CHAPTER VII.

A post-chaise with two stout horses, and as stout a man to drive them, was standing before the door of Jackson's Inn, in the then little village of Fermoy, at the close of a dry and frosty February day. In the parlour of the inn, two or three gentlemen stood watching or eagerly conversing with a couple of tall and powerful-looking men, who were engaged with a beef-steak, which it seemed--from a watch being placed before them on the table--they had but a limited time to discuss.

"Then you are really determined on it, Mr Skelton?" said one of the standers-by to the elder and busier of the banqueters.

"Quite," answered the person addressed, speaking as rapidly as he fed. "What's to be done?--road stopp'd up--business checked--six months gone--mails cut off--guard killed--alarm increasing"----

"If it continues much longer," interrupted his slower companion, "all communication with the capital will be at an end, unless a blow be struck," he said, looking round him loftily, "that will paralyze the enemy, gentlemen."

"Now for it, Rudd," said Skelton rising; "our time's up--twenty-five minutes past five," and he pocketed the watch by which he counted.

"I'm your man," answered Rudd, as he swallowed his last glass of sherry, and jumped up: "have you the blunderbuss?"

"Ay have I."

"I have the dirk and pistols, then: so bolt at once. Good-by, gentlemen;" and without waiting for the "good-bys" and "successes" that were showered on them, Messrs Skelton and Rudd hurried into the attendant post-chaise, and, giving some earnest directions in a whisper to the driver, dashed rapidly over the bridge which crossed the Blackwater, and took the road leading north, over Kilworth mountain, to Dublin.

Half an hour's travelling brought them to the foot of the hill, where the road began to ascend, and from this spot the driver was instructed to proceed at a slow pace. The night had thoroughly set in, both dark and foggy, and an hour elapsed tediously in winding up and attaining the vast level of the Wild. As they had no lamps, though desirous now to advance at a brisker rate, they were compelled to keep in a slow and cautious trot, the hearts of the travellers, intrepid as they seemed to be a short time ago, thumping violently every step they proceeded.

After various short pauses to avoid deep ruts, and several descents by the driver to free his horses' hoofs from the loose stones that lay plentifully along the wretched road--during one of which he seemed to hold colloquy with some benighted traveller--the carriage had nearly crossed the long summit of the desolate hills, when its occupants perceived it to stop with a sudden and forcible impulse, that betokened instant danger. Dropping the glasses at once, they called loudly to the driver to enquire the cause.

"There's a gentleman here," replied the man in a timid sullen voice, "houldin' the horses heads, that says I must stop here a spell."[27]

"How many of 'em?" asked Skelton in a low tone.

"Two," was the answer, just as softly; "one a-horseback, t'other a-foot."

"Here we are, then!" said Rudd to his companion in a feverish whisper.

"Yes; I wish 'twas over," was the reply, which was scarcely breathed when a man appeared at the right-hand carriage-window, and, presenting a pistol, said in a strong loud voice--

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I must have your money."

"Or your lives," added a man on horseback, blocking up the opposite side of the chaise.

"This is very hard, sir," answered Rudd hesitatingly--"very--hard--indeed; however, I suppose it must be so: perhaps you'll be good enough to come round to the other door of the chaise--my friend here is, I fear, seriously ill--

"Certainly," said the robber, who was now heard walking round to the door already occupied by his mounted companion.

"Are you steady?" whispered Rudd.

"As steel!" answered Skelton.

"Then slip the muzzle of the blunderbuss across me, and the moment the door is well opened, when I raise my arm with the purse, shoot him dead on the spot."

The click of a trigger was the sole reply:--the highwayman had come round to the door. He had his grasp on the handle, when he was suddenly struck in the eyes with some icy liquid, that caused him to swerve violently aside, dragging open the door at the same moment. There was a terrific volley from the carriage, and Curly Cahill, receiving the greater portion of the contents of the blunderbuss intended for his friend, dropped heavily from his horse.

Rudd and Skelton instantly sprang out. They found Hewitt (for our readers, no doubt, have anticipated it was he) engaged with their stalwart driver, who had already grappled with him, having, before he could recover from his shock, as well as surprise, by a well-directed blow knocked the pistol from his hand, and closed with him. The man would have been no match for Hewitt; but before the latter could draw another pistol, he was struck down by Rudd, and, with the powerful assistance of Skelton, handcuffed, and secured in the chaise.

The travellers, who had come determined and prepared for this expedition,[28] now struck a light, and proceeded to raise Cahill, who continued to groan heavily where he had fallen. He seemed to bleed inwardly, having been wounded chiefly in the chest and stomach, and was lifted into the carriage beside his captured companion, and where he almost instantly expired, having squandered his last breath in a feeble laugh, and the expression of his conviction, that "the Capting was cashiered at last."

The travellers now hurried rapidly onwards, conveying with them Sally-the-tin, whom, having been benighted on her return from some country-fair, the driver (an old acquaintance) had overtaken and given a lift to on the bar beside himself, and whose elemental piety, for once not ill-timed, was the means of saving Hewitt's exit. Leaving Cahill's body at the very roadside-hut where he had so lately planned his villanous revenge, they continued their course to Clogheen; and being informed that the nearest magistrate was the rector of the parish, about nine o'clock at night they entered Mr Tyrrel's parlour, where, though still suffering under her father's suspicions, Katey was presiding at the tea-table to Lysaght and his uncle, and begged to introduce to the Reverend Justice's notice, the person who accompanied them--the dreaded and notorious freebooter, Roderick O'Hanlon, who had been so many months the terror of all who travelled Kilworth mountains--and who, on a previous occasion, had been ushered, in an imaginary way, to his acquaintance as Major Fergus Hewitt, commissioner to Mononia from the Provisional Government.

* * * * *

Hewitt (or O'Hanlon) was tried at the ensuing Tipperary Assizes, and, notwithstanding the extreme severity of the law at that period, there were so many palliating circumstances pleaded in his favour at the trial--particularly a popular, and we believe a not altogether unfounded eulogium, (since grown into an apothegm in that country,) that "He robbed the rich to give to the poor," and so many persons of distinction, who had known him at one time as a performer on the Dublin stage, came forward to interest themselves in his behalf--that he escaped with transportation for life. He ultimately conducted himself with such propriety at Sydney, that he obtained a free pardon--and lived to amass some property, and settle in that colony. Previous to his quitting Ireland, he conveyed to Miss Tyrrel, by the hands of her father, a few lines explanatory of portions of his conduct and career, and which concluded with the assurance, that, next to _one_ nameless and bitter regret, he most deeply lamented the injury he had, were it only in _her_ estimation, inflicted on the cause of brave and unfortunate men, by passing himself as an adherent of Robert Emmett's, and the affair of 1803--with neither of which, he declared, had he had any connexion.

Katey Tyrrel recovered so rapidly from the shock and illness that succeeded the appearance of Hewitt as a prisoner in her father's parlour, that it is more than probable her wounded pride and convicted folly annihilated at once that affection for a highwayman which she would have had no scruple of bestowing on a Major of the Republican Brigade. Her father, grateful that, before it was too late, he was afforded an opportunity of atoning for past severity, no less than former indulgence, restored her speedily to favour. Katey profited largely by the lesson her giddiness and obstinacy had received. She became a steady and domestic character, and in due time saved herself the trouble of looking out a wife for Lysaght Osborne among her neighbours, by marrying him herself. They continued to reside with her father, who survived to such an extreme old age as to see all feuds between himself and his parishioners extinguished by the Composition Act.

Sally-the-tin, as often as her vagrant disposition admitted of it, had always a corner in Katey Osborne's kitchen; and it would be an injustice to woman's heart not to say, that this protection was afforded her not a whit the less warmly and permanently, for having been instrumental (however unconsciously) in saving the life of Hewitt.

A GLANCE AT THE PENINSULA.[29]

In England, where politics are so generally and largely discussed, where in fact they form the only subject upon which most men appear disposed or competent to converse, it is not uncommon to meet with persons well informed concerning the social and political state of the principal European countries. But we have frequently observed, that even amongst those who display the most varied knowledge of this kind, there are very few who either possess or pretend to any thing like a thorough appreciation of the affairs of the Peninsula. Yet there are obvious reasons why Englishmen ought to be more conversant with Spanish affairs than with those of any other European state--our nearest neighbours, perhaps, excepted. Here is a country about which we have been fighting or diplomatizing, almost without intermission, since the commencement of the present century; a country to which, by its intestine broils and frequent political changes, the attention of the English public has been continually directed, while that of the monied and commercial classes has been specially attracted to it by the frequent fluctuations and consequent speculation in what are facetiously termed Spanish _Securities_, and by the oft-revived but hitherto fallacious expectation of a commercial treaty. When these sources of interest are considered, it does seem singular that so few persons should have thought it worth while to investigate the real state of Spain in all its various relations; and that of those who have gone thither with that view, none should have produced a book fully elucidating Spanish affairs to the numerous classes in England which are more or less interested in them. The probable cause of this is, that no country has been so difficult to follow and comprehend through all its countless changes; an indispensable key to which is a thorough knowledge of the national character. On the other hand, that knowledge is doubly difficult to obtain at a period when, as now, the people and the institutions of Spain are in a state of transition.

It is a truism which, at first sight, looks like a paradox, that contemporary history is the most difficult to write. Time, which, in its more extended lapse, destroys and obliterates--previously, by successive operations, purifies and enlightens; classes men and events; elevates the important and the true; and gives praise and obloquy to whom they are severally due. And in the Peninsula, more than in any other country, is this kind of classification requisite. Amidst the various parties and factions, the strange contradictions of the national character, the interminable web of intrigue and political manoeuvre, how arduous the task to unravel the truth, to throw a clear light upon the state and prospects of Spain, and explain the hidden and complicated machinery by which many of the recent events in that country have been brought about!

We have now lying before us a book in which this task has been attempted, and, we are disposed to think, by no means without success. It is the work of a man who has evidently passed a considerable time in the Peninsula; and, after becoming well acquainted with the language and habits of the people, has studied the peculiarities of their manners, feelings, and institutions, with a keen and observant eye. The result of his observations he has committed to paper pretty much as they were made; so at least we infer from the style of his book, which, without being on any regular plan, touches upon every subject connected with Spain, nearly, as it would appear, in the order in which they chanced to come uppermost in the writer's mood of the moment. The frequent change which this occasions, from grave subjects to gay, and _vice versa_, serves, perhaps as well as any more regularly preconceived plan could have done, to carry the general reader pleasantly through two rather copious volumes; in which, whatever nay be their deficiencies, there is certainly no lack of variety; while the style in which they are written has about it a characteristic vigour and originality, and at times a considerable degree of humour. We are not informed how long the author has lived in Spain; but we suspect that his residence there has been of considerable duration, and that he has become in some degree _Espanolisado_. We infer this from an occasional foreign idiom; from his intimate knowledge of the habits of various classes, which only a long residence in the country could have brought in his way; and from a familiarity with Spanish proverbial language, which now and then breaks out in an amusing and Sancho-like passage. In short, the whole book is characteristic both of the man who has written it, and of the people whom it describes.

Commencing with the fall of Espartero, the first twenty chapters of the first volume are chiefly political in their nature;--containing explanations of the various circumstances attending the above event; details of the state of parties, of the intrigues against Olozaga, and his final overthrow by the Camarilla of the day; the history of Camarillas generally, and sketches of several of the most prominent actors upon the Spanish political stage. The figurative signification of the word _camarilla_, which, in its literal sense, means a little chamber, is almost too well known, even out of Spain, for an explanation of it to be necessary. Since the fourteenth century, the days of Alonzo the Eleventh, and the beautiful Leonor de Gusman, it has been the wont of Spanish monarchs, with rare exceptions, to rule, and often to be ruled, by cabals or coteries composed of an indeterminate number of courtiers. We find men of all ranks and classes of society taking in turn their share of this back-stairs influence; priests and soldiers, jesuits, nobles, and lawyers, and not unfrequently women, composed the courtier-conclaves that governed the rulers of Spain, sent their own foes to the scaffold or dungeon, and raised their own friends to the highest dignities of the state. In conformity with this time-honoured tradition of the Spanish monarchy, no sooner was Espartero expelled from Spain than Christina hastened to send creatures of her own to Maddrid, to watch over her interests pending her own arrival, and to intrigue against those who should appear disposed to thwart her designs and line of policy; to form, in short, a Camarilla. This was soon done. "It was composed of Narvaez, the Marchioness of Santa Cruz, and Valverde, the Duke of Ossuna, Juan Donoso Cortes, and a member of the Senate named Calvet--all faithful adherents of Christina, Moderados in their politics, and strongly tinged with absolutist principles, although most hostile to the claims of Don Carlos." These half-dozen intriguing spirits soon carved out for themselves abundant and mischievous employment. The then minister, Lopez, the same whose famous amnesty project caused the downfall of Espartero, alike averse to encounter their opposition or to truckle to them in his government, resigned his office although possessing a strong majority in the Cortes; and Olozaga took his place, having been himself designated by Lopez as the most fitting man. The new premier trusted to his energies and talents to make head against the Camarilla; but he had underrated the ingenuity and cunning of the latter; and, still more, the hatred borne to him by Queen Christina. This hatred he had excited to a deadly extent, when ambassador at Paris in the time of Espartero, by demanding the expulsion of Ferdinand's widow from the French capital, on the ground of her plottings and attempts to revolutionize Spain. As will be remembered, no attention was paid to these demands by Louis Philippe, who was far better affected to Christina than to Espartero; and the cunning dowager remained snug at the Hotel de Courcelles, hatching plots against the existing government of Spain--plots in the carrying out of which she was largely aided by French gold and French counsels. But she neither forgot nor forgave Olozaga's interference; and no sooner did he assume the reins of government, than her adherents opened their batteries upon him with unusual vigour. So effectual was their fire, that Olozaga, who took office on the twenty-first of November, was dismissed from it on the twenty-ninth;--one week's tenure. The absurd history of the violence employed by him to obtain the Queen's signature to a decree for the dissolution of the Cortes is well known, as are also the efforts that were made to crush him, even after his expulsion from the ministry had been obtained by this pitiful pretext--a pretext at once disgraceful to the artful and unprincipled framers, and injurious in the highest degree to Queen Isabel, one of whose first acts, after her majority had been declared, was thus made to be the attestation of a gross and shameless falsehood. In the long and stormy debate that ensued in the Cortes, Olozaga amply confirmed all parties of the absurdity of the charge brought against him, and utterly confounded his enemies. What they could not accomplish by public means, the latter now attempted to bring about by underhand ones--namely, Olozaga's destruction in a literal as well as a political sense; and after one or two narrow escapes from assassination, the ex-premier was advised by his friends to withdraw from Spain. "Portugal presented the readiest asylum; and following very nearly the course of the Tagus, the exile, escorted by twenty well-armed contrabandists, came by way of Talavera and Coria on the back of a mule, in the disguise of a trader, with copious saddle-bags, and crossing the little river Herjas into the Portuguese province of Beira, was soon in Castello Branco." Olozaga was used to this sort of thing, having already had to fly for his life in the time of Ferdinand. On that occasion he drove out of Madrid in the disguise of a Calesero, in company with his friend Garcia, the then intendant of police, who was also obliged to fly from the vengeance of the Camarilla of the day. They reached Corunna in safety, and embarked for England; the facile versatility with which Olozaga had smoked, joked, and drunk his way, adapting himself to the humours of all he met, and supporting admirably his assumed character, having in no small degree contributed to save them from detection.

The account our author gives of Queen Isabel is any thing but a favourable one; although we have much reason to fear that it is substantially correct. Wilful and pettish, at times obstinate, deficient in intelligence as well as temper, and above all, _dissimulada_, a dissembler. Ugly words these; but if it be true that children inherit their parents' virtues and vices, what better could be expected from the offspring of a Ferdinand and a Christina? Indeed it will be fortunate for herself and her people, if, at a later period of this child-queen's life, there are not a few more failings to be added to the above list--already sufficiently long. At present, artfulness and insincerity seem her chief faults--no trifling ones, certainly; and to these may be added a want of heart, very unusual in a girl of such tender age, and which is perhaps the worst symptom in her character. It has been frequently and strongly exemplified in her conduct to those nearest her person. Previously to the anti-Christina revolution of 1840, the Marquesa de Santa Cruz was her governess, and to her the young Queen appeared much attached. But when the Marchioness left Spain in the suite of the Queen-mother, Isabel never made an enquiry after her, receiving Madame Mina with just the same degree of apparent affection that she had shown to her preceding governess. Whilst Espartero was Regent, she professed unbounded attachment to him, insisted having the portrait of her "_caro amigo_" hung in her room, and seemed proud of showing it to all her visitors. The wheel went round; Narvaez was at Madrid, and the Duke of Victoria a refugee on board the Malabar. The Senora de Mina was dismissed, and her royal pupil took leave of her with the same absence of feeling that she had shown when separated from the Marchioness of Santa Cruz:--

"'Since you are leaving me,' she said, 'I must make you a present.' And away she ran to take down the portrait of her very 'dear friend' Espartero, which precious relic she handed over to her outgoing _Aya_, saying 'Keep this portrait, senora; it will be better in your possession than mine!'"

Taken to a bull-fight, her youthful majesty of Spain was delighted beyond measure, enjoying the sufferings of maddened bulls and gored horses with as much zest as could have been shown by her illustrious and respectable father. Unfortunately, _auto-da-fes_ are out of date, or they might serve to vary her pastimes. As it is, she is obliged to fill up her leisure by the consumption of confectionery, of which she has a constant and abundant supply on hand. "This pastry-cook museum, which extends over every apartment of the palace, contains some most interesting specimens--the _tortas_, or tarts, of Moron, the most celebrated in Spain; the _panes pintados_, or painted buns, of Salamanca; the _Paschal ojalores_, or Carnival and Easter dainties; the hard _turrones_ of Alicant, composed of almonds, nut-kernels, filberts, and roasted chestnuts, intermixed with honey and sugar; _dulces_ of cocoa-nut frosted with sugar; roasted almonds; _avellanas_, a peculiarly nice sort of filbert, whole and in powder; _alfajor_, or spiced bread; the delicious cheese called _jijona_; pomegranate jelly; _blando de huevos_, or sweetened yolks of eggs," &c. &c. &c. When in a good humour, she makes presents of these delicacies to the persons about her; and the degree of favour in which her courtiers stand, is to be estimated by the amount of cakes and sugar-sticks bestowed upon them. No place is secure from the invasion of these sweets; even in the council-chamber, while dispatching business with the ministers, she is surrounded by them, "and the confection of decrees, and discussion of dainties, proceed _pari passu_."

The abundance of the comfits and the badness of the counsellors by which the poor child is environed, menace grievous injury both to mind and body, heart and stomach. A puppet in the hands of factions, living from her earliest childhood in an atmosphere of intrigue and falsehood,--the usual atmosphere of Spanish courts and camarillas, how was she to escape the contagion? Her education seems also to have been grievously neglected. When Arguelles was her governor, she was indocile and refractory; under the care of Olozaga she only remained three months. Her female instructors, with the exception of the Countess of Mina, have been women of equivocal reputation, seeking to advance themselves and their friends, and teaching their pupil few lessons but those of dissimulation. To aggravate the evil, during the three years of Christina's exile, that princess was allowed to be in constant correspondence with her daughter, and of course lost no opportunity of inspiring her with a dislike of her own political enemies, the Progresistas. These latter, however, being in power, and about the person of the young Queen, she was obliged at least to _appear_ friendly with them, and was thus "taught to be false and artful by the force of circumstances, and trained by events to deceit."

The chapter headed "Narvaez" is extremely interesting, giving graphic sketches of one of the most remarkable of living Spaniards. In Narvaez we find the faults and the virtues of the soldier of fortune; prompt decision, great energy and determination, on the one hand--cruelty, impolicy, and violence, on the other. His character has made him popular with a portion of the army, and over the officers, in particular, he exercises great influence. His severities, however, especially his shooting eight men the autumn before last, for demanding what had been solemnly promised them, permission to quit the service, have lost him many adherents, and made him numerous enemies in the ranks. But his deadly foes, and those from whom he has the most to fear, are the Ex-National Guards of Madrid. Their hatred of him is unlimited, and savage beyond conception, founded upon various causes, any one of which is, with Spaniards, sufficient to account for it. Their confidence betrayed, their arms taken from them, themselves recklessly sabred and bayoneted when assembled for the most peaceable purposes--these and many other injuries will never be forgotten or forgiven by the Madrilenos. We in England are now so accustomed to hear of bloodshedding and outrage in the Peninsula, that we have began to consider it almost as a matter of course, and scarcely accord a moment's attention to the horrors of to-day, which are no worse than those of yesterday, and may probably be surpassed by those of to-morrow. Yet, if we except a portion of the period of Espartero's rule, there are no three months in the history of Spain for the last ten years, which would not, if transplanted into the annals of any other country, form an era of bloodshed. Since the advent of Narvaez to power, although the vigour of his government has prevented civil war and checked insurrection, that has only been accomplished by a system of despotic cruelty worthy of the days of Ferdinand the Well-beloved. Countless instances may be adduced in support of this assertion. Executions, like that of Zurbano and his family, have been defended by the argument, that the sufferers were rebels against the established government of the country, and as such deserved the fate they met. Rather a flimsy argument, it appears to us, in a country in which revolution flourishes as an evergreen plant. How is it to be decided which is the rightful governor, and which the usurper? who shall say whether those in power are there by right as well as might; or whether they are merely successful rebels, banditti on a large scale, who have seized upon place and power with as much justice, and by the same violent means, as highwaymen of inferior grade possess themselves of the purses of travellers? But even if we concede this point, and admit that whoever holds the reins, though but from yesterday, and with a bloodstained hand, is justified in slaughtering by wholesale all who show a disposition to drag him down again, it will still be impossible to palliate the treacherous and tyrannical proceedings of Narvaez. The inhabitants of Madrid, lured out of their houses by the bait of some joyous festival, the streets hung with banners and strewed with flowers, the fountains playing wine and milk--on all sides rejoicings and festivity; the _insouciant_ light-hearted Castilians forgetting for a while the misfortunes of their country, and giving themselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the moment. But there are those amongst them who will soon trouble their pleasures; agents of their rulers, tutored to excite them to some apparently rebellious demonstration. A shout or two, interpreted as indicative of disaffection, and caught up by an excitable mob; and immediately battalions appear upon the _plaza_, dragoons gallop out of the side streets, bayonets are lowered and sabres bared, and amidst the clatter of the charge, the screams of women and the oaths of men, the festal garlands are trodden under foot, and blood reddens the pavement. "On many a _fiesta_, or day of saints," says our author, "which Spain regards as of special holiness, plots and snares were thickly strewn around the people's footsteps; murder lurked beneath the wreath of festivity, and the day which began in prayer, concluded with mourning."

During the three days' rejoicings on occasion of the Queen's majority, scenes of this sort occurred. "They invited us to a ball," said the people in the true Madrileno spirit--"they invited us to a ball, and we had to assist at a funeral." The object sought to be obtained by such barbarous means, was the intimidation of the populace, and the deterring of revolutionists and progresistas. The suppression of the national guard produced another _alboroto_, or disturbance. A crowd assembled, and moved through the streets, giving _vivas_ for the constitutional Queen, and _mueras_ for the ministers and the traitors. Narvaez asked no better chance than this. Out turned the palace guard, composed of strong bodies of infantry and cavalry, and, without a moment's delay, charged the mob, which, although principally composed of national guardsmen, was unarmed, save with a few bayonets and knives. In all the adjacent streets, people were running for their lives; and the congregations, which were then just leaving mass--for this occurred on a Sabbath morning--recoiled for safety into the churches.

As a politician, Narvaez is unquestionably an obstinate and unscrupulous dunce, who feels his incompetency to rule by any means but the sword, and has substituted a tyrannical dictatorship supported by bayonets, for the legal and constitutional government of Spain. In a military point of view he is more respectable, although even as a general his exploits have been few and little heard of. In his brief campaign against the Esparterists, he had no opportunity of showing more than activity and daring; since at the very moment when he was on the point of measuring strength and generalship with Seoane and Zurbano at Torrejon de Ardos, the troops under those two leaders came over to him. During the War of Succession, he gave proof of some skill as an organizer of armies of reserve, and even fought a gallant and successful battle with Gomez at Majaceite in Andalusia, in which, if one might believe the lying Spanish bulletins, he nearly swept the Carlists from the face of the earth. There is no doubt he mauled them a little; but neither that nor the various other decisive overthrows recorded by gazettes, prevented Gomez from returning to the Basque provinces with a considerable force at his back, and an immense amount of booty.

It will be contrary to all precedent in modern Spanish history, if Narvaez's career terminates otherwise than by a violent death, met, in all probability, at the hands of the populace, or at those of some disgusted adherents of his own. The deaths of Carlos de Espana, slain by his own escort on his way to the French frontier; of Moreno--the butcher of Torrijos, Lopez Pinto, Florez Calderon, and fifty other martyrs--himself murdered in the wood of Vera by the bandit followers of the savage priest Echeverria; these, and fifty similar instances, are events but of yesterday. It is still fresh in the memory of the Madrilenos how they pursued the stern Quesada to his place of refuge--Quesada who, alone and by his single energy, had cleared the streets of an excited populace, and stopped a revolution for one whole day; how they dragged him forth, piecemeal it may almost be said, and with his severed fingers stirred the bowl in which they toasted the downfall of tyrants. Between Quesada and Narvaez there is more than one point of resemblance. Their deaths, also, may be alike.

