part I sat at first all of a tingle and tremble, thinking how near his

lovely daughter might be; and there were the breakfast cups laid out on a round table at the other side, behind me. However I made my move, Sir Charles made his, and pitched in to the game in a half impatient, half long-headed sort of way, anxious to get to the thick of it, as it were, once more. Not a word was said, and you only heard the suck of the smoke bubbling through the water-bottle of his pipe, after each move the Judge made; till I set myself to the play in right earnest, and, owing to the old gentleman's haste at the beginning, or his over-sharpness, I hooked him into a mess with which I used to catch the old hands at chess in the cock-pit, just by fancying what _they_ meant to be at. The Judge lifted his head, looked at me, and went on again. "Your queen is in check, Sir Charles!" said I, next time, by way of a polite hint. "_Check_, though, young gentleman!" said he, chuckling, as he dropped one of his outlandish knights, which I wasn't yet up to the looks of, close to windward of my blessed old Turk of a king; so the skirmish was just getting to be a fair set-to, when I chanced to lift my eyes, and saw the door from the after-cabin open, with Miss Hyde coming through. "Now, papa," exclaimed she on the moment, "you must come to breakfast,"--when all of a sudden, at seeing another man in the cabin, she stopped short. Being not so loud and griffin-like in my toggery that morning, and my hat off, the young lady didn't recognise me at first,--though the next minute, I saw by her colour and her astonished look, she not only did that, but something else--no doubt remembering at last where she had seen me ashore. "Well, child," said the Judge, "make haste with it, then!--Recollect where we are, now, young gentleman,--and come to breakfast." She had a pink muslin morning-dress on, with her brown hair done up like the Virgin Mary in a picture, and the sea had taken almost all the paleness off her cheek that it had in the ball-room at Epsom, a month or two ago,--and, by Jove! when I saw her begin to pour out the tea out of the silver tea-pot, I didn't know _where_ I was! "Oh, I forgot," said the Judge, waving his hand from me to her, in a hurry, "Mr Robbins, Violet!--ho, Kitmagar, curry l'ao!" "Oh," said she, stiffly, with a cold turn of her pretty lip, "I have met Mr--Mr--" "Collins, ma'am," said I. "I have met this gentleman by accident _before_." "So you have--so you have," said her father; "but you play chess well, Mr--a--a--what's his name?--ah! Colley. Gad you play _well_, sir,--we must have it out!" The young lady glanced at me again with a sort of astonishment; at last she said, no doubt for form's sake, though as indifferently as possible,--"You have known your friend the missionary gentleman long, I believe, sir?--the Reverend Mr Thomas--I think that is his name?" "Oh no, ma'am!" said I hastily, for the Judge was the last man I wished should join Westwood and me together, "only since we crossed the Line, or so." "Why, I thought he said you were at school together!" said she, in surprise. "Why--hem--certainly not, ma'am--a--a--I--a--a--I don't remember the gentleman there," I blundered out. "Eh, what?--check to your queen, young gentleman, surely?" asked Sir Charles. "What's this, though! Always like to hear a mystery explained, so"--and he gave me one of his sharp glances. "Why, why--surely, young man, now I think of it in that way, I've seen you before in some peculiar circumstances or other--on land, too. Why, where was it--let me see, now?" putting his finger to his forehead to think, while, I sat pretty uneasy, like a small pawn that had been trying to get to the head of the board, and turn into a knight or a bishop, when it falls foul of a grand figured-out king and queen. However, the queen is the only piece you need mind at distance, and blessed hard it is to escape from _her_, of course. Accordingly, I cared little enough for the old nabob finding out I had gone in chase of them; but there sat his charming little daughter, with, her eyes on her teacup; and whether the turn of her face meant coolness, or malice, or amusement, I didn't know--though she seemed a little anxious too, I thought, lest her father should recollect me.

"It wasn't _before_ me, young man?" asked he, looking, up of a sudden: "no, that must have been in India--_must_ have been in England, when I was last there--let me see." And I couldn't help fancying what a man's feelings must be, tried for his life, as I caught a side-view of his temples working, dead in my wake, as it were. The thing was laughable enough, and for a moment I met Lota's eye as he mentioned England--'twas too short a glimpse, though, to make out; and, thought I, "he'll be down on Surrey directly, and then Croydon--last of all, the back of his garden wall, I suppose!" "Check" it was, and what I was going to say I couldn't exactly conceive, unless I patched up some false place or other, with matters to match, and mentioned it to the old fellow, though small chance of its answering with such a devil of a lawyer--when all at once I thought I heard a hail from aloft, then the second-mate's voice roared close outside, "Hullo!--aloft there!" The next moment I started up, and looked at Miss Hyde, as I heard plainly enough the cry, "On deck there--land O!" I turned round at once, and walked out of the roundhouse to the quarterdeck, where, two minutes after, the whole of the passengers were crowding from below, the Judge and his daughter already on the poop. Far aloft, upon the fore-to'gallant-yard, in the hot glare of the sun, a sailor was standing, with his hand over his eyes, and looking to the horizon, as the Indiaman stood quietly before the light breeze. "Where-away-ay?" was the next hail from deck. "Broad on our larboard bow, sir," was the answer.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Quere--Liberator?

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.[14]

We have here combined the best of all books, and the best of all maps, for the study of the most interesting description of geography. Mr Johnston's _Physical Atlas_, now published in a form which renders it accessible to greater numbers, is without a rival as a companion and guide in this department of study; and by dwelling on its merits and utility, we should be only echoing a verdict which has already been pronounced by almost every journal of scientific or critical celebrity. And, indeed, the same might be said of our commendation of Mrs Somerville's book; our praise comes lagging in the rear, and is well-nigh superfluous. But not only are we desirous to tender our tribute of respect to one who has done more than any other living writer to extend amongst us sound, as well as general knowledge of physical science; we are anxious also to recommend to our youth the enlarged method of studying geography, which her present work demonstrates to be as captivating as it is instructive.

Mrs Somerville's _Physical Geography_ does not assume so profound an aspect, nor has it so lofty an aim, as the _Cosmos_ of Alexander Von Humboldt; neither can it claim, like that work, to be written by one who has himself surveyed the greater part of the terraqueous globe he undertakes to describe. This latter circumstance gives an extraordinary interest to the _Cosmos_. From time to time the professor of science, gleaning his knowledge from books, and laboratories, and museums, steps aside, and we hear, and almost see, the adventurous traveller, the man Humboldt himself, who seems to speak to us from the distant ocean he has traversed, or the sublime mountain heights he has ascended. Our countrywoman can claim no such peculiar prerogative. Who else can? To few--to none other--has it ever been permitted to combine so wide a range of knowledge with so wide a range of vision--to have carried his mind through all science, and his eye over all regions. He is familiar with all the grandeurs of our earth. He speaks with the air of the mountain still around him. When he discourses of the Himalaya or the Andes, it is with the vivid impression of one whose footsteps are still lying uneffaced amongst their rarely-trodden and precipitous passes. The phenomena he describes he has seen. He can reveal to us, and make us feel with him, that strange impression which "the first earthquake" makes even upon the most educated and reflective man, who suddenly finds his old faith shaken in the stability of the earth. And what lecturer upon electricity could ever arrest the attention of his auditors by so charming a reference to his personal experience as is contained in the following passage?--

"It was not without surprise that I noticed, on the shores of the Orinoco, children belonging to tribes in the lowest stage of barbarism amusing themselves by rubbing the dry, flat, shining seeds of a leguminous climbing plant (probably a negretia) for the purpose of causing them to attract fibres of cotton or bamboo. It was a sight well fitted to leave on the mind of a thoughtful spectator a deep and serious impression. How wide is the interval which separates the simple knowledge of the excitement of electricity by friction, shown in the sports of these naked, copper-coloured children of the forest, from the invention of the metallic conductor, which draws the swift lightning from the storm-cloud--of the voltaic pile, capable of effecting chemical decomposition--of a magnetic apparatus, evolving light--and of the magnetic telegraph!"

The writer naturally reflects on the wide interval which separates the knowledge of electricity shown by these naked children on the banks of the Orinoco, and the inventions of modern science, which have taught the lightnings of heaven to do our messages on the earth. But, to our mind, this wide interval is far more strikingly displayed by the picture which is here presented to the imagination, of the profound and meditative European looking down, pleased and surprised, at the first unconscious steps in experimental philosophy which these copper-coloured children of the forest are making in their sport.

But if Mrs Somerville's book has none of this extraordinary interest which the great traveller has thrown over his work, and if it does not aspire to that philosophic _unity_ of view, (of which a word hereafter, in passing,) it must take precedence of this, and of all other works, as a useful compendium of the latest discoveries, and the soundest knowledge we possess, in the various subjects it embraces. Nowhere, except in her own previous work, _The Connexion of the Physical Sciences_, is there to be found so large a store of well-selected information, so lucidly set forth. In surveying and grouping together whatever has been seen by the eyes of others, or detected by their laborious investigations, she is not surpassed by any one; and the absence of all higher aim, or more original effort, is favourable to this distinctness of exposition. We have no obscurities other than what the imperfect state of science itself involves her in; no dissertations which are felt to interrupt or delay. She strings her beads distinct and close together. With quiet perspicacity she seizes at once whatever is most interesting and most captivating in her subject.

The _Cosmos_ of Humboldt has the ambitious aim of presenting to us the universe, so far as we know it, in that _beauty_ of harmony which results from _a whole_. Thus, at least, we understand his intention. He would domineer, as with an eagle's glance, over the known creation, and embrace it in its unity, displaying to us that beauty which exists in the harmony of all its parts. The attempt no one would depreciate or decry, but manifestly the imperfect state of science forbids its execution. We have attained no point of view from which we can survey the world as one harmonious whole. Our knowledge is fragmentary, uncertain, imperfect; and the most philosophic mind cannot reduce it into any shape in which it shall appear other than uncertain and fragmentary. We cannot "stand in the sun," as Coleridge says in his fine verse, and survey creation; we have no such luminous standing-point. There never, indeed, was a time when the attempt to harmonise our knowledge, and view the universe of things "in the beauty of unity," was so hopeless, so desperate. For the old theories, the old methods of representing to the imagination the more subtle and invisible agencies of the physical world, are shaken, or exploded, and nothing new has been able to take their place. What is new, and what is old, are alike unsettled, unconfirmed. In reality, therefore, the work of Mrs Somerville is as much a _Cosmos_ as that of Von Humboldt; and, as a work of instruction, is far better for not aiming higher than it does. Mrs Somerville presents to us each gospel of science--if we may give that title to its imperfect revelations--and does not bewilder or confuse by attempting that "harmony of the gospels" which the scientific expositor is, as yet, unable to accomplish.

As yet, we have said--but, indeed, will science be ever able to realise this aspiration of the intellect after unity and completeness of view? To the reflective mind, human science presents this singular aspect. Whilst the speculative reason of man continually seeks after unity, strives to see the many in the one--as the Platonist would express himself--or, as we should rather say, strives to resolve the multiplicity of phenomena into a few ultimate causes, so as to create for itself _a whole_, some rounded system which the intellectual vision call embrace; the discoveries of science, by which it hopes and strives to realise this end, do in fact, at every stage, increase the apparent complexity of the phenomena. The new agencies, or causes, which are brought to light, if they explain what before was anomalous and obscure, become themselves the source of innumerable difficulties and conjectures. Each discovery stirs more questions than it sets at rest. What, on its first introduction, promised to explain so many things, is found, on further acquaintance, to have added but one more to the inexplicable facts around us. With each step, also, in our inquiry, the physical agents that are revealed to us become more subtle, more calculated to excite and to elude our curiosity. Already, half our science is occupied with matter that is invisible. From time to time some grand generalisation is proposed--electricity is now the evoked spirit which is to help us through our besetting difficulties--but, fast as the theory is formed, some new fact emerges that will not range itself within it; the cautious thinker steps back, and acknowledges that the effort is as yet premature. It always will be premature.

There is a perpetual antagonism between the intellectual tendency to reduce all phenomena to a harmonious and complete system, and that increase of knowledge which, while it seems to favour the attempt, renders it more and more impracticable. With our limited powers, we _cannot_ embrace the whole; and therefore it must follow, that it is only when our knowledge is scanty, that we seem capable of the task. Every addition to that knowledge, from the time that Thales would have reduced all things to the one element of water, has rendered the task more hopeless. And as science was never so far advanced as at the present time, so this antagonism was never so clearly illustrated between the effort of reason to generalise, and the influx of broken knowledge, reducing the overtasked intellect to despair. How much has lately been revealed to us of the more subtle powers and processes of nature--of light, of heat, of electricity! How tempting the generalisations offered to our view! We seem to be, at least, upon the eve of some great discovery which will explain all: an illusion which is destined to prompt the researches of the ardent spirits of every age. They will always be on the eve of some great discovery which is to place the clue of the labyrinth into their hand. The new discovery, like its predecessor, will add only another chamber to the interminable labyrinth.

Let us, for instance, suppose that we have discovered, in electricity, the cause of that attraction to which we had confided the revolution of the planets; of that chemical affinity to which we had ascribed the various combinations of those ultimate atoms of which the material world is presumed to be composed; of that vital principle which assimilates in the plant, and grows and feels in the animal. Let us suppose that this is a sound generalisation; yet, as electricity cannot be alone both attraction in the mass, and chemical affinity in the atom, and irritability and susceptibility in the fibre and the nerve, what has the speculative reason attained but to the knowledge of a new and necessary agent, producing different effects according to the different conditions in which, and the different co-agencies with which it operates? These conditions, these co-agencies, are all to be discovered. It is one flash of light, revealing a whole world of ignorance.

To the explanation of the most obstinate of all problems--the nature of the vital principle--we seem to have made a great step when we introduce a current of electricity circulating through the nerves. If this hypothesis be established, we shall probably have made a valuable and very useful addition to our stock of knowledge; but we shall be as far as ever from solving the problem of the vital principle. We have now a current of electricity circulating along the nerves, as we had before a current of blood, circulating through the veins and arteries; the one may become as prominent and as important a fact in the science of the physician as the other; but it will be equally powerless with the old discovery of Harvey to explain the ultimate cause of vitality. To the speculative reason it has but complicated the phenomena of animal life.

Within the memory of a living man, there has been such progress and revolution in science, that not one of the great generalisations taught him in his youth can be now received as uncontested propositions. Not many years ago, how commodiously a few words, such as attraction, caloric, affinity, rays of light, and others, could be used, and how much they seemed to explain! Caloric was a fluid, unseen indeed, but very obedient to the imagination--expanding bodies, and radiating from one to the other in a quite orderly manner. What is it now? Perhaps the vibration of a subtle ether interfused through all bodies; perhaps the vibration of the atomic parts themselves of those bodies. Who will venture to say? Attraction and affinity are no longer the clearly defined ultimate facts they seemed to be; we know so much, at least, that they are intimately connected with electrical phenomena, though not to what extent. That electricity is implicated with chemical composition, and recomposition, is clearly recognised; and Sir J. Herschel has lately expressed his opinion, that it is impossible any longer to attempt the explanation of the movements of all the heavenly bodies by simple attraction, as understood in the Newtonian theory--these comets, with their trains perversely turned _from_ the sun, deranging sadly our systematic views. The ray of light, which, with its reflection and its refraction, seemed a quite manageable substance, has deserted us, and we have an ethereal fluid--the same as that which constitutes heat, or another--substituted in its stead. Science has no language, and knows not how to speak. If she lectures one day upon the "polarisation" of light, she professes the next not to know what she means by the term; she is driven even to talk of "invisible rays" of light, or chemical rays. Never was it so difficult to form any scientific conception on these subjects, or to speak of them with any consistency. Mrs Somerville is a correct writer; yet she opens her brief section upon magnetism thus:--"Magnetism is one of those unseen imponderable existences, which, _like electricity and heat_, are known only by their effects. It is certainly _identical_ with electricity, for," &c. It is like, and it is identical, in almost the same sentence.

Even in the fields of astronomy, where we have to deal with large masses of matter, it is no longer possible for the imagination to form any embraceable system. We are plunged into hopeless infinitude, and the little regularities we had painfully delineated on the heavens are all effaced. The earth had been torn from its moorings and sent revolving through space, but it revolved round a central stationary sun. Here, at least, was something stable. The sun was a fixed centre for our minds, as well as for the planetary system. But the sun himself has been uprooted, and revolves round some other centre--we know not what--or else travels on through infinite space--we know not whither. A little time ago, the stately seven rolled round their central orb in clear and uninterrupted space; their number has been constantly increasing; we reckon now seventeen planetary bodies that can be reduced to no law of proportion or harmony, either as to their size, their orbits, the inclination of their axes, or any other planetary property;[15] and the space they circulate in is intruded on by other smaller and miscellaneous bodies, asteroids, and the like, some of which, it seems, occasionally fall to the earth. Comets come sweeping in from illimitable space, requiring, it is thought, some eight thousand years for their revolution round the sun. Some of these cross each other's orbits: one has crossed the orbit of the earth; and their decreasing circle round the sun, gives notice of some unknown ether suffused through the interstellar spaces. The outlying prospect, beyond our system, grows still more bewildering. The stars are no longer "fixed," nor is their brilliancy secured to them; this increases and diminishes with perplexing mystery. What seemed a single point of light, resolves itself into two stars revolving round each, perhaps reciprocally sun and planet. The faint and telescopic nebula, just reached by the glass in one age, is found in the next to be a congregation of innumerable stars. Our milky way is, at the same distance, just such another nebula. "The elder Herschel calculates that the light of the most distant nebula, discovered by his forty-feet refractor, requires two millions of years to reach our eyes." Oh, shut up the telescope! the reason reels.

Science, in short, presents before us a field of perpetual activity--of endless excitement, and that of the highest order--of practical results of the greatest utility and most beneficial description; but it gives no prospect of any resting-place--any repose for the speculative reason--any position with which the scientific mind shall be content, and from which it shall embrace the scene before it in its unity and harmony. Always will it be

"Moving about in worlds half-realised."

Having touched upon these subtle agencies of light, and heat, and electricity, and on the increasing difficulty we have of framing to ourselves any distinct conception of them, we cannot refrain from alluding to a little work or pamphlet, by Mr Grove, entitled, _The Correlation of Physical Forces_, in which this subject is treated with great originality. Mr Grove has made himself a name in experimental science by his discoveries in electricity and chemistry; in this pamphlet he shows, that he has the taste and power for enlarged speculation on the truths which experiment brings to light. We would recommend the perusal of his pamphlet to all who are interested in these higher and more abstract speculations. How far the wide generalisation he adopts is sustained by facts, we are not prepared to say. But it is a powerful work, and it is a singular one; for it is not often, in this country at least, that a man so well versed in the minutiæ of science ventures upon so bold a style of generalisation. After reviewing some of the more lately discovered properties of electricity, heat, light, and magnetism, and showing how each of them is capable of producing or resolving itself into the others, he reasons that all the four are but the varied activity of one and the same element. He adds, that this element is probably no other than the primitive atom itself; and that, in fact, these may be all regarded as affections of matter, which follow in their legal sequence, and not as the results of separate fluids or ethers. We are not sure that we do justice to his views, as we have not the work at hand, and it is some time since we read it; but we are persuaded that its perusal will be of interest to a philosophic reader, though its reasoning should fail to satisfy him.

But we have not placed the title of Mrs Somerville's book at the head of this paper, as an occasion to involve ourselves in these dark and abstract discussions. We are for _out-of-door_ life; we would survey this visible round world, whose various regions, with their products and their inhabitants, she has brought before us.

"Physical geography," thus commences our writer, "is a description of the earth, the sea, and the air, with their inhabitants animal and vegetable, of the distribution of these organised beings, and the causes of that distribution. Political and arbitrary divisions are disregarded: the sea and the land are considered only with respect to these great features, that have been stamped upon them by the hand of the Almighty; and man himself is viewed but as a fellow-inhabitant of the globe with other created things, yet influencing them to a certain extent by his actions, and influenced in return."

Physical geography stands thus in contrast with political and historical geography. Russia is here no despotism, and America no democracy; they are only portions of the globe inhabited by certain races. To some persons it will doubtless seem a strange "geography" that takes no notice of the city, and respects not at all the boundaries of states. Those to whom the name recalls only the early labours of the school-room, when counties and county-towns formed a great branch of learning--where the blue and red lines upon the map were so anxiously traced, and where, doubtless, some suspicion arose that the earth itself was marked out by corresponding lines, or something equivalent to them--will hardly admit that to be geography which takes no note of these essential demarcations, or allow that to be a map in which the very city they live in cannot be found. To them the Physical Atlas will still seem nothing but a series of maps, in which most of the names have still to be inserted. They unconsciously regard cities and provinces as the primary objects and natural divisions of the earth. They share something of the feeling of that good man, more pious than reflective, who noted it as all especial providence that all the great rivers ran by the great towns.

Others, however, will be glad to escape for a time from these landmarks which man has put upon the earth, and to regard it in its great natural lineaments of continent and sea, mountain and island. To do this with advantage, it is necessary to disembarrass ourselves, both in the book and the map, of much that in our usual nomenclature ranks pre-eminently as geography. Nor is it easy to study this, more than the older branch of geography, without an appropriate atlas. To turn over the maps of Mr Johnston's, and con the varied information which accompanies them, is itself a study, and no disagreeable one. Of the extent of this information we can give no idea by extract or quotation; it is manifestly in too condensed a form for quotation; it is a perfect storehouse of knowledge, gathered from the best authorities.

The first thing which strikes an observant person, on looking over a map, or turning round a globe, is the unequal division and distribution of land and water. Over little more than one-fourth of the surface of the earth does dry land appear; the remaining three-fourths are overflowed by water. And this land is by no means equally disposed over the globe. Far the greater part of it lies in the northern hemisphere. "In the northern hemisphere it is three times greater than the south."

