University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the Collection of 
 Joseph Z. Todd 
 
 Gift of 
 Hatherly B. Todd 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Vol. XXII 
 
 SKETCHES 5e 5e % S 
 CRITICISMS, ETC. 
 
LETTERS AND MISCEL- 
 LANIES OF ROBERT 
 LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 SKETCHES ie » S fe 
 CRITICISMS, ETC. 
 
 PUBLISHED IN * 
 NEW YORK BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
 SONS SE * 1907 se 
 
Copyright, 1898, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SKETCHES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Satirist i 
 
 II NuiTS Blanches 5 
 
 III The Wreath of Immortelles 8 
 
 IV Nurses 14 
 
 V A Character 18 
 
 COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 I Edinburgh Students in 1824 23 
 
 II The Modern Student Considered Generally .... 29 
 
 III Debating Societies 39 
 
 IV The Philosophy of Umbrellas 46 
 
 V The Philosophy of Nomenclature 52 
 
 NOTES AND ESSAYS, CHIEFLY OF THE ROAD 
 
 I A Retrospect 59 
 
 II Cockermouth and Keswick ... 71 
 
 III Roads 83 
 
 IV Notes on the Movements of Young Children ... 92 
 
 V On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places 99 
 
 VI An Autumn Effect 109 
 
 VII A Winter's Walk in Carrick and Galloway . . . 134 
 
 VIII Forest Notes 146 
 
 IX A Mountain Town in France , 177 
 
CONTENTS 
 CRITICISMS p^Qg 
 
 I Lord Lytton's " Fables in Song" 19? 
 
 II Salvini's " Macbeth " 205 
 
 III Bagster's " Pilgrim's Progress" 212 
 
 AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY OF THE CHURCH 
 OF SCOTLAND 
 With a Note for the Laity 229 
 
 LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 I On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature 243 
 
 (First published in ** The Contemporary Review," 
 April, 1885) 
 
 II A Note on Realism 266 
 
 (First published in " The Magazine of Art," 1883) 
 
 III The Morality of the Profession of Letters . . . 274 
 
 (First published in " The Fortnightly Review," 
 April, 1881) 
 
 IV The Day After To-morrow * 288 
 
 (First published in " The Contemporary Review," 
 
 April, 1887) 
 
 V Books which have Influenced Me 302 
 
 (First published in " The British Weekly," 
 
 May 13, 1887) 
 
 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 315 
 
 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER ... 375 
 
 HEATHERCAT , . . 399 
 
 ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS WRITTEN AT VAILIMA 
 
 I The Genesis of "The Master of Ballantrae" . . . 431 
 
 II Random Memories: "Rosa quo Locorum" .... 436 
 
 vi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LETTERS TO THE "TIMES," "PALL MALL GAZETTE/' Etc. 451 
 
 LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 501 
 
 LAY MORALS 53' 
 
 PRAYERS WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA . . 591 
 
 ADDENDA 
 
 I The Charity Bazaar 603 
 
 II The Light-keeper 606 
 
 III On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses 608 
 
 IV On the Thermal Influence of Forests 611 
 
 V Reflections and Remarks on Human Life 622 
 
 VI The Ideal House 634 
 
 VII Preface to "The Master of Ballantrae " .... 639 
 
 INDEX TO THE THISTLE EDITION 643 
 
 vii 
 
SKETCHES 
 
The following *' Sketches" {so named 
 hy the writer) are from unpublished 
 MSS. of 1870 to 1 87 1. 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 THE SATIRIST 
 
 MY companion enjoyed a cheap reputation for wit 
 and insight. He was by habit and repute a satirist. 
 If he did occasionally condemn anything or anybody who 
 richly deserved it, and whose demerits had hitherto es- 
 caped, it was simply because he condemned everything 
 and everybody. While I was with him he disposed 
 of St. Paul with an epigram, shook my reverence for 
 Shakespeare in a neat antithesis, and fell foul of the 
 Almighty himself, on the score of one or two out of 
 the ten commandments. Nothing escaped his blight- 
 ing censure. At every sentence he overthrew an idol, 
 or lowered my estimation of a friend. I saw every- 
 thing with new eyes, and could only marvel at my 
 former blindness. How was it possible that I had not 
 before observed A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's 
 boorish manners ? I and my companion, methought, 
 walked the streets like a couple of gods among a 
 swarm of vermin; for every one we saw seemed to 
 bear openly upon his brow the mark of the apocalyptic 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 beast. I half expected that these miserable beings, like 
 the people of Lystra, would recognise their betters and 
 force us to the altar; in which case, warned by the fate 
 of Paul and Barnabas, I do not know that my modesty 
 would have prevailed upon me to decline. But there 
 was no need for such churlish virtue. More blinded 
 than the Lycaonians, the people saw no divinity in our 
 gait; and as our temporary godhead lay more in the 
 way of observing than healing their infirmities, we 
 were content to pass them by in scorn. 
 
 I could not leave my companion, not from regard or 
 even from interest, but from a very natural feeling, 
 inseparable from the case. To understand it, let us 
 take a simile. Suppose yourself walking down the 
 street with a man who continues to sprinkle the crowd 
 out of a flask of vitriol. You would be much diverted 
 with the grimaces and contortions of his victims ; and 
 at the same time you would fear to leave his arm until 
 his bottle was empty, knowing that, when once among 
 the crowd, you would run a good chance yourself of 
 baptism with his biting liquor. Now my companion's 
 vitriol was inexhaustible. 
 
 It was perhaps the consciousness of this, the know- 
 ledge that I was being anointed already out of the vials 
 of his wrath, that made me fall to criticising the critic, 
 whenever we had parted. 
 
 After all, I thought, our satirist has just gone far 
 enough into his neighbours to find that the outside is 
 false, without caring to go farther and discover what 
 is really true. He is content to find that things are not 
 what they seem, and broadly generalises from it that 
 they do not exist at all. He sees our virtues are not 
 
THE SATIRIST 
 
 what they pretend they are; and, on the strength of 
 that, he denies us the possession of virtue altogether. 
 He has learnt the first lesson, that no man is wholly 
 good; but he has not even suspected that there is an- 
 other equally true, to wit, that no man is wholly bad. 
 Like the inmate of a coloured star, he has eyes for one 
 colour alone. He has a keen scent after evil, but his 
 nostrils are plugged against all good, as people plugged 
 their nostrils before going about the streets of the 
 plague-struck city. 
 
 Why does he do this ? It is most unreasonable to 
 flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a hor- 
 rible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmo- 
 sphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; 
 but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our 
 satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust 
 steward. He does not want light, because the dark- 
 ness is more pleasant. He does not wish to see the 
 good, because he is happier without it. I recollect that 
 when I walked with him, I was in a state of divine 
 exaltation, such as Adam and Eve must have enjoyed 
 when the savour of the fruit was still unfaded between 
 their lips ; and I recognise that this must be the man's 
 habitual state. He has the forbidden fruit in his waist- 
 coat pocket, and can make himself a god as often and 
 as long as he likes. He has raised himself upon a 
 glorious pedestal above his fellows ; he has touched the 
 summit of ambition; and he envies neither King nor 
 Kaiser, Prophet nor Priest, content in an elevation as 
 high as theirs, and much more easily attained. Yes, 
 certes, much more easily attained. He has not risen by 
 climbing himself, but by pushing others down. He 
 
 3 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 has grown great in his own estimation, not by blow- 
 ing himself out, and risking the fate of ^sop's frog, 
 but simply by the habitual use of a diminishing glass 
 on everybody else. And I think altogether that his is 
 a better, a safer, and a surer recipe than most others. 
 
 After all, however, looking back on what I have 
 written, I detect a spirit suspiciously like his own. All 
 through, I have been comparing myself with our Satir- 
 ist, and all through, I have had the best of the compari- 
 son. Well, well, contagion is as often mental as physi- 
 cal ; and I do not think my readers, who have all been 
 under his lash, will blame me very much for giving the 
 headsman a mouthful of his own sawdust. 
 
II 
 
 NUITS BLANCHES 
 
 If any one should know the pleasure and pain of a 
 sleepless night, it should be I. I remember, so long 
 ago, the sickly child that woke from his few hours' 
 slumber with the sweat of a nightmare on his brow, 
 to lie awake and listen and long for the first signs of 
 life among the silent streets. These nights of pain and 
 weariness are graven on my mind; and so when the 
 same thing happened to me again, everything that I 
 heard or saw was rather a recollection than a discovery. 
 
 Weighed upon by the opaque and almost sensible 
 darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break the 
 sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, perhaps, an 
 emphatic crack from the old cabinet that was made by 
 Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of the coals on the 
 extinguished fire. It was a calm; or I know that I 
 should have heard in the roar and clatter of the storm, 
 as I have not heard it for so many years, the wild career 
 of a horseman, always scouring up from the distance 
 and passing swiftly below the window; yet always 
 returning again from the place whence first he came, as 
 though, baffled by some higher power, he had retraced 
 his steps to gain impetus for another and another 
 attempt. 
 
 5 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 As I lay there, there arose out of the utter stillness 
 the rumbling of a carriage a very great way off, that 
 drew near, and passed within a few streets of the house, 
 and died away as gradually as it had arisen. This, too, 
 was a reminiscence. 
 
 I rose and lifted a corner of the blind. Over the 
 black belt of the garden I saw the long line of Queen 
 Street, with here and there a lighted window. How 
 often before had my nurse lifted me out of bed and 
 pointed them out to me, while we wondered together 
 if, there also, there were children that could not sleep, 
 and if these lighted oblongs were signs of those that 
 waited like us for the morning. 
 
 I went out into the lobby, and looked down into the 
 great deep well of the staircase. For what cause I know 
 not, just as it used to be in the old days that the fever- 
 ish child might be the better served, a peep of gas illu- 
 minated a narrow circle far below me. But where I 
 was, all was darkness and silence, save the dry mo- 
 notonous ticking of the clock that came ceaselessly up 
 to my ear. 
 
 The final crown of it all, however, the last touch of 
 reproduction on the pictures of my memory, was the 
 arrival of that time for which, all night through, I 
 waited and longed of old. It was my custom, as the 
 hours dragged on, to repeat the question, " When will 
 the carts come in ? " and repeat it again and again until 
 at last those sounds arose in the street that I have heard 
 once more this morning. The road before our house is 
 a great thoroughfare for early carts. I know not, and I 
 never have known, what they carry, whence they come, 
 or whither they go. But I know that, long ere dawn, 
 
 6 
 
NUITS BLANCHES 
 
 and for hours together, they stream continuously past, 
 with the same rolling and jerking of wheels and the 
 same clink of horses' feet. It was not for nothing that 
 they made the burthen of my wishes all night through. 
 They are really the first throbbings of life, the harbin- 
 gers of day ; and it pleases you as much to hear them 
 as it must please a shipwrecked seaman once again to 
 grasp a hand of flesh and blood after years of miserable 
 solitude. They have the freshness of the daylight life 
 about them. You can hear the carters cracking their 
 whips and crying hoarsely to their horses or to one 
 another; and sometimes even a peal of healthy, harsh 
 horse-laughter comes up to you through the dark- 
 ness. There is now an end of mystery and fear. Like 
 the knocking at the door in Macbeth,^ or the cry of the 
 watchman in the Tour de Nesle, they show that the 
 horrible caesura is over and the nightmares have fled 
 away, because the day is breaking and the ordinary life 
 of men is beginning to bestir itself among the streets. 
 In the middle of it all I fell asleep, to be awakened by 
 the officious knocking at my door, and I find myself 
 twelve years older than I had dreamed myself all night. 
 
 1 See a short essay of De Quincey's. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 
 
 It is all very well to talk of death as "a pleasant 
 potion of immortality " ; but the most of us, I suspect, 
 are of "queasy stomachs," and find it none of the 
 sweetest.^ The graveyard may be cloak-room to 
 Heaven; but we must admit that it is a very ugly and 
 offensive vestibule in itself, however fair may be the life 
 to which it leads. And though Enoch and Elias went 
 into the temple through a gate which certainly may be 
 called Beautiful, the rest of us have to find our way to 
 it through Ezekiel's low-bowed door and the vault full 
 of creeping things and all manner of abominable beasts. 
 Nevertheless, there is a certain frame of mind to which 
 a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. 
 If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else. It 
 was in obedience to this wise regulation that the other 
 morning found me lighting my pipe at the entrance to 
 Old Greyfriars', thoroughly sick of the town, the coun- 
 try, and myself. 
 
 Two of the men were talking at the gate, one of 
 them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with the 
 soil of graves. Their very aspect was delightful to me ; 
 
 1 Religio Medici^ Part ii. 
 8 
 
THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 
 
 and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick up some 
 snatch of sexton gossip, some "talk fit for a charnel,"i 
 something, in fine, worthy of that fastidious logician, 
 that adept in coroner's law, who has come down to us 
 as the patron of Yaughan's liquor, and the very prince 
 of gravediggers. Scots people in general are so much 
 wrapped up in their profession that I had a good chance 
 of overhearing such conversation : the talk of fishmon- 
 gers running usually on stockfish and haddocks ; while of 
 the Scots sexton I could repeat stories and speeches that 
 positively smell of the graveyard. But on this occasion 
 I was doomed to disappointment. My two friends 
 were far into the region of generalities. Their profes- 
 sion was forgotten in their electorship. Politics had 
 engulfed the narrower economy of gravedigging. " Na, 
 na," said the one, "ye 're a' wrang." "The English 
 and Irish Churches," answered the other, in a tone as 
 if he had made the remark before, and it had been 
 called in question— "The English and Irish Churches 
 have impoverised the country." 
 
 "Such are the results of education," thought I as I 
 passed beside them and came fairly among the tombs. 
 Here, at least, there were no commonplace politics, no 
 diluted this-morning's leader, to distract or offend me. 
 The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint 
 extent of roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, 
 still blackened with the fire of thirty years ago. A chill 
 dank mist lay over all. The Old Greyfriars' churchyard 
 was in perfection that morning, and one could go round 
 and reckon up the associations with no fear of vulgar 
 interruption. On this stone the Covenant was signed. 
 
 1 Duchess of Malfi. 
 9 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 In that vault, as the story goes, John Knox took hiding 
 in some Reformation broil. From that window Burke 
 the murderer looked out many a time across the tombs, 
 and perhaps o' nights let himself down over the sill to 
 rob some new-made grave. Certainly he would have 
 a selection here. The very walks have been carried 
 over forgotten resting-places; and the whole ground 
 is uneven, because (as I was once quaintly told) " when 
 the wood rots it stands to reason the soil should fall 
 in," which, from the law of gravitation, is certainly 
 beyond denial. But it is round the boundary that there 
 are the finest tombs. The whole irregular space is, as 
 it were, fringed with quaint old monuments, rich in 
 death's-heads and scythes and hour-glasses, and doubly 
 rich in pious epitaphs and Latin mottoes— rich in them 
 to such an extent that their proper space has run over, 
 and they have crawled end-long up the shafts of columns 
 and ensconced themselves in all sorts of odd corners 
 among the sculpture. These tombs raise their backs 
 against the rabble of squalid dwelling-houses, and every 
 here and there a clothes-pole projects between two 
 monuments its fluttering trophy of white and yellow 
 and red. With a grim irony they recall the banners in 
 the Invalides, banners as appropriate perhaps over the 
 sepulchres of tailors and weavers as these others above 
 the dust of armies. Why they put things out to dry 
 on that particular morning it was hard to imagine. The 
 grass was grey with drops of rain, the headstones black 
 with moisture. Yet, in despite of weather and com- 
 mon-sense, there they hung between the tombs; and 
 beyond them I could see through open windows into 
 miserable rooms where whole families were born and 
 
THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 
 
 fed, and slept and died. At one a girl sat singing 
 merrily with her back to the graveyard ; and from an- 
 other came the shrill tones of a scolding woman. Every 
 here and there was a town garden full of sickly flowers, 
 or a pile of crockery inside upon the window-seat. 
 But you do not grasp the full connection between these 
 houses of the dead and the living, the unnatural mar- 
 riage of stately sepulchres and squalid houses, till, lower 
 down, where the road has sunk far below the surface 
 of the cemetery, and the very roofs are scarcely on a 
 level with its wall, you observe that a proprietor has 
 taken advantage of a tall monument and trained a 
 chimney-stack against its back. It startles you to see 
 the red, modern pots peering over the shoulder of the 
 tomb. 
 
 A man was at work on a grave, his spade clinking 
 away the drift of bones that permeates the thin brown 
 soil; but my first disappointment had taught me to 
 expect little from Greyfriars' sextons, and I passed him 
 by in silence. A slater on the slope of a neighbouring 
 roof eyed me curiously. A lean black cat, looking as 
 if it had battened on strange meats, slipped past me. 
 A little boy at a window put his fmger to his nose in so 
 offensive a manner that I was put upon my dignity, 
 and turned grandly off to read old epitaphs and peer 
 through the gratings into the shadow of vaults. 
 
 Just then I saw two women coming down a path, 
 one of them old, and the other younger, with a child 
 in her arms. Both had faces eaten with famine and 
 hardened with sin, and both had reached that stage of 
 degradation, much lower in a woman than a man, 
 when all care for dress is lost. As they came down 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 they neared a grave, where some pious friend or rela- 
 tive had laid a wreath of immortelles, and put a bell 
 glass over it, as is the custom. The effect of that ring 
 of dull yellow among so many blackened and dusty 
 sculptures was more pleasant than it is in modern 
 cemeteries, where every second mound Can boast a 
 similar coronal; and here, where it was the exception 
 and not the rule, I could even fancy the drops of mois- 
 ture that dimmed the covering were the tears of those 
 who laid it where it was. As the two women came up 
 to it, one of them kneeled down on the wet grass and 
 looked long and silently through the clouded shade, 
 while the second stood above her, gently oscillating to 
 and fro to lull the muling baby. I was struck a great 
 way off with something religious in the attitude of these 
 two unkempt and haggard women; and I drew near 
 faster, but still cautiously, to hear what they were say- 
 ing. Surely on them the spirit of death and decay had 
 descended: I had no education to dread here: should I 
 not have a chance of seeing nature ? Alas ! a pawn- 
 broker could not have been more practical and com- 
 monplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said 
 to the woman upright— this and nothing more: "Eh, 
 what extravagance! " 
 
 O nineteenth century, wonderful art thou indeed- 
 wonderful, but wearisome in thy stale and deadly uni- 
 formity. Thy men are more like numerals than men. 
 They must bear their idiosyncrasies or their professions 
 written on a placard about their neck, like the scenery 
 in Shakespeare's theatre. Thy precepts of economy 
 have pierced into the lowest ranks of life ; and there is 
 now a decorum in vice, a respectability among the dis- 
 
THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES 
 
 reputable, a pure spirit of Philistinism among the waifs 
 and strays of thy Bohemia. For lo ! thy very gravedig- 
 gers talk politics; and thy castaways kneel upon new 
 graves, to discuss the cost of the monument and grum- 
 ble at the improvidence of love. 
 
 Such was the elegant apostrophe that I made as 1 
 went out of the gates again, happily satisfied in myself, 
 and feeling that 1 alone of all whom I had seen was able 
 to profit by the silent poem of these green mounds and 
 blackened headstones. 
 
 13 
 
IV 
 
 NURSES 
 
 I KNEW one once, and the room where, lonely and 
 old, she waited for death. It was pleasant enough, 
 high up above the lane, and looking forth upon a hill- 
 side, covered all day with sheets and yellow blankets, 
 and with long lines of underclothing fluttering between 
 the battered posts. There were any number of cheap 
 prints, and a drawing by one of "her children," and 
 there were flowers in the window, and a sickly canary 
 withered into consumption in an ornamental cage. The 
 bed, with its checkered coverlid, was in a closet. A 
 great Bible lay on the table; and her drawers were full 
 of " scones," which it was her pleasure to give to young 
 visitors such as I was then. 
 
 You may not think this a melancholy picture; but the 
 canary, and the cat, and the white mouse that she had 
 for a while, and that died, were all indications of the 
 want that ate into her heart. I think I know a little of 
 what that old woman felt; and I am as sure as if I had 
 seen her, that she sat many an hour in silent tears, with 
 the big Bible open before her clouded eyes. 
 
 If you could look back upon her life, and feel the great 
 chain that had linked her to one child after another, 
 sometimes to be wrenched suddenly through, and 
 
 14 
 
NURSES 
 
 sometimes, which is infinitely worse, to be torn gradu- 
 ally off through years of growing neglect, or perhaps 
 growing dislike! She had, like the mother, overcome 
 that natural repugnance— repugnance which no man 
 can conquer— towards the infirm and helpless mass of 
 putty of the earlier stage. She had spent her best and 
 happiest years in tending, watching, and learning to love 
 like a mother this child, with which she has no con- 
 nection and to which she has no tie. Perhaps she re- 
 fused some sweetheart (such things have been), or put 
 him off and off, until he lost heart and turned to some 
 one else, all for fear of leaving this creature that had 
 wound itself about her heart. And the end of it all,— 
 her month's warning, and a present perhaps, and the 
 rest of the life to vain regret. Or, worse still, to see 
 the child gradually forgetting and forsaking her, fostered 
 in disrespect and neglect on the plea of growing man- 
 liness, and at last beginning to treat her as a servant 
 whom he had treated a few years before as a mother. 
 She sees the Bible or the Psalm-book, which with glad- 
 ness and love unutterable in her heart she had bought 
 for him years ago out of her slender savings, neglected 
 for some newer gift of his father, lying in dust in the 
 lumber-room or given away to a poor child, and the act 
 applauded for its unfeeling charity. Little wonder if 
 she becomes hurt and angry, and attempts to tyrannise 
 and to grasp her old power back again. We are not all 
 patient Grizzels, by good fortune, but the most of us 
 human beings with feelings and tempers of our own. 
 
 And so in the end, behold her in the room that I de- 
 scribed. Very likely and very naturally, in some fling 
 of feverish misery or recoil of thwarted love, she has 
 
 >5 
 
SKETCHES 
 
 quarrelled with her old employers and the children are 
 forbidden to see her or to speak to her; or at best she 
 gets her rent paid and a little to herself, and now and 
 then her late charges are sent up (with another nurse, 
 perhaps) to pay her a short visit. How bright these 
 visits seem as she looks forward to them on her lonely 
 bed! How unsatisfactory their realisation, when the 
 forgetful child, half wondering, checks with every word 
 and action the outpouring of her maternal love! How 
 bitter and restless the memories that they leave behind! 
 And for the rest, what else has she?— to watch them 
 with eager eyes as they go to school, to sit in church 
 where she can see them every Sunday, to be passed 
 some day unnoticed in the street, or deliberately cut be- 
 cause the great man or the great woman are with friends 
 before whom they are ashamed to recognise the old 
 woman that loved them. 
 
 When she goes home that night, how lonely will 
 the room appear to her! Perhaps the neighbours may 
 hear her sobbing to herself in the dark, with the fire 
 burnt out for want of fuel, and the candle still unlit 
 upon the table. 
 
 And it is for this that they live, these quasi-mothers 
 —mothers in everything but the travail and the thanks. 
 It is for this that they have remained virtuous in youth, 
 living the dull life of a household servant. It is for 
 this that they refused the old sweetheart, and have no 
 fireside or offspring of their own. 
 
 I believe in a better state of things, that there will be 
 no more nurses, and that every mother will nurse her 
 own offspring; for what can be more hardening and 
 demoralising than to call forth the tenderest feelings of 
 
 i6 
 
NURSES 
 
 a woman's heart and cherish them yourself as long as 
 you need them, as long as your children require a nurse 
 to love them, and then to blight and thwart and destroy 
 them, whenever your own use for them is at an end? 
 This may be Utopian; but it is always a little thing if 
 one mother or two mothers can be brought to feel more 
 tenderly to those who share their toil and have no part 
 in their reward. 
 
 17 
 
A CHARACTER 
 
 The man has a red, bloated face, and his figure is 
 short and squat. So far there is nothing in him to 
 notice, but when you see his eyes, you can read in 
 these hard and shallow orbs a depravity beyond mea- 
 sure depraved, a thirst after wickedness, the pure, dis- 
 interested love of Hell for its own sake. The other 
 night, in the street, I was watching an omnibus passing 
 with lit-up windows, when I heard some one coughing 
 at my side as though he would cough his soul out ; and 
 turning round, I saw him stopping under a lamp, with 
 a brown greatcoat buttoned round him and his whole 
 face convulsed. It seemed as if he could not live long; 
 and so the sight set my mind upon a train of thought, 
 as I finished my cigar up and down the lighted streets. 
 
 He is old, but all these years have not yet quenched 
 his thirst for evil, and his eyes still delight themselves 
 in wickedness. He is dumb; but he will not let that 
 hinder his foul trade, or perhaps I should say, his yet 
 fouler amusement, and he has pressed a slate into the 
 service of corruption. Look at him, and he will sign 
 to you with his bloated head, and when you go to him 
 in answer to the sign, thinking perhaps that the poor 
 dumb man has lost his way, you will see what he 
 
 i8 
 
A CHARACTER 
 
 writes upon his slate. He haunts the doors of schools, 
 and shows such inscriptions as these to the innocent 
 children that come out. He hangs about picture-gal- 
 leries, and makes the noblest pictures the text for some 
 silent homily of vice. His industry is a lesson to our- 
 selves. Is it not wonderful how he can triumph over 
 his infirmities and do such an amount of harm without a 
 tongue ? Wonderful industry— strange, fruitless, plea- 
 sureless toil ? Must not the very devil feel a soft emo- 
 tion to see his disinterested and laborious service ? Ah, 
 but the devil knows better than this: he knows that 
 this man is penetrated with the love of evil and that all 
 his pleasure is shut up in wickedness, he recognises 
 him, perhaps, as a fit type for mankind of his satanic 
 self, and watches over his effigy as we might watch 
 over a favourite likeness. As the business man comes 
 to love the toil, which he only looked upon at first as 
 a ladder towards other desires and less unnatural grati- 
 fications, so the dumb man has felt the charm of his 
 trade and fallen captivated before the eyes of sin. It 
 is a mistake when preachers tell us that vice Is hideous 
 and loathsome; for even vice has her Horsel and her 
 devotees, who love her for her own sake. 
 
 19 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
Originally printed : 
 
 I. Edinburgh University Magazine, January, 1871, 
 II. Ibid., February, 1871. 
 
 III. Ibid., March, 1871. 
 
 IV. Ibid., February, 1871. 
 
 V. Ibid., April, 1871. 
 
 For the history of the short-lived periodical to which these 
 papers (now reprinted for the first time) were contributed, 
 see the Author's essay "A College Magazine " in "Memories 
 and Portraits '* (Travel and Essays, vol. xiii. of this edi- 
 tion). A sixth paper contributed to the same publication, 
 " An Old Scots Gardener," is omitted in this place, having 
 been reprinted with corrections by the Author himself in 
 "Memories and Portraits." 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 I 
 
 EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1 824 
 
 ON the 2nd of January, 1824, was issued the pro- 
 spectus of the Lapsus Linguce ; or, the College 
 Taller; and on the 7th the first number appeared. On 
 Friday the 2nd of April ''Mr. Taller became speechless." 
 Its history was not all one success ; for the editor (who 
 applies to himself the words of lago, " I am nothing if 
 I am not critical ") overstepped the bounds of caution, 
 and found himself seriously embroiled with the powers 
 that were. There appeared in No. xvi. a most bitter 
 satire upon Sir John Leslie, in which he was compared 
 to FalstafT, charged with puffmg himself, and very 
 prettily censured for publishing only the first volume of 
 a class-book, and making all purchasers pay for both. 
 Sir John Leslie took up the matter angrily, visited Car- 
 frae the publisher, and threatened him with an action, 
 till he was forced to turn the hapless Lapsus out of 
 doors. The maltreated periodical found shelter in the 
 shop of Huie, Infirmary Street; and No. xvii. was duly 
 issued from the new office. No. xvii. beheld Mr. 
 
 23 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 Tatler's humiliation, in which, with fulsome apology 
 and not very credible assurances of respect and admira- 
 tion, he disclaims the article in question, and advertises 
 a new issue of No. xvi. with all objectionable matter 
 omitted. This, with pleasing euphemism, he terms in 
 a later advertisement, "a new and improved edition." 
 This was the only remarkable adventure of Mr. Tatler's 
 brief existence; unless we consider as such a silly 
 Chaldee manuscript in imitation of Blackwood, and a 
 letter of reproof from a divinity student on the impiety 
 of the same dull effusion. He laments the near approach 
 of his end in pathetic terms. " How shall we summon 
 up sufficient courage," says he, "to look for the last 
 time on our beloved little devil and his inestimable 
 proof-sheet.^ How shall we be able to pass No. 14 
 Infirmary Street and feel that all its attractions are over ? 
 How shall we bid farewell for ever to that excellent man, 
 with the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, 
 who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma 
 Mater?" But alas! he had no choice: Mr. Taller y 
 whose career, he says himself, had been successful, 
 passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly 
 implored "the bringing home of bell and burial." 
 
 Alter et idem. A very different affair was the Lapsus 
 Linguce from the Edinburgh University Magazine. 
 The two prospectuses alone, laid side by side, would 
 indicate the march of luxury and the repeal of the paper 
 duty. The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1 823-4 
 was almost wholly dedicated to Momus. Epigrams, 
 pointless letters, amorous verses, and University grie- 
 vances are the continual burthen of the song. But Mr. 
 Taller was not without a vein of hearty humour; and 
 
 24 
 
EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824 
 
 his pages afford what is much better: to wit, a good 
 picture of student life as it then was. The students of 
 those polite days insisted on retaining their hats in the 
 class-room. There was a cab-stance in front of the 
 College; and "Carriage Entrance" was posted above 
 the main arch, on what the writer pleases to call " coarse, 
 unclassic boards." The benches of the "Speculative" 
 then, as now, were red; but all other Societies (the 
 " Dialectic " is the only survivor) met down-stairs, in 
 some rooms of which it is pointedly said that " nothing 
 else could conveniently be made of them." However 
 horrible these dungeons may have been, it is certain 
 that they were paid for, and that far too heavily for the 
 taste of session 1823-4, which found enough calls upon 
 its purse for porter and toasted cheese at Ambrose's, 
 or cranberry tarts and ginger-wine at Doull's. Duel- 
 ling was still a possibility; so much so that when two 
 medicals fell to fisticuffs in Adam Square, it was seri- 
 ously hinted that single combat would be the result. 
 Last and most wonderful of all. Gall and Spurzheim 
 were in every one's mouth ; and the Law student, after 
 having exhausted Byron's poetry and Scott's novels, 
 informed the ladies of his belief in phrenology. In the 
 present day he would dilate on " Red as a rose is she, '* 
 and then mention that he attends Old Greyfriars', as a 
 tacit claim to intellectual superiority. I do not know 
 that the advance is much. 
 
 But Mr. Tatlefs best performances were three short 
 papers in which he hit off pretty smartly the idiosyn- 
 crasies of the ''Divinity,'' the ''Medical,'' and the 
 " Law " of session 1823-4. The fact that there was no 
 notice of the "Arts " seems to suggest that they stood 
 
 25 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 in the same intermediate position as they do now— the 
 epitome of student-kind. Mr. Tatler's satire is, on the 
 whole, good-humoured, and has not grown superan- 
 nuated in all its limbs. His descriptions may limp at 
 some points, but there are certain broad traits that apply 
 equally well to session 1870-71. He shows us the 
 Divinity of the period— tall, pale, and slender— his col- 
 lar greasy, and his coat bare about the seams—" his 
 white neckcloth serving four days, and regularly turned 
 the third,"— "the rim of his hat deficient in wool,"— 
 and "a weighty volume of theology under his arm." 
 He was the man to buy cheap " a snuff-box, or a dozen 
 of pencils, or a six-bladed knife, or a quarter of a hun- 
 dred quills," at any of the public sale-rooms. He was 
 noted for cheap purchases, and for exceeding the legal 
 tender in halfpence. He haunted "the darkest and 
 remotest corner of the Theatre Gallery." He was 
 to be seen issuing from "aerial lodging-houses." 
 Withal, says mine author, "there were many good 
 points about him: he paid his landlady's bill, read 
 his Bible, went twice to church on Sunday, seldom 
 swore, was not often tipsy, and bought the Lapsus 
 Linguce." 
 
 The Medical, again, "wore a white greatcoat, and 
 consequently talked loud"— (there is something very 
 delicious in that consequently). He wore his hat on 
 one side. He was active, volatile, and went to the top 
 of Arthur's Seat on the Sunday forenoon. He was as 
 quiet in a debating society as he was loud in the streets. 
 He was reckless and imprudent: yesterday he insisted 
 on your sharing a bottle of claret with him (and claret 
 was claret then, before the cheap-and-nasty treaty), and 
 
 26 
 
EDINBURGH STUDENTS IN 1824 
 
 to-morrow he asks you for the loan of a penny to buy 
 the last number of the Lapsus. 
 
 The student of Law, again, was a learned man. " He 
 had turned over the leaves of Justinian's Institutes, and 
 knew that they were written in Latin. He was well 
 acquainted with the title-page of Blackstone's Commen- 
 taries, and argal (as the gravedigger in Hamlet says) 
 he was not a person to be laughed at." He attended 
 the Parliament House in the character of a critic, and 
 could give you stale sneers at all the celebrated speakers. 
 He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative or the 
 Forensic. In social qualities he seems to have stood 
 unrivalled. Even in the police-office we find him shin- 
 ing with undiminished lustre. " If a Charlie should 
 find him rather noisy at an untimely hour, and venture 
 to take him into custody, he appears next morning like 
 a Daniel come to judgment. He opens his mouth to 
 speak, and the divine precepts of unchanging justice 
 and Scots Law flow from his tongue. The magistrate 
 listens in amazement, and fines him only a couple of 
 guineas." 
 
 Such then were our predecessors and their College 
 Magazine. Barclay, Ambrose, Young Amos, and Fer- 
 gusson were to them what the Cafe, the Rainbow, and 
 Rutherford's are to us. An hour's reading in these old 
 pages absolutely confuses us, there is so much that is 
 similar and so much that is different; the follies and 
 amusements are so like our own, and the manner of 
 frolicking and enjoying are so changed, that one pauses 
 and looks about him in philosophic judgment. The 
 muddy quadrangle is thick with living students ; but in 
 our eyes it swarms also with the phantasmal white 
 
 27 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 greatcoats and tilted hats of 1824. Two races meet: 
 races alike and diverse. Two performances are played 
 before our eyes ; but the change seems merely of imper- 
 sonators, of scenery, of costume. Plot and passion are 
 the same. It is the fall of the spun shilling whether 
 seventy-one or twenty-four has the best of it. 
 
 In a future number we hope to give a glance at the 
 individualities of the present, and see whether the cast 
 shall be head or tail— whether we or the readers of the 
 Lapsus stand higher in the balance. 
 
 a8 
 
II 
 
 THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 
 
 We have now reached the difficult portion of our 
 task. Mr. Tatler, for all that we care, may have been 
 as virulent as he liked about the students of a former 
 day ; but for the iron to touch our sacred selves, for a 
 brother of the Guild to betray its most privy infirmities, 
 let such a Judas look to himself as he passes on his 
 way to the Scots Law or the Diagnostic, below the 
 solitary lamp at the corner of the dark quadrangle. We 
 confess that this idea alarms us. We enter a protest. 
 We bind ourselves over verbally to keep the peace. 
 We hope, moreover, that having thus made you secret 
 to our misgivings, you will excuse us if we be dull, 
 and set that down to caution which you might before 
 have charged to the account of stupidity. 
 
 The natural tendency of civilisation is to obliterate 
 those distinctions which are the best salt of life. All 
 the fine old professional flavour in language has evapo- 
 rated. Your very gravedigger has forgotten his avo- 
 cation in his electorship, and would quibble on the 
 Franchise over Ophelia's grave, instead of more appro- 
 priately discussing the duration of bodies under ground. 
 From this tendency, from this gradual attrition of life, 
 in which everything pointed and characteristic is being 
 
 29 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 rubbed down, till the whole world begins to slip be- 
 tween our fingers in smooth undistinguishable sands, 
 from this, we say, it follows that we must not attempt 
 to join Mr. Tatler in his simple division of students 
 into Law, Divinity, and Medical. Nowadays the 
 faculties may shake hands over their follies ; and, like 
 Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight (in Love for Love), they 
 may stand in the doors of opposite class-rooms, crying : 
 " Sister, Sister— Sister everyway ! " A few restrictions, 
 indeed, remain to influence the followers of individual 
 branches of study. The Divinity, for example, must 
 be an avowed believer; and as this, in the present day, 
 is unhappily considered by many as a confession of 
 weakness, he is fain to choose one of two ways of gild- 
 ing the distasteful orthodox bolus. Some swallow it 
 in a thin jelly of metaphysics ; for it is even a credit to 
 believe in God on the evidence of some crack-jaw phi- 
 losopher, although it is a decided slur to believe in Him 
 on His own authority. Others again (and this we think 
 the worst method), finding German grammar a some- 
 what dry morsel, run their own little heresy as a proof 
 of independence; and deny one of the cardinal doc- 
 trines that they may hold the others without being 
 laughed at. 
 
 Besides, however, such influences as these, there is 
 little more distinction between the faculties than the tra- 
 ditionary ideal, handed down through a long sequence of 
 students, and getting rounder and more featureless at 
 each successive session. The plague of uniformity has 
 descended on the College. Students (and indeed all 
 sorts and conditions of men) now require their faculty 
 and character hung round their neck on a placard, like 
 
 30 , 
 
THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 
 
 the scenes in Shakespeare's theatre. And in the midst 
 of all this weary sameness, not the least common fea- 
 ture is the gravity of every face. No more does the 
 merry medical run eagerly in the clear winter morning 
 up the rugged sides of Arthur's Seat, and hear the 
 church bells begin and thicken and die away below him 
 among the gathered smoke of the city. He will not 
 break Sunday to so little purpose. He no longer finds 
 pleasure in the mere output of his surplus energy. He 
 husbands his strength, and lays out walks, and reading, 
 and amusement with deep consideration, so that he 
 may get as much work and pleasure out of his body 
 as he can, and waste none of his energy on mere im- 
 pulse, or such flat enjoyment as an excursion in the 
 country. 
 
 See the quadrangle in the interregnum of classes, in 
 those two or three minutes when it is full of passing 
 students, and we think you will admit that, if we have 
 not made it "an habitation of dragons," we have at 
 least transformed it into " a court for owls." Solemnity 
 broods heavily over the enclosure; and wherever you 
 seek it, you will find a dearth of merriment, an absence 
 of real youthful enjoyment. You might as well try 
 
 " To move wild laughter in the throat of death," 
 
 as to excite any healthy stir among the bulk of this 
 staid company. 
 
 The studious congregate about the doors of the differ- 
 ent classes, debating the matter of the lecture, or com- 
 paring note-books. A reserved rivalry sunders them. 
 Here are some deep in Greek particles : there, others are 
 already inhabitants of that land 
 
 3» 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 " Where entity and quiddity, 
 Like ghosts of defunct bodies fly- 
 Where Truth in person does appear 
 Like words congealed in northern air." 
 
 But none of them seem to find any relish for their 
 studies— no pedantic love of this subject or that lights 
 up their eyes— science and learning are only means for 
 a livelihood, which they have considerately embraced 
 and which they solemnly pursue. " Labour's pale 
 priests," their lips seem incapable of laughter, except in 
 the way of polite recognition of professorial wit. The 
 stains of ink are chronic on their meagre fingers. They 
 walk like Saul among the asses. 
 
 The dandies are not less subdued. In 1824 there was 
 a noisy dapper dandyism abroad. Vulgar, as we 
 should now think, but yet genial— a matter of white 
 greatcoats and loud voices— strangely different from 
 the stately frippery that is rife at present. These men 
 are out of their element in the quadrangle. Even the 
 small remains of boisterous humour, which still cling 
 to any collection of young men, jar painfully on their 
 morbid sensibilities; and they beat a hasty retreat to 
 resume their perfunctory march along Princes Street. 
 Flirtation is to them a great social duty, a painful obli- 
 gation, which they perform on every occasion in the 
 same chill official manner, and with the same com- 
 monplace advances, the same dogged observance of 
 traditional behaviour. The shape of their raiment is a 
 burden almost greater than they can bear, and they halt 
 in their walk to preserve the due adjustment of their 
 trouser-knees, till one would fancy he had mixed in a 
 procession of Jacobs. We speak, of course, for our- 
 
 32 
 
THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 
 
 selves ; but we would as soon associate with a herd of 
 sprightly apes as with these gloomy modern beaux. 
 Alas, that our Mirabels, our Valentines, even our Brum- 
 mels, should have left their mantles upon nothing more 
 amusing! 
 
 Nor are the fast men less constrained. Solemnity, 
 even in dissipation, is the order of the day; and they go 
 to the devil with a perverse seriousness, a systematic 
 rationalism of wickedness that would have surprised 
 the simpler sinners of old. Some of these men whom 
 we see gravely conversing on the steps have but a slen- 
 der acquaintance with each other. Their intercourse 
 consists principally of mutual bulletins of depravity; 
 and, week after week, as they meet they reckon up 
 their items of transgression, and give an abstract of 
 their downward progress for approval and encourage- 
 ment. These folk form a freemasonry of their own. 
 An oath is the shibboleth of their sinister fellowship. 
 Once they hear a man swear, it is wonderful how their 
 tongues loosen and their bashful spirits take enlarge- 
 ment, under the consciousness of brotherhood. There 
 is no folly, no pardoning warmth of temper about them ; 
 they are as steady-going and systematic in their own 
 way as the studious in theirs. 
 
 Not that we are without merry men. No. We shall 
 not be ungrateful to those whose grimaces, whose 
 ironical laughter, whose active feet in the College An- 
 them have beguiled so many weary hours and added a 
 pleasant variety to the strain of close attention. But 
 even these are too evidently professional in their antics. 
 They go about cogitating puns and inventing tricks. 
 It is their vocation, Hal. They are the gratuitous jesters 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 of the class-room ; and, like the clown when he leaves 
 the stage, their merriment too often sinks as the bell 
 rings the hour of liberty, and they pass forth by the 
 Post-Office, grave and sedate, and meditating fresh 
 gambols for the morrow. 
 
 This is the impression left on the mind of any observ- 
 ing student by too many of his fellows. They seem 
 all frigid old men ; and one pauses to think how such 
 an unnatural state of matters is produced. We feel 
 inclined to blame for it the unfortunate absence of 
 University feeling which is so marked a characteristic 
 of our Edinburgh students. Academical interests are so 
 few and far between— students, as students, have so 
 little in common, except a peevish rivalry— there is such 
 an entire want of broad college sympathies and ordinary 
 college friendships, that we fancy that no University 
 in the kingdom is in so poor a plight. Our system 
 is full of anomalies. A, who cut B whilst he was a 
 shabby student, curries sedulously up to him and cud- 
 gels his memory for anecdotes about him when he 
 becomes the great so-and-so. Let there be an end of 
 this shy, proud reserve on the one hand, and this shud- 
 dering fine-ladyism on the other; and we think we shall 
 find both ourselves and the College bettered. Let it be 
 a sufficient reason for intercourse that two men sit to- 
 gether on the same benches. Let the great A be held 
 excused for nodding to the shabby B in Princes Street, 
 if he can say, "That fellow is a student." Once this 
 could be brought about, we think you would find the 
 whole heart of the University beat faster. We think 
 you would find a fusion among the students, a growth 
 of common feelings, an increasing sympathy between 
 
 34 
 
THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 
 
 class and class, whose influence (in such a heterogene- 
 ous company as ours) might be of incalculable value in 
 all branches of politics and social progress. It would 
 do more than this. If we could find some method of 
 making the University a real mother to her sons- 
 something beyond a building full of class-rooms, a 
 Senatus and a lottery of somewhat shabby prizes— we 
 should strike a death-blow at the constrained and un- 
 natural attitude of our Society. At present we are not 
 a united body, but a loose gathering of individuals, 
 whose inherent attraction is allowed to condense them 
 into little knots and coteries. Our last snowball riot 
 read us a plain lesson on our condition. There was no 
 party spirit— no unity of interests. A few, who were 
 mischievously inclined, marched off to the College of Sur- 
 geons in a pretentious file ; but even before they reached 
 their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in 
 many, and their numbers were sadly thinned. Some 
 followed strange gods in the direction of Drummond 
 Street, and others slunk back to meek good-boyism at 
 the feet of the Professors. The same is visible in bet- 
 ter things. As you send a man to an English Univer- 
 sity that he may have his prejudices rubbed off, you 
 might send him to Edinburgh that he may have them 
 ingrained— rendered indelible— fostered by sympathy 
 into living principles of his spirit. And the reason of 
 it is quite plain. From this absence of University feel- 
 ing it comes that a man's friendships are always the 
 direct and immediate results of these very prejudices. 
 A common weakness is the best master of ceremonies 
 in our quadrangle: a mutual vice is the readiest intro- 
 duction. The studious associate with the studious 
 
 35 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 alone— the dandies with the dandies. There is nothing 
 to force them to rub shoulders with the others; and 
 so they grow day by day more wedded to their own 
 original opinions and affections. They see through the 
 same spectacles continually. All broad sentiments, all 
 real catholic humanity expires ; and the mind gets gradu- 
 ally stiffened into one position— becomes so habituated 
 to a contracted atmosphere, that it shudders and withers 
 under the least draught of the free air that circulates in 
 the general field of mankind. 
 
 Specialism in Society, then, is, we think, one cause of 
 our present state. Specialism in study is another. We 
 doubt whether this has ever been a good thing since 
 the world began; but we are sure it is much worse 
 now than it was. Formerly, when a man became a 
 specialist, it was out of affection for his subject. With 
 a somewhat grand devotion he left all the world of 
 Science to follow his true love; and he contrived to 
 find that strange pedantic interest which inspired the 
 man who 
 
 *' Settled Hoti's business— let it be- 
 Properly based Oun— 
 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De^ 
 Dead from the waist down." 
 
 Nowadays it is quite different. Our pedantry wants 
 even the saving clause of Enthusiasm. The election is 
 now matter of necessity and not of choice. Knowledge 
 is now too broad a field for your Jack-of-all-Trades ; 
 and, from beautifully utilitarian reasons, he makes his 
 choice, draws his pen through a dozen branches of 
 study, and behold— John the Specialist. That this is 
 the way to be wealthy we shall not deny ; but we hold 
 
 36 
 
THE MODERN STUDENT CONSIDERED GENERALLY 
 
 ihat it is not the way to be healthy or wise. The 
 whole mind becomes narrowed and circumscribed to 
 one " punctual spot " of knowledge. A rank unhealthy 
 soil breeds a harvest of prejudices. Feeling himself 
 above others in his one little branch— in the classification 
 of toadstools, or Carthaginian history— he waxes great 
 in his own eyes and looks down on others. Having 
 all his sympathies educated in one way, they die out in 
 every other; and he is apt to remain a peevish, narrow, 
 and intolerant bigot. Dilettante is now a term of re- 
 proach; but there is a certain form of dilettantism to 
 which no one can object. It is this that we want 
 among our students. We wish them to abandon no 
 subject until they have seen and felt its merit— to act 
 under a general interest in all branches of knowledge, 
 not a commercial eagerness to excel in one. 
 
 In both these directions our sympathies are consti- 
 pated. We are apostles of our own caste and our own 
 subject of study, instead of being, as we should, true 
 men and loving students. Of course both of these 
 could be corrected by the students themselves ; but this 
 is nothing to the purpose: it is more important to ask 
 whether the Senatus or the body of alumni could do 
 nothing towards the growth of better feeling and wider 
 sentiments. Perhaps in another paper we may say 
 something upon this head. 
 
 One other word, however, before we have done. 
 What shall we be when we grow really old ? Of yore, 
 a man was thought to lay on restrictions and acquire new 
 deadweight of mournful experience with every year, till 
 he looked back on his youth as the very summer of 
 impulse and freedom. We please ourselves with think- 
 
 37 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 ing that it cannot be so with us. We would fain hope 
 that, as we have begun in one way, we may end in 
 another; and that when we are in fact the octogena- 
 rians that we seem at present, there shall be no merrier 
 men on earth. It is pleasant to picture us, sunning 
 ourselves in Princes Street of a morning, or chirping 
 over our evening cups, with all the merriment that we 
 wanted in youth. 
 
 38 
 
Ill 
 
 DEBATING SOCIETIES 
 
 A DEBATING society is at first somewhat of a disap- 
 pointment. You do not often find the youthful De- 
 mosthenes chewing his pebbles in the same room with 
 you ; or, even if you do, you will probably think the 
 performance little to be admired. As a general rule, 
 the members speak shamefully ill. The subjects of 
 debate are heavy; and so are the fines. The Ballot 
 Question— oldest of dialectic nightmares— is often found 
 astride of a somnolent sederunt. The Greeks and 
 Romans, too, are reserved as sort of general-utility 
 men, to do all the dirty work of illustration ; and they 
 fill as many functions as the famous waterfall scene at 
 the Princess's, which 1 found doing duty on one even- 
 ing as a gorge in Peru, a haunt of German robbers, and 
 a peaceful vale in the Scottish borders. There is a sad 
 absence of striking argument or real lively discussion. 
 Indeed, you feel a growing contempt for your fellow- 
 members ; and it is not until you rise yourself to hawk 
 and hesitate and sit shamefully down again, amid elee- 
 mosynary applause, that you begin to find your level 
 and value others rightly. Even then, even when failure 
 has damped your critical ardour, you will see many 
 things to be laughed at in the deportment of your rivals. 
 
 39 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 Most laughable, perhaps, are your indefatigable 
 strivers after eloquence. They are of those who " pur- 
 sue with eagerness the phantoms of hope," and who, 
 since they expect that " the deficiencies of last sentence 
 will be supplied by the next," have been recommended 
 by Dr. Samuel Johnson to " attend to the History of 
 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." They are characterised 
 by a hectic hopefulness. Nothing damps them. They 
 rise from the ruins of one abortive sentence, to launch 
 forth into another with unabated vigour. They have 
 all the manner of an orator. From the tone of their 
 voice, you would expect a splendid period— and lo! a 
 string of broken-backed, disjointed clauses, eked out 
 with stammerings and throat-clearings. They possess 
 the art (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an uneu- 
 phonious sentence by dwelling on a single syllable— of 
 striking a balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening 
 out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they 
 never cease to hope. Even at last, even when they 
 have exhausted all their ideas, even after the would-be 
 peroration has finally refused to perorate, they remain 
 upon their feet with their mouths open, waiting for 
 some further inspiration, like Chaucer's widow's son in 
 the dung-hole, after 
 
 ** His throat was kit unto the nekke bone," 
 
 in vain expectation of that seed that was to be laid 
 upon his tongue, and give him renewed and clearer 
 utterance. 
 
 These men may have something to say, if they could 
 only say it— indeed they generally have; but the next 
 class are people who, having nothing to say, are cursed 
 
 40 
 
DEBATING SOCIETIES 
 
 with a facility and an unhappy command of words, 
 that makes them the prime nuisances of the society they 
 affect. They try to cover their absence of matter by an 
 unwholesome vitality of delivery. They look trium- 
 phantly round the room, as if courting applause, after 
 a torrent of diluted truism. They talk in a circle, harp- 
 ing on the same dull round of argument, and returning 
 again and again to the same remark with the same 
 sprightliness, the same irritating appearance of novelty. 
 
 After this set, any one is tolerable ; so we shall merely 
 hint at a few other varieties. There is your man who 
 is pre-eminently conscientious, whose face beams with 
 sincerity as he opens on the negative, and who votes 
 on the affirmative at the end, looking round the room 
 with an air of chastened pride. There is also the ir- 
 relevant speaker, who rises, emits a joke or two, and 
 then sits down again, without ever attempting to tackle 
 the subject of debate. Again, we have men who ride 
 pick-a-pack on their family reputation, or, if their 
 family have none, identify themselves with some well- 
 known statesman, use his opinions, and lend him their 
 patronage on all occasions. This is a dangerous plan, 
 and serves oftener, I am afraid, to point a difference 
 than to adorn a speech. 
 
 But alas! a striking failure may be reached without 
 tempting Providence by any of these ambitious tricks. 
 Our own stature will be found high enough for shame. 
 The success of three simple sentences lures us into a 
 fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from whose shut brackets 
 we may never disentangle the thread of our discourse. 
 A momentary flush tempts us into a quotation; and we 
 may be left helpless in the middle of one of Pope's 
 
 4i 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 couplets, a white film gathering before our eyes, and 
 our kind friends charitably trying to cover our disgrace 
 by a feeble round of applause. Amis lecteurs, this is a 
 painful topic. It is possible that we too, we, the " po- 
 tent, grave, and reverend" editor, may have suffered 
 these things, and drunk as deep as any of the cup of 
 shameful failure. Let us dwell no longer on so delicate 
 a subject. 
 
 In spite, however, of these disagreeables, I should 
 recommend any student to suffer them with Spartan 
 courage, as the benefits he receives should repay him an 
 hundredfold for them all. The life of the debating 
 society is a handy antidote to the life of the class-room 
 and quadrangle. Nothing could be conceived more 
 excellent as a weapon against many of those peccant 
 humours that we have been railing against in the Jere- 
 miad of our last College P^^^r— particularly in the field 
 of intellect. It is a sad sight to see our heather-scented 
 students, our boys of seventeen, coming up to College 
 with determined views— roues in speculation— having 
 gauged the vanity of philosophy or learned to shun it 
 as the middleman of heresy— a company of determined, 
 deliberate opinionists, not to be moved by all the 
 sleights of logic. What have such men to do with 
 study ? If their minds are made up irrevocably, why 
 burn the " studious lamp " in search of further confirma- 
 tion ? Every set opinion I hear a student deliver I feel 
 a certain lowering of my regard. He who studies, he 
 who is yet employed in groping for his premises, 
 should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark 
 flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He 
 should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive 
 
 42. 
 
DEBATING SOCIETIES 
 
 farce of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit 
 that we desire to press the claims of debating societies. 
 It is as a means of melting down this museum of pre- 
 mature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul 
 that we insist on their utility. If we could once pre- 
 vail on our students to feel no shame in avowing an 
 uncertain attitude towards any subject, if we could 
 teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad to 
 have his opinionette on every topic, we should have 
 gone a far way towards bracing the intellectual tone of 
 the coming race of thinkers; and this it is which de- 
 bating societies are so well fitted to perform. 
 
 We there meet people of every shade of opinion, and 
 make friends with them. We are taught to rail against 
 a man the whole session through, and then hob-a-nob 
 with him at the concluding entertainment. We find 
 men of talent far exceeding our own, whose conclusions 
 are widely different from ours ; and we are thus taught 
 to distrust ourselves. But the best means of all towards 
 catholicity is that wholesome rule which some folk are 
 most inclined to condemn,— I mean the law of obliged 
 speeches. Your senior member commands; and you 
 must take the affirmative or the negative, just as suits 
 his best convenience. This tends to the most perfect 
 liberality. It is no good hearing the arguments of an 
 opponent, for in good verity you rarely follow them; 
 and even if you do take the trouble to listen, it is merely 
 in a captious search for weaknesses. This is proved, 
 1 fear, in every debate; when you hear each speaker 
 arguing out his own prepared spicialiU (he never in- 
 tended speaking, of course, until some remarks of, etc.), 
 arguing out, I say, his own coached-up subject without 
 
 43 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 the least attention to what has gone before, as utterly 
 at sea about the drift of his adversary's speech as Pa- 
 nurge when he argued with Thaumaste, and merely 
 linking his own prelection to the last by a few flippant 
 criticisms. Now, as the rule stands, you are saddled 
 with the side you disapprove, and so you are forced, 
 by regard for your own fame, to argue out, to feel 
 with, to elaborate completely, the case as it stands 
 against yourself; and what a fund of wisdom do you 
 not turn up in this idle digging of the vineyard! How 
 many new difficulties take form before your eyes ! how 
 many superannuated arguments cripple finally into 
 limbo, under the glance of your enforced eclecticism ! 
 Nor is this the only merit of Debating Societies. 
 They tend also to foster taste, and to promote friend- 
 ship between University men. This last, as we have 
 had occasion before to say, is the great requirement of 
 our student life; and it will therefore be no waste of 
 time if we devote a paragraph to this subject in its con- 
 nection with Debating Societies. At present they par- 
 take too much of the nature of a clique. Friends pro- 
 pose friends, and mutual friends second them, until the 
 society degenerates into a sort of family party. You 
 may confirm old acquaintances, but you can rarely make 
 new ones. You find yourself in the atmosphere of 
 your own daily intercourse. Now, this is an unfortu- 
 nate circumstance, which it seems to me might readily 
 be rectified. Our Principal has shown himself so 
 friendly towards all College improvements that I cherish 
 the hope of seeing shortly realised a certain sugges- 
 tion, which is not a new one with me, and which must 
 often have been proposed and canvassed heretofore— I 
 
DEBATING SOCIETIES 
 
 mean, a real University Debating Society ^ patronised by 
 the Senatus, presided over by the Professors, to which 
 every one might gain ready admittance on sight of his 
 matriculation ticket, where it would be a favour and 
 not a necessity to speak, and where the obscure student 
 might have another object for attendance besides the 
 mere desire to save his fines: to wit, the chance of 
 drawing on himself the favourable consideration of his 
 teachers. This would be merely following in the good 
 tendency, which has been so noticeable during all this 
 session, to increase and multiply student societies and 
 clubs of every sort. Nor would it be a matter of much 
 difficulty. The united societies would form a nucleus : 
 one of the class-rooms at first, and perhaps afterwards 
 the great hall above the library, might be the place of 
 meeting. There would be no want of attendance or 
 enthusiasm, I am sure; for it is a very different thing to 
 speak under the bushel of a private club on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, in a public place, where a 
 happy period or a subtle argument may do the speaker 
 permanent service in after life. Such a club might end, 
 perhaps, by rivalling the " Union " at Cambridge or the 
 "Union "at Oxford. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS* 
 
 It is wonderful to think what a turn has been given 
 to our whole Society by the fact that we live under 
 the sign of Aquarius,— that our climate is essentially 
 wet. A mere arbitrary distinction, like the walking- 
 swords of yore, might have remained the symbol of 
 foresight and respectability, had not the raw mists and 
 dropping showers of our island pointed the inclination 
 of Society to another exponent of those virtues. A 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honour or a string of medals 
 may prove a person's courage; a title may prove his 
 birth; a professorial chair his study and acquirement; 
 but it is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the 
 stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the 
 acknowledged index of social position. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe presents us with a touching in- 
 stance of the hankering after them inherent in the civi- 
 lised and educated mind. To the superficial, the hot 
 suns of Juan Fernandez may sufficiently account for his 
 quaint choice of a luxury ; but surely one who had borne 
 the hard labour of a seaman under the tropics for all 
 
 1 " This paper was written in collaboration with James Walter Ferrier, 
 and if reprinted this is to be stated, though his principal collaboration 
 was to lie back in an easy-chair and laugh."— [R. L. S., Oct. 25, 1894.] 
 
 46 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 
 
 these years could have supported an excursion after 
 goats or a peaceful constitutional arm in arm with the 
 nude Friday. No, it was not this : the memory of a 
 vanished respectability called for some outward mani- 
 festation, and the result was— an umbrella. A pious 
 castaway might have rigged up a belfry and solaced his 
 Sunday mornings with the mimicry of church bells; 
 but Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his 
 leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind 
 striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as 
 we have ever met with. 
 
 It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has 
 become the very foremost badge of modern civilisation 
 —the Urim and Thummim of respectability. Its preg- 
 nant symbolism has taken its rise in the most natural 
 manner. Consider, for a moment, when umbrellas 
 were first introduced into this country, what manner of 
 men would use them, and what class would adhere to 
 the useless but ornamental cane. The first, without 
 doubt, would be the hypochondriacal, out of solicitude 
 for their health, or the frugal, out of care for their rai- 
 ment; the second, it is equally plain, would include the 
 fop, the fool, and the Bobadil. Any one acquainted 
 with the growth of Society, and knowing out of what 
 small seeds of cause are produced great revolutions 
 and wholly new conditions of intercourse, sees from 
 this simple thought how the carriage of an umbrella 
 came to indicate frugality, judicious regard for bodily 
 welfare, and scorn for mere outward adornment, and, 
 in one word, all those homely and solid virtues implied 
 in the term respectability. Not that the umbrella's 
 costliness has nothing to do with its great influence. 
 
 47 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 Its possession, besides symbolising (as we have already 
 indicated) the change from wild Esau to plain Jacob 
 dwelling in tents, implies a certain comfortable provision 
 of fortune. It is not every one that can expose twenty- 
 six shillings' worth of property to so many chances of 
 loss and theft. So strongly do we feel on this point, 
 indeed, that we are almost inclined to consider all who 
 possess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of 
 the Franchise. They have a qualification standing in 
 their lobbies ; they carry a sufficient stake in the com- 
 mon-weal below their arm. One who bears with him 
 an umbrella— such a complicated structure of whale- 
 bone, of silk, and of cane, that it becomes a very micro- 
 cosm of modern industry—is necessarily a man of 
 peace. A half-crown cane may be applied to an offend- 
 er's head on a very moderate provocation; but a six- 
 and-twenty shilling silk is a possession too precious to 
 be adventured in the shock of war. 
 
 These are but a few glances at how umbrellas (in the 
 general) came to their present high estate. But the 
 true Umbrella-Philosopher meets with far stranger ap- 
 plications as he goes about the streets. 
 
 Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy 
 with the individual who carries them : indeed, they are 
 far more capable of betraying his trust; for whereas a 
 face is given to us so far ready-made, and all our power 
 over it is in frowning, and laughing, and grimacing, 
 during the first three or four decades of life, each um- 
 brella is selected from a whole shopful, as being most 
 consonant to the purchaser's disposition. An undoubted 
 power of diagnosis rests with the practised Umbrella- 
 Philosopher. O you who lisp, and amble, and change 
 
 48 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 
 
 the fashion of your countenances— you who conceal all 
 these, how little do you think that you left a proof of 
 your weakness in our umbrella-stand— that even now, 
 as you shake out the folds to meet the thickening snow, 
 we read in its ivory handle the outward and visible sign 
 of your snobbery, or from the exposed gingham of its 
 cover detect, through coat and waistcoat, the hidden 
 hypocrisy of the dickey I But alas! even the um- 
 brella is no certain criterion. The falsity and the folly 
 of the human race have degraded that graceful symbol 
 to the ends of dishonesty; and while some umbrellas, 
 from carelessness in selection, are not strikingly char- 
 acteristic (for it is only in what a man loves that he 
 displays his real nature), others, from certain pruden- 
 tial motives, are chosen directly opposite to the per- 
 son's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is a sign of 
 great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters 
 itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit 
 his religious friends armed with the decent and repu- 
 table gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of 
 these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the 
 streets " with a lie in their right hand " ? 
 
 The king of Siam, as we read, besides having a 
 graduated social scale of umbrellas (which was a good 
 thing), prevented the great bulk of his subjects from 
 having any at all, which was certainly a bad thing. 
 We should be sorry to believe that this Eastern legisla- 
 tor was a fool— the idea of an aristocracy of umbrellas 
 is too philosophic to have originated in a nobody,— and 
 we have accordingly taken exceeding pains to find out 
 the reason of this harsh restriction. We think we have 
 succeeded; but, while admiring the principle at which 
 
 49 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 he aimed, and while cordially recognising in the Siamese 
 potentate the only man before ourselves who had taken 
 a real grasp of the umbrella, we must be allowed to 
 point out how unphilosophically the great man acted in 
 this particular. His object, plainly, was to prevent any 
 unworthy persons from bearing the sacred symbol of 
 domestic virtues. We cannot excuse his limiting these 
 virtues to the circle of his court. We must only re- 
 member that such was the feeling of the age in which 
 he lived. Liberalism had not yet raised the war-cry of 
 the working classes. But here was his mistake: it was 
 a needless regulation. Except in a very few cases of 
 hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by 
 nature umbrellarmns, have tried again and again to be- 
 come so by art, and yet have failed— have expended 
 their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after um- 
 brella, and yet have systematically lost them, and have 
 finally, with contrite spirits and shrunken purses, given 
 up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and bor- 
 rowing for the remainder of their lives. This is the 
 most remarkable fact that we have had occasion to 
 notice; and yet we challenge the candid reader to call 
 it in question. Now, as there cannot be any moral 
 selection in a mere dead piece of furniture— as the 
 umbrella cannot be supposed to have an affinity for 
 individual men equal and reciprocal to that which men 
 certainly feel towards individual umbrellas,— we took 
 the trouble of consulting a scientific friend as to whether 
 there was any possible physical explanation of the 
 phenomenon. He was unable to supply a plausible 
 theory, or even hypothesis; but we extract from his 
 letter the following interesting passage relative to the 
 
 50 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS 
 
 physical peculiarities of umbrellas : " Not the least im- 
 portant, and by far the most curious property of the 
 umbrella, is the energy which it displays in affecting 
 the atmospheric strata. There is no fact in meteorology 
 better established— indeed, it is almost the only one on 
 which meteorologists are agreed— than that the carriage 
 of an umbrella produces desiccation of the air; while if 
 it be left at home, aqueous vapour is largely produced, 
 and is soon deposited in the form of rain. No theory," 
 my friend continues, "competent to explain this hy- 
 grometric law has yet been given (as far as I am aware) 
 by Herschel, Dove, Glaisher, Tait, Buchan, or any other 
 writer; nor do I pretend to supply the defect. I ven- 
 ture, however, to throw out the conjecture that it will 
 be ultimately found to belong to the same class of nat- 
 ural laws as that agreeable to which a slice of toast 
 always descends with the buttered surface downwards." 
 But it is time to draw to a close. We could expa- 
 tiate much longer upon this topic, but want of space 
 constrains us to leave unfinished these few desultory 
 remarks— slender contributions towards a subject which 
 has fallen sadly backwards, and which, we grieve to 
 say, was better understood by the king of Siam in 1686 
 than by all the philosophers of to-day. If, however, 
 we have awakened in any rational mind an interest in 
 the symbolism of umbrellas— in any generous heart a 
 more complete sympathy with the dumb companion of 
 his daily walk,— or in any grasping spirit a pure notion 
 of respectability strong enough to make him expend his 
 six-and-twenty shillings— we shall have deserved well 
 of the world, to say nothing of the many industrious 
 persons employed in the manufacture of the article. 
 
 5» 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 
 
 " How many Caesars and Pompeys, by mere inspirations of the names, 
 have been rendered worthy of them ? And how many are there, who 
 might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters 
 and spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing ? "— 
 Tristram Shandy^ vol. i. chap. xix. 
 
 Such were the views of the late Walter Shandy, Esq., 
 Turkey merchant. To the best of my belief, Mr. Shandy 
 is the first who fairly pointed out the incalculable influ- 
 ence of nomenclature upon the whole life— who seems 
 first to have recognised the one child, happy in an heroic 
 appellation, soaring upwards on the wings of fortune, 
 and the other, like the dead sailor in his shotted ham- 
 mock, haled down by sheer weight of name into the 
 abysses of social failure. Solomon possibly had his eye 
 on some such theory when he said that " a good name 
 is better than precious ointment " ; and perhaps we may 
 trace a similar spirit in the compilers of the English 
 Catechism, and the affectionate interest with which 
 they linger round the catechumen's name at the very 
 threshold of their work. But, be these as they may, I 
 think no one can censure me for appending, in pursu- 
 ance of the expressed wish of his son, the Turkey 
 merchant's name to his system, and pronouncing, with- 
 
 52 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 
 
 out further preface, a short epitome of the Shandean 
 Philosophy of Nomenclature. 
 
 To begin, then: the influence of our name makes 
 itself felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I re- 
 member the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood, 
 Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows ; 
 and the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my 
 heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did 
 not share with me a single one of my numerous prce- 
 nomina. Look at the delight with which two children 
 find they have the same name. They are friends from 
 that moment forth ; they have a bond of union stronger 
 than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats. This feeling, 
 I own, wears off in later life. Our names lose their 
 freshness and interest, become trite and indifferent. 
 But this, dear reader, is merely one of the sad effects of 
 those " shades of the prison-house " which come gradu- 
 ally betwixt us and nature with advancing years; it 
 affords no weapon against the philosophy of names. 
 
 In after life, although we fail to trace its working, 
 that name which careless godfathers lightly applied to 
 your unconscious infancy will have been moulding your 
 character, and influencing with irresistible power the 
 whole course of your earthly fortunes. But the last 
 name, overlooked by Mr. Shandy, is no whit less im- 
 portant as a condition of success. Family names, we 
 must recollect, are but inherited nicknames ; and if the 
 sobriquet were applicable to the ancestor, it is most 
 likely applicable to the descendant also. You would 
 not expect to find Mr. MThun acting as a mute, or Mr. 
 M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of dancing. There- 
 fore, in what follows, we shall consider names, inde- 
 
 53 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 pendent of whether they are first or last. And to begin 
 with, look what a pull Cromwell had over Pvw— the 
 one name full of a resonant imperialism, the other, 
 mean, pettifogging, and unheroic to a degree. Who 
 would expect eloquence from Pvw— who would read 
 poems by Pym—v^ho would bow to the opinion of 
 Pym? He might have been a dentist, but he should 
 never have aspired to be a statesman. I can only won- 
 der that he succeeded as he did. Pym and Habakkuk 
 stand first upon the roll of men who have triumphed, 
 by sheer force of genius, over the most unfavourable 
 appellations. But even these have suffered; and, had 
 they been more fitly named, the one might have been 
 Lord Protector, and the other have shared the laurels 
 with Isaiah. In this matter we must not forget that all 
 our great poets have borne great names. Chaucer, 
 Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, 
 Shelley— what a constellation of lordly words! Not a 
 single commonplace name among them— not a Brown, 
 not a Jones, not a Robinson; they are all names that 
 one would stop and look at on a door-plate. Now, 
 imagine if Pepys had tried to clamber somehow into 
 the enclosure of poetry, what a blot would that word 
 have made upon the list! The thing was impossible. 
 In the first place, a certain natural consciousness that men 
 have would have held him down to the level of his name, 
 would have prevented him from rising above the Pep- 
 sine standard, and so haply withheld him altogether 
 from attempting verse. Next, the booksellers would 
 refuse to publish, and the world to read them, on the 
 mere evidence of the fatal appellation. And now, be- 
 fore I close this section, I must say one word as to 
 
 54 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOMENCLATURE 
 
 punnable names, names that stand alone, that have a 
 significance and h'fe apart from him that bears them. 
 These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine goes 
 bowed and humbled through life under the weight of 
 this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's 
 name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without 
 exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of 
 his death bids fair to carry laughter into many a home. 
 
 So much for people who are badly named. Now 
 for people who are too well named, who go top-heavy 
 from the font, who are baptised into a false position, 
 and find themselves beginning life eclipsed under the 
 fame of some of the great ones of the past. A man, for 
 instance, called William Shakespeare could never dare 
 to write plays. He is thrown into too humbling an 
 apposition with the author of Hamlet. His own name 
 coming after is such an anticlimax. "The plays of 
 William Shakespeare > " says the reader—" O no! The 
 plays of William Shakespeare Cockerill," and he throws 
 the book aside. In wise pursuance of such views, Mr. 
 John Milton Hengler, who not long since delighted us 
 in this favoured town, has never attempted to write an 
 epic, but has chosen a new path, and has excelled upon 
 the tight-rope. A marked example of triumph over this 
 is the case of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. On the face 
 of the matter, I should have advised him to imitate the 
 pleasing modesty of the last-named gentleman, and 
 confine his ambition to the sawdust. But Mr. Rossetti 
 has triumphed. He has even dared to translate from 
 his mighty name-father; and the voice of fame supports 
 him in his boldness. 
 
 Dear readers, one might write a year upon this mat- 
 55 
 
COLLEGE PAPERS 
 
 ter. A lifetime of comparison and research could scarce 
 suffice for its elucidation. So here, if it please you, we 
 shall let it rest. Slight as these notes have been, I 
 would that the great founder of the system had been 
 alive to see them. How he had warmed and brightened, 
 how his persuasive eloquence would have fallen on the 
 ears of Toby; and what a letter of praise and sympathy 
 would not the editor have received before the month 
 was out ! Alas ! the thing was not to be. Walter Shandy 
 died and was duly buried, while yet his theory lay forgot- 
 ten and neglected by his fellow-countrymen. But, reader, 
 the day will come, I hope, when a paternal government 
 will stamp out, as seeds of national weakness, all de- 
 pressing patronymics, and when godfathers and god- 
 mothers will soberly and earnestly debate the interest 
 of the nameless one, and not rush blindfold to the 
 christening. In these days there shall be written a 
 Godfather's Assistant, in shape of a dictionary of 
 names, with their concomitant virtues and vices; and 
 this book shall be scattered broadcast through the land, 
 and shall be on the table of every one eligible for god- 
 fathership, until such a thing as a vicious or untoward 
 appellation shall have ceased from off the face of the 
 earth. 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 CHIEFLY OF THE ROAD 
 
Previously published : 
 
 III. Portfolio, November, iSyj. 
 
 IV. Ibid., August, i8y4. 
 
 V. Ibid., November, 1874. 
 VI. Ibid., April and May, i8y^. 
 VII. (posthumously) Illustrated London News, Summer 
 
 Number, 1896. 
 VIII. Cornhill Magazine, May, 1876. 
 
 IX. {posthumously) The Studio, Winter Number, 1896. 
 Nos. I. and 11. are printed from the Author's MSS.for the 
 first time. 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 CHIEFLY OF THE ROAD 
 
 I 
 
 A RETROSPECT 
 
 {j4 Fragment : written at Dunoon, tSjo) 
 
 IF there is anything that delights me in Hazlitt, be- 
 yond the charm of style and the unconscious portrait 
 of a vain and powerful spirit which his works present, 
 it is the loving and tender way in which he returns 
 again to the memory of the past. These little recollec- 
 tions of bygone happiness were too much a part of the 
 man to be carelessly or poorly told. The imaginary 
 landscapes and visions of the most ecstatic dreamer can 
 never rival such recollections, told simply perhaps, but 
 still told (as they could not fail to be) with precision, 
 delicacy, and evident delight. They are too much 
 loved by the author not to be palated by the reader. 
 But beyond the mere felicity of pencil, the nature of 
 the piece could never fail to move my heart. When I 
 read his essay "On the Past and Future," every word 
 seemed to be something I had said myself. I could 
 have thought he had been eavesdropping at the door 
 of my heart, so entire was the coincidence between his 
 
 59 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 writing and my thought. It is a sign perhaps of a 
 somewhat vain disposition. The future is nothing; but 
 the past is myself, my own history, the seed of my 
 present thoughts, the mould of my present disposi- 
 tion. It is not in vain that I return to the nothings 
 of my childhood; for every one of them has left some 
 stamp upon me or put some fetter on my boasted free- 
 will. In the past is my present fate; and in the past 
 also is my real life. It is not the past only, but the 
 past that has been many years in that tense. The 
 doings and actions of last year are as uninteresting and 
 vague to me as the blank gulf of the future, the tabula 
 rasa that may never be anything else. I remember a 
 confused hotch-potch of unconnected events, a '' chaos 
 without form, and void " ; but nothing salient or strik- 
 ing rises from the dead level of " flat, stale, and unprofit- 
 able " generality. When we are looking at a landscape 
 we think ourselves pleased ; but it is only when it comes 
 back upon us by the fire o' nights that we can disentan- 
 gle the main charm from the thick of particulars. It is 
 just so with what is lately past. It is too much loaded 
 with detail to be distinct; and the canvas is too large 
 for the eye to encompass. But this is no more the case 
 when our recollections have been strained long enough 
 through the hour-glass of time; when they have been 
 the burthen of so much thought, the charm and com- 
 fort of so many a vigil. All that is worthless has been 
 sieved and sifted out of them. Nothing remains but 
 the brightest lights and the darkest shadows. When 
 we see a mountain country near at hand, the spurs and 
 haunches crowd up in eager rivalry, and the whole 
 range seems to have shrugged its shoulders to its ears, 
 
 60 
 
A RETROSPECT 
 
 till we cannot tell the higher from the lower: but when 
 we are far off, these lesser prominences are melted back 
 into the bosom of the rest, or have set behind the round 
 horizon of the plain, and the highest peaks stand forth 
 in lone and sovereign dignity against the sky. It is 
 just the same with our recollections. We require to 
 draw back and shade our eyes before the picture dawns 
 upon us in full breadth and outline. Late years are still 
 in limbo to us; but the more distant past is all that we 
 possess in life, the corn already harvested and stored 
 for ever in the grange of memory. The doings of to- 
 day at some future time will gain the required offing; I 
 shall learn to love the things of my adolescence, as 
 Hazlitt loved them, and as I love already the recollec- 
 tions of my childhood. They will gather interest with 
 every year. They will ripen in forgotten corners of my 
 memory; and some day I shall waken and find them 
 vested with new glory and new pleasantness. 
 
 It is for stirring the chords of memory, then, that I 
 love Hazlitt's essays, and for the same reason (I remem- 
 ber) he himself threw in his allegiance to Rousseau, 
 saying of him, what was so true of his own writings : 
 " He seems to gather up the past moments of his being 
 like drops of honey-dew to distil some precious liquor 
 from them; his alternate pleasures and pains are the 
 bead-roll that he tells over and piously worships; he 
 makes a rosary of the flowers of hope and fancy that 
 strewed his earliest years." How true are these words 
 when] applied to himself! and how much I thank him 
 that it was so! All my childhood is a golden age to 
 me. I have no recollection of bad weather. Except 
 one or two storms where grandeur had impressed itself 
 
 6i 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 on my mind, the whole time seems steeped in sunshine. 
 "£/ ego in Arcadia vixi" would be no empty boast 
 upon my grave. If I desire to live long, it is that I may 
 have the more to look back upon. Even to one, like 
 the unhappy Duchess, 
 
 " Acquainted with sad misery 
 As the tamed galley-slave is with his oar," 
 
 and seeing over the night of troubles no " lily-wristed 
 morn " of hope appear, a retrospect of even chequered 
 and doubtful happiness in the past may sweeten the 
 bitterness of present tears. And here I may be excused 
 if I quote a passage from an unpublished drama (the 
 unpublished is perennial, I fancy) which the author be- 
 lieved was not all devoid of the flavour of our elder 
 dramatists. However this may be, it expresses better 
 than I could some further thoughts on this same sub- 
 ject. The heroine is taken by a minister to the grave, 
 where already some have been recently buried, and 
 where her sister's lover is destined to rejoin them on 
 the following day.^ 
 
 What led me to the consideration of this subject, and 
 what has made me take up my pen to-night, is the rather 
 strange coincidence of two very different accidents— a 
 prophecy of my future and a return into my past. No 
 later than yesterday, seated in the coffee-room here, 
 there came into the tap of the hotel a poor mad High- 
 land woman. The noise of her strained, thin voice 
 brought me out to see her. I could conceive that she 
 
 1 The quotation here promised from one of the Author's own early 
 dramatic efforts (a tragedy of Semiramis) is not supplied in the MS. —[Ed.] 
 
 62 
 
A RETROSPECT 
 
 had been pretty once, but that was many years ago. 
 She was now withered and fallen-looking. Her hair 
 was thin and straggling, her dress poor and scanty. 
 Her moods changed as rapidly as a weather-cock before 
 a thunder-storm. One moment she said her " mutch " 
 was the only thing that gave her comfort, and the next 
 she slackened the strings and let it back upon her neck, 
 in a passion at it for making her too hot. Her talk 
 was a wild, somewhat weird, farrago of utterly mean- 
 ingless balderdash, mere inarticulate gabble, snatches of 
 old Jacobite ballads and exaggerated phrases from the 
 drama, to which she suited equally exaggerated action. 
 She "babbled of green fields "and Highland glens; she 
 prophesied " the drawing of the claymore," with a lofty 
 disregard of cause or common-sense; and she broke out 
 suddenly, with uplifted hands and eyes, into ecstatic 
 " Heaven bless hims !" and " Heaven forgive hims ! " She 
 had been a camp-follower in her younger days, and she 
 was never tired of expatiating on the gallantry, the fame, 
 and the beauty of the 42nd Highlanders. Her patriot- 
 ism knew no bounds, and her prolixity was much on 
 the same scale. This Witch of Endor offered to tell my 
 fortune, with much dignity and proper oracular enun- 
 ciation. But on my holding forth my hand a somewhat 
 ludicrous incident occurred. " Na, na, " she said ; " wait 
 till I have a draw of my pipe." Down she sat in the 
 corner, puffmg vigorously and regaling the lady behind 
 the counter with conversation more remarkable for 
 stinging satire than prophetic dignity. The person in 
 question had " mair weeg than hair on her head " (did 
 not the chignon plead guilty at these words ?)— " wad 
 be better if she had less tongue"— and would come at 
 
 63 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 last to the grave, a goal which, in a few words, she 
 invested with " warning circumstance" enough to make 
 a Stoic shudder. Suddenly, in the midst of this, she 
 rose up and beckoned me to approach. The oracles of 
 my Highland sorceress had no claim to consideration 
 except in the matter of obscurity. In " question hard 
 and sentence intricate" she beat the priests of Delphi; 
 in bold, unvarnished falsity (as regards the past) even 
 spirit-rapping was a child to her. All that I could gather 
 may be thus summed up shortly: that I was to visit 
 America, that I was to be very happy, and that I was 
 to be much upon the sea, predictions which, in consid- 
 eration of an uneasy stomach, I can scarcely think 
 agreeable with one another. Two incidents alone re- 
 lieved the dead level of idiocy and incomprehensible 
 gabble. The first was the comical announcement that 
 " when I drew fish to the Marquis of Bute, I should take 
 care of my sweetheart," from which I deduce the fact 
 that at some period of my life I shall drive a fishmon- 
 ger's cart. The second, in the middle of such nonsense, 
 had a touch of the tragic. She suddenly looked at me 
 with an eager glance, and dropped my hand, saying, in 
 what were tones of misery or a very good affectation 
 of them, "Black eyes! " A moment after she was at 
 work again. It is as well to mention that I have not 
 black eyes.i 
 This incident, strangely blended of the pathetic and 
 
 1 " The old pythoness was right," adds the Author in a note appended 
 to his MS. in 1 887 ; " I have been happy : I did go to America (am even 
 
 going again— unless ): and I have been twice and once upon the 
 
 deep." The seafaring part of the prophecy remained to be fulfilled on a 
 far more extended scale in his Pacific voyages of 1888-90.— [Ed.] 
 
 64 
 
A RETROSPECT 
 
 the ludicrous, set my mind at work upon the future; 
 but I could find little interest in the study. Even the 
 predictions of my sibyl failed to allure me, nor could 
 life's prospect charm and detain my attention like its 
 retrospect. 
 
 Not far from Dunoon is Rosemore, a house in which I 
 had spent a week or so in my very distant childhood, 
 how distant I have no idea; and one may easily conceive 
 how I looked forward to revisiting this place and so 
 renewing contact with my former self. I was under 
 necessity to be early up, and under necessity also, in 
 the teeth of a bitter spring north-easter, to clothe my- 
 self warmly on the morning of my long-promised ex- 
 cursion. The day was as bright as it was cold. Vast 
 irregular masses of white and purple cumulus drifted 
 rapidly over the sky. The great hills, brown with the 
 bloomless heather, were here and there buried in blue 
 shadows, and streaked here and there with sharp stripes 
 of sun. The new-fired larches were green in the glens ; 
 and " pale primroses " hid themselves in mossy hollows 
 and under hawthorn roots. All these things were new 
 to me; for I had noticed none of these beauties in my 
 younger days, neither the larch woods, nor the winding 
 road edged in between field and flood, nor the broad, 
 ruffled bosom of the hill-surrounded loch. It was, 
 above all, the height of these hills that astonished me. 
 I remember the existence of hills, certainly, but the pic- 
 ture in my memory was low, featureless, and uninter- 
 esting. They seemed to have kept pace with me in my 
 growth, but to a gigantic scale; and the villas that I 
 remembered as half-way up the slope seemed to have 
 been left behind like myself, and now only ringed their 
 
 65 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 mighty feet, white among the newly kindled woods. 
 As I felt myself on the road at last that I had been 
 dreaming of for these many days before, a perfect in- 
 toxication of joy took hold upon me ; and I was so pleased 
 at my own happiness that I could let none past me till 
 I had taken them into my confidence. I asked my way 
 from every one, and took good care to let them all 
 know, before they left me, what my object was, and 
 how many years had elapsed since my last visit. I 
 wonder what the good folk thought of me and my 
 communications. 
 
 At last, however, after much inquiry, I arrive at the 
 place, make my peace with the gardener, and enter. My 
 disillusion dates from the opening of the garden door. 
 I repine, I find a reluctation of spirit against believing 
 that this is the place. What, is this kailyard that inex- 
 haustible paradise of a garden in which M and I 
 
 found " elbow-room," and expatiated together without 
 sensible constraint ? Is that little tufted slope the huge 
 and perilous green bank down which I counted it a 
 feat, and the gardener a sin, to run ? Are these two 
 squares of stone, some two feet high, the pedestals on 
 which I walked with such a penetrating sense of dizzy 
 elevation, and which I had expected to find on a level 
 with my eyes ? Ay, the place is no more like what I 
 expected than this bleak April day is like the glorious 
 September with which it is incorporated in my mem- 
 ory. I look at the gardener, disappointment in my face, 
 and tell him that the place seems sorrily shrunken from 
 the high estate that it had held in my remembrance, 
 and he returns, with quiet laughter, by asking me how 
 long it is since I was there. I tell him, and he remem- 
 
 66 
 
A RETROSPECT 
 
 bers me. Ah I I say, I was a great nuisance, I believe. 
 But no, my good gardener will plead guilty to having 
 kept no record of my evil-doings, and I find myself 
 much softened towards the place and willing to take a 
 kinder view and pardon its shortcomings for the sake 
 of the gardener and his pretended recollection of myself. 
 And it is just at this stage (to complete my re-establish- 
 ment) that I see a little boy— the gardener's grandchild 
 —just about the same age and the same height that I 
 must have been in the days when I was here last. My 
 first feeling is one of almost anger, to see him playing 
 on the gravel where I had played before, as if he had 
 usurped something of my identity; but next moment I 
 feel a softening and a sort of rising and qualm of the 
 throat, accompanied by a pricking heat in the eyeballs. 
 1 hastily join conversation with the child, and inwardly 
 felicitate myself that the gardener is opportunely gone 
 for the key of the house. But the child is a sort of 
 homily to me. He is perfectly quiet and resigned, an 
 unconscious hermit. I ask him jocularly if he gets as 
 much abused as I used to do for running down the 
 bank; but the child's perfect seriousness of answer 
 staggers me—" O no, grandpapa does n't allow it— why 
 should he? " I feel caught: I stand abashed at the re- 
 proof: I must not expose my childishness again to this 
 youthful disciplinarian, and so I ask him very stately 
 what he is going to be— a good serious practical ques- 
 tion, out of delicacy for his parts. He answers that he 
 is going to be a missionary to China, and tells me how 
 a missionary once took him on his knee and told him 
 about missionary work, and asked him if he, too, would 
 not like to become one, to which the child had simply 
 
 67 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 answered in the affirmative. The child is altogether so 
 different from what I have been, is so absolutely comple- 
 mentary to what I now am, that I turn away not a little 
 abashed from the conversation, for there is always 
 something painful in sudden contact with the good 
 qualities that we do not possess. Just then the grand- 
 father returns ; and I go with him to the sumn^r-house, 
 where I used to learn my Catechism, to the wall which 
 
 M and I thought it no small exploit to walk upon, 
 
 and all the other places that I remembered. 
 
 In fine, the matter being ended, I turn and go my way 
 home to the hotel, where, in the cold afternoon, I write 
 these notes with the table and chair drawn as near the 
 fire as the rug and the French polish will permit. 
 
 One other thing I may as well make a note of, and that 
 is how there arises that strange contradiction of the hills 
 being higher than I had expected, and everything near 
 at hand being so ridiculously smaller. This is a ques- 
 tion I think easily answered: the very terms of the 
 problem suggest the solution. To everything near at 
 hand I applied my own stature, as a sort of natural unit 
 of measurement, so that I had no actual image of their 
 dimensions but their ratio to myself; so, of course, as 
 one term of the proportion changed, the other changed 
 likewise, and as my own height increased my notion 
 of things near at hand became equally expanded. But 
 the hills, mark you, were out of my reach : I could not 
 apply myself to them : I had an actual, instead of a pro- 
 portional eidolon of their magnitude; so that, of course 
 (my eye being larger and flatter nowadays, and so the 
 image presented to me then being in sober earnest 
 smaller than the image presented to me now), I found 
 
 68 
 
A RETROSPECT 
 
 the hills nearly as much too. great as I had found the 
 other things too small. 
 
 [y4dded the next morw/w^.]— He who indulges habitu- 
 ally in the intoxicating pleasures of imagination, for the 
 very reason that he reaps a greater pleasure than others, 
 must resign himself to a keener pain, a more intolerable 
 and utter prostration. It is quite possible, and even 
 comparatively easy, so to enfold oneself in pleasant 
 fancies that the realities of life may seem but as the 
 white snow-shower in the street, that only gives a rel- 
 ish to the swept hearth and lively fire within. By such 
 means I have forgotten hunger, I have sometimes eased 
 pain, and I have invariably changed into the most pleas- 
 ant hours of the day those very vacant and idle seasons 
 which would otherwise have hung most heavily upon 
 my hand. But all this is attained by the undue prom- 
 inence of purely imaginative joys, and consequently the 
 weakening and almost the destruction of reality. This 
 is buying at too great a price. There are seasons when 
 the imagination becomes somehow tranced and sur- 
 feited, as it is with me this morning; and then upon what 
 can we fall back } The very faculty that we have fos- 
 tered and trusted has failed us in the hour of trial; and 
 we have so blunted and enfeebled our appetite for the 
 others that they are subjectively dead to us. It is just 
 as though a farmer should plant all his fields in potatoes, 
 instead of varying them with grain and pasture; and so, 
 when the disease comes, lose all his harvest, while his 
 neighbours, perhaps^ may balance the profit and the loss. 
 Do not suppose that I am exaggerating when I talk 
 about all pleasures seeming stale. To me, at least, the 
 
 69 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 edge of almost everything is put on by imagination; 
 and even nature, in these days when the fancy is drugged 
 and useless,* wants half the charm it has in better mo- 
 ments. 1 can no longer see satyrs in the thicket, or 
 picture a highwayman riding down the lane. The fiat 
 of indifference has gone forth : I am vacant, unprofitable : 
 a leaf on a river with no volition and no aim : a mental 
 drunkard the morning after an intellectual debauch. 
 Yes; I have a more subtle opium in my own mind than 
 any apothecary's drug; but it has a sting of its own, 
 and leaves me as flat and helpless as does the other. 
 
II 
 
 COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 (y4 Fragment : i8ji) 
 
 Very much as a painter half closes his eyes so that 
 some salient unity may disengage itself from among the 
 crowd of details, and what he sees may thus form itself 
 into a whole; very much on the same principle, I may 
 say, I allow a considerable lapse of time to intervene 
 between any of my little journeyings and the attempt to 
 chronicle them. I cannot describe a thing that is before 
 me at the moment, or that has been before me only a 
 very little while before; I must allow my recollections 
 to get thoroughly strained free from all chaff till nothing 
 be except the pure gold ; allow my memory to choose 
 out what is truly memorable by a process of natural 
 selection ; and I piously believe that in this way I ensure 
 the Survival of the Fittest. If I make notes for future 
 use, or if I am obliged to write letters during the course 
 of my little excursion, I so interfere with the process 
 that I can never again find out what is worthy of being 
 preserved, or what should be given in full length, what 
 in torso, or what merely in profile. This process of 
 incubation may be unreasonably prolonged; and I am 
 somewhat afraid that I have made this mistake with the 
 
 71 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 present journey. Like a bad daguerreotype, great part 
 of it has been entirely lost ; I can tell you nothing about 
 the beginning and nothing about the end; but the 
 doings of some fifty or sixty hours about the middle 
 remain quite distinct and definite, like a little patch of 
 sunshine on a long, shadowy plain, or the one spot on 
 an old picture that has been restored by the dexterous 
 hand of the cleaner. I remember a tale of an old Scots 
 minister, called upon suddenly to preach, who had 
 hastily snatched an old sermon out of his study and 
 found himself in the pulpit before he noticed that the 
 rats had been making free with his manuscript and 
 eaten the first two or three pages away ; he gravely ex- 
 plained to the congregation how he found himself situ- 
 ated; " And now," said he, " let us just begin where the 
 rats have left off." I must follow the divine's example, 
 and take up the thread of my discourse where it first 
 distinctly issues from the limbo of forgetfulness. 
 
 COCKERMOUTH 
 
 I was lighting my pipe as I stepped out of the inn at 
 Cockermouth, and did not raise my head until I was 
 fairly in the street. When I did so, it flashed upon me 
 that I was in England; the evening sunlight lit up Eng- 
 lish houses, English faces, an English conformation of 
 street,— as it were, an English atmosphere blew against 
 my face. There is nothing perhaps more puzzling (if 
 one thing in sociology can ever really be more unac- 
 countable than another) than the great gulf that is set 
 between England and Scotland— a gulf so easy in ap- 
 pearance, in reality so difficult to traverse. Here are 
 
 72 
 
COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 
 two people almost identical in blood ; pent up together 
 on one small island, so that their intercourse (one would 
 have thought) must be as close as that of prisoners who 
 shared one cell of the Bastille ; the same in language and 
 religion ; and yet a few years of quarrelsome isolation 
 —a mere forenoon's tiff, as one may call it, in compari- 
 son with the great historical cycles— have so separated 
 their thoughts and ways that not unions, not mutual 
 dangers, nor steamers, nor railways, nor all the king's 
 horses and all the king's men, seem able to obliterate 
 the broad distinction. In the trituration of another 
 century or so the corners may disappear; but in the 
 meantime, in the year of grace 1871, I was as much in a 
 new country as if I had been walking out of the Hotel 
 St. Antoine at Antwerp. 
 
 I felt a little thrill of pleasure at my heart as I realised 
 the change, and strolled away up the street with my 
 hands behind my back, noting in a dull, sensual way 
 how foreign, and yet how friendly, were the slopes of 
 the gables and the colour of the tiles, and even the 
 demeanour and voices of the gossips round about me. 
 
 Wandering in this aimless humour, I turned up a 
 lane and found myself following the course of the 
 bright little river. I passed first one and then another, 
 then a third, several couples out love-making in the 
 spring evening; and a consequent feeling of loneliness 
 was beginning to grow upon me, when I came to a dam 
 across the river, and a mill— a great, gaunt promontory 
 of building,— half on dry ground and half arched over 
 the stream. The road here drew in its shoulders, and 
 crept through between the landward extremity of the 
 mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house 
 
 73 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and a large sign-board within its privet hedge. I was 
 pleased to fancy this an inn, and drew little etchings in 
 fancy of a sanded parlour, and three-cornered spittoons, 
 and a society of parochial gossips seated within over 
 their churchwardens ; but as I drew near, the board dis- 
 played its superscription, and I could read the name of 
 Smethurst, and the designation of " Canadian Felt Hat 
 Manufacturers." There was no more hope of evening 
 fellowship, and I could only stroll on by the river-side, 
 under the trees. The water was dappled with slanting 
 sunshine, and dusted all over with a little mist of flying- 
 insects. There were some amorous ducks, also, whose 
 love-making reminded me of what I had seen a little 
 farther down. But the road grew sad, and I grew 
 weary ; and as I was perpetually haunted with the ter- 
 ror of a return of the tic that had been playing such 
 ruin in my head a week ago, I turned and went back to 
 the inn, and supper, and my bed. 
 
 The next morning, at breakfast, I communicated to 
 the smart waitress my intention of continuing down 
 the coast and through Whitehaven to Furness, and, as 
 I might have expected, I was instantly confronted by 
 that last and most worrying form of interference, that 
 chooses to introduce tradition and authority into the 
 choice of a man's own pleasures. I can excuse a person 
 combating my religious or philosophical heresies, be- 
 cause them I have deliberately accepted, and am ready 
 to justify by present argument. But I do not seek to 
 justify my pleasures. If I prefer tame scenery to grand, 
 a little hot sunshine over lowland parks and woodlands 
 to the war of the elements round the summit of Mont 
 Blanc; or if I prefer a pipe of mild tobacco, and the com- 
 
 74 
 
COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 
 pany of one or two chosen companions, to a ball where 
 I feel myself very hot, awkward, and weary, I merely 
 state these preferences as facts, and do not seek to es- 
 tablish them as principles. This is not the general rule, 
 however, and accordingly the waitress was shocked, as 
 one might be at a heresy, to hear the route that I had 
 sketched out for myself. Everybody who came to 
 Cockermouth for pleasure, it appeared, went on to Kes- 
 wick. It was in vain that I put up a little plea for the 
 liberty of the subject; it was in vain that I said I should 
 prefer to go to Whitehaven. I was told that there was 
 "nothing to see there"— that weary, hackneyed, old 
 falsehood ; and at last, as the handmaiden began to look 
 really concerned, I gave way, as men always do in such 
 circumstances, and agreed that I was to leave for Kes- 
 wick by a train in the early evening. 
 
 AN EVANGELIST 
 
 Cockermouth itself, on the same authority, was a place 
 with " nothing to see " ; nevertheless I saw a good deal, 
 and retain a pleasant, vague picture of the town and all 
 its surroundings. I might have dodged happily enough 
 all day about the main street and up to the castle and 
 in and out of byways, but the curious attraction that 
 leads a person in a strange place to follow, day after 
 day, the same round, and to make set habits for him- 
 self in a week or ten days, led me half unconsciously 
 up the same road that I had gone the evening before. 
 When I came up to the hat manufactory, Smethurst 
 himself was standing in the garden gate. He was 
 brushing one Canadian felt hat, and several others had 
 
 75 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 been put to await their turn one above the other on his 
 own head, so that he looked something like the typical 
 Jew old-clothesman. As I drew near, he came sidling 
 out of the doorway to accost me, with so curious an 
 expression on his face that I instinctively prepared my- 
 self to apologise for some unwitting trespass. His first 
 question rather confirmed me in this belief, for it was 
 whether or not he had seen me going up this way last 
 night; and after having answered in the affirmative, I 
 waited in some alarm for the rest of my indictment. 
 But the good man's heart was full of peace; and he 
 stood there brushing his hats and prattling on about 
 fishing, and walking, and the pleasures of convalescence, 
 in a bright shallow stream that kept me pleased and in- 
 terested, I could scarcely say how. As he went on, he 
 warmed to his subject, and laid his hats aside to go 
 along the water-side and show me where the large 
 trout commonly lay, underneath an overhanging bank; 
 and he was much disappointed, for my sake, that there 
 were none visible just then. Then he wandered off on to 
 another tack, and stood a great while out in the middle 
 of a meadow in the hot sunshine, trying to make out 
 that he had known me before, or, if not me, some 
 friend of mine, merely, I believe, out of a desire that 
 we should feel more friendly and at our ease with one 
 another. At last he made a little speech to me, of 
 which I wish I could recollect the very words, for they 
 were so simple and unaffected that they put all the best 
 writing and speaking to the blush ; as it is, I can recall 
 only the sense, and that perhaps imperfectly. He began 
 by saying that he had little things in his past life that 
 it gave him especial pleasure to recall; and that the fac- 
 
 ^6 
 
COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 
 ulty of receiving such sharp impressions had now died 
 out in himself, but must at my age be still quite lively 
 and active. Then he told me that he had a little raft 
 afloat on the river above the dam which he was going 
 to lend me, in order that I might be able to look back, 
 in after years, upon having done so, and get great 
 pleasure from the recollection. Now, 1 have a friend of 
 my own who will forego present enjoyments and suffer 
 much present inconvenience for the sake of manufac- 
 turing "a reminiscence" for himself; but there was 
 something singularly refined in this pleasure that the 
 hatmaker found in making reminiscences for others; 
 surely no more simple or unselfish luxury can be ima- 
 gined. After he had unmoored his little embarkation, 
 and seen me safely shoved off into mid-stream, he ran 
 away back to his hats with the air of a man who had 
 only just recollected that he had anything to do. 
 
 I did not stay very long on the raft. It ought to have 
 been very nice punting about there in the cool shade of 
 the trees, or sitting moored to an overhanging root; but 
 perhaps the very notion that I was bound in gratitude 
 specially to enjoy my little cruise, and cherish its recol- 
 lection, turned the whole thing from a pleasure into a 
 duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon 
 wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me 
 more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, 
 happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, 
 than anything possibly connected with his crank, inse- 
 cure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I 
 was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to 
 enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up 
 the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back 
 
 77 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 into the town in time for dinner. As I went, I was 
 thinking of Smethurst with admiration; a look into that 
 man's mind was like a retrospect over the smiling 
 champaign of his past life, and very different from the 
 Sinai-gorges up which one looks for a terrified moment 
 into the dark souls of many good, many wise, and 
 many prudent men. I cannot be very grateful to such 
 men for their excellence, and wisdom, and prudence. 
 I find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard, comba- 
 tive existence, full of doubt, difficulties, defeats, dis- 
 appointments, and dangers, quite a hard enough life 
 without their dark countenances at my elbow, so that 
 what I want is a happy-minded Smethurst placed here 
 and there at ugly corners of my life's wayside, preach- 
 ing his gospel of quiet and contentment. 
 
 ANOTHER 
 
 I was shortly to meet with an evangelist of another 
 stamp. After I had forced my way through a gentle- 
 man's grounds, I came out on the highroad, and sat 
 down to rest myself on a heap of stones at the top of a 
 long hill, with Cockermouth lying snugly at the bottom. 
 An Irish beggar-woman, with a beautiful little girl by 
 her side, came up to ask for alms, and gradually fell to 
 telling me the little tragedy of her life. Her own sister, 
 she told me, had seduced her husband from her after 
 many years of married life, and the pair had fled, leav- 
 ing her destitute, with the little girl upon her hands. 
 She seemed quite hopeful and cheery, and, though she 
 was unaffectedly sorry for the loss of her husband's 
 earnings, she made no pretence of despair at the loss of 
 
 78 
 
COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 
 his affection ; some day she would meet the fugitives, 
 and the law would see her duly righted, and in the 
 meantime the smallest contribution was gratefully re- 
 ceived. While she was telling all this in the most 
 matter-of-fact way, 1 had been noticing the approach of 
 a tall man, with a high white hat and darkish clothes. 
 He came up the hill at a rapid pace, and joined our little 
 group with a sort of half-salutation. Turning at once 
 to the woman, he asked her in a business-like way 
 whether she had anything to do, whether she were a 
 Catholic or a Protestant, whether she could read, and so 
 forth; and then, after a few kind words and some 
 sweeties to the child, he despatched the mother with 
 some tracts about Biddy and the Priest, and the Orange- 
 man's Bible. I was a little amused at his abrupt man- 
 ner, for he was still a young man, and had somewhat 
 the air of a navy officer; but he tackled me with great 
 solemnity. I could make fun of what he said, for I do 
 not think it was very wise; but the subject does not 
 appear to me just now in a jesting light, so I shall only 
 say that he related to me his own conversion, which 
 had been effected (as is very often the case) through 
 the agency of a gig accident, and that, after having 
 examined me and diagnosed my case, he selected some 
 suitable tracts from his repertory, gave them to me, 
 and, bidding me God-speed, went on his way. 
 
 LAST OF SMETHURST 
 
 That evening I got into a third-class carriage on my 
 way for Keswick, and was followed almost immedi- 
 ately by a burly man in brown clothes. This fellow- 
 
 79 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 passenger was seemingly ill at ease, and kept continu- 
 ally putting his head out of the window, and asking the 
 bystanders if they saw him coming. At last, when the 
 train was already in motion, there was a commotion on 
 the platform, and a way was left clear to our carriage 
 door. He had arrived. In the hurry I could just see 
 Smethurst, red and panting, thrust a couple of clay pipes 
 into my companion's outstretched hand, and hear him 
 crying his farewells after us as we slipped out of the 
 station at an ever-accelerating pace. I said something 
 about its being a close run, and the broad man, already 
 engaged in filling one of the pipes, assented, and went 
 on to tell me of his own stupidity in forgetting a neces- 
 sary, and of how his friend had good-naturedly gone 
 down-town at the last moment to supply the omission. 
 I mentioned that I had seen Mr. Smethurst already, and 
 that he had been very polite to me; and we fell into a 
 discussion of the hatter's merits that lasted some time 
 and left us quite good friends at its conclusion. The 
 topic was productive of goodwill. We exchanged 
 tobacco and talked about the season, and agreed at last 
 that we should go to the same hotel at Keswick and 
 sup in company. As he had some business in the town 
 which would occupy him some hour or so, on our arri- 
 val I was to improve the time and go down to the lake, 
 that I might see a glimpse of the promised wonders. 
 
 The night had fallen already when I reached the 
 water-side, at a place where many pleasure-boats are 
 moored and ready for hire ; and as 1 went along a stony 
 path, between wood and water, a strong wind blew in 
 gusts from the far end of the lake. The sky was cov- 
 ered with flying scud; and, as this was ragged, there 
 was quite a wild chase of shadow and moon-glimpse 
 
 80 
 
CROCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK 
 
 over the surface of the shuddering water. I had to 
 hold my hat on, and was growing rather tired, and in- 
 clined to go back in disgust, when a little incident oc- 
 curred to break the tedium. A sudden and violent 
 squall of wind sundered the low underwood, and at the 
 same time there came one of those brief discharges of 
 moonlight, which leaped into the opening thus made, 
 and showed me three girls in the prettiest flutter and 
 disorder. It was as though they had sprung out of 
 the ground. I accosted them very politely in my ca- 
 pacity of stranger, and requested to be told the names 
 of all manner of hills and woods and places that I did 
 not wish to know, and we stood together for a while 
 and had an amusing little talk. The wind, too, made 
 himself of the party, brought the colour into their faces, 
 and gave them enough to do to repress their drapery ; 
 and one of them, amid much giggling, had to pirouette 
 round and round upon her toes (as girls do) when some 
 specially strong gust had got the advantage over her. 
 They were just high enough up in the social order not 
 to be afraid to speak to a gentleman; and just low 
 enough to feel a little tremor, a nervous consciousness 
 of wrong-doing— of stolen waters, that gave a consid- 
 erable zest to our most innocent interview. They were 
 as much discomposed and fluttered, indeed, as if I had 
 been a wicked baron proposing to elope with the whole 
 trio; but they showed no inclination to go away, and I 
 had managed to get them off hills and waterfalls and on 
 to more promising subjects, when a young man was de- 
 scried coming along the path from the direction of Kes- 
 wick. Now whether he was the young man of one of 
 my friends, or the brother of one of them, or indeed the 
 brother of all, I do not know; but they incontinently 
 
 8i 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 said that they must be going, and went away up the 
 path with friendly salutations. 1 need not say that I 
 found the lake and the moonlight rather dull after their 
 departure, and speedily found my way back to potted 
 herrings and whisky-and-water in the commercial room 
 with my late fellow-traveller. In the smoking-room there 
 was a tall dark man with a moustache, in an ulster coat, 
 who had got the best place and was monopolising most 
 of the talk; and, as I came in, a whisper came round to 
 me from both sides, that this was the manager of a 
 London theatre. The presence of such a man was a 
 great event for Keswick, and 1 must own that the man- 
 ager showed himself equal to his position. He had a 
 large fat pocket-book, from which he produced poem 
 after poem, written on the backs of letters or hotel-bills ; 
 and nothing could be more humorous than his recitation 
 of these elegant extracts, except perhaps the anecdotes 
 with which he varied the entertainment. Seeing, I 
 suppose, something less countrified in my appearance 
 than in most of the company, he singled me out to cor- 
 roborate some statements as to the depravity and vice 
 of the aristocracy, and when he went on to describe 
 some gilded saloon experiences, 1 am proud to say that 
 he honoured my sagacity with one little covert wink 
 before a second time appealing to me for confirmation. 
 The wink was not thrown away; I went in up to the 
 elbows with the manager, until I think that some of the 
 glory of that great man settled by reflection upon me, 
 and that I was as noticeably the second person in the 
 smoking-room as he was the first. For a young man, 
 this was a position of some distinction, I think you will 
 admit. . . . 
 
 82 
 
Ill 
 
 ROADS 
 (1873) 
 
 No amateur will deny that he can find more pleasure 
 in a single drawing, over which he can sit a whole quiet 
 forenoon, and so gradually study himself into humour 
 with the artist, than he can ever extract from the dazzle 
 and accumulation of incongruous impressions that sends 
 him, weary and stupefied, out of some famous picture- 
 gallery. But what is thus admitted with regard to art 
 is not extended to the (so-called) natural beauties: no 
 amount of excess in sublime mountain outline or the 
 graces of cultivated lowland can do anything, it is 
 supposed, to weaken or degrade the palate. We are 
 not at all sure, however, that moderation, and a regi- 
 men tolerably austere, even in scenery, are not healthful 
 and strengthening to the taste; and that the best school 
 for a lover of nature is not to be found in one of those 
 countries where there is no stage effect— nothing salient 
 or sudden, —but a quiet spirit of orderly and harmonious 
 beauty pervades all the details, so that we can patiently 
 attend to each of the little touches that strike in us, all 
 of them together, the subdued note of the landscape. 
 It is in scenery such as this that we find ourselves in 
 
 83 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the right temper to seek out small sequestered loveli- 
 ness. The constant recurrence of similar combinations 
 of colour and outline gradually forces upon us a sense 
 of how the harmony has been built up, and we become 
 familiar with something of nature's mannerism. This 
 is the true pleasure of your " rural voluptuary,"— not to 
 remain awe-stricken before a Mount Chimborazo; not 
 to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but 
 day by day to teach himself some new beauty— to ex- 
 perience some new vague and tranquil sensation that 
 has before evaded him. It is not the people who " have 
 pined and hungered after nature many a year, in the 
 great city pent," as Coleridge said in the poem that made 
 Charles Lamb so much ashamed of himself; it is not 
 those who make the greatest progress in this intimacy 
 with her, or who are most quick to see and have the 
 greatest gusto to enjoy. In this, as in everything else, 
 it is minute knowledge and long-continued loving in- 
 dustry that make the true dilettante. A man must have 
 thought much over scenery before he begins fully to 
 enjoy it. It is no youngling enthusiasm on hill-tops 
 that can possess itself of the last essence of beauty. 
 Probably most people's heads are growing bare before 
 they can see all in a landscape that they have the capa- 
 bility of seeing; and, even then, it will be only for one 
 little moment of consummation before the faculties are 
 again on the decline, and they that look out of the win- 
 dows begin to be darkened and restrained in sight. 
 Thus the study of nature should be carried forward 
 thoroughly and with system. Every gratification should 
 be rolled long under the tongue, and we should be 
 always eager to analyse and compare, in order that we 
 
ROADS 
 
 may be able to give some plausible reason for our ad- 
 mirations. True, it is difficult to put even approxi- 
 mately into words the kind of feelings thus called into 
 play. There is a dangerous vice inherent in any such 
 intellectual refining upon vague sensation. The analy- 
 sis of such satisfactions lends itself very readily to lit- 
 erary affectations; and we can all think of instances 
 where it has shown itself apt to exercise a morbid in- 
 fluence, even upon an author's choice of language and 
 the turn of his sentences. And yet there is much that 
 makes the attempt attractive ; for any expression, how- 
 ever imperfect, once given to a cherished feeling, 
 seems a sort of legitimation of the pleasure we take in 
 it. A common sentiment is one of those great goods 
 that make life palatable and ever new. The knowledge 
 that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things, 
 even if they are little things, not much otherwise than 
 we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one 
 of life's choicest pleasures. 
 
 Let the reader, then, betake himself in the spirit we 
 have recommended to some of the quieter kinds of Eng- 
 lish landscape. In those homely and placid agricultural 
 districts, familiarity will bring into relief many things 
 worthy of notice, and urge them pleasantly home to 
 him by a sort of loving repetition; such as the won- 
 derful life-giving speed of windmill sails above the 
 stationary country ; the occurrence and recurrence of the 
 same church tower at the end of one long vista after 
 another: and, conspicuous among these sources of quiet 
 pleasure, the character and variety of the road itself, 
 along which he takes his way. Not only near at hand, 
 in the lithe contortions with which it adapts itself to the 
 
 85 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 interchanges of level and slope, but far away also, when 
 he sees a few hundred feet of it upheaved against a hill 
 and shining in the afternoon sun, he will find it an object 
 so changeful and enlivening that he can always plea- 
 surably busy his mind about it. He may leave the river- 
 side, or fall out of the way of villages, but the road he 
 has always with him; and, in the true humour of ob- 
 servation, will find in that sufficient company. From 
 its subtle windings and changes of level there arises 
 a keen and continuous interest, that keeps the attention 
 ever alert and cheerful. Every sensitive adjustment to 
 the contour of the ground, every little dip and swerve, 
 seems instinct with life and an exquisite sense of bal- 
 ance and beauty. The road rolls upon the easy slopes 
 of the country, like a long ship in the hollows of the 
 sea. The very margins of waste ground, as they trench 
 a little farther on the beaten way, or recede again to the 
 shelter of the hedge, have something of the same free 
 delicacy of line— of the same swing and wilfulness. 
 You might think for a whole summer's day (and not 
 have thought it any nearer an end by evening) what con- 
 course and succession of circumstances has produced the 
 least of these deflections; and it is, perhaps, just in 
 this that we should look for the secret of their interest. 
 A foot-path across a meadow— in all its human way- 
 wardness and unaccountability, in all the grata proter- 
 vitas of its varying direction— will always be more to 
 us than a railroad well engineered through a difficult 
 country.^ No reasoned sequence is thrust upon our at- 
 
 1 Compare Blake, in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell : " Improve- 
 ment makes straight roads ; but the crooked roads, without improvement, 
 are roads of Genius." 
 
 86 
 
ROADS 
 
 tention: we seem to have slipped for one lawless little 
 moment out of the iron rule of cause and effect; and so 
 we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies 
 of personification, always poetically orthodox, and at- 
 tribute a sort of free-will, an active and spontaneous 
 life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and 
 bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of 
 the land before our eyes. We remember, as we write, 
 some miles of fine wide highway laid out with con- 
 scious aesthetic artifice through a broken and richly 
 cultivated tract of country. It is said that the engineer 
 had Hogarth's line of beauty in his mind as he laid them 
 down. And the result is striking. One splendid sat- 
 isfying sweep passes with easy transition into another, 
 and there is nothing to trouble or dislocate the strong 
 continuousness of the main line of the road. And yet 
 there is something wanting. There is here no saving 
 imperfection, none of those secondary curves and little 
 trepidations of direction that carry, in natural roads, our 
 curiosity actively along with them. One feels at once 
 that this road has not grown like a natural road, but has 
 been laboriously made to pattern; and that, while a 
 model may be academically correct in outline, it will 
 always be inanimate and cold. The traveller is also 
 aware of a sympathy of mood between himself and the 
 road he travels. We have all seen ways that have wan- 
 dered into heavy sand near the sea-coast, and trail 
 wearily over the dunes like a trodden serpent: here we 
 too must plod forward at a dull, laborious pace; and so 
 a sympathy is preserved between our frame of mind 
 and the expression of the relaxed, heavy curves of the 
 roadway. Such a phenomenon, indeed, our reason 
 
 87 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 might perhaps resolve with a little trouble. We might 
 reflect that the present road had been developed out of 
 a track spontaneously followed by generations of primi- 
 tive wayfarers ; and might see in its expression a testi- 
 mony that those generations had been affected at the 
 same ground, one after another, in the same manner as 
 we are affected to-day. Or we might carry the reflec- 
 tion further, and remind ourselves that where the air is 
 invigorating and the ground firm under the traveller's 
 foot, his eye is quick to take advantage of small undu- 
 lations, and he will turn carelessly aside from the direct 
 way wherever there is anything beautiful to examine or 
 some promise of a wider view; so that even a bush of 
 wild roses may permanently bias and deform the straight 
 path over the meadow; whereas, where the soil is 
 heavy, one is preoccupied with the labour of mere pro- 
 gression, and goes with a bowed head heavily and un- 
 observantly forward. Reason, however, will not carry 
 us the whole way ; for the sentiment often recurs in 
 situations where it is very hard to imagine any possible 
 explanation; and indeed, if we drive briskly along a 
 good, well-made road in an open vehicle, we shall ex- 
 perience this sympathy almost at its fullest. We feel 
 the sharp settle of the springs at some curiously twisted 
 corner; after a steep ascent, the fresh air dances in our 
 faces as we rattle precipitately down the other side, 
 and we find it difficult to avoid attributing something 
 headlong, a sort of abandon, to the road itself. 
 
 The mere winding of the path is enough to enliven a 
 long day's walk in even a commonplace or dreary coun- 
 try-side. Something that we have seen from miles back, 
 upon an eminence, is so long hid from us, as we wan- 
 
 88 
 
ROADS 
 
 der through folded valleys or among woods, that our 
 expectation of seeing it again is sharpened into a violent 
 appetite, and as we draw nearer we impatiently quicken 
 our steps and turn every corner with a beating heart. 
 It is through these prolongations of expectancy, this 
 succession of one hope to another, that we live out long 
 seasons of pleasure in a few hours' walk. It is in fol- 
 lowing these capricious sinuosities that we learn, only bit 
 by bit and through one coquettish reticence after another, 
 much as we learn the heart of a friend, the whole loveli- 
 ness of the country. This disposition always preserves 
 something new to be seen, and takes us, like a careful 
 cicerone, to many different points of distant view before 
 it allows us finally to approach the hoped-for destination. 
 In its connection with the traffic, and whole friendly 
 intercourse with the country, there is something very 
 pleasant in that succession of saunterers and brisk and 
 business-like passers-by, that peoples our ways and 
 helps to build up what Walt Whitman calls *' the cheer- 
 ful voice of the public road, the gay, fresh sentiment of 
 the road." But out of the great network of ways that 
 binds all life together from the hill-farm to the city, 
 there is something individual to most, and, on the 
 whole, nearly as much choice on the score of company 
 as on the score of beauty or easy travel. On some we 
 are never long without the sound of wheels, and folk 
 pass us by so thickly that we lose the sense of their 
 number. But on others, about little-frequented districts, 
 a meeting is an affair of moment; we have the sight far 
 off of some one coming towards us, the growing defi- 
 niteness of the person, and then the brief passage and 
 salutation, and the road left empty in front of us for 
 
 89 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 perhaps a great while to come. Such encounters have 
 a wistful interest that can hardly be understood by the 
 dweller in places more populous. We remember stand- 
 ing beside a countryman once, in the mouth of a quiet 
 by-street in a city that was more than ordinarily crowded 
 and bustling; he seemed stunned and bewildered by 
 the continual passage of different faces; and after a 
 long pause, during which he appeared to search for 
 some suitable expression, he said timidly that there 
 seemed to be a great deal of meeting thereabouts. The 
 phrase is significant. It is the expression of town-life 
 in the language of the long, solitary country highways. 
 A meeting of one with one was what this man had been 
 used to in the pastoral uplands from which he came; 
 and the concourse of the streets was in his eyes only 
 an extraordinary multiplication of such "meetings." 
 
 And now we come to that last and most subtle qual- 
 ity of all, to that sense of prospect, of outlook, that is 
 brought so powerfully to our minds by a road. In real 
 nature as well as in old landscapes, beneath that im- 
 partial daylight in which a whole variegated plain is 
 plunged and saturated, the line of the road leads the 
 eye forth with the vague sense of desire up to the green 
 limit of the horizon. Travel is brought home to us, and 
 we visit in spirit every grove and hamlet that tempts us 
 in the distance. Sehnsucht— the passion for what is 
 ever beyond— is livingly expressed in that white riband 
 of possible travel that severs the uneven country ; not a 
 ploughman following his plough up the shining furrow, 
 not the blue smoke of any cottage in a hollow, but is 
 brought to us with a sense of nearness and attainability 
 by this wavering line of junction. There is a passion- 
 
 90 
 
ROADS 
 
 ate paragraph in Wertber that strikes the very key. 
 " When I came hither," he writes, " how the beautiful 
 valley invited me on every side, as I gazed down into it 
 from the hill-top! There the wood— ah, that I might 
 mingle in its shadows! there the mountain summits— 
 ah, that I might look down from them over the broad 
 country! the interlinked hills! the secret valleys! O, 
 to lose myself among their mysteries ! I hurried into 
 the midst, and came back without finding aught I hoped 
 for. Alas! the distance is like the future. A vast 
 whole lies in the twilight before our spirit; sight and 
 feeling alike plunge and lose themselves in the prospect, 
 and we yearn to surrender our whole being, and let it 
 be filled full with all the rapture of one single glorious 
 sensation; and alas! when we hasten to the fruition, 
 when there is changed to here, all is afterwards as it 
 was before, and we stand in our indigent and cramped 
 estate, and our soul thirsts after a still ebbing elixir." 
 It is to this wandering and uneasy spirit of anticipation 
 that roads minister. Every little vista, every little 
 glimpse that we have of what lies before us, gives the 
 impatient imagination rein, so that it can outstrip the 
 body and already plunge into the shadow of the woods, 
 and overlook from the hill-top the plain beyond it, and 
 wander in the windings of the valleys that are still far 
 in front. The road is already there— we shall not be 
 long behind. It is as if we were marching with the 
 rear of a great army, and, from far before, heard the 
 acclamation of the people as the vanguard entered 
 some friendly and jubilant city. Would not every man, 
 through all the long miles of march, feel as if he also 
 were within the gates ? 
 
 91 
 
IV 
 
 NOTES ON THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN 
 (1874) 
 
 I WISH to direct the reader's attention to a certain qual- 
 ity in the movements of children when young, which is 
 somehow lovable in them, although it would be even 
 unpleasant in any grown person. Their movements 
 are not graceful, but they fall short of grace by some- 
 thing so sweetly humorous that we only admire them 
 the more. The imperfection is so pretty and pathetic, 
 and it gives so great a promise of something different 
 in the future, that it attracts us more than many forms 
 of beauty. They have something of the merit of a 
 rough sketch by a master, in which we pardon what is 
 wanting or excessive for the sake of the very bluntness 
 and directness of the thing. It gives us pleasure to see 
 the beginning of gracious impulses and the springs of 
 harmonious movement laid bare to us with innocent 
 simplicity. 
 
 One night some ladies formed a sort of impromptu 
 dancing-school in the drawing-room of an hotel in 
 France. One of the ladies led the ring, and I can recall 
 her as a model of accomplished, cultured movement. 
 Two little girls, about eight years old, were the pupils ; 
 
 92 
 
NOTES ON THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN 
 
 that is an age of great interest in girls, when natural grace 
 comes to its consummation of justice and purity, with 
 little admixture of that other grace of forethought and 
 discipline that will shortly supersede it altogether. In 
 these two, particularly, the rhythm was sometimes 
 broken by an excess of energy, as though the pleasure 
 of the music in their light bodies could endure no longer 
 the restraint of regulated dance. So that, between 
 these and the lady, there was not only some beginning 
 of the very contrast I wish to insist upon, but matter 
 enough to set one thinking a long while on the beauty 
 of motion. I do not know that, here in England, we 
 have any good opportunity of seeing what that is ; the 
 generation of British dancing men and women are cer- 
 tainly more remarkable for other qualities than for grace : 
 they are, many of them, very conscientious artists, and 
 give quite a serious regard to the technical parts of their 
 performance; but the spectacle, somehow, is not often 
 beautiful, and strikes no note of pleasure. If I had seen 
 no more, therefore, this evening might have remained 
 in my memory as a rare experience. But the best part 
 of it was yet to come. For after the others had desisted, 
 the musician still continued to play, and a little button 
 between two and three years old came out into the 
 cleared space and began to figure before us as the music 
 prompted. I had an opportunity of seeing her, not on 
 this night only, but on many subsequent nights ; and 
 the wonder and comical admiration she inspired was 
 only deepened as time went on. She had an admirable 
 musical ear; and each new melody, as it struck in her 
 a new humour, suggested wonderful combinations and 
 variations of movement. Now it would be a dance 
 
 93 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 with which she would suit the music, now rather an 
 appropriate pantomime, and now a mere string of dis- 
 connected attitudes. But whatever she did, she did it 
 with the same verve and gusto. The spirit of the air 
 seemed to have entered into her, and to possess her like 
 a passion ; and you could see her struggling to find ex- 
 pression for the beauty that was in her against the in- 
 efFicacy of the dull, half-informed body. Though her 
 footing was uneven, and her gestures often ludicrously 
 helpless, still the spectacle was not merely amusing; 
 and though subtle inspirations of movement miscarried 
 in tottering travesty, you could still see that they had 
 been inspirations; you could still see that she had set 
 her heart on realising something just and beautiful, and 
 that, by the discipline of these abortive efforts, she was 
 making for herself in the future a quick, supple, and 
 obedient body. It was grace in the making. She was 
 not to be daunted by any merriment of people looking 
 on critically ; the music said something to her, and her 
 whole spirit was intent on what the music said: she 
 must carry out its suggestions, she must do her best to 
 translate its language into that other dialect of the 
 modulated body into which it can be translated most 
 easily and fully. 
 
 Just the other day I was witness to a second scene, 
 in which the motive was something similar; only this 
 time with quite common children, and in the familiar 
 neighbourhood of Hampstead. A little congregation 
 had formed itself in the lane underneath my window, 
 and was busy over a skipping-rope. There were two 
 sisters, from seven to nine perhaps, with dark faces 
 and dark hair, and slim, lithe little figures clad in lilac 
 
 94 
 
NOTES ON THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN 
 
 frocks. The elder of these two was mistress of the art 
 of skipping. She was just and adroit in every move- 
 ment; the rope passed over her black head and under 
 her scarlet-stockinged legs with a precision and regu- 
 larity that was like machinery ; but there was nothing 
 mechanical in the infinite variety and sweetness of her 
 inclinations, and the spontaneous agile flexure of her 
 lean waist and hips. There was one variation favourite 
 with her, in which she crossed her hands before her 
 with a motion not unlike that of weaving, which was 
 admirably intricate and complete. And when the two 
 took the rope together and whirled in and out with oc- 
 casional interruptions, there was something Italian in 
 the type of both— in the length of nose, in the slimness 
 and accuracy of the shapes— and something gay and 
 harmonious in the double movement, that added to the 
 whole scene a Southern element, and took me over sea 
 and land into distant and beautiful places. Nor was 
 this impression lessened when the elder girl took in her 
 arms a fair-haired baby, and while the others held the 
 rope for her, turned and gyrated, and went in and out 
 over it lightly, with a quiet regularity that seemed as if 
 it might go on for ever. Somehow, incongruous as 
 was the occupation, she reminded me of Italian Madon- 
 nas. And now, as before in the hotel drawing-room, 
 the humorous element was to be introduced ; only this 
 time it was in broad farce. The funniest little girl, with 
 a mottled complexion and a big, damaged nose, and 
 looking for all the world like any dirty, broken-nosed 
 doll in a nursery lumber-room, came forward to take 
 her turn. While the others swung the rope for her as 
 gently as it could be done— a mere mockery of move- 
 
 95 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ment— and playfully taunted her timidity, she passaged 
 backwards and forwards in a pretty flutter of indecision, 
 putting up her shoulders and laughing with the embar- 
 rassed laughter of children by the water's edge, eager 
 to bathe and yet fearful. There never was anything at 
 once so droll and so pathetic. One did not know whether 
 to laugh or to cry. And when at last she had made an 
 end of all her deprecations and drawings back, and sum- 
 moned up heart enough to straddle over the rope, one 
 leg at a time, it was a sight to see her ruffle herself up 
 like a peacock and go away down the lane with her 
 damaged nose, seeming to think discretion the better 
 part of valour, and rather uneasy lest they should ask 
 her to repeat the exploit. Much as I had enjoyed the 
 grace of the older girls, it was now just as it had been 
 before in France, and the clumsiness of the child seemed 
 to have a significance and a sort of beauty of its own, 
 quite above this grace of the others in power to affect 
 the heart. I had looked on with a certain sense of 
 balance and completion at the silent, rapid, masterly 
 evolutions of the eldest; I had been pleased by these in 
 the way of satisfaction. But when little broken-nose 
 began her pantomime of indecision I grew excited. 
 There was something quite fresh and poignant in the 
 delight 1 took in her imperfect movements. I remem- 
 ber, for instance, that I moved my own shoulders, as 
 if to imitate her; really, I suppose, with an inarticulate 
 wish to help her out. 
 
 Now, there are many reasons why this gracelessness 
 of young children should be pretty and sympathetic to 
 us. And, first, there is an interest as of battle. It is 
 in travail and hughsible Jiasco that the young school 
 
 96 
 
NOTES ON THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN 
 
 their bodies to beautiful expression, as they school their 
 minds. We seem, in watching them, to divine antag- 
 onists pitted one against the other; and, as in other 
 wars, so in this war of the intelligence against the un- 
 willing body, we do not wish to see even the cause of 
 progress triumph without some honourable toil; and 
 we are so sure of the ultimate result, that it pleases us 
 to linger in pathetic sympathy over these reverses of 
 the early campaign, just as we do over the troubles that 
 environ the heroine of a novel on her way to the happy 
 ending. Again, people are very ready to disown the 
 pleasure they take in a thing merely because it is big, 
 as an Alp, or merely because it is little, as a little child; 
 and yet this pleasure is surely as legitimate as another. 
 There is much of it here; we have an irrational indul- 
 gence for small folk; we ask but little where there is so 
 little to ask it of; we cannot overcome our astonishment 
 that they should be able to move at all, and are interested 
 in their movements somewhat as we are interested in 
 the movements of a puppet. And again, there is a 
 prolongation of expectancy when, as in these move- 
 ments of children, we are kept continually on the very 
 point of attainment and ever turned away and tantalised 
 by some humorous imperfection. This is altogether 
 absent in the secure and accomplished movements of per- 
 sons more fully grown. The tight-rope walker does not 
 walk so freely of so well as any one else can walk upon 
 a good road; and yet we like to watch him for the 
 mere sake of the difficulty; we like to see his vacilla- 
 tions ; we like this last so much even, that I am told a 
 really artistic tight-rope walker must feign to be troubled 
 in his balance, even if he is not so really. And again, 
 
 97 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 we have in these baby efforts an assurance of sponta- 
 neity that we do not have often. We know this at least 
 certainly, that the child tries to dance for its own plea- 
 sure, and not for any by-end of ostentation and con- 
 formity. If we did not know it we should see it. 
 There is a sincerity, a directness, an impulsive truth, 
 about their free gestures that shows throughout all 
 imperfection, and it is to us as a reminiscence of primi- 
 tive festivals and the Golden Age. Lastly, there is in 
 the sentiment much of a simple human compassion for 
 creatures more helpless than ourselves. One nearly 
 ready to die is pathetic; and so is one scarcely ready 
 to live. In view of their future, our heart is softened 
 to these clumsy little ones. They will be more adroit 
 when they are not so happy. 
 
 Unfortunately, then, this character that so much de- 
 lights us is not one that can be preserved by any plastic 
 art. It turns, as we have seen, upon consideration not 
 really aesthetic. Art may deal with the slim freedom of 
 a few years later; but with this fettered impulse, with 
 these stammering motions, she is powerless to do more 
 than stereotype what is ungraceful, and, in the doing of 
 it, lose all pathos and humanity. So these humorous little 
 ones must go away into the limbo of beautiful things 
 that are not beautiful for art, there to wait a more per- 
 fect age before they sit for their portraits. 
 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES 
 (1874) 
 
 It is a difficult matter to make the most of any given 
 place, and we have much in our own power. Things 
 looked at patiently from one side after another generally 
 end by showing a side that is beautiful. A few months 
 ago some words were said in the Portfolio as to an 
 " austere regimen in scenery " ; and such a discipline was 
 then recommended as " healthful and strengthening to 
 the taste." That is the text, so to speak, of the present 
 essay. This discipline in scenery, it must be understood, 
 is something more than a mere walk before breakfast to 
 whet the appetite. For when we are put down in some 
 unsightly neighbourhood, and especially if we have come 
 to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must 
 set ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the 
 ardour and patience of a botanist after a rare plant. 
 Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing 
 nature more favourably. We learn to live with her, as 
 people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses : to 
 dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes 
 against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, 
 also, to come to each place in the right spirit. The 
 
 99 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, "fait des dis- 
 cours en sot pour se soutenir en chemin'' ; and into these 
 discourses he weaves something out of all that he sees 
 and suffers by the way; they take their tone greatly 
 from the varying character of the scene; a sharp ascent 
 brings different thoughts from a level road; and the 
 man's fancies grow lighter as he comes out of the wood 
 into a clearing. Nor does the scenery any more affect 
 the thoughts than the thoughts affect the scenery. We 
 see places through our humours as through differently 
 coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the equa- 
 tion, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony 
 almost at will. There is no fear for the result, if we 
 can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to the country 
 that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever think- 
 ing suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable 
 sort of story as we go. We become thus, in some sense, 
 a centre of beauty ; we are provocative of beauty, much 
 as a gentle and sincere character is provocative of sincer- 
 ity and gentleness in others. And even where there is 
 no harmony to be elicited by the quickest and most obe- 
 dient of spirits, we may still embellish a place with some 
 attraction of romance. We may learn to go far afield 
 for associations, and handle them lightly when we have 
 found them. Sometimes an old print comes to our aid ; 
 I have seen many a spot lit up at once with picturesque 
 imaginations, by a reminiscence of Callot, or Sadeler, or 
 Paul Brill. Dick Turpin has been my lay figure for many 
 an English lane. And I suppose the Trossachs would 
 hardly be the Trossachs for most tourists if a man of 
 admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them 
 with harmonious figures, and brought them thither 
 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES 
 
 with minds rightly prepared for the impression. There 
 is half the battle in this preparation. For instance: I 
 have rarely been able to visit, in the proper spirit, the 
 wild and inhospitable places of our own Highlands. I 
 am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily 
 pleased without trees. I understand that there are some 
 phases of mental trouble that harmonise well with such 
 surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing 
 power of the imagination, can go back several centuries 
 in spirit, and put themselves into sympathy with ihe 
 hunted, houseless, unsociable way of life that was in its 
 place upon these savage hills. Now, when I am sad, I 
 like nature to charm me out of my sadness, like David 
 before Saul ; and the thought of these past ages strikes 
 nothing in me but an unpleasant pity ; so that 1 can never 
 hit on the right humour for this sort of landscape, and 
 lose much pleasure in consequence. Still, even here, if 
 I were only let alone, and time enough were given.. I 
 should have all manner of pleasures, and take many 
 clear and beautiful images away with me when I left. 
 When we cannot think ourselves into sympathy with 
 the great features of a country, we learn to ignore ihem, 
 and put our head among the grass for flowers, or pore, 
 for long times together, over the changeful current of 
 a stream. We come down to the sermon in stones, 
 when we are shut out from any poem in the spread 
 landscape. We begin to peep and botanise, we take an 
 interest in birds and insects, we find many things beau- 
 tiful in miniature. The reader will recollect the little 
 summer scene in IVuthering Heights— the one warm 
 scene, perhaps, in all that powerful, miserable novel— 
 and the great feature that is made therein by grasses 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and flowers and a little sunshine: this is in the spirit of 
 which I now speak. And, lastly, we can go indoors; 
 interiors are sometimes as beautiful, often more pic- 
 turesque, than the shows of the open air, and they have 
 that quality of shelter of which I shall presently have 
 more to say. 
 
