CHAPTER LXV.

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.

Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, and, at certain periods of my life, a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,--wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books.--Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man's nature, which calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action,--yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey, have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the conqueror's aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child!--Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy--tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure, had left behind them seeds long latent--seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil--but that my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing-house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study,--lively observation, and petulant ambition, broke forth from the lush foliage of romance--that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it had buried,--ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler:--

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow."

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined routine,--how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful; but, now that my return to the University must be attended with positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father's name, I had easily obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term, and pursue my studies at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans, and bring round--how shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world--very hard! But the most painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a beloved home.

How--ah, how, indeed! "No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home."

Home!--the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress, disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favourite hilltop, and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear my mother's voice singing low, as she sits at work by her open casement. How--ah, how, indeed!

ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING.[9]

[9] _Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting._ Preceded by a General Introduction, with Translations, Prefaces, and Notes. By MRS MERRIFIELD. 2 vols.

We are beginning to find out that the "dark ages" were not so utterly dark as they have been represented. We ascertain that there was not that universal blight upon the human mind which it has been the practice of historians to contrast with the flourishing condition of their own times. Nay, if we are now to take that measure which those historians adopted, we should estimate their own era with as disparaging a comparison with the present. But the inventions of our own days--the great advance of arts and sciences--so far from having a tendency to depreciate, throw a light upon, and acknowledge the value of, those of the middle ages. The appreciation is becoming general. We are old enough to remember the time when it was thought of little moment to block up with low unseemly edifices, or mutilate for any purpose, those amazing works of mediæval genius, our Gothic religious structures. We need but refer to the dates on the mural deformities in most of our old churches and cathedrals. Who, that will turn his eye in disgust from such monstrosities of taste, to the decorations they have misplaced and mutilated, and to the general aspect, of an indestructible character, of our minsters, will not rather ask, which were the dark ages--those of the builders and founders, or those of the obliterators and defilers? It is astonishing that such wondrous magnificence should ever have been viewed with indifference, and still more astonishing that disfigurement and desecration should have been suffered; yet men thought themselves wise in those days, and learned, and ingenious. And so they were; but in respect of arts they were dark enough--and the spirit of Puritanism was indeed a blight infecting that darkness; and the effects of that blight have not yet passed away. It may appear strange that, after a long period of worse than neglect, we not only appreciate, but such is our admiration of those works of past genius, that we imitate them, and study them for a discovery of the canons of the art which we think we cannot with impunity set aside. We here speak of those large and conspicuous monuments of the mind of the middle ages, but the increasing admiration leads to discoveries of yet more hidden treasures. The genius that designed the structures was as busily and as devotionally employed in every kind of decoration; and with a surprising unity of feeling; and as if with one sole object, to carry out the new Christian principle--to make significant a "beauty of holiness" in all outward things, that men might look to with an awe and reverence--and learn. The sanctity of that one religious art--architecture--demanded that nothing without or within should be left "common" or "unclean," but that in the whole and minutest parts this precept should be legible and manifest--"Do all to the glory of God." All art was significant of the religion for which all art, all science was pursued. The workers of those days laboured with a loving and pious toil, and lifted up their works to an unseen and all-seeing eye, and not to the applause of men; for who was there to value, or to understand, even when in some degree they felt the influence of the skill which designed and executed such infinite variety of parts, to the manifestation of one great purpose?

We must no longer speak of the middle ages as a period of universal intellectual darkness. If it were so, it would be a miracle, contrary to the intention of miracle; and the thought has in it a kind of blasphemy, which would weaken the sustaining arm of Providence, and imply an unholy rest. We do not believe in the possibility of the human race universally retrograding. We trust that there is always something doing for the future as well as for the present; something for progression, neither acceptable nor perceived by the present generation--from whose sight it is, as it were, hidden--buried as seed in the earth, to spring up in its proper abundance, and in its due time. We want a history of the human mind, sifted from the large doings--from events which fascinate us to read of, born as we are to be active, taking interest in things of a bold violence, that have really benefited the world but little, at least in the sense in which we have accepted them. The rise of one nation, the subjugation of another; dynasties, the dominion of the sword--these are the themes of histories. But in reality all these historical actions, viewed for their own purpose, are of little value; while out of all the turbulence an unintended good has been the result. There has been throughout some quiet and unobserved work going on, whose influence, felt more and more by degrees, has at length become predominant, showing that the stirring events and characters which had figured the scenes and amused spectators, were but the underplots and subordinate _personæ_ of a greater and more serious drama. Since the overthrow of heathenism, the world's drama, still going on, is the development of Christianity; and doubtless even now, however sometimes with a seeming contrary action, every invention, every extension of knowledge--all arts, all sciences, are working to that end. It is strange, but true, that our very wars have furthered civilisation. The Crusades, worthless and fruitless as regards their ostensible object, have ameliorated the condition and softened the manners of our own and other nations.

In the fall of heathenism, fell the arts of heathenism; not, indeed, to be entirely obliterated--not for ever, but for a time. Their continuance would have been one of imitation: such imitation would have little suited the new condition of mankind; they were therefore removed, and hidden for awhile, that the new principle should develop itself unshackled. The arts had to arise from, and to be rebuilt upon, this new principle: all in them that would have interfered with this great purpose was allowed to be set aside, to be resumed only in after times, when that new principle should be safely and permanently established. It was only by degrees that the old buried art showed itself, and that the new was permitted to resume some of the old perfection. It may be that even yet the two streams, from such dissimilar sources, have not, in their fulness and plenitude, united: the characteristic beauty which they bear is of body and of soul; but they bear them separately, severally. What will the meeting of the waters be? and may we yet hope to see it? If it was required that there should be a kind of submerged world of heathenism, the germs of the true and beautiful would not necessarily perish. The church was, in fact, the ark of safety, to which all that intellect had effected, all arts, all sciences, all learning, fled for refuge. And as was the ark among the dark waters, so was the church and the treasures it bore providentially preserved amid the storms without that darkened and howled around it. What heathenism was to the middle ages, in respect of the hidden treasures, the middle ages are or have been to us. Their arts, their sciences, in their real beauty, have been hidden; they have had, indeed, invisible but effective virtues--the darkness, the blindness, has been ours. We have been doing the work of our age, and are now discovering the good that was in theirs, and how much we are indebted to them for our own advancement. Let us imagine for a moment all that was then done obliterated, never to have been done, we should now have to do the work of the so-called "dark ages." It would be impossible to start up what we are without them. As we reflect, their works present themselves to us in every direction. Look where we will, we shall see that the church has been the school of mankind, in which all knowledge was preserved, and from which new sources of knowledge have arisen. She was the salt of the earth, to rescue it from rankness. The germ of life was in her in the winter of the times. When the wars of the Roses would have made our England a howling wilderness, there were places and persons unprofaned and respected by the murderer, the ravisher, the spoiler. When the nobles, the great barons throughout Europe, were little better than plunderers, and robbers even on the highway--Robin Hoods, without that outlaw's fabulous virtue and honest humanity--what was then doing within the walls of convents and monasteries? What were then the monks about? Embodying laws of peace, and, with a faith in the future improvement of mankind, cultivating sciences; planning and building up in idea new society, foreseeing its wants, and for its sake pursuing the useful arts; inventing, contriving, constructing, and decorating all, and preparing even the outward face of the world, by their wondrous structures, their practical application of their knowledge, more worthily to receive a people whom it was their hope, their faith, to bring out of a state of turbulence into peace. So far as the church was concerned in governments, it is astonishing how, when the body of the state was mutilated and dislocated, she kept the heart sound; so that where it might seem tyranny would have overwhelmed all, she made, and she preserved those wholesome laws to which we now owe our liberty and every social advancement. But it is in the light of the arts and sciences our present purpose directs us to view their doings. Let us take one fact--walk the streets of even our inferior provincial towns, see not only the comforts which, in their dwellings, surround the inhabitants, but the magnificence of the shops with their glass fronts. Whence are they? The first skill, the first invention, arose from the study of ecclesiastics, and was practised by cloistered monks. Monastic institutions grew out of the church; we speak of them as one. It would not be very difficult, in fact, to trace every useful invention, in its first principle, to the same source. But with a great portion of mankind it would not be pleasing so to trace their means of enjoyment. They have been habituated to think, or at least to feel, otherwise. History has been too often written by men either averse to religion itself, or inimical to churchmen. History, such as it has been put into the hands of children, for the rudiments of their education, has taught them to lisp falsehoods against the church, the priesthood. The "rapacity" of churchmen is an early lesson. Nor can we wonder if men so educated grow up with a prejudice, and, when they begin to, scramble themselves for what they can get in the world's active concerns, and know something of their own natures, are little inclined to cast the film from their eyes, and more fairly to unravel the mysteries of historical events. Were they in candour to make the attempt, they would see rapacity elsewhere; and that, in times more irreverent than the middle ages, the churchmen have not been the plunderers, but the plundered. The church has been the nurse, of art, of knowledge, of science. Let those who are accustomed to see light but a little way beyond them, and to think all a blank darkness out of the illumination of their own day, consider how they have often seen, in many a dark and stormy night, little lights shining through a great distance, and hailed them as notices of a warm and living virtue of domestic and industrial peace; and then let them see, if they will have it that the middle ages were so dark, the similitude; when the light in many a monastic cell shone brightly upon the depth of that night, and dotted the general gloom with as living a light; when monks, when churchmen, were making plans for the minsters that we now gaze at with so much astonishment--were transcribing, were illuminating works of sacred use, were registering their discoveries in art, their "secreti"--and at the same time, were not unobservant of the highest office to watch and keep alive in their own and others' hearts the sacred fire, which still we trust burns, and will burn more and more, sending forth its light into surrounding darkness. We would speak of a general character, as we from our hearts believe it to be the true one--not asserting that there were no instances, as examples from which hostile writers might draw plausible inferences to justify their prejudice. The fairest spots are overshadowed by the passing clouds of a general storm, though there may yet be lights of safety in many a dwelling. The history of the arts is the history of civilisation, and these arts were preserved or originated in monastic institutions. If the monks were legislators, were physicians, were architects, painters, sculptors, it was because all the learning of the age was centered in them. "Neither Frederic Barbarossa, John, king of Bavaria, nor Philip the Hardy of France, could read; nor could Theodoric or Charlemagne write. Of the barons whose names are affixed to Magna Charta, very few could write."

We suspect that Mrs Merrifield has fallen into a common error, propagated by historians such as Robertson, with regard to this ignorance of letters. It was not only "usual for persons who could not write to make the sign of the cross, in confirmation of a charter," but for those who could. If a little more had been accurately ascertained of the feelings and manners of the periods in question, it would have been seen that the signature of the cross, instead of the name, was more according to the dignity of the signing person and the sanctity of the act--in fact, a better security for the full performance of the contract. We are not quite sure that "pro ignoratione literarum" implies so much as an inability to write a name; for, writing being then not the kind of clerkship which it now is, but in documents of moment, especially an artistic affair, it may not be very wonderful if "persons of the highest rank" were unable to compete with the practised hands, and were unwilling to show, and to the deterioration of the outward beauty of the documents, their inferiority in caligraphy. But, after all, the "innumerable proofs," between the eight and twelfth centuries, amount only to four.

That of Tassilo duke of Bavaria, by its wording, may express the ornamental character, "Quod manu propriâ, ut potui, characteres chirographe inchoando depinxi coram judicibus atque optimatibus meis." If, however, this Duke of Bavaria was so poor a scribe, he was at least the founder of a convent that made full amends for his deficiency--one of whose nuns, Diemudis, was the most indefatigable transcriber of any age. An amazing list of her caligraphic handicraft is extant, almost incredible, if we did not know the patient zeal of those days of fervent piety. Those who are desirous to obtain better information than is commonly received on the subject of the learning, as well as the piety of the middle ages, will be amply repaid by consulting Mr Maitland's "Dark Ages," in which the historians are refuted to their shame, and the charge of ignorance is most fairly retorted. In his very interesting volume, this list of Diemudis may be seen. The works copied are indeed religious works, which some of our historians may have looked upon with a prejudice, and as proofs of the darkness of the times. Mr Maitland's book will undeceive any who are of that opinion, containing, as it does, so many proofs, in original letters and discourses, of erudition, perfect acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures, of eloquence and intellectual acuteness. Whatever books these "ignorant" monks and ecclesiastics possessed, there is one invention of a time included by most censurers of the "dark ages" in that invidious term, the absence of which would have deprived this "enlightened" age of half the books it possesses, of half the knowledge of the "reading public," and of we know not how many other inventions to which it may have been the unacknowledged parent: we are grateful enough to acknowledge that, without it, we should not be now writing these remarks, and should certainly lose many readers--the invention of spectacles. There are notices of them in A. D. 1299. It is said on a monument in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, at Florence, that Salvino degli Armati, who died in 1317, invented them. "Indeed P. Marahese attributes the invention of spectacles to Padre Alesandro," (a Dominican and miniature painter;) "but the memorial of him in the Chronicle of St Katherine, at Pisa, proves that he had seen spectacles made before he made them himself; and that, with a cheerful and willing heart, he communicated all he knew."

"The proof," says Mrs Merrifield, that Europe is indebted to religious communities for the preservation of the arts during the dark ages, rests on the fact that the most ancient examples of Christian art consist of the remains of mural pictures in churches, of illuminations in sacred books, and of vessels for the use of the church and the altar, and on the absence of all similar decorations on buildings and utensils devoted to secular uses during the same period--to which may be added, that many of the early treatises on painting were the work of ecclesiastics, as well as the paintings themselves. A similar remark may be made with regard to architecture, many of the earliest professors of which were monks." We believe Mrs Merrifield here is short of the fact; and that, where the monks were not the builders, they were in almost all instances the designers. Their architecture, indeed, and all that pertained to it, was a Christian book to teach; their designs contained Christian lessons, which the knowledge of ecclesiastics could alone supply. "Painting was essentially a religious occupation; the early professors of the art believed that they had an especial mission to make known the works and miracles of God to the common people who were unacquainted with letters:--'Agli uomini grossi che non sanno lettere.' Actuated by this sentiment, it is not surprising that so many of the Italian painters should have been members of monastic establishments. It has been observed that the different religious orders selected some particular branch of the art, which they practised with great success in the convents of their respective orders. Thus the Gesuati and Umiliati attached themselves to painting on glass and architecture, the Olivetani to tarsia work, the Benedictines and Camaldolites to painting generally; and the monks of Monte Casino to miniature painting; while the Dominicans appear to have practised all the various branches of the fine arts, (with the exception of mosaic,) and to have produced artists who excelled in each." Their devotion to the arts was, indeed, a religious devotion; their treatises commence with most earnest prayers, and solemn dedication of themselves and their works to the Holy Trinity; and not unfrequently with a long exordium, introducing the creation and fall of man, as we see in the prefaces of Theophilus and Cennino Cennini.

Whilst the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries saw the erection of magnificent cathedrals, (our own York, Salisbury, and Westminster were built in the thirteenth,) the manners of the people were yet rude: one plate served for man and wife; there were no wooden-handled knives; a house did not contain more than two drinking-cups. There were neither wax nor tallow candles; clothes were of leather, unlined. Had the middle and lower classes, in our day, no better dwellings than were the houses belonging to those conditions so late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we dare not to conjecture how much worse would be their moral condition. "In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the houses of the English, of the middle and lower classes, consisted in general of a ground-floor only, divided into two apartments--namely a hall, into which the principal door opened, and which was their room for cooking, eating, and receiving visitors; and a chamber adjoining the hall, and opening out of it, which was the private apartment of the females of the family, and the bed-room at night. The greater part of the houses in London were built after this plan." The more wealthy classes were not very much better lodged; the principal difference, being an upper floor, the access to which was by a flight of steps outside. As arts advanced, manners refined: the Crusades had their domestic as well as warlike effects; they induced a taste for dress, and general luxury; and the Saracens were ready examples for imitation. It was then, and when commercial enterprise enriched a few cities, the arts of the monks began to be appreciated; but they did not readily assume a secular character--painting and other decorations were in design either religious, or historical with a religious reference or moral. It is curious that clocks were not found in convents after they had been among the articles of domestic furniture in castles and palaces. Perhaps, this may be an instance of a devotional spirit of the monks, who may have thought it an impiety to relax the discipline of reckoning time by the repetition of Ave Marias, Paternosters and Misereres. They were, however, generally adopted about the latter half of the fifteenth century.

To those who are at all advanced in life, and who must themselves remember a very different state of society from the present, and the introduction of our present luxuries and comforts into houses, and alteration of habits and manners, it must seem but a step backwards into comparative barbarism. A very few centuries take us back to paper windows; and even they were removable as furniture, not attached to the house. We have ourselves heard an old person say, that he remembered the time when there were only two carriages kept in a city, the second in importance in England--who now in that city would task himself to count the number? Nor was our own country singular in the deficiencies of the luxuries of life. The changes were general and simultaneous; and this is extraordinary, that the revival of arts and literature was not confined to one country or one place, but arose as it were from one general impulse, and simultaneously, among people under varieties of climate, circumstances, and manners.

It is time we should say something of the book which has led us to make this somewhat long introduction. It consists of two volumes, containing original treatises, dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, on the arts of painting in oil, miniature, mosaic, and on glass; of gilding, dyeing, the preparation of colours and of artificial gems, by Mrs Merrifield, whose valuable translation of Cennino Cennini has been reviewed in the pages of Maga. Mrs Merrifield is likewise the authoress of an excellent little volume on fresco painting, very opportunely published. The present work is the result of a commission from the Government to proceed to Italy, to collect MSS., and every possible information respecting the processes and methods of oil-painting adopted by the Italians. As the Original Treatises discovered, and now published, contain much other matter besides that which relates to painting in oil, the work is more comprehensive than the first purpose of the commission would have made it. The introduction, which occupies nearly two-thirds of the first volume, is a very able performance; in it is a comprehensive view of the history of the fine arts. The conclusions drawn from the documents, the result in detail of her search and labours, are so clearly laid before the reader, with ample proofs of each particular fact and inference, as greatly to facilitate the reader in his inquiry into the documents themselves. He will find that Mrs Merrifield, by her arrangement of the parts, and bringing them to bear upon her purpose, has saved him that trouble which the nature of the work would otherwise have necessitated. Besides that her introduction contains a separate and complete treatise on each branch of art, the preliminary observations, heading each document, render its contents most tangible. At the end of the second volume is an index, which in a work of this kind it is most desirable to possess--the want of which in Mr Eastlake's excellent _Materials for a History of Oil-painting_ we have often had occasion to regret; and we do hope that, in his forthcoming work on the Italian practice, he will make amends for this defect by an index which will embrace the contents of the "Materials." We have ourselves spent much time, that might have been saved by an index, in turning over the pages for passages to which we wished to refer, for that work is one strictly of reference, although interesting in the first reading.

The documents consist of the following MSS.--the manuscripts of Jehan Le Begue, of St Audemar, of Eraclius, of Alcherius, in the first volume. In the second--the Bolognese, Marciana, Paduan, Volpato, and Brussels manuscripts; extracts from all original manuscript by Sig. Gio. O'Kelly Edwards; extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro Edwards, in the academy of fine arts at Venice, on the propriety of restoring the public pictures.

As these several MSS. open to us new sources of information, most important in establishing certain facts, from whence the art of painting among us may enter upon great and important changes, it may not be altogether unprofitable to give some short account of them in their order.

The manuscript of Jehan Le Begue, "a licentiate in the law, and notary of the masters of the mint in Paris," was composed by him in the year 1431, in his sixty-third year. It is, however, professedly a compilation from works of Jehan Alcherius, or Alcerius, of whom little is known, nor is it certain that he was a painter. His work probably preceded Le Begue's about twenty years. Alcherius himself was a collector of recipes, from various sources, during thirty years, and twenty years afterwards his MSS. came into the hands of Le Begue.

