen striking off, on the
authority of the geographer to the Queen, Mr. A. K. John-
ston, at an acute angle from the highway at Blair-Athole ;
then running on for some twelve or thirteen miles parallel
to the Tilt ; and then, after scaling the heights of the up-
per part of the glen, deflecting into the valley of the Dee,
and terminating at Castleton of Braemar. The track which
it lays open is peculiarly a favorite one with the botanist,
for the many interesting plants which it furnishes; and so
much so with the geologist, that what may be termed the
classic literature of the science might, with the guide-books
of the country, be brought as evidence into court in the
case. Playfair's admirably-written " Illustrations of Hut-
ton " take part against the Duke and his gillies. That
curious junction of the granite and stratified schists in
which Hutton recognized the first really solid ground for
his theory, and of which, as forming the great post of van-
tage in the battle between his followers and those of
Werner, a representation may be found in almost every
geological treatise since published, occurs in Glen Tilt, and
possesses a more than European celebrity. There is not a
man of science in the world who has not heard of it. The
history of its discovery, and of what it establishes, as given
in a few sentences by one of the most popular of modern
geologists, we must present to the reader.
11*
126 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
u The absence of stratification in granite," says Mr. Lyell, " and ita
analogy in mineral character to rocks deemed of igneous origin, led
Hutton to conclude that granite must also have been formed from
matter in fusion ; and this inference, he felt, could not be fully con-
firmed, unless he discovered, at the contact of granite and other
strata, a repetition of the phenomena exhibited so constantly by the
trap rocks. Resolved to try his theory by this test, he went to the
Grampians, and surveyed the line of junction of the granite and
superincumbent stratified masses, and found in Glen Tilt, in 1785,
the most clear and unequivocal proofs in support of his views.
Veins of red granite are there seen branching out from the principal
mass, and traversing the black micaceous schists and primary lime-
stones. The intersected stratified rocks are so distinct in color and
appearance as to render the example in that locality most striking ;
and the alteration of the limestone in contact is very analogous to
that produced by trap veins on calcareous strata. This verification
of his system filled him with delight, and called forth such marks of
joy and exultation that the guides who accompanied him, says his
biographer, were convinced that he must have discovered a vein of
silver or gold."
There are various other objects interesting to the geolo-
gist on this track through the property of the Duke of
Atholl. We understand that when Agassiz was last in
this country, he accompanied to the locality an Edinburgh
professor, well known both in the worlds of letters and
of science, with the intention of visiting a quarry on the
grounds of his Grace ; but, on addressing his Grace for
permission, there was no answer returned to his letter, and
the distinguished foreigner had to turn back disappointed,
to say how much more liberally he had been dealt with
elsewhere, and to contrast, not very favorably for our coun-
try, the portion of liberty doled out to even the learned
and celebrated among the Scottish people, with that en-
joyed under the comparably free and kindly despotisms
of the Continent. The incident happily illustrates the
taste and understanding of his Grace the Duke of Atholl,
and intimates the kind of measures which the public should
keep with such a man. If the Scottish people yield up to
GLEN TILT TABOOED. 127
his Grace their right of way through Glen Tilt, they will
richly deserve to be shut out of their country altogether ;
and be it remarked, that to this state of things matters are
fast coming with regard to the Scottish Highlands. It is
said of one of the Queens of England, that in a moment of
irritation she threatened to make Scotland a hunting-park ;
and we know that the tyranny of the Norman Conqueror
did actually produce such a result over extensive tracts of
England. The formation of the New Forest is instanced
by all our historians as one of the most despotic acts of a
foreign conqueror. William, in order to indulge his tastes
as a huntsman, depopulated the country, and barred out
the human foot from an extent, says Hume, of more than
thirty miles. It is to this act of despotism, and its conse-
quences, that the master-poet of the times of Queen Anne
refers in his exquisite description :
" The land appeared in ages past
A dreary desert and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And kings more furious and severe than they,
Who claimed the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods."
The pleasures of the chase are necessarily jealous and un-
social. The shepherd can carry on his useful profession
without quarrel with the chance traveller ; the agricultur-
ist in an open country has merely to fence against the en-
croachments of the vagrant foot the patches actually under
cultivation at the time ; whereas it is the tendency of the
huntsman possessed of the necessary power, to " empty "
the " wilds and woods " of their human inhabitants. The
traveller he regards as a rival or an enemy : he looks upon
him as come to lessen his sport, either by sharing in it or
by disturbing it ; and so, when he can, he reigns, according
to the poet, a "lonely lord," and the country spreads out
around him, as in the days of the Conqueror, " a dreary
desert and a gloomy waste." Aud into this state of savage
128 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
nature and jealous appropriation characteristic, in the
sister kingdom, of the times of the Conquest many dis-
tricts in the Highlands of Scotland are fast passing. The
great sheep-farms were permitted, in the first instance, to
swallow up the old agricultural holdings ; and now the let
shootings and game-parks are fast swallowing up the great
sheep-farms, The ancient inhabitants were cleared off, in
the first process, to make way for the sheep ; and now the
people of Scotland generally are to be shut out from these
vast tracts, lest they should disturb the game. There is no
exception to be made by cat-witted dukes and illiterate
lords in favor of the man of letters, however elegant his
tastes and pursuits ; or the man of science, however pro-
found his talents and acquirements, or however important
the objects to which he is applying them. The Duke of
Leeds has already shut up the Grampians, and the Duke
of Atholl has tabooed Glen Tilt. The gentleman and
scholar who, in quest of knowledge, and on the strength
of the prescriptive right enjoyed from time immemorial by
even the humblest of the people, enters these districts,
finds himself subjected to insult and injury; and should
the evil be suffered to go on unchecked, we shall by and
by see the most interesting portions of our country barred
up against us by parishes and counties. If one proprietor
shut up Glen Tilt, why may not a combination of proprie-
tors shut up Perthshire? Or if one sporting tenant bar
against us the Grampians, why, when the system of shoot-
ing-farms and game-parks has become completed, might not
the sporting tenants united shut up against us the entire
Highlands? They would be prevented, it may be said, by
certain rights of roadway. No ; these rights of roadway
as certainly exist in the case of Glen Tilt and the Gram-
pians as over the Highlands generally.
Regretting, as we do, that a gentleman and scholar, with
his friends, of character resembling his own, should have
been subjected to unworthy treatment, we yet deem it
fortunate that it should have fallen rather on men 6uch a8
GLEN TILT TABOOED. 129
he and they than on some party of humble individuals,
possessed of no adequate means of making their case
known, or of attracting for it any general sympathy even
if they had. Were, however, the party of humble men to
be very numerous, some such pleasure party as occa-
sionally, in these days, sets out from Edinburgh for Ber-
wick, Glasgow, or the land of Burns, we could afford to
wish them substituted for the naturalist and the professor.
There is, we repeat, a right of roadway through Glen Tilt :
the Duke of Atholl is quite at liberty to challenge that
privilege in a court of law ; but he has no right whatever
violently to arrest travellers on the public way ; and all
good subjects, when the policeman or the soldier is not at
hand to protect them, in the name and authority of the
civil magistrate, from illegal violence, have a right to pro-
tect themselves. And we are pretty sure a few scores of
our working men could defend themselves very admirably
amid the solitudes of Glen Tilt, even though assailed by
the Knight of the Gael and all his esquires. As the case
chanced, however, it is well that a learned professor and a
party of amateur naturalists should have been the suffer-
ers. We may just mention in the passing, as a curious
coincidence, that the professor in question is one of the
nearest living relatives of the philosophic Hutton, who
sixty-two years ago rendered Glen Tilt so famous ; the
professor's father is, we understand, the philosopher's near-
est living relative. We trust to see the country roused all the
sooner and the more widely in consequence of the charac-
ter of the outrage, to assert for the people a right to walk
over the country's area, to share in that cheap enjoy-
ment of the beauties of its scenery which softens and hu-
manizes the heart, and to trace unchallenged, amid its
wild moors, on its lonely hilltops, or in the rigid folds of
its strata, those revelations of the All-wise Designer which
serve both to expand the imagination and to exercise the
understanding. Not merely the rights of the poor man,
but the privileges of the man of literature, and the inter*
ISO HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
ests of the man of science, are involved in this question,
those rights, interests, and privileges which the true aris-
tocracy of the country have ever been the first to recog-
nize. Our better proprietors have often admitted where
they might have excluded, never excluded where they
ought to have admitted ; and the experience of our men
of literature and of science, save in those singularly rare
instances in which they come in contact with men of the
peculiar mental cast of the Duke of Atholl, has been invari-
ably that of Cowper's in the park of the Throckmortons :
" The folded gates would bar my progress now,
But that the lord of this enclosed demesne,
Communicative of the good he owns,
Admits me to a share : the guiltless eye
Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys."
We will not instance the case of Sir Walter Scott, nor
say how, in his kindliness of heart, he flung open the
grounds of Abbotsford to his humbler neighbors, without
ever finding occasion to repent his liberality ; for Sir
Walter was no ordinary proprietor, nor, perhaps, was he
dealt with in this matter according to the ordinary expe-
rience of the class. The passage, however, in which, in
his " Letters of Malachi Malagrowther," he sums up some
of the balancing advantages which make up to the poor
Highlander for the general hardness of his lot, seems so
entirely to our purpose that we cannot forbear reference
at least to it. Taken in connection with the shutting
np of Glen Tilt and the Grampians, it forms a piece of
peculiarly exquisite irony :
" The inhabitants of the wilder districts in Scotland," says Sir
Walter, " have actually some enjoyments, both moral and physical,
which compensate for the want of better subsistence and more
comfortable lodging. In a word, they have more liberty than the
inhabitants of the richer soil. Englishmen will start at this as a par-
adox ; but it is very true, notwithstanding, that if one great privilege
GLEN TILT TABOOED. 131
of liberty be the power of going where a man pleases, the Scottish
peasant enjoys it much more than the English. The pleasure of
viewing ' fair nature's face,' and a great many other primitive enjoy-
ments, for which a better diet and lodging are but indifferent substi-
tutes, are more within the power of the poor man in Scotland than
in the sister country. A Scottish gentleman in the wilder districts
is seldom severe in excluding his poor neighbors from his grounds ;
and I have known many that have voluntarily thrown them open to
all quiet and decent persons who wish to enjoy them. The game
of such liberal proprietors, their plantations, their fences, and all
that is apt to suffer from intruders, have, I have observed, been
better protected than when severe measures of general seclusion
were adopted. But in many districts the part of the soil which,
with the utmost stretch of appropriation, the first-born of Egypt
can set apart for his own exclusive use, bears a small proportion
indeed to the uncultivated wastes. The step of the mountaineer
on his wild heath, solitary mountains, and beside his far-spread lake,
is more free than that which is confined to a dusty turnpike, and
warned from casual deviations by advertisements, which menace the
summary vindication of the proprietor's monoply of his extensive
park by spring-guns or man-traps, or the more protracted, yet
scarce less formidable, denunciation of what is often, and scarce un-
justly, spelled 'persecution according to law.' Above all, the peas-
ant lives and dies, as his father did, in the cot where he was born,
without ever experiencing the horrors of a workhouse. This may
compensate for the want of much beef, beer, and pudding, in those
to whom habit has not made this diet indispensable."
" Give us a good trespass act," say some of our propri-
etors, " and we care not though you abolish the game-laws
to-morrow." The country sees in the affair of Gen Tilt
and the Grampians what a good trespass act means, and
has fair warning to avoid effecting the work of abolition
for effected it will be in a careless and slovenly style,
that might result ultimately in but shutting the Scotch out
of Scotland. We trust, meanwhile, that the rencounter
of the Duke of Atholl with the Edinburgh professor will
not be unproductive of consequences. The general ques-
tion could not be fought on more advantageous ground ;
and at least nineteen twentieths of the population of the
132 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
kingdom have an interest in taking part in it, and fighting
it out. There already exists in Edinburgh a " Footpath
Society ; " and we think the country could not do better
than make the Society the nucleus of a great league, and,
in the case of the professor, bring his Grace the Duke into
court. By scarce any other means, in times like the pres-
ent, can the rights of the people be asserted. Combination
and a general fund formed the policy of Cobden and of
O'Connell, and of a greater than either, Thomas Chal-
mers ; and only through combination and a common fund
can our country be now preserved to its people from the
ungenerous and narrow-minded aggressions of Dukes of
Atholl and of Leeds.
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 133
XVI.
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO.
Edinburgh for about a hundred and thirty years after
the Union continued to be in effect, and not in name
merely, the capital of a kingdom, and occupied a place in
the eye of the world scarcely second to that of London.
In population and wealth it stood not higher than the
third-class towns of England ; it had no commerce, and
very little trade, nor did it form a great agricultural centre ;
and as for the few members of the national aristocracy
that continued to make it their home after the disappear-
ance of its parliament, they were not rich, and they were
not influential, and added to neither its importance nor its
celebrity. The high place which Edinburgh held among
the cities of the earth it owed exclusively to the intellect-
ual standing and high literary ability of a few distinguished
citizens, who were able to do for it greatly more in the
eye of Em*ope than had been done by its court and par-
liament, or than could have been done through any other
agency, by the capital of a small and poor country, peopled
by but a handful of men. Ireland produced many famous
orators, shrewd statesmen, and great authors ; but they
did comparatively little for Dublin, even previous to the
Union. With the writings of Swift, Goldsmith, Burke,
Sheridan, and Thomas Moore before us, we can point to
only one work which continues to live in English literature,
"The Draper's Letters," that issued originally from
the Dublin press. London drew to itself the literary ability
of Ireland, and absorbed and assimilated it just as it did
a portion of that of Scotland represented by the Burnets,
Thomsons, Armstrongs, Arbuthnots, Meikles, and Smolletta
12
134 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
of the three last ages ; and in London the Irish became
simply Britons, and served to swell the general stream
of British literature. But Scotland retained not a few
of her most characteristic authors ; and her capital in
many respects less considerable than Dublin formed a
great literary mart, second at one time, in the importance
and enduring character of the works it produced, to no
other in the world. Nothing, however, can be more
evident than that this state of things is passing away.
During the last quarter of a century one distinguished
name after another has been withdrawn by death from
that second great constellation of Scotchmen resident in
Edinburgh to which Chalmers, Sir "Walter Scott, and Lord
Jeffrey belonged ; and with Sir William Hamilton the last
of the group may be said to have disappeared. For the
future, Edinburgh bids fair to take its place simply am<jng
the greater provincial towns of the empire ; and it seems
but natural to look upon her departing glory with a sigh,
and to luxuriate in recollection over the times when she
stood highest in the intellectual scale, and possessed an
influence over opinion coextensive with civilized man.
We have been led into this train by the perusal of one
of the most interesting volumes which has issued from the
Scottish press for several years, " Memorials of his Time ;
by Henry Cockburn." Lord Cockburn en me into life just
in time to occupy the most interesting point possible as
an observer. He was born nearly a year before Chalmers,
only eight years after Scott, and about fourteen years
before Lockhart. The place he occupied in that second
group of eminent men to which the capital of Scotland
owed its glory was thus, chronologically, nearly a middle
place, and the best conceivable for observation. He was
in time too to see, at least as a boy, most of the earlier
group. The greatest of their number, Hume, had indeed
passed from off the stage, but almost all the others still
lived. Home, Robertson, Blair, Henry, were flourishing
in green old age, at a time when he had shot up into
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 135
carious, observant boyhood ; and Mackenzie and Dugald
Stewart were still in but middle life. It is perhaps beyond
the reach of philosophy to assign adequate reasons for the
appearance at one period rather than another of groups
of great men. We know not why the reign of Elizabeth
should have had its family of giants, its Shakspeare,
Spencer, Raleigh, and Bacon ; or why a Milton, Hampden,
and Cromwell should have arisen together during the
middle of the following century; and that after theirtime
only men of a lower stature, though of exquisite propor-
tions, should have come into existence, to flourish as the
wits of Queen Anne. Nor can it be told why the Humes,
Robertsons, and Adam Smiths should have appeared in
Scotland together in one splendid group, to give place to
another group scarce less brilliant, though in a different
way. We only know, that among a people of such intel-
lectual activity as the Scotch, a literary development of
the national mind might have been expected much about
the earlier time. The persecutions and troubles of the
seventeenth century had terminated with the Revolution ;
the intellect of the country, overlaid for nearly a hundred
years, had been set free, and required only a fitting vehicle
in which to address that extended public to which the
Union had taught our countrymen to look; but for more
than thirty years the necessary vehicle was wanting.
Scotchmen bred in Scotland had great difficulty in mas-
tering that essentially foreign language the English ; and
not until the appearance of Hume's first work in 1738 was
there an English book produced by a Scotchman, within
the limits of the country, which Englishmen could rec-
ognize as really written in their own tongue. But the
necessary mastery of the language once acquired, it was
an inevitable consequence of the native mass and quality
of the Scottish mind that it should make itself felt in
British literature ; though, of course, why it should have
given to Britain at nearly the same time its two greatest
historians, its first and greatest political economist, and a
136 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
philosophy destined to be known as peculiarly the Scotch
philosophy all over the world, cannot, of course, be so
readily shown.
It is greatly easier to say why such talent should have
found a permanent centre in Edinburgh. Simple as it may
seem, the prescriptive right of the capital to draft to its
pulpits the elite of the Established clergy did more for it
than almost aught else. Robei-tson the historian had been
minister of Gladsmuir ; Henry the historian, minister of a
Presbyterian congregation in Berwick ; Hugh Blair, min-
ister of Collessie ; Finlayson, so distinguished at one time
for his sermons, and a meritorious Logic Professor in the
University, had been minister of Borthwick; Macknight,
the harmonist of the Gospels, minister of Jedburgh ; and
Dr. John Erskine, minister of Kirkintilloch. But after
they had succeeded in making themselves known by their
writings, they were all concentrated in Edinburgh, with not a
few other able and brilliant men ; and in an age in which the
Scottish clergy, whatever might be their merely professional
merits as a class, were perhaps the most literary in Europe,
such a privilege could not fail to reflect much honor on the
favored city for whose special benefit it was exerted. The
University, too, was singularly fortunate in its professors,
in especial in its school of anatomy and medicine, long
maintained in high repute by the Monroes, Cullens, and
Grcgories, and which reckoned among its offshoots, though
they concentrated their energies rather on physical and
natural than on medical science, men such as Hutton and
Black. In mathematics it had boasted in succession of
a David Gregory and Colin Maclaren, both friends and
proteges of Sir Isaac Newton ; and in f atCT times, of a
Matthew Stewart, John Playfair, and Sir John Leslie. Both
iiese last, with their predecessor Robinson, had also ren-
dered its chair of natural philosophy a very celebrated one ;
tind of its moral science, it must be enough to say that its
metaphysical chair was filled in succession by Dr. Adam
Ferguson, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and latterly
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 137
by the brilliant Wilson, who, if less distinguished than his
predecessors in the walks of abstract thought, more than
equalled them in genius, and in his influence over the gen-
eral literature of the age. Such men are the gifts of Prov-
idence to a country, and cannot be produced at any given
time on the ordinary principle of demand and supply.
But even when they exist, they may be kept out of their
proper places by an ill-exercised patronage ; and it must
be conceded to the old close corporation of Edinburgh,
that in the main it exercised its patronage with great dis-
crimination, and for the best interests of the city. It was
of signal advantage that the established religion of the
country was numerically and politically so strong at the
time that the disturbing element of denominational jeal-
ousy could have no existence in the body ; and, influenced
and directed by the general intellect of the city, its choice
fell on the best possible men, whether Episcopalian or
Presbyterian, that lay within its reach. Further, the legal
profession contributed largely to the earlier intellectual
glory of Edinburgh. Kames was one of its first cultivators
of letters on the English model. Monboddo, with all his
vagaries a very superior man and very vigorous writer,
belonged to the same class. Mackenzie, though in a differ-
ent walk and of a later time, belonged also to the legal
profession. Almost all the contributors to the two peri-
odicals which he edited in succession the "Mirror" and
* Lounger " were also lawyers. And in Edinburgh's
second intellectual group the legal faculty greatly predom-
inated. Scott, Wilson, Lockhart, were all, at least nomi-
nally, of the faculty; and the editor of the "Edinburgh
Review," with its most vigorous contributors, were, even
when they wrote most largely for its pages, busied with
the toils of the bar. Such were the elements of that intel-
lectual greatness of the Scottish capital which gave it so
high a place among the cities of the world. How have
they now so signally failed to keep up the old supply?
It would of course be as idle to inquire why Edinburgh
12*
138 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
has at the present time no Scotts, Humes, or Chalmerses,
as to inquire why Britain has no Shakspeares, Newtons, or
Miltons. Such men always rank among the rarest pro-
ductions of nature ; and centuries elapse in the history of
even learned and ingenious nations in which there appear
none so large of calibre or so various of faculty. Further,
it must be confessed that both the bar and the university
have in a very considerable degree come under that law
of paroxysm which leaves occasional blank spaces in the
production of men of a high class, and the equally obvious
law that gives to a highly cultivated age like the pres-
ent great abundance everywhere of men of mere talent
and accomplishment. Aberdeen, Glasgow, and the great
second-classs towns of England, are all, from this double
circumstance of a lack of the highest men and a great
abundance of men of the subordinate class, much nearer
the level of Edinburgh than they were only a quarter of a
century ago, when Scott and Jeffrey might be seen every
day in term-time at the Parliament House, and Chalmers,
Wilson, and Sir William Hamilton lectured in the Univer-
sity. That change, too, which has passed over the pervad-
ing literature of the age, and given a first place to the
daily newspaper, and only a second place to the bulky
quarterly, has of necessity militated against the capital of
a small country whose most successful newspapers must
content themselves with a circulation of but from two to
three thousand. For the highest periodic literature Lon-
don has, of consequence, become the only true mart ; and
the Scotchman who would live by it must of necessity
make the great metropolis his home. Yet further, the
source whence Edinburgh derived so much of at least her
earlier halo of glory can scarce be said any longer to exist.
Edinburgh has still the old privilege of drafting to her
established churches the elite of the body that can alone
legally occupy them ; but that great revolution in matters
ecclesiastical which has rendered the abolition of the tests
so essential to the efficient maintenance of the educational
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 139
institutions of the nation, has manifested itself within the
pale of the Establishment; and we suppose there is no one
who will now contend that aught of the old ability is to
be derived from this privilege. We have before us a bulky-
volume, entitled "Men of the Time," which, with its bio-
graphic notices of only the living, forms a sort of supple-
ment to those ordinary works of biography which record
the names of only the dead. All the men whose names it
records have made themselves known in the worlds of
thought or action. There are, no doubt, omissions of names
that ought to have found a place in it, and some of the
names which it records might well have been omitted ;
but it is an English, not a Scotch publication ; it does not
seem to have been got up for any party purpose, certainly
not for any party purpose of the Free Church ; and its
evidence, positive and negative, on a question like the
present, may, we think, be safely received. And while we
find in this volume at least three names of Edinburgh
ministers who were brought into the place previous to the
Disruption through the exercise of the old privilege, but
who quitted the Establishment on the Disruption, we do
not find in it the name of a single minister who now occu-
pies any of the city churches.
In that altered state of things to which we refer, Edin-
burgh must of course acquiesce with the best grace it can.
It seems greatly less to be wondered at that such a fate
should overtake it now than that it should not have over-
taken it earlier. There are two circumstances on which
the great interest of Lord Cockburn's "Memorials" seems
to depend, independently of the very pleasing manner in
which the work is written. The recollection of two such
groups of men as for a whole century gave celebrity to a
nation, could scarce fail to secure perusal, from the interest
which ever attaches to the slightest personal traits or
peculiarities of men of fine genius or high talents. We
read the lives of poets and philosophers, not for the striking
points of the stories which they embody, for striking
140 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
points there may be none, but simply for the sake of
the men themselves. We also feel a natural interest in
acquainting ourselves with the strongly-marked manners
and broadly-defined characters of comparatively rude and
simple ages, and seek to derive our amusement rather
from the well drawn-portraits of men who bear all the
natural lineaments than from the masked and muffled men
of a more polished time. No small portion of the amuse-
ment we derive from the glowing fictions of Scott results
from the well-drawn manners of ages a century or two in
advance of our own. And in Lord Cockburn's " Memo-
rials " we have both elements of interest united. In Scot-
land, as in several other countries of northern Europe, the
intellectual development of the leading minds preceded
the general development of even the upper classes in the
politenesses and amenities. Macaulay, in describing the
mental standing of Scotland at the time when the acces-
sion of James VI. to the throne of Elizabeth virtually
united it to England, remarks, that, though it was the
poorest kingdom in Christendom, it already vied in ev-
ery branch of learning with the most favored countries.
"Scotsmen,'' he adds, "whose dwellings and whose food
were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time,
wrote Latin verses with more than the delicacy of Vida,
and made discoveries in science which would have added to
the renown of Galileo." High intellectual cultivation and
great simplicity, nay, rudeness, of manners, with an entire
unacquaintance with what are now the common arts of life,
existed in the same race, and, though the conventionalisms
gained ground as the years passed by, continued to do
bo till at least the commencement of the present century.
Not a few of the best writers and most vigorous thinkers
Britain ever produced bore about them all the sharp-edged
angularity of that early state of society in which every
individual, instead of being smoothed down to a common
mediocre standard, carries about him, like an unworn medal,
the original impress stamped upon him by nature ; and
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 141
they were thus not only interesting as men of large cal-
ibre, but also as the curious characters of a primitive age.
We have not only no such writers or thinkers now as
Hume, Robertson, Kames, and Adam Smith, but no such
characters. In some respects, however, society seems to
have improved in well-nigh the degree in which it has be-
come less picturesque. Lockhart remarks, in his " Life of
Burns," that there was at least one class with which the
poet came in contact in Edinburgh, that, unlike its clerical
literati, were " shocked by his rudeness or alarmed by his
wit." He adds, that among the lawyers of that age " wine-
bibbing and the principle of jollity was indeed in its high
and palmy state ; and that the poet partook largely in
those tavern scenes of audacious hilarity, which then
soothed, as a matter of course, the arid labors of the north-
ern noblesse de la robe" And then he goes on to show
that there is too much reason to fear that Burns, who had
tasted but rarely of such excesses in Ayrshire, caught harm
from his new companions, and became nearly as lax in his
habits, and nearly as reprehensible in his morals, as most
respectable judges of the Supreme Court and influential
elders of the General Assembly. And the work before us
6hows how very much may be involved in the remark*
Certainly, if Burns ever drank half so hard as some of the
leading lawyer elders, who, laudably alarmed lest the found-
ations of our faith should be undermined by the metaphys-
ics of Sir John Leslie, took most decided part against the
appointment of that philosopher, he must have been nearly
as bad as he has been represented by his severer censors.
The late Lord Hermand may be regarded as no unmeet
representative of the class.
" He had acted," says Lord Cockburn, his nephew, by the way,
" in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any
man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure ;
hut with Hermand it was a virtue. It inspired the excitement by
which he was elevated, and the discursive jollity which he loved to
promote. But beyond these ordinary attractions, he had a sincere
142 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
respect for drinking : indeed, a high moral approbation, and a seri-
ous compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it ;
but due contempt of those who could but diJ not. He groaned
over the gradual disappearance of the Fineat days of periodical fes-
tivity, and prolonged the observance, like a hero fighting amidst his
fallen friends, as long as he could. The worship of Bacchus, which
softened his own heart, and seemed to him to soften the hearts of
his companions, was a sacred duty No carouse ever injured
his health Two young gentlemen, great friends, went together
to the theatre in Glasgow, supped at the lodgings of one of them,
and passed a whole summer night over their punch. In the morn-
ing a kindly wrangle broke out about their separating or not sepa-
rating, when, by some rashness, if not accident, one of them was
stabbed, not violently, but in so vital a part that he died on the
spot. The survivor was tried at Edinburgh, and was convicted of
culpable homicide. It was one of the sad cases where the legal
guilt was greater than the moral, and, very properly, he was sen-
tenced to only a short imprisonment. Hermand, who felt that dis-
credit had been brought on the cause of drinking, had no sympathy
with the tenderness of his temperate brethren, and was vehement
for transportation. ' We are told that there was no malace, and
that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor ! Why, he
was drunk ! And yet he murdered the very man that had been
drinking with him ! They had been carousing the whole night ;
and yet he stabbed him, after drinking a whole bottle of rum with
him ! Good God ! my laards, if he will do this when he is drunk,
what will he do when he is sober!'"
As an elder this worthy representative of the old school
was no less extraordinary than as a judge. The humor of
Goldsmith has been described as hurrying him into mere
unnatural farce when he describes his incarcerated debtor
as remarking from his prison, in the prospect of a Gallican
invasion, "The greatest of my apprehensions is for our
freedom ! " and the profane soldier, very much a Protestant,
as chiming in with the exclamation, "May the devil sink
me into flames, if the French should come over, but our
religion would be utterly undone." But from the real his-
tory of Lord Hermand similar examples might be gleaned
quite extreme enough to justify Goldsmith. We find
EDINBURGH AN AGE AGO. 143
Lord Cockburn thus describing his zeal for what he deemed
sound views, in the famous Sir John Leslie case :
" Hermand was in a glorious frenzy. Spurning all unfairness, a
religious doubt, entangled with mystical metaphysics, and counte-
nanced by his party, had great attractions for his excitable head
and Presbyterian taste. What a figure, as he stood on the floor
declaiming and screaming amidst the .divines! tbe tall man, with
his thin powdered locks and long pigtail, the long Court-of- Session
cravat flaccid and streaming with the heat and the obtrusive linen !
The published report makes him declare that the ' belief of the being
and perfections of the Deity is the solace and delight of my life.'
But this would not have been half intense enough for Hermand ; and
accordingly his words were, ' Sir, I have sucked in the being and
attributes of God with my mother's milk* His constant and affection-
ate reverence for his mother exceeded the devotion of any Indian
for his idol ; and under the feeling, he amazed the house by main-
taining (which was his real opinion) that there was no apology for
infidelity, or even for religious doubt, because no good or sensible
man had anything to do except to be of the religion of his mother,
which, be it what it might, was always best. ' A sceptic, Sir, I hate !
with my whole heart I detest him ! But, Moderator, I love a
Turk.'"
Such was one of the characters of Edinburgh not more
than half a century ago ; and yet he belongs as entirely to
an extinct state of things as the oldest fossils of the ^eol-
ogist. And there are many such in this volume, drawn
with all the breadth, and in some instances all the pictur-
esque effect, of the best days of the drama. But, though
a thoroughly amusing volume, it is also something greatly
better; and there is, we doubt not, a time coming when
the student of history will look to it, much rather than to
works professedly historic, for the true portraiture of Edin-
burgh society during the periods in which it maintained its
place most efficiently in the worlds of literature and of
science. And yet, as may be seen from the sketch just
given, all was not admirable in the ages in which our cap-
ital excited admiration most; and we must just console
144 HISTORICAL AXD BIOGRAPHICAL.
ourselves by the reflection, that, though we live in a more
mediocre time, it is in the main a more quietly respectable
one.
XVII.
BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP.
" The Burns Festival," writes a respected correspond-
ent in the west, in whose veins flows the blood of Gilbert
Burns, " is already well-nigh forgotten in Ayr." We are
not at all sure that it ought to be forgotten so soon. Could
we but look just a little below the surface of the event,
with its checkered patchwork of the bizarre and the pic-
turesque, and its, doubtless, much genuine enthusiasm,
blent with at least an equal anount of overstrained and
awkward simulation, we might possibly discover in it a
lesson not unworthy of being remembered. Deep below the
ridiculous gaud and glitter, we may find occult principles
of our nature at work in this commemorative festival prin-
ciples which have been active throughout every period of
the history of man, which gave of old their hero gods to
the Greek and the Roman, and the red-letter saint days to
the calender of the Papist ; and which in these latter times
we may see scarce less active than ever in the worlds of
politics and letters. We find them alike developed in the
" hero-worship " of Carlyle, and the Pitt and Fox dinners
and clubs of our politicians.
Assa piece of mere show, the festival of Burns, like the
tournament of Lord Eglinton, was singularly unhappy
Both got sadly draggled in the mud, and looked like
bepowdered beaus who set out for the ballroom in their
thin shoes and silk stockings, and are overwhelmed in a
thunder-shower by the way. Serious earnest stands a
THE BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP. 145
ducking ; mere show and make-believe becomes ridiculous
in the wet. The 92d Highlanders were thoroughly re-
spectable at Waterloo, though drenched to the skin ; and
we have seen from twelve to fifteen thousand of their de-
vout countrymen gathered together amid their wild hills,
in storm and rain, on a sacramental Sabbath, without
appearing in the slightest degree contemptible. But alas
for a draggled procession, or a festival first dressed up in
gumflowers and then bespattered with mud ! Processions
and festivals cannot stand a wetting. Like some of the
cheap stuffs half whitening and starch of the cotton-
weaver, they want body for it. Their respectability is
painfully dependent on the vicissitudes of the barometer.
Every shower of rain converts itself into a jest at their
expense, that turns the laugh against them, and every
flying pellet of mud becomes a practical joke. And as the
festival of Burns, like the tournament of Eglinton, got
particularly wet, wet till it streamed and smoked like a
Bait-pan, and the water that streamed downwards from its
nape to its heels discharged the dye of its buckram inex-
pressibles on its white silk stockings, and flowed over the
mouth of its thin-soled pumps, it returned to its home
in the evening, looking, it must be confessed, rather ludi-
crous than gay. It encountered the accident of being
splashed and rained upon, and so turned out a failure.
Nay, even previous to its mishap, there were visible in
the getting-up of its scene-work certain awkward-looking
strings and wires, that did not appear particularly respect-
able in the broad daylight. Its prepared lightning took
the form of pounded rosin ; and the mustard-mill destined
to produce its thunder was suffered to obtrude itself all
too palpably on the sight of the public. People remarked,
that among the various toasts given at the banquet, there
were no grateful compliments paid, no direct notice taken,
of its first originators. No one thought of toasting them.
They were found to compose part of the vulgar string-
and-wire work, part of the pounded rosin and mustard-
18
146 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHIC AI..
mill portion of the exhibition ; and so, according to the
poet,
" What would offend the eye
The painter threw discreetly into shade."
But it is well to remark that the Burns festival had an
element of actual t ower and significancy in it, altogether
separate and apart from the lowness of its immediate ori-
gin, the staring rawness of its rude machinery, or the
woful ducking in which it made its ridiculous exit. It is
significant that the mind of the country should exist in
such a state in reference to the memory of the departed
poet, that a few obscure men over their ale could have
originated such a display. The call to celebrate by a
festival the memory of Burns, seems, with reference to
those from whom it first proceeded, to have been a low
and vulgar call ; but that it should have been responded
to by thousands and tens of thousands, that town and
village should have poured forth their inhabitants to the
spectacle, that eminent men from remote parts of the
country should have flocked to it, are matters by no
means vulgar or low. The surface of the pageant, like its
origin, seems to have been a sufficiently poor affair ; but
underneath that surface there must have beat a living and
vigorous heart, neither poor in its emotions nor yet unin-
teresting in its physiology.
We would recognize in it, first of all, the singularly pow-
erful impression made by the character of Burns on the
people of Scotland. The man Burns exists as a large idea
in the national mind, altogether independent of his literary
standing as the writer of what are preeminently the na-
tional songs. Our English neighbors, as a people at least,
are much less literary than ourselves. The fame of their
best writers has scarce at all reached the masses of their
population. They know nothing of Addison with his
exquisitely classic prose, or of Pope with his finished and
pointed verse. We have been struck, however, by finding
THE BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP. 147
it remarked by an English writer, who lived long in Lon-
don, and moved much among the common people, that he
found in the popular mind well-marked though indistinct
and exaggerated traces of at least one great English au-
thor. He could learn nothing, he observed, from the men
who drove cabs and drays, of the wits and scholars of
Queen Anne, or of the much greater literati of the previous
century ; nay, they seemed to know scarce anything of
living genius ; but they all possessed somehow an indistinct,
shadowy notion of one Dr. Samuel Johnson, a large, ill-
dressed man, who was a great writer of they knew not
what ; and almost all of them could point out the various
places in which he had lived, and the house in which
he died. Altogether independently of his writings for
these are far from being of a popular cast the doctor
had made an impression by the sheer bulk and energy of
his character ; he loomed large and imposing simj)ly as a
man; an impression of the strange kingly power which he
possessed, and before which his contemporaries, the Burkes
and Reynolds and Charles James Foxes of the age, were
content to bow acquiescent, had somehow reached the
masses, and the lapse of two generations had failed to
efface it. The only other man of whom the author of the
remark found similar traces among the common people of
London was not a writer at all ; but he, too, far excelled
his contemporaries in the kingly faculty, and stamped, not
on the mind of his country alone, but on that of civilized
man everywhere, the impress of his power. The men who
carried about with them this curious shadowy idea of
Johnson had an idea, also existing in exactly similar con-
ditions, of one Oliver Cromwell, an idea of some kind
of undefinable greatness and power, not extrinsic and
foreign to him, but inherent and self-derived, and before
which all opposition was prostrated. The intrinsic weight
of the two characters had sunk their impress deep into the
popular memory. And on a similar principle has the pop*
148 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
ular memory been impressed in Scotland by the eharactv*
of Robert Burns.
Scotland has produced many men eminent for literature
and philosophy, exquisite poets, like him who wrote the
" Battle of the Baltic," and scholai-s of the highest reach,
such as the author of the " Franciscan ; " the history of
Hume is still supereminently the English History ; the
novels of Scott are the most popular fictions ever produced
in any age or nation ; but the authors of these works,
though great writers, were not properly great men. Some
of them, on the contrary, were rather small men. Camp-
bell was decidedly diminutive, maugro his fine genius and
exquisite taste ; Hume was merely a cold, though not ill-
tempered sceptic, who enjoyed life at his leisure and grew
fat ; nor would Scott, though rather a happy-dispositioned,
hospitable country gentleman, who made money and then
lost it, have greatly shone as a hero in one of the dramas
of Goethe or Shakspeare. But, altogether independently
of his writings, the character of Burns, like that of John-
son, was one of great massiveness and power. There was
a cast of true tragic greatness about it. There was a
largeness in his heart, and a force in his passions, that
corresponded with the mass of his intellect and the vigor
of his genius. We receive just such an impression from
reading his life as we do from perusing one of the greater
tragedies of Shakspeare. Like the Othellos or Macbeths
of the dramatist, characters that fasten upon the imag-
ination and sink into the memory from causes altogether
unconnected with either literary taste or moral feeling,
we feel in him, per force, an interest which exists and
grows alike independently of the excesses into which his
passions betrayed him, or the trophies which his genius ena-
bled him to erect. Burns was not merely a distinguished
poet, he was a man on a large scale; and the festival
of the present month bore emphatic testimony to the fact
It is not uninstructive to mark how this admiration of
the merely great and imposing grows upon mankind, until
THE BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP. 149
at length, at the distance of an age or two, the departed
great man reckons among his semi-worshippers individuals
of not less calibre than himself. Burns to borrow from
Cowper's allusion to Garrick and Garrick's commemora-
tive festival at Avon " was himself a worshipper. ' " Man
praises man ! " The great hero of the poet was Robert the
Bruce. He was selected by him to form the leading char-
acter in his projected drama ; we find frequent allusions to
him in his letters and journals ; and the most spirit-stirring
of all his songs is the address of the hero king to his troops
at Bannockburn. Now we have seen faithful casts of the
skulls of worshipper and worshipped resting side by side
on the same shelf in a museum, and have been greatly struck
by the fact that they should have existed in such a rela-
tion to each other. The worshipper, if there be a shadow
of truth in the science that professes to draw conclusions
from the material organ of mind regarding the energy and
direction of the mind's immaterial workings, must have been
altogether as powerful a man as the worshipped. In gen-
eral size, the head of the indomitable king, who so strongly
impressed his character on a rude and turbulent age, and
the head of the not less indomitable peasant, who in an age
of thinking men stamped the impress of his scarce less
deeply, exactly resemble one another. They were heads of
about the same bulk as the head of Dr. Chalmers. Both
display great animal power. There is a towering organ
of firmness in the head of the monarch which we miss in
that of the poet, and larger developments of caution and
hope ; but in imagination, intellect, benevolence, the scale
predominates greatly on the other side. In these the
man-like faculties the worshipper was superior to his
demi-god. And yet he was a worshipper. The felt influ-
ence of greatness, removed by distance, that identical
influence which a fortnight since drew so many thousands
to the Burns festival, had been operative on his imagi-
nation and his feelings : the departed hero loomed large and
imposing through the magnifying fogs of the past ; and
13*
150 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
the worshipper, though not greatly disposed to yield to
contemporaries, and fully aware that he himself was no
common man, never once suspected that the object of his
worship was in the main not a greater man than himself,
and in some respects an inferior one.
Could we but lay open the inner springs of this tendency
to man-worship, they would enable us, we are convinced,
to comprehend many a curious chapter in the early history
of the species. Departed greatness, enveloped by its pecu-
liar atmosphere of reverential respect and awe, and exag-
gerated by distance, is suffered to retain within the bright
circle of its halo many an attendant littleness and impurity
that contemporaries would have at least not admired. The
greatness is doubtless the staple of the matter, that which
dazzles, impresses, attracts ; and the littlenesses and impu-
rities, mere accidents that have mixed with it ; and yet how
strange a tone do they not too frequently succeed in im-
parting to the worship ! There was much of apology at
the Burns festival for the errors of the poet; and it said
at least something for the morals of the time, whatever it
might for the taste of the speakers, that such should have
been the case. In a remoter and more darkened age of
the world, like those ages in which hero worship rose into
religion, the errors would have been remembered, but the
apology would have been wanting. Burns would have
been deified into an Apollo, and his love passages with the
nymphs Daphne, Levcothoe, and Coronis, and his drinking
bouts with Admetus and Hyacinthus, would have been
registered simply as incidents in his history, incidents
which in the course of time would have come to serve as
precedents for his worshippers. We are afraid that, rnau-
gre regret and apology, there is too much of this as it is.
His hapless errors, so fatal to himself, have been too often
surveyed though the dazzling halo of his celebrity. The
felt influence of his greatness has extended to his faults,
as if they were part and parcel of that greatness. The
atmosphere of the sun conceals the sun's spots from the
1HE BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP. 151
unassisted eye of the observer; but the atmosphere of
glory that surrounds the memory of Burns has not had a
similar effect. To many at least it has the effect of making
his blemishes appear less as original flaws than as a species
of beauty-spots, of a fashion to be imitated. How can we
marvel that the old worshippers of the offspring of Saturn
or of Latona should have imitated their gods in their
crimes, if in these our days of light, with the model of a
perfect religion before our eyes, hero worship should be
found to exert, as of old, a demoralizing tendency ! But
it would not be easy to say where more emphatic or more
honest warning could be found on this head than in the
writings of Burns himself. We stake his own deeply-
mournful prediction of the fate which he saw awaiting him
against all ever advanced on the opposite side :
" The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the social glow
And safter flame;
Bat thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name."
Despite the'authority of high names, we are no admirers
of hero worship. We are not insensible to what we may
term the natural claims of Barns on the admiration of his?
country, both as a writer and as a character of great bulk
and power. It would be hypocrisy in us to say that we
were. Were his writings to be annihilated to-morrow, wo
could restore from memory some of the best of them entire,
and not a few of the more striking passages in many of the
others. Nor are we unimpressed by the massiveness of
his character as a man. We bear about with us an ad
equate idea of it, as developed in that deeply-mournful
tragedy, his life. But we would not choose to go and
worship at his festival. There was a hollowness about the
ceremony, independently of the falseness of the principles
on which its ritual was framed. Of the thousands who at-
152 HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
tended, how many, does the reader think, would have sym-
pathized, had they seen the light some fifty years earlier,
with the man Robert Burns ? How many of them grap-
pled in idea at his festival with other than a more phan-
tom of the imagination a large but intangible shade,
obscure and indefinable as that conjured up by the unin-
formed Londoner of Cromwell or of Johnson ? Rather
more than fifty years ago, the sinking sun shone brightly,
one fine afternoon, on the stately tenements of Dumfries,
and threw its slant rule of light athwart the principal
street of the town. The shadows of the houses on the
western side were stretched halfway across the pavement;
while on the side opposite, the red beam seemed as if
sleeping on jutting irregular fronts and tall gables. There
was a world of well-dressed company that evening in
Dumfries ; for the aristocracy of the adjacent country for
twenty miles round had poured in to attend a county ball,
and were fluttering in groups along the sunny side of the
street, gay as buttei-flies. On the other side, in the shade,
a solitary individual paced slowly along the pavement.
Of the hundreds who fluttered past, no one took notice of
him ; no one seemed to recognize him. He was known to
them all as the exciseman and poet Robert Burns ; but he
had offended the stately Toryism of the district by the
freedom of his political creed ; and so tainted by the
plague of Liberalism, he lay under strict quarantine. He
was shunned and neglected ; for it was with the man
Burns that these his contemporaries had to deal. Let the
reader contrast with this truly melancholy scene the scene
of his festival a fortnight since. Here are the speeches of
the Earl of Eglinton and Sir John M'Neil, and here the
toast of the Lord Justice General. Let us just imagine
these gentlemen, with all their high aristocratic notions
about them, carried back half a century into the past, and
dropped down, on the sad evening to which we refer,
in the main street of Dumfries. Which side, does the
reader think, would they have chosen to walk upon?
THE BURNS FESTIVAL AND HERO WORSHIP. 153
Would they have addressed the one solitary individual in
the shade, or not rather joined themselves to the gay
groups in the sunshine who neglected and contemned
him ? They find it an easy matter to deal with the phan-
tom idea of Burns now ; how would they have dealt with
the man then ? How are they dealing with his poorer
relatives ; or how with men of kindred genius, their contem-
poraries? Alas ! a moment's glance at such matters is suf-
ficient to show how very unreal a thing a commemorative
feast may be. Reality, even in idea, becomes a sort of
Ithuriel spear to test it by. The Burns festival was but
an idle show, at which players enacted their parts.
There is another score on which we dislike hero worship.
We deem it a sad misapplication of an inherent disposition
of the mind, imparted for the most solemnly important of
purposes. " Man worships man," says Cowpcr. The ten-
dency, either directly or in its effects, we find indicated in
almost every page of the history of the species. We see
it in every succeeding period, from its times of full devel-
opment, when the men-gods of the Greek were worshipped
by sacrifice and oblation, down to the times of the Shak-
speare jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, or the times of the
Burns festival at Ayr. But the sentiment, thus active in
expatiating in false direction, has a true direction in which
to expatiate, and a worthy object on which to fix. As if to
dash the dull and frigid dreams of the Socinian,the instinct
of man worship may find a true man worthy the adoration
of all, and who reigns over the nations as their God and
king. Every other species of man worship is a robbery of
Him. It is a worship that belongs of right to the man
Christ Jesus alone, the " God whose throne is for ever
and ever," and whom " all the angels of God worship,"
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
I.
OUR WORKING GLASSES.
Never in the history of the world have so many efforts
been made to improve the condition of the working classes
as at the present time. The legislator, the philanthropist,
the city missionary, the theorist, who would do his best to
uproot the very foundations of our social system, and the
man of practice, who would spare no exertion to ameliorate
its actual condition, have been at work, each in his several
direction, honestly, earnestly, and unremittingly toiling to
a single purpose, the elevation of our working people.
We have passed laws ; we have devised model dwellings ;
we have sent pious men to hunt out ignorance and vice;
we have schemed out theories that would mow down the
institutions of ages ; we have speculated in the direction
of secular socialism and in the direction of Christian so-
cialism ; we have tried cooperative societies, building soci-
eties, and model lodgings ; we have written, lectured, and
taught ; we have appointed commissions, jointed acres
of reports ; pried into every hole and corner of society
(except the convents) ; we have exported hundreds of
thousands of what we termed, only a year or two back,
ouv "surplus population;" we have raised wages, dimin-
ished competition, and founded magnificent colonies with
t* ose who were too many at home ; we have done these
OUR WORKING CLASSES. 155
and many other things; and what has been the result?
Have we moved the living mass of our work-people a single
step higher in the scale of moral existence ? Have we
taught them wisdom as well as knowledge ? Have we
taught them to be provident, and to manage their own
affairs with prudence and discretion ? Have we placed
them in circumstances where they fulfil their duties as
men? Have we, in fact, succeeded, after all our labors,
in promoting the genuine welfare of the working popula-
tion ? To answer this question either with a summary
affirmative or with an emphatic No, would be out of place.
That all the expended labor has been wasted and thrown
away, we cannot for a moment believe ; but it is equally
certain that the present condition of our working classes
is preeminently unsatisfactory, and that no such general
improvement has taken place as would entitle us to say
that we had arrived at the true solution of this great social
problem. Two things there are which, in every condition
of life, mark the wellbeiug of society ; namely, the integrity
of the family, and the sufficiency of the dwelling. The
family is the foundation of everything, the root out of
which the social world grows. Break it up, and you have
as certainly introduced a corrupting poison into the frame-
work of the community, as if you had inoculated the hu-
man frame with a deadly and malignant agent that destroys
the very issues of life. The whole of our factory system
where women are employed is merely a systematic de-
struction of the family, practical socialism, in fact, which
prepares the way for theoretic socialism of the direst and
most disastrous tendency, atheistic and material, without
natural affection, without law, without order, without the
thousand amenities of domestic life. It matters little
whether the women are employed as married, or only as
unmarried. If married women are engaged in factory
works, they of course neglect their children, who, between
the period of childhood and that of labor, have the edu-
cation of the public streets, with its unconcealed vice, its
156 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
oaths and curses, its idleness and its vagabondism. "We
have only to go into our streets in the lower quarters of
any of our towns to be painfully assured that every one
is a broad road to destruction for the young, and that no
mere school-education can ever effectually compete with
the force of evil habit, any more than wholesome food will
effectually nourish those who dwell continually in a pol-
luted atmosphere. We are all aware that the decent por-
tion of our country population look with absolute horror
on the habitual circumstances of a town life. And why
so? Is it not because in their country dwellings they
have been accustomed to the sacred integrity of the family,
and that their isolated cottage was a home, containing
father, mother, and children : God's first institute, s*
family ? The cottage may be small, ill-thatched, ill-venti-
lated, ill-floored, and smoky; it may have its dubs, it?
puddles, and its national midden; it may be high up on $
hill, where winter blasts and winter snows are more famil-
iar than blue skies or green fields ; or it may be down in a
glen, miles away from other mortal habitation, so soli-
tary that every stranger who appears is a spectacle and
amazement to the children. No matter : wherever or
whatever it may be, it is a home, and contains a family,
every member of which would look with instinctive horror
at the indiscriminate sort of existence common in many
of our towns. Thanks to the bothy system, however, this
feeling of family sacredness is beginning to be eradicate 1
out of even our rural population ; and perhaps in time a
certain portion of our peasantry may be duly brought to
believe that the family is a superfluous invention, after
which they will be fit for anything, and good for nothing.
The same principle pervades every rank of society, high 01
low. Where the family is broken up, whether from
what are termed the necessities of trade, from polygamous
customs, from fashionable usages, or from particular acci-
dents, evil follows as a regular and constant effect. Of
all the social laws that have ever been discovered, this
OUR WORKING CLASSES. 157
is the most indisputably certain, that the family is an insti-
tution of nature, an organized association established im-
mutably by God's providence for the welfare of mankind.
What, we ask, is it that has made the most powerful mon-
arch in the world the most universally and enthusiastically
popular among her subjects? It is neither her power nor
her possession of tho imperial throne. It is the splendor
of the wife and mother, beaming with a light far brighter
than a kohinoor, and carrying to every subject-land and
to every subject-household the royal proclamation that
the family is respected by the thi*one, and that monarchs
themselves may find their truest happiness in those insti-
tutes of God which are common to the humblest house-
hold that obeys their sway. The preservation of the family
in its full integrity we regard as the first absolute requisite,
without which there can be no permanent improvement,
and without which all efforts to ameliorate the condition
of our working classes must certainly fail.
Next to the family comes the dwelling. As dress is the
clothing of the individual, so is the house the clothing of
the family. It ought to be sufficient, sufficient for all
the purposes of family life, for decency, for convenience,
for warmth, for shelter, for washing and cooking, for retire-
ment, and for the separation of the sexes. Here society
has foiled. It is idle to speak of sanitary reform, and almost
idle to speak of moral reform, when we comtemplate the
dwellings of a large portion of the working population.
We can no more expect propriety of conduct in the in-
dividual if we clothe him in rags, and keep him in rags,
than we can expect propriety of conduct in a family that
lives habitually in the wretched lodgments which disgrace
our towns and cities. For our towns, however, there is
some excuse. They have increased so rapidly in popu-
lation, that the supply of house-room did not, and could not,
under the ordinary course of private speculation, equal
the demand. When Ireland was pouring her thousands
into Glasgow, and the Highlands were undergoing the
14
158 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
process of clearing, it could not be expected that more
than the very meanest accommodation should be obtained
by such a class. The past must be palliated ; but now
that the pressure is in a great measure over, and a breath-
ing-time is afforded by the stream of emigration setting
no longer from the country to the town, but out of the
kingdom to the colonies and the United States, we can
conceive no object on which society may more profitably
fix its attention than on the systematic improvement of
the dwellings of the industrial classes. A universal crusade
against every tenement that did not afford the proper
requisites of domestic life would be at least one step to-
wards the desirable result. But this would be insufficient.
It would be only a negative reform, and all negative reforms
are insufficient. It would be only cutting off the evil,
whereas the true object is to produce the good. If we
were to pull down every tenement that did not fulfil even
the moderate conditions that would in all probability be
fixed by the Government, we should only have rendered our
working people houseless. We must devise some plan by
which proper buildings shall be erected, and insure the
future wellbeing of the people by a systematic scheme,
that could not legally be departed from within the limits
of any town containing a given number of inhabitants.
What is already evil we must reform as best we may ; but
what is future we ought intelligently to design to leave
nothing to accident, nothing to the hazards of avaricious
speculation ; but, duly considering what is needed, to pro-
vide for it beforehand with a wise precaution, which in
course of time would react powerfully on the whole habits
and manners of the laboring community.
We believe, however, that we have reached a turning-
point in our downward course, that we have passed the
worst, and that there is, both in the legislature and in
society at large, a very general desire to favor the requisite
improvements, provided it could be clearly shown what the
improvements should consist of, and upon what principle
OUR WORKING CLASSES. 159
they should be undertaken. When we find men like the
"Duke of Buccleuch candidly confessing to his honor be
it spoken that he had done wrong in so long neglecting
the dwellings of the smaller tenantry, cottars, and bothy-
men, when we find Mr. Stuart of Oathlaw succeeding
in banding together some of the most influential and exten-
sive landed proprietors for the purpose of improving the
dwellings in the country districts, and when we find the
Rev. Mr. Mackenzie of North Leith only stopped in his
career of practical benevolence by the absurd and anti-
quated usages of feudal lawyerism, we are not without
ground for hope that a general movement may be made at
no very distant period, and that we may see model towns
not only projected, but actually erected, inhabited, and in
vital operation. Without the integrity of the family and
the sufficiency of the dwelling there can be no satisfactory
reform, either in a sanitary or a moral aspect ; and we
propose in a future article to discuss some of the main
causes that have led to the present condition of our work-
ing population. We propose to inquire whether, and in
what circumstances, the laboring agriculturist or artisan
might profitably be the proprietor of his dwelling, and how
far the acquisition of real property might operate as a
check on the habitual improvidence that is proven to exist.
Among all the experiments that have been made, at least in
this country, it is plainly evident that a vast field, and that
certainly not the most unpromising, has been left untouched
and unexplored. To promote the habit of providence in
our working classes, it is not only necessary to exhibit a
moral restriction which cautions them from going wrong,
but to present a positive stimulus which induces them to
go right, to exhibit something good before their eyes,
after which they shall strive, rand to make them act of
their own free will, as if they had an object to attain.
This stimulus may possibly be found in the desire to pos-
sess real property; and although no mere change of laws
or circumstances may ever do more than facilitate the
160 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
progress of good, it is quite possible that a change of cir-
cumstances might eminently promote a change of habits,
and lead gradually but surely to a more enlightened ap-
preciation of the advantages that might accrue if the pres-
ent recklessness and extravagance were exchanged for
prudence and economy.
II.
PEASANT PROPERTIES.
In our present observations on peasant properties, we do
not intend to inquire into the ethics of the question. We do
not ask whether it was morally right or morally wrong for
England to pursue that vast system of inclosure by which
the English peasantry were permanently ejected from
their commons, and deprived of their prescriptive rights ;
or whether it was right or wrong for the legislature and
the Highland proprietors to convert, by a fiction of law,
what was once to all intents and purposes the property of
the clans into-the private domains of individual landlords,
thereby disinheriting all save the chief and his family.
These questions are practically settled ; the facts are
achieved ; society has accepted them ; and it is now useless
to speculate on what might have been the result if a dif-
ferent principle had pervaded the arrangements. Within
a century and a half a vast revolution has been wrought
in the occupation of the lands both of England and Scot-
land. By the inclosure of the commons, about five thou-
sand parishes, constituting nearly a half of the soil of
England, were subjected to a legal process which severed
the peasant from all direct interest in the land, and left it
ultimately in the hands of large proprietors. And by the
PEASANT PROPERTIES. 161
introduction of the English doctrine of property into the
Highlands, the old system of customary occupation was
entirely superseded, and a new system substituted which
threw vast territories into the absolute control of single
individuals, who had previously been only the representa-
tives of their tribe, and who had held the lands not as
their own, but in virtue of their office as chiefs or petty
sovereigns, who ruled over a given district, and adminis-
tered the public affairs of the clan. These measures have
produced a radical change in the whole structure of soci-
ety. The first, by leading to the absorption ofthe smaller
properties, abolished the English yeoman ; and the second
bids fair to abolish the Highland population. Both mea-
sures had essentially the same result in one respect,
essentially a different result in another. They both left
a country population composed of a very small number of
great landed proprietors, surrounded by a dependent and
almost subject tenantry, outside of which remained the
mass of those who live by labor alone, who have been cast
loose from all interest in the soil, and who are regarded as
machines for the execution of work. In this respect the
results have been similar in the two countries. But a very
striking difference presents itself to view when we turn
our attention to the soil itself, and ask how it has been
affected by the change. In England the pretext for the
inclosure of the commons was, that the land was uncul-
tivated, and to a great extent unproductive. This was
actually true, and, being so, it was a good and sufficient
reason for the introduction of some new system by which
the lands should be brought into cultivation. Still, even
supposing that the produce after the inclosure was five or
ten times greater than before, it was more advantageous
to the peasantry that is, to the great body of the rural
population to have only the fifth or the tenth as their
own than to be deprived of it altogether, and to see ten
times the produce passing into the hands of the great
landlords and great agriculturists. The lands, however,
14*
162 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
were cultivated, and the produce was obtained ; so that
although the English peasant was ousted from his common
rights, the land was turned to its proper agricultural use,
and grew corn for the service of the nation. The land-
lords and farmers acquired wealth, the peasants went on
the parish, and were supported by the parish rates. In
Scotland the effect has been entirely of an opposite char-
acter. The lands, instead of being brought into cultivation,
have been thrown out of cultivation. The cottage and
the croft have been herried to make way for grouse and
deer; and, so far as the production of food is concerned,
food available for the ordinary purposes of life, hun-
dreds of thousands of acres that once grew and supported
soldiers second to none who ever stpeped, might as well
be sunk in the bottom of the sea. Not only are they not
cultivated, but in some cases they are not even to be seen.
What, then, is to be the termination of this course, that
has been gradually but surely working an entire change in
the relations of the British population to the British soil '?
The number of proprietors has been constantly diminish-
ing, and the land is passing into fewer and fewer hands.
If the process were to continue, a time might come when
the very stability of the state itself might be endangered,
and a change of system would be imperatively required
for the safety of the nation. Already many parts of the
country are both materially and martially much weaker
than at any former period. They can neither turn out
the same amount of food for the support of the nation,
nor the same number of men for the national labor or the
national defence. In other districts where the population
is dense, the stature of the people has diminished ; that is,
the people are undergoing a course of physical deteriora-
tion. Great numbers of our healthiest, strongest, and
most athletic sons are emigrating ; for it is no longer the
half-starved pauper who emigrates, but the very pick of
our industrial classes. The nation, powerful as it is, and
perhaps presuming a little too much on its past career, is
PEASANT PROPERTIES. 163
certainly at the present time undergoing a process of de-
bilitation, becoming relatively weaker ; increasing in
wealth, but not improving, or even maintaining, the solid
element of a well-arranged and well-conditioned popula-
tion.
To arrest the progress of this growing evil, various rem-
edies have been proposed. Some have asserted that a total
abolition of entails would effectually prevent the accumu-
lation of estates into the hands of a single proprietor; for-
getting that the estates have been so accumulated simply
because the large estates were entailed, and the small
estates were not entailed ; and that the usual purchaser,
whenever land is exposed for sale, is either a great proprie-
tor or a great capitalist. When an evil has grown to a
certain point, it will perpetuate itself, like iron, which,
when heated to a certain temperature, will burn of its own
accord. In the present condition of Britain, the abolition
of entails would be quite as likely to throw the land into
fewer hands as to increase the number of landholders, be-
cause the great proprietors, who have large revenues, or
almost unlimited credit, will give more for the land than
its actual mercantile worth, estimated by the rate of inter-
est that might be derived from other investments. The
abolition of entails would in all probability only transfer
the estates of the impoverished families to those who are
already possessed of extensive domains. There would be
no tendency to subdivision, because the offer of ten thou-
sand pounds for a small property that was only worth five
thousand would be no temptation to a lord or duke who
has perhaps a clear income of a hundred thousand a year,
and whose object is not to get money, but to get more
land. That the abolition of entails would lead to the
sale of land in such portions as would be convenient to
the purchaser, that a farmer, for instance, who had been
saving and successful, could go to his landlord and buy
his farm at a fair market-price, as he would buy a house or
a ship, we certainly do not anticipate ; for if the farm lay
164 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
in the centre of an estate, the proprietor would not sell it
for ten times its estimated value ; nay, he would not sell it
at all. The mere abolition of entails, therefore, although
in itself a good and proper measure, would not be calcu-
lated to work any great change for the general welfare.
It might relieve some spendthrift families from the incon-
venience of estates which they were unable to manage or
redeem, and it might infuse new capital into the agricul-
tural improvements of the country ; but that it would
materially affect the mass of the rural population to their
advantage is by no means probable. At the same time,
the total abolition of every remnant of the feudal system
and of feudal practice in land conveyance is perhaps the
first step to improvement.
Another proposed remedy is the formation of peasant
properties, a measure that has vehement advocates, and
quite as vehement opponents, even among those who are
supposed impartially to have investigated the subject.
Mr. M'Culloch, carried away with the one idea of cultiva-
tion on a large scale, assures us that anything like peasant
proprietorship would submerge us into a sea of pauperism.
Mr. Joseph Kay, on the contrary, whose ability we take to
be quite equal to that of Mr. M'Culloch, and whose oppor-
tunities for extensive, accurate, and personal observation
we apprehend to have been even superior, assures us that
the measure would tend to make our poorer classes happy,
prudent, and prosperous. Mr. M'Culloch's objections we
regard as a long course of special pleading, based on the
fallacy of taking a small portion of the population as the
index of the whole. It is quite easy to point to one of our
large farms, or to our whole system of large farming, and
to compare the amount of produce with the amount ob-
tained from the labor of the same number of individuals
in France, Germany, or Ireland. From such premises,
however, the conclusion is a mere partial inference from
insufficient data. It is quite easy to point to one of our
regiments, and to admire the order, cleanliness, and seeming
PEASANT PROPERTIES. 165
perfection of the military organization, just as Mr. Carlyle
adduces the line-of-battlc ship as an instance of indubitable
success, and asks why the same system is not universally
introduced into the field of labor. But human nature is
neither composed of regiments nor of line-of-battle ships,
nor of any select body of men from whom the very young,
the very old, the halt, the lame, and the blind are sedulously
and intentionally excluded. When we look at a regiment,
we must ask not only what is the condition of these young
men, but what is the condition of their wives, their chil-
dren, and their aged parents ? Muster the whole on parade ;
let us inspect the whole ; and then we shall be able to form
an opinion as to the success of the system. And so, also,
when Mr. M'Culloch tells us to look at the success of our
large properties and large farms, let us look at the whole pop-
ulation ; let us look at the fact, that, at the very moment of
his writing, about every tenth person in Enland was a
pauper; let us look at our prisons, our poor-laws, our union
workhouses, our poisonings for the sake of burial-fees, our
emigration, as if our people were flying like ratg, helter-
skelter, from a drowning ship. Let us sum up the whole,
and then perhaps we should find that our boasted system
of social distribution was no more successful than the mus-
ter of one regiment, where we should find, on the one hand,
order and competence ; on the other, rags and tatters, wives
abandoned, parents neglected, children left to the hazard
of casual charity, and too often a dark shadow of vice and
wretchedness following in the train of our vaunted institu-
tions. But there is another special fallacy involved in the
objections to peasant properties. We are told to compare
ourselves with those countries where the great majority
of the people are engaged in agriculture, and to mark their
condition. We are told, with a singularly lame species of
reasoning, that France is a nation of peasants ; that France
has peasant properties ; and, consequently, that if we have
peasant properties, we shall become a nation of peasants
also. But, in the first place, the question is not whether
166 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
France may have run rather far in one direction, but
whether we have not run incomparably further in the
other; and, in the second place, France has at present no
other means of employing her population except on the
soil, whereas we can employ a hitherto unknown proportion
of our people in manufacturing and commercial industry.
No disposition of the land could ever again reduce Britain
to the condition of France, because we have profitable
manufactures, holding out the prospect of a higher reward
than can be derived from agriculture ; and consequently it
is as absurd to suppose that our people should again return
to mere tillage, as that they should return to the hunting
and savage state of the earlier ages. The question of
peasant properties does not affect the majority of our
population, but only that portion actually engaged in the
culture of the soil; and here we believe that the allocation
of a certain portion of land to our laboring agriculturists
would go a great way to restore the stability and inde-
pendence of our country population, and perhaps to revive
those homely virtues which were once more common than
they are now, and which have waned exceedingly within
the memory of those who are still alive. Of the positive
advantages of having a peasantry rooted and grounded in
the soil itself we say nothing, because there are at present
no m'eans by which the change from the prevailing system
could be effected ; but it seems evident that if our colonies
and the States continue to present advantages which can-
not be obtained at home, and if our people come to regard
emigration, not as a matter of necessity, not as a change
which the indigent are obliged to make for the sake of the
necessaries of life, but as an attractive removal to another
sphere, in which they can employ their labor much more
satisfactorily than in their native country, then we must
anticipate that a larger and larger portion of our best
laborers will seek to establish an independent existence
elsewhere, and leave to Britain only the inferior remnants
of a class that has fought her battles, cultivated her fields,
PEASANT PROPERTIES. 167
manned her ships, worked in her manufactories, peopled her
colonies, and brought her, ungrateful as she is, up to the
highest pitch of power. To those patriotic gentlemen who
are about to improve the dwellings of our rural population
we particularly recommend the experiment of attaching at
least to some of the cottages as much land as would keep
a cow, with a rood or two of croft, that would enable the
cottar to instruct his children in spade husbandry, and to
teach them regular and constant habits of industry from
their earliest years. Let those gentlemen read in the
" Quarterly Review " for July, 1829, how Thomas Rook did
his hired work regularly, and yet made thirty pounds a
year out of a little bit of land ; and how Richard Thomson
kept two pigs and a Scotch cow on an acre and a quarter
worth, when he got it, five shillings per acre of rent ; and
how the widow at Hasketon brought up her fourteen chil-
dren, and saved them from the degradation of the parish,
by being allowed to retain as much land as kept her two
cows; and, above all, let them remark how poor-rates and
degradation have always followed the severance of the
peasantry from the soil. If they wish to improve the peo-
ple as well as the dwellings, let them lay these things to
heart, and let them be assured that the first thing to
improve the laboring man is to hold out to him the pros-
pect of an independent position, which he may hope to
attain by prudence, economy, and honest labor.
168 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
III.
THE FRANCHISE.
One of the most remarkable sayings of which the discus-
sion in Parliament on the Reform Bill proved the occasion,
was that of Lord Jeffrey, then Lord Advocate for Scot-
land. " It was a measure," he said, " that would separate
the waters above the firmament from the waters below."
The remark embodied both a striking figure and a solid
truth, a figure which, by appealing to the imagination,
has sunk deeper into the memory of the country than any
other produced at the time; and a truth which recent
events have served peculiarly to substantiate and elucidate.
It was in consequence of this separation of the waters,
that, while the revolutionary hurricane raged wide upon
the Continent, dashing into one wild, weltering ocean of
anarchy and confusion the dense and ponderous masses,
whose inherent strength no such measure had divided into
antagonistic, self-balancing forces, Britain escaped at least
all the more terrible consequences of the storm. It is
doubtful, however, whether we are permanently to escape.
We are told by men of science, that, save for the continu-
ous belt of ocean which girdles the globe in the southern
hemisphere, we of the northern regions would have scarce
any tides. In the equatorial and arctic oceans, the rise of
the sea, in obedience to the attractive impulsions of the
6un and moon, is checked by the great continents that
stretch from north to south before the tidal wave becomes
in the least considerable ; but in the southern belt that
wave rolls round the world without break or interruption,
and then, travelling northwards laterally, in obedience to
the law through which water always seeks its level, it
THE FRANCHISE. 169
rises and falls twice every twenty-four hours on the most
northern shores of Europe, Asia, and America. It has
been thus with the tidal wave of revolution. The Reform
Bill in this country stretched abreast of the privileged
classes like a vast continent, and would have effectually
checked every rising tide of revolution that originated in
the country itself. But there lay in the neighboring States
great unbroken belts of the popular ocean, in which the
revolutionary wave has risen high. The popular privileges
have been elevated, in consequence, in these States, con-
siderably above the British level ; and it is very question-
able whether this country will be long able to preserve its
lower surface-line unaltered, when the flood is toppling at
a higher line all around it. It would be at least well to
be prepared for a steady setting in of the flood-tide on our
shores; it would be wise to return to the figure of Lord
Jeffrey to be casting about for some second firmament,
through which a further modicum* of bulk and volume
might be subtracted from the wafers below, and added to
the waters above.
But does there exist, we ask, a portion of these lower
waters that might be so separated with safety? We
think there does. The bona fide property qualification we
have ever regarded as peculiarly valuable, greatly more
so than the mere tenant qualification. The man who in-
habits as tenant a house for which he pays a yearly rental
of ten pounds, may be in many cases a man as well hafted
in society, and possessed of as considerable a stake in the
stability of the country and the maintenance of its institu-
tions, as the proprietor to whom the ten pounds are paid.
But the class are by no means so safe on the average.
Their stake, as a body, is considerably less ; they are a
greatly more fluctuating portion of the population, and
more unsteady and unbalanced in their views and opinions.
There is really no comparison between the man who, in
some of the close alleys of a city like Edinburgh, opens a
epirit-cellar on speculation for which he pays a yearly rent
15
170 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
of ten pounds, and the man who, after steadily adding
pound to pound during the course of half a lifetime, at
length invests his little capital in a house that brings him
in ten pounds per annum, or, if he be his own tenant, that
saves him that sum. The ten-pound tenants and the ten-
pound proprietors compose, in the aggregate, bodies of
men of an essentially different status and standing ; and
we hold that along the scale of proprietorship the franchise
might safely descend a very considerable way indeed ere it
corresponded with the existing level, if we may so express
ourselves, on the tenant scale. We hold that the propri-
etor who possessed a house valued at five yearly pounds,
would be on a higher, not a lower level, than the tenant
who merely occupied a house valued at ten yearly pounds.
His stake in the stability of the national institutions would
be greater; and it might be rationally premised regarding
him, if the house had been purchased out of his savings, or
if, being derived to him by inheritance, he continued to
preserve it unsquandered, that he was a steadier and safer
man than the mere ten-pound tenant, of whom it could
only be premised that present circumstances had enabled
him, or hopes of future advantage had induced him, to in-
habit a dwelling of a certain value. Nay, we are by no
means sure whether there be not a principle in human
nature through which a descent along the scale of propri-
etorship, vei-y considerably beneath the five yearly pounds,
might be rendered safe. We have ever found men valu-
ing the property which they possessed, especially if of
their own earning, not by an absolute, but by a compara-
tive standard, not by its price in pounds sterling, but
with reference to their own circumstances and condition,
and to the efforts which the acquirement of it had cost
them. We have seen working men quite as proud of the
little house, consisting of a but and a ben, a trap-stair and
a loft, which the painful labor of years had secured to
them, as the merchant on the little estate of some three or
four hundred acres, in which he had invested the savings
THE FRANCHISE. 171
of a lifetime, or the master-builder or contractor of the
half street or square of which his profession, long and suc-
cessfully pursued, had enabled him to become the owner.
We therefore do not attempt fixing the line to which, in
this special direction, the franchise might be safely permit-
ted to descend ; but we do think it is a direction in which
it might descend very safely ; and though in our larger
cities, such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, its descent would
have scarce any effect in extending that basis on which
the representation of the country rests, and which to a cer-
tainty must by and by be widened and enlarged, we are
mistaken if in the smaller towns it would not considerably
more than double its area. It would broaden the base of
the social pyramid, and enable it to resist, without the
danger of overthrow, the coming tempest which is so visi-
bly darkening the heavens.
Is there any other portion of the " waters beneath the
firmament" that might be separated from the general mass
and made to balance against it, somewhat in the manner
in which the tidal wave that enters through the Bristol
Channel from the south balances and counteracts the tidal
wave which enters the German Sea from the north, and
in some parts of the coast, as at Great Yarmouth and the
Hague, reduces, by fully one half, the average rise and fall
of the tide? We would answer this query much more
hesitatingly and doubtfully than the other. We, however,
do not see on what principle it is that, while the tenants
of houses of ten-pound-rental in the burghs are equally
vested in the franchise with their proprietors, it is merely
the proprietors of such houses that are vested in the fran-
chise in the counties. Why not extend the privilege to
the tenants also ? The writer of this article inhabits a
house a few hundred yards beyond the boundary line of
the city, as drawn at the time of the Reform Bill, for which
he pays a rent of rather more than thirty pounds yearly;
and there are some of his neighbors, most respectable, in-
telligent men, who inhabit houses for which they pay rent
172 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
of forty and forty-five pounds ; but falling short of a fifty-
pound rental, they do not possess a county vote. Why,
we ask, should this state of things exist ? As the tenants
of thirty and forty-pound houses, they belong to an entirely
different class of persons from the tenants of thirty and
forty-pound farms; and the fact of actual residency in their
dwellings places them in a category still more widely dif-
ferent from that to which the fictitious voters of our coun-
ties belong. We are disposed to hold that the exclusion
of this class from the franchise is simply the consequence
of a design to prevent the introduction, not of an element
of subserviency, but of an element of independence, into
our county elections, and that in this direction the fran-
chise might be safely extended. It is a direction, however,
in which extension could not very considerably affect the
representative basis. With regard to further extension
along the tenant line, our views are far from clear. It
seems obvious, however, that a scale of rental common in
its pecuniary amount to our cities and our smaller towns
does not adequately represent classes. The ten-pound
house-renters of the lesser towns are considerably superior
in the average to the ten-pound house-renters of the larger;
nay, it seems doubtful whether the five or six-pound
tenants of burghs containing from fifteen hundred to three
thousand inhabitants do not stand, on the average, on as
high a level as the ten-pound tenants of the towns that
possess a population of from eighty to a hundred thousand.
The extension of the franchise to the five-pound house-
holders of Edinburgh and Glasgow would in all probability
wholly swamp the existing constituencies of these towns,
and give them for their representatives mere loquacious
Chartists, full of words, but infirm of judgment and devoid
of principle ; but we would have no such fear regarding a
similar extension in burghs such as Tain and Dingwall,
Cromarty and Nairn.