The sketches of Spanish political men, the various party leaders and conspicuous senators of the day, are done with much spirit and cleverness, and give an excellent idea of the fickle inconsistency, the showy talent but want of steadiness of purpose, that characterize most of the notable Peninsular politicians. One is much accustomed to receive information upon such subjects with doubt and mistrust, it being so often tinctured with the violent party spirit which, in Spain, distorts men's views and opinions; and the book before us being published anonymously, we are prevented from judging, by circumstances of position or others, to which side or men, if to any, the author is likely to incline. But we think we discern in him the wish to be impartial, and are therefore disposed to place unusual confidence in his statements; the more so as he represents no character as entirely bad, but, while laying on the lash for their faults, does not forget to give them credit for their good qualities. According to his account, Lopez is the most brilliantly eloquent, and, at the same time, one of the most incorrupt members of the Spanish Chambers; one of the very few Spaniards who have held office without advantage to themselves.

"It is a most creditable distinction in Spain, where office is sought almost exclusively for its emoluments, that Lopez has been at three different times a minister of the crown, and retired thrice from that government, of which he was always the most influential member, without any permanent office, or title, or decoration; without even a cross or a riband to display upon his breast, in a country where those favours are most extensively distributed. Even from the premiership of the provisional government, by which high titles and orders were lavishly disseminated amongst the leading instruments of a successful national movement, and from the side of a Queen whose majority had been just proclaimed, he withdrew into private life in a strictly private capacity, without a charge upon the pension list for himself or any of his connexions--without an inscription in the court list or a _real_ of the public money. Five hundred different lucrative and permanent offices were at his disposal, but he preferred a practising lawyer's independence."

This would be rare praise in any country; in Spain it must be almost without parallel. In striking contrast stands the character of Don Luis Gonzalez Bravo, or Brabo, as he affects to write himself, who succeeded Olozaga in the premiership, for which post he united some of the most singular disqualifications ever possessed by a prime minister.

Spain, while imitating the fashions of England and France in dress and suchlike petty particulars, has also thought proper to copy certain political peculiarities of those two countries. Thus, while La Jeune France vapours in long-bearded and belligerent splendour, under the special patronage of a Joinville, and Young England peeps out, gentlemanly and dignified, from beneath the aegis of a less high-born, but, in other respects, equally distinguished character, La Joven Espana, emulous of their bright example, ranges itself under the patronage of the disreputable editor of a scurrilous journal. It is difficult for us in England to imagine the state of things existing in a country where such a person can head any party or section, however insignificant, in the legislative assembly, and still more difficult to conceive any amount of satirical and vituperative talent placing within his grasp the portfolio of prime minister.

Bravo's first introduction to public notice, was as member of the "_Trueno_," or Thunder Club--a society that amused itself, of evenings, by molesting peaceable citizens as they returned home to their families, thrashing the _serenos_ or watchmen, and suchlike intellectual and dignified diversion. He got seriously wounded by a pistol-shot on one of these occasions, and we next find him editing the Guirigay or "Slang," a paper remarkable for its personal and unscrupulous tone. For some time its attacks were directed against Christina, to whose expulsion from Spain it is said to have contributed, so great is the influence of newspaper violence in the Peninsula. During the Queen-Dowager's three years' exile, however, Bravo wrote himself round from a violent _exaltado progresista_, or Radical, into a very decided _moderado_, or Conservative, in which latter character he entered office. Taxed with his renegade conduct, his defence was a most impudent one, highly characteristic of the man. "_No es ridiculo_," said he, "_estar para siempre el mismo?_" Is it not ridiculous to be always the same?

But though he managed to get on while in opposition--and even, by a certain amount of impassioned energy and satirical _verve_, to place himself at the head of a party of young members, who, although not exceeding fifty in number, turned the scale in many parliamentary contests--his incapacity became glaringly apparent as soon as he took office.

"The prime minister, when he should have been writing sage decrees, was scribbling scurrilous paragraphs; from his portfolio peeped forth old numbers of 'The Slang' and his official robes could not hide his harlequin's jacket. '_Vistan me, dijo Sancho, como quisieren qui de cualquier manera que vaya vestido sere Sancho Panza._' Let them dress me up as they will, quoth Sancho, however I am dressed I shall still be Sancho Panza."

Bravo, however, did as well as another to be the tool of Narvaez, and moreover he was found pliant, which doubtless prevented his being kicked out of office as soon as he got into it. Of course he lost no time in taking care of himself and his friends. His father, who had been dismissed from a government employment for malversation, received the appointment of under-secretary to the Treasury; his wife's brother, a hanger-on at one of the theatres, was made state-groom to the Queen; while a number of other equivocal characters were appointed to the diplomatic corps, and half the political chiefs and public employes in Spain were dismissed to make room for the new premier's friends, including a considerable number of newspaper scribblers. The power of the newspaper press in Spain is enormous, and nearly all the leading politicians in Madrid either are, or have been, editors or proprietors of some one of the principal journals.

The manners and peculiarities of the lower orders in Spain offer a fertile theme, differing as they do _in toto_ from those of the corresponding classes in any other country. They have furnished our author with materials for some amusing chapters. The description of a roadside _venta_, or inn, and its frequenters, is capital, and reminds us of some of Lewis's admirable pencillings of Spanish life and interiors. The amalgamation of grades of society, which in most countries would be kept carefully distinct, but in the Peninsula hobnob together in perfect good fellowship, the mixture of muleteers and alcaldes, priests and banditti, smugglers and custom-house officers, all sitting in the same smoky room, dipping in the same dish, exchanging the latest intelligence, local and political, forms a strange but a characteristic and perfectly true picture. _Apropos_ of smugglers, here is a small statement worthy the notice of that sensible party in Spain which opposes the introduction of foreign manufactures upon payment of a reasonable duty.

"Spain is, of all European countries, the most helplessly exposed to contrabandist operations. With an ill-paid and sometimes ragged army, and with revenue officers directly exposed to temptation by inadequate salaries, she has 500 miles of Portuguese frontier and nearly 300 of Pyrenean; and with a fleet crumbled into ruins, and no longer of the slightest efficacy, she has 400 miles of Cantabrian and 700 of Mediterranean coast. Four hundred thousand smugglers are constantly engaged in demolishing her absurd fiscal laws, and some 1,600,000 pounds weight of cotton goods alone, are every year illicitly imported."

But things in Spain are now rapidly approaching that happy state when it will become quite unnecessary for the gentlemen contrabandistas to expose their valuable health to the Pyrenean fogs, or their lives in contests with _aduaneros_. The system is becoming each day more beautifully simple; and, strange as it may seem, the direct road for the importation of contraband goods is through the custom-house. "Bribery is here reduced to the old electioneering simplicity; and the tariff of custom-house corruption is arranged with more uniform regularity, and far more perfectly understood, than the tariff of customs' duties--the difference being, that the customs' revenues may not be paid, but the customs' officers must." The due amount of fee being insinuated into the "itching palm" of the revenue officers, your goods pass with all imaginable facility. By the magic of a four, eight, or sixteen dollar bit, as the case may be, a mist settles over the vision of the complaisant official, and either prevents his seeing at all, or else transforms in the most remarkable manner the objects that pass before him. Bales of manufactured goods assume the appearance of sacks of potatoes and onions--nay, those useful products of the soil are sometimes even supposed to be contained in wooden cases and casks, carefully hooped and nailed; "and huge canvass bales are likewise cleared, and reported to be indubitably filled with the said potatoes, the softness of the packages to the touch arising probably from the fact of their being boiled!"

At times, however, by a rare chance, an incorruptible custom-house is discovered; and for that, or some other reason, it is deemed advisable to resort to the old, and certainly more sporting plan, of running the cargoes, which is accomplished in a most systematic and comfortable manner. The smugglers are usually in sufficient number to deter the carabineros from meddling; and if, by chance, the latter _should_ interfere, they almost invariably receive a sound thrashing. There are a large number of small Portuguese craft constantly employed in running contraband goods; and the quantity of merchandise introduced from Gibraltar is enormous. The latter town, which, by the census of 1835, had 15,000 inhabitants, contains _only_ 3000 cigar manufacturers. As our author says, what a frightful deal they must smoke in Gibraltar!

It is all nonsense talking in mincing terms about English smuggling in Spain. However much our Government might discountenance it, nothing could be done to prevent it, not even if English guarda costas were stationed round the whole eleven hundred miles of Spanish coast. The smuggled goods would then go through Portugal, as many of them do now; or any diminution in the amount of English merchandise imported, would be made up by a corresponding increase in the quantity of French. Why, even the Germans, the respectable, plodding Germans, supply their quota of indifferent calicoes and dull cutlery to the Spanish consumer. The French, who are fond of charging England with being the nation "_egoiste par excellence_," who consults only her own interests, and is equally ready to poison antipodean barbarians with opium, or to violate the principles of fair dealing that ought to exist between friendly countries, by introducing contraband goods in every possible manner--the French, we say, albeit so Pecksniffian in their condolences with Spain, and other nations, which they affect to consider victims to the practices of greedy and treacherous England, are themselves most reckless and determined in their smuggling transactions with their southern neighbours; and the sole circumstance which "rises their dander" is to find English goods obtaining the preference in the Peninsula, as every where else. The constant aim of the French is to irritate Spaniards against England; and the ground upon which they have hitherto gone is, that of representing us, in all our actions, as thinking only of our own advantage. The activity and skill of French political agents were long exerted to bring about a reaction against the friendly feelings which, only a very short time back, were entertained in the Peninsula towards England; and these exertions were at last successful, although we may now hope that Spaniards are again opening their eyes to the deceit that has been practised on them. The friendly offices of France are probably by this time beginning to be appreciated at their just value; and doubts must be arising in the minds of the rational portion of the Spanish people, whether the "_perfides insulaires_" did not mean and act as honestly by them as the more smooth-tongued and insinuating allies who have reimposed upon them a Christina and a Narvaez.

"Exaggeration in all things," says the English resident, "is the leading vice of Spain. There is not a city in the Peninsula that is not '_muy noble, muy leal, y muy heroica_;' not a corporate body that is not 'most excellent,' or 'most illustrious;' not a military corps that is not renowned, and matchless for its valour; not a ragamuffin in Castile that does not esteem himself noble, nor a brigand in Andalusia but calls himself a soldier; not a man but is a Don, nor a woman but is a Dona; not a dunce of a doctor but is profoundly learned, nor a scribbling poetaster but is a European celebrity. Where all are first-rate, how shall there be improvement? Where there is no humility, how shall there be acquisition of knowledge? Pangloss might here have found his perfect world."

It is, we fear, this Bobadil vein, this unbounded self-approval and vain-gloriousness, entailing an unwillingness to acknowledge obligations, and an impatience of feeling that they have received any, which renders a large proportion of Spaniards less amicably disposed towards England than we might expect them to be, when we look at the recent history of the two countries, and recall all the friendly offices Spain has received at the hands of England. We have ourselves noticed amongst Spaniards--even amongst men of good average intelligence and education--a fretful sort of feeling whenever the support for which their country has been indebted to Great Britain was alluded to. Some of them go so far as to endeavour to persuade the world, and more especially themselves, that the parts played by English and Spaniards in the Peninsular War were the converse of what is usually supposed--that it was Spanish valour, skill, and generalship that swept Napoleon's armies before them, and drove his best commanders across the Pyrenees. The English were there, certainly; they were very useful, but they played second fiddle to their allies on most occasions. In short, to hear many of the present generation of Spaniards talk, one might suppose that it was their ill-disciplined, badly-officered troops which won the numerous hard-fought fields of the War of Independence.

Another subject of difference, and a far more serious one than these petty ranklings of offended pride and ill-borne obligation, is the slave-trade, and the right of search. Persuade Spaniards, or Frenchmen, or any nation in the world, if you can, that Great Britain added twenty millions to her debt, impoverished her own colonial proprietors, and still goes to a heavy annual expense for the suppression of the slave traffic, with any other view than a very decided one to her own benefit. To Spain, thanks to the wretched administration of her internal resources, the revenue derived from her few remaining colonies is a great object; and in our hostility to the slave-trade, she beholds a direct attack on that source of income. Again, in the present depressed state of Spanish commerce, a large portion of the commercial capital of the country is invested in the slave-trade; and a constant bitter feeling towards the English is consequently kept up amongst the class whose money is thus employed. If they bring one cargo out of three to the Havannah, they have, it is said, a profit on the transaction; but at the same time it is not likely to put the slave-dealing Dons in particularly good humour to hear of the other two having been walked off by British cruisers. On the contrary, they curse the meddling Ingleses, who having, they say, cut off their own tail by emancipating their negroes, now, like the fox in the fable, wish to persuade, or, if necessary, to compel all their neighbours to follow their example.

The English resident is enthusiastic on the subject of slave emancipation, and gives us a lively account of some arguments he maintained on the subject with sundry Gaditano slave-dealers, the result of which was, of course, that each party remained precisely of the same opinion as before. The abstract philanthropy of English legislation on that question cannot be doubted; and it is to be hoped that the course adopted may eventually prove beneficial to humanity, although it seems very doubtful whether such has as yet been the case. Meanwhile, there is small credit given to us for disinterestedness by foreigners, who, in our resolute opposition to the slave-traffic, are determined to see nothing but a wish to harass their commerce, injure their colonies, and insure our dominion of the seas.

Under the favouring auspices of that poor creature, Leopold O'Donnel, who distinguished himself during the War of Succession by the skill with which he managed to get beaten by the Carlists on nearly every possible occasion, and who now occupies the important post of Governor of Cuba--under his auspices the slave-trade is flourishing with renewed vigour. Slaves, we are told, can now be legally imported into Cuba upon payment of the governor's fee of twenty-five dollars per head, and "_la traite_ has seldom, of late years, been more successful than under the rule of this governor." One of the most striking chapters of the book before us is the one on colonial slavery, in which some curious details are given concerning the recent conspiracy of Matanzas. This outbreak, like all others that occur in the Spanish West Indies, was most falsely laid at the door of the English by the whole Spanish press. "It was directed," said they, "by a committee of five members. Placido was president, two of the other four were mulattoes, _and two Englishmen_. This latter circumstance is worthy of note." "As being an utter falsehood," observes our author.

Placido, the mulatto leader of the insurrection, seems to have been a remarkable man, of commanding appearance, great energy of character, and superior intelligence. One of the means he adopted to rouse the coloured population of Cuba against their oppressors, was the writing of revolutionary songs and verses. During the whole of 1843 he was busy laying the foundations of his scheme, and, although his designs were known to thousands, no one was found to betray them. The plot was finally discovered by the conversation of some of the conspirators being overheard. An obscure warning of it, given by a young negress to her master, with whom she was in love, also led to enquiry. The project was for nothing less than the total extermination of the white race, and the formation of a republic after the example of Hayti The leading posts and commands were assigned to the mulattoes, as well during the revolt as in the organized government that was subsequently to be formed. The Thursday in Passion Week was the day fixed for the outbreak; the signal to be given by the simultaneous burning of the sugar-canes; the watchword, "_La Muerte y la Destruccion_." The domestic servants were in the plot, and were to aid in various ways. "The cooks were to poison their masters, and the caleseros, with their coach-horses, to form a corps of cavalry."

The alarm was not given till the morning of the day on which the conspiracy was to have broken out. Then the arrests began. Five hundred of the conspirators were thrown into the prison of Matanzas, which town was the headquarters of the conspiracy, and gave its name to it. But the negroes finding themselves discovered, and expecting no mercy, resolved at least to glut their vengeance as far as the time would allow them. Overseers were flung into their sugar-boilers, two entire families at Matanzas were poisoned, and other excesses took place. The reprisals exercised were most horrible; two hundred prisoners were immediately butchered, and numerous straggling parties shot down like dogs; some wretched victims were flogged to death to induce them to betray their accomplices. Further outbreaks were the result of these severities. The planters who fell into the hands of the negroes were mercilessly massacred; numerous plantations were burned. The insurrectionary movements were, however, isolated and without organization; the Spaniards succeeded in repressing them, and then, furious and alarmed at the imminence of the peril they had so narrowly escaped, inflicted the most terrible punishment on the unsuccessful mutineers. Eight hundred prisoners had been secured in the Matanzas Jail; of these two hundred were shot without trial, the remainder, for the most part, strangled in their dungeons. The meaning of the Spanish word _Matanzas_ is "a place of slaughter," and such, indeed, the town became. Placido, the chief of the conspiracy, made a tremendous resistance before he was taken. "He fired three pistols, killing or wounding a man at each discharge, and then hacked and hewed away with his sword, speedily making for himself a ring of more than its span, and clearing a space around him as rapidly as an Utreran bull when he rushes into the circus. But a soldier's musket soon brought him to the ground, and bleeding and faint he was flung into the Matanzas carcel."

As the prisoners refused to a man to make disclosures, torture was resorted to. The lash was applied till they confessed or fainted. Most of them yielded, the plot was acknowledged to be of ancient date, and to have Placido at its head.

Placido bore, with the resolution of a stoic, the rude and unsparing stripes with which his broad shoulders and back were speedily covered. Not a groan nor a sigh escaped him; but he fainted away at last from loss of blood, and with such little apparent change, that the executioners continued to flog for some time after he was senseless. He was loosed from the triangles, and tied to a neighbouring stake, after the mummery of a five minutes' court-martial. He was still senseless when bound to the stake--lifeless, for all that his _verdugos_ knew to the contrary. Ere he received the fusillade, he recovered from his fainting fit sufficiently to exclaim, in an audible tone. "_Los dias de la esclavitud son contados!_" "The days of slavery are numbered."

A horrible account, but doubtless a correct one. Our author seems to have been in the south of Spain at the time of the Matanzas insurrection, and consequently in the right place to get at the true particulars of the affair.

In the chapters on the Spanish Army, &c., although amusing enough, we do not consider the English resident to have been so successful as in most other parts of his work. We would caution him against believing, or at any rate expecting others to believe, the marvels recorded by Spanish gazettes of Spanish armies and generals--marvels which usually get repeated and magnified to most preposterous dimensions by the _embustero_ retailers of such intelligence. We would also warn him against indulging in such enthusiasm as he displays in speaking of General Leon--a very fine fellow undoubtedly, a good soldier and dashing officer, but yet a little overrated in these lines. "In his unexaggerated feats of war, he eclipsed the Homeric heroes, and rivalled the incredible exploits of Charlemagne and his peers. His tremendous lance spread terror and dismay among the enemies of his queen and country, and the glorious inequalities of Crecy and Azincour were revived in the deeds of Leon, witnessed by living men." Revived and considerably eclipsed, we should say, judging from the list of exploits that follows. If our friend the English resident be in any degree acquainted with military matters, he must be aware that the dispersal of an army of eleven thousand infantry, and one thousand horse, by a hundred and fifty hussars, a feat which he attributes to Leon, is an absurdity; and that if such a thing, or any thing like it, did occur, it must have been when the hundred and fifty dragoons were closely backed by some much more numerous force.

The Spanish army, as it existed at the close of the Carlist war, was perhaps in a higher state of discipline and practical usefulness than it had been at any previous period of the present century. Rendered hardy and martial by six years' unremitting warfare; officered, too, for the most part, by men who had something besides title or family interest to recommend them, it only required greater regularity of pay and supplies to prove highly efficient. Gradually reduced by Espartero to about fifty thousand men, its numbers were doubled by a decree of Narvaez, who felt that so small a force was insufficient to support him in his tyrannical rule. At the same time an unprecedented system of conciliation, or of adulation it should rather be said, was adopted by the dictator towards his legions. Espartero had done all in his power, and that the disordered state of Spanish finances allowed him to do, for the comfort and well-being of his army; but he had not thought fit to sacrifice to it all or any other classes of the state. It had not been necessary for him to do so; _his_ government was not based upon fear, nor dependent on bayonets. With Narvaez it was very different. His sole tenure of power was in the fidelity of the army, and this he sought to ensure by every possible means. "The priest may starve and the exclaustrado perish; the last rotten planks of the navy may go to pieces; public monuments may totter for want of conservation or repairs; the civil employe may be pinched, and the very palace pine for its arrears; but money must be found to clothe and feed the army, and maintain it like a prancing charger." The extent to which this courting and propitiation of the soldiery is carried, is almost incredible, and often ridiculous. Allowances of cigars, extra rations of wine upon holidays, boxes and stalls at the theatre provided gratis for the officers upon the Queen's birth-day--these and similar indulgences are the sops thrown by Narvaez to his capricious cohorts. But, with all his pains, he obtains no feeling of security. He is well aware that no man in Spain has so many enemies, not mere ill-wishers, but deadly foes thirsting for his blood; he knows that the National Guards of Madrid have sworn his destruction; and he cannot even tell how soon he may be turned upon or betrayed by the very army which he takes such trouble to conciliate. They may sell Narvaez, as they sold Espartero, to the highest bidder.

In a recent number of this Magazine, we took occasion to animadvert on the conceit and presumption of certain tourists who imagine themselves qualified by a flying visit to write their opinions concerning a country and people, thus doing grievous injustice to those they write about, and sadly misleading any credulous portion of the public which may be beguiled into reading and placing confidence in their lucubrations. It has been seen that no such reproach can be addressed to the author of the book we are now noticing, who has moreover performed his labour, which was no light one, in a conscientious and creditable manner, without prejudice, favour, or affection. We scarcely think he does full justice to Espartero, whom we must still persist in considering the most estimable and respectable of the Spanish public men of the day. He may not possess the glowing and fascinating eloquence of an Olozaga, nor the fierce energy of a Narvaez; but neither has he the versatile insincerity of the former, nor the unscrupulous and brutal recklessness of the latter. He has not, like Olozaga, according to the uncontradicted testimony of Roca de Togores in the Cortes, "broken faith with all parties;" nor did he ever, like Narvaez, cause his dragoons to charge inoffensive crowds, assembled by invitation of their rulers to celebrate saint-days or national festivals.

Our author's general remarks on the state of Spain, of its people and prospects, are acute and sensible; and they also coincide in great measure with as much as has been said on those subjects by one or two recent and intelligent travellers in the Peninsula. In short, setting aside a slight occasional tendency to high colouring, more calculated, however, to amuse than mislead, the principal fault we have to find with the book is its title. After the deluges of Mysteries and Revelations that has been poured upon the shoulders of the reading public during the last two or three years, commencing with the rhapsodies of Sue and company, and continued through countless varieties by writers of every degree on both sides the Channel, we really cannot think that such a title as "Revelations" of any thing will tend to prepossess the public in favour of the work it designates. One frequently sees books of very small merit, or of none at all, ushered into the world under some highly enticing name, conveying the idea that the author has expended at his bantling's christening the whole of his diminutive modicum of talent. Here, however, is an example of the opposite mode of proceeding; a title that we must decidedly condemn, given to a book of much interest and utility--a book which, from its liveliness, and the amount of anecdote and light matter it contains, will be read by many who would shrink from the perusal of a mere dry statistical work.

AESTHETICS OF DRESS.

NO. III.

THE CUT OF A COAT AND THE GOOD OF A GOWN.

So you have got a decent coat on your back, gentle reader! Well, we congratulate you upon this fortunate circumstance, this honourable badge of aesthetic distinction; but do not be too proud of it--there are coats, and coats--_non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius_, you know. Wait a bit till we turn you round, and trot you out to see the cut of the thing, ere we admit you to be a well-dressed, or even a sensibly-dressed man. But before we enter into controversy on the superficial appearance of man in the nineteenth century, let us hasten to recall attention to our definition of good taste in all matters of dress--utility first and ornament afterwards, but ornament always subservient to utility--and let us also appease the indignation of the tailoring world by affirming, that in one grand class of coats--we will specify which by and by--the public seem to have arrived at a tolerably reasonable result. There certainly are some men, many men indeed, in the world who may be said to be sensibly dressed. 'Tis a phenomenon when you come to think about it; but the fluctuations of taste in this matter have, for the time being, arrived at a normal state. After the variations of centuries, the vagaries of taste in male attire, (which may be measured, for their ups and downs, by curves, with quite as much reason as the rise and fall in prices of corn, and various other things that the members of statistical societies delight in portraying)--these variations, in their endless wrigglings and windings, have come back in more cases than one to their points of departure, and there form _nodi_, points of reflection, contrary flexure, &c. At all these points the curve of taste may be assumed to be stationary. Pray, excuse us, good reader, for being scientific--do not call it obscure--on so luminous a point. But is not the mystery of tailoring become a science? Is not the ninth part of a man now called an _artiste_? Have we not regular treatises published, with no end of diagrams, on the art of self-measurement? Just look at the advertisements at the back of your Sunday newspaper, or in the fly-leaves of your last Maga. And, after all, where is the harm? "The noblest study of mankind is man!" However, it is a learned point, on which a world of talk may be got up; so we will waive it for the moment, to be resumed in the due course of our ruminations.

