Chapter 2

"Hope springs eternal in the human mind, I would be cruel only to be kind; 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, Survey mankind from Indus to Peru; How long by sinners shall thy courts be trod? An honest man's the noblest work of God."

_MS. Poem_--(original.)

Night, thick, heavy, deep night!--No star visible amid the sulphureous blackness of the overcharged clouds; and silence, dreadful as if distilled from the voicelessness of the graves of a buried world! Night and silence, the twins that keep watch over the destinies of the slumbering earth, which booms round in ceaseless revolution, grand, mystic, sublime, but yearns in the dim vastness of its sunless course, for the bright morning-hour which shall again invest it with a radiance fresh from heaven! Darkness, and night, and silence! and suddenly rushing down, on whirlwind wings, the storm burst fearfully upon their domain--wind and rain, and the hollow sound of the swaying branches! And Lawleigh pressed onward. His horse, which for several miles had shown symptoms of fatigue now yielded to the difficulties it could no longer encounter; and after a few heavy struggles, fell forward, and did not attempt to rise. Thirteen hours had elapsed from the time the chase on that day commenced, and unless for a short minute, he had seen nothing of the fugitive. Yet he had dashed onward, feeling occasionally his holsters, and satisfied that his pistols were in serviceable condition. He was now nearly as much exhausted as his horse; but determining to yield to no obstruction, he seized the pistols, and proceeded through the wood, leaving his gallant charger to its fate. Lawleigh was strong and active beyond most men of his day; and, when excited, more vigorous and determined than could have been supposed from the ordinary equanimity of his character. But here a great murder had been committed!--before his very eyes!--accusations had been hazarded!--and one soft voice dwelt for ever on his ear--"Find out the murderer, or see me no more." Had Lady Alice, indeed, allowed a suspicion to invade her mind, that he had been accessory to the death of Sir Stratford Manvers? But no!--he would pursue the dreadful thought no further. Sufficient that, after many efforts, he had regained a clue to the discovery of the tall man he had seen escape into the thicket. He had tracked him unweariedly from place to place--had nearly overtaken him in the cave of Nottingham Hill--caught glimpses of him in the gipsy camp at Hatton Grange--and now felt assured he was close upon his track in the savage ranges of Barnley Wold. Barnley Wold was a wild, uncultivated district, interspersed at irregular intervals with the remains of an ancient forest, and famous, at the period of our narrative, as the resort of many lawless and dangerous characters. Emerging from one of the patches of wood, which, we have said, studded the immense expanse of the wold, Lawleigh was rejoiced to perceive a faint brightening of the sky, which foretold the near approach of the morning. He looked all around, and, in the slowly increasing light, he thought he perceived, at the top of a rising ground at some distance, a shepherd's hut, or one of the rough sheds put up for the accommodation of the woodmen. He strove to hurry towards it, but his gigantic strength failed at length; and, on reaching the humble cottage, he sank exhausted at the door. When he recovered consciousness, he perceived he was laid on a rough bed, in a very small chamber, illuminated feebly by the still slanting beams of the eastern sun. He slowly regained his full recollection; but, on hearing voices in the room, he shut his eyes again, and affected the same insensibility as before.

"What could I do?" said a voice, in a deprecating tone.

"Leave him to die, to be sure," was the rough-toned answer. "I thought thee had had enough of gentlefolks, without bringing another fair-feathered bird to the nest." There was something in the expression with which this was said, that seemed to have a powerful effect on the first speaker.

"After the years of grief I've suffered, you might have spared your taunt, George. The gentleman lay almost dead at the door, and you yourself helped me to bring him in."

"'Twould have been better, perhaps, for him if we had led him somewhere else; for your father seems bitter now against all the fine folks together."

"Because he fancies he has cause of hatred to me--but he never had," answered the girl.

"And the gentleman had pistols, too," said the man. "You had better hide them, or your father will maybe use them against the owner."

"I did not move them from the gentleman's breast. We must wake him, and hurry him off before my father's return--but, hark! I hear his whistle. Oh, George, what shall we do?"

Lawleigh, who lost not a syllable of the conversation, imperceptibly moved his hand to his breast, and grasped the pistol. The man and the girl, in the mean time, went to the door, and, in a minute or two, returned with a third party--an old man dressed like a gamekeeper, and carrying a short, stout fowling-piece in his hand. His eyes were wild and cruel, and his haggard features wore the impress of years of dissipation and recklessness. "Does he carry a purse, George?" said the new-comer, in a low whisper, as he looked towards the bed.

"Don't know--never looked," said George. "Where have you been all the week? We expected you home three days ago."

"All over the world, boy--and now you'll see me rest quiet and happy--oh, very! Don't you think I looks as gleesome, Janet, as if I was a gentleman?"

The tone in which he spoke was at variance with the words; and it is likely that his face belied the expression he attributed to it; for his daughter, looking at him for the first time, exclaimed--

"Oh, father! what has happened? I never saw you look so wild."

"Lots has happened, Janet--sich a lot o' deaths I've been in at, to be sure--all great folks, too, none o' your paltry little fellows of poachers or gamekeepers, but real quality. What do you think of a lord, my girl?"

"I know nothing about them, father."

"You used, though, when you lived at the big house. Well, I was a-passing, two nights since, rather in a hurry, for I was a little pressed for time, near the house of that old fellow that keeps his game as close as if he was a Turk, and they was his wives--old Berville--Lord Berville, you remember, as got Bill Hunkers transported for making love to a hen pheasant. Well, thinks I, I'll just make bold to ask if there's any more of them in his lordship's covers, when, bing, bang goes a great bell at the Castle, and all the village folks went up to see what it was. I went with them, and there we seed all the servants a rummaging and scrummaging through the whole house, as if they was the French; and, as I seed them all making free with snuff-boxes, and spoons, and such like, I thought I'd be neighbourly, and just carried off this gold watch as a keepsake of my old friend."

"Oh, father! What will his lordship do?"

"He'll rot, Janet, without thinking either about me or his watch; for he's dead. He was found in his bed that very morning when he was going to sign away all the estate from his nephew. So that it's lucky for that 'ere covy that the old boy slipt when he did. People were sent off in all directions to find him; for it seems the old jackdaw and the young jackdaw wasn't on good terms, and nobody knows where he's gone to."

"They would have known at Rosley Castle," said the girl, but checked herself, when her father burst out--

"To the foul fiend with Rosley Castle, girl! Will you never get such fancies out of your head. If you name that cursed house to me again, you die! But, ha! ha! you may name it now," he added, with a wild laugh. "We've done it."

"Who? Who have done it?"

"She and I," said the ruffian, and nodded towards the fowling-piece, which he had laid upon the table; "and now we're safe, I think; so give me some breakfast, girl, and ask no more foolish questions. You, George, get ready to see if the snares have caught us anything, and I'll go to bed in the loft. I'll speak to this springald when I get up."

"Done what, father?" said the girl, laying her hand on the old man's arm. "For mercy's sake, tell ne what it is you have done--your looks frighten me."

"Why, lodged a slug in the breast of a golden pheasant, that's all--a favourite bird of yours--but be off, and get me breakfast."

While waiting for his meal, he sat in an arm-chair, with his eyes fixed on the bed where Lawleigh, or, as we must now call him, Lord Berville, lay apparently asleep. What the ruffian's thoughts were we cannot say, but those of his involuntary guest were strange enough. His uncle dead, and the fortune not alienated, as, with the exception of a very small portion, he had always understood his predecessor had already done--his life at this moment in jeopardy; for a cursory glance at the tall figure of the marauder, as he had entered, had sufficed to show that the object of his search was before him--and too well he knew the unscrupulous villany of the man to doubt for a moment what his conduct would be if he found his pursuer in his power. If he could slip from the bed unobserved, and master the weapon on the table, he might effect his escape, and even secure the murderer; for he made light of the resistance that could be offered by the young woman, or by George. But he felt, without opening his eyes, that the glance of the old man was fixed on him; and, with the determination to use his pistol on the first demonstration of violence, he resolved to wait the course of events. The breakfast in the mean time was brought in, and Janet was about to remove the fowling-piece from the table, when she was startled by the rough voice of her father, ordering her to leave it alone, as it might have work to do before long.

The girl's looks must have conveyed an enquiry; he answered them with a shake of his head towards the bed. "I may have business to settle with _him_," he said, in a hoarse whisper; and the girl pursued her task in silence. The old man, after cautioning her not to touch the gun, turned to the dark press at one end of the room, and in about half a minute had filled his pipe with tobacco, and re-seated himself in the chair. But Janet had seized the opportunity of his back being turned, and poured the hot water from the teapot into the touch-hole, and was again busy in arranging the cups and saucers.

"Where's George?" enquired the father; "but poh, he's a chicken-hearted fellow, and would be of no use in case of a row"---- So saying, he went on with his breakfast.

"He's awake!" he said suddenly. "I seed his eye."

"Oh no, father! he's too weak to open his eyes--indeed he is."

"I seed his eye, I tell ye; and more than that, I've seed the eye afore. Ha! am I betrayed?"

He started up, and seized the fowling-piece. His step sounded across the floor, and Berville threw down the clothes in a moment, and sprang to his feet.

"_You_ here?" cried the ruffian, and levelled the gun, drew the trigger, and recoiled in blank dismay when he missed fire, and saw the athletic figure of Berville distended to its full size with rage, and a pistol pointed with deadly aim within a yard of his heart. He raised the but-end of his gun; but his daughter, rushing forward, clung to his arm.

"Fire not--but fly!" she cried to Berville. "Others are within call, and you are lost."

"Villain!" said Berville, "miscreant! murderer! you have but a moment to live"--and cocked the pistol.

"Let go my arm, girl," cried the old man, struggling.

"I have saved your life--I hindered the gun from going off--all I ask you in return is to spare my father." She still retained her hold on the old man's arm, who, however, no longer struggled to get it free.

"What! you turned against me?" he said, looking ferociously at the beautiful imploring face of his daughter. "You, to revenge whom I did it all! Do you know what I did? I watched your silken wooer till I saw him in the presence of this youth--I killed Sir Stratford Manvers"----

"And shall die for your crime," cried Berville; "but the death of a felon is what you deserve, and you shall have none other at my hands. In the mean time, as I think you are no fit companion for the young woman to whom I am indebted for my life, I shall offer her the protection of my mother, and take her from your house. If you consent to let us go in peace, I spare your life for the present; and will even for three days abstain from setting the emissaries of the law in search of you. After that, I will hunt you to the death. Young woman, do you accept my terms? If you refuse, your father dies before your face."

"Shall I accept, father?"

"If you stay, I lodge a bullet in your brain," said the old savage, and drew himself up.

"Come, then," said Berville, leading Janet to the door. She turned round ere she quitted the cottage, but met a glance of such anger and threatening, that she hurried forward with Berville, who pursued his way rapidly through the wood."

["That fits in very nicely," said Jack Stuart; "and you may be getting ready the five pound note, for I feel sure you know you back the losing horse. Can any thing be more like a genuine, _bona fide_ novel, the work of one man, and a devilish clever man too? Confess now, that if you didn't know the trick of it, you would have thought it a splendid original work? But perhaps you're throat's dry with so much reading? Here's another bottle of Lafitte; and we can miss over a volume and a half of foreign scenes, which you can imagine; for they are to be found in every one of the forty novels I sent for. Just imagine that the Countess takes her daughters abroad--that Berville encounters them in the Colosseum by moonlight--quarrels--doubts--suspicions--and a reconciliation; finally, they all come home, and you will find the last chapter of the last volume in this."

Jack handed me a volume, evidently popular among circulating library students, for it was very dirty; and I was just going to commence when Jack interrupted me.

"Stay," he said; "you must have a motto. Do you know Italian?"

"Not a word."

"Or Spanish, or German?"

"No."

"Well, you surely can recollect some Greek--for next to manuscript quotations and old plays, you can't do better than have some foreign lines at the beginning of the chapter. What Greek do you remember?--for, 'pon my honour; I've forgotten all mine."

"My dear Jack, I only know a line here and there."

"Out with them. Put them all in a row, and never mind the meaning."

Thus urged, I indited the following as a headpiece.]

"Deinè de clangè genet' argurioio bioio, Be d'akeion para thina poluphlosboio thalasses, Thelo legein Atreidas, thelo de Cadmon adein, Ton d'apomeibomenos prosephè podas-ocus Achilleus." HOMER, _Iliad,_ 1. I.

["Excellent! bravo!" said Jack; "they'll see at once the author is a gentleman and a scholar; and now go on."]

The crimson and gold drawing-room of Lorrington Caste was filled with company, the court-yard crowded with carriages, and the coachmen and footmen in gorgeous liveries, with a splendid white satin favour at the side of their hats. The view from the window----

["Stop," said Jack Stuart, "here's a better description. I cut it out of the _Times_"----]

The view from the window involved a spacious assemblage of all the numerous beauties and illustrations that cast a magnificent air of grandeur over one of

ENGLAND'S NOBLEST MANSIONS.

The extensive shrubberies clothed the verdant meads, and threw a shade of deep green tints over an

EXTENSIVE ARTIFICIAL LAKE,

on which floated, like a nymph or naiad, a beautiful

SAILING BOAT,

painted bright green, and fit for instant use. Further off, in one of those indistinct distances immortalized by the pencil of Turner--now softened into sober beauty by "the autumnal hue, the sear and yellow leaf," as an immortal bard expresses it, in language which the present writer does not imitate, and could not, without great difficulty, excel, was an

IMMENSE DAIRY FARM,

fit for the accommodation of

THIRTY MILK COWS,

of a peculiar breed, highly approved of by the

RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF SPENCER.

In other portions of the landscape rose statues which might have raised the envy of

PRAXITELES, THE GRECIAN SCULPTOR,

or attracted the love of the beautiful "Maid of France," who "sighed her soul away" in presence of

THE APOLLO BELVIDERE,

a figure, in the words of a living author,

"Too fair to worship, too divine to love."

The drawing-room of the mansion was of the amplest size, and contained some of the finest specimens of the taste and workmanship of

JACKSON AND GRAHAM,

enumerating Or-molu tables--escritoires--rosewood chairs richly inlaid--richly coloured

AXMINSTER CARPET,

and sofas covered with figured satin.

["That will do," said Jack. "Now go on with the book."]

But while the company were engaged in detached groups, waiting the signal for proceeding into the great hall, where the ceremony was to be performed by special license, Lord Berville sent a message to the Countess, that he wished to say a few words to Lady Alice, in the library, before the commencement of the ceremony that was to make him the happiest of men. He waited impatiently, and in a few minutes the bride appeared, radiant in joy and beauty. She started, when she saw seated beside him a beautiful young woman, plainly, but richly drest. They rose when Lady Alice appeared.

"Dearest Alice," said Berville, "I have told you that there was a person in this neighbourhood to whom my gratitude was unbounded, and who, I hope, has now an equal claim on yours, for she is the saviour of my life."

"Indeed?"

"Let it be a secret between us three," continued Berville; "but you agree with me, my friend," he said, turning to the stranger, "that there should be no reserve between a man and his wife. I told you, Alice, when we were at Rome, the story of an adventure I had on Barnley Wold, and of the heroic conduct of a young girl. In this lady you see her. She is now the wife of the vicar of my parish, and I trust will be a friend of both of us."

Lady Alice threw her arms round Janet's neck, and said, "I know it all; we shall be friends; and nothing makes one so happy as to know we shall be so near each other."

"Ah, madam, you know not how deeply I am indebted to his lordship's mother, for all her kindness, or how overpaid all my services are by the happiness of this moment."

"And now, having made you thus acquainted, I must ask you, my kind friend, to hurry Lady Alice to the great hall, where your husband, I trust, is waiting to tie the indissoluble band."

A joyous shout from the tenants assembled in the outer court, who became impatient for the appearance of the happy pair, gave evidence of the near approach of the happy moment, and Janet and Lady Alice hurried from the room. Lord Berville rang the bell. His servant appeared, being no other than our old acquaintance George, now softened by a year's sojourn in a foreign land.

"George," said Lord Berville, "no one in the earth knows your position; from this hour, therefore, you cease to be my servant, and are the steward of my Lincolnshire estate. Your uncle's fate is unknown?"

"His fate is known, my lord, that he died by his own hand in the hut on Barnley Wold; but his crimes are undiscovered."

"Be it so; let them be alluded to between us no more. Your cousin Janet is the happy wife of my friend and chaplain; and I am delighted to show my appreciation of her nobleness and purity, by all the kindness I can bestow on her relations. Go down to Lincolnshire, Mr Andrews," said his lordship, shaking hands with George, "and when you are installed in the mansion-house, write to me; and now, farewell."

It is difficult to say whose heart was most filled with joy on this eventful day. Lady Matilda, now happily married to Lord Merilands of the Guards, and the lovely Lady Mary Rosely, (shortly to be united to the young Earl of Gallowdale,) were pleased at the happiness of their friends; and certainly no prayer seemed to be more likely to receive its accomplishment than that which was poured forth, amidst the ringing of bells and the pealing of cannon, for the health and prosperity of Lord and Lady Berville.

Jack Stuart sat, with his eyes turned up to the ceiling, as if he were listening to the music of the spheres.

"The best novel I have ever read!" he exclaimed; "and now, all I have got to do is to get it copied fairly out, dedicate it to Lord William Lennox or Mr Henry Bulwer, and get my five or six hundred guineas. It is a capital thing to lose on the Derby; for unless I had been drawn for the hundred and fifty, I don't think the dovetail novel would ever have come into my head."

* * * * *

INSCRIPTION ON THE FOUNDATION STONE OF THE NEW DINING-HALL, &c., NOW ERECTING FOR THE HON. SOCIETY OF LINCOLN'S INN.

Stet lapis arboribus nudo defixus in horto Fundamen pulchræ tempus in omne domûs. Aula vetus lites legumque ænigmata servet, Ipsa nova exorior nobilitanda coquo.

FREE TRANSLATION.

No more look For shady nook, Poor perspiring stranger! Trees for bricks Cut their sticks, Lo! our _salle-à-manager!_

Yon old hall, For suit and brawl, Still be famed in story; This must look To the cook For its only glory!

O.O.

* * * * *

SCROPE ON SALMON FISHING.

_Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in the Tweed_. By WILLIAM SCROPE, Esq., F.L.S. 1 vol. royal 8vo. London, 1843.

We have here a work of great beauty in a pictorial and typographical point of view, and one which abounds with practical information regarding the bolder branches of the "gentle art." Mr Scrope conveys to us, in an agreeable and lively manner, the results of his more than twenty years' experience as an angler in our great border river; and having now successfully illustrated, both with pen and pencil, two of the most exciting of all sporting recreations--deer-stalking and salmon-fishing--he may henceforward repose himself upon the mountain-side, or by the murmuring waters, with the happy consciousness of having not only followed the bent of his own inclinations, but contributed to the amusement and instruction of a numerous class of his fellow creatures. The present volume consists of no dry didactic dissertations on an art unteachable by written rules, and in which, without long and often dear-bought experience, neither precept nor example will avail; but it contains a sufficiency of sagacious practical advice, and is enlivened by the narration of numerous angling adventures, which bring out, with force and spirit, the essential character of the sport in question.

Great advances have been recently made in our knowledge of the sea-going _Salmonidæ_. Indeed, all the leading facts of primary importance in the history of their first development and final growth are now distinctly known, and have lately been laid before the public in the form both of original memoirs in our scientific journals, and the transactions of learned societies, and of more popular abstracts in various literary works. We ourselves discussed the subject in this Magazine, with our accustomed clearness, a couple of months ago; and we shall therefore not here enter into the now no longer vexed question of the nature of parr and smolts,--all doubt and disputation regarding the actual origin and family alliance of these fry, their descent from and eventual conversion into grilse and salmon, being finally set at rest to the satisfaction of every reasonable and properly instructed mind. We consider it, however, as a good proof of the natural sagacity and observant disposition of our present author, that he should have come to the same conclusion several years ago, regarding the habits and history of salmon-fry, as that so successfully demonstrated by Mr Shaw. Mr Scrope dwells with no unbecoming pertinacity on this point; but he shows historically, while fully admitting the importance and originality of that ingenious observer's experimental proceedings, that he had, in the course of his own private correspondence and conversation, called the attention of Mr Kennedy of Dunure as a legislator, and of Sir David Brewster as a skilled interpreter of natural phenomena, to various facts corresponding to those which have been since so skilfully detailed by Mr Shaw.

Our author, though well acquainted with the sporting capabilities of all parts of Scotland, here confines himself to the lower portions of the Tweed, more than twelve miles of which he has rented at different times. We in some measure regret that one so able to inform us, from his extensive experiences regarding the nature and localities of the first-rate though rather precarious angling for salmon which may be obtained in the northern parts of Scotland, should not have contrived to include an account of the more uproarious Highland streams and placid lakes frequented by this princely species. With all our admiration for the flowing Tweed, of which we have fondly traced the early feeble voice--

"a fitful sound Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound, Unfruitful solitudes, that seem'd t' upbraid The sun in heaven!"--

until, through many an intermediate scene of infinitely varied beauty, the expanded waters--

"Gliding in silence with unfetter'd sweep, Beneath an ampler sky, a region wide Is open'd round them:--hamlets, towers, and towns, And blue-topp'd hills, behold them from afar:"--

we should still have rejoiced to find a twin volume devoted to those wilder and more desolate scenes by which the northern angler is encompassed. Meanwhile we accept with pleasure our author's "Days and Nights" upon the Tweed.

Salmon ascend from the sea, and enter this fine river, in greater or less abundance, during every period of the year, becoming more plentiful as the summer advances, provided there is a sufficiency of rain both to enlarge and discolour the waters, and thus enable the fish to pass more securely over those rippling shallows which so frequently occur between the deeper streams.

"The salmon," says Mr Scrope "travels rapidly, so that those which leave the sea, and go up the Tweed on the Saturday night at twelve o'clock, after which time no nets are worked till the Sabbath is past, are found and taken on the following Monday near St Boswell's--a distance, as the river winds, of about forty miles. This I have frequently ascertained by experience. When the strength of the current in a spate is considered, and also the sinuous course a salmon must take in order to avoid the strong rapids, their power of swimming must be considered as extraordinary."--P. 10.

We do not clearly see, and should have been glad had the author stated, in what manner he ascertained that his St Boswell's fish had not escaped the sweeping semicircles of the lower nets some days previous. We admit that there is a great deal of Sabbath desecration committed by salmon, but we also know that they travel upwards, though in smaller number and with greater risk, during all the other days of the week; and we are curious to understand how any angler, however accomplished, can carry his skill in physiognomy to such perfection, as to be able to look a fish in the face on Monday morning, and decide that it had not left the sea till the clock struck twelve on the Saturday night preceding.

"As salmon" our author continues, "are supposed to enter a river merely for the purposes of spawning, and as that process does not take place till September, one cannot well account for their appearing in the Tweed and elsewhere so early as February and March, seeing that they lose in weight and condition during their continuance in fresh water. Some think it is to get rid of the sea-louse; but this supposition must be set aside, when it is known that this insect adheres only to a portion of the newly-run fish which are in best condition. I think it more probable that they are driven from the coasts near the river by the numerous enemies they encounter there, such as porpoises and seals, which devour them in great quantities. However this may be, they remain in the fresh water till the spawning months commence."--P. 10.

We cannot think that a great instinctive movement which seems, although with a widely extended range in respect to tine, to pervade the entire mass of salmon along our universal shores, should in any way depend upon so casual an occurrence as an onslaught by seals and porpoises, or that fear rather than love should force them to seek the "pastoral melancholy" of the upper streams and tributaries. That seals are destructive to salmon, and all other fishes which frequent our shores or enter our estuaries, is undoubted; but we have no proof beyond the general allegation, that porpoises pursue a corresponding prey. Our own researches certainly lead to an opposite conclusion. The ordinary food of the _cetacea_, notwithstanding their enormous bulk, is minute in size; and we have never been informed, on good authority--that is, on direct testimony--that even herrings have ever been detected in the stomach of a porpoise. Yet we have careful notes of the dissection of these creatures, taken from specimens slaughtered in the midst of millions of herrings; and these notes show that the minute food with which the sea was swarming, and which formed the sustenance for the time of the smaller fishes, also constituted the food of the _cetacea_, which were merely gamboling through the herring shoals.

It is certainly, however, difficult to explain the motives by which the early spring salmon are actuated in ascending rivers, seeing that they never spawn till autumn at the soonest. We must remember, at the same time, that they are fresh-water fishes, born and bred in our own translucent streams, and that they have an undoubted right to endeavour to return there when it suits their own inclination. It may be, that although the ocean forms their favourite feeding-ground, and their increase of size and continuance in high condition depend upon certain marine attributes, which, of course, they can find only in the sea, yet the healthy development of the spawn requires a long-continued residence in _running_ waters. We have ascertained, by experiment, that the ova of salmon, after being deposited, will make no progress in still water; and we cannot illustrate this portion of the subject better than by transcribing a paragraph from a letter, addressed to us in spring, (11th April 1843,) by Mr Andrew Young of Invershin, the manager of the Duke of Sutherland's extensive salmon fisheries in the north of Scotland:--"You are aware that it has been asserted by some of our wisest doctors, that salmon spawn in the sea and in lochs, as well as in rivers. However, as doctors are proverbially allowed to differ, I have this winter been trying to test the fact in the following manner: At the same time that I deposited the spawn from which I made my other experiments, I also placed a basket of the same spawn, with equal care, in a pool of pure still water from the river Shin; and I soon found that, while that which was placed in the running pools was regularly progressing, every particle put into the still water was as visibly degenerating, so that, by the time the spawn in the running pools was alive, that in the still water was a rotten mass. I must therefore say, from the above experiment, that rivers and running streams are the places fixed by nature for salmon to hatch their young." "I would also," says our correspondent in a subsequent portion of his letter, "mention an additional experiment on another point. It has been very generally asserted that intense frost injured the spawn of salmon; and in this opinion I was myself, in some measure, a believer. But as nothing but truth will stand a proper test, I turned my attention to this subject also. During the time of our severest frost, I took a basket of spawn, and placed it in a stream, where for three days it continued a frozen mass among the ice. I then placed the basket again in the running pond from whence it had been taken, and carefully watched the effect. I found that, although exposure to extreme cold had somewhat retarded the progressive growth, it had not in the slightest degree destroyed vitality. I am therefore satisfied, that unless frost goes the length of drying up the spawning beds altogether, it does not harm the spawn, further than by retarding its growth during the actual continuance of excessive cold. Thus fry are longer of hatching in a severe winter, than during an open one with little frost."

