WM 
 
 ^ 
 
 /. 
 
 r^ 
 
 --ml 
 
 l^ 
 
 /^f^^M^^yi 
 
 f >jS|H 
 
 
   
 
 
jr^^i 
 
 '1M> 
 
 University of California • Berkeley 
 
 BRUCE PORTER COLLECTION 
 Gift of Mrs. Robert Bruce Porter 
 
KM 
 
EOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 
 
Sir J-sn-A. R--n--t,-ds in a Domimo. Dr. G-ldrm-th ik am Old English Dress. 
 
ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, 
 
 I 
 
 BEPEINTED FROM " THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE." 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. M. THACKERAY- 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 5> « 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 M.DCCC.LXIII. 
 
 [ The right of Translation is reserved^] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 TAGM 
 
 On a Lazy Idle Boy 1 
 
 On Two Children in Black 13 
 
 On Ribbons 26 
 
 On some late Great Victories 50 
 
 Thorns in the Cushion 63 
 
 On Screens in Dining-Rooms 78 
 
 TuNBRiDGE Toys 91 
 
 De Juventute 103 
 
 On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood 131 
 
 Round about the Christmas Tree 150 
 
 On a Chalk-Mark on the Door 166 
 
 On being Found Out 187 
 
 On a Hundred Years Hence 200 
 
 Small-Beer Chronicle 215 
 
 Ogres 231 
 
 On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write 246 
 
 A Mississippi Bubble 266 
 
 On Letts's Diary 282 
 
 Notes op a Week's Holiday 299 
 
 Nil Nisi Bonum 339 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Sir J-sh-a R-n-lds in a Domino. Dr. G-ldsm-th in an Old 
 English Dress." to face Title. 
 
 Little Dutchmen to face page 299. 
 
ON A LAZy IDLE BOY, 
 
EOUNDABOUT PAPEES. 
 
 ON A LAZY IDLE EOT. 
 
 I HAD occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the 
 little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where 
 lies 'buried that very ancient British king, saint, and 
 martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St. Peter, 
 which stands opposite the house No. 65, Cornhill. Few 
 people note the church now-a-days, and fewer ever 
 heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his 
 statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons of 
 
 * Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, "from the table fast 
 chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill ; " and says " he was after 
 some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at 
 Glowcester" — ^but, oh ! these incorrect chroniclers ! when Alban Butler, 
 in the Lives of the Saints, v. xii., and Murray's Handbook, and the 
 Sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb 
 with my own eyes ! 
 
 ;V 1 
 
Roundabout Papers. 
 
 his family. With tight red breeches, a Koman habit, 
 a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and 
 sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image : 
 and, from what I may call his peculiar position with 
 regard to No. Q5, Cornhill, I beheld this figure of 
 St. Lucius with more interest than I should have be- 
 stowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare- 
 say, his superiors. 
 
 The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end 
 of the world — of the world of to-day, the world of rapid 
 motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and 
 intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron 
 road stretches away to Zurich, to Basel, to Paris, to 
 home. From the old southern barriers, before which a 
 little river rushes, and around which stretch the crum- 
 bling battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the 
 slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Ehine, 
 through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently 
 over the Spltigen to the shores of Como. 
 
 I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, 
 and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need 
 have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to 
 build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes 
 to dry? No enemies approach the great mouldering 
 gates : only at morn and even, the cows come lowing 
 
On a Lazy Idle Boy. 
 
 past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round 
 the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream 
 that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with 
 book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the 
 gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. 
 There is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one 
 old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no 
 customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out 
 of their little windows at the single stranger sauntering 
 by. There is a stall with baskets of queer little black 
 grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half a 
 dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there 
 is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's 
 nobody at the book- shop. " If you will have the good- 
 ness to come again in an hour," says the banker, with 
 his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, *' you can have 
 the money." There is nobody at the hotel, save the 
 good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk young cook 
 who ministers to you. Nobody is in the Protestant 
 church — (oh ! strange sight, the two confessions are 
 here at peace !) — nobody in the Catholic church : until 
 the sacristan, from his snug abode in the cathedral close, 
 espies the traveller eyeing the monsters and pillars before 
 the old shark-toothed arch of his cathedral, and comes 
 out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and opens 
 
 1—2 
 
Roundabout Papers, 
 
 the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the 
 queer old relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments 
 (a black velvet cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as 
 yesterday, and presented by that notorious "pervert,'* 
 Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St. Lucius 
 who built St. Peter's Church, opposite No. ^6 Cornhill. 
 What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! 
 Has it been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of 
 years, and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal 
 Realms in his screaming car drawn by his snorting steel 
 elephant coming to waken it? Time was when there 
 must have been life and bustle and commerce here. 
 Those vast, venerable walls were not made to keep out 
 cows, but men-at-arms led by fierce captains, who 
 prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they 
 passed in and out with their bales, their goods, their 
 pack-horses, and their wains. Is the place so dead that 
 even the clergy of the different denominations can't 
 quarrel ? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen 
 hundred years ago (they haven't the register, over the 
 way, up to that remote period. I daresay it was burnt 
 in the fire of London) — a dozen hundred years ago, 
 when there was some life in the town, St. Lucius was 
 stoned here on account of theological differences, after 
 founding our church in Cornhill. 
 
On a Lazy Idle Boy. 
 
 There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take 
 in the evening, and mark the mountains round glooming 
 with a deeper purple ; the shades creeping up the golden 
 walls ; the river brawling, the cattle calling, the maids 
 and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and 
 bawling ; and several times in the course of our sober 
 walks, we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobble- 
 dehoy, with a rusty coat, and trowsers not too long, and 
 big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy 
 hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the 
 lazy hands a little book, which my lad held up to his 
 face, and which I daresay so charmed and ravished him, 
 that he was blind to the beautiful sights around him ; 
 unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of 
 the lessons he had to learn for to-morrow; forget- 
 ful of mother waiting supper, and father preparing 
 a scolding ; — absorbed utterly and entirely in his 
 book. 
 
 What was it that so fascinated the young student, 
 as he stood by the river shore ? Not the Pons 
 Asinorum, What book so delighted him, and blinded 
 him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not 
 care to see the apple -woman with her fruit, or (more 
 tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with 
 their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the 
 
6 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 fountain? What was the book? Do you suppose it 
 •was Livy, or the Greek grammar? No; it was a 
 Novel that you were reading, you lazy, not very clean ^ 
 good-for-nothing, sensible boy ! It was D'Artagnan 
 locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeed- 
 ing in keeping Charles the First's head on. It was the 
 prisoner of the Chateau d'lf cutting himself out of the 
 sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like 
 best myself — novels without love or talking, or any of 
 that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, 
 escaping, robbery, and rescuing) — cutting himself out of 
 the sack, and swimming to the island of Montecristo. 
 
 Dumas ! thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre ! 
 
 1 hereby ofier thee homage, and give thee thanks for 
 many pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in 
 bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, and had the 
 ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be 
 assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go 
 so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, 
 or insert the name of his favourite author) ; and as for 
 the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his school- 
 master, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender 
 pleadings of his mother that he should not let the 
 supper grow cold — I don't believe the scapegi-ace cared 
 one fig. No ! Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. 
 
On a Lazy Idle Boy, 
 
 Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white- 
 robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at 
 the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story- 
 teller reciting his marvels out of Antar or the Arabian 
 Nights ? I was once present when a young gentleman 
 at table put a tart away from him, and said to his 
 neighbour, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous air), 
 *' I never eat sweets." 
 
 " Not eat sweets ! and do you knoiy why ? " says T. 
 
 '' Because I am past that kind of thing," says the 
 young gentleman. 
 
 ''Because you are a glutton and a sot!" cries the 
 elder (and Juvenis winces a little^, ''All people who 
 have natural, healthy appetites, J ove sweets ; all chil- 
 dren, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are 
 not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink." And a 
 plateful of raspberries and cream disappeared before the 
 philosopher. 
 
 You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All 
 people with healthy literary appetites love them — almost 
 all women ; — a vast number of clever, hard-headed 
 men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in 
 England said to me only yesterday, "I have just read 
 So-and-So for the second time " (naming one of Jones's 
 exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathe- 
 
8 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 maticians, are notorious novel readers; as well as 
 young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender 
 mothers. Who has not read about Eldon, and how 
 he cried over novels every night when he was not at 
 whist ? 
 
 As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether 
 he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He 
 is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating 
 jelly until he will be sick. He will know most plots by 
 the time he is twenty, so that lie will never be surprised 
 when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl, — 
 when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabar- 
 dine, shows his stars and the collars of his various 
 orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves him- 
 self to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will 
 recognize the novelists* same characters, though they 
 appear in red-heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the 
 garb of the nineteenth century. He will get weary of 
 sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to 
 grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, 
 and the practice may have ended too) — as private school- 
 boys used to grow tired of the pudding before their 
 mutton at dinner. 
 
 And pray what is the moral of this apologue ? The 
 moral I take to be this : the appetite for novels extend- 
 
On a Lazy Idle Boy, 9 
 
 ing to the end of the world; far away in the frozen 
 deep, the sailors reading them to one another during 
 the endless night ; — far away under the Syrian stars, 
 the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet 
 as he recites his tales ; far away in the Indian camps, 
 
 where the soldiers listen to 's tales, or 's, after 
 
 the hot day's march ; far away in little Chur yonder, 
 where the lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and 
 drinks it in with all his eyes ; — the demand being what 
 we know it is, the merchant must supply it, as he 
 will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Cal- 
 cutta. 
 
 But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, 
 it will disagree with him ; and so surely, dear youth, 
 will too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel 
 writers themselves read many novels ? If you go into 
 Gunter's, you don't see those charming young ladies 
 (to whom I present my most respectful compliments) 
 eating tarts and ices, but at the proper even -tide they 
 have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. 
 Can anybody tell me does the author of the Tale of Two 
 Cities read novels ? does the author of the Tower of 
 London devour romances? does the dashing Harry 
 Lorrequer delight in Plain or Binglets or Spongers 
 Sporting Tour ? Does the veteran, from whose flowing 
 
10 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 pen we had the books which delighted our young days, 
 Darnley, and Bichelieu, and Deloj^me* relish the works 
 of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the Three 
 Musqueteers ? Does the accomplished author of the 
 Caxtons read the other tales in BlacJavood? (For 
 example, that ghost- story printed last August, and 
 which for my part, though I read it in the public 
 reading-room at the Pavilion Hotel at Folkestone, I 
 protest frightened me so that I scarce dared look over 
 my shoulder.) Does Uncle Tom admire Adam Bede ; 
 and does the author of the Vicar of Wrexhill laugh 
 over the Warden and the Three Clerks ? Dear youth 
 of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous pudor ! I make 
 no doubt that the eminent parties above named all 
 partake of novels in moderation — eat jellies — but 
 mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and 
 boiled. 
 
 Here, dear youth aforesaid ! our Cornhill Magazine 
 owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as 
 fiction ; and though it does not become them to brag of 
 their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where 
 
 * By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran 
 novelist ! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-General in Venice, 
 the only city in Europe where the famous " Two Cavaliers " cannot by 
 any possibihty be seen riding together. 
 
On a Lazy Idle Boy. 1 1 
 
 thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the Fox 
 was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought 
 for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic Night : that 
 account of China is told by the man of all the empire 
 most likely to know of what he speaks : those pages 
 regarding Volunteers come from an honoured hand that 
 has borne the sword in a hundred famous fields, and 
 pointed the British guns in the greatest siege in the 
 world. 
 
 Shall we point out others ? We are fellow-travellers, 
 and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. 
 In the Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on 
 high and holidays subsequently), the jellies set down on 
 table are richly ornamented ; inedioque in fonte leporum 
 rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned 
 in tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phe- 
 nomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the occasion 
 by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that the 
 flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always 
 float side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having 
 been previously compared to jellies — here are two (one 
 perhaps not entirely saccharine, and flavoured with an 
 amari aliquid very distasteful to some palates) — two 
 novels under two flags, the one that ancient ensign 
 which has hung before the well-known booth of Vanity 
 
12 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Fair; the other that fresh and handsome standard 
 which has lately been hoisted on Bar Chester Towers, 
 Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be 
 helped ? 
 
 So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain 
 Comstock press their guests to partake of the fare on 
 that memorable " First day out," when there is no 
 man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his 
 voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and 
 bounds away into the blue water. 
 
13 
 
 ON TWO CHILDEEN IN BLACK. 
 
 Montaigne and Howel's Letters are my bedside books. 
 If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to 
 prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves 
 for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell 
 their old stories over and over again. I read them in 
 the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am 
 informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don't 
 heed them. It was the custom of their time, as it is of 
 Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part of 
 dress which we all wear in cities. But people can't 
 afford to be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness 
 every time they meet an individual who wears his 
 national airy raiment. I never knew the Arabian 
 Nights was an improper book until I happened once to 
 read it in a *^ family edition." Well, qui s'excuse, . . 
 Who, pray, has accused me as yet? Here am I 
 smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, 
 
14 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 before she lias opened her mouth. I love, I say, and 
 scarce ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those 
 two dear old friends, the Perigonrdin gentleman and the 
 priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their 
 egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always 
 like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. 
 What subject does a man know -better? If I stamp on 
 a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine — he confounds my 
 clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking 
 about himself, and expressing his emotion of grief or 
 pain in a manner perfectly authentic and veracious. I 
 have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by 
 somebody, as far back as the year 1838 : whenever I 
 think of it, and have had a couple glasses of wine, I 
 cannot help telling it. The toe is stamped upon : the 
 pain is just as keen as ever : I cry out, and perhaps 
 Titter imprecatory language. I told the story only last 
 Wednesday at dinner : — 
 
 '* Mr. Koundabout," says a lady sitting by me, " how 
 comes it that in your books there is a certain class (it 
 may be of men, or it may be of women, but that is not 
 the question in point) — how comes it, dear sir, there is 
 a certain class of persons whom you always attack in 
 your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss up 
 in the air, kick, and trample on? " 
 
On Two Children in Black. 15 
 
 I couldn't help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. 
 I told her the whole story, between the entrees and the 
 roast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid 
 pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live 
 half as long as Tithonus, that crack across my heart can 
 never be cured. There are wrongs and griefs that can't 
 be mended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. 
 G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we 
 ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I 
 forget at will ? How forgive ? I can forgive the occa- 
 sional waiter, who broke my beautiful old decanter at 
 that very dinner. I am not going to do him any injury. 
 But all the powers on earth can't make that claret-jug 
 whole. 
 
 So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I 
 was egotistical. I was selfish, no doubt; but I was 
 natural, and was telling the truth. You say you are 
 angry with a man for talking about himself. It is 
 because you yourself are selfish, that that other person's 
 Self does not interest you. Be interested by other 
 people and with their afiairs. Let them prattle and 
 talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just mentioned. 
 When you have had enough of them, and sudden hazes 
 come over your eyes, lay down the volume ; pop out the 
 candle, and dormez hien, I should like to write a 
 
16 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 nightcap book — a book that you can muse over, that 
 you can smile over, that you can yawn over — a book of 
 which you can say, " Well, this man is so and so and 
 so and so ; but he has a friendly heart (although some 
 wiseacres have painted him as black as Bogey), and you 
 may trust what he says." I should like to touch you 
 sometimes with a reminiscence that shall waken your 
 sympathy, and make you say, lo anche have so thought, 
 felt, smiled, suffered. Now, how is this to be done 
 except by egotism ? Linea recta brevissima. That 
 right line " I '* is the very shortest, simplest, straight- 
 forwardest means of communication between us, and 
 stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes 
 authors say, *^ The present writer has often remarked ; " 
 or, '^ The undersigned has observed ; " or, " Mr. 
 Eoundabout presents his compliments to the gentle 
 reader, and begs to state," &c.; but " I " is better and 
 straighter than all these grimaces of modesty : and 
 although these are Roundabout Papers, and may wander 
 who knows whither, I shall ask leave to maintain the 
 upright and simple perpendicular. When this bundle 
 of egotisms is bound up together, as they may be one 
 day, if no accident prevents this tongue from wagging, 
 or this ink from running, they will bore you very 
 likely ; so it would to read through Howel's Letters 
 
On Two Children in Blach 17 
 
 from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a 
 ham : but a slice on occasion may have a relish : a dip 
 into the volume at random and so on for a page or 
 two : and now and then a smile ; and presently a gape ; 
 and the book drops out of your hand ; and so, hon soir, 
 and pleasant dreams to you. I have frequently seen 
 men at clubs asleep over their humble servant's works, 
 and am always pleased. Even at a lecture I don't 
 mind, if they don't snore. Only the other day when 
 my friend A. said, " You've left off that Koundabout 
 business, I see ; very glad you have," I joined in the 
 general roar of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig 
 whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don't 
 like partridge, Archilochus, or porridge, or what not ? 
 Try some other dish. I am not going to force mine 
 down your throat, or quarrel with you if you refuse it. 
 Once in America a clever and candid woman said to 
 me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had been 
 sitting beside her, *'Mr. Koundabout, I was told I 
 should not like you; and I don't." *'"Well, ma'am,'* 
 says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, 
 *' I don't care." And we became good friends imme- 
 diately, and esteemed each other ever after. 
 
 So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this 
 paper, and say, "Fudge ! " and pass on to another, I 
 
 2 
 
18 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 for one shall not be in the least mortified. If you 
 say, ''What does he mean by calling this paper On 
 Tico Children in Blacky when there's nothing about 
 people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and 
 evidently bored) at dinner, were black women. What 
 is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's ! '* 
 My dear fellow, if you read Montaigne's Essays, you 
 must own that he might call almost any one by the 
 name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or 
 an essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a 
 title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Dis- 
 coursing, or Experience, or what you will. Besides, if 
 I have a subject (and I have), I claim to approach it 
 in a roundabout manner. 
 
 You remember Balzac's tale of the Peaii de Chagrin, 
 and how every time the possessor used it for the accom- 
 plishment of some wish the fairy Peau shrank a little 
 and the owner's life correspondingly shortened ? I 
 have such a desire to be well with my public that I am 
 actually giving up my favourite story. I am killing my 
 goose, I know I am. I can't tell my story of the chil- 
 dren in black after this ; after printing it, and sending 
 it through the country. When they are gone to the 
 printer's these little things become public property. I 
 take their hands. I bless them. I say, " Good-by, my 
 
On Two Children ifi Black, 19 
 
 little dears." I am quite sorry, to part with tliem : but 
 the fact is, I have told all my friends about them 
 already, and don't dare to take them about with me 
 any more. 
 
 Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I 
 submit that there lies in it a most curious and exciting 
 little mystery. I am like a man who gives you the last 
 bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his cellar ; he 
 knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up 
 the bottle, fashioned so slenderly — takes it up tenderly, 
 cants it with care, places it before his friends, declares 
 how good it is, with honest pride, and wishes he had a 
 hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine in his 
 cellar. Si quid novisti, &c. I shall be very glad to 
 hear from you. I protest and vow I am giving you the 
 best I have. 
 
 Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall 
 never probably know to my dying day. They were very 
 pretty little men, with pale faces, and large, melancholy 
 eyes ; and they had beautiful little hands, and little 
 boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots 
 lined with the richest silk ; and they had picture-books 
 in several languages, English, and French, and German, 
 I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little men 
 I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very 
 
 2—2 
 
20 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 handsome, pale lady in mourning, and a maid-servant 
 dressed in black, too ; and on tlie lady's face there was 
 the deepest grief. The little boys clambered and played 
 about the carriage, and she sate watching. It was a 
 railway-carriage from Frankfort to Heidelberg. 
 
 I saw at once that she was the mother of those chil- 
 dren, and going to part from them. Perhaps I have 
 tried parting with my own, and not found the business 
 very pleasant. Perhaps I recollect driving down (with 
 a certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own 
 mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited — 
 only a few minutes — until the whirring wheels of that 
 *' Defiance " coach were heard rolling towards us as 
 certain as death. Twang goes the horn ; up goes the 
 trunk ; down come the steps. Bah ! I see the autumn 
 evening : I hear the wheels now : I smart the cruel 
 smart again : and, boy or man, have never been 
 able to bear the sight of people parting from their 
 children. 
 
 I thought these little men might be going to school 
 for the first time in their lives; and mamma might 
 be taking them to the doctor, and would leave them 
 with many fond charges, and little wistful secrets of 
 love, bidding the elder to protect his younger brother, 
 and the younger to be gentle, and to remember to pray to 
 
On Two Cliildren in Black, 21 
 
 God always for his mother, who would pray for her boy 
 too. Our party made friends with these young ones 
 during the little journey ; but the poor lady was too sad 
 to talk except to the boys now and again, and sate in 
 her corner, pale, and silently looking at them. 
 
 The next day, we saw the lady and her maid driving 
 in the direction of the railway station, tuitJiout the hoys. 
 The parting had taken place, then. That night they 
 would sleep among strangers. The little beds at home 
 were vacant, and poor mother might go and look at 
 them. Well, tears flow, and friends part, and mothers 
 pray every night all over the world. I daresay we went 
 to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the vast shattered 
 walls, and quaint gables ; and the Neckar running its 
 bright course through that charming scene of peace and 
 beauty ; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with 
 relish. The poor mother would eat but little Ahendessen 
 that night ; and, as for the children — that first night at 
 school — hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, 
 and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merri- 
 ment — as for the first night at a strange school, we most 
 of us remember what that is. And the first is not the 
 worst, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has 
 his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must have 
 yours. 
 
22 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden : and I 
 daresay, saw Madame de Sclilangenbad and Madame 
 de la Cruchecassee, and Count Punter, and honest 
 Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the 
 evening, but our two little boys, walking on each side 
 of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded man ! We wanted to 
 renew our acquaintance with them, and they were 
 coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the 
 father pulled back one of the little men by his paletot, 
 gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see the 
 children now looking rather frightened away from us 
 and up into the father's face, or the cruel uncle's — which 
 was he ? I think he was the father. So this was the 
 end of them. Not school as I at first had imagined. The 
 mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of 
 pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and 
 the pretty silken clothes, and the tender — tender cares ; 
 and they were handed to this scowling practitioner of 
 Trente et Quarante. Ah ! this is worse than school. 
 Poor little men ! poor mother sitting by the vacant little 
 beds ! We saw the children once or twice after, always in 
 Scowler's company ; but we did not dare to give each 
 other any marks of recognition. 
 
 From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, 
 and so over the St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we 
 
On Two Children in Blach 
 
 went to Venice; and now comes the singular part of 
 my story. In Venice there is a little court of which 
 I forget the name : but in it is an apothecary's shop, 
 whither I went to buy some remedy for the bites 
 of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling 
 animals, slapping animals, and humming, flying animals ; 
 all three will have at you at once ; and one night nearly 
 drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming 
 out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of 
 hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites a great 
 deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my 
 little Heidelberg-Baden boys ! 
 
 I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long 
 as they were with their mother. When I saw the boy 
 at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was 
 a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which 
 I had admired the little shiny boots, were without shoe 
 or stocking. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a 
 woman, who seized his hand; and with her he dis- 
 appeared down one of the thronged lanes of the 
 city. 
 
 From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway 
 at that time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the 
 magnificent Semmering Pass was not quite completed). 
 At a station, between Laybach and Graetz, one of my 
 
24 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to 
 the carriage saying : — 
 
 " There's that horrible man from Baden, with the 
 two little boys." 
 
 Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the 
 little boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb. My 
 companion said they were pale, wretched-looking, and 
 dressed quite sliabhily, 
 
 I got out at several stations, and looked at all the 
 carriages. I could not see my little men. From that 
 day to this I have never set eyes on them. That is all 
 my story. Who were they? What could they be? How 
 can you explain that mystery of the mother giving them 
 up ; of the remarkable splendour and elegance of their 
 appearance while under her care ; of their bare-footed 
 squalor in Venice, a month afterwards ; of their shabby 
 habiliments at Laybach ? Had the father gambled away 
 his money, and sold their clothes ? How came they to 
 have passed out of the hands of a refined lady (as she 
 evidently was, with whom I first saw them) into the 
 charge of quite a common woman like her with whom I 
 saw one of the boys at Venice ? Here is but one chapter 
 of the story. Can any man write the next, or that pre- 
 ceding the strange one on which I happened to light ? 
 Who knows : the mystery may have some quite simple 
 
On Two Children in Blach 25 
 
 solution. I saw two children, attired like little princes, 
 taken from their mother and consigned to other care ; 
 and a fortnight afterwards, one of them barefooted and 
 like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two 
 Children in Black ? 
 
26 
 
 llounddboiit Papers. 
 
 ON EIBBONS. 
 
 HE uncle 
 of the pre- 
 sent Sir 
 Louis N. 
 Bonaparte, 
 K.G., &c., 
 inaugu- 
 rated Kis 
 
 reiffn 
 
 as 
 
 Emperor 
 over the 
 neighbour- 
 ing nation 
 
 by esta- 
 blishing an 
 
 Order, to which all citizens of his country, militaiy, 
 naval, and ci vil — all men most distinguished in science, 
 
On Ribbons. 27 
 
 letters, arts, and commerce — were admitted. The 
 emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more 
 or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it. 
 The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, 
 blue, black, and all-coloured; and on their return 
 to dominion such good old Tories would naturally 
 have preferred to restore their good old Orders of 
 Saint Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel; but 
 France had taken the ribbon of the Legion of Honour 
 so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared to 
 pluck it thence. 
 
 In England, until very late days, we have been accus- 
 tomed rather to pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote 
 ribbons and crosses tinsel gewgaws, foolish foreign 
 ornaments, and so forth. It is known how the Great 
 Duke (the breast of whose own coat was plastered with 
 some half-hundred decorations) was averse to the wear- 
 ing of ribbons, medals, clasps, and the like, by his 
 army. We have all of us read how uncommonly distin- 
 guished Lord Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he 
 was the only gentleman present without any decoration 
 whatever. And the Great Duke's theory was, that 
 clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good and 
 proper ornaments for himself, for the chief oJBficers of 
 his distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high 
 
28 Roundabcmt Papers, 
 
 birth, who might naturally claim to wear a band of 
 garter blue across their waistcoats ; but that for common 
 people your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was 
 the most sensible wear. 
 
 And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as 
 comfortable ; we can walk and dine as well ; we can 
 keep the winter's cold out as well, without a star 
 on our coats, as without a feather in our hats. How 
 often we have laughed at the absurd mania of the 
 Americans for dubbing their senators, members of 
 Congress, and States' representatives. Honourable ! 
 "We have a right to call our privy councillors Right 
 Honourable, our lords' sons Honourable, and so 
 forth : but for a nation as numerous, well educated, 
 strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to 
 give its distinguished citizens titles of honour — mon- 
 strous assumption of low-bred arrogance and par- 
 venue vanity! Our titles are respectable, but theirs 
 absurd. Mr. Jones, of London, a chancellor's son, and 
 a tailor's grandson, is justly honourable, and entitled 
 to be Lord Jones at his noble father's decease : but Mr. 
 Brown, the senator from New York, is a silly upstart 
 for tacking Honourable to his name, and our sturdy 
 British good sense laughs at him. "Who has not 
 laughed (I have myself) at Honourable Nahum Dodge, 
 
On Rihhons. 29 
 
 Honourable Zeno Scudder, Honourable Hiram Boake, 
 and the rest ? A score of such queer names and titles 
 I have smiled at in America. And, mutato nomine ? 
 I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. 
 This drivelling noodle and his descendants through life 
 are your natural superiors and mine — your and my 
 children's superiors. I read of an alderman kneeling 
 and knighted at court : I see a gold-stick waddling back- 
 wards before majesty in a procession, and if we laugh, 
 don't you suppose the Americans laugh too ? 
 
 Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, 
 are folly. Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a 
 good man, and no one laughs at him or good Mrs. 
 Bobus, as they have their dinner at one o'clock. But 
 who will not jeer at Sir Thomas on a melting day, 
 and Lady Bobus, at Margate, eating shrimps in a 
 donkey-chaise? Yes, knighthood is absurd: and chi- 
 valry an idiotic superstition : and Sir Walter Manny 
 was a zany : and Nelson, with his flaming stars and 
 cordons, splendent upon a day of battle, was a mad- 
 man : and Murat, with his crosses and orders, at the 
 head of his squadrons charging victorious, was only a 
 crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern -waiter, and 
 was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dress and 
 legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, 
 
30 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 who told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were 
 smirking French dancing-masters ; and the Black Prince, 
 waiting upon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane 
 masquerade; and Chivalry is naught; and Honour is 
 humbug ; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly ; and 
 Ambition is madness ; and desire of distinction is 
 criminal vanity; and glory is bosh; and fair fame is 
 idleness ; and nothing is true but two and two ; and the 
 colour of all the world is drab ; and all men are equal ; 
 and one man is as tall as another ; and one man is as 
 good as another — and a great dale betther, as the Irish 
 philosopher said. 
 
 Is this so ? Titles and badges of honour are vanity ; 
 and in the American Eevolution you have his Excel- 
 lency General Washington sending back, and with 
 proper spirit sending back, a letter in which he is not 
 addressed as Excellency and General. Titles are 
 abolished ; and the American Republic swarms with 
 men claiming and bearing them. You have the French 
 soldier cheered and happy in his dying agony, and 
 kissing with frantic joy the chief's hand who lays the 
 little cross on the bleeding bosom. At home you have 
 the dukes and earls jobbing and intriguing for the 
 Garter; the military knights grumbling at the civil 
 knights of the Bath; the little ribbon eager for the 
 
On Rihhons. 31 
 
 collar; the soldiers and seamen from India and the 
 Crimea marching in procession before the queen, and 
 receiving from her hands the cross hearing her royal 
 name. And, remember, there are not only the cross 
 wearers, but all the fathers and friends ; all the women 
 who have prayed for their absent heroes ; Harry's wife, 
 and Tom's mother, and Jack's daughter, and Frank's 
 sweetheart, each of whom wears in her heart of hearts 
 afterwards the badge which son, father, lover, has 
 won by his merit ; each of whom is made happy and 
 proud, and is bound to the country by that little bit 
 of ribbon. 
 
 I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, 
 that, at his accession, the king had a mind to establish 
 an order for literary men. It was to have been called 
 the Order of Minerva — I suppose with an Owl for a 
 badge. The knights were to have worn a star of sixteen 
 points, and a yellow ribbon ; and good old Samuel 
 Johnson was talked of as President, or Grand Cross, or 
 Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an order 
 as this there certainly may be doubts. Consider the 
 claimants, the difficulty of settling their claims, the 
 rows and squabbles amongst the candidates, and the 
 subsequent decision of posterity ! Dr. Beattie would 
 have ranked as first poet, and twenty years after the 
 
32 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 sublime Mr. Hayley would, no doubt, have claimed the 
 Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have been eligible 
 on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions ; and 
 her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might 
 have interfered with the knighthood of the immortal 
 Mrs. Catharine Macaulay. How Goldsmith would have 
 paraded the ribbon at Madame Cornelys's, or the 
 Academy dinner ! How Peter Pindar would have railed 
 at it ! Fifty years later, the noble Scott would have 
 worn the Grand Cross and deserved it ; but Gifford 
 would have had it ; and Byron, and Shelley, and Hazlitt, 
 and Hunt would have been without it ; and had Keats 
 been proposed as officer, how the Tory prints would 
 have yelled with rage and scorn ! Had the star of 
 
 Minerva lasted to our present time but I pause, not 
 
 because the idea is dazzling, but too awful. Fancy the 
 claimants, and the row about their precedence ! Which 
 philosopher shall have the grand cordon? — which the 
 collar ? — which the little scrap no bigger than a butter- 
 cup ? Of the historians — A, say, — and C, and F, and 
 G, and S, and T, — which shall be Companion and which 
 Grand Owl ? Of the poets, who wears, or claims, the 
 largest and brightest star ? Of the novelists, there is 
 A, and B and C D ; and E (star of first magnitude, 
 newly discovered), and F (a magazine of wit), and fair G, 
 
On Ribbons, 33 
 
 and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and L, 
 and M, and N, and (fair twinklers), and I am puzzled 
 between three P's — Peacock, Miss Pardoe, and Paul 
 Pry — and Queechy, and R, and S, and T, mere et Jlls, 
 and very likely U, gentle reader, for who has not 
 written his novel now-a-days ? — who has not a claim to 
 the star and straw-coloured ribbon ? — and who shall 
 have the biggest and largest ? Fancy the struggle ! 
 Fancy the squabble ! Fancy the distribution of prizes ! 
 
 "Who shall decide on them? Shall it be the sove- 
 reign ? shall it be the minister for the time being ? and 
 has Lord Palmerston made a deep study of novels ? In 
 this matter the late ministry, to be sure, was better 
 qualified ; but even then, grumblers who had not got 
 their canary cordons, would have hinted at professional 
 jealousies entering the cabinet ; and, the ribbons being 
 awarded, Jack would have scowled at his because Dick 
 had a broader one ; Ned been indignant because Bob's 
 was as large : Tom would have thrust his into the 
 drawer, and scorned to wear it at all. No — no : the so- 
 called literary world was well rid of Minerva and her 
 yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been in- 
 different, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, 
 the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, 
 and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and 
 
 3 
 
34 Roundabout Papen 
 
 cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes 
 — and take for granted the Order of Minerva is esta- 
 blished — who shall have it ? A great philosopher ? no 
 doubt, we cordially salute him G.C.M. A great his- 
 torian ? G.C.M. of course. A great engineer ? G.C.M. 
 A great poet? received with acclamation G.C.M. A 
 great painter ? oh ! certainly, G.C.M. If a great painter, 
 why not a great novelist ? Well, pass, great novelist, 
 G.C.M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a story-telHng or 
 music-composing artist, why not a singing artist ? Why 
 not a basso -pr of ondo ? Why not a primo tenore ? And 
 if a singer, why should not a ballet-dancer come bounding 
 on the stage with his cordon, and cut capers to the music 
 of a row of decorated fiddlers ? A chemist puts in his 
 claim for having invented a new colour ; an apothecary 
 for a new pill ; the cook for a new sauce ; the tailor for a 
 new cut of trowsers. We have brought the star of Mi- 
 nerva down from the breast to the pantaloons. Stars and 
 garters ! can we go any farther ; or shall we give the shoe- 
 maker the yellow ribbon of the order for his shoetie ? 
 
 AVhen I began this present Roundabout excursion, I 
 think I had not quite made up my mind whether we 
 would have an Order of all the Talents or not : perhaps 
 I rather had a hankering for a rich ribbon and gorgeous 
 star, in which my family might like to see me at parties 
 
On mhhons. 35 
 
 in my best waistcoat. But then the door opens, and 
 there come in, and by the same right too. Sir Alexis 
 Soyer ! Sir Alessandro Tamburini ! Sir Agostino Velluti ! 
 Sir Antonio Paganini (violinist) ! Sir Sandy McG-uffog 
 (piper to the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh) ! Sir 
 Alcide Flicflac (premier danseur of H.M. Theatre) ! Sir 
 Harley Quin and Sir Joseph Grimaldi (from Covent 
 Garden) ! They have all the yellow ribbon. They are 
 all honourable, and clever, and distinguished artists. 
 Let us elbow through the rooms, make a bow to the 
 lady of the house, give a nod to Sir George Thrum, who 
 is leading the orchestra, and go and get some cham- 
 pagne and seltzer-water from Sir Eichard Gunter, who 
 is presiding at the buffet. A national decoration might 
 be well and good : a token awarded by the country to 
 all its hene-merentihus : but most gentlemen with 
 Minerva stars would, I think, be inclined to wear very 
 wide breast-collars to their coats. Suppose yourself, 
 brother penman, decorated with this ribbon, and looking 
 in the glass, would you not laugh ? Would not wife 
 and daughters laugh at that canary-coloured emblem ? 
 
 But suppose a man, old or young, of figure ever so 
 fitout, thin, stumpy, homely, indulging in looking-glass 
 reflections with that hideous ribbon and cross called 
 V. C. on his coat, would he not be proud? and his 
 
 3—2 
 
36 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 family, would not they be prouder ? For your nobleman 
 there is the famous old blue garter and star, and wel- 
 come. If I were a marquis — if I had thirty — forty 
 thousand a year (settle the sum, my dear Alnaschar, 
 according to your liking), I should consider myself 
 entitled to my seat in parliament and to my garter. The 
 garter belongs to the Ornamental Classes. Have you 
 seen the new magnificent Pavo Spicifer at the Zoolo- 
 gical Gardens, and do you grudge him his jewelled 
 coronet and the azure splendour of his waistcoat? I 
 like my lord mayor to have a gilt coach ; my magnificent 
 monarch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles : I 
 huzzay respectfully when they pass in procession. It is 
 good for Mr. Briefless (50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that 
 there should be a lord chancellor, with a gold robe and 
 fifteen thousand a year. It is good for a poor curate 
 that there should be splendid bishops at Fulham and 
 Lambeth : their lordships were poor curates once, 
 and have won, so to speak, their ribbon. Is a man 
 who puts into a lottery to be sulky because he does not 
 win the twenty thousand pounds prize ? Am I to fall 
 into a rage, and bully my family when I come home, 
 after going to see Chatsworth or Windsor, because we 
 have only two little drawing-rooms ? Welcome to your 
 garter, my lord, and shame upon him qui mal y pense! 
 
On Rihhons. 37 
 
 So I arrive in my roundabout way near the point 
 towards which I have been trotting ever since we set out. 
 
 In a voyage to America, some nine years since, on the 
 seventh or eighth day out from Liverpool, Captain 
 
 L came to dinner at eight bells as usual, talked a 
 
 little to the persons right and left of him, and helped 
 the soup with his accustomed politeness. Then he went 
 on deck, and was back in a minute, and operated on the 
 fish, looking rather grave the while. 
 
 Then he went on deck again ; and this time was absent, 
 it may be, three or five minutes, during which the fish 
 disappeared, and the entrees arrived, and the roast beef. 
 Say ten minutes passed — I can't tell after nine years. 
 
 Then L came down with a pleased and happy 
 
 countenance this time, and began carving the sirloin : 
 "We have seen the light," he said. *' Madam, may I 
 help you to a little gravy, or a little horse-radish ?" or 
 what-not ? 
 
 I forget the name of the light; nor does it matter. 
 It was a point of Newfoundland for which he was on 
 the look-out, and so well did the Canada know where 
 she was, that, between soup and beef, the captain had 
 sighted the headland by which his course was lying. 
 
 And so through storm and darkness, through fog and 
 midnight, the ship had pursued her steady way over 
 
38 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 the pathless ocean and roaring seas, so surely that the 
 officers who sailed her knew her place within a minute 
 or two, and guided us with a wonderful providence safe 
 on our way. Since the nohle Cunard Company has run 
 its ships, but one accident, and that through the error of 
 a pilot, has happened on the line. 
 
 By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and 
 trivial to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely 
 moved, and never can think of it but with a heart full of 
 thanks and awe. We trust our lives to these seame^, 
 and how nobly they fulfil their trust ! They are, under 
 heaven, as a providence for us. Whilst we sleep, their 
 untiring watchfulness keeps guard over us. All night 
 through that bell sounds at its season, and tells how our 
 sentinels defend us. It rang when the Amazon was on 
 fire, and chimed its heroic signal of duty, and courage, 
 and honour. Think of the dangers these seamen undergo 
 for us : the hourly peril and watch ; the familiar storm ; 
 the dreadful iceberg ; the long winter nights when the 
 decks are as glass, and the sailor has to climb through 
 icicles to bend the stiff sail on the yard. Think of their 
 courage and their kindnesses in cold, in tempest, in 
 hunger, in wreck ! " The women and children to the 
 boats," says the captain of the Birkenhead y and, with 
 the troops formed on the deck, and the crew obedient to 
 
On Bihhons, 39 
 
 the word of glorious command, the immortal ship goes 
 down. Eead the story of the Sarah Sands : — 
 
 SARAH SANDS. 
 
 The screw steam-ship SarUh Sands, 1,330 registered tons, was 
 chartered by the East India Company in the autumn of 1858, for the 
 conveyance of troops to India. She was commanded by John Squire 
 Castle. She took out a part of the 54th Regiment, upwards of 350 
 persons, besides the wives and children of some of the men, and the 
 families of some of the officers. All went well till the 11th November, 
 when the ship had reached lat. 14 S., long. 56 E., upwards of 400 
 miles from the Mauritius. 
 
 Between three and four p.m. on that day a very strong smell of fire 
 was perceived arising from the after-deck, and upon going below into 
 the hold. Captain Castle found it to be on fire, and immense volumes of 
 smoke arising from it. Endeavours were made to reach the seat of the 
 fire, but in vain ; the smoke and heat were too much for the men. There 
 was, however, no confusion. Every order was obeyed with the same 
 coolness and courage with which it was given. The engine was imme- 
 diately stopped. All sail was taken in, and the ship brought to the wind, 
 so as to drive the smoke and fire, which was in the after-part of the ship, 
 astern. Others were, at the same time, getting fire-hoses fitted and 
 passed to the scene of the fire. The fire, however, continued to increase, 
 and attention was directed to the ammunition contained in the powder 
 magazines, which were situated one on each side the ship immediately 
 above the fire. The starboard magazine was soon cleared. But by this time 
 the whole of the after-part of the ship was so much enveloped in smoke 
 that it was scarcely possible to stand, and great fears were entertained on 
 account of the port magazine. Volunteers were called for, and came 
 immediately, and, under the guidance of Lieutenant Hughes, attempted 
 to clear the port magazine, which they succeeded in doing, with the ex 
 caption, as was supposed, of one or two barrels. It was most dangerous 
 work. The men became overpowered with the smoke and heat, and fell; 
 and several, while thus engaged, were dragged up by ropes, senseless. 
 
40 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 The flames soon burst up through the deck, and running rapidly 
 along the various cabins, set the greater part on fire. 
 
 In the meantime Captain Castle took steps for lowering the boats. 
 There was a heavy gale at the time, but they were launched without the 
 least accident. The soldiers were mustered on deck;— there was no 
 rush to the boats; — and the men obeyed the word of cominand as if on 
 parade. The men were informed that Captain Castle did not despair of 
 saving the ship, but that they must be prepared to leave her if necessary. 
 The women and children were lowered into the port lifeboat, under the 
 charge of Mr. Very, third officer, who had orders to keep clear of the 
 ship until recalled. 
 
 Captain Castle then commenced constnicting rafts of spare spars. In 
 a short time, three were put together, which would have been capable of 
 saving a great number of those on board. Two were launched overboard, 
 and safely moored alongside, and then a third was left across the deck 
 forward, ready to be launched. 
 
 In the meantime the fire had made great progress. The v>^hole of 
 the cabins were one body of fire, and at about 8.30 p.m. flames burst 
 through the upper deck, and shortly after the mizen rigging caught fire. 
 Fears were entertained of the ship paying off", in which case the flames 
 would have been swept forwards by the wind; but fortunately the after- 
 braces were burnt through, and the main-yard swung round, which kept 
 the ship's head to wind. About nine p.m., a fearful explosion took place 
 in the port magazine, arising, no doubt, from the one or two barrels 
 of powder which it had been impossible to remove. By this time the 
 ship was one body of flame, from the stem to the main rigging, and 
 thinking it scarcely possible to save her, Captain Castle called Major 
 Brett (then in command of the troops, for the colonel was in one of the 
 boats) forward, and, telling him that he feared the ship was lost, 
 requested him to endeavour to keep order amongst the troops till the 
 last, but, at the same time, to use every exertion to check the fire. 
 Providentially, the iron bulkhead in the after-part of the ship withstood 
 the action of the flames, and here all efforts were concentrated to keep it 
 cool. 
 
On Rihhons, 43 
 
 " No person," says the captain, " can describe the manner in which 
 the men worked to keep the fire back ; one party were below, keeping 
 the bulkhead cool, and when several were dragged up senseless, fresh 
 volunteers took their places, who were, however, soon in the same state. 
 At about ten p.m., the maintopsail-yard took fire. Mr. Welch, one 
 quartermaster, and four or five soldiers, went aloft with wet blankets, 
 and succeeded in extinguishing it, but not until the yard and mast were 
 nearly burnt through. The work of fighting the fire below continued 
 for hours, and about midnight it appeared that some impression was 
 made; and after that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until day- 
 light, when they had completely got it under. The ship was now in a 
 frightful plight. The after-part was literally burnt out — merely the shell 
 remaining — the port quarter blown out by the explosion: fifteen feet of 
 water in the hold." 
 
 The gale still prevailed, and the ship was rolling and pitching in a 
 heavy sea, and taking in large quantities of water abaft: the tanks, too, 
 were rolling from side to side in the hold. 
 
 As soon as the smoke was partially cleared away. Captain Castle got 
 spare sails and blankets aft to stop the leak, passing two hawsers round 
 the stern, and setting them up. The troops were employed baling and 
 pumping. This continued during the whole morning. 
 
 In the course of the day the ladies joined the ship. The boats were 
 ordered alongside, but they found the sea too heavy to remain there. 
 The gig had been abandoned during the night, and the crew, under Mr. 
 Wood, fourth officer, had got into another of the boats. The troops were 
 employed the remainder of the day baling and pumping, and the crew 
 securing the stem. All hands were employed during the following night 
 baling and pumping, the boats being moored alongside, where they 
 received some damage. At daylight, on the 13th, the crew were 
 employed hoisting the boats, the troops were working manfully baling 
 and pumping. Latitude at noon, 13 deg. 12 min. south. At five p.m., 
 the foresail and foretopsail were set, the rafts were cut away, and the 
 ship bore for the Mauritius. On Thursday, the 19th, she sighted the 
 island of Kodrigues, and arrived at Mauritius on Monday the 23rd. 
 