Of the form which this land assumes, the following peculiarities have been noticed:--

"The tendency of the land to assume a _peninsular form_ is very remarkable, and it is still more so that almost all the peninsulas tend to the south--circumstances that depend on some unknown cause which seems to have acted very extensively. The continents of South America, Africa, and Greenland, are peninsulas on a gigantic scale, all tending to the south; the Asiatic peninsula of India, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, those of Corea, Kamtchatka, of Florida, California, and Aliaska, in North America, as well as the European peninsulas of Norway and Sweden, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece, take the same direction. All the latter have a rounded form except Italy, whereas most of the others terminate sharply, especially the continents of South America and Africa, India, and Greenland, which have the pointed form of wedges; while some are long and narrow, as California, Aliaska, and Malacca. Many of the peninsulas have an island, or group of islands, at their extremity--as South America, which terminates with the group of Terra del Fuego; India has Ceylon; Malacca has Sumatra and Banca; the southern extremity of New Holland ends in Van Diemen's Land; a chain of islands run from the end of the peninsula of Aliaska; Greenland has a group of islands at its extremity; and Sicily lies close to the termination of Italy. It has been observed, as another peculiarity in the structure of peninsulas, that they generally terminate boldly, in bluffs, promontories, or mountains, which are often the last portions of the continental chains. South America terminates in Cape Horn, a high promontory which is the visible termination of the Andes; Africa with the Cape of Good Hope; India with Cape Comorin, the last of the Ghauts; New Holland ends with South-East Cape in Van Diemen's Land; and Greenland's farthest point is the elevated bluff of Cape Farewell."

These are peculiarities interesting to notice, and which may hereafter explain, or be explained by, other phenomena. Resemblances and analogies of this kind, whilst they are permitted only to direct and stimulate inquiry, have their legitimate place in science. It was a resemblance of this description, between the zig-zag course of the metalliferous veins, and the path of the lightning, which first suggested the theory, based, of course, on very different reasonings, that electricity had essentially contributed to the formation of those veins--a theory which Mrs Somerville has considered sufficiently sound to introduce into her work.

What lies _within_ our globe is still matter of conjecture. The radius of the earth is 4000 miles, and by one means or another, mining, and the examination of the upheaved strata, and of what volcanoes have thrown out, we are supposed to have penetrated, with speculative vision, to about the depth of ten miles.

"The increase of temperature," writes Mrs Somerville, "with the depth below the surface of the earth, and the tremendous desolation hurled over wide regions by numerous fire-breathing mountains, show that man is removed but a few miles from immense lakes or seas of liquid fire. The very shell on which he stands is unstable under his feet, not only from those temporary convulsions that seem to shake the globe to its centre, but from a slow, almost imperceptible, elevation in some places, and an equally gentle subsidence in others, as if the internal molten matter were subject to secular tides, now heaving and now ebbing; or that the subjacent rocks were in one place expanded and in another contracted by changes in temperature."

Perhaps these "immense lakes or seas of liquid fire" are a little too hastily set down here in our geography. But of these obscure regions beneath the earth, the student must understand he can share only in the best conjectures of scientific men. Geology is compelled, at present, in many cases, to content herself with intelligent conjecture.

To return again to the surface of the earth, the first grand spectacle that strikes us is the mountains. Before it was understood how the mountain was the parent of the river, the noble elevation was apt to be regarded in the light of a ruin, as evidence of some disastrous catastrophe, and Burnett, in his _Theory of the Earth_, conceived the ideal or normal state of our planet to be that of a smooth ball, smooth as an egg. The notion not only betrays the low state of scientific knowledge in his age, but a miserable taste in world-architecture, which, we may remark in excuse for poor Burnett, was, almost as much as his scientific ignorance, to be shared with the age in which he lived. For it is surprising, with the exception of a few poets, how destitute men were, in his time, of all sympathy with, and admiration of, the grander and more sublime objects of nature. "We have changed all that!" The mountain range, pouring down its streams into the valleys on both sides, is not only recognised as necessary to the fertility of the plain; but, strange to say, we become more and more awake to its surprising beauty and magnificence. The description of the mountain ranges of the several continents of the world, forms one of the principal attractions of the study of physical geography, and one of the great charms of Mrs Somerville's book.

The mountains of Asia take precedence of all others in altitude and length of range.

"The mean height of the Himalaya is stupendous. Captain Gerard and his brother estimated that it could not be less than from 16,000 to 20,000 feet; but, from the average elevation of the passes over these mountains, Baron Humboldt thinks it must be under 15,700 feet. Colonel Sabine estimates it to be only 11,510 feet, though the peaks exceeding that elevation are not to be numbered, especially at the sources of the Sutlej. Indeed, from that river to the Kalee, the chain exhibits an endless succession of the loftiest mountains on earth: forty of them surpass the height of Chimborazo, one of the highest of the Andes, and several reach the height of 25,000 feet at least.... The valleys are crevices so deep and narrow, and the mountains that hang over them in menacing cliffs are so lofty, that these abysses are shrouded in perpetual gloom, except where the rays of a vertical sun penetrate their depths. From the steepness of the descent the rivers shoot down with the swiftness of an arrow, filling the caverns with foam and the air with mist.

"Most of the passes over the Himalaya are but little lower than the top of Mont Blanc; many are higher, especially near the Sutlej, where they are from 18,000 to 19,000 feet high; and that north-east of Khoonawur is 20,000 feet above the level of the sea, the highest that has been attempted. All are terrific, and the fatigue and suffering from the rarity of the air in the last 500 feet is not to be described. Animals are as much distressed as human beings, and many of them die; thousands of birds perish from the violence of the winds; the drifting snow is often fatal to travellers, and violent thunder-storms add to the horror of the journey. The Niti Pass, by which Mr Moorcroft ascended to the sacred lake of Manasa, in Tibet, is tremendous: he and his guide had not only to walk bare-footed, from the risk of slipping, but they were obliged to creep along the most frightful chasms, holding by twigs and tufts of grass, and sometimes they crossed deep and awful crevices on a branch of a tree, or on loose stones thrown across. Yet these are the thoroughfares for commerce in the Himalaya, never repaired, nor susceptible of improvement, from frequent landslips and torrents.

"The loftiest peaks, being bare of snow, give great variety of colour and beauty to the scenery, which in these passes is at all times magnificent. During the day, the stupendous size of the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness of their distant outline melting into the pale blue sky, contrasted with the deep azure above, is described as a scene of wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity; and no language can describe the splendour of the sunbeams at daybreak streaming between the high peaks, and throwing their gigantic shadows on the mountains below. There, far above the habitation of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard; the very echo of the traveller's footsteps startles him in the awful solitude and silence that reigns in these august dwellings of everlasting snow."

The table-lands of Asia are on a scale corresponding with its mountains. But the same elevation, it is remarked, is not accompanied with the same sterility in these parts of the world, as in the temperate zone. Corn has been found growing at heights exceeding the summit of Mont Blanc. "According to Mr Moorcroft, the sacred lake of Manasa, in Great Tibet, and the surrounding country, is 17,000 feet above the sea, which is 1240 feet higher than Mont Blanc. In this elevated region wheat and barley grow, and many of the fruits of Southern Europe ripen. The city of H'Lassa, in eastern Tibet, the residence of the Grand Lama, is surrounded by vineyards, and is called by the Chinese 'the Realm of Pleasure!'" Nevertheless the general aspect of the table lands is that of a terrific sterility. Here is a striking description of them. We should have been tempted to say, that in this singularly dark appearance of the sky at mid-day, there was something of exaggeration, if our own limited experience had not taught us to be very cautious in attributing exaggeration where the scenic effects of nature are concerned.

"In summer the sun is powerful at mid-day; the air is of the purest transparency, and the azure of the sky so deep that it seems black as in the darkest night. The rising moon does not enlighten the atmosphere; no warning radiance announces her approach, till her limb touches the horizon, and the stars shine with the distinctness and brilliancy of suns. In southern Tibet the verdure is confined to favoured spots; the bleak mountains and high plains are sternly gloomy--a scene of barrenness not to be conceived. Solitude reigns in these dreary wastes, where there is not a tree, nor even a shrub to be seen of more than a few inches high. The scanty, short-lived verdure vanishes in October; the country then looks as if fire had passed over it; and cutting dry winds blow with irresistible fury, howling in the bare mountains, whirling the snow through the air, and freezing to death the unfortunate traveller benighted in their defiles."

The description of the territory of the East India Company will be read with interest. We cannot afford space to extract it. Plains and valleys the very richest in the globe are to be found here, as also much rank marshy land, and also much jungle. "It has been estimated that a third of the East India Company's territory is jungle."

As a set-off against this jungle we have it intimated that, if proper search were made, gold would probably be found in this territory, as abundantly as in California. We sincerely hope no such discovery will be made. If there is a sure specific for demoralising a people, it is to involve them in the chase for gold, instead of that profitable industry which produces the veritable wealth for which gold has become the symbol and representative. The discovery of gold in one of our colonies would not only demoralise, it would impoverish. It would demoralise, by substituting for steady industry, with steady returns, a species of enterprise which has all the uncertainty and fluctuation of gambling; and it would finally impoverish by diverting labour from the creation of agricultural and manufacturing wealth, to the obtaining of the dry barren symbol of wealth, which, apart from its representative character, has but very little value whatever.

We will not look back towards Chimborazo and the Andes, as we should involve ourselves in long and tempting descriptions. In Africa, it is remarkable that we are little acquainted with the mountains. "No European has yet seen the Mountains of the Moon!" What a challenge to enterprising travellers! We know the level sands of Africa better than these elevations which have assumed so magnificent a title. What a terrific sterility does a large portion of this the most ill-fated of the great continents present! "On the interminable sands and rocks of these deserts no animal--no insect--breaks the dread silence; not a tree nor a shrub is to be seen in this land without a shadow. In the glare of noon the air quivers with the heat reflected from the red sand, and in the night it is chilled under a clear sky sparkling with its host of stars." The wind of heaven, which elsewhere breathes so refreshingly, is here a burning blast fatal to life; or else it drives the sand in clouds before it, obscuring the sun, and stifling and burying the hapless caravan.

In the _new_ continent of America--if it still retains that title--the desert is comparatively rare. But its enormous forests have, in some regions, proved that excessive vegetation can assume almost as terrific an appearance as this interminable sterility.

"The forests of the Amazons not only cover the basin of that river, from the Cordillera of Chiquitos to the mountains of Parima, but also its limiting mountain-chains, the Sierra Dos Vertentes and Parima, so that the whole forms an area of woodland more than six times the size of France, lying between the 18th parallel of south latitude and the 7th of north, consequently inter-tropical and traversed by the equator. According to Baron Humboldt, the soil, enriched for ages by the spoils of the forest, consists of the richest mould. The heat is suffocating in the deep and dark recesses of these primeval woods, where not a breath of air penetrates, and where, after being drenched by the periodical rains, the damp is so excessive that a blue mist rises in the early morning among the huge stems of the trees, and envelops the entangled creepers stretching from bough to bough. A deathlike stillness prevails from sunrise to sunset, then the thousands of animals that inhabit these forests join in one loud discordant roar, not continuous, but in bursts. The beasts seem to be periodically and unanimously roused by some unknown impulse, till the forests ring in universal uproar. Profound silence prevails at midnight, which is broken at the dawn of morning by another general roar of the wild chorus. The whole forest often resounds when the animals, startled from their sleep, scream in terror at the noise made by bands of its inhabitants flying from some night-prowling foe. Their anxiety and terror before a thunder-storm is excessive, and all nature seems to partake in the dread. The tops of the lofty trees rustle ominously, though not a breath of air agitates them; a hollow whistling in the high regions of the atmosphere comes as a warning from the black floating vapour; midnight darkness envelops the ancient forests, which soon after groan and creak with the blast of the hurricane. The gloom is rendered still more hideous by the vivid lightning, and the stunning crash of thunder."

One of the most interesting subjects, of which mention is made in the work before us, is the gradual elevation and subsidence observed in some portions of these continents themselves. Just when the imagination had become somewhat familiar with the sudden but very partial upheaving of the earth by volcanic agencies, this new discovery came to light of the slow rising and sinking of vast areas of the land, and unaccompanied with any earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. In some parts the crust of the earth has sunk and risen again; in others, sort of see-saw movement on a most gigantic scale has been detected.

"There is a line crossing Sweden from east to west, in the parallel of 56° 3´ N. lat., along which the ground is perfectly stable, and has been so for centuries. To the north of it for 1000 miles, between Gottenburg and North Cape, the ground is rising; the maximum elevation, which takes place at North Cape, being at the rate of five feet in a century, from whence it gradually diminishes to three inches in a century at Stockholm. South of the line of stability, on the contrary, the land is sinking through part of Christianstad and Malmo; for the village of Stassten in Scania is now 380 feet nearer to the Baltic than it was in the time of Linnæus, by whom it was measured eighty-seven years ago."

It is evident that the elevation of the land, in relation to the level of the sea, may be produced either by an uprising of the continent or a depression of the bed of the ocean, permitting the waters to sink; as also the apparent depression of the land may be occasioned by an elevation in the bed of the ocean. This renders the problem somewhat more difficult to solve, because the causes we are seeking to discover may be sometimes operating at that part of the crust of the earth which is concealed from our view. Mr Lyell, who, in his _Principles of Geology_, has collected and investigated the facts bearing upon this subject, mentions the following as probable causes of the phenomena:--

1. "It is easy to conceive that the shattered rocks may assume an arched form during a convulsion, so that the country above may remain permanently upheaved. In other cases, gas may drive before it masses of liquid lava, which may thus be injected into newly opened fissures. The gas having then obtained more room, by the forcing up of the incumbent rocks, may remain at rest; while the lava, congealing in the rents, may afford a solid foundation for the newly raised district.

2. "Experiments have recently been made in America, by Colonel Patten, to ascertain the ratio according to which some of the stones commonly used in architecture expand with given increments of heat.... Now, according to the law of expansion thus ascertained, a mass of sandstone, a mile in thickness, which should have its temperature raised 200° F., would lift a super-imposed layer of rock to the height of ten feet above its former level. But, suppose a part of the earth's crust one hundred miles in thickness, and equally expansible, to have its temperature raised 600° or 800°, this might produce an elevation of between two and three thousand feet. The cooling of the same mass might afterwards cause the overlying rocks to sink down again, and resume their original position. By such agency, we might explain the gradual rise of Scandinavia, or the subsidence of Greenland, if this last phenomenon should also be established as a fact on further inquiry.

3. "It is also possible that, as the clay in Wedgwood's pyrometer contracts, by giving of its water, and then by incipient vitrification; so large masses of argillaceous strata, in the earth's interior, may shrink, when subjected to heat and chemical changes, and allow the incumbent rocks to subside gradually. It may frequently happen that fissures of great extent may be formed in rocks, simply by the unequal expansion of a continuous mass heated in one part, while in another it remains in a comparatively low temperature. The sudden subsidence of land may also be occasioned by subterranean caverns giving way, when gases are condensed, or when they escape through newly formed crevices. The subtraction, moreover, of matter from certain parts of the interior, by the flowing of lava and of mineral springs, must, in the course of ages, cause vacuities below, so that the undermined surface may at length fall in."[16]

Two agencies of the most opposite, character have apparently been, at all times, acting on the crust of the earth to change its form, or add to the surface of dry land--the volcano and the insect!--the one the most sudden and violent imaginable, producing in a short time the most astonishing effects; the other gradual, silent, and imperceptible, yet leaving the most stupendous monuments of its activity. The volcano has thrown up a mountain in a single night; there is an instance, too, on record, where a mountain has quite as suddenly disappeared, destroying itself in its own violent combustion, and breaking up with repeated and terrific explosions. On the other hand, besides what has been long known of the works of the coral insect, the microscope has revealed to us that huge cliffs have been constructed of the minute fossil shells of animalcule. These creatures, abstracting from the water, or the air, or both, the minute particles of vegetable or other matter they hold in solution, first frame of them their own siliceous shells, and then deposit these shells by myriads, so as ultimately to construct enormous solid mounds out of imperceptible and fluent particles.

Astonishing, indeed, is the new world of animals invisible to the naked eye, which science has lately detected.

"Professor Ehrenberg," says Mrs Somerville, "has discovered a new world of creatures in the infusoria, so minute that they are invisible to the naked eye. He found them in fog, rain, and snow, in the ocean and stagnant water, in animal and vegetable juices, in volcanic ashes and pumice, in opal, in the dusty air that sometimes falls on the ocean; and he detected eighteen species twenty feet below the surface of the ground in peat earth, which was full of microscopic live animals: they exist in ice, and are not killed by boiling water. This lowest order of animal life is much more abundant than any other, and new species are found every day. Magnified, some of them seem to consist of a transparent vesicle, and some have a tail; they move with great alacrity, and show intelligence by avoiding obstacles in their course: others have siliceous shells. Language, and even imagination, fails in the attempt to describe the inconceivable myriads of these invisible inhabitants of the ocean, the air, and the earth."

With every great change, however brought about, in the surface of the earth, and the climate of its several regions, it appears that, either by the direct agency of the Omnipotent Creator, or through the intermediate operations of laws which are at present profound secrets to us, a corresponding change takes place in the forms of animal life, and in the whole vegetable kingdom. Modern science presents no subject to us of more interest than this, and none apparently so inscrutable. Nor does the examination of the globe, as it exists before us at this moment, with its various floras and faunas, at all assist us in forming any conception of the law by which the geological series (if we may so term it) of animal life, has been regulated, for the distribution of the several animals over the several countries and climates of the world follows no rule that one can detect. Of course, no animal can exist where provision has not been made for its subsistence, but the provision has been made with the same abundance in two countries, and in the one the animal is found, and the other not. We should ask in vain why the horse was found a native of the deserts of Tartary, and why it was originally unknown to the plains of America? Nor can any cause be detected for the difference between the congeners, a representative species of one continent or island, and those of another. And not only have the larger animals an arbitrary territory marked out to them by nature, but birds, and even insects, are separated and grouped together in the same unaccountable manner. The chapters which Mrs Somerville has devoted to this subject will be read, especially by those to whom the topic is new, with extreme interest. They are enlightened and judicious.

It is a natural supposition to make, that, in the series of animals which at great geological periods have been introduced upon the earth, there has been a _progression_, so that each new form of animal life has been, in some marked manner, superior to that which is substituted. The comparative anatomist has not sanctioned this opinion; he tells us that he finds the same "high organisation" in the fossil saurians of a bygone world, as in the lions and leopards of the present day. But we would observe that the presence of this "high organisation" is not sufficient to determine the question. We should be surprised, indeed, if any creature were to be found whose structure was not perfectly adapted to the mode of life it was destined to lead. But it is permissible to compare one animal with another in its whole nature, and the character of its existence. The pig has the same high organisation as the dog, yet we should certainly prefer the one animal to the other; we should say that it was calculated for a happier life. We cannot suppose that a bird is not a more joyous creature than the worm or the snail. The adaptation of the whole form and structure to a pleasurable existence, and not what is termed high organisation, is that which we must regard, in estimating the superiority of one animal to another. Now, in this respect, there surely has been a progression from the earliest epochs. The crocodile and the tortoise are, amongst the animals which now exist, those which most resemble some of the more remarkable of the extinct genera. They are as perfectly adapted, no doubt, as any other creature, to their peculiar mode of being; but that mode of being is not an enviable one. The long stiff unwieldy body of the one, and the slow movement, with the oppressive carcase, of the other, are not consistent with vivid animal enjoyment. The crocodile, accordingly, lies motionless for hours together--_waits_ for its prey--and slumbers gorged with food. And for the tortoise, it appears to lead a life as near to perpetual torpor as may be. Pass through a museum, and note those huger animals, the elephant and the rhinoceros, the seal or walrus, all those which most remind us of the gigantic creatures of the antediluvian world, and compare them with the horse, the deer, the dog, the antelope. Surely the latter present to us a type of animal life superior to the former--superior, inasmuch as the latter are altogether calculated for a more vivacious, sprightly, and happy existence. We must not venture to remark on their greater comparative _beauty_, for we shall be told that this is a matter for our own peculiar taste. We should not be contented to be so easily silenced on this head, but we should require far more space than we have now at our disposal to defend our æsthetic notions.

We have found ourselves imperceptibly conducted from the inanimate to the animate creation; we shall proceed, therefore, with the same topic, in the few farther extracts we shall be able to make from the work before us. Indeed, with so vast a subject, and so brief a space, it would be idle to affect any great precision in the arrangement of our topics; enough if they follow without abruptness, and are linked together by natural associations of thought.

"Three hundred thousand insects are known!" and every day, we were almost going to add, increases the number. They abound, as may be expected, in equatorial regions, and decrease towards the poles. "The location of insects depends upon that of the plants which yield their food; and as almost each plant is peopled with inhabitants peculiar to itself, insects are distributed over the earth in the same manner as vegetables; the groups, consequently, are often confined within narrow limits, and it is extraordinary that, notwithstanding their powers of locomotion, they often remain within a particular compass, though the plant, and all other circumstances in their immediate vicinity, appear equally favourable for their habitation."

Mountain-chains, Mrs Somerville observes, are a complete barrier to insects; they differ even in the two sides of the Col de Tende in the Alps, and they are limited in the choice of their food. If a plant is taken to a country where it has no congeners, it will be safe from the insects of that country; but if it has congeners, the insect inhabitants will soon find the way to it. Our cabbages and carrots, when transplanted to Cayenne, were not injured by the insects of that country; and the tulip tree, and other magnolias brought here, are not molested by our insects.

The insect is a race, or order, of creatures not friendly to man, or any of the larger animals.

"The mosquito and culex are spread over the world more generally than any other tribe; they are the torment of men and animals from the poles to the equator, by night and by day; the species are numerous, and their location partial.... Of all places on earth, the Orinoco, and other great rivers of tropical America, are the most obnoxious to this plague. The account given by Baron Humboldt is really fearful; at no season of the year, at no hour of the day or night, can rest be found; whole districts in the Upper Orinoco are deserted on account of these insects. Different species follow one another with such precision, that the time of day or night may be known accurately from their humming noise, and from the different sensations of pain which the different poisons produce. The only respite is the interval of a few minutes between the departure of one gang and the arrival of their successors, for the species do not mix. On some parts of the Orinoco, the air is one dense cloud of poisonous insects to the height of twenty feet."

The sea, as well as the air, is populous with insect life. The discoloured portions of the ocean generally owe their tint to myriads of insects. The vermilion sea off California is probably to be accounted for from this cause, "as Mr Darwin found red and chocolate-coloured water on the coast of Chili, over spaces of several square miles, full of microscopic animalcules, darting about in every direction, and sometimes exploding"--we hope for joy. "In the Arctic seas, where the water is pure transparent ultramarine colour, parts of twenty or thirty square miles, one thousand five hundred feet deep, are green and turbid, from the quantity of minute animalcules. Captain Scoresby calculated that it would require eighty thousand persons working unceasingly, from the creation of man to the present day, to count the number of insects contained in two miles of the green water."