Now, there is no man in his sober senses who will not admit that a European, but especially a Briton, requires one or more coats to protect him from the varying influences of climate. Whether we suppose him muffled up in the skins of the _urus_ and the wolf of the old Hercynian forest, or sporting in the soft fabrics woven from the fleeces of Spain and Saxony, no one but a sheer madman, in any parallel north of the 40th, ever thought of dispensing altogether with a stout upper garment. It has been a necessary thing, rammed into every man's head by Jack Frost, Dan Sol, and other atmospheric genii, that he should provide himself with suitable upper toggery; and hence we infer that public and private attention has been directed as much to coats and cloaks as to any other two things that can be mentioned, next after meat and drink. No wonder, then, that men have differed in their tastes as to the manner in which they should best adorn their beloved persons. No wonder that caprice and dandyism have prevailed in all ages of the modern world. There is plenty of room, and even of occasion, for such fickleness. Man is an imitative animal, and the clothing propensities of any one European people have always run the round of the rest of the family. On the whole, we think that men have been more reasonable about their coats than they have about their hats. They have been absurd enough, it is true, but their are grades of absurdity; and, we fancy, the comfort of the wearer has been of more direct influence in keeping up some degree of good sense concerning the covering of his corporeal trunk, than it has in protecting and adorning his head. Not that we intend going into a long history about coats--excuse the pun, we are not fond of long _tales_--we will rather be quick in giving our opinion as to the best manner of settling the _vexata quaestio_ of the clothing system.

Our modern coats, those _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of Stulz and Co., are to be traced back by their pedigree to about the middle of the seventeenth century; while our paletots, wrappers, or whatever else you like to call them, may lay claim to a higher antiquity by three hundred years. In the brilliant courts of Louis XIII., Philip IV., and Charles I., the costume had changed from the tight jacket or vest of the sixteenth century, to the open and somewhat _neglige_, though picturesque jerkin, so familiar to the lovers of Rubens and Vandyke. Over the linen integuments of his body, a gentleman in those days wore only one upper permanent garment, the jerkin or vest in question: the sleeves were loose and rather short; the waist was not pinched in; the cut was rather straight; the length extended only to the loins, and abundance of fine linen and lace was displayed. Over this garment, which was very plain, was worn a small cloak, more or less ornamented, in the hall or the hunting field; but in the tented camp, the cuirass was buckled on, and the jerkin appeared below, covering the tops of the cuissards or thigh-pieces. There is many a charming Vandyke portraying our ancestors in this elegant dress; and even the furious fanaticism of the Cromwellian times allowed the fashion to remain in England, till the taste of the French court underwent a change, and modified the habiliments of nearly all civilized Europe. To what cause we do not know, but probably to some degree of additional comfort required by Louis XIV. and his courtiers in their earlier campaigns--is to be ascribed the lengthening of the skirts of the jerkin, and the corresponding increase in the dimensions of the cloak, which we find to have taken place soon after 1660. The portraits of Mignard, and the battle-pieces of Vandermeulen, all show us the change that was then going on at the court of Versailles: we find the form of the dress stiffening, the sleeves lengthening, pockets either yawning wide, or covered under deep lapels, the cuffs turned up halfway to the elbow, and a glorious display of gold lace and ribands, that must have made a fine gentleman of those palmy days glitter with the colours of the rainbow. To the easy and languid elegance of the Spanish costume, had succeeded a certain degree of military stiffness and precision among the French beaux: all Europe was at that time lost in admiration of the Grand Monarque and his brilliant court; and their fashions were adopted as the universal rule of taste. It was this stiff coat of Louis XIV. that was the direct progenitor of two degenerate, yet widely differing, sons--the _habit_ or coat, and the frock or _surtout_ of the present day. Degenerate descendants truly! Who that ever saw the rustling, heavy, and almost self-supporting coat of Charles II., could have imagined that the plain, close-fitting, and supple frock, or the be-clipped and almost evanescent _habit pare_ of the nineteenth century, were to spring from them as types? Scarcely less wide is the difference between the plate armour of an old English baron, and the simple cuirass of a covenanter!

Hitherto a man of fashion had worn only one coat; but, towards the end of Louis XIV.'s reign, was introduced the superfluous luxury of a second and thinner under-covering, universally known in France as a _veste_, but in England corrupted into a waistcoat, or rather, from its general inutility, a _waste_-coat. This kind of garment grew in importance throughout the eighteenth century; and, like its neighbours the coats-proper, indulged in enormous lapels, and revelled in all the luxury of lace and brocade. The beaux of the First and Second George's times, knew right well how to stiffen out the skirts of their coats; how to dispense with the comfort of a collar; how to have buttons more than they would ever be patient enough to fasten; and how to have button-holes, or rather button-slits, six inches long, cut into the rich velvets and silks of their garments. They were grand, solemn times those! There was no such thing as a man taking liberties with his toilet; it was a serious piece of business to dress properly; and it must have been a matter of no small difficulty to keep a coat clean and decent. We strongly suspect, notwithstanding those flattering rogues the limners, that our great-great-grandfathers had to put up with a vast lot of dirt and discomfort; and that their coats, so expensive to purchase, must have been in no very enviable condition by the time they were left off. Fine days those for a valet-de-chambre! An honest fellow had then some chance of getting a penny out of the Israelitish dealers; and my lord's gentleman might entertain a reasonable prospect of retiring upon his means, long before reaching his grand climacteric. But events marched onwards. The coat, originally intended to be buttoned all the way down--and Louis XIV. actually did wear it buttoned below the ventricular curve--was gradually allowed to flaunt away in an open, dissolute manner, and to display the radiant glories of the vest. Men then came to ask themselves that momentous question, What is the use of such large skirts to our coats, if we do not employ them? And so they took the liberty, some of buttoning them back, others of cutting off a good large corner. The tailors found their account in this. Coats kept up at a proportionally equivalent price; but the profits of the drapers were much diminished, and by and by dwindled to a mere nothing. It was from that fatal period when the waistcoat wheedled itself into fashion, that the glory of the coat began to set; and, when once the skirt came to be retrenched, the majesty of the coat was gone for ever. Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley! gentle Will Honeycombe! ye were the last that knew how to unite the graces and the dignity of these two discordant garments: from your times, down to those of poor Beau Brummell, coats and waistcoats have degenerated through all degrees of folly, even to the verge of stark staring madness!

The noble mantle, and the solemn cloak, its successor, and the comfortable roquelaire, its grandson, and the old, farmer-like great-coat, its _arriere-petit-fils_, and the pilot-coat, the great-coat's brother that ran away from home and went to sea, and the paletot, a foreign bastard that could not prove who its father was, nor even tell how it came by its name, and the wrapper, the paletot's cousin, a regular commercial gent--such is the genealogy of that other family of garments which we cherish as our household gods. But, as we hinted above, we can hunt up the descent of some of these articles to times far removed--(the mantle, we know, came to us from the Romans)--we allude to the upper coat, or wrapper; for we find that a two-sleeved cloak, with enormously long sleeves, by the way, and a most surprisingly scanty allowance of body, was worn by the dandies in the days of the rival Roses; and, to go still further back, we have seen a contemporary portrait of that glorious old fellow Chaucer, clad in a grey wrapper that might have been made in St James's Street, A.D. 1845. If the paletot and the wrapper wish to prove any claims to gentle birth, they cannot do better than refer their wearers to the father of English poets. He was a man of first-rate taste, you may depend upon it.

With all these changes--and we do not intend to blacken our fathers' memories for having made them--what have we arrived at in this point of dress? What are the conveniences of our present garments? in what are they useful? in what are they beautiful? in what do they need to be improved? To begin at the top of the tree--the modern _habit-de-cour_: coat for coat of the dress kind, (military coats are, for the present, out of the question,) this is the most useful, and the most becoming, of any now worn. People are inclined to ridicule this coat, not so much on its own account as for the foolish trappings with which it is commonly accompanied; but we assert that, in its form, its dimensions, and in its suitableness of purpose, it is far superior to what is vulgarly called a dress-coat. The curve of the fronts, and the still somewhat ample sweep of the skirt, the plainness of the collar, and the absence of all pretension in its composition--above all, the total absence of any useless, unmeaning ornament, such as sham pocket-flaps, &c.--all these qualities give it a claim to superiority. If the opinions of the extremes of mankind be sometimes right, as opposed to those of the majority, then the form of that coat, which is worn alike by the courtier and the Quaker, must have some large share of innate merit.

Nothing of this kind can be said of the common short, or dress coat. This most silly and unmeaning habiliment possesses neither dignity nor beauty to entitle it to public favour. It is useless on the person of a youth, and undignified when worn by a man--an elderly person looks absurd in it, and to nobody is it in reality becoming. What is the good of the scanty skirts, that barely admit of a pocket being made in their folds? They add no symmetry nor grace to the person--they furnish little accommodation to the wearer. What is the good of the rolling lapel in the front, and of the collar never intended to be turned up? This coat is only a debased and withered skeleton of the original garment of the seventeenth century, deprived of all the qualities that recommended its type for general adoption; it has neither warmth nor comfort on its side, and it cannot stand the scrutiny of elegance for a moment. It may be a difficult thing for a tailor to make, but that is all; and the sooner that men emancipate themselves from the thraldom of its sway the better. If an open coat is to be adhered to, the old _habit-de-cour_ is the thing; utility and ornament there make a much nearer approach to each other, and for comfort there is no doubt about the matter. We object, however, to the idea of an open coat on the score of ornament, though we admit some of its claims to utility. Two surfaces of decoration on the human body are absurd; they distract the attention, and often, by the incongruous opposition of colour and substance, produce a most disagreeable effect. Without wishing to hurt the feelings of Young England--or, as some facetious wag or other has called him, Little Britain--we declare our dissent, _in toto_, from the dangerous heresy of the white waistcoat with the black coat. 'Tis a most unnatural conjunction. If the colour of the under-garment were only red instead of white, we should suspect some secret connexion with the old woman in scarlet, _ou vous savez_; as it is, we set it down to the account of her friend in black, and we launch against it our aesthetic anathema. True, it makes a man look clean; but cannot a gentleman enjoy the reputation of cleanliness without turning himself into a magpie? Carry the point out a little further--to its ultimate results, in fact--and picture to yourself Albion junior, in a black coat lined with white silk, a white waistcoat, white cravat, black unmentionables, and white silk stockings--each good and legitimate articles of dress in their way--what a figure! No! turn rather to one of those splendid old canvasses of Velasquez. Look at the great Duque de Olivarez, the finest gentleman in Europe; behold him in black velvet and black silk from the chin to the toe--no white but his lace collar--all black except this and his face and hands! There is no effort at display in his person, no attempt to attract attention by a glaring contrast; he knew that his looks proclaimed him a gentleman, and there he stands in quiet dignity, a model of good taste. Philip IV. the same; Charles I. of England, at times, the same. Even the Dutch burgomasters knew how to consult unity of dress, and to harmonize the colours of their vestments. We are not speaking of state-robes, but of the dress worn in society among men of fashion; and we would recommend any one sceptical on the point to compare the evening suits of the middle of the last century with those of the beginning, still more with those of the close of the seventeenth. He will find an immense falling off in good taste. Lord Chesterfield was not half so well-dressed a man as Lord Warwick, nor Lord Warwick as Lord Rochester.

To return, however, to waistcoats. They constitute a class of garments that have fallen into vulgar hands, and are applied to vulgar purposes. Your gents in the city, and your Margate-steamer men, know how to display a yard of velvet or silk to infinite advantage; see how ostentatiously they throw open their coats, and show you half-a-mile of mosaic gold chain meandering over a _champ fleuri_. They are regular tailors' advertisements, and disgust one by their abuse of cheap decoration. We never see a man in a smart waistcoat but we think of what lies at the back of it--a yard of silk or calico--all the glory of the front negatived, and the garment so mean behind that he dares not show it. Not so the good old sailor who spent his prize-money with honesty of purpose, and, let us add, with real good taste also; he decorated his shattered timbers stem and stern alike--there was no make-believe finery about him, and he was not ashamed to take off his coat before any body! Away, then, with the petty vanity of a waistcoat; away with all false idea of its giving decoration to the _ensemble_ of the toilet. We know of nothing in its favour except one single claim on the score of some small utility. To any one living in a variable climate it is of value, as enabling the wearer to modify the temperature of the body. Is the day unusually warm? he can throw open his coat, and preserve that prim neatness of appearance which is required in the present age, but is at variance with the display of fine linen of the Caroline epoch. Or is there a sudden blast of wind from the east, searching his rheumatic limbs to the very bone? he may button his coat over his waistcoat, and he has then a double protection for the tenderest chest. But if thus anxious for the chest, why not for the back also? Why should there be two thicknesses of cloth or stuff over the one, and only a single thickness, with some flimsy calico, over the other? In all this there is an inconsistency. Our ancestors, who wore only one coat at a time, had always a small mantle ready against any change of temperature; and they wore it either appended to the neck, as in the days of James I., or more constantly on the shoulders, as in the time of Cromwell. The main advantage of the waistcoat consists in its being light and permanently worn,--but it should be made of the same stuff throughout, and we think it might well be dispensed with altogether. If Kneller, Lely, Vandyke, and Rubens could visit the earth again for a moment--and they were good judges of what was, or what was not becoming--we have no doubt but they would be unanimous against waistcoats.

We come, therefore, to our last remaining class of coats, and here we halt with a hum of approbation: it would be hard indeed were we to pull the modern dandy to pieces, and leave him no protection against the wintry blast. Yes! the frock or surtout is good! we have little or nothing to say against it,--much in its favour. Utility and elegance are at once seen combined in this garment; it is warm, easy to wear, and comfortable it is of graceful and dignified appearance, and it is becoming, to man at all periods of his life. The frock-coat is nothing more than the ancient tunic opened in front, and made to sit tight upon the upper part of the body: the superior half of it shows the form of the wearer to advantage, and imparts to it a due degree of manly rigidity, while the inferior half partakes of the flowing folds of drapery, and gives warmth and covering down to the very knees. Of all garments that are to have any degree of freedom and looseness about them, the frock-coat is the best: it is good for a man in almost any avocation, and may be made suitable for the common business of life, as well as for the refinements of society. But then it should not be worn open: it should be buttoned upon the breast. Place an officer in his plain closely-buttoned undress coat by the side of a civilian, with his loose and open frock, and the contrast is so decidedly in favour of the former, that the point, as a matter of taste and effect, will not admit of a dispute. The one is a regular sloven compared with the other. If any thing can be said against this buttoning, it is on the score of inconvenience in civil life:--is a man at his library-table or his office-desk always to be fastened up in buckram? where are we to stow away our watches, our knives, our toothpicks, our loose cash (when we have any--_par parenthese_)? There is some weight in these objections; for these little articles of comfort cannot be dispensed with; and we have no better answer than to propose small external pockets with lapels, which would not spoil the symmetry of the figure; or else, if you are obstinate, good reader, and are determined on throwing away your money upon waistcoats--then keep your frock-coat open; but have a waistcoat either of the same colour, or of some respectable hue, and have it made jacket-fashion, as good behind as before. For ourselves, however, we confess we shall prefer

"That you, my friend, whatever wind should blow, Might traverse England safely to and fro, An honest man, close-button'd to the chin,-- Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within."

Any quantity of ornament that might be deemed requisite, could easily be applied to this kind of coat--so as to make it a fit habiliment for occasions of ceremony: in its present state, it retains the stiffness of its military origin, (for it may be called an invention of the Great Duke's, of him who wore it on the glorious fields of Salamanca and Waterloo, and it came into fashion at the close of the Peninsular war:) but it may be embroidered as much as you please, or its stuff may be varied _ad infinitum_, from Manchester fustian to the finest Genoa velvet. Not that embroidery is always consonant with good taste, when applied to male attire. A plain, dark, close-buttoned coat, whether of cloth or velvet, fastened with a single row of diamond or steel buttons in front, would be far more effective, as an object of good taste, than if its seams were all covered with gold lace.

As for the colour of coats, we do not intend to speak of this till we come to the subject of military costume. We leave it awhile to the taste of the nation,--colours have always served as marks of national differences. We beg leave to subjoin a few words in behalf of a poor little garment that has hardly any grown-up friends to say any thing for it; and which, when it left school, either went into a manufactory, or was sent to sea--we mean the jacket. In warm weather, for a country walk, for a ride, for a game at billiards or cricket, even for shooting, (_experto crede_)--a jacket is a capital contrivance; while for a sail, whether down the Thames or up the Mediterranean, it is indispensable. We do not appreciate the jacket as we ought, or rather we do not remember the good service it did us at Eton and Harrow--when the limbs were free and supple, and when their full activity was called into constant play, who would have thought of a coat? It was only when we began to fancy ourselves men, and to think that our claims to virility lay in the skirts of our coats, that we discarded the jacket. 'Twas an ungrateful proceeding:--school friendships ought not to be broken--and we recommend you, courteous reader, some day or other to lay your dignity aside for a while, and indulge in the innocent freedom of a jacket: you will get through any work you have on hand twice as quickly. The beaux of Queen Elizabeth's and King Jamie's courts wore nothing else but jackets, you know, with their short mantles hanging in the most _degage_ manner from the shoulders:--and truly we do not see why a man in a well-cut jacket, properly decorated, should not be entitled to as much admiration in his civil capacity, as when he has the honour to hold her Majesty's commission in the Tenth, and avails himself of that privilege to disturb the equanimity of the beauty and fashion of England. Much may be said upon all sides in this matter: the jacket would now be deemed too familiar without a sword and sabretache; the frock might be considered as slovenly; about the _habit-de-cour_ there can be no dispute; as for the dress-coat, it ought to be sent to Monmouth Street; waistcoats should be given to your valet. Speedily judge for yourself, tasty reader; but let us have a garment calculated for real use, and real ornament; no pretence, no sham; a fine manly figure, and a covering worthy of it, _voila la chose essentielle!_

To criticize a gown is always a more pleasing task than to waste one's patience upon a coat; and, independently of this, the aesthetician has to lay aside nearly all terms of reprobation, in alluding to the habiliments of ladies of the present day. Women have never wandered into so many absurdities of form with regard to this main article of dress, as men have; they have been volatile enough in the material, and colour, and ornament of their gowns; but in shape and cut they have kept much nearer to the golden rule of comfort and utility than the lords of the creation. The period of greatest aberration in this matter may be taken as extending from the latter quarter of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. During those long years, absurdity and inconvenience seemed to hold paramount sway in the wardrobes of the fair; and to apply the word "taste," in its good sense, to any portion of the female dress, at least in England, is hardly allowable within the limits mentioned. Look at your grandmothers' pictures, or turn over the leaves of any edition of Hogarth's works, and the broadness of the caricature cannot fail to strike you. That women should ever have consented so greatly to travestie the beautiful proportions of their fair frames; that they should ever have so completely lost sight of the main principles of decoration and comeliness, is inconceivable. The mischief all originated in France; and it must have come, in the first instance, from the deformity, either of body or mind, of some crabbed old dowager at Versailles; no young unsophisticated girl would ever of herself have invented the hoop or the _neglige_. But those times have happily gone by; and after passing through a transition state of minor absurdity--(look to the prints of the _Belle Assemblee_ from 1800 to 1815)--we have thrown away all unnatural short waists; we have discarded scanty skirts; stomachers have been sent nearly to the right about; and with the exception of a single opisthodomic folly--to which we do not care to allude more particularly--our better halves, and our fair friends, seem to have entered upon an age of good taste and good sense. The happy change has been brought about partly by some women of good sense consulting their own ideas of utility and simplicity--partly by a return of public taste to the dresses of the middle ages, and also of the times of Charles the First. Ladies have at length become aware, that novelty of form is not essential to beauty of effect--and they have opened their eyes to the truth, that the less they disfigure the proportions of their persons, the more becomingly and the more comfortably will they be clad.

The main divisions of lady's gown--every milliner understands what we mean--are the _corsage_ or body, and the _jupe_ or skirt. They are as independent of each other as the upper and lower divisions of a wasp--(indeed, some giddy girls have carried the similitude too far, and have been seen to approximate in their lacing contractions to that wonderfully small animal passage)--and these two divisions of the garment are to be formed and ornamented on totally different principles. By the common practice and consent of all womankind, it appears that the lower portion should be loose and flowing; and that the upper should be so conformable to the contour of the body, as to show that contour to the best advantage; these must be taken as the fundamental definitions upon which all laws of female dress are to be tried. And, first of all, of the skirt; if its form is to be loose and flowing, it should be made to derive its beauty from the curves and breaks and folds which drapery, partly suspended, partly at rest on the ground, will afford. It must be ample and symmetrically proportioned; and its material must have sufficient stiffness as well as pliability--drapery always requires a certain volume of material to be effective. The extreme limit of a scanty skirt, and its poor effect, as well as its great inconvenience, may be judged of from the figures and pictures of the old Egyptian priestesses--they look very _statuesque_, and make capital _caryatides_ for temples--but they will not bear a comparison with those lovely Athenian virgins, winding round the Parthenon, in their sacred pilgrimage to the shrine of their tutelar goddess. Drapery, then, must be ample, if it is to fall in graceful folds. But drapery, only suspended, will not produce the entire effect desired; it will hang in merely longitudinal lines, whereas one of the most pleasing effects produced by it is caused by those abrupt breaks in a fold, those sudden cuttings off of volutes, which are only to be seen when part of the drapery is in horizontal repose, or rests partially on the ground. Hence short gowns are not so graceful as long ones; they are beautiful at any time, it is true, and when the wearer is seated, produce somewhat of the effect alluded to; but for a woman to be robed with all the combined influences of grace and dignity, she must allow her dress to trail partially around her. Think upon the short garments of many classes of peasantry, and think of the train of a lady when dressed for court--we speak of their form, not of their substance--it will easily be seen how much dignity is conferred by length. The utility of long skirts is not so easy to be proved as their beauty; but this is only on the score of the difficulty in keeping them clean; as for warmth and comfort, the advantage is quite on their side. Our fair contemporaries, however, seem to have arrived at a reasonable and happy medium upon that point; they never wore better-formed skirts than at the present day. A gown, if properly made, and without any stinting of stuff, and if that stuff have any thing like substance, needs no adventitious aids to give it sufficient amplitude of contour; let our gentle readers take the hint; they will otherwise militate against one of the main laws of good taste. Let them only look at the portraits of their ancestors in the middle of the last century but one--let them look at Hollar's prints, and if they are open to conviction they will agree in what we say.

If the skirt is to be ample, the body should be confined to the natural shape of the human frame; and the more nearly it is so, the more graceful and effective will it become. Do what we will, distort the sleeves and waist as much as we may, we shall never come up to the symmetry of Dame Nature; she is a better milliner than any in Regent Street; and if the ladies would have their corsages made after her pattern in all cases, they would find their clothes fitting better, pinching less, and keeping them much warmer. Women assert--and we are not competent to dispute the point with them--that they need an enveloping support for the body; in fact, that they must have corsets: be it so: there is no harm in the article itself, provided the utility of it can be clearly proved; but there is much harm in it, if, by an abuse of its powers, this same thing is made to distort the body, and to injure the internal organization of the human frame. As far as beauty of form is concerned, whatever intrenches on the proportion of natural shape is intrinsically contradictory to it: let no woman imagine that she has a fine figure, if she can lace herself into a diameter of nine or ten inches; for by so doing, she disturbs the harmony of all the curves--all the lines of beauty, as Hogarth calls them--with which she has been so richly endowed; she fails of her effect, and, instead of beauty, produces only absurdity. Still the corsage of her dress should fit close; and for this to be possible, there must be a well-fitting corset beneath; but it need not pinch or squeeze the least in the world; let it fit close; that is enough. It is no doubt uncommonly convenient for a lusty alderman's wife of forty to reduce herself to the proportions of "fair seventeen;" but she ought to be able to reduce the whole frame in the same ratio; otherwise to pull in at the waist till the idea of suffocation is painfully evident to the most careless beholder, and yet to leave the bust with the symmetry of Minerva Victrix, is a gross and palpable absurdity. Far from being the [Greek: to chalon], this is the [Greek: to chachon] of all female decoration.

And, if the waist should not be metamorphosed into unnatural smallness, so the sleeves should not be puffed out into preternatural enlargement. Those abominable gigot-sleeves, so well named from our old familiar family-joint--they were utter abominations; and those bishop's sleeves--they were foolish caricatures. Ladies are doing much better now: either, in the evening, they trust to nature herself to set off their arms as she pleases, or else, in the morning, they envelope them in a covering that hardly destroys the beauty of their form. This is as it should be: one of the principal characteristics of female grace consists, as any sculptor can tell you, in the narrowness of the shoulders--just as of male dignity, in their breadth. What, then, could ever have made ladies suppose that they were ornamenting themselves by extending the upper portions of their sleeves until they measured full three feet in a direct transversal line? We are now witnesses of better ideas; the neck, the shoulders, and the arms are allowed to make a continuous series of curves. The corsage is simple in its form, and the only attempt at enrichment is the pendant border of lace, or other material, that gives due relief, without destroying the harmony of the outline.

As for form, then, we congratulate the ladies on having attained and preserved so much excellence in their habiliments. We have only to recommend, that they do not rashly try to innovate upon what they now delight in; or rather, if new ideas are to be introduced, that they control them by a perpetual reference to the form and framework of nature, as their best, indeed their only, guide to what is true and beautiful. Thanks to the manufacturing skill of European nations in general, and of our own more particularly, there is no lack of material for women to choose their dresses from. The loom teems with all kinds of substances; and every requirement of climate, every caprice of fancy, can now be gratified at a reasonable rate. One of the best symptoms of taste amongst Englishwomen is the increasing use of the finer woollen fabrics. They are well suited to the climate, and they are calculated to make graceful habiliments in whatever manner they are employed. But cotton is an immense boon for the mass of the population; and, by contributing to the cleanliness of the lower orders, has been of great value to the health of the community. The fact is, that it is of little consequence what an elegant woman wears, as far as her appearance is concerned. All clothes require, as the French say, to be _bien portes_. An awkward woman will never look well in any thing, however fine. Let ladies consult their own comfort, their own purposes, and the material they hit upon will certainly become them. We have now, too, ample means of decoration: furs, and lace, and ribands, and embroidery, are gradually coming within the grasp of large classes of society; we have to fear rather a deluge of ornament than the opposite; and, if caution is to be used in any direction, it is in this. The true secret of female ornament is, that it should be genuine: no sham flowers; no make-believe lapels; no collars only stitched on to the edge of the gown; no bows that do not untie; no ribands without some positive use; all false ornament should be avoided as the direct contrary to what is tasteful and becoming. If lace is worn, let it be of thread or silk--not of cotton; if fur, let it be from the real animal--not dyed or imitated; if jewels, let them be few but good, and set in real gold--no abominable sham decoration.