Our dread of universal, or even mere household suffrage,
is derived chi.;fly from our long and intimate acquaintance
THE FRANCHISE. 173
with the c'asses into whose hands it would throw the po-
itioal power of the country. " A poor man that oppress-
ith the poor," says Solomon, " is like a sweeping rain
which leaveth no food." Alas ! tyranny, as the wise man
well knew, is not the exclusive characteristic of the wealthy
and the powerful, nor is oppression the offence of a mere
class. It is not the aristocracy, and they only, that are
cruel and unjust : the poor can also override the natural
liberties of the poor, and trample upon their rights ; and
it is according to our experience that there is more of this
injustice and tyranny among that movement class now
known as Chartists, but which we have closely studied
under other names, when coming in contact with them in
strikes, combinations, and political meetings, than in per-
haps any other class in the country. It has been at least
our own fate in life never personally to experience the
oppression of the higher ranks, but not a little of the tyr-
anny of the lower classes, especially that of this movement
class. And we derive much of our confidence in the
property qualification, not merely from the sort of ballast
in the state which it furnishes, but from the fact that we
never yet saw a workman who made a right use of his
wages with an eye to his advancement in life, or who was
in any respect a rising man, at all disposed to join in op-
pressing a comrade or neighbor. We have very frequently
seen him made a victim of a tyrannical combination,
unmanly odds taken against him if at all formidable for
native power, but rarely, if ever, enacting the part of a
tyrant himself. In a little work recently published, entitled
the "Autobiography of a Working Man," we find an expe-
rience of this kind so truthfully rendered that we cannot
resist submitting it to the reader. The working man's
story is illustrative of a class of cases incalculably numer-
ous, from the existence of which, too often and surely
tested, we derive our chief dread of universal, or even
houshold suffrage, and the abandonment of a property
qualification. It was in the year 1830, when the cry for
15*
174 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
political reform in this country was so loud and general,
that the following incident in the history of the working
man took place :
" A number of masons were hewing the blocks of stone, and each
hewer had a laborer allotted to him to do the rougher work upon
the stone with a short pick technically, to ' scutch ' it. The ma-
sons were intolerable tyrants to their laborers. I was in the quarry
cutting the blocks from the rock when the tide was out ; and when
the tide was in I went and scutched with some of the hewers
chiefly with my friend Alick. One day, when we had been reading
in the newspapers a great deal about the tyranny of the Tories, and
the tyranny of the aristocracy in general, and some of the hewers
had been, as usual, wordy and loud in denouncing all tyrants, and
exclaiming, ' Down with them for ever ! ' one of them took up a
long wooden straight-edge, and struck a laborer with the sharp edge
of it over the shoulders. Throwing down my pick, I turned round
and told him that, so long as I was about the works, I would not see
a laborer struck in that manner, without questioning the masons'
pi-etended right to domineer over laborers. ' You exclaim against
tyranny,' I continued, and you yourselves are tyrants, if anybody
is.' The hewer answered that I had no business to interfere ; that
he had not struck me. ' No,' said I, ' or you would have been in
the sea by this time. But I have seen laborers who dared not speak
for themselves knocked about by you, and by many others ; and by
every mason about these works I have seen laborers ordered to do
things, and compelled to do them, which no working man should
order another to do, far less have the power to compel him to do.
And I tell you it shall not be done.'
" The laborers gathered around me; the masons conferred together.
One of them said, speaking for the rest, that he must put a stop to
this : the privileges of masons were not to be questioned by laborers ;
and I must either submit to that reproof or punishment which they
thought fit to inflict, or leave the works ; if not, they must all leave
the works. The punishment hinted at, was, to submit to be held over
one of the blocks of stone, face downward, the feet held down on
one side, the head and arms held down on the other side, while the
mason apprentices would whack the offender with their leathern
aprons knotted hard. I said that, so far from submitting to reproof
or punishment, I would carry my opposition a great deal further than
I had done. They had all talked about parliamentary reform : wa
THE FRANCHISE. 175
had all joined in the cry for reform, and denounced the exclusive
privileges of the anti-reformers ; but I would begin reform where we
then stood. I would demand, and I then demanded, that if a hewer
wanted his stone turned over, and called laborers together to do it,
they should not put hands to it unless he assisted ; that if a hewer
struck a laborer at his work, none of the laborers should do anything
thereafter, of any nature whatever, for that hewer. The masons
laughed. ' And further,' said I, 'the masons shall not be entitled
to the choice of any room they choose, if we go into a public house
to be paid, to the exclusion of the laborers ; nor, if there be only
one room in the house, shall the laborers be sent outside the door, tu
give the room to the masons, as has been the case. In everything
we shall be your equals, except in wages ; that we have no right to
expect,' The masons, on hearing these conditions, set up a shout of
derisive laughter. It was against the laws of their body to hear theii
privileges discussed by a laborer ; they could not suffer it, they said,
and I must instantly submit to punishment for my contumacy. ]
told them that I was a quarryman, and not a mason's laborer ; that,
as such, they had no power over me. They scouted this plea, and
said that wherever masons were at work they were superior, and
their privileges were not to be questioned. I asked if the act of a
mason striking a laborer with a rule was not to be questioned. They
said, by their own body it might, upon a complaint from the laborer ;
but in this case the laborer was insolent to the mason, and the latter
had a right to strike him. They demanded that I should at once
cease to argue the question, and submit, before it was too late, to
whatever punishment they chose to inflict. Upon hearing this, 1
put myself in a defensive attitude, and said, ' Let me see who shall
first lay hands on me ' ! No one approaching, I continued, * We have
been reading in the newspaper discussions about reform, and have
been told how much is to be gained by even one person sometimes
making a resolute stand against oppressive power. We have only
this day seen in the papers a warning to the aristocracy and the
anti-reformers that another John Hampden may arise. Come on,
he who dares ! I shall be Hampden to the tyrannies of masons ! '
" None of them offered to lay hands on me ; one said they had
better let the affair rest where it was, as there would only be a fight
about it, and several others assented ; and so we resumed our work.
" Had it been in summer, when building was going on, they would
have either dismissed me from the works, or have struck, and refused
to work themselves. It was only about the end of January, and
they could not afford to do more than threaten me."
176 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
IV.
A FIVE-POUND QUALIFICATION
When, owing to some deep-seated cause, the general
level of a country is heightened by sudden upheaval, not
only is its area extended by an apparent recession of the
sea, but tbe outlines of its coasts are also very much
changed. In places where the land is flat and low, ancS
the water shallow, it receives accessions of great tracts of
new country ; whereas in other places, where high table-
lands sink suddenly into the sea, and the water is deep, it
is restricted to nearly its old limits. In Scotland, for in-
stance, that last upheaval which laid dry the old coast-line
added many a rich acre to the links of the Forth and the
Carse of Gowrie, and gave to the country the sites of most
of its seaport towns, such as Leith and Greenock, Mussel-
burgh, Stonehaven, and Inverness ; whereas, along the
rocky shores of Aberdeen and Banff, and in especial Caith-
ness and Orkney, it did little more, save here and there in
a narrow inlet, than reduce by some two or three fathoms
the depth of sen at the foot of the cliffs. It left the old
boundaries just what they had been. The extension of
area which took place in consequence of the upheaval was
partial and local, though in the aggregate it added not a
little to the general value of the country ; and this peculiar
character was altogether a result of the previous form of
ths surface. We have witnessed something similar in the
effects of those great upheavals which occasionally take
place in the political world. The Reform Bill effected a
wonderful upheaval of this kind. It raised over the sea-
level, in certain districts, vast tracts that had been pre-
viously submerged ; while in other districts it left the old
A FIVE-POUND QUALIFICATION. 177
limits unchanged. The highlands of Toryism received no
new accessions ; while those of Liberalism it greatly en-
larged. By elevating the long-buried heads of the people
above the water in the character of ten-pound franchise-
holders, it strengthened the trading interests, or to carry
out our parallel gave new standing-room to the trading
towns; while the agricultural interests, located, if we may
so speak, on the high table-lands of the country, remained
no broader or stronger than they had been before. And
so, in the great struggle which ensued between the two
interests, the agricultural one went down, without, however,
catching any harm in the fall, and free trade won the day.
Party in general was not a little affected by this great
upheaval. The new accessions were chiefly accessions
made to the cause of Liberalism in general ; but it did
quite as little for hereditary Whiggism as for hereditary
Toryism ; and either party feel, when in office, that it has
had but the effect of making their position more precarious
and less desirable than of old. Or to carry out to a
meet termination our somewhat lengthened comparison
while the upheaval has done much for those lower regions
which it fairly raised over water, it has had but the effect of
elevating the high official peaks on which each succeeding
ministry takes its stand, into a less genial and more exposed
region of the atmosphere than that which they had previ-
ously occupied. It has thrown them up nearer than of old'
to the chill line of perpetual ice and snow, and exposed
them to the dangers of treacherous landslips and sudden
avalanches.
What, let us ask, would be the effect of a still further
upheaval of the political area, that would place the ten-
pound franchise in the position of a second old-coast-line,
by raising a widely-spread five-pound franchise outside of
it? To what regions of party would such an upheaval add
new breadth ? In what regions would it leave the present
limits unchanged ? What would be its effect, for instance,
on the various parties in Edinburgh, as brought out by the
178 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
late election? Some of these, though of but comparatively
recent appearance, must be regarded as tolerably permanent
in their elements. The Forbes Mackenzie Act is a law of
yesterday ; but the strong reaction against the spirit traffic
has been going on for some considerable time ; and so long
as the monstrous evil of intemperance continues to exist
it will, we cannot doubt, continue to exist also. It will
continue to form the pervading soul and spirit of a distinct
party ; nor will the antagonist party the public-house one
be less permanent. The latter has in its composition
that strongest, though at the same time most sordid, of all
elements, a profit-and-loss one: it stands on a monetary
basis, a foundation that bids fair to remain firm till at
least the millennium ; and so both these parties, come of
the Forbes Mackenzie Act what may, may be calculated
on, in any future contest, as permanent ones. How would
an extension of the franchise affect them? There are about
nine hundred spirit-dealers in Edinburgh ; and it has been
calculated that in the late election about three hundred
others voted in the spirit-dealing interest, influenced by
the stake which they possess as proprietors of public-house
propei-ty. A public house or tap-room in a suitable situa-
tion lets at a higher rent, by from one third to one half,
than it would bring as a dwelling-house. And hence the
interest of the proprietors of such, in their standing as
public houses, and, of consequence, their opposition to any
measure that would have the effect of either lessening the
number of spirit-dealers or reducing their profits. Now,
to this public-house party an extension of the franchise
to the five-pound householders would bring almost no ac-
cession of strength. All the spirit-dealers pay at least
ten-pound rents ; all the owners of their houses are ten-
pound proprietors ; both classes are within the limits of
the existing franchise, and certainly, as a body, exhibit
great energy, and hold well and act efficiently together.
The extension of the franchise would do almost nothing
for them. It would do much, however, for their opponents.
A FIVE-POUND QUALIFICATION. 17b
The strength of the temperance cause will be found to
lie chiefly among the decent five-pound house-ienants,
skilled mechanics chiefly, provident enough to meet the
landlord at rent-day, and in the main a very safe class.
The men at present outside the representative pale, who
would support the publicans had they the power, are a
greatly lower class, who, though in some instances they
may pay as high a rent, pay it by the month or the week
and who would almost always lack the qualification of
being settled for a twelvemonth in the same dwelling
Universal suffrage might, and we dare say would, strengthen
the publican cause; whereas a judiciously limited exten-
sion of the suffrage would have the effect of virtually weak-
ening it, by, of course, leaving it just what it is, while it
greatly strengthened the opposition to it.
The Roman Catholic party in Edinburgh is another
comparatively new party. We remember that in 1824
the year in which we first saw the Scottish capital the
bakers of the place and its Irish Papists were at feud, and
that the bakers, being the more numerous and powerful
party of the two, had the better. Times have since changed :
the Edinburgh Irish are now to be reckoned by thousands,
from fifteen to twenty mayhap, and their franchise-
holders amount to from two to three hundred. And yet
an extension of the franchise to the five-pound level would
do exceedingly little for them. They consist almost ex-
clusively of two classes, a broker and petty-dealer class,
whose shops, and sometimes their dwelling-houses, are of
value enough to bring them within the limits of the ten-
pound qualification ; and a class of unskilled laborers, who
live gregariously in humble hovels, to which a five-pound
qualification would not nearly descend, and who, besides,
shift their dwellings, on the average, some four or five times
every twelvemonth. One has but to scan for a few minutes
the congregation of the Roman Catholic chapel in Lothian
Street, as the motley crowd defiles on their dismissal towards
the Cowgate, in order to see that in this party, as in the
180 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
other, it is from universal suffrage, and not from a judi-
ciousl) restricted extension of the franchise, that there is
aught to be feared. The qualification would require to
descend very low indeed ere it could reach the class, com-
prising nine tenths of the whole congregation, who wear
their weekday clothes on Sunday because they have no
other, and are able, at the utmost, to greet the day with a
clean shirt; and as for the few respectably-dressed men in
black among them, that, though on but the ordinary level
of the attendants at Protestant places of worship, catch the
eye here as the magnates and aristocrats of their church,
they are all voters already. As opposed to the Papists,
however, the Protestant party would gain in strength, and
that very considerably, by such a limited extension of
the franchise as the one we specify. At least not more
than one third of the men who attend anti-popish lectures,
and whose presence at Mr. John Hope's meeting made it
respectable in point of appearance and numbers, at present
possess the franchise; but tbey are a decent, well-condi-
tioned class, and the houses they inhabit do not fall, save
in exceptional cases, beneath a five-pound rental, but, on
the contrary, average very considerably above it. It may
be safely presumed that any few accessions of strength
which popery might receive from a five-pound extension
of the franchise would be balanced at least ten times over
by the assistance which Protestantism would draw from
the accession to political power of this thoroughly respect-
able antagonist class.
There are two other parties the "Edinburgh Review"
Whigs and the " Blackwood Magazine " Tories whom
the extension of the franchise would leave exactly as they
are, unless, indeed, in the exercise of an ingenuity in which
they excel all other political bodies, they should fall upon
some new mode of manufacturing fictitious votes. Of these
two parties the Parliament House forms the central nu-
cleus, and each in turn, as their friends chance to be in
power for the time, possess the legal patronage of Scotland,
A FIVE-POUND QUALIFICATION. 181
Judgeships, sheriffships, clerkships, procurator-fiscalships,
all the many offices which Government can bestow, and to
which gentlemen of the law are alone eligible, with not a
few, besides, for which they are as eligible as any other
class, are the good and weighty things which, like a great
primary planet in the centre of a system, give cohesion and
force to the movements of these parties. We make the
remark in, we trust, no invidious spirit. Human nature
being what it is, these things must and will have their
weight and influence. There have been many instances
of wholly disinterested individuals among both Whigs and
Tories; but there never yet was a wholly disinterested
party, especially when in power; and that patronage which
made Lord Dundas in the last age the great centre round
which Scotch politics revolved, renders the Parliament
House a great political centre now, especially in Edinburgh.
We remember seeing, many years ago, an ingenious cari-
cature of the times of Fox and Pitt, which represented
the great political system of the country as formed on the
plan of the solar system. The Treasury, with its massive
bags of guineas, formed the solar centre, and the various
British statesmen of the age, inscribed within circles of
bright gambouge, of a size proportionate to their influence,
revolved as planets around it. Some of the larger ones
had their satellites. Georgium Sidus (George III.) pos-
sessed as his moons the class of men known as "the friends
of the King." Pitt also had. his numerous satellites, and
so had Fox. There was a good deal of complexity in the
system,
" With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
But the great centre of all the vast attractive mass
towards which all gravitated, and round which all revolved
was the Treasury, with its bushels of golden guineas.
And round this attractive circle, alike bright and solid, the
great statesmen of London and the smaller statesmen of
16
182 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
Edinburgh will continue to revolve in these as certainly
as in former times ; and it would be idle to dream of any
other condition of things with respect to the old governing
parties, whether Whig or Tory. But not the less is it a
duty on the part of men who love their country, sedulously
to watch over an influence of this biasing kind, and on
proper occasions to strive hard to counteract it. And by
no class could it be more effectually counteracted than by
a class who for themselves could have nothing to look for
or expect. And such a class the five-pound householders
would scarce fail to approve themselves. A scarlet coat,
associated with a letter-carrier's office, might now and then
be found for a compliant working man who voted as he
was bid ; but there could be no loaves and fishes found
for so great a multitude as that of the five-pound house-
holders.
Nor would we deem them an unsafe class in the main.
They would be found to comprise the great bulk of the
membership of all the evangelical churches, but few in-
deed of the lapsed classes. Nay, we know not that we
could draw a better or more practical line of demarcation
between these lapsed classes and our useful citizens of the
humbler class than that which a five-pound household
qualification would furnish. It has been said by a contem-
porary, more especially by its correspondents, that our aim
in supporting Mr. Brown Douglas in the recent contest
was simply to aggrandize the Free Church. We see not,
however, how, in the political field, the Free Church could
be aggrandized. We certainly look for no endowments for
herself, and ask neither place nor emolument for her min-
isters or members. We have assuredly no wish to see her
revolving round the Treasury as her centre. If we have
desired to see some of her abler men returned to Parlia-
ment, it was not because they were Free Churchmen, but
because we knew that on the most important questions of
the day their opinions were sound ; and if we now desire
to see many of her members possessed of the franchise, it
THE STRIKES. 183
is only because we believe they would exercise it safely
and well. We simply throw off, on the present occasion,
a few suggestions, not as definite conclusions, but as food
for thought, as contributions, too, towards the solution
of what we deem an interesting problem. The show of
hands at the hustings of last week was greatly in favor of
Mr. Brown Douglas ; and when led to inquire how best
the " declaration of the poll " could be made to agree with
the "show of hands," we could bethink us of no better plan
than that of a five-pound qualification.
V.
THE STRIKES.
ARTICLE I.
The last twelvemonth has been peculiarly marked in the
manufacturing world as a year of strikes and combinations ;
nor, though there are adjustments taking place, and bands
of operatives returning to their employment after months
of voluntary idleness, are they by any means yet at an end.
Great fires and disastrous shipwrecks are both very terrible
things ; but so far as the mere waste of property is involved,
a protracted strike is at least as formidable as either, and
its permanent effects are often incalculably more mischiev-
ous. Wreck or conflagration never yet ruined any branch
of industry. Were all the manufactured goods in London
to be destroyed in one fell blaze, a few months of accele-
rated industry would repair the loss. The greatest calamity
of the kind which could possibly take place would resemble
merely the emptying of a reservoir fed by a perennial
stream, that would continue flowing till it had filled it
again. But the loss occasioned by a long-protracted strike
184 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
is often of a deeper kind. It not only empties the res-
ervoir, but in some instances cuts off the spring, and in
this way robs of its means of supply the town or district
whose only resource the spring had constituted. Nations
have in this way, when there were competing nations in
the field, been permanently stripped of lucrative branches
of industry, and become the mere importers of articles
with which they had been accustomed to supply their
neighbors. In other instances the effects are disastrous,
not to the nation generally, but to merely a class of its
workers. A partial strike of one section of workmen, on
the product of whose labors certain other sections are de-
pendent for employment, disturbs the social machine, and
arrests its progress. By a stoppage in the movements of
a single wheel or pinion, the whole engine is brought to a
stand. The inventive power is quickened, through the
necessity thus created, to originate some mode of supplying
the place of the refractory bit or segment ; the ingenuity
exerted at length proves successful ; wood, iron, and
leather are made to perform the work of human nerve and
muscle ; and a province of industry is divested of its living
workmen, and occupied by dead machines. We believe
one of the last instances of this kind furnished by the his-
tory of strikes took place in the flax manufacture. Simple
as the work of the heckler may seem, it was long found
impossible to supersede him by machinery. In drawing
the tangled flax through the bristling hedge of steel em-
ployed in disentangling and straightening its fibres, the
human hand had a nice adaptability to the ever-varying
necessities of the tuft in process of being sorted, which for
so long a period could not be communicated to the move-
ments of the unconscious machine, that the mechanist at
length fairly gave up the attempt, and sat down in despair.
A series of strikes, however, on the part of the hecklers,
roused him anew to the work. Necessity at length proved
the mother of invention. After repeated failures, he ulti-
mately succeeded in making a most accomplished heckler
of wood and metal, who never strikes work so long as he
THE STRIKES. 185
gets :i few shovelfuls of coal to consume ; and the flesh-and-
blood hecklers, driven out of the field, have had to seek in
other countries, and in other walks of exertion, the employ-
ment which, in consequence of his overmastering competi-
tion, they can no longer secure in their own.
Strikes are unquestionably great evils. In the case of the
hecklers, what they effected was, not the ruin of the flax
trade in Scotland, but simply the ruin of the class of me-
chanics that lived by the heckle. A series of strikes among
the sawyers had a similar result. Circular saws, driven by
machinery, entered the field on the side of the masters, and
the recusant sawyers of flesh and blood went to the wall
in the competition that ensued. But in both cases the
trade of the district in which the sti'ikes occurred was not
permanently injured. Wood-and-metal hecklers and saw-
yers, with the strength of giants in their iron arms, and
that fed on coke and charcoal, took the place of the greatly
feebler human ones ; and that was just all. But in certain
other cases the result has been, as we have intimated, more
disastrous. During the season of strikes and combinations
that followed the passing of the Reform Bill, a combination
of the ship-carpenters of Dublin, accompanied by more than
the ordinary Irish violence and coercion, was completely
successful. The terrified masters broke down, and, yield-
ing to the terms imposed, gave their workmen the wages
they demanded. But though they escaped in consequence
the bludgeon and the brickbat, they could not escape the
ordinary laws of trade and manufacture. They of course
looked for the proper return from the capital invested in
their business ; they expected the proper remuneration for
the time, anxiety, and trouble which it cost them. Profit
was as indispensable to them as wages to their operatives.
They found, further, that on the new terms, and with the
competition of the western coast of Britain, especially that
of the ship-builders of Liverpool and the Clyde, to con-
tend with, profit could no longer be realized, and so they
had to shut up their workyards, one after another; and
16*
186 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
Dublin has now scarce any trade in ship-building. Its
ship-carpenters have become very few, and of consequence
very weak ; and, no longer able to dictate terras as before,
they have to work for wages quite as low as in any other
part of the United Kingdom. But though carpenter-work
may now be had as cheaply in the Irish capital as in Liver-
pool or Glasgow, the trade, fairly scared away, failed to
return; the dock-masters of the Clyde and the Mersey
kept a firm hold of what they had got ; and all that was
accomplished by the successful strike of the Dublin ship-
carpenters was simply the ruin of the ship-carpentry of
Dublin. Nor would the result have been different had the
combination been moi'e extensive. Had it included all the
carpenters of Britain and Ireland, the competition in ship-
building would have lain between, not the opposite sides
of the Irish Channel, but the opposite sides of the German
Ocean ; our merchants would have purchased their vessels
not from the Clyde and the Mersey, but from the dock-
yards of the Baltic and the Zuyder Zee ; and our British
carpenters, instead of being, as of old, the fabricators of
navies, might set out, shovel in hand, for the railways, and
become navvies themselves. Unless the originators of the
strikes of the country were also the makers of its laws, and
could reintroduce the protective system, very successful
strikes could have but the effect of striking down the trade
of the empire, and prostrating its commerce.
And yet, disastrous as strikes almost always are, it can-
not be questioned that the general principle which they
involve is a just one, quite as just as that of the masters
who continue to resist them. In the labor market, as in
every other, it is as fair to sell dear as to buy cheap ; and
it is in no degree more unjust for five hundred, five thou-
sand, or fifty thousand men to agree together that they
shall demand a high price for their labor, than it is for five
or for one. The laws framed to compel working men to
labor at whatever rate of remuneration legislators may
choose to fix, and in this country the terms legislators
THE STRIKES. 187
and employers have in the main been ever synonymous,
are properly regarded as evidences of a barbarous and un-
scrupulous time. The unquestioned right of the working
man, is, however, of all others one of the most liable to
abuse. It is greatly more so than the corresponding right
of his employers. Both possess the same common nature;
and it is quite as much the desire of the one to buy labor
cheaply as of the other to sell it dear. But there is an
amount of responsibility attached to the position of the
masters which has always the effect, in at least a free age
and country, of keeping their combinations within compar-
atively the same bounds. Masters of a morally inferior
cast cannot control their fellows. Should they even be a
majority, and should they agree to fix a rate of wages dis-
proportionately low compared with their own profits, a few
honest employers, instead of incurring loss by entering into
competition with them, and raising the hire of their work-
men, would soon appropriate to themselves their gains by
robbing them at once of their workers and their trade.
Competition on the side of the masters forms always the
wholesome corrective of combination. Nor dare the com-
biners take undue means to overawe and control the com-
petitors. Their amount of property, and their general
standing in consequence, give them a stake in their coun-
try which they dare not forfeit by any scheme of intimida-
tion ; a regard, too, to the general interests of their trade,
imposes upon them its limits ; and thus supposing them to
be quite as unscrupulous and selfish as the worst workmen
that ever lived, as no doubt some of them are, there are
in the nature of things restrictions set upon them which
the workman, often to his disadvantage, escapes. On him
the lowliness of circumstances virtually confers a power, if
he has but the hardihood to assert it, of overawing com-
petition. And we find from the history of all strikes that
he always does attempt to overawe it. During the last
thirty years lie has shot at it, thrown vitriol upon it, l-olled
it in the kennel, sent it to Coventry, persecuted it with
188 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
clumsy but very relentless ridicule, and subjected it, where
he could, to illegal fines. Masters have no doubt the same
nature in them as their men ; but from their position they
cannot, or dare not, attempt putting down competition in
this way. Their position is that of the responsible few,
while that occupied by the operative classes is the position
of the comparatively irresponsible many; and, from the
little stake which the latter possess in the property of the
country individually, and from their conscious power in the
mass, they are ever under the temptation of overstretching
their proper liberties of combining, to carry out their own
intentions, into a wild license, which demands that their
neighbors and fellows shall not, either singly or in parties,
exercise the liberty of carrying out theirs. There have been
several glaring instances of this species of tyranny during
even the present strikes. But one instance of the kind may
serve as a specimen of the class. We quote from the
Stockport correspondent of a London paper :
" At a lai^e mill not three miles from this, where upwards of a thou-
sand hands are engaged, one of the weavers did not choose to subscribe
to the weekly delegate's tax towards the unfortunate Preston strike.
In consequence, one evening this week, when the mill stopped, he was
watched in passing through the large gates into the road, was imme-
diately knocked down and blindfolded, his arms pinioned, and his
legs tied fast together, and, thus disabled, was carried through the
population of the place, mobbed by hundreds upon hundreds, shout-
ing, yelling, and execrating, not a soul daring to interfere, as any
resistance to these proceedings would probably have cost the poor
fellow his life. J know the man well, as an honest, sober, hard-
working operative, and feel grieved that he should be thus persecuted.
" You may say, Why do not the masters protect such men, and put
down such tyranny ? Simply because they dare not ; such interfer-
ence being sure to be followed by a general turn-out, and, very likely,
by destruction of property by fire or otherwise. These are sad
realities ; and I cannot but conclude that the above outrage has been
a natural sequence to the visit of one of the Preston delegates to the
heads of that very mill during last week. My own life would not be
safe, were it known that I had told this circumstance to one connected
with what the delegates call the vile hireling press.' "
THE STRIKES. 189
It is one of the grand disadvantages of .these strikes that
their management and direction are almost always thrown
into the hands of a class of men widely different in character
from the country's more solid and respectable mechanics.
We had to record in one brief paragraph, a few numbers
since, the flight of two delegates of the Preston movement,
the one with twenty-five pounds of the defence fund
in his possession, the other with one hundred and sixty.
And such are too generally the sort of men that force
themselves into prominence in these movements. Inferior
often as workmen, low in the moral sense, fluent as talkers,
but very unwise as counsellors, they rarely fail to land in
ruin the men who, smit by their stump oratory, make choice
of them as their directors and guides. Too little wise to
see that the most formidable opponent which any party
can arouse is the moral sense of a community, violence and
coercion form invariably the clumsy expedients of their
policy. And so, for the success which a well-timed strike,
founded on just principles, would be almost always certain
to secure, they succeed in but achieving from their un-
fortunate constituencies discomfiture, either immediate or
ultimate. It is really the least mischievous of these strike-
leaders that, like the Preston delegates, run away with the
funds. We find in strikes, as they ordinarily occur, the
disastrous working of exactly the same principle which has
rendered the revolutions of the Continent such unhappy
abortions. Who can doubt that the revolutions, like some
of the strikes, had their basis of real grievances ? But
their leaders lacked sense and virtue ; their wild license
became moi'e intolerable than the torpid despotism which
it had supplanted ; and in the reaction that ensued, the
sober citizen, the quiet mechanic, the industrious tiller of
the soil, all the representatives of very influential classes,
found it better, on the whole, again to submit themselves
to the old tyranny than to prostrate themselves before the
new.
190 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
ARTICLE II.
Capital and labor are joint values, invested together
for the production of a common result, which result is the
selling price of the article brought into the market. In a
commercial point of view, it matters little what the article
may be. It may be corn, cattle, or agricultural produce ;
it may be raw cotton, cotton yarn, or calico ; it may be
iron-stone, pig-iron, bar-iron, steel, or hardware goods, large
or small, a needle or an anchor, an iron spoon, or a mag-
nificent iron ship that transpoi'ts thousands of men in ease
and comfort, or thousands of tons of goods with safety and
celerity ; it may be a picture, a statue, a piece of music, a
poem, or any other work of art ; it may be a dwelling,
varying from the wretched holes in which modern society
stores away so large a portion of the working population,
bringing them up in an atmosphere of physical deteriora-
tion and moral corruption, to the lordly dwelling or the
royal palace, where luxury seems almost to have exhausted
her inventions, and left no wish ungratified or unprovided
for; it may be a book or a magazine, a quarterly or a
newspaper ; it may be, in fact, anything whatever produced
for the market and exposed for sale. In the articles there
may be a thousand varieties; but there is always a perma-
nent object which is common to them all the selling
price. The object of the manufacturer aud every pro-
ducer may be termed a manufacturer ; the farmer, for
instance, is as much a manufacturer of grain, of horses,
sheep, and cattle, as the cotton-spinner of cotton yarn, or
the ship-builder of a ship is not merely to produce a
given article, but to produce an article that will realize a
selling price, which selling price ought to repay the cost of
production, and leave a profit on the transaction. This is
the great commercial principle which pervades the ordinary
world of industry. True there are exceptions, because
there are labors expended and objects produced which
have an end and purpose differing altogether from the
THE STRIKES. 191
purposes of commerce. The end of commerce is gain,
profit to those who are engaged in it. But gain, though
absolutely necessary where men live in a world of exchange
and competition, may have a higher counterpart, the
gain, not of ourselves, but of others. Hence all works of
charity, benevolence, and moral instruction originate in a
higher principle than that of commercial gain. So also in
the region of literature, which abounds with what the mer-
cantile world would term unpi-ofitable speculations. Books
are produced from many various motives, entirely sepa-
rated from the commercial principle. Some authors produce
books from a desire to enlighten their fellow-men ; some
from the spontaneous desire to give utterance to the native
voice of genius the "Paradise Lost," for instance; some
from a love of fame ; some from a miscalculated estimate
of their powers. In almost every department of art there
are artists who regard excellence as higher than profit, and
who pursue it sometimes to their own loss; just as there
are philosophers who pursue their inquiries after truth
without regard to the accident of remuneration ; and just
as there are inventors who perfect machines and processes,
with minds so ardently bent on the realization of their
special idea that they sacrifice fame and fortune to an
achievement that may have great results, or no results, as
the chance may be, yet which bring to themselves no ele-
ment of worldly prosperity. Thomas Waghorn's overland
route to India, and Morgan's paddle-wheel, are notable
instances of skill and perseverance which brought no com-
mercial reward ; the first saving hundreds of thousands of
pounds annually to this country, and leaving Mr. Waghorn's
widow on a pension of fifty pounds a year ; the other being
a most beautiful piece of mechanism, which cost the fortune
of the inventor, and left him, we believe, in a commercial
sense, a ruined man.
Accidental exploits of this kind, however, are merely
the pioneerings of commerce, the voyages of discovery
into new regions, which may prove Arctic with unprofitable
192 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
snows, or Australian with untold treasures of wool, copper,
and gold. In commerce, as well as in geography, there
are invasions of a hitherto unknown territory, new
speculations, like, new expeditions, opening up new fields
of enterprise and industry. Columbus discovers a new
world, but reaps small advantage from a deed that is un-
surpassed in the annals of adventure. On the other hand,
a chemist, experimenting on sugar, finds that certain sub-
stances will refine it, and straightway he reaps a princely
fortune from the accidental revelation. In commerce,
however, as well as in geography, there is an old. world as
well as a new, a region of beaten paths and customary
ways, as well as a region of emigration, into which the old
world pours the enterprising or the unemployed of its pop-
ulation. In commerce there is an every-day old world of
buying, selling, and getting gain, of manufacturing for
the ordinary necessities of the race, of producing multi-
tudes of articles which are the joint productions of capital
and labor. In this manufacturing world there are two
parties, the employers and the employed. The first
brings his money or his money's worth his land, his
houses, his materials, his credit, and his power of waiting
for a return. The latter bring their skill and labor, their
knowledge, their practice, in short, their power of
doing the thing that is requisite to produce the article.
Capital and labor, then, are joint investments ; but they
are, in the present constitution of society, antagonistic
to each other. Whether a plan might be devised by
which this antagonism should be obviated, as a super-
fluous and unnecessary encumbrance, we cannot as yet say.
Such a plan, if such be possible, is the great desideratum
of the commercial world ; and we have at least the satis-
faction of knowing that at no anterior period of history
has it been sought for with the same ardor as at present,
or with the same probability of a successful issue. Leaving
that question alone, however, we need not hesitate to
affirm that at present capital and labor are commercially
THE STRIKES. 193
antagonistic when employed together in the production of
the same work, capital perpetually endeavoring to reduce
the price of labor, and labor perpetually endeavoring to en-
hance its own market value. In this case there is nothing
unreasonable or improper. No doubt there are evils inci-
dental to the system, and occasional cases where the prin-
ple is pushed to an extreme which is morally wicked and
fraudulent; as, for instance, where capital takes advantage
of the penury of the laborer, and accords him only a starv-
ation price ; or where the laborer takes advantage of some
distressed situation into which the capitalist has fallen,
say war, shipwreck, fire, or many other calamitous conditions,
and refuses to give his labor except at an exorbitant
rate, such as ought not to be required between man and
man. These cases are the abuses of the system, and we
pass them over. But so long as competition is the regu-
lating principle of the commercial world, capital and labor
must be to this extent antagonistic, that each will en-
deavor to obtain as large a share as possible of the selling
price of the produced article ; and the portion which the
one obtains cannot be also obtained by the other. The
question, then, is to ascertain the proper proportion that
should be allotted to capital, and the proper proportion that
should be allotted to labor, when they are jointly employed.
At first sight this may appear a simple question. If five
pounds' worth of labor and five pounds of capital are em-
barked in a dining-table which sells for fifteen pounds, we
might say that the expenditure had been equal, and that the
price obtained should be shared equally. This may seem an
easy way of solving the difficulty ; but unfortunately these
easy methods of solution are utterly incapable of application.
There are fluctuations in supply and demand which alter
the value of every single item ; and unless we could make
supply and demand absolutely constant, we could never
apply a rule which proceeded on the distribution of the
selling price. A capitalist may conduct his business for
years, paying regularly for the labor he employs, and yet
17
194 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
barely clear his expenses, when suddenly somft accidental
circumstance causes a great demand, a great rise in price,
and he is fairly entitled, not only to the profits of the pres-
ent time, but, to some extent, to the profits of past unfruit-
ful years, and this not because the present should pay for
the past, but because the present is actually a portion of
the past ; that is, the capitalist calculates on an average
of profits, which average may extend over a very consider-
able period. Recently we have had two instances of this
kind, namely, in shipping property and in cattle-dealing.
About two years since both of these businesses became
highly remunerative ; but previously they had been carried
on almost without profit, and in many cases with loss.
Those engaged in them were fairly entitled to a certain
amount of extra profit, because they had submitted to a
term of years in which their returns were far below the
average, and they required to recover the legitimate value
of their previously-expended time and capital. Another
instance we may cite, as showing the extent of fluctuation.
During the Australian gold mania, seamen, hoping to reap
some of the advantages, were willing to ship for the voy-
age to Australia, for, say a shilling per month ; whereas
seamen shipping/rom Australia (Melbourne) obtained ten,
twenty, and, we believe, in some cases, thirty pounds per
month. In the first case the capitalist made a large profit
out of the laborer; in the second the laborer made a large
profit out of the capitalist ; but in neither case was the
absolute return the selling price made the criterion.
The criterion was- as it always must be so long as free
competition is the ruling principle the relation of the
demand to the supply, and of the supply to the demand.
That these fluctuations are evils, and attended with
many inconveniences, there can be little doubt ; and if
any specific proof were required, we might point at once
to the fact that they lead to those most unhappy and most
unprofitable exhibitions called strikes. When prices rise,
and the laborer thinks that he receives less than his due
THE STRIKES. 195
proportion of the returns, he strikes; and when prices fall,
so that the returns will not cover the cost, the capitalist
strikes, that is, he ceases to employ labor ; and in so
doing he strikes quite as much as the laborer does when
he refuses to employ capital. In fact, the whole commer-
cial world is always in a modified state of strike. When
prices rise, it is because the seller has struck against the
buyer ; and when prices fall, it is because the buyer has
struck against the seller. A few infatuated individuals
will attempt to resist the ordinary law of supply and de-
mand ; and hence we hear of some English farmers who
have kept their wheat in stack for ten years, to be eaten
up by rats and mice, rather than sell at the current market
value. But the great majority must always succumb to
the market, and take the current rates, whether those rates
be the price of labor, or the price of capital, or the price
of produce. In general it is the capitalist who receives the
sale price, and who had charge of the money ; and it is
this circumstance, perhaps as much as any other, that cre-
ates a jealousy in the mind of the working men that the
capitalist appropriates more than his just share. Let us
reverse the picture, however, and look at the other side.
The banks advance money to parties who want capital.
These parties are, in fact, the laborers, and the bank is the
capitalist. Now, these persons often engage in very lu-
crative transactions with the bank money ; yet the bank
never seeks to share in the unusual profits. The bank for
its money asks only the current rate of interest, regulated
by the supply of cash in the market and the demand for the
same. In this case, it is not the capitalist, but the laborer,
who receives the sale price, and who has the whole and
sole charge of the returns. The bank is not jealous that
its money has been employed to advantage ; on the con-
trary, the bankers know that the better the return, the
more does business thrive, and the more demand will there
be fir the bank money, leading to a higher rate of interest
and to the prosperity of the capitalist. So also with the
196 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
workmen who laboi for the capitalist. They ought to re-
joice that the capitalist derives large returns, because those
large returns afford the in a security that their labor will be
employed, and that their wages will be as high as the
competition in their particular branch of business will pru-
dently afford. Strikes, then, for a rise of wages, are de-
structive resorts to an extreme and hazardous remedy.
Theoretically they are wrong and unnecessary in a free
country, where everything is open to free competition ;
and practically they have, we believe, in almost every case
on record, shown themselves to be perfectly useless. They
have never done good ; and though we no more deny the
right of men to strike than we deny the right of the mas-
ter to discontinue his business when it no longer pays, yet
we are* thoroughly assured that they never will do good.
They will always do more harm to the workmen who strike
than to the masters who are struck against. We would
therefore calmly but seriously recommend working men to
refrain from strikes, more especially when the object is a
rise of wages ; and these cautions we deem the more neces-
sary at the present time, as we greatly regret to perceive
that the Dundee ship-carpenters have shown a disposition
to enjracre in the same course that has been carried on so
disastrously at Preston. We hope that they will not be
misled by vague anticipations, and, above all, that they
will not manifest a spirit of unreasoning obstinacy, which
will certainly tend to defeat the very purpose they have in
view. We must say a word, however, on another matter.
A strike for a rise of wages is not likely to be attended
with success. The time is altogether another question.
If workmen are in a position to strike for a rise of wages,
they are also in a position to strike for shorter time ;
and our own experience enables us to affirm that as much
work and as good work will be done in a short week as in
a long one. We should rejoice to see the Saturday half-
holiday absolutely universal ; and we recommend all work-
men to strive for this great reform, as incomparably more
THE COTTAGES OF OUR HINDS. 197
valuable to themselves, to their wives, and to their chil-
dren, than any additional shillings that they hope to ob-
tain. If men strike at all, let them strike for the Saturday
half-holiday, and the good wishes of the whole community
will go with them. To every workman we would say, look
to the Saturday half-holiday as one of the most precious
things that you can possibly acquire : get it by all means.
Work hard, faithfully, honestly, like a man ; but by all
means get the Saturday half-holiday ; and when you get
it, be sure to make a good use of it.
VI.
THE COTTAGES OF OUR HINDS.
W.B presented to the reader on Saturday last, in our
report of the late half-yearly meeting of the Highland and
Agricultural Society, the remarks of two very estimable
noblemen on the cottages of the country, especially the
cottages of hinds, and on the best means of improving
them. It was stated by the one noble speaker, and reit-
erated by the other, that in order to render cottages im-
mensely better than they are at present, it is not at all
necessary that they should be rebuilt. The rebuilding of
them, in the greater number of instances, might be impos-
sible, and in all cases it would be at least very incon-
venient. But if proprietors had thus little in their power
regarding them, much might be done by the humble
inmates in the way of dividing their single rooms when
their accommodation chanced to be greater, and in impart-
ing to them an air of general comfort. It was held that
on this point, therefore, the premiums of the Society ought
specially to be directed. The proprietary of the country
17*
198 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
could not be expected to help their poor laborers on a
large scale, by providing them with suitable dwellings (a
single cottage might cost fifty pounds) ; but then they
were ready to encourage them in any feasible way of help-
ing themselves. A room twelve feet by sixteen might be
regarded as a very pretty sort of problem ; and if a man
and his wife, with some eight or ten children, could con-
trive to solve the difficulty by residing in it with comfort
and decency, they should be by all means rewarded for
their ingenuity by a premium from the Society. Now, we
would be very unwilling to indulge on this subject in
aught approaching to severity of remark ; nor, were it
otherwise, would we single out two of the more benevo-
lent noblemen of our country as objects on which to be
satirical. Scarce any Scottish nobleman has done so much
for his humbler dependants as the Earl of Rosebery : we
have been informed that on his own property every cot-
tage has its two comfortable apartments, and that many
of them have three. Nor is his Grace the Duke of Buc-
cleuch other, we believe, than a well-meaning man. As
we deem the matter one of considerable importance, how-
ever, we shall take the liberty of soliciting the attention
of the reader to a piece of a simple narrative, which bears
on it very directly.
We passed the summer and autumn of 1823 in one of
the wildest and least accessible districts of the northwestern
Highlands. The nearest public road at that period was a
long day's journey away. Among the humbler people we
met with only a single man turned of forty who understood
English. It was, in truth, a wild, uncultivated region,
brown and sterile, studded with rock, blackened with mo-
rasses, and cursed with an ever-weeping climate. The
hills of hard quartz rock of all the primary formations
the most unfavorable to vegetation seemed at least two
thirds naked ; and their upper peaks, bleached by sun and
storm, showed, from the pale hue of the stone, as if ever
covered by a sprinkling of fresh-fallen snow. The Atlan-
THE COTTAGES OF OUR HINDS. 199
tic, specked by the northern Hebrides, stretched away
from an iron-bound coast ; and here and there, though far
between, a group of dark-colored cottages, that rather
resembled huge molehills than human dwellings, occupied
some of the deeper inflections, where, for a short interval,
the cliffs gave place to a strip of sand or pebbles, or an
outlying group of skerries formed a sort of breakwater to
ward off" the violence of the sea. Every little village had
its few boats and its few green patches of cultivation.
Some of the latter, scarcely larger than onion beds, seemed
to stand out from amid the brown heath like islands in the
ocean ; and both the boats and the patches served as indi-
ces to show how the poor inhabitants of so barren a region
contrived to live. Could we travel back into the past,
amid the rich fields of the Lothians, for full ten centuries,
we would fail to arrive at so primitive a state of things
with regard to the common arts of life as existed only
nineteen years ago in this wild district. In the little
straggling village in our immediate neighborhood every
man was a fisherman, and in some degree an agriculturist;
and yet there was neither horse nor plough among all its
twenty families. The ground was turned up by the long-
handled spade, still known in some parts of the Highlands
as the cas-chrom ; and the manure was carried out in
spring, and the produce brought home in autumn, mostly
by women in slip-bottomed creels. All the other arts
practised in the village reminded one of a remote age.
We have seen the poor Highland women bending under
their burdens of turf or manure, and employed at the same
time in spinning with that most primitive of implements,
the distaff and spindle. Some of the boats, caulked with
moss, like the ancient Danish vessel disinterred some ten
or twelve years ago out of the silt of an English river,
were furnished with sails of woollen, anchors constructed
of wood and stone, and tackle spun out of the fibres of
moss fir. The little patches of cultivation were suited to
remind one, from their size, of the fields described by Gul*
200 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
liver ; but they had, besides, a peculiarity all their own ;
the ground abounded with stones, many of them by
much too bulky to be removed. To save as much space
as possible, each of the larger masses had its pyramid of
smaller stones piled upon it to the height of four or five
feet, and there were patches in which these pyramids lay
well-nigh as thickly grouped together as tents in an en-
campment. -V man of some little imagination might have
supposed thai one of the many Scotch witches of the sev-
enteenth century had passed the way in the time of harvest,
and transformed all the newly-reaped shocks into accumu-
lations of stone. Such was the agriculture of the district :
it was the agriculture of the first ages, the fruit of the
very first lesson which man had derived from experience,
on setting himself to force a living from the soil. Nor, it
may be well supposed, could the art of the builder in such
a country be greatly in advance of the art of the agricul-
turist. The human dwellings were quite as rude as the
fields. But we- shall describe one, just as a specimen of
the whole.
On the first evening of our arrival in the district, we
accompanied an acquaintance, to secure the services of a
Highlander whom we were desirous to engage as a la-
borer, and who lived in the nearer village. Twilight was
falling, but there remained light enough to enable us to
examine the surrounding forms of things. The cottage
we sought was a low, long, dark building, whose roof and
walls sloped in nearly the same angle, without any aper-
ture for windows, except along the ridge of the roof, and
with a door raised little more than four feet above the
threshold. In these northwestern regions, where there falls
about twice as much rain as on any part of the eastern
coast, and where, at some seasons, the almost incessant
6howcrs beat at an angle of inclination varying from thirty
to sixty, it is imperatively necessary to render the side-
walls of a building as impervious as the roof; and hence
the slope of the walls, --a slope given them by filling up
THE COTTAGES OF OUR HINDS. 201
a bulwark of solid turf against the comparatively erect
line of stone. Our first step into the interior was into a
pit fully two feet in depth. In this outer chamber, accord-
ing to the custom of the district, the ashes produced by
the turf and peat burnt during the year had been suffered
to accumulate, for the purposes of manure ; and as it was
now early in summer, the place had been but lately cleared
out. It was intensely dark, and filled with smoke ; and
we had some difficulty in finding the inner door, the
threshold of which we found raised to the level of the
door without. A step brought us into what proved to be
the middle apartment of the cottage. A fire of turf, enliv-
ened by a few pieces of moss fir, blazed on a flat stone in
the middle of the floor, with no protecting back to screen
any part of the building, so that the flames shone equally
all around on the rude walls and the equally rude furni-
ture. On one side the fire sat the master and builder of
the mansion, a strongly-built, red-haired, red-whiskered
Highlander, with two boys, his sons ; on the other, the
mistress, a thin, sallow woman, with her three daugh-
ters. The woman was busied in spinning with the primi-
tive implement to which we have already alluded ; now
twirling the spindle half at arm's length, and now coiling
up the thread. Her girls were teasing wool, which they
stored up in a large spherical basket, wattled all round,
except at a little square opening. A cloud of smoke, thick
and flat as a ceiling, rested overhead ; and there hung, as
if dropping out of it, a dark drapery of herring-nets. The
inner walls, as shown by the red glare of the fire, were
formed of undressed stone, uncemented by mortar; but
the interstices had been carefully caulked with dried moss.
The furniture was somewhat of the scantiest. There were
a few deal-seats, and a rude bed-frame in a corner, half-
filled with heath, the sleeping-place of the boys ; a few
wooden cogs occupied a recess behind the woman ; and
there was a large pot suspended over the fire from the
roof. But what we chiefly remarked was, that, the place,
202 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
rade as it was, had what by much the greater number of
the dwellings of our south-country hinds have not, the
luxury of an inner apartment : the wicker door opened
through a stone wall ; the thick turf roof was at least
water-tight, except where, beside the gables (not over the
fire), there were two openings to admit air and light, and
to give egress to the smoke. Our readers would smile
were we to associate ideas of comfort with such a dwelling.
Certain it was, however, that its inmates could do so ; and
all can at least associate ideas of decency with it. The
construction of Red Murouch's house was quite as primitive
as the tillage of his little croft, or the tackle of his boat, or
the distaff and spindle employed by his wife. His grand-
father removed by twenty generations had lived, in all
probability, in just such another; but it served Murouch
quite as well as its antitype had served his remote ancestor.
Besides, if he wished it better or larger, could he not im-
prove or add to it ? There was space enough outside ;
vast abundance of stone everywhere, and wood in the
neighboring hollow ; and Murouch, unsophisticated, like
all his neighbors, by the scheme of dividing labor, which,
while it adds to the skill of the community, lowers might-
ily that of the individual, was a master of the entire art of
building such houses.
Just six months after quitting the Highlands, we were
residing in one of the richest districts in the Lowlands of
Scotland one of those centres of cultivation from which
the art of the agriculturist has spread itself over all the
more accessible portions of the kingdom. The rent of land
in the neighborhood averaged somewhat above five pounds
per acre ; the yearly rental of the parish in which we lived
was estimated at about twenty-eight thousand pounds.
The Scottish metropolis lay not three hours' walk away.
Considerably more than two hundred miles intervened be-
tween us and the scene of our last year's labor. We have
often thought whether it would not be equally correct to
say that we had travelled in advance of it at least a thou-
THE COTTAGES OP OUR HINDS. 203
sand years. The whole seemed, viewed in recollection
from amid the fertile fields of the south, as if belonging
rather to the remote past than to the present. Even the
most unpractised eye could not fail being struck by the su-
perior style of the husbandry in the modern district. How
very close the plough had contrived to skirt the well-dressed
fences ! How straight the furrows! how equal the braird !
How thoroughly had the laud been cleared of weeds !
And then, what an air of snugness seemed to pervade
the farm-houses of the district, and how palpably had the
experience of ages been concentrated on the means and
appliances of their several steadings! The jealous neat-
ness, too, with which the various gentlemen's seats in the
neighborhood were kept, their general style, the appearance
of the surrounding grounds, their woods, and gardens, and
belts of shrubbery all testified to the elegant tastes and
habits of the possessors. Whatever belonged immediately
to the upper classes had but one character comfort gilded
by the beautiful. And there was much, doubtless, in the
very sight of all this for the poor man to enjoy. We still
entertain a vivid recollection, distinct as a picture, of the
beautiful vista in a gentleman's woods, tall, green, finely
arched, close over head as the roof of a cathedral, through
which we could see, almost every evening, as the twilight
faded into darkness, the Inchkeith light twinkling afar off,
like a star rising out of the sea. The noble grove through
which it shone was scarce a hundred yards distant from
the humble cottage in which we lodged.
But the cottage was an exceedingly humble one. It
was one of a line on the wayside, inhabited chiefly by com-
mon laborers and farm-servants, a cold, uncomfortable
hovel, consisting of only a single apartment, by many
degrees less a dwelling to our mind, and certainly less warm
and snug, than the cottage of the west-coast Highlander.
The tenant, our landlord, was an old farm -servant, who had
been found guilty of declining health and vigor about a
twelvemonth before, and had been discharged in conse-
204 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
quence. He was permitted to retain his dwelling, on the
express understanding that the proprietor was not to be
burdened with repairs ; and the thatch, which was giving
way in several places, he had painfully labored to patch
against the weather by mud and turf gathered from the
wayside. But he wanted both the art and the materials of
Red Murouch. With every heavy shower the rain found
its way through, and the curtains of his two beds, other-
wise so neatly kept, were stained by dark-colored blotches.
The earthern floor was damp and uneven ; the walls, of
undressed stone, had never been hard-cast ; but, by dint
of repeated whitewashings, the interstices had gradually
filled up. They were now, however, all variegated by the
stains from the roof. Nor had the pride of the apai'tment,
its old-fashioned eight-day clock or its chest of drawers,
escaped. From the top of the drawers the veneers were
beginning to start, in consequence of the damp ; and the
clock gave warning, by its frequent stops and irregular-
ities, that it would very soon cease to take further note
of time. The old man's wife, still a neat, tidy woman,
though turned of sixty, was a martyr to rheumatism ; and
her one damp and gousty room, with its mere apron-breadth
of partition interposed between it and the chinky outer
door, was not at all the place for her declining years or
her racking complaint. She did her best, however, to keep
things in order, and to attend to the comforts of her hus-
band and her two lodgers; but the bad roof and the sin-
gle apartment were disqualifying circumstances, and they
pressed on her very severely. It was well remarked by
his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, that " the keeping of
lodgers along with families in cottages where there is scarce
room for the family itself, is a great evil." It is even so
a very great evil. But, my Lord Duke, there are still
greater evils which press upon the indigent. These poor
old people had very slender means of living, and they
found it necessary to eke them out in any honest way.
Their lodgers, too humble, hard-working men could
THE COTTAGES OP OUR HINDS. 205
not afford a very sumptuous lodging-place, nor were there
any such in the neighborhood, even if they could. There
are stern necessities that press upon the poor in matters
of this kind, which we sincerely trust your Grace may
never experience, but of which all would be the better of
knowing just a very little.
And this was all that civilization, in the midst of a well-
nigh perfect agriculture, and amid the exercise of ever}
useful and elegant art, had done for the dwelling of the
poor hind. The rude husbandry of the western-coast High-
lander had been left more than a thousand years behind ;
manufactures had made marvellous advances since the re-
linquishment of the distaff and spindle ; trade had imported
many a luxury since woollen sails and wooden anchors had
been abandoned ; every umbrageous recess had its scene of
elegance and comfort; the homes of the poor had alone
remained stationary, and worse than stationary, they had
sunk below the level of semi-civilization. But we are
building perhaps on a solitary instance, attempting to
found a grievance on a needle-point. Would that it were
so! Our description is far above the average, however
exaggerated it may seem. Take, by way of proofj from a
very admirable little work on the subject by the Rev. Dr.
W. S. Gilly of Norham, a description of the hovels on the
border, deemed quite good enough by the proprietary of
the country for their own and their tenants' hinds. He
selects a single group as a specimen of the whole.
" Now for a more detailed description of that species of hut or hovel
for it is no better which prevails in this district. I have a group
of five such before my mind's eye. They belong to the same prop-
erty, and have all changed inhabitants within eighteen months. The
property, I may add, is tenanted by one of the best and most enter-
prising farmers in all England. They are built of rubble, loosely
cemented; and, from age and the badness of the materials, the walls
look as if they would scarcely hold together. The chinks gap open
in many places, and so widely that they freely admit every wind that
blows. The clr'.inneys have lost half their original height, and lean
18
206 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
on the 'oof with fearful gravitation. The rafters are evidently rotten
and displaced ; and the thatch, yawning in some parts to admit the
wet, and in all parts utterly unfit for its original purpose of giving
protection from the weather, looks more like the top of a dunghill
than of a cottage. Such is the exterior ; and when the hind comes
to take possession, he finds it no better than a shed. The wet, if it
happens to rain, is making a puddle on the earth floor. This earth
floor, by the by, is one of the causes to which Erasmus ascribed the
frequent recurrence of epidemic sickness among the cottars of Eng-
land more than three hundred years ago. It is not only cold and wet,
but contains the aggregate filth of years from the time of its being
first used. The refuse and dropping of meals, decayed animal and
vegetable matter of all kinds, these all mix together, and exude from
it. Window-frame there is none. There is neither oven, nor cop-
per, nor shelf, nor fixture of any kind. All these things the hind
has to bring with him, besides his ordinary articles of furniture.
Imagine the trouble, the inconvenience, and the expense which the
poor fellow and his wife have to encounter- before they can put this
shell of a hut into anything like a habitable form. This year I saw
a family of eight, husband, wife, two sons, and four daughters,
who were in utter discomfort, and in despair of putting themselves
into a decent condition, three or four weeks afier they had come into
one of these hovels. In vain did they try to stop up the crannies,
and to fill up the holes in the floor, and to arrange their furniture in
tolerably decent order, and to keep out the weather. Alas, what
will they not suffer in the winter ! There will be no fireside enjoy-
ments for them. They may huddle together for warmth, and heap
coals on the fire ; but they will have chilly beds and a damp hearth-
stone; and the cold wind will sweep through their dismal apartment;
and the icicles will hang by the wall, and the snow will drift through
the roof, and window, and crazy doorplace, in spite of all their en-
deavors to exclude it."
Great as they may seem, however, these are merely phys-
ical evils; and they are light and trivial compared with the
horrors which follow. These miserable cabins consist, in
by much the greater number of instances, as in the cottage
of the poor old hind, of but a single room. We again
quote :
" And into this apartment are crowded eight, ten, and even twelve
THE COTTAGES OP OUR HINDS. 207
persons. How they lie down to rest, how they sleep, how unuttera-
ble horrors are avoided, is beyond all conception. The case is ag-
gravated when there is a young woman to be lodged in this confined
space who is not a member of the family, but is hired to do the field-
work, for which every hind is bound to provide a female. It shocks
every feeling of propriety to think that in a room within such a space
as I have been describing civilized beings should be herding together
without a decent separation of age and sex. So long as the agricul-
tural system in this district requires the hind to find room for a fellow-
servant of the other sex in his cabin, the least that morality and
decency can demand is, that he should have a second apartment,
where the unmarried female and those of a tender age should sleep
apart from him and his wife."
The following simple story places the degradation to
which the poor hind and his family are subjected, in conse-
quence of the wretched accommodation provided for them,
in a light painfully strong. We may truly remark with
the poet, in this case, without metaphor, that misery makes
strange bedfellows.
" Last Whitsuntide, when the annul lettings were taking place, a
hind who had lived one year in the hovel he was about to quit called
to say farewell, and to thank me for some trifling kindness I had been
able to show him. He was a fine, tall man, of about forty-five,
a fair specimen of the frank, sensible, well-spoken, well-informed
Northumbrian peasantry, of that peasantry of which a militia
regiment was composed which so amazed the Londoners when it was
garrisoned in the capital many years ago, by the size, the noble de-
portment, the soldier-like bearing, and the good conduct of the men.
I thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions, where
he was going, and how he would dispose of his large family (eleven
in number). He told me they were to inhabit one of these hinds'
cottages, whose narrow dimensions were less than twenty-four feet by
fifteen ; and that the eleven would have only three beds to sleep in,
that he himself, his wife, a daughter of six, and a boy of four years
old would sleep in ore bed, that a daughter of eighteen, a son of
twelve, a son of ten, and a daughter of eight, would have a second
bed, and a third would receive his three sons, of the age of twenty,
sixteen, and fourteen. ' Pray,' said I, ' do you not think that this is
208 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
a very improper way of disposing of your family ? ' ' Yes, certainly,'
was the answer ; ' it is very improper in a Christian point of view ;
but, what can we do until they build us better houses ? ' "
It were needless to expatiate on this picture ; it is quite
enough that we hold it up to the reader. There is much
to militate against the character of the poor hind all over
the country. His very situation is adverse, however com-
paratively favorable the circumstances with which it may
chance to be surrounded. When aggravated by the hor-
rors of the bothy system, deterioration is inevitable ; nor
can any one honestly or rationally hold that the gross
cruelty which consigns him to situations such as the one
described situations wholly subversive of that nice del-
icacy of feeling which is at once the safeguard and orna-
ment of virtue does not furnish a necessary item in his
degradation. Mark the effects. In an interesting report,
on farm-servants, of the very reverend the Synod of Perth
and Stirling, published in October last, we find the follow-
ing astounding passage. It embodies a piece of moral
statistics in connection with this hapless class, as furnished
by the returns of thirty-nine parishes :
" Of the public scandals chargeable on farm-servants, the propor-
tion varies considerably in diiFerent parishes ; but in all of them,
with three exceptions, the number chargeable on that class of the
parishioners is larger in some of them much larger than on all
the others put together, although in no one instance does that class
constitute anything like a majority of the inhabitants. In those three
cases where the scandals among the farm-servants are fewer than
those among the other classes, the proportion of the whole number
of farm-servants to the other, and especially the working classes,
is exceedingly small. It requires to be particularly noticed, that in
one parish, the scandals which have occurred of late among the farm-
servants are reported to be nine tenths of the whole."
" Where is thy brother Cain ? the voice of thy brother's
blood crieth unto me from the ground." This surely is not
one of the matters in which our aristocracy do well to study
THE COTTAGES OF OUR HINDS. 209
a niggard economy. With all due respect, therefore, for the
excellent and benevolent nobleman who advocated an op-
posite view of the case in the meeting of last week, we
must be permitted to say, that it will not do to speak of
forty-pound impossibilities and twenty-pound inconvenien-
ces, when the morality of the country is thus at stake. It
will not do merely to propose premiums for introducing
beds with woollen screens in front into the one miserable
apartment of the poor neglected hind, or to incite him to
task his ingenuity in partitioning the narrow area in which
he is compelled to cram his family. Pecuniary sacrifices
must be made by the proprietary of the country, even
should they have to part, in consequence, with one or two
superfluous horses or a few supernumerary dogs. Mere
alterations will not do. In the language in which Watts,
in one of his less-known lyrics, describs the leprous house,
they m jst
" Since deep the fatal spot is grown,
Break down the timber and dig up the stone."
18*
210 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL,
VII.
THE BOTHY SYSTEM.
Most of our readei*s must know what the bothy system
is. A very considerable number of the farm-steadings of
the country, built on the most approved plan, with roomy
courts and sheds for the breeding of cattle, and stablea
constructed on the best possible principle for the horses,
with all, in short, that the modern system of agriculture
demands, have no adequate accommodation for the la-
borers by whom the farms attached to them are wrought.
The horses and cattle are well provided for, but not the
men. A wretched outhouse, the genuine bothy, fur-
nished with a few rude stools, a few deal bedsteads, a few
bowls of tin or earthen ware, a water-pail, and a pot,
serves miserably to accommodate some eight or ten labor-
ers, all of them, of course, single men. Here they kindle
their own fire, cook their own victuals, make their own beds.
The labors of the farm employ them from nine to ten
hours daily ; the grooming and feeding of their horses at
least an hour more. The rest of their time falls to be passed
in their miserable home. They return to it often wet and
fatigued, especially in the briefer and stormier months of
the year, just as the evening has fallen, and find all dark
and chill: the fire has to be lighted, in some districts
even the very fuel to be procured ; the water to be brought
from the well ; the hasty and unsavory meal to be prepared.
It is scarce possible to imagine circumstances of greater
discomfort. The staple food of the laborer is generally
oatmeal, cooked in careless haste, as might be anticipated
in the circumstances, by mixing a portion in a bowl with
THE BOTHY SYSTEM. 211
hot water and a little salt ; and often for weeks and months
together there is no change in either the materials of this
his necessarily heating and unwholesome meal, or in the
mode of preparing it. The farmer, his master, in too many
instances takes no further care of him after his labors for
the day are over. He represents merely a certain quantum
of power purchased at a certain price, and applied to a
certain purpose; and as it is, unluckily, power purchased
by the half-year, and abundant in the market, there is no
necessity that it should be husbanded from motives of
economy, like that of the farmer's horses or of his steam-
engine; and therefore little heed is taken though it should
thus run to waste. The consequences are in most cases
deplorable. It used to be a common remark of Burns,
no inadequate judge, surely, that the more highly culti-
vated he found an agricultural district, the more ignorant
and degraded he almost always found the people. Man
was discovered to have deteriorated at least as much as the
corn and cattle had improved. Now, in Scotland there
has been a very obvious reason for this. The altered cir-
cumstances of the country rendered inevitable the intro-
duction of the large-farm system, and broke down our
rural population, composed almost exclusively of what we
still term the small tenantry, a moral and religious race,
into two extreme classes, gentlemen farmers and firm-
servants. The farmers composed, of course, but a compar-
atively small portion of the whole ; nor, though furnishing
many high examples of intelligence and worth, can we
equal them as a body with the class which they supplanted.
Hitherto they have lived less in the " eye " of the great
"Taskmaster." They took their place, not in the front of
the common people, but in the rear of the aristocracy :
they passed, to employ the favorite proverb of the poet
whose remark we are attempting to illustrate, from the
"head of the commonalty to the tail of the gentry? The
other and greatly more numerous class proved much more
decidedly inferior. The tenant of from fifteen to fifty
212 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
pounds per annum necessarily occupied a place in which,
in accordance with the distinguishing characteristic of the
species as rational creatures, he had to look both before and
after him. He had to think and act ; to enact by turns the
agriculturist and the corn-merchant ; to manage his house-
hold, and to provide for term-day. He was alike placed
beyond the temptation of apeing his landlord, or of sinking
into a mere ploughing and harrowing machine. But, in
many instances, into such a machine the farm-servant
sunk. Still, however, there remained in his lot circum-
stances favorable to the development of the better parts
of his nature. There is much in having a home ; nor was
he placed beyond those ennobling influences of religion
which are scarce less necessary for enabling man rightly
to perform his part in this world than to prepare him for
another. Chiefly, however, from motives of a misei-able
economy, the unnatural bothy system was introduced, and
with the disastrous effects described. It promised to spare
some of our landlords the expense of providing cottages ;
and some of their tenantry expected to have their farms
more cheaply wrought by single than by married men.
We have seen more than the mere outsides of bothies, and
know from experience, that though they may be fit dwell-
ings for hogs and horses, they are not fit dwellings for
immortal creatures, who begin in this world their education
for eternity.
Nearly twenty years ago, we lived for a short time in an
agricultural district in the north of Scotland, on the farm
of one of the first introducers of the bothy system into
that part of the country. He has been dead for years, nor
do we know that any of his relatives survive. He had
been a bold speculator in his time, and had risen, with the
rise of the large-farm system, into the enjoyment of a very
considerable income ; but instead of regarding it as mere
capital in the forming, the merchant's true estimate of
his gains, he had dealt by it as the landed gentleman
does in most cases with his yearly rental. His style of
THE BOTHY SYSTEM. 213
living had more than kept pace with his means ; a change
had taken place in his circumstances at that eventful period,
so very trying to many of similar character, when England,
at the close of her long war with France, ceased to be the
workshop and general agency-office of Europe ; and he
was now an old man, and on the eve of bankruptcy. The
appearance of his steadings and fields consorted well at
the time with his general circumstances. The stone fences
were ruinous ; the hedges gapped by the half-tended cattle.
Harvest was just over, and on his farm at least it had been
a miserably scanty one; but it would have been somewhat
better with a little more care. In walking over one of
his fields, we counted well-nigh a dozen sheaves scattered
about aihong the stubble, that seemed to have fallen from
the carts at leading time, and were now fastened to the
earth by the grains having struck their shoots downward
and taken root. His steadings, though they wore a neg-
lected look, were of modern, substantial masonry, and well
designed, the stables roomy, the cattle-courts and sheds
formed on the most approved plan. Very different, how-
ever, was the appearance of the building in which his farm-
servants found their sort of half-shelter. Some twenty or
thirty years before it had been a barn ; for it had formed
part of an older steading, of which all the other buildings
had been pulled down to make way for the more modern
erection. It was a dingy, low, thatched building, bulged
in the sidewalls in a dozen different places, and green atop
with chickweed and stonecrop. One long apartment, with-
out partition or ceiling, occupied the interior from gable to
gable. A row of undressed deal-beds ran along the sides.
There was a fire at each gable, or rather a place at which
fires might be lighted, for there were no chimneys ; the
narrow slits in the walls were crammed with turf; the
roof leaked in a dozen different places; and along the
ridge the sky might be seen from end to end of the apart-
ment. We learned to know what o'clock it was, when we
214 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
awoke in the night-time, by the stars which we saw glim-
mering through the opening.
It was, in truth, a comfortless habitation for human
creatures in a wet and gusty November, and the inmates
were as rugged as their dwelling-place was rude. We
need hardly say that none of them could regard it as a
home. It was the gloomy season of the year, when the
night falls fast, abridging the labors of the day; and ere
they returned to their miserable hovel in the evening, all
was deep twilight without, and all darkness within. The
fuel had to be procured, the fire to be kindled, water to be
brought from the well, and the unsavory meal to be pre-
pared ; and all this by men stiff with fatigue, and not
unfrequently soaked with wet. It was no easy matter at
times to light the fire : the fuel often got damp, and, when
at length lighted, burnt dead and cheerless. There was a
singular want, too, of the ordinary providence among the
inmates, and it could be shown in a matter slight as this.
No provision was made in the morning for the fire of the
night. If the rain fell, their fuel and their tempers were
just so much the worse in consequence ; and that was all.
Does the reader remember Crabbe's admirable stroke of
nature in his " Phoebe Dawson ? " He describes the poor
thing as almost heartbroken in her miseiy, and yet strug-
gling with it in patient silence ; but a single drop serves to
make the full cup run over. When dragging herself pain-
fully along the green, with her broken pitcher in her one
hand and sustaining her child with the other, she sinks
ankle-deep in a quagmire. The mischance, slight as it
may seem, is the single drop which more than fills the cup,
and she bursts out into a hysteric fit of weeping. We
have seen matters quite as slight rouse into fierceness, in
the bothy, tempers already soured by bitter discontent.
The inmates, if careless of their master's interests, were
scarce less careless of their own comforts. A little hot
water poured on a handful of oatmeal, with a sprinkling of
ealt, furnished the thrice-a-day meal. Had the materials
THE BOTHY SYSTEM. 215
at their command been more luxuriant, we question much
whether they would have taken the trouble to prepare
them. It seems natural for men in such circumstances to
be cai-eless of themselves, and equally natural for them to
avenge on the cause of their general discomfort the irri-
tating effects of their own indifferency and lack of care.
There was a large amount of rude sarcasm in the bothy,
and, strange as it may seem, a great deal of laughter. It
has been remarked by, we think, a French writer, that the
people of despotic governments laugh more than those
of free states. We never heard the name of the farmer
mentioned among his servants without some accompanying
expression of dislike ; we never saw one of them manifest
the slightest regard for his interest. They ill-treated his
horses, neglected his cattle, left his corn to rot in the fields.
Some of them could speak of his approaching ruin with
positive glee. What we would fain have said to him then
may not be without its use to others now. " You, in your
utter selfishness, have spoiled the men whom you employ ;
and they, in turn, are spoiling your horses and cattle and
corn, and glorying in the ruin which is just on the eve of
overtaking you. All right. There is no getting above the
natural laws. Alkalies neutralize acids ; dense bodies in-
variably descend when placed in fluids lighter than them-
selves; and men, when they are spoiled, spoil all other
things."
Scarce any one except Crabbe could have done full jus-
tice to the interior of the bothy. We remember there was
a poacher, a desperate, thick-set, black-visaged fellow,
who used to steal in about midnight with his gun, when
all was dark and quiet, and draw himself up into one of
the beds. He was of the stuff that felons are made of,
beyond comparison more a criminal than any of the in-
mates of the bothy; and his occasional presence served to
show, by the force of contrast, that the others were nothing
worse than just useful members of society, of the average
character, lucklessly spoiled. It was the bothy system that
216 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
had made them what they were. The fact, however,
seems not unworthy of being noted, that the poacher
should have come to harbor in such a place. He was a
man living in a state of warfare with the upper classes,
a black-fisher and a breaker into game preserves; but no
inmate of the bothy thought a whit the worse of him for
his trade. He annoyed only people of the same class with
their master, and could there be harm in that? Immedi-
ately after dinner, especially when the fuel was bad, most
of the bothy-men disappeared. There was a small village
about a mile away, to which they generally resorted. It
had its smithy and its public house ; and in the latter there
were rustic dances got up at least once a fortnight, at
which all the men of the bothy were sure to attend. A
young jemmy lad the beau of the party, who used at
times to wear his Sunday coat of red tartan at the plough,
and who, had he been born to a more fitting sphere, would
haply have smoked cigars and sported moustaches on
Prince's Street had quite a knack at getting up these
entertainments, and in prodding his companions with
partners from all the farmhouses round. It was generally
late in the morning, on such occasions, ere they got home ;
and the unsteady tread as they groped along the floor for
their beds, or the pi-evious fumbling at the latch, gave evi-
dence in most cases that the protracted merry-making had
terminated in drunkenness. But we find we must abridge
our description. We may sum up the whole by remarking
that the evils of the bothy system are of a threefold char-
acter, economic, intellectual, religious. Our agricultur-
ists are, fortunately, becoming convinced of the first, a
conviction which may lead, in time, through the abolition
of the system, to the removal of the others. It is scarce
possible for the inmate of a bothy to cultivate his mind.
The bothy is a place in which the cogitative faculties fall
asleep ; the higher sentiments of our nature fare no better.
As for religion, it may be enough to remark, that we have
not yet seen a bothy in which the Sabbath could be properly
THE BOTHY SYSTEM. 217
kept : the ploughman who entertained a due reverence for
the Sabbath would walk out into the fields. Cobbett, during
his short stay in this country, acquainted himself with the
system, and was by much too quick-sighted not to detect
its evils. "Better," he said, in his own extreme style,
"better the fire-raisings of Kent than the bothy system of
Scotland." We are far from reiterating the remark. We
would deem, on the contrary, fire-raisings, such as those of
Kent, one of the worst consequences that could result from
it, though perhaps not one of the most improbable. We
may be permitted to ask, however, whether the Scottish
Church is much to be blamed for having endeavored to lay
on such a system what "Wordsworth well terms " the strong
hand of her purity?'
19
218 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
VIII.
THE HIGHLANDS. 1
" It is very sad that the people of this fine wild country
have not got enough to eat ; but, depend on't, we will col-
lect no more money for them in England. We have
already done our best to help them, and they must now
help themselves." Such was the remark of a comfortable-
looking Englishman whom we encountered, a few weeks
ago, among the wilds of the northern Highlands ; and,
judging from the indifferent success which has attended
the recent efforts to form a second fund in behalf of the
suffering Highlander, it seems to represent pretty fairly the
average feeling and general determination of the country
on the subject. Charity on a large scale, and directed,
on distant objects, soon exhausts itself. It is competent,
if thoroughly roused, to grapple with the necessities of one
famine, and to do a very little for a second ; but a third
wearies it; and, should famine become chronic, it leaves
1 At this date, 1862, the depopulation of the Highlands is still rapidly going on.
Not half a mile from the spot where we write, in the northwest Highlands,
many families were ejected from their holdings but a few months ago. The fac-
to) that dreaded middleman of the people came with the underlings of the
law, with spade and pickaxe, and left literally not one stone upon another of
their poor cottages standing. I can see a miserable hovel into which several
families have crowded, who had before separate holdings of their own. I have
no hesitation in saying that the proprietor ought to be held legally bound, in
such cases, either to provide other home accommodation or the means of emi-
gration. Such scenes ought not to be allowed to disgrace a Christian country.
But even where the inhabitants are allowed to remain on their miserable and
insufficient crofts, the able-bodied that is, the choicest of the population
are rapidly emigrating. "There is not a lad worth anything,'''' said a person, the
other day, who had just left a very large strath at some twenty miles distance,
" there is not a lad worth anything that is not going away to New Zealand, or
some other place."
The people are, indeed, oppressed with a sense of utter poverty, and a total
THE HIGHLANDS. 219
it to devastate unheeded, and ends where it is said to begin,
by exerting itself at home. Nor do we see, man being the
impulsive creature that he is, how his charity, if voluntary
and at large, is to be made to act other than paroxysmally
and at wide intervals. We must be content, we are afraid,
to accept it as a fact, that, even should our poor Highland-
ers not have enough to eat for several years to come, there
will be very little more money collected for them in Eng-
land or elsewhere; and that, however great the difficulty
which attaches to the "state of the Highlands" problem,
it is a difficulty with which our own country, and in espe-
cial the Highlands themselves, must be prepared to grapple,
undiverted by any vain hopes of eleemosynary aid from
without.