Captain Scoresby must be very fond of calculations. We have noticed, by the way, on several occasions, how very bold these men of figures are! One pounds and pulverises the Pyrenees, and strews them over France, and tells us how many feet this would raise the level of the whole country. Another calculates how much soil the Mississippi brings down, per hour, to the ocean; and another, still bolder, undertakes to say what quantity of ice lies amongst the whole range of the Alps. Some of these calculations are laborious inutilities, as it is evident that no accurate data can be obtained to proceed upon. In the last instance, how find the depth of the ice? The sand of the desert has been sounded in one place, we are told, and the lead has sunk three hundred and sixty feet without finding a bottom; but what plummet can sound the glacier? Here and there a crevice may let us into the secret of its depth, and we know that below a certain level ice cannot remain unmelted; but who can tell the configuration of the mountain under the ice, how shallow the glacier may be in some parts, and into what profound caverns it may sink in others? There is something childish in giving us an array of figures, when the figures present no useful approximation to the truth.

We have alluded to the difficult problem of the distribution of the different species of animals throughout the several regions of the globe: the same problem meets us in the vegetable world. Here we might expect to grapple with it with some better hopes of success, yet the difficulties are by no means diminished; we only seem to see them more plainly. In the first place, it is clear, as Mrs Somerville says, that "no similarity of existing circumstances can account for whole families of plants being confined to one particular country, or even to a very limited district, which, as far as we can judge, might have grown equally well in many others." But the _difference_ of the floras is not the only difficulty. While there is difference in a great number of the species, there is _identity_ in a certain other number. If now we account for the difference by supposing that the several portions of land emerged from the ocean at different epochs, and under different conditions, and that, therefore, the generative powers of vegetable life, (in whatever, under the will of Divine Providence, these may be supposed to consist) manifested themselves differently, how shall we next account for this identity? "In islands far from continents, the number of plants is small; but of these a large proportion occur nowhere else. In St Helena, of thirty flower-bearing plants one or two only are native elsewhere." But these one or two become a new perplexity. "In the Falkland Islands there are more than thirty flowering plants identical with those in Great Britain." Very many similar cases might be cited; we quote these only to show the nature of the difficulty with which science has to cope.

And here comes in the following strange and startling fact, to render this subject of vegetable production still more inexplicable:--

"Nothing grows under these great forests, (of South America;) and when accidentally burnt down in the mountainous parts of Patagonia, they never rise again; _but the ground they grow on is soon covered with an impenetrable brushwood of other plants_. In Chili the violently stinging Loasa appears first in these burnt places, bushes grow afterwards, and then comes a tree-grass, eighteen feet high, of which the Indians make their huts. The new vegetation that follows the burning of primeval forests is quite unaccountable. The ancient and undisturbed forests of Pennsylvania have no undergrowth; and when burnt down they are succeeded by a thick growth of rhododendrons."--(Vol. ii. p. 190.)

But we must bring our rambling excursion through these pleasant volumes to a close; the more especially as we wish once more to take this opportunity, not as critics only, but as readers also, to express our grateful sense of the benefit which Mrs Somerville has conferred upon society by this and her preceding volume, _The Connexion of the Physical Sciences_. It was once a prevailing habit to speak in a sort of apologetic strain of works of popular science. Such habit, or whatever residue of it remains, may be entirely laid aside. If by popular science is meant the conveyance, in clear intelligible language, as little technical as possible, of the results of scientific inquiry, then are we all of us beholden more or less to popular science. The most scientific of men cannot be equally profound in all branches of inquiry. The field has now become so extensive that he cannot hope to obtain his knowledge in all departments from the first sources. He must trust for much to the authority of others. Every one who is desirous of learning what anatomy and physiology can teach us, cannot attend the dissecting table. How much that we esteem, as amongst the most valuable of our acquisitions, depends on this secondary evidence! How few can follow the calculations of the mathematician, by which he establishes results which are nevertheless familiar to all as household words! And the mathematician himself, great aristocrat as he is in science, must take the chemist on his word for the nice analysis the latter has performed. He cannot leave his papers to follow out experiments, often as difficult and intricate as his own calculations. Indeed the experiments of the man of science have become so refined and elaborate, and deal often with such subtle matter, and this in so minute quantities, that, as it has been said of the astronomer, that it requires a separate education, and takes half a life to learn to observe, so it may be truly said, that to devise and conduct new experiments in philosophy has become an art in itself. We must be content to see a great deal with the eyes of others; to be satisfied with the report of this or that labourer in the wide field of science. We cannot all of us go wandering over moor and mountain to gather and classify herbs and flowers; interested as we all are in geological speculations, we cannot all use the geological hammer, or use it to any purpose; still less can we examine all manner of fishes, or pry with the microscope into every cranny of nature for _infusoria_.

Mrs Somerville gives us the book!--the neat, compact, valuable volume, which we hold so commodiously in the hand. The book--the book for ever! There are who much applaud the lecture and the lecture-room, with its table full of glittering apparatus, glass and brass, and all the ingenious instruments by which nature, as we say, is put to the torture. Let such as please spend their hot uneasy hour in a crowd. We could never feed in a crowd; we detest benches and sitting in a row. To our notion, more is got, in half the time, from a few pages of the quiet letterpress, quietly perused: the better if accompanied by skilful diagrams, or, as in this case, by admirable maps. As to those experiments, on the witnessing of which so much stress is laid, it is a great fallacy to suppose that they add anything to the certainty of our knowledge. When we see an experiment performed at a distance, in a theatre, we do, in fact, as entirely rely on the word of the lecturer as if we only read of its performance. It is our faith in his character that makes all the difference between his exhibition and that of the dexterous conjurer. To obtain any additional evidence from beholding the experiment, we ought to be at the elbow of the skilful manipulator, and weigh, and test, and scrutinise.

But, indeed, as a matter of evidence, the experiment in a popular lecture-room is never viewed for a moment. It is a mere show. It has degenerated into a mere expedient to attract idlers and keep them awake. The crowd is there, and expect to see something; and it has become the confirmed habit of the whole class of popular lecturers to introduce their experiments, not when they are wanted to elucidate or prove their propositions, but whenever and wherever they can answer the purpose of amusing the audience. If a learned professor is lecturing upon the theory of combustion, he will burn a piece of stick or paper before you, to show that when such things are burnt flame is produced. He would on no account forego that flame. Yes; and the audience look on as if they had never seen a stick or a piece of paper burn before. And when he is so happy as to arrive at the point where a few grains of gunpowder may be ignited, they give him a round of applause! In the hands of many, the lecture itself becomes little more than an occasion for the experiment. The glittering vials, the air-pump, the electrical machine, undoubtedly keep the eyes at least of the audience open; but the expedient, with all due deference be it said, reminds us of the ingenious resource of the veteran exhibitor of _Punch_, who knows that if his puppets receive knocks enough, and there is sufficient clatter with the sticks, the dramatic dialogue may take its course as it pleases: he is sure of his popularity.

Therefore it is we are for the book; and we hold such presents as Mrs Somerville has bestowed upon the public to be of incalculable value, disseminating more sound information than all the literary and scientific institutions will accomplish in a whole cycle of their existence. We will conclude with one or two practical suggestions, which would add to the utility of the last of her two works--_The Physical Geography_. Mrs Somerville has thought it well to insert a few notes explanatory of some scientific terms. But these notes are few. If it was well to explain such terms as "Marsupial animals," or "Testacea," a reader might be excused for wishing to know what a "torsion balance" was, or what a "moraine,"--terms which fall upon him just as suddenly, and unexplained by any previous matter. Would not a glossary of such terms be advisable? But whatever may be thought of this suggestion, our next remark is indisputable. To such a work as this, an index is extremely useful--is all but essential. There is an index, but it is so defective, so scanty, that it is worth nothing. We cannot say whether this last remark applies equally to _The Connexion of the Physical Sciences_, not having that work at present under our eye. But we beg to intimate to all authors and authoresses, that whenever a book is of such a nature that it becomes valuable as a work of reference, it should be accompanied by a good index. It is a plodding business, but it must be executed.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Physical Geography._ By MARY SOMERVILLE.

_The Physical Atlas._ By ALEXANDER KEITH JOHNSTON.

[15] "Nor are there," writes Humboldt, "any constant relations between the distances of the planets from the central body round which they revolve, and their absolute magnitudes, densities, times of rotation, eccentricities and inclinations of orbit and of axis. We find Mars, though more distant from the sun than either the earth or Venus, inferior to them in magnitude; Saturn is less than Jupiter, and yet much larger than Uranus. The zone of the telescopic planets, which are so inconsiderable in point of volume, viewed in the series of distances commencing from the sun, comes next before Jupiter, the greatest in size of all the planetary bodies. Remarkable as is the small density of all the colossal planets which are farthest from the sun, yet neither in this respect can we recognise any regular succession. Uranus appears to be denser than Saturn, and (though the inner group of planets differ but little from each other in this particular) we find both Venus and Mars less dense than the earth, which is situated between them. The time of rotation increases, on the whole, with increasing solar distance, but yet it is greater in Mars than in the earth, and in Saturn than in Jupiter." After other remarks of the same character, he adds, "The planetary system, in its relation of absolute magnitude, relative position of the axis, density, time of rotation, and different degrees of eccentricity of the orbits, has, to our apprehension, nothing more of natural necessity than the relative distribution of land and water on the surface of our globe, the configuration of continents, or the elevation of mountain chains. No general law, in these respects, is discoverable either in the regions of space or in the irregularities of the crust of the earth."

[16] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, p. 536.

CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS--A REMEDY.

To be British, or not to be, is now literally the question in all the North American colonies. Like England, when Mr Cobden and the potato blight produced, together, a panic which seemed to obliterate, for the time, all past arguments, and all future consequences--changing minds before deemed unchangeable, and raising to fame and greatness men and reasoning that the world was never previously able to see the force or the depth of--like England then, are the colonies now. They are in all the depths and mazes of a panic. One of the storms which occasionally break over the heads of all people is now raging over theirs. Nor is it surprising--with England's history for ten years before us--if there should be those among them who shrink from its drenchings or its shocks, or are incapable, in the midst of its wild commotions, of seeing sunshine in the distance. For our part, we are fond of that sturdy greatness which can put its shoulder to the blast, and say, "Blow on, great guns; we can stand your thunder."

Not that the panic in the colonies arises from the people's looking forward to having nothing to eat. They have plenty, thank God, and to spare. But they have nothing in their pockets; and, what is worse, they are afraid, if they go on much longer as they are now doing, they will soon be without pockets too. Factory cotton may be but fourpence a yard; but if they haven't the fourpence to pay for it, it might as well be as dear as diamonds, as far as they are concerned.

The policy of England, from the day that Lord Chatham said "that he would not allow the colonies to make a hob-nail for themselves," has been to convert them into marts for her manufactures--to make them useful and profitable to her, by causing them to consume those things which give her poor employment, her merchants and manufacturers profit, and her commercial navy all the incidental carrying trade. As a return for this, the colonies were directly and indirectly assured by England, that their produce should be protected in her markets--that, for all the profits England might make by manufacturing for the colonies, they should have a full return in the profits they should have by their produce being protected.

Meantime, the United States pursued an entirely different system. They, notwithstanding the interests of the great body of the southern states--whose interest, their principal product being cotton, was to buy what they wanted of manufactured goods in the lowest market, and to sell their cotton in the highest--rigidly adhered to the system of forming manufacturing interests of their own, and of fostering and encouraging them by every means in their power. While the colonies, therefore, bought, with the produce of their country, broad cloths, cottons, silks, blankets, scythes, hardware, and crockery, which were manufactured in England, they saw all the profits of their manufacture, their sale, and their carriage, go to another country, to be spent among another people. The Americans, on the other hand, who bought, with the produce of their lands, the manufactures of their own country, saw the profits upon these manufactures applied to building up factories, villages, and towns, which brought together a useful population; built churches, made roads, established places of learning and improvement; made better markets for some things which might have been sold otherwise, and made sale for many that could not otherwise have been sold at all, besides greatly enhancing the values of all adjacent property, and increasing the general wealth of the whole country. The advantages of the one system over the other, however, did not stop here. The necessities and the advantages of manufactures, which first dictated the making and improving of a common road, next conceived the benefit of a railroad and a canal, and the profits of manufacturing were straightway applied to their construction, and they were done. The farmer, therefore, imperceptibly to himself, was placed within a few hours of the best markets over the continent--found his produce carried to them for a trifle, in comparison to what it used to cost him--and found, withal, the process which made it so, bringing thousands upon thousands of people into the country, to develop its riches, to increase the price of its lands, and to contribute to its civilisation and conveniencies, from the establishment of a college down to the building of a blacksmith's shop. The colonial farmer, too, who bought the goods of an English or a Scotch manufacturer, contributed to send those manufacturers' children to school, to give them a profession, or to leave them a fortune. The American farmer, who bought his neighbours' manufactures, contributed to establish a school in his own neighbourhood, where his children could be educated; and to bring people together to support them, if they chose to study a profession or to enter into business.

To trace, within the limits of a whole magazine even, much less in the fragment of an article, the wealth and prosperity that have accrued to the States over the Colonies, by this system, would be impossible. We must content ourselves, for the present, with glancing at the accumulation of capital, and the extraordinary improvements in one State, as an example of what must have, and in truth what has, accrued to the rest, in a greater or less degree, in proportion as they have been engaged in manufacturing.

The state of Massachusetts, in point of soil, climate, and resources, has fewer, or, at all events, as few advantages as any other state in the American Union. With a few verdant valleys, and some highly productive land, it has much that is rocky and barren, and more that is marshy and useless. Yet this state, far below Upper Canada in natural advantages, has, intersecting it in different ways, five canals, their aggregate length being ninety-nine miles. It has, too, no fewer than eleven railroads winding through it and round it, constructed at an immense cost, and affording a profitable return to their proprietors. Now what is the cause of this extraordinary growth of capital, in a place where there was literally so little for it to grow upon?--and how came such immense facilities for public business to be employed, where nature has done so little to create business? The answer is obvious. Massachusetts has not prospered by its land, or natural resources--it has prospered by its manufactures; and its improvements, great and extraordinary though they be, are but the natural offspring of those manufactures. Its principal manufacturing town, Lowell, the largest such town in the United States, has grown from a few hundred inhabitants, that the land might have feebly supported, to some forty thousand, that manufactures have profitably employed. The necessities of these manufactures called for a canal and a railroad. The profits of the capital invested in them, and the labour they employed, soon constructed them. Salem, wholly by the profits of making cotton fabrics, has become a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants. Salem's manufacturing interests required a railroad to Boston, and Salem's manufacturers' and artisans' profits were able to construct it. Manchester and Lawrence owe their existence and prosperity, and the adjacent country owes the advantages they are to it, wholly to manufactories. They wanted, too, a railroad to connect them; and they were able to make, and have made one. Springfield, also in this State, and Worcester, Fallriver, Lynn, and Newburyport, and several other places of minor consequence, owe equally their existence and prosperity to the same cause. Nor is it to be wondered at that, in so short a period, such vast improvements should be made, when we consider the immense profits that have accrued upon the capital employed in these manufactories, and upon the labour engaged in them. There is a cotton factory in Salem which itself employs a capital of £200,000, giving work to five hundred and seventy-five operatives,--three-fourths of whom are girls,--whose average wages are three pounds twelve shillings sterling a month. Yet, a great proportion of these being very young, it necessarily follows that the wages of the grown up are reduced to make up the average of those of the weaker, and that in reality an industrious woman "can generally earn a dollar a day; and there are those who have been known, from one year's end to another, even to exceed this." Speaking of the character of this labour, and of its effect upon the States, Mr Webster, the highest authority upon this subject in America, thus truthfully and eloquently remarks--

"I have spoken of labour as one of the great elements of our society, the great substantial interest on which we all stand. Not feudal service, not predial toil, not the irksome drudgery by one race of mankind, subjected, on account of colour, to the control of another race of mankind; but labour, intelligent, manly, independent, thinking and acting for itself, earning its own wages, accumulating those wages into capital, becoming a part of society and of our social system, educating childhood, maintaining worship, claiming the right of the elective franchise, and helping to uphold the great fabric of the State. THAT IS AMERICAN LABOUR, and I confess that all my sympathies are with it, and my voice, until I am dumb, will be for it."

Of the profits arising from the capital invested in these manufactures, they have varied in different years, but have, on the average, vastly exceeded those upon all similar investments in England, or in any part of Europe. The _Newburyport Herald_, a couple of years since, gave a statement of the profits arising from the Essex Steam Mill Company in that town, by which it appeared _that forty-two and a half per cent_ upon the capital invested was paid to the stockholders, as the amount of profits for 1845. The Dedham Company, in the same state, also divided ten per cent for six months of the same year; the Norfolk Company, twelve per cent for the same period; and the Northern Company ten. All these companies were engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods--the most profitable, however, of all manufactures in the States.

But against this immense accumulation of capital in the States, against the vast incidental improvements and wealth to the country that have arisen from manufactures, what have the British colonies to show? What have the Canadas to arrest the eye of the traveller, and to prove to him that, though they have pursued the system which Lord Chatham chalked out for them, of not manufacturing a hob-nail for themselves--and which the policy of England has ever since prevented their doing--they have still wherewithal to attest that they have prospered; and that their labour has been equally rewarded by agriculture as by manufactures?

From one end of the provinces to the other, in every colony Britain has in America, there are no evidences of prosperity approaching, much less equalling that of Massachusetts; there is nothing, in truth, wherewith to institute a comparison between them. Beyond the towns which are supported by the trade incident to selling England's goods, there are none to be found in British America. Beyond the little villages throughout the provinces, that owe their existence to the necessity for agencies to collect the profits of the whole products of the country, and to send them to other lands to be spent, there is no appearance of labour employed in business, or capital reproducing capital. Probably one of the best cultivated and most productive districts in Upper Canada, is the Gore. It is situated at the head of Lake Ontario; has the beautiful little city of Hamilton for its capital; is composed of very fair land, and is settled by a population distinguished for their industry, and for the great comfort and independence it has brought them. Upon entering this district by the high road from Toronto, or in passing in a steamer up the north shore of Lake Ontario, the traveller is struck with the appearance of a little village called Oakville. It is situated on the bank of the lake, has its neat white churches, and its little picturesque cottages, looking out upon the broad lake. A stranger at a distance, from its situation and appearance, would imagine it one of those villages that spring up so magically in America,--full of activity, energy, and prosperity. He visits it, and to his surprise he finds, that though it bears all the evidences of having been built in a hurry, it bears also all the tokens of rapid decay--its shops being for the most part unoccupied, its houses untenanted, and its streets without people. And what may be the reason, in a district so prosperous as the Gore, and surrounded by a country teeming with grain, and with still many unused resources, that this village has so palpably disappointed the expectations if its founder? It is this,--Oakville was projected and built with a view to the largest prosperity of the country; and with facilities and necessities for a trade equal to the cultivation of every lot of land in the adjacent country that could support a family, and to the manufacturing into staves and boards, and square timber, of every tree in the surrounding woods. But the policy of England has rendered it unprofitable to get out the timber; and free trade has taken away the inducement to enter into Canadian farming. The consequence is that the shops, which were built to do an anticipated trade in Oakville, are now unrequired; and the people, who built houses for the accommodation of those who were to be engaged in the expected business, have their houses upon their hands. Nor can any one well acquainted with Upper Canada fail to recognise in Oakville a faithful picture of many, if not most, of the towns and villages in the province.

But let us now reverse the picture, and suppose that Oakville, instead of looking forward to rising, and being supported by the trade incident to selling England's goods, and the draining of the country's resources to pay for them, had looked forward to prosperity by manufacturing and selling goods of its own. Let us suppose that its founder--who, fifteen years ago, spent some £20,000 in adapting its harbour for ships, that never had occasion to come; and in building storehouses, for which there has never been use--had spent the same money in establishing one of these factories which first formed the nucleus of Lowell or Salem in Massachusetts. Is it not reasonable to infer, that in the same country, and among a people having the same necessities, the same results would have accrued in the Canadas which have accrued in the States? That the profits of fifteen years' manufacturing would have surrounded Oakville with mansions, proving the success of enterprise; and filled its streets with houses, showing that labour had prospered, and the country had its benefits? Would not its capitalists, instead of empty houses and ruined hopes, have now the proceeds of well-invested capital, or see them reproducing wealth in railroads, or public improvements?

But let us suppose, further, that the whole province of Upper Canada had invested in manufactures, from time to time, for fifty years, the whole profits that England and other countries have made by the sale of all the goods to it that it has consumed, and that this capital had been augmenting and reproducing itself during this period--what would be the probable result? It is impossible to calculate it. It can only be measured by the towns that have sprung up, by the railroads and canals that have been made, and by the vast capital that has been accumulated in the same period by Massachusetts, and the other manufacturing states of America.

It is not, therefore, to institutions or to laws, to peculiarities of race or of situation, that we ascribe the present undeniable prosperity of the States, or, at all events, of those states which have manufactured, over the Canadas. It is to the system the one adopted, of manufacturing what they required, and thus securing to their country the benefit of the population it required to do so, the profits of the labour employed in it, and the incidental improvements it occasioned. It is the system the other followed, or which was chalked out for them, of spending all they could make in the purchase of goods manufactured in England, the profits of which all went there to be spent. The States, by the one system, have made the most of their country's resources and its labour; the Canadas, by the other, have made the least. The States have cities, and railroads, and canals, and elegant mansions, to show for their labour of fifty years; the Canadas have built elegant mansions, too, by their labour, and have bought fine countryseats, and have contributed to make railroads, but they are unfortunately all in England and Scotland. What holds good of a family, sometimes holds good of a people. There is as much often accumulated by saving as by making. Probably the making little, and saving it, will end better than making much and saving little. The States might have made but little on their produce at first--probably less, for many years, than the Canadas; but their system inevitably tended to saving for the country all they did make; whereas the Canadian system, whatever the provinces made, much or little, as inevitably tended to the country's losing it: and the consequences are, the vast difference in the growth of capital in the one country over the other.