 With all this in mind, I have often been tempted to 
 put forth the paradox that any place is good enough to 
 live a life in, while it is only in a few, and those highly 
 favoured, that we can pass a few hours agreeably. For, 
 if we only stay long enough, we become at home in the 
 neighbourhood. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, 
 about uninteresting corners. We forget to some degree 
 the superior loveliness of other places, and fall into a 
 tolerant and sympathetic spirit which is its own reward 
 and justification. Looking back the other day on some 
 recollections of my own, I was astonished to find how 
 much I owed to such a residence; six weeks in one 
 unpleasant country-side had done more, it seemed, to 
 quicken and educate my sensibilities than many years in 
 places that jumped more nearly with my inclination. 
 
 The country to which I refer was a level and treeless 
 plateau, over which the winds cut like a whip. For 
 miles on miles it was the same. A river, indeed, fell 
 into the sea near the town where I resided ; but the val- 
 ley of the river was shallow and bald, for as far up as 
 ever I had the heart to follow it. There were roads, 
 certainly, but roads that had no beauty or interest; for, 
 as there was no timber, and but little irregularity of sur- 
 face, you saw your whole walk exposed to you from 
 the beginning: there was nothing left to fancy, nothing 
 to expect, nothing to see by the wayside, save here 
 
 102 
 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES 
 
 and there an unhomely-Iooking homestead, and here 
 and there a solitary, spectacled stone-breaker; and you 
 were only accompanied, as you went doggedly forward, 
 by the gaunt telegraph-posts and the hum of the resonant 
 wires in the keen sea-wind. To one who had learned 
 to know their song in warm pleasant places by the 
 Mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the country, and make 
 it still bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the waste 
 places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne 
 liked to put it, " taken back to Nature " by any decent 
 covering of vegetation. Wherever the land had the 
 chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a certain 
 tawny nudity of the South, bare sunburnt plains, col- 
 oured like a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue 
 transparent air; but this was of another description— 
 this was the nakedness of the North ; the earth seemed 
 to know that it was naked, and was ashamed and cold. 
 It seemed to be always blowing on that coast. In- 
 deed, this had passed into the speech of the inhabitants, 
 and they saluted each other when they met with 
 "Breezy, breezy," instead of the customary "Fine 
 day" of farther south. These continual winds were 
 not like the harvest breeze, that just keeps an equable 
 pressure against your face as you walk, and serves to 
 set all the trees talking over your head, or bring round 
 you the smell of the wet surface of the country after a 
 shower. They were of the bitter, hard, persistent sort, 
 that interferes with sight and respiration, and makes 
 the eyes sore. Even such winds as these have their 
 own merit in proper time and place. It is pleasant to 
 see them brandish great masses of shadow. And what 
 a power they have over the colour of the world ! How 
 
 103 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and 
 make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! 
 There is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this 
 among the woods, with all its sights and noises; and 
 the effect gets between some painters and their sober 
 eyesight, so that, even when the rest of their picture 
 is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale. 
 There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed 
 in a country where there were no trees and hardly any 
 shadows, save the passive shadows of clouds or those 
 of rigid houses and walls. But the wind was neverthe- 
 less an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you 
 taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place 
 of opportune shelter. The reader knows what 1 mean ; 
 he must remember how, when he has sat himself down 
 behind a dyke on a hill-side, he delighted to hear the 
 wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his back ; how 
 his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to 
 dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the 
 country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far- 
 away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Words- 
 worth, in a beautiful passage of the '* Prelude," has used 
 this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet 
 by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thor- 
 oughfares ; and the comparison may be turned the other 
 way with as good effect : 
 
 " Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length. 
 Escaped as from an enemy, we turn 
 Abruptly into some sequester'd nook, 
 Still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!" 
 
 I remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told 
 me of what must have been quite the most perfect in- 
 
 104 
 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES 
 
 Stance of this pleasure of escape. He had gone up, one 
 sunny, windy morning, to the top of a great cathedral 
 somewhere abroad; I think it was Cologne Cathedral, 
 the great unfinished marvel by the Rhine; and after a 
 long while in dark stairways, he issued at last into the 
 sunshine, on a platform high above the town. At that 
 elevation it was quite still and warm ; the gale was only 
 in the lower strata of the air, and he had forgotten it in 
 the quiet interior of the church and during his long as- 
 cent; and so you may judge of his surprise when, rest- 
 ing his arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over 
 into the Place far below him, he saw the good people 
 holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind 
 as they walked. There is something, to my fancy, 
 quite perfect in this little experience of my fellow- 
 traveller's. The ways of men seem always very trivial 
 to us when we find ourselves alone on a church-top, 
 with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles, and see far 
 below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses, 
 and the silent activity of the city streets ; but how much 
 more must they not have seemed so to him as he stood, 
 not only above other men's business, but above other 
 men's climate, in a golden zone like Apollo's! 
 
 This was the sort of pleasure I found in the country 
 of which I write. The pleasure was to be out of the 
 wind, and to keep it in memory all the time, and hug 
 oneself upon the shelter. And it was only by the sea 
 that any such sheltered places were to be found. Be- 
 tween the black worm-eaten headlands there are little 
 bights and havens, well screened from the wind and the 
 commotion of the external sea, where the sand and 
 weeds look up into the gazer's face from a depth of 
 tranquil water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flicker- 
 
 105 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ing from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and 
 the sunshine. One such place has impressed itself on 
 my memory beyond all others. On a rock by the 
 water's edge, old fighting men of the Norse breed had 
 planted a double castle; the two stood wall to wall like 
 semi-detached villas ; and yet feud had run so high be- 
 tween their owners, that one, from out of a window, 
 shot the other as he stood in his own doorway. There is 
 something in the juxtaposition of these two enemies full 
 of tragic irony. It is grim to think of bearded men and 
 bitter women taking hateful counsel together about the 
 two hall-fires at night, when the sea boomed against the 
 foundations and the wild winter wind was loose over 
 the battlements. And in the study we may reconstruct 
 for ourselves some pale figure of what life then was. 
 Not so when we are there; when we are there such 
 thoughts come to us only to intensify a contrary impres- 
 sion, and association is turned against itself. I remem- 
 ber walking thither three afternoons in succession, my 
 eyes weary with being set against the wind, and how, 
 dropping suddenly over the edge of the down, I found 
 myself in a new world of warmth and shelter. The 
 wind, from which I had escaped, **as from an enemy," 
 was seemingly quite local. It carried no clouds with it, 
 and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble- 
 the sea within view. The two castles, black and ruin- 
 ous as the rocks about them, were still distinguishable 
 from these by something more insecure and fantastic in 
 the outline, something that the last storm had left im- 
 minent and the next would demolish entirely. It would 
 be difficult to render in words the sense of peace that 
 took possession of me on these three afternoons. It 
 
 106 
 
ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES 
 
 was helped out, as I have said, by the contrast. The 
 shore was battered and bemauled by previous tempests ; 
 I had the memory at heart of the insane strife of the 
 pigmies who had erected these two castles and lived in 
 them in mutual distrust and enmity, and knew I had 
 only to put my head out of this little cup of shelter to 
 find the hard wind blowing in my eyes ; and yet there 
 were the two great tracts of motionless blue air and 
 peaceful sea looking on, unconcerned and apart, at the 
 turmoil of the present moment and the memorials of 
 the precarious past. There is ever something transitory 
 and fretful in the impression of a high wind under a 
 cloudless sky ; it seems to have no root in the constitu- 
 tion of things; it must speedily begin to faint and 
 wither away like a cut flower. And on those days the 
 thought of the wind and the thought of human life 
 came very near together in my mind. Our noisy years 
 did indeed seem moments in the being of the eternal 
 silence: and the wind, in the face of that great field of 
 stationary blue, was as the wind of a butterfly's wing. 
 The placidity of the sea was a thing likewise to be re- 
 membered. Shelley speaks of the sea as " hungering 
 for calm," and in this place one learned to understand 
 the phrase. Looking down into these green waters 
 from the broken edge of the rock, or swimming "lei- 
 surely in the sunshine, it seemed to me that they were 
 enjoying their own tranquillity; and when now and 
 again it was disturbed by a wind ripple on the surface, 
 or the quick black passage of a fish far below, they set- 
 tled back again (one could fancy) with relief. 
 
 On shore too, in the little nook of shelter, everything 
 was so subdued and still that the least particular struck 
 
 107 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 in me a pleasurable surprise. The desultory crackling 
 of the whin-pods in the afternoon sun usurped the ear. 
 The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been satu- 
 rated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it 
 into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. 
 I remember that I was haunted by two lines of French 
 verse; in some dumb way they seemed to fit my sur- 
 roundings and give expression to the contentment that 
 was in me, and I kept repeating to myself— 
 
 " Mon coeur est un luth suspendu, 
 Sitot qu'on le touche, il resonnc." 
 
 I can give no reason why these lines came to me at 
 this time; and for that very cause I repeat them here. 
 For all I know, they may serve to complete the impres- 
 sion in the mind of the reader, as they were certainly a 
 part of it for me. 
 
 And this happened to me in the place of all others 
 where I liked least to stay. When I think of it I grow 
 ashamed of my own ingratitude. " Out of the strong 
 came forth sweetness." There, in the bleak and gusty 
 North, I received, perhaps, my strongest impression of 
 peace. I saw the sea to be great and calm ; and the 
 earth, in that little corner, was all alive and friendly to 
 me. So, wherever a man is, he will find something to 
 please and pacify him : in the town he will meet pleas- 
 ant faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers 
 at a window, or hear a cage-bird singing at the corner 
 of the gloomiest street; and for the country, there is no 
 country without some amenity— let him only look for 
 it in the right spirit, and he will surely find. 
 
 108 
 
VI 
 
 AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 (1875) 
 
 ** Nous ne decrivons jamais mieux la nature que lorsque nous nous 
 efforf ons d'exprimer sobrement et simplement I'impression que nous en 
 avons re9ue."--M. Andre Theuriet, " L'Automne dans les bois," 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, ist Oct., 1874, p. 562.1 
 
 A COUNTRY rapidly passed through under favourable 
 auspices may leave upon us a unity of impression that 
 would only be disturbed and dissipated if we stayed 
 longer. Clear vision goes with the quick foot. Things 
 fall for us into a sort of natural perspective when we 
 see them for a moment in going by; we generalise 
 boldly and simply, and are gone before the sun is over- 
 cast, before the rain falls, before the season can steal 
 like a dial-hand from his figure, before the lights and 
 shadows, shifting round towards nightfall, can show 
 
 1 I had nearly finished the transcription of the following pages, when 
 I saw on a friend's table the number containing the piece from which 
 this sentence is extracted, and, struck with a similarity of title, took it 
 home with me and read it with indescribable satisfaction. I do not 
 know whether I more envy M. Theuriet the pleasure of having written 
 this delightful article, or the reader the pleasure, which I hope he has 
 still before him, of reading it once and again, and lingering over the 
 passages that please him most. 
 
 109 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 US the Other side of things, and belie what they showed 
 us in the morning. We expose our mind to the land- 
 scape (as we would expose the prepared plate in the 
 camera) for the moment only during which the effect 
 endures ; and we are away before the effect can change. 
 Hence we shall have in our memories a long scroll of 
 continuous wayside pictures, all imbued already with 
 the prevailing sentiment of the season, the weather, 
 and the landscape, and certain to be unified more and 
 more, as time goes on, by the unconscious processes of 
 thought. So that we who have only looked at a coun- 
 try over our shoulder, so to speak, as we went by, will 
 have a conception of it far more memorable and articu- 
 late than a man who has lived there all his life from a 
 child upwards, and had his impression of to-day modi- 
 fied by that of to-morrow, and belied by that of the day 
 after, till at length the stable characteristics of the coun- 
 try are all blotted out from him behind the confusion of 
 variable effect. 
 
 I began my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of 
 all humours : that in which a person, with a sufficiency 
 of money and a knapsack, turns his back on a town 
 and walks forward into a country of which he knows 
 only by the vague report of others. Such an one has 
 not surrendered his will and contracted for the next 
 hundred miles, like a man on a railway. He may 
 change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways 
 meet, follow vague preferences freely and go the low 
 road or the high, choose the shadow or the sunshine, 
 suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that turns im- 
 mediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies 
 open before him into the distance, and shows him the 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, 
 or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. In 
 short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, with- 
 out a pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to 
 his self-respect. It is true, however, that most men do 
 not possess the faculty of free action, the priceless gift 
 of being able to live for the moment only; and as they 
 begin to go forward on their journey, they will find 
 that they have made for themselves new fetters. Slight 
 projects they may have entertained for a moment, half 
 in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not why. 
 They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of 
 which I spoke above; and the mere fact that their in- 
 formant mentioned one village and not another will 
 compel their footsteps with inexplicable power. And 
 yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious liberty, 
 and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on 
 them to return; and some passion, some duty, some 
 worthy or unworthy expectation, will set its hand upon 
 their shoulder and lead them back into the old paths. 
 Once and again we have all made the experiment. We 
 know the end of it right well. And yet if we make it 
 for the hundredth time to-morrow, it will have the same 
 charm as ever; our heart will beat and our eyes will be 
 bright, as we leave the town behind us, and we shall 
 feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that we 
 are cutting ourselves loose for ever from our whole past 
 life, with all its sins and follies and circumscriptions, and 
 go forward as a new creature into a new world. 
 
 It was well, perhaps, that I had this first enthusiasm 
 to encourage me up the long hill above High Wycombe; 
 for the day was a bad day for walking at best, and now 
 
 III 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 began to draw towards afternoon, dull, heavy, and life- 
 less. A pall of grey cloud covered the sky, and its 
 colour reacted on the colour of the landscape. Near at 
 hand, indeed, the hedgerow trees were still fairly green, 
 shot through with bright autumnal yellows, bright as 
 sunshine. But a little way off, the solid bricks of wood- 
 land that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were not 
 green, but russet and grey, and ever less russet and 
 more grey as they drew off into the distance. As they 
 drew off into the distance, also, the woods seemed to 
 mass themselves together, and lie thin and straight, like 
 clouds, upon the limit of one's view. Not that this 
 massing was complete, or gave the idea of any extent 
 of forest, for every here and there the trees would break 
 up and go down into a valley in open order, or stand in 
 long Indian file along the horizon, tree after tree relieved, 
 foolishly enough, against the sky. I say foolishly 
 enough, although I have seen the effect employed clev- 
 erly in art, and such long line of single trees thrown out 
 against the customary sunset of a Japanese picture with 
 a certain fantastic effect that was not to be despised; 
 but this was over water and level land, where it did not 
 jar, as here, with the soft contour of hills and valleys. 
 The whole scene had an indefinable look of being 
 painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there 
 was something so sketchy and merely impressional 
 about these distant single trees on the horizon that one 
 was forced to think of it all as of a clever French land- 
 scape. For it is rather in nature that we see resem- 
 blance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a 
 hundred times, " How like a picture! " for once that we 
 say, " How like the truth ! " The forms in which we 
 
 112 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 learn to think of landscape are forms that we have got 
 from painted canvas. Any man can see and understand 
 a picture ; it is reserved for the few to separate anything 
 out of the confusion of nature, and see that distinctly 
 and with intelligence. 
 
 The sun came out before I had been long on my way; 
 and as I had got by that time to the top of the ascent, 
 and was now treading a labyrinth of confined by-roads, 
 my whole view brightened considerably in colour, for 
 it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and the 
 distance I could see no longer. Overhead there was a 
 wonderful carolling of larks which seemed to follow me 
 as I went. Indeed, during all the time I was in that 
 country the larks did not desert me. The air was alive 
 with them from High Wycombe to Tring; and as, day 
 after day, their " shrill delight " fell upon me out of the 
 vacant sky, they began to take such a prominence over 
 other conditions, and form so integral a part of my con- 
 ception of the country, that I could have baptised it " The 
 Country of Larks." This, of course, might just as well 
 have been in early spring ; but everything else was deeply 
 imbued with the sentiment of the later year. There was 
 no stir of insects in the grass. The sunshine was more 
 golden, and gave less heat than summer sunshine; and 
 the shadows under the hedge were somewhat blue and 
 misty. It was only in autumn that you could have seen 
 the mingled green and yellow of the elm foliage, and 
 the fallen leaves that lay about the road, and covered 
 the surface of wayside pools so thickly that the sun 
 was reflected only here and there from little joints and 
 pinholes in that brown coat of proof; or that your ear 
 would have been troubled, as you went forward, by 
 
 n3 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the occasional report of fowling-pieces from all direc- 
 tions and all degrees of distance. 
 
 For a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of 
 human activity that came to disturb me as I walked. 
 The lanes were profoundly still. They would have been 
 sad but for the sunshine and the singing of the larks. 
 And as it was, there came over me at times a feeling of 
 isolation that was not disagreeable, and yet was enough 
 to make me quicken my steps eagerly when I saw some 
 one before me on the road. This fellow-voyager proved 
 to be no less a person than the parish constable. It had 
 occurred to me that in a district which was so little 
 populous and so well wooded, a criminal of any intelli- 
 gence might play hide-and-seek with the authorities for 
 months ; and this idea was strengthened by the aspect 
 of the portly constable as he walked by my side with 
 deliberate dignity and turned-out toes. But a few min- 
 utes' converse set my heart at rest. These rural crimi- 
 nals are very tame birds, it appeared. If my informant 
 did not immediately lay his hand on an offender, he was 
 content to wait; some evening after nightfall there 
 would come a tap at his door, and the outlaw, weary 
 of outlawry, would give himself quietly up to undergo 
 sentence, and resume his position in the life of the 
 country-side. Married men caused him no disquietude 
 whatever; he had them fast by the foot. Sooner or 
 later they would come back to see their wives, a peep- 
 ing neighbour would pass the word, and my portly con- 
 stable would walk quietly over and take the bird sitting. 
 And if there were a few who had no particular ties in 
 the neighbourhood, and preferred to shift into another 
 county when they fell into trouble, their departure 
 
 114 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 moved the placid constable in no degree. He was of 
 Dogberry's opinion ; and if a man would not stand in 
 the Prince's name, he took no note of him, but let him 
 go, and thanked God he was rid of a knave. And 
 surely the crime and the law were in admirable keeping; 
 rustic constable was well met with rustic offender. The 
 officer sitting at home over a bit of fire until the crimi- 
 nal came to visit him, and the criminal .coming— it was 
 a fair match. One felt as if this must have been the 
 order in that delightful seaboard Bohemia where Florizel 
 and Perdita courted in such sweet accents, and the Puri- 
 tan sang psalms to hornpipes, and the four-and-twenty 
 shearers danced with nosegays in their bosoms, and 
 chanted their three songs apiece at the old shepherd's 
 festival; and one could not help picturing to oneself 
 what havoc among good people's purses, and tribula- 
 tion for benignant constables, might be worked here 
 by the arrival, over stile and footpath, of a new Au- 
 tolycus. 
 
 Bidding good-morning to my fellow-traveller, I left the 
 road and struck across country. It was rather a revela- 
 tion to pass from between the hedgerows and find quite 
 a bustle on the other side, a great coming and going of 
 school-children upon by-paths, and, in every second 
 field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. 
 The way I followed took me through many fields thus 
 occupied, and through many strips of plantation, and 
 then over a little space of smooth turf, very pleasant to 
 the feet, set with tall fir-trees and clamorous with rooks 
 making ready for the winter, and so back again into 
 the quiet road. I was now not far from the end of my 
 day's journey. A few hundred yards farther, and, 
 
 115 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 passing through a gap in the hedge, I began to go down 
 hill through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches'. 
 I was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun 
 still coloured the upmost boughs of the wood, and made 
 a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. A little faint 
 vapour lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of 
 the hollow; and from farther up 1 heard from time to 
 time an outburst of gross laughter, as though clowns 
 were making merry in the bush. There was something 
 about the atmosphere that brought all sights and sounds 
 home to one with a singular purity, so that I felt as if 
 my senses had been washed with water. After I had 
 crossed the little zone of mist, the path began to remount 
 the hill; and just as I, mounting along with it, had got 
 back again, from the head downwards, into the thin 
 golden sunshine, I saw in front of me a donkey tied to 
 a tree. Now, I have a certain liking for donkeys, prin- 
 cipally, I believe, because of the delightful things that 
 Sterne has written of them. But this was not after tht 
 pattern of the ass at Lyons. He was of a white colour, 
 that seemed to fit him rather for rare festal occasions 
 than for constant drudgery. Besides, he was very 
 small, and of the daintiest proportions you can imagine 
 in a donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to 
 look at him to see he had never worked. There was 
 something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look 
 too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have 
 survived much cudgelling. It was plain that these feet 
 had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had 
 plodded with a freight through miry lanes. He was 
 altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and 
 though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rue- 
 
 ii6 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 ful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by 
 impudently wagging his ears at me as I drew near. I 
 say he was somewhat solemnised just then ; for, with 
 the admirable instinct of all men and animals under re- 
 straint, he had so wound and wound the halter about 
 the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor 
 so much as put down his head to browse. There he 
 stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I be- 
 lieve, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully 
 revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again 
 another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still 
 remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for 
 the creature took hold upon me. I went up, and, not 
 without some trouble on my part, and much distrust 
 and resistance on the part of Neddy, got him forced 
 backwards until the whole length of the halter was set 
 loose, and he was once more as free a donkey as I dared 
 to make him. I was pleased (as people are) with this 
 friendly action to a fellow-creature in tribulation, and 
 glanced back over my shoulder to see how he was prof- 
 iting by his freedom. The brute was looking after me ; 
 and no sooner did he catch my eye than he put up his 
 long white face into the air, pulled an impudent mouth 
 at me, and began to bray derisively. If ever any one 
 person made a grimace at another, that donkey made a 
 grimace at me. The hardened ingratitude of his behav- 
 iour, and the impertinence that inspired his whole face 
 as he curled up his lip, and showed his teeth, and began 
 to bray, so tickled me, and was so much in keeping 
 with what I had imagined to myself about his charac- 
 ter, that 1 could not find it in my heart to be angry, and 
 burst into a peal of hearty laughter. This seemed to 
 
 117 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by 
 way of rejoinder; and we went on for a while, braying 
 and laughing, until I began to grow a-weary of it, and, 
 shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. 
 In so doing— it was like going suddenly into cold water 
 —I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. 
 She was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had 
 concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic 
 who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the 
 placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she 
 had already recommended her spirit most religiously to 
 Heaven, and prepared herself for the worst. And so, 
 to reassure her, I uncovered and besought her, after a 
 very staid fashion, to put me on my way to Great Mis- 
 senden. Her voice trembled a little, to be sure, but I 
 think her mind was set at rest; and she told me, very 
 explicitly, to follow the path until 1 came to the end of 
 the wood, and then I should see the village below me 
 in the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courte- 
 sies, the little old maid and I went on our respective 
 ways. 
 
 Nor had she misled me. Great Missenden was close 
 at hand, as she had said, in the trough of a gentle valley, 
 with many great elms about it. The smoke from its 
 chimneys went up pleasantly in the afternoon sunshine. 
 The sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled the neigh- 
 bouring fields and hung about the quaint street corners. 
 A little above, the church sits well back on its haunches 
 against the hill-side— an attitude for a church, you know, 
 that makes it look as if it could be ever so much higher 
 if it liked ; and the trees grew about it thickly, so as to 
 make a density of shade in the churchyard. A very 
 
 ii8 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 quiet place it looks; and yet I saw many boards and 
 posters about threatening dire punishment against 
 those who broke the church windows or defaced the 
 precinct, and offering rewards for the apprehension of 
 those who had done the like already. It was fair-day 
 in Great Missenden. There were three stalls set up, 
 sub jove, for the sale of pastry and cheap toys; and a 
 great number of holiday children thronged about the 
 stalls, and noisily invaded every corner of the straggling 
 village. They came round me by coveys, blowing simul- 
 taneously upon penny trumpets as though they imagined 
 I should fall to pieces like the battlements of Jericho. I 
 noticed one among them who could make a wheel of 
 himself like a London boy, and seemingly enjoyed a 
 grave pre-eminence upon the strength of the accomplish- 
 ment. By-and-by, however, the trumpets began to 
 weary me, and I went indoors, leaving the fair, I fancy, 
 at its height. 
 
 Night had fallen before I ventured forth again. It 
 was pitch-dark in the village street, and the darkness 
 seemed only the greater for a light here and there in an 
 uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one 
 such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw 
 within a charming genre picture. In a room, all white 
 wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect gem of col- 
 our after the black, empty darkness in which I had been 
 groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as I 
 could make out, to an attentive child upon her knee, 
 while an old woman sat placidly dozing over the fire. 
 You may be sure I was not behindhand with' a story for 
 myself— a good old story after the manner of G. P. R. 
 James and the village melodramas, with a wicked 
 
 119 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 squire, and poachers, and an attorney, and a virtuous 
 young man with a genius for mechanics, who should 
 love, and protect, and ultimately marry the girl in the 
 crimson room. Baudelaire has a few dainty sentences 
 on the fancies that we are inspired with when we look 
 through a window into other people's lives; and I think 
 Dickens has somewhere enlarged on the same text. 
 The subject, at least, is one that I am seldom weary of 
 entertaining. I remember, night after night, at Brus- 
 sels, watching a good family sup together, make merry, 
 and retire to rest ; and night after night I waited to see 
 the candles lit, and the salad made, and the last salu- 
 tations dutifully exchanged, without any abatement of 
 interest. Night after night I found the scene rivet my 
 attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner 
 of quaint imaginations. Much of the pleasure of the 
 Arabian Nights hinges upon this Asmodean interest; 
 and we are not weary of lifting other people's roofs, and 
 going about behind the scenes of life with the Caliph 
 and the serviceable Giaffar. It is a salutary exercise, 
 besides ; it is salutary to get out of ourselves and see 
 people living together in perfect unconsciousness of our 
 existence, as they will live when we are gone. If to- 
 morrow the blow falls, and the worst of our ill fears is 
 realised, the girl will none the less tell stories to the 
 child on her lap in the cottage at Great Missenden, nor 
 the good Belgians light their candle, and mix their salad, 
 and go orderly to bed. 
 
 The next morning was sunny overhead and damp 
 underfoot, with a thrill in the air like a reminiscence of 
 frost. I went up into the sloping garden behind the inn 
 and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 my landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and 
 cauliflowers that had been spoiled by caterpillars. She 
 had been so much pleased in the summer-time, she said, 
 to see the garden all hovered over by white butterflies. 
 And now, look at the end of it! She could nowise 
 reconcile this with her moral sense. And, indeed, un- 
 less these butterflies are created with a side-look to the 
 composition of improving apologues, it is not altogether 
 easy, even for people who have read Hegel and Dr. 
 M'Cosh, to decide intelligibly upon the issue raised. 
 Then I fell into a long and abstruse calculation with my 
 landlord; having for object to compare the distance 
 driven by him during eight years' service on the box of 
 the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world 
 itself. We tackled the question most conscientiously, 
 made all necessary allowance for Sundays and leap- 
 years, and were just coming to a triumphant conclusion 
 of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna 
 in my information. I did not know the circumference 
 of the earth. The landlord knew it, to be sure— plainly 
 he had made the same calculation twice and once be- 
 fore, —but he wanted confidence in his own figures, and 
 from the moment I showed myself so poor a second 
 seemed to lose all interest in the result. 
 
 Wendover (which was my next stage) lies in the 
 same valley with Great Missenden, but at the foot of it, 
 where the hills trend off on either hand like a coast-line, 
 and a great hemisphere of plain lies, like a sea, before 
 one. I went up a chalky road, until I had a good out- 
 look over the place. The vale, as it opened out into the 
 plain, was shallow, and a little bare, perhaps, but full 
 of graceful convolutions. From the level to which I 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 have now attained the fields were exposed before me 
 like a map, and I could see all that bustle of autumn 
 field-work which had been hid from me yesterday be- 
 hind the hedgerows, or shown to me only for a moment 
 as I followed the footpath. Wendover lay well down 
 in the midst, with mountains of foliage about it. The 
 great plain stretched away to the northward, variegated 
 near at hand with the quaint pattern of the fields, but 
 growing ever more and more indistinct, until it became 
 a mere hurly-burly of trees and bright crescents of river, 
 and snatches of slanting road, and finally melted into the 
 ambiguous cloud-land over the horizon. The sky was 
 an opal-grey, touched here and there with blue, and 
 with certain faint russets that looked as if they were 
 reflections of the colour of the autumnal woods below. 
 I could hear the ploughmen shouting to their horses, the 
 uninterrupted carol of larks innumerable overhead, and, 
 from a field where the shepherd was marshalling his 
 flock, a sweet tumultuous tinkle of sheep-bells. All these 
 noises came to me very thin and distinct in the clear air. 
 There was a wonderful sentiment of distance and 
 atmosphere about the day and the place. 
 
 I mounted the hill yet farther by a rough staircase of 
 chalky footholds cut in the turf. The hills about Wen- 
 dover and, as far as 1 could see, all the hills in Bucking- 
 hamshire, wear a sort of hood of beech plantation ; but 
 in this particular case the hood had been suffered to ex- 
 tend itself into something more like a cloak, and hung 
 down about the shoulders of the hill in wide folds, in- 
 stead of lying flatly along the summit. The trees grew 
 so close, and their boughs were so matted together, that 
 the whole wood looked as dense as a bush of heather. 
 
 122 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 The prevailing colour was a dull, smouldering red, 
 touched here and there with vivid yellow. But the 
 autumn had scarce advanced beyond the outworks; it 
 was still almost summer in the heart of the wood; and 
 as soon as I had scrambled through the hedge, I found 
 myself in a dim green forest atmosphere under eaves of 
 virgin foliage. In places where the wood had itself for a 
 background and the trees were massed together thickly, 
 the colour became intensified and almost gem-like: a 
 perfect fire of green, that seemed none the less green for 
 a few specks of autumn gold. None of the trees were 
 of any considerable age or stature; but they grew well 
 together, I have said; and as the road turned and wound 
 among them, they fell into pleasant groupings and broke 
 the light up pleasantly. Sometimes there would be a 
 colonnade of slim, straight tree-stems with the light 
 running down them as down the shafts of pillars, that 
 looked as if it ought to lead to something, and led only 
 to a corner of sombre and intricate jungle. Sometimes 
 a spray of delicate foliage would be thrown out flat, the 
 light lying flatly along the top of it, so that against a 
 dark background it seemed almost luminous. There 
 was a great hush over the thicket (for, indeed, it was 
 more of a thicket than a wood); and the vague 
 rumours that went among the tree-tops, and the occa- 
 sional rustling of big birds or hares among the under- 
 growth, had in them a note of almost treacherous 
 stealthiness, that put the imagination on its guard and 
 made me walk warily on the russet carpeting of last 
 year's leaves. The spirit of the place seemed to be all 
 attention; the wood listened as I went, and held its 
 breath to number my footfalls. One could not help 
 
 123 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 feeling that there ought to be some reason for this still- 
 ness: whether, as the bright old legend goes, Pan lay 
 somewhere near in siesta, or whether, perhaps, the 
 heaven was meditating rain, and the first drops would 
 soon come pattering through the leaves. It was not 
 unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and 
 anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened 
 only where the path lay much upon the slope, and 
 there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood 
 at some distance below the level at which I chanced my- 
 self to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of fore- 
 shortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian 
 houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment 
 in the aperture, and grow larger and smaller, and change 
 and melt one into another, as I continued to go forward, 
 and so shift my point of view. 
 
 For ten minutes, perhaps, I had heard from some- 
 where before me in the wood a strange, continuous 
 noise, as of clucking, cooing, and gobbling, now and 
 again interrupted by a harsh scream. As I advanced 
 towards this noise, it began to grow lighter about me, 
 and I caught sight, through the trees, of sundry gables 
 and enclosure walls, and something like the tops of a 
 rickyard. And sure enough, a rickyard it proved to be, 
 and a neat little farm-steading, with the beech-woods 
 growing almost to the door of it. Just before me, how- 
 ever, as I came up the path, the trees drew back and let 
 in a wide flood of daylight on to a circular lawn. It was 
 here that the noises had their origin. More than a score 
 of peacocks (there are altogether thirty at the farm), a 
 proper contingent of peahens, and a great multitude that 
 I could not number of more ordinary barn-door fowls, 
 
 124 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 were all feeding together on this little open lawn among 
 the beeches. They fed in a dense crowd, which swayed 
 to and fro, and came hither and thither as by a sort of 
 tide, and of which the surface was agitated like the sur- 
 face of a sea as each bird guzzled his head along the 
 ground after the scattered corn. The clucking, cooing 
 noise that had led me thither was formed by the blend- 
 ing together of countless expressions of individual con- 
 tentment into one collective expression of contentment, 
 or general grace during meat. Every now and again a 
 big peacock would separate himself from the mob and 
 take a stately turn or two about the lawn, or perhaps 
 mount for a moment upon the rail, and there shrilly 
 publish to the world his satisfaction with himself and 
 what he had to eat. It happened, for my sins, that none 
 of these admirable birds had anything beyond the merest 
 rudiment of a tail. Tails, it seemed, were out of season 
 just then. But they had their necks for all that; and by 
 their necks alone they do as much surpass all the other 
 birds of our grey climate as they fall in quality of song 
 below the blackbird or the lark. Surely the peacock, 
 with its incomparable parade of glorious colour and the 
 scrannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from 
 its painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies 
 at Great Missenden, have been invented by some skilful 
 fabulist for the consolation and support of homely vir- 
 tue: or rather, perhaps, by a fabulist not quite so skilful, 
 who made points for the moment without having a 
 studious enough eye to the complete effect ; for 1 thought 
 these melting greens and blues so beautiful that after- 
 noon, that I would have given them my vote just then 
 before the sweetest pipe in all the spring woods. For 
 
 125 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 indeed there is no piece of colour of the same extent in 
 nature, that will so flatter and satisfy the lust of a man's 
 eyes; and to come upon so many of them, after these 
 acres of stone-coloured heavens and russet woods, and 
 grey-brown ploughlands and white roads, was like 
 going three whole days' journey to the southward, or 
 a month back into the summer. 
 
 1 was sorry to leave Peacock Farm— for so the place' 
 is called, after the name of its splendid pensioners— and 
 go forwards again in the quiet woods. It began to grow 
 both damp and dusk under the beeches; and as the day 
 declined the colour faded out of the foliage ; and shadow, 
 without form and void, took the place of all the fine 
 tracery of leaves and delicate gradations of living green 
 that had before accompanied my walk. I had been 
 sorry to leave Peacock Farm, but I was not sorry to find 
 myself once more in the open road, under a pale and 
 somewhat troubled-looking evening sky, and put my 
 best foot foremost for the inn at Wendover. 
 
 Wendover, in itself, is a straggling, purposeless sort 
 of place. Everybody seems to have had his own opin- 
 ion as to how the street should go; or rather, every now 
 and then a man seems to have arisen with a new idea on 
 the subject, and led away a little sect of neighbours to 
 join in his heresy. It would have somewhat the look 
 of an abortive watering-place, such as we may now see 
 them here and there along the coast, but for the age of 
 the houses, the comely quiet design of some of them, 
 and the look of long habitation, of a life that is settled 
 and rooted, and makes it worth while to train flowers 
 about the windows, and otherwise shape the dwelling 
 to the humour of the inhabitant. The church, which 
 
 126 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 might perhaps have served as rallying-point for these 
 loose houses, and pulled the township into something 
 like intelligible unity, stands some distance off among 
 great trees ; but the inn (to take the public buildings in 
 order of importance) is in what I understand to be the 
 principal street: a pleasant old house, with bay-win- 
 dows, and three peaked gables, and many swallows' 
 nests plastered about the eaves. 
 
 The interior of the inn was answerable to the outside : 
 indeed, I never saw any room much more to be admired 
 than the low wainscoted parlour in which I spent the 
 remainder of the evening. It was a short oblong in 
 shape, save that the fireplace was built across one of the 
 angles so as to cut it partially off, and the opposite angle 
 was similarly truncated by a corner cupboard. The 
 wainscot was white, and there was a Turkey carpet on 
 the floor, so old that it might have been imported by 
 Walter Shandy before he retired, worn almost through 
 in some places, but in others making a good show of 
 blues and oranges, none the less harmonious for being 
 somewhat faded. The corner cupboard was agreeable 
 in design; and there were just the right things upon 
 the shelves— decanters and tumblers, and blue plates, 
 and one red rose in a glass of water. The furniture was 
 old-fashioned and stiff. Everything was in keeping, 
 down to the ponderous leaden inkstand on the round 
 table. And you may fancy how pleasant it looked, all 
 flushed and flickered over by the light of a brisk com- 
 panionable fire, and seen, in a strange, tilted sort of 
 perspective, in the three compartments of the old mirror 
 above the chimney. As I sat reading in the great arm- 
 chair, I kept looking round with the tail of my eye at the 
 
 127 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 quaint, bright picture that was about me, and could not 
 help some pleasure and a certain childish pride in form- 
 ing part of it. The book I read was about Italy in the 
 early Renaissance, the pageantries and the light loves of 
 princes, the passion of men for learning, and poetry, 
 and art; but it was written, by good luck, after a solid, 
 prosaic fashion, that suited the room infinitely more 
 nearly than the matter; and the result was that I thought 
 less, perhaps, of Lippo Lippi, or Lorenzo, or Politian, 
 than of the good Englishman who had written in that 
 volume what he knew of them, and taken so much 
 pleasure in his solemn polysyllables. 
 
 I was not left without society. My landlord had a 
 very pretty little daughter, whom we shall call Lizzie. 
 If I had made any notes at the time, I might be able to 
 tell you something definite of her appearance. But 
 faces have a trick of growing more and more spiritual- 
 ised and abstract in the memory, until nothing remains 
 of them but a look, a haunting expression; just that 
 secret quality in a face that is apt to slip out somehow 
 under the cunningest painter's touch, and leave the por- 
 trait dead for the lack of it. And if it is hard to catch 
 with the finest of camel's-hair pencils, you may think 
 how hopeless it must be to pursue after it with clumsy 
 words. If I say, for instance, that this look, which I 
 remember as Lizzie, was something wistful that seemed 
 partly to come of slyness and in part of simplicity, and 
 that I am inclined to imagine it had something to do 
 with the daintiest suspicion of a cast in one of her large 
 eyes, I shall have said all that I can, and the reader will 
 not be much advanced towards comprehension. I had 
 struck up an acquaintance with this little damsel in the 
 
 128 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 morning, and professed much interest in her dolls, and 
 an impatient desire to see the large one which was kept 
 locked away for great occasions. And so I had not been 
 very long in the parlour before the door opened, and in 
 came Miss Lizzie with two dolls tucked clumsily under 
 her arm. She was followed by her brother John, a year 
 or so younger than herself, not simply to play propriety 
 at our interview, but to show his own two whips in 
 emulation of his sister's dolls. I did my best to make 
 myself agreeable to my visitors, showing much admira- 
 tion for the dolls and dolls' dresses, and, with a very 
 serious demeanour, asking many questions about their 
 age and character. I do not think that Lizzie distrusted 
 my sincerity, but it was evident that she was both bewil- 
 dered and a little contemptuous. Although she was ready 
 herself to treat her dolls as if they were alive, she seemed 
 to think rather poorly of any grown person who could 
 fall heartily into the spirit of the fiction. Sometimes she 
 would look at me with gravity and a sort of disquietude, 
 as though she really feared I must be out of my wits. 
 Sometimes, as when I inquired too particularly into the 
 question of their names, she laughed at me so long and 
 heartily that 1 began to feel almost embarrassed. But 
 when, in an evil moment, I asked to be allowed to 
 kiss one of them, she could keep herself no longer to 
 herself. Clambering down from the chair on which she 
 sat perched to show me, Cornelia-like, her jewels, she 
 ran straight out of the room and into the bar— it was 
 just across the passage,— and I could hear her telling her 
 mother in loud tones, but apparently more in sorrow 
 than in merriment, that the gentleman in the parlour 
 wanted to kiss Dolly, I fancy she was determined to 
 
 129 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 save me from this humiliating action, even in spite of 
 myself, for she never gave me the desired permission. 
 She reminded me of an old dog I once knew, who 
 would never suffer the master of the house to dance, 
 out of an exaggerated sense of the dignity of that mas- 
 ter's place and carriage. 
 
 After the young people were gone there was but one 
 more incident ere I went to bed. I heard a party of 
 children go up and down the dark street for a while, 
 singing together sweetly. And the mystery of this little 
 incident was so pleasant to me that I purposely refrained 
 from asking who they were, and wherefore they went 
 singing at so late an hour. One can rarely be in a 
 pleasant place without meeting with some pleasant ac- 
 cident. I have a conviction that these children would 
 not have gone singing before the inn unless the inn- 
 parlour had been the delightful place it was. At least, 
 if I had been in the customary public room of the 
 modern hotel, with all its disproportions and discom- 
 forts, my ears would have been dull, and there would 
 have been some ugly temper or other uppermost in my 
 spirit, and so they would have wasted their songs upon 
 an unworthy hearer. 
 
 Next morning I went along to visit the church. It is 
 a long-backed red-and-white building, very much 
 restored, and stands in a pleasant graveyard among 
 those great trees of which I have spoken already. The 
 sky was drowned in a mist. Now and again pulses of 
 cold wind went about the enclosure, and set the branches 
 busy overhead, and the dead leaves scurrying into the 
 angles of the church buttresses. Now and again, also, 
 I could hear the dull sudden fall of a chestnut among 
 
 130 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 the grass— the dog would bark before the rectory door 
 —or there would come a clinking of pails from the 
 stable-yard behind. But in spite of these occasional 
 interruptions— in spite, also, of the continuous autumn 
 twittering that filled the trees— the chief impression 
 somehow was one as of utter silence, insomuch that the 
 little greenish bell that peeped out of a window in the 
 tower disquieted me with a sense of some possible and 
 more inharmonious disturbance. The grass was wet, 
 as if with a hoar-frost that had just been melted. I do 
 not know that ever I saw a morning more autumnal. As 
 I went to and fro among the graves, I saw some flowers 
 set reverently before a recently erected tomb, and draw- 
 ing near was almost startled to find they lay on the grave 
 of a man seventy-two years old when he died. We are 
 accustomed to strew flowers only over the young, 
 where love has been cut short untimely, and great 
 possibilities have been restrained by death. We strew 
 them there in token that these possibilities, in some 
 deeper sense, shall yet be realised, and the touch of our 
 dead loves remain with us and guide us to the end. 
 And yet there was more significance, perhaps, and per- 
 haps a greater consolation, in this little nosegay on the 
 grave of one who had died old. We are apt to make so 
 much of the tragedy of death, and think so little of the 
 enduring tragedy of some men's lives, that we see more 
 to lament for in a life cut off in the midst of usefulness 
 and love, than in one that miserably survives all love and 
 usefulness, and goes about the world the phantom of 
 itself, without hope, or joy, or any consolation. These 
 flowers seemed not so much the token of love that sur- 
 vived death, as of something yet more beautiful— of love 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 that had lived a man's life out to an end with him, and 
 been faithful and companionable, and not weary of lov- 
 ing, throughout all these years. 
 
 The morning cleared a little, and the sky was once 
 more the old stone-coloured vault over the sallow 
 meadows and the russet woods, as I set forth on a 
 dog-cart from Wendover to Tring. The road lay for a 
 good distance along the side of the hills, with the great 
 plain below on one hand, and the beech-woods above 
 on the other. The fields were busy with people plough- 
 ing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood 
 in the angle of the hedge, and I could see many a team 
 wait smoking in the furrow as ploughman or sower 
 stepped aside for a moment to take a draught. Over 
 all the brown ploughlands, and under all the leafless 
 hedgerows, there was a stout piece of labour abroad, 
 and, as it were, a spirit of picnic. The horses smoked 
 and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the 
 sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect 
 of large, open-air existence. The fellow who drove me 
 was something of a humourist; and his conversation 
 was all in praise of an agricultural labourer's way of life. 
 It was he who called my attention to these jugs of ale 
 by the hedgerow ; he could not sufficiently express the 
 liberality of these men's wages ; he told me how sharp 
 an appetite was given by breaking up the earth in the 
 morning air, whether with plough or spade, and cordially 
 admired this provision of nature. He sang Ofortunatos 
 agricolas! indeed, in every possible key, and with many 
 cunning inflections, till I began to wonder what was the 
 use of such people as Mr. Arch, and to sing the same 
 air myself in a more diffident manner. 
 
 »32 
 
AN AUTUMN EFFECT 
 
 Tring was reached, and then Tring railway-station; 
 for the two are not very near, the good people of Tring 
 having held the railway, of old days, in extreme appre- 
 hension, lest some day it should break loose in the town 
 and work mischief. I had a last walk, among russet 
 beeches as usual, and the air filled, as usual, with the 
 carolling of larks ; I heard shots fired in the distance, and 
 saw, as a new sign of the fulfilled autumn, two horse- 
 men exercising a pack of foxhounds. And then the 
 train came and carried me back to London. 
 
 US 
 
VII 
 
 A winter's walk in CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 (y4 Fragment: i8y6) 
 
 At the famous bridge of Doon, Kyle, the central dis- 
 trict of the shire of Ayr, marches with Carrick, the most 
 southerly. On the Carrick side of the river rises a hill 
 of somewhat gentle conformation, cleft with shallow 
 dells, and sown here and there with farms and tufts of 
 wood. Inland, it loses itself, joining, I suppose, the 
 great herd of similar hills that occupies the centre of the 
 Lowlands. Towards the sea, it swells out the coast- 
 line into a protuberance, like a bay-window in a plan, 
 and is fortified against the surf behind bold crags. 
 This hill is known as the Brown Hill of Carrick, or, more 
 shortly, Brown Carrick. 
 
 It had snowed overnight. The fields were all sheeted 
 up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their 
 shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like 
 children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had 
 made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the 
 sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was 
 a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light 
 on the summit of Brown Carrick showed where the sun 
 was trying to look through ; but along the horizon clouds 
 
 134 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no dis- 
 tinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders of 
 the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was 
 nothing but a great vacancy and blackness ; and the road 
 as it drew near the edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the 
 shores of creation and void space. 
 
 The snow crunched underfoot, and at farms all the 
 dogs broke out barking as they smelt a passer-by upon 
 the road. I met a fine old fellow, who might have sat 
 as the father in ''The Cottar's Saturday Night," and 
 who swore most heathenishly at a cow he was driving. 
 And a little after I scraped acquaintance with a poor body 
 tramping out to gather cockles. His face was wrinkled 
 by exposure; it was broken up into flakes and channels, 
 like mud beginning to dry, and weathered in two 
 colours, an incongruous pink and grey. He had a faint 
 air of being surprised— which, God knows, he might 
 well be— that life had gone so ill with him. The shape 
 of his trousers was in itself a jest, so strangely were 
 they bagged and ravelled about his knees ; and his coat 
 was all bedaubed with clay as though he had lain in a 
 rain-dub during the New Year's festivity. I will own 
 I was not sorry to think he had had a merry New Year, 
 and been young again for an evening; but I was sorry 
 to see the mark still there. One could not expect such 
 an old gentleman to be much of a dandy, or a great 
 student of respectability in dress ; but there might have 
 been a wife at home, who had brushed out similar stains 
 after fifty New Years, now become old, or a round- 
 armed daughter, who would wish to have him neat, 
 were it only out of self-respect and for the ploughman 
 sweetheart when he looks round at night. Plainly, 
 
 ^35 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 there was nothing of this in his life, and years and 
 loneliness hung heavily on his old arms. He was 
 seventy-six, he told me; and nobody would give a 
 day's work to a man that age: they would think he 
 could n't do it. " And, 'deed," he went on, with a sad 
 little chuckle, "'deed, I doubt if I could." He said 
 good-bye to me at a footpath, and crippled wearily off 
 to his work. It will make your heart ache if you think 
 of his old fingers groping in the snow. 
 
 He told me I was to turn down beside the school- 
 house for Dunure. And so, when I found a lone house 
 among the snow, and heard a babble of childish voices 
 from within, I struck off into a steep road leading down- 
 wards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the steep 
 hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consum- 
 mate disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and a 
 score or so of fishers' houses. Hard by, a few shards 
 of ruined castle overhang the sea, a few vaults, and one 
 tall gable honeycombed with windows. The snow lay 
 on the beach to the tide-mark. It was daubed on to the 
 sills of the ruin ; it roosted in the crannies of the rock 
 like white sea-birds ; even on outlying reefs there would 
 be a little cock of snow, like a toy lighthouse. Every- 
 thing was grey and white in a cold and dolorous sort 
 of shepherd's plaid. In the profound silence, broken 
 only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was sounded 
 twice; and I saw the postman, girt with two bags, 
 pause a moment at the end of the clachan for letters. 
 It is, perhaps, characteristic of Dunure that none were 
 brought him. 
 
 The people at the public-house did not seem well 
 pleased to see me, and though I would fain have stayed 
 
 n6 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 by the kitchen fire, sent me " ben the hoose " into the 
 guest-room. This guest-room at Dunure was painted 
 in quite aesthetic fashion. There are rooms in the same 
 taste not a hundred miles from London, where persons 
 of an extreme sensibility meet together without em- 
 barrassment. It was all in a fine dull bottle-green and 
 black; a grave harmonious piece of colouring, with 
 nothing, so far as coarser folk can judge, to hurt the 
 better feelings of the most exquisite purist. A cherry- 
 red half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in 
 the cold room, and threw quite a glow on the floor. 
 Twelve cockle-shells and a halfpenny china figure were 
 ranged solemnly along the mantel-shelf. Even the 
 spittoon was an original note, and instead of sawdust 
 contained sea-shells. And as for the hearth-rug, it 
 would merit an article to itself, and a coloured diagram 
 to help the text. It was patchwork, but the patchwork 
 of the poor: no glowing shreds of old brocade and 
 Chinese silk, shaken together in the kaleidoscope of 
 some tasteful housewife's fancy ; but a work of art in 
 its own way, and plainly a labour of love. The patches 
 came exclusively from people's raiment. There was no 
 colour more brilliant than a heather mixture; "My 
 Johnnie's grey breeks," well polished over the oar on 
 the boat's thwart, entered largely into its composition. 
 And the spoils of an old black cloth coat, that had been 
 many a Sunday to church, added something (save the 
 mark!) of preciousness to the material. 
 
 While I was at luncheon four carters came in— long- 
 limbed, muscular Ayrshire Scots, with lean, intelligent 
 faces. Four quarts of stout were ordered ; they kept 
 filling the tumbler with the other hand as they drank ; 
 
 137 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and in less time than it takes me to write these words 
 the four quarts were finished— another round was pro- 
 posed, discussed, and negatived— and they were creak- 
 ing out of the village with their carts. 
 
 The ruins drew you towards them. You never saw 
 any place more desolate from a distance, nor one that 
 less belied its promise near at hand. Some crows and 
 gulls flew away croaking as 1 scrambled in. The snow 
 had drifted into the vaults. The clachan dabbled with 
 snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in 
 the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, 
 as it looked from a loophole in Dunure, was cold, 
 wretched, and out-at-elbows. If you had been a wicked 
 baron and compelled to stay there all the afternoon, you 
 would have had a rare fit of remorse. How you would 
 have heaped up the fire and gnawed your fingers ! I 
 think it would have come to homicide before the even- 
 ing—if it were only for the pleasure of seeing something 
 red! And the masters of Dunure, it is to be noticed, 
 were remarkable of old for inhumanity. One of these 
 vaults where the snow had drifted was that "black 
 voute " where " Mr. Alane Stewart, Commendatour of 
 Crossraguel," endured his fiery trials. On the ist 
 and 7th of September, 1570 (ill dates for Mr. Alan!), 
 Gilbert, Earl of Cassilis, his chaplain, his baker, his 
 cook, his pantryman, and another servant, bound the 
 poor Commendator *'betwix an iron chimlay and a 
 fire," and there cruelly roasted him until he signed 
 away his abbacy. It is one of the ugliest stories of an 
 ugly period, but not, somehow, without such a flavour 
 of the ridiculous as makes it hard to sympathise quite 
 seriously with the victim. And it is consoling to re- 
 
 138 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 member that he got away at last, and kept his abbacy, 
 and, over and above, had a pension from the Earl until 
 he died. 
 
 Some way beyond Dunure a wide bay, of somewhat 
 less unkindly aspect, opened out. Colzean plantations 
 lay all along the steep shore, and there was a wooded 
 hill towards the centre, where the trees made a sort of 
 shadowy etching over the snow. The road went down 
 and up, and past a blacksmith's cottage that made fine 
 music in the valley. Three compatriots of Burns drove 
 up to me in a cart. They were all drunk, and asked 
 me jeeringly if this was the way to Dunure. 1 told 
 them it was; and my answer was received with un- 
 feigned merriment. One gentleman was so much 
 tickled he nearly fell out of the cart; indeed, he was 
 only saved by a companion, who either had not so fine 
 a sense of humour or had drunken less. 
 
 "The toune of Mayboll," says the inimitable Aber- 
 crummie,^ " stands upon an ascending ground from east 
 to west, and lyes open to the south. It hath one prin- 
 cipall street, with houses upon both sides, built of free- 
 stone; and it is beautifyed with the situation of two 
 castles, one at each end of this street. That on the east 
 belongs to the Erie of Cassilis. On the west end is a 
 castle, which belonged sometime to the laird of Blair- 
 quan, which is now the tolbuith, and is adorned with a 
 pyremide [conical roof], and a row of ballesters round 
 it raised from the top of the staircase, into which they 
 have mounted a fyne clock. There be four lanes which 
 pass from the principall street; one is called the Black 
 
 1 William Abercrombie. See Fasti Ecclesice Scoticance, under " May- 
 bole " (Part iii.). 
 
 >39 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Vennel, which is steep, declining to the south-west, and 
 leads to a lower street, which is far larger than the high 
 chiefe street, and it runs from the Kirkland to the Well 
 Trees, in which there have been many pretty buildings, 
 belonging to the severall gentry of the countrey, who 
 were wont to resort thither in winter, and divert them- 
 selves in converse together at their owne houses. It 
 was once the principall street of the town; but many 
 of these houses of the gentry having been decayed and 
 ruined, it has lost much of its ancient beautie. Just 
 opposite to this vennel, there is another that leads 
 north-west, from the chiefe street to the green, which 
 is a pleasant plott of ground, enclosed round with an 
 earthen wall, wherein they were wont to play football, 
 but now at the GowfT and byasse-bowls. The houses 
 of this towne, on both sides of the street, have their 
 several gardens belonging to them; and in the lower 
 street there be some pretty orchards, that yield store of 
 good fruit." As Patterson says, this description is near 
 enough even to-day, and is mighty nicely written to 
 boot. I am bound to add, of my own experience, 
 that Maybole is tumbledown and dreary. Prosperous 
 enough in reality, it has an air of decay; and though 
 the population has increased, a roofless house every here 
 and there seems to protest the contrary. The women 
 are more than well-favoured, and the men fine tall fel- 
 lows; but they look slipshod and dissipated. As they 
 slouched at street corners, or stood about gossiping in 
 the snow, it seemed they would have been more at 
 home in the slums of a large city than here in a coun- 
 try place betwixt a village and a town. I heard a great 
 deal about drinking, and a great deal about religious re^ 
 
 140 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 vivals: two things in which the Scottish character is 
 emphatic and most unlovely. In particular, I heard of 
 clergymen who were employing their time in explain- 
 ing to a delighted audience the physics of the Second 
 Coming. It is not very likely any of us will be asked 
 to help. If we were, it is likely we should receive 
 instructions for the occasion, and that on more reliable 
 authority. And so I can only figure to myself a con- 
 gregation truly curious in such flights of theological 
 fancy, as one of veteran and accomplished saints, who 
 have fought the good fight to an end and outlived all 
 worldly passion, and are to be regarded rather as a part 
 of the Church Triumphant than the poor, imperfect 
 company on earth. And yet I saw some young fellows 
 about the smoking-room who seemed, in the eyes of 
 one who cannot count himself strait-laced, in need of 
 some more practical sort of teaching. They seemed 
 only eager to get drunk, and to do so speedily. It was 
 not much more than a week after the New Year; and 
 to hear them return on their past bouts with a gusto 
 unspeakable was not altogether pleasing. Here is one 
 snatch of talk, for the accuracy of which I can vouch— 
 
 " Ye had a spree here last Tuesday? " 
 
 "We had that!" 
 
 " I wasna able to be oot o' my bed. Man, I was 
 awful bad on Wednesday." 
 
 " Ay, ye were gey bad." 
 
 And you should have seen the bright eyes, and heard 
 the sensual accents! They recalled their doings with 
 devout gusto and a sort of rational pride. Schoolboys, 
 after their first drunkenness, are not more boastful; a 
 cock does not plume himself with a more unmingled 
 
 14( 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 satisfaction as he paces forth among his harem ; and yet 
 these were grown men, and by no means short of wit. 
 It was hard to suppose they were very eager about the 
 Second Coming: it seemed as if some elementary 
 notions of temperance for the men and seemliness for 
 the women would have gone nearer the mark. And 
 yet, as it seemed to me typical of much that is evil in 
 Scotland, Maybole is also typical of much that is best. 
 Some of the factories, which have taken the place of 
 weaving in the town's economy, were originally founded 
 and are still possessed by self-made men of the sterling, 
 stout old breed— fellows who made some little bit of an 
 invention, borrowed some little pocketful of capital, and 
 then, step by step, in courage, thrift, and industry, 
 fought their way upwards to an assured position. 
 
 Abercrummie has told you enough of the Tolbooth ; 
 but, as a bit of spelling, this inscription on the Tolbooth 
 bell seems too delicious to withhold: "This bell is 
 founded at Maiboll Bi Danel Geli, a Frenchman, the 6th 
 November, 1696, Bi appointment of the heritors of the 
 parish of Maiyboll." The Castle deserves more notice. 
 It is a large and shapely tower, plain from the ground 
 upwards, but with a zone of ornamentation running 
 about the top. In a general way this adornment is 
 perched on the very summit of the chimney-stacks ; but 
 there is one corner more elaborate than the rest. A very 
 heavy string-course runs round the upper story, and just 
 above this, facing up the street, the tower carries a 
 small oriel window, fluted and corbelled and carved 
 about with stone heads. It is so ornate it has some- 
 what the air of a shrine. And it was, indeed, the cas- 
 ket of a very precious jewel, for in the room to which 
 
 142 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 it gives light lay, for long years, the heroine of the 
 sweet old ballad of "Johnnie Faa"— she who, at the 
 call of the gipsies' songs, " came tripping down the 
 stair, and all her maids before her." Some people say 
 the ballad has no basis in fact, and have written, I be- 
 lieve, unanswerable papers to the proof. But in the 
 face of all that, the very look of that high oriel window 
 convinces the imagination, and we enter into all the 
 sorrows of the imprisoned dame. We conceive the 
 burthen of the long, lack-lustre days, when she leaned 
 her sick head against the mullions, and saw the burghers 
 loafing in Maybole High Street, and the children at play, 
 and ruffling gallants riding by from hunt or foray. We 
 conceive the passion of odd moments, when the wind 
 threw up to her some snatch of song, and her heart 
 grew hot within her, and her eyes overflowed at the 
 memory of the past. And even if the tale be not true 
 of this or that lady, or this or that old tower, it is true 
 in the essence of all men and women: for all of us, 
 some time or other, hear the gipsies singing; over all 
 of us is the glamour cast. Some resist and sit resolutely 
 by the fire. Most go and are brought back again, like 
 Lady Cassilis. A few, of the tribe of Waring, go and 
 are seen no more; only now and again, at springtime, 
 when the gipsies' song is afloat in the amethyst evening, 
 we can catch their voices in the glee. 
 
 By night it was clearer, and Maybole more visible than 
 during the day. Clouds coursed over the sky in great 
 masses; the full moon battled the other way, and lit up 
 the snow with gleams of flying silver; the town came 
 down the hill in a cascade of brown gables, bestridden 
 by smooth white roofs, and spangled here and there 
 
 »43 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 with lighted windows. At either end the snow stood 
 high up in the darkness, on the peak of the Tolbooth 
 and among the chimneys of the Castle. As the moon 
 flashed a bull's-eye glitter across the town between the 
 racing clouds, the white roofs leaped into relief over the 
 gables and the chimney-stacks, and their shadows over 
 the white roofs. In the town itself the lit face of the 
 clock peered down the street; an hour was hammered 
 out on Mr. Geli's bell, and from behind the red curtains 
 of a public-house some one trolled out— a compatriot of 
 Burns, again!— "The saut tear blin's my e'e." 
 
 Next morning there was sun and a flapping wind. 
 From the street corners of Maybole I could catch breezy 
 glimpses of green fields. The road underfoot was wet 
 and heavy— part ice, part snow, part water; and any 
 one I met greeted me, by way of salutation, with " A 
 fine thowe" (thaw). My way lay among rather bleak 
 hills, and past bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and 
 monasteries, to the Highland-looking village of Kirkos- 
 wald. It has little claim to notice, save that Burns 
 came there to study surveying in the summer of 1777, 
 and there also, in the kirkyard, the original of Tam 0' 
 Shanter sleeps his last sleep. It is worth noticing, how- 
 ever, that this was the first place I thought " Highland- 
 looking." Over the hill from Kirkoswald a farm-road 
 leads to the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, 
 the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day 
 before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there 
 was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and de- 
 formed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled 
 mountain-tops of Arran, veined and tipped with snow; 
 and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. 
 
 144 
 
A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY 
 
 Cottony clouds stood, in a great castle, over the top of 
 Arran, and blew out in long streamers to the south. 
 The sea was bitten all over with white; little ships, 
 tacking up and down the Firth, lay over at different 
 angles in the wind. On Shanter they were ploughing 
 lea; a cart foal, all in a field by himself, capered and 
 whinnied as if the spring were in him. 
 
 The road from Turnberry to Girvan lies along the 
 shore, among sand-hills and by wildernesses of tumbled 
 bent. Every here and there a few cottages stood to- 
 gether beside a bridge. They had one odd feature, not 
 easy to describe in words : a triangular porch projected 
 from above the door, supported at the apex by a single 
 upright post; a secondary door was hinged to the post, 
 and could be hasped on either cheek of the real entrance ; 
 so, whether the wind was north or south, the cotter 
 could make himself a triangular bight of shelter where 
 to set his chair and finish a pipe with comfort. There 
 is one objection to this device : for, as the post stands 
 in the middle of the fairway, any one precipitately 
 issuing from the cottage must run his chance of a 
 broken head. So far as I am aware, it is peculiar to 
 the little corner of country about Girvan. And that 
 corner is noticeable for more reasons : it is certamly one 
 of the most characteristic districts in Scotland. It has 
 this movable porch by way of architecture; it has, as 
 we shall see, a sort of remnant of provincial costume, 
 and it has the handsomest population in the Low- 
 lands. . . . 
 
 145 
 
VIII 
 
 FOREST NOTES 
 (1875-6) 
 
 ON THE PLAIN 
 
 Perhaps the reader knows already the aspect of the 
 great levels of the Gatinais, where they border with the 
 wooded hills of Fontainebleau. Here and there a few 
 grey rocks creep out of the forest as if to sun them- 
 selves. Here and there a few apple-trees stand together 
 on a knoll. The quaint, undignified tartan of a myriad 
 small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend 
 and disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and 
 empty, with no accident save perhaps a thin line of 
 trees or faint church spire against the sky. Solemn and 
 vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near details, 
 the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards 
 evening. The sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it 
 were into the sea. A blue-clad peasant rides home, 
 with a harrow smoking behind him among the dry clods. 
 Another still works with his wife in their little strip. 
 An immense shadow fills the plain; these people stand 
 in it up to their shoulders ; and their heads, as they stoop 
 over their work and rise again, are relieved from time to 
 time against the golden sky. 
 
 These peasant farmers are well off nowadays, and 
 146 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 not by any means overworked; but somehow you 
 always see in them the historical representative of the 
 serf of yore, and think not so much of present times, 
 which may be prosperous enough, as of the old days 
 when the peasant was taxed beyond possibility of pay- 
 ment, and lived, in Michelet's image, like a hare between 
 two furrows. These very people now weeding their 
 patch under the broad sunset, that very man and his 
 wife, it seems to us, have suffered all the wrongs of 
 France. It is they who have been their country's scape- 
 goat for long ages ; they who, generation after genera- 
 tion, have sowed and not reaped, reaped and another 
 has garnered; and who have now entered into their 
 reward, and enjoy their good things in their turn. For 
 the days are gone by when the Seigneur ruled and prof- 
 ited. " Le Seigneur," says the old formula, "enferme 
 ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel a la 
 terre. Tout est a lui, foret chenue, oiseau dans I'air, 
 poisson dans I'eau, bete au buisson, I'onde qui coule, 
 la cloche dont le son au loin roule." Such was his old 
 state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. 
 And now you may ask yourself where he is, and look 
 round for vestiges of my late lord, and in all the coun- 
 try-side there is no trace of him but his forlorn and 
 fallen mansion. At the end of a long avenue, now 
 sown with grain, in the midst of a close full of cy- 
 presses and lilacs, ducks and crowing chanticleers and 
 droning bees, the old chateau lifts its red chimneys and 
 peaked roofs and turning vanes into the wind and sun. 
 There is a glad spring bustle in the air, perhaps, and 
 the lilacs are all in flower, and the creepers green about 
 the broken balustrade; but no spring shall revive the 
 
 »47 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 honour of the place. Old women of the people, little 
 children of the people, saunter and gambol in the walled 
 court or feed the ducks in the neglected moat. Plough- 
 horses, mighty of limb, browse in the long stables. The 
 dial-hand on the clock waits for some better hour. Out 
 on the plain, where hot sweat trickles into men's eyes, 
 and the spade goes in deep and comes up slowly, per- 
 haps the peasant may feel a movement of joy at his 
 heart when he thinks that these spacious chimneys are 
 now cold, which have so often blazed and flickered 
 upon gay folk at supper, while he and his hollow-eyed 
 children watched through the night with empty bellies 
 and cold feet. And perhaps, as he raises his head and 
 sees the forest lying like a coast-line of low hills along 
 the sea-like level of the plain, perhaps forest and chateau 
 hold no unsimilar place in his affections. 
 
 If the chateau was my lord's the forest was my lord 
 the king's; neither of them for this poor Jacques. If 
 he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some 
 petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, 
 he found himself face to face with a whole department, 
 from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who 
 was a high-born lord, down to the common sergeant, 
 who was a peasant like himself, and wore stripes or a 
 bandoleer by way of uniform. For the first offence, 
 by the Salic law, there was a fine of fifteen sols; and 
 should a man be taken more than once in fault, or cir- 
 cumstances aggravate the colour of his guilt, he might 
 be whipped, branded, or hanged. There was a hang- 
 man over at Melun, and, I doubt not, a fine tall gibbet 
 hard by the town gate, where Jacques might see his 
 fellows dangle against the sky as he went to market. 
 
 148 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 And then, if he lived near to a cover, there would be 
 the more hares and rabbits to eat out his harvest, and 
 the more hunters to trample it down. My lord has a 
 new horn from England. He has laid out seven francs 
 in decorating it with silver and gold, and fitting it with 
 a silken leash to hang about his shoulder. The hounds 
 have been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mesmer, 
 or Saint Hubert in the Ardennes, or some other holy 
 intercessor who has made a specialty of the health of 
 hunting-dogs. In the grey dawn the game was turned 
 and the branch broken by our best piqueur. A rare 
 day's hunting lies before us. Wind a jolly flourish, 
 sound the bien-aller with all your lungs. Jacques 
 must stand by, hat in hand, while the quarry and hound 
 and huntsman sweep across his field, and a year's spar- 
 ing and labouring is as though it had not been. If he 
 can see the ruin with a good enough grace, who knows 
 but he may fall in favour with my lord; who knows 
 but his son may become the last and least among the 
 servants at his lordship's kennel— one of the two poor 
 varlets who get no wages and sleep at night among the 
 hounds ? ^ 
 
 For all that, the forest has been of use to Jacques, 
 not only warming him with fallen wood, but giving 
 him shelter in days of sore trouble, when my lord of 
 the chateau, with all his troopers and trumpets, had 
 been beaten from field after field into some ultimate 
 fastness, or lay over-seas in an English prison. In 
 these dark days, when the watch on the church steeple 
 
 1 " Deux poures varlez qui n'ont nulz gages et qui gissoient la nuit avec 
 les chiens." See Champollion-Figeac's Louis et Charles d^OrUans, \, 
 6}, and for my lord's English horn, ihid. 96. 
 
 149 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 saw the smoke of burning villages on the sky-line, or 
 a clump of spears and fluttering pennons drawing nigh 
 across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all 
 their household gods, into the wood, whence, from 
 some high spur, their timid scouts might overlook the 
 coming and going of the marauders, and see the harvest 
 ridden down, and church and cottage go up to heaven 
 all night in flame. It was but an unhomely refuge that 
 the woods afforded, where they must abide all change of 
 weather and keep house with wolves and vipers. Often 
 there was none left alive, when they returned, to show 
 the old divisions of field from field. And yet, as times 
 went, when the wolves entered at night into depopu- 
 lated Paris, and perhaps De Retz was passing by with 
 a company of demons like himself, even in these caves 
 and thickets there were glad hearts and grateful prayers. 
 Once or twice, as I say, in the course of the ages, the 
 forest may have served the peasant well, but at heart 
 it is a royal forest, and noble by old association. 
 These woods have rung to the horns of all the kings of 
 France, from Philip Augustus downwards. They have 
 seen Saint Louis exercise the dogs he brought with him 
 from Egypt; Francis I. go a-hunting with ten thousand 
 horses in his train; and Peter of Russia following his 
 first stag. And so they are still haunted for the imagi- 
 nation by royal hunts and progresses, and peopled 
 with the faces of memorable men of yore. And this 
 distinction is not only in virtue of the pastime of dead 
 monarchs. Great events, great revolutions, great cycles 
 in the affairs of men, have here left their note, here 
 taken shape in some significant and dramatic situation. 
 It was hence that Guise and his leaguers led Charles the 
 
 150 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 Ninth a prisoner to Paris. Here, booted and spurred, 
 and with all his dogs about him. Napoleon met the 
 Pope beside a woodland cross. Here, on his way to 
 Elba not so long after, he kissed the eagle of the Old 
 Guard, and spoke words of passionate farewell to his 
 soldiers. And here, after Waterloo, rather than yield 
 its ensign to the new power, one of his faithful regi- 
 ments burned that memorial of so much toil and glory 
 on the Grand Master's table, and drank its dust in 
 brandy, as a devout priest consumes the remnants of 
 the Host. 
 
 IN THE SEASON 
 
 Close into the edge of the forest, so close that the 
 trees of the bornage stand pleasantly about the last 
 houses, sits a certain small and very quiet village. 
 There is but one street, and that, not long ago, was a 
 green lane, where the cattle browsed between the 
 door-steps. As you go up this street, drawing ever 
 nearer the beginning of the wood, you will arrive at 
 last before an inn where artists lodge. To the door 
 (for I imagine it to be six o'clock on some fine sum- 
 mer's even), half a dozen, or maybe half a score, of 
 people have brought out chairs, and now sit sunning 
 themselves, and waiting the omnibus from Melun. 
 If you go on into the court you will find as many 
 more, some in the billiard-room over absinthe and a 
 match of corks, some without over a last cigar and a 
 vermouth. The doves coo and flutter from the dove- 
 cote; Hortense is drawing water from the well; and as 
 all the rooms open into the court, you can see the 
 white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and 
 
 «5« 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and 
 washed his brushes, jangling a waltz on the crazy, 
 tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger. " Edmond, 
 encore un vermouth,'* cries a man in velveteen, adding 
 in a tone of apologetic afterthought, '' un double, sHl 
 vous plait,'' " Where are you working ? " asks one in 
 pure white linen from top to toe. *' At the Carrefour 
 de I'Epine," returns the other in corduroy (they are all 
 gaitered, by the way). "I could n't do a thing to it. 
 I ran out of white. Where were you.? " "I was n't 
 working, I was looking for motives." Here is an out- 
 break of jubilation, and a lot of men clustering together 
 about some new-comer with outstretched hands ; per- 
 haps the " correspondence " has come in and brought 
 So-and-so from Paris, or perhaps it is only So-and-so 
 who has walked over from Chailly to dinner. 
 
 ''A table, Messieurs! " cries M. Siron, bearing through 
 the court the first tureen of soup. And immediately 
 the company begins to settle down about the long tables 
 in the dining-room, framed all round with sketches of 
 all degrees of merit and demerit. There 's the big 
 picture of the huntsman winding a horn with a dead 
 boar between his legs, and his legs— well, his legs in 
 stockings. And here is the little picture of a raw mut- 
 ton-chop, in which Such-a-one knocked a hole last 
 summer with no worse a missile than a plum from the 
 dessert. And under all these works of art so much 
 eating goes forward, so much drinking, so much jab- 
 bering in French and English, that it would do your 
 heart good merely to peep and listen at the door. One 
 man is telling how they all went last year to the fete 
 at Fleury, and another how well So-and-so would sing 
 
 152 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 of an evening; and here are a third and fourth making 
 plans for the whole future of their lives ; and there is 
 a fifth imitating a conjurer and making faces on his 
 clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and 
 admirable! A sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, 
 and resigns himsdf to digestion. A seventh has just 
 dropped in, and calls for soup. Number eight, mean- 
 while, has left the table, and is once more trampling 
 the poor piano under powerful and uncertain fingers. 
 
 Dinner over, people drop outside to smoke and chat. 
 Perhaps we go along to visit our friends at the other 
 end of the village, where there is always a good wel- 
 come and a good talk, and perhaps some pickled oys- 
 ters and white wine to close the evening. Or a dance 
 is organised in the dining-room, and the piano exhibits 
 all its paces under manful jockeying, to the light of the 
 three or four candles and a lamp or two, while the 
 waltzers move to and fro upon the wooden floor, and 
 sober men, who are not given to such light pleasures, 
 get up on the table or the sideboard, and sit there 
 looking on approvingly over a pipe and a tumbler of 
 wine. Or sometimes— suppose my lady moon looks 
 forth, and the court from out the half-lit dining-room 
 seems nearly as bright as by day, and the light picks 
 out the window-panes, and makes a clear shadow 
 under every vine-leaf on the wall— sometimes a picnic 
 is proposed, and a basket made ready, and a good 
 procession formed in front of the hotel. The two 
 trumpeters in honour go before; and as we file down 
 the long alley, and up through devious footpaths 
 among rocks and pine-trees, with every here and there 
 a dark passage of shadow, and every here and there a 
 
 »53 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Spacious outlook over moonlit woods, these two pre- 
 cede us and sound many a jolly flourish as they walk. 
 We gather ferns and dry boughs into the cavern, and 
 soon a good blaze flutters the shadows of the old 
 bandits' haunt, and shows shapely beards and comely 
 faces and toilettes ranged about the wall. The bowl is 
 lit, and the punch is burnt and sent round in scalding 
 thimblef uls. So a good hour or two may pass with song 
 and jest. And then we go home in the moonlight 
 morning, straggling a good deal among the birch tufts 
 and the boulders, but ever called together again, as 
 one of our leaders winds his horn. Perhaps some one 
 of the party will not heed the summons, but chooses out 
 some by-way of his own. As he follows the winding 
 sandy road, he hears the flourishes grow fainter and 
 fainter in the distance, and die finally out, and still 
 walks on in the strange coolness and silence and between 
 the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, 
 until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far- 
 away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No 
 surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing 
 knoll over the busy market-place, can speak with a 
 more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. 
 Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in 
 his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once 
 more so utterly silent that it seems to him he might 
 hear the church bells ring the hour out all the world 
 over, not at Chailly only, but in Paris, and away in 
 outlandish cities, and in the village on the river, where 
 his childhood passed between the sun and flowers. 
 
 154 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 IDLE HOURS 
 
 The woods by night, in all their uncanny effect, are 
 not rightly to be understood until you can compare 
 them with the woods by day. The stillness of the 
 medium, the floor of glittering sand, these trees that go 
 streaming up like monstrous sea-weeds and waver in 
 the moving winds like the weeds in submarine cur- 
 rents, all these set the mind working on the thought of 
 what you may have seen off a foreland or over the side 
 of a boat, and make you feel like a diver, down in the 
 quiet water, fathoms below the tumbling, transitory 
 surface of the sea. And yet in itself, as I say, the 
 strangeness of these nocturnal solitudes is not to be felt 
 fully without the sense of contrast. You must have 
 risen in the morning and seen the woods as they are 
 by day, kindled and coloured in the sun's light; you 
 must have felt the odour of innumerable trees at even, 
 the unsparing heat along the forest roads, and the cool- 
 ness of the groves. 
 
 And on the first morning you will doubtless rise be- 
 times. If you have not been wakened before by the 
 visit of some adventurous pigeon, you will be wakened 
 as soon as the sun can reach your window— for there 
 are no blinds or shutters to keep him out— and the room, 
 with its bare wood floor and bare whitewashed walls, 
 shines all round you in a sort of glory of reflected lights. 
 You may doze awhile longer by snatches, or lie awake 
 to study the charcoal men and dogs and horses with 
 which former occupants have defiled the partitions: 
 Thiers, with wily profile; local celebrities, pipe in hand; 
 
 •55 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 or, maybe, a romantic landscape splashed in oil. 
 Meanwhile artist after artist drops into the salle-a-man- 
 ger for coffee, and then shoulders easel, sunshade, 
 stool, and paint-box, bound into a fagot, and sets off 
 for what he calls his " motive." And artist after artist, 
 as he goes out of the village, carries with him a little fol- 
 lowing of dogs. For the dogs, who belong only nom- 
 inally to any special master, hang about the gate of the 
 forest all day long, and whenever any one goes by who 
 hits their fancy, profit by his escort, and go forth with 
 him to play an hour or two at hunting. They would 
 like to be under the trees all day. But they cannot go 
 alone. They require a pretext. And so they take the 
 passing artist as an excuse to go into the woods, as 
 they might take a walking-stick as an excuse to bathe. 
 With quick ears, long spines, and bandy legs, or per- 
 haps as tall as a greyhound and with a bulldog's head, 
 this company of mongrels will trot by your side all day 
 and come home with you at night, still showing white 
 teeth and wagging stunted tail. Their good humour is 
 not to be exhausted. You may pelt them with stones 
 if you please, and all they will do is to give you a 
 wider berth. If once they come out with you, to you 
 they will remain faithful, and with you return ; although 
 if you meet them next morning in the street, it is as 
 like as not they will cut you with a countenance of 
 brass. 
 
 The forest— a strange thing for an Englishman— is 
 very destitute of birds. This is no country where every 
 patch of wood among the meadows gives up an in- 
 cense of song, and every valley wandered through by 
 a streamlet rings and reverberates from side to side 
 
 156 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 with a profusion of clear notes. And this rarity of 
 birds is not to be regretted on its own account only. 
 For the Insects prosper in their absence, and become as 
 one of the plagues of Egypt. Ants swarm in the hot 
 sand; mosquitos drone their nasal drone; wherever 
 the sun finds a hole in the roof of the forest, you see 
 a myriad transparent creatures coming and going in the 
 shaft of light; and even between-whiles, even where 
 there is no incursion of sun-rays into the dark arcade 
 of the wood, you are conscious of a continual drift of 
 insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things 
 between the trees. Nor are insects the only evil crea- 
 tures that haunt the forest. For you may plump into 
 a cave among the rocks, and find yourself face to face 
 with a wild boar, or see a crooked viper slither across 
 the road. 
 
 Perhaps you may set yourself down in the bay be- 
 tween two spreading beech-roots with a book on your 
 lap, and be awakened all of a sudden by a friend: "I 
 say, just keep where you are, will you ? You make 
 the jolliest motive." And you reply: "Well, I don't 
 mind, if I may smoke." And thereafter the hours go 
 idly by. Your friend at the easel labours doggedly a 
 little way off, in the wide shadow of the tree ; and yet 
 farther, across a strait of glaring sunshine, you see an- 
 other painter, encamped in the shadow of another tree, 
 and up to his waist in the fern. You cannot watch 
 your own effigy growing out of the white trunk, and 
 the trunk beginning to stand forth from the rest of the 
 wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with 
 the flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, 
 and, as a wind goes by and sets the trees a-talking. 
 
 157 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 flicker hither and thither like butterflies of light. But 
 you know it is going forward; and, out of emulation 
 with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay 
 out the colour for a woodland scene in words. 
 
 Your tree stands in a hollow paved with fern and 
 heather, set in a basin of low hills, and scattered over 
 with rocks and junipers. All the open is steeped in 
 pitiless sunlight. Everything stands out as though it 
 were cut in cardboard, every colour is strained into its 
 highest key. The boulders are some of them upright 
 and dead like monolithic castles, some of them prone 
 like sleeping cattle. The junipers— looking, in their 
 soiled and ragged mourning, like some funeral proces- 
 sion that has gone seeking the place of sepulchre three 
 hundred years and more in wind and rain— are daubed 
 in forcibly against the glowing ferns and heather. 
 Every tassel of their rusty foliage is defined with pre- 
 Raphaelite minuteness. And a sorry figure they make 
 out there in the sun, like misbegotten yew-trees ! The 
 scene is all pitched in a key of colour so peculiar, and 
 lit up with such a discharge of violent, sunlight, as a 
 man might live fifty years in England and not see. 
 
 Meanwhile at your elbow some one tunes up a song, 
 words of Ronsard to a pathetic tremulous air, of how 
 the poet loved his mistress long ago, and pressed on 
 her the flight of time, and told her how white and quiet 
 the dead lay under the stones, and how the boat dipped 
 and pitched as the shades embarked for the passionless 
 land. Yet a little while, sang the poet, and there shall 
 be no more love; only to sit and remember loves that 
 might have been. There is a falling flourish in the air 
 that remains in the memory and comes back in incon- 
 
 158 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 gruous places, on the seat of hansoms or in the warm 
 bed at night, with something of a forest savour. 
 
 "You can get up now," says the painter; "I 'm at 
 the background." 
 
 And so up you get, stretching yourself, and go your 
 way into the wood, the daylight becoming richer and 
 more golden, and the shadows stretching farther into 
 the open. A cool air comes along the highways, and 
 the scents awaken. The fir-trees breathe abroad their 
 ozone. Out of unknown thickets comes forth the soft, 
 secret, aromatic odour of the woods, not like a smell of 
 the free heaven, but as though court ladies, who had 
 known these paths in ages long gone by, still walked in 
 the summer evenings, and shed from their brocades a 
 breath of musk or bergamot upon the woodland winds. 
 One side of the long avenues is still kindled with the 
 sun, the other is plunged in transparent shadow. Over 
 the trees the west begins to burn like a furnace; and 
 the painters gather up their chattels, and go down, by 
 avenue or footpath, to the plain. 
 
 A PLEASURE PARTY 
 
 As this excursion is a matter of some length, and, 
 moreover, we go in force, we have set aside our usual 
 vehicle, the pony-cart, and ordered a large wagonette 
 from Lejosne's. It has been waiting for near an hour, 
 while one went to pack a knapsack, and t' other hurried 
 over his toilette and coffee; but now it is filled from end 
 to end with merry folk in summer attire, the coachman 
 cracks his whip, and amid much applause from round 
 the inn door off we rattle at a spanking trot. The way 
 
 159 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 lies through the forest, up hill and down dale, and by 
 beech and pine wood, in the cheerful morning sun- 
 shine. The English get down at all the ascents and 
 walk on ahead for exercise; the French are mightily 
 entertained at this, and keep coyly underneath the tilt. 
 As we go we carry with us a pleasant noise of laughter 
 and light speech, and some one will be always break- 
 ing out into a bar or two of opera boufife. Before we 
 get to the Route Ronde here comes Desprez, the col- 
 ourman from Fontainebleau, trudging across on his 
 weekly peddle with a case of merchandise; and it is 
 ** Desprez, leave me some malachite green " ; " Desprez, 
 leave me so much canvas " ; " Desprez, leave me this, 
 or leave me that " ; M. Desprez standing the while in 
 the sunlight with grave face and many salutations. 
 The next interruption is more important. For some 
 time back we have had the sound of cannon in our 
 ears; and now, a little past Franchard, we find a 
 mounted trooper holding a led horse, who brings the 
 wagonette to a stand. The artillery is practising in the 
 Quadrilateral, it appears; passage along the Route 
 Ronde formally interdicted for the moment. There is 
 nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring cross-roads, 
 and get down to make fun with the notorious Cocardon, 
 the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly 
 and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the 
 sandy banks. And meanwhile the Doctor, with sun 
 umbrella, wide Panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy 
 wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing 
 the too facile sentry. His speech is smooth and dulcet, 
 his manner dignified and insinuating. It is not for 
 nothing that the Doctor has voyaged all the world over, 
 
 160 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 and speaks all languages from French to Patagonian. 
 He has not come home from perilous journeys to be 
 thwarted by a corporal of horse. And so we soon see 
 the soldier's mouth relax, and his shoulders imitate a 
 relenting heart. '' En voiture, Messieurs, Mesdames,'* 
 sings the Doctor; and on we go again at a good round 
 pace, for black care follows hard after us, and discre- 
 tion prevails not a little over valour in some timorous 
 spirits of the party. At any moment we may meet the 
 sergeant, who will send us back. At any moment we 
 may encounter a flying shell, which will send us some- 
 where farther off than Grez. 
 
 Grez— for that is our destination— has been highly 
 recommended for its beauty. " II y a de Veau," people 
 have said, with an emphasis, as if that settled the ques- 
 tion, which, for a French mind, I am rather led to think 
 it does. And Grez, when we get there, is indeed a 
 place worthy of some praise. It lies out of the forest, a 
 cluster of houses, with an old bridge, an old castle in 
 ruin, and a quaint old church. The inn garden de- 
 scends in terraces to the river; stable-yard, kailyard, 
 orchard, and a space of lawn, fringed with rushes and 
 embellished with a green arbour. On the opposite 
 bank there is a reach of English-looking plain, set thickly 
 with willows and poplars. And between the two lies 
 the river, clear and deep, and full of reeds and floating 
 lilies. Water-plants cluster about the starlings of the 
 long low bridge, and stand half-way up upon the piers 
 in green luxuriance. They catch the dipped oar with 
 long antennae, and chequer the slimy bottom with the 
 shadow of their leaves. And the river wanders hither 
 and thither among the islets, and is smothered and 
 
 i6i 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, 
 hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the 
 box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for 
 his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over 
 the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splash- 
 ing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old 
 kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day 
 among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen 
 washed there should be specially cool and sweet. 
 
 We have come here for the river. And no sooner 
 have we all bathed than we board the two shallops and 
 push off gaily, and go gliding under the trees and 
 gathering a great treasure of water-lilies. Some one 
 sings; some trail their hands in the cool water; some 
 lean over the gunwale to see the image of the tall pop- 
 lars far below, and the shadow of the boat, with the 
 balanced oars and their own head protruded, glide 
 smoothly over the yellow floor of the stream. At last, 
 the day declining— all silent and happy, and up to the 
 knees in the wet lilies— we punt slowly back again to 
 the landing-place beside the bridge. There is a wish 
 for solitude on all. One hides himself in the arbour 
 with a cigarette; another goes a walk in the country 
 with Cocardon ; a third inspects the church. And it is 
 not till dinner is on the table, and the inn's best wine 
 goes round from glass to glass, that we begin to throw 
 off the restraint and fuse once more into a jolly fellow- 
 ship. 
 
 Half the party are to return to-night with the wagon- 
 ette; and some of the others, loath to break up good 
 company, will go with them a bit of the way and drink 
 a stirrup-cup at Marlotte. It is dark in the wagonette, 
 
 162 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 and not so merry as it might have been. The coach- 
 man loses the road. So-and-so tries to light fireworks 
 with the most indifferent success. Some sing, but the 
 rest are too weary to applaud; and it seems as if the 
 festival were fairly at an end— 
 
 " Nous avons fait la noce, 
 Rentrons a nos foyers! " 
 
 And such is the burthen, even after we have come to 
 Marlotte and taken our places in the court at Mother 
 Antonine's. There is punch on the long table out in 
 the open air, where the guests dine in summer weather. 
 The candles flare in the night wind, and the faces round 
 the punch are lit up, with shifting emphasis, against a 
 background of complete and solid darkness. It is all 
 picturesque enough; but the fact is, we are aweary. 
 We yawn ; we are out of the vein ; we have made the 
 wedding, as the song says, and now, for pleasure's 
 sake, let 's make an end on 't. When here comes 
 striding into the court, booted to mid-thigh, spurred 
 and splashed, in a jacket of green cord, the great, 
 famous, and redoubtable Blank; and in a moment the 
 fire kindles again, and the night is witness of our 
 laughter as he imitates Spaniards, Germans, English- 
 men, picture-dealers, all eccentric ways of speaking 
 and thinking, with a possession, a fury, a strain of 
 mind and voice, that would rather suggest a nervous 
 crisis than a desire to please. We are as merry as ever 
 when the trap sets forth again, and say farewell noisily 
 to all the good folk going farther. Then, as we are 
 far enough from thoughts of sleep, we visit Blank in 
 his quaint house, and sit an hour or so in a great tapes- 
 
 163 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 tried chamber, laid with furs, littered with sleeping 
 hounds, and lit up, in fantastic shadow and shine, by 
 a wood fire in a mediaeval chimney. And then we 
 plod back through the darkness to the inn beside the 
 river. 
 
 How quick bright things come to confusion ! When 
 we arise next morning, the grey showers fall steadily, 
 the trees hang limp, and the face of the stream is spoiled 
 with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday's lilies encumber 
 the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voy- 
 age towards the Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shim- 
 mer lies upon the dripping house-roofs, and all the 
 colour is washed out of the green and golden landscape 
 of last night, as though an envious man had taken a 
 water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a 
 sponge. We go out a-walking in the wet roads. But 
 the roads about Grez have a trick of their own. They 
 go on for a while among clumps of willows and 
 patches of vine, and then, suddenly and without any 
 warning, cease and determine in some miry hollow or 
 upon some bald know; and you have a short period 
 of hope, then right-about face, and back the way you 
 came! So we draw about the kitchen fire and play a 
 round game of cards for ha'pence, or go to the billiard- 
 room for a match at corks ; and by one consent a mes- 
 senger is sent over for the wagonette— Grez shall be 
 left to-morrow. 
 
 To-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree 
 to walk back for exercise, and let their knapsacks fol- 
 low by the trap. 1 need hardly say they are neither of 
 them French; for, of all English phrases, the phrase 
 "for exercise" is the least comprehensible across the 
 
 164 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 Straits of Dover. All goes well for a while with the 
 pedestrians. The wet woods are full of scents in the 
 noontide. At a certain cross, where there is a guard- 
 house, they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the 
 daughter of their good host at Barbizon. And so there 
 they are hospitably received by the comely woman, 
 with one child in her arms and another prattling and 
 tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince 
 in the back parlour, with a map of the forest on the 
 wall, and some prints of love-affairs and the great 
 Napoleon hunting. As they draw near the Quadri- 
 lateral, and hear once more the report of the big guns, 
 they take a by-road to avoid the sentries, and go on 
 awhile somewhat vaguely, with the sound of the can- 
 non in their ears and the rain beginning to fall. The 
 ways grow wider and sandier; here and there there 
 are real sand-hills, as though by the sea-shore; the fir- 
 wood is open and grows in clumps upon the hillocks, 
 and the race of sign-posts is no more. One begins to 
 look at the other doubtfully. " I am sure we should 
 keep more to the right," says one; and the other is just 
 as certain they should hold to the left. And now, 
 suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain falls "sheer 
 and strong and loud," as out of a shower-bath. In a 
 moment they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They 
 cannot see out of their eyes for the drift, and the water 
 churns and gurgles in their boots. They leave the track 
 and try across country with a gambler's desperation, 
 for it seems as if it were impossible to make the situa- 
 tion worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from 
 boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now 
 no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings where 
 
 165 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the scattered shells and broken fir-trees tell all too 
 plainly of the cannon in the distance. And meantime 
 the cannon grumble out responses to the grumbling 
 thunder. There is such a mixture of melodrama and 
 sheer discomfort about all this, it is at once so grey 
 and so lurid, that it is far more agreeable to read and 
 write about by the chimney-corner than to suffer in the 
 person. At last they chance on the right path, and 
 make Franchard in the early evening, the sorriest pair 
 of wanderers that ever welcomed English ale. Thence, 
 by the Bois d'Hyver, the Ventes-Alexandre, and the 
 Pins Brules, to the clean hostelry, dry clothes, and 
 dinner. 
 
 THE WOODS IN SPRING 
 
 I think you will like the forest best in the sharp early 
 springtime, when it is just beginning to reawaken, 
 and innumerable violets peep from among the fallen 
 leaves ; when two or three people at most sit down to 
 dinner, and, at table, you will do well to keep a rug 
 about your knees, for the nights are chill, and the salle- 
 a-manger opens on the court. There is less to distract 
 the attention, for one thing, and the forest is more 
 itself. It is not bedotted with artists' sunshades as 
 with unknown mushrooms, nor bestrewn with the 
 remains of English picnics. The hunting still goes on, 
 and at any moment your heart may be brought into 
 your mouth as you hear far-away horns ; or you may 
 be told by an agitated peasant that the Vicomte has 
 gone up the avenue, not ten minutes since, '' dfond de 
 train, monsieur, et avec dou^e piqueurs.'' 
 
 If you go up to some coign of vantage in the system 
 166 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 of low hills that permeates the forest, you will see 
 many different tracts of country, each of its own cold 
 and melancholy neutral tint, and all mixed together and 
 mingled the one into the other at the seams. You will 
 see tracts of leafless beeches of a faint yellowish grey, 
 and leafless oaks a little ruddier in the hue. Then 
 zones of pine of a solemn green; and, dotted among 
 the pines, or standing by themselves in rocky clearings, 
 the delicate, snow-white trunks of birches, spreading 
 out into snow-white branches yet more delicate, and 
 crowned and canopied with a purple haze of twigs. 
 And then a long, bare ridge of tumbled boulders, with 
 bright sand-breaks between them, and wavering sandy 
 roads among the bracken and brown heather. It is all 
 rather cold and unhomely. It has not the perfect 
 beauty, nor the gem-like colouring, of the wood in 
 the later year, when it is no more than one vast colon- 
 nade of verdant shadow, tremulous with insects, inter- 
 sected here and there by lanes of sunlight set in purple 
 heather. The loveliness of the woods in March is not, 
 assuredly, of this blowzy rustic type. It is made sharp 
 with a grain of salt, with a touch of ugliness. It has 
 a sting like the sting of bitter ale; you acquire the love 
 of it as men acquire a taste for olives. And the won- 
 derful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by 
 voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and 
 sets the heart tinkling to a new tune— or, rather, to an 
 old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something 
 akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for explora- 
 tion, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, 
 plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you 
 over many a stony crest. It is as if the whole wood 
 
 167 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 were full of friendly voices calling you farther in, and 
 you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's don- 
 key, in a maze of pleasure. 
 
 Comely beeches send up their white, straight, clus- 
 tered branches, barred with green moss, like so many 
 fingers from a half-clenched hand. Mighty oaks stand 
 to the ankles in a fine tracery of underwood; thence 
 the tall shaft climbs upwards, and the great forest of 
 stalwart boughs spreads out into the golden evening 
 sky, where the rooks are flying and calling. On the 
 sward of the Bois d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder 
 with outspread arms, like fencers saluting; and the air 
 smells of resin all around, and the sound of the axe is 
 rarely still. But strangest of all, and in appearance 
 oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts of 
 young wood. The ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, 
 and strewn with fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark. 
 Rocks lie crouching in the thicket, guttered with rain, 
 tufted with lichen, white with years and the rigours 
 of the changeful seasons. Brown and yellow butter- 
 flies are sown and carried away again by the light air- 
 like thistledown. The loneliness of these coverts is so 
 excessive, that there are moments when pleasure draws 
 to the verge of fear. You listen and listen for some 
 noise to break the silence, till you grow half mesmer- 
 ised by the intensity of the strain ; your sense of your 
 own identity is troubled; your brain reels, like that of 
 some gymnosophist poring on his own nose in Asiatic 
 jungles; and should you see your own outspread feet, 
 you see them, not as anything of yours, but as a feature 
 of the scene around you. 
 
 Still the forest is always, but the stillness is not al- 
 i68 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 ways unbroken. You can hear the wind pass in the 
 distance over the tree-tops ; sometimes briefly, like the 
 noise of a train; sometimes with a long steady rush, 
 like the breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at 
 hand, the branches move, a moan goes through the 
 thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you 
 may hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a bird 
 gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle 
 underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady 
 recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. From time to 
 time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by ; 
 and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls 
 upon the ear, not sweet and rich and near at hand as in 
 England, but a sort of voice of the woods, thin and far 
 away, as fits these solemn places. Or you hear sud- 
 denly the hollow, eager, violent barking of dogs ; scared 
 deer flit past you through the fringes of the wood ; then 
 a man or two running, in green blouse, with gun and 
 game-bag on a bandoleer; and then, out of the thick of 
 the trees, comes the jar of rifle-shots. Or perhaps the 
 hounds are out, and horns are blown, and scarlet-coated 
 huntsmen flash through the clearings, and the solid 
 noise of horses galloping passes below you, where you 
 sit perched among the rocks and heather. The boar 
 is afoot, and all over the forest, and in all neighbour- 
 ing villages, there is a vague excitement and a vague 
 hope; for who knows whither the chase may lead ? and 
 even to have seen a single piqueur, or spoken to a sin- 
 gle sportsman, is to be a man of consequence for the 
 night. 
 
 Besides men who shoot and men who ride with the 
 hounds, there are few people in the forest, in the early 
 
 169 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 spring, save wood-cutters plying their axes steadily, and 
 old women and children gathering wood for the fire. 
 You may meet such a party coming home in the twi- 
 light: the old woman laden with a fagot of chips, and 
 the little ones hauling a long branch behind them in her 
 wake. That is the worst of what there is to encounter ; 
 and if I tell you of what once happened to a friend of 
 mine, it is by no means to tantalise you with false 
 hopes; for the adventure was unique. It was on a 
 very cold, still, sunless morning, with a flat grey sky 
 and a frosty tingle in the air, that this friend (who shall 
 here be nameless) heard the notes of a key-bugle played 
 with much hesitation, and saw the smoke of a fire 
 spread out along the green pine-tops, in a remote un- 
 canny glen, hard by a hill of naked boulders. He drew 
 near warily, and beheld a picnic party seated under a 
 tree in an open. The old father knitted a sock, the 
 mother sat staring at the fire. The eldest son, in the 
 uniform of a private of dragoons, was choosing out 
 notes on a key-bugle. Two or three daughters lay in 
 the neighbourhood picking violets. And the whole 
 party as grave and silent as the woods around them ! 
 My friend watched for a long time, he says ; but all held 
 their peace; not one spoke or smiled; only the dragoon 
 kept choosing out single notes upon the bugle, and the 
 father knitted away at his work and made strange 
 movements the while with his flexible eyebrows. They 
 took no notice whatever of my friend's presence, which 
 was disquieting in itself, and increased the resemblance 
 of the whole party to mechanical waxworks. Cer- 
 tainly, he affirms, a wax figure might have played the 
 bugle with more spirit than that strange dragoon. And 
 
 170 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 as this hypothesis of his became more certain, the awful 
 insolubility of why they should be left out there in the 
 woods with nobody to wind them up again when they 
 ran down, and a growing disquietude as to what might 
 happen next, became too much for his courage, and he 
 turned tail, and fairly took to his heels. It might have 
 been a singing in his ears, but he fancies he was fol- 
 lowed as he ran by a peal of Titanic laughter. Nothing 
 has ever transpired to clear up the mystery; it may be 
 they were automata ; or it may be (and this is the the- 
 ory to which 1 lean myself) that this is all another chap- 
 ter of Heine's "Gods in Exile"; that the upright old 
 man with the eyebrows was no other than Father Jove, 
 and the young dragoon with the taste for music either 
 Apollo or Mars. 
 
 MORALITY 
 
 Strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the 
 minds of men. Not one or two only, but a great chorus 
 of grateful voices have arisen to spread abroad its fame. 
 Half the famous writers of modern France have had 
 their word to say about Fontainebleau. Chateaubriand, 
 Michelet, Beranger, George Sand, de Senancour, Flau- 
 bert, Murger, the brothers Goncourt, Theodore de 
 Banville, each of these has done something to the eter- 
 nal praise and memory of these woods. Even at the 
 very worst of times, even when the picturesque was 
 anathema in the eyes of all Persons of Taste, the forest 
 still preserved a certain reputation for beauty. It was 
 in 1730 that the Abbe Guilbert published his Historical 
 Description of the Palace, Town, and Forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau, And very droll it is to see him, as he tries to 
 
 171 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 set forth his admiration in terms of what was then 
 permissible. The monstrous rocks, etc. , says the Abbe, 
 " sont admirees avec surprise des voyageurs qui s'ecri- 
 ent aussitot avec Horace: Ut mihi devio rupes et 
 vacuum nemus mirari libet." The good man is not 
 exactly lyrical in his praise; and you see how he sets 
 his back against Horace as against a trusty oak. Hor- 
 ace, at any rate, was classical. For the rest, however, 
 the Abbe likes places where many alleys meet; or 
 which, like the Belle-Etoile, are kept up *' by a special 
 gardener," and admires at the Table du Roi the labours 
 of the Grand Master of Woods and Waters, the Sieur 
 de la Falure^ "qui a fait faire ce magnifique endroit." 
 
 But indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the 
 forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that 
 subtle something, that quality of the air, that emana- 
 tion from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes 
 and renews a weary spirit. Disappointed men, sick 
 Francis Firsts and vanquished Grand Monarchs, time 
 out of mind have come here for consolation. Hither 
 perplexed folk have retired out of the press of life, as 
 into a deep bay-window on some night of masquerade, 
 and here found quiet and silence, and rest, the mother 
 of wisdom. It is the great moral spa; this forest with- 
 out a fountain is itself the great fountain of Juventius. 
 It is the best place in the world to bring an old sorrow, 
 that has been a long while your friend and enemy; and 
 if, like Beranger's, your gaiety has run away from home 
 and left open the door for sorrow to come in, of all 
 covers in Europe, it is here you may expect to find the 
 truant hid. With every hour you change. The air 
 penetrates through your clothes, and nestles to your 
 
 172 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 living body. You love exercise and slumber, long 
 fasting and full meals. You forget all your scruples 
 and live awhile in peace and freedom, and for the 
 moment only. For here, all is absent that can stimu- 
 late to moral feeling. Such people as you see may be 
 old, or toil-worn, or sorry ; but you see them framed in 
 the forest, like figures on a painted canvas ; and for you, 
 they are not people in any living and kindly sense. You 
 forget the grim contrariety of interests. You forget 
 the narrow lane where all men jostle together in un- 
 chivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and unclean, 
 that gapes on either hand for the defeated. Life is 
 simple enough, it seems, and the very idea of sacrifice 
 becomes like a mad fancy out of a last night's dream. 
 Your ideal is not perhaps high, but it is plain and 
 possible. You become enamoured of a life of change 
 and movement and the open air, where the muscles 
 shall be more exercised than the affections. When 
 you have had your will of the forest, you may visit the 
 whole round world. You may buckle on your knap- 
 sack and take the road on foot. You may bestride a 
 good nag, and ride forth, with a pair of saddle-bags, 
 into the enchanted East. You may cross the Black 
 Forest, and see Germany wide-spread before you, like a 
 map, dotted with old cities, walled and spired, that 
 dream all day on their own reflections in the Rhine or 
 Danube. You may pass the spinal cord of Europe and 
 go down from Alpine glaciers to where Italy extends 
 her marble moles and glasses her marble palaces in the 
 midland sea. You may sleep in flying trains or wayside 
 taverns. You may be awakened at dawn by the scream 
 of the express or the small pipe of the robin in the 
 
 173 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 hedge. For you the rain should allay the dust of the 
 beaten road; the wind dry your clothes upon you as 
 you walked. Autumn should hang out russet pears 
 and purple grapes along the lane; inn after inn proffer 
 you their cups of raw wine; river by river receive your 
 body in the sultry noon. Wherever you went warm 
 valleys and high trees and pleasant villages should com- 
 pass you about; and light fellowships should take you 
 by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your 
 way. You may see from afar off what it will come to 
 in the end— the weather-beaten red-nosed vagabond, 
 consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all near 
 touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an 
 outcast. And yet it will seem well— and yet, in the air 
 of the forest, this will seem the best— to break all the 
 network bound about your feet by birth and old com- 
 panionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of 
 phosphates to and fro, in town and country, until the 
 hour of the great dissolvent. 
 
 Or, perhaps, you will keep to the cover. For the 
 forest is by itself, and forest life owns small kinship 
 with life in the dismal land of labour. Men are so far 
 sophisticated that they cannot take the world as it is 
 given to them by the sight of their eyes. Not only 
 what they see and hear, but what they know to be be- 
 hind, enter into their notion of a place. If the sea, for 
 instance, lie just across the hills, sea-thoughts will come 
 to them at intervals, and the tenor of their dreams from 
 time to time will suffer a sea-change. And so here, in 
 this forest, a knowledge of its greatness is for much in 
 the effect produced. You reckon up the miles that lie 
 between you and intrusion. You may walk before you 
 
 174 
 
FOREST NOTES 
 
 all day long, and not fear to touch the barrier of your 
 Eden, or stumble out of fairyland into the land of gin 
 and steam-hammers. And there is an old tale enhances 
 for the imagination the grandeur of the woods of France, 
 and secures you in the thought of your seclusion. 
 When Charles VI. hunted in the time of his wild boy- 
 hood near Senlis, there was captured an old stag, hav- 
 ing a collar of bronze about his neck, and these words 
 engraved on the collar: "Caesar mihi hoc donavit." It 
 is no wonder if the minds of men were moved at this 
 occurrence and they stood aghast to find themselves 
 thus touching hands with forgotten ages, and follow- 
 ing an antiquity with hound and horn. And even for 
 you, it is scarcely in an idle curiosity that you ponder 
 how many centuries this stag had carried its free antlers 
 through the wood, and how many summers and win- 
 ters had shone and snowed on the imperial badge. If 
 the extent of solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall 
 stag from the hunters' hounds and horses, might not 
 you also play hide-and-seek, in these groves, with all 
 the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and elude 
 Death, the mighty hunter, for more than the span of 
 human years ? Here, also, crash his arrows ; here, in 
 the farthest glade, sounds the gallop of the pale horse. 
 But he does not hunt this cover with all his hounds, 
 for the game is thin and small: and if you were but 
 alert and wary, if you lodged ever in the deepest thickets, 
 you too might live on into later generations and aston- 
 ish men by your stalwart age and the trophies of an 
 immemorial success. 
 
 For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. 
 There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free de- 
 
 '75 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 sires. Here all the impudencies of the brawling world 
 reach you no more. You may count your hours, like 
 Endymion, by the strokes of the lone wood-cutter, or 
 by the progression of the lights and shadows and the 
 sun wheeling his wide circuit through the naked 
 heavens. Here shall you see no enemies but winter 
 and rough weather. And if a pang comes to you at all, 
 it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All the puling 
 sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty 
 that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight 
 of these woods, fall away from you like a garment. 
 And if perchance you come forth upon an eminence, 
 where the wind blows upon you large and fresh, and 
 the pines knock their long stems together, like an un- 
 gainly sort of puppets, and see far away over the plain 
 a factory chimney defined against the pale horizon— it 
 is for you, as for the staid and simple peasant when, 
 with his plough, he upturns old arms and harness from 
 the furrow of the glebe. Ay, sure enough, there was 
 a battle there in the old times ; and, sure enough, there 
 is a world out yonder where men strive together with 
 a noise of oaths and weeping and clamorous dispute. 
 So much you apprehend by an athletic act of the ima- 
 gination. A faint far-off rumour as of Merovingian 
 wars ; a legend as of some dead religion. 
 
 176 
 
IX 
 
 A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 (y4 Fragment^ iSjp: Originally intended to serve as the opening 
 chapter of " Travels with a Donkejy in the Cevennes.") 
 
 Le Monastier is the chief place of a hilly canton in 
 Haute Loire, the ancient Velay. As the name betokens, 
 the town is of monastic origin; and it still contains a 
 towered bulk of monastery and a church of some archi- 
 tectural pretensions, the seat of an archpriest and sev- 
 eral vicars. It stands on the side of a hill above the 
 river Gazeille, about fifteen miles from Le Puy, up a 
 steep road where the wolves sometimes pursue the 
 diligence in winter. Th-e road, which is bound for 
 Vivarais, passes through the town from end to end in 
 a single narrow street; there you may see the fountain 
 where women fill their pitchers; there also some old 
 houses with carved doors and pediments and ornamen- 
 tal work in iron. For Monastier, like Maybole in Ayr- 
 shire, was a sort of country capital, where the local 
 aristocracy had their town mansions for the winter; 
 and there is a certain baron still alive and, I am told, 
 extremely penitent, who found means to ruin himself 
 by high living in this village on the hills. He certainly 
 has claims to be considered the most remarkable spend- 
 
 177 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 thrift on record. How he set about it, in a place where 
 there are no luxuries for sale, and where the board at 
 the best inn comes to little more than a shilling a day, 
 is a problem for the wise. His son, ruined as the 
 family was, went as far as Paris to sow his wild oats ; 
 and so the cases of father and son mark an epoch in 
 the history of centralisation in France. Not until the 
 latter had got into the train was the work of Richelieu 
 complete. 
 
 It is a people of lace-makers. The women sit in the 
 streets by groups of five or six; and the noise of the 
 bobbins is audible from one group to another. Now 
 and then you will hear one woman clattering off pray- 
 ers for the edification of the others at their work. They 
 wear gaudy shawls, white caps with a gay ribbon about 
 the head, and sometimes a black felt brigand hat above 
 the cap; and so they give the street colour and bright- 
 ness and a foreign air. Awhile ago, when England 
 largely supplied herself from this district with the lace 
 called torchon, it was not unusual to earn five francs a 
 day; and five francs in Monastier is worth a pound in 
 London. Now, from a change in the market, it takes 
 a clever and industrious workwoman to earn from three 
 to four in the week, or less than an eighth of what she 
 made easily a few years ago. The tide of prosperity 
 came and went, as with our northern pitmen, and left 
 nobody the richer. The women bravely squandered 
 their gains, kept the men in idleness, and gave them- 
 selves up, as I was told, to sweethearting and a merry 
 life. From week's end to week's end it was one con- 
 tinuous gala in Monastier; people spent the day in the 
 wine-shops, and the drum or the bagpipes led on the 
 
 178 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 bourrees up to ten at night. Now these dancing days 
 are over. "// ny a plus de jeunesse," said Victor the 
 garcon. I hear of no great advance in what are thought 
 the essentials of morality; but the bourreey with its 
 rambling, sweet, interminable music, and alert and rus- 
 tic figures, has fallen into disuse, and is mostly remem- 
 bered as a custom of the past. Only on the occasion 
 of the fair shall you hear a drum discreetly rattling in a 
 wine-shop or perhaps one of the company singing the 
 measure while the others dance. I am sorry at the 
 change, and marvel once more at the complicated 
 scheme of things upon this earth, and how a turn of 
 fashion in England can silence so much mountain mer- 
 riment in France. The lace-makers themselves have 
 not entirely forgiven our countrywomen; and I think 
 they take a special pleasure in the legend of the northern 
 quarter of the town, called L'Anglade, because there the 
 English free-lances were arrested and driven back by the 
 potency of a little Virgin Mary on the wall. 
 
 From time to time a market is held, and the town 
 has a season of revival; cattle and pigs are stabled in 
 the streets; and pickpockets have been known to come 
 all the way from Lyons for the occasion. Every Sun- 
 day the country folk throng in with daylight to buy 
 apples, to attend mass, and to visit one of the wine- 
 shops, of which there are no fewer than fifty in this 
 little town. Sunday wear for the men is a green tail- 
 coat of some coarse sort of drugget, and usually a com- 
 plete suit to match. I have never set eyes on such 
 degrading raiment. Here it clings, there bulges; and 
 the human body, with its agreeable and lively lines, is 
 turned into a mockery and laughing-stock. Another 
 
 179 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 piece of Sunday business with the peasants is to take 
 their ailments to the chemist for advice. It is as much 
 a matter for Sunday as church-going. I have seen a 
 woman who had been unable to speak since the Mon- 
 day before, wheezing, catching her breath, endlessly 
 and painfully coughing; and yet she had waited up- 
 wards of a hundred hours before coming to seek help, 
 and had the week been twice as long, she would have 
 waited still. There was a canonical day for consulta- 
 tion; such was the ancestral habit, to which a respec- 
 table lady must study to conform. 
 
 Two conveyances go daily to Le Puy, but they rival 
 each other in polite concessions rather than in speed. 
 Each will wait an hour or two hours cheerfully while 
 an old lady does her marketing or a gentleman fmishes 
 the papers in a cafe. The Courrier (such is the name 
 of one) should leave Le Puy by two in the afternoon 
 on the return voyage, and arrive at Monastier in good 
 time for a six-o'clock dinner. But the driver dares not 
 disoblige his customers. He will postpone his depar- 
 ture again and again, hour after hour; and I have 
 known the sun to go down on his delay. These purely 
 personal favours, this consideration of men's f-^ncies, 
 rather than the hands of a mechanical clock, as mark- 
 ing the advance of the abstraction, time, makes a more 
 humorous business of stage-coaching than we are used 
 to see it. 
 
 As far as the eye can reach, one swelling line of hill- 
 top rises and falls behind another; and if you climb an 
 eminence, it is only to see new and farther ranges be- 
 hind these. Many little rivers run from all sides in 
 cliffy valleys ; and one of them, a few miles from Mo 
 
 i8o 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 nastier, bears the great name of Loire. The mean level 
 of the country is a little more than three thousand feet 
 above the sea, which makes the atmosphere propor- 
 tionally brisk and wholesome. There is little timber 
 except pines, and the greater part of the country lies in 
 moorland pasture. The country is wild and tumbled 
 rather than commanding; an upland rather than a 
 mountain district; and the most striking as well as the 
 most agreeable scenery lies low beside the rivers. 
 There, indeed, you will find many corners that take the 
 fancy ; such as made the English noble choose his grave 
 by a Swiss streamlet, where nature is at her freshest, 
 and looks as young as on the seventh morning. Such 
 a place is the course of the Gazeille, where it waters the 
 common of Monastier and thence downwards till it joins 
 the Loire; a place to hear birds singing; a place for 
 lovers to frequent. The name of the river was perhaps 
 suggested by the sound of its passage over the stones ; 
 for it is a great warbler, and at night, after I was in bed 
 at Monastier, I could hear it go singing down the val- 
 ley till I fell asleep. 
 
 On the whole, this is a Scottish landscape, although 
 not so noble as the best in Scotland; and by an odd 
 coincidence, the population is, in its way, as Scottish 
 as the country. They have abrupt, uncouth, Fifeshire 
 manners, and accost you, as if you were trespassing, 
 with an " OiCst-ce que vous allei? " only translatable 
 into the Lowland " Whaur ye gaun ? " They keep the 
 Scottish Sabbath. There is no labour done on that day 
 but to drive in and out the various pigs and sheep and 
 cattle that make so pleasant a tinkling in the meadows. 
 The lace-makers have disappeared from the street. Not 
 
 181 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 to attend mass would involve social degradation; and 
 you may find people reading Sunday books, in particu- 
 lar a sort of Catholic Monthly Visitor on the doings of 
 Our Lady of Lourdes. I remember one Sunday, when 
 I was walking in the country, that I fell on a hamlet 
 and found all the inhabitants, from the patriarch to the 
 baby, gathered in the shadow of a gable at prayer. 
 One strapping lass stood with her back to the wall and 
 did the solo part, the rest chiming in devoutly. Not 
 far off, a lad lay flat on his face asleep among some 
 straw, to represent the worldly element. 
 
 Again, this people is eager to proselytise; and the 
 postmaster's daughter used to argue with me by the 
 half-hour about my heresy, until she grew quite flushed. 
 I have heard the reverse process going on between a 
 Scotswoman and a French girl ; and the arguments in 
 the two cases were identical. Each apostle based her 
 claim on the superior virtue and attainments of her 
 clergy, and clenched the business with a threat of hell- 
 fire. ''Pas bong pritres ici,'' said the Presbyterian, 
 ''bong pretres en Ecosse.'' And the postmaster's 
 daughter, taking up the same weapon, plied me, so 
 to speak, with the butt of it instead of the bayonet. 
 We are a hopeful race, it seems, and easily persuaded 
 for our good. One cheerful circumstance I note in 
 these guerilla missions, that each side relies on hell, and 
 Protestant and Catholic alike address themselves to a 
 supposed misgiving in their adversary's heart. And I 
 call it cheerful, for faith is a more supporting quality 
 than imagination. 
 
 Here, as in Scotland, many peasant families boast a 
 son in holy orders. And here also, the young men 
 
 182 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 have a tendency to emigrate. It is certainly not poverty 
 that drives them to the great cities or across the seas, 
 for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune 
 of at least 40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked 
 with the spirit of adventure and the desire to rise in life, 
 and leave their homespun elders grumbling and won- 
 dering over the event. Once, at a village called Laus- 
 sonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake 
 who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing 
 and disappear. The wild swan in question was now 
 an apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way of 
 Bordeaux, and first landed in America, bareheaded and 
 barefoot, and with a single halfpenny in his pocket. 
 And now he was an apothecary! Such a wonderful 
 thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as 
 well have stayed at home,- but you never can tell 
 wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his 
 pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to 
 write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in 
 public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothe- 
 cary in Brazil. As for his old father, he could conceive 
 no reason for the lad's behaviour. *' I had always bread 
 for him," he said; "he ran away to annoy me. He 
 loved to annoy me. He had no gratitude." But at 
 heart h^ was swelling with pride over his travelled off- 
 spring, and he produced a letter out of his pocket, 
 where, as he said, it was rotting, a mere lump of paper 
 rags, and waved it gloriously in the air. " This comes 
 from America, " he cried, " six thousand leagues away ! " 
 ^nd the wine-shop audience looked upon it with a 
 certain thrill. 
 I soon became a popular figure, and was known for 
 183 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 miles in the country. Ou'st-ce que vous allei? was 
 changed for me into Quoi, vous rentre^ au Monastier 
 ce soir? and in the town itself every urchin seemed to 
 know my name, although no living creature could 
 pronounce it. There was one particular group of lace- 
 makers who brought out a chair for me whenever I 
 went by, and detained me from my walk to gossip. 
 They were filled with curiosity about England, its 
 language, its religion, the dress of the women, and 
 were never weary of seeing the Queen's head on Eng- 
 lish postage-stamps or seeking for French words in 
 English Journals. The language, in particular, filled 
 them with surprise. 
 
 "Do they speak patois in England?" I was once 
 asked ; and when I told them not, " Ah, then, French ? " 
 said they. 
 
 "No, no,*' I said, "not French." 
 
 "Then," they concluded, "they s^tzk patois.*' 
 
 You must obviously either speak French or patois. 
 Talk of the force of logic— here it was in all its weak- 
 ness. I gave up the point, but proceeding to give illus- 
 trations of my native jargon, I was met with a new 
 mortification. Of all patois they declared that mine 
 was the most preposterous and the most jocose in 
 sound. At each new word there was a new explosion 
 of laughter, and some of the younger ones were glad 
 to rise from their chairs and stamp about the street in 
 ecstasy; and I looked on upon their mirth in a faint 
 and slightly disagreeable bewilderment. "Bread," 
 which sounds a commonplace, plain-sailing monosyl- 
 lable in England, was the word that most delighted 
 these good ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them 
 
 184 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they 
 all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, 
 for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with 
 every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack 
 the sense of humour. 
 
 They were of all ages: children at their first web 
 of lace, a stripling girl with a bashful but encouraging 
 play of eyes, solid married women, and grandmothers, 
 some on the top of their age and some falling towards 
 decrepitude. One and all were pleasant and natural, 
 ready to laugh and ready with a certain quiet solem- 
 nity when that was called for by the subject of our 
 talk. Life, since the fall in wages, had begun to ap- 
 pear to them with a more serious air. The stripling 
 girl would sometimes laugh at me in a provocative and 
 not unadmiring manner, if I judge aright; and one of 
 the grandmothers, who was my great friend of the 
 party, gave me many a sharp word of judgment on 
 my sketches, my heresy, or even my arguments, and 
 gave them with a wry mouth and a humorous twinkle 
 in her eye that were eminently Scottish. But the rest 
 used me with a certain reverence, as something come 
 from afar and not entirely human. Nothing would 
 put them at their ease but the irresistible gaiety of my 
 native tongue. Between the old lady and myself I 
 think there was a real attachment. She was never 
 weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap 
 and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily com- 
 posed, and though she never failed to repudiate the 
 result, she would always insist upon another trial. It 
 was as good as a play to see her sitting in judgment 
 over the last. "No, no," she would say, "that is not 
 
 185 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 it. I am old, to be sure, but I am better-looking thart 
 that. We must try again." When I was about to 
 leave she bade me good-bye for this life in a somewhat 
 touching manner. We should not meet again, she said ; 
 it was a long farewell, and she was sorry. But life is 
 so full of crooks, old lady, that who knows .^ I have 
 said good-bye to people for greater distances and times, 
 and, please God, I mean to see them yet again. 
 
 One thing was notable about these women, from the 
 youngest to the oldest, and with hardly an exception. 
 In spite of their piety, they could twang off an oath 
 with Sir Toby Belch in person. There was nothing so 
 high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human 
 body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip 
 out the name of it, fair and square, by way of conver- 
 sational adornment. My landlady, who was pretty 
 and young, dressed like a lady and avoided patois like 
 a weakness, commonly addressed her child in the lan- 
 guage of a drunken bully. And of all the swearers that 
 I ever heard, commend me to an old lady in Gondet, a 
 village of the Loire. I was making a sketch, and her 
 curse was not yet ended when I had finished it and 
 took my departure. It is true she had a right to be 
 angry; for here was her son, a hulking fellow, visibly 
 the worse for drink before the day was well begun. 
 But it was strange to hear her unwearying flow of 
 oaths and obscenities, endless like a river, and now and 
 then rising to a passionate shrillness, in the clear and 
 silent air of the morning. In city slums, the thing 
 might have passed unnoticed; but in a country valley, 
 and from a plain and honest countrywoman, this beast- 
 liness of speech surprised the ear. 
 
 i86 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 The Conductor, as he is called, of Roads and Bridges 
 was my principal companion. He was generally intel- 
 ligent, and could have spoken more or less falsetto on 
 any of the trite topics ; but it was his specialty to have 
 a generous taste in eating. This was what was most 
 indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; 
 and I found in his company what I had long suspected, 
 that enthusiasm and special knowledge are the great 
 social qualities, and what they are about, whether 
 white sauce or Shakespeare's plays, an altogether sec- 
 ondary question. 
 
 1 used to accompany the Conductor on his profes- 
 sional rounds, and grew to believe myself an expert in 
 the business. I thought I could make an entry in a 
 stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure off the way- 
 side with any living engineer in France. Gondet was 
 one of the places we visited together; and Laussonne, 
 where I met the apothecary's father, was another. 
 There, at Laussonne, George Sand spent a day while 
 she was gathering materials for the Marquis de Villemer; 
 and I have spoken with an old man, who was then a 
 child running about the inn kitchen, and who still re- 
 members her with a sort of reverence. It appears that 
 he spoke French imperfectly; for this reason George 
 Sand chose him for companion, and whenever he let 
 slip a broad and picturesque phrase m patois, she would 
 make him repeat it again and again till it was graven 
 in her memory. The word for a frog particularly 
 pleased her fancy; and it would be curious to know if 
 she afterwards employed it in her works. The peas- 
 ants, who knew nothing of letters and had never so 
 much as heard of local colour, could not explain her 
 
 187 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 chattering with this backward child ; and to them she 
 seemed a very homely lady and far from beautiful : the 
 most famous man-killer of the age appealed so little to 
 Velaisian swineherds! 
 
 On my first engineering excursion, which lay up by 
 Crouzials towards Mount Mezenc and the borders of 
 Ardeche, I began an improving acquaintance with the 
 foreman road-mender. He was in great glee at having 
 me with him, passed me off among his subalterns as 
 the supervising engineer, and insisted on what he called 
 *' the gallantry " of paying for my breakfast in a road- 
 side wine-shop. On the whole, he was a man of great 
 weather-wisdom, some spirits, and a social temper. 
 But I am afraid he was superstitious. When he was 
 nine years old, he had seen one night a company of 
 bourgeois et dames qui faisaient la manege avec des 
 chaises, and concluded that he was in the presence of a 
 witches' Sabbath. I suppose, but venture with timidity 
 on the suggestion, that this may have been a romantic 
 and nocturnal picnic party. Again, coming from Pra- 
 delles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart 
 drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road. 
 The driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with 
 the cracking of his whip. He never seemed to go 
 faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake 
 him; and at length, at the corner of a hill, the whole 
 equipage disappeared bodily into the night. At the 
 time, people said it was the devil qui s'amusait a 
 faire ga, 
 
 1 suggested there was nothing more likely, as he 
 must have some amusement. 
 
 The foreman said it was odd, but there was less of 
 188 
 
A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE 
 
 that sort of thing than formerly. " Cest difficile,'' he 
 added, ''a expltquer,'' 
 
 When we were well up on the moors and the Con- 
 ductor was trying some road-metal with the gauge— 
 
 " Hark! " said the foreman, " do you hear nothing ? '* 
 
 We listened, and the wind, which was blowing chilly 
 out of the east, brought a faint, tangled jangling to our 
 ears. 
 
 " It is the flocks of Vivarais," said he. 
 
 For every summer, the flocks out of all Ardeche are 
 brought up to pasture on these grassy plateaux. 
 
 Here and there a little private flock was being tended 
 by a girl, one spinning with a distaff, another seated on 
 a wall and intently making lace. This last, when we 
 addressed her, leaped up in a panic and put out her 
 arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a distance, 
 and it was some seconds before we could persuade her 
 of the honesty of our intentions. 
 
 The Conductor told me of another herdswoman from 
 whom he had once asked his road while he was yet 
 new to the country, and who fled from him, driving 
 her beasts before her, until he had given up the in- 
 formation in despair. A tale of old lawlessness may 
 yet be read in these uncouth timidities. 
 
 The winter in these uplands is a dangerous and 
 melancholy time. Houses are snowed up, and way- 
 farers lost in a flurry within hail of their own fireside. 
 No man ventures abroad without meat and a bottle of 
 wine, which he replenishes at every wine-shop; and 
 even thus equipped he takes the road with terror. All 
 day the family sits about the fire in a foul and airless 
 hovel, and equally without work or diversion. The 
 
 189 
 
NOTES AND ESSAYS 
 
 father may carve a rude piece of furniture, but that is 
 all that will be done until the spring sets in again, and 
 along with it the labours of the field. It is not for 
 nothing that you find a clock in the meanest of these 
 mountain habitations. A clock and an almanac, you 
 would fancy, were indispensable in such a life. . . . 
 
 190 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
Originally published : 
 
 I. Fortnightly Review, June, 1 8^4, 
 
 II. Academy, April i^, iSyd. 
 
 III. Magazine of Art, April, 1882, 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 LORD LYTTON S 
 
 IT seems as if Lord Lytton, in this new book of his, 
 had found the form most natural to his talent. In 
 some ways, indeed, it may be held inferior to " Chroni- 
 cles and Characters " ; we look in vain for anything like 
 the terrible intensity of the night-scene in "Irene," or 
 for any such passages of massive and memorable writ- 
 ing as appeared, here and there, in the earlier work, 
 and made it not altogether unworthy of its model, 
 Hugo's " Legend of the Ages." But it becomes evident, 
 on the most hasty retrospect, that this earlier work 
 was a step on the way towards the later. It seems as 
 if the author had been feeling about for his definite 
 medium, and was already, in the language of the child's 
 game, growing hot. There are many pieces in " Chroni- 
 cles and Characters " that might be detached from their 
 original setting, and embodied, as they stand, among 
 the "Fables in Song." 
 
 For the term Fable is not very easy to define rigor- 
 ously. In the most typical form some moral precept is 
 
 ^93 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 set forth by means of a conception purely fantastic, 
 and usually somewhat trivial into the bargain ; there is 
 something playful about it, that will not support a very 
 exacting criticism, and the lesson must be apprehended 
 by the fancy at half a hint. Such is the great mass of 
 the old stories of wise animals or foolish men that have 
 amused our childhood. But we should expect the fable, 
 in company with other and more important literary 
 forms, to be more and more loosely, or at least largely, 
 comprehended as time went on, and so to degenerate 
 in conception from this original type. That depended 
 for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was 
 fantastic : the point of the thing lay in a sort of humor- 
 ous inappropriateness ; and it is natural enough that 
 pleasantry of this description should become less com- 
 mon, as men learn to suspect some serious analogy 
 underneath. Thus a comical story of an ape touches us 
 quite differently after the proposition of Mr. Darwin's 
 theory. Moreover there lay, perhaps, at the bottom of 
 this primitive sort of fable, a humanity, a tenderness of 
 rough truths ; so that at the end of some story, in which 
 vice or folly had met with its destined punishment, 
 the fabulist might be able to assure his auditors, as we 
 have often to assure tearful children on the like occa- 
 sions, that they may dry their eyes, for none of it was 
 true. 
 
 But this benefit of fiction becomes lost with more 
 sophisticated hearers and authors: a man is no longer 
 the dupe of his own artifice, and cannot deal playfully 
 with truths that are a matter of bitter concern to him in 
 his hfe. And hence, in the progressive centralisation 
 of modern thought, we should expect the old form of 
 
 194 
 
LORD LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 
 
 fable to fall gradually into desuetude, and be gradually 
 succeeded by another, which is a fable in aK points 
 except that it is not altogether fabulous. And this new 
 form, such as we should expect, and such as we do 
 indeed fmd, still presents the essential character of 
 brevity ; as in any other fable also, there is, underlying 
 and animating the brief action, a moral idea ; and as in 
 any other fable, the object is to bring this home to the 
 reader through the intellect rather than through the 
 feelings ; so that, without being very deeply moved or 
 interested by the characters of the piece, we should recog- 
 nise vividly the hinges on which the little plot revolves. 
 But the fabulist now seeks analogies where before he 
 merely sought humorous situations. There will be now 
 a logical nexus between the moral expressed and the 
 machinery employed to express it. The machinery, in 
 fact, as this change is developed, becomes less and less 
 fabulous. We find ourselves in presence of quite a 
 serious, if quite a miniature division of creative litera- 
 ture; and sometimes we have the lesson embodied in 
 a sober, every-day narration, as in the parables of the 
 New Testament, and sometimes merely the statement 
 or, at most, the collocation of significant facts in life, 
 the reader being left to resolve for himself the vague, 
 troublesome, and not yet definitely moral sentiment 
 which has been thus created. And step by step with 
 the development of this change, yet another is devel- 
 oped: the moral tends to become more indeterminate 
 and large. It ceases to be possible to append it, in a 
 tag, to the bottom of the piece, as one might write the 
 name below a caricature ; and the fable begins to take 
 rank with all other forms of creative literature, as some- 
 
 195 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 thing too ambitious, in spite of its miniature dimensions, 
 to be resumed in any succinct formula without the loss 
 of all that is deepest and most suggestive in it. 
 