The difficulty is certainly very great, and it has been
vastly enhanced by the late years of famine. We are old
enough to remember the northern Highlands, rather more
than thirty years ago, when there were whole districts of
the interior, untouched by the clearing system, in posses-
sion of the aboriginal inhabitants. And if asked to sum
up in one word the main difference between the circum-
inability to rise above it. In many places their circumstances are made as
wretched as possible, on purpose to starve them out. There are a few propri-
etors such as Sir Kenneth M'Kenzie of Gairloch who respect the feelings
of those who have been for generations located on their properties; but these
are very few. It is but justice, too, to the present and late noble proprietors of
Sutherland to say, that, notwithstanding the melancholy clearings, for which,
of course, they individually are not responsible, such of their small tenantry
as remain are not rack-rented. They are, in fact, very leniently dealt with in
this respect. But nothing can ever make the Highlander what he was, but that
interest in the soil which he has lost. Every Highlander formerly was possessed
of all those feelings which constitute much that is valuable in the birthright of
true gentlemen, a long-descended lineage, a sense of status, and property, and
an intense attachment to home and country. We fear that we have seen nearly
the last of this noble race on the battlefield of the Crimea; and that soon, unless
a marvellous revolution takes place, the so-called Highland regiments may be
Irish, or what they please, but not Highlanders. But if the mountains and
moors only were let for deer-shootings, and the soil proper were restored to its
children in farms capable of supporting families, this calamity might yet be
averted ; nor would the proprietors, in the long run, be the losers, in a pecuniary
point of view. We are disposed to think the contrary would be the case.
220 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
stances of the Highlander in these and in later times, oui
one word would be, that most important of all vocables to
the political economist, capital. The Highlander was
never wealthy ; the inhabitant of a wild mountainous dis-
trict, formed of the primary rocks, never are. But he
possessed on the average his six, or eight, or ten head of
cattle, and his small flock of sheep, and when as some-
times happened in the high-lying districts the corn crop
turned out a failure, the sale of a few cattle or sheep more
than served to clear scores with the landlord, and enabled
him to purchase his winter and spring supply of meal in
the Lowlands. He was thus a capitalist, and possessed the
capitalist's peculiar advantage of not living " from hand
to mouth," but on an accumulated fund, which always stood
between him and absolute want, though not between him
and positive hardship, and enabled him to rest during a
year of scarcity on his own resources, instead of throwing
himself on the charity of his Lowland neighbors. And in
these times he never did throw himself on the charity of
his Lowland neighbors. Kay, in what were emphatically
termed the " dear years " of the beginning of the present
and the latter half of the past century, the humbler people
of the Lowlands, especially our Lowland mechanics and
laborers, suffered more than the crofters of the Highlands,
and this mainly from the circumstance that, as the failure
of the crops which induced the scarcity was a corn failure,
not a failure of grass and pasture, the humbler Highlanders
had what the humbler Lowlanders wanted, sheep and
cattle, which continued to sujjply them with food and
raiment ; while the others, depending on corn almost ex-
clusively, and accustomed to deal with the draper for their
articles of clothing, were reduced by the high price of pro-
visions to great straits. In truth, the golden age of the High-
lands was comprised in that period which extended from
shortly after the suppression of the rebellion of 1745, and
the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions, down till the
commencement of the clearance system. It is to this period .
THE HIGHLANDS. 221
that Mrs. Grant's description of Celtic habits and of Celtic
character belong, and which give one the idea of so con-
tented, and, in the main, so comfortable a people, that,
save for our own early recollections when we lived among
the Highlanders, we would be disposed to suspect that the
good lady had drawn on her imagination for the coloring
of her pictures. Previous to the long wars of the first
French revolution, the people of our country generally did
not work so hard as they do now. One set of mechanics,
such as our weavers, had not to contend with machinery,
and earned good wages in comparatively " short hours ;"
another class, such as masons and carpenters, had not to
work, as now, under the competition of the estimate system,
but wrought easily on day's pay. The Highlander, whose
labors were more prevailingly pastoral than agricultural,
wrought still less than either class ; but having less to
compete with, the little which he did work served his turn.
And as his mode of life was favorable to the development
of the military spirit, a spirit which the traditions of
the country served mightily to foster, great numbers of
the young men of the country, of a very different class
from those that usually enlist in England and the Low-
lands, entered the army, and our Highland regiments were
composed of at once the best men and the best soldiers in
the service. It was early in this period that the eloquent
Chatham could boast, in his place in Parliament, that, in-
different whether a man's cradle had been rocked to the
south or north of the Tweed, he had seen high military
merit among the Scottish mountains ; and that, calling
forth from amid their recesses, to the service of the coun-
try, a " hardy and dauntless race of men, they had con-
quered for it in every quarter of the globe."
With the wars of the first French revolution there was
a great change introduced into the country. The wheels
of its industry were quickened by the pressure of taxation,
and by the introduction of a system of competition with
machinery, on the one hand, that lengthened the term of
19*
222 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
labor by reducing its remuneration, and with the " estimate
system " on the other. Nor was it in the nature of things
that the Highlands should long remain unaffected by this
change. The price of provisions rose in England and the
low country, and with the price of provisions the l'ent of
land. The Highland proprietor naturally enough bethought
him how his rental was also to be increased ; and, as a con-
sequence of the conclusion at which he arrived, the sheep-
farm and clearing system began. Many thousand High-
landers, ejected from their snug holdings, employed their
little capital in emigrating to Canada or the States; and
there, in most cases, save in very inhospitable localities, as
in the Cape Breton district, the little capital increased, and
a rude plenty continues to be enjoyed by their descendants.
Many thousands more, however, fell down upon the coasts
of the country, and, on moss-covered moors or bare, exposed
promontories, little suited for the labors of the agriculturist,
commenced a sort of amphibious life as crofters and fisher-
men ; and there, located on an ungenial soil, and prose-
cuting with but indifferent skill a precarious trade, their
little capital dribbled out of their hands, and they became
the poorest of men. Meanwhile, in some parts of the
Highlands and Islands a busy commerce sprung up, which
employed, much to the profit of the landlord, several thou-
sands of the inhabitants. The manufacture of kelp rendered
tracts of barren shore and inhospitable islets of more value
than the richest land in Scotland; and, under the impetus
given by full employment, and, if not ample, at least re-
munerative pay, population increased. Suddenly, however,
free trade, in its first approaches, destroyed the trade in
kelp ; and then the reduction of the salt-duties, and the
discovery of a cheap mode of manufacturing soda out of
common salt, secured its ruin beyond the power of legisla-
tion to retrieve. Both people and landlords experienced
in these, the kelp districts, the evils which a ruined com-
merce always leaves behind it. Old Highland families
have disappeared, in consequence, from among the aristoc*
THE HIGHLANDS. 223
racy and landowners of the country ; and the population
of extensive islands and seaboards of the country, from
being no more than adequate to the employment furnished,
suddenly became oppressively redundant. It required,
however, another drop to make the full cup run over. The
potato is of comparatively modern introduction into the
Highlands. We were intimate in early life with several
individuals who had seen potatoes first transferred from
the gardens of Sutherland and Ross to the fields. But
during the present century potatoes had become the staple
food of the Highlander. In little more than forty years
their culture had increased fivefold ; for every twenty bolls
reared in 1801, there were a hundred reared in 1846 ; and
when in the latter year the potato blight came on, the poor
people, previously stripped of their little capitals, and di-
vested of their employment, were deprived of their food,
and ruined at a blow. The same stroke which did little
more than slightly infringe on the comforts of the people
of the Lowlands, utterly prosti'ated those of the Highlands;
and ever since, the sufferings of famine have become
chronic along the bleak shores and rugged islands of at
least the northwestern portion of our country. Nor is it
perhaps the worst part of the evil that takes the form of
clamorous want. Wordsworth, in describing a time of
famine in which the fields for two years together "were
left with half a harvest," tersely says, that
" Many rich
Sank down, as in a dream, among the poor,
And of the poor many did cease to be."
We fear that during the famines of the last five years not a
few of our Highland poor have ceased to be, if not in conse-
quence of absolute starvation, in consequence at least of the
severe course of privation to which they have been exposed.
But their wants are now all provided for; and it is a more
disastrous though less obtrusive fact, that so heavily has
the famine borne on a class that were not absolutely the
224 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
poor when it came on, that they are the absolutely poor
now. It has dissipated the last remains of capital possessed
by the people of the Highlands, and placed them in cir-
cumstances of prostration too extreme to leave them any
very great chance of recovering themselves, or rather in
circumstances from which, in the present state of the coun-
try, recovery for them as a people is an impossibility.
Such seems to be the present state of the Highlands.
Where are we to look for the proper remedies? Alas! in
the body politic, as in the natural body, injuries may be
easily dealt, for which it may be scarce possible to suggest
a cure. In travelling over an extensive Highland tract
last autumn, we had a good deal of conversation with the
people themselves. Passing through wild districts of the
western coast, where the rounded hills and scratched and
polished rocks gave evidence that the country had been
once wrapped up in a winding-sheet of ice, we saw the soil
for many miles together where the bare rock had any
covering at all composed of two almost equally hopeless
ingredients. The subsoil was formed of glacial debris,
the mere scrapings of the barren primary rocks ; and over
it there lay a stratum, varying generally from six inches
to six feet, of cold, wet, inert moss, over which there grew
scarce even a useful grass, except perhaps the " deer's hair"
of the sheep-farmer. And yet, on this ungenial soil, rep-
resentative of but vegetable and mineral death, the
dead ice-rubbish and the dead peat, we saw numerous
cultivated patches in which the thin green corn or sickly-
looking potatoes struggled with aquatic plants, the com-
mon reed and the dwarf water-flag. No agriculturist, with
all the appliances of modern science at command, would
once think of investing capital in such a soil; and yet here
were the poor Highlanders investing at least labor in it,
and their modicum of seed-corn. And we are not to
wonder if the tillers of such fields be miserably poor, and
fail to achieve independence. There was a locality pointed
out to us, in a barren quartz-rock district, in which the
THE HIGHLANDS. 225
indestructible stone, that never resolves into soil, was
covered by a stratum of dark peat, where the proprietor
nad experimented on the capabilities of the native High-
landers, by measuring out to them amid the moor, at a low
rent, several small farms, of ten or twelve acres apiece.
But in a moor composed of peat and quartz-rock no rent
can be low. No farmer thrives on a barren soil, let his rent
be what it may ; and so the speculation here had turned
out a bad one. The quartz-rock and the peat proved
pauper-making deposits; and while the tenants paid their
rents irregularly and ill, the demands made on the poor-
rates by the hangers-on of the colony came to be demanded
very regularly indeed, and were beginning to overtop the
nominal rent in their amount. " How," we have frequently
inquired of the poor people, "are you spending your
strength on patches so miserably unproductive as these ?
You are said to be lazy. For our own part, what we chiefly
wonder at is your great industry. Were we at least in
your circumstances, we would improve upon your indo-
lence by striking work, and not laboring at all." The
usual reply used to be: "Ah, there is good land in the
country, but they will not give it to us." And certainly
we did see in the Highlands many tracts of kindly-looking
soil. Green margins, along the sides of long-withdrawing
valleys, which still bore the marks of the plough, but now
under natural grass, seemed much better fitted to be, as of
old, scenes of human industry, than the cold, ungenial
mosses or the barren moors. But in at least nineteen
cases out of every twenty we found the green patches
bound by lease to some extensive sheep-farmer, and as
unavailable for the purposes of the present emergency,
even to the proprietor, as if they lay in the United States
or the Canadas.
So far as we could see, the effects of recent emigration
had not been favorable. The poor-rates were heaviest in
the districts from which the greatest numbers had emi-
grated. Unless emigration be so enforced as to become a
226 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
sort of indiscriminate banishment, and in these days of
poor-laws it would not be easy to enforce it, even in the
Highlands, it will be the more vigorous and energetic
portion of the community that will seek for a home in
other countries, and the feeble in mind and body that will
be left behind. We were much struck by the casual state-
ment in a newspaper paragraph, that, of several hundred
emigrants from Lewis who arrived in Canada this season,
there was scarce one who was not under thirty. It was
the elite of the island that went, while its pauperism staid
behind. The pauperism of the Highlands will not willingly
cross the Atlantic; it would be going from home much
more emphatically than the vigorous emigrant. There are
poor-laws in Scotland, but none in the backwoods. But
on a subject at once so extensive and so difficult we can
do little more than touch. We regretted to find, during
our late visit, that the military spirit is at present so dead
in the Highlands that the recruiting party of one of the
most respectable Highland regiments under the Crown
succeeded in enlisting, during a stay of several months,
only some ten or twelve young men, in a county charged
with an unemployed and suffering population. In popish
Ireland as many hundreds would have enrolled in the
time ; and this disposition on the part of the Irish has
crowded the British army with a preponderating propor-
tion of Roman Catholics, who, in the event of such a reli-
gious war as may one day break out to convulse Europe,
could be but little depended upon on the side of Protest-
antism and the Queen. We fain would see a revival of
the old military spirit of the Highlands, both on their own
account and on that of the country. The condition of the
British army is at the present time one of comfort and
plenty compared with that of the general population of
the northwestern parts of Scotland ; the prospect of retire-
ment, with a snug pension, some one-and-twenty years
hence, is a better prospect than any poor Highland crofter
or cottar can rationally entertain ; and we would much
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 227
prefer seeing some twenty thousand of our brave country-
men enrolled in the army, as at once its best soldiers and
best Protestants, than lost forever to the country in a col-
ony that in a few years hence may exist as one of the
States of the great North American republic.
IX.
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW,
We have never yet been able to see any foundation for
the assertion of Paley, that " the poor have the same right
to that portion of a man's property which the laws assign
to them, that the man himself has to the remainder."
Right cannot be created by law where right did not exist
before; and in the poor-laws, as now administered in Eng-
land, we have a striking illustration of the fact. No law
can give to one man a right to take another man, guilty of
no crime save poverty, and in debt to no one, and shut him
up in prison. Poverty is surely not so grave an offence as
to merit a punishment so severe. And yet certain it is,
that a legal right of this character exists in England at the
present day. It exists as surely as the other legal right
asserted by Paley ; nor does it in the least alter the state
l A poor-law edict indeed " become inevitable for Scotland ! " But alas for
its consequences ! One who was session-clerk for fourteen years in a parish as
large as three or four of the smaller English counties, tells me that in all those
years the proprietors, four in number, gave just one five-pounds in all to assist
the poor. Now they give aboui five hundred a year, while the people are taxed
to the amount of another five hundred. This would be little matter, if the con-
dition of the poor were improved; but it is unmistakably and undeniably a hun-
dred times worse. Nothing like the thousand pounds named finds its way into their
pockets: collectors, inspectors, law expenses, etc., swallow up a great part of it.
But, worse than all, the kindly charities of the poor towards the poor are quite
frozen up. Formerly paupers were assisted with a little milk, potatoes, and fish :
now the industrious poor, irritated by the poor-law tax, will contribute nothing
towards the support of their poorer neighbors. The cry is, Go to the Poor's
228 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
of the case that the prison is called a workhouse. If the
poor, simply in their character as poor, had any such right
to a portion of the property of their more fortunate coun-
tryfolks as that which their more fortunate countryfolks
themselves have to the remainder, no legislator, Scotch or
English, would dare clog that right with so degrading a
condition. The laboring man has a right to be paid for
his labor. Where is the despot who would venture to
affirm, that, in order to make that right good, the laboring
man would require to go into prison ? His right was made
good when he completed the stipulated work ; and it is
the lack of all such solid right on the part of the pauper,
in his character as a pauper, that enables British legisla-
tors to attach conditions to the fulfilment of his ill-based
claims, which even Turkish or Persian despots would not
dare to attach to the claims of the creditor who de-
manded some debt legally due to him. The conditions by
which the legal right described by Paley may be clogged
at pleasure, demonstrate that it is not a reality, but a fic-
tion. The deserving poor have, indeed, a claim upon their
wealthier brethren ; but it is a claim which human laws
cannot enforce without entirely altering its character; it is
a claim which bears reference to the divine law alone, and
to man's responsibility to his Maker.
Let us analyze this matter : we deem it one of consider-
able importance. It seems to be mainly from this want
Board. Even the sympathies of children towards their parents are dried np.
This is universally spoken of as a new and shocking phase of things. It is not
uncommon for young people to get married on the very day their parents go to the
poor-house. In towns the state of matters is, if possible, worse. The assistance
rendered by the Poor's Board becomes an absolute premium on vice. No hand
is stretched out towards the struggling poor, because character is made of no
account; but vice and improvidence urge their claims unblushingly, and they
dare not be disregarded. This is very disheartening to well-disposed individual
of the better classes who take an interest in the condition of the poor: the more
so that the poor themselves are so well aware of it. " Ah! we will get no help,"
say those who strive to maintain a little outward decency; " but let us first get
drunk, and then sell everything that is left to us, and then we shall be sure of
it! " It is easier to create evils by unwise legislation than to cure tbem Nev-
ertheless, some checks upon such an unwholesome state of things ought to be
devised.
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 229
of a solid claim ou the one side, and this consequent right
of enforcing disagreeable conditions on the other, that
compulsory assessments have so invariably the effect of
setting at variance the classes on whom they are levied,
with the class for whose support they are made.
We resided and labored in this part of the country for
i summer and autumn about eighteen years ago, at a time
when wages were high and employment abundant. There
was much dissipation among the working classes of the
period ; and one of our brother workmen, Jock Laidlie,
was an extreme specimen of the more dissipated class.
Pay day came round once a fortnight, and then we were
sure to lose sight of Jock for about three days. When he
came back to resume his labor, he had always a miserable,
parboiled sort of look, as if he had been simmering for
half an hour in a caldron over a slow fire. He was inva-
riably, too, in that wretched state of spirits which in those
days workmen used to term " the horrors; " and as men
can't get parboiled and into " the horrors " for nothing,
it was found in every instance that Jock's whole wages
had been dissipated in the process. And such, fortnight
after fortnight, was the course pursued by Jock. Now,
employment, though easily enough jn-ocured in summer
and autumn in Jock's profession, was always uncertain in
winter, even when the winter proved fine and open ; and
when frosts wei - e keen and prolonged, and the snow lay
long on the ground, there was no employment for even the
more fortunate. It was essentially necessary, therefore, in
the busier seasons, to make provisions for the season in
which business failed. For our own part, we were desirous,
we remember, to have the winter all to ourselves ; and
when Hallow-day came round, and employment failed, we
found ourselves in the possession of twelve pounds, which
we had laid by just as its price, if we may so speak.
Twelve pounds released us from the necessity of laboring
for twice twelve weeks. Twelve pounds were sufficient
to purchase for us leisure and independence two very
20
230 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
excellent things from the end of October to the begin-
ning of May ; and we were desirous to employ the time
thus fairly earned in cultivating a little inheritance which,
in lesser or larger measure, descends to all, and of which
no law of appropriation can rob even working-men, but
which, unless resolutely broken in, and sedulously im-
proved, must lie fallow and unproductive, of no benefit
to the possessor, and useless to the community. Jock
Laidlie had not laid by a single farthing ; we, on a very
small scale, were a capitalist determined on making an in-
vestment. Jock was a pauper; and here, in a state of
great simplicity, in comes the question at issue, Had
Jock Laidlie any right to our twelve pounds ?
To not one copper farthing of it, say we. It was all
our own, all honestly earned by the sweat of our brow.
We had never claimed any right to share with Jock in a
single gill ; we had never tasted his whiskey ; we had never
enjoyed one whiff of his tobacco ; we had never meddled
with his earnings ; he had no right to intermeddle with
ours. But Jock Laidlie had an aged mother, who, without
any fault on her part, was miserably poor, just because
Jock had failed in his duty to her. Had Jock Laidlie's
mother any right to our twelve pounds? No no right.
It might doubtless be a duty to help the poor suffering
woman ; but her claim ujson us was merely a claim on our
compassion. She had no right / nor had any third party
a right to thrust his hand into our pocket, and, out of our
hard-earned twelve pounds, to assist Jock Laidlie's mother.
But if this was the true state of things with regard to
the earnings of a single summer and autumn, accumulated
with an eye to the coming winter, could there be any new
element introduced simply by multiplying the summers
and autumns some thirty or forty times, and by making
their accumulated earnings bear reference, not to the win-
ter of the year, but to the winter of life ? Assuredly not,
say we. The principle would remain intact and unchanged,
however largely the seasons or the earnings might be mul-
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 231
tiplied. But suppose, further, that these earnings of forty
years were to be invested in a house of a piece of land,
would not Jock Laidlie or his mother have some right to
share in them then ? Would not their conversion into earth
and stone, or into stone and lime, derive a right to Jock or
Jock's mother? Paley has a very elaborate argument on
the subject, from which he seems to arrive at the conclusion
that it would. "All things," says this writer, "were orig-
inally common. No one being able to produce a charter
from heaven, had any better title to a particular possession
than his next neighbor. There were reasons for mankind
agreeing upon a separation of this common fund ; and God,
for these reasons, is presumed to have ratified it ; and as
no fixed laws for the regulation of property can be so con-
trived as to provide for the relief of every case and distress
which may arise, these cases and distresses, when their
right and share in the common stock were given up or
taken from them, were supposed to be left to the bounty
of those who might be acquainted with the exigencies of
their situation, and in the way of affording assistance.
And therefore, when the partition of property is rigidly
maintained against the claims of indigence and distress, it
is maintained in opposition to the intention of those who
made it, and to His who is the supreme proprietor of
everything, and who has filled the world with plenteous-
ness for the sustenance and comfort of all whom He sen<|p
into it." Does not Jock Laidlie or his mother acquire a
claim to intromit with earnings transmuted into land, in
virtue of all this fine philosophy, and this original compact
on which it professes to be founded ? No, not the shadow
of a claim. We insist, in the first instance, upon Jock
Laidlie's producing proof of this compact. We never
heard of it before. Paley tells us that " when the partition
of property is rigidly maintained against the claims of in-
digence, it is maintained in opposition to the intention of
those who made it." It is imperative, say we, that Paley
prove that intention. To what records does he refer ?
232 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
To what histories? "Wherever man exists one degree
above the savage state, there land is appropriated. It is
appropriated in China in the far east, and in America in
the far west ; it is appropriated on towards the Antarctic in
New South Wales, and far to the north, on the coasts of
Iceland and the White Sea. In some of these conntries
the appropriation took place no later than yesterday ; in
some of the others it took place full thirty centuries ago.
But from which of them, we marvel, could Paley or Jock
Laidlie prove the existence of the compact ? Do the set-
tlers in the backwoods take axe in hand, to impart value
to their newly appropriated acres by a long course of severe
labor, with the intention affirmed by the philosopher? Do
they recognize a right in the Jock Laidlies of the country
to intromit with their buckwheat or their Indian corn
now? Or do they yield to future Jock Laidlies a prospect-
ive right to intromit with the buckwheat or Indian corn
of their descendants, when all the country shall have been
appropriated and cleared ? Most assuredly not. Or are
the evidences of any such intention on the part of our an-
cestors embodied in the older records of those pieces of
laud in our own country which we occasionally see in the
market at an upset price of from thirty to forty years' pur-
chase ? No, There can be but one answer to questions
such as these. Paley's compact is altogether a fiction ; and
acitizen of York or of Bagdad might as well lay claim to
some island of the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, on the
ground that his townsman Robinson Crusoe or his towns-
man Sinbad the Sailor had once taken possession of it in
behalf of the people of York or of Bagdad, as the poor
lay claim to free support on the ground that such was the
intention of the first appropriators of the soil. The first
appropriators of the soil had no such intention.
The poor have indeed claims on the compassion of men ;
and these claims, when their poverty is the result of mis-
fortune, are very strong. God speaks in their behalf in his
word. He speaks in their behalf in the human heart,
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 2?''
which His finger has made. When He gave laws to IT'
chosen people of old, He forbade them to reap the corners
of their fields, or to gather again the loose ears which fell
from the hands of their reapers, that the fatherless and the
stranger might pluck and eat, and that the poor gleaner
might not ply in vain her tedious labors. But He gave to
the poor no right in the property of his neighbor which
the poor could assert before the civil magistrate. No third
party was permitted to step in and determine what amount
of assistance the pauper was entitled to receive or the rich
necessitated to give. To himself alone did God reserve
the right of being legislator and judge in the case; and
under his wise management a genial charity, that softened
and improved the heai't, and clarified the whole atmosphere
of society, did not* degenerate into an odious tax, redolent
of bitter discontent and ill-will ; the bowels of compassion
were not sealed up among those whom he had blessed
with substance ; nor did the children of poverty degener-
ate into mean and ungrateful paupers. In mercy to the
poor, He gave them no such rights as those contended for
by Paley.
Now, it is this felt want of right to support on the part
of the poor that communicates, as we have said, to those
who are compelled to support them, a right of enforcing
disagreeable conditions. No man has a right in this coun-
try to put another man in prison simply because he is
poverty-stricken and grows old. But any man has a right
to say to any other man who is destitute of support, and
yet has no legitimate claim to be supported, Go into prison,
and I will support you there. From the invariable ten-
dency of a poor-law not only to perpetuate itself, but also
to increase mightily in weight, by adding to the improv-
idence and destitution of every country in which it is
established, checks are found necessary : from its tendency
to harden men's hearts, these checks are almost always of
a barbarous character ; and hence the workhouse check.
The law, as it stands in England at present, empowers, one
20*
234 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
man to take another man, guilty, it may be, of no other
crime save poverty, from the wife with whom he has pei--
chance lived in happiness for many years, and the circle of
mayhap an attached family, and to shut him up in a prison
under the rule of a despotic jailer, and among the very
refuse of mankind. And what does it give the poor man
in return, as the price of his liberty, and all that he enjoyed
from the sympathy and society of a circle in the round of
which his attachments lie? It gives him Paley's right of
the poor food, shelter, and clothing; for the two rights
the right of putting in prison and the right of being
supported there have come to be balanced against each
other. It gives him miserable rations of the coarsest food,
scanty in quantity, mayhap unwholesome in quality ; and
the share of a truck-bed, with, it may be, some poor dis-
eased wretch, as loathsome in mind as in person, for his
bedfellow. Such is the character of the English check.
Nor can we doubt that in Scotland, naturally a much
poorer country, a country, too, in the possession of at
least as hard-hearted an aristocracy as that of the sister
kingdom, and in which, if once thoroughly contaminated
by the influence of a poor-law, pauperism must increase
enormously, some check at least equally severe will come
to be devised. The atmosphere of the English poor-houses
is taintinsr all England with unwholesome disaffection and
discontent; it is making bitter every where the heart of the
poor man against the middle classes and the aristocracy ;
and, truly, no wonder. The poor-law bastilles at the last
election furnished the grand topics of Chartist vituperation
in England against the Whigs ; and we are of opinion that
the man requires to be a sanguine speculator indeed who
ventures to surmise that their introduction into Scotland
will have the effect of " sweetening the breath of society "
there. The effect will be directly the reverse. The en-
actment of a Scottish poor-law must of necessity widen
that gulf, so perilously broad already, which separates the
upper from the lower classes.
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 235
There is one misguided and very numerous class on
whom it must be brought peculiarly to bear, and whom we
deeply pity. We are, we trust, friendly to Chartists,
though determinedly hostile to Chartism. The principle
is ruining thousands and tens of thousands of our working-
men. It is an ignis fatuus, leading them astray in quest
of an imaginary and unrealizable good, when, in many cases
at least, some real good lies full within their reach, but of
the very existence of which, blinded by the Chartist hallu-
cination, they have no perception. Scotland was always a
poor country, narrow in its resources, and at times griev-
ously oppressed. It never yet succeeded in employing all
its people. But in times when religion was prized, and
education not neglected, the effects of the pressure were
rather favorable than otherwise. It thrust out on every
side an intelligent, energetic, trustworthy people, who made
room for themselves everywhere. Continental Europe
knew them in all its cities, England, Ireland, the colonies,
the whole world. Ere taking leave of their country, they
stood on the elevation of the parish school and the parish
church ; <ind, discerning advantage at a great distance over
the face of the globe, they bent their steps direct upon it.
And in virtue of the same process, those who remained
behind were fitted for improving to the utmost the resour-
ces within their reach at home. There are thousands of
Scotchmen in the present day, men with the same blood
in their veins, who are wasting their energies on the five
points of the Charter, engaged in dreaming a disturbed
and unhappy dream about unrealizable political privileges,
which, even if attainable, would be useless ; and precipitat-
ing themselves, meanwhile, on the poor-house. Let the
reader just try to imagine a poor-law bastille existing under
the more stringent and repulsive checks of the system, and
filled with superannuated Chartists. Of all writers, Crabbe
alcne was fitted to do justice to the miseries of such a
prison so filled. It would be truly "a hell upon earth."
The transition from a state in which aspirations after uni-
236 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
versal suffrage are deemed of but a lower and comparatively
commonplace kind, and in which all existing institutions
are denounced as far beneath the ideal of true liberty or
the standard of free-born men, to a state compared with
which the despotism of Turkey or Morocco would be liberal,
and the degradation of ordinary slavery not at all subver-
sive of the dignity of man's nature, could be compared to
only those transitions described by Milton :
" When all the damned
Are brought to feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice."
But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a poor-
law has become inevitable in Scotland. Though unable
to recognize that right on the part of the poor for which
Paley contends, there exists a right to legislate in
their behalf on the part of the state which we cannot
avoid recognizing. The state has as decidedly a right to
impose a tax in order that a portion of its subjects may
not be destroyed by starvation, as it has a right to impose
a tax in order that a portion of its subjects may not be
destroyed by an invading enemy ; and there are cases
in which the enactment of a poor-law may be imper-
atively a duty. In such a state of things as that drawn by
Goldsmith in his allegory of Asem the Man-hater, for in-
stance, where, in a country whose inhabitants were devoid
of all pity, the diseased and the aged were suffered to per-
ish by the wayside, a poor-law would have been the state's
only alternative. It would have been as much its duty
to interpose a tax between its perishing people and de-
struction in a case of this kind, as it would be its duty to
levy a tax for carrying on a war of defence against a merci-
less enemy, who was ravaging its territories with fire and
sword. There is another principle on which a state may
well interfere. During the great plague of Marseilles, the
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 237
living, sunk in the indifference of despair, would no longer
bury their dead, and fifteen hundred bodies lay rotting in
the sun outside the city gate, adding, by their poisonous
effluvium, at once to the horrors and the intensity of the
contagion. The magistracy interfered, and compelled their
interment ; and who can doubt that the magistracy did
right in the case? Now it seems unquestionable that,
among our neglected poor, diseases originate which, like
the effluvium of the dead at Marseilles, spread infection
and death through all classes of the community ; and the
circumstance derives to the state both a right and a duty
in behalf of all its people to remove, through a provision
for the poor, the distress and squalor in which the evil
originates. Now, in the present state of Scotland we rec-
ognize an urgent necessity, on both these principles, for
state interference in behalf of the poor. They are perish-
ing for lack of bread ; they are spreading deadly contagion
through our lanes and alleys ; the system of compulsory
support is a coarse, inadequate system ; it will have by
and by to be connected with some repulsive check, in
order that the capital and industry of the country may not
be swallowed up by its lean and blighted poverty. But,
however coarse, however inadequate, however productive
it may prove of fierce discontent or miserable degradation,
it is the only system in the field at present. A poor-law,
we repeat, has become inevitable in Scotland. The con-
troversy between contending systems exists among us no
longer. Dr. Alison still occupies his ground;* Dr. Chal-
mers has withdrawn.
Truly, it is enough to make one's heart swell to think
how the gigantic exertions of this great and good man in
behalf of his country have been met in this cause. Were
we to say that the poor of Scotland are on the eve of per-
ishing in utter degradation, from a lack of faith in the effi-
cacy of the gospel of Christ on the part of our influential
classes, the remark would no doubt be deemed over ex-
treme and severe ; and it would be a remark open, doubt-
238 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
less, to objection, not, however, from its severity, but
from its tame and inexpressive inadequacy. It is the con-
demnation of the class most influential in directing the
destinies of our country, not that, in the indifferency of
unbelief, they have stood aloof and done nothing, but that
they have risen in maniac hostility, and overpowered those
who were straining all their energies in their behalf. Not
since the days of Knox did any venerable father of the
Church of Scotland so exert himself in bringing Christian-
ity to the people by the erection of congregations and the
planting of churches, as Dr. Chalmers has done. Never
has merchant so travailed to till his coffers, or statesman
so labored to consolidate his power, as this man has trav-
ailed aud labored, in season and out of season, to bring the
blessings of the gospel to the poor, the degraded, and the
forgotten. In ten years the Church of Scotland saw two
hundred places of worship added to her communion. And
how have these his weapons forged to bear down the
crime and ignorance, and, with these, the poverty of the
country been dealt with? Let our law-courts tell, in
the first instance ; let our aristocrats who stand by applaud-
ing their decisions, declare in the second. Who was it
that, when the state and the aristocracy of the country
refused to endow his churches, and when the industrious
and religious poor came forward for the purpose with their
coppers, widows with their mites, and toil-worn laborers
and mechanics with pittances subtracted from their scanty
wages, who was it that made j:>rize of their humble offer-
ings, and confiscated them, on behalf of the pauperism of
the country, forsooth ? There was an irony in the pretext
which those who employed it could not have fully under-
stood at the time, but which they will come to appreciate
by and by. And who, through the Stewarton and Auch-
terarder decisions, have fully completed what the Brechin
decision began? Truly, the parties who had most at
stake in the exertions of the champion who took the field
in their behalf have been wonderfully successful in disarm*
THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 239
ing and forcing him aside ; and all that is necessary for
them now is, just to be equally successful in grappling with
the o'ermastering and enormous evils which he set himself
so determinedly to oppose. We trust, however, that they
will no longer attempt deceiving the country, by speaking
of a moral force as a thing still in the field, in opposition
to the merely pecuniary force recommended by Dr. Alison.
The moral force is in the field no longer ; Dr. Alison
stands alone.
For the present, however, we must conclude. Very im-
portant questions of morals are on the eve of becoming
questions of arithmetic in Scotland; and the wealth of the
country, though it may find the exercise a reducing one,
will be quite able to sum them up in their new character.
Let us just touch one two of them by way of specimen.
We have adverted oftener than once to the evils of the
bothy system. They are going to take the form of a
weighty assessment ; and our proprietary may be induced
to inquire into them in consequence. There is another
great evil to which we have not referred so directly. All
our readers must have heard of vast improvements which
have taken place during the present century in the northern
Highlands. The old small farm, semi-pastoral, semi-agri-
cultural system was broken up, the large sheep-farm system
introduced in its place, and the inland population of the
country shaken down, not without violence, to the skirts
of the land, there to commence a new mode of life as la-
borers and fishermen. And all this was called improve-
ment. It was called great improvement not many years
since, in most respectable English, in the pages of the
" Quarterly Review." And we heard a voice raised in re-
ply. It was the scrannel voice of meagre famine from the
shores of the northern Highlands, prolonged into a yell of
suffering and despair. But, write as you may, apologists
of the system, you have ruined the country, and the fact is
on the eve of being stated in figures. The poor-law assess-
ment will find you out.
240 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
X.
PAUPERISM.
The utterly miserable are always unsafe neighbors. In
former days, when a barbarous jurisprudence, with its savage
disregard of human life, extended to our prisons, and every
place of confinement in the kingdom was a stagnant den
of filth and wretchedness, the contagious disease originated
in these receptacles of horror and suffering, and which
from this circumstance bore the name of the j'ail-distemper,
frequently burst out on the inhabitants of the surrounding
town or village, and carried them off by hundreds at a time.
It is recoraeu, *Lat, after a criminal court had been held on
one occasion, in the reign of James VI., at which the cele-
brated Lord Bacon took some official part, a malignant
fever bx-oke out among the persons who had attended,
which terminated fatally in the case of several of the jury
and of some of the gentlemen of the bar, and that the
philosophic Chancellor expressed his conviction that the
contagion had been carried into the court-room by a posse
of wretched felons from the tainted atmosphere of their
dungeon. Self-preservation in these cases enforced the
dictates of humanity : the same all-powerful principle
enforces them still. It is more than probable that the
misery of the neglected classes occasionally breaks out
upon that portion of our population which occupies the
upper walks in society, in the form of contagious disease,
in the form of typhus fever, for instance : there can be
no doubt whatever that it often breaks out upon them in
the form of crime.
But where is the true remedy to be found ? It was com-
paratively an easy matter to ventilate our prisons, and to
PAUPERISM. 241
introduce into them the various improvements recom-
mended alike by the dictates of humanity and prudence.
But how are the suffering masses to be ventilated, and
their condition permanently improved ? It does not do to
grope in the dark in such matters. It is well, surely to
meet with the evil in its effects when it has become utter
misery and destitution, and to employ every possible means
for relieving its victims. It is infinitely better, however,
to meet with it in its causes, to meet with it in the
forming, and to check it there. It was not by baling back
the waters of the river that Cyrus laid bare the bed of the
Euphrates; it was by cutting off the supply. Where are
the sources of this fearfully accumulated and still accu-
mulating misery to be found ? At what particular point,
or in what particular manner, should the enlightened ben-
efactor of the suffering classes interfere to cut off the sup-
ply ? The reader anticipates a truism, one of those
important and unquestioned truths which, according to
Goethe, seem divested of their proper effect, as important
just from the circumstance of their being unquestioned, and
which, gliding inefficiently along the stream of universal
assentation, are allowed to weigh less with the public mind
than the short-lived and unfruitful paradoxes of the pass-
ing time. Instead, however, of laying down a principle,
we shall simply state a few facts of a kind which many of
our humbler readers the " men of handicraft and hard
labor " will be able fully to verify from their own expe-
rience, and that embody the principle which seems to bear
most directly on the subject.
We passed part of two years in the neighborhood of
Edinburgh immediately before the great crisis of 1825, and
knew perhaps more about the working classes of the place
than can well be known by men who do not live on their
own level. The speculations of the time had given an
impulse to the trading world. Employment was abundant,
and wages high ; and we had a full opportunity of seeing
in what degree the mere commercial and trading prosper-
21
242 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
ity of a country the mere money-welfare which men
such as Joseph Hume can appreciate is truly beneficial
to the laboring portion of the community. We shall pick
out, by way of specimen, the case of a single party of
about twenty workmen, engaged at from twenty-four to
twenty-seven shillings per week, most of them young, un-
married men, in the vigor of early manhood. Remember
we are drawing no fancy sketch. Fully two thirds of that
number were irreligious, and in a greater or less degree
dissipated. They were paid by their employer regularly
once a fortnight, on the evening of Saturday ; and imme-
diately as they had pocketed their wages, a certain num-
ber of them disappeared. On the morning of the following
Wednesday, but rarely sooner, they returned again to their
labors, worn out and haggard with the excesses of three
days grossly spent, and without a single shilling of the
money which they had earned during the previous fort-
night. And such was the regular round with these unfor
tunate men, until the crisis arrived, and they were thrown
out of employment in a state of as utter poverty as if they
had never been employed at all.
There was a poor laborer attached, with a few others, to
the party we describe, whose wages amounted to about
half the hire of oue of the mechanics. His earnings at
most did not exceed fourteen shillings per week. This
laborer supported his aged mother. On Sundays he was
invariably dressed in a neat, clean suit ; he occasionally in-
dulged, too, in the purchase of a good book; and we have
sometimes seen him slip, unnoticed as he thought, a few
coppers into the hands of a poor beggar. And yet this
man saved a little money. We lived nine months under
the same roof with him ; and as we were honored with
his confidence and his friendship, we had opportunities of
seeing the character in its undress. Never have we met
with a man more thoroughly a Christian, or a man who
felt more continually that he was living in the presence of
Deity. Now, in the ordinary course of events, and debar-
PAUPERISM. 243
ring the agency of accident, it is well-nigh as impossible
that men such as this laborer can sink into pauperism, as
*jhat men of the opposite stamp can avoid sinking into it.
The dissipated mechanics, with youth and strength on
their side, and with their earnings of twenty-four and
twenty-seven shillings per week, were yet paupers in em-
bryo. It is according to the inevitable constitution of
society, too, that vigorous working-men should have rela-
tives dependent upon them for sustenance, aged parents
or unmarried sisters, or, when they have entered into the
marriage relation, wives and families. And hence the
mighty accumulation of pauperism when the natural prop
fails in yielding its proper support.
We have another fact to state regarding our old acquaint-
ances, which is not without its importance, and in which,
we are convinced, the experience of all our humbler readers
will bear us out. Some of the most skilful mechanics of
the party, and some, too, of the most intelligent, were
among the most dissipated. One of the number, a power-
ful-minded man, full of information, was a great reader ;
there was another, possessed of an intellect more than
commonly acute, who had a turn for composition. The
first, when thrown out of employment, and on the extreme
verge of starvation, enlisted into a regiment destined for
some of the colonies, whence he never returned ; the other
broke down in constitution, and died, before his fortieth
year, of old age. What is the proper inference here ?
Mere intellectual education is not enough to enable men
to live well, either in the upper or lower walks of society,
and especially in the latter. The moral nature must also
be educated. Was Robert Burns an ignorant or unintelli-
gent man ? or yet Robert Ferguson ?
Facts such as these and their amount is altogether
incalculable indicate the point at which the sources of
pauperism can alone be cut off. The disease must be antici-
pated ; for when it has passed to its last stage, and actually
become pauperism, there is no remedy. Every effort which
244 POLITICAL AKL SOCIAL.'
an active but blind humanity can suggest in such, desperate
circumstances is but a baling back of the river when Jhe
floods are rising. If there be a course of moral and reli-
gious culture to which God himself sets his seal, and
through which even the dissipated can be reclaimed, and
the uncontaminated preserved from contamination, a
course through which, by the promised influences of a
divine agent, characters such as that of our friend the poor
laborer can be formed, that course of moral and religious
culture is the only remedy. The pauperism of Scotland,
in its present deplorable extent, is comparatively new to
the country ; and certain it is, that in the last age the
spirit of anti-pauperism and of anti-patronage were insep-
arable among the Presbyterian people. There is a close
connection between the non-intrusion principle and the
formation of characters such as that of our friend the la-
borer. What were the religious sentiments of the class,
happily not yet forgotten in our country, who bore up in
their honest and independent poverty, relying for support
on the promise of their Heavenly Father, but who asked
not the help of man, and who, in so many instances, would
not receive it even when it was extended to them ? To
what party in the church did the poor widows belong
who refused the proffered aid of the parish, if they had
children, lest it should be " cast up " to them in after-life,
if they had none, " because they had come of honest
people ? " Much of what was excellent in the Scottish
character in the highest degree arose directly out of the
Scottish Church in its evangelical integrity ; much, too, of
what was excellent in the main, though perhaps somewhat
dashed with eccentricity, arose out of what we may term
the church's reflex influences.
PAUPER LABOR. 24-S
XI.
PAUPER LABOR.
We hold that the only righteous and practical check on
vv\ult pauperism, the only check at once just and efficient,
% the compulsory imposition of labor on every pauper to
whom God has given, in even the slightest degree, the
laboring ability. One grand cause of the inefficiency of
workhouses arises mainly from the circumstance that their
names do not indicate their character. The term work-
house has become a misnomer, seeing that it designates
buildings in which, for any one useful purpose, no work is
done. We say for any useful purpose; for in some cases
there is work done in them which is of a most mischievous,
pauper-producing kind. They enter, in the character of
competitors, into that field of unskilled, or at least very
partially skilled labor, which is chiefly occupied by the
self-sustaining c/asses that stand most directly on the verge
of pauperism; and their hapless rivals, backed by no such
bounty as that upon which they trade, sink in the ill-
omened contest, and take refuge within their walls, to
assist in carrying on teat war against honest industry in
which they themselves nave gone down. Folly of this
extreme character in the management of the pauperism of
the country admits of no apology, from the circumstance
that it is as palpable as it is mischievous. The legitimate
employment of the inmates of a workhouse we find unmis-
takably indicated by the nature of their wants. What is
it that constitutes their pauperism ? Nature has given
them certain wants, which, from some defect either in
character or person, they themselves fail to supply; they
lack food and they lack raiment; and these two wants
21*
246 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
comprise the wants of a poorhouse. Then let the direct
supply of these wants be the work of a poorhouse, its
direct, not its circuitous work, not its work in the com-
petition market, to the inevitable creation of more paupers,
but its work in immediate connection with the soil, out
of which all food and all raiment are produced, and with
the wants of its own inmates. The organization of labor
in society at large we regard as an inexecutable vision. In
even the most despotic nations of Europe that compulsory
power is wanting which must constitute man being what
he is the moving force of organized labor; but within
the precincts of a workhouse the compulsory power does
exist ; and there, in consequence, the organization of labor
is no inexecutable vision, but a sober possibility. It would
impart to our workhouses their proper character, by not only
furnishing them with an efficient labor check, and convert-
ing them into institutions of discipline, in which the useless
member of society, that could but would not work, would
be compelled to exert himself in his own behalf; but it
would also convert them into institutions in which a nu-
merous pauper class, of rather better character, too in-
efficient, either from lack of energy or of skill, to provide
for themselves, amid that pressure and bustle of competition
which obtains in society at large, might, by being shielded
from competition, and brought into immediate contact with
the staple of their wants, become self-supporting. All that
would be necessary in any poorhouse would be simply
this, that its class of raiment-producers should produce
clothes enough for both themselves and its sustenance-
producers; and that its sustenance-producers should, in
turn, produce food enough for both themselves and its
raiment-producers. And, brought fairly into contact with
the soil and its productions in the raw state, with their
wants reduced to the simple natural level, the profits of
the trader superseded, the pressure of taxation removed,
the enormous expenses of the dram-shop cut off by that
law of compulsory temperance which the lack of a com-
TAUPER LABOR. 247
mand of money imposes, we have little fear but that
many of those institutions would become self-supporting,
or at least very nearly so. The country would still have
to bear some of the expense of what has been well termed
its heaven-ordained poor, the halt, the maimed, and the
fatuous ; but be it remembered that these always bear a
definite proportion to the population ; and that the present
alarming increase in the country's pauperism is not a con-
sequence of any disproportionate increase in that modicum
of its amount which the heaven-ordained poor composes.
So much for the country's adult pauperism. With regard
to its juvenile pauperism, the labor scheme is more impor-
tant still. The country has many poor children living at
its expense in workhouses, or boarded in humble cottages
in the country ; and there are many more that either want
parents, or worse than want them, that are prowling about
its larger towns, and scraping up a miserable livelihood by
begging or theft. Unless in the season of youth ere the
mind becomes rigid under the influence of habit, and takes
the set which it is to bear through life these juvenile
paupers and vagabonds be converted into self-sustaining,
honest members of society, they will inevitably become
the adult paupers or criminals of the future, and the country
will have to support them either in poorhouses or penal
settlements, or, worse still, to pay executioners for hanging
them. Of all non-theological things, labor is the most
sacred ; of all non-ethical things, labor is the most moral.
The working habit the mere homely ability of laboring
fairly and honestly for one's bread is of more value to a
country, when dilfused among its people, than all the other
gifts be they hills of gold or rocks of diamonds that
can possibly fall to its share. And if its people, or any
very considerable part of them, possess not that habit and
ability, it matters not what else it may possess : there is
an element of weakness in its constitution for which no
amount of even right principle among them will ever form
an adequate compensation. There is, we believe, no part
iM8 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
of her Majesty's dominions in which there is more right
principle than in the Highlands of Scotland ; hut, from
causes which it might be a mournful, but certainly no un-
instructive task to trace, their people possess the working
habit and ability in a comparatively small degree ; and so
they can do exceedingly little for the propagation of the
principles which they hold, and, when disease touches the
root of the potato, they find themselves in circumstances
in which, save for the charity of their neighbors, they would
perish. Principle, even when held truly and in sincerity,
as among many of our poor Highlanders, is not enough of
itself; and the mere teaching of principle in early life, in
lessons which may or may not be received efficiently and
in truth, must of itself be still less sufficient. Even if the
best churches in the country had the country's vagabond
and pauper children subject to their instruction, sup-
posing the thing possible, though, of course, if the churches
did not feed them, it is not ; and supposing, further, that
they turned them out on society, the course completed,
destitute of industrial habits or skill, what would be the
infallible result ? The few converted to God by a vital
change of heart, and in all ages of the church the num-
bers of such have been proportionably few, would no
doubt either struggle on blamelessly through life, or, sink-
ing in the hard contest, would resign life rather than
sustain it by the fruits of a course of crime ; but the great
bulk of the others would live as paupers or criminals: they
would be simply better instructed vagabonds than if they
had been worse taught. The welfare of a country has two
foundations. Right principle is the one; and the other,
and scarce less important foundation, is industrial habit
combined with useful skill. And in order to obviate the
great danger of permitting juvenile paupers to grow up
into adult paupers and criminals, it is essentially necessary
that the skill should be communicated to them, and the
habits formed in them. And hence the impoi'tance of the
scheme that, by finding regular employment for the youth-
PAUPER LABOR. 249
ful paupers of the country, would rear them up in honest,
industrial habits, and thus qualify them for being useful
members of society.
It has been alleged against Presbyterianism by excellent
men of the English Church, among the rest by Thomas
Scott the commentator, that in its history in the past it
has been by much too political, and has busied itself too en-
grossingly with national affairs. There can be little doubt
that its history during the seventeenth and the latter half
of the sixteenth century is very much that of Scotland.
Presbyterianism was political in those days, and fought
the battles of civil as certainly as those of religious liberty.
During a considerable part of the eighteenth century it
was not political. From the suppression of the Rebellion
of 1745 to the breaking out of the great revolutionary
war, the life led by the Scottish people was an exceedingly
quiet one, and there were no exigencies in their circum-
stances important enough to make large demands on the
exertions of the patriot or the ingenuity of the political
economist. The people of the empire rather fell short
than exceeded its resources, and were somewhat less than
sufficient to carry on its operations of agriculture and
trade ; and hence the comfortable doctrine of Goldsmith
and Smollett regarding population, a comfortable doc-
trine, for it never can obtain save when a nation is in
comfortable circumstances. The best proof of the welfare
of a country, they said, was the greatness of its population.
It was unnecessary in such an age that Presbyterianism
should be political. The pauperism which had deluged
Scotland immediately after the Revolution had been all
absorbed ; the people, in at least the Lowlands, were a
people of good working habits; and in the Highlands little
work served ; and all that had to be done by such of the
ministers of religion in the country as were worthy of the
name was to exert themselves in adding right principle
and belief in relation to the realities of the unseen world,
to the right habits in relation to the present one that had
250 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
already been formed among the people of their charges.
But with the revolutionary war and the present century
the state of matters greatly altered. Pauperism began
mightily to increase ; the recesses of our large towns, that
some forty or fifty years before used to pour out to the
churches, at the sound of the Sabbath bells, a moral and
religious population, became the foul dens in which a worse
than heathen canaille festered in poverty and ignorance ;
habits of intemperance had increased twenty-fold among
the masses ; the young were growing up by thousands in
habits of idleness and crime to contaminate the future ;
even the better people, placed with their children in peril-
ous juxtaposition with the thoroughly vitiated, were in the
circumstances of men in health located per force in the
fever-ward of a hospital. The Scottish Highlanders, too,
ruined by the clearing system, had come to be in circum-
stances greatly different from those of their fathers ; and
it had grown once more necessai-y that the Presbyterian
minister should, like his predecessors of the sixteenth cen-
tury, interest himself in a class of secular questions that
are shown by experience to be as clearly allied to spiritual
ones as the body is to the soul. The one great name
specially connected with this altered state of things, and
the course of action which it demands, is that of Chalmers,
Chalmers, the true type and exemplar of the Presbyte-
rian minister as specially suited to the exigencies of the
time. But there are other names. The late Dr. Duncan
with his savings banks, Guthrie with his ragged schools,
Begg and Mackenzie with their dwellings for the working
classes, Tasker in his West Port laboring in the footsteps
of his friend the great deceased, must be regarded as true
successors of those Presbyterian ministers of the seven-
teenth century who identified themselves with their people
in all their interests, and were as certainly good patriots as
sound divines. And there are signs in the horizon that
their example is to become general. We have scarce met
a single Highland minister for the last three or four yea-rs,
PAUPER LABOR. 251
y especially those of the northwestern Highlands, who
Jki not ask, however hopeless of an answer, " What is
to be done with our poor people ? " The question indi-
cates an awakening to the inevitable necessity of inquiry
and exertion in other fields than the purely theological one ;
and one of these, in both Lowlands and Highlands, is that
in which Chalmers so long labored. The case of the poor
must be wisely considered, or there will rest no blessing
on the exertions of the churches.
But we must bring our remarks to a close ; and we would
do so by citing an instance, only too lamentably obvious
at the present time, of how very much, in our mixed state
of existence as creatures composed of soul and body, a
purely physical event may affect the religious interests of
a great empire. The potato disease was a thing purely
physical. It seemed to have nothing of the nature of a
missionary society about it ; it dhl not engage missionaries,
nor appoint committees, nor hire committee-rooms, nor
hold meetings ; and it seemed to have as little favor foi
popish priests as for Episcopalian curates or Presbyterian
ministers. And yet, by pressing out the popish population
of Ireland on every side, and surcharging with them the
large towns of England, Scotland, and the United States,
it has done more in some three or four years for the spread
of popery in Britain and America than all the missionary
societies of all the evangelistic churches of the world have
done for the spread of Protestantism during the last half-
century. He must be an obtuse man who fails to see, with
such an example before him, how intimately associated
with the ecclesiastical the secular may be.
252 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
XII
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS.
If there was a special law enacted against all red-haired
men and all men six feet high, red-hah-ed men and men
six feet high would in a short time become exceedingly
dangerous characters. In order to render them greatly
worse than their neighbors, there would be nothing more
necessary than simply to set them beyond the pale of the
constitution, by providing by statute that whoever lodged
informations against red-haired men or men six feet high
should be handsomely rewarded, and that the culprits
themselves should be lodged in prison, and kept at hard
labor, on every conviction, from a fortnight to sixty clays.
The country would at length come to groan under the in-
tolerable burden of its red-haired men and its men six feet
high. There would be frequent paragraphs in our columns
and elsewhere to the effect that some three or four re-
spectable white-haired gentlemen, varying in height from
five feet nothing to five feet five, had been grievously mal-
treated in laudably attempting to apprehend some formi-
dable felon, habit and repute six feet high ; or to the effect
that Constable D. of the third division had been barba-
rously murdered by a red-haired ruffian. Philosophers
would come to discover, that so deeply implanted was the
bias to outrage and wrong in red-haired nature, that it held
by the scoundrels even after their heads had become bald
and their whiskers gray ; and that so inherent was ruffian-
ism to six-feet-highism, that though four six-feet fellows
had, for the sake of example, been cut short at the knees,
they had remained, notwithstanding the mutilation, as in-
corrigible ruffians as ever. From time to time there would
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 253
be some terrible tragedy enacted by some tremendous in-
carnation of illegality and evil, who was both red-haired
and six feet high to boot. Of course, to secure the pro-
tection of the lieges, large additions would be made to the
original statute ; and thus the mischief would go on from
bad to worse, unmitigated by the teachings of the pulpit
or the press, and unrestrained by the terrors of the magis-
tracy, until some bold reformer, rather peculiar in his
notions, would suggest, as a last resource, the repeal of
what ere now would come to be very generally lauded
as the sole safeguards of the public peace and the glory
of the Constitution, the anti-red-hair, an ti -six-feet-high
enactments. And after the agitation of some fifteen or
twenty years after articles innumerable had been writ-
ten on both sides, and speeches without number had been
spoken the enactments would come to be fairly re-
scinded, and the tall and the red-haired, in the lapse of a
generation or two, would improve, in consequence, into
good subjects and quiet neighbors.
Is the conception too wild and extravagant ? Let the
reader pause for a moment ere he condemns. England lit-
tle more than a century ago was infamous for the number
of its murders committed on the highway. Hawksworth's
story, in the "Adventurer," of the highwayman who mur-
dered a beloved son, just restored, after a long absence, to
his country and his friends, before the eyes of his father,
and then threw the old man a shilling, lest, said the ruffian,
he should be stopped at the tolls, was not deemed out of
nature at the time. It was, on the contrary, quite a prob-
able occurrence in the days of Jack Sheppard, Turpin, and
Captain Macheath. About an age earlier, as shown by the
"London Gazette," one of the oldest of English newspa-
pers, there were from six to eight murders perpetrated
yearly by foot-pads on the public roads ; and paragraphs
such as the following, which we extract from this ancient
journal, were comparatively common : "On the 23d of
this month [Mar r .-h, 1682], three highwaymen, two on horse-
22
254 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
back and one on foot, set upon two persons on Hindhead
Heath, in Surrey, one of whom they mortally wounded,
and took from them a black crop gelding near fifteen hands
high ;" or such notices as the following, inserted as a gen-
eral citation of witnesses, by the keeper of the Newgate :
" Whereas many robberies are daily committed on the
highways, to the great prejudice of his Majesty's subjects,
these are to give notice that there has lately been taken
and are now in the custody of Captain Richardson, Mas-
terof his Majesty's jail at Newgate, several supposed high-
way robbers, of whom here followeth the names and de-
scriptions," etc. Such was the state of things in times
when the earlier British novelists, desirous of making the
incidents lie thick in their fictions, gave them the form of
a journey, and sent their heroes travelling over England.
The evil, however, was at length put down, partly through
the marked improvement which took place in the police of
the country, but still more through the great increase of
its provincial newspapers, and the vast acceleration in the
rate of its travelling, circumstances which have united
to render the escape or concealment of the highwayman
impossible. And so highway murder has become one of
almost the rarest offences in the criminal register of the
country. Very different is the case, however, with mur-
ders of another kind. Our newspapers no longer contain
in their English corner paragraphs at all resembling those
we have just quoted, by way of specimen, from the "Lon-
don Gazette," and which so strike in the perusal, as char-
acteristic of an age only half escaped from barbarism ; but
they exhibit, instead, their paragraphs, to the barbarity of
which the accommodating influence of custom can alone rec-
oncile the reader, and which will be held, we trust, in less
than half an age hence, to bear as decidedly the stamp of
savageism. Within the last few years there have been no
fewer than twenty-five gamekeepers murdered in England.
The cases were all ascertained cases ; coroners' juries sat
upon the bodies, and verdicts of wilful murder were re-
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 255
turned against certain parties, known or unknown ; and
these were, of course, but the murders on the one side.
We occasionally hear of the death of a poacher; and all our
readers must remember a late horrible instance, in which
an unfortunate man of this class, captured after a des-
perate resistance, was found to be so dreadfully injured
in the fray that his bowels protruded through his Avounds.
But in by far the greater number of cases the poor
wounded wretch has strength enough left to bear him to
his miserable home, and the parish hears little more of the
matter than that there has been a brief illness and a sudden
death. It is quite bad enough that IJawksworth's story
of the highwayman should be a not improbable one in the
times of the first two Georges ; it is still worse that Oabbe's
story of the rival brothers who killed each other in a mid-
night fray, in which the one engaged in the character of a
poacher the other in that of a gamekeeper, should be as
little improbable in the times of William and Victoria.
Be it remembered, too, that the peculiar barbarism of
the modern period is greatly more a national reproach than
that of the ancient. The older enormities were enormities
in spite of a good law ; the newer enormities are enormi-
ties that arise directly out of a bad one. There is sound
sense as well as good feeling in the remark of Mrs. Saddle-
tree on the law, in Effie Dean's case, as laid down by her
learned husband the saddler. " The crime," remarked the
wiseacre to his better half, "is rather a favorite of the law,
this species of murder being one of its own creating."
" Then, if the law makes murders," replied the matron,
" the law should be hanged for them ; or if they would
hang up a lawyer instead, the country would find nae faut."
All the twenty-five ascertained murders to which we have
referred, and the at least equally great number of concealed
ones, were crimes of the law's making, murders which
as certainly originated in the law, and which, if the law
did not exist, would as certainly not have been, as the
supposed crimes of our illustration under the anti-red-hair,
256 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
anti-six-fcet-high statutes. No murders arise out of the
killing of seals and sea-gulls ; why should there arise any
murders out of the killing of hares and pheasants? Simply
because there is a pabulum of law in the one case, out of
which the transgression springs, and no producing pabu-
lum of law in the other. There can be nothing more peril-
ous to the morals of the people than stringent laws, that,
instead of attaching their penalties to actual crime, and
having, in consequence, like the laws against the house-
breaker and the highwayman, the whole weight of the
popular conscience on their side, create the crime which
they punish, and have thus the moral sense of the country
certainly not for, mayhap against them. They become
invariably, in all such cases, a sort of machinery for con-
verting useful subjects and honest men into rogues and pub-
lic pests. Lacking the moral sanction, their penalties are
neither more nor less than a certain amount of peril, which
bold spirits do not hesitate to encounter, just as a keen
sportsman does not hesitate to encounter the modicum of
risk which he runs from the gun that he carries. It may
burst and kill him ; or in drawing it through a hedge a
sprig may catch the trigger, and lodge its contents in his
body ; or it may hang fire, and send its charge through his
head half a minute after he has withdrawn it from his
shoulder. Accidents of the kind happen in sporting coun-
tries almost every month, for such is the natural law of
accident in the case ; but there is no moral stigma attached,
and so men brave the penalty every day. And such is the
principle, when the law, equally dissociated from the
promptings of the moral sense, is not a law of accident,
but of the statute-book. Men brave the danger of the
penalty, as they do the peril of the fowling-piece. But
there is this ultimate difference : without being in any de-
gree a felon tried by his own conscience, the traverser of
the statutory enactment becomes legally a felon ; he may
be dealt with, like the red-haired or six-feet-high felon of
our illustration, as decidedly criminal. He is fero<**ously
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 257
attacked with lethal weapons as a felon ; and, defending
himself in hot blood with the resembling weapons, without
which his amusements cannot be carried on, he becomes
a murderer ; or he is apprehended, manacled, tried, con-
demned, imprisoned, transported, as a felon, and, in passing
through so degrading a process, becomes at length the ac-
tual criminal which he had been in the eye of the law all
along. Few of our readers can have any adequate concep-
tion of the immense mass of criminalty created yearly in
the empire by this singularly deteriorating process. In the
year 1843 there were in England and Wales alone no fewer
than four thousand five hundred and twenty-nine convic-
tions under the game-laws. Forty of that number were
deemed cases of so serious a nature that the culprits were
transported. In all the other cases they were either fined or
imprisoned, the fines taken in the aggregate averaging
two pounds sterling, the imprisonments seven weeks. And
it is out of this system of formidable penalties that the
numerous murders have arisen, and that the game-laws of
the country have, like those of Draco, come to be written in
blood.
The character of the ordinary Scotch poacher must be
familiar to all our readers. "E'en in our ashes," says the
poet, " live our wonted fires." There are few things more
truly natural to man than a love of field-sports. Voyagers
have remarked of the wild dogs of Juan Fernandez, that
they hunt in packs. It needs, it would seem, no previous
training to make them hunting animals: they are such by
nature ; and, placed in the proper circumstances, the nature
at once develops itself. Now, it would appear as if man
were also a hunting animal : the peculiar occupation which
the first circumstances of society in almost every country
render imperative upon the species, and for which, in an
early age of the world, ere the human family was yet dis-
persed, Nimrod became so famous, is perhaps of all others
the most natural to us. What the passion which leads to
it is in the aristocracy, the game-laws serve of themselves
22*
258 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
sufficiently to testify; and the humbler classes feel the
impulse as strongly. It is truly wonderful how soon men
brought up in a state of civilization accommodate them-
selves, when thrown by circumstances among a barbarous
people, or into a state of seclusion from their fellows, to
the life of the hunter 1 , and learn to love it. And the
inherent feeling is, of course, as little blamable in the
humble as in the wealthy or titled man. We have seen it
greatly indulged in by dwellers along the seashore,
farmers, cottars, mechanics, and almost every more spir-
ited young man in the locality becoming in a lesser or
greater degree a marksman. For a certain period, a young
fellow of fair character has been shooting east, over the
beaeh, towards the sea, and picking down the scart and
the gray goose, the coot and duck, and now and then
sending a bullet through the head of an otter or seal. A
tempting opportunity occurs, however; and, instead of
shooting east, he shoots west, over the beach, towards the
land, and lodges his shot, not in a scart or seal, but in a
woodcock or hare. Formerly he was in danger from his
gun, or in scrambling among the rocks: he is now in dan-
ger of being fined, and, should he frequently repeat the
oiFence, of being imprisoned ; but in his own estimate and
that of his neighbors the one kind of danger is no more
connected with any moral stigma than the other. Had
he fired west, and wilfully shot a sheep or goat, the case
would, of course, be altogether different; but he is merely
an occasional poacher, not a scoundrel. And if the game-
laws be not strictly enforced in the district, he remains, as
at first, a good and useful member of society, in no degree
either the better or the worse for now and then shooting a
coot or wild goose that has no standing in the game-list,
and now and then picking down a partridge or heath hen
that has.
But in those parts of England where game are rigidly
preserved, and the game-laws strictly enforced, the process
Is different. The commencement of the poacher's course
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 259
is nearly the same in both cases. There is the same in-
stinctive love of sport, and the same general conviction
that game is not real property, a conviction which every
view of the subject serves but to strengthen and confirm.
The Englishman sees that if his neighbor the shopkeeper
or banker detects a rascal robbing his till or breaking his
strong box, he never once thinks of engaging him as his
shopman or cashier; smd that, on the same principle, the
sheep-feeder or farmer avoids hiring as his shepherd a man
notorious for stealing sheep, or declines employing as his
farm-servant a man who has been tried and cast for
stealing horses. He finds, too, that the fair trader never
bargains with habit-and-repute thieves for their stolen
goods. But he sees that an entirely different principle
obtains among game-preservers. Not a few of them, bent
on stocking their preserves, deal freely with poachers for
live game ; and still more of them, in choosing their game-
keepers, prefer poachers clever, active fellows, exten-
sively acquainted among their own class to any other sort
of persons whatever. Nor, if the poachers be nothing worse
than poachers, can there be a single objection to the ar-
rangement, save on the unrecognizable, untenable ground
that game is property. It is, however, the tendency of
the poacher, in a country where the game-laws are strictly
enforced, to become something worse. He goes to the
woods, shoots or traps game, and finds himself, in conse-
quence, in the circumstances of the red-haired or six-feet-
high men of our illustration. He is apprehended and fined;
and as his wages as a laborer are small, he has just to go
to the woods again, in order we quote a remark grown
into a proverb among the class that he may seek his
money in the place where he lost it. He is again appre-
hended, and imprisoned for some six or eight weeks, during
which time he is occasionally visited by the chaplain of
the prison, who tells him he has done wrong, but always,
somehow, forgets to quote the text which proves it, and
is besides not particularly clear in his argument. He re*
260 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
ceives, too, visits of a different character, those of hard-
ened felons; and their lessons impress him much more
deeply than the teachings of the chaplain. He is again
discharged ; but he has now become rather an unsettled
sort of person, and fails not unfrequently to procure employ-
ment. But the neighboring preserves prove an unfailing
tesource: he is time after time surprised and apprehended;
but he at length becomes weary of passive submission ; the
hour is late, the thicket dark and lonely, the gamekeeper
alone ; they are simply man to man ; and in the scuffle
which ensues the keeper is baffled and beaten off. Better
a brief fray than a heavy fine or a long imprisonment. The
poacher's associates, ere he has reached this stage, are
chiefly desperate men. * There are notorious poachers,"
says Mr. Bright, in his speech on the game-laws with which
he prefaced his motion for a parliamentary committee on
the subject, " who have by a long succession of offences
and imprisonments been driven out almost from the pale
of society, a kind of savages, living in hovels, or wher-
ever they can find shelter. One of this outcast class was
recently tried at the assizes for an act of incendiarism."
Such company can have, of course, no tendency to improve
a man's morals, or to increase his tenderness of human
life. He engages in the forest in one fray more ; and he
who commenced his career as a law-made criminal, and
free of moral stain in the abstract, terminates it in the
character of an atrocious felon in the sight both of God
and man, a red-handed murderer, through whom two
human lives have been lost to society, that of his victim
and his own.
It must be miserable policy that balances against the
lives of human creatures and the morals of thousands of
our humbler people, the mere idle amusements of a privi-
leged class, comparatively few in number, and who have a
great marry other amusements full within their reach. Even
were their claims to the game of the country clear, and
all know that a right of property in wild animals can be
THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 2G1
constituted by taking and keeping them, as Cowper did
his hares, still, did these claims interfere with the public
good, they ought of necessity to give way. Justice, as
certainly as humanity, demands the sacrifice. We are
much pleased, in this point of view, with an anecdote re-
lated by Mr. Jesse in his "Gleanings in Natural History,"
an exceedingly interesting volume, from which the reader
may learn that there are many other ways of deriving
amusement from animals besides killing them. " One of
the keepers in Richmond Park informs me," says the natu-
ralist, "that he has often heard his father, who was also a
keeper, mention that, in the reign of George II., a large
flock of turkeys, consisting of not less than three thousand,
was regularly kept up as part of the stock of the park. In
the autumn and winter they fed on acorns, of which they
must have had an abundant supply, since the park was
then almost entirely wooded with oak, with a thick cover
of furze ; and although at present eleven miles in circum-
ference, it was formerly much larger, and connected with
extensive possessions of the Crown, some of which are now
alienated. Stacks of barley were also put up in different
places of the park for their support ; and some of the old
turkey-cocks are said to have weighed from twenty-five to
thirty pounds. They were hunted with dogs, and made
to take refuge in a tree, where they were frequently shot
by George II. I have not been able to learn how long
they had been preserved in the park before his reign ; but
they were totally destroyed towards the latter end of it,
in consequence of the danger to which the keepers were
exposed in protecting them from poachers, with whom
they had many bloody fights, being frequently overpowered
by them." Here we have a pleasing instance of even the
monarch of the country yielding up his amusements in
order that the lives of his servants might not be endan-
gered. David would not drink of the water which was,
he said, " the blood of the men that went for it in jeopardy
of their lives," and so he " poured it out unto the Lord."
262 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
XIII.
IS GAME PROPERTY?
When we last walked out through several of our busier
Edinburgh streets into the country, we did not see a single
article in the shop-windows or elsewhere which we did not
at once recognize as property, and of whose general line-
age, as such, we could not give some satisfactory account.
Human skill and labor had been employed upon them all,
from the nicely-fashioned implement or machine in which
the baser metals had become more valuable than silver, or
the elaborate strip of gossamer-like tissue in which the
original vegetable fibre had been made to outprice its
weight in gold, to the wild intertropical nut or date
gathered from their several palms under the burning sun
of the African or Asiatic desert, or the costly furs of the
Arctic hunter, purchased by the adven nrous merchant of
a civilized country amid the wild wastes of Lapland, or on
the icy confines of Baffin's Bay or Mackenzie River. All
was property on which the eye rested, that of individ-
uals or the community ; houses, churches, public halls,
the paved streets, the lamps, the railings, the shrubs and
flowers in the squares and gardens, the very stones on the
macadamized road, all was property.
As we cleared the suburbs, with their reticulations of
cross walls, their scattered trees, and their straggling houses,
there opened upon us a wide extent of country, with its
woods and fields, its proprietors' seats, and its farm-stead-
ings. And here was property of another kind, property
in land, emphatically termed by our laws in contradis-
tinction to the portable valuables which we had just seen
IS GAME PROPERTY ? 263
in passing outwards, in the shops, and on the persons of
the passengers, real property. And real property the
land of the country unquestionably is, more obscure in
its lineage, mayhap, than the furs furnished in barter by
the American Indian, or the flowered piece of netting
elaborated to order by the incessant toil, prolonged for
months, of the poor lace-maker, but obscure merely on the
principle through which the early history of an ancient
people or long-derived family is obscure, obscure simply
because its beginnings reach far beyond the era of the
annalist and the chronicler. It has been property so long
that the metaphysician can but surmise how it became
such ; nor can the historian decide which of the philoso-
pher's many guesses on the subject is the best one. We
incline to the solution of Locke, though in some respects
inadequate, in preference to that of Paley, who holds, most
unphilosophically we think, that the real foundation >f
right in the case is the law of the land. Law of the land !
We could as soon believe that a son was the producing
cause through which his father came into being, or that a
daughter was the producing cause of her mother's existence.
Property in the land existed long ere there were laws in
the land. Cain must have been as certainly the proprietor
of the field which he rendered valuable by incorporating
his labor with its soil, as Abel of the flock which his labor
had tamed or reared. Both the land and the animals were
general gifts to the species from the Beneficent Giver of
all; and the individual right was fairly constituted ir the
one case by the man who broke in the animals from their
state of original wildness, and in the other by the man
who cleared and tilled and sowed the hitherto uncultiva-
ted waste, and converted it into a patrimony worthy of
being bequeathed to his children. There must have been
at least as much labor expended in the case of the s-gri-
culturist as in that of the shepherd ; and, if the poets are
to be regarded as authorities, and there are instances
in which they wonderfully approximate to the truth.
264 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
considerably more. Paley tells us that the first partition of
an estate which we read of was that which took place be-
tween Abram and Lot, " If thou wilt take the left hand,
then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right
hand, then I will go to the left." Had he examined his
Bible just a little more carefully, he would have found
that the transaction was not a partition of land, for
Abram had none at the time, but a mere temporary ar-
rangement regarding the occupation for a certain term of
a certain extent of common ; that the portions of land in
that country with which, according to Locke, human labor
had been mixed up, had already, in consequence of the
incorporation, become property; and that when Abram
desired the field of Machpelah, with the sepulchral " cave
that was in the end thereof," he had to purchase it of the
proprietor for "four hundred shekels of silver." If the
sole foundation of men's rights to their landed properties
was, as Paley holds, the law of the land, if there had
been no previous foundation of right on which the law
itself rested, we would have to regard as miserably
inadequate and precarious indeed the tenures of our laird-
ocracy, and to recognize the aspirations of the levelling
Chartist and the agrarian ten-acre man as at once rational
and fair. The right which the law had created at one time
it might without blame disannul at another; for if the law
did not rest on a heaven-derived justice, but was itself a
primary foundation, and rendered just whatever rested on
it, justice would of course be as variable in its nature as
opinion among the law-making majorities of the country ;
and so it would not be more than equally just for the Con-
servative majorities of to-day to secure their estates to the
existing proprietors, than for the Chartist majorities of to-
morrow to break up these estates into single fields, and
give a field apiece to the working-men of the country.
The law of the land cannot create property : it can merely
extend its sanction and protection to those previously
existing rights of property on which all legislation on the
IS GAME PROPERTY ? 265
subject must rest, or be mere enacted violence and outrage,
abhorrent to that ancient underived justice which existed
ere man was, and which shall long survive every merely
human law.
Nay, even in cases where man's labor has not yet been
incorporated with the soil, on wide moors and among
rugged hills, where he has neither ploughed nor planted,
it is for the benefit of the species that individual rights of
proprietorship should exist and be recognized. The pro-
prietor virtually holds, in many such cases, not merely in
his own behalf, but in that of the country also. We were
never more forcibly struck by the fact than when travelling
several months ago in the mainland of Orkney, in a local-
ity where the properties are small, and there exists a vast
breadth of undivided common. Wherever the rights of
individual proprietors extended, we found land of some
value ; we at least found vegetation and a vegetable soil.
On the common, on the contrary, there was almost no
vegetable soil, and scarce any vegetation. The upper layer
of mould, scanty at first, had been stripped off by repeated
parings, and carried away for fuel ; and for hundreds of
acres together the boulder clay lay exposed on the surface,
here and there mottled by a tuft of stunted heath, but
covered by no continuous carpeting of even moss or lichen.
Were such the state of the entire island, it would be
wholly uninhabitable : it is the rights of individual prop-
erty alone that have preserved Pomona to its people.
Even a wood of any value is never suffered to grow on a
common, unless, perchance, in the uninhabited recesses of
a country : no peasant ever dreams of sparing a sapling in
order that it may expand into a tree for the benefit of his
neighbor's children. The winter is severe, and, standing
in need of fuel, he cuts the promising plant down by a
stroke of his bill, and, fagoting it up with several hundred
others, he carries it home to his fire. Property in land is,
we repeat, real property, pi*operty held not merely for
the benefit of individual proprietors, but also for the best
23
266 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
interests of the community ; for, did all the land belong to
all, it would be of no value to any.
Such were some of our reflections as we walked on from
field to field into the open country. In approaching a
small stream that divided the lands of two proprietors, we
startled a hare that had been couching amid a plot of tur-
nips. It ran downwards for a few score yards along a fur-
row, stopped short, looked round, resumed progress, cleared
the little stream at a bound, and was then lost to our view
amid a brake of furze that skirted one of the fields of the
neighboring proprietor. As we walked on, and, after cross-
ing the streamlet, were rising on the hillside, beside a field
laid down with wheat, we raised a covey of partridges.