And what are we to say about cloaks, and pelisses, and shawls, and the other preservers of gowns, that correspond to the outward comforters of man? They flutter about in shop windows, thick as gnats in a summer sunbeam: many of them are elegant; not a few useful; some are quite loves!--witness the polka-pelisse--others are frumpy and old-fashioned; such as the cloak with a deep cape of ever-to-be-respected maternal memory. But there are two which we single out as simple and unspoiled, and indeed unspoilable, items of dress, which ought to be in fashion as long as women love pretty things. One is the Spanish mantilla; that plain black scarf which forms the sweetest disguisement a woman can put on: by its simplicity, and its obvious utility, it claims our approbation at the first glance. The other is the Indian shawl; that marvellous product of the mountain loom, fit for any climate, for any temperature, for any complexion, and for any purpose; women may rack their inventions for ever, but they never will invent a garment more generally useful, more constantly becoming, than this.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

NO. IV.

DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.

Nothing is gained by attempting to deny or to disguise a known and plain fact, simply because it happens to be a distasteful one--Time has estranged us from Chaucer. Dryden and Pope we read with easy, unearned pleasure. Their speech, their manner of mind, and their facile verse, are of our age, almost of our own day. The two excellent, graceful, and masterly poets belong, both of them, to THIS NEW WORLD. Go back a little, step over an imperceptible line, to the contemporary of Dryden, Milton, and you seem to have overleaped some great chronological boundary; you have transported yourself into THAT OLD WORLD. Whether the historical date, or the gigantic soul, or the learned art, make the separation, the fact is clear, that the poet of the "Paradise Lost" stands decidedly further off; and, more or less, you must acquire the taste and intelligence of the poem. Why, up to this hour, probably, there are three-fifths of the poem that you have not read; or, if you have read all, and go along with all, you have yourself had experience of the progress, and have felt your capacity of Milton grow and dilate. So has it been with your capacity for Shakspeare, or you are a truant and an idler. To comprehend with delight Milton and Shakspeare as poets, you need, from the beginning, a soul otherwise touched, and gifted for poesy, than Pope claims of you, or Dryden. The great elder masters, being original, require of you springs of poesy welling in your own spirit; while the two latter, imitative artists of luxury, exact from you nothing more, in the way of poetical endowment, than the gusto of ease and luxurious enchantment. To prefer, for some intellectual journey, the smooth wafture of an air-gliding ear--to look with pleasure upon a dance of bright-hued images--to hear more sweetness in Philomela's descant than in a Turkish concert--to be ever so little sensible to the bliss of dreams--ever so little sick of reality, and ever so little glad to be rid of it for an hour--is qualification enough to make you a willing and able reader of verse in the latter school. But if you are to prefer the style of the antecessors, other conditions must come in. It is, then, not a question merely whether you see and love in Imogen the ideal of a wife in love with her husband, or take to the surpassing and inimitable portraiture of the "lost archangel" in Satan; but whether you feel the sweetness of Imogen's soul in the music of her expressions--whether you hear the tones of the Will that not the thunder has quelled, in that voice to which all "the hollow deep of hell resounded." If you do, assuredly you will perceive in yourself that these are discernments of a higher cast, and that place you upon a higher degree when critics on poetry come to be ranked, than when you had nothing better to say for yourself than that your bosom bled at the Elegy on an Unfortunate Young Lady, or that you varied with Alexander to the varying current of the Ode of St Cecilia's Day.

We call Chaucer the Father of our Poetry, or its Morning Star. The poetical memory of the country stretches up to him, and not beyond. The commanding impression which he has made upon the minds of his people dates from his own day. The old poets of England and Scotland constantly and unanimously acknowledge him for their master. Greatest names, Dunbar, Douglas, Spenser, Milton, carry on the tradition of his renown and his reign.

In part he belongs to, and in part he lifts himself out of, his age. The vernacular poetry of reviving Europe took a strong stamp from one principal feature in the manners of the times. The wonderful political institution of Chivalry--turned into a romance in the minds of those in whose persons the thing itself subsisted--raised up a fanciful adoration of women into a law of courtly life; or, at the least, of courtly verse, to which there was nothing answerable in the annals of the old world. For though the chief and most potent of human passions has never lacked its place at the side of war in the song that spoke of heroes--though two beautiful captives, and a runaway wife bestowed by the Goddess of Beauty, and herself the paragon of beauty to all tongues and ages, have grounded the _Iliad_--though the Scaean gate, from which Hector began to flee his inevitable foe, and where that goddess-born foe himself stooped to destiny, be also remembered for the last parting of a husband and a wife--though Circe and Calypso have hindered homebound Ulysses from the longing arms of Penelope--and Jason, leading the flower of a prior and yet more heroic generation, must first win the heart of Medea before he may attain the Golden Fleece--though the veritable nature of the human being have ever thus, through its strongest passion, imaged itself in its most exquisite mirror, Poetry--yet there did, in reawaking Europe, a new love-poetry arise, distinctively characterised by the omnipotence which it ascribed to the Love-god, legitimating in him an usurped supremacy, and exhibiting, in artificial and wilful excess, that passion which the older poets drew in its powerful but unexaggerated and natural proportions.

Thenceforwards the verse of the South and of the North, and alike the forgotten and the imperishable, all attest the predominancy of the same star. Diamond eyes and ruby lips stir into sound the lute of the Troubadours and the Minnesingers. Famous bearers of either name were knights distinguished in the lists and in the field. And who is it that stole from heaven the immortal fire of genius for Petrarch? Laura. Who is the guide of Dante through Paradise? Beatrice. In our own language, the spirit of love breathes, more than in any other poet, in Spenser. His great poem is one Lay of Love, embodying and associating that idealized, chivalrous, and romantic union of "fierce warres and faithful loves." It hovers above the earth in some region exempt from mortal footing--wars such as never were, loves such as never were--and all--Allegory! One ethereal extravagance! A motto may be taken from him to describe that ascendancy of the love-planet in the poetical sky of renewed Europe. It alludes to the love-freaks of the old Pagan deities upon earth, in which the King of the Gods excelled, as might be supposed, all the others.

"While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd, _The winged boy did thrust into his throne_; And scoffing thus, unto his mother sayde, '_Lo! now the heavens obey to me alone And take me for their Jove, now Jove to earth is gone_.'"

The pure truth of the poetical inspiration which rests upon Spenser's poems, when compared to the absolute departure from reality apparent in the manners of his heroes and heroines, and in the physical world which they inhabit, is a phenomenon which may well perplex the philosophical critic. You will hardly dare to refuse to any true poet the self-election of his materials. Grant, therefore, to Spenser knight-errantry--grant him dragons, and enchanters, and enchanted gardens, satyrs, and the goddess Night on her chariot--grant him love as the single purpose of human life--a faery power, leading with a faery band his faery world! But while you accept this Poem as the lawful consummation and ending of that fabulous intellectual system or dream which had subsisted with authority for centuries, it is wonderful to see how, in the very day of Spenser, the STAGE recovers humanity and nature to poetry--recalls poetry to nature and humanity! Shakspeare and Spenser, what contemporaries! The world that _is_, and the world that _is not_, twinned in time and in power!

This exaggeration of an immense natural power, Love--making, one might almost say, man's worship of woman the great religion of the universe, and which was the "amabilis insania" of the new poetry--long exercised an unlimited monarchy in the poetical mind of the reasonable Chaucer. See the longest and most desperate of his Translations--which Tyrwhitt supposes him to have completed, though we have only two fragments--seven thousand verses in place of twenty-two thousand--the "ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE," otherwise entitled the "Art of Love," "wherein are shewed the helps and furtherances, as also the lets and impediments, that lovers have in their suits." Then comes the work upon which Sir Philip Sydney seems to rest the right of Chaucer to the renown of an excellent poet having the insight of his art--the five long books which celebrate the type of all true lovers, Troilus, and of all false traitresses, Creseide. Then there is "The Legende of GOODE Women," the loving heroines, fabulous and historical, of Lempriere's dictionary. The first name is decisive upon the signification of "_goode_"--Cleopatras, Queene of Egypt--Tisbe of Babylon--Dido, Queene of Carthage--Hipsiphile and Medea, betrayed both by the same "root of false lovers, Duk Jason"--Lucrece of Rome--Ariadne of Athens--Philomen--Phillis--Hypermnestra.

The "Assemblee of Foules" is all for love and allegory. Chaucer has been reading Scipio's dream. Whereon he himself dreams that "Affrican" comes to him, and carries him away into a sort of Love's Paradise. There were trees with leaves "grene as emeraude," a garden full of "blossomed bowis," running waters in which small fishes light, with red fins and silver-bright scales, dart to and fro, flowers of all tinctures, all manner of live creatures, and a concert commingled of stringed instruments, of leaves murmuring to the wind, and of singing-birds. Under a tree, beside a spring, was "Cupide our Lord" forging and filing his arrows--his daughter (_who is she?_) assisting, and tempering them to various effects. A host of allegorical persons are in attendance of course; and there, too, stands a Temple of Venus, described from the Teseida of Boccaccio. But the principal personage whom Chaucer encounters, and the most busily engaged, is the great goddess, NATURE. It is St Valentine's Day, whereon all the birds choose their mates for the coming year. The particular business to which _this_ anniversary of the genial Saint is devoted was intelligible, no doubt, to the quick wits of Chaucer's age, if to the dull ones of ours a little perplexing. Nature held in her hand "a formell eagle, of shape the gentillest," benign, goodly, and so full of every virtue, that "Nature herself had blisse to looke on her, and oft her beeke to kisse." The question is, who shall be her mate? Three "tercell eagles" offer themselves, and eagerly plead their claims. The four orders of fowl, those "of ravine," those that feed on insects, the water-fowl, and those that eat seed, are by nature required to elect each a delegate that shall opine on the matter. The birds of prey depute "the tercelet of the faucon." He gives the somewhat startling if otherwise plausible advice, that the worthiest of knighthood, and that has the longest used it, and that is of the greatest estate, and of blood the gentlest, shall be preferred, leaving the decision of those merits to the lady eagle. The goose, on the behalf of the water-fowl, merely advises that he who is rejected shall console himself by choosing another love; which ignominious and anserine suggestion is received by the "gentill foules" with a general laugh. The "turtle-dove," for the seed-eating birds, indignantly protests against this outrageous and impracticable proposal. The cuckoo, for the worm-eaters, provided that he may have his own "make," is willing that the three wooers shall live each solitary and sullen. The "sperhawke," the "gentle tercelet," and the "ermelon," severally reply in high scorn to the goose, to the duck, who seconds the goose, and to the cuckoo. Dame Nature ends the plea by referring the choice to the "formell eagle" herself, who begs a year's respite, which is granted her. The rest, for the day is now well spent, choose their mates--an elect choir sing a roundel in honour of Nature; and at the "shouting" that, when the song was done, the fowls made in flying away, the Poet awoke! Amongst the hard points of this enigmatical love-allegory are, that when the first lover, a "royal tercell," has ended his plea, the "formell eagle" _blushes_! as does afterwards the turtle upon the proposal made of changing an old love for a new, and that the duck swears by his _hat_. Be the specific intent what it may, the general bearing speaks for itself, namely, the unmeasured lifting-up of Love's supremacy--though we cannot help feeling how much nearer Chaucer was to the riddling days of poetry than we are. Did the old Poet translate from plain English into the language of Birds, and expect us to re-translate? Or are these blushes and this knighthood amongst birds merely regular adjuncts in any fable that attributes to the inferior creation human powers of reason and speech? It is curious that the _rapacious_ fowls are presented as excelling in high and delicate sentiment! They are the aristocracy of the birds, plainly; yet an aristocracy described as of "ravine" seems to receive but an equivocal compliment.

The HOUSE OF FAME is in Three Books. The title bespeaks Allegory; and the machinery which justifies the allegory, as usual is a Dream. But the title does not bespeak, what is nevertheless true, that here, too, love steals in. During the entire First Book, the poet dreams himself to be in the temple of Venus, all graven over with AEneas's history, taken point by point from the Mantuan. The history belongs properly to its place; not because AEneas is the son of Venus, but because the course of events is conducted by Jupiter consonantly to the prayer of Venus. Why the House of Venus takes up a third part of the poem to be devoted to the House of Fame is less apparent. Is the poet crazed with love? and so driven against method to dream perforce of the divinity who rules over his destiny, as she did over her son's? Or does the _fame_ conferred by Virgil upon AEneas make it reasonable that the dream should proceed by the House of one goddess to that of the other? Having surveyed the whole, the poet goes out to look in what part of the world he is, when Jupiter's eagle seizes upon him, and carries him up to the city and palace of Fame, seated above the region of tempests, but apparently below the stars, and there sets him down. The Second Book is spent in their conversation during their flight. Some singular inventions occur. Every word spoken on earth, is carried up by natural reverberation to the House of Fame; but, there arrived, puts on the likeness of the wight, in his habit as he lives, that has uttered it. The palace itself stands upon a rock of ice, inscribed with names. Those on the southern face are nearly melted away by the heat of the sun; those on the northern stand sharp and clear. Some of the minstrels--Orpheus of old, and the later Breton Glaskirion, he hears playing yet. The great Epopeists are less agreeably occupied. 'Omer,' and aiding him, 'Dares,' 'Titus,' 'Lolius,' 'Guido' the Colempnis, that is, of Colonna, and English Galfrida, standing high upon a pillar of iron, 'are busie to bear up Troy' upon their shoulders. Virgil, upon a pillar 'of tinned iron clere,' supports 'the fame of pius AEneas.' Near, upon a pillar of iron, 'wrought full sternly,' the 'grete poete, Dan Lucan' bears upon his shoulders the 'fame of Julius and Pompee.' An innumerable company kneel before the goddess herself, beseeching her for renown. She deals out her favours capriciously--to one company of well-deservers, utter silence and oblivion--to another, like meritorious, loud slanders and infamy--to another assembly, with similar claims, golden, immortal praises. A fourth and a fifth company have done good for the pure sake of goodness, and request of her to hide their deeds and their name. To the one set she readily grants their asking. To the other not--but bids her trumpet "Eolus" ring out their works so that all the world may hear, which happens accordingly. Another throng have been sheer idlers on the earth, doers of neither good nor ill. They desire to pass for worthy, wise, good, rich, and in particular for having been favourably regarded by the brightest eyes. The whole of this undeserved reputation is instantaneously granted them. Another troop follow with like desert and with like request. Eolus takes up as bidden his "black clarioun," and blazons their dishonour. A troop of evil-doers ask for good fame. The goddess is not in the humour, and takes no notice of them. The last comers of all are delighters in wickedness for its own sake, and request their due ill fame. Amongst them is "that ilke shrewe that brente the temple of Isidis in Athenes." This is, no doubt, the gentleman who burned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus for that laudable purpose. The goddess is complaisant, and grants them exactly their desire.

There stands by the first, a second House of Fame of a strange sort. It is built cage-like of twigs, is sixty miles in length, whirls incessantly about, and is full of all imaginable noises--the rumours of all events, private and public, that happen upon earth, including murrains, tempests, and conflagrations. The eagle gets the dreamer in, and he notes the humours of the place. This is most remarkable, that as soon as any one of the innumerable persons, in press, there hears a tiding, he forthwith whispers it with an addition to another, and he, with a further eking, to a third, until in a little while it is known every where, and has attained immeasurable magnitude--as from a spark the fire is kindled that burns down a city. The tidings fly out at windows. A true and a false tiding jostled in their way out, and after some jangling for precedency, agreed to fly together. Since which time, no lie is without some truth, and no truth without some falsehood. An unknown person of great reverence and authority making his appearance, the poet, apparently disturbed with awe, awakes, wonders, and falls to writing his dream.

The criticism of so strange a composition is hardly to be attempted. It shows a bold and free spirit of invention, and some great and poetical conceiving. The wilful, now just, now perverse dispensing of fame, belongs to a mind that has meditated upon the human world. The poem is one of the smaller number, which seems hitherto to stand free from the suspicion of having been taken from other poets. For Chaucer helped himself to every thing worth using that came to hand.

The earlier writings of Chaucer have several marks that belong to the literature of the time.

First, an excessive and critical self-dedication of the writer to the service of LOVE, this power being for the most part arrayed as a sovereign divinity, now in the person of the classical goddess Venus, and now of her son, the god Cupid. Secondly, an ungovernable propensity to allegorical fiction. The scheme of innumerable poems is merely allegorical. In others, the allegorical vein breaks in from time to time. Thirdly, a Dream was a vehicle much in use for effecting the transit of the fancy from the real to the poetical world. Chaucer has many dreams. Fourthly, interminable delight in expatiating upon the simplest sights and sounds of the natural world. This overflows all Chaucer's earlier poems. In some, he largely describes the scene of adventure--in some, the desire of solace in field and wood leads him into the scene. Fifthly, a truly magnanimous indifference to the flight of time and to the cost of parchment, expressed in the dilatation of a slender matter through an infinite series of verses. You wonder at the facility of writing in the infancy of art. It seems to resemble the exuberant, untiring activity of children, prompted by a vital delight which overflows into the readiest utterance; and, in proportion to its display, achieving the less that is referable to any purpose of enduring use. Even the admired and elaborately-written _Troilus_ and _Creseide_ is a great specimen. The action is nearly null; the discoursing of the persons and of the poet endless. It is not, then, simply the facility of the eight-syllabled couplet, as in that interminable _Chaucer's Dreme_, that betrays; there is a dogged purpose of going on for ever.

Of the poems expressly of Love, are, "The Romaunt of the Rose--Troilus and Creseide--The Legende of Goode Women--The Assemblee of Foules--Of Queen Annelida and False Arcita--The Complaint of the Blacke Knight--The Complaint of Mars and Venus--Of the Cuckou and the Nightingale--The Court of Love--Chaucer's Dreme--The Flour and the Leaf--The First Book of the House of Fame"--and, if you choose, the "Boke of the Duchess," which is John of Gaunt's mourning for his lost wife. There must be something like thirty thousand verses, long, short, in couplets or stanzas, which may be said to be dedicated to LOVE!

And of them all, only the four following Poems tread the plain ground--have their footing upon the same earth that we walk--Troilus and Creseide, The Legende of Goode Women, Queen Annelida and False Arcita, the Complaint of the Blacke Knight. We grant them for human and real, notwithstanding that most of the persons are of a very romantic and apocryphal stamp--because they are not presented in dreams or visions, and are not allegorical creations of beings out of the air, Impersonations of Ideas. They are offered as men and women, downright flesh and blood, and so are to be understood. Nevertheless even here, when Chaucer is nearest home, taking his subject in his own day, and putting his own friend and patron in verse, there is a trick of the riddling faculty, since the Blacke Knight lodging, during the love-month of May, in the greenwood, and bemoaning all day long his hard love-hap, represents, it is presumed, old stout John of Gaunt in love, who might utter his passion, uncertain of requital,

"In groans that thunder love, in sighs of fire;"

but who, most assuredly, did not build himself a forest bower, and annually retire from court and castle, to spend there a lovesick May.

Of absolutely fanciful creations are, as we have seen, the "Assemblee of Foules," and the "Complaint of Mars and Venus," which the poet overhears a fowl singing on St Valentine's Day ere sunrise. "Of the Cuckou and Nightingale:" the poet, between _waking and sleeping_, hears the bird of hate and the bird of music dispute against and for love. When the nightingale takes leave of him, he wakes. "The Court of Love." The poet, at the age of eighteen, is summoned by Mercury to do his obeisance at the Court of Love, "a lite before the Mount of Citheree," called further on Citheron. He is, on this occasion, not asleep at all, but dreams away like any other poet, with his eyes open, in broad daylight.

In Chaucer thus we find every kind of possible allegory. There is the thoroughly _creative_ allegory, when thoughts are turned into beings, and impersonated abstract ideas appear as deities, and as attendants on deities. This is the unsubstantial allegory, which has, it must be owned, a different meaning to different climes and times. For example, to the belief of the old Greeks, Aphrodite and Eros, albeit essentially thoughts, had flesh that could be touched, wounded even, and veins, in which for blood ran ichor. In the verses of our old poet and his contemporaries, Venus and Cupid are as active as they were with Homer and Anacreon; only, that now their substance has imperceptibly grown attenuate. So that in the "Assemblee of Foules," for example, these two celestial potentates are upon an equal footing, for subsistency and reality, with the great goddess Dame Nature, who seems to be more of modern than of ancient invention, and with Plesaunce, Arrai, Beautee, Courtesie, Craft, Delite, Gentlenesse, and others enow, whom the poet found in attendance upon the Love-god and his mother. With or without belief, this belongs to all the ages of poetry, from the beginning to the consummation of the world.

Then there is the _disguising_ allegory--for by no other appellation can it be described--which may be of a substantial kind. For example, the Black Knight, as we have seen, forlorn in love, builds himself a lodge in the wild-wood, to which he resorts during the month of May, and mourns the livelong day under the green boughs. If the conjecture which Tyrwhitt throws out, but without much insisting upon it, that John of Gaunt, wooing his Duchess Blanche, is here figured, this is a _disguising_ allegory of the lowest ideal idealization. The conjecture of Tyrwhitt, whether exact or not, quite agrees to the art of poetical invention in that age.

That old and deeply-rooted species of fable, which ascribes to the inferior animals human mind and manners, was another prevalent allegory. Usually, the picture of humanity so conveyed is of a general nature. But if, as has been guessed, the first and noblest of the Three Tercels that woo the "formell eagle," in the Assemblee of Foules, be the same John of Gaunt wooing the same Blanche, here would be two varieties of allegory--the disguising of particular persons and events, and the veiling of human actions and passions, under the semblance of the inferior kinds--mixed in this part of the poem, which, in as much as it also introduces wholly ideal personages, would, if the key to the enigma has been truly found, very fully exemplify the allegorizing genius of the old poetry.

Certainly, many of the old poems, unless they are interpreted to allude, in this manner, to particular persons and occurrences, appear to want due meaning, such as this Complaint of the nameless Black Knight, this Wooing of the Three Tercels, and the faithless Hawk whom Canace hears. We may often feel ourselves justified in presuming an allusion, although in regard to the true import of the allusion it may be that Time has first locked the door, and then thrown the key over the wall.

Of one Poem, to which we have hitherto but alluded, we feel ourselves now called on to give an analysis, both for sake of its own exquisite beauty and surpassing loveliness, and for sake of Dryden's immortal paraphrase--THE FLOURE AND THE LEAF.

There is in the plan of "The Floure and the Leaf," a peculiarity which is not easily accounted for. In the other poems of Chaucer, which are thrown into the form of an adventure or occurrence personal to the relater, he relates in person his own experience. Here the parts of experiencing, and of relating an adventure, are both transferred to an unknown person of the other sex. It is also remarkable that this difference in the personality of the relater does not appear until the very close of the poem, and then incidentally, one of the imaginary persons addressing the relater as "Daughter." In the adventure, which is simply the witnessing a Vision, there is nothing that might not as well have happened to Chaucer himself as to dame or damsel.