When salmon first ascend the Tweed, they are brown upon the back, fat, and in high condition. During the prevalence of cold weather they lie in deep and easy water, but as the season advances, they draw into the great rough streams, taking up their stations where they are likely to be least observed. But there the wily wand of the practiced angler casts its gaudy lure, and "Kinmont Willie," "Michael Scott," or "The Lady of Mertoun," (three killing flies,) darting deceitfully within their view, a sudden lounge is made--sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs--as often accompanied by a watery heave, and a flash like that of an aurora borealis,--and downwards, upwards, onwards, a twenty-pounder darts away with lightning speed, while the rapid reel gives out that heart-stirring sound so musical to an angler's ear, and than which none accords so well with the hoarser murmur of the brawling stream; till at last, after many an alternate hope and fear, the glittering prize turns up his silvery unresisting broadside, in meek submission to the merciless gaff.

Many otherwise well-principled persons believe that little more is required in angling than the exercise of patience. Place a merely patient man, acquainted only with pedestrian movements, upon a strong-headed horse determined to win, and give him the start at a steeple-chase, with Lord Waterford not far behind, and it will be seen before he has crossed much country, where patience is always as useful as it is praiseworthy. Place the same patient man, if he happens to have been picked up alive, and eventually recovers, in the midst of a roaring rock-bound river, and suppose him (a thing we confess, in his case, not quite conceivable) to have hooked a twenty-pound salmon at the tail of the stream, just where it subsides into some vast, almost fathomless, and far-extended pool, and that the said salmon, being rather of a restless disposition, and moreover somewhat disquieted by feeling an unaccustomed barb in his cheek or tongue, takes his 300 yards down the deep water at a single run, and then goes helter-skelter over a cataract, which had occupied him most of the preceding Sunday to ascend, after many a sinewy but unsuccessful spring! Will patience avail a man any thing in such a predicament, when he ought rather to run like an Arab, or dive like a dolphin, "splash, splash, towards the sea," notwithstanding the chance of his breaking his neck among the rocks, or being drowned while trying to round a crag which he cannot clamber over? Let us hear Mr Scrope's account of his third cast, one fine morning, when he came to Kingswell Lees.

"Now every one knows that Kingswell Lees, in fishermen's phrase, fishes off land; so there I stood on _terra dura_, amongst the rocks that dip down to the water's edge. Having executed one or two throws, there comes me a voracious fish, and makes a startling dash at 'Meg with the muckle mouth.'[10] Sharply did I strike the caitiff; whereat he rolled round disdainful, making a whirl in the water of prodigious circumference; it was not exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he flashed and whizzed away like a rocket. My situation partook of the nature of a surprise. Being on a rocky shore, and having had a bad start, I lost ground at first considerably; but the reel sang out joyously, and yielded a liberal length of line, that saved me from the disgrace of being broke. I got on the best pace I was able, and was on good ground just as my line was nearly all run out. As the powerful animal darted through _Meg's Hole_, I was just able to step back and wind up a few yards of line; but he still went at a killing pace, and when he came near to Melrose bridge, he evinced a distressing preference for passing through the further arch, in which case my line would have been cut by the pier. My heart sunk with apprehension, for he was near the opposite bank. Purdie, seeing this, with great presence of mind, took up some stones from the channel, and through them one by one between the fish and the said opposite bank. This naturally brought Master Salmo somewhat nearer, but still, for a few moments, we had a doubtful struggle for it. At length, by lowering the head of the rod, and thus not having so much of the ponderous weight of the fish to encounter, I towed him a little sideways; and so, advancing towards me with propitious fin, he shot through the arch nearest me.

"Deeply immersed, I dashed after him as best I might; and arriving on the other side of the bridge, I floundered out upon dry land, and continued the chase. The salmon, 'right orgillous and presumptive,' still kept the strength of the stream, and abating nothing of its vigour, went swiftly down the _whirls_; then through the _Boat shiel_, and over the shallows, till he came to the throat of the _Elm Wheel_, down which he darted amain. Owing to the bad ground, the pace here became exceedingly distressing. I contrived to keep company with my fish, still doubtful of the result, till I came to the bottom of the long cast in question, when he still showed fight, and sought the shallow below. Unhappily the alders prevented my following by land, and I was compelled to take water again, which slackened my speed. But the stream soon expanding, and the current diminishing, my fish likewise travelled more slowly; so I gave a few sobs and recovered my wind a little, gathered up my line, and tried to bring him to terms. But he derided my efforts, and dashed off for another burst, triumphant. Not far below lay the rapids of the _Slaughterford_: he would soon gain them at the pace he was going: that was certain--see, he is there already! But I back out again upon dry land, nothing loth, and have a fair race with him. Sore work it is. I am a pretty fair runner, as has often been testified; but his velocity is surprising. On, on, still he goes, ploughing up the water like a steamer. 'Away with you, Charlie! quick, quick, man--quick for your life! Loosen the boat at the Cauld Pool, where we shall soon be,' and so indeed we were, when I jumped into the said craft, still having good hold of my fish.

"The Tweed is here broad and deep, and the salmon at length had become somewhat exhausted; he still kept in the strength of the stream, however, with his nose seawards, and hung, heavily. At last he comes near the surface of the water. See how he shakes his tail and digs downwards, seeking the deep profound that he will never gain. His motions become more short and feeble: he is evidently doomed, and his race wellnigh finished. Drawn into the bare water, and not approving of the extended cleek, he makes another swift rush, and repeats this effort each time that he is towed to the shallows. At length he is cleeked in earnest, and hauled to shore; he proves one of the grey-skull newly run, and weighs somewhat above twenty pounds. The hook is not in his mouth, but in the outside of it: in which case a fish being able to respire freely, always shows extraordinary vigour, and generally sets his head down the stream.

"During the whole period of my experience in fishing, though I have had some sharp encounters, yet I never knew any sport equal to this. I am out of breath even now, whenever I think of it. I will trouble any surveyor to measure the distance from the Kingswell Lees, the starting spot, above Melrose bridge, to the end of the Cauld Pool, the death place, by Melrose church, and tell me how much less it is than a mile and three quarters,--I say, I will trouble him to do so; and let him be a lover of the angle, that he may rather increase than diminish the distance, as in good feeling and respect for the craft it behoves him to do."--P. 174.

[Footnote 10: A successful salmon-fly so named.]

On the subject of salmon leaps, most of us have both heard and seen much that was neither new nor true. Mr Yarrell, a cautious unimaginative man, accustomed to quote Shakspeare as if the bard of Avon had been some quiet country clergyman who had taken his share in compiling the statistical account of Scotland, confines their saltatorial powers only within ten or twelve perpendicular feet. We hold, with Mr Scrope, that even this is probably much beyond the mark. He thinks he never _saw_ a salmon spring out of the water above five feet perpendicular.

"There is a cauld at the mouth of the Leader water where it falls into the Tweed, which salmon never could spring over; this cauld I have lately had measured by a mason most carefully, and its height varies from five and a half to six feet from the level above to the level below it, according as the Tweed, into which the Leader falls, is more or less affected by the rains. Hundreds of salmon formerly attempted to spring over this low cauld, but none could ever achieve the leap; so that a salmon in the Leader water was formerly a thing unheard of. The proprietors of the upper water have made an opening in this cauld of late years, giving the owner of the mill some recompense, so that salmon now ascend freely. Large fish can spring much higher than small ones; but their powers are limited or augmented according to the depth of water they spring from. They rise rapidly from the very bottom to the surface of the water, by rowing and sculling as it were with fins and tail, and this powerful impetus bears them upwards in the air. It is probably owing to a want of sufficient depth in the pool below the Leader water cauld, that prevented the fish from clearing it; because I know an instance where salmon have cleared a cauld of six feet belonging to Lord Sudely, who lately caused it to be measured for my satisfaction, though they were but few out of the numerous fish that attempted it that were able to do so. I conceive, however, that very large fish could leap much higher."--P. 12.

We believe that a good deal of the contrariety of opinion which prevails on this subject, arises from anglers and other men confounding an inclined plane with a perpendicular height. Salmon will assuredly overcome a prodigious force of descending water,--a roaring turmoil, which presents from below the aspect of a fall, but consists in reality of separate ledges massed together into one, when "floods lift up their voices." We are sorry to say, however, that the entire practice of angling is pervaded by a system of inaccuracy, exaggeration, and self-deceit, which is truly humiliating. There is consequently no period in the life of a young person which ought to be more sedulously superintended by parents and guardians, than that in which he is first allowed to plant himself by the rivers of waters. The most wonderful feature, however, in the leaping of salmon is not so much the height to which they spring, as the ease, elegance, and _certainty,_ with which, while ascending small cataracts, they make their upward movements. For example, near Oykel bridge in Sutherland, there is a rocky interruption to the more ordinary current of the river, where the water is contained, as it were, in stages of pots or little caldrons, over the lower edge of each of which it dances downwards in the form of a short perpendicular fall. From a neighbouring bank by the river side, the movements of the aspiring fish may be distinctly seen. When a grilse has made his way to the foot of one of these falls, (which he never could have ascended before, although he must have descended it in childhood on his seaward way,) without a moment's doubt or hesitation he darts into the air, and throws himself head-foremost into the little basin above, to the bottom of which he instantly descends. Nothing can be more curious than the air of _nonchalance_ with which they drop into these watery chambers, as if they knew their dimensions to an inch, and had been in the habit of sleeping in them every night. Now, from what has been ascertained of the natural history of the species, although the adult salmon of the Oykel must have previously made the leap at least once before, no fresh-run grilse could have ever done so; and yet, during suitable weather in the summer season, they are sometimes seen springing along with all the grace and agility of a troop of voltigeurs. Their object of course is to rest themselves for a short time, before leaping into the second range from the ground floor. But this innocent intention is too often interfered with; for a sharp-sighted Highlander, stationed on the bank above, immediately descends with landing-net in hand, and scoops them out of their natural caldron, with a view to their being speedily transferred to another of more artificial structure--the chief difference, however, consisting in the higher temperature of the water.

"Salmon," says Mr Scrope, "are led by instinct to select such places for depositing their spawn as are the least likely to be affected by the floods. These are the broad parts of the river, where the water runs swift and shallow, and has a free passage over an even bed. There they either select an old spawning place, a sort of trough left in the channel, or form a fresh one. They are not fond of working in new loose channels, which would be liable to be removed by a slight flood, to the destruction of their spawn. The spawning bed is made by the female. Some have fancied that the elongation of the lower jaw in the male, which is somewhat in the form of a crook, is designed by nature to enable him to excavate the spawning trough. Certainly it is difficult to divine what may be the use of this very ugly excrescence; but observation has proved that this idea is a fallacy, and that the male never assists in making the spawning place: and, indeed, if he did so he could not possibly make use of the elongation in question for that purpose, which springs from the lower jaw, and bends inwards towards the throat. When the female commences making her spawning bed, she generally comes after sunset, and goes off in the morning; she works up the gravel with her snout, her head pointing against the stream, as my fisherman has clearly and unequivocally witnessed, and she arranges the position of the loose gravel with her tail. When this is done, the male makes his appearance in the evenings, according to the usage of the female. He then remains close by her, on the side on which the water is deepest."--P. 15.

During this crisis trout collect below to devour such portions of the spawn as float down the river, and parr are frequently seen hovering in and around the trough. All these parr are salmon fry of the male sex, in a state of maturity; and if the old gentleman chances to be killed, or driven away, without having provided an assistant or successor, the "two-year-olds" perform the functions of paternity. This circumstance, though overlooked by modern naturalists till the days of Shaw, (not the old compiling doctor of the British Museum, but the more practical "keeper" of Drumlanrig,) was known and described by Willoughby in the seventeenth century. "To demonstrate the fact," says the more recent observer, "in January 1837, I took a female salmon, weighing fourteen pounds, from the spawning bed, from whence I also took a male parr, weighing one ounce and a half, with the milt of which I impregnated a quantity of her ova, and placed the whole in a private pond, where, to my great astonishment, the process succeeded in every respect as it had done with the ova which had been impregnated by the adult male salmon, and exhibited, from the first visible appearance of the embryo fish, up to their assuming their migratory dress, the utmost health and vigour."

So serious is the destruction of the spawn and fry of salmon, both by sea and fresh-water trout, that the Duke of Sutherland's manager would willingly, were it possible, extirpate the entire breed of these fish. "They commence," he informs us, in a letter of 15th May 1843, "the moment the salmon begin to deposit their spawn, and in the course of the spawning season they devour an immense quantity of ova. Indeed, at all other times of the year, they feed on the fry of salmon, and continue their destruction till the day the smolts leave the rivers. I have often cut up trout, and got smolts in their stomach; and last week a trout was opened in Mr Buist's fish-yard with four full-grown smolts in its belly. From these and other similar occurrences, you may judge to what extent this destruction is carried on, in the course of a single year, in such a river as our Oykel, where I have killed seven hundred trout at a single hawl." We understand that, some years ago, when Mr Trap, (a most appropriate name,) the fishmonger in Perth, had the Dupplin cruives, he got about 400 whitlings (or sea-trout) in one day, all of them gorged to the throat with salmon fry. The sea-trout of Sutherlandshire, like those of the Nith and the Annan, almost all belong to the species named _Salmo trutta_ by naturalists. They scarcely ever exceed, indeed rarely attain to, a weight of five pounds; and such as go beyond that weight, and range upwards from eight to twelve pounds, are generally found to pertain to _Salmo eriox_, the noted _bull-trout_ of the Tweed. The great grey sea-trout of the river Ness, which sometimes reaches the weight of eighteen pounds, we doubt not, also belongs to the species last named. It is rare in the waters of the Tay.

In regard to the seaward migration of salmon fry, Mr Scrope is of opinion that some are continually going down to the salt water in every month of the year, not with their silver scales on, but in the parr state.

"I say, not with their silver scales, because no clear smolt is ever seen in the Tweed during the summer and autumnal months. As the spawning season in the Tweed extends over a period of six months, some of the fry must be necessarily some months older than the others, a circumstance which favours my supposition that they are constantly descending to the sea, and it is only a supposition, as I have no proof of the fact, and have never heard it suggested by any one. But if I should be right, it will clear up some things that cannot well be accounted for in any other mode. For instance, in the month of _March_ 1841, Mr Yarrell informs me that he found a young salmon in the London market, and which he has preserved in spirits, measuring only fifteen inches long, and weighing only fifteen ounces. And again another, the following _April_, sixteen and a half inches long, weighing twenty-four ounces. Now, one of these appeared two months, and the other a month, before the usual time when the fry congregate. According to the received doctrine, therefore, these animals were two of the migration of the preceding year; and thus it must necessarily follow that they remained in salt water, one ten, and the other eleven months, with an increase of growth so small as to be irreconcilable with the proof we have of the growth of the grilse and salmon during their residence in salt water."--P. 36.

We are not entirely of Mr Scrope's opinion, that some salmon fry are descending to the sea during every month of the year; at least, we do not conceive that this forms a part of their regular rotation. But the nature of the somewhat anomalous individuals alluded to by Mr Yarrell, may be better understood from the following considerations. Although it is an undoubted fact that the great portion of parr descend together to the sea, as smolts, in May, by which time they have entered into their third year, yet it is also certain that a few, owing to some peculiarity in their natural constitution, do not migrate at that time, but continue in the rivers all summer. As these have not obeyed the normal or ordinary law which regulates the movements of their kind, they make irregular migrations to the sea during the winter floods, and ascend the rivers during the spring months, some time before the descent of the two-year-olds. We have killed parr of this description, measuring eight and nine inches, in the rivers in October, and we doubt not these form eventually the small, thin, rather ill-conditioned grilse which are occasionally taken in our rivers during early spring. But it is midsummer before the regularly migrating smolts reappear as grilse. However, certain points in relation to this branch of our subject may still be regarded as "open questions," on which the Cabinet has not made up its mind, and may agree to differ. Mr Scrope is certainly right in his belief, that, whatever be the range of time occupied by the descent of smolts towards the sea, they are not usually seen descending with their silvery coating on except in spring; although our Sutherland correspondent, to whom we have so frequently referred, is not of that opinion. It may be, that those which do not join the general throng, migrate in a more sneaking sort of way during summer. They are non-intrusionists, who have at first refused to sign the terms of the Convocation; but finding themselves eventually rather out of their element, on the wrong side of the cruive dyke, and not wishing to fall as fry into the cook's hands, have sea-ceded some time after the disruption of their General Assembly.

Even those smolts which descend together in April and May, (the chief periods of migration,) do not agree in size. Many are not half the length of others, although all have assumed the silvery coat. "I had, last April," Mr Young informs us in a letter of 3d June 1843, "upwards of fifty of them in a large bucket of water, for the purpose of careful and minute examination of size, &c., when I found a difference of from three and a half to six inches--the smallest having the same silvery coat as the largest. We cannot at all wonder at this difference, as it is a fact that the spawn even of the same fish exhibits a disparity in its fry as soon as hatched, which continues in all the after stages. Although the _throng_ of our smolts descend in April and May, we have smolts descending in March, and as late in the season as August, which lapse of time agrees with the continuance of our spawning season. But in all these months we have an equal proportion (that is, a corresponding mixture) of large and small smolts. I have earnestly searched for smolts in the winter months, year after year, and I can only say that I have never seen one, although I have certainly tried every possible means to find them. I have seen fish spawning through the course of six months, and I have seen smolts descending through the same length of time. Our return of grilses, too, exactly corresponds with this statement. Thus a few descending March smolts give a few ascending May grilses; while our April and May swarms of smolts yield our hordes of grilse in June and July. After July, grilses decrease in numbers till October, in proportion to the falling off of smolts from May to August. At least these are my observations in our northern streams." They are observations of great value, and it is only by gathering together similar collections of facts from various quarters, that we can ultimately attain to a clear and comprehensive knowledge of the whole subject.

We gather from our most recent correspondence with Mr Shaw, (Letter of 8th June 1843,) that he does not regard the range in the spawning period to be followed by a corresponding range in the departure of smolts towards the sea, and in their return from it as grilse. He has found a considerable diversity of time in the assumption of the silvery coating even among individuals of the very same family. "I do not," he observes, "recollect an instance where there were not individuals of each brood reared in my ponds, which assumed the migratory coating several weeks before the brood in general had done so; and these individuals would have migrated accordingly, and reappeared as grilse all the sooner." As the hatching and growth of salmon smolts and other fish, is regulated in a great measure by the temperature of the water in which they dwell, it is very probable that ova deposited late in the season, (say the month of March,) may, in consequence of the great increase of temperature, be hatched much more rapidly than those spawned in mid-winter, and so, by the end of a couple of years, no great difference will exist between them. We remember that, in one of Mr Shaw's earlier experiments, it is stated that he took occasion to convey a few ova in a tumbler within doors, where the temperature ranged from 45° to 47°. They were hatched in thirty-six hours, while such as were left in the stream of the pond, in a temperature of 41°, did not hatch until the termination of seven subsequent days. The whole had been previously one hundred and six days in the water, under a considerably lower temperature.

Mr Shaw has frequently detected individual smolts, both of salmon and sea-trout, (though of the latter more particularly,) descending in some seasons as early as the end of March, and as late as the middle of June, and he has little doubt that some may make their way still earlier to the sea. These, of course, will be found in our tideways as small grilse, weighing one or two pounds, in April and May. The large parr, to which we have already alluded as occasionally met with in rivers, and which we regard as young salmon remaining (and in this forming exceptions to the normal rule) in fresh water throughout their third year, Mr Shaw, whose opinion we requested on the subject, coincides with us in thinking, "would, in all probability, be the first to quit the river after so long a residence there, when the season of migration approached. These, however, are not the only individuals of their kind which leave the river for the sea long before the month of May." A difference in the period of deposition will assuredly cause a difference in the period of hatching, and in this we agree with Mr Scrope; but we think that a late spawning, having the advantage of a higher temperature as the result of a more genial season, will be followed by a more rapid development, and so the difference will not be so great, nor expanded over so many months, as that gentlemen supposes. Finally, the vagrant summer smolts, to which we have before alluded, may consist of that small number of anomalous fry, which we know to assume the migratory dress and instinct soon after the completion of their first year.

Although the excellence of a salmon's condition is derived from the sea, and all its increase of weight is gained there, yet few of these fish remain for any considerable length of time in marine waters. By a wonderful, and to us most beneficial instinct, they are propelled to revisit their ancestral streams, with an increase of size corresponding to the length of their sojourn in the sea. Such as observe their accustomed seasons, (and of these are the great mass of smolts,) return at certain anticipated times. Their periods are known, and their revolutions calculated. Such as migrate at irregular or unobserved intervals, return unexpectedly at different times. Their motions seem eccentric, because their periods have not been ascertained.

But it is obvious that Mr Yarrell's diminutive examples already alluded to, could not have gone down to the sea with the great majority of their kind, during the spring preceding that in which they were captured; because, in that case, having remained a much longer time than usual in salt water, they would have returned as very large grilse instead of extremely small ones.

Mr Scrope informs us that the most plentiful season in the Tweed for grilse, if there has been a flood, is about the time of St Boswell's fair, namely, the 18th of July, at which period they weigh from four to six pounds. Those which don't leave the salt for the fresh water till the end of September and the course of October, sometimes come up from the sea for the first time weighing ten or eleven pounds, or even more.

"Some of them are much larger than small salmon; but by the term grilse I mean young salmon that have only been once to sea. They are easily distinguished from salmon by their countenance, and less plump appearance, and particularly by the diminished size of the part of the body next the tail, which also is more forked than that of the salmon. They remain in fresh water all the autumn and winter, and spawn at the same time with the salmon. They return also to sea in spring with the salmon. It seems worthy of remark, that salmon are oftentimes smaller than moderate-sized grilse; but, although such grilse have been only once to sea, yet the period they have remained there must have exceeded the two short visits made by the _small_ salmon, and hence their superiority of size. When these fish return to the river from their _second_ visit to the sea, they are called _salmon_, and are greatly altered in their shape and appearance; the body is more full, and the tail less forked, and their countenance assumes a different aspect."--P. 37.

We are glad to observe that in these opinions regarding the growth of grilse and salmon, our author conforms with, and consequently confirms, the ingenious and accurate experimental observations recently completed by Mr Young of Invershin.[11]

Of all those natural causes which counteract the increase of salmon fry, and consequently of grown grilse and adult salmon, Mr Scrope considers that the "furious spates" which so frequently occur in Tweed, are the most destructive. These not only put the channel in motion, but often sweep away the spawning beds entirely. Prior to the improvements in agriculture, and the amelioration of the hill pastures by drainage, the floods were much less sudden, because the morasses and swampy grounds gave out water gradually, and thus the river took longer to rise, and continued fuller for a greater length of time than in these degenerate days, to the increased delight of every acre-less angler.

"But now every hill is scored with little rills which fall into the rivers, which suddenly become rapid torrents and swell the main river, which dashes down to the ocean with tumultuous violence. Amidst the great din you may hear the rattling of the channel stones as they are borne downwards. Banks are torn away; new deeps are hollowed out, and old ones filled up; so that great changes continually take place in the bed of the river either for the better or the worse. When we contemplate these things, we must at once acknowledge the vast importance of Mr Shaw's experiments; for if ponds were constructed upon the Tweed at the general expense, after the model of those made by him, all these evils would be avoided. The fry might be produced in any quantities by artificial impregnation, be preserved, and turned into the great river at the proper period of migration. There might at first be some difficulty in procuring food for them; but this would be easily got over at a very small expense, and with a few adult salmon more fry may be sent to sea annually than the whole produce of the river at present amounts to, after having encountered the sweeping perils I have mentioned."--P. 43.

[Footnote 11: See _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_. Vol. XV. Part iii. p. 343.]

Our author then proposes that proprietors should call meetings for the purpose, and that parr, hitherto so named, should now, in their capacity of young salmon, be protected by law. He advises all who have an interest in the river, to consider the wisdom of mutual accommodation; the owners of the more seaward banks being dependent on the upper heritors for the protection of the spawning fish and fry, while they, on the other hand, are equally dependent on the former for an honest adherence to the weekly close-time.

But a thoughtful consideration of this portion of our subject would lead us into a somewhat interminable maze, including the policy of our ancient Acts of Parliament, and the nature of estuaries,--those mysteriously commingled "watteris quhar the sea ebbis and flowis,"--"ubi salmunculi vel smolti, seu fria alterius generis piscium maris vel aquæ dulcis, (nunquam) descendunt et ascendunt,"--and then the stake-net question stretches far before us, and dim visions of the "Sutors of Cromarty" rise upon our inward eye, and the wild moaning of the "Gizzin Brigs" salutes our ear, and defenders are converted into appellants, and suspenders into respondents, and the whole habitable earth assumes for a time the aspect of a Scotch Jury Court, which suddenly blazes into the House of Lords.[12]

[Footnote 12: Certain river mouths and estuaries in the north of Scotland "within flude-marke of the sea," have lately given rise to various questions of disputed rights regarding the erection of stake-nets, and the privilege of catching salmon with the same. These questions involve the determination of several curious though somewhat contradictory points in physical geography, geology, and the natural history of fishes and marine vegetation.]