The arguments, however, in favour of England's manufacturing for the colonies, were not without their speciousness, and, as applied to other countries, were not without their truth. These were, that England could manufacture cheaper for the colonies than they could manufacture for themselves; and, moreover, that the labour the colonies might apply to manufacturing, could be more profitably employed in raising produce. But these arguments, as far as the Canadas and all America are concerned, are fallacious. In a country where the largest possible reward for labour bears frequently no sort of proportion to the advantages gained by individuals and the whole commonwealth, by the mere fact of that labour's being employed in it, the question changes from what the people save upon a yard of calico, to what the country loses by towns not being built, by railroads not being made, and by improvements not taking place that always follow manufactures. It may be true, that where the greatest possible reward for labour is the only object sought for or attainable, that a people should find out, and engage in what pays them best: but where the congregation of a hundred people in one place raises the value of property there ten thousand fold--and such has often been the case in the States--and every farmer adjacent not only gains a market by them, but has his roads improved, his lands increased in value, double, and triple, and ten times; and has a thousand conveniences and benefits supplied him by them, that he never otherwise could have had--then the question arises with him, Which benefited him most?--the hundred people's manufacturing, and spreading the profits of their labour around them, or the buying a few yards of cloth a few shillings cheaper, and keeping the hundred people away? For every penny that the whole people of the United States have lost, by buying their own goods, they have made pounds by making them. And the profits of a mechanic's own labour sink into utter insignificance, in comparison to the wealth he often acquires by a single lot of land, upon which he settles down with others, and which makes him rich by also enriching all around him. To measure, indeed, the advantages that manufactures have given to America, by the mere profits of the actual labour employed in them, would be but like valuing an oak at the price of one of its acorns. Men may compute the probable profits of labour employed in manufacturing, by computing the cost of raw material with the expense of manufacturing it, and what it sold for. But the enormous wealth that has accrued to America,--by the increase of population incident to manufacturing, by the development of its resources, and the gigantic improvements that have followed it--would be utterly out of the reach of all human industry to compute.

But in striking out the system England did for her colonies, she should, at least have considered whether the benefits she intended to confer would be really used as benefits; whether the system of protection to colonial produce was not, in fact, something like that of indulgent parents giving to their sons pocket-money in addition to sufficient salaries--which same pocket-money does not generally add to the morals or property of the recipients. And, in truth, this was in effect the character of England's colonial protective system. But it went a little farther than the wisdom displayed by anxious parents; for, with the gifts, it took good care to furnish temptations to spend them--a piece of amiable generosity that we would acquit even all indulgent mothers of. However, this was--whatever England meant, or expected, to the contrary--practically the effect of the system. When money was sent out to buy produce or timber, it was always sure to be accompanied by a proportionate stock of broad cloths and silks, challis and shawls. Those who could have done very well with Canadian gray, were induced to buy broad cloths, and often found but these in the market; for England bought the country's crop, and England's merchants knew full well what the farmers could afford to pay for. Women wore silk dresses and satin bonnets, who might have looked charming enough, before their friends at meeting, in Hoyle's prints, or before all reasonable beaus at home, in good, honest, home-made flannel. Brandy and water, too, was too often substituted for wholesome cider, and fashionable tailors for industrious women. The sliding-scale of expenditure always went up and down to suit the times. A good year was marked by an increase of finery and extravagance; a bad one by debts and law-suits, depressions and complaints--the country gaining nothing, from year to year, for its labour or its resources. And what is now the consequence? The system which occasioned the evil is now done away, but the evil and its results remain. The farmer, unknowing the cause at first of the declension in his income, went into debt, thinking, as had often been the case before, that a good year would follow a bad one; and that he would be able to retrieve by it. But the next year came, and it was worse than the former. He could not pay his debts, and he was obliged to mortgage his property, or sell his stock, to do so. He could no longer get credit from the shopkeeper, and he was unable to purchase with cash the quantity or the quality of goods he bought before. The shopkeeper, in his turn depending upon the custom of the farmer for the sale of his goods, and depending upon receiving his accounts from him to meet his own, found both fail him together; was obliged to curtail his business to a miserable remnant; or to shut up his shop, or to wait for the sheriff to do it for him. Hence the altered appearance of every part of Canada, both town and country. Hence the whole streets in Montreal with hardly a single shop open. Hence those sorry emblems of poverty and retrogression--empty houses with broken windows, and streets without people, which may be seen in almost every village in the provinces.

Now, for the system which has produced this state of things, who is to blame? Clearly and unmistakeably, England. If the colonies, as is now palpable to all America, have worked but with one arm towards prosperity, while the States have worked with two, it was England's manufacturing interests that tied the colonies' arm. The colonies were, in this respect, wholly in the hands of England. She not only established a system for them, by which the proceeds of every acre of land they cleared, and every tree they hewed, went to give work to her poor, and wealth to her rich, but she reserved the right of thinking for them as well. Without her, they must have naturally adopted the course taken by the rest of America. She legislated for them; they believed her wise, and followed her dictates without thought or apprehension. They are injured; and she is to blame.

But when Lord Chatham laid the foundation of the system by which the colonies have been, in effect, prevented manufacturing for themselves, he established mutuality of interests between them and the mother country. If he would have England's poor employed, and England's capitalists enriched by making goods for the colonies, he would have the colonies profit equally by protection in the English markets. The partnership, for such it really was, gave to each country its own particular share of benefits; and the system was such, too, that the more the profits of the one rose, though by its own individual efforts, the more it was able to benefit the other. For the more people engaged in Canadian farming, the more land that became cleared, and the more timber that was got out, the more English manufactures were consumed. But we have shown, by comparison, with the States, the disastrous effect of this system upon the prosperity of the colonies. We have shown, too, from its own character, that it never was, and never could have been, of any substantial benefit to them; that it made them extravagant, without leaving them capital; that it made them to all intents and purposes poorer, whilst it was expected to make them richer. And who was this system expressly and avowedly intended to benefit? Who were, in all seasons, and at all times, whether good or bad for the colonies, the only benefiters by it? It was the manufacturers of England. For if the colonies could buy but prints and cottons, they bought of these all they could pay for, and these manufacturers had all the profit. If they could buy broad cloths and silks, they purchased as much as their crops were worth, and often were induced to draw upon the future, English manufacturers and merchants getting all the benefit. But after these manufacturers had thus bled the colonies of all their vitality, in the shape of capital, for upwards of half a century--after the colonies' right arm had been tied up so long, for their express benefit, that it became impotent from want of exercise, these same manufacturers turned round and told their colonial partners--"We have now made all we can out of you or, if we have not, we think we can make a little more by free trade than we can by keeping our honest engagements with you. We are sorry you have acquired a lamer arm in our service. It is a pity. It can't be helped now. Good-bye." Yes, it was these manufacturers, who so long bled the colonies, that turned round to strike them in the end the blow that should finish them. It was their selfish agitation for years; it was their constant sounding into the ears of England one unvarying theme; it was their disregard of all interests, of all duties, and of all obligations to all men, in one deadly, unwavering struggle for the attainment of one object, and for one class, that cost the colonies their solemnly pledged protection--that cost them, we may add, their respect for the honour and the justice of England.

But we have now, after a digression which has been somewhat of the longest, come to the point of our argument, and that is this:--Upon a question so vitally affecting the interests of the colonies, upon a question that might cost them the institutions of England; upon a question where all truth and justice demanded that they should have been in a situation to protect themselves against manufacturing selfishness, does it not occur to the reader, that the colonies should have had a representation where it was decided? The measures that exasperated the old colonies to rebellion, shrink into utter insignificance, as far as injury or effect are concerned, in comparison to this one. Here are three millions of people, the main profits of whose labour for upwards of fifty years have gone to enrich a certain class of people in England. And here they are now, sacrificed to the selfishness of that very class, without having the opportunity of saying a word for themselves. If the legislation of England, for ten years past, has been pregnant with vaster consequences to her than the legislation of a century, it has hardly affected her so deeply as it has affected her North American colonies. If her landowners see ruin, in it--if her agricultural labourers see in it the means of depriving them of bread--still her other classes see, or think they see, advantages in it to counteract the evils, and prosperity to balance the injury. But in England all have been heard--all have contended, where giant intellect sways as well as mighty interests; where mind has its influences as well as matter. But in the colonies, where every interest and every class saw, in imperial legislation, injustice and ruin, neither their intellect nor their interests availed them anything. They were literally placed in the legislative boat of England: they found that they must either sink or float in it; that legislation happened to sink them; and though they saw themselves going down, and might, with their friends, have pulled themselves ashore, they were not allowed an oar to do so--they were not in a situation to make an effort to save themselves.

In the face of these deeply important considerations, can it be fairly said that the colonies have no interest in imperial legislation, and that there are no interests for imperial legislation to guard in the colonies? Palpably to all the world, the States have been making gigantic strides in prosperity, while the colonies have been standing still. Yet in the British House of Commons, whenever the question of the colonies has been mooted, has it not been with the view to consider how the colonies could be made to consume more English manufactures, rather than how they should prosper by manufactures of their own? Who has urged the question there, that instead of England's perpetually sending out goods, and draining the colonies of all the fruits of their labour, England should send out people to make goods, who in making them would make the country? Yet this is the root of the depression and the poverty of the Canadas. And who with this vast country's resources before him--with its ways and means of making millions independent, and with the vast facilities for the investment of capital it afforded and affords--can say that no interests could spring up in it of consequence to the legislation of England?

It is true that the colonies have had their own parliaments; and it has been imagined that these parliaments encompassed the whole of their interests. But when did the colonial legislatures decide that the colonies should not make a hob-nail for themselves? Yet the want of making the hob-nails has been the ruin of their prosperity. It is estimated that the colonies lose upwards of two hundred thousand pounds a year by the loss of protection: it is but too well known how deeply this loss has affected them. Yet whose legislation and policy educated them literally to feel this loss? whose interests were consulted in giving the protection, and taking it away again, that has been the cause of all the evil? It was England's. The colonies have been allowed by their legislatures to shake the leaves of their interests; imperial legislation has always assailed the trunk. But this is not all; colonial interests have been, unheard and unheeded, sacrificed to other interests in England. The destiny of the colonies, without question and without redress, has been placed in the hands of men who have made a convenience of their interests, and an argument of their misfortunes, brought about by these men themselves. Nor could, nor ever can, whatever may be imagined to the contrary, the connexion of the colonies be preserved with England, without her policy and her legislation vitally affecting them. For they must be either English or American; they must be, as they ever have been, if the connexion is maintained, made subservient to the interests of England, or their interests must be identified with hers: and if their interests are identical, their legislation should be identical also. It is impossible that the flag of England can long wave over what is all American. If the colonies are to be wholly independent in their interests of England, it is in the very nature of things, that their measures and their policy may become, not only what England might not like, but what might be an actual injury to her; and what might owe its very success, like much of the policy of America, to its being detrimental to her interests. And it is as unnatural as it is absurd to suppose, that England would or could, for any length of time, extend her protection over a people whose interests and whose policy might be pulling against her own, whose success might be marked by her injury, and whose prosperity might increase at the expense of her adversity.

But, apart from the abstract right of the colonies being represented where they are, and, we insist, must continue to be, so deeply concerned, it is time the present humiliating system of understanding their views or feelings in the English parliament should come to an end. Upon a vitally important question to them--upon one of these things that only come up once in a century, or in a people's whole history--take the following, as an example of the way in which their opinions and their interests were regarded:--

"DISHONESTY OF PUBLIC MEN. (_From the London Post._)--Mr Labouchere wished to show that Canada chafed under the restrictions of the Navigation Laws, and that they would be satisfied with 'the new commercial principle,' provided the Navigation Laws were repealed. For this purpose the minister took a course which he would no more have thought of taking in the affairs of private life, than he would have thought of taking purses on the highway. The minister quoted the statement of three respectable gentlemen at Montreal, which coincided with his views; and he did not let fall one word from which the house could have inferred that the opinions thus alluded to, were not the general mercantile opinions of Montreal. Now, the minister could scarcely be ignorant that this question about free trade, and the alteration of the Navigation Laws, has been the subject of very earnest discussion in Montreal; and he cannot but have known that Mr Young and Mr Holmes, however respectable in their position, and influential in their business, are the leaders of a small minority of the body to which they belong. Mr Labouchere read a statement to the House of Commons, which he had the confidence to call 'a proof irrefragable' of the mercantile public opinion of Montreal and Upper Canada, when the truth is--as he could not but have known--that the opinions of that statement are the opinions of a few persons utterly opposed to the general opinion of the mercantile body. There was held in Montreal, on the 17th of last month, the largest public in-door meeting that ever assembled in that city, at which a string of resolutions was passed by acclamation, in favour of the policy of protection, and against the 'new commercial principle' of the government. That meeting was addressed both by Mr Young and Mr Holmes. They endeavoured to support the views held by Mr Labouchere, but against the overwhelming sense of the meeting, from which they retired in complete discomfiture. We are bound to suppose that the minister who is head of the British Board of Trade cannot but be aware of this; and yet he not only conceals it altogether from the House of Commons, but he reads to that house the statement of Mr Young and Mr Holmes, as 'proof irrefragable' of the opinion of the colony of Canada, in favour of the ministerial policy. The President of the Board of Trade would as soon cut off his right hand as do anything of the kind in the ordinary concerns of life; and yet so warped is he by party politics--so desirous of obtaining a triumph for the political bigotry which possessed him--that he represents the mercantile interest of Montreal and Upper Canada as if it were decidedly on his side, when, if he had told the whole story fairly and honestly, he would have been obliged to admit that exactly the contrary was the fact."

Now, if it be necessary for England to understand colonial feelings, and opinions in order to legislate for them, is this a fair or honourable way of treating them? Are the interests of these great provinces to be thus made subservient to political trickery? Is their destiny of so little importance to Great Britain, that it should be even in the very nature of things for any man, or any party, in England, to have it in his or their power thus to insult their intellect as well as to violate their interests? And is this circumstance not a counterpart of others that have from time to time occurred, when Canadian subjects have been before parliament? If we mistake not, upon another vitally important question to them--the corn laws--the petitions and the remonstrances even of their governor and their legislature were, to enable misrepresentation and untruth to have its influence in a debate, kept back and concealed. A party's interests in England were at stake; the colonies were sacrificed. Now, can it be reasonably urged, that the allowing these colonies to speak for themselves, and to be understood for themselves, in that place and before that people who literally hold their destiny in their hands, would be pregnant with more danger to England than this dishonourable system is to both her and to them? Would it not be better to have them constitutionally heard than surreptitiously represented? Is it necessary to the understanding of the wants and wishes of the colonies, and to the good government of them, that tricking and dishonesty should triumph over truth and principle, and that the legislative boons which reach them should be filtered through falsehood and deception? It will be in the recollection of all who have read the debate in the House of Lords upon the Navigation Laws, how Lord Stanley exposed these same Messrs Holmes and Young, mentioned by Mr Labouchere, but who, on this occasion, in the Lords, were joined with a Mr Knapp. It was shown by his lordship that these eminent commercial men (who seem to be the standing correspondents of the present ministry,) wrote what is called in America a _bunkum_ letter to Earl Grey, to be used in the House of Lords, making a grand flourish of their loyalty, and a great case out in favour of the colonial secretary's side of the question. But it was unfortunately, or rather fortunately, discovered, that these eminent individuals had been, at the very same time, writing to their commercial correspondents in London to shape their business for an early annexation of the colonies to the United States! Yet it is upon such eminent testimony as this that imperial legislation for the colonies is founded. This is the way England comes to a sufficient understanding of a people's interests, to shape a policy which may change their whole political existence.

But, in addition to these reasons why the colonies themselves should be represented in England, there may be reasons why England herself might wish the same thing. May it not be possible, nay, is it not the fact, that a vast amount of trouble, vexation, and expense might be avoided by it? How many commissioners sent out to find out difficulties and to redress grievances,--how many investigations before parliamentary committees,--how many debates in parliament,--how many expenses of military operations, might have been avoided, had these colonies been in a situation from time to time to have explained their own affairs, and to have allowed their petty squabbles of race and of faction to have escaped in the safety-valves of imperial legislation? In 1827, it cost England the time and expense incident to a parliamentary report, upon the civil government of Lower Canada alone, which extends over nearly five hundred pages octavo. And this was irrespective, of course, of the questions and debates which led to it, besides all that grew out of it. Next came the debates upon the causes of the failure of the remedies proposed in the report--for the report itself turned out to be like throwing a little water on a large fire--it only served to increase the blaze. Then came Lord Gosford, with extensive powers to settle all difficulties, and, it was hoped, with a large capacity for understanding them. But he, whatever else he did, succeeded to admiration in bringing matters to a head; or, being an Irishman, perhaps he thought he would make things go by contraries--for he came out to pacify all parties, and he managed to leave them all fighting. Next came the debates upon, and the cost of, the rebellion, and then rose the bright star of Canadian hope and prosperity; for the Earl of Durham was deputed, with a large collection of wisdom, and a pretty good sprinkling of other commodity as well, to settle the whole business. But, in sooth, these Canadians must be a sad set, for he procured them responsible government, and this seems to have set them clean into the fire.

Now, although it may be true that the colonies might have had but few interests at first to engage the attention of imperial legislation, yet it would have been far better to have educated them to understand that legislation, and to have appreciated England's true greatness through her institutions--and at the same time, to have England taught, by practical association and connexion with them, their real worth--than to have had English legislation largely and perpetually wasted upon colonial broils, and the colonies as perpetually dissatisfied with English legislation. The truth is, their system of international legislation only made the two countries known to each other by means of their difficulties. The colonies were never taught to look to the proceedings of the imperial parliament, unless when there was some broil to settle, or some imperial question to be decided, that was linked with colonial ruin, and in the decision of which the colonies had the interesting part to play of looking on. Nor has England ever thought of, or regarded the colonies, except to hand them over bodily to some subordinate in the colonial office--unless when they were forced upon her attention by her pride being likely to be wounded by her losing them, or by some other equally disagreeable consideration. The legislative intercourse between them has ever been of the worst possible kind. Instead of intending to teach the people of England to respect, to rely upon, and to appreciate the real worth of the colonies, it has taught them to underrate, to distrust, and to avoid them. Instead of imperial legislation's forming the character of the people, as it has formed the character of the people of England, and giving them principles to cling to, and to hope upon, it has directly tended to concentrate their attention upon America, and to alienate their feelings from England.

But it is not alone in the passing of laws, or in the arrangements of commerce, or the harmonising and combining of interests, that the colonies would be benefited by imperial representation. They would be benefited a thousand times more by the intercourse it would occasion between the two countries. The colonies would then be taught to regard England as their home. They would read the debates of her parliament as their own debates; they would feel an interest in her greatness, in her struggles, and in her achievements, because they would participate in their accomplishment. The speeches of English statesmen--the literature of England--her institutions and her history, would then be studied, understood, and appreciated by them; and instead of the colonies belonging to the greatest empire in the world, and being the most insignificant in legislation, they would rise to the glory and dignity of that empire of which they formed a part--sharing in its intellectual greatness, its rewards, and the respect that is due to it from the world. Every person, too, who represented the colonies in England, would not simply be the representatives of their public policy, or national interests--he would also represent their vast resources, their thousand openings for the profitable investment of capital, which the people of England might benefit by as much as the colonies. The public improvements now abandoned in the colonies for want of capital to carry them on, and for want of sufficient confidence in their government on the part of capitalists, to invest their money in them, would then become, as similar improvements are in the States, a wide field for English enterprise to enrich itself in, and for English poverty to shake off its misery by. If the resources of the colonies--if their means of making rich, and being enriched, were understood and taken advantage of--if international legislation, common interests, and a common destiny, could make the colonies stand upon the same footing to England as England does to herself, God only call tell the vast amount of human comfort, independence, and happiness, that might result from the consummation.

But how can these advantages accrue to England, or to the colonies, as long as it is understood that, the moment a man plants his foot upon a colony, that moment he yields up the fee-simple of his forefathers' institutions--that moment he takes, as it were, a lease of them, conditioned to hold them by chance, and to regard them as a matter of temporary convenience and necessity. And who that has observed the tone of public feeling in England for years, or the spirit of the debates in her parliament, can deny that this is the case?--who that now lives in the colonies can deny it? And with such an understanding as this, and with all education perpetually going on in colonial legislatures, weaning the feelings and separating the interests of the colonies from the mother country, how can it be expected that that interest in England necessary to all true loyalty, and that knowledge and appreciation of her institutions necessary to all enlightened or patriotic attachment, can take root, or subsist for any length of time in the colonies? If the colonies, in truth, are to be made, or to be kept British, in anything else than in name--if even in name they can long be kept so--it must be by the infusion of the essential elements of British character and British principle into them, by means of British legislation. If they are to be part and parcel of the great oak, the grafts must be nourished by the same sap that supports the tree itself. The little boat that is launched on the great sea to shift for itself, must soon be separated from the great ship. The colonies, denied all practical participation in the true greatness of England, and having with them, by virtue of their very name as colonies, the prestige of instability and insecurity, must, in the very nature of things, be avoided by all who, though they would be glad to trust the great ship, cannot rely upon one of its frail boats. The great wings of England's legislation must be made to cover the North American colonies, and to warm them into a British existence; or they will be doomed to stray and to wander, and to be disrespected and uncared for, until inevitable destiny at last forces them under the wings of another.

Franklin, the profoundest thinker of the many great men connected with the American Revolution, thus wrote upon this subject:--

"The time has been when the colonies might have been pleased with imperial representation; they are now indifferent about it; and if it is much longer delayed, they will refuse it. But the pride of the English people cannot bear the thought of it, and therefore it will be delayed. Every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over America--seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of _our subjects in the colonies_. The parliament cannot well and wisely make laws suited to the colonies, without being properly and truly informed of their circumstances, ability, temper, &c. This cannot be without representatives from the colonies; yet the parliament of England is fond of exercising this power, and averse to the only means of acquiring the necessary knowledge for exercising it; which is desiring to be _omnipotent_ without being _omniscient_.... There remains among the colonists so much respect, veneration, and affection for Britain, that, if cultivated prudently, with a kind usage, and tenderness for their privileges, they might be easily governed by England still for ages, without force, or any considerable expense. But I do not see there a sufficient quantity of the wisdom that is necessary to produce such a conduct, and I lament the want of it."--_Letter to Lord Kames._

But it is most strange, that while England's policy, and the spirit of her legislation, have for some years past clearly indicated to the world, that she expected and seemed disposed to pave the way for a separation between herself and her colonies, her conduct in other respects should be so opposed to her views in this. For while she was foreshadowing in her legislature the independence of her colonies, she was building, at a heavy expense, garrisons in them to support her power for all time to come. Within the ten years last past, garrison quarters, upon a large scale, have been built at Toronto; and large sums have been laid out upon every fort and place of defence in the colonies. Surely this must have been done with some other view than making safe and convenient places for the stars and stripes to wave on in a few years! Yet when we come to look back upon England's legislation for the same period, and upon the spirit evoked by the debates in her parliament, it would really seem, if she had any rational design in these expenditures at all, that she must have intended them for the express benefit of her once rebellious son Jonathan. England, by these defences, would seem to say to the colonists--"Look there, my lads, and see the emblems of your protection, and of British rule in America for ever." By her legislation and free trade policy, she has unequivocally told them, "that she must buy her bread where she pleases; and they may find a government where they please." With one hand she has taken her colonies by the shoulder, and told them they must behave themselves: with the other, she has shaken hands with them, and told them they may kick up their heels as they please for all she cares.