In a sweet season of spring, a lady who, for some cause unknown to herself, cannot sleep, rises at the peep of day, and wanders out into a lofty and pleasant grove, where a slender unworn path, not easily seen, leads her to a fair arbour of elaborate workmanship, and so framed as that the sitter within sees, unseen, whatsoever passes without; adjoining which is a singularly beautiful medlar-tree in full blossom. A goldfinch leaps from bough to bough, eating buds and blossoms his fill, and then sings most 'passing sweetly,' and is answered by an unseen nightingale, in a note 'so merry' that all the wood rang again. Whilst the lady adventuress sits upon the turfed seat listening, a new burst, as if of angelical voices, is heard. The harmony proceeds from "a world of ladies," who march out from a neighbouring grove, clad in richly-jewelled surcoats of white velvet, each wearing on her head a chaplet of green leaves, laurel, or woodbine, or Agnus Castus. They dance and sing soberly, surrounding one who wears on her head a crown of gold, has a branch of Agnus Castus in her hand, excels them all in beauty, appears to be their queen, and sings a roundel having some allusion to the Green Leaf, and advance, dancing and singing, into a meadow fronting the arbour. The song is not given--its name is in half unintelligible French. Now a thundering of trumpets is heard: and innumerable "men of arms" issue from the grove from which the ladies came. Trumpets, kings-of-arms, heralds, and pursuivants clad in white, and wearing chaplets of leaves, ride foremost. Then follow Nine Knights magnificently armed, excepting that on their unhelmed heads are set crowns of laurel. Upon each three henchmen attend, clad in white, with green chaplets, and severally carrying the casque, the shield, and the lance of him they serve. Last, issue a great rout of knights, well-mounted, wearing chaplets, and bearing boughs of oak, laurel, hawthorn, woodbine, and other kinds. They joust gallantly for an hour or more: the laurel-wearers overbearing all opposition. At last, the whole company dismount, and move by two and two towards the ladies, who, at their approach, break off song and dance, and go to meet them. Every lady takes a knight by the hand, and in this fashion they pace towards a fair laurel, of such prodigious amplitude as that a hundred persons might rest at ease under the shadow of its diffused branches. All incline with obeisance to the tree; and then sing and dance around it; ever a lady and a knight going together. All these are, (but as is only afterwards at the close made known to the spectatress of these occurrences,) as you may easily surmise, the homagers of the Leaf. Now the homagers of the Flower enter upon the stage. From the depth of the wide champaign there come roaming in a great company, ladies and knights, and ever a knight and a lady hand in hand. They are all richly clad in green, and wear chaplets of flowers; green-robed minstrels, with instruments of all sorts, and wearing variegated chaplets of flowers precede. They dance up to a great tuft of flowers in the midst of the mead; about which they incline reverently, and one sings the praise of the "Margarete" or Daisy, the others answering in chorus; meanwhile the hour grows to noon; the sun waxes hot; the unsheltered flowers wither; the ladies and the knights of the Flower are scorched with his rays; then the wind rises, and furiously blows down all the flowers; then comes on a terrible storm of mixed hail and rain; wets the knights and ladies of the Flower to the skin, and at last blows over. But the white-habited servants of the Leaf have stood under their laurel, shaded from the fiery noon beams, and shrouded from the tempest; and now, moved with ruth and pity, come forwards to tender their aid. The Queen of the Leaf greets, with loving sisterly compassion, the Queen of the Flower. The party of the Leaf proceed to more effectual relief than soothing words--hewing down boughs and trees to make "stately fires" for drying their wet clothes, and searching the plain for virtuous herbs to make for the blistered and drouthy sufferers salves and salads. She of the Leaf now invites Her of the Flower to supper, who accepts as courteously. The Leaf company, at the bidding of their mistress, provide horses for the Flower company. At this juncture the Nightingale, who all day long, sitting hidden in the laurel, sang "the service longing to May," flies to the hand of the Leaf-queen, and sings on as diligently as before--the Goldfinch, whom the heat had forced from his blossom of "medle-tree" into the cool bushes, betakes himself in like manner to his Flower-queen's hand, and sings there; and fast by the arbour, where our spectatress has remained all the while seeing and unseen, ladies and knights ride along and away. Only one lady in white rides alone after the rest. To her she comes out, and enquires what the wandering show means. The answer, given with courteous explicitness, imports in sum that those who wear chaplets of Agnus Castus are virgins; the laurel wearers, knights who were never conquered; the Nine most distinguished knights being the Nine Worthies; with whom are the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne, and many "knightes olde" of the Garter. Those who wear woodbine

"Be such as never were To love untrewe in word, thoghte, ne dede."

They wear the Leaf, because the beauty of the Leaf lasts. But the followers of the Flower are "those that loved idlenesse and not delite of no besinesse, but for to hunte and hawke and pley in medes, and many other such idle dedes." They wear the perishable Flower accordingly. The informant ends with enquiring of her auditress, whether she will, for the years to come, serve the Leaf or the Flower; who in answer vows her observance to the Leaf. The deep implication of the ancient mythology in the reviving poetry, here again discovers itself. It appears the lady of the Leaf is the goddess Diana; the lady of the Flower, Flora in person.

The invention is remarkably well purposed, and well carried through. The division of the world into those who follow virtue and those who pursue their own delight, is a good general poetico-ethical view, and the delicate emblems happily chosen for expressing the contrast. The heat and the tempest which overwhelm the dainty voluptuaries, and are harmless to the deed-worthy, express the true wisdom of virtue, even for this world, which moves not at our will; and the gentle healing kindness of the wiser to the less wise, whom they equalize with themselves, might almost seem profoundly to signify the recovery to the better wisdom of those who had set out with choosing amiss--a gracious hidden Christian lesson of charity and penitence. The contact of the simply human spectatress with beings brought from the world of imagination, is boldly designed. Here is no Dream. She walks down from her own house into the wood, and the vision comes and goes, in all the strength of true flesh and blood. The solitariness of her stealing out from a sleepless bed, "about the springing of the day, long or the brighte sonne uprisen was"--therefore, whilst common mankind lie buried in sleep--is all the saving partition that the poet has deigned betwixt the coarse and harsh Real and the splendid Unreal. As for the poetical working-out--the descriptive narrative--it is elaborate and full of beauty. The natural scene is painted with exquisite sensibility to the influences of nature, and with such determinate strokes as show a conversant eye. For example, the mixed and illuminated spring-foliage, the

----"levis new That sprongin out _agen the sonne shene_: Some _very rede_, and some a _glad light_ grene,"

would seem fresh and vivid from the hand of Coleridge or Tennyson--and the

----"path of _litil brede_, ----that _gretly had not usid be_, For it _forgrowin was with gras and wede_,"

--which beguiles the foot of the vision-favoured away from the usual beat of men, leading her into the unvisited sequestration due to the haunting of an embodied Allegory--might, in its old simplicity, pass for well invented by whichsoever Priest of Imagination in our day can the best read, in the Sensible, the symbolized Spiritual and Invisible.

You wonder withal, if Chaucer was the poet, how the spectator was turned into a spectatress; and you are somewhat concerned at finding an unwilling word of the judicious Tyrwhitt's, which owns to a doubt on the authorship of the most beautiful minor poem, admitted into the volume of Chaucer.

Dryden felt the effusion of beauty, and has rendered and enhanced it. One may question the fitness of a material alteration which he has ventured upon. The allegory of the old Poem is pure. Dryden has changed the Knights and Ladies, collectively, into Fairies; for any thing that appears, indeed, of good human stature. The thought came to him apparently as making the beauty more beautiful, and possibly as obtaining, to an otherwise indefinite sort of imaginary beings, a known character and a recognized hold upon poetical--succeeding to popular--belief. A contradiction is--that the company of the Leaf have, in emphatic and chosen terms, been described as INNUMERABLE. The laurel is of such enormous diffusion, that A HUNDRED persons might repose under it. Yet IT SHELTERS THEM ALL FROM THE STORM.

It is also singular to us, that the Margarete or Daisy should suffer any slight from Chaucer, seeing the reverence with which he elsewhere regards it. It is here, too, no doubt raised into reverence by the observance of the Flower party; but then it suffers disparagement inasmuch as they are disparaged.

Truly does the amiable Godwin say--"In a word, the Poem of Dryden, regarded merely as the exhibition of a soothing and delicious luxuriance of fancy, may be classed with the most successful productions of human genius. No man can read it without astonishment, perhaps not without envy, at the cheerful, well-harmonized, and vigorous state of mind in which the author must have been at the time he wrote it."

"Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun His course exalted through the Ram had run And whirling up the skies, his chariot drove Through Taurus, and the lightsome realms of love, Where Venus from her orb descends in showers To glad the ground, and paint the fields with flowers; When first the tender blades of grass appear, And buds, that yet the blast of Eurus fear, Stand at the door of life, and doubt to clothe the year; Till gentle heat, and soft repeated rains, Make the green blood to dance within their veins: Then, at their call, embolden'd, out they come And swell the gems, and burst the narrow room; Broader and broader yet their blooms display, Salute the welcome sun, and entertain the day. Then from their breathing souls the sweets repair To scent the skies, and purge the unwholesome air. Joy spreads the heart, and with a general song, Spring issues out, and leads the jolly months along. "In that sweet season, as in bed I lay, And sought in sleep to pass the night away, I turn'd my weary side, but still in vain, Though full of youthful health, and void of pain. Cares I had none to keep me from my rest, For love had never enter'd in my breast; I wanted nothing fortune could supply, Nor did she slumber till that hour deny. I wonder'd then, but after found it true, Much joy had dried away the balmy dew: Seas would be pools, without the brushing air To curl the waves, and sure some little care Should weary nature so, to make her want repair. "When Chanticleer the second watch had sung, Scorning the scorner sleep, from bed I sprung; And dressing by the moon, in loose array, Pass'd out in open air, preventing day, And sought a goodly grove, as fancy led my way. Straight as a line in beauteous order stood Of oaks unshorn, a venerable wood; Fresh was the grass beneath, and every tree, At distance planted in a due degree, Their branching arms in air with equal space Stretch'd to their neighbours with a long embrace; And the new leaves on every bough were seen, Some ruddy-colour'd, some of lighter green. The painted birds, companions of the spring, Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing. Both eyes and ears received a like delight, Enchanting music, and a charming sight. On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire, And listen'd for the queen of all the quire; Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing, And wanted yet an omen to the spring. "Attending long in vain, I took the way, Which through a path, but scarcely printed, lay; In narrow mazes oft it seem'd to meet, And look'd as lightly press'd by fairy feet. Wand'ring I walk'd alone, for still methought To some strange end so strange a path was wrought; At last it led me where an arbour stood, The sacred receptacle of the wood; This place unmark'd, though oft I walk'd the green, In all my progress I had never seen; And seized at once with wonder and delight, Gazed all around me, new to the transporting sight. 'Twas bench'd with turf, and goodly to be seen, The thick young grass arose in fresher green: The mound was newly made, no sight could pass Betwixt the nice partitions of the grass; The well-united sods so closely lay, And all around the shades defended it from day; For sycamores with eglantine were spread, A hedge about the sides, a covering over head. And so the fragrant briar was wove between, The sycamore and flowers were mix'd with green, That nature seem'd to vary the delight, And satisfied at once the smell and sight. The master workman of the bower was known Through fairylands, and built for Oberon; Who twining leaves with such proportion drew, They rose by measure, and by rule they grew; No mortal tongue can half the beauty tell, For none but hands divine could work so well. Both roof and sides were like a parlour made, A soft recess, and a cool summer shade. The hedge was set so thick, no foreign eye The persons placed within it could espy; But all that pass'd without with ease was seen, As if nor fence nor tree was placed between. 'Twas border'd with a field; and some was plain With grass, and some was sow'd with rising grain, That (now the dew with spangles deck'd the ground) A sweeter spot of earth was never found. I look'd, and look'd, and still with new delight, Such joy my soul, such pleasures fill'd my sight; And the fresh eglantine exhaled a breath, Whose odours were of power to raise from death. Nor sullen discontent, nor anxious care, Even though brought thither, could inhabit there; But thence they fled as from their mortal foe; For this sweet place could only pleasure know. Thus as I mused, I cast aside my eye, And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh. The spreading branches made a goodly show, And full of opening blooms was every bough: A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side, Still pecking as she pass'd; and still she drew The sweets from every flower, and suck'd the dew. Sufficed at length, she warbled in her throat, And tuned her voice to many a merry note, But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear, Yet such as sooth'd my soul and pleased my ear. "Her short performance was no sooner tried, When she I sought, the nightingale, replied; So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung, That the grove echo'd and the valleys rung; And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note-- I stood entranced, and had no room for thought, But all o'erpower'd with ecstasy of bliss, Was in a pleasing dream of Paradise; At length I waked, and looking round the bower, Search'd every tree, and pry'd on every flower, If any where by chance I might espy The rural poet of the melody; For still methought she sung not far away: At last I found her on a laurel spray, Close by my side she sate, and fair in sight, Full in a line against her opposite; Where stood with eglantine the laurel twined, And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd. "On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long; (Sitting was more convenient for the song:) Nor till her lay was ended could I move, But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove. Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd, And every note I fear'd would be the last. My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ'd, And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd. And what alone did all the rest surpass, The sweet possession of the fairy place; Single, and conscious to myself alone, Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown; Pleasures which nowhere else were to be found, And all Elysium in a spot of ground."

The Lake poets--Heaven bless them!--have one and all--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey--loudly and angrily denied to Dryden a poetical eye for nature, quoting in proof some inflated passage or another from his rhyming plays. Pope, too, according to them, was blind, and had never seen the moon and stars. Where, we ask, in all the poetry of the Lakes and Tarns, is there such a strain--so rich and so sustained--as that yet ringing in your ears? And "the ancient woman seated on Helmcrag" answers--"where?" True, the imagery is all in Chaucer. But had not Dryden's heart 'rejoiced in nature's joy,' not thus could he have caught the spirit of his master. Ay--the spirit; for there it is, in spite of the difference of manner--transfused without evaporation or other loss, from the 'rhime roial' in which Chaucer rejoiced, into the couplet in which Dryden, in his old age, moved like a giant refreshed with gulps of the dewy morn. Again:--

"The ladies left their measures at the sight, To meet the chiefs returning from the fight, And each with open arms embraced her chosen knight. Amid the plain a spreading laurel stood, The grace and ornament of all the wood; That pleasing shade they sought, a soft retreat From sudden April showers, a shelter from the heat. Her leafy arms with such extent were spread, So near the clouds was her aspiring head, That hosts of birds, that wing the liquid air, Perch'd in the boughs, had nightly lodging there: And flocks of sheep beneath the shade from far Might hear the rattling hail, and wintry war; From heaven's inclemency here found retreat, Enjoy'd the cool, and shunn'd the scorching heat; A hundred knights might there at ease abide, And every knight a lady by his side: The trunk itself such odours did bequeath That a Moluccan breeze to these was common breath. The lords and ladies here, approaching, paid Their homage, with a low obeisance made, And seem'd to venerate the sacred shade. These rites perform'd, their pleasures they pursue, With songs of love, and mix with measures new: Around the holy tree their dance they frame, And ev'ry champion leads his chosen dame. "I cast my sight upon the farther field, And a fresh object of delight beheld. For from the region of the west I heard New music sound, and a new troop apppear'd, Of knights and ladies mix'd, a jolly band, But all on foot they march'd, and hand in hand "The ladies dressed in rich symars were seen, Of Florence satin, flower'd with white and green, And for a shade betwixt the bloomy gridelin. The borders of their petticoats below Were guarded thick with rubies in a row; And every damsel wore upon her head Of flowers a garland blended white and red. Attired in mantles all the knights were seen, That gratified the view with cheerful green: Their chaplets of their ladies' colours were, Composed of white and red, to shade their shining hair. Before the merry troop the minstrels play'd, All in their masters' liveries were array'd, And clad in green, and on their temples wore The chaplets white and red their ladies bore. Their instruments were various in their kind, Some for the boy, and some for breathing wind; The sawtry, pipe, and hautboy's noisy band, And the soft lute trembling beneath the touching hand. A tuft of daisies on a flowery lea They saw, and thitherward they bent their way; To this both knights and dames their homage made, And due obeisance to the daisy paid. And then the band of flutes began to play, To which a lady sang a virelay; And still at every close she would repeat The burden of the song, _The daisy is so sweet_. _The daisy is so sweet_, when she begun The troop of knights and dames continued on. The concert and the voice so charm'd my ear, And sooth'd my soul, that it was heaven to hear."

O bardlings of Young England! withhold, we beseech you, from winsome _Maga_, your verse-offerings, while thus the sons of song, evoked from the visionary land, coming and going like shadows, smile to let drop at her feet the scrolls of their inspiration. Poetry indeed! "You lisp in numbers, for the numbers come." But in big boobies a lisp is only less loathsome than a burr. Some of you have both, and therefore deserve to die. Readers beloved! prefer you not such sweet, strong strains as these sounded by Dryden, when he had nearly counted threescore and ten? "Yet was not his natural force abated"--while his sense of beauty, instructed and refined by meditations that deepen amongst life's evening shades, became holier within sight of the grave. You will thank us for another quotation; for much do we fear, O lady fair! that thou hast no copy of Dryden in thy _boudoir_, and yet life is fast flowing on with thee, for thou art--nay, there's no denying--yea, thou art--in thy twentieth year--and _if you continue to refuse our advice_--will soon be an old woman.

"The Lady of the Leaf ordain'd a feast, And made the Lady of the Flower her guest: When lo! a bower ascended on the plain, With sudden seats adorn'd, and large for either train. This bower was near my pleasant arbour placed, That I could hear and see whatever pass'd: The ladies sat with each a knight between, Distinguish'd by their colours, white and green; The vanquish'd party with the victors join'd, Nor wanted sweet discourse, the banquet of the mind. Meantime the minstrels play'd on either side, Vain of their art, and for the mastery vied. The sweet contention lasted for an hour, And reach'd my secret arbour from the bower. The sun was set; and Vesper, to supply His absent beams, had lighted up the sky: When Philomel, officious all the day To sing the service of th' ensuing May, Fled from her laurel shade, and wing'd her flight Directly to the queen array'd in white; And hopping, sat familiar on her hand, A new musician, and increased the band. "The goldfinch, who, to shun the scalding heat, Had changed the medlar for a safer seat, And hid in bushes 'scaped the bitter shower, Now perch'd upon the Lady of the Flower; And either songster holding out their throats, And folding up their wings, renew'd their notes; As if all day, preluding to the fight, They only had rehearsed, to sing by night. The banquet ended, and the battle done, They danced by starlight and the friendly moon: And when they were to part, the laureat queen Supplied with steeds the lady of the green, Her and her train conducting on the way, The moon to follow, and avoid the day."

Whatsoever merit of thought or of poetry may be found in the poems of which we have spoken, the world has rightly considered the CANTERBURY TALES as the work by which Chaucer is to be judged. In truth, common renown forgets all the rest; and it is by the Canterbury Tales only that he can properly be said to be known to his countrymen. Here it is that he appears as possessing the versatility of poetical power which ranges from the sublime, through the romantic and the pathetic, to the rudest mirth--choosing subjects the most various, and treating all alike adequately. Here he discovers himself as the shrewd and curious observer, and close painter of manners. Here he writes as one surveying the world of man with enlarged and philosophical intuition, weighing good and evil in even scale. Here, more than in any other, he is master of his matter, disposing it at his discretion, and not carried away with or mastered by it. Here he is master, too, of his English, thriftily culling the fit word, not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has acquired his own art and his own style of versification, which is here to be studied accordingly. Well therefore, and wisely, did Tyrwhitt judge, when undertaking to rescue the "mirrour of Rethoures alle" from the dust and rust of injurious time, he laid out his long and hard, but not uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone.

Every soul alive knows something of them--but not very many more than Stothard, in his celebrated Picture, has informed their eye withal. Their plan ranks them among works which are numerous, early and late, but which rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found, but they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative, the container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance, which gave to a number of slighter compositions, collectively taken, the importance of a greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which, in a world where the tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill, afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from dropping entirely away into oblivion.

To Chaucer, the scheme serves a higher purpose of art, which of itself allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend, as if in one picture, a more diversified and complete representation of humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders, who have been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of spring, have casually fallen into company, and who pace along, breathing an air which "sweet showers" have embalmed--exhilarated by the brightening radiance of "the young sun," and made loquacious by the very power which pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the long wayside.

And who are the riders? And what is the charm that has drawn together a company of thirty to ride on the same road at the same hour of the same day? The suddenly-spun band of a union that will be as hastily dissolved, squares happily with the large purpose of the poet, by unforcedly bringing together persons of both sexes, and of exceedingly diverse conditions, high, low, learned, unlearned, military, civil, religious, from city and from country, land and sea, of unlike occupations, buoyant with youth, grave with years. The momentary tie has poetical vitality, from the fact that it is borrowed from the heart of the time and of England. They are Pilgrims from all quarters to the shrine of England's illustrious and favourite Saint, the martyr of Canterbury. They have gradually mustered into cavalcade in coming up from the shires to the metropolis, one excepted--the Poet. He falls into their party, by the hap of sleeping the night preceding the journey out from the capital at the same inn, in the suburb towards Canterbury--Southwark.

The specific incitement of the Tale-telling is thus invented in a natural spirit, and aptly to the vivacity of the whole conception. Mine host of the Tabard, Henry Bailey, a hearty fellow no doubt, since Chaucer has thought his name worthy of his immortalizing, contrives the proceeding, and this half in good fellowship, and half in the way of his trade. To shorten the tediousness of the road, he proposes that each of them shall tell, on the way to Canterbury, one tale, and on the way back, another--or, for here the poem a little disagrees with itself, two tales going and two returning; and that he or she who tells the best tale shall have, on their return, a supper, for which all the others shall pay, and which of course, he, Henry Bailey, shall provide. Upon these terms he will, without fee, perform the part of their conductor to Canterbury and back again. In assenting, the Pilgrims constitute him the judge of the tales; and thus mine host, with his joyous temper, courtesy, where courtesy needs, worldly sense, rough, sharp, and ready wit, and unappealable dictatorship in all matters of the commonwealth, becomes a dramatic person of the very first consequence, the animating soul of the poetical action; and who, continually stepping in between the finishing of one tale and the beginning of the next, organically links together the otherwise disunited and incomposite Series.

The General Prologue contains, as was unavoidable, besides the scheme of the poem, the description of the several Pilgrims, and constitutes in itself, by the versatile feeling with which the portraits are seized, by the strength, precision, peculiarity, liveliness, rapidity, and number of the strokes with which each is individualized--a masterpiece of poetical painting. One lost generation of Old England moves before us in the warmth and hues of life.

The Knight, his son the Squire, his servant the good Yeoman--a gallant three--the Clerke of Oxenford, the "poure Person of a toun," and his brother the Ploughman, are, each in his estate, of thorough worthiness, and are all, accordingly, drawn in a spirit of full affection. The Prioress and the Franklin are laughed at a little--she for the pains she gives herself to display her _imitative_ high breeding, and for--only think it!--A.D. 1489--her SENTIMENTALITY!--he for his love of a plenteously-spread board, and for his "poignant sauces!" But the two are good at heart; and the satire of the poet leaves to them undisturbed their place in your good esteem. His other men of some condition--the Monk, the Friar, the "Sergeant of the Lawe," the Merchant, the "Doctour of Physike"--he lashes with a more vigorous wrist. But not like a farce-monger, who, to gain your laugh, must utterly abase his characters, and make them merely ridiculous. The hunting Monk wants nothing but his hood off to be a distinguished country squire. He is "_a manly man_ to be an abbot able!" and, if he keeps greyhounds, they are "as swift as fowl of flight." And look but at his horse's points and condition! The rascal of a "Frere," if, by his perseverance and persuasiveness in begging, he impoverishes the county, is a noble post of his order, and well beloved and familiar with franklins, and with worthy women. The Merchant has an assumed air of importance--magnifies his gains--thinks the protection of the sea betwixt the ports from which his vessels run the first duty of civilized governments--and keeps his wit set upon the main chance. But that is the worst of him--"For sothe he was _a worthy man_ withalle." The Lawyer is at the top of his profession--wise, witty, perfect in statutes and in precedents, high in honours. What are his faults? You can hardly tell. There is a slight ostentation of wisdom. He has got a deal of money together--he is full of business--but he "_seems_ yet busier than he is." The Doctor, too, is an excellent physician. He calls the stars in to his aid. But that may be Chaucer's belief, not his mirth. He knows the disease, and has the remedy at command. To be sure, he and his apothecaries understand one another. He is learned in a thousand books; but not in THE BOOK. Gold is of high esteem in medicine as a cordial. Therefore he loves gold.

Why go on? Like Shakspeare, Chaucer portrays men in a spirit of humanity. He paints his fellows; and, if he is amused with our follies, he prefers showing the fairer side of our nature. Even the merry, warm-blooded Wife of Bath, with her five wedded husbands, earns some goodwill of us by her joyous and invincible spirit. Imagine the daring, the vigour, and the stirring wit of the west-country cloth-manufacturess, who cannot rest easy till she has been three times in pilgrimage to Jerusalem!

There is a visible purpose of keeping up the RESPECTABILITY of the company. If the MILLER, the COKE, the REVE, and the SOMPNOUR, stand on a somewhat low step of the social stair--the HABERDASHER, the CARPENTER, the WEBBE (Weaver)--the DYER and the TAPISER--who are lumped in the poet's description--

"Were al yclothed in ye liveree, _Of a solempne and gret fraternitee_.

* * * *

_Wel semed ech of hem a fayr burgeis_, _To sitten in a gild halle_, ON THE DEIS."

They are of wisdom qualifying them to stand for Aldermen of their wards. Their wives are 'ycleped Madame'--take precedency in going to vigils--and have

----"A mantel reallich (_i.e._ royally) yborne."

Even our honest friend the Southwark innkeeper, Henry Bailey, has an air of dignity thrown over him. He was

"A semely man-- For to have ben _a marshal in an halle_. _A large man_ he was, with eyen stepe,[30] _A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe_. Bold of his speche, and wise and _wel ytaught_, And of manhood him lacked righte nought."

Moreover, even that chief of poetical Taverns, the TABARD, is designated as

"This _gentil_ hostelrie."

No wonder! since

"The _chambres and the stables weren wide_, And _wel we weren esed_ ATTE BESTE."

The Tales are, in some respect, like an extension of the Prologue. They carry out the characters, or the spirit of the characters, there drawn. Thus, if the chivalry of the time is impersonated, in respect of its valour, honour, and courteous demeanour, in the Knight, in his Tale it mounts into poetical aspiration, and shines out in regal splendour. The contrast, due to the different years of the father and the son, is in part disappointed by the cross destiny which has

----"left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold."