That salmon return with great regularity to the river in which they were originally bred, is now well known. Mr Scrope, however, thinks that they do not invariably do so, but will ascend other rivers during spawning time, if they find their own deficient in bulk of water. Thus many Tweed salmon are caught in the Forth, (a deep and sluggish stream,) and a successful fishing there is usually accompanied by a scarce one in the Tweed. Yet we know that they will linger long, during periods of great drought, in those mingled waters where the sea "comes and gangs,"--as was well seen in the hot and almost rainless summer of 1842, when the Berwick fishings were abundant, but those of Kelso and the upper streams extremely unproductive. The established fact, however, that grilse and salmon, under ordinary natural circumstances, do certainly return to their native beds, is one of great practical importance, because it permits the plan of peopling barren rivers by the deposition of impregnated spawn carried from more fruitful waters. It ought to be borne in mind, however, in relation to this latter point, that these waters must possess, in a considerable measure, the same natural attributes which characterize the voluntary haunts of salmon. If they do not do so, although the fry bred there will in all probability return thither from the sea as grilse, yet the breeding process will be carried on at first feebly, and then inefficiently, till the species finally becomes extinct. The same observations, of course, apply to trout. It has been proposed, we believe by Sir W.F. Mackenzie of Gairloch, to apply the principle of one set of Mr Shaw's experiments to the improvement of moorland lochs, or others, in which the breed of trout may be inferior, by carrying the ova of a better and richer flavoured variety from another locality. Now, in this well-intentioned scheme, we think there is some confusion of cause and effect. It is the natural difference in food, and other physical features and attributes, between the two kinds of lochs in question, which causes or is intimately connected with the difference in the fleshly condition of their finny inhabitants; and unless we can also change the characters of the surrounding country, and the bed of the watery basin, we shall seek in vain to people "the margins of our moorish floods" with delicate trout, lustrous without any red of hue within, in room of those inky-coated, muddy-tasted tribes, "indigenæ an advectæ," which now dwell within our upland pools.

It has been asserted by some that salmon will dwell continuously, and even breed, in fresh water, although debarred all access to the sea. "Near Kattrineberg," says Mr Lloyd, in his work on the field-sports of the north of Europe, "there is a valuable fishery for salmon, ten or twelve thousand of these fish being taken annually. These salmon are bred in a lake, and, in consequence of cataracts, cannot have access to the sea. They are small in size, and inferior in flavour. The year 1820 furnished 21,817." We confess we cannot credit this account of fresh water (sea-debarred) salmon, but suppose there must be some mistake regarding the species. Every thing that we know of the habits and history, the growth and migrations, of these fish in Britain, is opposed to its probability. Mr Young has conclusively ascertained that, at least in Scotland, not only does their growth, after the assumption of the silvery state, take place solely in the sea, but that they actually decrease in weight from the period of their entering the rivers; and Mr Scrope himself, (see pp. 27, 30,) although he quotes the passage without protest, seems of the same opinion. Besides, with their irrepressible instinctive inclination to descend the rivers during spring when young, we don't believe that the cataract in question would prevent their doing so, although it might assuredly hinder their return in summer, in which case the Kattrineberg breed would soon become extinct, even supposing that they had ever had existence. The alleged fact, however, is well worthy of more accurate observance and explicit explanation than have yet been bestowed upon it by the Scandinavian naturalists.

We are informed that Mr George Dormer of Stone Mills, in the parish of Bridport, put a female salmon, which measured twenty inches, and was caught in the mill-dam, into a small well, where it remained twelve years, and at length died in the year 1842. "The well measured only five feet by two feet four inches, and there was only fifteen inches depth of water." We should have been well pleased to have been told of the size of the fish when it died, in addition to that of the prison in which it dwelt, for otherwise the fact itself is of less consequence.[13] We presume its rate of growth would be extremely slow, although we do not agree with Mr Young in the opinion already quoted, that salmon actually decrease in _dimensions_ on entering the fresh water. We doubt not they decrease in _weight_, and probably also in circumference; but their bones and organic structure are assuredly enlarged, and themselves lengthened, in such a way as to fit their general form for a rapidly increased development, so soon as they again rejoice in the fattening influences of the salubrious sea.

[Footnote 13: The following curious particulars regarding the above-mentioned salmon are taken from a Devonshire newspaper:--"She would come to the top of the water and take meat off a plate, and would devour a quarter of a pound of lean meat in less time than a man could eat it; she would also allow Mr Dormer to take her out of the water, and when put into it again she would immediately take meat from his hands, or would even bite the finger if presented to her. Some time since a little girl teased her by presenting the finger and then withdrawing it, till at last she leaped a considerable height above the water, and caught her by the said finger, which made it bleed profusely: by this leap she threw herself completely out of the water into the court. At one time a young duckling got into the well, to solace himself in his favourite element, when she immediately seized him by the leg, and took him under water; but the timely interference of Mr Dormer prevented any further mischief than making a cripple of the young duck. At another time a full-grown drake approached the well, when Mrs Fish, seeing a trespasser on her premises, immediately seized the intruder by the bill, and a desperate struggle ensued, which at last ended in the release of Mr Drake from the grasp of Mrs Fish, and no sooner freed, than Mr Drake flew off in the greatest consternation and affright; since which time, to this day, he has not been seen to approach the well, and it is with great difficulty he can be brought within sight of it. This fish lay in a dormant state for five months in the year, during which time she would eat nothing, and was likewise very shy."]

Our author next refers to a rather singular subject, which has not yet sufficiently attracted the notice of naturalists, and the phenomena of which (at least their final causes) have not been explained by physiological enquirers. That fishes assume, in a great degree, the colour of the channel over which they lie, is known to many practical observers. We have ourselves frequently frightened small flounders from their propriety with our shoe-points, while angling near the mouths of rivers, and so exactly did their colour accord with the shingle beneath our feet, that we could not detect their presence but by their own betraying movements. Such, however, as happened to glide towards, and settle on, a portion of the bed of different colour from the rest, continued perceptible for a short time; but they too seemed speedily to disappear, although we afterwards discovered that they had not stirred an inch, but had merely changed their tint to that of the particular portion of the basin of the stream to which they had removed. Every angler knows, that there is not only a difference in the colour of trouts in different streams, but that different though almost adjoining portions of the same river, if distinguished by some diversity of character in respect to depth, current, or clearness, will yield him fish of varying hue. Very rapid and irregular changes are also observable in their colours after death; and large alternate blotches of darker and lighter hues may be produced upon their sides and general surface, by the mode of their disposal in the creel. Dr Stark showed many years ago, that the colour of sticklebacks, and other small fishes, was influenced by the colour of the earthenware, or other vessels in which they were confined, as well as modified by the quantity of light to which they were exposed; and Mr Shaw has very recently informed us, regarding this mutability of the outer aspect of fishes, that if the head alone is placed upon a particular colour, (whether lighter or darker,) the whole body will immediately assume a corresponding shade, quite independent of the particular tint upon which the body itself may chance to rest. We know not to what extent these, and similar phenomena, are familiar to Sir David Brewster; but we willingly admit, that in order to attain to their clearer comprehension, the facts themselves must be investigated by one who, like that accomplished philosopher, is conversant with those branches of physical science to which they are related. They unfortunately lie beyond the range of our own optics, but Mr Scrope's practical improvement of the subject is as follows:--

"I would recommend any one who wishes to show his day's sport in the pink of perfection, to keep his trouts in a wet cloth, so that, on his return home, he may exhibit them to his admiring friends, and extract from them the most approved of epithets and exclamations, taking the praise bestowed upon the fish as a particular compliment to himself."--P. 56.

British legislators ought certainly to consider the recent completion of our knowledge both of salmon and sea-trout; and if they can make themselves masters of their more detailed local history, so much the better. Mr Home Drummond's is still the regulating Act of Parliament, and seems to have kept its ground firmly, notwithstanding many attempted alterations, if not amendments. In accordance with that Act, all our rivers north of the Tweed close on the 14th of September, and do not re-open till the 1st of February.[14] This bears hardly upon some of our northern streams. In the Ness, for example, before the application of the existing laws, more fish were wont to be killed in December and January than during most other periods of the year.[15] It appears to have been clearly ascertained that the season of a river (in respect to its being early or late) depends mainly upon the temperature of its waters. The Ness, which is the earliest river in Scotland, scarcely ever freezes. It flows from the longest and deepest loch in Britain; and thus, when the thermometer, as it did in the winter of 1807, stands at 20, 30, or even 40 deg. below the freezing point at Inverness, it makes little or no impression upon either lake or river. The course of the latter is extremely short. The Shin is also an early river, flowing from a smaller loch, though with a more extended course before it enters the Kyle of Sutherland, where it becomes confluent with the Oykel waters. It may so happen, that in these and other localities, a colder stream, drawing its shallow and divided sources from the frozen sides of barren mountains, may adjoin the lake-born river, and

"On that flood, Indurated and fix'd, the snowy weight Lies undissolved, while silently beneath, And unperceived, the current steals away."

Now salmon don't like either snowy water, bridges of ice, or stealthy streams, but a bold, bright, expansive, unimpeded, and accommodating kind of highway to our inland vales. They instinctively regard a modified temperature, and a flowing movement, as great inducements to leave the sea in early winter, instead of waiting until spring; and, in like manner, they avoid "imprisoned rivers" until icy gales have ceased to blow. The consequences are, we may have an extremely early river and a very late one within a few hundred yards of each other, and both debouching from the same line of coast into the sea. Now, in the autumn of 1836, a bill was proposed and brought in by Mr Patrick Stewart and Mr Loch, to amend the preceding Act (9th Geo. IV.) which had repealed that of James I., (1424.) It proceeded on the preamble, that "whereas the sand acts have been found inadequate to the purposes for which they were passed, inasmuch as it is found that our close-time is not suitable for all the salmon fishings and rivers throughout Scotland, and it is expedient that the same should therefore, and in other respects, be altered, modified, and amended." It therefore enacted that different close-times shall be observed in different divisions of Scotland, the whole of which is partitioned into twelve districts, as specified in schedule A referred to in the bill. We do not know how or from whom the necessary information was obtained; but we doubt not it was sedulously sought for, and digested in due form. For example, the boundaries as to time and space of the second district, are as follows:--"From Tarbet Ness aforesaid, to Fort George Point, in the county of Nairn, including the Beaulie Frith and the rivers connected therewith, _except the river Ness_, from the 20th day of August to the 6th day of January, both days inclusive; and for the said river Ness, from the 14th day of July, to the 1st day of December, both days inclusive." This is so far well. But in the ninth district, the definition and directions are:--"From the confines of the Solway Frith to the northern boundary of the county of Ayr, from the 30th day of September to the 16th day of February, both days inclusive." Now most anglers know that the district thus defined, includes streams which vary considerably in their character, and cannot be correctly classed together. Thus the Doon, which draws its chief sources from numerous lakes among the hills, is one of the earliest rivers in the south-west of Scotland, clean fresh-run fish occurring in it by Christmas; while the neighbouring river Ayr, although existing under the same general climatic influence, produces few good salmon till the month of June. It is fed by tributaries of the common kind. The Stinchar, in the same district, is also a late river, being seldom worked by the tacksmen till towards the end of April, and even then few of the fish are worth keeping. Of course, it requires to be closed in September, although the fish are then in good case. These, and many other facts which might be mentioned, show the difficulty of legislating even upon the improved localizing principle which it has been attempted to introduce. However, the bill referred to, though printed, was never passed.

[Footnote 14: The net fishings in the Tweed do not close till the 16th of October, and the lovers of the angle are allowed an additional fortnight. These fishings do not open (either for net or rod) till the 15th of February.]

[Footnote 15: It was proved in evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons in 1825, that the amount of salmon killed in the Ness during eight years, (from 1811-12 to 1818-19,) made a total for the months

Of December, of 2405 Of January, 3554 Of February, 3239 Of March, 3029 Of April, 2147 Of May, 1127 Of June, 170 Of July, 253 Of August, 2192 Of September, 430 ------ 18,542

It further appears, from the evidence referred to, that during these years no _grilse_ ran up the Ness till after the month of May. The months

Of June produced 277 Of July, 1358 Of August, 4229 Of September, 1493 ---- 7357 ]

Since we have entered, inadvertently, into what may be called the legislative branch of our subject, we may refer for a moment to the still more recent bill, prepared and brought into Parliament by Mr Edward Ellice and Mr Thomas Mackenzie, and ordered to be printed, 11th May 1842. It is entitled, "a bill for the better regulation of the close-time in salmon fisheries in Scotland;" and with a view to accommodate and reconcile the interests of all parties, it throws the arrangement and the decision of the whole affair into the hands of the commissioners of the _herring_ fishery. It enacts that it shall be lawful for these commissioners, upon due application by any proprietor (or guardian, judicial factor, or trustee) of salmon fishings, of the value of not less than twenty pounds yearly, in any of the rivers, streams, lochs, &c., or by any three or more of such proprietors possessing salmon fishings of the yearly value of ten pounds each, or of any proprietor of salmon fishings which extend one mile in length on one side, or one half mile on both sides of any river or stream, calling upon the said commissioners to alter the close-time of any river, stream, &c., to enquire into the expediency of such alteration. With that view, the are empowered to call before them, and examine upon oath or affirmation, all necessary witnesses, and to take all requisite evidence for and against the proposed alteration of the close-time; and upon due consideration of all the circumstances of the case, to determine that the close-time in such river, stream, &c., shall be altered, and to alter the same accordingly, and fix such other close-time as they shall deem expedient. Provided always that the close-time to be fixed by said commissioners, shall not in any case consist of less than one hundred and thirty-nine free consecutive days. Provision is also made for an alteration, on application and evidence as before, of any such legalized close-time, after the expiration of three years; all expenses incurred by the commissioners in taking evidence, or in other matters connected with the subject, to be defrayed by the proprietors. Permission may also be granted in favour of angling with the single rod, for fourteen days after the close. This bill, which we suspect it would have been difficult to work conveniently, was likewise laid upon the shelf.

Although, as we have said, salmon soonest ascend the warmest rivers, they are alleged to spawn earliest in the colder ones. Thus Mr Scrope informs us, that in the shallow mountain streams which pour into the Tay, near its source, the fish spawn much earlier than those in the main bed of that magnificent river, and he quotes the following sentiments of the late John Crerar, head fisherman and forester to the Duke of Athole, on the subject:--

"There are," said John, "two kinds of creatures that I am well acquainted with--the one a land animal, the other a water one--the red-deer and the salmon. In October the deer ruts, and the salmon spawns. The deer begins soonest, high up among the hills, particularly in frosty weather; so does the salmon begin to spawn earlier in frosty weather than in soft. The master hart would keep all the other harts from the hind, if he could; and the male salmon would keep all the other males from the female, if he was able."--P. 60.

We do not think, however, that Mr Scrope's comparative reference to the upper and lower portions of the Tay affords a satisfactory or conclusive test. The higher parts of almost all rivers (including, their tributaries) constitute the favourite spawning places, from other causes than "by reason of the cold;" and the question should be tried, not by comparing two different districts of the same river, but all the portions of one river, with the entire course of another of dissimilar character. The exceptive clause in Mr Loch's proposed act in flavour of the river Ness, certainly stood upon the supposition of that river being an early one for the breeding salmon, as well as the new-run winter fish; for it enacts not only that the Ness should open more than a month earlier than its neighbours, but also that it shall close more than a month before them. This latter restriction would of course be useless and impolitic, if the parent fish were not conceived to be about to spawn. But it should also be borne in mind, that the same causes (such as the extent and depth of feeding lakes) which produce a higher temperature in winter, cause a lower one in summer and the earlier part of autumn, and that shallow upland streams are warmer during the latter periods than those which flow from deeper and more affluent sources. We believe that the fish of all rivers spawn soonest on the higher portions of their water courses, whether these be comparatively warm or cold. The earliest individuals are in general such as have escaped the nets and other accidents below, and have made their watery way in good time to proper spawning places. In several rivers with which we are acquainted, a great majority of the breeding fish ascend in August and September. But many of those which make their appearance in July, would be early spawners if they were allowed to escape the various dangers which beset their path in life--almost all the salmon of that month being captured by one means or another. Mr Young, in our MS. notes already quoted, states, in regard to the range of the breeding season, that he has seen salmon perfectly full of spawn, ascending the rivers in October, November, December, January, and February. Now the fish of the last-named month may have spawned as late as March, although our correspondent adds that he has never _seen_ fish on the spawning beds later than February, nor earlier than September. He has seen them in the act of spawning in these and all the intermediate months.

As we have said above, the greater part of these breeders ascend in August and September, and the _throng_ of the spawning process takes place in November and December. The earlier spawning begins in September with only a few pairs, generally grilse; and from that period the numbers increase till the first week of December, when the operation has attained its height. It then gradually decreases until February, when perhaps only a few pairs are seen at work. Mr Young informs us that sea-trout are seen spawning a week earlier than grilse, and grilse a week earlier than salmon. He does not mean that all grilse spawn before salmon begin, but that they are observed working a week before the latter have commenced.

Mr Shaw informs us, (in his last letter,) that it is an exceedingly rare occurrence to find an unspawned fish in the rivers of Dumfriesshire in the month of March. On one occasion, however, about twenty years ago, he observed a female salmon spawning in the Nith about the 10th or 12th of March, but unaccompanied by any male. He can also call to mind a pair of salmon having been observed spawning in the Ettrick so late as Selkirk March fair, which is held during the first week of April. This, however, we believe to be a very rare occurrence, notwithstanding Mr Scrope's statement, that he has in the Tweed "caught full roaners as late as May." These seem to be anomalous or accidental instances, and we are not aware that any evidence has been brought forward to prove that they still seek the spawning beds in pairs at that period, or produce what may be called autumnal fry.

The usual spawning period in the south-west of Scotland extends from about the middle of November till the middle of February; but the busiest months of that period are December and January, when the salmon spawn in great numbers in the Nith, about Drumlanrig. From the circumstances of the largest salmon visiting the rivers at that season, Mr Shaw is induced to think that they are likewise the oldest; and that, as they increase in years, they desire to remain the longer in the sea, visiting the fresh waters only during the breeding season. The spawning period of sea-trout, he informs us, is from about the middle of October until the middle of December, the principal period being the whole of November, when the various streams and tributaries are taken possession of both by sea-trout and herling, spawning in deep or shallow water, according to their individual size.

But in reference to the point in question, that cold accelerates the spawning process, let us take for a moment the general basin of the Oykel waters into view. We know that for several seasons back, the earliest spawning in that quarter has occurred in the Carron, in September. Now, it is certain, that during that month the Carron waters are warmer than those of the Shin. So also the Oykel (properly so called) is itself two degrees warmer in October than the Shin, and yet the latter is the later of the two. It thus appears that warmth may be advantageous both as inducing early spawning in autumn, and an early entrance of fresh-run fish in winter; although a single river may not possess both attributes for the reason hinted at--the deepest waters, though protected from winter's cold, being also screened from summer's heat. Mr Scrope may therefore be regarded as right in his facts as to the earlier season of the upland streams, although his theoretical explanation of them is not conclusive.

The lateness of the spawning season in the Shin may, in some measure, be owing to the early breeding fish going up into the loch, from whence, after a time, they fall back upon the spawning places in the fords of the river. The same thing happens in the lower regions of the Tay--the fish fall back from the loch, and the ford between Taymouth Castle and Kenmore is by far the latest in that river. Salmon have been seen to spawn there in February. In regard to the general influence of the atmosphere, we may here remark that frosty weather is good for spawning; because the fish go then into the deeper or central portions of the fords, by which procedure the spawning beds are never dry,--whereas, in time of spates, salmon are apt to deposit their spawn along the margins, and thus the roe is frequently destroyed by the subsiding of the waters.

However, the real importance of an early river has little or no connexion with the periods of the spawning process; because it is not so much the breeding fish that are of individual value in winter, as those which, having no intention or requirement to spawn until the following autumn, enter the fresh waters because they have already completed the days of their purification in the sea. Although, when viewed in the relation of time, they may seem to form the continuous succession of spawning fish which have come up _gravid_ from the ocean during the later months of autumn, they are in truth rather the _avant-couriers_ of the newer and more highly-conditioned shoals which show themselves in early spring. We believe that fresh-run fish may be found in all our larger rivers during every month throughout the year, though we cannot clear up their somewhat anomalous history, nor explain why the breeding season, as among land creatures of identical natures, should not take place more uniformly about the same time. It is by no means improbable, however, that, as grilse seek our fresh waters at different periods from adult salmon, so salmon of a certain standing may observe different periods of migration from those of dissimilar age.

If, as many suppose, the earliest fish are those which have soonest spawned during the preceding autumn, and have since descended towards and recovered in the sea,--then a precocious spawning would necessarily lead to the speediest supply of clean fish in mid-winter; but the fact referred to has not been ascertained, and it may therefore still be as reasonably alleged that the winter fish (an opinion supported by the fact of their unusually large size) have continued in the sea since spring. At least a majority of them, (for they differ somewhat in their aspect and condition,) instead of having spawned soonest in autumn, have probably rather spawned last of all during the preceding spring, and so required for their recovery a corresponding retardation of their sojourn in the sea. The reasons why grilse seldom show themselves till the summer is well advanced, are very obvious, now that we have become conversant with their true history. They were only smolts in the immediately preceding spring, and are becoming grilse from week to week, and of various sizes, according to the length of their continuance in the sea. But they require at least a couple of months to intervene between their departure from the rivers in April or May, and their return thither;--which return consequently commences, though sparingly, in June, and preponderates in July and August.

But we are making slow progress with our intended exposition of Mr Scrope's beautiful and instructive volume. Although salmon and salmon streams form the subject and "main region of his song," he yet touches truthfully, albeit with brevity, upon the kindred nature of sea-trout, which are of two species--the salmon-trout and the bull-trout. The fry of the former, called orange fins, (which, like the genuine parr, remain two continuous years in the river,) greatly resemble the young of the common fresh-water trout. "Like the grilse, it returns to the river the summer of its spring migration, weighing about a pound and a half upon an average."--P. 63. We think our author rather over-estimates their weight at this early period. Herlings (for so they are also named on their first ascent from the sea) rarely weigh one pound, unless they remain for a longer time than usual in salt water. In this state they bear the same relation to adult sea-trout as grilse do to salmon, and they spawn while herlings. They afterwards increase about a pound and a half annually, and in the summer of their sixth year (from the ovum) have been found to weigh six pounds.[16] Whether this is their ordinary ultimate term of increase, or whether, having every year to pass up and down the dangerous, because clear and shallow waters, exposed to many mischances, and, it may be, the "imminent deadly breach" of the cruive-dyke, and thus perish in their prime, we cannot say: but this we know, that they are rarely ever met with above the weight of six or seven pounds.

[Footnote 16: See Mr Shaw's paper "On the Growth and Migration of the Sea-trout of the Solway."--_Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_. Vol. XV. Part iii. p. 369.]

Of the generation and growth of the other and greater sea-trout (_Salmo eriox_,) we have not yet acquired the same precise knowledge, but its history may fairly be inferred to be extremely similar.

"These fish," says Mr Scrope, "are found in many salmon rivers, but not in all. It is very abundant in the Tweed, which it visits principally at two seasons; in the spring about the month of May, and again in the month of October, when the males are very plentiful; but the females are scarce till about the beginning or middle of November. With salmon it is the reverse, as their females leave the sea before the males. The bull trout is also more regular in his habits than the salmon; for the fisherman can calculate almost to a day when the large black male trout will leave the sea. The foul fish rise eagerly at the fly, but the clean ones by no means so. They weigh from two to twenty-four pounds, and occasionally, I presume, but very rarely indeed, more. The largest I ever heard of was taken in the Hallowstell fishing water, at the mouth of the Tweed, in April 1840, and weighed twenty-three pounds and a half. The heaviest bull trout I ever encountered myself weighed sixteen pounds, and I had a long and severe contest with his majesty. He was a clean fish, and I hooked him in a cast in Mertoun water called the _Willow Bush_, not in the mouth but in the dorsal fin. Brethren of the craft, guess what sore work I had with him! He went here and there with apparent comfort and ease to his own person, but not to mine. I really did not know what to make of him. There never was such a Hector. I cannot say exactly how long I had him on the hook; it seemed a week at least. At length John Halliburton, who was then my fisherman, waded into the river up to his middle, and cleeked him whilst he was hanging in the stream, and before he was half beat."--P. 66.

Many simple-minded people, with something of a sentimental turn, (they are almost always fond of raw oysters, and gloat over a roasted turkey, although they know that it was bled to to death by cutting the roots of its tongue,) look upon angling as a "cruel sport." Let us see, with Mr Scrope, how this matter really stands.

"I take a little wool and feather, and tying it in a particular manner upon a hook, make an imitation of a fly; then I throw it across the river, and let it sweep round the stream with a lively motion. This I have an undoubted right to do, for the river belongs to me or my friend; but mark what follows. Up starts a monster fish with his murderous jaws, and makes a dash at my little Andromeda. Thus he is the aggressor, not I; his intention is evidently to commit murder. He is caught in the act of putting that intention into execution. Having wantonly intruded himself on my hook, which I contend he had no right to do, he darts about in various directions, evidently surprised to find that the fly, which he hoped to make an easy conquest of, is much stronger than himself. I naturally attempt to regain this fly, unjustly withheld from me. The fish gets tired and weak in his lawless endeavours to deprive me of it. I take advantage of his weakness, I own, and drag him, somewhat loth, to the shore, when one rap on the back of the head ends him in an instant. If he is a trout, I find his stomach distended with flies. That beautiful one called the May fly, who is by nature almost ephemeral--who rises up from the bottom of the the shallows, spreads its light wings, and flits in the sunbeam in enjoyment of its new existence--no sooner descends to the surface of the water to deposit its eggs, than the unfeeling fish, at one fell spring, numbers him prematurely with the dead. You see, then, what a wretch a fish is; no ogre is more bloodthirsty, for he will devour his nephews, nieces, and even his own children, when he can catch them; and I take some credit for having shown him up. Talk of a wolf, indeed a lion, or a tiger! Why, these, are all mild and saintly in comparison with a fish! What a bitter fright must the smaller fry live in! They crowd to the shallows, lie hid among the weeds, and dare not say the river is their own. I relieve them of their apprehensions, and thus become popular with the small shoals. When we see a fish quivering upon dry land, he looks so helpless without arms or legs, and so demure in expression, adding hypocrisy to his other sins, that we naturally pity him; then kill and eat him, with Harvey sauce, perhaps. Our pity is misplaced,--the fish is not. There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name of _Salmo ferox._ I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and give him the _coup-de-grace_. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff."--P. 83.