 Now it is in this widest sense that Lord Lytton 
 understands the term; there are examples in his two 
 pleasant volumes of all the forms already mentioned, 
 and even of another which can only be admitted among 
 fables by the utmost possible leniency of construction. 
 "Composure," "Et Caetera," and several more, are 
 merely similes poetically elaborated. So, too, is the 
 pathetic story of the grandfather and grandchild : the 
 child, having treasured away an icicle and forgotten it 
 for ten minutes, comes back to find it already nearly 
 melted, and no longer beautiful : at the same time, the 
 grandfather has just remembered and taken out a bun- 
 dle of love-letters, which he too had stored away in 
 years gone by, and then long neglected ; and, behold ! 
 the letters are as faded and sorrowfully disappointing 
 as the icicle. This is merely a simile poetically worked 
 out; and yet it is in such as these, and some others, to 
 be mentioned further on, that the author seems at his 
 best. Wherever he has really written after the old 
 model, there is something to be deprecated : in spite of 
 all the spirit and freshness, in spite of his happy as- 
 sumption of that cheerful acceptation of things as they 
 are, which, rightly or wrongly, we come to attribute to 
 the ideal fabulist, there is ever a sense as of something 
 a little out of place. A form of literature so very in- 
 nocent and primitive looks a little overwritten in Lord 
 Lytton's conscious and highly coloured style. It may 
 be bad taste, but sometimes we should prefer a few 
 sentences of plain prose narration, and a little Bewick 
 
 196 
 
LORD LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 
 
 by way of tail-piece. So that it is not among those 
 fables that conform most nearly to the old model, but 
 one had nearly said among those that most widely differ 
 from it, that we fmd the most satisfactory examples of 
 the author's manner. 
 
 In the mere matter of ingenuity, the metaphysical 
 fables are the most remarkable; such as that of the 
 windmill who imagined that it was he who raised the 
 wind ; or that of the grocer's balance (" Cogito ergo 
 sum ") who considered himself endowed with free-will, 
 reason, and an infallible practical judgment; until, one 
 fine day, the police make a descent upon the shop, and 
 find the weights false and the scales unequal; and the 
 whole thing is broken up for old iron. Capital fables, 
 also, in the same ironical spirit, are " Prometheus Un- 
 bound," the tale of the vainglory ing of a champagne- 
 cork, and " Teleology," where a nettle justifies the ways 
 of God to nettles while all goes well with it, and, upon 
 a change of luck, promptly changes its divinity. 
 
 In all these there is still plenty of the fabulous if you 
 will, although, even here, there may be two opinions 
 possible; but there is another group, of an order of 
 merit perhaps still higher, where we look in vain for 
 any such playful liberties with Nature. Thus we have 
 "Conservation of Force"; where a musician, thinking 
 of a certain picture, improvises in the twilight; a poet, 
 hearing the music, goes home inspired, and writes a 
 poem ; and then a painter, under the influence of this 
 poem, paints another picture, thus lineally descended 
 from the first. This is fiction, but not what we have 
 been used to call fable. We miss the incredible ele- 
 ment, the point of audacity with which the fabulist was 
 
 >97 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 wont to mock at his readers. And still more so is this 
 the case with others. " The Horse and the Fly " states 
 one of the unanswerable problems of iife in quite a 
 realistic and straightforward way. A fly startles a cab- 
 horse, the coach is overset; a newly married pair within 
 and the driver, a man with a wife and family, are all 
 killed. The horse continues to gallop off in the loose 
 traces, and ends the tragedy by running over an only 
 child ; and there is some little pathetic detail here intro- 
 duced in the telling, that makes the reader's indignation 
 very white-hot against some one. It remains to be 
 seen who that some one is to be : the fly ? Nay, but, on 
 closer inspection, it appears that the fly, actuated by 
 maternal instinct, was only seeking a place for her eggs : 
 is maternal instinct, then, " sole author of these mis- 
 chiefs all " ? " Who 's in the Right ? " one of the best 
 fables in the book, is somewhat in the same vein. 
 After a battle has been won, a group of officers assem- 
 ble inside a battery, and debate together who should 
 have the honour of the success : the Prince, the general 
 staff, the cavalry, the engineer who posted the battery 
 in which they then stand talking, are successively 
 named : the sergeant, who pointed the guns, sneers to 
 himself at the mention of the engineer; and, close by, 
 the gunner, who had applied the match, passes away 
 with a smile of triumph, since it was through his hand 
 that the victorious blow had been dealt. Meanwhile, 
 the cannon claims the honour over the gunner; the 
 cannon-ball, who actually goes forth on the dread mis- 
 sion, claims it over the cannon, who remains idly be- 
 hind; the powder reminds the cannon-ball that, but for 
 him, it would still be lying on the arsenal floor; and the 
 
 198 
 
LORD LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 
 
 match caps the discussion: powder, cannon-ball, and 
 cannon would be all equally vain and ineffectual with- 
 out fire. Just then there comes on a shower of rain, 
 which wets the powder and puts out the match, and 
 completes this lesson of dependence, by indicating the 
 negative conditions which are as necessary for any 
 effect, in their absence, as is the presence of this great 
 fraternity of positive conditions, not any one of which 
 can claim priority over any other. But the fable does 
 not end here, as perhaps, in all logical strictness, it 
 should. It wanders off into a discussion as to which 
 is the truer greatness, that of the vanquished fire or that 
 of the victorious rain. And the speech of the rain is 
 charming: 
 
 ** Lo, with my little drops I bless again 
 And beautify the fields which thou didst blast! 
 Rend, wither, waste, and ruin, what thou wilt, 
 But call not Greatness what the Gods call Guilt. 
 Blossoms and grass from blood in battle spilt, 
 And poppied com, 1 bring, 
 *Mid mouldering Babels, to oblivion built, 
 My violets spring. 
 
 Little by little my small drops have strength 
 To deck with green delights the grateful earth." 
 
 And so forth, not quite germane (it seems to me) to 
 the matter in hand, but welcome for its own sake. 
 
 Best of all are the fables that deal more immediately 
 with the emotions. There is, for instance, that of 
 *' The Two Travellers," which is profoundly moving in 
 conception, although by no means as well written as 
 some others. In this, one of the two, fearfully frost- 
 bitten, saves his life out of the snow at the cost of all 
 
 . 199 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 that was comely in his body; just as, long before, the 
 other, who has now quietly resigned himself to death, 
 had violently freed himself from Love at the cost of all 
 that was finest and fairest in his character. Very 
 graceful and sweet is the fable (if so it should be called) 
 in which the author sings the praises of that " kindly 
 perspective" which lets a wheat-stalk near the eye 
 cover twenty leagues of distant country, and makes the 
 humble circle about a man's hearth more to him than 
 all the possibilities of the external world. The com- 
 panion fable to this is also excellent. It tells us of a 
 man who had, all his life through, entertained a passion 
 for certain blue hills on the far horizon, and had prom- 
 ised himself to travel thither ere he died, and become 
 familiar with these distant friends. At last, in some 
 political trouble, he is banished to the very place of his 
 dreams. He arrives there overnight, and, when he 
 rises and goes forth in the morning, there sure enough 
 are the blue hills, only now they have changed places 
 with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, 
 from the old home whence he has come. Such a story 
 might have been very cynically treated ; but it is not so 
 done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the 
 disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and 
 understands that things far away are to be loved for 
 their own sake, and that the unattainable is not truly 
 unattainable, when we can make the beauty of it our 
 own. Indeed, throughout all these two volumes, 
 though there is much practical scepticism, and much 
 irony on abstract questions, this kindly and consolatory 
 spirit is never absent. There is much that is cheerful 
 and, after a sedate^ fireside fashion, hopeful. No one 
 
LORD LYTTON'S ''FABLES IN SONG" 
 
 will be discouraged by reading the book; but the 
 ground of all this hopefulness and cheerfulness remains 
 to the end somewhat vague. It does not seem to arise 
 from any practical belief in the future either of the in- 
 dividual or the race, but rather from the profound per- 
 sonal contentment of the writer. This is, I suppose, 
 all we must look for in the case. It is as much as we 
 can expect, if the fabuliSt shall prove a shrewd and 
 cheerful fellow-wayfarer, one with whom the world 
 does not seem to have gone much amiss, but who has 
 yet laughingly learned something of its evil. It will 
 depend much, of course, upon our own character and 
 circumstances, whether the encounter will be agreeable 
 and bracing to the spirits, or offend us as an ill-timed 
 mockery. But where, as here, there is a little tincture 
 of bitterness along with the good-nature, where it is 
 plainly not the humour of a man cheerfully ignorant, 
 but of one who looks on, tolerant and superior and 
 smilingly attentive, upon the good and bad of our 
 existence, it will go hardly if we do not catch some 
 reflection of the same spirit to help us on our way. 
 There is here no impertinent and lying proclamation of 
 peace— none of the cheap optimism of the well-to-do; 
 what we find here is a view of life that would be even 
 grievous, were it not enlivened with this abiding cheer- 
 fulness, and ever and anon redeemed by a stroke of 
 pathos. 
 
 It is natural enough, I suppose, that we should find 
 wanting in this book some of the intenser qualities of 
 the author's work; and their absence is made up for by 
 much happy description after a quieter fashion. The 
 burst of jubilation over the departure of the snow, 
 
 20 1 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 which forms the prelude to "The Thistle," is full of 
 spirit and of pleasant images. The speech of the forest 
 in " Sans Souci " is inspired by a beautiful sentiment 
 for nature of the modern sort, and pleases us more, 
 I think, as poetry should please us, than anything in 
 ''Chronicles and Characters." There are some admir- 
 able felicities of expression here and there; as that of 
 the hill, whose summit • 
 
 " Did print 
 The azure air with pines.** 
 
 Moreover, I do not recollect in the author's former 
 work any symptom of that sympathetic treatment of 
 still life, which is noticeable now and again in the 
 fables ; and perhaps most noticeably, when he sketches 
 the burned letters as they hover along the gusty flue, 
 " Thin, sable veils wherein a restless spark Yet trem- 
 bled." But the description is at its best when the sub- 
 jects are unpleasant, or even grisly. There are a few 
 capital lines in this key on the last spasm of the battle 
 before alluded to. Surely nothing could be better, in 
 its own way, than the fish in " The Last Cruise of the 
 Arrogant," "the shadowy, side-faced, silent things," 
 that come butting and staring with lidless eyes at the 
 sunken steam-engine. And although, in yet another, 
 we are told, pleasantly enough, how the water went 
 down into the valleys, where it set itself gaily to saw 
 wood, and on into the plains, where it would soberly 
 carry grain to town ; yet the real strength of the fable 
 is when it deals with the shut pool in which certain 
 unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and 
 snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sod* 
 
 202 
 
LORD LYTTON'S "FABLES IN SONG" 
 
 den contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely signifi- 
 cant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are 
 startled by the appearance of her horrible lover, the 
 maggot. 
 
 And now for a) last word, about the style. This is 
 not easy to criticise. It is impossible to deny to it 
 rapidity, spirit, and a full sound; the lines are never 
 lame, and the sense is carried forwards with an uninter- 
 rupted, impetuous rush. But it is not equal. After 
 passages of really admirable versification, the author 
 falls back upon a sort of loose, cavalry manner, not 
 unlike the style of some of Mr. Browning's minor pieces, 
 and almost inseparable from wordiness, and an easy 
 acceptation of somewhat cheap finish. There is no- 
 thing here of that compression which is the note of a 
 really sovereign style. It is unfair, perhaps, to set a 
 not remarkable passage from Lord Lytton side by side 
 with one of the signal masterpieces of another, and a 
 very perfect poet; and yet it is interesting, when we 
 see how the portraiture of a dog, detailed through thirty- 
 odd lines, is frittered down and finally almost lost in 
 the mere laxity of the style, to compare it with the 
 clear, simple, vigorous delineation that Burns, in four 
 couplets, has given us of the ploughman's collie. It is 
 interesting, at first, and then it becomes a little irritat- 
 ing; for when we think of other passages so much 
 more finished and adroit, we cannot help feeling that 
 with a little more ardour after perfection of form, criti- 
 cism would have found nothing left for her to censure. 
 A similar mark of precipitate work is the number of 
 adjectives tumultuously heaped together, sometimes to 
 help out the sense, and sometimes (as one cannot but 
 
 203 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 suspect) to help out the sound of the verses. I do not 
 believe, for instance, that Lord Lytton himself would 
 defend the lines in which we are told how Laocoon 
 " Revealed to Roman crowds, now Christian grown, 
 That Pagan anguish which, in Parian stone, the Rho- 
 dian artist," and so on. It is not only that this is bad 
 in itself; but that it is unworthy of the company in 
 which it is found; that such verses should not have 
 appeared with the name of a good versifier like Lord 
 Lytton. We must take exception, also, in conclusion, 
 to the excess of alliteration. Alliteration is so liable to 
 be abused that we can scarcely be too sparing of it; 
 and yet it is a trick that seems to grow upon the author 
 with years. It is a pity to see fine verses, such as 
 some in " Demos," absolutely spoiled by the recurrence 
 of one wearisome consonant. 
 
II 
 
 SALVINI'S MACBETH 
 
 Salvini dosed his short visit to Edinburgh by a per- 
 formance of Macbeth. It was, perhaps, from a senti- 
 ment of local colour that he chose to play the Scottish 
 usurper for the first time before Scotsmen; and the 
 audience were not insensible of the privilege. Few 
 things, indeed, can move a stronger interest than to see 
 a great creation taking shape for the first time. If it is 
 not purely artistic, the sentiment is surely human. And 
 the thought that you are before all the world, and have 
 the start of so many others as eager as yourself, at 
 least keeps you in a more unbearable suspense before 
 the curtain rises, if it does not enhance the delight with 
 which you follow the performance and see the actor 
 " bend up each corporal agent " to realise a masterpiece 
 of a few hours' duration. With a player so variable as 
 Salvini, who trusts to the feeling of the moment for so 
 much detail, and who, night after night, does the same 
 thing differently but always well, it can never be safe 
 to pass judgment after a single hearing. And this is 
 more particularly true of last week's Macbeth; for the 
 whole third act was marred by a grievously humorous 
 misadventure. Several minutes too soon the ghost of 
 Banquo joined the party, and, after having sat help- 
 
 205 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 less awhile at a table, was ignominiously withdrawn. 
 Twice was this ghostly Jack-in-the-box obtruded on 
 the stage before his time; twice removed again; and 
 yet he showed so little hurry when he was really 
 wanted, that, after an awkward pause, Macbeth had to 
 begin his apostrophe to empty air. The arrival of the 
 belated spectre in the middle, with a jerk that made 
 him nod all over, was the last accident in the chapter, 
 and worthily topped the whole. It may be imagined how 
 lamely matters went throughout these cross-purposes. 
 
 In spite of this, and some other hitches, Salvini's 
 Macbeth had an emphatic success. The creation is 
 worthy of a place beside the same artist's Othello and 
 Hamlet. It is the simplest and most unsympathetic of 
 the three; but the absence of the finer lineaments of 
 Hamlet is redeemed by gusto, breadth, and a headlong 
 unity. Salvini sees nothing great in Macbeth beyond 
 the royalty of muscle, and that courage which comes 
 of strong and copious circulation. The moral small- 
 ness of the man is insisted on from the first, in the 
 shudder of uncontrollable jealousy with which he sees 
 Duncan embracing Banquo. He may have some North- 
 ern poetry of speech, but he has not much logical un- 
 derstanding. In his dealings with the supernatural 
 powers he is like a savage with his fetich, trusting them 
 beyond bounds while all goes well, and whenever he 
 is crossed, casting his belief aside and calling " fate into 
 the list." For his wife, he is little more than an agent, 
 a frame of bone and sinew for her fiery spirit to com- 
 mand. The nature of his feeling towards her is ren- 
 dered with a most precise and delicate touch. He 
 always yields to the woman's fascination ; and yet his 
 
 206 
 
SALVINI'S MACBETH 
 
 caresses (and we know how much meaning Salvini 
 can give to a caress) are singularly hard and unloving. 
 Sometimes he lays his hand on her as he might take 
 hold of any one who happened to be nearest to him at a 
 moment of excitement. Love has fallen out of this mar- 
 riage by the way, and left a curious friendship. Only 
 once— at the very moment when she is showing herself 
 so little a woman and so much a high-spirited man- 
 only once is he very deeply stirred towards her; and 
 that finds expression in the strange and horrible trans- 
 port of admiration, doubly strange and horrible on 
 Salvini's lips—" Bring forth men-children only! " 
 
 The murder scene, as was to be expected, pleased 
 the audience best. Macbeth's voice, in the talk with 
 his wife, was a thing not to be forgotten ; and when he 
 spoke of his hangman's hands he seemed to have blood 
 in his utterance. Never for a moment, even in the very 
 article of the murder, does he possess his own soul. 
 He is a man on wires. From first to last it is an ex- 
 hibition of hideous cowardice. For, after all, it is not 
 here, but in broad daylight, with the exhilaration of 
 conflict, where he can assure himself at every blow he 
 has the longest sword and the heaviest hand, that this 
 man's physical bravery can keep him up; he is an un- 
 wieldy ship, and needs plenty of way on before he 
 will steer. 
 
 In the banquet scene, while the first murderer gives 
 account of what he has done, there comes a flash of 
 truculent joy at the "twenty trenched gashes" on 
 Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome to his 
 imagination those very details of physical horror which 
 are so soon to turn sour in him. As he runs out to 
 
 207 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 embrace these cruel circumstances, as he seeks to realise 
 to his mind's eye the reassuring spectacle of his dead 
 enemy, he is dressing out the phantom to terrify him- 
 self; and his imagination, playing the part of justice, 
 is to " commend to his own lips the ingredients of his 
 poisoned chalice." With the recollection of Hamlet 
 and his father's spirit still fresh upon him, and the holy 
 awe with which that good man encountered things not 
 dreamt of in his philosophy, it was not possible to 
 avoid looking for resemblances between the two appa- 
 ritions and the two men haunted. But there are none 
 to be found. Macbeth has a purely physical dislike for 
 Banquo's spirit and the "twenty trenched gashes.'* 
 He is afraid of he knows not what. He is abject, and 
 again blustering. In the end he so far forgets himself, 
 his terror, and the nature of what is before him, that 
 he rushes upon it as he would upon a man. When 
 his wife tells him he needs repose, there is something 
 really childish in the way he looks about the room, and, 
 seeing nothing, with an expression of almost sensual 
 relief, plucks up heart enough to go to bed. And what 
 is the upshot of the visitation ? It is written in Shake- 
 speare, but should be read with the commentary of Sal- 
 vini's voice and expression : — " O! siam nelV opra ancor 
 fanciulli''—'' We are yet young indeed." Circle below 
 circle. He is looking with horrible satisfaction into the 
 mouth of hell. There may still be a prick to-day; but 
 to-morrow conscience will be dead, and he may move 
 untroubled in this element of blood. 
 
 In the fifth act we see this lowest circle reached ; and 
 it is Salvini's finest moment throughout the play. From 
 the first he was admirably made up, and looked Mac- 
 
 308 
 
SALVINI'S MACBETH 
 
 beth to the full as perfectly as ever he looked Othello. 
 From the first moment he steps upon the stage you can 
 see this character is a creation to the fullest meaning of 
 the phrase; for the man before you is a type you know 
 well already. He arrives with Banquo on the heath, 
 fair and red-bearded, sparing of gesture, full of pride 
 and the sense of animal well-being, and satisfied after 
 the battle like a beast who has eaten his fill. But in 
 the fifth act there is a change. This is still the big, 
 burly, fleshly, handsome-looking Thane; here is still 
 the same face which in the earlier acts could be super- 
 ficially good-humoured and sometimes royally courteous. 
 But now the atmosphere of blood, which pervades the 
 whole tragedy, has entered into the man and subdued 
 him to its own nature; and an indescribable degrada- 
 tion, a slackness and puffiness, has overtaken his fea- 
 tures. He has breathed the air of carnage, and supped 
 full of horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell 
 of blood on her hand: Macbeth makes no complaint- 
 he has ceased to notice it now; but the same smell is 
 in his nostrils. A contained fury and disgust possesses 
 him. He taunts the messenger and the doctor as people 
 would taunt their mortal enemies. And, indeed, as he 
 knows right well, every one is his enemy now, except 
 his wife. About her he questions the doctor with 
 something like a last human anxiety; and, in tones of 
 grisly mystery, asks him if he can " minister to a mind 
 diseased." When the news of her death is brought 
 him, he is staggered and falls into a seat; but somehow 
 it is not anything we can call grief that he displays. 
 There had been two of them against God and man; 
 and now, when there is only one, it makes perhaps less 
 
 209 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 difference than he had expected. And so her death is 
 not only an affliction, but one more disillusion; and he 
 redoubles in bitterness. The speech that follows, given 
 with tragic cynicism in every word, is a dirge, not so 
 much for her as for himself. From that time forth there 
 is nothing human left in him, only " the fiend of Scot- 
 land," Macduff's " hell-hound," whom, with a stern glee, 
 we see baited like a bear and hunted down like a wolf. 
 He is inspired and set above fate by a demoniacal energy, 
 a lust of wounds and slaughter. Even after he meets 
 Macduff his courage does not fail; but when he hears 
 the Thane was not born of woman, all virtue goes out 
 of him ; and though he speaks sounding words of de- 
 fiance, the last combat is little better than a suicide. 
 
 The whole performance is, as I said, so full of gusto 
 and a headlong unity ; the personality of Macbeth is so 
 sharp and powerful ; and within these somewhat narrow 
 limits there is so much play and saliency that, so far as 
 concerns Salvini himself, a third great success seems 
 indubitable. Unfortunately, however, a great actor can- 
 not fill more than a very small fraction of the boards ; and 
 though Banquo's ghost will probably be more seasonable 
 in his future apparitions, there are some more inherent 
 difficulties in the piece. The company at large did not 
 distinguish themselves. Macduff, to the huge delight 
 of the gallery, out-Macduff'd the average ranter. The 
 lady who filled the principal female part has done better 
 on other occasions, but I fear she has not metal for 
 what she tried last week. Not to succeed in the sleep- 
 walking scene is to make a memorable failure. As it 
 was given, it succeeded in being wrong in art without 
 being true to nature. 
 
SALYINI'S MACBETH 
 
 And there is yet another difficulty, happily easy to 
 reform, which somewhat interfered with the success 
 of the performance. At the end of the incantation 
 scene the Italian translator has made Macbeth fall in- 
 sensible upon the stage. This is a change of question- 
 able propriety from a psychological point of view ; while 
 in point of view of effect it leaves the stage for some 
 moments empty of all business. To remedy this, a 
 bevy of green ballet-girls came forth and pointed their 
 toes about the prostrate king. A dance of High Church 
 curates, or a hornpipe by Mr. T. P. Cooke, would not 
 be more out of the key ; though the gravity of a Scots 
 audience was not to be overcome, and they merely ex- 
 pressed their disapprobation by a round of moderate 
 hisses, a similar irruption of Christmas fairies would 
 most likely convulse a London theatre from pit to gal- 
 lery with inextinguishable laughter. It is, I am told, 
 the Italian tradition ; but it is one more honoured in the 
 breach than the observance. With the total disappear- 
 ance of these damsels, with a stronger Lady Macbeth, 
 and, if possible, with some compression of those scenes 
 in which Salvini does not appear, and the spectator 
 is left at the mercy of Macduffs and Duncans, the play 
 would go twice as well, and we should be better able 
 to follow and enjoy an admirable work of dramatic art. 
 
 an 
 
Ill 
 
 bagster's " pilgrim's progress " 
 
 I HAVE here before me an edition of the Pilgrim* s 
 Progress, bound in green, without a date, and described 
 as " illustrated by nearly three hundred engravings, and 
 memoir of Buny an. " On the outside it is lettered " Bag- 
 ster's Illustrated Edition," and after the author's apology, 
 facing the first page of the tale, a folding pictorial " Plan 
 of the Road " is marked as " drawn by the late Mr. T. 
 Conder," and engraved by J. Basire. No further in- 
 formation is anywhere vouchsafed; perhaps the pub- 
 lishers had judged the work too unimportant; and we 
 are still left ignorant whether or not we owe the wood- 
 cuts in the body of the volume to the same hand that 
 drew the plan. It seems, however, more than probable. 
 The literal particularity of mind which, in the map, laid 
 down the flower-plots in the devil's garden, and care- 
 fully introduced the court-house in the town of Vanity, 
 is closely paralleled in many of the cuts ; and in both, the 
 architecture of the buildings and the disposition of the 
 gardens have a kindred and entirely English air. Who- 
 ever he was, the author of these wonderful little pictures 
 may lay claim to be the best illustrator of Bunyan.^ 
 
 1 The illustrator was, in fact, a lady, Miss Eunice Bagster, eldest daughter 
 of the publisher, Samuel Bagster; except in the case of the cuts depicting 
 
 212 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 They are not only good illustrations, like so many others ; 
 but they are like so few, good illustrations of Bun- 
 yan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is still the same 
 as his own. The designer also has lain down and 
 dreamed a dream, as literal, as quaint, and almost as 
 apposite as Bunyan's ; and text and pictures make but 
 the two sides of the same homespun yet impassioned 
 story. To do justice to the designs, it will be neces- 
 sary to say, for the hundredth time, a word or two about 
 the masterpiece which they adorn. 
 
 All allegories have a tendency to escape from the pur- 
 pose of their creators; and as the characters and inci- 
 dents become more and more interesting in themselves, 
 the moral, which these were to show forth, falls more 
 and more into neglect. An architect may command a 
 wreath of vine-leaves round the cornice of a monument; 
 but if^ as each leaf came from the chisel, it took proper 
 life and fluttered freely on the wall, and if the vine grew, 
 and the building were hidden over with foliage and 
 fruit, the architect would stand in much the same situa- 
 tion as the writer of allegories. The FaBry Queen was 
 an allegory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as 
 an imaginative tale in incomparable verse. The case of 
 Bunyan is widely different ; and yet in this also Allegory, 
 poor nymph, although never quite forgotten, is some- 
 times rudely thrust against the wall. Bunyan was 
 fervently in earnest; with "his fingers in his ears, he 
 ran on," straight for his mark. He tells us himself, in 
 
 the fight with Apollyon, which were designed by her brother, Mr. Jona- 
 than Bagster, The edition was published in 1845. I am indebted for 
 this information to the kindness ol Mr. Robert Bagster, the present man- 
 aging director of the firm.— [Ed.] 
 
 213 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 the conclusion to the first part, that he did not fear t<? 
 raise a laugh ; indeed, he feared nothing, and said any- 
 thing; and he was greatly served in this by a certain 
 rustic privilege of his style^ which, like the talk of strong 
 uneducated men, when it does not impress by its force, 
 still charms by its simplicity. The mere story and the 
 allegorical design enjoyed perhaps his equal favour. 
 He believed in both with an energy of faith that was 
 capable of moving mountains. And we have to remark 
 in him, not the parts where inspiration fails and is sup- 
 plied by cold and merely decorative invention, but the 
 parts where faith has grown to be credulity, and his 
 characters become so real to him that he forgets the end 
 of their creation. We can follow him step by step into 
 the trap which he lays for himself by his own entire 
 good faith and triumphant literality of vision, till the 
 trap closes and shuts him in an inconsistency. The 
 allegories of the Interpreter and of the Shepherds of the 
 Delectable Mountains are all actually performed, like 
 stage-plays, before the pilgrims. The son of Mr. Great- 
 grace visibly "tumbles hills about with his words." 
 Adam the First has his condemnation written visibly 
 on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very 
 instant the net closes round the pilgrims, " the white 
 robe falls from the black man's body." Despair "get- 
 teth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel " ; it was in " sun- 
 shiny weather " that he had his fits ; and the birds in 
 the grove about the House Beautiful, "our country 
 birds," only sing their little pious verses " at the spring, 
 when the flowers appear and the sun shines warm." 
 "I often," says Piety, "go out to hear them; we also 
 ofttimes keep them tame on our house." The post 
 
 214 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS'' 
 
 between Beulah and the Celestial City sounds his horn, 
 as you may yet hear in country places. Madam Bubble, 
 that " tall, comely dame, something of a swarthy com- 
 plexion, in very pleasant attire, but old," "gives you 
 a smile at the end of each sentence"— a real woman 
 she; we all know her. Christiana dying "gave Mr. 
 Stand-fast a ring," for no possible reason in the allegory, 
 merely because the touch was human and affecting. 
 Look at Great-heart, with his soldierly ways, garrison 
 ways, as I had almost called them; with his taste in 
 weapons ; his delight in any that " he found to be a 
 man of his hands"; his chivalrous point of honour, 
 letting Giant Maul get up again when he was down, a 
 thing fairly flying in the teeth of the moral; above all, 
 with his language in the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: 
 "I thought I should have lost my man "—"chicken- 
 hearted"— "at last he came in, and I will say that for 
 my lord, he carried it wonderful lovingly to him." This 
 is no Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, big- 
 busted ancient, adjusting his shoulder-belts, twirling 
 his long moustaches as he speaks. Last and most re- 
 markable, "My sword," says the dying Valiant-for- 
 Truth, he in whom Great-heart delighted, " my sword 
 I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, 
 and my courage and skill to him that can get it." And 
 after this boast, more arrogantly unorthodox than was 
 ever dreamed of by the rejected Ignorance, we are told 
 that "all the trumpets sounded for him on the other 
 side.'' 
 
 In every page the book is stamped with the same 
 energy of vision and the same energy of belief. The 
 quality is equally and indifferently displayed in the spirit 
 
 215 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 of the fighting, the tenderness of the pathos, the start- 
 ling vigour and strangeness of the incidents, the natural 
 strain of the conversations, and the humanity and charm 
 of the characters. Trivial talk over a meal, the dying 
 words of heroes, the delights of Beulah or the Celestial 
 City, Apollyon and my Lord Hate-good, Great-heart, 
 and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, all have been imagined with 
 the same clearness, all written of with equal gusto and 
 precision, all created in the same mixed element, of 
 simplicity that is almost comical, and art that, for its 
 purpose, is faultless. 
 
 It was in much the same spirit that our artist sat down 
 to his drawings. He is by nature a Bunyan of the 
 pencil. He, too, will draw anything, from a butcher at 
 work on a dead sheep, up to the courts of Heaven. 
 " A Lamb for Supper " is the name of one of his designs, 
 '' Their Glorious Entry " of another. He has the same 
 disregard for the ridiculous, and enjoys somewhat of 
 the same privilege of style, so that we are pleased even 
 when we laugh the most. He is literal to the verge of 
 folly. If dust is to be raised from the unswept parlour, 
 you may be sure it will " fly abundantly " in the picture. 
 If Faithful is to lie "as dead" before Moses, dead he 
 shall lie with a warrant— dead and stiff like granite; nay 
 (and here the artist must enhance upon the symbolism 
 of the author), it is with the identical stone tables of the 
 law that Moses fells the sinner. Good and bad people, 
 whom we at once distinguish in the text by their names, 
 Hopeful, Honest, and Valiant-for-Truth on the one hand, 
 as against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord 
 Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply 
 distinguished by their costume. Good people, when 
 
 216 
 
BAGSTER'S '^ PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about 
 the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad 
 people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few 
 with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, 
 and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. 
 Worldly Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, 
 stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waist- 
 coat, and trunk-hose. But above all examples of this 
 artist's intrepidity, commend me to the print entitled 
 "Christian Finds it Deep." "A great darkness and 
 horror," says the text, have fallen on the pilgrim; it is 
 the comfortless death-bed with which Bunyan so strik- 
 ingly concludes the sorrows and conflicts of his hero. 
 How to represent this worthily the artist knew not; 
 and yet he was determined to represent it somehow. 
 This was how he did: Hopeful is still shown to his 
 neck above the water of death ; but Christian has bodily 
 disappeared, and a blot of solid blackness indicates his 
 place. 
 
 As you continue to look at these pictures, about an 
 inch square for the most part, sometimes printed three 
 or more to the page, and each having a printed legend 
 of its own, however trivial the event recorded, you 
 will soon become aware of two things : first, that the 
 man can draw, and, second, that he possesses the gift 
 of an imagination. "Obstinate reviles," says the 
 legend; and you should see Obstinate reviling. "He 
 warily retraces his steps " ; and there is Christian, posting 
 through the plain, terror and speed in every muscle. 
 " Mercy yearns to go " shows you a plain interior with 
 packing going forward, and, right in the middle, Mercy 
 yearning to go— every line of the girl's figure yearning. 
 
 217 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 In " The Chamber called Peace " we see a simple Eng- 
 lish room, bed with white curtains, window valance 
 and door, as may be found in many thousand unpre- 
 tentious houses ; but far off, through the open window, 
 we behold the sun uprising out of a great plain, and 
 Christian hails it with his hand : 
 
 *' Where am I now ! is this the love and care 
 Of Jesus, for the men that pilgrims are ! 
 Thus to provide ! That I should be forgiven I 
 And dwell already the next door to heaven ! " 
 
 A page or two further, from the top of the House 
 Beautiful, the damsels point his gaze towards the De- 
 lectable Mountains: "The Prospect," so the cut is 
 ticketed— and I shall be surprised, if on less than a 
 square of paper you can show me one so wide and fair. 
 Down a cross-road on an English plain, a cathedral city 
 outlined on the horizon, a hazel shaw upon the left, 
 comes Madam Wanton dancing with her fair enchanted 
 cup, and Faithful, book in hand, half pauses. The 
 cut is perfect as a symbol : the giddy movement of the 
 sorceress, the uncertain poise of the man struck to the 
 heart by a temptation, the contrast of that even plain of 
 life whereon he journeys with the bold, ideal bearing 
 of the wanton— the artist who invented and portrayed 
 this had not merely read Bunyan, he had also thought- 
 fully lived. The Delectable Mountains— I continue 
 skimming the first part— are not on the whole happily 
 rendered. Once, and once only, the note is struck, 
 when Christian and Hopeful are seen coming, shoulder- 
 high, through a thicket of green shrubs— box, perhaps, 
 or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or 
 
 218 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 pointed, the hills stand ranged against the sky. A 
 little further, and we come to that masterpiece of Bun- 
 yan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground; where, 
 in a few traits, he has set down the latter end of such 
 a number of the would-be good; where his allegory 
 goes so deep that, to people looking seriously on life, 
 it cuts like satire. The true significance of this inven- 
 tion lies, of course, far out of the way of drawing; only 
 one feature, the great tedium of the land, the growing 
 weariness in well-doing, may be somewhat represented 
 in a symbol. The pilgrims are near the end : " Two 
 Miles Yet," says the legend. The road goes ploughing 
 up and down over a rolling heath ; the wayfarers, with 
 outstretched arms, are already sunk to the knees over 
 the brow of the nearest hill ; they have just passed a 
 milestone with the cipher two; from overhead a great, 
 piled, summer cumulus, as of a slumberous summer 
 afternoon, beshadows them: two miles! it might be 
 hundreds. In dealing with the Land of Beulah the 
 artist lags, in both parts, miserably behind the text, but 
 in the distant prospect of the Celestial City more than 
 regains his own. You will remember when Christian 
 and Hopeful "with desire fell sick." "Effect of the 
 Sunbeams " is the artist's title. Against the sky, upon 
 a cliffy mountain, the radiant temple beams upon them 
 over deep, subjacent woods; they, behind a mound, 
 as if seeking shelter from the splendour— one prostrate 
 on his face, one kneeling, and with hands ecstatically 
 lifted— yearn with passion after that immortal city. 
 Turn the page, and we behold them walking by the 
 very shores of death ; Heaven, from this nigher view, 
 has risen half-way to the zenith, and sheds a wider 
 
 319 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 glory; and the two pilgrims, dark against that 
 brightness, walk and sing out of the fulness of 
 their hearts. No cut more thoroughly illustrates at 
 once the merit and the weakness of the artist. Each 
 pilgrim sings with a book in his grasp— a family 
 Bible at the least for bigness; tomes so recklessly 
 enormous that our second impulse is to laughter. 
 And yet that is not the first thought, nor perhaps 
 the last. Something in the attitude of the mani- 
 kins—faces they have none, they are too small for 
 that— something in the way they swing these 
 monstrous volumes to their singing, something 
 perhaps borrowed from the text, some subtle dif- 
 ferentiation from the cut that went before and 
 the cut that follows after— something, at least, 
 speaks clearly of a fearful joy, of Heaven seen 
 from the death-bed, of the horror of the last pas- 
 sage no less than of the glorious coming home. 
 There is that in the action of one of them which 
 always reminds me, with a difference, of that 
 haunting last glimpse of Thomas Idle, travelling 
 to Tyburn in the cart. Next come the Shining 
 Ones, wooden and trivial enough; the pilgrims pass 
 into the river; the blot already mentioned settles over 
 and obliterates Christian. In two more cuts we be- 
 hold them drawing nearer to the other shore; and 
 then, between two radiant angels, one of whom 
 points upwards, we see them mounting in new weeds, 
 their former lendings left behind them on the inky 
 river. More angels meet them; Heaven is displayed, 
 and if no better, certainly no worse, than it has been 
 shown by others— a place, at least, infinitely popu- 
 
 220 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 lous and glorious with light— a place that haunts sol- 
 emnly the hearts of children. And then this symbolic 
 draughtsman once more strikes into his proper vein. 
 Three cuts conclude the first part. In the first the 
 gates close, black against the glory struggling from 
 within. The second shows us Ignorance— alas! poor 
 Arminian!— hailing, in a sad twilight, the ferryman 
 Vain-Hope; and in the third we behold him, bound 
 hand and foot, and black already with the hue of his 
 eternal fate, carried high over the mountain-tops of the 
 world by two angels of the anger of the Lord. " Car- 
 ried to Another Place," the artist enigmatically names 
 his plate— a terrible design. 
 
 Wherever he touches on the black side of the super- 
 natural his pencil grows more daring and incisive. He 
 has many true inventions in the perilous and diabolic; 
 he has many startling nightmares realised. It is not 
 easy to select the best; some may like one and some 
 another; the nude, depilated devil bounding and cast- 
 ing darts against the Wicket Gate; the scroll of flying 
 horrors that hang over Christian by the Mouth of Hell; 
 the horned shade that comes behind him whispering 
 blasphemies; the daylight breaking through that rent 
 cave-mouth of the mountains and falling chill adown 
 the haunted tunnel; Christian's further progress along 
 the causeway, between the two black pools, where, at 
 every yard or two, a gin, a pitfall, or a snare awaits 
 the passer-by— loathsome white devilkins harbouring 
 close under the bank to work the springes. Christian 
 himself pausing and pricking with his sword's point at 
 the nearest noose, and pale discomfortable mountains 
 rising on the farther side; or yet again, the two ill- 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 favoured ones that beset the first of Christian's journey, 
 with the frog-like structure of the skull, the frog-like 
 limberness of limbs— crafty, slippery, lustful-looking 
 devils, drawn always in outline as though possessed of 
 a dim, infernal luminosity. Horrid fellows are they, 
 one and all; horrid fellows and horrific scenes. In 
 another spirit that Good-Conscience " to whom Mr. 
 Honest had spoken in his lifetime," a cowled, grey, 
 awful figure, one hand pointing to the heavenly shore, 
 realises, I will not say all, but some at least of the 
 strange impressiveness of Bunyan's words. It is no 
 easy nor pleasant thing to speak in one's lifetime with 
 Good-Conscience; he is an austere, unearthly friend, 
 whom maybe Torquemada knew ; and the folds of his 
 raiment are not merely claustral, but have something 
 of the horror of the pall. Be not afraid, however; with 
 the hand of that appearance Mr. Honest will get safe 
 across. 
 
 Yet perhaps it is in sequences that this artist best 
 displays himself. He loves to look at either side of a 
 thing: as, for instance, when he shows us both sides 
 of the wall—" Grace Inextinguishable " on the one side, 
 with the devil vainly pouring buckets on the flame, 
 and " The Oil of Grace " on the other, where the Holy 
 Spirit, vessel in hand, still secretly supplies the fire. 
 He loves, also, to show us the same event twice over, 
 and to repeat his instantaneous photographs at the in- 
 terval of but a moment. So we have, first, the whole 
 troop of Pilgrims coming up to Valiant, and Great- 
 heart to the front, spear in hand and parleying; and 
 next, the same cross-roads, from a more distant view, 
 the convoy now scattered and looking safely and curi- 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 ously on, and Valiant handing over for inspection his 
 "right Jerusalem blade." It is true that this designer 
 has no great care after consistency: Apollyon's spear 
 is laid by, his quiver of darts will disappear, whenever 
 they might hinder the designer's freedom; and the 
 fiend's tail is blobbed or forked at his good pleasure. 
 But this is not unsuitable to the illustration of the 
 fervent Bunyan, breathing hurry and momentary in- 
 spiration. He, with his hot purpose, hunting sinners 
 with a lasso, shall himself forget the things that he 
 has written yesterday. He shall first slay Heedless in 
 the Valley of the Shadow, and then take leave of him 
 talking in his sleep, as if nothing had happened, in an 
 arbour on the Enchanted Ground. And again, in his 
 rhymed prologue, he shall assign some of the glory of 
 the siege of Doubting Castle to his favourite Valiant- 
 for-Truth, who did not meet with the besiegers till 
 long after, at that dangerous corner by Deadman's 
 Lane. And, with all inconsistencies and freedoms, 
 there is a power shown in these sequences of cuts : a 
 power of joining on one action or one humour to an- 
 other; a power of following out the moods, even of the 
 dismal subterhuman fiends engendered by the artist's 
 fancy; a power of sustained continuous realisation, 
 step by step, in nature's order, that can tell a story, in 
 all its ins and outs, its pauses and surprises, fully and 
 figuratively, like the art of words. 
 
 One such sequence is the fight of Christian and 
 Apollyon— six cuts, weird and fiery, like the text. 
 The pilgrim is throughout a pale and stockish figure; 
 but the devil covers a multitude of defects. There is 
 no better devil of the conventional order than our 
 
 223 
 
CRITICISMS 
 
 artist's Apollyon, with his mane, his wings, his bestial 
 legs, his changing and terrifying expression, his in- 
 fernal energy to slay. In cut the first you see him afar 
 off, still obscure in form, but already formidable in 
 suggestion. Cut the second, "The Fiend in Dis- 
 course," represents him, not reasoning, railing rather, 
 shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his shoulder advanced, 
 his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready for a spring, 
 while Christian stands back a little, timidly defensive. 
 The third illustrates these magnificent words : " Then 
 Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of 
 the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter: 
 prepare thyself to die ; for I swear by my infernal den 
 that thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy soul! 
 And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast." 
 In the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching 
 pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad 
 vans, and straddling the while across the path, as only 
 a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his infernal 
 den. The defence will not be long against such vice, 
 such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the 
 fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his 
 victim, sped by foot and pinion, and roaring as he 
 leaps. The fifth shows the climacteric of the battle; 
 Christian has reached nimbly out and got his sword, 
 and dealt that deadly home-thrust, the fiend still 
 stretched upon him, but "giving back, as one that had 
 received his mortal wound." The raised head, the 
 bellowing mouth, the paw clapped upon the sword, 
 the one wing relaxed in agony, all realise vividly these 
 words of the text. In the sixth and last, the trivial 
 armed figure of the pilgrim is seen kneeling with 
 
 224 
 
Obstinate reviles 
 
 Mr. Worldiy-Wiseman 
 
 He warily retraces his steps 
 
 Christian at the gate 
 
 The parlour unswept 
 
 The chamber called Peace 
 
 Is met by Apollyon 
 
 The fiend in discourse 
 
 The conflict 
 
Close combat 
 
 The deadly thrust 
 
 Thanksgiving for victory 
 
 His last weapon— All-prayer 
 
 -^ 
 
 hispering blasphemies 
 
 
 \^ 
 
 N 
 
 Snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls 
 
 Madam Wanton 
 
 Two miles yet 
 
 is^smwilf/y^ 
 
 Effect of the sunbeams 
 
 Carried to another place 
 
BAGSTER'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
 clasped hands on the betrodden scene of contest and 
 among the shivers of the darts ; while just at the margin 
 the hinder quarters and the tail of Apollyon are whisk- 
 ing off, indignant and discomfited. 
 
 In one point only do these pictures seem to be un- 
 worthy of the text, and that point is one rather of 
 the difference of arts than the difference of artists. 
 Throughout his best and worst, in his highest and 
 most divine imaginations as in the narrowest sallies of 
 his sectarianism, the human-hearted piety of Bunyan 
 touches and ennobles, convinces, accuses the reader. 
 Through no art besides the art of words can the kind- 
 ness of a man's affections be expressed. In the cuts 
 you shall find faithfully parodied the quaintness and 
 the power, the triviality and the surprising freshness 
 of the author's fancy; there you shall find him out- 
 stripped in ready symbolism and the art of bringing 
 things essentially invisible before the eyes : but to feel 
 the contact of essential goodness, to be made in love 
 with piety, the book must be read and not the prints 
 examined. 
 
 Farewell should not be taken with a grudge; nor 
 can I dismiss in any other words than those of grati- 
 tude a series of pictures which have, to one at least, 
 been the visible embodiment of Bunyan from childhood 
 up, and shown him, through all his years. Great-heart 
 lungeing at Giant Maul, and Apollyon breathing fire at 
 Christian, and every turn and town along the road to 
 the Celestial City, and that bright place itself, seen as 
 to a stave of music, shining afar off upon the hill-top, 
 the candle of the world. 
 
 225 
 
LETTER TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
Originally published as a pamphlet hy W. Blackwood and 
 Sons, Edinburgh and London, i8y^ 
 
 i 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 WITH A NOTE FOR THE LAITY 
 
 " Had I a strong voice, as it is the weakest alive, yea, could I lift it up 
 as a trumpet, I would sound a retreat from our unnatural contentions, 
 and irreligious strivings for religion."— Archbishop Leighton, 1669. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, -The position of the Church of 
 Scotland is now one of considerable difficulty; 
 not only the credit of the Church, not only the credit 
 of Christianity, but to some extent also that of the 
 national character, is at stake. You have just gained 
 a great victory, in spite of an opposition neither very 
 logical nor very generous; you have succeeded in 
 effecting, by quiet constitutional processes, a great re- 
 form, which brings your Church somewhat nearer in 
 character to what is required by your Dissenting 
 brethren. It remains to be seen whether you can 
 prove yourselves as generous as you have been wise 
 and patient. And the position, as I say, is one of 
 difficulty. Many, doubtless, left the Church for a 
 reason which is now removed; many have joined 
 other sects who would rather have joined themselves 
 with you, had you been then as you now are; and for 
 these you are bound to render as easy as may be the 
 
 229 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 way of reconciliation, and show, by some notable ac- 
 tion, the reality of your own desire for Peace. But I 
 am not unaware that there are others, and those pos- 
 sibly a majority, who hold very different opinions— 
 who regard the old quarrel as still competent, or have 
 found some new reason for dissent; and from these 
 the Church, if she makes such an advance as she ought 
 to make, in all loyalty and charity, may chance to meet 
 that most sensible of insults— ridicule, in return for an 
 honest offer of reconciliation. I am not unaware, also, 
 that there is yet another ground of difficulty; and that 
 those even who would be most ready to hold the cause 
 of offence as now removed will find it hard to forget 
 the past— will continue to think themselves unjustly 
 used— will not be willing to come back, as though 
 they were repentant offenders, among those who de- 
 layed the reform and quietly enjoyed their benefices, 
 while they bore the heat and burthen of the day in a 
 voluntary exile for the Truth's sake. 
 
 In view of so many elements of difficulty, no intelli- 
 gent person can be free from apprehension for the 
 result; and you, gentlemen, may be perhaps more 
 ready now to receive advice, to hear and weigh the 
 opinion of one who is free, because he writes without 
 name, than you would be at any juncture less critical. 
 There is now a hope, at least, that some term may 
 be put to our more clamorous dissensions. Those who 
 are at all open to a feeling of national disgrace look 
 eagerly forward to such a possibility; they have been 
 witnesses already too long to the strife that has divided 
 this small corner of Christendom ; and they cannot re- 
 member without shame that there has been as much 
 
 230 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 noise, as much recrimination, as much severance of 
 friends, about mere logical abstractions in our remote 
 island, as would have sufficed for the great dogmatic 
 battles of the Continent. It would be difficult to ex- 
 aggerate the pity that fills the heart at such a reflection ; 
 at the thought of how this neck of barren hills between 
 two inclement seaways has echoed for three centuries 
 with the uproar of sectarian battle; of how the east 
 wind has carried out the sound of our shrill disputa- 
 tions into the desolate Atlantic, and the west wind has 
 borne it over the German Ocean, as though it would 
 make all Europe privy to how well we Scottish breth- 
 ren abide together in unity. It is not a bright page in 
 the annals of a small country : it is not a pleasant com- 
 mentary on the Christianity that we profess; there is 
 something in it pitiful, as I have said, for the pitiful 
 man, but bitterly humorous for others. How much 
 time we have lost, how much of the precious energy 
 and patience of good men we have exhausted, on these 
 trivial quarrels, it would be nauseous to consider; we. 
 know too much already when we know the facts in 
 block; we know enough to make us hide our heads 
 for shame, and grasp gladly at any present humiliation, 
 if it would ensure a little more quiet, a little more 
 charity, a little more brotherly love in the distant 
 future. 
 
 And it is with this before your eyes that, as I feel 
 certain, you are now addressing yourselves to the con- 
 sideration of this important crisis. It is with a sense 
 of the blackness of this discredit upon the national 
 character and national Christianity that not you alone 
 but many of other Churches are now setting them- 
 
 231 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 selves to square their future course with the exigencies 
 of the new position of sects; and it is with you that 
 the responsibility remains. The obligation lies ever on 
 the victor; and just so surely as you have succeeded 
 in the face of captious opposition in carrying forth the 
 substance of a reform of which others had despaired, 
 just as surely does it lie upon you as a duty to take 
 such steps as shall make that reform available, not to 
 you only, but to all your brethren who will consent to 
 profit by it; not only to all the clergy, but to the cause 
 of decency and peace, throughout your native land. 
 It is earnestly hoped that you may show yourselves 
 worthy of a great opportunity, and do more for the 
 public minds by the example of one act of generosity 
 and humility than you could do by an infinite series of 
 sermons. 
 
 Without doubt, it is your intention, on the earliest 
 public opportunity, to make some advance. Without 
 doubt, it is your purpose to improve the advantage 
 you have gained, and to press upon those who quitted 
 your communion some thirty years ago your great de- 
 sire to be once more united to them. This, at least, 
 will find a place in the most unfriendly programme 
 you can entertain; and if there are any in the Free 
 Church (as I doubt not there are some) who seceded, 
 not so much from any dislike to the just supremacy of 
 the law, as from a belief that the law in these ecclesi- 
 astical matters was applied unjustly, I know well that 
 you will be most eager to receive them back again ; I 
 know well that you will not let any petty vanity, any 
 scruple of worldly dignity, stand between them and 
 their honourable return. If, therefore, there were no 
 
 232 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 more to be done than to display to these voluntary 
 exiles the deep sense of your respect for their position, 
 this appeal would be unnecessary, and you might be 
 left to the guidance of your own good feeling. 
 
 But it seems to me that there is need of something 
 more; it seems to me, and I think that it will seem so 
 to you also, that you must go even further if you 
 would be equal to the importance of the situation. If 
 there are any among the Dissenters whose consciences 
 are so far satisfied with the provisions of the recent 
 Act that they could now return to your communion, 
 to such, it must not be forgotten, you stand in a posi- 
 tion of great delicacy. The conduct of these men you 
 have so far justified; you have tacitly admitted that 
 there was some ground for dissatisfaction with the 
 former condition of the Church; and though you may 
 still judge those to have been over-scrupulous who 
 were moved by this imperfection to secede, instead of 
 waiting patiently with you until it could be remedied 
 by peaceful means, you must not forget that it is the 
 strong stomach, according to Saint Paul, that is to con- 
 sider the weak, and should come forward to meet 
 these brethren with something better than compliments 
 upon your lips. Observe, I speak only of those who 
 would now see their way back to your communion 
 with a clear conscience; it is their conduct, and their 
 conduct alone, that you have justified, and therefore it 
 is only for them that your special generosity is here 
 solicited. But towards them, if there are any such, 
 your countrymen would desire to see you behave with 
 all consideration. I do not pretend to lay before you 
 any definite scheme of action; I wish only to let you 
 
 233 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 understand what thoughts are busy in the heads of 
 some outside your councils, so that you may take this 
 also into consideration when you come to decide. And 
 this, roughly, is how it appears to these: These good 
 men have exposed themselves to the chance of hard- 
 ship for the sake of their scruples, whilst you, being 
 of a stronger stomach, continued to enjoy the security 
 of national endowments. Some of you occupy the 
 very livings which they resigned for conscience' sake. 
 To others preferment has fallen which would have 
 fallen to them had they been still eligible. If, then, 
 any of them are now content to return, you are bound, 
 if not in justice, then in honour, to do all that you can 
 to testify your respect for brave conviction, and to 
 repair to them such losses as they may have suffered, 
 whether for their first secession or their second. You 
 owe a special duty, not only to the courage that left 
 the Church, but to the wisdom and moderation that 
 now returns to it. And your sense of this duty will 
 find a vent not only in word but in action. You will 
 facilitate their return not only by considerate and 
 brotherly language, but by pecuniary aid; you will 
 seek, by some new endowment scheme, to preserve 
 for them their ecclesiastical status. That they have no 
 claim will be their strongest claim on your considera- 
 tion. Many of you, if not all, will set apart some share 
 out of your slender livings for their assistance and sup- 
 port; you will give them what you can afford; and 
 you will say to them, as you do so, what I dare say to 
 you, that what you give is theirs— not only in honour 
 but in justice. 
 For you know that the justice which should rule the 
 234 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 dealings of Christians, how much more of Christian 
 ministers, is not as the justice of courts of law or 
 equity; and those who profess the morality of Jesus 
 Christ have abjured, in that profession, all that can be 
 urged by policy or worldly prudence. From them we 
 can accept no half-hearted and calculating generosity; 
 they must make haste to be liberal; they must catch 
 with eagerness at all opportunities of service, and the 
 mere whisper of an obligation should be to them more 
 potent than the decree of a court to others who make 
 profession of a less stringent code. And remember 
 that it lies with you to show to the world that Chris- 
 tianity is something more than a verbal system. In the 
 lapse of generations men grow weary of unsupported 
 precept. They may wait long, and keep long in 
 memory the bright doings of former days, but they 
 will weary at the last; they will begin to trouble you 
 for your credentials; if you cannot give them miracles, 
 they will demand virtue; if you cannot heal the sick, 
 they will call upon you for some practice of the Chris- 
 tian ethics. Thus people will knock often at a door if 
 only it be opened to them now and again ; but if the 
 door remains closed too long, they will judge the 
 house uninhabited and go elsewhere. And thus it is 
 that a season of persecution, constantly endured, re- 
 vives the fainting confidence of the people, and some 
 centuries of prosperity may prepare a Church for ruin. 
 You have here at your hand an opportunity to do more 
 for the credit of your Christianity than ever you could 
 do by visions, miracles, or prophecies. A sacrifice such 
 as this would be better worth, as I said before, than 
 many sermons; and there is a disposition in mankind 
 
 235 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 that would ennoble it beyond much that is more osten-i 
 tatious ; for men, whether lay or clerical, suffer better 
 the flame of the stake than a daily inconvenience or a 
 pointed sneer, and will not readily be martyred without 
 some external circumstance and a concourse looking 
 on. And you need not fear that your virtue will be 
 thrown away; the people of Scotland will be quick to 
 understand, in default of visible fire and halter, that 
 you have done a brave action for Christianity and the 
 national weal; and if they are spared in the future any 
 of the present ignoble jealousy of sect against sect, 
 they will not forget that to that end you gave of your 
 household comfort and stinted your children. Even if 
 you fail— ay, and even if there were not found one to 
 profit by your invitation— your virtue would still have 
 its own reward. Your predecessors gave their lives 
 for ends not always the most Christian; they were 
 tempted, and slain with the sword ; they wandered in 
 deserts and in mountains, in caves and in dens of the 
 earth. But your action will not be less illustrious; 
 what you may have to suffer may be a small thing if 
 the world will, but it will have been suffered for the 
 cause of peace and brotherly love. 
 
 I have said that the people of Scotland will be quick 
 to appreciate what you do. You know well that they 
 will be quick also to follow your example. But the 
 sign should come from you. It is more seemly that 
 you should lead than follow in this matter. Your 
 predecessors gave the word from their free pulpits 
 which was to brace men for sectarian strife: it 
 would be a pleasant sequel if the word came from 
 you that was to bid them bury all jealousy, and for- 
 
 236 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 get the ugly and contentious past in a good hope of 
 peace to come. 
 
 What is said in these few pages may be objected to 
 as vague; it is no more vague than the position seemed 
 to me to demand. Each man must judge for himself 
 what it behoves him to do at this juncture, and the 
 whole Church for herself. All that is intended in this 
 appeal is to begin, in a tone of dignity and disinter- 
 estedness, the consideration of the question; for when 
 such matters are much pulled about in public prints, 
 and have been often discussed from many different, 
 and not always from very high, points of view, there 
 is ever a tendency that the decision of the parties may 
 contract some taint of meanness from the spirit of their 
 critics. All that is desired is to press upon you, as 
 ministers of the Church of Scotland, some sense of the 
 high expectation with which your country looks to you 
 at this time; and how many reasons there are that you 
 should show an example of signal disinterestedness 
 and zeal in the encouragement that you give to return- 
 ing brethren. For, first, it lies with you to clear the 
 Church from the discredit of our miserable contentions ; 
 and surely you can never have a fairer opportunity to 
 improve her claim to the style of a peacemaker. Again, 
 it lies with you, as I have said, to take the first step, 
 and prove your own true ardour for an honourable 
 union; and how else are you to prove it? It lies with 
 you, moreover, to justify in the eyes of the world the 
 time you have been enjoying your benefices, while 
 these others have voluntarily shut themselves out from 
 all participation in their convenience; and how else are 
 you to convince the world that there was not some- 
 
 237 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 thing of selfishness in your motives ? It lies with you, 
 lastly, to keep your example unspotted before your 
 congregations ; and I do not know how better you are 
 to do that. 
 
 It is never a thankful office to offer advice; and ad- 
 vice is the more unpalatable, not only from the diffi- 
 culty of the service recommended, but often from its 
 very obviousness. We are fired with anger against 
 those who make themselves the spokesmen of plain 
 obligations ; for they seem to insult us as they advise. 
 In the present case I should have feared to waken some 
 such feeling, had it not been that I was addressing 
 myself to a body of special men on a very special occa- 
 sion. I know too much of the history of ideas to 
 imagine that the sentiments advocated in this appeal 
 are peculiar to me and a few others. I am confident 
 that your own minds are already busy with similar 
 reflections. But I know at the same time how difficult 
 it is for one man to speak to another in such a matter; 
 how he is withheld by all manner of personal consider- 
 ations, and dare not propose what he has nearest his 
 heart, because the other has a larger family or a smaller 
 stipend, or is older, more venerable, and more con- 
 scientious than himself; and it is in view of this that I 
 have determined to profit by the freedom of an anony- 
 mous writer, and give utterance to what many of you 
 would have uttered already, had they been (as I am) 
 apart from the battle. It is easy to be virtuous when 
 one's own convenience is not affected ; and it is no shame 
 to any man to follow the advice of an outsider who owns 
 that, while he sees which is the better part, he might not 
 have the courage to profit himself by this opinion. 
 
 238 
 
OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 [Note for the Laity] 
 
 The foregoing pages have been in type since the 
 beginning of last September. I have been advised to 
 give them to the public ; and it is only necessary to add 
 that nothing of all that has taken place since they were 
 written has made me modify an opinion or so much 
 as change a word. The question is not one that can be 
 altered by circumstances. 
 
 I need not tell the laity that with them this matter 
 ultimately rests. Whether we regard it as a question 
 of mere expense or as a question of good feeling against 
 ill feeling, the solution must come from the Church 
 members. The lay purse is the long one; and if the 
 lay opinion does not speak from so high a place, it 
 speaks all the week through and with innumerable 
 voices. Trumpets and captains are all very well in 
 their way; but if the trumpets were ever so clear, and 
 the captains as bold as lions, it is still the army that 
 must take the fort. 
 
 The laymen of the Church have here a question be- 
 fore them, on the answering of which, as I still think, 
 many others attend. If the Established Church could 
 throw off its lethargy, and give the Dissenters some 
 speaking token of its zeal for union, 1 still think that 
 union, to some extent, would be the result. There is 
 a motion tabled (as I suppose all know) for the next 
 meeting of the General Assembly; but something more 
 than motions must be tabled, and something more 
 must be given than votes. It lies practically with the 
 laymen, by a new endowment scheme, to put the 
 
 239 
 
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 
 
 Church right with the world in two ways, so that 
 those who left it more than thirty years ago, and who 
 may now be willing to return, shall lose neither in 
 money nor in ecclesiastical status. At the outside, 
 what will they have to do? They will have to do for 
 (say) ten years what the laymen of the Free Church 
 have done cheerfully ever since 1843. 
 February 12, iSy^. 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE ^ 
 
 THERE is nothing more disenchanting to man than 
 to be shown the springs and mechanism of any 
 art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the 
 surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their 
 beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is 
 to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the 
 coarseness of the strings and pulleys. In a similar 
 way, psychology itself, when pushed to any nicety, 
 discovers an abhorrent baldness, but rather from the 
 fault of our analysis than from any poverty native to 
 the mind. And perhaps in aesthetics the reason is the 
 same : those disclosures which seem fatal to the dignity 
 of art seem so perhaps only in the proportion of our 
 ignorance ; and those conscious and unconscious artifices 
 which it seems unworthy of the serious artist to em- 
 ploy were yet, if we had the power to trace them to 
 their springs, indications of a delicacy of the sense 
 finer than we conceive, and hints of ancient harmonies 
 
 1 First published in the Contemporary RevUw, April, 1885. 
 243 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 in nature. This ignorance at least is largely irremedi- 
 able. We shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for 
 they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mys- 
 terious history of man. The amateur, in consequence, 
 will always grudgingly receive details of method, which 
 can be stated but never can wholly be explained; 
 nay, on the principle laid down in "Hudibras," that 
 
 "Still the less they understand, 
 The more they admire the sleight-of-hand," 
 
 many are conscious at each new disclosure of a diminu- 
 tion in the ardour of their pleasure. I must therefore 
 warn that well-known character, the general reader, that 
 I am here embarked upon a most distasteful business : 
 taking down the picture from the wall and looking on 
 the back; and, like the inquiring child, pulling the mu- 
 sical cart to pieces. 
 
 I. Choice of Words.— The. art of literature stands 
 apart from among its sisters, because the material in 
 which the literary artist works is the dialect of life; 
 hence, on the one hand, a strange freshness and im- 
 mediacy of address to the public mind, which is ready 
 prepared to understand it; but hence, on the other, a 
 singular limitation. The sister arts enjoy the use of a 
 plastic and ductile material, like the modeller's clay; 
 literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with 
 finite and quite rigid words. You have seen these 
 blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a 
 pediment, a third a window or a vase. It is with 
 blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the 
 literary architect is condemned to design the palace 
 of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks, or 
 
 244 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 words, are the acknowledged currency of our daily 
 affairs, there are here possible none of those suppres- 
 sions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, and 
 vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, 
 no inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, 
 as in architecture; but every word, phrase, sentence, 
 and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and 
 convey a definite conventional import. 
 
 Now the first merit which attracts in the pages of a 
 good writer, or the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, 
 is the apt choice and contrast of the words employed. 
 It is, indeed, a strange art to take these blocks, rudely 
 conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar, 
 and by tact of application touch them to the finest 
 meanings and distinctions, restore to them their primal 
 energy, wittily shift them to another issue, or make of 
 them a drum to rouse the passions. But though this 
 form o^ merit is without doubt the most sensible and 
 seizing, it is far from being equally present in all 
 writers. The effect of words in Shakespeare, their 
 singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is 
 different, indeed, from the effect of words in Addison 
 or Fielding. Or, to take an example nearer home, the 
 words in Carlyle seem electrified into an energy of 
 lineament, like the faces of men furiously moved; 
 whilst the words in Macaulay, apt enough to convey 
 his meaning, harmonious enough in sound, yet glide 
 from the memory like undistinguished elements in a 
 general effect. But the first class of writers have no 
 monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in which 
 Addison is superior to Carlyle; a sense in which Cicero 
 is better than Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels Mon- 
 
 245 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 taigne: it certainly lies not in the choice of words; it 
 lies not in the interest or value of the matter; it lies 
 not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour. The 
 three first are but infants to the three second; and yet 
 each, in a particular point of literary art, excels his 
 superior in the whole. What is that point ? 
 
 2. The JVeb.—Litemtuve, although it stands apart 
 by reason of the great destiny and general use of its 
 medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other 
 arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes : 
 those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are 
 representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, 
 imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the 
 dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presenta- 
 tive. Each class, in right of this distinction, obeys 
 principles apart; yet both may claim a common ground 
 of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice 
 that the motive and end of any art whatever is to make 
 a pattern; a pattern, it may be, of colours, of sounds, 
 of changing attitudes, geometrical figures, or imitative 
 lines; but still a pattern. That is the plane on which 
 these sisters meet; it is by this that they are arts; and 
 if it be well they should at times forget their childish 
 origin, addressing their intelligence to virile tasks, and 
 performing unconsciously that necessary function of 
 their life, to make a pattern, it is still imperative that 
 the pattern shall be made. 
 
 Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive 
 their pattern of sounds in time ; or, in other words, of 
 sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in 
 broken words, the business of life be carried on with 
 substantives alone; but that is not what we call litera- 
 
 246 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 ture; and the true business of the literary artist is to 
 plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; 
 so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first 
 come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of 
 suspended meaning, solve and clear itself. In every 
 properly constructed sentence there should be observed 
 this knot or hitch ; so that (however delicately) we are 
 led to foresee, to expect, and then to welcome the suc- 
 cessive phrases. The pleasure may be heightened by an 
 element of surprise, as, very grossly, in the common 
 figure of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, 
 where an antithesis is first suggested and then deftly 
 evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in 
 itself; and between the implication and the evolution 
 of the sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise 
 of sound ; for nothing more often disappoints the ear 
 than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared, and 
 hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance 
 be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be 
 infinitely various ; to interest, to disappoint, to surprise, 
 and yet still to gratify; to be ever changing, as it were, 
 the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of an ingeni- 
 ous neatness. 
 
 The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our 
 pleasure in beholding him springs from this, that neither 
 is for an instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the 
 writer. His pattern, which is to please the supersen- 
 sua! ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, 
 to the demands of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, 
 whatever the intricacies of the argument, the neatness 
 of the fabric must not suffer, or the artist has been 
 proved unequal to his design. And, on the other 
 
 247 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot 
 must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word 
 be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate 
 the argument; for to fail m this is to swindle in the 
 game. The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less 
 emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, 
 I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any 
 meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike 
 a balance in the sound. Pattern and argument live in 
 each other; and it is by the brevity, clearness, charm, 
 or emphasis of the second, that we judge the strength 
 and fitness of the first. 
 
 Style is synthetic; and the artist, seeking, so to 
 speak, a peg to plait about, takes up at once two or 
 more elements or two or more views of the subject in 
 hand; combines, implicates, and contrasts them; and 
 while, in one sense, he was merely seeking an occa- 
 sion for the necessary knot, he will be found, in the 
 other, to have greatly enriched the meaning, or to 
 have transacted the work of two sentences In the space 
 of one. In the change from the successive shallow 
 statements of the old chronicler to the dense and lumi- 
 nous flow of highly synthetic narrative, there is im- 
 plied a vast amount of both philosophy and wit. The 
 philosophy we clearly see, recognising in the synthetic 
 writer a far more deep and stimulating view of life, 
 and a far keener sense of the generation and affinity of 
 events. The wit we might imagine to be lost; but it 
 is not so, for it is just that wit, these perpetual nice 
 contrivances, these difficulties overcome, this double 
 purpose attained, these two oranges kept simultane- 
 ously dancing in the air, that, consciously or not, afford 
 
 248 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 the reader his delight. Nay, and this wit, so little 
 recognised, is the necessary organ of that philosophy 
 which we so much admire. That style is therefore 
 the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most 
 natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of 
 the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of 
 elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if 
 obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and 
 vigour. Even the derangement of the phrases from 
 their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the mind ; 
 and it is by the means of such designed reversal that 
 the elements of a judgment may be most pertinently 
 marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action most 
 perspicuously bound into one. 
 
 The web, then, or the pattern: a web at once sensu- 
 ous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that 
 is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. 
 Books indeed continue to be read, for the interest of 
 the fact or fable, in which this quality is poorly repre- 
 sented, but still it will be there. And, on the other 
 hand, how many do we continue to peruse and reperuse 
 with pleasure whose only merit is the elegance of tex- 
 ture } I am tempted to mention Cicero; and since Mr. 
 Anthony Trollope is dead, I will. It is a poor diet for 
 the mind, a very colourless and toothless " criticism of 
 hfe"; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most intricate 
 and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once of 
 elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even 
 if one of them be rotten, kept dancing with inimitable 
 grace. 
 
 Up to this moment I have had my eye mainly upon 
 prose; for though in verse also the implication of the 
 
 249 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 logical texture is a crowning beauty, yet in verse it 
 may be dispensed with. You would think that here 
 was a death-blow to all I have been saying; and far 
 from that, it is but a new illustration of the principle 
 involved. For if the versifier is not bound to weave a 
 pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has 
 been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse. 
 For that is the essence of a prosody. Verse may be 
 rhythmical; it may be merely alliterative; it may, like 
 the French, depend wholly on the (quasi) regular re- 
 currence of the rhyme; or, like the Hebrew, it may 
 consist in the strangely fanciful device of repeating 
 the same idea. It does not matter on what principle 
 the law is based, so it be a law. It may be pure con- 
 vention; it may have no inherent beauty; all that we 
 have a right to ask of any prosody is, that it shall lay 
 down a pattern for the writer, and that what it lays 
 down shall be neither too easy nor too hard. Hence 
 it comes that it is much easier for men of equal facility 
 to write fairly pleasing verse than reasonably interest- 
 ing prose; for in prose the pattern itself has to be in- 
 vented, and the difficulties first created before they can 
 be solved. Hence, again, there follows the peculiar 
 greatness of the true versifier: such as Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and Victor Hugo, whom I place beside them as 
 versifier merely, not as poet. These not only knit and 
 knot the logical texture of the style with all the dex- 
 terity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the 
 pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; 
 but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, 
 by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with 
 which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, 
 
 250 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 and now combine, the double pattern of the texture 
 and the verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a 
 little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little 
 further, and both will reach their solution on the same 
 ringing syllable. The best that can be offered by the 
 best writer of prose is to show us the development of 
 the idea and the stylistic pattern proceed hand in hand, 
 sometimes by an obvious and triumphant effort, some- 
 times with a great air of ease and nature. The writer 
 of verse, by virtue of conquering another difficulty, 
 delights us with a new series of triumphs. He fol- 
 lows three purposes where his rival followed only two ; 
 and the change is of precisely the same nature as that 
 from melody to harmony. Or if you prefer to return 
 to the juggler, behold him now, to the vastly increased 
 enthusiasm of the spectators, juggling with three 
 oranges instead of two. Thus it is : added difficulty, 
 added beauty; and the pattern, with every fresh ele- 
 ment, becoming more interesting in itself. 
 
 Yet it must not be thought that verse is simply an 
 addition ; something is lost as well as something gained ; 
 and there remains plainly traceable, in comparing the 
 best prose with the best verse, a certain broad distinc- 
 tion of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may 
 draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves 
 the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In 
 prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, 
 and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a 
 puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this 
 return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to 
 the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for 
 either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, 
 
 251 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 or, if he be not, and still persist in his more delicate 
 enterprise, he fails to be as widely his inferior. But 
 let us select them from the pages of the same writer, 
 one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance. 
 Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of Henry IV,, 
 a fine flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second 
 manner, and set it side by side with Falstaff's praise of 
 sherris, act iv. scene i. ; or let us compare the beautiful 
 prose spoken throughout by Rosalind and Orlando; 
 compare, for example, the first speech of all, Orlando's 
 speech to Adam, with what passage it shall please you 
 to select— the Seven Ages from the same play, or even 
 such a stave of nobility as Othello's farewell to war; 
 and still you will be able to perceive, if you have an 
 ear for that class of music, a certain superior degree of 
 organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of the 
 parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a 
 throbbing pendulum. We must not, in things tem- 
 poral, take from those who have little, the little that 
 they have ; the merits of prose are inferior, but they are 
 not the same; it is a little kingdom, but an independent. 
 3. Rhythm of the Phrase.—Some way back, I used 
 a word which still awaits an application. Each phrase, 
 I said, was to be comely; but what is a comely phrase ? 
 In all ideal and material points, literature, being a repre- 
 sentative art, must look for analogies to painting and 
 the like; but in what is technical and executive, being 
 a temporal art, it must seek for them in music. Each 
 phrase of each sentence, like an air or a recitative in 
 music, should be so artfully compounded out of long 
 and short, out of accented and unaccented, as to gratify 
 the sensual ear. And of this the ear is the sole judge. 
 
 252 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 It is impossible to lay down laws. Even in our accen- 
 tual and rhythmic language no analysis can find the 
 secret of the beauty of a verse; how much less, then, 
 of those phrases, such as prose is built of, which obey 
 no law but to be lawless and yet to please ? The little 
 that we know of verse (and for my part I owe it all to 
 my friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin) is, however, 
 particularly interesting in the present connection. We 
 have been accustomed to describe the heroic line as 
 five iambic feet, and to be filled with pain and confu- 
 sion whenever, as by the conscientious schoolboy, we 
 have heard our own description put in practice. 
 
 ** All night I the dread | less an | gel un | pursued," i 
 
 goes the schoolboy ; but though we close our ears, we 
 cling to our definition, in spite of its proved and naked 
 insufficiency. Mr. Jenkin was not so easily pleased, 
 and readily discovered that the heroic line consists of 
 four groups, or, if you prefer the phrase, contains four 
 pauses : 
 
 " AH night I the dreadless \ angel | unpursued." 
 
 Four groups, each practically uttered as one word: 
 the first, in this case, an iamb; the second, an amphi- 
 brachys; the third, a trochee; and the fourth, an amphi- 
 macer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty 
 but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it 
 as five iambs. Perceive, now, this fresh richness of 
 intricacy in the web ; this fourth orange, hitherto unre- 
 marked, but still kept flying with the others. What 
 had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; 
 
 1 Milton. 
 253 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the verse is made 
 at the same time to read in fives and to read in fours. 
 
 But again, four is not necessary. We do not, indeed, 
 find verses in six groups, because there is not room for 
 six in the ten syllables; and we do not find verses of 
 two, because one of the main distinctions of verse 
 from prose resides in the comparative shortness of the 
 group ; but it is even common to find verses of three. 
 Five is the one forbidden number; because five is the 
 number of the feet; and if five were chosen, the two 
 patterns would coincide, and that opposition which is 
 the life of verse would instantly be lost. We have 
 here a clue to the effect of polysyllables, above all in 
 Latin, where they are so common and make so brave 
 an architecture in the verse; for the polysyllable is a 
 group of Nature's making. If but some Roman would 
 return from Hades (Martial, for choice), and tell me by 
 what conduct of the voice these thundering verses 
 should be uWtx&d—'' Aut Lacedcemonium Tarentum," 
 for a case in point— 1 feel as if I should enter at last 
 into the full enjoyment of the best of human verses. 
 
 But, again, the five feet are all iambic, or supposed 
 to be; by the mere count of syllables the four groups 
 cannot be all iambic; as a question of elegance, I doubt 
 if any one of them requires to be so; and I am certain 
 that for choice no two of them should scan the same. 
 The singular beauty of the verse analysed above is due, 
 so far as analysis can carry us, part, indeed, to the 
 clever repetition of L, D, and N, but part to this variety 
 of scansion in the groups. The groups which, like 
 the bar in music, break up the verse for utterance, fall 
 uniambically; and in declaiming a so-called iambic 
 
 254 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 verse, it may so happen that we never utter one 
 iambic foot. And yet to this neglect of the original 
 beat there is a limit. 
 
 "Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts,*'i 
 
 is, with all its eccentricities, a good heroic line; for 
 though it scarcely can be said to indicate the beat of 
 the iamb, it certainly suggests no other measure to the 
 ear. But begin 
 
 " Mother Athens, eye of Greece," 
 
 or merely "Mother Athens," and the game is up, for 
 the trochaic beat has been suggested. The eccentric 
 scansion of the groups is an adornment; but as soon 
 as the original beat has been forgotten, they cease im- 
 plicitly to be eccentric. Variety is what is sought; but 
 if we destroy the original mould, one of the terms of 
 this variety is lost, and we fall back on sameness. 
 Thus, both as to the arithmetical measure of the verse, 
 and the degree of regularity in scansion, we see the 
 laws of prosody to have one common purpose: to 
 keep alive the opposition of two schemes simultane- 
 ously followed; to keep them notably apart, though 
 still coincident; and to balance them with such judicial 
 nicety before the reader, that neither shall be unper- 
 ceived and neither signally prevail. 
 
 The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, 
 too, we write in groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call 
 them, for the prose phrase is greatly longer and is much 
 more n(5nchalantly uttered than the group in verse; so 
 
 1 Milton. 
 255 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 that not only is there a greater interval of continuous 
 sound between the pauses, but, for that very reason, 
 word is linked more readily to word by a more sum- 
 mary enunciation. Still, the phrase is the strict analogue 
 of the group, and successive phrases, like successive 
 groups, must differ openly in length and rhythm. The 
 rule of scansion in verse is to suggest no measure but 
 the one in hand ; in prose, to suggest no measure at all. 
 Prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as much so as 
 you will; but it must not be metrical. It may be any- 
 thing, but it must not be verse. A single heroic line 
 may very well pass and not disturb the somewhat 
 larger stride of the prose style; but one following an- 
 other will produce an instant impression of poverty, 
 flatness, and disenchantment. The same lines delivered 
 with the measured utterance of verse would perhaps 
 seem rich in variety. By the more summary enuncia- 
 tion proper to prose, as to a more distant vision, these 
 niceties of difference are lost. A whole verse is uttered 
 as one phrase; and the ear is soon wearied by a suc- 
 cession of groups identical in length. The prose writer, 
 in fact, since he is allowed to be so much less harmo- 
 nious, is condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of 
 movement on a larger scale, and must never disap- 
 point the ear by the trot of an accepted metre. And 
 this obligation is the third orange with which he has to 
 juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must 
 work into his pattern of words. It may be thought 
 perhaps that this is a quality of ease rather than a fresh 
 difficulty; but such is the inherently rhythmical strain 
 of the English language, that the bad writer— and must 
 I take for example that admired friend of my boyhood, 
 
 256 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 Captain Reid?— the inexperienced writer, as Dickens in 
 his earlier attempts to be impressive, and the jaded 
 writer, as any one may see for himself, all tend to fall 
 at once into the production of bad blank verse. And 
 here it may be pertinently asked, Why bad ? And I 
 suppose it might be enough to answer that no man 
 ever made good verse by accident, and that no versej 
 can ever sound otherwise than trivial when uttered' 
 with the delivery of prose. But we can go beyond 
 such answers. The weak side of verse is the regu- 
 larity of the beat, which in itself is decidedly less im- 
 pressive than the movement of the nobler prose; and 
 it is just into this weak side, and this alone, that our 
 careless writer falls. A peculiar density and mass, con- 
 sequent on the nearness of the pauses, is one of the 
 chief good qualities of verse; but this our accidental 
 versifier, still following after the swift gait and large 
 gestures of prose, does not so much as aspire to imi- 
 tate. Lastly, since he remains unconscious that he 
 is making verse at all, it can never occur to him 
 to extract those effects of counterpoint and opposi- 
 tion which I have referred to as the final grace and 
 justification of verse, and, I may add, of blank verse 
 in particular. 
 
 4. Contents of the Phrase.— Here is a great deal of 
 talk about rhythm— and naturally; for in our canorous 
 language rhythm is always at the door. But it must 
 not be forgotten that in some languages this element is 
 almost, if not quite, extinct, and that in our own it is 
 probably decaying. The even speech of many educated 
 Americans sounds the note of danger. I should see it 
 go with something as bitter as despair, but I should not 
 
 257 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 be desperate. As in verse no element, not even rhythm, 
 is necessary, so, in prose also, other sorts of beauty 
 will arise and take the place and play the part of those 
 that we outlive. The beauty of the expected beat in 
 verse, the beauty in prose of its larger and more law- 
 less melody, patent as they are to English hearing, are 
 already silent in the ears of our next neighbours; for 
 in France the oratorical accent and the pattern of the 
 web have almost or altogether succeeded to their places ; 
 and the French prose writer would be astounded at the 
 labours of his brother across the Channel, and how a 
 good quarter of his toil, above all invita Minerva, is to 
 avoid writing verse. So wonderfully far apart have 
 races wandered in spirit, and so hard it is to under- 
 stand the literature next door! 
 
 Yet French prose is distinctly better than English; 
 and French verse, above all while Hugo lives, it will 
 not do to place upon one side. What is more to our 
 purpose, a phrase or a verse in French is easily distin- 
 guishable as comely or uncomely. There is then 
 another element of comeliness hitherto overlooked in 
 this analysis : the contents of the phrase. Each phrase 
 in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music 
 consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, de- 
 mands, and harmonises with another; and the art of 
 rightly using these concordances is the final art in 
 literature. It used to be a piece of good advice to all 
 young writers to avoid alliteration ; and the advice was 
 sound, in so far as it prevented daubing. None the 
 less for that, was it abominable nonsense, and the mere 
 raving of those blindest of the blind who will not see. 
 The beauty of the contents of a phrase, or of a sen- 
 
 258 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 tence, depends implicitly upon alliteration and upon 
 assonance. The vowel demands to be repeated; the 
 consonant demands to be repeated ; and both cry aloud 
 to be perpetually varied. You may follow the adven- 
 tures of a letter through any passage that has particu- 
 larly pleased you; find it, perhaps, denied awhile, to 
 tantalise the ear; find it fired again at you in a whole 
 broadside; or find it pass into congenerous sounds, one 
 liquid or labial melting away into another. And you 
 will find another and much stranger circumstance. 
 Literature is written by and for two senses : a sort of 
 internal ear, quick to perceive ** unheard melodies " ; 
 and the eye, which directs the pen and deciphers the 
 printed phrase. Well, even as there are rhymes for the 
 eye, so you will find that there are assonances and 
 alliterations ; that where an author is running the open 
 A, deceived by the eye and our strange English spelling, 
 he will often show a tenderness for the flat A; and that 
 where he is running a particular consonant, he will not 
 improbably rejoice to write it down even when it is 
 mute or bears a different value. 
 
 Here, then, we have a fresh pattern— a pattern, to 
 speak grossly, of letters— which makes the fourth 
 preoccupation of the prose writer, and the fifth of the 
 versifier. At times it is very delicate and hard to per- 
 ceive, and then perhaps most excellent and winning 
 (1 say perhaps) ; but at times again the elements of this 
 literal melody stand more boldly forward and usurp the 
 ear. It becomes, therefore, somewhat a matter of con- 
 science to select examples; and as I cannot very well 
 ask the reader to help me, I shall do the next best by 
 giving him the reason or the history of each selection. 
 
 259 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 The two first, one in prose, one in verse, I chose with- 
 out previous analysis, simply as engaging passages that 
 had long re-echoed in my ear. 
 
 " I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, un- 
 exercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and 
 sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that 
 immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and 
 heat."^ Down to "virtue," the current S and R are 
 both announced and repeated unobtrusively, and by 
 way of a grace-note that almost inseparable group PVF 
 is given entire.^ The next phrase is a period of repose, 
 almost ugly in itself, both S and R still audible, and B 
 given as the last fulfilment of PVF. In the next four 
 phrases, from "that never" down to "run for," the 
 mask is thrown off, and, but for a slight repetition of 
 the F and V, the whole matter turns, almost too obtru- 
 sively, on S and R ; first S coming to the front, and 
 then R. In the concluding phrase all these favourite 
 letters, and even the flat A, a timid preference for which 
 is just perceptible, are discarded at a blow and in a 
 bundle; and to make the break more obvious, every 
 word ends with a dental, and all but one with T, for 
 which we have been cautiously prepared since the be- 
 ginning. The singular dignity of the first clause, and 
 this hammer-stroke of the last, go far to make the charm 
 of this exquisite sentence. But it is fair to own that S 
 and R are used a little coarsely. 
 
 1 Milton. 
 
 2 As PVF will continue to haunt us through our English examples, 
 take, by way of comparison, this Latin verse, of which it forms a chief 
 adornment, and do not hold me answerable for the all too Roman free- 
 dom of the sense: " Hanc volo, quae facilis, quae palliolata vagatur." 
 
 260 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 " In Xanadv did Kubla Khan (KANDL) 
 
 A stately pleasure dome decree, (KDLSR) 
 
 Where Alph the sacred river ran, (KANDLSR) 
 
 Through caverns measureless to man, (KANLSR) 
 
 Down to a sunless sea." i (NDLS) 
 
 Here I have put the analysis of the main group along- 
 side the lines; and the more it is looked at, the more 
 interesting it will seem. But there are further niceties. 
 In lines two and four, the current S is most delicately 
 varied with Z. In line three, the current flat A is twice 
 varied with the open A, already suggested in line two, 
 and both times (" where " and " sacred ") in conjunc- 
 tion with the current R. In the same line F and V (a 
 harmony in themselves, even when shorn of their 
 comrade P) are admirably contrasted. And in line 
 four there is a marked subsidiary M, which again was 
 announced in line two. I stop from weariness, for 
 more might yet be said. 
 
 My next example was recently quoted from Shake- 
 speare as an example of the poet's colour sense. Now, 
 1 do not think literature has anything to do with colour, 
 or poets anyway the better of such a sense ; and I in- 
 stantly attacked this passage, since " purple " was the 
 word that had so pleased the writer of the article, to 
 see if there might not be some literary reason for its 
 use. It will be seen thqt I succeeded amply; and I am 
 bound to say I think the passage exceptional in Shake- 
 speare—exceptional, indeed, in literature; but it was 
 not I who chose it. 
 
 " The BaRge she sat iN, like a BURNished throNe 
 BURNt oN the water : the POOP was BeateN gold, 
 
 1 Coleridge. 
 261 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 PURPle the sails and so PUR * Fumed that * per 
 
 The wiNds were love-sick with them."i 
 
 It may be asked why I have put the F of " perfumed " 
 in capitals ; and I reply, because this change from P to 
 F is the completion of that from B to P, already so 
 adroitly carried out. Indeed, the whole passage is a 
 monument of curious ingenuity; and it seems scarce 
 worth while to indicate the subsidiary S, L, and W. In 
 the same article, a second passage from Shakespeare was 
 quoted, once again as an example of his colour sense: 
 
 " A mole cinque-spotted like the crimson drops 
 V the bottom of a cowslip." 2 
 
 It is very curious, very artificial, and not worth while 
 to analyse at length : I leave it to the reader. But before 
 I turn my back on Shakespeare, I should like to quote a 
 passage, for my own pleasure, and for a very model of 
 every technical art : 
 
 " But in the wind and tempest of her frown, W. P. V.^ F. (st) (ow) 
 Distinction with a loud and powerful fan, W. P. F. (st) (ow) L 
 Puffing at all, winnows the light away ; W. P. F. L 
 And what hath mass and matter by itself W. F. L. M. A. 
 Lies rich in virtue and unmingled."* V. L. M. 
 
 From these delicate and choice writers I turned with 
 some curiosity to a player of the big drum — Macaulay . I 
 had in hand the two-volume edition, and I opened at the 
 beginning of the second volume. Here was what I read : 
 
 "The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree 
 of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not 
 
 "^ Antony and Cleopatra, 2 Cymbeline. 
 
 3 The V is in " of." * Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 262 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years 
 greatly more corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen 
 with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the house 
 of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive. The 
 English complained not of the law, but of the violation of the law." 
 
 This was plain-sailing enough; it was our old friend 
 PVF, floated by the liquids in a body ; but as I read on, 
 and turned the page, and still found PVF with his 
 attendant liquids, I confess my mind misgave me 
 utterly. This could be no trick of Macaulay's ; it must 
 be the nature of the English tongue. In a kind of de- 
 spair, I turned half-way through the volume; and com- 
 ing upon his lordship dealing with General Cannon, 
 and fresh from Claverhouse and Killiecrankie, here, 
 with elucidative spelling, was my reward : 
 
 '* Meanwhile the disorders of Kannon's Kamp went on inKreasing. He 
 Kalled a Kouncil of war to Konsider what Kourse it would be advisable 
 to taKe. But as soon as the Kouncil had met, a preliminary Kuestion 
 was raised. The army was almost eKsKlusively a Highland army. The 
 recent viKtory had been won eKsKlusively by Highland warriors. Great 
 chiefs who had brought siKs or Sez>en hundred /ighting men into the 
 /ield did not think it /air that they should be outtJoted by gentlemen 
 from Ireland, and yrom the Low Kountries, who bore indeed King 
 James's Kommission, and were Kalled Kolonels and Kaptains, but who 
 were Kolonels without regiments and Kaptains without Kompanies." 
 
 A moment of FV in all this world of K's! It was 
 not the English language, then, that was an instrument 
 of one string, but Macaulay that was an incomparable 
 dauber. 
 
 It was probably from this barbaric love of repeating 
 the same sound, rather than from any design of clear- 
 ness, that he acquired his irritating habit of repeating 
 
 263 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 words; I say the one rather than the other, because 
 such a trick of the ear is deeper-seated and more original 
 in man than any logical consideration. Few writers, 
 indeed, are probably conscious of the length to which 
 they push this melody of letters. One, writing very 
 diligently, and only concerned about the meaning of 
 his words and the rhythm of his phrases, was struck 
 into amazement by the eager triumph with which he 
 cancelled one expression to substitute another. Neither 
 changed the sense; both being monosyllables, neither 
 could affect the scansion; and it was only by looking 
 back on what he had already written that the mystery 
 was solved: the second word contained an open A, 
 and for nearly half a page he had been riding that 
 vowel to the death. 
 
 In practice, I should add, the ear is not always so 
 exacting; and ordinary writers, in ordinary moments, 
 content themselves with avoiding what is harsh, and 
 here and there, upon a rare occasion, buttressing a 
 phrase, or linking two together, with a patch of asso- 
 nance or a momentary jingle of alliteration. To under- 
 stand how constant is this preoccupation of good 
 writers, even where its results are least obtrusive, it is 
 only necessary to turn to the bad. There, indeed, you 
 will find cacophony supreme, the rattle of incongruous 
 consonants only relieved by the jaw-breaking hiatus, 
 and whole phrases not to be articulated by the powers 
 of man. 
 
 Conclusion.— ^t may now briefly enumerate the 
 elements of style. We have, peculiar to the prose 
 writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmi- 
 cal, and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them 
 
 264 
 
TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE 
 
 to fall into the strictly metrical : peculiar to the versifier, 
 the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, 
 and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre 
 —harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task 
 of artfully combining the prime elements of language 
 into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the 
 task of weaving their argument into a texture of com- 
 mitted phrases and of rounded periods— but this par- 
 ticularly binding in the case of prose: and, again 
 common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, 
 and communicative words. We begin to see now 
 what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how 
 many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must 
 be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it 
 is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure. 
 From the arrangement of according letters, which is 
 altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture 
 of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigor- 
 ous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in 
 man but has been exercised. We need not wonder, 
 then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages 
 rarer. 
 
 265 
 
II 
 
 A NOTE ON REALISM* 
 
 Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for 
 the student who does not aspire so high as to be num- 
 bered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which 
 he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, 
 creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are 
 allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned 
 nor simulated. But the just and dexterous use of what 
 qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another 
 and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accen- 
 tuation of the important, and the preservation of a 
 uniform character from end to end— these, which taken 
 together constitute technical perfection, are to some 
 degree within the reach of industry and intellectual 
 courage. What to put in and what to leave out; 
 whether some particular fact be organically necessary 
 or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely orna- 
 mental, it may not weaken or obscure the general de- 
 sign ; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we 
 should do so grossly and notably, or in some conven- 
 tional disguise : are questions of plastic style continually 
 rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways 
 
 1 First published in the Magazine of Art in 1883. 
 266 
 
A NOTE ON REALISM 
 
 of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to 
 propound. 
 
 In literature (from which I must draw my instances) 
 the great change of the past century has been effected 
 by the admission of detail. It was inaugurated by the 
 romantic Scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic 
 Balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic fol- 
 lowers, bound like a duty on the novelist. For some 
 time it signified and expressed a more ample contem- 
 plation of the conditions of man's life; but it has 
 recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely tech- 
 nical and decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still 
 too harsh to call survival. With a movement of alarm, 
 the wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back 
 from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a 
 more naked, narrative articulation ; after the succinct, 
 the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, 
 after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. 
 After Scott we beheld the starveling story— once, in 
 the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable— begin 
 to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these 
 details developed a particular ability of hand ; and that 
 ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that 
 now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the 
 unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on 
 technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and 
 attract the mob, he adds a steady current of what I 
 may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting 
 to the moralist; but what more particularly interests 
 the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, 
 when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere 
 feux'de-joie of literary tricking. The other day even 
 
 267 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours 
 and visible sounds. 
 
 This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may 
 serve to remind us of the fact which underlies a very 
 dusty conflict of the critics. All representative art, 
 which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; 
 and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter 
 purely of externals. It is no especial cultus of nature 
 and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that 
 has made us turn our back upon the larger, more vari- 
 ous, and more romantic art of yore. A photographic 
 exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion ; but 
 even in the ablest hands it tells us no more— I thmk it 
 even tells us less— than Moliere, wielding his artificial 
 medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or 
 Orgon, Dorine or Chrysale. The historical novel is 
 forgotten. Yet truth to the conditions of man's nature 
 and the conditions of man's life, the truth of literary 
 art, is free of the ages. It may be told us in a carpet 
 comedy, in a novel of adventure, or a fairy tale. The 
 scene may be pitched in London, on the sea-coast of 
 Bohemia, or away on the mountains of Beulah. And 
 by an odd and luminous accident, if there is any page 
 of literature calculated to awake the envy of M. Zola, 
 it must be that Troilus and Cressida which Shake- 
 speare, in a spasm of unmanly anger with the world, 
 grafted on the heroic story of the siege of Troy. 
 
 This question of realism, let it then be clearly under- 
 stood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental 
 truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art. 
 Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be 
 none the less veracious ; but if you be weak, you run 
 
 268 
 
A NOTE ON REALISM 
 
 the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you 
 be very strong and honest, you may chance upon a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind ; 
 during the period of gestation it stands more clearly 
 forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expres- 
 sive lineaments, and becomes at length that most 
 faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product 
 of the human mind, a perfected design. On the ap- 
 proach to execution all is changed. The artist must 
 now step down, don his working clothes, and become 
 the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy concep- 
 tion, his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must 
 decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, 
 and the particularity of execution of his whole design. 
 
 The engendering idea of some works is stylistic; a 
 technical preoccupation stands them instead of some 
 robuster principle of life. And with these the execu- 
 tion is but play; for the stylistic problem is resolved 
 beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully 
 foregone. Such are the verses, intricately designed, 
 which we have learnt to admire, with a certain smiling 
 admiration, at the hands of Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson ; 
 such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or even 
 breadth of plastic style takes the place of pictorial 
 nobility of design. So, it may be remarked, it was 
 easier to begin to write Esmond than Vanity Fair, 
 since, in the first, the style was dictated by the nature 
 of the plan ; and Thackeray, a man probably of some 
 indolence of mind, enjoyed and got good profit of this 
 economy of effort. But the case is exceptional. Usu- 
 ally in all works of art that have been conceived from 
 
 269 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 within outwards, and generously nourished from the 
 author's mind, the moment in which he begins to exe- 
 cute is one of extreme perplexity and strain. Artists 
 of indifferent energy and an imperfect devotion to their 
 own ideal make this ungrateful effort once for all; and, 
 having formed a style, adhere to it through life. But 
 those of a higher order cannot rest content with a pro- 
 cess which, as they continue to employ it, must in- 
 fallibly degenerate towards the academic and the 
 cut-and-dried. Every fresh work in which they em- 
 bark is the signal for a fresh engagement of the whole 
 forces of their mind; and the changing views which 
 accompany the growth of their experience are marked 
 by still more sweeping alterations in the manner of 
 their art. So that criticism loves to dwell upon and 
 distinguish the varying periods of a Raphael, a Shake- 
 speare, or a Beethoven. 
 
 It is, then, first of all, at this initial and decisive 
 moment when execution is begun, and thenceforth 
 only in a less degree, that the ideal and the real do 
 indeed, like good and evil angels, contend for the direc- 
 tion of the work. Marble, paint, and language, the 
 pen, the needle, and the brush, all have their gross- 
 nesses, their ineffable impotences, their hours, if I may 
 so express myself, of insubordination. It is the work 
 and it is a great part of the delight of any artist to con- 
 tend with these unruly tools, and now by brute energy, 
 now by witty expedient, to drive and coax them to effect 
 his will. Given these means, so laughably inadequate, 
 and given the interest, the intensity, and the multi- 
 plicity of the actual sensation whose effect he is to 
 render with their aid, the artist has one main and neces- 
 
 270 
 
A NOTE ON REALISM 
 
 sary resource which he must, in every case and upon 
 any theory, employ. He must, that is, suppress much 
 and omit more. He must omit what is tedious or ir- 
 relevant, and suppress what is tedious and necessary. 
 But such facts as, in regard to the main design, sub- 
 serve a variety of purposes, he will perforce and eagerly 
 retain. And it is the mark of the very highest order 
 of creative art to be woven exclusively of such. There, 
 any fact that is registered is contrived a double or a 
 treble debt to pay, and is at once an ornament in its 
 place, and a pillar in the main design. Nothing would 
 find room in such a picture that did not serve, at once, 
 to complete the composition, to accentuate the scheme 
 of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance, and to 
 strike the note of the selected sentiment ; nothing would 
 be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, 
 expedite the progress of the fable, build up the char- 
 acters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical 
 design. But this is unattainable. As a rule, so far 
 from building the fabric of our works exclusively with 
 these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can 
 muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of 
 our confection. And hence, in order that the canvas 
 may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, 
 other details must be admitted. They must be admitted, 
 alas! upon a doubtful title; many without marriage 
 robes. Thus any work of art, as it proceeds towards 
 completion, too often— I had almost written always— 
 loses in force and poignancy of main design. Our 
 little air is swamped and dwarfed among hardly rele- 
 vant orchestration; our little passionate story drowns 
 in a deep sea of descriptive eloquence or slipshod talk. 
 
 271 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 But again, we are rather more tempted to admit those 
 particulars which we know we can describe; and hence 
 those most of all which, having been described very 
 often, have grown to be conventionally treated in the 
 practice of our art. These we choose, as the mason 
 chooses the acanthus to adorn his capital, because they 
 come naturally to the accustomed hand. The old stock 
 incidents and accessories, tricks of workmanship and 
 schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or 
 they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt 
 our fancy, offer us ready-made but not perfectly appro- 
 priate solutions for any problem that arises, and wean 
 us from the study of nature and the uncompromising 
 practice of art. To struggle, to face nature, to find 
 fresh solutions, and give expression to facts which have 
 not yet been adequately or not yet elegantly expressed, 
 is to run a little upon the danger of extreme self-love. 
 Difficulty sets a high price upon achievement; and the 
 artist may easily fall into the error of the French natu- 
 ralists, and consider any fact as welcome to admission 
 if it be the ground of brilliant handiwork; or, again, 
 into the error of the modern landscape-painter, who is 
 apt to think that difficulty overcome and science well 
 displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the 
 one excuse and breath of art— charm. A little further, 
 and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy 
 sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious pas- 
 sage as an infidelity to art. 
 
 We have now the matter of this difference before us. 
 The idealist, his eye singly fixed upon the greater out- 
 lines, loves rather to fill up the interval with detail of 
 the conventional order, briefly touched, soberly sup- 
 
 272 
 
A NOTE ON REALISM 
 
 pressed in tone, courting neglect. But the realist, with 
 a fine intemperance, will not suffer the presence of any- 
 thing so dead as a convention; he shall have all fiery, 
 all hot-pressed from nature, all charactered and notable, 
 seizing the eye. The style that befits either of these ex- 
 tremes, once chosen, brings with it its necessary dis- 
 abilities and dangers. The immediate danger of the 
 realist is to sacrifice the beauty and significance of the 
 whole to local dexterity, or, in the insane pursuit of 
 completion, to immolate his readers under facts; but he 
 comes in the last resort, and as his energy declines, to 
 discard all design, abjure all choice, and, with scientific 
 thoroughness, steadily to communicate matter which is 
 not worth learning. The danger of the idealist is, of 
 course, to become merely null and lose all grip of fact, 
 particularity, or passion. 
 
 We talk of bad and good. Everything, indeed, is 
 good which is conceived with honesty and executed 
 with communicative ardour. But though on neither 
 side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the 
 artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and 
 yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation ; 
 yet one thing may be generally said, that we of the last 
 quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we do 
 the intellectual atmosphere of our age, are more apt to 
 err upon the side of realism than to sin in quest of the 
 ideal. Upon that theory it may be well to watch and 
 correct our own decisions, always holding back the 
 hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity, 
 and resolutely fixed to begin no work that is not philo- 
 sophical, passionate, dignified, happily mirthful, or, at 
 the last and least, romantic in design. 
 
 273 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS ^ 
 
 The profession of letters has been lately debated in 
 the public prints; and it has been debated, to put the 
 matter mildly, from a point of view that was calculated 
 to surprise high-minded men, and bring a general con- 
 tempt on books and reading. Some time ago, in par- 
 ticular, a lively, pleasant, popular writer^ devoted an 
 essay, lively and pleasant like himself, to a very en- 
 couraging view of the profession. We may be glad 
 that his experience is so cheering, and we may hope 
 that all others, who deserve it, shall be as handsomely 
 rewarded; but I do not think we need be at all glad to 
 have this question, so important to the public and our- 
 selves, debated solely on the ground of money. The 
 salary in any business under heaven is not the only, 
 nor indeed the first, question. That you should con- 
 tinue to exist is a matter for your own consideration; 
 but that your business should be first honest, and second 
 useful, are points in which honour and morality are 
 concerned. If the writer to whom I refer succeeds in 
 persuading a number of young persons to adopt this 
 
 ^ First published in the Fortnightly Review, April, 1881. 
 2 Mr. James Payn. 
 
 274 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 way of life with an eye set singly on the livelihood, 
 we must expect them in their works to follow profit 
 only, and we must expect in consequence, if he will 
 pardon me the epithets, a slovenly, base, untrue, and 
 empty literature. Of that writer himself I am not 
 speaking: he is diligent, clean, and pleasing; we all 
 owe him periods of entertainment, and he has achieved 
 an amiable popularity which he has adequately deserved. 
 But the truth is, he does not, or did not when he first 
 embraced it, regard his profession from this purely 
 mercenary side. He went into it, 1 shall venture to 
 say, if not with any noble design, at least in the ardour 
 of a first love; and he enjoyed its practice long before 
 he paused to calculate the wage. The other day an 
 author was complimented on a piece of work, good in 
 itself and exceptionally good for him, and replied, in 
 terms unworthy of a commercial traveller, that as the 
 book was not briskly selling he did not give a copper 
 farthing for its merit. It must not be supposed that 
 the person to whom this answer was addressed received 
 it as a profession of faith ; he knew, on the other hand, 
 that it was only a whiff of irritation; just as we know, 
 when a respectable writer talks of literature as a way 
 of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is 
 only debating one aspect of a question, and is still 
 clearly conscious of a dozen others more important in 
 themselves and more central to the matter in hand. 
 But while those who treat literature in this penny-wise 
 and virtue-foolish spirit are themselves truly in posses- 
 sion of a better light, it does not follow that the treat- 
 ment is decent or improving, whether for themselves 
 or others. To treat all subjects in the highest, the 
 
 275 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit, consistent 
 with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If he be 
 well paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty becomes 
 the more urgent, the neglect of it the more disgraceful. 
 And perhaps there is no subject on which a man should 
 speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be, 
 which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is 
 his tool to earn or serve with ; and which, if it be un- 
 worthy, stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb 
 and greedy bowels on the shoulders of labouring hu- 
 manity. On that subject alone even to force the note 
 might lean to virtue's side. It is to be hoped that a 
 numerous and enterprising generation of writers will 
 follow and surpass the present one; but it would be 
 better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our 
 old, honest English books were closed, than that esuri- 
 ent book-makers should continue and debase a brave 
 tradition, and lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. 
 Better that our serene temples were deserted than filled 
 with trafficking and juggling priests. 
 
 There are two just reasons for the choice of any way 
 of life: the first is inbred taste in the chooser; the 
 second some high utility in the industry selected. Lit- 
 erature, like any other art, is singularly interesting to the 
 artist; and, in a degree peculiar to itself among the arts, 
 it is useful to mankind. These are the sufficient justi- 
 fications for any young man or woman who adopts it 
 as the business of his life. I shall not say much about 
 the wages. A writer can live by his writing. If not 
 so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. 
 The nature of the work he does all day will more affect 
 his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. 
 
 276 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings 
 you in the year, you could still, you know, get more 
 by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much 
 concerned about a little poverty; but such considera- 
 tions should not move us in the choice of that which is 
 to be the business and justification of so great a portion 
 of our lives ; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the 
 philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave 
 career in which we can do the most and best for man- 
 kind. Now nature, faithfully followed, proves herself 
 a careful mother. A lad, for some liking to the jingle 
 of words, betakes himself to letters for his life; by- 
 and-by, when he learns more gravity, he finds that he 
 has chosen better than he knew; that if he earns little, 
 he is earning it amply; that if he receives a small wage, 
 he is in a position to do considerable services; that it 
 is in his power, in some small measure, to protect the 
 oppressed and to defend the truth. So kindly is the 
 world arranged, such great profit may arise from a 
 small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such, 
 in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing, 
 that it should combine pleasure and profit to both par- 
 ties, and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, 
 like good preaching. 
 
 This is to speak of literature at its highest ; and with 
 the four great elders who are still spared to our respect 
 and admiration, with Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, and 
 Tennyson before us, it would be cowardly to consider 
 it at first in any lesser aspect. But while we cannot 
 follow these athletes, while we may none of us, per- 
 haps, be very vigorous, very original, or very wise, I 
 still contend that, in the humblest sort of literary work, 
 
 277 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 we have it in our power either to do great harm or 
 great good. We may seek merely to please; we may 
 seek, having no higher gift, merely to gratify the idle 
 nine days' curiosity of our contemporaries ; or we may 
 essay, however feebly, to instruct. In each of these 
 we shall have to deal with that remarkable art of words 
 which, because it is the dialect of life, comes home so 
 easily and powerfully to the minds of men; and since 
 that is so, we contribute, in each of these branches, to 
 build up the sum of sentiments and appreciations which 
 goes by the name of Public Opinion or Public Feeling. 
 The total of a nation's reading, in these days of daily 
 papers, greatly modifies the total of the nation's speech ; 
 and the speech and reading, taken together, form the 
 efficient educational medium of youth. A good man or 
 woman may keep a youth some little while in clearer 
 air; but the contemporary atmosphere is all-powerful 
 in the end on the average of mediocre characters. The 
 copious Corinthian baseness of the American reporter 
 or the Parisian chroniquer, both so lightly readable, 
 must exercise an incalculable influence for ill ; they touch 
 upon all subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous 
 hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and 
 unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they 
 supply some pungency for dull people to quote. The 
 mere body of this ugly matter overwhelms the rare 
 utterances of good men; the sneering, the selfish, and 
 the cowardly are scattered in broad sheets on every 
 table, while the antidote, in small volumes, lies unread 
 upon the shelf. I have spoken of the American and 
 the French, not because they are so much baser, but so 
 much more readable, than the English ; their evil is done 
 
 378 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 more effectively, in America for the masses, in French 
 for the few that care to read ; but with us as with them, 
 the duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily 
 perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily 
 degraded in the treatment. The journalist is not reck- 
 oned an important officer; yet judge of the good he 
 might do, the harm he does; judge of it by one instance 
 only: that when we find two journals on the reverse 
 sides of politics each, on the same day. openly garbling 
 a piece of news for the interest of its own party, we 
 smile at the discovery (no discovery now!) as over a 
 good joke and pardonable stratagem. Lying so open 
 is scarce lying, it is true; but one of the things that we 
 profess to teach our young is a respect for truth ; and I 
 cannot think this piece of education will be crowned 
 with any great success, so long as some of us practise 
 and the rest openly approve of public falsehood. 
 
 There are two duties incumbent upon any man who 
 enters on the business of writing : truth to the fact and 
 a good spirit in the treatment. In every department of 
 literature, though so low as hardly to deserve the name, 
 truth to the fact is of importance to the education and 
 comfort of mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the 
 faithful trying to do so will lend some dignity to the 
 man who tries it. Our judgments are based upon two 
 things : first, upon the original preferences of our soul ; 
 but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the nature 
 of God, man, and the universe which reaches us, in 
 divers manners, from without. For the most part 
 these divers manners are reducible to one, all that we 
 learn of past times and much that we learn of our own 
 reaching us through the medium of books or papers, 
 
 279 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 and even he who cannot read learning from the same 
 source at second-hand and by the report of him who 
 can. Thus the sum of the contemporary knowledge 
 or ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure, the 
 handiwork of those who write. Those who write 
 have to see that each man's knowledge is, as near as 
 they can make it, answerable to the facts of life; that 
 he shall not suppose himself an angel or a monster; 
 nor take this world for a hell ; nor be suffered to imagine 
 that all rights are concentred in his own caste or coun- 
 try, or all veracities in his own parochial creed. Each 
 man should learn what is within him, that he may strive 
 to mend ; he must be taught what is without him, that 
 he may be kind to others. It can never be wrong to 
 tell him the truth ; for, in his disputable state, weaving 
 as he goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering 
 or reproving others, all facts are of the first importance 
 to his conduct; and even if a fact shall discourage or 
 corrupt him, it is still best that he should know it; for 
 it is in this world as it is, and not in a world made easy 
 by educational suppressions, that he must win his way 
 to shame or glory. In one word, it must always be 
 foul to tell what is false ; and it can never be safe to 
 suppress what is true. The very fact that you omit 
 may be the fact which somebody was wanting, for 
 one man's meat is another man's poison, and I have 
 known a person who was cheered by the perusal of 
 Candide. Every fact is a part of that great puzzle we 
 must set together; and none that comes directly in a 
 writer's path but has some nice relations, unperceivable 
 by him, to the totality and bearing of the subject under 
 hand. Yet there are certain classes of fact eternally 
 
 280 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 more necessary than others, and it is with these that 
 literature must first bestir itself. They are not hard to 
 distinguish, nature once more easily leading us ; for the 
 necessary, because the eificacious, facts are those which 
 are most interesting to the natural mind of man. Those 
 which are coloured, picturesque, human, and rooted 
 in morality, and those, on the other hand, which are 
 clear, indisputable, and a part of science, are alone vital 
 in importance, seizing by their interest, or useful to 
 communicate. So far as the writer merely narrates, 
 he should principally tell of these. He should tell of 
 the kind and wholesome and beautiful elements of our 
 life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil and sorrow 
 of the present, to move us with instances; he should 
 tell of wise and good people in the past, to excite us 
 by example; and of these he should tell soberly and 
 truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may neither 
 grow discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our 
 neighbours. So the body of contemporary literature, 
 ephemeral and feeble in itself, touches in the minds of 
 men the springs of thought and kindness, and supports 
 them (for those who will go at all are easily supported) 
 on their way to what is true and right. And if, in any 
 degree, it does so now, how much more might it do so 
 if the writers chose ! There is not a life in all the records 
 of the past but, properly studied, might lend a hint and 
 a help to some contemporary. There is not a juncture 
 in to-day's affairs but some useful word may yet be said 
 of it. Even the reporter has an office, and, with clear 
 eyes and honest language, may unveil injustices and 
 point the way to progress. And for a last word: in 
 all narration there is only one way to be clever, and 
 
 281 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 that is to be exact. To be vivid is a secondary quality 
 which must presuppose the first; for vividly to convey 
 a wrong impression is only to make failure conspicuous. 
 But a fact may be viewed on many sides ; it may be 
 chronicled with rage, tears, laughter, indifference, or 
 admiration, and by each of these the story will be trans- 
 formed to something else. The newspapers that told 
 of the return of our representatives from Berlin, even if 
 they had not differed as to the facts, would have suffi- 
 ciently differed by their spirits ; so that the one descrip- 
 tion would have been a second ovation, and the other 
 a prolonged insult. The subject makes but a trifling 
 part of any piece of literature, and the view of the writer 
 is itself a fact more important because less disputable 
 than the others. Now this spirit in which a subject is 
 regarded, important in all kinds of literary work, be- 
 comes all-important in works of fiction, meditation, or 
 rhapsody ; for there it not only colours but itself chooses 
 the facts ; not only modifies but shapes the work. And 
 hence, over the far larger proportion of the field of 
 literature, the health or disease of the writer's mind or 
 momentary humour forms not only the leading feature 
 of his work, but is, at bottom, the only thing he can 
 communicate to others. In all works of art, widely 
 speaking, it is first of all the author's attitude that is 
 narrated, though in the attitude there be implied a 
 whole experience and a theory of life. An author who 
 has begged the question and reposes in some narrow 
 faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even 
 many of the sides of this various existence; for, his 
 own life being maim, some of them are not admitted 
 in his theory, and were only dimly and unwillingly 
 
 282 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, 
 the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely 
 sectarian religion; and hence we fmd equal although 
 unsimilar limitation in works inspired by the spirit of 
 the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So 
 that the first duty of any man who is to write is intel- 
 lectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself 
 up for a leader of the minds of men ; and he must see 
 that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. 
 Everything but prejudice should find a voice through 
 him; he should see the good in all things; where he 
 has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, 
 there he should be wholly silent; and he should recog- 
 nise from the first that he has only one tool in his 
 workshop, and that tool is sympathy. ^ 
 
 The second duty, far harder to define, is moral. 
 There are a thousand different humours in the mind, 
 and about each of them, when it is uppermost, some 
 literature tends to be deposited. Is this to be allowed ? 
 Not certainly in every case, and yet perhaps in more 
 than rigourists would fancy. It were to be desired that 
 all literary work, and chiefly works of art, issued from 
 sound, human, healthy, and potent impulses, whether 
 grave or laughing, humorous, romantic, or religious. 
 Yet it cannot be denied that some valuable books are 
 partially insane; some, mostly religious, partially inhu- 
 
 1 A footnote, at least, is due to the admirable example set before all 
 young writers in the width of literary sympathy displayed by Mr. Swin- 
 burne. He runs forth to welcome merit, whether in Dickens or Trollope, 
 whether in Villon, Milton, or Pope, This is, in criticism, the attitude we 
 should all seek to preserve, not only in that, but in every branch of 
 literary work. 
 
 283 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 man; and very many tainted with morbidity and im- 
 potence. We do not loathe a masterpiece although we 
 gird against its blemishes. We are not, above all, to 
 look for faults, but merits. There is no book perfect, 
 even in design; but there are many that will delight, 
 improve, or encourage the reader. On the one hand, 
 the Hebrew psalms are the only religious poetry on 
 earth ; yet they contain sallies that savour rankly of the 
 man of blood. On the other hand, Alfred de Musset 
 had a poisoned and a contorted nature; I am only quot- 
 ing that generous and frivolous giant, old Dumas, when 
 I accuse him of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse 
 under which he wrote was purely creative, he could give 
 us works like Carmosine or Fantasia, in which the last 
 note of the romantic comedy seems to have been found 
 again to touch and please us. When Flaubert wrote 
 Madame Bovary, I believe he thought chiefly of a some- 
 what morbid realism; and behold! the book turned in 
 his hands into a masterpiece of appalling morality. But 
 the truth is, when books are conceived under a great 
 stress, with a soul of ninefold power, nine times heated 
 and electrified by effort, the conditions of our being are 
 seized with such an ample grasp, that, even should the 
 main design be trivial or base, some truth and beauty 
 cannot fail to be expressed. Out of the strong comes 
 forth sweetness; but an ill thing poorly done is an ill 
 thing top and bottom. And so this can be no encour- 
 agement to knock-kneed, feeble-wristed scribes, who 
 must take their business conscientiously or be ashamed 
 to practise it. 
 
 Man is imperfect; yet, in his literature, he must ex- 
 press himself and his own views and preferences; for 
 
 284 ^ 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 to do anything else is to do a far more perilous thing 
 than to risk being immoral: it is to be sure of being 
 untrue. To ape a sentiment, even a good one, is to 
 travesty a sentiment; that will not be helpful. To 
 conceal a sentiment, if you are sure you hold it, is to 
 take a liberty with truth. There is probably no point 
 of view possible to a sane man but contains some truth 
 and, in the true connection, might be profitable to the 
 race. I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell 
 it me, but I am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered. 
 There is a time to dance and a time to mourn; to be 
 harsh as well as to be sentimental ; to be ascetic as well 
 as to glorify the appetites ; and if a man were to com- 
 bine all these extremes into his work, each in its place 
 and proportion, that work would be the world's 
 masterpiece of morality as well as of art. Partiality is 
 immorality; for any book is wrong that gives a mis- 
 leading picture of the world and life. The trouble is 
 that the weakling must be partial; the work of one 
 proving dank and depressing; of another, cheap and 
 vulgar; of a third, epileptically sensual; of a fourth, 
 sourly ascetic. In literature as in conduct, you can 
 never hope to do exactly right. All you can do is to 
 make as sure as possible; and for that there is but one 
 rule. Nothing should be done in a hurry that can be 
 done slowly. It is no use to write a book and put it 
 by for nine or even ninety years ; for in the writing you 
 will have partly convinced yourself; the delay must 
 precede any beginning; and if you meditate a work of 
 art, you should first long roll the subject under the 
 tongue to make sure you like the flavour, before you 
 brew a volume that shall taste of it from end to end; 
 
 285 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 or if you propose to enter on the field of controversy, 
 you should first have thought upon the question under 
 all conditions, in health as well as in sickness, in sor- 
 row as well as in joy. It is this nearness of examina- 
 tion necessary for any true and kind writing, that makes 
 the practice of the art a prolonged and noble education 
 for the writer. 
 
 There is plenty to do, plenty to say, or to say over 
 again, in the meantime. Any literary work which con- 
 veys faithful facts or pleasing impressions is a service 
 to the public. It is even a service to be thankfully 
 proud of having rendered. The slightest novels are a 
 blessing to those in distress, not chloroform itself a 
 greater. Our fine old sea-captain's life was justified 
 when Carlyle soothed his mind with The King's Own 
 or Newton Forster. To please is to serve; and so far 
 from its being difficult to instruct while you amuse, it 
 is difficult to do the one thoroughly without the othen 
 Some part of the writer or his life will crop out in even 
 a vapid book; and to read a novel that was conceived 
 with any force is to multiply experience and to exercise 
 the sympathies. Every article, ev.ery piece of verse, 
 every essay, every entre-Jilet, is destined to pass, how- 
 ever swiftly, through the minds of some portion of 
 the public, and to colour, however transiently, their 
 thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, 
 some scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportu- 
 nity of beginning its discussion in a dignified and human 
 spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our 
 public press, neither the public nor the Parliament 
 would find it in their minds to drop to meaner thoughts. 
 The writer has the chance to stumble, by the way, on 
 
 286 
 
THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS 
 
 something pleasing, something interesting, something 
 encouraging^ were it only to a single reader. He will 
 be unfortunate, indeed, if he suit no one. He has the 
 chance, besides, to stumble on something that a dull 
 person shall be able to comprehend; and for a dull 
 person to have read anything and, for that once, com- 
 prehended it, makes a marking epoch in his education. 
 Here, then, is work worth doing and worth trying to 
 do well. And so, if 1 were minded to welcome any 
 great accession to our trade, it should not be from any 
 reason of a higher wage, but because it was a trade 
 which was useful in a very great and in a very high 
 degree; which every honest tradesman could make 
 more serviceable to mankind in his single strength; 
 which was difficult to do well and possible to do better 
 every year; which called for scrupulous thought on the 
 part of all who practised it, and hence became a per- 
 petual education to their nobler natures; and which, 
 pay it as you please, in the large majority of the best 
 cases will still be underpaid. For surely, at this time 
 of day in the nineteenth century, there is nothing that 
 an honest man should fear more timorously than getting 
 and spending more than he deserves. 
 
 287 
 
IV 
 
 THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW* 
 
 History is much decried ; it is a tissue of errors, we 
 are told, no doubt correctly; and rival historians expose 
 each other's blunders with gratification. Yet the worst 
 historian has a clearer view of the period he studies than 
 the best of us can hope to form of that in which we 
 live. The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a 
 thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting 
 report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experience ; 
 but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insidious shifting 
 of landmarks. Parties and ideas continually move, but 
 not by measurable marches on a stable course; the 
 political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible degrees, 
 like a travelling glacier, carrying on its bosom not only 
 political parties but their flag-posts and cantonments ; 
 so that what appears to be an eternal city founded on 
 hills is but a flying island of Laputa. It is for this 
 reason in particular that we are all becoming Socialists 
 without knowing it; by which I would not in the least 
 refer to the acute case of Mr. Hyndman and his horn- 
 blowing supporters, sounding their trumps of a Sunday 
 within the walls of our individualist Jericho, but to 
 
 * First published in the Contemporary Review, April, 1887. 
 288 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 the Stealthy change that has come over the spirit of 
 Englishmen and English legislation A little while ago, 
 and we were still for liberty; "Crowd a few more 
 thousands on the bench of Government/' we seemed 
 to cry ; " keep her head direct on liberty, and we cannot 
 help but come to port.'* This is over; laisser-faire de- 
 clines in favour; our legislation grows authoritative, 
 grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and 
 new penalties, and casts a spawn of inspectors, who 
 now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of 
 England. It may be right or wrong, we are not trying 
 that; but one thing it is beyond doubt: it is Socialism 
 in action, and the strange thing is that we scarcely 
 know it. 
 
 Liberty has served us a long while, and it may be 
 time to seek new altars. Like all other principles, she 
 has been proved to be self-exclusive in the long run. 
 She has taken wages besides (like all other virtues) and 
 dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we 
 were accustomed to admire as the benefits of freedom 
 and common to all were truly benefits of wealth, and 
 took their value from our neighbours' poverty. A few 
 shocks of logic, a few disclosures (in the journalistic 
 phrase) of what the freedom of manufacturers, land- 
 lords, or ship-owners may imply for operatives, tenants, 
 or seamen, and we not unnaturally begin to turn to 
 that other pole of hope, beneficent tyranny. Freedom, 
 to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the 
 virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen 
 him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of 
 many helots ; and the slaves are still ill fed, ill clad, ill 
 taught, ill housed, insolently treated, and driven to their 
 
 28q 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 mines and workshops by the lash of famine. So much, 
 in other men's affairs, we have begun to see clearly; 
 we have begun to despair of virtue in these other 
 men, and from our seat in Parliament begin to discharge 
 upon them, thick as arrows, the host of our inspectors. 
 The landlord has long shaken his head over the manu- 
 facturer; those who do business on land have lost all 
 trust in the virtues of the ship-owner; the professions 
 look askance upon the retail traders and have even 
 started their co-operative stores to ruin them ; and from 
 out the smoke-wreaths of Birmingham a finger has 
 begun to write upon the wall the condemnation of the 
 landlord. Thus, piece by piece, do we condemn each 
 other, and yet not perceive the conclusion, that our 
 whole estate is somewhat damnable. Thus, piece by 
 piece, each acting against his neighbour, each sawing 
 away the branch on which some other interest is seated, 
 do we apply in detail our Socialistic remedies, and yet not 
 perceive that we are all labouring together to bring in 
 Socialism at large. A tendency so stupid and so selfish 
 is like to prove invincible; and if Socialism be at all a 
 practicable rule of life, there is every chance that our 
 grandchildren will see the day and taste the pleasures 
 of existence in something far liker an ant-heap than any 
 previous human polity. And this not in the least be- 
 cause of the voice of Mr. Hyndman or the horns of his 
 followers ; but by the mere glacier movement of the 
 political soil, bearing forward on its bosom, apparently 
 undisturbed, the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If 
 Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen humour, which is far 
 from my conception of his character, he might rest 
 from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho 
 
 290 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 begin already to crumble and dissolve. That great 
 servile war, the Armageddon of money and numbers, 
 to which we looked forward when young, becomes 
 more and more unlikely; and we may rather look to 
 see a peaceable and blindfold evolution, the work of 
 dull men immersed in political tactics and dead to polit- 
 ical results. 
 
 The principal scene of this comedy lies, of course, in 
 the House of Commons; it is there, besides, that the 
 details of this new evolution (if it proceed) will fall to 
 be decided ; so that the state of Parliament is not only 
 diagnostic of the present but fatefully prophetic of the 
 future. Well, we all know what Parliament is, and 
 we are all ashamed of it. We may pardon it some 
 faults, indeed, on the ground of Irish obstruction— a 
 bitter trial, which it supports with notable good-humour. 
 But the excuse is merely local; it cannot apply to similar 
 bodies in America and France ; and what are we to say 
 of these.? President Cleveland's letter may serve as a 
 picture of the one; a glance at almost any paper will 
 convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay ap- 
 pears to have seized on the organ of popular government 
 in every land; and this just at the moment when we 
 begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole 
 skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, 
 like a new Messiah, to take upon itself our frailties and 
 play for us the part that should be played by our own 
 virtues. For that, in few words, is the case. We 
 cannot trust ourselves to behave with decency; we 
 cannot trust our consciences ; and the remedy proposed 
 is to elect a round number of our neighbours, pretty 
 much at random, and say to these : " Be ye our con- 
 
 291 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 science; make laws so wise, and continue from year 
 to year to administer them so wisely, that they shall 
 save us from ourselves and make us righteous and 
 happy, world without end. Amen." And who can 
 look twice at the British Parliament and then seriously 
 bring it such a task ? I am not advancing this as an 
 argument against Socialism: once again, nothing is 
 further from my mind. There are great truths in 
 Socialism, or no one, not even Mr. Hyndman, would 
 be found to hold it; and if it came, and did one-tenth 
 part of what it offers, I for one should make it welcome. 
 But if it is to come, we may as well have some notion 
 of what it will be like; and the first thing to grasp is 
 that our new polity will be designed and administered 
 (to put it courteously) with something short of inspira- 
 tion. It will be made, or will grow, in a human parlia- 
 ment; and the one thing that will not very hugely 
 change is human nature. The Anarchists think other- 
 wise, from which it is only plain that they have not 
 carried to the study of history the lamp of human sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Given, then, our new polity, with its new wagon- 
 load of laws, what head-marks must we look for in the 
 life.^ We chafe a good deal at that excellent thing, the 
 income tax, because it brings into our affairs the prying 
 fingers, and exposes us to the tart words, of the official. 
 The official, in all degrees, is already something of a 
 terror to many of us. I would not willingly have to do 
 with even a police constable in any other spirit than 
 that of kindness. I still remember in my dreams the 
 eye-glass of a certain attache at a certain embassy— an 
 eye-glass that was a standing indignity to all on whom 
 
 292 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 it looked ; and my next most disagreeable remembrance 
 is of a bracing, Republican postman in the city of San 
 FranciscOo I lived in that city among working-folk, 
 and what my neighbours accepted at the postman's 
 hands— nay, what I took from him myself— it is still 
 distasteful to recall. The bourgeois, residing in the 
 upper parts of society, has but few opportunities of 
 tasting this peculiar bowl ; but about the income tax, 
 as I have said, or perhaps about a patent, or in the 
 halls of an embassy at the hands of my friend of the 
 eye-glass, he occasionally sets his lips to it; and he 
 may thus imagine (if he has that faculty of imagination, 
 without which most faculties are void) how it tastes to 
 his poorer neighbours, who must drain it to the dregs. 
 In every contact with authority, with their employer, 
 with the police, with the School Board officer, in the 
 hospital, or in the workhouse, they have equally the 
 occasion to appreciate the light-hearted civility of the 
 man in office ; and as an experimentalist in several out- 
 of-the-way provinces of life, I may say it has but to be 
 felt to be appreciated. Well, this golden age of which 
 we are speaking will be the golden age of officials. In 
 all our concerns it will be their beloved duty to meddle, 
 with what tact, with what obliging words, analogy 
 will aid us to imagine. It is likely these gentlemen will 
 be periodically elected; they will therefore have their 
 turn of being underneath, which does not always 
 sweeten men's conditions. The laws they will have 
 to administer will be no clearer than those we know 
 to-day, and the body which is to regulate their adminis- 
 tration no wiser than the British Parliament. So that 
 upon all hands we may look for a form of servitude 
 
 393 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 most galling to the blood— servitude to many and 
 changing masters— and for all the slights that accom- 
 pany the rule of Jack in office. And if the Socialistic 
 programme be carried out with the least fulness, we 
 shall have lost a thing in most respects not much to 
 be regretted, but, as a moderator of oppression, a thing 
 nearly invaluable— the newspaper. For the indepen- 
 dent journal is a creature of capital and competition; 
 it stands and falls with millionaires and railway-bonds 
 and all the abuses and glories of to-day; and as soon 
 as the State has fairly taken its bent to authority and 
 philanthropy, and laid the least touch on private prop- 
 erty, the days of the independent journal are numbered. 
 State railways may be good things, and so may State 
 bakeries; but a State newspaper will never be a very 
 trenchant critic of the State officials. 
 
 But again, these officials would have no sinecure. 
 Crime would perhaps be less, for some of the notives 
 of crime we may suppose would pass away. But if 
 Socialism were carried out with any fulness, there 
 would be more contraventions. We see already new 
 sins springing up like mustard— School Board sins, 
 factory sins. Merchant Shipping Act sins— none of 
 which I would be thought to except against in particu- 
 lar, but all of which, taken together, show us that 
 Socialism can be a hard master even in the beginning. 
 If it go on to such heights as we hear proposed and 
 lauded, if it come actually to its ideal of the ant-heap, 
 ruled with iron justice, the number of new contraven- 
 tions will be out of all proportion multiplied. Take the 
 case of work alone. Man is an idle animal. He is at 
 least as intelligent as the ant; but generations of ad- 
 
 294 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 visers have in vain recommended him the ant's example. 
 Of those who are found truly indefatigable in business, 
 some are misers; some are the practisers of delightful 
 industries, like gardening; some are students, artists, 
 inventors, or discoverers, men lured forward by suc- 
 cessive hopes; and the rest are those who live by 
 games of skill or hazard— financiers, billiard-players, 
 gamblers, and the like. But in unloved toils, even 
 under the prick of necessity, no man is continually 
 sedulous. Once eliminate the fear of starvation, once 
 eliminate or bound the hope of riches, and we shall see 
 plenty of skulking and malingering. Society will then 
 be something not wholly unlike a cotton plantation in 
 the old days ; with cheerful, careless, demoralised slaves, 
 with elected overseers, and, instead of the planter, a 
 chaotic popular assembly. If the blood be purposeful 
 and the soil strong, such a plantation may succeed, and 
 be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries and 
 long hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip 
 will be in the overseer's hand, and not in vain. For, 
 when it comes to be a question of each man doing his 
 own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of senti- 
 ment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is 
 not enough ; many will rather eat haws and starve on 
 petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel 
 for one hour daily„ For such as these, then, the whip 
 will be in the overseer's hand; and his own sense of 
 justice and the superintendence of a chaotic popular 
 assembly will be the only checks on its employment. 
 Now, you may be an industrious man and a good citi- 
 zen, and yet not love, nor yet be loved by. Dr. Fell the 
 inspector. It is admitted by private soldiers that the 
 
 295 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 disfavour of a sergeant is an evil not to be combated ; 
 offend the sergeant, they say, and in a brief while you 
 will either be disgraced or have deserted. And the 
 sergeant can no longer appeal to the lash. But if these 
 things go on, we shall see, or our sons shall see, what 
 it is to have offended an inspector. 
 
 This for the unfortunate. But with the fortunate 
 also, even those whom the inspector loves, it may not 
 be altogether well. It is concluded that in such a state 
 of society, supposing it to be financially sound, the level 
 of comfort will be high. It does not follow: there are 
 strange depths of idleness in man, a too-easily-got suffi- 
 ciency, as in the case of the sago-eaters, often quenching 
 the desire for all besides ; and it is possible that the men 
 of the richest ant-heaps may sink even into squalor. 
 But suppose they do not; suppose our tricksy instru- 
 ment of human nature, when we play upon it this new 
 tune, should respond kindly; suppose no one to be 
 damped and none exasperated by the new conditions, 
 the whole enterprise to be financially sound— a vaulting 
 supposition— and all the inhabitants to dwell together 
 in a golden mean of comfort: we have yet to ask our- 
 selves if this be what man desire, or if it be what man 
 will even deign to accept for a continuance. It is cer- 
 tain that man loves to eat; it is not certain that he loves 
 that only or that best. He is supposed to love comfort ; 
 it is not a love, at least, that he is faithful to. He is 
 supposed to love happiness; it is my contention that he 
 rather loves excitement. Danger, enterprise, hope, the 
 novel, the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular 
 meals. He does not think so when he is hungry, but 
 he thinks so again as soon as he is fed; and on the 
 
 396 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 hypothesis of a successful ant-heap, he would never 
 go hungry. It would be always after dinner in that 
 society, as, in the land of the Lotus-eaters, it was always 
 afternoon; and food, which, when we have it not, 
 seems all-important, drops in our esteem, as soon as 
 we have it, to a mere prerequisite of living. 
 