But there is a question, upon the satisfactory answering of which rests the whole matter of whether the colonies can, or cannot, continue connected with Great Britain. And that question is, can they prosper in proportion to their abilities to prosper, by that connexion?

We have already partially answered it by showing the benefit that would inevitably accrue to the colonies from their being represented in the imperial parliament--by their whole property and worth being, by this means, placed in the market of the world side by side with the property and worth of England herself; and by England's capital partially, if not to all intents and purposes, flowing into the colonies upon the same footing that it flows through England--_i.e._, upon the principle of advantageous investment. But we shall prove that they can and should prosper, to the fullest extent of their capabilities, in connexion with Britain, in another way.

It is admitted, on all hands, that were their connexion with England broken off, and were the colonies to become, as it is certain they would, several States of the American Union, they would prosper, in proportion to their capabilities, equally with any of the northern states having no greater advantages in soil or resources. It is thought, and we believe with truth, that the public improvements which now lie dormant for want of capital to carry them on, or for want of sufficient knowledge of, or confidence in, the colonies from without, to induce the necessary capital to be advanced for them, would be completed, if the colonies were joined to the States. It is thought, too, and with equal propriety, that Lower Canada, whose population is singularly well fitted to prosper and be benefited by manufactures, would, were it a State, be directed in that course most conducive to its prosperity. And it is thought--likewise correctly--that the great resources of Upper Canada, were that province too a State, would become greatly more available than they now are: its population would increase; its cities and towns enlarge; and every man having an acre of land, or a lot in a town in it, would become much better off than he is at present. This, if the States remain united as they have been, and prosper as they have done, might be all strictly true. But why is it that the colonies believe this, and that the States are also of the same opinion? It is because the colonies know what the Americans are, and the Americans know what the colonies are capable of. They understand each other, and they know how they could work together for good.

But what means would the Americans employ to develop the undeveloped resources of the colonies, and to secure wealth to themselves, while they brought prosperity to them? They would simply employ their capital in them; and they know that it could, and they would see that it should, be so employed as to secure these results.

But let us now inquire,--Is it impossible to employ the capital of England in these colonies, so as to effect the same thing? If American enterprise and skill could cause wealth to spring up in Lower Canada, and could enrich itself by doing so, is it impossible for English enterprise and skill to do likewise? If American capitalists could, beyond any manner of question, accumulate wealth for themselves, and vastly benefit the Canadas, by constructing railroads through them, or rather by continuing their own, is it out of the power of English capitalists to be enriched by the same process? If the Canadas, as we have said, believe the States can infuse prosperity into them, because they see the States understand them, and know what they are capable of, is it impossible for England to understand them also, and to take advantage of their worth? But then, it will be answered, there is the difficulty of colonial government. Who will invest his capital for a period of fifteen or twenty years, where he may be paid off by a revolution--when, as Moore said of the old colonies--

"England's debtors might be changed to England's foes?"

But suppose the stability of England's own government were imparted to the colonies, suppose the permanency and the interests of England became effectually and for ever identified with them--what then? That there is no reason under heaven left why they should not prosper, to the fullest extent of their ability to prosper, and that England might not be benefited by them in proportion.

But even this is but a partial view of the case; for the Americans would actually borrow the money in England that they would invest in the colonies, and yet enrich themselves by doing so. The colonies, in truth--joined to the States--would prosper by diluted benefits, the Americans reaping all the advantages of the dilution. Connected with Great Britain--did Britain confide in them as she might, and understand them as she should, and were they in a situation to inspire that confidence, and to occasion that understanding--they must inevitably reap, in many respects, double the benefits they would enjoy with the States.

_But the States would benefit the colonies all they could. Will England?_

The scheme of imperial representation for the North American colonies may be, and doubtless is, open to many objections; and many difficulties would have to be got over before it could be accomplished. The first, if not the only great difficulty, is--Would the colonies bear the burden of taxation, and the responsibility of being part and parcel of the British empire, for better or for worse, for all time to come? And could they, if they would?

In considering these questions, it is but fair to view them, not only in regard to the responsibilities the system we propose would entail, but also in regard to the responsibilities they would and must incur by any other system they might adopt. For this may be taken for granted--they must soon become all American, or all English. They must enjoy English credit and English permanency, or they must have some other. A great country, with an industrious, enterprising people, cannot long remain without credit, without prosperity, and without either the use or the hope of capital. The Canadas are now in this situation.

If, then, the colonies should become independent, and it were possible for them to continue so, they would have to pay for their own protection. And if they became a republic, they would have to take their stand with the other powers of the world, and bear the expense of doing so. If, on the other hand, they were taken into the American Union, they would have to contribute, in addition to the cost of their own local or state governments, to the support of the general government of the whole Union; they would have, too, to contribute to the forming a navy for the States, such as England has now got; and they would be obliged to contribute, too, for the construction of military defences for America, which England is pretty well supplied with. They would have, in short, to expend upon America a great deal of what England, in three or four centuries, has been expending upon herself as a nation.

It may also be fairly presumed, that, with interests every day becoming more independent of England; with a system of government which leaves England nothing in America but a name--or, as Lord Elgin says, a "dignified neutrality," and which really means a dignified nothingness--with a system of government such as this, every sensible man must foresee that England will soon get tired of paying largely for the support of her dignified nothingness in America; that she will--as indeed she has already done--inquire what right or occasion she has for protecting colonies from their enemies from without, or, what is much more serious to her, from themselves within, when she has ceased to have a single interest in commerce with them; and when she must see--if the present system be kept up much longer--that every day must separate her still more widely from them in feeling, and in all the essential principles that bind a people to each other, or a colony to a mother country?

In view, therefore, of all these considerations, taken separately or together, it is but reasonable to suppose that the colonies may soon be called upon to pay for their own protection from their enemies from without, or for their own squabbles within, if they must indulge in such expensive amusements. And the question then arises--Would their being practically identified with the British empire, participating in all its greatness, and enjoying the prestige of its stability and its credit, entail upon them greater cost or responsibility, than they would have to incur to maintain a puny, helpless independence, or in becoming states of the American Union?

It is out of our power to make the calculation, as it is impossible for us to know upon what terms England would agree to the colonies participating in her government as we propose. It is likewise impossible for us to tell how much might be saved by removing the tea-pots, so pregnant with tempests, in the shape of colonial legislatures; in removing governors to preserve "_dignified neutrality_;" and courts to keep up the shadow of England's government in America, the substance having grown "beautifully less" of late years. But after much thought and investigation, by both ourselves and others better accustomed to such matters than we are, we have come to the conclusion--that imperial representation might cost the colonies nothing more, if as much, as any other change they would have to make; that England would gain immensely by the change; and that the proceeds of the vast tracts of country lying north and north-west of the Canadas, their fisheries, their mineral resources, and their other unused and unappropriated wealth in timber and other things, might be converted into a sinking fund by the united governments of England and her colonies, that, in its effects, might astonish both England and the world. We can but throw out the suggestion; it is for others to consider it.

But if the connexion of the colonies with Great Britain is to be made a mere matter of time and convenience, as to when it shall end, or how, then it is of little use in hoping much, or thinking deeply, upon what may be pregnant with such vast consequences to England's race in America, and even America's own race in it. A time, it would seem, which has taught Britons to know what their institutions are worth, must cost them in America these institutions. A time, which has exhibited, during the principal settlement of the Canadas, the fall alike of the fabric of the political enthusiast and the fortress of the despot in Europe, must cost, it seems, the colonies that government which bore freedom aloft through the wild storm. England has stood upon a rock, and, after pointing out to her colonies the wreck of human institutions, she is about to push them off to share the fate she has taught them so much to dread. If England has the heart to do it, it must be done. Three millions of people will cease to say "God save the Queen!" The sun will set upon her empire. Full many an honest tear will be shed at hearing that it must. Full many a heart will be torn from what it would but too gladly die for. But the days of chivalry are gone; the days of memory are fled. The selfish, mercenary nineteenth century will be marked with the loss of the best jewel in Britain's crown.

HAMILTON, CANADA WEST, _August 1849_.

THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, OR THE GLORY OF MOTION.

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr Palmer, M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by the eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter[17] of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, who certainly invented (or _discovered_) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital points of speed and keeping time, but who did _not_ marry the daughter of a duke.

These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself--having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams, an agency which they accomplished, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented; they first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time, an under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite danger; secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; fourthly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances,[18] of storms, of darkness, of night, overruled all obstacles into one steady co-operation in a national result. To my own feeling, this Post-office service recalled some mighty orchestra, where a thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, veins, and arteries, in a healthy animal organisation. But, finally, that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises by terror and terrific beauty over my dreams, lay in the awful political mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail-coaches it was that distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _Te Deums_ to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, and to the nations of western and central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had prospered.

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts were awakened. There were, perhaps, of us gownsmen, two thousand _resident_[19] in Oxford, and dispersed through five-and-twenty colleges. In some of these the custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms;" that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept severally by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted residence, accordingly, it was possible that a student might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro. And as these homes lay dispersed through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except his majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend to so extensive a connexion with Mr Palmer's establishment as Oxford. Naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of the system. With some of these Mr Palmer had no concern; they rested upon bye-laws not unreasonable, enacted by posting-houses for their own benefit, and upon others equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to rouse our scorn, from which the transition was not _very long_ to mutiny. Up to this time, it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people, (as an old tradition of all public carriages from the reign of Charles II.,) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable delf ware outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint the foot concerned in that operation; so that, perhaps, it would have required an act of parliament to restore its purity of blood. What words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that case, which _had_ happened, where all three outsides, the trinity of Pariahs, made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four? I myself witnessed such an attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of lunacy (or _delirium tremens_) rather than of treason. England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her social composition. I am not the man to laugh at it. But sometimes it expressed itself in extravagant shapes. The course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was, that the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged _salle-à-manger_, sang out, "This way, my good men;" and then enticed them away off to the kitchen. But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, though very rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to move, and so far carried their point, as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a corner of the room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or _dais_, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law--that the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim, that objects not appearing, and not existing, are governed by the same logical construction.

Such now being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, what was to be done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the insides themselves as often very suspicious characters, were we voluntarily to court indignities? If our dress and bearing sheltered us, generally, from the suspicion of being "raff," (the name at that period for "snobs,"[20]) we really _were_ such constructively, by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of theatres was urged against us, where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit suits the purpose of the dramatic reporter. But the reporter or critic is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Whereas, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. The higher price we should willingly have paid, but _that_ was connected with the condition of riding inside, which was insufferable. The air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat--these were what we desired; but, above all, the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving.

Under coercion of this great practical difficulty, we instituted a searching inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the different apartments about the mail. We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily, that the roof of the coach, which some had affected to call the attics, and some the garrets, was really the drawing-room, and the box was the chief ottoman or sofa in that drawing-room; whilst it appeared that the inside, which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise.

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the celestial intellect of China. Amongst the presents carried out by our first embassy to that country was a state-coach. It had been specially selected as a personal gift by George III.; but the exact mode of using it was a mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed, (Lord Macartney) had made some dim and imperfect explanations upon the point; but as his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper, at the very moment of his departure, the celestial mind was very feebly illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question--"Where was the emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial place, and, _for the scoundrel who drove, he might sit where he could find a perch_. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, under a flourish of music and a salute of guns, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented person, which was the coachman. This mutinous individual, looking as blackhearted as he really was, audaciously shouted--"Where am _I_ to sit?" But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition, that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed to the emperor through a window, "how am I to catch hold of the reins?"--"Any how," was the answer; "don't trouble _me_, man, in my glory; through the windows, through the key-holes--how you please." Finally, this contumacious coachman lengthened the checkstrings into a sort of jury-reins, communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as may be supposed. The emperor returned after the briefest of circuits: he descended in great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's prosperous escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the state-coach was dedicated for ever as a votive offering to the God Fo, Fo--whom the learned more accurately call Fi, Fi.

A revolution of this same Chinese character did young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. It was a perfect French revolution; and we had good reason to say, _Ca ira_. In fact, it soon became _too_ popular. The "public," a well known character, particularly disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and notorious for affecting the chief seats in synagogues, had at first loudly opposed this revolution; but when all opposition showed itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a sort of race between us; and, as the public is usually above 30, (say generally from 30 to 50 years old,) naturally we of young Oxford, that averaged about 20, had the advantage. Then the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keepers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans on the box-seat. _That_, you know, was shocking to our moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, we observed, and there is an end to all morality, Aristotle's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use was it? For _we_ bribed also. And as our bribes to those of the public being demonstrated out of Euclid to be as five shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles of the stable-establishment about the mails. The whole corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed; so that a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at that time to be the most corrupt character in the nation.

There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. On the contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly,--"Whither can I go for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? Or a lunatic, hospital? Or the British Museum?" I should have replied--"Oh, no; I'll tell you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the box of his majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date that you are made unhappy--if noters and protesters are the sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life--then note you what I vehemently protest, viz., that no matter though the sheriff in every county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch a hair of your head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your legal domicile, on the box of the mail. It's felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot do that. And an _extra_ (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) touch of the whip to the leaders at any time guarantees your safety." In fact, a bed-room in a quiet house seems a safe enough retreat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances, to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again! there _are_ none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in Von Troil's Iceland; except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in the "coal-cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in a mail-coach, which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden seat in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was _læsa majestas_, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. But even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our knowledge--that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. With a quotation rather too trite, I remarked to the coachman,--

----"Jam proximus ardet Ucalegon."

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of his education might have been neglected, I interpreted so far as to say, that perhaps at that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and next-door neighbour Ucalegon. The coachman said nothing, but by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to be thinking that he knew better; for that in fact, Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill.

No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the indeterminate and mysterious. The connexion of the mail with the state and the executive government--a connexion obvious, but yet not strictly defined--gave to the whole mail establishment a grandeur and an official authority which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. But perhaps these terrors were not the less impressive, because their exact legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates; with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look at that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road: ah! traitors, they do not hear us as yet, but as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with the proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six generations, and nothing is wanting but the heads-man and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be within benefit of clergy, to delay the king's message on the highroad?--to interrupt the great respirations, ebb or flood, of the national intercourse--to endanger the safety of tidings running day and night between all nations and languages? Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their widows for Christian burial? Now, the doubts which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty; than could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts, (we, the collective mail, I mean,) did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power, haughtily dispensing with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having authority.

Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would become frisky; and in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash, though, after all, I believe the damage might be levied upon the hundred. I, as far as was possible, endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words too celebrated in those days from the false[21] echoes of Marengo)--"Ah! wherefore have we not time to weep over you?" which was quite impossible, for in fact we had not even time to laugh over them. Tied to post-office time, with an allowance in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I contended, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties.

Upholding the morality of the mail, _à fortiori_ I upheld its rights, I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I remember being on the box of the Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some _Tallyho_ or _Highflier_, all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour is this plebeian wretch! The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet-ring bears to a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single pannel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the state; whilst the beast from Birmingham had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side,--a piece of familiarity that seemed to us sufficiently jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you see _that_?" I said to the coachman. "I see," was his short answer. He was awake, yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When _that_ seemed ripe, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger image, he sprang his known resources, he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting leopards after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished, seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a tower of strength, namely, the king's name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph, that was really too painfully full of derision.

I mention this little incident for its connexion with what followed. A Welshman, sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the continuance of the race? I said--No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied, that he didn't see _that_; for that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. "_Race_ us perhaps," I replied, "though even _that_ has an air of sedition, but not _beat_ us. This would have been treason; and for its own sake I am glad that the Tallyho was disappointed." So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists, viz.--that once, in some Oriental region, when the prince of all the land, with his splendid court, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle; and in defiance of the eagle's prodigious advantages, in sight also of all the astonished field-sportsmen, spectators, and followers, killed him on the spot. The prince was struck with amazement at the unequal contest, and with burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the hawk should be brought before him; caressed the bird with enthusiasm, and ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a crown of gold should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head; but then that, immediately after this coronation, the bird should be led off to execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor that had dared to rise in rebellion against his liege lord the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "how painful it would have been to you and me as men of refined feelings, that this poor brute, the Tallyho, in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with jewellery, gold, with Birmingham ware, or paste diamonds, and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And when I hinted at the 10th of Edward III. chap. 15, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily--That if the attempt to pass a mail was really treasonable, it was a pity that the Tallyho appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law.

These were among the gaieties of my earliest and boyish acquaintance with mails. But alike the gayest and the most terrific of my experiences rose again after years of slumber, armed with preternatural power to shake my dreaming sensibilities; sometimes, as in the slight case of Miss Fanny on the Bath road, (which I will immediately mention,) through some casual or capricious association with images originally gay, yet opening at some stage of evolution into sudden capacities of horror; sometimes through the more natural and fixed alliances with the sense of power so various lodged in the mail system.

The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, but not however as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon _alien_ evidence, as, for instance, because somebody _says_ that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the word was--_Non magna loquimur_, as upon railways, but _magna vivimus_. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of an animal, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and echoing hoofs. This speed was incarnated in the _visible_ contagion amongst brutes of some impulse, that, radiating into _their_ natures, had yet its centre and beginning in man. The sensibility of the horse uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration in such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first--but the intervening link that connected them, that spread the earthquake of the battle into the eyeball of the horse, was the heart of man--kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by motions and gestures to the sympathies, more or less dim, in his servant the horse.

But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar has power any more to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever; man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; the inter-agencies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master, out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight solitudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, must henceforwards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, and advancing through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler.

Thus have perished multiform openings for sublime effects, for interesting personal communications, for revelations of impressive faces that could not have offered themselves amongst the hurried and fluctuating groups of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a mail-coach had one centre, and acknowledged only one interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train.

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer months entered about dawn into the lawny thickets of Marlborough Forest, couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have become known to myself? Yet Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and person that perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, merited the station which even _her_ I could not willingly have spared; yet (thirty-five years later) she holds in my dreams; and though, by an accident of fanciful caprice, she brought along with her into those dreams a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that were more abominable to a human heart than Fanny and the dawn were delightful.

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came so continually to meet the mail, that I on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected her name with the great thoroughfare where I saw her; I do not exactly know, but I believe with some burthen of commissions to be executed in Bath, her own residence being probably the centre to which these commissions gathered. The mail-coachman, who wore the royal livery, being one amongst the privileged few,[22] happened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was, that loved his beautiful granddaughter; and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Was I then vain enough to imagine that I myself individually could fall within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour; and probably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in personal advantages.

Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is universally aristocratic: it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she _is_ so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? Why, yes; _mais oui donc_; as much love as one _can_ make whilst the mail is changing horses, a process which ten years later did not occupy above eighty seconds; but _then_, viz. about Waterloo, it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a great deal of truth; and (by way of parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth, in a contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities for such suggestions. Yet he was still active; he was still blooming. Blooming he was as Fanny herself.

"Say, all our praises why should lords--"

No, that's not the line:

"Say, all our roses why should girls engross?"

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face deeper even than his granddaughter's,--_his_ being drawn from the ale-cask, Fanny's from youth and innocence, and from the fountains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some infirmities he had; and one particularly, (I am very sure, no _more_ than one,) in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd _length_ of his back; but in our Grandpapa it arose rather from the absurd _breadth_ of his back, combined, probably, with some growing stiffness in his legs. Now upon this crocodile infirmity of his I planted an easy opportunity for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his honourable vigilance, no sooner had he presented to us his mighty Jovian back, (what a field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet!) whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, and the silver turrets of his harness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her easily to understand how happy it would have made me to rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12, in which case a few casualties amongst her lovers (and observe--they _hanged_ liberally in those days) might have promoted me speedily to the top of the tree; as, on the other hand, with how much loyalty of submission I acquiesced in her allotment, supposing that she had seen reason to plant me in the very rearward of her favour, as No. 199+1. It must not be supposed that I allowed any trace of jest, or even of playfulness, to mingle with these expressions of my admiration; that would have been insulting to her, and would have been false as regarded my own feelings. In fact, the utter shadowiness of our relations to each other, even after our meetings through seven or eight years had been very numerous, but of necessity had been very brief, being entirely on mail-coach allowance--timed, in reality, by the General Post-Office--and watched by a crocodile belonging to the antepenultimate generation, left it easy for me to do a thing which few people ever _can_ have done--viz., to make love for seven years, at the same time to be as sincere as ever creature was, and yet never to compromise myself by overtures that might have been foolish as regarded my own interests, or misleading as regarded hers. Most truly I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and had it not been for the Bath and Bristol mail, heaven only knows what might have come of it. People talk of being over head and ears in love--now, the mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct of the affair. I have mentioned the case at all for the sake of a dreadful result from it in after years of dreaming. But it seems, _ex abundanti_, to yield this moral--viz. that as, in England, the idiot and the half-wit are held to be under the guardianship of Chancery, so the man making love, who is often but a variety of the same imbecile class, ought to be made a ward of the General Post-Office, whose severe course of _timing_ and periodical interruption might intercept many a foolish declaration, such as lays a solid foundation for fifty years' repentance.

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that all things change or perish. Even thunder and lightning, it pains me to say, are not the thunder and lightning which I seem to remember about the time of Waterloo. Roses, I fear, are degenerating, and, without a Red revolution, must come to the dust. The Fannies of our island--though this I say with reluctance--are not improving; and the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Mr Waterton tells me that the crocodile does _not_ change--that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. _That_ may be; but the reason is, that the crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood amongst naturalists, that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally met that mistake by another; he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued until Mr Waterton changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed to be, not by running away, but by leaping on its back, booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up--it is to be ridden; and the use of man is, that he may improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile, who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have done in the infancy of the Pyramids.