Mr Scrope is known as an accomplished artist as well as an experienced angler, and we need not now to tell our readers that he is also a skilful author. It does not fall to the lot of all men to handle with equal dexterity the brush, the pen, and the rod--to say nothing of the rifle--still less of the leister, under cloud of night. There is much in the present volume to interest even those who are so unfortunate as to have never seen either, grilse or salmon, except as pupils or practitioners in the silver-fork school. His reminiscences of his own early life and manlier years, under the soubriquet of Harry Otter, are pleasantly told, and his adventurous meetings with poachers and painters are amusing in themselves, as well as instructive in their tendency to illustrate, not only the deeper mysteries of piscatorial art, but the life and conversation of the amphibious people who dwell by the sides of rivers. His first arrival in "fair Melrose," the moonlight lustre of which was then unsung, is thus described--

"It was late, and I looked forth on the tranquil scene from my window. The moonbeams played upon the distant hilltops, but the lower masses slept as yet in shadow; again the pale light caught the waters of the Tweed, the lapse of whose streams fell faintly on the ear, like the murmuring of a sea-shell. In front rose up the mouldering abbey, deep in shadow; its pinnacles, and buttresses, and light tracery, but dimly seen in the solemn mass. A faint light twinkled for a space among the tomb-stones, soon it was extinct, and two figures passed off in the shadow, who had been digging a grave even at that late hour. As the night advanced, a change began to take place. Clouds heaved up over the horizon; the wind was heard in murmurs; the rack hurried athwart the moon; and utter darkness fell upon river, mountain, and haugh. Then the gust swelled louder, and the storm struck fierce and sudden against the casement. But as the morrow dawned, though rain-drops still hung upon the leaf, the clouds sailed away, the sun broke forth, and all was fair and tranquil."--P. 97.

The fisherman was sent for express, and his general garb and fly-bedizened hat, are soon portrayed; while the "waxing" of the Tweed, and how the Eildon Hills were of old cloven by the art of grammarye, conclude the fourth chapter, and bring us only to the hundredth page.

The ensuing section of the work opens with some general observations on the scenery of that now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with all those ongoings of human life and action which we call enjoyments! How mixed in their effects are even the natural glories of this our fair creation! What golden sunset casts not its far-beaming splendour, not only on the great mountains and the glittering sea, but also breaks, as if in mockery, into ghastly chambers where the desolation of death, "the wages of sin," is miserably brooding! And yet how solemnizing, how elevating in their influences, are all the highest beauties both of art and nature, notwithstanding the awe, approaching to fearfulness, with which they not seldom affect our spirits. The veneration with which we gaze even on insensate walls which once formed the loved abode of genius and virtue, is a natural tribute to a noble nature, and flows from one of the purest and most sustaining sources of emotion by which our humanity is distinguished. It almost looks as if, in accordance with the Platonic philosophy, there remained to man, from an original and more lofty state of existence, some dim remembrance of perfection.

"This inborn and implanted recollection of the godlike," says Schlegel, "remains ever dark and mysterious; for man is surrounded by the sensible world, which being in itself changeable and imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, changeableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual obscurity over that light which is within him. Wherever, in the sensible and natural world, he perceives any thing which bears a resemblance to the attributes of the God-head, which can serve as a symbol of a high perfection, the old recollections of his soul are awakened and refreshed. The love of the beautiful fills and animates the soul of the beholder with an awe and reverence which belong not to the beautiful itself--at least not to any sensible manifestation of it--but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the type. From this admiration, this new-awakened recollection, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher knowledge and truth. These are not the product of cold, leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a station far superior to what either thought, or art, or speculation, can attain; and enter into our inmost souls with the power and presence of a gift from the divinity."

Mr Scrope's first visit to the Tweed was made before the "Ariosto of the North" had sung those undying strains which have since added so much associated interest to the finely varied courses of that fair river. But many fond lovers of nature, then as now,

"Though wanting the accomplishment of verse,"

were well acquainted with all its unrecorded beauties.

"What stranger," asks our author, "just emerging from the angular enclosures of the south, scored and subdued by tillage, would not feel his heart expand at the first sight of the heathy mountains, swelling out into vast proportions, over which man had no dominion? At the dawn of day he sees, perhaps, the mist ascending slowly up the dusky river, taking its departure to some distant undefined region; below the mountain range his sight rests upon a deep and narrow glen, gloomy with woods, shelving down to its centre. What is hid in that mysterious mass the eye may not visit; but a sound comes down from afar, as of the rushing and din of waters. It is the voice of the Tweed, as it bursts from the melancholy hills, and comes rejoicing down the sunny vale, taking its free course through the haugh, and glittering amongst sylvan bowers--swelling out at times fair and ample, and again contracted into gorges and sounding cataracts--lost for a space in its mazes behind a jutting brae, and re-appearing in dashes of light through bolls of trees opposed to it in shadow.

"Thus it holds its fitful course. The stranger might wander in the quiet vale, and far below the blue summits he might see the shaggy flock grouped upon some sunny knoll, or struggling among the scattered birch-trees, and lower down on the haugh, his eye perchance might rest awhile on some cattle standing on a tongue of land by the margin of the river, with their dark and rich brown forms opposed to the brightness of the waters. All these outward pictures he might see and feel; but he would see no farther: the lore had not spread its witchery over the scene--the legends slept in oblivion. The stark moss-trooper, and the clanking stride of the warrior, had not again started into life; nor had the light blazed gloriously in the sepulchre of the wizard with the mighty book. The slogan swelled not anew upon the gale, sounding, through the glens and over the misty mountains; nor had the minstrel's harp made music in the stately halls of Newark, or beside the lonely braes of Yarrow.

"Since that time I have seen the Cottage of Abbotsford, with the rustic porch, lying peacefully on the haugh between the lone hills, and have listened to the wild rush of the Tweed as it hurried beneath it. As time progressed, and as hopes arose, I have seen that cottage converted into a picturesque mansion, with every luxury and comfort attached to it, and have partaken of its hospitality; the unproductive hills I have viewed covered with thriving plantations, and the whole aspect of the country civilized, without losing its romantic character. But, amidst all these revolutions, I have never perceived any change in the mind of him who made them,--'the choice and master spirit of the age.' There he dwelt in the hearts of the people, diffusing life and happiness around him; he made a home beside the border river, in a country and a nation that have derived benefit from his presence, and consequence from his genius. From his chamber he looked out upon the grey ruins of the Abbey, and the sun which set in splendour beneath the Eildon Hills. Like that sun, his course has been run; and, though disastrous clouds came across him in his career, he went down in unfading glory.

"These golden hours, alas! have long passed away; but often have I visions of the sylvan valley, and its glittering waters, with dreams of social intercourse. Abbotsford, Mertoun, Chiefswood, Huntly-Burn, Allerley--when shall I forget ye?"--P. 102.

How many share these sad and vain regrets! The very voice of the living waters, which once glittered so rejoicingly through the green pastures, or reflected in their still expanse the lichen-covered crag or varied woodland, seems now to utter an "_illoetabile murmur_," while

"A trouble not of clouds or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light, Engender'd, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height."

On the 21st of September 1832, Sir Walter Scott breathed his last, in the presence of all his children. "It was a beautiful day," we have been elsewhere told, "so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes. No sculptor ever modelled a more majestic image of repose."[17]

[Footnote 17: The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., by his literary executor.]

We must here unwillingly conclude our account of Mr Scrope's volume, although we have scarcely even entered on many of its most important portions. Bait fishing for salmon, and the darker, though torch-illumined, mysteries of the leister, occupy the terminal chapters. A careful study of the whole will amply repay the angler, the naturalist, the artist, and the general admirer of the inexhaustible beauties of rural scenery--nowhere witnessed or enjoyed to such advantage as by the side of a first-rate river.

* * * * *

THE WHIPPIAD, A SATIRICAL POEM.

BY REGINALD HEBER, BISHOP OF CALCUTTA.

In offering this little poem to the public, some few words, by way of explanation, are deemed necessary. Most of the circumstances alluded to in it will be familiar to Oxford readers of Bishop Heber's standing, but especially to those of his own college, Brazenose. The origin of the poem was simply this:--A young friend of his, B----d P----t, went to call upon him at Brazenose, and, without being aware of the heinous crime he was committing, cracked a four-horse whip in the quadrangle. This moved the ire of a certain doctor, a fellow and tutor, and at that time also dean of the college, commonly called _Dr Toe_ from a defect in one of his feet. The doctor had unfortunately made himself obnoxious to most of those of his own college, under-graduates as well as others, by his absurd conduct and regulations. On the following day Mr P----t cracked the whip in the quadrangle, when the doctor issued from his rooms in great wrath, and after remonstrating with Mr P----t, and endeavouring to take the whip from him, a scuffle ensued, in which the whip was broken, and the doctor overpowered and thrown down by the victorious P----t, who had fortunately taken his degree of Master of Arts. Heber, then an under-graduate of only a few terms' standing, wrote the first canto the same evening, and the intrinsic merit of the poem will recommend it to most readers. But it will be doubly interesting when considered as one of the _first_, if not the _very first_, of the poetical productions of that eminent and distinguished scholar. In it may be traced the dawnings of that genius which was afterwards to delight the world in an enlarged sphere of usefulness.

K.

CANTO FIRST.

Where whiten'd Cain the curse of heaven defies,[18] And leaden slumber seals his brother's eyes, Where o'er the porch in brazen splendour glows The vast projection of the mystic nose, Triumph erewhile of Bacon's fabled arts,[19] Now well-hung symbol of the student's parts; 'Midst those unhallow'd walls and gloomy cells Where every thing but Contemplation dwells, Dire was the feud our sculptured Alfred saw,[20] And thy grim-bearded bust, Erigena, When scouts came flocking from the empty hall, And porters trembled at the Doctor's call; Ah! call'd in vain, with laugh supprest they stood And bit their nails, a dirty-finger'd brood. E'en Looker gloried in his master's plight,[21] And John beheld, and chuckled at the sight.[22] Genius of discord! thou whose murky flight With iron pennons more obscured the night-- Thou, too, of British birth, who dost reside In Syms's or in Goodwin's blushing tide,[23] Say, spirit, say, for thy enlivening bowl With fell ambition fired thy favourite's soul, From what dread cause began the bloodless fray Pregnant with shame, with laughter, and dismay? Calm was the night, and all was sunk to rest, Save Shawstone's party, and the Doctor's breast: He saw with pain his ancient glory fled, And thick oblivion gathering round his head. Alas! no more his pupils crowding come, To wait indignant in their tyrant's room,[24] No more in hall the fluttering theme he tears, Or lolling, picks his teeth at morning prayers; Unmark'd, unfear'd, on dogs he vents his hate, And spurns the terrier from his guarded gate. But now to listless indolence a prey, Stretch'd on his couch, he sad and darkling lay; As not unlike in venom and in size, Close in his hole the hungry spider lies. "And oh!" he cries, "am I so powerless grown, That I am fear'd by cooks and scouts alone? Oh! for some nobler strife, some _senior_ foe, To swell by his defeat the name of Toe!" He spoke--the powers of mischief heard his cries, And steep'd in sullen sleep his rheumy eyes. He slept--but rested not, his guardian sprite Rose to his view in visions of the night, And thus, with many a tear and many a sigh, He heard, or seem'd to hear, the mimic demon cry:--[25] "Is this a time for distant strife to pray, When all my power is melting fast away, Like mists dissolving at the beams of day, When masters dare their ancient rights resume, And bold intruders fill the common room, Whilst thou, poor wretch, forsaken, shunn'd by all, Must pick thy commons in the empty hall? Nay more! regardless of thy hours and thee, They scorn the ancient, frugal hour of three.[26] Good Heavens! at four their costly treat is spread, And juniors lord it at the table's head; See fellows' benches sleeveless striplings bear,[27] Whilst Smith and Sutton from the canvass stare.[28] Hear'st thou through all this consecrated ground, The rattling thong's unwonted clangour sound? Awake! arise! though many a danger lour, By one bright deed to vindicate thy power." He ceased; as loud the fatal whip resounds, With throbbing heart the eager Doctor bounds. So when some bear from Russia's clime convey'd, Politer grown, has learnt the dancer's trade, If weary with his toil perchance, he hears His master's lash re-echoing in his ears, Though loath, he lifts his paws, and bounds in air, And hops and rages whilst the rabble stare.

CANTO THE SECOND.

You the great foe of this Assembly! I the great foe? Why the great foe? In that being one of the meanest, barest, poorest, ----Thou goest foremost.--SHAKSPEARE'S _Coriolanus_.

Forth from his cell the wily warrior hies, And swift to seize the unwary victim flies. For sure he deem'd, since now declining day Had dimn'd the brightness of his visual ray, He deem'd on helpless under-graduate foes To purge the bile that in his liver rose. Fierce schemes of vengeance in his bosom swell, Jobations dire, and Impositions fell. And now a cross he'd meditate, and swear[29] Six ells of Virgil should the crime repair.[30] Along the grass with heedless haste he trod,[31] And with unequal footsteps press'd the sod-- That hallow'd sod, that consecrated ground, By eclogues, fines, and crosses fenced around. When lo! he sees, yet scarcely can believe, The destined victim wears a master's sleeve; So when those heroes, Britain's pride and care, In dark Batavian meadows urge the war; Oft as they roam'd, in fogs and darkness lost, They found a Frenchman what they deem'd a post. The Doctor saw; and, filled with wild amaze, He fix'd on P----t[32] his quick convulsive gaze. Thus shrunk the trembling thief, when first he saw, Hung high in air, the waving Abershaw.[33] Thus the pale bawd, with agonizing heart, Shrieks when she hears the beadle's rumbling cart. "And oh! what noise," he cries, "what sounds unblest, Presume to break a senior's holy rest?[34] Full well you know, who thus my anger dare, To horse-whips what antipathy I bear. Shall I, in vain, immersed in logic lore, O'er Saunderson and Allrick try to pore-- I, who the major to the minor join, And prove conclusively that _seven's_ not _nine_? With expectation big, and hope elate, The critic world my learned labours wait: And shall not Strabo then respect command, And shall not Strabo stay thy insulting hand? Strabo![35] whose pages, eighteen years and more, Have been my public shame, my private bore? Hence, to thy room, audacious wretch! retire, Nor think thy sleeves shall save thee from mine ire." He spoke; such fury sparkled in his face, The Buttery trembled to its tottering base, The frighted rats in corners laid them down, And all but P----t was daunted at his frown; Firm and intrepid stood the reverend man, As thrice he stroked his face, and thus began: "And hopest thou then," the injured Bernard said, "To launch thy thunders on a master's head? O, wont to deal the trope and dart the fist, Half-learn'd logician, half-form'd pugilist, Censor impure, who dar'st, with slanderous aim, And envy's dart, assault a H----r's name. Senior, self-called, can I forget the day, When titt'ring under-graduates mock'd thy sway, And drove thee foaming from the Hall away? Gods, with what raps the conscious tables rung, From every form how shrill the cuckoo sung![36] Oh! sounds unblest--Oh! notes of deadliest fear-- Harsh to the tutor's or the lover's ear, The hint, perchance, thy warmest hopes may quell, And cuckoo mingle with the thoughts of _Bel_."[37] At that loved name, with fury doubly keen, Fierce on the Deacon rush'd the raging Dean; Nor less the dauntless Deacon dare withstand The brandish'd weight of Toe's uplifted hand. [38]The ghost of themes departed, that, of yore, Disgraced alike, the Doctor praised or tore, On paper wings flit dimly through the night, And, hovering low in air, beheld the fight. Each ill-starr'd verse its filthy den forsakes, Black from the spit, or reeking from the jakes; The blot-stain'd troop their shadowy pages spread, And call for vengeance on the murderer's head.

CANTO THE THIRD.

digito male pertinaci.--_Hor_.

[39]Shade of Boileau! (who told in deathless lays A choral pulpit's military praise,) Thou, too, that dared'st a cloister'd warfare sing, And dip thy bucket in Castalia's spring! Forgive, blest bards, if, with unequal fire, I feebly strike the imitative lyre; Though strong to celebrate no vulgar fray, Since P----t and conquest swell the exulting lay. Not link'd, alas in friendship's sacred band, With hands fast lock'd the furious parsons stand; Each grasps the whip with unrelenting might-- The whip, the cause and guerdon of the fight-- But either warrior spends his strength in vain, And panting draws his lengthen'd breath with pain, Till now the Dean, with throat extended wide, And faltering shout, for speedy succour cried [40]To them who in yon grateful cell repose, Where Greenland odours feast the stranger's nose-- "Scouts, porters, shoe-blacks, whatsoe'er your trade, All, all, attend, your master's fist to aid!" They heard his voice, and, trembling at the sound, The half-breech'd legions swarm'd like moths around; But, ah! the half-breech'd legions, call'd in vain, Dismay'd and useless, fill'd the cumber'd plain; And while for servile aid the Doctor calls, [41]By P----t subverted, prone to earth he sprawls. [42]E'en then were heard, so Brazenose students sing, The grass-plot chains in boding notes to ring; E'en then we mark'd, where, gleaming through the night, Aerial crosses shed a lurid light. Those wrestlers, too, whom naked we behold Through many a summer's night and winter's cold, Now changed appear'd, his pristine languor fled, Expiring Abel raised his sinking head, While with fix'd eyes his murderer seemed to stand, The bone half dropping from his nerveless hand. So, when of old, as Latian records tell, At Pompey's base the laurel'd despot fell, Reviving freedom mock'd her sinking foe, And demons shriek'd as Brutus dealt the blow. His trencher-bonnet tumbling from his crown, Subdued by Bernard, sunk the Doctor down; But yet, though breathless on the hostile plain, The whip he could not seize he snapt in twain-- "Where now, base themester,"--P----t exulting said, And waved the rattling fragments o'er his head-- "Where now thy threats? Yet learn from me to know How glorious 'tis to spare a fallen foe. Uncudgel'd, rise--yet hear my high command-- [43]Hence to thy room! or dread thy conqueror's hand." [44]His hair all gravel, and all green his clothes, In doleful dumps the downcast Doctor rose, Then slunk unpitied from the hated plain, And inly groaning sought his couch again; Yet, as he went, he backward cast his view, And bade his ancient power a last adieu. So, when some sturdy swain through miry roads A grunting porker to the market goads, With twisted neck, splash'd hide, and progress slow, Oft backward looks the swine, and half disdains to go. "Ah me! how fallen," with choaking sobs he said, And sunk exhausted on his welcome bed; "Ere yet my shame, wide-circling through the town, Spreads from the strong contagion of the gown, Oh! be it mine, unknowing and unknown, [45]With deans deceased, to sleep beneath the stone." As tearful thus, and half convulsed with spite, He lengthen'd out with plaints the livelong night, At that still hour of night, when dreams are oft'nest true, A well-known spectre rose before his view, As in some lake, when hush'd in every breeze, The bending ape his form reflected sees,[46] Such and so like the Doctor's angel shone, And by his gait the guardian sprite was known, Benignly bending o'er his aching head-- "Sleep, Henry, sleep, my best beloved," he said,[47] "Soft dreams of bliss shall soothe thy midnight hour; Connubial transport and collegiate power. Fly fast, ye months, till Henry shall receive The joys a bride and benefice can give. But first to sanction thy prophetic name, In yon tall pile a doctor's honours claim;[48] E'en now methinks the awe-struck crowd behold Thy powder'd caxon and thy cane of gold. E'en now--but hark! the chimney sparrows sing, St Mary's chimes their early matins ring-- I go--but thou----through many a festive night Collegiate bards shall chant thy luckless fight-- Though many a jest shall spread the table round, And many a bowl to B----r----d's health be crown'd-- O'er juniors still maintain thy dread command, Still boast, my son, thy cross-compelling hand.[49] Adieu!"--His shadowy robes the phantom spread, And o'er the Doctor drowsy influence shed; Scared at the sound, far off his terrors flew, And love and hope once more his curtains drew.

[Footnote 18: In the quadrangle of Brazenose College, there is a statue of Cain destroying Abel with a bone, or some such instrument. It is of lead, and _white-washed_, and no doubt that those who have heard that Cain was struck black, will be surprised to find that in Brazenose he is white as innocence.]

[Footnote 19: All the world has rung with the fame of Roger Bacon, formerly of this college, and of his exploits in astrology, chemistry, and metallurgy, _inter alia_ his brazen head, of which alone the nose remains, a precious relic, and (to use the words of the excellent author of the _Oxford Guide_) still conspicuous over the portal, where it erects itself as a symbolical illustration of the Salernian adage "Noscitur a naso."]

[Footnote 20: Two medallions of Alfred and Erigena ornament the outside of the Hall, so as to overlook the field of battle.]

[Footnote 21: The Porter of the college.]

[Footnote 22: The doctor's servant or scout.]

[Footnote 23: Two wine-merchants residing in Oxford.]

[Footnote 24: To those gentlemen who, for half an hour together, have sometimes had the honour of waiting in the Doctor's antechamber, "Donec libeat vigilare tyranno," this passage will need no explanation; and of his acts of graceful dignity and unaffected piety at chapel, perhaps the less that is said the better.]

[Footnote 25: It was a Rosicrucian tenet, that the demon was assimilated to the object of his care; and in this we are confirmed by the authority of the Doctor himself, who treated very largely on the subject of demons in his lecture on Plato's Phædon. The powers of his mind were never more successfully displayed than when he illustrated his positions by the scriptural instance of the two Galilean demoniacs, who abode in the tombs night and day. It was reserved for his ingenuity and learning to discover that those unfortunate Bedlamites were not mortals, but departed spirits.]

[Footnote 26: The real friend of collegiate discipline, whose feelings our author would blush to offend, will be pleased to recollect that this deviation from the usual dinner hour took place in the long vacation; that it was introduced for the convenience of study, and that the doctor, could he so far have forgotten his dignity as to have joined the four o'clock party, would have found decorous manners, and more than one brother fellow of the company.]

[Footnote 27: Wisely was it ordained by our founders, that, young men being too apt to laugh in their sleeves at the conduct of their superiors, the academical dress of the under-graduates should, as far as possible, obviate that inconvenience. Thus, also, Tully hath it, "Cedant arma togæ."]

[Footnote 28: The two founders of Brazenose College.]

[Footnote 29: It is necessary to explain to non-academic readers, that it is customary for the tutor of a college to put an X opposite the name of an offending member in the Buttery Book, as it is called, by which he is interdicted from having bread buttered, a kind of excommunication.]

[Footnote 30: For the meaning of this expression we refer the reader to the most preposterous imposition ever known in the annals of collegiate punishment; the original MS. of which is preserved in the museum of an eminent collector in Kent. In short, as in Cambridge they sell their butter by the yard, so at Brazenose the cloth measure has been applied with singular success to the works of genius; and perhaps the system may be so far improved upon, that a future under-graduate may have to toil through a _furlong_ of Strabo, or a _perch_ of logic.]

[Footnote 31: This alludes to the hobbling gait of the Doctor, in consequence of the defect in his foot.]

[Footnote 32: The Rev. B----d P----t.]

[Footnote 33: Alluding to a notorious malefactor, executed about this times and hung in chains on Wimbledon Common.]

[Footnote 34: Prophetically spoken, as the Doctor was then only a junior fellow.]

[Footnote 35: The Doctor, finding that Horace prescribed a nine years' delay for play or poem, inferred that more than twice that time was necessary for the learned labours of the editor of Strabo.]

[Footnote 36: For the wonderful answers of the learned cuckoo, at logic lecture, we refer to his (the cuckoo's) equally edified class-fellows.]

[Footnote 37: The reader will perhaps be astonished to find, that the Doctor as supposed to flatter himself with the hope that his attentions were not altogether unacceptable to a young lady of singular elegance and personal accomplishments, here alluded to.]

[Footnote 38: "Obscoenæque volucres signa dabant."]

[Footnote 39: The poet invokes his heroi-comic predecessors, the author of the _Lutrin_, and Alessandro Tassoni, whose _Secchia Rapita_, or Rape of the Bucket, is well known to the amateurs of Italian poetry.]

[Footnote 40: No classical stranger could ever pass the porter in his lodge at Brazenose, without being sensibly reminded of a favourite passage in Horace, and exclaiming, "Quis multà gracilis--puer in rosâ, Perfusus liquidis--odoribus Grato----sub antro." ]

[Footnote 41: "Procumbit humi bos." This is not the first time the Doctor has been overcome by _port_.]

[Footnote 42: "Hine exaudiri gemitus, et sæva sonare Verbera, tum stridor ferri tractæque catenæ." ]

[Footnote 43: With great practical justice and classical elegance, the words of the assailant are retorted upon himself-- "Suo sibi gladio hunc jugulo." ]

[Footnote 44: The _boulevérsement_ is supposed to have happened on the green adjoining the gravel.]

[Footnote 45: Dead deans, broken bottles, dilapidated lantherns, under-graduated ladders, and other lumber, have generally found their level under the pavement of Brazenose cloisters.]

[Footnote 46: Like Virgil's nightingale or owl-- "Ferali carmine bubo Flet noctem." ]

[Footnote 47: "Post mediam visus noctem cum somnia vera."]

[Footnote 48: We have heard it whispered, but cannot undertake to vouch for the truth of the rumour, that a considerable wager now depends upon the accomplishment of this prophecy within nine calendar months after the Doctor has obtained a _bona fide_ degree.]

[Footnote 49: Alluding to the collegiate punishment before explained.]

* * * * *

CHARLES EDWARD AT VERSAILLES.

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF CULLODEN.

