part I tried first to get down one hatchway, then another, and Lord

Frederick himself came up on the starboard side of the quarterdeck in the height of the scene. Indeed, I believe it was a joke for months after in the Hebe, of a night, to say it was "the second lieutenant's watch;" the sole revenge I had being to leave Mother Dulcken and her boy to expect the "ship that was coming after."

A Government boat came aboard in the afternoon, and as soon as it left us, Lord Frederick took his gig, and steered for a frigate lying some distance off, which had the harbour flag hoisted at her main, being the only man-o'-war besides ourselves, and commanded by a senior captain. Till it got dark I could see the crews of the nearest merchantmen looking over their bulwarks at us and our prize, apparently comparing the schooner with the frigate, and speculating on her character, as she lay a few fathoms off the Hebe's quarter, both of us rising and falling in turn on the long heave of the Cape swell from seaward. 'Twas hard to say, in fact, so far as their hulls went, which was the most beautiful sample of its kind; though the schooner's French-fashioned sticks and off-hand sort of rigging, showed rather like jury-gear beside the tall regular sticks aloft of the Hebe's decks, with all her hamper perfect to a tee. The Hebe's men very naturally considered their own ship a model for everything that floated, a sort of a Solomon's temple, in short; and to hear the merciless way they ran down the Indiamen all round, would have raised the whole homeward-bound fleet against us; whereas the schooner was our own, at any rate, and she was spoken of much in the manner one mentions an unfortunate orphan, as good as already christened by the name of "the Young Hebe." This our learned chaplain said was quite improper, and he gave another name in place of it--the "Aniceta"--which meant, as he observed, the Hebe's youngest daughter; so the Aniceta she was called, happening to be a title that went, according to the boatswain, full as sweetly through the sheave-hole.

Next day the schooner had landed not only her passengers from St Helena, but the prisoners also, as we still understood the French and their Kroomen to be. Not long after that Lord Frederick came back from Cape Town, looking grave, and went straight down to his cabin, or "cabins," as his lordship preferred to have it said. The first lieutenant dined that day with the captain; but they could scarcely have finished when the "young gentlemen" who had been as usual from the reefer's mess, came up with a message from the captain, that his lordship would be glad if I would join the first lieutenant and himself in a glass of wine. I found them sitting at the side of the table nearest the open port, with the decanters between them, and the broad bright bay in full sight to the shore and the foot of Table Mountain, which rose up blocking the port with the top of it beyond view; the sounds of the merchantmen clicking at their heavy windlasses, and hoisting in water-casks, floated slowly in from every side, while the schooner had hauled on her cable more abreast of the frigate, leaving the sight clear over the eddy round her low counter.

"A lovely piece of workmanship, certainly!" observed Lord Frederick thoughtfully, as he leant back swinging his eyeglass round his finger, with the other hand in the breast of his waistcoat, and looking out at what was seen of the schooner. "And how one might have improved her spars, too!" said Mr Hall, wistfully. "I should have recommended longer lower-masts altogether, Lord Frederick, and a thorough overhaul, I may say, from the combings upwards!" "I would not have her hull touched for the world, Mr Hall!" said the captain; "'tis too--excessively provoking, at least! But pass the bottles to Mr Collins, if you please." I had taken a chair and quietly filled my glass, wondering what could be the matter, when his lordship turned to me and said, "Do you know, Mr Collins, this schooner of ours is likely to be laid up in Chancery, heaven knows how long. The Admiralty court ashore are doubtful of condemning her, apparently, and she must either be sent home or to Monte Video or somewhere, where the master of her claims to belong!" "Indeed, my lord," said I, setting down my glass, "that is curious." "Curious indeed, sir!" replied he, biting his lips, "though, after all, we really can scarce say what she is to be condemned for--only in the meantime I sail to-morrow for India." "She's French to the backbone, that I'll swear, Lord Frederick!" I said; "and what's more, she was"----"Ah," broke in the captain, "I know, I know; but the less we say of that, in present circumstances, the better! Once get her entangled with politics, and we may give her up altogether." Lord Frederick twisted his eyeglass round his forefinger faster than before, still watching the schooner; the first lieutenant held up his claret betwixt himself and the light, and I sipped mine. "I tell you what, gentlemen," exclaimed his lordship suddenly, "I _must_ have that schooner at any cost!--What is to be done, Mr Hall?" "She'd be of great service in the China seas, my lord, certainly," said the first lieutenant, looking thoughtfully into his empty glass; "a perfect treasure for light service, especially if new sparred and--" I noticed Lord Frederick glancing sideways at me, as I thought, with a slight gleam in his eye; and accordingly I suggested that he might buy her from the Frenchman himself; a very poor idea, no doubt, as both the captain and first luff seemed to think, and we all three kept eyeing her doubtfully through the port, without a word.

At this time the schooner's counter had been slowly sheering toward the frigate's beam, owing to the ebb-tide, and her holding only by a single cable, till her stern began to show right opposite the cabin, I should say not twenty feet off. Lord Frederick put his glass to his eye, and was peering through it, when he remarked that they had brought up rather too near, leaving scarce room for the schooner to swing as she did, earlier than we, so that she would be in danger of getting foul of the frigate's cables. "The worst of it is, Lord Frederick," said I, "that in case of a gale from seaward here, she might have to slip and run upon very short warning, whereas the Hebe has plenty of ground-tackle to let her ride it out. Considering it was Table Bay, at this season, he ought to have kept her a clearer berth for herself, or else have gone well outside!"--"Ah!" said Lord Frederick quickly, meeting my eye for half a minute, till the gleam came into his again; and somehow or other mine must have caught it, though I must say the notion that struck me then all at once wasn't in my head before. "Do you know, that's well thought of, Collins!" said his lordship. "You've weathered the Cape before, by the bye?"--"A dozen times, Lord Frederick," said I; when a regularly jovial roar of laughter broke fair through the port into the cabin, from over the schooner's taffrail, as she sheered end-on to the frigate's quarter, and Lord Frederick leant forward with the glass screwed into his right eye to see along their decks, which were covered aft with an awning like the open gable of a tent at a fair. "Singular!" said he; "by the lord Harry, who or what can that be Mr Hammond has got there?" Dangling over the French schooner's taffrail were to be seen the soles of two immense boots, with calves and knees to match, and a pair of tightish striped trousers worked up more than half way, 'till you saw the tops of the stockings; just beyond the knees was the face leaning back in the shade of the awning and a straw hat together, out of which a huge green cabbage-leaf hung like a flap over one eye, while the other kept gazing in a half-closed sleepy sort of way at the sky, and the red end of a cigar winked and glowed in the midst of the puffs of smoke lower down. The first lieutenant started up shocked at the sight, the noble captain of the Hebe sat with his eyeglass fixed, between amusement and wonder; for my own part, when the voice of this same prodigy broke all of a sudden on us out of the awning, in a mixture of stuttering, hiccuping, Yankee drawling, and puffs at the cigar, 'twas all I could do to hold on, with the knowledge of where I was. "W_a_ll now, general," said the American, as if he were talking to some one aloft or in the sky, "ye-you're qui-quite wrong--I ki-kick-calc'late I've fit a deal more be-be-battles than you have--I re-respect you, Ge-Ge-General Washington; but I ho-ho-hope you know who--hic--whom I am!" Here Mr Daniel Snout, who was in a state of beastly intoxication, swayed himself up bodily into the schooner's taffrail, and sat with his arms folded, his long legs swinging over the stern, and his head trying to keep steady, as he scowled solemnly aloft over the frigate's mizen-royal-masthead; while the third lieutenant, Mr Hammond, and the master's mate he had aboard with him, could be heard laughing at his back, as if they had gone mad--Hammond being a wild sprig of an Irishman, who would go any length for a piece of fun.

Just then the American's one eye lighted on the side of the frigate, till it settled lazily on the port of the captain's cabin: first he seemed to notice Lord Frederick Bury, and then myself, the first lieutenant having just recovered himself enough to rush toward the door to get on deck. Daniel himself surveyed me scornfully for a moment, then with a sort of doubtful frown, and a gravity that passes me to describe, unless by the look of an old cock a-drinking--evidently trying to recollect me. "Hallo, mister!" shouted he suddenly, "you haven't touched those _notions_ of mine, I hope." With that he made a spring off where he sat, as if to come towards us--no doubt thinking of the Seringapatam, and the valuables he had left aboard, without seeing the water between; and a pretty deep dive Mr Snout would have made of it, into an ebb-tide that would have swept him under the frigate's bottom, if Mr Hammond and the midshipman hadn't both sprung forward in time to catch him by the neck of the coat. There, accordingly, was the Yankee hanging like a spread eagle over the schooner's taffrail, yelling and turning round at the same time like a fowl on a spit--the third lieutenant's and the mate's faces, two pictures of dismay, as they held on, at finding for the first time where the schooner had shied them round to, with their two pairs of eyes fair in front of the captain's eyeglass,--while Mr Hall was singing out like thunder from the deck above us, "The schooner ahoy--d'ye see where you've got to, sir; haul ahead on that cable, d'ye hear, you lubbers, and keep clear of the ship!"

"Mr Collins," said his lordship quietly to me, as soon as he could keep his countenance, and looking the sterner for the trouble he was put to in doing it, "you will get your things and go aboard the schooner directly--take her in charge, sir, and send Mr Hammond back here."--"Very well, my lord," said I, waiting in the doorway for something more, which, from something in Lord Frederick's look, I had reason to expect, knowing it of old. "I can only spare you a dozen of the men she has," added he; "but if you choose you can send ashore at once to pick up a few makeshifts, or anything you find!"--"Ay, ay, my lord," said I; "the best hand for that would be Mr Snelling, if I may take him, Lord Frederick?" "Oh, certainly," was the answer; "and harkye, Collins, you had better shift your berth a few cable-lengths farther off, or more, if you please."--"One thing, my lord," said I, stooping down to see through the port, "I don't much like the heavy ground-swell that begins to meet the ebb, Lord Frederick; and I fancy it won't be long ere Table Mountain spread its supper-cloth--in which case I'd consider it necessary to slip cable and run out at once, though I mightn't get in again so easily. Am I to find the frigate here again, Lord Frederick?"--"Deuce take it, man--no!" said his lordship. He turned his back to hide the evident twinkle of his eye. "Should we part company, of course you make for the Bay of Bengal! You can't be sure of the Hebe, short of the Sandheads--and if not there, then opposite Fort William, at Calcutta."--"Very good, my lord," said I, and had made my bow to go on deck, when Lord Frederick called me back. "By the bye," said he hastily, "about that Indiaman of yours, Collins--she is here, no doubt?" "No, Lord Frederick," answered I, "I believe she sailed a week ago." "Dear me, the deuce!" exclaimed he, "why I meant to have sent to-morrow to have your friend Westwood arrested and brought aboard!" I started at this, on which his lordship explained that if Westwood got to Bombay, whither the Seringapatam was bound, the authorities there would have news of the thing by this time, and could send him overland at once to England, which would be far worse for him than being carried to Calcutta, where his uncle the Councillor's interest might do something for him. "The best thing you can do, Collins," added Lord Frederick, "if you _are_ obliged to run out to sea, is to look after that Indiaman! With such a neat thing of a sea-boat under you, you might do anything you please; so cruise to windward or leeward in chase, find her out, and take out Westwood bodily--lose him afterwards in the Hoogley, if you like--carry away those old spars of hers, and send up new ones--only don't lose the schooner, I beg; so good bye to you, my dear fellow, lest we should not meet on this side the Line again!"--"Good bye, my lord!" said I cheerfully, and hurried on deck, understanding all he wanted as well as if I'd been ordered to set her jib that moment and heave up anchor. In ten minutes I was over the frigate's side, and in ten more Hammond was back in her, with the men who were to leave; while I sent my baggage below, set the hands to work shifting the schooner's berth, and by sun-down we were lying beyond hail of the ship, opposite the custom-house, and a long line of a main street in Cape Town, where we could see the people, the carriages, and the Dutch bullock-carts passing up and down; while Table Mountain hove away up off the steep Devil's Hill and the Lion's Rump, to the long level line a-top, as blue and bare as an iron monument, and throwing a shadow to the right over the peaks near at hand.

Our friend from the United States being by this time in quite an oblivious condition, the first thing I did was to have him put quietly into the boat with which Mr Snelling was to go ashore for fresh hands, and I instructed the reefer to get clear of him anyhow he liked, if it was only above tide-mark. When they were gone I walked the schooner's little quarterdeck in the dusk by myself, till the half moon rose with a ghostly copper-like glare over the hollow in the Lion's Rump, streaking across the high face of Table Mountain, and bringing out all its rifts and wrinkles again. The land-breeze began to blow steadily with a long sighing sweep from the north-east, meeting the heavy swell that set into the broad bay; and the schooner, being a light crank little craft, got rather uneasy; whereas you could see the lights of the frigate heaving and settling leisurely, less than half a mile off. I had only six or seven good hands aboard altogether at the time, which, with those the midshipman had, were barely sufficient to work her in such seas; so with all I had to do, with the difficulty of getting men in the circumstances, a long voyage before us, and things that might turn up, as I hoped, to require a touch of the regular service, why the very pleasure of having a command made me a good deal anxious. Even of that I didn't feel sure; and I kept watching Table Mountain, eager for the least bit of haze to come across the top of it, as well as sorry I had sent Snelling ashore. "I'd give a hundred pounds at this moment," thought I, "to have had Bob Jacobs here!"

As the moon got higher, I could see the swell washing up between the different merchantmen in sight, into their shadows, and heavy enough some of them seemed to roll round their cables, betwixt a breeze and a swell running the contrary ways; first one let go a second anchor, and then another, to help their heads shoreward; but still there was no danger, as things went. It wasn't long before I made out two boats coming from toward the town, round the stern of one of the ships, the frigate lying betwixt her and us, so that they took her by the way, and a good deal of hailing seemed to pass between them. I could even see epaulets glisten over the Hebe's quarter, as if there was a stir made aboard; after which the boats were plainly pulling for the schooner. What all this might mean, I couldn't very well conceive, unless it were either Snelling come back already, or else some hands Lord Frederick himself had provided before this, as I saw both boats were full of people. "Forward there!" I sung out, "hail those boats!"--"Ay, ay, the schooner ahoy!" was the answer, in a sharp voice from the headmost of them, "from the shore--all right! Stand by to heave us a line, will ye?" Next came a hail from Snelling, in our own gig; so I at once gave orders to heave them a rope and have both boats brought under the gangway, naturally supposing the sharp little fellow had come some marvellous good speed in shipping hands. As soon as he jumped on deck, I accordingly inquired how many men he had brought, when to my great surprise he informed me there was only one, "a scuffy sort of a swab," as he expressed it, "who would do for cook!"--"The devil he will, you young rascal," I broke out. "Hush, sir, for heaven's sake," said he, making some extraordinary sign which I didn't understand; "it'll all be right in the end, Mr Collins. Now then, sir," to some one in the boat alongside, as he carefully handed him the accommodation-ropes, "here you are--hold on, sir--so-o!" This was a rather youngish fellow in a huge pilot coat and a glazed cap, with some kind of uniform inside, and a large breastpin in his shirt, who handed me a paper the moment he stood firm on deck, without speaking a word; though, by the light of the deck-lantern, I didn't much like the look of his foxy sort of face, with the whiskers on it coming forward from both cheeks to his mouth, nor the glance he gave round the schooner with his pair of quick sharp little eyes. "Much more like a custom-house officer than a cook!" thought I, "unless we mean to have a French one;" but what was my astonishment, on opening the paper, to find him called "Gilbert Webb, harbour-master's assistant, hereby authorised by the Admiralty Court, sitting in Cape Town, to take charge of the doubtful vessel described in her papers as the 'Ludovico,' belonging to Monte Video--from the officer commanding the prize crew of his Britannic Majesty's ship Hebe." My first thought was to have Mr Gilbert Webb pitched over into his boat again, when Lord Frederick's own signature met my eye at the bottom of the paper, addressed below to "Lieutenant Collins, of his Majesty's schooner Aniceta, _at sea_." A wonderfully mysterious squint from Snelling, behind the officer, was sufficient to clinch the matter in my own mind, showing that the reefer was as sharp as a needle: and I handed back the document to the harbour gentleman, with a "Very well, sir, that will do." "I suppose I'd better have my men up, Lieutenant Collins?" said he, with a quick pert kind of accent, which made me set him down at once for a Londoner, while at the same time he seemed impatient, as I thought, to get the management. "Why, sir," said I, "I suppose you had."

Hereupon up mounted four or five decent enough looking _stevedores_[7]--one or two of whom had rather the air of sailors, the rest being broad-beamed, short-legged Dutchmen, with trousers like pillow-slips--followed by a whole string of fourteen or fifteen Indian Lascars, their bundles in their hands, and an ugly old _serdug_ at their head; while the lame, broken-down, debauched-like fellow of a man-o'-warsman, that Snelling had found sitting on a timberhead ashore, got aboard with our own boat's crew. Our gangway was chokeful, to my fresh dismay, for to get rid of such a tagrag-and-bobtail, in case of running to sea, was impossible; even if they weren't odds against us, here was it likely to get a thick night, the swell growing under the schooner till she began to yerk at her anchor, head to wind, like a young filly at a manger; so that dropping them back into their boat when needful, as I intended at first, was out of the question for the present. I found from the harbour officer that the number of hands would all be required with the morning tide, when his orders were to have the schooner towed in opposite the Battery Dock, especially as there was much chance of the wind blowing strong from seaward next day. The swell on the water, he said, was such that, after putting off, he thought of going back again till the tide began to turn; if he had not been encouraged to stick to it and keep on by the midshipman, whom he fell in with near the quay. This piece of news was the finish to the rage I felt brewing in me, vexed as I naturally was to give up the notion of a free cruise, in command of a craft like the schooner; and, as soon as Mr Webb was comfortable in the cabin, over a tumbler of stiff grog and some cold beef, I sent for Snelling to my own cupboard of a state-room.

[7] Men employed in the stowing of ships' cargoes.

"You cursed unlucky little imp you!" I burst out, the moment he made his appearance, "What's the meaning of this, sirrah? eh?"--"What is it, if you please, sir?" said Snelling, pretending to hold down his shock-head like a frightened schoolboy, and looking up all the time both at me and the lamp at once, while he swayed with the uneasy heave of the deck in such a way as made me grip him by the arm in a perfect fury, fancying he had got drunk ashore. "You young blackguard you!" said I, shaking him, "didn't I tell you to get hands--didn't you know I meant to--to--" "Oh yes, Mr Collins," gasped the reefer, "I did indeed--you meant to cut and run--I saw it by your eye, sir, and--don't shake me any more, sir, or you'll spoil my hair--and I don't deserve it--it's--all right!" And on my letting him go, the ugly little scamp sunk down on a chair with his eyes starting from his head, and a leer like a perfect demon incarnate; but so perfectly laughable it was, not to mention the air of complete confidence between us that he threw into it, that I sat down myself, ready to grin at my bad luck. "Well, Mister Snelling," said I, quietly, "you _are_ a touch beyond me! Let's have the joke, at least--out with it, man, else another shake may be--" The reefer pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to the cabin, shoved his chin forward, and whispered, "Why, sir, I'm only doubtful whether you could make him third officer--but at any rate, he'll always be useful at a rope, Mr Collins--won't he, sir?" I gave Snelling one look, meant to be as grave as an Old Bailey chaplain's, but it wouldn't do--my conscience wouldn't stand it--in fact the very self-same notion seemed to me to have been creeping into my mind. "You--young--rascal!" was all I could manage to say, before making bolt to go on deck. "By the by, Mister Snelling," said I, turning and looking down from the hatchway, "you must want a glass of grog--tell the boy to let you have some--and go and keep the officer company, sir."

By this time it was raining hard, the half-moon coming out at moments and shining through it with a sudden sharp gleam, in some gust of the wind off the land--showing the swell in as far as the wet white custom-house and the bare quays, the ships with their hazy lights all hither and thither, while Table Mountain was to be seen now and then peering half over the mist, first one corner and then another, of a colour like dead ashes. One time I looked down toward the dusky little cabin, where the midshipman, quite in his element, was sitting with the harbour officer, the lamp jerking and making wild swings betwixt them, while Snelling evidently egged on his companion to drink; then I gave a glance seaward, where there was nothing but a glimmer of rain and spray along the dark hollows of the water. I couldn't make up my mind, all I could do--it was too barefaced a thing to slip from the roadstead with a breeze blowing off-shore; but the worst of it was that I didn't feel easy at the idea of parting with an anchor in the circumstances, not to say carrying off the Government people, unless forced to it. I accordingly went below to mix myself a stiffener, and found the officer a cool head, for, in spite of all Snelling could do, the reefer himself had got provoked, whereas the sharp Mr Webb was only a little brisker than before. "A rough sort of night," said I, nodding to him, as I knocked the water out of my cap. "Well, it seems," said he, free and easy. "S'pose I go on deck then, gentlemen--I've refreshed, I assure you, so you needn't trouble about this 'ere schooner no farther--glad to get quit of it and turn in, I desay, lieutenant?"--"No trouble in the world, Mr Webb," said I, going on with my mixture, "far from it; but sit down a minute, pray sir,--Mr Snelling here will take charge of the deck for us in the meantime;" and Snelling vanished at once, Mr Webb apparently flattered at my wishing his company. "Will that cable of yours hold, think ye, Lieutenant Collins?" asked he, filling up another glass. "Why," said I, almost laughing, "to tell you the truth, I begin to feel devilish doubtful of it." "What!" broke out the harbour officer, starting up, "then I must 'ave another put down immediately: why, what's the effect, sir--we'll be carried out to sea!" "You said it exactly, Mr Webb," I said "'twould have been much worse, I suppose, if we were driven ashore, though! Now look you, if I were to let go a second anchor at present, I couldn't light upon a better plan either to break her back, or lose both anchors in the end--from the difference of strain on the two cables, with this ground-swell. The fact is, my good fellow, you're evidently not fit to take charge at present." "D--n me, lieutenant!" said he, looking fierce and foolish at the same time, "here's strange lang'age to a Gov'ment officer, sir--I hask the meanin' off it _at_ once, mister!" "But I depend a good deal on your knowledge of Table Bay weather," I continued, leaning back with my weather eye screwed to bear upon him. "D'ye think this wind likely to moderate soon, sir? come now."--"No," replied he sulkily: "I'm sure it won't--and to-morrow it's certain to blow back ten times worse." "Then, Mr Webb," said I, rising, "you oughtn't to have come aboard to-night; as the short and the long of it is, I shall get the schooner an offing the first possible moment!" The officer stared at me in a bewildered manner; and as for the schooner, she seemed to be bolting and pitching in a way worse than before, with now and then a plunge of the swell on her broadside as if she had been under weigh. Suddenly Snelling lifted the skylight frame and screamed down into the cabin, "Mr Collins, Mr Collins! she's been dragging her anchor for the last ten minutes, sir!"

I sprang on deck at two bounds--the schooner had somehow or other got her anchor out of hold at the time, the cable as taut as a fiddle-string. It was quite dark aloft, and not a vestige of Table Mountain to be seen, though the moonshine, low down to westward, brought out two or three tracks of light along the stretch of water, and you saw the lights in the ships slowly sweeping past. Where we happened to be, it blew two ways at once, as is often the case in Table Bay, round the bluffs of the mountain, and as soon as she brought up again with a surge at the windlass, the heave of a long swell took her right on the quarter, lifting her in to her anchor again with a slack of the hawser, at which every second man sung out to "hold on!" Over she went to port, a sea washing up the starboard side, and throwing a few dozen bucketfuls at once fair into the companion, where our friend the harbour officer was sticking at the time; so down plumped Mr Webb along with it, and the booby hatch was shoved close after him, while the poor devils of Lascars were huddled together as wet as swabs in the lee of the caboose forward. "A hand to the wheel!" shouted I, as soon as I recovered myself; when to my great surprise I saw Snelling's new hand, poor creature as I'd thought him, standing with a spoke in each fist, as cool and steady as possible, and his eye fixed on me in the true knowing way which I felt could be trusted to. "Jib there!" I sung out, "see all clear to run up a few hanks of the jib--stand by to cut the cable at the bitts!"--"Ay, ay, sir," answered Snelling, who was working away with the harbour men, his bare head soaked, and altogether more like an imp than a young gentleman of the navy--"All's clear, sir."