44 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 The Nile and Trafalgar are not more glorious to our 
 country, are not greater \dctories than these won by our 
 merchant seamen. And if you look in the captains' 
 reports of any maritime register, you will- see similar 
 acts recorded every day. I have such a volume for last 
 year, now lying before me. In the second number, as I 
 open it at hazard, Captain Koberts, master of the ship 
 Empire, from Shields to London, reports how on the 
 14th ult. (the 14th December, 1859), he, "being off 
 Whitby, discovered the ship to be on fire between the 
 main hold and boilers : got the hose from the engine 
 laid on, and succeeded in subduing the fire ; but only 
 apparently ; for at seven the next morning, the Dudgeon 
 bearing S.S.E. seven miles' distance, the fire again 
 broke out, causing the ship to be enveloped in flames on 
 both sides of midships : got the hose again into play 
 and all hands to work with buckets to combat with the 
 fire. Did not succeed in stopping it till four p.m., to 
 effect which, were obliged to cut away the deck and top 
 sides, and throw overboard part of the cargo. The vessel 
 was very much damaged and leaky: determined to 
 make for the Humber. Ship was run on shore, on the 
 mud, near Grimsby harbour, with five feet of water in 
 her hold. The donkey-engine broke down. The water 
 increased so fast as to put out the furnace fires and 
 
On Ribbons, 45 
 
 render the ship almost unmanageahle. On the tide 
 flowing, a tug towed the ship off the mud, and got her 
 into Grimshy to repair." 
 
 On the 2nd of November, Captain Strickland, of the 
 Purchase brigantine, from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U. S., 
 ** encountered heavy gales from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in 
 lat. 43° N., long. 34° W., in which we lost jib, fore- 
 topmast, staysail, topsail, and carried away the foretop- 
 mast stays, bobstays and bowsprit, headsails, cut-water 
 and stem, also started the wood ends, which caused the 
 vessel to leak. Put her before the wind and sea, and 
 hove about twenty-five tons of cargo overboard to lighten 
 the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by 
 means of thrusting 2J-inch rope in the opening, con- 
 trived to stop a great portion of the leak. 
 
 ^^ December 16^/i. — The crew, continuing night and 
 day at the pumps, could not keep the ship free ; deemed 
 it prudent for the benefit of those concerned to bear up 
 for the nearest port. On arriving in lat. 48° 45' N., 
 long. 23° W., observed a vessel with a signal of distress 
 flying. Made towards her, when she proved to be the 
 barque Carleton, water-logged. The captain and crew 
 asked to be taken off. Hove to, and received them on 
 board, consisting of thirteen men : and their ship was 
 abandoned. We then proceeded on our course, the crew 
 
46 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 of the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep 
 my ship afloat. We arrived at Cork harbour on the 
 27th ult." 
 
 Captain Coulson, master of the brig Othello, reports 
 that his brig foundered off Portland, December 27; — 
 encountering a strong gale, and shipping two heavy seas 
 in succession, which hove the ship on her beam-ends. 
 '' Observing no chance of saving the ship, took to the 
 long boat, and within ten minutes of leaving her saw 
 the brig founder. We were picked up the same morn- 
 ing by the French ship Commerce de Paris, Captain 
 Tombarel." 
 
 Here, in a single column of a newspaper, w^hat 
 strange, touching pictures do we find of seamen's 
 dangers, vicissitudes, gallantry, generosity! The ship 
 on fire — the captain in the gale sHnging himself in a 
 bowline to stop the leak — the Frenchman in the hour of 
 danger coming to his British comrade's rescue — the 
 brigantine, almost a wreck, working up to the barque 
 with the signal of distress flying, and taking off her crew 
 of thirteen men: *'We then proceeded on our course, 
 the crew of the ahandoned vessel assisting all they coidd 
 to keep my ship afloat.''^ What noble, simple words ! 
 What courage, devotedness, brotherly love ! Do they 
 not cause the heart to beat, and the eyes to fill ? 
 
On Ribbons, 47 
 
 This is what seamen do daily, and for one another. 
 One lights occasionally upon different stories. It hap- 
 pened, not very long since, that the passengers by one 
 of the great ocean steamers were wrecked, and, after 
 undergoing the most severe hardships, were left, de- 
 stitute and helpless, at a miserable coaling port. 
 Amongst them were old men, ladies, and children. 
 When the next steamer arrived, the passengers by that 
 steamer took alarm at the haggard and miserable ap- 
 pearance of their unfortunate predecessors, and actually 
 remonstrated with their own captain, urging him not to 
 take the poor creatures on hoard. There was every 
 excuse, of course. The last-arrived steamer was already 
 dangerously full : the cabins were crowded ; there were 
 sick and delicate people on board — sick and delicate 
 people who had paid a large price to the company for 
 room, food, comfort, already not too sufficient. If 
 fourteen of us are in an omnibus, will we see three or 
 four women outside and say, *' Come in, because this 
 is the last 'bus, and it rains ? " Of course not : but 
 think of that remonstrance, and of that Samaritan 
 master pf the Purchase brigantine ! 
 
 In the winter of '53, I went from Marseilles to Civita 
 Vecchia, in one of the magnificent P. and 0. ships, the 
 Valetta, the master of which subsequently did distin- 
 
48 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 guished service in the Crimea. This was his first 
 Mediterranean voyage, and he sailed his ship by the 
 charts alone, going into each port as surely as any pilot. 
 I remember walking the deck at night with this most 
 skilful, gallant, well-bred, and well-educated gentleman, 
 and the glow of eager enthusiasm with which he as- 
 sented, when I asked him whether he did not think a 
 RIBBON or ORDER would be welcome or useful in his 
 service. 
 
 Wliy is there not an Order of Britannia for British 
 seamen ? In the Merchant and the Royal Navy alike, 
 occur almost daily instances and occasions for the dis- 
 play of science, skill, bravery, fortitude in trying cir- 
 cumstances, resource in danger. In the First Number 
 of the Cornhill Magazine, a friend contributed a most 
 touching story of the M'Clintock expedition, in the 
 dangers and dreadful glories of which he shared; and 
 the writer was a merchant captain. How many more 
 are there (and, for the honour of England, may there be 
 many like him !) — gallant, accomplished, high-spirited, 
 enterprising masters of their noble profession ! Can 
 our fountain of Honour not be brought to such men ? 
 It plays upon captains and colonels in seemly profusion. 
 It pours forth not illiberal rewards upon doctors and 
 judges. It sprinkles mayors and aldermen. It bedews 
 
On Rihhons. 49 
 
 a painter now and again. It has spirted a baronetcy 
 upon two, and bestowed a coronet upon one noble man 
 of letters. Diplomatists take their Bath in it as of 
 right ; and it flings out a profusion of glittering stars 
 upon the nobility of the three kingdoms. Cannot 
 Britannia find a ribbon for her sailors? The Navy, 
 royal or mercantile, is a Service. The command of a. 
 ship, or the conduct of her, implies danger, honour, 
 science, skill, subordination, good faith. It may be a 
 victory, such as that of the Sarah Sands ; it may be dis- 
 covery, such as that of the Fox; it may be heroic 
 disaster, such as that of the Birkenhead ; and in such 
 events merchant seamen, as well as royal seamen, take 
 their share. 
 
 Why is there not, then, an Order of Britannia ? One 
 day a j^oung officer of the Euryalus may win it ; and, 
 having just read the memoirs of Lord Dundonald, I 
 know who ought to have the first Grand Cross. 
 
50 
 
 Roundahout Paper, 
 
 ON SOME LATE GREAT YICTOEIES. 
 
 Ox^ the 18 til day of April last I went to see a friend in 
 a neighbouring Crescent, and on the steps of the next 
 house beheld a group something like that here depicted. 
 
' On some late Great Victories. 51 
 
 A news-boy had stopped in his walk, and was reading 
 aloud the journal w^hich it was his duty to deliver ; a 
 pretty orange girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, ren- 
 dered more brilliant by one of those great blue papers 
 in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant 
 over the railing and listened; and opposite the nym- 
 pham discentem there w^as a capering and acute-eared 
 young satirist of a crossing-sweeper, who had left 
 his neighbouring professional avocation and chance 
 of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little 
 news-boy. 
 
 That intelligent reader, with his hand following the 
 line as he read it out to his audience, was saying : — 
 " And — now — Tom — coming up smiling — after his fall 
 — dee — delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia 
 Boy's — potato-trap — but was met by a — punisher on 
 the nose — which," &c. &c. ; or words to that effect. 
 Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading his 
 lecture; and, having been some twenty minutes or so 
 in the house and paid my visit, I took leave. 
 
 The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 door- 
 step, and his audience had scarcely changed their posi- 
 tion. Having read every word of the battle myself in 
 the morning, I did not stay to listen further ; but if the 
 gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour 
 
 4—2 
 
52 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 that day experienced delay and a little disappointment I 
 shall not be surprised. 
 
 I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have 
 read in the correspondent's letter of a Northern news- 
 paper, that in the midst of the company assembled the 
 reader's humble servant was present, and in a very 
 polite society, too, of *^ poets, clergymen, men of letters, 
 and members of both Houses of Parliament." If so, I 
 must have walked to the station in my sleep, paid three 
 guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, and 
 returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly ^woke there 
 about the time when history relates that the fight was 
 over. I do not know whose colours I wore- — the 
 Benician's, or those of the Irish champion ; nor remem- 
 ber where the fight took place, which, indeed, no 
 somnambulist is bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers 
 to be honoured for being brave, or punished for being 
 naughty? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't 
 know. 
 
 In George II.'s time, there was a turbulent navy 
 lieutenant (Handsome Smith he was called — his picture 
 is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet, and gold and 
 scarlet; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly 
 handsome; but his face by no means the beauty) — 
 there was, I say, a turbulent young lieutenant who was 
 
On some late Great Victories, 53 
 
 broke on a complaint of the French ambassador, for 
 obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to 
 his ship at Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom 
 was next day made Captain Smith. Well, if I were 
 absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers to the mill for 
 a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of 
 Clerkenwell. You are a naughty boy, Tom ! but then, 
 you know, we ought to love our brethren, though ever 
 so naughty. We are moralists, and reprimand you ; 
 and you are hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in 
 case England should ever have need of a few score 
 thousand champions, who laugh at danger; who cope 
 with giants; who, stricken to the ground, jump up and 
 gaily rally, and fall, and rise again, and strike, and die 
 rather than yield — in case the country should need such 
 men, and you should know them, be pleased to send 
 lists of the misguided persons to the principal police 
 stations, where means may some day be found to utilize 
 their wretched powers, and give their deplorable 
 energies a right direction. Suppose, Tom, that you 
 and your friends are pitted against an immense invader 
 — suppose you are bent on holding the ground, and 
 dying there, if need be — suppose it is life, freedom, 
 honour, home, you are lighting for, and there is a 
 death-dealing sword or rifle in your ^hand, with which 
 
54 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 you are going to resist some tremendous enemy who 
 challenges your championship on your native shore? 
 Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to the death, and it is 
 all right : kill him, and heaven bless you. Drive him 
 into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and drown 
 him; and let us sing Laudamus, In these national 
 cases, you see, we override the indisputable first laws 
 of morals. Loving your neighbour is very well, but 
 suppose your neighbour comes over from Calais and 
 Boulogne to rob you of your laws, your liberties, your 
 newspapers, your parliament (all of which some dear 
 neighbours of ours have given up in the most self- 
 denying manner) : suppose any neighbour were to 
 cross the water and propose this kind of thing to us ? 
 Should we not be justified in humbly trying to pitch 
 him into the water ? If it were the King of Belgium 
 himself we must do so. I mean that fighting, of course, 
 is wrong ; but that there are occasions when &c. — I 
 suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of Sayers is 
 one ot the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told : 
 and, with every love and respect for Morality — my 
 spirit says to her, " Do, for goodness' sake, my dear 
 madam, keep your true, and pure, and womanly, and 
 gentle remarks for another day. Have the great kind- 
 ness to stand a leetle aside, and just let us see one or 
 
On some late Great Victories. 55 
 
 two more rounds between the men. That little man 
 with the one hand powerless on his breast facing yonder 
 giant for hours, and felling him, too, every now and 
 then! It is the little Java and the Constitution over 
 again." 
 
 I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave 
 Heenan, who has acted and written since the battle 
 with a true warrior's courtesy, and with a great deal 
 of good logic too, that the battle was a di'awn one. 
 The advantage was all on Mr. Sayers's side. Say a 
 young lad of sixteen insults me in the street, and I try 
 and thrash him, and do it. Well, I have thrashed a 
 young lad. You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit 
 your own size? But say the lad thrashes me? In 
 either case I walk away discomfited : but in the latter, 
 I am positively put to shame. Now, when the ropes 
 were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas released, 
 the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly blind of one 
 eye, and speedily afterwards was blind of both. Could 
 Mr. Sayers have held out for three minutes, for five 
 minutes, for ten minutes more ? He says he could. 
 So w^e say we could have held out, and did, and had 
 beaten off the enemy at Waterloo, even if the Prussians 
 hadn't come up. The opinions differ pretty much 
 according to the nature of the opinants. I say the 
 
56 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Duke and Tom could have held out, that they meant to 
 hold out, that they did hold out, and that there has 
 been fistlfying enough. That crowd which came in 
 and stopped the fight ought to be considered like one 
 of those divine clouds which the gods send in Homer : 
 
 Apollo shrouds 
 The godlike Trojan in a veil of clouds. 
 
 It is the best way of getting the godlike Trojan out 
 of the scrape, don't you see ? The nodus is cut ; Tom 
 is out of chancery; the Benicia Boy not a bit the 
 worse, nay, better than if he had beaten the little man. 
 He has not the humiliation of conquest. He is greater, 
 and will be loved more hereafter by the gentle sex. 
 Suppose he had overcome the godlike Trojan ? Suppose 
 he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven 
 to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph ? Faugh I 
 the great, hulking conqueror ! Why did you not hold 
 your hand from yonder hero ? Everybody, I say, was 
 relieved by that opportune appearance of the British 
 gods, protectors of native valour, who interfered, and 
 *' withdrew " their champion. 
 
 Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet- 
 eight beaten ; would Sayers have been a whit the less 
 gallant and meritorious ? If Sancho had been allowed 
 really to reign in Barataria, I make no doubt that. 
 
On some late Great Victories, 57 
 
 with his good sense and kindness of heart, he would 
 have devised some means of rewarding the brave van- 
 quished, as well as the brave victors in the Baratarian 
 army, and that a champion who had fought a good fight 
 would have been a knight of King Don Sancho's orders, 
 whatever the upshot of the combat had been. Suppose 
 Wellington overwhelmed on the plateau of Mont St. 
 John; suppose Washington attacked and beaten at 
 Valley Forge — and either supposition is quite easy — 
 and what becomes of the heroes ? They would have 
 been as brave, honest, heroic, wise; but their glory, 
 where would it have been ? Should we have had their 
 portraits hanging in our chambers? have been familiar 
 with their histories ? have pondered over their letters, 
 common lives, and daily sayings? There is not only 
 merit, but luck which goes to making a hero out of a 
 gentleman. Mind, please you, I am not saying that the 
 hero is after all not so very heroic ; and have not the 
 least desire to grudge him his merit because of his good 
 fortune. 
 
 Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay 
 on some late great victories is tending ? Do you sup- 
 pose that by those words I mean Trenton, Brandywine, 
 Salamanca, Vittoria, and so forth ? By a great victory 
 I can't mean that affair at Farnham, for it was a drawn 
 
58 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 figlit. Where then are the victories, pi'ay, and when 
 are we coming to them ? 
 
 M J good sir, you will perceive that in this Nicasan dis- 
 course I have only as yet advanced as far as this — that 
 a hero, whether he wins or loses, is a hero ; and that if 
 a fellow will but be honest and courageous, and do his 
 best, we are for paying all honour to him. Further- 
 more, it has been asserted that Fortune has a good deal 
 to do with the making of heroes ; and thus hinted for 
 the consolation of those who don't happen to be engaged 
 in any stupendous victories, that, had opportunity so 
 served, they might have been heroes too. If you are 
 not,' friend, it is not your fault, whilst I don't wish to 
 detract from any gentleman's reputation who is. There. 
 My worst enemy can't take objection to that. The 
 point might have been put more briefly perhaps ; but, 
 if you please, we will not argue that question. 
 
 Well, then. The victories which I wish especially 
 to commemorate in this the last article of our first 
 volume, are the six great, complete, prodigious, and 
 undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the 
 editor of the Coknhill Magazine has the honour to 
 command. When I seemed to speak disparagingly 
 but now of generals, it was that chief I had in my I 
 (if you will permit me the expression), I wished him 
 
On S07ne late Great Victories. 59 
 
 not to be elated by too much prosperity ; I warned him 
 against assuming heroic imperatorial airs, and cocking 
 his laurels too jauntily over his ear. I was his con- 
 science, and stood on the splash-board of his triumph- 
 car, whispering, " Ilominem memento teP As we rolled 
 along the way, and passed the weathercocks on the 
 temples, I saluted the symbol of the goddess Fortune 
 with a reverent awe. " We have done our little 
 endeavour," I said, bowing my head, ^^ and mortals can 
 do no more. But we might have fought bravely, and 
 not won. We might have cast the coin, calling ^ Head,' 
 and lo ! Tail might have come uppermost." O thou 
 Ruler of Victories! — thou awarder of Fame! — thou 
 Giver of Crowns (and shillings) — if thou hast smiled 
 upon us, shall we not be thankful ? There is a Satur- 
 nine philosopher, standing at the door of his book-shop, 
 who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expression as the triumph 
 passes. (I can't see quite clearly for the laurels, which 
 have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is reining 
 in the two white elephants that draw the car ; I raise 
 the other hand up to — to the laurels, and pass on, waving 
 him a graceful recognition. Up the Hill of Ludgate — 
 around the Pauline Square — by the side of Chepe — 
 until it reaches our own Hill of Corn — the procession 
 passes. The Imperator is bowing to the people; the 
 
60 ^ Ttoundabout Papers. 
 
 captains of the legions are riding round the car, their 
 gallant minds struck by the thought, " Have we not 
 fought as well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the 
 chariot, and are we not as good as he?'* Granted, 
 with all my heart, my dear lads. When your consul- 
 ship arrives, may you be as fortunate. When these 
 hands, now growing old, shall lay down sword and 
 truncheon, may you mount the car, and ride to the 
 temple of Jupiter. Be yours the laurel then. Neque 
 me myrtus dedecet^ looking cosily down from the arbour 
 where I sit under the arched vine. 
 
 I fancy the Imperator standing on the steps of the 
 temple (erected by Titus) on the Mens Frumentarius, 
 and addressing the citizens : " Quirites ! " he says, " in 
 our campaign of six nionths, we have been engaged six 
 times, and in each action have taken near upon a 
 hundred thousand prisoners. Go to ! What are other 
 magazines compared to our magazine ? (Sound, trum- 
 peter I) What banner is there like that of Cornhill ? 
 You, philosopher yonder ? " (he shirks under his mantle). 
 *^ Do you know what it is to have a hundred and ten 
 thousand readers ? A hundred thousand readers ? a 
 hundred thousand buyers I " (Cries of No ! — Pooh ! Yes, 
 upon my honour ! Oh, come ! and murmurs of applause 
 and derision) — " I say more than a hundred thousand 
 
On some late Great Victories, 61 
 
 purchasers — and I believe as much as a million readers ! " 
 (Immense sensation.) " To these have we said an un- 
 kind word ? We have enemies ; have we hit them an 
 unkind blow ? Have we sought to pursue party aims, 
 to forward private jobs, to advance selfish schemes? 
 The only persons to whom wittingly we have given pain 
 are some who have volunteered for our corps — and of 
 these volunteers we have had thousands,^^ (Murmurs 
 and grumbles.) " What commander, citizens, could 
 place all these men — could make officers of all these 
 men ? " (cries of No — no ! and laughter) — " could say, ^ I 
 accept this recruit, though he is too short for our 
 standard, because he is poor and has a mother at home 
 who wants bread ? ' could enrol this other, who is too 
 weak to bear arms, because he says, ' Look, sir, I shall 
 be stronger anon.' The leader of such an army as ours 
 must select his men, not because they are good and 
 virtuous, but because they are strong and capable. To 
 these our ranks are ever open, and in addition to 
 the w^arriors — who surround me" — (the generals look 
 proudly conscious) — "I tell you, citizens, that I am 
 in treaty with other and most tremendous champions, 
 who will march by the side of our veterans to the 
 achievement of fresh victories. Now, blow trumpets ! 
 Bang, ye gongs ! and drummers, drub the thundering 
 
62 Roundabout Papers* 
 
 skins ! Generals and chiefs, we go to sacrifice to the 
 gods." 
 
 Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, 
 the other Magazines walking modestly behind them. 
 The people huzza; and, in some instances, kneel and 
 kiss the fringes of the robes of the warriors. The 
 Philosopher puts up his shutters, and retires into his 
 shop, deeply moved. In ancient times, Pliny {apud 
 Smith) relates it was the custom of the Imperator " to 
 paint his whole body a bright red ; " and, also, on ascend- 
 ing the Hill, to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside 
 "to the adjoining prison, and put to death." We propose 
 to dispense with both these ceremonies. 
 
63 
 
 THOMS IN THE CUSHION. 
 
 In the Essay with which our first Number closed, 
 the CoRNHiLL Magazine w^as likened to a ship sailing 
 forth on her voyage, and the captain uttered a very 
 sincere prayer for her prosperity. The dangers of storm 
 
64 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 and rock ; the vast outlay upon ship and cargo, and 
 the certain risk of the venture, gave the chief officer a 
 feeling of no small anxiety ; for who could say from 
 what quarter danger might arise, and how, his owner's 
 property might be imperilled ? After a six months' 
 voyage, we with very thankful hearts could acknow- 
 ledge our good fortune : and, taking up the apologue in 
 the Roundabout manner, we composed a triumphal 
 procession in honour of the Magazine, and imagined 
 the Imperator thereof riding in a sublime car to return 
 thanks in the Temple of Victory. Cornhill is accus- 
 tomed to grandeur and greatness, and has witnessed, 
 every ninth of November for I don't know how many 
 centuries, a prodigious annual pageant, chariot progress, 
 and flourish of trumpetry; and our publishing office 
 being so very near the Mansion-House, I am sure the 
 reader will understand how the idea of pageant and pro- 
 cession came naturally to my mind. The imagination 
 easily supplied a gold coach, eight cream-coloured 
 horses of your true Pegasus breed, huzzaing multitudes, 
 running footmen, and clanking knights in armour, a 
 chaplain and a sword-bearer with a muff on his head, 
 scowling out of the coach-w^indow, and a Lord Mayor 
 all crimson, fur, gold chain, and white ribbons, solemnly 
 occupying the place of state. A playful fancy could 
 
Thorns in the Cushion, Q5 
 
 have carried the matter farther^ could have depicted the 
 feast in the Egyptian Hall, the ministers, chief-justices, 
 and right reverend prelates taking their seats round 
 about his lordship, the turtle and other delicious viands, 
 and Mr. Toole behind the central throne, bawling out 
 to the assembled guests and dignitaries: ^^My Lord 
 So-and-so, my Lord What-d'ye-call-'im, my Lord 
 Etcsetera, the Lord Mayor pledges you all in a loving 
 cup." Then the noble proceedings come to an end; 
 Lord Simper proposes the ladies; the company rises 
 from table, and adjourns to coffee and muffins. The 
 carriages of the nobility and guests roll back to the 
 West. The Egyptian Hall, so bright just now, appears 
 in a twilight glimmer, in which waiters are seen ran- 
 sacking the dessert, and rescuing the spoons. His 
 lordship and the Lady Mayoress go into their private 
 apartments. The robes are doffed, the collar and white 
 ribbons are removed. The Mayor becomes a man, and 
 is pretty surely in a fluster about the speeches which he 
 has just uttered ; remembering too well now, wretched 
 creature, the pnncipal points which he didTiHt make when 
 he rose to speak. He goes to bed to headache, to care, to 
 repentance, and, I daresay, to a dose of something which 
 his body-physician has prescribed for him. And there are 
 ever so many men in the city who fancy that man happy I 
 
 5 
 
JRoundahout Papers, 
 
 Now, suppose that all through that 9th of November 
 his lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a tooth- 
 ache, let us say, during all dinner time — through which 
 he has been obliged to grin and mumble his poor old 
 speeches. Is he enviable ? Would you like to change 
 with his lordship ? Suppose that bumper which his golden 
 footman brings him, instead i'fackins of ypocras or canary, 
 contains some abomination of senna? Away ! Remove 
 the golden goblet, insidious cup-bearer ! You now begin 
 to perceive the gloomy moral which I am about to draw. 
 
 Last month we sang the song of glorification, and 
 rode in the chariot of triumph. It was all very well. 
 It was right to huzzay, and be thankful, and cry. Bravo, 
 our side ! and besides, you know, there was the enjoy- 
 ment of thinking how pleased Brown, and Jones, and 
 Kobinson (our dear friends) would be at this announce- 
 ment of success. But now that the performance is 
 over, my good sir, just step into my private room, and 
 see that it is not all pleasure — this winning of successes. 
 Cast your eye over those newspapers, over those letters. 
 See what the critics say of your harmless jokes, neat 
 little trim sentences, and pet waggeries ! Why, you are 
 no better than an idiot ; you are drivelling ; your powers 
 have left you ; this always overrated writer is rapidly 
 sinking to &c. 
 
Tliorns in the Cushion. 67 
 
 This is not pleasant ; but neither is this the point. 
 It may be the critic is rights and the author wrong. It 
 may be that the archbishop's sermon is not so fine as 
 some of those discourses twenty years ago which used 
 to delight the faithful in Granada. Or it may be 
 (pleasing thought !) that the critic is a dullard, and does 
 not understand what he is writing about. Everybody 
 who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors dis- 
 coursing about the pictures before their faces. One 
 says, " This is very well ; " another says, " This is stuff 
 and rubbish ; " another cries, ^^ Bravo ! this is a master- 
 piece : " and each has a right to his opinion. For ex- 
 ample, one of the pictures I admired most at the Eoyal 
 Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my 
 knowledge, set eyes. This picture is No. 346, Moses, 
 by Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had a great intention. 
 I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly re- 
 presented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian 
 bondage, and suggested the touching story. My news- 
 paper says : " Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at 
 a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object ; " and so 
 good-by, Mr. Solomon. Are not most of our babies 
 served so in life? and doesn't Mr. Robinson consider 
 Mr. Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling little brat? So 
 cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who discoursed 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Houndahout Papers. 
 
 on your baby is a bad judge of babies. When Pha- 
 raoh's kind daughter found the child, and cherished and 
 loved it, and took it home, and found a nurse for it, too, 
 I daresay there were grim, brickdust-coloured chamber- 
 lains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, yellow 
 princesses at court, who never had children themselves, 
 who cried out, '^ Faugh! the horrid little squalling 
 wretch ! " and knew he would never come to good ; and 
 said, " Didn't I tell you so ? " when he assaulted the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a 
 critic pooh-poohs your work of art — your Moses — your 
 child — your foundling. Why, did not a wiseacre in 
 Blackwood's Magazine lately fall foul of Tom Jones f 
 O hypercritic ! So, to be sure, did good old Mr. Rich- 
 ardson, who could write novels himself — but you, and I^ 
 and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in giving our 
 respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave old 
 master. 
 
 In these last words I am supposing the respected 
 reader to be endowed with a sense of humour, which 
 he may or may not possess ; indeed, don't we know 
 many an honest man who can no more comprehend a 
 joke, than he can turn a tune. But I take for granted, 
 my dear sir, that you are brimming over with fun — vou 
 
Thorns in the Cushion, 69 
 
 mayn't make jokes, but you could if you would — you 
 know you could : and in your quiet way you enjoy 
 them extremely. Now many people neither make them, 
 nor understand them when made, nor like them when 
 understood , and are suspicious, testy, and angry with 
 jokers. Have you ever watched an elderly male or 
 female — an elderly " party," so to speak, who begin r. to 
 find out that some young wag of the company is 
 " chaffing " him ? Have you ever tried the sarcastic or 
 Socratic method with a child ? Little simple he or she, 
 in the innocence of the simple heart, plays some silly 
 freak, or makes some absurd remark, which you turn to 
 ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives that you 
 are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, 
 bursts into tears, — upon my word it is not fair to try 
 the weapon of ridicule upon that innocent young victim. 
 The awful objurgatory practice he is accustomed to. 
 Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire consequences 
 thereof: expose it roundly, and give him a proper, 
 solemn, moral whipping — but do not attempt to castigare 
 ridejido. Do not laugh at him writhing, and cause all 
 the other boys in the school to laugh. Remember your 
 own young days at school, my friend — the tingling 
 cheeks, burning ears, bursting heart, and passion of 
 desperate tears, with which you looked up, after having 
 
70 Roundahout Pcqjers. 
 
 performed some blunder, whilst the doctor held you to 
 public scorn before the class, and cracked his great 
 clumsy jokes upon you — helpless, and a prisoner ! Better 
 the block itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of 
 birch-twigs, than the maddening torture of those 
 jokes ! 
 
 Now with respect to jokes — and the present company 
 of course excepted — many people, perhaps most people, 
 are as infants. They have little sense of humour. They 
 don't like jokes. Raillery in writing annoys and offends 
 them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, 
 very few women who liked the banter of Swift and 
 Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at 
 laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, 
 and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his 
 horns, hoofs, and ears ? Fi done, le vilain monstre, with 
 his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs ! Let him 
 go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, 
 and pull them over those horrid shanks ; put a large 
 gown and bands over beard and hide; and pour a 
 dozen of lavender-water into his lawn handkerchief, 
 and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall all be 
 highly-distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and 
 gushing eloquence ; and the foot slianH peep out, and a 
 plague take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out 
 
Tliorns in the Cushion. 71 
 
 with your cambric, dear ladies, and let us all whimper 
 together. 
 
 Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that it is not 
 the fire of adverse critics which afflicts or frightens the 
 editorial bosom. They may be right; they may be 
 rogues who have a personal spite ; they may be dullards 
 who kick and bray as their nature is to do, and prefer 
 thistles to pineapples ; they may be conscientious, acute, 
 deeply learned, delightful judges, who see your joke in 
 a moment, and the profound wisdom lying underneath. 
 Wise or dull, laudatory or otherwise, we put their 
 opinions aside. If they applaud, we are pleased: if 
 they shake their quick pens, and fly off with a hiss, we 
 resign their favours and put on all the fortitude we can 
 muster. I would rather have the lowest man's good 
 word than his bad one, to be sure ; but as for coaxing a 
 compliment, or wheedling him into good-humour, or 
 stopping his angry mouth with a good dinner, or accept- 
 ing his contributions for a certain Magazine, for fear of 
 his barking or snapping elsewhere— allons done I These 
 shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, Cerberus! Here 
 shall be no sop for thee, unless — unless Cerberus is an 
 uncommonly good dog, when we shall bear no malice 
 because he flew at us from our neighbour's gate. 
 
 What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoy- 
 
72 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 ing you — the toothaclie in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the 
 thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair ? It is there. 
 Ah ! it stings me now as I write. It comes with almost 
 every morning's post. At night I come home, and 
 take my letters up to bed *(not daring to open them), 
 and in the morning I find one, two, three thorns .on my 
 pillow. Three I extracted yesterday ; two I found this 
 morning. They don't sting quite so sharply as they 
 did ; but a skin is a skin, and they bite, after all, most 
 wickedly. It is all very fine to advertise on the 
 Magazine, " Contributions are only to be sent to Q5, 
 Cornhill, and not to the Editor's private residence." 
 My dear sir, how little you know man- or woman-kind, 
 if you fancy they will take that sort of warning ! How 
 am I to know (though, to be sure, I begin to know now) 
 as I take the letters off the tray, which of those enve- 
 lopes contains a real hona fide letter, and which a thorn ? 
 One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a 
 thorn-letter, and kept it without opening. This is what 
 I call a thorn-letter : — 
 
 Cambenvell, June 4. 
 SiK^ — May I hope, may I entreat, that you will favour me by perus- 
 ing the enclosed lines, and that they may be found worthy of insertion 
 in the Cornhill Magazine. We have known better days, sir. I have 
 a sick and widowed mother to maintain, and little brothers and sisters 
 who look to me. I do my utmost as a governess to support them. I 
 toil at night when they are at rest, and my own hand and brain are alike 
 
Thorns in the Cushion, 73 
 
 tired. If I could add but a little to our means by my pen, many of my 
 poor invalid's wants might be supplied, and I could procure for her com- 
 forts to which she is now a stranger. Heaven knows it is not for want 
 of will or for want of energy on my part, that she is now in ill-health, 
 and our little household almost without bread. Do — do cast a kind 
 glance over my poem, and if you can help us, the widow, the orphans 
 will bless you ! I remain, sir, in anxious expectancy, 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 S. S. S. 
 
 And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an envelope 
 with its penny stamp — Heaven help us! — and the 
 writer's name and address. 
 
 Now you see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the 
 case put with true female logic. " I am poor ; I am 
 •good; I am ill; I work hard; I have a sick mother 
 and hungry brothers and sisters dependent on me. You 
 can help us if yoa will." And then I look at the paper, 
 with the thousandth part of a faint hope that it may be 
 suitable, and I find it won't do : and I knew it wouldn't 
 do : and why is this poor lady to appeal to my pity and 
 bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and 
 calling for bread which I can give them if I choose ? 
 No day passes but that argument ad misericordiam is 
 used. Day and night that sad voice is crying out for 
 help. Thrice it appealed to me yesterday. Twice 
 this morning it cried to me : and I have no doubt when 
 I go to get my hat, I shall find it with its piteous face 
 
74 Roundabout Fapeo^s, 
 
 and its pale family about it, waiting for me in the hall. 
 One of the immense advantages which women have over 
 our sex is, tliat they actually like to read these letters. 
 Like letters ? O mercy on us ! Before I was an editor 
 I did not like the postman much : — but now ! 
 
 A very common way with these petitioners is to 
 begin with a fine flummery about the merits and 
 eminent genius of the person whom they are addressing. 
 But this artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail. When 
 I see that kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and 
 fling it away before it has time to sting. Away, reptile, 
 to the waste-paper basket, and thence to the flames ! 
 
 But of these disappointed people, some take their dis- 
 appointment and meekly bear it. Some hate and hold 
 you their enemy because you could not be their friend. 
 Some, furious and envious, say : ^^ Who is this man who 
 refuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited 
 coxcomb, to deny my merit?" 
 
 Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but 
 
 bludgeons. Here are two choice slips from that noble 
 
 Irish oak, w^hich has more than once supplied alpeens 
 
 for this meek and unoffending skull : — 
 
 Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. 
 SiE, — I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale, 
 Lovel the Widower, and am much surprised at the unwarrantable stric- 
 tures you pass therein on the corps de ballet. 
 
Thonis in the Cushion, 75 
 
 I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical 
 profession, and I beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de ballet 
 are virtuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that snug cottages 
 are not taken for them in the Eegent's Park. 
 
 I also have to inform you that theatrical managers arc in the habit 
 of speaking good English, possibly better English than authors. 
 
 You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a 
 wilful falsehood. 
 
 I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as also 
 those of actors and actresses, are superior to the snarlings of dyspeptic 
 libellers, or the spiteful attacks and brutum fulrrien of ephemeral authors. 
 I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 The Editor of the Cornhill Magazine. A. B. C. 
 
 Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. 
 
 SiK, — I have just read, in the Cornhill Magazine for January, the 
 first portion of a Tale written by you, and entitled Lovel the Widower. 
 
 In the production in question you employ all your malicious spite 
 (and you have great capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the cha- 
 racter of the corps de ballet. When you imply that the majority of 
 ballet-girls have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, / sar/ you 
 tell a deliberate falsehood. 
 
 Haveing been brought up to the stage from infancy, and, though now 
 an actress, haveing been seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am 
 competent to speak on the subject. I am only surprised that so vile a 
 libeller as yourself should be allowed to preside at the Dramatic Fund 
 dinner on the 22nd instant. I think it would be much better if you were 
 to reform your own life, instead of telling lies of those who arc immea- 
 surably your superiors. 
 
 Yours in supreme disgust, 
 
 A.D. 
 The signatures of the respected writers are altered, 
 and for the site of their Theatre Royal an adjacent place 
 is named, which (as I may have been falsely informed) 
 
76 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 used to be famous for quarrels, thumps and broken 
 heads. But, I say, is this an easy chair to sit on, when 
 you are liable to have a pair of such shillelaghs flung 
 at it? And, prithee, what was all the quarrel about? 
 In the little history of Lovel the Widower I described, 
 and brought to condign punishment, a certain wretch of 
 a ballet-dancer, who lived splendidly for awhile on ill- 
 gotten gains, had an accident, and lost her beauty, and 
 died poor, deserted, ugly, and every way odious. In 
 the same page, other little ballet-dancers are described, 
 wearing homely clothing, doing their duty, and carrying 
 their humble savings to the family at home. But 
 nothing will content my dear correspondents but to have 
 me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers have 
 villas in the Kegent's Park, and to convict me of " de- 
 liberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen 
 to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story ? 
 I might get an expostulatory letter saying, " Sir, in 
 stating that the majority of washerwomen are red-haired, 
 you are a liar ! and you had best not speak of ladies 
 who are immeasurably your superiors." Or suppose I 
 had ventured to describe an illiterate haberdasher? 
 One of the craft might write to me, " Sir, in describing 
 haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a wilful falsehood. 
 Haberdashers use much better English than authors." 
 
TJiorns in the Cushion, 77 
 
 It is a mistake, to be sure. I have never said what my 
 correspondents say I say. There is the text under their 
 noses, but what if they choose to read it their own way ? 
 " Hurroo, lads ! Here's for a fight. There's a bald head 
 peeping out of the hut. There's a bald head ! It must 
 be Tim Malone's." And whack ! come down both the 
 bludgeons at once. 
 
 Ah me! we wound where we never intended to 
 strike ; we create anger where we never meant harm ; 
 and these thoughts are the thorns in our Cushion. 
 Out of mere malignity, I suppose, there is no man 
 who would like to m.ake enemies. But here, in this 
 editorial business, you can't do otherwise : and a queer, 
 sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the 
 mind of many a public man : " Do what I will, be 
 innocent or spiteful, be generous or cruel, there are 
 A and B, and C and D, who will hate me to the end 
 of the chapter — to the chapters end — to the Finis of 
 the page — when hate, and envy, and fortune, and 
 disappointment shall be over." 
 
78 
 
 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 ON SCREENS IN MNING-EOOMS. 
 
 GRANDSONofthelate 
 
 Rev. Dr. Primrose 
 
 (of Wakefield, vicar) 
 
 wrote me a little 
 
 note from his country 
 
 living this morning, 
 
 and the kind fellow 
 
 lij had the precaution to 
 
 ==- Y^rite *^ No thorn " 
 A 
 
 upon the envelope, so 
 
 that ere I hroke the 
 
 seal, my mind might 
 
 be relieved of any 
 
 anxiety lest the letter 
 
 should contain one of 
 
 those lurking stabs which are so painful to the present 
 
 gentle writer. Your epigraph, my dear P., shows 
 
On Screens in Dining -Rooms. 79 
 
 your kind and artless nature ; but don't you see it 
 is of no use ? People who are bent upon assassinating 
 you in the manner mentioned will write "No thorn" 
 upon their envelopes too ; and you open the case, and 
 presently out flies a poisoned stiletto, which springs 
 into a man's bosom, and makes the wretch howl with 
 anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt 
 all sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all con- 
 ceivable corners, and tap his miserable shoulder. His 
 wife is taken ill ; his sweetheart, who remarked his 
 brilliant, too brilliant appearance at the Hyde Park 
 review, will meet him at Cremorne, or where you will. 
 The old friend who has owed him that money these five 
 years will meet him at so-and-so and pay. By one 
 bait or other the victim is hooked, netted, landed, and 
 down goes the basket-lid. It is not your wife, your 
 sweetheart, your friend, who is going to pay you. It 
 
 is Mr. Nab the bailiff. You know you are caught. 
 
 You are off in a cab to Chancery Lane. 
 
 You know, I say? Why should you know? I 
 make no manner of doubt you never were taken by 
 a bailiff in your life. I never was. I have been in 
 two or three debtors' prisons, but not on my own 
 account. Goodness be praised! I mean you can't 
 escape your lot ; and Nab only stands here metaphori- 
 
80 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 cally as the watchful, certain, and untiring officer of 
 Mr. Sheriff Fate. Why, my dear Primrose, this 
 morning along with your letter comes another, bearing 
 the well-known superscription of another old friend, 
 which I open without the least suspicion, and what do 
 I find? A few lines from my friend Johnson, it is 
 true, but they are written on a page covered with 
 feminine handwriting. " Dear Mr. Johnson," says the 
 Vt^riter, " I have just been perusing with delight a most 
 charming tale by the Archbishop of Cambray. It is 
 called Telemachus ; and I think it would be admirably 
 suited to the Cornhill Magazine, As you know the 
 Editor, will you have the great kindness, dear Mr. 
 Johnson, to communicate with him personally (as that 
 is much better than writing in a roundabout way to 
 Cornhill, and waiting goodness knows how long for 
 an answer), and stating my readiness to translate this 
 excellent and instructive story. I do not wish to breathe 
 a word against Lovel Parsonage, Framley the Widower, 
 or any of the novels which have appeared in the Corn- 
 hill Magazine, but I am sure Telemachus is as good as 
 new to English readers, and in point of interest and 
 morality /ar," &c. &c. &c. 
 
 There it is. I am stabbed through Johnson. He 
 has lent himself to this attack on me. He is weak 
 
On Screens in Dining-Rooms. 8 1 
 
 about women. Other strong men are. He submits to 
 the common lot, poor fellow. In my reply I do not use 
 a word of unkindness. I write him back gently, that I 
 fear Telemachus won't suit us. He can send the letter 
 on to his fair correspondent. But however soft the 
 answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned 
 away. Will there not be a coolness between him and 
 the lady ? and is it not possible that henceforth her fine 
 eyes will look with darkling glances upon the pretty 
 orange cover of our Magazine ? 
 
 Certain writers, they say, have a bad opinion of 
 women. Now am I very whimsical in supposing that 
 this disappointed candidate will be hurt at her rejec- 
 tion, and angry or cast down according to her nature ? 
 *' Angry, indeed ! " says Juno, gathering up her purple 
 robes and royal raiment. ^^ Sorry, indeed ! '" cries 
 Minerva, lacing on her corslet again, and scowling 
 under her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple 
 case has just been argued and decided.) " Hurt, for- 
 sooth ! Do you suppose we care for the opinion of that 
 hobnailed lout of a Paris ? Do you suppose that I, the 
 Goddess of Wisdom, can't make allowances for mortal 
 ignorance, and am so base as to bear malice against a 
 poor creature who knows no better ? You little know 
 the goddess nature when you dare to insinuate that our 
 
 6 
 
82 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 divine minds are actuated by motives so base. A love 
 of justice influences us. We are above mean revenge. 
 "We are too magnanimous to be angry at the award of 
 sucli a judge in favour of sucli a creature." And rust- 
 ling out their skirts, the ladies walk away together. 
 This is all very welL You are bound to believe them. 
 They are actuated by no hostility: not they. They 
 bear no malice — of course not. But when the Trojan 
 war occurs presently, which side will they take ? many 
 brave souls will be sent to Hades. Hector will perish. 
 Poor old Priam's bald numskull will be cracked, and 
 Troy town will burn, because Paris prefers golden- 
 haired Yenus to ox-eyed Juno and grey-eyed Minerva. 
 The last Essay of this Roundabout Series, describing 
 the griefs and miseries of the editorial chair, was 
 written, as the kind reader will acknowledge, in a mild 
 and gentle, not in a warlike or satirical spirit. I 
 showed how cudgels were applied; but, surely, the 
 meek object of persecution hit no blows in return. The 
 beating did not hurt much, and the person assaulted 
 could afford to keep his good-humour ; indeed, I ad- 
 mired that brave though illogical little actress, of the 
 T. R. D-bl-n, for her fiery vindication of her profes- 
 sion's honour. I assure her I had no intention to 
 tell 1 — s — well, let us say, monosyllables — about my 
 
On Screens in Dining-Rooms, 83 
 
 superiors : and I wish her nothing but well, and when 
 Macmahon (or shall it be Mulligan?) Roi d'Trlande, 
 ascends his throne, I hope she may be appointed pro- 
 fessor of English to the princesses of the royal house. 
 Nwper — in former days — I too have militated; some- 
 times, as I now think, unjustly; but always, I vow, 
 without personal rancour. Which of us has not idle 
 words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you 
 never committed an imprudence? Have you never 
 had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong? 
 So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui 
 croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief 
 madness, but a permanent mania. His rage is not a 
 fever-fit, but a black poison inflaming him, distorting 
 his judgment, disturbing his rest, embittering his cup, 
 gnawing at his pleasures, causing him more cruel suffer- 
 ing than ever he can inflict on his enemy. la belle 
 morale I As I write it, I think [about one or two little 
 affairs of my own. There is old Dr. Squaretoso (he 
 certainly was very rude to me, and that's the fact); 
 there is Madame Pomposa (and certainly her ladyship's 
 behaviour was about as cool as cool could be). Never 
 mind, old Squaretoso : never mind, Madame Pomposa ! 
 Here is a hand. Let us be friends, as we once were, 
 and have no more of this rancour. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 I had hardly sent that last Roundabout Paper to the 
 printer (which, I submit, was written in a pacable and 
 not unchristian frame of mind), when Saturday came, 
 and with it, of course, my Saturday Review, I remember 
 at New York coming down to breakfast at the hotel one 
 morning, after a criticism had appeared in the Neio 
 York Herald, in which an Irish writer had given me a 
 dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah ! my dear 
 little enemy of the T. R. D., what were the cudgels in 
 your little hillet-doux compared to those noble New York 
 shillelaghs ? All through the Union, the literary sons 
 of Erin have marched alpeen-^iock in hand, and in 
 every city of the States they call each other and every- 
 body else the finest names. Having come to breakfast, 
 then, in the public room, I sit down, and see — that the 
 nine people opposite have all got New York Heralds in 
 their hands. One dear little lady, whom I knew, and 
 who sate opposite, gave a pretty blush, and popped her 
 paper under the table-cloth. I told her I had had my 
 whipping already in my own private room, and begged 
 her to continue her reading. I may have undergone 
 agonies, you see, but every man who has been bred at- 
 an English public school comes away from a private 
 interview with Dr. Birch with a calm, even a smilincr 
 face. And this is not impossible, when you are pre- 
 
On Screens in Dining-Rooms, 85 
 
 pared. You screw your courage up — jou go through 
 the business. You come back and take your seat on the 
 form, showing not the least symptom of uneasiness or of 
 previous unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenly up, 
 and whipped in the bosom of your family — to sit down 
 to breakfast, and cast your innocent eye on a paper, 
 and find, before you are aware, that the Saturday 
 Monitor or Black Monday Instructor has hoisted you and 
 is laying on — that is indeed a trial. Or perhaps the 
 family has looked at the dreadful paper beforehand, and 
 weakly tries to hide it. " Where is the Instructor, or 
 the Monitor f " say you. " Where is that paper ? " says 
 mamma to one of the young ladies. Lucy hasn't it. 
 Fanny hasn't seen it. Emily thinks that the governess 
 has it. At last, out it is brought, that awful paper ! 
 Papa is amazingly tickled with the article on Thomson; 
 thinks that show up of Johnson is very lively ; and now 
 — heaven be good to us! — he has come to the critique 
 on himself: — ^^ Of all the rubbish which we have had 
 from Mr. Tomkins, we do protest and vow that this last 
 cartload is " &c. Ah, poor Tomkins ! — but most of all, 
 ah ! poor Mrs. Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fanny, 
 and Lucy, who have to sit by and see paterfamilias put 
 to the torture ! 
 
 Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry 
 
86 Roundabout Pampers. 
 
 because it was not so much the Editor as the Publisher 
 of the Cornhill Magazine who was brought out for a 
 dressing ; and it is wonderful how gallantly one bears 
 the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer should 
 be taken to task about his books^, is fair, and he must 
 abide the praise or the censure. But that a publisher 
 should be criticised for his dinners, and for the conver- 
 sation which did not take place there, — is this tolerable 
 press practice, legitimate joking, or honourable warfare ? 
 I have not the honour to know my next-door neighbour, 
 but I make no doubt that he receives his friends at 
 dinner ; I see his wife and children pass constantly ; I 
 even know the carriages of some of the people who call 
 upon him, and could tell their names. Now, suppose 
 his servants were to tell mine what the doings are next 
 door, who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and 
 T were to publish an account of these transactions in a 
 newspaper, I could assuredly get money for the report ; 
 but ought I to write it, and what would you think of me 
 for doing so ? 
 
 And suppose, Mr. Saturday Eeviewer — you censor 
 morum, you who pique yourself (and justly and honour- 
 ably in the main) upon your character of gentleman, as 
 well as of writer, — suppose, not that you yourself invent 
 and indite absurd twaddle about gentlemen's private 
 
O/i Screetis in Dhiing-Rooms, 87 
 
 meetings and transactions^ but pick this wretched garb- 
 age out of a New York street, and hold it up for your 
 readers' amusement- — don't you think, my friend, that 
 you might have been better employed ? Here, in my 
 Saturday Review, and in an American paper subsequently 
 sent to me, I light, astonished, on an account of the 
 dinners of my friend and publisher, which are described 
 as " tremendously heavy," of the conversation (which 
 does not take place), and of the guests assembled at the 
 table. I am informed that the proprietor of the Cornhill, 
 and the host on these occasions, is '' a very good man, 
 but totally unread ; " and that on my asking him whether 
 Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, 
 " God bless my soul, my dear sir, there's no person by 
 the name of Johnson here, nor any one behind the 
 screen," and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I 
 am informed by the same New York correspondent that 
 I have touched up a contributor's article ; that I once 
 said to a literary gentleman, who was proudly pointing 
 to an anonymous article as his writing, ^^ Ah I I thought 
 I recognized your lioof in it." I am told by the same 
 authority that the Cornhill Magazine '' shows symptoms 
 of being on the wane," and having sold nearly a hundred 
 thousand copies, he (the correspondent) " should think 
 forty thousand was now about the mark." Then the 
 
88 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 graceful writer passes on to the dinners, at which it 
 appears the Editor of the Magazine " is the great gun, 
 and comes out with all the geniality in his power." 
 
 Now suppose this charming intelligence is untrue? 
 Suppose the publisher (to recall the words of my friend 
 the Dublin actor of last month) is a gentleman to the 
 full as well informed as those whom he invites to^is 
 table? Suppose he never made the remark, beginning 
 — " God bless my soul, my dear sir," &c., nor anything 
 resembling it ? Suppose nobody roared with laughing ? 
 Suppose the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine never 
 " touched up " one single line of the contribution which 
 bears '' marks of his hand ? " Suppose he never said to 
 any literary gentleman, " I recognized your hoof'' in 
 any periodical whatever? Suppose the 40,000 sub- 
 scribers, which the writer to New York " considered to 
 be about the mark," should be between 90,000 and 
 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there they are). 
 Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly blun- 
 dering and untrue, would any one wonder ? Ah ! if we 
 had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer 
 among the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheer- 
 fulness and easy confidence his presence would impart 
 to our meetings ! He would find that " poor Mr. 
 Smith" had heard that recondite anecdote of Dr. 
 
On Screens in Dining-Rooms, 89 
 
 Johnson behind the screen ; and as for " the great gun 
 of those banquets," with what geniaHty should not I 
 " come out " if I had an amiable companion close by 
 me, dotting down my conversation for the New York 
 Times ! 
 
 Attack our books, Mr. Correspondent, and welcome. 
 They are fair subjects for just censure or praise. But 
 woe be to you, if you allow private rancours or ani- 
 mosities to influence you in the discharge of your public 
 duty. In the little court where you are paid to sit as 
 judge, as critic, you owe it to your employers, to your 
 conscience, to the honour of your calling, to deliver just 
 sentences ; and you shall have to answer to heaven for 
 your dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on 
 the Bench. The dignity of letters, the honour of the 
 literary calling, the slights put by haughty and unthink- 
 ing people upon literary men, — don't we hear outcries 
 upon these subjects raised daily ? As dear Sam Johnson 
 sits behind the screen, too proud to show his threadbare 
 coat and patches among the more prosperous brethren 
 of his trade, there is no want of dignity in him, in that 
 homely image of labour ill-rewarded, genius as yet un- 
 recognized, independence sturdy and uncomplaining. 
 But Mr. Nameless, behind the publisher's screen unin- 
 vited, peering at the company and the meal, catching up 
 
90 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 scraps of the jokes, and noting down the guests' 
 behaviour and conversation , — what a figure his is! 
 Allons, Mr. Nameless ! Put up your notebook ; walk 
 out of the hall ; and leave gentlemen alone who would 
 be private, and wish you no harm. 
 
91 
 
 TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 
 
 WONDER whether those little silver pencil-cases 
 with a moveable almanack at the butt-end are still 
 favourite implements with boys, and whether pedlars 
 still hawk them about the country ? Are there pedlars 
 and hawkers still, or are rustics and children grown too 
 
92 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 sharp to deal with them ? Those pencil-cases, as far as 
 my memory serves me, were not of much use. The 
 screw, upon which the moveable almanack turned, was 
 constantly getting loose. The 1 of the table would 
 work from its moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, 
 as the case might be, and you would find, on examina- 
 tion, that Th. or W. was the 23 J of the month (which 
 w^as absurd on the face of the thing), and in a word 
 your cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable time- 
 keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. Consider 
 the position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket. You 
 had hard-bake in it ; marbles, kept in your purse w^hen 
 the money was all gone ; your mother's purse knitted 
 so fondly and supplied with a little bit of gold, long 
 since — prodigal little son ! — scattered amongst the 
 swine — I mean amongst brandy-balls, open tarts, three- 
 cornered puffs, and similar abominations. You had a 
 top and string ; a knife ; a piece of cobbler's wax ; two 
 or three bullets ; a Little Warbler ; and I, for my 
 part, remember, for a considerable period, a brass- 
 barrelled pocket-pistol (which would fire beautifully, 
 for with it I shot off a button from Butt Major's 
 jacket); — with all these things, and ever so many 
 more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and your 
 hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual movement. 
 
Tunhridge Toys, 93 
 
 how could you expect your moveable almanack not to 
 be twisted out of its place now and again — your pencil- 
 case to be bent — your liquorice water not to leak out 
 of your bottle over the cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes 
 not to ram up the lock and barrel of your pistol, and 
 so forth. 
 
 In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I 
 bought one of those pencil-cases from a boy whom 
 I shall call Hawker, and who was in my form. Is he 
 dead ? Is he a millionnaire ? Is he a bankrupt now ? 
 He was an immense screw at school, and I believe 
 to this day that the value of the thing for which I owed 
 and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality 
 not one-and-nine. 
 
 I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and 
 amused myself with twiddling round the moveable 
 calendar. But this pleasure wore off. The jewel, 
 as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and 
 violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. 
 His constant remark was, " When are you going to pay 
 me that three-and-sixpence? What sneaks your re- 
 lations must be? They come to see you. You go 
 out to them on Saturdays and Sundays, and they 
 never give you anything! Don't tell me, you little 
 humbug ! " and so forth. The truth is that my relations 
 
94 Roundabout Papei^s. 
 
 were respectable ; but my parents were making a tour 
 in Scotland ; and my friends in London, whom I used 
 to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but 
 somehow never tipped me. That term, of May to 
 August, 1823, passed in agonies then, in consequence 
 of my debt to Hawker. What was the pleasure of a 
 calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and 
 torture of mind occasioned by the sense of the debt, 
 and the constant reproach in that fellow's scowling eyes 
 and gloomy, coarse reminders ? How was T to pay off 
 such a debt out of sixpence a week ? ludicrous ! Why 
 did not some one come to see me, and tip me ? Ah ! 
 my dear sir, if you have any little friends at school, 
 go and see them, and do the natural thing by them. 
 You won't miss the sovereign. You don't know what 
 a blessing it will be to them. Don't fancy they are too 
 old — try 'em. And they will remember you, and bless 
 you in future days ; and their gratitude shall accom- 
 pany your dreary after life ; and they shall meet you 
 kindly when thanks for kindness are scant. O mercy I 
 shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave me. Captain 
 Bob? or the agonies of bohig in debt to Hawker? 
 In that very term, a relation of mine was going to 
 India. I actually was fetched from school in order to 
 take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker of this 
 
Tunhridge Toys, 95 
 
 circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's 
 giving mo a pound. A pound ? Pooli ! A relation 
 going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his 
 darling kinsman, might give five pounds to tlie dear 
 Follow ! . . . . There was Hawker when I came 
 back — of course there he was. As he looked in my 
 scared face, his turned livid with rage. He muttered 
 curses, terrible from the Hps of so young a boy. 
 My relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative 
 appointment, asked mo with much interest about my 
 progress at school, heard me construe a passage of 
 Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was 
 then engaged ; gave me a God bless you, and sent me 
 back to school ; upon my word of honour, without so 
 much as a half-crown ! It is all very well, my dear 
 sir, to say that boys contract habits of expecting tips 
 from their parents' friends, that they become avaricious, 
 and so forth. Avaricious I fudge! Boys contract 
 habits of tart and toffee eating, which they do not 
 carry into after life. On the contrary, T wish I did 
 like 'em. What raptures of pleasure one could have 
 now for five shillings, if one could but pick it off the 
 pastrycook's tray I No. If you have any little friends at 
 school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart 
 to those little ones the little fleeting joys of their age. 
 
Roundabout Papers. 
 
 Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, 
 Bartlemy-tide holidays came, and I was to go to my 
 parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My place in 
 the coach was taken by my tutor's servants — Bolt-in- 
 Tun, Fleet Street, seven o'clock in the morning, 
 
 was the word. My Tutor, the Rev. Edward P , 
 
 to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had 
 a parting interview with me : gave me my little account 
 for my governor: the remaining part of the coach- 
 hire; ^YQ shillings for my own expenses; and some 
 five-and-twenty shillings on an old account which had 
 been overpaid, and was to be restored to my family. 
 
 Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. 
 Ouf ! what a weight it was off my mind ! (He was a 
 Norfolk boy, and used to go home from Mrs. Nelson's 
 Bell Inn, Aldgate — but that is not to the point.) The 
 next morning, of course, we were an hour before the 
 time. I and another boy shared a hackney-coach ; 
 two-and-six: porter for putting luggage on coach, 
 threepence. I had no more money of my own left. 
 Rasherwell, my companion, went into the Bolt-in-Tun 
 coffee-room, and had a good breakfast. I couldn't; 
 because, though I had five-and-twenty shillings of 
 my parents' money, I had none of my own, you see. 
 I certainly intended to go without breakfast, and 
 
Tunhridge Toys, 97 
 
 still remember how strongly I had that resolution in my 
 mind. But there was that hour to wait. A beautiful 
 August morning — I am very hungry. There is Rash- 
 erwell " tucking " away in the coffee-room. I pace 
 the street, as sadly almost as if I had been coming to 
 school, not going thence. I turn into a court by mere 
 chance — I vow it was by mere chance — and there I 
 see a coffee-shop with a placard in the window. Coffee^ 
 Twopence, Round of buttered toast, Tivopence, And 
 here am I hungry, penniless, with five-and-twenty 
 shillings of my parents' money in my pocket. 
 
 What would you have done ? You see I had had 
 my money, and spent it in that pencil-case affair. The 
 five-and-twenty shillings were a trust — by me to be 
 handed over. 
 
 But then would my parents wish their only child 
 to be actually without breakfast ? Having this money, 
 and being so hungry, so very hungry, mightn't I take 
 ever so little ? Mightn't I at home eat as much as I 
 chose ? 
 
 Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent four- 
 pence. I remember the taste of the coffee and toast 
 to this day — a peculiar, muddy, not-sweet-enough, 
 most fragrant coffee — a rich, rancid, yet not-buttered- 
 enough, delicious toast. The waiter had nothing. At 
 
 7 
 
Roundabout Papers, 
 
 any rate, fourpence I know Avas the sum I spent. And 
 the hunger appeased, I got on the coach a guilty being. 
 
 At the last stage, — what is its name? I have for- 
 gotten in seven-and-thirty years, — there is an inn with a 
 little green and trees before it ; and by the trees there 
 is an open carriage. It is our carriage. Yes, there are 
 Prince and Blucher, the horses ; and my parents in the 
 carriage. Oh ! how I had been counting the days until 
 this one came! Oh! how happy had I been to see 
 them yesterday ! But there was that fourpence. All 
 the journey down the toast had choked me, and the 
 coffee poisoned me. 
 
 I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, 
 that I forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender 
 paternal voice. I pull out the twenty-four shillings and 
 eightpence with a trembling hand. 
 
 '* Here's your money," I gasp out, "which Mr. P 
 
 owes you, all but fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence 
 to Hawker out of my money for a pencil-case, and I had 
 none left, and I took fourpence of yours, and had some 
 coffee at a shop." 
 
 I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering 
 this confession. 
 
 " My dear boy," says the governor, " why didn't you 
 go and breakfast at the hotel ? " 
 
Turibridge Toys, 99 
 
 " He must be starved," says my mother. 
 
 I had confessed ; I had been a prodigal ; I had been 
 taken back to my parents' arms again. It was not a 
 very great crime as yet, or a very long career of prodi- 
 gality ; but don't we know that a boy who takes a pin 
 which is not his own, will take a thousand poimds when 
 occasion serves, bring his parents' grey heads with 
 sorrow to the grave, and carry his own to the gallows ? 
 Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our 
 friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began 
 by playing pitch-and-toss on a tombstone : playing fair, 
 for what we know: and even for that sin he was 
 promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo was ineffec- 
 tual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. 
 From pitch-and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if 
 necessary: to highway robbery; to Tyburn and the 
 rope there. Ah ! heaven be thanked, my parents' 
 heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of thet 
 noose. 
 
 As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge "Wells 
 Common and the rocks, the strange familiar place which 
 I remember forty years ago. Boys saunter over the 
 green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop 
 by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is Cramp, 
 Eidmg Master, as it used to be in the reign of George IV., 
 
 7—2 
 
100 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 and that Centaur Cramp must be at least a hundred 
 years old. Yonder comes a footman with a bundle of 
 novels from the library. Are they as good as our 
 novels ? Oh ! how delightful they were ! Shades of 
 Valancour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how I shudder at 
 your appearance ! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, 
 how often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict 
 you in a Polish cap and richly embroidered tights! 
 And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue pantaloons and 
 Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from the country, can all 
 the fashion, can all the splendour of real life which these 
 eyes have subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have 
 heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, 
 w^ith your brilliancy, with your delightful grace, and 
 sparkling vivacious rattle ? 
 
 Who knows ? They may have kept those very books 
 at the library still — at the well-remembered library on 
 the Pantiles, where they sell that delightful, useful Tun- 
 bridge ware. I will go and see. I went my way to 
 the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a 
 hundred years since, so much good company came to 
 take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the past century, 
 gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in a lecture 
 on George II. in the Cor7iJiiIl Magazine) assembled here 
 and entertained each other with gaming, dancing. 
 
Tunhridge Toys. 101 
 
 fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and 
 trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little 
 old balcony, but where is the fine company ? Where 
 are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent em- 
 broidered gamesters? A half dozen of children and 
 their nurses are listening to the musicians ; an old lady 
 or two in a poke bonnet passes, and for the rest, I see 
 but an uninteresting population of native tradesmen. 
 As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly 
 theologians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so 
 forth. Can I go in and ask the young ladies at the 
 counter for Manfroni, or the One-Handed Monk, and Life 
 in London, or the Adventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah 
 Hawthorn, Esq., and their friend Bob Logic ? — absurd. 
 I turn away abashed from the casement — from the 
 Pantiles — no longer Pantiles, but Parade. I stroll over 
 the Common and survey the beautiful purple hills 
 around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which 
 have sprung up over this charming ground since first I 
 saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty I 
 What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the 
 cloud shadows across it, and murmurs through the full 
 clad trees ! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, 
 more cheerful ? I see a portion of it when I look up 
 from the window at which I write. But fair scene. 
 
102 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 green woods, bright terraces gleaming in sunshine, and 
 purple clouds swollen with summer rain — nay, the very- 
 pages over which my head bends — disappear from before 
 my eyes. They are looking backwards, back into forty 
 years off, into a dark room, into a little house hard by 
 on the Common here, in the Bartlemy-tide holidays. 
 The parents have gone to town for two days : the house 
 is all his own, his own and a grim old maid-servant's, 
 and a little boy is seated at night in the lonely drawing- 
 room, poring over Manfroni, or the One-Handed Monky 
 so frightened that he scarcely dares to turn round. 
 
103 
 
 DE JUTENTDTE. 
 
 UR last Paper of this vera- 
 cious and roundabout series 
 related to a period which 
 can only be historical to a 
 great number of readers 
 of this Magazine. Four I 
 saw at the station to-day 
 with orange-covered books 
 in their hands, who can 
 but have known George IV. by books, and statues, 
 and pictures. Elderly gentlemen were in their prim 
 old men in their middle age, when he reigne 
 over us. His image remains on coins ; on a picture 
 or two hanging here and there in a Club or old- 
 fashioned dining-room; on horseback, as at Trafalgar 
 Square, for example, where I defy any monarch to look 
 more uncomfortable. He turns up in sundry memoirs 
 
104 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 and histories which have been published of late days ; 
 in Mr. Massey's History ; in the Buckingham and 
 Grenville Correspondence; and gentlemen who have 
 accused a certain writer of disloyalty are referred to 
 those volumes to see whether the picture drawn of 
 George is overcharged. Charon has paddled him off; 
 he has mingled with the crowded republic of the dead. 
 His effigy smiles from a canvas or two. Breechless he 
 bestrides his steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he 
 still wears his robes at Madame Tussaud's (Madame 
 herself having quitted Baker Street and life, and found 
 him she modelled t'other side the Stygian stream). On 
 the head of a five-shilling piece we still occasionally- 
 come upon him, with St. George, the dragon-slayer, on 
 the other side of the coin. Ah me ! did this George 
 slay many dragons ? Was he a brave, heroic champion, 
 and rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! have you and I 
 overcome all the dragons that assail us ? come alive and 
 victorious out of all the caverns which w^e have entered 
 in life, and succoured, at risk of life and limb, all poor 
 distressed persons in whose naked limbs the dragon 
 Poverty is about to fasten his fangs, whom the dragon 
 Crime is poisoning with his horrible breath, and about 
 to crunch up and devour ? O my royal liege ! O my 
 gracious prince and warrior ! You a champion to fight 
 
De Juventute. 105 
 
 that monster ? Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy 
 paunch or plated back? See how the flames come 
 gurgling out of his red-hot brazen throat ! What a roar ! 
 Nearer and nearer he trails, with eyes flaming like the 
 lamps of a railroad engine. How he squeals, rushing 
 out through the darkness of his tunnel ! Now he is 
 near. Now he is here. And now — what ? — lance, shield, 
 knight, feathers, horse and all ? O horror, horror ! 
 Next day, round the monster's cave, there lie a few 
 bones more. You, who wish to keep yours in your 
 skins, be thankful that you are not called upon to go 
 out and flght dragons. Be grateful that they don't sally 
 out and swallow you. Keep a wise distance from their 
 caves, lest you pay too dearly for approaching them. 
 Kemember that years passed, and whole districts 
 were ravaged, before the warrior came who was able 
 to cope with the devouring monster. When that knight 
 does make his appearance, with all my heart let us go 
 out and welcome him with our best songs, huzzahs, 
 and laurel wreaths, and eagerly recognize his valour 
 and victory. But he comes only seldom. Countless 
 knights were slain before St. George won the battle. 
 In the battle of life are we all going to try for 
 the honours of championship? If we can do our 
 duty, if we can keep our place pretty honourably 
 
lOS Roundabout Paper. 
 
 through the combat, let us say, Laus Deo ! at the 
 end of it, as the firing ceases, and the night falls 
 over the field. 
 
 The old were middle-aged, the elderly were in their 
 prime, then, thirty years since, when yon royal George 
 was still fighting the dragon. As for you, my pretty 
 lass, with your saucy hat and golden tresses tumbled 
 in your net, and you, my spruce young gentleman in 
 your mandarin's cap (the young folks at the country- 
 place where I am staying are so attired), your parents 
 were unknown to each other, and wore short frocks and 
 short jackets, at the date of this five-shilling piece. 
 Only to-day I met a dog-cart crammed with children — 
 children with mustachios and mandarin caps — children 
 with saucy hats and hair-nets — children in short frocks 
 and knickerbockers (surely the prettiest boy's dress that 
 has appeared these hundred years) — children from 
 twenty years of age to six ; and father, with mother by 
 his side, driving in front — and on father's countenance I 
 saw that very laugh which I remember perfectly in the 
 time when this crown-piece was coined — in Ms time, in 
 King George's time, when we were school-boys seated 
 on the same form. The smile was just as broad, as 
 bright, as jolly, as I remember it in the past — unfor- 
 gotten, though not seen or thought of, for how many 
 
De Juventute, 107 
 
 decades of years, and quite and instantly familiar, 
 though so long out of sight. 
 
 Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and 
 reads the inscription round the laurelled head, " Georgius 
 IV. Britanniarum Rex. Fid. Def. 1823," if he will but 
 look steadily enough at the round, and utter the proper 
 incantation, I daresay may conjure back his life there. 
 Look well, my elderly friend, and tell me what you see ? 
 First, I see a Sultan, with hair, beautiful hair, and a 
 crown of laurels round his head, and his name is 
 Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., and so on. Now the Sultan 
 has disappeared ; and what is that I see ? A boy, — a 
 boy in a jacket. He is at a desk; he has great books 
 before him, Latin and Greek books and dictionaries. 
 Yes, but behind the great books, which he pretends to 
 read, is a little one, with pictures, which he is really 
 reading. It is — yes, I can read now — it is the Heart of 
 Mid Lothian, by the author of Waverley — or, no, it is 
 Life in London, or the Adventures of Corinthian Tom, 
 Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Boh Ljogic, by 
 Pierce Egan ; and it has pictures — oh ! such funny 
 pictures ! As he reads, there comes behind the boy, a 
 man, a dervish, in a black gown, like a woman, and a 
 black square cap, and he has a book in each hand, and 
 he seizes the boy who is reading the picture-book, and 
 
108 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 lays his head upon one of his books, and smacks it with 
 the other. The boy makes faces, and so that picture 
 disappears. 
 
 Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a 
 black gown and cap, something like the dervish. He 
 is at a table, with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, 
 and tobacco ; and other young dervishes come in. They 
 seem as if they were singing. To them enters an old 
 mooUah, he takes down their names, and orders them 
 all to go to bed. What is this ? a carriage, with four 
 beautiful horses all galloping — a man in red is blowing 
 a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage — 
 one of them is driving the horses. Surely they won't 
 drive into that— ah ! they have all disappeared ? And 
 now I see one of the young men alone. He is walking 
 in a street — a dark street — presently a light comes to a 
 window. There is the shadow of a lady who passes. 
 He stands there till the light goes out. Now he is in 
 a room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a 
 miniature every now and then. They seem to be lines 
 each pretty much of a length. I can read heart, smart, 
 dart ; Mary, fairy ; Cupid, stupid ; true, you ; and never 
 mind what more. Bah ! it is bosh. Now see, he has 
 got a gown on again, and a wig of white hair on his 
 head, and he is sitting with other dervishes in a great 
 
De Juveniute. 109 
 
 room full of them, and on a throne in the middle is an 
 old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk, and he wears 
 a wig too — and the young man gets up and speaks 
 to him. And now what is here ? He is in a room with 
 ever so many children, and the miniature hanging up. 
 Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting before 
 that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from 
 which she is pouring hot liquor into cups ? Was she 
 ever a fairy? She is as fat as a hippopotamus now. 
 He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He has a paper 
 on his knees. Read the name of the paper. It is the 
 Superjine Review, It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens 
 is not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray is not a true 
 gentleman, and that when the one is pert and the other 
 is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Swperfine Eevieiv, 
 think, and think rightly, that we have some cause to be 
 indignant. The great cause why modern humour and 
 modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are un- 
 warrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Superjine 
 Reviewer thinks, " was a true sentimentalist, because he 
 was above all tilings a true gentleman." The flattering 
 inference is obvious : let us be thankful for having an 
 elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too 
 old, to imitate his highbred politeness and catch his 
 unobtrusive grace. If we are unwarrantably familiar. 
 
110 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 we know who is not. If we repel by pertness, we know 
 who never does. If our language offends, we know 
 whose is always modest. O pity! The vision has 
 disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the 
 past are vanishing away ! We who have lived before 
 railways were made, belong to another world. In how 
 many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from 
 Brighton to London, with a light carriage built ex- 
 pressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the next 
 stage? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coach- 
 man of the Age, who took our half-crown so affably ? 
 It was only yesterday ; but what a gulph between now 
 and then? Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, 
 more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highway- 
 men, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman 
 legions, Druids, Ancient Britons, painted blue, and 
 so forth — all these belong to the old period. I will 
 concede a halt in the midst of it, and allow that gun- 
 powder and printing tended to modernize the world* 
 But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a 
 certain age belong to the new time and the old one. 
 We are of the time of chivalry as well as the Black 
 Prince or Sir Walter Manny. We are of the age of 
 steam. We have stepped out of the old world on to 
 Brunei's vast deck, and across the waters ingens patet 
 
De Juventute. Ill 
 
 tellus. Towards what new continent are we wending ? 
 to what new laws, new manners, new politics, vast new 
 expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised ? 
 I used to know a man who had invented a flying- 
 machine. " Sir," he would say, " give me but five 
 hundred pounds, and I will make it. It is so simple 
 of construction that I tremble daily lest some other 
 person should light upon and patent my discovery.'* 
 Perhaps faith was wanting ; perhaps the five hundred 
 pounds. He is dead, and somebody else must make 
 the flying-machine. But that will only be a step 
 forward on the journey already begun since we quitted 
 the old world. There it lies on the other side of yonder 
 embankments. You young folks have never seen it : 
 and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and 
 George lY. than Sardanapalus. We elderly people 
 have lived in that praerailroad world, which has passed 
 into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it 
 was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They 
 have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut 
 off" the old world that was behind them. Climb up that 
 bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the other 
 side — it is gone. There is no other side. Try and 
 catch yesterday. Where is it? Here is a Times 
 newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 
 
112 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as 
 yesterday ? 
 
 We who lived before railways, and survive out of 
 the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family 
 out of the Ark. The children will gather round and 
 say to us patriarchs, " Tell us, grandpapa, about the 
 old world." And we shall mumble our old stories ; 
 and we shall drop off one by one ; and there will be 
 fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. 
 There will be but ten prserailroadites left : then three 
 — then two — then one — then ! If the hippopotamus 
 had the least sensibility (of which I cannot trace any 
 signs either in his hide or his face), I think he would 
 go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come 
 up again. Does he not see that he belongs to bygone 
 ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out 
 of place in these times ? What has he in common with 
 the brisk young life surrounding him ? In the watches 
 of the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the 
 birds are on one leg, when even the little armadillo is 
 quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chatter, — he, 
 I mean the hippopotamus, and the elephant, and the 
 long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads 
 together and have a colloquy about the great silent 
 antediluvian world which they remember, where 
 
De Juventute, 113 
 
 mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles 
 basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the 
 caves and waters before men were made to slay them. 
 We who lived before railways — are antediluvians — we 
 must pass away. We are growing scarcer every day ; 
 and old — old — very old relicts of the times when 
 George was still fighting the Dragon. 
 
 Not long since, a company of horse -riders paid a visit 
 to our watering-place. We went to see them, and I 
 bethought me that young Walter Juvenis, who w^as in 
 the place, might like also to witness the performance. 
 A pantomime is not always amusing to persons who 
 have attained a certain age ; but a boy at a pantomime 
 is always amused and amusing, and, to see his pleasure, 
 is good for most hypochondriacs. 
 
 We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might 
 join us, and the kind lady replied that the boy had 
 already been at the morning performance of the eques- 
 trians, but was most eager to go in the evening likewise. 
 And go he did; and laughed at all Mr. Merryman's 
 remarks, though he remembered them with remarkable 
 accuracy, and insisted upon waiting to the very end of 
 the fun, and was only induced to retire just before its 
 conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party 
 would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo 
 
 8 
 
114 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 the rush and trample of the crowd round about. When 
 this fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at once, 
 though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking longingly 
 towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth. We 
 were scarcely clear of the place, when wx heard " God 
 save the King," played by the equestrian band, the 
 signal that all was over. Our companion entertained 
 us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home — 
 precious crumbs of wit which he had brought away 
 from that feast. He laughed over them again as we 
 walked under the stars. He has them now, and takes 
 them out of the pocket of his memory, and crunches 
 a bit, and relishes it with a sentimental tenderness, too, 
 for he is, no doubt, back at school by this time ; the 
 holidays are over ; and Doctor Birch's young friends 
 have reassembled. 
 
 Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths 
 to grin ! As the jaded Merryman uttered them to 
 the old gentleman with the whip, some of the old 
 folks in the audience, I daresay, indulged in reflections 
 of their own. There was one joke — I utterly forget 
 it — but it began with Merryman saying what he had 
 for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, 
 after which " he had to come to business J^ And then 
 came the point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor 
 
De Jumntute. 115 
 
 Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you read this, will 
 you please send me a line, and let me know what 
 was the joke Mr. Merryman made about having his 
 dinner? You remember well enough. But do I 
 want to know ? Suppose a boy takes a favourite, 
 long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and 
 offers you a bite? Merci! The fact is, I doiit care 
 much about knowing that joke of Mr. Merry man's. 
 
 But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his 
 mutton, and his landlord, and his business, I felt a 
 great interest about Mr. M. in private life — about his 
 wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history, and I 
 daresay was forming a picture of those in my mind : — r 
 wife cooking the mutton ; children waiting for it ; 
 Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth ; daring 
 which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed 
 at, and Mr. M., resuming his professional duties, was 
 tumbling over head and heels. Do not suppose I am 
 going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about 
 buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, 
 Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes ; Opposition 
 leaders prepare and polish them ; Tabernacle preachers 
 must arrange them in their mind before they utter 
 them. All I mean is, that I would like to know any 
 one of these performers thoroughly, and out of his 
 
 8—2 
 
116 Iiou7idahout Papers. 
 
 uniform : that preacher, and why in his travels this 
 and that point struck him; wherein lies his power 
 of pathos, humour, eloquence ; — that Minister of State, 
 and what moves him, and how his private heart is 
 working ; — I would only say that, at a certain time of 
 life certain things cease to interest: but about some 
 things when we cease to care, what will be the use 
 of life, sight, hearing? Poems are written, and we 
 cease to admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we 
 yawn ; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned; 
 The last time I saw a ballet at the opera — oh ! it 
 is many years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging 
 my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amuse- 
 ment to the company, while the feet of five hundred 
 nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few 
 paces' distance. Ah, I remember a different state of 
 things ! Credite posferi. To see those nymphs — 
 gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That 
 leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled 
 old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping 
 down on her board out of time — that an opera-dancer ? 
 Pooh ! My dear Walter, the great difference between 
 my time and yours, who will enter life some two or 
 three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women 
 and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time. 
 
De Juventute. 117 
 
 and out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the 
 dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stock- 
 ings, that I am surprised how anybody can like to 
 look at them. And as for laughing at me for fall- 
 ing asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing 
 otherwise. In my time, a la bonne lieure. In the 
 reign of George lY., I give you my honour, all the 
 dancers at the opera were as beautiful as Houris. 
 Even in William lY.'s time, when I think of Duver- 
 nay prancing in as the Bayadere, — I say it w^as a 
 vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see 
 now-a-days. How well I remember the tune to 
 which she used to appear ! Kaled used to say to the 
 Sultan, " My lord, a troop of those dancing and slug- 
 ging gurls called Bayaderes approaches," and, to the 
 clash of cymbals, and the thumping of my heart, in 
 she used to dance ! There has never been anything 
 like it — never. There never will be — I laugh to scorn 
 old people who tell me about your Noblet, your 
 Montessu, your Yestris, your Parisot — pshaw, the 
 senile twaddlers! And the impudence of the young 
 men, with their music and their dancers of to-day! 
 I tell you the women are dreary old creatures. I 
 tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and 
 they send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi 
 
118 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 de Begnis, thou lovely one ! Ah> Caradori, thou 
 smiling angel ! Ah, Malibran ! Nay, I will come to 
 modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a 
 -very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was 
 the boy for me): and then we had Ambrogetti, and 
 Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer. 
 
 But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay 
 of stage beauty since the days of George lY. Think of 
 Sontag ! I remember her in Otello and the Donna del 
 Lago in '28. I remember being behind the scenes at 
 the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion 
 used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down 
 over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli. 
 Young fellows have never seen beauty like that, heard 
 such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell me ! 
 A man who has been about town since the reign of 
 George lY., ought he not to know better than you 
 young lads who have seen nothing ? The deterioration 
 of women is lamentable ; and the conceit of the young 
 fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this 
 fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours. 
 
 Bless me ! when I was a lad, the stage was covered 
 with angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I 
 remember the Adelphi, and^the actresses there : when I 
 think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle 
 
De Juventute. 119 
 
 at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils — of the 
 Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, 
 and Pauline Leroux, and a host more ! One much- 
 admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, 
 and that was the chief male dancer — a very important 
 personage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, 
 and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause 
 with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door 
 for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I 
 am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti — your 
 old fogey who can see no good except in his own time. 
 
 They say that claret is better now-a-days, and cookery 
 much improved since the days of my monarch — of 
 George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly not so good. I 
 have often eaten half-a-crown's worth (including, I trust, 
 ginger-beer) at ou.r school pastrycook's, and that is a 
 proof that the pastry must have been very good, for 
 could I do as much now ? I passed by the pastrycook's 
 shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. It 
 looked a very dingy old baker's ; misfortunes may have 
 come over him — those penny tarts certainly did not 
 look so nice as I remember them : but he may have 
 grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him 
 to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand 
 may have lost its cunning. 
 
J 20 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Not that we were not great epicures. I remember 
 how we constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food 
 in our master's house — which on my conscience I believe 
 was excellent and plentiful — and how we tried once or 
 twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastry- 
 cook's we may have over-eaten ourselves (I have 
 admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own part, but I 
 don't like to mention the real figure for fear of pervert- 
 ing the present generation of boys by my monstrous 
 confession) — we may have eaten too much, I say. We ' 
 did ; but what then ? The school apothecary was sent 
 for : a couple of small globules at night, a trifling pre- 
 paration of senna in the morning, and we had not to go 
 to school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure. 
 
 For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, 
 which were pretty much in old times as they are now 
 (except cricket, par exemple — and I wish the present 
 youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and 
 Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces 
 next), there were novels — ah ! I trouble you to find such 
 novels in the present day ! O Scottish Chiefs, didn't 
 we weep over you ! O Mysteries of Udolfo, didn't I 
 and Briggs minor draw pictures out of you, as I have 
 said ? This was the sort of thing : this was the fashion 
 in our day : — 
 
122 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and 
 our friends. " I say, old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured 
 in the Inquisition," or, " Draw ns Don Quixote and the 
 windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who 
 had a love of drawing. Peregrine Pickle we liked, our 
 fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it 
 was capital fun ; but I think I was rather bewildered by 
 it, though Roderick Random was and remains delight- 
 ful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school 
 library, no doubt because the works of that divine were 
 not considered decent for young people. Ah ! not 
 against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, 
 would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful 
 to live in times w^hen men no longer have the tempta- 
 tion to write so as to call blushes on women's cheeks, 
 and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to honest 
 boys. Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the 
 kindly, the generous, the pure — the companion of what 
 countless delightful hours ; the purveyor of how much 
 happiness ; the friend whom w^e recall as the constant 
 benefactor of our youth ! How well I remember the 
 type and the brownish paper of the old duodecimo Tales 
 of 'My Landlord! I have never dared to read the 
 Pirate, and the Bride of Lammermoor, or Kenilivorth, 
 from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy. 
 
De Juventute. 123 
 
 and people die, and are murdered at the end. But 
 Ivanlioe, and Quentin Duricard ! Oh ! for a half- 
 hoKdaj, and a quiet corner, and one of those books 
 again ! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with 
 which we read them ; and, it may be, the brains behind 
 the eyes ! It may be the tart was good ; but how fresh 
 the appetite was ! If the gods would give me the desire 
 of my heart, I should be able to write a story which 
 boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. 
 The boy-critic loves the story : grown up, he loves the 
 author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is 
 established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty 
 nearly for life. I meet people now who don't care for 
 Walter Scott, or the Arabian Nights ; I am sorry for 
 them, unless they in their time have found their 
 romancer — their charming Scheherazade. By the way, 
 Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the 
 favourite novelist in the fourth form now ? Have you 
 got anything so good and kindly as dear Miss Edge- 
 worth's Frank f It used to belong to a fellow's sisters 
 generally ; but though he pretended to despise it, and 
 said, " Oh, stuff for girls ! " he read it ; and I think 
 there were one or two passages which would try my 
 eyes now, were I to meet with the little book. 
 
 As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty 
 
124 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 way of calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the Britisli 
 Museum tlie other clay on purpose to get it ; but some- 
 how, if you will press the question so closely, on re- 
 perusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as 1 had 
 supposed it to be. The pictures are just as fine as 
 ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry 
 Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after 
 many years' absence. But the style of the writing, 
 I own, was not pleasing to me; I even thought it a 
 little vulgar — well ! well ! other writers have been con- 
 sidered vulgar — and as a description of the sports and 
 amusements of London in the ancient times, more 
 curious than amusing. 
 
 But the pictures ! — oh ! the pictures are noble still ! 
 First, there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a 
 green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for 
 a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian 
 Tom's tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure 
 and fashion. The park ! delicious excitement ! The 
 theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rapturous 
 bliss — tlie opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple 
 Bar, to knock down a Charley there ! There are Jerry 
 and Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats, 
 coming from the opera — very much as gentlemen in 
 waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are 
 
De Juventute. 125 
 
 at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred per- 
 sonages, with the Duke of Clarence himself looking at 
 them dancing. Now, strange change, they are in Tom 
 Cribb's parlour, where they don't seem to be a whit less 
 at home than in fashion's gilded halls : and now they 
 are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the male- 
 factors' legs previous to execution. What hardened 
 ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow 
 breeches ! What compunction in the face of the gentle- 
 man in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and 
 who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain I 
 Now we haste away to merrier scenes : to Tattersall's 
 (ah ! gracious powers ! what a funny fellow that actor 
 was who performed Dicky Green in that scene at the 
 play !) ; and now we are at a private party, at which 
 Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully, too, 
 as you must confess) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob 
 Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the piano ! 
 
 " After," the text says, " the Oxonian had played 
 several pieces of lively music, he requested as a favour 
 that Kate and his friend Tom would perform a waltz. 
 Kate without any hesitation immediately stood up. Tom 
 offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the 
 dance took place. The plate conveys a correct repre- 
 sentation of the ' gay scene ' at that precise momenta 
 
126 
 
 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 The anxiety of the Oxonian to witness the attitudes of 
 the elegant pair had nearly put a stop to their move- 
 ments. On turning round from the pianoforte and pre- 
 senting his comical mug, Kate could scarcely suppress a 
 laugh." 
 
De Jumntute, 127 
 
 And no wonder; just look at it now (as I liave 
 copied it to the best of my humble ability), and com- 
 pare Master Logic's countenance and attitude wdth the 
 splendid elegance of Tom ! Now every London man is 
 weary and hlasL There is an enjoyment of life in these 
 young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with 
 our feelings of 1860. Here, for instance, is a specimen 
 of their talk and walk. " ^ If,' says Logic — * if enjoy- 
 orient is your mottOi you may make the most of an even- 
 ing at Yauxhall, more than at any other place in the 
 metropolis. It is all free and easy. Stay as long as 
 you like, and depart when you think proper.' — ' Your 
 description is so flattering,' replied Jerry, ^that I do 
 not care how soon the time arrives for us to start.' 
 Logic proposed a ' hit of a stroll ' in order to get rid of 
 an hour or tw^o, which was immediately accepted by 
 Tom and Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a stroll 
 through Piccadilly, a look in at Tattersall's, a ramble 
 through Pall Mall, and a strut on the Corinthian path, 
 fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for 
 dinner arrived, w^hen a few glasses of Tom's rich 
 wines soon put them on the qui vive, Vauxhall was 
 then the object in view, and the Trio started, bent 
 upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply 
 affords." 
 
128 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those 
 capitals, bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye ! 
 They are as good as jokes, though you mayn't 
 quite perceive the point. Mark the varieties of 
 lounge in which the young men indulge — now a stroll, 
 then a looh in, then a ramble, and presently a strut. 
 When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have 
 read in an old Magazine, " the Prince's lounge " w^as a 
 peculiar manner of walking which the young bucks 
 imitated. At Windsor George III. had a cat's path — 
 a sly early walk which the good old king took in the 
 gray morning before his household was astir. What 
 was the Corinthian path here recorded? Does any 
 antiquary know ? And what were the rich wines which 
 our friends took, and which enabled them to enjoy 
 Vauxhall? Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which 
 could occasion such a delightful perversion of the 
 intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, 
 what were they ? 
 
 So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, 
 the rustic, is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and 
 is forced to go home, and the last picture rei^resents 
 him getting into the coach at the White Horse Cellar, 
 he being one of six inside; whilst his friends shake 
 him by the hand ; whilst the sailor mounts on the roof; 
 
De Juventiite. 129 
 
 whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives, 
 and sealing-wax : whilst the guard is closing the door. 
 Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors ? where 
 are the guards ? where are the jolly teams ? where are 
 the coaches ? and where the youth that climbed inside 
 and out of them; that heard the merry horn which 
 sounds no more ; that saw the sunrise over Stonehenge ; 
 that rubbed away the bitter tears at night after parting 
 as the coach sped on the journey to school and London ; 
 that looked out with beating heart as the milestones 
 flew by, for the welcome corner where began home and 
 holidays ? 
 
 It is night now : and here is home. Gathered under 
 the quiet roof elders and children lie alike at rest. In 
 the midst of a great peace and calm, the stars look out 
 from the heavens. The silence is peopled with the 
 past; sorrowful remorses for sins and shortcomings 
 — memories of passionate joys and griefs rise out of 
 their graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, 
 as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to 
 shine. The town and the fair landscape sleep under 
 the starlight, wreathed in the autumn mists. Twink- 
 ling among the houses a light keeps watch here and 
 there, in what may be a sick chamber or two. The 
 clock tolls sweetly in the silent air. Here is night and 
 
 9 
 
130 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the heart swell, 
 and the head bow, as I pass to my room through the 
 sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing 
 were upon it. 
 
131 
 
 ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD FROM THE LATE 
 THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 HE good - natured 
 reader who has pe- 
 rused some of these 
 rambling papers has 
 long since seen (if to 
 see has been worth 
 his trouble) that the 
 writer belongs to the 
 old-fashioned classes 
 of this world, loves 
 to remember very- 
 much more than to 
 prophesy, and though 
 he can't help being carried onward, and downward, 
 perhaps, on the hill of life, the swift milestones marking 
 their forties, fifties — how many tens or lustres shall we 
 say? — he sits under Time, the white -wigged charioteer, 
 
 9—2 
 
132 Roundabout Papei 
 
 with his back to the horses, and his face to the past, 
 looking at the receding landscape and the hills fading 
 into the grey distance. Ah me! those grey, distant 
 hills were green once, and here, and covered with 
 smiling people ! As we came up the hill there was 
 difficulty, and here and there a hard pull to be sure, 
 but strength, and spirits, and all sorts of cheery inci- 
 dent and companionship on the road ; there were the 
 tough struggles (by Heaven's merciful will) overcome, 
 the pauses, the faintings, the weakness, the lost way, 
 perhaps, the bitter weather, the dreadful partings, the 
 lonely night, the passionate grief — towards these I turn 
 my thoughts as I sit and think in my hobby-coach under 
 Time, the silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks 
 in the same carriage meanwhile are looking forwards. 
 Nothing escapes their keen eyes — not a flower at the 
 side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced 
 children at the gate : the landscape is all bright, the 
 air brisk and jolly, the town yonder looks beautiful, and 
 do you think they have learned to be difficult about the 
 dishes at the inn ? 
 
 Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his 
 wife and children in the sociable, and he passes an 
 ordinary brick house on the road with an ordinary 
 little garden in the front, we will say, and quite an 
 
On a Johe I once heard from the late T. Hood. 1 33 
 
 ordinary knocker to the door, and as many sashed 
 windows as you please, quite common and square, and 
 tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others ; or 
 suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he 
 sees an ordinary tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing 
 under it, if you like — wife and daughter look at these 
 objects without the slightest particle of curiosity or 
 interest. What is a brass knocker to them but a lion's 
 head, or what not ? and a thorn-tree with a pool beside 
 it, but a pool in which a thorn and a jackass are 
 reflected ? 
 