Take away that star and garter--hide them from my loathing sight, Neither king nor prince shall tempt me from my lonely room this night; Fitting for the throneless exile is the atmosphere of pall, And the gusty winds that shiver 'neath the tapestry on the wall. When the taper faintly dwindles like the pulse within the vein, That to gay and merry measure ne'er may hope to bound again, Let the shadows gather round me while I sit in silence here, Broken-hearted, as an orphan watching by his father's bier. Let me hold my still communion far from every earthly sound-- Day of penance--day of passion--ever, as the year comes round. Fatal day whereon the latest die was cast for me and mine-- Cruel day, that quell'd the fortunes of the hapless Stuart line! Phantom-like, as in a mirror, rise the griesly scenes of death-- There before me, in its wildness, stretches bare Culloden's heath-- There the broken clans are scatter'd, gaunt as wolves, and famine-eyed-- Hunger gnawing at their vitals--hope abandon'd--all but pride-- Pride--and that supreme devotion which the Southron never knew, And the hatred, deeply rankling, 'gainst the Hanoverian crew. Oh, my God! are these the remnants--these the wrecks of the array, That around the royal standard gather'd on the glorious day, When, in deep Glenfinnart's valley, thousands, on their bended knees, Saw once more that stately banner waving in the northern breeze, When the noble Tullibardine stood beneath its weltering fold, With the ruddy lion ramping in the field of treasured gold! When the mighty heart of Scotland, all too big to slumber more, Burst in wrath and exultation, like a huge volcano's roar! There they stand, the batter'd columns, underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing--not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill-- But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness--madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest from the field of red Dunbar? Fetch my horse, and blow the trumpet!--Call the riders of Fitz-James, Let Lord Lewis bring the muster!--Valiant chiefs of mighty names-- Trusty Keppoch! stout Glengarry! gallant Gordon! wise Lochiel! Bid the clansmen charge together, fast, and fell, and firm as steel. Elcho, never look so gloomy! What avails a sadden'd brow? Heart, man--heart! we need it sorely--never half so much as now. Had we but a thousand troopers--had we but a thousand more!---- Noble Perth, I hear them coming!--Hark! the English cannons' roar. God! how awful sounds that volley, bellowing through the mist and rain! Was not that the Highland slogan? Let me hear that shout again! Oh, for prophet eyes to witness how the desperate battle goes! Cumberland! I would not fear thee, could my Camerons see their foe. Sound, I say, the charge at venture--t'is not naked steel we fear; Better perish in the mêlée than be shot like driven deer! Hold! the mist begins to scatter. There in front 'tis rent asunder, And the cloudy battery crumbles underneath the deafening thunder; There I see the scarlet gleaming! Now, Macdonald--now or never!-- Woe is me, the clans are broken! Father, thou art lost for ever! Chief and vassal, lord and yeoman, there they lie in heaps together, Smitten by the deadly volley, rolled in blood upon the heather; And the Hanoverian horsemen, fiercely riding to and fro, Deal their murderous strokes at random.-- Ah my God! where am I now? Will that baleful vision never vanish from my aching sight? Must those scenes and sounds of terror haunt me still by day and night? Yea, the earth hath no oblivion for the noblest chance it gave, None, save in its latest refuge--seek it only in the grave. Love may die, and hatred slumber, and their memory will decay, As the water'd garden recks not of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, what shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies coil'd around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!--What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied as a wasted cripple's knee! Suppliant-like for alms depending on a false and foreign court, Jostled by the flouting nobles, half their pity, half their sport. Forced to hold a place in pageant, like a royal prize of war Walking with dejected features close behind his victor's car, Styled an equal--deem'd a servant--fed with hopes of future gain-- Worse by far is fancied freedom than the captive's clanking chain! Could I change this gilded bondage even for the massy tower Whence King James beheld his lady sitting in the castle bower-- Birds around her sweetly singing, fluttering on the kindled spray, And the comely garden glowing in the light of rosy May. Love descended to the window--Love removed the bolt and bar-- Love was warder to the lovers from the dawn to even-star. Wherefore, Love, didst thou betray me? Where is now the tender glance? Where the meaning looks once lavish'd by the dark-eyed Maid of France? Where the words of hope she whisper'd, when around my neck she threw That same scarf of broider'd tissue, bade me wear it and be true-- Bade me send it as a token when my banner waved once more On the castled Keep of London, where my fathers' waved before? And I went and did not conquer--but I brought it back again-- Brought it back from storm and battle--brought it back without stain; And once more I knelt before her, and I laid it at her feet, Saying, "Wilt thou own it, Princess? There at least is no defeat!" Scornfully she look'd upon me with a measured eye and cold-- Scornfully she view'd the token, though her fingers wrought the gold, And she answer'd, faintly flushing, "Hast thou kept it, then, so long? Worthy matter for a minstrel to be told in knightly song! Worthy of a bold Provençal, pacing through the peaceful plain, Singing of his lady's favour, boasting of her silken chain, Yet scarce worthy of a warrior sent to wrestle for a crown. Is this all that thou hast brought me from thy field of high renown? Is this all the trophy carried from the lands where thou hast been? It was broider'd by a Princess, can'st thou give it to a Queen?" Woman's love is writ in water! Woman's faith is traced in sand! Backwards--backwards let me wander to the noble northern land; Let me feel the breezes blowing fresh along the mountain side; Let me see the purple heather, let me hear the thundering tide, Be it hoarse as Corrievreckan spouting when the storm is high-- Give me but one hour of Scotland--let me see it ere I die! Oh, my heart is sick and heavy--southern gales are not for me; Though the glens are white with winter, place me there, and set me free; Give me back my trusty comrades--give me back my Highland maid-- Nowhere beats the heart so kindly as beneath the tartan plaid! Flora! when thou wert beside me, in the wilds of far Kintail-- When the cavern gave us shelter from the blinding sleet and hail-- When we lurk'd within the thicket, and, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, heard him chant his listless tune-- When the howling storm o'ertook us drifting down the island's lee, And our crazy bark was whirling like a nutshell on the sea-- When the nights were dark and dreary, and amidst the fern we lay Faint and foodless, sore with travel, longing for the streaks of day; When thou wert an angel to me, watching my exhausted sleep-- Never didst thou hear me murmur--couldst thou see how now I weep! Bitter tears and sobs of anguish, unavailing though they be. Oh the brave--the brave and noble--who have died in vain for me!

W.E.A.

* * * * *

EARLY GREEK ROMANCES--THE ETHIOPICS OF HELIODORUS.

"It is not in Provence, (Provincia _Romanorum_,) as is commonly said from the derivation of the name--nor yet in Spain, as many suppose, that we are to look for the fatherland of those amusing compositions called _Romances_, which are so eminently useful in these days as affording a resource and occupation to ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do. It is in distant and far different climes to our own, and in the remote antiquity of long vanished ages:--it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar genius and poetical temperament of those nations particularly adapt them, and in which they delight to a degree scarcely to be credited. For even their ordinary discourse is interspersed with figurative expressions; and their maxims of theology and philosophy, and above all, of morals and political science, are invariably couched under the guise of allegory or parable. I need not stay to enlarge upon the universal veneration paid throughout the East to the fables of Bidpai or Pilpay, and to Lokman, who is (as may easily be shown) the Esop of the Greeks:--and it is well known that the story of Isfendiyar, and of the daring deeds of the Persian hero Rustan, in love and war,[50] are to this day more popular in those regions than the tales of Hercules, Roland, or Amadis de Gaul, ever were with us. And so decidedly is Asia the parent of these fictions, that we shall find on examination, that nearly all those who in early times distinguished themselves as writers of what are now called romances, were of oriental birth or extraction. Clearchus, a pupil of Aristotle, and the first who attempted any thing of the sort in the Greek language, was a native of Soli in Cilicia:--Jamblichus was a Syrian, as were also Heliodorus and Lucian, the former being of Emessa, the latter of Samosata:--Achilles Tatius was an Alexandrian; and the rule will be found to hold good in other instances, with scarcely a single exception."

[Footnote 50: The exploits of these and other paladins of the Kaianian dynasty, the heroic age of Persian history, are now known to us principally through the _Shah-Nameh_ of Ferdousi, a poem bearing date only at the beginning of the eleventh century; but both this and its predecessor, the _Bostan-Nameh_, were founded on ballads and [Greek: rhapsôdiai] of far distant ages, which had escaped the ravages of time and the Mohammedans, and some of which are even now preserved among the ancient tribes of pure Persian descent, in the S.W. provinces of the kingdom. Sir John Malcolm (_History of Persia_, ii. 444, note, 8vo. ed.,) gives an amusing anecdote of the effect produced among his escort by one of these popular chants.]

Such is the doctrine laid down (at somewhat greater length than we have rendered it) by the learned Huetius, in his treatise _De Origine Fabularum Romanensium_; and from the general principle therein propounded, we are certainly by no means inclined to dissent. But while fully admitting that it is to the vivid fancy and picturesque imagination of the Orientals that we owe the origin of all those popular legends which have penetrated, under various changes of costume, into every corner of Europe,[51] as well as those more gorgeous creations which appear, interwoven with the ruder creations of the northern nations, to have furnished the groundwork of the _fabliaux_ and _lais_ of the chivalry of the middle ages:--we still hold that the invention of the romance of ordinary life, in which the interest of the story depends upon occurrences in some measure within the bounds of probability, and in which the heroes and heroines are neither invested with superhuman qualities, nor extricated from their difficulties by supernatural means, must be ascribed to a more _European_ state of society than that which produced those tales of wonder, which are commonly considered as characteristic of the climes of the East. Even the authors enumerated by the learned bishop of Avranches himself, in the passage above quoted, were all denizens of the _Greek_ cities of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and consequently, in all probability, Greeks by descent; and though the scene of their works is frequently laid in Asia, the costumes and characters introduced are almost invariably on the Greek model. These writers, therefore, may fairly be considered as constituting a distinct class from those more strictly Oriental, not only in birth, but in language and ideas; and as being, in fact, the legitimate forerunners of that portentous crowd of modern novelists, whose myriad productions seem destined (as the Persians believe of the misshapen progeny of Gog and Magog, confined within the brazen wall of Iskender,) to over-run the world of literature in these latter days.

[Footnote 51: The prototype of the well-known Welsh legend of Beth-Gelert, for instance, is found in the Sanscrit Hitopadosa, as translated by Sir William Jones, with a mere change in the _dramatis personæ_--the faithful hound Gelert becoming a tame mungoos or ichneumon, the wolf a cabra-capello, and the young heir of the Welsh prince an infant rajah.]

At the head of this early school of romantic writers, in point of merit as of time, (for the writings of Lucian can scarcely be considered as regular romances; and the "Babylonica" of Jamblichus, and the "Dinias and Dercyllis" of Antonius Diogenes, are known to us only by the abstract of them preserved in Photius,) we may, without hesitation, place Heliodorus, the author of the "Ethiopics," "whose writings"--says Huetius--"the subsequent novelists of those ages constantly proposed to themselves as a model for imitation; and as truly may they all be said to have drunk of the waters of this fountain, as all the poets did of the Homeric spring." To so servile an extent, indeed, was this imitation carried, that while both the incidents and characters in the "Clitophon and Leucippe" of Achilles Tatius, a work which, in point of literary merit, stands next to that of Heliodorus, are, in many passages, almost a reproduction, with different names and localities,[52] of those in the "Ethiopics," the last-named has again had his copyists in the "Hysminias and Hysmine" of Eustathius or Eumathius, and the "Dosicles and Rhodanthe" of Theodorus Prodromus, the latter of whom was a monk of the twelfth century. In these productions of the lower empire, the extravagance of the language, the improbability of the plot, and the wearisome dullness of the details, are worthy of each other; and are only varied occasionally by a little gross indelicacy, from which, indeed, none but Heliodorus is wholly exempt. Yet, "as in the lowest deep there is a lower still," so even Theodorus Prodromus has found an humble imitator in Nicetas Eugenianus, than whose romance of "Charicles and Drosilla" it must be allowed that the force of nonsense "can no further go." Besides this descending scale of plagiarism, which we have followed down to its lowest anti-climax, we should mention, for the sake of making our catalogue complete, the "Pastorals, or Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus--a work in itself of no particular merits or demerits as a literary composition, but noted for its unparalleled depravity, and further remarkable as the first of the class of pastoral romances, which were almost as rife in Europe during the middle ages as novels of fashionable life are, for the sins of this generation, at the present day. There only remain to be enumerated the three precious farragos entitled "The Ephesiacs, or Habrocomas and Anthia"--"the Babylonics"--and "the Cypriacs"--said to be from the pen of three different Xenophons, of whose history nothing, not even the age in which any of them lived, can be satisfactorily made out--though the uniformity of stupid extravagance, not less than the similarity of name, would lead _à priori_ to the conclusion that one luckless wight must have been the author of all three. From this list of the Byzantine romances, (in which we are not sure that one or two may not after all have been omitted,) it will be seen that Heliodorus had a tolerably numerous progeny, even in his own language, to answer for; though we fear we must concur in the sweeping censure of a Quarterly Reviewer, (vol. x. p. 301,) who condemns then _en masse_, with the single exception of the "Ethiopics" of the last-named author, as "a few tiresome stories, absolutely void of taste, invention, or interest; without influence even upon the declining literature of their own age, and in all probability quite unknown to the real forerunners of Richardson, Fielding, and Rousseau."

[Footnote 52: The principal adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe consist in being twice taken by pirates on the banks of the Nile, as Theagenes and Chariclea are in the Ethiopics.]

A work thus excepted, by common consent, from the general reprobation is which all its compeers are involved, must deserve some notice from its negative, if not from its positive merits; and the particulars which have been preserved of its literary history are also somewhat curious. Even in these days, when almost every other individual is a novelist, either _in esse_ or in embryo, the announcement of a love-story from the pen of a bishop would create what is called "a considerable sensation"--though perhaps it would hardly draw down on the author such condign and summary punishment as was inflicted by the straitlaced Kirk of Scotland, less than a century ago, on one of her ministers, for the high crime and misdemeanour of having indited "a stage play, called the _Tragedy of Douglas_."[53] Yet not only the "Ethiopics," but the best known of its successors, the "Clitophon and Leucippe" of Achilles Tatius, are both universally asserted to have been juvenile productions of ecclesiastics who afterwards attained the episcopal dignity: and the former, if we may credit the Ecclesiastical History of Nicephorus, fared not much better at the hands of the Provincial Synod of Thessaly than did the "Tragedy of Douglas" at those of the Scottish Presbyteries. Hear what saith the historian: "This Heliodorus, bishop of Trica, had in his youth written certain love-stories called the "Ethiopics," which are highly popular even at the present day, though they are now better known by the title of 'Chariclea'"--(the name of the heroine)--"and it was by reason thereof that he lost his see. For, inasmuch as very many of the youth were drawn into peril of sin by the perusal of these amorous tales, it was determined by the provincial synod that either these books, which kindled the fire of love, should themselves be consumed by fire, or that the author should be deposed from his episcopal functions--and this choice being propounded to him, he preferred resigning his bishopric to suppressing his writings."--(_Niceph. Hist. Ecclesiast._ lib. xii. c. 34.)[54] Heliodorus, according to the same authority, was the first Thessalian bishop who had insisted on the married clergy putting away their wives, which may probably have tended to make him unpopular: but the story of his deposition, it should be observed, rests solely on the statement of Nicephorus, and is discredited by Bayle and Huet, who argue that the silence of Socrates (_Ecclesiast. Hist._ v. chap. 22.) in the passage where he expressly assigns the authorship of the "Ethiopics" to _the Bishop_ Heliodorus, more than counterbalances the unsupported assertion of Nicephorus--"an author," says Huet, "of more credulity than judgment." If Heliodorus were, indeed, as has been generally supposed, the same to whom several of the Epistles of St Jerome were addressed, this circumstance would supply an additional argument against the probability of his having incurred the censures of the church: but whatever the testimony of Nicephorus may be worth on this point, his mention of the work affords undeniable proof of its long continued popularity, as his Ecclesiastical History was written about A.D. 900, and Heliodorus lived under the reign of the sons of Theodosius, or fully five hundred years earlier. Enough, however, has been said of him in his capacity of a bishop--and we shall proceed to consider him in that of an author, by which he is far better known than by episcopacy.

[Footnote 53: Home was expelled the ministry for this heinous offence, which raised a fearful turmoil at the time among Synods and Presbyteries. The Glasgow Presbytery published a declaration (Feb. 14, 1757) on the "melancholy but notorious fact, that one, who is a minister of the Church of Scotland, did himself write and compose a stage play intitled the Tragedy of Douglas;" and to this declaration various other presbyteries published their adhesion.]

[Footnote 54: This sentence might, with more justice, have been visited upon the work of the other bishop, Achilles Tatius, for his not infrequent transgressions against delicacy, a fault never chargeable on Heliodorus.]

The time of the story is laid in the middle ages of Grecian history, after the conclusion of the wars between Greece and Persia, and while Egypt was still governed by the satraps of the great king; and the first scene at once plunges the reader, in accordance with the Horatian precept, _in medias res_. A band of marauders, prowling on the coast of Egypt, are surprised by the sight of a ship moored to the shore without any one on board, while the beach around is strewed with the fragments of a costly banquet, and with a number of dead bodies of men, slain apparently in mutual conflict; the only survivors being a damsel of surpassing beauty, arrayed as a priestess of Diana, who is wailing over the inanimate form of a wounded youth. Before they have time however, either to unravel the mystery, or to avail themselves of the booty, thus unexpectedly spread before them, they are in turn put to flight by a more numerous party of robbers, or rather buccaneers, (_bucoli_ or _herdsmen_,) who carry off the forlorn couple to their retreat, in the inner-most recesses of a vast lake or morass, near the Heracleotic mouth of the Nile.[55] The description of this robber-colony appears to have been drawn from an existing or well-remembered state of things, and bears considerable resemblance, except in the presence of women and children, to a _setsha_, or stronghold, of the Zaporog Cossacks in the islets of the Dniepr.

[Footnote 55: This is usually called the _Canopia_ mouth; but Herodotus (who says that it was dug by artificial means) calls it the _Bucolic_, perhaps from the haunts above described in its neighbourhood.]

"This whole region is called by the Egyptians the _Bucolia_, or 'pasturages,' and is a tract of low land, which has been converted by the inundations of the Nile into a lake, of great depth in the middle, and gradually shoaling towards the margins into a marsh. Among this labyrinth of lakes and morasses, all the robber-community of Egypt hold their commonwealth; some building huts wherever there is enough of dry land for the purpose, and others living wholly on board their boats, which serve them for a home, as well as to transport them from place to place. In these narrow craft their children are born and brought up, tied by a cord round their foot, in their infancy, to keep them from falling overboard, and tasting for their first food, after being weaned, the fish of the lake dried in the sun. Thus, many of these _buccaneers_ are natives of the lake itself, which they regard as their country and their fortress; and they also receive among them many recruits of the same sort as themselves. The waters serve them for a defence, and they are further fortified by the vast quantity of reeds overgrowing the borders of the lake, through which they have contrived certain narrow winding paths known only to themselves, to guard them against sudden incursions from without."

The chief, Thyamis, is forthwith desperately smitten by the charms of Chariclea, and announces, in a set speech to his followers, when assembled for the division of the booty, his intention of taking her to wife. The heroine, as usual with heroines in such trying circumstances, feigns compliance, stipulating only for the delay of the ceremony till she could deposit her sacred ornaments in a temple; a request which Thyamis--who, by the way, is no vulgar depredator, but an Egyptian of rank, who has been deprived of an hereditary[56] priesthood, and driven into hiding, by the baseness of a younger brother--is too well bred to refuse. The beautiful captive is accordingly, (with Theagenes, whom she calls her brother,) given in charge, for the time, to an Athenian prisoner named Cnemon, who had been driven into exile by the vindictive artifices of his step-mother and her confidante, and the recital of whose adventures (apparently borrowed from those of Hippolitus) occupies a considerable space at this juncture, without much advancing the story. On the following day, however, the settlement is attacked by an irresistible force, guided by the gang who had been driven from their prey on the beach. Thyamis, after performing prodigies of valour, is taken prisoner; and Theagenes and Chariclea, with Cnemon, escaping in the confusion, find themselves alone in an island of the lake. Cnemon, as being best acquainted with the language and the surrounding country, is sent the next day to the main land, to make discoveries, accompanied by Thermuthis, the buccanier lieutenant, who had returned when the fray was over, in hopes of recovering a fair captive of his own. The object of his search, however, who proves to be no other than Thisbe, the treacherous soubrette through whom Cnemon's misfortunes had arisen, had been slain by accident in the conflict; and Thermuthis, whose suspicions had been awakened by the joy expressed by Cnemon, is meditating the murder of his fellow-traveller, when he opportunely perishes by the bite of an asp. Cnemon, continuing on his way,[57] reaches the margin of the Nile opposite the town of Chemmis, and there encounters a venerable personage, who, wrapt in deep thought, is pensively pacing the banks of the river. This old Egyptian priest, (for such he proves to be,) Calasiris by name, not only takes the abrupt intrusion of Cnemon in perfect good part, but carries his complaisance so far as to invite him to the house of a friend of whom he is himself a guest, and the honours of whose mansion he is doing in the temporary absence of the owner. This obliging offer is, of course, accepted with great alacrity; and, in the course of after-dinner conversation, the incidental mention by Calasiris of the names of Theagenes and Chariclea, and the consequent enquiries of Cnemon, who recognises them as those of his late fellow captives, lead to a long episodical narration from the old gentleman, during which Cnemon, in return for the hospitality and confidence thus unexpectedly shown him, displays most enviable powers as a listener, and which, in a great measure, unfolds the plot to the reader.

[Footnote 56: The hereditary succession of the Egyptian priesthood is stated both by Herodotus and Diodorus; but Sir J.G. Wilkinson (_Manners of the Ancient Egyptians_, i. 262,) believe that, "though a priest was son of a priest, the peculiar office held by a son may sometimes have been different in point of rank from that of his father."]

[Footnote 57: Before setting out on this expedition, he "reduces his hair to a more moderate quantity than that usually worn by robbers." Thus, the Italian bravoes of the middle ages, when they repented their evil ways, were wont to "shave the tuft," which was thrown over the face as a disguise; hence the phrase, _radere il ciuffo_, still used as synonymous with becoming an honest man. See Manzoni's well-known romance of "I Promessi Sposi."]

It appears that Persina, consort of Hydaspes, King of Ethiopia, had given birth, in consequence of one of those accidents which will sometimes happen in the best regulated families, to a _white_ or fair-complexioned daughter;[58] and dreading lest the hue of her offspring, unusual in that country, might draw on herself suspicions which might expose her to certain pains and penalties, she secretly committed the infant to the care of Sisimithres, an officer of the court, placing at the same time in his hands, as tokens by which she might afterwards be recognised, various costly ornaments, especially a ring which had been given her by the king at their nuptials, bearing "the royal symbol engraven within a circle on the talismanic stone _Pantarbé_," and a fillet on which was embroidered, in the Ethiopic character,[59] the story of the child's birth. Under the guardianship of Sisimithres, she remained seven years; till, fearing for her safety if she continued in Ethiopia, he took the opportunity of his being sent to Thebes as ambassador from Hydaspes to the Satrap of Egypt, to transfer his charge, with the tokens attached to her, to a priest of the Delphian Apollo, named Charicles, who was travelling in search of consolation for domestic afflictions. Before Sisimithres, however, had time to explain the previous history of the foundling, he was compelled to leave Egypt in haste; and Charicles, carrying her with him on his return to his Grecian home, adopted her as his daughter, add gave her the name of Chariclea. She grew up at Delphi a miracle of grace and beauty, dedicating herself to the service of the temple, and obedient to the will of her supposed father in all points, except one, her determination to lead a single life. At this juncture, Calasiris (who, as it now incidentally transpires, is father of Thyamis and his rival-brother Petosiris) arrives at Delphi during the celebration of the Pythian games, having found it expedient to absent himself from Egypt for a time, for various family reasons, and more especially on account of the prediction of an oracle, that he should live to see his two sons engaged with each other in mortal conflict. A favourable response, vouchsafed to him by the Pythia from the tripod, at his entrance into the fane of Apollo, having pointed him out as a personage of consideration, he is treated with high distinction by Charicles, who confides to him the history of Chariclea, as far as he is himself acquainted with it, and entreats him to dispose her, by those occult sciences in which the Egyptian priests were supposed to be versed, to listen to the suit of his nephew Alcamenes, whom he had destined for her husband. Calasiris promises compliance; but the scene is now changed by the arrival of a magnificent deputation from the Ænianes, a noble tribe of Thessaly, headed by a princely youth named Theagenes, who, as a reputed descendant of Achilles, has come to sacrifice at the shrine of his ancestor Neoptolemus. The pomp and pageantry of the ceremonial is described in vivid language, and with considerable effect; and as a specimen of our author's manner, we shall quote the procession of the Thessalians to the temple.