Five minutes I dare say we stood, every one in the same position, while I waited for a good moment in the run of the swell, looking into the binnacle: till she hung slack, as it were, in a wide seething trough of the sea, when I signed to the man behind me to put the helm gradually to starboard. I glanced at the fellow again, caught his sharp weatherly eye once more--then putting both hands to my mouth I sung out to bowse on the jib halliards. "Now--cut--the cable!" shouted I, springing forward in my anxiety. The schooner rose away from her anchor on the heavy roll of the sea; I saw two quick strokes of the axe on the instant, and she was spinning head off from the wind, heeling over betwixt the force of it and the ground-swell together, while the mass of black water was washing bodily away with us; the new helmsman showing down below me as he leant to the wheel, like somebody at the foot of a slide. If he hadn't helped her at the moment with a back turn of the spokes to port, t'would have been all up with us. As it was, the schooner fell off gallantly in his hands, with a sliding surge into the lee of the next swell, that buried her sharp bows in the green sea, till it foamed about our very shoulders as we hung on like grim death to the weather bulwark. She was just shaking herself free, and rising like a buoy over the broad tops of the waves, when Snelling, myself, and two or three of the men, staggered down to her mainmast to swig up the throat halliards, letting her feel a little of the boom mainsail; and we had scarce belayed, as the last glimpse of the frigate's lights was caught astern of us, heaving and setting, as she rode with her two bower anchors down; we had driven past close enough to have heard the creak of her hamper aloft. After that, I had the fore-stay-sail set on her, then the reefed mainsail, and the lively schooner yielded to the long rolling seas so well, as very soon to make her own weather of it--especially since, clear of the high land about Table Bay, it was blowing only a strong breeze, and the more I began to feel master of her, the more inclined I was to let her show her good qualities. Such a craft I never had had the full management of before in my life; and you may easily fancy how I felt at dividing the hands into the two watches, giving little Snelling command of one, as first mate, and picking out our men in turn. I looked round amongst mine, rather at a loss for one to make second mate for the cruise, though there were three prime enough man-o'-warsmen, and I had chosen one of the Government officer's gang for his activity. As for the Lascars, we slumped in half of the number to each of us, for make-weights--when Snelling's fresh hand, who had fallen to my share, caught my eye again as he stood at the wheel. Every half spoke he gave the schooner told; she was topping the heavy seas as they rose, and taking them just where they melted one to the other, with a long floating cleave, that carried her counter fairly free of the after-run, though nearly right before the wind: the main-boom had been guyed over to the lee-quarter, till a third of the sail hung clear of her hull, and the breeze swept into the hollow of it, thick with spray. The light from the little binnacle shone up distinctly on the man's face, and with all the desperate, used-up, marbled sort of look of it, like one getting the better of a long spree ashore, I thought there was something uncommonly promising about him, not to say greatly above the run of foremast men. The wet, the wind, and the work he was at, took off the seediness of his clothes; even the old rag of a handkerchief round his hairy neck had got a gloss to it, and he stood handling the wheel with a strange mixture of recklessness and care, as he glanced from the compass to the gaff of the mainsail against the scud, and down again. The very contrast between the man's manner and his outward rig was sufficient to strike one, though plenty of seamen are to be found in the like state ashore: but what fixed me to him above all, was the expression in those two keen, searching, _living_ eyes of his, when they once or twice met mine on their way from aloft to the compass-boxes. 'Twas as if they'd woke up since he came aboard out of a sleepy, maudlin condition, with the "blue-devils" or scarce fully out of 'em; like a sick man's in the lull of a fever, suddenly seen watching you out of the dusk of the bed, when one happens to glance up from the nurse's seat.

"What's your name, my man?" asked I, stepping aft to the binnacle. "My name is Jones, sir," said he readily. "And your first name?" I said. "Jack," was the answer, in an off-hand way, with a hitch of one shoulder, and a weather-spoke to the wheel; spoken in an accent you'd have expected more in a West End drawing-room than from a common sailor. "Ah," said I, sharply, "Jack Jones? I wonder how many Jack Joneses there are afloat! An able seaman, I think, Jones?"--"Why sir," replied the man, "I never rate myself, sir--'tis all one to me, able, ordinary, landsman, or boy--I carry no papers, and leave my betters to rate me." "Where were you last, my man?" I asked; whereupon I met such a cool, steady, deep look out of the fellow's strange light-coloured eyes, bloodshot as they were with drinking, that I felt almost our very two souls jostle in it: as much as to say, To all eternity fathom me if ye can! "Well, I forget where, sir," said he, lowering his look to the compass-box again: "always the way with me, after a trip, a cruise, a voyage, or whatever it may be. I've got--ha!" and he yielded his body coolly to a jerk of the schooner's wheel. "A sweet craft this, sir, but a little ticklish!" "You've got what?" said I, not unwilling to wear out the time. "I've got--no memory!" Still there was somewhat so gloomy and mournful in the next glance aloft, I don't know how it was, but I felt inclined to offer him a mate's place on trial, and so I hinted, if he knew half as well how to handle a craft as he did of steering her. To my own surprise, Jones's wonder didn't seem to be roused at the notion, except that he gave me another quick glance from head to foot, with a queer smile that struck me as if I were being questioned, instead of _him_; then he looked down over his own outfit, judging by which you'd have said he'd been shipwrecked. "Well," said I, "I daresay you've been hard put to it, somehow, Jones,--so as soon as you leave the wheel, you can go below to the steward, and get a seagoing suit of my own, till we see Calcutta, when your mate's wages will set you all right again." The man touched his battered old straw hat; but I noticed his eyes gleam for a moment by the binnacle light, and a strange twitch run round his mouth at the mention of the mate's wages: the only way I could account for it at the time being his late hard-up condition; and nothing to my mind was more deucedly pitiable, than to see the thought of a few paltry additional rupees light up a head like that, with the glistening sort of expression of a miser, as I fancied. The man had a head on him, in fact, when you eyed him, fit for a gentleman's shoulders, or more--his hair and his whiskers curly and dark, draggled though they were with the rain, not to say Cape Town mud--while the wearing away of the hair about the temples, and the red grog-streaks in the veins of his face, made him no doubt a dozen years older to appearance than he was. For my part I was quite convinced already, this same Jack Jones hadn't been sent out a cabin boy; there was not only a touch of high blood in him at bottom, but I'd have sworn he had been some time or other in the place of a gentleman, afloat or ashore, though plainly now "going to the devil."

Meanwhile the breaking look of the clouds away on our larboard bow showed it wasn't far off dawn; so, sending another hand to the wheel, and finding a snug spot under a stern-grating for a snooze on deck, I told Jones to begin with taking charge of the deck for me. "One thing, sir," said he, touching his hat again, as I lay down, "I've only shipped for the outward voyage, and leave at the first port."--"Why, what the deuce!" said I, lifting my head; "what do you mean to do there, eh?" "I--I want to go ashore," answered he, eagerly; "ay, if we're years on the cruise, so much the better, sir,--but so soon as she drops anchor off Calcutta, I'm my own master?"--"Have your own way, then," said I; "at any rate I'll try you in the meantime,--so Mister Jones, let's see how you mind the schooner till eight bells!" Whereupon I turned myself over to sleep, and it was as broad daylight as we had any likelihood of about the Cape, when I woke.

It still blew a stiff breeze, but the waves rose with a length and a breadth in them you find in no other sea; deep-blue sparkling hills of water, with green gleams about the crests, of which every single wave had a hundred or so; and a long seething, simmering, glassy hollow of a still valley between, where the flecks of foam slid away glittering out of the shadow. But, Lord! it was glorious to feel the schooner rising quietly in the trough, with the mount of a wave, to the very ridge of it; then with a creak of all her timbers and bulk-heads below, a slight shake to windward, and a yerk at her bows, lean over to leeward again and go hissing through the breast of a huge sea, till you thought she'd go down into it; while there she was, however, lifting head up, with a swift flash of her cutwater, on the cross half wave that joined every first and third one--"billow" and "sea," as you may say. The breeze having drawn more easterly toward morning, Jones had braced her more upon a wind, with reefed main and foresails, and fore-staysail set, which brought out the Aniceta's weatherly qualities to a marvel; as notwithstanding almost a head-wind and a swelling sea, she went nearly as fast as the frigate would have done before the breeze, and not a sign of the land was to be seen from her crosstrees.

It was not till the afternoon, when the midshipman and I had both been busy together seeing various things done about the rigging, as well as having preventer-braces and guys clapped on the booms and gaffs, that we had time to look about us; the schooner still driving along with the breeze strong abeam, and a floating plunge from one wide dark-blue sea to another, as if they handed her onward. Jones had got himself made decent below, as I told him, till what with different clothes and a shave together, besides refreshment from sea weather, he was quite a different man to look at. Even Snelling owned to his sailor-like appearance, though rather surprised at my notion of making him a mate; while as for the men, they didn't know but he had come aboard as such, and to tell the truth, he was having the mainstaysail got up and ready to bend at the time, like one accustomed to give orders. By this time I remembered the harbour officer, Webb, whom we'd carried off so unceremoniously, and found he was still in his "bunk" below, half sulky and half sick, consoling himself with brandy and water till we should get into Table Bay again, as he said. "Only put him into my watch, Mr Collins," said Snelling gravely, "and I'll work him up, sir." The reefer himself, in fact, had all of a sudden turned out in a laughably dignified style, to meet his new post--in full midshipman's rig, dirk and all, with his cocked hat, which I sent him down immediately to change; but he had brushed up his mop of hair, and begun to cultivate the down on his upper lip; while being a deep-shouldered, square-built, short-armed little fellow, as muscular as a monkey, you'd have thought from the back of his coat he was a man cut shorter, and for his face, he had contrived to put such a sour effect into it--meant for great experience, no doubt--that it was only by his eyes one saw he was a boy of sixteen or so; and _they_ were brimful of wild glee, as he jumped about wherever he was needed, doing the work of a couple of ordinary men, and actually delighted when a spray came over the weather bulwarks on top of him, seeing that, instead of the frigate, she was "our schooner" that did it.

"I think she walks, Mr Collins!" observed Snelling, holding up his head stiffly, and looking aloft as we went aft, after shaking ourselves from one of these same sprays. "No denying that, Mr Snelling," said I as gravely; "I only wish your fond parents could see you just now, first mate of such a smart craft, Mister Snelling!" His father was a country baronet, who had sent him off to sea with an allowance--I daresay because his looks were no ornament, and there were plenty more coming; though Snelling always pretended his worthy progenitor was an old man. "Fond be blowed!" said he, starting; "I just see him at this moment at the foot of that blessed old mahogany, proposing my health before the ladies go, and--" Here the schooner rose on a sharp, short wave, making a plunge through it that sent the helmsman swinging to the lee-side of the wheel, while a sea washed up over her forecastle, and away aft with the tubs, buckets, and spars, knocking everybody right and left. Snelling and I held on by the weather main-rigging with our feet in a bath, till she lifted bodily through it, careering to her lee-gunnel. "By George, though!" broke out the reefer, smacking his lips as we drew breath, "I wish he _did_ see me--wouldn't it cheer his declining years, when I'd got to hand the governor carefully below! And such a rough night as we're going to have of it, too, sir!" "You unfilial young dog!" said I; "but so I'm afraid we shall--and no joke either!" Jones was standing near us, watching the looks of the weather with evident uneasiness, and I asked him what he thought of it. "In my opinion, sir," said he, "you'll have some pretty sudden shift of wind ere long, of a kind I have seen more than once off the Cape before--and that as furious as a south-easter ordinarily is hereabouts. Look away yonder, sir!"

It had got to a clear, dry, north-easterly gale, that shook our canvass every time she lifted, singing through the ropes, and bitter cold. Long and heavy as the roll of the sea was, the sky was as keen and clear as glass all round about and aloft, save the mist kicked up by the spray off a wave here and there. If a rag of white cloud appeared, it was blown away, and you saw the black wrinkled side of one wave at a time, a mile wide, you'd have said, freckled all over with spots of foam, and its ridge heaving against the eye of the blast. The waves had begun to break shorter. The schooner, buoyant as she was, and sharp as a dolphin, pitched and rolled at times like mad, and the men forward were standing by to let go the fore-halliards, throat and peak, to ease her a little: when Jones pointed out the bank of gray cloud ahead of us, scarce to be seen through the troughs of the water, except when she lifted well upon a swell of sea. The sun going down in a wild red glare to leeward of us, threw a terrible glitter across the huge slant of one single wave that rose stretching away far and wide from her very bow, then brought out the sulky wrinkled blue in it; the hissing green crests curled over to the very sunset, as it were, while we sunk slowly into the long dark lulling trough, and saw the broken shaft of a rainbow stand glimmering for a moment or two into a black hollow right ahead, when the gale drove it back upon us like an arrow, as the schooner urged through the breast of the next wave. I looked from Snelling to the new mate, who still held on by a belaying-pin and watched the clouds, giving me back a glance that showed he thought the matter more serious than ordinary. "The sooner we strip her to the storm-staysails," said I quickly, as we fell into the trough again, "the better, I think. If it blows harder, we must lie-to with her at once." My eye was anxiously fixed on Jones, for large as the schooner was, between two and three hundred tons, yet no craft in the world is so nice to bring to the wind in a gale, with a heavy sea running. Scudding before it might have done for the frigate, with her full bows, and spars high enough to keep her main-topsail full in spite of the troughs; but even that would have taken us out of our course after the Indiaman. Besides that, to tell the truth, I didn't sufficiently understand fore-and-aft rigged craft in all weathers yet, to be quite sure of what I did at a pinch like the present. "Yes, yes, sir," answered he; "but if you'll take an older man's advice, before that you'll wear her round on the other tack to it. We've the worst to come, or else I'm mistaken, sir."--"You're accustomed to schooners?" asked I firmly, and gazing him in the face. I saw his lips open in the sweep of the wind through our after-rigging, and he made a sign with his hand, while a gnawing sort of spasm, as it were, shot through the muscles of his jaw, and for a moment he gave me a devilishly fierce, keen glance, almost a glare, from under his strong straight eyebrows--then turned away. "Take the trumpet then, Mr Jones," said I, singing out into his ear; "I'll leave her to you, sir. Mr Snelling, let's see the hatches all fast!" And we scrambled along by the belaying-pins.

"Are you all ready fore and aft?" came Jones's voice like thunder in the next dip she made, and he leapt up bareheaded on the breech of one of the small carronades aft, holding on with one hand by the weather main-shrouds, and watching the run of the waves as they glimmered off our lee-beam into the dusk, for full five minutes. I had hold of a rope near him, and his eye was as steady as if he were picking out hills in a view. I had full confidence in the man; but I must say it was a nervous moment to me, when I saw him lift the trumpet to his mouth--and furiously as the wind shook the schooner, you heard his hoarse cry, "Put your helm up--slack off the mainsheet--brail up the mainsail--ease down the weather boom-guy--main-staysail sheet--" And the rest was lost in the wild shriek of the north-east gale. We were hard at it, however, staggering as we hauled and held on, even to the poor half-drowned, terrified Lascars, whom the midshipman had roused out of the caboose and long-boat, shoving the ropes into their leathery hands. But I knew little else till I saw the schooner had payed off before the wind, shearing with a hiss like red-hot iron right through the ridge, betwixt two tremendous combing waves. It swelled green over her larboard bulwark as she heeled over, and she gave a heavy dead lurch with it, as if she would let the next sea break aboard. "Now! now!" shouted Jones, at a pitch of voice like no earthly sound; "aft the mainsheet, for your lives!" He jumped to the wheel himself, at a single bound. We were in two floundering heaps, as we dragged at the mainboom aft, and the head-sheets on the forecastle, while she came trembling up in the long bight of the sea, and took the gale steadily before her other beam. It was blowing harder than ever; and the awful "scud" of the sea rolled her bodily away, as she met it with her weather-bow, washing white over the headrail, with spray from cathead to bowsprit; the gale heaving her down on the lee-beam, till she plunged to the brim on that side, at every forward pitch, so that all hands on deck had to keep crowded together aft. Still it was keen starlight overhead, the gale dry, though it was bitter cold, and the seas long and pretty regular. The schooner behaved wonderfully, being as tight as a bottle; and at the same time we were not only lying our course either for the Mozambique or Indian Ocean, but instead of running farther into the gale, as before, and getting more into the wild Cape latitudes, why, at present she tended to clear out of them. I accordingly agreed with Jones to hold on with everything as long as possible, in spite of the way she was sometimes flung off with the crest of a wave, as it were, making a clear dive with her nose under water through a white seething sea that seemed to swell round the whole horizon: the black bank of cloud off our weather-beam towered like icebergs against the cold green sky to south-east, the stars glittering and twinkling over it, with little hazy rings round them, after a fashion that one of us liked no more than the other.

About midnight, we had got everything off her to the two small storm-staysails, main and fore, the wind blowing great guns, and the half moon shining right over the long bank, as if the back of it were dead-white; while betwixt it and the washing glimmer of moonlight half-way, you'd have thought the black heave of the ridges vanished into a bulk of shadow ten times blacker, save for the heads of spray tossing dimly over in it here and there. All at once, in the very height of the gale, as the black floating clouds from the bank began to cross over the gray scud flying fast aloft, a blue flash of lightning shot zig-zag into the very comb of a wave ahead of us, then came the clap of thunder, loud enough to be heard above the wind, and in half a minute there was a sudden lull. You saw the fleecy rags of scud actually settling together under the dark vapour moving above them, and heard nothing but the vast washing welter of the billows rising and seething for miles round, as if the world were water, while the schooner rolled helplessly away, with her storm-staysails flapping, into the trough. The midshipman almost gasped as he looked to me--not from fear, but as much as to say, "What next?" Our strange mate stood against the fife-rail of the mainmast, apparently too intent on the sky and sea for speaking. For my own part, I let go of my belaying pin, and half tumbled to the wheel, almost knocking the sailor down in my haste to put the helm hard up--for I saw how the blast was to come, fairly before the beam, upon us. "Hard a-starboard with it!" shouted I; "haul down the main-staysail there--let her fall off as she rises!" The last words were never heard, for next moment there was another flash of lightning, this time a blaze all round into the troughs of the sea; I saw a body of mist coming down upon us from south-east, through which the gale struck her on the starboard beam, having suddenly shifted eight points or so. The heavy rolling swell from north-east was close aboard, and as soon as I knew what I was about, here she was leaning over to the full tremendous force of the storm, without power to surge ahead, though struggling to rise like a cart-horse down on his knees with a load uphill of him. 'Twas by instinct, as they say, I found myself scrambling along to her weather main-channels, where I managed to get out on the side, slippery as it was, and drenched with the blinding showers of spray. I had got my knife at work, cutting the lanyards of the shrouds to let the mainmast go, when I saw Snelling creep after me, like a fearless little fellow as he was, dirk in hand; although what was come of Jones I couldn't see, unless he had lost heart and skulked. All at once, to my great joy, the main-staysail blew inway to leeward out of the bolt-ropes, like a scrap of paper, the main-topmast crashed at the cap and went alongside, when the schooner righted to her keel, with a wild bolt forward through the whole width of an immense wave--one of the "third waves" it was, commonly the last and the hugest in a single roll of the sea of the Cape, before you sink into a long gliding valley, with a sort of a lull in it. The scene was so terrible at the moment, though we bore up for full half a minute to the fair steady stroke of the awful gale, nothing but a yeast of mist, scud, and darkness ahead, the spray torn off the ridge of the wave and flying with us, while the triple run of the heavy seas astern was in danger of sweeping her decks from over the poop--that I felt we must try lying-to with her at once. Indeed, Snelling and I hardly knew whether we were holding on or not, as we were half washed inboard and half crawled round the rigging; but Jones had already seized the exact point, when she sank in the hollow, to have the helm eased down to leeward. Meanwhile he had got the reefed foresail balanced and set, with the sheet hauled aft beforehand--a tackle hooked on to the clue, and bowsed amidships--everything else was off her; and with this sail she came slowly up close to the wind on the slant of the next wave, lying-to nearly head toward the force of the sea, as her helm was kept fast, two or three points to leeward. I never had seen a craft of the kind hove-to in a gale before, and a very nice matter it is, too. We drew breath, scarce able to credit our eyes, while the schooner rode apparently safe on a sea rolling mountain-high; rising and falling off from the breasts to the sides of the waves, so far as leeway went, and forging ahead a little at the same time through the fierce spray that showered out of the dark over her weather-bow.

Cape weather as bad I had seen before, but always in good-sized ships; and I owned to Snelling I would rather have handled any one of them, even with a lee-shore near, ten times over, than this schooner of ours in the present case. However, none of us were in any mood for speaking at the time, let alone the waste of breath it was. The best thing we had to do, after getting somewhat satisfied of her weathering it this way, was to have the grog served out to the men, swig off a stiff pannikin one's self, and make one's self as comfortable as possible with his pea-coat in the lee of something. The sight of the sea ridging up with a dim glimmer against the dark, kept your eye fixed to it: first you thought it would burst right aboard, crash down upon the decks; then she lifted with it, swelling broad under her, while the long steady sweep of the gale drove just over the bulwarks with a deep moan: for half a minute, perhaps, a shivering lull, when you heard the bulkheads and timbers creak and strain below from stem to stern, and the bilge-water yearning, as it were, to the water outside. Then, again, it was a howl and a shriek, a wide plunge of sea bore up her weather-bow, and the moment ere she came fairly to, one felt as if the schooner were going to pitch God knows where. Her whole bulwarks shook and shivered, the wind found out every chink in them, whistling round every different rope it split upon, while all the time, the loose wet dreary spars behind the long-boat kept slatting and clattering against each other in the lashings, like planks in a woodyard of a November night. This was the way we stuck till the morning watch showed it all in a drizzling, struggling sort of half light, blowing as hard as ever, the Cape seas rolling and heaving mountain-high, of a pale yesty hue, far and wide to the scud; the spray drifting from the crests, and washing over her bare forecastle, with now and then the white wings of a huge albatross to be seen aslant to windward, riding on the breast of a long wave down into the trough.

Well, the whole blessed day did this sort of thing continue, only varied by now and then a huger sea than ordinary lifting close aboard of us, and we being hove up to get a glimpse of the long glaring streak of horizon through the troughs of the waves: sometimes an unluckier splash than usual over the bow and through the forechains, that made us look sharp lest the canvass of the foresail should go, or the schooner broach end-on to the sea. Otherwise, all we had to do was to watch the binnacle, hold on with one hand to a rope, and with the other to our caps; or turn out and in with each other down the booby-hatch for a snatch of sleep, and a bit of biscuit and cold beef, with a glass of grog. Mr Webb, the harbour officer, was to be seen below in his berth all this time, lying as peaceable as a child--whether he was dead sick, or only confoundedly afraid, I didn't know; but I must say I felt for the poor fellow when I heard him ask Snelling, in a weak voice, if he would get somebody to stand off the bull's-eye in the deck over his berth, as it always made him think there was a new hurricane coming on. "D--n it, you low skulking hound!" said the reefer, who had wonderfully little pity in his make, "it can't be worse--what d'ye want light for, eh?" "Only to see the opposite wall," said Webb, meekly; "do, sir--oh now!" "Oh, you lubber ye!" said Snelling, "don't you know a bulkhead from a wall yet? If you'd come on deck to bear a hand like others, you wouldn't need light; and _I_ thought you might do for a mate aboard, too--pah, you scum!" "Mr Snelling," said I sharply, as he came through the cabin, "a worm will turn when it's trod upon, and so you may find yet, sir!" "Well, Mr Collins," said he, as confidentially as if I hadn't meant to give him a set down, "I don't like the fellow's eye. I'll look after him, sir!" Not to mention the young rogue's power of face, which was beyond brass, he had a way of seeing you in two places at once with that upward squint of his, as if his eyes were the points of a pair of compasses, that made the officers of the Hebe always send him to the masthead directly, for fear it should take the frown out of them. In fact, when Snelling's twinkling weather-eye lighted on one's neck, without the other, you almost felt it tickle you, and as usual I turned away with a "pshaw!"

On the second morning, the gale at last began to break, shifting southward; on which, as soon as the sea ran a little easier, I had the helm cautiously put up at a favourable moment, the reefed mainsail, fore-topmast-staysail, and square fore-topsail set as she got before the wind, and away the schooner went; rising on the wide deep-blue swells with a long roll in them, then shearing ahead through their breasts, wrinkled and seething pale-green, till she sank with the fall of the wave--the stump of her aftermast standing, and the fore one shortened by the to'gallant-mast. You may easily believe there was no one aboard more eager to get clear of this weather than myself; as in ordinary circumstances, with a craft like this, in two or three days more we might have been in a high enough latitude to begin looking out for the Indiaman. For my part, I can't deny that the wish for having Tom Westwood safe out of harm's way, and with me in the schooner, strong as it was, played second to the notion of seeing sweet Violet Hyde in any way again, if it was only the last time before she went out of reach altogether; for her getting amongst East India ways of doing, high-flying civilians and soldiers, shows, and sights, either in Calcutta or up-country, was equal to anything else, in my mind. Still, we had six or seven days longer of the heavy seas and hard gales, before north-easting enough could be made to take us beyond the Cape winter, just then coming on, and which the Seringapatam had very likely escaped by two or three days, so that she would have a considerable start of us.