The youthful fancy, dipped or drenched in romance, of the twenty-year old Squire, shows itself, indeed, in the two sections which we have of his chivalrous narrative. The Sword, which, with its edge, hews through all armour, and with its "plat" heals the else incurable wounds of its own inflicting--the Mirror, which discloses the plotting of the kingdom's enemies, the truth or disloyalty of a distant lover--the Ring, which enables its wearer to understand the "leden" of all birds, and to answer them in the same--and the marvellous Horse of Brass, which, with turning of a pin, and with a whisper in the ear, carries his rider whither he would through the air, vanishes and comes with a wish, and, farthermore, behaves and comports himself wholly after the best fashion of a horse;--these four gifts from the King of Arabie and Inde to the Tartar king and his daughter, transport us, as with a flight of the magical courser himself, into the deep, wild, and mystical heart of that region, unplaced by geographers, explored by the host of dreamers, Romance. So, the love-story of the forsaken Bird, with whom the Ring brings the Princess acquainted, is Eastern, is amorous, is high-fantastical, fit for the 'lover and lusty bacheler,' who

----"Coude songes make, and well indite, Juste and eke dance"--

and stands off in complete distinction from the love-debate, with argumentation and with arms, of Palamon and Arcite. What is it, then, that we would have more? Truly, we fear, that for once we are half unreasonable. The Tale, with beginning, middle, and end, to satisfy the heart of Aristotle, in the Knight's mouth--and the finely-begun fragment in the Squire's--are, by their temper, allied and opposed, quite up to the dramatic propriety of the two speakers. What would we have more? Simply this, that Chaucer, by carrying to an end the unfinished fiction in the tone in which he has begun it, should have demonstrated himself the master of his art, which, by his project, he seems to be. The Knight's is a love-tale, as well; but there is, in the love-story, an involving of political interests, which, together with the known historical names, or such as are so reputed, tempers the romantic, confers a gravity, and mixes in a tone of the world's business that suits the sedate reason, and the various observation of the veteran warrior, tried in high services. It would have been a pleasant feat of poetical understanding and skill, especially for that unpractised day, if a second equally gallant recital of love and war--long and complex it would, by the intimations thrown out, have been--could have been pursued throughout its natural evolutions and vicissitudes, as resolutely as thus far it is, upon its own meet self-sustained wing. It would have been! Oh, vex not the shade of the true Maker with saucy doubts and fears! "Call up Him!" Yes--were there evocations of such potency; but "call Him" in the simplicity of your soul, because he has moved in you the lawful desire of hearing--because you long, insatiably, to know what was done, found, suffered, enjoyed, by Cambalo, Algarsif, Canace: which none other segger, disour, maker, harper and carper, that shall ever arise shall have wit to tell you--not because you would fain sit in the chair of criticism, awarding or withholding the palm of dramatic skill, claimed by Dan Geffrey. Ay! "call up Him!" But call up no substitute for Him.

The Sergeant of Laws' Tale, and the Clerke of Oxenford's, have an affinity. Each describes a tried wife, an exemplar for all her sex, two perfectly pure-souled women. And nothing is more honourable to Chaucer than the love with which he has dwelt upon the story of both. Both suffer to extremity; but Custance, the Sergeant's heroine, under the hand of Providence, who proves her with strange calamities, and when she has well-endured the ordeal, restores her to deserved happiness. For the loving wife, whom the Clerke of Oxenford praises, a loving husband is pleased to devise a course of sharp assaying, which might have been conveniently spared. The manner of telling in the two stories is marked with a difference. In both it is somewhat of the copious kind; and it may be observed, generally, that the style of the narrative, in the seven-lined stanza, or "rime roiall," is more diffuse than in the couplets. There is a difference between the two which appears to belong to the characters of the speakers. The Man of Law has not a few passages of exclamatory and apostrophical moral and sentimental rhetoric. They compel you to recollect his portrait--

"Discret he was, and of gret reverence He _seemed_ swiche, his _wordes were so wise_."

The Clerk has nothing of the kind. The largeness in his manner of relating, is rather an explicit and lucid fulness in representing an interesting subject, than what is properly called diffuseness. Chaucer has said of him--

"Not a word spake he more than was nede;"

and you will see accordingly, that although he _details_ his narrative, every word, in its place, is pertinent and serviceable. He ends with a freak, which carries him, you are disposed to think, out of his character. He has related, after Petrarch, the story of patient Griseldis, with beautiful earnestness and simplicity. He has conducted her through all the trials which the high-born lord thought good to lay upon the low-born wife, has displayed and rewarded her inimitable "wifly pacience," and then confesses, that not being imitable, neither is it intended that it should be imitated. In short, he "stints of ernestful matere;" and to "gladen" his audience, ends with "saying them a song," in six quaintly-rhymed stanzas, in which he counsels the wives to stand upon the defensive against their husbands, and take all natural care of themselves--

"Be ay of chere as light as lefe on linde, And let _him_ care, and wepe, and wringe, and wail."

The ironical counsel does not belie the moral of the story; but it comes unexpectedly from him whom the Hoste has called upon for his tale, with remarking, that he "rides as still and coy as a maid newly espoused sits at her bord."

The Franklin has at home a graceless cub and heir of his own. If good living were one and the same thing with holy living, this should the less easily have happened. The Franklin is wonderfully captivated with our young Squire's breeding, grace, and eloquence. The contrast brings his own "burdane" painfully into his mind, and wrings from him a mortified exclamation. The old man, with his sanguine complexion, and his beard

"White as is the dayesie,"

has--notwithstanding the sharp censorship which he exercises over his cook--a heart in his bosom. The pleasure with which he has heard the Squire, vouches as much; and more decisively so does the story, which he himself tells from the old Breton lays; another story of a virtuous wife, strangely tried, of all the three the most strangely. Her husband, a knight, is on a voyage, and she takes a horror of the perilous rocks that edge their own shore. Meanwhile, a youthful squire pursues her with love. One day, in a mockery, she promises to grant him his suit if he will remove all the rocks in a morning. After some perplexity of thought he resorts to an able magician at Orleans; who, for the consideration of a thousand pounds, undertakes, and accomplished the feat. Who is now hard bestead, but the lady? She, in her strait, consults her husband, who has returned; and the honourable husband says--you must keep your word. The squire comes for his guerdon. "My husband says that I must keep my word." "Indeed!--and shall a squire not know how to do a 'gentil dede,' as well as a knight? I release you your promise."--He carries L500--all of the agreed sum that he can muster to the conjurer, and prays of him time for the rest. "Have I performed my undertaking?" "Yes!"--"And the lady hers?"--The squire is obliged to relate the sequence of events.--"And is a clerk," exclaims the master, "less able to do a gentil dede, than squire and knight? Keep thy money, Sir Squire!"

That is a creditable tale for a country gentleman--

"Whose table dormant in the halle alway Stood redy covered alle the longe day."

There is much feeling in the detail of the story, and the magical shows, by which the enchanter, before striking his bargain, demonstrates his competency, and by which he afterwards executes his engagement, are dressed out with vivid imagination.

But now it is really high time that you should hear Dryden on Chaucer. For is not this Number IV. of our Specimens of the British Critics?

"With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not unlike: both of them were well bred, well natured, amorous, and libertine, at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives. Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman Feasts_, and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_, are sufficient witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors--Boccace his 'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and Arcite_ was written, in all probability, by some Italian wit, in a former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from whom it came to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures. I find I have anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before I come to him; but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper of most kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something of his own, as _The Wife of Bath's Tale_, _The Cock and the Fox_, which I have translated, and some others, I may justly give our countryman the precedence in that part; since I can remember nothing of Ovid which was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners; under which name I comprehend the passions, and in a larger sense the descriptions of persons, and their very habits. For an example, I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_, their humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. Yet even there, too, the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better light; which, though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts and words remain to be considered in the comparison of the two poets, and I have saved myself one-half of that labour by owning that Ovid lived when the Roman tongue was in its meridian; Chaucer, in the dawning of our language; therefore, that part of the comparison stands not on an equal foot, any more than the diction of Ennius and Ovid, or of Chaucer and our present English. The words are given up, as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the modern art of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they flow more or less naturally from the persons described on such and such occasions. The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see Ovid full of them, and Chaucer altogether without them, will think me little less than mad, for preferring the Englishman to the Roman. Yet, with their leave, I must presume to say, that the things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are unnatural. Would any man who is ready to die for love, describe his passions like Narcissus; would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_, and a dozen more of such expressions, poured on the neck of one another, and signifying all the same thing? This is just John Littlewit, in 'Bartholomew Fair,' who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions, the poet should endeavour to raise pity; but, instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh. Virgil never made use of such machines when he was moving you to commiserate the death of Dido; he would not destroy what he was building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had altered his character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this occasion? He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his deathbed;--he had complained he was farther off from possession by being so near, and a thousand such boyisms, which Chaucer rejected as below the dignity of the subject. They who think otherwise, would by the same reason prefer Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and Martial to all four of them. As for the turn of words, in which Ovid particularly excels all poets, they are sometimes a fault, and sometimes a beauty, as they are used properly or improperly; but in strong passions always to be shunned, because passions are serious, and will admit no playing. The French have a high value for them; and I confess they are often what they call delicate, when they are introduced with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more simplicity, and followed nature more closely, than to use them. I have thus far, to the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt the parties in competition, not meddling with the design nor the disposition of it; because the design was not their own; and in the disposing of it they were equal. It remains that I say something of Chaucer in particular.

"In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way, but swept like a drag-net great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded, not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, 'Not being of God, he could not stand.'

"Chaucer followed nature every where, but was never so bold to go beyond her; and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and _nimis poeta_, if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and affectation. * * *

"He must have been a man of most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and humours (as we may now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks, and friars, and canons, and lady-abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though every thing is altered. May I have leave to do myself the justice, (since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man,) may I have leave, I say, to inform my reader, that I have confined my choice to such tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will no more offend against good manners. I am sensible, as I ought to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make what reparation I am able, by this public acknowledgment. If any thing of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far from defending it, that I disown it, _totum hoc indictum volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them."

An English reader is likely to have held his way through the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden, ere arriving at the knight's Tale of Chaucer. It will not easily happen that he overleaps that Version, so full of the fire and vigorous grace which he delights in, and couched in the very choicest of that English on which his ears habitually feed, to introduce himself all at once to the antique and to him obsolete Original. The pure impression, therefore, with which he would read the Tale in its proper place, if he there first got acquainted with it, is hardly to be obtained. No matter! Forget Dryden, and plunge yourself into Chaucer.

Be surprised, if you can, as you surely will be amused, at encountering the inextricable commixture of manners, usages, tones, thinkings, and speakings, which time and space have done their best at keeping asunder--the chivalry of modern Europe, and of the middle ages, transplanted into the heroic age of old Greece, and to the Court of Theseus, "Duk of Athenes." Be surprised and amused, but do not therefore lay the book out of your hand, or laugh the old master to scorn, or do him other than reverent and honourable justice. Take rather the story to pieces, convince yourself step by step how strangely at every turn the old world and the new, the Christian and the Heathen, are confounded together, and feel at every step how the vitality which the good poet has infused into his work, reconciles and atones discordancies and discrepancies; and in spite of the perplexing physiognomy, how that must needs be one body which is informed and actuated, through all its joints and members, by one spirit.

Take in pieces the story--untwist the intertwined classical and romantic threads. Make sure of the fault, and then hasten to forgive it. The fault! Are you quite sure that it is one? Recollect that it is not Chaucer who relates the Knight's Tale. Chaucer is here a dramatic poet, and his Knight relates his own tale. What!--Shall he, who has "full often time the bord begun,"--

"Aboven alle natiouns in Pruce;"

who has "reysed in Lettowe, and in Ruce," has been--

"In Gernade at the siege Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie;"

who was--

"At Leyes and at Satalie, When they were wonne; and in the Grete See, At many a noble armee;"--

he who has been at--

"Mortal battailes fiftene, And foughten for our faith at Tramisene, In listes thries, and ay slain his fo"--

shall he, upon the qualm of a queasy criticism, not be allowed to transfer something of the

"Chevalrie, Truth and honor, fredom and courtesie,"

which, "from the time that he first began to riden out," he has loved--across a gap of a few hundred leagues and years? To what end else, it may be asked, has he approved himself, "full worthy in his lordes werre," and "ridden thereto no man ferre,"--

"As well in Christendom as in Hethenesse, And ever honor'd for his worthinesse?"

Why, the Knight would have been no knight at all if he had been Richard Bentley or John Milton, and not, as there is every reason to hope he was, _le noble et vaillant Chivaler_ MATHEU DE GOURNEY, whose marble tells us that he had fought at Benamaryn and Algezire, and been at abundance of battles and sieges, named and unnamed, in Christendom and Heathenesse--"_en les quex il gaigna noblement graunt los et honour_"--and who "died in 1406 at the age of 96." It is therefore Sir Matheu de Gourney who speaks, like a knight, of knighthood--and let him speak--

"Who never yet no vilainie ne sayde, In all his life unto no manere wight."--

Let him speak, justifying his eulogist, and showing us, as well as may be by his words, what his deeds showed the world, that--

"He was a veray parfit gentil knight!"

The first transaction that is related with some full process, is the chivalrous enterprise of Theseus against Creon; King of Thebes. This dispiteous and abominable tyrant prohibits the bodies of the warriors fallen in the celebrated siege of that city from burial. The widows of the slain princes and nobles move Theseus for vengeance and redress, which he instantly undertakes, and forthwith executes. And now mark the admixture of times and manners. In the first place, the heinousness of the crime, and even the imagination of such an impiety, are purely antique, as, in truth, the fact itself is on classical record in the "Antigone" of Sophocles. Again, the suppliant, bereaved, and woebegone wives have awaited Theseus's coming "in the temple of the goddess Clemency," than which nothing can be more classical; and the manner in which, at his return home from his victorious war upon the "Amasones," the sorrowful company receive him, kneeling by two and two clothed in black, along the highway, might persuade you that Sir Matheu had read the OEdipus Tyrannus, and successfully imitated OEdipus's dolorous and picturesque reception in the streets of Thebes, by the kneeling, plague-smitten population of the city.

On the other hand, the claim of redress at the hand of the warrior carries your imagination to the interesting volumes of St Palaye; and clearly refers to the obligation by which the knight, at his investiture, bound himself to redress all wrongs, especially those of the ladies. And Theseus is nothing slack in acknowledging the obligation. He dismounts, takes them each and all up in his arms,

"And swore his oth, _as he was trewe knight_,"

that he will do his endeavour that the world shall applaud the chastising of the "false king."--Again, when the one day's demolishing fight has given Creon to death, and his Land into Theseus's hand, and the two right Heroes of the Tale, the Theban cousins, Palamon and Arcite, are dragged out, half-alive and half-dead, from the heap of the slain, the "herauds" know them, by the "cote-armoure," to be of the blood-royal. Of course, they are designated "knights."--Again: Theseus will take no ransom for them. That is perhaps, indifferently, ancient or modern; but it sounds to our ears rather modern, that he shuts them up in a high tower, which overlooks the Garden of his Palace.

But now we plunge into the bosom of our own Heroic times. To do observance to the May is a rite that we find continually occurring in the poetry of the middle ages. It is on May morning that Emelie, going into the garden to gather flowers, and wreathe for herself a coronal, is first seen by the two captive Theban kinsmen. Again, when Arcite, liberated by the intervention of Pirithous, has returned, and is living unrecognized in the service of Theseus, it is precisely upon the same occasion of going into the wood to gather "grenes" for May morning, that he falls in with Palamon, who has the night before broken prison, and hides himself during the day in the forest--which encounter leads to their set encounter in arms the next day, and so to the interruption of their duel by Theseus himself, and so to all the consequent course of events. Whatever the true rites of returning May may have been, in classical antiquity, the observance comes into this tale from the manners of mediaeval Europe, not of ancient Greece.

With what glad and light ritual, the Athenians, in the first years after the war of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, did homage to their king and queen of the May, we do not remember to have seen distinctly described. At this day the young folk of old Hellas parade the streets, shouting the classical [Greek: chelidonisma], or song of the swallow, on the 1st of March. The Romans held their Floralia from the 28th of April to the 1st of May, danced and sang, and had games, and crowned themselves with garlands and with flowers. Nevertheless, you instinctively feel that the singularly graceful picture of Emelie, called up from slumber by the dawning May morning, and proceeding to pluck in the royal garden the dew-fresh and bright materials of her own coronal, owes nothing to the lore of books, but is breathingly imaged from some gracious original of our own good fourteenth century. You remain assured, that the trustworthy poet records his own proper love-experience in adjusting the occasion that is to vivify with a new passion the dolorous prison of the two Thebans, and turn the sworn brothers-in-arms into rivals at deadly feud with each other. That rougher age of the world--rude the day was not that produced and cherished Chaucer--had this virtue, that the grown-up men and women were still, by a part of their heart, children. The welcoming-in of the May is described by the old poets in different countries of Europe as a passion--seizing upon young and old, high and low. All were for the hour children--children of nature. When, therefore, that love at first sight, which immediately becomes a destiny to the two kinsmen, governing their whole after-life, is in this manner attached by our poet to the visit made upon this occasion by Emelie to the garden which their tower overlooks, the reader is entitled to understand that the poet does for him the very best thing any poet can do, that he infuses into his poetical dream his own pulsating life-blood.

The immense joy and universal jubilee of nature, called out by the annual renewing of warmth, light, life, and beauty, and the share and the sympathy of man in the diffusive and exuberant benediction, fix themselves and take form in stated and ordered celebrations all the world over. It seems hard to deny to any nation the rejoicing on the return of summer. All have it. Yet certainly Chaucer paints from his own experience, and not from erudition. The poem of "The Cuckou and the Nightingale" is a mere extolling of love and the May. The exordium is a sort of incidental hymn to the Love-god, and runs into affirming and arguing at some length the peculiar energy of his dominion in this month.

"And most his might he shedeth ever in May."

The Complaint of the Black Knight--love is his complaint--falls in May. The unhappy lover has built himself a lodge or bower in the greenwood, whether with returning May he withdraws himself from all feasts, societies, and throngs of men, to dedicate himself to love-mourning, and where, under the trees, whilst the month of love lasts, he remains abandoned to his love-martyrdom. That 'Dreme of Chaucer,' which has been supposed, although Tyrwhitt thinks fancifully, to refer to the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, happens as he lay alone on a night of May thinking of his lady. The opening of the Flower and Leaf puts you in doubt whether you are not rather in April than in May; but by and by you find that the nightingale has been all the day long singing the service of May. All this amorous and poetical caressing of the May discovers, in the twice resting the process of events in "The Knight's Tale" upon the observance of May-day, a significancy otherwise perhaps less evident. Shakspeare, in the verse--

"As full of spirits as the month of May,"

expresses the natural ground which ceremony and eulogy, solemn or quaint, have artificially displayed in the usages of old times, and in the poetry of Chaucer.

But to return to our two knights. They are _brothers-in-arms_--by the by, rather a romantic, than a classical institution--and so pledged to help one another in love; and the question arises, as the ground of a long argument, which is traitor to the other. Yet here, too, is intermixed the classical with the romantic. For Palamon, who first sees Emelie, takes her for the goddess Venus; on which Arcite ingeniously founds his own plea, that _he_ first loved her as a woman, and so is entitled to the help of the other. Their silent arming of one another, for mortal duel, in the forest, each

"As frendly as he were his owen brother,"

reminds you of chivalrous loyalty and faith; although it would be hard to deny that the antique warriors might have been as honest. But the truth is, that in Homer every knight arms himself, and the two Thebans must have worn modern armour to need this help. And yet here what a classical relief in the simile of the hunter! Of all transplantation from the modern to the ancient, tempered nevertheless with antiquity, their great listed Duel stands foremost. Take it, with all the circumstances that introduce it. Whilst the kinsmen are fighting, Theseus rides up, "pulled out a sword, and cried, Ho!" This is the language of the 14th century, and the western side of Europe. But he swears by "mighty Mars," that the first who strikes another stroke shall lose his head. Both are liable to death. Palamon for having broken prison, and Arcite, because his avoiding Athenian ground on pain of death was an original condition of his liberation. Theseus' challenge to them, "Tell me who ye are that are so bold as to fight here without judge or officer," is the manner of the poet's day. In the time of Theseus, fighting in a wood near Athens was free to all the world.

What saves them? The interposition of the ladies! Queen, princess, court and all, who think it a pity two gallant young "gentil men" of "gret estat" shall die, and all for love. The duke is moved; for pity soon melts in a "gentil herte." And he appoints a regular Tournament--that at the year's end they shall meet, each bringing a hundred knights, and fight it out. He pledges himself 'upon his troth, and as he is a knight,' that he who shall slay his adversary, or 'out of listes him drive,' shall have Emelie to wife.

The lists are--from the hint of antiquity--a regular Amphitheatre, a mile about--walled, and the seats in steps to the height of sixty paces. Art and wealth have been lavished in making the field worthy of the fight. Over the Eastern gate is an altar and an "Oratorie" to Venus--over the Western, to Mars--on the North side is one to Diana. The description of the three Fanes is of surpassing power. Among the portraitures in that of Mars is the Suicide, for whom the relater, poet or knight, forgets himself in his vivid conception, and says that he _saw it_.

The allies of the two knights are both classically and romantically chosen. With Palamon comes "Licurge, the grete king of Trace." That is classical. With Arcite "the grete Emetrius, the king of Inde." That is romantic. The persons of the two kings are described at large, with great strength and fecundity of painting. And here again, in the way of art, the contrast is admirably sustained and effective. Licurge is the older, more uncouth, and giant-like. The youthful Emetrius is more splendid and knightly. Both are thoroughly regal and formidable. Licurge is black-bearded, for the sake of more savage effect; wherefore the monarch of Inde, contrariwise to the actual distribution of races over the earth, or more properly speaking to the known influence of climate, is fair. His crisp and ringed locks are yellow, and glitter like the sun. His complexion may trouble the physiologists; but is not likely to discompose the poetical reader under the tuition of Christopher North. The "foure white bolles" that draw the 'char of gold' upon which the Thracian _stands_, are as antique as you can devise. The tamed eagle as any lily white, which Emetrius carries "for his deduit"--therefore, in lieu of a hawk upon his hand, is of manners that are almost our own.

Each king brings his own hundred knights. They arrive "on the Sonday abouten prime." The tilting will be next day. The three persons principally interested in the issue of the impending combat perform, in the interval, their devotions at the three several shrines, which have been aptly provided for them in the building of the lists. Each of them obtains an answer from the respective deity. Two hours ere the day, Palamon visits the oratory of Venus. He prays that he may win Emelie, although he should lose what comparatively he regards with indifference, the palm of the conflict. The statue of the goddess renders, after a long delay, the signal of acceptance. Emelie, at sunrise, worships Diana. Her first prayer is, that she may remain till death the virgin servant, herself a huntress, of the divine huntress; and if that may not be, that he may win her who best loves her. Upon the altar she kindles two fires, which burn ominously. One goes out and revives again. Then the other is wholly quenched--drops of blood falling out from the hissing and burning brands. All this the process of the combat and its consequences afterwards elucidate; as the appearing goddess forewarns her chaste worshipper. The 'nexte hour of Marte'--whereof anon--Arcite offers prayer and incense to the God of War. He is accepted, and victory promised; but the oracular voice murmurs the words faintly and hollowly.

All this intricate omination comes forcibly out in the sequence of events; and is in itself, as you feel, at all events right classical. The treatment of the Hours lies deeper. It is astrological. For the twelve now longer and now shorter hours, into which the time from sunrise to sunset--and the twelve now shorter and now longer, into which the time from sunset to sunrise was divided, belonged to the Seven Planets, in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna--by following out which order, you will discover that, since the first hour of Sunday belongs to the Sun, giving name to the day--the twenty-third hour, or the second before sunrise of the following day, will belong to Venus, to whom Palamon then prays--and the hour of sunrise, next day, belongs to the Moon, or Diana, to whom Emelie then addresses herself. Following the circle, you find that the fourth hour of Monday belongs to Mars. This is Arcite's hour. And if you wonder how such Chaldaic and Egyptian lore should come into your tale of chivalry, you will be relieved by understanding that these dedications had, in our poetical ages, due popularity for infusing into them a poetical efficiency; forasmuch as an old French "Shepherds' Calendar," cited by Tyrwhitt, alleges the very rule which we have given, for the instruction of him "who will weet how the Shepherds do wit which planet reigneth every hour of the day and of the night." This timing, therefore, of sacrifice and orison to the planetary hours, is pertinently and speakingly feigned by Chaucer.

The Tournament follows, which is mediaeval enough. Arcite, according to the promise of Mars, is victorious. Palamon is taken and bound. But here is the difficulty. Venus has promised Emelie to Palamon. Saturn, the [Greek: agchylometis], finds a remedy, and gratifies his grand-daughter. As Arcite, the victor, having taken off his helmet, rides along the lists to show himself to all, and especially to Emelie, Pluto, at the request of Saturn, sends an infernal fury who starts up out of the ground before him. The scared horse plunges and stumbles; Arcite is thrown upon his head, and taken up for dead. He is not dead; but he dies, and is burned, after the fashion of Patroclus and Hector; and twelve months after, his virgin widow is by Theseus given in marriage to Palamon.

What is the real effect of all this commixture? The truth is, that under such circumstances, after a little resistance and struggling, you give in, and let the poet have his own way, provided that he is a poet. There is but one condition--that the poet put, into whatever manners, true life. Then you willingly give up your own dull book-learning, and accept his painting for the authentic record of reality. You are, in fact, gradually conducted to this pass, that you look upon history as useful for ministering materials to poetry, not upon poetry as bound to teach history. But Chaucer _has_ wonderfully put life into the classical part of the poem, so that you can hardly say that he seems more at home in giving the manners which he had seen, than in reviving the manners which he had only read. He has this in common with Shakspeare. In common with Shakspeare he has, too, the apology for the confusion of manners--of having lived before we were as critical in the costume of ages and nations as we now are.