The manuscript of Petrus de St Audemar, according to Mr Eastlake, may be of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. He is supposed to have been a native of France, (Pierre de St Omer.) Some of the recipes are found in the "Clavicula," attributed to the twelfth century; but this is no argument against the date, for it was at all times the practice to make selections from former "secreti."

The manuscripts of Eraclius consist of three books--the first two metrical, the third in prose. Nothing is known of the author. "Two ancient copies only of the MS. of Eraclius have been hitherto discovered, and it is somewhat singular that both are bound up with the MSS. of Theophilus." It is not easy to fix a date to Eraclius. Mrs Merrifield thinks "that the metrical parts only constituted the Treatise '_de coloribus et artibus Romanorum_' of Eraclius, and that this part is more ancient than a great part of the third book."

Manuscripts of Alcherius.--These are of two dates, 1398, and again corrected 1411, after his return from Bologna, "according to further information, which he subsequently received by means of several authentic books treating of such subjects, and otherwise." These are the Le Begue manuscripts.

"The Bolognese manuscript is of the fifteenth century. It is a small volume in duodecimo on cotton paper, and is preserved in the library of the R. R. Canonici Regolari, in the convent of St Salvatore in Bologna." There is no name of the author--it is written sometimes "in Italianised Latin, and sometimes Italian, with a mixture of Latin words, as was usual at that period." It has no precise date. It is an interesting notice of all the decorative arts practised in Bologna at that period, and contains a systematically arranged collection of recipes.

The Marciana manuscript is of the sixteenth century, in the library of St Marco at Venice. The recipes are in the Tuscan dialect, and some are but little known. They appear to have been compiled for the use of a convent, by some monk or lay brother, who, in his capacity of physician to the infirmary, prepared both medicaments, varnishes, and pigments. Names of artists are mentioned which show that the author lived at the beginning or middle of the sixteenth century.

The Paduan manuscript, Mrs Merrifield asserts to be Venetian. It is in quarto, on paper, without date; but the handwriting is of the seventeenth century. It shows a manifest deviation from the practice established in the Marciana MS.--the introduction of spirit of turpentine as a diluent, and mastic varnish, instead of the hard varnishes of amber and sandarac. In it we find that "oil-paintings had begun to suffer from the effects of age; and that they required, or it was believed that they required, to be washed with some corrosive liquid, and to be revarnished. Directions, or rather recipes, for both these processes are given." Some of the recipes are in Latin, supposed "secreti," and therefore given in that language.

The Volpato manuscript.--The author, a painter, Giovanni Baptista Volpato, of Bassano, was born 1633--a pupil of Novelli, who had been a pupil of Tintoretto. A work from a MS. of Volpato was announced for publication at Vicenza in 1685, but it is believed that it has not been published. The MS. now first brought to light by Mrs Merrifield was lent to her, with permission to copy, by Sig. Basseggio, librarian and president of the Athenæum of Bassano. There is good reason to believe that it was written during the latter end of seventeenth, or beginning of eighteenth century.

The Brussels manuscript.--This now published is a portion of a MS. preserved in a public library of Brussels, written by Pierre Le Brun, contemporary with the Caracci and Rubens; its date is 1635.

Sig. Edwards's manuscript is written by the son of Sig. Pietro Edwards, who was employed by the Venetian and Austrian governments in the restoration of the pictures in Venice. He died in 1821. His son, Sig. O'Kelly Edwards, wrote an account of the method of restoration, with interesting matters respecting the public pictures generally. Mrs Merrifield has taken extracts, the work not being permitted to be published without the permission of the Academy of Venice, which was refused.

There follow also extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro Edwards to the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, on the propriety of restoring the public pictures.

Besides these documentary papers, Mrs Merrifield extended her inquiries among the best modern painters, copiers, and restorers, and has recorded their opinions: we cannot call them more than opinions, for there is no certain conclusion, on any one point of inquiry, to be drawn from her conferences with these persons. They give, indeed, their information, such as it is, clearly and decidedly enough, but they are at disagreement with each other. It is creditable to foreign artists to add, that only in one instance was any reluctance shown to be communicative.

It will have been observed that these documents go back far enough in time, and down to a sufficiently late date; it should be presumed, therefore, that in them will be found every particular of practice from the change of method, from the tempera to painting in oil--such as it was after "the discovery" of Van Eyck. But if we are to conclude that the discovery of Van Eyck is actually contained in these documentary "secreti" it must be admitted to have been rather a discovery of application than of material.

There is no positive distinct statement to the effect that this and this did Van Eyck, or where is the identical recipe which he introduced into Italy. This is perhaps no proof, nor cause of reasonable conjecture, that the materials of his method are not set forth in some of these MS.,--on the contrary, it may have been the cause of their not being set down as Van Eyck's, upon the assumption that a new practice and application only was introduced. Indeed it will be scarcely thought, now that so much has been brought to light, that any vehicle for pigments has been kept back by the several writers of the MSS. If it then be asked what is the conclusion to be drawn--what the really valuable result of these commissions, and the indefatigable research of such able persons as Mr Eastlake, Mr Hendrie, and Mrs Merrifield--it may be answered that they all conclude in one and the same view--that the practice of the best masters of the best time consisted in the use of olio-resinous varnishes. We should have said _an_ olio-resinous varnish, and that amber--were it not for the proof that sandarac and amber were chiefly the _two_ substances--that they were frequently synonymous the one for the other, and that they were not unfrequently both used together. Nor can it be denied that there were occasionally other additions. Mr Eastlake places great confidence in the _olio d'abezzo_, which, not without a fair show of evidence, he concludes (and we think in this Mrs Merrifield agrees with him) to have been the varnish used by Correggio, according to Armenini. But we are nowhere as yet assured that it was used by Correggio as a vehicle.

If we remember rightly, there is a passage in Mr Eastlake's book which has a tendency to alarm our modern painters, and perhaps make some abstain from the use of the old olio-resinous medium. He speaks somewhere of its liability to crack, to come away in pieces, but after a long lapse of time. We could have wished he had been more explicit on this point: it would have been well to have shown the difference, if there be any, as we feel somewhat confident there must be, between the effect of olio-resinous varnishes used over the surface of a picture, and as mixed with the colours in the painting. If we are not mistaken, he refers to some of the old tempera paintings before Van Eyck's time, covered with the varnish, and particularly to those of the old Byzantine school. We do not ourselves remember to have ever seen on old pictures such changes, though we have seen them to a lamentable and obliterative degree on pictures painted within the last fifty years in oil and mastic varnish. We throw out these observations because it may attract the notice of Mr Eastlake, before his long-expected volume on the Italian practice comes from the press. It may be doubtful if Van Eyck had himself, at first, that entire confidence in his materials which time has shown they deserved--for parts of his most elaborate and famous picture were put in in distemper and varnished over--yet we are led to believe that the peculiar effect of his medium was the preservation of colours in their original purity. It should be mentioned, also, that one improvement supposed to have been introduced by Van Eyck, or rather the Van Eycks, was the dryer--the substitution of white copperas for lead: and this appears to have been adopted from chemical knowledge, it having been shown that, whereas oils take up the lead, no portion of the copperas becomes incorporated with the oils, that substance only facilitating the absorption of oxygen.

Although these MS. treatises do not go farther back than the twelfth century, assuming that to be the date of the one by Eraclius, yet there is reason to suppose that the earliest treatises are compilations of the recipes, the _secreti_, of still earlier ages. They become thus more interesting as links which, though broken here and there, indicate the character of the chain in the history of arts, which may be still left to complete without any material deviation from the original pattern. That character was undoubtedly religious, but it is not true that every other show of art was held in contempt, as some maintain. The goldsmith, the jeweller, the workers in glass and all kinds of metal, whose recipes may be found in these volumes of Mrs Merrifield, showed as much skill, (and a far better taste in design) somewhat out of the line of religious ornament, as any of the last two centuries. Even in the ninth century, among the gifts of the King of Mercia to a monastery, we find a golden curtain, on which is wrought the taking of Troy, and a gilded cup which is chased over all the outside with savage vine-dressers, fighting with serpents. We can imagine it a work of which a Benvenuto Cellini need not have been ashamed.

A woodcut in page xxx. of the introduction, and which Mrs Merrifield has adopted to ornament the cover, represents "a writer of the fifteenth century." It is taken from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque at Paris. It is not only curious as showing what an important and laborious art writing was in those days, and what machinery it required, but for the religious mark which designates the character of the writing--in the corner is a painting of the crucifixion. Mrs Merrifield had told us, that, in a catalogue of the sale of "furniture of Contarini, the rich Venetian trader, who resided at St Botolph's in London in 1481, or in that of a nobleman in 1572," neither looking-glasses nor chairs are mentioned! Yet in this woodcut there is not only a chair, but exactly the one which has been recently reintroduced in modern furnishing. Surely the date 1572 would throw some excuse upon that of 1481--and offer a fair conjecture that there must have been some peculiar cause for the omission. We must have sufficient proof of chairs at the later date. Does the writer in this cut sit alone?--the room is not even indicated--or was he one of many sitting together in the Scriptorium? Mr Maitland thinks that, in later times, the Scriptorium was a small cell, that would only hold one person--not so in earlier times. We quote a passage from his book upon the subject: "But the Scriptorium of earlier times was obviously an apartment capable of containing many persons; and in which many persons did, in fact, work together in a very business-like manner, at the transcription of books. The first of these points is implied in a very curious document, which is one of the very few extant specimens of French Visigothic MS. in uncial characters, and belongs to the eighth century. It is a short form of consecration, or benediction, barbarously entitled '_Orationem in Scripturis_,' and is to the following effect, 'Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this Scriptorium of thy servants, and all that dwell therein, that, whatsoever sacred writings shall be here read or written by them, they may receive with understanding, and bring the same to good effect, through our Lord,'" &c. We can imagine that we see the impress of this prayer in the representation, in the corner of the woodcut of which we have been speaking. Mrs Merrifield enumerates to a large extent the works of such writers: many of them must have been extremely beautiful. "The choral books belonging to the cathedral of Ferrara are thirty in number, twenty-two of which are twenty-six inches long, by eighteen in breadth, and the remaining eight smaller. They were begun in 1477, and completed in 1533. The most interesting of these books, for the beauty of the characters, as well as for the miniatures, were executed by Jacopo Filippo d'Argenta, Frate Evangelista da Reggio, a Franciscan, Andrea delle Veze, Giovanni Vendramin of Padua, and Martino di Georgio da Modena. The parchment on which these books are written is in excellent preservation. It is worthy of remark, that great part of the parchment or vellum for these books was brought from Germany, or at least was manufactured by Germans. There is an entry in the records of the cathedral, for the year 1477, of a sum of money paid to M. Alberto da Lamagna, for 265 skins of vellum; of another sum paid in 1501, for 60 skins, to Piero Iberno, also a German; and to Creste, another German, for 50 skins, furnished by them on account of these books." Caligraphy and miniature-painting were sister arts: so highly were both esteemed, that the right hands of the writer and miniature-painters, who completed the choral books of Ferrara, and those of the monastery degli Angeli in Florence, are preserved in a casket with the utmost veneration. "The best miniature-painter of the tenth century was Godemann, who was chaplain of the Bishop of Winchester, from A.D. 963 to 984, and afterwards Abbot of Thornley. His Benedictional, ornamented with thirty beautiful miniatures, is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. In the eleventh century, schools of painting were formed at Hildesheim and Paderborn, and the art was exercised by ecclesiastics of the higher rank." Francesco dai Libri, so called from his constant employment in illuminating MS., was one of the most eminent _miniatori_ of the fifteenth century. What Vasari says of him is quite delightful, whether it conveys the sentiment of Vasari himself or of Francesco--that, having lived to a great age, "he died contented and happy, because, in addition to the peace of mind which he derived from his own virtues, he left a son who was a better painter than himself." We doubt if this total absence of jealousy is a very general parental virtue. The passage reminds us of the noble-hearted Achilles, whose ghost in the shades below anxiously inquired respecting his son if he excelled in glory, and being answered in the affirmative, stalked away rejoicing greatly. It may not be universally known, that the word miniature is derived from minium, red lead, with which the initial letters were written, or perhaps more commonly painted: hence our Rubrics.

Mosaic painting was for some time the rival of oil-painting. It was much esteemed at Venice, where the damp affected other kinds of painting. It was introduced unquestionably by the Greeks. It afforded work for several centuries in the decoration of the church of St Mark, commencing from the eleventh century.

This department of art was not without its jealousies. The Zuccati were charged by their rivals with having filled up deficiencies in their work with other painting, and though Titian vindicated them, and is supposed to have assisted them in designs, the Venetian government decreed that they should re-execute the work at their own cost, which nevertheless was not done. Mosaic workers did not always work from the designs of others; some, and these not inconsiderable, painters applied themselves to this art. There were great "secreti" in the working in mosaic, which even now may be useful. The most important of these of working in mosaic was that of Agnolo, the son of Taddeo Gaddi, who, in 1346, repaired some of the mosaics executed by Andrea Tafi in the roof of St Giovanni at Florence. He fixed the cubes of the glass so firmly into the ground, with a stucco composed of wax and mastic melted together, that neither the roof nor the vaulting had received any injury from water from the period of its completion until the time of Vasari. May not our slate and mortar system be happily superseded? Mrs Merrifield takes occasion to redeem from his prison, to which, in her preface to the translation of Cennino Cennini, she had condemned, that earnest old man, upon the authority of the subscription from the prison of the Stinche--showing that it was the domicile of the transcriber, not the author. Vasari asserts that Cennino Cennini, to whom the secret of mosaic work was transmitted from Agnolo Gaddi, left a treatise on the subject. No such work has been yet found; but as there are other MSS. of the author, the treatise may be yet forthcoming. There is an anecdote which shows there may be better gold than comes from the mint. Alesso Baldovinetto, who spared no pains to learn the best methods of working in mosaic, learned much of the art from a German traveller to whom he had given a lodging. Thus, having been well informed, he worked with great success. At eighty years of age, feeling the natural infirmities fast approaching, he sought a retreat in the hospital of St Paul. "It is related that, in order to insure himself a better reception, he took with him to his apartments in the hospital a large chest, which was thought to contain money; and, in this belief, the officers of the hospital treated him with the greatest respect and attention. But their disappointment may be imagined, when, on opening the chest, after the decease of the aged artist, they found nothing but drawings on paper, and a small book which taught the art of making the mosaics, (_Pietre del Musaico_) the stucco, and the method of working. At the present time, we should have considered this little book a greater treasure than the money which was so much desired." We here have another delightful passage from Vasari, which will readily be accepted as the old man's excuse. "It was no wonder that they did not find money, for Alesso was so bountiful, that everything he possessed was as much at the service of his friends as if it had been their own." The introductory remarks on mosaic may be well worth the builder's and architect's attention, now that great improvements have been made in the making of glass, and that it is rendered so cheap; whilst duty was according to weight, the great art was to make it as thin as possible, hence the greater nicety and expense in the manufacture. To make thick, strong, or, in the language of mosaic art, cubes of glass for ornamental purposes, and as a preservative from weather, is a desideratum of the present day.

Few people will interest themselves about Tarsia work, of which Vasari speaks slightingly, that it was fittest for those persons who have more patience than skill in design. An art, however, of some antiquity may yet be very commonly seen in the inlaid work of various woods in our Tunbridge ware. Indeed, the art is even now becoming more important in its application to furniture: our fashionable tables are a kind of Tarsia work.

The history of painting on glass is extremely interesting, and has engaged the attention of many writers. France and Germany have taken the lead in this art, particularly the former; less attention has perhaps been paid to its rise in Italy than the subject deserves. The art itself is so exquisitely beautiful, and its application as a religious ornament so impressive, that we rejoice to see its revival. Mrs Merrifield enlarges much upon the subject, and very happily, though her commission to Italy did not send her to a country where the best materials may be collected. Specimens of painted glass in our own country, both as to design and colour, are so admirable--some, indeed, may vie with painting in oil of the best time, with regard to drawing and effect--that we could wish a commission to collect and publish the coloured specimens that are now unknown, excepting to the curious in the art. Glass painting had attained great perfection in France in the eleventh century. It was likewise much cultivated in our own country; the windows of Lincoln cathedral show early specimens of great beauty. Glass windows were introduced into England as early as A.D. 674, by ecclesiastics, for decoration of their churches. In private houses, glass was extremely rare in the middle ages; it was not in common use till the reign of Henry VIII. It was the custom to remove windows as furniture. Before the introduction of glass, thin parchment stretched on frames, and varnished, and not unfrequently painted, protected the interior of the houses from the weather. We have always understood that, for the great improvement in glass-painting, and that which rendered the cinque-cento style so beautiful, we are indebted to John Van Eyck: before his time every variation in colour required a separate piece. The painting on glass, as on canvass, and burning in different tints and on colours on one surface, has been generally considered the discovery of the inventor of oil-painting. Mrs Merrifield rather thinks that at least a portion of this improvement is to be ascribed to Fra Giacomo da Ulmo, who found out that a transparent yellow might be given to the glass by silver--the origin of the invention being the letting fall from his sleeve a silver button into the furnace, which being closed, and the silver fused, a yellow stain had been imparted to the glass. Pottery and glass-making are nearly allied; it would be curious, if there be a fair ground for the supposition that the manufacture of glass was brought from Tyre to Venice. "In the fourteenth century the Venetians had still a colony at Tyre." The Venetian glass, however, was deficient in transparency; hence probably the Venetian practice of using black glass, which, by juxtaposition in small pieces, would certainly tend to give the appearance of greater transparency to the coloured.

We know not if there has been any great advance in the art of gilding, from early times to the present, though that of gold-beating has been brought to far greater perfection. Gold was extensively used at a very early period in all kinds of decoration, and in the fifteenth century was lavishly employed on pictures. Seven thousand leaves of gold were used on the chapel of S. Jacopo de Pistoia. The gold, as well as some of the expensive colours, was commonly provided by the parties for whom pictures were painted. On mural paintings, leaves of tinfoil, covered with a yellow varnish, were substituted for gold. It would be curious to seek how some modern uses are indebted to the publication of old recipes. "In order to economise gold, the old masters had another invention, called 'porporino,' a composition made of quicksilver, tin, and sulphur, which produced a yellow metallic powder, that was employed instead of gold. The Bolognese MS. devotes a whole chapter to this subject. A substance of a similar nature is now in use in England, and is employed as a substitute for gold in coloured woodcuts and chromo-lithographs." Wax was used as a mordant in gilding. Its use as a vehicle in painting has been much discussed; it was known to the ancients as encaustic, and, in another form, has been strongly recommended by a modern painter of great ability, whose works are fair tests of its efficiency; and if we may believe the assertions with regard to the ancient practice of Greek and mediæval painters, there may be little reason to doubt its durability. But as it was certainly known and discarded by the old masters, even before the invention of Van Eyck in oil painting, we should reasonably conclude that it was inferior to other vehicles. There is a picture by Andrea Mantegna at Milan, painted in wax, on which Mrs Merrifield makes the following remarks:--"The picture is very perfect, the colours bright, and the touches sharp. The darks are laid on very thick, but the paint appears to have run into spots or streaks, as if it had been touched with something which had touched the surface. It is said, however, that it has never been repaired, and its authenticity is stated to be undoubted. It is evident that the wax has been used liquid, for if the colours had been fused by the application of heat, the sharpness and precision of touch for which this picture, in common with other paintings of this period, is remarkable, would have been lost and melted down. The vehicle, whatever it was, appeared to me to have been as manageable as that of Van Eyck." Mrs Merrifield refers to Mr Eastlake's _Materials_ for the fullest account of all that pertains to wax-painting. We would refer also to his _Reports_ of the Commission on the Fine Arts for further detail.[10]

[10] In the third Report a recipe is given by Mr Eastlake, as communicated by "Mr John King of Bristol," who is spoken of as a "chemist." The recipe itself, in the Report, is considered an improvement. We wish, however, to correct an error which somewhat disparages the scientific reputation of a deceased friend, whom we greatly esteemed for his many virtues, as well as for his enthusiasm, knowledge, and taste, in all that regarded art. Mr King was not a chemist, but an eminent surgeon of Clifton. Had he been a chemist, his recipe would have been drawn up with greater chemical correctness: it is certainly not _secundum artem chemicam_. We may here state that we have heard from him, that early in life he had received this recipe from an aged ecclesiastic, as the veritable recipe of ancient times.