By this time we were standing well up for the Mozambique Channel, which I had heard the Indiamen intended to take in company; a piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water again, where, being the only ship from Bombay, she would no doubt part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing that troubled me most: somehow or other, whenever the picture of Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long after she cleared the Leychelles islands, where a lonely enough stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west, dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak--till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it annoyed me most to feel him seeing into _me_, as it were, without troubling himself. "We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round Cape Mary yonder," said he, stepping forward. "So I expect, myself, Mr Jones," said I, "though you evidently know the coast better than I do." With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had seen it two or three times before.

With the evening we were once more running sharp on a wind up channel; and when she did get her own way in a good breeze, the schooner's qualities came out. 'Twas a perfect luxury to look over the side and see the bubbles pass, her sharp bows sliding through it like a knife, she eating into the wind all the time in a way none but a fore-and-aft clipper could hope to do, with a glassy blue ripple sent back from her weather-bow as far as the forechains: then to wake of a morning and feel her bounding under you with a roll up to windward, while the water gushed through and through below the keel, and ran yearning and toppling away back along the outer timbers into her boiling wake, working with the moving rudder. And our man-o'-warsmen were quite delighted with the Young Hebe, as they still called her. Snelling was in his element while we were having the new spars sent up aloft--a set of longer sticks than before--till she had twice the air, as well as a knowing rake aft. Next thing was to get the long-brass nine-pounder amidships from under the boat, where the Frenchmen had kept it, besides which we found another in her hold; so that, added to six small carronades already on deck, we made a pretty show. Meanwhile, for my own part, I kept cracking on with every stitch of canvass that could be clapped upon the spars, including studding-sails. Jones himself didn't know better than I did by this time how to handle the craft, schooner though she was, in the way of making her use what weather we had to the best purpose. Variable as it proved, too, I was aware the Indiamen would have pretty much the same now as we had; so that, on going aloft with the glass, as I did every watch in the day, I soon began each time expecting one or other of them to heave in sight.

As for the five hands from Cape Town, they seemed to have fallen in cheerfully enough with our own; and as soon as the fine weather came, the gang of Lascars were set to duty like the rest. Snelling would have them even trained to work the guns; although, if it blew at all hard, not one could be got to go aloft except their old _serang_, and the _tindal_, his mate. What surprised me most was the harbour officer himself at last asking, as Mr Snelling told me, to be put in a watch; but as the midshipman said there was no doubt Webb had made a voyage or two before, somewhere or other, I agreed to it at once. "I'm not sure, sir," added the midshipman, with one of his doubtful double looks, "but the gentleman may have seen blue-water the first time at Government expense, and not in the service either--he don't look fore and aft enough, Mr Collins, harbour officer though he be; but never mind, sir, I'll see after him!"--"Pooh," said I, laughing; "if he does turn to, Mr Snelling, it shan't be in the watch _you_ have to do with! Hand him over to Mr Jones." By this time I had changed the mid into my own watch, and given Jones charge of the other--so to him the harbour officer went.

The main character aboard of us, to me at any rate, was this Jones himself. The fact was, at first I had my doubts of him altogether, partly owing to the queer way we got hold of him, partly on account of his getting the upper hand so much through chance, in the tremendous weather we had at the outset, till I wasn't sure but it might come into the fellow's head of itself, to be upon some drift or other that might cost me trouble, as things stood. However, I no sooner felt where I was, and got the craft under my own spoke, than I came to set him down for nothing but one of those strange hands you fall in with at sea sometimes, always sailing with a "purser's name," a regular wonder of a shipmate, and serving to quote every voyage after, by way of a clincher on all hard points, not to say an oracle one can't get beyond, and can't flow sky-high enough. To tell the truth, though, Jones was as thorough a seaman as ever I met with--never at a loss, never wanting on any hand; whether it was the little niceties we stood in need of for setting the schooner's rigging all right again, which none but a blue-water long-voyage sailor can touch, or, what comes to be still better in tropical latitudes, a cool head and a quick hold, with full experience for all sorts of weather, 'twas much the same to him. He was all over like iron, too, never seeming to stand in need of sleep, and seeing like a hawk. At any hour I came on deck in his watch, there was Jones, all awake and ready, till hearing him walk the planks over my head of a fine night made me at times keep my eyes open, listening to it and the wash of the water together. I fancied there was something restless in it, like the sea, with now and then an uneven sort of a start; and at last it would come to full stop, that gave me the notion of how he was standing quiet in the same spot; whether he was looking aloft, or thinking, or leaning over the side, or what he was going to do, troubled me wonderfully. The only want in his seamanship I noticed, he evidently wasn't used to handle a large ship; but craft of some kind I was pretty sure he had commanded in the course of his life. As for taking observations, he could do it better than I could then; while the knowledge he had on different heads, that came out by chance, made you think more of a Cambridge graduate than a common sailor, such as he had shipped for with us. The strangest part of all about him, though, was what I couldn't well name, not to this day: 'twas more grained in his manner, and the ring of his voice at particular moments, as well as his walk, though these were the smart seaman's no less; but one couldn't help thinking of a man that had known the world ashore some time or other, in a different enough station from now--ay, and in a way to bring out softer lines in his face than reefing topsails or seeing the main-tack ridden down would do. The nearest I could come to calling it, far apart as the two men stood, was to fancy he reminded me of Lord Frederick Bury himself; especially when he looked all of a sudden to the horizon in that wide, vacant kind of fashion, as if he expected it farther off than it was: only Jones's face was twice the age, like a man's that had had double the passions in it at the outset, and given them full swing since then; with a sleeping devil in his eye yet, besides, as I thought, which only wanted somewhat to rouse it. Only for that, I had a sort of leaning to Jones myself; but, as it was, I caught myself wishing, over and over, for something to make us fall regularly foul of each other, and get rid of this confounded doubtful state. One hitch of a word to take hold of, and, by Jove! I felt all the blood in my body would boil out in me to find how we stood, and show it; but nothing of the kind did Jones let pass--and as close as the sea itself he was in regard to his past life. As for the men from the frigate, at least, they seemingly looked on him with no great fondness, and a good deal of respect, in spite of themselves, for his seamanship; whereas, if he had been left in the forepeak in place of the cabin, I've no doubt in a short time it would have been no man but Jones. You light now and then upon a man afloat, indeed, that his shipmates hold off from, as healthy dogs do from a mad one; and you saw they had some sort of an inkling of the gloomy close nature Jones had in him, by the way they obeyed his orders. Webb's three Cape Dutchmen seemed to have a notion he was some being with mysterious powers, while the Lascars ran crouching at his very word--some of them being, as I found, Malays, and the rest Mussulmen from Chittagong; but Jones could send them about in their own language, Dutchmen and all--a part of the matter which did not tend to keep me less careful over him. Still I observed, since his coming aboard, that Jones never once touched liquor, which had plainly enough been his ruin ashore; whether on account of meaning to pull up once for all and mend, or only to have a wilder bout at next port, or else to keep himself steady for aught that might turn up, I couldn't settle in my own mind. Though deucedly doubtful of its being the first, the very idea of it made one feel for the man; and, in case of his doing well, I had no small hopes of something in the upshot to save a real sailor like him from going to the devil altogether, as he seemed doing.

Now, after our getting clear of the rough Cape weather, and the dead-lights being taken out of the stern-windows, I had given a look, for the first time, into the schooner's after-cabins, which were pretty much as the people she belonged to before had left them, except for the rough work the gale had played. There were two of them, one opening into the other; and I must say it was a melancholy sight to meet the bright sunlight streaming into them from off the water astern, with all the little matters either just as if the owners were still inside, or else tumbled about at sixes and sevens. One drawer, in particular, had come out of a table, scattering what was in it on the deck: there was a half open letter in a woman's hand, all French, and showing a lock of hair, with a broken diamond cross of the French Legion of Honour, besides a sort of paper-book full of writing, and two printed ones bound in morocco. I picked up the letter and the cross, put them in again, and shoved the drawer back to its place, though I brought the books away with me to have a glance over. What struck me most, though, was a plaster figure of the French emperor himself, standing fastened on a shelf, with one hand in the breast of his great coat, and looking calmly out of the white sightless eyes; while right opposite hung a sort of curtain which you'd have thought they were fixed upon. When I hauled it aside, I started--there, on a shelf to match the other, was a beautiful smiling child's head to the shoulders, of pure white marble, as if it leant off the bulkhead like a cherub out of the clouds. Spite of all, however, the touch of likeness it had to the head I got such a glimpse of at Longwood, even when the hot sunlight showed it in my spy-glass so pale and terrible, was sufficient to tell me what _this_ was,--Napoleon's own little son, in fact, who was made king of Rome, as I remembered hearing at the time. The thought of the schooner's strange French captain, and his desperate scheme, came back on me so strong, joined to what I saw he had an eye to in fitting out his cabins, that, for my own part, I hadn't the heart to use them myself, and at first sight ordered the dead-lights to be shipped again, and the door locked.

'Twas a good many days after this, of course, and we had made a pretty fast run up the Mozambique, in spite of the sharp navigation required, sighting nothing larger than the native and Arab craft to be seen thereabouts; we were beginning to clear out from amongst the clusters of islands and shoals at the channel head, when two large sail were made in open water to nor'-eastward. Next morning by daybreak we were to windward of the weathermost,--a fine large Indiaman she was, crowding a perfect tower of canvass. Shortly after, however, the schooner was within hail, slipping easily down upon her quarter, which seemed to give them a little uneasiness, plenty of troops as she seemed to have on board, and looming like a frigate. After some showing of keeping on, and apparently putting faith in the man-o'-war pennant I hoisted, she hove into the wind, when we found she was the Company's ship Warringford, and the other the something Castle, I forget which, both for Calcutta. The next thing, as soon as they found we were tender to his Majesty's frigate Hebe, was to ask after the Seringapatam; on which I was told she was three or four days sail ahead with the Mandarin, bound to China, neither of them having put in at Johanna Island to refresh. I was just ready to put our helm up again and bid good-bye, when the tiffin gong could be heard sounding on the Indiaman's quarterdeck, and the old white-haired captain politely asked me if I wouldn't come aboard with one or two of my officers to lunch. Mr Snelling gave me a wistful glance--there were a dozen pretty faces admiring our schooner out of the long white awnings: but even if the notion of bringing up Snelling himself as my first officer hadn't been too much for me, not to speak of either Jones or Webb, why the very thoughts that everything I saw recalled to me, made me the more eager to get in sight of the Seringapatam. "Thank you, sir," answered I. "No--I must be off after the Bombay ship."--"Ah," hailed the old captain, "some of your Admiral's post-bags, I suppose. Well, keep as much northing as you can, sir, and I daresay you'll find her parted company. She's got a jury fore topmast up, for one she lost a week ago; so you can't mistake her for the Mandarin, with a good glass."--"Have you noticed any suspicious craft lately, sir?" asked I. "Why, to tell you the truth, lieutenant," sang out he, looking down off the high bulwarks at our long nine-pounders and the knot of Lascars, "none more so than we thought _you_, at first, sir!" The cadets on the poop roared with laughter, and an old lady with two daughters seemed to eye Snelling doubtfully through an opera-glass, as the reefer ogled both of them at once. "By the bye," sang out the captain of the Indiaman to me again, "I fancy the passengers in that ship must have got somehow uncomfortable--one of our Bengal grandees aboard of her wanted a berth to Calcutta with us, 'tother day in the Mozambique; but we're too full already!"--"Indeed, sir?" said I; but the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure, and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze, till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should overhaul the chase.

Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta--Fancy the thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it--the lively schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the sole passengers aboard--why, the idea of it was fit to drive me crazy with impatience.

Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough--a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours--and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was _Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française_, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India,--when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.

It was middle watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all was quiet--Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang, and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his leathery Hindoo face and mustache like a firefly in the root of a banian, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour. These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics; and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw me--a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put it in my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time, the serang stopped his talk, and sidled off.

However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like dew-drops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon, through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's two long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had, too, blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft, and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells, as deep in the hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant, one couldn't say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western quarter, till you saw a star in it. The night was so lovely, in fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times, when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of the watch on the weather quarterdeck, which surprised the more in Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and, to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by the weather side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as I thought, apparently speaking to some one down the schooner's side; upon which I stepped across. Jones's back was to me as I looked over too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash of the water, which was louder there than inboard, while you heard the plash from her bows every time she forged, he evidently didn't hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading loud out to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had no doubt left in the dining-cabin--the book open in both hands--he giving it forth in long staves, with a break between--and regular Greek it was, too: you'd have thought he timed them to the plash alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost fancied I made a meaning of them--each like a wave, as it were, sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it you can't conceive; and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of the kind, he stopped.[8] "There!" said he, "there, old Homer--women, wine, and adventure--what could the devil ask more, blind old prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash away, lying old blue-water, you cant wash _it_ out--and wine--no, not the strongest rum in Cape Town--can wash _you_ out!" With that Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand, muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. "Still it rouses the old times in me!" said he. "Here comes this book across me, too. Ay, ay, and the Rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek out of old wild Homer all week day--and--and his girl slipping out and in--'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh--then warn me against the sea--ha!" The laugh that came from him at that moment was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering "Women, wine, and adventure, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess too; still he _was_ a good old man the Rector--no guile nor evil in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with--ah, the less of that. 'Twas in me, though, and all the blood--and in _her_ dark eyes, too, Mary, though she was! Damnation!" he broke out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something under the side, "I didn't take her the first time I came home--nor the second--but--but--ay, I came _back_! Oh that parting-stile, in sight of the sea--and that packet-ship--but oh God! that night, that night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue--blue--" And he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. "Hellish, hellish by God!" he said, suddenly standing upright and looking straight aloft, with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky, and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened along the gaff. "She was pure to the last!" I heard him say, though I had walked to the other side of the boom; "ay, though I rot to perdition for it!--Down, old fiend!" as he lifted his one hand with the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away astern.

[8] Looking into Homer's _Iliad_ here for a passage to correspond with the account given by the naval man, one is somewhat at a loss; but at the end of the second book of the _Odyssey_ there occur lines which might not improbably have been those recited. They are such as might well, in the original, excite longings after sea-life, and revive feelings of the kind most natural to the seafaring character, apparently known to Captain Collins only as "Jones." Will the readers of Maga accept, illustratively, of a rough translation?--

Then to Telemachus glided on board divinest Athenè, Where on the poop she sat, and near her Telemachus rested. Then were the moorings loosed by the mariners coming aboard her, Joyous coming on board, and seated apart on the benches. A fair westerly breeze by the blue-eyed goddess was wafted, Cheerfully rippling along, and over the deep-coloured ocean. Now to his shipmates shouted Telemachus, while to the oar-blades Leapt the impatient surge, till each at his order obeying, Stepped they the pine-mast then in the mast-hole ready amidships, Firmly staying it both ways down; and next by the well-twisted hide-thongs, Snowily spreading abroad, the sails drew fluttering downward. And in the sail-breast blew the bellying wind with a murmur, The purple wave hissed from the prow of the bark in its motion; Into the riotous wave she plunged, pursuing her voyage. But when their oars they drew back to the galley securely,-- The swift, dark-sided bark, as she full on her journey exulted-- Then to her foaming beak they brought the o'er-bubbling goblet Of red-hued wine, and poured out on her head a libation To the immortal gods, that dwell in the sky and in ocean, But to the blue-eyed daughter of Jupiter mostly, Athené. All night then they sailed, till the morning rose on their voyage.

Now I had heard nothing from Jones that I couldn't have fancied before, and there was even a humour to my mind in the notion of clapping it all on old Homer, if Homer it was, and heaving him overboard with such a confoundedly complimentary burial-service. But some of the words that dropped from him shot through one's veins like icicles: and now there was something fearful in the sight of him standing straight again, with a look right into the heavens, as if he'd have searched them up and up--in that lovely night too, spread far and wide--the very rays of the moonlight sparkled down the weather side of the sail I was on, trembling on the leech-ropes and brails as they swayed, and into the hollows they made in the belly of the taut canvass: the long shining spot of it wavered and settled on the same two planks of the quarterdeck, beyond the shadow of the bulwark from the moon's eye, fast as the schooner moved through the water, and it was like a hand laid upon her, with the air and wind stretching between. Of a sudden I saw Jones wheel slowly round where he stood, like a man turned about by main strength, with his eyes fixed aloft, and his one arm raising from the shoulder till his forefinger pointed to something, as I thought, about the fore-to'gallant sail. His face was like ashes, his eye glaring, and I sprang across to him under the main-boom. "See!" said he, never turning his head, and the words hissed betwixt his teeth, "look at that!"

"For heaven's sake, _what_, Mr Jones?" said I. "_Her--her_," was his answer, "coming against the wind--dead fore-and-aft in the shade of the sails!" On the lee-sides of them the high boom-sails made a sort of a thin shadow against the moonshine off the other beam, which came glimpsing through between them out of a world of air to the south-east, with a double of it flickering alongside on the water as it heaved past to leeward; and whether it was fancy, or whether it was but the reflection aloft from below, I thought, as I followed Jones's finger, I saw something like the shape of a woman's dress floating close in with the bonnet of the foretopmast-staysail, from the dusk it made to the breast of the fore-topsail, and even across the gush of white light under the yard--long and straight, as it were, like a thing lifted dripping out of water, and going, as he said, right against the schooner's course. "Now in the foresail!" whispered Jones, his eye moving as on a pivot, and a thrill ran through me at the notion, for I made out one single moment what I thought a face against the sky at the gaff-end, white as death, shooting aft toward the mainsail,--though next instant I saw it was but a block silvered by the moon as the schooner lifted. "Now the mainsail!" said he huskily, "and now--now, by the heavens--rising--rising to the gaff-topsail--away! Oh Christ! _Mary!_"

He was leaning aft toward the width of the sky, with both hands clutched together before him, shuddering all over. For the first minute my own blood crept, I must say; but directly after I touched him on the shoulder. "This is strange, Mr Jones," said I, "what's the matter?" "Once in the Bermudas!" said he, still wildly, "once in the Pacific--and now! Does the sea give up its dead, though, think ye?"--"You've a strong fancy, Mr Jones, that's all," I said, sternly. "Fancy!" said he, though beginning to get the better of himself; "did ye ever fancy a face looking down--down at you in the utterest scorn--down sideways off the shoulder of the garment, as it sticks wet into every outline like life? All the time gliding on the other way, too, and the eyes like two stars a thousand miles away beyond, as kind as angels'--neither wind nor sea can stop it, till suddenly it rises to the very cope of heaven--still looking scornfully down at you!--No, sir, fancy it _you_ couldn't!" The glance he gave me was somehow or other such as I couldn't altogether stomach from the fellow, and he was turning to the side when I said quietly, "No, nor Homer either, I daresay!" Jones started and made a step towards me. "You heard me a little ago!" rapped out he, eyeing me. "Yes," I said; "by Jove! who could help being curious to hear a sailor spout Greek as you were doing, Mr Jones?"

"The fact is, Mr Collins," answered he, changing his tone, "I was well brought up--the more shame to me for bringing myself to what you saw me. I had a sister drowned, too, on her passage to America one voyage, when I was mate of the ship myself. No wonder it keeps my nerves shaking sometimes, when I've had too long about shore."--"Well, well, Jones," said I, rather softening, "you've proved yourself a first-rate seaman, and I've got nothing to complain of--but I tell You fairly I had my doubts of you! So you'll remember you're under the Articles of War aboard here, sir," added I, "which as long as I have this schooner under hand, I'll be hanged if I don't carry out!" All at once the thought struck me a little inconveniently, of my carrying off Webb and his people, and I fancied Jones's quick eye wandered to the Lascars forward. "I know it, sir," said he, looking me steadily in the face; "and what's more, Mr Collins, at any rate I couldn't forget you picked me out, confounded low as I looked, to come aft here! 'Tis not every captain afloat that has such a good eye for a seaman, as _I_ know!" "Oh well, no more about it," I said, walking forward on the weather side, and leaving him on the lee one as distinctly as Lord Frederick Bury could have done to myself in the frigate. Jones no doubt thought I didn't notice the slight wrinkle that gathered round his lee-eye when he gave me this touch of butter at the end; but I put it down for nothing more, gammon though it was.

It was near the end of the watch, the moon beginning to set, while it still wanted three hours of daybreak in those latitudes, when the look-out on the top-gallant-yard, who was stationed there in man-o'-war cruising fashion, reported a sail to windward. Just then the midshipman came on deck to his watch, wonderfully early for him indeed: and on my remarking it was probably the Indiaman at last, Jones himself went aloft with the night-glass to make her out. "Mr Snelling," said I, "see the hands on deck ready for going about." Next minute I saw him rousing up the rest of the Lascars, who slept watch and watch on the forecastle. Only five or six of the Hebe's men were up; and all of them, save the man at the wheel, ran aloft to rig out stunsail-booms to windward, as soon as the schooner was fairly on the starboard tack, standing to nor'-eastward. Suddenly I saw a scuffle between the midshipman, and the tindal,[9] a stout dark-faced young Bengalee, with a jaunty scull-cap and frock, whom Snelling had probably helped along with a touch of a rope's end; and in a moment two or three more of them were upon him; while the reefer drew his dirk, and sung out to me, scarce before I was with him, the Lascars rolling into the lee-scuppers at two kicks of my foot. Webb and three of the men from Cape Town were hoisting a stunsail at the time, the smart man-o'-war'smen aloft singing out to them to bear a hand. What with the noise of the sail flapping, and its being betwixt my own men and the deck, they could know nothing of the matter; and the Lascars let go the halliards in a body, making a rush at Snelling and myself with everything they could pick up in the shape of a spar.

[9] Lascar boatswain's mate.

This would have been nothing, as in two or three minutes more the men would have been down, and the cocoa-faced rascals dodged every way from the handspike I got hold of; but I just caught a glimpse on one side of the sly old serang shoving on the fire-scuttle to keep down the watch below; and on the other, of Webb looking round him, evidently to see how matters stood. Two Dutchmen seized the first sailor that came down the rigging, by the legs, and I saw the affair must be finished at once, it had so much the look of a regular plot on Webb's part, if Jones wasn't concerned in it too. I made one spring upon my Cape Town gentleman, and took him by the throat with one hand, while I hit the biggest Dutchman full behind the ear, felling him to the deck; on which the man-o'-war's man grappled his watchmate, and Webb was struggling with me sufficiently to keep both my hands full, when I had a pleasant inkling of a Malay Lascar slipping toward my back with a bare kreese in his fist. I just looked over my shoulder at his black eyes twinkling devilishly before he sprang, when some one came sliding fair down from the fore-top-mast-head by a backstay, and pitched in a twinkling on top of his head--a thing enough to break the neck of a monument. Directly after, I saw Jones himself hitting right and left with his night-glass, from the moonlight to the shadow of the foresail, while Snelling tumbled over a Lascar at every slap, standing up in boxer style. By the time the rest of the men came down all was settled--the Dutchmen sulking against the bulwarks, and Webb gasping after I let him go. "Boatswain," said I to one of the sailors, "clap that man in irons below. Mr Snelling, see the watch called, sir." "I 'ad the law with me," said Webb gloomily. "You plotted it then, Mr Webb?" I said. "Didn't you carry us off illegally?" said he. "I only meant to recover the vessel--upon my honour, nothing more, sir; and if you're 'ard with me, you'll have to answer for it, I assure you!" Here he looked round to Jones in a strange way, as I fancied for a moment; but Jones turned on his heel with a sneer. "Why, Mr Webb," answered I, "you lost that tack by offering yourself in a watch, which makes the thing neither more nor less than mutiny--so take him below, do ye hear, bo'sun!" And down he went.