They went whirring above our head, and, reversing the
course of the hare, flew over the stream, and settled in a
second field of wheat, just beside the turnip one. Thathare
and these partridges were, it seems, property ; and we had
witnessed on this occasion a curious transferrence of valua-
bles that had taken place without bargain or agreement on
the part of any one. Up to a certain moment the hare
had belonged to one proprietor ; when we had first started
it, and when it was running along the furrow, and when it
had turned round to reconnoitre, it had belonged to the
proprietor of the turnip-plot ; but no sooner had it cleared
the stream, than it straightway belonged to the proprietor
of the wheatfield and the furze-brake. And, as if to make
the first amends for the loss which he had just sustained,
the partridges we had raised, from being the property of
him of the field and the brake, had, on flying over the run-
nel, become the property of him of the turnip-plot. Cer-
tainly a strange mode of conveyancing ! It seemed equally
strange, too, that the turnips on which the hare had just
been feeding, and the wheat which expanded the crops of
the partridges, did not belong to either of the proprietors,
but were the property of certain third parties called tenants.
We saw within view at the time a considerable number of
the tame animals. Enclosed within a fold of stakes and
IS GAME PROPERTY ? 267
network, in a corner of the turnip-plot, there was a flock
of sheep bearing on their necks a certain red mark to dis-
tinguish them from those of any other sheep-owner; and
a half-dozen cattle were picking up their sustenance for
the day amid the furze of the brake. The cattle belonged
to the farmer who rented the brake, and the sheep to the
owner of the turnips. The one could recognize his cattle,
the other his sheep. If the cattle crossed the stream into
the turnip-plot, or the sheep broke loose, and, o'erleaping
the runnel from the opposite side, did damage to the
sprouting wheat, or picked the brake bare, either tenant
would have a legitimate claim for damages done his prop-
erty, but there would be no actual transfer of property in
the case. The sheep would have an owner equally on
both sides of the streamlet, in the tenant whose red mark
they bore ; and the cattle, whether in the furze-brake or
the turnip-field, would be equally the property of the ten-
ant who farmed the brake. Certainly, if the game of the
country be property, it must be property of a very anoma-
lous kind. Is it personal, or real ? We find it conveyanced
from one nominal owner to another, without these owners
knowing aught of the matter; we find that they have no
marks by which to distinguish it ; we find that, unlike all
other live stock, it is fed on food not theirs ; we find that
they can give no account of its origin or lineage in relation
to themselves, it was neither gifted to them nor bought
by them ; it runs away from them, and beyond a certain
point they dare not follow it ; it is brought to them when
dead, and, unable to recognize it as theirs, they purchase it
on the ordinary terms. It is not personal property; it is
not real property ; it belongs to an entirely different cate-
gory : it is simply imaginary property.
We are acquainted with an extensive district in the
north of Scotland in which some thirty years ago there was
not a single wild rabbit. Rabbits there had once been in
the locality, though at a very early period. The laborer,
in running his ditches through a sandy soil, or casting up
268 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
the foundation of some farmhouse or stone fence, laid
open, not unfrequently, underground excavations greatly
larger than those of the mole, with here and there a black-
ened nest-like bunch of decayed grass and leaves, huddled
up far from the light, and here and there a few minute
bones strewed along the passages ; and he would point
out the remains to his employer, and say that the site had
been once that of a rabbit-warren. But the rabbits them-
selves had become as thoroughly extinct in the locality as
the wolf or bear. About a quarter of a century since,
however, one of the minor proprietors of the district, a gen-
tleman possessed of some two or three hundred acres, let
loose a few pairs of rabbits ; and so enormous has been
the increase, that, over a space of some two or three hun-
dred square miles, rabbits abound ; and of that large area,
scarcely one thirtieth part is in the hands of the proprietary;
it is farmed by tenants who pay large rents. To whom be-
long the millions of rabbits by which it is infested, and who
gobble up yearly many hundred pounds' worth of the pro-
duce? To the proprietor who originally turned them loose?
Alas ! no : the two or three pair, the progenitors of the
whole, that, so long as they were in his possession, were
assuredly his, would have scarce brought him half a crown
in the market ; besides, he has long since sold his little
property, and left that part of the kingdom. His claim
would be exactly that of the Italian boy, who, having turned
loose his two tame mice in a granary, came back some twenty
years after, and found their descendants twenty millions
strong. Do they belong, then, to the proprietors of the dis-
trict in general? On what plea? They were not theirs
originally ; they have been supported, not on their produce,
but on that of their tenants. The non-farming, non-resi-
dent proprietors have not a particle of property in them ;
they are simply a certain amount of the grass, corn, and tur-
nips of the farmers and farming proprietors, converted into
animal food, and running about on all fours. They are
mischievous vermin when alive, which no one ought to be
IS GAME PROPERTY ? 26$
prevented from destroying, and which the farmer has a
positive right to destroy ; and, when dead, they ought
surely, just like the fur-bearing animals of Siberia or Hud-
son's Bay, to be the property of the man who has taken
the trouble of killing them. All quite right, says the
game-preserver. You are, however, rather unfortunate in
your illustration ; rabbits are not game. We are quite
aware of that fact, we reply, and might have chosen what
you would have deemed a better illustration. In Pomona,
twenty years ago, there were no hares. A young man,
the son of a proprietor, procured a very few from the
mainland of Scotland ; and hares have in consequence be-
come comparatively common in Orkney, just as rabbits
have become common in the Black Isle ; and, in propor-
tion to their number, they do as much mischief. It is the
part of the game-preserver to show how or why the hares,
in such circumstances, should have become property, and
the rabbits not. Wherein lies the difference between two
tribes of animals that so nearly resemble each other? There
can be but one reply ; the law has made the hare property,
which means simply, say we, that the game-laws exist,
a fact which it requires no profound process of argumenta-
tion to demonstrate. We would never once have thought
of writing our present article if the game-laws did not exist.
But the unreal and imaginary property, which has no other
foundation than human enactment, which the law makes
to-day and unmakes to-morrow, which a few years ago
comprised the wild rabbit, and which a few years hence
will not comprise the wild hare, is property of an emi-
nently precarious nature. It resembles property in ice in
a warm summer. Laws which are themselves not founded
in moral right and the nature of things form but unsolid
foundations for aught else. There was a law in Russia,
en?,2ted in the days of the capricious Paul, which rendered
it imperative on the male portion of Paul's subjects to
wear small-clothes, and empowered the police to cut short
at the knees the trowsers of the refractory. There was a
23*
270 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
law in Great Britain in the days of George II., that made
it treasonable for a Scotch Highlander to wear tartan.
Put neither the one law nor the other was based on the
principles of ever-enduring justice. Independently of
conventional enactment, it is no more a moral offence to
wear trowsers than to knock down a partridge, or to sport
tartans than to shoot a hare ; and so trowsers are now
worn in Russia, and tartans in the Highlands.
Our views on this subject are in no respect novel : they
do not belong to the times of the Chartist and the leveller.
They have, on the contrary, been long embodied in our
literature. The conventional game-laws had never the
effect of creating in Britain a conventional morality, that
learned to respect these laws as its code and standard.
On this point our masters of fiction the men whose
special work it was to draw character as they found it,
draperied in the manners of their age, and modified by its
opinions are high authorities. When Goldsmith re-
quires for the purposes of his story \,o get a thoroughly
honest fellow into Newgate, he makes him knock down a
hare. "When Fielding an honorable magistrate at least,
however lax in other matters, and a determined enemy of
thieving wishes to bring his hero into trouble without
rendering him culpable, he sends him, with all the eagerness
of the young sportsman, after a covey he had started on
his benefactor's grounds, into the grounds of a neighboring
proprietor, and makes him kill them there. " The Ed-
wardses of Southhill," says Mackenzie, " and a worthy
family they were ! " how came these same worthy Ed-
wardses to be ruined ? Young Edwards, " who was a
remarkably good shooter, and kept a pointer," knocked
down a partridge one day in the field of his neighbor, a
country justice, and so the ruin was quite a matter of
course. But there is no end of such instances ; and the
report on the game-laws shows on how broad a basis of
reality these adepts in fictitious narrative (the prose-
maJcers) founded their inventions. Unfortunately, in not
IS GAME PROPERTY ? 271
a few cases a poacher becomes a bad character, and a source
of loss and annoyance to the community ; but it is not in
the beginning of his career, when he is simply a poacher,
that he is in any degree a bad character. He is in most
cases either an adventurous young fellow, a " good shooter,"
like young Edwards, and fond of sport, like the game-
preserving proprietors whom he annoys, or else some poor
man out of employment, with a wife and family dependent
on him, and much in terror of the neighboring workhouse.
The evidence of Mr. M. Gibson, Inspector of Prisons in
England, is jDeculiarly valuable on this head: "There are
certainly many," he says, "who poach and are sent to
prison, who would not commit a robbery." "There are
poachers," he adds, "from the love of adventure and of
sport, who are the most irreclaimable of any ; there are
poachers from poverty ; and there is the young man, always
in the fields, who from early life has set his bird-trap, and
cannot resist the impulse of subjugating the wild animals."
Such is Mr. Gibson's opinion of a numerous class of poach-
ers ; and their opinion of themselves seems, as might be
expected, not greatly worse than his. " Have you had any
opportunity," he is asked by the committee, "of ascertaining
the opinions of chaplains and officers of prisons at all gen-
erally as to the operation of the present game-laws?" The
reply is eminently worthy of being carefully noted and
pondered. " Yes," he says ; " with regard to the effect on
the prisoners, the opinion of the chaplains generally is,
that they can produce no moral effect whatever upon them
under the game-laws ; that they leave the prison only to
return ; frequently replying to the proffered advice by say-
ing that the game was made for the poor as well as the rich,
and that God -made the birds of the air and thefshes of the
sea for alV It so happens, curiously enough, that Judge
Blackstone, and most of the philosophic thinkers which
the country has yet produced, were of the same opinion ;
but, more curious still, not a few of even the more zealous
game-preserving proprietors seem also to entertain it,
272 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
though of course in a greatly more covert style. They are
indisputably gentlemen, and would neither employ as their
servants habit-and-repute thieves, nor yet act the part of
the Jonathan Wilds of the last age by being receivers of
stolen goods. And yet there are two facts which come
fully out in the evidence. They have no hesitation what-
ever in employing as gamekeepers and gamewatchers
active habit-and-repute poachers ; and hundreds of them,
when stocking their preserves, drive a trade with the
poachers that are still actually such, in live leverets and
pheasants' eggs. Now these live leverets and pheasants'
eggs cannot be property, or else these same game-preserving
proprietors would to a certainty be not gentlemen, but
Bcoundrels. By their doings at least they virtually decide
the question against themselves.
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 273
XIV.
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY.
It is very generally felt that life and property are less
secure in this country at the present time than they were
some eight or ten years ago. In the course of nearly a
century Britain had greatly changed its character for the
better, in the degree of security which the civil magistrate
afforded to the peaceable subject. So late as the year 1750,
it was unsafe to walk at night the streets of our larger
towns ; and the man who sauntered unprotected after
sunset into their quieter suburbs, or traversed even their
more frequented approaches, might be almost certain of
being struck down and robbed, if not murdered. Fielding,
who was not only a great novelist but also one of the most
efficient magistrates that ever lived, relates in his narrative
of the earlier stages of that illness which ultimately carried
him off, that the symptoms were much aggravated by the
fatigue which he incurred in long examinations regarding
the street robberies and murders of London, in especial by
the examinations respecting "Jive different murders, all
committed within the space of a week by different gangs of
street robbers." The materials of his comparatively little-
known volume, "The Life of Jonathan Wild," were col-
lected during this period of crime and outrage ; nor does
the work, as a whole, exaggerate the actual state of things
at the time. Another of his works he entitled an " Inquiry
into the Increase of Thieves and Robbers," "a work which
contains several hints," says Sir Walter Scott, " which
have been adopted by succeeding statesmen, and some of
which are worthy of still more attention than they have
received." If an "increase" of the robber class actually
274 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
took place at the time, as the title indicates, matters must
have been bad indeed ; for, about an age earlier, so sadly
were the roads that approach the metropolis infested by
highwaymen, as to be scarce at all passable by the solitary
traveller. "Whatever might be the way in which a jour-
ney was performed," says Macaulay, " the travellers, unless
they were numerous and well armed, ran considerable risk
of being stopped and plundered. The mounted highway-
man, a marauder known to our generation only by books,
was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts
which lay on the main routes near London were especially
haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on
the great western road, and Finchley Common, on the
great northern road, were perhaps the most celebrated of
these spots. The Cambridge scholars trembled when they
approached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight; and
seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often
compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill." Long after
the times that Macaulay describes, long after the times of
Fielding too, even in country districts, the law served but
imperfectly to protect the peaceable subject from the
housebreaker and the highwayman. Cowper's graphic
description, written in the year 1783, must be familiar to
all our readers :
" Now, ere you sleep,
See that your polished arms be primed with care,
And draw the night-bolt : ruffians are abroad,
And the first 'larum of the cock's shrill throat
May prove a trumpet summoning your ear
To horrid sounds of hostile feet within.
Even daylight has its dangers ; and the walk
Through pathless wastes and woods, unconscious once
Of other tenants than melodious birds
Or harmless flocks, is hazardous and bold."
But a gradual improvement took place, especially in the
larger towns. The great increase of newspapers, which
recorded every act of violence and outrage as it occurred,
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 275
and set the whole country on its guard, that quickening
of the postal arrangements which soon overtook and dis-
tanced the culprit in his escape, the admirable organi-
zation of the police, effected by the act of Sir Robert Peel,
above all, the outlet furnished through the discovery of
Botany Bay, and its appropriation as a penal colony for
the country, had all their effect in producing a favorable
change ; and, while a great increase took place in the list
of minor offences, a consequence of the growth of what
are known as the lapsed classes, crimes of blacker dye,
perpetrated by professional felons, became considerably
more rare and less atrocious than in an earlier time. Dur-
ing the first two decades of the present century a few
terrible cases occurred. The Williams murders of 1812,
and the general panic they occasioned, must be remembered
by some of our older readers ; and such as belong to a
later generation may find their startling effects reproduced
in some degree by the vigorous pen of De Quincey, in his
grim but singularly powerful essay, " Murder considered as
one of the Fine Arts." The murder by the M'Keans, also
permanently recorded by the same graphic writer, belongs
to a somewhat later period, and is marked by similar cir-
cumstances of atrocity. We do not refer to the Burke
and Bishop murders, which may be considered as wholly
sui generis / nor yet to those of the Thurtle or Tawell
class, which occurred in private society, and lay outside
what may be regarded as the professional pale. Within
that pale great improvement took place ; robbery accom-
panied by violence became rare, and robbery accompanied
by mui'der rarer still. The streets and lanes of our larger
cities might be traversed in comparative safety at all hours ;
the great bulk of offences committed against the person
were offences committed under the influence of drink,
quite a bad enough symptom of the condition and morals
of a great portion of the humbler classes, but in several
material respects greatly preferable to that class of offences
against the person which obtained in the days of Fielding,
276 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
and respecting which he had to conduct, as has been said,
five examinations in a single week. The means, too, bj
which the darker class of crimes has been suppressed in
our own days are equally in advance of those to which
the novelist unrivalled, as his writings show, in his
knowledge of the worse traits and specimens of human
nature had been compelled to have recourse a century
ago. In the introduction of the " Voyage to Lisbon," he
relates that, when consulted by the Premier of the day,
the Duke of Newcastle, respecting the best mode of put-
ting down the robbers and murderers of the metropolis,
he could advise nothing better than the employment of
money in corrupting their associates. "I had the most
eager desire," we find him saying, " of demolishing these
gangs of villains and cut-throats, which I was sure of ac-
complishing the moment I was enabled to pay a fellow who
had undertaken for a small sum to betray them into the
hands of a set of thief-takers whom I had enlisted into the
service, all men of known and approved fidelity and intre-
pidity. After some weeks," he adds, " the money was paid
at the treasury ; and within a few days after two hundred
pounds of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of
cut-throats were entirely dispersed, seven of the thieves
were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out of
the town and others out of the kingdom."
For the last six or eight years, however, there has cer-
tainly been no improvement of the nature which took place
in the criminal records of the country during the previous
quarter of a century ; on the contrary, the course has been
retrograde ; and at the present time we seem as if passing
to the state of matters which obtained during the days of
Justice Fielding and Jonathan Wild. Murders have been
committed during the last month of the old mercenary
class, that, in circumstances of merciless barbarity, do not
yield to any in the "Newgate Calendar;" assaults on the
person for the same object have rendered the new term
garrotting a completely naturalized one of familiar use ;
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 277
and housebreakings on a large scale have become such
common events that almost every succeeding newspaper
records their occurrence. In some cases the respectable
trader goes to his bed square with the world, and rises in
the morning a ruined man. And yet never was there a
time when certain of the causes which formed so powerful
a check on crime in the past were so influentially in opera-
tion as now. Never were there so many newspapers to
spread over the country the intelligence of every offence in
all its details, and to direct public attention on the offend-
ers ; never was there a time when such intelligence could
be transmitted with even a tithe of the 2)resent speed,
the act of Sir Robert Peel has certainly not been suffered
to fall into desuetude ; and never had the country a more
active or intelligent magistracy. What, then, can be the
more than neutralizing causes of such various circumstances
of advantage, under which crime of what we have termed
the professional class is so obviously on the increase ? The
question is easily answered. The causes are two. In the
first place, that change through which Britain no longer
possesses penal colonies has led to a great accumulation of
criminals in the country ; and it has got, in consequence,
into the unhealthy condition of living subjects when the
natural evacuations are stopped ; and in the second place,
the ticket-of-leave system a system essentially false in
principle in the circumstances has greatly exaggerated
the evil. We cannot, however, agree with those who give
a paramount place to the latter cause. Were it to be abol-
ished to-morrow, and criminals imprisoned for the shorter
periods, whether five, seven, or fourteen years, in no
case released until the close of the legitimate terms re-
corded in their sentences, the master evil would still
remain. The felon, now let loose upon the public at the
end of some two or three years, would in the other case
not be let loose upon it until the end of five years, or of
seven, or fourteen ; but ultimately he would be let loose
upon it ; and, even if inclined to live honestly, he would
24
278 POLITICAL AKD SOCIAL.
have quite as little chance of procuring the necessary era
ployment at the end of the longer as of the shorter term.
There is only one way in which the master evil in the case
is to be remedied. The old means of evacuation must, at
whatever cost, be procured. Britain, whatever difficulties
may lie in the way, must again have recourse to the scheme
of penal colonies, or both life and property must continue
to remain insecure. And, though difficulties do lie in the
way, we do not see that they are by any means insurmount-
able. Half the trouble which our ancestors had in extirpat-
ing the native wolves would suffice to rid us of a greatly
more formidable class of wild beasts, the incorrigible
criminals. It is surely not at all necessary that a penal
colony should be a paradise. It was no advantage; but, on
the contrary, much the reverse, that during even the
healthiest state of the country the incipient felon looked
with longing eyes on the representations of New South
Wales given in the print-shop windows, and then went off
to qualify himself by some bold act for a free passage. A
penal colony should be simply a country in which the dis-
charged felon could earn his bread by the sweat of his brow ?
just as our humbler people do at home, and in which the
circumstances of the community would be such as to ren-
der the life of the marauder not only a more dangerous,
but also a more toilsome and difficult one than that of the
honest worker who labored fairly for his bread. And a
colony of this character ought not to be difficult to find.
The country once heard a great deal about the Falkland
Islands. Rather more than eighty years ago (1771), it was
on the eve of entering, mainly on their account, into a war
with France ; and on that occasion Johnson wrote his fa-
mous tract to dissuade Britain from the contest, by showing
that the islands were of really little value, and would be
dearly purchased at such a price. But now that all dispute
regarding them has ceased, for the last quarter of a cen-
tury they have been in the uninterrupted possession of
this country, they might be found very valuable as a
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 279
penal colony. They have an area of about thirteen thou-
sand square miles; their mean temperature during the year
is exactly that of Edinburgh, with summers, however, a
little warmer, and winters a little colder, than our Scotch
ones ; their surface is green ; the grass-lands are peculiarly
luxuriant, and form such a paradise for cattle that the tame
breeds are becoming wild in the interior, and promise to
be very numerous ; and the bays and sounds which indent
the coast abound in fish. Further, so imperfectly are they
colonized, that though the expense of maintaining them
costs the country about six thousand pounds per annum,
their entire exports fall short of four thousand. In fine,
at a very slight sacrifice these islands could be converted
into a hopeful penal colony, that would fully absorb the
more dangerous criminals of the country for a quarter of
a centmy to come.
But while recognizing the lack of penal colonies, and
the consequent accumulation of our criminals within the
country, as the main causes of that increase of serious
crime against both the person and property which has taken
place during the last eight or ten years, we must not un-
dervalue the influence of the other cause, that ticket-
of-leave system which has let loose so many dangerous
felons on society ere half their terms of punishment had
expired. The principle of the system is utterly false and
unsolid in all its circumstances and details. A fond mother
was once heard addressing her son as follows : " Be a
good, religious boy, my little Johnnie ; fear God, and honor
your parents ; and I will give you two pretty red-cheeked
apples." Nor is it difficult to say what sort of a religion
would be the effect of such a promise. Little Johnnie's two
apples'-worth of the fear of God and the honor of parents
would be a very hypocritical fear, and a very fictitious
honor. And the ticket-of-leave system proceeds wholly
on the same principle. Be religious and moral, it virtually
says to the convict, for a given time, and you will get,
when it has expired, the two red-cheeked apples. It has
280 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
a grand disadvantage, too, over the scheme of the fond
mother. She might no doubt succeed in making little
Johnnie a little hypocrite ; but the two apples, when made
over to him, if really good ones, might be productive of
further hurt to neither himself nor the family. Not so the
premium for behavior held out to the convict. The prof-
fered reward bears simply to the effect that he is to be let
loose on society, to prey upon it anew. There is in reality
no scheme in existence by which convicts in the mass can
be dealt with as our paper-makers deal with their filth-be-
grimmed rags. We cannot put them in at the one end of
a penitentiary in the soiled state, and take them out white
and pure at the other. True, we must not limit the grace
of God. It is just possible, however improbable, that lit-
tle Johnnie, notwithstanding the sad stumbling-block of
the two apples, or that a convict, notwithstanding the
greatly sadder stumbling-block of the ticket-of-leave system,
might be in reality converted ; but neither on the apple
scheme nor any other will there be any wholesale conver-
sions of either the little Johnnies or the greater felons of
the country. Regarded as a whole, the latter will enter
the penitentiaries as felons, and as felons they will leave
them ; but if, by seeming to be religious, and by exercising
a degree of self-constraint in a place in which there is ex-
ceedingly little to tempt, they will have the prospect held
out to them of quitting their place of confinement at an
early day, the men of strong wills and of self-control among
them always the more dangerous class will not fail
to conform to the conditions. And thus the picked felons
will be ever and anon let loose long ere their time, to rob
in order that they may live, and to murder in order that
their robberies may be concealed. In the brief passage
which we have quoted from Sir Walter's " Life of Field-
ing," we find him remarking, that one of the less known
publications of the old magistrate and novelist contained
hints, some of which had been adopted, and " some of
which are worthy of more attention than they have re
THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 281
ceived." And we would reckon among the latter the
hints contained in the chapter entitled, " Of the Encour-
agement given to Robbers by frequent Pardons." Pardons
at the time a consequence of the extreme severity of
the English criminal code were very numerous and very
capricious, though neither so numerous nor so capricious
as the ticket-of-leave system has rendered them now. And
what were the effects which they produced ? Simply this,
as determined by a singularly shrewd and sagacious man,
who knew more of the matter than any one else, that from
the hope of impunity which they created, they hanged ten
times more felons than they saved from the gallows, and
greatly increased the amount of crime.
24*
282 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
XV.
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT.
"On the 22d of Aprile" (1532), says Calderwood, in his
"Ecclesiastical History," so recently published, for the first
time, by the Wodrow Society, " the Collegde of the Judges
was established in Edinburgh," "for judgment of pecuni-
all and civil causes." " In the beginning," continues the
historian, " many things were profitable devised by them,
and justice ministered with equitie. But the event an-
swered not the expectatioun of men ; for, seeing in Scotland
there be almost no lawes except the acts of Parliament,
whereof manie are not perpetuall but temporarie, and the
judges hinder what they may the making of such lawes,
the goods of all men are committed to the arbitriement
and decisioun of fyfteen men that have perpetuall power,
which, in truth, is but tyranicall impyre, seeing their own
arbitriements stand for lawe."
Such was the objection raised by Calderwood two hun-
dred years ago to the constitution and practice of the
Court of Session, at a time when no case of harassing and
irritating collision with the ecclesiastical courts had arisen
to disturb the equanimity or cloud the judgment of the
shrewd old churchman. Such, too, was the decision pro-
nounced regarding it nearly a century earlier by Buchanan,
whom, in this significant and very pregnant passage, the
ecclesiastical chronicler has been content closely to follow,
so closely, indeed, that the passage may be deemed
rather a translation than a piece of original writing. The
court was comparatively in its infancy an institution
of about fifty years' standing when it was characterized
by the older historian as an arbitrary erection, opposed in
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 283
its constitution to the very genius of freedom. And why ?
It is according to the genius of freedom that a people be
governed by laws which they themselves have made. The
principle is at once so obvious and fundamental that there
is scarce a writer on civil liberty who has not laid it down
as his very basis. And it would certainly be no easy mat-
ter to conceive of aught in more direct and hostile antag-
onism to such a proposition, than the proposition that a
people should be governed, not by laws of their own
making, but by the legislative decisions of some fifteen
irresponsible judges, chosen by the monarch to "have per-
petuall power," and " whose arbitriements should stand
for lawe."
Such were some of the grounds of Buchanan's judgment
on the "Colledge of Judges;" and they serve to demonstrate
the peculiar sagacity of the man, a sagacity altogether
wonderful when we take into account the early period in
which he flourished. His reflections on the barbarous tor-
ments to which the assassins of James I. were subjected
has been instanced by Dugald Stewart, in his "Disserta-
tion on the Rise of Metaphysical Science," as fraught with
philosophy of a deeper reach than can be found in the
works of any other w T riter of so early a period. We would
place over against it as scarce less vivaciously instinct
with the philosophic spirit, and as even a still better ex-
ample of that discriminating ability in the political field
which enabled him to take his place as an asserter of the
just principles of civil liberty so mightily in advance of his
age his remark on the constitution of the Court of Ses-
sion. It serves at once to remind us of the eulogium of
Sir James Macintosh and to justify it. " The science which
teaches the rights of man," says this elegant and powerful
writer, " the eloquence which kindles the spirit of free-
dom, had for ages been buried with the other monuments
of the wisdom and relics of the genius of antiquity.
But the revival of letters first unlocked only to a few
the sacred fountain. The necessary labors of criticism
284 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
and lexicography occupied the earlier scholars, and some
time elapsed before the spirit of antiquity was transferred
into its admirers. The first man of that period who uni-
ted elegant learning to original and masculine thought
was Buchanan ; and he, too, seems to have been the first
scholar who caught from the ancients the noble flame of
republican enthusiasm. This praise is merited by his neg-
lected though incomparable tract, 'De Jure Regni,' in
which the principles of popular politics and the maxims
of a free government are delivered with a precision, and
enforced with an energy, which no former age had equalled
and no succeeding has surpassed."
A history of the many decisions of the Court of Session
that, according to Buchanan and Calderwood, are legisla-
tive, not judicial, that, instead of explaining existing
law, are in reality creations of laws which have no existence
save in the decisions themselves, would form a very cu-
rious and a very useful work. It would be well, surely, to
know how much of the national code is the production of
the "fyfteen men that have perpetuall power, and whose
arbitriements stand for lawe," and how much of it has been
made by the people themselves, through the people's rep-
resentatives. It would be at least particularly well to
know how much of what is practically the national code
is not merely law created by the " fyfteen men " where no
law existed before, but law created by them in direct op-
position to existing laws, law directly subversive of the
law made by the people. Nor can there be any doubt that
the time is coming when such a work will be imperatively
called for by the public. Scotland, through the decisions
of this court, is on the eve of being placed in circumstances
exactly similar to those in which the disastrous wars of five
hundred years have placed Ireland. The religion of the
country is on the eve of being disestablished, disestab-
lished, too, at a time when in a state of greater vigor, and
more truly popular, than at any other period during the
last hundred years ; and as revolutions never occur with-
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 285
out at least awakening a spirit of inquiry regarding the
causes which have produced them, the period must be
inevitably at hand when the legislative decisions of the
Court of Session shall be examined, and that with no ordi-
nary degree of attention, in the light of Calderwood and
Buchanan.
We have specified on several occasions decisions which,
in their character as precedents, have actually become law,
that traverse, and practically abrogate, the statutory
law of the kingdom. We adduced one very striking in-
stance when setting against each other the existing mode
of provision for the building and repairing of parish
churches as settled by decision, and the diametrically op-
posite mode as arranged and provided by enactment.
According to statute, " the parishioners of parish kirks "
are charged and empowered to "elect and chuse certain
of the most honest qualified men within their parochins,"
to tax the parish for the expenses of the necessary erection
or repair ; and in the event of the parishioners " failing or
delaying to elect or chuse, through sloth or unwillingness,
the power of making such choice or election of such honest
qualified men falls to the ecclesiastical authorities." Such
is the enacted statutory law on this head, the people's
law. But what is the actual law of precedent in the case,
the law of " the fyfteen ? " That any such election " of
honest men " would be altogether illegal; that so far are
the parishioners or ecclesiastical authorities from possessing
any such right of election, that, even were they to make a
voluntary contribution among themselves for the repair or
improvement of the parish church, they could be legally pre-
vented from lifting a tool upon the building ; that, in short,
the whole matter of erecting, repairing, improving, is not
in the hands of the parishioners or the ecclesiastical author-
ities, where statute has placed it, but exclusively in hands
in which statute never placed it, in the hands of the
heritors. How very striking an illustration of the sagacity
of Buchanan !
286 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
We need scarce refer to the still more striking illustration
which our present ecclesiastical struggle furnishes, an
illustration which, we have said, will scarce fail of being
appreciated over the whole empire by and by. We shall
venture, however, on one remark. It is not according to
the nature of things that the decisions of the Court of
Session should traverse statutory enactments, which have
originated amid the ebullitions of strong popular feeling,
and are in reality embodiments of the popular will, so long
as these enactments are recent, and the impulse to which
they owed their existence is still predominant in the coun-
try as a moving power. Nothing less probable, for in-
stance, than that the court should have reversed any of
the more broad and obvious provisions of the Reform Bill
when Earl Grey's ministry were still in office, or any of
the more thoroughly understood clauses of the Roman
Catholic Emancipation Act ere it had attained to a twelve-
month's standing. The state of these measures as recent
as measures which had agitated the whole country whose
meanings all the people understood, not so much in their
character as statutes as in their character as embodiments
of either their own will or the will of the Roman Catholics
of Ireland would have prevented most effectually any
judicial reversal of the main principles which they involved.
The Court of Session might as safely declare that Ernest
of Hanover, not Victoria, is the monarch of these realms,
as that ten-pound freeholders have no legal right to vote
in the election of members of Parliament, or that at least
ten-pound freeholders have no legal right to vote in the
election of members of Parliament who are Roman Catho-
lics. The character of such acts, as recent, restricts our
judges to the exercise of their purely judicial functions.
They cannot, they dare not, reverse them. Taking this
obvious principle into account, and it is certainly not
easy to say how any principle could be more obvious, --it
is of vast importance to ascertain the opinions which our
judges held regarding the powers and jurisdiction of the
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 287
church at a time when both the Revolution and the Union
were events as fresh in men's memories as the Reform Bill
and the Emancipation Act are now. Hence, in part, the
great value of those views and sentiments of our older
lawyers on the point, to which we have so often referred.
Lord Cullen, with whose admirable tract on patronage most
of our readers must be acquainted, was a grown man at
the time of the Revolution. His son, Lord Prestongrange,
must have remembered the Union as the great event of
Scotland in that age. The Lord President Dundas and
the Lord President Forbes were lawyers of much the same
standing as the latter. Kames, Monboddo, Dreghorn,
were all reared at the feet of these men ; and though all
i , ; ' ....
of them could, no doubt, occasionally unite to their judicial
functions those legislative powers which so excited, at an
earlier period, the jealousy of Buchanan, all of them must
have felt that, regarding the more palpable conditions of
those two great events, the Revolution and the Union,
they were at liberty to exercise their judicial functions
only. The fundamental conditions of these events were
present to the national mind as great living principles ;
they still engaged the feelings of the country; they still
exercised its reasoning faculties; they were something
other than dead statutory enactments for legislative judges
to dissect at will, and on which spruce half-fledged lawyers
might try their hand at an amputation, without the neces-
sity of using the tourniquet. Their true meaning was as
thoroughly exhibited in the living intellect of the country
as in the statute-book itself. And hence, of necessity, the
rectitude of judicial opinion regarding them.
Is this view of the matter in any degree a rational one ?
If so, what estimate must we form of the view taken by
Lord Cuninghame in his last note ? The church has never
yet disputed that the judicial sentence of the civil court
may legitimately effect a separation between her spiritu-
alities and the temporalities of the state ; but this, she
contends, is the utmost extent to which any such legiti-
288 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
mate decision can effect her; and in proof of the doctrine
she appeals not only to the statutory enactments in which
it is embodied, but also to the opinions on the subject of
all the Scotch lawyers and more eminent judges of the
last century, men who lived under the direct influence
of the immensely important events by which the Constitu-
tion of the country had been ultimately fixed at the Rev*
olution and the Union. " There appears to be little doubt,"
says his lordship, in reply, " that at a certain period in the
last century, when ecclesiastical questions first were the
subject of discussion in our courts, an opinion was enter-
tained by lawyers of learning and reputation, such as Lord
Prestongrange, Mr. Crosbie, and others, that such a sepa-
ration was in certain cases legitimate and competent, and
admitted of no remedy in this court. But, able as the
persons were, they had not the benefit of the anxious and
elaborate arguments which the questions have undergone in
modem times, and which have thrown a light on cases of
this nature that writers at no former period enjoyed."
Surely we may be permitted to exclaim, " O unhappy law-
yers of the last century ! hapless Henry Home, unlucky
Duncan Forbes, unfortunate Monboddo, ill-fated Dreg-
horn ! O ye Dundases, Cullens, Crosbies, and Preston-
granges ! why were ye all born a hundred years too
soon? Poor blind gropers in quest of truth, men of
deficient law and slender intellect, why were you not fated
to imbibe wisdom from the philosophic notes of my Lord
Cuninghame, and to inhale at once wit and knowledge
from the lucid and sparkling speeches of my Lord Justice-
Clerk Hope ? Thou, O Karnes ! hadst thou but lived to
see these luminaries, mightest have remained unenlightened
thyself notwithstanding, like those very obstinate gentle-
men of our own times, Lords Jeffrey and Moncreiff ; but
in taking measure of the vast intellectual stature of oui
Hopes and Cuninghames, thou wouldest have at least found
it necessary to introduce into thy 'Sketches' one Adam
more, and he a giant. And thou, O Monboddo ! hadst
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 289
thou but seen the sort of persons who follow in their train,
thou wouldest surely have rejoiced, whatever else thou
mightest have done, in the return of the men with tails.
But ah ! unhappy lawyers, ye lived an age too soon, and
so must content yourselves now with just the pity of the
Lord Ordinary."
There is assuredly a time coming when our ecclesiastical
question, viewed in the clear light of history, shall be
judged one of the best possible for illustrating the charac-
ter of the court in both its judicial and legislative aspects.
It will exhibit the Janus-like head of this institution, with
its one countenance bent tranquilly upon the past century,
and its other countenance breathing war and horror on the
present. It will be seen that in the last century, the court,
with regard to the church, presented only its judicial
aspect: we have shown why. It will be found that it is
the legislative aspect which it presents with respect to the
church now. And there will doubtless be some interest
in marking the exact point at which the one character has
been taken up and the other character laid down, with all
the various causes which have led to the change. But the
prejudices and prepossessions of men interfere, and prevent
the question from being one of the best possible illustrations
of this in the present time. We have a case before us
which at least our antagonists will recognize as happier in
its application. It is a case in which the decision arrived
at by the court traverses not quite so palpably the laws of
the country as the fixed laws of nature. We submitted
to our readers, rather more than a week since, the report
of a trial which had taken place a short time previous,
before the court in Edinburgh, regarding a right to the
fishing of salmon in the Frith of Dornoch, and which had
gone against the defendant. We stated further that a
similar case, involving a similar right to the fishing of sal-
mon in the Frith of Cromarty, had been tried with a similar
result a few years before. The principles of both cases
may be stated in a few words. Salmon, according to the
25
290 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
statutory laws of Scotland, may be fished for in me s^y
with wears, yairs, and other such fixed machinery ; but it-
is illegal to fish for them alter this fashion in rivers. The
statutes, however, which refer to the case are ancient and
brief, and contain no definition of what is river or what
sea. They leave the matter altogether to the natural sensa
of men. But not such the mode pursued by the Court of
Session. In its judicial capacity it can but decide that
salmon are not to be fished for in rivers after a certain
manner in which they may be fished for in the sea. In its?
legislative capacity it sets itself to say what is sea and what
river, and proves so eminently happy in its definition, that"
we are now able to enumerate among the rivers of Scotland
the Frith of Dornoch and the Frith of Cromarty. Yes,
gentle reader, it has been legally declared by that "infalli-
ble civil court" to which there lies an appeal from all the
decisions of our poor "fallible church," that Scotland pos-
sesses two rivers of considerably greater volume and
breadth than either the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi '.
Genius of Buchanan ! It is well that thou, who didst so
philosophically describe the Court of Session, didst describe
also, like a fine old poet as thou wert, the glorious bay of
Cromarty !
Some of our readers must be acquainted with the pow-
erful writing of Tacitus in his "Life of Agricola," in which
he describes the Roman galleys as struggling for the first
time with the tides and winds of our northern seas. The
wave rose sluggish and heavy to the oars of the rowers,
and they saw all around them, in the indented shores
scooped into far withdrawing arms of the sea, evidences of
its ponderous and irresistible force. Buchanan must have
had the passage in his mind when he drew the bay of Cro-
marty. He tells us how " the waters of the German Ocean,
opening to themselves a way through the stupendous cliffs
of the most lofty precipices, expand within into a spacious
basin, affording certain refuge against every tempest, and
in which the greatest navies may rest secure from winds
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 291
and waxes." The Court of Session, in the wise exercise
of its legislate functions, reverses the very hasis of this
description. The rowers of Agricola must have been mis-
erably in error: the old shrewd historian must have fallen
into a gross mistake. The Frith of Cromarty is not the
inlet of a mighty sea, ; it is merely the outlet of an incon-
siderable river. It is not an arm of the German Ocean ;
it is simply a prolongation of the Conon. Prolongation of
the Conon ! Why, we know a little of both. We have
waded a hundred times mid-leg deep across the one, and
picked up the large brown pearl mussels from the bottom
without wetting our sleeve ; we have guided our little shal-
lop a thousand times along the green depths of the other,
and have seen the long sea-line burying patch after patch,
as it hurried downwards, and downwards, and downwards,
till, far below, the lead rested in the darkness, amid shells,
and weeds, and zoophytes, rare indeed so near the shore, and
whose proper habitat is the profound depths of the ocean.
We have seen the river coming down, red in flood, with
its dark whirling eddies and its patches of yellow foam,
and then seen it driven back by the tidal wave, within
even its own banks, like a braggart overmastered and struck
down in his own dwelling. We have seen, too, the frith
agitated by storm, the giant waves dashing against its
stately portals, to the height of a hundred feet ; and where
on earth was the power that could curb or stay them?
The Frith of Cromarty a prolongation of the Conon ! Were
the Court of Session to put the Conon in its pocket, the
Frith of Cromarty would be in every respect exactly what
it is, the noble tortus Salutis of Buchanan, the wide
ocean bay, in which the whole British navy could ride at
anchor. Is it not a curious enough circumstance, that
.much about the same time in which the Court of Session,
in the due exercise of its legislative functions, stirred up
the church to rebellion, it so laid down the law with re-
spect to the Frith of Cromarty, in the exercise of exactly
the same functions, that it stirred it up to rebellion also ?
292 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
Yes, it is a melancholy fact, but it cannot be denied,
that this splended sheet of water has been in a state of
open rebellion for the last four years. In obedience to its
own ocean laws, it has been going on producing its own
ocean products, its prickly sea-urchins, its sea-anemones,
its dulce, its tangle, "its roarin' buckies," and its "dead men's
fingers;" when, like a good subject, it should have been
river-mouth to all intents and purposes, nor have ventured
on growing anything less decidedly fluviatile than a lymnea
or a cyclas, or a freshwater polypus. It has been so utterly
outrageous in some of its doings, that, albeit inclined to
mercy, we are disposed to advise the court to deal with it
somewhat closely. There might be trouble, perhaps, in
bringing it to the bar, more by a great deal than sufficed
to bring the Presbytery of Dunkeld there ; but with the
precedent of Canute on record, we do not think the court
would lower its dignity much below the present level by
just stepping northwards to rebuke it. It would be per-
haps well, too, to select as the proper time the height of a
stiff" nor'easter. For our own part, we would be extremely
happy to furnish the information necessary to convict,
whether geological or of any other kind. We can satisfac-
torily prove, that no further back than last year, this frith
gave admission, in utter contempt of court, to so vast a
body of herrings, that all its multitudinous waves seemed
as if actually heaving with life; nay, that it permitted
them, by millions and thousands of millions, to remain and
spawn within its precincts. We can prove, further, that
it suffered a plump of whales vast of back and huge of
fin to pursue after the shoal, rolling, and blowing, and
splashing the white spray against the sun ; and that it
furnished them with ample depth and ample verge for their
gambols, though the very smallest of them was larger
considerably strange as the fact may seem than the
present Dean of Faculty. Is all this to be suffered ? The
Lords of Session must assuredly either bring the rebel to
its senses, or be content to leave their own legislative
THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 293
wisdom sadly in question. For ourselves, we humbly pro-
pose that, until they make good their authority, they be
provided daily with a pail of its clear fresh water, drawn
from depths not more than thirty fathoms from the surface,
and be left, one and all, to make their toddy out of the
best of it and to keep the rest for their tea. Nothing like
river-water for such purposes, and the waters of the Conon
are peculiarly light and excellent.
XVI.
THE PEACE MEETINGS.
It is indisputable that peace societies are becoming of
importance enough to constitute one of the peculiar fea-
tures of the time. We learn from Sir Charles Lyell's
recent work of travels in the United States, that they
appear to be telling on the American mind, albeit naturally
a war-breathing mind, combative in its propensities and
fiery in its elements. The late peace meetings at Paris,
London, Birmingham, and Manchester, seem to have been
it once very largely attended and animated by the enthu-
uasm of a young and growing cause; and newspapers such
is the "Times," the " Chronicle," the "Herald," and the
l< Post," and periodicals such as the " Quarterly Review,"
evidently deem the movement, of which they are a result,
Jbrmidable enough to justify the attempt to write it down.
(t is certain, too, that the substratum of right feeling in
which the movement has originated, and which it repre-
sents in a rather exaggerated form, is vastly broader and
more extensive than the movement itself. There are
many thousands both in Britain and America, and not a
<ew in France and Germany, whose judgments maybe not
25*
294 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
at all satisfied by the expedients through which the peace
societies propose putting an end to national wars, that yet
share deeply in that general dislike of war itself which is
happily so marked a characteristic of the age.
There is nothing positively new in what may be termed
the main or central idea of the existing peace associations,
namely, adjustment of national differences by arbitration,
not arms. The true novelty presented lies in the fact that
an idea restricted in the past to but single minds should
now be operative in the minds of thousands. The reader
may find in the works of Rousseau a treatise, originated
by the Abbe de St. Pierre, but edited and remodelled by
the philosopher of Geneva, entitled a " Project for a Per-
petual Peace," in which the expedient of a great European
Court of Arbitration for national differences is elaborately
developed. We question, indeed, whether any member
of the peace societies of the present day has presented to
his fellows, or the public generally, the master idea of
these institutions in so artistic and plausible a form as
that in which it was submitted to the world by Rousseau
considerably more than eighty years ago. But though
it attracted some degree of notice among the rulers of
nations, it failed to attract anywhere the notice of the
ruled, that class of which the great bulk of nations are
composed ; nor, perhaps, are all the members of peace
societies aware how nearly it was realized at one time,
and how it yet failed entirely, notwithstanding its plausi-
bility, to work for any good purpose.
Nations can, of course, only act through their govern-
ments ; and of the European governments in the days
of Rousseau, the greater number were arbitrary in their
constitution. And in forming his Court of Arbitration,
he had of course to admit as its members, governments
represented by monarchs possessed of irresponsible power,
such as the Kings of France, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Na-
ples, and Sardinia, and the Emperors of Austria and Russia.
He had no other materials of which to form his General
THE PEACE MEETINGS. 295
Arbitration Court. Of the nineteeen European states in
his list of arbiters, twelve were despotic, and the lai-ger
half of the remainder nearly so; and yet, in order to secure
the desiderated blessing of peace, he had to lay it down as
a fundamental rule, that each state should be maintained
by all the others in its internal rights and powers, and that
its territories, at the time of the union, should be guaran-
teed to it entire. On other principles no union of gov-
ernments could have taken place. To put down war was
the object of his proposed confederation, internal as cer-
tainly as foreign war ; for of what use would a peace as-
sociation be under which there could arise such a war as
that which raged between Great Britain and its American
colonies, or between Austria and Hungary, or as that which
deluged the streets of Paris with blood ? Nay, under a
peace association composed of despotic and semi-despotic
governments, no such invasion of one country by the troops
of another could have taken place as that of England by
William III., which produced the Revolution of 1688.
Rousseau's project, if practicable, would have secured peace,
but it would have also, o" necessity, arrested progress. It
would have cursed the world with a torpid, unwholesome
quiet, a thousand times less friendly to the best interests
of humanity than that mingled state of alternate peace and
war under which, with all its disadvantages, the human
species have been slowly rising in the scale of intelligence,
and securing for themselves constitutional rights and equal
laws. Nor were there wanting men among the rulers of
the world shrewd enough to see that such was the real
character of the scheme ; and it was with rulers, not sub-
jects, that that attempt originated to which we have re-
ferred, to convert it from an idea into a fact.
A fierce and long protracted European war had just
come to a close, a war productive of greater waste of
blood and treasure than any other of modern times,
when three great monarchs met at Paris to originate a
peace society on nearly the principles of Rousseau.
296 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
These were Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, and
Frederick William of Prussia. Lord Castlereagh, as the
representative of his country, was cognizant of the prin-
ciples of the association, and warmly approved of them ;
but it was found that the forms of the British Constitution
were such as to prevent the King of England from becom-
ing a member. The document which formed the basis of
the confederation was published ; and it was found, as
might, indeed, be expected from most Christian princes, to
be of a greatly higher tone than that which marked the
project of Rousseau. It commenced with an announce-
ment of the intentions of the subscribing parties to act for
the future on the principles of the gospel, defined to be
those of justice, Christian charity, and peace. Then fol-
lowed three articles, introduced by the scriptural command
to all men to consider one another as brethren, which were
to the effect, first, that the three contracting princes should
remain united to each other by the bonds of a true and
indissoluble fraternity ; second, that they should conduct
themselves to their subjects and armies as the fathers of
families ; and, third, that all other powers should be in-
vited to join with them in the confederacy. The scheme
was hailed throughout Europe as the precursor of a
better state of things than the world had yet seen ; and
liberal politicians everywhere, and more especially in Ger-
many, were filled with the most sanguine expectations of
happy results. Most of the European princes became mem-
bers of this magnificent peace society ; and England, though
precluded from formally joining itself to it officially, in-
timated to its members that no other power could be more
inclined to act upon the principles which its fundamental
articles seemed necessarily to involve. It had its series of
congresses ; for, curiously enough, its meetings had the
same name given them as those of our present peace
associations ; and at the first of these, held at Aix-la-
Chapelle in 1818, there was prepared, and subsequently
published by its members, a declaration to the effect that
THE PEACE MEETINGS. 207
peace was its paramount object. What, asks the reader,
was the name borne by this eminently good and truly
Christian peace society ? Its name was the Holy Alliance,
a name that now stinks in the nostril ; and it was in
effect a foul and detestable conspiracy against the progress
of nations and the best interests of the human species.
But such, of necessity, must be the nature and character
of every peace association of which the members are gov-
ernments, if a majority of these be despotic. And if the
members of a peace association be not governments, they
can of course possess no powers of arbitration. In vain
may Joseph Sturge and his friends propose themselves as
arbiters in any such quarrel as that which recently took
place between Austria and the Hungarians, or between
France and Rome. The reply made to the pacific Quaker,
were there to be reply at all, would be exactly that made
by Captain Sword to Captain Pen,
" Let Captain Pen
Bring at his Lack a million men,
And I'll talk to his wisdom, and not till then ."'
And, on the other hand, if governments, we repeat, take
up the work of arbitration in such cases, governments
such as those of Russia, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, France,
Sardinia, Naples, Spain, and Portugal, and such are the
existing elements for an Arbitration Court, it is easy to
divine how the peace of the world would be preserved : it
would be preserved by the putting down of what would
be termed rebellion in Hungary, and revolution in Rome.
Often did Chalmers quote the emphatic words, "first pure,
then peaceable." And very emphatic words they are, and
singularly pregnant with meaning. They reveal why it is
that peace societies, in the present state of the world, can
produce no direct results. The nations and the govern-
ments must realize the purity ere they can rationally ex-
pect the peace. Peace under certain limitations is no
doubt a duty. " If it be possible, as much as lieth in you,"
298 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
says th 3 apostle, " live peaceably with all men." But the
qualifications of the text are very important ones, "if it
be possible" and " as much as lieth in you" so important
that they make a state of peace to be not so much a duty
to be accomplished as a gift to be received. " When a
man's ways please the Lord," said the wise king, " He mak-
eth even his enemies to be at peace with him." Nor can
peace associations alter this state of matters. They cannot
by any scheme of arbitration convert the gift simply into a
duty, seeing that if they take the existing governments as
the elements of their arbitration courts, their plan involves
of necessity merely the creation of a new Holy Alliance ;
and if, on the contrary, they propose first remodelling and
reforming the nations, so as to qualify their governments
for arbitrating j ustly, they change their nature, and become
revolution societies, of course, another name for war soci-
eties.
But, though we can thus promise ourselves no direct
results from the peace societies of the times, their indirect
results may be very important. That dislike of war which
good men have entertained in all ages, is, we are happy to
believe, a fast-spreading dislike. It was formerly enter-
tained by units and tens ; it is now cherished by thousands
and tens of thousands. And of course the more the feel-
ing grows in any country, which, like France, Britain, and
America, possesses a representative government, the less
chance will there be of these nations entering rashly into
war. France and the United States have always had their
senseless war parties. It is of importance, therefore, that
they should possess also their balancing peace parties, even
should these be well-nigh as senseless as the others. Again,
in our own country war is always the interest of a class
largely represented in both Houses of Parliament. It is of
wreat importance that they also should be kept in check,
and their influence neutralized, by a party as hostile to war
on principle as they are favorable to it from interest. We
repose very considerable confidence in the common sense
THE PEACE MEETINGS. 299
of the British people, and so have no fear that an irrational
peace party should so increase in the country as to put in
peril the national independence ; and, not fearing this, we
must hail as good and advantageous any revolution in
that opinion in which all power is founded, which bids fair
to render more rare than formerly those profitless exhibi-
tions of national warfare which the poet of the w Seasons "
so graphically describes :
" What most showed the vanity of life
Was to behold the nations all on fire,
In cruel broils engaged and deadly strife :
Most Christian kings, inflamed by black desire,
With honorable ruffians in their hire,
Cause war to wage, and blood around to pour.
Of this sad work when each begins to tire
They sit them down just where they were before.
Till for new scenes of woe peace shall their force restore."
300 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
XVII.
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE.
" The Crock of Gold," " Toil and Trial," and a " Story
of the West End," are all little works which have been
gent us for review during the last few months. " The
Crock of Gold " is a story about a poor English laborer,
who lived in a damp, unwholesome, exceedingly pictur-
esque hovel, on eight shillings per week ; " Toil and Trial "
is a story about a poor shopman and his wife, who had to
toil together in much unhappiness on the long-hour, late-
shutting-up system ; and a " Story of the West End " is a
story about two poor needle-girls, of whom one sank into
the grave under her protracted labor, and the other nar-
rowly escaped degradation and ruin. They are all inter-
esting, well-written little works ; but what we would at
present remark in incidental connection with them is that
very decided change of direction which our higher literature
has taken during the last twenty years, and more especially
during the last ten. The great-grandfathers and great-
grandmothers of the present reading public could sympa-
thize in the joys and sorrows of only kings and queens ;
and the critics of the day gave reasons why it should be so.
Humble life was introduced upon the stage, or into works
of fiction, only to be laughed at ; or so bedizzened with
the unnatural frippery of Pastoral, that the picture repre-
sented, not the realities of actual life, but merely one of
the idlest conventualities of literature. But we have lived
to see a great revolution in these matters reach almost its
culminating point. It is kings and queens, albeit subjected
to greater and more sudden revolutions than at any former
period of the world's history, that have now no place in the
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. 301
literature of fiction. We have our humbler people exhibited
instead ; and the reading public are invited to sympathize
in the sorrows and trials of aged laborers of an independent
spirit, settling down, not without many an unavailing strug-
gle, into dreaded pauperism ; overwrought artisans aveng-
ing their sufferings upon their wealthy masters ; and poor,
friendless needle-women bearing long up against the evils
of incessant toil and extreme privation, but at length
sinking into degradation or the grave. We are made ac-
quainted in tales and novels with the machinery and prin-
ciples of strike-associations and trades' unions, and intro-
duced to the firesides of earners, publicans, and porters.
There is a fashion in all such matters, that lasts but for
a time ; and what we chiefly fear is, that the present dispo-
sition on the part of the reading public to look more closely
than formerly into the state of the laboring classes, and to
take an interest in their humble stories, may be suffered to
pass away unimproved. Wherever there exists a large
demand for any species of manufacture, spurious imitations
are sure to abound ; and when the supply becomes at once
greatly deteriorated and greatly too ample, there com-
mences a period of reaction and depression. An over-
charged satiety takes the place of the previously existing
interest. It is of importance, therefore, for there are
already many spurious articles in the field, that the still
unblunted appetite should be ministered to, not by the
spurious, but by the real, and that only the true condition
and character of those classes which must always comprise
the great bulk of mankind should be exhibited to the
classes on a higher level than themselves, on whose exer-
tions in their behalf so very much must depend. Nor
would the advantage be all on one side ; both the high
and the low would be greatly the better for knowing each
other. It would tend to contract and narrow the perilous
gulf which yawns, in this and in all the other countries of
Europe, between the poor and the wealthy, were it mutually
felt, not merely coldly acknowledged, that God has made
26
302 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
them of one blood, and given to them the same sympathies
and faculties, and that the things in which they differ are
mere superficial circumstances, the effect of accident of
position. " I have long had a notion," said the late "Wil-
liam Thom, the Inverury poet, " that many of the heart-
burnings that run through the social whole spring not so
much from the distinctiveness of classes, as from their mu-
tual ignorance of each other. The miserably rich look on
the miserably poor with distrust and dread, scarcely giving
them credit for sensibility sufficient to feel their own sor-
row. That is ignorance with its gilded side. The poor,
in turn, foster a hatred of the wealthy as a sole inheritance,
look on grandeur as their natural enemy, and bend to the
rich man's rule in gall and bleeding scorn. Puppies on
the one side and demagogues on the other are the portions
that come oftenest in contact. These are the luckless
things that skirt the great divisions, exchanging all that is
offensive therein. ' Man, know thyself,' should be written
on the -right hand; and on the left, 'Men, know each
other.'" These are quaintly expressed sentences, but they
are pregnant with meaning.
It is no uninteresting matter to trace, in the various
styles of English literature, the part assigned to the people.
They cut but a poor figure in Shakspeare. The wonderful
wool-comber of Stratford-on-Avon rose from among them ;
but it would scarce have served the interests of the Globe
Theatre in those days to have ennobled, by any of the
higher qualities of head or heart, the humble peers and
associates of wool-combers ; and so, wherever the people,
as such, are introduced in his dramas, whether they be
citizens of Rome, as in " Coriolanus," or English country
folk, as in " Henry VI.," we find them represented as fickle,
unthinking, and ludicrously absurd. In the works of his
contemporary Spencer we do not find the people at all ;
but discover, instead, what for nearly two hundred years
after his time occupied their place in our literature : we
are introduced to shepherds in abundance, Hobbinols,
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. 303
Diggon Davies, and Colin Clouts, and find muclfreference
made to " huts where poor men lie ; " but it is the poor
men of the classical Pastoral, who wei*e in reality neither
poor nor men, but mere fictions of the poets, the inhab-
itants of a Utopia filled with crooks, and pipes, and gar-
lands of flowers.
There have been many criticisms on the Pastoral, some
of these by the first names in our literature, Pope, Ad-
dison, and Johnson ; but the true secret of the origin of
this, the least natural and interesting of all the depart-
ments of poetry, we have not yet seen indicated. Like the
silver mask of the veiled prophet that gleamed far amid
the darkness of the night, and yet covered a countenance
too horrible to be bared to the eye, it formed in the ancient
literature the mask that at once concealed and represented
the face of the people, a face scarred and deformed by
a cruel system of domestic slavery, and so unfit to be
uncovered. In every truly national literature the people
must be exhibited ; and if they cannot be exhibited as
they are, they must be exhibited as they are not. Hence
the pastoral poetry of Rome and Greece : it was the silver
mask of a veiled people ; and that of England and the
other nations of Europe was simply a tame imitation of it.
About the middle of the last century the Pastoral proper
died out of insanity, and the people began to be exhibited,
first in Scotland by Allan Ramsay, who, though he retained
in his exquisite drama the old pastoral outlines, looked in-
telligently around him, and, drawing his materials fresh
from among the humble class, out of which he had arisen,
gave life, and truth, and nature to the dead blank form.
It was perhaps in Scotland that the people could be first
represented as they really were. The vitalities of the na-
tional religion had already placed them on a high moral
platform, and the national scheme of education a result
of the national religion had developed their faculties as
thinking men. As the Pastoral gradually disappeared in
England, the people began to be exhibited, at first very
304 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
inadequacy and partially, but with certain lineaments of
truth. Fielding and Richardson were contemporary. The
first, a debauchee and a Bow Street magistrate, had an eye
for but what was bad and ridiculous in the popular char-
acter. If we except Joseph Andrews, a sort of male
Pamela, drawn rather to caricature Richardson than from
any sympathy with good morals and right feeling in a
humble hero, there is not one of the people whom in
his character as an artist he exhibits in his works, whom
in his character as a magistrate he would not punish as a
scoundrel. The staple of his humbler characters is vulgar
rascality. Richardson did better as a man, but not greatly
better as an artist. His Pamela is rather a picture drawn
in his back-parlor from his own imagination than an ex-
hibition of a real character, representative of any section
of the people. There is more truth in the humbler charac-
ters of Smollett ; and, though enveloped in the ridiculous,
not a few of them possess what the humbler characters of
Fielding want, right feeling and a moral sense. But
even of his own countrymen of the humbler order Smol-
lett could do little more than portray the externals : he
was ignorant of the inner life of Scotland, and of those
high principles which can impart dignity to even the poor-
est. A Bunyan or a Robert Burns would have constituted
a phenomenon beyond his conception.
It was the part of this last-named genius to assert for
the people their true place in British literature, directly,
no doubt, by many of his writings, but not less efficiently
by his life, and by the light which his biography has thrown
on his humble compeers. It is interesting to observe in
the lives of our eminent men how each brings out into
full view a group of individuals of whom we would other-
wise never have heard. Each, like the sun of a system,
possessed in himself the effulgence which renders him vis-
ible across the lapse of ages ; but that effulgence confers
visibility on not only himself, but on many an attendant
planet besides, that, save for the reflected light, would misa
LITERATURE OP THE PEOPLE. 305
being seen altogether. We see a Cowper surrounded by
the Ileskeths and Austins, the Unwins and the Johnstones ;
and a Henry Kirke White, by brothers Neville and James,
the Maddocks, the Charlesworths, and the Svvanns. The
light which Burns cast revealed the Scottish peasantry to
the literati of Britain as men of no inferior grade or stunted
proportions ; and the revelation has told upon our litera-
ture. Had there been no Burns, it is not very probable
that the philosophic hero of the " Excursion " would have
been represented as a peddler ; nay, we doubt if a man so
tinged with Toryism as Sir Walter Scott would have dared
to give, under the previous state of things, a heroine so
humble as Jeanie Deans to one of his greater productions,
or a hero of such lowly extraction as Halbert Glendinning
to another. The surprise elicited in the mind of every
intelligent man by the introduction to the Scottish people
in their true character, which the life and writings of Burns
secured, we find well expressed by Lord Jeffrey, in a crit-
ique on " Cromek's Reliques," written more than forty
years ago. " It is impossible to read the productions of
Burns," says this accomplished writer, * without forming a
higher idea of the intelligence, taste, and accomplishments
of the peasantry than most of those in the higher ranks
are disposed to entertain. Without meaning to deny that
he himself was endowed with rare and extraordinary gifts
of genius and fancy, it is evident, from the whole details
of his history, as well as from the letters of his brother,
and the testimony of Mr. Murdoch and others to the char-
acter of his father, that the whole family, and many of
their associates who have never emerged from the native
obscurity of their condition, possessed talents, and taste,
and intelligence which are little suspected to lurk in these
humble retreats. His epistles to brother poets in the rank
of farmers aud shop-keepers in the adjoining villages, the
existence of a book-society and debating-club among per-
sons of that description, and many other incidental traits
in his sketches of his youthful companions, all contribute
26*
306 POLITICAL AXD SOCIAL.
to show that not only good sense and enlightened morality,
but literature and talonts for speculation, are far more gen-
erally diffused in society than is generally imagined, and
that the delights and the benefits of these generous and
humanizing pursuits are by no means confined to those
whom leisure and affluence have courted to their enjoy-
ment. That much of this is peculiar to Scotland, and may
be properly referred to our excellent institutions for paro-
chial education, and to the natural sobriety and prudence
of our nation, may certainly be allowed; but we have no
doubt that there is a good deal of the same principle in
England, and that the actual intelligence of the lower
orders will be found there also very far to exceed the or-
dinary estimates of their superiors."
This striking passage suggests to us what we deem the
main defect of much of the modern literature in which the
working classes are represented. There is no lack of a
hearty sympathy on the part of the writers with the feel-
ings of our humbler people ; but we are sensible of a fee-
bleness of conception when they profess to grapple with
their intellect. They can appreciate the hearts, but fail
to estimate at the right value the heads, of those with
whom they have to do. And hence pictures true but in
part.
The two most remarkable men who rose from among
the people during the last century were Robert Eurns and
Benjamin Franklin; and both have left us autobiographi-
cal sketches, in which they refer to the associates of their
early days. In what terms do they speak of their capacity ?
Certainly in terms very different from what the modern
novelist or tale-writer would employ. Many of the humble
men with whom the great poet and great philosopher came
in contact were men from whom they were content to
learn. A young lady of literary taste and acquirements
would draw a female in the sphere of the authoress of the
"Pearl of Days," as perhaps a person of just views and
correct feeling ; but in describing her intellect, she would
LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. 307
of course feel necessitated to let herself down. But we
discover, when the authoress of the "Pearl of Days" takes
up the pen in her own behalf, and tells her own story, that
the young literary lady might not let herself down. She
might exercise all her own intellect in portraying that of
her heroine, and not find the stock over-great. In like
manner, were a modern tale-writer to describe a good
weaver,- forced by lack of employment to quit his comfort-
less home, and cast himself with his wife and children upon
the cold charity of the world, he might bestow upon him
keen sensibilities, a depressing sense of degradation, and a
feeling of shame ; but his thoughts on the occasion would
scarce fail to partake of the poverty of his circumstances.
When, however, the weaver Tom tells exactly such a story
of himself, not as a piece of fiction, but as a sad truth
burnt into his memory, we find the keen sensibility and
the sense of shame united to thinking of great power,
heightened in effect by no stinted measure of the poetic
faculty.
Now, from our knowledge of such cases, and from
a felt want, in our modern fictitious narratives, of what
we shall term the inner life of the working classes, what
we would fain recommend is, that the working classes
should themselves tell their own stories. A series of auto-
biographies of working-men, produced, like the Sabbath
Essays, on the competition principle, and rendered, by
judicious selection, representative of the various manual
trades of the country and its several districts, would form
one of perhaps the most valuable, and certainly not least
interesting, "Miscellanies," which the enterprise of the
" Trade " has yet given to the country. It would consti-
tute, too, a contribution to the domestic history of the
period, the importance of which could not be very easily
over-estimated. It were well, surely, that the appetite
which exists for information regarding the true state and
feelings of the working classes should be satisfied with
other than mere pictures of the imagination. A series of
308 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.
cheap volumes, such as we desiderate, would furnish many
an interesting glimpse into the lives of the laboring poor,
and deepen the interest in their welfare already so gen-
erally felt. And we are sure the scheme, if attempted by
some judicious bookseller, would scarce fail to remunerate.
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
I.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.
FIRST ARTICLE.
The Exhibition closed upon Saturday last; and one of
the most marvellous and instructive sights which the world
ever saw now survives only as a great recollection, as a
lesson unique in the history of the species, which has been
fairly given, but which, upon the same scale at least, we
need scarce hope to see repeated. I spent the greater part
of last week amid its long withdrawing aisles and galleries,
and, without specially concentrating myself on any one set
of objects, artistic or mechanical, set my thoughts loose
among the whole, to see whether they could not glean up
for future use a few general impressions, better suited to
remain with me than any mere recollections of the partic-
ular and the minute. The memory lays fast hold of the
sum total in an important calculation, and retains it; but
of all the intermediate sums employed in the work of reduc-
tion or summation it takes no hold whatever ; and so, in
most minds, on a somewhat similar principle, general results
are remembered, while the multitudinous items from which
they are derived fade into dimness and are forgotten.
Like every other visitor, I was first impressed by the
great building which spanned over the whole, having ample
310 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
room in its vast areas for at once the productions of a world
and the population of a great city. I was one of a hundred
and eight thousand persons who at once stood under its
roof; nor, save at a few. points, was the pressure incon-
veniently great. If equally spread over the building, all
the present population of Edinburgh could, without the
displacement of a single article, have found ample standing
room within the walls. And yet this greatest of buildings
did not impress me as great. In one point at least, where
the airy transept raises its transparent arch seventy feet
over the floor, and the sunlight from above sported freely
amid the foliage of the imprisoned trees and on the play
of crystal fountains, it struck me as eminently beautiful :
but the idea which it conveyed everywhere else was
simply one of largeness, not of greatness. There are but
two great ideas in the architecture of the world, the
Grecian idea and the Gothic idea ; and though both de-
mand for their full development a certain degree of magni-
tude, without which they sink into mere models, very
ample magnitude is not demanded. York Minster and
St. Paul's united would scarce cover one fourth the space
occupied by the Crystal Palace, and yet they are both
great buildings, and it is not. Hercules, the son of the
most potent of the gods, was great ; whereas the earthborn
giants that he conquered and slew were simply bulky.
And in woi'ks of art so much depends, in like manner, on
lineage, that things of plebeian origin, however large they
may eventually become, rarely if ever attain to greatness.
Two or three centuries ago, some lover of flowers and
shrubs bethought him of shielding his more delicate plants
from the severity of the climate by a small glass-frame,
consisting of a few panes. In course of time, the idea em-
bodied in the frame expanded into a moderate-sized hot-
house, then into a green-house of considerably larger size,
then into a tall palm-house ; and, last of all, an ingenious
gardener, bred among groves of exotics protected by huge
erections of glass and iron, and familiar with the necessity
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 311
of adding to the size of a case as the objects which it had
to contain multiplied or were enlarged, bethought him of
expanding the idea yet further into the Crystal Palace of
the Exhibition. And such seems to be the history and
lineage of perhaps the largest of all buildings: it is simply
an expansion of the first glass-frame that covered the first
few delicate flowers transplanted from a warmer to a colder
climate, and, notwithstanding its imposing proportions, is
as much a mere case as it was. And were its size to be
doubled, if, instead of containing two hundred miles of
sash-bars and nine hundred thousand superficial feet of
glass, it were stretched out so as to contain four hundred
miles of bars and eighteen hundred thousand feet of glass,
it would be of course a larger building than it is, but not a
greater. Nay, I should perhaps rather remark that it would
be impossible by addition to render it not only more, but
even less great than it is, in itself a mark of inferiority.
To a truly great building it would be impossible to add ;
for unity, as a whole, forms the very soul of all great edifices.
He would be a bold man who would attempt making a
single addition to St. Paul's, one tower more would ruin
it; whereas the length or breadth of a railway terminus may
be increased ad infinitum, without in the least affecting its
unity or proportions ; for the railway terminus is also a
mere case, and its unity and proportions bear reference to
but the rule of convenience, which directs that it should
be made quite large enough to hold what it had been
erected to shelter. It is ill, I may add, with an architec-
ture, of what at least ought to be the higher kind, when it
is found to come under this law of the lower. I was sorry
to observe that the singularly ornate pile which contains
the new Houses of Parliament, now nearly finished, could,
like the glass palace or a railway terminus, and very unlike
either St. Paul's or York Minster, be made either twice as
long as it is now, or shorter by one half, without rendering
it either a better building or a worse.
Once fairly entered within the edifice, the objects first
312 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
singled out by the eye were a few noble statues, such as the
Greek Slave and the Amazon and Tiger ; nor was it until
these works of genius were scanned that the humbler works
of mere talent and art succeeded in forcing themselves on
the attention. And yet these last served to show much
more definitely the actual stage of progress at which the
nations that produced them had arrived than the higher
order of works. When genius is the artist, the goal is
soon reached ; whereas talent labors slowly. Genius, too,
can work very much alone, and bid, as Johnson expresses
it, " help and hinderance alike vanish before it ; " whereas
talent requires the assistance of a thousand coadjutors.
And so we find that genius, laboring in ancient Greece
greatly more than two thousand years ago, produced its
statues and its architecture, its orations, its history, and
its poetry, to be models and patterns to the world through-
out all after ages. But the world at the time was too
much in its infancy to excel in works of talent ; aud so
Greece, even when erecting the Parthenon, or sculpturing
the figures on its frieze, could not have built and furnished
a single ship of the line, or raised such a palace of glass
and iron as that of Mr. Paxton. I found, however, that in
works of genius, as certainly as of talent, what may be
properly termed the civilized nations of the world inarch
abreast of each other in nearly the same line, not serially
in file ; and it is one of the advantages of the Exhibition
that it should teach this lesson. The United States of
America, France, Austria, Northern Germany, Denmark,
Italy and Sardinia, England and Scotland, are all laboring
in nearly the same arts, artistic and mechanical, and pro-
ducing nearly the same results. Their inhabitants are
intellectually of like stature, and similarly trained, a fact
which national pride, schooled in the Exhibition, will now
scarce venture to deny, and which, we are disposed to
think, the English people will be much the better for know-
ing ; seeing that to undervalue a competitor or opponent
is one of the most certain ways possible to secure defeat,
IMPRESSIONS OP THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 318
and to form a correct estimate of him one of the most effec-
tual means of avoiding it.
It was interesting enough to read, in the extent of some
manufactures all over the world, as shown in the various
departments of the Exhibition, a chronicle of their great
antiquity. Tried by this test, the art of the weaver seemed
to be the most ancient ; it was, in at least this display of
human industry, the most widely diffused. With the ex-
ception of a few barbarous islands, where a kind of coarse
paper, or animal skins, or the layers of vegetable tissue,
form an imperfect substitute for cloth, every nation pre-
sented for examination its textile fabrics, very diverse ir*
pattern in most instances, but constructed on the same
mechanical principles, and ornamented, if not in the same
style, at least by the same arts. That quality of thread,
for instance, of reflecting light according to the disposi-
tion of its fibres and to the angle in which it is viewed,
which forms the foundation of the style of ornament em-
ployed in damask, and in so many other fabrics, seems to
be known all over the world, in China, with its insulated
and far-distant centre of civilization on the one hand, as
certainly as in America on the other ; and in all countries
the same arts have been employed to make this quality
paint without color the surface of the fabric. It is now
more than three thousand years since the patriarch Job
compared the short life of man to the swift and brief flight
of a weaver's shuttle. Judging from what appears in the
Exhibition, it seems not improbable that weavers' shuttles,
and this simple art of painting by light without the aid of
chemistrj r , may have been spread all over the world at the
dispersal of mankind from before the great tower. And it
seemed quite curious enough to reflect, that in this world's
other great building the nations should have assembled for
the first time, to show whether and to what extent they had
been improving the talent, or whether, like a few of the
barbarous tribes, they had not sunk into utter degradation
and buried it in the earth. In passing along through this-
27
314 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC
textile department, one of the most largely represented
in the Exhibition, it was interesting to mark the differ-
ent ideas that had been superadded from certain countries
to the original stock. The Jacqxiard idea seemed one of
the most important ; and we find that, with the potency
of a true idea, it has spread all over Europe and America.
The other great idea in this department is of such recent
origin, that we found it well-nigh still restricted to its
original centre of production. We refer to the invention
of our fellow-citizen Mr. Richard Whytock, of barring the
threads across in the state of yarn, according to a nice
calculation, with varying stripes of color, and of then form-
ing them, by simply committing them to the loom, into
rich patterns, that grow up under the workman's hand he
scarce knows how. The rich magnificence of the pieces
exhibited a magnificence that, in at least their immedi-
ate neighborhood, threw all competition into the shade
demonstrated the happiness of the idea, and its unique-
ness in the Exhibition, though occurring in one of the
oldest of arts, its great originality.
One of the next things that struck, in the general survey,
was the tendency of all the merely ornamental ideas pre-
sented in the Exhibition to arrange themselves in the mind,
irrespective of the dates of their production, into modern
and ancient. The semi-barbarous and the civilized nations
are contemporary ; the workmen who produced the fabrics
or jewellery of China and of Tunis are as certainly living
men, still engaged in the production of more, as the work
men of France or of England ; and yet their works bea>
the stamp of antiquity ; while those of the civilized na-
tions, save where, in a few cases, a false taste has led to .i
retrograde movement, bear the true modern air. They are
things, not of the past, but of the present. Not a few of
the ideas which they embody are absolutely old : their
sculpture is formed on the old model of Greece, their
architectural ideas are either Grecian or Gothic ; and yet,
though associations and recollections of the ancient do
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 315
mix themselves np with the later style, we feel that, unlike
the semi-barbarous productions of the less civilized nations,
they are not old-fashioned, but new. In one sense, new
and true, old and false, are evidently convertible terms.
A false idea in art always becomes old ; while a true idea
lives on, and bears about it the freshness of youth. The
false idea is consigned to the keeping of but the antiquary ;
whereas civilized man, as such, becomes the depository of
the true one ; and in his countless reproductions it con-
tinues to bear about it the fresh gloss of youth. And at
length, with even the recent, if false, we come to associate
ideas of the obsolete and the old. I was much struck, in
the mediaeval department of the Exhibition, a depart-
ment which we owe to Puseyism, by the large amount
of the false in art which this superstition has been the
means of calling back from its grave. The Gothic archi-
tecture is true, one, as we have already said, of the two
great architectural ideas of the world. But the Gothic
sculpture and the Gothic painting are both false ; and
Puseyism has, with the nonsense and false doctrine of the
middle ages, been restoring both the false painting and the
false sculpture. The grotesque figures gaudily stained
into glass, or grimly fretted into stone, harmonized well
with tall candles of beeswax and cotton wick, to light
which is worship, and with snug little cages of metal, into
which priests put their god when they have made him
out of a little dried batter. We are told that James VII.
strove hard to convert his somewhat unscrupulous favorite,
the semi-infidel Sheffield, to Popery. " Your Majesty must
excuse me," said the courtier : " I have at length come to
believe that God made man, which is something; but I
cannot believe that man, to be quits with his Maker, turns
round and discharges the obligation by making God." In
such a display of human faculty as the Great Exhibition, the
strangely-expressed feeling of Sheffield must surely have
come upon many a visitor of the mediaeval apartment.