 But you remember how once upon a time your heart 
 used to beat, as you beat on that brass knocker, and 
 whose eyes looked from the window above? You 
 remember how by that thorn-tree and pool, where 
 the geese were performing a prodigious evening con- 
 cert, there might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody 
 in a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be 
 coming from a village yonder, and whose image has 
 flickered in that pool ? In that pool, near the thorn ? 
 Yes, in that goose-pool, never mind how long ago, 
 when there were reflected the images of the geese— 
 and two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster may 
 have the advantage of his young fellow travellers, 
 and so Putney Heath or the New Road may be invested 
 
134 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 "Nvith a halo of brightness invisible to them, because 
 it only beams out of his own soul. 
 
 I have been reading the Memorials of Hood by 
 his children,* and wonder whether the book will 
 have the same interest for others and for younger 
 people, as for persons of my own age and calling. 
 Books of travel to any country become interesting 
 to us who have been there. Men revisit the old 
 school, though hateful to them, with ever so much 
 kindliness and sentimental aifection. There was the 
 tree, under which the bully licked you: here the 
 ground where you had to fag out on holidays, and so 
 forth. In a word, my dear sir. You are the most 
 interesting subject to yourself, of any that can occupy 
 your worship's thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean 
 soldier, reading a history of that siege, and how Jones 
 and the gallant 99th were ordered to charge or what 
 not, thinks, "Ah, yes, we of the 100th were placed 
 so and so, I perfectly remember." So with this me- 
 morial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a greater 
 interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so- 
 to speak, in a different part of the field, and engaged, 
 a young subaltern in the Battle of Life, in which 
 
 * Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, 1860. 2 vols. 
 
On a Joke I once heard from the late T. Hood. 135 
 
 Hood fell, young still, and covered with glory. " The 
 Bridge of Sighs " was his Corunna, his heights of 
 Abraham — sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the full 
 blaze and fame of that great victory. 
 
 What manner of man was the genius who penned 
 that famous song ? What like was Wolfe, who climbed 
 and conquered on those famous heights of Abraham ? 
 We all want to know details regarding men who 
 have achieved famous feats, whether of war, or wit, 
 or eloquence, or endurance, or knowledge. His one or 
 two happy and heroic actions take a man's name and 
 memory out of the crowd of names and memories. 
 Henceforth he stands eminent. We scan him: we 
 want to know all about him ; we walk round and 
 examine him, are curious, perhaps, and think are we 
 not as strong and tall and capable as yonder champion ; 
 were we not bred as well, and could we not endure the 
 winter's cold as well as he ? Or we look up with all 
 our eyes of admiration ; will find no fault in our hero : 
 declare his beauty and proportions perfect ; his critics 
 envious detractors, and so forth. Yesterday, before 
 he performed his feat, he was nobody. Who cared 
 about his birthplace, his parentage, or the colour of 
 his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or 
 by a series of great actions to which his genius 
 
136 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy 
 finding out under what schoolmaster's ferule he was 
 educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and 
 so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's 
 were to be found to-morrow, would they not inspire a 
 general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers ? 
 I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old 
 Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon mas- 
 querade ^in an old English habit.' Straightway my 
 imagination ran out to meet him, to look at him, to 
 follow him about. I forgot the names of scores of fine 
 gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned besides. 
 We want to see this man who has amused and charmed 
 us ; who has been our friend, and given us hours of 
 pleasant companionship and kindly thought. I protest 
 when I came, in the midst of those names of people 
 of fashion, and beaux, and demireps, upon those names 
 ^^ Sir J, R-yn-ldsy in a domino; Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr, 
 G'ldsm-thi in tivo old English dresses^^ I had, so to speak, 
 my heart in my mouth. What, you here, my dear Sir 
 Joshua? Ah, what an honour and privilege it is to 
 see you I This is Mr. Goldsmith ? And very much, 
 sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you ! O 
 Doctor ! what a pleasure I had and have in reading 
 the Animated Nature. How did you learn the secret 
 
On a JoTce I once heard from, the late T, Hood. 137 
 
 of writing the decasyllable line, and whence that sweet 
 wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song ? 
 Was Beau Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the 
 honour of allowing me to sit at your table at supper ? 
 Don't you think you know how he would have talked ? 
 Would you not have liked to hear him prattle over the 
 champagne ? 
 
 Now, Hood is passed away — passed oif the earth 
 as much as Goldsmith or Horace. The times in which 
 he lived, and in which very many of us lived and were 
 young, are changing or changed. I saw Hood once 
 as a young man, at a dinner which seems almost as 
 ghostly now as that masquerade at the Pantheon (1772), 
 of which we were speaking anon. It was at a dinner 
 of the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment w^hich 
 is hung round with the portraits of very large Royal 
 Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the 
 end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, 
 were our companions. I quite remember his pale face ; 
 he was thin and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely 
 opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one 
 pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood 
 
 said, (the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must 
 
 remember, by Mr. Cuff in those days, not by its present 
 proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for. 
 
138 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 and Cuff (remember that name) being the name of 
 the landlord. Hood opened his silent jaws and said 
 * * * * * Shall I tell you what he said? It was 
 not a very good pun, which the great punster then 
 made. Choose your favourite pun out of Whims and 
 Oddities, and fancy that was the joke which he con- 
 tributed to the hilarity of our little table. 
 \ Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, you 
 must know a pause occurred, during which I was 
 engaged with Hood^s Own, having been referred to the 
 book, by this life of the author which I have just been 
 reading. I am not going to dissert on Hood's humour ; 
 I am not a fair judge. Have I not said elsewhere that 
 there are one or two wonderfully old gentlemen still 
 alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy? I 
 can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that 
 sovereign, that rapture of raspberry tarts, which made 
 my young days happy. Those old sovereign-contribu- 
 tors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh ; they 
 may commit murder, and I shall believe it was justi- 
 fiable homicide. There is my friend Baggs, who goes 
 about abusing me, and of course our dear mutual friends 
 tell me. Abuse away, mon hon I You were so kind to 
 me when I wanted kindness, that you may take the 
 change out of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal 
 
On a Johe I once heard from the late T, Hood. 139 
 
 and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs ! Dost thou wince 
 as thou readest this line? Does guilty conscience 
 throbbing at thy breast tell thee of whom the fable is 
 narrated ? Puff out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased 
 to blow, my Baggs shall be to me as the Baggs of old — 
 the generous, the gentle, the friendly. 
 
 No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not 
 repeat that joke which I heard Hood make. He says 
 he wrote these jokes with such ease that he sent manu- 
 scripts to the publishers faster than they could acknow- 
 ledge the receipt thereof. I won't say that they were 
 all good jokes, or that to read a great book full of them 
 is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing to a 
 friend respecting some memoir of him which had been 
 published, Hood says, " You will judge how well the au- 
 thor knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious 
 than comic." At the time when he wrote these words, 
 he evidently undervalued his own serious power, and 
 thought that in punning and broad-grinning lay his 
 chief strength. Is not there something touching in that 
 simplicity and humility of faith ? " To make laugh is my 
 calling," says he ; "I must jump, I must grin, I must 
 tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap 
 through grammar ; " and he goes to his work humbly 
 and courageously, and what he has to do that does he 
 
140 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 with all liis might, through sickness, through sorrow, 
 through exile, poverty, fever, depression — there he is, 
 always ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in 
 his pocket! Why, when he laid down his puns and 
 pranks, put the motley oflP, and spoke out of his heart, 
 all England and America listened with tears and 
 wonder! Other men have delusions of conceit and 
 fancy themselves greater than they are, and that the 
 world slights them. Have we not heard how Listen 
 always thought he ought to play Hamlet ? Here is a 
 man with a power to touch the heart almost unequalled, 
 and he passes days and years in writing ^' Young Ben 
 he was a nice young man," and so forth. To say truth, 
 I have been reading in a book of HoodHs Own until I am 
 perfectly angry. "You great man, you good man, 
 you true genius and poet," I cry out, as I turn page 
 after page. '• Do, do, make no more of these jokes, but 
 be yourself, and take your station." 
 
 When Hood was on his deathbed, Sir Robert Peel, 
 who only knew of his illness, not of his imminent 
 danger, wrote to him a noble and touching letter, 
 announcing that a pension was conferred on him : 
 
 " I am more than repaid," writes Peel, " by the personal satisfaction 
 which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and 
 characteristic acknowledgments. 
 
On a Johe I once heard from the late T. Hood, 141 
 
 " You perhaps think that you are known to one, with such multifarious 
 occupations as myself, merely by general reputation as an author; but I 
 assure you that there can be little, which you have written and acknow- 
 ledged, which I have not read ; and that there are few, who can appreciate 
 and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling which 
 have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings 
 correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing 
 beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very 
 often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of inde- 
 pendence, as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed 
 between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am 
 fulfilling the intentions of the legislature, which has placed at the dis- 
 posal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be 
 applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. 
 K you will review the names of those, whose claims have been admitted 
 on account of their literary, or scientific eminence, you will find an 
 ample confirmation of the truth of my statement. 
 
 " One return, indeed, I shall ask of you, — that you will give me the 
 opportunity of making your personal acquaintance." 
 
 And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of 
 Peel's letter, says : " Sir R. Peel came from Burleigli 
 on Tuesday night, and went down to Brighton on 
 Saturday. If he had written by post, I should not have 
 had it till to-day. So he sent his servant with the 
 enclosed on Saturday night; another mark of conside- 
 rate attention." He is frightfully unwell, he continues, 
 his wife says he looks quite green : but ill as he is, poor 
 fellow, " his well is not dry. He has pumped out a 
 sheet of Christmas fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall 
 write a sheet more of his novel." 
 
142 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 O sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of 
 patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! 
 How noble Peel's figure is standing by that sick bed ! 
 how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his 
 compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart 
 full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, 
 must turn to him and say — " If it be well to be remem- 
 bered by a minister, it is better still not to be forgotten 
 by him in a ^ hurly Burleigh ! ' " Can you laugh ? Is 
 not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips ? 
 As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his 
 bow — as one reads of Catholics on their death-beds 
 putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world — 
 here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly 
 motley, and uttering one joke more. 
 
 He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his 
 children, wife, friends ; to the former especially his 
 whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his 
 fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the 
 record of his most pure, modest, honourable life, and 
 living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly 
 and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and 
 upright soul, with whom you have been brought into 
 communion. Can we say as much of all lives of all men 
 of letters ? Here is one at least without guile, without 
 
On a Joke I once heard from the late T, Hood, 143 
 
 pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family 
 and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted. 
 
 And what a hard work, and what a slender reward ! 
 In the little domestic details with which the book 
 abounds, what a simple life is shown to us ! The most 
 simple little pleasures and amusements delight and 
 occupy him. You have revels on shrimps ; the good 
 wife making the pie ; details about the maid, and criti- 
 cisms on her conduct ; wonderful tricks played with the 
 plum-pudding — all the pleasures centering round the 
 little humble home. One of the first men of his time, 
 he is appointed editor of a magazine at a salary of 300^. 
 per annum, signs himself exultingly "Ed. N. M. M." 
 and the family rejoice over the income as over a fortune. 
 He goes to a Greenwich dinner — what a feast and 
 rejoicing afterwards ! 
 
 " Well, we drank ' the Boz ' with a delectable clatter, which drew 
 from him a good warm-hearted speech. . . . He looked very well, 
 and had a younger brother along with him. . . . Then we had 
 songs. Barham chanted a Robin Rood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a 
 
 burlesque ballad of Lord H ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave 
 
 a capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, 
 and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the ' Deep 
 deep sea,' in his deep deep voice; and then we drank to Procter, who 
 wrote the said song; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, and Cruikshank's, 
 and Ainsworth's: and a Manchester friend of the latter sang a Man- 
 chester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been 
 not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as Jerdanish as usual on 
 
144 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 such occasions — you know how paradoxically he is quite at home in 
 dining out. As to myself, I had to make my second maiden speech, for 
 Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might 
 allow me to repeat to t/ou, but my memory won't. However I ascribed 
 the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that their 
 wishes had already improved it — that I felt a brisker circulation — a more 
 genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling 
 of my hand was not from palsy, cr my old ague, but an inclination in 
 my hand to shake itself with every one present. Whereupon I had to 
 go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the company as 
 were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other 
 end of the table. Very gratifying, wasn't it ? Though I cannot go 
 quite so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, 
 bottled, and preserv'ed in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very 
 anxiously, as usual when I go out, because I am so domestic and 
 steady, and was down at the door before I could ring at the gate, to 
 which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage. Poor girl! what would 
 she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame one ? " 
 
 And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles 
 the hand which has been shaken by so many illustrious 
 men ! The little feast dates back only eighteen years, 
 and yet somehow it seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. 
 Thrale's, or a meeting at Will's. 
 
 Poor little gleam of sunshine ! very little good cheer 
 enlivens that sad simple life. We have the triumph of 
 the magazine : then a new^ magazine projected and pro- 
 duced: then illness and the last scene, and the kind 
 Peel by the dying man's bedside, speaking noble words 
 of respect and sympathy, and soothing the last throbs of 
 the tender honest heart. 
 
On a Joke I once heard from the late T. Hood, 145 
 
 I like, I say. Hood's life even better than his books, 
 and I wish, with all my heart. Monsieur et clier confrere^ 
 the same could be said for both of us, when the ink- 
 stream of our life hath ceased to run. Yes : if I drop 
 first, dear Baggs, I trust you may find reason to modify 
 some of the unfavourable views of my character, which 
 you are freely imparting to our mutual friends. What 
 ought to be the literary man's point of honour now- 
 a-days ? Suppose, friendly reader, you are one of the 
 craft, w^hat legacy would you like to leave to your 
 children ? First of all (and by Heaven's gracious help) 
 you would pray and strive to give them such an endow- 
 ment of love, as should last certainly for all their lives, 
 and perhaps be transmitted to their children. You 
 would (by the same aid and blessing) keep your honour 
 pure, and transmit a name unstained to those who have 
 a right to bear it. You would, — though this faculty of 
 giving is one of the easiest of the literary man's quali- 
 ties — you would, out of your earnings, small or great, 
 be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress his 
 wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him 
 succour. Is the money which the noble Macaulay gave 
 to the poor lost to his family? God forbid. To the 
 loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather [the most 
 precious part of their inheritance ? It was invested in 
 
 10 
 
146 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 love and righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. 
 You will, if letters be your vocation, find saving harder 
 than giving and spending. To save be your endeavour 
 too, against the night's coming when no man may work ; 
 ^vhen the arm is weary with the long day's labour; 
 when the brain perhaps grows dark ; when the old, who 
 can labour no more, want warmth and rest, and the 
 young ones call for supper. 
 
 1 copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure 
 in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old 
 silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at 
 the Hague. It is one of the gift-spoons so common in 
 Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of 
 late years at our dealers' in old silverware. Along the 
 stem of the spoon are written the words : " Anno 1609, 
 Bin ick aldus gheUedt gheghaen''^ — " In the year 1609 I 
 went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released 
 from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks 
 lilie that of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his 
 thank-ofiering to some godchild at home, he thus piously 
 records his escape. 
 
 Was not poor Cervantes also a captive amongst the 
 Moors ? Did not Fielding, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, 
 too, die at the chain as well as poor Hood ? Think of 
 
On a Joke I once heard from the late T. Hood. 147 
 
 Fielding going on board his wretched ship in the 
 Thames, with scarce a hand to bid him farewell; of 
 brave Tobias Smollett, and his life, how hard, and how 
 poorly rewarded ; of Goldsmith, and the physician 
 whispering, "Have you something on your mind?" 
 and the wild, dying eyes answering, Yes. Notice how 
 Boswell speaks of Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt 
 with which he regards him. Read Hawkins on Field- 
 ing, and the scorn with which Dandy Walpole and 
 Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley-slaves doomed to 
 tug the oar and wear the chain, whilst my lords and 
 dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine music and 
 disport with fine ladies in the cabin ! 
 
 But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn ? Had 
 some of these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors 
 advantage over them ? Men of letters cannot lay their 
 hands on their hearts, and say, "No, the fault was 
 fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Goldsmith's 
 nor Fielding's." There was no reason why Oliver 
 should always be thriftless; why Fielding and Steele 
 should sponge upon their friends ; why Sterne should 
 make love to his neighbours' wives. Swift, for a long time, 
 was as poor as any wag that ever laughed : but he owed 
 no penny to his neighbours: Addison, when he wore 
 his most threadbare coat, could hold his head up, and 
 
 10—2 
 
148 Rou7iclabout Papers. 
 
 maintain his dignity: and, I dare vouch, neither of 
 those gentlemen, when they were ever so poor, asked 
 any man alive to pity their condition, and have a regard 
 to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession. 
 Galley-slave, forsooth! If you are sent to prison for 
 some error for which the law awards that sort of labo- 
 rious seclusion, so much the more shame for you. If 
 you are chained to the oar a prisoner of war, like 
 Cervantes, you have the pain, but not the shame, and 
 the friendly compassion of mankind to reward you* 
 Galley-slaves, indeed ! What man has not his oar to 
 pull? There is that v»ronderful old stroke-oar in the 
 Queen's galley. How many years has he pulled ? Day 
 and night, in rough water or smooth, with what invin- 
 cible vigour and surprising gaiety he plies his arms. 
 There is in the same GaUre Capitaine, that well-known, 
 trim figure, the bow oar; how he tugs, and with what a 
 will ! How both of them have been abused in their 
 time ! Take the Lawyer's galley, and that dauntless 
 octogenarian in command ; when has lie ever complained 
 or repined about his slavery? There is the Priest's 
 galley — black and lawn sails — do any mariners out of 
 Thames work harder? When lawyer, and statesman, 
 and divine, and writer are snug in bed, there is a ring 
 at the poor Doctor's bell. Forth he must go, in rheu- 
 
On a Joke I once heard from the late T. Hood, 149 
 
 matism or snow ; a galley-slave bearing his gallej-pots 
 to quench the flames of fever, to succour mothers and 
 young children in their hour of peril, and, as gently and 
 soothingly as may be, to carry the hopeless patient over 
 to the silent shore. And have we not just read of the 
 actions of the Queen's galleys, and their brave crews in 
 the Chinese waters ? Men not more worthy of human 
 renown and honour to-day in their victory, than last 
 year in their glorious hour of disaster. So with stout 
 hearts may "we ply the oar, messmates all, till the voyage 
 is over, and the Harbour of Eest is found. 
 
150 
 
 JRoundabout Paper ii 
 
 ROUND ABOUT THE CHEISTIAS TEEE. 
 
 The kindly Clirist mas-tree, from which I trust every 
 gentle reader has pulled a bonbon or two, is yet all 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree. 151 
 
 aflame whilst I am writing, and sparkles with the 
 sweet fruits of its season. You young ladies, may 
 you have plucked pretty giftlings from it; and out 
 of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with 
 the captain or the sweet young curate may you have 
 read one of those delicious conundrums which the 
 confectioners introduce into the sweetmeats, and which 
 apply to the cunning passion of love. Those riddles 
 are to be read at your age, when I daresay they 
 are amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who 
 are standing at the tree, they don't care about the 
 love-riddle part, but understand the sweet-almond 
 portion very well. They are four, five, six years 
 old. Patience, little people ! A dozen merry Christ- 
 mases more, and you will be reading those wonderful 
 love-conundrums, too. As for us elderly folks, we 
 watch the babies at their sport, and the young people 
 pulling at the branches : and instead of finding bonbons 
 or sweeties in the packets which we pluck ofi:' the 
 boughs, we find enclosed Mr. Carnifex's review of 
 the quarter's meat; Mr. Sartor's compliments, and 
 little statement for self and the young gentlemen ; and 
 Madame de Sainte-Crinoline's respects to the young 
 ladies, who encloses her account, and will send on 
 Saturday, please; or we stretch our hand out to the 
 
152 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 educational branch of the Christmas tree, and there 
 find a lively and amusing article from the Rev. Henry 
 Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly 
 moderate account for the last term's school expenses. 
 
 The tree yet sparkles, I say. I am writing on the 
 day before Twelfth Day, if you must know ; but already 
 ever so many of the fruits have been pulled, and the 
 Christmas lights have gone out. Bobby Miseltow, 
 who has been staying with us for a week (and who 
 has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room)^ 
 comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of 
 the holidays with his grandmother— and I brush away 
 the manly tear of regret as I part with the dear child. 
 *^ Well, Bob, good-by, since you will go. Compli- 
 ments to grandmamma. Thank her for the turkey. 
 
 Here's " (^A slight pecuniary transaction takes place 
 
 at this juncture, and Boh nods and tuinks, and puts his 
 hand in his waistcoat pocket.) "You have had a plea- 
 sant week ? " 
 
 Bob. " Haven't I ! " {And exit, anxious to know the 
 amount of tlie coin which 1ms just changed hands,) 
 
 He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through 
 the door (behind which I see him perfectly), I too cast 
 up a little account of our past Christmas week. When 
 Bob's holidays are over, and the printer has sent me 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree, 153 
 
 back this manuscript, I know Christmas will be an 
 old storj. All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree 
 then ; the crackers will have cracked off ; the almonds 
 will have been crunched ; and the sweet-bitter riddles 
 will have been read ; the lights will have perished off 
 the dark green boughs ; the toys growing on them will 
 have been distributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, 
 broken. Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keep out of 
 it (be still, my gushing heart !) the remembrance of a 
 riddle read together, of a double-almond munched 
 together, and the moiety of an exploded cracker. . . . 
 The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly 
 stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and look- 
 ing-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school, fondly 
 thinking of the pantomime-fairies whom they have 
 seen; whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by 
 this time; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it?) 
 lower extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet but 
 a few days. Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked 
 off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples 
 of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of 
 Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going 
 on lolling his tongue out of his mouth, and saying, 
 " How are you to-morrow ? " To-morrow, indeed ! 
 He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that 
 
154 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for 
 asking the absurd question. To-morrow, indeed ! 
 To-morrow the diffugient snows will give place to 
 Spring; the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday 
 may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar 
 to that feast ; in place of bonbons, trees will have an 
 eruption of light green knobs ; the whitebait season 
 will bloom . . . as if one need go on describing 
 these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, 
 though ending, and the subject of my discourse ! 
 
 We have all admired the illustrated papers, and 
 noted how boisterously jolly they become at Christ- 
 mas time. What wassail bowls, robin - redbreasts, 
 waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song! 
 And then to think that these festivities are prepared 
 months before — that these Christmas pieces are pro- 
 phetic ! How kind of artists and poets to devise the 
 festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper 
 time ! We ought to be grateful to them, as to the 
 cook who gets up at midnight and sets the pudding 
 a-boiling, which is to feast us at six o'clock. I often 
 think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson Lee — 
 the author of I don't know how many hundred glorious 
 pantomimes — walking by the summer wave at Mar- 
 gate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree, 
 
 idea of some new gorgeous spectacle of faery, which 
 the winter shall see complete. He is like cook at mid- 
 night {si parva licet). He watches and thinks. He 
 pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums 
 of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of — well, the 
 figs of fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole 
 in the seething cauldron of imagination, and at due 
 season serves up the Pantomime. 
 
 Very few men in the course of nature can expect 
 to see all the pantomimes in one season, but I hope to 
 the end of my life I shall never forego reading about 
 them' in that delicious sheet of The Times which 
 appears on the morning after Boxing-day. Perhaps 
 reading is even better than seeing. The best way, I 
 think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed, and have 
 the paper for two hours, reading all the way down 
 from Drury Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton. Bob 
 and I went to two pantomimes. One was at the 
 Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, 
 and I don't know which we liked the best. 
 
 At the Fancy, we saw Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's 
 Ghost and Nunky's Pison, which is all very well — but, 
 gentlemen, if you don't respect Shakspeare, to whom 
 will you be civil ? The palace and ramparts of Elsi- 
 nore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's 
 
156 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 finest efforts. The banqueting-hall of the palace is 
 
 illuminated : the peaks and gables glitter with the 
 
 snow: the sentinels march blowing their fingers with 
 
 the cold — the freezing of the nose of one of them is 
 
 very neatly and dexterously arranged : the snow-storm 
 
 rises: the winds howl awfully along the battlements: 
 
 the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore. 
 
 Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the storm. He 
 
 and his two friends stamp on each other's toes to keep 
 
 them warm. The storm-spirits rise in the air, and 
 
 are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks. 
 
 My eyes ! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling 
 
 through the air ! As the storm reaches its height (here 
 
 the wind instruments come in with prodigious effect, 
 
 and I compliment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos) — 
 
 as the snow-storm rises (queek, queek, queek, go the 
 
 fiddles, and then thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato 
 
 movement in Bob Major, which sends a shiver into 
 
 your very boot-soles), the thunder-clouds deepen 
 
 (bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos). The 
 
 forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a 
 
 ziz-zag scream of viohns — and look, look, look! as 
 
 the frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the 
 
 battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each hissing 
 
 wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree. 157 
 
 over the platform, and plunges howling into the water 
 again. 
 
 Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look 
 for her son. The storm whips her umbrella out of her 
 hands, and she retires screaming in pattens. 
 
 The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at 
 Elsinore are seen to drive off, and several people are 
 drowned. The gas-lamps along the street are wrenched 
 from their foundations, and shoot through the troubled 
 air. Whish, rush, hish ! how the rain roars and pours ! 
 The darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the 
 power of the music — and see — in the midst of a rush, 
 and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave — what 
 is that ghastly figure moving hither ? It becomes bigger, 
 bigger, as it advances down the platform — more ghastly, 
 more horrible, enormous I It is as tall as the whole 
 stage. It seems to be advancing on the stalls and pit, 
 and the whole house screams with terror, as the Ghost 
 OF THE LATE Hamlet coines in, and begins to speak. 
 Several people faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick 
 pockets furiously in the darkness. 
 
 In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his 
 eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, 
 and the wind-instruments bugling the most horrible 
 wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened. 
 
158 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 But hark ! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles ! 
 Is it — can it be — the gray dawn peeping in the stormy 
 east? The ghost's eyes look blankly towards it, and 
 roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker ply the violins 
 of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient 
 clouds. Cockadoodloodloo ! crows that great cock 
 which has just come out on the roof of the palace. 
 And now the round sun himself pops up from behind 
 the waves of night. Where is the ghost ? He is gone ! 
 Purple shadows of morn '^ slant o'er the snowy sward,!' 
 the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess 
 we are very much relieved at the disappearance of the 
 ghost. We don't like those dark scenes in pantomimes. 
 
 After the usual business, that Ophelia should be 
 turned into Columbine was to be expected; but I 
 confess I was a little shocked when Hamlet's mother 
 became Pantaloon, and was instantly knocked down by 
 Clown Claudius. Grimaldi is getting a little old now, 
 but for real humour there are few clowns like him. Mr. 
 Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste and comic, as he 
 always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves. 
 
 Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of HastingSf at the 
 other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William 
 is acted with very great vigour by Snoxall, and the 
 battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree. 159 
 
 trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties 
 will not the merry genius of pantomime permit himself? 
 At the battle of Hastings, William is on the point of 
 being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very elegantly 
 led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharp- 
 shooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold. 
 The fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his 
 body, which straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst 
 the Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the Arch- 
 bishop of Bayeux a diverting pantaloon, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw ; 
 but one description will do as well as another. The 
 plots, you see, are a little intricate and difficult to un- 
 derstand in pantomimes; and I may have mixed up 
 one with another. That I was at the theatre on Boxing- 
 night is certain — but the pit was so full that I could 
 only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I stood 
 at the door. And if I was badly off, I think there was 
 a young gentleman behind me worse off still. 1 own 
 that he has good reason (though others have not) to speak 
 ill of me behind my back, and hereby beg his pardon. 
 
 Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in 
 Piccadilly, who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and 
 was there on his back, uttering energetic expressions; that 
 party begs to offer thanks, and compliments of the season. 
 
160 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 Bob's behaviour on New Year's day, I can assure 
 Dr. Holysliade, was highly creditable to the boy. He 
 had expressed a determination to partake of every dish 
 which was put on the table ; but after soup, fish, roast- 
 beef, and roast-goose, he retired from active business 
 until the pudding and mince-pies made their appear- 
 ance, of which he partook liberally, but not too freely. 
 And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by prais- 
 ing the punch, which was of my own manufacture, and 
 which some gentlemen present (Mr. O'M — ^g — h, 
 amongst others) pronounced to be too weak. Too 
 weak ! A bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a 
 bottle of brandy, and two bottles and a half of water — 
 can this mixture be said to be too weak for any mortal ? 
 Our young friend amused the company during the 
 evening, by exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, 
 which he had purchased, and likewise by singing 
 " Sally, come up ! " a quaint, but rather monotonous 
 melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro on 
 the banks of the broad Mississip. 
 
 What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's 
 amusement during the Christmas week ? A great 
 philosopher was giving a lecture to young folks at the 
 British Institution. But when this diversion was pro- 
 posed to our young friend Bob, he said, "Lecture? 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree. 161 
 
 No, thank you. Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic 
 signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr. Johnson's 
 opinion about lectures : " Lectures, sir ! what man 
 would go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which 
 he can read at leisure in a book ? " / never went, of 
 my own choice, to a lecture ; that I can vow. As for 
 sermons, they are different ; I delight in them, and they 
 cannot, of course, be too long. 
 
 Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights 
 besides pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, 
 one delightful, one most unlucky and pleasant day, we 
 drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which 
 carried us more quickly and briskly than any of your 
 vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the 
 horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron; through 
 suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a 
 leaden sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot 
 warming-pan; by pond after pond, where not only 
 men and boys, but scores after scores of women and 
 girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean 
 old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and 
 their hobnailed shoes flew up in the air ; the air frosty 
 with a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, 
 and churches, and plantations glimmered. We drive 
 up the hill. Bob and I ; we make the last two miles in 
 
 11 
 
162 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 eleven minutes ; we pass that poor, armless man who 
 sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes. I 
 don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We 
 are set down neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder 
 opens the brougham door. I don't give anything ; again 
 disappointment on Bob's part. I pay a shilling apiece, 
 and we enter into the glorious building, which is de- 
 corated for Christmas, and straightway forgetfulness on 
 Bob's part of everything but that magnificent scene. 
 The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and 
 Christmas. The stalls, the columns, the fountains, 
 courts, statues, splendours, are all crowned for Christ- 
 mas. The delicious negro is singing his Alabama 
 choruses for Christmas and Bob. He has scarcely 
 done, when, Tootarootatoo ! Mr. Punch is performing 
 his surprising actions, and hanging the beadle. The 
 stalls are decorated. The refreshment tables are piled 
 with good things ; at many fountains "Mulled Claret" 
 is written up in appetizing capitals. '' Mulled claret — 
 oh, jolly I How cold it is ! " says Bob ; I pass on. 
 " It's only three o'clock," says Bob. " No, only three, 
 I say, meekly. " We dine at seven," sighs Bob, " and 
 it's so-o-o coo-old." I still would take no hints. No 
 claret, no refreshment, no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls 
 for Bob. At last I am obliged to tell him all. Just 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree. 163 
 
 before we left home, a little Christinas bill popped in at 
 the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. I 
 forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half- 
 a-crown from John Coachman to pay for our entrance 
 into the palace of delight. Now you see. Bob, why I 
 could not treat you on that second of January when we 
 drove to the palace together ; when the girls and boys 
 were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich ; when the dark- 
 ling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like 
 a warming-pan in the leaden sky. 
 
 One more Christmas sight we had, of course ; and 
 that sight I think I like as well as Bob himself at 
 Christmas, and at all seasons. We went to a certain 
 garden of delight, where, whatever your cares are, 
 I think you can manage to forget some of them, and 
 muse, and be not unhappy ; to a garden beginning with 
 a Z, which is as lively as Noah's ark ; where the fox 
 has brought his brush, and the cock has brought his 
 comb, and the elephant has brought his trunk, and the 
 kangaroo has brought his bag, and the condor his old 
 white wig and black satin hood. On this day it was so 
 cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as 
 they plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to 
 say, " Aha, this weather reminds us of dear home ! " 
 " Cold ! bah I I have got such a warm coat,'* says 
 
 11—2 
 
164 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 brother Bruin, " I don't mind : " and he laughs on 
 his pole, and clucks down a bun. The squealing 
 hyaenas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us quite 
 refreshingly at their window ; and, cold as it w^as. 
 Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us red-hot 
 through his bars, and snorted blasts of hell. The 
 woolly camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced 
 round his ring on his silent pads. We went to our 
 favourite places. Our dear wambat came up, and had 
 himself scratched very affably. Our fellow-creatures 
 in the monkey-room held out their little black hands, 
 and piteously asked us for Christmas alms. Those 
 darling alligators on their rack winked at us in the 
 most friendly w^ay. The solemn eagles sate alone, and 
 scowled at us from their peaks ; whilst little Tom Ratel 
 tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual divert- 
 ing manner. If I have cares in my mind, I come to 
 the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate. I recog- 
 nize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages. I 
 entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, 
 and the black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, 
 hook-beaked, old marabou stork yesterday at dinner ; 
 and wdien Bob's aunt came to tea in the evening, and 
 asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her 
 gravely, and said — 
 
Round about the Christmas Tree, 165 
 
 " First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black, 
 Then I saAV the camel with a hump upon his back. 
 
 Child^e Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back ! 
 Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw; 
 Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw; 
 Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk. 
 Then I saw the monkeys — mercy, how unpleasantly 
 they smelt I " 
 
 There. No one can beat that piece of wit, can he. 
 Bob ? And so it is all over ; but we had a jolly time, 
 whilst you were with us, hadn't we? Present my 
 respects to the doctor ; and I hope, my boy, we may 
 spend another merry Christmas next year. 
 
166 
 
 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 ON A CHALK-MAEK ON THE DOOE. 
 
 N the doorpost 
 of the house of 
 a friend of mine, 
 a few inches 
 above the lock, 
 is a little chalk- 
 mark, which 
 some sportive 
 boy in passing 
 has probably 
 scratched on the 
 pillar. The door- 
 steps, the lock, 
 handle, and so 
 forth, are kept decently enough ; but this chalk-mark, 
 I suppose some three inches out of the housemaid's beat, 
 has already been on the door for more than a fortnight, 
 and I wonder whether it will be there whilst this paper is 
 
On a Chalk-Marh on the Door, 167 
 
 being written, whilst it is at the printer's, and, in fine, 
 until the month passes over? I wonder whether the 
 servants in that house will read these remarks about 
 the chalk-mark ? That the Cornhill Magazine is taken 
 in in that house I know. In fact I have seen it there. 
 In fact I have read it there. In fact I have written it 
 there. In a word, the house to which I allude is mine 
 — the " editor's private residence," to which, in spite of 
 prayers, entreaties, commands, and threats, authors, 
 and ladies especially, will send their communications, 
 although they won't understand that they injure their 
 own interests by so doing ; for how is a man who has 
 his own work to do, his own exquisite inventions to form 
 and perfect — Maria to rescue from the unprincipled 
 Earl — the atrocious General to confound in his own 
 machinations — the angelic Dean to promote to a 
 bishopric, and so forth — how is a man to do all this, 
 under a hundred interruptions, and keep his nerves and 
 temper in that just and equable state in which they 
 ought to be when he comes to assume the critical office ? 
 As you will send here, ladies, I must tell you you have 
 a much worse chance than if you forward your valua- 
 ble articles to Cornhill. Here your papers arrive, at 
 dinner-time, we wijl say. Do you suppose that is a 
 pleasant period, and that we are to criticize you between 
 
168 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 the ovum and malum, between the soup and the dessert ? 
 I have touched, I think, on this subject before. I say- 
 again, if you want real justice shown you, don't send 
 your papers to the private residence. At home, for 
 instance, yesterday, having given strict orders that I 
 was to receive nobody, " except on business," do you 
 suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, who forced 
 himself into my study, and there announced himself as 
 agent of a Cattle-food Company, was received with 
 pleasure ? There, as I sate in my arm-chair, suppose 
 he had proposed to draw a couple of my teeth, would I 
 have been pleased ? I could have throttled that agent. 
 I daresay the whole of that day's work will be found 
 tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned by my 
 clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, indeed ! 
 As if beans, oats, warm mashes, and a ball, are to be 
 pushed down a man's throat just as he is meditating on 
 the great social problem, or (for I think it was my epic 
 I was going to touch up) just as he was about to soar to 
 the height of the empyrean ! 
 
 Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume 
 my consideration of that little mark on the doorpost, 
 which is scored up as the text of the present little 
 sermon ; and which I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor 
 to any of its special uses or abuses (such as milk, neck- 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 169 
 
 powder, and the like), but to servants. Surely ours 
 might remove that unseemly little mark? Suppose it 
 were on my coat, might I not request its removal? I 
 remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, 
 upon whose forehead an ink mark remained, and was 
 perfectly recognizable for three weeks after its first 
 appearance. May I take any notice of this chalk-stain 
 on the forehead of my house ? Whose business is it to 
 wash that forehead ? and ought I to fetch a brush and a 
 little hot water, and wash it off myself? 
 
 Yes. But that spot removed, why not come down at 
 six, and wash the doorsteps ? I daresay the early rising 
 and exercise would do me a great deal of good. The 
 housemaid, in that case, might lie in bed a little later, 
 and have her tea and the morning paper brought to her 
 in bed : then, of course, Thomas would expect to be 
 helped about the boots and knives ; cook about the 
 saucepans, dishes, and what not ; the lady's-maid would 
 want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her hair, 
 and get her bath ready. You should have a set of 
 servants for the servants, and these under- servants 
 should have slaves to wait on them. The king com- 
 mands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord 
 to intimate to the gentleman usher to request the page 
 of the antechamber to entreat the groom of the stairs to 
 
170 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 implore John to ask the captain of the buttons to desire 
 the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper to 
 give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has 
 none for his coffee, which probably is getting cold 
 during the negotiation. In our little Brentfords we are 
 all kings, more or less. There are orders, 'gradations, 
 hierarchies, everywhere. In your house and mine there 
 are mysteries unknown to us. I am not going into the 
 horrid old question of " followers." I don't mean cousins 
 from the country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen 
 in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks ; but people who 
 have an occult right on the premises ; the uncovenanted 
 servants of the house; grey women who are seen at 
 evening with baskets flitting about area-railings ; dingy 
 shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in your neigh- 
 bourhood ; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind 
 boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's 
 crest and livery, and call him " Sir ; " those silent 
 women address the female servants as ^^Mum," and 
 curtsey before them, squaring their arms over their 
 wretched lean aprons. Then, again, those servi ser- 
 vorum have dependents in the vast, silent, poverty- 
 stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in 
 the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, 
 and dank, flagged cellars, and huddled straw, and rags. 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door, 171 
 
 in which pale children are swarming. It may be your 
 beer (which runs with great volubility) has a pipe or 
 two w^hich communicates with those dark caverns where 
 hopeless anguish pours the groan, and would scarce 
 see light but for a scrap or two of candle which has 
 been whipped away from your worship's kitchen. Not 
 many years ago — I don't know whether before or since 
 that white mark was drawn on the door — a lady occu- 
 pied the confidential place of housemaid in this " private 
 residence," who brought a good character, who seemed 
 to have a cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clatter- 
 ing and bumping overhead or on the stairs long before 
 daylight — there, I say, was poor Camilla, scouring the 
 plain, trundling and brushing, and clattering with her 
 pans and brooms, and humming at her work. Well, 
 she had established a smuggling communication of beer 
 over the area frontier. This neat-handed Phyllis used 
 to pack up the nicest baskets of my provender, and 
 convey them to somebody outside — I believe, on my 
 conscience, to some poor friend in distress. Camilla was 
 consigned to her doom. She was sent back to her 
 friends in the country ; and when she was gone we 
 heard of many of her faults. She expressed herself, 
 when displeased, in language that I shall not repeat. 
 As for the beer and meat, there was no mistake about 
 
172 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 them. But apres ? Can I have the heart to be very 
 angry with that poor jade for helping another poorer 
 jade out of my larder ? On your honour and conscience, 
 when you were a boy, and the apples looked temptingly 
 
 over Farmer Quarrlngdon's hedge, did you never ? 
 
 When there was a grand dinner at home, and you were 
 sliding, with Master Bacon, up and down the stairs, and 
 the dishes came out, did you ever do such a thing as 
 just to ? Well, in many and many a respect ser- 
 vants are like children. They are under domination; 
 They are subject to reproof, to ill-temper, to petty 
 exactions, and stupid tyrannies, not seldom. They 
 scheme, conspire, fawn, and are hypocrites. "Little 
 boys should not loll on chairs." " Little girls should 
 be seen, and not heard;" and so forth. Have we 
 not almost all learnt these expressions of old foozles : 
 and uttered them ourselves when in the square- 
 toed state? The Eton master, who was breaking a 
 lance with our Paterfamilias of late, turned on Pater- 
 familias, saying. He knows not the nature and exquisite 
 candour of well-bred English boys. Exquisite fiddle- 
 stick's end, Mr. Master ! Do you mean for to go for to 
 tell us that the relations between young gentlemen and 
 their schoolmasters are entirely frank and cordial ; that 
 the lad is familiar with the man who can have him 
 
On a Chalk-Mar Jc on the Door. 173 
 
 flogged ; never shirks his exercises ; never gets other 
 boys to do his verses ; never does other boys' verses ; 
 never breaks bounds ; never tells fibs — I mean the fibs 
 permitted by scholastic honour ? Did I know of a boy 
 who pretended to such a character, I would fijrbid my 
 scapegraces to keep company with him. Did I know a 
 schoolmaster who pretended to believe in the existence 
 of many hundred such boys in one school at one time, 
 I would set that man down as a baby in knowledge of 
 the world. " Who was making that noise ? " "I don't 
 know, sir." — And he knows it was the boy next him in 
 school. " Who was climbing over that wall ? " ^^ I 
 don't know, sir." — And it is in the speaker's own trou- 
 sers, very likely, the glass bottle-tops have left their 
 cruel scars. And so with servants. *^ Who ate up the 
 three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at 
 breakfast this morning?" "O dear me! sir, it was 
 John, who went away last month ?" — or, " I think it was 
 Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and 
 is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." 
 Yes, it was the canary-bird ; and Eliza saw it ; and Eliza 
 is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true ; 
 but please don't call them lies. This is not lying ; this 
 is voting with your party. You must back your own 
 side. The servants' hall stands by the servants' hall 
 
174 Eoundahout Papers. 
 
 against the dining-room. The schoolboys don't tell tales 
 of each other. They agree not to choose to know who 
 has made the noise, who has broken the window, who 
 has eaten up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers' 
 eggs out of the aspic, how it is that liqueur brandy of 
 Gledstanes is in such porous glass bottles— and so forth. 
 Suppose Brutus had a footman, who came and told him 
 that the butler drank the Cura9oa, which of these ser- 
 vants would you dismiss ? — the butler, perhaps, but the 
 footman certainly. 
 
 No. If your plate and glass are beautifully bright, 
 your bell quickly answered, and Thomas ready, neat, 
 and good-humoured, you are not to expect absolute 
 truth from him. The very obsequiousness and per- 
 fection of his service prevents truth. He may be ever 
 so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through 
 his service — hand the shining plate, replenish the spot- 
 less glass, lay the glittering fork — never laugh when 
 you yourself or your guests joke — be profoundly atten- 
 tive, and yet look utterly impassive — exchange a few 
 hurried curses at the door with that unseen slavey who 
 ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and 
 polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an 
 hour to your bell ; or leave the girl of his heart — his 
 mother, who is going to America — his dearest friend. 
 
On a Chalk-Marh on tlie Door. 1.75 
 
 who has come to say farewell — his lunch, and his glass 
 of beer just freshly poured out — any or all of these, if 
 the door-bell rings, or the master calls out " Thomas " 
 from the hall. Do you suppose you can expect absolute 
 candour from a man whom you may order to powder 
 his hair ? As between the Rev. Henry Holyshade and 
 his pupil, the idea of entire unreserve is utter bosh ; so 
 the truth as between you and Jeames or Thomas, or 
 Mary the housemaid, or Betty the cook, is relative, and 
 not to be demanded on one side or the other. Why, 
 respectful civility is itself a lie, which poor Jeames 
 often has to utter or perform to many a swaggering 
 vulgarian, who should black Jeames's boots, did Jeames 
 wear them and not shoes. There is your little Tom, 
 just ten, ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young 
 man about — shrieking calls for hot water — bullying 
 Jeames because the boots are not varnished enough, or 
 ordering him to go to the stables, and ask Jenkins why 
 the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round — or 
 what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles 
 of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little miss scolding 
 Martha, who waits up five-pair of stairs in the 
 nursery. Little miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all 
 expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from 
 Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My 
 
176 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose 
 you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, " I'm 
 reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed ;" or sup- 
 pose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, " You 
 great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't you big enough to bring 
 it hup yoursulf ?" what would your feehngs be ? Now, 
 if you made similar proposals or requests to Mr. Jones 
 next door, this is the kind of answer Jones would give 
 you. You get truth habitually from equals only; so my 
 good Mr. Holy shade, don't talk to me about the habi- 
 tual candour of the young Etonian of high birth, or I 
 have my own opinion of your candour or discernment 
 when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honour 
 and has been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last 
 time they parted at Wapping Old Stairs ; but do you 
 suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar, and above- 
 board in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B. ? 
 There are secrets, prevarications, fibs, if you will, 
 between Tom and the Admiral — between your crew 
 and their captain. I know I hire a worthy, clean, 
 agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, 
 at so many guineas a year, to do so and so for me. 
 Were he other than hypocrite I would send him about 
 his business. Don't let my displeasure be too fierce 
 with him for a fib or two on his own account. 
 