"Now, Mr Jones," said I, as soon as all hands were on deck, "you'll be so good as have half of these Lascars seized to the rigging here, one after the other, and see a good dozen given to each of their backs; then these two Dutchmen, each three dozen--then pipe down the watch, sir." Jones glanced at me, then at the fellows, then at me again. I thought he hung aback for an instant; but do it I was determined he should, for a reason I had; and I gave him back the look steady as stone. "Ay, ay, sir," said he at last, touching his hat. I walked aft to the capstan, and stood there till every mother's son of them had got his share, the Lascars wriggling and howling on the deck after it, and the Dutchmen twisting their backs as they walked off. 'Twas the first time I did that part of duty in command; and I felt, in the circumstances, I was in for carrying it out with a taut hand.

By this time the moon was setting, and in the dusk we lost sight of the sail to windward; but as we were heading well up to weather upon her, and going at least ten knots, I turned in below for a little, leaving the midshipman. Accordingly, it wasn't very long before Snelling called me in broad daylight. "She's a large ship, Mr Collins," said he, "standing under all sail on a wind. I hope to goodness, sir, it's that confounded Indiaman at last!" I hurried on deck, took the glass aloft, and soon made out the jury-foretop-mast shorter than the main, as the old captain mentioned. Accordingly it was with somewhat of a flutter in me I came down again, watching the schooner's trim below and aloft, to see if I couldn't take an hour or so off the time betwixt that and once more setting eyes on the Judge's daughter.

THE JEW BILL.

The period at which this obnoxious measure has been brought forward, limits our present remarks to a few paragraphs. But we have so long fought for the Constitution, that We cannot suffer the month to pass without reprobating an intrigue, which we cannot but regard as most dangerous to the Empire. We are no bigots,--we demand no surrender of the rights of opinion,--we force no man to our altars,--we forbid no man's access to his own; but to avert public evil is a duty of every subject,--to strip hypocrisy is clearly an act of justice,--and to protect religion is only an act of supreme necessity. We solemnly believe, that to bring the Jew into the Parliament of England, would be at once injury to the Constitution, a peril to public principle, and an insult to Christianity.

The attempt was made last year, and was defeated. It is now to be renewed, without the slightest additional ground, and the battle will have to be fought over again. Must we not ask, is this experiment to be again made on public patience? Is it meant to tell the people of England, that what common sense rejects, is to be forced on general weariness; that what manly principle repels, is to be gained by vulgar perseverance; and that which public judgement denounces, is to be made law by the united effect of disgust and disdain producing indifference? We trust that the common sense of England will speak such a language to the Legislature, as to extinguish the _prestige_ that obstinacy in the wrong is more effective than honesty in the right; that to be sickened of a struggle, is a legitimate reason for abandoning the contest; and that a great nation can be yawned out of the greatest interests in the world.

The first question of all is, Can this admission of the Jew into a Christian legislature be compatible with the character of a Christian constitution? If we live in bad times, with the evidence of bad practices in important positions, and with a powerful propensity among influential classes to sacrifice everything to the moment, this consciousness should only be a stronger claim on the vigilance of honest men. However strangely it may sound in some ears, England is still a Christian country: however some may doubt, the country still demands a Christian legislature; and, notwithstanding all opinions on the subject, we believe that to worship God and Mammon is still as impossible as it was pronounced to be eighteen hundred years ago. We believe that it is only by national virtue that nations can retain the divine protection; that zeal for the divine honour is the supreme source of virtue; and that to sacrifice the honour of God to any earthly purpose, is only to bring divine desertion on a people. Must we not ask, is there any national demand, national necessity, or religious principle, connected with giving legislative power, at this time, to the Jew?

Where is the national demand? If the Jew, in some instances, is rich, is mere money to be the qualification for giving legislative power? In the simplest point of view, must we not demand ability, personal honour, a personal interest in the country, and a personal evidence that the trustee will never betray or abandon his trust? But what is the Jew? He has _no_ country. By being equally a member of all countries, he is equally an alien in all; beyond the casual connexion of trade, he has no connexion with any kingdom of earth: his only country is his counting-house,--his only city is the Exchange. His world consists in his traffic; and if any calamity should fall on one of those kingdoms where he keeps his counting-house, he transfers himself, like a Bill of Exchange, to the next; and in whatever land is equally at home. The Jew gives no pledge to any country; he is no possessor of land, no leader of science, no professor of the liberal pursuits, no manufacturer, no merchant, no sailor, no soldier; as if some irresistible destination prohibited him from ever finally settling in any land, his property is always ready to take wing. Must we not ask, Is this fugitive the man who has a right to share the privileges of the Englishman, bound, as we are, to the soil by nature, and bound to its defence and prosperity by the indissoluble obligation of nature?

In a political point of view, what security could we have for confiding in the Jew,--for intrusting our finances, our liberties, our councils, the guardianship of our country, to the Jew? The especial and perpetual object of his existence is money. Now, while every man knows that money is the great corrupter of the human mind, that, except in minds fully fortified by principle, it overwhelms all other objects, and that, in all the convulsions of the greatest war of Europe--the war of the French Revolution--the secrets of every Continental cabinet were at the mercy of the purse; do we desire to see this supremacy extended? Do we desire to see the principles of fraud and falsehood made a regular material in the market of public transactions, and lucre exalted into the sole object of existence?

As to the practical effect of bringing the tribe of the money-dealer into Parliament, would any man, in the exercise of his experience, wish to see the finances of England in the hands of any Jew in existence? And let no man pretend that this conception is imaginary. Place a Jew in Parliament, giving him the power of making a party; give him the opportunity of working on the impulses, habits, or necessities of men; and in twelve months you may see him anything he desires,--even Chancellor of the Exchequer. But he is a man of honour; he will not sell the secrets of Council; he will not copy a despatch for the benefit of his partners; he will not raise or sink the stocks, though every movement may add a million to the coffers of his partnership. We hope not; but can we run the risk? But the fact is, that he is a man not to be judged of by the feelings of any other in the world; he differs from all other men. What is patriotism to the Jew? He knows nothing of it. Who ever heard of the Jew taking any part in those noble struggles which have saved the honour or secured the rights of any nation on earth? His business is gain, and it is the only business that he ever follows; from the man with ten firms and five hundred clerks, with a counting-house in every village from the Rhine to the Neva, down to the seller of old clothes, and the pedlar in dilapidated slippers, who ever heard of a Jew thinking of anything but to make money?

But the view which must supersede all others, is the aspect of the measure as it relates to religion. Great Britain is certainly, on the whole, a religious country: it perhaps contains more true religion than all the earth besides; but its fault is, that, though reverent in the church, it does not sufficiently carry its reverence into the course of common life. If this were done, there would be no difficulties in public opinion. It is in no superstition that we say, the only question to be asked on any doubtful course of action is, "Will it please God? Is it for the honour of God?" This is what the Scripture calls "walking with God," and describes as the essential character of virtue. But the majority of mankind add to those questions, Will it benefit myself? The statesman asks, Shall I lose power by it?--the merchant, Shall I lose profit?--the tradesman, Shall I lose custom? And this question is the master-key to the diversities of opinion on points which, to the unbiassed mind, are as clear as the sun.

Let us put the matter in a more every-day point of view. Let us suppose the question asked, Would you take for your friend a man who denied your God, who scoffed at your religion, and who declared yourself a dupe or a deceiver? Yet all this the Jew does openly by the profession of his own creed. Can you conceive it for the honour of your Redeemer, to give this man your confidence in the highest form in which it can be given by a subject? Or can you bring yourself to believe that you are doing your duty to Christ in declaring by your conduct, that to be hostile to Him makes no imaginable difference in your estimate of the character of any man?

On those points it is wholly impossible that there can be any doubt whatever. The enemy of Christ cannot, without a crime, be favoured, still less patronised and promoted, by the friend of Christ. Now, this feeling is neither prejudice nor persecution: it merely takes the words of the Jew himself; and it would not force him, by the slightest personal injury, to change the slightest of his opinions. It is merely the conduct which all who were unbiassed by gain, or unperverted by personal objects, would follow in any common act of life. To give power to the Jew, from the motives of pelf, or party, or through indifference, is criminal; and it is against this crime that we protest, and that we desire to guard our fellow Christian.

We must now rapidly pass through the leading points of the question. The Jew is a "condemned man." More than three thousand years ago, Moses, in pronouncing the future history of the people, declared that a teacher should finally be sent to their nation, like himself, a man; and mingling as such among men, to give them a law, not in clouds and thunders as at Sinai, nor written in tables of stone, nor fixed in stern ordinances, but written in the heart, and acting by the understanding: and that, if they rejected him, they should be made nationally to answer the national crime to the Almighty. Him they rejected, and the rejection has been answered by national ruin. The prophecy is before the eye of the world; the fulfilment is also before the eye of the world.

The Jew is an undone being, if there be truth in the words of inspiration. "He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son, _shall not see life_; but the _wrath of God_ abideth on him." (John iii. 35, 36.) What right have we to dispense with such words? The declaration is unequivocal; and if there be a compassionate allowance for the barbarian, who has no Bible and whom the gospel has never reached, what allowance can there be for the Jew, possessing the Bible and living in the sound of the gospel? But this language is not alone. We have the declaration of ruin constantly expressed or implied, "Who is a liar, but he that _denieth that Jesus is the Christ_? Whosoever _denieth the Son_, the same _hath not the Father_." (1 John ii. 22)

Are those deniers the men whom the Christian is to take into the very centre of his political favouritism? Are the brands of Scripture on the national forehead to be scorned by a people professing obedience to the Divine will? Can human conception supply a stronger proof of the reality of those brands than the condition of the Jews ever since their first fulfilment, in the fall of Jerusalem--the terrible reply to their own anathema, "His blood be on us, and on our children."

What is the state of the Jew himself with respect to sacred things? Nothing but ignorance can speak of the _religion_ of the Jew. So far as belongs to worship, he has _none_. Sacrifice, the solemnisation of the three great festivals, the whole ceremonial of the temple, were _essential_ to Judaism. The Jew cannot perform a single public ceremonial of his religion. Sacrifice was supremely essential for nearly the atonement of every fault of man; but it could be offered only in the Temple. The Temple is gone. What now becomes of his atonement?

A weak attempt is made to answer this tremendous question, by referring to the condition of the Jews in Babylon. But what comparison can exist between a captivity prophetically limited to years not exceeding a single life, passed under the protection of kings, and under the guardianship of the most illustrious man of Asia, the prophet Daniel, cheered by prophecy and miracle, and certain of return, and the eighteen hundred years' banishment of the Jew? What comparison between the temporary suspension of the national worship, and the undefined and hopeless duration which seems to lie before the Jewish exile; and which, when it shall close at last, will extinguish his Judiasm, will show him his folly only by stripping the superstition of the Rabbi and the Talmud from his eyes, and will awake him at once to the extent of his error, to the exercise of his understanding, and to the worship of Christianity?

After considerations of this order, all others must be almost trivial. But the common declamation on the _natural right_ of the Jew to be represented in Parliament is verbiage. But the Jew is actually represented, as much as a multitude of other interests of superior importance are represented. Are the fifteen thousand clergy of the Church of England (a body worth all the Jews on the globe) personally represented? Are the millions of England under twenty-one represented? One might thus go through the great industrious classes of England, and find that, out of twenty millions, there are not one million electors. And what claim have a class--who come to this country only to make money, and who make nothing but money, and who, if they could make more money anywhere else on the earth, would go there to-morrow--to an equality of right with the manly, honest, and attached son of England, every day of whose life adds something to the comfort or the credit of the community?

The whole and sole claim of the Jew is, that some of his party are rich. How they have made their riches, or how they spend them, is beneath us to inquire. But what are their national evidences, even of wealth, it might be difficult to discover. They exhibit no fruits here, nor anywhere. It has been often asked, with genuine astonishment, what signs of national liberality have ever been given by Jewish wealth in the world? What contribution does it make, or has it ever made, to the arts that decorate life, to the literature that enlightens it, or to those bold and commanding services by which nations are raised or restored? Where are the picture galleries, or the great libraries, the great institutions, erected by the wealth of the Jew? As to the genius which endows mankind, for generations to come, with noble inventions, or leaves its name behind in a track of glory to posterity, who ever heard of it among the Jews? Shopkeepers of London have planted its vicinity with great establishments, castles of charity, magnificent monuments of practical religion, to which all the works of Jewish bounty are molehills. The Jews have an hospital and a few schools,--and there the efflux of liberality stops, the stream stagnates, the river becomes a pond, and the pond dries away.

It is remarkable, and may be a punitive consequence, that there is nothing so fugitive as the wealth of the Jew. There is perhaps no hereditary example of Jewish wealth in the world. In England we have seen opulent firms, but they have never had the principle of permanency. Supposed to be boundlessly wealthy, a blight came, and every leaf dropt off. One powerful firm now lords it over the loan-market of Europe. We have no desire to anticipate the future; but what has become of all its predecessors in this country? or what memorial have they all left, to make us regret their vanishing, or remember their existence?

Of the sudden passion with which Ministers have snatched the Israelite to their bosom, we shall leave the explanation until their day of penitence. As poverty makes man submit to strange companionship, political necessity may make a Whig Cabinet stoop to the embrace of the Jew. The resource is desperate, but the exigency must be equally so. We hail the omen,--the grasp at straws shows nothing but the exhaustion of the swimmer.

On one point more alone we shall touch. It is of a graver kind. It has been the source of a kind of ignorant consideration for the Jews, that prophecy speaks of their future restoration. But, as _Jews_ they will _never_ be restored. In the last days some powerful influence of the Holy Spirit will impel the surviving Jews to solicit an admission into Christianity. How many or how few will survive the predicted universal convulsion of these days, is not for man to tell; the terrible, or the splendid, catastrophes of those times are still hidden; but no Jew well ever dwell in the presence of the patriarchs, but as a "new creature"--a being cleared from the prejudices of his exiled fathers, and by supernatural interposition purified from the unbelief, to be rescued from the ruin, of his stiff-necked people.

The measure must be thrown out by the awakened power of public opinion. We must not indulge our indolence in relying on the House of Lords. They _may_ do their duty, but _we must do ours_. The Jew _must not_ enter the Christian Legislature.

THE PICTURES OF THE SEASON.

The taste for pictorial art, if its progress may be measured by the opportunity afforded for its gratification, is decidedly upon the increase in this country. In London, especially, pictures of one class or other form, each successive year, a larger and more important item in the sum of public amusements. During the present season of 1850 there have been open, at one time, four exhibitions consisting chiefly of oil paintings, two numerous collections of water-colour drawings, and panoramas and dioramas in unprecedented number and of unusual excellence. These last, although pertaining to a lower walk of art, have strong claims on consideration for their scenic truthfulness and artistic skill, and are fairly to be included in an estimate of the state of public feeling for the pictorial. The four first exhibitions alone comprise upwards of three thousand works of art, now for the first time submitted to public inspection. As usual, the exhibition of the Royal Academy is the most important and deserving of attention. Numerically, the Society of British Artists claims the next place; but in point of interest it must yield precedence to the British Institution, now for some weeks closed, and also to the exhibition of an association of artists which has installed itself, upon a novel principle, and under the title of the National Institution, in a building constructed for its accommodation, and known as the Portland Gallery. It were for some reasons desirable--it certainly would be favourable to the comparative appreciation of merit--that, as at Paris, the whole of the annual harvest of pictures should be collected in one edifice, subject, of course, to such previous examination by a competent and impartial council, as should exclude those works unworthy of exhibition. But such a system, however pleasant it might be found by the public, could hardly be made agreeable to the artists. The most indulgent censorship, excluding none but the veriest daubs--nay, even the plan of open doors to all comers, which has lately clothed a portion of the walls of the Republican Louvre with canvass spoiled by ignorance and presumption, would fail to satisfy artists and their friends. In London, as in Paris under the old system, it is less the question of admission than the placing of the pictures that is the source of discontent. The excluded conceal their discomfiture; the misplaced grumble loudly, and not always without reason, especially as regards the Academy exhibition. The fault may be more in the rooms that contain, than in the men who place the pictures. Of course everybody whose work gets into the Octagon Room feels aggrieved, although it is evident that, as long as that ridiculous nook is used to contain pictures, some unlucky artists must fill it. The good places in the other rooms--limited as is the extent of these compared to the large number of pictures annually exhibited in them--cannot be very numerous, although they may be multiplied by the exercise of judgment, and by impartial attention to the requirements of each picture as regards light and elevation. The best possible arrangement, however, will fail to please everybody, and the persons to whom falls the difficult task of distributing a thousand or fifteen hundred pictures over the walls of a suite of rooms inadequate to their proper accommodation, must be prepared to endure some obloquy, and esteem themselves fortunate if the public acquit them of flagrant partiality or negligence. It is not our purpose to dilate on this oft-mooted and still vexed question. We have no polemical intention in the present paper, in which we shall not have too much space to note down a few of the thoughts that suggested themselves to us during our morning wanderings amongst the throng of pictures in four exhibitions.

The great event of the artist's year, the opening of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, is of course the signal for a Babel of opinions. The question which on all sides is heard: What sort of Exhibition is this? obtains the most conflicting replies. People are too apt to trust to their first impressions, and to indulge in sweeping censure or excessive encomium. We have heard this year's exhibition set down by some as first-rate, by others as exceedingly poor. Our own opinion, after careful examination and consideration, is, that it has rather less than the average amount of merit. This we believe to be also the opinion of the majority of those most competent to judge. There is certainly an unusually small number of pictures of striking excellence; nor is this atoned for by any marked improvement in those artists whose works can claim but a second rank. One circumstance unfavourable to the interest of the exhibition is the uncommonly large number of portraits, the majority of which are not very admirable either in subject or execution. The impression, as one walks through the rooms, is, that an extraordinary number of ugly or uninteresting persons have got themselves painted by careless or indifferent artists. Of landscapes there seem to be fewer than usual--certainly fewer good ones. Some of the best of this class of painters have contributed to other exhibitions. On the other hand, historical, scriptural, and dramatic subjects are numerous, but not in many cases have they been treated with very great success. One of the foremost pictures in the Exhibition--certainly the one about which most curiosity has been excited--is Edwin Landseer's _Dialogue at Waterloo_. We are unfeigned admirers of Mr Landseer's genius, but we do not think this one of his happiest efforts. There is much fashion in these matters; people are very apt to be led away by a name, and to fall into ecstasies before a picture simply because it is by a great painter. We believe it impossible for Edwin Landseer to paint anything that shall not have great merit, but he is certainly most felicitous when confining himself to what is strictly speaking his own style. We do not think him successful as a portrait painter. His Marchioness of Douro does less than justice to the beautiful original. As to the Duke of Wellington, it is a failure; especially if, as we are assured, it is intended to be his portrait as he now is. We certainly cannot admire the burly figure and swarthy complexion of Mr Landseer's Duke, which gives us the idea of a younger and more robust man than him it is intended to represent. We should be disposed to object to the strained appearance of the downward-pointing hand; but the gesture is said to be one habitual to the original, and of course the painter was right to preserve character, even at the cost of grace. The less prominent portion of the picture is the most to our taste--the peasants and child, the dogs and game, and the plough horses with their old driver. We are not quite clear as to what it all means; some of the objects seeming rather to have been dragged in than naturally to have come thither; the tablecloth spread in the ploughed field appearing rather out of character, and the left-hand corner of the picture having altogether somewhat of a crowded aspect: but these are trifles not worth dwelling upon. The painting is evidently unfinished. The subject of Mr Landseer's second picture, a shepherd digging the stragglers from his flock out of a snow-drift, is of less interest than that of his larger work; but, in an artistic point of view, it claims higher praise. His snow is admirable, the tender gray tints are full of light, and distributed with surpassing skill; and the earnest laborious face of the delving peasant is very vigorous and characteristic. Mr Landseer is so accurate an observer of brute nature that it is with extreme caution we venture to criticise his animals, but we must say that the wool of his sheep in this painting has a hard and cork-like look. Upon the whole it is a question with us, when we revert to some of this artist's former productions, whether he is painting as carefully as he used to do. Looking at his Waterloo Dialogue, we say no; but an affirmative starts to our lips when we examine his last and smallest picture in this year's Exhibition, Lady Murchison's dog. With this the most fastidious would be troubled to find fault. It is a gem of admirable finish. If Mr Landseer's power of drawing, in the grander contours of his designs, were equal to the skill he displays in the details, he would leave nothing to desire.

Mr Maclise has two pictures in this exhibition. There is scarcely an English artist living concerning whom we are more embarrassed to make up our minds, than concerning the painter of _The Spirit of Justice_ and _The Gross of Green Spectacles_. His merits and defects are alike very great, and unfortunately he delays to amend the latter--if indeed it be in his power so to do. His first-named and larger picture, whilst it contains much to admire, leaves a great deal to be desired. To us it is a vexatious performance. We cannot look at it without admitting it to be the work of no ordinary artist, and we feel the more annoyed at the mannerism that detracts from its merit. Mr Maclise has fertility of invention and power of design, but there is a deficiency of true artistical feeling in his execution. We cannot coincide, besides, with the notion which he, in common with many others, seems to entertain, that fresco painting precludes chiaroscuro. In _The Spirit of Justice_ there are some good faces; but there are more that are unnecessarily ugly, and several of faulty expression. Justice has a fine countenance and altogether pleases us well. The widow's face is hard and unflesh-like; the accuser, who drags the murderer before the tribunal, and displays a bloody dagger as evidence of guilt, and the free citizen who unrolls the charter of liberty, are anything but admirable. The accuser looks more like an informer than an avenger. Nothing can be more unfavourable to the face than the sort of scrubby, colourless, thinly-sown stubble with which his chin is provided, as a contrast, we presume, with the dark hirsute countenance of the criminal, who, deducting the beard, might pass for a portrait of Mr Macready, of one of whose favourite attitudes the position of the head and shoulders particularly reminds us. With all its defects, however, this is by far the best of Mr Maclise's two pieces. _The Gross of Spectacles_ we consider a failure. It is a gross of spectacles, and little besides. The first thing that catches the eye is Moses' unlucky bargain. There they are, the twelve dozen, in green cases and with plated rims. We submit that the first thing which _should_ attract the eye is the countenances of the actors in the scene. Owing to their tameness of expression, these, which should be prominent, are almost subordinate to the inanimate details of the apartment. Unimportant as it is, we are inclined to prefer the recess, and the peep through the window, to any other part of the picture. There is an airiness and transparency in that corner of the canvass, which we in vain seek elsewhere. The general effect is very hard. The hair of Moses and the little boy is as unlike hair as it well can be: we remember to have seen something very like it upon a tea-tray. These are technical objections. But Mr Maclise may rely upon it that he lacks the keen perception of humour indispensable to the artist who would illustrate Goldsmith.

Amongst the scriptural and mythological paintings, those of Mr Patten and Mr F. R. Pickersgill attract at least as much notice as they deserve. Besides portraits, Mr Patten has contributed three pictures. His _Susannah and the Elders_ is remarkable as being the most decidedly indecent picture exhibited this year. The subject is not a very pleasing one, and, to our thinking, has been painted quite often enough. But this is not the question. Mr Patten has put his version of it out of the pale of propriety by his mode of handling it. There is nothing classical in his treatment, nothing to redeem or elevate the nudity and associations of the subject. His Susannah is simply a naked English girl, with a pretty face, an immaculate cuticle, and something exceedingly voluptuous in the form and arrangement of her limbs. There is no novelty of conception in the picture, nor any particular merit except the colouring, which is good, but not equal to that in No. 446, _Bacchus discovering the Use of the Grape_. This is a pleasanter subject, cleverly treated, displaying more originality and much better taste. The flesh-tints are capital, and the picture altogether does credit to the painter. _Venus and Cupid_, by the same artist, is chiefly remarkable for a plaster-of-Paris dove of an extraordinarily brilliant and very unnatural effect. As to Mr F. R. Pickersgill, we should like his pictures better if he would not imitate poor Etty, whose memory, be it parenthetically observed, has been little regarded by those who have exhibited that most coarse and unpleasant picture, _The Toilet_, No. 276, a specimen of the deceased artist's worst manner. Mr Pickersgill's _Samson Betrayed_ is, there is no denying it, a very unsatisfactory composition. His red-haired Dalilah is graceless and characterless. Samson, recumbent in an attitude in which no man ever slept soundly, seems prevented only by a miracle from slipping off her knees. Two girls, instead of getting to a safe distance, are hugging each other in terror within reach of the giant's arm. There is scarcely an attitude in the picture that is not strained. In the conception there is an utter want of novelty of circumstance. The whole picture is deficient in originality. The eye wanders over it, seeking some feature of special interest or striking beauty whereon to dwell, and finds none. Mr Pickersgill has good qualities, but the spark of fancy and genius which alone can complete the great painter, is, we fear, wanting in his composition.