What man is, how glorious in intellect, how rich in
316 LITERACY AND SCIENTIFIC.
genius, and how powerful in his control over the blind
forces of nature, was manifested, in by much the larger
part of the Exhibition, in a manner in which none present
had ever seen it manifested before. And what then must
be the character and standing of that Great Being by
whom man was created ? Under the ample roof, however,
there were here and there grotesque corners filled with
the false and the old-fashioned ; and, curiously enough,
there were posted in these grotesque corners, as specimens
of human workmanship, false, old-fashioned gods, gods
with paunch bellies, and gods with bloated, negro-like faces,
and gods with from fourteen to twenty hands and arms
apiece ; and here, in yet one other grotesque corner, amid
a false sculpture, we found copes, and albs, and painted
candles seven feet high, and little cages for holding what
the early reformers termed the " bread-god," which priests
manufacture. Here, as in the other idolatrous apartments,
false, old-fashioned arts were associated with a false, old-
fashioned religion, and both wore alike on their foreheads
the stamp of mortality and decay.
Popery, however, had, I found, one grand advantage
over Puseyism in its use of art. With Puseyism all was
restoration from a barbarous age, that possessed only one
true artistic idea among many false ones ; whereas Po-
pery, on the other hand, had availed itself of art in all its
stages; and so all its artistic ideas were the best and truest
of their respective ages. When a Michel Angelo appeared,
it forthwith adopted the sculpture of a Michel Angelo ;
when a Raphael appeared, it forthwith adopted the paint-
ing of a Raphael. Instead of perpetuating an obsolete
fashion in its trinkets and jewels, it set its Benvenuto
Cellini to model and set them anew; nay, in Italy, sur-
rounded by noble fragments of the old classic architecture,
it broke off its associations with the Gothic, and erected
its fairest temples in the old Vitruvian symmetry, under
the eye of a Palladio. This great difference between the
two churches was most instructively shown in the portion
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 317
of the Exhibition devoted to the display of stained glass.
The English contributions, manufactured for the Puseyite
market, abounded in ugly saints and idiotical virgins,
flaming in tasteless combinations of gaudy color ; whereas
in much of the stained glass contributed by the popish
countries of the Continent the style is exquisitely RapTi-
aelesque. But I cannot better describe the difference be-
tween the two schools than in the admirable pictures of
Warton, with which, as representative of the wisdom of
Popery in its generation, compared with the folly of Pu-
seyism, we for the present conclude. It is of the mediaeval
style that the poet speaks :
"Ye brawny prophets, that, in robes so rich.
At distance due possess the crisped niche;
Te saints, who, clad in crimson's bright array,
More pride than humble poverty display;
Ye virgins meek, that wear the palmy crown
Of patient faith, and yet so fiercely frown;
Ye angels, that from clouds of gold recline,
But boast no semblance to a race divine ;
Shapes that with one broad glare the gazer strike;
Kings, bishops, nuns, apostles, all alike;
No more the sacred window's round disgrace,
But yeld to Grecian groups the opening space.
* * * *
And now I view, instead, the chaste design,
The just proportion, and the genuine line;
Those native portraitures of Attic art,
That from the lucid surface seem to start;
The doubtful radiance of contending dyes,
That faintly mingle, yet distinctly rise
'Twixt light and shade; the transitory strife,
The feature blooming with immortal life;
The stole, in causal foldings taught to flow,
Not with ambitious ornaments to glow;
The tread majestic, and the beaming eye,
That, lifted, speaks its commerce with the sky;
Heaven's golden emanation, gleaming mild
O'er tht? mean cradle of the virgin's child.
* * *
27*
SI 8 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Thy powerful hand has broke the Gothic chain,
And brought the bosom back to tro again,
To truth, by no peculiar taste confined,
Whose universal pattern strikes ma. "kind."
SECOND ABTICLE.
I found the various articles of the Exhibition ranged
under the four great heads of raw materials, manufactures,
machinery, and the fine arts. In the first department
I saw the stuff, whether furnished by the buwels of the
earth or produced on its surface, on which man has to
work ; in the second, that into which, for purposes of use
or of ornament, he succeeds in fashioning it ; in the third,
his various most ingenious modes of making dead matter
his fellow-laborer and slave in the task of moulding the
stubborn materials into shape and form ; and in the fourth,
his strainings after something higher than mere utility, and
his wonderful ability of creating a perfection in form and
expression greater than that which he finds in living na-
ture. I could have wished that into this last department
fine pictures, as certainly as fine statues, had been admis-
sible. The display of either was not properly the object
of the Great Exhibition ; and yet it would have been
incomplete without them. From the two sister arts,
those of the painter and of the statuary, all that im-
parted elegance and beauty to the labors of the manufac-
turer had been derived. The workers in wood, stone, and
metal had borrowed their delicate sculpturings from the
statuary ; the workers in silk and thread, in clay and in
glass, in dyes and in paints, in japans and in varnishes,
had borrowed their choicest patterns from the painter;
all that added beauty to comfort in the implements and
appliances of a high civilization had been derived from the
twin arts ; they had thrown, as if by reflection, the flush of
IttR^SSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 319
gen t> on the common and ordinary things of life ; I saw
their vivid impress at almost every stall ; and as sculpture
was present in some of her higher productions, I hold that
painting in some of her higher productions should have
been present also, as that other art which, in the staple
productions of tne Exhibition, had added beauty to com-
fort, and the exquisite and the ideal to the common and
the ordinary.
In examining the raw materials furnished by the various
countries of the world, some of them many thousand miles
apart, what first struck was the great uniformity of character
and appearance which prevailed among the sections devoted
to mineral and mining products, and the great diversity
which marked tne animal and vegetable ones. Whatever
was furnished by the primary rocks bore almost the same
character all over the world. The granites and porphyries
of the southern hemisphere differed in no respect from those
of the northern one ; or the iron, lead, and copper ores of
the Old World from those of the New. Even specimens
sent by one state or kingdom as marvels from their size or
purity, were in most cases tally matched by specimens of
the same kind sent by some other state or kingdom thou-
sands of miles apai't. Russia, for instance, furnished plates
of mica a full foot across ; but then the United States did
the same ; and a mass of virgin copper from Massachusetts,
which weighed two thousand five hundred and forty-four
pounds, was more than matched by a block of similar cop-
per from Trenanze in Cornwall, which weighed only two
thousand five hundred pounds, but was merely a portion
of a mass fifty superficial feet in extent, of so much greater
weight that it could not be raised entire out of the mine.
The frequent occurrence of copper in a virgin that is,
pure and malleable state, among the ores of the world,
as presented to view in the Exhibition, threw light on the
place which the bronze age holds in the chronology of the
antiquary. Its place is always second to the age of stone.
All the iron ores exhibited existed as mere stones. If a
320 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
bit of virgin iron be here and there occasionally found,
the chemist ascertains that, unlike any of the iron of earth,
it is mixed with nickel and chrome, and concludes that it
came as a meteorolite from heaven ; for it is still doubtful
whether there be properly any virgin iron on earth which
the earth itself has pi-oduced ; at least, if it at all exists,
it is a greatly rarer substance than gold. And iron in the
stony state is a much less eligible substance for tool or
weapon making than ordinary stone. But virgin copper
is greatly superior to either flint or jasper in at least duc-
tility ; and such is its purity, that the savage who found
the first mass of it in the rock could beat it out into a
sword or spear-head, with simply one stone for his anvil
and another for his hammer. In every country of the
world in which copper is to be found at all, the copper or
bronze age is found to have come immediately after that
of stone, and in advance of that of iron. That resem-
blance borne among themselves by the mineral productions
of the earth in all countries, which the Exhibition made
so sti'ikingly manifest, has been remarked both by Hum-
boldt and by Captain Basil Hall. " Humboldt," says the
latter writer, in his voyage to Loo Choo, " somewhere re-
marks the wonderful uniformity which obtains in the rocks
forming the crust of the globe, and contrasts this regularity
with the diversity prevailing in every other branch of
natural history. The truth of this remark was often for-
cibly impressed upon our notice during the present voyage
for. wherever we went, the vegetable, the animal, and the
moral kingdom, if I may use such an expression, were dis-
covered to be infinitely varied : even the aspect of the
skies was changed ; and new constellations and new cli-
mates cooperated to make us sensible that we were far
from home. But on turning our eyes to the rocks upon
which we were standing, we instantly discovered the most
exact resemblance to what we had seen elsewhere."
There were, however, a few centres to be found in this
Exhibition of the world's industry, where the production
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 821
of some mineral in larger and finer masses than it had beeK
detected elsewhere, among at least the civilized nations,
had originated some branch of art or manufacture unique
in the show. Of this, perhaps the most striking example
was furnished by the Kussian department, where the mal-
achite furniture and ornaments, wholly unlike aught dis-
played in any other section, were of the most gorgeous
and impressive beauty. A few specimens of the material
in its rude state lay on a table beside the wrought articles,
and were certainly of much greater size and mass than
any specimens of the mineral which I had hitherto seen in
any collection. One fragment seemed about a foot square
on its larger surface, and from six to eight inches in depth.
Malachite is one of the ores of copper. It consists of from
fifty to sixty per cent, of that metal, combined with oxygen,
carbonic acid gas, and water, in the solid form ; it may, in
fine, be regarded as a green verdigris, hardened by its union
with the gases into a compact marble, susceptible of a
fine polish, and occurring usually in cavities in the stalac-
titical or botryoidal form. Its color internally is found to
vary from darker to lighter, as in most stalactites, in gi-ace-
ful lines parallel to its lines of surface, and that speak, in
those flowing curves, of aqueous deposition. The worker
in malachite cuts it up into thin veneers, which, according
to the nature of his work, he lays down upon a ground
either of stone or of metal, taking care that the curve of
one fragment merges gracefully into the curves of the
neighboring ones ; and thus large and apparently contin-
uous planes of the substance are formed, as in tables,
chimney-pieces, and doors ; or it is curved and hollowed
so as to wrap round noble vases bordered with gold, or
even wrought into ornately carved chairs. The beauty of
the articles thus produced is so great that they formed
one of the centres of the Exhibition, upon which the liv-
ing tide constantly set in ; but their great cost must
restrict their use to what their exquisite beauty peculiarly
fits them to grace, the palaces of princes and the man-
322 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
sions of nobles. One magnificent door of this substance,
which from top to bottom looked like an opaque emerald,
was valued, we understood, at about ten thousand pounds
sterling.
The vegetable and animal substances exhibited under
the head of raw materials formed a marked contrast, in
their great diversity, to the mining and mineral products.
In the colonial department, almost every climate and zone
sent specimens of its plants and trees, its mammals, rep-
tiles, fishes, and birds ; and the variety was of course very
great. There were, however, a few of the mineral pro-
ducts of the latter geological ages that came under the
same law of diversity as that which obtained among the
plants, and animals. Coal and the coal plants, judging
from the specimens, seem to bear well-nigh the same char-
acter all over the world, and to be spread very widely in
each hemisphere ; but amber, the fossilized resin of an ex-
tinct species of pine, seems very much restricted, like some
of our existing pines, to a European centre ; and though
there were specimens in the Exhibition furnished from va-
rious European localities, among the rest, from the Nor-
folk coast, all the finer and larger specimens came, we
found, from Northern Germany, and in especial from the
southern coast of the Baltic. In the glass case of one ex-
hibitor, beautiful pieces of amber, dug out of the ground,
lay side by side with fragments of the fossil pine (pinus
succinifer, which had produced it ; in another there were
large masses which had been cast up by the sea, of a quality
so fine that similar masses have been sold at the rate of a
hundred dollars per pound weight ; in yet another case
there were specimens of the various implements and orna-
ments into which amber is formed, and which rendered it
of old, and in some degree still, an important article of
commerce ; and in yet another and vastly more interesting
case still, had one but the time and opportunity necessary
to observation, there was a set of specimens of amber se-
lected for the sake of the organisms, vegetable and animal,
IMPRESSIONS OF THE GKEAT EXHIBITION. 323
which they contained, and which had taken so said the
catalogue twenty-rive years to collect. It is a curious
circumstance, that naturalists have now discovered in this
substance fossilized fragments of forty-eight different spe-
cies of shrubs and trees, and no fewer than eight hundred
different species of insects. We looked with no little re-
spect on the various specimens of amber furnished by the
Exhibition, as of great interest to the geologist, from the
circumstance that it has formed the best of all matrices for
the preservation of the minuter organisms of the later ter-
tiary periods ; and of great interest to the historian, from
the circumstance that it was the means of first awakening
the commercial spirit in northern Europe, and of inducing
the equalizing tides of civilization to set in from the shores
of the genial Mediterranean to those of the frozen Baltic.
In the vegetable department, though the intertropical
colonies sent their splendid exotics, and the woods, roots
and plants of the New World contended with those of the
Indian Archipelago and the southern hemisphere, I saw
nothing that at all equalled in completeness the collection
of the Messrs. Lawson of Edinburgh. It consists of all
plants, seeds, and trees which are reared in Scotland for
the use of man ; and, interesting at all times, it would
have formed, had it been made in the last age, one of the
best possible apologetic defences for Scotland against the
gibes of the English. "Do you ever bring the sloe to per-
fection in your country?" inquired Johnson, in one of his
merrier moods, of the obsequious Boswell. The Messrs.
Lawson show most conclusively that we bring to perfection
a great deal more. We find it stated that the making of
their collection cost them about two thousand pounds ster-
ling, evidence enough of itself that the vegetable pro-
ductions of Scotland useful for food and in the arts cannot
be few. There are many Scotchmen, and in especial Scotch
women, who complain of the climate of their country.
I dare say it must have occurred to some of them, amid
the beautiful specimens of the Messrs. Lawsons' collection,
324 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC,
that the wonder is, not that the climate of Scotland should
be occasionally severe, but that in the average it should be
so mild and genial. There is not another country in the
world lying between the fifty-fifth and fifty-ninth degreed of
latitude, whether in the northern or southern hemisphere,
that could mature one-half the productions exhibited by
the Messrs. Lawson. On the American coast, under the
same degrees, the isothermal line is that of the north of
Iceland ; the ground always remains frozen hard as a rock
to the depth of a few feet from the surface ; and as the
winter sets in, the sea forms into a continuous cake of ice
along the shores. The lines of latitude fairly taken into
account, we challenge for Scotland the finest climate and
the most productive soil in the world. And yet, at a time
comparatively recent to the geologist, though, of course,
removed beyond the historic period, the case was widely
different. The scratched and polished rocks of the Pleis-
tocene period, its moraines and travelled stones, its drift
gravels, its boulder clays, and its semi-arctic shells, testify
to an age of ice and snow, of local glaciers and drifting
icebergs, in which not a tithe of the vegetable productions
exhibited by the Messrs. Lawson could have been reared
in Scotland. I am glad to learn that this interesting col-
lection, so honorable to the skill and industry of the collec-
tors, and which so thoroughly bears out the deductions of
science regarding the isothermal conditions of Scotland,
is to be transferred entire to the horticultural museum at
Kew Gardens.
In the exhibition of birds and beasts, which came in part
under the head of materials derived from the animal king-
dom, and in part illustrated the art of the animal-stuffer,
I saw some cabinets of rare interest ; but I could fain have
wished that the general section had been more complete.
Such a collection of the birds, fishes, and quadrupeds of
Scotland as that which the Messrs. Lawson exhibited of its
plants would have well repaid the study of days. Nor, of
course, would less of interest have attached to the animals
IMPRESSIONS OF TIIE GREAT EXHIBITION. 325
of other countries, with their rivers and seas. I saw one
tastefully-arranged case of stuffed birds from the wild west
coast of Assynt, and recognized in the name of the exhibitor,
Mr. W. Dunbar, an intelligent naturalist resident at Loch
Inver, whose freely communicated stores of knowledge
occupy, though not always with the due acknowledgment,
a large space in a popular work on Sutherlandshire. His
case contained chiefly the game-birds of the county, which
might be regarded either as the raw material which our
sporting gentlemen convert into food at the very moder-
ate cost, when they are eminently successful in the process,
of about thirty pounds sterling per stone ; or, a more pleas-
ing view, as adequately representative of an important
portion of the natural history of the county. Nothing could
be more perfectly life-like or natural than these stuffed birds
of Mr. Dunbar. The great achievement presented by the
Exhibition, however, in this department, was furnished by
a German State. On no one object under the vast crystal
roof, not even on the Kohinoor itself, did a greater tide
of visitors set in, whether on shilling or on half-crown days,
than on what were known, though not so entered in the
official catalogue, as " The Comical Creatures of Wurtem-
burg." The catalogue simply bore that Herman Ploucquet,
preserver of objects of natural history at the Royal Mu-
seum of Stuttgardt, had contributed to the show " groups
of stuffed animals and birds, nests of birds of prey, hawks
pouncing upon owls," etc., etc. ; and certainly nothing could
be more natural and true than these groups. They were
made to represent, with all the energy of life, the scenes so
frequently enacted in the animal world. It was not, how-
ever, to the purely natural that the Exhibition owed its
interest, but to the introduction of an idea long familiar to
the poet and the fabulist, and which painting and sculp-
ture, in at least some of their humble departments, have
borrowed from literature, but which, to at least the bird
and animal stuffer, seems to be new. Most of Mr. Plouc-
quet's groups, though animals are the actors, represent
28
326 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
scenes, not of animal, but of human life. The " Batracho-
maomachia" of Homer, in which frogs and mice enact the
part of the heroes of the Trojan war, and " make an Iliad
of a day's campaign," furnished merriment to the old Greeks.
^Esop and his numerous imitators followed in the same
wake ; until at length the representation of men under the
forms, and bearing the characters of animals, became one
of the commonest of literary ideas. And from literature it
found its way, as we have said, into painting and sculpture.
But the introduction of the animals themselves into such
scenes seems to be anew, and, judging from the great pop-
ularity of Ploucquet's figures, a most successful idea. It
is interesting, and really not uninstructive, to mark how
thoroughly the animal physiognomy can be made to express
at least the lower passions and more earthy moods of the
human subject. One of the stories illustrated by the in-
genious German is an eminently popular one on the Con-
tinent, that of Reynard the Fox. " Among the people,"
says Carlyle, " it was long a house-book and universal best
companion. It has been lectured on in universities, quoted
in imperial council-halls, lain on the toilets of princes, and
been thumbed to pieces on the bench of artisans." Rey-
nard bears, of course, in the story, his character of consum-
mate cunning and address ; and in the opening scene, where
a bona fide fox is introduced, lolling at his ease on a sofa,
with his hind legs set across, his tail issuing from between
them and curled jauntily round his left fore-paw, and his
head reclining upon his right, there is an expression of cool,
calculating cunning, as strongly, we had almost said aa
artistically marked, as in the Lovat or the John Wilkes
of Hoo arth.
CRITICISM FOIv THE UNINITIATED. 327
II.
CRITICISM FOE THE UNINITIATED.
FIRST ARTICLE.
We have just been spending a few hours for the first
time among the pictures of the Exhibition of the Royal
Scottish Academy, and spending them very agreeably. A
good picture is inferior in value to only a good book ; and
in one important respect at least bad ones are better than
inferior books, seeing one can determine their true charac-
ter at scarce any expense of time. There are no second
and third pages to turn after perusing the first ; and if there
be nothing to strike or nothing to please, this negative
quality of the piece, as fatal surely to a picture as to a book,
is discovered at a cost proportioned to its value. The con-
noisseur, like the critic, has his rules of art and his vocab-
ulary ; but though some eyes are doubtlessly more prac-
tised than others, and some judgments better informed, I
do not deem the art itself of very difficult attainment. To
please is the grand end of the painter ; and he can attain
his object in only two different ways, by either a close
imitation of the objects he represents, or by the choice of
objects interesting in themselves. Now, it needs no art
whatever to decide whether or no he has succeeded in the
first and simpler department, the faithful representation
of what he intended to delineate. The birds that pecked
at the grapes of the ancient painter ; the countryman who
attempted to scale the painted flight of stairs ; the artist
who stretched his hand to draw aside the well-simulated
curtain which seemed to half-conceal the work of his rival,
all these were equally skilful judges. Even the decision
328 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
of the birds themselves was such a decision as no connois-
seur would have dared dispute; and many an ingenious
piece of criticism has the memory of it survived. In the
same way, the mastiff who came running up to his master's
portrait wagging his tail was a perfectly qualified judge
of its fidelity. The other department of the art r the
choice of subjects requires higher qualities in the con-
noisseur ; but it is not exclusively in picture-galleries that
his skill is to be acquired. Nay, I am mistaken if it may
not be acquired outside of the picture-gallery altogether,
and in utter ignorance of the technicalities of the art. Take
landscape, for instance. Who can doubt that Shenstone,
who had of all men the most exquisite eye for the real
scenes of nature, must have had an eye equally exquisite
for those very scenes when transferred to canvas ? He
was more than a great connoisseur: he was also a great
artist, an artist who dealt in realities exclusively, and
planted his thickets and formed his waterfalls with all
the exquisite perception and inventive originality of high
genius. No one can suppose that Shenstone's taste and
skill would not have served him in as good stead amid a
collection of pictures as at Hagley or in the Leasowes;
or that, however unskilled in the connoisseur's vocabulary,
he would have proved other than a first-rate connoisseur.
The "poet's lyre," says Cowper, "must be the poet's
heart ; " he must feel warmly before he can express strongly.
I suppose nearly the same remark may be applied both to
the painter and the men best qualified to appreciate the
pointer's productions. An intense feeling of the beautiful
and a nice perception of it invariably go together ; and.
unless a person has experienced this feeling, in the first
instance, amid the delights of the original nature, there is
no virtue in rules or phrases to convey it to him from the
painter's copy. I am not aware that Professor Wilson
knows anything of these rules or phrases. Certain I am,
however, that this master of gorgeous description, who
makes the reader more than see the scene he paints, for he
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 329
makes him feel it too, must have an exquisite eye for land-
scape, whether it be on or off canvas. He is one of the
born connoisseurs. And what this man of genius possesses
in so great a degree is possessed as really, though in im-
mensely varied gradations, by almost all. Akenside de-
scribes the untaught peasant lingering delighted amid the
glories of a splendid sunset, intensely happy, and yet
scarcely able to say why. Assuredly that same peasant
would be quite qualified to distinguish between a daub and
a fine picture. Imagine him passing homeward, after " his
long day's labor," in one of those exquisite evenings of
early June that live with a " sunshiny freshness in mem-
ory," as Shelley finely expresses it, long after they have
passed. There is a splendid drapery of clouds in the west,
tinted by those hues of heaven which can be fully expressed
by neither the words nor the colors of earth, those hues
of exquisite glory of gold, and flame, and pearl, and
amber which the prophets describe as encircling the
chariot of Deity. The sun rests in the midst, less fiercely
bright than when he looked down from the middle heavens,
but dilated apparently in size, and more glorious to the
conception, because more accessible to the eye. The land-
scape below is soft and pastoral. There is a dim undulat-
ing line of blue hills on the one hand, and the far-off sea
on the other. A light, fleecy cloud hangs over the distant
village, and seems a bar of pale silver relieved against the
wooded hill behind. A lonely burying-ground, surrounded
by ancient trees, and with the remains of an old time-shat-
tered edifice rising in the midst, occupies the foreground.
We see the white tombstones glittering to the sun, and the
alternate bars of light and shadow that mark more dimly
the sepulchral ridges of yellow moss which rise so thickly
over the sward ; while beyond, on the side of a wide-
spreading acclivity, there is a quiet scene of fields, and
hedgerows, and clumps of wood, with here and there a
group of white cottages, all basking in the red light. And
mark the loiterer, one of the intellectual peasants of our
28*
3^0 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
own country, a well-selected specimen of the class which,
in at least thought, feeling, and power, has found its meet
type and representative in
"Him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough upon the mountain-side."
How his steps become gradually fewer and more slow ! and
how at length, unconscious of aught except what Aken-
sicle exquisitely describes as the "form of beauty smiling
at his heart," ho stands still, to lose, in the happiness of the
present, every gloomier recollection of the past, and every
darker anticipation of the future! Undoubtedly that un-
taught peasant is a connoisseur of the higher class. The
birds peck the grapes, the mastiff recognizes the portrait ;
but the peasant can judge of more than mere likeness,
lie can exquisitely feel the beautiful; and he is perfectly
qualified to say that the work of art which can reawaken
in him this feeling is assuredly a work of genius. But why
all this wild radicalism, this lowering of the aristocracy of
criticism, this breaking down of the fictitious distinctions
of connoisseurship ! In the first place, I am merely mak-
ing my apology for having derived very exquisite pleasure
from even a first visit to the pictures of the Academy ; and,
in the second, for daring to do what I am just on the eve
of doing, for daring to assure the reader, that, if he has
an eye and a heart for nature, he may go there, however
unskilled in the rules of the vocabulary of criticism, and
derive much pleasure from them too. I am merely stand-
ing up, as Earl Grey and Cobbett have expressed it, for
my order, the uninitiated.
I have spent some of my happiest hours amid exhibitions
of a different kind from the Exhibition in the Academy;
and some of my most vivid recollections refer to scenes
redolent of the wild and the sublime of nature, and to the
emotions which these have awakened. May I venture to
describe the feeling in connection with one sweet scene
a wooded dell in the far north in which I have perhaps
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 331
oftenest experienced it, and which came rushing into my
mind as I lingered in front of one of the richest landscapes
of the Exhibition ? It is a l-ecess of deepest solitude ; but
the sweet Highland stream that comes winding through it,
passing alternately from light to shadow and from motion
to repose, imparts to it an air of life and animation, and
we do not feel that it is lonely. Man is so little an ani-
mal, says Rousseau, that he is as effectually sheltered
by a tree twenty feet in height as by one of sixty. True ;
but his ideas are much larger than himself, and he has too
close a sympathy with nature not to experience an ampler
expansion of feeling under the loftier than under the lower
cover. In this solitary dell, the banks, which on either
hand, at every angle and indentation, advance their grassy
ridges or retire in long, sloping hollows, partake perhaps
rather of the picturesque than of the magnificent ; but the
trees which rise along their sides, and which for the last
century have been slowly lifting themselves to the freer
air of the upper region, look down from more than the
higher altitude instanced by Rousseau. Often, when the
evening sun was casting its slant red beams athwart their
topmost branches, and all beneath was brown in the shade,
I have sauntered along this little stream, lost in delicious
musings, whose intermingled train of thought and feeling
I have no language to convey. I have felt that the cog-
itative faculty in these moods had not much of activity ;
but then, though it wrought slowly, it wrought willingly
and unbiddeu ; and around every minute thought there
would swell and expand an atmosphere of delightful feel-
ing, which somehow seemed to owe its origin as much to
the magnitude as to the quiet beauty of the surrounding ob-
jects, and which has reminded me fancifully, but strongly, of
that minutest of all the planets, of the asteroids rather,
whose atmosphere rises over it to more than ten times
the height of the atmosphere of our own planet ; I have
looked up to the branches that twisted and interlaced
themselves so high over head, and the leaves that seemed
32 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
sleeping in the light; I have seen the deep blue sky far
beyond ; I have caught glimpses through the chance vistas
of little open spaces, shaggy with a rank vegetation, and
which I have loved to deem the haunts of a solitude still
deeper than that which surrounded me ; I have marked
the varieties of beauty which distinguish the several deni-
zens of the foresi, the ash, with his long massy arms,
that shoot off from the trunk at such acute angles, and his
sooty blossoms spread over him as if he wore mourning ;
the elm, with his trunk gnarled and furrowed like an
Egyptian column, and his flake-like foliage laid on in strips
that lie nearly parallel to the horizon ; the plane, with his
dark green leaves and dense, heavy outline, like that of a
thunder-cloud ; the birch, too, a tree evidently of the gen-
tler sex, with her long flowing tresses falling down to her
knee ; and as I looked above and around, I felt my heart
swelling with an exquisite emotion, that feasts on the
grand and the beautiful as its proper food ; and surely that
mind must be chilled and darkened by the pall of a death-
like scepticism, that does not expand with love and grati-
tude, under the influence of so exquisite a feeling, to the
great and wonderful Being who has imparted so much of
good and fair to the forms of inanimate nature, and has
bestowed on the creature such a capacity of enjoying
them.
SECOND ARTICLE.
In the middle of the second exhibition-room, on the
west side, there is a picture of Allan's which almost every
visitor star-ds to study and admire ; and we observed not
a few who, like ourselves, came back a second and a third
time to look at it again and again. Let criticism say what
it please, this is praise of the very highest order. The
piece represents one of the first heroes and greatest men
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 333
of Scotland, Robert the Bruce ; and represents him when
greatest and noblest, uniting to a courage truly heroic
the tenderness and compassion of a gentle and affectionate
nature. It embodies with exquisite truth Barbour's affect-
ing story ol the king and the * poore lavender."
The scene, as all our readers must remember, is laid in
Ireland. The redoubtable hero of Bannockburn had been
compelled to retreat before the immensely superior forces
of the English and their Irish allies. Both the retreating
and the pursuing army had been resting for the night,
the one in a valley, the other on an adjoining hill; but the
pursuers were early astir, and their long array had been
seen from the Scottish encampment stretching far into the
background on the ridge of the neighboring height, and all
in full advance. The Scotch, too, had been preparing for
a hasty retreat ; Edward Bruce and the Black Douglas
had mounted their war-horses, and the warriors behind
were all on foot and in marching column, when they were
suddenly arrested by the voice of the king. He had heard
a woman shrieking in despair when just on the eve of
mounting his horse, and had been told by his attendants,
in reply to a hurried inquiry, that one of the female follow-
ers of the army, a " poore lavender " (that is, laundress),
mother of an infant who had just been born, was about to
be left behind, as being too weak to travel, and that she
was shrieking in utter terror at thoughts of falling into the
hands of the Irish, who were accounted very cruel. We
quote the words of Sir Walter, who softens, with a tact
and delicacy worthy of study, the less tasteful, though
scarcely less powerful, narrative of the metrical historian.
"King Robert was silent for a moment when he heard the
story, being divided betwixt the feeling of humanity occa-
sioned by the poor woman's distress, and the danger to which
a halt would expose his army. At last he looked round
his officers with eyes which kindled like fire. ' Ah, gen-
tlemen, never let it be said that a man who was born of a
woman, and nursed by a woman's tenderness, should leave
334 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
a mother and an infant to the mercy of barbarians. In the
name of God, let the odds and the risk be what they will, 1
will fight Edmund Butler rather than leave these poor crea-
tures behind me. ' "
The painter has chosen the moment of this noble excla-
mation for fixing the scene on his canvas. King Robert
occupies the centre, a wonderfully perfect transcript of
Sir Walter's exquisite description in the " Lord of the
Isles," and one of the most commanding figures we have
ever seen. There is a strength more than Herculean in
the deep broad chest and the uplifted arm, the very
arm which clave Sir Henry Bohun to the teeth through
the steel headpiece; but, to employ the language of Lava-
ter, "it is not the inert strength of the rock, but the elastic
strength of the spring." The ease is admirable as the
force ; the figure possesses the blended power of an Achil-
les, alike unmatched in the race and the combat. His look
is raised to heaven, a look intensely eloquent, for it
unites the indomitable resolution of the unmatched war-
rior with a devout awe for the Being in whose strength he
has determined to abide the battle. The features, too,
grave and rugged like those of his countryrhen, possess
that beauty of expression, far surpassing the beauty of mere
form, which a mind conversant with high thoughts and
noble emotions can alone impart to the countenance. The
painter has drawn the Bruce, mind and body, the master-
spirit of the time, and through whom, under Providence,
Scotland at this day is a country of free men, not of de-
graded helots, like at least two thirds of the unfortunate
Irish.
On the left of the warrior-king is the new-made mother
with her infant ; she is a poor young creature, of simple
beauty, such a one as the Mary of Burns or the Jessie
of Tannahill. It would really have been a great pity to
have left her to the barbarous, pitiless Irish, the ruthless
savages who, even in the times of the first Charles, could
so cruelly destroy the Protestant females of the country,
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 335
quite as unable to resist, and quite as unoffending, as
the "poore lavender." There is something very admirable
in the air of lassitude which invests the whole figure : one
hand barely sustains the infant, which, in the midst of
danger and extreme weakness, she evidently regards with
all the intense, though but newly-awakened, affection of
the mother; the other finely-formed arm I had almost said
supports her in her half-reclining position ; but it is by
much too weak for that, and tells eloquently its story of
utter exhaustion and recent suffering. There is much
good taste, too, shown in the painter's selection of the
surrounding attendants ; in the old woman, and in the
girl, who half-compassionates the mother, half-admires the
child ; in the aged monk, too, evidently a good, benevolent
man, who in all probability directed the devotions of his
countrymen when they knelt at Bannockburn, and who is
particularly well pleased that the Bruce has determined
rather to fight Edmund Butler than to desert the " poore
lavender."
On the king's right are his brother Edward Bruce, and
James, Lord of Douglas, mounted, as we have said, on
their war-steeds. Edward is well-nigh as perfect a concep-
tion as his brother the king. It needs no Lavater to tell
us, from the speaking countenance, that the warrior on the
right cannot be other than the frank, fearless, rashly-
spoken, affectionate man, who hastily wished Bannockburn
unfought because his friend had been killed in the battle.
His whole figure is instinct with character. There he
stands, a capital man-at-arms, first in the charge and last
in the retreat; especially good at a light joke too, partic-
ularly when matters come to the worst ; but not at all
to be trusted as a leader. He is right well pleased on this
occasion with brother Robert. " Fight Edmund Butler !
ay, ten Edmund Butlers, if they choose to come ; but we
can't leave the poor woman." Possibly enough, however,
the poor woman would have been left had Edward been
first in command, not certainly from any indifference,
336 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
but out of sheer thoughtlessness. Edward would never
have thought of asking what the cry meant.
We are not quite so satisfied with the Black Douglas.
Pie is a stalwart warrior, keen and true in the hour of
danger as his steel battleaxe ; but the tenderness of the
character is wanting. The painter has given us rather the
Black Douglas of Sir Walter as drawn in his last melan-
choly production, " Castle Dangerous," when the mind of
our greatest master of character was more than half gone,
than the good Lord James of Barbour. Barbour devotes
an entire page to the personal appearance of the Douglas,
and certifies his description by assuring the reader that
he had derived his information solely from men who had
seen him with their own eyes. His metrical history was
given to the country rather less than half a century after
the death of his hero. He describes him as tall and im-
mensely powerful, and with a "visage some dele gray;"
and the painter, true to the description, has made him just
gray enough. The expression, however, was peculiarly
soft, modest, and pleasing ; and, in accordance with his
appearance, he spoke with a slight lisp, " which set him
wonder well." He was a mighty favorite, too, we are told,
with the ladies of King Robert's company, the Queen, and
her attendants, he was so gentle and so amusing; and
when, early in the king's career, they were hard beset
among the mountains, no one exerted himself half so much
as the Douglas in supplying all their little and all their
great wants, in providing them with venison from the
hillside and fish from the river, or, as the Arch-Dean
quite as well expresses it, " in getting them meit." After
dwelling, however, on all his amiabilities of character and
expression, and particularly the latter, the historian tells
us in his happiest manner,
" But who in baittle mocht him see,
Another countenance had hee."
Old James Melville gives us nearly a similar description of
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 3-37
Kivcaldy of Grange, " Anelyon in thefeild,and ane lambe in
the hous ; " and what does not quite please us in the Doug-
las of the picture, because it runs somewhat counter to oui
associations, is, that, though the spectator of a scene sc
moving, he should yet have got on his battle countenance.
We have the lion, not the lamb. This, however, is not
intended for criticism. The picker of minute faults in
works of great genius reminds us always of the philosophei
in Wordsworth's epitaph, the " man who could peep
and botanize upon his mother's grave."
There is another point in the picture of great interest,
and very admirably brought out. It is at once exquisitely
true to nature, and illustrates finely one of the most mas-
terly strokes in Barbour. We are told by the ancient poet,
that when the king, single-handed, had defended the rocky
pass beside the ford against the troop of Galloway men,
and had succeeded in beating them back, after " dotting
the upgang with slain horse and men," his followers, just
awakened from the slumbers in which he had been watch-
ing them so sedulously, came rushing up to him. They
found him sitting bareheaded beside the ford, " for he was
het," and had taken off his helmet, to breathe the more freely
after his hard exercise. The exploit had gone far beyond
all they had ever seen him accomplish before. He had
defended them against " a hail troop, him alone ;" and they
came crowding round to get a glimpse of him. The very
men who were with him every day, and who saw him al-
most every minute, were actually jostling one another,
that they might look at him. Now, this is surely exquis-
ite nature; and the idea is as happily brought out by
Allan as by Barbour himself. The men are crowding to
see their king ; and never were there countenances more
eloquent. There is love and admiration in every feature ;
and we feel that such a general with such followers could
be in no imminent danger of defeat, after all, from the
multitudes of Edmund Butler. The minor details of the
picture seem to be finely managed. There is a clear, gray
29
338 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
light ; the sun has not yet risen, but it is on the eve of
rising ; all is seen clearly that any one wishes to see, and
the rest is thrown into the soft, bluish, tinted shade pecu-
liar to the hour. Randolph appears in the middle distance ;
and no person acquainted with the strictly just but stern-
hearted warrior would desire to see him brought a step
nearer. He would merely have come to say, with that
severe face of his, that he really thought there was too
much ado about a poor washerwoman ; but that, if Ed-
mund Butler was to be met with, why, he would just meet
with him.
Edmund Butler, however, was not met with on this
occasion. The wary leader knew that Robert the Bruce
was the first general of his age ; and that when he halted
to offer battle, it could not be without some hidden rea-
son, which rendered it no safe matter to accept the chal-
lenge which the halt implied. And so the English leader
halted too, until the king resumed his march ; and thus
the " poore lavender " was saved at no actual expense to
her countrymen. The story is one of those which deserve
to live ; nor is it probable that what Allan has painted,
and Sir Walter described, " the country will willingly let
die." We felt, when standing in front of this admirable
picture, that the art of the painter, all unfitted as it is for
serving devotional purposes, may yet be well employed in
giving effect to a moral one.
THIRD ARTICLE. \
In estimating the real strength of a country, one has
always to take into account its past history. The statistics
of its existing condition are no doubt very important. It
is well to know the exact amount of its population, and
the extent of its resources. It is a great deal more impor-
tant, however, to ascertain what its people were doing a
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 339
century or two ago, what the nature of their contests
and their success in them, and what the issue of their bat-
tles. It is not enough to count heads, or to calculate on
the mere physical power of a certain quantum of thews
and sinews. If the country's history be that of an en-
slaved and degraded race, who took their law from every
new invader, neither its physical strength nor the great-
ness of its revenues matters anything : it is utterly weak
and powerless. If, on the contraiy, its battles were hard-
fought, and terminated either in signal victory on the part
of its people, or in a defeat that led merely to another bat-
tle, if, in all its struggles, however protracted, the enemy
was eventually boi'ne down, and the object of the struggle
secured, depend upon it, that country, whether it reckon
its population by thousands or by millions, is rich in the
elements of power. The national history in these cases is
more than a test of character; it is also an ingredient of
strength. The past breathes its invigorating influences
upon the present ; the battles won centuries before become
direct guarantees, through the enthusiasm which they
awaken, for the issue of battles to be fought in the future ;
the names of the brave and the good among the ancestors
become watchwords of tremendous efficacy to the descend-
ants ; the children " honor their fathers," and " their days,
therefore, shall be long in the land."
But what has all this to do with criticism? A great
deal. As you enter the second exhibition-room, turn just
two steps to the left, and examine the large picture before
you. It is one of the masterpieces of Harvey, " The
Covenanters' Communion ; " and very rarely has the same
extent of canvas borne the impress of an equal amount of
thought or feeling. The Covenanters themselves are be-
fore us, and we return to the times of which, according to
"Wordsworth, the " echo rings through Scotland till this
hour." Not in vain did these devoted people assemble to
worship God among the hills ; not in vain did these vener-
able men, these delicate women and tender maidens, un
340 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
hesitatingly lay down their lives for the cause of Christ and
his church. Their solitary graves form no small portion
of the strength and riches of the country. They retain a
vivifying power, like the grave of Elisha, into which when
the dead man was thrown he straightway revived. Those
opponents of the church who assert, in the present struggle,
that the cherished memory of our martyrs serves only to
foster a spirit of fanatical pride among the people, are as
opposed to right reason as devoid of true feeling. It fos-
ters a truly conservative spirit, which it is well and wise
to cherish; and one of the eminently wholesome effects of
the present struggle is the reciprocity of feeling, if we may
so express ourselves, which it awakens between the past
and the present. The determination of the present revives
the memory of the past, and the memory of the past gives
tenfold force and effect to the determination of the present.
Martrys never die in vain. We doubt not there is a time
coming when even the memory of the noble Spaniards of
the sixteenth century who perished unseen, for their adher-
ence to Protestantism, in the dungeons of the Inquisition,
and that of the noble Venetians of the same dark period
who were consigned at midnight, and in chains, for the
same sacred cause, to the depths of the Adriatic, will yet
awaken among their countrymen, as an animating spirit to
urge them on with double vigor to the attack, when Baby-
lon is to be utterly destroyed. Most assuredly, Scotland
at least has not yet reaped the entire benefit which she is
to derive from the blood of her martyrs. The commonest
seeds retain their vitality for centuries; the seed of the
church retains its vitality for centuries too.
I shall attempt a description of Harvey's exquisite pic-
ture, for the sake of such of my readers as live at a distance.
The locale of the scene represents one of those wild upland
solitudes so common among our lower mountain ranges,
one of those hollows amid the hills known only to the
shepherd and the huntsman, which are shut out by the
surrounding summits from the view of the neighboring
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 341
country, and which, rising high over the reign of corn, and
almost over that of wood, presents only a widespread bar-
renness. There is a solitary fir bush in the background,
which at a lower elevation would have been a tree ; and
its stunted and dwarf-like appearance tells of the ungenial
climate and the unproductive soil. All else up to the very
hill-tops is dark with heath ; and there is a sky well-nigh
as dark beyond ; for there is scarce transparency enough
in the accumulated masses of heavy clouds, that betoken a
night of tempest, to relieve the outline. But there is a
light in the foreground. The previous service of the day
has been protracted for many hours ; there has been a long
" action sermon " on the wrestlings of the Kirk, and a long,
impressive prayer ; and the sun at his setting is throwing
his last red gleam on the group, with one of those striking
fire-light effects which only nature and genius ever succeed
in producing. The rays reach not beyond, but are absorbed
in the heath ; and there is truth in this too : one of the
most striking effects of the moon when just rising, or the
sun when just setting, is, that the light seems to be looking
at darkness, and the darkness abiding the look. These,
however, are but the minor features of the picture.
The congregation is but a small one ; the fierce persecu-
tion has been long protracted, and all the chaff has blown
off. The battle of Bothwell has been fought and lost:
many have laid down their lives on the scaffold, and many
on the hillside. The flower of the country is wasting in
dungeons, or toiling in chains in the colonies. There is no
hope of deliverance from man ; and we have in the little
group before us a mere remnant, tried in the very extrem-
ity of suffering, and found faithful and true. There is more
than a Sabbath-day sacredness impressed upon the scene;
and the utter poverty in which the solemn feast is cele-
brated adds powerfully to the effect. A cottage bench,
barely large enough to bear the ."communion elements,"
serves for the long, low table ; but, in the recollection of
other days, they have covered it with a white linen cloth.
29*
342 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
The flagon is evidently not of silver, nor yet the plate
which bears the bread ; but the cups are : they have been
carefully secreted from the spoiler, and devoutly reserved
in the midst of extreme want, and though the fines of Mid-
dleton and Lauderdale have fallen ruinously heavy on the
recusants, for the seiwice of the sanctuary. The commu-
nicants are ranged on the heath on both sides. Three rev-
erend elders are standing in front of the table, grave,
strong-featured men, well stricken in years, with high,
thoughtful foreheads, and in both form and countenance so
thoroughly Scotch that the spectator is convinced at a
glance they could belong to no other country in the world
except our own. Had I met them in the north of Scotland,
I would have said they were three of the men, and that I
was very sure they could all speak judiciously to the ques-
tion. There is an air of reasoning sagacity about them.
Their very type of forehead is metaphysical, high, full,
erect. They could not have stopped short of Calvinism,
even had they wished it. The clergyman stands alone on
the opposite side, with his back to the setting sun, and the
pale reflected light from the linen cloth thrown upon his
face. I have striven to read the expression. The spare
figure and the attenuated hands tell at once their story ;
but the countenance yields its full meaning more slowly,
and, I would almost say, more doubtfully. But it has evi-
dently much to tell. What was the character of the latter
divines of the covenant, its Camerons, Pedens, Renwicks,
and Cargills, the men who excommunicated in the Tor-
wood that " man of blood, Charles Stuart," for his " cruel
slaughter of the saints of God," the men who, when the
persecution waxed hotter and hotter, became only the
more determined to resist, but who, though the will re-
mained unsubdued and unshaken, experienced, in the in-
tensity of their distress, something approaching to aber-
ration in the other faculties, and in their more unsettled
moods did battle in lonely caves with shades of darkness
from the abyss, or saw in their waking visions the events
CRITICISM FOR THE UXINTTIAfED. 343
of the future rising up thick before them. Well did Solo-
mon say that persecution maketh even wise men mad. The
spectator has but to think of the character which the coun-
tenance really should express, and he will find it no easy
matter to conceive how the painter could have expressed
it differently. There is an air of intense melancholy that
tells almost of a weariness of life, mingled with what, for
want of a better word, I must term a ghostly expression.
There is the appearance, too, of fatigue and exhaustion,
and the impression of a strangely-mixed feeling, that hov-
ers, as it were, between the visible and the spiritual world.
The whole figure and countenance, in short, gives us the
idea of human nature tried over-severely, and the " willing
spirit" failing through the "weakness of the flesh."
On the spectator's left hand there is a group of the com-
municants thrown much into the shade. There are two
stern-looking men among the others, who have evidently
perused with great satisfaction the chapter in the " Hind
Let Loose " " Concerning owning tyrants' authority," and
the other equally emphatic chapter, " Defensive arms
vindicated." The one rests upon his broadsword ; and
there is a powder-horn and carabine lying beside the other.
The group on the right is decidedly the most exquisite I
ever saw, eitrer on or off canvas. It is instinct with char-
acter, and rich in beauty. The communicants have just
partaken of the bread ; and never was the devotional feeling
the awe and reverence proper to the occasion more
truthfully expressed. One of the men, young in years but
old in sufferings, still retains the bread in his hand. His
air has all the solemnity of prayer. A young girl sits be-
side him, the very beau-ideal of a beautiful Scotch female
in humble life, simple, modest, devout, a very Jeanie
Deans, too, in quiet good sense, only a great deal hand-
somer than Jeanie. I could not look at her without think-
ing of the young and delicate female, her contemporary
and countrywoman, whom the cruel dragoons bound to a
stake below flood-mark, while the tide was rising, and
344 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
whom they urged, as the water rose inch by inch, to abjure
her church and close with " black Prelacy," but who, faith-
ful to the last, chose rather to perish amid the waves of
the sea. There is a still younger girl beside her, who has
evidently not yet been admitted into full communion with
the church, and with whose deep seriousness there mingles
an air of dejection. An old woman, on the extreme edge
of life, is seated in the middle of the group ; and there is
perhaps some exaggeration in the figure, but the mind and
the feeling with which it is animated triumphs over the
defects. It is not the thin, sharp features, and the almost
skeleton arm, that attract our attention ; it is the all-per-
vading intensity of the devotional feeling. The old man
who sits beside her with his face covered is admirably in
keeping with the rest. Such is an imperfect description of
a picture which must not only be seen, but also carefully
perused, ere its excellence can be adequately appreciated.
The gentleman who criticized it in our last, rates it consid-
erably lower than I have done ; and there are other pic-
tures which he estimates highly that lie perhaps beyond
the reach of my sympathy. I am unable to understand
them. I therefore again remind the reader that I pretend
to no critical skill, and that my only criterion of merit in
a picture is simply the amount of pleasure which I derive
from it, and the quantum of thought which I find embodied
in it. I have literally to feel my way along the canvas.
Allan's picture of the Bruce reads a high moral lesson.
What is the moral taught by Harvey's Communion? It is
a controversial picture on the side of the church. It sets
before us, with all the truth of impartial history, the rebels
and outlaws of the bloody and dissolute reign of Charles II.,
and teaches powerfully. the useful truth that these offend-
ers against the majesty of the law were in reality the pre-
serving salt of the age, that these dwellers in dens and
caves were the meet representatives for the time of the
dwellers in dens and caves described by the apostle, and
of whom the " world was not worthy." The dissolute Mid-
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 345
dleton, the crafty Rothes, the brutal Lauderdale, the bloody
Mackenzie, were the judges and law authorities of the time.
A gross and profligate atheist, bribed against his owu peo-
ple by foreign gold, sat upon the throne. His court was a
sty of licentiousness and impurity. Wickedness had bro-
ken loose in those "evil days;" and for twenty-eight years
together the people of God were hunted upon the hills.
But a time of retribution came; the wicked died "even as
the beast dieth," and went to their place leaving names
behind them that sound like curses in the ears of posterity.
The reigning family those infatuated and low-thoughted
Stuarts, who, in their short-sighted and debasing policy,
would have rendered men faithful to their princes by mak-
ing them untrue to their God were driven from their
high places and their country to wander homeless under
the curse of Cain, to bring disaster on every nation that
sheltered them, and death and ruin on every adherent that
espoused their cause. And at length, when the spectacle
of their misery and degradation was fully shown to the
kingdoms of the earth, the last vial of wrath was poured
upon their heads, and they passed into utter extinction.
But the names of the persecuted survive in a different
savor; their sufferings have met with a different reward;
the noble constancy of the persecuted, the high fortitude
of the martyr, still live ; a halo encircles their sepulchres;
and from many a solitary grave and many a lonely battle-
field there come voices like those which issued from behind
the veil, voices that tell us how this world, with all its
little interests, must pass away, but that for those who
fight the good fight there abideth a rest that is eternal. I
heartily thank this man of genius and right feeling for the
lesson which his pencil has taught. Such pictures more
than please, they powerfully instruct.
346 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
FOURTH ARTICLE.
At the further end of the first exhibition-room, on the
left hand, there is a moonlight scene by M'Cnlloch,
" Deer Startled," which only a man of genius could have
transferred from nature to the canvas. It is actually what
it professes to be, a landscape lighted up by the moon ;
and the scene itself, a deep Highland solitude, is full of a
wild and yet quiet poetry.
The mind of every man has its picture-gallery, scenes
of beauty or magnificence, or of quiet comfort, stamped
indelibly upon his memory. More than half the exile's
recollections of home are a series of landscapes. The poor
untaught Highlander carries with him to Canada pictures
enough in the style of M'Culloch to store an exhibition-
room, pictures of brown solitary moors, with here and
there a gray cairn, and here and there a sepulchral stone,
pictures, too, of narrow, secluded glens, each with its own
mossy stream that sparkles to the light like amber, and its
shaggy double strip of hazel and birch, of hills, too, that
close around the valleys, and vary their tints, as they re-
tire, from brown to purple, and from purple to blue. He
carries them all with him to the distant country. The
gloomy forest rises thick as a hedge on every side of his
wooden hut; the huge stumps stand up abrupt and black
from amid his corn, in the little angular patch which his
labor has laid open to the air and the sunshine. These
are the objects which strike the sense ; but the others fill
the mind ; and when year after year has gone by, and he
sits among his children's children a wornout old man, full
of narratives about the brown moors and the running
streams of his own Scotland, his eyes moisten as the scenes
rise up before him in more than their original freshness ;
and he tells the little folk, as they press around him, that
there is no place in the world that can be at all compared
with the Highlands, and that no plant equals the heather.
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 347
One of Wordsworth's earliest lyrics, a sweet little poem
which he gave to the world at a time when the world
thought very little of it, though it has become wiser since,
embodies a similar thought. The poet represents a poor
girl originally from a rural district, who had been both
happier and better ere she had come to form a unit in
the million of London passing in the morning along
Cheapside, when a bird, caged against the sunny wall,
breaks out in a sudden burst of song. Her old recollec-
tions are awakened at the sound ; the street disappears,
and the dingy houses ; she sees the meadow tract, with
the overhanging trees, where she used to milk her cows;
she sees, too, the cattle themselves waiting her coming;
and, in the words of the lyric, "a river flows down through
the breadth of Cheapside." Poor Susan ! " Her heart is
stirred," and her eyes fill.
Every human mind has its pictures. Were it otherwise,
who would care anything for the art of the painter?
When standing in front of M'Culloch's exquisite landscape,
I was enabled to call up some of my own, moonlight
scenes of quiet and soothing beauty, or of wild and lonely
graudem*. I stood on a solitary seashore. A broken
wall of cliffs, more than a hundred yards in height, rose
abruptly behind, here advancing in huge craggy tow-
ers, tapestried with ivy and crowned with wood, there re-
ceding into deep, gloomy hollows. The sea, calm and
dark, stretched away league after league in front to the
far horizon. The moon had just risen, and threw its long
fiery gleam of red light across the waters to the shore. A
solitary vessel lay far away, becalmed in its wake. I could
see the sail flapping idly against the mast, as she slowly
rose and sank to the swell. The light gradually strength-
ened ; the dark bars of cloud, that had shown like the
grate of a dungeon, wore slowly away; the white sea
birds, perched on the shelves, became visible along the
clifi's; the advancing crags stood out from the darkness;
the recesses within seemed, from the force of contrast, to
'SA8 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
deepen their shades ; the isolated spire-like crags that rise
thick along the coast, half on the shore, half in the sea,
Hung each its line of darkness inwards along the beach.
A wide cavern yawned behind me, rugged with spiracles
of stalactites, that hung bristling from the rocf like icicles
at the edge of a waterfall; and a long rule of light that
penetrated to the innermost wall, leaving the sides en-
veloped in thick obscurity, fell full on what seemed an
ancient tomb and a reclining figure in white, sports of
nature in this lonely cave. There was an awful grandeur
in the scene : the deep solitude, the calm still night, the
huge cliffs, the vast sea, the sublime heavens, the slowly
rising moon, with its broad, cold face ! I felt a half-super-
stitious feeling creep over me, mingled with a too oppress-
ive sense of the weakness and littleness of man. Pride
is not one of the vices of solitude. It grows upon us
among our fellows ; but alone, and at midnight, amid the
sublime of nature, we must feel, if we feel at all, that we
ourselves are little, and that God only is great.
The scene passed, and there straightway arose another.
I stood high in an open space, on a thickly-wooded ter-
race, that stretched into an undulating plain, bounded
with hills. The moon at full looked down from the mid-
dle heavens, undimmed by a single cloud ; but far to the
west there was a gathering wreath of vapor, and a lunar
rainbow stretched its arch in pale beauty across a secluded
Highland valley. A wide river rolled at the foot of the
wooded terrace ; but a low silvery fog had risen over it,
bounded on both sides by the line of water and bank ; and
I could see it stretching its huge snake-like length adown
the hollow, winding with the stream, and diminishing in
the distance. The fiosts of autumn had dyed the foliage
of the wood ; the trees rose around me in their winding-
sheets of brown and crimson and yellow, or stretched, in
the more exposed openings, their naked arms to the sky.
There was a dark moor beyond the fog-covered river, that
seemed to absorb the light ; but directly under the nearest
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 349
hill, which rose like a pyramid, there was a tall solitary
ruin standing out from the darkness, like the sheeted
spectre of a giant. The distant glens glimmered indistinct
to the eye ; but the first snows of the season had tipped
the upper eminences with white, and they stood out in
bold and prominent relief, nearer, apparently, than even
the middle ground of the landscape. The whole was
exquisitely be3^itiful, a scene to be once seen and ever
remembered.
I must attempt a description of the picture of M'Culloch.
The moon is riding high over head in a cloudy and yet a
quiet sky. There is a greenish transparency in the piled
and rounded masses. Even where most dense, the thinner
edges are light and fleecy ; and the whole betokens what
White of Selborne would have termed a mild and delicate
evening. There is a lonely moor in front, a piece of water,
and a stunted fir tree. The light falls strongly both upon
the water and where the heathy bank shelves gradually
toward it on the right, while the middle ground of the
picture, with its scattered trees, lies more in the shade.
The clouded sky tells us, however, that the whole country
on such an evening cannot be other than checkered with
a carpeting of alternate light and shadow. There is a
screen of hills behind, dim and yet distinct ; and a few
startled deer startled we know not why are grouped
in front. Such are the main features of the picture ; but
it is one thing merely to tell these over as in a catalogue,
and quite another to convey an adequate idea of the wild
and yet simple poetry which they express. The extreme
loneliness of the scene, the calm beauty of the evening,
the unknown cause of fright among these untamed deni-
zens of the moors and mountains, what can they have
seen ? what can they have heard ? It is night, and deep
solitude. Are the spirits of the dead abroad ?
M'Culloch has another very sweet picture in the exhibi-
tion of this year, "A Highland Solitude with Druidical
Stones." We find it in the large middle room, on the left
30
350 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
hand as we pass inwards. It is, though equally Highland,
an entirely different scene from the other ; and yet, in de-
scribing it, for the pen has no such variety of shades as
the pencil, and no such pliant flexibility of outline, I
must employ some of the same words. I must repeat, for
instance, that there is a heathy moor in the foreground,
and a screen of hills behind, and that a sky checkered
with cloudo has dappled the landscape with sunshine and
shadow. There is a transient shower sweeping gloomily
along a narrow glen, while the hills to the right are smil-
ing in purple to the sun. The Druidical stones rise gray
in the mid-ground ; and the smoke, apparently of a shep-
herd's fire, is ascending slant ways from among them, be-
fore a light breeze. It is, as I have said, a sweet picture,
but inferior in feeling to the other, and perhaps not alto-
gether what its name would have led us to expect. I
question, however, whether that blended feeling of the
sublime and the solemn, with which it is natural to con-
template the monuments of an antiquity so remote that
they lie wholly beyond the reach of history, and which
form the sole and yet most doubtful memorials of unknown
rites and usages, and of tribes long passed away, can be
reawakened by the imitations of the painter. I have felt
it strongly on the scene of some forgotten battle sprinkled
with cairns and tumuli, and where the stone-axe and the
flint-arrow are occasionally turned up to the light, to tes-
tify of a period when the aborigines of the country were
making their first rude essays in art, and when the man
had not yet risen over the savage. I have felt it when,
standing where some ancient burial mound had been just
laid open, I saw the rude unglazed sepulchral urn filled
with half-burned fragments of bone, or with rudely-formed
ornaments of jet or amber, fashioned evidently ere the
discovery of iron. I have felt it, too, amid the Druidical
circle, and beside the tall unshapen obelisk. But I did
not feel it when standing before M'Culloch's second pic-
ture ; an 1 I questioned whether in what he had failed any
\
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 351
other could have succeeded. With what Johnson terms
the u honest desire of giving pleasure."* I shall briefly at-
tempt a description of the scene in which I have felt it
most strongly, a scene to be visited in the gray of the
evening, or by the light of the moon.
There is a soft pastoral valley, formed by the river Nairn,
not much more than a mile to the southwest of the field
of Culloden. Low-swelling eminences rise on either hand.
The view is terminated, as we look downward, by a prom-
inent rounded hill, on which are the remains of one of
those ancient earthen forts or duns combinations of
green mounds and deep angular fosses which seem to
have constituted in our own country, like the hill-forts of
New Zealand in the present day, the very first efforts of
ingenuity in defensive warfare, the very first inventions
of the weaker party in their attempts to withstand the
stronger. As we look up the glen towards the west, we
see the view shut in by another rounded hill, and it also
bears its ancient stronghold, one of those puzzles of the
antiquary, a vitrified fort. The low rude wall all around
the top of the eminence has been fixed into one solid mass
by the force of fire ; and we marvel how the rude savage
who applied the consolidating agent, all unacquainted as
he was with mortar, and unfurnished with tools, should
have been so expert a chemist. He was a glassrnaker on
a large scale, probably before the discovery of the Phoeni-
cian merchants. It is in the valley below, however, on a
level meadow-plain beside the winding Nairn, known as
the plain of Clava, that we find most to interest and to
astonish. It is a city of the ancient dead, thickly mottled
in its whole extent with sepulchral cairns, standing stones,
and Druidical temples. Detached columns of undressed
stone, shaggy with moss and spotted with lichens, rise at
wide intervals apparently in lines, as if to unite the other
structures in one general design. There are cairns beside
cairns, and circles within circles ; and there rose high over
the rest only a few years ago, but they have since been
352 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
injured by some curious excavator, three accumulations of
stone, immensely more huge than the others, and more
artificially constructed, that seemed to mark out the rest-
ing-place of the kings or chieftains of the tribe. The bases
of these larger cairns were hemmed in by circular rings
of upright stones ; and a wider ring, of larger masses, en-
circled the outside. A dark, low-roofed, circular chamber
occupied the space within. Its walls were consti*ucted of
upright stones ; and uncemented flags, overlapping each
other until they closed atop, formed the rude, dome-like
roof. In the fat, unctuous earth which composed the floor
there were found unglazed earthen urns, as rudely fashioned
as the surrounding building, and filled with ashes and
half-calcined bones. It is a curious fact, that, even so late
as the close of the last century, Highlanders in the neigh-
borhood buried amid these ancient tombs such of their
children as died before baptism. For, according to a su-
perstition derived from the Church of Rome, and in some
remote localities not yet worn out, unbaptized children
were deemed unholy ; and in this belief their remains
were consigned to the same unconsecrated ground which
contained the dust of their remote pagan ancestors. It
is another striking fact, a fact full of poetry, that
near the western end of the plain of Clava there are the
remains of an ancient Christian chapel, which still bears
the name of the clachan, or church ; and a traditional be-
lief survives in the district that it was planted in this cit-
adel of idolatry by the first Christian missionaries. Would
that we were acquainted with its story ! and yet it would
probably be merely another illustration of the fact that
the religion that most inculcates humility and self-denial
is of all animating principles the most daring and heroic
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 353
FIFTH ARTICLE.
What sort of painters, think you, do the Scotch promise
to become ? Why, painters equal to any the world ever
produced, if the national mind be only suffered to get
into a national track, and our artists have sense and spirit
enough, however much they may admire the pictures of
other countries, not to imitate them. The genius of our
countrymen, as shown in their literature, is eminently of
a pictorial character. The national feeling is vividly de-
scriptive. As early even as the days of James IV., old
Gavin Douglas, and his contemporary Will Dunbar, could
fill page after page with splendid descriptions, as minutely
faithful as the descriptions of Cowper in his " Task," and
scarcely less poetical. The " Seasons " of Thomson form
a series of landscapes ; and never, sui'ely, were there land-
scapes more felicitously conceived or more exquisitely
finished. It has become the fashion of late to decry
M'Pherson ; but rarely has Europe seen a mightier master
of description. The scenery of Burns is nature itself.
Who ever excelled Grahame in pictures of quiet beauty,
or Professor Wilson in the wild and the sublime of Alpine
landscape ? And, last and greatest, we stake Sir Walter
Scott for the vividly graphic, for strength of outline and
beauty of color, against every painter of every school, and
all the writers of the world. The people whose litera-
ture exhibits such powers have, if they v/ish to become
painters, only to try. But let them beware of imitation.
The straight-nosed beauties of Greece were no doubt very
great beauties, and its historical characters very fine char-
acters indeed. There is something very admirable, too, in
the genius of Italy. No people ever excelled the Italians
in drawing legendary saints, with glories of yellow ochre
round their heads, or angels mounted on the wings of
pigeons. But what of all that ? It is not by painting the
straight-nosed beauties of Greece or the winged angels of
31* *
354 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Italy that the Scotch artist need expect to confer honor
on either Scotland or himself. Let him do what was done
by Thomson and Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and what
Wilkie and Allan and Harvey are employed in doing,
let him walk abroad into nature, and study the history of
his country. The mere imitative faculty is one of the
lowest ; the Chinese possess it in perfection, and so does
the chimj:>anzee.
But am I not evincing a barbarous and Gothic disregard
of the classical ? Very far from it. I have read all Cow-
per's " Homer" and Dryden's "Virgil" again and again.
I could almost repeat that portion of the Odyssey in which
the wanderer of Ithaca is described sitting apart in his
own hall, a poor, despised beggar, when his enemies are
expending their strength in vain attempts to bend his bow ;
and I have felt my heart leap within me, when, scorning
reply to their rude taunts, he leaned easily forward on
the well-remembered weapon, and, bending it with scarce
more of effort than the musician employs in straightening
the strings of his harp, sent the well-aimed arrow through
all the rings and the double planks of the oaken gate be-
yond. I have luxuriated, too, over the exquisite descrip-
tions of the ^Eneid, amid the horrors of the burning
town, for instance, till I almost saw the pointed flames
shooting far aloft into the darkness, and almost heard the
tramplings and shouts of the enemy in the streets, amid
the terrors, too, of the tempest, when the fierce surge rolled
resistless over the foundering vessel, and the scattered
fleet labored heavily amid the loud dash of the billows
and the wild howl of the wind. And when I looked for
the first time on Laocoon and his children crushed in the
ruthless coil of the serpent, a too faithful allegory of
the human race, the story of Virgil rose at once before
me, and I felt the blended genius of the poet and the
sculptor breathing in an intense human interest from the
group. But what classical artists and authors were born
to accomplish has been accomplished already ; and no man
CKITTCISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 355
ever became great, nor ever will, by servilely following in
their track. The more an author or artist copies them,
the less is he like them ; for the imitative turn, which de-
lights in catching their manner, is altogether incompatible
with the originality of their genius. And hence it is that
our modern classics, whether painters or sculptors, or man-
ufacturers of unreadable epics, rank invariably among the
men of neglected merit. They overshoot those sympathies
of a common humanity to which their masters could so
powerfully appeal in the past, and which their contempo-
raries are scarcely less successful in awakening in the pres-
ent, each in a track of his own opening. The sculptors
of Great Britain were classical and imitative for a whole
century ; and all they produced in that time, in conse-
quence, was a lumbering mass of unreadable allegories
in stone, which no one cares for ; groups of Prudences
with fine necks; of Mercies, too, with well-turned ankles ;
and of Cupids looking sly ; and, had they been employed
in cutting them in white-sugar or gingerbread, all would
have now agreed that the choice of the material mightily
heightened the value of the work.
Among the rising painters of our country, I know no
artist whose productions better serve to corroborate the
truth of remarks such as these than the pictures of Thomas
Duncan. Brown justly reckons the principle of contrast, or
conti'ariety, among the causes which suggest and connect
ideas. One of Duncan's living pictures " Prince Charles
and the Highlanders entering Edinburgh after the battle
of Preston," a picture exquisitely Scotch, instinct with
character and rich in interest shows more powerfully,
on this principle, the folly of toiling in the dead school of
classical imitation, than even the effete of the artists who
irrecoverably lose themselves within its precincts of death.
I spent two full hours before his picture, and regretted I
could not spend four.
The morning sun has risen high over the Old Town of
Edinburgh, and the beams fall clear and bright through a
356 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
cloudless autumn sky, on half the high-piled, picturesque
tenements of the Canongate, and half the street below.
The other half lies gray in the shade. I saw, just in front,
on the sunny side, the castellated jail of the burgh, with
its blackened turrets and its Flemish -looking clock-house.
The barred windows are thronged with faces ; and a few
disarmed, half-stripped, forlorn-looking soldiers, huddled
together on an outer staircase, show that the incarcerated
crowd are military prisoners from the field of Preston.
The street lies in long perspective beyond, house rising
over house, and balcony projecting beyond balcony. Every
flaw and weather-stain has the mark of truth ; every pe-
culiarity of the architecture reminded me of the scene and
the age. A dense crowd occupies the foreground. The
Highlanders, after totally routing the superior numbers of
Cope, have entered the city with their Prince at their head,
and have advanced thus far on their march to Holyrood
House. The apparently living mass seems bearing clown
upon the spectator. There is a mischievous-looking, ragged
urchin, half-extinguished by the cap of some luckless gren-
adier, who has possibly no further use for it, scampering
out of the way ; and an unfortunate barber, the very type
of Smollett's Strap, has got himself fast jambed between
a projecting outside stair and the brandished war-axe of a
half-naked and more than half-savage gillie, who is exert-
ing himself with tremendous vigor in clearing a passage,
and who, as if to add to the poor barber's distress and
peril, is looking in another direction. There are other
strokes of the comic in the piece. In one corner a Jaco-
bite laird, blirC fou, is threatening destruction with un-
sheathed whinyard to all and sundry who will not drink
the Prince's health. In another, two pipers are marching
side by side. The one, a long-winded young fellow, cast
in the Herculean mould of his country, and proud of his
strength and his music, is adjusting the drone of his pipe
with a degree of self-complacency that might serve even
the Dean of Faculty himself. The other, an old man of
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 357
at least seventy-five, with features fiercely Celtic, and an
expression like a thunder-cloud, is evidently enraged at
the better breath of his opponent ; but, collecting his
strength for another effort, he seems determined rather
to die than give in. The Prince rides in the centre on a
noble steed, that seems starting out of the canvas. We
recognize him at once, not only from his prominent place
and princely bearing, but from the striking truth of the
portrait, one of the most spirited, perhaps, that has yet
appeared, and most like the man when at his best. Has
the reader never noticed the striking resemblance which
the better portraits of Prince Charles bear to those of his
remote ancestress, Queen Mary ? I was first struck by it
when, in glancing my eye over a bookseller's window, I
saw side by side the frontispieces of " Chambers' History
of the Rebellion " and the " Life of Mary Queen of Scots,"
both numbers of " Constable's Miscellany ; " and I
have had since repeated opportunities of verifying the
remark. It is, I believe, no uncommon matter for resem-
blances of this kind to reappear in families at distant in-
tervals. Sir Walter, no ordinary observer of whatever
pertained to the nature of man, whether physical or intel-
lectual, has repeatedly embodied the fact in his inventions ;
but I do not know a more striking instance of it in real
history than the one adduced.
All the more celebrated heroes of the rebellion are
grouped round the Prince, full, evidently, of a generous
enthusiasm, in which the spectator can hardly avoid sym-
pathizing. There was little of moral worth or of true
kingly dignity in the latter Stuarts ; and I could not for-
get that the "gallant adventurer," who, with at least all
the courage of his ancestors, threw himself upon the gen-
erosity of the devoted and warm-hearted Highlanders, was
in reality a cold, selfish man, who sunk in after life into
a domestic tyrant and a besotted debauchee. And yet I
could not avoid sharing in the well-expressed excitement
of the Prince's gallant adherents, as they drink in his
858 LITERACY AND SCIENTIFIC.
looks with all the intense and rapturous exultation of a
loyalty which has passed from the earth with the genera-
tion that cherished it. No such pervading love or deep
devotion awaits the kings or princes of the present time.
Behind the Prince rides Clanranald, the chief of Clan-
Colla. His Highlanders take precedence of the other
clans, for the Bruce had assigned them their place of
honor in the right when they fought at Bannockburn.
Young Clanranald, a tall, handsome youth, and his cousin
Kinloch Moidart, have advanced in front ; old Hugh
Stewart, a rugged, deep-chested veteran of the Black
Watch, who fought in all the battles of Charles, and whose
portrait is still preserved, presses on behind them ; and
the gigantic miller of Inverrahayle's Mill, a tremendous
specimen of the wild mountaineer, is still more conspic-
uous among a group of clansmen on the left. There is
a dense crowd behind, and what seems a thick wood of
spears and axes, with here and there a banner, among
the rest, an English standard taken from the dragoons at
Preston. A heap of other trophies lies in front, over which
Hamish M'Gregor, the son of the celebrated outlaw Rob
Roy, keeps watch.
An intensely interesting group occupies the left. There
we see Lord George Murray, the cool-headed, far-seeing
statesman of the expedition, who dared honestly to tell
his Prince disagreeable truths, and who was liked none
the better because he did so; the gallant Lochiel, too,
who in his devoted loyalty joined in the enterprise with
his brave Camerons, even though he had anticipated from
the first that the result would be disastrous. There also
is the Marquis of Tullibarden, the original of Sir Walter's
Baron of Bradwardine, a fine old Lowland cavalier, dressed,
in honor of the Prince, in a birthday suit, half-covered
with lace, and of a fashion at least twenty years earlier
than the time. There is a galaxy of high-born dames
beside him, relatives of the family, one of them at least
of exquisite beauty, and all of them what clever artists do
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 359
not invariably succeed in painting, even when they try
most ladies. Their countenances seem lighted up with
the triumph of the occasion ; and the children of the
family, sweet little things, worth all the cupids that the
imitators ever chiselled or painted, are employed in strew-
ing white roses in the path of the Prince. The opposite
side of the picture is occupied by a group of a different
but not less interesting character.
On an outer stone stair, on the shady side of the street,
one of those appendages characteristic of the Scoto-
Flemish style of domestic architecture, there is a group
of citizens. Professor Maclaurin, the celebrated mathe-
matician, the man who first brought down the philosophy
of Newton to the level of common minds, and whose sim-
ple, unpretending style rises in some passages to the dig-
nity of the sublime, purely from the force and magnitude
of his thoughts, leans calmly over the rail. The good
zealous Whig had proposed to the magistrates his well-
laid scheme for fortifying and defending the city, and had
exerted himself in carrying it into effect ; but the neces-
sary courage to carry out his measures was lacking on the
part of the people, and so he has had just to fall back and
rest him on his philosophy. John Home, the author of
'< Douglas," and one of the first historians of the Rebellion,
stands beside him. He, too, though a mere youth at the
time, had bestirred himself vigorously in the same cause,
and is now evidently bearing the reverse of his party as
he best can. But the figure behind them, one of the most
masterly in the picture, is instinct with a sterner spirit.
Had there been five hundred such men in the city to back
the philosopher, the Highlanders, with all their valor,
would have been kept outside the wall. He stands at the
stair-head, scowling at the enemy and all their array of
spears and battleaxes, one of the followers of Richard
Cameron, girt with a buff belt, from which his Andrea
Ferrara hangs suspended, and bearing a heavy Bible. De-
pend on it, had that man fought at Preston, he would
360 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
have stood beside the good and gallant Colonel Gardiner
unmoved in the midst of rout and panic, and have left,
like him, a gashed and mangled corpse to mark where
the tide of the battle had turned. Such is a meagre out-
line of Duncan's exquisite picture. It is said to have cost
the almost continuous labor of two years ; and the antici-
pated expense of multiplying it by the graver and never
was there a picture more worthy is calculated at about
three thousand pounds. The pictorial history of Scotland
promises to excel all its other histories, and it does not
contain a more brilliant page than that contributed by
Duncan.
Gallant Highlanders, men of warm hearts and tender
feelings, and spirits that kindle as the danger comes, the
phantom of mistaken loyalty deludes you no longer ; you
have closed with a better faith ; and, while the strength
of the character still remains unbroken, all its fierceness is
gone. I have lived amid the quiet solitude of your hills,
and, as I have passed your cottages at the close of evening,
have heard the voice of psalms from within. I have sat
with you at the humble board, to share your proffered
hospitality, the hospitality of willing hearts, that thought
not of the scanty store whence the supply was derived.
I have marked your untaught courtesy, ever ready to yield
to the stranger, and have laid me down in security at
night amid your hamlets, with only the latch on the door.
I have seen you pouring forth your thousands from brown
distant moors and narrow glens, to listen with devout
attention to the words of life from the lips of your much-
loved pastors, and to worship God among your mountains
in the open air. I know, too, the might that slumbers
amid your gentleness of nature ; and that, when the day
of battle comes, " and level for the charge your arms are
laid," desperate indeed must that enemy be, and much in
love with death, that awaits the onset. A day may yet
arrive, should Socialism and Chartism, with their coward
cruelty, inundate society in the plains, when we may look
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 361
to your hills for succor ; but that day has not yet come.
You tell us that, though little able to assist the church
with the pen or on the platform in her present troubles,
your hearts are all with us ; and that, should the worst
come to the worst, we may reckon on the Highlanders of
Scotland as thirty thousand fighting men. And we know
what sort of fighting men you are, and what sort of hearts
you bear. But reserve your strength, brave countrymen,
for another day and a diiFerent quarrel. Should the church
which you love fall prostrate before her adversaries, and
wickedness rush unchecked over the land to trample and
destroy, your swords may be required, not to protect her
friends from her enemies, but to protect both her friends
and her enemies too.
SIXTH ARTICLE.