After some interesting accounts of statue-painting, the propriety of which has been so ably discussed by Mr Eastlake, and a few words on implements used in painting, Mrs Merrifield treats of leather, niello, and dyeing. The first of these leads her to lament the practice of the monks "during the dark ages;" who, to the supposed loss of many classic works, found out that, according to the old proverb, there is "nothing like leather." We would recommend her to become a little more acquainted with the real history of the monks during "the dark ages," their actual habits and manners, rather than trust, as we fear has been the case, to authors who have only misrepresented them. She will find matter even as interesting as the documents discovered respecting their arts and inventions. However there may be cause for lamenting the misuse of parchments which had been written on, and their conversion into waistcoats for warriors, and sandals for monks, there was no need to fit the said sandals on "the sleek and well-fed monks;" for certainly, if they were as described, they would have worn out the fewer, as "sleek and well-fed" means but fat and lazy. It would be hard to find any now who, equally with them, were given to fasting and prayer. Indeed, the very arts which they practised, into which Mrs Merrifield has made research, should, we think, rescue them from the common ill report.

Leather was used for hangings, at first only behind the seats of the owner of the house, subsequently round the room, and stamped and gilt, and ornamented with tinfoil. We doubt if our modern papers, even the "artistic," are an improvement. The old principle in furniture was richness of effect, a depth, a home-warmth both in substance and colour; the modern inferior taste is, or has been recently, for all that is light, gaudy, and flimsy. We should not be sorry to see the revival of leather hangings, as, in point of richness and look of comfort--a great thing in a room--far superior to paper. There is perhaps no very great beauty in niello, nor much cause for regret that it has fallen into disuse; yet, unimportant as it is in itself, it is the parent of the most delightful, the most useful invention--engraving. Nigellum or niello was known to the ancients, and practised during the middle ages: it is only known now by specimens in museums. Yet we think there has been an attempt to revive it in Russia. We have seen a specimen, but it was very coarsely executed.

Dyeing appears, during the middle ages, to have been the trade of the Jews. It is not ascertained at what period it was introduced into England. It is said that, in the reign of Henry III., woollen cloth was worn white, for lack of the art of dyeing--though this is doubted, as, woad having been imported in the time of John, it might be implied that dyeing was known. Before the introduction of printing-blocks, the practice of painting linen cloth intended for wearing-apparel, with devices, flowers, and various ornaments, in imitation of embroidery, was common in England. To what great results has this little dress-vanity led! How much of our commercial prosperity has its very origin in a taste condemned by the serious as frivolous! The love of ornament is an instinct, and they are slanderers of Nature in all her works, and in man's inventive mind, who would insert it in the calendar of deadly sins. There is perhaps another love, the love of profit, of a more ambiguous character: we believe there are not a few who would have made a "drab creation" of this beautiful world, now from their cotton-printing mills sending forth, by millions upon millions of yards, this "frivolous vanity" to the ends of the earth. It may be questioned if Penn's merchandise, as the bales were unpacked, would have passed the custom-house of a white conscience. Have poor Indians been as unscrupulously corrupted as cheated?

By far the greater portion of the introduction takes up the subject of oil-painting, which was the chief object of the commission. We have already spoken of the result, as well as of the little reliance to be placed upon the experience of modern painters and restorers in the country of the old masters. They flatly contradict each other. Even as to method, did Titian paint first with cold colours? One affirms, another denies. There is much evidence that the Venetian painters were more sparing than others in the use of ultramarine. Their principal blue, it appears, was azzurro della Magna, (German blue.) The receipts for making azures are numerous. Blue is the most important of our colours; it is well, therefore, that the attention of our colour-makers should be particularly directed to it. We have often felt sure, on looking at Venetian pictures, that the blues generally were not ultramarine--the beauty of which colour, great as it is, does not bear the mixture with _a body_ of white lead with impunity--it must be used thin. One of the artists consulted said, "The Venetians never used ultramarine, which inclined too much to the violet." Though he is wrong in "_never_," for there is proof to the contrary, in reference to their general practice he may be right, as also for their cause of setting it aside. The very glowing, warm, general tones of the Venetians--of Titian and Giorgione especially--required a _warmer_ blue, if we may be allowed to apply such an epithet--for we are aware that most classifiers of colours say that it is always cold; and we remember the old controversy on the subject, which Gainsborough endeavoured not unsuccessfully to decide, by painting his now celebrated picture, called the "Blue Boy." Contrary to the opinion of many artists, we are inclined to agree with Mr Field, whose chemical knowledge and experience should have great weight, that the modern colour "Prussian blue," if well prepared, is one of much value. It is certainly the most powerful--not, however, to be recommended for the clear azure of a sky. We should be glad to know the opinion of Mr Eastlake with regard to the modern ultramarine, said to be made after an analysis of the real substance. Though it belongs not to his investigation of the old practice, a note upon the subject would be very acceptable. If our blues and our chromes are permanent colours, we have little to regret in the (supposed) loss of many used by the old masters.

It is curious that even colours were purchased of the "speziali,"--the apothecaries. It is well known how much we are indebted to medical science for many of the recipes in art, including those for the purification of oils and the manufacture of varnishes. "Sig. A. told me that, when he was at Venice, he made a point of going to the Piazza San Salvatore, where Titian used to purchase his colours, to see whether there were any "speziali" there still. He found one, and inquired of him if he had any old colours, such as were used by the old painters, and he was shown an orange-coloured pigment, which resembled a colour frequently found on Venetian pictures." We have before us a document of payments so late as 1699, by which it appears that, with us also, the apothecary was the vender of painters' materials. "1699--Rob. Bayley, apothecary--for oil, gold, and colours, £61." This was for painting a high cross. Blackness has sometimes been objected to in the colouring of the greatest of landscape painters, Gaspar Poussin. If the following statement may be relied upon, the cause of this occasional blemish, if it be one, may be conjectured. Sig. A. showed a black mirror, which he said had been used in painting by Bamboccio, (Peter Van Laer,) and that it had been "bequeathed by Bamboccio to Gaspar Poussin; by the latter to some other painter, until it ultimately came into the hands of Sig. A." In pictures of an early time the darks are thick and substantial, the lights thin. This was reversed afterwards, excepting with regard to some dark blue, and other draperies, of which examples may be seen in Correggio. There is a peculiar impasto, however, of the Bolognese school, which seems to have escaped the notice of Mr Eastlake and Mrs Merrifield: it is mostly observable in Guercino. The paint on the flesh, in heads, arms, &c., is frequently greatly raised, as if modelled. We are curious to know something respecting this method--in what way the manipulation is managed.

We cannot credit the accounts given by all whom Mrs Merrifield consulted, that it was Titian's practice to lay by his pictures, after each painting, for months, and even years. This slow process implies a forbearance which can noways be reconciled with the fervour and usual impatience of genius. Without fastening him down to so systematic a necessity, we can easily believe that his pictures were long under his hand, from the repeated glazings so remarkable in his works. Exposure to the sun and air seems to have been universal. It is well known that, a short time after painting, a portion, probably a deleterious portion, of the oil rises to the surface. The atmosphere certainly takes up this, but the exposure must be frequent, for this greasiness will return. We strongly suspect that it is this deleterious exudation which destroys the purity of colours; and would recommend, from a long experience, the washing the surface of pictures, (we have used common sand for the purpose,) as often as any greasiness returns. A time will be ascertained when none recurs; and we think the picture is then pretty secure from any farther change. In this case, a kind of abrasion does what time would in the end do; but, not waiting for time, we often varnish, and leave this deleterious part of the oil to do its mischief. Much stress has been laid on the grinding of colours. The Venetians were not very careful in this matter, excepting in their glazing colours. It is very evident that, for some purposes of effect, they purposely laid on their colours very coarsely ground, and scraped down for granulation. White lead, however, it is admitted, cannot be too finely ground, or too carefully made. It is _the_ pigment that Titian was most solicitous about. There is a letter of his extant, in which he laments the death of the person who manufactured it for him. "The Italians, and especially the Venetians," says Mrs Merrifield, "were extremely careful in the preparation of their white lead, which was generally purified by washing." A recipe of Fra Fortunato of Rovigo, recommends the grinding it with vinegar and washing it, repeating the operation: "You will then have a white lead, which will be as excellent for miniature painting as for painting in oil." With regard to the glazings of Titian, an almost incredible story is told by an artist, Sig. E. "He says that glazings are never permanent, and that nothing can make them so; and, as a proof, he told me there were in a certain palace several pictures by Titian, which had always been covered with glasses: that he was present when the glasses were removed for the time; when, to the surprise of every one present, the glazings were found to have evaporated from the pictures, and to have adhered to the inside of the glass. I considered this incredible, and it certainly appears to require proof, although it must be recollected that Lionardo da Vinci says, 'Il verde fatto dal rame, ancorchè tal color sia messo a olio, se ne va in fumo,'" &c. If the colour evaporated from the picture, it would certainly be retained by the glass; and this artist distinctly said, that all the glazings were fixed on the inside of the glass, exactly above the painting, and that the effect of the different colours on the glass was very singular. From that time, he added, he had left off glazing his pictures. This is the more strange, because painters of the Flemish school may be said to have commenced their pictures with glazing, and to have continued it throughout; yet we never heard of such a fact, though many of their pictures have been under glass.

We have elsewhere recommended, without knowing that it was an old practice, the use of white chalk and such substances with the colours, and are therefore pleased to find the following notice,--"White chalk, marble dust, gesso, the bone of cuttle-fish, alumen, and travertine, were occasionally used in white pigments. They were frequently mixed with transparent vegetable colours, to give them body:" it might be added to give them, by a semi-transparency, and that even to colours in their own nature opaque, a luminous quality.

Does "grana in grano," the Spanish term for the scarlet pigment, show the origin of the expression, "a rogue in grain." "Pierce Plowman, whose _Vision_ is supposed to have been written in 1350, in describing the dress of a lady richly clad, says, that her robe was of 'scarlet in grain;' that is, scarlet dyed with grana, the best and most durable red dye. The import of the words 'in grain,' was afterwards changed, and the term was applied generally to all colours with which cloths were dyed, which were considered to be permanent."

"Biadetto," the artificial carbonate of copper, is said to be the blue most resembling that found in Venetian pictures. Mrs Merrifield erroneously places coal among the black pigments. It is a brown, and we know of none so useful; it is deep, but not the hot brown, such as Vandyke brown, resembling that of Teniers: Mr Eastlake has shown that it was used by the Flemish and Dutch painters. We had long used it, before we were acquainted with so authoritative a recommendation.

We find many very useful observations on oils, as to their purification, and the methods of rendering them drying. As Mrs Merrifield offers in a note a new dryer, certainly a desideratum, we quote the passage, that trials of it may be made:--

"The most powerful of all dryers is perhaps chloride of lime in a dry state: a small quantity of this, added to clarified oil, will convert it into a solid. For this reason it must be employed very cautiously: if too much be used, it may burn the brushes, and injure the colours. It has the advantage of not darkening the oil, and its drying property appears to arise from its absorbing the watery particles of the oil. Chloride of calcium is equally efficacious as a dryer, but the small quantity of iron which it contains dissolves in the oil, and darkens it. It seems probable that, if the chloride of lime were judiciously employed, it might prove serviceable as a dryer; but as I am not aware that it has been tried as such by any person but myself, the utmost caution would be required, and some experiments would be necessary, in order to ascertain the smallest possible quantity which would answer the purpose intended."

We are surprised to find, in the Bolognese MS., olive oil mentioned as mixed with linseed oil in equal proportions, because we never yet heard of any successful experiment to render it drying. As it is the property of olive oil to turn lighter, not, as other oils, darker, a proof of successful experiment would be valuable. Pacheco mentions "salad oil" with honey, in a mixture of flour paste for grounds; but this may have been nut-oil. Besides the passages in Vasari and Lomazzo, which attribute to Lionardo the use of distilled oil, there is the recipe in the _Secreti_ of Alessio, which is conclusive as to the fact that linseed-oil was distilled and used to dilute amber varnish. We are aware that Mr Hendrie, in his valuable translation of Theophilus, strongly insists upon the superiority of distilled over other oil, but it does not appear ever to have been in general use.

The recommendation of amber varnish being the chief result of the commission, numerous authorities as well as recipes are given. "It appears to be mentioned in the Marciana MS., under the term 'carbone,' which has undoubtedly been written instead of 'caribe,' the Arabic and Persian term for amber." We would suggest the possibility that "carbone" may still be the right word, and mean amber, if it has been before mentioned in the MS.,--for one mode of making the varnish was to burn the amber to a "carbone," and then to grind it, as recommended in the recipe. In speaking of amber varnish as the result of Mrs Merrifield's research, we should be wrong in ascribing it to that alone; nor should we be doing justice to her own liberal and full acknowledgment of the prior recommendation of it by Mr Sheldrake in 1801, whose authority she quotes at much length, with detail of his experiments. "The use of amber varnish as a vehicle for painting, was revived and recommended so long ago as 1801, by Mr Sheldrake, in a paper published in the 19th volume of the _Transactions of the Society of Arts_. In these papers, Mr Sheldrake endeavours to prove that this varnish was used by the Italian painters; and as his opinion has been in a great measure confirmed by documentary evidence, his papers acquire additional interest from his having recorded the experiments made by himself in painting with this varnish."

The authority of Gerard Lairesse, given in a note, we think little of; for the work bearing his name was not written by him, but after his death, by some who professed to give an account of his instructions. There is an amusing anecdote, which is introduced for the purpose of showing that varnish was in use; we insert it for its pleasantry:--

"As an indirect proof, but not the less valuable on that account, is the following anecdote, related by Luigi Crespi of his father, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, called Lo Spagnuolo. 'One day, Cardinal Lambertini was in our house, sitting for his portrait, which my father was painting, when one of my brothers entered the room, bringing a letter, just arrived by post, from another brother who was at Modena on business. The Cardinal took the letter, and, on opening it, said to my father, 'Go on painting, and I will read it.' Having opened the letter, he began to read quickly, inventing an imaginary letter, in which the absent son, with the greatest expressions of shame and humiliation, prostrated himself at the feet of his father, begging his pardon, and saying that he had found it impossible to disengage himself from a stringent promise of marrying a certain Signora Apollonia, whence.... But he had hardly proceeded thus far, when my father leaped on to his feet, knocking over palette, pencils, and chair; _and upsetting oil, varnish, and everything else which was on the little bench_; and uttering all kinds of exclamations. The Cardinal jumped at the same time, to quiet and pacify him, telling him, as well as he could for laughing, that it was all nonsense, and entirely an invention of his own. Meanwhile, my father was running round the room in despair, the Cardinal following him, and thus pleasantly ended the morning's work. After this time, whenever his eminence came to see my father, before getting out of the carriage, he would whisper, That he had no doubt Signora Apollonia was at home, and with him.'"

We refer the artist-reader to the work itself, for valuable matter on the subject of grounds; we have already trespassed too far to allow of our here entering minutely into the subject. Mr Eastlake and Mrs Merrifield, however, think a knowledge of grounds of the first importance. The evidence is in favour of white grounds, of size and gesso. De Piles thinks them, however, liable to crack. And in this place Mrs Merrifield narrates, on the authority of the French painter, M. Camille Rogier, to Sig. Cigogna, who inserted it in his _Inscrizeoni Veneziane_, a circumstance which strongly savours of the astute exchange of armour in the _Iliad_--brass for gold. Owing to the gesso or white tempera ground, it is said that the celebrated Nozze di Cana, by Paolo Veronese, was in such a condition as to render it necessary to line it very carefully, to prevent the paint scaling from the canvass. "But when, in 1815, the picture was about to be restored to Venice, according to the treaty, it was perceived that the colours crumbled off and fell into dust at the slightest movement. To continue the operation, therefore, was to expose one of the finest works of the Venetian school to certain destruction; and the committee decided that the picture of Paolo should remain at Paris, and that a painting of Lebrun's should be sent to Venice in its stead." "Credat Judæus!" If this were so--if the picture was really in that condition, how could it have been lined? and if it could, by any care, bear the necessary rough usage and removals of lining, would it not have borne careful conveyance? The French are able diplomatists. We think Mr Peel, and much less experienced liners, must laugh at the simplicity of the committee. Were they a committee on the Fine Arts? We have heard of valuable pictures having been smuggled into this country, with other pictures painted over them--if the proof which satisfied the committee, (if the story have any real foundation of truth,) had been a free pass through the custom-house, we have not the slightest doubt our picture-dealers would have readily supplied it, and have skilfully so attached dry colours as to peel off on the slightest shaking. We should rather give credence to the glazings of Titian flying off to the glass, than to this supposed danger of removal from the cause ascribed.

In now taking leave of Mrs Merrifield, we express our hope that, having so ably and so faithfully done the work confided to her by the Commission on the Fine Arts, she will not think her labours at an end; for we are quite sure that her judicious mind and clear style may be most profitably employed in the service of art, to whose practical advancement she has contributed so much.

TENNYSON'S POEMS.[11]

[11] _Poems._ By ALFRED TENNYSON. Fifth Edition.

_The Princess: a Medley._ By ALFRED TENNYSON.

There is no living poet who more justly demands of the critic a calm and accurate estimate of his claims than Alfred Tennyson; neither is there one whom it is more difficult accurately and dispassionately to estimate. Other living and poetical reputations seem tolerably well settled. The older bards belong already to the past. Wordsworth all the world consents to honour. Living, he already ranks with the greatest of our ancestors. His faults even are no longer canvassed; they are frankly admitted, and have ceased to disturb us. Every man of original genius has his mannerism more or less disagreeable; once thoroughly understood, it becomes our only care to forget it. No one now thinks of discovering that Wordsworth is occasionally, and especially when ecclesiastical themes overtake him, sadly prosaic; no one is now more annoyed by this than he is at the school divinity of Milton, or the tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which the impetuous imagination of Shakspeare sometimes hurries him. Moore, another survivor of the magnates of the last generation, has judgment passed upon him with equal certainty and universality. He, with a somewhat different fate, has seen his fame collapse. He no longer stalks a giant in the land, but he has dwindled down to the most delightful of minstrel-pages that ever brought song and music into a lady's chamber. So exquisite are his songs, men willingly forget he ever attempted anything higher. We have no other remembrance of his _Lalla Rookh_ than that he has embedded in it some of those gems of song--some of those charming lyrics which scarcely needed to be set to music; they are melody and verse in one. They sing themselves. If his fame has diminished, it has not tarnished. It has shrunk to a little point, but that little point is bright as the diamond, and as imperishable. Of the poets more decidedly of our own age and generation, there are but few whom it would be thought worth while to estimate according to a high standard of excellence. The crowd we in general consent to praise with indulgence, because we do not look upon them as candidates for immortality, but merely for the honours of the day--a social renown, the applause of their contemporaries, the palm won in the race with living rivals.

Poetry of the very highest order, coupled with much affectation, much defective writing, many wilful blunders, renders Alfred Tennyson a very worthy and a very difficult subject for the critic. The extreme diversity and unequal merit of his compositions, make it a very perplexing business to form any general estimate of his writings. The conclusion the critic comes to at one moment he discards the next. He finds it impossible to satisfy himself, nor can ever quite determine in what measure praise and censure should be mixed. At one time he is so thoroughly charmed, so completely delighted with the poet's verse, that he is disposed to extol his author to the skies; he is as little inclined to any captious and disparaging criticism as lovers are, when they look, however closely, into the fair face which has enchanted them. At other times, the page before him will call up nothing but vexation and annoyance. Even the gleams of genuine poetry, amongst the confusion and elaborate triviality that afflict him, will only add to his displeasure. A heap of rubbish never looks so vile, or so disagreeable, as when a fresh flower is seen thrown upon it. Were Tennyson to be estimated by some half-dozen of his best pieces, he would be the compeer of Coleridge and of Wordsworth--if by a like number of his worst performances, he would be raised very little above that nameless and unnumbered crowd of dilettanti versifiers, whose utmost ambition seems to be to see themselves in print, and then, as quickly as possible, to disappear--

"One moment _black_, then gone for ever."