On a Chalk-Ma7'k on the Door. 177 
 
 Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a 
 distant part of the country, and my business detaining 
 me in London, I remained in my own house with three 
 servants on board wages. I used only to breakfast at 
 home ; and future ages w^ill be interested to know that 
 this meal used to consist, at that period, of tea, a penny 
 roll, a pat of butter, and, perhaps, an egg. My w^eekly 
 bill used invariably to be about fifty shillings ; so that as 
 I never dined in the house, you see, my breakfast, con- 
 sisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about 
 seven shillings and threepence per diem. I must, there- 
 fore, have consumed daily — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 A quarter of a pound of tea (say) ... 1 3 
 
 A penny roll (say) 10 
 
 One pound of butter (say) 13 
 
 One pound of lump-sugar 10 
 
 A new-laid egg 2 9 
 
 Which is the only possible way I have for making out 
 the sum. 
 
 Well, T fell ill while under this regimen, and had an 
 illness which, but for a certain doctor, who was brought to 
 me by a certain kind friend I had in those days, would, 
 I think, have prevented the possibility of my telling 
 this interesting anecdote now a dozen years after. Don't 
 be frightened, my dear madam ; it is not a horrid, senti- 
 mental account of a malady you are coming to — only a 
 
 12 
 
178 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 question of grocery. This illness, I say, lasted some 
 seventeen days, during which the servants were admi- 
 rably attentive and kind ; and poor John, especially, 
 was up at all hours, watching night after night — amiable, 
 cheerful, untiring, respectful, the very best of Johns and 
 nurses. 
 
 Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had 
 a glass of eau sucree — say a dozen glasses of eau sucrde 
 — certainly not more. Well, this admirable, watchful, 
 cheerful, tender, affectionate John brought me in a little^ 
 bill for seventeen pounds of sugar consumed during the 
 illness — " Often 'ad sugar and water ; always was a 
 callin' for it," says John, wagging his head quite 
 gravely. You are dead, years and years ago, poor 
 John — so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the 
 invalid in the fever. , But confess, now, wherever you 
 are, that seventeen pounds of sugar to make six glasses 
 of eau sucree was a little too strong, wasn't it, John ? 
 Ah, how frankly, how trustily, how bravely he lied, poor 
 John ! One evening, being at Brighton, in the con- 
 valescence, I remember John's step was unsteady, his 
 voice thick, his laugh queer — and having some quinine 
 to give me, John brought the glass to me — not to my 
 mouth, but struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, 
 which was not the way in which Dr. Elliotson had 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 179 
 
 intended his prescription should be taken. Turning 
 that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that my atten- 
 dant had been drinking. Drinking ! I never was more 
 humiliated at the thought of my own injustice than at 
 John's reply. "Drinking! Sulpme! I have had ony 
 one pint of beer with my dinner at one o'clock ! " — and 
 he retreats, holding on by a chair. These are fibs, you 
 see, appertaining to the situation. John is drunk. 
 " Sulp him, he has only had an 'alf-pint of beer with 
 his dinner six hours ago;" and none of his fellow- 
 servants will say otherwise. Polly is smuggled on 
 board ship. Who tells the lieutenant when he comes 
 his rounds ? Boys are playing cards in the bedroom. 
 The outlying fag announces master coming — out go 
 candles — cards popped into bed — boys sound asleep. 
 Who had that light in the dormitory ? Law bless you ! 
 the poor dear innocents are every one snoring. Every 
 one snoring, and every snore is a lie told through the 
 nose ! Suppose one of your boys or mine is engaged 
 in that awful crime, are we going to break our hearts 
 about it ? Come, come. We pull a long face, waggle 
 a grave head, and chuckle within our waistcoats. 
 
 Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who 
 are sitting in the room below, how strange and won- 
 derful is the partition ! We meet at every hour of the 
 
 12—2 
 
180 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 daylight, and are indebted to each other for a hundred 
 offices of duty and comfort of life ; and we live toge- 
 ther for years, and don't know each other. John's 
 voice to me is quite different from John's voice when 
 it addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the 
 street with a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know 
 her. And all these good people with whom I may live 
 for years and years, have cares, interests, dear friends 
 and relatives, mayhap schemes, passions, longing hopes, 
 tragedies of their own, from which a carpet and a few 
 planks and beams utterly separate me. When we were 
 at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to look so pale, and 
 run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter in a great 
 scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how 
 should we know that the poor little thing's heart was 
 breaking? She fetched the water, and she smoothed 
 the ribbons, and she laid out the dresses, and brought 
 the early cup of tea in the morning, just as if she had 
 had no cares to keep her awake. Henry (who lived out 
 of the house) was the servant of a friend of mine who 
 lived in chambers. There was a dinner one day, and 
 Henry waited all through the dinner. The champagne 
 was properly iced, the dinner was excellently served ; 
 every guest was attended to ; the dinner disappeared ; 
 the dessert was set; the claret was in perfect order. 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 181 
 
 carefully decanted, and more ready. And then Henry 
 said, ''^If you please, sir, may I go home?" He had 
 received word that his house was on fire ; and, having 
 seen through his dinner, he wished to go and look after 
 his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, such 
 a man's livery is a uniform of honour. The crest on his 
 button is a badge of bravery. 
 
 Do you see — I imagine I do myself — in these little 
 instances, a tinge of humour ? Ellen's heart is breaking 
 for handsome Jeames of Buckley Square, whose great 
 legs are kneeling, and who has given a lock of his 
 precious powdered head, to some other than Ellen. 
 Henry is preparing the sauce for his master's wild-ducks 
 while the engines are squirting over his own little nest 
 and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the 
 basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. "We 
 may be en pleine tragddie, Ellen may breathe her last 
 sigh in blank verse, calling down blessings upon James 
 the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero, and 
 epaulettes are on his shoulders. Atqui sciehat, &c., what- 
 ever tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post 
 of duty. 
 
 You concede, however, that there is a touch of 
 humour in the two tragedies here mentioned. Why ? 
 Is it that the idea of persons at service is some- 
 
182 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 how ludicrous ? Perhaps it is made more so in 
 this country by the splendid appearance of the 
 liveried domestics of great people. When you think 
 that we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow- 
 creatures in green, pink, or canary-coloured breeches ; 
 that we order them to plaster their hair with flour, 
 having brushed that nonsense out of our own heads 
 fifty years ago ; that some of the most genteel and 
 stately among us cause the men who drive their car- 
 riages to put on little Albino wigs, and sit behind great 
 nosegays — I say I suppose it is this heaping of gold lace, 
 gaudy colours, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, 
 which makes the man absurd in our eyes, who need be 
 nothing but a simple reputable citizen and in-door 
 labourer. Suppose, my dear sir, that you yourself were 
 suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress, 
 domestic uniform with our friend Jones's crest repeated 
 in varied combinations of button on your front and 
 back ? Suppose, madam, your son were told, that he 
 could not go out except in lower garments of carnation 
 or amber-coloured plush — would you let him ? . . . . 
 But as you justly say, this is not the question, and be- 
 sides it is a question fraught with danger, sir; and 
 radicalism, sir ; and subversion of the very foundations 
 of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we won't 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 18S 
 
 enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us 
 disport with Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge- 
 tools about his knife-board : but with Betty and Susan 
 who wield the playful mop, and set on the simmering 
 kettle. Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking 
 to Mrs. Doddles about their mutual maids ? Miss Susan 
 must have a silk gown, and Miss Betty must wear 
 flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church if 
 you please, and did you ever hear such impudence? 
 The servant in many small establishments is a constant 
 and endless theme of talk. What small wage, sleep, 
 meal, what endless scouring, scolding, tramping on 
 messages fall to that poor Susan's lot ; what indignation 
 at the little kindly passing word with the grocer's young 
 man, the pot-boy, the chubby butcher ! Where such 
 tilings will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't know. 
 What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. 
 Doddles, &c. 
 
 Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut 
 out of The Times a few days since, expressly for you : 
 
 A LADY is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respectable 
 •^ young woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. 
 She has lived four years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can 
 make ice, and is an excellent baker. She will only take a place in a very 
 good family, where she can have the opportunity of improving herself, 
 and, if possible, staying for two years. Apply by letter to, &c. &c. 
 
184 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and 
 did you ever? Well, no, Mrs. Doddles. Upon my 
 word now, Mrs. T., I don't think I ever did. A 
 respectable young woman — as head kitchen-maid — 
 under a man-cook, will only take a place in a very good 
 family, where she can improve, and stay two years. 
 Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if you 
 please, mum, and then let us see : — 
 
 1. This young woman is to be head kitchen-maid, 
 
 that is to say, there is to be a chorus of kitchen- 
 maids, of which the Y. W. is to be chief. 
 
 2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) 
 
 ought he to be a French cook ; and (B), if so, 
 would the lady desire him to be a Protestant ? 
 
 3. She will only take a place in a ver^y good family. 
 
 How old ought the family to be, and what do 
 you call good ? that is the question. How long 
 after the Conquest will do ? Would a banker's 
 family do, or is a baronet's good enough ? Best 
 say what rank in the peerage would be suffi- 
 ciently high. But the lady does not say whether 
 she would like a high church or a low churcli 
 family. Ought there to be unmarried sons, and 
 may they follow a profession? and please say 
 
On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 185 
 
 how many daughters ; and would the lady like 
 them to be musical ? And how many company 
 dinners a week? Not too many, for fear of 
 fatiguing the upper kitchen-maid ; but sufficient, 
 so as to keep the upper kitchen-maid's hand in. 
 [N.B. — I think I can see a rather bewildered 
 expression on the countenance of Mesdames 
 Doddles and Toddles as I am prattling on in 
 this easy bantering way.] 
 
 4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two 
 years, and improve herself under the man-cook, 
 and having of course sucked the brains (as the 
 phrase is) from under the chef's nightcap, then 
 the head kitchen-maid wishes to go. 
 
 And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and 
 fetch the cab for her. The cab ? Why not her lady- 
 ship's own carriage and pair, and the head coachman to 
 drive away the head kitchen-maid ? You see she stipu- 
 lates for everything — the time to come; the time to 
 stay; the family she will be with; and as soon as she 
 has improved herself enough, of course the upper 
 kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and drive off. 
 
 Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are 
 coming to this pass, Mrs. Toddles, and Mrs. Doddles, 
 
186 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 mum, I think I will go upstairs and get a basin and a 
 sponge, and then downstairs and get some hot water ; 
 and then I will go and scrub that chalk-mark off my 
 own door with my own hands. 
 
 It is wiped off, I declare! After ever so many 
 weeks ! Who has done it ? It was just a little round- 
 about mark, you know, and it was there for days and 
 weeks, before I ever thought it would be the text of a 
 Eoundabout Paper. 
 
187 
 
 ON BEING FOUND OUT. 
 
 T the close (let ns say) 
 of Queen Anne's 
 reign, when I was a 
 boy at a private and 
 preparatory school 
 for young gentlemen, 
 I remember the wise- 
 acre of a' master or- 
 dering us all, one 
 night, to march into 
 a little garden at the 
 back of the house, 
 and thence to pro- 
 ceed one by one 
 into a tool or hen house (I was but a tender little thing 
 just put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether 
 the house was for tools or hens), and in that house to 
 
188 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 put our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, a 
 candle burning beside it. I put mj hand into the sack. 
 My hand came out quite black. I went and joined the 
 other boys in the school-room ; and all their hands were 
 black too. 
 
 By reason of my tender age (and there are some 
 critics who, I hope, will be satisfied by my acknow- 
 ledging that I am a hundred and fifty-six next birth- 
 day) I could not understand what w^as the meaning of 
 this night excursion — this candle, this tool- house, this 
 bag of soot. I think we little boys were taken out of 
 our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, then, 
 and showed our little hands to the master ; washed them 
 or not — most probably, I should say, not — and so went 
 bewildered back to bed. 
 
 Something had been stolen in the school that day ; 
 and Mr. Wiseacre having read in a book of an in- 
 genious method of finding out a thief by making him 
 put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty, the rogue 
 would shirk from doing), all we boys were subjected to 
 the trial. Goodness knows what the lost object was, or 
 who stole it. We all had black hands to show to the 
 master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found 
 Out that time. 
 
 I wonder if the rascal is alive — an elderly scoundrel 
 
On hdng Found Out, 189 
 
 he must be by this time ; and a hoary old hypocrite, to 
 whom an old schoolfellow presents his kindest regards — 
 parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place that 
 private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not 
 enough victuals, and caning awful! — Are you alive 
 still, I say, you nameless villain, who escaped discovery 
 on that day of crime ? I hope you have escaped often 
 since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you 
 and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our 
 peccadilloes; and that our backs can slip away from 
 the master and the cane ! 
 
 Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was 
 found out, and flogged coram populo ! What a butchery, 
 what an indecency, what an endless swishing of the 
 rod ! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good 
 friend Mealy mouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do 
 you go to church ? When there, do you say, or do you 
 not, that you are a miserable sinner ? and saying so, 
 do you believe or disbelieve it ? If you are a M. S., 
 don't you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if 
 you are to be let off? I say again, what a blessed thing 
 it is that we are not all found out! 
 
 Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong 
 being found out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all 
 the boys in all the school being whipped ; and then the 
 
190 Rou7idahout Papers. 
 
 assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford let us 
 call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, 
 having previously superintended the correction of the 
 whole army. After the young gentlemen have had 
 their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr. Lincolnsinn 
 being taken up for certain faults in Ms Essay and Re- 
 view. After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, 
 suppose we hoist up a bishop, and give him a couple of 
 dozen ! (I see my Lord Bishop of Double-Gloucester 
 sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend 
 bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we 
 to say to the Minister who appointed him ? My Lord 
 Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal 
 correction, to a boy of your age; but really . . . 
 Siste tandem, carnifex ! The butchery is too horrible. 
 The hand drops powerless, appalled at the quantity of 
 birch which it must cut and brandish. I am glad we 
 are not all found out, I say again ; and protest, my dear 
 brethren, against our having our deserts. 
 
 To fancy all men found out and punished is bad 
 enough ; but imagine all women found out in the dis- 
 tinguished social circle in which you and I have the 
 honour to move. Is it not a merCy that a many of these 
 fair criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered? 
 There is Mrs. Longbow, who is for ever practising, and 
 
On being Found Out 191 
 
 who shoots poisoned arrows, too ; when you meet her 
 you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wicked- 
 ness she has done, and is doing ? There is Mrs. Painter, 
 who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model 
 in society. There is no use in saying what you really 
 know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana 
 Hunter — what a little, haughty prude it is ; and yet loe 
 know stories about her which are not altogether edify- 
 ing. I say it is best, for the sake of the good, that the 
 bad should not all be found out. You don't want your 
 children to know the history of that lady in the next 
 box, who is so handsome, and whom they admire so ? 
 Ah me, what would life be if we were all found out, 
 and punished for all our faults ? Jack Ketch would be 
 in permanence ; and then who would hang Jack Ketch ? 
 They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found 
 out. Psha ! I have heard an authority awfully com- 
 petent vow and declare that scores and hundreds of 
 murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser. That 
 terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing 
 murder, which he maintained were quite common, and 
 were scarcely ever found out. A man, for instance, 
 comes home to his wife, and . . . but I pause — I 
 know that this Magazine has a very large circulation. 
 Hundreds and hundreds of thousands — why not say a 
 
192 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 million of people at once ? — well, say a million, read it. 
 And amongst these countless readers, I might be teach- 
 ing some monster how to make away with his wufe 
 without being found out, some fiend of a woman how to 
 destroy her dear husband. I will not then tell this easy 
 and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a 
 most respectable party in the confidence of private 
 intercourse. Suppose some gentle reader were to try 
 this most simple and easy receipt — it seems to me 
 almost infallible — and come to grief in consequence, and 
 be found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon 
 myself for having been the means of doing injury to a 
 single one of our esteemed subscribers ? The pre- 
 scription whereof I speak — that is to say, whereof I dorit 
 speak — shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a 
 humane man. I am not one of your Bluebeards to go 
 and say to my wife, " My dear ! I am going away for a 
 few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of the 
 house. You may open every door and closet, except 
 the one at the end of the oak-room opposite the fire- 
 place, wath the little bronze Shakspeare on the mantel- 
 piece (or what not)." I don't say this to a w^oman — 
 unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her — because, 
 after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. 
 I say nothing about the closet at all. I keep the key in 
 
On being Found Out 193 
 
 my pocket, and a being whom I love, but who, as I 
 know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way. You 
 toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground with 
 your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy 
 fingers, and cry, " O sneerer ! You don't know the 
 depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, 
 the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or 
 never, never would you libel us so ! " " Ah, Delia ! 
 dear, dear Delia! It is because I fancy I do know 
 something about you (not all, mind — no, no ; no man 
 knows that). — Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, 
 my poppet — choose, in fact, whatever name you like — 
 bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of 
 my darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, 
 it is because I do know a little about you that I con- 
 clude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my 
 key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key then, 
 and the house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her 
 out of harm's way and gadding, and so she never can 
 be found out. 
 
 And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents 
 how we are being found out every day ! You remember 
 that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the com- 
 pany at supper one night how the first confession he 
 ever received was from a murderer, let us say. 
 
 13 
 
194 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 Presently enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemi- 
 taine. "Palsambleu, abbe !" says the brilliant marquis, 
 taking a pinch of snuff, ^'are you here? Gentlemen 
 and ladies ! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made 
 him a confession which I promise you astonished him." 
 
 To be sure how queerly things are found out ! Here 
 is an instance. Only the other day I was writing in 
 these Koundabout Papers about a certain man, whom 
 I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me 
 to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly after, 
 that paper was published another friend. Sacks, let us 
 call him, scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in 
 perfect good-humour at the club, and passes on with- 
 out speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is 
 about him that I was writing ; whereas, upon my 
 honour and conscience, I never had him once in my 
 mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another 
 man. But don't you see, by this wrath of the guilty- 
 conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too ? 
 He has owned himself guilty, never having been 
 accused. He has winced when nobody thought of 
 hitting him. I did but put the cap out, and madly 
 butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes to put 
 his head into it ! Never mind. Sacks, you are found 
 out ; but I bear you no malice, my man. 
 
On hemg Found Out 195 
 
 And yet to be found out, I know from my own 
 experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly 
 mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a 
 poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, 
 plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up never- 
 theless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at 
 cabmen and women ; brandish my bludgeon, and per- 
 haps knock down a little man or two with it ; brag of 
 the images which I break at the shooting-gallery, and 
 pass amongst my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid 
 of neither man nor dragon. Ah, me ! Suppose some 
 brisk little chap steps up and gives me a caning in 
 St. James's Street, with all the heads of my friends 
 looking out of all the club windows ? My reputation 
 is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled 
 by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach 
 it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, 
 ■when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken 
 in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily- 
 liver, and expected that I should be found out some 
 day. 
 
 That certainty of being found out must haunt and 
 depress many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it 
 is a clergyman, who can pump copious floods of tears 
 out of his own eyes and those of his audience. He 
 
 13—2 
 
196 Roundahout Fa-pers. 
 
 thinks to himself, " I am but a poor swindling, chatter- 
 ing rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted several 
 women whom I have promised to marry. I don't 
 know whether I believe what I preach, and I know 
 I have stolen the very sermon over which I have been 
 snivelling. Have they found me out ? " says he, as his 
 head drops down on the cushion. 
 
 Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or what 
 not. The Beacon says that " Jones's w^ork is one of the 
 first order." The Lamp declares that " Jones's tragedy 
 surpasses every work since the days of Him of Avon." 
 The Comet asserts that ^^ J.'s Life of Goody TwosJioes is 
 a KTr]ij,a eg ael, a noble and enduring monument to the 
 fame of that admirable Englishwoman," and so forth. 
 But then Jones knows that he has lent the critic of 
 the Beacon five pounds ; that his publisher has a half- 
 share in the Lamp; and that the Comei comes re- 
 peatedly to dine with him. It is all very well. Jones 
 is immortal until he is found out; and then down 
 comes the extinguisher, and the immortal is dead and 
 buried. The idea {dies irce!) of discovery must 
 haunt many a man, and make him uneasy, as the 
 trumpets are puffing in his triumph. Brown, who 
 has a higher place than he deserves, cowers before 
 Smith, who has found him out. What is a chorus 
 
On being Found Out. 197 
 
 of critics shouting ^^ Bravo ? " — a public clapping 
 hands and flinging garlands? Brown knows that 
 Smith has found him out. Puff, trumpets ! Wave, 
 banners ! Huzzay, boys, for the immortal Brown ! 
 "This is all very well," B. thinks (bowing the 
 while, smiling, laying his hand to his heart); "but 
 there stands Smith at the window: he has measured 
 me ; and some day the others will find me out too." 
 It is a very curious sensation to sit by a man who 
 has found you out, and who, as you know, has found 
 you out, or, vice versa, to sit with a man whom you 
 have found out. His talent? Bah! His virtue? 
 We know a little story or tw^o about his virtue, and 
 he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend 
 Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow, and talk ; and 
 we are both humbugs together. Robinson a good 
 fellow, is he ? You know how he behaved to Hicks ? 
 A good-natured man, is he ? Pray, do you remember 
 that little story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye? How 
 men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, 
 and try and sleep, with this dread of being found out 
 on their consciences ! Bardolph, who has robbed a 
 church, and Nym, w^ho has taken a purse, go to their 
 usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their com- 
 panions. Mr. Detective BuUseye appears, and says. 
 
1 98 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 " Oh, Bardolph ! I want you about that there pyx 
 business ! " Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his 
 pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and 
 walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He 
 must go. " Good-by, Doll Tearsheet I Good-by, 
 Mrs. Quickly, ma'am ! " The other gentlemen and 
 ladies de la societd look on and exchange mute adieux 
 with the departing friends. And an assured time will 
 come when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found 
 out too. 
 
 What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature 
 it has been that, for the most part, our womankind 
 are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out! 
 They don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take 
 your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent 
 friend and reader, go into your drawing-room now, 
 and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence 
 the ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's 
 house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what 
 you think of him, and see what a welcome you will 
 get! In like manner, let him come to your house, 
 and tell your good lady his candid opinion of you, 
 and fancy how she will receive him! Would you 
 have your wife and children know you exactly for 
 what you are, and esteem you precisely at your worth ? 
 
On being Found Out 199 
 
 If so, my friend, you will live in a dreary house, 
 and you will have but a chilly fireside. Do you 
 suppose the people round it don't see your homely 
 face as under a glamour, and, as it were, with a halo 
 of love round it ? You don't fancy you are, as you 
 seem to them ? No such thing, my man. Put away 
 that monstrous conceit, and be thankful that they have 
 not found you out. 
 
200 
 
 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Ox^ A HDNBEED YEAES HENCE. 
 
 HERE have I just 
 read of a game played , 
 at a country house ? 
 The party assembles 
 round a table with 
 pens, ink, and paper. 
 Some one narrates 
 a tale containing 
 more or less inci- 
 dents and person- 
 ages. Each person 
 of the company then 
 writes down, to the 
 best of his memory 
 and ability, the anecdote just narrated, and finally 
 the papers are to be read out. I do not say I 
 should like to play often at this game, which might 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence, 201 
 
 possibly be a tedious and lengthy pastime, not by any 
 means so amusing as smoking a cigar in the conserva- 
 tory; or even listening to the young ladies playing 
 their piano-pieces; or to Hobbs and Nobbs lingering 
 round the bottle and talking over the morning's run 
 with the hounds ; but surely it is a moral and ingenious 
 sport. They say the variety of narratives is often very 
 odd and amusing. The original story becomes so 
 changed and distorted that at the end of all the 
 statements you are puzzled to know where the truth 
 is at all. As time is of small importance to the cheer- 
 ful persons engaged in this sport, perhaps a good way 
 of playing it would be to spread it over a couple of 
 years. Let the people who played the game in '60 
 all meet and play it once more in '61, and each write 
 his story over again. Then bring out your original 
 and compare notes. Not only will the stories differ 
 from each other, but the writers will probably differ 
 from themselves. In the course of the year the 
 incidents will grow or will dwindle strangely. The 
 least authentic of the statements will be so lively or 
 so malicious, or so neatly put, that it will appear most 
 like the truth. I like these tales and sportive exercises. 
 I had begun a little print collection once. I had 
 Addison in his nightgown in bed at Holland House, 
 
202 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 requesting young Lord Warwick to remark how a 
 Christian should die. I had Cambronne clutching 
 his cocked-hat, and uttering the immortal la Garde 
 meurt et ne se rend pas, I had the Vengeur going 
 down, and all the crew hurraying like madmen. I 
 had Alfred toasting the muffin; Curtius (Haydon) 
 jumping into the gulf; with extracts from Napoleon's 
 bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of Baron Mun- 
 chausen. 
 
 What man who has been before the public at all 
 has not heard similar wonderful anecdotes regard- 
 ing himself and his own history? In these humble 
 essaykins I have taken leave to egotize. I cry out 
 about the shoes which pinch me, and, as I fancy, 
 more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbour's 
 corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the 
 dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I 
 heard yesterday — about Brown's absurd airs — Jones's 
 ridiculous elation when he thinks he has caught me 
 in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is that Jones 
 will read this, and will perfectly well know that I 
 mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each 
 other with entire politeness). This is not the highest 
 kind of speculation, I confess, but it is a gossip which 
 amuses some folks. A brisk and honest small-beer 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence. 203 
 
 will refresh those who do not care for the frothy 
 outpourings of heavier taps. A two of clubs may be 
 a good, handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle 
 a king of diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some 
 philosophers get their wisdom with deep thought and 
 out of ponderous libraries ; I pick up my small crumbs 
 of cogitation at a dinner-table ; or from Mrs. Mary and 
 Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over their five 
 o'clock tea. 
 
 Well, yesterday at dinner Jucundus was good enough 
 to tell me a story about myself, which he had heard 
 from a lady of his acquaintance, to whom I send my 
 best compliments. The tale is this. At nine o'clock 
 on the evening of the 31st of November last, just 
 before sunset, I was seen leaving No. 96, Abbey Road, 
 St. John's Wood, leading two little children by the 
 Land, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other 
 having a mole on the third finger of his left hand (she 
 thinks it was the third finger, but is quite sure it 
 was the left hand). Thence I walked with them to 
 Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and sausage man. 
 No. 29, Upper Theresa Road. Here, whilst I left the 
 little girl innocently eating a polony in the front shop, 
 I and Boroughbridge retired with the boy into the 
 back parlour, where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing 
 
204 Roimdahout Papers. 
 
 cribbage. She put up the cards and boxes, took out 
 a chopper and a napkin, and we cut the little boy's 
 little throat (which he bore with great pluck and 
 resolution), and made him into sausage-meat by the 
 aid of Purkis's excellent sausage-machine. The little 
 girl at first could not understand her brother's absence, 
 but, under the pretence of taking her to see Mr. 
 Fechter in Hamlet, I led her down to the New River 
 at Sadler's Wells, where a body of a child in a nan- 
 keen pelisse was subsequently found, and has never 
 been recognized to the present day. And this Mrs. 
 Lynx can aver, because she saw the whole transaction 
 with her own eyes, as she told Mr. Jucundus. 
 
 I have altered the little details of the anecdote some- 
 what. But this story is, I vow and declare, as true as 
 Mrs. Lynx's. Gracious goodness ! how do lies begin ? 
 What are the averages of lying? Is the same amount 
 of lies told about every man, and do we pretty much 
 all tell the same amount of lies? Is the average 
 greater in Ireland than in Scotland, or vice versa — 
 among women than among men ? Is this a lie I 
 am telling now? If I am talking about you, the 
 odds are, perhaps, that it is. I look back at some 
 which have been told about me, and speculate on them 
 with thanks and wonder. Dear friends have told them 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence. 205 
 
 of me, have told them to me of myself. Have they 
 not to and of you, dear friend ? A friend of mine was 
 dining at a large dinner of clergymen, and a story, as 
 true as the sausage story above given, was told regard- 
 ing me, by one of those reverend divines, in whose 
 frocks sit some anile chatterboxes, as any man, who 
 knows this world, knows. They take the privilege of 
 their gown. They cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and 
 cackle comminations under their breath. I say the old 
 women of the other sex are not more talkative or 
 more mischievous than some of these. " Such a man 
 ought not to be spoken to," says Gobemouche, 
 narrating the story — and such a story ! " And I am 
 surprised he is admitted into society at all." Yes, dear 
 Gobemouche, but the story wasn't true; and I had 
 no more done the wicked deed in question than I had 
 run away with the Queen of Sheba. 
 
 I have always longed to know what that story was 
 (or what collection of histories), which a lady had in 
 her mind to whom a servant of mine applied for a place, 
 when I was breaking up my establishment once, and 
 going abroad. Brown went with a very good character 
 from us, which, indeed, she fully deserved after several 
 years' faithful service. But when Mrs. Jones read the 
 name of the person out of whose employment Brown 
 
206 Houndahout Papers. 
 
 came, '••' That is quite sufficient," says Mrs. Jones. 
 " You may go. I will never take a servant out of 
 that house." Ah, Mrs. Jones, how I should like to 
 know what that crime was, or what that series of 
 villanies, which made you determine never to take a 
 servant out of my house ? Do you believe in the story 
 of the little boy and the sausages ? Have you swallowed 
 that little minced infant? Have you devoured that 
 young Polonius? Upon my word you have maw 
 enough. We somehow greedily gobble down all stories 
 in which the characters of our friends are chopped up, 
 and believe w^rong of them without inquiry. In a late 
 serial work written by this hand, I remember making 
 some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe 
 ill of our neighbours — and I remember the remarks, 
 not because they were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, 
 but because, within three days after they had appeared 
 in print, the moralist who wrote them, walking home 
 with a friend, heard a story about another friend, which 
 story he straightway believed, and which story was 
 scarcely more true than that sausage fable which is 
 here set down. mea culpa, rnea maxima cidpa ! But 
 though the preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be 
 good ? Yea, 'brethren ! Here be the rods. Look you, 
 here are the scourges. Choose me a nice long, swish- 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence, 207 
 
 ing, buddy one, light and well-poised in the handle, 
 thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a whipcord 
 thong with some dainty knots in it — and now — we all 
 deserve it — whish, whish, whish ! Let us cut into each 
 other all round. 
 
 A favourite liar and servant of mine was a man I 
 once had to drive a brougham. He never came to my 
 house, except for orders, and once when he helped 
 to wait at dinner so clumsily that it was agreed we 
 would dispense with his further efforts. The (job) 
 brougham horse used to look dreadfully lean and tired, 
 and the livery-stable keeper complained that we worked 
 him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a 
 neighbouring butcher's lady who liked to ride in a 
 brougham ; and Tomkins lent her ours, drove her 
 cheerfully to Richmond and Putney, and, I suppose, 
 took out a payment in mutton-chops. We gave this 
 good Tomkins wine and medicine for his family when 
 sick — we supplied him with little comforts and extras 
 which need not now be remembered — and the grateful 
 creature rewarded us by informing some of our trades- 
 men whom he honoured with his custom, " Mr. Round- 
 about ? Lor bless you ! I carry him up to bed drunk 
 every night in the week." He, Tomkins, being a man 
 of seven stone weight, and five feet high ; whereas his 
 
208 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 employer was — but here modesty interferes, and I de- 
 cline to enter into the avoirdupois question. 
 
 Now, what was Tomkins' motive for the utterance 
 and dissemination of these lies ? They could further 
 no conceivable end or interest of his own. Had they 
 been true stories, Tomkins' master would still, and 
 reasonably, have been more angry than at the fables. 
 It was but suicidal slander on the part of Tomkins — . 
 must come to a discovery — must end in a punishment. 
 The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned 
 out, a fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, 
 for of course Tomkins had a wife and poor innocent 
 children. He might have had bread, beer, bed, cha- 
 racter, coats, coals. He might have nestled in our 
 little island, comfortably sheltered from the storms of 
 life ; but we were compelled to cast him out, and send 
 him driving, lonely, perishing, tossing, starving, to sea 
 — ^to drown. To drown? There be other modes of 
 death whereby rogues die. Good- by, Tomkins. And 
 so the night-cap is put on, and the bolt is drawn for 
 poor T. 
 
 Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our 
 respected readers to send in little statements of the lies 
 which they know have been told about themselves ; 
 what a heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence, 209 
 
 of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary 
 falsehoods, might we not gather together ! And a lie 
 once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it 
 by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical 
 little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, 
 *^ Magna est Veritas et prwvalehitJ^ Psha ! Great lies 
 are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and 
 day after day. Take an instance or two out of my own 
 little budget. I sit near a gentleman at dinner, and the 
 conversation turns upon a certain anonymous literary 
 performance which at the time is amusing the town. 
 " Oh," says the gentleman, " everybody knows who 
 wrote that paper: it is Momus's." I was a young 
 author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling : '' I 
 beg your pardon," I say, ^^it was written by your 
 humble servant." " Indeed ! " w^as all that the man 
 replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned his 
 back, and talked to his other neighbour. I never heard 
 sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than by that 
 " indeed." " Impudent liar," the gentleman's face said, 
 as clear as face could speak. Where was Magna 
 Veritas, and how did she prevail then ? She lifted up 
 her voice, she made her appeal, and she was kicked out 
 of court. In New York I read a newspaper criticism 
 one day (by an exile from our shores who has taken up 
 
 14 
 
2 1 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 his abode in the Western Republic), commenting upon 
 a letter of mine which had appeared in a contemporary 
 volume, and wherein it was stated that the writer was a 
 lad in such and such a year, and, in point of fact, I was, 
 at the period spoken of, nineteen years of age." " False- 
 hood, Mr. Roundabout," says the noble critic, ^^ you 
 were then not a lad; you were then six-and-twenty 
 years of age." You see he knew better than papa and 
 mamma and parish register. It w^as easier for him to 
 think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter connected 
 with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mistaken. 
 Years ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, 
 Arcturus and myself met a gentleman from China who 
 knew the language. We began to speak Chinese against 
 him. We said we were born in China. We were two 
 to one. We spoke the mandarin dialect with perfect 
 fluency. We had the company with us ; as in the old, 
 old days, the squeak of the real pig was voted not to be 
 so natural as the squeak of the sham pig. O Arcturus, 
 the sham pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause 
 of multitudes, and the real porker grunts unheeded in 
 his sty ! 
 
 I once talked for some little time with an amiable 
 lady : it was for the first time ; and I saw an expression 
 of surprise on her kind face, which said as plainly as 
 
On a Hundred Years Hence, 211 
 
 face could say, " Sir, do you know that up to this 
 moment I have had a certain opinion of you, and that I 
 begin to think I have been mistaken or misled?" I 
 not only know that she had heard evil reports of me, 
 but I know who told her — one of those acute fellows, 
 my dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous 
 sermon, who has found me out — found out actions 
 which I never did, found out thoughts and sayings 
 which I never spoke, and judged me accordingly. Ah, 
 my lad! have I found you out? visum teneatis. 
 Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more guilty 
 than I. 
 
 How comes it that the evil which men say spreads so 
 widely and lasts so long, whilst our good, kind words 
 don't seem somehow to take root and bear blossom? 
 Is it that in the stony hearts of mankind these pretty 
 flowers can't find a place to grow ? Certain it is that 
 scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's 
 neighbour is by no means lively hearing. An ac- 
 quaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with 
 mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; 
 whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but 
 a sickly, unrelishing meat. 
 
 Now, such being the case, my dear worthy Mrs. Can- 
 dour, in whom I know there are a hundred good and 
 
 14—2 
 
212 Roimdahout Papers, 
 
 generous qualities; it being perfectly clear that the 
 good things which we say of our neighbours don't 
 fructify, but somehow perish in the ground where they 
 are dropped, whilst the evil words are wafted by all 
 the winds of scandal, take root in all soils, and flourish 
 amazingly — seeing, I say, that this conversation does 
 not give us a fair chance, suppose we give up censo- 
 riousness altogether, and decline uttering our opinions 
 about Brown, Jones, and Robinson (and Mesdames B., 
 J., and R.) at all ? We may be mistaken about every 
 one of them, as, please goodness, those anecdote-mongers 
 against whom I have uttered my meek protest have been 
 mistaken about me. We need not go to the extent of 
 saying that Mrs. Manning was an amiable creature, 
 much misunderstood; and Jack Thurtell a gallant, 
 unfortunate fellow, not near so black as he was painted ; 
 but we will try and avoid personalities altogether in talk, 
 won't we ? We will range the fields of science, dear 
 madam, and communicate to each other the pleasing 
 results of our studies. We will, if you please, examine 
 the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the micro- 
 scope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit 
 with our arms round each other's waists on the 200ns 
 asinorum, and see the stream of mathematics flow 
 beneath. We will take refuge in cards, and play at 
 
On a Himdi^ed Years Hence, 213 
 
 " beggar my neighbour," not abuse my neighbour. 
 We will go to the Zoological Gardens and talk freely 
 about the gorilla and his kindred, but not talk about 
 people who can talk in their turn. Suppose we praise 
 the High Church ? we offend the Low Church. The 
 Broad Church ? High and Low are both offended. 
 What do you think of Lord Derby as a politician? 
 And what is your opinion of Lord Palmerston? If 
 you please, will you play me those lovely variations of 
 '' In my cottage near a wood ? " It is a charming air 
 (you know it in French, I suppose? Ah! te dirai-je, 
 maman!) and was a favourite with poor Marie An- 
 toinette. I say " poor " because I have a right to 
 speak with pity of a sovereign who was renowned for 
 so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as for 
 giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was 
 good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid ! We have 
 agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game 
 at cards — at dcarte, if you please. You deal. I ask for 
 cards. I lead the deuce of clubs. . . . 
 
 What ? there is no deuce ! Deuce take it ! What ? 
 People will go on talking about their neighbours, and 
 won't have their mouths stopped by cards, or ever so 
 much microscopes and aquariums ? Ah, my poor dear 
 Mrs. Candour, I agree with you. By the way, did you 
 
214 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 ever see anything like Lady Godiva Trotter's dress last 
 night ? People will go on chattering, although we hold 
 our tongues; and, after all, my good soul, what will 
 their scandal matter a hundred years hence ? 
 
215 
 
 SMALL-BEEE CHEONICLE. 
 
 OT long since^ at a cer- 
 tain banquet, I had the 
 good fortune to sit by- 
 Doctor Polymathesis, 
 who knows everything, 
 and who, about the 
 time when the claret 
 made its appearance, 
 W^ mentioned that old dic- 
 tum of the grumbling 
 \ Oxford Don, that "All 
 CLARET would he port if 
 it could!'' Imbibing a bumper of one or the other 
 not ungratefully, I thought to myself, " Here surely, 
 Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your rever- 
 ence's sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear 
 brethren, what is here said of the vintages of Portugal 
 
216 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 and Gascony, and we shall have no difficulty in perceiv- 
 ing how many clarets aspire to be ports in their way ; 
 how most men and women of our acquaintance, how we 
 ourselves, are Acquitainians giving ourselves Lusitanian 
 airs; how we wish to have credit for being stronger, 
 braver, more beautiful, more worthy than we really are. 
 Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy — a desire to 
 excel, a desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strength- 
 imparting — is a virtuous and noble ambition ; and it is 
 most difficult for a man in his own case, or his neigh- 
 bour's, to say at what point this ambition transgresses 
 the boundary of virtue, and becomes vanity, pretence, 
 and self-seeking. You are a poor man, let us say, 
 showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a 
 confident aspect. Yom- purse is very narrow, but you 
 owe no man a penny ; your means are scanty, but your 
 wife's gown is decent ; your old coat well brushed ; 
 your children at a good school ; you grumble to no one ; 
 ask favours of no one ; truckle to no neighbours on 
 account of their superior rank, or (a worse, and a 
 meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for 
 their better fortune. To all outward appearances you 
 are as well to do as your neighbours, who have thrice 
 your income. There may be in this case some little 
 mixture of pretension in your life and behaviour. You 
 
Small-Beer ChronicU, 217 
 
 certainly do put on a smiling face whilst fortune is 
 pinching jou. Your wife and girls^ so smart and neat 
 at evening parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling 
 all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. 
 You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are 
 content yourself with a glass of whisky and water. You 
 avoid a cab, saying, that of all things you like to walk 
 home after dinner (which you know, my good friend, is 
 a fib). I grant you that in this scheme of life there does 
 enter ever so little hypocrisy ; that this claret is loaded, 
 as it were ; but your desire to portify yourself is 
 amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honourable : and 
 were there no other hypocrisies than yours in the world 
 we should be a set of worthy fellows ; and sermonizers, 
 moralizers, satirizers, would have to hold their tongues, 
 and go to some other trade to get a living. 
 
 But you know you will step over that boundary line 
 of virtue and modesty, into the district where humbug 
 and vanity begin, and there the moralizer catches you 
 and makes an example of you. For instance, in a 
 certain novel in another place my friend Mr. Talbot 
 Twysden is mentioned — a man whom you and I know 
 to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in treating 
 himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our Britain 
 there are hundreds of men like him ; for ever striving 
 
218 Roundahcmt Papers. 
 
 to swell beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their 
 natural strength, to step beyond their natural stride. 
 Search, search within your own waistcoats, dear 
 brethren — you know in your hearts, which of your 
 ordinaire qualities you would pass oflP, and fain consider 
 as first-rate port? And why not you yourself, Mr. 
 Preacher ? says the congregation. Dearly beloved> 
 neither in nor out of this pulpit do I profess to be 
 bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you. 
 A short while since, a certain Reviewer announced that 
 I gave myself great pretensions as a philosopher. I a 
 philosopher ! I advance pretensions ! My dear Satur- 
 day friend ; and you ? Don't you teach everything to 
 > everybody? and punish the naughty boys if they don't 
 learn as you bid them? You teach politics to Lord 
 John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to 
 write ; painters, how to paint ; gentlemen, manners ; 
 and opera-dancers, how to pirouette. I was not a little 
 amused of late by an instance of the modesty of our 
 Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athe- 
 nians, and apropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, 
 sate down and gravely showed the Greek gentleman 
 how to write his own language. 
 
 No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all ; 
 but offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle. 219 
 
 I85. per cloz. let us say, grown on my own hill-side, and 
 offered de hon cceur to those who will sit down under my 
 tonnelle, and have a half-hour's drink and gossip. It is 
 none of your hot porto, my friend. I know there is 
 much better and stronger liquor elsewhere. Some 
 pronounce it sour ; some say it is thin ; some that 
 it has wofully lost its flavour. This may or may not 
 be true. There are good and bad years; years that 
 surprise everybody ; years of which the produce is 
 small and bad, or rich and plentiful. But if my tap 
 is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give 
 himself the trouble to drink it. I do not even say that 
 I would be port if I could ; knowing that port (by which 
 I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and more 
 durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not 
 relished by all palates, or suitable to all heads. We 
 will assume then, dear brother, that you and I are 
 tolerably modest people ; and, ourselves being thus out 
 of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our 
 neighbours are, and how very many of them would be 
 port if they could. 
 
 Have you never seen a small man from college placed 
 amongst great folk, and giving himself the airs of a man 
 of fashion? He goes back to his common room with 
 fond reminiscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry 
 
220 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Hall. He writes to the dear countess, to say that dear 
 Lord Lolly pop is getting on very well at St. Boniface, 
 and that the accident which he met with in a scuffle 
 with an inebriated bargeman only showed his spirit and 
 honour, and wall not permanently disfigure his lordship's 
 nose. He gets his clothes from dear Lollypop's London 
 tailor, and wears a mauve or magenta tie when he rides 
 out to see the hounds. A love of fashionable people is 
 a weakness, I do not say of all, but of some tutors. 
 Witness that Eton tutor t'other day, who intimated that 
 in Cornhill we could not understand the perfect purity, 
 delicacy, and refinement of those genteel families who 
 sent their sons to Eton. O usher, mon ami ! Old Sam 
 Johnson, who, too, had been an usher in his early life, 
 kept a little of that weakness always. Suppose Gold- 
 smith had knocked him up at three in the morning and 
 proposed a boat to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc 
 and his friend did, would he have said, "What, my 
 boy, are you for a frolic ? I'm with you ! " and gone 
 and put on his clothes ? Rather he would have pitched 
 poor Goldsmith downstairs. He would have liked to be 
 port if he could. Of course lue wouldn't. Our opinion 
 of the Portugal grape is known. It grows very high, and 
 is very sour, and we don't go for that kind of grape at all. 
 "I was walking with Mr. Fox" — and sure this 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle, 221 
 
 anecdote comes very pat after the grapes — "I was 
 walking with Mr. Fox in the Louvre," says Benjamin 
 West {apud some paper I have just been reading), '^ and 
 I remarked how many people turned round to look at 
 me. This shows the respect of the French for the 
 fine arts." This is a curious instance of a very small 
 claret indeed, which imagined itself to be port of the 
 strongest body. There are not many instances of a faith 
 so deep, so simple, so satisfactory as this. I have met 
 many who would like to be port ; but with few of the 
 Gascon sort, who absolutely believe they were port. 
 George III. believed in West's port, and thought 
 Reynolds' overrated stuff. When I saw West's pictures 
 at Philadelphia, I looked at them with astonishment and 
 awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head under your 
 old night-cap. O immortality ! is this the end of you ? 
 Did any of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read 
 Blackmore's Poems, or the Epics of Baour-Lormian, or 
 the Henriade, or — what shall we say ? — Pollok's Course 
 of Time ? They were thought to be more lasting than 
 brass by some people, and where are they now ? And 
 our masterpieces of literature — our ports — that, if not 
 immortal, at any rate are to last their fifty, their 
 hundred years — oh, sirs, don't you think a very small 
 cellar will hold them ? 
 