The 'Knight's Tale,' after the requisition usually laid upon an epic fable, makes use, and skilfully, of preternatural machinery. And here we will venture a vindication against an illustrious critic. The first suggestion to the banished Arcite of returning to Athens, comes to him in sleep. There is a slight invoking of the supernatural--at least of the fabulous. He dreams that Mercury appears, and announces to him an end of his woe at Athens. On awaking, he casts his eyes on a mirror, and sees that he is so changed with love-pining that he no longer knows himself--goes in disguise to Athens, offers himself to serve in the household of Emelie, and is accepted. Sir W. Scott blames this introduction of Mercury as needless, but let it be remembered:----

_First_, That this is introductory to far more important divine interpositions, is in keeping with them, and prepares the imagination for them.

_Secondly_, That, so managed, it is the least violent intervention of a god; the apparition being ambiguous between a natural dream and a real divine manifestation: an ambiguity which, by the by, is quite after the antique. So, Mercury appears to AEneas in a dream in the Fifth Book of the AEneid: and compare Hector's Ghost, &c.

_Thirdly_, That a psychological fact may be understood as here "lively shadowed:"--namely, that active purposes have often their birth during the mystery of sleep; and it would be a very felicitous poetical expression of this phenomenon to turn the oracular suggestion of the soul into a deity--_Sua cuique_ DEUS _fit dira cupido_.

_Fourthly_, It is completely probable, that the fancy of a believer in Mercury would actually shape his own dreaming thought into the suitable deity.--The vision is lightly touched by Chaucer, and gracefully translated by Dryden. The classical inventions throughout appear to be very much from Boccaccio; but the poetry of the relation Chaucer's own.

Do you wish to see Dryden in his majesty? Look here:--

"But in the dome of mighty Mars the red, With different figures all the sides were spread. This temple, less in form, with equal grace, Was imitative of the first in Thrace: For that cold region was the loved abode, And sovereign mansion of the warrior god. The landscape was a forest wide and bare, Where neither beast nor human kind repair; The fowl that scent afar, the borders fly, And shun the bitter blast, and wheel about the sky. A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground, And prickly stubs, instead of trees, are found; Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old, Headless the most, and hideous to behold; A rattling tempest through the branches went, That stripp'd them bare, and one sole way they bent. Heaven froze above severe, the clouds congeal, And through the crystal vault appear'd the standing hail. Such was the face without; a mountain stood Threat'ning from high, and overlook'd the wood; Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent, The temple stood of Mars armipotent; The frame of burning steel, that cast a glare From far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air. A straight long entry to the temple led, Blind with high walls, and horror overhead; Thence issued such a blast and hollow roar, As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door; In through that door, a northern light there shone; 'Twas all it had, for windows there were none. The gate was adamant, eternal frame! Which, hew'd by Mars himself, from Indian quarries came, The labour of a God; and all along Tough iron plates were clench'd to make it strong. A ton about was every pillar there; A polish'd mirror shone not half so clear; There saw I how the secret felon wrought, And treason labouring in the traitor's thought, And midwife Time the ripen'd plot to murder brought. There the red Anger dared the pallid Fear; Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer; Soft-smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown; The assassinating wife, the household fiend; And, far the blackest there, the traitor-friend. On t'other side, there stood Destruction bare, Unpunish'd Rapine, and a waste of war; Contest, with sharpen'd knives, in cloisters drawn, And all with blood bespread the holy lawn. Loud menaces were heard, and foul disgrace, And bawling infamy in language base, Till sense was lost in sound, and silence fled the place. The slayer of himself yet saw I there, The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair, With eyes half closed, and gaping mouth he lay, And grim, as when he breathed his sullen soul away. In midst of all the dome Misfortune sate, And gloomy Discontent, and fell Debate, And Madness laughing in his ireful mood; And arm'd complaint on theft, and cries of blood. There was the murder'd corpse in covert laid, And violent death in thousand shapes display'd, The city to the soldiers' rage resign'd, Successless wars, and poverty behind: Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores, And the rash hunter strangled by the boars; The new-born babe by nurses overlaid; And the cook caught within the raging fire he made. All ills of Mars his nature, flame and steel; The gasping charioteer beneath the wheel Of his own car; the ruin'd house that falls And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls. The whole division that to Mars pertains, All trades of death that deal in steel for gains, Were there; the butcher, armourer, and smith, Who forges sharpen'd faulchions, or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed With shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced; A pointed sword hung threat'ning o'er his head, Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread. There saw I Mars his Ides, the Capitol, The seer in vain foretelling Caesar's fall; The last Triumvirs, and the wars they move, And Antony, who lost the world for love: These, and a thousand more, the Fane adorn, Their fates were painted ere the men were born; All copied from the heavens, and ruling force Of the red star, in his revolving course. The form of Mars high on a chariot stood, All sheathed in arms, and gruffly look'd the God: Two geomantic figures were display'd Above his head, a warrior and a maid, One when direct, and one when retrograde."

"The Knight's Tale, the longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry." This is in Sir Walter's happiest natural vein; not so the astounding passage that follows it. "_That a classic scholar_ like Trapp should think the plan of the Knight's Tale equal to that of the Iliad, _is a degree of candour not to be hoped for_; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress; which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, _is abstractedly considered more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commenced long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken_!" Why, is not this the true and magnificent praise of the Iliad, that from the heart of the immense war it has taken out a story of individual interest, which begins where your curiosity asks, and where your sympathy finds repose? Achilles--his quarrel with Agamemnon--his loss of Patrocles--his vengeance on Hector--accomplished when he willingly relinquishes the body to burial? That is the integrity of an epic fable, which employs the Ten Years' War, not for its subject, but for the illimitable field in which its gigantic subject moves. He was the greatest of the poets, who knew how to make the storms, rising and falling, in the single breast of the goddess-born _more_ to you, his hearer, than the war which has encamped a hundred thousand Greeks in siege before the imperial city of Priam. From a great poet, the most Homeric of modern poets--what a judgment on the Iliad! Trapp's words are--"Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate quodam Chauceri pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque AEneada aequet, imo superet. Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas esse censuras, nec ad severississimam critices normam exactas: _illo judice, id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus habet, et in quo nunc occupatur_." Perfectly true. What says Dryden? "It is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the 'Ilias' or the 'AEneid.' The story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful, only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least." Godwin says truly, "This eulogium must be acknowledged to be written in a spirit of ridiculous and impertinent exaggeration." And he then says as truly, that it is "full of novelty and surprise, is every where alive, comprises the most powerful portrait of chivalry that was perhaps ever believed, and possesses every thing in splendour and in action that can most conspicuously point out the scenes of the narrative to the eye of the reader." Dryden's version is indeed what Warton has pronounced it to be--"the most animated and harmonious piece of versification in the English language."

If you ask what reconciles you to the prevalent confusion of manners in this noble poem, it is the earnest simple spirit with which the Knight goes on relating as if he believed every word. It is, as we said, with Chaucer as with Shakspeare. Shakspeare mixes times of the world, and we bear it. Iachimo, a complete modern Italian--a more courtly Iago--serves under Lucius, general to some emperor--we forget which, if we ever knew--of old Rome; and beguiles, to the death almost, that Posthumus Leonatus--a Celt, by the by, with two Latin names--to whom Jupiter--not exactly the supreme deity of the Celto-British Pantheon--descends in actual presence. We, the auditors, or the readers, meanwhile, breathe no whisper of doubt or dissatisfaction. Why should we? We believe with eye, and ear, and imagination, and heart; and are as fain of our wildly-compounded--_real-unreal_--dream, as the birds are of the dawning. Hamlet, born and bred in the court of our own Elizabeth, and abruptly called up to Town, on the point of graduating with honours at Oxford, is shown to our credulous apprehension rooted upon a soil and in a century when and where there were no human shapes to be met with but bloodthirsty Vikings and invulnerable Berserkers. And we take all in excellent part. Why shall we not? We gain past all computation by the slight intellectual concession. Besides, we cannot well help ourselves; for we are not the Masters. The enchanter is the Master:--who sets us down, not after the saying of Horace, now in Greece and now in Britain--but in Britain and in Greece at one and the same moment.

Shakspeare commingles widely divided times; and why, two hundred years before him, shall not Chaucer? It requires practice to read Chaucer. Not only do you need familiarizing to a form of the language, which is not your own, but much more to a simplicity of style, which at first appears to you like barenness and poverty. It seems meagre. You miss too much the rich and lavish colours of the later time. Your eye is used to gorgeousness and gaudiness. The severe plainness of the old manner wants zest for you. But, when you are used to Chaucer, can accept his expression, and think and feel with him, this hinderance wears off. You find a strong imagination--a gentle pathos--no lack of accumulation, where needed--but the crowding is always of effective circumstances or images--a playfulness, upon occasion, even in serious writing--but the special characteristic of the style is, that the word is always to the purpose. He amply possesses his language, and his sparing expression is chosen, and never inadequate--never indigent. His rule is, that for every phrase there be matter; and narrative or argument is thus constantly progressive. He does not appear to be hurried out of himself by the heat of composition. His good understanding completely goes along with him, and weighs every word.

Dryden's rendering of Chaucer is a totally distinct operation from his Englishing of Virgil--Homer--Lucretius--Juvenal--Ovid. And you are satisfied that it should be so. He could not transfer these poets, accomplished in art, and using their language in an age of its perfection, with _too_ close a likeness of themselves. He translates because the language is unknown to his presumed reader. This is but half his motive with Chaucer. The language would be more easily got over; but the mind is of another age, and that is less accessible--more distant from us than the obsolete dialect. We are contented to have the style of that day translated into the style of our own. Is this a dereliction of poetical principle? Hardly. The spirited and splendid verse and language of Dryden have given us a new poem. Why should our literature have forborne from so enriching herself? Hear Dryden himself.

"But there are other judges, who think I ought not to have translated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion. They suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language, and that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this opinion as that excellent person whom I mentioned, the late Earl of Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as Mr Cowley despised him. My lord dissuaded me from this attempt, (for I was thinking of it some years before his death,) and his authority prevailed so far with me as to defer my undertaking while he lived, in deference to him; yet my reason was not convinced with what he urged against it. If the first end of writer be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete his thoughts must grow obscure.

'_Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere; cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi!_

"When an ancient word, for its sound and significancy, deserves to be revived, I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity to restore it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never to be removed. Customs are changed, and even statutes are silently repealed, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted. As for the other part of the argument--that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty by the innovation of words--in the first place, not only their beauty but their being is lost, where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion--that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maimed, when it is scarce intelligible, and that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer, so as to understand him perfectly! And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. It is not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him--let them neglect my version, because they have no need of it. I made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they, when that poetry and sense is put into words which they understand. I will go further, and dare to add, that what beauties I lose in some places, I give to others which had them not originally. But in this I may be partial to myself; let the reader judge, and I submit to his decision. Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them, who, because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up as misers do their granddam gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder others from making use of it. In sum, I seriously protest, that no man ever had, or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer than myself. I have translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen. If I have altered him any where for the better, I must at the same time acknowledge, that I could have done nothing without him. _Facile est inventis addere_ is no great commendation; and I am not so vain to think I have deserved a greater."

You are an Englishman, and a scholar in your mother-tongue. Good! You have dabbled, it may be, in Anglo-Saxon, Alfred's English. It is all very well. You read Chaucer easily. We congratulate you. You will, we hope, love the speech, and the soul, and the green, grassy mould of old England all the better. We praise you for searching England near and far, high and low. Do this heartily; do this understandingly; and you are excellently engaged. But do not grudge your next neighbour, who is merely a modern Englishman--a thorough good-fellow of one, however--_his_ Chaucer, in a tongue and manner that he can read without stepping out of himself--his Chaucer, for his possession of whom he thanks Dryden, and from his grateful heart ejaculates "glorious John!"

MAYNOOTH.

It is due to the character of this Journal, unflinching in its Conservative politics through one entire stormy generation, that, in any great crisis of public interest, or in any fervent strife of public opinion, it should utter its voice strongly; under the shape of a protest and a parting testimony to the truth, where the case practically may be hopeless; under the shape of a hearty effort, co-operating with other efforts, where the case is _not_ hopeless. There is nothing more depressing to patriotic honour and loyalty than the cowardice of despondency, even when a cause has touched the very brink of defeat; and we believe that no spectacle of firmness is more naturally congenial to the temper of our countrymen, than the fidelity which still makes signal of its affection in circumstances desperate for resistance, and which in mortal extremities will not relax its hold from a cause once conscientiously adopted. Do we insinuate by this that the anti-Maynooth cause looks desperate? Our trust is otherwise. But if it were, what we say is, that not the less the duty remains sacred of hoping after all light of encouragement seems to have departed. This in any case; whilst, in the present, that duty is trebly sacred, because a whole succession of objects will remain upon which our future hopes must retreat, even if this foremost intrenchment should be forced. Maynooth will be no _solitary_ aggression on the great cause of Protestanism: that carried, others will rapidly follow: their "aspiring heads" are already above the horizon; and it is necessary to defend the first line in a spirit of gaiety and confidence, were it only that the second line and the third may not be abandoned under the contagion of dismay.

Of late this Journal has a good deal retired from the strife of politics. Our readers must not misunderstand this. It was not through any treachery to that duty of hope which we have been insisting on as sacred: it was through a change in the public rather than in ourselves. Ireland had for some time narrowed itself into Mr O'Connell; domestic feuds had dwindled into the corn question. Neither of these subjects, it is true, was so utterly exhausted that we could not have found something new to say. But by the intolerable persecution of much speaking and much writing upon two wearisome topics, the public attention at last fell into a mere lethargy, from which it could not be roused to vibrate or react under any amount of stimulation. The audience fell away to nothing as the garrulity of the speakers increased; the public patience languished as its abusers multiplied. Now, however, Ireland is again restored to us as a fountain of interest under a new and most agitating impulse. Never, for many years, has the public mind fermented with so uncontrollable a fervour. Ascendency upon one field at least for Popery is now felt to be making a forward rush; the balance of the constitutional forces, for a government essentially Protestant, is threatened with overthrow; and, if this Maynooth endowment prospers, Protestantism will receive a deadly wound in the empire which is, and _has_ been, and by Providence was appointed to be, its main bulwark.

In speaking to this question, it is our purpose to array briefly before the reader its gravest aspects; to press upon his attention one or two which have been entirely neglected; to do this with the utmost rapidity that is consistent with distinct explanation of our meaning; but all along, with no purpose of rousing angry prejudices, or appealing to any one sentiment that a candid man of any one party could describe as bigotry. We disapprove entirely, as a needless irritation to Roman Catholic feelings, of going back to the Revolution of 1829. If that great event were now pending, instead of being sixteen years in the rear, it would be our duty, at any cost of possible offence in any quarter, to speak of it as our conscience might require us to speak. But, as things are, this would be to offer a wanton provocation, utterly useless for any practical end, and tending towards the continued alienation of many excellent fellow-subjects. Wrong or right, the policy of "Emancipation" has triumphed; the thing is done, and cannot be undone; we must now adapt ourselves to a system which has become the law of the land. It is in such a case as with the past errors of a man's life: if he is wise, he will not suffer his energies to waste themselves upon unavailing regrets. To revoke the irrevocable being an effort so manifestly childish, he will apply himself to an effort which is rational, manly, and full of hope--to the correcting or mitigating of those consequences from his errors which are most threatening for his future welfare.

Social forms often show the same principle of vitality and reproduction; and, after the deadliest convulsions, put forward corresponding tendencies to restoration of their natural health and equilibrium. It is one, indeed, amongst the tests of excellence in any political constitution, that it can stand very rude shocks, and that it has internal resources for healing all injuries not organically destructive. Catholic emancipation, whatever might be thought of it if viewed from a station of unlimited power to choose or to reject, must now be reconciled to our minds for better and worse; and in peaceable times will gradually adjust itself to the working of our political system, settling into the general economy of the machine. But this Maynooth endowment tends to other results. The steps are inevitable from this centre to the very outermost periphery that bounds the ambition of Irish Popery; viz. to absolute ascendancy for itself, to absolute overthrow of Protestantism in Ireland, and therefore to ultimate separation of that island from the British empire, so far as the dreadful effort is concerned. For we must not overlook the modern symptoms of the case. Formerly, as in 1782 for instance, Ireland dreamed not of any further advantages than such as could be extorted from the occasional difficulties of England under foreign hostility, and such as should be sanctioned by English parliamentary concession. But under the long agitation of Mr O'Connell a new party has grown up, which regards Ireland--however inferior for aggressive war--as strong enough, by means of its excessive population, and the local advantages inherent in every _possessor_ of the soil, for throwing off the connexion with England. Independence, on the footing of a separate nation, is seriously aimed at by the young blood of Ireland; not with a view to any imaginary advantages from development of native resources or alleviation of taxes, but on the single excitement of nationality. And by this ultimate object, as undoubtedly a favoured object working underground and extensively in the Ireland of 1845, we must measure the tendencies of an endowment conferred by Parliament upon the Popish religion.

Rightly to judge of any favour or privilege whatever conceded to Popery, we must consider the position of Popery with respect to the altered prospects of the world as it now is, and the duties of Protestantism, permanently as well as specially, in relation to the changed and changing attitude of our own particular crisis. But these being the capital aspects of the case, we will first of all notice those more manageable and rememberable topics which are flying abroad upon the popular breath amongst our antagonists.

It is alleged that we, the confederate opponents of the grant, are not natural allies. Being heterogeneous, our opposition cannot be cordial. Why not? If comprehensive unanimity, and undistinguishing unanimity, were an indispensable condition towards a legitimate confederacy, then it would be an impossibility that any combined action of men (which is one main purpose of human society) should ever arise. Some of us think it a high duty of the state to endow and favour that form of Christianity which the predominant opinion (as collected from the _total_ empire) pronounces the true one. This is our own creed; and it is our further belief that this duty is strengthened where not only the general opinion has pronounced itself strongly for that particular religious system, but where also the history and the institutions of the land have unfolded themselves for centuries, and through memorable struggles, under the inspiration of that system, conforming to it, and receiving its impress. On the other hand, considerable masses of those who now pull together with ourselves, are permanent protesters against all state endowments of any one particular church; and not only so, but they object to any possible mode of connexion between the government and the functions of ecclesiastical bodies. What of that? Those are most thoughtless, or else incapable of self-control, who at such a moment of common peril remind us of differences utterly impertinent to the question. Can we not abstract? If we are in discord upon political points, are we not agreed upon the great interests of our common Protestantism? Why must we be in harmony further than as to the one vast cause which we jointly defend? Upon this logic, Whigs and Tories meeting upon the same deck must not unite to "sink, burn, and destroy" the enemies of their common country; or two households, Radical and Conservative, in the same village, must not work the same engine for the extinction of a fire which threatens every hearth. As to the case of those who oppose the grant _exclusively_ on the principle of hostility to state endowments of religious bodies, all of us see clearly that they travel on our road no inch further than it leads to a private purpose of their own, and that they will violently wheel away from us at the point where our purposes begin to divide. But, in the mean time, our purposes at this moment, and for the instant result, do _not_ divide; and their support is good for so much of the struggle as they are conscientiously able to share with us.

But surely, say another class of objectors, though it is a pity that the Irish are not Protestants, it is better that they should have Popery for their form of religion than no religion at all. True. And if this were the alternative necessity, viz. that, Popery decaying, all religion must decay in Ireland; then we also should cordially support any _safe_ mode (but not _this_ mode) of raising the standard of education for the priestly instructors of Ireland. But we are not called upon to legislate for that dilemma. If, indeed, the case were that of a Popish regiment, it is clearly the duty of government to provide a Popish chaplain, and to see that he is properly qualified for his office; because, if you do not open a regular channel to Popish instructions, you are sure that both conscience and worldly honour, paramount principles for cherishing amongst soldiers, will lead them to withdraw from all other instructions. Not being Papists, the men will become practically infidels. But the case is far otherwise for the Irish people. Government is not summoned to provide any part of an improved equipage for an Irish religious establishment. That is done, or done sufficiently. Whether as Protestant or Catholic, every man has access to religious instructions and religious consolations. There is no call to improve the quality of the priestly ministrations; for, considering the quality of the doctrines and usages which are essential to Popery, we do not believe that the Irish priesthood is much open to improvement as a machinery for carrying out its own indefeasible purposes. To raise the standard of respectability at Maynooth, would not alter the character of the creed which Maynooth teaches. And when it is said that, with a higher education, the Romish priesthood would be more likely to breed schism or incipient reformation within their own order, we doubt greatly as to the interpretation of the facts upon which that speculation is grounded. The Reformation, which shook the sixteenth century, did not arise, (as we see it alleged,) because Luther or Melanchthon was so much above the standard of monkish education. Men quite as extensively learned as they, and even more highly endowed by nature, had but the more passionately undertaken the cause of Papal Rome in consequence of those great advantages. Luther was strong in the strength of his forerunners. The men of Luther's age _inherited_ the zeal and the light kindled by three centuries of growing truth. And what put the crest and plumage upon the aspiring hopes of that period, was the providential madness of Rome, and the towering altitude of her corruptions, which just then, from mercenary causes, soared aloft more audaciously than ever before. In the present state of the Papal church, and under the new hopes which we shall point out further on, as just now opening upon her, it is more than ever improbable that any laxity of discipline at Maynooth, or in the general government internally of the Irish church, will be suffered to leave openings for heresies to arise. Essentially, Rome is aware that, for the next half century, beyond all the churches of earth, she will be a church militant. Escaping decay during that critical period from the immense diffusion of _general_ knowledge, [but of knowledge not by any means concurrently connected with spiritual knowledge]--Rome is likely (as we shall soon argue) to take a prodigious bound forward. And if, on the other hand, any great fermentation of truth _should_ commence in the Popish church of Ireland, and that a vacuum should thus be created, into which the priests could no longer carry their minstrations acceptably, that vacuum would be instantly filled by zealous Protestants. Such a change would be so far from leaving any part of the Irish poor denuded of spiritual aid, or in any way exposed to the risk of infidelity, (according to the objection,) that Protestant help would arise (we are well assured) in a ratio more than corresponding to a necessity that must naturally have been gradual in its development. And thus it would appear--that, by strengthening Maynooth, Government, so far from protecting the people against the chances of infidelity, would (in the case supposed) have been intercepting the fair chances of our own Protestant missions. Besides, that (according to a constant reproach of our antagonists, which they must not be allowed to forget exactly when it furnishes an argument inconvenient to themselves,) the _regular_ clergy of the Irish Protestant establishment, having churches (as they insist) without congregations, will always compose a staff large enough to intercept any possible expansion of infidelity that could attend the declension of Popery through one generation at the least. Fully agreeing, therefore, that Popery is a blessing to Ireland by comparison with any risk of no religion at all, we deny firmly that she exposed to such a risk. And if unhappily she were, a most Irish mode of averting that risk it would be--to fortify the claims of Maynooth, that last asylum of unhallowed and fraudulent casuistry, a casuistry which, like the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, makes void the pure law of God.

But a more cogent objection at first sight to us, the opposers of the Maynooth grant, seems this: "In 1796 your party it was that originally proposed and founded any grant at all. If it was right then, it is right now. And, as to the increase from nine thousand pounds _per annum_ to twenty-six thousand, that is a consideration for accountants rather than for statesmen; the sum cannot affect the principle."

Here are our answers; for there are more points to answer than one.

_First_, It is not true, or near to being true, that the sum at issue could not affect the principle concerned. Many are the cases in which the quantities of the objects concerned in acts entirely vary the qualities of the acts. The law itself, which professedly neglects trifles, [_de minimis nor curat lex_,] and which, in criminal cases, will not entertain a charge where the injury is below a certain money amount, shows how essential to the moral estimate of acts is the quantity of the value in issue. Money being power, quite as much as ever knowledge was power, and much less restrictedly so, there arises with the variations of the sum the largest range of variations in the interpretation of the understanding between the parties as to the intention of giver and receiver. That sum is a bribe, which, divided by ten, is a fair acknowledgment of services performed. That sum in other cases is an insult, which, being centupled, would be an honourable expression of distinguished merit. Nine thousand pounds might have been given, and (if we go back to the facts) really _was_ given as a donation to an abject pauper; whilst an addition of seventeen thousand more may be accepted--and (if we consult the facts) _will_ be accepted--in the haughty spirit of one who affects to regard as a testimony to his own merit what secretly he believes to be offered in trembling propitiation. It was Burke who suggested the first endowment of a Popish College; but how different are acts nominally the same! _His_ motives were the motives of a reflecting patriot; Sir Robert Peel's are the motives of a compromiser between adverse interests, whose heart, though honourable as regards intentions, does not prompt him to give a preponderating weight to either side, however opposed in principle. The _motives_, however, belong to our next head. At present, we are dealing with the money amount. It is alleged that seventeen thousand added to nine thousand can make no difference as to principle, and that all we, who reverence Burke and Pitt, are bound by their precedent. Now to that point the distinct answer is--that the nine thousand of Burke and Pitt was given as an eleemosynary dole to a body too poor, and at that time too abject, in political consideration, to move jealousy in any quarter. But the sum now asked is very nearly threefold of that fixed by Mr Pitt, and (if we add the interest of the outfit for the new furniture, appointments, &c.) is _more_ than threefold. The small sum was given as charity; was given as an _annual_ vote; and the large one will be given (if it _is_ given) as an endowment in perpetuity to a haughty political interest, to a corrival of Trinity college, to a body that _has_ moved jealousy in every quarter, and finally, (which sickens us to recollect,) to a body that will have the audacity, in concert with Mr O'Connell, one year after every favour shall have been received, to disown it as a subject for gratitude--acknowledging it only as the pledge and monument of English panic.