We turn with pleasure to Leslie's pictures. Were we disposed to find fault with this very agreeable artist, our objections could only be technical. With want of imagination, and feeling for beauty, none can tax him. Two of his three pictures contain the sweetest female faces in this exhibition. How admirably has he interpreted Shakspeare's description of Beatrice stealing to the woodbine bower, to play the eavesdropper on Hero and Ursula.

"Look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground."

The painter has exactly rendered the poet's graceful idea. As she glides along, we seem to detect the slight flutter and palpitation attendant on the clandestine movement. Expression and attitude are alike charming. Sophia Western deserves even higher praise. She is indeed a lovely creature. Tom Jones bids her behold herself in the mirror, and say whether such a face and form do not guarantee his fidelity. It is altogether a most agreeable composition; and if we have any fault to find, it is with the face of the enamoured foundling, which wants refinement, and has a sort of overgrown schoolboy's ruddy fulness. Katherine of Arragon beseeching Capucius to convey to Henry VIII. her last recommendation of her daughter and servants to his goodness, is the most important of Mr Leslie's pictures; and although by many it will not be deemed the most attractive, none can deny it great merit and interest. The suffering countenance of Katherine, and the tearful faces of her attendants, are full of expression. The ambassador is rather tame, and one scarcely recognises in his face or bearing the energy with which he vows to do the bidding of the unhappy queen.

Mr Eastlake has one scriptural and one historical picture in this year's exhibition. A passage from Sismondi, telling the escape of an Italian noble and his wife from the persecution of the Duke of Milan, has suggested the latter, which is painted for the Vernon Gallery. There is some good expression in the faces in this picture, which has more interest and novelty than its companion _The Good Samaritan_, and also greater vigour. Both show the hand of the experienced and skilful artist, although perhaps neither can be classed amongst the best things he has produced. We should gladly see a little more nerve in Mr Eastlake's style, and this we think might be advantageously combined with his beautiful transparency of colouring, and other excellent qualities as a painter. There is no diminution in the purity of style and thought which has always been one of his finest characteristics.

Mr Frith is an improving artist. There is humour and progress in No. 543, a scene from Goldsmith's _Good-natured Man_. _Mr Honeywood introduces the bailiffs to Miss Richland as his friends._ He must beware, however, of running into caricature in subjects of this kind. The bailiffs are perhaps a little overdone. Miss Richland has a very pretty face, but she looks more like a _soubrette_ or smart actress than a woman of fashion. Mr Frith's other picture, Sancho proving to the duchess that Don Quixote is at the bottom of the table, is well painted, and, in a technical point of view, it must be spoken of with respect. He has not been quite so successful as we should have expected in the expression of the faces,--that of the duke excepted, which is a good and thoroughly Spanish countenance, with its habitual gravity disturbed by Sancho's quaint humour and his master's manifest distress. But painting ladies is not Mr Frith's forte. His duchess is pretty, but there is a want of aristocratic distinction in her face and bearing; and as to the ladies grouped behind her chair, they are cookmaids in masquerade. Very few living artists, besides Leslie, should venture upon Sancho. We will not say that Mr Frith is not one of those few, but his delineation of the shrewd esquire, although very humorous, is rather coarse, and he has made him ragged and filthy to an unnecessary degree. The vexation and embarrassment of Don Quixote are ludicrously portrayed.

Four very small, very unpretending pictures by Thomas Webster, R.A., must be sought for, but, when found, cannot fail to be admired. They are a feature, and a very charming one, of this year's Exhibition. High finish and truth to nature are their chief characteristics. Mr Webster is getting quite into the Ostade manner. His colouring, too, is admirable. No. 54 is a boy in a chimney corner, supping pottage, with an old woman knitting opposite to him. Both faces are excellent, and full of character. _A Cherry Seller_ is a perfect _bijou_--the woman weighing out the fruit; the boys, looking on with eager eyes and watering mouths; the fruit itself, with its Dutch nicety of finish:--altogether it is a most desirable picture, such as one can hardly pass, even for the twentieth time, without pausing for another view. _A Peasant's Home_ is upon the whole too gray, and perhaps the least attractive of the four; but in the _Farmhouse Kitchen_ are a couple of figures, a farmer and his dame, than which nothing can be better, either in colour or expression. Mr Webster shows great taste and judgment in adhering to a pleasing simplicity, without ever falling into quaintness or affectation. And it is a study for a young artist to observe the skill with which he throws his lights, and the transparency and absence of _paintyness_ (to borrow a term from the studio) which characterise his pictures.

Mr Solomon Hart's _Kitchen Interior at Mayfield_ will not do after Webster. This, however, is one of the least important of his six pictures, which comprise two other interiors, two heads, and a Jewish festival. This last is perhaps the best picture he has painted. The MSS. of the Pentateuch are being carried round the synagogue at Leghorn, amidst chanting of hymns. There is a strong devotional character in many of the faces; and, as a work of art, the picture is more than respectable. The interest of the subject is a question of taste. For us, we confess, it possesses very little attraction; and the Jewish physiognomy, so strongly marked as it is in all the occupants of the synagogue, is, to our thinking, incompatible with beauty. We do not much admire either _A Virtuoso or Arnolfo di Lapo_. The latter is the best of the two: the former, carefully painted, is merely an ordinary-looking Jew.

What can we say of Mr Turner? Perhaps we had better content ourselves with mentioning that he has four pictures in the Exhibition, all in his latest manner, all illustrative of that far-famed, but, unfortunately, unpublished poem, _The Fallacies of Hope_, and all proving the fallacy of the hope we annually cherish that he will abjure his eccentricities, and revert to the style which justly gained him his high reputation. It were absurd of us to attempt to criticise his present productions, for to us they are unintelligible; and, judging from the extremely puzzled looks we see fixed upon them, we suspect that not many of those who pause for their examination are more successful than ourselves in deciphering their meaning, and in appreciating the beauties which a few stanch adherents pretend to discover in those strange compounds of red, white, and yellow. What if Mr Turner were to seek his inspirations elsewhere than in the aforesaid MS.? Can it be that the poet's halting verse influences the painter's vagaries? From the specimens afforded us, we are not inclined to think highly of _The Fallacies_ _of Hope_. Take the following, _exempli gratiâ_:--

"Beneath the morning mist Mercury waited to tell him of his neglected fleet."

And this--

"Fallacious Hope beneath the moon's pale crescent shone, Dido listened to Troy being lost and won."

Enough of such poetry, and enough, as far as we are concerned, of a great painter's unfortunate aberrations.

Apropos of aberrations, we have a word to say, which may as well be said here as elsewhere. Affectation, however, is a more suitable word for the mountebank proceedings of a small number of artists, who, stimulated by their own conceit, and by the applause of a few foolish persons, are endeavouring to set up a school of their own. We allude, to the pre-Raphaelites. Let not Messrs Millais, Hunt, Rosetti, & Co. suppose, because we give them an early place in this imperfect review of the exhibitions, that we concede to them an undue importance. As to admiration, we shall presently make them aware how far we entertain that feeling towards them. Meanwhile, let them not plume themselves on a place amongst men of genius. Just as well might they experience an exaltation of their horns, because their absurd and pretentious productions get casually hung next to pictures by Landseer or Webster. It appears they have got into their wise heads certain notions that the ideal of expression is to be found in the works of the artists who flourished previously to Raphael. And they have accordingly set to work to imitate those early masters, not only in the earnestness of purpose visible in their productions, but in their errors, crudities, and imperfections--renouncing, in fact, the progress that since then has been made; rejecting the experience of centuries, to revert for models, not to art in its prime, but to art in its uncultivated infancy. And a nice business they make of it. Regardless of anatomy and drawing, they delight in ugliness and revel in diseased aspects. Mr Dante Rosetti, one of the high-priests of this retrograde school, exhibits at the Portland Gallery. Messrs Millais and Hunt favour the saloons of the Academy. Ricketty children, emaciation and deformity constitute their chief stock in trade. They apparently select bad models, and then exaggerate their badness till it is out of all nature. We can hardly imagine anything more ugly, graceless, and unpleasant than Mr Millais' picture of Christ in the carpenter's shop. Such a collection of splay feet, puffed joints, and misshapen limbs was assuredly never before made within so small a compass. We have great difficulty in believing a report that this unpleasing and atrociously affected picture has found a purchaser at a high price. Another specimen, from the same brush, inspires rather laughter than disgust. A Ferdinand of most ignoble physiognomy is being lured by a pea-green monster intended for Ariel; whilst a row of sprites, such as it takes a Millais to devise, watch the operation with turquoise eyes. It would occupy more room than the thing is worth to expose all the absurdity and impertinence of this work. Mr Hunt's picture of a Christian Missionary sheltered from Druid pursuit is in as ridiculous taste as any of the group.

From such monstrosities it is a relief to turn to Mr Frank Stone's graceful creations. He also has taken a subject from the second scene in the _Tempest_, No. 342, Miranda's first sight of Ferdinand. Compared with Mr Millais' Ferdinand, that of Mr Stone is a demigod. Estimated by its intrinsic merits, it strikes us as a little theatrical--rather too much of the stage-player in the air and attitude. Miranda has a sweet and youthful face; Prospero is too young, and does not look his part. This is not one of Mr Stone's happiest efforts, but it is a nice picture, and we prefer it to his other in the same exhibition, _The Gardener's Daughter_, a young lady attitudinising under a rose-tree, with a pair of admiring swains in the distance. This artist is too apt to give his male lovers a sickly look, as if their love disagreed with them. The best picture he has shown this year is one in the British Institution--_Sympathy_--two very pretty maidens, with an expression of pleasing sentiment in their faces. Barring a little occasional mannerism, Mr Stone is a very delightful painter; and in our opinion, if he had had his deserts, he would some time since have been a member of the Academy. Were it not invidious, we could cite a few, who write _Associate_ after their names, who have less claim than he has to that honorary distinction. Mr Stone has a great deal of fancy, a fine feeling for the beautiful, and we are indebted to him for many charming compositions and lovely female faces. And certainly if popularity be a test of merit, which we admit is not always the case, he ought years ago to have figured in the list of Academicians.

That very conscientious and careful artist, Mr Charles Landseer, has a pretty and well-painted _Girl in a Hop-garden_, and a larger and still better picture--perhaps the best he has for some years produced--of _Æsop_, surrounded by several of the animals celebrated in his fables. There is a great deal of quiet humour and nice finish in this picture: the figure and face of the hump-backed fabulist, and those of a girl, who seems admiringly to listen to his allegorical wisdom, are exceedingly good. Mr Dyce has only one picture, and really that had been as well away. An ugly Jacob is protruding his lips to kiss a vulgar Rachel. The colouring is hard and bad, and there is a pervading gray tint which is not natural. We hope Mr Dyce, R.A., can do better things than this. We prefer Mr Cope's _King Lear_, which has considerable merit. There is fine expression in the old monarch's head. Cordelia pleases us less; and perhaps, upon the whole, the best figures in the picture are those of the musicians and singers. There is a something in this painting that reminds us of Maclise. Of Mr Cope's other pictures, _Milton's Dream_ has a nice tone of colour; and the two sketches for fresco of Prince Henry's submission to Judge Gascoigne, and the Black Prince receiving the order of the Garter, are spirited and good. Mr Redgrave's principal picture is No. 233. _The Marquis having chosen patient Griselda for his wife, causes the court ladies to dress her in her father's cottage._ Griselda has a pretty face, and sits in an easy, graceful attitude: the ladies are coarse, and the expression of scorn upon their countenances is theatrical and affected. The heads of some of them are too big, and out of proportion with their bodies. _The Child's Prayer_, by the same artist, is a pleasing picture; well painted, particularly the woman's head and hand, which latter has a look of Rubens. Mr E. M. Ward has two pictures of very different subjects. _Isaac Walton Angling_ hardly claims any particular notice; _James II. receiving the News of the Landing of the Prince of Orange in 1688_, has more pretension and greater merit. It certainly contains good painting: the grouping of the figures and the expression of some of the faces are also praiseworthy; but yet it hardly satisfies us. The queen's face and attitude, as she advances, already sympathising with the agitation visible on his countenance, to her husband's side, are very charming. James's physiognomy is almost too much discomposed to accord with the passage from Dalrymple quoted by Mr Ward. And it strikes us, although this may seem hypercritical, that there is something ludicrous in the eternal suspension in the air of the letter that he has just allowed to escape from his fingers. Upon the whole, however, this is a clever picture, and, as far as we had opportunity of observing, it attracts a very full share of public attention; although that is no criterion of merit, so large a proportion of the loungers through an exhibition being more readily attracted by a piquant subject than by artistical skill. And probably no subjects are more generally popular than those that may be styled the homely-historical; scenes in the private apartments of royalty; the personal adventures and perils of princes, whether in the palace or the prison--on the steps of the throne or the verge of the scaffold. There is a fair sprinkling of such pictures in the four exhibitions now under notice; and as we have no pretension to be otherwise than exceedingly desultory in this article, whose limits, and the heterogeneous subject, preclude our being otherwise, we will at once dispose of such of them as deserve notice, and have not already received it, commencing, in order of catalogue, with Delaroche's picture of _Cromwell looking at the dead body of Charles I._ This is a picture concerning which the most conflicting opinions have been uttered. It has received fulsome praise and unwarranted abuse. Some have lauded it as perfection merely because it is by Paul Delaroche; others have decried it with a virulence and injustice warranting the suspicion that some envious brother of the brush had temporarily abandoned the palette for the pen, and applied himself to slander merit he himself was hopeless of equalling. We are aware but of two valid objections that can fairly be made to the picture. The subject is certainly ghastly and horrid; but, on the other hand, it has been rendered as little so as possible by the consummate skill and good taste of its treatment. And none, we think, but the very fastidious, will dwell upon this point. The other objection (technical only) is to the coppery tone of colouring of certain parts of the picture, particularly of the flesh. This premised, we are aware of little else that can fairly be alleged against this very fine picture. The countenance of Cromwell certainly does not agree with the most authentic portraits that have been handed down to us, or with the written and traditional accounts of his features. The artist has idealised his hero--has abridged his nose, increased his under jaw, and thrown nearly the whole expression of the face into and around the mouth. M. Delaroche having taken such liberties, we ought to be particularly grateful to him that he has not gone farther, and, in aiming at a great effect, fallen into exaggeration. Out of twenty French artists, nineteen, we suspect, would have given us, with the strong and dangerous temptation of so striking a subject, an unpleasant caricature. It has been objected that the face is deficient in character and expression, and would perfectly suit any one of Cromwell's Ironsides, who through curiosity should have lifted the lid of the deceased monarch's coffin. It is, to our thinking, an evidence of skill on the part of the painter thus to have left the expression doubtful--a matter of speculation to the beholder. We interpret it as merely meditative. Any emotion it includes is one of exultation at the great and important step the Usurper has made in his upward progress. Of pity or remorse there is no trace.

The next picture in the Exhibition of the Academy, of the class at present under notice, that particularly caught our eye, is No. 491, _The Burial of the two sons of Edward IV. in the Tower_, by Mr Cross, whose painting of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, exhibited at Westminster Hall, will be remembered by many of our readers. The present picture does not redeem the promise of its predecessor. It has a washy, fresco-like look, and a great want of light and shade, which is the more striking because the subject is one particularly favourable to the display of a Rembrandt-like vigour in that respect. The arrangement of the dead bodies is very bad, and they have an emaciated look which was quite uncalled for. On the other hand, the faces of two of the murderers, (one sustains the stone beneath which the grave is dug, and the other grasps the arm of one of the children,) and that of the turnkey, are very expressive. The chief of the gang and the grave-digger are rather strained and theatrical. Upon the whole, the picture disappoints us much. A report, however, has reached us, that it was painted under the disadvantage of ill health, so we will hope that Mr Cross may yet do better things. No. 569, _The Abdication of Mary Queen of Scots at Lochleven Castle_, by J. Severn, is a very tame affair. And we do not greatly admire Mr Lucy's _Parting of Charles I. with his Children_. The subject has been better treated before. But we delight in Mr Joy's conception of Cromwell coveting, and yet daring not to grasp, the crown of England. A bilious misanthrope, with flabby cheeks and lacklustre eye, is seated beside a table on which stands the crown, whose covering he has partly withdrawn. The notion is amusingly matter-of-fact. Does Mr Joy really suppose that such a man as Cromwell could find enjoyment in the deliberate physical contemplation of the jewelled bauble--the substantial crown--the mere emblem of the dignity and sway for which he thirsted? We cannot compliment this artist on either the conceit or the execution. We prefer his picture in the British Institution, although that is not very remarkable. The subject is the interview between James IV. of Scotland and the outlaw Murray on the banks of Yarrow. In this Exhibition we find another Cromwell, of a very different cast from the one just referred to. The Lord Protector of England dictates to John Milton his celebrated despatch in favour of the persecuted Piedmontese Protestants. Here there is a fire and energy mingled with the coarseness of Cromwell's physiognomy, which gives the character of the man as we read of him and believe him to have been. Milton's face wears a look of gentle enthusiasm and approval, as he admiringly weighs the words that fall from the lips of his great patron. In his eyes there is a sort of haziness that seems to foreshadow the darkness which later is to come over him. The picture does great credit to a very rising artist, Mr F. Newenham, who also exhibits a painting at the Portland Gallery, which we like quite as well as his Cromwell. The subject, _The Princes in the Tower_, is not a very new one, but there is imagination and novelty in its treatment. It is just the same point of time that Delaroche has chosen in his painting of this subject, but there is nothing like an imitation of the great Frenchman. Here the younger child still sleeps, whilst the elder, a princely-looking lad, roused by the noise at the door, gazes anxiously, rather than fearfully, at the shadow cast upon the wall by a hand bearing a lantern. The picture is suggestive and interesting, and in an artistic point of view, also, it merits high praise. In this Portland Gallery (which we may observe, by the way, is most excellently constructed and lighted for the advantageous exhibition of works of art) is a painting by Mr Claxton, _Marie Antoinette with her Children, escaping by the Secret Door from her apartment in Versailles, when the palace was attached by the mob_, which we mention rather on account of the interest of the subject than of its merits as a work of art, these being but of a negative description. Marie Antoinette, dressed rather like a fashionable of the year 1850, is accompanied by a terrified lady, who looks back at the door, half-masked by smoke, through whose broken pannel the bayonets of the rebels cross with those of the loyal grenadiers. Another picture from French history, but selected from a much remoter period, is that of _The Excommunication of Robert, King of France, and his Queen Bertha_, (No. 159 in the Portland Gallery.) which Mr Desanges has executed with some skill. The king, having married his cousin in defiance of the Pope, but with the sanction of three prelates of his kingdom, incurs the pontifical anathema, in common with the prelates and royal family. In the picture, the fiat has just been pronounced, and the extinction of their torches by the officiating priests symbolically completes their mission.

This is not one of Mr Clarkson Stanfield's best years. We prefer this careful and able artist on a grander scale than that of the comparatively small pictures he this year exhibits. Nor do we think he has been particularly happy in his choice of subjects. His scene from Macbeth, viewed as a landscape--for we do not take into account the figures, which are insignificant, and might as well have been left out--is a good picture, but not in his happiest taste. We prefer his _Scene on the Maas_, and his _Bay of Baiæ_, which are both excellent. No. 288, _Near Foria_, is not a very good subject. But Mr Stanfield is a pleasant, natural painter, quite free from affectation, and a most excellent representative of the English school. Mr Roberts is another favourite of ours. Belgium and the East, Egyptian temples and Catholic shrines, furnish subjects for his seven pictures. What we particularly like in him is the strong impression of correctness and fidelity conveyed by his representations of distant scenes. Without having seen the places, one feels convinced of the accuracy of his delineations, and that he gives the real effect of the objects depicted--just as, in certain portraits, one feels certain of the resemblance without knowing the original. The subjects of his pictures this year do not demand any detailed criticism, and his good qualities are so universally appreciated as to render general commendation superfluous.

Before passing on to landscapes and portraits we will glance at a few pictures of various classes, which happen to have attracted our attention, and which deserve better or worse than to be left unnoticed. Diving into the gloom of the Octagon, we are struck by the very remarkable merit of two pictures, which ought never to have been placed there. Only by kneeling or sitting upon the ground is it possible to examine Mr Van Schendel's poacher detected, No. 633, _Un Braconnier au moment qu'on vient le prendre_. Of ordinary visitors to the Exhibition, not one in five will notice the existence of the picture--not one in twenty, probably, will go through the painful contortions requisite to get even a bad view of it. Very few, if any, critics will have sought it out or written a comment on it. Yet this is a picture on which greater talent and labour have been expended than on dozens that hang in conspicuous places and good lights. A dark picture, too--a night scene--it required a strong light; and it was most unjust to put it thus in the very darkest nook, and in the lowest range of the whole Academy. For hospitality's sake to a foreigner, this excellent painting should have been differently placed. The only other picture which we noticed in the Octagon--there may be others of great merit, but we never have patience to linger long in the gloomy closet--is No. 586, _Flowers and Fruit_, by T. Groenland--an artist far superior to Lance, who seems to us to fall off instead of improving. Fruit and flower pieces are things that few people care much to look at--and, for our part, we confess that we seldom afford them more than a very cursory glance; but our attention was seriously and pleasingly arrested by both of those exhibited this year by Mr Groenland, remarkable, as they are, not only for the accuracy with which he imitates the texture of the different fruits--whether pulpiness, bloom, or transparency be their chief characteristic--and for the admirable delicacy of his flower-painting, but also for his skill in elevating and giving interest to the walk of art he has chosen. This is strikingly the case in No. 1254, apropos of which we have another piece of injustice or carelessness--let them call it which they like--to notice on the part of the Hanging Committee. Of all the seven rooms of the Academy, not one is so little visited as that which, in the catalogue, is headed Architecture. Accordingly, the hangmen have placed at one end of it five as pleasing pictures--each in its own style--as any in the Exhibition. Here we have the _Vierge Route du Simplon_, a charming airy landscape by Harding; _Esther_, by O'Neil, one of the best, perhaps, he ever did; _The Port of Marseilles_, by E. W. Cooke, very like and very well painted, with excellent water; _A Winter Evening_, by H. Horsley, a most clever piece of snow scenery, with a cold look that makes one shiver, and a capital effect of setting sun through an archway; and, last in our enumeration, but not in merit, Mr Groenland's second fruit and flower piece, with a landscape background, a gorgeous and life-like peacock, a flush of rhododendrons, and painstaking and talent in every leaf and flower. Another picture in the same vicinity, by W. Fisher, _The Coulin_, a subject taken from Moore's melodies, is rather affected, but by no means destitute of merit.

Mr Martin's picture, _The Last Man_, is far from one of his best. The subject is unpleasing, and there is a decided fault of perspective; the human corpses and carcasses of strange beasts, in the foreground, being much too small in proportion with the figure of the man, who stands on an elevation which is doubtless intended to be much in advance of, but which in reality is almost on a line with, the spot where they are spread pellmell in grisly confusion. Mr Hannah's _Lady Northumberland and Lady Percy dissuading the Earl from joining the wars against Henry IV._ is oddly coloured, and acquires a cold, insipid look from the profusion of blue and gray; but it is a good and clever picture. A similar class of subject has been selected by Mr T. J. Barker, from Professor Aytoun's ballad of _Edinburgh after Flodden_. Randolph Murray, bearing news of the defeat, is the centre of a throng anxious even to agony.

"Why art thou alone, unfollowed? Is it weal, or is it woe?"

Perched up as this picture is above the door in the West Room, it is difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of it. As far as we could distinguish, it is not without merit, and the expression of exhaustion in the figure of Murray is pretty well rendered; but altogether it is hardly worthy of the nervous and admirable verse it is intended to illustrate. Mr Armitage's _Aholibah_ has a good deal of pretension, but we cannot compliment him on it in any one respect. In the first place the subject is disgusting, and shows wretched taste in the artist who would select it. Then the face of Aholibah is ugly and repulsive, and the expression coarse in the extreme: the drawing of the limbs under the drapery is faulty, and the gazelles are out of place and out of perspective. Mr Armitage can do better than this. We prefer his picture in the Portland Gallery, of Samson tying firebrands to the foxes' tails for the destruction of the Philistine crops; although the face is a great deal too black, and we cannot understand why Samson should allow a fox to bite into the muscle of his thigh, as one of those in his grasp appears to do. Why does Mr Armitage persist in his French style of painting? It is quite a mistake. Let him be natural, and rely upon his own taste and judgment, and we think he may do better things.