This diversity of merit is not to be accounted for by the diverse nature of the subject-matter which the poet has at different times treated; for Mr Tennyson has given us the happiest specimens of the most different styles of composition, employed on a singular variety of topics. He has been grave and graceful, playful and even broadly comic, with complete success. As a finished portraiture of a peculiar state of mind--conceived with philosophic truth, and embellished with all the fascinating associations which it is the province of poetry to call around us--nothing could surpass the poem of the _Lotos Eaters_. For playfulness, and tender, amorous fancy--warm, but not too warm--spiritual, but not too spiritual--we shall go far before we find a rival to the _Talking Oak_, or to the _Day Dream_: what better ballad can heart desire than the _Lord of Burleigh_? And how well does a natural indignation speak out in the clear ringing verse of _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_! Specimens of the richly comic, as we have hinted, may here and there be found: we have one in our eye which we shall seek an opportunity for quoting. In harmonising metaphysic thought with poetic imagery and expression, he does not always succeed; on the contrary, some of his saddest failures arise from the abortive attempt; yet there are some admirable passages even of this description of writing.

It is not, therefore, the difference of style aimed at, or subject-matter adopted, which determines whether Tennyson shall be successful or not. Perhaps it will be said that the marked inequality in his compositions is sufficiently accounted for by the simple fact, that some were written at an earlier age than others; that some are the productions of his youth, and others of his maturity--that, in short, it is a mere question of dates. There is indeed a very striking difference between those poems which commence the volume, and bear the date of 1830, and the other and greater number, which bear the date of 1832: the difference is so great, that we question whether, upon the whole, the fame of Mr Tennyson would not have been advanced by the omission altogether from his collected works of this first portion of his poems; for though much beauty would be lost, far more blemish would be got rid of. Still, however, as the same inequality pursues us in his later writings, and is evident even in his last production--_The Princess_--there remains something more to be explained than can be quite accounted for by the mere comparison of dates. This something more we find explained in _a bad school of taste_, under the influence of which Mr Tennyson commenced his poetic authorship. Above this influence he often rises, but he has never quite liberated himself from it. To this source we trace the affectations of many kinds which deface his writings--affectation of a super-refinement of meaning, ending in mere obscurity, or in sheer nonsense; affectation of antique simplicity ending in the most jejune triviality; experimental metres putting the ear to torture; or an utter disregard of all metre, of all the harmonies of verse, together with an incessant toil after originality of phrase; as if no new idea could be expressed unless each separate word bore also an aspect of novelty.

At the time when Tennyson commenced his career, poetry and poets were in a somewhat singular position. Never had there been so great a thirst for poetry--never had there existed so large a reading public with so decided a predilection for this species of literature; and rarely, if ever, has there arisen--at once the cause and effect of this public taste--so noble a band of contemporary poets as those who were just then retiring from the stage. The success which attended metrical composition was quite intoxicating. Poems, now gradually waning from the sight of all mankind, were rapturously welcomed as masterpieces. It seemed that the poet might dare anything. Meanwhile, the novelty to which he was emboldened was rendered urgent and necessary; for, in addition to the old rivals of times long past, there was this band of poets, whose echoes were still ringing in the theatre, to be competed with. Was it any wonder that at such an epoch we should have Keats writing his _Endymion_, or Tennyson elaborating his incomprehensible ode _To Memory_, or inditing his foolish songs _To the Owl_, or torturing himself to unite old _balladry_ with modern sentiment in his _Lady of Shalott_, for ever rhyming with that detested town of _Camelot_; or that he should have been stringing together fulsome, self-adulatory nonsense about _The Poet and the Poet's Mind_--or, in short, committing any conceivable extravagance in violation of sense, metre, and the English language? The young poet of this time was evidently carried off his feet. He had drank so deep of those springs about Parnassus, that he had lost his footing on the solid ground. It did not follow that he and his compeers always soared above us because they could no longer walk on a level with us. Men, in a dream, think they are flying when they are only falling. They reeled much, these intellectual revellers. It is true that sober men discountenanced them, rebuked them, reminded them that liberty was not license, nor imagination another name for insanity; but there was still a considerable crowd of indiscriminate admirers to cheer and encourage them in their wildest freaks.

One tendency, gathered from these times, seems, all along and throughout his whole progress, to have beset our author--the reluctance to subside for a moment to the easy natural level of cultivated minds. He has a morbid horror of commonplace. He will be grotesque, if you will; absurd, infantine--anything but truly simple: when he girds himself for serious effort, he would give you the very essence of poetry, and nothing else. This wish to have it all blossoms, no stem or leaves, has perhaps been one cause why he has written no long work. It is a tendency which is, in some measure, honourable to him. Though it has assisted in betraying him into the errors we have already noticed, it must be allowed that we are never in danger of being wearied with the monotony of commonplace.

It may be worth while to consider for a moment this characteristic--the wish to seize upon the essence, and the essence only, of poetry.

In our high intellectual industry, there goes on a certain division and subdivision of labour analogous to that which marks the progress of our commercial and manufacturing industry. The first men of genius were historians, poets, philosophers, all in one. If they wrote verse, they found a place in it for whatever could in any manner interest their contemporaries, whether it was matter of knowledge, or matter of passion. The theology of a people, and the agriculture of a people--chaos and night, and how to sow the fields--the progeny of gods, and the breeding of bulls--were alike materials for the poem. A Hesiod or a Gower chant all they know--science, or religion, or morality. The first epic is the first history. But the narrative here becomes too engrossing to admit of large admixtures of didactic matter. This is relegated to some other form of composition, and handed over to some other master of the art. The dramatic form carries on this division still further. The representation of the narrative relieves the poem of its historic character, and a dialogue which is to accompany action becomes necessarily devoted to the passions of life, or such strains of reflection as result from, and harmonise with, those passions. The lyric minstrel seizes upon these eliminated elements of passion and reflection, and adds thereto a greater liberty of imagination. At length comes that mere intellectual luxury Of imaginative thought--that gathering in of beauty and emotion from all sources--that subtle blending of a thousand pleasing allusions and flitting images--exquisite for their own sake, and constituting what is considered as pre-eminently the poetical description of natural scenery, or the poetical delineation of human feeling.

But it is possible that this intellectual division of labour may be carried too far. This luxury of imaginative thought may be found supporting itself on the slenderest base imaginable of either incident or reflection, may be almost divorced from those first natural sources of interest which affect all mankind. Now, although this may be the most poetical element of the poem--though this subtle play of imagination may constitute, more than anything else, the difference between poetry and prose, it does not follow that a good poem can be constructed wholly of such materials. It does not even follow that, in a good poem, this is really the most essential part; for that which constitutes the specific distinction between prose and poetry may not be an ingredient so important as others which both prose and poetry have in common. It is the _hilt_, and its peculiar formation, which more particularly distinguishes the sword from any other cutting instrument; but the blade--the faculty of cutting which it shares in common with the most domestic knife--is, after all, the most important part, the most requisite property of the sword. A peculiar play of imagination is pre-eminently poetic, but thought, reflection, the genuine passions of man--these must still constitute the greater elements of the composition, whether it be prose or poem.

If, therefore, we carry this division of labour too far, we shall be in danger of carving elegant and elaborate hilts that have no blades, or but a sham one. We ask no one to write didactic or philosophic poems--we should entreat of them to abstain; we call on no man to describe again the culture of the sugarcane, (though it bids fair to become amongst us one of the lost arts,) or the breeding of sheep, in numerous verse; we hope no one will again fall into that singular error of imagining that the "art of poetry" must be a peculiarly appropriate subject for a poem, and the very topic that the spirit of a poetic reader was thirsting for. Art of poetry! what poetic nutriment will you extract from that? As well think to dine a man upon the art of cookery! It is quite right that what is best said in prose should be confined to prose; but neither must we divorce substantial thought, the broad passions of mankind, or a deep reflection, from the poetic form. This would be to build nothing but steeples, and minarets, and all the filigree of architecture. We should have pillars and porticoes enough, but not a temple of any kind to enter into.

We often hear it asserted, on the one hand, that the taste for poetry has declined. We hear this, on the other hand, vigorously contested and denied. No, says the indignant champion of the muse, _verse_ may have sunk much in estimation, and the ingenious labours of the rhymist may be put on a par, if you will, with the tricks of the juggler or the caprices of art. Difficulties conquered! Nonsense. We want good things executed. It is your folly if you do not choose the best means. The man who plays on his fiddle with one string only, shall have thanks if he plays well, but not because he plays on one string; if he could have played better, using the four, his thanks shall be diminished by so much. Yes, verse may be depreciated, but _poetry_--which grows perennial from the very heart of humanity--you may plough over the soil deep as you please, you will only make it grow the faster, and strike the deeper root. The answer is well, and yet there may be something left unexplained. If poetry has been deserting the highroads of human thought--if it has grown more limited as it has grown more subtle--there may be some ground for suspecting that the public will desert it. Without wishing to detract anything from the high merit of his best performances, we should refer to a great portion of the poetry of _Shelley_ as an illustration of these remarks, and also to a considerable part of the poetry of _Keats_.

It is especially in the class of descriptive poetry, that we moderns have carried the over-refinement we are speaking of, to so remarkable an extent. The poets of Greece and Rome, it has been often observed, rarely, if ever, described natural scenery simply for its own sake. It was with their verse as with their paintings--the landscape was always a mere accessory, the main interest lying with the human or superhuman beings who inhabited it. The truth seems to be, that the pagan imagination was so full of its goddesses and nymphs, that these obscured the genuine impression, which the scene itself would have produced. Not but that the ancient poet must have felt the charm of a beautiful or sublime scene; but instead of dwelling upon this natural charm, he turned immediately to what seemed a more worthy subject--to the supernatural beings with which superstition had peopled the scene. Scarcely could he see the wood for the dryads, or the river for those smooth naiads that were surely living in its lucid depths. And even if we suppose that these pagan faiths had lost their hold both of writer and of reader, it is still very easy to understand that simple nature--trees, and hills, and water--however pleasing to the beholder, might not be thought an appropriate subject, or one sufficiently important for an exclusive description. What is open to every one's eye, and familiar to every man's thought, is not the first, but the last topic to which literature resorts. Not till all others are exhausted does it betake itself to this. Just as the heroic in human existence would be sung and resung, long before a Fielding portrays the common life that is lying about him; so portents and prodigies, gods and satyrs, and Ovidian fables of metamorphosed damsels, would precede the description of groves and bays, verdure and water, and the light of heaven seen shining every day upon them.

Even the sacred poets and prophets amongst the Hebrews, who gave such sublime views of nature, always associated her with the presence of God. This, indeed, was the secret of their sublimity. With them nature was never seen alone. The clouds rolled about His else invisible path; the thunder was His, the hills were His; nature was the perpetual vesture of the Deity.

It is only in modern times that the scenery of nature has been allowed to speak for itself, to make its own impression, as the great representative of the Beautiful here below. But now, as this scenery is to be described, not by admeasurements, or the items of a catalogue, as so much land, so much water, so much timber, but by the deep, and varied, and often shadowy sentiments it calls forth, it is manifest that it must become a theme inexhaustible to the poet, and a theme also somewhat dangerous to him, as tempting him more and more towards those refined, and vague, and evanescent feelings which are not found on the highways of human thought, and are known only to the experience of a few.

But to return more immediately to Mr Tennyson. We have said that, at the time when he commenced writing, poetry was in a certain feverish condition. The young poet had been spoilt--had grown over-confident. He was like Spencer's Knight in the Palace of Love, who sees written over every door, "Be bold! Be bold!" Only over one door does he read the salutary caution, "Be not too bold!" Public opinion, or the opinion of a large and powerful coterie, favoured his wildest excesses. That language was strained and distorted, was a sure sign of the original power of thought that was struggling through the imperfect medium. Obscurity was always honoured. People strained their eyes to watch their favourite as he careered amongst the clouds: if they lost sight of him, the fault was presumed to be in their own vision; they were not likely, therefore, to confess any inability to follow him. The young aspirants of the day even learnt to despise the trammels of their own art. The measure and melody of their verse was sacrificed to the irresistible afflatus which bore them onward. Metre was put to the torture,--at least our ears were tortured--in order that no iota of the heaven-breathed strain should be lost. They still wrote in verse, because verse alone could disguise the empty, meaningless phraseology they had enlisted in their service; but it was often a jingling rhythm, harsher to the ear than the most crabbed prose, which was retained as an excuse or concealment for that resplendent gibberish they had imported so largely into the English language. From a super-refinement of thought, altogether transcendental, they delighted to descend to an imitation of childish or antique simplicity. The natural level of cultivated thought was by all means to be avoided. If you were not in the clouds, you must be seen sitting amongst the buttercups.

Turn now to the opening and earlier poems in Mr Tennyson's volume; they are considerably altered from the state in which they made their first appearance, but they still leave traces enough of the unfortunate influence we have attempted to describe. The best amongst them is a sort of gallery of portraits of fair ladies--Claribel, and Lilian, and Isabel, and Adeline, and Madeline, and others. From these might be extracted some few very beautiful lines, but none of them pleases as a whole. There is an air of effort and elaboration, coupled with much studied negligence, which prevents us from surrendering ourselves to the charms of any of these portraitures. The _Claribel_, with which the volume commences, might be a woman or a child for anything that the poem tells us; we only gather from the expression "low lieth," that she is dead, and over her grave there rings a chime of words, which leave as little impression on the living ear as they would on the sleeper beneath. It was a pity--since alterations have been permitted--that the volume was still allowed to open with this mere monotonous chant. And why were these two absurd songs _To the Owl_ still preserved? Was it to display a sort of moral courage, and as they were first written out of bravado to common sense, was it held a point of honour to persist in their republication? I, Tennyson, have written good things; therefore this, my nonsense, shall hold its ground in spite of the murmurs of gentle reader, or the anger of malignant critic! But we must not commence an inquisition of this kind, nor ask why this or that has been permitted to remain, for we should carry on such an inquiry to no little extent. We should make wide clearance in this first part of his volume. Here is a long _Ode to Memory_, which craves to be extinguished, which ought in charity to be forgotten. An utter failure throughout. We cannot read it again, to enable us to speak quite positively, but we do not think there is a single redeeming line in the whole of it. A dreary, shapeless, metaphysical mist lies over it; there is no object seen, and not a ray of beauty even colours the cloud. Then comes an odious piece of pedantry in the shape of "A Song." What metre, Greek or Roman, Russian or Chinese, it was intended to imitate, we have no care to inquire: the man was writing English, and had no justifiable pretence for torturing our ear with verse like this:--

SONG.

"A spirit haunts the year's last hours, Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers: To himself he talks; For at eventide, listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh, In the walks. Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers."

Of the _Lady of Shalott_ we have already hinted our opinion. They must be far gone in dilettantism who can make an especial favourite of such a caprice as this--with its intolerable vagueness, and its irritating repetition, every verse ending with the "Lady of Sha_lott_," which must always rhyme with "Came_lot_." We cannot conceive what charm Mr Tennyson could find in this species of odious iteration, which he nevertheless repeatedly inflicts upon us. It matters not what precedent he may insist upon--whether he quotes the authority of Theocritus, or the worthy example of old English ballad-makers--the annoyance is none the less. In a poem called _The Sisters_, we have the verse framed after this fashion:--

"We were two daughters of one race; She was the fairest in the face: _The wind is blowing in turret and tree._ They were together, and she fell; Therefore revenge became me well. _O the earl was fair to see!_"

And so we go on to the end of the chapter, with "The wind is blowing in turret and tree," and "The earl was fair to see," brought in, no matter how, but always in the same place. The rest of the verse is not so abundantly clear as to be well able to afford this intervenient jingle, which is indeed no better than the _fal lal la!_ or _tol de rol!_ of facetious drinking-songs. These have their purpose, being framed expressly for people in that condition when they want noise, and noise only, when the absence of all sense is rather a merit; but what earthly use, or beauty, or purpose there can be in the melancholy iterations of Mr Tennyson, we cannot understand. Certainly we agree here with Hotspur--we would rather hear "a kitten cry Mew, than one of these same metre ballad-mongers."

_Oriana_ is fashioned on the same plan:--

"My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana. There is no rest for me below, Oriana."

As if some miserable dog were baying the moon with the name of _Oriana_.

_Mariana in the Moated Grange_ is not by any means improved by this habit of repetition, every stanza ending with the same lines, and those not too skilfully constructed:--

"She only _said_, 'My life is dreary; He cometh not,' she _said_! She _said_, 'I am aweary, aweary; I would that I were dead!'"

This piece of _Mariana_ has been very much extolled; the praise we should allot to it would seem cold after the applause it has frequently received. The descriptive powers of Tennyson are, in his happiest moments, unrivalled; on these occasions there is no one of whom it may be said more accurately, that his words paint the scene; but the description here and in the subsequent piece, _Mariana in the South_, has always appeared to us too studied to be entirely pleasing. We have tried to _feel_ it, but we could not.

For instances of graver faults of style, and in productions of higher aim, we should point, amongst others, to _The Palace of Art_, _The Vision of Sin_, _The Dream of Fair Women_. In all of these, verses of great merit may be found, but the larger part is very faulty. An obscurity, the result sometimes of too great condensation of style, and a jerking spasmodic movement, constantly mar the effect. From _The Palace of Art_ we quote, almost at haphazard, the following lines. The soul has built her palace, has hung it with pictures, and placed therein certain great bells, (a sort of music we do not envy her,) that swing of themselves. It is then finely said of her--

"She took her throne, She sat betwixt the shining oriels To sing her songs alone."

After this the strain thus proceeds:--

"No nightingale delighteth to prolong Her low preamble all alone, More than my soul to hear her echoed song _Throb through the ribbed stone_;

"Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth, Trying to feel herself alive; Lord over nature, lord of the visible earth, Lord of the senses five.

"Communing with herself: 'All these are mine; And let the world have peace or wars, 'Tis one to me.' She--when young night divine Crown'd dying day with stars,

"Making sweet close of his delicious toils-- Lit light in wreaths and anadems, And pure quintessences of precious oils In hallow'd moons of gems,

"To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands, and cried, 'I marvel if my still delight In this great house, so royal, rich, and wide, Be flattered to the height.

"'From shape to shape at first within the womb, The brain is modell'd,' she began, 'And through all phases of all thought I come Into the perfect man.

"'All nature widens upward, evermore The simpler essence lower lies; More complex is more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.'

"Then of the moral instinct would she prate, And of the rising from the dead, As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate; And at the last she said--"

Now this surely is not writing which can commend itself to the judgment of any impartial critic. One cannot possibly admire this medley of topics, moral and physiological, thrown pell-mell together, and mingled with descriptions which are themselves a puzzle to understand. To hear one's own voice "throbbing through the ribbed stone," is a startling novelty in acoustics, and the lighting up of the apartment is far from being a lucid affair. We can understand "the wreaths and anadems;" our experience of an illumination-night in the streets of London, where little lamps or jets of gas, assume these festive shapes, comes to our aid, but "moons of gems" would form such globes as even the purest quintessence of the most precious oil must fail to render very luminous.

_The Vision of Sin_ commences after this fashion:--

"I had a vision when the night was late: A youth came riding toward a palace-gate; _He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown_, _But that his heavy rider kept him down_.

And from the palace came a child of sin, _And took him by the curls, and led him in_, Where sat a company with heated eyes, Expecting when a fountain should arise."

Thus it commences, and thus it proceeds for some time, in the same very intelligible strain. It is our fault, perhaps, that we cannot interpret the vision; but we confess that we can make nothing of it till the measure suddenly changes, and we have a bitter, mocking, sardonic song, a sort of devil's drinking-song, through which some species of meaning becomes evident enough.