222 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring 
 about Trafalgar Square and that neighbourhood, don't 
 you think many of them — apart even from the ridiculous 
 execution — cut rather a ridiculous figure, and that we 
 are too eager to set up our ordinaire heroism and talent 
 for port ? A Duke of Wellington or two I will grant, 
 though even of these idols a moderate supply will be 
 sufficient. Some years ago a famous and witty French 
 critic was in London, with whom I walked the streets. 
 I am ashamed to say that I informed him (being in 
 hopes that he was about to write some papers regarding 
 the manners and customs of this country) that all the 
 statues he saw represented the Duke of Wellington. 
 That on the arch opposite Apsley House ? the Duke in 
 a cloak, and cocked hat, on horseback. That behind 
 Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf costume ? the Duke 
 again. That in Cockspur Street? the Duke with a 
 pigtail — and so on. I showed him an army of Dukes. 
 There are many bronze heroes who after a few years 
 look already as foolish, awkward, and out of place as a 
 man, say at Shoolbred's or Swan and Edgar's. For 
 example, those three Grenadiers in Pall Mall, who have 
 been up only a few months, don't you pity those un- 
 happy household troops, who have to stand frowning 
 and looking fierce there ; and tliink they would like to 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle, 223 
 
 step down and go to barracks ? That they fought very 
 bravely there is no doubt; but so did the Russians 
 fight very bravely ; and the French fight very bravely ; 
 and so did Colonel Jones and the 99th, and Colonel 
 Brown and the 100th; and I say again that ordinaire 
 should not give itself port airs, and that an honest 
 ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering so. I 
 am sure if you could consult the Duke of York, who is 
 impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask 
 his late Royal Highness whether he thought he ought to 
 remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, 
 not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic 
 perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, 
 I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in 
 Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to 
 remain in his place. But look at William of Cumber- 
 land, with his hat cocked over his eye, prancing behind 
 Lord George on his Roman-ilosed charger ; he, depend 
 on it, would be for getting off his horse if he had the 
 permission. He did not hesitate about trifles, as we 
 know ; but he was a very truth-telling and honourable 
 soldier : and as for heroic rank and statuesque dignity, 
 I would wager a dozen of '20 port against a bottle of 
 pure and sound Bordeaux, at I85. per dozen (bottles 
 included), that he never would think of claiming any 
 
224 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 such absurd distinction. They have got a statue of 
 Thomas Moore at Dublin, I hear. Is he on horseback ? 
 Some men should have, say, a fifty years' lease of 
 glory. After a while some gentlemen now in brass 
 should go to the melting furnace, and reappear in 
 some other gentleman's shape. Lately I saw that 
 Melville column rising over Edinburgh ; come, good 
 men and true, don't you feel a little awkward and 
 uneasy when you walk under it? Who was this 
 to stand in heroic places ? and is yon the man whom 
 Scotchmen most delight to honour ? I must own defer- 
 entially that there is a tendency in North Britain to 
 over-esteem its heroes. Scotch ale is very good and 
 strong, but it is not stronger than all the other beer in 
 the world, as some Scottish patriots would insist. When 
 there has been a war, and stout old Sandy Sansculotte 
 returns home from India or Crimea, what a bagpiping, 
 shouting, hurraying, and self-glorification takes place 
 round about him ! You would fancy, to hear McOrator 
 after dinner, that the Scotch had fought all the battles, 
 killed all the Russians, Indian rebels, or what not. 
 In Cupar-Fife, there's a little inn called the " Battle 
 of Waterloo," and what do you think the sign is? 
 (I sketch from memory, to be sure.) "The Battle of 
 Waterloo" is one broad Scotchman laying about him 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle, 225 
 
 with a broadsword. Yes, yes, my dear Mac, you are 
 wise, you are good, you are clever, you are handsome. 
 
 you are brave, you are rich, &c. ; but so is Jones over 
 the border. Scotch salmon is good, but there are other 
 good fish in the sea. I once heard a Scotchman lecture 
 on poetry in London. Of course the pieces he selected 
 were chiefly by Scottish authors, and Walter Scott was 
 his favourite poet. I whispered to my neighbour, who 
 was a Scotchman (by the way, the audience were almost 
 all Scotch, and the room was All-Mac's — I beg 
 your pardon, but I couldn't help it, I really couldn't 
 help it) — '^ The professor has said the best poet was a 
 Scotchman : I wager that he will say the worst poet was 
 
 15 
 
226 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 a Scotchinan, too." And sure enough that worst poet, 
 when he made his appearance, was a Northern Briton. 
 
 And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on my 
 travels, can I forget one mighty republic — one — two 
 mighty republics, where people are notoriously fond 
 of passing off their claret for port ? I am very glad, 
 for the sake of a kind friend, that there is a great 
 and influential party in the United, and, I trust, in 
 the Confederate States, who believe that Catawba 
 wine is better than the best Champagne. Opposite 
 that famous old White House at Washington, whereof 
 I shall ever have a grateful memory, they have set up 
 an equestrian statue of General Jackson, by a self- 
 taught American artist of no inconsiderable genius and 
 skill. At an evening party a member of Congress 
 seized me in a corner of the room, and asked me if I 
 did not think this was the finest equestrian statue in the 
 world ? How was I to deal with this plain question, put 
 to me in a corner ? I was bound to reply, and accord- 
 ingly said that I did not think it was the finest statue in 
 the world. " Well, sir," says the member of Congress, 
 
 *' but you must remember that Mr. M had never 
 
 seen a statue when he made this ! " I suggested that to 
 
 see other statues might do Mr. M no harm. Nor 
 
 was any man more willing to own his defects, or more 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle. 227 
 
 modest regarding his merits, than the sculptor himself, 
 whom I met subsequently. But, oh ! what a charming 
 article there was in a Washington paper next day about 
 the impertinence of criticism and offensive tone of arro- 
 gance which EngUshmen adopted towards men and 
 works of genius in America ! " Who was this man, 
 who, &c. &c." The Washington writer was angry 
 because I would not accept this American claret as 
 the finest port wine in the world. Ah me ! It is about 
 blood and not wine that the quarrel now is, and who 
 shall foretell its end ? 
 
 How much claret that would be port if it could is 
 handed about in every society ! In the House of 
 Commons what small-beer orators try to pass for 
 strong ? Stay : have I a spite against any one ? It is 
 a fact that the wife of the member for Bungay has left 
 off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to her evening 
 parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I will 
 say that he was always overrated, and that now he is 
 lamentably falling off even from what he has been. I 
 will back the member for Stoke Pogis against him ; and 
 show that the dashing young member for Islington is a 
 far sounder man than either. Have I any little literary 
 animosities? Of course not. Men of letters never 
 have. Otherwise, how I could serve out a competitor 
 
 15—2 
 
228 Roundabout Paper, 
 
 here, make a face over his works, and show that his 
 would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed ! Non- 
 sense, man! Why so squeamish? Do they spare 
 you ! Now you have the whip in your hand, won't 
 you lay on? You used to be a pretty whip enough 
 as a young man, and liked it too. Is there no 
 enemy who would be the better for a little thong- 
 ing? No. I have militated in former times, not 
 without glory; but I grow peaceable as I grow 
 old. And if I have a literary enemy, why, he will 
 probably write a book ere long, and then it will be 
 his turn, and my favourite review will be down upon 
 him. 
 
 My brethren, these sermons are professedly short; 
 for I have that opinion of my dear congregation, 
 which leads me to think that were I to preach at 
 great length they would yawn, stamp, make noises, 
 and perhaps go straightway out of church ; and yet 
 with this text I protest I could go on for hours. What 
 multitudes of men, what multitudes of women, my 
 dears, pass off their ordinaire for port, their small 
 beer for strong! In literature, in politics, in the army, 
 the navy, the church, at the bar, in the world, what 
 an immense quantity of cheap liquor is made to do 
 service for better sorts ! Ask Serjeant Rowland his 
 
Small-Beer Chronicle, 229 
 
 opinion of Oliver, Q.C. ? "Ordinaire, my good fel- 
 low, ordinaire, with a port-wine label ! " Ask Oliver 
 his opinion of Rowland. Never was a man so over- 
 rated by the world and by himself. Ask Tweedledum- 
 ski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's performance, " A 
 quack, my tear sir ! an ignoramus, I geef you my 
 vort ? He gombose an opera ! He is not fit to make 
 dance a bear!" Ask Paddington and Buckmister, 
 those two '' swells " of fashion, what they think of each 
 other? They are notorious ordinaire. You and I 
 remember when they passed for very small wine, and 
 now how high and mighty they have become ? What 
 do you say to Tomkins' sermons ? Ordinaire, trying to 
 go down as orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire 
 too! To Hopkins' historical works? — to Pumkins' 
 poetry ? Ordinaire, ordinaire again — thin, feeble, 
 overrated ; and so down the whole list. And when 
 we have done discussing our men friends, have we 
 not all the women? Do these not advance absurd 
 pretensions? Do these never give themselves airs? 
 With feeble brains, don't they often set up to be esprits 
 fortsl Don't they pretend to be women of fashion, 
 and cut their betters ? Don't they try and pass off 
 their ordinary-looking girls as beauties of the first 
 order? Every man in his circle knows women who 
 
230 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 give themselves airs, and to whom we can apply the 
 port-wine simile. 
 
 Come, my friends. Here is enough of ordinaire and 
 port for to-day. My bottle has run out. Will any- 
 body have any more? Let us go upstairs, and get 
 a cup of tea from the ladies. 
 
231 
 
 OGEES. 
 
 DARESAY the reader 
 lias remarked that the 
 upright and independent 
 vowel, which stands in 
 the vowel-hst between 
 E and O, has formed 
 the subject of the main 
 part of these essays. 
 How does that vowel 
 feel this morning ? — 
 fresh, good-humoured, 
 andhvely? The Round- 
 about lines, which fall 
 from this pen, are cor- 
 respondingly brisk and 
 cheerful. Has anything, 
 on the contrary, dis- 
 acrreed with the vowel ? 
 Has its rest been disturbed, or was yesterday's dinner too 
 good, or yesterday's wine not good enough ? Under such 
 
232 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 circumstances, a darkling, misanthropic tinge, no doubt, 
 is cast upon the paper. The jokes, if attempted, 
 are elaborate and dreary. The bitter temper breaks 
 out. That sneering manner is adopted, which you 
 know, and which exhibits itself so especially when 
 the writer is speaking about women. A moody care- 
 lessness comes over him. He sees no good in any body 
 or thing: and treats gentlemen, ladies, history, and 
 things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy. 
 Agreed. When the vowel in question is in that mood i 
 if you like airy gaiety and tender gushing benevolence 
 — if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the 
 rest of your fellow-beings ; I recommend you, my dear 
 creature, to go to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn 
 to some other article. There are moods in the mind 
 of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is 
 ill-conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good 
 health, and good humour? Do not philosophers 
 grumble ? Are not sages sometimes out of temper ? 
 and do not angel-women go off in tantrums? To- 
 day my mood is dark. I scowl as I dip my pen in 
 the inkstand. 
 
 Here is the day come round — for everything here 
 is done with the utmost regularity : — intellectual labour, 
 sixteen hours; meals, thirty-two minutes; exercise. 
 
Ogres, 233 
 
 a hundred and forty-eight minutes ; conversation with 
 the family, chiefly Hterary, and about the housekeeping, 
 one hour and four minutes; sleep, three hours and 
 fifteen minutes (at the end of the month, when the 
 Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes 
 more); and the rest for the toilette and the world. 
 Well, I say, the Roundahout Pa'per Day being come, 
 and the subject long since settled in my mind, an 
 excellent subject — a most telling, lively, and popular 
 subject — I go to breakfast determined to finish that 
 meal in 9J minutes, as usual, and then retire to my 
 desk and work, when — oh, provoking! — here in the 
 paper is the very subject treated, on which I was going 
 to write ! Yesterday another paper which I saw treated 
 it — and of course, as I need not tell you, spoiled it. 
 Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the 
 subject; perhaps you may guess what it was — but 
 I won't tell you. Only this is true, my favourite 
 subject, which was about to make the best paper we 
 have had for a long time : my bird, my game that 
 I was going to shoot and serve up with such a delicate 
 sauce, has been found by other sportsmen; and pop, 
 pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it, 
 mangled it, and brought it down. 
 
 *^ And can't you take some other text," say you. All 
 
234 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 this is mighty well. But if you have set your heart 
 on a certain dish for dinner, be it cold boiled veal, 
 or what you will; and they bring you turtle and 
 venison, don't you feel disappointed? During your 
 walk you have been making up your mind that that 
 cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a 
 very sufficient dinner : you have accustomed your 
 thoughts to it ; and here, in place of it, is a turkey, 
 surrounded by coarse sausages, or a reeking pigeon-pie 
 or a fulsome roast pig. I have known many a good 
 and kind man made furiously angry by such a contre- 
 temps. I have known him lose his temper, call his 
 wife and servants names, and a whole household made 
 miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is 
 too dangerous to baulk a man about his dinner, how 
 much more about his article? I came to my meal 
 with, an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum ! 
 Wife, where is that tender little Princekin ? Have you 
 trussed him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have 
 you taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, 
 as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin to 
 whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and 
 clap my huge chest like a gorilla ; and then my poor 
 Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes have all 
 run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the 
 
Ogres, 235 
 
 paste to bake them in ! I pause in the description. 
 I won't condescend to report the bad language, which 
 you know must ensue, when an ogre, whose mind is 
 ill-regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence are 
 notorious, finds himself disappointed of his greedy 
 hopes. What treatment of his wife, what abuse and 
 brutal behaviour to his children, who, though ogrillons, 
 are children! My dears, you may fancy, and need 
 not ask my delicate pen to describe, the language and 
 behaviour of a vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man 
 with an immense mouth and teeth, which are too fre- 
 quently employed in the gobbling and crunching of 
 raw man's meat. 
 
 And in this circuitous way you see I have reached 
 my present subject, which is. Ogres. You fancy they 
 are dead or only fictitious characters — mythical repre- 
 sentatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for 
 blood ? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you 
 remember all sorts of little whipping-snapping Tomb 
 Thumbs used to elude and out-run them. They were so 
 stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades 
 and artifices : witness that well-known ogre,''who, because 
 Jack cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open 
 his own stupid waistcoat and interior. They were 
 cruel, brutal, disgusting with their sharpened teeth. 
 
236 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 immense knives, and roaring voices : but they always 
 ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or 
 some other smart little champion. 
 
 Yes ; they were conquered in the end there is no 
 doubt. They plunged headlong (and uttering the most 
 frightful bad language) into some pit where Jack came 
 with his smart couteau de chasse and whipped their 
 brutal heads off. They would be going to devour 
 maidens. 
 
 But ever when it seemed 
 
 Their need was at the sorest, 
 A knight, in armour bright. 
 
 Came riding through the forest. 
 
 And, down after a combat, would go the brutal per- 
 secutor with a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, 
 this is very true and well. But you remember that 
 round the ogre's cave, the ground was covered, for 
 hundreds and hundreds of yards, with the hones of the 
 victims whom he had lured into the castle. Many 
 knights and maids came to him and perished under his 
 knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres ? 
 monsters dwelling in caverns, whence they rushed, 
 attired in plate armour, wielding pikes and torches, 
 and destroying stray passengers who passed by their 
 lair? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as 
 they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. 
 
Ogres. 237 
 
 But, before they were destroyed, tliey did a deal of 
 mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. 
 They had sent many brave souls to Hades, before their 
 own fled, howling out of their rascal carcasses, to the 
 same place of gloom. 
 
 There is no greater mistake than to suppose that 
 fairies, champions, distressed damsels, and by conse- 
 quence ogres, have ceased to exist. It may not be 
 ogredble to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but, as 
 I am writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am 
 grinding my teeth — yelling, roaring, and cursing — 
 brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as it 
 were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater 
 mistake than to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. 
 We all know ogres. Their caverns are round us, and 
 about us. There are the castles of several ocrres within 
 a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of 
 them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not : but I 
 know they are. I visit them. I don't mean to say 
 that they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, 
 and have a cannibal feast before me. But I see the 
 bones lying about the roads to their houses, and in the 
 areas and gardens. Politeness, of course, prevents me 
 from making any remarks ; but I know them well 
 enough. One of the ways to know 'em is to watch 
 
238 Roundabout Pajyers. 
 
 the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children. 
 They lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful 
 cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will stab about, 
 and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and 
 ask a night's lodging, but they will outrage, murder, 
 and chop up their own kin. We all know ogres, I 
 say, and have been in their dens often. It is not 
 necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer 
 their guests the peculiar dish which they like. They 
 cannot always get a Tom Thumb .family. They eat 
 mutton and beef too ; and I daresay even go out to 
 tea, and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there 
 are numbers of them going about in the world. And 
 now you have my word for it, and this little hint, it 
 is quite curious what an interest society may be made 
 to have for you, by your determining to find out the 
 ogres you meet there. 
 
 What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, 
 to whom a joke is a very grave thing. I mean, 
 madam, that in the company assembled in your genteel 
 drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in 
 white neckcloths, you receive men who elbow through 
 life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private : 
 men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering ; cruel hectors at 
 home ; smiling courtiers abroad ; causing wives, chil- 
 
Ogres. 239 
 
 dren, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and 
 smiling and bowing as they bid strangers welcome into 
 their castles. I say, there are men who have crunched 
 the bones of victim after victim ; in whose closets lie 
 skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres 
 come out into the world, you don't suppose they show 
 their knives, and their great teeth? A neat simple 
 white neckcloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a 
 cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather 
 dreadful grin; but I know ogres very considerably 
 respected : and when you hint to such and such "a 
 man, "My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear 
 to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal ;" the 
 gentleman cries, " Oh, psha, nonsense ! Daresay not 
 so black as he is painted. Daresay not worse than his 
 neighbours." We condone everything in this country 
 — private treason, falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, 
 roguery, and double dealing — What? Do you mean 
 to say in your acquaintance you don't know ogres 
 guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that 
 knowing them you don't shake hands with them; 
 dine with them at your table ; and meet them at their 
 own ? Depend upon it, in the time when there were 
 real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up 
 real knights and virgins — when they went into the 
 
240 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 world — the neighbouring market-town, let us say, or 
 earl's castle ; though their nature and reputation were 
 jDretty well known, their notorious foibles were never 
 alluded to. You would say, " What, Blunderbore, 
 my boy ! How do you do ? How well and fresh you 
 look ! What's the receipt you have for keeping so 
 young and rosy?" And your wife would softly ask 
 after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or it 
 would be, " My dear Humguffin ! try that pork. It is 
 home-bred, home-fed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell 
 me if you think it is as good as yours ? John, a glass 
 of Burgundy to Colonel HumgufSn!" You don't sup- 
 pose there would be any unpleasant allusions to dis- 
 agreeable home-reports regarding Humguffin's manner 
 of furnishing his larder? I say we all of us know 
 ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. And if 
 inconvenient moralists tell us we are cowards for our 
 pains, we turn round with a tu quoqne, or say that we 
 don't meddle with other folk's affairs ; that people are 
 much less black than they are painted, and so on. 
 What ? Won't half the county go to Ogreham Castle ? 
 AVon't some of the clergy say grace at dinner ? Won't 
 the mothers bring their daughters to dance with the 
 young Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to 
 die — I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is too 
 
Ogres, 24 1 
 
 revolting — I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you 
 aver, on your conscience and honour, that mothers 
 will not be found to offer their young girls to supply 
 the lamented lady's place ? How stale this misanthropy 
 is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. 
 Yes, my good woman. I daresay you would like to 
 call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at 
 home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking 
 in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham 
 gaiety to conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee 
 out: — thou art prosperous and honoured, art thou? I 
 say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hast 
 plundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou 
 hast laid violent hands on the goods of the innocent and 
 confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the meek and 
 gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast been 
 hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, 
 monster! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill 
 daylight through thy wicked cannibal carcass ? I see 
 the ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the com- 
 pany ; and he gives a dreadful sidelong glance of sus- 
 picion as he is talking to my lord bishop in the corner 
 there. 
 
 Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In 
 former times, and in children's books, where it is 
 
 16 
 
242 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 necessary to paint your moral in such large letters 
 that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made 
 with that enormous mouth and ratelier which you know 
 of, and with which they can swallow down a baby, 
 almost without using that great knife which they 
 always carry. They are too cunning now-a-days» 
 They go about in society, slim, small, quietly dressed, 
 and showing no especially great appetite. In my own 
 young days there used to be play ogres — men who would 
 devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave hitn 
 without a bit of flesh on his bones. They were quiet 
 gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young 
 fellow into their cave. Champagne, pat6 de foie-gras, 
 and numberless good- things, were handed about; and 
 then, having eaten, the young man was devoured in 
 his turn. I believe these card and dice ogres have died 
 away almost as entirely as the hasty-pudding giants 
 whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres 
 in City courts who lure you into their dens. About 
 our Cornish mines I am told there are many most 
 plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and 
 pick your bones there. In a certain newspaper there 
 used to be lately a whole column of advertisements 
 from ogres who would put on the most plausible, 
 nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their vie- 
 
Ogres, 243 
 
 tims. You would read, " A tradesman, established for 
 seventy years in the City, and known, and much 
 respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring 
 Brothers, has pressing need for three pounds until next 
 Saturday. He can give security for half a million, 
 and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use 
 of the loan," and so on ; or, " An influential body of 
 capitalists are about to establish a company, of which 
 the business will be enormous and the profits propor- 
 tionately prodigious. They will require A seceetakt, 
 of good address and appearance, at a salary of two 
 thousand per annum. He need not be able to write, 
 but address and manners are absolutely necessary. As 
 a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to 
 deposit," &c. ; or, " A young widow (of pleasing man- 
 ners and appearance) who has a pressing necessity for 
 four pounds ten for three weeks, offers her Erard's 
 grand piano valued at three hundred guineas; a 
 diamond cross of eight hundred pounds; and board 
 and lodging in her elegant villa near Banbury Cross, 
 with the best references and society, in return for the 
 loan." I suspect these people are ogres. There are 
 ogres and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one- 
 eyed, notorious ogre, fetching his victims out of a hole, 
 and gobbling them one after another. There could be 
 
 16—2 
 
244 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens ogres 
 — pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly 
 from out of the water, and singing their melodious 
 wheedles. And the bones round their caves were more 
 numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh bones round 
 the cavern of hulking Polypheme. 
 
 To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up 
 rides the dapper champion of the pen ; puffs boldly 
 upon the horn which hangs by the chain ; enters the 
 hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking 
 within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring 
 ruffian ! We give him a meeting on the green plain be- 
 fore his castle. Green ? No wonder it should be green : 
 it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful 
 wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop 
 over our saddle. 'Tis but to kiss the locket of our 
 lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up : the lance 
 is in rest (Gillott's 'iron is the point for me). A touch 
 of the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, and we 
 gallop at the great brute. 
 
 "Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!" 
 And who are these who pour out of the castle ? the 
 imprisoned maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor 
 old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in 
 the dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing 
 
Ogres, 245 
 
 under the tyranny of that ruffian ! Ah ! ye knights of 
 the pen! May honour be your shield and truth tip 
 your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be 
 modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for 
 the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him. 
 
246 
 
 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPEES WHICH I 
 INTENDED TO W^EITE. 
 
 "We have all heard of a place paved with good inten- 
 tions: — a place which I take to be a veiy dismal, 
 useless and unsatisfactory terminus for many pleasant 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 247 
 
 thoughts, kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little 
 quips and pranks, harmless jokes which die as it were 
 the moment of their birth. Poor little children of the 
 brain ! He was a dreary theologian who huddled you 
 under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in 
 the vaults under the flagstones of Hades ! I trust that 
 some of the best actions we have all of us committed 
 in our lives have been committed in fancy. It is not 
 all wickedness we are thinking, que didble ! Some of 
 our thoughts are bad enough I grant you. Many a 
 one you and I have had here below. Ah mercy, what 
 a monster ! what crooked horns ! what leering eyes ! 
 what a flaming mouth! what cloven feet, and what a 
 hideous writhing tail! Oh, let us fall down on our 
 knees, repeat our most potent exorcisms, and overcome 
 the brute. Spread your black pinions, fly — fly to the 
 dusky realms of Eblis and bury thyself under the 
 paving stones of his hall, dark genie ! But all thoughts 
 are not so. No — no. There are the pure : there are 
 the kind: there are the gentle. There are sweet 
 unspoken thanks before a fair scene of nature: at a 
 sun-setting below a glorious sea; or a moon and a 
 host of stars shining over it : at a bunch of children 
 playing in the street, or a group of flowers by the 
 hedge-side, or a bird singing there. At a hundred 
 
248 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 moments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass 
 through the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken ; 
 prayers are made which never are said ; and Te Deum 
 is sung without church, clerk, choristers, parson, or 
 organ. Why, there's my enemy : who got the place 
 I wanted ; who maligned me to the woman I wanted 
 to be well with ; who supplanted me in the good graces 
 of my patron. I don't say anything about the matter : 
 but, my poor old enemy, in my secret mind I have 
 movements of as tender charity towards you, you old 
 scoundrel, as ever I had when we were boys together 
 at school. You ruffian ! do you fancy I forget that we 
 were fond of each other ? We are still. We share 
 our toffy ; go halves at the tuck-shop ; do each other's 
 exercises ; prompt each other with the word in con- 
 struing or repetition ; and tell the most frightful fibs 
 to prevent each other from being found out. We meet 
 each other in public. Ware a fight ! Get them into 
 difi*erent parts of the room ! Our friends hustle round 
 us. Capulet and Montague are not more at odds than 
 the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us say. 
 It is, " My dear Mrs. Bufi'er, do kindly put yourself in 
 the chair between those two men ! " Or, " My dear 
 Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blanc- 
 mange down to supper ? She adores your poems ; and 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 249 
 
 gave five shillings for your autograph at the fancy 
 fair." In like manner the peace-makers gather round 
 Koundabout on his part: he is carried to a distant 
 comer, and coaxed out of the way of the enemy with 
 whom he is at feud. 
 
 When we meet in the Square at Yerona, out flash 
 rapiers, and we fall to. But in his private mind 
 Tybalt owns that Mercutio has a rare wit, and Mer- 
 cutio is sure that his adversary is a gallant gentleman. 
 Look at the amphitheatre yonder. You do not suppose 
 those gladiators who fought and perished, as hundreds 
 of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs down, 
 and cried " Kill, kill ! " — you do not suppose the com- 
 batants of necessity hated each other? No more than 
 the celebrated trained bands of literary sword-and- 
 buckler men hate the adversaries whom they meet in 
 the arena. They engage at the given signal; feint 
 and parry ; slash, poke, rip each other open, dismember 
 limbs, and hew off noses : but in the way of business, 
 and, I trust, with mutual private esteem. For instance, 
 I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company with 
 the honours due among warriors. Here's at you, 
 Spartacus, my lad. A hit I acknowledge. A palpable 
 hit ! Ha ! how do you like that poke in the eye in 
 return ? When the trumpets sing truce, or the specta- 
 
250 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 tors are tired, we bow to the noble company; with- 
 draw ; and get a cool glass of wine in our rendezvous 
 des braves gladiateurs. 
 
 By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Yerona 
 under the strange light of a lurid eclipse some years 
 ago : and I have been there in spirit for these twenty 
 liues past, under a vast gusty awning, now with twenty 
 thousand fellow-citizens looking on from the benches, 
 now in the circus itself a grim gladiator with sword 
 and net, or a meek martyr — was I? — brought out to 
 be gobbled up by the lions ? or a huge shaggy, tawny 
 lion myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set ? 
 What a day of excitement I have had to be sure ! 
 But I must gQt away from Verona, or who knows 
 how much farther the Roundabout Pegasus may carry 
 me? 
 
 We were saying, my Muse, before we dropped and 
 perched on earth for a couple of sentences, that our 
 unsaid words were in some limbo or other, as real as 
 those we have uttered; that the thoughts which have 
 passed through our brains are as actual as any to which 
 our tongues and pens have given currency. For instance, 
 besides what is here hinted at, I have thought ever so 
 much more about Yerona: about an early Christian 
 church I saw there : about a great dish of rice we had 
 
On Tivo Eoundahout Papers I intended to Write, 251 
 
 at the inn : about the bugs there ; about ever so many 
 more details of that day's journey from Milan to Venice : 
 about lake Garda, which lay on the way from Milan 
 and so forth. I say what fine things we have thought 
 of, haven't we, all of us? Ah, what a fine tragedy 
 that was I thought of, and never wrote! On the day 
 of the dinner of the Oystermongers' Company, what a 
 noble speech I thought of in the cab, and broke down — 
 I don't mean the cab, but the speech. Ah, if you could 
 but read some of the unwritten Roundabout Papers — 
 how you would be amused ! Aha ! my friend, I catch 
 you saying, *^ Well, then, I wish this was unwritten, 
 with all my heart." Very good. I owe you one. I do 
 confess a hit, a palpable hit. 
 
 One day in the past month, as I was reclining on the 
 bench of thought, with that ocean The Times newspaper 
 spread before me, the ocean cast up on the shore at my 
 feet two famous subjects for Roundabout Papers, and I 
 picked up those waifs, and treasured them away until I 
 could polish them and bring them to market. That 
 scheme is not to be carried out. I can't write about 
 those subjects. And though I cannot write about them, 
 I may surely tell what are the subjects I am going 7iot 
 to write about. 
 
 The first w^as that Northumberland Street encounter. 
 
252 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 which all the papers have narrated. Have any novelists 
 of our days a scene and catastrophe more strange and 
 terrible than this which occurs at noonday within a few 
 yards of the greatest thoroughfare in Europe ? At the 
 theatres they have a new name for their melodramatic 
 pieces, and call them " Sensation Dramas." What a 
 sensation drama this is ! What have people been flock- 
 ing to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last hundred 
 and fifty nights ? A woman pitched overboard out of a 
 boat, and a certain Miles taking a tremendous " header," 
 and bringing her to shore ? Bagatelle ! What is this 
 compared to the real life drama, of which a midday 
 representation takes place just opposite the Adelphi in 
 Northumberland Street ? The brave Dumas, the in- 
 trepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the cold- 
 shudder-inspiring Woman in White, the astounding 
 author of the Mysteries of the Court of London, never 
 invented anything more tremendous than this. It might 
 have happened to you and me. We want to borrow a 
 little money. We are directed to an agent. We pro- 
 pose a pecuniary transaction at a short date. He goes 
 into the next room, as we fancy, to get the bank-notes, 
 and returns with " two very pretty, delicate little ivory- 
 handled pistols," and blows a portion of our heads off. 
 After this, what is the use of being squeamish about the 
 
On Tico Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 253 
 
 probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction? 
 Years ago I remember making merry over a play of 
 Dumas, called Kean, in "whicli the Coal-Hole Tavern 
 was represented on the Thames, with a fleet of pirate- 
 ships moored alongside. Pirate ships? Why not? 
 What a cavern of terror was this in Northumberland 
 Street, with its splendid furniture covered with dust, 
 its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits a grim 
 "agent," amusing himself by firing pistols, aiming at 
 the unconscious mantelpiece, or at the heads of his 
 customers ! 
 
 After this, what is not possible? It is possible 
 Hungerford Market is mined, and will explode some 
 day. Mind how you go in for a penny ice unawares. 
 " Pray, step this way," says a quiet person at the door. 
 You enter — into a back room : — a quiet room ; rather a 
 dark room. " Pray, take your place in a chair." And 
 she goes to fetch the penny ice. Malheureux! The 
 chair sinks down with you — sinks, and sinks, and sinks 
 — a large wet flannel suddenly envelopes your face and 
 throttles you. Need we say any more ? After North- 
 umberland Street, what is improbable ? Surely there 
 is no difficulty in crediting Bluebeard. I withdraw my 
 last month's opinions about ogres. Ogres ? Why not ? 
 I protest I have seldom contemplated anything more 
 
254 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 terribly ludicrous than this " agent " in the dingy 
 splendour of his den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and 
 piles of empty bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at 
 the mantelpiece until his clients come in! Is pistol 
 practice so common in Northumberland Street, that it 
 passes without notice in the lodging-houses there ? 
 
 We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad 
 thoughts ? Is there some Northumberland Street cham- 
 ber in your heart and mine, friend : close to the every- 
 day street of life : visited by daily friends ; visited by 
 people on business; in which affairs are transacted; 
 jokes are uttered ; wine is drunk ; through which people 
 come and go ; wives and children pass ; and in which 
 murder sits unseen until the terrible moment when he 
 rises up and kills ? A farmer, say, has a gun over the 
 mantelpiece in his room where he sits at his daily meals 
 and rest ; caressing his children, joking with his friends, 
 smoking his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is 
 taken down : the farmer goes out : and it is a murderer 
 who comes back and puts the piece up and drinks by 
 that fireside. Was he a murderer yesterday when he 
 was tossing the baby on his knee, and when his hands 
 were playing with his little girl's yellow hair ? Yester- 
 day there was no blood on them at all : they were 
 shal^en by honest men : have done many a kind act in 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 255 
 
 their time very likely. He leans his head on one of 
 them, the wife comes in with her anxious looks of 
 welcome, the children are prattling as they did yester- 
 day round the father's knee at the fire, and Cain is 
 sitting by the embers and Abel lies dead on the moor. 
 Think of the gulph between now and yesterday. Oh, 
 yesterday! Oh, the days when those two loved each 
 other and said their prayers side by side ! He goes to 
 sleep, perhaps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be 
 true, O dream ! Let him live in dreams, and wake no 
 more. Be undone, O crime, O crime ! But the sun 
 rises : and the officers of conscience come : and yonder 
 lies the body on the moor. I happened to pass, and 
 looked at the Northumberland Street house the other 
 day. A few loiterers were gazing up at the dingy 
 windows. A plain, ordinary face of a house enough — 
 and in a chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, 
 pistol in hand, to slaughter another. Have you ever 
 killed any one in your thoughts? Has your heart 
 compassed any man's death ? In your mind, have you 
 ever taken a brand from the altar, and slain your 
 brother ? How many plain, ordinary faces of men 
 do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those 
 eyes ? Lucky for you and me, brother, that we have 
 good thoughts unspoken. But the bad ones? I tell 
 
256 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 you that the sight of those blank windows in Northum- 
 berland Street — through which, as it were, my mind 
 could picture the awful tragedy glimmering behind — set 
 me thinking, " Mr. Street-Preacher, here is a text for 
 one of your pavement sermons. But it is too glum and 
 serious. You eschew dark thoughts; and desire to be 
 cheerful and merry in the main." And, such being the 
 case, you see we must have no Roundabout Essay on 
 this subject. 
 
 Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, you 
 know, had William Tell a bolt for his son, the apple of 
 his eye : and a shaft for Gessler, in case William came 
 to any trouble with the first poor little target.) And 
 this, I 'must tell you, was to have been a rare Round- 
 about performance — one of the very best that has ever 
 appeared in this series. It was to have contained all 
 the deep pathos of Addison; the logical precision of 
 Rabelais ; the childlike playfulness of Swift ; the manly 
 stoicism of Sterne ; the metaphysical depth of Gold- 
 smith; the blushing modesty of Fielding; the epi- 
 grammatic terseness of Walter Scott; the uproarious 
 humour of Sam Richardson ; and the gay simplicity of 
 Sam Johnson ; — it was to have combined all these 
 qualities, with some excellencies of modem writers 
 whom I could name : — but circumstances have oc- 
 
On Tico Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 257 
 
 curred which have rendered this Koundabout Essay 
 also impossible. 
 
 I have not the least objection to tell you what was to 
 have been the subject of that other admirable Round- 
 about Paper. Gracious powers ! the Dean of St. 
 Patrick's never had a better theme. The paper was 
 to have been on the Gorillas, to be sure. I was going 
 to imagine myself to be a young surgeon-apprentice 
 from Charleston, in South Carolina, who ran away to 
 Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, with 
 which nobody has the least concern ; who sailed thence 
 to Africa in a large, roomy schooner with an extraor- 
 dinary vacant space between decks. I was subject to 
 dreadful ill-treatment from the first mate of the ship, 
 who, when I found she was a slaver, altogether declined 
 to put me on shore. I was chased — we were chased — 
 by three British frigates and a seventy-four, which we 
 engaged and captured ; but were obliged to scuttle and 
 sink, as we could sell them in no African port : and I 
 never shall forget the look of manly resignation, com- 
 bined with considerable disgust, of the British Admiral 
 as he walked the plank, after cutting off his pigtail, 
 which he handed to me, and which I still have in charge 
 for his family at Boston, Lincolnshire, England. 
 
 We made the port of Bpoopoo, at the confluence of 
 
 VI 
 
258 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 the Bungo and Sgglolo rivers (which you may see in 
 Swammerdahl's map) on the 31st April last year. Our 
 passage had been so extraordinarily rapid, owing to the 
 continued drunkenness of the captain and chief officers, 
 by which I was obhged to work the ship and take her in 
 command, that we reached Bpoopoo six weeks before 
 we were expected, and five before the coffres from the 
 interior and from the great slave depot at Zbabblo were 
 expected. Their delay caused us not a little discomfort, 
 because, though we had taken the six English ships, vfe 
 knew that Sir Byam Martin's iron-cased squadron, with 
 the Warrior, the Impregnable, the Sanconiathon, and the 
 Berosus, were cruising in the neighbourhood, and might 
 prove too much for us. 
 
 It not only became necessary to quit Bpoopoo before 
 the arrival of the British fleet or the rainy season, but 
 to get our people on board as soon as might be. While 
 the chief mate, with a detachment of seamen, hurried 
 forward to the Pgogo lake, where we expected a con- 
 siderable part of our cargo, the second mate, with six 
 men, four chiefs, king Fbumbo, an Obi man, and 
 myself, went N.W. by W., towards King Mtoby's-town, 
 where we knew many hundreds of our between-dcck 
 passengers were to be got together. We went down the 
 Pdodo river, shooting snipes, ostriches, and rhinoceros 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 259 
 
 in plenty, and I think a few elephants, until, by the 
 advice of a guide, who I now believe was treacherous, 
 we were induced to leave the Pdodo, and march KE. 
 by N.N. Here Lieutenant Larkins, who had persisted 
 in drinking rum from morning to night, and thrashing 
 me in his sober moments during the whole journey, 
 died, and I have too good reason to know was eaten 
 with much relish by the natives. At Mgoo, where 
 there are barracoons and a depot for our cargo, we had 
 no news of our expected freight ; accordingly, as time 
 pressed exceedingly, parties were despatched in advance 
 towards the great Washaboo lake, by which the caravans 
 usually come towards the coast. Here we found no 
 caravan, but only four negroes down with the ague, 
 whom I treated, I am bound to say, unsuccessfully, 
 whilst we waited for our friends. We used to take 
 watch and watch in front of the place, both to guard 
 ourselves from attack, and get early news of the 
 approaching caravan. 
 
 At last, on the 23rd September, as I was in advance 
 with Charles Rogers, second mate, and two natives 
 with bows and arrows, we were crossing a great plain 
 skirted by a forest, when we saw emerging from a 
 ravine what I took to be three negroes — a very tall 
 one, one of a moderate size, and one quite little. 
 
 17—2 
 
260 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 Our native guides shrieked out some words in their 
 language, of which Charles Rogers knew something. 
 I thought it was the advance of the negroes whom we 
 expected. '' No ! " said Rogers (who swore dreadfully 
 in conversation), " it is the Gorillas ! " And he fired 
 both barrels of his gun, bringing down the little one 
 first, and the female afterwards. 
 
 The male, w^ho was untouched, gave a howl that you 
 might have heard a league off; advanced towards us as 
 if he would attack us, and turned and ran away with 
 inconceivable celerity towards the wood. 
 
 We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one 
 by the female appeared to be about two years old. It 
 lay bleating and moaning on the ground, stretching out 
 its little hands, with movements and looks so strangely 
 resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. 
 The female, who had been shot through both legs, could 
 not move. She howled most hideously when I ap- 
 proached the little one. 
 
 "We must be off," said Rogers, "or the whole 
 Gorilla race may be down upon us. The little one 
 is only shot in the leg, I said. I'll bind the limb up, 
 and we will carry the beast with us on board." 
 
 The poor little wretch held up its |leg to show it was 
 wounded, and looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write, 261 
 
 quite still whilst I looked for and found the bullet, 
 and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged up the 
 wound. I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly 
 heard Rogers cry, '^ Run ! run ! " and when I looked 
 up 
 
 When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I 
 ever heard — a roar? ten thousand roars — a whirling 
 army of dark beings rushed by me. Rogers, who had 
 bullied me so frightfully during the voyage, and who 
 had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own 
 I owed him 1,500 dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, 
 and torn into ten thousand pieces; and I daresay the 
 same fate would have fallen on me, but that the little 
 Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms 
 round my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer 
 than ours). And when an immense grey Gorilla, with 
 hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a goUybosh- 
 tree about sixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the 
 little one squeaked out something plaintive, which, of 
 course, I could not understand ; on which suddenly the 
 monster flung down his tree, squatted down on his huge 
 hams by the side of the little patient, and began to 
 bellow and weep. 
 
 And now, do you see whom I had rescued ? I had 
 rescued the yoimg Prince of the Gorillas, who was out 
 
262 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 walking with his nurse and footman. The footman had 
 run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw 
 a footman run quicker. The whole army of Gorillas 
 rushed forward to rescue their prince, and punish his 
 enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion was greats 
 fancy what the queen's must have been when she came 
 up ! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with 
 wattled branches, on which she lay, with her youngest 
 child, a prince of three weeks old. 
 
 My little protege, with the wounded leg, still persisted 
 in hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned that 
 they are longer than those of men in general), and as 
 the poor little brute was immensely heavy, and the 
 Gorillas go at a prodigious pace, a litter was made for 
 us likewise ; and my thirst much refreshed by a footman 
 (the same domestic who had given the alarm) running 
 hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the rinds 
 off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me the 
 fresh milk in its cup. My little patient partook of a 
 little, stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with 
 which, or with its hand, a Gorilla can help itself indis- 
 criminately. Relays of large Gorillas relieved each 
 other at the litters at intervals of twenty minutes, 
 as I calculated by my watch, one of Jones and Bates', 
 of Boston, Mass., though I have been unable to this 
 
On Two Roundabout Papers I intended to Write. 263 
 
 day to ascertain how these animals calculate time with 
 such surprising accuracy. We slept for that night 
 under 
 
 And now you see we arrive at really the most inte- 
 resting part of my travels in the country which I 
 intended to visit, viz., the manners and habits of the 
 Gorillas chez eux, I give the heads of this narrative 
 only, the full account being suppressed for a reason 
 which shall presently be given. The heads, then, of the 
 chapters, are briefly as follows : — 
 
 The autlior's arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geo- 
 graphical position. Lodgings assigned to him up a gum- 
 tree. Constant attachme7it of the little prince. His royal 
 highnesses gratitude. Anecdotes of his loit, playfulness, 
 and extraordinary precocity. Aon offered a portion of 
 poor Larkins for my supper, hut decline with horror. 
 Footman brings me a young crocodile: fishy but very 
 palatable. Old crocodiles too tough: ditto rhinoceros. 
 Visit the queen mother — aoi enormous old Gorilla, quite 
 white. Prescribe for her majesty. Meeting of Gorillas 
 at what appears a parliament amongst them: presided 
 over by old Gorilla in cocoa-nut-fibre wig. Their 
 sports. Tlieir customs. A privileged class amongst 
 them. Extraordinary likeness of Gorillas to people at 
 home, both at Charleston, S. C, my native place; 
 
264 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 and London, England, which I have visited. Flat-nosed 
 Gorillas and hlue-nosed Gorillas ; their hatred, and wars 
 between them. In a part of the country (its geographical 
 position described) I see several negroes under Gorilla 
 domination. Well treated by their masters. Frog-eating 
 Gorillas across the Salt Lake, Bull-headed Gorillas — 
 their mutual hostility. Green Island Gorillas, More 
 quarrelsome than the Bidl-heads, and howl much louder, 
 I am called to attend one of the princesses. Evident par- 
 tiality of H,R.H. for me. Jealousy and rage of large 
 red-headed Gorilla, How shall I escape ! 
 
 Aj, liow indeed ? Do you wish to know ? Is your 
 curiosity excited? Well, I do know how I escaped. I 
 could tell the most extraordinary adventures that 
 happened to me. I could show you resemblances to 
 people at home, that would make them blue with rage 
 
 and you crack your sides with laughter 
 
 And what is the reason I cannot write this paper, having 
 all the facts before me ? The reason is, that walking 
 down St. James Street yesterday, I met a friend who 
 says to me, " Roundabout, my boy, have you seen your 
 picture ? Here it is ! " And he pulls out a portrait, 
 executed in photography, of your humble servant, as 
 an immense and most unpleasant-featured baboon, 
 vvith long hairy hands, and called by the waggish 
 
On Two Houndahout Papers I intended to Write, 265 
 
 artist " A Literary Gorilla." O horror ! And now 
 you see why I can't play off this joke myself, and 
 moralize on the fable, as it has been narrated already 
 de me. 
 
226 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 
 
 This initial group of dusky children of the captivity is 
 copied out of a little sketch-book which I carried in 
 many a roundabout journey, and will point a moral or 
 
A Mississippi Bubble. 267 
 
 adorn a T as well as any other sketch in the volume. 
 Yonder drawing was made in a country where there 
 was such hospitality, friendship, kindness shown to the 
 humble designer, that his eyes do not care to look out 
 for faults, or his pen to note them. How they sang ; 
 how they laughed and grinned; how they scraped, 
 bowed, and complimented you and each other, those 
 negroes of the cities of the southern parts of the then 
 United States ! My business kept me in the towns ; I 
 was but in one negro plantation-village, and there were 
 only women and little children, the men being out 
 a-field. But there was plenty of cheerfulness in the 
 huts, under the great trees — I speak of what I saw — 
 and amidst the dusky bondsmen of the cities. I 
 witnessed a curious gaiety ; heard amongst the black 
 folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter ; and saw on 
 holydays black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such 
 splendour and comfort as freeborn workmen in our 
 towns seldom exhibit. What a grin and bow that dark 
 gentleman performed, who was the porter at the 
 colonel's, when he said, " You write your name, mas'r, 
 else I will forgot." I am not going into the slavery 
 question, I am not an advocate for " the institution," as 
 I know, madam, by that angry toss of your head, you 
 are about to declare me to be. For domestic purposes. 
 
268 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 my dear lady, it seemed to me about the dearest insti- 
 tution than can be devised. In a house in a Southern 
 city you will find fifteen negroes doing the work which 
 John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help, do perfectly 
 in your own comfortable London house. And these 
 fifteen negroes are the pick of a family of some eighty 
 or ninety. Twenty are too sick, or too old for work, 
 let US' say: twenty too clumsy: twenty are too young, 
 and have to be nursed and watched by ten more.* And 
 master has to maintain the immense crew to do the 
 work of half-a-dozen willing hands. No, no; let 
 Mitchel, the exile from poor dear enslaved Ireland, wish 
 for a gang of " fat niggers ; " I would as soon you 
 should make me a present of a score of Bengal 
 elephants, when I need but a single stout horse to pull 
 my brougham. 
 