 That for which man lives is not the same thing for 
 all individuals nor in all ages; yet it has a common 
 base; what he seeks and what he must have is that 
 which will seize and hold his attention. Regular meals 
 and weather-proof lodgings will not do this long. Play 
 in its wide sense, as the artificial induction of sensation, 
 including all games and all arts, will, indeed, go far to 
 keep him conscious of himself; but in the end he wearies 
 for realities. Study or experiment, to some rare natures, 
 is the unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable 
 natures; people shut in the house by sickness often 
 bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot 
 continue to exist upon such altitudes : his feet itch for 
 physical adventure ; his blood boils for physical dangers, 
 pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after 
 new things, cannot continue to look for them in books 
 and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing 
 stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the 
 shock of disappointment, furious contention with ob- 
 stacles : these are the true elixir for all vital spirits, these 
 are what they seek alike in their romantic enterprises 
 and their unromantic dissipations. When they are 
 taken in some pinch closer than the common, they 
 cry, "Catch me here again!" and sure enough you 
 catch them there again— perhaps before the week is 
 out. It is as old as Robinson Crusoe; as old as man. 
 
 297 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 Our race has not been strained for all these ages through 
 that sieve of dangers that we call Natural Selection, to 
 sit down with patience in the tedium of safety; the 
 voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our society 
 as it exists, the bourgeois is too much cottoned about 
 for any zest in living;, he sits in his parlour out of reach 
 of any danger, often out of reach of any vicissitudes 
 but one of health ; and there he yawns. If the people 
 in the next villa took pot-shots at him, he might be 
 killed indeed, but so long as he escaped he would fmd 
 his blood oxygenated and his views of the world 
 brighter. If Mr. Mallock, on his way to the publishers, 
 should have his skirts pinned to the wall by a javelin, 
 it would not occur to him— at least for several hours— 
 to ask if life were worth living; and if such peril were 
 a daily matter, he would ask it nevermore; he would 
 have other things to think about, he would be living 
 indeed— not lying in a box with cotton, safe, but im- 
 measurably dull. The aleatory, whether it touch life, 
 or fortune, or renown— whether we explore Africa or 
 only toss for halfpence— that is what I conceive men 
 to love best, and that is what we are seeking to exclude 
 from men's existences. Of all forms of the aleatory, 
 that which most commonly attends our working-men 
 —the danger of misery from want of work— is the least 
 inspiriting: it does not whip the blood, it does not evoke 
 the glory of contest; it is tragic, but it is passive; and 
 yet, in so far as it is aleatory, and a peril sensibly touch- 
 ing them, it does truly season the men's lives. Of those 
 who fail, I do not speak— despair should be sacred; 
 but to those who even modestly succeed, the changes 
 of their life bring interest: a job found, a shilling saved, 
 
 298 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 a dainty earned, all these are wells of pleasure spring- 
 ing afresh for the successful poor; and it is not from 
 these but from the villa-dweller that we hear complaints 
 of the unworthiness of life. Much, then, as the average 
 of the proletariat would gain in this new state of life, 
 they would also lose a certain something, which would 
 not be missed in the beginning, but would be missed 
 progressively, and progressively lamented. Soon there 
 would be a looking back : there would be tales of the 
 old world humming in young men's ears, tales of the 
 tramp and the pedlar, and the hopeful emigrant. And 
 in the stall-fed life of the successful ant-heap— with its 
 regular meals, regular duties, regular pleasures, an even 
 course of life, and fear excluded— the vicissitudes, de- 
 lights, and havens of to-day will seem of epic breadth. 
 This may seem a shallow observation ; but the springs 
 by which men are moved lie much on the surface. 
 Bread, I believe, has always been considered first, but 
 the circus comes close upon its heels. Bread we sup- 
 pose to be given amply; the cry for circuses will be 
 the louder, and if the life of our descendants be such 
 as we have conceived, there are two beloved pleasures 
 on which they will be likely to fall back : the pleasures 
 of intrigue and of sedition. 
 
 In all this I have supposed the ant-heap to be finan- 
 cially sound. I am no economist, only a writer of 
 fiction; but even as such, I know one thing that bears 
 on the economic question— I know the imperfection of 
 man's faculty for business. The Anarchists, who count 
 some rugged elements of common-sense among what 
 seem to me their tragic errors, have said upon this 
 matter all that I could wish to say, and condemned be- 
 
 299 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 forehand great economical polities. So far it is obvious 
 that they are right; they may be right also in predicting 
 a period of communal independence, and they may 
 even be right in thinking that desirable. But the rise 
 of communes is none the less the end of economic 
 equality, just when we were told it was beginning. 
 Communes will not be all equal in extent, nor in quality 
 of soil, nor in growth of population ; nor will the sur- 
 plus produce of all be equally marketable. It will be 
 the old story of competing interests, only with a new 
 unit; and, as it appears to me, a new, inevitable danger. 
 For the merchant and the manufacturer, in this new 
 world, will be a sovereign commune; it is a sovereign 
 power that will see its crops undersold, and its manu- 
 factures worsted in the market. And all the more 
 dangerous that the sovereign power should be small. 
 Great powers are slow to stir; national affronts, even 
 with the aid of newspapers, filter slowly into popular 
 consciousness; national losses are so unequally shared 
 that one part of the population will be counting its gains 
 while another sits by a cold hearth. But in the sover- 
 eign commune all will be centralised and sensitive. 
 When jealousy springs up, when (let us say) the 
 commune of Poole has overreached the commune of 
 Dorchester, irritation will run like quicksilver throughout 
 the body politic ; each man in Dorchester will have to 
 suffer directly in his diet and his dress ; even the secre- 
 tary, who drafts the official correspondence, will sit 
 down to his task embittered, as a man who has dined 
 ill and may expect to dine worse; and thus a business 
 difference between communes will take on much the 
 same colour as a dispute between diggers in the lawless 
 
 300 
 
THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW 
 
 West, and will lead as directly to the arbitrament of 
 blows. So that the establishment of the communal 
 system will not only reintroduce all the injustices and 
 heartburnings of economic inequality, but will, in all 
 human likelihood, inaugurate a world of hedgerow war- 
 fare. Dorchester will march on Poole, Sherborne on 
 Dorchester, Wimborne on both; the wagons will be 
 fired on as they follow the highway, the trains wrecked 
 on the lines, the ploughman will go armed into the 
 field of tillage; and if we have not a return of ballad 
 literature, the local press at least will celebrate in a high 
 vein the victory of Cerne Abbas or the reverse of Toller 
 Porcorum. At least this will not be dull; when I was 
 younger, I could have welcomed such a world with 
 relief; but it is the New-Old with a vengeance, and irre- 
 sistibly suggests the growth of military powers and the 
 foundation of new empires. 
 
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME^ 
 
 The Editor 2 has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for 
 his correspondents, the question put appearing at first 
 so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, 
 until after some reconnaissance and review that the 
 writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something 
 in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon 
 a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother 
 whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost 
 and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the 
 man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed 
 (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and 
 if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and some- 
 times weak and say too much, the blame must lie at 
 the door of the person who entrapped me. 
 
 The most influential books, and the truest in their 
 influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the 
 reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover 
 to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which 
 he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rear- 
 range, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage 
 
 1 First published in the British JVeekly^ May 13, 1887. 
 « Of the British IVeekly. 
 
 302 
 
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME 
 
 US from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance 
 of others; and they show us the web of experience, 
 not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular 
 change— that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, 
 for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be 
 reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work 
 that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course 
 of our education is answered best by those poems and 
 romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmo- 
 sphere of thought and meet generous and pious char- 
 acters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living 
 friends have had upon me an influence so strong for 
 good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already 
 well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to see, 
 I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. 
 Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more 
 delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence 
 quite passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying 
 Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the 
 burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, so 
 touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so over- 
 powering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best 
 friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan— the elderly 
 D'Artagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not 
 a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be 
 very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in 
 morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Mus- 
 keteers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim's Progress, 
 a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable 
 emotion. 
 
 But of works of art little can be said ; their influence 
 is profound and silent, like the influence of nature ; they 
 
 303 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and 
 are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books more 
 specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, 
 and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book 
 which has been very influential upon me fell early into 
 my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its 
 influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still 
 keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: 
 the Essais of Montaigne. That temperate and genial 
 picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of 
 persons of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages 
 a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of an antique 
 strain ; they will have their " linen decencies " and ex- 
 cited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any 
 gift of reading) perceive that these have not been flut- 
 tered without some excuse and ground of reason ; and 
 (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end 
 by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways 
 a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view 
 of life, than they or their contemporaries. 
 
 The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was 
 the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel ac- 
 cording to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and 
 move any one if they could make a certain effort of 
 imagination and read it freshly like a book, not dron- 
 ingly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one 
 would then be able to see in it those truths which we 
 are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly 
 refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is per- 
 haps better to be silent. 
 
 I come next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book 
 of singular service, a book which tumbled the world 
 
 304 
 
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME 
 
 upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cob- 
 webs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having thus 
 shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon 
 a strong foundation of all the original and manly vir- 
 tues. But it is, once more, only a book for those who 
 have the gift of reading. I will be very frank— I believe 
 it is so with all good books except, perhaps, fiction. 
 The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in 
 convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are 
 more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. 
 Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and 
 crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths 
 and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, 
 or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, 
 and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. 
 New truth is only useful to supplement the old ; rough 
 truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our 
 civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot 
 judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. 
 There he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, 
 some good. 
 
 Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, 
 I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No 
 more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. How 
 much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, 
 how much is clay and how much brass, it were too 
 curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always 
 manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of 
 highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic 
 symbol but still joyful; and the reader will fmd there a 
 caput mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveli- 
 ness, but with most of its essentials; and these two 
 
 305 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual 
 vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much 
 of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer. 
 
 Goethe's Life, by Lewes, had a great importance for 
 me when it first fell into my hands— a strange instance 
 of the partiality of man's good and man's evil. I know 
 no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a 
 very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking open the 
 doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, 
 in that crowning offence of Werther, and in his own 
 character a mere pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious of 
 the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish 
 inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his 
 office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his 
 honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what 
 lessons are contained ! Biography, usually so false to 
 its office, does here for once perform for us some of the 
 work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly 
 mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults 
 and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same 
 character. History serves us well to this effect, but in 
 the originals, not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, 
 who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make 
 us feel the difference of epochs instead of the essential 
 identity of man, and even in the originals only to those 
 who can recognise their own human virtues and defects 
 in strange forms, often inverted and under strange 
 names, often interchanged. Martial is a poet of no 
 good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read 
 his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly 
 jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and 
 self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, 
 
 306 
 
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME 
 
 in reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses ; I 
 never heard of them, at least, until I found them for 
 myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand 
 things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical 
 conception of the great Roman Empire. 
 
 This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble 
 book— the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The dis- 
 passionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the 
 tenderness of others, that are there expressed and were 
 practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, 
 make this book a book quite by itself. No one can 
 read it and not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely 
 appeals to the feelings— those very mobile, those not 
 very trusty parts of man. Its address lies further back : 
 its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have 
 read, you carry away with you a memory of the man 
 himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, 
 looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend ; there 
 is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to 
 life and to the love of virtue. 
 
 Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one 
 has been influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to 
 tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a rugged 
 austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, " the silence that 
 is in the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of 
 dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular addresc* 
 to what is best in us. I do not know that you learn a 
 lesson; you need not— Mill did not— agree with any 
 one of his beliefs ; and yet the spell is cast. Such are 
 the best teachers : a dogma learned is only a new error 
 —the old one was perhaps as good ; but a spirit com- 
 municated is a perpetual possession. These best 
 
 307 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it 
 is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that 
 they communicate. 
 
 I should never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist 
 It is art, if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic 
 art, and from all the novels 1 have read (and I have read 
 thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is a Nathan 
 for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood 
 into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture of human 
 faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our 
 neighbour; what we want is to be shown, not his de- 
 fects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, 
 to which we are too blind. And The Egoist is a satire ; 
 so much must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular 
 quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, 
 which is engaged from first to last with that invisible 
 beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are 
 your own faults that are dragged into the day and 
 numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel cunning 
 and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith's (as I 
 have the story) came to him in an agony. " This is 
 too bad of you," he cried. "Willoughby is me!" 
 **No, my dear fellow," said the author; "he is all of 
 us." I have read The Egoist five or six times myself, 
 and I mean to read it again; for I am like the young 
 friend of the anecdote— I think Willoughby an unmanly 
 but a very serviceable exposure of myself. 
 
 I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have 
 forgotten much that was most influential, as I see 
 already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Hazlitt, whose 
 paper " On the Spirit of Obligations " was a turning- 
 point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of apho- 
 
 308 
 
BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME 
 
 risms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's 
 Tales of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time 
 the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's 
 laws— a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. 
 That I should commemorate all is more than I can hope 
 or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point, 
 after having said so much upon improving books, to 
 say a word or two about the improvable reader. The 
 gift of reading, as 1 have called it, is not very common, 
 nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, 
 in a vast intellectual endowment— a free grace, I find I 
 must call it— by which a man rises to understand that 
 he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he 
 differs absolutely wrong. He may hold dogmas; he 
 may hold them passionately; and he may know that 
 others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, 
 or hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of 
 reading, these others will be full of meat for him. They 
 will see the other side of propositions and the other 
 side of virtues. He need not change his dogma for 
 that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and 
 he must supplement and correct his deductions from 
 it. A human truth, which is always very much a lie, 
 hides as much of life as it displays. It is men who hold 
 another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a danger- 
 ous lie, who can extend our restricted field of know- 
 ledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. Something 
 that seems quite new, or that seems insolently false 
 or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. If he 
 tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, 
 he has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely 
 hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, 
 
 309 
 
LITERARY PAPERS 
 
 he had better take to the daily papers; he will never 
 be a reader. 
 
 And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I 
 have laid down my part-truth, I must step in with its 
 opposite. For, after all, we are vessels of a very limited 
 content. Not all men can read all books ; it is only in 
 a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food ; 
 and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make 
 themselves welcome to the mind. A writer learns this 
 early, and it is his chief support; he goes on unafraid, 
 laying down the law ; and he is sure at heart that most 
 of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a 
 mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good 
 for service; but he is sure besides that when his words 
 fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will be 
 weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits 
 will be assimilated ; and when they fall into the hands 
 of one who cannot intelligently read, they come there 
 quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and 
 his secret is kept as if he had not written. 
 
 310 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
Posthumously published, Illustrated London NewSr 
 Christmas, 189$ 
 
 Copyright, i8p$, hyjohn Brishen IValker 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I Nance at the Green Dragon 315 
 
 II In which Mr. Archer is Installed 323 
 
 III Jonathan Holdaway 332 
 
 IV Mingling Threads 338 
 
 V Life in the Castle 345 
 
 VI The Bad Half-Crown 350 
 
 VII The Bleaching-Green 356 
 
 VIII The Mail-Guard ^6} 
 
 Editorial Note 570 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 
 
 NANCE HOLDAWAY was on her knees before the 
 fire, blowing the green wood that voluminously 
 smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot 
 forth a smothered flame; her knees already ached and 
 her eyes smarted, for she had been some while at this 
 ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far away to 
 meet the coming stranger. Now she met him in the 
 wood, now at the castle gate, now in the kitchen by 
 candle-light; each fresh presentment eclipsed the one 
 before ; a form so elegant, manners so sedate, a coun- 
 tenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and 
 resolute— sure such a man was never seen ! The thick- 
 coming fancies poured and brightened in her head like 
 the smoke and flames upon the hearth. 
 
 Presently the heavy foot of her Uncle Jonathan was 
 heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she 
 bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the green 
 fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and 
 the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, 
 
 3^5 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken 
 glazing of the casement clumsily repaired with paper. 
 
 " Leave that fire a-be," he cried. " What, have I toiled 
 all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind end ? Leave 
 it a-be, I say." 
 
 "La, uncle, it does n't burn a bit; it only smokes," 
 said Nance, looking up from her position. 
 
 "You are come of decent people on both sides," re- 
 turned the old man. " Who are you to blow the coals for 
 any Robin-run-agate ? Get up, get on your hood, make 
 yourself useful, and be off to the Green Dragon." 
 
 " I thought you was to go yourself," Nance faltered. 
 
 "So did I," quoth Jonathan; "but it appears I was 
 mistook." 
 
 The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and 
 she began to hang back. " I think I would rather not, 
 dear uncle," she said. "Night is at hand, and I think, 
 dear, I would rather not. " 
 
 "Now you look here," replied Jonathan; "I have my 
 Lord's orders, have I not ? Little he gives me, but it 's 
 all my livelihood. And do you fancy, if I disobey my 
 Lord, I 'm likely to turn round for a lass like you ? No ; 
 I 've that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I would n't 
 walk a mile, not for King George upon his bended 
 knees." And he walked to the window and looked 
 down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the 
 bottom of the dell. 
 
 Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own room, 
 by the glimmer of the twilight, she washed her hands 
 and pulled on her Sunday mittens; adjusted her black 
 hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and in 
 less than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and ex- 
 
 316 
 
NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 
 
 cellently bright eyes, she passed forth under the arch 
 and over the bridge, into the thickening shadows of 
 the groves. A well-marked wheel-track conducted 
 her. The wood, which upon both sides of the river 
 dell was a mere scrambling thicket of hazel, hawthorn, 
 and holly, boasted on the level of more considerable 
 timber. Beeches came to a good growth, with here 
 and there an oak; and the track now passed under a 
 high arcade of branches, and now ran under the open 
 sky in glades. As the girl proceeded these glades be- 
 came more frequent, the trees began again to decline in 
 size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. 
 Last of all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond 
 that the track came forth upon an open, rolling moor- 
 land, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and 
 all golden-brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right 
 over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset 
 burned under horizontal clouds ; the night fell clear and 
 still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy pas- 
 sages began to crackle underfoot with ice. 
 
 Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the 
 lights of the Green Dragon hove in sight, and running 
 close beside them, very faint in the dying dusk, the 
 pale ribbon of the Great North Road. It was the back 
 of the post-house that was presented to Nance Holda- 
 way; and as she continued to draw near and the night 
 to fall more completely, she became aware of an unusual 
 brightness and bustle. A post-chaise stood in the yard, 
 its lamps already lighted: light shone hospitably in the 
 windows and from the open door; moving lights and 
 shadows testified to the activity of servants bearing 
 lanterns. The clank of pails, the stamping of hoofs on 
 
 317 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 the firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of 
 all, the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon 
 her ear. By the stir you would have thought the mail 
 was at the door, but it was still too early in the night. 
 The down mail was not due at the Green Dragon for 
 hard upon an hour; the up mail from Scotland not 
 before two in the black morning. 
 
 Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, 
 the tall hostler, was polishing the curb-chain with sand ; 
 the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light 
 through the holes with which its conical roof was 
 peppered. 
 
 " Hey, miss," said he, jocularly, "you won't look at 
 me any more, now you have gentry at the castle." 
 
 Her cheeks burned with anger. 
 
 "That 's my Lord's chay," the man continued, nod- 
 ding at the chaise; "Lord Windermoor's. Came all 
 in a fluster— dinner, bowl of punch, and put the horses 
 to. For all the world like a runaway match, my dear 
 —bar the bride. He brought Mr. Archer in the chay 
 with him." 
 
 " Is that Holdaway? " cried the landlord from the 
 lighted entry, where he stood shading his eyes. 
 
 "Only me, sir," answered Nance. 
 
 "O, you. Miss Nance," he said. "Well, come in 
 quick, my pretty. My Lord is waiting for your uncle." 
 
 And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow 
 wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentle- 
 men sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. One of 
 these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like 
 a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous 
 lips, a short purple hand, in which he brandished a 
 
 518 
 
NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 
 
 long pipe, and an abrupt and gobbling utterance. This 
 was my Lord Windermoor. In his companion, Nance 
 beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely 
 dressed, and wearing his own hair. Her glance but 
 lighted on him, and she flushed, for in that second she 
 made sure that she had twice betrayed herself— betrayed 
 by the involuntary flash of her black eyes her secret 
 impatience to behold this new companion, and, what 
 was far worse, betrayed her disappointment in the 
 realisation of her dreams. He, meanwhile, as if un- 
 conscious, continued to regard her with unmoved de- 
 corum. 
 
 " O, a man of wood," thought Nance. 
 
 " What- what ? " said his Lordship. " Who is this.^ " 
 
 "If you please, my Lord, I am Holdaway's niece," 
 replied Nance, with a courtesy. 
 
 " Should have been here himself," observed his Lord- 
 ship. "Well, you tell Holdaway that I 'm aground; 
 not a stiver— not a stiver. I 'm running from the 
 beagles— going abroad, tell Holdaway. And he need 
 look for no more wages : glad of 'em myself, if I could 
 get 'em. He can live in the castle if he likes, or go to 
 the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend 
 him to take him in— a friend of mine— and Mr. Archer 
 will pay, as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of 
 a precious good thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, 
 and a set-off against the wages." 
 
 " But O, my Lord! " cried Nance, "we live upon the 
 wages, and what are we to do without ? " 
 
 " What am I to do .?— what am I to do ? " replied Lord 
 Windermoor, with some exasperation. "I have no 
 wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if Holdaway 
 
 }'9 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 does n*t like it, he can go to the devil, and you with 
 him!— and you with him! " 
 
 "And yet, my Lord," said Mr. Archer, "these good 
 people will have as keen a sense of loss as you or I; 
 keener, perhaps, since they have done nothing to de- 
 serve it." 
 
 "Deserve it? "cried the peer. "What? What? If a 
 rascally highwayman comes up to me with a confounded 
 pistol, do you say that I 've deserved it ? How often 
 am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated— that I was 
 cheated ? " 
 
 "You are happy in the belief," returned Mr. Archer, 
 gravely. 
 
 " Archer, you would be the death of me! " exclaimed 
 his Lordship. "You know you 're drunk; you know 
 it, sir; and yet you can't get up a spark of animation." 
 
 "I have drunk fair, my Lord," replied the younger 
 man; "but I own I am conscious of no exhilaration." 
 
 "If you had as black a look-out as me, sir," cried 
 the peer, " you would be very glad of a little innocent 
 exhilaration, let me tell you. I am glad of it— glad of 
 it, and I only wish 1 was drunker. For let me tell you 
 it 's a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life 
 and my position, to be brought down to beggary be- 
 cause the world is full of thieves and rascals— thieves 
 and rascals. What ? For all I know, you may be a 
 thief and a rascal yourself; and I would fight you for a 
 pinch of snuff— a pinch of snuff," exclaimed his Lordship. 
 
 Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a 
 pleasant smile, so full of sweetness, kindness, and com- 
 posure that, at one bound, her dreams returned to her. 
 
 "My good Miss Holdaway," said he, "if you are 
 320 
 
NANCE AT THE GREEN DRAGON 
 
 willing to show me the road, I am eager to be gone. 
 As for his Lordship and myself, compose yourself; 
 there is no fear; this is his Lordship's way." 
 
 " What ? What ? " cried his Lordship. " My way ? 
 Ish no such a thing, my way." 
 
 "Come, my Lord," cried Archer; "you and I very 
 thoroughly understand each other; and let me suggest, 
 it is time that both of us were gone. The mail will 
 soon be due. Here, then, my Lord, I take my leave 
 of you, with the most earnest assurance of my gratitude 
 for the past, and a sincere offer of any services I may 
 be able to render in the future. " 
 
 "Archer," exclaimed Lord Windermoor, "I love you 
 like a son. Le' 's have another bowl." 
 
 " My Lord, for both our sakes, you will excuse me," 
 replied Mr. Archer. "We both require caution; we 
 must both, for some while at least, avoid the chance of 
 a pursuit" 
 
 "Archer," quoth his Lordship, " this is a rank ingratis- 
 hood. What ? I 'm to go firing away in the dark in 
 the cold po'-chaise, and not so much as a game of ecarte 
 possible, unless I stop and play with the postilion— the 
 postilion; and the whole country swarming with 
 thieves and rascals and highwaymen." 
 
 " I beg your Lordship's pardon," put in the landlord, 
 who now appeared in the doorway to announce the 
 chaise, " but this part of the North Road is known for 
 safety. There has not been a robbery, to call a robbery, 
 this five years' time. Farther south, of course, it 's nearer 
 London, and another story," he added. 
 
 " Well, then, if that 's so," concluded my Lord. " le' 's 
 have t* other bowl and a pack of cards." 
 
 3a I 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 "My Lord, you forget," said Archer, "I might still 
 gain, but it is hardly possible for me to lose." 
 
 " Think I 'm a sharper ? " inquired the peer. " Gen'le- 
 man's parole 's all I ask." 
 
 But Mr. Archer was proof against these blandish- 
 ments, and said farewell gravely enough to Lord Win- 
 dermoor, shaking his hand and at the same time bowing 
 very low. "You will never know," said he, "the 
 service you have done me." And with that, and be- 
 fore my Lord had finally taken up his meaning, he had 
 slipped about the table, touched Nance lightly but im- 
 periously on the arm, and left the room. In face of 
 the outbreak of his Lordship's lamentations, she made 
 haste to follow the truant. 
 
II 
 
 IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 
 
 The chaise had been driven around to the front door; 
 the courtyard lay all deserted, and only lit by a lantern 
 set upon a window-sill. Through this Nance rapidly 
 led the way, and began to ascend the swellings of the 
 moor with a heart that somewhat fluttered in her 
 bosom. She was not afraid, but in the course of these 
 last passages with Lord Windermoor Mr. Archer had 
 ascended to that pedestal on which her fancy waited to 
 install him. The reality, she felt, excelled her dreams, 
 and this cold night walk was the first romantic incident 
 in her experience. 
 
 It was the rule in those days to see gentlemen un- 
 steady after dinner, yet Nance was both surprised and 
 amused when her companion, who had spoken so 
 soberly, began to stumble and waver by her side with 
 the most airy divagations. Sometimes he would get 
 so close to her that she must edge away ; and at others 
 lurch clear out of the track and plough among deep 
 heather. His courtesy and gravity meanwhile remained 
 unaltered. He asked her how far they had to go; 
 whether the way lay all upon the moorland, and when 
 he learned they had to pass a wood expressed his plea- 
 sure. " For," said he," I am passionately fond of trees. 
 
 32^ 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 Trees and fair lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the 
 ornaments of nature, as palaces and fine approaches—" 
 And here he stumbled into a patch of slough and nearly 
 fell The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at heart 
 she was lost in admiration for one who talked so ele- 
 gantly. 
 
 They had got to about a quarter of a mile from 
 the Green Dragon, and were near the summit of the 
 rise, when a sudden rush of wheels arrested them. 
 Turning and looking back, they saw the post-house, 
 now much declined in brightness ; and speeding away 
 northward the two tremulous bright dots of my Lord 
 Windermoor's chaise-lamps. Mr. Archer followed 
 these yellow and unsteady stars until they dwindled 
 into points and disappeared. 
 
 "There goes my only friend," he said. "Death has 
 cut off those that loved me, and change of fortune 
 estranged my flatterers ; and but for you, poor bankrupt, 
 my life is as lonely as this moor." 
 
 The tone of his voice affected both of them. They 
 stood there on the side of the moor, and became thrill- 
 ingly conscious of the void waste of the night, without 
 a feature for the eye, and except for the fainting whisper 
 of the carriage-wheels without a murmur for the ear. 
 And instantly, like a mockery, there broke out, very 
 far away, but clear and jolly, the note of the mail-guard's 
 horn. "Over the hills," was his air. It rose to the 
 two watchers on the moor with the most cheerful sen- 
 timent of human company and travel, and at the same 
 time in and around the Green Dragon it woke up a 
 great bustle of lights running to and fro and clattering 
 hoofs. Presently after, out of the darkness to south- 
 
IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 
 
 ward, the mail drew near with a growing rumble. Its 
 lamps were very large and bright, and threw their 
 radiance forward in overlapping cones; the four can- 
 tering horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the 
 coach followed like a great shadow; and this lit picture 
 slid with a sort of ineffectual swiftness over the black 
 field of night, and was eclipsed by the buildings of 
 the Green Dragon. 
 
 Mr. Archer turned abruptly and resumed his former 
 walk; only that he was now more steady, kept better 
 alongside his young conductor, and had fallen into a 
 silence broken by sighs. Nance waxed very pitiful 
 over his fate, contrasting an imaginary past of courts 
 and great society, and perhaps the King himself, with 
 the tumbledown ruin in a wood to which she was now 
 conducting him. 
 
 "You must try, sir, to keep your spirits up," said 
 she. " To be sure, this is a great change for one like 
 you ; but who knows the future ? " 
 
 Mr. Archer turned towards her in the darkness, and 
 she could clearly perceive that he smiled upon her very 
 kindly. " There spoke a sweet nature," said he, " and 
 I must thank you for these words. But I would not 
 have you fancy that I regret the past for any happi- 
 ness found in it, or that I fear the simplicity and hard- 
 ship of the country. 1 am a man that has been much 
 tossed about in life; now up, now down; and do you 
 think that I shall not be able to support what you sup- 
 port—you who are kind, and therefore know how to 
 feel pain; who are beautiful, and therefore hope; who 
 are young, and therefore (or am I the more mistaken ?) 
 discontented ? " 
 
 335 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 "Nay, sir, not that at least," said Nance; "not dis- 
 contented. If I were to be discontented, how should 
 I look those that have real sorrows in the face ? I have 
 faults enough, but not that fault; and I have my merits 
 too, for I have a good opinion of myself. But for 
 beauty, I am not so simple but that I can tell a banter 
 from a compliment." 
 
 "Nay, nay," said Mr. Archer, " I had half forgotten; 
 grief is selfish, and I was thinking of myself and not 
 of you, or I had never blurted out so bold a piece of 
 praise. 'T is the best proof of my sincerity. But come, 
 now, I would lay a wager you are no coward ? " 
 
 "Indeed, sir, I am not more afraid than another," 
 said Nance. " None of my blood are given to fear.'* 
 
 " And you are honest ? " he returned. 
 
 " I will answer for that," said she. 
 
 " Well, then, to be brave, to be honest, to be kind, 
 and to be contented, since you say you are so— is not 
 that to fill up a great part of virtue ? " 
 
 " I fear you are but a flatterer," said Nance, but she 
 did not say it clearly, for what with bewilderment and 
 satisfaction, her heart was quite oppressed. 
 
 There could be no harm, certainly, in these grave 
 compliments; but yet they charmed and frightened her, 
 and to find favour, for reasons however obscure, in the 
 eyes of this elegant, serious, and most unfortunate 
 young gentleman, was a giddy elevation, was almost 
 an apotheosis, for a country maid. 
 
 But she was to be no more exercised ; for Mr. Archer, 
 disclaiming any thought of flattery, turned off to other 
 subjects, and held her all through the wood in conver- 
 sation, addressing her with an air of perfect sincerity, 
 
 326 
 
IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 
 
 and listening to her answers with every mark of interest 
 Had open flattery continued, Nance would have soon 
 found refuge in good sense; but the more subtle lure 
 she could not suspect, much less avoid. It was the 
 first time she had ever taken part in a conversation 
 illuminated by any ideas. All was then true that she 
 had heard and dreamed of gentlemen ; they were a race 
 apart, like deities knowing good and evil. And then 
 there burst upon her soul a divine thought, hope's 
 glorious sunrise: since she could understand, since it 
 seemed that she too, even she, could interest this sor- 
 rowful Apollo, might she not learn ? Or was she not 
 learning.? Would not her soul awake and put forth 
 wings ? Was she not, in fact, an enchanted princess, 
 waiting but a touch to become royal ? She saw her- 
 self transformed, radiantly attired, but in the most ex- 
 quisite taste: her face grown longer and more refined; 
 her tint etherealised ; and she heard herself with de- 
 lighted wonder talking like a book. 
 
 Meanwhile they had arrived at where the track comes 
 out above the river dell, and saw in front of them the 
 castle, faintly shadowed on the night, covering with 
 its broken battlements a bold projection of the bank, 
 and showing at the extreme end, where were the habi- 
 table tower and wing, some crevices of candle-light. 
 Hence she called loudly upon her uncle, and he was 
 seen to issue, lantern in hand, from the tower door, 
 and, where the ruins did not intervene, to pick his way 
 over the swarded courtyard, avoiding treacherous cellars 
 and winding among blocks of fallen masonry. The 
 arch of the great gate was still entire, flanked by two 
 tottering bastions, and it was here that Jonathan met 
 
 327 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 them, standing at the edge of the bridge, bent some- 
 what forward, and blinking at them through the glow 
 of his own lantern. Mr. Archer greeted him with civil- 
 ity ; but the old man was in no humour of compliance. 
 He guided the new-comer across the courtyard, looking 
 sharply and quickly in his face, and grumbling all the 
 time about the cold, and the discomfort and dilapida- 
 tion of the castle. 
 
 He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would like it; 
 but in truth he could not think what brought him there. 
 Doubtless he had a good reason— this with a look of 
 cunning scrutiny— but, indeed, the place was quite unfit 
 for any person of repute; he himself was eaten up with 
 the rheumatics. It was the most rheumaticky place in 
 England, and, some fine day, the whole habitable part 
 (to call it habitable) would fetch away bodily and go 
 down the slope into the river. He had seen the cracks 
 widening; there was a plaguy issue in the bank below; 
 he thought a spring was mining it; it might be to-mor- 
 row, it might be next day; but they were all sure of a 
 come-down sooner or later. " And that is a poor death, " 
 said he, " for any one, let alone a gentleman, to have a 
 whole old ruin dumped upon his belly. Have a care to 
 your left there : these cellar vaults have all broke down, 
 and the grass and the hemlock hide 'em. Well, sir, 
 here is welcome to you, such as it is, and wishing you 
 well away." 
 
 And with that Jonathan ushered his guest through 
 the tower door, and down three steps on the left hand 
 into the kitchen or common room of the castle. It 
 was a huge, low room, as large as a meadow, occu- 
 pying the whole width of the habitable wing, with six 
 
 528 
 
IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 
 
 barred windows looking on the court, and two into the 
 river valley. A dresser, a table, and a few chairs stood 
 dotted here and there upon the uneven flags. Under 
 the great chimney a good fire burned in an iron fire- 
 basket; a high old settee, rudely carved with figures 
 and Gothic lettering, flanked it on either side; there were 
 a hinge table and a stone bench in the chimney corner, 
 and above the arch hung guns, axes, lanterns, and great 
 sheaves of rusty keys. 
 
 Jonathan looked about him, holding up the lantern, 
 and shrugged his shoulders with a pitying grimace. 
 " Here it is," he said. " See the damp on the floor, look 
 at the moss ; where there 's moss you may be sure that 
 it 's rheumaticky. Try and get near that fire for to 
 warm yourself; it '11 blow the coat off your back. And 
 with a young gentleman with a face like yours, as pale 
 as a tallow candle, I 'd be afeard of a churchyard cough 
 and a galloping decline," said Jonathan, naming the 
 maladies with gloomy gusto, ** or the cold might strike 
 and turn your blood," he added. 
 
 Mr. Archer fairly laughed. "My good Mr. Holda- 
 way," said he, "I was born with that same tallow- 
 candle face, and the only fear that you inspire me with 
 is the fear that I intrude unwelcomely upon your private 
 hours. But I think I can promise you that I am very 
 little troublesome, and I am inclined to hope that the 
 terms which I can offer may still pay you the derange- 
 ment." 
 
 " Yes, the terms," said Jonathan, " I was thinking of 
 that. As you say, they are very small," and he shook 
 his head. 
 
 *' Unhappily, I can afford no more," said Mr. Archer. 
 329 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 "But this we have arranged already," he added with a 
 certain stiffness; "and as I am aware that Miss Holda- 
 way has matter to communicate, I will, if you permit, 
 -etire at once. To-night I must bivouac; to-morrow 
 my trunk is to follow from the Dragon. So, if you 
 will show me to my room I shall wish you a good 
 slumber and a better awakening." 
 
 Jonathan silently gave the lantern to Nance, and she, 
 turning and courtesying in the doorway, proceeded to 
 conduct their guest up the broad winding staircase of 
 the tower. He followed with a very brooding face. 
 
 " Alas! " cried Nance, as she entered the room, "your 
 fire is black out," and setting down the lantern she 
 clapped upon her knees before the chimney and began 
 to rearrange the charred and still smouldering remains. 
 Mr. Archer looked about the gaunt apartment with a sort 
 of shudder. The great height, the bare stone, the shat- 
 tered windows, the aspect of the uncurtained bed, with 
 one of its four fluted columns broken short, all struck 
 a chill upon his fancy. From this dismal survey his 
 eyes turned to Nance crouching before the fire, the 
 candle in one hand and artfully puffing at the embers ; 
 the flames as they- broke forth played upon the soft 
 outline of her cheek— she was alive and young, coloured 
 with the bright hues of life, and a woman. He looked 
 upon her, softening; and then sat down and continued 
 to admire the picture. 
 
 "There, sir," said she, getting upon her feet, "your 
 fire is doing bravely now. Good-night." 
 
 He rose and held out his hand. " Come," said he, 
 " you are my only friend in these parts, and you must 
 shake hands." 
 
 330 
 
IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 
 
 She brushed her hand upon her skirt, and offered it, 
 blushing. 
 
 "God bless you, my dear," said he. 
 
 And then, when he was alone, he opened one of the 
 windows, and stared down into the dark valley. A 
 gentle wimpling of the river among stones ascended 
 to his ear; the trees upon the other bank stood very 
 black against the sky ; farther away an owl was hoot- 
 ing. It was dreary and cold, and as he turned back to 
 the hearth and the fine glow of fire, " Heavens! " said 
 he to himself, "what an unfortunate destiny is mine!'" 
 
 He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow in 
 uneasy snatches. Outbreaks of loud speech came up the 
 staircase; he heard the old stones of the castle crack in 
 the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and the bed 
 complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the 
 morning, he awakened from a doze to hear, very far 
 off, in the extreme and breathless quiet, a wailing flour- 
 ish on the horn. The down mail was drawing near to 
 the Green Dragon. He sat up in bed; the sound was 
 tragical by distance, and the modulation appealed to 
 his ear like human speech. It seemed to call upon him 
 with a dreary insistence— to call him far away, to 
 address him personally, and to have a meaning that he 
 failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nodding 
 castle, in a cold, miry woodland, and so far from men 
 and society, that the traffic on the Great North Road 
 spoke to him in the intervals of slumber. 
 
 331 
 
Ill 
 
 JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 
 
 Nance descended the tower-stair, pausing at every 
 step. She was in no hurry to confront her uncle with 
 bad news, and she must dwell a little longer on the 
 rich note of Mr. Archer's voice, the charm of his kind 
 words, and the beauty of his manner and person. But, 
 once at the stair-foot, she threw aside the spell and 
 recovered her sensible and workaday self. 
 
 Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a 
 mug of ale beside him, in the attitude of one prepared 
 for trouble; but he did not speak, and suffered her to 
 fetch her supper and eat of it, with a very excellent 
 appetite, in silence. When she had done, she, too, 
 drew a tankard of home-brewed, and came and planted 
 herself in front of him upon the settle. 
 
 '■ Well ? " said Jonathan. 
 
 *' My Lord has run away," said Nance. 
 
 " What ^ " cried the old man. 
 
 "Abroad," she continued. "Run away from credi- 
 tors. He said he had not a stiver, but he was drunk 
 enough. He said you might live on in the castle, and 
 Mr. Archer would pay you; but you was to look for no 
 more wages, since he would be glad of them himself." 
 
 332 
 
JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 
 
 Jonathan's face contracted; the flush of a black, 
 bilious anger mounted to the roots of his hair; he gave 
 an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his feet, and began rapidly 
 pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his hands be- 
 hind his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticu- 
 late as he turned. 
 
 "This man— this Lord," he shouted, "who is he? 
 He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and I 
 with a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach when he 
 was a baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured since 
 I was that high— that high." And he shouted again. 
 " 1 'm bent and broke, and full of pains. D' ye think I 
 don't know the taste of sweat ? Many 's the gallon I 've 
 drunk of it— ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. 
 All through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, 
 bend my old creaking back till it would ache like break- 
 ing; wade about in the foul mire, never a dry stitch; 
 empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; 
 kicks and ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, 
 when I 'm worn to my poor bones, a kick and done 
 with it." He walked a little while in silence, and then, 
 extending his hand, "Now, you Nance Holdaway," 
 said he, " you come of my blood, and you 're a good 
 girl. When that man was a boy, I used to carry his 
 gun for him. I carried the gun all day on my two feet, 
 and many a stitch I had, and chewed a bullet for. He 
 rode upon a horse, with feathers in his hat, but it was 
 him that had the shots and took the game home. Did 
 I complain ? Not I. I knew my station. What did I 
 ask, but just the chance to live and die honest ? Nance 
 Holdaway, don't let them deny it to me— don't let them 
 do it. I 've been poor as Job, and honest as the day, 
 
 }}} 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 but now, my girl, you mark these words of mine, I 'm 
 getting tired of it." 
 
 " I would n't say such words, at least," said Nance. 
 
 " You would n't ? " said the old man, grimly. " Well, 
 and did I when I was your age ? Wait till your back 's 
 broke, and your hands tremble, and your eyes fail, and 
 you *re weary of the battle, and ask no more but to lie 
 down in your bed and give the ghost up like an honest 
 man; and then let there up and come some insolent, 
 ungodly fellow— ah! if I had him in these hands! 
 * Where 's my money that you gambled ? ' I should 
 say. * Where 's my money that you drank and 
 diced? Thief!' is what I would say; thief I '* he 
 roared, "thief! " 
 
 " Mr. Archer will hear you, if you don't take care," 
 said Nance; "and I would be ashamed, for one, that he 
 should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working man 
 like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy." 
 
 " D' ye think I mind for Mr. Archer ? " he cried shrilly, 
 with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to 
 her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees, 
 and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expres- 
 sion, something like a smile. " Do I mind for God, 
 my girl ? " he said, " that 's what it 's come to be now, 
 do I mind for God ? " 
 
 "Uncle Jonathan," she said, getting up and taking 
 him by the arm ; " you sit down again, where you were 
 sitting. There, sit still; I '11 have no more of this; 
 you 11 do yourself a mischief. Come, take a drink of 
 this good ale, and I '11 warm a tankard for you. La, 
 well; we '11 pull through, you '11 see. I 'm young, as 
 you say, and it 's my turn to carry the bundle; and don't 
 
 334 
 
JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 
 
 you worry your bile, or we '11 have sickness, too, as 
 well as sorrow." 
 
 " D' ye think that 1 'd forgotten you? " said Jonathan, 
 with something like a groan; and thereupon his teeth 
 clicked to, and he sat silent with the tankard in his 
 hand and staring straight before him. 
 
 " Why," says Nance, setting on the ale to mull," men 
 are always children, they say, however old ; and if ever 
 I heard a thing like this, to set to and make yourself 
 sick, just when the money 's failing! Keep a good 
 heart up ; you have n't kept a good heart these seventy 
 years, nigh hand, to break down about a pound or two. 
 Here 's thir Mr. Archer come to lodge, that you disliked 
 so much. Well, now you see it was a clear Providence. 
 Come, let 's think upon our mercies. And here is the 
 ale mulling lovely; smell of it; I '11 take a drop myself, 
 it smells so sweet. And, Uncle Jonathan, you let me 
 say one word. You 've lost more than money before 
 now; you lost my aunt, and bore it like a man. Bear 
 this." 
 
 His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, 
 and shot forth into the air, and trembled. " Let them 
 look out! " he shouted. "Here, I warn all men; I 've 
 done with this foul kennel of knaves. Let them look 
 out." 
 
 " Hush, hush! for pity's sake," cried Nance. 
 
 And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into his 
 hands, and broke out with a great hiccoughing dry sob 
 that was horrible to hear. "O," he cried, "my God, 
 if my son had n't left me, if my Dick was here! " and 
 the sobs shook him; Nance sitting still and watching 
 him, with distress. " O, if he were here to help his 
 
 335 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 father! " he went on again. " If I had a son like other 
 fathers, he would save me now, when all is breaking 
 down; O, he would save me! Ay, but where is he ? 
 Raking taverns, a thief perhaps. My curse be on him ! " 
 he added, rising again into wrath. 
 
 "Hush! " cried Nance, springing to her feet: "your 
 boy, your dead wife's boy— Aunt Susan's baby, that 
 she loved— would you curse him? 0, God for- 
 bid! " 
 
 The energy of her address surprised him from his 
 mood. He looked upon her, tearless and confused. 
 "Let me go to my bed," he said at last, and he rose 
 and, shaking as with ague, but quite silent, lighted his 
 candle, and left the kitchen. 
 
 Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams was 
 all diverted. She beheld a golden city, where she 
 aspired to dwell; she had spoken with a deity, and had 
 told herself that she might rise to be his equal; and 
 now the earthly ligaments that bound her down had 
 been straitened. She was like a tree looking sky- 
 ward, her roots were in the ground. It seemed to her 
 a thing so coarse, so rustic, to be thus concerned about 
 a loss in money; when Mr. Archer, fallen from the 
 sky-level of counts and nobles, faced his changed des- 
 tiny with so immovable a courage. To weary of hon- 
 esty ; that, at least, no one could do, but even to name 
 it was already a disgrace; and she beheld in fancy her 
 uncle, and the young lad, all laced and feathered, hand 
 upon hip, bestriding his small horse. The opposition 
 seemed to perpetuate itself from generation to genera- 
 tion; one side still doomed to the clumsy and servile, 
 the other born to beauty. 
 
JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 
 
 She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen 
 were bred, and figured with so excellent a grace; zones 
 in which wisdom and smooth words, white linen and 
 slim hands, were the mark of the desired inhabitants; 
 where low temptations were unknown, and honesty no 
 virtue, but a thing as natural as breathing. 
 
 337 
 
IV 
 
 MINGLING THREADS 
 
 It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apart- 
 ment. On the landing he found another door beside 
 his own, opening on a roofless corridor, and presently 
 he was walking on the top of the ruins. On one hand 
 he could look down a good depth into the green court- 
 yard ; on the other, his eye roved along the downward 
 course of the river, the wet woods all smoking, the 
 shadows long and blue, the mists golden and rosy in the 
 sun, here and there the water flashing across an obsta- 
 cle. His heart expanded and softened to a grateful 
 melancholy, and with his eye fixed upon the distance, 
 and no thought of present danger, he continued to stroll 
 along the elevated and treacherous promenade. 
 
 A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard. 
 He looked down, and saw in a glimpse Nance standing 
 below with hands clasped in horror and his own foot 
 trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and 
 leant against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and 
 covering his face with his hands; and Nance had time 
 to run round by the stair and rejoin him where he stood 
 before he had changed a line of his position. 
 
 " Ah ! " he cried, and clutched her wrist; " don't leave 
 me. The place rocks; I have no head for altitudes." 
 
 b8 
 
MINGLING THREADS 
 
 "Sit down against that pillar," said Nance. ** Don't 
 you be afraid; I won't leave you; and don't look up or 
 down: look straight at me. How white you are!" 
 
 "The gulf," he said, and closed his eyes again and 
 shuddered. 
 
 '* Why," said Nance, *' what a poor climber you must 
 be ! That was where my cousin Dick used to get out 
 of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut the gate. 
 I 've been down there myself with him helping me. I 
 would n't try with you," she said, and laughed merrily. 
 
 The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, 
 and perhaps its beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. 
 The blood came into his face with a quick jet, and then 
 left it paler than before. ** It is a physical weakness," 
 he said harshly, " and very droll, no doubt, but one that 
 I can conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. 
 Well, I advance to the battlements and look down. 
 Show me your cousin's path." 
 
 " He would go sure-foot along that little ledge," said 
 Nance, pointing as she spoke; "then out through the 
 breach and down by yonder buttress. It is easier com- 
 ing back, of course, because you see where you are 
 going. From the buttress-foot a sheep-walk goes along 
 the scarp— see, you can follow it from here in the dry 
 grass. And now, sir," she added, with a touch of 
 womanly pity, "I would come away from here if I 
 were you, for indeed you are not fit." 
 
 Sure enough, Mr. Archer's pallor and agitation had 
 continued to increase; his cheeks were deathly, his 
 clenched fingers trembled pitifully. " The weakness is 
 physical," he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance 
 led him from the spot, and he was no sooner back in 
 
 539 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 the tower-Stair, than he fell heavily against the wall 
 and put his arm across his eyes. A cup of brandy had 
 to be brought him before he could descend to breakfast; 
 and the perfection of Nance's dream was for the first 
 time troubled. 
 
 Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow, 
 blood-shot eyes and a peculiar dusky complexion. He 
 hardly waited till they found their seats, before, raising 
 one hand, and stooping with his mouth above his plate, 
 he put up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a 
 spirit of gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and 
 without more civility, fell to. But it was notable that 
 he was no less speedily satisfied than he had been greedy 
 to begin. He pushed his plate away and drummed upon 
 the table. 
 
 "These are silly prayers," said he, "that they teach 
 us. Eat and be thankful, that 's no such wonder. 
 Speak to me of starving— there 's the touch. You 're a 
 man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some 
 reverses ? " 
 
 " I have met with many," replied Mr. Archer. 
 
 "Ha!" said Jonathan, "none reckons but the last. 
 Now, see; I tried to make this girl here understand 
 me." 
 
 " Uncle," said Nance, " what should Mr. Archer care 
 for your concerns ? He hath troubles of his own, and 
 came to be at peace, 1 think." 
 
 " I tried to make her understand me," repeated Jona- 
 than, doggedly; " and now I '11 try you. Do you think 
 this world is fair } " 
 
 " Fair and false! " quoth Mr. Archer. 
 
 The old man laughed immoderately. "Good," said 
 340 
 
MINGLING THREADS 
 
 he ; " very good. But what I mean is this : do you know 
 what it is to get up early and go to bed late, and never 
 take so much as a holiday but four; and one of these 
 your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals 
 of folk you loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age 
 in shelter, and bread for your old belly, and a bed to 
 lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear conscience ? " 
 
 " Sir," said Mr. Archer, with an inclination of his head, 
 "you portray a very brave existence." 
 
 " Well," continued Jonathan, " and in the end thieves 
 deceive you, thieves rob and rook you, thieves turn you 
 out in your grey old age and send you begging. What 
 have you got for all your honesty? A fine return ! You 
 that might have stole scores of pounds, there you are 
 out in the rain with your rheumatics ! " 
 
 Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand upon 
 his chin he was studying the old man's countenance. 
 " And you conclude ? " he asked. 
 
 "Conclude!" cried Jonathan. "I conclude I '11 be 
 upsides with them." 
 
 " Ay," said the other, " we are all tempted to revenge." 
 
 " You have lost money ? " asked Jonathan. 
 
 "A great estate," said Archer, quietly. 
 
 " See now! " says Jonathan, " and where is it ? " 
 
 " Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had his 
 share of it but me," was the reply. ** All England hath 
 paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep that 
 left my wool on every brier." 
 
 " And you sit down under that ? " cried the old man. 
 *' Come now, Mr. Archer, you and me belong to differ- 
 ent stations ? and I know mine— no man better— but 
 since we have both been rooked, and are both sore 
 
 34» 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 with it, why, here 's my hand with a very good heart, 
 and I ask for yours, and no offence, I hope." 
 
 "There is surely no offence, my friend," returned 
 Mr. Archer, as they shook hands across the table; " for, 
 believe me, my sympathies are quite acquired to you. 
 This life is an arena where we fight with beasts ; and, 
 indeed," he added, sighing, "I sometimes marvel why 
 we go down to it unarmed." 
 
 In the meanwhile, a creaking of ungreased axles had 
 been heard descending through the wood ; and presently 
 after the door opened, and the tall hostler entered the 
 kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer's trunks. The 
 other was carried by an aged beggarman of that district, 
 known and welcome for some twenty miles about under 
 the name of Old Cumberland. Each was soon perched 
 upon a settle, with a cup of ale; and the hostler, who 
 valued himself upon his affability, began to entertain 
 the company, still with half an eye on Nance, to 
 whom in gallant terms he expressly dedicated every 
 sip of ale. First he told of the trouble they had to get 
 his Lordship started in the chaise; and how he had 
 dropped a rouleau of gold on the threshold, and the 
 passage and door-step had been strewn with guinea- 
 pieces. At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. 
 Next the visitor turned to news of a more thrilling 
 character: how the down mail had been stopped again 
 near Grantham by three men on horseback— a white 
 and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their 
 faces; how Tom the guard's blunderbuss missed fire, 
 but he swore he had winged one of them with a pistol ; 
 and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds 
 in money, some valuable papers, and a watch or two- 
 
 342 
 
MINGLING THREADS 
 
 " Brave, brave ! " cried Jonathan, in ecstasy. " Seventy 
 pounds ! O, it 's brave ! " 
 
 "Well, I don't see the great bravery," observed the 
 hostler, misapprehending him. "Three men, and 
 you may call that three to one. I '11 call it brave 
 when some one stops the mail single-handed; that 's 
 a risk." 
 
 " And why should they hesitate } " inquired Mr. 
 Archer. "The poor souls who are fallen to such a 
 way of life, pray, what have they to lose ? If they get 
 the money, well; but if a ball should put them from 
 their troubles, why, so better." 
 
 "Well, sir," said the hostler, "I believe you '11 find 
 they won't agree with you. They count on a good 
 fling, you see; or who would risk it .?— And here 's my 
 best respects to you. Miss Nance." 
 
 "And I forgot the part of cowardice," resumed Mr. 
 Archer. " All men fear." 
 
 "O, surely not! " cried Nance. 
 
 "All men," reiterated Mr. Archer. 
 
 " Ay, that 's a true word," observed Old Cumberland, 
 "and a thief, anyway, for it 's a coward's trade." 
 
 "But these fellows, now," said Jonathan, with a 
 curious, appealing manner—" these fellows with their 
 seventy pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer, they were no 
 true thieves after all, but just people who had been 
 robbed and tried to get their own again. What was 
 that you said, about all England and the taxes ? One 
 takes, another gives ; why, that 's almost fair. If I 've 
 been rooked and robbed, and the coat taken off my 
 back, I call it almost fair to take another's." 
 
 "Ask Old Cumberland," observed the hostler, "you 
 343 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 ask Old Cumberland, Miss Nance!" and he bestowed 
 a wink upon his favoured fair one. 
 
 " Why that ? " asked Jonathan. 
 
 "He had his coat taken, ay, and his shirt too," re- 
 turned the hostler. 
 
 " Is that so ? " cried Jonathan, eagerly. " Was you 
 robbed too ? " 
 
 " That was I," replied Cumberland, " with a warrant! 
 I was a well-to-do man when I was young." 
 
 "Ay! See that! " says Jonathan. "And you don't 
 long for a revenge ? " 
 
 "Eh! Not me! " answered the beggar. "It 's too 
 long ago. But if you '11 give me another mug of your 
 good ale, my pretty lady, I won't say no to that." 
 
 . " And shalt have ! And shalt have ! " cried Jonathan ; 
 " or brandy even, if you like it better." 
 
 And as Cumberland did like it better, and the hostler 
 chimed in, the party pledged each other in a dram of 
 brandy before separating. 
 
 As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, partly 
 to avoid the hostler's gallantries, partly to lament over 
 the defects of Mr. Archer. Plainly, he was no hero. 
 She pitied him ; she began to feel a protecting interest 
 mingle with and almost supersede her admiration, and 
 was at the same time disappointed and yet drawn to 
 him. She was, indeed, conscious of such unshaken 
 fortitude in her own heart, that she was almost tempted 
 by an occasion to be bold for two. She saw herself, 
 in a brave attitude, shielding her imperfect hero from 
 the world; and she saw, like a piece of Heaven, his 
 gratitude for her protection. 
 
 344 
 
LIFE IN THE CASTLE 
 
 From that day forth the life of these three persons in 
 the ruins ran very smoothly. Mr. Archer now sat by 
 the fire with a book, and now passed whole days abroad, 
 returning late, dead weary. His manner was a mask; 
 but it was half transparent; through the even tenor of 
 his gravity and courtesy profound revolutions of feeling 
 were betrayed, seasons of numb despair, of restlessness, 
 of aching temper. For days he would say nothing be- 
 yond his usual courtesies and solemn compliments ; and 
 then, all of a sudden, some fine evening beside the 
 kitchen fire, he would fall into a vein of elegant gossip, 
 tell of strange and interesting events, the secrets of 
 families, brave deeds of war, the miraculous discovery of 
 crime, the visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle 
 would sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: 
 Jonathan applauding the unexpected incidents with 
 many a slap of his big hand; Nance, perhaps, more 
 pleased with the narrator's eloquence and wise reflec- 
 tions. And then, again, days would follow of abstrac- 
 tion, of, listless humming, of frequent apologies and 
 long hours of silence. Once only, and then after a 
 week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over to the 
 Green Dragon, spent the afternoon with the landlord 
 
 345 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 and a bowl of punch, and returned as on the first nighty 
 devious in step, but courteous and unperturbed of 
 speech. 
 
 If he seemed more natural and more at his ease, it 
 was when he found Nance alone ; and laying by some 
 of his reserve, talked before her rather than to her of 
 his destiny, character, and hopes. To Nance these 
 interviews were but a doubtful privilege. At times he 
 would seem to take a pleasure in her presence, to con- 
 sult her gravely, to hear and discuss her counsels; at 
 times even, but these were rare and brief, he would 
 talk of herself, praise the qualities that she possessed, 
 touch indulgently on her defects, and lend her books 
 to read and even examine her upon her reading; but 
 far more often he would fall into a half-unconscious- 
 ness, put her a question and then answer it himself, 
 drop into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising, 
 and leave her at last as though he had forgotten her 
 existence. It was odd, too, that in all this random con- 
 verse not a fact of his past life, and scarce a name, 
 should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept 
 watch upon his most unguarded moments. He spoka 
 continually of himself, indeed, but still in enigmas; the 
 veiled prophet of egoism. 
 
 The base of Nance's feelings for Mr. Archer was ads 
 miration as for a superior being; and with this, his 
 treatment, consciously or not, accorded happily. When 
 he forgot her, she took the blame upon herself. His 
 formal politeness was so exquisite that this essential 
 brutality stood excused. His compliments, besides, 
 were always grave and rational ; he would offer reason 
 for his praise, convict her of merit, and thus disarm 
 
 346 
 
LIFE IN THE CASTLE 
 
 suspicion. Nay, and the very hours when he forgot 
 and remembered her alternately could by the ardent 
 fallacies of youth be read in the light of an attention. 
 She might be far from his confidence; but still she was 
 nearer it than any one. He might ignore her presence, 
 but yet he sought it. 
 
 Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one 
 point of superiority. Beside this rather dismal, rather 
 effeminate man, who recoiled from a worm, who grew 
 giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the 
 weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and 
 shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She 
 could walk, head in air, along the most precarious rafter; 
 her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness 
 of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, 
 into the brier bush, and could take hold of any crawling 
 horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as 
 already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's palace. 
 Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a 
 busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough 
 seamstress work from the Green Dragon, and from 
 another neighbour ten miles across the moor. At this 
 she cheerfully laboured, and from that height she could 
 afford to pity the useless talents and poor attitude of 
 Mr. Archer. It did not change her admiration, but it 
 made it bearable. He was above her in all ways; but 
 she was above him in one. She kept it to herself, and 
 hugged it. When, like all young creatures, she made 
 long stories to justify, to nourish, and to forecast the 
 course of her affection, it was this private superiority 
 that made all rosy, that cut the knot, and that, at last, 
 in some great situation, fetched to her knees the dazzling 
 
 347 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 but imperfect hero. With this pretty exercise she be- 
 guiled the hours of labour, and consoled herself for Mr. 
 Archer's bearing. Pity was her weapon and her weak- 
 ness. To accept the loved one's faults, although it has 
 an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain, and this pity it 
 was which, lying nearer to her heart, lent the one ele- 
 ment of true emotion to a fanciful and merely brain- 
 sick love. 
 
 Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the Green 
 Dragon and brought back thence a letter to Mr. Archer. 
 He, upon seeing it, winced like a man under the knife: 
 pain, shame, sorrow, and the most trenchant edge of 
 mortification cut into his heart and wrung the steady 
 composure of his face. 
 
 " Dear heart! have you bad news ? " she cried. 
 
 But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his room, 
 and when, later on, she ventured to refer to it, he 
 stopped her on the threshold, as if with words prepared 
 beforehand. "There are some pains," said he, "too 
 acute for consolation, or I would bring them to my kind 
 consoler. Let the memory of that letter, if you please, 
 be buried." And then as she continued to gaze at him, 
 being, in spite of herself, pained by his elaborate phrase, 
 doubtfully sincere in word and matter: "Let it be 
 enough," he added haughtily, " that if this matter wring 
 my heart, it doth not touch my conscience. I am a 
 man, 1 would have you to know, who suffers unde- 
 servedly." 
 
 He had never spoken so directly: never with so con- 
 vincing an emotion; and her heart thrilled for him. 
 She could have taken his pains and died of them with 
 joy. 
 
 348 
 
LIFE IN THE CASTLE 
 
 Meanwhile she was left without support. Jonathan 
 now swore by his lodger, and lived for him. He was 
 a fine talker. He knew the finest sight of stories; he 
 was a man and a gentleman, take him for all in all, and 
 a perfect credit to Old England. Such were the old 
 man's declared sentiments, and sure enough he clung 
 to Mr. Archer's side, hung upon his utterance when he 
 spoke, and watched him with unwearying interest when 
 he was silent. And yet his feeling was not clear; in 
 the partial wreck of his mind, which was leaning to 
 decay, some afterthought was strongly present. As 
 he gazed in Mr. Archer's face a sudden brightness 
 would kindle in his rheumy eyes, his eyebrows would 
 lift as with a sudden thought, his mouth would open 
 as though to speak, and close again in silence. Once 
 or twice he even called Mr. Archer mysteriously forth 
 into the dark courtyard, took him by the button, and 
 laid a demonstrative finger on his chest; but there his 
 ideas or his courage failed him; he would shufflingly 
 excuse himself and return to his position by the fire 
 without a word of explanation. " The good man was 
 growing old," said Mr. Archer, with a suspicion of a 
 shrug. But the good man had his idea, and even when 
 he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from his lips 
 continually in the course of mumbled and gesticulative 
 conversation. 
 
 349 
 
VI 
 
 THE BAD HALF-CROWN 
 
 However early Nance arose, and she was no slug- 
 gard, the old man, who had begun to outlive the earthly 
 habit of slumber, would usually have been up long 
 before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she 
 would see him wandering among the ruins, lantern in 
 hand, and talking assiduously to himself. One day, 
 however, after he had returned late from the market- 
 town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that 
 indefatigable early riser. The kitchen was all blackness. 
 She crossed the castle yard to the wood-cellar, her steps 
 printing the thick hoar-frost. A scathing breeze blew 
 out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of 
 black and tattered clouds over the face of Heaven, which 
 was already kindled with the wild light of morning, but 
 where she walked, in shelter of the ruins, the flame of 
 her candle burned steady. The extreme cold smote 
 upon her conscience. She could not bear to think this 
 bitter business fell usually to the lot of one so old as 
 Jonathan, and made desperate resolutions to be earlier 
 in the future. 
 
 The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping 
 dismally into the kitchen. " Nance," said he, " I be all 
 knotted up with the rheumatics ; will you rub me a 
 
 350 
 
THE BAD HALF-CROWN 
 
 bit ? " She came and rubbed him where and how he 
 bade her. " This is a cruel thing that old age should be 
 rheumaticky," said he. "When I was young I stood 
 my turn of the teethache like a man ! for why ? because 
 it could n't last for ever; but these rheumatics come to 
 live and die with you. Your aunt was took before the 
 time came; never had an ache to mention. Now I lie 
 all night in my single bed and the blood never warms 
 in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with 
 the rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to 
 sew by it ; and all the strings of my old body ache, as 
 if devils was pulling 'em. Thank you kindly; that *s 
 someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has 
 little to look for; it *s pain, pain, pain to the end of the 
 business, and I '11 never be rightly warm again till I get 
 under the sod," he said, and looked down at her with 
 a face so aged and weary that she had nearly wept. 
 
 "I lay awake all night," he continued; "I do so 
 mostly, and a long walk kills me. Eh, deary me, to 
 think that life should run to such a puddle! And I 
 remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood 
 all hot and good about me, and I loved to run, too— 
 deary me, to run ! Well, that 's all by. You 'd better 
 pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till you 
 get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, 
 your cold, shivering, dark old age, that 's like a winter's 
 morning"; and he bitterly shuddered, spreading his 
 hands before the fire. 
 
 "Come now," said Nance, "the more you say the 
 less you '11 like it. Uncle Jonathan; but if I were you I 
 would be proud for to have lived all your days honest 
 and beloved, and come near the end with your good 
 
 35" 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 name: is n't that a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. 
 Archer was telling me in some strange land they used 
 to run races each with a lighted candle, and the art was 
 to keep the candle burning. Well, now, I thought 
 that was like life : a man's good conscience is the flame 
 he gets to carry, and if he comes to the winning-post 
 with that still burning, why, take it how you will, the 
 man 's a hero— even if he was low-born like you and 
 me." 
 
 " Did Mr. Archer tell you that ? " asked Jonathan. 
 
 ** No, dear," said she, *' that 's my own thought about 
 it. He told me of the race. But see, now," she con- 
 tinued, putting on the porridge, " you say old age is a 
 hard season, but so is youth. You 're half out of the 
 battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her, 
 and buried her, and some of these days soon you '11 go 
 to meet her; and take her my love and tell her I tried 
 to take good, care of you; for so I do. Uncle Jonathan." 
 
 Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. " D' ye 
 think I want to die, ye vixen! " he shouted. " I want 
 to live ten hundred years." 
 
 This was a mystery beyond Nance's penetration, 
 and she stared in wonder as she made the porridge. 
 
 "I want to live," he continued, "I want to live and 
 to grow rich. I want to drive my carriage and to dice 
 in hells and see the ring, I do. Is this a life that I lived ? 
 I want to be a rake, d' ye understand ? I want to know 
 what things are like. I don't want to die like a blind 
 kitten, and me seventy-six." 
 
 **0 fie! " said Nance. 
 
 The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the 
 grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged 
 
 352 
 
THE BAD HALF-CROWN 
 
 face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his 
 bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents 
 on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, 
 ringing and examining each, and suddenly he leapt like 
 a young man. "What!" he screamed. "Bad? O 
 Lord ! I 'm robbed again ! " And falling on his knees 
 before the settle he began to pour forth the most dread- 
 ful curses on the head of his deceiver. His eyes were 
 shut, for to him this vile solemnity was prayer. He 
 held up the bad half-crown in his right hand, as though 
 he were displaying it to Heaven, and what increased the 
 horror of the scene, the curses he invoked were those 
 whose efficacy he had tasted— old age and poverty, 
 rheumatism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened 
 appalled; then she sprang forward and dragged down 
 his arm and laid her hand upon his mouth. 
 
 "Whist!" she cried. "Whist ye, for God's sake! 
 O my man, whist ye! If Heaven were to hear; if poor 
 Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be listen- 
 ing." And with the histrionism of strong emotion she 
 pointed to a corner of the kitchen. 
 
 His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a 
 little, thinking, blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet 
 and resumed his place upon the settle, the bad piece 
 still in his hand. So he sat for some time, looking upon 
 the half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the 
 injustice and partiality of the law, now computing again 
 and again the nature of his loss. So he was still sitting 
 when Mr. Archer entered the kitchen. At this a light 
 came into his face, and after some seconds of rumina- 
 tion he despatched Nance upon an errand. 
 
 "Mr. Archer," said he, as soon as they were alone 
 
 353 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 together, "would you give me a guinea-piece for 
 silver ? " 
 
 "Why, sir, I believe I can," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 And the exchange was just effected when Nance 
 re-entered the apartment. The blood shot into her face. 
 " What 's to do here ? " she asked rudely. 
 
 "Nothing, my deary," said old Jonathan, with a 
 touch of whine. 
 
 " What 's to do ? " she said again. 
 
 " Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold," 
 returned Mr. Archer. 
 
 "Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer," 
 replied the girl. " I had a bad piece, and I fear it is 
 mixed up among the good." 
 
 "Well, well," replied Mr. Archer, smiling, "I must 
 take the merchant's risk of it. The money is now 
 mixed." 
 
 "I know my piece," quoth Nance. "Come, let me 
 see your silver, Mr. Archer. If I have to get it by a 
 theft I '11 see that money," she cried. 
 
 " Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest 
 as the world to steal, I must give way, though I betray 
 myself," said Mr. Archer. " There it is as I received it." 
 
 Nance quickly found the bad half-crown. " Give him 
 another," she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and 
 when that had been done, she walked over to the chim- 
 ney and flung the guilty piece into the reddest of the 
 fire. Its base constituents began immediately to run; 
 even as she watched it the disc crumpled, and the 
 lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, 
 who had followed close behind, beheld these changes 
 from over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely. 
 
 354 
 
THE BAD HALF-CROWN 
 
 "Now," said she, " come back to table, and to-day it 
 is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old times, 
 day about with Dick " ; and covering her eyes with one 
 hand, '*0 Lord," said she, with deep emotion, "make 
 us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For 
 the love of the poor souls that watch for us in Heaven, 
 O deliver us from evil I" 
 
 355 
 
VII 
 
 THE BLEACHING-GREEN 
 
 The year moved on to March ; and March, though it 
 blew bitter keen from the North Sea, yet blinked kindly 
 betweenwhiles on the river dell. The mire dried up 
 in the closest covert ; life ran in the bare branches, and 
 the air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with 
 the fragrance of new grass. 
 
 Above and below the castle the river crooked like the 
 letter "S." The lower loop was to the left, and em- 
 braced the high and steep projection which was crowned 
 by the ruins ; the upper loop enclosed a lawny promon- 
 tory, fringed by thorn and willow. It was easy to 
 reach it from the castle side, for the river ran in this 
 part very quietly among innumerable boulders and over 
 dam-like walls of rock. The place was all enclosed, 
 the wind a stranger, the turf smooth and solid; so it 
 was chosen by Nance to be her bleaching-green. 
 
 One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had 
 but begun to wring and lay them out when Mr. Archer 
 stepped from the thicket on the far side, drew very 
 deliberately near, and sat down in silence on the grass. 
 Nance looked up to greet him with a smile, but finding 
 her smile was not returned, she fell into embarrassment 
 and stuck the more busily to her employment. Man or 
 
 356 
 
THE BLEACHING-GREEN 
 
 woman, the whole world looks well at any work to 
 which they are accustomed ; but the girl was ashamed 
 of what she did. She was ashamed, besides, of the 
 sun-bonnet that so well became her, and ashamed of 
 her bare arms, which were her greatest beauty. 
 
 " Nausicaa," said Mr. Archer, at last, " I find you like 
 Nausicaac " 
 
 " And who was she ? " asked Nance, and laughed in 
 spite of herself, an empty and embarrassed laugh, that 
 sounded in Mr. Archer's ears, indeed, like music, but to 
 her own like the last grossness of rusticity. 
 
 "She was a princess of the Grecian islands," he re- 
 plied. " A king, being shipwrecked, found her washing 
 by the shore. Certainly I, too, was shipwrecked," he 
 continued, plucking at the grass. " There was never a 
 more desperate castaway— to fall from polite life, for- 
 tune, a shrine of honour, a grateful conscience, duties 
 willingly taken up and faithfully discharged; and to 
 fall to this— idleness, poverty, inutility, remorse." He 
 seemed to have forgotten her presence, but here he 
 remembered her again. " Nance," said he, *' would you 
 have a man sit down and suffer or rise up and strive ? " 
 
 "Nay," she said. "I would always rather see him 
 doing." 
 
 "Ha! " said Mr, Archer, "but yet you speak from 
 an imperfect knowledge. Conceive a man damned to 
 a choice of only evil— misconduct upon either side, not 
 a fault behind him, and yet naught before him but this 
 choice of sins. How would you say then ? " 
 
 "I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer," 
 returned Nance. " I would say there was a third choice, 
 and that the right one." 
 
 357 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 "I tell you," said Mr. Archer, "the man I have in 
 view hath two ways open, and no more. One to wait, 
 like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save or ruin him ; the 
 other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish or 
 be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are 
 wrong. Either way this step-child of Providence must 
 fall ; which shall he choose, by doing, or not doing ? " 
 
 "Fall, then, is what 1 would say," replied Nance. 
 " Fall where you will, but do it! For O, Mr. Archer," 
 she continued, stooping to her work, "you that are 
 good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go 
 against my heart to see you live on here like a sheep in 
 a turnip-field I If you were braver—" and here she 
 paused, conscience-smitten. 
 
 " Do I, indeed, lack courage ? " inquired Mr. Archer 
 of himself. "Courage, the footstool of the virtues, 
 upon which they stand ? Courage, that a poor private 
 carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a 
 weasel or a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail 
 there, I wonder ? But what is courage, then ? The 
 constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer ? 
 The itch of ill-advised activity— mere shuttle-wittedness 
 —or to be still and patient ? To inquire of the signifi- 
 cance of words is to rob ourselves of what we seem to 
 know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still is 
 the least heroic. Nance," he said, "did you ever hear 
 oi Hamlet?*' 
 
 "Never," said Nance. 
 
 "T is an old play," returned Mr. Archer, "and fre- 
 quently enacted. This while I have been talking Ham- 
 let. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince among 
 the Danes," and he told her the play in a very good 
 
 358 
 
THE BLEACHING-GREEN 
 
 Style, here and there quoting a verse or two with solemn 
 emphasis. 
 
 "It is strange," said Nance; "he was then a very 
 poor creature ? " 
 
 "That was what he could not tell," said Mr. Archer. 
 ** Look at me; am I as poor a creature ? " 
 
 She looked, and what she saw was the familiar 
 thought of all her hours; the tall figure very plainly 
 habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the slim hands; 
 the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide 
 and somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that 
 were so full of depth and change and colour. He was 
 gazing at her with his brows a little knit, his chin upon 
 one hand and that elbow resting on his knee. 
 
 "Ye look a man! " she cried, "ay, and should be a 
 great one! The more shame to you to lie here idle 
 like a dog before the fire." 
 
 "My fair Holdaway," quoth Mr. Archer, "you are 
 much set on action. I cannot dig, to beg 1 am ashamed " 
 He continued, looking at her with a half-absent fixity: 
 " 'T is a strange thing, certainly, that in my years of 
 fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when 
 I am broke, enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier 
 than to-day ? Was the grass softer, the stream pleasante/ 
 in sound, the air milder, the heart more at peace ? Why 
 should I not sink ? To dig— why, after all, it should 
 be easy. To take a mate, too ? Love is of all grades 
 since Jupiter; love fails to none; and children—" but 
 here he passed his hand suddenly over his eyes. " O 
 fool and coward, fool and coward! " he said bitterly; 
 " can you forget your fetters ? You did not know that 
 I was fettered, Nance.? " he asked, again addressing her. 
 
 359 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 But Nance was somewhat sore. " I know you keep 
 talking," she said, and, turning half away from him, 
 began to wring out a sheet across her shoulder. " I 
 wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the 
 hands lie abed the tongue takes a walk." 
 
 Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to 
 the water's edge. In this part the body of the river 
 poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten feet very 
 smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as 
 it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the 
 channel, began, by imperceptible degrees, to separate 
 towards either shore in dancing currents, and to leave 
 the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards either 
 side was nearly equal: about one half of the whole 
 water plunged on the side of the castle, through a 
 narrow gullet; about one half ran lipping past the 
 margin of the green and slipped across a babbling rapid. 
 
 "Here," said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for 
 some time at the fine and shifting demarcation of these 
 currents, " come here and see me try my fortune." 
 
 " I am not like a man," said Nance; " I have no time 
 to waste." 
 
 "Come here," he said again. "I ask you seriously, 
 Nance. We are not always childish when we seem so. " 
 
 She drew a little nearer. 
 
 "Now," said he, "you see these two channels- 
 choose one." 
 
 " I '11 choose the nearest, to save time," said Nance. 
 
 "Well, that shall be for action," returned Mr. Archen 
 " And since I wish to have the odds against me, not 
 only the other channel but yon stagnant water in the 
 midst shall be for lying still. You see this.? " he con- 
 
 360 
 
THE BLEACHING-GREEN 
 
 tinued, pulling up a withered rush, " I break it in three. 
 I shall put each separately at the top of the upper fall, 
 and according as they go by your way or by the other 
 I shall guide my life." 
 
 "This is very silly," said Nance, with a movement 
 of her shoulders. 
 
 " I do not think it so," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 "And then," she resumed, "if you are to try your 
 fortune, why not evenly ? " 
 
 "Nay," returned Mr. Archer, with a smile, "no man 
 can put complete reliance in blind Fate; he must still 
 cog the dice." 
 
 By this time he had got upon the rock beside the 
 upper fall, and, bidding her look out, dropped a piece 
 of rush into the middle of the intake. The rusty frag- 
 ment was sucked at once over the fall, came up again 
 far on the right hand, leaned ever more and more in 
 the same direction, and disappeared under the hanging 
 grasses on the castle side. 
 
 " One," said Mr. Archer, " one for standing still." 
 
 But the next launch had a different fate, and after 
 hanging for a while about the edge of the stagnant 
 water, steadily approached the bleaching-green and 
 danced down the rapid under Nance's eyes. 
 
 "One for me," she cried with some exultation; and 
 then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown pale, and 
 was kneeling on the rock, with his hand raised like a 
 person petrified. " Why," said she, " you do not mind 
 it, do you ? " 
 
 " Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which 
 a fortune hangs ? " said Mr. Archer, rather hoarsely. 
 " And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you have 
 
 361 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I 
 launch the next one." 
 
 "A prayer," she cried, "about a game like this? I 
 would not be so heathen." 
 
 "Well," said he, "then without," and he closed his 
 eyes and dropped the piece of rush. This time there 
 was no doubt. It went for the rapid as straight as any 
 arrow. 
 
 " Action then! " said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet; 
 "and then God forgive us," he added, almost to him- 
 self. 
 
 " God forgive us, indeed," cried Nance, "for wasting 
 the good daylight! But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you 
 look so serious I shall begin to think you was in earnest." 
 
 "Nay," he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a 
 full smile; "but is not this good advice ? 1 have con- 
 sulted God and demigod ; the nymph of the river, and 
 what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. 
 Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it 
 already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea 
 with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day 
 for the first time." 
 
 362 
 
VIII 
 
 THE MAIL-GUARD 
 
 Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had 
 burst upon the castle, a clap of screaming wind that 
 made the towers rock, and a copious drift of rain that 
 streamed from the windows. The wind soon blew 
 itself out, but the day broke cloudy and dripping, and 
 when the little party assembled at breakfast, their 
 humours appeared to have changed with the change of 
 weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at 
 the river-side, applying it in various ways to her par- 
 ticular aspirations, and the result, which was hardly to 
 her mind, had taken the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. 
 Archer, too, was somewhat absent; his thoughts were 
 of a mingled strain ; and even upon his usually impas- 
 sive countenance there were betrayed successive depths 
 of depression and starts of exultation, which the girl 
 translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But 
 Jonathan was the most altered : he was strangely silent, 
 hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. Archer with 
 an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as if the idea that 
 had so long hovered before him had now taken a more 
 solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat 
 alarmed his imagination. 
 
 At this rate, conversation languished into a silence 
 363 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 which was only broken by the gentle and ghostly noises 
 of the rain on the stone roof and about all that field of 
 ruins; and they were all relieved when the note of a 
 man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps 
 in the grassy court announced a visitor. It was the 
 hostler from the Green Dragon bringing a letter for Mr. 
 Archer. Nance saw her hero's face contract and then 
 relax again at the sight of it; and she thought that 
 she knew why, for the sprawling, gross black char- 
 acters of the address were easily distinguishable from 
 the fine writing on the former letter that had so much 
 disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; 
 while the hostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, 
 and proceeded to make himself agreeable after his 
 fashion. 
 
 " Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance," said he. 
 " I have n't been abed this blessed night." 
 
 Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on 
 Mr. Archer, who was reading his letter with a face of 
 such extreme indifference that she was tempted to sus- 
 pect him of assumption. 
 
 "Yes," continued the hostler, "not been the like of 
 it this fifteen years : the North Mail stopped at the three 
 stones." 
 
 Jonathan's cup was at his lip, but at this moment he 
 choked with a great splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if 
 startled by the noise, made so sudden a movement that 
 one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his 
 finger and thumb. It was some little time before the 
 old man was sufficiently recovered to beg the hostler 
 to go on, and he still kept coughing and crying and 
 rubbing his eyes. Mr. Archer, on his side, laid the 
 
 364 
 
THE MAIL-GUARD 
 
 letter down, and putting his hands in his pocket, lis- 
 tened gravely to the tale. 
 
 "Yes," resumed Sam, "the North Mail was stopped 
 by a single horseman ; dash my wig, but I admire him ! 
 There were four insides and two out, and poor Tom 
 Oglethorpe, the guard. Tom showed himself a man ; 
 let fly his blunderbuss at him; had him covered, too, 
 and could swear to that ; but the Captain never let on, 
 up with a pistol and fetched poor Tom a bullet through 
 the body. Tom, he squelched upon the seat, all over 
 blood. Up comes the Captain to the window. * Oblige 
 me,' says he, *with what you have.' Would you be- 
 lieve it? not a man says cheep!— not them! *Thy 
 hands over thy head. ' Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, 
 seven-and-forty pounds overhead in gold. One Dick- 
 see, a grazier, tries it on : gives him a guinea. * Beg 
 your pardon,' says the Captain, *I think too highly of 
 you to take it at your hand. I will not take less than 
 ten from such a gentleman.' This Dicksee had his 
 money in his stocking, but there was the pistol at his 
 eye. Down he goes, offs with his stocking, and there 
 was thirty golden guineas. 'Now,' says the Captain, 
 * you 've tried it on with me, but I scorns the advantage. 
 Ten, I said,' he says, 'and ten 1 take.' So, dash my 
 buttons, I call that man a man ! " cried Sam, in cordial 
 admiration. 
 
 " Well, and then? " says Mr. Archer. 
 
 "Then," resumed Sam, "that old fat fagot Engleton, 
 him as held the ribbons and drew up like a lamb when 
 he was told to, picks up his cattle, and drives off again. 
 Down they came to the Dragon, all singing like as if 
 they was scalded, and poor Tom saying nothing. You 
 
 365 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 would 'a* thought they had all lost the King's crown 
 to hear them. Down gets this Dicksee. ' Postmaster,' 
 he says, taking him by the arm, ' this is a most abomi- 
 nable thing,* he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and 
 gets the old man by the other arm. * We 've been 
 robbed,' he cries, * robbed!' Down gets the others, 
 and all round the old man telling their story, and what 
 they had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined ; 
 till at last old Engleton says, says he, ' How about 
 Oglethorpe ? ' says he. * Ay, ' says the others, ' how 
 about the guard ? ' Well, with that we bousted him 
 down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. I 
 thought he was dead. Well, he ain't dead; but he 's 
 dying, I fancy." 
 
 " Did you say four watches ? " said Jonathan. 
 
 " Four, I think. I wish it had been forty," cried Sam. 
 *VSuch a party of soured herrings I never did see— not 
 a man among them bar poor Tom. But us that are the 
 servants on the road have all the risk and none of the 
 profit." 
 
 "And this brave fellow." asked Mr. Archer, very 
 quietly, "this Oglethorpe— how is he now ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole 
 bang through him," said Sam. "The doctor has n't 
 been yet. He 'd 'a' been bright and early if it had been 
 a passenger. But, doctor or no, 1 '11 make a good guess 
 that Tom won't see to-morrow. He '11 die on a Sun- 
 day, will poor Tom; and they do say that 's fortunate." 
 
 " Did Tom see him that did it ? " asked Jonathan. 
 
 " Well, he saw him," replied Sam, " but not to swear 
 by. Said he was a very tall man, and very big, and 
 had a 'andkerchief about his face, and a very quick 
 
 366 
 
THE MAIL-GUARD 
 
 shot, and sat his horse like a thorough gentleman, as 
 he is." 
 
 " A gentleman ! " cried Nance. '* The dirty knave ! " 
 
 " Well, I calls a man like that a gentleman," returned 
 the hostler; "that 's what I mean by a gentleman." 
 
 " You don't know much of them, then," said Nance. 
 " A gentleman would scorn to stoop to such a thing. 
 I call my uncle a better gentleman than any thief." 
 
 " And you would be right," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 " How many snuff-boxes did he get ? " asked Jona- 
 than. 
 
 "O, dang me, if I know," said Sam; "I did n't take 
 an inventory." 
 
 "I will go back with you, if you please," said Mr. 
 Archer. " I should like to see poor Oglethorpe. He 
 has behaved well." 
 
 " At your service, sir," said Sam, jumping to his feet. 
 " 1 dare to say a gentleman like you would not forget a 
 poor fellow like Tom— no, nor a plain man like me, sir, 
 that went without his sleep to nurse him. And excuse 
 me, sir," added Sam, "you won't forget about the 
 letter, neither ? " 
 
 "Surely not," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a long 
 garret of the inn. The rain soaked in places through 
 the roof and fell in minute drops; there was but one 
 small window; the beds were occupied by servants, 
 the air of the garret was both close and chilly. Mr. 
 Archer's heart sank at the threshold to see a man lying 
 perhaps mortally hurt in so poor a sick-room, and as he 
 drew near the low bed he took his hat off. The guard 
 was a big, blowzy, innocent-looking soul with a thick 
 
 367 
 
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD 
 
 lip and a broad nose, comically turned up; his cheeks 
 were crimson, and when Mr. Archer laid a finger on 
 his brow he found him burning with fever. 
 
 "I fear you suffer much," he said, with a catch in 
 his voice, as he sat down on the bedside. 
 
 "I suppose I do, sir," returned Oglethorpe; "it is 
 main sore." 
 
 " I am used to wounds and wounded men," returned 
 the visitor. " I have been in the wars and nursed brave 
 fellows before now ; and, if you will suffer me, I pro- 
 pose to stay beside you till the doctor comes." 
 
 "It is very good of you, sir, I am sure," said Ogle- 
 thorpe. " The trouble is they won't none of them let 
 me drink." 
 
 " If you will not tell the doctor," said Mr, Archer, " I 
 will give you some water. They say it is bad for a 
 green wound, but in the Low Countries we all drank 
 water when we found the chance, and I could never 
 perceive we were the worse for it." 
 
 " Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps ? " called Ogle- 
 thorpe. 
 
 "Twice," said Mr. Archer, "and was as proud of 
 these hurts as any lady of her bracelets. T is a fine 
 thing to smart for one's duty; even in the pangs of it 
 there is contentment." 
 
 " Ah, well! " replied the guard, " if you 've been shot 
 yourself, that explains. But as for contentment, why, 
 sir, you see, it smarts, as you say. And then, I have 
 a good wife, you see, and a bit of a brat— a little thing, 
 so high." 
 
 " Don't move," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 "No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly," said 
 368 
 
THE MAIL-GUARD 
 
 Oglethorpe. " At York they are. A very good lass is 
 my wife— far too good for me. And the little rascal- 
 well, 1 don't know how to say it, but he sort of comes 
 around you. If I were to go, sir, it would be hard on 
 my poor girl— main hard on her! " 
 
 " Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that 
 laid you here," said Mr. Archer. 
 
 " Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the pas- 
 sengers," replied the guard. "He played his hand, if 
 you come to look at it; and I wish he had shot worse, 
 or me better. And yet I '11 go to my grave but what I 
 covered him," he cried. " It looks like witchcraft. I '11 
 go to my grave but what he was drove full of slugs like 
 a pepper-box." 
 
 "Quietly," said Mr. Archer, "you must not excite 
 yourself. These deceptions are very usual in war; the 
 eye, in a moment of alert, is hardly to be trusted, and 
 when the smoke blows away you see the man you fired 
 at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You should 
 observe, too, that you were in the dark night, and 
 somewhat dazzled by the lamps, and that the sudden 
 stopping of the mail had jolted you. In such circum- 
 stances a man may miss, ay, even with a blunderbuss, 
 and no blame attach to his marksmanship." . . . 
 
 369 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 The Editor is unable to furnish any information as to the intended 
 plot of the story which breaks off thus abruptly. From very early days 
 Mr. Stevenson had purposed to write (since circumstances did not 
 allow him to enact) a romance of the highway. The purpose seems to 
 have ripened after his recovery from the acute attack of illness which in- 
 terrupted his work from about Christmas, 1883, to September, 1884. The 
 chapters above printed were written at Bournemouth soon after the latter 
 date; but neither Mr. Henley nor 1, though we remember many conver- 
 sations with the writer on highway themes in general, can recall the origin 
 or intended course of this particular story. Its plot can hardly be forecast 
 from these opening chapters ; nor do the writer's own words, in a letter 
 written at the time to Mr. Henley, take us much further, except in so far 
 as they show that it was growing under his hands to be a more serious 
 effort than he first contemplated. " The Great North Road,^' he writes, 
 " which 1 thought to rattle off, like Treasure Island, for coin, has turned 
 into my most ambitious design, and will take piles of writing and think- 
 ing ; so that is what m.y highwayman has turned to ! The ways of Provi- 
 dence are inscrutable. Mr. Archer and Jonathan Holdaway are both giand 
 premier parts of unusual difficulty, and Nance and the Sergeant— the first 
 very delicate, and the second demanding great geniality. I quail before 
 the gale, but so help me, it shall be done. It is highly picturesque, most 
 dramatic, and if it can be made, as human as man. Besides, it is a true 
 storjy, and not, like Otto, one half story and one half play." Soon 
 after the date of this letter the author laid aside the tale in order to finish 
 for press the second half of More New Arabian Nights— The Dynamiter, 
 and never took it up again. 
 
 370 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
Now printed for the first tim$ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prologue— The Wine-Seller's Wife 375 
 
 I The Prince ^gy 
 
 Editorial Note 3pi 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 THE wine-seller's WIFE 
 
 THERE was a wine-seller's shop, as you went down 
 to the river in the city of the Antipopes. There 
 a man was served with good wine of the country and 
 plain country fare ; and the place being clean and quiet, 
 with a prospect on the river, certain gentlemen who 
 dwelt in that city in attendance on a great personage 
 made it a practice (when they had any silver in their 
 purses) to come and eat there and be private. 
 
 They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built 
 more like a bullock than a man, huge in bone and 
 brawn, high in colour, and with a hand like a baby for 
 size. Marie-Madeleine was the name of his wife; she 
 was of Marseilles, a city of entrancing women, nor 
 was any fairer than herself. She was tall, being almost 
 of a height with Paradou ; full-girdled, point-device in 
 every form, with an exquisite delicacy in the face; her 
 nose and nostrils a delight to look at from the fineness 
 of the sculpture, her eyes inclined a hair's-breadth in- 
 ward, her colour between dark and fair, and laid on 
 
 375 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 even like a flower's. A faint rose dwelt in it, as though 
 she had been found unawares bathing, and had blushed 
 from head to foot. She was of a grave countenance, 
 rarely smiling; yet it seemed to be written upon every 
 part of her that she rejoiced in life. Her husband loved 
 the heels of her feet and the knuckles of her fingers ; he 
 loved her like a glutton and a brute; his love hung 
 about her like an atmosphere; one that came by chance 
 into the wine-shop was aware of that passion; and it 
 might be said that by the strength of it the woman 
 had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if 
 she loved or loathed him; he was always in her eyes 
 like something monstrous— monstrous in his love, 
 monstrous in his person, horrific but imposing in his 
 violence; and her sentiment swung back and forward 
 from desire to sickness. But the mean, where it dwelt 
 chiefly, was an apathetic fascination, partly of horror; 
 as of Europa in mid-ocean with her bull. 
 
 On the loth November, 1749, there sat two of the 
 foreign gentlemen in the wine-seller's shop. They 
 were both handsome men of a good presence, richly 
 dressed. The first was swarthy and long and lean, 
 with an alert, black look, and a mole upon his cheek. 
 The other was more fair. He seemed very easy and 
 sedate, and a little melancholy for so young a man, but 
 his smile was charming. In his grey eyes there was 
 much abstraction, as of one recalling fondly that which 
 was past and lost. Yet there was strength and swift- 
 ness in his limbs ; and his mouth set straight across his 
 face, the under lip a thought upon side, like that of a 
 man accustomed to resolve. These two talked together 
 in a rude outlandish speech that no frequenter of that 
 
 376 
 
THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 
 
 wine-shop understood. The swarthy man answered 
 to the name of Ballantrae; he of the dreamy eyes was 
 sometimes called Balmile, and sometimes my Lordy or 
 my Lord Gladsmuir; but when the title was given him, 
 he seemed to put it by as if in jesting, not without 
 bitterness. 
 
 The mistral blew in the city. The first day of that 
 wind, they say in the countries where its voice is heard, 
 it blows away all the dust, the second all the stones, 
 and the third it blows back others from the mountains. 
 It was now come to the third day; outside the pebbles 
 flew like hail, and the face of the river was puckered, 
 and the very building-stones in the walls of houses 
 seemed to be curdled, with the savage cold and fury of 
 that continuous blast. It could be heard to hoot in all 
 the chimneys of the city; it swept about the wine-shop, 
 filling the room with eddies ; the chill and gritty touch 
 of it passed between the nearest clothes and the bare 
 flesh ; and the two gentlemen at the far table kept their 
 mantles loose about their shoulders. The roughness 
 of these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' cloaks 
 that had seen service, set the greater mark of richness 
 on what showed below of their laced clothes; for the 
 one was in scarlet and the other in violet and white, 
 like men come from a scene of ceremony; as indeed 
 they were. 
 
 It chanced that these fine clothes were not without 
 their influence on the scene which followed, and which 
 makes the prologue of our tale. For a long time Bal- 
 mile was in the habit to come to the wine-shop and eat 
 a meal or drink a measure of wine; sometimes with a 
 comrade; more often alone, when he would sit and 
 
 377 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 dream and drum upon the table, and the thoughts 
 would show in the man's face in little glooms and 
 lightenings, like the sun and the clouds upon a water. 
 For a long time Marie-Madeleine had observed him 
 apart. His sadness, the beauty of his smile when by 
 any chance he remembered her existence and addressed 
 her, the changes of his mind signalled forth by an 
 abstruse play of feature, the mere fact that he was 
 foreign and a thing detached fxom the local and the 
 accustomed, insensibly attracted and affected her. 
 Kindness was ready in her mind; it but lacked the 
 touch of an occasion to effervesce and crystallise. Now 
 Balmile had come hitherto in a very poor plain habit; 
 and this day of the mistral, when his mantle was just 
 open, and she saw beneath it the glancing of the violet 
 and the velvet and the silver, and the clustering fineness 
 of the lace, it seemed to set the man in a new light, 
 with which he shone resplendent to her fancy. 
 
 The high inhuman note of the w^nd, the violence and 
 continuity of its outpouring, and the fierce touch of it 
 upon man's whole periphery, accelerated the functions 
 of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it whirled 
 the trees of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as 
 it stirred up the dust in chambers. As brief as sparks, 
 the fancies glittered and succeeded each other in the 
 mind of Marie-Madeleine; and the grave man with the 
 smile, and the bright clothes under the plain mantle, 
 haunted her with incongruous explanations. She con- 
 sidered him, the unknown, the speaker of an unknown 
 tongue, the hero (as she placed him) of an unknown 
 romance, the dweller upon unknown memories. She 
 recalled him sitting there alone, so immersed, so stupe- 
 
 378 
 
THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 
 
 fled ; yet she was sure he was not stupid. She recalled 
 one day when he had remained a long time motionless, 
 with parted lips, like one in the act of starting up, his 
 eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one else must have looked 
 foolish ; but not he. She tried to conceive what manner 
 of memory had thus entranced him ; she forged for him 
 ai past; she showed him to herself in every light of 
 heroism and greatness and misfortune; she brooded 
 with petulant intensity on all she knew and guessed of 
 him. Yet, though she was already gone so deep, she 
 was still unashamed, still unalarmed; her thoughts 
 were still disinterested ; she had still to reach the stage 
 at which— beside the image of that other whom we 
 love to contemplate and to adorn— we place the image 
 of ourself and behold them together with delight. 
 
 She stood within the counter, her hands clasped be- 
 hind her back, her shoulders pressed against the wall, 
 her feet braced out. Her face was bright with the wind 
 and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of 
 tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed 
 to glow, standing there, and to breathe out energy. It 
 was the first time Ballantrae had visited that wine- 
 seller's, the first time he had seen the wife; and his 
 eyes were true to her. 
 
 " I perceive your reason for carrying me to this very 
 draughty tavern," he said at last. 
 
 "I believe it is propinquity," returned Balmile. 
 
 "You play dark," said Ballantrae, "but have a care J 
 Be more frank with me, or I will cut you out. I go 
 through no form of qualifying my threat, which would 
 be commonplace and not conscientious. There is only 
 one point in these campaigns: that is the degree of 
 
 379 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 admiration offered by the man; and to our hostess I 
 am in a posture to make victorious love." 
 
 " If you think you have the time, or the game worth 
 the candle," replied the other, with a shrug. 
 
 " One would suppose you were never at the pains to 
 observe her," said Ballantrae. 
 
 " I am not very observant, " said Balmile. " She seems 
 comely." 
 
 "You very dear and dull dog!" cried Ballantrae; 
 " chastity is the most besotting of the virtues. Why, 
 she has a look in her face beyond singing! I believe, 
 if you were to push me hard, I might trace it home 
 to a trifle of a squint. What matters.?^ The height of 
 beauty is in the touch that 's wrong, that 's the modu- 
 lation in a tune. 'T is the devil we all love ; I owe many 
 a conquest to my mole "—he touched it as he spoke 
 with a smile, and his eyes glittered; "we are all 
 hunchbacks, and beauty is only that kind of deformity 
 that I happen to admire. But come! Because you are 
 chaste, for which I am sure I pay you my respects, that 
 is no reason why you should be blind. Look at her, 
 look at the delicious nose of her, look at her cheek, look 
 at her ear, look at her hand and wrist— look at the 
 whole baggage from heels to crown, and tell me if she 
 would n't melt on a man's tongue." 
 
 As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic, 
 Balmile was constrained to do as he was bidden. He 
 looked at the woman, admired her excellences, and 
 was at the same time ashamed for himself and his 
 companion. So it befell that when Marie-Madeleine 
 raised her eyes, she met those of the subject of her 
 contemplations fixed directly on herself with a look 
 
 380 
 
THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 
 
 that is unmistakable, the look of a person measuring 
 and valuing another,— and, to clench the false impres- 
 sion, that his glance was instantly and guiltily with- 
 drawn. The blood beat back upon her heart and leaped 
 again; her obscure thoughts flashed clear before her; 
 she flew in fancy straight to his arms like a wanton, 
 and fled again on the instant like a nymph. And at 
 that moment there chanced an interruption, which not 
 only spared her embarrassment, but set the last con- 
 secration on her now articulate love. 
 
 Into the wine-shop there came a French gentleman, 
 arrayed in the last refinement of the fashion, though a 
 little tumbled by his passage in the wind. It was to 
 be judged he had come from the same formal gathering 
 at which the others had preceded him; and perhaps 
 that he had gone there in the hope to meet with them, 
 for he came up to Ballantrae with unceremonious 
 eagerness. 
 
 "At last, here you are!" he cried in French. "I 
 thought I was to miss you altogether." 
 
 The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first 
 greetings, laid his hand on his companion's shoulder. 
 
 " My Lord," said he, " allow me to present to you one 
 of my best friends and one of our best soldiers, the Lord 
 Viscount Gladsmuir." 
 
 The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the 
 period. 
 
 *' Monseigneur" said Balmile, '*je n' at pas la preten- 
 tion de m 'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de 
 mon rot ne me permet pas de porter comme il sied. Je 
 m 'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court. " 
 (" My Lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself 
 
 381 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not 
 suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, 
 at your service, plain Blair of Balmile.") 
 
 " Monsieur le Vicomte ou Monsieur Bier' de Balmail/' 
 replied the new-comer, " le nom n'y fait rien, etVon 
 connait vos beaux fails.'' (''The name matters no- 
 thing; your gallant actions are known.") 
 
 A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting down 
 together to the table, called for wine. It was the hap- 
 piness of Marie-Madeleine to wait unobserved upon the 
 prince of her dfisires. She poured the wine, he drank 
 of it; and that link between them seemed to her, for 
 the moment, close as a caress. Though they lowered 
 their tones, she surprised great names passing in their 
 conversation, names of kings, the names of De Gesvre 
 and Belle-Isle; and the man who dealt in these high 
 matters, and she who was now coupled with him in 
 her own thoughts, seemed to swim in mid-air in a 
 transfiguration. Love is a crude core, but it has singu- 
 lar and far-reaching fringes ; in that passionate attraction 
 for the stranger that now swayed and mastered her, his 
 harsh incomprehensible language, and these names of 
 grandees in his talk, were each an element. 
 
 The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain he 
 left behind him matter of much interest to his com- 
 panions; they spoke together earnestly, their heads 
 down, the woman of the wine-shop totally forgotten ; 
 and they were still so occupied when Paradou returned. 
 
 This man's love was unsleeping. The even bluster 
 of the mistral, with which he had been combating some 
 hours, had not suspended, though it had embittered, 
 that predominant passion. His first look was for his 
 
 382 
 
THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 
 
 wife, a look of hope and suspicion, menace and humil- 
 ity and love, that made the over-blooming brute appear 
 for the moment almost beautiful. She returned his 
 glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with 
 a swiftly waxing coldness of intent; and at last, with- 
 out changing their direction, she had closed her eyes. 
 
 There passed across her mind during that period much 
 that Paradou could not have understood had it been told 
 to him in words : chiefly the sense of an enlightening 
 contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the 
 man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned 
 for and that to which she had been long exposed like 
 a victim bound upon the altar. There swelled upon 
 her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence and 
 disgust. She had succumbed to the monster, humbling 
 herself below animals; and now she loved a hero, 
 aspiring to the semi-divine. It was in the pang of 
 that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes. 
 
 Paradou— quick, as beasts are quick, to translate 
 silence— felt the insult through his blood; his inarticu- 
 late soul bellowed within him for revenge. He glanced 
 about the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen 
 deep in talk, and passed them over: his fancy flying 
 not so high. There was but one other present, a coun- 
 try lout who stood swallowing his wine, equally unob- 
 served by all and unobserving; to him he dealt a glance 
 of murderous suspicion, and turned direct upon his 
 wife. The wine-shop had lain hitherto, a space of 
 shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial passages and 
 some whispered conversation, in the howling river of 
 the wind ; the clock had not yet ticked a score of times 
 since Paradou's appearance; and now, as he suddenly 
 
 383 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 gave tongue, it seemed as though the mistral had en- 
 tered at his heels. 
 
 " What ails you, woman ? " he cried, smiting on the 
 counter. 
 
 " Nothing ails me," she replied. It was strange; but 
 she spoke and stood at that moment like a lady of de- 
 gree, drawn upward by her aspirations. 
 
 " You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned 
 me! " cried the husband. 
 
 The man's passion was always formidable; she had 
 often looked on upon its violence with a thrill— it had 
 been one ingredient in her fascination; and she was 
 now surprised to behold him, as from afar off, gesticu- 
 lating but impotent. His fury might be dangerous like 
 a torrent or a gust of wind, but it was inhuman; it 
 might be feared or braved, it should never be respected. 
 And with that there came in her a sudden glow of 
 courage and that readiness to die which attends so 
 closely upon all strong passions. 
 
 " I do scorn you," she said. 
 
 " What is that? " he cried. 
 
 "I scorn you," she repeated, smiling. 
 
 " You love another man! " said he. 
 
 "With all my soul," was her reply. 
 
 The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house rang 
 and shook with it. 
 
 " Is this the ? " he cried, using a foul word, com- 
 mon in the South ; and he seized the young countryman 
 and dashed him to the ground. There he lay for the 
 least interval of time insensible; thence fled from the 
 house, the most terrified person in the county. The 
 heavy measure had escaped from his hands, splashing 
 
 384 
 
THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 
 
 the wine high upon the wall. Paradou caught it. 
 " And you ? " he roared to his wife, giving her the same 
 name in the feminine, and he aimed at her the deadly 
 missile. She expected it, motionless, with radiant 
 eyes. 
 
 But before it sped, Paradou was met by another ad- 
 versary, and the unconscious rivals stood confronted. 
 It was hard to say at that moment which appeared the 
 more formidable. In Paradou, the whole muddy and 
 truculent depths of the half-man were stirred to frenzy ; 
 the lust of destruction raged in him ; there was not a 
 feature in his face but it talked murder. Balmile had 
 dropped his cloak: he shone out at once in his finery, 
 and stood to his full stature; girt in mind and body; 
 all his resources, all his temper, perfectly in command; 
 in his face the light of battle. Neither spoke; there 
 was no blow nor threat of one; it was war reduced to 
 its last element, the spiritual ; and the huge wine-seller 
 slowly lowered his weapon. Balmile was a noble, he 
 a commoner; Balmile exulted in an honourable cause. 
 Paradou already perhaps began to be ashamed of his 
 violence. Of a sudden, at least, the tortured brute 
 turned and fled from the shop, in the footsteps of his 
 former victim, to whose continued flight his reappear- 
 ance added wings. 
 
 So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband 
 and herself, Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her 
 eyes. It might be her last moment, and she fed upon 
 that face ; reading there inimitable courage and illimit- 
 able valour to protect. And when the momentary 
 peril was gone by, and the champion turned a little 
 awkwardly towards her whom he had rescued, it was 
 
 385 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 to meet, and quail before, a gaze of admiration more 
 distinct than words. He bowed, he stammered, his 
 words failed him ; he who had crossed the floor a mo- 
 ment ago, like a young god, to smite, returned like one 
 discomfited: got somehow to his place by the table, 
 muffled himself again in his discarded cloak, and for a 
 last touch of the ridiculous, seeking for anything to 
 restore his countenance, drank of the wine before him, 
 deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was little wonder 
 if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes, 
 laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, 
 "To the champion of the Fair." 
 
 Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the 
 counter; she disdained the mocking laughter; it fell on 
 her ears, but it did not reach her spirit. For her, the 
 world of living persons was all resumed again into one 
 pair, as in the days of Eden ; there was but the one end 
 in life, the one hope before her, the one thing needful^ 
 the one thing possible,— to be his. 
 
 =$86 
 
THE PRINCE 
 
 That same night there was in the city of Avignon a 
 young man in distress of mind. Now he sat, now 
 walked in a high apartment, full of draughts and shad- 
 ows. A single candle made the darkness visible; and 
 the light scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, where 
 they had been recently and rudely nailed, a few minia- 
 tures and a copper medal of the young man's head. 
 The same was being sold that year in London to ad- 
 miring thousands. The original was fair; he had 
 beautiful brown eyes, a beautiful bright open face; a 
 little feminine, a little hard, a little weak; still full of 
 the light of youth, but already beginning to be vul- 
 garised ; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coars- 
 ened with a touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as 
 for a gala, in peach-colour and silver; his breast sparkled 
 with stars and was bright with ribbons; for he had 
 held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished 
 personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, 
 now walked precipitately to and fro, now went and 
 gazed from the uncurtained window, where the wind 
 was still blowing, and the lights winked in the dark- 
 ness. 
 
 The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing; 
 387 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 and the high notes and the deep tossed and drowned, 
 boomed suddenly near or were suddenly swallowed up, 
 in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale 
 blue eyes; the expression of his face was changed to 
 that of a more active misery; it seemed as if the voices 
 of the bells reached, and touched and pained him, in a 
 waste of vacancy where even pain was welcome. 
 Outside in the night they continued to sound on, swell- 
 ing and fainting; and the listener heard in his memory, 
 as it were their harmonies, joy-bells clashing in a 
 Northern city, and the acclamations of a multitude, the 
 cries of battle, the gross voices of cannon, the stridor 
 of an animated life. And then all died away, and he 
 stood face to face with himself in the waste of vacancy, 
 and a horror came upon his mind, and a faintness on 
 his brain, such as seizes men upon the brink of cliffs. 
 
 On the table, by the side of the candle, stood a tray 
 of glasses, a bottle, and a silver bell. He went thither 
 swiftly, then his hand lowered first above the bell, 
 then settled on the bottle. Slowly he filled a glass, 
 slowly drank it out; and, as a tide of animal warmth 
 recomforted the recesses of his nature, stood there 
 smiling at himself. He remembered he was young; 
 the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his life shine and 
 broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward. 
 The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle, and a 
 third ; a fire stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that 
 also; and the fir-cones and the gnarled olive billets were 
 swift to break in flame and to crackle on the hearth, 
 and the room brightened and enlarged about him like 
 his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands 
 lightly clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably taken. 
 
 388 
 
THE PRINCE 
 
 Victory walked with him ; he marched to crowns and 
 empires among shouting followers ; glory was his dress. 
 And presently again the shadows closed upon the soli- 
 tary. Under the gilt of flame and candle-light, the 
 stone walls of the apartment showed down bare and 
 cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual 
 failure: defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, 
 despair, broken followers, mourning faces, empty 
 pockets, friends estranged. The memory of his father 
 rose in his mind: he, too, estranged and defied; despair 
 sharpened into wrath. There was one who had led 
 armies in the field, who had staked his life upon the 
 family enterprise, a man of action and experience, of 
 the open air, the camp, the court, the council-room; and 
 he was to accept direction from an old, pompous gen- 
 tleman in a home in Italy, and buzzed about by priests? 
 A pretty king, if he had not a martial son to lean upon! 
 A king at all ? 
 
 " There was a weaver (of all people) joined me at St. 
 Ninians; he was more of a man than my papa! " he 
 thought. " I saw him lie doubled in his blood and a 
 grenadier below him— and he died for my papa! All 
 died for him, or risked the dying, and I lay for him all 
 those months in the rain and skulked in heather like a 
 fox; and now he writes me his advice! calls me Car- 
 luccio— me, the man of the house, the only king in 
 that king's race!" He ground his teeth. "The only 
 king in Europe! Who else ? Who has done and suf- 
 fered except me? who has lain and run and hidden 
 with his faithful subjects, like a second Bruce ? Not 
 my accursed cousin, Louis of France, at least, the lewd 
 effeminate traitor! " And filling the glass to the brim, 
 
 389 
 
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER 
 
 he drank a king's damnation. Ah, if he had the power 
 of Louis, what a king were here! 
 
 The minutes followed each other into the past, and 
 still he persevered in this debilitating cycle of emotions, 
 still fed the fire of his excitement with driblets of 
 Rhine wine; a boy at odds with life, a boy with a 
 spark of the heroic, which he was now burning out 
 and drowning in futile reverie and solitary excess. 
 
 From two rooms beyond, the sudden sound of a 
 raised voice attracted him. 
 
 "By . . . 
 
 390 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 The first suggestion for the story of which the above is the opening 
 was received by the author from Mr. Andrew Lang. It is mentioned in 
 Vailima Letters (p. 113 of this edition) under date January 3, 1892. 
 Writing of the subject again on March 25 of the same year (p. 133), Mr. 
 Stevenson speculates on the title to be chosen and the turn the plot is 
 to take; and later again (towards the end of May, pp. 150,151) an- 
 nounces that he has written the first "prologuial episode," that, namely, 
 which the reader has now before him. "There are only four charac- 
 ters," he observes: "Francis Blair of Balmile (Jacobite Lord Gladsmuir), 
 my hero ; the Master of Ballantrae ; Paradou, a wine-seller of Avignon ; 
 Marie-Madeleine, his wife. These last two I am now done with, and I 
 think they are successful, and I hope I have Balmile on his feet; and 
 the style seems to be found. It is a little charged and violent; sins on 
 the side of violence ; but I think will carry the tale. I think it is a 
 good idea so to introduce my hero, being made love to by an episodic 
 woman." If the reader will turn to the passage, he will find more about 
 the intended developments of the story, which was to hinge on the rescue 
 by the Prince of a young lady from a fire at an inn, and to bring back 
 upon the scene not only the Master of Ballantrae, but one of the author's 
 and his readers' favourite characters, Alan Breck. Mr. Lang has been 
 good enough to fiimish the following interesting notes as to its origin : 
 
 "The novel of The Young Chevalier" writes Mr. Lang, "of which 
 only the fragment here given exists, was based on a suggestion of my 
 own. But it is plain that Mr. Stevenson's purpose differed widely from 
 my crude idea. In reading the curious Tales of the Century (1847), by 
 ' John Sobieski Holberg Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart,' 1 had been 
 struck by a long essay on Prince Charies's mysterious incognito. Expelled 
 from France after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, His Royal Highness, in De- 
 cember, 1 748, sought refuge in the papal city of Avignon, whence, an- 
 
 39» 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 Tioyed by English remonstrances with the Vatican, he vanished in the last 
 days of February, 1 749. The Jacobite account of his secret adventures is 
 given in a little romance, purporting to be a 'Letter from Henry Goring,' 
 his equerry, brother of Sir Charles Goring. I had a transcript made from this 
 rather scarce old pamphlet, and sent it to Mr. Stevenson, in Samoa. Ac- 
 cording to the pamphlet (which is perfectly untrustworthy), a mysterious 
 stranger, probably meant for the Earl Marischal, came to Avignon. There 
 came, too, an equally mysterious Scottish exile. Charles eloped in com- 
 pany with Henry Goring (which is true), joined the stranger, travelled 
 to a place near Lyons, and thence to Strasbourg, which is probable. Here 
 he rescued from a fire a lovely girl, travelling alone, and disdained to profit 
 by her sudden passion for Me Comte d'Espoir,' his travelling-name. 
 Moving into Germany, he was attacked by assassins, headed by the 
 second mysterious stranger, a Scottish spy; he performs prodigies of 
 valour. He then visits foreign courts, Berlin being indicated, and wins 
 the heart of a lady, probably the Princess Radziwill, whom he is to marry 
 when his prospects improve. All or much of this is false. Charies really 
 visited Paris, by way of Dijon, and Mme. de Talmont ; thence he went 
 to Venice. But the stories about Berlin and the Polish marriage were 
 current at the time among bewildered diplomatists.! 
 
 "My idea was to make the narrator a young Scottish Jacobite at 
 Avignon. He was to be sent by Charies to seek an actual hidden treas- 
 ure—the fatal gold of the hoard buried at Loch Arkaig a few days after 
 CuUoden. He was to be a lover of Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, who 
 later played the part of Beatrix Esmond to the Prince. 
 
 " Mr. Stevenson liked something in the notion, to which he refers in 
 his Vailima Letters. He told me that Alan Breck and the Master of 
 Ballantrae were to appear in the tale. I sent him such books about Avignon 
 as I could collect, and he also made inquiries about Mandrin, the famous 
 French brigand. Shortly before his death I sent him transcripts of the 
 unpublished letters of his old friend, James More Macgregor, and of Pickle 
 the Spy, from the Pelham mss. in the British Museum. But these, 1 think, 
 arrived too late for his perusal. In Pickle he would have found some one 
 not very unlike his Ballantrae. The fragment, as it stands, looks as if the 
 Scottish assassin and the other mysterious stranger were not to appear, 
 or not so early as one had supposed. The beautiful woman of the inn 
 and her surly husband (Mandrin?) were inventions of his own. Other 
 
 1 The real facts, as far as known, are given in Pickle the Spy.—[X. L.] 
 
 392 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 projects superseded his interest in this tale, and deprived us of a fresh 
 view of Alan Breck. His dates, as indicated in the fragment, are not 
 exact ; and there is no reason to believe that Charles's house at Avignon 
 (that of the De Rochefort family) was dismantled and comfortless, as here 
 represented. 
 
 " Mr. Stevenson made, as was his habit, a list of chapter headings, 
 which I unluckily did not keep. One, I remember, was ' Ballantrae to 
 the Rescue,' of whom or of what did not appear. It is impossible to 
 guess how the story would have finally shaped itself in his fancy. One 
 naturally regrets what we have lost, however great the compensation in 
 the works which took the place of the sketch. Our Prince Charles of 
 romance must remain the Prince of IVaverley and the King of Red- 
 gauntlet. No other hand now can paint him in the adventurous and 
 mysterious years of 1 749-59. Often, since Mr. Stevenson's death, in 
 reading Jacobite mss. unknown to me or to any one when the story was 
 planned, I have thought, 'He could have done something with this,' or 
 ^This would have interested him.' Eheu! " 
 
 393 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
Nov published for the first tim$ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Part I 
 
 THE KILLING-TIME page 
 
 I Traquairs of Montroymont 399 
 
 II Francie 405 
 
 III The Hill-End of Drumlowe 420 
 
 Editorial Note 426 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 PART I: THE KILLING-TIME 
 
 TRAaUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 
 
 THE period of this tale is in the heat of the killing- 
 time ; the scene laid for the most part in solitary 
 hills and morasses, haunted only by the so-called Moun- 
 tain Wanderers, the dragoons that came in chase of 
 them, the women that wept on their dead bodies, and 
 the wild birds of the moorland that have cried there 
 since the beginning. It is a land of many rain-clouds ; 
 a land of much mute history, written there in prehis- 
 toric symbols. Strange green raths are to be seen 
 commonly in the country, above all by the kirkyards; 
 barrows of the dead, standing stones ; beside these, the 
 faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the Roman ; 
 and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living 
 and active— a complete Celtic nomenclature and a 
 scarce-mingled Celtic population. These rugged and 
 grey hills were once included in the boundaries of the 
 Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his apple- 
 
 399 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 tree and lamented Gwendolen ; here spoke with Kentu 
 gern; here fell into his enchanted trance. And the 
 legend of his slumber seems to body forth the story of 
 that Celtic race, deprived for so many centuries of their 
 authentic speech, surviving with their ancestral inheri- 
 tance of melancholy perversity and patient, unfortunate 
 courage. 
 
 The Traquairs of Montroymont (Mons Romanus, as 
 the erudite expound it) had long held their seat about 
 the head waters of the Dule and in the back parts of 
 the moorland parish of Balweary. For two hundred 
 years they had enjoyed in these upland quarters a cer- 
 tain decency (almost to be named distinction) of repute; 
 and the annals of their house, or what is remembered 
 of them, were obscure and bloody. Ninian Traquair 
 was " cruallie slochtered " by the Crozers at the kirk- 
 door of Balweary, anno 1482. Francis killed Simon 
 Ruthven of Drumshoreland, anno 1540; bought letters 
 of slayers at the widow and heir, and, by a barbarous 
 form of compounding, married (without tocher) 
 Simon's daughter Grizzel, which is the way the Tra- 
 quairs and Ruthvens came first to an intermarriage. 
 About the last Traquair and Ruthven marriage, it is the 
 business of this book, among many other things, to tell. 
 
 The Traquairs were always strong for the Covenant; 
 for the King also, but the Covenant first; and it began 
 to be ill days for Montroymont when the Bishops came 
 in and the dragoons at the heels of them. Ninian (then 
 laird) was an anxious husband of himself and the prop- 
 erty, as the times required, and it may be said of him 
 that he lost both. He was heavily suspected of the 
 Pentland Hills rebellion. When it came the length of 
 
 400 
 
TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 
 
 Bothwell Brig, he stood his trial before the Secret 
 Council, and was convicted of talking to some insur- 
 gents by the wayside, the subject of the conversation 
 not very clearly appearing, and of the reset and main- 
 tenance of one Gale, a gardener-man, who was seen 
 before Bothwell with a musket, and afterwards, for a 
 continuance of months, delved the garden at Montroy- 
 mont. Matters went very ill with Ninian at the Coun- 
 cil ; some of the lords were clear for treason ; and even 
 the boot was talked of. But he was spared that tor- 
 ture; and at last, having pretty good friendship among 
 great men, he came off with a fine of seven thousand 
 marks, that caused the estate to groan. In this case, 
 as in so many others, it was the wife that made the 
 trouble. She was a great keeper of conventicles; 
 would ride ten miles to one, and when she was fined, 
 rejoiced greatly to suffer for the Kirk; but it was rather 
 her husband that suffered. She had their only son, 
 Francis, baptised privately by the hands of Mr. Kidd; 
 there was that much the more to pay for! She could 
 neither be driven nor wiled into the parish kirk ; as for 
 taking the sacrament at the hands of any Episcopalian 
 curate, and tenfold more at those of Curate Haddo, 
 there was nothing further from her purposes; and 
 Montroymont had to put his hand in his pocket month 
 by month and year by year. Once, indeed, the little 
 lady was cast in prison, and the laird, worthy, heavy, 
 uninterested man, had to ride up and take her place; 
 from which he was not discharged under nine months 
 and a sharp fine. It scarce seemed she had any grati- 
 tude to him ; she came out of jail herself, and plunged 
 immediately deeper in conventicles, resetting recusants, 
 
 401 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 and all her old, expensive folly, only with greater vigour 
 and openness, because Montroymont was safe in the 
 Tolbooth and she had no witness to consider. When 
 he was liberated and came back, with his fingers singed, 
 in December, 1680, and late in the black night, my lady 
 was from home. He came into the house at his alight- 
 ing, with a riding-rod yet in his hand ; and, on the ser- 
 vant-maid telling him, caught her by the scruff of the 
 neck, beat her violently, flung her down in the passage- 
 way, and went up-stairs to his bed fasting and with- 
 out a light. It was three in the morning when my lady 
 returned from that conventicle, and, hearing of the 
 assault (because the maid had sat up for her, weeping), 
 went to their common chamber with a lantern in hand 
 and stamping with her shoes so as to wake the dead; 
 it was supposed, by those that heard her, from a de- 
 sign to have it out with the goodman at once. The 
 house-servants gathered on the stair, because it was a 
 main interest with them to know which of these two 
 was the better horse; and for the space of two hours 
 they were heard to go at the matter, hammer and tongs. 
 Montroymont alleged he was at the end of his possi- 
 bilities; it was no longer within his power to pay the 
 annual rents; she had served him basely by keeping 
 conventicles while he lay in prison for her sake; his 
 friends were weary, and there was nothing else before 
 him but the entire loss of the family lands, and to begin 
 life again by the wayside as a common beggar. She 
 took him up very sharp and high : called upon him, if 
 he were a Christian ? and which he most considered, 
 the loss of a few dirty, miry glebes, or of his soul ? 
 Presently he was heard to weep, and my lady's voice 
 
 402 
 
TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 
 
 to go on continually like a running burn, only the words 
 indistinguishable; whereupon it was supposed a victory 
 for her ladyship, and the domestics took themselves to 
 bed. The next day Traquair appeared like a man who 
 had gone under the harrows ; and his lady wife thence- 
 forward continued in her old course without the least 
 deflection. 
 
 Thenceforward Ninian went on his way without 
 complaint, and suffered his wife to go on hers without 
 remonstrance. He still minded his estate, of which, it 
 might be said, he took daily a fresh farewell, and 
 counted it already lost; looking ruefully on the acres 
 and the graves of his fathers, on the moorlands where 
 the wild-fowl consorted, the low, gurgling pool of the 
 trout, and the high, windy place of the calling curlews 
 —things that were yet his for the day and would be 
 another's to-morrow; coming back again, and sitting 
 ciphering till the dusk at his approaching ruin, which 
 no device of arithmetic could postpone beyond a year 
 or two. He was essentially the simple ancient man, 
 the farmer and landholder j he would have been content 
 to watch the seasons come and go, and his cattle in- 
 crease, until the limit of age; he would have been con- 
 tent at any time to die, if he could have left the estates 
 undiminished to an heir male of his ancestors, that duty 
 standing first in his instinctive calendar. And now he 
 saw everywhere the image of the new proprietor come 
 to meet him, and go sowing and reaping, or fowling 
 for his pleasure on the red moors, or eating the very 
 gooseberries in the Place garden ; and saw always, on 
 the other hand, the figure of Francis go forth, a beggar, 
 into the broad world. 
 
 403 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 It was in vain the poor gentleman sought to moder- 
 ate ; took every test and took advantage of every indul- 
 gence; went and drank with the dragoons in Balweary ; 
 attended the communion and came regularly to the 
 church to Curate Haddo, with his son beside him. The 
 mad, raging, Presbyterian zealot of a wife at home 
 made all of no avail; and indeed the house must have 
 fallen years before if it had not been for the secret in- 
 dulgence of the curate, who had a great sympathy with 
 the laird, and winked hard at the doings in Montroy- 
 mont. This curate was a man very ill reputed in the 
 country-side, and indeed in all Scotland. " Infamous 
 Haddo " is Shield's expression. But Patrick Walker is 
 more copious. " Curate Hall Haddo," says he, sub voce 
 Peden, " or Hell Haddo as he was more justly to be 
 called, a pokeful of old condemned errors and the filthy 
 lusts of the flesh, a published whoremonger, a common 
 gross drunkard, continually and godlessly scraping and 
 skirling on a fiddle, continually breathing flames against 
 the remnant of Israel. But the Lord put an end to his 
 piping, and all these offences were composed into one 
 bloody grave." No doubt this was written to excuse 
 his slaughter; and I have never heard it claimed for 
 Walker that he was either a just witness or an indul- 
 gent judge. At least, in a merely human character, 
 Haddo comes off not wholly amiss in the matter of 
 these Traquairs : not that he showed any graces of the 
 Christian, but had a sort of pagan decency, which might 
 almost tempt one to be concerned about his sudden, 
 violent, and unprepared fate. 
 
 404 
 
II 
 
 FRANCIE 
 
 Francie was eleven years old, shy, secret, and rather 
 childish of his age, though not backward in schooling, 
 which had been pushed on far by a private governor, 
 one M'Brair, a forfeited minister harboured in that 
 capacity at Montroymont. The boy, already much 
 employed in secret by his mother, was the most apt 
 hand conceivable to run upon a message, to carry food 
 to lurking fugitives, or to stand sentry on the sky-line 
 above a conventicle. It seemed no place on the moor- 
 lands was so naked but what he would find cover 
 there; and as he knew every hag, boulder, and heather- 
 bush in a circuit of seven miles about Montroymont, 
 there was scarce any spot but what he could leave or 
 approach it unseen. This dexterity had won him a 
 reputation in that part of the country; and among the 
 many children employed in these dangerous affairs, he 
 passed under the by-name of Heathercat. 
 
 How much his father knew of this employment might 
 be doubted. He took much forethought for the boy's 
 future, seeing he was like to be left so poorly, and 
 would sometimes assist at his lessons, sighing heavily, 
 yawning deep, and now and again patting Francie on 
 the shoulder if he seemed to be doing ill, by way of a 
 
 405 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 private, kind encouragement. But a great part of the 
 day was passed in aimless wanderings with his eyes 
 sealed, or in his cabinet sitting bemused over the par- 
 ticulars of the coming bankruptcy; and the boy would 
 be absent a dozen times for once that his father would 
 observe it. 
 
 On the 2nd of July, 1682, the boy had an errand from 
 his mother, which must be kept private from all, the 
 father included in the first of them. Crossing the braes, 
 he hears the clatter of a horse's shoes, and claps down 
 incontinent in a hag by the wayside. And presently 
 he spied his father come riding from one direction, and 
 Curate Haddo walking from another; and Montroymont 
 leaning down from the saddle, and Haddo getting on 
 his toes (for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, 
 more like a dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a 
 halt within two fathoms of the child. 
 
 "Montroymont," the curate said, "the de'il 's in 't 
 but I '11 have to denunciate your leddy again." 
 
 " De'il 's in 't indeed! " says the laird. 
 
 "Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk ? " 
 pursues Haddo; " or to a communion at the least of it. 
 For the conventicles, let be ! and the same for yon solemn 
 fule, M'Brair: I can blink at them. But she 's got to 
 come to the kirk, Montroymont." 
 
 "Dinna speak of it," says the laird. "I can do no- 
 thing with her." 
 
 " Could n't ye try the stick to her ? It works wonders 
 whiles," suggested Haddo. "No.? I 'm wae to hear 
 it. And I suppose ye ken where you 're going.? " 
 
 " Fine ! " said Montroymont. " Fine do I ken where : 
 Bankrup'cy and the Bass Rock! " 
 
 406 
 
FRANCE 
 
 * Praise to my bones that I never married! " cried the 
 curate. " Well, it 's a grievous thing to me to see an 
 auld house dung down that was here before Flodden 
 Field. But naebody can say it was with my wish." 
 
 "No more they can, Haddo! " says the laird. "A 
 good friend ye 've been to me, first and last. I can 
 give you that character with a clear conscience." 
 
 Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont rode 
 briskly down into the Dule Valley. But of the curate 
 Francie was not to be quit so easily. He went on with 
 his little, brisk steps to the corner of a dyke, and stopped 
 and whistled and waved upon a lassie that was herding 
 cattle there. This Janet M'Clour was a big lass, being 
 taller than the curate; and what made her look the 
 more so, she was kilted very high. It seemed for a 
 while she would not come, and Francie heard her call- 
 ing Haddo a * daft auld fule," and saw her running and 
 dodging him among the whins and hags till he was 
 fairly blown. But at the last he gets a bottle from his 
 plaid-neuk and holds it up to her; whereupon she came 
 at once into a composition, and the pair sat, drinking of 
 the bottle, and dafFmg and laughing together, on a 
 mound of heather. The boy had scarce heard of these 
 vanities, or he might have been minded of a nymph 
 and satyr, if anybody could have taken long-leggit Janet 
 for a nymph. But they seemed to be huge friends, he 
 thought; and was the more surprised, when the curate 
 had taken his leave, to see the lassie fling stones after 
 him with screeches of laughter, and Haddo turn about 
 and caper, and shake his staff at her, and laugh louder 
 than herself. A wonderful merry pair, they seemed; 
 and when Francie crawled out of the hag, he had a 
 
 407 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 great deal to consider in his mind. It was possible they 
 were all fallen in error about Mr. Haddo, he reflected, 
 —having seen him so tender with Montroymont, and 
 so kind and playful with the lass Janet; and he had a 
 temptation to go out of his road and question her her- 
 self upon the matter. But he had a strong spirit of 
 duty on him ; and plodded on instead over the braes 
 till he came near the House of Cairngorm. There, in 
 a hollow place by the burn-side that was shaded by some 
 birks, he was aware of a barefoot boy, perhaps a matter 
 of three years older than himself. The two approached 
 with the precautions of a pair of strange dogs, looking 
 at each other queerly. 
 
 "It 's ill weather on the hills," said the stranger, 
 giving the watchword. 
 
 "For a season," said Francie, "but the Lord will 
 appear." 
 
 " Richt," said the barefoot boy. " Wha* 're ye frae ? " 
 
 "The Leddy Montroymont," says Francie. 
 
 " Ha'e then ! " says the stranger, and handed him a 
 folded paper, and they stood and looked at each other 
 again. " It 's unco het," said the boy. 
 
 "Dooms het," says Francie. 
 
 " What do they ca' ye ? " says the other. 
 
 "Francie," says he. "I 'm young Montroymont. 
 They ca' me Heathercat." 
 
 "I *m Jock Crozer," said the boy. And there was 
 another pause, while each rolled a stone under his foot. 
 
 "Cast your jaiket and I '11 fecht ye for a bawbee," 
 cried the elder boy, with sudden violence, and dra- 
 matically throwing back his jacket. 
 
 "Na, I have nae time the now," said Francie, with a 
 408 
 
FRANCIE 
 
 sharp thrill of alarm, because Crozer was much the 
 heavier boy. 
 
 "Ye 're feard. Heathercat indeed!" said Crozer, 
 for among this infantile army of spies and messengers 
 the fame of Crozer had gone forth and was resented by 
 his rivals. And with that they separated. 
 
 On his way home Francie was a good deal occupied 
 with the recollection of this untoward incident. The 
 challenge had been fairly offered and basely refused: 
 the tale would be carried all over the country, and the 
 lustre of the name of Heathercat be dimmed. But the 
 scene between Curate Haddo and Janet M'Clour had 
 also given him much to think of; and he was still 
 puzzling over the case of the curate, and why such ill 
 words were said of him, and why, if he were so merry- 
 spirited, he should yet preach so dry, when, coming 
 over a know, whom should he see but Janet, sitting 
 with her back to him, minding her cattle! He was 
 always a great child for secret, stealthy ways, having 
 been employed by his mother on errands when the same 
 was necessary; and he came behind the lass without 
 her hearing. 
 
 "Jennet," says he. 
 
 " Keep me ! " cries Janet, springing up. " O, it 's you, 
 Maister Francie! Save us, what a fricht ye gied me!" 
 
 "Ay, it 's me," said Francie. "I Ve been thinking. 
 Jennet; I saw you and the curate awhile back—" 
 
 "Brat! " cried Janet, and coloured up crimson; and 
 the one moment made as if she would have stricken 
 him with a ragged stick she had to chase her bestial 
 with, and the next was begging and praying that he 
 would mention it to none. It was " naebody's business, 
 
 409 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 whatever," she said; " it would just start a dash in the 
 country " ; and there would be nothing left for her but 
 to drown herself in Dule Water. 
 
 " Why ? " says Francie. 
 
 The girl looked at him and grew scarlet again. 
 
 " And it isna that, anyway," continued Francie. " It 
 was just that he seemed so good to ye— like our Father 
 in Heaven, I thought; and I thought that mebbe, per- 
 haps, we had all been wrong about him from the first. 
 But I *ll have to tell Mr. M'Brair; I 'm under a kind of 
 a bargain to him to tell him all." 
 