Mr Hook's _Dream of Venice_, a clever imitation of Paul Veronese, is a very pleasant picture. Mr F. Williams' _Holy Maiden_ is a pretty head, full of sentiment. We are glad to see such good promise given by Mr Leslie, junior, in a very humorous picture entitled _A Sailor's Yarn_. A thoroughbred and unmistakeable Cockney greedily listens to some astounding narrative, whilst, behind the credulous landsman, a second sailor grins admiration of his messmate, and contempt for the "green hand." _The Young Student_, by W. Gush, is a very nice picture of a youthful painter, with an artist's eye and a pleasing Vandykish contour of face, and with carefully painted hands. One of the most comical pictures in the Exhibition is a wild boar by Wolf. The bristly forest-ranger is making its way through the deep snow, leaving a long furrow behind it, along which it has apparently been nuzzling for provender, for its snout is garnished with the snow, which, combined with the sudden fore-shortening of the body, produces a ludicrous effect. No. 121, _Autumn--Wounded Woodcock_, from the same hand, has mellow and natural tints.

We have kept back, almost to the last, one of our chief favourites in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Mr Sidney Cooper is in great force this year. He has six pictures; four of them all his own, two painted in conjunction with Mr F. R. Lee, R.A. With all respect for this artist, to whose landscapes we shall refer in their place, we prefer Cooper alone to Cooper in partnership. The two styles do not blend well, nor does Lee put his best landscapes into Cooper's cattle-pieces. Take the first of their pictures--No. 23--_Cattle crossing a Ford_. As a whole it is agreeable--and the cattle, we need hardly say, are worthy of the best English cattle-painter of the day; but the landscape is feeble. In No. 298, _The Watering-place_, the rather heavy paint of the foliage gives a thin washy look to the foreground. We advise Messrs Lee and Cooper to hang their pictures side by side, if they will, as excellent specimens of their respective walks of art, but not to associate themselves on the same canvass. People find fault with the landscape part of Cooper's pictures; but it is in good keeping with the rest, and moreover he improves in that respect, as in others. We will instance No. 278, _A Mountain Group--Evening_, some charming goats, where the background, bathed in soft light, harmonises admirably with the more prominent parts of the picture. No. 454, _A Group on the Welsh Mountains_, is most delicately finished, quite a gem; and _Fordwick Meadows--Sunset_, in a somewhat broader style, is equally excellent. Mr Cooper's is a class of art which strongly appeals to the domestic and rural tastes of Englishmen. He excels in it, and need fear no competitors, although several artists this year exhibit cattle-landscapes of some merit. And here we should perhaps say a word about Mr Ansdell, who has put some Brobdignagian sheep into a landscape by Mr Creswick, (British Institution, No. 123, _Southdowns_,) and who has rather a pretty thing in the same exhibition--No. 40, _The Regretted Companion_--an old hawker perplexed and mournful beside the body of his dead ass. We would gladly see this artist cease to imitate Landseer. He sacrifices his originality without succeeding in catching the best points of his model.

Nos. 80, 405, 407 in the catalogue of the Academy, are Mr Lee's landscapes--uncombined with Cooper's cattle. The second, _A Calm Morning_, is the one we prefer; and a very charming picture of repose it is. Mr Creswick is the next upon our list. His cold unnatural grayness of colouring greatly detracts from the merit of his pictures. We are quite aware that the same reproach has been repeatedly addressed to him, and we should hardly have referred to a fault which hitherto he has either obstinately clung to, or been unable to correct, did not one of his pictures in the Academy this year give us hopes that he is on the verge of a change. No. 542, _A Forest Farm_, is the best picture of Creswick's, in point of colouring, that we remember to have seen. The _slaty_ look is replaced by an agreeable transparency. No. 289, _In the Forest_, is also warmer than usual. The others are in the old style. Mr Linnell is more to our taste, although we cannot approve his _Christ and the Woman of Samaria at Jacob's Well_. In the first place the colour seems unnatural, altogether too brown; at the same time it is just possible nature may assume that extraordinarily russet tint in Samaria--a country to which our travels have not extended. But we can more confidently object to the figure of the Saviour as altogether unpleasant, with a harsh darkly-bearded face, devoid alike of resemblance to the received type, and of any divine expression whatever. Mr Linnell is a landscape-painter, and should not attempt sacred subjects or portraits, things which are quite out of his line. No. 395, _Crossing the Brook_, is of a better tone of colour; and the same artist has two other pictures, of about his usual average of merit, in the British Institution. The chief fault with which we tax Mr Linnell, (whilst freely admitting his great talent,) and one which may also be imputed to Mr Creswick, and to other clever landscape-painters of the present day, is the undeviating smallness of their touch, which gives, to use a colloquialism, a niggled look to their pictures. Hobbima, and Ruysdael, and others of that class--in whose footsteps we presume no living landscape-painter is too proud to tread--avoided this fault, and proportioned the fulness of their touch to the size of their picture. We may select an example of what we mean from the works of an able and industrious artist, who figures advantageously this year in all four exhibitions, and who, in most instances, is very free from the defect we refer to. Mr Sidney Percy's _Woodland River_, No. 207, in the Portland Gallery, is a good picture, but to our thinking the touch is too small for the size. Mr Percy, however, is a man of talent and a rising painter. In the same gallery we call attention, as to one of the best landscapes exhibited this year, to his No. 277, _Welsh Mountains_. There is an effect of aërial perspective in this picture, especially in the grass valley, on the spectator's left hand, which deserves the very highest praise. Several others of his eighteen pictures for 1850 deserve much commendation; but we can only point out No. 576, in the Academy, _A Limpid Pool_, and 394, _A Quiet Vale_, in the British Artists'. The water in the last is very good,--otherwise it is hardly one of his best. We would have Mr Percy to beware of hardness of treatment, the fault to which he is most prone. His lines are apt to be too sharply defined, especially his distant outlines. He should guard himself against this defect, and with care he may expect to attain great eminence as a landscape-painter. If we mistake not, he is one of a talented family, which also comprises Messrs Boddington and Gilbert, and several artists of the name of Williams, all of whom, we believe, devote themselves chiefly, if not exclusively, to landscape-painting, and either by identity of name or affinity of style, form a most puzzling group for conscientious critics, desirous, like ourselves, to sort their works and fairly distribute praise. We can mention but a few of their pictures, taken, nearly at random, from amongst a number we have marked as of merit or promise. In the Academy, 344, _A Valley Lane_, by A. W. Williams, is a charming subject, excellently treated. In the Portland Gallery, where many good landscapes are to be found, most of them by this family, we were particularly attracted by No. 41, _Noon_, also by A. W. Williams, and by No. 65, _Medmenham Abbey--Evening_, by G. A. Williams. No. 161, _A Showery Afternoon in Sussex_, by A. Gilbert, is remarkable as an example of the admirable effect he knows how to produce by the judicious and little-understood application of the various gradations between opacity and perfect transparency of colour. Mr Boddington has two nice pictures in the Academy.

We cannot compliment Mr F. Danby on either of the two specimens of his art that he this year displays. We find it impossible to comprehend his colouring. That of _A Golden Moment_ (British Institution) is surely unnatural. Certainly it is a very rare effect of sunset; and the background is too bright to be consistent with the sombre foreground. If we turn to his picture in the Academy, _Spring_, we are no better pleased. That sort of dusky glow is quite an exaggeration of nature. Of Mr Witherington's four pictures, we prefer _Coniston Lake_ and _The Mountain Road_. Mr Hering's _Porto Fesano_ (British Institution) is a pleasing picture, and improves on examination; and there is a great deal of light and some pretty colour in the same artist's _Ruins of Rome_ in the Academy. Mr J. Peel has rather a pretty _Canal view_ in the Portland Gallery, in which, oddly enough, he has thrown the shadow of a tree the wrong way; and in the same exhibition Mrs Oliver has a bit of Welsh scenery which is pretty in spite of its finical touch. Of Mr Linton, who has pictures both in the Academy and British Institution, we cannot but speak with respect, recognising the ability of his works, the study they evince, and his close observation of the aspect of places. But they are quite for distant effect; on near approach they look rough and granitic, and are not a very pleasing or popular class of pictures.

We beg Mr Boxall not to think we have forgotten him. We were desirous to commence the brief paragraph we can afford to portraits, by praising his _Geraldine_, an undraped fancy portrait, which shows a capital feeling for colour, and is perhaps the best specimen of flesh-painting in the Exhibition. It wants finish; but even without that it is nearly the first thing that attracts the eye when we glance at that side of the Middle Room. There is good colour also in the same artist's portrait of Mr Cubitt.

Proceeding, with this exception, in numerical rotation, we notice No. 6, _The Hon. Caroline Dawson_, by Dubufe. The arms are rather flat, but it is a nice portrait, well painted, and infinitely superior to the same artist's picture in the British Institution--a French grisette with a Jewish face and an ugly mouth, holding a rose; the motto "Wither one rose and let the other flourish,"--a poor conceit and very indifferently executed. No. 52 is Mr Francis Grant's, the first, but not the best, of seven which he exhibits. Mr Grant is getting very careless. Such hands and clothes as he gives his sitters are really not allowable. The only carefully finished portrait he exhibits this year is that of Lady Elizabeth Wells, after which that of Miss Grant is perhaps the best. The Countess Bruce has an odd sort of resemblance, in the attitude or something, to the same painter's picture of Mr Sidney Herbert. The Duke of Devonshire looks vulgar. Viscount Hardinge is feeble, for Grant, who can do so much better. We urge this artist to take a little more pains, or his high reputation will dwindle. His portrait of Sir George Grey, now on view at Colnaghi's, is another example of carelessness. The face is the only finished part. Mr Watson Gordon understands the portrait-painter's vocation after a different fashion, and is most conscientious in his practice. Apart from their striking resemblance, his portraits are admirable as carefully finished works of art. His sitters this year have been, upon the whole, less suited to make interesting or pleasing pictures than several of the persons who have sat to Mr Grant; but Watson Gordon has done his work far more carefully. Perhaps the best of his three portraits is that of a lady, No. 137. The child in the same picture pleases us rather less. No. 175, Daniel Vere, Esq. of Stonebyres, is a striking likeness of that gentleman; and nothing can be better, in all respects, than the portrait of the Lord Justice-General of Scotland. Mr Buckner is, we are sorry to say, retrograding sadly. He rose very suddenly into public favour, and if he does not take care, he will rapidly decline. His portrait of Miss Lane Fox is perhaps his best this year. Rachel is flattered. Lady Alfred Paget is badly coloured, and looks in an incipient stage of blue cholera. We do not like Mr Pickersgill's portraits this year. For those who do, there are seven in the Exhibition, besides an ugly thing called Nourmahal. Mr G. F. Watts has painted Miss Virginia Pattle. It is one of the most affected pictures in the whole Exhibition. The young lady is perched on a platform, her figure standing out against the blue sky, and her feet completely hidden under her dress, which latter circumstance gives her an unsteady appearance, and inspires dread lest she should be blown from her elevation. The flesh is very pasty, and the general effect of the picture jejune in the extreme. No. 282, _The Duke of Aumale_, is by V. Mottez, and presents a singular combination or monotony of colour, the artist having seemingly carefully avoided all tints that would give warmth to his picture. With the exception of the insipidly fair countenance of the Duke, the painting is nearly all blue. It is not a disagreeable picture, and it perhaps gains on repeated examination; but one cannot get rid of an unpleasant impression of coldness. Placed next to Boxall's Geraldine, the flesh looks like chalk. That coarse but clever painter Knight has eight portraits, including several celebrities of one kind or other--Buckstone the comedian, Keate the surgeon, Sir J. Duke the mayor, Cooper the cattle-painter, and Mrs Fitzwilliam the actress. The picture of Sir J. Duke (who is represented in all the glory of civic office) is well put together; Cooper is laughably like; Mrs Fitzwilliam is perhaps as delicate a female portrait as Knight ever painted--which is not saying much for the others. Mr Say's portrait of Guizot is softened down and idealised till the character of the man is lost. In the Portland Gallery, No. 1 and No. 70 are by an artist whose historical pictures we have already commended, Mr Newenham. The first is a full length, size of life, of Mr Ross, the engineer; the other, Mrs Gall, is a sweet female countenance. Both are very good; but Mr Newenham is always particularly successful--indeed we can call to mind no living painter who is more so--in his portraits of ladies. Whilst avoiding flattery, he still invariably paints pleasing as well as correct likenesses. Such at least is the case with all those of his lady-portraits we have had opportunities of comparing with the models. Middleton has some nice portraits in this exhibition, and Mr J. Lucas shows a pleasing one of a young lad. And one of the most lifelike and speaking portraits exhibited this year is No. 286, by R. S. Lauder, the likeness of our old friend and much-esteemed contributor, the Rev. James White. A more exact resemblance we never saw.

We have not counted them, but we are informed, and have no difficulty in believing, that there are 450 portraits (or thereabouts) in this the eighty-second exhibition of the Royal Academy. A very large number, out of 1456 works of art. Adding the portraits in the three other exhibitions, we attain a total of which, even after deducting drawings and miniatures, it is impossible for us to notice one fourth-part. And we must particularly remark, with respect to portraits and landscapes, what also applies in a less degree to the less numerous classes of pictures, that we have unavoidably--on account of our limited space to deal with so compendious a subject, and also because we would not reduce this article to a mere catalogue--omitted notice of many artists and pictures whose claims are undoubted to mention more or less honourable; as we have also forborne, for the same reason, and much more willingly, certain censures which we should have been justified in inflicting. Concerning portraits, however, we would gladly have been rather more diffuse, had we not still to take some notice, within the compass of a very few pages, of those exhibitions to which as yet we have done little more than incidentally refer.

The restoration to the galleries of purchasers and studios of painters, of the five hundred pictures exhibited this year by the British Institution, diminishes the interest now attaching to that exhibition, and induces us to be tolerably brief in our notice of some of its leading features. No. 52, _The Post Office_, by F. Goodall, is a pretty picture enough, but displays no genius, and the subject suggests a comparison with Wilkie, which is not favourable. Mr Bullock's _Venus and Cupid_, No. 124, is about as sickly a piece of blue and pink as we remember to have seen. Mr Sant's _Rivals_ gives the impression of a copy from the lid of a French plum-box. We have surely seen the Frenchified group in some engraving of Louis XV's times. Mr Woolmer's _Syrens_ displays some imagination, but the colouring is very bad. The sky is exaggerated, and the water seems to have flowed from a cesspool, suggesting unsavoury ideas of the extent of its contamination by the dead bodies that float upon it. It is a picture, nevertheless, that one is apt to look at twice. T. Clark's _The Horses of Rhesus captured by Ulysses and Diomed_, has plenty of faults, certainly, but it has also boldness and spirit, and makes us think the painter may hereafter do better things. No. 205, _Lance reproving his Dog_--left unfinished by the late Sir A. W. Callcott, and completed by J. Callcott Horsley--includes a pretty bit of landscape, and the dog is not bad; but, as a whole, the picture does not strike us as remarkable. No. 231, _A French Fishing Girl_, by T. K. Fairless, is a nice bit of colouring, very fresh and judicious; and R. M'Innes's _Detaining a Customer_, tells its story well, and is of careful finish, but insipid colouring. Lady Macbeth, by T. F. Dicksee, is repulsive and unnatural; not the murderess Shakspeare conceived and Siddons acted, but a saucer-eyed maniac standing under a gas-lamp. No. 290, _Our Saviour after the Temptation_, is by Sir George Hayter, who has bestowed great pains without producing, as a whole, a very satisfactory result. The picture has certainly good points, but it speaks against its general excellence that we are driven to praise details. All the hands are particularly well done--Sir George's experience as a portrait painter having here availed him. The colouring of Christ's dress is good, but generally there is an abuse of yellow in the picture. The angels have no backs to their heads, but this phrenological defect is perhaps intentional, to convey the artist's notion of an angel by indicating the absence of gross passions. G. Cole's _Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Pedro's hut_ is humorous, but quite a caricature. The painter seems to have studied to establish a resemblance between the men and their respective beasts. Another laughable picture is Mrs C. Smith's _Irish Piper_, whose companion _The Irish Card-cutter_ is No. 206 in the British Artists'. As works of art, they have little merit, but one cannot help acknowledging and laughing at the vulgar humour and truth to nature they both contain. Mr Selous' _The First Impression_, Gutemberg showing to his wife his first experiment in printing from movable types, is perhaps the best picture in the South Room. There is an air of nature about Mr W. Wyld's _Smugglers' halt in the Sierra Morena_; but the figures, although well grouped, are on too small a scale for much interest, and the landscape lacks attraction. Our old friend George Cruikshank gives full scope to his rich humour in No. 100, _Sancho's surprise on seeing the Squire of the Wood's Nose_; and 455, _Disturbing the Congregation_. This last is inimitable--brimful of fun. A charity boy has let his peg-top fall during service, and the awful clatter upon the church pavement draws all eyes in the direction of the delinquent. This is a picture that must be seen, not described; but our readers will imagine all the fun Cruikshank would make of such a subject--the terrified face of the culprit, in vain affecting unconsciousness, and the awful countenance of the beadle. We must say a word of Mr J. F. Herring's _A Farmyard_, which contains some good horses; but he has huddled his objects too much together, his colouring is very opaque, and there is a want of air and perspective in the picture. There is the same defect of thick colour in Mr H. Jutsum's pretty composition, _Evening--coming home to the Farm_.

We have already mentioned several pictures in the Portland Gallery, including a portrait by Mr R. S. Lauder, (the president of this new society,) which is perhaps the best, although one of the most unpretending, of the seven pictures he exhibits. We do not discern any very great merit in two carefully painted illustrations of Quentin Durward. We should like to know on what authority Mr Lauder makes a tall, large-limbed man of Louis XI., and how he intends to get him and the raw-boned Scot through the door in No. 166, without a most unkingly deviation from the perpendicular. There is here a fault of perspective. And Mr Lauder should beware of repetition. We remember the lady behind the tapestry in No. 45, in at least a dozen of his pictures. This, however, is the best of the pair, and there is good painting in it. His most important picture this year is that of _Christ appearing to two of his Disciples on the way to Emmaus_. This is certainly a fine work, although there is much opposition of opinion respecting it. There is undoubtedly a fine sentiment in the colouring, which is peculiarly applicable to the subject. Mr M'Ian is in great force here, with no less than ten pictures. We like this artist for the character and energy he infuses into his productions. His most attractive picture this year is No. 55, _Here's his health in Water!_ thus explained--"A Highland gentleman of 1715, in Carlisle prison, the day previous to his execution, receiving the last visit of his mother, wife, and children, and instilling into his son--the future Highland gentleman of 1745--the principles of loyalty." The face of the condemned Highlander is full of vigour and determination, as is also that of his mother, a resolute old lady, who seems to confirm his precepts to her grandchild. The countenances of the sorrowing wife and of the little girl, whose attention is distracted by the opening of the prison door, are natural and pleasing. The boy, a sturdy scion of the old stock, drinks King James's health out of the prison-mug of water. We will not omit to praise Mrs M'Ian's very well-painted picture of _Captivity and Liberty_--gipsies in prison, with swallows twittering in the loophole that affords them light. There is a nice feeling about this picture, which includes a handsome gipsy face; it is careful in its details, and very effective in point of chiaroscuro. No. 251, _A Jealous Man, disguised as a Priest, hears the confession of his Wife_, is a subject (from the _Decameron_) of which more might have been made than there has been by Mr D. W. Deane. The countenances lack decided expression. Several artists have this year painted scenes from the _Tempest_, and Mr A. Fussell is one of the number. It were to be wished he had abstained. His picture of _Caliban, Ariel, and his fellows_, is very bad indeed. He should be less ambitious in his subjects, or at least less fantastical in their treatment. It is unintelligible to us how this picture illustrates the passage quoted. Nos. 264-5 are Mr H. Barraud's pictures:--_Lord have mercy upon us_, and _We praise thee, O God!_ the engravings of which have for some time past been in every shop-window. We are really at a loss to comprehend the _engouement_ for these pictures, which seem to us as deficient in real sentiment as they are feeble in execution. They are pretty enough, certainly, but that is all the praise we are disposed to accord them. There is no great beauty in the faces; and one of the boys (on the spectator's right hand) is a mere lout, without any expression whatever. The Messrs Barraud have a great many pictures in this exhibition--amongst others, No. 199, _The Curfew_, their joint production, which is pretty, but in respect to which it strikes us that they have read Gray's poem wrong, for the light in their picture is not that of parting day, but of approaching sunset. Mr Rayner's _Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick_, is a good picture; Mr Niemann's _Kenilworth from the Tilt-yard_, and _Landscape_, No. 72, also deserve praise; Mr Dighton is very effective in some of his landscapes and studies. Upon the whole, this young exhibition promises well.

Driven to our utmost limits, we must conclude, without further mention than we have already here and there made of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street; and we do so with the less regret because that gallery contains but a small proportion of pictures of merit. Mr Anthony contributes a very large number of his odd paintings, some of which are rather effective at a distance; but it is not a style we admire. Finally, we have with pleasure noticed, during our many rambles through the different galleries, that the public not only visit but buy; and we trust that the year 1850 will prove profitable and satisfactory to British artists, in the same proportion that it undoubtedly is creditable to their industry, and, upon the whole, highly honourable to their talents. One word more we will say at parting. In this article we have written down opinions, formed neither hastily nor partially, of whose soundness, although critics will always differ, we venture to feel pretty confident. We have applied ourselves to point out merits rather than defects, and to distribute praise in preference to blame; but we should have failed in our duty to ourselves and the public, had we altogether abstained from the latter. We well know, however, the many difficulties and discouragements that beset the path of the painter. And it would be matter for sincere regret to us, if, in the freedom of our remarks, we had unwittingly hurt the feelings of any man who is honestly and earnestly striving in the pursuit of a very difficult art--although his success may as yet be incommensurate with his industry and zeal.

THE YEAR OF SORROW.--IRELAND--1849.

SPRING SONG.

Once more, through God's high will and grace, Of Hours that each its task fulfils, Heart-healing Spring resumes its place;-- The valley throngs and scales the hills,

In vain. From earth's deep heart o'ercharged, The exulting life runs o'er in flowers;-- The slave unfed is unenlarged: In darkness sleep a nation's powers.

Who knows not Spring? Who doubts, when blows Her breath, that Spring is come indeed? The swallow doubts not; nor the rose That stirs, but wakes not, nor the weed.

I feel her near, but see her not, For those with pain-uplifted eyes Fall back repulsed; and vapours blot The vision of the earth and skies.

I see her not; I feel her near, As, charioted in mildest airs, She sails through yon empyreal sphere, And in her arms and bosom bears

That urn of flowers and lustral dews, Whose sacred balm, o'er all things shed, Revives the weak, the old renews, And crowns with votive wreaths the dead.

Once more the cuckoo's call I hear; I know, in many a glen profound, The earliest violets of the year Rise up like water from the ground.

The thorn I know once more is white; And, far down many a forest dale, The anemones in dubious light Are trembling like a bridal veil.

By streams released that singing flow From craggy shelf through sylvan glades, The pale narcissus, well I know, Smiles hour by hour on greener shades.

The honeyed cowslip tufts once more The golden slopes;--with gradual ray The primrose stars the rock, and o'er The wood-path strews its milky way.

--From ruined huts and holes come forth Old men, and look upon the sky! The Power Divine is on the earth:-- Give thanks to God before ye die!

And ye, O children worn and weak, Who care no more with flowers to play, Lean on the grass your cold, thin cheek, And those slight hands, and whispering, say,

"Stern Mother of a race unblest-- In promise kindly, cold in deed; Take back, O Earth, into thy breast, The children whom thou wilt not feed."

IRELAND--1849.

AUTUMNAL DIRGE.

Then die, thou Year--thy work is done: The work ill done is done at last. Far off, beyond that sinking sun, Which sets in blood, I hear the blast

That sings thy dirge, and says--"Ascend, And answer make amid thy peers, (Since all things here must have an end,) Thou latest of the famine years!"

I join that voice. No joy have I In all thy purple and thy gold, Nor in the nine-fold harmony From forest on to forest rolled:

Nor in that stormy western fire, Which burns on ocean's gloomy bed, And hurls, as from a funeral pyre, A glare that strikes the mountain's head;

And writes on low-hung clouds its lines Of cyphered flame, with hurrying hand; And flings amid the topmost pines That crown the steep, a burning brand.

Make answer, Year, for all they dead, Who found not rest in hallowed earth, The widowed wife, the father fled, The babe age-stricken from his birth.

Make answer, Year, for virtue lost; For Faith, that vanquished fraud and force, Now waning like a noontide ghost; Affections poisoned at their source:

The labourer spurned his lying spade; The yeoman spurned his useless plough; The pauper spurned the unwholesome aid, Obtruded once, exhausted now.