 How hospitable they were, those Southern men ! In 
 the North itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who 
 have eaten Northern and Southern salt, can testify. 
 As for New Orleans, in spring-time, — -just when the 
 orchards were flushing over with peach-blossoms, and 
 
 * This was an account given by a gentleman at Kichmond of his 
 establishment. Six European sen^ants would have kept his house and 
 stables well. "His farm," he said, "barely sufficed to maintain the 
 negroes residing t)n it." 
 
A Mississippi Bubble. 269 
 
 the sweet herbs came to flavour the juleps — it seemed 
 to me the city of the world where you can eat and drink 
 the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret 
 is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It was all 
 good — believe an expert Robert — from the half-dollar 
 Medoc of the public hotel table, to the private gentle- 
 man's choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that 
 gifted place at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the 
 morning. It is good : it is superabundant — and there 
 is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill of such a 
 country ! When I do, pone me pigris campis : smother 
 me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me ! 
 At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a 
 bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at 
 Marseilles : and not the least headache in the morning, 
 I give you my word : on the contrary, you only wake 
 "with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water. 
 They say there is fever there in the autumn : but not 
 in the spring-time, when the peach-blossoms blush over 
 the orchards, and the sweet herbs come to flavour the 
 juleps. 
 
 I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis ; and 
 our walk was constantly on the Levee, whence we could 
 see a hundred of those huge white Mississippi steamers 
 
 their moorings in the river : " Look," said my friend 
 
270 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 Lochlomond to me, as we stood one day on the quay — 
 ^' look at that post ! Look at that cofFee-house behmd it I 
 Sir, last year a steamer blew np in the river yonder, 
 just where you see those men pulling off in the boat. 
 By that post where you are standing a mule was cut in 
 two by a fragment of the burst machinery, and a bit of 
 the chimney stove in that first-floor window of the 
 coffee-house, killed a negro who w^as cleaning knives in 
 the top-room ! " I looked at the post, at the coffee-house 
 window, at the steamer in which I was going to embark, 
 at my friend, with a pleasing interest not divested of 
 melancholy. Yesterday, it was the donkey, thinks I, 
 who was cut in two : it may be eras mihi. Why, in 
 the same little sketch-book, there is a drawing of an 
 Alabama river steamer which blew up on the very next 
 voyage after that in which your humble servant was on 
 board ! Had I but waited another week, I might have 
 . . . . These incidents give a queer zest to the 
 voyage down the life stream in America. When our 
 huge, tall, white, pasteboard castle of a steamer began 
 to work up stream, every limb in her creaked, and 
 groaned, and quivered, so that you might fancy she 
 would burst right off. Would she hold together, or 
 would she split into ten million of shivers ? O my home 
 and children ! Would your humble servant's body be 
 
A Mississippi Bubble , 271 
 
 cut in two across yonder chain on the Levee, or be 
 precipitated into yonder first-floor, so as to damage the 
 chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window? 
 The black man is safe for me, thank goodness. But you 
 see the little accident might have happened. It has 
 happened ; and if to a mule, why not to a more docile 
 animal ? On our journey up the Mississippi, I give you 
 my honour we were on fire three times, and burned our 
 cook-room down. The deck at night was a great fire- 
 work — the chimney spouted myriads of stars, which fell 
 blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the deck, or 
 gleaming into the mighty stream through which we 
 laboured — the mighty yellow stream with all its snags. 
 
 How I kept up my courage through these dangers 
 shall now be narrated. The excellent landlord of the 
 Saint Charles Hotel, when I was going away, begged 
 me to accept two bottles of the very finest Cognac, with 
 his compliments ; and I found them in my state-room 
 with my luggage. Lochlomond came to see me off, 
 and as he squeezed my hand at parting, " Roundabout," 
 says he, " the wine mayn't be very good on board, so I 
 have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you 
 liked ; " and we grasped together the hands of friendship 
 and farewell. Whose boat is this pulling up to the 
 ship? It is our friend Glenlivat, who gave us the 
 
272 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 dinner on Lake Pontchartrain. ^^ Roundabout," says 
 he, " we have tried to do what we could for you, my 
 boy; and it has been done de hon cceur^^ (I detect a 
 kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he 
 speaks). ^^ I say — hem ! — the a — the wine isn't too 
 good on board, so I've brought you a dozen of M^doc 
 for your voyage, you know. And God bless you ; and 
 when I come to London in May I shall come and see 
 you. Hallo ! here's Johnson come to see you off, top ! " 
 
 As I am a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped 
 my hand, he said, " Mr. Roundabout, you can't be sure 
 of the wine on board these steamers, so I thought I 
 would bring you a little case of that light claret which 
 you liked at my house. Et de trois ! No wonder I 
 could face the Mississippi with so much courage 
 supplied to me ! Where are you, honest friends, who 
 gave me of your kindness and your cheer? May I be 
 considerably boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak 
 hard words of you. May claret turn sour ere I do ! 
 
 Mounting the stream it chanced that we had very few 
 passengers. How far is the famous city of Memphis 
 from New Orleans? I do not mean the Egyptian 
 Memphis, but the American Memphis, from which to 
 the American Cairo we slowly toiled up the river — to 
 the American Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and 
 
A Mississippi Bubble, 273 
 
 Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we parted com- 
 pany from the boat, and from some famous and 
 gifted fellow-passengers who joined us at Memphis, 
 and whose pictures we had seen in many cities 
 of the South. I do not give the names of these 
 remarkable people, unless, by some wondrous chance, 
 in inventing a name I should light upon that real one 
 which some of them bore ; but if you please I will say 
 that our fellow-passengers whom we took in at Memphis 
 were no less personages than the Vermont Giant and 
 the famous Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her son. 
 Their pictures I had seen in many cities through which 
 I travelled with my own little ^performance. I think 
 the Vermont Giant was a trifle taller in his pictures 
 than he was in life (being represented in the former as, 
 at least, some two stories high): but the lady's pro- 
 digious beard received no more than justice at the 
 hands of the painter; that portion of it which I saw 
 being really most black, rich, and curly — I say the 
 portion of beard, for this modest or prudent woman 
 kept I don't know how much of the beard covered up 
 with a red handkerchief, from which I suppose it only 
 emerged when she went to bed, or when she exhibited 
 it professionally. 
 
 The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I 
 
 18 
 
274 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 have known gentlemen, not in tlie profession, better 
 made, and I should say taller, than the Vermont gen- 
 tleman. A strange feeling I used to have at meals ; 
 when, on looking round our little society, I saw the 
 Giant, the Bearded Lady of Kentucky, the little 
 Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain (this I 
 think ; but at this distance of time I would not like to 
 make the statement on affidavit), and the three other 
 passengers, all with their knives in their mouths 
 making play at the dinner — a strange feeling I say it 
 was, and as though I was in a castle of ogres. But, 
 after all, why so squeamish? A few scores of years 
 back, the finest gentlemen and ladies of Europe did the 
 like. Belinda ate with her knife ; and Saccharissa had 
 only that weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon, 
 for her pease. Have you ever looked at Gilray's print 
 of the Prince of Wales, a languid voluptuary, retiring 
 after his meal, and noted the toothpick which he 
 uses ? . . . . You are right, madam, I own that 
 the subject is revolting and terrible. I will not pursue 
 it. Only — allow that a gentleman, in a shaky steam- 
 boat, on a dangerous river, in a far-off country, which 
 caught fire three times during the voyage — (of course 
 I mean the steamboat, not the country), seeing a giant, 
 a voracious supercargo, a bearded lady, and a little boy. 
 
A Mississippi Bubble. 275 
 
 not three years of age, with a chin already quite black 
 and curly, all plying their victuals down their throats 
 with their knives — allow, madam, that in such a com- 
 pany a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I don't 
 know whether you have ever remarked the Indian 
 jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a 
 whole table of people performing the same trick, but if 
 you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you 
 there is a roll in them which is dreadful. 
 
 Apart from this usage which they practise in common 
 with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Ver- 
 mont gentleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady — 
 or did I say the reverse? — whichever you like, my 
 dear sir — were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people. 
 She sate working with her needle, if I remember right. 
 He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, which was 
 seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say, 
 did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you 
 would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. 
 Nay, this giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be 
 sure, he went forward and ate a sheep or two in private 
 with his horrid knife — oh, the dreadful thought! — but in 
 public, I say, he had quite a delicate appetite,) and was 
 also a tea-totaller. I don't remember to have heard the 
 lady's voice, though I might, not unnaturally, have 
 
 18—2 
 
276 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 been curious to hear it. Was her voice a deep, rich, 
 magnificent bass; or was it soft, fluty, and mild? I 
 shall never know now. Even if she comes to this 
 country, I shall never go and see her. I have seen her, 
 and for nothing. 
 
 You would have fancied that, as after all we were 
 only some half-dozen on board, she might have dis- 
 pensed with her red handkerchief, and talked, and 
 eaten her dinner in comfort : but in covering her chin 
 there was a kind of modesty. That beard was her 
 profession : that beard brought the public to see her : 
 out of her business she wished to put that beard aside 
 as it were : as a barrister would wish to put ofif his 
 wig. I know some who carry theirs into private life, 
 and who mistake you and me for jury-boxes when 
 they address us : but these are not your modest bar- 
 risters, not your true gentlemen. 
 
 Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty 
 with which, her public business over, she retired into 
 private life. She respected her life, and her beard. 
 That beard having done its day's work, she puts it 
 away in a handkerchief; and becomes as far as in her 
 lies, a private ordinary person. All public men and 
 women of good sense, I should think, have this modesty. 
 When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. Brown 
 
A Mississippi Bubble, 277 
 
 comes simpering up to me, with her album in one 
 hand, a pen in the other, and says, " Ho, ho, dear 
 Mr. Roundabout, write us one of your amusing, &c. &c." 
 my beard drops behind my handkerchief instantly. 
 Why am I to wag my chin and grin for Mrs. Brown's 
 good pleasure ? My dear madam, I have been making 
 faces all day. It is my profession. I do my comic 
 business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and 
 trouble: and with it make, I hope, a not dishonest 
 livelihood. If you ask Mons. Blondin to tea, you don't 
 have a rope stretched from your garret window to the 
 opposite side of the square, and request Monsieur to 
 take his tea out on the centre of the rope ? I lay my 
 hand on this waistcoat, and declare that not once in the 
 course of our voyage together did I allow the Kentucky 
 Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or 
 the Bearded Lady to surmise that I wished to peep 
 under the handkerchief which muffled the lower part 
 of her face. 
 
 And the more fool you, says some cynic. (Faugh, 
 those cynics, I hate 'em !) Don't you know, sir, that a 
 man of genius is pleased to have his genius recognized ; 
 that a beauty likes to be admired ; that an actor likes 
 to be applauded ; that stout old Wellington himself was 
 pleased, and smiled when the people cheered him as he 
 
278 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 passed ? Suppose you had paid some respectful elegant 
 compliment to that lady ? Suppose you had asked that 
 giant, if, for once, he would take anything at the liquor- 
 bar? you might have learned a great deal of curious 
 knowledge regarding giants and bearded ladies, about 
 whom you evidently now know very little. There was 
 that little boy of three years old, with a fine beard 
 already, and his little legs and arms, as seen out of his 
 little frock, covered with a dark down. What a queer 
 little capering satyr ! He was quite good-natured, 
 childish, rather solemn. He had a little Norval dress, I 
 remember : the drollest little NorvaL 
 
 I have said the B. L. had another child. Now this 
 was a little girl of some six years old, as fair and as 
 smooth of skin, dear madam, as your own darling 
 cherubs. She wandered about the great cabin quite 
 melancholy. No one seemed to care for her. All the 
 family affections were centred on Master Esau yonder. 
 His little beard was beginning to be a little fortune 
 already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the 
 family. No one would pay a cent to see lier little fair face. 
 No wonder the poor little maid was melancholy. As I 
 looked at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a 
 fairy tale, and more and more in a cavern of ogres. 
 Was this a little fondling whom they had picked up in 
 
A Mississippi Bubble, 279 
 
 some forest, where lie the picked bones of the queen, 
 her tender mother, and the tough old defunct monarch, 
 her father? No. Doubtless they were quite good- 
 natured people, these. I don't believe they were unkind 
 to the little girl without the mustachios. It may have 
 been only my fancy that she repined because she had a 
 cheek no more bearded than a rose's. 
 
 Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have 
 a smooth cheek, a modest air, and a gentle feminine 
 behaviour, or to be — I won't say a whiskered prodigy, 
 like this Bearded Lady of Kentucky — but a masculine 
 wonder, a virago, a female personage of more than 
 female strength, courage, wisdom ? Some authors, who 
 shall be nameless, are, I know, accused of depicting the 
 most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines, for ever 
 whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces. You 
 would have the heroine of your novel so beautiful that 
 she should charm the captain (or hero, whoever he may 
 be) with her appearance; surprise and confound the 
 bishop with her learning ; outride the squire, and get the 
 brush, and, when he fell from his horse, whip out a 
 lancet and bleed him ; rescue from fever and death the 
 poor cottager's family whom the doctor had given up ; 
 make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor cap- 
 tain only scored 18 ; give him twenty in fifty at billiards 
 
280 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 and beat him ; and draw tears from the professional 
 Italian people by her exquisite performance (of voice 
 and violoncello) in the evening ; — I say, if a novelist 
 would be popular with ladies — the great novel readers 
 of the world — this is the sort of heroine who would 
 carry him through half-a-dozen editions. Suppose I 
 had asked that Bearded Lady to sing ? Confess, now, 
 miss, you would not have been displeased if I had told 
 you that she had a voice like Lablache, only ever so 
 much lower. 
 
 My dear, you would like to be a heroine? You 
 would like to travel in triumphal caravans ; to see your 
 effigy placarded on city walls ; to have your levees 
 attended by admiring crowds, all crying out, ^^Was 
 there ever such a wonder of a woman?" You would 
 like admiration ? Consider the tax you pay for it. You 
 would be alone were you eminent. Were you so dis- 
 tinguished from your neighbours — I will not say by a 
 beard and whiskers, that were odious — but by a great 
 and remarkable intellectual superiority — would you, do 
 you think, be any the happier ? Consider envy. Con- 
 sider solitude. Consider the jealousy and torture of 
 mind which this Kentucky lady must feel, suppose she 
 is to hear that there is, let us say, a Missouri prodigy, 
 with a beard larger than hers ? Consider how she is 
 
A Mississippi Bubble, 281 
 
 separated from her kind by the possession of that wonder 
 of a beard ? When that beard grows grey, how lonely 
 she will be, the poor old thing ! If it falls off, the public 
 admiration falls off too ; and how she will miss it — the 
 compliments of the trumpeters, the admiration of the 
 crowd, the gilded progress of the car. I see an old 
 woman alone in a decrepit old caravan, with cobwebs 
 on the knocker, with a blistered ensign flapping idly 
 over the door. Would you like to be that deserted 
 person ? Ah, Chloe ! To be good, to be simple, to be 
 modest, to be loved, be thy lot. Be thankful thou art 
 not taller, nor stronger, nor richer, nor wiser than the 
 rest of the world ! 
 
282 
 
 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 ON LETTS'S DIAEY. 
 
 INE is one of your No. 12 
 diaries, three shillings 
 cloth boards ; silk limp, 
 gilt edges, three-and- 
 six; French morocco, 
 tuck ditto, four-and- 
 six. It has two pages, 
 ruled with faint lines 
 for memoranda, for 
 - .^==i= every week, and a 
 
 ruled account at the end, for the twelve months from 
 January to December, where you may set down your 
 incomings and your expenses. I hope yours, my 
 respected reader, are large ; that there are many fine 
 round sums of figures on each side of the page : liberal 
 on the expenditure side, greater still on the receipt. 
 I hope, sir, you will be '^a better man," as they 
 
On Letts s Diary. 283 
 
 say, in '62 than in this moribund '61, whose career of 
 life is just coming to its terminus. A better man in 
 purse? in body? in soul's health? Amen, good sir, 
 in all. Who is there so good in mind, body or estate, 
 but bettering won't still be good for him ? O unknown 
 Fate, presiding over next year, if you will give me 
 better health, a better appetite, a better digestion, a 
 better income, a better temper in '62 than you have 
 bestowed in '61, I think your servant will be the better 
 for the changes. For instance, I should be the better 
 for a new coat. This one, I acknowledge, is very old. 
 The family says so. My good friend, who amongst us 
 would not be the better if he would give up some old 
 habits ? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the 
 allegory ? Alas ! at our time of life we don't like to 
 give up those old habits, do we ? It is ill to change. 
 There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, 
 laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to 
 fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress coat 
 that pinches him ? There is the cozy wrap-rascal self- 
 indulgence — how easy it is ! How warm ! How it 
 always seems to fit ! You can walk out in it ; you can 
 go down to dinner in it. You can say of such what 
 Tully says of his books : Pernoctat nohiscum, peregri- 
 natur, rusticatur. It is a little slatternly — it is a good 
 
284 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 deal stained — it isn't becoming — it smells of cigar 
 smoke; but, allons done! let the world call me idle 
 and sloven. I love my ease better than my neigh- 
 bour's opinion. I live to please myself; not you, 
 Mr. Dandy, with your supercilious airs. I am a 
 philosopher. Perhaps I live in my tub, and don't make 
 
 any other use of it We won't pursue further 
 
 this unsavoury metaphor ; but, with regard to some of 
 your old habits, let us say — 
 
 1. The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of 
 your neighbours. 
 
 2. The habit of getting into a passion with your 
 man-servant, your maid -servant, your daughter, 
 wife, &c. 
 
 3. The habit of indulging too much at table. 
 
 4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room after 
 dinner. 
 
 5. The habit of spending insane sums of money in 
 hric a brae, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c. ; '20 Port, 
 outrageously fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, 
 and what not ; or, 
 
 6. The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, and 
 chuckling over the saving of half-a-crown, whilst 
 you are poisoning your friends and family with bad 
 wine. 
 
On Letts's Diary. 285 
 
 7. The habit of going to sleep immediately after 
 dinner, instead of cheerfully entertaining Mrs. Jones 
 and the family ; or, 
 
 8. Ladies ! The -habit of running up bills with the 
 milliners, and swindling paterfamilias on the house 
 bills. 
 
 9. The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast. 
 
 10. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and the 
 Miss Browns, because they are not quite du monde, or 
 quite so genteel as Lady Smith. 
 
 IL The habit of keeping your wretched father up at 
 balls till five o'clock in the morning, when he has to be 
 at his office at eleven. 
 
 12. The habit of fighting with each other, dear 
 Louisa, Jane, Arabella, Amelia. 
 
 13. The habit of always ordering John Coachman 
 three-quarters of an hour before you want him. 
 
 Such habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to 
 note in your diary of '61, 1 have not the slightest doubt 
 you will enter in your pocket-book of '62. There are 
 habits, Nos. 4 and 7, for example. I am morally sure 
 that some of us will not give up those bad customs, 
 though the women cry out and grumble, and scold ever 
 so justly. There are habits, Nos. 9 and 13. I feel 
 perfectly certain, my dear young ladies, that you wiK 
 
286 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 continue to keep John Coachman waiting; that you 
 will continue to give the most satisfactory reasons 
 for keeping him waiting : and as for (9), you will show 
 that you once (on the 1st of April last, let us say) 
 came to breakfast firsts and that you are always first in 
 consequence. 
 
 Yes; in our '62 diaries^ I fear we may all of us 
 make some of the '61 entries. There is my friend 
 Freehand, for instance. (Aha ! Master Freehand, 
 how you will laugh to find yourself here !) F. is in 
 the habit of spending a little, ever so little, more than 
 his income. He shows you how Mrs. Freehand works, 
 and works (and indeed. Jack Freehand, if you say she 
 is an angel, you don't say too much of her) ; how they 
 toil, and how they mend, and patch, and pinch ; and 
 how they carit live on their means. And I very much 
 fear, nay, I will bet him half a bottle of Gladstone 145. 
 per dozen claret, that the account which is a little on 
 the wrong side this year, will be a little on the wrong 
 side in the next ensuing year of grace. 
 
 A diary. Dies To die. How queer to read are some 
 of the entries in the journal ! Here are the records of 
 dinners eaten, and gone the way of flesh. The lights 
 burn blue somehow, and we sit before the ghosts of 
 victuals. Hark at the dead jokes resurging ! Memory 
 
On Lettis Diary, 287 
 
 greets them with a ghost of a smile. Here are the 
 lists of the individuals who have dined at your own 
 humble table. The agonies endured before and during 
 those entertainments are renewed and smart again. 
 What a failure that special grand dinner was ! How 
 those dreadful occasional waiters did break the old 
 china! What a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, 
 made of the French dish which she would try out of 
 Francatelli ? How angry Mrs. Pope was at not going 
 down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop ! How Trimalchio 
 sneered at your absurd attempt to give a feast; and 
 Harpagon cried out at your extravagance and ostenta- 
 tion ! How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies in 
 the drawing-room (when no gentlemen were present) : 
 never asked you back to dinner again: left her card by 
 her footman : and took not the slightest notice of your 
 wife and daughters at Lady Hustleby's assembly ! On 
 the other hand, how easy, cozy, merry, comfortable, 
 those little dinners were ; got up at one or two days' 
 notice; when everybody was contented; the soup as 
 clear as amber ; the wine as good as Trimalchio's own ; 
 and the people kept their carriages waiting, and would 
 not go away till midnight ! 
 
 Along with the catalogue of bygone pleasures, balls, 
 banquets, and the like which the pages record, comes 
 
288 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 a list of much more important occurrences and remem- 
 brances of graver import. On two days of Dives' 
 diary are printed notices that " Dividends are due at 
 the Bank." Let us hope, dear sir, that this announce- 
 ment considerably interests you; in which case, pro- 
 bably, you have no need of the almanac-maker's printed 
 reminder. If you look over poor Jack Reckless's 
 note-book, amongst his memoranda of racing odds 
 given and taken, perhaps you may read : — " Nabbam's 
 bill, due 29th September, 142Z. 15s. 6d" Let us 
 trust, as the day has passed, that the little transaction 
 here noted has been satisfactorily terminated. If you 
 are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind gentleman, no 
 doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th 
 December (say), "Boys come home." Ah, how care- 
 fully that blessed day is marked in their little calendars ! 
 In my time it used to be, Wednesday, 13th November, 
 " 5 weeks from the holidays; " Wednesday,- 20th Novem- 
 ber, " 4 weeks from the holidays ; " until sluggish time 
 sped on, and we came to Wednesday 18th December, 
 O rapture ! Do you remember pea-shooters ? I think 
 we only had them on going home for holidays from 
 private schools, — at public schools, men are too dignified. 
 And then came that glorious announcement, Wednes- 
 day, 27th, "Papa took us to the Pantomime;" or if 
 
On Letts' s Diarij. 289 
 
 not papa, perhaps you condescended to go to the pit, 
 under charge of the footman. 
 
 That was near the end of the year — and mamma 
 gave you a new pocket-book, perhaps, with a Httle coin, 
 God bless her, in the pocket. And that pocket-book 
 was for next year, you know ; and, in that pocket-book, 
 you had to write down that sad day, Wednesday, 
 January 24th, eighteen hundred and never mind what, 
 — when Dr. Birch's young friends were expected to 
 re-assemble. 
 
 Ah me ! Every person who turns this page over 
 has his own little diary in paper or ruled in his memory 
 tablets, and in which are set down the transactions of 
 the now dying year. Boys and men, we have our 
 calendar, mothers and maidens. For example, in your 
 calendar pocket-book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad 
 day that is; how fondly and bitterly remembered; 
 when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to 
 danger, to battle, perhaps. What a day was that last 
 day at home, when the tall brother sat yet amongst the 
 family, the little ones round about him wondering at 
 saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and 
 other wondrous apparatus of war and travel which 
 poured in and filled the hall; the new dressing-case 
 for the beard not yet grown ; the great sword-case 
 
 19 
 
290 Roundabout Pa'pers, 
 
 at "which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! 
 What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little 
 and grown children assembled together, and all tried 
 to be cheerful! What a night was that last night, 
 when the young ones were at roost for the last time 
 together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone 
 in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled 
 one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her 
 fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how 
 quickly the melancholy dawn came ! Only too soon 
 the sun rose over the houses. And now in a moment 
 more the city seemed to wake. The house began to 
 stir. The family gathers together for the last meal. 
 For the last time in the midst of them the widow kneels 
 amongst her kneeling children, and falters a prayer in 
 which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to the 
 care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you 
 hide — what prayers you hear! And so the nights 
 pass and the days succeed, until that one comes when 
 tears and parting shall be no more. 
 
 In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked 
 with sadness, not for this year only, but for all. On 
 a certain day, and the sun, perhaps, shining ever so 
 brightly, the house-mother comes down to her family 
 with a sad face, which scares the children round about 
 
On Letts' s Diary, 291 
 
 in tlie midst of their laughter and prattle. They may 
 have forgotten — but she has not — a day which came, 
 twenty years ago it may be, and which she remembers 
 only too well; the long night watch; the dreadful 
 dawning and the rain beating at the pane ; the infant 
 speechless, but moaning in its little crib; and then 
 the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub 
 :£ace, when the cries have ceased, and the little suffering 
 breast heaves no more. Then the children, as they 
 see their mother's face, remember this was the day 
 on which their little brother died. It was before they 
 were born ; but she remembers it. And as they pray 
 together, it seems almost as if the spirit of the little 
 lost one was hovering round the group. So they pass 
 away ; friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, 
 aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the 
 mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and 
 more names are written ; unless haply you live beyond 
 man's common age, when friends have dropped off, 
 and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the 
 terminus alone. 
 
 In this past year's diary is there any precious day 
 noted on which you have made a new friend ? This 
 is a piece of good fortune bestowed but grudgingly on 
 the old. After a certain age a new friend is a wonder, 
 
 19—2 
 
292 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 like Sarah's cliild. Aged persons are seldom capable 
 of bearing friendships. Do you remember how warmly 
 you loved Jack and Tom when you were at school; 
 what a passionate regard you had for Ned when you 
 were at college, and the immense letters you wrote 
 to each other? How often do you write, now that 
 postage costs nothing? There is the age of blossoms 
 and sweet budding green : the age of generous summer ; * 
 the autumn when the leaves drop; and then winter, 
 shivering and bare. Quick, children, and sit at my 
 feet : for they are cold^ very cold : and it seems as if 
 neither wine nor worsted will warm 'em. 
 
 In this past year's diary is there any dismal day 
 noted in which you have lost a friend ? In mine there 
 is. I do not mean by death. Those who are gone, 
 you have. Those who departed loving you, love you 
 still ; and you love them always. They are not really 
 gone, those dear hearts and true ; they are only gone 
 into the next room : and you will presently get up 
 and foUow them, and yonder door will close upon you, 
 and you will be no more seen. As I am in this cheer- 
 ful mood, I will tell you a fine and touching story 
 of a doctor which I heard lately. About two years 
 since there was, in our or some other city, a famous 
 doctor, into whose consulting 'room crowds come daily. 
 
On Letts's Diary, 293 
 
 so that they might be healed. Now this doctor had 
 a suspicion that there was something vitally wrong 
 with himself, and he went to consult another famous 
 physician at Dublin, or it may be at Edinburgh. And 
 he of Edinburgh punched his comrade's sides; and 
 listened at his heart and lungs ; and felt his pulse, I 
 suppose; and looked at his tongue; and when he 
 had done. Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, 
 ^^ Doctor, how long have I to live ? " And Doctor 
 Edinburgh said to Doctor London, " Doctor, you may 
 last a year." 
 
 Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what 
 Doctor Edinburgh said was true. And he made up 
 his accounts, with man and Heaven, I trust. And he 
 visited his patients as usual. And he went about 
 healing, and cheering, and soothing and doctoring; 
 and thousands of sick people were benefited by him. 
 And he said not a word to his family at home ; but 
 lived amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, 
 and loving; though he knew the night was at hand 
 when he should see them and work no more. 
 
 And it was winter time, and they came and told him 
 that some man at a distance — very sick, but very rich — 
 wanted him ; and, though Doctor London knew that he 
 was himself at death's door, he went to the sick man ; 
 
294 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 for he knew the large fee would be good for his children 
 after him. And he died ; and his family never knew 
 tintil he was gone, that he had been long aware of the 
 inevitable doom. 
 
 This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not ? You 
 see, in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I never 
 know whether they are to be merry or dismal. My 
 hobby has the bit in his mouth ; goes his own way ; and 
 sometimes trots through a park, and sometimes paces by 
 a cemetery. Two days since came the printer's little 
 emissary, with a note saying, " We are waiting for the 
 Roundabout Paper ! " A Roundabout Paper about what 
 or whom ? How stale it has become, that printed jollity 
 about Christmas ! Carols, and wassail bowls, and holly, 
 and mistletoe, and yule logs de commande — ^what heaps 
 of these have we not had for years past ! Well, year 
 after year the season comes. Come Trost, come thaw, 
 come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbour 
 the parson has to make his sermon. They are getting 
 tegether the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at 
 Fortnum's and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres 
 are composing the Christmas pantomime, [which our 
 young folks will see and note anon in their little 
 diaries. 
 
 And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse 
 
On Letts^s Diary, 295 
 
 with an extract out of that great diary, the newspaper ? 
 I read it but yesterday, and it has mingled with all my 
 thoughts since then. Here are the two paragraphs, 
 which appeared following each other: — 
 
 " Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been 
 appointed to the post of Legislative Member of the 
 Council of the Governor-General." 
 
 *^ Sir R. S., agent to the Governor-General for Cen- 
 tral India, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis." 
 
 These two men, whose different fates are recorded in 
 two paragraphs and half-a-dozen lines of the same news- 
 paper, were sisters' sons. In one of the stories by the 
 present writer, a man is described tottering "up the 
 steps of the ghaut," having just parted with his child, 
 whom he is despatching to England from India. I wrote 
 this, remembering in long, long distant days, such a 
 ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta ; and a day when, 
 down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came 
 two children, whose mothers remained on the shore. 
 One of those ladies was never to see her boy more ; and 
 he, too, is just dead in India, "of bronchitis, on the 
 29th October." We were first cousins ; had been little 
 playmates and friends from the time of our birth ; and 
 the first house in London to which I was taken, was 
 that of our aunt, the mother of his Honour the Member 
 
296 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 of Council. His Honour was even then a gentleman of 
 the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms. We 
 Indian children were consigned to a school of which our 
 deluded parents had heard a favourable report, but 
 which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who 
 made our yoiing lives so miserable that I remember 
 kneeling by my little bed of a night, and saying, " Pray 
 God, I may dream of my mother ! " Thence we went 
 to a public school ; and my cousin to Addiscombe and 
 to India. 
 
 '^ For thirty-two years," the paper says, " Sir Rich- 
 mond Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the 
 Government of India, and during that period but once 
 visited England, for a few months and on public duty. 
 In his military capacity he saw much service, was 
 present in eight general engagements, and was badly 
 wounded in the last. In 1840, when a young lieutenant, 
 he had the rare good fortune to be the means of rescuing 
 from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of 
 the Emperor of Russia ; and, but two years later, greatly 
 contributed to the happy recovery of our own prisoners 
 from a similar fate in Cabul. Throughout his career 
 this officer was ever ready and zealous for the public 
 service, and freely risked life and liberty in the discharge 
 of his duties. Lord Canning, to mark his high sense of 
 
071 Letts's Diary, 297 
 
 Sir Richmond Shakespear's public services, had lately 
 offered him the Chief Commissionership of the Mysore, 
 which he had accepted, and was about to undertake, 
 when death terminated his career." 
 
 When he came to London the cousins and playfellows 
 of early Indian days met once again, and shook hands. 
 "Can I do anything for you?" I remember the kind 
 fellow asking. He was always asking that question : of 
 all kinsmen ; of all widows and orphans ; of all the poor ; 
 of young men who might need his purse or his service. 
 I saw a young officer yesterday to whom the first words 
 Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his arrival in India 
 were, " Can I do anything for you ? " His purse was at 
 the command of all. His kind hand was always open. 
 It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows 
 and captives. Where could they have a champion more 
 chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender ? 
 
 I write down his name in my little book, among those 
 of others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned 
 hence. And so we meet and part; we struggle and 
 succeed ; or we fail and drop unknown on the way. As 
 we leave the fond mother's knee, the rough trials of 
 childhood and boyhood begin ; and then manhood is 
 upon us, and the battle of life, with its chances, perils, 
 wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort William guns 
 
298 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 are saluting in one man's honour,* while the troops are 
 firing the last volleys over the other's grave — over the 
 grave of the brave, the gentle, the faithful Christian 
 soldier. 
 
 * W. R. obiit March 22, 1862. 
 
LITTLE DUTCHMEN. 
 
n9 
 
 NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 
 
 OSTofustell 
 old sto- 
 ries in our 
 families. 
 The wife 
 and child- 
 ren laugh 
 for the 
 hundredth 
 time at 
 the joke. 
 The old 
 servants 
 
 (though old servants are fewer every day) nod and 
 smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote. 
 " Don't tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room," says 
 Diggoiy to Mr. Hardcastle in the play, " or I must 
 
300 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 laugh." As we twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we 
 may tell an old story ; or, out of mere benevolence, and 
 a wish to amuse a friend when conversation is flagging, 
 disinter a Joe Miller now and then ; but the practice is 
 not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of 
 hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad 
 thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of 
 anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. 
 What right have I to tell my *' Grouse and the gun- 
 room " over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, 
 mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlour- 
 maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not ? I smirk 
 and go through the history, giving my admirable imita- 
 tions of the characters introduced : I mimic Jones's 
 grin, Hobbs's squint. Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, 
 Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and the 
 family part of my audience laughs good-humouredly. 
 Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the per- 
 formance is given, is amused by it, and laughs too. 
 But this practice continued is not moral. This self- 
 indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is weak, 
 vain — not to say culpable. I can imagine many a 
 worthy man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, 
 and comes to the present sentence, lying back in his 
 chair, thinking of that story which he has told inno- 
 
Notes of a Week's Holidayo 301 
 
 cently for fifty years, and rather piteously owning to 
 himself, "Well, well, it is wrong; I have no right to call 
 on my poor wife to laugh, my daughters to affect to he 
 amused, hy that old, old jest of mine. And they would 
 have gone on laughing, and they would have pretended 
 to he amused, to their dying day, if this man had not 
 flung his damper over our hilarity." ... I lay down 
 the pen, and think, " Are there any old stories which I 
 still tell myself in the hosom of my family ? Have I 
 any 'Grouse in my gunroom?'" If there are such, 
 it is hecause my memory fails ; not because I want 
 applause, and wantonly repeat myself. You see, men 
 with the so-called fund of anecdote will not repeat the 
 same story to the same individual ; but they do think 
 that, on a new party, the repetition of a joke ever so 
 old may be honourably tried. I meet men walking the 
 London street, bearing the best reputation, men of 
 anecdotical powers : — I know such, who very likely will 
 read this, and say, " Hang the fellow, he means me! '* 
 And so I do. No — no man ought to tell an anecdote 
 more than thrice, let us say, unless he is sure he is 
 speaking only to give pleasure to his hearers — unless he 
 feels that it is not a mere desire for praise which makes 
 him open his jaws. 
 And is it not with writers as with raconteurs ? Ought 
 
302 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 they not to have their ingenuous modesty ? May authors 
 tell old stories, and how many times over? When I 
 come to look at a place which I have visited any time 
 these twenty or thirty years, I recal not the place merely, 
 but the sensations I had at first seeing it, and which are 
 quite different to my feelings to-day. That first day at 
 Calais ; the voices of the women crying out at night, as 
 the vessel came alongside the pier; the supper at Quillacq's 
 and the flavour of the cutlets and wine ; the red-calico 
 canopy under which I slept ; the tiled floor, and the fresh 
 smell of the sheets; the wonderful postilion in his jack- 
 boots and pigtail ; — all return with perfect clearness to 
 my mind, and I am seeing them, and not the objects 
 which are actually under my eyes. Here is Calais. 
 Yonder is that commissioner I have known this score of 
 years. Here are the women screaming and bustling over 
 the baggage; the people at the passport-barrier who take 
 your papers. My good people, I hardly see you. You 
 no more interest me than a dozen orange women in 
 Covent Garden, or a shop book-keeper in Oxford Street. 
 But you make me think of a time when you were indeed 
 wonderful to behold — when the little French soldiers 
 wore white cockades in their shakos — when the diligence 
 was forty hours going to Paris; and the great-booted 
 postilion, as surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, 
 
Notes of a WeeJc's Holiday. 303 
 
 with his jurons, his ends of rope for the harness, and his 
 clubbed pigtail, was a wonderful being, and productive of 
 endless amusement. You young folks don't remember 
 the apple-girls who used to follow the dihgence up the 
 hill beyond Boulogne, and the delights of the jolly 
 road ? In making continental journeys with young 
 folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward 
 appearance, melancholy ; but really he has gone back to 
 the days of his youth, and he is seventeen or eighteen 
 years of age (as the case may be), and is amusing him- 
 self with all his might. He is noting the horses as 
 they come squealing out of the post-house yard at mid- 
 night; he is enjoying the delicious meals at Beauvais 
 and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitum the rich table- 
 d'hote wine ; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and 
 alive to all the incidents of the road. A man can be 
 alive in 1860 and 1830 at the same time, don't you see ? 
 Bodily, I may be in 1860, inert, silent, torpid ; but in 
 the spirit I am walking about in 1828, let us say ; — in 
 a blue dress coat and brass buttons, a sweet figured silk 
 waistcoat (which I button round a slim waist with perfect 
 ease), looking at beautiful beings with gigot sleeves and 
 tea-tray hats under the golden chesnuts of the Tuileries, 
 or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc 
 is floating from the statueless column. Shall we go and 
 
304 Roundahout Papers, 
 
 dine at Bombarda's, near the Hotel Breteuil, or at the 
 Cafe Virginie ? — ^Away ! Bombarda's and the Hotel 
 Breteuil have been pulled down ever so long. They 
 knocked down the poor old Virginia Coffee-house last 
 year. My spirit goes and dines there. My body, 
 perhaps, is seated with ever so many people in a railway 
 carriage, and no wonder my companions find me dull 
 and silent. Have you read Mr. Dale Owen's Footsteps 
 on the Confines of Another }Vorlcl .^ — (My dear sir, it 
 will make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) 
 In that work you will read that when gentlemen's or 
 ladies' spirits travel off a few score or thousand miles to 
 visit a friend, their bodies lie quiet and in a torpid state 
 in their beds or in their arm-chairs at home. So in this 
 way, I am absent. My soul whisks away thirty years 
 back into the past. I am looking out anxiously for a 
 beard. I am getting past the age of loving Byron's 
 poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and Shelley 
 much better. Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) dis- 
 agrees with me ; and I know whom I think to be the 
 most lovely creature in the world. Ah, dear maid (of 
 that remote but well-remembered period), are you a wife 
 or widow now ? — are you dead ? — are you thin and 
 withered and old ? — or are you grown much stouter, 
 with a false front ? and so forth. 
 
Notes of a WeeFs Holiday. 305 
 
 Eliza, Eliza ! — Stay, ivas she Eliza ? Well, I pro- 
 test I have forgotten what your Christian name was. 
 You know I only met you for two clays, but your sweet 
 face is before me now, and the roses blooming on it 
 are as fresh as in that time of May. Ah, dear Miss 
 
 X , my timid youth and ingenuous modesty would 
 
 never have allowed me, even in my private thoughts, to 
 address you otherwise than by your paternal name, 
 but that (though I conceal it) I remember perfectly 
 well, and that your dear and respected father was a 
 brewer. 
 
 Caeillon. — I was awakened this morning with the 
 chime which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours. 
 The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes 
 will. You dress, eat, drink, walk, and talk to yourself 
 to their tune : their inaudible jingle accompanies you 
 all day: you read the sentences of the paper to their 
 rhythm. I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the 
 ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is 
 "the shadow dance of Dinorali.''^ It may be so. I 
 dimly remember that my body was once present during 
 the performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were 
 closed, and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back 
 of the box ; howbeit, I have learned that shadow dance 
 
 20 
 
306 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 from hearing it pealing up ever so high in the air, at 
 night, morn, noon. 
 
 How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery- 
 peal ! whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking 
 up rosy at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the 
 scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broad 
 places, and the great shining river; or sparkling in 
 snow which dresses up a hundred thousand masts, 
 peaks, and towers ; or wrapt round with thunder-cloud 
 canopies, before which the white gables shine whiter; 
 day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic 
 melodies overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot 
 VIVOS vocant, mortuos planguiit, fulgura frangunt; sa 
 on to the past and future tenses, and for how many 
 nights, days, and years ! Whilst the French were 
 pitching their fulgura into Chasse's citadel, the bells 
 went on ringing quite cheerfully. Whilst the scaffolds 
 were up and guarded by Alva's soldiery, and regiments 
 of penitents, blue, black, and grey, poured out of 
 churches and convents, droning their dirges, and 
 marching to the place of the Hotel de Ville, where 
 heretics and rebels were to meet their doom, the bells 
 up yonder were chanting at their appointed half-hours 
 and quarters, and rang the mauvais quart d'heure for 
 many a poor soul. This bell can see as far away as the 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday. 307 
 
 towers and dykes of Botterdam. That one can call a 
 greeting to St. Ursula's at Brussels, and toss a recog- 
 nition to that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, and 
 rememher how after a great struggle there a hundred 
 and fifty years ago the whole plain was covered with 
 the flying French chivalry — Burgundy, and Berri, and 
 the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. " What 
 is your clamour about Oudenarde ? " says another bell, 
 (Bob Major this one must be.) " Be still, thou que- 
 rulous old clapper ! / can see over to Hougoumont and 
 St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all 
 through one Sunday in June, when there was such a 
 battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you 
 others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service 
 nntil after vespers, the French and English were all at 
 it, ding-dong." And then calls of business intervening, 
 the bells have to give up their private jangle, resume 
 their professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus out 
 of Dinorah, 
 
 What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard ! 
 I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I 
 have been hearing it constanUy ever since. And this 
 house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and 
 ten miles from Antwerp. And it is a week off; and 
 there is the bell still jangling its shadow dance out of 
 
 20—2 
 
308 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 Dinorah. An audible shadow you understand, and an 
 invisible sound, but quite distinct; and a plague take 
 the tune ! 
 
 Under the Bells.— Who has not seen the church 
 under the bell? Those lofty aisles, those twilight 
 chapels, that cumbersome pulpit with its huge carvings, 
 that wide gray paveme^t flecked with various light from 
 the jewelled windows, those famous pictures between 
 the voluminous columns over the altars which twinkle 
 with their ornaments, their votive little silver hearts, 
 legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of sham 
 roses, and what not ? I saw two regiments of little 
 scholars creeping in and forming square, each in its 
 appointed place, under the vast roof; and teachers 
 presently coming to them. A stream of light from the 
 jewelled windows beams slanting down upon each little 
 squad of children, and the tall background of the church 
 retires into a grayer gloom. Pattering little feet of 
 laggards arriving echo through the great nave. They 
 trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the 
 slanting sunbeams. What are they learning ? Is it 
 truth ? Those two gray ladies with their books in 
 their hands in the midst of these little people have no 
 doubt of the truth of every word they have printed 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday. 309 
 
 under their eyes. Look, through the windows jewelled 
 all over with saints, the light comes streaming down 
 from the sky, and heaven's own illuminations paint the 
 book ! A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of 
 the little children assembled in this immense temple, 
 which has endured for ages, and grave teachers bending 
 over them. Yes, the picture is very pretty of the 
 children and their teachers, and their book — but the 
 text ? Is it the truth, the only truth, nothing but the 
 truth ? If I thought so, I would go and sit down on 
 the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson 
 with all my heart. 
 
 Beadle. — But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is 
 the intrusion and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with 
 the baldric — the officer who answers to the beadle of 
 the British Islands — and is pacing about the church 
 with an eye on the congregation. Now the boast of 
 Cathohcs is that their churches are open to all ; but in 
 certain places and churches there are exceptions. At 
 Kome I have been into St. Peter's at all hours : the 
 doors are always open, the lamps are always burning, 
 the faithful are for ever kneeling at one shrine or the 
 other. But at Antwerp not so. In the afternoon you 
 can go to the church, and be civilly treated; but you 
 
310 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 must pay a franc at the side gate. In the forenoon the 
 doors are open, to be sure, and there is no one to levy 
 an entrance fee. I was standing ever so still, looking 
 through the great gates of the choir at the twinkling 
 lights, and listening to the distant chants of the priests 
 performing the service, when a sweet chorus from the 
 organ loft broke out behind me overhead, and I turned 
 round. My friend the drum-major ecclesiastic was 
 down upon me in a moment. *^ Do not turn your back 
 to the altar during divine service," says he, in very 
 intelligible English. I take the rebuke, and turn a 
 soft right-about face, and listen awhile as the service 
 continues. See it I cannot, nor the altar and its minis- 
 trants. We are separated from these by a great screen 
 and closed gates of iron, through which the lamps 
 glitter and the chant comes by gusts only. Seeing a 
 score of children trotting down a side aisle, I think I 
 may follow them. I am tired of looking at that hideous 
 old pulpit with its grotesque monsters and decorations. 
 I slip off to the side aisle ; but my friend the drum- 
 major is instantly after me — almost I thought he was 
 going to lay hands on me. " You mustn't go there," 
 says he ; *' you mustn't disturb the service." I was 
 moving as quietly as might be, and ten paces off there 
 were twenty children kicking and clattering at their 
 
Notes of a WeeTc^s Holiday. 311 
 
 ease. I point them out to the Swiss. ^* They come to 
 
 pray,'* says he. ^'You don't come to pray, you " 
 
 ** When I come to pay," says I, " I am welcome," and 
 with this withering sarcasm, I walk out of church in a 
 huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle after 
 receiving point blank such a stroke of v/it. 
 