 " Tell it to the divil if ye like for me! " cried the lass. 
 "I 've naething to be ashamed of. Tell M'Brair to 
 mind his ain affairs," she cried again; "they '11 be hot 
 eneugh for him, if Haddie likes! " And so strode off, 
 shoving her beasts before her, and ever and again look- 
 ing back and crying angry words to the boy, where he 
 stood mystified. 
 
 By the time he had got home his mind was made up 
 that he would say nothing to his mother. My Lady 
 Montroymont was in the keeping-room, reading a 
 godly book; she was a wonderful frail little wife to 
 make so much noise in the world and be able to steer 
 about that patient sheep her husband; her eyes were 
 like sloes, the fingers of her hands were like tobacco- 
 pipe shanks, her mouth shut tight like a trap; and even 
 when she was the most serious, and still more when 
 she was angry, there hung about her face the terrifying 
 semblance of a smile. 
 
 " Have ye gotten the billet, Francie ? " said she; and 
 when he had handed it over, and she had read and 
 burned it, " Did you see anybody ? " she asked- 
 
 410 
 
FRANCE 
 
 " I saw the laird, " said Francie. 
 
 " He dinna see you, though ? " asked his mother. 
 
 "De'il a fear," from Francie. 
 
 " Francie ! " she cried. " What 's that I hear ? an aith ? 
 The Lord forgive me, have I broughten forth a brand 
 for the burning, a fagot for hell-fire ? " 
 
 " I 'm very sorry, ma'am," said Francie. '*I humbly 
 beg the Lord's pardon, and yours, for my wickedness." 
 
 "H'm," grunted the lady. "Did ye see nobody 
 else ? " 
 
 " No, ma*am," said Francie, with the face of an angel, 
 "except Jock Crozer, that gied me the billet." 
 
 "Jock Crozer! " cried the lady. " I 'II Crozer them! 
 Crozers indeed ! What next ? Are we to repose the 
 lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers ? The whole 
 clan of them wants hanging, and if I had my way of it, 
 they wouldna want it long. Are you aware, sir, that 
 these Crozers killed your forebear at the kirk-door ? " 
 
 " You see, he was bigger 'n me," said Francie. 
 
 "Jock Crozer," continued the lady. "That *1I be 
 Clement's son, the biggest thief and reiver in the coun- 
 try-side. To trust a note to him ! But I 'II give the 
 benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we 
 two forgather. Let her look to herself! I have no 
 patience with half-hearted carlines, that complies on 
 the Lord's-day morning with the kirk, and comes tai- 
 gling the same night to the conventicle. The one or the 
 other! is what I say: Hell or Heaven— Haddie's abomi- 
 nations or the pure word of God dreeping from the lips 
 of Mr. Arnot, 
 
 " * Like honey from the honeycomb 
 
 That dreepeth, sweeter far.' " 
 
 411 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon 
 two congenial subjects: the deficiencies of the Lady 
 Whitecross, and the turpitudes of the whole Crozer 
 race— which, indeed, had never been conspicuous for 
 respectability. She pursued the pair of them for twenty 
 minutes on the clock with wonderful animation and 
 detail, something of the pulpit manner, and the spirit 
 of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she ex- 
 claimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread 
 with Christian folk. Of all the sins of this day there is 
 not one so God-defying, so Christ-humiliating, as dam- 
 nable compliance " ; the boy standing before her mean- 
 while, and brokenly pursuing other thoughts, mainly 
 of Haddo and Janet, and Jock Crozer stripping off his 
 jacket. And yet, with all his distraction, it might be 
 argued that he heard too much ; his father and himself 
 being "compilers "—that is to say, attending the church 
 of the parish as the law required. 
 
 Presently, the lady's passion beginning to decline, or 
 her flux of ill words to be exhausted, she dismissed her 
 audience. Francie bowed low, left the room, closed 
 the door behind him; and then turned him about in 
 the passageway, and with a low voice, but a prodigious 
 deal of sentiment, repeated the name of the evil one 
 twenty times over, to the end of which, for the greater 
 efficacy, he tacked on *' damnable " and " hellish." Fas 
 est ah hoste ^o^m— disrespect is made more pungent by 
 quotation; and there is no doubt but he felt relieved, 
 and went up-stairs into his tutor's chamber with a quiet 
 mind. M'Brair sat by the cheek of the peat-fire and 
 shivered, for he had a quartan ague, and this was his 
 day. The great nightcap and plaid, the dark unshaven 
 
 412 
 
FRANCIE 
 
 cheeks of the man, and the white, thin hands that held 
 the plaid about his chittering body, made a sorrowful 
 picture. But Francie knew and loved him; came 
 straight in, nestled close to the refugee, and told his 
 story. M'Brair had been at the College with Haddo; 
 the Presbytery had licensed both on the same day ; and 
 at this tale, told with so much innocency by the boy, 
 the heart of the tutor was commoved. 
 
 " Woe upon him! Woe upon that man! " he cried. 
 '' O the unfaithful shepherd! O the hireling and apos- 
 tate minister! Make my matters hot for me ? quo' she! 
 the shameless limmer! And true it is that he could 
 repose me in that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate 
 Tolbooth, from which your mother drew me out— the 
 Lord reward her for it!— or to that cold, unbieldy, 
 marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate 
 kist, would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in 
 my Master's service. I have a duty here: a duty to 
 my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His strength, I 
 will perform it." 
 
 Then he straightly discharged Francie to repeat the 
 tale, and bade him in the future to avert his very eyes 
 from the doings of the curate. " You must go to his 
 place of idolatry; look upon him there! " says he, "but 
 nowhere else. Avert your eyes, close your ears, pass 
 him by like a three days' corp'. He is like that damnable 
 monster Basiliscus, which defiles— yea, poisons!— by 
 the sight." All which was hardly claratory to the boy's 
 mind. 
 
 Presently Montroymont came home, and called up 
 the stairs to Francie. Traquair was a good shot and 
 swordsman ; and it was his pleasure to walk with his 
 
 4>3 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 son over the braes of the moor-fowl, or to teach him 
 arms in the back court, when they made a mighty 
 comely pair, the child being so lean and light and 
 active, and the laird himself a man of a manly, pretty 
 stature, his hair (the periwig being laid aside) showing 
 already white with many anxieties, and his face of an 
 even, flaccid red. But this day Francie's heart was not 
 in the fencing. 
 
 "Sir," says he, suddenly lowering his point, "will 
 ye tell me a thing if I was to ask it ? " 
 
 " Ask away," says the father. 
 
 "Well, it 's this," said Francie: "Why do you and 
 me comply if it 's so wicked ? " 
 
 " Ay, ye have the cant of it too! " cries Montroymont. 
 '' But I '11 tell ye for all that. It *s to try and see if we 
 can keep the rigging on this house, Francie. If she 
 had her way, we would be beggar-folk, and hold our 
 hands out by the wayside. When ye hear her— when 
 ye hear folk," he corrected himself briskly, "call me a 
 coward, and one that betrayed the Lord, and I kenna 
 what else, just mind it was to keep a bed to ye to sleep 
 in and a bite for ye to eat.— On guard! " he cried, and 
 the lesson proceeded again till they were called to supper 
 
 "There 's another thing yet," said Francie, stopping 
 his father. " There 's another thing that I am not sure 
 I am very caring for. She— she sends me errands." 
 
 "Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty," said 
 Traquair. 
 
 "Ay, but wait till I tell ye," says the boy. "If I 
 was to see you I was to hide." 
 
 Montroymont sighed. " Well, and that *s good of 
 her too," said he. ** The less that I ken of thir doings 
 
 414 
 
FRANCIE 
 
 the better for me ; and the best thing you can do is just 
 to obey her, and see and be a good son to her, the same 
 as ye are to me, Francie." 
 
 At the tenderness of this expression the heart of 
 Francie swelled within his bosom, and his remorse 
 was poured out. "Faither!" he cried, "I said 'de'il* 
 to-day; many 's the time I said it, and * damnable* too, 
 and ' hellitsh.' I ken they 're all right; they 're beeblical. 
 But I didna say them beeblically ; I said them for sweir- 
 words— that 's the truth of it." 
 
 " Hout, ye silly bairn ! " said the father; " dinna do it 
 nae mair, and come in by to your supper.*' And he 
 took the boy, and drew him close to him a moment, 
 as they went through the door, with something very 
 fond and secret, like a caress between a pair of lovers. 
 
 The next day M'Brair was abroad in the afternoon, 
 and had a long advising with Janet on the braes where 
 she herded cattle. What passed was never wholly 
 known; but the lass wept bitterly, and fell on her knees 
 to him among the whins. The same night, as soon as 
 it was dark, he took the road again for Balweary. In 
 the Kirkton, where the dragoons quartered, he saw 
 many lights, and heard the noise of a ranting song and 
 people laughing grossly, which was highly offensive 
 to his mind. He gave it the wider berth, keeping 
 among the fields ; and came down at last by the water- 
 side, where the manse stands solitary between the river 
 and the road. He tapped at the back door, and the old 
 woman called upon him to come in, and guided him 
 through the house to the study, as they still called it, 
 though there was little enough study there in Haddo's 
 days, and more song-books than theology. 
 
 415 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 " Here *s yin to speak wi' ye, Mr. Haddie! " cries the 
 old wife. 
 
 And M'Brair, opening the door and entering, found 
 the little, round, red man seated in one chair and his 
 feet upon another. A clear fire and a tallow dip lighted 
 him barely. He was taking tobacco in a pipe, and 
 smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle and glass, and 
 his fiddle and bow, were beside him on the table. 
 
 " Hech, Patey M'Brair, is this you ? " said he, a trifle 
 tipsily. " Step in by, man, and have a drop brandy : 
 for the stomach's sake! Even the de'il can quote 
 Scripture— eh, Patey ? " 
 
 "I will neither eat nor drink with you,** replied 
 M'Brair. "I am come upon my Master's errand: woe 
 be upon me if I should anyways mince the same. Hall 
 Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you en- 
 cumber." 
 
 " Muckle obleeged ! " says Haddo, winking. 
 
 " You and me have been to kirk and market together," 
 pursued M'Brair: " we have had blessed seasons in the 
 kirk, we have sat in the same teaching-rooms and read 
 in the same book; and I know you still retain for me 
 some carnal kindness. It would be my shame if I de- 
 nied it ; I live here at your mercy and by your favour, 
 and glory to acknowledge it. You have pity on my 
 wretched body, which is but grass, and must soon be 
 trodden under; but O, Haddo! how much greater is 
 the yearning with which I yearn after and pity your 
 immortal soul! Come now, let us reason together! I 
 drop all points of controversy, weighty though these 
 be; I take your defaced and damnified kirk on your 
 own terms ; and I ask you. Are you a worthy minister ? 
 
 416 
 
FRANCIE 
 
 The communion season approaches ; how can you pro- 
 nounce thir solemn words, ' The elders will now bring 
 forrit the elements,' and not quail ? A parishioner may 
 be summoned to-night ; you may have to rise from your 
 miserable orgies; and I ask you, Haddo, what does 
 your conscience tell you ? Are you fit ? Are you fit to 
 smooth the pillow of a parting Christian ? And if the 
 summons should be for yourself, how then ? " 
 
 Haddo was startled out of all composure and the 
 better part of his temper. " What 's this of it ? " he 
 cried. "I 'm no waur than my neebours. I never 
 set up to be speeritual; I never did. I 'm a plain, 
 canty creature; godliness is cheerfulness, says I; give 
 me my fiddle and a dram, and I wouldna hairm a 
 flee." 
 
 "And I repeat my question," said M'Brair: "Are you 
 fit— fit for this great charge ? Fit to carry and save 
 souls ? " 
 
 " Fit ? Blethers ! As fit 's yoursel', " cried Haddo. 
 
 "Are you so great a self-deceiver?" said M'Brair. 
 " Wretched man, trampler upon God's covenants, 
 crucifier of your Lord afresh! 1 will ding you to the 
 earth with one word: How about the young woman. 
 Janet M'Clour?" 
 
 " Well, what about her ? what do I ken ? " cries 
 Haddo. " M'Brair, ye daft auld wife, I tell ye as true 's 
 truth, I never meddled her. It was just daffing, I tell 
 ye: daifing, and nae mair: a piece of fun, like! I 'm 
 no denying but what I 'm fond of fun, sma' blame to 
 me! But for onything sarious— hout, man, it might 
 come to a deposeetion! I '11 sweir it to ye. Where 's 
 a Bible, till you hear me sweir ? " 
 
 ^17 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 "There is nae Bible in your study," said M^Brair, 
 severely. 
 
 And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was con- 
 strained to accept the fact. 
 
 " Weel, and suppose there isna ? " he cried, stamping. 
 " What mair can ye say of us, but just that I 'm fond 
 of my joke, and so 's she ? I declare to God, by what 
 I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary— if she would just 
 keep clear of the dragoons. But me! na, de'il haet o' 
 me!" 
 
 "She is penitent at least," says M'Brair. 
 
 " Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my face 
 that she accused me ? " cried the curate. 
 
 "I canna just say that," replied M'Brair. "But 1 
 rebuked her in the name of God, and she repented 
 before me on her bended knees." 
 
 " Weel, I daur say she 's been ower far wi' the dra- 
 goons," said Haddo. "I never denied that. I ken 
 naething by it." 
 
 "Man, you but show your nakedness the more 
 plainly," said M'Brair. " Poor, blind, besotted creature 
 —and I see you stoitering on the brink of dissolution : 
 your light out, and your hours numbered. Awake, 
 man ! " he shouted with a formidable voice, " awake, 
 or it be ower late." 
 
 " Be damned if I stand this ! " exclaimed Haddo, 
 casting his tobacco-pipe violently on the table, where 
 it was smashed in pieces. " Out of my house with ye, 
 or I '11 call for the dragoons." 
 
 "The speerit of the Lord is upon me," said M'Brair, 
 with solemn ecstasy. " I sist you to compear before 
 
 418 
 
FRANCIE 
 
 the Great White Throne, and I warn you the summons 
 shall be bloody and sudden." 
 
 And at this, with more agility than could have been 
 expected, he got clear of the room and slammed the 
 door behind him in the face of the pursuing curate. 
 The next Lord's day the curate was ill, and the kirk 
 closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. M'Brair abode un- 
 molested in the house of Montroymont 
 
 419 
 
HI 
 
 THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 
 
 This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked 
 upon the west a moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. 
 These presently drained into a burn that made off, with 
 little noise and no celerity of pace, about the corner of 
 the hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare 
 heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the pres- 
 ence of the standing stones for which the place was 
 famous. They were many in that part, shapeless, 
 white with lichen— you would have said with age; and 
 had made their abode there for untold centuries, since 
 first the heathens shouted for their installation. The 
 ancients had hallowed them to some ill religion, and 
 their neighbourhood had long been avoided by the pru- 
 dent before the fall of day; but of late, on the up- 
 springing of new requirements, these lonely stones on 
 the moor had again become a place of assembly. A 
 watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the 
 northern and eastern approaches; and such was the 
 disposition of the ground, that by certain cunningly 
 posted sentries the west also could be made secure 
 against surprise: there was no place in the country 
 where a conventicle could meet with more quiet of 
 mind or a more certain retreat open, in the case of 
 
 420 
 
THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 
 
 interference from the dragoons. The minister spoke 
 from a know close to the edge of the Ring, and poured 
 out the words God gave him on the very threshold of 
 the devils of yore. When they pitched a tent (which 
 was often in wet weather, upon a communion occa- 
 sion) it was rigged over the huge isolated pillar that 
 has the name of Anes-Errand, none knew why. And 
 the congregation sat partly clustered on the slope below, 
 and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on the 
 turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was 
 well qualified to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had 
 there been any wanted. But these congregations as- 
 sembled under conditions at once so formidable and 
 romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. They 
 were the last of the faithful; God, who had averted His 
 face from all other countries of the world, still leaned 
 from Heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the 
 doings of His moorland remnant; Christ was by them 
 with His eternal wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy 
 Ghost (never perfectly realised nor firmly adopted by 
 Protestant imaginations) was dimly supposed to be in 
 the heart of each and on the lips of the minister. And 
 over against them was the army of the hierarchies, from 
 the men Charles and James Stuart, on to King Lewie 
 and the Emperor; and the scarlet Pope, and the muckle 
 black devil himself, peering out the red mouth of hell 
 in an ecstasy of hate and hope. " One pull more! " he 
 seemed to cry ; " one pull more, and it 's done. There 's 
 only Clydesdale and the Stewartry, and the three Bailie- 
 ries of Ayr, left for God." And with such an august 
 assistance of powers and principalities looking on 
 at the last conflict of good and evil, it was scarce pos- 
 
 421 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 sible to Spare a thought to those old, infirm, debile, 
 ab agendo devils whose holy place they were now 
 violating. 
 
 There might have been three hundred to four hun- 
 dred present. At least there were three hundred horse 
 tethered for the most part in the Ring; though some of 
 the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd stood with 
 their bridles in their hand, ready to mount at the first 
 signal. The circle of faces was strangely characteristic ; 
 long, serious, strongly marked, the tackle standing out 
 in the lean brown cheeks, the mouth set and the eyes 
 shining with a fierce enthusiasm; the shepherd, the 
 labouring man, and the rarer laird, stood there in their 
 broad blue bonnets or laced hats,- and presenting an 
 essential identity of type. From time to time a long- 
 drawn groan of adhesion rose in this audience, and was 
 propagated like a wave to the outskirts, and died away 
 among the keepers of the horses. It had a name; it 
 was called "a holy groan." 
 
 A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist went 
 out before it and whelmed the scene ; the wind stormed 
 with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister's 
 voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger, and 
 turned the congregation for a moment into a mere 
 pother of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses ; and 
 the rain followed and was dashed straight into their 
 faces. Men and women panted aloud in the shock of 
 that violent shower-bath; the teeth were bared along 
 all the line in an involuntary grimace; plaids, mantles, 
 and riding-coats were proved vain, and the worshippers 
 felt the water stream on their naked flesh. The minis- 
 ter, reinforcing his great and shrill voice, continued to 
 
 422 
 
THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 
 
 contend against and triumph over the rising of the 
 squall and the dashing of the rain. 
 
 ** In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a 
 crawing cock," he said; "and fifty mile and not get a 
 light to your pipe; and an hundred mile and not see a 
 smoking house. For there '11 be naething in all Scot- 
 land but deid men's banes and blackness, and the living 
 anger of the Lord. O, where to find a bield— O sirs, 
 where to find a bield from the wind of the Lord's anger ? 
 Do ye call tbts a wind ? Be thankit! Sirs, this is but a 
 temporary dispensation ; this is but a puff of wind, this 
 is but a spit of rain and by with it. Already there *s a 
 blue bow in the west, and the sun will take the crown 
 of the causeway again, and your things '11 be dried 
 upon ye, and your flesh will be warm upon your bones. 
 But O, sirs, sirs! for the day of the Lord's anger! " 
 
 His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocu- 
 tion, and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon. 
 Such as it was, it was the gift of all hill-preachers, to a 
 singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images 
 scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and 
 the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling- 
 piece, a spade, a pipe, a dunghill, a crowing cock, the 
 shining and the withdrawal of the sun. An occasional 
 pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big 
 biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a 
 poetry apart ; bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent 
 of the soil. 
 
 A little before the coming of the squall there was a 
 different scene enacting at the outposts. For the most 
 part the sentinels were faithful to their important duty; 
 the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe 
 
 423 
 
HEATHERCAT 
 
 meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular 
 day had been somewhat lax from the beginning, and 
 grew laxer during the inordinate length of the discourse. 
 Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole, looking 
 abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was 
 across the course of the burn, then over a piece of plain 
 moorland, to a gap between two hills; nothing moved 
 but grouse, and some cattle who slowly traversed his 
 field of view, heading northward : he heard the psalms, 
 and sang words of his own to the savage and melan- 
 choly music; for he had his own design in hand, and 
 terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately, 
 like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was 
 uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied 
 through all its length with this impromptu strain: 
 
 " And I will ding Jock Crozer down 
 No later than the day." 
 
 Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in 
 wafts, at the wind's will, as by the opening and shut- 
 ting of a door; wild spasms of screaming, as of some 
 undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate 
 passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and Francie 
 heard them with a critical ear. "Ay," he thought at 
 last, " he '11 do; he has the bit in his mou' fairly." 
 
 He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy, 
 Jock Crozer, had been established at a very critical part 
 of the line of outposts; namely, where the burn issues 
 by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of high moors. 
 If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was 
 this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end itself, 
 it might be called the key to the position ; and it was 
 
 424 
 
THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 
 
 where the cover was bad, and in which it was most 
 natural to place a child. It should have been Heather- 
 cat's ; why had it been given to Crozer ? An exquisite 
 fear of what should be the answer passed through his 
 marrow every time he faced the question. Was it 
 possible that Crozer could have boasted ? that there were 
 rumours abroad to his— Heathercat's— discredit? that 
 his honour was publicly sullied ? All the world went 
 dark about him at the thought; he sank without a strug- 
 gle into the midnight pool of despair; and every time he 
 so sank, he brought back with him— not drowned hero- 
 ism indeed, but half-drowned courage by the locks. 
 His heart beat very slowly as he deserted his station, and 
 began to crawl towards that of Crozer. Something 
 pulled him back, and it was not the sense of duty, but 
 a remembrance of Crozer's build and hateful readiness 
 of fist. Duty, as he conceived it, pointed him forward 
 on the rueful path that he was travelling. Duty bade 
 him redeem his name if he were able, at the risk of 
 broken bones; and his bones and every tooth in his 
 head ached by anticipation. An awful subsidiary fear 
 whispered him that if he were hurt, he should disgrace 
 himself by weeping. He consoled himself, boy-like, 
 with the consideration that he was not yet committed ; 
 he could easily steal over unseen to Crozer's post, and 
 he had a continuous private idea that he would very 
 probably steal back again. His course took him so 
 near the minister that he could hear some of his words: 
 " What news, minister, of Claver'se ? He 's going 
 round like a roaring, rampaging lion . . . 
 
 425 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 The story, which opens with these scenes of covenanting life and char- 
 acter in Scotland, was intended to shift presently across the Atlantic, first 
 to the Carolina plantations, and next to the ill-fated Scotch settlement in 
 Darien. Practically all that we know of it is contained in one or two 
 passages of letters from the author to Mr. Charles Baxter and Mr. S. R. 
 Crockett. To Mr. Baxter he writes as follows : 
 
 "6 Deer., 1893. 
 
 "'Oct; 25, 1685, at Privy Council, George Murray, Lieutenant of the 
 King's Guard, and others, did, on the 21 of September last, obtain a 
 clandestine order of Privy Council to apprehend the person of Janet Pringle, 
 daughter to the late Clifton, and she having retired out of the way upon 
 information, he got an order against Andrew Pringle, her uncle, to produce 
 her. . . . But she having married Andrew Pringle, her uncle's son (to 
 disappoint all their designs of selling her), a boy of 13 years old'— but 
 my boy is 1 4, so I extract no further (Fountainhall, i. 320). May 6, 1 685, 
 Wappus Pringle of Clifton was still alive after all,i and in prison for debt, 
 and transacts with Lieutenant Murray, giving security for 7000 marks 
 (i. 320). 
 
 " My dear Charles, the above is my story, and I wonder if any light 
 can be thrown on it. I prefer the girl's father dead ; and the question is how 
 in that case could Lieutenant George Murray get his order to apprehend 
 and his power to sell her in marriage ? Or . . . might Lieutenant G. be 
 her tutor, and the fugitive to the Pringles, and on the discovery of her 
 whereabouts hastily married ? A good legal note on these points is very 
 ardently desired by me ; it will be the corner-stone of my novel. 
 
 "This is for— I am quite wrong to tell you, for you will tell others, 
 and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the air, and vanish 
 and reappear again like shapes in the clouds— it is for Heathercat; whereof 
 
 1 No ; it seems to have been her brother who had succeeded. 
 426 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 the first volume will be called The Killing Time; and 1 believe 1 have 
 authorities ample for that. But the second volume is to be called (I be- 
 lieve) Dariettf and for that I want, 1 fear, a good deal of truck. 
 
 Darien papers, 
 Carstairs papers, 
 Marchmont papers, 
 Jerviswood correspondence— 
 
 I hope may do me; some sort of general history of the Darien affair (if 
 there is a decent one, which I misdoubt) it would also be well to have; 
 the one with most details, if possible. It is singular how obscure to me 
 this decade of Scots History remains, 1690-1700: a deuce of a want of 
 light and grouping to it. However, I believe I shall be mostly out of 
 Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina and next in Darien." 
 
 The place of Andrew Pringle, in the historical extract above quoted, 
 was evidently to be taken in Stevenson's story by Ninian Traquair of 
 Montroymont. In a rough draft of chapter headings, chap. vi. bears the 
 title, "The Ward Comes Home"; another chapter shows that her name 
 was to have been Jean Ruthven ; plainly Francie Traquair was to be the 
 boy-husband to whom this Jean was to be united in order to frustrate 
 the designs of those who hoped to control her person and traffic in her 
 marriage. 
 
 The references in the author's letters to Mr. Crockett date from June 30, 
 1893, and afterwards. His correspondent was about this time engaged 
 in preparing a covenanting romance of his own— The Men of the Moss" 
 Hags, On the first-named date Stevenson writes : " It may interest you 
 to know that IVeir of Hermiston, or The Hanging Judge, or whatever 
 the mischief the thing is to be called, centres about the grave of the Pray- 
 ing Weaver of Balweary. And when Heatbercat is written, if it ever is, 
 O, then there will be another chance for the Societies" (i.e., the United 
 Societies, generally known in history as the Cameronians). A little later 
 Stevenson received from the same correspondent, at his own request, ma- 
 terials for his work in the shape of extracts collected from the Eariston 
 papers by the Rev. John Anderson, Assistant Curator of the Historical 
 Department, Register House, Edinburgh; the minutes of the Societies, 
 edited by the Rev. John Howie of Lochgoin, entitled " Faithful Contend- 
 ings," etc., etc. Later, hf sends a humorous sketch of a trespassing board 
 
 427 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 and gallows, with R. L. S. in the act of hanging S. R. C, and on the 
 board the words : " Notice— The Cameronians are the proppaty of me, R. 
 L. S.— trespassers and Raiders will be hung." In the letter accompany- 
 ing this he says : " I have made many notes for Heatbercat, but do not 
 get much forrader. For one thing, I am not inside these people yet. Wait 
 three years and / 7/ race you. For another thing, I am not a keen partisan, 
 and to write a good book you must be. The Society men were brave, 
 dour-headed, strong-hearted men fighting a hard battle and fighting it 
 hardly. That is about all the use I have for them." Finally, in a letter 
 written shortly before his death, he mentions having laid the story on the 
 shelf, whether permanently or only for a while he does not know. 
 
 438 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 WRITTEN AT VAILIMA 
 
These papers were draughted in i8gj or 18^4 toward:, a 
 projected new series of essays for ''Scribner's Magazine," and 
 are here printed for the first time. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 WRITTEN AT VAILIMA 
 I 
 
 THE GENESIS OF " THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE " 
 
 I WAS walking one night in the verandah of a small 
 house in which i lived, outside the hamlet of Sara- 
 nac. It was winter; the night was very dark; the air 
 extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity 
 of forests. From a good way below, the river was to 
 be heard contending with ice and boulders : a few lights 
 appeared, scattered unevenly among the darkness, but 
 so far away as not to lessen the sense of isolation. For 
 the making of a story here were fine conditions. I was 
 besides moved with the spirit of emulation, for I had 
 just finished my third or fourth perusal of The Phantom 
 Ship, "Come," said I to my engine, "let us make a 
 tale, a story of many years and countries, of the sea 
 and the land, savagery and civilisation; a story that 
 shall have the same large features and may be treated 
 in the same summary elliptic method as the book you 
 have been reading and admiring." I was here brought 
 up with a reflection exceedingly just in itself, but which, 
 as the sequel shows, I failed to profit by. I saw that 
 
 43« 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 Marryat, not less than Homer, Milton, and Virgil, prof- 
 ited by the choice of a familiar and legendary subject; 
 so that he prepared his readers on the very title-page; 
 and this set me cudgelling my brains, if by any chance 
 I could hit upon some similar belief to be the centre- 
 piece of my own meditated fiction. In the course of 
 this vain search there cropped up in my memory a 
 singular case of a buried and resuscitated fakir, which 
 I had been often told by an uncle of mine, then lately 
 dead, Inspector-General John Balfour. 
 
 On such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the 
 thermometer below zero, the brain works with much 
 vivacity ; and the next moment I had seen the circum- 
 stance transplanted from India and the tropics to the 
 Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the 
 Canadian border. Here then, almost before I had begun 
 my story, I had two countries, two of the ends of the 
 earth involved: and thus though the notion of the 
 resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general 
 acceptation, or even (as I have since found) acceptability, 
 it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands ; 
 and this decided me to consider further of its possibili- 
 ties. The man who should thus be buried was the first 
 question: a good man, whose return to life would be 
 hailed by the reader and the other characters with glad- 
 ness ? This trenched upon the Christian picture and was 
 dismissed. If the idea, then, was to be of any use at 
 all for me, I had to create a kind of evil genius to his 
 friends and family, take him through many disappear- 
 ances, and make this final restoration from the pit of 
 death, in the icy American wilderness, the last and 
 grimmest of the series. I need not tell my brothers of 
 
 432 
 
THE GENESIS OF "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE" 
 
 the craft that I was now in the most interesting mo- 
 ment of an author's life; the hours that followed that 
 night upon the balcony, and the following nights and 
 days, whether walking abroad or lying wakeful in my 
 bed, were hours of unadulterated joy. My mother, 
 who was then living with me alone, perhaps had less 
 enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who is my 
 usual helper in these times of parturition, I must spur 
 her up at all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify 
 my unformed fancies. 
 
 And while I was groping for the fable and the char- 
 acters required, behold, i found them lying ready and 
 nine years old in my memory. Pease porridge hot, pease 
 porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine years old. 
 Was there ever a more complete justification of the rule 
 of Horace ? Here, thinking of quite other things, I had 
 stumbled on the solution, or perhaps I should rather say 
 (in stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a 
 story conceived long before on the moors between 
 Pitlochry and Strathardle, conceived in the Highland 
 rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bog-plants, 
 and with a mind full of the Athole correspondence and 
 the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago, 
 so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and 
 the mutual tragic situation of the men of Durisdeer. 
 
 My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, 
 India, and America being all obligatory scenes. But of 
 these India was strange to me except in books; I had 
 never known any living Indian save a Parsee, a member 
 of my club in London, equally civilised and (to all 
 seeing) equally occidental with myself. It was plain, 
 thus far, that I should have to get into India and out of 
 
 433 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 it again upon a foot of fairy lightness; and I believe 
 this first suggested to me the idea of the Chevalier 
 Burke for a narrator. It was at first intended that he 
 should be Scottish, and I was then filled with fears that 
 he might prove only the degraded shadow of my own 
 Alan Breck. Presently, however, it began to occur to 
 me it would be like my Master to curry favour with the 
 Prince's Irishmen ; and that an Irish refugee would have 
 a particular reason to find himself in India with his 
 countryman, the unfortunate Lally. Irish, therefore, I 
 decided he should be, and then, all of a sudden, I was 
 aware of a tall shadow across my path, the shadow of 
 Barry Lyndon. No man (in Lord Foppington's phrase) 
 of a nice morality could go very deep with my Master: 
 in the original idea of this story conceived in Scotland, 
 this companion had been besides intended to be worse 
 than the bad elder son with whom (as it was then 
 meant) he was to visit Scotland; if I took an Irishman, 
 and a very bad Irishman, in the midst of the eighteenth 
 century, how was I to evade Barry Lyndon ? The 
 wretch besieged me, offering his services ; he gave me 
 excellent references; he proved that he was highly 
 fitted for the work I had to do; he, or my own evil 
 heart, suggested it was easy to disguise his ancient 
 livery with a little lace and a few frogs and buttons, so 
 that Thackeray himself should hardly recognise him. 
 And then of a sudden there came to me memories of 
 a young Irishman, with whom I was once intimate, 
 and had spent long nights walking and talking with, 
 upon a very desolate coast in a bleak autumn : I recalled 
 him as a youth of an extraordinary moral simplicity— 
 almost vacancy ; plastic to any influence, the creature of 
 
 434 
 
THE GENESIS OF "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE" 
 
 his admirations : and putting such a youth in fancy into 
 the career of a soldier of fortune, it occurred to me that 
 he would serve my turn as well as Mr. Lyndon, and in 
 place of entering into competition with the Master, 
 would afford a slight though a distinct relief. I know 
 not if I have done him well, though his moral disserta- 
 tions always highly entertained me: but I own I have 
 been surprised to find that he reminded some critics of 
 Barry Lyndon after all . . , 
 
 435 
 
II 
 
 RANDOM memories: " ROSA QjUO LOCORUM 
 
 Through what little channels, by what hints and 
 premonitions, the consciousness of the man's art dawns 
 first upon the child, it should be not only interesting 
 but instructive to inquire. A matter of curiosity to-day, 
 it will become the ground of science to-morroWo From 
 the mind of childhood there is more history and more 
 philosophy to be fished up than from all the printed 
 volumes in a library. The child is conscious of an 
 interest, not in literature, but in life. A taste for the 
 precise, the adroit, or the comely in the use of words, 
 comes late; but long before that he has enjoyed in 
 books a delightful dress-rehearsal of experience. He is 
 first conscious of this material— I had almost said this 
 practical— preoccupation; it does not follow that it 
 really came the first. I have some old fogged nega- 
 tives in my collection that would seem to imply a prior 
 stage. "The Lord is gone up with a shout, and God 
 with the sound of a trumpet"— memorial version, I 
 know not where to find the text— rings still in my ear 
 from my first childhood, and perhaps with something 
 of my nurse's accent. There was possibly some sort of 
 
 436 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES; "ROSA QUO LOCORUM" 
 
 image written in my mind by these loud words, but I 
 believe the words themselves were what I cherished. 
 I had about the same time, and under the same influ- 
 ence—that of my dear nurse— a favourite author: it is 
 possible the reader has not heard' of him— the Rev. 
 Robert Murray M'Cheyne. My nurse and I admired his 
 name exceedingly, so that I must have been taught the 
 love of beautiful sounds before I was breeched; and I 
 remember two specimens of his muse until this day : 
 
 " Behind the hills of Naphtali 
 The sun went slowly down, 
 Leaving on mountain, tower, and tree, 
 A tinge of golden brown." 
 
 There is imagery here, and I set it on one side. The 
 other— it is but a verse— not only contains no image, 
 but is quite unintelligible even to my comparatively 
 instructed mind, and I know not even how to spell the 
 outlandish vocable that charmed me in my childhood : 
 
 " Jehovah Tschidkenu is nothing to her " ; i 
 
 I may say, without flippancy, that He was nothing to 
 me either, since I had no ray of a guess of what He was 
 about; yet the verse, from then to now, a longer inter- 
 val than the life of a generation, has continued to haunt 
 me. 
 
 I have said that I should set a passage distinguished 
 by obvious and pleasing imagery, however faint; for 
 the child thinks much in images, words are very live 
 
 1 " Jehovah Tsidkenu," translated in the Authorised Version as " The 
 Lord our Righteousness " (Jeremiah xxiii. 6 and xxxiii.i6). 
 
 437 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 to him, phrases that imply a picture eloquent beyond 
 their value. Rummaging in the dusty pigeonholes of 
 memory, I came once upon a graphic version of the 
 famous psalm, ** The Lord is my shepherd " : and from 
 the places employed in its illustration, which are all in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of a house then occupied 
 by my father, I am able to date it before the seventh 
 year of my age, although it was probably earlier in 
 fact. The " pastures green " were represented by a cer- 
 tain suburban stubble-field, where I had once walked 
 with my nurse, under an autumnal sunset, on the banks 
 of the Water of Leith : the place is long ago built up ; 
 no pastures now, no stubble-fields ; only a maze of little 
 streets and smoking chimneys and shrill children. Here, 
 in the fleecy person of a sheep, I seemed to myself to 
 follow something unseen, unrealised, and yet benig- 
 nant; and close by the sheep in which I was incarnated 
 —as if for greater security— rustled the skirts of my 
 nurse. " Death's dark vale " was a certain archway in 
 the Warriston Cemetery : a formidable yet beloved spot, 
 for children love to be afraid,— in measure as they love 
 all experience of vitality. Here I beheld myself some 
 paces ahead (seeing myself, I mean, from behind), 
 utterly alone in that uncanny passage : on the one side 
 of me a rude, knobby shepherd's staff, such as cheers 
 the heart of the cockney tourist, on the other a rod like 
 a billiard-cue appeared to accompany my progress: 
 the staff sturdily upright, the billiard-cue inclined con- 
 fidentially, like one whispering, towards my ear. I was 
 aware— I will never tell you how— that the presence of 
 these articles afforded me encouragement. The third 
 and last of my pictures illustrated the words : 
 
 438 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES: "ROSA QUO LOCORUM" 
 
 " My table Thou hast furnished 
 In presence of my foes : 
 My head Thou dost with oil anoint, 
 And my cup overflows " : 
 
 and this was perhaps the most interesting of the series. 
 I saw myself seated in a kind of open stone summer- 
 house at table; over my shoulder a hairy, bearded, and 
 robed presence anointed me from an authentic shoe- 
 horn; the summer-house was part of the green court 
 of a ruin, and from the far side of the court black and 
 white imps discharged against me ineffectual arrows. 
 The picture appears arbitrary, but I can trace every de- 
 tail to its source, as Mr. Brock analysed the dream of 
 Alan Armadale. The summer-house and court were 
 muddled together out of Billings' Antiquities of Scot- 
 land ; the imps conveyed from Bagster's Pilgrim's 
 Progress ; the bearded and robed figure from any one 
 of a thousand Bible pictures ; and the shoe-horn was 
 plagiarised from an old illustrated Bible, where it figured 
 in the hand of Samuel anointing Saul, and had been 
 pointed out to me as a jest by my father. It was 
 shown me for a jest, remark; but the serious spirit of 
 infancy adopted it in earnest. Children are all classics; 
 a bottle would have seemed an intermediary too trivial 
 —that divine refreshment of whose meaning I had no 
 guess ; and I seized on the idea of that mystic shoe- 
 horn with delight, even as, a little later, I should have 
 written flagon, chalice, hanaper, beaker, or any word 
 that might have appealed to me at the moment as least 
 contaminate with mean associations. In this string of 
 pictures I believe the gist of the psalm to have con- 
 sisted; I believe it had no more to say to me; and the 
 
 439 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 result was consolatory. I would go to sleep dwelling 
 with restfulness upon these images ; they passed before 
 me, besides, to an appropriate music; for 1 had already 
 singled out from that rude psalm the one lovely verse 
 which dwells in the minds of all, not growing old, not 
 disgraced by its association with long Sunday tasks, a 
 scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion 
 thought : 
 
 " In pastures green Thou leadest me, 
 The quiet waters by." 
 
 The remainder of my childish recollections are all 
 of the matter of what was read to me, and not of any 
 manner in the words. If these pleased me, it was 
 unconsciously; I listened for news of the great va- 
 cant world upon whose edge 1 stood; I listened for 
 delightful plots that I might re-enact in play, and ro- 
 mantic scenes and circumstances that I might call up 
 before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of Scot- 
 land, and home, and that weary prison of the sick- 
 chamber in which I lay so long in durance. Robinson 
 Crusoe ; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious, 
 romantic soul, Mayne Reid ; and a work (rather grue- 
 some and bloody for a child, but very picturesque) 
 called Paul Blake ; these are the three strongest im- 
 pressions I remember: The Swiss Family Robinson came 
 next, longo intervallo. At these I played, conjured up 
 their scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto 
 seventy times seven. I am not sure but what Paul 
 Blake came after I could read. It seems connected 
 with a visit to the country, and an experience unfor- 
 
 getable. The day had been warm; H and I had 
 
 440 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES: "ROSA QyO LOCORUM" 
 
 played together charmingly all day in a sandy wilder- 
 ness across the road; then came the evening with a 
 great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness in the 
 air. Somehow my playmate had vanished, or is out of 
 the story, as the sagas say, but I was sent into the 
 village on an errand ; and, taking a book of fairy tales, 
 went down alone through a fir-wood, reading as I 
 walked. How often since then it has befallen me to 
 be happy even so; but that was the first time: the 
 shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot, and 
 if my mind serves me to the last, I never shall; for it 
 was then that I knew I loved reading. 
 
 To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take 
 a great and dangerous step. With not a few, I think 
 a large proportion of their pleasure then comes to an 
 end; "the malady of not marking" overtakes them; 
 they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear 
 never again the chime of fair words or the march of 
 the stately period. Non ragioniam of these. But to 
 all the step is dangerous; it involves coming of age; it 
 is even a kind of second weaning. In the past all was 
 at the choice of others ; they chose, they digested, they 
 read aloud for us and sang to their own tune the books 
 of childhood. In the future we are to approach the 
 silent, inexpressive type alone, like pioneers; and the 
 choice of what we are to read is in our own hands 
 thenceforward. For instance, in the passages already 
 adduced, I detect and applaud the ear of my old nurse; 
 they were of her choice, and she imposed them on my 
 
 441 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 infancy, reading the works of others as a poet would 
 scarce dare to read his own; gloating on the rhythm, 
 dwelling with delight on assonances and alliterations. 
 I know very well my mother must have been all the 
 while trying to educate my taste upon more secular 
 authors ; but the vigour and the continual opportunities 
 of my nurse triumphed, and after a long search, I can 
 find in these earliest volumes of my autobiography no 
 mention of anything but nursery rhymes, the Bible, 
 and Mr. M'Cheyne. 
 
 I suppose all children agree in looking back with de- 
 light on their school Readers. We might not now find 
 so much pathos in " Bingen on the Rhine," "A soldier 
 of the Legion lay dying in Algiers," or in " The Soldier's 
 Funeral," in the declaration of which I was held to have 
 surpassed myself. "Robert's voice," said the master 
 on this memorable occasion, " is not strong, but im- 
 pressive": an opinion which I was fool enough to 
 carry home to my father; who roasted me for years in 
 consequence. I am sure one should not be so deli- 
 ciously tickled by the humorous pieces : 
 
 " What, crusty ? cries Will, in a taking, 
 Who would not be crusty with half a year's baking? " 
 
 I think this quip would leave us cold. The " Isles of 
 Greece" seem rather tawdry too; but on the "Address 
 to the Ocean," or on " The Dying Gladiator," "time has 
 writ no wrinkle." 
 
 " 'T is the mom, but dim and dark; 
 Whither flies the silent lark ? "— 
 
 does the reader recall the moment when his eye first 
 fell upon these lines in the Fourth Reader; and "sur- 
 
 442 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES: "ROSA QUO LOCORUM" 
 
 prised with joy, impatient as the wind," he plunged 
 into the sequel ? And there was another piece, this 
 time in prose, which none can have forgotten; many 
 like me must have searched Dickens with zeal to fmd 
 it again, and in its proper context, and have perhaps 
 been conscious of some inconsiderable measure of dis- 
 appointment, that it was only Tom Pinch who drove, 
 in such a pomp of poetry, to London. 
 
 But in the Reader we are still under guides. What 
 a boy turns out for himself, as he rummages the book- 
 shelves, is the real test and pleasure. My father's library 
 was a spot of some austerity : the proceedings of learned 
 societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical 
 science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon 
 the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that 
 anything really legible existed as by accident. The 
 Parents Assistant, Rob Roy, IVaverley, and Guy Man- 
 nermg, the Voyages of Captain Woods Rogers, Fuller's 
 and Bunyan's Holy Wars, The Reflections of Robinson 
 Crusoe, The Female Bluebeard, G. Sand's Mare au 
 Diable (how came it in that grave assembly!), Ains- 
 worth's Tower of London, and four old volumes of 
 Punch— these were the chief exceptions. In these 
 latter, which made for years the chief of my diet, I 
 very early fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell) 
 with the Snob Papers. I knew them almost by heart, 
 particularly the visit to the Pontos ; and I remember my 
 surprise when I found, long afterwards, that they were 
 famous, and signed with a famous name; to me, as I 
 read and admired them, they were the works of Mr. 
 Punch. Time and again I tried to read Rob Roy, with 
 whom of course I was acquainted from the Tales of a 
 
 443 
 
ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 Grandfather ; time and again the early part, with Rash- 
 leigh and (think of it!) the adorable Diana, choked me 
 off; and I shall never forget the pleasure and surprise 
 with which, lying on the floor one summer evening, I 
 struck of a sudden into the first scene with Andrew 
 Fairservice. " The worthy Dr. Lightfoot "— " mistrysted 
 with a bogle "— *' a wheen green trash "—"Jenny, lass, 
 I think I ha'e her " : from that day to this the phrases 
 have been unforgotten. I read on, I need scarce say; 
 I came to Glasgow, I bided tryst on Glasgow Bridge, 
 I met Rob Roy and the Bailie in the Tolbooth, all with 
 transporting pleasure; and then the clouds gathered 
 once more about my path; and I dozed and skipped 
 until I stumbled half-asleep into the clachan of Aber- 
 foyle, and the voices of Iverach and Galbraith recalled 
 me to myself. With that scene and the defeat of Cap- 
 tain Thornton the book concluded; Helen and her sons 
 shocked even the little schoolboy of nine or ten with 
 their unreality; I read no more, or I did not grasp what 
 I was reading; and years elapsed before I consciously 
 met Diana and her father among the hills, or saw Rash- 
 leigh dying in the chair. When I think of that novel 
 and that evening, I am impatient with all others ; they 
 seem but shadows and impostors; they cannot satisfy 
 the appetite which this awakened ; and I dare be known 
 to think it the best of Sir Walter's by nearly as much 
 as Sir Walter is the best of novelists. Perhaps Mr. Lang 
 is right, and our first friends in the land of fiction are 
 always the most real. And yet I had read before this 
 Guy Mannering, and some of Waverleyy with no such 
 delighted sense of truth and humour, and I read imme- 
 diately after the greater part of the Waverley Novels, 
 
 444 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES: "ROSA QUO LOCORUM" 
 
 and was never moved again in the same way or to the 
 same degree. One circumstance is suspicious: my 
 critical estimate of the Waverley Novels has scarce 
 changed at all since I was ten. Rob Roy, Guy Man- 
 nering, and Redgauntlet first ; then, a little lower, The 
 Fortunes of Nigel ; then, after a huge gulf, Ivanhoe and 
 Anne of Geier stein : the rest nowhere ; such was the 
 verdict of the boy. Since then The Antiquary, St. 
 Ronan's Well, Kenilworth, and The Heart of Midlothian 
 have gone up in the scale; perhaps Ivanhoe and Anne 
 of Geier stein have gone a trifle down ; Diana Vernon 
 has been added to my admirations in that enchanted 
 world of Rob Roy ; I think more of the letters in Red- 
 gauntlet, and Peter Peebles, that dreadful piece of real- 
 ism, I can now read about with equanimity, interest, 
 and I had almost said pleasure, while to the childish 
 critic he often caused unmixed distress. But the rest 
 is the same ; I could not finish The Pirate when I was 
 a child, I have never finished it yet; Peveril of the Peak 
 dropped half-way through from my schoolboy hands, 
 and though I have since waded to an end in a kind of 
 wager with myself, the exercise was quite without 
 enjoyment. There is something disquieting in these 
 considerations. I still think the visit to Ponto's the 
 best part of the Book of Snobs : does that mean that I 
 was right when I was a child, or does it mean that I 
 have never grown since then, that the child is not the 
 man's father, but the man ? and that I came into the 
 world with all my faculties complete, and have only 
 learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of boredom ? . . . 
 
 445 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
THE two collections which here follow both consist 
 of letters written from Samoa and referring to 
 Samoan matters. In other respects they are quite un- 
 like. The first is a reprint of correspondence which 
 appeared in London newspapers at intervals from 1889 
 to 1895, and of which the object was to call the atten- 
 tion of the English public to political events in the islands : 
 first to the proceedings of the representatives of the Ger- 
 man Empire before the Treaty of Berlin; next to the 
 administration of the two chief officials appointed by 
 the three Powers under that treaty; and lastly, after 
 those officials had been withdrawn and succeeded by 
 others, to the part played by the three Consuls in the 
 government. Mr. Stevenson may have been right or 
 wrong— or, as is more probable, partly right and partly 
 wrong— in his outspoken criticism of the various au- 
 thorities engaged in administering the embroiled affairs 
 of the islands where he had fixed his home, and for 
 whose population he felt so warm a sympathy. But 
 at all events he believed himself to be working in the 
 interests of justice and of peace; he was entirely devoid 
 of personal animus and personal motive; and as to one 
 main part of his contention, though not the rest, the 
 action of the three Powers practically confirmed his 
 views. As these matters filled so large a part of his 
 time and thoughts, it seemed proper (following a sug- 
 
 449 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 gestion of his own made in correspondence) to give, 
 as supplementing his Footnote to History, the letters 
 referring to the same subjects which he contributed 
 to the public press both before and after the appearance 
 of that volume. 
 
 The letters in the second group are of a wholly dif- 
 ferent character. They were written playfully in order 
 to convey impressions of life at Vailima to boys and 
 girls. The first three are addressed, through a lady 
 who had been a friend and correspondent of the writer's 
 in Bournemouth days, to some children in a convalescent 
 home in Kilburn which she helped to manage; the re- 
 mainder to a member of his own household, his wife's 
 grandson Austin Strong, at times when he was away 
 in California or New Zealand. This correspondence 
 might seem more properly to belong to the collection of 
 general letters which will accompany the Life of the 
 author now in preparation; but as it has already been 
 published in St. Nicholas ifitctmhtVy 1895; January and 
 February, 1896), it has been thought well to reprint it 
 here.— [S. C] 
 
 450 
 
LETTERS TO THE ''TIMES," "PALL MALL 
 GAZETTE," ETC 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TIMES " 
 
 Yacbt *'Casco,** Hawaiian Islands, February lo, t88p. 
 
 Sir,— News from Polynesia is apt to come piecemeal, and thus fail of 
 its effect, the first step being forgotten before the second comes to hand. 
 For this reason I should like to be allowed to recapitulate a little of the 
 past before I go on to illustrate the present extraordinary state of affairs 
 in the Samoan Islands. 
 
 It is quite true that this group was largely opened up by German en- 
 terprise, and that the port of Apia is much the creation of the Godeffroys. 
 So far the German case extends ; no further. Apia was governed till lately 
 by a tripartite municipality, the American, English, and German Consuls, 
 and one other representative of each of the three nations making up the 
 body. To both America and Germany a harbour had been ceded. Eng- 
 land, I believe, had no harbour, but that her position was quite equal to 
 that of her neighbours one fact eloquently displays. Malietoa— then King 
 of Samoa, now a prisoner on the Marshall Islands— offered to accept the 
 supremacy of England. Unhappily for himself, his offer was refused. 
 Her Majesty's Government declaring, I am told, that they would prefer 
 to see him independent. As he now wanders the territory of his island 
 prison, under the guns of an Imperial war-ship, his independence (if it 
 still exists) must be confined entirely to his bosom. 
 
 Such was the former equal and pacific state of the three nations at Apia. 
 It would be curious to tell at length by what steps of encroachment on 
 
 45 » 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 the one side and weakness on the other the present reign of terror has 
 been brought about ; but my time before the mail departs is very short, 
 your space is limited, and in such a history much must be only matter of 
 conjecture. Briefly and roughly, then, there came a sudden change in 
 the attitude of Germany. Another treaty was proposed to Malietoa and 
 refused ; the cause of the rebel Tamasese was invented or espoused ; Malie- 
 toa was seized and deported, Tamasese installed, the tripartite municipality 
 dissolved, the German Consul seated autocratically in its place, and the 
 Hawaiian Embassy (sent by a Power of the same race to moderate among 
 Samoans) dismissed with threats and insults. In the course of these events 
 villages have been shelled, the German flag has been at least once sub- 
 stituted for the English, and the Stars and Stripes (only the other day) 
 were burned at Matafatatele. On the day of the chase after Malietoa the 
 houses of both English and Americans were violently entered by the Ger- 
 mans. Since the dissolution of the municipality English and Americans 
 have paid their taxes into the hands of their own Consuls, where they 
 accumulate, and the German representative, unrecognised and unsup- 
 ported, rules single in Apia. I have had through my hands a file of Con- 
 sular proclamations, the most singular reading— a state of war declared, 
 all other authority but that of the German representative suspended, pun- 
 ishment (and the punishment of death in particular) liberally threatened. 
 It is enough to make a man rub his eyes when he reads Colonel de Coet- 
 logon's protest and the high-handed rejoinder posted alongside of it the 
 next day by Dr. Knappe. Who is Dr. Knappe, thus to make peace and 
 war, deal in life and death, and close with a buffet the mouth of English 
 Consuls? By what process known to diplomacy has he risen from his 
 one-sixth part of municipal authority to be the Bismarck of a Polynesian 
 island ? And what spell has been cast on the Cabinets of Washington 
 and St. James's, that Mr. Blacklock should have been so long left unsup- 
 ported, and that Colonel de Coetlogon must bow his head under a public 
 buffet? 
 
 I have not said much of the Samoans. I despair, in so short a space, 
 to interest English readers in their wrongs ; with the mass of people at 
 home they will pass for some sort of cannibal islanders, with whom faith 
 were superfluous, upon whom kindness might be partly thrown away. 
 And, indeed, I recognise with gladness that (except as regards the cap- 
 tivity of Malietoa) the Samoans have had throughout the honours of the 
 game. Tamasese, the German puppet, has had everywhere the under 
 
 452 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 hand ; almost none, except those of his own clan, have ever supported 
 his cause, and even these begin now to desert him. "This is no Samoan 
 war," said one of them, as he transferred his followers and services to the 
 new Malietoa— Mataafa; "this is a German war." Mataafa, if he be cut 
 off from Apia and the sea, lies inexpugnable in the foot-hills immediately 
 behind with five thousand warriors at his back. And beyond titles to a 
 great deal of land, which they extorted in exchange for rifles and ammu- 
 nition from the partisans of Tamasese, of all this bloodshed and bullying 
 the Germans behold no profit. I have it by last advices that Dr. Knappe 
 has approached the King privately with fair speeches, assuring him that 
 the state of war, bombardments, and other evils of the day, are not at 
 all directed at Samoans, but against the English and Americans ; and that, 
 when these are extruded, peace shall again smile on a German island. 
 It can never be proved, but is highly possible he may have said so ; 
 and, whether he said it or not, there is a sense in which the thing is true. 
 Violence has not been found to succeed with the Samoans ; with the two 
 Anglo-Saxon Powers it has been found to work like a charm. I conclude 
 with two instances, one American, one English : 
 
 First. Mr. Klein, an American journalist, was on the beach with 
 Malietoa's men on the night of the recent German defeat. Seeing the 
 boats approach in the darkness, Mr. Klein hailed them and warned them 
 of the Samoan ambush, and, by this innocent and humane step, made 
 public the fact of his presence. Where much else is contested so much 
 appears to be admitted (and, indeed, claimed) upon both sides. Mi. 
 Klein is now accused of firing on the Germans and of advising the Samoans 
 to fire, both of which he denies. He is accused, after the fight, of suc- 
 couring only the wounded of Malietoa's party ; he himself declares that he 
 helped both ; and, at any rate, the offence appears a novel one, and the 
 accusation threatens to introduce fresh dangers into Red Cross work. 
 He was on the beach that night in the exercise of his profession. If he 
 was with Malietoa's men, which is the real gist of his offence, we who 
 are not Germans may surely ask. Why not ? On what grounds is Malie- 
 toa a rebel ? The Germans have not conquered Samoa that I ever heard 
 of; they are there on treaty like their neighbours, and Dr. Knappe him- 
 self (in the eyes of justice) is no more than one-sixth part of the town 
 council of Apia. Lastly, Mr. Klein's innocence stands very clearly proven 
 by the openness with which he declared his presence. For all that, this 
 gentleman lay for a considerable time, watched day and night by German 
 
 453 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 sailors, a prisoner in the American Consulate ; even after he had succeeded 
 in running the gantlet of the German guards, and making his escape in 
 a canoe to the American war-ship Nipsic, he was imperiously redemanded 
 from under his own flag, and it is probable his extradition is being 
 already called for at Washington. 
 
 Secondly. An English artist had gone into the bush sketching. I 
 believe he had been to Malietoa's camp, so that his guilt stands on some- 
 what the same ground as Mr. Klein's. He was forcibly seized on board 
 the British packet Richmond, carried half-dressed on board the Adler, 
 and detained there, in spite of all protest, until an English war-ship had 
 been cleared for action. This is of notoriety, and only one case (although 
 a strong one) of many. Is it what the English people understand by the 
 sovereignty of the seas?— I am, etc., 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 O THE EDITOR OF THE "times " 
 
 Vailima, Upolu, Samoa, October 12, 1891, 
 Sir,— I beg leave to lay before your readers a copy of a correspondence, 
 or (should that have reached you by another channel) to offer a few words 
 of narrative and comment. 
 
 On Saturday, September 5, Mr. Cedercrantz, the Chief Justice of Samoa, 
 sailed on a visit to Fiji, leaving behind him certain prisoners in jail, and 
 Baron Senfft von Pilsach, President of the Municipal Council, master of 
 the field. The prisoners were five chiefs of Manono who had surrendered 
 of their own accord, or at the desire of Mataafa, had been tried by a na- 
 tive magistrate, and received sentence of six months' confinement under 
 " gentlemanly " {sic) conditions. As they were marched to prison, certain 
 of their country-folk of Manono ran beside and offered an immediate 
 rescue ; but Lieutenant Ulfsparre ordered the men of the escort to load, 
 and the disturbance blew by. How little weight was attached to this in- 
 cident by the Chief justice is sufficiently indicated by the fact of his de- 
 parture. It was unhappily otherwise with those whom he left behind. 
 Panic seems to have marked them for her own ; they despaired at once of 
 all lawful defence; and on Sunday, the day after the Chief Justice's depar- 
 ture, Apia was in consequence startled with strange news. Dynamite 
 
 454 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 brought from the wrecker ship, an electrical machine and a mechanic hired, 
 the prison mined, and a letter despatched to the people of Manono advis- 
 ing them of the fact, and announcing that if any rescue were attempted 
 prison and prisoners should be blown up— such were the voices of rumour ; 
 and the design appearing equally feeble, reckless, and wicked, consider- 
 able agitation was aroused. Perhaps it had some effect. Our Govern- 
 ment at least, which had rushed so hastily to one extreme, now dashed 
 with the same speed into another. Sunday was the day of dynamite, 
 Tuesday dawned the day of deportation. A cutter was hurriedly pre- 
 pared for sea, and the prisoners, whom the Chief Justice had left three 
 days before under a sentence of " gentlemanly " detention, found them- 
 selves under way to exile in the Tokelaus. 
 
 A Government of this agility escapes criticism : by multiplying surprises 
 it obliterates the very memory of past mistakes. Some, perhaps, forgot 
 the dynamite ; some, hearing no more of it, set it down to be a trick ot 
 rumour such as we are all well used to in the islands. But others were not 
 so sure. Others considered that the rumour (even if unfounded) was of 
 an ill example, might bear deplorable fruit, and, from all points of view of 
 morality and policy, required a public contradiction. Eleven of these 
 last entered accordingly into the annexed correspondence with the Presi- 
 dent. It will be seen in the crevice of what quibble that gentleman sought 
 refuge and sits inexpugnable. In a question affecting his humanity, his 
 honour, and the well-being of the kingdom which he serves, he has pre- 
 ferred to maintain what I can only call a voluble silence. The public 
 must judge of the result ; but there is one point to which I may be allowed 
 to draw attention— that passage in the fourth of the appended documents 
 in which he confesses that he was already acquainted with the rumours 
 in question, and that he has been present (and apparently not protesting) 
 when the scandal was discussed and the proposed enormity commended. 
 
 The correspondence was still passing when the President surprised Apia 
 with a fresh gambado. He has been a long while in trouble as to his 
 disposition of the funds. His intention to build a house for himself— to 
 all appearances with native money— his sending the taxes out of the 
 islands and locking them up in deposits, and his noisy squabbles with the 
 King and native Parliament as to the currency, had all aroused unfavour- 
 able comment. On Saturday, the 3rd of October, a correspondence on 
 the last point appeared in the local paper. By this it appeared that our 
 not too resolute 'King and Parliament had at last and in one particular 
 
 455 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 defied his advice and maintained their own opinion, h vengeance were 
 to be the order of the day, it might have been expected to fall on the 
 King and Parliament ; but this would have been too direct a course, and 
 the blow was turned instead against an innocent municipal council. On 
 the 7th the President appeared before that body, informed them that his 
 authority was lessened by the publication, that he had applied to the 
 King for a month's leave of (theatrical) absence, and must now refuse to 
 fulfil his duties. With this he retired to his own house, which is under 
 the same roof, leaving the councillors and the municipality to do what 
 they pleased and drift where they could without him. It is reported he 
 has since declared his life to be in danger, and even applied to his Consul 
 for protection. This seems to pass the bounds of credibility ; but the 
 movements of Baron Senfft von Pilsach have been throughout so agitated 
 and so unexpected that we know not what to look for; and the signa- 
 tories of the annexed addresses, if they were accused to-morrow of a design 
 on the man's days, would scarce have spirit left to be surprised. 
 
 It must be clearly pointed out that this is no quarrel of German and 
 anti-German. The German officials, consular and naval, have behaved 
 with perfect loyalty, A German wrote the letter to the paper which un- 
 chained this thunderbolt ; and it was a German who took the chair which 
 the President had just vacated at the table of the municipal board. And 
 though the Baron is himself of German race, his conduct presents no ap- 
 pearance of design, how much less of conspiracy! Doubtless certain 
 journals will so attempt to twist it, but to the candid it will seem no 
 more than the distracted evolutions of a weak man in a series of panics. 
 
 Such is the rough outline of the events to which I would fain direct the 
 attention of the public at home, in the States, and still more in Germany. 
 It has for me but one essential point. Budgets have been called in ques- 
 tion, and officials publicly taken the pet before now. But the dynamite 
 scandal is unique. 
 
 If it be unfounded, our complaint is already grave. It was the Presi- 
 dent's duty, as a man and as a responsible official, to have given it instant 
 and direct denial : and since he neither did so of his own motion, nor 
 consented to do so on our repeated instances, he has shown that he neither 
 understands nor yet is willing to be taught the condition of this country. 
 From what I have been able to collect, Samoans are indignant because 
 the thing was decided between the King and President without consulta- 
 tion with the native Parliament. The thing itself, it does not enter in 
 
 456 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 their thoughts to call in question ; they receive gratefully a fresh lesson 
 in civilised methods and civilised justice; a day may come when they 
 shall put that lesson in practice for themselves ; and if they are then de- 
 cried for their barbarity— as they will surely be— and punished for it, as 
 is highly probable, I will ask candid people what they are to think? 
 " How ? " they will say. " Your own white people intended to do this, 
 and you said nothing. We do it, and you call us treacherous savages!" 
 
 This is to suppose the story false. Suppose it true, however ; still more, 
 suppose the plan had been carried out. Suppose these chiefs to have 
 surrendered to the white man's justice, administered or not by a brown 
 judge ; suppose them tried, condemned, confined in that snare of a jail, 
 and some fine night their mangled limbs cast in the faces of their coun- 
 trymen : 1 leave others to predict the consequences of such an object- 
 lesson in the arts of peace and the administration of the law. The 
 Samoans are a mild race, but their patience is in some points limited. 
 Under Captain Brandeis a single skirmish and the death of a few youths 
 sufficed to kindle an enduring war and bring on the ruin of the Govern- 
 ment. The residents have no desire for war, and they deprecate alto- 
 gether a war embittered from the beginning by atrocities. Nor can they 
 think the stakes at all equal between themselves and Baron Senfft, He 
 has nothing to lose but a situation ; he is here in what he stands in ; he 
 can swarm to-morrow on board a war-ship and be off. But the resi- 
 dents have some of them sunk capital on these shores ; some of them are 
 involved in extended affairs; they are tied to the stake, and they pro- 
 test against being plunged into war by the violence, and having that war 
 rendered more implacable by the preliminary cruelties, of a white official. 
 
 I leave entirely upon one side all questions of morality ; but there is 
 still one point of expediency on which I must touch. The old native 
 Government (which was at least cheap) failed to enforce the law, and 
 fell, in consequence, into the manifold troubles which have made the 
 name of Samoa famous. The enforcement of the law— that was what 
 was required, that was the salvation looked for. And here we have a 
 Government at a high figure, and it cannot defend its own jail, and 
 can find no better remedy than to assassinate its prisoners. What we 
 have bought at this enormous increase of expenditure is the change from 
 King Log to King Stork— from the man who failed to punish petty theft 
 to the man who plots the destruction of his own jail and the death ol 
 his own prisoners. 
 
 457 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 On the return of the Chief Justice, the matter will be brought to his 
 attention ; but the cure of our troubles must come from home ; it is from 
 the Great Powers that we look for deliverance. They sent us the Presi- 
 dent. Let them either remove the man, or see that he is stringently 
 instructed— instructed to respect public decency, so we be no longer 
 menaced with doings worthy of a revolutionary committee ; and instructed 
 to respect the administration of the law, so if I be fined a dollar to-mor- 
 row for fast riding in Apia street, 1 may not awake next morning to find 
 my sentence increased to one of banishment or death by dynamite.— I 
 am, Sir, your obedient servant, Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 P. S., October 14.— I little expected fresh developments before the 
 mail left. But the unresting President still mars the quiet of his neighbours. 
 Even while I was writing the above lines, Apia was looking on in mere 
 amazement on the continuation of his gambols. A white man had written 
 to the King, and the King had answered the letter— crimes against Baron 
 Senfft von Pilsach and (his private reading of) the Berlin Treaty. He 
 offered to resign— I was about to say "accordingly," for the unexpected 
 is here the normal— from the presidency of the municipal board, and to 
 retain his position as the King's adviser. He was instructed that he must 
 resign both, or neither ; resigned both ; fell out with the Consuls on de- 
 tails ; and is now, as we are advised, seeking to resile from his resignations. 
 Such an official 1 never remember to have read of, though I have seen the 
 like, from across the footlights and the orchestra, evolving in similar figures 
 to the strains of Offenbach. R. L. S. 
 
 COPIES OF A CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN CERTAIN 
 RESIDENTS OF APIA AND BARON SENFFT VON PILSACH 
 
 September 28, 1891. 
 Baron Senfft von Pilsach. 
 
 Sir,— We are requested to lay the enclosed appeal before you, and to 
 express the desire of the signatories to meet your views as to the manner 
 of the answer. 
 
 Should you prefer to reply by word of mouth, a deputation will be 
 ready to wait upon you on Thursday, at any hour you may please to 
 appoint. 
 
 Should you prefer to reply in writing, we are asked only to impress 
 458 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 upon you the extreme desire of the signatories that no time should be 
 unnecessarily lost. 
 
 Should you condescend in either of the ways suggested to set at rest 
 our anxiety, we need scarce assure you that the step will be received with 
 gratitude.— We have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servants, 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 E. W. GURR. 
 
 {Enclosed in No. /.) 
 
 The attention of the President of the Municipal Council is respectfully 
 directed to the following rumours : 
 
 1. That at his suggestion, or with his authority, dynamite was pur- 
 chased, or efforts were made to procure dynamite, and the use of an 
 electrical machine was secured, or attempted to be obtained. 
 
 2. That this was for the purpose of undermining, or pretending to 
 undermine, the jail in which the Manono prisoners were confined. 
 
 3. That notification of this design was sent to the friends of the prisoners. 
 
 4. That a threat of blowing up the jail and the prisoners, in the event 
 of an attempted rescue, was made. 
 
 Upon all and upon each of these points severally the white residents 
 anxiously expect and respectfully beg information. 
 
 It is suggested for the President's consideration that rumours uncor- 
 rected or unexplained acquire almost the force of admitted truth. 
 
 That any want of confidence between the governed and the Govern- 
 ment must be fruitful in loss to both. 
 
 That the rumours in their present form tend to damage the white races in 
 the native mind, and to influence for the worse the manners of the Samoans. 
 
 And that the President alone is in a position to deny, to explain, or to 
 correct these rumours. 
 
 Upon these grounds the undersigned ask to be excused for any infor- 
 mality in their address, and they hope and humbly pray that the President 
 will accept the occasion here presented, and take early and effectual means 
 to inform and reassure the whites, and to relieve them from possible mis- 
 judgment on the part of the Samoans. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 E. W. GURR. 
 
 (/ind nine other signatures.) 
 459 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 III 
 
 /Ipia, September ^o, 1891. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, Escl., E. W. Gurr, Esq_. 
 
 Dear Sirs,— Thanking you for your kind letter dated 28th inst., which 
 I received yesterday, together with the address in question, I beg to in- 
 form you that I am going to answer the address in writing as soon as 
 possible.— I have the honour to be, dear Sirs, your obedient servant, 
 
 Senfft. 
 
 IV 
 
 Apia, October 2, 1891. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, Esq_., E. W. Gurr, Escl. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of an address 
 without date which has been signed by you and some other foreign resi- 
 dents and handed to me on the 29th of September. 
 
 In this address my attention is directed to some rumours, specified 
 therein, concerning which I am informed that " upon all and upon each 
 of these points severally the white residents anxiously expect and respect- 
 fully beg information." 
 
 Generally, I beg to state that, with a view of successfully performing 
 my official duties, I believe it is advisable for me to pay no attention to 
 any anonymous rumour. 
 
 Further, I cannot forbear expressing my astonishment that in speaking 
 to me so seriously in the name of " the white residents " the subscribers 
 of the address have deemed it unnecessary to acquaint me with their au- 
 thorisation for doing so. This omission is by no means a mere informality. 
 There are white residents who in my presence have commented upon the 
 rumours in question in a manner directly opposed to the meaning of the 
 address. 
 
 This fact alone will justify me in objecting to the truth of the above- 
 quoted statement so prominently set forth and so positively affirmed in 
 the address. It will also justify me in abstaining from a reply to the 
 further assertions of gentlemen who, in apostrophising me, care so little 
 for the correctness of the facts they deal with. 
 
 If, in consequence, according to the apprehensions laid down in the 
 address, those unexplained rumours will " damage the white races in the 
 native mind," I think the signing parties will then remember that there 
 are public authorities in Samoa officially and especially charged with the 
 
 460 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 protection of "the white residents." If they present to them their com- 
 plaints and their wishes I have no doubt by so doing they will get all 
 information they may require. 
 
 1 ask you, Gentlemen, to communicate this answer to the parties having 
 signed the address in question.— I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, 
 your obedient servant, Frhr. Senfft von Pilsach. 
 
 V 
 
 October 9, /891. 
 
 The signatories of the address are in receipt of the President's favour 
 under date October 2. Much of his answer is occupied in dealing with a 
 point foreign to the matter in hand, and in itself surprising to the signa- 
 tories. Their address was an appeal for information on specific points and 
 an appeal from specific persons, who correctly described themselves as 
 "white residents," "the undersigned," and in the accompanying letter as 
 the "signatories." They were so far from seeking to collect evidence in 
 private that they applied frankly ana directly to the person accused for 
 explanation ; and so far from seeking to multiply signatures or promote 
 scandal that they kept the paper strictly to themselves. They see with 
 regret that the President has failed to appreciate this delicacy. They 
 see with sorrow and surprise that, in answer to a communication which 
 they believe to have been temperately and courteously worded, the 
 President has thought fit to make an imputation on their honesty. The 
 trick of which he would seem to accuse them would have been useless, 
 and even silly, if attempted ; and on a candid re-examination of the address 
 and the accompanying letter, the President will doubtless see fit to recall 
 the imputation. 
 
 By way of answer to the questions asked the signatories can find no- 
 thing but what seems to be a recommendation to them to apply to their 
 Consuls for " protection." It was not protection they asked, but infor- 
 mation. It was not a sense of fear that moved them, but a sense of 
 shame. It is their misfortune that they cannot address the President in 
 his own language, or they would not now require to explain that the 
 words "tend to damage the white races in the native mind," quoted and 
 misapplied by the President, do not express any fear of suffering by the 
 hands of the Samoans, but in their good opinion, and were not the ex- 
 pression of any concern for the duration of peace, but of a sense of shame 
 under what they conceived to be disgraceful imputations. While agree- 
 
 461 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 ing generally with the President's expressed sentiment as to " anonymous 
 rumours," they feel that a line has to be drawn. Certain rumours they 
 would not suffer to remain uncontradicted for an hour. It was natural, 
 therefore, that when they heard a man of their own white race accused 
 of conspiring to blow up the jail and the prisoners who were there under 
 Ihe safeguard of his honour, they should attribute to the accused a similar 
 impatience to be justified; and it is with a sense of painful surprise that 
 they find themselves to have been mistaken. 
 
 {Signatures as to No. //.) 
 
 VI 
 
 y4pia, October p, 1891. 
 
 Gentlemen,— Being in receipt of your communication under to-day's 
 date, I have the honour to inform you that I have undertaken the re-ex- 
 amination of your first address, which you believe would induce me to 
 recall the answer I have given on the 2nd inst. 
 
 From this re-examination I have learned again that your appeal begins 
 with the following statement : 
 
 " Upon all and upon each of these points severally the white residents 
 anxiously expect and respectfully beg information." 
 
 I have called this statement a seriously speaking to me in the name of 
 the white residents, and I have objected to the truth of that statement. 
 
 If after a "candid re-examination " of the matter from your part you 
 may refute me in either or both points, I shall be glad, indeed, in recall- 
 ing my answer. 
 
 At present I beg to say that I see no reason for your supposing I mis- 
 understood your expression of damaging the white races in the native 
 mind, unless you have no other notion of protection than that applying 
 to the body. 
 
 Concerning the assertion contained in the last clause of your second 
 address, that five Samoan prisoners having been sentenced by a Samoan 
 judge for destroying houses were in the jail of the Samoan Government 
 "under the safeguard of my honour," I ask for your permission to rec- 
 ommend this statement also and especially to your re-examination.— I 
 have the honour to be, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, 
 
 Frhr. Senfft von Pilsach. 
 
 462 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 III 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TIMES " 
 
 Samoa, April 9, 1892. 
 
 Sir,— A sketch of our latest difficulty in Samoa will be interesting, at 
 least to lawyers. 
 
 In the Berlin General Act there is one point on which, from the earliest 
 moment, volunteer interpreters have been divided. The revenue arising 
 from the customs was held by one party to belong to the Samoan Govern- 
 ment, by another to the municipality ; and the dispute was at last decided 
 in favour of the municipality by Mr. Cedercrantz, Chief Justice. The 
 decision was not given in writing ; but it was reported by at least one of 
 the Consuls to his Government, it was of public notoriety, it is not denied, 
 and it was at once implicitly acted on by the parties. Before that deci- 
 sion, the revenue from customs was suffered to accumulate; ever since, 
 to the knowledge of the Chief Justice, and with the daily countenance of 
 the President, it has been preceived, administered, and spent by the muni- 
 cipality. It is the function of the Chief Justice to interpret the Berlin Act ; 
 its sense was thus supposed to be established beyond cavil; those who 
 were dissatisfied wnth the result conceived their only recourse lay in a 
 prayer to the Powers to have the treaty altered ; and such a prayer was, 
 but the other day, proposed, supported, and finally negatived, in a public 
 meeting. 
 
 About a year has gone by ance the decision, and the state of the 
 Samoan Government has been daily growing more precarious. Taxes 
 have not been paid, and the Government has not ventured to enforce 
 them. Fresh taxes have fallen due, and the Government has not ventured 
 to call for them. Salaries were running on, and that of the Chief Justice 
 alone amounts to a considerable figure for these islands ; the coffers had 
 fallen low, at last it was believed they were quite empty, no resource seemed 
 left, and bystanders waited with a smiling curiosity for the wheels to stop. 
 I should add, to explain the epithet "smiling," that the Government has 
 proved a still-born child ; and except for some spasmodic movements 
 which I have already made the subject of remark in your columns, it may 
 be said to have done nothing but pay salaries. 
 
 In this state of matters, on March 28, the President of the Council, 
 Baron Senfft von Pilsach, was suddenly and privately supplied by Mr. 
 
 463 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 Cedercrantz with a written judgment, reversing the verbal and public de- 
 cision of a year before. By what powers of law was this result attained ? 
 And how was the point brought again before his Honour ? I feel I shall 
 here strain the credulity of your readers, but our authority is the President 
 in person. The suit was brought by himself in his capacity (perhaps an 
 imaginary one) of King's adviser ; it was defended by himself in his capa- 
 city of President of the Council; no notice had been given, the parties 
 were not summoned, they were advised neither of the trial nor the judg- 
 ment; so far as can be learned, two persons only met and parted— the 
 first was the plaintiff and defendant rolled in one, the other was a judge 
 who had decided black a year ago, and had now intimated a modest 
 willingness to decide white. 
 
 But it is possible to fo low more closely these original proceedings. 
 Baron von Pilsach sat down (he told us) in his capacity of adviser to the 
 King, and wrote to himse'.f, in his capacity of President of the Council, 
 an eloquent letter of reprimand three pages long ; an unknown English 
 artist clothed it for him in good language ; and nothing remained but to 
 have it signed by King Malietoa, to whom it was attributed. " So long 
 as he knows how to sign! "—a white official is said thus to have summed 
 up, with a shrug, the qualifications necessary in a Samoan king. It was 
 signed accordingly, though whether the King knew what he was signing 
 is matter of debate ; and thus regularised, it was forwarded to the Chief 
 Justice enclosed in a letter of adhesion from the President. Such as they 
 were, these letters appear to have been the pleadings on which the Chief 
 Justice proceeded ; such as they were, they seem to have been the docu- 
 ments in this unusual cause. 
 
 Suppose an unfortunate error to have been made, suppose a reversal of 
 the Court's finding and the year's policy to have become immediately 
 needful, wisdom would indicate an extreme frankness of demeanour. And 
 our two officials preferred a policy of irritating dissimulation. While the 
 revolution was being prepared behind the curtain, the President was hold- 
 ing night sessions of the municipal council. What was the business? 
 No other than to prepare an ordinance regulating those very customs 
 which he was secretly conspiring to withdraw from their control. And 
 it was a piece of duplicity of a similar nature which first awoke the echoes 
 of Apia by its miscarriage. The council had sent up for the approval of 
 the Consular Board a project of several bridges, one of which, that of the 
 Vaisingano, was of chief importance to the town. To sanction so much 
 
 464 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 fresh expense, at the very moment when, to his secret knowledge, the 
 municipality was to be left bare of funds, appeared to one of the Consuls 
 an unworthy act ; and the proposal was accordingly disallowed. The peo- 
 ple of Apia are extremely swift to guess. No sooner was the Vaisingano 
 bridge denied them than they leaped within a measurable distance of 
 the truth. It was remembered that the Chief Justice had but recently 
 (this time by a decision regularly obtained) placed the municipal funds at 
 the President's mercy ; talk ran high of collusion between the two officials ; 
 it was rumoured the safe had been already secretly drawn upon; the 
 newspaper being at this juncture suddenly and rather mysteriously sold, 
 it was rumoured it had been bought for the officials with municipal money, 
 and the Apians crowded in consequence to the municipal meeting on 
 April I , with minds already heated. 
 
 The President came on his side armed with the secret judgment ; and 
 the hour being now come, he unveiled his work of art to the municipal 
 councillors. On the strength of the Chief Justice's decision, to his know- 
 ledge, and with the daily countenance of the President, they had for 
 twelve months received and expended the revenue from customs. They 
 learned now that this was wrong ; they learned not only that they were 
 to receive no more, but that they must refund what they had already 
 spent; and the total sum amounting to about $25,000, and there being 
 less than $20,000 in the treasury, they learned that they were bankrupt. 
 And with the next breath the President reassured them ; time was to 
 be given to these miserable debtors, and the King in his clemency would 
 even advance them from their own safe— now theirs no longer— a loan of 
 $3000 against current expenses. If the municipal council of Apia be far 
 from an ideal body, at least it makes roads and builds bridges, at least 
 it does something to justify its existence and reconcile the ratepayer to 
 the rates. This was to cease : all the funds husbanded for this end were 
 to be transferred to the Government at Mulinuu, which has never done 
 anything to mention but pay salaries, and of which men have long ceased 
 to expect anything else but that it shall continue to pay salaries till it die 
 of inanition. Let us suppose this raid on the municipal treasury to have 
 been just and needful. It is plain, even if introduced in the most con- 
 ciliatory manner, it could never have been welcome. And, as it was, the 
 sting was in the manner— in the secrecy and the surprise, in the dissimu- 
 lation, the dissonant decisions, the appearance of collusion between the 
 officials, and the offer of a loan too small to help. Bitter words were 
 
 46^^ 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 spoken at the council-table ; the public joined with shouts ; it was openly 
 proposed to overpower the President and seize the treasury key. Baron 
 von Pilsach possesses the redeeming rudimentary virtue of courage. It 
 required courage to come at all on such an errand to those he had de- 
 ceived; and amidst violent voices and menacing hands he displayed a 
 constancy worthy of a better cause. The council broke tumultuously 
 up ; the inhabitants crowded to a public meeting ; the Consuls, acquainted 
 with the alarming effervescency of feeling, communicated their willing- 
 ness to meet the municipal councillors and arrange a compromise; and 
 the inhabitants renewed by acclamation the mandate of their representa- 
 tives. The same night these sat in council with the Consular Board, and 
 a modus vivendi was agreed upon, which was rejected the next morn- 
 ing by the President. 
 
 The representations of the Consuls had, however, their effect ; and when 
 the council met again on April 6, Baron von Pilsach was found to have 
 entirely modified his attitude. The bridge over the Vaisingano was con- 
 ceded ; the sum of $3000 offered to the council was increased to $9000, 
 about one half of the existing funds ; the Samoan Government, which 
 was to profit by the customs, now agreed to bear the expenses of collec- 
 tion ; the President, while refusing to be limited to a specific figure, prom- 
 ised an anxious parsimony in the Government expenditure, admitted his 
 recent conduct had been of a nature to irritate the councillors, and frankly 
 proposed it should be brought under the notice of the Powers. I should 
 not be a fair reporter if 1 did not praise his bearing. In the midst of men 
 whom he had grossly deceived, and who had recently insulted him in 
 return, he behaved himself with tact and temper. And largely in conse- 
 quence his modus vivendi was accepted under protest, and the matter in 
 dispute referred without discussion to the Powers. 
 
 I would like to refer for one moment to my former letter. Tho Manono 
 prisoners were solemnly sentenced to six months' imprisonment ; and, by 
 some unexplained and secret process, the sentence was increased to one 
 of banishment. The fact seems to have rather amused the Governments 
 at home. It did not at all amuse us here on the spot. But we sought 
 consolation by remembering that the President was a layman, and the 
 Chief Justice had left the islands but the day before. Let Mr. Cedercrantz 
 return, we thought, and Arthur would be come again. Well, Arthur 
 is come. And now we begin to think he was perhaps an approving, 
 if an absent, party to the scandal. For do we not find, in the case ot 
 
 a66 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 the municipal treasury, the same disquieting features? A decision is 
 publicly delivered, it is acted on for a year, and by some secret and in- 
 explicable process we find it suddenly reversed. We are supposed to 
 be governed by English law. Is this English law ? Is it law at all ? 
 Does it permit a state of society in which a citizen can live and act with 
 confidence ? And when we are asked by natives to explain these pecu- 
 liarities of white man's government and white man's justice, in what 
 form of words are we to answer ? 
 
 yipril 12. 
 
 Fresh news reaches me ; I have once again to admire the accuracy of 
 lumour in Apia, and that which I had passed over with a reference be- 
 comes the head and front of our contention. The Samoa Times was 
 nominally purchased by a gentleman who, whatever be his other recom- 
 mendations, was notoriously ill off. There was paid down for it ;^6oo 
 in gold, a huge sum of ready money for Apia, above all in gold, and all 
 men wondered where it came from. It is this which has been discovered : 
 The wrapper of each rouleau was found to be signed by Mr. Martin, 
 collector for the municipality as well as for the Samoan Government, and 
 countersigned by Mr. Savile, his assistant. In other words, the money 
 had left either the municipal or the Government safe. 
 
 The position of the President is thus extremely exposed. His accounts 
 up to January i are in the hands of auditors. The next term of March 
 31 is already past, and although the natural course has been repeatedly 
 suggested to him, he has never yet permitted the verification of the bal- 
 ance in his safe. The case would appear less strong against the Chief 
 Justice. Yet a month has not elapsed since he placed the funds at the 
 disposal of the President, on the avowed ground that the population of 
 Apia was unfit to be entrusted with its own affairs. And the very week 
 of the purchase he reversed his own previous decision and liberated his 
 colleague from the last remaining vestige of control. Beyond the extent 
 of these judgments, I doubt if this astute personage will be found to have 
 committed himself in black and white ; and the more foolhardy President 
 may thus be left in the top of the breach alone. 
 
 Let it be explained or apportioned as it may, this additional scandal is 
 felt to have overfilled the measure. It may be argued that the President 
 has great tact and the Chief Justice a fund of philosophy. Give us instead 
 a judge who shall proceed according to the forms of justice, and a trea- 
 surer who shall permit the verification of his balances. Surely there can 
 
 467 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 be found among the millions of Europe two frank and honest men, one 
 of whom shall be acquainted with English law, and the other possess the 
 ordinary virtues of a clerk, over whose heads, in the exercise of their duties, 
 six months may occasionally pass without painful disclosures and dangerous 
 scandals ; who shall not weary us with their surprises and intrigues ; who 
 shall not amaze us with their lack of penetration ; who shall not, in the 
 hour of their destitution, seem to have diverted ;^6oo of public money 
 for the purchase of an inconsiderable sheet, or at a time when eight prov- 
 inces of discontented natives threaten at any moment to sweep their in- 
 effective Government into the sea to have sought safety and strength in 
 gagging the local press of Apia. If it be otherwise— if we cannot be 
 relieved, if the Powers are satisfied with the conduct of Mr. Cedercrantz 
 and Baron Senfft von Pilsach ; if these were sent here with the under- 
 standing that they should secretly purchase, perhaps privately edit, a little 
 sheet of two pages, issued from a crazy wooden building at the mission 
 gate; if it were, indeed, intended that, for this important end, they 
 should divert (as it seems they have done) public funds and affront all the 
 forms of law— we whites can only bow the head. We are here quite 
 helpless. If we would complain of Baron Pilsach, it can only be to Mr. 
 Cedercrantz ; if we would complain of Mr. Cedercrantz, and the Powers 
 will not hear us, the circle is complete. A nightly guard surrounds and 
 protects their place of residence, while the house of the King is cynically 
 left without the pickets. Secure from interference, one utters the voice 
 of the law, the other moves the hands of authority ; and now they seem 
 to have sequestered in the course of a single week the only available funds 
 and the only existing paper in the islands. 
 
 But there is one thing they forget. It is not the whites who menace 
 the duration of their Government, and it is only the whites who read the 
 newspaper. Mataafa sits hard by in his armed camp and sees. He sees 
 the weakness, he counts the scandals of their Government. He sees his 
 rival and " brother " sitting disconsidered at their doors, like Lazarus be- 
 fore the house of Dives, and, if he is not very fond of his "brother," he 
 is very scrupulous of native dignities. He has seen his friends menaced 
 with midnight destruction in the Government jail, and deported without 
 form of law. He is not himself a talker, and his thoughts are hid from 
 us ; but what is said by his more hasty partisans we know. On March 
 29, the day after the Chief Justice signed the secret judgment, three days 
 before it was made public, and while the purchase of the newspaper was 
 
 468 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 yet in treaty, a native orator stood up in an assembly. " Who asked the 
 Great Powers to make laws for us ; to bring strangers here to rule us ? " 
 he cried. " We want no white officials to bind us in the bondage of tax- 
 ation." Here is the changed spirit which these gentlemen have produced 
 by a misgovernment of fifteen months. Here is their peril, which no 
 purchase of newspapers and no subsequent editorial suppressions can avert. 
 It may be asked if it be still time to do anything. It is, indeed, 
 already late; and these gentlemen, arriving in a golden moment, have 
 fatally squandered opportunity and perhaps fatally damaged white pres- 
 tige. Even the whites themselves they have not only embittered, 
 but corrupted. We were pained the other day when our municipal 
 councillors refused, by a majority, to make the production of invoices 
 obligatory at the Custom-house. Yet who shall blame them, when 
 the Chief Justice, with a smallness of capacity at which all men won- 
 dered, refused to pay, and, I believe, still withholds, the duties on his 
 imports ? He was above the law, being the head of it ; and this was 
 how he preached by example. He refused to pay his customs ; the white 
 councillors, following in his wake, refuse to take measures to enforce them 
 against others; and the natives, following in his wake, refuse to pay 
 their taxes. These taxes it may, perhaps, be never possible to raise again 
 directly. Taxes have never been popular in Samoa ; yet in the golden 
 moment when this Government began its course, a majority of Samoans 
 paid them. Every province should have seen some part of that money 
 expended in its bounds ; every nerve should have been strained to interest, 
 and gratify the natives in the manner of its expenditure. It has been 
 spent instead on Mulinuu, to pay four white officials, two of whom came 
 in the suite of the Chief Justice, and to build a so-called Government 
 House, in which the President resides, and the very name of taxes is be- 
 come abhorrent. What can still be done, and what must be done imme- 
 diately, is to give us a new Chief Justice— a lawyer, a man of honour, a 
 man who will not commit himself to one side, whether in politics or in 
 private causes, and who shall not have the appearance of trying to coin 
 money at every joint of our affairs. So much the better if he be a man 
 of talent, but we do not ask so much. With an ordinary appreciation of 
 law, an ordinary discretion, and ordinary generosity, he may still, in the 
 course of time, and with good fortune, restore confidence and repair the 
 breaches in the prestige of the whites. As for the President, there is much 
 discussion. Some think the office is superfluous, still more the salary to 
 
 469 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 be excessive ; some regard the present man, who is young and personally 
 pleasing, as a tool and scapegoat for another, and these are tempted to 
 suppose that, with a new and firm Chief Justice, he might yet redeem 
 his character. He would require at least to clear himself of the affair of 
 the rouleaux, or all would be against him.— I am, Sir, your obedient 
 servant, Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 
 IV 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES'" 
 
 Samoa, June 22, i8<)2. 
 
 Sir,— I read in a New Zealand paper that you published my last with 
 misgiving. The writer then goes on to remind me that I am a novelist, 
 and to bid me return to my romances and leave the affairs of Samoa 
 to subeditors and distant quarters of the world. "We, in common 
 with other journals, have correspondents in Samoa," he complains, "and 
 yet we have no news from them of the curious conspiracy which Mr. 
 Stevenson appears to have unearthed, and which, if it had any real ex- 
 istence, would be known to everybody on the island." As this is the 
 only voice which has yet reached me from beyond the seas, I am con- 
 strained to make some answer. But it must not be supposed that, 
 though you may perhaps have been alone to publish, I have been alone 
 to write. The same story is now in the hands of the three Governments 
 from their respective Consuls. Not only so, but the complaint to the 
 municipal council, drawn by two able solicitors, has been likewise laid 
 before them. 
 
 This at least is public, and I may say notorious : The solicitors were 
 authorised to proceed with their task at a public meeting. The President 
 (for I was there and heard him) approved the step, though he refrained 
 from voting. But he seemed to have entertained a hope of burking, or, 
 at least, indefinitely postponing, the whole business, and, when the meet- 
 ing was over and its proceedings had been approved (as is necessary) by 
 the Consular Board, he neglected to notify the two gentlemen appointed 
 of that approval. In a large city the trick might have succeeded for a 
 time ; in a village like Apia, where all news leaks out and the King meets 
 the cobbler daily, it did no more than to advertise his own artfulness. And 
 the next he learned, the case for the municipal council had been prepared, 
 approved by the Consuls, and despatched to the Great Powers. I am 
 accustomed to have my word doubted in this matter, and must here look 
 
 470 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 to have it doubted once again. But the fact is certain. The two solici- 
 tors (Messrs. Carruthers and Cooper) were actually cited to appear before 
 the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court. I have seen the summons, and 
 the summons was the first and last of this State trial. The proceeding, 
 instituted in an hour of temper, was, in a moment OT reaction, allowed 
 to drop. 
 
 About the same date a final blow befell the Government of Mulinuu. 
 Let me remind you, Sir, of the situation. The funds of the municipality 
 had been suddenly seized, on what appears a collusive judgment, by the 
 bankrupt Government of Mulinuu. The paper, the organ of opposition, 
 was bought by a man of straw ; and it was found the purchase-money 
 had been paid in rouleaux from the Government safes. The Government 
 consisted of two men. One, the President and treasurer, had a ready 
 means to clear himself and dispose for ever of the scandal— that means, 
 apart from any scandal, was his mere, immediate duty,— viz., to have his 
 balance verified. And he has refused to do so, and he still refuses. But 
 the other, though he sits abstruse, must not think to escape his share of 
 blame. He holds a high situation ; he is our chief magistrate, he has 
 heard this miserable tale of the rouleaux, at which the Consuls looked so 
 black, and why has he done nothing ? When he found that the case 
 against himself and his colleague had gone to the three Powers a little of 
 the suddenest, he could launch summonses (which it seems he was after- 
 wards glad to disavow) against Messrs. Cooper and Carruthers. But 
 then, when the whole island murmured— then, when a large sum which 
 could be traced to the Government treasuries was found figuring in the 
 hands of a man of straw— where were his thunderbolts then ? For more 
 than a month the scandal has hung black about his colleague ; for more 
 than a month he has sat inert and silent; for more than a month, in 
 consequence, the last spark of trust in him has quite died out. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that the Government of Mulinuu ap- 
 proached the municipal council with a proposal to levy fresh taxes from 
 the whites. It was in these circumstances that the municipal council 
 answered, No. Public works have ceased, the destination of public 
 moneys is kept secret, and the municipal council resolved to stop supplies. 
 
 At this, it seems, the Government awoke to a sense of their position. 
 The natives had long ceased to pay them ; now the whites had followed suit. 
 Destitution had succeeded to embarrassment. And they made haste to join 
 with themselves another who did not share in their unpopularity. This 
 
 47' 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 gentleman, Mr. Thomas Maben, Government surveyor, is himself deserv- 
 edly popular, and the office created for him, that of Secretary of State, is 
 one in which, under happier auspices, he might accomplish much. He is 
 promised a free hand ; he has succeeded to, and is to exercise entirely, 
 those vague functions claimed by the President under his style of adviser 
 to the King. It will be well if it is found to be so in the field of prac- 
 tice. It will be well if Mr. Maben find any funds left for his not exorbitant 
 salary. It would doubtless have been better, in this day of their desti- 
 tution and in the midst of growing Samoan murmurs against the high 
 salaries of whites, if the Government could have fallen on some expedient 
 which did not imply another. And there is a question one would fain 
 have answered. The President claims to hold two offices— that of ad- 
 viser to the King, that of President of the Municipal Council. A year ago, 
 in the time of the dynamite affair, he proposed to resign the second and 
 retain his whole emoluments as adviser to the King. He has now prac- 
 tically resigned the first ; and we wish to know if he now proposes to 
 retain his entire salary as President of the Council.— I am, etc., 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TIMES " 
 
 j4pia,July 19, 1892. 
 Sir,— I am at last in receipt of your article upon my letter. It was as 
 I supposed ; you had a difficulty in believing the events recorded ; and, to 
 my great satisfaction, you suggest an inquiry. You observe the marks of 
 passion in my letter, or so it seems to you. But your summary shows 
 me that I have not failed to communicate with a sufficient clearness the 
 facts alleged. Passion may have seemed to burn in my words ; it has not, 
 at least, impaired my ability to record with precision a plain tale. The 
 " cold language " of Consular reports (which you say you would prefer) 
 is doubtless to be had upon inquiry in the proper quarter; I make bold 
 to say it will be found to bear me out. Of the law case for the muni- 
 cipality I can speak with more assurance; for, since it was sent, I have 
 been shown a copy. Its language is admirably cold, yet it tells (it is 
 possible in a much better dialect) the same remarkable story. But all 
 these corroborations sleep in official keeping ; and, thanks to the generosity 
 with which you have admitted me to your columns, I stand alone before 
 the public. It is my prayer that this may cease as soon as possible. 
 
 472 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 There is other evidence gone home ; let that be produced. Or let us have 
 (as you propose) an inquiry ; give to the Chief Justice and the President 
 an opportunity to clear their characters, and to myself that liberty (which 
 I am so often requested to take) of returning to my private business.— I 
 am, Sir, your obedient servant, Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 VI 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OP THE " TIMES " 
 
 Apia, September 14, 1892. 
 
 Sir,— The Peninsula of Mulinuu was claimed by the German firm; and 
 in case their claim should be found good, they had granted to the Samoan 
 Government an option to buy at a certain figure. Hereon stand the 
 houses of our officials, in particular that of the Chief Justice. It has long 
 been a problem here whether this gentleman paid any rent, and the prob- 
 lem is now solved; the Chief Justice of Samoa was a squatter. On the 
 ground that the Government was about to purchase the peninsula, he 
 occupied a house ; on the ground that the Germans were about to sell it, 
 he refused to pay them any rent. The firm seemed to have no remedy 
 but to summon the squatter before himself, and hear over again from the 
 official what they had heard already from the disastrous tenant. But 
 even in Samoa an ingenious man, inspired by annoyance, may find means 
 of self-protection. The house was no part of the land, nor included in 
 the option ; the firm put it up for sale ; and the Government, under pain 
 of seeing the Chief Justice houseless, was obliged to buy it. 
 
 In the meanwhile the German claim to Mulinuu was passed by the Land 
 Commission and sent on to the Chief Justice on the 17th of May. He 
 ended by confirming the report ; but though his judgment bears date the 
 9th of August, it was not made public till the 1 5th. So far as we are 
 aware, and certainly so far as Samoa has profited by his labours, his 
 Honour may be said to have had nothing else to do but attend to this one 
 piece of business ; he was being paid to do so at the rate of ;^i 00 a month ; 
 and it took him ninety days, or about as long as it took Napoleon to 
 recapture and to lose again his empire. But better late than never; and 
 the Germans, rejoicing in the decision, summoned the Government to 
 complete the purchase or to waive their option. There was again a delay 
 in answering, for the policy of all parts of this extraordinary Government 
 is on one model ; and when the answer came it was only to announce a 
 fresh deception. The German claim had passed the Land Commission 
 
 473 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 and the Supreme Court, it was good against objections, but it appeared 
 it was not yet good for registration, and must still be resurveyed by a 
 "Government surveyor." The option thus continues to brood over the 
 land of Mulinuu, the Government to squat there without payment, and 
 the German firm to stand helpless and dispossessed. What can they 
 do ? Their adversary is their only judge. I hear it calculated that the 
 present state of matters may be yet spun out for months, at the end of 
 which period there must come at last a day of reckoning ; and the pur- 
 chase-money will have to be found or the option to be waived and the 
 Government to flit elsewhere. As for the question cf arrears of rent, it 
 will be in judicious hands, and his Honour may be trusted to deal with 
 it in a manner suitable to the previous history of the case. 
 
 But why (it will be asked) spin out by these excessive methods a thread 
 of such tenuity ? Why go to such lengths for four months longer of fal- 
 lacious solvency ? I expect not to be believed, but I think the Govern- 
 ment still hopes. A war-ship, under a hot-headed captain, might be 
 decoyed into hostilities; the taxes might begin to come in again; the 
 three Powers might become otherwise engaged and the little stage of 
 Samoa escape observation— indeed, I know not what they hope, but they 
 hope something. There lives on in their breasts a remainder coal of 
 ambition still unquenched. Or it is only so that I can explain a late 
 astonishing sally of his Honour's. In a long and elaborate judgment he 
 has pared the nails, and indeed removed the fingers, of his only rival, 
 the municipal magistrate. For eighteen months he has seen the lower 
 Court crowded with affairs, the while his own stood unfrequented like 
 an obsolete churchyard. He may have remarked with envy many hundred 
 cases passing through his rival's hands, cases of assault, cases of larceny, 
 ranging in the last four months from 2s. up to ;^i 125. ; or he may have 
 viewed with displeasure that despatch of business which was characteristic 
 of the Magistrate, Mr. Cooper. An end, at least, has been made of these 
 abuses ; Mr. Cooper is henceforth to draw his salary for the minimum of 
 public service; and all larcenies and assaults, however trivial, must go, 
 according to the nationality of those concerned, before the Consular 01 
 the Supreme Courts. 
 
 To this portentous judgment there are two sides— a practical and legal. 
 And first as to the practical. For every blow struck or shilling stolen the 
 parties must now march out to Mulinuu and place themselves at the mercy 
 of a Court, which if Hamlet had known, he would have referred wdth 
 
 474 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 more emotion to the law's delays. It is feared they will not do so, and 
 that crime will go on in consequence unpunished, and increased by in- 
 dulgence. But this is nothing. The Court of the municipal magistrate 
 was a convenient common-ground and clearing-house tor our manifold 
 nationalities. It has now been, for all purpose of serious utility, abolished, 
 and the result is distraction. There was a recent trumpery case, heard 
 by Mr. Cooper amid shouts of mirth. It resolved itself (if I remember 
 rightly) into three charges of assault with counter-charges, and three of 
 abusive language with the same; and the parties represented only two 
 nationalities— a small allowance for Apia. Yet in our new world, since 
 the Chief Justice's decision, this vulgar shindy would have split up into 
 six several suits before three different Courts ; the charges must have been 
 heard by one judge, the counter-charges by another ; the whole nauseous 
 evidence six times repeated, and the lawyers six times feed. 
 
 Remains the legal argument. His Honour admits the municipality to 
 be invested " with such legislative powers as generally constitute a police 
 jurisdiction " ; he does not deny the municipality is empowered to take 
 steps for the protection of the person, and it was argued this implied a 
 jurisdiction in cases of assault. But this argument (observes his Honour) 
 "proves too much, and consequently nothing. For like reasons the 
 municipal council should have power to provide for the punishment of 
 all felonies against the person, and I suppose the property as well." And, 
 filled with a just sense that a merely police jurisdiction should be limited, 
 he limits it with a vengeance by the exclusion of all assaults and all lar- 
 cenies. A pity he had not looked into the Berlin Act! He would have 
 found it already limited there by the same power which called it into 
 being— limited to fines not exceeding $200 and imprisonment not ex- 
 tending beyond 1 80 days. Nay, and I think he might have even reasoned 
 from this discovery that he was himself somewhat in error. For, assaults 
 and larcenies being excluded, what kind of enormity is that which is to 
 be visited with a fine of £40 or an imprisonment of half a year ? It is 
 perhaps childish to pursue further this childish controversialist. But there 
 is one passage, if he had dipped into the Berlin Act, that well might have 
 arrested his attention : that in which he is himself empowered to deal 
 with "crimes and offences, . , . subject, however, to the provisions 
 defining the jurisdiction of the municipal magistrate of Apia." 
 
 I trust, Sir, this is the last time I shall have to trouble you with these 
 twopenny concerns. But until some step is taken by the three Powers, 
 
 475 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 or until I have quite exhausted your indulgence, I shall continue to report 
 our scandals as they arise. Once more, one thing or other : Either what 
 I write is false, and I should be chastised as a calumniator ; or else it is 
 true, and these officials are unfit for their position.— I am, etc., 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 P. S. —The mail is already closed when 1 receive at last decisive con- 
 firmation of the purchase of the Samoa Times by the Samoan Govern- 
 ment. It has never been denied ; it is now admitted. The paper which 
 they bought so recently, they are already trying to sell ; and have received 
 and refused an offer of ^ 1 50 for what they bought for upwards of ^^600, 
 Surely we may now demand the attention of the three Powers. 
 
 VII 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " PALL MALL GAZETTE " 
 I 
 
 September 4, /8p^. 
 In June it became clear that the King's Government was weary of 
 waiting upon Europe, as it had been clear long before that Europe would 
 do nothing. The last commentary on the Berlin Act was read. Malietoa 
 Laupepa had been put in ex auctoritate by the Powers; the Powers 
 would not support him even by a show of strength, and there was no- 
 thing left but to fall back on an " Election according to the Laws and Cus- 
 toms of Samoa "—by arbitrament of rifle-bullets and blackened faces. 
 Instantly heaven was darkened by a brood of rumours, random calumnies, 
 and idle tales. As we rode, late at night, through the hamlet near my 
 house, we saw fires lighted in the houses, and eager talkers discussing the 
 last report. The King was sick ; he was dying ; he was perfectly well ; 
 he was seen riding furiously by night in the back parts of Apia, and 
 covering his face as he rode. Mataafa was in favour with the Germans ; 
 he was to be made a German king ; he was secure of the support of all 
 Samoa ; he had no following whatsoever. The name of every chief and 
 village (with many that were new to the hearer) came up in turn, to be 
 dubbed Laupepa, or Mataafa, or both at the same time, or neither. Dr. 
 George Brown, the missionary, had just completed a tour of the islands. 
 There are few men in the worid with a more mature knowledge of native 
 character, and I applied to him eageriy for an estimate of the relative 
 forces. '' When the first shot is fired, and not before," said he, ''you 
 
 476 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 will know who is who. " The event has shown that he might have gone 
 yet further; for even after shots were fired and men slain, an important 
 province was still hesitating and trimming. 
 
 Mataafa lay in Malie. He had an armed picket at a ford some two miles 
 from Apia, where they sat in a prodigious state of vigilance and glee ; and 
 his whole troop, although not above five hundred strong, appeared ani- 
 mated with the most warlike spirit. For himself, he waited, as he had 
 waited for two years ; wrote eloquent letters, the time to answer which was 
 quite gone by ; and looked on while his enemies painfully collected their 
 forces. Doubtless to the last he was assured and deceived by vain 
 promises of help. 
 
 The process of gathering a royal army in Samoa is cumbrous and dila- 
 tory in the extreme. There is here none of the expedition of the fiery 
 cross and the bale-fire ; but every step is diplomatic. Each village, with 
 a great expense of eloquence, has to be wiled with promises and spurred 
 with threats, and the greater chieftains make stipulations ere they will 
 march. Tamasese, son to the late German puppet, and heir of his am- 
 bitions, demanded the vice-kingship as the price of his accession, though 
 I am assured that he demanded it in vain. The various provinces returned 
 various and unsatisfactory answers. Atua was off and on ; Tuamasaga 
 was divided ; Tutuila recalcitrant ; and for long the King sat almost solitary 
 under the windy palms of Mulinuu. It seemed indeed as if the war was 
 off, and the whole archipelago unanimous (in the native phrase) to sit still 
 and plant taro. 
 
 But at last, in the first days of July, Atua began to come in. Boats 
 arrived, thirty and fifty strong, a drum and a very ill-played bugle giving 
 time to the oarsmen, the whole crew uttering at intervals a savage howl ; 
 and on the decked fore-sheets of the boat the village champion, frantically 
 capering and dancing. Parties were to be seen encamped in palm-groves 
 with their rifles stacked. The shops were emptied of red handkerchiefs, 
 the rally ing-sign, or (as a man might say) the uniform of the Royal army. 
 There was spirit shown ; troops of handsome lads marched in a right 
 manly fashion, with their guns on their shoulders, to the music of the 
 drum and the bugle or the tin whistle. From a hamlet close to my own 
 doors a contingent of six men marched out. Their leader's kit contained 
 one stick of tobacco, four boxes of matches, and the inevitable red hand- 
 kerchief ; in his case it was of silk, for he had come late to the purchasing, 
 and the commoner materials were exhausted. This childish band of 
 
 477 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 braves marched one afternoon to a neighbouring hill, and the s?me night 
 returned to their houses on the ground that it was " uncomfortable " in 
 the bush. An excellent old fellow, who had had enough of war in many 
 campaigns, took refuge in my service from the conscription, but in vain. 
 The village had decided no warrior might hang back. One summoner 
 arrived; and then followed some negotiations— 1 have no authority to 
 say what : enough that the messenger departed and our friend remained. 
 But, alas! a second envoy followed and proved to be of sterner composi- 
 tion; and with a basket full of food, kava, and tobacco, the reluctant 
 hero proceeded to the wars. I am sure they had few handsomer soldiers, 
 if, perhaps, some that were more willing. And he would have been better 
 to be armed. His gun— but in Mr. Kipling's pleasant catchword, that is 
 another story. 
 
 War, to the Samoan of mature years, is often an unpleasant necessity. 
 To the young boy it is a heaven of immediate pleasures, as well as an 
 opportunity of ultimate glory. Women march with the troops— even 
 the Taupo-sa, or sacred maid of the village, accompanies her father in 
 the field to carry cartridges, and bring him water to drink,— and their 
 bright eyes are ready to " rain influence " and reward valour. To what 
 grim deeds this practice may conduct I shall have to say later on. In the 
 rally of their arms, it is at least wholly pretty ; and I have one pleasant 
 picture of a war-party marching out ; the men armed and boastful, their 
 heads bound with the red handkerchief, their faces blacked— and two girls 
 marching in their midst under European parasols. 
 
 On Saturday, July 8, by the early morning, the troops began to file 
 westward from Apia, and about noon found themselves face to face with 
 the lines of Mataafa in the German plantation of Vaitele. The armies 
 immediately fraternised ; kava was made by the ladies, as who should say 
 tea, at home, and partaken of by the braves with many truculent ex- 
 pressions. One chief on the King's side, revolted by the extent of these 
 familiarities, began to beat his followers with a staff. But both parties 
 were still intermingled between the lines, and the chiefs on either side 
 were conversing, and even embracing, at the moment when an accidental, 
 or perhaps a treacherous, shot precipitated the engagement. 1 cannot 
 find there was any decisive difference in the numbers actually under fire ; 
 but the Mataafas appear to have been ill posted and ill led. Twice their 
 flank was turned, their line enfiladed, and themselves driven, with the 
 loss of about thirty, from two successive cattle walls. A third wall 
 
 478 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 afforded them a more effectual shelter, and night closed on the field of 
 battle without further advantage. All night the Royal troops hailed 
 volleys of bullets at this obstacle. With the earliest light, a charge proved 
 it to be quite deserted, and from farther down the coast smoke was seen 
 rising from the houses of Malie. Mataafa had precipitately fled, destroy- 
 ing behind him the village, which, for two years, he had been raising 
 and beautifying. 
 
 So much was accomplished: what was to follow? Mataafa took 
 refuge in Manono, and cast up forts. His enemies, far from following 
 up this advantage, held /o«os and made speeches and found fault. I 
 believe the majority of the King's army had marched in a state of con- 
 tinuous indecision, and maintaining an attitude of impartiality more to be 
 admired in the cabinet of the philosopher than in the field of war. It is 
 certain at least that only one province has as yet fired a shot for Malietoa 
 Laupepa. The valour of the Tuamasaga was sufficient and prevailed. 
 But Atua was in the rear, and has as yet done nothing. As for the men 
 of Crana, so far from carrying out the plan agreed upon, and blocking 
 the men of Malie, on the morning of the 8th, they were entertaining an 
 embassy from Mataafa, and they suffered his fleet of boats to escape 
 without a shot through certain dangerous narrows of the lagoon, and the 
 chief himself to pass on foot and unmolested along the whole foreshore 
 of their province. No adequate excuse has been made for this half-hearted- 
 ness— or treachery. It was a piece of the whole which was a specimen. 
 There are too many strings in a Samoan intrigue for the merely European 
 mind to follow, and the desire to serve upon both sides, and keep a door 
 open for reconciliation, was manifest almost throughout. A week passed 
 in these divided counsels. Savaii had refused to receive Mataafa— it is said 
 they now hesitated to rise for the King, and demanded instead a/ono 
 (or council) of both sides. And it seemed at least possible that the Royal 
 army might proceed no farther, and the unstable alliance be dissolved. 
 
 On Sunday, the i6th. Her British Majesty's ship Katoomha, Captain 
 Bickford, C.M.G., arrived in Apia with fresh orders. Had she but come 
 ten days earlier the whole of this miserable business would have been 
 prevented, for the three Powers were determined to maintain Malietoa 
 Laupepa by arms, and had declared finally against Mataafa. Right or 
 wrong, it was at least a decision, and therefore welcome. It may not be 
 best— it was something. No honest friend to Samoa can pretend any- 
 thing but relief that the three Powers should at last break their vacillating 
 
 479 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 silence. It is of a piece with their whole policy in the islands that they 
 should have hung in stays for upwards of two years— of a piece with 
 their almost uniform ill-fortune that, eight days before their purpose was 
 declared, war should have marked the country with burned houses and 
 severed heads. 
 
 There is another side to the medal of Samoan warfare. So soon as an 
 advantage is obtained, a new and (to us) horrible animal appears upon 
 the scene— the Head-hunter. Again and again we have reasoned with 
 our boys against this bestial practice ; but reason and (upon this one point) 
 even ridicule are vain. They admit it to be indefensible; they allege 
 its imperative necessity. One young man, who had seen his father take 
 a head in the late war, spoke of the scene with shuddering revolt, and yet 
 said he must go and do likewise himself in the war which was to come. 
 How else could a man prove he was brave ? and had not every country its 
 own customs ? 
 
 Accordingly, as occasion offered, these same pleasing children, who 
 had just been drinking kava with their opponents, fell incontinently on 
 the dead and dying, and secured their grisly trophies. It should be said, 
 in fairness, that the Mataafas had no opportunity to take heads, but that 
 their chief, taught by the lesson of Fangalii, had forbidden the practice. 
 It is doubtful if he would have been obeyed, and yet his power over his 
 people was so great that the German plantation, where they lay some 
 time, and were at last defeated, had not to complain of the theft of a 
 single cocoanut. Hateful as it must always be to mutilate and murder 
 the disabled, there were in this day's affray in Vaitele circumstances yet 
 more detestable. Fifteen heads were brought in all to Mulinuu. They 
 were carried with parade in front of the fine house which our late Presi- 
 dent built for himself before he was removed. Here, on the verandah, 
 the King sat to receive them, and utter words of course and compliment 
 to each successful warrior. They were spoila opima in the number. 
 Leaupepe, Mataafa's nephew— or, as Samoans say, his son— had fallen 
 by the first wall, and whether from those sentiments of kindred and friend- 
 ship that so often unite the combatants in civil strife, or to mark by an 
 unusual formality the importance of the conquest, not only his head but 
 his mutilated body also was brought in. From the mat in which the 
 corpse was enveloped a bloody hand protruded, and struck a chill in 
 
 480 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 white eye-witnesses. It were to attribute to (Malietoa) Laupepa senti- 
 ments entirely foreign to his race and training, if we were to suppose him 
 otherwise than gratified. 
 
 But it was not so throughout. Every country has its customs, say 
 native apologists, and one of the most decisive customs of Samoa ensures 
 the immunity of women. They go to the front, as our women of yore 
 went to a tournament. Bullets are blind ; and they must take their risk 
 of bullets, but of nothing else. They serve out cartridges and water ; 
 they jeer the faltering and defend the wounded. Even in this skirmish 
 of Vaitele they distinguished themselves on either side. One dragged her 
 skulking husband from a hole, and drove him to the front. Another, 
 seeing her lover fall, snatched up his gun, kept the head-hunters at bay, 
 and drew him unmutilated from the field. Such services they have been 
 accustomed to pay for centuries ; and often, in the course of centuries, a 
 bullet or a spear must have despatched one of these warlike angels. 
 Often enough, too, the head-hunter, springing ghoul-like on fallen bodies, 
 must have decapitated a woman for a man. But, the case arising, there 
 was an established etiquette. So soon as the error was discovered tiie 
 head was buried, and the exploit forgotten. There had never yet, in the 
 history of Samoa, occurred an instance in which a man had taken a 
 woman's head and kept it and laid it at his monarch's feet. 
 
 Such was the strange and horrid spectacle, which must have immedi- 
 ately shaken the heart of Laupepa, and has since covered the faces of his 
 party with confusion. It is not quite certain if there were three, or only 
 two ; a recent attempt to reduce the number to one must be received with 
 caution as an afterthought ; the admissions in the beginning were too 
 explicit, the panic of shame and fear had been too sweeping. There is 
 scarce a woman of our native friends in Apia who can speak upon the 
 subject without terror; scarce any man without humiliation. And the 
 shock was increased out of measure by the fact that the head— or one of 
 the heads— was recognised ; recognised for the niece of one of the greatest 
 of court ladies ; recognised for a Taupo-sa, or sacred maid of a village 
 from Savaii. It seemed incredible that she— who had been chosen for virtue 
 and beauty, who went everywhere attended by the fairest maidens, and 
 watched over by vigilant duennas, whose part it was, in holiday costume, 
 to receive guests, to make kava, and to be the leader of the revels- 
 should become the victim of a brutal rally in a cow-park, and have her 
 face exposed for a trophy to the victorious king. 
 
 481 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 In all this muttering of aversion and alarm, no word has been openly 
 said. No punishment, no disgrace, has been inflicted on the perpetrators 
 of the outrage. King, Consuls, and mission appear to have held their peace 
 alike. I can understand a certain apathy in whites. Head-hunting, they 
 say, is a horrid practice : and will not stop to investigate its finer shades. 
 But the Samoan himself does not hesitate ; for him the act is portentous ; 
 and if it go unpunished, and set a fashion, its consequences must be dam- 
 nable. This is not a breach of a Christian virtue, of something half- 
 learned by rote, and from foreigners, in the last thirty years. It is a 
 flying in the face of their own native, instinctive, and traditional stan- 
 dard : tenfold more ominous and degrading. And, taking the matter for 
 all in all, it seems to me that head-hunting itself should be firmly and 
 immediately suppressed. "How else can a man prove himself to be 
 brave ? " my friend asked. But often enough these are but fraudulent 
 trophies. On the morrow of the fight at Vaitele, an Atua man discovered 
 a body lying in the bush ; he took the head. A day or two ago a party 
 was allowed to visit Manono. The King's troops on shore, observing 
 them put off from the rebel island, leaped to the conclusion that this 
 must be the wounded going to Apia, launched off .at once two armed 
 boats and overhauled the others— after heads. The glory of such exploits 
 is not apparent ; their power for degradation strikes the eyes. Lieutenant 
 Ulfsparre, our late Swedish Chief of Police and Commander of the forces, 
 told his men that if any of them took a head his own hand should 
 avenge it. That was talking ; I should like to see all in the same story 
 —King, Consuls, and missionaries— included. 
 
 The three Powers have at last taken hold here in Apia. But they 
 came the day after the fair; and the immediate business on hand is 
 very delicate. This morning, i8th. Captain Bickford, followed by two 
 Germans, sailed for Manono. If he shall succeed in persuading Mataafa 
 to surrender, all may be well. If he cannot, this long train of blunders 
 may end in— what is so often the result of blundering in the field of 
 politics— a horrible massacre. Those of us who remember the services of 
 Mataafa, his unfailing generosity and moderation in the past, and his be- 
 reavement in the present— as well as those who are only interested in a 
 mass of men and women, many of them our familiar friends, now pent 
 
 482 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 up on an island, and beleaguered by three war-ships and a Samoan army 
 —await the issue with dreadful expectation. 
 
 VIII 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TIMES " 
 
 Vailima, Apia, April 2}, i8p4. 
 
 Sir,— I last addressed you on the misconduct of certain officials here, 
 and I was so far happy as to have had my facts confirmed in every par- 
 ticular with but one exception. That exception, the affair of the dynamite, 
 has been secretly smuggled away ; you shall look in vain in either Blue- 
 book or White-book for any mention even of the charge ; it is gone like 
 the conjurer's orange. I might have been tempted to inquire into the 
 reason of this conspiracy of silence, whether the idea was conceived in 
 the bosoms of the three Powers themselves, or whether in the breasts of 
 the three Consuls, because one of their number was directly implicated. 
 And I might have gone on to consider the moral effect of such suppres- 
 sions, and to show how very idle they were, and how very undignified, 
 in the face of a small and compact population, where everybody sees and 
 hears, where everybody knows, and talks, and laughs. But only a personal 
 question remained, which I judged of no interest to the public. The 
 essential was accomplished. Baron Senfft was gone already. Mr. Ceder- 
 crantz still lingered among us in the character (I may say) of a private 
 citizen, his Court at last closed, only his pocket open for the receipt of his 
 salary, representing the dignity of the Berlin Act by sitting in the wind 
 on Mulinuu Point for several consecutive months— a curious phantom or 
 survival of a past age. The new officials were not as yet, because they had 
 not been created. And we fell into our old estate of government by the 
 three Consuls, as it was in the beginning before the Berlin Act existed ; as 
 it seems it will be to the end, after the Berlin Act has been swept away. 
 
 It was during the time of this triumvirate, and wholly at their instiga- 
 tion and under their conduct, that Mataafa was defeated, driven to 
 Manono, and (three war-ships coming opportunely to hand) forced to 
 surrender. I have been called a partisan of this chief's, and I accept the 
 term. I thought him, on the whole, the most honest man in Samoa, 
 not excepting white officials. I ventured to think he had been hardly 
 used by the Treaty Powers ; I venture to think so still. It was my opinion 
 that he should have been conjoined with Malietoa as Vice-King; and I 
 
 483 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 have seen no reason to change that opinion, except that the time for it 
 is past. Mataafa has played and lost ; an exile, and stripped of his titles, 
 he walks the exiguous beach of Jaluit, sees the German flag over his head, 
 and yearns for the land-w^ind of Upolu. In the politics of Samoa he is 
 no longer a factor ; and it only remains to speak of the manner in which 
 his rebellion was suppressed and punished. Deportation is, to the Samoan 
 mind, the punishment next to death, and thirteen of the chiefs engaged 
 were deported with their leader. Twenty-seven others were cast into the 
 jail. There they lie still ; the Government makes almost no attempt to 
 feed them, and they must depend on the activity of their families and 
 the charity of pitying whites. In the meantime, these very families are 
 overloaded with fines, the exorbitant sum of more than ;^66oo having 
 been laid on the chiefs and villages that took part with Mataafa. 
 
 So far we can only complain that the punishments have been severe 
 and the prison commissariat absent. But we have, besides, to regret the 
 repeated scandals in connection with the conduct of the war, and we 
 look in vain for any sign of punishment. The Consuls had to employ 
 barbarous hands; we might expect outrages; we did expect them to be 
 punished, or at least disowned. Thus, certain Mataafa chiefs were landed,, 
 and landed from a British man-of-war, to be shamefully abused, beaten, 
 and struck with whips along the main street of Mulinuu. There was no 
 punishment, there was even no inquiry ; the three Consuls winked. Only 
 one man was found honest and bold enough to open his mouth, and 
 that was my old enemy, Mr. Cedercrantz. Walking in Mulinuu, in his 
 character of disinterested spectator, gracefully desipient, he came across 
 the throng of these rabblers and their victims. He had forgotten that he 
 was an official, he remembered that he was a man. It was his last public 
 appearance in Samoa to interfere ; it was certainly his best. Again, the 
 Government troops in the field took the heads of girls, a detestable felony 
 even in Samoan eyes. They carried them in procession to Mulinuu, 
 and made of them an oblation to that melancholy effigy the King, who 
 (sore against his will) sat on the verandah of the Government building, 
 publicly to receive this affront, publicly to utter the words of compliment 
 and thanks which constitute the highest reward known to Samoan bravery, 
 and crowned as heroes those who should have been hanged like dogs. 
 And again the three Consuls unanimously winked. There was no pun- 
 ishment, there was even no inquiry. 
 
 Lastly, there is the story of Manono. Three hours were given to.- 
 484 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 Mataafa to accept the terms of the ultimatum, and the time had almost 
 elapsed when his boats put forth, and more than elapsed before he came 
 alongside the Katoomha and surrendered formally to Captain Bickford. 
 In the dusk of the evening, when all the ships had sailed, flames were 
 observed to rise from the island. Mataafa flung himself on his knees 
 before Captain Bickford, and implored protection for his women and 
 children left behind, and the captain put back the ship and despatched 
 one of the Consuls to inquire. The Katoomha had been about seventy 
 hours in the islands. Captain Bickford was a stranger; he had to rely 
 on the Consuls implicitly. At the same time, he knew that the Govern- 
 ment troops had been suffered to land for the purpose of restoring 
 order, and with the understanding that no reprisals should be committed 
 on the adherents of Mataafa; and he charged the emissary with his 
 emphatic disapproval, threats of punishment on the offenders, and re- 
 minders that the war had now passed under the responsibility of the 
 three Powers. I cannot condescend on what this Consul saw during 
 his visit; I can only say what he repoited on his return. He reported all 
 well, and the chiefs on the Government side fraternising and making ava 
 with those on Mataafa's. It may have been ; at least it is strange. The 
 burning of the island proceeded, fruit-trees were cut down, women 
 stripped naked ; a scene of brutal disorder reigned all night, and left be- 
 hind it, over a quarter of the island, ruin. If they fraternised with Ma- 
 taafa's chieftains they must have been singularly inconsistent, for, the 
 next we learn of the two parties, they were beating, spitting upon, and 
 insulting them along the highway. The next morning in Apia I asked 
 the same Consul if there had not been some houses burned. He told me 
 no. I repeated the question, alleging the evidence of officers on board 
 the K-atoomha who had seen the flames increase and multiply as they 
 steamed away ; whereupon he had this remarkable reply— " O! huts, huts, 
 huts! There is n't a house, a frame house, on the island." The case to 
 plain men stands thus : The people of Manono were insulted, their food- 
 trees cut down, themselves left houseless; not more than ten houses— I 
 beg the Consul's pardon, huts— escaped the rancour of their enemies; 
 and to this day they may be seen to dwell in shanties on the site of their 
 former residences, the pride of the Samoan heart. The ejaculation of the 
 Consul was thus at least prophetic; and the traveller who revisits to-day 
 the shores of the " Garden Island " may well exclaim in his turn, " Huts, 
 
 485 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 The same measure was served out, in the mere wantonness of clan 
 hatred, to Apolima, a nearly inaccessible islet in the straits of the same 
 name ; almost the only property saved there (it is amusing to remember) 
 being a framed portrait of Lady Jersey, which its custodian escaped with 
 into the bush, as it were the palladium and chief treasure of the inhabi- 
 tants. The solemn promise passed by Consuls and captains in the name 
 of the three Powers was thus broken ; the troops employed were allowed 
 their bellyful of barbarous outrage. And again there was no punishment, 
 there was no inquiry ; there was no protest, there was not a word said 
 to disown the act or disengage the honour of the three Powers. 1 do 
 not say the Consuls desired to be disobeyed, though the case looks black 
 against one gentleman, and even he is perhaps only to be accused of levity 
 and divided interest ; it was doubtless important for him to be early in 
 Apia, where he combines with his diplomatic functions the management 
 of a thriving business as commission agent and auctioneer. 1 do say of 
 all of them that they took a very nonchalant view of their duty. 
 
 I told myself that this was the government of the Consular Triumvirate. 
 When the new officials came it would cease ; it would pass away like a 
 dream in the night ; and the solid Pax Rotnana of the Berlin General Act 
 would succeed. After all, what was there to complain of? The Con- 
 suls had shown themselves no slovens and no sentimentalists. They had 
 shown themselves not very particular, but in one sense very thorough. 
 Rebellion was to be put down swiftly and rigorously, if need were with 
 the hand of Cromwell ; at least it was to be put down. And in these 
 unruly islands I was prepared almost to welcome the face of Rhadaman- 
 thine severity. 
 
 And now it appears it was all a mistake. The government by the 
 Berlin General Act is no more than a mask, and a very expensive one, for 
 government by the Consular Triumvirate. Samoa pays (or tries to pay) 
 ^2200 a year to a couple of helpers ; and they dare not call their souls 
 their own. They take their walks abroad with an anxious eye on the 
 three Consuls, like two well-behaved children with three nurses ; and the 
 Consuls, smiling superior, allow them to amuse themselves with the routine 
 of business. But let trouble come, and the farce is suspended. At the 
 whistle of a squall these heaven-bom mariners seize the tiller, and the 
 ;^220o amateurs are knocked sprawling on the bilge. At the first beat 
 of the drum, the treaty officials are sent below, gently protesting, like a 
 pair of old ladies, and behold! the indomitable Consuls ready to clear the 
 
 486 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 wreck and make the deadly cutlass shine. And their method, studied 
 under the light of a new example, wears another air. They are not so 
 Rhadamanthine as we thought. Something that we can only call a dig- 
 nified panic presides over their deliberations. They have one idea to 
 lighten the ship. " Overboard with the ballast, the mainmast, and the 
 chronometer ! " is the cry. In the last war they got rid (first) of the honour 
 of their respective countries, and (second) of all idea that Samoa was to 
 be governed in a manner consistent with civilisation, or Government 
 troops punished for any conceivable misconduct. In the present war 
 they have sacrificed (first) the prestige of the new Chief Justice, and 
 (second) the very principle for which they had contended so vigorously 
 and so successfully in the war before— that rebellion was a thing to be 
 punished. 
 
 About the end of last year, that war, a war of the Tupuas under 
 Tamasese the younger, which was a necessary pendant to the crushing 
 of Mataafa, began to make itself heard of in obscure grumblings. It was 
 but a timid business. One half of the Tupua party, the whole province 
 of Atua, never joined the rebellion, but sulked in their villages, and spent 
 the time in indecisive eloquence and barren embassies. Tamasese, by a 
 trick eminently Samoan, " went in the high bush and the mountains,** 
 carrying a gun like a private soldier— served, in fact, with his own troops 
 incognito— and thus, to Samoan eyes, waived his dynastic pretensions. 
 And the war, which was announced in the beginning with a long cata- 
 logue of complaints against the King and a distinct and ugly threat to 
 the white population of Apia, degenerated into a war of defence by the 
 province of Aana against the eminently brutal troops of Savaii, in which 
 sympathy was generally and justly with the rebels. Savaii, raging with 
 private clan hatred and the lust of destruction, was put at free quarters 
 in the disaffected province, repeated on a wider scale the outrages of 
 Manono and Apolima, cut down the food-trees, stripped and insulted the 
 women, robbed the children of their little possessions, burned the houses, 
 killed the horses, the pigs, the dogs, the cats, along one half the seaboard 
 of Aana, and in the prosecution of these manly exploits managed (to the 
 joy of all) to lose some sixty men killed, wounded, and drowned. 
 
 Government by the Treaty of Berlin was still erect when, one fine 
 morning, in walked the three Consuls, totally uninvited, with a procla- 
 mation prepared and signed by themselves, without any mention ot 
 anybody else. They had awoke to a sense of the danger of the situa- 
 
 487 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 tion and their own indispensable merits. The two children knew theii 
 day was over; the nurses had come for them. Who can blame them for 
 their timidity? The Consuls have the ears of the Governments; they 
 are the authors of those despatches of which, in the ripeness of time, 
 Blue-books and White-books are made up; they had dismissed (with 
 some little assistance from yourself) MM. Cedercrantz and Senfft von 
 Pilsach, and they had strangled, like an illegitimate child, the scandal of 
 the dynamite. The Chief Justice and the President made haste to disap- 
 pear between decks, and left the ship of the State to the three volunteers. 
 There was no lack of activity. The Consuls went up to Atua, they 
 went down to Aana; the oarsmen toiled, the talking men pleaded; they 
 are said to have met with threats in Atua, and to have yielded to them 
 —at least, in but a few days' time they came home to us with a new 
 treaty of pacification. Of course, and as before, the Government troops 
 were whitewashed ; the Savaii ruffians had been stripping women and 
 killing cats in the interests of the Berlin Treaty; there was to be no 
 punishment and no inquiry ; let them retire to Savaii with their booty 
 and their dead. Offensive as this cannot fail to be, there is still some 
 slight excuse for it. The King is no more than one out of several chiefs 
 of clans. His strength resides in the willing obedience of the Tuamasaga, 
 and a portion— I have to hope a bad portion— of the island of Savaii. 
 To punish any of these supporters must always be to accept a risk ; and 
 the golden opportunity had been allowed to slip at the moment of the 
 Mataafa war. 
 
 What was more original was the treatment of the rebels. They were 
 under arms that moment against the Government ; they had fought and 
 sometimes vanquished; they had taken heads and carried them to 
 Tamasese. And the terms granted were to surrender fifty rifles, to 
 make some twenty miles of road, to pay some old fmes—and to be for- 
 given! The loss of fifty rifles to people destitute of any shadow of a 
 gunsmith to repair them when they are broken, and already notoriously 
 short of ammunition, is a trifle; the number is easy to be made up of 
 those that are out of commission ; for there is not the least stipulation as 
 to their value ; any synthesis of old iron and smashed wood that can be 
 called a gun is to be taken from its force. The road, as likely as not, 
 will never be made. The fines have nothing to say to this war; in any 
 reasonably governed country they should never have figured in the treaty ; 
 they had been inflicted before, and were due before. Before the rebellion 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 began, the beach had rung with I know not what indiscreet bluster : the 
 natives were to be read a lesson ; Tamasese (by name) was to be hanged ; 
 and after what had been done to Mataafa, 1 was so innocent as to listen 
 with awe. And now the rebellion has come, and this wzs the punish- 
 ment! There might well have been a doubt in the mind of any chief 
 who should have been tempted to follow the example of Mataafa ; but 
 who is it that would not dare to follow Tamasese ? 
 