Immediately below one of Wilkie's admirable pictures,
" The Spanish Posado," there is a painting, not par-
ticularly showy, and which might possibly enough come to
be overlooked among productions of less merit and more
glitter, but which is at once so simple, unaffected, and true
to nature, that it bears the formidable neighborhood won-
derfully well. It is the work of a young and rising artist,
Tavernor Knott, a gentleman who, at the age of twenty-
two, has learned to compress a large amount of just thought
and fine feeling within a few square feet of canvas, and
who, I am convinced, will be better known to his country-
folks in the future than he is at present. I do not know
whether his subject might not have" prejudiced me in his
favor, "A Scotch Family Emigrating ; " but I have cer-
tainly derived much pleasure from an attentive perusal of
his picture, and it has served to recall to my recollection
a good many similar scenes from real life, of a half-pleasing,
half-melancholy character. I have never yet seen a party
31
362 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
of emigrants quitting their country forever, half-broken-
hearted, as they almost always are, without forgetting all
my political economy, and sympathizing with them in their
regret. Hazlitt says, very truly though somewhat quaintly,
that when men compassionate themselves, other men com-
passionate them too. We admire the fortitude of the stoic,
but we never pity his sufferings. But a kindly, manly
Scot, proud of his country, and attached to his friends,
and yet compelled by stern necessity to part from both, and
parting from them with a swelling heart and wet eyes,
we must pity the poor fellow, and feel sorry that he is
leaving us, let population increase as it may. I know of
scenes which have taken place in the Highlands of Scot-
land which I hope neither Malthus nor M'Culloch could
have contemplated with a dry eye ; and I shall instance
one of them. All the Highlanders of an inland district in
Sutherlandshire were ejected from their homes by the late
Duke a good many years ago, to make way for a few sheep-
farmers. The poor people, a moral and religious race,
bound to their rugged hills with a strength of attachment
hardly equalled in any other country, could not be made
to believe the summonses of removal real. Their fathers
had lived and died among these very hills for thousands of
years. They had spent their blood, and had laid down
their lives of old, for the good Earls of Sutherland. Nay,
when their Countess, in her maiden years, had expressed a
wish to raise a regiment among them for the service of the
country, a regiment had risen at the bidding of their chief's
daughter, and had marched off to the war. Every man
among them brought his Bible with him, and the enemy
never bore them down in the charge. And now could it
be possible that they were to be forced out of their own
country! They at first thought of resistance ; and, had
they carried the thought into action, it would have af-
forded perilous employment to a thousand armed men to
have ejected every eight hundred of them; but they had
read their New Testaments, and they knew that the Duke
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 363
had become proprietor of the soil ; and so the design
dropped. Shall we write it? some of their houses were
actually fired over their heads, and yet there was no blood-
shed ! Convinced at length that no other alternative
remained for them, they gathered in a body in the church-
yard of the district to take leave of their country for ever,
and of the dust of their fathers last. And there, seated
among the graves, men and women, the old and the young,
with one accord, and under the influence of one feeling,
they all " lifted up their voices and wept." This tract of
the Highlands is now inhabited by sheep.
Mr. Knott's picture represents rather a Lowland than a
Highland scene. There is a humble cottage, half over-
shadowed by trees, in the foreground, surrounded by a
level country. The sea spreads beyond. We see the ship
in the distance which is to bear away the emigrants ; and
the loaded wagon in the middle ground is evidently con-
veying their effects to the shore. The group stands in
front of the cottage. There are a few supplementary fig-
ures introduced into the scene, partly for the sake of height-
ening the effect by the force of contrast, for they have
no direct interest in it, and partly to bring out its minor
details; for, though little moved by it, they are yet all
employed in it. One, an elderly man, with spectacles on,
is painfully scrawling out a direction-card for a box ; there
is a rough, thick-set, sun-burned sailor from the beach, who
is leaning over him, evidently criticising the penmanship,
but satisfied, apparently, that it may just pass; and a tall
stripling stands directly in front, prepared with a coil of
cord to bear the box away. In an opposite corner there is
a boy of the family parting with a favorite dog, which he
is handing over, bound in a string, to a companion. The
poor little fellow is much dejected, and not at all likely
soon to forget Scotland, nor his dog either. The stroke is
a fine one ; but there is a still finer stroke in the same
part of the group. A barefooted, simple-looking lassie, of
about fifteen, who has been living with the family, taking
364 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
care of the child, a sweet, chubby thing, is kissing her
charge, not dry-eyed, and bidding it farewell ; and baby,
though it does not exactly know what is the matter, is
quite disposed to return the caress.
A vigorous man, in the prime of early manhood, the
father of the boy and the infant, and of two little girls in
the foreground, has turned round in a half-absent mood
to the shut door. He has been bearing up, with apparent
fortitude, for the sake of the others, and under a high
sense of what constitutes the firm and the manly in char-
acter. The present, however, is a moment of partial for-
getfulness ; the assumed firmness is laid down, and his
thoughts are hovering in sadness, as he looks back on his
humble dwelling, between the enjoyments of the past and
the uncertainties of the future. His wife, a woman of great
beauty, not merely that of feature and complexion, which
may exist wholly disjoined from all that we most value in
the sex, but that of expression and character also, is
leaning on the arm of her father-in-law, a venerable old
man. Unlike her husband, she has had no part to act on
the occasion, nor has she simulated the fortitude or the
indifference which she does not possess nor feel. She is
drowned in tears. The sweet little girl who holds on by
her gown, and the girl beside grandpapa, are both too
young to participate in the general regret ; and yet they,
too, have an air of absence and unhappiness about them,
caught, as it were, by sympathy from the others. The old
man, the patriarch of the family, is one of the most striking
figures in the picture. Wilkie himself has rarely produced
anything more characteristically Scotch. There is a deep
seriousness impressed on the somewhat rugged features,
blent with a dash of sadness ; for he, too, feels that he is
leaving his home and the country of his fathers. But he
has thought of another and more certain home ; and the
consolations which he is pressing on his daughter-in-law,
whose hand he is affectionately grasping in his own, are
evidently of the highest character. Venerable old man !
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 365
Divested of hopes and beliefs such as yours, the aged emi-
grant would be of all men the most unhappy. It has been
well said by Goldsmith, that " a mind long habituated to
a certain set of objects insensibly becomes fond of seeing
them, visits them from habit, and parts from them with
reluctance ; " and it is chiefly from such objects that age
derives its pleasures. It cannot give to novelty the feelings
appropriated by recollection ; and must fare ill, therefore,
in a foreign land, in the midst of what is strange, and what,
from its very nature, cannot become otherwise, in the
midst, too, of hardships and privation. The old man in
such circumstances must be either like the cottar of Burns,
the " priest-like father " of the family, or he must be
by much the unhappiest member of it.
Such is an imperfect description of Mr. Knott's picture,
as I have been enabled to read it. It has no doubt its
faults, like every other; but these seem mostly to be mere
faults of execution, from which no young artist can be
wholly free, whatever his genius, not faults of concep-
tion. The foliage of the trees which half-embosom the
cottage does not repose in the softened sunshine with per-
haps all the grace of nature, and the tiled cottage does
not strike as characteristically Scottish. A roof of heath,
or fern, or straw, with here and there a patch of stone-crop,
and here and there a tuft of grass or a cluster of house-
leek, would better repay the painter's study. But these
are very minute matters ; and he would be a connoisseur
worth looking at who would place such things in the bal-
ance against the large amount of thought and feeling dis-
played in the group. The painter who can impart character
to men and women, both national and individual, can well
afford to leave a tree or a cottage without much to dis-
tinguish them, and be a superior painter still.
Of all the figures of the piece, the old man pleases me
the best, though the female, his daughter-in-law, is also
very exquisite. I have perused with deep interest the let-
ters of an aged emigrant, who quitted the north of Scot
31*
366 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
land for Upper Canada about eight years ago. He was
one of the excellent though now fast diminishing body
known in Ross-shire and the neighboring districts by the
name of the men / and, though marked perhaps by a few
eccentricities, he was by no means a low specimen of the
class. He settled among some of the outer townships,
I forget which, where there were no ministers and no
churches ; and he saw for the first time, in his seventieth
year, the Sabbath rise over the wild and trackless woods
of America, all unmarked from the other days of the week.
But John Clark had brought his Bible with him, and no
superficial knowledge of its contents ; and, regularly as
the day came round, he assembled his family, like one
of the Pilgrim fathers of old, for the purpose of religious
worship, and to press upon them the importance of religious
truth. Some of the neighbors learned to drop in. His
fervent prayers, and his homely but forcible expositions,
full of masculine thought, had the true popular germ in
them ; and John's log cottage became the meetinghouse
of the thinly-peopled district; until at length the accumu-
lating infirmities of a period of life greatly advanced in-
terfered with his self-imposed duties, and set him aside.
He is still alive, however, at least he was so a few months
ago ; and at that time, in the midst of great bodily de-
bility, far removed from all his Christian friends of the
same stamp or standing with himself, and with the near
prospect of laying down his worn-out frame, to mingle
with the soil in some gloomy recess of the wild forest,
thousands of miles from the lonely Highland churchyard
where the remains of his fathers and of some of his children
are laid, with those of the wife of his youth, John was yet
more than resigned ; he was rejoicing, will our readers
guess for what? He had just heard of the revival at
Kilsyth, and of the attitude assumed by the Church of
Scotland in behalf of the rights of the Christian people
and of the Headship of her Divine Master. What, I
CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 367
marvel, does infidelity propose giving to such men in
exchange for their religion ?
I am impressed by the absolute necessity which exists
for emigration. Circumstances have settled the point.
Whatever the sacrifice of feeling, it has ceased to be an
open question whether or no our countrymen should leave
us for other fields of exertion. The population of the
country is already redundant in a degree which occasions
much distress among the working classes, and much
consequent bad feeling ; for the true cause of the evil is
misunderstood ; and this already redundant population is
increasing at the portentous rate of nearly a thousand per
day. Besides, it is according to the design of Providence
that the human race should spread forth as they multiply.
The Scotch are only doing for Canada and the insular
regions of the far south what the Celtas and the Scandina-
vians did for Scotland three thousand years ago ; and is it
not well that the process should be so different now from
what it was when the Goths and the Vandals overwhelmed
the Roman emniie? It is civilization and the arts that
are advancing on the regions of barbarism, and sending
out their pickets and their advanced guards far into the
waste, not barbarism that is bursting in, as of old, to
bear down civilization and the arts. But we can at once
recognize these principles, principles, indeed, too obvious
not to be recognized, and yet regret cases of what we
may term wholesome emigration none the less. Nothing
can be more healthy than the drain on a redundant town
or country population : it is blood-letting to an apoplectic
patient ; and the emigrating thousands are as little missed
as water withdrawn from the ocean. " The crowds close
in, and all's forgotten." Very different is the case, how-
ever, when the population of upland districts have been
torn up root and branch, and uninhabited wildernesses
formed where a simple-hearted but surely noble race lived
contented in times of quiet, and constituted the strength
of their country in the day of war. There have been
368 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
cottages on many a hillside emptied of their inhabitants
within the last twenty years, which shall never again be
gladdened by the domestic circle ; and the heath is creep-
ing slowly in lonely dells and sweejnng acclivities, over
many a narrow range of meadow, and many a little field
whose flattened and sinking furrows shall never again yield
to the plough. The contemplation of such scenes amid
the depopulated solitudes of the Highlands has always
inclined me to sadness, especially in the inland districts
which, as they nad no dependence on the fluctuations of
trade, were little exposed to those extreme depressions
which have borne so heavily of late years on the inhabi-
tants of the islands and the sea-coasts, and in which, I
know from experience, much happiness has been enjoyed,
and an intense love of country cherished.
Rather more than twelve years ago I was led into the
central Highlands of the north. I first left behind me the
comparatively level fields of the low country, with their
hedgerows and intervening belts of planting, and then the
upper skirting of forest, which waved mile after mile on
the lower declivities of the hills. I next passed on a half-
obliterated path along the upper ridges, rising and de-
scending alternately, now shut out from the widening
landscape in some brown moory hollow, roughened with
huge fragments of rock, now on a swelling eminence that,
overtopping the previously surmounted height, blended
in one vast prospect the region of moor, of forest, and of
corn, and, far beyond, the widely extended sea. The last
eminence was at length surmounted, and a broad tract of
table-land, slightly depressed toward the middle, bounded
on the opposite side by low craggy hills, with here and
there an inky pool and here and there a gloomy morass,
spread out for miles before me in black and unvaried ster-
ility. I toiled drearily across, and reached the opposite
boundary of hill. It overlooked a deep pastoral valley of
considerable extent. A wild Highland stream, skirted on
either bank by a straggling vow of alders, went winding
CKITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 369
through the midst. On either side there were patches of
vivid green, encircled by the brown heath, like islands by
the ocean, which had once been furrowed by the plough.
As I advanced I saw the ruins of deserted cottages. All
was solitary and desolate. Roof-trees were decaying within
mouldering walls. A rank vegetation had covered the si-
lent floors, and was waving over hearths the fires of which
had been forever extinguished. A solitary lapwing was
screaming over the ruins, rising and falling in sudden starts,
darting off along the ground, now to the right, now to the
left, and then turning abruptly round in mid air, and
almost brushing me as she passed. She had built her nest
within some deserted cottage, and was employing her
every instinct to lure me away. A melancholy raven was
croaking on a neighboring eminence. There was the faint
murmur of the stream, and the low moan of the breeze ;
but every sound of man had long passed from the air ;
and the bright sunshine seemed to fall idly on the brown
slopes and greener levels of this uninhabited and desolate
valley. I have rarely been more impressed. I was re-
minded of what I had read of eastern armies, whose track
may be followed years after their march by ruined villages
and a depopulated country, of scenes, too, described by
the prophets, lands once populous "grown places where
no man dwelleth, or son of man passeth through."
370 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
III.
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY.
It was remarked early in the last century by a French
wit, who was also an astronomer, that when the potentates
of earth ceased to quarrel about their sublunary territories,
they would in all likelihood begin to dispute about the
plains and mountain ranges of the moon. They would
give, he said, their own names to its peaks and craters,
and fall to blows for the nominal possession of some of its
more prominent eminences or profounder hollows. The
prediction, however, seems to be as far from its fulfilment
as ever. The present war with Russia shows that the quar-
rels of rulers respecting their earthly territories, so far from
being at an end, or nearly so, are as serious and irreconcil-
able as at any former period ; and hitherto, at least, kings
and princes have left all disputes about the nomenclature
of the moon's geography to be settled by the moon's ge-
ographers. The celestial map-makers have already had
their quarrels on the subject. One of them named the
places on the moon's surface after philosophers eminent in
all the various departments of mind ; another named them
after the terrestrial seas and mountains which they seemed
to resemble ; a third, interposing, strove to give them back
to the philosophers again, but struck off the former list
all philosophers save the astronomical ones ; and now the
moon's surface bears, in the maps at least, marks of all the
three combatants. It has its Alps and its Apennines and
its Caucasus, its Sea of Serenity and its Sea of Storms,
its Aristarchus and its Plato, its Tycho and its Coper-
nicus. There is, as we may perceive, no danger of a too
unbroken peace on earth regarding the condition of the
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 371
moon, or of any of the other heavenly bodies, even though
neither Napoleon nor Nicholas should interfere in the
quarrel.
In fine, every department of science has its controver-
sies ; and it is well that it should be so. It saves the
world from all danger of connivance to deceive it, on the
part of scientific men, a thing which the world is some-
what prone to suspect, and proves, on the whole, the best
mode of eliciting truth. There are certain stages, too, in
the course of discovery, when controversy becomes inevi-
table. "Tempests in the state are commonly greatest,"
says Bacon, " when things grow to equality, as natural
tempests are greatest about the equinoctia." And we find
that it is so in science also. When comparatively new
sciences rise, in certain departments specially their own,
to assert an equality with old ones, that, when they stood
alone, had been extended beyond their just limits, contro-
versies almost always result from the new-born equality in
the disputed province. In the middle ages, for instance*
there existed but one great science, theology ; and,
pressed far beyond its just limits, it impinged on almost
every province of physical research and every department
of mind. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries pecu-
liarly the ages of maritime discovery geography rose
into importance ; and after a prolonged controversy, which
at one time had well-nigh crushed Columbus, it was finally
established, in opposition to the findings of St. Augustine
and Lactantius, that the world is round, not flat, and that
it has antipodes. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries astronomy became a great and solid science ; and-,
after a still fiercer controversy than that of the geographers,
it asserted a supremacy in its own special walk against
popish theologians such as Caccini and Bellarmine, and
against Protestants such as Turretine. We have seen a
similar controversy carried on in the present century
which has witnessed the rise of geology, just as the fif-
teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries witnessed that
372 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
of geography and astronomy, between theologians who
were also geologists, such as Chalmers, Sedgwick, and
Sumner, and theologians who were wholly ignorant of
geology, such as Granville Pen, Eleazor Lord, and Moses
Stuart. And, as in astronomy and geography, the contro-
versy may now be regai'ded as ultimately settled in favor
of the new science, within at least the new science's own
proper province. There are, however, other controversies
than theological ones, wich rise when, according to Bacon,
" things grow to equality ; " and that equality to which
geology has attained with astronomy during the last fifty
years may be properly regai'ded as the real cause of the
very interesting controversy carried on at the present
time between the author of the " Essay on the Plurality
of Worlds," understood to be one of the distinguished or-
naments of English science, and our great countryman Sir
David Brewster, a philosopher who, while supreme in
his own special walk, is perhaps of all living men the most
extensively acquainted with the general domain of physi-
cal science. The English writer, though he presses his
argument by much too far, may be regarded as representa-
tive of the geological side ; Sir David of the astronomical.
There are, we have said, certain stages in the course of
discovery at which controversy becomes inevitable ; and it
seems demonstrative of the fact that the new arguments
in which these controversies originate arise much about
the same time, without concert or communication, in
minds engaged in the same or similar pursuits. Had they
not been originated by the man who first made them
known, they would have been originated almost contem-
poraneously by some one else. Almost all discovery has
a similar course. Adams and Le Verrier were engaged at
the same time in calculating the irregularities of Uranus,
and inferred from them the existence and position of the
great planet, actually discovered almost simultaneously,
shortly after, by Dr. Galle and Professor Challis ; and it is
a known fact that Mr. Lassel and Professor Bond discov-
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 373
ered on the same evening the eighth moon of Saturn, though
the Atlantic flowed between them at the time. And we
And a resembling simultaneousness of inference and conclu-
sion exemplified by the work which has given occasion to
the present controversy. The argument which it ampli-
fies and expands, and, as we think, carries by much too
far, and into conclusions not legitimate, was first given to
the world seven years ere the appearance of this English
volume, in the columns of a Scotch newspaper, and full
six years in a separate work, published and rather exten-
sively circulated both in Britain and America. And in
glancing over the first edition of the " Essay on the Plu-
rality of Worlds," we had expected not, perhaps, taking
sufficiently into account that simultaneity of thought at
certain stages of acquirement to which we refer that
some acknowledgment ought to have been made to the
writer who had originated the argument so long before.
We ascertain, however, from the second edition of the
English work now before us, that its author had framed
his argument for himself, independently altogether of the
previously-published one. " I have no wish," he says,
" to lay any stress upon the originality of the views pre-
sented in the Essay. I now know that, several years ago
(in 1849), Hugh Miller, in his 'First Impressions of Eng-
land ' (chap, xvii), presented an argument from geology
very much of the nature of that which I have employed /
and that the Rev. Mr. Banks, in a little tract published in
1850, urged the very insecure character of the doctrine that
the planets and stars are inhabited. These coincidences
with my views I did not know till my Essay was not
only written but printed. As to myself, the views which
I have at length committed to paper have long been in
my mind." There is an error in the date given here. The
argument to which the author of the Essay refers as
"much of the nature" of his own was first published, not
in 1849, but in October, 1846, when it appeared in the
columns of the "Witness" as part of one of the chapters
32
874 LTTKRARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
of " First Impressions, 9 a work which was published in
the collected form as a volume early in the following year.
Essentially, however, the reference is perfectly satisfactory
and, mayhap, not wholly uninteresting, as corroborative
of our position, that at certain periods, after a certain
amount of fact in some new department has been ac-
quired, inferences never drawn before come to be drawn
simultaneously by minds cut off by circumstances from all
intercourse with each other. The argument, as originally
stated in the " Witness," we shall take the liberty to re-
peat, slightly abridged, not only from its bearing on one
of the most curious controversies of modern times, but as
it may also serve to indicate what we deem the just de-
gree in which the inferences of astronomers regarding the
inhabitability of the planets are to be qualified by the facts
of the geologist.
" There is a sad oppressiveness in that sense of human littleness
which the great truths of astronomy have so direct a tendency to
inspire. Man feels himself lost amid the sublime magnitudes of
creation, a mere atom in the midst of infinity; and trembles lest
the scheme of revelation should be found too large a manifestation
of the divine care for so tiny an ephemera. Now, I am much mis-
taken if the truths of geology have not a direct tendency to restore
him to his true place. When engaged some time since in perusing
one of the sublimest philosophic poems of modern times, the
' Astronomical Discourses ' of Dr. Chalmers, there occurred to me
a new argument that might be employed against the infidel objection
which the work was expressly written to remove. The infidel points
to the planets ; and, reasoning from an analogy which on other than
geologic data the Christian cannot challenge, asks whether it be not
more probable that each of these is, like our own earth, not only a
scene of creation, but also a home of rational, accountable creatures.
And then follows the objection, as fully stated by Dr. Chalmers, Does
not the largeness of that field which astronomy lays open to the view
of modern science throw a suspicion over the truth of the gospel his-
tory ? and how shall we reconcile the greatness of that wonderful
movement which was made in heaven for the redemption of fallen
man with the comparative meanness and obscurity of our species ? '
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 375
Geology, when the Doctor wrote, was in a state of comparative in-
fancy. It has since been largely developed ; and we have been
introduced, in consequence, to the knowledge of some five or six
different creations of which this globe was the successive scene ere
the present creation was called into being. At the time the ' Astro-
nomical Discourses ' were published, the infidel could base his analogy
on his knowledge of but one creation ; whereas we can now base
our ana!ogy on the knowledge of at least six creations, the various
productions of which we can handle, examine, and compare. And
how, it may be asked, does this immense extent of basis affect the
objection with which Dr. Chalmers has grappled so vigorously ? It
annihilates it completely. You argue, may not the geologist say to
the infidel, that yonder planet, because apparently a scene of crea-
tion like our own, is also a home of accountable creatures like our-
selves. But the extended analogy furnished by geologic science is
full against you. Exactly so might it have been argued regarding
the earth during the early creation represented by the Silurian system,
and yet the master-existence of that extended period was a crustacean.
Exactly so might it have been argued regarding the earth during
the term of the creation represented by the Old Red Sandstone ;
and yet the master-existence of that scarce less extended period was
a fish. During the creation represented by the Carboniferous period,
with all its rank vegetation and green-reflected light, the master-
existence was a fish still. During the creation represented by the
Oolite, the master-existence was a reptile, a bird, or a marsupial
animal. During the creation of the Cretaceous period, there was no
further advance. During the creation of the Tertiary formation,
the master-existence was a mammiferous quadruped. It was not
until the creation to which we ourselves belong was called into
existence that a rational being, born to anticipate a hereafter, was
ushered upon the scene. Suppositions such as yours would have '
been false in at least five out of six instances ; and if in five out of
six consecutive creations there existed no accountable agent, what
shadow of reason can there be for holding that a different arrange-
ment obtains in five out of six contemporary creations ? Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus may have all their plants
and animals, and yet they may be as devoid of rational, accountable
creatures, as were the creations of the Silurian, Old Red Sandstone,
Carboniferous, Oolitic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary periods. They
may bo merely some of the ' many mansions ' prepared in the 1
' Father's house ' for the immortal existence of kingly destiny made
376 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
in the Father's own image, to whom this little world forms but the
cradle and the nursery.
" But the effect of this extended geologic basis may be neutralized,
the infidel may urge, by extending it yet a little further. Why, he
may ask, since we draw our analogies regarding what obtains in the
other planets from what obtains in our own, why not conclude
that each one of them has also had its geologic eras and revolutions,
its Silurian, Old Red Sandstone, Carboniferous, Oolitic, Creta-
ceous, and Tertiary periods ; and that now, contemporary with the
creation of which man constitutes the master-existence, they have
all their fully-matured creations, headed by rationality ? Why not
carry the analogy thus far? Simply, it may be unhesitatingly urged
in reply, because to carry it so far would be to carry it beyond the
legitimate bounds of analogy ; and because analogy pursued but a
single step beyond the limits of its proper province is sure always
to land the pursuer in error. Analogy is not identity A saga-
cious guide in its own legitimate field, it is utterly blind and senseless
in the precincts that lie beyond. It is nicely correct in its generals,
perversely erroneous in its particulars ; and no sooner does it quit
its proper province the general for the particular than there
start up around it a multitude of solid objections, sternly to challenge
it as a trespasser on grounds not its own. How infer, we may well
ask the infidel, admitting, for the argument's sake, that all the
planets come under the law of geologic revolution, how infer that
they have all, or any of them save our own earth, arrived at the
stage of stability and ripeness essential to a fully developed creation,
with a reasoning creature as its master-existence ? Look at the
immense mass of Jupiter, and at that mysterious mantle of cloud,
barred and streaked in the direction of his trade-winds, that forever
conceals his face. May not that dense robe of cloud be the ever-
ascending steam of a globe that, in consequence of its vast bulk, has
not sufficiently cooled down to be a scene of life at all ? Even the
analogue of our Silurian creation may not yet have begun in Jupiter.
Look, again, at Mercury, where it bathes in a flood of light, en-
veloped within the sun's halo, like some forlorn smelter sweltering
beside the furnace mouth. A similar state of things may obtain on
the surface of that planet, from a different though not less adequate
cause. But it is unnecessary to deal further with an analogy so
palpably overstrained, and whose aggressive place and position in a
province not its own so many unanswerable objections start up to
elucidate and fix."
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 377
Such, virtually, is the argument which has been repro-
duced and greatly expanded in the " Essay on the Plurality
of Worlds." We think, however, that the ingenious and
accomplished author of that work has pressed it too far,
and forgotten that, though it introduces into the reason-
ings of the astronomer, regarding the existence of rational
inhabitants in the planets, the modifying element of time,
it does not affect his general conclusions. It merely shows,
from the extended experience of the earth's history which
geology furnishes, that these conclusions may not refer to
the now of the planetary universe, but to some period in a
perhaps very remote future. For the argument of the as-
tronomer, in a condensed form, let us draw on Fontenelle,
a man who wrote ere geology had yet any existence as
a science. It is thus he makes his philosopher reason with
his lady friend the Marchioness, in a general summary :
"We cannot pretend to make you see them [the inhab-
itants of the planets] ; and you cannot insist upon demon-
stration here, as you would in a mathematical question ;
but you have all the proofs you could desire in our world,
the entire resemblance of the planets with the earth
which is inhabited, the impossibility of conceiving any
other use for which they were created, the fecundity and
magnificence of nature, the certain regards which she seems
to have had to the necessities of the inhabitants, as in giv-
ing moons to those planets remote from the sun, and more
moons still to those yet more remote ; and, what is still
very material, there are all things to be said on one side,
and nothing on the other. In short, supposing that these
inhabitants of the planets really exist, they could not de-
clare themselves by more marks, or by marks more sensi-
ble." Such is the statement of Fontenelle ; and, though
it can be no longer affirmed that nothing can be said on
the opposite side, seeing that we have now a very ingenious
volume written on the opposite side, by not merely a clever,
but also a highly scientific man, it will be found that in
the course of discovery the argument has rather strength-
32*
378 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
ened than weakened. Let us take, for instance, the por-
tion of it founded on the existence and distribution of
moons. It was known when Fonteuelle wrote his " Con-
versations on the Plurality of Worlds," that the earth had
one moon, Jupiter four moons, and Saturn five. It is
now farther known that Saturn has eight moons, and
Uranus also eight ; and if only one has yet'been detected
revolving round Neptune, it must be taken into account
that the latter planet is twice further distant from our
earth than Saturn, and so dimly discernible that it is still
a question whether it possesses a ring or no, that our
earliest acquaintance with it is not yet more than eight
years old, that even Saturn's eighth moon was discov-
ered only six years ago, and that not only not a few of
the moons of Neptune, but even some of the moons of
Uranus, may be still to find. The general fact still holds
good, that in proportion as the larger planets most distant
from the sun require, in consequence, moons to light them,
the necessary moons they have got; just as on our own
earth the animals who live most distant from the sun, and
require, in consequence, thicker protective coverings to
keep them warm, have got these necessary protective cov-
erings, whether of fatty matter or of fur. But the argu-
ment derivable from the light and heat of the sun himself
seems scarce less strong. Let us avail ourselves of it, as
condensed by Sir David Brewster, from Sir Isaac Newton's
first letter to Dr. Bentley. " He [Sir Isaac] thought it
inexplicable by natural causes, and to be ascribed to the
counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent, that the
matter [of which the solar system is formed] should divide
itself into two sorts, part of it composing a shining body
like the sun, and part an opaque body like the planets.
Had a natural and blind cause, without contrivance and
design, placed the earth in the centre of the moon's orbit,
and Jupiter in the centre of his system of satellites, and
the sun in the centre of the planetary system, the sun
would have been a body like Jupiter, and the earth that
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 379
is, without light and heat; and, consequently, he [Sir
Isaac] knew no reason why there is only one body qual-
ified to give light and heat to all the rest, but because the
Author of the system thought it convenient, and because
one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest."
"To warm and enlighten all the rest!" Newton recog-
nizes the hand of the Divine Designer in that peculiar
collocation of matter through which the lamp and furnace
of the system is placed in its centre, and the opaque
objects to be warmed and heated arranged at certain dis-
tances around it. But why the application of light and
heat to masses of dead matter ? Light and heat, in a
lesser or greater degree, are necessary to the existence of
all organisms, plant and animal, but not to the exist-
ence of matter not organized. A lamp is necessary in a
railway carriage that travels by night, if there be passen-
gers within, but not in the least necessary to the carriage
itself, if there be only the empty seats to shine upon. And
if, of all the planets that not only revolve round the central
lamp and furnace, but have also special lamps of their
own, the earth be the only inhabited one, not only is the
waste most enormous, but the argument of design, so pro-
foundly deduced by Sir Isaac, must be pronounced to be
of no force in more than thirty cases for one, that is, in
the cases of all the supposed uninhabited planets In which
there exists nothing capable of being benefited by being
either lighted or warmed. Or, to avail ourselves of Sir
David's happy illustration, the Creator of a solar system
with many uninhabited planets, and only a single inhabited
one, would resemble some " mighty autocrat who should
establish a railway round the coasts of Europe and Asia,
and place upon it an enormous train of first-class carriages,
impelled year after year by tremendous steam-power, while
there was a philosopher and a culprit in a humble van,
attended by hundreds of unoccupied carriages and empty
trucks." And, of course, were the unoccupied carriages
to be lighted up with lamps apparently for the benefit of
380 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
the passengers which they had not, and were these lamps
to be fewer or more numerous in each case in meet pro-
portion with the degree of darkness to be encountered, and
as the necessities of actual passengers would require, the
puzzle involved in the why and wherefore of the whole
concern would be still increased. The old argument for
the inhabitancy of the planets, regarded as an argument
of ultimate design, still remains unaffected by the discov-
eries of the geologist.
But, on the other hand, let not the modifying influence
of these discoveries be denied. Such is their effect on the
argument, that, though we may receive it in full as truly
solid, we may yet, in perfect consistency with its conclu-
sions, deem it a moot point whether there be at the present
time a single inhabited world in the system save our own.
We cannot express, either by figures or by algebraic signs,
save by the signs that express unknown quantity, the ge-
ologic periods. We only know that they were of enormous
extent. Let us, however, for the argument's sake, repre-
sent the period during which man has been upon earth by
the sum 5000, the periods during which the successive
plant-and-animal-bearing systems of the geologist were in
being by the sum 1,000,000, and the earlier death periods,
during which the gneiss, the older quartz rock, the mica
schist, and the non-fossiliferous clay slate were formed, by
the sum 500,000 ; and let us then suppose that some intel-
lectual being, wise as a Newton, and reasoning on exactly
his principles and those of Sir David Brewster, had existed
during all these terms, converted into years, at a distance
from the earth as great as that which separates the earth
from the planets Mars or Venus; further, let us suppose
that once in every five thousand years for the first half-
million, the query had been propounded to him by the
Creator, as the Creator questioned Job of old, "Intel-
lectual being, is yonder planet inhabited, or no ? " and that
during the million of years that followed, the query should
be repeated after the same intervals in the modified form,
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 881
" Is yonder planet inhabited by rational, accountable
creatures, or no ? " Now, nothing can be more clear than
that, reasoning on Sir Isaac's and Sir David's premises,
the reply would be given in each instance in the affirma-
tive. It would be seen by the reasoning creature that the
distant earth-planet was lighted up and heated by the
great central furnace and lamp, the sun ; that it had its
clouds, and therefore its atmosphere ; that it had its grate-
ful interchange of day and night, of summer and winter,
autumn and spring ; and, further, that it had its attendant
moon, to stir up its seas with purifying tides, and to light
up its nights. And yet most probable it is that the first
hundred answers to the query those which related to
the existence of mere animal being would have been
false ones ; and most certain it is that the next two hun-
dred answers to the query those which related to the
existence of natural life would be false also. Not until
after the lapse of a million and a half of years, when the
question would come to be put for the three hundred and
first time, would it elicit the true response. And let us
remember that whatever was may be ; and that what were
the first states of our own planet may be the present states
of the various planets that revolve with it round the
central furnace and lamp. Here again we cannot cast our
argument into an exact geometrical or arithmetical shape.
We cannot even say, founding on the assumption of pro-
portionate periods already given, that as our earth was for
three hundred periods of five thousand years each without
rational inhabitants, and possessed of such an inhabitant
during only the three hundred and first period of that
length, so it is probable that of three hundred and one
contemporary planets only one is a scene of rational ex-
istence, and the others either not inhabited at all, or in-
habited by but sentient irrationality. We cannot give the
argument any such exact form, seeing that an unreckoned
but possible, nay, probable element, comes in to destroy
its exactitude. The other planets may, nay, in all likeli-
382 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
hood, have bnen ripening as certainly as our own, and the
period of rational inhabitancy may have arrived in not a
few of them. Quite as perilous, however, would it be to
argue from the particular analogy furnished by the history
of the earth, that all, or even the greater part of them, had
so ripened. Why, even the fruit of one season, whether
apples or apricots, does not all ripen at the same time on
the same tree ; far less do the fruits of different trees ripen
at the same time. And we are sufficiently acquainted
with the planets to know that, with certain general resem-
blances, they are very different fruit indeed from our own
earth. Even supposing Jupiter, for instance, to be in
every respect save size a second earth (which, by the way,
demonstrably he is not), he would take, on the soberest
calculations of the geologist, many hundred times more
time to ripen than our small planet. And so may it be
predicted of Saturn and Uranus, and Neptune also, and
most probably, from the different circumstances in which
they are placed, of the smaller planets Mercury and Venus.
But while this geological question, in relation to the pres-
ent time of ripe or unripe, must be now brought in to
qualify the reasonings of the astronomer, let us not forget
that these reasonings have, with reference to ultimate re-
sults, a value as positive as ever. From the crustaceous
eyes of many facets that existeel during the times of the
Silurian period, and the ichthyic eyes of but one facet or
capsule that existed during the times of the Old Red Sand-
stone, the geologist infers that during these periods there
existed light ; while the astronomer, taking up the con-
verse of the argument, infers that where there is light
(joined, of course, to the other necessary conditions of life,
such as planetary matter existing in the twofold form of
solid nucleus and surrounding atmosphere) there must be
eyes, eyes, therefore light, solar or lunar, etc., light,
solar or lunar, therefore eyes. And just as the geologic
argument is noways invalidated by. the fact that there
are animals in the foetal state furnished with eyes darkly
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 383
veiled in the womb, for which light does not yet exist, it
in no degree invalidates the astronomical argument that
there have been, and most probably now axe, foetal planets
furnished with light, solar or lunar, for which eyes do not
yet exist. Such, in this controversy, seems to be the due
balance and adjustment of the opposite arguments, as-
tronomic and geologic arguments that modify, but in no
degree destroy, each other.
We can of course do little more, within the limits of a
single article, than just touch at a few points, on a subject
upon which men such as Sir David Brewster, and, shall we
say, Professor Whewell, fill each a volume apiece. Let us,
however, submit to them, as very admirable, both in form
and substance, the claims of geology, as stated by the
English Professor :
" Astronomy claims a sort of dignity over other sciences, from her
antiquity, her certainty, and the vastness of her discoveries. But the
antiquity of astronomy as a science had no share in such speculations
as we are discussing ; and if it had had, new truths are better than
old conjectures ; new discoveries must rectify old errors ; new an-
swers must remove old difficulties. The vigorous youth of geology
makes her fearless of the age of astronomy. And as to the certainty
of astronomy, it has just as little to do with these speculations. The
certainty stops just where these speculations begin. There may,
indeed, be some danger of delusion on this subject. Men have been
so long accustomed to look upon astronomical science as the mother
of certainty, that they may possibly confound astronomical discov-
eries with cosmological conjectures, though these be slightly and
illogically connected with those. And then, as to the vastness of as-
tronomical discoveries, granting that character, inasmuch as it is
to a certain degree a matter of measurement, we must observe
that the discoveries of geology are no less vast ; they extend through
time, as those of astronomy do through space ; they carry us through
millions of years, that is, of the earth's revolutions, as those of as-
tronomy do through millions of the earth's diameter, or of diameters of
the earth's orbit. Geology fills the regions of duration with events, as
astronomy fills the regions of the universe with objects. She carries
us backward by the relation of cause and effect, as astronomy carries
384 LITEKARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
us upward by the relation of geometry. As astronomy steps on
from point to point of the universe by a chain of triangles, so geology
steps from epoch to epoch of the earth's history by a chain of me-
chanical and organical laws. If the one depends on the axioms of
geometry, the other depends on the axioms of causation.
" So far, then, geology has no need to regard astronomy as her
superior, and least of all when they apply themselves together to
speculations like these. But, in truth, in such speculations geology
has an immeasurable superiority. She has the command of an im-
plement in addition to all that astronomy can use, and one, for the
purpose of such speculations, adapted far beyond any astronomical
element of discovery. She has for one of her studies, one of her
means of dealing with her problems, the knowledge of life, animal
and vegetable. Vital organization is a subject of attention which
has in modern times been forced upon her. It is now one of the
main points of her discipline. The geologist must study the traces
of life in every form ; must learn to decipher its faintest indications
and its fullest development. On the question, then, whether there
be in this or that quarter evidence of life, he can speak with the con-
fidence derived from familiar knowledge ; while the astronomer, to
whom such studies are utterly foreign, beause he has no facts that
bear upon them, can offer on such questions only the loosest and
most arbitrary conjectures ; which, as we have had to remark, have
been rebuked by eminent men as being altogether inconsistent with
the acknowledged maxims of his science.
" When, therefore, geology tells us that the earth, which has been
the seat of human life for a few thousand years only, has been the
seat of animal life for myriads, it may be millions, of years, she has
a right to offer this as an answer to any difficulty which astronomy,
or the readers of astronomical books, may suggest, derived from the
consideration that the earth, the seat of human life, is but one globe
of a few thousand miles in diameter, among millions of other globes
at distances millions of times as great. Let the difficulty be put in
any way the objector pleases. Is it that it is unworthy of the great-
ness and majesty of God, according to our conception of him, to
bestow such peculiar care on so small a part of his creation ? But
we know from geology that he has bestowed upon this .small part
of his creation mankind this special care. He has made their
period, though only a moment in the ages of animal life, the only
period of intelligence, morality, religion. If, then, to suppose that
he had done this is contrary to our conceptions of his greatness and
GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 385
majesty, it is plain that our conceptions are erroneous : they have
taken a wrong direction. God has not judged as to what is worthy
of Him as we have judged. He has found it worthy of him to
bestow upon man his special care, though he occupies so small a
portion of time ; and why not, then, although he occupies so small
a portion of space ?
" Or is the objection this, that if we suppose the earth only to
be occupied by inhabitants, all the other globes of the universe are
wasted, turned to no purpose ? Is waste of this kind considered
as unsuited to the character of the Creator ? But here again we
have the like waste in the occupation of the earth. All its previous
ages, its seas, and its continents, have been wasted upon mere brute
life, often, so far as we can see, for myriads of years upon the lowest,
the least conscious form of life, upon shell-fishes, crabs, sponges
Why, then, should not the seas and continents of other planets be
occupied at present with a fife no higher than this, or with no life at
all?"
88
386 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
IV.
THE SPACES AND THE PERIODS.
That vast development of natural science which forma
a leading characteristic of the present age gives an im-
portance to questions such as that which it involves which
they did not possess at any former period ; and must, we
doubt not, materially affect in the future the entire front
of that ever-fresh controversy which has been maintained
since the earliest ages of the church around the Christian
evidences. Let us address ourselves to the present portion
of our subject, the great extent of the geologic periods,
through the medium of a simple illustration.
Let us suppose that shortly after the arrival of the May-
flower at the shores of New England, and just as the
Pilgrim Fathers are preparing to begin their labors among
the deep primeval forests which cover the country, there
occurs a friendly controversy between two of the party
regarding the age of these vast woods. All the trees are
of kinds unknown at home ; and though loftier, many of
them, than the great oaks of England, and not a few of
them not less bulky, it is maintained by one of the dispu-
tants that they may yet have come under very different
laws of growth, and may not be one twentieth part so old.
These hoary forests, he argues, though it would require
some three or four centuries to form such on the eastern
shores of the Atlantic, may on its western shores be less
than fifty years old ; nay, not only may the woods of the
country be as of yesterday compared with those of Eng-
land, but even its animals may. be of such rapid growth
that the mouse-deer, though of ponderous bulk and size,
may be in reality only a few months old ; and the oyster,
THE SPACES AND THE PERIODS. 387
which on the English beds takes from five to seven years,
as shown by its annual shoots, to be fit for market, may in
the greatly larger American species be equally mature in
as many weeks. The disputant contends and at this
stage of the controversy contends truly that they are
furnished with no correct unit by which to measure the
age of either the unknown plants or unfamiliar animals of
the new country. Let us yet further suppose that in the
immediate neighborhood of the infant settlement there is
a small lake, which the settlers find it necessary for sani-
tary purposes to drain, and that they cut through, in the
work, one of those deep mosses of northern America in
which the gigantic bones, and not unfrequently the entire
skeletons, of the mastodon occur. Let us suppose that
they first cut through several yards of solid peat ; that
they then reach a tier of rather small tree-stumps sticking
in the soil ; that a second tier of somewhat larger tree-
stumps lies beneath ; that they then reach a third tier of
still larger stumps ; that under the stratum of earth which
underlies these they find a thick bed of marl composed
chiefly of very minute shells ; and that embedded in the
marl they find the skeleton of a mastodon. Judging from
data furnished on the eastern side of the Atlantic, the
Pilgrim who has been asserting, in opposition to his neigh-
bor, the antiquity of the American woods, argues from
these appearances that the moss deposit must be of great
age, and the underlying skeleton of an age greater still.
Mosses in Old England, containing three tiers of stumps,
are demonstrably as old as the times of the Roman inva-
sion. Even the Roman axe has in some instances been
found sticking in the lower trunks ; and at least the huge
unknown skeleton just found in the moss must, he urges,
be quite as ancient as the times of Agricola or Julius Cassar.
His antagonist, however, challenges the inference. The
previous question has, he asserts, first to be settled. The
rate of growth of the American wood and the American
shells has to be determined ere any calculation can be
388 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
founded on either the three tiers of stumps or the over-
lying or intervening deposits of vegetable matter, or yet
on the thickness of the shell-marl which underlies the
whole. For if, as he contends, the growth of animals and
vegetables be, as is possible, very rapid in the new world,
the moss and shells, instead of being at least sixteen or
seventeen hundred years old, may not be above sixty or
seventy years old, and the huge animal beneath may have
been living only eighty or a hundred years ago. At length,
however, the required unit of measui-ement turns up. In
cutting a tree for the erection of his hut, the Pilgrim who
maintains the opposite side of the argument finds it strongly
marked by the annual rings. And there can be no doubt
that the rings are annual ones. Between the tropics, when
rings occur at all, they may indicate the checks given to
vegetation by the dry seasons ; and as the year has in
certain localities two of these, each twelvemonth may be
represented in the tree, not by one, but by two rings.
But in the latitude of New England, where winter presses
his iron signet on the soil with much firmness, one strongly-
marked ring represents the year; and so, if it be found
that a tree of some eighteen or twenty inches in diameter
has its hundred concentric rings, it may be safely predicated
that it has stood its century. And such, in the supposed
case, is the inference of the Pilgrim. He has at length
got a unit, in reality fixed by the great, never-varying
astronomic movements which give to the world its seed-
time and its winter; and finding, as he cuts tree after tree,
the same evidence repeated, ring answering to ring, here
larger and there smaller, but in their average proportions
corresponding with those of the English woods, he is
constrained definitively to conclude that the trees of the
new country grow as slowly, or nearly so, as those of the
old one ; and he confidently challenges his antagonist to
test the data on which he founds. Nor can he hold that
his newly-found unit, though, strictly speaking, only a
measure of the age of the various forest trees in which it
THE SPACES AND THE PERIODS. 389
occurs, has bearing only on them. If trees grow as slowly
in the new country as in the old, can he rationally hold that
its other classes of vegetables its ferns, equisetacae, club-
mosses, grasses, and herbaceous plants generally grow
much faster than their cogeners at home ? Further, though
his unit does not enable him to measure exact'y the age
by the mossy deposit, with its three tiers of stumps and
its underlying mastodon, it at least enables him to deter-
mine that it must be very old. It gives him in succession
the age of each tier ; and when he infers respecting the
intervening and overlying deposits of vegetable matter,
that, as the trees grow slowly, the deposits must have been
formed correspondingly slow in about the average ratio of
similar formations on the other side of the Atlantic, it jus-
tifies the inference ; nay, it is not without its bearing on
the probable growth of the animals of the country also.
It would be utterly wild to hold that in a country in which
an ordinary-sized pine was the slow growth of a century,
a mouse-deer or a grizzly bear shot up to its full size in a
few weeks or months. And if in the foliaceous shells of
the coast, such as its oysters, he finds exactly such layers
of growth, or shoots, as those from which the oyster-fisher
at home computes the age of the animals, each " shoot "
being the work of a year, can he avoid the conclusion that
here also he has got a unit by which to measure the time
during which the organisms have lived, and from which
he may conclude, in all sobriety, that if the bed of shell-
marl which contains the remains of the mastodon be very
thick, it must of necessity be very old ? If he cannot, in
strictness, apply his units to every plant or every shell, or
yet to every deposit of vegetable or animal origin, they at
least tell him that the same general laws of growth obtain
on the one side of the Atlantic as on the other, and warn
him against inferring, like his antagonist, that the cases in
which he has not yet been able to apply them are in any
degree anomalous, or under laws that are different.
We have but to apply to the geological periods of at
33*
390 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
least the Secondary and Tertiary divisions the reasoning
of our illustration here, in order to determine that they
must have been immensely prolonged. In no degree is
the argument more affected by the portion of time which
separates our age from the ages of the Oolite, than by the
portion of space which separates our country from the
eastern shores of America. In the woods of the great
palaeozoic division the lines of growth are uncertain and
capricious. Many of the trees furnish no trace of them
whatever, just as there are recent intertropical trees in
which they do not occur ; and in some of the others they
appear capriciously and irregularly, as in those intertropical
trees in which the growth is checked from time to time by
intense heats and occasional droughts. But in the woods
of the Lias and Oolite winter has set his seal; the annual
rings of Peuce Eiggensis and Peuce Lindleiana are as
regularly and strongly marked as those of the Scotch fir
or Swiss pine ; nor, be it added, are they of larger size. In
one specimen of our collection, but in one only, the rings
average nearly a quarter of an inch in breadth ; the tree
added in a single twelvemonth almost half an inch to its
diameter ; but the specimen is an exceptional one. In the
others they average from about a line to an eighth part ;
and in one specimen no fewer than twenty-eight rings
occur in the space of an inch. The slow-growing tree, of
which 1t formed a portion, sluggish in its progress as a
Norwegian pine on some exposed mountain-side, added
only half an inch to its diameter in seven years. The unit
here tells certainly of no rapid development of life, but,
on the contrary, of a development quite as tardy as that
of the present age of the world in latitudes as high as
onr own ; and, though we cannot decide with the same
certainty respecting the rate of growth in the animals
contemporary with those trees, we may surely most natu-
rally infer that ostrea of some ten or twelve layers, or
gryphites (extinct members of the same family) of some
fifteen or twenty, could not have been very young ; that
THE SPACES AND THE PERIODS. 391
as the ammonite, though thinly walled, was as solid in its
substance as the nautilus, and had a great many more
chambers, which were added to it peacemeal, one at a time,
it could not have been of much quicker growth ; and that,
as the internal shell of the belemnite was much more pon-
derous than that of its successor the cuttle-fish, it must
have attained to maturity quite as slowly. Further, not
only can it be demonstrated that ivory teeth were every
whit as dense in those ages as they are now, a remark
that applies equally to the later palaeozoic periods, but
it can be shown also that some of these teeth were as
sorely worn as in existing animals when very old. In
short, the evidence that life, animal and vegetable, existed
on the further side of the Tertiary geologic periods under
the same laws as now, is as conclusive as that it exists
under the same laws on the further side of the Atlantic.
And these laws cast much light, as in the case of the peat-
moss of our illustration, on the rate at which many of the
mechanical deposits must have gone on. The Lias of
Eathie, for instance, consist, for about four hundred feet in
vertical extent, of an almost impalpable shale, divided into
layers scarce thicker than pasteboard. It might well be
predicated, from the merely mechanical character of the
deposit, that its formation could not have been rapid. But
how greatly is the argument for the lapse of a vast period
of time for its growth strengthened by the fact that each
one of these many thousand layers formed a crowded
platform of animal life, and that so thickly are they covered
with the remains of not only free shells, such as ammonites,
but also of sedentary shells, such as the ostrea, that the
organisms of but two of the more crowded platforms could
not find room on a single one ! And these shells were the
contemporaries of slow-growing pines, that on the average
increased in diameter little more than the fifth of an inch
yearly.
Nor, though we lack the regulating unit, is the evidence
of the lapse of vast periods during the deposition of the
392 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
palaeozoic systems much less complete. The oldest wood
that pi*esents its structure to the microscope a fossil of
the Lower Old Red Sandstone exhibits no annual rings;
but it presents as dense a structure as the Norfolk Island
pine. The huge araucarian of Granton has a structure
nearly as dense. We have already incidentally referred to
the solid ivory and much-worn teeth of the reptile fishes
of the Coal Measures. In the Mid-Lothian basin there are
thirty seams of workable coal intercalated among deposits
of various character, whose united thickness amounts to
nearly three thousand feet, and under most of these seams
the original soil may still be detected on which the plants
that formed their coal flourished and decayed. Whole
beds of the Mountain Limestone are composed almost
exclusively of marine shells and the stems of lily encrinites.
In the Old Red Sandstone there are three different form-
ations abounding in fishes ; and yet, so far as is yet known,
there is not a single species of fish common to any two of
them. And who shall tell us that the life-term of a crea-
tion is a brief period ? In the Upper Silurian system we
have examined a deposit more than fifty feet thick, every
fragment of which had once been united to animal life,
crustaceous, molluscan, or radiated. And how wonderfully,
too, the further geologists explore, and the more carefully
they examine, are their formations found to expand !
Phillips estimated the thickness of the Coal Measures at
ten thousand feet. Sir Charles Lyell, in one of his recent
visits to America, found that the Coal Measures of Nova
Scotia had a thickness of more than fourteen thousand six
hundred feet. Phillips estimated all the deposits beneath
ths Old Red Sandstone at twenty thousand feet. The
geologists of the Government survey find that the Silurians
alone amount to about thirty thousand feet; and under
these, in Scotland at least, lie the clay-slates, the mica-
schists, and the enormous deposits of the gneisses. On
the Continent, the remains of whole creations have been
found intercalated between what had been deemed con-
THE SPACES AND THE PERIODS. 393
tiguous systems. An entire system, the Permian, has
been detected between the Coal Measures and the Trias ;
and that shell-deposit that extends between the Gironde
and the Pyrenees, once regarded as of the same age with
the Coraline Crag, has yielded seven hundred species
of shells nearly twice the number of all the species
found on the coasts of Britain that belong neither to
the Crag nor to the older Eocene. It is yet another
creation that has appeared, for which fitting space must
be found in the record. The more thoroughly the field-
geologist examines, the larger become his demands on the
eternity of the past for periods which it is certainly very
competent to supply. His sibyl ever returns upon him ;
but, unlike her of old, it is with an increased, not a dimin-
ished store of volumes ; and she ever demands for them
a larger and yet larger price.
And why should the tale of years be refused her? Let
year be heaped upon year, until the numerals that repre-
sent them, consisting all of nines, would extend in a close
line from the sun to the planet Neptune, and they would
still form but an inappreciable item in the lifetime of the
Creator. We see nothing to regret in the truth, destined
to become greatly more evident in the future than it is
now, that there is nothing in all history, or in all creation,
vast enough to be measured off against the periods of the
geologist, save the spaces of the astronomer; or that, with
relation to at least our own planet, rational existence is
still in its immature infancy. Could we wish it to be
otherwise ? The world is still sowing its wild oats ; and,
though somewhat better, on the whole, than it has been,
there is surely nothing in its present aspect to reconcile any
one to the belief that it has attained to its ultimate devel-
opment. Its present most prominent features, if we may
so express ourselves, are the horrible sufferings of war and
the lies of stock-jobbers.
394 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
V.
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES.*
There are certain typical forms of error that never die,
though their details alter, and the facts and analogies on
which they purport to be based vary with the increase of
knowledge and the progress of the human mind. And it
is of great importance that these should be studied, not
only in their essential, and. if we may so express ourselves,
generic character, but also historically, in the various mod-
ifications of shape and color which have marked them at
their several periods of revival, and which will almost al-
ways be found to depend on some peculiarity of pursuit
or opinion prevalent at the time, or, if connected with the
physical sciences, on some newly-opened course of discov-
ery. The various species of error once thoroughly mas-
tered, the student will find ever after that it is with but
its varieties he has to deal. Nay, by thoroughly knowing
the species, and the history of the changes through which
they passed at their several appearances, he may be able
to anticipate the exact course which they would have to
run should they reappear in his own times, when men
worse taught, and unacquainted with this cycloidal char-
acter of error, will neither know whence they come nor
whither they are going. The native sagacity of the late
Dr. M'Crie was greatly sharpened by a knowledge of this
kind, derived from his profound acquaintance with church
history; and he is said to have predicted, while Rowism was
1 The Unity of the Human Races proved to be the Doctrine of Scripture,
Reason, Science, etc. By the Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D., Member of the Amer
lean Association for the Advancement of Science.
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 395
yet a howling enthusiasm, gibbering the untranslatable
tongues, and stretching forth its hand to work miracles,
that it was to end at no very remote period as a decrepit
superstition. The fluttering butterfly was destined, agree-
ably to its previously-determined constitution, to produce
a brood of creeping caterpillars, though only the laborious
student who had acquainted himself with its specific char-
acter, as exhibited in former manifestations, knew that
such was to be the case. This perception of the specific
essentials and consequents of both truth and error consti-
tutes, too, at once the charm and the value of such a mas-
tery over the controversies which have arisen within the
church, or in which, in self-defence, the church has been
compelled to engage, as that possessed by the Principal of
our Free Church College, Dr. Cunningham ; and there are
not a few opposed to college extension on the principle
that, even in the Free Church, Professors of Church History
of similar calibre and acquirement are not to be had in
every district of country, and that yet such are impera-
tively demanded by the emergencies of the time. To dis-
tinguish between the permanent forms and the accidental
circumstances, between the ever-recurring cycloidal types
and those mere varieties which belong to but one phase or
period in the appearance of these, must ever form no
inconsiderable portion of the science of ecclesiastical his-
tory. Nay, save for this tendency in the typical forms of
error to return upon the world altered in their features but
unchanged in their framework, at least two thirds of all
ecclesiastical history would be but a profitless record of
the nonsense and errors of the past ; and the beau ideal of
a church history would be a work such as that of Milner,
which is little else than a record of the better thoughts
and deeds of Christian men chronologically arranged, and
useless for the most important ends served by ecclesiasti-
cal history of the better type. It sounds no note of warn-
ing, and furnishes no armor of defence, against the cycloi-
dal errors.
896 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
There are two of these returning errors of a diametri-
cally opposite character, which arise out of natural science,
and of which the last century has seen several revivals,
and the centuries to come must witness many more. The
one that of Maillet and Lamarck sees no impassable
line between species, or even genera, families, and classes,
and so holds that all animals the human race as certainly
as the others may have commenced in the lowest forms,
and developed during the course of ages to what they now
are. The other that of Karnes and Voltaire recog-
nizes in even the varieties of the species impassable lines,
and holds, in consequence, that the human race cannot
have sprung from a single pair. And both beliefs are as
incompatible with the fundamental truths of revelation as
they are with one another. The Lamarckian form of error
has been laid on the shelf for a time ; nor will it be very
efficiently revived until some new accumulation of fact,
gleaned from the yet unexplored portions of the geologic
field, or the obscurer fields of natural history, and preg-
nant with those analogical resemblances between the course s
of creation and the progress of embryology with which
nature is full, will give it new footing, by associating it
with novel and interesting truth. The antagonist error is
at present all alive and active in America, where it has
been espoused by naturalists of high name and standing ;
and it has already produced volumes of controversy. Nor
is there a country in the world where, from purely politi-
cal causes, there must exist a predisposition equally strong
to receive as true the hypothesis of Voltaire. The exist-
ence of slavery in the Southern States, and the strong
dislike with which the black population are regarded by
the whites throughout the country generally, must dispose
the men who hate or enslave them to receive with favor
whatever plausibilities go to show that they are not of one
blood with themselves, and that they owe to them none
of the duties of brotherhood. We have perused with in-
terest and instruction a very learned and able volume on
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 397
this subject by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Smyth of Charleston,
one of the most accomplished Presbyterian ministers of
the United States, with whose works on the " Apostolical
Succession" and the " Claims of the Free Church of Scot-
land " many of our readers must be already acquainted,
and who, though residing in the centre of a slave district,
nncl exposed to much odium on the part of the abolitionists,
has been the first to come forward in this controversy to
assert in behalf of the black man the " unity of the human
races," and that all men have fallen in one common father,
the first Adam, " created a living soul," and that there is
salvation to all in one common Saviour, the " last Adam,"
" made a quickening Spirit." Much of the volume is taken
up in dealing with the question in its older form. Vol-
taire held that there were " as well-marked species of men
as of apes." Karnes was more unhappy in his illustration.
" If the only rule afforded by nature for classing animals
can be depended upon," we find him saying, " there are
different species of men as well as of dogs." Gibbon,
though his remark on the subject takes the characteristic
form of an ironical sneer, in which he says the contrary
of what he means, deemed it more natural to hold that
the various races of men originated in those tracts of the
globe which they inhabit, than that they had all proceeded
from a common centre and a single pair of progenitors.
To the view, however, taken by these distinguished scep-
tics, men eminent in the literary world, but of little
weight in that of science, all the greater naturalists of
the last century were opposed. Kames, in the chapter of
his " Sketches " specially devoted to the question, had to
combat both Linnaeus and Buffon ; and the later natural-
ists who have specially concentrated themselves on the
subject, such as Pritchard, Bachman, and Lawrence, have
irrofragably shown that, tried by the marks which are re-
garded as constituting specific differences among the lower
animals, the family of man consists of but one species
But the question raised in the modern form, without dia-
34
398 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
puting this conclusion, eludes it by a new statement ; and
we could fain wish that Dr. Smyth had devoted a larger
portion of his valuable volume to the controversy in its
new phase. The fact is, while in its old form the greater
naturalists were on the side of the orthodox theologian,
some very distinguished naturalists take in its new form
the opposite side. The difference in the statement may
be summed up in a few words. It was held by Voltaire
and his coadjutors that there are several species of men,
who must of necessity have originated from several pairs ;
whereas, what is held by Professor Agassiz and several of
the American naturalists is, that though the species be
properly but one, it is according to the known analogies
both of plants and animals that it should have originated
in various centres, a conclusion which the strongly-
marked varieties of the race which occur in certain well-
defined geographic areas serve, it is held, to substantiate,
or at least to render the most probable.
It will be seen that against this restatement of the
question many of the old facts and arguments do not bear.
Theologically, however, in every instance in which it
assumes the positive form, and in which, building on its
presumed analogies, and the extreme character and remote
appearance of the several varieties of the species to which
it points, it asserts that the beginnings of the race must
be diverse, and its Adams and Eoes many, it is in effect
the same. On the consequences of the result it can be
scarce necessary to insist. The second Adam died for but
the descendants of the first. Nay, so thoroughly is reve-
lation pledged to the unity of the species, that if all nations
be not " made of one blood," there is, in the theological
sense, neither first nor second "Adam;" "Christ," accord-
ing to the apostle, " hath not risen ; " conversion is an
idle fiction ; and all men are yet in their sins. Further,
that kind of brotherhood which unites the species by those
ties of neighborhood illustrated by our Saviour is broken ;
and there are races of men reckoned up by millions and
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 399
tens of millions in which we may recognize our slaves and
victims, but not our brothers and neighbors. Nay, why
should we respect the life of creatures not of our own
blood ? Bill Sykes tells Fagin the Jew, in " Oliver Twist,"
that he wished he was his dog; "for," said he, "the gov-
ernment that cares for the lives of men like you lets a
man kill a dog how he likes." But if these tribes be men
not of our own blood, men who did not spring from the
same source with ourselves, and for whom therefore Chris-
tianity can make no provision, why the distinction ? It
is only to those whom we believe to be of our own blood
that the distinction extends. It is as lawful to shoot an
orang-outang or a chimpanzee as a dog or a cat ; and
with but mere expediency to regulate the matter, it might
become quite as necessary to hunt down and destroy wild
men as to hunt down and destroy wild dogs. Nay, we
are not sure whether a somewhat mysterious admission to
this effect may not be found in a passage quoted by Dr.
Smyth from the writings of one of the American assertors
of the diversity of races, Dr. Nott. " The time must
come," says this latter gentleman, "when the blacks will
be worse than useless to us. What then ? Emancipation
must follow, which, from the lights before us, is but an-
other name for extermination? But though the remark,
viewed in connection with such a doctrine, seems strangely
ominous, we do not profess fully to understand it.
Within the limits of a newspaper article narrow for
such a subject when amplest we can scarce be expected
even to indicate the line which we think ought to be taken
up in this controversy by the churches. To the historic
evidence we find ample justice done by Dr. Smyth; and
the historic evidence, so far as it goes, is, be it remembered,
positive, not merely inferential. We are less sure, Low-
ever, of the line specially adopted against Agassiz in the
field of natural history. The analogies may be on the
side of the naturalist, as he says they are, and he may be
quite right in holding that varieties of the race so extreme
400 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
as that of the negro on the one side, and the blue-eyed,
fair-haired, diaphanous Goth on the other, could not have
originated naturally in a species possessed of a common
origin during the brief period limited by authentic history
on the one hand, and the first beginnings of a family so
recent as that of maYi on the other. But though he may
possibly be right as a naturalist, though we think that
matter admits of being tried, for it is far from settled,
he may be none the less wrong on that account as a the-
ologian. His inferences may be right and legitimate in
themselves, and yet the main deduction founded upon
them be false in fact. Let us illustrate. There is nothing
more certain than that the human species is of compara-
tively recent origin. All geological science testifies that
man is but of yesterday ; and the profound yet exquisitely
simple argument of Sir Isaac Newton, as reported by Mr.
Conduit, bears with singular effect on the same truth.
Almost all the great discoveries and inventions, argued
the philosopher, are of comparatively recent origin. Per-
haps the only great invention or discovery that occurs in
the fabulous ages of history is the invention of letters.
All the others such as the mariner's compass, printing,
gunpowder, the telescope, the discovery of the New World
and Southern Africa, and of the true position and relations
of the earth in the solar system lie within the province
of the authentic annalist; which, man being the inquisi-
tive, constructive creature that he is, would not be the
case were the species of any very high antiquity. We
have seen, since the death of Sir Isaac, steam, gas, and
electricity introduced as new forces into the world ; the
race, in consequence, has in less than a century and a half
grown greatly in knowledge and in power; and by the
rapid rate of the increase, we argue with the philosopher
that it can by no means be very ancient. Had it been on
the earth twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand years ago,
steam, as, and electricity would have been discovered
hundreds of ages since, and it would at this date have no
UNITY OP THE HUMAN KACES. 401
such room to grow. And the only very ancient history
which has a claim to be authentic that of Moses con-
firms, we find, the shrewd inference of Sir Isaac. Now,
with this fact of the recent origin of the race on the one
hand, and the other fact, that the many various languages
of the race so differ that there are some of them which
have scarce a dozen words in common, a linguist who
confined himself to the consideration of natural causes
would be quite justified in arguing that these languages
could not possibly have changed to be what they are, from
any such tongue, in the some five or six thousand years
to which he finds himself restricted by history, geology,
and the inference of Sir Isaac. It takes many centuries
thoroughly to change a language, even in the present
state of things, in which divers languages exist, and in
which commerce and conquest, and the demands of litera-
ture, are ever incorporating the vocables of one people
with those of another. After the lapse of nearly three
thousand years, the language of modern Greece is essen-
tially that in which Homer wrote; and by much the larger
part of the words in which we ourselves express our ideas
are those which Alfred employed when he propounded his
scheme of legislative assemblies and of trial by jury. And
were there but one language on earth, changes in words
or structure would of necessity operate incalculably more
slowly. Nor would it be illogical for the linguist to argue,
that if, some five or six thousand years ago, the race, then
in their extreme infancy, had not a common language,
they could not have originated as one family, but as sev-
eral, and so his conclusion would in effect be that of the
American naturalist. But who does not see that, though
right as a linguist, he would be wrong as a theologian,
wrong in fact ? Reasoning on but the common and the
natural, he would have failed to take into account, in his
calculation, one main element, the element of miracle,
as manifested in the confusion of tongues at Babel ; and
his ultimate finding would, in consequence, be wholly
31*
402 LITERAKT AND SCIENTIFIC.
erroneous. Now, it is perhaps equally possible for the
naturalist to hold that two such extreme varieties of the
human family as the negro and the Goth could not have
originated from common parents in the course of a few
centuries ; and certainly the negro does appear in history
not many centuries after the flood. He had assumed his
deep black hue six hundred years before the Christian era,
when Jeremiah used his well-known illustration, " Can the
Ethiopian," etc. ; and the negro head and features appear
among the sculptures and paintings of Egypt several cen-
turies earlier. Nay, negro skulls of a very high antiquity
have been found among the mummies of the same ancient
kingdom. But though, with distinguished naturalists on
the other side, we would not venture authoritatively to
determine that a variety so extreme could have originated
in the ordinary course of nature in so brief a period, just
as we would hesitate to determine that a new language
could originate naturally in other than a very extended
term, we would found little indeed upon such a circum-
stance, in the face of a general tradition that the negroid
form and physiognomy were marks set upon an offending
family, and were scarce less the results of miracle than the
confusion of tongues. We are far from sure, however,
that it is necessary to have recourse to miracle. The Goth
is widely removed from the negro ; but there are interme-
diate types of man that stand in such a midway relation
to both, that each variety, taking these as the central type,
is divested of half its extremeness. Did such of our Ed-
inburgh readers as visited the Exhibition of this season
mark with what scholar-like exactness and artistic beauty
the late Sir William Allan restored, in his last great pic-
ture (" The Cup found in Benjamin's Sack "), the original
Egyptian form, as exhibited in the messengers of Joseph ?
Had the first men, Adam and Noah, been of that mingled
negroid and Caucasian type, and who shall say that
they were not? neither the Goth nor the negro would
UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 403
be so extreme a variety of the species as to be beyond the
power of natural causes to produce. -
We had purposed referring at some length to that por-
tion of the argument which is made to rest on analogy.
We have, however, more than exhausted our space, and
merely remark that it is not at all a settled point that the
analogies are in favor of creation in i plurality of centres.
Linnaeus and his followers in the past, and men such as
Edward Forbes in the present, assert exactly the contrary ;
and, though the question is doubtless an obscure and dif-
ficult one, so much so that he who takes up either side,
and incurs the onus probandi of what he asserts, will find
he has but a doubtful case, the doubt and obscurity lie
quite as much on the one side as the other. Even, how-
ever, were the analogies with regard to vegetables and the
lower animals in favor of creation in various centres, it
would utterly fail to affect the argument. Though the
dormouse and the Scotch fir had been created in fifty
places at once, the fact would not yield us the slightest
foundation for inferring that man had originated in more
than a single centre. Ultimately, controversies of this
character will not fail to be productive of good. They
will leave the truth more firmly established, because more
thoroughly tried, and the churches more learned. Nay,
should such a controversy as the present at length con-
vince the churches that those physical and natural sciences
which, during the present century, have been changing
the very face of the world and the entire region of human
thought, must be sedulously studied by them, and that
they can no more remain ignorant without sin than a
shepherd can remain unharmed in a country infested by
beasts of prey without breach of trust, it will be produc-
tive of much greater good than harm.
404 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
VI.
NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 1
There is a striking resemblance in form and aspect be-
tween the Scandinavian races of Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway, and the people of the northeastern coasts of
Scotland. The resemblance, however, is not restricted to
the races, it extends also to the countries which they
inhabit. The general features of Denmark and Sweden
are very much those of the southern districts of our own
country, mayhap rather tamer on the whole, from a less
ample development of the trap-rocks. And in Norway
we have, if we except a small portion of its southern ex-
tremity, simply a huge repitition of the Western High-
lands of Scotland ; it is a Highlands roughened by greater
hills, and intersected by deeper and more extensive lochs,
and prolonged far beyond the Arctic circle. In, however,
their physical conditions, both Norway and the Highlands
are wonderfully alike ; but with this interesting difference,
that some of the great agents which modified, in the re-
mote past, the form of the rougher portions of our coun-
try, and regarding which we can only speculate and
theorize, are still in active operation in Norway. The
loftier Norwegian mountains rise to nearly twice the
height of Ben Macdhui and Ben Nevis ; the country, too,
sti-etches about twelve degrees further to the north than
Cape Wrath, and runs more than three hundred miles
within the Arctic circle. And so it has its permanent
i Norway and its Glaciers visited in 1851, etc. By James D. Forbes, P.C.L.,
F.K.S., Sec. R S., Ed., etc. etc., and Professor of Natural Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh.
NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 405
sncw-fields and its great glaciers, that are in the present
day casting up their moraines, lateral and transverse, and
grooving and rounding the rocks beneath, just as our own
country had them in some remote and dateless age, ere,
mayhap, the introduction of man upon our planet. There
are other respects in which it is representative rather of
the past than of the present of Scotland. It still retains
its original forests, and presents, over wide areas, an ap-
pearance similar to that which was presented by the more
mountainous parts of our own country ere the formation
of our great peat-mosses. The range of the Grampians,
when first seen by Agricola, must have very much resem-
bled in its woody covering the southern Highlands of
Norway at the present day. Professor Forbes, on nearing
the Norwegian coast, was struck, on first catching sight of
the land, by the striking resemblance which it bore to
some of the gneiss tracts of the mainland of Scotland and
the Hebrides. The gneiss islands of Tyree and Coll first
occurred to his mind ; and " doubtless," he says, " the same
causes have produced this similarity of character, acting
in like circumstances. Both belong to that great gneiss
formation so prevalent in Norway, and also in Scotland,
with which few rocks can compare in their resistance to
atmospheric action and mechanical force. In both cases
they have been subjected forages to the action of the most
tremendous seas which wash any part of Europe ; and
they have probably been abraded by mechanical forces of
another kind, which have given the rounded outlines to
even their higher hills." As, however, the Professor ap-
proached the shore, he became sensible of a grand distinc-
tion between the mountain scenery of Norway and the
Scotch Hebrides. It was the Scotland of eighteen hun-
dred years ago on which he was looking. " On closer
observation," he says, " I pei'ceived that the low, rounded,
and rocky hills which I had at first believed to be bare
were almost everywhere covered, or at least dotted over,
with woods of pine, which, descending almost to the shore,
405 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
gave a peculiarity of character to the scenery, at the same
time, that it afforded a scale by which to estimate its mag-
nitude." The low hills which had at first rather disap-
pointed him were now, he found, a full thousand feet in
height.
There are several respects in which Norway may be re-
garded as a country still in its green youth. These prime-
val forests are of themselves demonstrative of the fact.
Humboldt well remarks, that " an early civilization of the
human race sets bounds to the increase of forests;" for
" nations," he says, " in their change-loving spirit, gradu-
ally destroy the decorations which rejoice our eye in the
north, and which, more than the records of history, attest
the youthfulness of our civilization." There are other evi-
dences that at least the northern portions of both Norway
and Sweden were unappropriated by man during the
earlier ages of British and Continental history. It is a
curious fact, adverted to by Mr. Robert Chambers in his
" Tracings of the North of Europe," that in the great
Museum of Antiquities at Copenhagen, the relics of the
stone period have been furnished by only Denmark and the
southern provinces of Sweden and Norway. They are
not to be found in the far provinces of the north ; and the
only district beyond the Baltic in which they occur in the
ordinary proportions of the south and middle portions of
Europe, is the low-lying, comparatively temperate prov-
ince of Scania. It is doubtless an advantage, in some
respects, at least for a wild and mountainous country to
be still in its youth. Large tracts of the more ancient
Scottish Highlands lie sunk in the hopeless sterility of old
age. In many of their so-called forests, that are forests
without a living tree, such as the Moin in Sutherland-
shire, or that tract of desert waste which spreads out
around Kingshouse in Argyleshire, the traveller sees, in
the sections opened by the winter torrents, two periods of
death represented, with a comparatively brief period of
life intervening between. There is first, reckoning from
NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 407
the rock upward, a stratum of gray angular gravel, formed
of the barren primary rocks, and identical with the angu-
lar gravels still in the course of forming under the attrition
of the glaciers of Norway and the Alps. And it speaks
of the ice-period of death, when the country had its per-
manent snow-fields and its great glaciers. Next in order
immediately over the dead gravel, there occurs usually a
thin stratum of mossy soil, bearing its tier of buried stumps
the representatives of an age of vegetable life when the
Highlands were what Norway is now, a scene of wide-
spreading forests. And then over all, to the depth often
of six or eight feet, we find, as representative of a second
and permanent period of death, a cold, spongy, ungenial
peat-moss, in which nothing of value to man finds root, save,
perhaps, a few scattered spikes of deer-grass, that, springing
early, furnish the flocks of the shepherd with a week or
two's provision, just as the summer begins. But for every
agricultural purpose these mossy wastes are in their effete
and sterile old age, and the yearly famines show how the
poor settlers upon them fai*e. Man failed to appropriate
them during their cheerful season of youth and life ; and
over wide tracts they are dead past resuscitation now.
In Norway, with all its bleakness, the chances in favor of
the people are better. The Norwegians have escaped the
curse of clanship ; and the country, still in the vigor of
youth, is parcelled out among many proprietors, who till
the lands which they inherit. Even in its wild animals,
Norway is a larger Scotland, post-dated some ten or fifteen
centuries. It has the identical beaver, bear, and wolf still
living in its forests, whose remains are occasionally found
in our mosses and marl-pits.