In a vision of sin we may count upon a little mystery; but we should expect to find all clear and beautiful in _A Dream of Fair Women_. But here, too, everything is singularly misty. Those who have witnessed that ingenious exhibition called The Dissolving Views, will recollect that gay and gaudy obscurity which intervenes at the change of each picture; they will remember that they passed half their time looking upon a canvass covered with indistinct forms, and strangely mingled colours. Just for a few minutes the picture stands out bright and well defined as need be, then it breaks up, and confuses its dim fragments with the colours of some other picture, which is now struggling to make itself visible. Half our time is spent amongst mingled shadows of the two, the eye in vain attempting to trace any perfect outline. Precisely such a sensation the perusal of this, and some other of the poems of Tennyson, produces on the reader. For a moment the scene brightens out into the most palpable distinctness, but for the greater part we are gazing on a glittering mist, where there is more colour than form, and where the colours themselves are flung one upon the other in lawless profusion. In the _Dream of Fair Women_, the form of Cleopatra stands forth magnificently; it is almost the only portion of the poem that has the great charm of distinctness, or which fixes itself permanently on the memory.

We cannot bring ourselves to quote line after line, and verse after verse, of what we hold to be bad and unreadable: we have given some examples, and mentioned a considerable number of the pieces, on which we should found a certain vote of censure; the intelligent reader can easily check our judgment by his own,--confirm or dispute it. We turn to what is a more grateful task. Well known as these poems are, we must be permitted to give a few specimens of those happy efforts which have secured, we believe, to Tennyson, in spite of the defects we have pointed out, an enduring place amongst the poets of England. We shall make our selection so as to illustrate his success in very different styles, and on different topics. We shall make this selection from the volume of _The Poems_, and then dwell separately, and somewhat more at large, upon _The Princess_, which is comparatively a late publication.

We cannot pass by our especial favourite, _The Lotos-Eaters_. This is poetry of the very highest order--in every way charming--subject and treatment both. The state of mind described, is one which every cultivated mind will understand and enter into, and which a poet, in particular, must thoroughly sympathise with--that lassitude which is content to look upon the swift-flowing current of life, and let it flow, refusing to embark thereon--a lassitude which is not wholly torpor, which has mental energy enough to cull a justification for itself from all its stores of philosophy--a lassitude charming as the last thought, before sleep quite folds us in its safe and tried oblivion. No need to eat of the Lotos, or to be cast upon the enchanted island, to feel this gentle despondency, this resignation made up of resistless indolence and well-reasoned despair. Yet these are circumstances which add greatly to the poetry of our picture. To the band of weary navigators who had disembarked upon this land--

"Where all things always seemed the same-- The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

IV.

"Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each; but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave, Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

V.

"They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon, upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, 'We will return no more;' And all at once they sang, 'Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"

CHORIC SONG.

I.

"There is sweet music here, that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And through the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leav'd flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II.

"Why are we weighed upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone? We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,-- 'There is no joy but calm!' Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

* * * * *

IV.

"Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life: ah! why Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence,--ripen, fall, and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease!"

VI.

"Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives, And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change; For surely now our household hearths are cold: Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The gods are hard to reconcile: 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There _is_ confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath." . . .

VIII.

* * * * *

"We have had enough of action; and of motion, we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."

As at once a companion and counterpart to this picture, we have a noble strain from _Ulysses_, who, having reached his island-home and kingdom, pants again for enterprise--for wider fields of thought and action.

"It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly.

I am become a name; For, always roaming with a hungry heart, Much have I seen and known; cities of men, And manners, climates, councils, governments; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

* * * * *

"This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-- Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs his sail: There gloom the dark-blue seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me-- That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die."

_St Simeon Stylites_ is a poem strongly and justly conceived, and written throughout with sustained and equable power. Those who have objected to it, that it is not the portrait of any _Christian_ even of that distant age and that Eastern clime, have perhaps not sufficiently consulted their ecclesiastical history, or sufficiently reflected how almost inevitably the practice of penances and self-inflictions leads to the idea that these are, in fact, a sort of present payment for the future joys of heaven. Such an idea most assuredly prevailed amongst the Eastern eremites, of whom our Simeon was a most noted example. But we cannot quote from this, or from _The Two Voices_, or from _Locksley Hall_, or from _Clara Vere de Vere_; for we wish now to select some specimen of the lighter, more playful, and graceful manner of our poet. We pause betwixt _The Day-Dream_ and _The Talking Oak_; they are both admirable: we choose the latter--we rest under its friendly, sociable shade, and its most musical of boughs. The lover holds communion with the good old oak-tree, and finds him the most amiable as well as the most discreet of confidants. May every lover find his oak-tree talk as well, and as agreeably, and give a report as welcome of his absent fair one! On being questioned--

"If ever maid or spouse As fair as my Olivia, came To rest beneath thy boughs,"

The oak makes answer:--

"O Walter, I have sheltered here Whatever maiden grace The good old summers, year by year, Made ripe in summer-chase:

"Old summers, when the monk was fat, And, issuing shorn and sleek, Would twist his girdle tight, and pat The girls upon the cheek;

"And I have shadow'd many a group Of beauties, that were born In teacup-times of hood and hoop, Or while the patch was worn;

"And leg and arm, with love-knots gay, About me leap'd and laugh'd The modish Cupid of the day, And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prick Each leaf into a gall) This girl for whom your heart is sick Is three times worth them all;

"I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain, (And hear me with thy ears,) That though I circle in the grain Five hundred rings of years--

"Yet since I first could cast a shade Did never creature pass So slightly, musically made, So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flit To make the greensward fresh, I hold them exquisitely knit, But far too spare of flesh."

The lover proceeds to inquire when it was that Olivia last came to "sport beneath his boughs;" and the oak, who from his topmost branches could see over into Summer-place, and look, it seems, in at the windows, gives him full information. Yesterday her father had gone out--

"But as for her, she staid at home, And on the roof she went, And down the way you use to come, She look'd with discontent.

"She left the novel, half uncut, Upon the rosewood shelf; She left the new piano shut; She could not please herself.

"Then ran she, gamesome as a colt, And livelier than a lark; She sent her voice through all the holt Before her, and the park.

"A light wind chased her on the wing, And in the chase grew wild; As close as might be would he cling About the darling child.

"But light as any wind that blows, So fleetly did she stir, The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose, And turn'd to look at her.

"And here she came, and round me play'd, And sang to me the whole Of those three stanzas that you made About my 'giant bole;'

"And, in a fit of frolic mirth, She strove to span my waist; Alas! I was so broad of girth I could not be embraced.

"I wish'd myself the fair young beech, That here beside me stands, That round me, clasping each in each, She might have lock'd her hands."

It is all equally charming, but we can proceed no further. Of the comic, we have hinted that Mr Tennyson is not without some specimens, though, as will be easily imagined, it is not a vein in which he frequently indulges. _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue_ is not a piece much to our taste, yet that

"Head-waiter of the chophouse here, To which I most resort,"

together with the scene in which he lives and moves, is very graphically brought before us in the following lines:--

"But thou wilt never move from hence, The sphere thy fate allots: Thy latter days, increased with pence, Go down among the pots. Thou battenest by the greasy gleam In haunts of hungry sinners, Old boxes, larded with the steam Of thirty thousand dinners.

"_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins, Would quarrel with our lot; _Thy_ care is under-polish'd tins To serve the hot-and-hot. To come and go, and come again, Returning like the pewit, And watch'd by silent gentlemen That trifle with the cruet."

But this is not the extract we promised our readers, nor the one we should select as the best illustration of our author's powers in this style. In a piece called _Walking to the Mail_, there occurs the following description of a certain college trick played on some miserly caitiff, who, no doubt, had richly deserved this application of _Lynch law_. It is not unlike the happiest manner of our old dramatists,--

"I was at school--a college in the south: There lived a flay-flint near; we stole his fruit, His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir: she With meditative grunts of much content, Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragg'd her to the college tower From her warm bed, and up the cork-screw stair, With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd. Large range of prospect had the mother sow, And but for daily loss of one she lov'd, As one by one we took them--but for this, As never sow was higher in this world, Might have been happy: but what lot is pure? We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine, And so returned unfarrow'd to her sty."

_The Princess; a Medley_, now claims our attention. This can no longer, perhaps, be regarded as a new publication, yet, being the latest of Mr Tennyson's, some account of it seems due from us. With what propriety he has entitled it "A Medley" is not fully seen till the whole of it has come before the reader; and it is at the close of the poem that the author, sympathising with that something of surprise which he is conscious of having excited, explains in part how he fell into that half-serious, half-bantering style, and that odd admixture of modern and mediæval times, of nineteenth century notions and chivalrous manners, which characterise it, and constitute it the medley that it is. Accident, it seems, must bear the blame, if blame there be. The poem grew, we are led to gather, from some chance sketch or momentary caprice. So we infer from the following lines,--

"Here closed our compound story, which at first, Perhaps, but meant to banter little maids With mock heroics and with parody; But slipt in some strange way, cross'd with burlesque From mock to earnest, even into tones Of tragic."----

However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was this, that the _pictures_ it presents are the most vivid imaginable; that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where the author falls into _reflection_ and _sentiment_, he is not equal to himself; that here a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to steal over the page; so that, although the poem is not long, there are yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has, at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full justification, we presume, in that half-burlesque character which is impressed upon the whole poem.

The subject is a pleasing one--a gentle banter of "the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us--the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down, A man with knobs and wires and vials fired A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep From hollow fields: and here were telescopes For azure views; and there a group of girls In circle waited, whom the electric shock Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake A little clock-work steamer paddling plied, And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls, A dozen angry models jetted steam; A petty railway ran; a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves, And dropt a parachute and pass'd: And there, through twenty posts of telegraph, They flash'd a saucy message to and fro Between the mimic stations; so that sport With science hand in hand went: otherwhere Pure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'd And stump'd the wicket; _babies roll'd about Like tumbled fruit in grass_; and men and maids Arrang'd a country-dance, and flew through light And shadow."----

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down; It is but bringing up; no more than that You men have done it; how I hate you all! O were I some great princess, I would build Far off from men a college of my own, And I would teach them all things; you would see.' And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight, If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, _And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair_. . . . . Yet I fear, If there were many Lilias in the brood, However deep you might embower the nest, Some boy would spy it.' "At this upon the sward She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot: 'That's your light way; but I would make it death For any male thing but to peep at us.' Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd; _A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she_."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened--who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat, With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, All beauty compass'd in a female form, The princess; liker to the inhabitant Of some clear planet close upon the sun, Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said: 'We give you welcome; not without redound Of fame and profit unto yourselves ye come, The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime, And that full voice which circles round the grave Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. What! are the ladies of your land so tall?' 'We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!' She answered; 'then ye know the prince?' And he, 'The climax of his age: as tho' there were One rose in all the world--your highness that-- He worships your ideal.' And she replied: 'We did not think in our own hall to hear This barren verbiage, current among men-- Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment: We think not of him. When we set our hand To this great work, we purposed with ourselves Never to wed. You likewise will do well, Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling The tricks which make us toys of men, that so, Some future time, if so indeed you will, You may with those self-styled our lords ally Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.' At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves, Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word, _Fancy_, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two _widows_, (both of whom have children, and one an infant,)--Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche--for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognises her brother.

"'My brother! O,' she said; 'What do you here? And in this dress? And these? Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold! A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me! A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out,--

"To take The dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stood Among her maidens higher by the head, Her back against a pillar, her foot on one Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled, And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near: My heart beat thick with passion and with awe; And from my breast the involuntary sigh Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes, That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so Went forth in long retinue, following up The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract--even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read--no books? Quoit, tennis-ball--no games? nor deals in that Which men delight in, martial exercises? To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, Methinks he seems no better than a girl; As girls were once, as we ourselves have been. We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them; We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, Being other--since we learnt our meaning here, To uplift the woman's fall'n divinity Upon an even pedestal with man."

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

"'Forbear,' the princess cried, _'Forbear, Sir,' I_-- And, heated through and through with wrath and love, I smote him on the breast; he started up; There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him:--

"'You have done well, and like a gentleman, And like a prince; you have our thanks for all: And you look well too in your woman's dress; Well have you done and like a gentleman. You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks: Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood; Then men had said--but now-- You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us-- _I_ wed with thee! _I_ bound by precontract, Your bride, your bond-slave! _not tho' all the gold_ _That veins the world were packed to make your crown_, And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the _mêlée_, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up--disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights--a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child! My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more; For now will cruel Ida keep her back; And either she will die for want of care, Or sicken with ill usage, when they say The child is hers; and they will beat my girl, Remembering her mother. O my flower! Or they will take her, they will make her hard; And she will pass me by in after-life With some cold reverence, worse than were she dead. But I will go and sit beside the doors, And make a wild petition night and day, Until they hate to hear me, like a wind Wailing for ever, till they open to me, And lay my little blossom at my feet, My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child: And I will take her up and go my way, And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass--

"Psyche ever stole A little nearer, till the babe that by us, _Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede_, _Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass_, _Uncared for, spied its mother, and began_ _A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance_ _Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms_, _And lazy lingering fingers_. She the appeal Brook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine--mine--not yours; It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,' Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled--gives it, however, to Cyril.

"'Take it, sir,' and so Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands, Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprang To embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks, Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough; And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it, And hid her bosom with it; after that Put on more calm."

The two kings are well sketched out--the father of Ida, and the father of our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice; A little dry old man, without a star, Not like a king! Three days he feasted us, And on the fourth I spoke of why we came, And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said, Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 'All honour. We remember love ourselves In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass Long summers back, a kind of ceremony-- I think the year in which our olives failed. I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart;-- With my full heart! but there were widows here, Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche; They fed her theories, in and out of place, Maintaining that with equal husbandry The woman were an equal to the man. They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang; Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk; Nothing but this: my very ears were hot To hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon, A certain summer-palace which I have Hard by your father's frontier: I said No, Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone--a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

"Boy, The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says:--

"'Tut, you know them not, the girls: They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force. Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them As he that does the thing they dare not do,-- Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes With the air of trumpets round him, and leaps in Among the women, snares them by the score, Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death, He reddens what he kisses: thus I won Your mother, a good mother, a good wife, Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness To such as her! If Cyril spake her true, To catch a dragon in a cherry net, And trip a tigress with a gossamer, Were wisdom to it.'"

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our maiden university:

"There One walked, reciting by herself, _and one In this hand held a volume as to read, And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that_. Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by, Or under arches of the marble bridge Hung, shadow'd from the heat."

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem, such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance, _The Princess_, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him--not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances--a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.[12]

[12] _The Romance of the Peerage, or Curiosities of Family History._ By GEORGE LILLIE CRAIK. Vols. I. and II. London: 1849.

_Celebrated Trials connected with the Aristocracy in the Relations of Private Life._ By PETER BURKE, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Pp. 505. London: 1849.

_Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, and Episodes in Ancestral Story._ By J. BERNARD BURKE, Esq. 2 Vols. London: 1849.

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and erudite--at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value. And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole, his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on--for he promises four or five more volumes--that interest is likely to rise. Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened, instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito--and Burke is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth. As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style. _Ne sutor_, &c., means, we apprehend, in this instance, let not Burke, whose prename is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance. Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant. But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes, tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive, are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections. People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay, has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately, being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"

The first section of Mr Craik's book extends over nearly a century, "that most picturesque of our English centuries which lies between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion," and owes its priority to its length and importance, not to chronological precedence, which is due rather to some of the narratives in the second volume. The history of the Lady Lettice Knollys, her marriages and her descendants, occupies nearly the whole volume, including much interesting matter relative to various noble English families, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, Antonio Perez, and other characters well known in history or romance. Here there is temptation enough to linger; but we pass on to a most interesting chapter of the second volume, which illustrates, as well and more briefly, the merits of Mr Craik's book. It is entitled _The Old Percys_--a name than which none is more thoroughly English, none more suggestive of high and chivalrous qualities. Mr Craik begins by a tilt at Romeo's fallacy of there being nothing in a name, instead of which, he says, "names have been in all ages among the most potent things in the world. They have stirred and swayed mankind, and still do so, simply as names, without any meaning being attached to them. Of two sounds, designating or indicating the same thing, the one shall, by its associations, raise an emotion of the sublime, the other of the ridiculous. There can hardly be a stronger instance of this than we have in the two paternal names, the assumed and the genuine one, of the family at present possessing the Northumberland title. The former, Percy, is a name for poetry to conjure with; it is itself poetry of a high and epic tone, and may be said to move the English heart 'more than the sound of a trumpet,' as Sidney tells us his was moved whenever he heard the rude old ballad in which it is celebrated; but when Canning, or whoever else it was, in the _Anti-Jacobin_ audaciously came out with--

'Duke Smithson of Northumberland A vow to God did make,'

he set the town in a roar." The case is neatly made out, and the writer then investigates the etymology of the name of Percy. The popular version is, that a Scottish king, the great Malcolm Canmore, was slain in the latter part of the eleventh century whilst assaulting the castle of Alnwick, whose lord ran his spear into the monarch's eye, and thence derived the surname of Pierce-eye. This is so pretty and romantic a derivation that one is loath to relinquish it, but unfortunately the Percys were Percys fully two centuries before Malcolm's death. Geoffrey, son of Mainfred the Danish chieftain, accompanied Rollo in his invasion of France, and became lord of the town of _Percy_ or _Persy_, in Lower Normandy, and this became his _sur_-name--originally _sieur_-name or lord-name--an appellation derived from territorial property. Two of the _de Percys_, fifth in descent from Geoffrey, followed William the Conqueror to England, where the elder of them became one of the greatest lords in the country. "About a hundred and twenty lordships in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and other parts, are set down in Domesday Book as his property. He was, of course, a baron of the realm. His family name being probably reserved for occasions of form and ceremony, he was familiarly known in his own day as _Guillaume al gernons_--that is, Will with the Whiskers--which puts us in possession of at least one point in the personal appearance of this founder of the English house of Percy. Hence _Algernon_ became a common baptismal name among his descendants.... Will with the Whiskers must have been a good fellow, if it be true, as we are told by an old writer, that his wife, Emma de Port, was the Saxon heiress of some of the lands bestowed upon him by the Conqueror, and that 'he wedded her in discharging of his conscience.'" We here observe a variance between Mr Craik and Mr Bernard Burke, who devotes more than one chapter to anecdotes of the house of Percy, which he states to have enjoyed an uninterrupted male descent from the date of the Conquest to the death of Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh earl, in 1670. Mr Craik, on the other hand, whilst noticing that the line has thrice ended in a female, and been revived through the marriage of the heiress, fixes the date of the first of these extinctions and revivals in 1168, or rather later, about a century after the Conquest, when the death, without male heirs, of the third Lord Percy, left the wealth and honours of the house to his two daughters. Maud, the eldest, died without issue; Agnes, the younger, married Jocelyn of Loraine, whose house was one of the most illustrious in Europe, boasting relationship with the dukes of Hainault, and collateral descent from the emperor Charlemagne, but whom she took for her husband only on condition of his assuming her ancestral name. Mr Craik gives Collins' _Peerage_ as his authority; Mr Burke would probably refer us to his own: but we do not feel enough interest in the subject to attempt to decide where doctors of this eminence differ. Amongst his celebrated "Peerage Causes," Mr Burke gives some curious particulars of the claim made by a Dublin trunkmaker to the titles and estates of the Percys, on the extinction of the male line in 1670. This man, whether the blood of the Percys flowed in his veins or not, showed no small share of the pluck and boldness for which that family was so long distinguished, by upholding his pretensions for fifteen years--at first against the dowager Countess of Northumberland, and afterwards against the proud and powerful Duke of Somerset, who had married the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy. When it is remembered that this occurred in the reign of Charles II., whose tribunals were not renowned for their equity, (and when a long purse was often better than the clearest right,) and that the influence and position of the countess and duke gave them incalculable advantages, it may be thought that the box-builder from Ireland was almost as bold a man as the Hotspur he claimed for an ancestor. He got hard measure from the House of Lords, and was rebuked for presuming to trouble it. He tried the courts of law, suing persons for scandal who had stated him to be an impostor--an indirect way of establishing his descent. After one of these trials, Lord Hailes, dissatisfied with the decision of the court, which was unfavourable to the plaintiff, is stated to have said to Lord Shaftesbury, when entering his coach--"I verily believe he (James Percy) hath as much right to the earldom of Northumberland as I have to this coach and horses, which I have bought and paid for." In the reign of James II., Percy again petitioned the Lords, but ineffectually. His final effort was in the first year of William and Mary, when his petition was read and referred to a Committee of Privileges, whose report declared him insolent; and ultimately he was condemned to be brought "before the four courts in Westminster Hall, wearing a paper upon his breast, on which these words shall be written: THE FALSE AND IMPUDENT PRETENDER TO THE EARLDOM OF NORTHUMBERLAND." This was accordingly done, and, thus disgraced and branded as a cheat, the unfortunate trunkmaker was heard of no more.