 For some reason— I know not what, unless it be fear— there is a strong 
 prejudice amongst whites against any interference with the bestial prac- 
 tice of head-hunting. They say it would be impossible to identify the 
 criminals— a thing notoriously contrary to fact. A man does not take a 
 head, as he steals an apple, for secret degustation ; the essence of the 
 thing is its publicity. After the girls' heads were brought into Mulinuu 
 I pressed Mr, Cusack-Smith to take some action. He proposed a paper 
 of protest, to be signed by the English residents. We made rival drafts ; 
 his was pi ef erred, and I have heard no more of it. It has not been offered 
 me to sign ; it has not been published ; under a paper-weight in the British 
 Consulate I suppose it may yet be found! Meanwhile, his Honour, Mr. 
 Ide, the new Chief Justice, came to Samoa and took spirited action. He 
 engineered an ordinance through the House of Faipule, inflicting serious 
 penalties on any who took heads, and the papers at the time applauded 
 his success. The rebellion followed, the troops were passing to the front, 
 and with excellent resolution Mr. Ide harangued the chiefs, reiterated the 
 terms of the new law, and promised unfailing vengeance on offenders. 
 It was boldly done, and he stood committed beyond possibility of retreat 
 to enforce this his first important edict. Great was the commotion, 
 great the division, in the Samoan mind. "O! we have had Chief Jus- 
 tices before," said a visitor to my house; "we know what they are; I 
 will take a head if I can get one." Others were more doubtful, but 
 thought none could be so bold as lay a hand on the peculiar institution 
 of these islands. Yet others were convinced. Savaii took heads; but 
 when they sent one to Mulinuu a messenger met them by the convent 
 gates from the King; he would none of it, and the trophy must be 
 ingloriously buried. Savaii took heads also, and Tamasese accepted the 
 presentation. Tuamasaga, on the other hand, obeyed the Chief Justice, 
 and (the occasion being thrust upon them) contented themselves with 
 taking the dead man's ears. On the whole, about one third of the troops 
 engaged, and our not very firm Monarch himself, kept the letter of the 
 
 489 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 wdinance. And it was upon this scene of partial, but really cheering, 
 success that the Consuls returned with their general pardon! The Chief 
 Justice was not six months old in the islands. He had succeeded to a 
 position complicated by the failure of his predecessor. Personally, speak- 
 ing face to face with the chiefs, he had put his authority in pledge that 
 the ordinance should be enforced. And he found himself either forgotten 
 or betrayed by the three Consuls. These volunteers had made a liar of 
 him ; they had administered to him, before all Samoa, a triple buffet. I 
 must not wonder, though I may still deplore, that Mr. Ide accepted the 
 position thus made for him. There was a deal of alarm in Apia. To 
 refuse the treaty thus hastily and shamefully cobbled up would have in- 
 creased it tenfold. Already, since the declaration of war and the immi- 
 nence of the results, one of the papers had ratted, and the white population 
 were girding at the new ordinance. It was feared besides that the native 
 Government, though they had voted, were secretly opposed to it. It 
 was almost certain they would try to prevent its application to the loyalist 
 offenders of Savaii The three Consuls in the negotiations of the treaty 
 had fully illustrated both their want of sympathy with the ordinance and 
 their want of regard for the position of the Chief justice. " In short, I 
 am to look for no support, whether physical or moral ? " asked Mr. Ide ; 
 and I could make but the one answer— "Neither physical nor moral." 
 It was a hard choice; and he elected to accept the terms of the treaty 
 without protest. And the next war (if we are to continue to enjoy the 
 benefits of the Berlin Act) will probably show us the result in an enlarged 
 assortment of heads, and the next difficulty perhaps prove to us the 
 diminished prestige of the Chief justice. Mr. Ide announces his intention 
 of applying the law in the case of another war; but I very much fear the 
 golden opportunity has again been lost. About one third of the troops 
 believed him this time; how many will believe him the next? 
 
 It will doubtless be answered that the Consuls were affected by the 
 alarm in Apia and actuated by the desire to save white lives. I am far 
 from denying that there may be danger; and I believe that the way we 
 are going is the best way to bring it on. In the progressive de-civilisation 
 of these islands— evidenced by the female heads taken in the last war and 
 the treatment of white missionaries in this— our methods of pull devil, 
 pull baker, general indecision, and frequent (though always dignified) 
 panic are the best calculated in the worid to bring on a massacre of whites. 
 A consistent dignity, a consistent and independent figure of a Chief Jus^ 
 
 490 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 tice, the enforcement of the laws, and, above all, of the laws against 
 barbarity, a Consular Board the same in the presence as in the absence of 
 war-ships, will be found our best defence. 
 
 Much as I have already occupied of your space, 1 would yet ask leave 
 to draw two conclusions. 
 
 And first, Mataafa and Tamasese both made war. Both wars were 
 presumably dynastic in character, though the Tupua not rallying to 
 Tamasese as he had expected led him to cover his design. That he carried 
 a gun himself, and himself fired, will not seem to European ears a very 
 important alleviation. Tamasese received heads, sitting as a king, under 
 whatever name ; Mataafa had forbidden the taking of heads— of his own 
 accord, and before Mr. Ide had taken office. Tamasese began with threats 
 against the white population ; Mataafa never ceased to reassure them and 
 to extend an effectual protection to their property. What is the differ- 
 ence between their cases ? That Mataafa was an old man, already famous, 
 who had served his country well, had been appointed King of Samoa, 
 had served in the office, and had been set aside— not, indeed, in the text, 
 but in the protocols of the Beriin Act, by name ? I do not grudge his 
 good fortune to Tamasese, who is an amiable, spirited, and handsome 
 young man ; and who made a barbarous war, indeed, since heads were 
 taken after the old Samoan practice, but who made it without any of 
 the savagery which we have had reason to comment upon in the camp 
 of his adversaries. I do not grudge the invidious fate that has befallen 
 my old friend and his followers. At first I believed these judgments to 
 be the expression of a severe but equal justice. I find them, on further 
 experience, to be mere measures of the degree of panic in the Consuls, 
 varying directly as the distance of the nearest war-ship. The judgments 
 under which they fell have now no sanctity ; they form no longer a pre- 
 cedent; they may perfectly well be followed by a pardon, or a partial 
 pardon, as the authorities shall please. The crime of Mataafa is to have 
 read strictly the first article of the Beriin Act, and not to have read at all 
 (as how should he when it has never been translated ?) the insidious pro- 
 tocol which contains its significance ; the crime of his followers is to have 
 practised clan fidelity, and to have in consequence raised an imperiutn in 
 impervio, and fought against the Government. Their punishment is to 
 be sent to a coral atoll and detained there prisoners. It does not sound 
 much ; it is a great deal. Taken from a mountain island, they must in- 
 habit a narrow strip of reef sunk to the gunwale in the ocean. Sand, 
 
 491 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 »tone, and cocoanuts, stone, sand, and pandanus, make the scenery. 
 There is no grass. Here these men, used to the cool, bright mountain 
 rivers of Samoa, must drink with loathing the brackish water of the coral. 
 The food upon such islands is distressing even to the omnivorous white. 
 To the Samoan, who has that shivering delicacy and ready disgust of the 
 child or the rustic mountaineer, it is intolerable. I remember what our 
 present King looked like, what a phantom he was, when he returned 
 from captivity in the same place. Lastly, these fourteen have been 
 divorced from their families. The daughter of Mataafa somehow broke 
 the consigne and accompanied her father; but she only. To this day 
 one of them, Palepa, the wife of Faamoina, is dunning the authorities in 
 vain to be allowed to join her husband— she a young and handsome 
 woman, he an old man and infirm. I cannot speak with certainty, but 
 I believe they are allowed no communication with the prisoners, nor the 
 prisoners with them. My own open experience is brief and conclusive— I 
 have not been suffered to send my friends one stick of tobacco or one 
 pound of ava. So much to show the hardships are genuine. I have to 
 ask a pardon for these unhappy victims of untranslated protocols and 
 inconsistent justice. After the case of Tamasese, I ask it almost as of 
 right. As for the other twenty-seven in jail, let the doors be opened 
 at once. They have shown their patience, they have proved their loyalty 
 long enough. On two occasions, when the guards deserted in a body, 
 and again when the Aana prisoners fled, they remained— one may truly 
 say— voluntary prisoners. And at least let them be fed! I have paid 
 taxes to the Samoan Government for some four years, and the most 
 sensible benefit I have received in return has been to be allowed to feed 
 their prisoners. 
 
 Second, if the farce of the Beriin Act is to be gone on with, it will be 
 really necessary to moderate among our five Sovereigns— six if we are to 
 count poor Malietoa, who represents to the life the character of the Hare 
 and Many Friends. It is to be presumed that Mr. Ide and Herr Schmidt 
 were chosen for their qualities; it is little good we are likely to get by 
 them if, at every wind of rumour, the three Consuls are to intervene. 
 The three Consuls are paid far smaller salaries, they have no right under 
 the treaty to interfere with the government of autonomous Samoa, and 
 they have contrived to make themselves all in all. The King and a ma- 
 jority of the Faipule fear them and look to them alone, while the legiti- 
 mate ad>iser occupies a second place, if that The misconduct of MM. 
 
 493 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 Cedercrantz and Senfft von Pilsach was so extreme that the Consuls were 
 obliged to encroach; and now when these are gone the authority ac- 
 quired in the contest remains with the encroachers. On their side they 
 have no rights, but a tradition of victory, the ear of the Governments at 
 home, and the vis viva of the war-ships. For the poor treaty officials, 
 what have they but rights very obscurely expressed and very weakly de- 
 fended by their predecessors ? Thus it comes about that people who are 
 scarcely mentioned in the text of the treaty are, to all intents and pur- 
 poses, our only rulers. Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 IX. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TIMES " 
 
 yailima, Samoa, May 22, 1894. 
 
 Sir,— I told you in my last that the Consuls had tinkered up a treaty 
 of peace with the rebels of Aana. A month has gone by, and I would 
 not weary your readers with a story so intricate and purposeless. The 
 Consuls seem to have gone backward and forward, to and fro. To 
 periods of agitated activity, comparable to that of three ants about a 
 broken nest, there succeeded seasons in which they rested from their 
 labours and ruefully considered the result. 1 believe I am not overstating 
 the case when I say that this treaty was at least twice rehandled, and the 
 date of submission changed, in the interval. And yesterday at length we 
 beheld the first-fruits of the Consular diplomacy. A boat came in from 
 Aana bearing the promised fifty stand of arms— in other words, a talking 
 man, a young chief, and some boatmen in charge of a boat-load of 
 broken ironmongery. The Government (well advised for once) had 
 placed the Embassy under an escort of German blue-jackets, or I think it 
 must have gone ill with the Ambassadors. 
 
 So much for Aana and the treaty. With Atua, the other disaffected 
 province, we have been and are on the brink of war. The woods have 
 been patrolled, the army sent to the front, blood has been shed. It con- 
 sists with my knowledge that the loyalist troops marched against the 
 enemy under a hallucination. One and all believed, a majority of them 
 still believe, that the war-ships were to follow and assist them. Who 
 told them so ? If I am to credit the rumours of the natives, as well as 
 the gossip of official circles, a promise had been given to this effect by 
 the Consuls, or at least by one of the Consuls. And when 1 say that 
 a promise had been given, I mean that it had been sold. I mean that 
 the natives had to buy it by submissions. 
 
 493 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 Let me take an example of these submissions. The native Govern- 
 ment increased the salary of Mr. Gurr, the natives' advocate. It was not 
 a largesse; it was rather an act of tardy justice, by which Mr. Gurr re- 
 ceived at last the same emoluments as his predecessor in the office. At 
 the same time, with a bankrupt treasury, all fresh expenses are and must 
 be regarded askance. The President, acting under a so-called Treasury 
 regulation, refused to honour the King's order. And a friendly suit was 
 brought, which turned on the validity of this Treasury regulation. This 
 was more than doubtful. The President was a treaty official; hence 
 bound by the treaty. The three Consuls had been acting for him in his 
 absence, using his powers and no other powers whatever under the treaty ; 
 and the three Consuls so acting had framed a regulation by which the 
 powers of the President were greatly extended. This was a vicious circle 
 with a vengeance. But the Consuls, with the ordinary partiality of pa- 
 rents for reformed offspring, regarded the regulation as the apple of their 
 eye. They made themselves busy in its defence, they held interviews, it 
 is reported they drew pleas ; and it seemed to all that the Chief Justice 
 hesitated. It is certain at least that he long delayed sentence. And 
 during this delay the Consuls showed their power. The native Govern- 
 ment was repeatedly called together, and at last forced to rescind the 
 order in favour of Mr. Gurr. It was not done voluntarily, for the Gov- 
 ernment resisted. It was not done by conviction, for the Government 
 has taken the first opportunity to restore it. If the Consuls did not appear 
 personally in the affair— and I do not know that they did not— they made 
 use of the President as a mouthpiece ; and the President delayed the de- 
 liberations of the Government until he should receive further instructions 
 from the Consuls. Ten pounds is doubtless a considerable affair to a 
 bankrupt Government. But what were the Consuls doing in this matter 
 of inland administration? What was their right to interfere? What 
 were the arguments with which they overcame the resistance of the Gov- 
 ernment ? I am either very much misinformed, or these gentlemen were 
 trafficking in a merchandise which they did not possess, and selling at a 
 high price the assistance of the war-ships over which (as now appears; 
 they have no control. 
 
 Remark the irony of fate. This affair had no sooner been settled, Mr. 
 Gurr's claim cut at the very root, and the Treasury regulation apparently 
 set beyond cavil, than the Chief Justice pulled himself together, and, 
 taking his life in his right hand, delivered sentence in the case. Great 
 
 494 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 was the surprise. Because the Chief Justice had balked so long, it was 
 supposed he would never have taken the leap. And here, upon a sudden, 
 he came down with a decision flat against the Consuls and their Treasury 
 regulation. The Government have, I understand, restored Mr. Gurr's 
 salary in consequence. The Chief Justice, after giving us all a very severe 
 fright, has reinstated himself in public opinion by this tardy boldness; 
 and the Consuls find their conduct judicially condemned. 
 
 It was on a personal affront that the Consuls turned on Mr. Ceder- 
 crantz. Here is another affront, far more galling and public! I suppose 
 it is but a coincidence that I should find at the same time the clouds 
 beginning to gather about Mr. Ide's head. In a telegram, dated from 
 Auckland, March 30, and copyrighted by the Associated Press, I find the 
 whole blame of the late troubles set down to his account. It is the work 
 of a person worthy of no trust. In one of his charges, and in one only, 
 he is right. The Chief Justice fined and imprisoned certain chiefs of Aana 
 under circumstances far from clear; the act was, to say the least of it, 
 susceptible of misconstruction, and by natives will always be thought of 
 as an act of treachery. But, even for this, it is not possible for me to 
 split the blame justly between Mr. Ide and the three Consuls. In these 
 early days, as now, the three Consuls were always too eager to interfere 
 where they had no business, and the Chief Justice was always too patient 
 or too timid to set them in their place. For the rest of the telegram no 
 qualification is needed. " The Chief Justice was compelled to take steps 
 to disarm the natives." He took no such steps; he never spoke of dis- 
 armament except publicly and officially to disown the idea ; it was during 
 the days of the Consular Triumvirate that the cry began. "The Chief 
 Justice called upon Malietoa to send a strong force," etc. ; the Chief Jus- 
 tice "disregarded the menacing attitude assumed by the Samoans," etc. 
 —these are but the delusions of a fever. The Chief Justice has played 
 no such part ; he never called for forces ; he never disregarded menacing 
 attitudes, not even those of the Consuls. What we have to complain of 
 in Mr. Ide and Mr. Schmidt is strangely different. We complain that 
 they have been here since November, and the three Consuls are still 
 allowed, when they are not invited, to interfere in the least and the 
 greatest; that they have been here for upwards of six months, and 
 government under the Berlin Treaty is still overridden— and I may say 
 overlaid— by the government of the Consular Triumvirate. 
 
 This is the main foundation of our present discontents. This it is that 
 495 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 we pray to be relieved from. Out of six Sovereigns, exercising incon- 
 gruous rights or usurpations on this unhappy island, we pray to be re- 
 lieved of three. Th3 Berlin Treaty was not our choice; but if we are to 
 have it at all, let us have it plain. Let us have the text, and nothing but 
 the text. Let the three Consuls who have no position under the treaty 
 cease from troubling, cease from raising war and making peace, from 
 passing illegal regulations in the face of day, and from secretly black- 
 mailing the Samoan Government into renunciations of its independence. 
 Afterwards, when we have once seen it in operation, we shall be able to 
 judge whether government under the Berlin Treaty suits or does not suit 
 our case.— I am, Sir, etc., Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 FROM THE "daily CHRONICLE," MARCH l8, 1895 
 
 (Subjoined is the full text of the late Robert Louis Stevenson's last 
 letter to Mr. J. F. Hogan, M.P. Apart from its pathetic interest as 
 one of the final compositions of the distinguished novelist, its eloquent 
 terms of pleading for his exiled friend Mataafa, and the light it sheds 
 on Samoan affairs, make it a very noteworthy and instructive docu- 
 ment. — Ed. D C.) 
 
 Vailima, October y, 18^4. 
 j. F. HoGAN, EscL., M.P. 
 
 Dear Sir, — My attention was attracted the other day by the thor- 
 oughly pertinent questions which you put in the House of Commons, 
 and which the Government failed to answer. It put an idea in my 
 head that you were perhaps the man who might take up a task which I 
 am almost ready to give up. Mataafa is now known to be my hobby. 
 People laugh when they see any mention of his name over my signa- 
 ture, and the Times, while it still grants me hospitality, begins to lead 
 the chorus. 1 know that nothing can be more fatal to Mataafa's 
 cause than that he should be made ridiculous, and I cannot help feel- 
 ing that a man who makes his bread by writing fiction labours under 
 the disadvantage of suspicion when he touches on matters of fact. If 
 I were even backed up before the world by one other voice, people 
 might continue to listen, and in the end something might be done. 
 But so long as I stand quite alone, telling the same story, which 
 becomes, apparently, not only more tedious, but less credible by 
 
 496 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 repetition, I feel that I am doing nothing good, possibly even some 
 evil. 
 
 Now, Sir, you have shown by your questions in the House, not only 
 that you remember Mataafa, but that you are instructed in his case, 
 and this exposes you to the trouble of reading this letter. 
 
 Mataafa was made the prisoner of the three Powers. He had been 
 guilty of rebellion; but surely rather formally than really. He was the 
 appointed King of Samoa. The treaty set him aside, and he obeyed 
 the three Powers. His successor — or I should rather say his succes- 
 sor's advisers and surroundings — fell out with him. He was disgusted 
 by the spectacle of their misgovernment. In this humour he fell to the 
 study of the Berlin Act, and was misled by the famous passage, " His 
 successor shall be duly elected according to the laws and customs of 
 Samoa." It is to be noted that what I will venture to call the infamous 
 protocol — a measure equally of German vanity, English cowardice, and 
 American incuria — had not been and has never yet been translated 
 into the Samoan language. They feared light because their works 
 were darkness. For what he did during what I can only call his can- 
 didature, I must refer you to the last chapter of my book. It was 
 rebellion to the three Powers; to him it was not rebellion. The troops 
 of the King attacked him first. The sudden arrival and sudden action 
 of Captain Bickford concluded the affair in the very beginning. Mat- 
 aafa surrendered. He surrendered to Captain Bickford. He was 
 brought back to Apia on Captain Bickford's ship. I shall never forget 
 the captain pointing to the British ensign and saying, ' * Tell them they 
 are safe under that." And the next thing we learned, Mataafa and 
 his chiefs were transferred to a German war-ship and carried to the 
 Marshalls. 
 
 Who was responsible for this? Who is responsible now for the care 
 and good treatment of these political prisoners ? I am far from hint- 
 ing that the Germans actually maltreat him. I know even that many 
 of the Germans regard him with respect. But I can only speak of what 
 I know here. It is impossible to send him or any of his chiefs either 
 a present or a letter. 1 believe the mission (Catholic) has been allowed 
 some form of communication. On the same occasion I sent down let- 
 ters and presents. They were refused; and the officer of the deck on 
 the German war-ship had so little reticence as to pass the remark, " O, 
 you see, you like Mataafa; we don't." In short, communication is so 
 
 497 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 completely sundered that for anything we can hear in Samoa, they 
 may all have been hanged at the yard-arm two days out. 
 
 To take another instance. The high chief Faamoina was recently 
 married to a young and pleasing wife. She desired to follow her 
 husband, an old man, in bad health, and so deservedly popular that 
 he had been given the by-name of '' Papalagi Mativa," or " Poor 
 White Man," on account of his charities to our countrymen. She was 
 refused. Again and again she has renewed her applications to be 
 allowed to rejoin him, and without the least success. 
 
 It has been decreed by some one, I know not whom, that Faamoina 
 must have no one to nurse him, and that his wife must be left in the 
 anomalous and dangerous position which the Treaty Powers have made 
 for her. I have wearied myself, and I fear others, by my attempts to 
 get a passage for her or to have her letters sent. Every one sympa- 
 thises. The German ships now in port are loud in expressions of dis- 
 approval and professions of readiness to help her. But to whom can 
 we address ourselves? Who is responsible? Who is the unknown 
 power that sent Mataafa in a German ship to the Marshalls, instead 
 of in an English ship to Fiji? that has decreed since that he shall 
 receive not even inconsiderable gifts and open letters ? and that keeps 
 separated Faamoina and his wife ? 
 
 Now, dear Sir, these are the facts, and I think that I maybe excused 
 for being angry. At the same time, I am well aware that an angry 
 man is a bore. I am a man with a grievance, and my grievance has 
 the misfortune to be very small and very far away. It is very small, 
 for it is only the case of under a score of brown-skinned men who have 
 been dealt with in the dark by I know not whom. And I want to 
 know. I want to know by whose authority Mataafa was given over 
 into German hands. I want to know by whose authority, and for how 
 long a term of years, he is condemned to the miserable exile of a low 
 island. And I want to know how it happens that what is sauce for 
 the goose is not sauce for the gander in Samoa? — that the German 
 enemy Mataafa has been indefinitely exiled for what is after all scarce 
 more than constructive rebellion, and the German friend Tamasese, 
 for a rebellion which has lasted long enough to threaten us with fam- 
 ine, and was disgraced in its beginning by ominous threats against the 
 whites, has been punished by a fine of one hundred rifles? 
 
 True, I could sympathise with the German officers in their embar- 
 498 
 
LETTERS TO LONDON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 rassment. Here was the son of the old King whom they had raised, 
 and whom they had deserted. What an unenviable office was theirs 
 when they must make war upon, suppress, and make a feint of pun- 
 ishing, this man to whom they stood bound by a hereditary alliance, 
 and to whose father they had already failed so egregiously. They 
 were loyal all round. They were loyal to their Tamasese, and got 
 him off with his fine. And shall I not be a little loyal to Mataafa ? 
 And will you not help me ? He is now an old man, very piously 
 inclined, and I believe he would enter at least the lesser orders of the 
 Church if he were suffered to come back. But I do not even ask so 
 much as this, though I hope it. It would be enough if he were 
 brought back to Fiji, back to the food and fresh water of his childhood, 
 back into the daylight from the darkness of the Marshalls, where some 
 of us could see him, where we could write to him and receive answers, 
 where he might pass a tolerable old age. If you can help me to get 
 this done, I am sure that you will never regret it. In its small way, 
 this is another case of Toussaint VOuverture, not so monstrous if you 
 like, not on so large a scale, but with circumstances of small perfidy 
 that make it almost odious. 
 
 I may tell you in conclusion that, circumstances co-operating with 
 my tedious insistence, the last of the Mataafa chiefs here in Apia has 
 been liberated from jail. All this time they stayed of their own free- 
 Avill, thinking it might injure Mataafa if they escaped when others 
 did. And you will see by the enclosed paper how these poor fellows 
 spent the first hours of their liberty.^ You will see also that I am not 
 the firebrand that I am sometimes painted, and that in helping me, if 
 you shall decide to do so, you will be doing nothing against the peace 
 and prosperity of Samoa. 
 
 With many excuses for having occupied so much of your valuable 
 time, I remain, yours truly, Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 P. S. — On revisal, I observe some points: in the first place, I do not 
 believe Captain Bickford was to blame; I suspect him to have been a 
 victim. I have been told, but it seems incredible, that he underwent 
 
 li.e., in building a section of a new road to Mr. Stevenson's house. 
 The paper referred to is a copy of the Samoa Times, containing a report 
 -of the dinner given by Mr. Stevenson at Vailima to inaugurate this new 
 road. (See Appendix to Vailima Letters.) 
 
 499 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 an examination about Mataafa's daughter having been allowed to 
 accompany him. Certainly he liked his job little, and some of his 
 colleagues less. R. L. S. 
 
 October p. 
 Latest intelligence. We have received at last a letter from Mat- 
 aafa. He is well treated and has good food; only complains of not 
 hearing from Samoa. This has very much relieved our minds. But 
 why were they previously left in the dark ? R. L. S. 
 
 500 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 TO MISS B 
 
 yuilima Plantation (Spring, 1892). 
 
 Dear Friend,' — Please salute your pupils in my name, and tell them 
 that a long, lean, elderly man who lives right through on the under 
 side of the world, so that down in your cellar you are nearer him than 
 the people in the street, desires his compliments. 
 
 This man lives on an island which is not very long and is extremely 
 narrow. The sea beats round it very hard, so that it is difficult to get 
 to shore. There is only one harbour where ships come, and even that 
 is very wild and dangerous; four ships of war were broken there a little 
 while ago, and one of them is still lying on its side on a rock clean 
 above water, where the sea threw it as you might throw your fiddle- 
 bow upon the table. All round the harbour the town is strung out: 
 it is nothing but wooden houses, only there are some churches built 
 
 iThe lady to whom the first three of these letters are addressed " used 
 to hear" (writes Mr. Lloyd Osbourne) "so frequently of the 'boys' in 
 Vailima that she wrote and asked Mr. Stevenson for news of them, as it 
 would so much interest her little girls. In the tropics, for some reason or 
 other that it is impossible to understand, servants and work-people are al- 
 ways called ' boys,' though the years of Methuselah may have whitened 
 their heads, and great-grandchildren prattle about their knees. Mr. 
 Stevenson was amused to think that his • boys,' who ranged from eighteen 
 years of age to threescore and ten, should be mistaken for little youngsters ; 
 but he was touched to hear of the sick children his friend tried so hard to 
 entertain, and gladly wrote a few letters to them. He would have written 
 more but for the fact that his friend left the home, being transferred else- 
 where." 
 
 501 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 of stone. They are not very large, but the people have never seen 
 such fine buildings. Almost all the houses are of one story. Away 
 at one end of the village lives the king of the whole country. His 
 palace has a thatched roof which rests upon posts; there are no walls, 
 but when it blows and rains, they have Venetian blinds which they 
 let down between the posts, making all very snug. There is no fur- 
 niture, and the king and the queen and the courtiers sit and eat on the 
 floor, which is of gravel; the lamp stands there too, and every now 
 and then it is upset. 
 
 These good folks wear nothing but a kilt about their waists, unless 
 to go to church or for a dance on the New Year or some great occa- 
 sion. The children play marbles all along the street; and though they 
 are generally very jolly, yet they get awfully cross over their marbles, 
 and cry and fight just as boys and girls do at home. Another amuse- 
 ment in country places is to shoot fish with a little bow and arrow. 
 All round the beach there is bright shallow water, where the fishes can 
 be seen darting or lying in shoals. The child trots round the shore, 
 and whenever he sees a fish, lets fly an arrow, and misses, and then 
 wades in after his arrow. It is great fun (I have tried it) for the child, 
 and 1 never heard of it doing any harm to the fishes: so what could be 
 more jolly ? 
 
 The road to this lean man's house is up hill all the way, and through 
 forests; the trees are not so much unlike those at home, only here and 
 there some very queer ones are mixed with them — cocoanut-palms, 
 and great trees that are covered with bloom like red hawthorn but not 
 near so bright ; and from them all thick creepers hang down like ropes, 
 and ugly-looking weeds that they call orchids grow in the forks of the 
 branches; and on the ground many prickly things are dotted, which 
 they call pineapples. I suppose every one has eaten pineapple drops. 
 
 On the way up to the lean man's house, you pass a little village, all 
 of houses like the king's house, so that as you ride by you can see every- 
 body sitting at dinner, or, if it is night, lying in their beds by lamp- 
 light; because all the people are terribly afraid of ghosts, and would 
 not lie in the dark for anything. After the village, there is only one 
 more house, and that is the lean man's. For the people are not very 
 many, and live all by the sea, and the whole inside of the island is 
 desert woods and mountains. When the lean man goes into the 
 forest, he is very much ashamed to own it, but he is always in a ter- 
 
 502 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 rible fright. The wood is so great, and empty, and hot, and it is 
 always filled with curious noises: birds cry like children, and bark like 
 dogs; and he can hear people laughing and felling tfees; and the other 
 day (when he was far in the woods) he heard a sound like the biggest 
 mill-wheel possible, going with a kind of dot-and-carry-one movement 
 like a dance. That was the noise of an earthquake away down below 
 him in the bowels of the earth; and that is the same thing as to say 
 away up towards you in your cellar in Kilburn. All these noises make 
 him feel lonely and scared, and he does n't quite know what he is 
 scared of. Once when he was just about to cross a river, a blow 
 struck him on the top of his head, and knocked him head-foremost 
 down the bank and splash into the water. It was a nut, I fancy, that 
 had fallen from a tree, by which accident people are sometimes killed. 
 But at the time he thought it was a Black Boy. 
 
 " Aha," say you, " and what is a Black Boy? " Well, there are a 
 lot of poor people here who are brought to Samoa from distant islands 
 to labour for the Germans. They are not at all like the king and his 
 people, who are brown and very pretty; for these are black as negroes 
 and as ugly as sin, poor souls, and in their own land they live all the 
 time at war, and cook and eat men's flesh. The Germans make them 
 work; and every now and then some run away into the Bush, as the 
 forest is called, and build little sheds of leaves, and eat nuts and roots 
 and fruits, and dwell there by themselves. Sometimes they are bad, 
 and wild, and people whisper to each other that some of them have 
 gone back to their horrid old habits, and catch men and women in 
 order to eat them. But it is very likely not true; and the most of 
 them are poor, half- starved, pitiful creatures, like frightened dogs. 
 Their life is all very well when the sun shines, as it does eight or nine 
 months in the year. But it is very different the rest of the time. The 
 wind rages then most violently. The great trees thrash about like 
 whips; the air is filled with leaves and branches flying like birds; and 
 the sound of the trees falling shakes the earth. It rains, too, as it never 
 rains at home. You can hear a shower while it is yet half a mile away, 
 hissing like a shower-bath in the forest; and when it comes to you, 
 the water blinds your eyes, and the cold drenching takes your breath 
 away as though some one had struck you. In that kind of weather it 
 must be dreadful indeed to live in the woods, one man alone by him- 
 self. And you must know that if the lean man feels afraid to be in 
 
 503 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 the forest, the people of the island and the Black Boys are much more 
 afraid than he; for they believe the woodg to be quite filled with 
 spirits; some like pigs, and some like flying things; but others (and 
 these afe thought the most dangerous) in the shape of beautiful young 
 women and young men, beautifully dressed in the island manner, with 
 fine kilts and fine necklaces, and crosses of scarlet seeds and flowers. 
 Woe betide him or her who gets to speak with one of these! They 
 will be charmed out of their wits, and come home again quite silly, 
 and go mad and die. So that the poor runaway Black Boy must be 
 always trembling, and looking about for the coming of the demons. 
 
 Sometimes the women-demons go down out of the woods into the 
 villages; and here is a tale the lean man heard last year: One of the 
 islanders was sitting in his house, and he had cooked fish. There 
 came along the road two beautiful young women, dressed as I told 
 you, who came into his house, and asked for some of his fish. It is 
 the fashion in the islands always to give what is asked, and never to 
 ask folks' names. So the man gave them fish, and talked to them in 
 the island jesting way. Presently he asked one of the women for her 
 red necklace; which is good manners and their way: he had given the 
 fish, and he had a right to ask for something back. " I will give it 
 you by-and-by," said the woman, and she and her companion went 
 away; but he thought they were gone very suddenly, and the truth is 
 they had vanished. The night was nearly come, when the man heard 
 the voice of the woman crying that he should come to her, and she 
 would give the necklace. He looked out, and behold! she was stand- 
 ing calling him from the top of the sea, on which she stood as you 
 might stand on the table. At that, fear came on the man; he fell on 
 his knees and prayed, and the woman disappeared. 
 
 It was said afterwards that this was once a woman, indeed, but she 
 should have died a thousand years ago, and has lived all that while as 
 an evil spirit in the woods beside the spring of a river. Sau-mai-afe i 
 is her name, in case you want to write to her. 
 
 Ever your friend (for whom I thank the stars), 
 
 TusiTALA (Tale-writer). 
 
 1 " Come-a-thousand." 
 
 504 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 TO MISS B 
 
 yailima Plantation, 14 Aug., i8p2. 
 
 . . . The lean man is exceedingly ashamed of himself, and offers 
 his apologies to the little girls in the cellar just above. If they will be 
 so good as to knock three times upon the floor, he will hear it on the 
 other side of his floor, and will understand that he is forgiven, 
 
 I left you and the children still on the road to the lean man's house, 
 where a great part of the forest has now been cleared away. It comes 
 back again pretty quick, though not quite so high; but everywhere, 
 except where the weeders have been kept busy, young trees have 
 sprouted up, and the cattle and the horses cannot be seen as they feed. 
 In this clearing there are two or three houses scattered about, and be- 
 tween the two biggest I think the little girls in the cellar would first 
 notice a sort of thing like a gridiron on legs, made of logs of wood. 
 Sometimes it has a flag flying on it, made of rags of old clothes. It is 
 a fort (as I am told) built by the person here who would be much the 
 most interesting to the girls in the cellar. This is a young gentleman 
 of eleven years of age, answering to the name of Austin. It was after 
 reading a book about the Red Indians that he thought it more prudent 
 to create this place of strength. As the Red Indians are in North 
 America, and this fort seems to me a very useless kind of building, I 
 anxiously hope that the two may never be brought together. When 
 Austin is not engaged in building forts, nor on his lessons, which are 
 just as annoying to him as other children's lessons are to them, he 
 walks sometimes in the Bush, and if anybody is with him, talks all the 
 time. When he is alone I don't think he says anything, and I dare 
 say he feels very lonely and frightened, just as the Samoan does, at 
 the queer noises and the endless lines of trees. 
 
 He finds the strangest kinds of seeds, some of them bright-coloured 
 like lollipops, or really like precious stones; some of them in odd cases like 
 tobacco-pouches. He finds and collects all kinds of little shells, with 
 which the whole ground is scattered, and that, though they are the 
 shells of land creatures like our snails, are of nearly as many shapes and 
 colours as the shells on our sea-beaches. In the streams that come 
 running down out of our mountains, all as clear and bright as mirror- 
 
 505 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 glass, he sees eels and little bright fish that sometimes jump together 
 out of the surface of the brook in a spray of silver, and fresh-water 
 prawns which lie close under the stones, looking up at him through the 
 water with eyes the colour of a jewel. He sees all kinds of beautiful 
 birds, some of them blue and white, and some of them coloured like our 
 pigeons at home; and these last, the little girls in the cellar may like to 
 know, live almost entirely on wild nutmegs as they fall ripe off the trees. 
 Another little bird he may sometimes see, as the lean man saw him 
 only this morning: a little fellow not so big as a man's hand, exqui- 
 sitely neat, of a pretty bronzy black like ladies' shoes, who sticks up 
 behind him (much as a peacock does) his little tail, shaped and fluted 
 like a scallop-shell. 
 
 Here there are a lot of curious and interesting things that Austin sees 
 all round him every day; and when I was a child at home in the old 
 country I used to play and pretend to myself that I saw things of the 
 same kind — that the rooms were full of orange and nutmeg trees, and 
 the cold town gardens outside the windows were alive with parrots 
 and with lions. What do the little girls in the cellar think that Austin 
 does? He makes believe just the other way; he pretends that the 
 strange great trees with their broad leaves and slab-sided roots are Eu- 
 ropean oaks; and the places on the road up (where you and I and the 
 little girls in the cellar have already gone) he calls old-fashioned, far- 
 away European names, just as if you were to call the cellar-stair and 
 the corner of the next street — if you could only manage to pronounce 
 their names — Upolu and Savaii. And so it is with all of us, with 
 Austin, and the lean man, and the little girls in the cellar: wherever 
 we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever 
 we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something 
 else that shall be different. 
 
 But you must not suppose that Austin does nothing but build forts, 
 and walk among the woods, and swim in the rivers. On the contrary, 
 he is sometimes a very busy and useful fellow; and I think the little 
 girls in the cellar would have admired him very nearly as much as he 
 admired himself, if they had seen him setting off on horseback, with 
 his hand on his hip, and his pocket full of letters and orders, at the 
 head of quite a procession of huge white cart-horses with pack-saddles, 
 and big, brown native men with nothing on but gaudy kilts. Mighty 
 well he managed all his commissions; and those who saw him ordering 
 
 506 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 and eating his single-handed luncheon in the queer little Chinese 
 restaurant on the beach declare he looked as if the place, and the 
 town, and the whole archipelago belonged to him. 
 
 But I am not going to let you suppose that this great gentleman at 
 the head of all his horses and his men, like the King of France in the 
 old rhyme, would be thought much of a dandy on the streets of Lon- 
 don. On the contrary, if he could be seen with his dirty white cap 
 and his faded purple shirt, and his little brown breeks that do not 
 reach his knees, and the bare shanks below, and the bare feet stuck in 
 the stirrup-leathers — for he is not quite long enough to reach the irons 
 — I am afraid the little girls and boys in your part of the town might 
 be very much inclined to give him a penny in charity. So you see 
 that a very big man in one place might seem very small potatoes in 
 another, just as the king's palace here (of which I told you in my last) 
 would be thought rather a poor place of residence by a Surrey gipsy. 
 And if you come to that, even the lean man himself, who is no end 
 of an important person, if he were picked up from the chair where he 
 is now sitting, and slung down, feet-foremost, in the neighbourhood 
 of Charing Cross, would probably have to escape into the nearest shop, 
 or take the risk of being mobbed. And the ladies of his family, who 
 are very pretty ladies, and think themselves uncommonly well dressed 
 for Samoa, would (if the same thing were to be done to them) be ex- 
 tremely glad to get into a cab. . . . Tusitala. 
 
 Ill 
 
 UNDER COVER TO MISS B 
 
 Vailima, 4 Sept., 1892. 
 Dear Children in the Cellar, — I told you before something of the 
 Black Boys who come here to work on the plantations, and some of 
 whom run away and live a wildlife in the forests of the island.^ Now 
 
 1 The German company, from which we got our black boy Arick, owns 
 and cultivates many thousands of acres in Samoa, and keeps at least a 
 thousand black people to work on its plantations. Two schooners are 
 always busy in bringing fresh batches to Samoa, and in taking home to 
 their own islands the men who have worked out their three years' term of 
 labour. This traffic in human beings is called the " labour trade," and is 
 the life's blood, not only of the great German company, but of all the 
 planters in Fiji, Queensland, New Caledonia. German New Guinea, the 
 
 507 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 I want to tell you of one who lived in the house of the lean man. Like 
 the rest of them here, he is a little fellow, and when he goes about in 
 old battered cheap European clothes, looks very small and shabby. 
 When first he came he was as lean as a tobacco-pipe, and his smile 
 (like that of almost all the others) was the sort that half makes you 
 wish to smile yourself, and half wish to cry. However, the boys in the 
 kitchen took him in hand and fed him up. They would set him down 
 alone to table, and wait upon him till he had his fill, which was a good 
 long time to wait. The first thing we noticed was that his little 
 stomach began to stick out like a pigeon's breast; and then the food 
 got a little wider spread, and he started little calves to his legs; and last 
 of all, he began to get quite saucy and impudent. He is really what 
 you ought to call a young man, though 1 suppose nobody in the whole 
 wide world has any idea of his age; and so far as his behaviour goes, 
 you can only think of him as a big little child with a good deal of 
 sense. 
 
 When Austin built his fort against the Indians, Arick (for that is the 
 Black Boy's name) liked nothing so much as to help him. And this is 
 very funny, when you think that of all the dangerous savages in this 
 island Arick is one of the most dangerous. The other day, besides, he 
 made Austin a musical instrument of the sort they use in his own coun- 
 try — a harp with only one string. He took a stick about three feet 
 long and perhaps four inches round. The under side he hollowed out 
 in a deep trench to serve as a sounding-box; the two ends of the upper 
 side he made to curve upward like the ends of a canoe, and between 
 these he stretched the single string. He plays upon it with a match 
 or a little piece of stick, and sings to it songs of his own country, of 
 which no person here can understand a single word, and which are, 
 very likely, all about fighting with his enemies in battle, and killing 
 
 Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides. The difference between the 
 labour trade, as it is now carried on under Government supervision, and 
 the slave trade is a great one, but not great enough to please sensitive 
 people. In Samoa the missionaries are not allowed by the company to 
 teach these poor savages religion, or to do anything to civihse them and 
 raise them from their monkey-like ignorance. But in other respects the 
 company is not a bad master, and treats its people pretty well. The sys- 
 tem, however, is one that cannot be defended and must sooner or later be 
 suppressed.— [L. O.] 
 
 508 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 them, and, I am sorry to say, cooking them in a ground-oven, and eat- 
 ing them for supper when the fight is over. 
 
 For Arick is really what you call a savage, though a savage is a very 
 different sort of a person, and very much nicer than he is made to 
 appear in little books. He is the kind of person that everybody smiles 
 to, or makes faces at, or gives a smack as he goes by; the sort of per- 
 son that all the girls on the plantation give the best seat to and help 
 first, and love to decorate with flowers and ribbons, and yet all the while 
 are laughing at him; the sort of person who likes best to play with 
 Austin, and whom Austin, perhaps (when he is allowed), likes best to 
 play with. He is all grins and giggles and little steps out of dances, 
 and little droll ways to attract people's attention and set them laugh- 
 ing. And yet, when you come to look at him closely, you will find 
 that his body is all covered with scars ! This happened when he was 
 a child. There was war, as is the way in these wild islands, between 
 his village and the next, much as if there were war in London between 
 one street and another; and all the children ran about playing in the 
 middle of the trouble, and, I dare say, took no more notice of the war 
 than you children in London do of a general election. But sometimes, 
 at general elections, English children may get run over by processions 
 in the street; and it chanced that as little Arick was running about in 
 the Bush, and very busy about his playing, he ran into the midst of the 
 warriors on the other side. These speared him with a poisoned spear; 
 and his own people, when they had found him, in order to cure him 
 of the poison scored him with knives that were probably made of fish- 
 bone. 
 
 This is a very savage piece of child-life ; and Arick, for all his good- 
 nature, is still a very savage person. I have told you how the Black 
 Boys sometimes run away from the plantations, and live alone in the 
 forest, building little sheds to protect them from the rain, and some- 
 times planting little gardens for food ; but for the most part living the 
 best they can upon the nuts of the trees and the yams that they dig 
 with their hands out of the earth. I do not think there can be any- 
 where in the world people more wretched than these runaways. They 
 cannot return, for they would only return to be punished ; they can 
 never hope to see again their own people— indeed, I do not know 
 what they can hope, but just to find enough yams every day to keep 
 them from starvation. And in the wet season of the year, which is 
 
 509 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 our summer and your winter, when the rain falls day after day far 
 harder and louder than the loudest thunder-plump that ever fell in 
 England, and the room is so dark that the lean man is sometimes glad 
 to light his lamp to write by, I can think of nothing so dreary as the 
 state of these poor runaways in the houseless Bush. You are to re- 
 member, besides, that the people of the island hate and fear them be- 
 cause they are cannibals; sit and tell tales of them about their lamps 
 at night in their own comfortable houses, and are sometimes afraid to 
 lie down to sleep if they think there is a lurking Black Boy in the 
 neighbourhood. Well, now, Arick is of their own face and language, 
 only he is a little more lucky because he has not run away; and how 
 do you think that he proposed to help them ? He asked if he might 
 not have a gun. "What do you want with a gun, Arick?" was 
 asked. He answered quite simply, and with his nice, good-natured 
 smile, that if he had a gun he would go up into the High Bush and 
 shoot Black Boys as men shoot pigeons. He said nothing about eating 
 them, nor do I think he really meant to; I think all he wanted was to 
 clear the plantation of vermin, as gamekeepers at home kill weasels 
 or rats. 
 
 The other day he was sent on an errand to the German company 
 where many of the Black Boys live. It was very late when he came 
 home. He had a white bandage around his head, his eyes shone, and 
 he could scarcely speak for excitement. It seems some of the Black 
 Boys who were his enemies at home had attacked him, one with a 
 knife. By his own account, he had fought very well ; but the odds 
 were heavy. The man with the knife had cut him both in the head 
 and back; he had been struck down; and if some Black Boys of his 
 own side had not come to the rescue, he must certainly have been 
 killed. I am sure no Christmas box could make any of you children 
 so happy as this fight made Arick. A great part of the next day he 
 neglected his work to play upon the one-stringed harp and sing songs 
 about his great victory. To-day, when he is gone upon his holiday, 
 he has announced that he is going back to the German firm to have 
 another battle and another triumph. I do not think he will go, all the 
 same, or I should be uneasy; for I do not want to have my Arick 
 killed; and there is no doubt that if he begin this fight again, he will 
 be likely to go on with it very far. For I have seen him once when he 
 saw, or thought he saw, an enemy. 
 
 510 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 It was one of those dreadful days of rain, the sound of it like a great 
 waterfall, or like a tempest of wind blowing in the forest; and there 
 came to our door two runaway Black Boys seeking refuge. In such 
 weather as that my enemy's dog (as Shakespeare says) should have 
 had a right to shelter. But when Arick saw the two poor rogues com- 
 ing with their empty stomachs and drenched clothes, one of them with 
 a stolen cutlass in his hand, through that world of falling water, he 
 Jiad no thought of any pity in his heart. Crouching behind one of the 
 pillars of the verandah, to which he clung with his two hands, his 
 mouth drew back into a strange sort of smile, his eyes grew bigger 
 and bigger, and his whole face was just like the one word MURDER 
 in big capitals. 
 
 But I have told you a great deal too much about poor Arick's savage 
 nature, and now I must tell you of a great amusement he had the other 
 day. There came an English ship of war into the harbour, and the 
 officers good-naturedly gave an entertainment of songs and dances and 
 a magic lantern, to which Arick and Austin were allowed to go. At 
 the door of the hall there were crowds of Black Boys waiting and try- 
 ing to peep in, as children at home lie about and peep under the tent 
 of a circus; and you may be sure Arick was a very proud person when 
 he passed them all by, and entered the hall with his ticket. 
 
 I wish I knew what he thought of the whole performance; but a 
 friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what 
 seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the 
 officers came out with blackened faces^ like minstrels, and began to 
 dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own peo- 
 ple, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in this new 
 European style. 
 
 But the great affair was the magic lantern. The hall was made 
 quite dark, which was very little to Arick's taste. He sat there behind 
 my friend, nothing to be seen of him but eyes and teeth, and his heart 
 was beating finely in his little scarred breast. And presently there 
 came out of the white sheet that great big eye of light that I am sure 
 all of you children must have often seen. It was quite new to Arick; 
 he had no idea what would happen next, and in his fear and excite- 
 ment he laid hold with his little slim black fingers like a bird's claw on 
 the neck of the friend in front of him. All through the rest of the 
 show, as one picture followed another on the white sheet, he sat 
 
 5>i 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 there grasping and clutching, and goodness knows whether he were 
 more pleased or frightened. 
 
 Doubtless it was a very fine thing to see all those bright pictures 
 coming out and dying away again, one after another; but doubtless 
 it was rather alarming also, for how was it done ? At last when there 
 appeared upon the screen the head of a black woman (as it might be 
 his own mother or sister), and this black woman of a sudden began to 
 roll her eyes, the fear or the excitement, whichever it was, wrung out 
 of him a loud, shuddering sob. I think we all ought to admire his 
 courage when, after an evening spent in looking at such wonderful 
 miracles, he and Austin set out alone through the forest to the lean 
 man's house. It was late at night and pitch-dark when some of the 
 party overtook the little white boy and the big black boy, marching 
 among the trees with their lantern. I have told you this wood has an 
 ill name, and all the people of the island believe it to be full of evil 
 spirits; it is a pretty dreadful place to walk in by the moving light of 
 a lantern, with nothing about you but a curious whirl of shadows, 
 and the black night above and beyond. But Arick kept his courage 
 up, and I dare say Austin's too, with a perpetual chatter, so that the 
 people coming after heard his voice long before they saw the shining 
 of the lantern. Tusitala. 
 
 IV 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 Vailima, November 2, 1892, 
 Mr DEAR Austin, — First and foremost I think you will be sorry to 
 hear that our poor friend Arick has gone back to the German firm. 
 He had not been working very well, and we had talked of sending 
 him off before; but remembering how thin he was when he came 
 here, and seeing what fat little legs and what a comfortable little stom- 
 ach he had laid on in the meanwhile, we found we had not the heart. 
 The other day, however, he set up chat to Henry, the Samoan over- 
 seer, asking him who he was and where he came from, and refusing 
 to obey his orders. I was in bed in the workmen's house, having a 
 fever. Uncle Lloyd came over to me, told me of it, and I had Arick 
 sent up. I told him I would give him another chance. He was taken 
 out and asked to apologise to Henry, but he would do no such thing. 
 He preferred to go back to the German firm. So we hired a couple 
 
 512 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 of Samoans who were up here on a visit to the boys, and packed him 
 off in their charge to the firm, where he arrived safely, and a receipt 
 was given for him like a parcel,* 
 
 Sunday last the Alameda returned. Your mother was off bright 
 and early with Palema, for it is a very curious thing, but is certainly 
 the case, that she was very impatient to get news of a young person 
 by the name of Austin. Mr. Gurr lent a horse for the Captain — it was 
 a pretty big horse, but our handsome Captain, as you know, is a very 
 big Captain indeed. Now, do you remember Misifolo — a tall, thin 
 Hovea boy that came shortly before you left ? He had been riding up 
 this same horse of Gurr's just the day before, and the horse threw him 
 off at Motootua corner, and cut his hip. So Misifolo called out to the 
 Captain as he rode by that that was a very bad horse, that it ran away 
 and threw people off, and that he had best be caretul ; and the funny 
 thing is, that the Captain did not like it at all. The foal might as 
 well have tried to run away with Vailima as that horse with Captain 
 Morse, which is poetry, as you see, into the bargain; but the Captain 
 was not at all in that way of thinking, and was never really happy 
 until he had got his foot on ground again. It was just then that the 
 horse began to be happy too, so they parted in one mind. But the 
 horse is still wondering what kind of piece of artillery he had bfought 
 up to Vailima last Sunday morning. So far it was all right. The 
 Captain was got safe off the wicked horse, but how was he to get 
 back again to Apia and the Alameda ? 
 
 Happy thought — there was Donald, the big pack-horse! The last 
 time Donald was ridden he had upon him a hair-pin and a pea — by 
 which 1 mean (once again to drop into poetry) you and me. Now he 
 was to have a rider more suited to his size. He was brought up to the 
 
 1 When Arick left us and went back to the German company, he had 
 grown so fat and strong and intelligent that they deemed he was made for 
 better things than cotton-picking or plantation work, and handed him over 
 to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I used often to meet 
 him after this, tripping at his master's heels with the theodolite, or scam- 
 pering about with tapes and chains like a kitten with a spool of thread. He 
 did not look then as though he were destined to die of a broken heart, 
 though that was his end not so many months afterwards. The plantation 
 manager told me that Arick and a New Ireland boy went crazy with home- 
 sickness, and died in the hospital together. — [L. O]. 
 
 5»3 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 door — he looked a mountain. A step-ladder was put alongside of 
 him. The Captain approached the step-ladder, and he looked an Alp. 
 I was n't as much afraid for the horse as I was for the step-ladder, but 
 it bore the strain, and with a kind of sickening smash that you might 
 have heard at Monterey, the Captain descewded to the saddle. Now 
 don't think that I am exaggerating, but at the moment when that enor- 
 mous Captain settled down upon Donald, the horse's hind legs gave 
 visibly under the strain. What the couple looked like, one on top of 
 t' other, no words can tell you, and your mother must here draw a pic- 
 ture. — Your respected Uncle, O Tusitala. 
 
 TO AUSTIN STROKO 
 
 yailima, November i^, t8p2. 
 
 My dear Austin, — The new house is begun. It stands out nearly 
 half-way over towards Pineapple Cottage— the lower floor is laid and 
 the uprights of the wall are set up; so that the big lower room wants 
 nothing but a roof over its head. When it rains (as it does mostly all 
 the time) you never saw anything look so soixy for itself as that room 
 left outside. Beyond the house there is a work-shed roofed with sheets 
 of iron, and in front, over about half the lawn, the lumber for the 
 house lies piled. It is about the bringing up of this lumber that I want 
 to tell you. 
 
 For about a fortnight there were at work upon the job two German 
 overseers, about a hundred Black Boys, and from twelve to twenty- 
 four draught-oxen. It rained about half the time, and the road was 
 like lather for shaving. The Black Boys seemed to have had a new 
 rig-out. They had almost all shirts of scarlet flannel, and lavalavas, 
 the Samoan kilt, either of scarlet or light blue. As the day got warm 
 they took off the shirts; and it was a very curious thing, as you went 
 down to Apia on a bright day, to come upon one tree after another in 
 the empty forest with these shirts stuck among the branches like ver- 
 milion birds. 
 
 I observed that many of the boys had a very queer substitute for a 
 pocket. This was nothing more than a string which some of them tied 
 about their upper arms and some about their necks, and in which they 
 stuck their clay pipes; and as I don't suppose they had anything else 
 to carry, it did very well. Some had feathers in their hair, and some 
 
 5M 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 long stalks of grass through the holes in their noses. 1 suppose this 
 was intended to make them look pretty, poor dears; but you know 
 what a Black Boy looks like, and these Black Boys, for all their blue, 
 and their scarlet, and their grass, looked just as shabby and small, and 
 sad, and sorry for themselves, and like sick monkeys as any of the rest. 
 
 As you went down the road you came upon them first working in 
 squads of two. Each squad shouldered a couple of planks and carried 
 them up about two hundred feet, gave them to two others, and walked 
 back empty-handed to the places they had started from. It was n't 
 very hard work, and they did n't go about it at all lively; but, of course, 
 when it rained, and the mud was deep, the poor fellows were unhappy 
 enough. This was in the upper part about Trood's. Below, all the 
 way down to Tanugamanono, you met the bullock-carts coming and 
 going, each with ten or twenty men to attend upon it, and often enough 
 with one of the overseers near. Quite a far way off through the for- 
 est you could hear the noise of one of these carts approaching. The 
 road was like a bog, and though a good deal wider than it was when 
 you knew it, so narrow that the bullocks reached quite across it with 
 the span of their big horns. To pass by, it was necessary to get into 
 the Bush on one side or the other. The bullocks seemed to take no 
 interest in their business; they looked angry and stupid, and sullen 
 beyond belief; and when it came to a heavy bit of road, as often as 
 not they would stop. 
 
 As long as they were going the Black Boys walked in the margin 
 of the Bush on each side, pushing the cart-wheels with hands and 
 shoulders, and raising the most extraordinary outcry. It was strangely 
 like some very big kind of bird. Perhaps the great flying creatures 
 that lived upon the earth long before man came, if we could have 
 come near one of their meeting-places, would have given us just such 
 a concert. 
 
 When one of the bullamacows 1 stopped altogether the fun was 
 
 1 "BuUamacow" is a word that always amuses the visitor to Samoa. 
 When the first pair of cattle was brought to the islands, and the natives 
 asked the missionaries what they must call these strange creatures, they 
 were told that the English name was " a bull and a cow." But the 
 Samoans thought that " a bull and a cow" was the name of each of the 
 animals, and they soon corrupted the English words into " bullamacow," 
 which has remained the name for beef or cattle ever since. — [L. O.] 
 
 515 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 highest. The buUamacow stood on the road, his head fixed fast in 
 the yoke, chewing a little, breathing very hard, and showing in his 
 red eye that if he could get rid of the yoke he would show them what 
 a circus was. All the Black Boys tailed on to the wheels and the back 
 of the cart stood there getting their spirits up, and then of a sudden 
 set to shooing and singing out. It was these outbursts of shrill cries 
 that it was so curious to hear in the distance. One such stuck cart 1 
 came up to and asked what was the worry. ** Old fool bullamacow 
 stop same place," was the reply. I never saw any of the overseers 
 near any of the stuck carts; you were a very much better overseer than 
 either of these. 
 
 While this was going on, I had to go down to Apia five or six dif- 
 ferent times, and each time there were a hundred Black Boys to say 
 "Good-morning" to. This was rather a tedious business; and, as 
 very few of them answered at all, and those who did, only with a 
 grunt like a pig's, it was several times in my mind to give up this piece 
 of politeness. The last time I went down, I was almost decided ; but 
 when I came to the first pair of Black Boys, and saw them looking so 
 comic and so melancholy, I began the business over again. This 
 time I thought more of them seemed to answer, and when I got down 
 to the tail-end where the carts were running, I received a very pleasant 
 surprise, for one of the boys, who was pushing at the back of a cart^ 
 lifted up his head, and called out to me in wonderfully good English, 
 "You good man — always say 'Good-morning.'" It was sad to- 
 think that these poor creatures should think so much of so small a 
 piece of civility, and strange that (thinking so) they should be so dull 
 as not to return it. Uncle Louis. 
 
 VI 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 June i8, i8pj. 
 Respected Hopkins,! — This is to inform you that the Jersey cow 
 had an elegant little cow-calf Sunday last. There was a great deal of 
 rejoicing, of course; but I don't know whether or not you remember 
 
 1 In the letters that were sent to Austin Strong you will be surprised to 
 see his name change from Austin to Hoskyns, and from Hopkins to 
 Hutchinson. It was the penalty Master Austin had to pay for being the 
 particular and bosom friend of each of the one hundred and eighty blue- 
 
 516 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 the Jersey cow. Whatever else she is, the Jersey cow is not good- 
 natured, and Dines, who was up here on some other business, went 
 down to the paddock to get a hood and to milk her. The hood is a little 
 wooden board with two holes in it, by which it is hung from her 
 horns. 1 do not know how he got it on, and I don't believe be does. 
 Anyway, in the middle of the operation, in came Bull Bazett, with his 
 head down, and roaring like the last trumpet. Dines and all his merry 
 men hid behind trees in the paddock and skipped. Dines then got 
 upon a horse, plied his spurs, and cleared for Apia. The next time he 
 is asked to meddle with our cows, he will probably want to know the 
 reason why. Meanwhile, there was the cow, with the board over her 
 €yes, left tied by a pretty long rope to a small tree in the paddock, 
 and who was to milk her ? She roared, — I was going to say like a 
 bull, but it was Bazett who did that, walking up and down, switching 
 his tail, and the noise of the pair of them was perfectly dreadful. 
 
 Palema went up to the Bush to call Lloyd; and Lloyd came down 
 i i one of his know-all-about-it moods. " It was perfectly simple," he 
 said. " The cow was hooded; anybody could milk her. All you had 
 to do was to draw her up to the tree, and get a hitch about it." So 
 he untied the cow, and drew her up close to the tree, and got a hitch 
 about it right enough. And then the cow brought her intellect to bear 
 on the subject, and proceeded to walk roand the tree to get the hitch off. 
 
 Now, this is geometry, which you '11 have to learn some day. The 
 tree is the centre of two circles. The cow had a ''radius" of about 
 two feet, and went leisurely round a small circle; the man had a 
 " radius " of about thirty feet, and either he must let the cow get the 
 hitch unwound, or else he must take up his two feet to about the 
 height of his eyes and race round a big circle. This was racing and 
 chasing. 
 
 The cow walked quietly round and round the tree to unwind her- 
 self; and first Lloyd, and then Palema, and then Lloyd again, scam- 
 pered round the big circle, and fell, and got up again, and bounded like 
 a deer, to keep her hitched. 
 
 jackets that made up the crew of the British man-of-war Curagoa; for, 
 whether it was due to some bitter memories of the Revolutionary war, or 
 to some rankling reminiscences of 1812, that even friendship could not al- 
 together stifle (for Austin was a true American boy), they annoyed him by 
 giving him, each one of them, a separate name. — [L. O.J 
 
 5«7 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 It was funny to see, but we could n't laugh with a good heart; for 
 every now and then (when the man who was running tumbled down) 
 the cow would get a bit ahead; and I promise you there was then no 
 sound of any laughter, but we rather edged away towards the gate, 
 
 /Vi»^**» 
 
 
 ' " 9 
 
 /#•• 
 
 
 %wmmmm 
 
 looking to see the crazy beast loose, and charging us. To add to hei 
 attractions, the board had fallen partly off, and only covered one eye, 
 giving her the look of a crazy old woman in a Sydney slum. Mean- 
 while, the calf stood looking on, a little perplexed, and seemed to be 
 saying: ** Well, now, is this life? It does n't seem as if it was all it 
 was cracked up to be. And is this my mamma ? What a very im- 
 pulsive lady! " 
 
 All the time, from the lower paddock, we could hear Bazett roaring 
 like the deep seas, and if we cast our eye that way, we could see him 
 switching his tail, as a very angry gentleman may sometimes switch 
 his cane. And the Jersey would every now and then put up her head, 
 and low like the pu i for dinner. And take it for all in all, it was a 
 very striking scene. Poor Uncle Lloyd had plenty of time to regret 
 having been in such a hurry; so had poor Palema, who was let into 
 the business, and ran until he was nearly dead. Afterwards Palema 
 
 1 The big conch-shell that was blown at certain hours every day.— > 
 [L. O.] 
 
 518 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 went and sat on a gate where your mother sketched him, and she is go- 
 ing to send you the sketch. And the end of it ? Well, we got her tied 
 again, 1 really don't know how; and came stringing back to the house 
 with our tails between our legs. That night at dinner, the Tamaitai I 
 bid us tell the boys to be very careful " not to frighten the cow." It 
 was too much; the cow had frightened us in such fine style that we 
 all broke down and laughed like mad. 
 
 General Hoskyns, there is no further news, your Excellency, that I 
 am aware of. But it may interest you to know that Mr. Christian 
 held his twenty-fifth birthday yesterday — a quarter of a living century 
 old; think of it, drink of it, innocent youth! — and asked down Lloyd 
 and Daplyn to a feast at one o'clock, and Daplyn went at seven, and 
 got nothing to eat at all. Whether they had anything to drink, 1 
 know not — no, not I; but it 's to be hoped so. Also, your Uncle 
 Lloyd has stopped smoking, and he does n't like it much. Also, that 
 your mother is most beautifully gotten up to-day, in a pink gown with 
 a topaz stone in front of it; and is really looking like an angel, only 
 that she is n't like an angel at all — only like your mother herself. 
 
 Also that the Tamaitai has been waxing the floor of the big room, 
 so that it shines in the most ravishing manner; and then we insisted 
 on coming in, and she would n't let us, and we came anyway, and 
 have made the vilest mess of it — but still it shines. 
 
 Also, that I am, your Excellency's obedient servant, 
 
 Uncle Louis. 
 
 VII 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 My dear Hutchinson,— This is not going to be much of a letter, so 
 don't expect what can't be had. Uncle Lloyd and Palema made a 
 malanga2 to go over the island to Siumu, and Talolo was anxious to 
 go also; but how could we get along without him? Well, Misifolo, 
 the Maypole, set off on Saturday, and walked all that day down the 
 island to beyond Faleasiu with a letter for lopu; and lopu and Tali 
 and Misifolo rose very eariy on the Sunday morning, and walked all 
 that day up the island, and came by seven at night — all pretty tired, 
 
 1 Mrs. R. L. S., as she is called in Samoan, " the Lady."— [L. O.J 
 
 2 A visiting party. 
 
 5>9 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 and Misifolo most of all — to Tanugamanono.^ We at Vailima knew 
 nothing at all about the marchings of the Saturday and Sunday, but 
 Uncle Lloyd got his boys and things together and went to bed. 
 
 A little after five in the morning I woke and took the lantern, and 
 went out of the front door and round the verandahs. There was never 
 a spark of dawn in the east, only the stars looked a little pale ; and 1 
 expected to find them all asleep in the workhouse. But no ! the stove 
 was roaring, and Talolo and Fono, who was to lead the party, were 
 standing together talking by the stove, and one of Fono's young men 
 was lying asleep on the sofa in the smoking-room, wrapped in his lava- 
 lava. I had my breakfast at half-past five that morning, and the bell 
 rang before six, when it was just the grey of dawn. But by seven the 
 feast was spread — there was lopu coming up, with Tali at his heels, 
 and Misifolo bringing up the rear — and Talolo could go the malanga. 
 
 Off they set with two guns and three porters, and Fono and Lloyd 
 and Palema, and Talolo himself with his best Sunday-go-to-meeting 
 lavalava rolled up under his arm, and a very sore foot; but much he 
 cared — he was smiling from ear to ear, and would have gone to Siumu 
 over red-hot coals. Off they set round the corner of the cook-house, 
 and into the Bush beside the chicken-house, and so good-bye to them. 
 
 But you should see how lopu has taken possession! ** Never saw a 
 place in such a state! " is written on his face. '* In my time," says he, 
 "we did n't let things go ragging along like this, and I 'm going to 
 show you fellows." The first thing he did was to apply for a bar of 
 soap, and then he set to work washing everything (that had all been 
 washed last Friday in the regular course). Then he had the grass cut 
 all round the cook-house, and I tell you but he found scraps, and odds 
 and ends, and grew more angry and indignant at each fresh discovery. 
 
 1 Talolo was the Vailima cook ; Sina, his wife ; Tauilo, his mother ; Mi- 
 taele and Sosimo, his brothers. Lafaele, who was married to Faauma, was 
 a middle-aged Futuna Islander, and had spent many years of his life on a 
 whale-ship, the captain of which had kidnapped him when a boy. Misi- 
 folo was one of the " housemaids." lopu and Tali, man and wife, had long 
 been in our service, but had left it after they had been married some time ; 
 but, according to Samoan ideas, they were none the less members of Tusi- 
 tala's family, because, though they were no longer working for him, they 
 still owed him allegiance. "Aunt Maggie" is Mr. Stevenson's mother; 
 Palema, Mr. Graham Balfour.— [L. C] 
 
 520 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 " If a white chief came up here and smelt this, how would you 
 feel ?" he asked your mother. " It is enough to breed a sickness! " 
 
 And 1 dare say you remember this was just what your mother had 
 often said to himself; and did say the day she went out and cried on 
 the kitchen steps in order to make Talolo ashamed. But lopu gave it 
 all out as little new discoveries of his own. The last thing was the 
 cows, and I tell you he was solemn about the cows. They were all 
 destroyed, he said, nobody knew how to milk except himself — where 
 he is about right. Then came dinner and a delightful little surprise. 
 Perhaps you remember that long ago I used not to eat mashed potatoes, 
 but always had two or three boiled in a plate. This has not been done 
 for months, because Talolo makes such admirable mashed potatoes 
 that I have caved in. But here came dinner, mashed potatoes for your 
 mother and the Tamaitai, and then boiled potatoes in a plate for me! 
 
 And there is the end of the Tale of the return of lopu, up to date. 
 What more there may be is in the lap of the gods, and. Sir, I am yours 
 considerably, Uncle Louis. 
 
 vni 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 My dear Hoskyns,— I am kept away in a cupboard because everybody 
 has the influenza ; 1 never see anybody at all, and never do anything what- 
 ever except to put ink on paper up here in my room. So what can I find 
 to write to you ?— you, who are going to school, and getting up in the 
 morning to go bathing, and having (it seems to me) rather a fine time of 
 it in general ? 
 
 You ask if we have seen Arick ? Yes, your mother saw him at the 
 head of a gang of boys, and looking fat, and sleek, and well-to-do. I 
 have an idea that he misbehaved here because he was homesick for the 
 other Black Boys, and did n't know how else to get back to them. Well, 
 he has got them now, and 1 hope he likes it better than 1 should. 
 
 I read the other day something that I thought would interest so great 
 a sea-bather as yourself. You know that the fishes that we see, and 
 catch, go only a certain way down into the sea. Below a certain depth 
 there is no life at all. The water is as empty as the air is above a certain 
 height. Even the shells of dead fishes that come down there are crushed 
 into nothing by the huge weight of the water. Lower still, in the places 
 
 5»t 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 where the sea is profoundly deep, it appears that life begins agsfm. People 
 fish up in dredging-buckets loose rags and tatters of creatures that hang 
 together all right down there with the great weight holding them in one, 
 but come all to pieces as they are hauled up. Just what they look like, 
 just what they do or feed upon, we shall never find out. Only that we 
 have some flimsy fellow-creatures down in the very bottom of the deep 
 seas, and cannot get them up except in tatters. It must be pretty dark 
 where they live, and there are no plants or weeds, and no fish come down 
 there, or drowned sailors either, from the upper parts, because these are 
 all mashed to pieces by the great weight long before they get so far, or . 
 else come to a place where perhaps they float. But I dare say a cannon 
 sometimes comes careering solemnly down, and circling about like a dead 
 leaf or thistledown ; and then the ragged fellows go and play about the 
 cannon and tell themselves all kinds of stories about the fish higher up 
 and their iron houses, and perhaps go inside and sleep, and perhaps dream 
 of it all like their betters. 
 
 Of course you know a cannon down there would be quite light. Even 
 in shallow water, where men go down with a diving-dress, they grow so 
 light that they have to hang weights about their necks, and have their 
 boots loaded with twenty pounds of lead— as 1 know to my sorrow. 
 And with all this, and the helmet, which is heavy enough of itself to any 
 one up here in the thin air, they are carried about like gossamers, and 
 have to take every kind of care not to be upset and stood upon their 
 heads. 1 went down once in the dress, and speak from experience. But 
 if we could get down for a moment near where the fishes are, we should 
 be in a tight place. Suppose the water not to crush us (which it would), 
 we should pitch about in every kind of direction ; every step we took 
 would carry us as far as if we had seven-league boots ; and we should 
 keep flying head over heels, and top over bottom, like the liveliest clowns 
 in the world. 
 
 Well, Sir, here is a great deal of words put down upon a piece of 
 paper, and if you think that makes a letter, why, very well ! And if you 
 don't, I can't help it. For I have nothing under heaven to tell you. 
 
 So, with kindest wishes to yourself, and Louie, and Aunt Nellie, be- 
 lieve me, your affectionate Uncle Louis. 
 
 Now here is something worth telling you. This morning at six o'clock 
 I saw all the horses together in the front paddock, and in a terrible ado 
 
 522 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 about something. Presently I saw a man with two buckets on the march, 
 and knew where the trouble was— the cow ! The whole lot cleared to the 
 gate but two— Donald, the 
 big white horse, and my 
 Jack. They stood solitary, 
 one here, one there. I be- 
 gan to get interested, for I 
 thought Jack was off his 
 feed. In came the man with 
 the bucket and all the ruck ^ ^ » • / 
 
 of curious horses at his tail. 
 
 Right round he went to where Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, 
 and the majestic Donald ate it, and the ruck of common horses followed 
 the man. On he went to the second station, Jack's (/ in the plan), and 
 poured out a feed, and the fools of horses went in with him to the next 
 place {y4 in the plan). And behold as the train swung round, the last of 
 them came curiously too near Jack; and Jack left his feed and rushed 
 upon this fool with a kind of outcry, and the fool fled, and Jack returned 
 to his feed ; and he and Donald ate theirs with glory, while the others 
 were still circling round for fresh feeds. 
 
 Glory be to the name of Donald and to the name of Jack, for they 
 had found out where the foods were poured, and each took his station 
 and waited there, Donald at the first of the course for his, Jack at the 
 second station, while all the impotent fools ran round and round after 
 the man with his buckets! R. L. S. 
 
 IX 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 yailima. 
 
 My dear Austin,— Now when the overseer is away 1 1 think it my duty 
 to report to him anything serious that goes on on the plantation. 
 
 Early the other afternoon we heard that Sina's foot was very bad, 
 and soon after that we could have heard her cries as far away as the front 
 balcony. I think Sina rather enjoys being ill, and makes as much of it 
 
 1 While Austin was in Vailima many little duties about the plantation fell 
 to his share, so that he was often called the " overseer"; and, small as he 
 was, he sometimes took charge of a couple of big men, and went into town 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 as she possibly can ; but all the same it was painful to hear the cries ; and 
 there is no doubt she was at least very uncomfortable. I went up twice 
 to the little room behind the stable, and found her lying on the floor, 
 with Tali and Faauma and Talolo all holding on different bits of her. I 
 gave her an opiate ; but whenever she was about to go to sleep one of 
 these silly people would be shaking her, or talking in her ear, and then 
 she would begin to kick about again and scream. 
 
 Palema and Aunt Maggie took horse and went down to Apia after the 
 doctor. Right on their heels off went Mitaele on Musu to fetch Tauilo, 
 Talolo's mother. So here was all the island in a bustle over Sina's foot. 
 No doctor came, but he told us what to put on. When I went up at 
 night to the little room, I found Tauilo there, and the whole plantation 
 boxed into the place like little birds in a nest. They were sitting on the 
 bed, they were sitting on the table, the floor was full of them, and the 
 place as close as the engine-room of a steamer. In the middle lay Sina, 
 about three parts asleep with opium ; two able-bodied work-boys were 
 pulling at her arms, and whenever she closed her eyes calling her by 
 name, and talking in her ear. 
 
 I really did n't know what would become of the girl before morning. 
 Whether or not she had been very ill before, this was the way to make 
 her so, and when one of the work-boys woke her up again, I spoke to 
 him very sharply, and told Tauilo she must put a stop to it. 
 
 Now I suppose this was what put it into Tauilo's head to do what she 
 did next. You remember Tauilo, and what a fine, tall, strong Madame 
 Lafarge sort of person she is ? And you know how much afraid the na- 
 tives are of the evil spirits in the wood, and how they think all sickness 
 comes from them ? Up stood Tauilo, and addressed the spirit in Sina's 
 foot, and scolded it, and the spirit answered and promised to be a good 
 boy and go away. I do not feel so much afraid of the demons after this. 
 It was Faauma told me about it. I was going out into the pantry after 
 soda-water, and found her with a lantern drawing water from the tank. 
 " Bad spirit he go away," she told me. 
 
 "That 's first-rate," said I. "Do you know what the name of that 
 spirit was? His name was tautala [talking]." 
 
 "O, no! " she said; "his name is Tu." 
 
 with the pack-horses. It was not all play, either; for he had to see that the 
 barrels and boxes did not chafe the horses' backs, and that they were not 
 allowed to come home too fast up the steep road. — [L. O.] 
 
 524 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 You might have knocked me down with a straw. " How on earth do 
 you know that ? " I asked. 
 
 "Hear him tell Tauilo," she said. 
 
 As soon as I heard that, I began to suspect Mrs. Tauilo was a little bit 
 of a ventriloquist ; and imitating as well as I could the sort of voice they 
 make, asked her if the bad spirit did not talk like that. Faauma was 
 very much surprised, and told me that was just his voice. 
 
 Well, that was a very good business for the evening. The people all 
 went away because the demon was gone away, and the circus was over, 
 and Sina was allowed to sleep. But the trouble came after. There had 
 been an evil spirit in that room and his name was Tu. No one could say 
 when he might come back again; they all voted it was Tu much; and 
 now Talolo and Sina have had to be lodged in the Soldier Room.* As 
 for the little room by the stable, there it stands empty ; it is too small to 
 play soldiers in, and I do not see what we can do with it, except to have 
 a nice brass name-plate engraved in Sydney, or in "Frisco," and stuck 
 upon the door of \i—Mr. Tu. 
 
 So you see that ventriloquism has its bad side as well as its good sides ; 
 and I don't know that I want any more ventriloquists on this plantation. 
 We shall have Tu in the cook-house next, and then Tu in Lafaele's, and 
 Tu in the workman's cottage ; and the end of it all will be that we shall 
 have to take the Tamaitai's room for the kitchen, and my room for the 
 boys' sleeping-house, and we shall all have to go out and camp under 
 umbrellas. 
 
 Well, where you are there may be schoolmasters, but there is no such 
 thing as Mr. Tu! 
 
 Now, it 's all very well that these big people should be frightened out 
 of their wits by an old wife talking with her mouth shut ; that is one of 
 the things we happen to know about. All the old women in the world 
 might talk with their mouths shut, and not frighten you or me, but there 
 are plenty of other things that frighten us badly. And if we only knew 
 about them, perhaps we should find them no more worthy to be feared 
 than an old woman talking with her mouth shut. And the names of 
 some of these things are Death, and Pain, and Sorrow. 
 
 Uncle Louis. 
 
 1 A room set apart to serve as the theatre for an elaborate war-game, 
 which was one of Mr. Stevenson's favourite recreations. 
 
 525 
 
LETTERS FROM SAMOA 
 
 TO AUSTIN STRONG 
 
 January 27, i8p^. 
 Dear General Hoskyns,— I have the honour to report as usual. Your 
 giddy mother having gone planting a flower-garden, I am obliged to 
 write with my own hand, and, of course, nobody will be able to read it. 
 This has been a very mean kind of a month. Aunt Maggie left with the 
 influenza. We have heard of her from Sydney, and she is all right again ; 
 but we have inherited her influenza, and it made a poor place of Vailima. 
 We had Talolo, Mitaele, Sosimo, lopu, Sina, Misifolo, and myself, all 
 sick in bed at the same time ; and was not that a pretty dish to set before 
 the king! The big hall of the new house having no furniture, the sick 
 pitched their tents in it,— I mean their mosquito-nets,— like a military 
 camp. The Tamaitai and your mother went about looking after them, 
 and managed to get us something to eat. Henry, the good boy! though 
 he was getting it himself, did housework, and went round at night from 
 one mosquito-net to another, praying with the sick. Sina, too, was as 
 good as gold, and helped fis greatly. We shall always like her better. 
 All the time— I do not know how they managed— your mother found the 
 time to come and write for me ; and for three days, as 1 had my old 
 trouble on, and had to play dumb man, I dictated a novel in the deaf- 
 and-dumb alphabet. But now we are all recovered, and getting to feel 
 quite fit, A new paddock has been made ; the wires come right up to 
 the top of the hill, pass within twenty yards of the big clump of flowers 
 (if you remember that) and by the end of the pineapple patch. The 
 Tamaitai and your mother and I all sleep in the upper story of the new 
 house. Uncle Lloyd is alone in the workman's cottage; and there ij 
 nobody at all at night in the old house, but ants and cats and mosquitos 
 The whole inside of the new house is varnished. It is a beautiful golden^ 
 brown by day, and in lamplight all black, and sparkle. In the comer of 
 the hall the new safe is built in, and looks as if it had millions of pounds 
 in it ; but I do not think there is much more than twenty dollars and a 
 spoon or two ; so the man that opens it will have a great deal of trouble 
 for nothing. Our great fear is lest we should forget how to open it ; but 
 it will look just as well if we can't. Poor Misifolo— you remember the 
 thin boy, do you not ?— had a desperate attack of influenza ; and he was 
 in a great taking. You would not like to be very sick in some savage 
 
 526 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 place in the islands, and have only the savages to doctor you. Well, 
 that was just the way he felt. "It is all very well," he thought, "to 
 let these childish white people doctor a sore foot or a toothache, but this 
 is serious— I might die of this! For goodness' sake, let me get away into 
 a draughty native house, where I can lie in cold gravel, eat green bananas, 
 and have a real grown-up, tattooed man to raise spirits and say charms 
 over me." A day or two we kept him quiet, and got him much better. 
 Then he said he must go. He had had his back broken in his own 
 island, he said ; it had come broken again, and he must go away to a 
 native house, and have it mended. "Confound your back!" said we; 
 "lie down in your bed." At last, one day, his fever was quite gone, 
 and he could give his mind to the broken back entirely. He lay in the 
 hall ; I was in the room alone ; all morning and noon I heard him roaring 
 like a bull calf, so that the floor shook with it. It was plainly humbug ; 
 it had the humbugging sound of a bad child crying ; and about two of 
 the afternoon we were worn out, and told him he might go. Off he set. 
 He was in some kind of a white wrapping, with a great white turban on 
 his head, as pale as clay, and walked leaning on a stick. But, O, he was 
 a glad boy to get away from these foolish, savage, childish white people, 
 and get his broken back put right by somebody with some sense. He 
 nearly died that night, and little wonder! but he has now got better again, 
 and long may it last! All the others were quite good, trusted us wholly, 
 and stayed to be cured where they were. But then he was quite right, 
 if you look at it from his point of view ; for, though we may be very 
 clever, we do not set up to cure broken backs. If a man has his back 
 broken, we white people can do nothing at all but bury him. And was 
 he not wise, since that was his complaint, to go to folks who could do 
 more? 
 
 Best love to yourself, and Louie, and Aunt Nellie, and apologies for so 
 ^ull a letter, from your respectful and affectionate 
 
 Uncle Louis. 
 
 5^7 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
The following chapters of a projected treatise on ethics, here 
 printed for the first time, were drafted at Edinburgh in the 
 spring of 1879. They are unrevised, and must not he taken 
 as representing, either as to matter or form, their author's 
 final thoughts; hut they contain much that is essentially 
 characteristic of his mind. 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE problem of education is twofold: first to know, 
 and then to utter. Every one who lives any 
 semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and pro- 
 foundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can 
 impart only broken images of the truth which they 
 perceive. Speech which goes from one to another be- 
 tween two natures, and, what is worse, between two 
 experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries 
 his meaning; it is for the hearer to dig it up again; and 
 all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language 
 until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such, 
 moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we con- 
 descend upon details in our advice, we may be sure we 
 condescend on error; and the best of education is to 
 throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was 
 ever so poor that he could express all he has in him 
 by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is 
 eternally incommunicable, for it is a knowledge of 
 himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no 
 process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, 
 
 531 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates 
 with the variation of events and circumstances. 
 
 A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, 
 and contempt for others, try earnestly to set forth as 
 much as they can grasp of this inner law; but the vast 
 majority, when they come to advise the young, must 
 be content to retail certain doctrines which have been 
 already retailed to them in their own youth. Every 
 generation has to educate another which it has brought 
 upon the stage. People who readily accept the re- 
 sponsibility of parentship, having very different matters 
 in their eye, are apt to feel rueful when that responsi- 
 bility falls due. What are they to tell the child about 
 life and conduct, subjects on which they have them- 
 selves so few and such confused opinions ? Indeed, I 
 do not know; the least said, perhaps, the soonest 
 mended; and yet the child keeps asking, and the pa- 
 rent must find some words to say in his own defence. 
 Where does he find them ? and what are they when 
 found ? 
 
 As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, he will instil into 
 his wide-eyed brat three bad things ; the terror of public 
 opinion, and, flowing from that as a fountain, the de- 
 sire of wealth and applause. Besides these, or what 
 might be deduced as corollaries from these, he will 
 teach not much else of any effective value: some dim 
 notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, and 
 how to walk through a quadrille. 
 
 But, you may tell me, the young people are taught 
 to be Christians. It may be want of penetration, but 
 I have not yet been able to perceive it. As an honest 
 
 532 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 man, whatever we teach, and be it good or evil, it is 
 not the doctrine of Christ. What he taught (and in 
 this he is like all other teachers worthy of the name) 
 was not a code of rules, but a ruling spirit; not truths, 
 but a spirit of truth ; not views, but a view. What he 
 showed us was an attitude of mind. Towards the 
 many considerations on which conduct is built, each 
 man stands in a certain relation. He takes life on a 
 certain principle. He has a compass in his spirit which 
 points in a certain direction. It is the attitude, the re- 
 lation, the point of the compass, that is the whole body 
 and gist of what he has to teach us ; in this, the details 
 are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts 
 issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained 
 and applied. And thus, to learn aright from any 
 teacher, we must first of all, like a historical artist, 
 think ourselves into sympathy with his position and, 
 in the technical phrase, create his character. A histo- 
 rian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an 
 actor charged with a part, have but one preoccupation ; 
 they must search all round and upon every side, and 
 grope for some central conception which is to explain 
 and justify the most extreme details ; until that is found, 
 the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the 
 part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words ; but 
 once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human na- 
 ture appears, the politician or the stage-king is under- 
 stood from point to point, from end to end. This is a 
 degree of trouble which will be gladly taken by a very 
 humble artist; but not even the terror of eternal fire 
 can teach a business man to bend his imagination to 
 such athletic efforts. Yet without this, all is vain; 
 
 53} 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 until we understand the whole, we shall understand 
 none of the parts; and otherwise we have no more 
 than broken images and scattered words ; the meaning 
 remains buried ; and the language in which our prophet 
 speaks to us is a dead language in our ears. 
 
 Take a few of Christ's sayings and compare them 
 with our current doctrines. 
 
 " Ye cannot," he says, "serve God and Mammon.'* 
 Cannot ? And our whole system is to teach us how 
 we can ! 
 
 " The children of this world are wiser in their genera- 
 tion than the children of light. " Are they ? I had been 
 led to understand the reverse: that the Christian mer- 
 chant, for example, prospered exceedingly in his affairs; 
 that honesty was the best policy; that an author of 
 repute had written a conclusive treatise " How to make 
 the best of both worlds." Of both worlds indeed! 
 Which am I to believe then— Christ or the author of 
 repute? 
 
 " Take no thought for the morrow." Ask the Suc- 
 cessful Merchant; interrogate your own heart; and you 
 will have to admit that this is not only a silly but an 
 immoral position. All we believe, all we hope, all we 
 honour in ourselves or our contemporaries, stands 
 condemned in this one sentence, or, if you take the 
 other view, condemns the sentence as unwise and in- 
 humane. We are not then of the "same mind that 
 was in Christ." We disagree with Christ. Either 
 Christ meant nothing, or else he or we must be in the 
 wrong. Well says Thoreau, speaking of some texts 
 from the New Testament, and finding a strange echo 
 of another style which the reader may recognise : " Let 
 
 534 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 but one of these sentences be rightly read from any 
 pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone 
 of that meeting-house upon another." 
 
 It may be objected that these are what are called 
 " hard sayings " ; and that a man, or an education, may 
 be very sufficiently Christian although it leave some of 
 these sayings upon one side. But this is a very gross 
 delusion. Although truth is difficult to state, it is both 
 easy and agreeable to receive, and the mind runs out to 
 meet it ere the phrase be done. The universe, in relation 
 to what any man can say of it, is plain, patent, and 
 staringly comprehensible. In itself, it is a great and 
 travailing ocean, unsounded, unvoyageable, an eternal 
 mystery to man; or, let us say, it is a monstrous and 
 impassable mountain, one side of which, and a few 
 near slopes and foot-hills, we can dimly study with 
 these mortal eyes. But what any man can say of it, 
 even in his highest utterance, must have relation to 
 this little and plain corner, which is no less visible to 
 us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it 
 will go hard if we cannot follow the demonstration. 
 The longest and most abstruse flight of a philosopher 
 becomes clear and shallow, in the flash of a moment, 
 when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his 
 intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed ; 
 once we get our own finger rightly parallel, and we see 
 what the man meant, whether it be a new star or an 
 old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to 
 understand, it is because we are thinking of something 
 else. 
 
 But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things 
 as our prophet, and to think of different things in the 
 
 535 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 same order. To be of the same mind with another is 
 to see all things in the same perspective; it is not to 
 agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not 
 much debated ; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, 
 to see the force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly 
 in the centre of his vision that whatever he may express, 
 your eyes will light at once on the original, that what- 
 ever he may see to declare, your mind will at once 
 accept. You do not belong to the school of any phi- 
 losopher because you agree with him that theft is, on 
 the whole, objectionable, or that the sun is overhead 
 at noon. It is by the hard sayings that discipleship is 
 tested. We are all agreed about the middling and in- 
 different parts of knowledge and morality; even the 
 most soaring spirits too often take them tamely upon 
 trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist, 
 does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the 
 purpose of any system looks towards those extreme 
 points where it steps valiantly beyond tradition and 
 returns with some covert hint of things outside. Then 
 only can you be certain that the words are not words of 
 course, nor mere echoes of the past; then only are you 
 sure that if he be indicating anything at all, it is a star 
 and not a street-lamp; then only do you touch the heart 
 of the mystery, since it was for these that the author 
 wrote his book. 
 
 Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly 
 often, Christ finds a word that transcends all com- 
 monplace morality; every now and then he quits the 
 beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws 
 out a pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it 
 is only by some bold poetry of thought that men can 
 
 5^^ 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 be Strung up above the level of every-day conceptions 
 to take a broader look upon experience or accept some 
 higher principle of conduct. To a man who is of the 
 same mind that was in Christ, who stands at some centre 
 not too far from his, and looks at the world and con- 
 duct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not opposing 
 attitude— or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ's phi- 
 losophy—every such saying should come home with a 
 thrill of joy and corroboration ; he should feel each one 
 below his feet as another sure foundation in the flux of 
 time and chance; each should be another proof that in 
 the torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines 
 and great armaments and empires are swept away and 
 swallowed, he stands immovable, holding by the eternal 
 stars. But alas ! at this juncture of the ages it is not so 
 with us; on each and every such occasion our whole 
 fellowship of Christians falls back in disapproving won- 
 der and implicitly denies the saying. Christians! the 
 farce is impudently broad. Let us stand up in the sight 
 of heaven and confess. The ethics that we hold are 
 those of Benjamin Franklin. Honesty is the best policy, 
 is perhaps a hard saying; it is certainly one by which a 
 wise man of these days will not too curiously direct his 
 steps; but I think it shows a glimmer of meaning to 
 even our most dimmed intelligences; I think we per- 
 ceive a principle behind it; I think, without hyperbole, 
 we are of the same mind that was in Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 537 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 But, I may be told, we teach the ten commandments, 
 where a world of morals lies condensed, the very pith 
 and epitome of all ethics and religion ; and a young man 
 with these precepts engraved upon his mind must 
 follow after profit with some conscience and Christianity 
 of method. A man cannot go very far astray who 
 neither dishonours his parents, nor kills, nor commits 
 adultery, npr steals, nor bears false witness ; for these 
 things, rightly thought out, cover a vast field of duty. 
 
 Alas! what is a precept? It is at best an illustra- 
 tion; it is case law at the best which can be learned 
 by precept. The letter is not only dead, but killing; 
 the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered, alone 
 is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but 
 familiarity has a cunning disenchantment; in a day or 
 two she can steal all beauty from the mountain-tops; 
 and the most startling words begin to fall dead upon 
 the ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too 
 often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too 
 often, you no longer hear it. Our attention requires to 
 be surprised ; and to carry a fort by assault, or to gain 
 a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are 
 feats of about an equal difficulty and must be tried by 
 not dissimilar means. The whole Bible has thus lost 
 its message for the common run of hearers; it has be- 
 
 538 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 come mere words of course; and the parson may bawl 
 himself scarlet and beat the pulpit like a thing possessed, 
 but his hearers will continue to nod ; they are strangely 
 at peace; they know all he has to say; ring the old bell 
 as you choose, it is still the old bell and it cannot startle 
 their composure. And so with this by-word about the 
 letter and the spirit. It is quite true, no doubt; but it 
 has no meaning in the world to any man of us. Alas! 
 it has just this meaning, and neither more nor less : that 
 while the spirit is true, the letter is eternally false. 
 
 The shadow of a great oak lies abroad upon the ground 
 at noon, perfect, clear, and stable like the earth. But 
 let a man set himself to mark out the boundary with 
 cords and pegs, and were he never so nimble and never 
 so exact, what with the multiplicity of the leaves and 
 the progression of the shadow as it flees before the 
 travelling sun, long ere he has made the circuit the 
 whole figure will have changed. Life may be com- 
 pared, not to a single tree, but to a great and compli- 
 cated forest; circumstance is more swiftly changing 
 than a shadow, language much more inexact than the 
 tools of a surveyor; from day to day the trees fall and 
 are renewed ; the very essences are fleeting as we look ; 
 and the whole world of leaves is swinging tempest- 
 tossed among the winds of time. Look now for your 
 shadows. O man of formulae, is this a place for you ? 
 Have you fitted the spirit to a single case ? Alas, in 
 the cycle of the ages when shall such another be pro- 
 posed for the judgment of man ? Now when the sun 
 shines and the winds blow, the wood is filled with an 
 innumerable multitude of shadows, tumultuously tossed 
 and changing; and at every gust the whole carpet leaps 
 
 539 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 and becomes new. Can you or your heart say 
 more? 
 
 Look back now, for a moment, on your own brief 
 experience of life; and although you lived it feelingly in 
 your own person, and had every step of conduct burned 
 in by pains and joys upon your memory, tell me what 
 definite lesson does experience hand on from youth to 
 manhood, or from both to age ? The settled tenor 
 which first strikes the eye is but the shadow of a delu- 
 sion. This is gone; that never truly was; and you 
 yourself are altered beyond recognition. Times and 
 men and circumstances change about your changing 
 character, with a speed of which no earthly hurricane 
 affords an image. What was the best yesterday, is it 
 still the best in this changed theatre of a to-morrow ? 
 Will your own Past truly guide you in your own violent 
 and unexpected Future ? And if this be questionable, 
 with what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we 
 not watch other men driving beside us on their unknown 
 careers, seeing with unlike eyes, impelled by different 
 gales, doing and suffering in another sphere of things ? 
 
 And as the authentic clue to such a labyrinth and 
 change of scene, do you offer me these twoscore words ? 
 these five bald prohibitions ? For the moral precepts 
 are no more than five; the first four deal rather with 
 matters of observance than of conduct; the tenth, Tbou 
 Shalt not comet, stands upon another basis, and shall be 
 spoken of ere long. The Jews, to whom they were 
 first given, in the course of years began to find these 
 precepts insufficient; and made an addition of no less 
 than six hundred and fifty others ! They hoped tc make 
 a pocket-book of reference on morals, which should 
 
 540 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 Stand to life in some such relation, say, as Hoyle stands 
 in to the scientific game of whist. The comparison is 
 just, and condemns the design ; for those who play by 
 rule will never be more than tolerable players ; and you 
 and I would like to play our game in life to the noblest 
 and the most divine advantage. Yet if the Jews took 
 a petty and huckstering view of conduct, what view 
 do we take ourselves, who callously leave youth to go 
 forth into the enchanted forest, full of spells and dire 
 chimeras, with no guidance more complete than is 
 afforded by these five precepts ? 
 
 Honour thy father and thy mother. Yes, but does 
 that mean to obey } and if so, how long and how far > 
 Thou Shalt not hill. Yet the very intention and purport 
 of the prohibition may be best fulfilled by killing. 
 Thou Shalt not commit adultery. But some of the 
 ugliest adulteries are committed in the bed of marriage 
 and under the sanction of religion and law. Thou shall 
 not bear false witness. How > by speech or by silence 
 also } or even by a smile } Thou shalt not steal. Ah, 
 that indeed ! But what is to steal ? 
 
 To steal ? It is another word to be construed ; and 
 who is to be our guide ? The police will give us one 
 construction, leaving the word only that least minimum 
 of meaning without which society would fall in pieces ; 
 but surely we must take some higher sense than this; 
 surely we hope more than a bare subsistence for man- 
 kind; surely we wish mankind to prosper and go on 
 from strength to strength, and ourselves to live rightly 
 in the eye of some more exacting potentate than a 
 policeman. The approval or the disapproval of the 
 police must be eternally indifferent to a man who is 
 
 54» 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 both valorous and good. There is extreme discomfort, 
 but no shame, in the condemnation of the law. The 
 law represents that modicum of morality which can be 
 squeezed out of the ruck of mankind; but what is that 
 to me, who aim higher and seek to be my own more 
 stringent judge ? I observe with pleasure that no brave 
 man has ever given a rush for such considerations. 
 The Japanese have a nobler and more sentimental feel- 
 ing for this social bond into which we all are born 
 when we come into the world, and whose comforts 
 and protection we all indifferently share throughout our 
 lives:— but even to them, no more than to our Western 
 saints and heroes, does the law of the state supersede 
 the higher law of duty. Without hesitation and with- 
 out remorse, they transgress the stiffest enactments 
 rather than abstain from doing right. But the accidental 
 superior duty being thus fulfilled, they at once return 
 in allegiance to the common duty of all citizens; and 
 hasten to denounce themselves; and value at an equal 
 rate their just crime and their equally just submission 
 to its punishment. 
 
 The evading of the police will not long satisfy an 
 active conscience or a thoughtful head. But to show 
 you how one or the other may trouble a man, and what 
 a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this invalu- 
 able eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages 
 out of a young man's life. 
 
 He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; 
 generous, flighty, as variable as youth itself, but always 
 with some high motions and on the search for higher 
 thoughts of life. I should tell you at once that he thor- 
 oughly agrees with the eighth commandment. But he 
 
 542 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 got hold of some unsettling works, the New Testament 
 among others, and this loosened his views of life and 
 led him into many perplexities. As he was the son of 
 a man in a certain position, and well off, my friend had 
 enjoyed from the first the advantages of education, 
 nay, he had been kept alive through a sickly child- 
 hood by constant watchfulness, comforts, and change 
 of air; for all of which he was indebted to his father's 
 wealth. 
 
 At college he met other lads more diligent than him- 
 self, who followed the plough in summer-time to pay 
 their college fees in winter; and this inequality struck 
 him with some force. He was at that age of a con- 
 versable temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects 
 of life ; and he spent much of his time scraping acquain- 
 tance with all classes of man- and womankind. In 
 this way he came upon many depressed ambitions, and 
 many intelligences stunted for want of opportunity; 
 and this also struck him. He began to perceive that 
 life was a handicap upon strange, wrong-sided prin- 
 ciples; and not, as he had been told, a fair and equal 
 race. He began to tremble that he himself had been 
 unjustly favoured, when he saw all the avenues of 
 wealth and power and comfort closed against so 
 many of his superiors and equals, and held unweary- 
 ingly open before so idle, so desultory, and so dissolute 
 a being as himself. There sat a youth beside him on 
 the college benches, who had only one shirt to his back, 
 and, at intervals sufficiently far apart, must stay at home 
 to have it washed. It was my friend's principle to 
 stay away as often as he dared; for I fear he was no 
 friend to learning. But there was something that came 
 
 543 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 home to him sharply, in this fellow who had to give 
 over study till his shirt was washed, and the scores of 
 others who had never an opportunity at all. If one of 
 these could take his place^ he thought ; and the thought 
 tore away a bandage from his eyes. He was eaten by 
 the shame of his discoveries, and despised himself as 
 an unworthy favourite and a creature of the backstairs 
 of Fortune. He could no longer see without confusion 
 one of these brave young fellows battling up hill against 
 adversity. Had he not filched that fellow's birthright } 
 At best was he not coldly profiting by the injustice of 
 society, and greedily devouring stolen goods .? The 
 money, indeed, belonged to his father, who had worked, 
 and thought, and given up his liberty to earn it; but by 
 what justice could the money belong to my friend, who 
 had, as yet, done nothing but help to squander it.^ A 
 more sturdy honesty, joined to a more even and im- 
 partial temperament, would have drawn from these 
 considerations a new force of industry, that this equiv- 
 ocal position might be brought as swiftly as possible 
 to an end, and some good services to mankind justify 
 the appropriation of expense. It was not so with my 
 friend, who was only unsettled and discouraged, and 
 filled full of that trumpeting anger with which young 
 men regard injustices in the first blush of youth; al- 
 though in a few years they will tamely acquiesce in 
 their existence, and knowingly profit by their compli- 
 cations. Yet all this while he suffered many indignant 
 pangs. And once, when he put on his boots, like any 
 other unripe donkey, to run away from home, it was 
 his best consolation that he was now, at a single plunge, 
 to free himself from the responsibility of this wealth 
 
 544 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 that was not his, and do battle equally against his fel- 
 lows in the warfare of life. 
 
 Some time after this, falling into ill health, he was 
 sent at great expense to a more favourable climate ; and 
 then I think his perplexities were thickest. When he 
 thought of all the other young men of singular promise, 
 upright, good, the prop of families, who must remain 
 at home to die, and with all their possibilities be lost to 
 life and mankind ; and how he, by one more unmerited 
 favour, was chosen out from all these others to sur- 
 vive; he felt as if there were no life, no labour, no 
 devotion of soul and body, that could repay and justify 
 these partialities. A religious lady, to whom he com- 
 municated these reflections, could see no force in them 
 whatever. "It was God's will," said she. But he 
 knew it was by God's will that Joan of Arc was burnt 
 at Rouen, which cleared neither Bedford nor Bishop 
 Cauchon; and again, by God's will that Christ was 
 crucified outside Jerusalem, which excused neither the 
 rancour of the priests nor the timidity of Pilate. He 
 knew, moreover, that although the possibility of this 
 favour he was now enjoying issued from his circum- 
 stances, its acceptance was the act of his own will; 
 and he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest and 
 sunshine. And hence this allegation of God's provi- 
 dence did little to relieve his scruples. I promise you 
 he had a very troubled mind. And I would not laugh 
 if I were you, though while he was thus making moun- 
 tains out of what you think mole-hills, he were still 
 (as perhaps he was) contentedly practising many other 
 things that to you seem black as hell. Every man is 
 his own judge and mountain-guide through life. There 
 
 545 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 is an old story of a mote and a beam, apparently not 
 true, but worthy perhaps of some consideration. I 
 should, if I were you, give some consideration to these 
 scruples of his, and if I were he, I should do the like 
 by yours ; for it is not unlikely that there may be some- 
 thing under both. In the meantime you must hear 
 how my friend acted. Like many invalids, he supposed 
 that he would die. Now should he die, he saw no 
 means of repaying this huge loan which, by the hands 
 of his father, mankind had advanced him for his sick- 
 ness. In that case it would be lost money. So he 
 determined that the advance should be as small as pos- 
 sible ; and, so long as he continued to doubt his recov- 
 ery, lived in an upper room, and grudged himself all 
 but necessaries. But so soon as he began to perceive a 
 change for the better, he felt justified in spending more 
 freely, to speed and brighten his return to health, and 
 trusted in the future to lend a help to mankind, as 
 mankind, out of its treasury, had lent a help to him. 
 
 I do not say but that my friend was a little too curi- 
 ous and partial in his view; nor thought too much of 
 himself and too little of his parents ; but I do say that 
 here are some scruples which tormented my friend in 
 his youth, and still, perhaps, at odd times give him a 
 prick in the midst of his enjoyments, and which after 
 all have some foundation in justice, and point, in their 
 confused way, to some more honourable honesty within 
 the reach of man. And at least, is not this an unusual 
 gloss upon the eighth commandment ? And what sort 
 of comfort, guidance, or illumination did that precept 
 afford my friend throughout these contentions ? " Thou 
 shalt not steal. " With all my heart ! But am I stealing? 
 
 546 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 The truly quaint materialism of our view of life dis- 
 ables us from pursuing any transaction to an end. You 
 can make no one understand that his bargain is any- 
 thing more than a bargain, whereas in point of fact it is 
 a link in the policy of mankind, and either a good or 
 an evil to the world. We have a sort of blindness 
 which prevents us from seeing anything but sovereigns. 
 If one man agrees to give another so many shillings for 
 so many hours' work, and then wilfully gives him a 
 certain proportion of the price in bad money and only 
 the remainder in good, we can see with half an eye that 
 this man is a thief. But if the other spends a certain 
 proportion of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco, 
 and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or 
 the clock, or trying to recall an air, or in meditation on 
 his own past adventures, and only the remainder in 
 downright work such as he is paid to do, is he, because 
 the theft is one of time and not of money,— is he any 
 the less a thief ? The one gave a bad shilling, the other 
 an imperfect hour; but both broke the bargain, and 
 each is a thief. In piece-work, which is what most of 
 us do, the case is none the less plain for being even less 
 material. If you forge a bad knife, you have wasted 
 some of mankind's iron, and then, with unrivalled 
 cynicism, you pocket some of mankind's money for 
 your trouble. Is there any man so blind who cannot 
 see that this is theft ? Again, if you carelessly cultivate 
 a farm, you have been playing fast and loose with man- 
 kind's resources against hunger; there will be less bread 
 in consequence, and for lack of that bread somebody 
 will die next winter: a grim consideration. And you 
 must not hope to shuffle out of blame because you got 
 
 547 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 less money for your less quantity of bread ; for although 
 a theft be partly punished, it is none the less a theft for 
 that. You took the farm against competitors; there 
 were others ready to shoulder the responsibility and be 
 answerable for the tale of loaves; but it was you who 
 took it. By the act you came under a tacit bargain 
 with mankind to cultivate that farm with your best 
 endeavour; you were under no superintendence, you 
 were on parole ; and you have broke your bargain, and 
 to all who look closely, and yourself among the rest if 
 you have moral eyesight, you are a thief. Or take the 
 case of men of letters. Every piece of work which is 
 not as good as you can make it, which you have palmed 
 off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in execution, 
 upon mankind who is your paymaster on parole and in 
 a sense your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue 
 performance, should rise up against you in the court 
 of your own heart and condemn you for a thief. Have 
 you a salary ? If you trifle with your health, and so 
 render yourself less capable for duty, and still touch 
 and still greedily pocket the emolument— what are you 
 but a thief ? Have you double accounts? do you by any 
 time-honoured juggle, deceit, or ambiguous process, 
 gain more from those who deal with you than if you 
 were bargaining and dealing face to face in front of 
 God ?— What are you but a thief ? Lastly, if you fill an 
 office, or produce an article, which, in your heart of 
 hearts, you think a delusion and a fraud upon mankind, 
 and still draw your salary and go through the sham 
 manoeuvres of this office, or still book your profits and 
 keep on flooding the world with these injurious goods? 
 —though you were old, and bald, and the first at church, 
 
 548 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 and a baronet, what are you but a thief ? These may 
 seem hard words and mere curiosities of the intellect, 
 in an age when the spirit of honesty is so sparingly 
 cultivated that all business is conducted upon lies and 
 so-called customs of the trade, that not a man bestows 
 two thoughts on the utility or honourableness of his 
 pursuit. I would say less if I thought less. But look- 
 ing to my own reason and the right of things, I can 
 only avow that I am a thief myself, and that I passion- 
 ately suspect my neighbours of the same guilt. 
 
 Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest ? 
 Do you find that in your Bible ? Easy ? It is easy to 
 be an ass and follow the multitude like a blind, besotted 
 bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is what 
 you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it 
 will not bear the stress of time nor the scrutiny of con- 
 science. Even before the lowest of all tribunals— be- 
 fore a court of law, whose business it is, not to keep 
 men right, or within a thousand miles of right, but to 
 withhold them from going so tragically wrong that they 
 will pull down the whole jointed fabric of society by 
 their misdeeds— even before a court of law, as we begin 
 to see in these last days, our easy view of following at 
 each other's tails, alike to good and evil, is beginning 
 to be reproved and punished, and declared no honesty 
 at all, but open theft and swindling; and simpletons 
 who have gone on through life with a quiet conscience 
 may learn suddenly, from the lips of a judge, that the 
 custom of the trade may be a custom of the devil. You 
 thought it was easy to be honest. Did you think it 
 was easy to be just and kind and truthful ? Did you 
 think the whole duty of aspiring man was as simple 
 
 549 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 as a hornpipe ? and you could walk through life like a 
 gentleman and a hero, with no more concern than it 
 takes to go to church or to address a circular ? And 
 yet all this time you had the eighth commandment! and, 
 what makes it richer, you would not have broken it for 
 the world! 
 
 The truth is, that these commandments by them- 
 selves are of little use in private judgment. If com- 
 pression is what you want, you have their whole spirit 
 compressed into the golden rule; and yet there ex- 
 pressed with more significance, since the law is there 
 spiritually and not materially stated. And in truth, 
 four out of these ten commands, from the sixth to the 
 ninth, are rather legal than ethical. The police court is 
 their proper home. A magistrate cannot tell whether 
 you love your neighbour as yourself, but he can tell 
 more or less whether you have murdered, or stolen, or 
 committed adultery, or held up your hand and testified 
 to that which was not; and these things, for rough 
 practical tests, are as good as can be found. And per- 
 haps, therefore, the best condensation of the Jewish 
 moral law is in the maxims of the priests, " neminem 
 laedere" and "suum cuique tribunere." But all this 
 granted, it becomes only the more plain that they are 
 inadequate in the sphere of personal morality; that 
 while they tell the magistrate roughly when to punish, 
 they can never direct an anxious sinner what to do. 
 
 Only Polonius, or the like solemn sort of ass, can 
 offer us a succinct proverb by way of advice, and not 
 burst out blushing in our faces. We grant them one 
 and all, and for all that they are worth ; it is something 
 above and beyond that we desire. Christ was in gen- 
 
 550 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 eral a great enemy to such a way of teaching; we rarely 
 find him meddling with any of these plump commands 
 but it was to open them out, and lift his hearers from 
 the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal affair; 
 in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own 
 hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot 
 shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself 
 is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute 
 for the time and case. The moralist is not a judge of 
 appeal, but an advocate who pleads at my tribunal. 
 He has to show not the law, but that the law applies. 
 Can he convince me ? then he gains the cause. And 
 thus you find Christ giving various counsels to varying 
 people, and often jealously careful to avoid definite 
 precept. Is he asked, for example, to divide a heritage.^ 
 He refuses : and the best advice that he will offer is but 
 a paraphrase of that tenth commandment which figures 
 so strangely among the rest. Take heed, and beware 
 of covetousness. If you complain that this is vague, I 
 have failed to carry you along with me in my guar- 
 ment. For no definite precept can be more than an 
 illustration, though its truth were resplendent like the 
 sun, and it was announced from heaven by the voice 
 of God. And life is so intricate and changing, that 
 perhaps not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the 
 ages, shall we find that nice consent of circumstances 
 to which alone it can apply. 
 
 55" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Although the world and life have in a sense become 
 commonplace to our experience, it is but in an external 
 torpor; the true sentiment slumbers within us; and we 
 have but to reflect on ourselves or our surroundings to 
 rekindle our astonishment. No length of habit can 
 blunt our first surprise. Of the world 1 have but little 
 to say in this connection; a few strokes shall suffice. 
 We inhabit a dead ember swimming wide in the blank 
 of space, dizzily spinning as it swims, and lighted up 
 from several million miles away by a more horrible hell- 
 fire than was ever conceived by the theological imagi- 
 nation. Yet the dead ember is a green, commodious 
 dwelling-place; and the reverberation of this hell-fire 
 ripens flower and fruit and mildly warms us on summer 
 eves upon the lawn. Far off on all hands other dead 
 embers, other flaming suns, wheel and race in the ap- 
 parent void; the nearest is out of call, the farthest so 
 far that the heart sickens in the effort to conceive the 
 distance. Shipwrecked seamen on the deep, though 
 they bestride but the truncheon of a boom, are safe and 
 near at home compared with mankind on its bullet. 
 Even to us who have known no othec it seems a 
 strange, if not an appalling, place of residence. 
 
 But far stranger is the resident, man, a creature com- 
 pact of wonders that, after centuries of custom, is still 
 
 552 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 wonderful to himself. He inhabits a body which he is 
 continually outliving, discarding, and renewing. Food 
 and sleep, by an unknown alchemy, restore his spirits 
 and the freshness of his countenance. Hair grows on 
 him like grass; his eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst 
 for action; he joys to see and touch and hear, to par- 
 take the sun and wind, to sit down and intently ponder 
 on his astonishing attributes and situation, to rise up 
 and run, to perform the strange and revolting round of 
 physical functions. The sight of a flower, the note of 
 a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he looks un- 
 concerned on the impassable distances and portentous 
 bonfires of the universe. He comprehends, he designs, 
 he tames nature, rides the sea, ploughs, climbs the air 
 in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, begins interminable 
 labours, joins himself into federations and populous 
 cities, spends his days to deliver the ends of the earth 
 or to benefit unborn posterity; and yet knows himself 
 for a piece of unsurpassed fragility and the creature of 
 a few days. His sight, which conducts him, which 
 takes notice of the farthest stars, which is miraculous 
 in every way and a thing defying explanation or belief, 
 is yet lodged in a piece of jelly, and can be extinguished 
 with a touch. His heart, which all through life so in- 
 domitably, so athletically labours, is but a capsule, and 
 may be stopped with a pin. His whole body, for all 
 its savage energies, its leaping and its winged desires, 
 may yet be tamed and conquered by a draught of air or 
 a sprinkling of cold dew. What he calls death, which 
 is the seeming arrest of everything, and the ruin and 
 hateful transformation of the visible body, lies in wait 
 for him outwardly in a thousand accidents, and grows 
 
 553 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 up in secret diseases from within. He is still learning 
 to be a man when his faculties are already beginning 
 to decline; he has not yet understood himself or his 
 position before he inevitably dies. And yet this mad, 
 chimerical creature can take no thought of his last end, 
 lives as though he were eternal, plunges with his vul- 
 nerable body into the shock of war, and daily affronts 
 death with unconcern. He cannot take a step without 
 pain or pleasure. His life is a tissue of sensations, which 
 he distinguishes as they seem to come more directly 
 from himself or his surroundings. He is conscious of 
 himself as a joyer or a sufferer, as that which craves, 
 chooses, and is satisfied ; conscious of his surroundings 
 as it were of an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of 
 aspects, inspirations, wonders, cruel knocks and trans- 
 porting caresses. Thus he goes on his way, stumbling 
 among delights and agonies. 
 
 Matter is a far-fetched theory, and materialism is 
 without a root in man. To him everything is important 
 in the degree to which it moves him. The telegraph 
 wires and posts, the electricity speeding from clerk to 
 clerk, the clerks, the glad or sorrowful import of the 
 message, and the paper on which it is finally brought 
 to him at home, are all equally facts, all equally exist 
 for man. A word or a thought can wound him as 
 acutely as a knife of steel. If he thinks he is loved, he 
 will rise up and glory to himself, although he be in a 
 distant land and short of necessary bread. Does he 
 think he is not loved ?— he may have the woman at his 
 beck, and there is not a joy for him in all the world. 
 Indeed, if we are to make any account of this figment 
 of reason, the distinction between material and imma^ 
 
 554 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 terial, we shall conclude that the life of each man as an 
 individual is immaterial, although the continuation and 
 prospects of mankind as a race turn upon material con- 
 ditions. The physical business of each man's body is 
 transacted for him; like a Sybarite, he has attentive 
 valets in his own viscera; he breathes, he sweats, he 
 digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting 
 volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a 
 wakeful consciousness, but as it were between two 
 thoughts. His life is centred among other and more 
 important considerations; touch him in his honour or 
 his love, creatures of the imagination which attach him 
 to mankind or to an individual man or woman; cross 
 him in his piety which connects his soul with heaven ; 
 and he turns from his food, he loathes his breath, and 
 with a magnanimous emotion cuts the knots of his 
 existence and frees himself at a blow from the web of 
 pains and pleasures. 
 
 It follows that man is twofold at least; that he is not 
 a rounded and autonomous empire ; but that in the same 
 body with him there dwell other powers, tributary but 
 independent. If I now behold one walking in a garden, 
 curiously coloured and illuminated by the sun, digest- 
 ing his food with elaborate chemistry, breathing, cir- 
 culating blood, directing himself by the sight of his 
 eyes, accommodating his body by a thousand delicate 
 balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the 
 path, and all the time, perhaps, with his mind engaged 
 about America, or the dog-star, or the attributes of God 
 —what am I to say, or how am I to describe the thing 
 I see ? Is that truly a man, in the rigorous meaning of 
 the word ? or is it not a man and something else ? What, 
 
 555 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 then, are we to count the centre-bit and axle of a being 
 so variously compounded ? It is a question much de- 
 bated. Some read his history in a certain intricacy of 
 nerve and the success of successive digestions; others 
 find him an exiled piece of heaven blown upon and 
 determined by the breath of God ; and both schools of 
 theorists will scream like scalded children at a word of 
 doubt. Yet either of these views, however plausible, 
 is beside the question; either may be right; and I care 
 not; I ask a more particular answer, and to a more im- 
 mediate point. What is the man ? There is Something 
 that was before hunger and that remains behind after a 
 meal. It may or may not be engaged in any given act 
 or passion, but when it is» it changes, heightens, and 
 sanctifies. Thus it is not engaged in lust, where satis- 
 faction ends the chapter; and it is engaged in love, 
 where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire, 
 and where age, sickness, or alienation may deface what 
 was desirable without diminishing the sentiment. This 
 something, which is the man, is a permanence which 
 abides through the vicissitudes of passion, now over- 
 whelmed and now triumphant, now unconscious of 
 itself in the immediate distress of appetite or pain, now 
 rising unclouded above all. So, to the man, his own 
 central self fades and grows clear again amid the tumult 
 of the senses, like a revolving Pharos in the night. It 
 is forgotten; it is hid, it seems, for ever; and yet in 
 the next calm hour he shall behold himself once more, 
 shining and unmoved among changes and storm. 
 
 Mankind, in the sense of the creeping mass that is 
 born and eats, that generates and dies, is but the aggre- 
 gate of the outer and lower sides of man. This inner 
 
 55^ 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 consciousness, this lantern alternately obscured and 
 shining, to and by which the individual exists and must 
 order his conduct, is something special to himself and 
 not common to the race. His joys delight, his sorrows 
 wound him, according as this is interested or indiffer- 
 ent in the affair; according as they arise in an imperial 
 war or in a broil conducted by the tributary chieftains 
 of the mind. He may lose all, and this not suffer; he 
 may lose what is materially a trifle, and this leap in his 
 bosom with a cruel pang. I do not speak of it to har- 
 dened theorists : the living man knows keenly what it 
 is I mean. 
 
 " Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something 
 better and more divine than the things which cause the 
 various effects, and, as it were, pull thee by the strings. 
 What is that now in thy mind ? is it fear, or suspicion, 
 or desire, or anything of that kind } " Thus far Marcus 
 Aurelius, in one of the most notable passages in any 
 book. Here is a question worthy to be answered. 
 What is in thy mind ? What is the utterance of your 
 inmost self when, in a quiet hour, it can be heard in- 
 telligibly? It is something beyond the compass o( 
 your thinking, inasmuch as it is yourself; but is it not 
 of a higher spirit than you had dreamed betweenwhiles,. 
 and erect above all base considerations ? This soul 
 seems hardly touched with our infirmities ; we can find 
 in it certainly no fear, suspicion, or desire; we are only 
 conscious— and that as though we read it in the eyes of 
 some one else— of a great and unqualified readiness. 
 A readiness to what ? to pass over and look beyond the 
 objects of desire and fear, for something else. And 
 this something else ? this something which is apart from 
 
 557 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 desire and fear, to which all the kingdoms of the world 
 and the immediate death of the body are alike indifferent 
 and beside the point, and which yet regards conduct- 
 by what name are we to call it ? It may be the love of 
 God ; or it may be an inherited (and certainly well-con- 
 cealed) instinct to preserve self and propagate the race ; 
 I am not, for the moment, averse to either theory ; but 
 it will save time to call it righteousness. By so doing 
 I intend no subterfuge to beg a question ; I am indeed 
 ready, and more than willing, to accept the rigid con- 
 sequence, and lay aside, as far as the treachery of the 
 reason will permit, all former meanings attached to the 
 word righteousness. What is right is that for which a 
 man's central self is ever ready to sacrifice immediate or 
 distant interests ; what is wrong is what the central self 
 discards or rejects as incompatible with the fixed design 
 of righteousness. 
 
 To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of 
 definition. That which is right upon this theory is 
 intimately dictated to each man by himself, but can 
 never be rigorously set forth in language, and never, 
 above all, imposed upon another. The conscience has, 
 then, a vision like that of the eyes, which is incom- 
 municable, and for the most part illuminates none but 
 its possessor. When many people perceive the same 
 or any cognate facts, they agree upon a word as sym- 
 bol; and hence we have such words as tree^ star, love^ 
 honour, or death; hence also we have this word right, 
 which, like the others, we all understand, most of us 
 understand differently, and none can express succinctly 
 otherwise. Yet even on the straitest view, we can 
 make some steps towards comprehension of our own 
 
 558 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 superior thoughts. For it is an incredible and most 
 bewildering fact that a man, through life, is on variable 
 terms with himself; he is aware of tiffs and reconcilia 
 tions; the intimacy is at times almost suspended, at 
 times it is renewed again with joy. As we said before, 
 his inner self or soul appears to him by successive revela» 
 tions, and is frequently obscured. It is from a study 
 of these alternations that we can alone hope to discover, 
 even dimly, what seems right and what seems wrong 
 to this veiled prophet of ourself. 
 
 All that is in the man in the larger sense, what we 
 call impression as well as what we call intuition, so far 
 as my argument looks, we must accept. It is not wrong 
 to desire food, or exercise, or beautiful surroundings, 
 or the love of sex, or interest which is the food of the 
 mind. All these are craved ; all these should be craved ; 
 to none of these in itself does the soul demur; where 
 there comes an undeniable want, we recognise a demand 
 of nature. Yet we know that these natural demands 
 may be superseded ; for the demands which are com- 
 mon to mankind make but a shadowy consideration in 
 comparison to the demands of the individual soul. Food 
 is almost the first prerequisite ; and yet a high character 
 will go without food to the ruin and death of the body 
 rather than gain it in a manner which the spirit disa- 
 vows. Pascal laid aside mathematics ; Origen doctored 
 his body with a knife; every day some one is thus 
 mortifying his dearest interests and desires, and, in 
 Christ's words, entering maim into the kingdom of 
 heaven. This is to supersede the lesser and less har- 
 monious affections by renunciation ; and though by this 
 ascetic path we may get to heaven, we cannot get thither 
 
 559 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 a whole and perfect man. But there is another way, 
 to supersede them by reconciliation, in which the soul 
 and all the faculties and senses pursue a common route 
 and share in one desire. Thus, man is tormented by a 
 very imperious physical desire; it spoils his rest, it is 
 not to be denied; the doctors will tell you, not I, how 
 it is a physical need, like the want of food or slumber. 
 In the satisfaction of this desire, as it first appears, the 
 soul sparingly takes part; nay, it oft unsparingly regrets 
 and disapproves the satisfaction. But let the man learn 
 to love a woman as far as he is capable of love; and for 
 this random affection of the body there is substituted a 
 steady determination, a consent of all his powers and 
 faculties, which supersedes, adopts, and commands the 
 other. The desire survives, strengthened, perhaps, 
 but taught obedience, and changed in scope and char- 
 acter. Life is no longer a tale of betrayals and regrets ; 
 for the man now lives as a whole; his consciousness 
 now moves on uninterrupted like a river; through all 
 the extremes and ups and downs of passion, he remains 
 approvingly conscious of himself. 
 
 Now to me, this seems a type of that rightness which 
 the soul demands. It demands that we shall not live 
 alternately with our opposing tendencies in continual 
 seesaw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on 
 which the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but serve 
 each other to a common end. It demands that we shall 
 not pursue broken ends, but great and comprehensive 
 purposes, in which soul and body may unite like notes 
 in a harmonious chord. That were indeed a way of 
 peace and pleasure, that were indeed a heaven upon 
 earth. It does not demand, however, or, to speak in 
 
 560 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 measure, it does not demand of me, that I should starve 
 my appetites for no purpose under heaven but as a pur- 
 pose in itself; or, in a weak despair, pluck out the eye 
 that I have not yet learned to guide and enjoy with 
 wisdom. The soul demands unity of purpose, not 
 the dismemberment of man; it seeks to roll up all his 
 strength and sweetness, all his passion and wisdom, 
 into onej and make of him a perfect man exulting in 
 perfection. To conclude ascetically is to give up, and 
 not to solve, the problem. The ascetic and the creeping 
 hog, although they are at different poles, have equally 
 failed in life. The one has sacrificed his crew; the 
 other brings back his seamen in a cock-boat, and has 
 lost the ship. I believe there are not many sea-captains 
 who would plume themselves on either result as a 
 success. 
 
 But if it is righteousness thus to fuse together our 
 divisive impulses and march with one mind through 
 life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than 
 all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and 
 draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness 
 of oneself. In the best of times, it is but by flashes, 
 when our whole nature is clear^ strong, and conscious, 
 and events conspire to leave us free, that we enjoy 
 communion with our soul. At the worst, we are so 
 fallen and passive that we may say shortly we have 
 none. An arctic torpor seizes upon men. Although 
 built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating world, 
 they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; con- 
 sciousness becomes engrossed among the reflex and 
 mechanical parts of life, and soon loses both the will 
 and power to look higher considerations in the face. 
 
 561 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is tem- 
 poral damnation, damnation on the spot and without 
 the form of judgment. " What shall it profit a man if 
 he gain the whole world and lose himself?" 
 
 It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his 
 own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the 
 better part of moral and religious education is directed ; 
 not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule 
 of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till 
 we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the 
 purpose, we must say what will remind the pupil of 
 his soul; we must speak that soul's dialect; we must 
 talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him 
 think of them. If, from some conformity between us 
 and the pupil, or perhaps among all men, we do in truth 
 speak in such a dialect and express such views, beyond 
 question we shall touch in him a spring; beyond ques- 
 tion he will recognise the dialect as one that he him- 
 self has spoken in his better hours; beyond question he 
 will cry, " I had forgotten, but now I remember; I too 
 have eyes, and I had forgot to use them ! I too have a 
 soul of my own, arrogantly upright, and to that I will 
 listen and conform." In short, say to him anything 
 that he has once thought, or been upon the point of 
 thinking, or show him any view of life that he has once 
 clearly seen, or been upon the point of clearly seeing; 
 and you have done your part and may leave him to 
 complete the education for himself. 
 
 Now the view taught at the present time seems to 
 me to want greatness; and the dialect in which alone 
 it can be intelligibly uttered is not the dialect of my 
 soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing 
 
 562 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 quite is, but something different is to be; we are to 
 keep our eyes upon the indirect from the cradle to the 
 grave. We are to regulate our conduct not by desire, 
 but by a politic eye upon the future ; and to value acts 
 as they will bring us money or good opinion; as they 
 will bring us, in one word, profit. We must be what 
 is called respectable, and offend no one by our carriage; 
 it will not do to make oneself conspicuous— who knows? 
 even in virtue? says the Christian parent ! And we must 
 be what is called prudent and make money; not only 
 because it is pleasant to have money, but because that 
 also is a part of respectability, and we cannot hope to 
 be received in society without decent possessions. 
 Received in society! as if that were the kingdom of 
 heaven! There is dear Mr. So-and-so;— look at him! 
 —so much respected— so much looked up to— quite the 
 Christian merchant! And we must cut our conduct as 
 strictly as possible after the pattern of Mr„ So-and-so ; 
 and lay our whole lives to make money and be strictly 
 decent. Besides these holy injunctions, which form by 
 far the greater part of a youth's training in our Christian 
 homes, there are at least two other doctrines. We are 
 to live just now as well as we can, but scrape at last 
 into heaven, where we shall be good. We are to 
 worry through the week in a lay, disreputable way, 
 but, to make matters square, live a different life on 
 Sunday. 
 
 The train of thought we have been following gives 
 us a key to all these positions, without stepping aside 
 to justify them on their own ground. It is because we 
 have been disgusted fifty times with physical squalls, 
 and fifty times torn between conflicting impulses, that 
 
 5^y 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 we teach people this indirect and tactical procedure in 
 life, and to judge by remote consequences instead of 
 the immediate face of things. The very desire to act 
 as our own souls would have us, coupled with a pathetic 
 disbelief in ourselves, moves us to follow the example 
 of others ; perhaps, who knows ? they may be on the 
 right track; and the more our patterns are in number, 
 the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in 
 concert with a whole civilised nation, there are surely 
 a majority of chances that we must be acting right. 
 And again, how true it is that we can never behave as 
 we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only aspire 
 to different and more favourable circumstances, in order 
 to stand out and be ourselves wholly and rightly ! And 
 yet once more, if in the hurry and pressure of affairs 
 and passions you tend to nod and become drowsy, 
 here are twenty-four hours of Sunday set apart for you 
 to hold counsel with your soul and look around you on 
 the possibilities of life. 
 
 This is not, of course, all that is to be, or even should 
 be, said for these doctrines. Only, in the course of this 
 chapter, the reader and I have agreed upon a few catch- 
 words, and been looking at morals on a certain system ; 
 it was a pity to lose an opportunity of testing the 
 catchwords, and seeing whether, by this system as 
 well as by others, current doctrines could show any 
 probable justification. If the doctrines had come too 
 badly out of the trial, it would have condemned the 
 system. Our sight of the world is very narrow; the 
 mind but a pedestrian instrument; there 's nothing new 
 under the sun, as Solomon says, except the man him- 
 self; and though that changes the aspect of everything 
 
 564 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 else, yet he must see the same things as other people, 
 only from a different side. 
 
 And now, having admitted so much, let us turn to 
 criticism. 
 
 If you teach a man to keep his eyes upon what others 
 think of him, unthinkingly to lead the life and hold the 
 principles of the majority of his contemporaries, you 
 must discredit in his eyes the one authoritative voice 
 of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen ; he will 
 never be a man. It is ours, on the other hand, to dis- 
 regard this babble and chattering of other men better 
 and worse than we are, and to walk straight before us 
 by what light we have. They may be right ; but so, 
 before heaven, are we. They may know ; but we know 
 also, and by that knowledge we must stand or fall. 
 There is such a thing as loyalty to a man's own better 
 self; and from those who have not that, God help me, 
 how am I to look for loyalty to others ? The most dull, 
 the most imbecile, at a certain moment turn round, at 
 a certain point will hear no further argument, but stand 
 unflinching by their own dumb, irrational sense of right. 
 It is not only by steel or fire, but through contempt and 
 blame, that the martyr fulfils the calling of his dear 
 soul. Be glad if you are not tried by such extremities. 
 But although all the world ranged themselves in one 
 line to tell you "This is wrong," be you your own 
 faithful vassal and the ambassador of God— throw down 
 the glove and answer, "This is right." Do you think 
 you are only declaring yourself ? Perhaps in some dim 
 )way, like a child who delivers a message not fully 
 ^ understood, you are opening wider the straits of pre- 
 judice and preparing mankind for some truer and more 
 
 565 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 spiritual grasp of truth ; perhaps, as you stand forth for 
 your own judgment, you are covering a thousand weak 
 ones with your body ; perhaps, by this declaration alone, 
 you have avoided the guilt of false witness against hu- 
 manity and the little ones unborn. It is good, I believe, 
 to be respectable, but much nobler to respect oneself 
 and utter the voice of God. God, if there be any God, 
 speaks daily in a new language by the tongues of men; 
 the thoughts and habits of each fresh generation and 
 each new-coined spirit throw another light upon the 
 universe and contain another commentary on the printed 
 Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse 
 of something new, is a letter of God's alphabet; and 
 though there is a grave responsibility for all who speak, 
 is there none for those who unrighteously keep silence 
 and conform ? Is not that also to conceal and cloak 
 God's counsel ? And how should we regard the man 
 of science who suppressed all facts that would not 
 tally with the orthodoxy of the hour ? 
 
 Wrong ? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose 
 this morning round the revolving shoulder of the world. 
 Not truth, but truthfulness, is the good of your en- 
 deavour. For when will men receive that first part and 
 prerequisite of truth, that, by the order of things, by 
 the greatness of the universe, by the darkness and par- 
 tiality of man's experience, by the inviolate secrecy of 
 God, kept close in His most open revelations, every 
 man is, and to the end of the ages must be, wrong ? 
 Wrong to the universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to 
 God. And yet in another sense, and that plainer and 
 nearer, every man of men, who wishes truly, must be 
 right. He is right to himself, and in the measure of 
 
 ^66 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 his sagacity and candour. That let him do in all sin- 
 cerity and zeal, not sparing a thought for contrary 
 opinions ; that, for what it is worth, let him proclaim. 
 Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the 
 dead, stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, 
 whatever it is, is not that stammering, inept tradition 
 which the people holds. These truths survive in trav- 
 esty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and 
 confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully 
 hold, the many, in their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, 
 and misinterpret. 
 
 So far of Respectability : what the Covenanters used 
 to call " rank conformity " : the deadliest gag and wet 
 blanket that can be laid on men. And now of Profit. 
 And this doctrine is perhaps the more redoubtable, be- 
 cause it harms all sorts of men ; not only the heroic and 
 self-reliant, but the obedient, cowlike squadrons. A 
 man, by this doctrine, looks to consequences at the 
 second, or third, or fiftieth turn. He chooses his end, 
 and for that, with wily turns and through a great sea of 
 tedium, steers this mortal bark. There may be political 
 wisdom in such a view ; but I am persuaded there can 
 spring no great moral zeal. To look thus obliquely 
 upon life is the very recipe for moral slumber. Our 
 intention and endeavour should be directed, not on 
 some vague end of money or applause, which shall 
 come to us by a ricochet in a month or a year, or twenty 
 years, but on the act itself; not on the approval of others, 
 but on the rightness of that act. At every instant, at 
 every step in life, the point has to be decided, our soul 
 has to be saved, heaven has to be gained or lost. At 
 every step our spirits must applaud, at every step we 
 
 567 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 must set down the foot and sound the trumpet. " This 
 have 1 done," we must say; " right or wrong, this have 
 I done, in unfeigned honour of intention, as to myself 
 and God." The profit of every act should be this, that 
 it was right for us to do it. Any other profit than that, 
 if it involved a kingdom or the woman I love, ought, if 
 I were God's upright soldier, to leave me untempted. 
 