In another respect, however, Norway resembles our
country at a greatly earlier time than that of the primeval
forests. Its long line of western coast, with its many
islands and long-withdrawing fiords, presents everywhere
the appearance of a land not yet fairly arisen out of the
sea. The islands are simply the tops of great mountains,
408 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
that at once sink sheer into deep water ; and the fiords,
great glens, like Glen Nevis and Glencoe, that have not
yet raised themselves out of the sea. One may voyage
for many miles along this bold coast without finding a bit
of shore on which to land ; and such must have been very
much the appearance of our Western Highlands in the old
ice-ages, when the sea stood from five hundred to a thou-
sand feet higher along our steep hillsides than it does now,
or rather the land sat from five hundred to a thousand feet
lower. Both Professor Forbes and Mr. Chambers refer to
the great freshness of the raised terraces which stretch at
various heights along the coast, as if to show where the
surf had beat during prolonged intervals in the course of
upheaval ; and the latter gentleman seems to have been
particularly struck by the freshness of the sea-shells that
occur at great heights, and by their identity with those
which now live in the neighboi'ing seas. Professor Keilhau
showed Mr. Chambers serpulze on a rock-face, scarce a
mile from the busy city of Christiania, still firmly adhering
to the spot on which the creatures that inhabited them
had lived and died. And yet that rock is now one hun-
dred and eighty-six feet over the level of the sea. The
great abundance and freshness of the shells found on some
of the raised beaches of the country is of itself an object
of wonder. " TJdd walla," says Mr. Chambers, in his " Trac-
ings," "is a name of no small interest in science, because
of a great bed of ancient shells found near it. The effect
was novel and startling, when, on the hill-face o'erlooking
the fiord, and at the height of two hundred feet above its
waters, I found something like a group of gravel-pits, but
containing, instead of gravel, nothing but shells! It is
a nook among the hills, with a surface which had originally
been flat in the line of the fiord, though sloping forward
toward it. We can see that the whole space is filled to a
great depth with the exuviae of marine molluscs, cockles,
mussels, whelks, etc., all of them species existing at this
time in the Baltic, with only a thin covering of vegetable
NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 409
mould on the surface. I feel sure that some of these ex-
cavations are twenty feet deep; yet that is not the whole
thickness of the shell-bed." In the fact of the identity of
these shells with those that still live in the neighboring
sea, we have an evidence of the comparative recentness
of the upheaval of the land. In our own country, it is
only those shells that lie embedded in the terrace which
underlies the old coast-line that are identical, in at least
the gro&p, with the existing ones of the littoral and lamiu-
arian zones beyond. The higher-lying shells, not yet ex-
tinct, which occur in Britain at various heights, from fifty
to fourteen hundred feet over the present sea-line, are, as
a group, sub-arctic, and belong to the ice-age.
In one important circumstance, however, Norway and
our own country must have had an exactly similar history.
In both, the climate has been greatly more mild since at
least the historic ages began than it was in an earlier time.
When Scotland had its glaciers and snow wastes, Norway
seems to have been enveloped in ice ; whereas its climate
is now one of the finest in the world for the same lines of
latitude. That great gulf-stream which casts so liberally
on the northern shores of Europe the tepid water of the
tropics, is no doubt one of the main causes of this superi-
ority in the climate of both Norway and our own country
over all other countries in the same parallels. "It has
been calculated," says Professor Forbes, "that the heat
thrown into the Atlantic Ocean by the gulf-stream in a
winter's day would suffice to raise the temperature of the
part of the atmosphere which rests upon France and Great
Britain from the freezing point to summer heat." And
such are the effects on the distant coast of Norway, that,
under the Arctic circle, or at least the sea-coast, the mercury
rarely sinks beneath zero. The absence of the great gulf-
stream would of course leave both countries to the climatal
conditions proper to their position ; it would insure to
Scotland the severe and wintry climate of Labrador, and
to Norway the still severer climate of northern Greenland.
35
410 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Nor, as has been shown of late by Professor Hopkins,
would it require a very considerable depression of the cen-
tral parts of^North America to rob northern Europe of
the signal advantages of the gulf-stream. A greatly less
considerable sinking of what is now the vast valley of the
Mississippi, and of the lake district beyond, than that of
which we have the evidence in our own country, would
divert its waters into Hudson's Bay and the arctic seas be-
yond ; and both Great Bi-itain and Norway would be left to
the severe cliraatal conditions of their latitudinal position
on the globe. Nor is it in the least improbable that such,
during the glacial ages, was the actual state of things.
North America, as certainly as our own country, gives
evidence of extensive submergence during the period of the
existing plants and shells.
We must add, that Professor Forbes's volume is remark-
ably well written, and not less rich in the picturesque and
the poetic than in the severely scientific. There has been
a mighty improvement in this respect in what may be
termed the pure literature of science during the last cen-
tury ; and at the present time some of the severest thinkers
of the age take their place also among its best writers.
Humboldt, the late Arago, Sir David Brewster, and Sir
John Herschel, far excel, in the purely artistic department
of authorship, most of our mere litterateurs. We have
exhausted our space ; but, referring our reader to Professor
Forbes's interesting volume for his more scientific facts and
observations, we must be permitted to show by the follow-
ing extract how graphically he describes :
" We are at the head of the Naraedal, one of those singular clefts
common in Norway, bounded on either side by cliffs usually perpen-
dicular, to a height of perhaps fifteen hundred or even two thousand
feet ; the bottom flat and alluvial, and terminating abruptly at the
head of a steep but not precipitous slope. Down the slope the road
is conducted by a series of zigzags, or rather coils, in a masterly
manner, through a vertical height of eight hundred feet, a very
striking waterfall rushing down on either hand, and rendering the
NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 411
view in the opposite direction wonderfully grand. It is generally
agreed that no more genuine specimen exists of Norwegian scenery
than the Naraedal. From the foot of the descent to Gudvangen,
on the banks of the Narae-fiord, the road is nearly level, the
whole descent on several miles being little more than three hundred
feet. The mountains, however, preserve all their absolute elevation
on either side, so that the ravine, though not quite so narrow, is
deeper. The masses of rock on the right rise to five thousand or
six thousand feet, and a thread of water forming the Keel-foss de-
scends a precipice estimated at two thousand feet. The arrival at
Gudvangen takes one by surprise. The walls of the ravine are un-
interrupted ; only the alluvial flat gives place to the unruffled and
nearly fresh waters of this arm of the sea, which reaches the door
of the inn. After dining, and procuring a boat and three excellent
rowers, we proceeded to the navigation of the extensive Sogne-fiord,
of which the Narae-fiord, on which we now were, is one of the many
intricate ramifications. The weather, which had fortunately cleared
up for a time, was now again menacing, and a slight rain had set in
when we embarked. The clouds continued to descend, and settled
at length on the summits of the unscalable precipice which for many
miles bound this most desolate and even terrific scene. I do not
know what accidental circumstances may have contributed to the
impression, but I have seldom felt the sense of solitude and isola-
tion so overwhelming. My companion had fallen into a deep sleep ;
the air was still damp and calm ; the oars plashed with a slow mea-
sure into the deep, blank, fathomless abyss of water below, which
was bounded on either side by absolute walls of rock, without, in
general, the smallest slope of debris at the foot, or space enough
anywhere for a goat to stand, and whose tops, high as they indeed
are, seemed higher by being lost in clouds, which formed, as it were,
a level roof over us, corresponding to the watery floor beneath.
Thus shut in above, below, and on either hand, we rowed on amidst
the increasing gloom and thickening rain, till it was a relief when
we entered on the wider though still gloomy Aurlands- fiord."
412 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
VII.
THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE.
The love of literature amounts, with those who enter-
tain it most strongly, to an engrossing passion ; and there
are few men of cultivated minds, however much engaged
with other pursuits, who do not derive from it a sensible
pleasure. Even when politics ran highest, and first-class
periodicals, such as the " Edinburgh Review " and the
" Quarterly," were toiling in the front of their respective
parties, none but the most zealous partisans could deem
their literary articles second in interest to their political
ones ; and to the great bulk of their readers, however sin-
cere as Whigs or hearty as Tories, the literary ones always
took the first place. They were read with avidity imme-
diately on the delivery of the numbers which contained
them, while the more serious disquisitions had to wait.
Literature, in fine, was the sweetened pabulum in which
the political principle of these works was conveyed to the
public ; and had the pabulum been less palatable in itself,
or less generally suited to the public taste, the medicine
would have failed to take. It has the advantage, too, of
being so general a pebulum, that men of all parties and
professions, if of equal acquirement and cultivation, take
an equal interest in it. It is the most catholic of predilec-
tions, and neutralizes, more than any othr, the bias of
caste, church, and party. The Protestant, forgets, in hit
admiration of their writings, that Pope ard Dryden wen
Papists ; the High Churchman luxuriates over Milton ; ola
Samuel Johnson is admired by the Liberal and the Scot;
and the Tory forgets that Addison wa* a Whig. In this,
as in other respects, a love of literature is one of the hu-
THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. 413
H&niiifcjr principles, and in ages of controversy and con-
tention lte tendencies are towards union. It gives to men
who differ in otner matters a common ground on which
they can meet and agree, and has led to many friendships
and acts of foroearance and good-will between men who,
had they been devoid of it, would have been bitter antag-
onists and personal enemies. There have been mutual
respect and admiration from this cause between partisans
on the opposite sides of very important questions. Swift
and Addison still called each other friend, at a time when
the point at issue between their respective septs was vir-
tually the Protestant Succession ; and Scott and Jeffrey
were on fair terms when Whigs and Tories were engaged
in a death-grapple, with the Reform Bill looming in the
distance. Doubtless one of the causes of the often-re-
marked circumstance that while fifth and sixth rate parti-
sans are almost always bitter in the feelings with which
they regard their opponeuts, and ungenerous towards them
in their resentments, the leaders of parties are compara-
tively tolerant and humane, may be traced in part to a
community of tastes and sentiments in this important de-
partment, and in part to that superior tone of thought and
feeling which it is one of the great functions of literature
to foster and develop. Many of our readers must have
had opportunity of remarking how pleasant it is, after one
has been shut up for months, mayhap, in some country sol-
itude, or engaged in some over-busy scene, without intelli-
gent companionship, to meet with an accomplished, well-
read man, with whom to beat over all the literary topics,
and settle the merits of the various schools and authors.
It is not less pleasant to turn to one's books after some
period of close-engrossing engagement, and to clear off,
among the masters of thought and language, all trace of
the homely cares and narrow thinking which the season of
hard labor had imperatively demanded. And it is so with
peoples as certainly as with individuals. During the war
so happily terminated, the nation was too busy and too
35*
414 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
much engrossed to listen patiently to disquisitions, how-
ever ingenious, on literature and the belleslettres. Leaders
and articles on the state of the army and the prospect of
the campaign, or the narratives and descriptions of "cor-
respondents " in the Crimea, formed the staple reading of
the time; and some of our most respectable booksellers
could tell very feelingly, on data furnished by their bal-
ance-sheets, how little, in comparison, was the interest that
attended reading of any other kind. The roar of war
drowned the voice of the muses. Now, however, the
country has got a breathing time ; its period of all-engross-
ing occupation is over for the present ; and works of gen-
eral literature will once more form the staple reading of its
more cultivated intellects. Good books will begin to sell
better, when, at least, the publishing season commences,
than they have done for the last two years ; and by their
measure of success they will certify respecting the tastes
and leisure-hour occupations of that great and influential
portion of the people which constitutes the reading public.
And we recognize in a work now before us "Essays,
Biographical and Critical, chiefly on English Poets," by
Professor David Masson, 1 which has just issued from the
Cambridge press one of the class of books which, in the
circumstances of the time, this portion of the public will
delight to read, and be the better and happier for reading.
Professor Masson is a high representative of a class of
literary men peculiar to the age, men who a century ago
would have stood pi'ominently forward in the ranks of
authorship as the writers of elaborate volumes, but who, in
the altered circumstances of a more hurried age than any
of those which preceded it, are engaged mainly in provid-
ing the reading public with its daily bread, and, for the
sake of present influence and usefulness, are content in
some degree, so far as they themselves are concerned, to
subordinate the future to the passing time. Almost all the
i Essays, Biographical and Critical, chiefly on English Poets. By David
Masson, A.M.., Professor of English Literature in University College, London.
THE AMENITIES OP LITERATURE. 415
writing produced in our first-class newspapers, however
distinguished for ability or influential in directing opinion,
passes away with the day, or at least with the week, in
which it has been produced. Like those ephemeridae which,
born in the morning, deposit their eggs and die before
night, it makes its nidus in the public mind, and then drops
and disappears. Contributions, however, to the higher
quarterlies and first-class magazines have a better chance
of life; and we have already a class of works drawn from
these sources which bid as fair to live as almost any of
the more elaborate authorship of the age. Such are the
collected critiques of Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the phi-
losophic papers of Macintosh, the brilliant essays of Ma-
caulay, and the soberer contributions of Henry Rogers.
And to this class the Essays of Professor Masson belong ;
nor are they unworthy of being ranked among the very
foremost of their class. There are essays in this volume
which, for the minute knowledge of English literature
which they display, and their nice appreciation of the dis-
tinctive and characteristic in our higher writers, we would
place side by side with the chef cPoeuvres of Jeffrey.
Though consisting chiefly of contributions to the quarter-
lies, written at various times, and published in different
periodicals, the pieces which compose the work have been
so arranged that they form, with but few gaps, which are
more than compensated for by at least as many happy epi-
sodes, a history of English literature from the early days
of Milton down to those of Wordsworth. Nor are there
backward glances wanting, which bring before the reader
the primeval English literature of the times of Chaucer
and Spencer. There are just two blanks in the work,
which we could wish to see filled in some future edition,
a blank representative of that period which intervened
between the times of Swift and of Chatterton, during which
old Samuel Johnson gave law to the world of letters, and
was well-nigh all that Dryden had been for the decade
that preceded and the decade which succeeded the Revo-
416 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
lution ; and a second, though lesser blank, representative
of the times during which Burns and Cowper flourished,
and in which the school of Pope gave place to a more
national, natural, and less elaborate school. Among what
may be termed the episodes of the work, we would spe-
cially instance a dissertation on what we may term the
boundary limits of prose and poetry, which we deem by
far the ablest and most satisfactory which we have yet
seen on the subject. Much has been written on what may
be termed the conterminous limits of the two provinces ;
and the suits have been many that have originated in an
erroneous drawing of the line. As in the famous case be-
tween Dandy Dinmont and Jack Dawson of the Cleugh,
one party affirms that " the march rins on the tap o' the
hill, where the wind and water sheers;" while another
"contravenes that, and says that it hands down by the
auld drove road ; and that makes an unco difference ; "
some critics so draw the line, that, like Bowles in his con-
troversy with Campbell, they almost wholly exclude poets
such as Pope and Dryden from their own proper domains ;
while others affirm that there exists no line between the
two domains at all, but that whatever in thought or feeling
finds expression in verse, may with equal propriety be ex-
pressed in prose. Byron's terse couplet on Wordsworth,
whom it describes as a writer
" Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is only prose,"
has, though in a somewhat exaggerated form, made this
special view better known than even the men who assert it.
Certainly there are broad grounds common to both prose
and verse ; and such is the groundwork of truth in Byron's
satirical couplet, though in a widely different sense from
that which the satirist himself intended, that there is not
much in even the highest flights of the poetry of Words-
worth to which prose might not attain. We know not, for
instance, a single passage in his greatest poem, "The Ex-
THE AMENITIES OP LITERATUBE. 417
cursion," that might not find adequate expression, not only
in the magnificent prose of Milton, or Raleigh, or Jeremy
Taylor, but, so far at least as the necessary expression is
required, in even that of Dryden or of Cowley. The same
may be said of the poetry of Scott. The flights in "Mar-
mion " or the " Lady of the Lake " rise no higher than those
in Waverley or Ivanhoe. And yet, as Professor Masson
well shows, there certainly is verse under whose burden
the highest prose would utterly sink. We have remarked,
in travelling through the Highlands of Scotland, that
almost all the first-class hills of the country take the char-
acter of hills of the average size, with other hills placed,
as if by accident, on the top of them ; and there is a very
lofty poetry that attains to its greatest elevation on a sim-
ilar principle. The imagination, in the plenitude of its
power, is ever piling, like the giants of old, mountain on
the top of mountain. Let us draw our illustration from
Milton. After comparing the arch-fiend, as he " lay float-
ing many a rood " on the burning lake, to the old Titanian
monster that warred on Jupiter, the poet rushes into an-
other and richer comparison : he compares him to
" That sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream."
And here, on the ground common to prose and verse,
the comparison should stop. But the imagination of the
great poet has been aroused ; the glimpse of the huge sea-
beast so fascinates him that he must look again; and a
picture is the consequence, invested with circumstances of
poetic interest, and finished with a degree of elaboration
far beyond the necessities of the comparison :
" Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell.
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side, under the lee, while nigur
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays."
418 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
What a pile. of imagery! Mountain cast on the top of
mountain, a feat for the greatest of the giants, and far
beyond the reach of the most poetic prose-man, or the
capabilities of prose itself. Our other example, though of
a more homely character, will be found scarce less illustra-
tive of this piled-up style, peculiar to the higher poesy.
Burns, in his decidedly anti-teetotal "Earnest Cry and
Prayer," after adverting to the deteriorating effects of the
wines of southern Europe on the nerves and framework
of the Continental soldiery, describes a Scottish soldier an-
imated for the contest by the inspiration of usquebagh:
" But bring a Scotsman frae his hill,
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill,
Say, Such is royal George's will,
An' there's the foe :
He has nae thought but how to kill
Twa at a blow."
Now, here is a vigorous stanza, terse, clear, epigram-
matic, and charged with thought equally fitted to do service
either as prose or verse. But the poet catches a glance of
the Highland soldier, the poetic blood gets up, and it be-
comes impossible, for the time, to arrest in his career either
soldier or poet :
" Nae cauld faint-hearted doubtings tease him ;
Death comes; wi' fearless eye he sees him;
Wi' bloody ban' a welcome gi'es him ;
An' when he fa's,
His latest draught o' breathin' lea's him
In faint huzzas."
Here, again, we find the hill piled on the top of the hill
after a different manner, but as decidedly as in Milton,
and alike beyond the necessities or the reach of prose.
This peculiar region of poetry seems to have formed a sort
of inextricable wilderness to the more prosaic class of crit-
ics. Lord Karnes, though a coarse, was an eminently sen-
sible man ; and his " Elements of Criticism " is a work that
THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. 419
contains many striking things. What, however, the French
critic termed " comparisons with a tail," seem fairly to
have puzzled him. He could no more understand why
similes should have caudal appendages, than his brother
Judge, Lord Monboddo, could understand why men should
want them. And so he instances as a mere " phantom
simile, that ought to have no quarter given it," the very
exquisite one which Coriolanus employs in describing Va-
leria,
" The noble sister of Pophlicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle
That's curdled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple."
The shrewd magistrate, who, to employ the delicate
periphrase of Hector in the " Antiquary," used to address
his learned compeers on the bench by the name ordinarily
used to designate " a female dog," could not understand
why the temple of Dian should be introduced into this
comparison, or what right the icicle had in it at all ; and
so he ruled that it was palpably illegal for Shakspeare
to write what he, a judge and a critic, could not intelli-
gently read. The conclusion of Professor Masson on the
respective provinces of poesy and prose is worthy of being
carefully pondered by the reader :
" In the whole vast field of the speculative and the didactic," says
the Professor, "a field in which the soul of man may win triumphs
nowise inferior, let illiterate poetasters babble as they will, to those
pf the mightiest sons of song, prose is the legitimate monarch,
receiving verse but as a visitor and guest, who will carry back
bits of rich ore, and other specimens of the land's produce ; in the
great business of record also, prose is preeminent, verse but volun-
tarily assisting ; in the expression of passion, and the work of
moral stimulation, verse and prose meet as coequals, prose under-
taking the rougher and harder duty, where passion intermingles with
the storm of current doctrine, and with the play and conflict of
social interests, sometimes, when thus engaged, bursting into such
strains of irregular music that verse takes up the echo and prolongs
420 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
it in measured modulation, leaving prose rapt and listening to
hear itself outdone ; and, lastly, in the noble realm of poetry or
imagination, prose also is capable of a 1 exquisite, beautiful, and
magnificent etfects, but that by reason of a greater ease with fancies
when they come in crowds, and of a greater range and arbitrariness
of combination, verse here moves with the more royal gait. And
thus prose and verse are presented as two circles or spheres, not en-
tirely separate, as some would make them, but intersecting and inU) pene-
trating through a large portion of both their bulks, and disconnected
only in two crescents outstanding at the right and left, or, if you adjust
them differently, at the upper and lower extremities. The left or lower
crescent, the peculiar and sole region of prose, is where we labor
amid the sheer didactic, or the didactic combined with the practical
and the stern. The right or upper crescent, the peculiar and sole
region of verse, is where pathesis, at its utmost thrill and ecstasy,
interblends with the highest and most darting poiesis."
This is vigorous thinking and writing; and the Profes-
sor's volume contains many such passages. We would in
especial instance the Essays on the " Literature of the
Restoration," on " Wordsworth," and on " Scottish Influ-
ence on British Literature." But the longest and finest
composition of the work a gem in literary biography
is its "Chatterton, a Story of the Year 1770." There is
perhaps no name in British poetry, of the same frequency
of occurrence, that is so purely a name, as that of
" The marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride."
Such of his poems as were written in modern English, and
in his own proper name and character, are not pleasing,
and, sooth to say, not more than clever; while his poems
written in the character of Rowley are locked up in what is
virtually a dead tongue, considerably different from that of
Chaucer or the " King's Quair," or, in short, from any other
tongue ever written by any other poet. And as there is
but little temptation to master a language, and that, too, a
language which never was spoken, for th i a sake of a few
THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. 421
poems, however meritorious, most men are content to take
the fame of the Rowley writings on trust, or at least to
determine by brief specimens that they are in reality the
wonderful compositions which the critics of the last age
pronounced them to be. And so Chatterton is now very
much a bright name associated with a dark story. Further,
of the story, little more survived in the public mind than
would have furnished materials for an ordinary newspaper
paragraph. Chatterton had not been very fortunate in his
biographers; and it was but known, in consequence, that,
living in an age not unfamiliar with literary forgery, it
is unnecessary to give instances within sight of the great
Highland mountains, he had fabricated a volume of old
English poems greatly superior to any old English poems
ever written, with the single exception of those of Chau-
cer; that, quitting his native place, where he had succeeded
in earning not more than the modicum of honor which
prophets ordinarily achieve for themselves when at home,
he had gone to force his upward way among the wits of
London ; and that there, in utter destitution and neglect,
he had miserably destroyed himself. Such was all that
was generally known of Chatterton, even by men of read-
ing. Professor Masson's singularly interesting and power-
ful biography fills up this sad outline as it was never filled
up before; and shows how deep a tragedy that of the poor
boy was, who, after achieving immortality, "perished in
his pride," at about the age when lads who purpose pur-
suing the more laborious mechanical professions are pre-
paring to enter on their apprenticeships. Further, without
aught approaching to formal apology for the offences and
shortcomings of the hapless lad, it shows us what a mere
boy he was, in all except genius, at the time of his death.
Sir Walter, in referring, in his "Demonology," to the young
rascals on whose extraordinary evidence so many old
women were burnt as witches in Sweden, has some very
striking, and, we think, very just remarks, on the obtuse-
ness of the moral sense in most children, especially boys
36
422 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
" The melancholy truth, that the ' human heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked,' is by nothing
proved so strongly," we find him saying, " as by the imper-
fect sense displayed by children of the sanctity of moral
truth. Both gentlemen and the mass of the people, as
they advance in years, learn to despise and avoid falsehood,
the former out of pride, and from a remaining feeling,
derived from the days of chivalry, that the character of a
liar is a deadly stain on their honor ; the other, from some
general reflection upon the necessity of presei-ving a char-
acter for integrity in the course of life, and a sense of
the truth of the common adage that ' honesty is the best
policy.' But these are acquired habits of thinking. The
child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all
who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If
they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak,
the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to
excuse it. Nor is this all. The temptation of attracting
attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire
to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday,
will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, -so
weak is it within them." A sad picture, but, we fear, a
true one ; and in reading the tragic story of Chatterton,
we were oftener than once reminded of it. We see in
almost every stage of his progress the unripe boy, pre-
cocious in intellect, and in that only. But with the follow
ing powerful passage, taken from the closing scene in the
sad drama, we must conclude, meanwhile recommending
Professor Masson's work to our readers as one of singular
interest and ability :
" He called on me,' is Mr. Cross's statement, ' about half-past eleven
in the morning. As usual, he talked about various matters ; and at
last, probably just as he was going away, he said he wanted some ar-
senic for an experiment.' Mr. Cross, Mr. Cross, before you go
to your drawer for the arsenic, look at that boy's face I Look at it
steadily ; look till he quails ; and then leap upon him and hold him !
Mr. Cross does not look. He sells the arsenic (yes, sells, for somehow
THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. 423
during that walk, in which he has disposed of the bundle [of manu-
scripts], he has procured the necessary pence), and lives to repent it.
Chatterton, the arsenic in his pocket, does not return to his lodging
immediately, but walks about, God only knows where, through the
vast town. ' He returned,' continued Mrs. Angell, ' about seven in
the evening, looking very pale and dejected, and would not eat any-
thing, but sat moping by the fire with his chin on his knees, and
muttering rhymes in some old language to her. After some hours
he got up to go to bed, and he then kissed her, a thing he had
never done before.' Mrs. Angell, what can that kiss mean ? Detain
the boy ; he is mad ; he is not fit to be left alone ; arouse the whole
street rather than let him go. She does let him go, and lives
to repent it. ' He went up stairs,' she says, stamping on every
t tair as he went slowly up, as if he would break it.' She hears him
reach his room. He enters, and locks the door behind him.
" The devil was abroad that night in the sleeping city. Down
narrow and squalid courts his presence was felt, where savage men
clutched miserable women by the throat, and the neighborhood was
roused by yells of murder, and the barking of dogs, and the shrieks
of children. Up in wretched garrets his presence was felt, where
solitary mothers gazed on their infants, and longed to kill them.
He was in the niches of dark bridges, where outcasts lay huddled
together, and some of them stood up from time to time, and looked
over at the dim stream below. He was in the uneasy hearts of un-
liscovered forgers, and of ruined men plotting mischief. He was in
prison cells, where condemned criminals condoled with each other
in obscene songs and blasphemy. What he achieved that night in
and about the vast city came duly out into light and history. But
of all the spots over which the Black Shadow hung, the chief, for
that night at least, was a certain undistinguished house in the narrow
street, which thousands who now dwell in London pass and repass,
scarce observing it, every day of their lives, as they go and come
along the thoroughfare of Holborn. At the door of one house in
that quiet street the Horrid Shape watched ; through that door he
passed in, towards midnight; and from that door, having done his
work, he emerged before it was morning.
" On the morrow, Saturday the 25th August, Mrs. Angell noticed
that her lodger did not come down at the time expected. As he had
lain longer than usual, however, on the day before, she was not
alarmed. But about eleven o'clock, her husband being then out,
and Mrs. Wolfe having come in, she began to fear that something
424 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
might be the matter ; and she and Mrs. Wolfe went up stairs and
knock 2d at the door. They listened awhile, but there was no answer.
They then tried to open the door, but found it locked. Being then
thoroughly alarmed, one of them ran down stairs, and called a man
who chanced to be passing in the street to come and break the door
open. The man did so ; and on entering they found the floor lit-
tered with small pieces of paper, and Chatterton lying on the bed,
with his legs hanging over, quite dead. The bed had not been lain
in. The man took up some of the pieces of paper ; and on one of
them he read, in the deceased's own handwriting, the words, ' I
leave my soul to its Maker, my body to my mother and sisters, and
my curse to Bristol. If Mr. Ca ' : the rest was torn off. ' The
man then said,' relates Mrs. Angell, ' that he must have killed him-
self; which we did not think till then. Mrs. Wolfe ran immediately
for Mr. Cross, who came, and was the first to point out a bottle on
the window containing arsenic and water. Some of the bits of ar-
senic were between his teeth, so that there was no doubt that he had
poisoned himself.' "
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 425
VIII.
A STEANGE STOUT, BUT TRUE. 1
It is now nearly forty years since an operative mason,
somewhat dissipated in his habits, and a little boy, his son,
who had completed his twelfth year only a few weeks pre-
vious, were engaged in repairing a tall, ancient domicile,
in one of the humbler streets of Plymouth. The mason
was employed in re-laying some of the roofing ; the little
boy, who acted as his laborer, was busied in carrying up
slates and lime along a long ladder. The afternoon was
slowly wearing through, and the sun hastening to its set-
ting; in little more than half an hour, both father and son
would have been set free from their labors for the eve-
ning, when the boy, in what promised to be one of his
concluding journeys roofwards for the day, missed footing
just as he was stepping on the eaves, and was precipitated
on a stone pavement thirty-five feet below. Light and
slim, he fared better than an adult would have done in the
circumstances ; but he was deprived of all sense and rec-
ollection by the fearful shock ; and, save that he saw for
a moment the gathering crowd, and found himself carried
homewards in the arms of his father, a fortnight elapsed
ere he awoke to consciousness. When he came to himself,
in his father's house, it was his first impression that he had
outslept his proper time for rising. It was broad daylight ;
and there were familiar forms round his bed. He next,
* Memoirs of Dr. John Kitto, D.D., F.S.A., Editor of the " Pictorial Bible "
and the " Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature," Author of" Daily Bible Il'ustra-
tions," etc. Compiled chiefly from his Letters and Journals. By J. E. ltyland,
M.A. With a Critical Estimate of Dr. Kitto's Life and Writings- B/ Professor
Eadie, D.D., LL.D., Glasgow.
36*
426 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
however, found himself grown so weak that he could
scarce move his head on the pillow ; and was theu struck
by the profound silence that prevailed around him, a
silence which seemed all the more extraordinary from the
circumstance that he could see the lips of his friends in
motion, and ascertain from their gestures that they were
addressing him. But the riddle was soon read. The boy,
in his terrible fall, had broken no bone, nor had any of the
vital organs received serious injury; but his sense of hear-
ing was gone forever ; and for the remainder of the half-
century which was to be his allotted term on earth he was
never to hear more. Knowledge at one entrance was
shut out forever. As is common, too, in such circum-
stances, the organs of speech become affected. His voice
assumed a hollow, sepulchral tone, and his enunciation be-
came less and less distinct, until at length he could scarce
be understood by even his most familiar friends. For al-
most all practical purposes he became dumb as well as deaf.
Unable, too, any longer to assist in the labors of his dis-
sipated father, he had a sore struggle for existence, which
terminated in his admission into the poor-house of the
place as a pauper. And in the workhouse he was set to
make list-shoes, under the superintendence of the beadle.
He was a well-conditioned, docile, diligent little mute,
and made on the average about a pair and a half of shoes
per week, for which he received from the manager, in rec-
ognition of his well-doing, a premium of a weekly penny,
a vei-y important sum to the poor little deaf pauper.
Darker days were, however, yet in store for him ; he was
not a little teased and persecuted by the idle children in
the workhouse, who made sport of his infirmity ; his grand-
mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, and with
whom he had lived previous to his accident, was taken
from him by death ; and, to sum up his unhappiness at this
time, he was apprenticed by the workhouse to a Plymouth
shoemaker, a brutal and barbarous wretch, who treated
him with the most ruthless indignity and cruelty, threw
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 427
shoes at his head, boxed him on the ears, slapped him on
the face, and even struck him with the broad-faced ham-
mer used in the trade. Such of our readers as are ac-
quainted with Crabbe's powerful but revolting picture of
Peter Grimes, the ruffian master who murdered his appren-
tices by his piecemeal cruelties, would scarce fail to find
the original of the sketch in this disreputable wretch,
with this aggravation, too, in the actual as set off against
the fictitious case, that the apprentices of Peter Grimes
were not poor, helpless mutes, already rendered objects of
commiseration to all well-regulated minds " through the
visitation of God." And who could anticipate a different
end for the sadly-injured and sorely-misused boy than
that which overtook Peter's apprentices as they dropped
in succession into the grave ? Were it to be seen, how-
ever, that the deaf little fellow, apparently so shut out
from the world, could record his sufferings at this time in
very admirable English, the hope might arise that there
was some other fate in store for one who had mind and
energy enough to triumph over circumstances so unprece-
dentedly depressed and depressing. The following are ex-
tracts from a journal which he kept while under the brute
master :
" O misery, thou art to be my only portion ! Father of mercy,
forgive me if I wish I had never been born ! Oh that I were dead,
if death were an annihilation of being ; but as it is not, teach me to
endure life : to enjoy it I never can. Mine is indeed a severe and
cruel master Threw this morning a shoe in my face : I had
made a wrong stitch Struck again Again. I could not
bear it : a box on the ear, a slap on the face. I did not weep in
April [when his grandmother died], but I did at this unkind usage.
I did all in my power to suppress my inclination to weep, till I was
almost suffocated : tears of bitter anguish and futile indignation fell
upon my work, and blinded my eyes. I sobbed convulsively. I
was half mad with myself for suffering him to see how much I was
affected. Fool that I was ! Oh that I were again in the workhouse !
He threw his pipe in my face, which I had accidentally bro-
ken ; it hit me on the temple, and narrowly missed my eye I
428 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
held the thread too short : instead of telling me to hold it longer, he
struck me on the hand with the hammer (the iron part). Mother
can bear witness that it is much swelled ; not to mention many
more indignities I have received, many, many more. Again, this
morning, I have went. What's the matter with my eyes ! "
Alas, poor boy ! And all this took place in proud Eng-
land, the land of liberty and of equal rights and laws!
Flogging is not a punishment for men, but a very suitable
one for brutes ; and had the brute master in this case been
tied up to the halberts and subjected to a round hundred,
he would be a squeamish reformer indeed who could have
objected to so just and appropriate a use of the lash.
Suddenly, however, this dire tyranny came to a close.
A few excellent men connected with the management of
the workhouse had been struck by the docility and intel-
ligence of the young mute. One of them, Mr. Burnard,
a gentleman w T ho still survives, struck by his powers of
thought and expression, had furnished him with themes
on which to write. He had shown him attention and kind-
ness, and the lad naturally turned to him as a friend and
protector ; and, stating his case to him by letter, the good
man not only got him relieved from the dire thraldom of
his tyrannical master, but, by interesting a few friends in
his behalf, secured for him the leisure necessary to prose-
cute his studies, for, even when his circumstances were
most deplorable, the little deaf and dumb boy had been
dreaming of making himself a name in letters, by produc-
ing books which even the learned would not despise,
and, by means of a liberal subscription, he was now en-
abled to go on reading and writing, with wonderful
change for him whose premium pence used to be all spent
in the purchase of little volumes ! the whole books of a
subscription library at his command. It is customary to
augh at the conceit and egotism of the young, as indica-
tive of a mere weakness, which it is the part of after years
*-f sober experience to dissipate or cure. There are cases,
however, in which the apparent weakness is real strength,
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 429
a moving power, without which, in very depressing cir-
cumstances, there would be no upward progress, for there
would be no hope and no motive to exertion ; and so the
poor mute boy's estimate of himself, while yet an inmate
of the workhouse, though it may provoke a smile, may be
deemed not uninteresting, as in reality representative of
an undercurrent in the character, destined to produce great
results.
"Dec. 5th, 1821. Yesterday I completed my sixteenth year;
and I shall take this opportunity of describing, to the best of my
ability, my person. I am four feet eight inches high ; my hair is
stiif and coarse, of a dark brown color, almost black ; my head is
very large, and, I believe, has a tolerable good lining of brain within ;
my eyes are brown and large, and are the least exceptional part of
my person ; my forehead is high, eyebrows bushy, nose large, mouth
very big, teeth well enough, and limbs not ill-shaped You have
asked me why I have in many places used the expression, ' When I
am old enough in other people's opinion.' The customs of this coun-
try have declared that man is not competent to his own direction
until he has attained the age of twenty-one. Not so I. I never was
a lad. From the time of my fall, deprived of many external sources
of occupation, 1 have been accustomed to find sources of occupation
within myself, to think as I read, as I worked, or as I walked.
While other lads were employed with trifles, I have thought, felt, and
acted as a man. At ignominious treatment, at blows, I have sup-
pressed my indignation and my tears till I have felt myself almost
choked. I have, however, felt also the superiority of genius, which
would not allow ignorance to triumph. I have walked hours on hours
in the most lonesome lanes I could find, abstracted in melancholy
musing ; or, with a book in my hand, 1 have sat for hours under a
hedge or tree. Sometimes, too, sheltered from observation by a rock,
I have sat in contemplation by the riverside. At such times I have
felt such a melancholy pleasure as I have not known since I have
been in the hospital. O Nature ! why didst thou create me with feel-
ings such as these V Why didst thou give such a mind to one in my
condition V Why, O Heavens ! didst thou enclose my proud scul
within such a casket ? Yet, pardon my murmurs ; I will try to be
convinced that ' whatever is is right.' Kind Heaven, endue me with
resignation to thy will, and contentment with whatever situation it
is thy pleasure I should fill."
430 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Such was the estimate formed of himself by the deaf
workhouse boy, and such his mode of expressing it. De-
pressed as his circumstances might at this time seem, and
little favorable, apparently, to the development of mind,
they were yet not without their peculiar balance of advan-
tage. Lads born deaf and dumb rarely master in after life
the grammar of the language ; for, though they acquire a
knowledge of the words which express qualities and senti-
ments, or which represent things, they seen^ unable to
attain to the right use of those important particles, adverbs,
conjunctions, and prepositions, which, as the smaller stones
in a wall serve to keep the larger ones in their places,
give in speech or writing order and coherency to the others.
But the deaf lad had not been born deaf: he had read and
conversed, and even attempted composition, previous to
his accident ; so that his grandmother could boast of the
self-taught boy, not without some shadow of truth, that bar
" Johnnie was the best scholar in all Plymouth." And now,
writing having become his easiest and most ready mode of
communication, the speech by which he communicated his
ideas, he had attained to a facility in the use of the pen,
and a command of English, far from common among even
university-bred youths, his seniors by several years. He
had acquired, too, the ability of looking at things very
intently. It has been well said by the poet,
" That oft when one sense is suppressed,
It but retires into the rest."
And it would seem as if the hearing of this deaf lad had
retreated into his eyes, which were ever after to exercise a
double portion of the seeing function. All this, however,
could not be at once understood by his friends. There
seemed to be but few openings through which the poor
deaf and dumb lad could be expected to make his way to
independence, and what is termed respectability ; and it
was suggested that he should set himself to acquire the art
of the common printer, and attach himself to a mission of
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 431
the English Church, still, we believe, stationed in Malta,
that sends forth from its press many useful little books,
chiefly for distribution in the East.
Accordingly, in a comparatively short time the deaf lad
did acquire the art of the common printer, nay, more,
he became skilful in setting the Arabic character ; and,
having a decided turn for acquiring languages, though
unable to speak them, he promised, judging from his me-
chanical and linguistic abilities, to be a useful operative to
the mission. Unfortunately, however, for such was the
estimate of the mission's conductors, he was not content
to be a mere operative : his instincts drew him strongly
towards literature ; and, ere quitting England for Malta,
he had such a quarrel on this score with some very excel-
lent men, that he threw up his situation, which, however,
through the mediation of kind friends, he was again in-
duced and enabled to resume. But at Malta, where the
poor deaf lad suffered much from illness, and much from
wounded affections, for, shut out though he was from
his fellows, he had yet had his affair of the heart, and the
course of true love did not run smooth in his case, the
quarrel was again resumed, and he received a reprimand
from the committee of the mission in England, which was
virtually a dismissal. "The habits of his mind," said the
committee, " were likely to disqualify him from that steady
and persevering discharge of his duties which they con-
sidered as indispensably requisite." And to this harsh
resolution the late excellent Mr. Bickersteth, by whom it
was forwarded, added the following remark: "You are
aware our first principles as Christians are the sacrifice of
self-will and self-gratification. If you can rise to this, and
steadily pursue your work, as you engaged to do, you may
yet fill a most important station, and glorify our Great
Master. But if you cannot do this, it is clear that the So-
ciety cannot continue in its service those who will not
devote themselves to their engagements." The deaf, soli-
tary man felt much aggrieved. He said, and said truly,
432 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
" I gave the Society a pledge, which there does not live
a man who could prove to an impartial person that I
have not redeemed. When, after the labors of eight or
nine hours, the office was closed for the day, I felt that I
was at liberty to partake of some mental refreshment.
This is the ground of my dismissal. Even if my attach-
ment to literature were an evil, it might be tolerated whilst
it did not (and it did not) interfere with my defined
duties."
It is not now difficult to adjudicate between the poor
deaf man and this learned and influential Missionary Soci-
ety. No ordinary master printer in Edinburgh, or else-
where, would think of treating one of his journeymen, or
even one of his apprentices, after this fashion. The limits
of a printer's work are easily ascertained. Nine tenths of
the printers of Great Britain and Ireland are employed by
the piece, the others are placed on what is known as a set-
tlement/ and, under either scheme, there is a portion of
their time which is not sold to their masters, and with
which, therefore, a master cannot honestly interfere. But
the grand mistake of the committee, and of worthy Mr.
Bickersteth, in this not uninstructive case, seems to have
been founded on a certain goody sentiment, from which
missionaries such as the brethren of the Society of Jesus
would have been saved by their sagacious discernment of
the capabilities and spirits of men, and the ordinary master
printer, by his knowledge of the proper tale of work which
an operative ought to furnish, and his full recognition of
the common business rule, that the time is not the master's,
but the operative's own, for which the master does not pay.
The committee and Mr. Bickersteth evidently held, on the
other hand, that the deaf lad, being a missionary printer,
ought to have his heart and soul in the missionary printing,
and in nothing else ; that the work of writing and trans-
lating was a work to be done by other heads and hands
than his, heads and hands trained, mayhap, at Cambridge
or Oxford ; and that the literary studies pursued by the
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 433
lad after office-hours were over were mere works of " self-
will " and "self-gratification," and not suited to "glorify
the Great Master." In order to glorify the Great Master,
it was necessary, they held, that the deaf lad should give
his heart exclusively to the printing of the mission. Alas!
the good men were strangely in error. The Great Master
had, we now know, quite other work for the deaf lad. We
are ignorant of what the Oxford and Cambridge men of
the Malta Mission have done, what they could, we dare
say, and we are sure they think it all too little ; but their
labors will scarce ever be brought into competition with
those of the greatest Biblical illustrator of modern times.
"What Dr. Chalmers used to term his Biblical library con-
sisted of four great standard works ; and of these select
four, Dr. Kitto's "Pictorial Bible" was much a favorite.
"I feel quite sure," we find him saying, in his "Daily Scrip-
ture Readings," "that the use of the sacred dialogues as a
school-book, and the pictures of Scripture scenes which
interested my boyhood, still cleave to me, and impart a
peculiar tinge and charm to the same representations when
brought within my notice. Perhaps when I am moulder-
ing in my coffin, the eye of my dear Tommy his grandson]
may light upon this page ; and it is possible that his rec-
ollections may accord with my present anticipations of the
effect that his delight in the ' Pictorial Bible ' may have
in endearing still more to him the holy Word of God." In
the peculiar walk in which Dr. John Kitto specially ex-
celled all other writers, the great Chalmers was content to
accept him as his teacher, and to sit at his feet ; and the
poor, friendless, deaf lad, who so offended the committee
of the Maltese Mission by devoting to literature the time
which was indisputably his own, not theirs, was this same
John Kitto, a name now scarce less widely known,
though in a different walk, than that of Chalmers himself.
Dismissed from his situation, he returned to England
with but forlorn prospects. There was, however, work
for him to do ; and an unexpected opening, which provi-
37
434 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
dentially occurred shortly after his arrival, served greatly
to fit him for it. A missionary friend, bound for central
Persia, engaged him to accompany him on the journey as
tutor to his two boys, a charge for which his previous
studies, pursued under the direst disadvantages, adequately
fitted him ; and, with his eyes all the more widely open
from the circumstance that his ears were shut, he travelled
through Russian Europe into Persia, saw the greater and
lesser Ararats, passed through the Caucasian range of
mountains, loitered amid the earlier seats of the human
family, forded the Euphrates near its source, resided for
about two years in Bagdad, witnessed the infliction of war,
famine, and pestilence, and then his task of tuition com-
pleted journeyed homeward by Teheran, Tabreez, Treb-
izond, and Constantinople, to engage in his great work.
His quiet life was not without its due share of striking in-
cident. We have referred to a story of wounded affection.
On his return to England, he found that she who had de-
ceived and forsaken him had deeply regretted the part she
had acted, and was now no more ; and for years after, he
bore about with him a sad and widowed heart. In his
second return he had a companion, a young man in deli-
cate health, who, when detained with him in quarantine at
the mouth of the Thames, sickened and died. The de-
scription of the quarantine burying-ground, in which his
remains were deposited, is suited to remind the reader of
some of the descriptions of similar places given by Dickens.
" We went," says Kitto, in his journal, " in a boat of the vessel, to
a kind of low island devoted to the burial of persons dying in quar-
antine. The coffin was plain, without a plate, and with pieces of
ropes for handles, but had the honor of being covered with the ensign
of the doctor's ship as a pall. The grave-place, overgrown with long,
reedy grass, was not more than a few paces from the water's edge ;
and its uses were indicated only by what the captain calls ' wooden
tombstones,' of which there are only two, both dated 1832, and all of
wood, painted of a stone color, the first I have seen in England.
S was carried to his last home by the sailors of our vesv>L
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 435
On arriving at the grave, we found it of dark clay, with water at
the bottom; a wet ditch being near, above its level. It was also too
small, and we had to wait till it was enlarged ; and then, the coffin
being brought to the side, ready to be let down, the doctor's head
servant took out a prayer-book, and, all uncovering, read a part of
the burial service. We waited till the grave was filled up and banked
over; and then, with a sigh, not the last, returned to the boat. On
our return, the flags, which had hitherto been floating half-mast high,
were raised to their usual position."
Kitto's fellow-traveller, whose dust he saw thus con-
signed to the dark, obscure burial-yard at the mouth of
the Thames, had been engaged to a young lady, on whom,
after his release from quarantine, the deaf man waited, to
communicate to her the fate of her lover. The two wid-
owed hearts drew kindly together ; and in course of time
the lady became Mrs. Kitto, a match from which her
husband, now entering on a literary life of intense labor,
derived great comfort and support.
Never did literary man toil harder or more incessantly.
His career as an author commenced in 1833, and termi-
nated at the close of 1853 ; and during that period he
produced twenty-one separate works, some of them of
profound research and great size. Among these we may
enumerate the "Pictorial Bible," the "Pictorial History
of Palestine," the " Plistory of Palestine from the Patri-
archal Age to the Present Time," the " Cyclopaedia of Bib-
lical Literature," the " Lost Senses," " Scripture Lands,"
and the "Daily Bible Illustrations." And in order to pro-
duce this amazing amount of elaborate writings, Dr. Kitto
used to rise, year after year, at four o'clock in the morning,
and toil on till night. But the overwrought brain at
length gave way, and in his fiftieth year he broke down
and died. Could he have but retained the copyright of
his several works, he would have been a wealthy man ; he
would at least have left a competency to his family. But
commencing without capital, and compelled, by the inev-
itable expense of a growing family, to labor for the book*
436 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
sellers, he was ever engaged in "providing," according to
Johnson, "for the day that was passing over him," and
died, in consequence, a poor man. And his widow and
family have, we understand, a direct interest in the sale
of the well-written and singularly interesting biographic
work to which we are indebted for the materials of our
article, and which we can recommend with a good con-
science to the notice of our readers. We know not a finer
example than that which it furnishes of the " pursuit of
knowledge under difficulties," nor of a devout and honest
man engrossingly engaged in an important work, in which
he was at length to affect the thinking of his age, and to
instruct and influence its leading minds. It may be in-
teresting to remark how such a man received the first
decided direction in his course of study; and so the fol-
lowing extract, with which we conclude, of a letter on the
subject from a gentleman much before the public at the
present time, from his, we believe, honest and fearless
report on the mismanagement of our leading officers in
the Crimea during the campaign now brought happily to
a close, may be regarded by our readers as worthy of
perusal ;
" My first meeting with Kitto," says Sir John M'Neill, " was at
Tabrcez, in 1829. He was going with Mr. and Mrs. Groves and
their two sons to Bagdad, where Mr. Groves intended to establish
himself as a missionary. Kitto was then acting as tutor to the two
boys, who were lively and intelligent ; and I was struck with the
singularity of his position, as the deaf and almost dumb teacher of
boys who were very far from being either deaf or dumb. This cir-
cumstance, and the loneliness of mind which was a necessary conse-
quence of his inability to communicate with the persons whom he
was thrown amongst at Tabreez, led me to put some questions to him
in writing, with the view of drawing him into conversation ; but I
found great difficulty in comprehending his answers, in consequence
of the peculiarity of his voice and enunciation. With the assistance
of his pupils, however, who spoke with great rapidity on their fingers,
and appeared to have no difficulty in understanding what he said, J
succeeded in engaging him in such conversation as could he so carried
A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 437
on. I found his intelligence and his information vastly greater than
I had anticipated. He had evidently the greatest avidity for informa-
tion ; but was restrained from pressing his inquiries, apparently by his
modesty, and the fear of being considered obtrusive or troublesome.
Finding him well read and deeply interested in the Scriptures, I di-
rected his attention to the many incidental allusions in the Bible to
circumstances connected with Oriental habits and modes of life, which
had become intelligible to me only after I had been for some time in
the East. I remember he was particularly interested in something I
had said in illustration of the importance attaching to the fact that
' Jacob digged a well.' I had explained to him, that, in arid coun-
tries, where cultivation could only be carried on by means of irriga-
tion, the land was of no value unless when water could be brought
to irrigate it ; and that in Persia the theory of the law still is, that
he who digs a well in the desert is entitled to the land which it will
irrigate. He came to me more than once for fuller information upon
this subject, and was greatly delighted with some illustrations of
Scripture which I pointed out to him in ' Morier's Second Journey
to Persia.' I refer to these circumstances because I believe that
they relate to the first steps of that inquiry which he prosecuted so
assiduously and successfully during the remainder of his life, and to
which he constantly recurred almost every time I met him afterwards*
either in Asia or in England."
37*
438 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
IX.
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL.
It is not often in these latter days that a metaphysical
question is forced on the notice of the public. The muse
of abstract thought the genius that asserts as her special
province the region of "being and knowing" has been
dozing for at least an age in a state of partial hybernation,
sucking her paws in closets and class-rooms, and getting
so marvellously thin and spiritual under the process, that
her attenuated form has long since failed to make any
very distinct impression on the retina of the community.
The cas'e was widely different once. During the latter
half of the last century no other class of questions pos-
sessed half so great an intex^est in Scotland as metaphysical
ones. Metaphysical had succeeded to theological disqui-
sition, and was pursued with equal earnestness ; partly,
no doubt, because the metaphysics of the age had set the
theology of the age that had gone before virtually on its
trial, but in great part also because the largest minds of
the time had given themselves to the work; and, further,
because the limited character of that cycle in which the
mental philosophy is doomed to expatiate was not yet
known. Early in the present century the interest had in
some degree begun to flag, and the keen eye of Jeffrey
was one of the first to detect the slacking of the tide.
And in his ingenious critique on "Stewart's Life of Reid,"
he attempted to render a reason for it. The age had al-
ready started forward in that course of natural, physical,
and mechanical experiment in which such distinguished
trophies have since been won, and which have given its
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 439
peculiar character to the time ; and it had become impa-
tient, said the critic, of barren, non-productive observation.
And it was a grand distinction, he held, between the
physical and the metaphysical walks, that, while experiment
reigned paramount in the one, and formed the all-potent
key by which man could lay open at will the arcana of
nature, and arm himself with her powers, observation only
could be employed in the other, a mere passive faculty,
that had an ability of seeing, but none whatever of con-
trolling. Hence, he argued, the unproductive character
of metaphysical science, and the natural preference which
the public had begun to manifest, on ascertaining such to
be its character, for pursuits through which solid benefits
were to be secured. " In the proper experimental philos-
ophy," he said, "every acquisition of knowledge is an in-
crease of power, because the knowledge is necessarily de-
rived from some intentional disposition of materials, which
we may always command in the same manner. In the
philosophy of observation, it is merely a gratification of
our curiosity. The phenomena of the human mind are al-
most all of the latter description. We feel, and perceivt,
and remember, without any purpose or contrivance of
ours, and have evidently no power over the mechanism by
which those functions are performed. We cannot decom-
pose our perceptions in a crucible, nor divide our sensations
by a prism ; nor can we by act and contrivance produce
any combination of thoughts or emotions besides those
with which all men have been provided by nature. No
metaphysician expects by analysis to discover a new power,
or to excite a new sensation, in the mind, as a chemist dis-
covers a new earth or a new metal ; nor can he hope by
any process of synthesis to exhibit a mental combination
different from any that nature has produced in the minds
of other persons."
Certainly metaphysical found in physical science at the
beginning of the present century a formidable rival, that
could reward her followers much more largely than she
440 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
could ; and even ere the retirement of Dngald Stewart,
her decline in interest and influence, which the keen eyo
of Jeffrey had remarked at an earlier period, might be seen
by all. The genius of Thomas Brown created a diversion
in her favor; but he sank and died in middle life, and his
science in Scotland might be said to die with him. His
successor in the moral philosophy chair of our university
Avas at least his equal in genius ; but the bent of Wilson
was literary, not scientific ; and the enthusiasm which he
excited among his pupils was an enthusiasm for the sensu-
ous, not the abstract. But while all must agree in the
fact remarked by Jeffrey, many may fail to acquiesce in
the cause which he assigns for it. Pursuits not more prof-
itable than metaphysical ones have been eminently popu-
lar in the age just gone by, and are so still. We know
not that we should instance theology, seeing that on theo-
logical truth man's most important interests may be re-
garded as suspended ; but we surely may instance that
department of philosophic criticism in which Jeffrey him-
self won his laurels. We may instance, besjdes, at least
two of the natural sciences, astronomy and geology, neither
of them more rich of dowry than metaphysical science it-
self, and which cannot be advantageously prosecuted save
at a much greater expense. And yet both have been zeal-
ously cultivated, especially the latter, in the age during
which metaphysics have been neglected. We must look
for some other cause; nor do we think it ought to be diffi-
cult to find. Metaphysical pursuit fell into abeyance in
this country, not because it rested on a mere basis of ob-
servation, not experiment, or because it led to no such tan-
gible results as the pursuit of the physical sciences ; but
simply in consequence of a thorough divorce which took
place, through the labors of some of the most acute and
ingenious metaphysicians the world ever saw, between the
deductions of the science and the conclusions of common
sense. Reid, who raised one of the most vigorous protests
ever made on the other side, has well remarked that " it is
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 441
genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy,
and fills it with error and false theory." And certainly
none but very superior men could have run their science
so high and dry upon the beach, that, with all the interest
which attaches to its objects, men have preferred leaving
it there to taking the trouble of getting it afloat again.
We have before us Brown's " Philosophy of the Human
Mind," open at one of the most ingenious portions of the
work, that on the phenomena of simple suggestion, and
would cite one of his views by way of example.
Plume had previously shown that there is no other visi-
ble connection between cause and effect than that of inva-
riable contiguity. Cause and effect were Siamese twins
persistently seen together, but with the connecting liga-
ment, if any such really existed, invariably concealed. And
Brown, following close in the wake of the elder dialectician,
deliberately erased the very words from his metaphysic
vocabulary, and substituted antecedent and consequent in-
stead. The very terms cause and effect vanished from his
speculations, and with the terms the doctrine they in-
volved ; and he taught, instead, that power is nothing more
than the relation of one object or event as antecedent to
another object or event, its immediate and invariable con-
sequent. Hume, whose vigorous common-sense was ever
raising protests against his ingenuities, and in whose ever-
recurring asides, if we may so speak, the germ of the
Scotch philosophy may be found, had stopped short when
he showed that no known argument existed by which
it could be proved that effects were the necessary results
of causes, and that it could only be shown instead, and
thus simply as a matter of experience, not reason, that
they were always associated with causes, always tagged
to them in the exhibiting areas of space and time, as the
cart is tagged to the horse, or as a train of railway carriages
is tagged to the engine. And in summing up these links
of the associative faculty, which keeps up the ever-moving
train of thinking in the human mind, and constitutes one
442 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
thought master of the ceremonies in introducing another,
lie enumerated, as distinct and separate, first, the link of
contiguity in time and place ; and, second, the link of
cause and effect. And well he might. Let a misemployed
ingenuity compound them as they may, they are wide as
the poles asunder. They are separated by the entire
breadth of the human intellect; nay, by the entire breadth
of the brute and human intellect united. The prevailing
link of association in the mind of the highest philosopher
is the link of causation. It was the link that connected
the sublime thoughts of Newton, when, sitting in his
arbor, he saw the apple fall from the tree, and traced in
profound meditation the effect of the great law to which it
owed its fall, from the earth to the moon, and from thence
to the sun and all the planets. And, on the other hand,
the link of mere contiguity is the prevailing link in those
minds in which intellect is feeblest; it was the link on
which the ideas of Dame Quickly were suspended. Her
recollections hung upon the parcel-gilt goblet, the sea-coal
fire, and the chance visit of goodwife Keech, the butcher's
wife. Nay, even the inferior animals are not too low to
be under its influence. The horse quickens his pace when
some contiguous object reminds him of the neighborhood
of his stable, with its corn and hay ; and the cat learns to
associate the dinner-bell with the dinner which it precedes.
And yet we find one of the most ingenious of the idealistic
metaphysicians fusing these two widely-distant links of
association into one, the prevailing Newtonian link into
the prevailing link of the cat and horse ; or, as he himself
expresses it, suppressing the link of causation as superfluous,
and leaving instead, in conformity with his ado])tion of the
doctrine of Hume (though Hume himself avoided the
absurdity), only the link of contiguity in time and space.
The "olde polde-headed manne," who held that Tenter-
den steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands, because
the steeple had been built in their neighborhood, he said,
just immediately before they began to form, has been a
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 443
standing joke in English literature for the last four hun-
dred years. He made the mistake of substituting conti-
guity in time and place for causality, and has become a jest
in consequence. But what shall be said of a scheme of
metaphysics that does deliberately and knowingly, in order
to preserve the consistency of a foregone conclusion, what
the " polde-headed manne" did in his simplicity and igno-
rance ? The shrewd natural philosopher who saw in the
slow deposition of a few particles of earth or mud in still
water, formed by the opposing action of two currents, a
future sandbank, and, reasoning from cause to effect, was
reminded, through the associative link thus furnished, of
the brown wastes of the Goodwin Sands strewed with
wrecks, and with the white surf beating over them, and
the garrulous old woman to whom a print of Tenterden
steeple suggested the contiguous sand-pit along whose
margin she had been accustomed to pick up bits of broken
planks for her fire, would be, on the showing of Dr. Brown,
under the influence of identical suggestions ; for contiguous
cause and contiguous steeple he has virtually placed in the
same category. Is there any wonder that a busy age
should leave philosophers who argued after such a fashion,
however nice their genius or however excessive their in-
genuity, to milk their rams unheeded (we borrow the old
illustration), and that only a few ill-employed students
should be found idle enough to hold the pail ? And yet,
such is no extreme illustration of the idealistic philosophy.
It is, in truth, the grand objection to this philosophy,
that it sets itself in direct opposition to mind engaged in
all the practical walks. Let us adduce another instance.
It is one of the fundamental principles of an ingenious met-
aphysician of the present time, a principle in which he is
virtually at one with Berkeley, that being is to be regarded
as tantamount to knowing ; and that whatever is not an
object of consciousness cannot be regarded as existent.
Berkeley held that the absolute existence of unthinking
beings, without any relation to their being perceived, was
444 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
wholly unintelligible ; and we at once grant that a bar of
metal kept in the fire until it glows a bright red has no
consciousness of redness, that the caloric with which it is
charged has no sense of heat, and, further, that the bar
itself has no feeling whatever of expansion or solidity.
Redness, heat, expansion, and the idea of solidity are all
impressions of sentient existence, accidents or qualities
to be seen, felt, or conceived of. But it docs not follow,
that, because a heated bar of iron is not conscious of heat,
solidity, or redness, it is not therefore a heated bar of
iron ; or that because the senses can testify to its existence
only as the senses of the living can testify of the existence
of what is non-vital and non-sentient, it has therefore no
existence as a non-vital, non-sentient substance. The leap
in the logic seems most extraordinary, from the fact of the
non-sentient character of the heated bar to the non-exist-
ence of the heated bar. And yet such virtually was
the conclusion of Berkeley. " Some truths are so near
and obvious to the mind," he said, " that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. And such," he added,
"I take this important one to be, namely, that all the
choir of heaven and furniture of earth in a word, all
those bodies which compose the mighty framework of
the world have not any substance without a mind ; that
their being is to be perceived or known : to be convinced
of which, the reader need only reflect and try to separate
in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its
being perceived." In this last sentence the sophism seems
to lie. It confounds conceiving with existing, light with
eye and the optic nerve, and caloric and solidity with feel-
ing and the tactile sense. It would date the beginning of
the sun, not from that early period during which the sun
influenced the yearly motions of our planet, but from the
long posterior period during which eyes began to exist.
And such essentially is the philosophy of that other in-
genious metaphysician of our own time to which we refer.
"He" also "goes so far as to afBrm," says Mr; Cairns,
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 445
in his admirable pamphlet, " that thought ana existence
are identical. Knowledge of existence, he says, the
apprehension of one's self and other things, is alone true
existence." Yes, true rational existence ; but, judged
by the common-sense of mankind, it would be an emi-
nently irrational existence that would deny the reality of
existence of any other kind, that would recognize the
bona fide being of an Edinburgh professor, but deny, in an
argument four hundred pages long, that the university in
which he lectured had any being whatever. And if, while
such a teacher of moral philosophy, seated in its logic
chair, mayhap, was lecturing in one room on the general
nonentity of things, there was a professor of natural
science demonstrating in another, on evidence which no
ingenuous mind could resist, that, during immensely pro-
tracted periods, this old earth of our3 had moved round
the sun in a state so nearly approximating to the incan-
descent, that its diurnal motion propelled outward its mat-
ter at the meridian, so that its equatorial diame'ter still
exceeds its polar one, in consequence, by about twenty-six
miles, that for periods more than equally protracted,
when it became a home of sentient existence, its highest
creatures were in succession but trilobites, fishes, reptiles,
birds, and mammals, and that not until comparatively of
yesterday did its rational existence come into being,
we could not regard such neighborhood as other than
formidable to the logician to whom this brief latter day
would be the only one recognized as a reality. It would
be such a neighborhood as that of a disciple of Newton
busied in weighing and measuring the planets or calculat-
ing the return of a comet on the parallax of a fixed star, to
an old sophist engaged in showing his lads, on what he
deemed excellent grounds, that if a tortoise which crept a
hundred yards in an hour had got the start by a few fur-
rows' breadth of Achilles, who ran a mile in five minutes,
the tieet warrior might be engaged for ever and ever \v
vain attempts to come up with it
88
446 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
One of two things would of necessity occur in a state
of matters so little desirable, either the pupils of the lo-
gician would become such mere triflers in argument as the
Jack Lizard of Steele's essay, who, when his mother scalded
her fingers, angered the honest woman by assuring her
there was no such thing as heat in boiling water ; or they
would learn .to despise both their professor and his science.
It gives us sincere pleasure to find that the Edinburgh
University is in no such danger. So long as the logic
chair remained vacant, we purposely abstained from making
any allusion to the subject, in the fear that any expression
of opinion, even in a matter so impersonal as the respective
merits of two schools of philosophy, might and would be
misinterpreted. But we are in no such danger now; and
we must be permitted to express our sincere pleasure that
the election of Tuesday has resulted in the selection of an
asserter of the Scotch school of philosophy to teach in the
leading Scotch university. Nor are we influenced by any
idle preference for the mere name Scotch. We know not
that so large an amount of ingenuity has yet been expended
on that common-sense school of which Reid was the founder,
and Beattie, Hamilton, and Dugald Stewart the exponents,
as on the antagonistic school, which at least equally dis-
tinguished Scotchmen, such as Hume and Thomas Brown,
have illustrated and adorned. George Primrose, in the
" Vicar of Wakefield," found that the best things remained
to be said on the wrong side ; and so, in the determination
of astonishing the world, he set himself to dress up his
three paradoxes. And, unquestionably, the paradoxes of
the idealistic philosophy have been admirably dressed.
But the Scotch philosophy has at least this grand advan-
tage over the opponent school, that all its principles and
deductions can be brought into harmony with those of
all the other departments of science. It is not a jarring
discord in the great field of mental exertion, a false bar,
to be slurred over or dropped in the general concert, but
a well-toned and accordant part, consistent with the bar-
THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 447
mony of the whole. It was acknowledged by Hume, that
it was only in solitude and retirement that he could yield
any assent to his own philosophy. Nor was he always
true to it even in solitude ; for in solitude he wrote his
admirable political essays, and his "History of England."
And the Scotch school is simply an appeal, on philosophic
grounds, from Hume the metaphysical dreamer, wrapped
up in the moonshine of sceptical speculation, to Hume the
practical politician and shrewd historian. And we know
no man better fitted to be an exponent of this true and
solid school, or whose mind partakes more of the character
of that of its founder Reid, than the gentleman on whom
the choice of the council h;is fallen. We trust he has a
long career of usefulness before him ; and have every
reason to hope that his expositions will be found not
unworthy of the chair of Hamilton, nor of a philosophy
destined ultimately, we cannot doubt, to give law in the
regions of mental philosophy, at a time when the inge-
nuities of its opponents shall have shared the fate of tho
paradoxes of George Primrose.
448 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
X.
THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY.
It has been well said of singing B song, in reference,
of course, to the extreme commonness of musical accom-
plishment in a low degree, and its extreme rarity in a high
one, that it is what every one can do, and not one in a
thousand can do well. A musical ear is, like seeing and
hearing, one of the ordinary gifts of nature, just because
music was designed to be one of the ordinary delights of
the species ; but while the class capable of being delighted
is a very large one, the class capable of delighting is one
of the smallest. A not large apartment could contain all
the first-class singers in the world ; and, mayhap, judged
by men of the highest degree of taste, a closet roomy
enough to contain Jenny Lind might be found sufficient
to accommodate for a time its preeminent musical talent.
And it is so as certainly with poetry as with music. There
are a few men in every community wholly destitute of
both the musical and the poetic sense, just as in every
community there are a few men born blind and a few more
born deaf; but, with these exceptions, all men have poetry
and music in them, music enough, if their education has
not been wholly neglected, to derive pleasure from music,
and poetry enough to derive pleasure from poetry. And
in due accordance with this fact, we find that in what
man's Creator appointed from the beginning to be the
commonest of all things, religion, he has made large use
of both. Every church has its music, and a large portion
of the divine revelation has been made in poetry. But
if the great musicians who can exquisitely delight be few,
the great poets are still fewer. There is but one Jenny
THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 449
Lincl in the world ; but then the world has not had a
Shakspeare for the last two hundred and forty years ; and,
though greatly more than a century has elapsed since
Dryden took tale, in his famous epigram, of all the great
epic poets, and found them but three, no one has since
been able to add a fourth to the list. Of all rare and
admirable gifts, the poetic faculty in the high and perfect
degree is at once the most admirable and the most rare.
It mny, however, be very genuine and exquisite, though
not full-orbed, as in a Homer or a Milton. Nature, when
she makes a poet of the first class, adds a powerful imag-
inative faculty, and a fancy of great brilliancy, to an un-
derstanding the profoundest ; she takes all that makes the
great philosopher and all that is peculiar to the true poet,
and, adding them together, produces, once in a thousand
years or so, one of her fully-i-ounded and perfect intellects.
But a man may have much though he may not have all ;
nay, a very few faculties, if of a rare order and wisely
employed, may well excite admiration and wonder. Tan-
nahill could achieve only a song ; but as the songs which
he did achieve were very genuine ones, with the true
faculty in them, Scotland seems to be in no danger of
forgetting them. Beranger, the greatest of living song-
writers, is a man of similar faculty with Tannahill. He is
known as a song-writer, and as that only ; but never had
France such songs before, and France knows how to value
them. The one thing which Beranger can do, no other
man can do equally well ; and not a few of the fairest
names among the poets of antiquity are those of poets
equally limited, apparently, in what they were fitted to
produce, but also equally exquisite in the quality of their
productions. Anacreon has left only little odes, and Pin-
dar only great ones ; but scholars tell us that it is almost
worth while acquiring Greek in order to be able to read
them. Ancient Rome has immortalized her Lucretius for
his single faculty of transmuting not very good philosophy
into very noble verse, and modern Italy her Petrarch for
38*
450 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
his rar3 skill in turning a sonnet. In short, almost all the
poets of the second order have been poets, not full-orbed
in their brightness, like the sun or the great outer planets
of the system, but, like the inner planets, and like the
moon ere her full term has come, mere segments and cres-
cents of glory.
There can be no very adequate division made of these
partially orbed poets ; and yet they naturally enough
divide into two classes, a class in whom intellect is
comparatively strong and genius weak, and, vice versa, a
class in whom intellect is comparatively weak and genius
strong. Pure intellect dissociated from the poetic faculty
can of course accomplish but little in the fields of poesy.
And yet, such is the power of determination, diligence,
and high culture, that a little it has accomplished. If it
has not produced brilliant poems, it has at least produced
pointed stanzas and pleasing stories, narrated in easy and
elegant verse. We greatly question whether Hayley was
born a poet ; but his " Triumphs of Temper," though they
triumphed over the temper of Byron, certainly did not tri-
umph over ours. On the contrary, we found the piece, in
its character as a metrical tale, at least as readable as if it
had been written in good prose ; and there are even some
of its stanzas which we still remember. The few lines in
which the father of the heroine is described may not be
poetry, but they are nearly as good as if they were. There
are not many characters better hit off in a few lines, in the
whole round of English verse, than that of
" The good Sir Gilbert, to his country true,
A faithful Whig, who, zealous for the state,
In freedom's service led the loud debate;
Yet every day, by transmutation rare,
Turned to a Tory in his elbow-chair,
And made his daughter pay, howe'er absurd,
Passive obedience to his sovereign word."
But of all the achievements of the prose men in the prov-
ince of verse, that of Swift is the greatest. Dryden was
THE POESY OP INTELLECT AND FANCY. 451
quite in the right when he said that the young clergyman
was no poet ; and yet the " no poet " has so fixed his name
in the poesy of the country that in mo general biography
of the English poets do we find his life omitted, and in
no general collection of English poetry do we fail to find
his verses. The works of a class of writers not certainly
so devoid of poetry as Swift and Hayley, but who were
rather men of fine taste and vigorous intellect than of
high poetic genius, represent in large measure the common
staple of English poesy during the earlier and middle part
of the last century. Not only the Broomes, Fentons, and
Lytteltons, but even the Armstrongs and Akensides, be-
longed to this class. The men who assisted Pope in trans-
lating the "Odyssey;" the man who wrote that work
on the Conversion of St. Paul which still maintains its
place in what may be termed the higher literature of
the "Evidences;" in especial, the men who produced the
"Pleasures of the Imagination" and the "Art of Pre-
serving Health," had all very vigorous minds. Akenside
would have made a first-class metaphysical professor, par-
ticularly in the aesthetic department ; and Armstrong could
have effectually grappled with very severe and rugged
subjects ; but the poetic faculty that was in them was very
subordinate to their intellect. It was true so far as it ex-
tended, but embroidered only thinly and in a threadbare
way the strong tissue of their thinking. And yet both the
" Art of Preserving Health " and the " Pleasures of the
Imagination" are noble poems. The latter is the better
known of the two : Thomas Brown used to repeat almost the
whole of it every season in his class, as at once good poetry
and good metaphysics. But the former deserves to be
known as well. The man who could transmute such a
subject into passable poetry, and render his composition
readable as a whole, and much of the poetry is more
than passable, and the piece as a whole eminently reada-
ble, must be regarded as having accomplished no ordi-
nary achievement. It is, however, from the strong intellect
452 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
displayed in the staple texture of the piece, rather tLan
from its poetic embroidery, that it derives its merit.
The second class the class composed of men whoso
poetic genius overrode their intellect is not so largely
represented in English poetry as the other. It may be
6afely said, however, that in the writings of men of the
last century, such as Collins, Chatterton in his Rowley
poems, and perhaps Meikle, we find more of poetry than
of pure intellect ; and in writings of men of the present
century, such as those of Keats, Wilson, and perhaps
Leigh Hunt, we find much more. In the writings of Wil-
son there is often scarce tissue enough to support the load
of gorgeous embroidery that mantles over it. In especial
in his " Isle of Palms " do we find the balance of the
poetry preponderately cast against the intellect. It is, as
a poem, in every respect the antipodes of the " Art of
Preserving Health." In Keats the preponderance is also
very marked. What a gorgeous gallery of poetic pictures
that "Eve of St. Agnes" forms, and yet how slim the tis-
sue that lies below ! How thin the canvas on which the
whole is painted ! For vigorous sense, one deep-thoughted
couplet of Dryden would make the whole kick the beam.
And yet what can be more exquisite in their way than
those pictures of the young poet ! Even the old worn-out
gods of Grecian mythology become life-like when he draws
them. They revive in his hands, and become vital once
more. In " Rimini " we detect a similar faculty. A man
of profound, nay, of but rather strong intellect, would
scarce have chosen such a repulsive story for poetic adorn-
ment ; but, once chosen, only a true poet could have
adorned it so well.
Such are specimens of the class of poets which we would
set off against that to which the Lytteltons, Akensides,
and Armstrongs belonged, and at whose head Pope and
Dryden took their stand. And it is a class that, compar-
atively at least, the sum total of the poetic stock taken
into account, is largely represented at the present time.
THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 453
Wo shall not repeat the nickname which has been era-
ployed to designate them ; for, believing, whatever may
be their occasional aberrations, that they possess " the vis-
ion and the faculty divine," we shall not permit ourselves
to speak other than respectfully of them. We could fain
wish that they oftener rejected first thoughts, and waited
for those second ones which, according to Bacon, are
wiser: we could fain wish that what was said of Dryden
" Who either knew not, or forgot,
That greatest art, the art to blot,"
could not be said so decidedly of them. But we must not
forget that their compositions, though not without fault
in their character as wholes, and often primed in, as a
painter might say, on too thin a groundwork, contain some
of the most brilliant passages in the wide range of modern
poetry. To this school Gerald Massey, a name already
familiar to most of our readers, has been held to belong.
He has less of its peculiar faults, however, than any of its
other members, with certainly not less of its peculiar beau-
ties. With all the marked individuality of original genius,
he reminds us more of Keats than of any other English
poet ; but with the same rare perception of external beauty,
and occasionally the same too extreme devotion to it, he
adds a lyrical power and a depth of feeling which Keats
did not possess. And from these circumstances we augur
well of his future. It is ever the tendency of genuine feel-
ing to pass from the surface of nature to its depths; and
though, as we see exemplified in the songs of Burns, the
true lyrist may find in description adequate employment
for his peculiar powers, it is always in preparation for some
burst of sentiment, or by way of garnishing to some strik-
ing thought. Mr. Massey's new poem " Craigcrook Castle "
furnishes admirable illustrations of the various phases of
his genius. The plan of the work is one of which our
literature has furnished many examples, from the times of
the " Canterbury Tales " down to those of the " Queen's
454 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Wake," and which is taken up year after year in the Christ-
mas stories of the writers connected with the "Household
Words." There is a meeting of friends at the hospitable
board, over which Jeffrey once presided, and at which a
man of similar literary tastes and feelings presides now ;
and each guest, in passing the evening, brings forward his
contribution of song or story. The introduction, with
none of the cadences of Keats, reminds us in every line of
that poet's delight in sensuous imagery and influences, and
of the crust of rich thought, if we may so express ourselves,
that mantled over the surface of his poetry. The advent
of the morning at Craigcrook we find thus described :
" The meek and melting amethyst of dawn
Blushed o'er the blue hills in the ring o' the world;
Up purple twilights come the shining sea
Of sunlight breaking in a silent surge,
Whence morning, like the birth of beauty, rose;
While at a rosy touch, the clouds, that lay
In sullen purples round the hills of Fife,
Adown her pathway spread their paths of gold.
* * * *
" Sweet lilies of the valley, tremulous fair,
Peep through their curtains, clasped with diamond dew
By fairy jeweller's working while they slept;
The arch laburnum droops her budding gold
From emerald fingers with such taking grace;
The fuchsia fans her fairy chandclry,
And flowering current crimsons the green gloom;
The pansies, pretty little puritans,
Come peering up with merry, elvish eyes;
At summer's call the lily is alight;
Wallflowers in fragrance burn themselves away
With the sweet season on her precious pyre;
Pure passionate aromas of the rose,
And purple perfume of the hyacinth,
Come like a color through the golden day."
There is much of Keats in this passage, and yet Keats
was not in the mind of the writer: the similarity of result
is an effect, evidently, not of imitation, but of a similarity
THE POESY OP INTELLECT AND FANCY. 455
of genius. The following passage, much in the same vein,
has been greatly criticized, and yet none but a true poet
could have produced it. It is a remarkable picture of a
remarkable man, with points about it which might easily
be laid hold of in a mocking spirit, but which impart not
a little of its character and individuality to the portrait.
We quote from the second edition :
" We gathered all within the house, and there
Shook off the purple silence of the night.
Cried one, Come, let us a symposium hold,
And each one to the banquet bring their best
In song or story : all shall play a part.