Connected with the early years of the heiress whose rights were thus disputed, are some singularly romantic incidents, of which a long account is given by both Burkes. Before the Lady Elizabeth Percy attained the age of sixteen, she was thrice a wife, and twice a widow. She was not yet thirteen when the ceremony of marriage was performed between her and the Earl of Ogle, a boy of the same age, who died within the year, leaving the heiress of Northumberland to be competed for by new suitors. Amongst these was Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat in Wiltshire, known, from his great wealth, as Tom of Ten Thousand, member of parliament for his county, a man of weight in the country, and living in a style of great magnificence. He had been an intimate friend of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., but, having quarrelled with that prince, he turned Whig, and courted the Duke of Monmouth, who frequently visited him at his sumptuous mansion of Longleat, and to whom he made a present of a team of Oldenburg carriage--horses of remarkable beauty. Thynne was soon the accepted suitor of Lady Elizabeth Percy, and they were married in 1681, but separated immediately after the ceremony on account of the youth of the bride, who went abroad for a tour on the Continent.

"It was then, as some say, that she first met Count Konigsmark at the court of Hanover; but in this notion there is a confusion both of dates and persons. The count, in fact, appears to have seen her in England, and to have paid his addresses to her before she gave her hand, or had it given for her, to Thynne. On his rejection, he left the country; but that they met on the Continent there is no evidence or likelihood. Charles John von Konigsmark was a Swede by birth, but was sprung from a German family, long settled in the district called the Mark of Brandenburg, on the coast of the Baltic. The name of Konigsmark is one of the most distinguished in the military annals of Sweden throughout a great part of the seventeenth century."--(_Celebrated Trials_, p. 41.)

Count Charles John did honour, at a very early age, to the warlike reputation of his family, upon whose scutcheon he was subsequently to cast the shadow of a foul suspicion. When eighteen years old, he greatly distinguished himself in a cruise against the Turks, undertaken in company with the Knights of Malta. Early in 1681, he returned to England, and the probabilities are that it was then, during Lady Elizabeth's widowhood, that he became an aspirant for her hand. Her second marriage apparently destroyed the chance of the desperate Swede, but without extinguishing his hopes. In the month of February 1682, the position of the three personages of the drama was as follows: Lady Elizabeth, or Lady Ogle, as she was styled, was abroad; Konigsmark had been lost sight of, having gone none knew whither; Tom Thynne, with the heiress of Northumberland his own by legal title, if not in actual possession, was at the zenith of his personal and political prosperity. His friend Monmouth was the idol of the mob, the Duke of York had gone to Scotland to avoid the storm raised by the absurd popish plot, and by the murder of Sir Emondbury Godfrey; Shaftesbury had been released from the Tower, amidst acclamations and illuminations: party-spirit, in short, ran so high, and Thynne was so prominent a figure at the moment, that the crime to which he presently fell a victim has been thought by many to have been instigated by political enemies, at least as much as by a disappointed rival for the hand of the heiress of the Percys. Be that as it may, (and at this distance of time it were a hopeless undertaking to elucidate a deed which the tribunals and annalists of the day failed to clear up,) "on the night of Sunday, 12th February 1682, all the court end of London was startled by the news that Thynne had been shot passing along the public streets in his coach. The spot was towards the eastern extremity of Pall-Mall, directly opposite to St Alban's Street,--no longer to be found, but which occupied nearly the same site with the covered passage now called the Opera Arcade. St Alban's Place, which was at its northern extremity, still preserves the memory of the old name. King Charles, at Whitehall, might almost have heard the report of the assassin's blunderbuss; and so might Dryden, sitting in his favourite front-room on the ground-floor of his house, on the south side of Gerrard Street, also hard by, more than a couple of furlongs distant." Sir John Reresby, the magistrate and memoir-writer, took an active share in the arrests and examinations that followed, and gives the details of the affair. He was at court that evening, and declares the king to have been greatly shocked at news of the murder--"not only for horror of the action itself, (which was shocking to his natural disposition,) but also for fear of the turn the anti-court party might give thereto." Three persons were arrested--a Pole, a German, and a Swedish lieutenant; and Borosky, the Pole, declared that he came to England by the desire of Count Konigsmark, signified to him through his Hamburg agent, and that on his arrival the count informed him what he had to do, supplied him with weapons, and put him under the orders of a German captain, by whose command he fired into Mr Thynne's carriage. The murderers were determined their enterprise should not miscarry for want of arms, and got together an arsenal. "There were a blunderbuss, two swords, two pair of pistols, three pocket-pistols, &c., tied up together in a sort of sea-bed, and delivered to Dr Dubartin, a German doctor, who received them at his own house." Active search was made for Konigsmark, who had arrived in England _incognito_ some days before the murder, and after a while he was discovered in hiding at Gravesend. The Duke of Monmouth and Lord Cavendish were particularly active in the affair, and a reward of £200 was offered for the count's apprehension. He was carried before the king. "I happened," says Reresby, "to be present upon this occasion, and observed that he appeared before his majesty with all the assurance imaginable. He was a fine person of a man, and I think his hair was the longest I ever saw." Nothing was elicited at this examination, which was very superficial, but on the 27th February the four accused persons were put on their trial at Hick's Hall. Konigsmark was acquitted for want of evidence (that of his three accomplices and servants not being receivable against him,) and by reason also, says Mr Peter Burke, of the more than ordinarily artful and favourable summing up of Chief-Justice Pemberton, who seemed determined to save him. The others were hanged in Pall-Mall, and Borosky, who fired the blunderbuss, was suspended in chains at Mile End. Although Konigsmark slipped through the fingers of justice, the moral conviction of his guilt was so strong, and the popular feeling so violent against him, that he was glad to leave England in all haste. "The high-spirited Lord Cavendish," says Mr Bernard Burke, "the friend and companion of the murdered Thynne, indignant at what he deemed a shameful evasion of justice, offered to meet Konigsmark in any part of the world, charge the guilt of blood upon him, and prove it with his sword. Granger records that the challenge was accepted, and that the parties agreed to fight on the sands of Calais, but before the appointed time arrived, Konigsmark declined the encounter." Such backwardness is rather inconsistent with the count's high reputation for bravery--somewhat inexplicable in the leader of the Maltese boarders, and in the man who subsequently greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Cambray and Gerona, at Navarin and Modon, and at the battle of Argoo, where he was either killed in fight, or died of a pleurisy brought on by over-exertion. On this last point authorities differ. It is not improbable, however, notwithstanding his approved valour, that conscience may have made a coward of him in the instance referred to by Granger, and that the man who never flinched before the Turk's scimitar or the Spaniard's toledo, may have shunned crossing his sword with the vengeful blade of Cavendish.

If, as may be supposed, it was Konigsmark's intention, by the assassination of Mr Thynne, to clear the way for his own pretensions to the hand of Lady Elizabeth, that part of his scheme was frustrated by the discovery of his complicity in the crime. There could be no hope of a renewal of the favour with which the lady has been said to have regarded the handsome Swede previously to her contract with Thynne--the work apparently of her restless matchmaking grandmother and guardian, rather than the result of any inclination of her own. Twice married, and still a maid, the Lady Ogle returned to England, immediately after the execution of her second husband's murderers, and soon (only two months afterward, we are told) she was led to the altar, for the third time, by Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, commonly known as the Proud Duke of Somerset, by reason of his inordinate arrogance and self-esteem. He outlived her, and married Lady Charlotte Finch, daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea. "Madam," he is reported to have said, with infinite indignation, to this lady, when she once ventured to tap him familiarly on the shoulder with her fan--"Madam, my first wife was a Percy, and she never would have dared to take such liberty." The Proud Duke, who not infrequently made himself a laughingstock by his fantastical assumption, attended the funerals of three sovereigns, and the coronation of five. On all such state occasions the precedence was his, the first peer of the realm (Duke of Norfolk) being a Roman Catholic. His only surviving son, out of seven borne him by his first duchess, left but one daughter, married to Sir Hugh Smithson, to whom the earldom of Northumberland descended, and who, in 1776, became the first duke of Northumberland.

Opposite the title-page of Mr Craik's second volume smiles the sweet face of Mary Tudor, the daughter, sister, and widow of kings, the wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the grandmother of the hapless Lady Jane Grey. No English princess, so little remarkable for high mental qualities, occupies so conspicuous a place in our annals. Her life was a romance; and the portion of it passed in France, as the bride of the infirm Louis XII., has been more than once availed of by the novelist. But the truth is here far too picturesque for embellishment. The utmost efforts of fiction could scarcely enhance singularity of the chain of circumstances entwined with Mary's girlhood, in the course of which she was near becoming an empress, as she afterwards became Queen. In January 1506 Mary was eight years old, Philip, Archduke of Austria, and, in right of his wife, King of Castile, was compelled by stress of weather to put in at Falmouth, during a voyage from the Netherlands to Spain, whereupon Henry VII. detained him at his court, and would not let him go, till he had extorted his consent to a marriage between the infant princess and Prince Charles of Castile, afterwards the Emperor Charles V. Philip died in the autumn of the same year, but the marriage was not the less solemnised by proxy in London early in 1508, to the great contentment of Henry, to whose felicity, Bacon says, there was then nothing to be added. "Nevertheless, the marriage of Mary of England with the Spanish prince, though it had gone so far, went no farther; nor does her father seem to have counted upon the arrangement being carried out with absolute reliance. When he died, in 1509 he was found to have directed in his will that the sum of £50,000 should bestowed as a dower with Mary, whenever she should be married either to Charles, King of Castile, or to any other foreign prince. In October 1513, after the capture of Tournay by Henry VIII., it was stipulated by a new treaty, concluded at Lisle, between him and Maximilian Emperor of Austria, that Charles should marry the Princess Mary at Calais before the 15th May next." The match, however, hung fire on the part of the Austrian, who had been tempted by the offer for his grandson of the French princess Renée, and although nothing came of this project, it enabled the King of France to connect himself as closely with the royal family of England, as he had been desirous of doing with that of Castile, but in another manner. His queen, Anne of Bretagne, died just about that time, and a few months afterwards the decrepid valetudinarian of fifty-three proposed marriage with the blooming sister of Henry VIII., then in her seventeenth year. Mary, attaching apparently little importance to the contract with the Prince of Castile, had fixed her affections on the handsome and chivalrous Charles Brandon, her brother's favourite, and the best lance of his day.

"Le premier des rois fut un soldat heureux,"

says the French ballad; and Brandon, whose pedigree was a blank previously to his father's father, may be said to have had almost equal fortune. For if not a king himself, he was a queen's husband, and a king's brother-in-law. He must have been some years older than Mary, for he had already been twice married, and had been talked of as the proposed husband of various illustrious ladies, and amongst others, of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, whose heart he is said to have won by his prowess in a tournament. At last Mary Tudor cast her eyes upon him, apparently with the full approval of her brother, whose most intimate friend Brandon long had been, and who now created him Duke of Suffolk, in anticipation of his marriage with his sister. Just then came Louis XII.'s offer. "The temptation of seeing his sister queen of France," says Mr Craik, "was not to be resisted by Henry; and the prospect of such an elevation may not perhaps have been without its seductions for the princess herself:" an illiberal supposition, refuted, if there be aught in physiognomy, by Mr Craik's own artist. The owner of those frank, fair features can never have preferred ambition to love, a decrepid French king to a gallant English duke. She consented, however, to the alliance; and if there were tears and overruling in the matter, they are certainly not upon the record. Old Louis--who, although not much past what is generally the full vigour of life, had already a foot in the grave--had planned the marriage as a matter of policy, but soon became exceedingly excited by the accounts he got of Mary's great beauty. A letter from the Earl of Worcester, sent to Paris as her proxy at the ceremony of marriage, to Cardinal Wolsey, exhibits the French monarch in a fever of expectation, "devising new collars and goodly gear" for his bride. "He showed me," says the earl, "the goodliest and the richest sight of jewels that ever I saw. I assure you, all that I ever have seen is not to compare to fifty-six great pieces that I saw of diamonds and rubies, and seven of the greatest pearls that I have seen, besides a great number of other goodly diamonds, rubies, balais, and great pearls; and the worst of the second sort of stones to be priced, and cost two thousand ducats. There is ten or twelve of the principal stones that there hath been refused for one of them one hundred thousand ducats." It seemed as if Louis, diffident of his own powers of captivation, had resolved to buy his wife's affection with trinkets; and Lord Worcester, duly appreciating the glittering store, and overrating, perhaps, its power of conferring happiness, doubts not "but she will have a good life with him, with the grace of God." The respectable and uxorious old sovereign was too wise to hand over the entire treasure at once, and planned, as he told Worcester, to have "at many and divers times kisses and thanks for them." He accordingly doled them out in daily morsels, which, although minute enough when compared with the coffers' full of which Lord Worcester speaks, were yet sufficiently considerable to satisfy an ordinary appetite. On the day of their marriage, which took place at Abbéville, he gave her "a marvellous great pointed diamond, with a ruby almost two inches long, without fail." And the following day he bestowed upon her "a ruby two inches and a half long, and as big as a man's finger, hanging by two chains of gold at every end, without any foil; the value whereof few men could esteem." At the same time he packed off her English attendants, which at first greatly discomposed her, but after a time she appears to have become reconciled to it, when a new cause of embarrassment arose in the arrival at Paris of the Duke of Suffolk in the character of English ambassador. "The attachment understood to have so recently existed between her majesty and Suffolk was of course well-known in France. The story of the English chroniclers is, that Suffolk was on this account regarded with general jealousy and dislike by the French; and the Duke of Bretagne, in particular, is charged with having actually sought his life."--(_Romance of the Peerage_, vol. ii. p. 245.) The Duke of Bretagne, also called the Dauphin, was son-in-law of Louis, and afterwards Francis I. One feels unwilling to credit the imputation cast on so chivalrous a king. Mr Burke generalises the matter, making no mention of Francis, and attributing the foul play to "the French, envious of the success of Brandon." But Mr Burke, who will gossip by the hour about an apocryphal legend, huddles over the romantic career of Charles Brandon in half-a-dozen pages, and can hardly be looked upon as a serious authority. The alleged unfair attempt on Suffolk's life occurred on the occasion of a tournament, which began at Paris, on Sunday 12th November, "before the king and queen, who were on a goodly stage; and the queen stood so that all men might see her, and wondered at her beauty, and the king was feeble, and lay upon a couch for weakness." In this tourney, the Duke of Suffolk and Marquis of Dorset and other Englishmen bore a gallant part, doing, says a chronicler, "as well as the best of any other." And a trifle better, too, judging from results; but old Hall, in his quaintness, is a friend to anything but exaggeration. And Suffolk himself, in a letter to Wolsey, after the tournament, merely says, with praiseworthy modesty, "blessed be God, all our Englishmen sped well, as I am sure ye shall hear by other." He himself was the hero of the jousts. It was no bloodless contest, with bated weapons, but a right stern encounter, with sharp spears. "Divers," says the cool chronicler, in a parenthesis, "were slain, and not spoken of." The felony charged on Francis was, that on the second day of the tourney, when he himself, by reason of a hurt in the hand, was compelled to leave the lists, he "secretly had a certain German, who was the tallest and strongest man in all the court of France, brought and put in the place of another person, in the hope of giving Suffolk a check." The bulky champion met his match, and more. After several fierce encounters, "Suffolk, by pure strength, took his antagonist round the neck, and pummelled him so about the head that the blood issued out of his nose." This "coventry" practice, then adopted, we believe, for the first time, settled the German, who was conveyed away in lamentable plight--by the dauphin, Hall affirms, and secretly, lest he should be known. The supposed motive of Francis, in seeking Suffolk's life, was his passion for his father-in-law's bride, which Brantome and other French writers have asserted to have been reciprocated by Mary--a base lying statement, there can be little doubt. There is every reason to believe the French queen's conduct to have been irreproachable. At any rate, her husband found no fault with her, declaring, on the contrary, in a letter to Harry the Eighth, how greatly pleased and contented he was with her, and lauding at the same time, in the highest terms, his excellent cousin of Suffolk. Four days after writing this letter, and twelve weeks after his marriage, Louis, who was much troubled with gout, and who, for the sake of his young queen, had completely changed his habits, dining at the extravagantly late hour of noon, and remaining out of bed sometimes until nearly midnight, departed this life. Upon which event Mr Craik strikes another splinter out of the romantic lens through which we have always loved to contemplate Mary Tudor, by insinuating she may have been not quite pleased to lose the dazzling position of queen-consort of France; and that it would have been equally satisfactory to her if Suffolk and Louis had lingered a little longer--the one in the pangs of disappointed love, the other in those of the gout. But if a diadem had such charms for Mary, that of Spain was at her command, by Mr Craik's own confession. "Both the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Spain would now have been glad to secure her hand for her old suitor the Prince of Castile." Now, as ever, her behaviour was correct, proving both good sense and good feeling. She remained several weeks in Paris without giving the least indication of an intention to marry again, although Wolsey had no sooner heard of her being a widow than he wrote to her on the subject of a second union. Of course, nobody expected she would allow the usual term of mourning to expire before bestowing her hand on Suffolk, for their mutual and long-standing attachment was well known. Exactly three months after the death of Louis, they were privately married. At the last moment Suffolk hesitated, through fear of offending Henry VIII.; and although Francis himself advised him to marry the queen, he still demurred, with a degree of irresolution hardly to have been expected in one of his adventurous character, until Mary herself took energetic measures, giving him four days, and no more, to make up his mind. Thus urged, he ran the risk, and had no cause to repent. Henry was easily reconciled to the marriage, which he had doubtless foreseen as inevitable; and Mary, the French queen, as she continued to sign herself, was happy with the husband of her choice until her early death at the age of thirty-five.

The nobility of Great Britain need no advocate to vaunt their virtues and exalt their fame. Ever foremost in the field and at the council-board, they long since achieved, and still maintain, the first place amongst the world's aristocracy. Their illustrious deeds are blazoned upon the page of history. Ready alike with purse and blade, they have never flinched from shedding their blood and expending their treasure in the cause of loyalty and patriotism. Measure them with the nobility of other countries, and they gain in grandeur by the comparison. Whilst in nearly every other European land the aristocracy is fallen, as in France, by its vices and heartlessness; degenerate and incapable, as in Spain; or, as in Russia, but lately emerged from barbarism, and with its reputation yet to make, the nobles of Great Britain proudly maintain their eminent position, not by factitious advantages alone, but because none more than they deserve it--because they are not more conspicuous for high rank and illustrious descent, than for dignified conduct and distinguished talents. We have heard of self-styled liberals scowling down from the gallery of the House of Lords upon the distinguished assembly, and with an envious grimace pledging their utmost exertions to its extinction. Fortunately the renown of such gentlemen is not equal to their spite, or the British constitution, there can be little doubt, would soon be abrogated in favour of some hopeful scheme, coined in a Brummagem mint. Fortunately there is still enough right feeling and good sense in the country to guard our institutions against Manchester machinations.