"In the van came the oxen destined for sacrifice, led by men of rustic guise and rude demeanour, each clad in a white tunic closely girt about him, with the right arm bare to the shoulder, and brandishing a double-headed axe. The oxen were all black without mixture, with massive necks low-hung dewlaps, and straight and even horns, which in some were gilt, in the others twined with garlands; and their number was neither more nor less than a hundred--a true hecatomb. Next followed the rest of the victims, each kind of animal kept separate and in order, and all marshalled to the sound of flutes and other wind instruments. Then appeared, in rich and flowing robes, and with their long locks floating loose on their shoulders, a band of the deep-zoned virgins of Thessaly, divided into two separate sets or choruses, the first of which bore baskets of flowers and ripe fruit, while those in the second carried salvers of sweetmeats and rich perfumes, which filled the air with the mingled fragrance breathing from them; but these light burdens were supported on their heads, thus leaving their hands free to be joined in the movements of the dance, to the slow and stately measure of which they advanced; while one chorus led the hymn, the strains of which were taken up by the other, in praise of Peleus and Thetis, their hero-son, and Neoptolemus and the other heroes of his race. The alternate rhythm of the chant keeping time with the fall of their footsteps, riveted the attention of the spectators, who seemed spell-bound by the sweet voices of the maidens, till the cavalcade which succeeded, flashing out from the crowd beyond, with their princely leader at their head, once more attracted all eyes to themselves. The troop consisted of fifty horsemen, who rode like guards in double file, twenty-five on each side of the chief, arrayed all alike in white cloaks with borders of azure embroidery, clasped across the breast with golden buckles, and with buskins laced above the ancle with scarlet thongs. Their steeds were all of that generous breed which the rich plains of Thessaly alone produce, and pawed the ground as if impatient of the bit by which their ardour was restrained by their riders; and the silver and gold which glittered on their frontlets and caparisons, showed the rivalry prevailing among these cavaliers in the splendour of the equipments, rather of their coursers than themselves. But it was on him who rode in the midst of this gallant party, eclipsing all his comrades as the glare of lightning seems to obscure all lesser luminaries, that the eyes of the gazing crowd were now fixed. He was completely armed at all points, except his head, and grasped in his hand an ashen lance; while a scarlet cloak, on which was depicted, in figures of gold tissue, the battle of the Centaurs with the Lapithæ, flowed loose over his panoply, and was fastened in front with a clasp, representing Pallas sculptured in amber, and holding before her the Gorgon's head on her shield. The breeze, which blew back his locks from his forehead, gave his features more fully to view; and even the horse which bore him seemed to move with a statelier gait, arching his neck and proudly caracoling, as if conscious of the noble presence of his master; while the admiration of the surrounding multitude burst out into a spontaneous shout of applause, and some of the women of the lower class even threw fruit and flowers towards him, in the hope, I suppose, of drawing on themselves a glance of acknowledgement from his eye."

[Footnote 58: The incidents of the birth of Chariclea have been copied by Tasso in the story of Clorinda, as related to her by Arsete, in the 12th canto of "Gierusalemme Liberata." In the "Shah-Nameh," also, Zal, the father of the Persian hero Rustan, being born _with white hair_, is exposed by his father Sam on the mountain of Elborz, where he is preserved and brought up by the giant-bird Simorgh.]

[Footnote 59: "In the _royal_ character"--"[Greek: grammasin Aithiopikois oy dêmotikois, alla basilikois]." This distinction between the royal and popular system of hieroglyphics, as well as the etiquette, before mentioned, of inscribing the title of the king within a circle or oval, is borrowed, as need hardly be mentioned, from the monuments of Egypt.]

The cavalier thus eulogized by Calasiris is of course Theagenes, who, after thrice encompassing in due form the tomb of Neoptolemus, at length reaches the Temple of Apollo; but, during the performance of the ceremonial, it falls to his lot to receive the torch with which the altar is to be kindled from the hand of Chariclea, and love at first sight, mutual and instantaneous, is the result. The aid of Calasiris is again invoked by both the lovers; and the good old gentleman, whose knowledge of the Ethiopian hieroglyphics, by enabling him to decipher the mysterious inscription on the fillet, has put him in possession of the true parentage of Chariclea, (which he does not, however, communicate to Charicles,) at once resolves to contrive their elopement, being further stimulated thereto by Apollo in a dream--the agency of dreams, it should be remarked, being introduced on almost every possible occasion throughout the narrative, and their dictates in all cases religiously acted upon by the parties interested. A passage is procured on board a Phoenician ship opportunely lying in the Crissæan Gulf, the nearest point of the coast to Delphi; and the abduction of Chariclea having been effected by apparent violence by the companions of Theagenes, the trio set sail for Sicily, the fugitives passing as the children of Calasiris. The voyage is at first prosperous; but the ship happening to touch at Zacynthus, the beauty of Chariclea attracts the eye of a noted pirate named Trachinus, who, when the vessel resumes her course, pursues and captures her after a long chase, and turning the crew adrift in the boat,[60] and carries his prize, with his three captives, to the coast of Egypt, where he prepares a feast on the beach, from the materials furnished by the rich cargo of the Phoenician ship, in honour of his intended nuptials. Calasiris, however, whose genius seems ever fertile in expedients, has contrived to possess the mind of Pelorus, the pirate lieutenant, with the belief that he is the object of the fair captive's preference; and his assertion at the banquet of his claims gives rise to a furious conflict among the intoxicated pirates, ending in the slaughter of the whole party except Pelorus himself, who in turn falls by the sword of Theagenes. Calasiris, who had prudently retired to a safe distance till the fighting was over, is now on the point of coming forward to aid Chariclea in the care of her wounded lover, when he is anticipated by the arrival of the robbers, by whom, as related at the commencement of the story, he sees his protegés carried off.

[Footnote 60: The capture of the vessel has furnished the subject of a painting by Raffaelle and Giulio Romano.]

Before this recital, however, had been brought to a close, Nausicles,[61] the master of the house, returns, and the cause of his absence is explained. An Athenian mistress whom he had brought from Greece had fallen into the hands of the freebooters; and Nausicles, having procured the aid of a body of Persian troops from the governor of the district, had proceeded against the buccanier settlement in order to recover her. On reaching the island, however, they find only Theagenes and Chariclea, Cnemon and Thermuthis having just started on their voyage of discovery; and Nausicles, disappointed of finding her whom he sought, (and who was no other than the faithless Thisbe, slain, as above related, in the battle,) conceived the idea of claiming Chariclea in her place by way of indemnity; while Theagenes was sent off to Memphis by the Persian officer, who deemed that his beauty and noble bearing would make him an acceptable addition to the household[62] of the Satrap Oroondates. The lovers are thus again separated, and Chariclea is in despair; but, on arriving at the house of Nausicles, she is of course immediately recognised and reclaimed by Calasiris. Cnemon, who seems to have as extraordinary a genius for sudden friendships as the two heroines in the "Rovers," marries the fair daughter of Nausicles after a few hours' courtship, and at once sets sail with his father-in-law for Greece, having ascertained from him that the detection of his enemies had now made his return safe:--And Calasiris and Chariclea, disguised as beggars, set out in search of the lost Theagenes. That luckless hero had, meanwhile, been re-captured on his road to Memphis, by his, old friend Thyamis, who, having escaped (it does not exactly appear how) from the emissaries of his treacherous brother, with whom the attack on the island proves to have originated, is now at the head of another and more powerful body of the buccanier fraternity, in the district of Bessa. He receives Theagenes with great cordiality, and, having beaten off an attack from the Persian troops, takes the bold resolution of leading his lawless followers against Memphis itself, in order to reclaim his right to the priesthood, while Oroondates is engaged on the southern frontier in withstanding an invasion of the Ethiopians. Arsace, the wife of the satrap, who is acting as vice-regent for her husband, unprovided with troops to repel this sudden incursion, proposes that the two brothers shall settle the ecclesiastical succession by single combat; and a duel accordingly takes place under the walls of Memphis, in which Petosiris is getting considerably the worst of it, when the combat is interrupted by the arrival of Chariclea and Calasiris, who thus witnesses the spectacle foretold by the oracle--(the dread of seeing which had driven him into voluntary exile)--his two sons aiming at each other's life. The situation is a well-conceived one, and described with spirit. Calasiris is recognised by his penitent sons, and himself resumes the priesthood, the contested vacancy in which had been occasioned only by his absence and supposed death. The lovers are received as his guests in the temple of Isis, and all seems on the point of ending happily, when Calasiris, as if the object of his existence had been accomplished in the fulfilment of the oracle, is found the same night dead in his bed.

[Footnote 61: He is called "A merchant of Naucratis," though resident in Chemmis. But Naucratis, as we find from Herodotus, (ii. 179,) "was of old the only free port of Egypt; and, if any trader came to one of the other mouths of the Nile, he was put upon oath that his coming was involuntary, and was then made to sail to the Canopic mouth. But, if contrary winds prevented him from doing this, he was obliged to send his cargo in barges round the Delta to Naucratis, so strict was the regulation." Amasis was the first king who had permitted the trade of the Greeks at this port, [ib. 178,] and the restriction appears to have been continued under the Persian rule.]

[Footnote 62: The establishment of household slaves or _Mamlukes_ seems to have been nearly on the same footing with the ancient as with the modern Persians.]

The loss of their old protector soon involves them in a fresh maze of troubles. Thyamis, indeed, whose elevation to the high priesthood seems to have driven his former love for Chariclea out of his head, still continues their friend; but Arsace, the haughty consort of the satrap, who is represented as a princess of the royal blood of Persia, and a prototype of Catharine of Russia in her amours, has already cast her eyes on Theagenes, whose personal attractions seem on all occasions to have been as irresistible by the ladies as those of the fair partner of his wanderings by the other sex.[63] Under pretence of removing them from the temple during the period of mourning for Calasiris, they are lodged in the palace of the satrapess, where the constancy of the hero is exposed to a variety of perilous temptations, but comes forth, of course, unscathed from the ordeal. The love of ladies thus rejected has been prone, in all ages and countries, particularly in Egypt since the days of Yusuf and Zuleikha,[64] to turn into hatred; and Arsace is no exception to this long-established usage. Theagenes is accordingly thrown into a dungeon, and regularly bastinadoed under the superintendence of a eunuch, in order to instill into him proper notions of gallantry; while an attempt on the life of Chariclea, whom Arsace has discovered not to be his sister, fails through the mistake of an attendant, who delivers the poisoned goblet intended for her to Cybele, the princess's nurse and confidante, and the contriver of the plot. Chariclea, however, is condemned on this pretext to be burned alive as a poisoner; but the flames recoil before the magical influence of the gem _Pantarbé_, which she wears in her mother's ring; and before Arsace has time to devise any fresh scheme for her destruction, the confidential eunuch of Oroondates, to whom the misdeeds of his spouse had become known, arrives from the camp of Syene with orders to bring the two captives to the presence of the satrap. Arsace commits suicide in despair; but the escort of the lovers, while travelling along the banks of the Nile, is surprised by a roving party of Ethiopians; and they are carried to the camp of Hydaspes, by whom they are destined, according to Ethiopian usage, to be hereafter sacrificed to the sun and moon--the national deities of the country, as first-fruits of the war. A long account is now introduced of the siege and capture of Syene by the Ethiopians, and the victory of Hydaspes over Oroondates, which occupies the whole of the ninth book; and though in itself not ill told, is misplaced, as interrupting the narrative at the most critical point of the story. Peace is at last concluded between the belligerents; and Hydaspes, returning in triumph to his capital of Meroë, holds a grand national festival of thanksgiving, at which the victims are to be sacrificed. The secret of her birth had, however, been revealed to Chariclea by Calasiris before the elopement from Delphi, and when on the point of being led to the altar, she suddenly throws herself at the feet of the Queen Persina, and, producing the well-remembered token of the fillet and the ring, claims the protection of her parents. The recognition of the mother is instantaneous, but Hydaspes, who had always believed that the child to which his queen gave birth had died in early infancy, remains incredulous, till his doubts are removed by the evidence of Sisimithres, who identifies Chariclea as the child which he had confided, ten years before, to the care of Charicles. At this juncture Charicles himself appears, having come to Egypt to reclaim his lost child from Calasiris, and thence having been sent on by Oroondates to the court of Ethiopia:--and the denouement, as far as the heroine is concerned, is now complete. Theagenes, however, still remains doomed, and Hydaspes seems unwilling to relinquish his victim; but, after an interval of suspense, during which he incidentally performs various exploits rather unusual in a man in momentary expectation of death,[65] he is spared, at the vehement intercession of Persina, to whom Chariclea has revealed her love for the young Thessalian. The voice of the people, raised in acclamation at this deed of clemency, is ratified by the approbation of Sisimithres and the Gymnosophists, and all difficulties are now at an end. The betrothal of Theagenes and Chariclea is publicly announced; and, at the termination of the festival, they return in state into the city, with Hydaspes and Persina, as the acknowledged heirs of the kingdom.

[Footnote 63: In all the Greek romances, it seems almost inevitable that all the male characters should fall in love with the heroine, and all the females with the hero; and, this is, in some of them, carried to a ludicrous degree of absurdity.]

[Footnote 64: The name of Potiphar's wife, according to the 12th chapter of the Koran. The story of Yusuf and Zuleikha forms the subject of one of the most beautiful poems in the Persian language, by Jami.]

[Footnote 65: One of these consists in pursuing a wild bull on horseback, and throwing himself from the horse on the neck of the bull, which he seizes by the horns, and then, by main force wrenching his neck round, hurls him powerless to the ground on his back! Such an achievement appears almost incredible; but it is represented, in all its particulars, in one of the Arundel marbles, (Marmor. Oxon. Selden, xxxviii,) under the name of [Greek: Tayrokathapsia], and is mentioned as a national sport of Thessaly, the native country of Theagenes, both by Pliny (Hist. Nat. viii. 45), and by Suetonius (Claud. cap. 21)--"He exhibited," (says the latter writer,) "Thessalian horsemen who drive wild bulls round and round the circus, and leaping on them when they are weary, bring them to the ground by the horns."]

Such is the general outline of the story, which, as will have been perceived, is far from deficient either in incident or in strikingly imagined situations; but the merit of the conceptions is too often marred by the mismanagement of the details, and the unskilful arrangement of the different parts of the narrative. Thus all the circumstances of the early history of Chariclea, and the rise of the mutual affection between her and Theagenes, and of their adventurous flight, are made known through a long episode awkwardly put into the mouth of a third person, who himself knows great part of them only at second-hand, and voluntarily related by him to one with whom his acquaintance is scarcely of an hour's standing. This mode of narration, in which one of the characters is introduced (like the prologue in an old play) to recount the previous adventures of the others, is in itself at all times defective; since it injures the effect of the relation by depriving it of those accessory touches which the author, from his conventionally admitted insight into the feelings and motives of his characters, is privileged to supply: whereas a speaker in the first person must necessarily confine himself, unless when narrating his own adventures, to the points which have fallen under his personal observation. In the present instance it is, moreover, needless, as the whole episode might as well have been told in the ordinary manner. The endless captures and recaptures of the lovers, who are continually bandied about from one set of pirates, robbers, or plundering soldiers to another, become, at length, wearisome from repetition; and the dramatic force of the conclusion, which would otherwise be highly effective, is weakened by the knowledge which the reader possesses, that Chariclea is all along aware of the secret of her own parentage, and that she has only to produce the fillet and ring in order to ensure her deliverance from the dreadful doom which appears to threaten her. The improbability of some of the incidents, and the awkward manner in which others are brought about, have been much objected to by modern critics, and it must be admitted that some better way might be found to dispose of personages whose agency was no longer needed, than to cut them off by sudden death, like Calasiris, or by the bite of a venemous serpent, like Thermuthis. But the mechanical art (as it may almost be called) of constructing a story was then in its infancy; and the violations of probability which have been laid to the charge of Heliodorus, are, after all, much less flagrant than those of Achilles Tatius, and infinitely less so than those of any of the other Greek writers of romance; nor would many of our modern novelists, perhaps, gain much by the comparison.

The characters are of very different degrees of merit. Theagenes is as insipid and uninteresting as one of Walter Scott's well-behaved heroes; and his entreaties to Chariclea, in the final scene, no longer to delay making herself known to her parents, betray a most laudable instinct of self-preservation. The deeds of strength and valour which he is occasionally made to perform, seem rather to arise from the author's remembering that his hero must do something to support the character, than to result naturally from the situations in which he is placed, and his love of decorum is carried, on all occasions, to an absurd extent of prudery. "Le heros de la pièce est d'une sagesse qui a donné lieu à des railleries assez plaisantes," says Bayle; though the instance usually cited--a box on the ear, which he gives Chariclea, when she approaches him in her beggar's dress, under the walls of Memphis, and attempts to throw herself into his arms, is scarcely a fair one, as he does not at the time recognize his beloved under her unbecoming disguise. The character of Chariclea herself, however, makes ample amends for the defects of that of her lover; and this superiority of the heroine, it may be observed, is almost invariable in the early Greek romances. The masculine firmness and presence of mind which she evinces in situations of peril and difficulty, combined at all times with feminine delicacy, and the warmth and confiding simplicity of her love for Theagenes, attach to her a degree of interest which belongs to none of the other personages; and her spontaneous burst of grateful affection, on recognizing, at Meroë, the voice of her foster-father, Charicles, is expressed with exquisite tenderness. Of the subordinate characters little need be said. Charicles is a mere impersonation of benevolence and parental love; and Cnemon seems to have been introduced for little else than to tell his own long story, and listen to that of Calasiris in return. The old Egyptian priest, however, is a sketch of considerable merit. Like Scott's Peregrine Touchwood, though abundantly zealous at all times to serve his friends, he cannot find it in his heart to take any but the most round-about way of doing so; but he is never disconcerted by any of the untoward results of his schemes, and relates to Cnemon, with the most perfect self-complacency, the deceit which he had practiced on his confiding host, Charicles, in helping Theagenes to steal away his adopted daughter, and the various scrapes into which his protegés had fallen under his guidance. He has, moreover, pet theories of his own on the phenomena of the Nile, the cause of the roughness of the Ionian Sea, and various other matters, in which he indoctrinates Cnemon _par parenthèse_: he is an enthusiastic admirer and constant quoter of Homer, whose Egyptian birth (at Thebes the hundred-gated) he maintains with all the zeal of a Highlander defending the authenticity of Ossian; and, on the whole, we cannot but think the author has scarcely used him well, in not allowing him to live to see his efforts crowned with success, and to enjoy the honours which would doubtless have been heaped upon him at the court of Ethiopia.

The author appears to take especial delight in accounts of costumes, processions, sacrifices, &c.; the details given of which are often valuable in an antiquarian point of view; and his information upon these subjects, as well as of the manners of the country in which the scene is laid, as far as our knowledge of the present day will enable us to decide, is extremely correct. One of the most curious morceaux of this sort, is a minute description of the complete armour for horse and man, worn by the élite of the cavalry in the army of Oroondates; and which, though probably taken from that used by the troops of the Sassanian monarchs cotemporary with Heliodorus, is equally applicable to the period at which the scene is laid; since numerous passages in ancient authors show, that from the earliest time up to the Mohammedan conquest, the Persian nobles and heavy cavalry used panoply as impenetrable as the European chivalry of the middle ages. Among the other scattered traits of manners, it will be remarked as singular, according to the ideas of the present day, that open piracy and robbery are neither spoken of as disreputable, nor as attaching any slur to those who exercised them; insomuch, that the notoriety of Thyamis, having been a chief of freebooters, is not regarded as any obstacle to his assumption of the high-priesthood. But this, it will be found, was strictly in accordance with the manners of the ancient Greeks, among whom piracy was so far from being looked upon in any other light than that of an honourable profession, that Nestor himself, in the third book of the Odyssey, asks his guests, Telemachus and Mentor, as an ordinary question, whether business or piracy was the object of their voyage. But the _Bucoli_ (herdsmen or buccaniers,) over whom Thyamis held command, should probably, notwithstanding their practice of rapine, be regarded not so much as robbers as in the light of outlaws, who had taken refuge in these impenetrable marshes from the yoke of the Persians; and their constant conflicts with the Persian troops, as well as the march of Thyamis upon Memphis, confirm the opinion that this was the intention of the author. That these vast marshes of the Delta were in fact, throughout the period of Persian rule in Egypt, the strongholds of Egyptian independence, admits of abundant demonstration from the Greek historians:--it was here, in the mysterious island of Elbo, that Amyrtæus, (called by Thucydides "the king of the marshes,") held out after the reconquest of Egypt by Megabysus, B.C. 454, "for they could not take him on account of the great extent of the marsh; besides which, the marshmen are the most warlike of all the Egyptians."[66] This view of the subject has, at least, the advantage of placing Thyamis in a more respectable light than that of a mere marauder; though his mode of life under either supposition, would be considered, according to modern notions, as a strange training for the sacerdotal office.

[Footnote 66: Thuc. i. cap. 110. The island of Elbo, according to Herodotus, who gives a curious account of the Egyptian marshes and their inhabitants, had been constructed of _cinders_, in long past times, by a king who lay concealed for fifty years from the Ethiopians; but no man knew its situation, till it was again brought to light, after having been lost for five hundred years, by Amyrtæus.]

Few if any works of fiction have enjoyed so long and widely diffused a celebrity, as the Ethiopics. Whatever credit may be attached to the story preserved by Nicephorus, of the deposition of Heliodorus from his see, it at least affords evidence of the high popularity of the work, even during the lifetime of the author; and we have the personal testimony of Nicephorus himself, that in his own time, five centuries later, it was still regarded with undiminished favour. Down to the fall of the Greek empire, its style and incidents continued to furnish a model to all the wretched scribblers who attempted the composition of romances--nor was its fame confined within the limits of the language in which it was written. It found a place in the famous library of Matthias Corvinus at Buda; and the dispersion of that celebrated collection on the capture of the city by the Ottomans after the battle of Mohácz, in 1526, first made it known to western Europe: the first edition by Obsopoeus,[67] (printed at Basle in 1534,) having been taken in MS. which fell into the possession of a soldier on this occasion. Among the literati of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its popularity seems almost to have equalled that which it had enjoyed in its native country. Tasso, as has already been noticed, borrowed from it the episode of Clorinda--and Racine (one of whose early productions was also founded upon it) was, in his younger days, so enthusiastic an admirer of it, that when the volume was taken from him by his tutor at Port-Royal, he replied that it mattered little, as he knew the whole by heart! The numerous translations, however, which have appeared in various languages, particularly in French and English, are little calculated to add, by the merits of their execution, to the favour of the work; one English _poetical_ version in particular, by Lisle, published in 1527, is one of the most precious specimens of balderdash in existence--a perfect literary curiosity in its way! Of the others, we need mention only the French one of Amyot, (1558,) not for its merits, but from the author's having been rewarded by Henry II. of France with the nomination to an abbey--as if in tardy compensation to Heliodorus, in the person of his literary representative, for the see from which the authorship is said to have caused his expulsion.

[Footnote 67: Of the later editions of the Greek text, the best are those of Coray, Paris, 1804; and Mitscherlisch, Strasburg, 1797.]

* * * * *

PAST AND PRESENT, BY CARLYLE.

Mr Carlyle--an astute and trenchant critic might, with show of justice, remark--assumes to be the reformer and castigator of his age--a reformer in philosophy, in politics, in religion--denouncing its _mechanical_ method of thinking, deploring its utter want of _faith_, and threatening political society, obstinately deaf to the voice of wisdom, with the retributive horrors of repeated revolutions; and yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to promulgate. The age is irreligious, he exclaims, and the vague feeling of the impenetrable mystery which encompasses us, is all the theology we can gather from him; civil society, with its laws and government, is in a false and perilous position, and for all relief and reformation, he launches forth an indisputable morality--precepts of charity, and self-denial, and strenuous effort--precepts most excellent, and only _too_ applicable; applicable, unfortunately, after an _à priori_ fashion--for if men would but obey them, there had been need of few laws, and of no remedial measures.

This man of faith--our critic might continue--has but one everlasting note; and it is really the most sceptical and melancholy that has ever been heard, or heard with toleration, in our literature. He repeats it from his favourite apostle Goethe; "all doubt is to be cured only--by action." Certainly, if _forgetting_ the doubt, and the subject of doubt, be the sole cure for it. But that other advice which Mr Carlyle tells us was given, and in vain, to George Fox, the Quaker, at a time when he was agitated by doubts and perplexities, namely, "to drink beer and dance with the girls," was of the very same stamp, and would have operated in the very same manner, to the removing of the pious Quaker's doubts. Faith! ye lack faith! cries this prophet in our streets; and when reproved and distressed scepticism enquires where truth is to be found, he bids it back to the loom or the forge, to its tools and its workshop, of whatever kind these may be--there to forget the enquiry.

The religion, or, if he pleases, the formula of religion, which helps to keep men sober and orderly, Mr Carlyle despises, ridicules; "old clothes!" he cries, empty and ragged. It is not till a man has risen into frenzy, or some hot fanaticism, that he deserves his respect. An Irving, when his noble spirit, kindled to fever heat, is seized with delirium, becomes worthy of some admiration. A Cromwell is pronounced emphatically to have believed in a God, and _therefore_ to have been "by far the remarkablest governor we have had here for the last five centuries or so." Meanwhile, is it the faith of an Irving, or the God of a Cromwell, that our subtle-minded author would have us adopt, or would adopt himself? If he scorn the easy, methodical citizen, who plods along the beaten tracks of life, looking occasionally, in his demure, self-satisfied manner, upwards to the heavens, but with no other result than to plod more perseveringly along his very earthy track, it follows not that there is any one order of fanatic spirits with whom he would associate, to whose theology he would yield assent. Verily, no. He demands faith--he gives no creed. What is it _you_ teach? a plain-speaking man would exclaim; where is your church? have you also your thirty-nine articles? have you nine? have you _one_ stout article of creed that will bear the rubs of fortune--bear the temptations of prosperity or a dietary system--stand both sunshine and the wind--which will keep virtue steady when disposed to reel, and drive back crime to her penal caverns of remorse? What would you answer, O philosopher! if a simple body should ask you, quite in confidence, where wicked people go to?

Were it not better for those to whom philosophy has brought the sad necessity of doubt, to endure this also patiently and silently, as one of the inevitable conditions of human existence? Were not this better than to rail incessantly against the world, for a want of that sentiment which _they_ have no means to excite or to authorize?

The same inconsequence in politics. We have _Chartism_ preached by one not a Chartist--by one who has no more his _five points_ of Radicalism than his five points of Calvinistic divinity--who has no trust in democracy, who swears by no theory of representative government--who will never believe that a multitude of men, foolish and selfish, will elect the disinterested and the wise. Your constitution, your laws, your "horse-haired justice" that sits in Westminster Hall, he likes them not; but he propounds himself no scheme of polity. Reform yourselves, one and all, ye individual men! and the nation will be reformed; practise justice, charity, self-denial, and then all mortals may work and eat. This is the most distinct advice he bestows. Alas! it is advice such as this that the Christian preacher, century after century, utters from his pulpit, which he makes the staple of his eloquence, and which he and his listeners are contented to applaud; and the more contented probably to applaud, as, on all hands, it is tacitly understood to be far _too good_ to be practised.