 Leo Belgicus. — Perhaps you will say after this I am 
 a prejudiced critic. I see the pictures in the cathedral 
 fuming under the rudeness of that beadle, or, at the 
 lawful hours and prices, pestered by a swarm of shabby 
 touters, who come behind me chattering in bad EngHsh, 
 and who would have me see the sights through their 
 mean, greedy eyes. Better see Eubens anywhere than 
 in a church. At the Academy, for example, where you 
 may study him at your leisure. But at church ? — I 
 would as soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. 
 Either would paint you a martyrdom very fiercely and 
 picturesquely — writhing muscles, flaming coals, scowling 
 captains and executioners, swarming groups, and light, 
 shade, colour, most dexterously brilliant or dark; but 
 in Rubens I am admiring the performer rather than the 
 piece. With what astonishing rapidity he travels over 
 his canvas; how tellingly the cool lights and warm 
 shadows are made to contrast and relieve each other ; 
 
312 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 how that blazing, blowsy penitent in yellow satin and 
 glittering hair carries down the stream of light across 
 the picture ! This is the way to work, my boys, and 
 earn a hundred florins a day. See ! I am as sure of my 
 line as a skater of making his figure of eight ! and down 
 with a sweep goes a brawny arm or a flowing curl of 
 drapery. The figures arrange themselves as if by magic. 
 The paint-pots are exhausted in furnishing brown 
 shadows. The pupils look wondering on, as the master 
 careers over the canvas. Isabel or Helena, wife No J 1 
 or No. 2, are sitting by, buxom, exuberant, ready to be 
 painted; and the children are boxing in the corner, 
 waiting till they are wanted to figure as cherubs in the 
 picture. Grave burghers and gentlefolks come in on a 
 visit. There are oysters and Ehenish always ready on 
 yonder table. Was there ever such a painter ? He has 
 been an ambassador, an actual Excellency, and what 
 better man could be chosen ? He speaks all the lan- 
 guages. He earns a hundred florins a day. Prodigious ! 
 Thirty-six thousand five hundred florins a year. Enor- 
 mous ! He rides out to his castle with a score of 
 gentlemen after him, like the Governor. That is his 
 own portrait as St. George. You know he is an English 
 knight? Those are his two wives as the two Maries. 
 He chooses the handsomest wives. He rides the hand- 
 
Notes of a Weeh^s Holiday, 313 
 
 somest horses. He paints the handsomest pictures. 
 He gets the handsomest prices for them. That sHm 
 young Van Dyck, who was his pupil, has genius too, 
 and is painting all the noble ladies in England, and 
 turning the heads of some of them. And Jordaens — 
 what a droll dog and clever fellow ! Have you seen his 
 fat Silenus ? The master himself could not paint 
 better. And his altar-piece at St. Bavon's ? He can 
 paint you anything, that Jordaens can — a drunken jolli- 
 fication of boors and doxies, or a martyr howling with 
 half his skin off. What a knowledge of anatomy ! But 
 there is nothing like the master — nothing. He can 
 paint you his thirty-six thousand five hundred florins' 
 worth a year. Have you heard of what he has done 
 for the French Court ? Prodigious ! I can't look at 
 Eubens* pictures without fancying I see that handsome 
 figure swaggering before the canvas. And Hans Hem- 
 melinck at Bruges? Have you never seen that dear 
 old hospital of St. John, on passing the gate of which 
 you enter into the fifteenth century. I see the wounded 
 soldier still lingering in the house, and tended by the 
 kind gray sisters. His little panel on its easel is placed 
 at the Hght. He covers his board with the most won- 
 drous, beautiful little figures, in robes as bright as 
 rubies and amethysts. I think he must have a magic 
 
314 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 glass, in which he catches the reflection of little cherubs 
 with many-coloured wings, very little and bright. Angels, 
 in long crisp robes of white, surrounded with haloes of 
 gold, come and flutter across the mirror, and he draws 
 them. He hears mass every day. He fasts through 
 Lent. No monk is more austere and holy than Hans. 
 Which do you love best to behold, the lamb or the 
 lion? the eagle rushing through the storm, and 
 pouncing mayhap on carrion; or the linnet warbling 
 on the spray ? 
 
 By much the most delightful of the Christopher set 
 of Rubens to my mind (and ego is introduced on these 
 occasions, so that the opinion may pass only for my 
 own, at the reader's humble service to be received or 
 declined) is the " Presentation in the Temple :*' splendid 
 in colour, in sentiment sweet and tender, finely con- 
 veying the story. To be sure, all the others tell their 
 tale unmistakeably — witness that coarse " Salutation," 
 that magnificent " Adoration of the Kings " (at the 
 Museum), by the same strong downright hands ; that 
 wonderful " Communion of St. Francis," which, I think, 
 gives the key to the artist's faire better than any of his 
 performances. I have passed hours before that picture 
 in my time, trying and sometimes fancying I could 
 understand by what masses and contrasts the artist 
 
Notes of a Week^s Holiday. 315 
 
 arrived at his effect. In many others of the pictures 
 parts of this method are painfully ohvious, and you see 
 how grief and agony are produced by blue lips, and eyes 
 rolling blood-shot with dabs of vermilion. There is 
 something simple in the practice. Contort the eyebrow 
 sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it, — by a few 
 lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me a 
 mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of 
 carmine at each extremity — and there are the lips smil- 
 ing. This is art if you will, but a very naive kind of 
 art : and now you know the trick, don't you see how easy 
 it is? 
 
 Tu QuoQUE. — ^Now you know the trick, suppose you 
 take a canvas and see whether yoib can do it ? There 
 are brushes, palettes, and gallipots full of paint and 
 varnish. Have you tried, my dear sir — you, who set up 
 to be a connoisseur ? Have you tried ? I have — and 
 many a day. And the end of the day's labour ? 
 dismal conclusion ! Is this puerile niggling, this feeble 
 scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce — you, 
 who but now found Eubens commonplace and vulgar, 
 and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery? 
 Pardon, great chief, magnificent master and poet ! 
 You can do. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can 
 
316 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 but pry, and measure, and doubt, and carp. Look at 
 the lion. Did you ever see such a gross, shaggy, 
 mangy, roaring brute ? Look at him eating lumps of 
 raw meat — positively bleeding, and raw, and tough — 
 till, faugh ! it turns one's stomach to see him — the 
 coarse wretch ! Yes, but he is a lion. Eubens has 
 lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has 
 endured for two centuries, and we still continue wonder- 
 ing at him, and admiring him. What a strength in 
 that arm ! What splendour of will hidden behind that 
 tawny beard, and those honest eyes ! Sharpen your 
 pen, my good critic. Shoot a feather into him; hit 
 him, and make him wince. Yes, you may hit him fair, 
 and make him bleed, too ; but, for all that, he is a lion 
 — a mighty, conquering, generous, rampagious Leo 
 JBelgicus — monarch of his wood. And he is not dead 
 yet, and I will not kick at him. 
 
 Sir Antony.^ — In that " Pieta " of Van Dyck, in the 
 Museum, have you ever looked at the yellow-robed 
 angel, with the black scarf thrown over her wings and 
 robe ? What a charming figure of grief and beauty ! 
 What a pretty compassion it inspires ! It soothes and 
 pleases me like a sweet rhythmic chant. See how deli- 
 cately the yellow robe contrasts with the blue sky behind, 
 
Notes of a WeeFs Holiday. 317 
 
 and the scarf binds the two ! If Kubens lacked grace. 
 Van Dyck abounded in it. What a consummate 
 elegance ! "What a perfect cavalier ! No wonder the 
 fine ladies in England admired Sir Antony. Look 
 at 
 
 Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes 
 who keep the Musee cry out, ^^ Allans! Sortons! II est 
 trois heiires ! Allez ! Sortez ! " and they skip out of the 
 gallery as happy as boys running from school. And 
 we must go too, for though many stay behind — many 
 Britons with Murray's handbooks in their handsome 
 hands ; they have paid a franc for entrance-fee, you see 
 — and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance 
 until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven 
 us out of this Paradise. 
 
 But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, 
 and see the ships unlading, and by the citadel, and 
 wonder howabouts and whereabouts it was so strong. 
 We expect a citadel to look like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreit- 
 stein at least. But in this one there is nothing to see 
 but a flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and 
 mounds of uninteresting green. And then I remember 
 how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of 
 no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be over- 
 come except by a much bigger champion, and the im- 
 
318 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 mensest quantity of thrashing. A perfect citadel of a 
 boy, with a General Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof 
 casemate, his heart, letting blow after blow come 
 thumping about his head, and never thinking of 
 giving in. 
 
 And we go home, and we dine in the company of 
 Britons, at the comfortable Hotel du Pare, and we have 
 bought a novel apiece for a shilling, and every half-hour 
 the sweet carillon plays the waltz from Dinorah in the 
 air. And we have been happy ; and it seems about' a 
 month since we left London yesterday; and nobody 
 knows where we are, and we defy care and the post- 
 man. 
 
 Spooeweg. — Vast green flats, speckled by spotted 
 cows, and bound by a gray frontier of windmills; 
 shining canals stretching through the green ; odours 
 like those exhaled from the Thames in the dog-days, 
 and a fine pervading smell of cheese ; little trim houses, 
 with tall roofs, and great windows of many panes ; 
 gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over pea-green 
 canals ; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, 
 with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings ; about 
 the houses and towns which we pass a great air of 
 comfort and neatness ; a queer feehng of wonder that 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday, 319 
 
 you can't understand wliat your fellow-passengers are 
 saying, the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfort- 
 able dowdiness of dress, are so like our own ; — whilst 
 we are remarking on these sights, sounds, smells, the 
 little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague 
 comes to an end. I speak to the railway porters and 
 hackney coachmen in English, and they reply in their 
 own language, and it seems somehow as if we under- 
 stood each other perfectly. The carriage drives to the 
 handsome, comfortable, cheerful hotel. We sit down a 
 score at the table ; and there is one foreigner and his 
 wife, — I mean every other man and woman at dinner 
 are English. As we are close to the sea, and in the 
 midst of endless canals, we have no fish. We are 
 reminded of dear England by the noble prices which we 
 pay for wines. I confess I lost my temper yesterday at 
 Rotterdam, where I hadjio pay a florin for a bottle of 
 ale (the water not being drinkable, and country or 
 Bavarian beer not being genteel enough for the hotel) ; 
 — I confess, I say, that my fine temper was ruffled, 
 when the bottle of pale ale turned out to be a pint 
 bottle ; and I meekly told the waiter that I had bought 
 beer at Jerusalem at a less price. But then Rotterdam 
 is eighteen hours from London, and the steamer with 
 the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel win- 
 
320 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 dows ; whilst to Jerusalem tliey have to carry the ale 
 on camels' backs from Beyrout or Jaffa, and through 
 hordes of marauding Arabs, who evidently don't care 
 for pale ale, though I am told it is not forbidden in the 
 Koran. Mine would have been very good, but I choked 
 with rage whilst drinking it. A florin for a bottle, and 
 that bottle having the words " imperial pint," in bold 
 relief, on the surface ! It was too much. I intended 
 not to say anything about it; but I must speak. A 
 florin a bottle, and that bottle a pint ! Oh, for shame ! 
 for shame ! I can't cork down my indignation ; I 
 froth up with fury ; I am pale with wrath, and bitter 
 with scorn. 
 
 As we drove through the old city at night, how it 
 swarmed and hummed with life ! What"* a special 
 clatter, crowd, and outcry there was in the Jewish 
 quarter, where myriads of young ones were trotting 
 about the fishy street ! Why don't they have lamps ? 
 We passed by canals seeming so full that a pailful of 
 water more would overflow the place. The laquais de 
 'place calls out the names of the buildings : the town- 
 hall, the cathedral, the arsenal, the synagogue, the 
 statue of Erasmus. Get along ! We know the statue 
 of Erasmus well enough. We pass over drawbridges 
 by canals where thousands of barges are at roost. At 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday. 321 
 
 roost — at rest ! Shall we have rest in those bedrooms, 
 those ancient lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we have 
 to pay a florin for a pint of pa — psha ! at the New Bath 
 Hotel on the B.oompjes ? If this dreary edifice is the 
 New Bath, what must the Old Bath be like ? As I 
 feared to go to bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as 
 I might; but three young men were imparting their 
 private adventures to each other with such freedom and 
 liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their artless 
 prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bed-clothes 
 and darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense 
 of terror — that sort of sensation which I should think 
 going down in a diving-bell would give. Suppose the 
 apparatus goes wrong, and they don't understand your 
 signal to mount? Suppose your matches miss fire 
 when you wake ; when you loant them, when you will 
 have to rise in half-an-hour, and do battle with the 
 horrid enemy who crawls on you in the darkness ? I 
 protest I never was more surprised than when I woke 
 and beheld the light of dawn. Indian birds and strange 
 trees were visible on the ancient gilt hangings of the 
 lofty chamber, and through the windows the Boompjes 
 and the ships along the quay. We have all read of 
 deserters being brought out, and made to kneel, with 
 their eyes bandaged, and hearing the word to " Fire " 
 
 21 
 
322 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 given ! I declare I underwent all the terrors of exe- 
 cution that night, and wonder how I ever escaped 
 unwounded. 
 
 But if ever I go to the Bath Hotel, Kotterdam, again, 
 I am a Dutchman. A guilder for a bottle of pale 
 ale, and that bottle a pint ! Ah ! for shame — for 
 shame ! 
 
 Mine Ease in Mine Inn. — Do you object to talk 
 about inns ? It always seems to me to be very good 
 talk. Walter Scott is full of inns. In Don Quixote 
 and Gil Bias there is plenty of inn-talk. Sterne, 
 Fielding, and Smollett constantly speak about them ; 
 and, in their travels, the last two tot up the bill, 
 and describe the dinner quite honestly ; whilst 
 Mr. Sterne becomes sentimental over a cab, and weeps 
 generous tears over a donkey. 
 
 How I admire and wonder at the information in 
 Murray's Handbooks — wonder how it is got, and 
 admire the travellers who get it. For instance, you 
 read : Amiens (please select your towns), 60,000 in- 
 habitants. Hotels, &c. — Lion d'Or, good and clean. 
 Le Lion d' Argent, so so. Le Lion Noir, bad, dirty, 
 and dear. Now say, there are three travellers — three 
 inn-inspectors, who are sent forth by Mr. Murray on 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday, 323 
 
 a great commission, and who stop at every inn in tlie 
 world. The eldest goes to the Lion d'Or — capital house, 
 good table d'hote, excellent wine, moderate charges. 
 The second commissioner tries the Silver Lion — tole- 
 rable house, bed, dinner, bill and so forth. But fancy 
 Commissioner No. 3 — the poor fag, doubtless, and boots 
 of the party. He has to go to the Lion Noir. He knows 
 he is to have a bad dinner — he eats it uncomplainingly. 
 He is to have bad wine. He swallows it, grinding his 
 wretched teeth, and aware that he will be unwell in con- 
 sequence. He knows he is to have a dirty bed, and what 
 he is to expect there. He pops out the candle. He 
 sinks into those dingy sheets. He delivers over his 
 body to the nightly tormentors, he pays an exorbitant 
 bill, and he writes down, " Lion Noir, bad, dirty, dear.'* 
 Next day the commission sets out for Arras, we will 
 say, and they begin again : Le Cochon d'Or, Le Cochon 
 d'Argent, Le Cochon Noir — and that is poor Boots's inn, 
 of course. What a life that poor man must lead ! What 
 horrors of dinners he has to go through ! What a hide 
 he must have ! And yet not impervious ; for unless he is 
 bitten, how is he to be able to warn others ? No ; on second 
 thoughts, you will perceive that he ought to have a very 
 delicate skin. The monsters ought to troop to him 
 eagerly, and bite him instantaneously and freely, so that 
 
 21—2 
 
324 Roundahout Paper, 
 
 lie may be able to warn all future handbook buyers of 
 tbeir danger. I fancy tliis man devoting himself to 
 danger, to dirt, to bad dinners, to sour wine, to damp 
 beds, to midniglit agonies, to extortionate bills. I 
 admire bim, I thank him. Think of this champion, 
 who devotes his body for us — this dauntless gladiator 
 going to do battle alone in the darkness, with no other 
 armour than a light helmet of cotton, and a lorica of 
 calico. I pity and honour him. Go, Spartacus ! Go, 
 devoted man — to bleed, to groan, to suffer — and smile 
 in silence as the wild beasts assail thee ! 
 
 How did I come into this talk ? I protest it was the 
 word inn set me off — and here is one, the Hotel de Belle 
 Vue, at the Hague, as comfortable, as handsome, as 
 cheerful, as any I ever took mine ease in. And the 
 Bavarian beer, my dear friend, how good and brisk and 
 light it is ! Take another glass — it refreshes and does 
 not stupefy — and then we will sally out, and see the 
 town and the park and the pictures. 
 
 The prettiest little brick city, the pleasantest little 
 park to ride in, the neatest comfortable people walking 
 about, the canals not unsweet, and busy and picturesque 
 with old-world life. Eows upon rows of houses, built 
 with the neatest little bricks, with windows fresh painted, 
 and tall doors polished and carved to a nicety. '\Yhat 
 
Notes of a WeeFs Holiday, 325 
 
 a pleasant spacious garden our inn has, all sparkling 
 with autumn flowers, and bedizened with statues ! At 
 the end is a row of trees, and a summer-house, over 
 the canal, where you might go and smoke a pipe with 
 Mynheer Van Dunck, and quite cheerfully catch the 
 ague. Yesterday, as we passed, they were making hay, 
 and stacking it in a barge which was lying by the 
 meadow, handy. Round about Kensington Palace there 
 are houses, roofs, chimneys, and bricks like these. I feel 
 that a Dutchman is a man and a brother. It is very 
 funny to read the newspaper, one can understand it 
 somehow. Sure it is the neatest, gayest little city — 
 scores and hundreds of mansions looking like Cheyne 
 Walk, or the ladies' schools about Chiswick and 
 Hackney. 
 
 Le Geos Lot. — To a few lucky men the chance befals 
 of reaching fame at once, and (if it is of any profit mori- 
 turo) retaining the admiration of the world. Did poor 
 Oliver, when he was at Leyden yonder, ever think that 
 he should paint a little picture which should secure him 
 the applause and pity of all Europe for a century after ? 
 He and Sterne drew the twenty thousand prize of fame. 
 The latter had splendid instalments during his lifetime. 
 The ladies pressed round him ; the wits admired him, 
 
326 Roundabout Pa'pers, 
 
 the fashion hailed the successor of Eabelais. Gold- 
 smith's little gem was hardly so valued until later days. 
 Their works still form the wonder and delight of the 
 lovers of English art ; and the pictures of the Vicar and 
 Uncle Toby are among the masterpieces of our English 
 school. Here in the Hague Gallery is Paul Potter's 
 pale, eager face, and yonder is the magnificent work by 
 which the young fellow achieved his fame. How did you, 
 so young, come to paint so well ? What hidden power 
 lay in that weakly lad that enabled him to achieve such 
 a wonderful victory ? Could little Mozart, when he was 
 five years old, tell you how he came to play those wonder- 
 ful sonatas ? Potter was gone out of the world before he 
 was thirty, but left this prodigy (and I know not how 
 many more specimens of his genius and skill) behind 
 him. The details of this admirable picture are as curious 
 as the effect is admirable and complete. The weather 
 being unsettled, and clouds and sunshine in the gusty sky, 
 we saw in our little tour numberless Paul Potters — the 
 meadows streaked with sunshine and spotted with the 
 cattle, the city twinkling in the distance, the thunder- 
 clouds glooming overhead. Napoleon carried off the 
 picture {vide Murray) amongst the spoils of his bow and 
 spear to decorate his triumph of the Louvre. If I were a 
 conquering prince, I would have this picture certainly, 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday, 327 
 
 and the Raphael Madonna from Dresden, and the Titian 
 Assumption from Venice, and that matchless Rembrandt 
 of the Dissection, The prostrate nations would howl 
 with rage as my gendarmes took off the pictures, nicely 
 packed and addressed, to '*Mr. the Director of my 
 Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side upper- 
 most." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., 
 should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat 
 with tears before the pictures torn from their native 
 cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, 
 and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of 
 despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works 
 of art. Bah ! I would offer them a pinch of snuff out 
 of my box as I walked along my gallery, with their 
 Excellencies cringing after me. Zenobia was a fine 
 woman and a queen, but she had to walk in Aurelian's 
 triumph. The proccde was peu delicat ? En iisez vous, 
 man cher monsieur ? (The marquis says the Macaba is 
 delicious.) What a splendour of colour there is in that 
 cloud ? What a richness, what a freedom of handling, 
 and what a marvellous precision ! I trod upon your 
 Excellency's corn ? — a thousand pardons. His Excel- 
 lency grins and declares that he rather likes to have his 
 corns trodden on. Were you ever very angry with Soult 
 — about that Murillo which we have bought? The 
 
328 Roundabout Paipevs. 
 
 veteran loved that picture because it saved the life of a 
 fellow-creature — the fellow-creature who hid it, and 
 whom the Duke intended to hang unless the picture was 
 forthcoming. 
 
 We gave several thousand pounds for it — how many 
 thousand ? About its merit is a question of taste 
 which we will not here argue. If you choose to place 
 Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim 
 upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant. 
 Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as well as Milton, and 
 warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the Angels after his 
 fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try historical 
 subjects ? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads 
 will fetch 1,000/., 1,500/., 2,000/.— as much as a Sevres 
 cabaret of Kose du Barri. If cost price is to be your 
 criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little 
 receipt for lOL for the copyright of Paradise Lost, 
 which used to hang in old Mr. Eogers' room ? When 
 living painters, as frequently happens in our days, see 
 their pictures sold at auctions for four or five times the 
 sums which they originally received, are they enraged or 
 elated ? A hundred years ago the state of the picture - 
 market was difierent : that dreary old Italian stock was 
 much higher than at present ; Rembrandt himself, a 
 close man, was known to be in difficulties. If ghosts 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday, 329 
 
 are fond of money still, what a wrath his must he at the 
 present value of his works ! 
 
 The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest 
 of all his pieces to my mind. Some of the heads are as 
 sweetly and lightly painted as Gainsborough ; the faces 
 not ugly, but delicate and high-bred; the exquisite 
 gray tones are charming to mark and study ; the heads 
 not plastered, but painted with a free, liquid brush : the 
 result, one of the great victories won by this consum- 
 mate chief, and left for the wonder and delight of suc- 
 ceeding ages. 
 
 The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has 
 served a campaign or two ever so ingloriously, has at 
 least this good fortune of understanding, or fancying 
 he is able to understand, how the battle has been fought, 
 and how the engaged general won it. This is the Rhine- 
 lander's most brilliant achievement — victory along the 
 whole line. The Night-watch at Amsterdam is mag- 
 nificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's 
 right, smoky and dim. The Five Masters of the 
 Drapers is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, 
 massive power. What words are these to express a 
 picture ! to describe a description ! I once saw a moon 
 riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling 
 maids of honour, and a little lady said, with an air of 
 
330 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 great satisfaction, " I must sketch itJ' Ah, my dear 
 lady, if with an H.B., a Bristol board, and a bit of 
 india-rubber, you can sketch the starry firmament on 
 high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my com- 
 pliment ! I can't sketch The Five Drapers with any 
 ink or pen at present at command — but can look with 
 all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a master- 
 piece. 
 
 They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the 
 old tenant of the mill. What does he think of the Van- 
 der Heist which hangs opposite his Night-watch, and 
 which is one of the great pictures of the world ? It is 
 not painted by so great a man as Eembrandt ; but there 
 it is — to see it is an event of your life. Having beheld 
 it you have lived in the year 1648, and celebrated the 
 treaty of Munster. You have shaken the hands of 
 the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk 
 their Rhenish, heard their jokes as they wagged their 
 jolly beards. The Amsterdam Catalogue discourses 
 thus about it : — a model catalogue : it gives you the 
 prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct 
 description of the work. 
 
 *' This masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic 
 guard, which took place on the 18th June, 1648, in the 
 great hall of the St. Joris Doele, on the Singel at 
 
Notes of a WeeFs Holiday. 331 
 
 Amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the Peace at 
 Munster. The thirty-five figures composing the picture 
 are all portraits. 
 
 '* The Captain Witse is placed at the head of the 
 table, and attracts our attention first. He is dressed in 
 black velvet, his breast covered with a cuirass, on his 
 head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes. 
 He is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with 
 a velvet cushion, and holds in his left hand, supported 
 on his knee, a magnificent drinking-horn, surrounded 
 by a St. George destroying the dragon, and ornamented 
 with olive-leaves. The captain's features express cor- 
 diality and good-humour ; he is grasping the hand of 
 Lieutenant Van Waveren seated near him, in a habit 
 of dark gray, with lace and buttons of gold, lace-collar 
 and wrist-bands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow 
 leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, on his head a 
 black hat and dark-brown plumes. Behind him, at the 
 centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, Jacob 
 Banning, in an easy martial attitude, hat in hand, 
 his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his 
 left knee. He holds the flag of blue silk, in which the 
 Virgin is embroidered, (such a silk ! such a flag ! 
 such a piece of painting !) emblematic of the town 
 of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, 
 
332 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 and he looks towards the spectator frankly and com- 
 placently. 
 
 *^ The man behind him is probably one of the 
 sergeants. His head is bare. He wears a cuirass, and 
 yellow gloves, grey stockings, and boots with large tops, 
 and kneecaps of cloth. He has a napkin on his knees, 
 and in his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread, and a 
 knife. The old man behind is probably William the 
 Drummer, He has his hat in his right hand, and in 
 his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. 
 He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with 
 little slashes of yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two 
 matchlock men are seated at the end of the table. One 
 in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a hausse-col 
 of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. He is eating with 
 his knife. The other holds a long glass of white wine. 
 Four musketeers, with different shaped hats, are behind 
 these, one holding a glass, the three others with their 
 guns on their shoulders. Other guests are placed 
 between the personage who is giving the toast and the 
 standard-bearer. One with his hat off, and his hand 
 uplifted, is talking to another. The second is carving a 
 fowl. A third holds a silver plate ; and another, in the 
 background, a silver flagon, from which he fills a cup. 
 The corner behind the captain is filled by two seated 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday. 333 
 
 personages, one of whom is peeling an orange. Two 
 others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom one 
 holds a plumed hat. Behind him are other three 
 individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot, on 
 which the name Poock, the landlord of the Hotel 
 Doele, is engraved. At the back, a maid-servant is 
 coming in with a pasty, crowned with a turkey. 
 Most of the guests are listening to the captain. 
 From an open window in the distance, the facades 
 of two houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures 
 of sheep." 
 
 There, now you know all about it : now you can go 
 home and paint just such another. If you do, do pray 
 remember to paint the hands of the figures as they are 
 here depicted ; they are as wonderful portraits as the 
 faces. None of your slim Vandyck elegancies, which 
 have done duty at the cuffs of so many doublets ; 
 but each man with a hand for himself, as with a face 
 for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the 
 chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind William 
 THE Drummee, splendidly attired, sitting full in the 
 face of the public ; and holding a pork-bone in his 
 hand. Suppose the Saturday Revietv critic were to 
 come suddenly on this picture ? Ah ! what a shock it 
 would give that noble nature ! Why is that knuckle of 
 
334 Eoundahout Papers. 
 
 pork not painted out ? at any rate, why is not a little 
 fringe of lace painted round it ? or a cut pink paper ? 
 or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in. instead, with 
 a crest and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief, 
 in lieu of the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the 
 corner ? or suppose you covered the man's hand (which 
 is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of 
 a kid glove ? But a piece of pork in a naked hand ? 
 nerves and eau de Cologne, hide it, hide it ! 
 
 In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble 
 sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it ! A 
 great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have seen 
 here. Not the greatest picture in the world — not a 
 work of the highest genius — but a performance so great, 
 various, and admirable, so shrewd of humour, so wise of 
 observation, so honest and complete of expression, that 
 to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it 
 will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bar- 
 tholomeus Vander Heist ! Brave, meritorious, victorious, 
 happy Bartholomew, to whom it has been given to pro- 
 duce a master-piece ! 
 
 May I take off my hat and pay a respectful compH- 
 ment to Jan Steen, Esq. ? He is a glorious composer. 
 His humour is as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own 
 figure sitting in the window-sill yonder, and roaring 
 
Notes of a WeeFs Holiday. 335 
 
 with laughter ! What a twinlde in the eyes ! what a 
 mouth it is for a song, or a joke, or a noggin ! I think 
 the composition in some of Jan's pictures amounts to 
 the subhme, and look at them with the same delight 
 and admiration which I have felt before works of the 
 very highest style. This gallery is admirable — and the 
 city in which the gallery is, is perhaps even more 
 wonderful and curious to behold than the gallery. 
 
 The first landing at Calais (or, I suppose, on any 
 foreign shore) — the first sight of an Eastern city — the 
 first view of Venice — and this of Amsterdam, are among 
 the delightful shocks which I have had as a traveller. 
 Amsterdam is as good as Venice, with a superadded 
 humour and grotesqueness, which gives the sight-seer 
 the most singular zest and pleasure. A run through 
 Pekin I could hardly fancy to be more odd, strange, and 
 yet famihar. This rush, and crowd, and prodigious 
 vitality ; this immense swarm of life ; these busy waters, 
 crowding barges, swinging drawbridges, piled ancient 
 gables, spacious markets teeming with people; that 
 ever-wonderful Jews' quarter ; that dear old world of 
 painting and the past, yet alive, and throbbing, and 
 palpable — actual, and yet passing before you swiftly and 
 strangely as a dream ! Of the many journeys of this 
 Koundabout life, that drive through Amsterdam is to be 
 
336 Roiindahout Papers, 
 
 specially and gratefully remembered. You have never 
 seen tlie palace of Amsterdam, my dear sir ? Why, 
 there's a marble hall in that palace that will frighten 
 you as much as any hall in Vathek, or a nightmare. 
 At one end of that old, cold, glassy, glittering, ghostly, 
 marble hall there stands a throne, on which a white 
 marble king ought to sit with his white legs gleaming 
 down into the white marble below, and his white eyes 
 looking at a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his 
 icy shoulders a blue globe as big as the full moon. If 
 he were not a genie, and enchanted, and with a strength 
 altogether hyperatlantean, he would drop the moon with 
 a shriek on to the white marble floor, and it would 
 splitter into perdition. And the palace would rock, and 
 heave, and tumble ; and the waters would rise, rise, 
 rise; and the gables sink, sink, sink; and the barges 
 would rise up to the chimneys ; and the water- souchee 
 fishes would flap over the Boompjes, where the pigeons 
 and storks used to perch; and the Amster, and th& 
 Eotter, and the Saar, and the Op, and all the dams of 
 Holland would burst, and the Zuyder Zee roll over the 
 dykes ; and you would wake out of your dream, and find 
 yourself sitting in your arm-chair. 
 
 Was it a dream ? it seems like one. Have we been 
 to Holland ? have we heard the chimes at midnight at 
 
Notes of a Week's Holiday, 337 
 
 Antwerp ? Were we really away for a week, or have I 
 been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old 
 desk? Here's the desk; yes. But, if it has been a 
 dream, how could I have learned to hum that tune out 
 of Binorah ? Ah, is it that tune, or myself that I am 
 humming ? If it was a dream, how comes this yellow 
 Notice des Tableaux du Musee d' Amsterdam avec 
 FACSIMILE DES MoNOGRAMMES before me, and this signa- 
 ture of the gallant 
 
 Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted 
 a whole week. "With the exception of that little pint of 
 amari aliquid at Rotterdam, we were all very happy. 
 We might have gone on being happy for whoever knows 
 how many days more ? a week more, ten days more : 
 who knows how long that dear teetotum happiness can 
 be made to spin without toppling over ? 
 
 But one of the party had desired letters to be sent 
 paste restante, Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by 
 that awful palace where the Atlas is, and which we 
 really saw. 
 
 There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance 
 of finding us. There it was. " The post has only this 
 
 22 
 
338 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 moment come in," says the smirking commissioner. 
 And he hands over the paper, thinking he has done 
 something clever. 
 
 Before the letter had been opened, I could read Come 
 BACK, as clearly as if it had been painted on the wall. It 
 was all over. The spell was broken. The sprightly 
 little holiday fairy that had frisked and gambolled so 
 kindly beside us for eight days of sunshine — or 
 rain which was as cheerful as sunshine — gave a 
 parting piteous look, and whisked away and vanished. 
 And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old 
 desk. 
 
339 
 
 NIL NISI BONUI. 
 
 Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke to 
 Lockhart, his biographer, were, " Be a good man, my 
 dear ! " and with the last flicker of breath on his dying 
 lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed away 
 blessing them. 
 
 Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left 
 us, the Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a 
 few weeks are over, many a critic's pen will be at work, 
 reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their 
 works. This is no review, or history, or criticism : only 
 a word in testimony of respect and regard from a man 
 of letters, who owes to his own professional labour the 
 honour of becoming acquainted with these two eminent 
 literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the 
 New World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born 
 almost with the republic ; the ^ater patrice had laid his 
 hand on the child's head. He bore Washington's name : 
 he came amongst us bringing the kindest sympathy, the 
 
 * Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859; Lord Macaulay died, 
 December 28, 1859. 
 
 22—2 
 
340 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 most artless, smiling goodwill. His new country (which 
 some people here might be disposed to regard rather 
 superciliously) could send us, as he showed in his own 
 person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no 
 very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, 
 witty, quiet ; and, socially, the equal of the most refined 
 Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind 
 one, was it not also gratefully remembered ? If he ate 
 our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart ? Who 
 can calculate the amount of friendliness and good fcBl- 
 ing for our country which this writer's generous and 
 untiring regard for us disseminated in his own ? His 
 books are read by millions * of his countrymen, whom 
 he has taught to love England, and why to love her. It 
 would have been easy to speak otherwise than he did : 
 to inflame national rancours, which, at the time when 
 he first became known as a public writer, war had just 
 renewed : to cry down the old civilization at the expense 
 of the new : to point out our faults, arrogance, short- 
 comings, and give the republic to infer how much she 
 was the parent state's superior. There are writers 
 enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, who 
 preach that kind of doctrine. But the good Irving, tho 
 
 * See his Life in the most remarakble Dictionary of Authors, pub- 
 lished lately at Philadelphia, by Mr. Alibone. 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum, 341 
 
 peaceful, the friendly, had no place for bitterness in his 
 heart, and no scheme but kindness. Eeceived in Eng- 
 land with extraordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, 
 Southey, Byron, a hundred others have borne witness to 
 their liking for him), he was a messenger of goodwill 
 and peace between his country and ours. '* See, 
 friends ! " he seems to say, *' these English are not so 
 wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been 
 taught to believe them. I went amongst them a humble 
 man ; won my way by my pen ; and, when known, 
 found every hand held out to me with kindliness and 
 welcome. Scott is a great man, you acknowledge. Did 
 not Scott's king of England give a gold medal to him, 
 and another to me, your countryman, and a stranger?" 
 Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the 
 history of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving 
 on his return to his native country from Europe. He 
 had a national welcome ; he stammered in his speeches, 
 hid himself in confusion, and the people loved him all 
 the better. He had worthily represented America in 
 Europe. In that young community a man who brings 
 home with him abundant European testimonials is still 
 treated with respect (I have found American writers, of 
 wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the 
 opinions of quite obscure British critics, and elated or 
 
342 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 depressed by their judgments) ; and Irving went home 
 medalled by the king, diplomatized by the university, 
 crowned and honoured and admired. He had not in 
 any way intrigued for his honours, he had fairly won 
 them ; and, in Irving's instance, as in others, the old 
 country was glad and eager to pay them. 
 
 In America the love and regard for Irving was a 
 national sentiment. Party wars are perpetually raging 
 there, and are carried on by the press with a rancour 
 and fierceness against individuals which exceed British, 
 almost Irish, virulence. It seemed to me, during a 
 year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a 
 blow at Irving. All men held their hand from that 
 harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune 
 to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and 
 Washington,* and remarked how in every place he was 
 honoured and welcome. Every large city has its 
 " Irving House." The country takes pride in the fame 
 of its men of letters. The gate of his own charming 
 little domain on the beautiful Hudson Kiver was for 
 ever swinging before visitors who came to him. He 
 
 * At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the writer^ 
 which Mr. Filmore and General Pierce, the president and president elect, 
 were also kind enough to attend together. " Two kings of Brentford 
 smelling at one rose," says Irving, looking up with his good-humoured 
 smile. 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum. 343 
 
 shut out no one.* I had seen many pictures of his 
 house, and read descriptions of it, in both of which it 
 was treated with a not unusual American exaggeration. 
 It was but a pretty little cabin of a place ; the gentleman 
 of -the press who took notes of the place, whilst his kind 
 old host was sleeping, might have visited the whole 
 house in a couple of minutes. 
 
 And how came it that this house was so small, when 
 Mr. Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, 
 nay, millions, when his profits were known to be large, 
 and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were 
 notoriously modest and simple ? He had loved once in 
 his life. The lady he loved died; and he, whom all 
 the world loved, never sought to replace her. I can't 
 say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched 
 me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add 
 to the pathos of that untold story ? To grieve always 
 was not in his nature; or, when he had his sorrow, 
 
 * Mr. Irving described to me, with that humour and good humour 
 which he always kept, how, amongst other visitors, a member of the 
 British press who had carried his distinguished pen to America (where 
 he employed it in vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, intro- 
 duced himself to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two 
 days described Mr. Irving, his house, his nieces, his meal, and his manner 
 of dozing afterwards, in a New York paper. On another occasion, Irving 
 said, laughing, " Two persons came to me, and one held me in conver- 
 sation whilst the other miscreant took my portrait!" 
 
344 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 to bring all the world in to condole with liim and 
 bemoan it. Deep and quiet he lays the love of his 
 heart, and buries it ; and grass and flowers grow over 
 the scarred ground in due time. 
 
 Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, 
 because there was a great number of people to occupy 
 them. He could only afford to keep one old horse 
 (which, lazy and aged as it was, managed once or twice 
 to run away with that careless old horseman). He 
 could only afford to give plain sherry to that amiable 
 British paragraph-monger from New York, who saw the 
 patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and 
 fetched the public into his private chamber to look at 
 him. Irving could only live very modestly, because the 
 wifeless, childless man had a number of children to 
 whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine 
 nieces, I am told — I saw two of these ladies at his 
 house — with all of whom the dear old man had shared 
 the produce of his labour and genius. 
 
 '' Be a good man, my dear,^* One can't but think of 
 these last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who 
 had tasted and tested the value of worldly success, 
 admiration, prosperity. Was Irving not good, and, of 
 his works, was not his life the best part ? In his 
 family, gentle, generous, good-humoured, affectionate, 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum. 345 
 
 self-denying: in society, a delightM example of com- 
 plete gentlemanliood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity; 
 never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the 
 base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in 
 bis -and other countries) ; eager to acknowledge every 
 contemporary's merit ; always kind and affable with the 
 young members of his calling; in his professional 
 bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and 
 grateful; one of the most charming masters of our 
 lighter language; the constant friend to us and our 
 nation ; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit 
 and genius merely, but as an examplar of goodness, 
 probity, and pure life : — I don't know what sort of 
 testimonial will be raised to him in his own country, 
 where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of 
 American merit is never wanting : but Irving was in 
 our service as well as theirs ; and as they have placed a 
 stone at Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant 
 young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of some 
 of our Arctic seamen, I would like to hear of some 
 memorial raised by English writers and friends of letters 
 in affectionate remembrance of the dear and good 
 Washington Irving. 
 
 As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, 
 some few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of 
 
346 Roundahout Papers. 
 
 admiring readers deplore, our republic lias already 
 decreed liis statue, and he must have known that he 
 had earned this posthumous honour. He is not a poet 
 and man of letters merely, but citizen, statesman, a 
 great British worthy. Almost from the first moment 
 when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college students, 
 amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great 
 Englishman. All sorts of successes are easy to him : 
 as a lad he goes down into the arena with others, and 
 wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place' in 
 the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He 
 takes his seat there ; he speaks, when so minded, with- 
 out party anger or intrigue, but not without party faith 
 and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still he 
 is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That 
 he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling 
 studies, he absents himself for a while, and accepts a 
 richly-remunerative post in the East. As learned a 
 man may live in a cottage or a college common-room ; but it 
 always seemed to me that ample means and recognized 
 rank were Macaulay's as of right. Years ago there was 
 a wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a 
 letter from Windsor Castle, where he was sta}dng. 
 Immortal gods ! Was this man not a fit guest for any 
 palace in the world ? or a fit companion for any man or 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum. 347 
 
 woman in it ? I daresay, after AustJBrlitz, tlie old K. K. 
 court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for 
 dating from Schonbrnnn. But that miserable " Wind- 
 sor Castle " outcry is an echo out of fast-retreating old- 
 world remembrances. The place of such a natural chief 
 was amongst the first of the land ; and that country is 
 best, according to our British notion, at least, where the 
 man of eminence has the best chance of investing his 
 genius and intellect. 
 
 If a company of giants were got together, very likely 
 one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be 
 angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest 
 of the party : and so I have heard some London wits, 
 rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that 
 he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now 
 that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not 
 many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance 
 to listen ? To remember the talk is to wonder : to 
 think not only of the treasures he had in his memory, 
 but of the trifles he had stored there, and could produce 
 with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the 
 fortune to see him, a conversation happened suddenly to 
 spring up about senior wranglers, and what they had 
 done in after life. To the almost terror of the persons 
 present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler of 
 
348 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and 
 relating his subsequent career and rise. Every man 
 who has known him has his story regarding that 
 astonishing memory. It may be that he was not ill- 
 pleased that you should recognize it; but to those 
 prodigious intellectual feats, which were so easy to him, 
 who would grudge his tribute of homage ? His talk 
 was, in a word, admirable, and we admired it. 
 
 Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord 
 Macaulay, up to the day when the present lines are 
 written (the 9th of January), the reader should not 
 deny himself the pleasure of looking especially at two. 
 It is a good sign of the times when such articles as 
 these (I mean the articles in The Times and Saturday 
 Revieiv) appear in our public prints about our public 
 men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly. 
 An uninstructed person in a museum or at a concert 
 may pass by without recognizing a picture or a passage 
 of music, which the connoisseur by his side may show 
 him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder of 
 artistic skill. After reading these papers you like and 
 respect more the person you have admired so much 
 already. And so with regard to Macaulay's style thero 
 may be faults of course — what critic can't point them 
 out ? But for the nonce we are not talking about 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum, 349 
 
 faults : we want to say nil nisi honum. Well — take at 
 hazard any three pages of the Essays or History ; — and, 
 glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it 
 w^ere, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half- 
 score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, 
 literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Why 
 is this epithet used? Whence is that simile drawn? 
 How does he manage, in two or three words, to paint an 
 individual, or to indicate a landscape ? Your neighbour, 
 who has his reading, and his little stock of literature 
 stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, 
 allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the pro- 
 digious memory and vast learning of this master, but 
 the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil 
 of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a 
 sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of 
 description. 
 
 Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British 
 Museum Library. I speak a coeur ouvert, and pray the 
 kindly reader to bear with me. I have seen all sorts of 
 domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, — what 
 not ? — and have been struck by none of them so much 
 as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, under which our 
 million volumes are housed. What peace, what love, 
 what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what 
 generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! 
 
350 Roundabout Papers. 
 
 It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place with- 
 out a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have 
 said my grace at the table, and to have thanked heaven 
 for this my English birthright, freely to i^artake of 
 these bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find 
 there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's brain, 
 and from which his solemn eyes looked out on the world 
 but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonder- 
 ful store of learning was ranged! what strange lore 
 would he not fetch for you at your bidding ! A volume 
 of law, or history, a book of poetry familiar or forgotten 
 (except by himself who forgot nothing), a novel ever so 
 old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him once about 
 Clarissa, "Not read Clarissa!''' he cried out. "If 
 you have once thoroughly entered on Clarissa, and are 
 infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India 
 I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the 
 governor-general, and the secretary of government, 
 and the commander-in-chief, and their wives. I had 
 Clarissa with me : and, as soon as they began to read, 
 the whole station was in a passion of excitement about 
 Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly 
 Lovelace ! The governor's wife seized the book, and 
 the secretary waited for it, and the chief justice could 
 not read it for tears ! " He acted the whole scene : he 
 paced up and down the Athenseum library : I daresay he 
 
Nil Nisi Bonum, 35 1 
 
 could have spoken pages of the book — of that book, and 
 of what countless piles of others ! 
 
 In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil 
 nisi honwn. One paper I have read regarding Lord 
 Macaulay says " h6 had no heart." Why, a man's 
 books may not always speak the truth, but they speak 
 his mind in spite of himself : and it seems to me this 
 man's heart is beating through every page he penned. 
 He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation 
 against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic 
 resistance ; how he backs and applauds freedom strug- 
 gling for its own; how he hates scoundrels, ever so 
 victorious and successful; how he recognizes genius, 
 though selfish villains possess it ! The critic who says 
 Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had 
 none : and two men more generous, and more loving, 
 and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do 
 not live in our history. Those who knew Lord Macau- 
 lay knew how admirably tender, and generous,* and 
 affectionate he was. It was not his business to 
 bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call 
 for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them. 
 
 If any young man of letters reads this little sermon — 
 
 * Since the above was written, I have been informed that it has been 
 found, on examining Lord Macaulay's papers, that he was in the habit 
 of giving away more than a fourth part of his annual income. 
 
352 Roundabout Papers, 
 
 and to him, indeed, it is addressed^I would say to him, 
 *' Bear Scott's words in your mind, and. * he good, my 
 dear,'' " Here are two Hterary men gone to their 
 account, and, laiis Deo, as far as we know, it is fair, 
 and open, and clean. Here is no need of apologies for 
 shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would 
 have heen virtues but for unavoidable &c. Here are two 
 examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing 
 his calling ; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; 
 each honest in his life ; just and irreproachable in his 
 dealings ; dear to his friends ; honoured by his country ; 
 beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of 
 both to give incalculable happiness and delight the 
 world, which thanks them in return with an immense 
 kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, 
 brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or 
 rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these 
 men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win 
 the baton or epaulettes ; but God give us strength to 
 guard the honour of the flag ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : rrinted by Smith, Eldeu & Co., Little Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey. 
 
 y 
 

 # 
 
^w^ 
 
 '1 
 
 ^^^^H 
 
 ^ 
 
 ii^^^^H 
 
 
 ,^H 
 
 n^~m 
 
 4^^l 
 
 
 « 
 
 ''■^'^iSS 
 
 ^1 
 
 ^^r! 
 
 E^l