Perhaps, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, but all things else _do_: even the shadow of the Pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen to call up the image of Fanny from thirty-five years back, arises suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like the antiphonies in a choral service, rises Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, as in a chorus; roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end--thick as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, or in a coat with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, and with the dreadful legend of TOO LATE. Then all at once we are arrived in Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely households[23] of the roe-deer: these retire into the dewy thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; the roses call up (as ever) the sweet countenance of Fanny, who, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of wild semi-legendary animals--griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering, armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures; whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the fore-finger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, and having power (which, without experience, I never could have believed) to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart, together with the monstrous creations of darkness that shock the belief, and make dizzy the reason of man. This is the peculiarity that I wish the reader to notice, as having first been made known to me for a possibility by this early vision of Fanny on the Bath road. The peculiarity consisted in the confluence of two different keys, though apparently repelling each other, into the music and governing principles of the same dream; horror, such as possesses the maniac, and yet, by momentary transitions, grief, such as may be supposed to possess the dying mother when leaving her infant children to the mercies of the cruel. Usually, and perhaps always, in an unshaken nervous system, these two modes of misery exclude each other--here first they met in horrid reconciliation. There was also a separate peculiarity in the quality of the horror. This was afterwards developed into far more revolting complexities of misery and incomprehensible darkness; and perhaps I am wrong in ascribing any value as a _causative_ agency to this particular case on the Bath road--possibly it furnished merely an _occasion_ that accidentally introduced a mode of horrors certain, at any rate, to have grown up, with or without the Bath road, from more advanced stages of the nervous derangement. Yet, as the cubs of tigers or leopards, when domesticated, have been observed to suffer a sudden development of their latent ferocity under too eager an appeal to their playfulness--the gaieties of sport in _them_ being too closely connected with the fiery brightness of their murderous instincts--so I have remarked that the caprices, the gay arabesques, and the lovely floral luxuriations of dreams, betray a shocking tendency to pass into finer maniacal splendours. That gaiety, for instance, (for such at first it was,) in the dreaming faculty, by which one principal point of resemblance to a crocodile in the mail-coachman was soon made to clothe him with the form of a crocodile, and yet was blended with accessory circumstances derived from his _human_ functions, passed rapidly into a further development, no longer gay or playful, but terrific, the most terrific that besieges dreams, viz.--the horrid inoculation upon each other of incompatible natures. This horror has always been secretly felt by man; it was felt even under pagan forms of religion, which offered a very feeble, and also a very limited gamut for giving expression to the human capacities of sublimity or of horror. We read it in the fearful composition of the sphinx. The dragon, again, is the snake inoculated upon the scorpion. The basilisk unites the mysterious malice of the evil eye, unintentional on the part of the unhappy agent, with the intentional venom of some other malignant natures. But these horrid complexities of evil agency are but _objectively_ horrid; they inflict the horror suitable to their compound nature; but there is no insinuation that they _feel_ that horror. Heraldry is so full of these fantastic creatures, that, in some zoologies, we find a separate chapter or a supplement dedicated to what is denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous creatures, however visionary,[24] have a real traditionary ground in medieval belief--sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating with mendacity, blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself--occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain--holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart--some horrid alien nature. What if it were his own nature repeated,--still, if the duality were distinctly perceptible, even _that_--even this mere numerical double of his own consciousness--might be a curse too mighty to be sustained. But how, if the alien nature contradicts his own, fights with it, perplexes, and confounds it? How, again, if not one alien nature, but two, but three, but four, but five, are introduced within what once he thought the inviolable sanctuary of himself? These, however, are horrors from the kingdoms of anarchy and darkness, which, by their very intensity, challenge the sanctity of concealment, and gloomily retire from exposition. Yet it was necessary to mention them, because the first introduction to such appearances (whether causal, or merely casual) lay in the heraldic monsters, which monsters were themselves introduced (though playfully) by the transfigured coachman of the Bath mail.

GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY.

But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo: the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the rest, from 1805 to 1815 inclusively, furnished a long succession of victories; the least of which, in a contest of that portentous nature, had an inappreciable value of position--partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive in central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in a quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity[25] of having bearded the _élite_ of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation from the aroma of the regular despatches. The government official news was generally the first news.

From eight P.M. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street, where, at that time, was seated the General Post-Office. In what exact strength we mustered I do not remember; but, from the length of each separate _attelage_, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On _any_ night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, and the magnificence of the horses, were what might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage, on every morning in the year, was taken down to an inspector for examination--wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, &c., were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and behold! to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking addition!--horses, men, carriages--all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons. The guards, who are his Majesty's servants, and the coachmen, who are within the privilege of the Post-Office, wear the royal liveries of course; and as it is summer (for all the _land_ victories were won in summer,) they wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without any covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilated their hearts, by giving to them openly an _official_ connection with the great news, in which already they have the general interest of patriotism. That great national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress. The usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his English blood. The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the Post-Office servants the great ancestral names of cities known to history through, a thousand years,--Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth, Glasgow--expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play;--horses! can these be horses that (unless powerfully reined in) would bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering of wheels, what a trampling of horses!--what farewell cheers--what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that, all night long and all the next day--perhaps for even a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, almost without intermission, westwards for three hundred[26] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies, yet unborn, which we were going to evoke.

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer evening, the sun perhaps only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows--young and old understand the language of our victorious symbols--and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along behind and before our course. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the heightened colour on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on the point of passing them. We passengers--I on the box, and the two on the roof behind me--raise our hats, the coachman makes his professional salute with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of gesture: all smile on each side in a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies say that we are nothing to _them_? Oh, no; they will not say _that_. They cannot deny--they do not deny--that for this night they are our sisters: gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come--we on the outside have the honour to be their brothers. Those poor women again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance of Barnet, and seem by their air of weariness to be returning from labour--do you mean to say that they are washerwomen and charwomen? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you, they stand in a higher rank: for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to no humbler title.

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy--such is the sad law of earth--may carry with it grief, or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating the circumstances of the former case. Here also the glasses are all down--here also is an elderly lady seated; but the two amiable daughters are missing; for the single young person, sitting by the lady's side, seems to be an attendant--so I judge from her dress, and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning; and her countenance expresses sorrow. At first she does not look up; so that I believe she is not aware of our approach, until she bears the measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case to her at once; but she beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even with terror. Sometime before this, I, finding it difficult to hit a flying mark, when embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins intervening, had given to the guard a _Courier_ evening paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Accordingly he tossed it in so folded that the huge capitals expressing some such legend as--GLORIOUS VICTORY, might catch the eye at once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if the guard were right in thinking the lady to have received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal affliction in connexion with this Spanish war.

Here now was the case of one who, having formerly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing herself with anticipations of another similar suffering. That same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exultation so unmeasured in the news, and its details, as gave to her the appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is called _fey_. This was at some little town, I forget what, where we happened to change horses near midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds. We saw many lights moving about as we drew near; and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where perhaps she had been presiding at some part of the evening, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon myself. The victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_ occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera. I told her the main outline of the battle. But her agitation, though not the agitation of fear, but of exultation rather, and enthusiasm, had been so conspicuous when listening, and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if she had not some relation in the Peninsular army. Oh! yes: her only son was there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory, had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military annals. They leaped their horses--_over_ a trench, where they could _into_ it, and with the result of death or mutilation when they could _not_. What proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_, closed up and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour--(I use the word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this movement to those whom even then he was calling to his presence)--that two results followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, originally 350 strong, paralysed a French column, 6000 strong, then ascending the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have been all but annihilated; but eventually, I believe, not so many as one in four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already for some hours known to myself and all London as stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody aceldama--in which the young trooper served whose mother was now talking with myself in a spirit of such hopeful enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up her dream? No. I said to myself, to-morrow, or the next day, she will hear the worst. For this night, wherefore should she not sleep in peace? After to-morrow, the chances are too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, let her owe this to _my_ gift and _my_ forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody price that had been paid, there was no reason for suppressing the contributions from her son's regiment to the service and glory of the day. For the very few words that I had time for speaking, I governed myself accordingly. I showed her not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But I told her how these dear children of England, privates and officers, had leaped their horses over all obstacles as gaily as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists of death, (saying to myself, but not saying to _her_,) and laid down their young lives for thee, O mother England! as willingly--poured out their noble blood as cheerfully--as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, they had rested their wearied heads upon their mothers' knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms. It is singular that she seemed to have no fears, even after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been conspicuously engaged, for her son's safety: but so much was she enraptured by the knowledge that _his_ regiment, and therefore _he_, had rendered eminent service in the trying conflict--a service which had actually made them the foremost topic of conversation in London--that in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, she threw her arms round my neck, and, poor woman, kissed me.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Lady Madeline Gordon.

[18] "_Vast distances._"--One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers, where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which exactly bisected the total distance.

[19] "_Resident._"--The number on the books was far greater, many of whom kept up an intermitting communication with Oxford. But I speak of those only who were steadily pursuing their academic studies, and of those who resided constantly as _fellows_.

[20] "Snobs," an its antithesis, "nobs," arose among the internal factions of shoe-makers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.

[21] "False echoes"--yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napoleon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at all. They stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering _Vengeur_, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "_La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas_," as the repartees of Talleyrand.

[22] "Privileged few." The general impression was that this splendid costume belonged of right to the mail coachmen as their professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it _did_ belong as a matter of course, and was essential as an official warrant, and a means of instant identification for his person, in the discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long or special service.

[23] "_Households._"--Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents, and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of a peculiarly tender character, if less dignified by the grandeurs of savage and forest life.

[24] "_However visionary._"--But _are_ they always visionary? The unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoological facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie, is rather _too_ true; for, simply as a _monokeras_, he is found in the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for the peace of what in Scotland would be called the _intending_ traveller. That which really _is_ a lie in the account of the unicorn--viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion--which lie may God preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield that embalms it--cannot be more destructive to the zoological pretensions of the unicorn, than are to the same pretensions in the lion our many popular crazes about his goodness and magnanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed by so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence. The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named, (as, suppose, a mer-ape) nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as many that are assessed to the poor-rates.

[25] "_Audacity!_" Such the French accounted it, and it has struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London, at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said more than once--"Here are the English--we have them: they are caught _en flagrant delit_." Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in the north of Portugal, during his flight from an English army, and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles.

[26] "_Three hundred._" Of necessity this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little lying, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:--"And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of 170 miles." And this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure falsehood gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent; nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains: yet, if he _had_ been so absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water--viz. the Tiber--has contrived to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached, nor likely to be reached very soon, by any river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the density of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer of Columbian standards, is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these terms:--"Those rascals, sir, in France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where food can be had and lodging: whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast."

DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.[27]

Lord Braybrooke has established a strong claim to the gratitude of the literary world for his present elegant, improved, and augmented edition of the _Diary of Samuel Pepys_. The work may now, we presume, be regarded as complete, for there is little chance that any future editor will consider himself entitled to supply the _lacunæ_ or omissions which still confessedly exist. Lord Braybrooke informs us that, after carefully re-perusing the whole of the manuscript, he had arrived at the conclusion, "that a literal transcript of the Diary was absolutely inadmissible; and he more than hints that most of the excluded passages have been withheld from print on account of their strong indelicacy." We cannot blame the noble editor for having thus exercised his judgment, though we could wish that he had been a little more explicit as to the general tenor and application of the proscribed entries. The Diary of Pepys is a very remarkable one, comprehending both a history or sketch of the times in which he lived, and an accurate record of his own private transactions and affairs. He chronicles not only the faults of others, as these were reported to him or fell under his personal observation, but he notes his own frailties and backslidings with a candour, a minuteness, and even occasionally a satisfaction, which is at once amusing and uncommon. The one division of his subject is a political and social--the other a psychological curiosity. We are naturally desirous to hear all about Charles and his courtiers, and not averse to the general run of gossip regarding that train of beautiful women whose portraits, from the luxuriant pencil of Lely, still adorn the walls of Hampton Court. But not less remarkable are the quaint confessions of the autobiographer, whether he be recording, in conscious pride, the items of the dinner and the plate with which he appeased the appetite and excited the envy of some less prosperous guest, or junketing with Mrs Pierce and equivocal Mrs Knipp the actress, whilst poor Mrs Pepys was absent on a fortnight's visit to the country. Far are we from excusing or even palliating the propensities of Pepys. We have enough before us to show that he was a sad flirt, and a good deal of a domestic hypocrite: all this he admits, and even exhibits at times a certain amount of penitence and compunction. But we confess that we should be glad to know from which section of the Diary the objectionable matter has been expunged. If from the public part, or rather that disconnected with the personality of Pepys, we acquiesce without further comment in the taste and judgment of the editor. We do not want to have any minute details, even though Pepys may have written them down, of the drunken and disgraceful exhibitions of Sir Charles Sedley and his comrades, or even of the private actings of the Maids (by courtesy) of Honour. We have enough, and more than enough, of this in the _Memoirs of Grammont_, and no one would wish to see augmented that repertory of antiquated scandal. History, and the products of the stage as it then existed, speak quite unequivocally as to the general demoralisation of those unhappy times, and it cannot serve any manner of use to multiply or magnify instances. But whilst we so far freely concede the right of omission to Lord Braybrooke, we must own that we are not a little jealous lest, out of respect to the individual memory of Pepys, he should have concealed some personal confessions, which may have been really requisite in order to form an accurate estimate of the man. We cannot read the Diary without strong suspicions that something of the kind has taken place. Mere flirtation on the part of her husband could hardly have driven Mrs Pepys to the desperate extremity of heating the tongs in the fire, and approaching the nuptial couch therewith, obviously for no good purpose, to the infinite dismay of Samuel. Pepys might perhaps be excused for a reciprocated oscillation of the eyelid, when Mrs Knipp winked at him from the stage; but why, if his motives for frequenting her company were strictly virtuous and artistical, did he go to kiss her in her tireing-room? why should she have pulled his hair, when she sat behind him in the pit? or why should he have been sorely troubled "that Knipp sent by Moll (an orange-woman, whose basket was her character) to desire to speak to me after the play, and I promised to come; but it was so late, and I forced to step to Mrs Williams' lodgings with my Lord Brouncker and her, where I did not stay, however, for fear of her showing me her closet, and thereby forcing me to give her something; and it was so late, that, for fear of my wife's coming home before me, I was forced to go straight home, which troubled me"? If Pepys was really innocent in deed, and but culpable in thought and inclination, his escape was a mighty narrow one, and Mrs Pepys may well stand excused for the strength and frequency of her suspicions. The truth is, that Pepys, at least in the earlier part of his life, was a very odious specimen of the Cockney, and would upon many occasions have been justly punished by a sound kicking, or an ample dose of the cudgel. It seems to us perfectly inexplicable how the coxcomb--who, by the way, was a regular church-goer, and rather zealous religionist--could have prevailed upon himself to make such entries as the following in his journal: "_August 18, 1667._--I walked towards Whitehall, but, being wearied, turned into St Dunstan's church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again, which seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also." What a pity that the first maid in question had not been more nimble with her fingers! The poisoned bodkin which the goblin page shoved into the knee of Wat Tinlinn, would have been well bestowed, if buried to the very head, on this occasion, in the hip of Pepys; and charity does not forbid us from indulging ourselves in fancy with the startling hideousness of his howl! No wonder that Mrs Pepys not only made hot the tongs, but incoherently insisted, at times, on the necessity of a separate maintenance.

The great charm of the book is its utter freedom from disguise. The zeal of antiquaries, and the patriotic exertions of the literary clubs, have, of late years, put the public in possession of various diaries, which are most valuable, as throwing light upon the political incidents and social manners of the times in which the authors lived. Thus we have the journals of honest John Nicholl, writer to the signet in Edinburgh, who saw the great Marquis of Montrose go down from his prison to the scaffold; of the shrewd and cautious Fountainhall; of the high-minded and accomplished Evelyn, and many others--the manuscripts of which had lain for years undisturbed on the shelf or in the charter-chest. But it cannot be said of any one of those diaries, that it was kept solely for the use and reference of the writer. Some of them may not have been intended for publication; and it is very likely that the thoughts of posthumous renown never crossed the mind of the chronicler, as he set down his daily jotting and observation. Nevertheless those were family documents, such as a father, if he had no wider aim, might have bequeathed for the information of his children. Diaries of more modern date have, we suspect, been kept principally with a view to publication; or, at least, the writers of them seem never to have been altogether devoid of a kind of consciousness that their lucubrations might one day see the light. Owing to that feeling, the veil of domestic privacy is seldom withdrawn, and seldomer still are we treated to a faithful record of the deeds and thoughts of the diarist. But Pepys framed his journal with no such intention. He durst not, for dear life, have submitted a single page of it to the inspection of the wife of his bosom--had he been as fruitful as Jacob, no son of his would have been intrusted with the key which could unlock the mysterious cipher in which the most private passages of his life were written. No clerk was allowed to continue it in a clear, legible hand, when failing eyesight rendered the task irksome or impossible to himself. There is something of pathos in his last entry, when the doors of the daily confessional were just closing for ever. "And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear; and therefore resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long hand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be anything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add now and then a note in short-hand, with my own hand." Perhaps it is as well that the marginal continuation so hinted at was withheld; for, in the process of decanting, the wine would have lost its flavour, and must have suffered terribly in contrast with the raciness of the earlier cooper.

The position in life which Pepys occupied renders his Diary doubly interesting. Had he been only a hanger-on of the court, we might have heard more minute and personal scandal, conveyed through the medium of Bab May, or Chiffinch, or other unscrupulous satellites of a very profligate monarch. Had he been a mere private citizen or merchant, his knowledge of or interest in public events would probably have been so small, as to assist us but little in unravelling the intricate history of the time. But, standing as he did between two classes of society, then separated by a far stronger line of demarcation than now,--a citizen of London by birth and connexion, by occupation a government official, and through instinct an intense admirer of the great--he had access to more sources of information, and could interpret general opinion better, than the professional courtier or tradesman. Shrewd, sharp, and not very scrupulous, he readily seized all opportunities of making his way in the world; and though privately a censor of the more open vices of the great, he never was so truly happy as when admitted by accident to their society. Lord Braybrooke, we think, is too partial in his estimate of Pepys' character. If we are to judge of him by his own confessions, he was largely imbued with that spirit of meanness, arrogance, and vanity, which dramatic writers have always seized on as illustrative of the parvenu, but which is never apparent in the conversation, or discernible in the dealings, of a true and perfect gentleman.

Sam does not appear to have troubled himself much about his pedigree until he became a person of considerable note and substance. Indeed, the circumstances of his immediate extraction were not such as to have found much favour in the eyes of the professors of Herald's College. His father was a respectable tailor, and, in his own earlier years, Pepys had carried doublets to customers, if not actually handled the goose. The impressions that he received in his boyhood seem to have been indelible through life; prosperity could not make him insensible to the flavour of cucumber. The sight of a new garment invariably kindled in his mind the aspirations of his primitive calling, and very proud, indeed, was he when brother Tom brought him his "jackanapes coat with silver buttons." In his way he was quite a Sir Piercie Shafton, and never formed a complete opinion of any man without due consideration of his clothes. At the outset of his diary we find him married, and in rather indifferent circumstances. He was then a clerk in some public office connected with the Exchequer, at a small salary. But he was diligent in his vocation, and prudent in his habits; so that he and his wife, and servant Jane, fared not much worse, or perhaps rather better, than Andrew Marvell, for we find them living in a garret, and dining on New Year's day on the remains of a turkey, in the dressing whereof Mrs Pepys unfortunately burned her hand. A few days afterwards, they mended their cheer at the house of "cosen Thomas Pepys" the turner, where the dinner "was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable mutton, which was not handsome." But the advent of better banquets was near. In the preceding autumn, the old protector, Oliver Cromwell, had been carried to the grave, and the reins of government, sorely frayed and worn, were given to the weak hands of Richard. In truth, there was hardly any government at all. The military chiefs did not own the second Cromwell as their master; Lambert was attempting to get up a party in his own favour; and Monk, in command of the northern army, was suspected of a similar design. The bulk of the nation, in terror of anarchy, and heartily sick of the consequences of revolution, which, as usual, had terminated in arbitrary rule, longed for the restoration of their legitimate sovereign, as the only means of arresting further calamity; and several of the influential officers, not compromised by regicide, were secretly of the same opinion. Amongst these latter was Sir Edward Montagu, admiral of the fleet, afterwards created Earl of Sandwich, whose mother was a Pepys, and with whom, accordingly, Samuel was proud to reckon kin. Sir Edward had been already very kind to his young relative, and now laid the foundation of his fortunes by employing him as his secretary, during the expedition which ended with the return of Charles II. to his hereditary dominions. Pepys, in his boyish days, had been somewhat tainted with the Roundhead doctrines, but he was now as roaring a royalist as ever danced round a bonfire; and the slight accession of profit which accrued to him for his share in the Restoration, gave him an unbounded appetite for future accumulations. He made himself useful to Montagu, who presently received his earldom, and through his interest Pepys was installed in office as clerk of the Acts of the Navy.