The weaver wove till all was dark, And, long ere morning, bent and bowed Above his work with fingers stark; And made, nor knew he made, a shroud.

The roof-trees fall of hut and hall, I hear them fall, and falling cry-- "One fate for each, one fate for all; So wills the Law that willed a lie."

Dread power of Man! what spread the waste In circles, hour by hour more wide, And would not let the past be past?-- The Law that promised much, and lied.

Dread power of God! whom mortal years Nor touch, nor tempt; who sitt'st sublime In night of night,--O bid thy spheres Resound at last a funeral chime.

Call up, at last, the afflicted Race Whom Man not God abolished. Sore, For centuries, their strife: the place That knew them once shall know no more.

IRELAND--1849.

WINTER DIRGE.

Fall, Snow, and cease not! Flake by flake The decent winding-sheet compose: Thy task is just and pious; make An end of blasphemies and woes.

Fall flake by flake: by thee alone, Last friend, the sleeping draught is given: Kind nurse, by thee the couch is strewn, The couch whose covering is from heaven.

Descend and clasp the mountain's crest; Possess wide plain and valley deep:-- This night, in thy maternal breast Forsaken myriads die in sleep.

Lo! from the starry Temple gates Death rides, and bears the flag of peace: The combatants he separates; He bids the wrath of ages cease.

Descend, benignant Power! But O, Ye torrents, shake no more the vale; Dark streams, in silence seaward flow; Thou rising storm, remit thy wail.

Shake not, to-night, the cliffs of Moher, Or Brandon's base, rough sea! Thou Isle, The Rite proceeds:--from shore to shore Hold in thy gathered breath the while.

Fall, snow! in stillness fall, like dew On temple roof, and cedar's fan; And mould thyself on pine and yew, And on the awful face of man.

Without a sound, without a stir, In streets and wolds, on rock and mound, O omnipresent comforter, By thee, this night, the lost are found.

On quaking moor, and mountain moss, With eyes upstaring at the sky, And arms extended like a cross, The long-expectant sufferers lie.

Bend o'er them, white-robed Acolyte! Put forth thine hand from cloud and mist, And minister the last sad rite, Where altar there is none, nor priest.

Touch thou the gates of soul and sense: Touch darkening eyes and dying ears; Touch stiffening hand and feet, and thence Remove the trace of sin and tears.

And ere thou seal those filmed eyes, Into God's urn thy fingers dip, And lay, 'mid eucharistic sighs, The sacred wafer on the lip.

This night the Absolver issues forth: This night the Eternal Victim bleeds-- O winds and woods--O heaven and earth! Be still this night. The Rite proceeds.

LONDON AND EDINBURGH CHESS MATCH.

If we pique ourselves on anything, it is on our invincible good-nature. We are as slow to be roused as a brown bear in the midst of its winter sleep; and, if we were let alone, we very much doubt whether, by any conceivable exertion, we could work ourselves into a downright passion. But, somehow or other, it constantly happens that people of a less tranquil mood step in to deprive us of the enjoyment of our untroubled repose. At one time some worthy fellow entreats us to take up the public cudgel and belabour a blatant Economist. At another, we are pathetically besought to administer due castigation to some literary sinner who has transgressed the first principles of decency, morality, and taste. One friend implores us, with tears in his eyes, to take up the case of the oppressed and injured washerwomen: a second puts a tomahawk into our hand, and benevolently suggests the severment of the skull of a charlatan: a third writes to us regarding a rowing match, in which he opines gross injustice has been done by the umpire to the Buffs, and he fervently prays for our powerful assistance in vindicating the honour of the Blues.

In all national questions, it seems to be expected that we are to act with the devotion of a knight-errant. Whenever Scotland is assailed, the general impression is that we are bound to stand forth, and incontinently give battle to the enemy: and we believe it will be admitted that we have done so before now with no inconsiderable effect. It so happens that, at the present juncture, several of our most esteemed compatriots, feeling themselves deeply aggrieved by the _outrecuidance_ of the Southron, have laid the story of their wrongs before us; and, after a deliberate review of the whole circumstances of the case, we feel ourselves compelled to come forward in behalf of our countrymen. Let no man venture to say that Chess is an ignoble subject. It is, if properly considered, as recondite a science as mathematics. Kings, conquerors, and sages have not thought it beneath them to ponder over the chequered board; and it may be that the noble game has contributed in no light degree to the success of their most triumphant efforts. We know of no absorption more complete than that which possesses the mind of a true votary of chess. Watch him as he is contemplating his moves, and his countenance is a perfect study for the physiognomist. He may not perhaps be the most agreeable of companions, but we cannot expect loquacity from men of high intellect whilst engaged in deepest rumination.

Let us, however, dispense as much as possible with preface, and come to the actual offence which has induced us to take up our pen in vindication of the national honour. Our attention has been called to what is undoubtedly a departure from the fair and liberal spirit which ought to actuate antagonists--in short, by an attempt to deprive the Edinburgh Chess Club of laurels which were fairly and honourably won. It is all very well for men who have been beaten to apply salves to their wounded vanity, and to persuade themselves that they have failed rather through misfortune than from any deficiency of skill. Napoleon used to amuse himself at St Helena by demonstrating that he _ought_ to have won the battle of Waterloo--a position in which, we doubt not, Count Montholon and General Bertrand entirely concurred, though, after a certain time, they must have been tolerably sick of the subject. But these affirmations of the Emperor did not serve the purpose of reinstating him on the throne of France; and, in like manner, opine that the writers who, at this time of day, are, applying themselves to the task of persuading the public that the great match at chess between Edinburgh and London, which was won by Edinburgh in 1828, ought to have terminated otherwise, are losing their labour, and, moreover, placing themselves in a very ridiculous position.

We like to see a man take a beating in good part. The Southron may come here and vanquish us at cricket, and we shall submit to be bowled or caught out with the utmost equanimity--no member of the Grange Club will retire to the cloister in consequence. He may extinguish our renown at rackets, or even soar considerably above our mark in the altitude of the flying-leap. We shall not cavil at the result, should some Southron Robin Hood defeat the Queen's Body Guard in the toxophilite competition which is about to take place in this city. We shall not be jealous if the stranger beats us; and if, in return, we should extinguish him utterly at golf or throwing the hammer, we promise to crow as mildly as the plenitude of our lungs will permit. But we have no idea of pushing complaisance to such an extraordinary point, as to permit our real victories to be perverted and annulled at the hands of a defeated adversary. Hector _might_ have beaten Achilles, but he did not; and the mere fact of a remote possibility having once existed, will not justify us in giving the lie to Homer. We make every allowance for testiness; still we cannot help thinking it extraordinary that those feelings of mortification, which might perhaps have been excusable in the defeated party at the moment of the antagonist's triumph, should manifest themselves as strongly as ever nearly a quarter of a century after the contest--and that, too, in persons who took no actual share in it, and are comparatively strangers to the views and opinions of those really concerned.

English chess-players have the command of all the chess-periodicals, which emanate chiefly, if not exclusively, from the London press; and which have, for many years back, been made the vehicles of repeated observations intended to depreciate the triumph of Scotland. Of late these have been even more than usually frequent. And within the last year, the _Quarterly Review_, which, like the trunk of an elephant, is as ready to pick up a pin as to uproot a tree, has opened its pages for remarks on the chess match, conceived in no very handsome spirit towards the Scotch champions. This we do not consider to be justifiable conduct on the part of our bulky contemporary. In the accomplished editor--himself a Scot--it is in direct antagonism to the principles of Richie, the servitor of Nigel, who made so vigorous a stand for the credit of the Water of Leith; and we regret to observe so palpable a falling off from the fervid patriotism of the Moniplies. The uniform burden of the song is, that the event of the match was determined by an accident,--or by what they reckon as nearly equivalent to an accident--an oversight upon the part of the London Club, to which the best of players are liable, and which in this instance is said to have been rather ungenerously taken advantage of by Edinburgh. The Scottish players have hitherto said very little upon the subject, contenting themselves with a short but perfectly satisfactory answer, made immediately after the termination of the match, to some observations of Mr Lewis, in which, while they conclusively disposed of his views and inferences, they at the same time stated, that they were "far from begrudging to the London Club the usual consolation of a beaten adversary--of going back upon a game, and showing that, if they had played otherwise at a particular point, they could have won the game." The constant reiteration of the English statement, however, is calculated to produce an erroneous impression in the minds of those not acquainted with the merits of the question.

The London and Edinburgh chess match, which was played by correspondence, was begun in the year 1824. It was the result of a challenge given by the Edinburgh Club, which was then only in its infancy. The terms agreed on were, that the match should consist of three won games; and that, in case of any game being drawn, a new one, begun by the same opener, should take its place. The match commenced on 23d April 1824. Two games were opened simultaneously. The first game was opened by the Edinburgh Club; and in sending their first answering move, the London Club also sent the first move of the second game. The first game, which consisted of 35 moves, was, on 14th December 1824, declared to be drawn. The second, which consisted of 52 moves, was resigned by the London Club on 23d February 1825. The third game--opened by the Edinburgh Club in place of the first game, which had been drawn--was begun on 20th December 1824; it consisted of 99 moves, and was drawn on 18th March 1828. The fourth game, begun by the Edinburgh Club, on 26th February 1825, was resigned by them on 15th September 1826, at the 55th move. The fifth game, begun by the Edinburgh Club, on 6th October 1826, was resigned by the London Club on 31st July 1828, at the 60th move--and this determined the match in favour of Edinburgh.

The simple statement of these details is sufficient altogether to exclude the idea that the result of the match was a mere accident, where manifestly inferior players profited by the unfortunate blunder of their superior antagonists. Though the Edinburgh Club had lost, instead of gaining, two out of the three games, it would still have been in vain to maintain that the play in the match showed them to be unquestionably inferior. The contest was a long and severe one. When the fifth and deciding game was proceeding, each party had gained one game, and there had been two drawn games, both of which were keenly disputed, without the least advantage in favour of London at any point of either; while, on the other hand, in the third game, Edinburgh had obtained an advantage, though not sufficient to enable them to checkmate their adversaries. It has never been pretended, by the most unscrupulous partisan of England, that the winning of the fifth game was ascribable to an oversight. On the contrary, their chess writers have, with most becoming fairness and candour, always referred to it as an instance of admirable play on the part of Edinburgh; and members of the London committee, who shortly after happened to visit Edinburgh, acknowledged that their committee were quite unable to discover the object of particular moves, the effect of which had been previously calculated, and reduced to demonstration by the Edinburgh players. Is there, in all this, such evidence of overwhelming superiority on the part of the English players, that their losing the match _must_ have been an accident?

But it is time to inquire a little more minutely into the so-called blunder, which the Englishmen say was the cause of their defeat. And here it is but fair to give their statement in their own words. The _Quarterly_ reviewer says--

"Perhaps the most remarkable instance on record of a strict enforcement of the tenor of chess law occurred in the celebrated match, by correspondence, between the London and Edinburgh Clubs. At the 27th move of the second game, the London Club threw a rook away. How they did so, Mr Lewis explains in the following words:--'The 26th, 27th, and 28th moves were sent on the same day to the Edinburgh Club. This was done to save time. It so happened that the secretary, whose duty it was to write the letters, had an engagement which compelled him to leave the Club two hours earlier than usual--the letter was therefore posted at three instead of five o'clock. In the mean time, one of the members discovered that the 2d move (the 27th) had not been sufficiently examined.[10] An application was immediately made at the Post-office for the letter, which was refused. In consequence, a second letter was transmitted by the same post to the Edinburgh Club, retracting the 2d and 3d moves, and abiding only by the first. The Edinburgh Club, in answer, gave it as their decided opinion that the London Club were bound by their letter, and that no move could be retracted: they therefore insisted on the moves being played. The London Club conceded the point, though they differed in opinion.'

"We cannot but think, under all the circumstances, the Edinburgh Club were to blame. What rendered the mishap more vexatious to the Londoners was, that whereas they had a won game before, they now barely lost it, and thereby the match, which the winning of this game would have decided in their favour. There can be little doubt that the London Club (then comprising Messrs Lewis, Fraser, and Cochrane) was the strongest of the two. On the part of Edinburgh, we believe the lion's share of the work fell to the late Mr Donaldson."

[10] It is of importance to keep in view that it never was asserted that the _first_ move, the 26th, had not been sufficiently examined; and it will be immediately seen that that move was adhered to, no attempt being made to recall it. The truth is, that the London Club could not have played a better move than their 27th. Their mistake, as was first discovered by the Edinburgh Club, was in the 26th move, the one adhered to _after examination_.

In the remarks on the London and Amsterdam match, in Mr Staunton's periodical, (the _Chess-Player's Chronicle_,) for February 1850, there is the following passage:--

"If the relative skill of the competitors engaged on each side were to be the gauge by which to estimate the probable result of a contest like this, it would have been easy to predict to which party victory would incline; and we should have wondered at the daring gallantry that prompted the little band of Hollanders to challenge the leviathans of London. Experience, however, has shown that, in a match of chess by correspondence, the battle is not always to the strong, and that foresight and profound calculation are of infinitely less account, when the men may be moved experimentally, than they are in ordinary chess, where conclusions must be tried by the head, and not by the hand. Of this, indeed, the archives of the London Club afford a memorable instance. In March 1824, a proposal was made to this Club by the Club at Edinburgh, to play a match at chess by correspondence for a silver cup; the match to consist of three games, (irrespective of drawn games;) two games to be played together, and the winner of the first game to have the move in the third. The London Club at this period was in the pride and plenitude of its strength, and the committee appointed to conduct the match comprised every name of note among the chess-players of the metropolis. The Edinburgh Chess-Club, on the other hand, was composed of amateurs comparatively unknown and inexperienced, and possessed one player only--the late Mr Donaldson--capable of making anything like a stand 'over the board' with any of the London chiefs. In an ordinary contest, indeed, over the board, it was the old odds of Lombard Street to a China orange! Maugre all the advantages of superior skill and practice, however, the Londoners lost the battle, and lost it by a blunder as ridiculous as it was vexatious, at the very moment, too, when the game was in their hands."

The general remarks on playing by correspondence in this last passage are evidently made to furnish a pretence for introducing the notice of the London and Edinburgh match; and they share the fate of all such forced work. They are absolute nonsense. The probability that a decidedly superior will overcome an inferior player, is not at all diminished by the circumstance that the match is played by correspondence. On the contrary, we should rather be inclined to say that the chance of an inferior player's escape in a single game or so is almost extinguished where the match is played by correspondence; because the time given for deliberation increases the improbability of his antagonist's erring from carelessness, or not taking in the whole position of the game, which sometimes occurs in playing over the board. But there is an inconsequence in the whole argument which surprises us to find in anything sanctioned by a person of Mr Staunton's unquestionable powers of mind. The loss of the match by London is not to be wondered at, it is said, because it was a match by correspondence; and the immediate cause of their losing it was the commission of a ridiculous and vexatious blunder! To make this anything like logic, it would be necessary to hold that ridiculous and vexatious blunders are more likely to be committed when the player has time and opportunity to consider his moves, and to make experiments upon their effect, than where he is under the necessity of moving at once in presence of an adversary, and possibly of spectators, apt to get impatient at long delay. It is plain that the game's being played by correspondence was the very circumstance calculated to render the London Club's particular excuse for losing all the more untenable.

It is quite true, however, that at a particular stage of the game opened by the London Club, (being one of the two games with which the match commenced,) the London Club might have won the game, by playing other moves than they did. This may be said of every game; but it is as unusual as it is unhandsome for the unsuccessful party, merely because he has missed such an opportunity of winning, to refuse all credit to his adversary for afterwards defeating him. In the third game, which was drawn, the Edinburgh Club would have won if they had played a different 51st move from that which they did. But this did not lead them to make depreciatory remarks about their antagonists: all that their report bears on this point is, that the London Club "conducted a difficult defence with great skill and dexterity, and finally succeeded in drawing the game."

Further, the remarks above quoted are calculated to produce an erroneous idea respecting the situation and conduct of the two clubs in the second game. The sophistry consists in mixing up two entirely separate and unconnected things. In this same game in which the London Club failed to observe that they had a winning position, they applied to have two of their moves recalled after they were despatched, and the Edinburgh committee refused their request. Now the obvious tendency of all that the English writers say upon the subject is to create the impression that if the London Club had been allowed to recall these two moves, they would have retained their winning position. This is plainly the only construction that the passage in the _Quarterly Review_ is capable of bearing. It is the only construction which would justify his remarks, or make them at all intelligible. But it is quite incorrect. The only moves which the London committee wished to recall were the 27th and 28th; but they have never attempted to show that if they had been allowed to do so, they could have won the game. It has been demonstrated, over and over again, that they could not. In fact, the moves they wished to recall were as good as any others then in their power. They might have drawn the game if these moves had been played; and they could have done no more had they been allowed to recall them. This matter was set at rest while the match was still pending, by a proposal which emanated from the Edinburgh Club. When the Londoners lost the game, Mr Lewis insinuated, though he did not expressly state, that if they had not been held to the 27th and 28th moves, they would have won the game. A member of the Edinburgh Club then offered to play a back-game with any one or more of the London Club, in which the London players were to be allowed a new 27th move instead of the one they had made, and wished to recall; and also another back-game in which the Edinburgh player was to take the London side _at an earlier stage of the game_, with the view of showing that, by playing differently, the London Club might have won it. This proposal was under consideration of the London Club _for several weeks_, during which they satisfied themselves that the recall of the 27th and 28th moves would be of no use, and, accordingly, it was declined. It is surely not very uncharitable to surmise that it was during this period, and on the suggestion of their opponents, that they discovered that the error was not in the 27th move which they had proposed to recall, but in the 26th, which they had examined and adhered to. In his first publication of the games, Mr Lewis gives no back-game on this 26th move; and it is believed that no member of the London Club was aware, till the game was finished, that by playing differently at the 26th move they might have won it. But Mr Lewis admits that the game could not be won by a mere alteration of the 27th or 28th move; and any one who says that it could, is either speaking in ignorance of the subject, or is making a wilful misrepresentation. The likelihood of the remarks of the English writers producing an erroneous impression arises from their mixing up these two separate and distinct things: 1st, that at a previous stage of the game, the London Club had a winning position which they did not discover, and failed to avail themselves of; and, 2d, that the Edinburgh Club would not allow them to retract the 27th and 28th moves. These two facts have no longer any possible connection with each other when it is known that, at the 27th move, the London Club had ceased to have a winning position, and that the recall of that move would have been of no use to them. The failure, at a previous stage of the game, to maintain the winning position which they had, is simply one among several illustrations which occurred in the match, of the truth that the London Club, "in the pride and plenitude of its strength," did not always play as well as it was possible to have done. How such things show that superiority on the part of London, which they are brought forward to establish, we confess ourselves unable to understand, unless we were to adopt the principle of the _Chess-Players' Chronicle_, that it is the best players who are most likely to commit errors in conducting a match by correspondence!!

It seems to be a source of melancholy consolation to the English players, that their Club committed a "ridiculous and vexatious blunder." We are sorry that, in our strict regard for truth, we must deprive them even of that comfort. The losing of the disputed game was not a ridiculous blunder, however vexatious. On the contrary, the series of moves by which they lost the chance of winning, was at first a very promising attack, and had the additional temptation of appearing brilliant and enterprising. If any chess-player will set up the men at the 27th move of the London Club, or glance at the diagram given in Mr Staunton's periodical for May 1850, he will see that nothing but the utmost skill and caution on the part of Edinburgh could have successfully warded off the attack. The London Club had not contemplated the defence which they met with; and if, in these circumstances, they were seduced into an ingenious but unsound attack, it may be conceded that they manifested want of circumspection, an important qualification in a chess-player; but they cannot be accused of committing a ridiculous blunder. They talk of having "thrown away" a rook. They did no such thing. The rook was played not by mistake, but for the very purpose of being taken in the course of their dashing but unsuccessful attack. And in Mr Lewis's analyses, it will be found that many of his methods of winning, at previous stages of the game, involve this very sacrifice of the rook.

The refusal of the Edinburgh Club to allow the recall of the 27th and 28th moves loses all its importance when it is known that it did not affect the fate of the game. But we should in any circumstances be sorry to believe that, in so refusing, they had done what deserved the censure bestowed on them by the _Quarterly_ reviewer. In considering the propriety of their conduct, there are only two lights in which the request may be viewed. They were either asked to do what the London Club had a right to demand, or they were asked to grant a favour to the London Club. We do not know that the former view is supported by any of the English writers. Even the _Quarterly_ reviewer does not say that the London Club had a _right_ to recall the moves; and on this question of right it appears to us that there cannot be the least shadow of a doubt. The letter containing the moves was despatched to the Post-office. It was held by the Post-office for the party to whom it was addressed, and was entirely beyond the control of the party sending it. The piece, in every sense, was therefore "let go" by the player; and the 8th Article of Sarratt's laws of chess, by which it was agreed that the games should be played, provides that "as long as a player holds a piece, he is at liberty to play it where he chooses; but when he has _let it go_, he cannot recall his move." Accordingly, the London Club never attempted to contest the question of right. They stated that they had "no hesitation in acceding to the Edinburgh Committee's construction," and adhering to the moves. In fact, the construction put on the point by the Edinburgh Club was not only assented to by the London players at the time, but several members of the committee admitted afterwards, that it was unquestionably the right way of dealing with the case, and no member of the London Club ever hinted a complaint on the subject, except what was insinuated by Mr Lewis in the publication referred to.

Were the Edinburgh Club "_to blame_" for not granting the favour which was asked of them? On this question we think there is quite as little doubt as the other. We have a strong and decided opinion as to the necessity of strict play in _all_ games. It is the only fair and rational system; for once allow indulgence, and it is impossible to fix the limit at which it should stop. But we think that the remark applies with peculiar force to the game of chess, in which rigour is absolutely essential to the acquisition of the habits fitted for the proper playing of the game. Above all, in an important match at chess, anything but the strict game is entirely out of the question. A high-spirited antagonist will scorn to ask a favour, or even to grumble about the commission of a blunder. He submits in silence, and plays on in the hope of retrieving his fault by redoubled care and attention. If, on the other hand, he were to be expected to grant favours to his blundering antagonist, it is plain that his very good qualities would be turned to his disadvantage in the match. The Edinburgh Club played in the belief that the rules of the game were to apply with equal strictness to both parties; and though there was more than one instance in which they would have been glad to recall a move, they never proposed this, or even spoke of the occasions for it, except in answer to Mr Lewis's observations on the proposed recall of the 27th move. In the very game in which this move was made, the Edinburgh committee had at a _previous_ point in the game made a move which they discovered to be unsound, or at least doubtful. Their report bears that "application was made to the Post-office to have the letter containing it restored, but without effect. Finding this to be the case, the letter was looked upon as delivered, the Post-office being regarded as holding it, not on behalf of the Club from which it had been sent, but on behalf of the Club to which it was addressed; and therefore no attempt was made to countermand the move, by transmitting another letter by the same post. The 8th article of the laws was considered to be too clear and explicit to warrant a recall." This conduct of the Edinburgh Club appears to us the manly and proper way of dealing with such a circumstance, and infinitely better than trying to make it the foundation of a complaint of rigorous procedure on the part of their opponents.

The same thing happened again to the Edinburgh Club in the fourth game. In consequence of having put up the game erroneously, they sent an impossible move--that is to say, they directed a Knight to be moved to a square already occupied by their King. They discovered the mistake before the letter had left Edinburgh, but considered themselves as having incurred the penalty of playing an impossible move, which was, in the option of their adversary, either to move the Knight to some other square, or to move their King. Of these two, the move of the _King_ was infinitely the better play, and therefore, in order to save time, a note was written on the outside of the letter explaining the mistake, and stating that the Edinburgh committee held themselves bound to move the _Knight_, which it was presumed the London Club would enforce, as the more severe penalty. The London Club did so; and yet Mr Lewis, in his notes to this game, rather disingenuously, as it appears to us, represented the London Club as having yielded an advantage to their antagonists, in accepting the move of the Knight. This merely accidental blunder, on the part of the Edinburgh Club, was one cause of their loss of the fourth game.