Accustomed as we have been of late years to meet all manner of radicalism and mischievous trash, in the disguise of polite literature, in weekly parts and monthly numbers, in half-guinea volumes and twopenny tracts, tricked out, gilt, and illustrated, just as a cunning quack coats his destructive pills in a morsel of shining tinsel, we took up Mr Peter Burke's book with a slight mistrust, which did not, however, survive the perusal of his preface. Therein he disclaims all intention of depreciating the character of the British aristocracy. Had such been his view, he says, it had been signally defeated by the statistics contained in his book, which proves to be a most triumphant vindication of the class referred to. "The volume embraces a period of three hundred years, and during the whole of that time we find but three peers convicted of murder: the very charge against them, if we except Lord Ferrers' crime--the act of a madman--and some cases of duelling, is unknown for more than two hundred years back. Moreover, setting aside these murders, and also the night-broils peculiar to the beginning of the last century, the aristocratic classes of society have scarcely a single instance on record against them of a base or degrading nature, beyond the misdemeanour of Lord Grey of Werke, and the misdeeds of two baronets.... The judgments pronounced against them are the judgments, not of felony, but of treason. Crimes they may have committed, but they are almost invariably the crimes, not of villany, but of misapplied honour and misguided devotion." Mr Burke steers clear of politics, and limits his investigations to the offences against society. The first trial he records took place in 1541--the last occurred in 1846. Besides treasonable offences, he has excluded such cases as could not be given, even in outline, without manifest offence to his reader's delicacy. With these exceptions, he intimates that he has noticed all the trials connected with the aristocracy that have occurred during the last three centuries. We cannot contradict him, without more minute reference to authorities than we at this moment have opportunity to make; but we thought the criminal records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been richer in this respect; and indeed his brother Bernard's book of anecdotes reminds us of two or three cases--that of the Countess of Strathmore, and of Mure of Auchindrane--which, it seems to us, would have been in their place in his collection. The trials given by Mr Peter Burke are thirty-three in number, and it is not uninteresting to sort them according to the offences. In many instances, it is to be observed, the members of the aristocracy concerned were sinned against, not sinning, as in the murder of Lord William Russell, the singular attempt to extort money from the second Duke of Marlborough, the recent action for breach of promise against Earl Ferrers. There are nine cases of murder, most of them of ancient date; five duel cases, beginning with Lord Mohun and terminating with the Earl of Cardigan; two trials for bigamy, (Beau Fielding and the Duchess of Kingston;) two parricides, and sundry brawls. First in the list is the trial of Sir Edmond Kneves, knight, of Norfolk, arraigned before the king's justices "for striking of one Master Clerc, of Norfolk, servant with the Earle of Surrey, within the king's house in the Tenice-court." Sir Edmond was found guilty, and condemned to lose his right hand. In cases of decapitation, a headsman and his aid, or two aids at most, have generally been found sufficient. The cutting off of a hand involved much more ceremony, and a far greater staff of officials. A curious list is given, from the state trials, of the persons in attendance to assist in Sir Edmond's mutilation. "First, the serjeant chirurgion, with his instruments appertaining to his office; the serjeant of the woodyard, with the mallet and a blocke, whereupon the hand should lie; the master cooke for the king, with the knife; the serjeant of the larder, to set the knife right on the joynt; the serjeant farrier, with his searing-yrons to seare the veines; the serjeant of the poultry, with a cocke, which cocke should have his head smitten off upon the same blocke, and with the same knife; the yeoman of the chandry, with seare-clothes; the yeomen of the scullery, with a pan of fire to heat the yrons, a chafer of water to cool the ends of the yrons, and two fourmes for all officers to set their stuffe on; the serjeant of the seller, with wine, ale, and beere; the yeoman of the ewry, in the serjeant's steed, who was absent, with bason, ewre, and towels." A dozen persons or more to assist at poor Sir Edmond's _manumission_. Everybody remembers Sir Mungo Malagrowther's charitable visit to Lord Glenvarloch, when he had incurred a like penalty, and his description of the "pretty pageant" when one Tubbs or Stubbes lost his right hand for a "pasquinadoe" on Queen Elizabeth. Sir Edmond Kneves was more fortunate. When condemned, he prayed that the king, (Henry VIII.,) "of his benigne grace, would pardon him of his right hand, and take the left; for, (quoth he,) if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter doe such good service to his grace, as shall please him to appoint." A request which his majesty, "considering the gentle heart of the said Edmond, and the good report of lords and ladies," was graciously pleased to meet with a free pardon. Sir Edmond was a man of high rank and consideration, and his descendants obtained a peerage and a baronetcy, both now extinct.

Fifteen years later, under the reign of Queen Mary, happened the trial and execution of Lord Stourton and four of his servants, for the murder of William and John Hartgill. The motive was a private grudge. Lord Stourton was a zealous Catholic, and great interest was made with Mary to save his life, but in vain: she would only grant him the favour to be hung with a silken rope. Next comes "The great case of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury," concerning which much has been written; and then the investigation of a base and disgraceful conspiracy got up by Sir John Croke of Chilton, Baronet, to accuse the Reverend Robert Hawkins of felony. We pass on to the case of Lord Mohun--twice tried for homicide, and finally slain in a duel, in which his antagonist also perished. Cases of brawling--not the offence to which the word is now generally applied, and of which Doctors' Commons takes cognisance, but bloody brawls, with sword-thrusts and mortal wounds--were of frequent occurrence towards the close of the seventeenth century, and several of the more important trials they gave rise to are related by Mr Peter Burke. Lord Mohun was one of the most turbulent spirits of a period when gentlemen carried swords, frequented taverns, drank deep, and swore high, and when a fray, with bare steel and bloodshed, was as common an occurrence in London streets as is now the detection of a pickpocket or the breaking-down of a hackney cab; when hot-headed young men--the worthy descendants of the Wildrakes of a previous reign--met on tavern stairs, primed with good liquor, quarrelled about nothing, rushed into the street, and slew each other incontinently. After this fashion did Sir Charles Pym of Brymmore, Somersetshire, lose his life, after a dinner at the Swan, upon Fish Street Hill; his decease extinguishing the baronetcy, and terminating the male line of an ancient and honourable house. The cause of quarrel was trivial in the extreme--a very dog's quarrel, it may be called, for the whole ground of dispute was a plate of meat. However fashionable a house of entertainment the Swan upon Fish Street Hill may in those days have been deemed, its larder seems to have been conducted upon a most economical scale; for on the trial, a Mr Mirriday deposed that, upon going there to dine in company with Sir Charles and other gentlemen, and asking for meat, they were told they might have fish, but there was no meat save what was bespoke by Mr Rowland Walters, a person of station and family, who was dining with some friends in another room. The evidence on this trial, which is given at length, is curious as a quaint illustration of the manners of the time. "He desired him (the tavern-keeper) to help us to a plate of it, if it might be got, which we had brought up stairs: after dinner we drank the gentlemen's health that sent it, and returned them thanks for it. A little while after, Sir Thomas Middleton went away, and about an hour after that, or thereabouts, Sir Charles Pym and the rest of us came down to go away; and when we were in the entry, Mr Cave met us, and asked Sir Charles how he liked the beef that was sent up--who answered, we did not know you sent it, for we have paid for it: then the boy that kept the bar told us that he did not reckon it in the bill; upon which Mr Cave seemed to take it ill; but, my lord, I cannot be positive whether Mr Bradshaw and Mr Palms were at any words. Then I took Mr Cave to one side into the entry, and he thought that I had a mind to fight him, but I did what I could to make an end of the quarrel. [Upon which the court highly commended. Mr Mirriday.]" The quarrel continued, however, and Sir Charles Pym was run through the body by Mr Walters, "and fell down crinkling (writhing) immediately," deposed a Mr Fletcher, who saw the fight. It was urged in extenuation, that Sir Charles had previously run Walters eight inches into the thigh. "'Pray, my lord,' said Walters, 'let Sir Charles' sword be seen, all blood.' [But that gave no satisfaction on either side.]" So much malice was shown, that the jury would fain have returned a verdict of wilful murder; but Justice Allibone overruled their wish, and laid down the law, and they brought it in manslaughter. The sentence is not given; but such offences were then very leniently looked upon, and it is not likely to have been severe. Lord Mohun's two trials were of a different nature from this one; for in the first--for the murder of Mountford, the actor, which has been often told, and which arose out of an attempt to carry off Congreve's friend, Mrs Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress--the blow was struck by Captain Hill, who escaped, and Mohun was indicted for aiding and abetting. "My Lord Mohun," the murdered man deposed, "offered me no violence; but while I was talking with my Lord Mohun, Hill struck me with his left hand, and with his right hand ran me through before I could put my hand to my sword." Not only in street squabbles, but in encounters of a more regular character, foul play appears to have been not unfrequent. There was strong suspicion of it in the duel in which Lord Mohun met his death. After he had received his mortal wound, his second, Major-General Macartney, is said to have basely stabbed the Duke of Hamilton, already grievously hurt. Colonel Hamilton, the Duke's second, "declared upon oath, before the Privy Council, that when the principals engaged, he and Macartney followed their example; that Macartney was immediately disarmed; but the colonel, seeing the duke fall upon his antagonist, threw away the swords, and ran to lift him up; that while he was employed in raising the Duke, Macartney, having taken up one of the swords, stabbed his grace over Hamilton's shoulder, and retired immediately." This was one of the accounts given of the affair. "According to some," says the author of _Anecdotes of the Aristocracy_, "Lord Mohun shortened his sword, and stabbed the wounded man to the heart while leaning on his shoulder, and unable to stand without support; others said that a servant of Lord Mohun's played the part attributed by the more credible accounts to Macartney." Some years later, Macartney stood his trial at the King's Bench; and as the jury found him guilty only of manslaughter, it is presumable they discredited Colonel Hamilton's evidence. The truth is now difficult to be ascertained, for the whole affair is mixed up with the fierce party-politics of the time. The Whigs are said to have instigated Mohun, "who had long laboured under the repute of being at once the tool and bully of the party," to provoke the duke, and force him into a quarrel. Mohun primed himself with wine, and took a public opportunity of insulting his grace, in order to make him the challenger: then, as the duke seemed disposed to stand upon his own high character, and treat the disreputable brawler with contempt, Mohun sent him a cartel by the hands of the above-named Macartney, a fire-eater and scamp of his own kidney. The motive of Whig hatred of the duke was his recent appointment as ambassador extraordinary to the court of France, and their fear that he would favour the Pretender. During Macartney's absence in Holland, £800 were offered for his apprehension--£500 by the government of the day, and £300 by the Duchess of Hamilton; and Swift tells an anecdote of a gentleman who, being attacked by highwaymen, told them he was Macartney, "upon which they brought him to a justice of peace in hopes of a reward, and the rogues were sent to gaol."

But the most wanton and persevering brawler of that quarrelsome period was no less a person than Philip, seventh Earl of Pembroke, and fourth of Montgomery. Head-breaking and rib-piercing were his daily diversions: for in those days, when all gentlemen wore swords, the superabundant pugnacity of bloods about town did not exhale itself on such easy terms as in the present pacific age. Now, the utmost excesses of "fast" youths--whether right honourables or linen-shopmen--when, after a superabundance of claret or gin twist, a supper at an opera-dancer's, or a Newgate song at a night-tavern, they patrol the streets, on rollicking intent, never exceed a "round" with a cabman, the abstraction of a few knockers, or a "mill" with the police; and are sufficiently expiated by a night in the station-house, and a lecture and fine from Mr Jardine the next morning. But with the Pembrokes, and Mohuns, and Walters, when the liquor got uppermost, it was out bilbo directly, and a thrust at their neighbours' vitals. And, doubtless, the lenity of the judges encouraged such rapier-practice; for unless malice aforethought was proved beyond possibility of a doubt, the summing-up was usually very merciful for the prisoner, as in the trial of Walters for Sir Charles Pym's death, when Mr Baron Jenner told the jury that "he rather thought there was a little heat of wine amongst them," (the evidence said that nine or ten bottles had been drunk amongst six of them, which, in the case of seasoned topers, as they doubtless were, might hardly be considered an exculpatory dose;) "and this whole action was carried on by nothing else but by a hot and sudden frolic; and he was very sorry that it should fall upon such a worthy gentleman." Between merciful judges and privilege of peerage, Lord Pembroke got scot-free, or nearly so, out of various scrapes which would have been very serious matters a century and a half later. The first note taken of his eccentricities is an entry in the Lords' journals, dated the 28th January 1678, recording that the house was that day informed by the Lord Chancellor, in the name of his majesty, of "the commitment of the Earl of Pembroke to the Tower of London, for uttering such horrid and blasphemous words, and other actions proved upon oath, as are not fit to be repeated in any Christian assembly." After four weeks' imprisonment, his lordship was set free upon his humble petition, in which he asked pardon of God, the King, and the House of Peers, and declared his health "much impaired by the long restraint." His convalescence was rather boisterous, for exactly one week after his release, a complaint was made to the house by Philip Rycaut, Esq., to the effect that, on the evening of the preceding Saturday, "he being to visit a friend in the Strand, whilst he was at the door taking his leave, the Earl of Pembroke, coming by, came up to the door, and with his fist, without any provocation, struck the said Philip Rycaut such a blow upon the eye as almost knocked it out; and afterwards knocked him down, and then fell upon him with such violence that he almost stifled him with his gripes, in the dirt; and likewise his lordship drew his sword, and was in danger of killing him, had he not slipped into the house, and the door been shut upon him." One cannot but admire the sort of ascending scale observable in this assault. The considerate Pembroke evidently shunned proceeding at once to extreme measures; so he first knocked the man's eye out, then punched his head, then tried a little gentle strangulation, and finally drew his sword to put the poor wretch out of his misery. A mere assault and battery, however, was quite insufficient to dispel the steam accumulated during the month passed in the Tower. Twenty-four hours after the attack on Rycaut, and before that ill-used person had time to lodge his complaint, the furious earl had got involved in an affair of a much more serious nature, for which he was brought to trial before the Peers, in Westminster Hall. The Lord High Steward appointed on the occasion was the Lord Chancellor, Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, for whose address to the prisoner we would gladly make room here, for it is a masterpiece, of terse and dignified eloquence, and one of the most striking pages of Mr Peter Burke's compilation. The crime imputed to Lord Pembroke was the murder of one Nathaniel Cony, by striking, kicking, and stamping upon him; and the evidence for the prosecution was so strong that a verdict of guilty was inevitable. But it was brought in manslaughter, not murder; and the earl, claiming his privilege of peerage, was discharged. It is difficult to say what was considered murder at that time; nothing, apparently, short of homicide committed fasting, and after long and clearly established premeditation. A decanter of wine on the table, or the exchange of a few angry words, reduced the capital crime to a slight offence, got over by privilege of peerage or benefit of clergy. The death of Cony was the result of most brutal and unprovoked ill-treatment. "It was on Sunday the 3d of February," said the Attorney-General, Sir William Jones, in his quaint but able address to the peers, "that my Lord of Pembroke and his company were drinking at the house of one Long, in the Haymarket, (I am sorry to hear the day was no better employed by them,) and it was the misfortune of this poor gentleman, together with one Mr Goring, to come into this house to drink a bottle of wine." The said Goring was one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution, but his evidence was not very clear, for he had been excessively drunk at the time of the scuffle, and indeed poor Cony seems to have been the same; and it was his maudlin anxiety to see his friend home, and to take a parting-glass at Long's, "which it _seems_," said Goring, "was on the way," (he, the said Goring, being anything but confident of what had been _on_ or _off_ the way on the night in question)--that brought him into the dangerous society of Lord Pembroke. Goring got into dispute with the earl, received a glass of wine in his face, had his sword broken, lost his hat and periwig, and was hustled out of the room. "Whilst I was thrusting him out of doors," deponed Mr Richard Savage, one of Lord Pembroke's companions, "I saw my Lord of Pembroke strike Cony with his right hand, who immediately fell down, and then gave him a kick; and so upon that, finding him not stir, I took Mr Cony, being on the ground, (I and my lord together, for I was not strong enough to do it myself,) and laid him on the chairs, and covered him up warm, and so left him." The tender attention of covering him up warm, did not suffice to save the life of Cony, who had evidently, from his account and that of the medical men, received a vast deal more ill-usage than Savage chose to acknowledge. The earl got off, however, as already shown, and was in trouble again before the end of the same year--this time with a man of his own rank, Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the wit and poet, who received a message late one night, to the effect that Lord Pembroke was desirous to speak with him at Locket's tavern. After inquiring whether Pembroke were sober, and receiving an affirmative reply, Dorset went as requested, but only to be insulted by his very drunken lordship of Pembroke, who insisted on his fighting him forthwith for some imaginary affront. The matter came before the House of Peers, and the disputants were put under arrest in their respective dwellings, until Lord Pembroke, declaring himself unconscious of all that had passed on the night in question, tendered apologies, and craved to be allowed to retire to his house at Wilton, whither he accordingly was permitted to go, and where he may possibly have remained--as no other frolics are related of him--until his death, which occurred three or four years afterwards.

Few of the remarkable trials given in the _Anecdotes of the Aristocracy_ will obtain much attention from persons who have read Mr Peter Burke's book, whence most of them are borrowed and condensed, with here and there a slight alteration or addition. In a note towards the close of his second volume, Mr Bernard Burke somewhat tardily acknowledges his obligations to his brother. Considering the recent publication of the _Celebrated Trials, &c._, it would perhaps have been judicious of him to have altogether omitted the criminal cases in question. As told by him, they do not constitute the best portion of his book, whose most interesting chapters, to our mind, are those including such wild old fragments as _A Curious Tradition_, _The Mysterious Story of Littlecot_, _An Irish Waterfiend_, and others of a similar kind. The short anecdotes are generally better than those that have been worked up into a sort of tale. Many of the stories have of course been already thrice told; but by persons who have not met with them, and who are not likely to take the trouble of hunting them up in old memoirs and magazines, they will be read with pleasure, and duly prized. And whilst Mr Craik's book may fairly claim to rank as history, and Mr Peter Burke's as a well-arranged and interesting compilation, it were hardly fair to refuse brother Bernard the modicum of praise usually awarded to a painstaking and amusing gossip.

THE LIFE OF THE SEA.

BY B. SIMMONS.

"A very intelligent young lady, born and bred in the Orkney islands, who lately came to spend a season in this neighbourhood, told me nothing in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as woods and trees. She found them so dead and lifeless, that she never could help pining after the eternal motion and variety of the ocean. And so back she has gone; and I believe nothing will ever tempt her from the wind-swept Orcades again."--SIR WALTER SCOTT. _Lockhart's Life_, vol. ii.--[Although it is of a female this striking anecdote is related, it has been thought more suitable to give the amplified expression of the sentiment in the stanzas a masculine application.]

I.

These grassy vales are warm and deep, Where apple-orchards wave and glow; Upon soft uplands whitening sheep Drift in long wreaths.--Below, Sun-fronting beds of garden-thyme, alive With the small humming merchants of the hive, And cottage-homes in every shady nook Where willows dip and kiss the dimples of the brook.

II.

But all too close against my face My thick breath feels these crowding trees, They crush me in their green embrace.-- I miss the Life of Seas; The wild free life that round the flinty shores Of my bleak isles expanded Ocean pours-- So free, so far, that, in the lull of even, Naught but the rising moon stands on your path to heaven.

III.

In summer's smile, in winter's strife, Unstirr'd, those hills are walls to me; I want the vast, all-various life Of the broad, circling Sea,-- Each hour in morn, or noon, or midnight's range, That heaves or slumbers with exhaustless change, Dash'd to the skies--steep'd in blue morning's rays-- Or back resparkling far Orion's lovely blaze.

IV.

I miss the madd'ning Life of Seas, When the red, angry sunset dies, And to the storm-lash'd Orcades Resound the Seaman's cries: Mid thick'ning night and fresh'ning gale, upon The stretch'd ear bursts Despair's appealing gun, O'er the low Reef that on the lee-beam raves With its down-crashing hills of wild, devouring waves.