In fine, turn which way you will, to philosophy, to politics, to religion, you find Mr Carlyle objecting, denouncing, scoffing, rending all to pieces in his bold, reckless, ironical, manner--but _teaching_ nothing. The most docile pupil, when he opens his tablets to put down the precious sum of wisdom he has learned, pauses--finds his pencil motionless, and leaves his tablet still a blank.

Now all this, and more of the same kind, which our astute and trenchant critic might urge, may be true, or very like the truth, but it is not the whole truth.

"To speak a little pedantically," says our author himself, in a paper called _Signs of the Times_, "there is a science of _Dynamics_ in man's fortune and nature, as well as of _Mechanics_. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified, forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of love, and fear, and wonder, of enthusiasm, poetry--religion, all which have a truly vital and _infinite_ character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate 'motives,' as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment. Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as moralists, poets, or priests, did, without neglecting the mechanical province, deal chiefly with the dynamical; applying, themselves chiefly to regulate, increase, and purify, the inward primary powers of man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake."--_Misc_. vol. ii. p. 277.

In such _Dynamics_ it is that Mr Carlyle deals. To speak in our own plain common-place diction, it is to the elements of all religious feeling, to the broad unalterable principles of morality, that he addresses himself; stirring up in the minds of his readers those sentiments of reverence to the Highest, and of justice to all, even to the lowest, which can never utterly die out in any man, but which slumber in the greater number of us. It is by no means necessary to teach any peculiar or positive doctrine in order to exert an influence on society. After all, there is a moral heart beating at the very centre of this world. Touch _it_, and there is a responsive movement through the whole system of the world. Undoubtedly external circumstances rule in their turn over this same central pulsation: alter, arrange, and modify, these external circumstances as best you can, but he who, by the _word_ he speaks or writes, can reach this central pulse immediately--is he idle, is he profitless?

Or put it thus: there is a justice between man and man--older, and more stable, and more lofty in its requisitions, than that which sits in ermine, or, if our author pleases, in "horse-hair," at Westminster Hall; there is a morality recognized by the intellect and the heart of all reflective men, higher and purer than what the present forms of society exact or render feasible--or rather say, a morality of more exalted character than that which has hitherto determined those forms of society. No man who believes that the teaching of Christ was authorized of heaven--no man who believes this only, that his doctrine has obtained and preserved its heavenly character from the successful, unanswerable, appeal which it makes to the human heart--can dispute this fact. Is he an idler, then, or a dreamer in the land, who comes forth, and on the high-road of our popular literature, insists on it that men should assume their full _moral strength_, and declares that herein lies the salvation of the world? But what can he do if the external circumstances of life are against him?--if they crush this moral energy?--if they discountenance this elevation of character? Alone--perhaps nothing. He with both hands is raising one end of the beam; go you with your tackle, with rope and pulley, and all mechanical appliances, to the other end, and who knows but something may be effected?

It is not by teaching this or that dogma, political, philosophical, or religious, that Mr Carlyle is doing his _work_, and exerting an influence, by no means despicable, on his generation. It is by producing a certain moral tone of thought, of a stern, manly, energetic, self-denying character, that his best influence consists. Accordingly we are accustomed to view his works, even when they especially regard communities of men, and take the name of histories, as, in effect, appeals to the individual heart, and to the moral will of the reader. His mind is not legislative; his mode of thinking is not systematic; a state economy he has not the skill, perhaps not the pretension, to devise. When he treats of nations, and governments, and revolutions of states, he views them all as a wondrous picture, which he, the observer, standing apart, watches and apostrophizes, still revealing _himself_ in his reflections upon them. The picture _to the eye_, he gives with marvellous vividness; and he puts forth, with equal power, that sort of world-wide reflection which a thinking being might be supposed to make on his first visit to our planet; but the space between--those intermediate generalizations which make the pride of the philosophical historian--he neglects, has no taste for. Such a writer as Montesquieu he holds in manifest antipathy. His _History of the French Revolution_, like his _Chartism_, like the work now before us, his _Past and Present_, is still an appeal to the consciousness of each man, and to the high and eternal laws of justice and of charity--lo, ye are brethren!

And although it be true, as our critic has suggested, that to enlarge upon the misery which lies low and wide over the whole ground-plot of civilized society, without at the same time devising an effectual remedy, is a most unsatisfactory business; nevertheless, this also must be added, that to forget the existence of this misery would not be to cure it--would, on the contrary, be a certain method of perpetuating and aggravating it; that to _try_ to forget it, is as little wise as it is humane, and that indeed such act of oblivion is altogether impossible. If crowds of artizans, coming forth from homes where there is neither food nor work, shall say, in the words that our author puts into their mouths, "Behold us here--we ask if you mean to lead us towards work; to try to lead us? Or if you declare that you cannot lead us? And expect that we are to remain quietly unled, and in a composed manner perish of starvation? What is it that you expect of us? What is it that you mean to do with us?"--if, we say, such a question is asked, we may not be able to answer, but we cannot stifle it. Surely it is well that every class in the community should know how indissolubly its interest is connected with the well-being of other classes. However remote the man of wealth may sit from scenes like this--however reluctant he may be to hear of them--nothing can be more true than that this distress is _his calamity_, and that _on him_ also lies the inevitable alternative to remedy or to suffer.

It accords with the view we have here taken of the writings of Mr Carlyle, that of all his works that which pleased us most was the one most completely _personal_ in its character, which most constantly kept the reader in a state of self-reflection. In spite of all its oddities and vagaries, and the chaotic shape into which its materials have been thrown, the _Sartor Resartus_ is a prime favourite of ours--a sort of volcanic work; and the reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the spirit of strife and contention!

"To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine warfare with the time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this--'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from _my_ share; which, by the heavens, thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.' Alas! and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them! Can we not, in all such cases, rather say--'Take it, thou too ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wanted; take it with a blessing: would to heaven I had enough for thee!'"--P. 200.

Truisms! Preachments repeated from Solomon downwards! some quick, impatient reader, all animal irritability, will exclaim--Good, but it is the very prerogative of genius, in every age, to revive truisms such as these, and make them burn in our hearts. Many a man in his hour of depression, when resolution is sicklied over by the pale cast of thought, will find, in the writings of Carlyle, a freshening stimulant, better than the wine-cup, or even the laughter of a friend, can give. In some of his biographical sketches, with what force has he brought out the moral resolution which animated, or ought to have animated, the man of whom he is writing! We shall have occasion, by and by, to notice what, to our mind, appears a mere perversion of thought, and a mischievous exaggeration in our author, who, in his love of a certain _energy_ of character, has often made this energy (apart from a moral purpose) the test and rule of his admiration. But at present turn to his admirable estimation of Dr Samuel Johnson, and the noble regret which he throws over the memory of Burns. A portion of the first we cannot resist extracting. What a keen mountain air, bracing to the nerves, mortal to languor and complaint, blows over us from passages such as these:--

"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully. Johnson, in the eighteenth century, all as a man of letters, was, in good truth, 'the bravest of the brave.' What mortal could have more to war with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's heart, may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Observe, too, that he never called himself brave, never felt himself to be so; the more completely _was_ he so. No Giant Despair, no Golgotha Death-Dance, or Sorcerer's Sabbath of 'Literary Life in London,' appals this pilgrim; he works resolutely for deliverance; in still defiance steps stoutly along. The thing that is given him to do he can make himself do; what is to be endured he can endure in silence.

"How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily his own bitter, unalleviable allotment of misery and toil, shows beside the poor, flimsy, little soul of young Boswell; one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarrying by the wine-cup, and crying, Aha, the wine is red; the next day deploring his down-pressed, night-shaded, quite poor estate; and thinking it unkind that the whole movement of the universe should go on, while _his_ digestive apparatus had stopped! We reckon Johnson's 'talent of silence' to be among his great and rare gifts. Where there is nothing further to be done, there shall nothing further be said; like his own poor, blind Welshwoman, he accomplished somewhat, and also 'endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken fortitude.' How grim was life to him; a sick prison-house and doubting-castle! 'His great business,' he would profess, 'was to escape from himself.' Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all 'with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear.' Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimonious; 'wearied of his stay, yet offended at his departure;' it is the manner of the world. 'By popular delusion,' remarks he, with a gigantic calmness, 'illiterate writers will rise into renown:' it is a portion of the history of English literature; a perennial thing, this same popular delusion; and will--alter the character of the language....

"The life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no lie found in him. His doings and writings are not _shows_, but _performances_: you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages; and with that grand perennial tide flowing by, in whose waters he nevertheless refused to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of cant he takes to himself, and offers to others, the lowest possible view of his business, which he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote _so_. Into the region of poetic art he indeed never rose; there was no _ideal_ without him, avowing itself in his work; the nobler was that unavowed _ideal_ which lay within him, and commanded, saying, Work out thy artisanship in the spirit of an artist! They who talk loudest about the dignity of art, and fancy that they too are artistic guild-brethren, and of the celestials, let them consider well what manner of man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day-labourer."--_Misc_. vol. iv. p. 19.

The _History of the French Revolution_ deserves, no doubt, notwithstanding the sort of partiality we have intimated for its wild predecessor, to be considered as the greatest work of Mr Carlyle; but it is the work of which criticism, if she ventures to speak at all, must speak with the loudest and most frequent protests. There are certain grave objections which cannot be got over. As to the _style_, indeed, Mr Carlyle is, on this head, (except, occasionally, when writing for some _Review_ in which a very violent departure from the English language would not be advisable,) far above all criticism. The attempt to censure the oddities with which it abounds--the frequent repetition--the metaphor and allusion used again and again till the page is covered with a sort of slang--would only subject the critic himself to the same kind of ridicule that would fall upon the hapless wight who should bethink him of taking some Shandean work gravely to task for its scandalous irregularities, and utter want of methodical arrangement. Such is _Carlylism_; and this is all that can be said upon the matter. But the style which seemed not altogether unnatural, and far from intolerable, in Herr Teufelsdrockh, becomes a strangely inconvenient medium of communication where a whole history is to be told in it. The mischief is, that it admits of no safe middle path: it must arrest attention for its novelty, its graphic power, its bold originality; or it must offend by its newfangled phrase, its jerking movement, and its metaphor and allusion reduced into a slang. Meanwhile, there is so much in a history which needs only to be told--so much, which even this author, _skip_ how he may, must relate, for the sake merely of preserving a continuous narrative--and where the perfection of style would be, as all the world knows, that it should draw no attention whatever to itself. A style like this of our author's, once assumed, cannot be laid down for a moment; and the least important incident is related with the same curiosity of diction, and the same startling manner, that delighted us in the _Siege of the Bastile_. To convey mere _information_, it seems quite unserviceable. "How inferior," says our author somewhere himself,--"how inferior for _seeing by_ is the brightest train of fireworks to the humblest farthing candle!"

The basis of a history is surely, after all, the narrative, and whatever may be the estimate of others, the _historian_ proceeds on the supposition that the facts he has to relate are, for their own sake, deserving to be had in remembrance. If not, why is he there recording and verifying them? But Mr Carlyle proceeds throughout on quite the contrary supposition, that the fact for itself is worth nothing--that it is valuable only as it presents some peculiar picture to the imagination, or kindles some noteworthy reflection. He maintains throughout the attitude of one who stands apart, looking _at_ the history; rarely does he assume the patient office of that scribe whom we remember to have seen in the frontispiece of our school histories, recording faithfully what the bald headed Time, sitting between his scythe and his hour-glass, was dictating.

Never, indeed, was history written in so mad a vein--and that not only as regards style, but the prevailing mood of mind in which the facts and characters are scanned. That mood is for the most part ironical. There is philanthropy, doubtless, at the bottom of it all; but a mocking spirit, a profound and pungent irony, are the manifest and prevailing characteristics. It is a philanthropy which has borrowed the manner of Mephistopheles. It is a modern Diogenes--in fact it is Diogenes Teufelsdrockh himself, surveying the Revolution from his solitary watch-tower, where he sits so near the eternal skies, that a whole generation of men, _whirling off in wild Sahara waltz into infinite space_, is but a spectacle, and a very brief and confused one. This lofty irony, pungent as it is, grows wearisome. By throwing a littleness on all things, it even destroys the very aliment it feeds on; nothing, at last, is worth the mocking. But the weariness it occasions is not its greatest fault. It leads to a most unjust and capricious estimate of the characters and actions of men. Capricious it must, of necessity, become. To be ironical always were insufferable; even for the sake of artistical effect, some personages; and some events, must be treated with a natural feeling of respect or abhorrence; yet if one murder is to be recorded with levity, why not another;--if one criminal is to be dismissed with a jest, levelled perhaps at some personal oddity, why is an earnest indignation to be bestowed on the next criminal that comes under notice? The distinctions that will be made will be not fair judgments, but mere favouritism. Situated thus--plain moral distinctions having been disparaged--Mr Carlyle has given way to his admiration of a certain _energy_ of character, and makes the possession of this sole excellence the condition of his favour, the title to his respect, or perhaps, we should say, to an immunity from his contempt. The man who has an _eye_--that is, who glares on you like a tiger--he who, in an age of revolution, is most thoroughly revolutionary, and _swallows all formulas_--he is made a hero, and honourable mention is decreed to him; whilst all who acted with an ill-starred moderation, who strove, with ineffectual but conscientious effort, to stay the wild movement of the revolution, are treated with derision, are dismissed with contempt, or at best with pity for their _weakness_.

His first hero is Mirabeau, a man of energy enough doubtless, and who had, in a most remarkable degree, that force of character which gives not only influence over, but a sort of _possession_ of, other men's minds, though they may claim far higher intellectual endowments. For this one quality he is forgiven every thing. The selfish ambition of which he must be more than suspected, is not glanced at. Even the ridicule due to his inordinate vanity, is spared him. "Yes support that head," says this dying gladiator to his friend; "would I could bequeath it to thee!" And our caustic Diogenes withholds the lash. As the history proceeds, Danton is elevated to the place of hero. He is put in strong contrast with Robespierre. The one is raised into simple admiration, the other sunk into mere contempt; both are spared the just execration which their crimes have merited. The one good quality of Danton is, that, like Mirabeau, he had an _eye_--did not see through _logic spectacles_--had _swallowed all formulas_. So that, when question is made of certain massacres in which he was implicated, we are calmly told "that some men have tasks frightfuller than ours." The one great vice of Robespierre is, that he lacked courage; for the rest, he is "sea-green and incorruptible"--"thin and acrid." His incorruptibility is always mentioned contemptuously, and generally in connexion with his bilious temperament, as if they related as cause and effect, or were both alike matters of pathology. Mr Carlyle has a habit of stringing together certain moral with certain physical peculiarities, till the two present themselves as of quite equal importance, and things of the same category.

Yet this Robespierre, had our author been in want of another hero, possessed one quality, which, in his estimate, would have entitled him to occupy the pedestal. He had _faith_. "Of incorruptible Robespierre, it was long ago predicted that he might go far--mean, meagre mortal though he was--for _doubt_ dwelt not in him." And this prediction was uttered by no less a man than Mirabeau. "Men of insight discern that the sea-green may by chance go far: 'this man,' observes Mirabeau, 'will do somewhat; _he believes every word he says_.'" The audacity of Danton the 'sea-green' certainly did not possess, but of that sort of courage which can use the extremest means for the desired end, he surely had sufficient. He shrunk from no crime, however exorbitant. His _faith_ carried him through all, and nearer to the goal than any of his compeers. He walked as firm as others round the crater of this volcano, and walked there the longest. It is impossible not to feel that _here_, by the side of Dauton, a great injustice has been done to the incorruptible and _faithful_ Robespierre.

Well may _energy_ or _will_ stand in the place of goodness with Mr Carlyle, since we find him making in another place this strange paradoxical statement: "_Bad_ is by its nature negative, and can do _nothing_; whatsoever enables us to _do_ any thing is by its very nature _good_." So that such a thing as a _bad deed_ cannot exist, and such an expression is without meaning. Accordingly, not only is energy applauded, but that energy applauded most that _does most_. Those who exercised their power, and the utmost resolution of mind, in the attempt to restrain the Revolution, are not to be put in comparison with those who _did something_--who carried forward the revolutionary movement. With what contempt he always mentions Lafayette--a man of limited views, it is true; and whose views at the time were wide enough? or to whom would the widest views have afforded a practical guidance?--but a man of honour and of patriotic intentions! It is "Lafayette--thin, constitutional pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice." And how are the whole party of the Gironde treated with slight and derision, because, at a period of what proved to be irremediable confusion--when nothing but the whirlwind was to be reaped--they were incessantly striving to realize for their country some definite and permanent institutions! But though their attempt we see was futile, could they do other than make the attempt? Mr Carlyle describes the position of affairs very ably in the following passage:--

"This huge insurrectionary movement, which we liken to a breaking out of Tophet and the abyss, has swept away royalty, aristocracy, and a king's life. The question is, what will it next do? how will it henceforth shape itself? Settle down into a reign of law and liberty, according as the habits, persuasions, and endeavours of the educated, monied, respectable class prescribe? That is to say, the volcanic lava-flood, bursting up in the manner described, will explode, and flow according to Girondine formula and pre-established rule of philosophy? If so, for our Girondine friends it will be well.

"Meanwhile, were not the prophecy rather, that as no external force, royal or other, now remains which could control this movement, the movement will follow a course of its own--probably a very original one. Further, that whatsoever man or men can best interpret the inward tendencies it has, and give them voice and activity, will obtain the lead of it. For the rest, that, as a thing _without_ order--a thing proceeding from beyond and beneath the region of order--it must work and wither, not as a regularity, but as a chaos--destructive and self-destructive always; till something that _has_ order arise, strong enough to bind it into subjection again; which something, we may further conjecture, will not be a formula, with philosophical propositions and forensic eloquence, but a reality, probably with a sword in its hand!"

But, true as all this may be, Mr Carlyle would be the last man to commend the Girondists had they allowed themselves to be borne along _passively_ by this violent movement: is it fair dealing, then, that their efforts--the only efforts they _could_ make--efforts which cost them life, should be treated as little better than idle pedantries?

But what criticism has to say in _praise_ of this extraordinary work, let it not be said with stint or timidity. The bold glance _at_ the Revolution, taken from his Diogenes' station, and the vivid descriptions of its chief scenes, are unrivalled.

That many a page sorely tries the reader's patience is acknowledged, and we might easily fill column after column with extracts, to show that the style of Mr Carlyle, especially when it is necessary for him to descend to the common track of history, can degenerate into a mannerism scarce tolerable, for which no term of literary censure, would be too severe. We have, however, no disposition to make any such extracts; and our readers, we are sure, would have little delight in perusing them. On the other hand, when he does succeed, great is the glory thereof; and we cannot forego the pleasure of making one quotation, however well known the remarkable passages of this work may be, to illustrate the triumphant power which he not unfrequently displays. Here is a portion of his account of the _Taking of the Bastile_. It will be borne in mind, that there is throughout a mixture of the ironical and mock-heroic:

"All morning since nine there has been a cry every where: To the Bastile! Repeated 'deputations of citizens' have been here, passionate for arms; whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon elector Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance; finds De Launay indisposed for surrender; nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon--only drawn back a little! But _outwards_, behold how the multitude flows on, swelling through every street: tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the _générale_: the suburb Saint Antoine rolling hitherward wholly as one man!

"Woe to thee De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, _rule_ circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is _un_questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing even louder into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry--which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new _deputation of citizens_ (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge; a slight sputter--which has _kindled_ the too combustible chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos. Bursts forth insurrection at sight of its own blood, (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire,) into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration. The Bastile is besieged!

"On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye sons of liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cart-wright of the Marais, old soldier of the regiment Dauphiné: smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe (_q._ hammer?) strike such a stroke. Down with it, man: down with it to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some 'on bayonets stuck into the joints of the wall,' Louis Tournay smites brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an old soldier) seconding him: the chain yields, breaks; the huge drawbridge slams down thundering, (_avec fracas_.) Glorious: and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks! The eight grim towers, with their Invalides' musketry, their paving stones and cannon-mouths, still roar aloft intact; ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner drawbridge with its _back_ towards us; the Bastile is still to take!

"To describe this siege of the Bastile (thought to be one of the most important in history) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite leading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open esplanade at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Fore-courts, _Cour avancé, Cour de l'Orme_, arched gateway, (where Louis Tournay now fights,) then new drawbridges, dormant bridges rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic mass, high-frowning there, of all ages, from twenty years to four hundred and twenty; beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer; seldom, since the war of pigmies and cranes, was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes: half-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève. Frantic patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot, (or seemingly so,) to the Hôtel de Ville:--Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt!--Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness.

"Let conflagration rage of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides' mess-rooms. A distracted 'peruke-maker with two fiery torches' is for burning 'the saltpetres of the arsenal;' had not a woman run screaming--had not a patriot, with some tincture of natural philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him, (butt of musket on pit of stomach,) overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element.

"Blood flows; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into the houses of the Rue Cerisuie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtel de Ville. These wave their town-flag in the gateway, and stand rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such crack of doom De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them; they return with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do? The firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides' cannon, to wet the touch-holes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high, but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose _catapults_. Santerre, the sonorous brewer of the suburb Saint Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a 'mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine, spouted up through forcing pumps.' O Spinola Santerre, hast thou the mixture _ready_? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not: even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart) and one Turk. Gardes Françaises have come; real cannon, real cannoniers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands.

"How the great Bastile clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner court there, at its ease, hour after hour, as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down in their vaults the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely....

"For four long hours now has the world-bedlam roared: call it the world-chimera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the _chamade_, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge, a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone ditch--plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots--he hovers perilous. _Such a dove towards such an ark!_ Deftly thou shifty usher; one man already fell, and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry. Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole; the shifty usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender--pardon, immunity to all. Are they accepted? "_Foi d'officier_--on the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!" Sinks the drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when down--rushes in the living deluge--the Bastile is fallen! '_Victoire! La Bastile est prise!_'"--Vol. i. p. 233.

Such descriptions, we need hardly say, are not the sport of fancy, nor constructed by the agglomeration of eloquent phrases; they are formed by collecting together (and this constitutes their value) facts and intimations scattered through a number of authorities. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that there is no imagination, or little artistic talent, displayed in collecting the materials for such a description. There may be genius in _reading well_ quite as certainly as in _writing well_; nor is it any common or inferior ability that detects at a glance, amongst a multitude of facts, the one which has real significance, and which gives its character to the scene to be reviewed. If any one wishes to convince himself how much a man of genius may _see_ in the page which can hardly obtain the attention of an ordinary reader, the last work of Mr Carlyle, _Past and Present_, will afford him an opportunity of making the experiment. He has but to turn, after reading in that work the account of Abbot Samson, to the Chronicle of _Jocelin_, from which it has been all faithfully extracted, and he will be surprised that our author could find so much life and truth in the antiquarian record. Or the experiment would be still more perfect if he should read the chronicle first, and then turn to the extracted account in _Past and Present_.

It is time, indeed, that we ourselves turned to this work, the perusal of which has led us to these remarks upon Mr Carlyle. We were desirous, however, of forming something like a general estimate of his merits and demerits before we entered upon any account of his last production. What space we have remaining shall be devoted to this work.

_Past and Present_, if it does not enhance, ought not, we think, to diminish from the reputation of its author; but as a _mannerism_ becomes increasingly disagreeable by repetition, we suspect that, without having less merit, this work will have less popularity than its predecessors. The style is the same "motley wear," and has the same jerking movement--seems at times a thing of shreds and patches hung on wires--and is so full of brief allusions to his own previous writings, that to a reader unacquainted with these it would be scarce intelligible. With all this it has the same vigour, and produces the same vivid impression that always attends upon his writings. Here, as elsewhere, he pursues his author-craft with a right noble and independent spirit, striking manifestly for truth, and for no other cause; and here also, as elsewhere, he leaves his side unguarded, open to unavoidable attack, so that the most blundering critic cannot fail to hit right, and the most friendly cannot spare.

The _past_ is represented by a certain Abbot Samson, and his abbey of St Edmunds, whose life and conversation are drawn from the chronicle already alluded to, and which has been lately published by the Camden Society.[68] Our author will look, he tells us, face to face on this remote period, "in hope of perhaps illustrating our own poor century thereby." Very good. To get a station in the past, and therefrom view the present, is no ill-devised scheme. But Abbot Samson and his monks form a very limited, almost a domestic picture, which supplies but few points of contrast or similitude with our "own poor century," which, at all events, is very rich in point of view. When, therefore, he proceeds to discuss the world-wide topics of our own times, we soon lose all memory of the Abbot and his monastery, who seems indeed to have as little connexion with the difficulties of our position, as the statues of Gog and Magog in Guildhall with the decision of some election contest which is made to take place in their venerable presence. On one point only can any palpable contrast be exhibited, namely, between the religious spirit of his times and our own.

[Footnote 68: Chronica JOCELINI DE BRAKELONDA, de rebus gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi: nunc primum typis mandata, curante JOHANNE GOGE ROKEWOOD. (Camden Society, London, 1840.)]

Now, here, as on every topic where a comparison is attempted, what must strike every one is, the manifest partiality Mr Carlyle shows to the past, and the unfair preference he gives it over the present. Nothing but respect and indulgence when he revisits the monastery of St Edmunds; nothing but censure and suspicion when he enters, say, for instance, the precincts of Exeter Hall. Well do we know, that if Mr Carlyle could meet such a monk alive, as he here treats with so much deference, encounter him face to face, talk to him, and hear him talk; he and the monk would be intolerable to each other. Fortunately for him, the monks are dead and buried whom he lauds so much when contrasted with our modern pietists. Could these tenants of the stately monastery preach to him about their purgatory and their prayers--lecture him, as assuredly they would, with that same earnest, uncomfortable, too anxious exhortation, which all saints must address to sinners--he would close his ears hermetically--he would fly for it--he would escape with as desperate haste as from the saddest whine that ever issued from some lath-and-plaster conventicle.