Other snug jobs followed, and Pepys began to thrive apace. It is possible that, if judged by the standard of morality recognised in his time, our friend may have been deemed, on the whole, a tolerably conscientious officer; but, according to our more strict ideas, he hardly could have piqued himself, like a modern statesman, on the superior purity of his palms. If not grossly avaricious, he was decidedly fond of money; he cast up his accounts with great punctuality, and seems to have thought that each additional hundred pounds came into his possession through a special interposition of Providence. Now, although we know well that there is a blessing upon honest industry, it would appear that a good deal of Pepys' money flowed in through crooked channels. Bribes and acknowledgments he received without much compunction or hesitation, only taking care that little evidence should be left of the transaction. The following extract shows that his conscience was by no means of stiff or inflexible material: "I met Captain Grove, who did give me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be in it, knowing as I found it to be, the proceeds of the place I have got him to be--the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not open it till I came home--not looking into it until all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was a piece in gold, and £4 in silver." Pepys made altogether a good thing out of the Tangier settlement, for which he was afterwards secretary, as, besides such small pickings as the above, we read of magnificent silver flagons--"the noblest that ever I saw all the days of my life"--presented to him, in grateful acknowledgment of services to come, by Gauden, victualler of the navy. Samuel had twinges of conscience, but the sight of the plate was too much for him: "Whether I shall keep them or no," saith he, striving to cast dust in his own eyes, "I cannot tell; for it is to oblige me to him in the business of the Tangier victualling, wherein I doubt I shall not; but glad I am to see that I shall be sure to get something on one side or other, have it which will; so with a merry heart I looked upon them, and locked them up." The flagons, however, did the business. Gauden was preferred; and, from an entry in the Diary, made about a year afterwards, we must conclude that his profits were enormous: "All the afternoon to my accounts; and then find myself, to my great joy, a great deal worth--above £4000--for which the Lord be praised! and is principally occasioned by my getting £500 of Cocke for my profit in his bargains of prize goods, and from Mr Gauden's making me a present of £500 more, when I paid him £800 for Tangier. Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner. I have raised my estate from £1300, in this year, to £4400." A pretty accretion: but made, we fear, at the expense of the nation, by means which hardly would have stood the scrutiny of a court of justice. It may be quite true that every man in office, from the highest to the lowest, from the chancellor to the doorkeeper, was then doing the like; still we cannot give Pepys the benefit of a perfect indemnity on the score of the general practice. Even when he tells us elsewhere, with evident satisfaction--"This night I received, by Will, £105, the first-fruits of my endeavours in the late contract for victualling of Tangier, for which God be praised! for I can, with a safe conscience, say that I have therein saved the king £5000 per annum, and yet got myself a hope of £300 per annum, without the least wrong to the king"--it is impossible to reconcile his conduct with the strict rules of morality, or of duty: nor, perhaps, need we do so, seeing that Pepys makes no pretence of being altogether immaculate. He began by taking small fees in a surreptitious way, and ended by pocketing the largest without a single twinge. It is the progress from remuneration to guerdon, as philosophically explained by Costard--"Guerdon!--O sweet guerdon! better than remuneration; eleven-pence farthing better. Most sweet guerdon!--I will do it, sir, in print;--guerdon--remuneration!"

The common proverb tells us that money easily got is lightly expended. In one sense Pepys formed no exception to the common rule; for, notwithstanding divers good resolutions, he led rather a dissipated life for a year or two after the Restoration, and was in the constant habit of drinking more wine than altogether agreed with his constitution. This fault he strove to amend by registering sundry vows, which, however, were often broken; and he was finally weaned from the bottle by the pangs of disordered digestion. His expenses kept pace with his income. The "jackanapes coat, with silver buttons," was succeeded by a "fine one of flowered tabby vest, and coloured camelot tunique, made stiff with gold lace at the bands," in which Pepys probably expected to do great execution in the Park, or, at any rate, to astonish Mrs Knipp; but it proved to be so extravagantly fine, that his friends thought it necessary to interfere. "Povy told me of my gold-laced sleeve in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also, so as to resolve never to appear in court with them, but presently to have them taken off, as it is fit I should, and so called at my tailor's for that purpose." Povy's hint might have its origin in envy; but, on the whole, it was wise and judicious. Also Mrs Pepys was indulged with a fair allowance of lace, taffeta, and such trinkets as females affect; and both of them sat for their portraits to Hales, having previously been refused by Lely. Furniture and plate of the most expensive description were ordered; and finally, to his intense delight, Samuel achieved the great object of his own ambition, and set up a carriage of his own. The account of his first public appearance in this vehicle is too characteristic to be lost:--"At noon home to dinner, and there found my wife extraordinary fine, with her flowered gown that she made two years ago, now laced exceeding pretty, and indeed was fine all over; and mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses' manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all the day. But we set out, out of humour--I, because Betty, whom I expected, was not come to go with us; and my wife, that I would sit on the same seat with her, which she likes not, being so fine; and she then expected to meet Sheres, which we did in the Pell Mell, and, against my will, I was forced to take him into the coach, but was sullen all day almost, and little complaisant; the day being unpleasing, though the Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and now and then a little dribbling of rain; and, what made it worse, there were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's; and so we had little pleasure." The tale of Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia, does not convey a clearer moral. No peacock was prouder than Samuel Pepys, as he stepped that day, in all the luxury of gorgeous apparel, into his coach, and drove through the streets of London, under the distinct impression that, for the moment, he was the most remarked and remarkable man in the whole of his Majesty's dominions. Yet there were drops of bitterness in the cup. Betty Turner was not there to enjoy the triumph, and Sheres, who must needs join the party, was supposed by Samuel to stand rather high in the good graces of Mrs Pepys, insomuch that he mourned not a whit when he heard that the gallant captain was about to set off to Tangier. Add to this, the ungenial weather, and the insolent display of hackney coaches, obscuring somewhat the lustre of his new turn-out, and detracting from the glory of red ribbons, gilt standards, and green reins, and we need hardly wonder if, even in the hour of triumph, Pepys felt that he was mortal. It is to be hoped that, when he returned home, he vented his ill-humour neither upon his wife nor his monkey, both of whom, on other occasions, were made to suffer when anything had gone wrong.

Three great national events, which have not yet lost their interest, are recorded in this Diary. These are the plague, the great fire of London, and the successful enterprise of De Ruyter and the Dutch fleet at Chatham. The account of the plague will be read with much interest, especially at the present time, when another terrible epidemic has been raging through the streets and lanes of the metropolis. The progress of the plague through Europe seems, in many respects, to have resembled that of the cholera. It did not burst out suddenly in one locality, but appears to have pervaded the Continent with a gradual and irresistible march, sometimes lingering in its advance, and ever and anon breaking out with redoubled virulence. Several years before it reached England, the pestilence raged in Naples, and is said to have carried off in six months nearly 400,000 victims. Its introduction was traced to a transport ship, with soldiers on board, coming from Sardinia. It reached Amsterdam and Hamburg more than a year before it broke out in London, and its malignity may be judged of by the following entry in Pepys' Diary: "We were told to-day of a sloop, of three or four hundred tons, where all the men were dead of the plague, and the sloop cast ashore at Gottenburg." In England there had been great apprehension of its coming, long before the visitation; and two exceedingly unhealthy seasons, occurring in succession, had probably enfeebled the constitutions of many, and rendered them more liable to the contagion. Pepys' note of 15th January 1662 is as follows: "This morning Mr Berkenshaw came again, and after he had examined me, and taught me something in my work, he and I went to breakfast in my chamber upon a collar of brawn; and after we had eaten, asked me whether we had not committed a fault in eating to-day; telling me that it is a fast-day, ordered by the parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather: that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it wore the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague, (as all men think,) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day." The plague appeared in London in December 1664, and reached its deadliest point in August and September of the ensuing year. The number of those who died from it has been differently estimated from sixty-eight to one hundred thousand. London is now, according to the best authorities, about four times as populous as it was then, so that we may easily judge of the consternation into which its inhabitants must have been thrown when the pestilence was at its worst. During the month of September 1849, the greatest number of deaths occurring from cholera in the metropolis, in one day, was about four hundred and fifty--a proportion very small when compared with the ravages of the plague at its most destructive season, and yet large enough to justify great apprehension, and to demand humiliation and prayer for national apathy and transgression. Yet, great as the alarm was, when death was waving his wings over the affrighted city, it does not seem to have been so excessive as we might well imagine. The truth is, that, not withstanding intramural interment, bad sewerage, and infected air, the sanatory condition of London, since it was rebuilt after the great fire, has improved in a most remarkable degree. Prior to that event, the metropolis had at various times suffered most severely from epidemics. In 1204, when the population must have been very small, it is recorded that two hundred persons were buried daily in the Charterhouse-yard. The mortality in 1367 has been described as terrific. In 1407, thirty thousand persons perished of a dreadful pestilence. There was another in 1478, which not only visited London with much severity, but is said to have destroyed, throughout England, more people than fell in the wars which had raged with little intermission for the fifteen preceding years. In 1485, that mysterious complaint called the sweating sickness was very fatal in London. Fifteen years later, in 1500, the plague there was so dreadful that Henry VII. and his court were forced to remove to Calais. The sweating sickness, described as mortal in three hours, again scourged England in 1517, and its ravages were so great, that, according to Stowe, half of the inhabitants of most of the larger towns died, and Oxford was almost depopulated. In 1603-4, upwards of thirty thousand persons died of the plague in London alone; and in 1625 there was another great mortality. Since the great plague of London in 1664-5, down to our time, no very fatal epidemic--at least none at all comparable to those earlier pestilences--seems to have occurred in the metropolis, and it is therefore natural that any extraordinary visitation should, from its increased rarity, occasion a much higher degree of alarm. Of all the accounts extant of the plague, that of Pepys appears to be the most truthful and the least exaggerated. He remained in London at his post until the month of August, when he removed to Greenwich; and although a timorous man, and exceedingly shy of exposing himself to unnecessary risks, he seems on this occasion to have behaved with considerable fortitude. One anecdote we cannot omit, for it tells in a few words a deep and tearful tragedy, and is moreover honourable to Pepys. It occurred when the plague was at its height. "My Lord Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I, up to the vestry, at the desire of the justices of the peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of people of the town, who will, because they are forbid, come in crowds along with the dead corpses to see them buried; but we agreed on some orders for the prevention thereof. Among other stories, one was very passionate, methought, of a complaint brought against a man in the town, for taking a child from London from an infected house. Alderman Hooker told us it was the child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a saddler, who had buried all the rest of his children of the plague; and himself and wife, now being shut up in despair of escaping, did desire only to save the life of this little child, and so prevailed to have it removed, stark-naked, into the arms of a friend, who brought it, having put it into fresh clothes, to Greenwich; when, upon hearing the story, we did agree it should be permitted to be received, and kept in the town." It is now generally admitted that the Account of the Plague, written by Defoe, cannot be accepted as a genuine narrative, but must be classed with the other fictions of that remarkable man, whose singular power of giving a strong impression of reality to every one of his compositions must always challenge the admiration of the reader. He has not, perhaps, aggravated the horrors of the pestilence, for that were impossible; but he has concentrated them in one heap, so as to produce a more awful picture than probably met the eye of any single citizen of London even at that disastrous period. Pepys, in his account of different visits which he was forced to make to the City when the epidemic was at its height, has portrayed the outward desolation, and the inward anxiety and apprehension, which prevailed, in more sober, yet very striking colours: "_28th August 1665._--To Mr Colville the goldsmith's, having not been for some days in the streets; but now how few people I see, and those looking like people that had taken leave of the world. To the Exchange, and there was not fifty people upon it, and but few more like to be, as they told me. I think to take adieu to-day of the London streets.... _30th._--Abroad, and met with Hadley, our clerk, who, upon my asking how the plague goes, told me it increases much, and much in our parish; for, says he, there died nine this week, though I have returned but six; which is a very ill practice, and makes me think it is so in other places, and therefore the plague much greater than people take it to be. I went forth, and walked towards Moorefields, to see--God forgive my presumption!--whether I could see any dead corpse going to the grave, but, as God would have it, did not. But, Lord! how everybody's looks and discourse in the street is of death, and nothing else! and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place deserted and forsaken.... _6th Sept._--To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw fires burning in the street, (as it is through the whole city,) by the lord mayor's order. Hence by water to the Duke of Albemarle's: all the way fires on each side of the Thames, and strange to see, in broad daylight, two or three burials upon the Bankside, one at the very heels of another: doubtless, all of the plague, and yet at least forty or fifty people going along with every one of them.... _20th._--Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the river; and grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets!" By this time the plague had become so general, that all attempt to shut up the infected houses was abandoned; so that, says Pepys, "to be sure, we do converse and meet with people that have the plague upon them." A little later, when the pestilence was abating, we find this entry: "I walked to the town; but, Lord! how empty the streets are, and melancholy! so many poor, sick people in the streets, full of sores, and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that; and they tell me that, in Westminster, there is never a physician, and but one apothecary, left--all being dead; but that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week: God send it!" Still, without the circle of the plague, (for it does not seem to have penetrated beyond the immediate environs of London,) men ate, drank, and made merry, as though no vial of divine wrath had been poured out amongst them. Even Pepys, after returning from the melancholy spectacles of this day, seems to have drowned his care in more than usual jollity; and his records go far to confirm the truthfulness of Boccaccio, in the account which he has given of the levity of the Florentines during the prevalence of a like contagion.

The fire of London, which occurred about the middle of the succeeding year, not only dispelled the more poignant memories of the plague, but is thought to have done good service in eradicating its remains, which still lingered in some parts of the city, and may perhaps have been the means of preventing a second outbreak of this pestilence. On the second night the conflagration was awful: Pepys watched it from the river,--"So near the fire as we could for the smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire--three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow, and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more; and in corners, and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire, from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin." For five days the conflagration raged, nor was its force spent until the greater part of London was laid in ashes. The terror of the calamity was heightened by rumours industriously propagated, though their origin never could be traced. The fire was said to be the result of a deep-laid Popish plot; and that report, though in all probability utterly without foundation, was at a future day the cause of shameful persecution and bloodshed. A great alarm was raised that the Dutch, with whom England was then at war, and whose fleet was actually in the Channel, had landed; so that a kind of sullen despair and apathy seized upon the minds of many. It was long before London could recover from the blow; but at length a new city, far more substantial and splendid than the first, arose from the scattered ruins.

England was at that time contesting the supremacy of the seas with the States of opulent and enterprising Holland. Amsterdam was then considered the most wealthy capital of Europe. The Dutch navy was powerful, well equipped, and well manned, and the admirals, De Ruyter and De Witt, were esteemed second to none living for seamanship and ability. The struggle was not a new one. In 1652, after a desperate engagement with Blake, Van Tromp, the renowned commander of Holland, had sailed in triumph through the Channel, with a broom at his masthead, to denote that he had swept the English from the seas. That premature boast was afterwards terribly avenged. Three times, in three successive months, did these foes, worthy of each other, encounter on the open seas, and yet victory declared for neither. Four other battles were fought, which England has added to her proud list of naval triumphs; but most assuredly the decisive palm was not won until, on the 31st July 1653, gallant Van Tromp fell in the heat of action. A braver man never trod the quarterdeck, and Holland may well be proud of such a hero. For a time the States succumbed to the stern genius of Cromwell; nor did the struggle commence anew until after the Restoration of Charles. The first engagement was glorious for England. The Duke of York, afterwards James II., commanded in person: he encountered the Dutch fleet off Harwich, and defeated it after a stubborn engagement. Eighteen of their finest vessels were taken, and the ship of the admiral (Opdam) blown into the air. Mr Macaulay, in his late published _History of England_, has not deigned even to notice this engagement--a remarkable omission, the reason of which it is foreign to our purpose to inquire. This much we may be allowed to say, that no historian who intends to form an accurate estimate of the character of James II., or to compile a complete register of his deeds, can justly accomplish his task without giving that unfortunate monarch due credit for his conduct and intrepidity, in one of the most important and successful naval actions which stands recorded in our annals. The same year (1665) is memorable for another victory, when the Earl of Sandwich captured fourteen of the enemy's ships. Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle were less successful in the engagement which commenced on 1st June 1666. The fight lasted four days, with no decisive result, but considerable loss on either side. The next battle, fought at the mouth of the Thames, ended in favour of England; the Dutch lost four-and-twenty men-of-war, and four of their admirals, and four thousand officers and seamen, fell. When we take into consideration the state of the navy during the earlier part of the reign of Charles, it is absolutely astonishing that England was able not only to cope with the Dutch on equal terms, but ultimately to subdue them. We learn from Pepys the particulars of a fact long generally known, that in no department of the state were there greater corruptions, abuses, and frauds practised than in that of the Admiralty. The pay both of officers and men was constantly in arrear, insomuch that some of them were reduced to absolute starvation whilst considerable sums were due to them. Stores were embezzled and plundered almost without inquiry. The fleets were often wretchedly commanded, for there was not then, as there is now, any restriction between the services; and new-made captains from the circle of the court, who never in their lives had been at sea, were frequently put over the heads of veterans who from boyhood had dwelt upon the ocean. There was scarcely any discipline in the navy; impressment was harshly and illegally practised, and after each engagement the sailors deserted by hundreds. So bad did matters at length become, that, towards the close of the year 1666, the fleet was in actual mutiny, and the naval arm of England paralysed. The subsequent reform of the navy is mainly attributable to the firmness and determination of the Duke of York, who, being a far better man of business than his indolent and selfish brother, applied himself resolutely to the task. The most important suggestions and rules for remedying grievances, and securing future efficiency, were made and drawn out by Pepys, who showed himself, in this respect, a most able officer of the crown, and who, in consequence, acquired an ascendency in navy affairs, which lie never lost until the Revolution deprived him of a master who thoroughly understood his value. But, before any steps were taken towards this most necessary reform, her daring adversaries aimed at the capital of England a blow which narrowly failed of success.

The seamen, as we have said, being in a state of mutiny arising from sheer wanton mismanagement, it became apparent that no active naval operations could be undertaken in the course of the following year. All this was well known to the Dutch, who determined to avail themselves of the opportunity. During the spring of 1667, the whole British coast, as far north as the firth of Forth, was molested by the Dutch cruisers, insomuch that great inconvenience was felt in London from the total stoppage of the coal trade. In the month of June, De Ruyter, being by that time fully prepared and equipped, sailed boldly into the Thames, without encountering a vestige of opposition. It is not too much to say, that the plague and fire combined, had not struck the citizens of London with so much alarm as did this hostile demonstration. All the former naval triumphs of England seemed to have gone for nothing, for here was invasion brought to the very doors of the capital. The supremacy of the seas was not now in dispute: it was the occupancy of the great British river, the highway of the national commerce. Strange were the thoughts, that haunted the minds of men whilst that mighty armament was hovering on our shores: it seemed a new Armada, with no gallant Drake to oppose it. "We had good company at our table," wrote Pepys, upon the 3d of June; "among others, my good Mr Evelyn, with whom, after dinner, I stepped aside, and talked upon the present posture of our affairs, which is, that the Dutch are known to be abroad with eighty sail of ships of war, and twenty fireships; and the French come into the Channel, with twenty sail of men-of-war, and five fireships, while we have not a ship at sea to do them any hurt with; but are calling in all we can, while our ambassadors are treating at Breda; and the Dutch look upon them as come to beg peace, and use them accordingly: and all this through the negligence of our prince, who had power, if he would, to master all these with the money and men that he hath had the command of, and may now have if he would mind his business. But, for aught we see, the kingdom is likely to be lost, as well as the reputation of it, for ever; notwithstanding so much reputation got and preserved by a rebel that went before him." All this was true. Had _he_ been alive--he whose senseless clay had six years before been exhumed and dishonoured at Tyburn--England would not then have been submitting to so unexampled a degradation. Traitor and renegade as he was, Cromwell loved his country well. Self-ambition might be his first motive, but he was keenly alive to the glory of England, and had made her name a word of fear and terror among the nations. He was no vulgar demagogue, like those of our dogmatic time. Unlawfully as he had usurped the functions of a sovereign, Britain suffered nothing in foreign estimation while her interests were committed to his charge. What wonder if, at such a crisis, Pepys and others could not help reverting to the memory of the strong man whose bones were lying beneath the public gallows, whilst the restored king was squandering among his harlots that treasure which, if rightfully applied, might have swept the enemies of England from the seas?

On the 8th of June, the Dutch fleet appeared off Harwich. Two days afterwards they ascended the river, took Sheerness, and, breaking an enormous chain which had been drawn across the Medway for defence, penetrated as far as Upnor Castle, where, in spite of all resistance, they made prize of several vessels, and burned three men-of-war. By some shameful mismanagement the English ships had been left too far down the river, notwithstanding orders from the Admiralty to have them removed: they were, besides, only half manned; and on this occasion the English sailors did not exhibit their wonted readiness to fight. It was even reported to Pepys, by a gentleman who was present, "that he himself did hear many Englishmen, on board the Dutch ships, speaking to one another in English; and that they did cry and say, We did heretofore fight for tickets, now we fight for dollars! and did ask how such and such a one did, and would commend themselves to them--which is a sad consideration." Reinforcements arrived from Portsmouth; but instead of working, they "do come to the office this morning to demand the payment of their tickets; for otherwise they would, they said, do no more work; and are, as I understand from everybody who has to do with them, the most debauched, damning, swearing rogues that ever were in the navy--just like their profane commander." It seemed, at one time, more than probable that the Dutch would attack the city: had they made the attempt, it is not likely, so great was the panic, that they would have been encountered by effectual opposition; but De Ruyter was apprehensive of pushing his advantage too far, and contented himself with destroying such shipping as he found in the river.

Meanwhile, great was the explosion of public wrath, both against the Court and the Admiralty officials. Crowds of people congregated in Westminster, loudly clamouring for a parliament. The windows of the Lord Chancellor's house were broken, and a gibbet erected before his gate. "People do cry out in the streets of their being bought and sold; and both they, and everybody that do come to me, do tell me that people make nothing of talking treason in the streets openly; as, that they are bought and sold, and governed by Papists, and that we are betrayed by people about the king, and shall be delivered up to the French, and I know not what." Poor Pepys expected nothing else than an immediate attack upon his office, in which, by some miraculous circumstance, there happened to be at the moment a considerable sum of public money. His situation rendered him peculiarly obnoxious to abuse; and at one time it was currently reported that he was summarily ordered to the Tower. These things cost him no little anxiety; but what distracted him most was, the agonising thought that the whole of his private savings and fortune, which he had by him in specie, might, in a single moment, be swept away and dissipated for ever. If the seamen who were mutinous for pay should chance to hear of the funds in hand, and take it into their heads to storm the office, there was little probability of them drawing nice distinctions between public and private property: and, in that case, money, flagons, and all would find their way to Wapping. Also, there might be a chance of a reckoning in any event; "for," said he, "the truth is, I do fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone, that I do this night resolve to study with my father and wife what to do with the little I have in money by me, for I give up all the rest that I have in the king's hands, for Tangier, for lost. So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into, and whether any violence on this office, or perhaps some severity on our persons, as being reckoned by the silly people, or perhaps may, by policy of state, be thought fit to be condemned by the king and Duke of York, and so put to trouble; though, God knows! I have in my own person done my full duty, I am sure." So, in the very midst of the confusion, Samuel, like a wise man, set about regulating his own affairs. He was lucky enough to get £400 paid him, to account of his salary, and he despatched his father and wife to Cambridgeshire, with £1300 in gold in their night-bag. Next day Mr Gibson, one of his clerks, followed them with another 1000 pieces, "under colour of an express to Sir Jeremy Smith." The two grand silver flagons went to Kate Joyce's, where it is to be presumed they would be tolerably safe. Pepys, moreover, provided himself a girdle, "by which, with some trouble, I do carry about me £300 of gold about my body, that I may not be without something in case I should be surprised; for I think, in any nation but ours, people that appear--for we are not indeed so--so faulty as we would have their throats cut." Still he had £200 in silver by him, which was not convertible into gold, there having been, as usual on such occasions, a sharp run upon the more portable metal. His ideas as to secreting this sum would not have displeased Vespasian, but he seems to have been deterred from that experiment by the obvious difficulty of recovering the silver at the moment of need. These dispositions made, Pepys obviously felt himself more comfortable, and manfully resolved to abide the chances of assault, imprisonment, or impeachment.