So, for a leader simple and grand, we chose
Our miracle-worker in midwifery, he
Who wrestled with the fiend of corporal pain,
And stands above the writhing agony
Like Michael with the dragon 'neath his heel;
Who is in soul Love riding on a lion;
In body, a Bacchus crowned with the head of Jove :
The keen life looks out in his lighted face
So fulgent, that the gazer brightens too;
He bravely towers above our fume and fret,
Like the old hills, whose feet are in the surge,
And on their lifted brows the eternal calm;
For he is one of those prophetic spirits
That, ere the world's night, dreams of things to come."
There may be faults here, as the reviewers suggest,
nay, it may be all fault; but it certainly does remind us of
those aberrations of genius specially described by the poet
as "glorious faults, that critics dare not mend." In illus-
tration of the lyrical spirit and deep tenderness of Mr.
Massey, we give the following extracts from a series of
simple triplets on the death of a beloved child :
" Within a mile of Edinburgh town
We laid our little darling down, \j^
Our first seed in " God's acre " sown.
"The city looketh solemn and sweet;
It bares a gentle brow to greet
The mourners mourning at its feet.
456 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
"The sea of human life breaks round
This shore o' the dead with softened sound;
Wild flowers climb each mossy mound
To place in resting hands their palm,
And breathe their beauty, bloom, and balm,
Folding the dead in fragrant calm.
* * * *
" Lone mother, at the dark grave-door
She kneeleth, pleading o'er and o'er;
But it is shut for evermore.
" She toileth on the mournfulest thing
At the vain task of emptying
The cistern where the salt tears spring.
* * *
"The spirit of life may leap above,
But in that grave her prisoned dove
Lies cold to th' warm embrace of love;
" And dark though all the world is bright,
And lonely with a city in sight,
And desolate in the rainy night.
"Ah, Godl when in the glad life-cup
The face of Death swims darkly up,
The crowning flower is sure to droop!
" And so we laid our darling down,
When summer's cheek grew ripely brown;
And still, though grief has milder grown,
Unto the stranger's land we cleave,
Like some poor birds that grieve and grieve
Bound the robbed nest, so loth to leave."
There are one or two obscurities of figure here that crave
a second thought to unlock them ; but nothing can be more
sadly tender than the whole, and there is poetry in every
stanza. Gerald Massey is still a young man, and much of
his time in the past must have been spent in shaking off the
stiff soil that clogs round for a time the thoughts and expres-
sions of untutored genius. A man still under thirty, who
never attended any school save a penny one for a brief
period, and who at eight years of age was sent to toil in a
THE UNTAUGHT POKTS. 457
silk manufactory from five o'clock in the morning till half-
past six at night, may well be regarded as still but partially
developed ; and we are convinced the world has not yet
seen his best. He has but to give his intellect as full scope
as his fancy and imagination, and to bestow upon his pieces
that elaboration and care which high excellence demands
from even the happiest genius, in order to become one of
the enduring lights of British song.
XI.
THE UNTAUGHT POETS.
In more than one respect the untaught poets of England
have fared better than those of our own country. In the
first place, Southey, perhaps the raciest English writer of
his day, wrote their history, and made not a few of them
known who had succeeded but indifferently in making
known themselves ; and in the second, we find from his nar-
ratives that, with few exceptions, their poetry served them
as a sort of stepping-stone, by which they escaped upwards
from the condition of hard labor and obscurity, to which
they seemed born, into a sphere of comparative affluence
and comfort. For one of the first of their number, John
Taylor, the "Water Poet," a man who was certainly
not a water-poet in the teetotal sense, nothing could
have been done. He was a bold, rough, roystering fellow,
quite as famous for his feats and wagers as for his rhymes.
On one occasion he navigated his cockle-shell of a wherry
all the way from London Bridge to York ; on another, he
rowed it across the German Sea from London to Ham-
burg; on yet another, in 1618, he undertook to travel
from London to Edinburgh, and thence into the Highlands,
39
458 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
u not carrying money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing,
nor asking meat, drink, or lodging; " and what he under-
took to do he did, and bequeathed to us, in his history of
his " Pennyless Pilgrimage," the best account extant of
hunting in the Highlands by the " Tinckhell," and of the
" wolves and wild horses " which, at even that compara-
tively recent period, abounded in the ruder districts of
Scotland. It would have been scarce possible to elevate
such a man, even had a very generous patronage been the
order of the age ; but Taylor had all his days enough to
eat and drink, and died the keeper of a thriving public
house, much frequented, during the times of the Common-
wealth, by the cavaliers. And no sooner did men of this
class arise, to whom a judicious patronage could be ex*
tended, than they were admitted to its benefits. Stephen
Dick, the " Thresher," was rather a small poet, but he was
an amiable and conscientious man ; and, mainly through
the exertions of the Rev. Mr. Spence, Professor of Poetry
in the University of Oxford, he obtained orders in the
English Church, and was preferred to a not uncomfortable
living. Dodsley, still known by his " King and Miller of
Mansfield," was elevated, through the exercise of a genial
patronage, from his original place as a table-boy, to be one
of the most respectable London booksellers of his day,
a man whose name still imparts a recognizable bibliograph-
ical value to the works to which it is attached. The shoe-
maker Woodhouse, and the tobacco-pipe-maker Bryant,
were also fortunate in their patrons ; Gilford was eminently
so; all seems to have been done for Ann Yearsley, the poeti-
cal milkwoman, that her own unhappy temper allowed ; and
in our own times, John Clare was kindly and liberally
dealt with ; though not more in his case than in that of
his predecessor Duck could the degree of favor with which
he was treated ward off the cruel mental malady that
darkened his latter years. With, in short, the exception
of one of the best, and in every respect most meritorious
and deserving of the class, poor Robert Bloomfield, who
THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 459
was suffered to die in great poverty, we know not a
single untaught English poet who gave evidence of the
possession of the true faculty, however narrow its scope,
and had at the same time character enough to be capable
of being benefited by a liberal patronage, that failed to re-
ceive the encouragement which he deserved. And we
find Southey laying down very admirably, in combating a
remark of the elder Sheridan, whom he terms an ill-
natured, perverse man, the generous principle on which
this had been done. " Wonder," says the author of the
first " Pronouncing Dictionary," a man whom the
greater lexicographer, Johnson, described as not only nat-
urally dull, but as also rendered, through dint of immense
effort on his own part, vastly duller than nature had made
him, " wonder, usually accompanied by a bad taste,
looks only for what is uncommon ; and if a work comes
out under the name of a thresher, a bricklayer, a milkwo-
man, or a lord, it is sure to be eagerly sought after by the
million." " Persons of quality," remarks the poet-laureate,
" require no defence when they appear as authors in these
days ; and, indeed, as mean a spirit may be shown in tra-
ducing a book because it is written by a lord, as in extolling
it beyond its deserts for the same reason. But when we
are told that the thresher,. the milkwoman, and the tobac-
co-pipe-maker did not deserve the patronage they found,
when it is laid down as a maxim of philosophical criti-
cism that poetry ought never to be encouraged unless
it is excellent in its kind ; that it is an art in which infe-
rior execution is not to be tolerated, a luxury, and must
therefore be rejected unless it is of the very best,
such reasoning may be addressed with success to cockered
and sickly intellects, but it will never impose upon a
healthy understanding, a generous spirit, or a good man.
.... If the poet be a good and amiable man," continues
Southey, " he will be both the better and the happier
for writing verses. ' Poetry,' says Landon, ' opens many
sources of tenderness that lie forever in the rock without
460 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
it The. benevolent persons who patronized Stephen
Duck did it, not with the hope of rearing a great poet,
but for the sake of placing a worthy man in a station
more suited to his intellectual endowments than that in
which he was born. Bryant was befriended in a manner
not dissimilar, for the same reason. In the case of Wood-
house and Ann Yearsley the intention was to better their
condition in their own way of life. And the Woodstock
shoemaker was chiefly indebted for the patronage which
he received to Thomas Warton's good nature ; for my
predecessor Warton was the best-natured man that ever
wore such a wig." There is the true English generosity of
sentiment here, a generosity which, in such well-known
cases as that of Henry Kirke White and John Jones, was
actually exemplified by Southey himself; and his remark
regarding the humanizing influence of poesy on even its
humbler cultivators will scarce fail to remind some of our
readers of the still happier one which our countryman
Mackenzie puts into the mouth of " old Ben Silton."
"There is at least," said the stranger, "one advantage in
the poetical inclination, that is an incentive to philan-
thropy. There is a certain poetic ground on which a man
cannot tread without feelings that enlarge the heart. The
causes of human depravity vanish before the romantic en-
thusiasm he professes ; and many who are not able to
reach the Parnassian heights may yet approach so near as
to be bettered by the air of the climate."
The untaught poets of Scotland have fared much more
hardly than those of the sister country. Some of them
forced their way through life simply as energetic, vigorous
men. Allan Ramsay throve as a tradesman, and built for
himself a house in Edinburgh, which continues to attract
the eye of the stranger by its picturesqueness, and which
few literary men of the present day could afford to pur-
chase. And Falconer, though he died a sailor's death in
the full vigor of his prime, had first risen from the fore-
castle to the quarter-deck as a bold and skilful seaman.
THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 461
Allan Cunningham, too, made his way good as a hard-
working business man. But, if unable to help themselves
after the manner of Falconer, Cunningham, and Ramsay,
the untaught poets of Scotland received but little help
from the patronage of their countrymen. The aristocracy
of Scotland made Burns a gauger, and employed one of
the noblest intellects which his country ever produced in
u searching," as he himself in bitter mirth expressed it,
" auld wives' barrels." And neither Alexander Wilson nor
poor Tannahill ever received even the miserable measure
of patronage that gave Burns seventy pounds a year, and
demanded, in return, that he should waste three fourths
of his time in a half-reputable and uncongenial employ-
ment. Poor Tannahill, the harmless, the gentle, the affec-
tionate, was left to perish unhappily when he was but
little turned of thirty ; and Wilson, a stronger, though
not a finer spirit, quitted his country in disgust, and made
himself an enduring fame in the United States as a nat-
uralist, by the great work which Prince Charles Lucien
Bonaparte did not disdain to complete. We cannot point
to a single untaught poet in the literary history of our
country that ever enjoyed a pension. Pensions were re-
served for the friends and relatives of the statesmen to
whom Toryism in Edinburgh and elsewhere built senseless
columns. But though the untaught poets of Scotland
fared thus differently from those of England, it was cer-
tainly not because they deserved less. On the contrary,
if we except Shakspeare, one of those extraordinary
minds that, according to Johnson, "bid help and hinder-
ance alike vanish before them," our untaught Scotchmen
have been men of larger calibre, and greater masters of
the lyre, than the corresponding class in England. Pass-
ing over the John Taylors and Ned Wards as deserving
of no special remark, we would stake Ramsay with his
" Gentle Shepherd " against his brother poet and brother
bookseller Dodsley with his " Miller of Mansfield " and his
" Toy Shop," taking odds nf ten to one any day ; Bloom-
39*
462 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
field, though a worthy personage, and possessed of the
true faculty, was a small man compared with Robert
Burns ; and the Ducks, Woodhouses, Bryants, and Ben-
nets were slim and stunted of stature compared with the
Falconers, Tannahills, Wilsons, Allan Cunninghams, and
Hoggs. In this, as in other walks, though English genius
of the highest class takes the first place in the literature
of the world, its genius of the second class fails to equal
second-class genius in Scotland. There have been poets
among our countrymen whose lives no one thinks of writ-
ing, and whose verses have failed to attract any very large
share of notice who possessed powers greatly superior to
most of the authors enumerated by Southey in his Essay
on the Uneducated Poets, and who, had they written in
England, would have been extensively known. To one
of these, still among us, we find pleasing reference made
in the correspondence of Jeffrey. " The greater part of
your poems," we find him saying, in a note to the self-
taught poet Alexander Maclagan, " I have perused with
singular gratification. I can remember when the appear-
ance of such a work would have produced a great sensa-
tion, and secured to its author both distinction and more
solid advantages." And in another note, written in ref-
erence chiefly to a second and enlarged edition of Mr.
Maclagan's poems, and which occurs in the volume of
" Correspondence," edited by Lord Cockburn, we find the
distinguished critic specifying the pieces which pleased him
most. "I have already," says his lordship, "read all [the
poems] on the slips, and think them, on the whole, fully
equal to those in the former volume. I am most pleased,
I believe, with that which you have entitled 'Sisters'
Love,' which is at once very touching, very graphic, and
very elegant. Your ' Summer Sketches ' have beautiful
passages in all of them, and a pervading joyousness and
kindliness of feeling, as well as a vein of grateful devotion,
which must recommend them to all good minds. The
Scorched Flowers,' I thought the most picturesque."
THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 463
We have read over Mr. Maclagan's works, both the
volume of poems which so gratified the taste of Jeffrey, 1
and an equally pleasing volume, of subsequent appearance,
dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Guthrie, and devoted to the
cause of ragged schools. 2 The general strain of both is
equally pleasing ; though we know not whether we do not
prefer the simplicity and pathos of some of the " Ragged
School Rhymes" to even those compositions of the earlier
volume on which Jeffrey has stamped his imprimatur.
Let us, however, ere quoting from the latter work, submit
to the reader a few stanzas of the piece which most pleased
the critic. It is a younger sister that thus addresses in
strains that, for their quaint beauty, remind us of some
of the happier pieces of Marvell a sister older than her-
self, but still young, that had been to her, in her state of
orphanage, as a mother.
" Lo ! whilst I fondly look upon
Thy lovely face, drinking the tone
Of thy sweet voice, my early known,
My long, long loved, my dearest grown,
I feel thou art
A joy, a part
Of all I prize in soul and heart.
" Sweet guardian of my infancy,
Hast thou not been the blooming tree
Whose soft green branches sheltered me
From withering want's inclemency?
No cloud of care
Nor bleak despair
Could blight me 'ncath thy branches fair.
" And thou hast been, since that sad day
We gave our mother's clay to clay,
The morning star, the evening ray,
That cheered me on life's weary way,
A vision bright,
Filling my night
Of sorrow with thy looks of light.
I Sketches from Nature, and other Poems. By Alexander Maclagan.
1 Ragged School Rhymes. By Alexander Maclagan.
464 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
" Yet there were hours I'll ne'er forget
Ere sorrow and thy soul had met,
Ere thy young cheeks with tears were wet,
Or grief's pale seal was on them set,
Ere hope declined,
And cares unkind
Threw sadness o'er thy sunny mind.
" In glorious visions still I see
The village green, the old oak tree,
The sun-bathed banks where oft with thee
I've hunted for the blaeberrie,
Where oft we crept,
And sighed and wept,
Where our dead linnet soundly slept.
" Again I see the rustic chair
In which you swung me through sweet air,
Or twined fair lilies with my hair,
Or dressed my little doll with care;
In fancy's sight
Still rise its bright
Blue beads, red shoes, and boddice white.
*' And at the sunsets in the west,
And at my joy when gently prest
To the soft pillow of thy breast,
Lulled by thy mellow voice to rest,
Sung into dreams
Of woods and streams,
Of lovely buds, and birds, and beams.
** When wintry tempests swept the vale,
When thunder and the heavy hail
And lightning turned each young cheek pale,
Thine ever was the Bible tale
Or psalmist's song
The wild night long,
Fresh from the heart where faith is strong.
" Now summer clouds, like golden towers,
Fall shattered into diamond showers :
Come, let us seek our wildwood bowers,
And lay our heads among the flowers;
Come, sister dear,
That we may hear
Our mother's spirit whispering near."
THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 465
These stanzas are, as the great Scotch critic well re-
marked, at once "touching," "graphic," and "elegant,"
and certainly exhibit no trace of what Johnson well terms
the " narrow conversation " to which untaught men in
humble circumstances " are inevitably condemned." But
regarding the difficulties with which Mr. Maclagan has
had to contend, we must quote from himself : " That a
working-man," we find him saying, "should write and
publish a volume of verse, is no phenomenon : many of
the brightest lights of literature in all countries have toiled
for years at the press, the plough, the loom, and the ham-
mer. That wealth and education in themselves have
never made a true minstrel, is proverbial ; nevertheless,
they are powerful allies in his favor. Take, for instance,
a youth from school, ten years of age, and bind him at
thirteen or fourteen to a laborious trade. See him work-
ing ten hours a day for years without, intermission, strug-
gling to unravel, meanwhile, the mysteries of literature,
science, and art, without assistance or encouragement, and
you will find that he has many hard battles to fight before
he can hope to attain even standing-room in the literary
arena. Such, literally, has been the position of the author
of the present volume." Let us remark, however, that
untaught men possessed of the true poetic faculty are
usually, in one important respect, happier in their genius
than untaught men whose intellect is of the reflective cast,
and their bent scientific. The poets are developed much
earlier, and lose less in life. Ramsay began to publish his
poems, in detached broad-sheets, in his five-and-twentieth
year ; Burns in his twenty-sixth year had written the
greater part of his Kilmarnock volume, including his " Twa
Dogs," " Halloween," and the " Cottar's Saturday Night ; "
Alexander Wilson produced his " Watty and Meg " at the
same age ; and the writings of both Tannahill and Allan
Cunningham saw the light ere either writer was turned
of thirty. But self-taught men of science have usually to
undergo a much longer probationary period ere they can
466 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
elevate themselves into notice. James Ferguson wa9
nearly forty before he began to give public lectures on his
favorite subjects, astronomy and mechanics. Franklin was
in his forty-third year ere he had demonstrated the iden-
tity of lightning with the electric spark ; and not until he
had attained the same age did Sir William Herschel render
himself known as a great astronomer and the discoverer
of a new planet. Both in national and individual history,
poetry is of early and science of late growth. The self-
taught poet is not unfrequently developed at as early an
age as men of a similar cast of genius who have enjoyed
all the advantages of complete culture; judging from the
experience of the past, he need not lose a single year of
life ; whereas the self-taught man of science may deem
himself more than usually fortunate if he does not lose at
least ten.
We have said that in some respects we prefer Mr. Mac-
lagan's second publication, the " Ragged School Rhymes,"
to his first. It is, in the main, a more earnest, and, in the
poetic sense, more truthful work. When the poet, in his
earlier volume, sings, as he does at times, though rarely,
of drinking " cronies " and usages, we know that he is
catching but the dying echoes of a bypast time, when
there was not a little staggering on the top of Parnassus,
and Helicon used to run at times, like a town cistern on
an election day, whiskey punch by the hour. But there is
none of this in the other volume. The distress which it
exhibits, the sympathy which it expresses, the views of
nature which it embodies, are all realities of the present
day. The earlier volume, however, contains more think-
ing ; and the possession of both are necessary to the man
desirous of rightly appreciating the untaught poet Mac-
lagan. We find some little difficulty in selecting from the
"Ragged School Rhymes" an appropriate specimen, not
from the poverty, but from the wealth, of the volume.
We fix, however, on the following, as suited to remind
the reader of that passage in one of the larger poems of
THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 467
Langhorne which, according to Sir Walter Scott, power-
fully elicited the sympathy of Burns, though we are pretty
certain Mr. Maclagan had not the passage in his eye when
he wrote. Indeed, the latter part of his poem could have
been written in only the present age :
THE OUTCAST.
" And did you pity me, kind sir?
Say, did you pity me?
Then, oh how kind, and oh how warm,
Your generous heart must be!
For I have fasted all the day,
Ay, nearly fasted three,
And slept upon the cold, hard earth,
And none to pity me;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me.
" My mother told me I was born
On a battlefield in Spain,
Where mighty men like lions fought,
Where blood ran down like rain !
And how she wept, with bursting heart,
My father's corse to see,
When I lay cradled 'mong the dead,
And none to pity me;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me.
" At length there came a dreadful day, -
My mother too lay dead,
And I was sent to England's shore
To beg my daily bread,
To beg my bread; but cruel men
Said, Boy, this may not be,
So they locked me in a cold, cold cell,
And none to pity me ;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me.
468 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
"They whipped me, sent me hungry forth;
I saw a lovely field
Of fragrant beans ; I plucked, I ate :
To hunger all must yield.
The farmer came, a cold, a stern,
A cruel man was he;
He sent me as a thief to jail,
And none to pity me;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me.
" It was a blessed place for me,
For I had better fare ;
It was a blessed place for me,
Sweet was the evening prayer.
At length they drew my prison bolts,
And I again was free,
Poor, weak, and naked in the street,
And none to pity me;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me.
" I saw sweet children in the fields,
And fair ones in the street,
And some were eating tempting fruit,
And some got kisses sweet;
And some were in their father's arms,
Some on their mother's knee;
I thought my orphan heart would break.
For none did pity me;
For none did pity me, kind sir,
For none did pity me.
" Then do you pity me, kind sir?
Then do you pity me?
Then, oh how kind, and oh how warm,
Your generous heart must be!
For I have fasted all the day,
Ay, nearly fasted three,
And slept upon the cold, hard ground,
And none to pity me;
And none to pity me, kind sir,
And none to pity me."
.OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 469
XII.
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE.
What are the most influential writings of the present
time, the writings that tell with most effect on public
opinion ? Not, certainly, the graver or more eleaborate
productions of the press. Some of these in former times
exerted a prodigious influence. There were four great
works, in especial, that appeared at wide intervals during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the last of
their number about eighty years ago, that revolutionized,
on their respective subjects, the thinking of all Europe ;
and these were, the "Laws of Peace and War," the " Essay
on the Human Understanding," the " Spirit of Laws," and
the " Wealth of Nations," all works of profound elabo-
ration, that contain the thinking of volumes condensed into
single pages. At an earlier period there were theological
works that stirred men's minds to their utmost depths,
and changed the political relations of states and kingdoms
over all Christendom. Such was the influence exerted by
the treatises of Luther, whose written " words were half-
battles ; " and by those " Institutes of Calvin " that gave
form and body to the thinking of half the religious world.
But whether it be that we live in an age too superficial to
produce, or too busy too read, such works, or at once su-
perficial and busy both, without either the works to read
or the time to read them in, it is certain that almost all
power has passed away from the grave and the elaborate
to the light and the clever, and that what would have
been pronounced about a century ago the least influential
kinds of writing must now be recognized as by far the
most influential. Had one said to a literary man in the
40
470 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
early days of Johnson, " Pray, what do you regard as the
least important departments of your literature, both in
themselves and their effects, and that tell least on the
public mind ? " the reply would probably have been,
" Why, the writing in our newspapers and our novels."
And now the same reply would serve at least equally well
to indicate the kinds of writing that are most telling and
influential. None others exert so great a power over the
general mind of the community as novels and newspaper
articles. And the mode of piecemeal publication recently
resorted to by our more popular novelists gives to the
effect proper to their compositions as pictures of great
genius and power the further effect of pamphlets or mag-
azines: they are at once novels and newspaper articles
too.
Considerably more than a century has passed, however,
since a judicious critic might have seen how very influ-
ential a class of compositions well-written novels were to
become. "The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe"
appeared as far back as the year 1719, and at once rose to
the popularity which it has ever since maintained. But
it failed to attract the notice of the critics. The men who
sat in judgment on the small elegances of the wits of the
reign of George I., and marked how sentences were bal-
anced and couplets rounded, could not stoop to notice a
composition so humble as a novel, more especially a novel
written by a self-taught man. But his singularly vivacious
production forced a way for itself, leaving the fine sen-
tences and smart couplets to be forgotten. In a short
time it was known all over Europe ; several translations
appeared simultaneously in France, much about the period
when Le Sage was engaged in writing, in one of the
smaller houses of one of the most neglected suburbs of
Paris, his Cil Bias " and his Devil on Two Sticks ; "
and such was the rage of imitation which it excited in
Germany, that no fewer than forty-one German novels
were produced that had Robinson Crusoes for their heroes,
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 471
arid fifteen others, that, though equally palpable imitations,
had heroes that bore a different name. Eight years after
the publication of Defoe's great work, there appeared an
English novel of a more extraordinary form, and of higher
literary pretensions, in the " Travels of Gulliver ; " and it
too at once attained to a popularity which has never since
flagged or diminished. Thirteen years more elapsed, and
Richardson had produced his "Pamela," and, shortly after,
Fielding his " Joseph Andrews." Smollett came upon the
scene with his " Roderick Random " in eight years more.
There followed in succession, after the lapse of about ten
other years, the " Rasselas " of Johnson and the " Candide "
of Voltaire, both works which spread over the world ;
and in yet seven other years Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wake-
field " appeared, and attained to even a more extensive
popularity than either. And yet still, after the teaching
of nearly half a century, nay, after nearly two centuries
had elapsed since a novel was recognized as the most pop-
ular and influential of all the works ever produced by
Spain, grave and serious people continued to speak of
novels as mere frivolities, that were to be in every case
eschewed by the young, but were scarce of importance
enough to be heeded by the old at all. Nor even yet,
after the novels of Scott have, if we may so express our-
selves, taken possession of the world, after the most po-
tent work of Germany, the " Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe,
has appeared, like that of Spain, in the form of a novel,
after the modern novels of France have been measuring
lances with even its priesthood, and approving themselves,
in at least the larger towns, the mightier power of the
two, and after, in our own country, it has been accepted
altogether as a marvel that history, in the case of Macau-
lay's, should have its thirty thousand subscriber's, but as
quite an expected and ordinary thing that fiction, in Dick-
ens's current work, should have at least an equal number,
the old estimate in the minds of many has been suffered
to remain uncorrected, and the novel is thought of rather
472 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
as a light, though not always very laudable toy, than as a
tremendously potent instrument for the origination or the
revolutionizing of opinion. Some of our great lawyers
could make sharp speeches, about two years ago, against
what they termed the misrepresentations of "Bleak House,"
evidently regarding it, as they well might, as the most
formidable series of pamphlets against the abuses of
chancery, and the less justifiable practices of the legal
profession, that ever appeared. We are by no means sure,
however, that the church is as thoroughly awake to the
tendencies of his present work as members of the legal
faculty, wise in their generation, were to the design of his
last.
Most of the novelists have been hostile to virtue of a
high or severe kind in general; and there were few of
eminence produced in our own country that did not leave
on record their dislike of evangelism in particular. We
are afraid Byron was in the right in holding that Cervantes
laughed away the chivalry of Spain : Spain produced no he-
roes after the age of Don Quixote. As for Le Sage, Vinet
is at least as just in his criticism as Byron in his, when he
says that "his novels do not contain a single honest char-
acter, nothing but knaves and weaklings, and even the
very weaklings are far from being honest." "In a word,"
we find the critic again remarking, " Gil Bias ' is but a
paraphrase of the celebrated maxim of Rochefoucauld,
' Virtue is only a word ; it is nowhere found on the earth ;
and we must be resigned." Most of the modern novelists
of France stand on a still lower level than that of their
great master, Le Sage. He did not inculcate virtue, and
they teach positive vice. Nor is Goethe a safer guide.
The "Sorrows of Werter" and "Wilhelm Meister's Ap-
prenticeship" are both very mischievous books. The nov-
elists of our own country have been more mixed in their
character. Defoe we must regard as, with all his faults, a
well-meaning man, who had been an object of persecution
himself, and had learned to sympathize with the persecu-
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 473
ted. The Scotch were very angry with him for the part
he took in the Union ; but that did not prevent his doing
justice, in his history, to their long struggles for ecclesias-
tical independence ; and religion never conies across him
in his novels, some of them quite loose enough, but
he has always a good word to say in its behalf. He was
no very profound theologian : Friday, in the dialogue parts
of " Crusoe," is nearly as subtle a divine as his master ;
and when poor Olivia Primrose instances, as a proof of her
large acquirements in controversy and her consequent abil-
ity of converting 'Squire Thornhill, that she had read all the
" Religious Courtship," another of Defoe's works, we
at once agree that the worthy doctor, her father, did quite
right in sending her off to "help her mother in making
the gooseberry pie." Swift, clergyman as he was, mani-
fested, however, a very different spirit from that of Defoe :
in proportion as he knew more he reverenced less ; and
there is perhaps nothing in our literature more essentially
profane than his essay on the " Mechanical Operation of
the Spirit," and his " Tale of a Tub." Richardson, no
doubt, deemed himself a friend to virtue and religion. He
patronized both after a sort, and many good ladies and
clergymen were moved, in consequence, to patronize him ;
and yet, as Vinet pointedly says of the general literature
of France in that age, his " very morality was in fact im-
moral." We know not whether we would not give " Tom
Jones" as readily into the hands of a young person as the
virtuously written " Pamela." There is more of a whole-
some, generous, unselfish spirit about the scapegrace, than
in the demure, designing girl, who, after behaving herself
well for a time, sets her cap to catch her master, and is at
length rewarded with a fine house, a fine coach, and Mr.
Booby. And yet Fielding, like his hero, was a sad scape-
grace. He had a respect for what he deemed religion.
We see it in his novels even. Of the few thoroughly
honest men he ever drew, and, unlike Le Sage, he did
occasionally draw honest men, two are clergymen,
40*
474 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
Dr. Harrison in " Amelia," and the world-renowned Parson
Adams in "Joseph Andrews;" and both are represented,
though in the case of the latter with many a ludicrous
accompaniment, as at least as good and sincere Christians
as Fielding could make them. Nay, curiously enough,
one of the novelist's last works, a work which he did not
live to finish, was a defense of religion against Bolingbroke,
and a very ingenious one. But alas for a Christianity
such as that of Whitefield when it came across him ! If
the devoted missionary could have been annoyed by any-
thing, it would have been by the ruthless humor with
which his brother and his brother's wife are introduced
by name into " Tom Jones," as the landlord and landlady
of the Bell public house in Gloucester ; and the terms in
which the lady is spoken of as " a very sensible person,"
who, though at first the preacher's "documents" made so
much impression on her " that she put herself to the ex-
pense of a long hood in order to attend the extraordinary
movements of the Spirit," got tired of emotions, " which
proved to be not worth a farthing," and at once " laid by
the hood, and abandoned the sect."
Smollett was of a similar spirit. We know nothing
better on the subject in our language than the essay in
which he argues against Shaftesbury that ridicule is not
the test of truth ; but no little ridicule does he himself
heap on Methodism in his " Humphrey Clinker." There
is no bitterness in his exhibition ; his untaught Methodist
preacher is not a disagreeable fool, like the Rev. Mr. Chad-
band, or a greedy rogue, like the Methodist preacher in
" Pickwick," whom old Weller treats to a ducking ; but,
on the contrary, a thoroughly honest fellow, and, in his
own proper sphere, a sensible and useful one. He is, in
short, no other than the faithful Clinker himself. But he
never associates religion of any earnestness save with
characters of humble parts and acquirements, and always
accompanied with points of extreme ludicrousness. Gold-
smith was of a more genial temperament than Smollett.
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 475
His Vicar is one of the most thoroughly honest men that
ever lived, and has all the religion that poor Goldie could
give him. It was not until a later time, however, and
in Scotland too, for we need not reckon on the now
forgotten novel of Mrs. Hannah More, that religious
characters were most largely introduced into our novel
literature. Scott, Lockhart, Wilson, Gait, Ferrier, have
all brought religion in review before the public in their
novels, some of them with great power, some with con-
siderable truth, some with truth and with power too ; and
at least one novelist of considerable ability, the excellent
authoress of " Father Clement," made it her leading sub-
ject. They all at least knew more of religion than the
earlier novelists; and, save when carried away, as in the
case of Scott, by Jacobite predilections, or in that of Lock-
hart, by moderate ones, did it more justice. Even in some
of Scott's pictures there is wonderful truth. The few
words in which poor Nanty Ewart is made, in his remorse,
to describe his father, are those of a great master of char-
acter. "There was my father (God bless the old man !),
a true chip of the old Presbyterian block, walked his parish
like a captain on the quarter-deck, and was always ready
to do good to rich and poor. Off went the laird's hat to
the minister as fast as the poor man's bonnet. When the
eye saw him, Pshaw ! what have I to do with that now?
Yes, he was, as Virgil hath it, ' Vir sapientia et pietate
gravis? " Still more distinctive is he, however, when he
speaks of him in connection with two charitable ladies of
the Roman Catholic Church. " These Misses Arthciret,"
says Nanty, " feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and
such like acts, which, my poor father used to say, were
filthy rags / but he dressed himself out with as many of
them as most folk." There is not such a stroke as this
in all Dickens. The writer who could draw such a feature
with a single dash of the pencil well knew what he was
about.
But it would be easy to multiply remarks such as these
476 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
on the novelists. The fact of their mighty influence on
opinion cannot, we think, be challenged ; and so it is of
great importance that the influence should be a good one,
or at least so far negatively good as not to be hurtful.
We are aware that there are very excellent people who
would altogether taboo this class of works ; they would
fain render them the subject of a sort of Maine law, make
the open perusal of them unlawful, and severely punish all
smuggling. But their attempts hitherto have been at-
tended with but miserable success. We have often had
occasion to know, that, even among their own children,
they succeeded w T ith only the very stupid ones, who have
no turn for reading; and that model-grown men or women
of their training, ignorant of our novel literature, are usu-
ally scarce less ignorant of literature of any other kind,
and yet not a whit better than their neighbors. Besides,
even were the case otherwise, even were they to be
really successful in their own little spheres, the great
fact of the influence and popularity of the genuine novel
would still remain untouched. Dickens would have his
thirty thousand subscribers for every new work, and at
least his half million of readers ; and the proprietor of the
Scott novels would continue to sell sixty thousand volumes
yearly. Further, the novel per se, the novel regarded sim-
ply as a literary form, is morally as unexceptionable as any
other literary form whatever, as unexceptionable as the
epic poem, for instance, or the allegory, or the parable.
The "Vicar of Wakefield," as a form, is as little blamable
as the " Deserted Village," or " Waverley " as " Marmion "
or the " Lay of the Last Minstrel." And so we must hold,
that, on every occasion in which the form is made the ve-
hicle of truth, truth of external nature, truth of character,
historic truth in at least its essence, and ethical truth in
its bearings on the great problem of society, it should
be received with merited favor, not frowned upon or
rejected. We have been much pleased, on this principle,
with the novels of a writer to whom we ought to have
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 477
referred approvingly long ago, the authoress of " Mrs.
Margaret Maitland," one of the most thoroughly truth-
ful writers of her class, and one of the most pleasing also.
We have now before us what may be regarded as a contin-
uation of her first work, in " Lilliesleaf," a concluding
series of passages in the life of " Mrs. Margaret Maitland."
It is, of course, a formidable matter to introduce a second
time to the public any character that had on its first ap-
pearance engaged and interested it. Shakspeare could do
it with impunity. Falstaff, on even his third appearance,
an appearance, however, which, had the great dramatist
been left to himself, he would never have made, is Fal-
staff still. But even Scott has been but partially success-
ful in an attempt of the kind. The Cceur de Lion of the
" Talisman " is not at all so interesting a personage as the
Cceur de Lion of " Ivanhoe." And so we took up these
new volumes with some little solicitude regarding Mrs.
Margaret. The old lady has, however, acquitted herself
admirably, in some passages more admirably, we will
venture to say, in the face of an opposite opinion which
we have seen elsewhere expressed, than on her first ap-
pearance. In the early part of the first volume we were,
indeed, sensible of an air of languor, and the narrative
moved on too slowly, Mrs. Maitland seemed to have
grown greatly older than when we had last seen her ;
though even in this part of the work we found some very
admirable things, among the rest, a true life-picture of the
ancient dowager lady of Lilliesleaf, with her broken health
and failed understanding, ever carping and fault-finding;
and, while beyond the reach of all advice herself, always
obtruding her^ worse than useless advices on other people,
who did not want them, and could not take them, and had
no need of them. As the work goes on, however, the
interest increases ; there are new characters introduced,
truthful glimpses of the Scotch people given, the incidents
thicken, and the narrative, though always quiet, as becomes
the grave and gentle narrator, gathers headway, and grows
478 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
more rapid, We know few things more masterly than the
character of Rhoda, a wild, clever, ill-taught girl, brought
up by a reckless, extravagant father, who, after utterly
neglecting her himself, introduces her into the house of
her half-sister, an excellent but somewhat proud and cold
woman, who evinces but little sympathy for her provoking
and haughty but very unhappy relation. Mrs. Margaret,
however, after encountering many a rebuff, at length wins
her; and there are few things finer in our novel literature
than the scene in which she does so :
M As I was going to my bed, I tarried in the long gallery, where
Miss Rhoda's door opened into, to look at the bonnie harvest moon
mounting in the sky, the which was so bright upon the fields and the
garden below the window, that I could not pass it by without turn-
ing aside to glance upon the grand skies,, and the warm earth with
all routh and plenty yet upon her breast, that were both the handi-
work of the Lord. I had put my candle upon a table at the door
of my own room; and as I was standing here, I heard a sound of
crying and wailing out of Miss Rhoda's room. It was not loud, but
for all that it was very bitter, as if the poor bairn was breaking her
heart. Now, truly, when I heard that, I never took two thoughts
about it, nor tarried to ponder whether I would be welcome to her
or no ; but hearing that it was her voice, and that she was in distress,
I straightway turned and rapped at the door.
" The voice stoppit in a moment ; so quick I scarce could think it
was real ; and then I heard a rustling and motion in the room. I
thought she might be feared, seeing it was late ; so I said, ' It is
me, my dear ; will you let me speak to you ? ' It was all quiet
for a moment more, and then the door was opened in an impatient
way, and I entered in. Rhoda was there, turning her back upon
me ; and there was no light but the moonlight, which made the big
room, eerie though it was, so clear that you could have read a book.
The curtains of the bed were drawn close, as Cecy had drawn
them when she sorted the room for the young lady, and Rhoda's
things were lying about on the chairs ; and through the open door
of the small room that was within there was another eerie glint of
the white moonlight ; and pale shadows of it, that, truly, I liked not
to look upon, were in the big mirror that stood near. It was far
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 479
from pleasant to me, and I was like to be less moved by fancy
than a young thing like Rhoda, the look this room had.
" ' My dear bairn,' said I, being more earnest than I ever was
with her before, ' will you let me hear what ails you ? I ken what
trouble is myself; and many a young thing has told her trouble to
me. And you are lone and solitary and motherless, my poor bairn ;
and I am an aged woman, and would fain bring you comfort if it
was in my power. Sit down here, and keep no ill thought in your
heart of me ; for I ken what it is to be solitary and without friends
mysel.' "
" She stood awhile, and would not mind what I said, nor the hand
I put upon her arm. And then she suddenly fell down upon her
knees in a violent way, and laid her face upon the sofa, and cried.
Truly, I kent not of such tears. I have shed heavy ones, and have
seen them shed ; but I kent not aught like the passion and anger
and fierceness of this.
" ' I can't tell you what grieves me,' she said, starting up, and
speaking in her quick way, that was so strange to me, ' a hundred
thousand things everything ! I should like to go and kill myself
I should like to be tortured oh I anything anything rather than
this ! '
" ' My dear, is it yourself you are battling with ? ' said I ; 'for
that is a good warfare, and the Lord will help you if you try it
aright. But if it is not yourself, what is it, my bairn ? '
" She flung away out of my hand, and ran about the room like a
wild thing. Then she came, quite steady and quiet, back again. ' Yes,'
she said, ' I suppose it is myself I am fighting with. I am a wild
beast, or something like it ; and I am biting at my cage. I wish you
would beat me, or hurt me, will you ? I should like to be ill, or
have a fever, or something to put me in great pain. For you are a
good old lady, I know, though I have been very rude to you. No,
I am sure I cannot tell you what grieves me ; for I cannot fight with
you. It is all papa's fault, that is what it is ! He persuaded me
that people would pay attention to me here. But I am nobody here,
nobody even takes the trouble to be angry with me 1 And I
cannot hate you all, either, though I wish I could. Oh ! old lady,
go away ! '
" ' Na, Miss Rhoda,' said I ; ' I am not going away.'
" ' That ridiculous Scotch, too ! ' cried out the poor bairn, with a
sound that was meant for laughter. * But I can't laugh at it ; and
sometimes I want to be friends with you. How do you know that I
480 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
never had a mother ? for it is quite true I never had one, never
from the first day I was in the world. And I love papa with my
whole heart, though he is not good to me ; and I hate every one that
hates him ; and I will not consent to live as you live here, however
good you may pretend to be.'
" ' But, Miss Rhoda,' said I, what ails you at the way we live
here ? '
" ' It is not living at all,' said the poor bairn. * I never can do
anything very well when I try ; but I always want to be something
great.' I cannot exist and vegetate as you quiet people do. What
is the good of your lives to you ? I am sure I cannot tell ; but.it
will kill me.'
" ' You have never tried it, my dear,' said I j * so whether it will
kill you or no, you can very ill ken. But till me how you would like
to be great.'
a i "Why should I speak of such things ? You would not under-
stand me,' said Rhoda. ' I would like to be a great writer, or a
great painter, or a great musician, though I never would be a ser-
vant to the common people, and perform upon a stage. I know I
could do something, indeed, indeed, I know it ! And you would
have me take prim walks, and do needlework, and talk about
schools and stuff", and visit old women. Such things are not for me.'
" ' Such things have been fit work for many a saint in heaven, my
dear,' said I ; 'but truly I ken no call that has been made upon you,
either for one thing or another. Great folk, so far as I have heard,
are mostly very well pleased with the common turns of this life to
rest themselves withal ; and truly it is my thought, that the greater
a person is, the less he will disdain a quiet life, and kindness, and
charity. But it has never been forbidden you, Miss Rhoda, to take
your pleasure ; and I wot well it never will be.' "
This surely is powerful writing, so entirely worthy of
Mrs. Margaret Maitland, that we know not whether we
could quite equal it by any extract of the same length
from her former work. There is much quiet power, too,
iu the sketches given of external nature in the present
volumes, and much originality of observation. We know
not that we ever before met in books with what we may
term the echo of that peculiar sound characteristic of a
furzy moor under a hot sun which is so well described as in
OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 481
the following passage. All our readers must remember the
incessant " crack, crack, crack," which they have so often
heard when the sun was hot and high, mingling, amid the
long broom or prickly whins, with the chirp of the grass-
hopper and the hum of the bee :
" Naw, we had scarce ended our converse, when, looking out at
the end window, I saw Rhoda coming her lane along the road ; and,
seeing she might be solitary in her own spirit among such a meeting
of near friends, I went out to the door to bring her in myself. It
was a very bonny day, as I have said, and, the bairns being round
upon the lawn at the other side, there was but a far-off sound of
their voices, and everything else as quiet as it could be under the
broad, warm, basking sun, so quiet, that you heard the crack of the
seed husks on a great bush of gorse near at hand, a sound that ever
puts me in mind of moorland places, and of the very heart and heat oj
sunny days. Rhoda, poor bairn, was in very deep black, as it be-
hoved her to be, and was coming, in a kind of wandering, thoughtful
way, her lane down the bright sandy road, and below the broad
branches of the chestnut trees, that scarce had a rustle in them, so
little air was abroad ; and the bit crush of her foot upon the sand
was like to a louder echo of the whins, and made a very strange
kind of harmony in the quietness."
This wholesome and very interesting novel is calculated
to exert a salutary influence, and to yield, besides, much
pleasure in the perusal. Like all the other works of its
authoress, it is thoroughly truthful : there is no exaggera-
tion of character or incident ; events such as it narrates
occur in real life ; and the men and women which it por-
trays may be met in ordinary society, though the better
ones are unluckily not very common. And yet a wild
romance, full of all sorts of marvels and monstrosities,
could scarce amuse so much even a youthful reader, far
less readers of sober years. In nothing, however, has the
work more merit than in its representations of the religious
character. Here, also, there is no exaggeration. The nat-
ural temperament is exhibited as exerting its inevitable
influence. Rhoda's half-sister, Grace, for instance, though
41
482 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
one of the excellent, is not at all so lovable a person as
Mrs. Margaret, just because in her religion was set on
what was originally a more wilful and less loving nature ;
and we find this thoroughly truthful distinction maintained
throughout. In short, this latest production of Mrs. Mar-
garet Maitland is a book which may be safely placed in
any hands ; and, seeing that novels must and will exist,
and must and will exercise prodigious influence, whether
the religious world gives its consent or no, we think the
good people should by all means try whether they cannot
conscientiously patronize the good ones.
XIII.
EUGENE SUE
It is not from the formal histories of a country, as his-
tory has hitherto been written, that the manner and morals
of its people may best be learned. Its works of fiction, if
they have been produced by the hand of a master, and
have dealt with the aspects of contemporary society, are
vastly more true to the lineaments of its internal life than
its works of sober fact. Smollett's " History of the Reign
of George II." is a dull record, that bears on its weary
series of numbered paragraphs no distinguishable impress
of the character of the age ; whereas Smollett's " Humph-
rey Clinker " is one of the most admirable pictures of Eng-
ush society during that reign which anywhere exists. The
uevere history, with all its accuracy of names and dates,
wants truth ; the amusing novel, that seems but to play
with ideal characters, is, in all its multitudinous lights and
shadows, a true portraiture of the time. And the rule
seems general. Does the student wish to acquaint himself
EUGENE SUE. 483
with the aspect of English society in the days of our great
grandfathers ? he will gain wonderfully little by poring
over heavy sections in the "Annual Registers" of Dodsley,
but a very great deal in the study of the graphic sketches
of Richardson and Fielding. The " Waverley " of Scott
is truer beyond comparison to the real merits of the Re-
bellion of 1741 than the authentic history of Home, though
Home was himself an actor in many of the scenes which
he describes.
It is partly at least from a consideration of this kind that
we have placed at the head of our article the name of one
of the most popular French novelists of the present day,
a writer whose fictions have been introduced nearly as ex-
tensively to the people of London, through the medium of
cheap translations, as to those of Paris in the original
French, and which are widely circulated over the Conti-
nent generally. His novels, with all their extravagances,
give a striking picture of the state of society among at
least the city-reared masses of France, and are singularly
efficient vehicles in spreading over Eui'ope the contagion
of their principles. We find in them more of the philoso-
phy of the late movement in Switzerland against the Jesuits,
though they contain not a single allusion to that event,
than in any of the narratives of the outbreak which we
have yet seen. They serve to show how opinion among
the anti-Jesuit party came first to be formed, the nature,
too, of that opinion, and how it happens that they are not
merely an anti-Jesuit, but also an anti-evangelistic and
anti-tolerant party. Their views and principles are exactly
those of Eugene Sue ; and their numbers bid fair to increase
over Europe, wherever the influence of his writing shall be
found to prevail. But a brief sketch of some of the lead-
ing characters in one of his latest and most characteristic
works the "Wandering Jew," of which we perceive a
cheap English translation has just appeared may better
serve to show what his fictions teach than a general refer-
ence to their tendency or effects. Rome, in the course of
484 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
its history, has been signally damaged by two great revo-
lutions in religious opinion, the Reformation of Luther,
and the great revolt of Voltaire. The revived Christianity
of the New Testament was the formidable antagonist with
which it had to deal in the one case, and a singularly enthu-
siastic and fanatical infidelity the enemy "with which it had
to contend in the other; and, for a time, the injury which
it received seemed in both cases equally severe. But they
were in reality very different in their nature. The wound
dealt by infidelity was a flesh wound, and soon healed ;
whereas the blow dealt by the revived Christianity ampu-
tated the members on which it took effect, and separated
them forever from the maimed and truncated carcass. In-
fidelity dips its idle bucket into the sea of superstition, and
labors to create a chasm, where, in the nature of things, no
chasm can exist ; there is a momentary hollow formed, but
the currents come rushing in from every side, and fill it up.
But evangelism not only scoops out the hollow, but also
occupies it, leaving no vacuum for aught else to flow in.
France, in less than an age after the canonization of her
atheists, had again become popish ; the tides flowed in, and
the vacuum was annihilated : whereas evangelistic Scotland
is as little popish now as she was two centuries ago ; for in
her that perilous space which must be occupied either by
religion or superstition was thoroughly filled by the doc-
trines of the New Testament. The remark bears very
directly on the nature of the warfare waged on Rome and
the Jesuits by Eugene Sue. His labors, like those of Vol-
taire, serve but to create a vacuum, abhorrent to the nature
of man.
The chief group in his recent no\ftl, round which all its
other groups are made to revolve, and on whose designs
their destiny is made to hang, is the Society of the Jesuits.
We see them pursuing their schemes of ambition and
aggrandizement undeterred by any sense of justice, and
without any feeling of pity or remorse. And the picture,
Ve are afraid, is scarce exaggerated. As exhibited in this
EUGENE SUE. 485
work of fiction, there is no part of it so black as to be with-
out its counterpart in real history. There are two grand
circumstances which have conspired to render the Jesuits
what they are, the specific nature of their principles, and
their generic character as a society. An able man, possessed
of much power, who held by the principles of the Jesuits,
and cared not what means he employed in effecting his
ends, would be eminently dangerous. Their principles are,
in fact, the principles of the great bad man, who subordi-
nates to his designs whatever is venerable in morals or
sacred in religion, and regards the end as justifying the
means. The Machiaevel-taught despot, whether he be a
Charles I. or a Louis XIV., is, to the extent of his principles,
a Jesuit on his own behalf. But then the individual bad
man has what the bad society has not, he has human
feelings ; and these often create a diversion against his
principles in favor of his suffering fellows. Even a Nero
could weep. But societies have no tears : they are abstract
embodiments of their principles ; and if their principles be
bad, it is in vain to look for protection against them to
their feelings. They don't feel. Even when their prin-
ciples are not ostensibly bad, when the cord by which
they are united is a mere love of gain, it is too much
their tendency, as well described by Cowper, to become
cruel and unjust :
" Man in society is like a flower
Blown in its native bed : 'tis there alone
His faculties, expanded in full bloom,
Shine out, there only reach their proper use.
But man associated and leagued with man
By regal warrant, or self-joined by bond
For interest's sake, or swarming into clans
Beneath one head, for purposes of war,
Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound
And bundled close, to fill some crowded vase,
Fades rapidly, and, by compression marred,
Contracts defilement not to be endured."
But when their end is not vulgar gain, but power, however
41*
486 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
attained, and the aggrandizement of a false and bloody
church, when their principles, untrue to the first laws of
morals, strike at the very foundations of all justice, and
are, in short, what Pascal has so well described, and
when to all this the inevitable lack of human feeling is
added, the result is, not a corporation of ordinary and
every-day iniquity, but a society without parallel in the
annals of the world, the Society of the Order of Jesus.
And so Eugene Sue has not done them less than justice in
his fiction. Moliere, in one of his dramas, introduces a
character who, after he had been guilty of almost every
crime, after he had abandoned his wife, cheated his
friends, deceived and insulted his father, and made an open
profession of his atheism, completes the climax of his
infamy by becoming hypocrite. Eugene Sue, in holding
up the Jesuits to abhorrence, improves on the design. Such
is the character which he gives to but the second worst
Jesuit in the piece. In early life the Jesuit had been a
traitor to his country, and had fought against it ; he had
been the ungenerous enemy of a brave and honest man
who abhorred his treachery, and had pursued with bitter
hatred his unprotected wife and defenceless children. His
prevailing passion was a vulgar love of power ; and in order
to obtain it, there was no intrigue too mean for him to
stoop to, no crime too atrocious for him to perpetrate;
but, with all his baseness and villany, he is drawn as not
wholly devoid of human feeling: his mother on her death-
bed enjoins that he should visit her; and it is with re-
luctance, and hesitatingly, that he sets aside the dying
injunction, and sets out in an opposite direction on some
business of the Society; and this one touch of inoperative
human feeling is rendered a sufficiently grave fault in the
hands of the novelist to reduce him from a first to a second
place in the community of Loyola. The first place is
assigned to a wretch whom we recognize as actually a man
and not a demon, when we find that he has a frame which
can be acted upon by poison and the cholera, but not be-
EUGENE SUE. 487
fore. In the development of the plot, we see the mach-
inations of the Society involving in ruin all that is good
and lovable among the dramatis personal of the piece :
the just, the generous, the honorable, the unsuspecting
maiden, the kind master, the attached father, the devoted
friend, all become, in turn, the victims of the meanest
and basest villany ; and Jesuitism, devoid of all tinge of
pity and remorse, exults over them as they perish. We
do not wonder how the admirers of such a work should
learn to hate the Jesuits. It seems suited to accomplish,
amid the superficiality of the present age, in the innumer-
able class of French novel-readers, the effects which were
produced in a higher order of minds, rather more than
a century and a half ago, by the tt Provincial Letters of
Pascal." The English reader who has read the " Wan-
dering Jew " will be better able to estimate from the pe-
rusal than before the intense hatred of the Jesuits which
animated, in their late outbreak, the insurgent Switzers of
Vaud and Argovia.
But we can see no elements of permanency in the prin-
ciples marshalled against them, either as embodied in the
characters of Eugene Sue, or as illustrated from time to
time by the minute portions of passing history. The con-
troversy does not lie between truth and error, but between
antagonist errors. The determined assailants of priestly
superstition and villany are themselves the asserters of
principles which, if reduced to practice, would subvert all
public morals ; and for the false belief which they would
so fain extinguish, they would substitute an unnatural
vacuum, into which other false beliefs would assuredly
crowd. Nay, in the fictions of Eugene Sue we already see
the phantoms of a false faith crowding into the gap. All
the honest devotees which he draws are exhibited as weak
in proportion to the strength of their religious feelings.
Their religion is represented as forming a mere handle
by which they are converted into the tools of designing
hypocrites ; and yet, in the supernatural machinery of
488 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
the piece, we see, as in the athestic poetry of Shelley, the
elements of a new religion coming into view, and embody-
ing, in an incipient state, not a few of the woi'st errors
f Rome. One of the leading characters in the novel
a young lady of high birth and talent, whose destruction
the Jesuits at length effect, and are rendered detestable
by effecting is represented as adorned by qualities the
most generous and lovable. We must select one trait of
many, not merely as a specimen of the character, but of
the art also with which the novelist addresses himself to
the independent feelings of the French people, which have
been so prominently developed since the Revolution. The
heroine of the following passage is, as we have said, a lady
of birth and fortune ; and it is a poor journeyman mechanic,
of spirit and talent, however, who is the second actor in
the scene :
" When Adrienne entered the saloon, Agricola was examining a
magnificent silver vase, which bore the words, ' Jean Marie, working-
chaser, 1823.' Adrienne trod so lightly, that she had approached
the blacksmith without his being aware of it.
" * Is not that a handsome vase, sir ? ' she said, in a silver-toned
voice.
" Agricola started, and replied, in confusion, ' Very handsome,
mademoiselle.'
" ' You see that I am an admirer of what is just and right,' said
Adrienne, pointing to the words engraved on the vase. ' A painter
puts his name to a picture, a writer to his book ; and I hold that a
workman who distinguishes himself in his trade should put his name
to his workmanship. When I bought this vase it bore the name of
a wealthy goldsmith, who was astonished at my fantasies, for I caused
him to erase it, and to insert that of the maker of this wonderful
piece of art ; so that if the workman lack riches, his name at least
will not be forgotten. Is this just, sir ? '
" ' As a workman, mademoiselle, I feel sensible of this act of
justice.'
" ' A skilful artisan merits esteem and respect. But take a seat,
sir.' "
This is a fine trait, and the character of Adrienne ia
EUGENE SUE. 489
mainly composed of such ; but the author takes particular
care to iuform us that she is not a Christian ; and when
we come to learn her views on marriage, we find that they
are exactly those of Mary Wolstonecraft. The sentiments
which she is made to express in the following scene are
not unworthy of being examined. They are not simply
those of a writer of fiction, struck out at a sitting, and then
given to the world merely to amuse it, and keep up the
interest of his work: they are, on the contrary, widely dis-
seminated over the cities of Europej and very extensively
acted upon. Socialism in our own country ostensibly
adopts them as its own ; and there ai-e many not Socialists,
who, though the usages of society prevent their acting
upon them, have not hesitated to adopt them. We need
scarce remind the reader that the subject is one upon
which the Saviour has authoritatively spoken, and that if
he be Truth, the modern theory is a lie :
" ' Something is wanting to consecrate our union ; and in the eyes
of the world there is only one way, by marriage, which is binding
for life.'
" Djalma looked at the young girl with surprise.
" * Yes, for life ; and yet who can answer for the sentiments of a
whole life? A Deity able to look into futurity could alone bind
irrevocably certain beings together for their happiness. But, alas'
the future is impenetrable to us ; therefore we can only answer foj
our present sentiments. To bind ourselves indissolubly is a foolish.,
selfish, and impious action, is it not ? '
" ' That is sad to think of,' said Djalma, after a moment's reflection,
' but it is true.' He then regarded her with an expression of increas-
ing surprise.
" Adrienne hastily resumed, in a tender tone, ' Do not mistake
my meaning, my friend. The love of two beings who, like ourselves,
after a patient investigation of heart and mind, have found in each
other all the assurances of happiness, a love, in short, like ours,
is so noble, so divine, that it must be consecrated from above. I am
not of the religion of my venerable aunt ; but I worship God, from
whom we derive our ardent love. For this he must be piously
adored. It is therefore by invoking his name with deep gratitude
490 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
that we ought to promise not to love each other forever, not to
remain always together.'
" 'What ! ' cried Djalma.
" ' No,' resumed Adrienne, * for no one can take such an oath with-
out falsehood or folly ; but we can, in the sincerity of our hearts,
swear to do faithfully everything in our power to preserve our love.
Indissoluble ties we ought not to accept ; for if we should always
love each other, of what use are they ? and if not, our chains are
then only an instrument of odious tyranny. Is it not so, my friend ? '
" Djalma did not reply ; but with a respectful gesture he signed
to the young girl to continue.
" And, in fine,' resumed she, with a mixture of tenderness and
pride, ' from respect to your dignity as well as my own, I would never
promise to observe a law made by man against women with brutal
selfishness, a law which seems to deny to woman mind, soul, and
heart, a law which she cannot obey without being a slave or a
perjurer, a law which deprives her of her maiden name, and de-
clares her, as a wife, in a state of incurable imbecility, by subjecting
her to a degrading state of tutelage ; as a mother, refuses her all
right and power over her children ; and as a human being, subjects
her son even to the will and pleasure of another human being, who is
only her equal in the sight of God. You know how I honor your
noble and valiant heart ; I am not, therefore, afraid of seeing you
employ those tyrannical privileges against me ; but I have never
been guilty of falsehood in my life, and our love is too holy, too
pure, to be subjected to a consecration which must be purchased by
a double perjury.' "
Such are the principles of this Parisian heroine, and such
are some of the plausibilities with which she defends them.
There are two other female characters in the work, twin
sisters, of great beauty, whom the Jesuits also succeed in
destroying ; and they, too, are devoid of religion. Unlike
Adrienne, however, they are not intellectually infidel,
they have simply never heard of Christianity ; and when
they pray, it is to their deceased mother.' Yet another of
the female characters, a poor seamstress, possessed, however,
of a cultivated mind and a noble heart, finds no time to
attend to the duties of religion ; and when, through the
machinations of the Jesuits, she becomes destitute and
EUGENE SUE. 491
wretched, she proposes to go out of the world by her own
act, as convinced that she is in the right in doing so, as if,
wearied and overcome by sleep, she had prepared to go to
bed. She is joined in the purpose of death by her sister ;
and the scene throws light on the acts of social suicide so
common in France, and of which we have had a few
instances of late years in our own country.
" The sisters embraced each other for some minutes amid a pro-
found and solemn silence.
" ' heavens,' cried Cephysi, ' how cruel, to love each other thus,
and be compelled to part forever ! '
" ' To part ! ' exclaimed the Mayeux, while her pale face was sud-
denly lighted up with a ray of divine hope ; 'to part ! Oh no,
sister, no : what makes me so calm is, that I feel certain we are going
to another world, where a happier life awaits us. Come, hasten ;
come where God reigns alone, and where man, who on this earth
brings about the misery and despair of his fellow-creatures, is noth-
ing. Come, let us depart quickly, for it is late.'
" The sisters, having laid the charcoal ready for lighting, proceeded
with incredible self-possession to stop up the chinks in the door and
windows ; and during this sinister operation, the calmness and
mournful resignation of these two unfortunate beings did not once
forsake them."
We had intended referring to several other points in this
mischievous work of fiction, which at once serves to exhibit
the opinions entertained by no inconsiderable proportion
of the anti-Jesuit party on the Continent, and to spread
these opinions more widely. Wherever we find the devo-
tional feeling introduced, some disaster is sure always to
follow. One of the best characters in the novel is a
highly intellectual and generous manufacturer, more bent
on ministering to the happiness of his workmen than on the
accumulation of gain. He provides them with comfortable
dwellings, extends their leisure hours, gives them a share
in the profits of his trade, conducts his manufactory, in
short, on the model of the philanthropic economist ; and
all this when he is an avowed Freethinker; but, falling
492 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
into bad health, and meeting with a crushing disappoint-
ment, he becomes a devotee, loses all his interest in the
welfare of his workmen, becomes enfeebled in body and
mind, and the Jesuits ruin him. The wife of a brave and
faithful soldier, a thoroughly excellent man, but devoid of
all sense of religion, has also the misfortune, though a very
honest and good sort of person, to be devout ; and the
weakness, like the dead fly in the apothecary's ointment,
imparts a dangerous taint to the whole character. And
thus the lesson of the tale runs on. We see in it the secret
of the hostility entertained to evangelism by the insurgents
of Vaud and Argovia, and which rendered them not less
tolerant of a vital Protestantism than even the Jesuits
whom they so determinedly opposed. We see in it, too,
the grand error of Voltaire repeated, miserable attempts
to create a blank where, in the nature of things, no blank
can exist ; and an utter ignorance of the great fact, that the
religion of the New Testament is the only efficient antidote
against superstition, and a widely-circulated Bible the sole
permanent protection against the encroachments of an
ambitious priesthood. It would be bold to conjecture what
the rising crop of opinion, so thickly sown over Europe, is
ultimately to produce. There exists a widely-extended
belief that Popery, when its final day has come, is to have
infidelity for its executioner. Do we see in works such as
those of Eugene Sue the executioner in training? or is
the old cycle again to revolve, and the blank formed by
infidelity to be filled up by superstition ? We would fain
see a safer expose of the Jesuits than the fiction of the in-
sidious novelist,: an expose at once so just to the order
that they could raise no effectual protest against it, and so
true to the interests of religion and the nature of man that
it could contain no elements of reaction favorable to the
body it assailed. When are we to have a translation of
the " Provincial Letters " at once worthy of Pascal and of
the existing emergency?
THE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCY. 493
XIV.
TEE ABBOTSFORD BARONETOT.
The intimation in our last of the death of Lieutenant-
Colonel Sir Walter Scott, and the extinction of the Ab-
botsford baronetcy, must have set not a few of our readers
athinking. The lesson of withered hopes and blighted
prospects which it reads is, sure enough, a common one,
a lesson for every-day perusal in the school of experience,
and which the history of every day varies with new in-
stances. But in this special case it reads with more than
the usual emphasis. The literary celebrity of the great poet
and novelist of Scotland, the intimate knowledge of his
personal history which that celebrity has induced, and
which exists coextensive with the study of letters, the
consequent acquaintance with the prominent foible that
stood out in such high relief in his character from the gen-
eral groundwork of shrewd good sense and right feeling,
have all conspired to set the lesson, as it were, in a sort
of illuminated framework. Sir Walter says of Gawin
Douglas, in his picture of the "noble lord of Douglas
blood," whose allegorical poem may still be perused with
pleasure, notwithstanding the veil cf obsolete language
which mars its sentiment and obscures its imagery, that
it " pleased him more "
" that in a barbarous age
He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page,
Than that beneath his rule he held
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld."
Not such, however, was the principle on which Sir Walter
estimated his own achievements or prospects. It pleased
42
494 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
him more to contemplate himself in the character of the
founder, as seemed likely, of a third-rate border family,
of importance enough, however, to occupy its annual line
in the almanac, than that his name should be known as
widely as even Virgil's own. And the ambition was one
to which he sacrificed health, and leisure, and peace of
mind, with probably a few years of life itself, and undoubt-
edly the very wealth which for this cause alone he so
anxiously strove to realize. Never was there one who
valued money less for its own sake ; but it flowed in upon
him, and, save for his haste to be rich that he might be a
landholder on his family's behalf, Sir Walter would have
died a man of large fortune, quite able to purchase three
such properties as that of Abbotsford. And in last week's
obituary we see the close of all he had toiled and suffered
for, in the extinction of the family in which he had so
fondly hoped to live for hundreds of years. One is reminded
by the incident of some of the more melancholy strokes in
his own magnificent fictions. He describes, for instance,
in the introduction to the "Monastery," a weather-wasted
stone fixed high in the wall of an ancient ecclesiastical edi-
fice, and bearing a coat-of-arms which no one for ages before
had been able to decipher. Weathered as it was, however,
it was all that remained to testify of the stout Sir Halbert
Glendinning, who had so bravely fought his way to a
knighthood and the possession of broad lands, but whose
wealth and honors, won solely by himself, he had failed to
transmit to other generations, and whose extinct race and
name had been lost in the tomb for centuries. Henceforth
the honors of the Abbotsford baronetcy will be exhibited
on but a hatchment whitened with the painted tears of the
herald. A sepulchral tablet in Dryburgh Abbey will form,
if not their only record, as in the imaginary case of the
knight of Glendinning, at least their most striking memo-
rial.
It is a curious enough fact, that Shakspeare, like Sir
Walter Scott, cherished the ambition of being the founder
THE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCY. 495
of a family. " All his real estate," says one of his later
biographers, Mr. C. Knight, " was devised to his daughter,
Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natural life.
It was then entailed upon her first son and his heirs-male ;
and, in default of such issue, on her second son and his
heirs-male ; and so on, in default of such issue, to his grand-
daughter, Elizabeth Hall ; and, in default of such issue, to
his daughter Judith and her heirs-male. By this strict
entailment," remarks the biographer, "it was manifestly
the object of Shakspeare to found a family; but, like many
other such purposes of short-sighted humanity," it is added,
"the object was not accomplished. His elder daughter
had no issue but Elizabeth, and she died childless. The
heirs-male of Judith died before her. And so the estates
were scattered after the second generation ; and the de-
scendants of his sister were the only transmitters to pos-
terity of his blood and lineage." We see little of the great
poet's own character in his more celebrated writings ; he
was too purely dramatic for that; and, like the " mirror
held up to nature " of his own happy metaphor, reflected
rather the features of others than his own. It is, however,
a curious fact, that in the portion of his writings which do
most exhibit him his sonnets there is no pleasure on
which he dwells half so much as the pleasure of living in
one's posterity. And, in urging the young friend to whom
these exquisite compositions are addressed to marry, he
rings the changes on this motive alone throughout twenty
sonnets together. We rather wonder how the circumstance
should have escaped the thousand and one critics and
commentators who have written on Shakspeare, but cer-
tain it is that an intense appreciation of the sort of pro-
spective, shadowy immortality that posterity confers on the
founder of a family forms one of the most prominent fea-
tures of the poetry in which he most indulged his own
feelings, and that with this marked appreciation the pro-
visions of his will thoroughly harmonize. He tells his
friend that the sear leafless autumn of old age, and the
496 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
u hideous winter " of death, draw near, when beauty " shall
be o'ersnowed," and " bareness left everywhere ; " and that
unless the odors of the summer flowers continue to survive,
distilled by the art of the chemist, they shall be as if they
had never been, things without mark or memorial.
" Then, were no summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner, pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilled, though they the winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet."
And then the poet, with the happy art in which he excelled
all men, applies the figure by urging his young and hand-
some friend to live in his posterity, as the vanished flowers
live in their distilled odors ; and expatiates on the solace
of enduring throughout the future in one's offspring:
" Be it ten for one,
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times re-figured thee;
Then, what could Death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Bo not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be Death's conquest, and make worms thine heir."
What strange vagaries human nature does play in even
the greatest minds! Shakspeare was thoroughly aware
that his verse was destined to immortality. We have his
own testimony on the point to nullify the idle conjectures
of writers who have set themselves to criticize his works,
without having first taken, as would seem, the necessary
precaution of reading them. He tells us in his sonnets,
that "not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes,"
would outlive "his powerful rhime." And, again, address-
ing his friend, he says :
" I'll live in this poor rhime
While Death insults o'er dull and specchless~trihes;
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent."
THE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCY. 497
And yet again, with still greater beauty, if not greater
energy, he says :
" Your life from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
While you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breath most breathes, e'en in the mouths of men."
And yet this great poet, so conscious of the enduring
vitality that dwelt in his verse, could find more pleasure in
the idea of living in future ages in his descendants, a
sort of pleasure in which almost every Irish laborer may
indulge, than in being one of the never-dying poets of
his country and the world. What may be termed the
human instinct of immortality, the natural sentiment
which, when rightly directed, rests on that continuity of
life in the individual in which the dark chasm of the grave
makes no break or pause, may be found, though wo-
fully misdirected, both in the sentiment that rejoices in
the prospect of posthumous celebrity, always so shadowy
and unreal, and the sentiment that gloats over the fancied,
delusive life which one lives in one's descendants. Shafc-
spearefelt himself sure of posthumous celebrity; and find-
ing it, like every sublunary good, when once fairly secured,
valueless and unsatisfactory, he fixed his desires with much
solicitude on the other earthly immortality, and sought
to live in his offspring. It would have been well had the
instinct been better directed, both in Sir Walter and his
great prototype the dramatist of Avon. It would be also
well, with such significant lessons before us, to be reading
them aright. They tell us that the longings after immor-
tality, in which it is the nature of man to indulge, are not
to be satisfied by the world-wide, ever-enduring fame of
42*
498 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
the poet, and that the humbler and not less unsubstantial
shadow of future life which one lives in one's children and
their descendants is at least not more satisfying in its na-
ture, and that it lies greatly more open than the other to
the blight of accident and the influence of decay.
Judging from the history of the past, there is no class of
men less entitled to indulge in the peculiar hope of Shak-
speare and Sir Walter Scott than the greater poets, men
whose blow of faculty, ratiocinative and imaginative, has
attained to the fullest development at which, in the human
species, it ever arrives. Has the reader ever bethought
him how exceedingly few of the poets of the two last cen-
turies have bequeathed their names to posterity through
their descendants? No doubt by much the greater part
of them ill-hafted in society, and little careful how they
guided their course were solitary men, who, without
even more than their characteristic imprudence, could not
have grappled with the inevitable expense of a family.
Thus it was that Cowley, Butler, and Otway died child-
less, with Prior and Congreve, Gay, Phillips, and Savage,
Thomson, Collins, and Shenstone, Akenside, Goldsmith,
and Gray. Pope, Swift, Watts, and Cowper were also un
mated, solitary men ; and Johnson had no child. Evei
the poets in more favorable circumstances, who could not
say, in the desponding vein of poor Kirke White,
" I sigh when all my happier friends caress,
They laugh in health, and future evils brave;
Them shall a wife and smiling children bless,
While I am mould'ring in the silent grave,"
even of this more fortunate class, how very few were happy
in their offspring ! The descendants of Dryden, Addison,
and Parnell did not pass into the second generation ;
those of Shakspeare and Milton became extinct in the
second and the third. It would seem as if we had an
illustration, in this portion of the literary history of our
country, of Doubleday's curious theory of population.
TIIE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCY. 499
The human mind attained in these remarkable men to its
full intellectual development, as the rose or the carnation,
under a long course of culture, at length suddenly stocks,
and doubles, and widens its gorgeous blow of a thousand
petals ; and then, when in its greatest perfection, transmis-
sion ceases, and there is no further reproduction of the
variety thus amplified and expanded to the full. Nature
does her utmost, and then, stopping short, does no more.
Abbotsford, a supremely melancholy place heretofore,
will be henceforth more melancholy still. Those associa-
tions of ruined hopes and blighted prospects which cling
to its picturesque beauty will now be more numerous and
more striking than ever. The writings of Scott are the
true monuments of his genius ; while Abbotsford, on which
he rested so much, will form for the future a memorial
equally significant of his foibles and his misfortunes, of
bright prospects suddenly overcast, and sanguine hopes
quenched in the grave forever. Is the reader acquainted
with the poem in which the good Isaac Watts laments the
untimely death of his friend Gunston, a man who died
childless, in the vigor of early manhood, just as he had
finished a very noble family seat ? The verse flows more
stiffly than that of Shakspeare or Sir Walter Scott, for
Watts was not always happiest when he attempted most ;
and there is considerable more poetry in his hymns for
children than in his "Pindaric Odes" or his "Elegies."
Still, however, his funeral poem on his friend brings out
not unhappily the sentiment which must breathe for the
future from the deserted halls of Abbotsford :
" How did he lay the deep foundations strong,
Marking the bounds, and reared the walls along, < ^"*"
Solid and lasting, where a numerous train
Of happy Gunstons might in pleasure reign,
While nations perished and long ages ran,
Nations unborn and ages unbegan;
Nor time itself should waste the blest estate,
Nor the tenth race rebuild the ancient seat.
How fond our fancies are ! * * *
\
500 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC.
And must this building, then, this costly frame,
Stand hei-e for strangers ? Must some unknown name
Possess these rooms, the labors of my friend ?
Why were these walls raised for this hapless end,
Why these apartments all adorned so gay,
Why his rich fancy lavished thus away?
The unhappy house looks desolate and mourns,
And every door groans doleful as it turns."
We find we cannot better conclude our desultory re-
marks than in the words of the London " Morning Herald,"
whom we find thus referring to the death of the Lieu-
tenant-Colonel, Sir Walter :
" The deceased Baronet was the last of a family which it cost one
precious life to create, and for whose perpetuation its founder would
have accounted no purchase too dear, and reckoned no sacrifice too
costly. It was not sufficient for the head of that house, whose last
member has so recently quitted the earth, that he stood foremost in
the ranks of celebrated men during life, that he secured immor-
tality upon his departure. Beyond the prodigal gifts of Heaven he
esteemed the factitious privileges of earth, and treated lightly an
imperishable wealth, for the sake of dross as poor as it was passing.
The memoirs of the first Sir Walter albeit penned by no unlov-
ing hand leave painful impressions upon the minds of all who
have made for themselves the character of the great magician, as far
as it was possible, from his undying works. If the history teaches
anything at all, it is one of the saddest lessons that can be brought
home to humanity, that of gigantic powers ill used, of insatiable
though petty ambition derided and destroyed. The vocation of Sir
Walter Scott was to enlighten and instruct mankind : he believed it
was to found a family, and to become a great landed proprietor.
To achieve the ignoble mission, the poet and the novelist embarked
the genius of a Shakspeare, and the result is now before us. The
family is extinct ; the landed proprietor was a bankrupt in his prime.
Who that has read the life of Sir Walter but has wept at his misfor-
tunes, and marvelled at the sacrifices heaped upon sacrifices, freely
made, in furtherance of a low and earthly seeking ? Heaven pointed
one way, human frailty another. 'Be mighty amidst the great,'
said the former ; ' be high amongst the small,' whispered the latter.
He obeyed the latter, and lo the consequence 1 The small know
THE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCY. 501
him not : amidst the great he still continues mighty. The history
of Scott is the history of mankind. We cannot violate the will,
expressed or understood, of Heaven, and be happy. We cannot
sinfully indulge a single passion, and not be disappointed. The
spiritual and moral laws which regulate our life are as constant and
invariable as any to be found in matter. Had Scott not enlisted
every hope, thought, and energy in his miserable aim at power and
position, he would in all probability have been alive to-day. He
was a hale and hearty man when the failure of the booksellers com-
pelled him to those admirable and superhuman exertions which
crushed and killed him. That failure would have been nothing to
the poet, if he had not involved himself in trade in order the
more rapidly to secure the purpose which he had at heart, for
which he wrote and lived. ' The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds
and mock us.' All that Scott bargained for at the outset of life he
possessed for an instant before he quitted it. He cared not to be
renowned, he wished to be rich. To be spoken of as the master
of prose and verse was nothing, if the term could not be coupled
with that of master of Abbotsford. The dream was realized. Money
came in abundance, and with it lands and increasing possessions.
The mansion of the laird rose by degrees, and child after child
promised to secure lands and house, as the founder would have them,
in the immediate possession of a Scott. Then came, as if to com-
plete the fabric and to insure the victory, honors and titles fresh
from the hand of Majesty itself. Nothing was wanting; all was
gained, and yet nothing was acquired. The gift melted in the grasp ;
the joy passed away in the possession. With his foot on the topmost
step of the ladder, Scott fell. His ambition was satisfied, but Prov-
idence was avenged. All that could be asked was given, but only
to show how vain are human aspirations, how less than childish
are misdirected aims. Scott lived to see his property, his house
and lands, in the hands of the stranger ; we have lived to see hia
children one by one removed. Is there no lesson here ? '
\i <Eh.
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