Mr Carlyle censures our poor century for its lack of faith; yet the kind of faith it possesses, which has grown up in it, which is _here_ at this present, he has no respect for, treats with no manner of tenderness. What _other_ would he have? He deals out to it no measure of philosophical justice. He accepts the faith of every age but his own. He will accept, as the best thing possible, the trustful and hopeful spirit of dark and superstitious periods; but if the more enlightened piety of his own age be at variance even with the most subtle and difficult tenets of his own philosophy, he will make no compromise with it, he casts it away for contemptuous infidelity to trample on as it pleases. When visiting the past, how indulgent, kind, and considerate he is! When Abbot Samson (as the greatest event of his life) resolves to see and to touch the remains of St Edmund, and "taking the head between his hands, speaks groaning," and prays to the "Glorious Martyr that it may not be turned to his perdition that he, miserable and sinful, has dared to touch his sacred person," and thereupon proceeds to touch the eyes and the nose, and the breast and the toes, which last he religiously counts; our complacent author sees here, "a noble awe surrounding the memory of the dead saint, symbol, and promoter of many other right noble things." And when he has occasion to call to mind the preaching of Peter the Hermit, who threw the fanaticism of the west on the fanaticism of the east, and in order that there should be no disparity between them in the sanguinary conflict, assimilated the faith of Christ to that of Mahommed, and taught that the baptized believer who fell by the Saracen would die in the arms of angels, and at the very gates of heaven; here, too, he bestows a hearty respect on the enthusiastic missionary, and all his fellow crusaders: it seems that he also would willingly have gone with such an army of the faithful. But when he turns from the past to the present, all this charity and indulgence are at an end. He finds in his own mechanico-philosophical age a faith in accordance with its prevailing modes of thought--faith lying at the foundation of whatever else of doctrinal theology it possesses--a faith diffused over all society, and taught not only in churches and chapels to pious auditories, but in every lecture-room, and by scientific as well as theological instructors--a faith in God, as creator of the universe, as the demonstrated author, architect, originator, of this wondrous world; and lo! this same philosopher who looked with encouraging complacency on Abbot Samson bending in adoration over the exhumed remains of a fellow mortal, and who listens without a protest to the cries of sanguinary enthusiasm, rising from a throng of embattled Christians, steps disdainfully aside from this faith of a peaceful and scientific age; he has some subtle, metaphysical speculations that will not countenance it; he demands that a faith in God should he put on some other foundation, which foundation, unhappily, his countrymen, as yet unskilled in transcendental metaphysics; cannot apprehend; he withdraws his sympathy from the so trite and sober-minded belief of an industrious, experimental, ratiocinating generation, and cares not if they have a God at all, if they can only make his existence evident to themselves from some commonplace notion of design and prearrangement visible in the world. Accordingly, we have passages like the following, which it is not our fault if the reader finds to be not very intelligible, or written in, what our author occasionally perpetrates, a sad jargon.

"For out of this that we call Atheism, come so many other _isms_ and falsities, each falsity with its misery at its heels!--A SOUL is not, like wind, (_spiritus_ or breath,) contained within a capsule; the ALMIGHTY MAKER is not like a clockmaker that once, in old immemorial ages, having _made_ his horologe of a universe, sits ever since and sees it go! Not at all. Hence comes Atheism; come, as we say, many other _isms_; and as the sum of all comes _vatetism_, the _reverse_ of heroism--sad root of all woes whatsoever. For indeed, as no man ever saw the above said wind element inclosed within its capsule, and finds it at bottom more deniable than conceivable; so too, he finds, in spite of Bridgewater bequests, your clockmaker Almighty an entirely questionable affair, a deniable affair; and accordingly denies it, and along with it so much else."--(P. 199.)

Do we ask Mr Carlyle to falsify his own transendental philosophy for the sake of his weaker brethren? By no means. Let him proceed on the "high _à priori_ road," if he finds it--as not many do--practicable. Let men, at all times, when they write as philosophers, speak out simply what they hold to be truth. It is his _partiality_ only that we here take notice of, and the different measure that he deals out to the past and the present. Out of compliment to a bygone century he can sink philosophy, and common sense too; when it might be something more than a compliment to the existing age to appear in harmony with its creed, he will not bate a jot from the subtlest of his metaphysical convictions.

Mr Carlyle not being _en rapport_ with the religious spirit of his age, finds therein no religious spirit whatever; on the other hand, he has a great deal of religion of his own, not very clear to any but himself; and thus, between these two, we have pages, very many, of such raving as the following:--

"It is even so. To speak in the ancient dialect, we 'have forgotten God;'--in the most modern dialect, and very truth of the matter, we have taken up the fact of the universe as it _is not_. We have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal substance of things, and opened them only to the shows and shams of things. We quietly believe this universe to be intrinsically a great unintelligible PERHAPS; extrinsically, clear enough, it is a great, most extensive cattle-fold and workhouse, with most extensive kitchen-ranges, dining-tables--whereat he is wise who can find a place! All the truth of this universe is uncertain; only the profit and the loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and remain very visible to the practical man.

"There is no longer any God for us! God's laws are become a greatest-happiness principle, a parliamentary expediency; the heavens overarch us only as an astronomical timekeeper: a butt for Herschel telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot sentimentalities at:--in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has lost the _soul_ out of him; and now, after the due period, begins to find the want of it! This is verily the plague-spot--centre of the universal social gangrene, threatening all modern things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and top-root, with its world-wide upas boughs and accursed poison exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing Kings, in passing Reform Bills, in French Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found no remedy. The foul elephantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, re-appears in new force and desperateness next hour.

"For actually this is _not_ the real fact of the world; the world is not made so, but otherwise! Truly, any society setting out from this no-God hypothesis will arrive at a result or two. The _un_veracities, escorted each unveracity of them by its corresponding misery and penalty; the phantasms and fatuities, and ten-years' corn-law debatings, that shall walk the earth at noonday, must needs be numerous! The universe being intrinsically a perhaps, being too probably an 'infinite humbug,' why should any minor humbug astonish us? It is all according to the order of nature; and phantasms riding with huge clatter along the streets, from end to end of our existence, astonish nobody. Enchanted St Ives' workhouses and Joe Manton aristocracies; giant-working mammonism near strangled in the partridge nets of giant-looking Idle Dilettantism--this, in all its branches, in its thousand thousand modes and figures, is a sight familiar to us."--P. 185.

What is to be said of writing such as this! For ourselves, we hurry on with a sort of incredulity, scarce believing that it is set down there for our steady perusal; we tread lightly over these "Phantasms" and "Unveracities," and "Double-barrelled Dilettantism," (another favourite phrase of his--pity it is not more euphonious--but none of his coinage _rings_ well,) we step on, we say, briskly, in the confident hope of soon meeting something--if only a stroke of humour--which shall be worth pausing for. Accordingly in the very page where our extract stopped, in the very next paragraph, comes a description of a certain pope most delectable to read. As it is but fair that our readers should enjoy the same compensation as ourselves, we insert it in a note.[69]

[Footnote 69: "The Popish religion, we are told, flourishes extremely in these years, and is the most vivacious-looking religion to be met with at present. '_Elle a trois cents ans dans le ventre_,' counts M. Jouffroy; '_c'est pourquoi je la respecte!_' The old Pope of Rome, finding it laborious to kneel so long while they cart him through the streets to bless the people on _Corpus-Christi_ day, complains of rheumatism; whereupon his cardinals consult--construct him, after some study, a stuffed, cloaked figure, of iron and wood, with wool or baked hair, and place it in a kneeling posture. Stuffed figure, or rump of a figure; to this stuffed rump he, sitting at his ease on a lower level, joins, by the aid of cloaks and drapery, his living head and outspread hands: the rump, with its cloaks, kneels; the Pope looks, and holds his hands spread; and so the two in concert bless the Roman population on _Corpus-Christi_ day, as well as they can.

"I have considered this amphibious Pope, with the wool-and-iron back, with the flesh head and hands, and endeavoured to calculate his horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened God's daylight, or painted himself in the human retina, for these several thousand years. Nay, since Chaos first shivered, and 'sneezed,' as the Arabs say, with the first shaft of sunlight shot through it, what stranger product was there of nature and art working together? Here is a supreme priest who believes God to be--what, in the name of God, _does_ he believe God to be?--and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax candles, organ blasts, Gregorian chants, mass-brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to save the ignorant from worse....

"There is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the scenic theory of worship, a frankness which I rather honour. Not half and half, but with undivided heart, does _he_ set about worshipping by stage machinery; as if there were now, and could again be, in nature no other. He will ask you, What other? Under this my Gregorian chant, and beautiful wax-light phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an abyss of black doubts, scepticism, nay, sans-culottic Jacobinism, an orcus that has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool _is_ thatched with pancakes,' as Jeannie Deans's innkeeper defined it to be! The bottomless of scepticism, atheism, Jacobinism, behold it is thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you also from what other _isms_!"--P. 187.]

The whole parallel which he runs between past and present is false--whimsically false. At one time we hear it uttered as an impeachment against our age, that every thing is done by committees and companies, shares and joint effort, and that no one man, or hero, can any longer move the world as in the blessed days of Peter the Hermit. Were we disposed to treat Mr Carlye as members of Parliament, by the help of their _Hansard_, controvert each other, we should have no difficulty in finding amongst his works some passage--whether eloquent or not, or how far intelligible, would be just a mere chance--in which he would tell us that this capacity for joint effort, this habit of co-operation, was the greatest boast our times could make, and gave the fairest promise for the future. In Ireland, by the way, _one man_ can still effect something, and work after the fashion, if not with so pure a fanaticism, as Peter the Hermit. The spectacle does not appear very edifying. Pray--the question just occurs to us--pray has Mr O'Connell got an _eye_? Would Mr Carlyle acknowledge that this man has _swallowed all formulas_? Having been bred a lawyer, we are afraid, or, in common Christian speech, we hope, that he has not.

But we are not about to proceed through a volume such as this in a carping spirit, though food enough for such a spirit may be found; there is too much genuine merit, too much genuine humour, in the work. What, indeed, is the use of selecting from an author who _will_ indulge in all manner of vagaries, whether of thought or expression, passages to prove that he can be whimsical and absurd, can deal abundantly in obscurities and contradictions, and can withal write the most motley, confused English of any man living? Better take, with thanks, from so irregular a genius, what seems to us good, or affords us gratification, and leave the rest alone.

We will not enter into the account of Abbot Samson; it is a little historical sketch, perfect in its kind, in which no part is redundant, and which, being gathered itself from very scanty sources, will not bear further mutilation. We turn, therefore, from the _Past_, although, in a literary point of view, a very attractive portion of the work, and will draw our extracts (they cannot now be numerous) from his lucubrations upon the _Present_.

Perhaps the most characteristic passage in the volume is that where, in the manner of a philosopher who suddenly finds himself awake in this "half-realized" world, he scans the institution of an _army_--looks out upon the _soldier_.

"Who can despair of Government that passes a soldier's guard-house, or meets a red-coated man on the streets! That a body of men could be got together to kill other men when you bade them; this, _à priori_, does it not seem one of the impossiblest things? Yet look--behold it; in the stolidest of do-nothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there, with buff-belts, red coats on its back; walking sentry at guard-houses, brushing white breeches in barracks; an indisputable, palpable fact. Out of grey antiquity, amid all finance-difficulties, _scaccarium_-tallies, ship-monies, coat-and-conduct monies, and vicissitudes of chance and time, there, down to the present blessed hour, it is.

"Often, in these painfully decadent, and painfully nascent times, with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings, and 'impossibilities;' meeting a tall lifeguardsman in his snow-white trousers, or seeing those two statuesque lifeguardsmen, in their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coal-black, sleek, fiery quadrupeds, riding sentry at the Horse-Guards--it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how, in such universal down-rushing and wrecked impotence of almost all old institutions, this oldest fighting institution is still so young! Fresh complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this fighting man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being, while so much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty semblance, a clothes'-suit, and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's blanket--here still is a reality!

"The man in horse-hair wig advances, promising that he will get me 'justice;' he takes me into Chancery law-courts, into decades, half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and _does get_ me--disappointment, almost desperation; and one refuge--that of dismissing him and his 'justice' altogether out of my head. For I have work to do; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing with other men about the exact wages of my work: I will work cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery lawsuit in my heart. He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul. O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he gets orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact, and not a shadow. Alive in this year Forty-three, able and willing to do _his_ work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances, have all changed and again changed; but the human battle-engine, in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size.

"Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection--this of successfully killing one another? Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding, and regimenting, you can make of men. These thousand straight-standing, firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat, and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they? Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets--an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you have made them this! Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining, and commanding among men. Let no man despair of Governments who look on these two sentries at the Horse Guards!"--P. 349.

Passages there are in the work which a political agitator might be glad enough to seize on; but, upon the whole, it is very little that Radicalism or Chartism obtain from Mr Carlyle. No political party would choose him for its champion, or find in him a serviceable ally. Observe how he demolishes the hope of those who expect, by new systems of election, to secure some incomparably pure and wise body of legislators--some aristocracy of talent!

"We must have more wisdom to govern us, we must be governed by the wisest, we must have an aristocracy of talent! cry many. True, most true; but how to get it? The following extract from our young friend of the _Houndsditch Indicator_ is worth perusing--'At this time,' says he, 'while there is a cry every where, articulate or inarticulate, for an aristocracy of talent, a governing class, namely, what did govern, not merely which took the wages of governing, and could not with all our industry be kept from misgoverning, corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce, with us--it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an aristocracy is! Do you expect, my friends, that your indispensable aristocracy of talent is to be enlisted straightway, by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general population; arranged in supreme regimental order; and set to rule over us? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out of chaff, from the twenty-seven million British subjects; that any ballot-box, reform-bill, or other political machine, with force of public opinion ever so active on it, is likely to perform said process of sifting? Would to heaven that we had a sieve; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or _ne plus ultra_ of machinery, devisable by man that would do it!

"'Done, nevertheless, sure enough, it must be; it shall, and will be. We are rushing swiftly on the road to destruction; every hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure, done. The doing of it is not doubtful; only the method or the costs! Nay, I will even mention to you an infallible sifting-process, whereby he that has ability will be sifted out to rule amongst us, and that same blessed aristocracy of talent be verily, in an approximate degree, vouchsafed us by-and-by; an infallible sifting-process; to which, however, no soul can help his neighbour, but each must, with devout prayer to heaven, help himself. It is, O friends! that all of us, that many of us, should acquire the true _eye_ for talent, which is dreadfully wanting at present.

"'For example, you, Bobus Higgins, sausage-maker on the great scale, who are raising such a clamour for this aristocracy of talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart of yours, chiefly in very fact pay reverence to? Is it to talent, intrinsic manly worth of any kind, you unfortunate Bobus? The manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did you ever reverence him; did you so much as know that he was a manly man at all, till his coat grew better? Talent! I understand you to be able to worship the fame of talent, the power, cash, celebrity, or other success of talent; but the talent itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay, what is it in yourself that you are proudest of, that you take most pleasure in surveying, meditatively, in thoughtful moments? Speak now, is it the bare Bobus, stript of his very name and shirt, and turned loose upon society, that you admire and thank heaven for; or Bobus, with his cash-accounts, and larders dropping fatness, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony chaise, admirable in some measure to certain of the flunkey species? Your own degree of worth and talent, is it of _infinite_ value to you; or only of finite--measurable by the degree of currency, and conquest of praise or pudding, it has brought you to? Bobus, you are in a vicious circle, rounder than one of your own sausages; and will never vote for or promote any talent, except what talent or sham-talent has already _got_ itself voted for!'--We here cut short the _Indicator_; all readers perceiving whither he now tends."--P. 39.

In the chapter, also, on Democracy, we have notions expressed upon _liberty_ which would make little impression--would be very distasteful to any audience assembled for the usual excitement of political oratory.

"Liberty! the true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the right path, and to walk thereon--to learn or to be taught what work he actually was able for, and then, by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing the same! That is his true blessedness, honour, 'liberty,' and maximum of well-being,--if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waist-coat, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him when he is going wrong, and order and compel him to go a little righter. O! if thou really art my _senior_--seigneur, my _elder_--Presbyter or priest,--if thou art in very deed my _wiser_, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to 'conquer' me, to command me! If thou do know better than I what is good and right, I conjure thee, in the name of God, force me to do it; were it by never such brass collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices! That I have been called by all the newspapers a 'free man,' will avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck. O that the newspapers had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and I had attained not death but life! Liberty requires new definitions."--P. 285.

"But truly, as I had to remark in the meanwhile, the 'liberty of not being oppressed by your fellow-man,' is an indispensable, yet one of the most insignificant fractional parts of human liberty. No man oppresses thee--can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shown. True; from all men thou art emancipated, but from thyself and from the devil! No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go; but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false appetites for money--Windsor Georges and such like! No man oppresses thee, O free and independent Franchiser! but does not this stupid porter-pot oppress thee? no son of Adam can bid thee come and go; but this absurd pot of heavy-wet, this can and does! Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this scoured dish of liquor; and thou protest of thy 'liberty,' thou entire blockhead!"--P. 292.

We should hardly think of entering with Mr Carlyle into a controversy upon the corn-laws, or on schemes of emigration, or any disputed point of political economy. He brings to bear upon these certain primitive _moral_ views and feelings which are but very remotely applicable in the resolution of these knotty problems. We should almost as soon think of inviting the veritable Diogenes himself, should he roll up in his tub to our door, to a discussion upon our commercial system. Our Diogenes Teufelsdrockh looks upon these matters in a quite peculiar manner; observe, for example, the glance he takes at our present mercantile difficulties, which, doubtless, is not without its own value, nor undeserving of all consideration.

"The continental people, it would seem, are 'exporting our machinery, beginning to spin cotton, and manufacture for themselves, to cut us out of this market and then out of that!' Sad news, indeed, but irremediable--by no means the saddest news. The saddest news is, that we should find our national existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any other people--a most narrow stand for a great nation to base itself on; a stand which, with all the corn-law abrogations conceivable, I do not think will be capable of enduring.

"My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we came honestly down from it, and said--'This is our minimum of cotton prices; we care not, for the present, to make cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seems so blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton fug, your hearts with copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny; become ye the general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!' I admire a nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other nations to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to _under_sell them; we will be content to _equal_sell them: to be happy selling equally with them. I do not see the use of underselling them; cotton cloth is already twopence a yard or lower, and yet bare backs were never more numerous amongst us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence incessantly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper; and try to invent, a little, how cotton, at its present cheapness, could be somewhat juster divided amongst us! Let inventive men consider whether the secret of this universe, and of man's life there, does after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in making money? There is one God--just, supreme, almighty: but is Mammon the name of him?

"But what is to be done with our manufacturing population, with our agricultural, with our ever-increasing population?--cry many.--Ay, what? Many things can be done with them, a hundred things, a thousand things--had we once got a soul and begun to try. This one thing of doing for them by 'underselling all people,' and filling our own bursten pockets by the road; and turning over all care for any 'population,' or human or divine consideration, except cash only, to the winds, with a 'Laissez-faire' and the rest of it; this is evidently not the thing. 'Farthing cheaper per yard;' no great nation can stand on the apex of such a pyramid; screwing itself higher and higher: balancing itself on its great toe! Can England not subsist without being _above_ all people in working? England never deliberately proposed such a thing. If England work better than all people, it shall be well. England, like an honest worker, will work as well as she can; and hope the gods may allow her to live on that basis. _Laissez-faire_ and much else being once dead, how many 'impossibles' will become possible! They are 'impossible' as cotton-cloth at twopence an ell was--till men set about making it. The inventive genius of great England will not for ever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps, and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a beaver's, or a spinner's, or a spider's genius: it is a _man's_ genius, I hope, with a God over him!"--P. 246.

And hear our Diogenes on the often repeated cry of _over-production_:--

"But what will reflective readers say of a governing class, such as ours, addressing its workers with an indictment of 'over-production!' Over-production: runs it not so? 'Ye miscellaneous ignoble, manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much. We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made of fustian, of cassimere, of Scotch plaid, of jane, nankeen, and woollen broadcloth, are they not manifold? Of hats for the human head, of shoes for the human foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with--Nay, what say we of hats and shoes? You produce gold watches, jewelleries, silver forks and épergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofas--Heavens, the Commercial Bazar and multitudinous Howel and James cannot contain you! You have produced, produced;--he that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of shirts and empty pairs of breeches hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of over-producing; you are criminally guilty of producing shirts, breeches, hats, shoes, and commodities in a frightful over-abundance. And now there is a glut, and your operatives cannot be fed.'

"Never, surely, against an earnest working mammonism was there brought by game-preserving aristocratic dilettantism, a stranger accusation since this world began. My Lords and Gentlemen--why it was _you_ that were appointed, by the fact and by the theory of your position on the earth, to make and administer laws. That is to say, in a world such as ours, to guard against 'gluts,' against honest operatives who had done their work remaining unfed! I say, you were appointed to preside over the distribution and appointment of the wages of work done; and to see well that there went no labourer without his hire, were it of money coins, were it of hemp gallows-ropes: that formation was yours, and from immemorial time has been yours, and as yet no other's. These poor shirt-spinners have forgotten much, which by the virtual unwritten law of their position they should have remembered; but by any written recognized law of their position, what have they forgotten? They were set to make shirts. The community, with all its voices commanded them, saying, 'make shirts;'--and there the shirts are! Too many shirts? Well, that is a novelty, in this intemperate earth, with its nine hundred millions of bare backs! But the community commanded you, saying, 'See that the shirts are well apportioned, that our human laws be emblems of God's law;' and where is the apportionment? Two millions shirt-less, or ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in work-house Bastiles, five millions more (according to some) in Ugoline hunger-cellars; and for remedy, you say--what say you? 'Raise our rents!' I have not in my time heard any stranger speech, not even on the shores of the Dead Sea. You continue addressing these poor shirt-spinners and over-producers in really a _too_ triumphant manner.

"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of over-production? We take the heavens and the earth to witness, that we have produced nothing at all. Not from us proceeds this frightful overplus of shirts. In the wide domains of created nature, circulates nothing of our producing. Certain fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of fair audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we have produced, and they are openly nailed up there. He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself, let him name what and when. We are innocent of producing,--ye ungrateful, what mountains of things have we not, on the contrary, had to consume, and make away with! Mountains of those your heaped manufactures, wheresoever edible or wearable, have they not disappeared before us, as if we had the talent of ostriches, of cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty to eat? Ye ungrateful!--and did you not grow under the shadow of our wings? Are not your filthy mills built on these fields of ours; on this soil of England, which belongs to--whom think you? And we shall not offer you our own wheat at the price that pleases us, but that partly pleases you? A precious notion! What would become of you, if we chose at any time to decide on growing no wheat more?"

An amusing--caustic--exaggeration, more like a portion of a clever satire on man and society, than a sincere discussion of political evils and remedies; and not intended, we trust, for Mr Carlyle's own sake, to express his real belief in the true causes of the evils of society. If we could suppose that this piece of extravagant and one-sided invective were meant to be seriously taken, as embodying Mr Carlyle's social and political creed, we should scarcely find words strong enough to reprobate its false and mischievous tendency.

We have already said, that we regard the chief _value_ of Mr Carlyle's writings to consist in the _tone of mind_ which the individual reader acquires from their perusal;--manly, energetic, enduring, with high resolves and self-forgetting effort; and we here again, at the close of our paper, revert to this remark: _Past and Present_, has not, and could not have, the same wild power which _Sartor Resartus_ possessed, in our opinion, over the feelings of the reader; but it contains passages which look the same way, and breathe the same spirit. We will quote one or two of these, and then conclude our notice. Their effect will not be injured, we may observe, by our brief manner of quotation. Speaking of "the man who goes about pothering and uproaring for his _happiness_," he says:--

"Observe, too, that this is all a modern affair; belongs not to the old heroic times, but to these dastard new times. 'Happiness, our being's end and aim,' is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world. The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking much about was, happiness enough to get his work done. Not, 'I can't eat!' but, 'I can't work!' that was the burden of all wise complaining among men. It is, after all, the one unhappiness of a man--that he cannot work--that he cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled."

* * * * *

"The latest Gospel in this world, is, know thy work and do it. 'Know thyself;' long enough has that poor 'self' of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to 'know' it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan."

* * * * *

"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river, there it runs and flows;--draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest glass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and _its_ value be great or small. Labour is life!"

* * * * *

"Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow workmen there, in God's eternity--surviving there--they alone surviving--sacred band of the Immortals. Even in the weak human memory they survive so long as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving--peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of time! To thee, Heaven, though severe, is _not_ unkind. Heaven is kind, as a noble mother--as that Spartan mother, saying, as she gave her son his shield, 'with it, my son, or upon it!'

"And, who art thou that braggest of thy life of idleness; complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous cushions; appliances for the folding of the hands to more sleep? Looking up, looking down, around, behind, or before, discernest thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any _idle_ hero, saint, god, or even devil? Not a vestige of one. 'In the heavens, in the earth, in the waters under the earth, is none like unto thee.' Thou art an original figure in this creation, a denizen in Mayfair alone. One monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is his 'religion?' That nature is a phantasm, where cunning, beggary, or thievery, may sometimes find good victual."

* * * * *

"The 'wages' of every noble work do yet lie in heaven, or else nowhere. Nay, at bottom dost thou need any reward? Was it thy aim and life-purpose, to be filled with good things for thy heroism; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call 'happy' in this world, or in any other world? I answer for thee, deliberately, no?

"The brave man has to give his life away. Give it, I advise thee--thou dost not expect to _sell_ thy life in an adequate manner? What price, for example, would content thee?... Thou wilt never sell thy life, or any part of thy life, in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart--let the price be nothing; thou hast then, in a certain sense, got all for it!"

Well said! we again repeat, O Diogenes Teufelsdrockh!

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_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_.

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