V.

How then, at dim, exciting morn, Suspense will question--as the Dark Is clearing seaward--"Has she worn The tempest through, that Bark?" And, 'mid the Breakers, bulwarks parting fast, And wretches clinging to a shiver'd mast, Give funeral answer. Quick with ropes and yawl! Launch! and for life stretch out! they shall not perish all!

VI.

These inland love-bowers sweetly bloom, White with the hawthorn's summer snows; Along soft turf a purple gloom The elm at sunset throws: There the fond lover, listening for the sweet Half-soundless coming of his Maiden's feet, Thrills if the linnet's rustling pinions pass, Or some light leaf is blown rippling along the grass.

VII.

But Love his pain as sweetly tells Beneath some cavern beetling hoar, Where silver sands and rosy shells Pave the smooth glistening shore-- When all the winds are low, and to thy tender Accents, the wavelets, stealing in, make slender And tinkling cadence, wafting, every one, A golden smile to thee from the fast-sinking sun.

VIII.

Calm through the heavenly sea on high Comes out each white and quiet star-- So calm up Ocean's floating sky Come, one by one, afar, White quiet sails from the grim icy coasts That hear the battles of the Whaleing hosts, Whose homeward crews with feet and flutes in tune And spirits roughly blithe, make music to the moon.

IX.

Or if (like some) thou'st loved in vain, Or madly wooed the already Won, --Go when the Passion and the Pain Their havoc have begun, And dare the Thunder, rolling up behind The Deep, to match that hurricane of mind: Or to the sea-winds, raging on thy pale Grief-wasted cheek, pour forth as bitter-keen a tale.

X.

For in that sleepless, tumbling tide-- When most thy fever'd spirits reel, Sick with desires unsatisfied, --Dwell life and balm to heal. Raise thy free Sail, and seek o'er ocean's breast --It boots not what--those rose-clouds in the West, And deem that thus thy spirit freed shall be, Ploughing the stars through seas of blue Eternity.

XI.

This mainland life I could not live, Nor die beneath a rookery's leaves,-- But I my parting breath would give Where chainless Ocean heaves; In some gray turret, where my fading sight Could see the Lighthouse flame into the night, Emblem of guidance and of hope, to save; Type of the Rescuer bright who walked the howling wave.

XII.

Nor, dead, amid the charnel's breath Shall rise my tomb with lies befool'd, But, like the Greek who faced in death The sea in life he ruled,[13] High on some peak, wave-girded, will I sleep, My dirge sung ever by the choral deep; There, sullen mourner! oft at midnight lone Shall my familiar friend, the Thunder, come to groan.

[13] Themistocles;--his tomb was on the chore at Salamis.

XIII.

Soft Vales and sunny hills, farewell! Long shall the friendship of your bowers Be sweet to me as is the smell Of their strange lovely flowers; And each kind face, like every pleasant star Be bright to me though ever bright afar: True as the sea-bird's wing, I seek my home, And its glad Life, once more, by boundless Ocean's foam!

LONDON CRIES.

BY B. SIMMONS.

I.

What trifles mere are more than treasure, To curious, eager-hearted boys! I yet can single out the pleasure, From memory's store of childish joys, That thrill'd me when some gracious guest First spread before my dazzled eyes, In covers, crimson as the West, A glorious book of _London Cries_.

II.

For days that gift was not resign'd, As stumbling on I spelt and read; It shared my cushion while I dined,-- I took it up at night to bed; At noon I conn'd it half-awake, Nor thought, while poring o'er the prize, How oft my head and heart should ache In listening yet to London Cries.

III.

Imprinted was the precious book By great John Harris, of St Paul's, (The Aldus of the nursery-nook;) I still revere the shop's gray walls, Whose wealth of story-books had power To wake my longing boyhood's sighs:-- But Fairy-land lost every flower Beneath your tempests-London Cries!

IV.

I learn'd by rote each bawling word-- And with a rapture turn'd the broad, Great staring woodcuts, dark and blurr'd, I never since derived from Claude. --That Cherry-seller's balanced scale, Poised nicely o'er his wares' rich dyes, Gave useful hints, of slight avail, To riper years 'mid London Cries.

V.

The Newsman wound his noisy horn, And told how slaughter'd friends and foes Lay heap'd, five thousand men, one morn, In thy red trenches, Badajoz. 'Twas FAME, and had its fond abettors; Though some folk now would think it wise To change that F for other letters, And hear no more such London Cries.

VI.

Here chimed the tiny Sweep;--since then I've loved to drop that trifling balm, Prescribed, lost ELIA, by thy pen, Within his small half-perish'd palm.[14] And there the Milkmaid tripp'd and splash'd, --All milks that pump or pail supplies, (Save that with human kindness dash'd,) 'Twas mine to quaff 'mid London Cries.

[14] "If thou meetest one of those small gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny--it is better to give him twopence. If it be stormy weather," adds Lamb, in that tone of tender humour so exclusively his own--"If it be stormy weather, and to the proper troubles of his occupation a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity will surely rise to a tester."--ESSAYS BY ELIA--_The praise of Chimney Sweepers._

VII.

That Dustman--how he rang his bell, And yawn'd, and bellow'd "dust below!" I knew the very fellow's yell When first I heard it years ago. What fruits of toil, and tears, and trust, Of cunning hands, and studious eyes, Like Death, he daily sacks to dust, (Here goes _my_ mite) 'mid London Cries!

VIII.

The most vociferous of the prints Was He who chaunted Savoys sweet, The same who stunn'd, a century since, That proud, poor room in Rider Street: When morning now awakes his note, Like bitter Swift, I often rise, And wish his wares were in that throat To stop at least _his_ London Cries.[15]

[15] "Morning"--[in bed.] "Here is a restless dog crying 'Cabbages and Savoys,' plagues me every morning about this time. He is now at it. I wish his largest cabbage were sticking in his throat!'--_Journal to Stella, 13th December 1712._ Swift at this period (he was then at the loftiest summit of his importance and expectations, the caressed and hourly companion of Harley and Bolingbroke, and a chief stay of their ministry) lodged "in a single room, up two pair of stairs," "over against the house in Little Rider Street, where D.D. [Stella] had lodged."

IX.

That Orange-girl--far different powers Were hers from those that once could win His worthless heart whose arid hours Were fed with dew and light by Gwynn; The dew of feelings fresh as day-- The light of those surpassing eyes-- The darkest raindrop has a ray, And Nell had hers 'mid London Cries.[16]

[16] For several instances of the true untainted feeling displayed through life by this charming woman, see the pleasing memoirs of her, in Mrs Jamieson's _Beauties of the Court of King Charles II._, 4to Edition, 1833.

X.

Here sued the Violet-vender bland-- It fills me now-a-days with gloom To meet, amid the swarming Strand, Her basket's magical perfume: --The close street spreads to woodland dells, Where early lost Affection's ties Are round me gathering violet-bells, --I'll rhyme no more of London Cries.

XI.

Yet ere I shut from Memory's sight That cherish'd book, those pictures rare-- Be it recorded with delight The ORGAN-fiend was wanting there. Not till the Peace had closed our quarrels Could slaughter that machine devise (Made from his useless musket-barrels) To slay us 'mid our London Cries.

XII.

Why did not Martin in his Act Insert some punishment to suit This crime of being hourly rack'd To death by some melodious Brute? From ten at morn to twelve at night His instrument the Savage plies, From him alone there's no respite, Since _'tis the Victim, here, that cries_.

XIII.

Macaulay! Talfourd! Smythe! Lord John! If ever yet your studies brown This pest has broken in upon, Arise and put the Monster down. By all distracted students feel When sense crash'd into nonsense dies Beneath that ruthless ORGAN'S wheel, We call! O hear our London Cries!

CLAUDIA AND PUDENS.[17]

[17] _Claudia and Pudens. An Attempt to show that Claudia, mentioned in St Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, was a British Princess._ By JOHN WILLIAMS, A.M., Oxon, Archdeacon of Cardigan, F.R.S.E., &c. Llandovery: William Rees. London: 1848. Longman & Co.

We gladly welcome this essay from the hand of an old friend, to whom Scotland is under great obligations. To Archdeacon Williams, so many years the esteemed and efficient head of our Edinburgh Academy, we are indebted for a large part of that increased energy and success with which our countrymen have latterly prosecuted the study of the classics; and he is more especially entitled to share with Professor Sandford, and a few others, the high praise of having awakened, in our native schools, an ardent love, and an accurate knowledge, of the higher Greek literature. We do not grudge to see, as the first fruits of Mr Williams's dignified retirement and well-earned leisure, a book devoted to an interesting passage in the antiquities of his own land.

The students of British history, particularly in its ecclesiastical branch, have long been familiar with the conjecture that Claudia, who is mentioned by St Paul, in his Second Epistle to Timothy, in the same verse with Pudens, and along with other Christian friends and brethren, may be identified in the epigrams of Martial as a lady of British birth or descent. The coincidences, even on the surface of the documents, are strong enough to justify the supposition. Claudia and Pudens are mentioned together by St Paul. Martial lived at Rome at the same time with the apostle; and Martial mentions first the marriage of a Pudens to Claudia, a foreigner, and next the amiable character of a matron Claudia, whom he describes as of British blood, and as the worthy wife of a holy husband. These obvious resemblances, with some other scattered rays of illustration, had been early observed by historians, and may be met with in all the common books on the subject, such as Thackeray and Giles. But the Archdeacon has entered deeper into the matter, and with the aid of local discoveries long ago made, but hitherto not fully used, and his own critical comparison of circumstances lying far apart, but mutually bearing on each other, he has brought the case, as we think, to a satisfactory and successful result; and has, at the same time, thrown important light on the position and character of the British people of that early period.

It seems remarkable that neither Thackeray nor Giles has noticed the argument derived from the singular lapidary inscription found at Chichester in 1723, and described in Horsley's _Britannia Romana_. According to the probable reading of that monument it was erected by Pudens, the son of Pudentinus, under the authority of Cogidunus, a British king, who seems, according to a known custom, to have assumed the name of Claudius when admitted to participate in the rights of Roman citizenship, and who may be fairly identified with the Cogidunus of Tacitus, who received the command of some states in Britain, as part of a province of the empire, and whom the historian states that he remembered "as a most faithful ally of the Romans." The inscription is to be found in Dr Giles's appendix, but he seems ignorant of the inference which Dr Stukeley drew from it when it was first brought to light. From Dr Giles's plan, perhaps, we were wrong in expecting anything else than a compilation of the materials which were readiest at hand; but, even with our experience of his occasional love of paradox, we were not prepared for his attempt to cushion the question as to the conversion of the early Britons, by assuming the improbability "that the first teachers and the first converts to Christianity adopted the preposterous conduct of our modern missionaries, who, neglecting vice and misery of the deepest dye at home, expend their own overflowing feelings, and exhaust the treasures of the benevolent, in carrying their deeds of charity to the Negro and the Hindoo." Differences of opinion may be entertained as to the mode in which some modern missions have been conducted; and those who think there should be no missions at all, are at liberty to say so. But, as a matter of fact, it seems strange that any one should be found to lay it down that either St Paul or his brethren, or their disciples, could confine themselves merely to vice and misery _at home_, or could have reconciled their consciences to so narrow a sphere of exertion, while the last words of their Master were still echoing in their ears, "Go ye, therefore, and teach ALL nations." The argument seems peculiarly absurd in the mouth of one who has edited, and with some success, the works of the venerable Bede--the worthy historian of those great changes which flowed from the Roman pontiff's resolution to look beyond vice and misery at home, and convey Christianity to the British shores; and who has also edited, we will not say so well, the remains of the excellent Boniface, whose undying fame rests on his self-devotion, in leaving his native land to seek the conversion of the German pagans.

If the only objection to the Britannic nativity of the Christian Claudia rested on the supposed indisposition of the apostles and their converts to diffuse the gospel over the remoter parts of the Roman empire, the case would be a clear one. But, even taking all difficulties into view, the probabilities in its favour are of a very decided character. The connexion between a Claudia and Pudens in Britain and a Pudens and Claudia in Rome, with the improbability that these names should be brought together in Paul's epistle in reference to other parties, goes far to support the conclusion; and it is aided by the collateral fact, that the name of Rufus--the friend of Martial's married Pair--has a connexion with the suspected Christianity of Pomponia, the wife of one of the Roman governors of Britain. But, without ourselves entering into details, we shall submit the summary which Mr Williams has made of the argument. The latter part of it relates to traditions or conjectures as to other parties, and as to ulterior consequences from the preceding theory, in reference to the early conversion of the Britons, which are deserving of serious attention, but in the accuracy of which we do not place equal confidence, though we think there is a general probability that a Christian matron of high rank and British birth would not forget the religious interests of her countrymen.

"We know, on certain evidence, that, in the year A.D. 67, there were at Rome two Christians named Claudia and Pudens. That a Roman, illustrious by birth and position, married a Claudia, a "stranger" or "foreigner," who was also a British maiden; that an inscription was found in the year 1723, at Chichester, testifying that the supreme ruler of that place was a Tib. Claud. Cogidunus; that a Roman, by name "Pudens, the son of Pudentinus, was a landholder under this ruler;" that it is impossible to account for such facts, without supposing a very close connexion between this British chief and his Roman subject; that the supposition that the Claudia of Martial, a British maiden, married to a Roman Pudens, was a daughter of this British chief, would clear all difficulties; that there was a British chief to whom, about the year A.D. 52, some states, either in or closely adjacent to the Roman Province, were given to be held by him in subjection to the Roman authority; that these states occupied, partly at least, the ground covered by the counties of Surrey and Sussex; that the capital of these states was "Regnum," the modern Chichester; that it is very probable that the Emperor Claudius, in accordance with his known practice and principles, gave also his own name to this British chief, called by Tacitus, Cogidunus; that, after the termination of the Claudian dynasty, it was impossible that any British chief adopted into the Roman community could have received the names "Tib. Claudius;" that during the same period there, lived at Rome a Pomponia, a matron of high family, the wife of Aulus Plautius, who was the Roman governor of Britain, from the year A.D. 43 until the year 52; that this lady was accused of being a votary of a foreign superstition; that this foreign superstition was supposed by all the commentators of Tacitus, both British and Continental, to be the Christian religion; that a flourishing branch of the Gens Pomponia, bore in that age the cognomen of Rufus; that the Christianity of Pomponia being once allowed, taken in connexion with the fact that she was the wife of A. Plautius, renders it highly probable that the daughter of Tib. Claudius Cogidunus, the friend of A. Plautius, if she went to Rome, would be placed under the protection of this Pomponia, would be educated like a Roman lady, and be thus made an eligible match for a Roman senator; and that, when fully adopted into the social system of Rome, she should take the cognomen Rufina, in honour of the cognomen of her patroness; and that, as her patroness was a Christian, she also, from the privileges annexed to her location in such a family, would herself become a Christian; that the British Claudia, married to the Roman Pudens, had a family, three sons and daughters certainly, perhaps six according to some commentators; that there are traditions in the Roman Church, that a Timotheus, a presbyter, a holy man and saint, was a son of Pudens the Roman senator; that he was an important instrument in converting the Britons to the faith in Christ; that, intimately connected with the narrow circle of Christians then living at Rome, was an Aristobulus, to whom the Christian Claudia and Pudens of St Paul must have been well known; that the traditions of the Greek Church of the very earliest period record, that this Aristobulus was a successful preacher of Christianity in Britain; that there are British traditions that the return of the family of Caractacus into Britain was rendered famous by the fact that it brought with it into our island a band of Christian missionaries, of which an Aristobulus was a leader; that we may suppose that, upon Christian principles, the Christianised families of both Cogidunus and Caractacus should have forgotten, in their common faith, their provincial animosities, and have united in sending to their common countrymen the word of life, the gospel of love and peace."

We believe that the Archdeacon is perfectly correct in his assertion that the British were not then either so barbarous, or so lightly esteemed by the Romans, as has been sometimes supposed. The undoubted alliance between Pudens and Claudia, celebrated by Martial as a subject of joyous congratulation, and the analogous case of the kindred Gauls, who were cheerfully acknowledged to deserve all the privileges of imperial naturalisation, seem to leave no room for doubt upon this question. Britain, therefore, we may assume, was, in the first century, both worthy and well prepared to receive any valuable boon of spiritual illumination which her friends at Rome might be ready to communicate.

But, while we so far go along with Mr Williams in his historical conjectures, we are not so much inclined to sympathise with him in some of the uses to which he wishes to put them. We rejoice to think that Christianity was largely diffused through Britain before the Saxon invasion. But we know too little of the British Church, except in the time of Pelagius, to have much confidence in her doctrine or discipline, or to regret deeply that the _English_ people--for such is undoubtedly the fact--were for the most part Christianised, not by the British clergy, but by the missionaries of Rome. We question if the historians of the sister isle will admit, or if impartial critics will unhesitatingly adopt the Archdeacon's assertion, that "this British church sent forth her missionaries into Ireland, and conveyed into that most interesting island both the faith of Christ and the learning of ancient Rome." With every disposition to acknowledge the services of the Irish in the conversion of the Picts, and partially also of the Angles, we must have more evidence before we can allow to the British Church even the indirect merit of those exertions.

But the material point in this question is, whether it be true that the British clergy refused or declined to exert themselves in the conversion of their conquerors. That they did so, is indicated by the absence of any evidence of such an attempt; and it was expressly made a subject of reproach to them, in the conference with Augustine, that they would not preach "the way of life to the Angles." If this be the case,--and it is half admitted by Mr Williams, when he says, that "the Irish Church, _the members of which were less hostile to the Saxon invaders than were the Christian Britons_, sent back into Britain the true faith,"--then such a course, so directly at variance with the spirit of Christianity, however humanly excusable, was sufficient to seal the doom of the church that practised it. It forms a remarkable contrast to the conduct of the Saxons themselves, who, when they in their turn were a prey to invasion, became the teachers of the very tyrants under whom they groaned, and even sent their missionaries into Scandinavia, to convert the countries which were the source of their sufferings. Nor were they in this respect without their reward. Their successful labours softened the oppression of their lot, and the sons of heathen and ruthless pirates became the beneficent and refined occupants of a Christian throne. If the British Church refused the opportunity afforded her, of at once converting and civilising her oppressors, she deserved her lot, and her advocates cannot now complain that the glory of founding Saxon Christianity must be awarded, not at all to her, but mainly to the Roman Gregory, who, whether from policy or piety, or both, entertained and perfected that missionary enterprise which influenced so beneficially the destiny of England and of Europe.

To us, and, we should think, to many men, it must be matter of little moment through what channel the stream of Christianity has been conveyed to us, if we possess it at our doors in purity and abundance. We would give the Pope his due, as well as others; but no antiquity of tradition, or dignity of authority, should restrain us from revising the doctrines transmitted to us, by a reference to the unerring standard of written truth. We adopt here the simple words and sound opinions of old Fuller: "We are indebted to God for his goodness in moving Gregory; Gregory's carefulness in sending Augustine; Augustine's forwardness in preaching here; but, above all, let us bless God's exceeding great favour that that doctrine which Augustine planted here but impure, and his successors made worse with watering, is since, by the happy Reformation, cleared and refined to the purity of the Scriptures."

This, however, is not an essential part of our present subject, and these feelings cannot interfere with our due appreciation of what Mr Williams has done to throw light on a most important subject of inquiry. If he gives us what he further promises,--a life of Julius Cæsar,--he will add a valuable contribution to the elucidation of British antiquities. The history and character of our Celtic fellow-countrymen, whether in the south, the north, or the west, have yet much need of illustration; and the task is well worthy of one who, with national predilections to stimulate his exertions, can bring to his aid the more refined taste and correcter reasoning which are cherished by a long familiarity with classical pursuits.

SIR ASTLEY COOPER.[18]

[18] _Life of Sir Astley Cooper, interspersed with Sketches from his Note-Books of Distinguished Contemporary Characters._ By BRANSBY LAKE COOPER, Esq., F.R.S. 2 vols. London: 1843.