 It is the mark of what we call a righteous decision, 
 that it is made directly and for its own sake. The 
 whole man, mind and body, having come to an agree- 
 ment, tyrannically dictates conduct. There are two 
 dispositions eternally opposed : that in which we recog- 
 nise that one thing is wrong and another right, and that 
 in which, not seeing any clear distinction, we fall back 
 on the consideration of consequences. The truth is, by 
 the scope of our present teaching, nothing is thought 
 very wrong and nothing very right, except a few ac- 
 tions which have the disadvantage of being disrespect- 
 able when found out; the more serious part of men 
 inclining to think all things rather wrong, the more 
 jovial to suppose them right enough for practical pur- 
 poses. I will engage my head, they do not find that 
 view in their own hearts; they have taken it up in a 
 dark despair; they are but troubled sleepers talking in 
 their sleep. The soul, or my soul at least, thinks very 
 distinctly upon many points of right and wrong, and 
 often differs flatly with what is held out as the thought 
 of corporate humanity in the code of society or the code 
 of law. Am I to suppose myself a monster ? I have 
 only to read books, the Christian Gospels for example, 
 to think myself a monster no longer; and instead I think 
 the mass of people are merely sneaking in their sleep. 
 
 568 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 It is a commonplace, enshrined, if I mistake not, even 
 in school copy-books, that honour is to be sought and 
 not fame. 1 ask no other admission; we are to seek 
 honour, upright walking with our own conscience every 
 hour of the day, and not fame, the consequence, the 
 far-off reverberation of our footsteps. The walk, not 
 the rumour of the walk, is what concerns righteous- 
 ness. Better disrespectable honour than dishonourable 
 fame. Better useless or seemingly hurtful honour, 
 than dishonour ruling empires and filling the mouths of 
 thousands. For the man must walk by what he sees, 
 and leave the issue with God who made him and taught 
 him by the fortune of his life. You would not dis- 
 honour yourself for money; which is at least tangible; 
 would you do it, then, for a doubtful forecast in poli- 
 tics, or another person's theory in morals ? 
 
 So intricate is the scheme of our affairs, that no man 
 can calculate the bearing of his own behaviour even on 
 those immediately around him, how much less upon 
 the world at large or on succeeding generations ! To 
 walk by external prudence and the rule of consequences 
 would require, not a man, but God. All that we know 
 to guide us in this changing labyrinth is our soul with 
 its fixed design of righteousness, and a few old pre- 
 cepts which commend themselves to that. The pre- 
 cepts are vague when we endeavour to apply them; 
 consequences are more entangled than a wisp of string, 
 and their confusion is unrestingly in change; we must 
 hold to what we know and walk by it. We must 
 walk by faith, indeed, and not by knowledge. 
 
 You do not love another because he is wealthy or wise 
 or eminently respectable: you love him because you 
 
 569 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 love him; that is love, and any other only a derision 
 and grimace. It should be the same with all our ac- 
 tions. If we were to conceive a perfect man, it should 
 be one who was never torn between conflicting impulses, 
 but who, on the absolute consent of all his parts and 
 faculties, submitted in every action of his life to a self- 
 dictation as absolute and unreasoned as that which bids 
 him love one woman and be true to her till death. But 
 we should not conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, 
 playing off his appetites against each other, turning the 
 wing of public respectable immorality instead of riding 
 it directly down, or advancing towards his end through 
 a thousand sinister compromises and considerations. 
 The one man might be wily, might be adroit, might be 
 wise, might be respectable, might be gloriously useful; 
 it is the other man who would be good. 
 
 The soul asks honour and not fame; to be upright, 
 not to be successful; to be good, not prosperous; to 
 be essentially, not outwardly, respectable. Does your 
 soul ask profit ? Does it ask money ? Does it ask the 
 approval of the indifferent herd ? I believe not. For 
 my own part, 1 want but little money, I hope; and I 
 do not want to be decent at all, but to be good. 
 
 570 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation which 
 keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with 
 the variation of events and circumstances. Now, for 
 us, that is ultimate. It may be founded on some rea- 
 sonable process, but it is not a process which we can 
 follow or comprehend. And moreover the dictation is 
 not continuous, or not continuous except in very lively 
 and well-living natures; and betweenwhiles we must 
 brush along without it. Practice is a more intricate 
 and desperate business than the toughest theorising; 
 life is an affair of cavalry, where rapid judgment and 
 prompt action are alone possible and right. As a matter 
 of fact, there is no one so upright but he is influenced 
 by the world's chatter; and no one so headlong but he 
 requires to consider consequences and to keep an eye 
 on profit. For the soul adopts all affections and appe- 
 tites without exception, and cares only to combine them 
 for some common purpose which shall interest all. 
 Now respect for the opinion of others, the study of 
 consequences and the desire of power and comfort, are 
 all undeniably factors in the nature of man; and the 
 more undeniably since we find that, in our current doc- 
 trines, they have swallowed up the others and are 
 thought to conclude in themselves all the worthy parts 
 of man. These, then, must also be suffered to affect 
 
 57« 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 conduct in the practical domain, much or little accord- 
 ing as they are forcibly or feebly present to the mind 
 of each. 
 
 Now a man's view of the universe is mostly a view 
 of the civilised society in which he lives. Other men 
 and women are so much more grossly and so much 
 more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they 
 stand between him and all the rest; they are larger to 
 his eye than the sun, he hears them more plainly than 
 thunder; with them, by them, and for them, he must 
 live and die. And hence the laws that affect his inter- 
 course with his fellow-men, although merely customary 
 and the creatures of a generation, are more clearly and 
 continually before his mind than those which bind him 
 into the eternal system of things, support him in his 
 upright progress on this whirling ball, or keep up the 
 fire of his bodily life. And hence it is that money 
 stands in the first rank of considerations and so power- 
 fully affects the choice. For our society is built with 
 money for mortar; money is present in every joint of 
 circumstance; it might be named the social atmosphere, 
 since, in society, it is by that alone that men continue 
 to live, and only through that or chance that they can 
 reach or affect one another. Money gives us food, 
 shelter, and privacy ; it permits us to be clean in person, 
 opens for us the doors of the theatre, gains us books for 
 study or pleasure, enables us to help the distresses of 
 others, and puts us above necessity so that we can 
 choose the best in life. If we love, it enables us to 
 meet and live with the loved one, or even to prolong her 
 health and life; if we have scruples, it gives us an op- 
 portunity to be honest; if we have any bright designs, 
 
 572 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 here is what will smooth the way to their accomplish- 
 ment. Penury is the worst slavery, and will soon lead 
 to death. 
 
 But money is only a means; it presupposes a man 
 to use it. The rich can go where he pleases, but per- 
 haps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library 
 or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither pa- 
 tience to read nor intelligence to see. The table may 
 be loaded, and the appetite wanting; the purse may be 
 full, and the heart empty. He may have gained the 
 world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around 
 him, in a great house and spacious and beautiful de- 
 mesne, he may live as blank a life as any tattered 
 ditcher. Without an appetite, without an aspiration, 
 void of appreciation, bankrupt of desire and hope, 
 there, in his great house, let him sit and look upon his 
 fingers. It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have 
 a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. 
 Although neither is to be despised, it is always better 
 policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand 
 pounds; for the money will soon be spent, or perhaps 
 you may feel no joy in spending it; but the interest 
 remains imperishable and ever new. To become a 
 botanist, a geologist, a social philosopher, an antiquary, 
 or an artist, is to enlarge one's possessions in the uni- 
 verse by an incalculably higher degree, and by a far 
 surer sort of property, than to purchase a farm of many 
 acres. You had perhaps two thousand a year before 
 the transaction; perhaps you have two thousand five 
 hundred after it. That represents your gain in the one 
 case. But in the other, you have thrown down a bar- 
 rier which concealed significance and beauty. The blind 
 
 573 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 man has learned to see. The prisoner has opened up a 
 window in his cell and beholds enchanting prospects ; 
 he will never again be a prisoner as he was; he can 
 watch clouds and changing seasons, ships on the river, 
 travellers on the road, and the stars at night; happy 
 prisoner! his eyes have broken jail ! And again he who 
 has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up 
 riches against the day of riches ; if prosperity come, he 
 will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not 
 slumber and forget himself in the lap of money, or 
 spend his hours in counting idle treasures, but be up 
 and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic 
 touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes 
 dead money into living delight and satisfaction. Eire 
 et pas avoir— Xo be, not to possess— that is the problem 
 of life. To be wealthy, a rich nature is the first re- 
 quisite and money but the second. To be of a quick 
 and healthy blood, to share in all honourable curiosities, 
 to be rich in admiration and free from envy, to rejoice 
 greatly in the good of others, to love with such gen- 
 erosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession 
 in absence or unkindness— these are the gifts of fortune 
 which money cannot buy and without which money 
 can buy nothing. For what can a man possess, or what 
 can he enjoy, except himself ? If he enlarge his nature, 
 it is then that he enlarges his estates. If his nature be 
 happy and valiant, he will enjoy the universe as if it 
 were his park and orchard. 
 
 But money is not only to be spent; it has also to be 
 earned. It is not merely a convenience or a necessary 
 in social life ; but it is the coin in which mankind pays 
 his wages to the individual man. And from this side, 
 
 574 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 the question of money has a very different scope and 
 application. For no man can be honest who does not 
 work. Service for service. If the farmer buys corn, 
 and the labourer ploughs and reaps, and the baker 
 sweats in his hot bakery, plainly you who eat must do 
 something in your turn. It is not enough to take off 
 your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the 
 admirable constitution of society and your own con- 
 venient situation in its upper and more ornamental 
 stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with a 
 sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of 
 the inquiry ; and you must first have bought the sixpence. 
 Service for service: how have you bought your six- 
 pences ? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of 
 such a nature; he must see to it that there is some 
 reciprocity between him and mankind; that he pays his 
 expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share in 
 profit and a drone's in labour; and is not a sleeping 
 partner and mere costly incubus on the great mercantile 
 concern of mankind. 
 
 Services differ so widely with different gifts, and 
 some are so inappreciable to external tests, that this is 
 not only a matter for the private conscience, but one 
 which even there must be leniently and trustfully con- 
 sidered. For remember how many serve mankind who 
 do no more than meditate; and how many are precious 
 to their friends for no more than a sweet and joyous 
 temper. To perform the function of a man of letters it 
 is not necessary to write; nay, it is perhaps better to be 
 a living book. So long as we love we serve; so long as 
 we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are 
 indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a 
 
 575 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 friend. The true services of life are inestimable in 
 money, and are never paid. Kind words and caresses, 
 high and wise thoughts, humane designs, tender be- 
 haviour to the weak and suffering, and all the charities 
 of man's existence, are neither bought nor sold. 
 
 Yet the dearest and readiest, if not the most just, 
 criterion of a man's services, is the wage that mankind 
 pays him or, briefly, what he earns. There at least 
 there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely 
 entitled to his earnings as a tent-maker, and Socrates 
 fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, 
 although the true business of each was not only some- 
 thing different, but something which remained unpaid. 
 A man cannot forget that he is not superintended, and 
 serves mankind on parole. He would like, when chal- 
 lenged by his own conscience, to reply: "I have done 
 so much work, and no less, with my own hands and 
 brain, and taken so much profit, and no more, for my 
 own personal delight." And though St. Paul, if he 
 had possessed a private fortune, would probably have 
 scorned to waste his time in making tents, yet of all 
 sacrifices to public opinion none can be more easily 
 pardoned than that by which a man, already spiritually 
 useful to the world, should restrict the field of his chief 
 usefulness to perform services more apparent, and 
 possess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice 
 could call in question. Like all sacrifices to public 
 opinion and mere external decency, this would certainly 
 be wrong; for the soul should rest contented with its 
 own approval and indissuadably pursue its own calling. 
 Yet, so grave and delicate is the question, that a man 
 may well hesitate before he decides it for himself; he 
 
 576 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 may well fear that he sets too high a valuation on his 
 own endeavours after good j he may well condescend 
 upon a humbler duty, where others than himself shall 
 judge the service and proportion the wage. 
 
 And yet it is to this very responsibility that the rich 
 are born. They can shuffle off the duty on no other; 
 they are their own paymasters on parole ; and must pay 
 themselves fair wages and no more. For I suppose 
 that in the course of ages, and through reform and civil 
 war and invasion, mankind was pursuing some other 
 and more general design than to set one or two Eng- 
 lishmen of the nineteenth century beyond the reach of 
 needs and duties. Society was scarce put together, and 
 defended with so much eloquence and blood, for the 
 convenience of two or three millionaires and a few 
 hundred other persons of wealth and position. It is 
 plain that if mankind thus acted and suffered during 
 all these generations, they hoped some benefit, some 
 ease, some well-being, for themselves and their descen- 
 dants; that if they supported law and order, it was to 
 secure fair-play for all ; that if they denied themselves 
 in the present, they must have had some designs upon 
 the future. Now a great hereditary fortune is a miracle 
 of man's wisdom and mankind's forbearance; it has 
 not only been amassed and handed down, it has been 
 suffered to be amassed and handed down; and surely 
 in such a consideration as this, its possessor should find 
 only a new spur to activity and honour, that with all 
 this power of service he should not prove unserviceable, 
 and that this mass of treasure should return in benefits 
 upon the race. If he had twenty, or thirty, or a hundred 
 thousand at his banker's, or if all Yorkshire or all Cali- 
 
 577 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 fornia were his to manage or to sell, he would still be 
 morally penniless, and have the world to begin like 
 Whittington, until he had found some way of serving 
 mankind. His wage is physically in his own hand; 
 but, in honour, that wage must still be earned. He is 
 only steward on parole of what is called his fortune. 
 He must honourably perform his stewardship. He 
 must estimate his own services and allow himself a 
 salary in proportion, for that will be one among his 
 functions. And while he will then be free to spend 
 that salary, great or little, on his own private pleasures, 
 the rest of his fortune he but holds and disposes under 
 trust for mankind; it is not his, because he has not 
 earned it; it cannot be his, because his services have 
 already been paid ; but year by year it is his to distrib- 
 ute, whether to help individuals whose birthright and 
 outfit have been swallowed up in his, or to further 
 public works and institutions. 
 
 At this rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly 
 possible to be both rich and honest; and the millionaire 
 is under a far more continuous temptation to thieve 
 than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for despi- 
 cable toils. Are you surprised ? It is even so. And 
 you repeat it every Sunday in your churches. " It is 
 easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I 
 have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained 
 away and brushed from the path of the aspiring Chris- 
 tian by the tender Great-heart of the parish. One ex- 
 cellent clergyman told us that the " eye of a needle " 
 meant a low. Oriental postern through which camels 
 could not pass till they were unloaded— which is very 
 
 578 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 likely just ; and then went on, bravely confounding the 
 " kingdom of God " with heaven, the future paradise, 
 to show that of course no rich person could expect to 
 carry his riches beyond the grave— which, of course, 
 he could not and never did. Various greedy sinners of 
 the congregation drank in the comfortable doctrine with 
 relief. It was worth the while having come to church 
 that Sunday morning! All was plain. The Bible, as 
 usual, meant nothing in particular; it was merely an 
 obscure and figurative school copy-book ; and if a man 
 were only respectable, he was a man after God's own 
 heart. 
 
 Alas ! I fear not. And though this matter of a man's 
 services is one for his own conscience, there are some 
 cases in which it is difficult to restrain the mind from 
 judging. Thus I shall be very easily persuaded that 
 a man has earned his daily bread ; and if he has but a 
 friend or two to whom his company is delightful at 
 heart, I am more than persuaded at once. But it will 
 be very hard to persuade me that any one has earned 
 an income of a hundred thousand. What he is to his 
 friends, he still would be if he were made penniless 
 to-morrow; for as to the courtiers of luxury and power, 
 I will neither consider them friends, nor indeed consider 
 them at all. What he does for mankind there are most 
 likely hundreds who would do the same, as effectually 
 for the race and as pleasurably to themselves, for the 
 merest fraction of this monstrous wage. Why it is 
 paid, I am, therefore, unable to conceive, and as the 
 man pays it himself, out of funds in his detention, I 
 have a certain backwardness to think him honest. 
 
 At least, we have gained a very obvious point: that 
 579 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 what a man spends upon himself, he shall have earned 
 by services to the race. Thence flows a principle for the 
 outset of life, which is a little different from that taught 
 in the present day. I am addressing the middle and 
 the upper classes ; those who have already been fostered 
 and prepared for life at some expense; those who have 
 some choice before them, and can pick professions; 
 and above all, those who are what is called independent, 
 and need do nothing unless pushed by honour or am~ 
 bition. In this particular the poor are happy; among 
 them, when a lad comes to his strength, he must take 
 the work that offers, and can take it with an easy con- 
 science. But in the richer classes the question is com- 
 plicated by the number of opportunities and a variety 
 of considerations. Here, then, this principle of ours 
 comes in helpfully. The young man has to seek, not 
 a road to wealth, but an opportunity of service; not 
 money, but honest work. If he has some strong pro- 
 pensity, some calling of nature, some overweening 
 interest in any special field of industry, inquiry, or art, 
 he will do right to obey the impulse; and that for two 
 reasons : the first external, because there he will render 
 the best services; the second personal, because a de- 
 mand of his own nature is to him without appeal 
 whenever it can be satisfied with the consent of his 
 other faculties and appetites. If he has no such elec- 
 tive taste, by the very principle on which he chooses 
 any pursuit at all he must choose the most honest and 
 serviceable, and not the most highly remunerated. We 
 have here an external problem, not from or to ourself, 
 but flowing from the constitution of society; and we 
 have our own soul with its fixed design of righteous- 
 
 580 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 ness. All that can be done is to present the problem 
 in proper terms, and leave it to the soul of the individual. 
 Now the problem to the poor is one of necessity : to 
 earn wherewithal to live, they must find remunerative 
 labour. But the problem to the rich is one of honour: 
 having the wherewithal, they must find serviceable 
 labour. Each has to earn his daily bread: the one, 
 because he has not yet got it to eat; the other, who 
 has already eaten it, because he has not yet earned it. 
 
 Of course, what is true of bread is true of luxuries 
 and comforts, whether for the body or the mind. But 
 the consideration of luxuries leads us to a new aspect 
 of the whole question, and to a second proposition no 
 less true, and maybe no less startling, than the last. 
 
 At the present day, we, of the easier classes, are in 
 a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat. Plethora has 
 filled us with indifference; and we are covered from 
 head to foot with the callosities of habitual opulence. 
 Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the 
 saying is, up to our station. We squander without 
 enjoyment, because our fathers squandered. We eat 
 of the best, not from delicacy, but from brazen habit. 
 We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence 
 of a luxury ; we are unaccustomed to its absence. And 
 not only do we squander money from habit, but still 
 more pitifully waste it in ostentation. I can think of 
 no more melancholy disgrace for a creature who pro- 
 fesses either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to 
 spend the smallest fraction of his income upon that 
 which he does not desire; and to keep a carriage in 
 which you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom 
 you are afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly. Money, being 
 
 581 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 a means of happiness, should make both parties happy 
 when it changes hands ; rightly disposed, it should be 
 twice blessed in its employment; and buyer and seller 
 should alike have their twenty shillings' worth of profit 
 out of every pound. Benjamin Franklin went through 
 life an altered man, because he once paid too dearly for 
 a penny whistle. My concern springs usually from a 
 deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle 
 when I did not want one. I find I regret this, or would 
 regret it if I gave myself the time, not only on personal 
 but on moral and philanthropical considerations. For, 
 first, in a world where money is wanting to buy books 
 for eager students and food and medicine for pining 
 children, and where a large majority are starved in their 
 most immediate desires, it is surely base, stupid, and 
 cruel to squander money when I am pushed by no ap- 
 petite and enjoy no return of genuine satisfaction. My 
 philanthropy is wide enough in scope to include myself; 
 and when I have made myself happy, I have at least 
 one good argument that I have acted rightly; but where 
 that is not so, and I have bought and not enjoyed, my 
 mouth is closed, and I conceive that I have robbed the 
 poor. And, second, anything I buy or use which I do 
 not sincerely want or cannot vividly enjoy, disturbs the 
 balance of supply and demand, and contributes to re- 
 move industrious hands from the production of what 
 is useful or pleasurable and to keep them busy upon 
 ropes of sand and things that are a weariness to the 
 flesh. That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very 
 silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and 
 ourselves. It is another question for each man's heart. 
 He knows if he can enjoy what he buys and uses; if he 
 
 582 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, if he cannot, I 
 contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a 
 man which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected 
 with propriety; and that only is the man's which is 
 proper to his wants and faculties. 
 
 A youth, in choosing a career, must not be alarmed 
 by poverty. Want is a sore thing, but poverty does 
 not imply want. It remains to be seen whether with 
 half his present income, or a third, he cannot, in the 
 most generous sense, live as fully as at present. He is 
 a fool who objects to luxuries; but he is also a fool 
 who does not protest against the waste of luxuries on 
 those who do not desire and cannot enjoy them. It 
 remains to be seen, by each man who would live a true 
 life to himself and not a merely specious life to society, 
 how many luxuries he truly wants and to how many 
 he merely submits as to a social propriety; and all these 
 last he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, 
 and he will be surprised to find how little money it re- 
 quires to keep him in complete contentment and activity 
 of mind and senses. Life at any level among the easy 
 classes is conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where 
 each man and each household must ape the tastes and 
 emulate the display of others. One is delicate in eating, 
 another in wine, a third in furniture or works of art or 
 dress ; and I, who care nothing for any of these refine- 
 ments, who am perhaps a plain athletic creature and 
 love exercise, beef, beer, flannel shirts and a camp bed, 
 am yet called upon to assimilate all these other tastes 
 and make these foreign occasions of expenditure my 
 own. It may be cynical: I am sure I shall be told it is 
 selfish ; but I will spend my money as I please and for 
 
 583 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 my own intimate personal gratification, and should 
 count myself a nincompoop indeed to lay out the colour 
 of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or duty. 
 J shall not wear gloves unless my hands are cold, or 
 unless I am born with a delight in them. Dress is my 
 own affair, and that of one other in the world ; that, in 
 fact and for an obvious reason, of any woman who 
 shall chance to be in love with me. I shall lodge where 
 I have a mind. If I do not ask society to live with me, 
 they must be silent; and even if I do, they have no 
 further right but to refuse the invitation. 
 
 There is a kind of idea abroad that a man must live 
 up to his station, that his house, his table, and his toi- 
 lette shall be in a ratio of equivalence, and equally im- 
 posing to the world. If this is in the Bible, the passage 
 has eluded my inquiries. If it is not in the Bible, it is 
 nowhere but in the heart of the fool. Throw aside this 
 fancy. See what you want, and spend upon that; dis- 
 tinguish what you do not care about, and spend nothing 
 upon that. There are not many people who can differ- 
 entiate wines above a certain and that not at all a high 
 price. Are you sure you are one of these ? Are you 
 sure you prefer cigars at sixpence each to pipes at some 
 fraction of a farthing ? Are you sure you wish to keep 
 a gig ? Do you care about where you sleep, or are you 
 not as much at your ease in a cheap lodging as in an 
 Elizabethan manor-house ? Do you enjoy fine clothes ? 
 It is not possible to answer these questions without a 
 trial; and there is nothing more obvious to my mind 
 than that a man who has not experienced some ups and 
 downs, and been forced to live more cheaply than in 
 his father's house, has still his education to begin. Let 
 
 584 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 the experiment be made, and he will find to his surprise 
 that he has been eating beyond his appetite up to that 
 hour; that the cheap lodging, the cheap tobacco, the 
 rough country clothes, the plain table, have not only no 
 power to damp his spirits, but perhaps give him as 
 keen pleasure in the using as the dainties that he took, 
 betwixt sleep and waking, in his former callous and 
 somnambulous submission to wealth. 
 
 The true Bohemian, a creature lost to view under the 
 imaginary Bohemians of literature, is exactly described 
 by such a principle of life. The Bohemian of the novel, 
 who drinks more than is good for him and prefers any- 
 thing to work, and wears strange clothes, is for the 
 most part a respectable Bohemian, respectable in disre- 
 spectability, living for the outside, and an adventurer. 
 But the man I mean lives wholly to himself, does what 
 he wishes and not what is thought proper, buys what 
 he wants for himself and not what is thought proper, 
 works at what he believes he can do well and not what 
 will bring him in money or favour. You may be the 
 most respectable of men, and yet a true Bohemian. 
 And the test is this : a Bohemian, for as poor as he may 
 be, is always open-handed to his friends; he knows 
 what he can do with money and how he can do with- 
 out it, a far rarer and more useful knowledge; he has 
 had less, and continued to live in some contentment; 
 and hence he cares not to keep more, and shares his 
 sovereign or his shilling with a friend. The poor, if 
 they are generous, are Bohemian in virtue of their birth. 
 Do you know where beggars go ? Not to the great 
 houses where people sit dazed among their thousands, 
 but to the doors of poor men who have seen the world ; 
 
 585 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 and it was the widow who had only two mites, who 
 cast half her fortune into the treasury. 
 
 But a young man who elects to save on dress or on 
 lodging, or who in any way falls out of the level of 
 expenditure which is common to his level in society, 
 falls out of society altogether. I suppose the young 
 man to have chosen his career on honourable principles ; 
 he finds his talents and instincts can be best contented 
 in a certain pursuit; in a certain industry, he is sure 
 that he is serving mankind with a healthy and becoming 
 service; and he is not sure that he would be doing so, 
 or doing so equally well, in any other industry within 
 his reach. Then that is his true sphere in life; not the 
 one in which he was born to his father, but the one 
 which is proper to his talents and instincts. And sup-^ 
 pose he does fall out of society, is that a cause of sorrow.^ 
 Is your heart so dead that you prefer the recognition of 
 many to the love of a few.^ Do you think society loves 
 you ? Put it to the proof. Decline in material expendi- 
 ture, and you will find they care no more for you than 
 for the Khan of Tartary. You will lose no friends. If 
 you had any, you will keep them. Only those who 
 were friends to your coat and equipage will disappear; 
 the smiling faces will disappear as by enchantment; but 
 the kind hearts will remain steadfastly kind. Are you so 
 lost, are you so dead, are you so little sure of your own 
 soul and your own footing upon solid fact, that you 
 prefer before goodness and happiness the countenance 
 of sundry diners-out, who will flee from you at a report 
 of ruin, who will drop you with insult at a shadow of 
 disgrace, who do not know you and do not care to 
 know you but by sight, and whom you in your turn 
 
 586 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 neither know nor care to know in a more human man- 
 ner? Is it not the principle of society, openly avowed, 
 that friendship must not interfere with business ; which 
 being paraphrased, means simply that a consideration 
 of money goes before any consideration of affection 
 known to this cold-blooded gang, that they have not 
 even the honour of thieves, and will rook their nearest 
 and dearest as readily as a stranger? I hope I would go 
 as far as most to serve a friend ; but I declare openly I 
 would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. 
 I may starve my appetites and control my temper for 
 the sake of those I love; but society shall take me as 
 I choose to be, or go without me. Neither they nor I 
 will lose ; for where there is no love, it is both laborious 
 and unprofitable to associate. 
 
 But it is obvious that if it is only right for a man to 
 spend money on that which he can truly and thoroughly 
 enjoy, the doctrine applies with equal force to the rich 
 and to the poor, to the man who has amassed many 
 thousands as well as to the youth precariously begin- 
 ning life. And it may be asked. Is not this merely 
 preparing misers, who are not the best of company ? 
 But the principle was this: that which a man has not 
 fairly earned, and, further, that which he cannot fully 
 enjoy, does not belong to him, but is a part of man- 
 kind's treasure which he holds as steward on parole. 
 To mankind, then, it must be made profitable; and how 
 this should be done is, once more, a problem which 
 each man must solve for himself, and about which none 
 has a right to judge him. Yet there are a few consider- 
 ations which are very obvious and may here be stated. 
 Mankind is not only the whole in general, but every 
 
 587 
 
LAY MORALS 
 
 one in particular. Every man or woman is one of man- 
 kind's dear possessions ; to his or her just brain, and 
 kind heart, and active hands, mankind entrusts some of 
 its hopes for the future; he or she is a possible well- 
 spring of good acts and source of blessings to the race. 
 This money which you do not need, which, in a rigid 
 sense, you do not want, may therefore be returned not 
 only in public benefactions to the race, but in private 
 kindnesses. Your wife, your children, your friends 
 stand nearest to you, and should be helped the first. 
 There at least there can be little imposture, for you 
 know their necessities of your own knowledge. And 
 consider, if all the world did as you did, and according 
 to their means extended help in the circle of their affec- 
 tions, there would be no more crying want in times of 
 plenty and no more cold, mechanical charity given with 
 a doubt and received with confusion. Would not this 
 simple rule make a new world out of the old and cruel 
 one which we inhabit ? Have you more money after 
 this is done ? are you so wealthy in gold, so poor in 
 friends who need your help, that having done all you 
 can among your own circle, you have still much of man- 
 kind's treasure undisposed upon your hands ? There 
 are still other matters to be done where you need not 
 fear imposition; and what is over you may hand over 
 without fear to the children whom you have taught; 
 they may be unfaithful to the trust, but you will have 
 done your best and told them on what a solemn 
 responsibility they must accept and deal with this 
 money. . . . 
 
 j4i this point the fragment breaks q^.— [Ed.] 
 588 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA 
 
from the author's unpublished MSS. 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 For Success 
 
 10RD, behold our family here assembled. We thank 
 ^ Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love 
 that unites us ; for the peace accorded us this day ; for the 
 hope with which we expect the morrow ; for the health, 
 the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make our 
 lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, 
 and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle. Let peace 
 abound in our small company. Purge out of every heart 
 the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to for- 
 bear and to persevere. Offenders, give us the grace to 
 accept and to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, 
 help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. 
 Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare 
 to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, 
 if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may 
 not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to 
 come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, 
 temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and 
 down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to 
 another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to 
 the wind, as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee 
 this help and mercy for Christ's sake. 
 
 591 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 For Grace 
 
 Grant that we here before Thee may be set free from 
 the fear of vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish 
 what remains before us of our course without dishonour 
 to ourselves or hurt to others, and, when the day comes, 
 may die in peace. Deliver us from fear and favour: 
 from mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on 
 each in his deficiency; let him be not cast down; sup- 
 port the stumbling on the way, and give at last rest to 
 the weary. 
 
 At Morning 
 
 The day returns and brings us the petty round of irri- 
 tating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, 
 help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, 
 let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go 
 blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our 
 resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, 
 and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. 
 
 Evening 
 
 We come before Thee, O Lord, in the end of thy day 
 with thanksgiving. 
 
 Our beloved in the far parts of the earth, those who 
 are now beginning the labours of the day what time 
 we end them, and those with whom the sun now stands 
 at the point of noon, bless, help, console, and prosper 
 them. 
 
 Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, 
 and the hour come to rest. We resign into thy hands 
 our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths and open doors. 
 
 592 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. 
 As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be 
 renewed with dawn ; as the sun lightens the world, so 
 let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our 
 habitation. 
 
 Another for Evening 
 
 Lord, receive our supplications for this house, family, 
 and country. Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy 
 and the treacherous, lead us out of our tribulation into 
 a quiet land. 
 
 Look down upon ourselves and upon our absent dear 
 ones. Help us and them ; prolong our days in peace 
 and honour. Give us health, food, bright weather, 
 and light hearts. In what we meditate of evil, frustrate 
 our will; in what of good, further our endeavours. 
 Cause injuries to be forgot and benefits to be remem- 
 bered. 
 
 Let us lie down without fear and awake and arise 
 with exultation. For his sake, in whose words we now 
 conclude. 
 
 In Time of Rain 
 
 We thank Thee, Lord, for the glory of the late days 
 and the excellent face of thy sun. We thank Thee for 
 good news received. We thank Thee for the pleasures 
 we have enjoyed and for those we have been able to 
 confer. And now, when the clouds gather and the 
 rain impends over the forest and our house, permit us 
 not to be cast down ; let us not lose the savour of past 
 mercies and past pleasures ; but, like the voice of a bird 
 singing in the rain, let grateful memory survive in the 
 
 593 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 hour of darkness. If there be in front of us any painful 
 duty, strengthen us with the grace of courage; if any 
 act of mercy, teach us tenderness and patience. 
 
 Another in Time of Rain 
 
 Lord, Thou sendest down rain upon the uncounted 
 millions of the forest, and givest the trees to drink ex- 
 ceedingly. We are here upon this isle a few handfuls 
 of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stal- 
 wart trees ! Teach us the lesson of the trees. The sea 
 around us, which this rain recruits, teems with the 
 race of fish ; teach us, Lord, the meaning of the fishes. 
 Let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the 
 countless number of the clans of thy handiwork. When 
 we would despair, let us remember that these also 
 please and serve Thee. 
 
 Before a Temporary Separation 
 
 T(>DAY we go forth separate, some of us to pleasure, 
 some of us to worship, some upon duty. Go with us, 
 our guide and angel ; hold Thou before us in our divided 
 paths the mark of our low calling, still to be true to 
 what small best we can attain to. Help us in that, our 
 maker, the dispenser of events— Thou, of the vast de- 
 signs, in which we blindly labour, suffer us to be so 
 far constant to ourselves and our beloved. 
 
 For Friends 
 
 For our absent loved ones we implore thy loving- 
 kindness. Keep them in life, keep them in growing 
 honour; and for us, grant that we remain worthy of 
 
 594 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 their love. For Christ's sake, let not our beloved blush 
 for us, nor we for them. Grant us but that, and grant 
 us courage to endure lesser ills unshaken, and to accept 
 death, loss, and disappointment as it were straws upon 
 the tide of life. 
 
 For the Family 
 
 Aid us, if it be thy will, in our concerns. Have 
 mercy on this land and innocent people. Help them 
 who this day contend in disappointment with their 
 frailties. Bless our family, bless our forest house, bless 
 our island helpers. Thou who hast made for us this 
 place of ease and hope, accept and inflame our gratitude ; 
 help us to repay, in service one to another, the debt of 
 thine unmerited benefits and mercies, so that when the 
 period of our stewardship draws to a conclusion, when 
 the windows begin to be darkened, when the bond of 
 the family is to be loosed, there shall be no bitterness 
 of remorse in our farewells. 
 
 Help us to look back on the long way that Thou hast 
 brought us, on the long days in which we have been 
 served not according to our deserts but our desires; on 
 the pit and the miry clay, the blackness of despair, the 
 horror of misconduct, from which our feet have been 
 plucked out. For our sins forgiven or prevented, for 
 our shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O 
 God. Help us yet again and ever. So order events, so 
 strengthen our frailty, as that day by day we shall come 
 before Thee with this song of gratitude, and in the end 
 we be dismissed with honour. In their weakness and 
 their fear, the vessels of thy handiwork so pray to Thee, 
 so praise Thee. Amen. 
 
 595 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 Sunday 
 
 We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, 
 folk of many families and nations gathered together in 
 the peace of this roof, weak men and women subsisting 
 under the covert of thy patience. Be patient still ; suffer 
 us yet awhile longer;— with our broken purposes of 
 good, with our idle endeavours against evil, suffer us 
 awhile longer to endure and (if it may be) help us to 
 do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies ; if the 
 day come when these must be taken, brace us to play 
 the man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with 
 ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any awake, 
 temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when 
 the day returns, return to us, our sun and comforter, 
 and call us up with morning faces and with morning 
 hearts— eager to labour— eager to be happy, if happiness 
 shall be our portion— and if the day be marked for sor- 
 row, strong to endure it. 
 
 We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words 
 of him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation. 
 
 For Self-blame 
 
 Lord, enlighten us to see the beam that is in our own 
 eye, and blind us to the mote that is in our brother's. 
 Let us feel our offences with our hands, make them 
 great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat 
 them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to the 
 offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memo- 
 ries, take them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here 
 before Thee carry and measure with the false balances 
 
 596 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 of love, and be in their own eyes and in all conjunctures 
 the most guilty. Help us at the same time with the 
 grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down 
 when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness 
 or our integrity : touch us with fire from the altar, that 
 we may be up and doing to rebuild our city: in the 
 name and by the method of him in whose words of 
 prayer we now conclude. 
 
 For Self-forgetfulness 
 
 Lord, the creatures of thy hand, thy disinherited chil- 
 dren, come before Thee with their incoherent wishes 
 and regrets : Children we are, children we shall be, till 
 our mother the earth hath fed upon our bones. Accept 
 us, correct us, guide us, thy guilty innocents. Dry our 
 vain tears, wipe out our vain resentments, help our yet 
 vainer efforts. If there be any here, sulking as children 
 will, deal with and enlighten him. Make it day about 
 that person, so that he shall see himself and be ashamed. 
 Make it heaven about him. Lord, by the only way to 
 heaven, forgetfulness of self, and make it day about his 
 neighbours, so that they shall help, not hinder him. 
 
 For Renewal of Joy 
 
 We are evil, O God, and help us to see it and amend. 
 We are good, and help us to be better. Look down 
 upon thy servants with a patient eye, even as Thou 
 sendest sun and rain; look down, call upon the dry 
 bones, quicken, enliven; re-create in us the soul of 
 service, the spirit of peace; renew in us the sense 
 of joy. 
 
 597 
 
ADDENDA 
 
NOTE 
 
 These Addenda are matters which either came to the knowledge of Mr. 
 Stevenson's literary executor after the collection of the main body of his 
 writings, or they are pieces which, although already printed in a fugitive 
 form, it had not been thought best to include, until during the publication 
 of the more important volumes some curiosity was found to exist about 
 them among collectors and others who had learned of their existence. 
 They were therefore brought together in a small volume and added as 
 supplementary to the Edinburgh Edition of Mr. Stevenson's works. They 
 are included in the Thistle Edition in order that nothing important of 
 whatever kind may be omitted from it. 
 
 In speaking of the appendix volume, Mr. Sidney Colvin, the Editor of 
 the Edinburgh Edition, said : 
 
 "It is a medley, made up of items, some serious and some trifling, 
 which for one reason or another were not included in the main edition. 
 Among them are things which various subscribers have already expressed 
 a desire to possess. Such are The Charity Ba^^aar and the two papers 
 on Lighthouse Illumination and The Thermal Influence of Forests. . . . 
 The first-named of these, which opens the volume, is a boyish skit pri- 
 vately printed on a charity occasion at Edinburgh, I believe in 1868, and 
 in its original form has for some time been a rarity competed for by col- 
 lectors. The other two were contributed to the Transactions of the 
 Royal Scottish Society of Arts for 1871 and the Proceedings of the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh for i8y^ respectively. They are not literature, and 
 do not proceed from any natural bias of the writer's mind. They do, 
 however, represent the circumstances of his origin and eariy training as 
 a member of a distinguished family of civil engineers; one of them 
 gained the silver medal of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts : and it has 
 been ascertained that to some of those interested in his career their inclu- 
 sion in this place will be welcome. I have prefixed to them two sets of 
 
 601 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 lighthouse verses from his note-books of i86p and tSyo, one written in a 
 sentimental, the other in somewhat of a cynic mood, which show what 
 used to be the private thoughts and real preoccupations of the youthful 
 engineer on his professional rounds. Next follow three pieces not before 
 printed from his later note-books. In Reflections and Remarks on 
 Human Life we have the draft of some chapters of an unfinished 
 treatise on morals and conduct, subjects on which he always wrote in 
 the spirit of a keen and thoughtful soldier in the battle of life : in one 
 of these chapters it will be noticed that he deals with the problems of 
 free-will and rewards and punishments on the same lines as in the brilliant 
 little apologue already published as No. / of his Fables, but at greater 
 length. The Ideal House belongs to the winter of 1884-^, and sets 
 forth the predilections, as to the site and arrangements of a home, of one 
 who had for years been a vagrant, priding himself on his freedom from 
 local ties and the burden of the worid's gear. But by this time he had 
 become the head of a household, and having tried two domiciles in Pro- 
 vence, was about to take possession of a new one on the English coast 
 at Bournemouth. Then follows the Preface to "The Master ofBallan- 
 trae,^^ written in the Pacific in 1889, with reminiscences of the office in 
 Edinburgh of his old friend Mr. Charies Baxter, W.S. When he published 
 the book in that year, he decided to suppress his preface, as being too 
 much in the vein of Jedediah Cleishbotham and Mr. Peter Pattieson ; but 
 afterwards he expressed a wish that it should be given with the Edinburgh 
 Edition. At that time, however, the manuscript had gone astray, an4 
 the text has now been recovered from his original draft." 
 
 609 
 
THE CHARITY BAZAAR; 
 
 AN ALLEGORICAL DIALOGUE 
 
 PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE 
 
 The Ingenuous Public, 
 His Wife. 
 The Tout. 
 
 The Tout J in an allegorical costume, holding a silver trumpet in his 
 right hand, is discovered on the steps in front of the Bazaar, He 
 sounds a preliminary flourish. 
 
 The Tout. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to announce a 
 sale of many interesting, beautiful, rare, quaint, comical, and necessary 
 articles. Here you will find objects of taste, such as Babies' Shoes, 
 Children's Petticoats, and Shetland Wool Cravats ; objects of general use- 
 fulness, such as Tea-cosies, Bangles, Brahmin Beads, and Madras Baskets ; 
 and objects of imperious necessity, such as Pen-wipers, Indian Figures 
 carefully repaired with glue, and Sealed Envelopes, containing a surprise. 
 And all this is not to be sold by your common Shopkeepers, intent on 
 small and legitimate profits, but by Ladies and Gentlemen, who would 
 as soon think of picking your pocket of a cotton handkerchief, as of 
 selling a single one of these many interesting, beautiful, rare, quaint, 
 comical, and necessary articles at less than twice its market value. 
 
 {He sounds another flourish.) 
 
 The Wife. This seems a very fair-spoken young man. 
 
 The Ingenuous Public {addressing the Tout). Sir, 1 am a man of simple 
 and untutored mind; but 1 apprehend that this sale, of which you give 
 us so glowing a description, is neither more nor less than a Charity Bazaar ? 
 
 60^ 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 The Tout. Sir, your penetration has not deceived you. 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. Into which you seek to entice unwary pas- 
 sengers ? 
 
 The Tout. Such is my office. 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. But is not a Charity Bazaar, Sir, a place 
 where, for ulterior purposes, amateur goods are sold at a price above their 
 market value ? 
 
 The Tout. I perceive you are no novice. Let us sit down, all three, 
 upon the door-steps, and reason this matter at length. The position is a 
 little conspicuous, but airy and convenient. 
 
 {The Tout seats himself on the second step, the Ingenuous Public 
 and his Wife to right and left of him, one step below.) 
 
 The Tout. Shopping is one of the dearest pleasures of the human 
 heart. 
 
 The Wife. Indeed, Sir, and that it is. 
 
 The Tout. The choice of articles, apart from their usefulness, is an 
 appetising occupation, and to exchange bald, uniform shillings for a fine 
 big, figurative knick-knack, such as a windmill, a gross of green spectacles, 
 or a cocked hat, gives us a direct and emphatic sense of gain. We have 
 had many shillings before, as good as these ; but this is the first time we 
 have possessed a windmill. Upon these principles of human nature. Sir, 
 is based the theory of the Charity Bazaar. People were doubtless chari- 
 tably disposed. The problem was to make the exercise of charity enter- 
 taining in itself— you follow me. Madam ?— and in the Charity Bazaar a 
 satisfactory solution was attained. The act of giving away money for 
 charitable purposes is, by this admirable invention, transformed into an 
 amusement, and puts on the externals of profitable commerce. You play 
 at shopping awhile; and in order to keep up the illusion, sham goods do 
 actually change hands. Thus, under the similitude of a game, I have seen 
 children confronted with the horrors of arithmetic, and even taught to gargle. 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. You expound this subject very magisterially, 
 Sir. But tell me, would it not be possible to carry this element of play 
 still further ? and after I had remained a proper time in the Bazaar, and 
 negotiated a sufficient number of sham bargains, would it not be possible 
 to return me my money in the hall ? 
 
 The Tout. I question whether that would not impair the humour of 
 the situation. And besides, my dear Sir, the pith of the whole device is 
 to take that money from you. 
 
 604 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. True. But at least the Bazaar might take 
 back the tea-cosies and pen-wipers. 
 
 The Tout. I have no doubt, if you were to ask it handsomely, that 
 you would be so far accommodated. Still it is out of the theory. The 
 sham goods, for which, believe me, 1 readily understand your disaffection 
 —the sham goods are well adapted for their purpose. Your lady wife 
 will lay these tea-cosies and pen-wipers aside in a safe place, until she is 
 asked to contribute to another Charity Bazaar. There the tea-cosies and 
 pen-wipers will be once more charitably sold. The new purchasers, in 
 their turn, will accurately imitate the dispositions of your lady wife. In 
 short. Sir, the whole affair is a cycle of operations. The tea-cosies and 
 pen-wipers are merely counters ; they come off and on again like a stage 
 army ; and year after year people pretend to buy and pretend to sell them, 
 with a vivacity that seems to indicate a talent for the stage. But in the 
 course of these illusory manoeuvres, a great deal of money is given in 
 charity, and that in a picturesque, bustling, and agreeable manner. If 
 you have to travel somewhere on business, you would choose the prettiest 
 route, and desire pleasant companions by the way. And why not show 
 the same spirit in giving alms ? 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. Sir, 1 am profoundly indebted to you for all 
 you have said. I am, Sir, your absolute convert. 
 
 The Wife. Let us lose no time, but enter the Charity BsizasiT. 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. Yes ; let us enter the Charity Bazaar. 
 
 Both (singing). Let us enter, let us enter, let us enter, 
 Let us enter the Charity Bazaar! 
 (y4n interval is supposed to elapse. The Ingenuous Public and 
 his Wife are discovered issuing from the Charity Ba:(aar.) 
 
 The Wife. How fortunate you should have brought your cheque-book ! 
 
 The Ingenuous Public. Well, fortunate in a sense. {Addressing the 
 Tout). Sir, I shall send a van in the course of the afternoon for the little 
 articles 1 have purchased. I shall not say good-bye; because I shall 
 probably take a lift in the front seat, not from any solicitude, believe me, 
 about the little articles, but as the last opportunity I may have for some 
 time of enjoying the costly entertainment of a drive. 
 
 THE SCENE CLOSES. 
 
 605 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 THE LIGHT-KEEPER 
 
 The brilliant kernel of the night, 
 
 The flaming lightroom circles me: 
 I sit within a blaze of light 
 
 Held high above the dusky sea. 
 Far off the surf doth break and roar 
 Along bleak miles of moonlit shore, 
 
 Where through the tides the tumbling wave 
 Falls in an avalanche of foam 
 And drives its churned waters home 
 
 Up many an undercliff and cave. 
 
 The clear bell chimes: the clockworks strain: 
 
 The turning lenses flash and pass, 
 Frame turning within glittering frame 
 
 With frosty gleam of moving glass: 
 Unseen by me, each dusky hour 
 The sea-waves welter up the tower 
 
 Or in the ebb subside again ; 
 And ever and anon all night. 
 Drawn from afar by charm of light, 
 
 A sea-bird beats against the pane. 
 
 And lastly when dawn ends the night 
 
 And belts the semi-orb of sea, 
 The tall, pale pharos in the light 
 
 Looks white and spectral as may be. 
 The early ebb is out : the green 
 Straight belt of sea-weed now is seen, 
 
 That round the basement of the tower 
 Marks out the interspace of tide ; 
 And watching men are heavy-eyed, 
 
 And sleepless lips are dry and sour. 
 606 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 The night is over like a dream : 
 
 The sea-birds cry and dip themselves; 
 And in the early sunlight, steam 
 
 The newly bared and dripping shelves, 
 Around whose verge the glassy wave 
 With lisping wash is heard to lave ; 
 
 While, on the white tower lifted high. 
 With yellow light in faded glass 
 The circling lenses flash and pass, 
 
 And sickly shine against the sky. 
 X869. 
 
 As the steady lenses circle 
 
 With a frosty gleam of glass ; 
 
 And the clear bell chimes, 
 
 And the oil brims over the lip of the burner. 
 
 Quiet and still at his desk, 
 
 The lonely Light-Keeper 
 
 Holds his vigil. 
 
 Lured from afar, 
 
 The bewildered sea-gull beats 
 
 Dully against the lantern ; 
 
 Yet he stirs not, lifts not his head 
 
 From the desk where he reads, 
 
 Lifts not his eyes to see 
 
 The chill blind circle of night 
 
 Watching him through the panes. 
 
 This is his country's guardian. 
 
 The outmost sentry of peace. 
 
 This is the man. 
 
 Who gives up all that is lovely in living 
 
 For the means to live. 
 
 Poetry cunningly gilds 
 The life of the Light-Keeper, 
 Held on high in the blackness 
 607 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 In the burning kernel of night. 
 The seaman sees and blesses him : 
 The Poet, deep in a sonnet, 
 Numbers his inky fingers 
 Fitly to praise him ; 
 Only we behold him, 
 Sitting, patient and stolid. 
 Martyr to a salary. 
 1870. 
 
 ON A NEW FORM OF INTERMITTENT LIGHT 
 FOR LIGHTHOUSES 1 
 
 The necessity for marked characteristics in coast illumination increases 
 with the number of lights. The late Mr. Robert Stevenson, my grand- 
 father, contributed two distinctions, which he called respectively the 
 intermittent and the flashing light. It is only to the former of these 
 that I have to refer in the present paper. The intermittent light was first 
 introduced at Tarbetness in 1 830, and is already in use at eight stations 
 on the coasts of the United Kingdom. As constructed originally, it was 
 an arrangement by which a fixed light was alternately eclipsed and re- 
 vealed. These recurrent occultations and revelations produce an effect 
 totally different from that of the revolving light, which comes gradually 
 into its full strength, and as gradually fades away. The changes in the 
 intermittent, on the other hand, are immediate; a certain duration of 
 darkness is followed at once and without the least gradation by a certain 
 period of light. The arrangement employed by my grandfather to effect 
 this object consisted of two opaque cylindric shades or extinguishers, one 
 of which descended from the roof, while the other ascended from below 
 to meet it, at a fixed interval. The light was thus entirely intercepted. 
 
 At a later period, at the harbour light of Troon, Mr. Wilson, C. E., 
 produced an intermittent light by the use of gas, which leaves little to 
 be desired, and which is still in use at Troon harbour. By a simple me- 
 chanical contrivance, the gas-jet was suddenly lowered to the point of 
 extinction, and, after a set period, as suddenly raised again. The chief 
 
 1 Read before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts on 27th March, 1871, 
 and awarded the Society's Silver Medal. 
 
 608 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 superiority of this form of intermittent light is economy in the consump- 
 tion of gas. In the original design, of course, the oil continues uselessly 
 to illuminate the interior of the screens during the period of occultation. 
 Mr. Wilson's arrangement has been lately resuscitated by Mr. Wigham 
 of Dublin, in connection with his new gas-burner. 
 
 Gas, however, is inapplicable to many situations ; and it has occurred to 
 me that the desired result might be effected with strict economy with oil 
 lights, in the following man- 
 ner: 
 
 In Fig. I, AAA represents 
 in plan an ordinary Fresnel's 
 dioptric fixed light apparatus, 
 and BB' a hemispherical mir- 
 ror (either metallic or dioptric 
 on my father's principle) which 
 is made to revolve with uniform 
 speed about the burner. This 
 mirror, it is obvious, intercepts 
 the rays of one hemisphere, and, 
 returning them through the ^^^fiT* ^» 
 
 flame (less loss by absorption, etc.), spreads them equally over the other. 
 In this way i8o° of light pass regularly the eye of the seaman ; and are 
 
 followed at once by 180° of 
 darkness. As the hemispherical 
 mirror begins to open, the ob- 
 server receives the full light, 
 since the whole lit hemisphere 
 is illuminated with strict equal- 
 ity; and as it closes again, he 
 passes into darkness. 
 
 Other characteristics can be 
 produced by different modifi- 
 cations of the above. In Fig. 1 
 the original hemispherical mirror 
 is shown broken up into three 
 different sectors, BB' , CO, and 
 Diy ; so that with the same velocity of revolution the periods of light 
 and darkness will be produced in quicker succession. In this figure (Fig. 2) 
 
 609 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 the three sectors have been shown as subtending equal angles, but if one 
 of them were increased in size and the other two diminished (as in Fig. 3), 
 we should have one long steady illumination and two short flashes at each 
 
 revolution. Again, the number of 
 sectors may be increased ; and by 
 varying both their number and 
 their relative size, a number of ad- 
 ditional characteristics are attain- 
 able. 
 
 Colour may also be introduced 
 as a means of distinction. Col- 
 ^ oured glass may be set in the al- 
 ternate spaces ; but it is necessary 
 to remark that these coloured sec- 
 tors will be inferior in power to 
 those which remain white. This 
 objection is, however, obviated to 
 a large extent (especially where the 
 dioptric spherical mirror is used) by such an arrangement as is shown in 
 Fig. 4 ; where the two sectors, IV fV, are left unassisted, while the two 
 with the red screens are rein- 
 forced respectively by the 
 two sectors of mirror, MM. 
 Another mode of holopho- 
 tally producing the intermit- 
 tent light has been suggested 
 by my father, and is shown 
 in Fig. 5. It consists of 
 alternate and opposite sectors 
 of dioptric spherical mirror, 
 MM, and of Fresnel's fixed 
 light apparatus, j4j4. By 
 the revolution of this com- 
 posite frame about the 
 burner, the same immediate 
 alternation of light and darkness is produced, the first when the front 
 of the fixed panel, and the second when the back of the mirror, is 
 presented to the eye of the sailor. 
 
 610 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 One advantage of the method that I propose is this, that while we are 
 able to produce a plain intermittent light ; an intermittent light of variable 
 period, ranging from a brief 
 flash to a steady illumination 
 of half the revolution ; and 
 finally, a light combining 
 the immediate occultation of 
 the intermittent with com- 
 bination and change of 
 colour, we can yet preserve 
 comparative lightness in the 
 revolving parts, and conse- 
 quent economy in the driv- 
 ing machinery. It must, 
 however, be noticed, that 
 none of these last methods 
 are applicable to cases where 
 more than one radiant is employed : for these cases, either my grand- 
 father's or Mr. Wilson's contrivance must be resorted to. 
 
 1871. 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 ON THE THERMAL INFLUENCE OF FORESTS 1 
 
 The opportunity of an experiment on a comparatively large scale, and 
 under conditions of comparative isolation, can occur but rarely in such a 
 science as Meteorology. Hence Mr. Milne Home's proposal for the plan- 
 tation of Malta seemed to offer an exceptional opportunity for progress. 
 Many of the conditions are favourable to the simplicity of the result ; and 
 it seemed natural that, if a searching and systematic series of observations 
 were to be immediately set afoot, and continued during the course of the 
 plantation and the growth of the wood, some light would be thrown on 
 the still doubtful question of the climatic influence of forests. 
 
 Mr, Milne Home expects, as I gather, a threefold result: 1st, an in- 
 creased and better-regulated supply of available water ; 2nd, an increased 
 rainfall ; and, 3rd, a more equable climate, with more temperate summer 
 
 1 Read before the Royal Society, Edinburgh, 19th May, 1873, *^d re- 
 printed from the Proceeding's R. S. E. 
 
 611 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 heat and winter cold.^ As to the first of these expectations, 1 suppose 
 there can be no doubt that it is justified by facts ; but it may not be 
 unnecessary to guard against any confusion of the first with the second. 
 Not only does the presence of growing timber increase and regulate the 
 supply of running and spring water independently of any change in the 
 amount of rainfall, but, as Boussingault found at Marmato,2 denudation 
 of forest is sufficient to decrease that supply, even when the rainfall has 
 increased instead of diminished in amount. The second and third effects 
 stand apart, therefore, from any question as to the utility of Mr. Milne 
 Home's important proposal ; they are both, perhaps, worthy of discussion 
 at the present time, but I wish to confine myself in the present paper to 
 the examination of the third alone. 
 
 A wood, then, may be regarded either as a superficies or as a solid; 
 that is, either as a part of the earth's surface slightly elevated above the 
 rest, or as a diffused and heterogeneous body displacing a certain portion 
 of free and mobile atmosphere. It is primarily in the first character that it 
 attracts our attention, as a radiating and absorbing surface, exposed to the 
 sun and the currents of the air ; such that, if we imagine a plateau of mea- 
 dow-land or bare earth raised to the mean level of the forest's exposed 
 leaf-surface, we shall have an agent entirely similar in kind, although per- 
 haps widely differing in the amount of action. Now, by comparing a tract 
 of wood with such a plateau as we have just supposed, we shall arrive at 
 a clear idea of the specialties of the former. In the first place, then, the 
 mass of foliage may be expected to increase the radiating power of each 
 tree. The upper leaves radiate freely towards the stars and the cold in- 
 terstellar spaces, while the lower ones radiate to those above and receive 
 less heat in return ; consequently, during the absence of the sun, each tree 
 cools gradually downward from top to bottom. Hence we must take 
 into account not merely the area of leaf-surface actually exposed to the 
 sky, but, to a greater or less extent, the surface of every leaf in the whole 
 tree or the whole wood. This is evidently a point in which the action of 
 the forest may be expected to differ from that of the meadow or naked 
 earth ; for though, of course, inferior strata tend to a certain extent to 
 follow somewhat the same course as the mass of inferior leaves, they da 
 so to a less degree— conduction, and the conduction of a very slow con- 
 ductor, beinp^ ubstituted for radiation. 
 
 1 Jour. Scot. Met. Soc, New Ser., xxvi. 35. 
 
 2 Quoted by Mr. Milne Home. 
 
 6\2 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 We come next, however, to a second point of difference. In the 
 case of the meadow, the chilled air continues to lie upon the surface, the 
 grass, as Humboldt says, remaining all night submerged in the stratum of 
 lowest temperature ; while in the case of trees, the coldest air is continually 
 passing down to the space underneath the boughs, or what we may per- 
 haps term the crypt of the forest. Here it is that the consideration of 
 any piece of woodland conceived as a solid comes naturally in ; for this 
 solid contains a portion of the atmosphere, partially cut off from the rest, 
 more or less excluded from the influence of wind, and lying upon a soil 
 that is screened all day from isolation by the impending mass of foli- 
 age. In this way (and chiefly, I think, from the exclusion of winds), 
 we have underneath the radiating leaf-surface a stratum of comparatively 
 stagnant air, protected from many sudden variations of temperature, and 
 tending only slowly to bring itself into equilibrium with the more general 
 changes that take place in the free atmosphere. 
 
 Over and above what has been mentioned, thermal effects have been 
 attributed to the vital activity of the leaves in the transudation of water, 
 and even to the respiration and circulation of living wood. The whole 
 actual amount of thermal influence, however, is so small that I may rest 
 satisfied with the mere mention. If these actions have any effect at all, 
 it must be practically insensible ; and the others that I have already stated 
 are not only sufficient validly to account for all the observed differences, 
 but would lead naturally to the expectation of differences very much 
 larger and better marked. To these observations I proceed at once. Ex- 
 perience has been acquired upon the following three points: i, The 
 relation between the temperature of the trunk of a tree and the tempera- 
 ture of the surrounding atmosphere; 2, The relation between the temper- 
 ature of the air under a wood and the temperature of the air outside ; 
 and, 3, The relation between the temperature of the air above a wood and 
 the temperature of the air above cleared land. 
 
 As to the first question, there are several independent series of observa- 
 tions ; and I may remark in passing, what applies to all, that allowance 
 must be made throughout for some factor of specific heat. The results 
 were as follows: The seasonal and monthly means in the tree and in 
 the air were not sensibly different. The variations in the tree, in M. Bec- 
 querel's own observations, appear as considerably less than a fourth of 
 those in the atmosphere, and he has calculated, from observations made 
 at Geneva between 1 796 and 1 798, that the variations in the tree were 
 
 613 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 less than a fifth of those in the air; but the tree in this case, besides 
 being of a different species, was seven or eight inches thicker than the 
 one experimented on by himself.! The variations in the tree, therefore, 
 are always less than those in the air, the ratio between the two depending 
 apparently on the thickness of the tree in question and the rapidity with 
 which the variations followed upon one another. The .times of the maxima, 
 moreover, were widely different : in the air, the maximum occurs at 2 p. m. 
 in winter, and at 3 p. m. in summer ; in the tree, it occurs in winter at 
 6 p. M., and in summer between 10 and 1 1 p. m. At nine in the morning 
 in the month of June, the temperatures of the tree and of the air had 
 come to an equilibrium. A similar difference of progression is visible in 
 the means, which differ most in spring and autumn, and tend to equalise 
 themselves in winter and in summer. But it appears most strikingly in 
 the case of variations somewhat longer in period than the daily ranges. 
 The following temperatures occurred during M. Becquerel's observations 
 in the Jardin des Plantes : 
 
 Date, Temperature Temperatiire 
 
 1859. of the Air. in the Tree. 
 
 Dec. 15 26.78° 32° 
 
 "16 19.76° 32° 
 
 "17 17.78° 31.46* 
 
 "18 13.28° 30.56° 
 
 "19 12.02° .... 28.40° 
 
 "20 12.54° .... 25.34° 
 
 "21 38.30° 27.86° 
 
 "22 43.34° .... 30.92° 
 
 "23 44.06° 31.46** 
 
 A moment's comparison of the two columns will make the principle 
 apparent. The temperature of the air falls nearly fifteen degrees in five 
 days ; the temperature of the tree, sluggishly following, falls in the same 
 time less than four degrees. Between the 1 9th and 20th the temperature 
 of the air has changed its direction of motion, and risen nearly a degree ; 
 but the temperature of the tree persists in its former course, and continues 
 to fall nearly three degrees farther. On the 2 1 st there comes a sudden 
 increase of heat, a sudden thaw ; the temperature of the air rises twenty- 
 five and a half degrees ; the change at last reaches the tree, but only raises 
 
 1 Ailas MiUorologique de V Observatoire ImpMal, 1867. 
 614 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 its temperature by less than three degrees; and even two days afterwards, 
 when the air is already twelve degrees above freezing-point, the tree is 
 still half a degree below it. Take, again, the following case : 
 
 Date, Temperature Temperature 
 
 1859. of the Air. in the Tree. 
 
 July 13 84.920 .... 76.28*> 
 
 "14 82.58° 78.62'* 
 
 "15 80.42° 7772* 
 
 *' 16 79.88° .... 78.44° 
 
 "17 73.22° .... 75.92° 
 
 "18 68.54° .... 74.30** 
 
 «• 19 65.66° 70.70° 
 
 The same order reappears. From the 13th to the 19th the temperature 
 of the air steadily falls, while the temperature of the tree continues appa- 
 rently to follow the course of previous variations, and does not really 
 begin to fall, is not really affected by the ebb of heat, until the 1 7th, three 
 days at least after it had been operating in the air.i Hence we may con- 
 clude that all variations of the temperature of the air, whatever be their 
 period, from twenty-four hours up to twelve months, are followed in the 
 same manner by variations in the temperature of the tree ; and that those 
 in the tree are always less in amount and considerably slower of occurrence 
 than those in the air. The thermal sluggishness, so to speak, seems 
 capable of explaining all the phenomena of the case without any hypo- 
 thetical vital power of resisting temperatures below the freezing-point, 
 such as is hinted at even by Becquerel. 
 
 Reaumur, indeed, is said to have observed temperatures in slender trees 
 nearly thirty degrees higher than the temperature of the air in the sun ; 
 but we are not informed as to the conditions under which this observa- 
 tion was made, and it is therefore impossible to assign to it its proper 
 value. The sap of the ice-plant is said to be materially colder than the 
 surrounding atmosphere ; and there are several other somewhat incongru- 
 ous facts, which tend, at first sight, to favour the view of some inherent 
 power of resistance in some plants to high temperatures, and in others to 
 low temperatures. 2 But such a supposition seems in the meantime to be 
 
 1 Comptes Rendus de I'Acadimie, 29th March, 1869. 
 
 > Professor Balfour's Class Book of Botany, Physiology, chap. xii. p. 670^' 
 
 615 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 gratuitous. Keeping in view the thermal redispositions, which must be 
 greatly favoured by the ascent of the sap, and the difference between the 
 condition as to temperature of such parts as the root, the heart of the 
 trunk, and the extreme foliage, and never forgetting the unknown factor 
 of specific heat, we may still regard it as possible to account for all anom- 
 alies without the aid of any such hypothesis. We may, therefore, I 
 think, disregard small exceptions, and state the result as follows : 
 
 If, after every rise or fall, the temperature of the air remained stationary 
 for a length of time proportional to the amount of the change, it seems 
 probable— setting aside all question of vital heat— that the temperature of 
 the tree would always finally equalise itself with the new temperature of 
 the air, and that the range in tree and atmosphere would thus become the 
 same. This pause, however, does not occur : the variations follow each 
 other without interval ; and the slow-conducting wood is never allowed 
 enough time to overtake the rapid changes of the more sensitive air. 
 Hence, so far as we can see at present, trees appear to be simply bad 
 conductors, and to have no more influence upon the temperature of their 
 surroundings than is fully accounted for by the consequent tardiness of 
 their thermal variations. 
 
 Observations bearing on the second of the three points have been made 
 by Becquerel in France, by La Cour in Jutland and Iceland, and by Rivoli 
 at Posen. The results are perfectly congruous. Becquerel's observations ^ 
 were made under wood, and about a hundred yards outside in open ground, 
 at three stations in the district of Montargis, Loiret. There was a differ- 
 ence of more than one degree Fahrenheit between the mean annual tem- 
 peratures in favour of the open ground. The mean summer temperature 
 in the wood was from two to three degrees lower than the mean summer 
 temperature outside. The mean maxima in the wood were also lower 
 than those without by a little more than two degrees. Herr La Cour 2 
 found the daily range consistently smaller inside the wood than outside. 
 As far as regards the mean winter temperatures, there is an excess in 
 favour of the forests, but so trifling in amount as to be unworthy of 
 much consideration. Libri found that the minimum winter temperatures 
 were not sensibly lower in Florence, after the Apennines had been denuded 
 of forest, than they had been before.^ The disheartening contradictori- 
 
 i Comptes Rendus, 1867 and 1869. 
 
 * See his paper. 
 
 * Annales de ChimU et de Physique, xlv., 1830. A more detailed corn* 
 
 616 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 ness of his observations on this subject led Herr Rivoli to the following 
 ingenious and satisfactory comparison. i Arranging his results according 
 to the wind that blew on the day of observation, he set against each other 
 the variation of the temperature under wood from that without, and the 
 variation of the temperature of the wind from the local mean for the 
 month : 
 
 Wind 
 
 N. 
 
 N.E. 
 
 E. 
 
 S.E. 
 
 S. 
 
 s.w. 
 
 w. 
 
 N.W. 
 
 
 Var in Wood 
 
 +0.60 
 —0 30 
 
 +0.26 
 -2.60 
 
 +0.26 
 -330 
 
 +0.04 
 — 1.20 
 
 -0.04 
 +1.00 
 
 — 0.20 
 
 +1.30 
 
 +0.16 
 + 1.00 
 
 +0.07 
 + 1.00 
 
 Var. in Wind 
 
 
 From this curious comparison, it becomes apparent that the variations 
 of the difference in question depend upon the amount of variations of 
 temperature which take place in the free air, and on the slowness with 
 which such changes are communicated to the stagnant atmosphere of 
 woods; in other words, as Herr Rivoli boldly formulates it, a forest is 
 simply a bad conductor. But this is precisely the same conclusion as we 
 have already arrived at with regard to individual trees ; and in Herr Rivoli's 
 table, what we see is just another case of what we saw in M. Becquerel's 
 —the different progression of temperatures. It must be obvious, how- 
 ever, that the thermal condition of a single tree must be different in many 
 ways from that of a combination of trees and more or less stagnant air, 
 such as we call a forest. And accordingly we find, in the case of the 
 latter, the following new feature: The mean yearly temperature of 
 woods is lower than the mean yearly temperature of free air, while they 
 are decidedly colder in summer, and very little, if at all, warmer in winter. 
 Hence, on the whole, forests are colder than cleared lands. But this is 
 just what might have been expected from the amount of evaporation, 
 the continued descent of cold air, and its stagnation in the close and 
 sunless crypt of a forest; and one can only wonder here, as elsewhere, 
 that the resultant difference is so insignificant and doubtful. 
 
 We come now to the third point in question, the thermal influence of 
 woods upon the air above them. It will be remembered that we have 
 Seen reason to believe their effect to be similar to that of certain other 
 surfaces, except in so far as it may be altered, in the case of the forest, 
 
 parison of the climate in question would be a most interesting and impo^ 
 tant contribution to the subject. 
 
 * Reviewed in the Austrian Meteorological Magazine, vol. iv. p. 543. 
 617 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 by the greater extent of effective radiating area, and by the possibility ot 
 generating a descending cold current as well as an ascending hot one. 
 M. Becquerel is (so far as I can learn) the only observer who has taken up 
 the elucidation of this subject. He placed his thermometers at three 
 points 'A A and B were both about seventy feet above the surface of the 
 ground ; but A was at the summit of a chestnut-tree, while B was in the 
 free air, fifty feet away from the other. C was four or five feet above 
 the ground, with a northern exposure ; there was also a fourth station to 
 the south, at the same level as this last, but its readings are very seldom 
 referred to. After several years of observation, the mean temperature at 
 A was found to be between one and two degrees higher than that at B. 
 The order of progression of differences is as instructive here as in the two 
 former investigations. The maximum difference in favour of station A 
 occurred between three and five in the afternoon, later or sooner accord- 
 ing as there had been more or less sunshine, and ranged sometimes as high 
 as seven degrees. After this the difference kept declining until sunrise,, 
 when there was often a difference of a degree, or a degree and a half^ 
 upon the other side. On cloudy days the difference tended to a minimum. 
 During a rainy month of April, for example, the difference in favour of 
 station A was less than half a degree; the first fifteen days of May 
 following, however, were sunny, and the difference rose to more than a 
 degree and a half.^ It will be observed that I have omitted up to the 
 present point all mention of station C. I do so because M. Becquerel's 
 language leaves it doubtful whether the observations made at this station 
 are logically comparable with those made at the other two. If the end 
 in view were to compare the progression of temperatures above the earth, 
 above a tree, and in free air, removed from all such radiative and absorjv 
 tive influences, it is plain that all three should have been equally exposed 
 to the sun or kept equally in shadow. As the observations were made, 
 they give us no notion of the relative action of the earth-surface and 
 forest-surface upon the temperature of the contiguous atmosphere; and 
 this, as it seems to me, was just the crux of the problem. So far, how- 
 ever, as they go, they seem to justify the view that all these actions are 
 the same in kind, however they may differ in degree. We find the forest 
 heating the air during the day, and heating it more or less according as 
 there has been more or less sunshine for it to absorb, and we find it also 
 
 1 Comptes Rendus, 28th May, i86o. 
 « Ibid., 20th May, 1861. 
 618 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 chilling it during the night ; both of which are actions common to any 
 radiating surface, and would be produced, if with differences of amount 
 and time, by any other such surface raised to the mean level of the ex- 
 posed foliage. 
 
 To recapitulate : 
 
 ist. We find that single trees appear to act simply as bad conductors. 
 
 2nd. We find that woods, regarded as solids, are, on the whole,, 
 slightly lower in temperature than the free air which they have displaced, 
 and that they tend slowly to adapt themselves to the various thermal, 
 changes that take place without them. 
 
 3rd. We find forests regarded as surfaces acting like any other part of 
 the earth's surface, probably with more or less difference in amount and 
 progression, which we still lack the information necessary to estimate. 
 
 All this done, I am afraid that there can be little doubt that the more 
 general climatic investigations will be long and vexatious. Even in South 
 America, with extremely favourable conditions, the result is far from being 
 definite. Glancing over the table published by M. Becquerel in his book 
 on climates, from the observations of Humboldt, Hall, Boussingault, and 
 others, it becomes evident, I think, that nothing can be founded upon the 
 comparisons therein instituted ; that all reasoning, in the present state of 
 our information, is premature and unreliable. Strong statements have 
 certainly been made ; and particular cases lend themselves to the forma- 
 tion of hasty judgments. " From the Bay of Cupica to the Gulf of 
 Guayaquil," says M. Boussingault, "the country is covered with immense 
 forests and traversed by numerous rivers ; it rains there almost ceaselessly ; 
 and the mean temperature of this moist district scarcely reaches 78.8** F. . . . 
 vAt Payta commence the sandy deserts of Priura and Sechura; to the con- 
 stant humidity of Choco succeeds almost at once an extreme of dryness; 
 and the mean temperature of the coast increases at the same time by 1 .8** 
 F."i Even in this selected favourable instance it might be argued that 
 the part performed in the change by the presence or absence of forest 
 was comparatively small; there seems to have been, at the same time, an 
 entire change of soil ; and, in our present ignorance, it would be difficult 
 to say by how much this of itself is able to affect the climate. Moreover, 
 it is possible that the humidity of the one district is due to other causes 
 besides the presence of wood, or even that the presence of wood is itself 
 only an effect of some more general difference or combination of differ- 
 1 Becquerel, Climats, p. 141. 
 619 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 ences. Be that as it may, however, we have only to look a little longer 
 at the table before referred to, to see how little weight can be laid on 
 such special instances. Let us take five stations, all in this very district 
 of Choco. Hacquita is eight hundred and twenty feet above Novita, and 
 their mean temperatures are the same. Alto de Mombu, again, is five 
 hundred feet higher than Hacquita, and the mean temperature has here 
 fallen nearly two degrees. Go up another five hundred feet to Tambo 
 de la Orquita, and again we find no fall in the mean temperature. Go 
 up some five hundred farther to Chami, and there is a fall in the mean 
 temperature of nearly six degrees. Such numbers are evidently quite 
 untrustworthy; and hence we may judge how much confidence can be 
 placed in any generalisation from these South American mean temperatures. 
 
 The question is probably considered too simply — too much to the 
 neglect of concurrent influences. Until we know, for example, some- 
 what more of the comparative radiant powers of different soils, we 
 cannot expect any very definite result. A change of temperature would 
 certainly be effected by the plantation of such a marshy district as the 
 Sologne, because, if nothing else were done, the roots might pierce 
 the impenetrable subsoil, allow the surface-water to drain itself off, 
 and thus dry the country. But might not the change be quite different 
 if the soil planted were a shifting sand, which, fixed by the roots of 
 the trees, would become gradually covered with a vegetable earth, 
 and thus be changed from dry to wet ? Again, the complication and 
 conflict of effects arises, not only from the soil, vegetation, and geo- 
 graphical position of the place of the experiment itself, but from the 
 distribution of similar or different conditions in its immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, and probably to great distances on every side. A forest, 
 for example, as we know from Herr Rivoli's comparison, would exer- 
 cise a perfectly different influence in a cold country subject to warm 
 winds, and in a warm country subject to cold winds; so that our 
 question might meet with different solutions even on the east and west 
 coasts of Great Britain. 
 
 The consideration of such a complexity points more and more to the 
 plantation of Malta as an occasion of special importance; its insular 
 position and the unity of its geological structure both tend to simplify 
 the question. There are certain points about the existing climate, 
 moreover, which seem specially calculated to throw the influence of 
 Avoods into a strong relief. Thus, during four summer months, there 
 
 620 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 Is piactically no rainfall. Thus, again, the northerly winds when 
 stormy, and especially in winter, tend to depress the temperature very 
 suddenly; and thus, too, the southerly and south-westerly winds, 
 which raise the temperature during their prevalence to from eighty- 
 eight to ninety-eight degrees, seldom last longer than a few hours; 
 insomuch that "their disagreeable heat and dryness may be escaped 
 by carefully closing the windows and doors of apartments at their 
 onset, "1 Such sudden and short variations seem just what is wanted 
 to accentuate the differences in question. Accordingly, the opportu- 
 nity seems one not lightly to be lost, and the British Association or 
 this Society itself might take the matter up and establish a series of 
 observations, to be continued during the next few years. Such a com- 
 bination of favourable circumstances may not occur again for years; 
 and when the whole subject is at a standstill for want of facts, the 
 present occasion ought not to go past unimproved. 
 
 Such observations might include the following: 
 
 The observation of maximum and minimum thermometers in three 
 different classes of situation — videlicet, in the areas selected for plan- 
 tation themselves, at places in the immediate neighbourhood of those 
 areas where the external influence might be expected to reach its maxi- 
 mum, and at places distant from those areas where the influence might 
 be expected to be least. 
 
 The operation of rain-gauges and hygrometers at the same three 
 descriptions of locality. 
 
 In addition to the ordinary hours of observation, special readings of 
 the thermometers should be made as often as possible at a change 
 of wind and throughout the course of the short hot breezes alluded to 
 already, in order to admit of the recognition and extension of Herr 
 Rivoli's comparison. 
 
 Observation of the periods and forces of the land and sea breezes. 
 
 Gauging of the principal springs, both in the neighbourhood of the 
 areas of plantation and at places far removed from those areaj 
 
 1873. 
 
 1 Scoresby-Jackson's Medical Climatology, 
 
 6ai 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 REFLECTION AND REMARKS ON HUMAN LIFE 
 
 I. Justice and Justification. — (i) It is the business of this life to 
 make excuses for others, but none for ourselves. We should be clearly 
 persuaded of our own misconduct, for that is the part of knowledge in 
 Avhich we are most apt to be defective. (2) Even justice is no right 
 of a man's own, but a thing, like the king's tribute, which shall never 
 be his, but which he should strive to see rendered to another. None 
 was ever just to me; none ever will be. You may reasonably aspire 
 to be chief minister or sovereign pontiff ; but not to be justly regarded 
 in your own character and acts. You know too much to be satisfied. 
 For justice is but an earthly currency, paid to appearances; you may 
 see another superficially righted; but be sure he has got too little or 
 too much; and in your own case rest content with what is paid you. 
 It is more just than you suppose; that your virtues are misunderstood 
 *is a price you pay to keep your meannesses concealed. (3) When you 
 seek to justify yourself to others, you may be sure you will plead 
 falsely. If you fail, you have the shame of the failure; if you succeed, 
 you will have made too much of it, and be unjustly esteemed upon 
 the other side. (4) You have perhaps only one friend in the world, in 
 whose esteem it is worth while for you to right yourself. Justification 
 to indifferent persons is, at best, an impertinent intrusion. Let them 
 think what they please; they will be the more likely to forgive you in 
 the end. (5) It is a question hard to be resolved, whether you should 
 at any time criminate another to defend yourself. I have done it 
 many times, and always had a troubled conscience for my pains. 
 
 II. Parent and Child. — (i) The love of parents for their children is, 
 of all natural affections, the most ill-starred. It is not a love for the 
 person, since it begins before the person has come into the world, and 
 founds on an imaginary character and looks. Thus it is foredoomed 
 to disappointment ; and because the parent either looks for too much, 
 or at least for something inappropriate, at his offspring's hands, it is too 
 often insufficiently repaid. The natural bond, besides, is stronger 
 from parent to child than from child to parent ; and it is the side which 
 confers benefits, not which receives them, that thinks most of a rela- 
 tion. (2) What do we owe our parents ? No man can owe love ; 
 >none can owe obedience. We owe, I think, chiefly pity ; for we are 
 
 622 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 tlie pledge of their dear and joyful union, we have Deen the solicitude 
 of their days and the anxiety of their nights, we have made them, 
 though by no will of ours, to carry the burthen of our sins, sorrows, 
 and physical infirmities ; and too many of us grow up at length to 
 disappoint the purpose of their lives and requite their care and piety 
 with cruel pangs. (3) Mater Dolorosa. It is the particular cross of 
 parents that when the child grows up and becomes himself instead 
 of that pale ideal they had preconceived, they must accuse their own 
 harshness or indulgence for this natural result. They have all been 
 like the duck and hatched swan's eggs, or the other way about ; yet 
 they tell themselves with miserable penitence that the blame lies with 
 them ; and had they sat more closely, the swan would have been a 
 duck, and home-keeping, in spite of all. (4) A good son, who can fulfil 
 what is expected of him, has done his work in life. He has to redeem 
 the sins of many, and restore the world's confidence in children. 
 
 III. Dialogue on Character and Destiny between Two Puppets. — 
 At the end of Chapter xxxiii. Count Spada and the General of the Jesuits 
 ^vere left alone in the pavilion, while the course of the story was turned 
 upon the doings of the virtuous hero. Profiting by this moment of pri- 
 vacy, the Jesuit turned with a very warning countenance upon the peer. 
 
 " Have a care, my lord," said he, raising a finger. " You are already 
 no favourite with the author; and for my part, I begin to perceive from 
 a thousand evidences that the narrative is drawing near a close. Yet 
 a chapter or two at most, and you will be overtaken by some sudden 
 and appalling judgment." 
 
 " I despise your womanish presentiments," replied Spada, '* and 
 count firmly upon another volume; I see a variety of reasons why my 
 life should be prolonged to within a few pages of the end; indeed, I 
 permit myself to expect resurrection in a sequel, or second part. You 
 will scarce suggest that there can be any end to the newspaper; and 
 you will certainly never convince me that the author, who cannot be 
 entirely without sense, would have been at so great pains with my 
 intelligence, gallant exterior, and happy and natural speech, merely to 
 kick me hither and thither for two or three paltry chapters and then 
 drop me at the end like a dumb personage. I know you priests are 
 often infidels in secret. Pray, do you believe in an author at all ? " 
 
 "Many do not, I am aware," replied the General, softly; " even in 
 the last chapter we encountered one, the self-righteous David Hume, 
 
 62^ 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 who goes so far as to doubt the existence of the newspaper in which 
 our adventures are now appearing; but it would neither become my 
 cloth, nor do credit to my great experience, were I to meddle with these 
 dangerous opinions. My alarm for you is not metaphysical, it is moral 
 in its origin : You must be aware, my poor friend, that you are a very 
 bad character— the worst, indeed, that I have met with in these pages. 
 The author hates you. Count; and difficult as it may be to connect the 
 idea of immortality— or, in plain terms, of a sequel— with the paper 
 and printer's ink of which your humanity is made, it is yet more diffi- 
 cult to foresee anything but punishment and pain for one who is justly 
 hateful in the eyes of his creator." 
 
 " You take for granted many things that I shall not be easily persuaded 
 to allow," replied the villain. " Do you really so far deceive yourself 
 in your imagination as to fancy that the author is a friend to good? 
 Read; read the book in which you figure; and you will soon disown 
 such crude vulgarities. Lelio is a good character; yet only two chap- 
 ters ago we left him in a fine predicament. His old servant was a 
 model of the virtues, yet did he not miserably perish in that ambuscade 
 upon the road to Poitiers? And as for the family of the bankrupt 
 merchant, how is it possible for greater moral qualities to be alive with 
 more irremediable misfortunes? And yet you continue to misrepresent 
 an author to yourself, as a deity devoted to virtue and inimical to vice? 
 Pray, if you have no pride in your intellectual credit for yourself, spare 
 at least the sensibilities of your associates." 
 
 "The purposes of the serial story," answered the Priest, "are, 
 doubtless for some wise reason, hidden from those who act in it. To 
 this limitation we must bow. But I ask every character to observe nar- 
 rowly his own personal relations to the author. There, if nowhere else, 
 we may glean some hint of his superior designs. Now I am myself a 
 mingled personage, liable to doubts, to scruples, and to sudden revul- 
 sions of feeling; I reason continually about life, and frequently the 
 result of my reasoning is to condemn or even to change my action. I 
 am now convinced, for example, that I did wrong in joining your plot 
 against the innocent and most unfortunate Lelio. I told you so, you 
 will remember, in the chapter which has just been concluded; and 
 though 1 do not know whether you perceived the ardour and fluency 
 with which I expressed myself, I am still confident in my own heart 
 that I spoke at that moment not only with the warm approval, but 
 
 624 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 under the direct inspiration, of the author of the tale. I know, Spada, 
 I tell you I know that he loved me as I uttered these words; and yet 
 at other periods of my career I have been conscious of his indifference 
 and dislike. You must not seek to reason me from this conviction; for 
 it is supplied me from higher authority than that of reason, and is, 
 indeed, a part of my experience. It may be an illusion that I drove 
 last night from Saumur; it may be an illusion that we are now in the 
 garden chamber of the chateau ; it may be an illusion that I am con- 
 versing with Count Spada; you may be an illusion, Count, yourself; 
 but of three things I will remain eternally persuaded, that the author 
 exists not only in the newspaper but in my own heart, that he loves me 
 when 1 do well, and that he hates and despises me when I do otherwise." 
 " I too believe in the author," returned the Count. " I believe like- 
 wise in a sequel, written in finer style and probably cast in a still 
 higher rank of society than the present story; although I am not con- 
 vinced that we shall then be conscious of our pre-existence here. So 
 much of your argument is, therefore, beside the mark; for to a certain 
 point I am as orthodox as yourself. But where you begin to draw 
 general conclusions from your own private experience, I must beg 
 pointedly and finally to differ. You will not have forgotten, I believe, 
 my daring and single-handed butchery of the five secret witnesses ? 
 Nor the sleight of mind and dexterity of language with which I sep- 
 arated Lelio from the merchant's family ? These were not virtuous 
 actions; and yet, how am 1 to tell you ? I was conscious of a troubled 
 joy, a glee, a hellish gusto in my author's bosom, which seemed to 
 renew my vigour with every sentence, and which has indeed made the 
 first of these passages accepted for a model of spirited narrative de- 
 scription, and the second for a masterpiece of wickedness and wit. 
 What result, then, can be drawn from two experiences so contrary as 
 yours and mine ? For my part, I lay it down as a principle, no author 
 can be moral in a merely human sense. And, to pursue the argument 
 higher, how can you, for one instant, suppose the existence of free- 
 will in puppets situated as we are in the thick of a novel which we do 
 not even understand? And how, without free-will upon our parts, 
 can you justify blame or approval on that of the author ? We are in 
 his hands; by a stroke of the pen, to speak reverently, he made us 
 what we are; by a stroke of the pen he can utterly undo and trans- 
 mute what he has made. In the very next chapter, my dear General, 
 
 625 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 you may be shown up for an impostor, or I be stricken down in the 
 tears of penitence and hurried into the retirement of a monastery! " 
 
 " You use an argument old as mankind, and difficult of answer," 
 said the Priest. " I cannot justify the free-will of which I am usually 
 conscious; nor will I ever seek to deny that this consciousness is inter- 
 rupted. Sometimes events mount upon me with such swiftness and 
 pressure that my choice is overwhelmed, and even to myself I seem to 
 obey a will external to my own; and again I am sometimes so para- 
 lysed and impotent between alternatives that I am tempted to imagine 
 a hesitation on the part of my author. But 1 contend, upon the other 
 hand, for a limited free-will in the sphere of consciousness; and as it 
 is in and by my consciousness that I exist to myself, I will not go on 
 to inquire whether that free-will is valid as against the author, the 
 newspaper, or even the readers of the story. And I contend, further, 
 for a sort of empire or independence of our own characters when once 
 created, which the author cannot or at least does not choose to violate. 
 Hence Lelio was conceived upright, honest, courageous, and headlong; 
 to that first idea all his acts and speeches must of necessity continue to 
 answer; and the same, though with such different defects and quali- 
 ties, applies to you, Count Spada, and to myself. We must act up 
 to our characters; it is these characters that the author loves or de- 
 spises; it is on account of them that we must suffer or triumph, whether 
 in this work or in a sequel. Such is my belief." 
 
 " It is pure Calvinistic election, my dear sir, and, by your leave, a 
 very heretical position for a churchman to support," replied the Count. 
 ** Nor can I see how it removes the difficulty. I was not consulted as 
 to my character; I might have chosen to be Lelio; I might have 
 chosen to be yourself; I might even have preferred to figure in a differ- 
 ent romance, or not to enter into the world of literature at all. And 
 am I to be blamed or hated, because some one else wilfully and in- 
 humanely made me what I am, and has continued ever since to 
 encourage me in what are called my vices ? You may say what you 
 please, my dear sir, but if that is the case, I had rather be a telegram 
 from the seat of war than a reasonable and conscious character in a 
 romance; nay, and I have a perfect right to repudiate, loathe, curse, 
 and utterly condemn the ruffian who calls himself the author." 
 
 **You have, as you say, a perfect right," replied the Jesuit; "and 
 1 am convinced that it will not affect him in the least." 
 
 626 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 " He shall have one slave the fewer for me," added the Count. "I 
 discard my allegiance once for all." 
 
 " As you please," concluded the other ; '* but at least be ready, for 
 I perceive we are about to enter on the scene." 
 
 And indeed, just at that moment. Chapter xxxiv. being completed, 
 Chapter xxxv., "The Count's Chastisement," began to appear in the 
 columns of the newspaper. 
 
 IV. Solitude and Society. — (i) A little society is needful to show a 
 man his failings; for if he lives entirely by himself, he has no occasion 
 to fall, and, like a soldier in time of peace, becomes both weak and 
 vain. But a little solitude must be used, or we grow content with 
 current virtues and forget the ideal. In society we lose scrupulous 
 brightness of honour; in solitude we lose the courage necessary to 
 face our own imperfections. (2) As a question of pleasure, after a 
 man has reached a certain age, I can hardly perceive much room to 
 choose between them: each is in away delightful, and each will please 
 best after an experience of the other. (3) But solitude for its own 
 sake should surely never be preferred. We are bound by the strongest 
 obligations to busy ourselves amid the world of men, if it be only to 
 crack jokes. The finest trait in the character of St. Paul was his readi- 
 ness to be damned for the salvation of anybody else. And surely we 
 should all endure a little weariness to make one face look brighter or 
 one hour go more pleasantly in this mixed world. (4) It is our busi- 
 ness here to speak, for it is by the tongue that we multiply ourselves 
 most influentially. To speak kindly, wisely, and pleasantly is the 
 first of duties, the easiest of duties, and the duty that is most blessed 
 in its performance. For it is natural, it whiles away life, it spreads in- 
 telligence; and it increases the acquaintance of man with man. (5) 
 It is, besides, a good investment, for while all other pleasures decay, 
 and even the delight in nature. Grandfather William is still bent to 
 gossip. (6) Solitude is the climax of the negative virtues. When 
 we go to bed after a solitary day we can tell ourselves that we have 
 not been unkind nor dishonest nor untruthful; and the negative vir- 
 tues are agreeable to that dangerous faculty we call the conscience. 
 That they should ever be admitted for a part of virtue is what I 
 cannot explain. I do not care two straws for all the nots, (7) The 
 positive virtues are imperfect; they are even ugly in their imperfection : 
 for man's acts, by the necessity of his being, are coarse and mingled. 
 
 627 
 
ADDENDA - 
 
 The kindest, in the course of a day of active kindnesses, will say some 
 things rudely, and do some things cruelly; the most honourable, per- 
 haps, trembles at his nearness to a doubtful act. (8) Hence the solitary 
 recoils from the practice of life, shocked by its unsightliness. But if \ 
 could only retain that superfine and guiding delicacy of the sense that 
 grows in solitude, and still combine with it that courage of perform- 
 ance which is never abashed by any failure, but steadily pursues its 
 right and human design in a scene of imperfection, I might hope to 
 strike in the long run a conduct more tender to others and less humili- 
 ating to myself. 
 
 V. Selfishness and Egoism. — An unconscious, easy, selfish person 
 shocks less, and is more easily loved, than one who is laboriously and 
 egoistically unselfish. There is at least no fuss about the first; but the 
 other parades his sacrifices, and so sells his favours too dear. Selfish- 
 ness is calm, a force of nature: you might say the trees were selfish. 
 But egoism is a piece of vanity; it must always take you into its con- 
 fidence; it is uneasy, troublesome, seeking; it can do good, but not 
 handsomely; it is uglier, because less dignified, than selfishness itself. 
 But here 1 perhaps exaggerate to myself, because 1 am the one more 
 than the other, and feel it like a hook in my mouth, at every step I take. 
 Do what 1 will, this seems to spoil all. 
 
 VI. Right and JVrong. — It is the mark of a good action that it 
 appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats 
 to do otherwise. And there 's an end. We ought to know distinctly 
 that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done 
 right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to 
 make a work about. 
 
 VII. Discipline of Conscience. — (i) Never allow your mind to 
 dwell on your own misconduct; that is ruin. The conscience has mor- 
 bid sensibilities; it must be employed but not indulged, like the ima- 
 gination or the stomach. (2) Let each stab suffice for the occasion; to 
 play with this spiritual pain turns to penance; and a person easily learns 
 to feel good by dallying with the consciousness of having done wrong, 
 (3) Shut your eyes hard against the recollection of your sins. Do not 
 be afraid, you will not be able to forget them. (4) You will always do 
 wrong: you must try to get used to that, my son. It is a small mat- 
 ter to make a work about, when all the world is in the same case. I 
 meant when I was a young man to write a great poem; and now I am 
 
 628 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 cobbling little prose articles and in excellent good spirits, I thank you. 
 So, too, I meant to lead a life that should keep mounting from the 
 first; and though I have been repeatedly down again below sea-level, 
 and am scarce higher than when I started, I am as keen as ever for that 
 enterprise. Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to con- 
 tinue to fail, in good spirits. (5) There is but one test of a good life: 
 that the man shall continue to grow more difficult about his own 
 behaviour. That is to be good: there is no other virtue attainable. 
 The virtues we admire in the saint and the hero are the fruits of a happy 
 constitution. You, for your part, must not think you will ever be a 
 good man, for these are born and not made. You will have your own 
 reward, if you keep on growing better than you were— how do I say? 
 if you do not keep on growing worse. (6) A man is one thing, and 
 must be exercised in all his faculties. Whatever side of you is neglected, 
 whether it is the muscles, or the taste for art, or the desire for virtue, 
 
 that which is cultivated will suffer in proportion. was greatly 
 
 tempted, I remember, to do a very dishonest act, in order that he might 
 pursue his studies in art. When he consulted me, I advised him not 
 (putting it that way for once), because his art would suffer. (7) It 
 might be fancied that if we could only study all sides of our being in 
 an exact proportion, we should attain wisdom. But in truth a chief 
 part of education is to exercise one set of faculties a outrance— one, 
 since we have not the time so to practise all; thus the dilettante misses 
 the kernel of the matter; and the man who has wrung forth the secret 
 of one part of life knows more about the others than he who has tep- 
 idly circumnavigated all. (8) Thus, one must be your profession, the 
 rest can only be your delights ; and virtue had better be kept for the 
 latter, for it enters into all, but none enters by necessity into it. You 
 will learn a great deal of virtue by studying any art; but nothing of 
 any art in the study of virtue. (9) The study of conduct has to do 
 with grave problems; not every action should be higgled over; one of 
 the leading virtues therein is to let oneself alone. But if you make it 
 your chief employment, you are sure to meddle too much. This is the 
 great error of those who are called pious. Although the war of virtue 
 be unending except with life, hostilities are frequently suspended, and 
 the troops go into winter quarters; but the pious will not profit by these 
 times of truce; where their conscience can perceive no sin, they will 
 find a sin in that very innocency; and so they pervert, to their annoy- 
 
 629 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 ance, those seasons which God gives to us for repose and a reward, 
 (lo) The nearest approximation to sense in all this matter lies with the 
 Quakers, There must be no wt7/- worship ; how much more, no will- 
 repentance. The damnable consequences of set seasons, even for 
 prayer, is to have a man continually posturing to himself, till his con- 
 science is taught as many tricks as a pet monkey, and the gravest 
 expressions are left with a perverted meaning, (i i) For my part, I 
 should try to secure some part of every day for meditation, above all in 
 the early morning and the open air; but how that time was to be im- 
 proved I should leave to circumstance and the inspiration of the hour. 
 Nor if I spent it in whistling or numbering my footsteps, should I con- 
 sider it misspent for that. I should have given my conscience a fair 
 field ; when it has anything to say, I know too well it can speak dag- 
 gers; therefore, for this time, my hard taskmaster has given me a holy 
 day, and I may go in again rejoicing to my breakfast and the human 
 business of the day. 
 
 VIII. Gratitude to God.—{i) To the gratitude that becomes us in 
 this life, I can set no limit. Though we steer after a fashion, yet we 
 must sail according to the winds and currents. After what I have 
 done, what might I not have done ? That I have still the courage to 
 attempt my life, that I am not now overladen with dishonours, to 
 whom do I owe it but to the gentle ordering of circumstances in the 
 great design? More has not been done to me than I can bear; I have 
 been marvellously restrained and helped: not unto us, O Lord! (2) 
 I cannot forgive God for the suffering of others; when I look abroad 
 upon His world and behold its cruel destinies, I turn from Him with 
 disaffection; nor do I conceive that He will blame me for the impulse. 
 But when I consider my own fates, I grow conscious of His gentle 
 dealing: I see Him chastise with helpful blows, I feel His stripes to be 
 caresses; and this knowledge is my comfort that reconciles me to the 
 world. (3) All those whom I now pity with indignation are perhaps 
 not less fatherly dealt with than myself I do right to be angry : yet 
 they, perhaps, if they lay aside heat and temper, and reflect with pa- 
 tience on their lot, may find everywhere, in their worst trials, the 
 same proofs of a divine affection. (4) While we have little to try us, 
 we are angry with little; small annoyances do not bear their justifica- 
 tion on their faces; but when we are overtaken by a great sorrow or 
 perplexity, the greatness of our concern sobers us so that we see more 
 
 630 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 clearly and think with more consideration. I speak for myself; no 
 thing grave has yet befallen me but 1 have been able to reconcile my 
 mind to its occurrence, and see in it, from my own little and partial 
 point of view, an evidence of a tender and protecting God. Even the 
 misconduct into which I have been led has been blessed to my im- 
 provement. If I did not sin, and that so glaringly that my conscience 
 is convicted on the spot, I do not know what 1 should become, but I 
 feel sure I should grow worse. The man of very regular conduct is 
 too often a prig, if he be not worse— a rabbi. I, for my part, want 
 to be startled out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my 
 own eyes; 1 want to feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually 
 reminded of my own weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. 
 (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least 
 part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some 
 broken evidences of a plan and some signals of an overruling good- 
 ness; shall 1 then be so mad as to complain that all cannot be de- 
 ciphered ? Shall 1 not rather wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, 
 that in so vast a scheme 1 seem to have been able to read, however 
 little, and that that little was encouraging to faith ? 
 
 IX. Blame. — What comes from without and what comes from 
 within, how much of conduct proceeds from the spirit or how much 
 from circumstances, what is the part of choice and what the part of 
 the selection offered, where personal character begins or where, if any- 
 where, it escapes at all from the authority of nature, these are ques- 
 tions of curiosity and eternally indifferent to right and wrong. Our 
 theory of blame is utterly sophisticated and untrue to man's expe- 
 rience. We are as much ashamed of a pimpled face that came to us 
 by natural descent as of one that we have earned by our excesses, 
 and rightly so; since the two cases, in so much as they unfit us for 
 the easier sort of pleasing and put an obstacle in the path of love, are 
 exactly equal in their consequences. We look aside from the true ques- 
 tion. We cannot blame others at all; we can only punish them; and 
 ourselves we blame indifferently for a deliberate crime, a thoughtless 
 brusquerie, or an act done without volition in an ecstasy of madness. 
 We blame ourselves from two considerations: first, because another has 
 suffered; and second, because, in so far as we have again done wrong, 
 we can look forward with the less confidence to what remains of our 
 career. Shall we repent this failure? It is there that the consciousness 
 
 631 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 of sin most cruelly affects us; it is in view of this that a man cries out, 
 in exaggeration, that his heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above 
 all things. We all tacitly subscribe this judgment: Woe unto him by 
 whom offences shall come! We accept palliations for our neighbours; 
 we dare not, in the sight of our own soul, accept them for ourselves. 
 We may not be to blame; we may be conscious of no free-will in the 
 matter, of a possession, on the other hand, of an irresistible tyranny of 
 circumstances,— yet we know, in another sense, we are to blame for all. 
 Our right to live, to eat, to share in mankind's pleasures, lies pre- 
 cisely in this : that we must be persuaded we can on the whole live 
 rather beneficially than hurtfully to others. Remove this persuasion, 
 and the man has lost his right. That persuasion is our dearest jewel, 
 to which we must sacrifice the life itself to which it entitles us. For 
 it is better to be dead than degraded. 
 
 X. Marriage. — (i) No considerate man can approach marriage 
 without deep concern. 1, he will think, who have made hitherto so 
 poor a business of my own life, am now about to embrace the respon- 
 sibility of another's. Henceforth, there shall be two to suffer from my 
 faults; and that other is the one whom I most desire to shield from 
 suffering. In view of our impotence and folly, it seems an act of pre- 
 sumption to involve another's destiny with ours. We should hesitate 
 to assume command of an army or a trading-smack; shall we not 
 hesitate to become surety for the life and happiness, now and hence- 
 forward, of our dearest friend ? To be nobody's enemy but one's own, 
 although it is never possible to any, can least of all be possible to one 
 who is married. (2) I would not so much fear to give hostages to for- 
 tune, if fortune ruled only in material things; but fortune, as we call 
 those minor and more inscrutable workings of providence, rules also in 
 the sphere of conduct. I am not so blind but that I know I might be 
 a murderer or even a traitor to-morrow; and now, as if I were not 
 already too feelingly alive to my misdeeds, I must choose out the one 
 person whom 1 most desire to please, and make her the daily witness 
 of my failures, I must give a part in all my dishonours to the one 
 person who can feel them more keenly than myself. (3) In all our 
 daring, magnanimous human way of life, I find nothing more bold than 
 this. To go into battle is but a small thing by comparison. It is the 
 last act of committal. After that, there is no way left, not even suicide, 
 but to be a good man. (4) She will help you, let us pray. And yef 
 
 63a 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 she is in the same case; she, too, has daily made shipwreck of her own 
 happiness and worth; it is with a courage no less irrational than yours, 
 that she also ventures on this new experiment of life. Two who have 
 failed severally now join their fortunes with a wavering hope. (5) But 
 it is from the boldness of the enterprise that help springs. To take 
 home to your hearth that living witness whose blame will most affect 
 you, to eat, to sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence most 
 exacting judge, is not this to domesticate the living God ? Each be- 
 comes a conscience to the other, legible like a clock upon the chim- 
 ney-piece. Each offers to his mate a figure of the consequence of 
 human acts. And while I may still continue by my inconsiderate or 
 violent life to spread far-reaching havoc throughout man's confederacy, 
 I can do so no more, at least, in ignorance and levity; one face shall 
 wince before me in the flesh ; I have taken home the sorrows I create 
 to my own hearth and bed; and though I continue to sin, it must be 
 now with open eyes. 
 
 XI. Idleness and Industry. — I remember a time when I was very 
 idle; and lived and profited by that humour. I have no idea why I 
 ceased to be so, yet I scarce believe I have the power to return to it ; 
 it is a change of age. I made consciously a thousand little efforts, 
 but the determination from which these arose came to me while 1 
 slept and in the way of growth. I have had a thousand skirmishes 
 to keep myself at work upon particular mornings, and sometimes 
 the affair was hot; but of that great change of campaign, which de- 
 cided all this part of my life, and turned me from one whose business 
 was to shirk into one whose business was to strive and persevere, — 
 it seems as though all that had been done by some one else. The 
 life of Goethe affected me; so did that of Balzac; and some very noble 
 remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the Cousine Bette. I dare 
 say I could trace some other influences in the change. All I mean is, 
 I was never conscious of a struggle, nor registered a vow, nor seemingly 
 had anything personally to do with the matter. I came about like a 
 well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel that unknown steersman 
 whom we call God. 
 
 XII. Courage. — Courage is the principal virtue, for all the others 
 presuppose it. If you are afraid, you may do anything. Courage is 
 to be cultivated, and some of the negative virtues may be sacrificed in 
 the cultivation. 
 
 635 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 XIII. Results of Action. — ^The result is the reward of actions, not the 
 test. The result is a child born; if it be beautiful and healthy, well: if 
 club-footed or crook-back, perhaps well also. We cannot direct . . . 
 
 [1878?] 
 
 THE IDEAL HOUSE 
 
 Two things are necessary in any neighbourhood where we propose 
 to spend a life : a desert and some living water. 
 
 There are many parts of the earth's surface which offer the necessary 
 combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great 
 prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied; even 
 greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and eye mea- 
 sure differently. Bold rocks near at hand are more inspiriting than 
 distant Alps, and the thick fern upon a Surrey heath makes a fine 
 forest for the imagination, and the dotted yew-trees noble mountains. 
 A Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a 
 knoll, or one of those rocky sea-side deserts of Provence overgrown 
 with rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where 
 the mind is never weary. Forests, being more enclosed, are not at first 
 sight so attractive, but they exercise a spell; they must, however, be 
 diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered 
 perfect without conifers. Even sand-hills, with their intricate plan, 
 and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert. 
 
 The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. A 
 great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood; its 
 sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of 
 one notable object from another; and a lively burn gives us, in the 
 space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of cas- 
 cade, shallow goil, and boiling pool, with answerable changes both 
 of song and colour, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles. 
 The fish, too, make a more considerable feature of the brook-side, and 
 the trout plumping in the shadow takes the ear. A stream should, 
 besides, be narrow enough to cross, or the burn hard by abridge, or 
 we are at once shut out of Eden. The quantity of water need be of 
 
 634 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 no concern, for the mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara Fall 
 of thirty inches. Let us approve the singer of 
 
 "Shallow rivers, by whose fall 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals. 
 
 If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard 
 with a heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small 
 havens and dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a first 
 necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock on a calm 
 day is a better station than the top of Tenerifife or Chimborazo. In 
 short, both for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near 
 and bold details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind 
 alive. 
 
 Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we 
 are to live is, I had almost said, indifferent; after that, inside the 
 garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old trees, a 
 considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide our 
 garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and thickets 
 of shrubs and evergreens to be cut into and cleared at the new owner's 
 pleasure, are* the qualities to be sought for in your chosen land. No- 
 thing is more delightful than a succession of small lawns, opening one 
 out of the other through tall hedges; these have all the charm of the 
 old bowling-green repeated, do not require the labour of many trim- 
 mers, and afford a series of changes. You must have much lawn 
 against the early summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the 
 year's morning frost; as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to 
 the full the period of their blossoming. Hawthorn is another of the 
 Spring's ingredients; but it is even best to have a rough public lane at 
 one side of your enclosure, which, at the right season, shall become 
 an avenue of bloom and odour. The old flowers are the best and 
 should grow carelessly in corners. Indeed, the ideal fortune is to find 
 an old garden, once very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect, and 
 to tend, not repair, that neglect; it will thus have a smack of nature 
 and wildness which skilful dispositions cannot overtake. The gardener 
 should be an idler, and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots; an 
 eager or toilful gardener misbecomes the garden landscape; a tasteful 
 gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take 
 the bloom off nature. Close adjoining, if you are in the south, an 
 
 635 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 •olive-yard, if in the north, a swarded apple-orchard reaching to the 
 stream, completes your miniature domain ; but this is perhaps best en- 
 tered through a door in the high fruit-wall; so that you close the door 
 behind you on your sunny plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, 
 when you go down to watch the apples falling in the pool. It is a 
 golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will 
 take care of themselves. Nor must the ear be forgotten : without birds, 
 a garden is a prison-yard. There is a garden near Marseilles on a steep 
 hill-side, walking by which, upon a sunny morning, your ear will sud- 
 denly be ravished with a burst of small and very cheerful singing: 
 some score of cages being set out there to sun their occupants. This 
 is a heavenly surprise to any passer-by ; but the price paid, to keep so 
 many ardent and winged creatures from their liberty, will make the 
 luxury too dear for any thoughtful pleasure-lover. There is only one 
 sort of bird that I can tolerate caged, though even then I think it hard, 
 and that is what is called in France the Bec-d'Argent. I once had two 
 of these pigmies in captivity ; and in the quiet, bare house upon a silent 
 street where I was then living, their song, which was not much louder 
 than a bee's, but airily musical, kept me in a perpetual good-humour. 
 I put the cage upon my table when I worked, carried it with me when 
 1 went for meals, and kept it by my head at night: the first thing in 
 the morning these maestrini would pipe up. But these, even if you 
 can pardon their imprisonment, are for the house. In the garden the 
 wild birds must plant a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that 
 should be almost deafening, a blackbird in the lilacs, a nightingale 
 down the lane, so that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little far- 
 ther, tree-tops populous with rooks. 
 
 Your house should not command much outlook; it should be set 
 deep and green, though upon rising ground, or, if possible, crowning 
 a knoll, for the sake of drainage. Yet it must be open to the east, or 
 you will miss the sunrise; sunset occurring so much later, you can go 
 up a few steps and look the other way. A house of more than two 
 stories is a mere barrack; indeed the ideal is of one story, raised upon 
 cellars. If the rooms are large, the house may be small: a single 
 room, lofty, spacious, and lightsome, is more palatial than a castleful 
 of cabinets and cupboards. Yet size in a house, and some extent and 
 intricacy of corridor, is certainly delightful to the flesh. The recep- 
 tion-room should be, if possible, a place of many recesses, which are 
 
 6}6 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 "petty retiring-places for conference"; but it must have one long 
 wall with a divan : for a day spent upon a divan, among a world of 
 cushions^ is as full of diversion as to travel. The eating-room, in the 
 French mode, should be ad hoc : unfurnished, but with a buffet, the 
 table, necessary chairs, one or two of Canaletto's etchings, and a tile 
 fireplace for the winter. In neither of these public places should 
 there be anything beyond a shelf or two of books; but the passages 
 may be one library from end to end, and the stair, if there be one, 
 lined with volumes in old leather, very brightly carpeted, and leading 
 half-way up, and by the way of landing, to a windowed recess with 
 a fireplace; this window, almost alone in the house, should com- 
 mand a handsome prospect. Husband and wife must each possess a 
 studio; on the woman's sanctuary I hesitate to dwell, and turn to the 
 man's. The walls are shelved waist-high for books, and the top thus 
 forms a continuous table running round the wall. Above are prints, 
 a large map of the neighbourhood, a Corot and a Claude or two. 
 The room is very spacious, and the five tables and two chairs are but 
 as islands. One table is for actual work; one close by for references 
 in use; one, very large, for mss. or proofs that wait their turn; one 
 kept clear for an occasion ; and the fifth is the map table, groaning 
 under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. Of all books these 
 are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the course 
 of roads and rivers, the contour-lines and the forests in the maps — 
 the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing-marks, and little pilot-pictures m 
 the charts — and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make them of all 
 printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy the fancy. The 
 chair in which you write is very low and easy, and backed into a 
 corner; at one elbow the fire twinkles; close at the other, if you are 
 a little inhumane, your cage of silver-bills are twittering into song. 
 
 Joined along by a passage, you may reach the great, sunny, glass- 
 roofed, and tiled gymnasium, at the far end of which, lined with 
 bright marble, is your plunge and swimming bath, fitted with a ca- 
 pacious boiler. 
 
 The whole loft of the house from end to end makes one undivided 
 chamber; here are set forth tables on which to model imaginary coun- 
 tries in putty or plaster, with tools and hardy pigments; a carpenter's 
 bench; and a spared corner for photography, while at the far end a 
 space is kept for playing soldiers. Two boxes contain the two armies 
 
 637 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 of some five hundrea norse and foot; two others the ammunition of 
 each side, and a fifth the foot-rules and the three colours of chalk, 
 with which you lay down, or, after a day's play, refresh the outlines 
 of the country; red or white for the two kinds of road (according as 
 they are suitable or not for the passage of ordnance), and blue for the 
 course of the obstructing rivers. Here I foresee that you may pass 
 much happy time; against a good adversary a game may well con- 
 tinue for a month; for with armies so considerable three moves will 
 occupy an hour. It will be found to set an excellent edge on this 
 diversion if one of the players shall, every day or so, write a report of 
 the operations in the character of army correspondent. 
 
 I have left to the last the little room for winter evenings. This should 
 be furnished in warm positive colours, and sofas and floor thick with rich 
 furs. The hearth, where you burn wood of aromatic quality on silver 
 dogs, tiled round with Bible pictures; the seats deep and easy; a single 
 Titian in a gold frame; a white bust or so upon a bracket; a rack for 
 the journals of the week; a table for the books of the year; and close 
 in a corner the three shelves full of eternal books that never weary: 
 Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, Lamb, Sterne, De Musset's comedies 
 {the one volume open at Carmosine and the other at Fantasio); the 
 yirabian Nights, and kindred stories, in Weber's solemn volumes; 
 Borrow's Bible in Spain, the Pilgrim's Progress, Guy Mannering and 
 Rob Roy, Monte Cristo and the Vicomte de Bragelonne, immortal 
 Boswellsole among biographers, Chaucer, Herrick, and the 5/<3!/^ Trials. 
 
 The bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of 
 varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf 
 of books of a particular and dippable order, such as Pepys, the Paston 
 Letters, Burt's Letters from the Highlands, or the Newgate Cat- 
 ^endar . . . 
 [1884?] 
 
 638 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 PREFACE TO 
 "THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE" 
 
 Although an old, consistent exile, the editor of the following page5 
 revisits now and again the city of which he exults to be a native ; and 
 there are few things more strange, more painful, or more salutary, 
 than such revisitations. Outside, in foreign spots, he comes by sur- 
 prise and awakens more attention than he had expected; in his own 
 city, the relation is reversed, and he stands amazed to be so little rec- 
 ollected. Elsewhere he is refreshed to see attractive faces, to remark 
 possible friends; there he scouts the long streets, with a pang at heart, 
 for the faces and friends that are no more. Elsewhere he is delighted 
 with the presence of what is new, there tormented by the absence of 
 what is old. Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he 
 is smitten with an equal regret for what he once was and for what he 
 once hoped to be. 
 
 He was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station, on his 
 last visit; he was feeling it still as he alighted at the door of his friend, 
 Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W. S., with whom he was to stay. A hearty 
 welcome, a face not altogether changed, a few words that sounded of 
 old days, a laugh provoked and shared, a glimpse in passing of the 
 snowy cloth and bright decanters and the Piranesis on the dining- 
 room wall, brought him to his bedroom with a somewhat lightened 
 cheer, and when he and Mr. Thomson sat down a few minutes later, 
 cheek by jowl, and pledged the past in a preliminary bumper, he was 
 already almost consoled, he had already almost forgiven himself his 
 two unpardonable errors, that he should ever have left his native 
 city, or ever returned to it. 
 
 " I have something quite in your way," said Mr. Thomson. ** I 
 wished to do honour to your arrival; because, my dear fellow, it is my 
 own youth that comes back along with you ; in a very tattered and 
 withered state, to be sure, but — well! — all that 's left of it." 
 
 "A great deal better than nothing," said the editor. " But what 
 is this which is quite in my way ? " 
 
 **I was coming to that," said Mr. Thomson: " Fate has put it in 
 639 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 my power to honour your arrival with something really original by 
 way of dessert. A mystery." 
 
 "A mystery?"! repeated. 
 
 "Yes," said his friend, *'a mystery, it may prove to be nothing, 
 and it may prove to be a great deal. But in the meanwhile it is truly 
 mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred years; it is 
 highly genteel, for it treats of a titled family ; it ought to be melo- 
 dramatic, for (according to the superscription) it is concerned with 
 death." 
 
 " I think 1 rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising annun- 
 ciation," the other remarked. " But what is It? " 
 
 ** You remember my predecessor's, old Peter M'Brair's business? " 
 
 "I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang 
 of reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without betraying it. 
 He was to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest 
 was not returned." 
 
 "Ah, well, we go beyond him," said Mr. Thomson. "I dare say 
 old Peter knew as little about this as 1 do. You see, I succeeded to 
 a prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some 
 of them of Peter's hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of the 
 dynasty, a great man in his day. Among other collections, were all 
 the papers of the Durrisdeers." 
 
 " The Durrisdeers! " cried I. ** My dear fellow, these may be of the 
 greatest interest. One of them was out in the '45; one had some 
 strange passages with the devil— you will find a note of it in Law's 
 Memorials, I think; and there was an unexplained tragedy, I know 
 not what, much later, about a hundred years ago — " 
 
 *' More than a hundred years ago," said Mr. Thomson. " In 1783." 
 
 "How do you know that? I mean some death." 
 
 " Yes, the lamentable deaths of my lord Durrisdeer and his brother, 
 the Master of Ballantrae (attainted in the troubles)," said Mr. Thomson, 
 with something the tone of a man quoting. " Is that it?" 
 
 " To say truth," said I, " I have only seen some dim reference to 
 the things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer still, through 
 my uncle (whom I think you knew). My uncle lived when he was a 
 boy in the neighbourhood of St. Bride's; he has often told me of the 
 avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the great gates never 
 opened, the last lord and his old-maid sister who lived in the back 
 
 640 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 parts of the house, a quiet, plain, poor, humdrum couple it would 
 seem— but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave house 
 —and, to the country folk, faintly terrible from some deformed tradi- 
 tions." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Thomson. " Henry Graeme Durie, the last lord, 
 died in 1820; his sister, the Honourable Miss Katherine Durie, in '27; 
 so much I know; and by what I have been going over the last few 
 days, they were what you say, decent, quiet people and not rich. To 
 say truth, it was a letter of my lord's that put me on the search for 
 the packet we are going to open this evening. Some papers could 
 not be found; and he wrote to Jack M'Brair suggesting they might 
 be among those sealed up by a Mr. Mackellar. M'Brair answered, 
 that the papers in question were all in Mackellar's own hand, all (as 
 the writer understood) of a purely narrative character; and besides, 
 said he, ' I am bound not to open them before the year 1889.' You 
 may fancy if these words struck me: I instituted a hunt through all 
 the M'Brair repositories; and at last hit upon that packet which (if 
 you have had enough wine) I propose to show you at once." 
 
 In the smoking-room, to which my host now led me, was a packet, 
 fastened with many seals and enclosed in a single sheet of strong 
 paper thus endorsed: 
 
 ** Papers relating to the lives and lamentable deaths of the late Lord 
 Durrisdeer, and his elder brother James, commonly called Master of 
 Ballantrae, attainted in the troubles: entrusted into the hands of John 
 M'Brair in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh, W. S. ; this 20th day of 
 September Anno Domini 1789; by him to be kept secret until the rev- 
 olution of one hundred years complete, or until the 20th day of Sep- 
 tember 1889: the same compiled and written by me, 
 
 " Ephraim Mackellar, 
 " For near forty jy ears Land Stew- 
 ard on the estates of His Lordship." 
 
 As Mr. Thomson is a married man, 1 will not say what hour had 
 struck when we laid down the last of the following pages; but 1 will 
 give a few words of what ensued. 
 
 "Here," said Mr. Thomson, "is a novel ready to your hand: all 
 you have to do is to work up the scenery, develop the characters, and 
 improve the style." 
 
 "My dear fellow," said I, "they are just the three things that f 
 641 
 
ADDENDA 
 
 would rather die than set my hand to. It shall be published as it 
 stands." 
 
 " But it 's so bald/' objected Mr. Thomson. 
 
 "I believe there is nothing so noble as baldness," replied I, ** and ! 
 am sure there is nothing so interesting. I would have all literature 
 bald, and all authors (if you like) but one." 
 
 " Well, well," said Mr. Thomson, ''we shall see." 
 
 1889. 
 
 641 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX TO THE THISTLE EDITION 
 
 COMPILED BY FRANCIS D. TANDY 
 
 ORDER OF THE VOLUMES 
 
 1. THB New Arabian Nights— 2. Treasure Island— 3. The Dtna- 
 miter; The Story of a Lie— 4. Prince Otto; The Island Nights* 
 Entertainments; Father Damien — 5. Kidnapped— 6. David Bal- 
 four— 7. The Merry Men; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— 8. The Black 
 Arrow, and Other Tales — 9. The Master op Ballantrae— 10. The 
 Wrecker — 11. The Wrong Box; The Ebb-Tidb — 12. An Inland Voy- 
 age; Travels with a Donkey; Edinburgh — 13. Virginibus Pue- 
 RiSQUE ; Memories and Portraits — 14. Familiar Studies of Men and 
 Books — 15. The Amateur Emigrant ; Across the Plains ; Silverado 
 Squatters— 16. Ballads and Other Poems— 17. Vailima Letters — 
 18. Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin ; Records of a Family of Engineers 
 —19. In the South Seas ; A Foot-Note to History— 20. Weir of Her- 
 miston; Plays; Miscellanies- 21. St. Ives— 22. Sketches, Criti- 
 cisms, etc. 
 
 Across the Goulet, Essay, v. 12, p. 216- 
 
 218. 
 Across the Lozere, Essay, v. 12, p. 227- 
 
 232. 
 Across the Plains, twelve essays, v.l5, 
 
 p. 93-^09. 
 Admiral, The, v. 3, p. 272. 
 Admiral Guinea, a play of the slave- 
 trade, V. 20, p. 335-395. 
 Admirals, English, Stories of the, v. 13, 
 
 p. 115. 
 Adventure, The novel of, v. 18, p. 35L 
 ^8 Triplex, Essay, v. 13, p. 95-105. 
 Age, Crabbed, and Youth, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 51-66. 
 Age, Illusions of, v. 13, p. 53; To be 
 
 feared by artists and writers, v. 15, 
 
 p. 286. 
 Aged people are the best teachers, v. 13, 
 
 p. 282. 
 Agincourt, Battle of, v. 14, p. 213. 
 Ainslie, Andrew, a robber, v. 20, p. 201. 
 Albany, New York, Ballantrae lands 
 
 at, V. 9, p. 64 ; Henry Durie at, v. 9, 
 
 p. 245. 
 Alick, a Scotch stowaway, v. 15, p. 53. 
 Aline, a servant at the Auberge des 
 
 Adrets, v. 20, p. 399. 
 
 Allardyce, Lady, kinswoman of Catri- 
 
 ona, V. 6, p. 67. 
 Allegory, Limitations of, v. 22, p. 213. 
 AUier River, Description of, v. 12, p. 17L 
 Alps, Fleeming Jenkin visits the, v. 18, 
 
 p. 147. 
 Alt Aussee, Jenkin visits, v. 18, p. 147. 
 Amatbur Emigrant, The, eight es- 
 says on steerage passengers, v. 15, p. 
 
 1-92. 
 Amend-all, John, assumed name of 
 
 Ellis Duckworth, v. 8, p. 8. 
 America, English ideas of, v. 15, p. 86 ; 
 
 Nomenclature of, v. 15, p. 105 ; Sunrise 
 
 in, V. 15, p. 104. 
 Americans, Mixture of races in, v. 15, 
 
 p. 161 ; Rudeness and kindness of, 
 
 V. 15, p. 90, 123. 
 Amersham Place, seat of Count de St. 
 
 Ives, V. 21, p. 185. 
 Anaho, Description of, v. 19, p. 19. 
 Ancestors, Speculations about, v. 13, 
 
 p. 245. 
 Andersen, Hans C, "Vanity of, v. 13, p. 
 
 296. 
 Andersen, Job, boatswain of the ffw- 
 
 paniola, v. 2, p. 75. 
 Animal life at Silverado, t. 16, p. 421. 
 
 645 
 
INDEX 
 
 Anatruther, a Scotch burgh, v. 15, 
 p. 218 ; Legends of, v. 15, p. 219. 
 
 Antwerp to Boom, Essay, v. 12, p. 3-7. 
 
 Apemama, v. 19, p. 299-370. 
 
 Apia, a town in Samoa, v. 17, p. 1; 
 Christmas day at, v. 17, p. 35; De- 
 scription of, V. 19, p. 387; Factions 
 in, V. 19, p. 389 ; Festivities at, v. 17, 
 p. 19. 
 
 Apia Bay, Description of, v, 19, p. 539 ; 
 Storm in, v. 19, p. 543. 
 
 Apology for Idlers, Essay, v. 13, p. 67- 
 79. 
 
 Appeal to the Clergy of Scotland, v. 22, 
 p. 227-240. 
 
 Appin, a Highland Jacobite district, 
 V. 5, p, 142. 
 
 Appleyard, Nick, an archer, v. 8, p. 5. 
 
 Arblaster, Captain of the Good Hope^ v. S, 
 p. 163. 
 
 Archer, Mr., v. 22, p. 319. 
 
 Architecture, Absurd, in VUla Quarters, 
 V.12, p. 329; Of New Town, Edinburgh, 
 V. 12, p. 321 ; Of the church in Hatiheu, 
 V. 19, p. 62. 
 
 Arethusa, Stevenson's canoe, v. 12, p. 3. 
 
 Argument, The pleasures of, v. 13, p. 272, 
 280. 
 
 Argyle, Duke of, judge of James Stew- 
 art, V. 6, p. 180. 
 
 Arick, Samoan servant of Stevenson, 
 V. 22, p. 507-513. 
 
 Armies in the Fire, Proem, v. 16, p. 59. 
 
 Armour, Jean, Meeting of Burns with, 
 V. 14, p. 57. 
 
 Aros, an island of the Scotch coast, v. 7, 
 p. 1. 
 
 Art, as a profession, v. 15, p. 279-289 ; 
 Cannot compete with lif e,v. 13, p. 347 ; 
 Need of drudgery in, v. 15, p. 173. 
 
 Art of Fiction, by Besant and James, 
 v. 13, p. 344. 
 
 Artisans, British, Fastidiousness of, 
 V. 15, p. 14. 
 
 Artists, Life of, in France, v. 15, p. 169- 
 191 ; In Fontainebleau, v. 22, p. 152- 
 166 ; In Paris, v. 3, p. 271-345 ; v. 10, 
 p. 34. 
 
 Asceticism, Failure of, v. 22, p. 561. 
 
 At Compi^gne, Essay, v. 12, p. 104-108. 
 
 At Landrecies, Essay, v. 12, p. 42-47. 
 
 At Maubeuge, Essay, v. 12, p. 20-24. 
 
 At the Seaside, Poem, v. 16, p. 3. 
 
 Atlantic cable, Jenkin's work on the, 
 V. 18, p. 130 ; Travel, v. 15, p. 1-92. 
 
 Atolls, Dangers of navigation among, 
 v. 19, p. 152, 161; Description of, v. 
 19, p. 158; Food products of, v. 19, 
 p. 166; Migration of inhabitants of, 
 V. 19, p. 172. 
 
 Attwater, William John, pearl-fisher 
 and evangelist, v. 11, p. 316. 
 
 Atua, Uprising in, v. 17, p. 284 ; Bom- 
 bardment of, V. 17, p. 300. 
 
 Auntie's Skirts, Poem, v. 16, p. 16. 
 
 Austin, Alfred, father-in-law of Fleem<. 
 
 ing Jenkin, v. 18, p. 60 ; Life of, in 
 
 Edinburgh, v. 18, p. 139 ; Death of, 
 
 V. 18, p. 185. 
 Austin, Anne, wife of Fleeming Jenkin, 
 
 V. 18, p. 64. 
 Austin, Eliza, wife of Alfred, v. 18, p. 
 
 62 ; Death of, v. 18, p. 185. 
 Austin, George Frederick, a beau, t. 
 
 20, p. 291. 
 Autumn Effect, An, Essay, v. 22, p. 
 
 109-133. 
 Autumn Fires, Poem, v. 16, p. 73. 
 Aylmer, John, Reply of, to John Knox, 
 
 V. 14, p. 286. 
 
 Back to the World, Essay, v. 12, p. 134, 
 185. 
 
 Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress, t. 22, p. 
 212-225. 
 
 Bain, Bob, a diver, v. 15, p. 227. 
 
 Balfour, Burley, Anecdote of, v. 15, p. 
 215. 
 
 Balfour, David, a young Scotchman, v. 
 5, p. 1; Flight of, from the High- 
 lands, V. 5, p. 150 ; Recovers his in- 
 heritance, V. 5, p. 276; Meets Catri- 
 ona MacGregor, v. 6, p. 6 ; Imprison- 
 ment of, on the Bass, v. 6, p. 145; 
 Adventures of, in Holland, v. 6, p. 251. 
 
 Balfour, Ebenezer, uncle of David, t. 
 
 5, p. 12 ; Confessions of, v. 5, p. 306. 
 Balfour of Pilrig, a cousin of David, y. 
 
 6, p. 29. 
 
 Ballads, Poems, v. 16, p. 270-359. 
 
 Ballantrae, James Durie, Master of, a 
 Jacobite, v. 9, p. 3; Landing of, in 
 America, v. 9, p. 55 ; Return of, to 
 Durrisdeer, v. 9, p. 173; Adventures 
 of, in the wilderness, v. 9, p. 257 ; v. 
 22, p. 376. 
 
 Balmile, a Jacobite, v. 22, p. 376. 
 
 Bandbox, The Story of the, v. 1, p. 106- 
 136. 
 
 Barbizon, Arrival of Dodd in, v. 10, p. 
 378 ; Artist life at, v. 15, p. 180. 
 
 Barron, Edward, father-in-law of Alfred 
 Austin, V. 18, p. 61. 
 
 Barron, Eliza, See Austin, Eliza. 
 
 Bass, The, an island off the Scotch 
 coast, V. 6, p. 145. 
 
 Baxfield, Lord, Character of, depicted 
 in Lord Hermiston, v. 20, p. 157. 
 
 Bazin, a French innkeeper, v. 12, p. 91. 
 
 Beach op FalesA, a story of the Taboo, 
 V. 4, p. 243-339; Immorality of, ob- 
 jected to, V. 17, p. 117; Stevenson's 
 opinion of, v. 17, p. 73 ; Title of, de- 
 cided upon, V. 17, p. 79 ; Writing of, 
 v. 17, p. 14, 60, 80, 146. See also Isl- 
 and Nights' Entertainments. 
 
 Beach-combers, v. 11, p. 224-269. 
 
 Beast of Gfevaudan, v. 12, p. 173. 
 
 Beau Austin, a drama of early 19th 
 century, v. 20, p. 275-329. 
 
 646 
 
INDEX 
 
 Beaulieu, Denis de, a French soldier, 
 15th century, v. 1, p. 317. 
 
 Becker, German Consul in Samoa, v. 19, 
 p. 411, 435, 468, 490. 
 
 Bed in Summer, Poem, v. 16, p. 1. 
 
 Beggars, Essay, v. 15, p. 266-278. 
 
 Belgium, Canoe travel in, v. 12, p. 3-135. 
 
 Bell, Dr., Friendship of Jenkin for, v. 
 18, p. 53. 
 
 Bell Rock, Building of a lighthouse on, 
 V. 18, p. 267-366. 
 
 Bellairs, Harry D., a San Francisco 
 lawyer, v. 10, p. 164; Voyage of, to 
 England, v. 10, p. 344. 
 
 Bellamy, Mr., lover of Dorothy Green- 
 sleeves, V. 21, p. 267. 
 
 Bells, Church, v. 12, p. 63 ; Clock, v. 12, 
 p. 106 ; Monasterv, v. 12, p. 202 ; Sab- 
 bath, in Edinburgh, v. 12, p. 310. 
 
 Berthelini, Elvira, wife of Leon, v. 1, 
 p. 349. 
 
 Berthelini, Leon, a French singer, v. 1, 
 p. 347. 
 
 Bertrand, Macaire's confederate, v. 20, 
 p. 402. 
 
 Besant, W., and James, H., Art of Fic- 
 tion, V. 13, p. 344. 
 
 Bickford, Capt., of H. M. S. Katoomba, 
 v. 22, p. 479, 485. 
 
 Billson, a student at the Muskegon Com- 
 mercial Academy, v. 10, p. 20. 
 
 Biographical sketches, Difficulties of 
 writing, v. 14, p. 2. 
 
 Birkenhead, Work of Jenkin at, v. 18, 
 p. 67. 
 
 Bivouacs, The joys of, v. 13, p. 155. 
 
 Black Arrow, a tale of the War of the 
 Roses, v. 8, p. 1-313. 
 
 Black Dog, a pirate, v. 2, p. 12. 
 
 Black Hills of Wyoming, v. 15, p. 128. 
 
 Black Jack, a negro partner of Chase, 
 V. 4, p. 245. 
 
 Black Tom, a San Francisco dive- 
 keeper and politician, v. 10, p. 150. 
 
 Blackie, Prof., Reminiscences of, v. 13, 
 p. 195. 
 
 Blast, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 171. 
 
 Block City, Poem, v. 16, p. 55. 
 
 Bloomfleld, Edward, uncle of Gideon 
 Forsyth, v. 11, p. 54 ; Discovers Gideon 
 in his house-boat, v. 11, p. 161. 
 
 Boarders, The, Essay, v. 12, pp. 206-212. 
 
 Body-Snatchbr, The, a tale of old-time 
 medical student life, v. 8, p, 405-430. 
 
 Bohemianism, true and false, v. 22, p. 
 585. 
 
 Bones, Bill, a pirate, v. 2, p. 3. 
 
 Books, a cure for morbidness, v. 13, p. 
 201 ; Difference in the charms of, v. 13, 
 p. 315 ; of adventure, Boys' love for, v. 
 13, p. 327. See also Fiction. 
 
 Books which Have Influenced Me, Es- 
 nay, v, 22, p. 302-310. 
 
 Boom, Description of, v. 12, p. 5. 
 
 Bore -fly of California, v. 15, p. 425. 
 
 647 
 
 BOTTLE Imp, a tale of Hawaii, v. 4, p, 
 
 339-379 ; Samoan translation of, v. 17, 
 
 p. 53. 
 Bouchet St Nicholas, Auberge of, t. 12, 
 
 p. 160. 
 Bowes, Elizabeth, mother of Marjorie, 
 
 V. 14, p. 306. 
 Bowes, Marjorie, first wife of Knox, 
 
 V. 14, p. 308. 
 Boys, Books beloved by, v. 13, p. 327. 
 Brackenbury, Rich, an English army 
 
 lieutenant, v. 1, p. 76. 
 Brackley, Sir Daniel, a Lancastrian 
 
 leader, v. 8, p. 23 ; Accused of treach- 
 ery, v. 8, p. 105. 
 Brand eis, Capt., German Commissioner 
 
 at Samoa, v. 19, p. 410-497. 
 Breck, Alan. See Stewart, Alan Breck. 
 Breck, John, a follower of Alan Breck, 
 
 v. 5, p. 185. 
 Bright, Mynors, editor of Pepys's Diary, 
 
 V. 14, p. 243. 
 Bright is the Ring of Words, Poem, t. 
 
 16, p. 216. 
 Brodie, Mary, sister of Brodie, v. 20, p. 
 