None of those calamities befell him. After the navy of Holland had disappeared from the waters of the Thames, an inquiry, of rather a strict and rigorous nature, as to the causes of the late disaster, was instituted; but, where the blame was so widely spread, and retort so easy, it was difficult to fix upon any particular victim as a propitiation for the official sins; and Pepys, who really understood his business, made a gallant and successful defence, not only for himself, but for his associates. We need not, however, enter into that matter, more especially as we hope that the reader feels sufficient interest in Pepys and his fortunes, to be curious to know what became of his money; nor is the history of its disposal and recovery the least amusing portion of this narrative.

Mr Peter Pett, commissioner of the navy, who was principally blamable for the loss of the ships at Chatham, had been actually sent to the Tower; and our friend Pepys, being summoned to attend the council, had an awful misgiving that the same fate was in store for him. He escaped, however; "but my fear was such, at my going in, of the success of the day, that I did think fit to give J. Hater, whom I took with me to wait the event, my closet key, and directions where to find £500 and more in silver and gold, and my tallies, to remove in case of any misfortune to me. Home, and after being there a little, my wife came, and two of her fellow-travellers with her, with whom we drank--a couple of merchant-like men, I think, but have friends in our country. They being gone, my wife did give me so bad an account of her and my father's method, in burying of our gold, that made me mad; and she herself is not pleased with it--she believing that my sister knows of it. My father and she did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden, where, for aught they knew, many eyes might see them, which put me into trouble, and I presently cast about how to have it back again, to secure it here, the times being a little better now."

The autumn was well advanced before Pepys could obtain leave to go down into the country, whither at length he proceeded, not to shoot partridges or pheasants, but to disinter his buried treasure. We doubt whether ever resurrectionist felt himself in such a quandary.

"My father and I with a dark-lantern, being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; that I began hastily to sweat, and be angry that they could not agree better upon the place, and at last to fear that it was gone: but by-and-by, poking with a spit, we found it, and then began with a spudd to lift up the ground. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, if anybody by accident were near hand, and within sight of a neighbour's window: only my father says that he saw them all gone to church before he began the work, when he laid the money. But I was out of my wits almost, and the more for that, upon my lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about the ground among the grass and loose earth; and taking up the iron headpieces wherever they were put, I perceived the earth was got among the gold, and wet, so that the bags were all rotten, and all the notes, that I could not tell what in the world to say to it, not knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had been lost by Gibson in his coming down; which, all put together, did make me mad; and at last I was fixed to take up the headpieces, dirt and all, and as many of the scattered pieces as I could with the dirt discern by candle-light, and carry them into my brother's chamber, and there lock them up till I had eat a little supper; and then, all people going to bed, W. Hewer and I did all alone, with several pails of water and besoms, at last wash the dirt off the pieces, and parted the pieces and the dirt, and then began to tell them by a note which I had of the value of the whole, in my pocket; and do find that there was short above a hundred pieces; which did make me mad; and considering that the neighbour's house was so near that we could not possibly speak one to another in the garden at that place where the gold lay--especially my father being deaf--but they must know what we had been doing, I feared that they might in the night come and gather some pieces and prevent us the next morning; so W. Hewer and I out again about midnight, for it was now grown so late, and there by candle-light did make shift to gather forty-five pieces more. And so in, and to cleanse them; and by this time it was past two in the morning; and so to bed, with my mind pretty quiet to think that I have recovered so many, I lay in the trundle-bed, the girl being gone to bed to my wife, and there lay in some disquiet all night, telling of the clock till it was daylight."

Then ensued a scene of washing for gold, the study of which may be useful to any intending emigrant to California.

"And then W. Hewer and I, with pails and a sieve, did lock ourselves into the garden, and there gather all the earth about the place into pails, and then sift those pails in one of the summer-houses, just as they do for diamonds in other parts of the world; and there, to our great content, did by nine o'clock make the last night's forty-five up seventy-nine: so that we are come to about twenty or thirty of what the true number should be; and perhaps within less; and of them I may reasonably think that Mr Gibson might lose some: so that I am pretty well satisfied that my loss is not great, and do bless God that all is so well. So do leave my father to make a second examination of the dirt; and my mind at rest on it, being but an accident: and so gives me some kind of content to remember how painful it is sometimes to keep money, as well as to get it, and how doubtful I was to keep it all night, and how to secure it in London: so got all my gold put up in bags."

And then did Samuel Pepys return to London rejoicing, not one whit the worse for all his care and anxiety, yet still incubating on his treasure, which he had prudently stowed away beneath him, and, says he, "my work every quarter of an hour was to look to see whether all was well; and I did ride in great fear all the day."

We have already hinted that Pepys was by no means a Hector in valour. The sight of a suspicious bumpkin armed with a cudgel, on the road, always gave him qualms of apprehension; and in the night-season his dreams were commonly of robbery and murder. For many nights after the great fire, he started from sleep under the conviction that his premises were in a bright flame: the creaking of a door after midnight threw him into a cold perspiration; and a reported noise on the leads nearly drove him past his judgment. He thus reports his sensations on the occurrence of the latter phenomenon:--

"Knowing that I have a great sum of money in the house, this puts me into a most mighty affright, that for more than two hours, I could not almost tell what to do or say, but feared this night, and remembered that this morning I saw a woman and two men stand suspiciously in the entry, in the dark; I calling to them, they made me only this answer, the woman saying that the men only come to see her; but who she was, I cannot tell. The truth is, my house is mighty dangerous, having so many ways to be come to; and at my windows, over the stairs, to see who goes up and down; but if I escape to-night, I will remedy it. God preserve us this night safe! So, at almost two o'clock I home to my house, and, in great fear, to bed, thinking every running of a mouse really a thief; and so to sleep, very brokenly, all night long, and found all safe in the morning."

All of us have, doubtless, on occasion, been wakened from slumber by a hollow bellowing, as if an ox had, somehow or other, fallen half way down the chimney. Once, in a remote country district, we were roused from our dreams by a hideous flapping of wings in the same locality, and certainly did, for a moment, conjecture that the foul fiend was flying away with our portmanteau. The first of these untimeous sounds usually proceeds from a gentleman of Ethiopian complexion, who is perched somewhere among the chimney-pots; the latter we discovered to arise from the involuntary struggles of a goose, who had been cruelly compelled to assist in the dislodgement of the soot. Some degree of tremor on such occasions is admissible without reproach, but surely old Trapbois himself could hardly have behaved worse than Pepys upon the following alarm.

"Waked about seven o'clock this morning, with a noise I supposed I heard near our chamber, of knocking, which by-and-by increased; and I, now awake, could distinguish it better. I then waked my wife, and both of us wondered at it, and lay so a great while, while that increased, and at last heard it plainer, knocking, as it were breaking down a window for people to get out; and then removing of stools and chairs; and plainly, by-and-by, going up and down our stairs. We lay, both of us, afraid; yet I would have rose, but my wife would not let me. Besides, I could not do it without making noise; and we did both conclude that thieves were in the house, but wondered what our people did, whom we thought either killed, or afraid as we were. Thus we lay till the clock struck eight, and high day. At last, I removed my gown and slippers safely to the other side of the bed, over my wife; and there safely rose, and put on my gown and breeches, and then, with a firebrand in my hand, safely opened the door, and saw nor heard anything. Then, with fear, I confess, went to the maid's chamber door, and all quiet and safe. Called Jane up, and went down safely, and opened my chamber door, where all well. Then more freely about, and to the kitchen, where the cookmaid up, and all safe. So up again, and when Jane came, and we demanded whether she heard no noise, she said "Yes, but was afraid," but rose with the other maid and found nothing; but heard a noise in the great stack of chimneys that goes from Sir J. Minnes's through our house; and so we sent, and their chimneys have been swept this morning, and the noise was that, and nothing else. _It is one of the most extraordinary accidents in my life_, and gives ground to think of Don Quixote's adventures, how people may be surprised; and the more from an accident last night, that our young gibb-cat did leap down our stairs, from top to bottom, at two leaps, and frighted us, that we could not tell whether it was the cat or a spirit, and do sometimes think this morning that the house might be haunted."

Had our space admitted of it, we should have been glad to copy a few of the anecdotes narrated by Pepys regarding the court of King Charles. These are not always to be depended upon as correct, for Pepys usually received them at second hand, and put them down immediately without further inquiry. We all know, from experience, what exaggeration prevails in the promulgation of gossip, and how difficult it is at any time to ascertain the real merits of a story. The raw material of a scandalous anecdote passes first into the hands of a skilful manufacturer, who knows how to give it due colour and fit proportion; and when, after undergoing this process, it is presented to the public, it would puzzle any of the parties concerned to reconcile it with the actual facts. In a court like that of Charles, there is always mixed up with the profligacy a considerable deal of wit. Such men as Sedley, Rochester, Etherege, and Killigrew, were privileged characters, and never scrupled to lay on the varnish, if by so doing they could heighten the effect. Neither the station, nor the manners, nor, indeed, the tastes of Pepys, qualified him to mix with such society, and therefore he can only retail to us the articles which came adulterated to his hand. It is rash in any historian to trust implicitly to memoirs. They may, indeed, give an accurate general picture, but they cannot be depended on for particulars: for example, we entertain a strong suspicion that one-half at least of the personal anecdotes related by Count Anthony Hamilton are, if not absolutely false, at least most grossly exaggerated. We shall allude merely to one notable instance of this kind of misrepresentation which occurs in Pepys. Frances, more commonly known as La Belle Stewart, a lady of the noble house of Blantyre, was beloved by Charles II., with probably as much infusion of the purer passion as could be felt by so sated a voluptuary. So strong was his admiration, that it was currently believed that the fair Stewart, failing Katherine, had an excellent chance of being elevated to the throne; and it is quite well known that her virtue was as spotless as her beauty was unrivalled. In spite of the opposition of the king, she married Charles, Duke of Lennox and Richmond; and her resolute and spirited conduct on that occasion, under very trying circumstances, was much and deservedly extolled. And yet we find in the earlier pages of Pepys most scandalous anecdotes to her discredit. In the second volume there is an account of a mock marriage between her and Lady Castlemaine, in which the latter personated the bridegroom, making way, when the company had retired, for the entry of her royal paramour. On several other occasions Pepys alludes to her as the notorious mistress of the king, and it was only after her marriage that he appears to have been undeceived. His informant on this occasion was the honourable Evelyn, and it may not displease our readers to hear his vindication of the lady--

"He told me," says Pepys, "the whole story of Mrs Stewart's going away from Court, he knowing her well, and believes her, up to her leaving the Court, to be as virtuous as any woman in the world: and told me, from a lord that she told it to but yesterday, with her own mouth, and a sober man, that when the Duke of Richmond did make love to her she did ask the King, and he did the like also, and that the King did not deny it: and told this lord that she was come to that pass as to have resolved to have married any gentleman of £1500 a year that would have had her in honour; for it was come to that pass, that she would not longer continue at Court without yielding herself to the King, whom she had so long kept off, though he had liberty more than any other had, or he ought to have, as to dalliance. She told this lord that she had reflected upon the occasion she had given the world to think her a bad woman, and that she had no way but to marry and leave the Court, rather in this way of discontent than otherwise, that the world might see that she sought not anything but her honour; and that she will never come to live at Court more than when she comes to town to kiss the Queen her mistress's hand: and hopes, though she hath little reason to hope, she can please her lord so as to reclaim him, that they may yet live comfortably in the country on his estate."

"A worthy woman," added Evelyn, "and in that hath done as great an act of honour as ever was done by woman." The fact is, that it was next thing to impossible for any lady to preserve her reputation at the court of King Charles. Those who handle pitch cannot hope to escape defilement; and daily association with the Duchess of Cleveland, and other acknowledged mistresses of the king, was not the best mode of impressing the public with the idea of a woman's virtue. Frances Stuart, a poor unprotected girl, did, we verily believe, pass through as severe an ordeal as well can be imagined: the cruel accusations which were raised up against her, were no more than the penalty of her position; but no stain of disgrace remains on the memory of her, whose fair and faultless form was selected as the fittest model for the effigy of the Genius of Britain.

In a small way, Pepys had some intercourse with the ladies of the court, though it must be confessed that his acquaintances were rather of the lower sphere. He was a staunch admirer of that splendid spitfire, Lady Castlemaine, whose portrait he greatly coveted. "It is," quoth he, "a most blessed picture, and one I must have a copy of." Mary Davis seems to have been no favourite of his, principally because she was an object of especial detestation to the monopolising Castlemaine. He styled her an "impertinent slut," and, one night at the theatre, "it vexed me to see Moll Davis, in the box over the king's, and my Lady Castlemaine's, look down upon the king, and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who it was; but when she saw Moll Davis, she looked like fire, which troubled me." Why it should have troubled Pepys, we cannot perfectly comprehend. With Nell Gwynne, Samuel was upon exceedingly easy terms; and no wonder, for she and Knipp belonged to the same company.

"To the King's house: and there, going in, met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms; and to the women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and as very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of "Flora Figarys," which was acted to-day. But, Lord! to see how they were both painted would make a man mad, and did make me loathe them; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk! and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make upon the stage by candle-light, is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in the pit, was pretty; the other house carrying away all the people at the new play, and is said, now-a-days, to have generally most company, as being better players. By-and-by into the pit, and there saw the play, which is pretty good."

We dare wager a trifle that Mrs Pepys died in total ignorance of her husband having been behind the scenes. Probably Nelly's style of conversation would have found less favour in her eyes. True, she had been introduced to Nelly on a previous occasion; but the little lady seems then to have been on her good behaviour, and had not made herself notorious with Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Charles Sedley, as was the case when Sam assisted at her toilet. Here again we find that arch-intriguer, Knipp, countermining the domestic peace of poor innocent Mrs Pepys. "Thence to the King's house, and there saw _The Humorous Lieutenant_, a silly play, I think; only the Spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one; and then Knipp's singing did please us. Here, in a box above, we spied Mrs Pierce; and, going out, they called us, and brought to us Nelly, a most pretty woman, who acted the great part of Coelia to-day very fine, and did it pretty well. I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a mighty pretty soul she is. We also saw Mrs Bell, which is my little Roman-nose black girl, that is mighty pretty: she is usually called Betty. Knipp made us stay in a box and see the dancing--preparatory to to-morrow, for _The Goblins_, a play of Suckling's, not acted these twenty-five years--which was pretty; and so away thence, pleased with this sight also, and specially kissing of Nell."

We have searched these volumes with some curiosity for entries which might throw any light on the history and character of the Duke of Monmouth. Of late he has been exalted to the rank of a champion of the Protestant cause, and figures in party chronicles rather as a martyr than a rebel. Now, although there is no doubt that he was privy to the designs of Sydney and Russell, the object of his joining that faction still remains a mystery to be explained. We can understand the spirit that animated the Whig Lords and Republican plotters, in attempting to subvert the power of the crown, which they deemed exorbitant and dangerous to the liberties of the subject. The personal character of the men was quite reconcilable with the motives they professed, and the principles they avowed. But that Monmouth--the gay, fickle, licentious, and pampered Monmouth--had any thought beyond his own aggrandisement, in committing such an act of monstrous ingratitude as rebellion against his indulgent father, seems to us an hypothesis unsubstantiated by even a shadow of proof. We do not here allude to his second treason, which brought him to the scaffold--his motives on that occasion are sufficiently clear: he never was a favourite with his uncle; he aimed at the crown through a false assertion of his legitimacy; and the knaves and fools who were his counsellors made use of the cry of Protestantism merely as a cover to their designs. Monmouth's first treason was undoubtedly his blackest crime: for, had he been the rightful heir of Britain, he could not have experienced at the hands of Charles more ample honour and affection. It is, therefore, valuable to know what position he occupied during the earlier period of his life.

The following are some of Pepys' entries, which we think are historically valuable:--

"31st Dec. 1662.--The Duke of Monmouth is in so great splendour at court, and so dandled by the King, that some doubt that, if the King should have no child by the Queen, which there is yet no appearance of, whether he would not be acknowledged as a lawful son; and that there will be a difference between the Duke of York and him, which God prevent!... 8th Feb. 1663.--The little Duke of Monmouth, it seems, is ordered to take place of all Dukes, and so do follow Prince Rupert now, before the Duke of Buckingham, or any else.... 27th April.--The Queen, which I did not know, it seems was at Windsor, at the late St George's feast there; and the Duke of Monmouth dancing with her, with his hat in his hand, the King came in and kissed him, and made him put on his hat, which everybody took notice of.... 4th May.--I to the garden with my Lord Sandwich, after we had sat an hour at the Tangier committee, and after talking largely of his own businesses, we began to talk how matters are at court: and though he did not fully tell me any such thing, yet I do suspect that all is not kind between the King and the Duke, (York) and that the King's fondness to the little Duke do occasion it; and it may be that there is some fear of his being made heir to the crown.... 22d Feb. 1664.--He (Charles) loves not the Queen at all, but is rather sullen to her; and she, by all reports, incapable of children. He is so fond of the Duke of Monmouth that everybody admires it; and he says that the Duke hath said, that he would be the death of any man that says the King was not married to his mother.... 11th September 1667.--Here came Mr Moore, and sat and conversed with me of public matters, the sum of which is, that he has no doubt there is more at the bottom than the removal of the Chancellor; that is, he do verily believe that the King do resolve to declare the Duke of Monmouth legitimate, and that we shall soon see it. This I do not think the Duke of York will endure without blows."

These are but a few of Pepys' notes relative to this subject, and we think there is much significancy in them. The fondness of Charles for Monmouth was, to say the least of it, extravagant and injudicious. He promoted him to the highest grade of the nobility; he procured for him a match with one of the wealthiest heiresses in Britain; and he allowed and encouraged him to assume outward marks of distinction which had always been considered the prerogative of Princes of the blood royal. In the words of Dryden--

"His favour leaves me nothing to require, Prevents my wishes and outruns desire; What more can I expect while David lives? All but his kingly diadem he gives."

Such unprecedented honours heaped upon the eldest of the bastards of Charles must necessarily have been extremely annoying to the Duke of York, and were ill-calculated to conciliate his favour, in the event of his succeeding to the crown. They certainly were enough to give much weight to the rumour long current in the nation, that Charles contemplated the step of declaring Monmouth legitimate, and of course they excited in the mind of the youth aspirations of the most dangerous nature. At no period of his career did the son of Lucy Walters display qualities which can fairly entitle him to our esteem. As a husband, he was false and heartless; as a son, he was undutiful and treacherous. Pepys always speaks of him disparagingly, as a dissipated, profligate young man; and he is borne out in this testimony by the shameful outrage committed on the person of Sir John Coventry, at his direct instigation. Again he says, "16th December 1666--Lord Brouncker tells me, that he do not believe the Duke of York will go to sea again, though there are many about the king that would be glad of any occasion to take him out of the world, he standing in their ways: and seemed to mean the Duke of Monmouth, who spends his time the most viciously and idle of any man, nor will be fit for anything; yet he speaks as if it were not impossible but the king would own him for his son, and that there was marriage between his mother and him." This was a strange champion to put forward in the cause of liberty and religion.

We now take our leave of these volumes, the perusal of which has afforded us some pleasant hours. Every one must regret that the health of Pepys compelled him to abandon his daily task so early; for by far the most interesting period of the reign of Charles remains unillustrated by his pen. Had his Diary been continued down to the Revolution, with the same spirit which characterises the extant portion, it would have been one of the most useful historical records in the English language. Pepys, beyond the immediate sphere of his own office, was no partisan. He never throws an unnecessary mantle over the faults even of his friends and patrons. No man was more alive to the criminal conduct of Charles, and his shameful neglect of public duty. He has his quips and girds at the Duke of York, though he entertained a high, and, we think, a just opinion of the natural abilities of that prince: and while he gives him due credit for a sincere desire to reform abuses in that public department which was under his superintendence, he shows himself by no means blind to his vices, and besetting obstinacy. Even the Earl of Sandwich, to whom he was so much indebted, does not escape. On one occasion, Pepys took upon himself to perform the dangerous office of a Mentor to that high-spirited nobleman, and it is to the credit of both parties that no breach of friendship ensued. Good advice was an article which Samuel was ever ready to volunteer, and his natural shrewdness rendered his councils really valuable. But, like many other people, he was not always so ready with his purse. Considering that he owed everything he possessed in the world to the earl, we think he might have opened his coffers, at such a pinch as the following, without any Israelitish contemplation of security. "After dinner comes Mr Moore, and he and I alone awhile, he telling me my Lord Sandwich's credit was like to be undone, if the bill of £200 my Lord Hinchingbroke wrote to me about be not paid to-morrow, and that, if I do not help them about it, they have no way but to let it be protested. So, finding that Creed had supplied them with £150 in their straits, and that this was no bigger sum, I am very willing to serve my lord, though not in this kind; but yet I will endeavour to get this done for them, and the rather because of some plate that was lodged the other day with me, by my lady's order, which may be in part security for my money. This do trouble me; but yet it is good luck that the sum is no bigger." We cannot agree with Lord Braybrooke that Pepys was a liberal man, even to his own relations. We do not go the length of saying that he was deficient in family duties, but it seems to us that he might have selected a fitter gift for his father than his old shoes; and surely, when his sister Paulina came to stay with him, there was no necessity for insisting that she should eat with the maids, and consider herself on the footing of a servant. Whatever Pepys may have been in after life, he portrays himself in his Diary as a singularly selfish man; nor is that character at all inconsistent with the shrewd, but sensual, and somewhat coarse expression of his features in the frontispiece. Yet it is impossible to read the Diary without liking him, with all his faults. There was, to be sure, a great deal of clay in his composition, but also many sparkles of valuable metal; and perhaps these are seen the better from the roughness of the material in which they are embedded. This at least must be conceded, that these volumes are unique in literature, and so they will probably remain.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary at the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II._ With a Life and Notes by RICHARD LORD BRAYBROOKE. Third edition considerably enlarged. London, 1849.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

Transcriber's Notes:

Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation normalized.

Anachronistic and non-standard spellings retained as printed.

Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_.

Greek text is transliterated and enclosed in ®registration signs®.