_Secondly_, As to the motives, these grew out of the perils diffused by the French Revolution. The year 1797, which followed the suggestion of this pecuniary aid to the Irish priests, was the last year of Burke's life. In what light he viewed the contagion from the anti-social frenzy then spreading over Europe, may be seen from the oracular works through which he spoke his mind both in 1796 and 1797. He was profoundly impressed with the disorganizing tendencies of the principles, but still more of the licentious cravings for change, which from the centre of Paris had crept like a mist over the whole face of Europe. France was in a less tumultuous state then than in 1792-3-4; but, as respected Europe generally, the aspect of things was worse; because naturally the explosion of frenzy in Paris during the Reign of Terror, took a space of two or three years to reproduce and train the corresponding sympathies in other great capitals of the Continent. By 1797, the contagion was mature. Thence came the necessity for some _domestic_ establishment where Irish priests should be educated: it was no longer safe that they should resort to St Omers: both because the unsettled license of thinking upon all things established would form the very worst atmosphere for clerical sobriety; and more specifically because all the Jacobins of the time bore deadly hatred to England. The priests trained at St Omers, would in fact have become a corps of spies, decoys, and conspirators in the service of France. The rebellion of '98 read a commentary on this text. And no policy, therefore, could have been wiser than to intercept such a result by a periodical grant to Maynooth; whilst the requisite dependency of the institution was secured by making the grant annual. Now, however, not only is it proposed to make it permanent, which (together with the enlarged amount) totally changes its character, but a greater change still is--that the original reason for any grant at all, the _political_ reason, has entirely passed away. The objection to a continental education may be strong as regards the convenience of the Irish; but the inconvenience has no longer any relation to ourselves. No air in Europe can be tainted with a fiercer animosity to England than the air of Ireland. In this respect the students of Maynooth _cannot_ be more perilously situated. Whilst we all know by the Repeal rent and the O'Connell yearly tribute, that the Irish Papists could easily raise three times the money demanded for Maynooth, if they were as willing to be just in a service of national duty as they are to be liberal in a service of conspiracy.

_Thirdly_, Connected with this question of _motives_, arises another aspect of the case. A college, it may be said, cannot do much in the way of modifying the political temper of a country, whether for the better or the worse. If disaffection to the government prevails in Ireland, that may argue no participation in such a spirit by the rules of Maynooth. But in another direction, Maynooth cannot plead innocence. The O'Connell agitation would at any rate, with or without Maynooth, have distempered all public loyalty amongst the lower classes. _They_ could present no resistance to influences operating too strongly upon their nationality. But the priestly order, if originally by their training at all adorned with the graces proper to their profession, would not have fallen under the influence of acts so entirely mobbish. Yet we know that by no other engine has Mr O'Connell so powerfully operated on the Irish mind as through the agency of the priests. Not O'Connell moulded _them_ for his service, but they presented themselves ready moulded to _him_; and with exceptions so rare as to argue a more extensive secularisation of the priestly mind throughout Ireland, than has ever been witnessed in the strongholds of Popery. This early preoccupation by a worldly taint of the clerical mind amongst the Irish Catholics, could not possibly have reached an excess so entirely without parallel in Europe, unless chiefly through profligate systems of training at Maynooth. In all Ireland there was found with difficulty any specimen of the simple rural pastor (so common in France) who withdrew himself from political strife. The priest who considered his spiritual character degraded by partisanship, (no matter in what service,) was nowhere to be heard of. Wherever Mr O'Connell wanted an agent, an intriguer, an instrument for rousing the people, he was sure of one in the parish priest. Now this fact is decisive upon the merits of Maynooth. It matters not what latitude may be allowed to variety of political views; no politics of _any_ sort can be regarded as becoming to a village pastor. But allow him to be a politician, how could a priest become a tool without ruin to his spiritual character? Yet this is the Maynooth, training its _alumni_ to two duties, the special duty of living _in procinctu_ and in harness for every assault upon the Protestant establishment of their country, and for the unlimited duty of taking orders in any direction from Mr O'Connell--this is the Maynooth to which, for such merits, we have been paying nine thousand pounds annually for exactly fifty years, and are now required to pay three times as much for ever.

But from these narrower questions, directed to circumstantialities local and transitory, we wish to draw the reader's attention upon certain other questions larger and more philosophic. And, first of all, let us say a word upon one point continually raised, and not at all limited to Irish cases; viz. the latitude allowed by conscience to a Protestant in promoting the welfare of Papists, where it happens that the personal service is associated unavoidably with some service to the Popish cause. As individuals, or even as a collective body in the commonwealth, every liberal man would wish to protect and to favour his Catholic fellow-citizens, if he could do so without aiding them in their natural purpose of making proselytes. There are cases undoubtedly in which these mixed advantages for the person and for the creed would so blend as to offer a difficult problem in casuistry to a delicate conscience. Sir Robert Peel in the final debate on the second reading of the Maynooth bill, attempted to throw dust in the eyes of the House upon the principle concerned in cases of this nature; and even if he had been right in his argument, we believe that he would have gained little for the particular question concerned in the Maynooth grant. He argued, by way of showing how untenable was the notion that we could not conscientiously support a religion which we believed erroneous, that upon that hypothesis we should cut the ground from below our feet in the mode of supporting our own religion. The law of England insists upon the Dissenters paying church-rates and tithes to the English church; now, argued Sir Robert, the Dissenter might turn round and plead, in bar of this claim, the English churchman's demur to supporting Popery by supporting Maynooth. But the case accurately stated is--that no English churchman ever _did_ demur to paying his quota towards Maynooth; on the contrary, he has paid it quietly for fifty years. What some few churchmen _have_ demurred to was--not paying after the law had said "_pay_," but legislating for the payment; passing the annual vote for the payment. Now, if a Dissenter happens to be in Parliament, he is quite at liberty to make the same demur as to church-rates; but he makes his demur in the wrong quarter if he addresses it to the collector. So again, as regards the increased grant, and the permanent grant to Maynooth, if it passes the two Houses, we shall all of us pay our share without scruple; neither will our consciences be at all wounded, for we pay under the coercion of a distress-warrant, contingent upon our refusing to pay. It is the suffering the law to pass, without opposing it in one way or other, that _would_ wound our consciences. And, again, the English law does not require a Dissenter to concur in the propriety of paying church-rates, it requires him only to pay them.

But we Protestants, in paying to Maynooth, supposing that we made ourselves parties to the payment by consenting to the bill, feel that we should be wilfully abetting the propagation of error. It is true that the Papist finds himself in the same necessity of contributing to what he regards as heresy by contributing to the support of the Protestant Establishment. But if a Protestant resorts to a country, or acquiesces in a country where Popery is established, he does not complain that he falls under the relation of a tributary to a system which did not seek _him_, but which _he_ sought.

There are other casuistical points, arising out of these practical relations to systems of religious belief, which are often unskilfully mingled with cases like this of Maynooth; but they cannot disguise the broad distinction between the principle in that question and the principle in the question of Catholic emancipation. There the object was purely negative, viz. to liberate a body of men from certain incapacities. Successive penal laws had stripped the Papist of particular immunities and liberties. These were restored by emancipation. A defect was made good. But no _positive_ powers were created by that measure. Now, on the other hand, when a large revenue is granted, (as by the pending Maynooth grant,) this is in effect to furnish artillery for covering advances upon hostile ground. This gives positive powers to Popery for propagating its errors. That Sir Robert Peel should hold such a mode of collusion with falsehood to be lawful--would be astonishing, were it not that he manifestly confounds the case of promoting, a law by votes, or any mode of active support, which is a true and substantial assent, with the case of paying under a demand of the law. Now this is no assent at all, any more than the surrendering your person passively to the arrest of a police-officer is an assent to the justice of the accusation, or to the reasonableness of the law under which you will be tried. To pay on the demand of the law is no assent at all, but an abridged process of yielding to the physical coercion of the law. You are aware of the steps through which the compulsory action of the law will travel, and it cannot make any difference as to the principle of your submission, that, for the sake of saving time, you yield to the first step, instead of waiting for the last. It is, therefore, no duty of a Protestant, in any circumstances, to abet Popery by any mode of support, but only seems to be so by confounding cases essentially different.

Next arises for notice, the very interesting question on the prospects of Popery at this moment and its chances of a great restoration, by means of combination with various forms of human power. One cause of error upon this subject lies in the notion that conspicuous obscurations of civil grandeur, jurisdiction, and wealth, which Popery has suffered of late years in almost every state, have therefore, been absolute losses of spiritual power. On the contrary, these losses are likely to strengthen Popery. Precisely in the most bigoted of Popish kingdoms--Austria, Bavaria, Spain, and Portugal--the Popish religion has been shorn, during the last fifty years, of it most splendid temporalities. The suppression of the Inquisition in Spain, &c., the extinction of religions houses on so vast a scale, the limitation of the Papal rights in the disposal of Bishops' sees, the confiscation or sale of church lands, to an amount unsuspected in Protestant countries--these and other convulsions have shaken the Papacy in a memorable degree. But it is certain that the vigour and vitality of Popery, in modes more appropriate to a spiritual power, are reviving. Popery has benefited by the removal, however harshly executed at the moment, of enormous abuses connected sometimes with wealth, sometimes only with the reputation of wealth, but in either case with a weight of popular odium. The vessel has righted and become buoyant by the sacrifice of masts and rigging. A spirit of activity has again manifested itself in many directions. And with this has concurred a new body of hopes, arising from social accidents in America. Throughout the great central valley of North America, and along the line of the most recent inroads into the western forests, a great opening has arisen, of late years, for throwing a network of spiritual power over a vast territory that is rapidly unfolding its power and wealth. Through this opening has poured, for some years like a spring-tide, a huge host of Catholic missionaries. Such was the extensive demand for spiritual ministration amongst a population multiplying to excess, that _any_ order of Christian clergy would have been welcome. Here is a basis laid for future magnificent development of Popish power. Rome itself has been stirred and agitated with the prospect of seeing its energies revive, and of reaping a malicious retribution by entering into combination with that Teutonic race, from whom, during the last three centuries, she had received her deadliest wounds. But a doubt arises, whether this very combination will not be more likely to impress a totally new character upon the Papal religion. The Saxon energy will be likely to strangle Popery, rather than Popery in the long run to pervert that energy. In England itself, through Oxford, unexpected auguries have dawned upon Rome, of a new birth for the pomps of Papal Rome. And exactly at this crisis of hope and unlimited anticipation, the splendid endowment of Maynooth, solemnly proposed and vigorously pressed forward by a cautious minister of England, coinciding also with the spasmodic throes of the Irish people to establish an independent nationality, have doubtless spread through the councils of the Vatican as much of what will probably be found visionary expectation, as through the hearts of our own Protestant countrymen, they have spread of what equally, we trust, will be converted by this national insurrection against Maynooth into visionary fear.

Another point we are bound to notice, as error generally diffused--though shocking to just logic. It is said, by way of reproach to ourselves--the England of this day--that we took all the splendid endowments of Oxford, Cambridge, and so forth, from Roman Catholics; which being so, we are bound to make some restoration of the spoils to the Catholics of this day. Was there ever heard more complex absurdity? Mark its stages:

1st, If you _had_ taken them from Catholics of the 16th century, how would _that_ translate any interest of property in the institutions to people of the nineteenth century, simply as professing the same faith? We took various spoils about 1780 from Hyder Ali, the sultan of Mysore: in 1799 we took others more costly from his son Tippoo: will that entitle some prince of Turkestan, or Bokhara, in the year 2000, to claim these spoils on the plea that he is a Mahometan? An interest of inheritance would thus be vested in the emptiest of abstractions.

2d, They were _not_ Catholics, in a proper sense, who founded the chief colleges at Oxford, &c. The Roman Catholic faith was not developed fully at the period when many were founded: it could not be developed even as a _religious system_, until after the great polemic writers, on the one side and the other, had drawn out the differential points of doctrine. And when partly developed, or showing a tendency to certain conclusions, it was not fully _settled_ until the Council of Trent. Next, as a _political interest_, it was not at all developed until between the beginning of Luther and the termination of Trent. Impossible it was that it should; for until a counter-pole existed, until an antagonist interest had arisen, the relations of Popery, whether political or religious, must have been indeterminate: as a kingdom surrounded by deserts and trackless forests, cannot have its frontier line ascertained.

3dly, If they had been Catholics, in the _fullest_ sense, who founded our Universities, it was not _as_ Catholics that they founded them, but as great families who had accumulated property under our system of laws; and secondly, as natives of the land. They were _able_ to found universities, because they had been protected by English laws; they were _willing_ to found universities, because they were of English birth, and loved their native land. The Countess of Richmond, for instance, or Henry VI., in his great foundations at Eton or Cambridge, or Baliol at Oxford, did not think of Popery under any relation to heresy. They thought of it, so far as _at all_ they thought of it, in its general abstraction of spiritual loveliness; and under that shape it differed not at all from the Protestantism of the English church. The temper in which they acted, is a pledge that they thought of man, and the children of man, not in relation to those points in which they differed, but to those above all in which they agreed. They were compatriots of the islanders--they loved knowledge--and in those characters, not as Papists, they founded colleges.

4thly, Supposing that in the plenary and controversial sense they _had_ been Catholics who founded our great mediaeval institutions; supposing, next, that they had founded them as Catholics, and _because_ they were Catholics; supposing, also, that from them, in that aerial character of "_persons holding a creed_," any rights of inheritance could, by leave of Thomas Aquinas, be imagined metaphysically to descend; lastly, and notwithstanding all this, their establishments had passed into the hands of other trustees by due course of law--that is, by legislation under the countersign of king, lords, and commons; that is, by the same title under which any man whatever, Papist or Protestant, holds any property whatever. Are we obliged to settle an annuity upon A B, because he can trace himself lineally to a man who held our lands under Edward the Confessor? Yet, by the supposition, A B _can_ prove a relation in blood to the ancient owner, though none at all to the lands. But the Catholics can show no relation whatever either to the foundations at Oxford, or to the blood of the founder. Upon this conceit, if a man could trace his blood to an ancient Druid, he would have a _lien_ in law upon all the oak-trees in the island! _Risum teneatis?_

Whilst this, however, is a mere vapour of the speculative brain, there is a final absurdity, less showy in its extravagance, yet in practice more misleading. We cannot allow ourselves, consistently with the rapid movement of our sketch, to do justice to this fallacy; but we will indicate its outline. Look back to all the pro-Catholic journals for the last forty years, and you will find it every where appealed to and relied on as a substantial argument--that, in many states on the Continent, Catholics and Protestants sit as assessors on the same bench of judgment; act harmoniously as officers, commanders and commanded, in the same regiment; meet daily as fellow-students in the same schools and colleges. The inference is--that mere partisanship, deeper bigotry, and no other cause whatever, has made it difficult or dangerous for English Protestants and Catholics to effect the same coalition. Having no room left for a fuller exposure of this delusive representation, we shall here content ourselves with an illustrative allusion or two. The Moors were expelled from Spain before any English Catholics became the objects (having wilfully _made_ themselves the objects) of something like proscription under English laws. The chasm between the Moors of this day and their ancestors stretches over more than three centuries. Has that rent closed? Have those wounds healed? Is the reader aware of the figurative language, under the symbol of house-door keys, still hanging over Moorish hearths, &c., by which, to this hour, the Moors cherish for their children's ears deep vindictive remembrances of their ancient habitations in Spain, and their haughty vision of a bloody re-entrance? Does the reader imagine that an invasion by Moors of Italy or France would move under the same burning impulses as an invasion of Spain? The return of the Moors to Spain would be like the _recoil_ of a catapulta. And, allowing for higher civilization, of the same deep memorial character would have been any re-entry of Roman Catholics upon _power_ in England, had it been less gradual than the prudence of Parliaments made it. The deep outrages of Catholics upon English rights, under the troubled movements amongst the thrones of Europe during the century of strife, which made the temptations to treason irresistible for vassals of Rome, forced from the Protestants such stern reactions, as have left with both parties an abiding sense of profound injuries. Attainders to be blotted out, judgments to be reversed, burning records of shame for persons and for creed, sculptured in our laws, to trample under foot, are likely to stimulate the malice (calling itself the retribution) of lineal descendants, even if there were no _estates to reclaim_. And surely those fantastic persons who think, that merely to bear the name or classification of "_Catholic_" must confer upon one, pleading no shadow of a connexion with the founder of a college, some claim to a dividend upon its funds, are not entitled to hold cheap the very different sort of claims, resting upon acknowledged heirship, which are now lying amongst the muniments of thousands. It is a record of the political imbecility, it is to the high _disgrace_, of the continental states, that with most of them Catholics and Protestants _could_ meet in this insipid harmony: it was a harmony resembling the religious toleration of people--tolerant, because careless of _all_ religion. Had they, like ourselves, possessed a constitution of slow growth, a representative system, a popular mind, all stimulating to noble political feuds,--in that case they would have had high principles like ourselves; they, like ourselves, would have faced the action and reaction of endless contest; and their political progress, like ours, would have been written on every page of their history and legislation. It was because they slept and snored for ages with no instincts of fiery political life, that they were able, in modern times--Catholics and Protestants--to fraternise in effeminate raptures of maudlin sentimentality.

We apply this last topic specially to our conclusion:--In pointing to the yet unappreciated difference between our own feuds with popery and those of other nations--which foreign feuds, at the very best, (if they rose at all to the grandeur of civil strife,) moved through butchery and violence, as in France, not through laws and scaffolds--moved like the uproars of Afghans, not like the grand tribunitial contests of ancient Rome--we could only indicate a feature or two of the inexhaustible case. And naturally it was to England that we pointed. But now--but by this Maynooth revolution, it is not England that is primarily menaced. Ireland it is upon which that evil will descend, which, by the wisdom of Parliament, backed by the protesting tumults of the people, did _not_ descend on England. For England, Parliament was cautious and retarding in all its steps. The "return of the Heracleidae" was by graduated movements; and, had it even been abrupt, a thousandfold greater were the resources for combined resistance of Protestants against combined reaction of Papists. But in Ireland, deeper are the vindictive remembrances, more recent are the deductions of claims to property, and louder the clamours for wide resumption; from massacre and counter massacre, from Cromwell, from Limerick, from Londondery, from Boyne, from Aughrim, the wounds are yet green and angry; and the hostile factions have never dissolved their array. This is the land into which a Moorish recoil is now threatened. The reader understands us to speak of a return--not for the physical men--but for the restored character of supremacy in which they will be able to act with power.

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

Footnotes:

[1] _Etudes des Sciences Sociales._ Par J. C. SIMONDE DE SISMONDI. 3 vols. Paris, 1837.

[2] Viz.:--

In Ireland, 2,300,000 ... England, 1,500,000 ... Scotland, 200,000 ---------- 4,000,000

just a seventh of the whole inhabitants, who are now about 28,000,000.

[3] Committals for serious crime, in--

Population of Great England. Scotland. Ireland. Total. Britain and Ireland.

1805, 4,605 89 3,600 8,284 15,800,000 1819, 14,254 1,380 13,251 28,885 20,600,000 1842, 31,369 3,884 21,352 56,605 27,300,000

--PORTER'S _Parl. Tables and Prog. of the Nation_, iii. 172, 227.

From this table it appears, that from 1805 to 1842 the population of the empire has advanced from 158 to 273--that is, increased about 70 _per cent_; while serious crime has increased from 8 to 56--that is, 700 per cent. Crime, therefore, has augmented ten times as fast as the number of the people.

[4] From [Greek: chrema]--"money, riches."

[5] NICOLAI, _dell' Agro Romano_, iii. 167-171. SISMONDI'S _Etudes Sociales_, ii. 46.

[6] _Ibid_, iii. 153. _Ib._, ii. 44. This part of Sismondi's work, which will be found Vol. ii, pp. 1-74, is highly interesting. We may perhaps, at a future period, give a detached account of it, under the title of "The Campagna of Rome."

[7] The canal by which the waters of the river Guautitlan are carried through the mountains into the valley of Tula.

[8] The Mexican Ceres, goddess of maize.

[9] Tatli is an Aztec word, signifying father.

[10] Monkish legend.

[11] The dry season.

[12] The best pulque is that of Tacotitlan. Frijolos are a species of bean which grows in great perfection in the Chinampas, or swimming gardens upon the lake of Chalco.

[13] Tenochtitlan is the ancient name of the valley of Mexico. It is here used to designate the capital city.

[14] The _pique_ or _nigua_ is a small but exceedingly noxious insect that abounds in some parts of Mexico, especially in the low grounds of Vera Cruz and Acapulco. It bores holes in the skin and lays its eggs there, causing a violent irritation and sometimes dangerous sores.

[15] A term used in mining operations. A rich vein of silver, or, generally, success in mining.

[16] In Mexican houses of the more opulent class, a woman-servant is kept for the sole purpose of preparing and baking the tortillas or maize cakes. She is called a tortillera.

[17] _Que se tenga por blanco._ Let him consider himself white. The usual form of the emancipation certificates which the Mexican Audiencia was accustomed to sell at high prices to the coloured races. These certificates were originally confined to the quadroons and quinteroons, and other castes that had only a small admixture of Indian blood.

[18] To dine with St Antonio--on bread and water.

[19] La Virgen de los Remedios was the especial patroness of the Spaniards in Mexico. Her picture was found by one of Cortes' soldiers, and she proved herself on various occasions a warm partisan of the Spaniards. During the fight of Otumba, she was seen to hover over the Spanish troops and scatter dust in the eyes of the Indians. In other battles she also fought against the Mexicans. The Spaniards, out of gratitude, built her a chapel. Suddenly, however, to their exceeding sorrow, her portrait disappeared. Half a year elapsed, and then an Indian, in stripping an aloe plant, found the picture between leaf and stem. It was carried in triumph, and so grateful did the Virgin show herself for this attention, that she sent an abundant rain, which happened just then to be greatly needed. In consideration of the innumerable miracles she had wrought in their favour, the Spaniards chose her for their patroness, and gave her the command of their armies. She struggled valiantly against the Virgin of Guadalupe, whom the Mexicans had elected to be their leader.

The original and miraculously discovered picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe is preserved in her magnificent church, two leagues from Mexico. It is on coarse bast, canvass made up of the fibres of the agave, but in a magnificent frame, and was found soon after the conquest of Mexico on a barren hill, by an Indian whom strains of heavenly music attracted thither. The Indian related the circumstance to the archbishop, who refused to credit it; whereupon the discoverer repaired to the hill a second time, and saw the harmonious picture lying amongst a heap of roses. It spoke to him, and commanded him to return to the archbishop, which he did, and now found him as eager to believe as he had before been incredulous. The prelate greeted the picture with the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe; a chapel was built, and this Virgin was finally promoted to be patroness of Mexico. Her complexion being of a brown colour, she was considered to watch more particularly over the aborigines.

When Hidalgo, after raising the standard of revolt, was excommunicated by the archbishop, and in danger of being abandoned by his followers, he had the fortunate idea of placing himself and his army under the guardianship of the Virgin of Guadalupe. An enormous banner was got ready, with a painting of that Virgin upon it; she was declared field-marshal and general-in-chief, pay allotted, and obedience sworn to her. She held her appointment for fourteen years--till 1824.

[20] White and blue were the colours of the ancient Mexicans and of the patriots. The Spaniards adopted them for the clothing of their executioners.

[21] The blue cloak was worn by the nobility, the brown by the lower and middling classes in Spain and Mexico.

[22] _Curly_--diminutive of Cornelius.

[23] The commencement of a common Irish benediction, _God and Mary and St Patrick be with (or bless) you!_

[24] A man concealing himself on arrest for debt is, in Ireland, familiarly said to be _on his keeping_, probably from his keeping or confining himself to the house when there is danger of the writ being executed.

[25] Abbrev. for Larry or Laurence.

[26] The length of a spade's-handle of ground. _Over a man's head_--i.e.--out-bidding the tenant in possession, by offering generally a larger rent for the land out of which he is about to be ejected.

[27] _Spell_--very short space of time, as long as it would take to spell a word.

[28] An achievement similar to that here described actually took place about the same period nearly on the same spot. It was planned and executed by two persons living at a town mentioned in the tale, and terminated in the instant death of the unlucky highwayman, whose body they placed in their vehicle, and brought back with them in an hour or two from the time they set out. In the present day, such a deed (thus premeditated) would be deservedly termed a rash and cruel act--the lawless and unprotected state of that country, however, at the time, led it to be considered--we believe--a laudable one.

[29] _Revelations of Spain._ By an ENGLISH RESIDENT.

[30] The Monk, too, has this characteristic, which is of dubious exposition. Tyrwhitt thinks that the meaning _may be_--"Eyes sunk deep in the head." Certainly a feature giving force and distinction to the physiognomy has been intended.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

The following misprints have been corrected: "on" corrected to "or" (page 537) "und" corrected to "and" (page 566) "sevesal" corrected to "several" (page 580) "Tyrrell's" standardized to "Tyrrel's" (page 587) "Tyrrell" standardized to "Tyrrel" (page 582) "would'nt" corrected to "wouldn't" (page 585) "ununhonoured" corrected to "unhonoured" (page 586) "Tyrell" standardized to "Tyrrel" (page 587) "hir" corrected to "his" (page 589) "aparment" corrected to "apartment" (page 590) "O'Connel" corrected to "O'Connell" (page 651) "n" corrected to "in" (page 654)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained from the original text.