 173. 
 Brodie, William, Deacon of the Wrights, 
 
 V. 12, p. 305 ; V. 20, p. 178. 
 Brown, Capt., alias of John Davis, v. 11, 
 
 p. 229. 
 Brown, Jessie, mother of Ballantrae's 
 
 child, V. 9, p. 12. 
 Brown Box, The, v. 8, p. 179-244. 
 Buckinghamshire, Description of, v. 
 
 22, p. 109-133. 
 Buckner, Mrs. Anne, wealthy aunt of 
 
 Charles Jenkin, v. 18, p. 7. 
 Bulwer-Lyttoii, E. R., Fables in Song, 
 
 V. 22, p. 193-204. 
 Bunyan, John, Pilgrim's Progress, v. 
 
 22, p. 212-225. 
 Burgundy, John the Fearless, Duke of, 
 
 V. 14, p. 207. 
 Burke, Francis, a Jacobite friend of 
 
 Ballantrae, v. 9, p. 29 ; Adventures of, 
 
 in India, v. 9, p. 167. 
 Burnet, Bishop, on Episcopal methods, 
 
 V. 14, p. 377. 
 Bums, Robert, Some Aspects of, Essay, 
 
 V. 14, p, 46-86 ; Character and mar- 
 riage of, V. 14, p. 5. 
 Burns, William, father of Robert, v. 14, 
 
 p. 48. 
 Butaritari, Description of, v. 19, p. 228. 
 By-day, A, Essay, v. 12, p. 67-73. 
 Byfield, Prof., an aeronaut, v. 21, p. 
 
 Caithness, Description of, v. 15, p. 225. 
 California, Description of, v. 15, p. 315- 
 
 428 ; Forest fires in, v. 15, p. 154 ; v. 
 
 20, p. 455; Prices in, v. 15, p. 144; 
 
 Wine of, v. 15, p. 330. 
 Calistoga, California, Description of, 
 
 V. 15, p. 320. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Calliope, The, an English ship in Challoner, Edward, a man about town, 
 
 Samoa, v. 19, p. 547. 
 Calton Hill, The, Essay, v. 12, p. 332-339. 
 Calvin, John, Eelation of, to John 
 
 Knox, V. 14, p. 283-285. 
 Camisards, Story of the, v. 12, p. 229, 
 
 235. 
 Camp, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 145. 
 Camp in the Dark, A, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 171-182. 
 Campbell, Colin, Murder of, v. 5, p. 146. 
 Campbell, Mary, one of Bums's loves, 
 
 V. 14, p. 61. 
 Campbell, Rev. Mr., Minister of Es- 
 
 sendean, v, 5, p. 1. 
 Canal Boats, Essay, v. 12, p. 53-58. 
 
 V. 3, p. 1-82. 
 Champdivers, assumed name of St. 
 
 Ives, v. 21, p. 1. 
 Changed Times, Essay, v. 12, p. 109- 
 
 115. 
 Chapter on Dreams, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 250-265. 
 Character, A, Sketch, v. 22, p. 18, 19. 
 Chai-acter, Development of. with age, 
 V. 13, p. 93 ; Is what makes wealth, 
 V. 15, p. 77 ; study of, Pleasures of, v. 
 15, p. 9 ; The novel of, v. 13, p. 353. 
 Character of Dogs, The, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 293-305. 
 Charity, Hollowness of, v. 15, p. 276. 
 Candlish, a Scotch drover, v. 21, p. 104 ; Charity Bazaar, The, Sketch, v. 22, p. 
 
 Release of, from prison, v. 21, p. 326. 
 Canea Bay, Description of, v. 18, p. 113. 
 Cannibalism in the South Sea Islands, 
 
 V. 19, p. 92, 96, 111. 
 Canoe Speaks, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 100. 
 Canoe travel in Belgium and France, 
 V. 12, p. 3-135 ; Easy work of, v. 12, 
 p. 112. 
 Cant, Unbearableness of, v. 15, p. 273. 
 Carew, Sir Danvers, Murder of, by Mr. 
 
 Hyde, v. 7, p. 305. 
 Carlyle, T., as a writer of short studies, 
 
 V. 14, p. 4. 
 Carmel, California, Indians of, v. 15, 
 
 p. 166. 
 Carnival, a boatman, v. 12, p. 69, 81. 
 Caroline, telegraph ship used by Jen- 
 kin, V. 18, p. 128. 
 Carrick, Description of, V. 22, p. 134-145. 
 Carthew, Norris, a younger son of the Chiefs^ Samoan, appointed ' by the 
 
 Charles, adopted son of Dumont, v. 20, 
 
 p. 399. 
 Charles of Orleans, Essay, v. 14, p. 201- 
 
 242. 
 Charlie, a Scotch student, v. 7, p. L 
 Chase, a South Sea trader, v. 4, p. 245. 
 Chatillon-sur-Loire, Arrest of Stevenson 
 
 at, V. 15, p. 196. 
 Cheerfulness, The virtue of, v. 16, p. 303. 
 Chevenix, Major Arthur, rival of St. 
 
 Ives, V. 21, p. 28 ; Meeting of, with 
 
 St. Ives at Mr. Robbie's, v. 21, p. 334. 
 Chew, an Indian trader, v. 9, p. 65. 
 Cheylard, On the road to, v. 12, p. 172. 
 Cheylard and Luc, Essay, v. 12, p. 183- 
 
 187. 
 Chia Bay, Description of, v. 18, p. 102, 
 Chicago, Impressions of, v. 15, p. 110. 
 
 Carthew family, v. 10, p. 369 ; Rescue 
 
 of, from Midway Island, v. 10, p. 482. 
 Carthorses, The, and the Saddlehorse, 
 
 Fable, v. 20, p. 478. 
 Casco, schooner in which Stevenson 
 
 sailed in the South Seas, v. 19, p. L 
 Casimir, a business man, brother of 
 
 Mme. Desprez, v. 7, p. 255. 
 Cassagnacs, a Camisard stronghold, v. 
 
 12, p. 261. 
 Cassilis, Frank, a gentleman tramp, v. 1, 
 
 p. 207. 
 Castel-le-Gftchis, a French provincial 
 
 town, V. 1, p. 349. 
 Caulder, a Cuban slaveholder, v. 3, p. 
 
 200. 
 Cayeux, Colin de, friend of Villon, v. 14, 
 
 p. 172. 
 Cedarcrantz, Conrad, Chief Justice of 
 
 Samoa, v. 17, p. 40, 75, 77 ; Arrival of, 
 
 in Samoa, v. 19, p. 560; Duplicities 
 
 of, V. 19, p. 573 ; v. 22, p. 46^-484. 
 Celestial Surgeon, The, Poem^ v. 16, 
 
 p. 130. 
 Ceremonial life of our ancestors, v. 14, 
 
 p. 358. 
 Cevennes. Travels with a Donkey In 
 
 the, v. 12, p. 143-277. 
 
 French, v. 19, p. 48 ; Election of, v. 
 19, p. 377 ; Powers of, v. 19, p. 379. 
 
 Children, Lies of, v. 13, p. 147; Literary 
 tastes of, V. 22, p. 436-445; Move- 
 ments of, V. 22, p. 92-98 ; On ship- 
 board, V. 15, p. 13 ; Sympathy of, v. 4, 
 p. 139. 
 
 Child's Garden op Vbrses, Poems, v. 
 16, p. 1-87. 
 
 Child's Play, Essay, v. 13, p. 136-149. 
 
 Chinese, American prejudice against, 
 V. 15, p. 139 ; Servants in California, 
 V. 15, p. 398. 
 
 Christian education. Lack of, v. 22, p. 
 532-551. 
 
 Christmas at Sea, Poem, v. 16, p. 357. 
 
 Christmas day at Apia, v. 17, p. 35. 
 
 Christmas Sermon, Essay, v, 15, p. 299- 
 309. 
 
 Church Interiors, Essay, v. 12, p. 116. 
 
 Cigar Divan, Prologue of the, v. 3, p. 1- 
 10. 
 
 Cigarette, The, a canoe, v. 12, p. 3. 
 
 Cities, Lighting of, v. 13, p. 165-169. 
 
 Citizen, The, and the Traveller, Fable, 
 V. 20, p. 475, 
 
 Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence, 
 V. 14, p. 68. 
 
 648 
 
INDEX 
 
 Clarke, W. E., a missionary at Samoa, 
 
 V. 17, p. 2, 19, 24, 167. 
 Clause!, a friend of Goguelat, v. 21, p. 
 
 63. 
 Claygate, Life of Jenkin at, v. 18, p. 76. 
 Clergy of Scotland, An Appeal to the, 
 
 V. 22, p. 227-240. 
 Clerk, John, friend of Robert Steven- 
 son, V. 18, p. 269. 
 Clerks (Monks), Legal privileges o^ v. 
 
 14, p. 179. 
 Climate, Influence of, on Scotch litera- 
 ture, V. 12, p. 340. 
 Coast of Fife, The, Ussay, v. 15, p. 209- 
 
 222. 
 Cockermouth and Keswick, Essay, v. 
 
 22, p. 71-82. 
 CofBn, Tari, native of Oahu, v. 19, p. 23. 
 Colenso, Capt., a mail-packet captain, 
 
 V. 21, p. 430. 
 College Magazine, A, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 211-222. 
 College Memories, Some, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 191-198. 
 College papers, v. 22, p. 22-56. 
 Colvin, Sidney, Intro, to Vailima Let- 
 ters, v. 17, p. vii ; Epilogue, v. 17, 
 
 p. 311-315 ; Epilogue to Weir op 
 
 Hbrmiston, v. 20, p. 163; Portrait 
 
 of, Stevenson receives, v. 17, p. 66. 
 Company at Table, The, Essay, v. 12, 
 
 p. 74-80. 
 Compifegne, Description of, v. 12, p. 104. 
 Conductor of the Koads and Bridges, 
 
 V. 22, p. 187-190. 
 Consuls, Rule of, in Samoa, v. 22, p. 
 
 486-500. 
 Controversy about Female Rule, The, 
 
 Essay, v. 14, p. 272-298. 
 Conventionality, Cowardice of, v. 13, p. 
 
 163 ; Lack of, among artists, v. 16, p. 
 
 182. 
 Conversation, Best topics ot v. 13, p. 
 
 270; Charm of good, v. 15, p. 53; 
 
 Powers of, among workingmen, v. 15, 
 
 p. 79 ; True charm of, v. 13, p. 267. 
 Cora, maid of Theresa Valdevia, v. 3, 
 
 p. 199. 
 Cornishmen, Peculiarities of, v. 15, p. 
 
 137. 
 Corpse, Mr., nickname of Tebureimoa, 
 
 V. 19, p. 234. 
 Couch, T. Quiller, Conclusion of ST. 
 
 Ives, v. 21, p. 371-485. 
 Counterblast, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 173. 
 Counterblast Ironical, The, Poem, v. 
 
 16, p. 176. 
 Country of the Camisards, The, Essay, 
 
 V. 12, p. 227-277. 
 Country of the Camisards, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 146. 
 Courage, v. 13, p. 121. 
 Covenant, The, Capt. Hoseason's brig, v. 
 
 5, p. 46. 
 Covenanters, v. 22, p. 395-428 ; v. 14, p. 
 
 377-400; Stevensons among the, t, 
 
 18, p. 198-200. 
 Cow, The, Poem, v. 18, p. 24. 
 Crabbed Age and Youth, Essay, v.^lS, 
 
 p. 61-66. 
 Crabtree, Sir John, an English tourist 
 
 in Griinewald, v. 4, p. 71; Drives 
 
 Seraphina towards Felsenburg, v. 4, 
 
 p. 203. 
 Crail, Capt., a Scotch smuggler, y. 9, 
 
 p. 88. 
 Cream-tarts, The man with, v. 1, p. 5. 
 Creil, Description of, v. 12, p. 118. 
 Crete, Description of, v. 18, p. 113. 
 Criticisms, three essays, v. 22, p. 192-226. 
 Cross of St. Bride, a place of rendezvous 
 
 near Shoreby, v. 8, p. 156, 261. 
 Culture, Joys of, v. 13, p. 88 ; Nature of, 
 
 V. 16, p. 75. 
 Currency Lass, a schooner owned by 
 
 Carthew, Hadden & Wicks, v. 10, p. 
 
 417. 
 
 Dale, Andie, a Lowland fisherman, v. 
 
 6, p. 143. 
 Dall, George, a lighthouse workman, 
 
 impressed, v. 18, p. 353. 
 Dalmahoy, a cheerful extravagant, v. 
 
 21, p. 294 ; Adventures of, in a bal- 
 loon, V. 21, p. 407. 
 
 Dalzell, battle with the Pentland 
 
 rebels, v. 14, p. 39L 
 Damien, Father, Essay, v. 4, p. 413- 
 
 432. 
 Dance, Mr., a revenue ofBcer, v. 2, p. 39. 
 Dances of natives in Samoa, v. 17, p. 19. 
 Damaway, Gordon, a crazy Scotch 
 
 wrecker, v. 7, p. 13. 
 Damaway, Mary, daughter of Gordon, 
 
 V. 7, p. 10. 
 Darwin, Charles, corrected by Jenkin, 
 
 V. 18, p. 76. 
 David (the Psalmist), Jenkin's ideas o^ 
 
 V. 18, p. 167. 
 David Balfour, a sequel to Kidnapped, 
 
 V. 6; Stevenson's opinion of, v. 17, 
 
 p. 193 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 121, 124- 
 
 127, 165, 219, 237, 264. 
 Davis, John, a sea-captain in disgrace, 
 
 V. 11, p. 229. 
 Dawson, majordomo at Amersham 
 
 Place, V. 21, p. 185. 
 Day after To-morrow, The, Essay, r. 
 
 22, p. 288-301. 
 
 Deacon Brodie ; or. The Double Life, 
 Play, V. 20, p. 173-269. 
 
 Dean, a rural village in Edinburgh, v. 
 12, p. 325. 
 
 Death, Horrors of, v. 13, p. 95 ; Human 
 carelessness of, v. 13, p. 96 ; in har- 
 ness. Glories of, v. 13, p. 105 ; Sick- 
 ness prepares us for, v. 13, p. 89. 
 
 De Banville, Poems of, v. 14, p. 240. 
 
 Debating Societies, Essay, r. 22, p. 
 39-45. 
 
 649 
 
INDEX 
 
 Deborah, an instance of woman's rule, Doric order, Geometrical proportions 
 
 V. U, p. 283, 292, 295. of, v. 18, p. 54. 
 
 Decalogue, The, as a basis of ethics, v. Double life. Deacon Brodib, Play, v. 
 
 22, p. 538-651. 20, p. 173-269. 
 
 Decimal coinage, Drawbacks to, v. 15, Down the Oise, four essays, v. 12, p. 
 
 p. 143. 81-86, 93-95, 101-103, 116-122. 
 
 De Coetlogon, English Consul at Samoa, Downward Course, Essay, v. 14, p. 72- 
 
 V. 19, p. 487 ; Interview of, with Dr. 
 
 Knappe, v. 19, p. 504, 506; Implica- 
 tion of, in the Fangalii affair, v. 19, 
 
 p. 525. 
 Degeneration, v. 11, p. 223-399. 
 Denman, butler in the Carthew family, 
 
 V. 10, p. 370. 
 Depopulation of the Marquesas, v. 19, 
 
 p. 28, 40. 
 Dejwrtation, Stevenson threatened 
 
 with, V. 17, p. 165. 
 Desborough, Harry, a man about town, 
 
 V. 3, p. 5 ; Adventures of, v. 3, p. 179- 
 
 244. 
 Desert of Wyoming, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 128-134. 
 Despised Races, Essay, v. 15, p. 139-143. 
 Desprez, Mme. Anastasie, wife of Dr. 
 
 Desprez, v. 7, p. 212. 
 Desprez, Dr. Henri, a pseudo-philoso- 
 pher, v. 7, p. 199. 
 Destroying Angel, Story of the, v. 3, p. 
 
 Devil and the Innkeeper, The, FaUe, v. 
 
 20, p. 458. 
 Devil- Work, v. 19, p. 350. 
 Dialects peculiar to sailors, v. 15, p. 8. 
 Diary, The, Essay, v. 14, p. 244-253. 
 Dickens, Charles, Gentlemen among the Dumas, A., Vicomte de Brageloune, v. 
 
 79. 
 Drake, Mrs., landlady of The Admiral 
 
 Benbow, v. 20, p. 353. 
 Drama, Jenkin's love of, v. 18, p. 150 ; 
 
 Morality in, v. 13, p. 329. 
 Dramatic novels, v. 13, p. 354. 
 Dreams, A Chapter on, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 250-265. 
 Dredging for telegraph cables, Method 
 
 of, V. 18, p. 108. 
 Dress, of the Gilbertines, v. 19, p. 240 ; 
 
 Woman's regard for, in men, v. 15, p. 
 
 70. 
 Drink, as a cause of emigration, v. 15, p. 
 
 34 ; Evil effects of, in a wife, v. 15, p. 
 
 31. 
 Drunkenness, in Butaritari, v. 19, p. 251 ; 
 
 On New Year's day, v. 12, p. 345. 
 Du Chayla, FranQois, Archpriest of the 
 
 C6vennes, v. 12, p. 236, 239, 269. 
 Ducie, Edward, assumed name of St. 
 
 Ives, V. 21, p. 290. 
 Duckworth, Ellis, a forest outlaw, v. 8, 
 
 p. 8. 
 Dudevant, Mme. A. L. A., Adventure 
 
 of, at Laussonne, v. 22, p. 187. 
 Dudgeon, Thomas, clerk to Homaine, r. 
 
 21, p. 164. 
 
 characters of, v. 14, p. 368. 
 Dickson, Mrs., daughter of Smeaton, 
 
 Interest of, in Bell Bock, v. 18, p. 355. 
 Dictator, The. See Vandeleur, John. 
 Distinguished Stranger, The, Fable, v. 
 
 20, p. 476, 477. 
 Ditty, Poem, v. 16, p. 214. 
 Diving, Stevenson's experience of, v. 15, 
 
 p. 227. 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mb. Hyde, a tale of 
 
 dual personality, v. 7, p. 281-372 ; 
 
 Originated in a dream, v. 15, p. 263. 
 
 13, p. 315-326. 
 Dumont, landlord of the Aubei^e des 
 
 Adrets, v. 20, p. 399. 
 Duncan, Matthews, reprints Jenkin's 
 
 review of his work, v. 18, p. 76. 
 Duncansby, Hector, a Scotch military 
 
 officer, V. 6, p. 83. 
 Duncanson, Neil, a retainer of James 
 
 More, V. 6, p. 9 ; Kidnaps David, y. 6, 
 
 p. 140. 
 Dunkirk, Adventures of Alan Breck and 
 
 David Balfour in, v. 6, p. 331. 
 
 Dodd, James K., a millionaire, father of Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, v. 14, 
 
 Loudon, V. 10, p. 15. p. 209. 
 
 Dodd, Loudon, an artist and Jack of Durie, Alexander, son of Henry Durier 
 
 all trades, v. 10, p. 5. 
 Dogs, Fleeming Jenkin's love for, v. 18, 
 
 p. 140 ; Intelligence of, v. 13, p. 235- 
 
 238 ; Of Scotch drovers, v. 21, p. 114 ; 
 
 Reigning of the female among, v. 13, 
 
 p. 298. 
 Dogs, The Character of, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 293-305. 
 Donkey, Adventure with a frolicsome, 
 
 V. 22, p. 116. 
 
 V. 9, p. 156. 
 Durie, Alison Graeme, wife of Henry 
 
 Durie, v. 9, p. 4 ; Learns of Ballan- 
 
 trae's extortions, v. 9, p. 82. 
 Durie, Henry, brother of Ballantrae, v. 
 
 9, p. 3. 
 Durie, Katherine, daughter of Henry, 
 
 V. 9, p. 28. 
 Durrisdeer, Lord, father of Ballantrae, 
 
 V. 9, p. 2. 
 
 Donkey, The, the Pack, and the Pack- Dynamiter, The, a series of con- 
 saddle, Essay, v. 12, p. 143-149. nected stories of the Fenian plot^ 
 
 Dordillon, Father, Bishop of Marqiiesas, v. 3. 
 
 V. 19, p. 86. Dynamiters, Perils of, v. 3, p. 116, 158. 
 
 650 
 
INDEX 
 
 Early Impressions, Essay, v. 15, p. 10- 
 
 19. 
 Earraid, Isle of, v. 13, p. 250-257 ; v. 5, 
 
 p. 110. 
 Ebb-Tidb, The, a story of degeneration, 
 
 V. 11, p. 223-399 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 
 
 134, 215, 228. 
 Edinburgh, Description of High Street, 
 
 V. 12, p. 293 ; Medical students' life in, 
 
 V. 8, p. 411 ; Ten essays, v. 12, p. 
 
 281-358; V. 13, p. 191-198; Students' 
 
 life iu, in 1824, v. 22, p. 23-28. 
 Education, Deficiency in existing meth- 
 
 ods of, V. 22, p. 531-551. 
 Education, F. Jenkin's methods of, v. 
 
 18, p. 140, 143, 160 ; Of Jenkin, v. 18, 
 
 p. 26 ; Idleness a means of, v. 13, p. 
 
 69 ; In Nuka-Hiva, v. 19, p. 58. 
 Education of an Engineer, Essay, v. 15, 
 
 p. 223-234. 
 El Dorado, Essay, v. 13, p. 106-109. 
 Elliott, Andrew, a Scotch rustic poet, 
 
 V. 20, p. 76. 
 Elliott, Cliristina, niece of Kirstie, v. 20, 
 
 p. 88. 
 Elliott, Clement, a Glasgow business 
 
 man, v. 20, p. 76. 
 Elliott, Gilbert, leader of "God's rem- 
 nant," V. 20, p. 73. 
 Elliott, Kirstie, housekeeper at Hermis- 
 
 ton, V. 20, p. 6 ; Love of, for Archie 
 
 Weir, V. 20, p. 62. 
 Elliott, Robert, a border farmer, v. 20, 
 
 p. 72. 
 Embro Hie Kirk, Poem, v. 16, p. 18L 
 Emerson, R. W., Account of Thoreau 
 
 by, V. 14, p. 116. 
 Emigrant Train, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 115-124 ; Starting of an, v. 15, p. 103, 
 
 118. 
 Emigrants, Characteristics of, v. 15, p. 
 
 11 ; Failure of, to obtain work, v. 15, 
 
 p. 88 ; in New York, Discomforts of, 
 
 V. 15, p. 99 ; Stupid jokes of, v. 15, p. 
 
 135. 
 Emigration, Hopelessness of, v. 15, p. 
 
 33, 137 ; True nature of, v. 15, p. 10. 
 Emotions, Difficulty of expressing, in 
 
 words, V. 13, p. 40, 43, 49. 
 Emperor of America, v. 10, p. 119. 
 End of Travel, An, Poem, v. 16, p. 259. 
 Enfield, Richard, a friend of Utterson's, 
 
 V. 7, p. 282. 
 Engineer, The Education of an, Essay, 
 
 V. 15, p. 223-234. 
 Engineering, profession of. Early days 
 
 in, V. 18, p. 211 ; Intricacies of, v. 18, 
 
 p. 261-264. 
 Engineers, a Family of. Records op, 
 
 V. 18, p. 195-366. 
 English Admirals, The, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 110-125. 
 English, dialects, Diversity of, v. 13, p. 
 
 178 ; language, French ideas of, v. 22, 
 
 p. 184 ; roads, Excellence of, v. 21, p. 
 
 156 ; ships, Arrival of, at Samoa, v. I9i 
 
 p. 473. 
 Englishmen, Ignorance of, v. 13, p. 178. 
 Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places, On 
 
 the, Essay, v. 22, p. 98-108. 
 Enjoyment the test of extravagance, v. 
 
 22, p. 581. 
 Envoy, Poem, v. 16, p. 97. 
 Epilogue to An Inland Voyage, v. 15, 
 
 p. 192-208. 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine, Essay, 
 
 V. 16, p. 403-414. 
 Epitaphs, Moral of, to the living, v. 13, 
 
 p. 209. 
 Equator Town, Building of, v. 19, p. 
 
 313 ; Life in, v. 19, p. 317. 
 Ernestine, Goriot's daughter, v. 20, p. 
 
 408. 
 Escape at Bedtime, Poem, v. 16, p. 22. 
 Et Tu in Arcadia Vixisti, Poem, v. 16. 
 
 p. 119. 
 Ethics, Fleeming Jenkin's views on, v. 
 
 18, p. 166 ; Rigidity of commonplace^ 
 
 V. 18, p. 71 ; V. 22, p. 529. 
 Etiquette in Samoa, v. 19, p. 375. 
 Evangelist, An, Sketch, v. 22, p. 75-79. 
 Evans, C, proprietor of The Petrified 
 
 Forest, v. 15, p. 327. 
 Evensong, Poem, v. 16, p. 265. 
 Evolution in literature, v. 14, p. 17. 
 Extravagance, Crime of, v. 22, p. 681. 
 
 Faauma, wife of Lafaele, v. 17, p. 99, 
 
 120, 152. 
 Faavao, mother of Uma, v. 4, p. 252. 
 Fable, Nature of the, v, 22, p. 193. 
 Fables in Song, by E. R. Bulwer-Lytton^ 
 
 V. 22, p. 193-204. 
 Fair Cuban, Story of the, v. 3, p. 187- 
 
 229. 
 Fair bairn, Apprenticeship of Jenkin 
 
 to, V. 18, p. 49. 
 Fairservice, Andrew, an old Scotch 
 
 gardener, v. 13, p. 223. 
 Fairy Bread, Poem, v. 16, p. 39. 
 Faith, Half-Faith, and No-Faith-at-AU, 
 
 Fable, v. 20, p. 484^86. 
 Fakarava, Description of, v. 19, p. 161,. 
 
 165. 
 
 FalesX, The Beach of, v. 4, p. 243-339. 
 Fame, not a motive with heroes, v. 13, 
 
 p. 124; of engineers. Narrow limits 
 
 of, V. 18, p. 70. 
 Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 
 
 fourteen essays, v. 14. 
 Family of Engineers, Records of a, 
 
 v. 18, p. 195-366. 
 Family prayers used at Vailima, v. 22, 
 
 p. 589-597. 
 Fangalii, Landing of Germans at, v. 19, 
 
 p. 514. 
 Fanshawe, Miss, afterwards Mrs. Henry 
 
 Luxmore, v. 3, p. 84. 
 Farewell, Modestine, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 275-277. 
 
 651 
 
INDEX 
 
 Farewell to the Farm, Poem, v. 16, p. 43. 
 
 Fanning, Fascination of, for Stevenson, 
 V. 17, p. 1. 
 
 Father Apollinaris, Essay, v. 12, p. 191- 
 196. 
 
 Father Damien, a letter in his defence, 
 V. 4, p. 413-432. 
 
 Father Michael, a Trappist monk, v. 12, 
 p. 197. 
 
 Feast, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 317. 
 
 Feast of Famine, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 309-330. 
 
 Felipe, brother of Olalla, v. 7, p. 145, 
 
 Fellow-Passengers, Essay, v. 15, p. 134- 
 139. 
 
 Felsenburg, a fortress in GrUnewald, v. 4, 
 p. 3. 
 
 Female rule. Controversy about, v. 14, p. 
 272-298. 
 
 Fenians, v. 3. 
 
 Fenn, Burchell, a forwarder of escaped 
 prisoners, v. 21, p. 136, 471. 
 
 Fenwick, John, suitor for Dorothy Mus- 
 grave, v, 20, p. 287. 
 
 Fere, La, of Cursed Memory, Essay, v. 
 12, p. 87-92. 
 
 Fergusson, Robert, Edinburgh poet, 
 Burns's model, v. 12, p. 323, 333. 
 
 Ferrier, J. W., joint author, The Philos- 
 ophy of Umbrellas, v. 22, p. 46. 
 
 Fetters, The House of the Eld, Fable, 
 v. 20, p. 463-470. 
 
 Fettes, formerly a medical student, v. 
 8, p. 405. 
 
 Fiction, Advice on the writing of, v. 13, 
 p. 356 ; Bad endings in, v. 20, p. 156 ; 
 In poetry and prose, v. 13, p. 346 ; 
 Modern English, v. 13, p. 345 ; of ad- 
 venture. Boys' love for, v. 13, p. 327 ; 
 Some gentlemen in, v. 14, p. 361 ; 
 Three different classes in, v. 13, p. 
 350. See also Books. 
 
 Fielding, H., Method of, v. 14, p. 22; 
 Comparison of, with Richardson, v. 
 14, p. 366 ; with Scott, v. 14, p. 18. 
 
 Fife, Description of, v. 15, p. 210. 
 
 Finsbury, John, nephew of Joseph Fins- 
 bury, V. 11, p. 5. 
 
 Finsbury, Joseph, a member of the ton- 
 tine, V. 11, p. 2. 
 
 Finsbury, Masterman, a member of the 
 tontine, v. 11, p. 2. 
 
 Finsbury, Michael, son of Masterman, v. 
 11, p. 13. 
 
 Finsbury, Morris, nephew and heir of 
 Joseph, V. 11, p. 5. 
 
 Florae, Essay, v. 12, p. 252-255. 
 
 Florizel, Prince of Bohemia, v. 1, p. 3 ; 
 Adventures of, with the detective, v. 
 1, p. 196-204; As keeper of a cigar 
 divan, v. 3, p. 3. 
 
 Flowers, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 69. 
 
 Folau, chief judge of Samoa, v. 17, p. 24. 
 
 Fonblanque, Abimelech, a Mormon, fa- 
 ther of Aseuath, v. 3, p. 22. 
 
 Fonblanque, Asenath, assumed name 
 of Clara Luxmore, v. 3, p. 13, 51. 
 
 Fonblanque, Lucy, wife of Abimelech, 
 V. 3, p. 24. 
 
 Fontainebleau, Essay, v. 15, p. 169- 
 191 ; Description of, v. 22, p. 146-171. 
 
 FOOT-NOTB TO HISTORY, A, eight years 
 of trouble in Samoa, v. 19, p. 375- 
 391 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 17, 94, 97, 
 100, 110, 112, 134, 148. 
 
 Foreign Children, Poem, v. 16, p. 30. 
 
 Foreign Lands, Poem, v. 16, p. 8. ' 
 
 Foreigner at Home, The, Essay, v. 13, 
 p. 177-190, 
 
 Forest fires, in California, v. 15, p. 154 ; 
 V. 20, p. 455, 456 ; Of Mormal, v. 12, p. 
 43. 
 
 FoEEST Notes, six sketches, v. 22, p. 
 146-176. 
 
 Forests, Pleasures of, v. 15, p. 189. See 
 also Woods. 
 
 Forsyth, Gideon, lover of Julia Hazel- 
 tine, V. 11, p. 54. 
 
 Fort Genova, Description of, v. 18, p. 
 93. 
 
 Fortune, Peter, an artisan on Bell 
 Rock, V. 18, p. 326. 
 
 Fobs, a California stage-driver, v. 15, p. 
 321. 
 
 Foster, Evelina, Dorothy Musgrave's 
 aunt, v. 20, p. 277. 
 
 Four Reformers, The, Fable, v. 20, p. 
 471. 
 
 Foxham, Lord, a Yorkist noble and 
 former guardian of Joanna Sedley, v. 
 8, p. 152. 
 
 France, at the time of Villon's birth, v. 
 14, p. 166 ; In the 15th century, v. 1, 
 p. 287-313, p. 317-544, v. 14, p. 166- 
 242 ; In the early 19th century, v. 20, 
 p, 399-442 ; Canoe travel in, v. 12, 
 p. 3-135 ; Effect of, upon art, v. 15, 
 p. 174 ; literature of, Effect of Villon 
 on, V. 14, p. 166 ; Similarity of, to 
 Scotland, v. 22, p. 181-183. 
 
 Franchard, The Treasure of, a tale of 
 the French provinces, v. 7, p. 199- 
 278, 
 
 Eraser, Simon, assistant of Preston- 
 grange, V. 6, p. 56. 
 
 French, Kit, Arethusa Gaunt's lover, v. 
 20, p. 336. 
 
 French revolution of 1848, Jenkin's ac- 
 count of, V. 18, p. 28. 
 
 Fritze, Capt., German officer in Samoa, 
 V. 19, p. 453, 533. 
 
 From a Railway Carriage, Poem, v. 16, 
 p. 40. 
 
 Frontier life, v. 15, p. 126, 131. 
 
 Galuchet, Father, a missionary, v. 4, p. 
 
 263. 
 Gang of Thieves, A, Essay, v. 14, pb 
 
 179-188. 
 Gardener, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 74. 
 
 6y. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Gas Lamps, A Plea for, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 105-169. 
 Gaskell, Mrs., Friendship of Jenkin for, 
 
 V. 18, p. 55. 
 Gaunt, Arethusa, daughter of John, v. 
 
 20, p. 335. 
 Gaunt, John, ex-captain of a slaver, v. 
 
 20, p. 339. 
 
 Genealogy, Scientific use of, v. 18, p. 2. 
 Genesis of " The Master of Ballantrae," 
 
 Essay, v. 22, p. 431-435. 
 Genoa, Life of Fleeming Jenkin in, v. 
 
 18, p. 40. 
 GentUity, Test of, v. 14, p. 351. 
 Gentleman blacksmith, v. 14, p. 351. 
 Gentlemen, Essay, v. 14, p. 346-360. 
 Geraldine, Col., personal attendant on 
 
 Prince Florizel, v. 1, p. 3; The brother 
 
 of, V. 1, p. 41. 
 German firm in Apia, The, v. 19, p. 893, 
 
 403 ; V. 22, p. 473. 
 Germany, Tyranny of, in Samoa, v. 22, 
 
 p. 451 et seq. 
 Gerolstein, a neighbouring principality 
 
 to Griinewald, v. 4, p. 3. 
 Gibson, Prime Minister of Hawaii, v. 19, 
 
 p. 411. 
 Gilbert Island Papers, Writing of, v. 
 
 17, p. 67. 
 Gilberts, The, v. 19, p. 221-370; Dress 
 
 in, V. 19, p. 240. 
 Gilchrist, Miss, maiden aunt of Flora, 
 
 V. 21, p. 8. 
 Gilchrist, Flora, lover of St. Ives, v. 21, 
 
 p. 6 ; Return of St. Ives to, v. 21, p. 
 
 303, 481. 
 Gilchrist, Ronald, brother of Flora, v. 
 
 21, p. 14; Meeting of, with St. Ives 
 at Mr. Robbie's, v. 21, p. 333. 
 
 Gladsmuir, Lord, a Jacobite, v. 22, p. 
 
 376. 
 Glen, James, Cheerfulness of, in a storm 
 
 on Bell Rock, v. 18, p. 325. 
 Glenalmond, David, Lord, friend of Her- 
 
 miston, v. 20, p. 21. 
 Glossary of Scotch dialect, v. 20, p. 163. 
 Gloucester, Duke of. See Richard, Duke 
 
 of Gloucester. 
 Goddedaal, Elias, mate of the Flying 
 
 Scud, V. 10, p. 448. See also Carthew, 
 
 Norris. 
 Goguelat, Philippe, a fellow-prisoner of 
 
 St. Ives, V. 21, p. 17. 
 Golden Gate, Essay, v. 15, p. 143-148. 
 Golden Valley, v. 12, p. 93. 
 Gondremark, Heinrich, Baron von, 
 
 Prime Minister of Griinewald, v. 4, p. 
 
 87. 
 Good and Bad Children, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 29. 
 Good Boy, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 21. 
 Good Play, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 14. 
 Gordon, Col., an Englishman In the 
 
 service of Griinewald, v. 4, p. 165. 
 Goriot, a friend of Dumont, v. 20, p. 408. 
 
 Gossip, A, on a Novel of Dumas's, E» 
 say, V. 13, p. 315-326. 
 
 Gossip on Romance, A, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 327-343. 
 
 Gothic Paris in Notre Dame, v. 14, p. 
 28. 
 
 Gottesheim, Killian, a farmer in Gerol- 
 stein, V. 4, p. 7. 
 
 Gotthold von Hohenstockwitz, Dr., a 
 privy councillor of Griinewald, v. 4, 
 p. 49. 
 
 Goulet, Across the. Essay, v. 12, p. 215- 
 218. 
 
 Government, reliance on, Growth of, 
 V. 22, p. 291. 
 
 Graden Easter, Northmour's residence, 
 V. 1, p. 207. 
 
 Grant, Barbara, daughter of Preston- 
 grange, V. 6, p. 51 ; Parting of, with 
 David, V. 6, p. 231. 
 
 Grant, Gen. U. S., a typical gentleman, 
 V. 14, p. 353. 
 
 Gratitude, Hollowness of, v. 16, p. 273, 
 276. 
 
 Gray, an acquaintance of Dr. Macfar- 
 lane, v. 8, p. 417. 
 
 Gray, Abraham, sailor on the Hispan- 
 iola, V. 2, p. 126. 
 
 Gray, Capt. Andrew, v. 14, p. 379, 385. 
 
 Great Misseuden, Description of, v. 22, 
 p. 118-120. 
 
 Great North Road, The, Fragment, 
 V. 22, p. 311-370. 
 
 Greek architecture. Geometrical pro- 
 portions of, V. 18, p. 53 ; costumes de- 
 signed by Jenkin, v. 18, p. 154. 
 
 Green Donkey-Driver, The, Essay, v. 
 12, p. 150-159. 
 
 Greensleeves, Dorothy, an eloping 
 school-girl, v. 21, p. 267. 
 
 Greisengesang, Baron von, Chancellor 
 of Griinewald, v. 4, p. 56. 
 
 Gretz, Description of, v. 15, p. 186. 
 
 Greville, Sir George, an English dia- 
 mond-trader, V. 3, p. 194. 
 
 Grey, Sir George, v. 17, p. 217. 
 
 Greyfriars, Essay, v. 12, p. 312-320; 
 Churchyard, Description of, v. 22, p. 
 9-13. 
 
 Grez, Description of, v. 22, p. 161-164. 
 
 Grierson, Dr., a Mormon Destroying An- 
 gel, v. 3, p. 24. 
 
 Griinewald, Principality of, v. 4, p. 1- 
 238. 
 
 Guest, Utterson's head clerk, v. 7, p. 313. 
 
 Gunn, Ben, a pirate marooned on Skele- 
 ton Island, V. 2, p. 110. 
 
 Hadden, Tom, a "remittance man" 
 
 in Sydney, v. 10, p. 401. 
 Haddo, Hall, a curate, v. 22, p. 404. 
 Haggard, Mr., Land Commissioner in 
 
 Samoa, v. 17, p. 69, 183, 195. 
 Hales, Portrait of Pepys by, v. 14, p. 254 
 Hamilton, Capt., Death of, v. 17, p. 54. 
 
 653 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hermiston, Jean, Lady, wife of Hermia* 
 ton, V. 20, p. 2. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, a decayed gentleman, 
 V. 11, p. 225. 
 
 High Woods of Ulufanua, Proposed 
 title of, V. 17, p. 14, 60, 73. 
 
 Highland Jacobites, v. 5 ; v. 6 ; v. 9. 
 
 Highlanders, Patriotism of, y. 13, p. 
 189. 
 
 Hispaniola, John Trelawney's ship, r. 
 2, p. 54. 
 
 Historical Associations, Poem, y. 16, p. 
 75. 
 
 History, People read, for education and 
 display, v. 17, p. 110 ; Inadequacy of 
 text-books of, v. 17, p. 92. 
 
 Hogan, J. F., Letter to, v. 22, p. 496-500. 
 
 Hoka, a native Anaho, v. 19, p. 16. 
 
 Holdaway, Jonathan, v. 22, p. 315. 
 
 Holdaway, Nance, v. 22, p. 315. 
 
 Holyrood, History of, v. 12, p. 282. 
 
 Holywood Abbey, near Shoreby, y. 8, 
 p.l. 
 
 Home, Milne, Proposed plantation of, 
 on Malta, v. 22, p. 611. 
 
 Homme qui Rit, L', v. 14, p. 35. 
 
 Honolulu, Stevenson's visit to, y. 17, p. 
 267. 
 
 Honour, True nature of, v. 22, p. 569. 
 
 Hoodoo, Mme. Mendizabal celebrates 
 the rites of, v. 3, p. 212. 
 
 Hope, Endurance of, v. 13, p. 17 ; Plea- 
 sures of, V. 13, p. 106. 
 
 Hoseason, Ellas, Captain of the Cove- 
 nant, V. 5, p. 41. 
 
 Hotels in America, v. 16, p. 113. 
 
 House Beautiful, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 104. 
 
 House of Tembinoka, The, Poem^ y. 
 16, p. 247. 
 
 House of the Eld, a fable of supersti- 
 tion, V. 20, p. 463-470. 
 
 House with the Green Blinds, Story of, 
 V. 1, p. 157-195. 
 
 Houston, Alan, friend of Nicholson, y. 
 8, p. 321. 
 
 Howells, William D., Novels of, v. 13, p. 
 357. 
 
 Huddlestone, Bernard, an absconding 
 banker, v. 1, p. 220. 
 
 Huddlestone, Clara, daughter of Ber- 
 nard, v. 1, p. 220. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, Romances of. Essay, y. 
 14, p. 17-45. 
 
 Huish, J. L., a Cockney clerk, v. 11, p. 
 229. 
 
 Human Life, Reflections on, v. 22, p. 
 622-634. 
 
 Human nature, Analysis of, v. 22, p. 552. 
 
 Humble Remonstrance, A, Essay, v. 
 13, p. 344-358. 
 
 Hume, David, Grave of, v. 13, p. 199. 
 Hermiston, Adam, Lord, Lord Justice Hunt, a Bow-Street runner, v. 20, p. 186. 
 Character of, drawn Hunter, John, servant of Trelawney, y. 
 
 Hamlet, Criticism of, v. 14, p. 362. 
 
 Hand, Capt, Commander of the Boy- 
 alisa, V. 19, p. 507. 
 
 Hands, Israel, coxswain of the His- 
 paniola, V. i^ p. 75 ; Death of, y. 2, p. 
 198. 
 
 Hansom Cab, Adventures of a, v. 1, p. 
 76-lOL 
 
 Hanson, Ruf e, a resident of Silverado, 
 V. 15, p. 371. 
 
 Happiness, a moral duty, v. 13, p. 76 ; 
 complete. Rareness of, v. 13, p. 85; 
 Different forms of, v. 15, p. 241-249 ; in 
 literature, Need of, v. 1^ p. 177 ; Sub- 
 jective nature of, v. 13, p. 87; The 
 aim of all existence, v. 15, p. 39, 247 ; 
 What constitutes, v. 13, p. 106. 
 
 Happy Thought, Poem, v. 16, p. 25. 
 
 Harker, carrier at Padwick, v. 11, p. 168. 
 
 Harris, Capt., a paid assassin, v. 9, p. 240. 
 
 Hart, Capt. John, a planter, v. 19, p. 111. 
 
 Hartley, Harry, secretary of Gen. Van- 
 deleur, v. 1, p. 105. 
 
 Hastie, Alison, an innkeeper's daugh- 
 ter, v. 5, p. 239. 
 
 Hatch, Bennet, a retainer of Brackley, 
 V. 8, p. 4. 
 
 Havens, Mr., a trader in the Marquesas, 
 V. 10, p. 5. 
 
 Hawaii, Missionaries in, y. 4, p. 416. 
 
 Hawaiian Embassy in Samoa, v. 19, p. 
 411. 
 
 Hawkins, Jim, son of the keeper of The 
 Admiral Benbow, v. 2, p. 3. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Art of, y. 14, p. 
 27. 
 
 Hayloft, The, Poem, y. 16, p. 42. 
 
 Hay ward, Stephens, author, v. 14, p. 
 329. 
 
 Hazeltine, Julia, ward of Joseph Fins- 
 bury, y. 11, p. 5. 
 
 He hears with gladdened heart the 
 thunder. Poem, y. 16, p. 225. 
 
 Head-hunting in Samoa, v. 19, p. 450, 
 463 ; V. 22, p. 480, 489. 
 
 Heart of the Country, The, Essay, v. 
 12, p. 261-268. 
 
 Heather Ale, Poem, v. 16, p. 349. 
 
 Hkathbroat, Fragment, v. 22, p. 395- 
 428. 
 
 Hem stead, an unemployed Sydney 
 clerk, V. 10, p. 395. 
 
 Henderland, Mr., a missionary in the 
 Highlands, v. 5, p. 136. 
 
 Henderson, Charles, Drowning of, near 
 Bell Rock, V. 18, p. 362. 
 
 Henley, W. E., teaches Jenkin literary 
 composition, v. 18, p. 169 ; Joint au- 
 thor. Plays, v. 20, p. 173-442. 
 
 Henry, Stevenson's Samoan boy, v. 17, 
 p. 3, 8, 22, 83, 179. 
 
 Henry James, Poem, v. 16, p. 124, 
 
 Clerk, y. 20, p. 2 ; i 
 
 from Lord Baxfield, v. 20, p. 157. 
 
 2, p. 71. 
 
 654 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hunter, Eobert, Reminiscences of, v. 
 
 13, p. 285. 
 Hunter's Family, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 374-384. 
 Hyde, Dr. C. M., Reply to attack of, on 
 
 Father Damien, v. 4, p. 414. 
 Hyde, Edward, assumed name of Dr. 
 
 Jekyll, V. 7, p. 284. 
 
 I Have a Goad, Essay, v. 12, p. 160-167. 
 I have trod the upward and the down- 
 ward slope. Poem, v. 16^ p. 224 
 
 Island Nights' Entbrtainmbnts, a 
 
 series of three tales, v. 4, p. 243-409 ; 
 
 Writing of, v. 17, p. 205, 208. 
 Isle of Voices, The, a story of magic, v. 
 
 4, p. 383-409. 
 Islet, Memoirs of an. Essay, t. 13, p. 
 
 250-257. 
 It is not yours, Mother, to complain. 
 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 136. 
 It is the Season now to Go, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 102. 
 ,.«x« o^v^i^v-, * >^^..., ,. ^^J, v. *-« Italian revolution of 1848, v. 18, p. 41. 
 
 I Kana Kim, a form of debasement^ v. It 's an owercome sooth for age an* 
 
 19, p. 290. 
 I know not how it is with you, Poem, 
 
 v. 16, p. 210. 
 I will make you brooches, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 211. 
 Ichigi-Koda, a soldier and disciple of 
 
 Yoshida, v. 14, p. 156. 
 Ide, Mr., Chief Justice of Samoa, v. 22, 
 
 p. 489. 
 Ideal House, The. v. 22, p. 634-638. 
 Ideals, All animals live for, v. 15, p. 
 
 296 ; Conflict of, in married life, v. 13, 
 
 p. 22. 
 Ideas, Growth of, v. 13, p. 54. 
 Idle Hours, Sketch, v. 22, p. 155-159. 
 Idlers, An Apology for. Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 67-79. 
 If This were Faith, Poem, v. 16, p. 227. 
 Hie Terrarum, Poem, v. 16, p. 157. 
 Imt^nation, Necessity of, to an engi- 
 neer, V. 18, p. 261-264; Of children, 
 
 v. 4, p. 140. 
 In Memoriam, Poem, v. 16, p. 237. 
 In Memoriam F. A. S., Poem, v. 1^ p. 
 
 139. 
 Intermittent Light for Lighthouses, A 
 
 New Foi-m of, v. 22, p. 608-611. 
 In the Highlands, in the country places. 
 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 217. 
 In the South Seas, an account of 
 
 Stevenson's travels, v. 19, p. 1-370; 
 
 Writing of, v. 17, p. 4, 17, 44, 50, 69, 
 
 77. 
 In the States, Poem, v. 16, p. 142. 
 In the Valley of the Nimente, Essay, 
 
 v. 12, p. 256-260. 
 In the Valley of the Tarn, Essay, v. 12, 
 
 p. 241-251. 
 Indian massacres, v. 15, p. 131. 
 Indians, American prejudice against, 
 
 v. 15, p. 142 ; Of Carmel, v. 15, p. 166. 
 Individuality, Ethical value of, v. 22, 
 
 p. 565. 
 Infanticide in Polynesia, v. 19, p. 38. 
 Influenza in Apia, v. 17, p. 90, 95, 209, 
 
 230 ; V. 11, p. 229. 
 Inland Votaoe, An, twenty-one es- 
 says on Belgium and France, v. 12, p. 
 
 3-135 ; Epilogue to, v. 15, p. 192-208. 
 Innes, Frank, Arrival of, at Hermiston, 
 
 youth, Poem, ▼. 16, p. 196. 
 
 Jackson, Henrietta, wife of Charles Jen- 
 kin, Jr., v. 18, p. 17. 
 
 Jacobites, v. 6 ; v. 6 ; v. 9 ; v. 22, p. 373- 
 393. 
 
 James, H., and Besant, W., Art of Fic- 
 tion, V. 13, p. 344. 
 
 James, Henry, Poem, v. 16, p. 124. 
 
 Japp, Dr., Thoreau's friend and disciple, 
 V. 14, p. 10. 
 
 Jean-Marie, adopted son of Dr. Desprez, 
 V. 7, p. 201. 
 
 Jekyll, Dr. Henry, an eminent physi- 
 cian, V. 7, p. 301. 
 
 Jenkin, Austin, eldest son of Fleeming, 
 Goodness of, v. 18, p. 143. 
 
 Jenkin, Bernard, son of Fleeming, y. 18, 
 p. 142. 
 
 Jenkin, Charles, grandfather of Fleem- 
 ing, V. 18, p. 5, 21. 
 
 Jenkin, Charles, Jr., father of Fleeming, 
 V. 18, p. 6 ; Life of, in Edinburgh, v. 18, 
 p. 139; Golden wedding of, v. 18, p. 183. 
 
 Jenkin, Mrs. Charles, Sickness of, v. 18, 
 p. 178. 
 
 Jenkin, Charles Frewen, second son of 
 Fleeming, Birth ot, v. 18, p. 81. 
 
 Jenkin family. Genealogy of, v. 18, p. 1. 
 
 Jenkin, Fleeming, Birth o^ t. 18, p. 24 ; 
 Marriage of, v. 18, p. 69 ; Work of, in 
 the Mediterranean, v. 18, p. 84-130; 
 Life of, in Edinburgh, v. 18, p. 36 ; As 
 a Professor, v. 18, p. 160 ; Character of, 
 V. 18, p. 170. 
 
 Jenkin, Fleeming, Memoir op, v. 18. 
 
 Jenkin, John, Great-grandfather of 
 Fleeming;v. 18, v. 3. 
 
 Jenkin, John, uncle of Fleeming, y. 18, 
 p. 6 ; Death of, v. 18, p. 184. 
 
 Jenkin, Odden, eldest son of Fleeming, 
 Birth of, v. 18, p. 75. 
 
 Jersey, Countess of, visits Mataafa, r. 
 17, p. 177. 
 
 Jesuit missions in California, v. 15, p. 
 167. 
 
 Jews, Usury of, in California, r. 16, p. 
 344. 
 
 Jimson, assumed name of Gideon For* 
 syth, V. 11, p. 146. 
 
 ▼. 20, p. 14 ; College friend of Archie John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. 
 Weir, V. 20, p. 24. v. 14, p. 207. 
 
INDEX 
 
 John Paul, a servant of Lord Durris- Laclas, a fellow-prisoner of St. Ives, v. 
 
 deer, v. 9, p. 9. 21, p. 21, 62. 
 
 Johnson, second mate of the Gleaner, Lafenstre, Gaston, a French artist, v. 
 
 v. 10, p. 147. 12, p. 74. 
 
 Johnson, Sir William, an English officer Lamplighter, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 32. 
 
 in America, v. 9, p. 254. Lancastrian army. Retreat of, v. 8, p. 
 
 Jones, a travelling companion of Steven- 72. 
 
 son, v. 15, p. 7. Land Commissioners in Samoa, v. 19, p. 
 
 Jopp, Duncan, Trial of, for murder, v. 587. 
 
 20, p. 27. Land of Counterpane, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 Journalism, Vicissitudes of, v. 13, p. 218. p. 17. 
 
 Joyce, Richard, servant of Trelawney's, Land of Nod, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 18. 
 
 V. 2, p. 71. Land of Story-Books, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 Jupille, Mme. , keeper of a caf6 in Paris, p. 57. 
 
 V. 21, p. 459. Land tenure in California, v. 15, p. 168, 
 
 166. 
 
 Kalamake, an Hawaiian magician, v. 4, Landrecies, At, Essay, v. 12, p. 48-52. 
 
 p. 383. Landrecies, To, Essay, v. 12, p. 42-47. 
 
 Kalawao, Leper settlement at, v. 4, p. Lands, The, in Edinbm^h, v. 12, p. 289- 
 
 419. 296. 
 
 Eangaroo-rat of California, v. 15, p. Language, Difference of, in England and 
 
 424. America, v. 15, p. 114; Limitations 
 
 Karaiti, a native of Butaritari, v. 19, p. of, v. 13, p. 43, 46, 164 ; Of Samoa, v. 
 
 276. 17, p. 41. 
 
 Katharine, Poem, v. 16, p. 127. Lantern-Bearers, Essay, v. 15, p. 235- 
 
 Katooinba, British vessel in Samoa, v. 249. 
 
 22, p. 479, 485. Lanyon, Dr. Hastie, a friend of Dr. 
 
 Kauanui, deposed brother of Taipi- Jekyll, v. 7, p. 291 ; Death of, v. 7, p. 
 
 Kikino, v. 19, p. 47. 319. 
 
 Kava, Drinking of, in Samoa, v. 17, p. Large Testament, The, Essay, v. 14, p- 
 
 142, 152, 168, 181, 269, 273. 193-200. 
 
 Kearney, Dennis, Career of, in Califor- Last Day, The, Essay, v. 12, p. 269-274. 
 
 nia, V. 15, p. 165. Last Sight, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 261. 
 
 Keawe, owner of the Bottle Imp, v. 4, Late in the nicht in bed I lay. Poem, v. 
 
 p. 339. 16, p. 188. 
 
 Keepsake Mill, Poem, v. 16, p. 27,. Laulii, headquarters of Mataafa, v. 19, 
 
 Kelland, Prof., Reminiscences of) v. 13, p. 492 ; War-ships at, v. 19, p. 505. 
 
 p. 194. Laupepa^ King of Samoa, v. 17, p. 85, 
 
 Kelmar, a Calif ornian Jew, v. 15, p. 343. 138, 139 ; v. 19, p. 405, 408, 414-428, 
 
 Kentish, Mr., an officer on Sir G. Gre- 556, 570, 582 ; v. 22, p. 476. 
 
 vine's yacht, v. 3, p. 220. Law-courts in Edinburgh, v. 12, p. 299 ; 
 
 Keola, an Hawaiian native, v. 4, p. 383. Justification of disregarding the, v. 
 
 Kettley, a town in the Fen district, v. 22, p. 542. 
 
 8, p. 23. Lawless, Will, one of Duckworth's fol- 
 
 KiDNAPPBD, a tale of the Highland Jac- lowers, v. 8, p. 54. 
 
 obites, V. 5. Lawson, William, Procurator-Fiscal, v.. 
 
 Kimberley, Admiral of American fleet 20, p. 178. 
 
 in Samoa, v. 19, p. 541 ; Cheerfulness Lay Morals, a treatise on ethics, v. 
 
 of, after the storm, v. 19, p. 551. 22, p. 529-588. 
 
 Kirkby-Lonsdale, Adventure of St. Ives Leary, Commander, American officer in 
 
 with the landlord at, v. 21, p. 280. Samoa, v. 19, p. 432 ; Protest of, 
 
 Klein, John, Samoan correspondent of against the Germans, v. 19, p. 454 ;. 
 
 the New York World, v. 19, p. 513, Attitude of, in the Scanlan outrage, 
 
 524 ; V. 22, p. 452. v. 19, p. 474 ; Visit of, to Tamasese's 
 
 Knappe, Dr., German Consul in Samoa, quarters, v. 19, p. 498. 
 
 V. 19, p. 502 ; Proclamation of martial Legends, Essay, v. 12, p. 304-311. See 
 
 law by, V. 19, p. 531 ; Reproof of, by also Superstition. 
 
 Bismarck, v. 19, p. 538 ; Tyranny of, Lehua, wife of Keola and daughter of 
 
 V. 22, p. 452. Molokai, v. 4, p. 383 ; Rescues Keola 
 
 Knox, John, and his Relations to from the Isle of Voices, v. 4, p. 408. 
 
 Women, Exsay, v. 14, p. 272-325. Leith, River, View of, from the Manse, 
 
 Kokua, wife of Keawe, v, 4, p. 353. v. 13, p. 241. 
 
 Kooamua, Chief of Hatiheu, v. 19, p. 49. Lepers, v. 4, p. 413-432. 
 
 Kusdkab^, a reformer from Satzuma, v. Leslie, Walter, Mary Brodie's lover, r. 
 
 14, p. 162. 20, p. 173. 
 
 656 
 
INDEX 
 
 Let Beauty Awake, Poem, v. 16, p. 209. Looking Forward, Poem, v. 16, p. 13. 
 
 Letter to a Young Gentleman who Pro- Looking-Glass River, Poem, v. 16, p, 
 
 poses to Embrace the Career of Art, 37. 
 
 V. 15, p. 279-289 ; to the Clergy oi Lopaka, friend of Keawe, v. 4, p. 345, 
 
 Scotland, v. 22, p. 227-240, 
 
 Letters of condolence to Robert Steven- 
 son's wife, V. 18, p. 222, 224. 
 
 Letters to Young People, v. 22, p. 501- 
 527. 
 
 Liberal Genius, A, Essay, v. 14, p. 253- 
 263. 
 
 Lie, The Story of a, a tale of Paris Bo- 
 hemians, V. 3, p. 271-345. 
 
 Lies of children, v. 13, p. 147. 
 
 Lost Occasion, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 226. 
 
 Lotoanuu, headquarters of Tamasese, 
 V. 19, p. 492. 
 
 Loudon, Adam, Scotch uncle of Loudon 
 Dodd, V. 10, p. 30. 
 
 Loudon, Alexander, maternal grand- 
 father of Loudon Dodd, v. 10, p. 31 ; 
 Makes his will, v. 10, p. 102 ; Death 
 of, V. 10, p. 
 
 Life, V. 14, p. 99 ; Originates in corrup- Louis de Valois, Duke of Orleans, father 
 tion, V. 15, p. 291 ; The meaning of, v. of Charles, v. 14, p. 202. 
 
 13, p. 99; Ties which bind us to, v. 
 13, p. 91 ; Uncertainty of, v. 13, p. 97 ; 
 V. 20, p. 452-454. 
 
 Lighthouse-keepers, Life of, v. 18, p. 
 249-255 ; men. Protection of, from the 
 press gang, v. 18, p. 234, 353 ; on Bell 
 Rock, V. 18, p. 267-366 ; Operations in 
 Scotland, v. 18, p. 235, 241 ; Thomas 
 Stevenson's work for, v. 13, p. 258; 
 Visitation of, v. 15, p. 214. 
 
 Lighthouses, Intermittent Lights for, 
 V. 22, p. 608-611. 
 
 Light-keeper, The, Poem, v. 22, p. 606. 
 
 Lights, Development of, v. 13, p. 165- 
 169. 
 
 Lindsay, Prof., Reminiscences of, v. 13, 
 p. 193. 
 
 Louis XL, changed times under, v. 14, 
 p. 235. 
 
 Love, Delights of mutual, v. 13, p. 34 ; 
 Difficulty of handling, in literature, 
 V. 17, p. 149 ; Every one cannot, v. 
 13, p. 30; Is passionate kindness, v. 
 13, p. 36 ; Jenkin's opinion of, v. 18, 
 p. 59 ; Not blind, v. 14, p. 139 ; Ob- 
 stacles which cause people to miss, v. 
 13, p. 31 ; Of Capt. Charles Jenkin for 
 his wife, v. 18, p. 180 ; Rarity of, v. 13, 
 p. 8. 
 
 Love Stories, The, Essay, y. 14, p. 67- 
 72. 
 
 Lovelands, Irvine, brother of Mrs. Han- 
 son, V. 15, p. 377. 
 
 Lovers, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 313. 
 
 Literary training of Stevenson, v. 13, Lowden Sabbath Morn, A, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 211. p. 163. 
 
 Literary work, a subject for mirth, v. Loz^re, Across the, Essay, v. 12, p. 227- 
 
 15, p. 72 ; Happiness of, v. 15, p. 244 ; 
 in Samoa, v. 17 ; Payment for, v. 15, 
 p. 37, 287. 
 literature, as a profession, v. 15, p. 287- 
 289 ; Comparison of, with painting, v. 
 14, p. 19 ; Discouragement of the be- 
 ginner in, V. 2, p. xi.; Impious, v. 20, 
 p. 473 ; Incident the cream of, v. 13, p. 
 882 ; Jenkin's choice in, v. 18, p. 168, 
 
 232. 
 
 Luc, Cheylard and, Essay, v. 12, p. 183- 
 187. 
 
 Luxmore, Clara, a young Fenian, v. 3, 
 p. 13; Return of, to her mother's 
 house, V. 3, p. 142 ; Meeting of, with 
 Florizel, v. 3, p. 262. See also Fon- 
 blanque, Asenath; and Valdevia, 
 Theresa. 
 
 177 ; Need of drudgery in, v. 15, p. Luxmore, Henry, v. 3, p. 96. 
 
 173 ; of woe, v. 14, p. 95 ; Pastoral ele- 
 ment in, v. 13, p. 238 ; Repeated use of 
 the same scene in, v. 13, p. 250 ; Rigid- 
 ity of, V. 13, p. 265. 
 
 Little Land, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 60. 
 
 Livesey, Dr. David, a physician and 
 magistrate, v. 2, p. 8 ; Narrative of, of 
 events on Skeleton Island, v. 2, p. 121. Maben, Thomas, Secretary of State of 
 
 Living Rosary, Association of the, v. 12, Samoa, v. 22, p. 472. 
 
 Luxmore, Mrs. Henry, a spirited old 
 lady, V. 3, p. 84; Reconciliation of, 
 with Clara, v. 3, p. 268. 
 
 Lysaght, S. R., v. 17, p. 286, 296. 
 
 Lytton, E. R. Bulwer, Lord, Fables in 
 Song, V. 22, p. 193-204. 
 
 p. 120. 
 Locke, Mrs. Anne, friend of Knox, v. 14, 
 
 p. 314. 
 Lodging for the Night, v. 1, p. 287-313. 
 
 Mac, a sailor on the Currency Lass, v. 
 
 10, p. 428. 
 MACAraB, a melodramatic farce, v. 20, 
 
 p. 399-442. 
 
 London, Robert Stevenson's description Macaire, Robert, a French robber, v. 
 
 of, v. 18, p. 223. 
 
 20, p. 402. 
 
 Longhurs^ Douglas B., a San Francisco Macaulay, T. B., as a writer of short 
 mUlionaire, v. 10, p. 165. studies, v. 14, p. 4. 
 
 Longnon, M., biographer of Villon, v. Macbeth, Salvini as, v. 22, p. 205-211. 
 
 14, p. 166. M 'Clour, Janet, servant of Soulis, n 
 
 657 
 
INDEX 
 
 classes, v. 15, p. 73 ; Of natives in Sa. 
 moa, V. 17, p. 82 ; Of the Polynesiana, 
 V. 19, p. 16. 
 Manono, Sacking of, v. 22, p. 484 ; 
 Troubles in, v. 17, p. 78; v. 19, p. 
 297. 
 
 witch, V. 7, p. 130 ; a girl Covenanter, 
 
 T. 22, p. 407. 
 Macconochie, a servant of Lord Durris- 
 
 deer, v. 9, p. 8. 
 Macfailane, Wolfe, a physician, college 
 
 chum of Fettes, v. 8, p. 408. 
 M'Glashan, Miss, Esther's aunt, v. 3, Manse, The, Essay, v. 13, p. 241-249. 
 
 p. 291. Mapiao, a Tahuku, v. 19, p. 124. 
 
 Macgregor,Catriona, daughter of James Marchand, Pierre, Prior of Paray-le- 
 
 More, V. 6, p. 5 ; Gratitude of, to Da- Monial, v. 14, p. 186. 
 
 Aid, y. 6, p. 105 ; Assists her father to Marching Song, Poem, v. 16, p. 28. 
 
 escape, v. 6, p. 201. Marjory, a parson's daughter, v. 7, p. 80. 
 
 Macgregor, James More, a son of Rob Markheim, a tale of a murderer's 
 
 Roy, V. 6, p. 4 ; Escape of, from conscience, v. 7, p. 104-126. 
 
 prison, v. 6, p. 201. 
 
 Macgregor, Robin, a son of Rob Roy, v. 
 5, p. 228. 
 
 Macgregors, Kinship of, to the Steven- 
 sons, V. 18, p. 202. 
 
 McGuire, Patrick, a Scotch Fenian, v. 
 3, p. 71 ; Adventure of, with an in- 
 fernal machine, v. 3, p. 155. 
 
 M'Kail, Hugh, Death of, v. 14, p. 397. 
 
 Mackay, a Scotch engineer emigrant, v. 
 15, p. 35. 
 
 Marquesas, The, v. 19, p. 1-147 ; Dwell- 
 ings in, V. 19, p. 14 ; Life on, v. 10, p. 1. 
 
 Marriage, Foolhardiness of, v. 13, p. 19 ; 
 Jenkin's ideas of, v. 18, p. 71 ; Modern 
 ideas of, v. 13, p. 4 ; Of Charles of Or- 
 leans to Isabella, v. 14, p. 206 ; To Mary 
 of Cleves, v. 14, p. 225 ; partners, Prin- 
 ciples of selecting, v. 13, p. 6 ; Respon- 
 sibility of, V. 13, p. 20. 
 
 Martyrs, Burial o:^ Patrick Walker on, 
 V. 12, p. 318. 
 Mackellar, Ephraim, steward to Henry Masaki, Taiso, pupil of Yoshida-Tora- 
 
 Durie, v. 9, p. 15. 
 
 jiro, V. 14, p. 150, 159. 
 
 M'Lehose, Agnes, a friend of Robert Master of Ballantrae, a tale of 
 
 Bums, V. 14, p. 67. 
 
 Macmorland, Tam, a servant of Lord 
 Durrisdeer, v. 9, p. 9. 
 
 Macpherson, Cluny, a Highland Jaco- 
 bite chief, V. 5, p. 202. 
 
 M'Queen, Robert, Conservatism of, v. 
 13, p. 131. 
 
 McRankine, Mrs. Bethiah, St. Ives's 
 landlady, v. 21, p. 292. 
 
 Madrigal, Poem, v. 16, p. 206. 
 
 Maea, a chief of Falesa, v. 4, p. 272. 
 
 Maitland, Sir Thomas, Commissioner of 
 the Ionian Islands, v. 18, p. 13. 
 
 Maka, a missionary and counsellor of 
 Nanteitei, r. 19, p. 231 ; Feast at the 
 house of, V. 19, p. 245 ; Magic-lantern 
 exhibition by, v. 19, p. 278. 
 
 Makenzie, Flora, lover of John Nich- 
 olson, V. 8, p. 325. 
 
 Maker to Posterity, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 p. 155. 
 
 Malanga, Nature of a, v. 19, p. 382. 
 
 Scotch Jacobites, v. 9 ; Difllculty of 
 finding a title for, v. 17, p. 133 ; Gen- 
 esis of, V. 22, p. 431-435 ; Proposed 
 preface to, v. 22, p. 639-642. 
 
 Mataafa, ex-King of Samoa, v. 17, p. xiii., 
 91, 137, 142, 155, 177, 252, 254 ; v. 19, p. 
 381 ; Absence of, from the coronation 
 of Tamasese, v. 19, p. 408 ; Reception 
 of the Hawaiian Embassy by, v. 19, p* 
 415 ; Letter of, to the consuls, v. 19, p. 
 458 ; Demands withdrawal of the Ger- 
 mans, v. 19, p. 468 ; Attempt to sei^e, 
 V. 19, p. 481 ; Attempt to disarm, v. 
 19, p. 511 ; Prestige of, v. 19, p. 557, 
 662 ; Plot to arrest, v. 19, p. 572 ; De- 
 scriptions of, V. 19, p. 584 ; Defeat and 
 punishment of, v. 22, p. 477-485 ; Wars 
 of, V. 22, p. 491 ; Exile of, v. 22, p. 496. 
 
 Matautu, Occupation of, by Tamasese, 
 V. 19, p. 457 ; Battle of, v. 19, p. 462. 
 
 Matcham, John, assumed name of 
 Joanna Sedley, v. 8, p. 26. 
 
 Mal^troit, Alain, Sire de, a French Mater Triumphans, Poem, v. 16, p. 215. 
 
 noble, 15th century, v. 1, p. 324. Materialism, Pessimism of ignorant, v. 
 
 Mal^troit, Blanche de, v. 1, p. 328. 15, p. 36. 
 
 Malie, headquarters of Mataafa, v. 17, Maubeuge, At, Essay, v. 12, p. 20-24. 
 
 p. 92, 141, 583. Maybole, Description of, v. 22, p. 139- 
 
 Malietoa Laupepa. See Laupepa. 145. 
 
 Malthus, Bartholomew, a member of May-day in Vailima, v. 17, p. 268. 
 
 the Suicide Club, v. 1, p. 23. Medina Sidonia, Duke of, at Anstruther, 
 
 Mamie McBride, a teacher of algebra, v. 15, p. 220. 
 
 V. 10, p. 124. Mediterranean Sea, Laying telegraph 
 
 Man and his Friend, The, Fable, v. 20, cables in, v. 18, p. 84-130. 
 
 p. 472. Memoir of Flbeming Jenkin, v. 18. 
 
 Man, Incongruous virtues and vices of, Memoirs of an Islet, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 v. 15, p. 293 ; Nature of, v. 22, p. 552. 250-257. 
 
 Manners, Difference of, in different Memories and Portraits, sixteen 
 
 658 
 
INDEX 
 
 autobiographical essays, ▼. 13, p. 177- 
 
 368. 
 Memory, v. 22, p. 59-70. 
 Mendizabal, Mme., a Cuban ex-slave 
 
 and witch, v. 3, p. 189. 
 Menteith, Austin's valet, v. 20, p. 291. 
 Merry George, a pirate, v. 2, p. 216. 
 Mbrry Men, The, a tale of a Scotch 
 
 wrecker, v. 7, p. 1-68. 
 Mexicans, Americans, and Indians ; Es- 
 say, V. 15, p. 158-168. 
 Michael, Father, a Trappist monk, v. 
 
 12, p. 197. 
 Michel, Brother, architect, v. 19, p. 63. 
 Mile an' a Bittock, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 101. 
 Mimente, In the Valley of the. Essay, 
 
 v. 12, p. 256-260. 
 Mine, Episodes in the Story of a, Essay, 
 
 V. 15, p. 403-414. 
 Mirror Speaks, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 125. 
 MISADVENTURES OP JOHN NICHOLSON, 
 
 a Scotch tale of persistent misfortune, 
 
 V. 8, p. 317-401. 
 Miscellaneous Papers, Essays, v. 14, 
 
 p. 329-400. 
 Mis6rables, Les, by Hugo, v. 14, p. 30. 
 Miserere, Criticism of, v. 12, p. 98. 
 Misers, 'The secret joys of, v. 15, p. 242. 
 Missionaries in Hawaii, Work of, v. 4, 
 
 p. 416 ; In the Marquesas, v. 19, p. 89 ; 
 
 Stevenson's influence on, v. 17, p. 2. 
 Mittwalden, capital of Griinewald, v. 
 
 4, p. 1. 
 Modern Student, The, Considered Gen- 
 erally, Essay, v. 22, p. 29-38. 
 Moipu, deposed chief of Atuona, v. 19, 
 
 p. 143. 
 Molokai, Leper settlement at, v. 4, p. 
 
 419. 
 Monastic life and diet, v. 12, p. 197. 
 Monastier, Stevenson's start from, v. 
 
 12, p. 143 ; Description of, v. 22, p. 
 
 177-190. 
 Money, bought with liberty, v. 14, p. 
 
 123, 127; Lack of, among Mexicans, 
 
 V. 15, p. 163 ; Popular worship of, v. 
 
 22, p. 572. 
 Monks, The, Essay, v. 12, p. 197-205. 
 Monks, Legal privileges of, v. 14, p. 179. 
 Montcorbier, Francois de, Villon's rejil 
 
 name, v. 14, p. 168. 
 Monterey, California, v. 15, p. 149-168. 
 Montigny, Regnier, friend of Villon, v. 
 
 1, p. 290; V. 14, p. 172, 186. 
 Montroymont, Ninian, Laird, a Cove- 
 nanter, V. 22, p. 400. 
 Montvert, Pont de, Essay, v. 12, p. 233- 
 
 241. 
 Moon, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 34. 
 Moore, Humphrey, a robber, v. 20, p. 
 
 198. 
 Moors, H. J., English Consul at Samoa, 
 
 v. 17, p. 2. 
 
 Morality, in literature, v. 13, p, 321, 329; 
 
 V. 17, p. 117 ; Of the Profession of Let- 
 
 ters. Essay, v. 22, p. 274-287 ; Positive 
 
 nature of, v. 15, p. 301. 
 Morality, Sketch, v. 22, p. 171-176. 
 Morgan, Tom, a pirate, v. 2, p. 61. 
 Mormal forest, v. 12, p. 43. 
 Mormonism in the Paumotus, v. 19, p. 
 
 186. 
 Mormons, Story of the Destrojdng 
 
 Angel, V. 3, p. 22-62. 
 Moser, Joseph, Jenkin's gillie in Alt 
 
 Aussee, v. 18, p. 148. 
 Moss, Mr., a Jew, agent of Michael 
 
 Finsbury, v. 11, p. 184. 
 Mountain, a subordinate of Harris, v. 
 
 9, p. 245. 
 Mountain Town, A, in France, v. 22, p. 
 
 177-190. 
 Mountebanks at Pr^cy, v. 12, p. 125. 
 Mouton, Michel, an alias of Villon, v. 
 
 14, p. 168, 178. 
 
 Movements of Young Children, Notes 
 on the, V. 22, p. 92-98. 
 
 Moy, Description of, v. 12, p. 85. 
 
 Mulinuu, headquarters of Taniasese, v. 
 19, p. 456; Evacuation of, v. 19, p. 
 479 ; Description of, v. 19, p. 578. 
 
 Murray, Andrew, Death of, v. 14, p. 395. 
 
 Murrayfleld, Allan Houston's house 
 near Edinburgh, v. 8, p. 356. 
 
 Musgrave, Anthony, Dorothy's brother, 
 V. 20, p. 292. 
 
 Musgrave, Dorothy, mistress of Austin, 
 V. 20, p. 281. 
 
 Music, among steerage passengers, v. 15, 
 p. 17 ; In Butaritari, v. 19, p. 271 ; Jen- 
 kin's ear for, v. 18, p. 73 ; Of the Mex- 
 icans, V. 15, p. 160 ; On board ship, v. 
 
 15, p. 30; Duel in, between Alan 
 Breck and Macgregor, v. 5, p. 230. 
 
 My Bed is a Boat, Poem, v. 16, p. 33. 
 My body which my dungeon is, Poem^ 
 
 V. 16, p. 150. 
 My Conscience, Poem, v. 16, p. 191. 
 My First Book, Essay, v. 2, p. ix.-xx. 
 My house, I say. But hark to the sunn^l 
 
 doves. Poem, v. 16, p. 149. 
 My Kingdom, Poem, v. 16, p. 51. 
 My Shadow, Poem, v. 16, p. 19. 
 My Ship audi. Poem, v. 16, p. 50. 
 My Treasures, Poem, v. 16, p. 54. 
 My Wife, Poem, v. 16, p. 229. 
 Myner, John, an English art student in 
 
 Paris, V. 10, p. 64. 
 
 NabakatoMa, brother and successor to 
 Nanteitei, v. 19, p. 230. 
 
 Nakaeia, King of Butaritari, v. 19, p. 
 228. 
 
 Names, Meaning of, to children, v. 13, 
 p. 311, 
 
 Namu, a native missionary, v. 4, p. 291. 
 
 Nantaitei, brother and successor of Na- 
 kaeia, V. 19, p. 230. 
 
 659 
 
INDEX 
 
 Napoleon, v. li, p. 355 ; Wars of, v. 21. Notre Dame, by Hugo, Criticism of, ▼. 
 Nares, Arty, mate of the Gleaner, v. 10, 14, p. 27. 
 
 p. 147 ; Takes command of the Hying Novel of Dumas's, Gossip on a, Essay, 
 
 Scud, V. 10, p. 203. V. 13, p. 315-326. 
 
 Naseby, Dick, an art student in Paris, Novels. See Fiction. 
 
 V. 3, p. 271. Noyon Cathedral, Essay, v. 12, p. 96- 
 Naseby, Squire, an English Tory, Dick's 100. 
 
 father, v. 3, p. 279. Nuits Blanches, Sketch, v. 22, p. 5-7. 
 
 National characteristics, v. 15, p. 179. Nukahiva, First sight of, v. 19, p. 3. 
 
 Nebraska, Plains of, Essay, v. 15, p. Nurses, Sketch, v. 22, p. U-19. 
 
 124-128. 
 
 Nest-Eggs, Poem, v. 16, p. 67. Gates, Sir Oliver, Sir D. Brackley's 
 New Arabian Nights, a series of con- chaplain, v. 8, p. 11. 
 
 nected short stories, v. 1. Occupations, Necessity of congenial, v. 
 New Arabian Nights, second series, 14, p. 129. 
 
 V. 3. Ocean, Life in the, v, 22, p. 521 ; View 
 New Island, Attwater's pearl-fishery, v. of the, from Earraid, v. 13, p. 253. See 
 
 11, p. 312. also Sea. 
 
 New Jersey, Emigrants in, v. 15, p. 102. Oise, Down the, four essays, v. 12, p. 81- 
 New Town — Town and Country, Essay, 86, 93-95, 101-103, 116-122. 
 
 v. 12, p. 321-328. Oise, The, in Flood, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 New Year's day in Edinburgh, v. 12, p. 59-66. 
 
 344. Olalla, a story of the Spanish moun- 
 New York, Essay, v. 15, p. 82-92. tains, v. 7, p. 142-198 ; Originated in a 
 
 New York, Emigrants in, v. 15, p. 99 ; dream, v. 15, p. 264. 
 
 Meeting of Henry Durie and Ballan- Old Greyfriars' churchyard, v. 22, p. 9-13. 
 
 trae in, v. 9, p. 223. Old Mortality, Essay, v. 13, p. 199-210. 
 
 Nicholas, Dom, a Picardy monk, v. 1, p. Old Pacific Capital, Essay, v. 15, p. 149- 
 
 289 ; V. 14, p. 180. 168. 
 
 Nicholson, Mr., a religious Scotch law- Old Scotch Gardener, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 yer, father of John, v. 8, p. 317. 223-230. 
 
 Nicholson, Alick, brother of John, v. 8, Old Town— the Lands, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 p. 389. 
 
 Nicholson, John, son of a Scotch lawyer. On a New Form of Intermittent Light 
 
 V. 8, p. 317. for Lighthouses, v. 22, p. 608-611. 
 
 Nicknames in Polynesia, Force of, v. 19, On Falling in Love, Essay, v. 13, p. 28- 
 
 p. 48. 39. 
 
 Night, A, among the Pines, Essay, v. On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places, 
 
 12, p. 219-224. Essay, v. 22, p. 98-108. 
 
 Night and Day, Poem, v. 16, p. 60. On the Sambre Canalised, two essays, v. 
 
 Nirvana, Beauty of, v. 12, p. 114. 12, p. 25-30, p. 42-47. 
 
 Noel, Dr., a refugee in Paris, v. 1, p. 43. On the Thermal Influence of Forests, v. 
 
 Nomenclature, of Stevenson, v. 18, p. 22, p. 611-621. 
 
 195-204 ; Of the United States, v. 15, On the Willebroek Canal, Essay, v. 12, 
 
 p. 105 ; Scottish, Confusion of, v. 18, p. 8-13. 
 
 p. 201 ; The Philosophy of, v. 22, p. Opium-eating in Marquesas, v. 19, p. 73. 
 
 52-56. Ordered South, Essay, v. 13, p. 80-94. 
 
 Northern Lights, Board of, v. 18 ; Early Originality in literature, v. 13, p. 214. 
 
 difficulties of, v. 18, p. 233 ; Servants Origny Sainte-Benolte, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 of, protected from the press-gang, v. 67-80. 
 
 18, p. 234, 353 ; Thomas Smith's ser- Orkney Islands, Barbarity of natives of, 
 
 vices to, V. 18, p. 232. v. 18, p. 244. 
 
 Northmour, R., friend of Cassilis, v. 1, Orme's History of Hindostan, Steven- 
 
 p. 207. son's appreciation of, v. 17, p. 299. 
 
 North- West Passage, Poem, v. 16, p. Oro, Brotherhood of, v. 19, p. 39. 
 
 44. O'Rooke, Major, a retired English sol- 
 Norton, imaginary Emperor of America, dier, v. 1, p. 88. 
 
 V. 10, p. 119. Osbourne, Lloyd, stepson of Stevenson, 
 
 Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields v. 17 ; Calls on Mataafa, v. 17, p. 72 ; 
 
 desert, Poem, v. 16, p. 134. Leaves for San Francisco, v. 17, p. 114 ; 
 
 Note on Realism, A, v. 22, p. 266-273. Joint author, v. 10 ; v. 11. 
 
 Notes and Essays, Chiefly of the Otto Johann Friedrich, Prince of Griine- 
 
 ROAD, V. 22, p. 57 et seq. wald, v. 4, p. 6. 
 
 Notes on the Movements of Young Chil- Our Lady of the Snows, Essay, y. 12, 
 
 dren, v. 22, p. 92-98. p. 191-212. 
 
 66o 
 
INDEX 
 
 Our Lady of the Snows, Poem,ly. 16, 
 p. 131. 
 
 Paaaeua, Chief of Atuona, v. 19, p. 139. 
 
 Pacific Camp Grounds, v. 15, p. 152. 
 
 Pacific Ocean, Beauties of the, v. 15, p. 
 150 ; Effect of, on the climate of Cal- 
 ifornia, V. 15, p. 157. 
 
 Pacific Railroad, a typical achievement, 
 V, 15, p. 130. 
 
 Painters, Village Communities of, v. 15, 
 p. 169-191. 
 
 Pan's Pipes, Essay, v. 13, p. 160-164. 
 
 Paradou, Marie-Madeleine, a wine- 
 seller's wife, V. 22, p. 375. 
 
 Paris, Adventures of Fleeniing Jenkin 
 ill, V. 18, p. 27 ; Art students' life in, 
 V. 10, p. 34 ; V. 3, p. 271-345 ; Return 
 of St. Ives to, V. 21, p. 455 ; Thieves 
 of, V. 1, p. 287-313 ; The workingmen's 
 home, V. 12, p. 78, 91. 
 
 Parliament Close, The, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 Parliaments of Churches, v. 12, p. 284, 
 
 308. 
 Passion and incident, Relation of, in 
 
 literature, v. 13, p. 335. 
 Pastoral, Essay, v. 13, p. 231-240. 
 Paul, German cook, v. 17, p. 8, 61, 63. 
 Paumotuans, Characteristics of the, v. 
 
 19, p. 182. 
 Paumotus, The, v. 19, p. 151-217. 
 Pavilion on the links, v. 1, p. 207-283. 
 Peasants, French, Cliaracteristics of, 
 
 v. 22, p. 146-151, 177-190; in the 
 
 C^vennes, Incivility of, v. 12, p. 173. 
 Peebles, Charles, son of George, v. 18, 
 
 p. 258. 
 Peebles, George, foreman builder of 
 
 the Northern Lights, v. 18, p. 257. 
 Pen, William, author and friend of 
 
 Pepys, V. 14, p. 265. 
 Pendragon, Charles, brother of Lady 
 
 Vandeleur, v. 1, p. 108. 
 Penitent, The, Fable, v. 20, p. 459. 
 "Penny Plain and Twopence Col- 
 oured," Essay, v. 13, p. 306-314. 
 Pentland Hills, To the. Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 348-358. 
 Pentland rebels, Treatment of the, v. 
 
 14, p. 396. 
 Pentland Rising, The, Essay, v. 14, p. 
 
 377-400. 
 Pepys, Samuel, Essay, v. 14, p. 243-271. 
 Personal Experience and Review, Es- 
 say, V. 15, p. 69-81. 
 Persons of the Tale, Fable, v. 20, p. 
 
 447-451. 
 Petit-Jehan, fellow-thief with Villon, v. 
 
 14, p. 180. 
 Petrified Forest, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 325-329. 
 Pew, David, a blind beggar, v. 20, p. 
 
 343. 
 Pew, a blind pirate, v. 2, p. 23. 
 
 Phillips, Alfred R., BLACK Arrow, writ. 
 
 ten in rivalry with, Dedication, v. 8. 
 Philosophy, The, of Nomenclature, 
 
 Essay, v. 22, p. 52-56. 
 Philosophy, The, of Umbrellas, Essay, 
 
 V. 22, p. 46-51. 
 Phonograph, Jenkin's interest in, v. 18, 
 
 p. 157. 
 Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, The 
 
 Story of the, v. 1, p. 42-75. 
 Picture-Books in Winter, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 53. 
 Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, 
 
 ten essays, v. 12, p. 281-358. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, Bagster's edition of, 
 
 V. 22, p. 212-225. 
 Pinkerton, Jim, an American business 
 
 man, v. 10, p. 43 ; Reunion of, with 
 
 Dodd, V. 10, p. 319. 
 Pirate Story, Poem, v. 16, p. 7. 
 Pitman, William, owner of the Hercules 
 
 statue, V. 11, p. 83. 
 Place of the Name, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 343. 
 Places, Suggestions received from, v. 13, 
 
 p. 329. 
 Plains of Nebraska, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 124-128. 
 Plea for Gas Lamps, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 165-169. 
 Pleasure Party, A, Sketch, v. 22, p. 159- 
 
 166. 
 Pofe, Samoan chief, a political prisoner, 
 
 V. 17, p. 302. 
 Poetry, Function of, v. 14, p. 90; Of 
 
 machinery, v. 18, p. 61. See also 
 
 Rhyming. 
 Political crimes, v. 3, Dedication ; Pris- 
 oners in Apia, v. 19, p. 575 ; Deporta- 
 tion of, V. 19, p. 577 ; In Samoa, v. 17, 
 
 p. 302. 
 Politics, and the Reformation, v. 14, p. 
 
 273 ; In Samoa, v. 17, p. 71, 74, 76, 81, 
 
 83, 137, 208, 211, 224, 226, 279, 283; 
 
 Stevenson's participation in, v. 17, p. 
 
 xiv., 71. 
 Polynesian languages, v. 19, p. 9, 12. 
 Pont de Montvert, Essay, v. 12, p. 233- 
 
 241. 
 Pont-sur-Sambre, Essay, v. 12, p. 31-41. 
 Poole, Dr. Jekyll's butler, v. 7, p. 298. 
 Poor, H. F., Hawaiian secretary, v. 19, 
 
 p. 415. 
 Poor Thing, The, a fable of prenatal 
 
 incarnation, v. 20, p. 496-502. 
 " Poor Whites," Description of, v. 15, p. 
 
 374. 
 Popo, the talking man, v. 17, p. 159. 
 Popular Authors, Essay, v. 14, p. 329- 
 
 345. 
 Population, Restriction of, in Polynesia, 
 
 V. 19, p. 38. 
 Portrait, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 143. 
 Portraits, Biographical value of, v. 13, p 
 
 127. 
 
 66 1 
 
INDEX 
 
 Prairie scenery, v. 15, p. 108, 124. 
 Prayers written for family use at Vai- 
 
 lima, V. 22, p. 589-597. 
 Pr6cy and the Marionettes, Essay, y. 
 
 12, p. 123-133. 
 
 President of the Council (Samoa), Resig- 
 nation of, V. 17, p. 84. 
 
 Press-gang, Lighthouse men impressed 
 by, V. 18, p. 353 ; Protected from, v. 
 18, p. 234. 
 
 Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scot- 
 land, V. 6, p. 34. 
 
 Priest's Vigil, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 309. 
 
 PRINCE OTTO, a story of court intrigue 
 in GrUnewald, v. 4, p. 1-238. 
 
 Prison, at Tai-o-hae, v. 19, p. 69 ; in Sa- 
 moa, Stevenson's visit to a, v. 17, p. 
 269 ; Feast in a, v. 17, p. 273. 
 
 Prisoners in Samoa, Treatment of, v. 19, 
 p. 402 ; Plot to dynamite, v. 22, p. 
 454 ; Political, in Apia, v. 19, p. 576 ; 
 In Samoa, v. 17, p. 302. 
 
 Private Life, Essay, v. 14, p. 298-325. 
 
 Proof-reading, v. 17, p. 116. 
 
 Protestant rebellion in the C^vennes, 
 V. 12, p. 229, 235. 
 
 Proverbs, popular, Cowardice of, v. 13, 
 p. 51. 
 
 Providence and the Guitar, a tale, v. 1, 
 p. 347-386. 
 
 Prudence, Folly of, v. 13, p. 58; Nar- 
 rowing effects of, V. 13, p. 103. 
 
 Prudence, a servant, afterwards Mrs. 
 Hartwell, v. 1, p. 120. 
 
 Public opinion, Lack of courage in, v. 
 
 13, p. 10. 
 
 Publishers, Stevenson's difficulty in se- 
 lecting, V. 17, p. 96. 
 
 Pulvis et Umbra, Essay, v. 15, p. 290- 
 298. 
 
 Purgle, Jenkin's steam-launch, v. 1^ p. 
 145. 
 
 Quackery, Fable, v. 20, p. 460-462. 
 Quartes, To, Essay, v. 12, p. 2&-30. 
 Quatre Vingt Treize, v. 14, p. 38. 
 
 Raeburn, Some Portraits by. Essay, v, 
 
 13, p. 126-135. 
 Raeburn, Mr., owner of the rose-garden, 
 
 V. 1, p. 124. 
 Rah^ro, Poem, v. 16, p. 294. 
 Raid, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 325. 
 Railway conductors, Officiousness of, v. 
 
 15, p. 112, 122 ; Cars in America, v. 16, 
 
 p. 116. 
 Rain, Poem, v. 16, p. 6. 
 Rain in Samoa, v. 17, p. 32. 
 Rajah's Diamond, The, a tale, v. 1, p. 
 
 105-204. 
 Ramornie, assumed name of St. Ives, 
 
 V. 21, p. 246. 
 Randall, William T., an old sea-captain. 
 
 Chase's partner, v. 4, p. 245. 
 Random Memories, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 209-234; Rosa quo Locorum, y. 22, 
 
 p. 436-445. 
 Rankeillor, Mr., Scotch lawyer, attor 
 
 ney of David, v. 5, p. 260. 
 Ransome, cabin boy of the Covenant, y. 
 
 5, p. 34. 
 Rattlesnakes at Silverado, v. 15, p. 422. 
 Reader, The, a fable of impious litera- 
 ture, V. 20, p. 473, 474. 
 Realism, A Note on, v. 22, p. 266-273. 
 Rebellion, Scotch, v. 14, p. 377-400 {see 
 
 also Jacobites); Threatened in Samoa, 
 
 V. 19, p. 449. 
 Rebels, Treatment of, in Samoa, v. 22, 
 
 p. 488. 
 Records op a Family op Engineers, 
 
 V. 18, p. 195-366 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 
 
 70, 240, 241. 
 Red Fox, Murder of, v. 6, p. 146. 
 Redruth, Tom, Trelawney's gamekeeper, 
 
 V. 2, p. 54. 
 Reflections and Remarks on Human 
 
 Life, V. 22, p. 622-634. 
 Reformation, John Knox's work for the, 
 
 V. 14, p. 272-325. 
 Reformers, The Four, Fable, v. 20, p. 471. 
 Regler, Mr., resident trader, v. 19, p. 6. 
 Religion of the Paumotuans, v. 19, p. 186. 
 Religious toleration, v. 22, p. 227-240. 
 Reuan, E., Stevenson's opinion of, v. 17, 
 
 p. 231. 
 Rennie, John, Connection of, to Bell 
 
 Rock Light, v. 18, p. 270. 
 Requiem, Poem^. 16, p. 129. 
 Respectability, Essay, v. 14, p. 263-271. 
 Respectability, Tyranny of, v. 22, p. 563. 
 Retrospect, A, Essay, v. 22, p. 59-70. 
 Riach, Mr., second mate of the Covenant, 
 
 V. 5, p. 49. 
 Richard III., v. 8, p. 252. 
 Ridi, the dress of Gilbertine women, y. 
 
 19, p. 240 ; Sacredness of, v. 19, p. 289. 
 Ridley, Barbara, Dorothy Musgrave's 
 
 maid, v. 20, p. 277. 
 Righteousness, Definition of, v. 22, p. 
 
 558. 
 Riot in Samoa on the German Emperor's 
 
 birthday, v. 19, p. 418. 
 Risingham, Alicia, friend of Joanna 
 
 Sedley, v. 8, p. 200. 
 Risingham, Earl of, a Lancastrian 
 
 leader, v. 8, p. 226 ; Death of, v. 8, p. 
 
 272. 
 Rivers, Intermittent, in Samoa, v. 17, p. 
 
 104 ; Scotch, Beauties of, v. 13, p. 231. 
 Road of Gratitude, Gift of the, to Steven- 
 son, V. 17, p. 305 ; Stevenson's address 
 
 on receiving the, v. 17, p. 316-322. 
 Roads, Essay, v. 22, p. 83-91. 
 Robbie, T., an Edinburghi lawyer, friend 
 
 of Roraaine, v. 21, p. 314. 
 Robie, gardener at Swanston Cottage, 
 
 V. 21, p. 76, 388, 481. 
 Robinson Crusoe, Truth of, to life, v. 
 
 13, p. 338. 
 
 662 
 
INDEX 
 
 Rocky Mountains, Scenery of, v. 15, p. 
 
 128, 146. 
 KoUes, Simon, the young man in holy 
 
 orders, v. 1, p. 127. 
 Romaine, Daniel, attorney of Count de 
 
 at. Ives, V. 21, p. 39 ; Meeting of, with 
 
 St. Ives at Ainersham Place, v. 21, p. 
 
 203 ; In Paris, v. 21, p. 467. 
 Romance, A Gossip on, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 327-343. 
 Romance, Human craving for, v. 13, p. 
 
 164; The essential quality of, v. 13, 
 
 p. 338. 
 Ronaldsay, Orkney Island, Barbarity 
 
 of natives of, v. 18, p. 245. 
 Rorie, a servant of Gordon Darnaway, 
 
 v. 7, p. 10. 
 Rosa quo Locorum, Essay, v. 22, p. 
 
 436-445. 
 Rosen, Anna, Countess von, mistress of 
 
 Gondremark, v. 4, p. 81. 
 Rotoava, metropolis of the Paumotus, 
 
 V. 19, p. 162. 
 Rowley, George, valet to St. Ives, v. 
 
 21, p. 187 ; Retmion of, with St. Ives, 
 
 V. 21, p. 470. 
 Royal Sport Nautique, The, Essay, v. 
 
 12, p. 14-19. 
 RuUion Green, Battle of, v. 14, p. 390- 
 
 394. 
 
 Sailors, Dialect of, v. 15, p. 8 ; off Bell 
 
 Rock, Dissatisfaction of, v. 18, p. 347. 
 St. Germain de Calberte, a C^veunes 
 
 hamlet, v. 12, p. 268. 
 St. Giles's Church, Edinbtirgh, v. 12, p. 
 
 297. 
 St. Ives, a story of a French prisoner in 
 
 England, v. 21 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 
 
 210, 212, 242-246, 260, 299, 301, 324, 
 
 334, 350. 
 St. Ives, Count de, uncle of Anne de 
 
 St. Ives, V. 21, p. 193. 
 St. Ives, Alain, Viscount de, cousin of 
 
 Anne de St. Ives, v. 21, p. 215 ; Meet- 
 ing of, with Anne at the Assembly 
 
 Ball, V. 21, p. 382 ; In Paris, v. 21, p. 
 
 457. 
 St. Ives, Viscount Anne de, a French 
 
 prisoner in England, v. 21, p. 1. 
 Sdkuma-Shozan, Yoshida's teacher in 
 
 Dutch, V. 14, p. 154. 
 Saluafata, attacked by Mataafa, v. 19, 
 
 p. 501. 
 Salvini, Stevenson's petition to, v. 18, 
 
 p. 151. 
 Salvini's Macbeth, Essay, v. 22, p. 205- 
 
 211. 
 Sambre and Oise Canal, The, Essay, v. 
 
 12, p. 53-58. 
 Sambre Canalised, two essays, v. 12, p. 
 
 25-30, 42-47. 
 Sambre, Pont-sur-, Essay, v. 12, p. 31-41. 
 Samoa, History of, v. 19, p. 375-391 ; 
 
 Letters to English papers, v. 22, p. 451- 
 
 500 ; Life in, v. 17 ; v. 22, p. 501-527 ; 
 natives of, Manners of, v. 17, p. 82; 
 Love of, for Stevenson, v. 17, p. 306 ; 
 Political troubles in, v. 17, p. 70, 74 ; 
 prison in, Visit of Stevenson to a, v. 
 17, p. 269 ; Seizure of, by the Ger- 
 mans, V. 19, p. 419. 
 
 "Samoa Times," Purchase of, v. 22, p. 
 467, 476. 
 
 San Francisco, Adventures of Pinker- 
 ton and Dodd in, v. 10, p. 109 ; De- 
 scription of the City Front, v. 10, p. 
 141 ; First view of, v. 15, p. 148. 
 
 Sand, George, Adventure of, at Laus- 
 Bonne, v. 22, p. 187. 
 
 Sang, Capt., Captain of the Rose, v. 6, 
 p. 235. 
 
 Satirist, The, Sketch, v. 22, p. 1-4. 
 
 Say not of me that weakly I declined. 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 152. 
 
 Saying of the Name, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 p. 335. 
 
 Scandal, Ignominy of repeating, v. 4, p. 
 428. 
 
 Scotch border family. A, v. 20, p. 64 ; 
 dialect. Glossary of, v. 20, p. 163 ; 
 Drove roads, v. 21, p. 107 ; rivers. 
 Beauties of, v. 13, p. 231 ; Rebels (nee 
 Covenanters ; Jacobites) ; Supersti- 
 tions, V. 12, p. 304, 351 ; V. 15, p. 219 ; 
 Tale of Tod Lapraik, v. 6, p. 156 ; v. 
 7, p. 1-68, p. 127-141. 
 
 Scotland, in the 18th century, v. 20, p. 
 173-269 ; V. 5 ; v. 6 ; v. 9 ; Difference 
 of, from England, v. 13, p. 181 ; Early 
 19th century, v. 21 ; Lighthouse op- 
 erations in, V. 18, p. 235, 241 ; Race 
 rivalry in, v. 13, p. 181 ; Similarity of 
 France to, v. 22, p. 181-183. 
 
 Scots Abroad, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 337-341. 
 
 Scotsman's Return from Abroad, The, 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 184. 
 
 Scott, James, Death of, off Bell Rock, 
 V. 18, p. 319. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, Carelessness of, in lit- 
 erary style, V. 13, p. 341 ; Comparison 
 of, with Fielding, v. 14, p. 18; In 
 court, V. 12, p. 301 ; Influence of sur- 
 roundings on, V. 12, p. 304; Literary 
 progenitor of Hugo, v. 14, p. 24 ; 
 Meeting of St. Ives witb, v, 21, p. 
 108 ; Stevenson's early love for, v. 22, 
 p. 443 ; The king of romance, v. 13, p. 
 340. 
 
 Scottish nomenclature. Confusion of, 
 V. 18, p. 201. 
 
 Scrivener's cramp, Stevenson suffers 
 from, V. 17, p. 174. 
 
 ScrjTnseour, Francis, illegitimate son 
 of Gen. Vandeleur, v. 1, p. 157. 
 
 Scuddamore, Silas Q., a young Ameri- 
 can in Paris, v. 1, p. 42. 
 
 Sculpture in Greyfriars' graveyard, v, 
 12, p. 312. 
 
 663 
 
INDEX 
 
 Sea, English love of the, v. 13, p. 111. Sim, a Scotch drover, v. 21, p. 101 ; Re. 
 
 See also Ocean. lease of, from prison, v. 21, p. 326. 
 
 Sea Fogs, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 385-391. Sing cleailier, Muse, or evermore be 
 
 Sebright, Lascelles, Lieutenant of still. Poem, v. 16, p. 144. 
 
 H. M. S. Tempest, v. 10, p. 310. Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, 
 
 Seccombe, Alpheus Q., an American Poem, v. 16, p. 262. 
 
 naval captain, v. 21, p. 446. Singing, Poem, v. 16, p. 12. 
 
 Second Cabin, Essay, v. 15, p. 1-9. Singing on an euiigiaut train, v. 15, p. 
 
 Secundra Dass, a native of India, friend 118. 
 
 of Ballantrae, v. 9, p. 169. Sinking Ship, The, Fable, v. 20, p. 
 
 Sedley, Joanna, ward of Sir D. Brack- 452-454. 
 
 ley, V. 8, p. 26. Siphano, Description of, v. 18, p. 118. 
 
 Seeking of the Name, The, Poem, v. Sire de Mal^troit's Door, v. 1, p. 317- 
 
 16, p. 340. 344. 
 
 Siguier, Spirit, a Camisard leader, v. Sisters, Two unforgiving, v. 12, p. 308. 
 
 12, p. 237. Siteoni, an Hawaiian sailor, v. 19, p. 
 
 Selden, a retainer of Sir Daniel Brack- 417. 
 
 ley, v. 8, p. 24. Siva, native song and dance, v. 17, p. 
 
 Self-confidence, Endurance o^v.l3,p. 17. 195. 
 
 Self, truth to. Ethical value of, v. 22, p. Skeleton Island, Discovery of map of, 
 
 566. V. 2, p. 47 ; Landing of the Hispaniola 
 
 Senfft von Pilsach, Baron, President of at, v. 2, p. 102. 
 
 the Municipal Board, Apia, v. 22, p. Skelt, Toy dramas of, v. 13, p. 311. 
 
 455-470. Skerryvore, Poem, v. 16, p. 147. 
 
 Sensitive-plant in South Sea Islands, v. Skerryvore, The Parallel, Poem^ v. 16, 
 
 17, p. 12, 15. p. 148. 
 
 Seraphina, Princess Amelia, wife of Sketches, v. 22, p. 1-19. 
 
 Otto, V. 4, p. 86. Slander, Fable, v. 20, p. 472. 
 
 Sermaise, Duel of, with Villon, v. 14, p. Slave-trade, a play, v. 20, p. 335-395. 
 
 177. Slaying of Tdmat^a, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 Servants as gentlemen, v. 14, p. 348. p. 271. 
 
 Sewall, H. M., American Consul in Small Testament, early poems of Villon, 
 
 Samoa, v. 17, p. 23 ; v. 19, p. 433. v. 14, p. 171. 
 Sex, Influence of, v. 15, p. 65. Smeaton, John, Robert Stevenson's re- 
 Sexes, Diflference between the, v. 13, p. gard for, v. 18, p. 271 ; The pioneer of 
 
 24 ; Talk between, v. 13, p. 289. engineering, v. 18, p. 212 ; daughter 
 
 Shairp, Book of, on Burns, v. 14, p. 46. of, Interest of the, in Bell Rock, v. 18, 
 
 Sheepshanks, Elshander, an amateur p. 355. 
 
 aeronaut, v. 21, p. 409. Smeaton, vessel employed in opera- 
 
 Shelton, Richard, a ward of Sir D. tions at Bell Rock, v. 18, p. 273 ; 
 
 Brackley, v. 8, p. 2. Takes ballast from the Bell Rock, v. 
 
 Sh epherd s, Life of the, in Scotland, v. 13, 18, p. 311. 
 
 p. 231-240. Smethurst, an innkeeper, v. 22, p. 74-82. 
 
 Shogun, Opposition of, to the Reforma- Smith, George, a robber, v. 20, p. 182. 
 
 tion, V. 14, p. 161. Smith, Janet, daughter of Thomas 
 
 Shoreby, Lord, a Lancastrian noble, v. Smith, v. 18, p. 211. 
 
 8, p. 142 ; Death of, v. 8, p. 225. Smith, Jean, daughter of Thomas Smith, 
 
 Shoreby-on-the-Till, a Lancastrian v. 18, p. 211 ; Marriage of, to Robert 
 
 stronghold, v. 8, p. 139 ; Battle of, v. Stevenson, v. 18, p. 218. See aluo Ste- 
 
 8, p. 260. venson, Jean (her stepmother). 
 
 Shovels of Newton Frencli, a projected Smith, Thomas, stepfather of Robert 
 
 story, V. 17, p. 46. Stevenson, v. 18, p. 208. 
 
 Shuan, Mr., first mate of the Covenant, Smollett, Alexander, Captain of the 
 
 V. 5, p. 59. Hispaniola, v. 2, p. 66. 
 
 Sick Child, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 138. Socialism, Growth of, in England, v. 15, 
 
 Sick Man, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 42-52. p. 52 ; Possibility of, v. 22, p. 288- 
 
 SiCK Man and the Fireman, The, 301. 
 
 Fable, v. 20, p. 457. Some Aspects of Robert Burns, Essay, 
 
 Sickness, Benumbing effects of, v. 13, p. v. 14, p. 46-86. 
 
 83 ; Resemblance of, to old age, v. 13, Some College Memories, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 89. p. 191-198. 
 
 Silver, John, cook on the Hispaniola, v. Some Gentlemen in Fiction, Essay, v. 
 
 2, p. 55 ; V. 20, p. 447. 14, p. 361-373. 
 
 Silverado Squatters, essays on Call- Some Portraits by Raeburn, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 fomia, V. 15, p. 315-428. p. 126-135, 
 
 664 
 
INDEX 
 
 Somerset, Paul, an impecunious barris- 
 ter, V. 3, p. 1 ; Adventures of, v. 3, p. 
 
 83-178, 245-256. 
 Something in It, a fable of the South 
 
 Seas, V. 20, p. 480-483. 
 Song of Rah^ro, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 271-303. 
 Song of the Morrow, The, Fable, v. 20, 
 
 p. 503-507. 
 Song of the Eoad, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 98. 
 SoNas OF Travel, and Othke Verses, 
 
 V. 16, p. 199-270. 
 Sophia Scarlet, a projected story, v. 
 
 17, p. 117. 
 Soul, Nature of the, v. 22, p. 655. 
 Soulis, £ev. Murdoch, the parson of 
 
 Bal weary, v. 7, p. 127. 
 Soutar, mate of a praam boat at Bell 
 
 Bock, V. 18, p. 239. 
 South Seas, Life in, v. 11, p. 223-399 ; 
 
 V. 19 ; V. 4, p. 243-409 ; v. 17 ; v. 10; 
 
 First impressions of the, v. 19, p. 2. 
 Spaewife, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 169. 
 Speculative Society, Edinburgh, v. 13, p. 
 
 215. 
 Speedy, a workman, debtor to Loudon, 
 
 v. 10, p. 133. 
 Spencer, H., Influence of, on Whitman, 
 
 v. 14, p. 88. 
 Spinsters' ball at Apia, v. 17, p. 18a 
 Spirited Old Lady, Narrative of a, v. 3, p. 
 
 90-122. 
 Squire of Dames, The, v. 3, p. 11-21. 
 Stanislao Moanatini, son of Temoana, 
 
 V. 19, p. 80. 
 Starry Drive, A, Essay, v. 15, p. 398- 
 
 402. 
 
 V. 18, p. 205 ; Arrested as a vagrant 
 in France, v. 15, p. 196 ; Autobiogra- 
 phy of, V. 13, p. 177-358 ; V. 17 ; As an 
 employer of labor, v. 17, p. 58 ; De- 
 sires of, for early breakfast, v. 17, p. 
 69; Early literary experiences, v. 2, 
 p. ix.; V. 13, p. 211, 215, 220 ; Early es- 
 say of, V. 13, p. 223-230 ; Life of, in 
 California, v. 15, p. 315-428 ; In the 
 South Seas, v. 17 ; Interview of, with 
 King Laupepa, v. 17, p. 85 ; Intimacy 
 of, with Jenkin, v. 18, p. 151 ; Meth- 
 ods of, in imaginative work, v. 20, p. 
 159 ; mother of. Arrival of, in Samoa, 
 V. 17, p. 62; Participation of, in Sa- 
 moan politics, v. 17, p. xiv., 71 ; Per- 
 sonality of, V. 17, p. vii.-xv. ; Quarrel 
 of, with Jenkin, v. 18, p. 162 ; Recon- 
 ciliation of, with German consulate in 
 Samoa, v. 17, p. 132 ; Sickness of, at 
 Honolulu, V. 17, p. 267 ; Tabooed by 
 German consulate, v.,17,jp.91 ; Threat- 
 ened with deportation from Samoa, v. 
 17, p. 165 ; Trips of, to Sydney, v. 17, 
 p. 42, 214 ; Weighing coins for accu- 
 racy in The Wrecker, v. 17, p. 87 ; 
 Workmen of, in Samoa, v. 17, p. 7, 58, 
 99, 130, 270. 
 
 Stevenson, Mrs. Robert Louis, Life of, 
 in the South Seas, v. 17 ; Joint author, 
 V.3. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert, v. 13, p. 258-264. 
 
 Stewart, Alan Breck, a Highland Jaco- 
 bite, V. 5, p. 65 ; Flight of, from the 
 Highlands, v. 6, p. 150; Escape of, 
 from Scotland, v. 6, p. 137 ; Reunion of, 
 with Balfour in Leyden, v. 6, p. 326 ; 
 Meeting of, with Ballantrae, v. 9, p. 
 
 Stealing, True nature of, v. 22, p. 541- 
 
 550. 36. 
 
 Steerage Scenes, Essay, v. 15, p. 20-28. Stewart, Charles, attorney for James 
 
 Steerage Types, Essay, v. 15, p. 29-41. Stewart, v. 6, p. 13 ; Political schemes 
 
 Steiermark, Fleeming Jenkin visits, v. of, at the trial of James, v. 6, p. 181. 
 
 18, p. 147. Stewart, James, a Jacobite, v. 5, p. 161. 
 
 Stevenson, Meaning of the name, v. 18, Stewart, Margaret, second wife of Knox, 
 
 p. 202. V. 14, p. 321. 
 
 Stevenson, Alan, great-grandfather of Storms, oflf the Bell Rock, v. 18, p. 293, 
 
 Robert Louis, v. 18, p. 205. 323, 332 ; In Samoa, v. 17, p. 32, 110 ; 
 
 Stevenson, Jean, great-grandmother of v. 19, p. 543. 
 
 Robert Louis, v. 18, p. 206 ; Second Stowaways, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 53-68. 
 
 marriage of, v. 18, p. 211. See also Strange Case op Dr. Jekyll and Mr, 
 
 Smith, Jean (her stepdaughter). Hyde, a tale of dual personality, v. 7, 
 
 Stevenson, John, a Covenanter, v. 18, p. p. 281-372. 
 
 _ 198. Strike at Fairbaim's works, v. 18, p. 52. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert, grandfather of Rob- Strikes, Causes of, v. 15, p. 51. 
 
 ert Louis, v. 13, p. 242 ; v. 18, p. 206; Strong, Austin, v. 17, p. 191, 286 ; Letters 
 
 , V. 13, p 
 Marriage of, to Jean Smith, v. 18, p. 
 218 ; Letters of, to his family, v. 18, p. 
 223-230; Services of, under the Board 
 of Northern Lights, v. 18, p. 232; Re- 
 lations of, to Lighthouse-keepers, v. 
 18, p. 252-260; Love of the pictur- 
 esque in, V. 18, p. 266 ; Account of, of 
 building of the Bell Rock Light, v. 18, 
 p. 275-366. 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, Ancestry of. Student life, v. 22, p'. 22-56 
 
 663 
 
 to, V. 22, p. 512-527. 
 Strong, Mrs. Isobel, stepdaughter of 
 
 Stevenson, v. 17. 
 Strong, J. D., American artist with 
 
 Hawaiian Embassy, v. 19, p. 415 ; One 
 
 of the Silverado squatters, v. 15, p. 
 
 399. 
 Stubbs, Mr., an Englishman on a walk* 
 
 ing tour in France, v. 1, p. 369. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Study, Danger of too constant, ▼. 13, p. Tari CoflBn, native of Oahu, ▼. 19, p. 2a 
 
 197. Tarleton, Mr., a missionai-y, v. i, p. 286. 
 
 Stuebel, Dr., German Consul in Samoa, Tarn, In the Valley of the, Essay, v. 12, 
 
 V. 19, p. 403, 555. p. 241-251. 
 
 Style in Literature, On Some Technical Tarquair, Ninian, a Covenanter, v. 22, p. 
 
 Elements of, v. 22, p. 243-265. 400, 405. 
 
 Submarine cables. See Telegraph Cables. Taxes, Difficulties over, in Samoa, v. 22, 
 
 Suicide, among the Marquesans, v. 19, p. p. 463-472. 
 
 32 ; Difficulty of committing, v. 11, p. Te Kop, a native dancer in Apemama, 
 
 V. 19, p. 343. 
 
 Suicide Club, The, v. 1, p. 3-101. 
 
 Teach, Capt., a pirate, v. 9, p. 40. 
 
 Sunday, at Eairaid, v. 13, p. 253 ; On Tebureimoa, King of Butaritari, v. 19, 
 
 board ship, v. 15, p. 18 ; In Butaritari, 
 
 V. 19, p. 246 ; In Edinburgh, v. 21, p. 
 
 315-323; Work on, on Bell Rock 
 
 Light, v. 18, p. 283. 
 Sun's Travels, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 31. 
 Simset in Samoa, Description of, v. 17, 
 
 p. 136. 
 Superfluous Mansion, The, v. 3, p. 83- 
 
 178, 245-256. 
 Superstition, denounced in Notre Dame, 
 
 v. 14, p. 27 ; In Apemama, v. 19, p. 350 ; 
 
 In the Orkney Islands, v. 18, p. 245-249; 
 
 p. 226 ; Nicknamed Mr. Corpse, v. 19, 
 p. 234; Fourth of July celebrated by, v. 
 19, p. 250 ; Visit of, to Stevenson, v. 19, 
 p. 277. 
 
 Technical Elements of Style in Litera- 
 ture, V. 22, p. 243-265. 
 
 Telegraph cables, dredging for, Method 
 of, V. 18, p. 108 ; Encrusted in coral, v. 
 18, p. 107 ; Jenkin's work laying, v. 18, 
 p. 84-135 ; Kinks in, v. 18, p. 109 ; 
 Machines for laying, v. 18, p. 86 ; tak- 
 ing up, Methods of, v. 18, p. 95. 
 
 In Paumotus, v. 19, p. 192, 198, 200 ; In Telpherage, Jenkin's invention of, v. 
 
 Polynesia, v. 19, p. 35, 54 ; In Samoa, 18, p. 187. 
 
 v. 17, p. 34, 36, 172 ; v. 22, p. 504-511, Tembinatake, uncle of Tembinok', v. 19, 
 
 524 ; Scotch, v. 6, p. 156 ; v. 7, p. 1-68, p. 365. 
 
 127-141 ; V. 12, p. 304, 351 ; The House Tembinok', King of Apemama, v. 19, p. 
 
 -   —- 299-368. 
 
 of tlie Eld, Fable, v. 20, p. 463-470 
 
 See also Hoodoo ; Taboo. 
 Surname of Stevenson, Essay, v. 18, p. 
 
 195-204. 
 Susquehanna River, Beauties of, v. 15, 
 
 p. 105. 
 Swanston Cottage, the home of the 
 
 Gilchrists, v. 21, p. 75, 301, 354, 480. 
 Swanston, History of, v. 12, p. 353. 
 Swing, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 35. 
 Sydney, Adventures of Norris Carthew 
 
 in, V. 10, p. 392 ; Trips of Stevenson to, 
 
 V. 17, p. 42, 214. 
 Syra, Description of, v. 18, p. 112. 
 System, Poem, v. 16, p. 20. 
 
 Taahauku, Description of, v. 19, p. 108. 
 Tabary, Guy, companion of Villon, v. 1, 
 
 p. 289 ; V. 14, p. 180, 187. 
 Taboo, V. 4. p. 243-339 ; Against liquor, 
 
 V. 19, p. 250, 269 ; On Equator Town, 
 
 Temoana, King of the Marquesas, v. 19, 
 
 p. 77. 
 Temptation, Cowardice of avoiding, v. 13, 
 
 p. 26. 
 Tenement-houses in Edinburgh, v. 12, p. 
 
 289-296. 
 Tentaillon, Mme., a French innkeeper, 
 
 V. 7, p. 199. 
 Terutak', a medicine-man in Apemama, 
 
 V. 19, p. 353-361. 
 Thackeray, Wm. M., Gentlemen char- 
 acters of, V. 14, p. 372. 
 The infinite shining heavens, Poem, v. 
 
 16, p. 205. 
 The morning drum-call on my eager ear. 
 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 223. 
 The tropics vanish, and meseems that I, 
 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 243. 
 Theatre, toy, Joys of the, v, 13, p. 308. 
 Theft, True nature of, v. 22, p. 541-550. 
 
 V. 19, p. 316 ; Stevenson protected by, Their Laureate to an Academy Class 
 
 V. 19, p. 260 ; Uses of, in Polynesia, v 
 
 19, p. 50-56. 
 Tadpole, The, and the Frog, Fable, v. 
 
 20, p. 479. 
 Tai-o-hae, capital of Nuka-hiva, v. 19, 
 
 p. 67. 
 Taipi-Kikino, native chief, v. 19, p. 6, 47. Through the Golden Valleyj 
 Talk and Talkers, Essay, v. 13, p. 265- 12, p. 93-95. 
 
 292. Ticonderoga, Poem, v. 16, p. 335-345. 
 
 Tamasese, King of Samoa, v. 19, p. 408, Time to Rise, Poem, v. 16, p. 36. 
 
 Dinner Club, Poem, v. 16, p. 178. 
 
 Thomson, Sir William, Friendship of 
 Jenkin for, v. 18, p. 68. 
 
 Thought, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 2. 
 
 Thrawn Janet, a tale of Scotch super- 
 stition, v. 7, p. 127-141. 
 
 V. 
 
 421, 446, 448, 456, 471 ; v. 22, p. 487, 491. 
 Taniera Mahinui, catechist and convict, 
 
 v. 19, p. 172. 
 •'Tapping," The trade of, v. 15, p. 78. 
 
 To , Poem, v. 16, p. 221. 
 
 To a Gardener, Poem, v. 16, p. 107. 
 
 To an Inland Princess, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 666 
 
INDEX 
 
 To Andrew Lang, Poem, v. 16, p. 117. 
 
 To any Reader, Poem, v. 16, p. 87. 
 
 To Auntie, Poem, v. 16, p. 81. 
 
 To Compi6gne, Essay, v. 12, p. 101-103. 
 
 To Dr. Hake, Poem, v. 16, p. 220. 
 
 To Dr. John Brown, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 193. 
 To JF.* J. S., Poem^ v. 16, p. 128. 
 To H. F. Brown, Poem, v. 16, p. 116. 
 To K. De M., Poem, v. 16, p. 110. 
 To Kalakaua, Poem, v. 16, p. 234. 
 To Minnie, Poem, v. 16, p. 82, 109. 
 _ - - p, 
 
 oem, V. 16, p. 
 
 To Mrs. Will H. Low, 
 
 114. 
 To Mother Maryanne, Poem^ v. 16, p. 
 
 236. 
 To Moy, Essay, v. 12, p. 81-86. 
 To My Father, Poem, v. 16, p. 140. 
 To My Mother, Poem, v. 16, p. 80. 
 To My Name-Child, Poem, v. 16, p. 85. 
 To My Old Familiars, Poem^ v. 16, p. 
 
 241. 
 To My Wife, Poem, v. 16, p. 238. 
 To N. V. De G. S., Poem, v. 16, p. 111. 
 To Princess Kaiulani, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 235. 
 To S. C, Poem, v. 16, p. 245. 
 To S. R. Crockett, Poem, v. 16, p. 264. 
 
 VENNES, fire essays, v. 12, p. 143- 
 
 277 ; Proposed opening chapter of, v. 
 
 22, p. 177-190. 
 Teeasurk Island, a tale of pirates, v. 
 
 2 ; Writing of, v. 2, p. ix.-xx.; Failure 
 
 of, to please readers, v. 8, Dedication. 
 
 See also Persons of the Tale, v. 20, p. 
 
 447-451. 
 Treasure of Franchard, The, a tale 
 
 of the French provinces, v. 7, p. 199- 
 
 278. 
 Tr61at, Emile, Letter of, concerning^ 
 
 Jenkin, v. 18, p. 173-176. 
 Trelawney, John, a friend of Dr. Livesey, 
 
 V. 2, p. 43. 
 Trent, Jacob, Captain of the Flyinff- 
 
 Scud, V. 10, p. 447. 
 Tropic Rain, Poem, v. 16, p. 257. 
 Trunk, Saratoga, Story of, v. 1, p. 42-75. 
 Truth of Intercourse, Essay, v. 13, p. 
 
 40-50. 
 Tui-ma-le-alii-fano, Visit of, to the Chief 
 
 Justice, V. 17, p. 279. 
 Tuitui in the South Sea Islands, v. 17, 
 
 p. 12, 15. 
 Tunbridge-Wells, in the early 19th 
 
 century, v. 20, p. 275-329. 
 Tunstall hamlet, v. 8, p. 1. 
 
 To the Golden Gates, Essay, v. 15, p. Tupuas, War of the, v. 22, p. 487. 
 
 143-148. 
 To the Muse, Poem, v. 16, p. 240. 
 
 Turner, Sir James, leader of the perse- 
 cutors, V. 14, p. 379-385. 
 
 To the Pentland Hills, Essay, v. 12, p. Tusitala, a title addressed to Stevenson, 
 
 348-358, 
 
 To W. E. Henley, Poem, v. 16, p. 122. 
 To Will H. Low, Poem, v. 16, p. 172. 
 
 V. 17, p. 108-306. 
 Twenty Captains, The, by Hayward, v. 
 14, p. 331. 
 
 To Willie and Henrietta, Poem^ v. 16, Two Matches, The, Fable, v. 20, p. 455, 
 
 p. 79. 456. 
 
 To you, let snow and roses, Poem^ v. 
 
 16, p. 208. 
 Todd, John, a shepherd, v. 13, p. 233. 
 Toils and Pleasures, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 415-428. 
 Toll House, The, Essay, v. 15, p. 392- 
 
 397. 
 Tontine, v. 11, p. 1-219. 
 
 Ulufanua, Meaning of, v. 17, p. 72. 
 Uma, native wife of Wiltshire, v. 4, p* 
 
 248. 
 Umbrellas, The Philosophy of, Essay, 
 
 V. 22, p. 46-51. 
 Underwoods, ninety poems, v. 16, p. 
 
 97-265. 
 
 Torrance, Rev., minister near Hermis- Unforgotten, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 203. 
 
 ton, V. 20, p. 84. 
 
 United States. See America. 
 
 Touchstone, The, Fable, v. 20, p. 487- Universities, Scotch and English, Y. 13, 
 
 495. p. 186. 
 
 Toy theatres, v. 13, p. 306. Unpleasant places. Enjoyment of, v. 22, 
 
 Traders and their wives in Butaritari, v, p. 98-108. 
 
 19, p. 288. Unseen Playmate, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 Tramps, in the South Sea Islands, v. 11, 49. 
 
 p. 224-269 ; On American railroads, v. Upper Gfevaudan, two essays, r. 12, 
 
 15, p. 145. See also Beggars ; Stow- _p. 171-187, 215-224. 
 
 aways. 
 Trappist monastery, v. 12, p. 194. 
 Travailleurs de la Mer, Les, by Hugo, 
 
 V. 14, p. 33. 
 Travel, Poem, v. 16, p. 10. 
 Traveller, The Citizen and the. Fable, Vaea Mountain, Stevenson's home, v. 
 
 Urquart, Dr., Surgeon of H. M. S. Tem- 
 pest, V. 10, p. 313. 
 
 Utterson, G. J., Dr. Jekyll's lawyer, v. 
 7, p. 281. 
 
 v. 20, p. 475. 
 
 17, p. 1. 
 
 Travelling Merchant, The, Essay, v. 12, Vaea River, Description of, v. 17, p. 102. 
 p. 37-41. Vaekehu, wife of Temoana, v. 19, p. 77. 
 
 Travels with a Donkey m the C£. Vagabond, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 199. 
 
 667 
 
INDEX 
 
 Vailima Letters, v. 17; Instructions 
 
 to Colvin regarding, v. 17, p. 63. 
 Vaituliga, a Samoan stream, Descrip- 
 tion of, V. 17, p. 5, 29. 
 Valdevia, Theresa, assumed name of 
 
 Clara Luxmore, v. 3, p. 180-229. 
 Valentina of Milan, mother of Charles 
 
 of Orleans, v. 14, p. 202. 
 Vallejo, California, Description of, v. 15, 
 
 p. 316. 
 Van de Grift, Fanny. See Stevenson, 
 
 Mrs. R. L. 
 Van Tromp, Esther, daughter of Peter, 
 
 V. 3, p. 287. 
 Van Tromp, Peter, an artist and 
 
 " sponge," V. 3, p. 272. 
 Vandeleur, John, brother of Gen. Van- 
 
 deleur, v. 1, p. 146 ; Steals the Rajah's 
 
 diamond, v. 1, p. 179. 
 Vandeleur, Gen. Sir Thomas, owner of 
 
 the Rajah's diamond, v. 1, p. 106. 
 Vandeleur, Lady, v. 1, p. 107. 
 Vandeleur, Miss, daughter of John, v. 
 
 1, p. 170. 
 Vanity, Decay of, from experience, v. 
 
 13, p. 207 ; Of dogs, V. 13, p. 294 ; Of 
 
 youth, V. 13, p. 205. 
 Vausselles, Catherine de, friend of Vil- 
 lon, V. 14, p. 172. 
 Vauversin, M. de, a mountebank, v. 12, 
 
 p. 129. 
 Velay, Essay, v. 12, p. 143-167. 
 Venging of T6mat6a, The, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 p. 281. 
 Vicomte de Bragelonne, by A. Dumas, 
 
 V. 13, p. 315-326. 
 Vigitantes of San Francisco, v. 10, p. 
 
 142 ; In California, v. 15, p. 165. 
 Villa Quarters, The, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 329-331. 
 Village Communities of Painters, Es- 
 say, V. 15, p. 169-19L 
 Villon, FrauQois, Student, Poet, and 
 
 Housebreaker, Essay, v. 14, p. 166- 
 
 200 ; V. 1, p. 287. 
 Villon, Guillaume de, adopted father of 
 
 Francois, v. 14, p. 170. 
 Villon and the Gallows, Essay, v. 14, p. 
 
 188-193. 
 ViRGiNiBUS PUERISQUE, four essays, 
 
 V. 13, p. 3-50. 
 Visit from the Sea, A, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 106. 
 Vivarais, Description of, v. 12, p. 191. 
 
 Walden, a refuge for slaves, v. 14, p. 10. 
 
 Walker, Patrick, on the burial of mar- 
 tyrs, V. 12, p. 318. 
 
 Walking Tours, Essay, v. 13, p. 150-159. 
 
 Wallace, Col., leader of the rebel cav- 
 alry, V. 14, p. 391. 
 
 Wandering Willie, Poem, v. 16, p. 218. 
 
 War in Samoa, Threatenings of, v. 17, 
 p. 243 ; Commencement of, v. 17, p. 
 249 ; Declaration of, v. 17, p. 279. 
 
 War of the Roses, v. 8. 
 
 Watt, Jean, mistress of Brodie, v. 20, 
 p. 182. 
 
 We are Pedlars, Essay, v. 12, p. 31-36. 
 
 We have Loved of Yore, Poem, v. 16, 
 p. 212. 
 
 We uncommiserate pass into the night, 
 Poem, V. 16, p. 260. 
 
 Wealth, Popular worship of, v. 22, p. 
 572 ; Responsibility of, v. 22, p. 577. 
 
 Weber, Theodor, a German trader in 
 Samoa, v. 19, p. 397. 
 
 Weir, Adam, Lord Hermiston. See 
 Hermiston, Lord. 
 
 Weir, Archie, son of Lord Hermiston, 
 v. 20, p. 7 ; Return of, to Hermiston, 
 v. 20, p. 56 ; Quarrel of, with Chris- 
 tina, v. 20, p. 145. 
 
 Weir, Major, father of myths, v. 12, p. 
 307. 
 
 Weir of Hermiston, a story of Scot- 
 land in early 19th century, v. 20; 
 Criticism of, v. 20, p. 154 ; Writing of, 
 V. 17, p. 199, 257, 281. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, a typical gentle- 
 man, V. 14, p. 354. 
 
 Wendover, Description of, v. 22, p. 121- 
 132. 
 
 When aince AprUe has fairly come. 
 Poem, v. 16, p. 160. 
 
 Where go the Boats, Poem, v. 16, p. 15. 
 
 Whistlers, a sect in Paumotus, v. 19, p. 
 189. 
 
 White, Grant, Ignorance of, of America, 
 V. 13, p. 179. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, Essay, v. 14, p. 87- 
 115 ; Exaggeration in writings about, 
 v. 14, p. 8. 
 
 Whole Duty of Children, Poem, v. 16, 
 
 Wickham, Mr., a client of Michael 
 
 Finsbury, v. 11, p. 48. 
 Wicks, Joe, a South Sea captain, alias 
 
 Capt. Trent, v. 10, p. 153, 406. 
 Wild Youth, A, Essay, v. 14, p. 168-179. 
 Will o' the Mill, a tale of a German 
 
 innkeeper, v. 7, p. 69-103. 
 Willebroek Canal, On the. Essay, v. 12, 
 
 p. 8-13. 
 Willet, Miss, Pepys's mistress, v. 14, p. 
 
 270. 
 Wiltshire, John, a South Sea trader, v. 
 
 4, p. 243. 
 Wind, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 26. 
 Windy Nights, Poem, v. 16, p. 9. 
 Winter and New Year, Essay, v. 12, p. 
 
 340-347. 
 Winter-Time, Poem, v. 16, p. 41. 
 Winter's Walk, A, in Carrick and Gal- 
 loway, Fragment, v. 22, p. 134-145. 
 Wishart, Michael, Accident to, on Bell 
 
 Rock, v. 18, p. 328. 
 Woman's rule, Anomaly of, v. 14, p. 275. 
 Women, bad debaters, v. 13, p. 291; 
 
 Attention bestowed by, on all men. 
 
 668 
 
INDEX 
 
 V. 15, p. 70 ; Make good listeners, v. 
 
 13, p. 286 ; Position of, in tlie Gilbert 
 
 Islands, v. 19, p. 287-295; Raeburns 
 
 portraits of, v. 13, p. 134 ; Relations 
 
 of John Knox to, v. 14, p. 272-325; 
 
 Subjection of, v. 13, p. 291. 
 Woodman, The, Poem, v. 16, p. 252. 
 Woods and the Pacific, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 149-157. 
 Woods in Spring, The, Sketch, v. 22, p. 
 
 166-171. See also Forests. 
 Words, Inadequacy of, v. 14, p. 92 ; v. 
 
 22, p. 531-551 ; written, Rigidity of, 
 
 V. 13, p. 265. 
 Workhigmen, Conversational powers of, 
 
 V. 15, p. 79 ; English, Prosperity of, 
 
 V. 15, p. 51 ; Selfishness of, v. 15, p. 47. 
 Works, Essay, v. 14, p. 79-86. 
 Wreath of Immortelles, The, Sketch, v. 
 
 22, p. 8-13. 
 Wrecker, The, a story of adventure in 
 
 the South Seas, v. 10 ; Writing of, v. 
 
 17, p. 67, 87, 90. 
 Wrong Box, a story of a tontine, v. 11, 
 
 p. 1-219. 
 Wurmbrand, Capt,, Governor of a Sa- 
 
 moan prison, v. 17, p. 269. 
 Wyoming, Desert of, Essay, v. 15, p. 
 
 128-134. 
 
 Yellow Paint, The, a fable of quackery, 
 
 V. 20, p. 460-462. 
 York, The, Foundering of, on Bell Rock, 
 
 V. 18, p. 269. 
 Yoshida-Torajiro, Essay, v. 14, p. 150- 
 
 165. 
 Young Chevalier, The, Fragment, 
 
 V. 22, p. 373-393 ; Writing of, v. 17, p. 
 
 124, 146, 149, 164-166, 
 Young Man in Holy Orders, Story of 
 
 the, V. 1, p. 137-156. 
 Young Night Thought, Poem, v. 16, p. 
 
 4. 
 Youth, Essay, v. 14, p. 48-57. 
 Youth and Love, Poem, v. 16, p. 201. 
 Youth, Crabbed Age and, Essay, v. 13, 
 
 p. 51-66. 
 Youth, Follies of, v. 13, p. 63 ; Morbid 
 
 imaginings of, v. 13, p. 200 ; Should 
 
 be enjoyed while it lasts, v. 13, p. 
 
 60 ; Vanity of, v. 13, p. 205. 
 
 Zembsch, Capt., German Consul at Sa- 
 moa, V. 19, p. 398. 
 
 Zephyrine, Mme., a Parisienne, v. 1, p. 
 42. 
 
 Zero, the head of the Fenians, v. 3, p. 
 135 ; Tale of the Explosive Bomb, v. 
 3, p. 166-166 ; Death of, v. 3, p. 266. 
 
 669