Seeing that the Edinburgh Club thus on all occasions subjected themselves to the most rigorous interpretation of the rules of the game, we cannot hold the _Quarterly Review_ as justified in saying that they were "to blame" in not allowing the London Club to retract a move. But we appeal from the _Quarterly_ reviewer as a partisan of England, to the _Quarterly_ reviewer, as an impartial enunciator of general propositions respecting the game of chess. Hear what he says about the absurdity of giving back moves:--

"Another advantage has arisen from the multiplication of clubs, and consequent publication of accurate rules--viz., that the strict game is now played, instead of those courteous surrenders of advantages offered by a heedless adversary, which used often to make winners of those who had received back two or three leading pieces in the course of the game. These were a source of endless unpleasant discussions, besides being in themselves an absurdity. We confess we have no notion of rewarding an opponent for his oversights. We would show him as little mercy as Mr Smith O'Brien would to Lord Clarendon. Nay, we should be moved hereto by a consideration of his benefit as well as our own--for why should we teach him vacillation and heedlessness?"

Again, among a portentous list of narrow-minded delusions, he gives as "Delusion the Fifth--

"'That it is illiberal to play the strict game.' To this we can only reply, that other methods are but a miserable imitation. People talk of the hardship of 'losing a game by an oversight,' and so on. It is much harder to arrive at nothing but 'conclusions inconclusive,' and to have the game terminate in an Irish discussion which of the two parties made the greatest blunders."

We agree in every word of this; and we only wonder that so sound a reasoner should himself fall under the delusion which he exposes--so severe a censor should commit the very offence which he condemns.

On the whole, as regards the proposed recall of the 27th and 28th moves of the second game, we think these three propositions are conclusively established, 1. That neither according to the rules of the game, nor upon any other principle which does or ought to regulate the playing of matches, were the London Club entitled to have their proposal acceded to. 2. That though it had been acceded to, and these moves had been allowed to be recalled, the London Club could not have bettered their situation, as the opportunity of winning was already irretrievably lost in consequence of the 26th move, which was not asked to be recalled, but, on the contrary, was expressly adhered to. 3. That the impression which English chess-players have so industriously attempted to create, that the refusal on the part of Edinburgh to allow the 27th and 28th moves to be recalled was what prevented the London Club from winning the game, can only exist through a confusion between these moves and the previous one, which the London Club had adhered to after a renewed examination, not having even then discovered that it was unsound.

Before leaving the second game, we have this last additional remark to make about it, that it is one of the erroneous assumptions and inferences of the English writers, that the winning of that game would have decided the match in their favour. It was the first won game; and though it is true that the London Club _subsequently_ won the fourth game, which was the successor of the second, it is also the fact that the fourth game, which was opened by the Edinburgh Club, would not have been played if the second had been won by London, who in that case would have had the opening of the fourth. We do not mean to say that having to open was a disadvantage. All we assert is, that, in point of fact, the game, which the Edinburgh Club lost partly through a mistake in setting up the men, and through another blunder, not very different in its character, would not have been played at all if London had won the second game. Besides, the fourth game would, in other respects, have been played under very different circumstances. The opening of the second game by the London Club was one which none of the Edinburgh players had ever seen before, though, from this match, it now goes by the name of the Scotch opening. They believed, however, from their consideration of the second game, that the London Club had not availed themselves of all the capabilities of the opening, and they thought it would be a spirited thing to return it upon their antagonists. This they did in the _third_ game. The event rewarded their enterprising conduct. They gained a decided advantage; and during the greater part of the _fourth_ game they believed that it would never require to be finished, as they thought that by winning the _third_ game they would gain the match. This accounts for the carelessness with which they played the fourth game, though we think nothing can excuse carelessness in playing chess. They were ultimately disappointed in their expectation of gaining the third game, as the London Club succeeded in drawing it; and this rendered a fifth game necessary.

Down to the fifth game it appears plain enough, from the above examination, that the Edinburgh Club had maintained, at the very least, an equal position to their antagonists. The first game had been drawn, with no advantage at any stage of it, in favour of either party. The second had been won by Edinburgh, but was subject to the observation that, at one point, London might have won had they played as well as they _afterwards_ discovered they might have done. The third game was drawn: but the advantage throughout had been in favour of Edinburgh, though not sufficiently so for winning; and, as was the case with London in the previous game, Edinburgh failed to perceive that by moving differently at a certain point, they would have been victorious. The fourth game was lost by Edinburgh, partly through an accidental and what may be called a mechanical blunder, and partly through another piece of carelessness of a similar character. After a contest thus maintained down to the commencement of the fifth game, it is beyond all question that the palm of superiority, in point of play, must rest with the victor in that game. And it was a game worthy to determine that question as well as the match. The Edinburgh Club had again returned upon their antagonists their own opening. In order to secure scope for the action of their pieces, they showed considerable intrepidity in disregarding the ordinary rules against doubled and isolated pawns; and so admirably had they analysed the game, that for a great many moves they knew that victory was certain, though all the while the London Club, according to the confession of some of their own members, were blind to the fate that was awaiting them; and believed, on the contrary, that the game was in their own hands. This fifth game will long be remembered by chess players as one of the most remarkable in the annals of chess; and appears to us conclusive, so far as regards the internal evidence derived from the games themselves, that the superiority, in point of play, lay with the Edinburgh Club, and that their winning the match was not a mere accident.

It may be that there are other data for determining the relative superiority of the two Clubs; but we cannot admit the correctness of any of those mentioned by the _Quarterly_ reviewer or Mr Staunton. It is true, as these gentlemen say, that the Edinburgh Club was comparatively inexperienced. It had only been instituted in 1822, and the match was begun in 1824. It comprehended, almost exclusively, professional gentlemen actively engaged in business, who had not, generally speaking, much leisure or opportunity for seeking antagonists out of their own little circle of chess-players at home. On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that there is to be found in the metropolis of England, in greater abundance than anywhere else, that combination of leisure with intellectual power, which gives the promise of good chess-playing. But these circumstances do not lead our minds to the conclusion to which Mr Staunton and the _Quarterly_ reviewer have come, that the winning of the match by the Edinburgh Club was an accident. We should rather be inclined to hold, considering the character of the contest as explained by us above, that they are a proof of the greater natural chess-playing capacity of the members of the Club which won the match under such disadvantages. Again, Mr Staunton asks where are the previous exploits to which the Edinburgh players could point, such as those that the members of the London Club had performed? The answer is, None. They never had, and never sought the opportunity of performing any great chess exploit, except beating the London Club. But in so doing they made their own all the previous victories of the London Club. The event showed that they might, without presumption, have expressed the sentiment of Prince Henry--

"Percy is but my factor, good, my lord, To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf; And I will call him to so strict account, That he shall render every glory up.

* * * * *

And all the budding honours on his crest I'd crop to make a garland for my head."

With which valorous quotation we draw our remarks to a close, submitting that the members of the Edinburgh Club are bound to invite us to a special sitting at a board, which shall be garnished with some other material more soft and digestible than chessmen.

THE INDUSTRY OF THE PEOPLE.

The dismal efforts of the Free-trading party to maintain the credit of their unnatural and mischievous scheme, afford the surest indication of their own consciousness that they have committed a grievous error. In their attempts to make head against the symptoms of reaction which are everywhere apparent in the public mind, they exhibit no unity of purpose; they are not agreed even as to the facts from which their arguments should be drawn. A few months ago, we were told that the whole country was in a state of the greatest prosperity. The existence of agricultural distress was denied; the shipping interest was said to be in the most healthy and flourishing condition; the manufacturers had so many orders that their ability to execute was impeded; wages were rising--pauperism decreasing--in short, no one could recall to memory times of more general happiness and content. Such was the picture drawn by Ministerial limners, no further back than the opening of the present session of Parliament, and it is very much to be regretted that it should so soon have vanished like a dissolving view. Down to the present moment, we have been unable to discover the motive for so monstrous a fiction. Nobody believed it: nobody could believe it, for it ran counter to every man's knowledge of his own affairs, and his opinion as to those of his neighbour. The agriculturists declared it to be a falsehood in so far as they were concerned--so did the ship-owners--so did the shopkeepers--so did the manufacturers, whose circulars acknowledged depression for the present, and held out little hope for the future. The Ministerial averment answered no purpose, save to excite a general burst of disapprobation. Conceived in fraud, it was abandoned with cowardice. A lower tone was assumed. Distress was admitted--but only to a certain extent; and we may remark that such admissions are peculiarly convenient and innocuous to those who make them, inasmuch as the actual degree or prevalence of the suffering must still remain matter of debate. Indeed, no statistics, however ingenious or elaborated, can furnish data for determining so delicate a point. But to account for the existence of distress, even in a mitigated form, was no easy task for those who were resolved, at all hazards, to exclude the operation of free trade. Their prosperity balance-sheet stood awkwardly in the way. Pluming themselves upon increased exports, and a larger foreign trade than had been driven for some years, they were compelled to assign some reason for the remarkable depression at home. The old shift of railway calls would no longer suit their purpose. Sir Robert Peel, regardless of a certain personal passage of his life connected with the opening of the Trent Valley, was exceedingly fond of turning out that scape-goat into the wilderness; but the time had gone by; the calls were paid up or suspended; and it was no longer possible for effrontery to maintain that the great mass of the consumers of these kingdoms had been materially injured by their imprudent dalliance with scrip. There was no tightness in the money market; no external cause to interfere with the successful operation of industry, capital, or enterprise. Yet still there was distress; and, what was more remarkable, the complaint was universal. The value of produce had fallen, effecting thereby a corresponding decline in rents, and every kind of uncertain profit. Employment grew scarcer every day, whilst the number of applicants increased. The burden of taxation, however, still remained undiminished. The creditor could still exact the stipulated amount of money from his debtor, without deduction, although the labour of the debtor was reduced in point of value by at least a third. Such were, and are, the leading phenomena, to account for which the ingenuity of the Free-traders has been exercised.

They have, we are bound to say, cut an exceedingly sorry figure in explanation. They have got in their mouths a few cant phrases, which, when assailed, they repeat over and over again, without the slightest reference to their meaning. One of these, and perhaps the most favourite, refers to the "transition state"--a peculiar phase of suffering, which they maintain to be the necessary consequence of every considerable change in the fiscal regulations of the empire. This "transition state," in politics, would appear to correspond to that which, in medicine, was favoured by Mr St John Long. In order to become better, it is necessary to make the patient, in the first instance, materially worse--to inflict artificial wounds and promote suppuration, in the hope that these may afterwards be healed. It is rather remarkable that none of our political doctors have as yet ventured to specify the nature of the curatory process. They leave us woefully in the dark as to the means which are to be adopted for remedying the evil; and they obstinately refuse to predict what kind of state is to follow upon this of transition. In truth, they are utterly at sea. They cannot shut their eyes to the extent of the mischief which they have wrought; they cannot find or invent an extraneous excuse, which will avail them, in the opinion even of the loosest thinker, to maintain the delusion that the present distress and stagnation are attributable to any other cause than that of low prices, occasioned by foreign competition; and they are attempting to conceal their chagrin and disappointment at the disastrous issue of their experiment under the cover of general terms and vague ambiguous phrases--a rhetorical expedient which is not likely to have much weight with those who have been made the victims of their rashness or vacillation.

Latterly, indeed, some portions of the public press have shown symptoms of being more specific, and very glad should we be if Ministers would follow that example. We are told that present prices are merely exceptional, and that they must shortly improve. The mere adoption of this argument shows that such writers dissent from the doctrine that cheapness is an unqualified blessing--that they still believe in their hearts that it is impossible altogether to separate the interests of the producer and the consumer--and that they are still alive to the fundamental political axiom, that the wealth of a country depends mainly upon the value of its produce. Were it otherwise, they would be supporters of the most astounding paradox that was ever advanced. The price of the loaf must rise correspondingly with that of the quarter of wheat: beef and mutton are sold by the stone or by the pound, in proportion to the market value of the living animal. If wheat were to rise to 56s., which is said to be the average cost of its production in this country, bread would become so much dearer, and, in that case, the working-man could be no better off than he was before the corn laws were repealed. We have heard it said, and we firmly believe it to be the case, that many of the public men, of both parties, who voted with Sir Robert Peel, did so under the full conviction that there could be no material decline--that they were misled by the onesided, imperfect, and fallacious reports as to the state, quality, and extent of the Continental harvests, which were laid before Parliament--and that they never would have consented to such a measure, had they foreseen the results which are now unhappily before us. We gather this, not merely from rumour, but from the tenor of the speeches delivered in the House of Commons in 1846. Sir James Graham and Lord John Russell both treated as visionary the notion of any material decline--Lord Palmerston went further; and we think it useful to lay before our readers the following excerpt from his speech, delivered on the occasion of the second reading of the Corn Importation Bill. Referring to the surplus quantity of Continental grain, he said--

"The surplus quantity now, or from time to time in existence, is merely the superfluity of abundant seasons held for a time in store to meet the alternate deficiency of bad years. Till the bad years come, that corn is cheap, because it is a supply exceeding the demand; but the moment we go into the foreign market as buyers, to purchase up this surplus, _prices abroad will rise_. Not only will the British demand, as a new competition with foreign demand, naturally cause a rise of prices, but our own merchants will compete against each other, until, by a rise of prices abroad, the profit of their importations shall have been brought down to the usual rate of mercantile profit upon capital employed in other ways. There is, therefore, very little probability that the importation of the existing surplus quantity of corn in foreign markets will materially lower prices in this country."

We have nothing to say to the arguments of the noble Viscount--however singular these may appear to persons of ordinary understanding--we merely refer to his conclusion, which we think is plain enough, to the effect that free importations could not materially lower prices. Nay, we could extract from the speeches of Sir Robert Peel himself, passages which would go far to show that he entertained the same opinion, notwithstanding the extreme wariness which he exhibited when challenged by Lord George Bentinck to state his views as to the probable effects of the change on the value of agricultural produce. Well, then, if this be the case--if there was actually a strong conviction in the minds of the leading men who supported the repeal of the corn laws that the expressed fears of the agricultural party were unfounded--are we not entitled now to require that the question should be brought to a very narrow issue indeed? So far as experience has gone, our calculations have proved right--theirs entirely wrong. We maintained that, in consequence of the removal of protective duties, the price of grain in this country would decline to a point far below the cost of production; they averred that nothing of the kind would happen. Nearly a year and a half has elapsed since the new system came into full operation, and the general averages of wheat throughout the country have fallen, and have remained for many months below 40s. per quarter. In spite of the accurate and veracious information of writers in the _Economist_ and other Ministerial prints, who have been assuring us, for a long period of time, that the whole available supplies of grain have been pumped out of the Continent, importations continue undiminished. In May 1850 we receive from abroad the equivalent of a million quarters of grain; France pours in her flour, to the panic even of our millers; and, instead of diminution, there are unmistakeable symptoms of a greater deluge than before. Now, if the Free-traders, in or out of Parliament, are honest in their views--as many of them, we believe, undoubtedly are--they are bound to tell us how far and how long they intend this experiment to last? Of course, if it is no experiment at all, but an absolute rigorous finality, there is no need of entering into discussion. If everything is to be sacrificed for cheapness, let cheapness be the rule; only do not let us behold the anomaly of the advocates of that system prophesying a rise of prices as a general boon to the country. If otherwise, surely some tangible period should be assigned for the endurance of this _experimentum crucis_. We entirely coincide with Lord John Russell in his dislike to vacillating legislation, and we have no wish whatever to precipitate matters. We think it preferable, in every way, that the eyes of the country should be opened to a sense of its true condition by a process which, to be effectual, cannot be otherwise than painful. But we are greatly apprehensive of the consequences which may arise ere long, from the obstinate refusal of Ministers to give the slightest indication of their intentions, supposing that the present prices shall continue; or to indicate what relief, if any, can be given to the industry of the nation.

As to the permanent nature of the fall under the operation of the present law, we entertain not the slightest doubt. There is no one symptom visible of its abatement; on the contrary, the experience of each succeeding month tends to fortify our previous impressions. The decline in the value of cattle is as great as in that of cereal produce. We have already, in a former paper, had occasion to state the extent of that fall down to the commencement of the present year: the accounts received of the state of the Dumbarton market, held in the beginning of June, are still more disastrous than before. Throughout a large portion of the Scottish Highlands--we do not know, indeed, whether we are entitled to make any exception--black cattle, the staple of the country, will not pay the expense of rearing. The enormous importation of provisions from America is annihilating this branch of produce, with what compensating benefit to the nation at large, it would be difficult for an economist to explain.

This is a state of matters which cannot continue long without manifest danger even to the tranquillity of the country. It is quite plain that, at present rates, agriculture cannot be carried on as heretofore in Great Britain. The farmer has been the first sufferer; the turn of the landowner is approaching. Let us illustrate this shortly. There must be, on an average of ordinary years, a certain price at which wheat can be grown remuneratively in this country. Sir Robert Peel, no mean authority on the subject, has indicated his opinion that such price may be stated at or about 56s. per quarter. Mr James Wilson, rating it somewhat lower, fixes it at 52s. 2d. Let us suppose, that wheat for the future shall average over England 39s. per quarter, and that the produce of the acre is twenty-four bushels, the loss on each acre of wheat hereafter raised will be, according to Sir Robert Peel, £2, 11s.--according to Mr Wilson, £1, 19s. 6d. What deduction of rent can meet such a depreciation as this? Excluding Middlesex, which is clearly exceptional, the highest rented county of England, Leicester, is estimated at £1, 14s. 10d. per acre; Warwickshire, at £1, 11s. 6d.; and Lincolnshire at £1, 8s. Haddington and Fife, the highest rented counties of Scotland, are estimated at £1, 5s. 6d. per acre. This of course includes much land of an inferior description; but we believe that, for the best arable land, an average rent of 40s. per acre may be assumed. In that case, supposing the whole rent to be given up, the farmer would still be a loser by cultivation, if Sir Robert Peel is correct in his figures.

Without presuming to offer an opinion as to the accuracy of either of the calculations submitted by these two Free-trading authorities, we think it is plain that the more favourable of them, taken in connection with present prices, is appalling enough to the agriculturist, whether he be landlord or tenant. We shall see, probably in a month or two, whether it is likely that even these prices can be maintained. We are clearly of opinion that the price of corn in this country must fall to the level of the cheapest market from which we can derive any considerable supplies; and in that case it is quite as likely that we may see wheat quoted at 32s. or 33s., as at 39s. or 40s. But the matter for our consideration is, that, ever since the repeal of the corn laws, the market price of grain has been greatly below the cost of its production; and that there are no symptoms of any amendment, but obviously the reverse.

The inevitable result of the continuance of such a state of matters is too clear to admit of argument. The land must go out of cultivation. The process may be slow, but it will be sure. It may, doubtless, be retarded by remissions of rent not sufficient to cover the farmer's losses, but great enough to induce him to renew his efforts for another year with the like miserable result; until at length the tiller of the soil is made bankrupt, and the landowner occupies his place. We can hardly trust ourselves to depict the effect of such a social revolution. All the misery which has been already felt--and that is far greater than our rulers will permit themselves to believe--would be as nothing compared with the calamitous consummation of Free Trade.

Yet it is towards that point that we are rapidly tending. Some of the fierce and more plain-spoken Radical journals are so far from contradicting our views, that they openly rejoice in the havoc which has been already made, and in the wider ruin which is impending. They say plainly, looking to the funds, that they see no method of escaping from the domination of the moneyed interest, except through the prostration of the landlords. Their meaning is quite distinct and undisguised. They want to get rid of the national debt, by reducing the value of produce so low, that the usual amount of taxation cannot possibly be levied; and their scheme, however nefarious, is by no means devoid of plausibility. There can be no doubt that the Currency Act of 1819 has operated most injuriously upon the industry of the nation, by enhancing the value of the claims of the creditor; and that these claims, along with the necessary expenses of government, must be paid, _ante omnia_, from the industrial produce of the year. The cheapening process, therefore, is one directly antagonistic to the maintenance of taxation. The anomaly in legislation of forcibly reducing the value of produce, and yet maintaining stringently an artificial standard of taxation, has been reserved for our times; yet, strange to say, though its effects are visible and confessed, few persons have courage or patience enough to grapple with the difficulty. Free Trade and a Fettered Currency are things that cannot possibly co-exist for any length of time; and our sole surprise is, that any statesman could be shortsighted enough to attempt to reconcile them. Taken singly, either of them is a great evil to a country situated like ours--taken together, they become absolutely intolerable. But we have no wish, at the present time, to depart from the point before us. We are merely taking the evidence of adversaries, to show that our views as to the position and prospects of the great productive classes of Britain are so far from exaggerated that they are acknowledged by the most strenuous advocates of Free Trade. The fundholder, nevertheless, may derive a useful lesson from these financial hints, which indicate an ulterior purpose.

Such is the state of the agricultural interest throughout the three Kingdoms at this moment, and such are the prospects before us. The evidence, albeit not taken before a committee of either House of Parliament, is too unanimous to admit of a doubt; county after county, district after district, parish after parish throughout England, have testified to their melancholy condition. The _Times_ may talk of mendicity, and the _Economist_ may trump up figures to show that the farmers ought to be making a profit even at present prices; but neither irony nor fiction can avail to discredit or pervert facts so well authenticated as these. Of these facts parliament is fully cognisant--not only from the individual knowledge of members as to what is passing abroad--not only from the sentiments expressed at many hundred meetings, independent of the great demonstrations lately made at London and Liverpool--but from the petitions which have been presented to both Houses, praying for a reversal of that policy which has proved so detrimental to the interests of a large section of her Majesty's subjects. Yet still Parliament is silent, and the first Minister of the Crown refuses to sanction that appeal to the country, which the exigency of the case would seem to require, and which has been resorted to on occasions far less peremptory and pressing than this.

Let us not be misunderstood. Our wish simply is to record the fact of such silence and refusal,--not to be rash in censure. We cannot, and do not forget the peculiar circumstances connected with the last general election--the political tergiversation which preceded it, the hopes and expectations which were then entertained by many, as to the working of the new system,--or the disorganisation of parties. Even the most strenuous opponents of the Free-Trade measures, since these had passed into a law, however iniquitously carried, were desirous that the experiment should have a fair trial, and that it should not be impeded in its progress, so long as, by the most liberal construction, it could be held to justify the anticipations of its authors. Many names of great weight, influence, and authority were found among the roll of those who consented to the new measures; and it was most natural that, throughout the country, a number of persons should be found willing to surrender their own judgment upon a matter yet untried, which had received so creditable a sanction. Therefore it was that the majority of members returned to the present House of Commons were Free-traders, bound to the system by the double ties of previous conviction and of pledge; and though recent elections, as well as the alarming posture of affairs, have contributed materially to alter the position of the two great parties in the House, it would be unreasonable as yet to look for a change, in a body so constituted, at least to that extent which a reversal of the adopted policy must imply.

Neither can we rationally expect, that Lord John Russell will be forward to recognise a failure, where he confidently anticipated a triumph. We believe him to have been, far more than Sir Robert Peel, the dupe of those random assertions and presumptuous calculations which were thrust forward by men utterly unfit, from their previous habits and education, to pronounce an opinion upon subjects of such magnitude and intricacy. We should not be surprised if, even now, his Lordship had some lingering kind of faith in the prophecies of the member for Westbury. Men are slow to believe that the ground is crumbling from below their feet; that the political scaffolding which they assisted to rear has been pitched in a marshy quagmire. Self love, and that kind of pride which is so nearly allied to conceit that it often assumes the form of obstinacy, stand woefully in the way of recantation; and moreover in the present instance to recant is equivalent to resign. We remember well the profound and sagacious remark of Sir Walter Scott, that "the miscarriage of his experiment no more converts the political speculator, than the explosion of a retort undeceives an alchymist." Lord John Russell in all probability is not yet prepared, from conviction, to revise his opinions on a question in which he is so deeply committed. He has a majority in the House of Commons, and, according to the forms of the constitution, so long as he can command that majority, he is entitled to persevere. It is well that our friends, whatever pressing cause they may have for their impatience, should remember these things; and not be too forward in pressing wholesale accusations, either against a Parliament chosen under such peculiar circumstances, or a Minister who is simply adhering to the course long since avowed by himself, and acted on by his immediate predecessor. We may regret, and many of us do unquestionably most bitterly feel, the anomalous position in which we are placed. A more cruel, a more galling thought can hardly be imagined than the conviction which is very general abroad, and which is also ours, that the present Parliament does not represent the feelings or the desires of the people; that it is not consulting their welfare or protecting their interests; and that the duration of that Parliament alone prevents a vigorous and successful effort in the cause of British industry. Yet still, while we feel all this, let us not be unjust to others. We cannot coerce opinion. We cannot force honourable members at once to retrace their steps, or to give the lie to their acknowledged pledges. We cannot complain of open wrong if Ministers decline to accept our voices, in lieu of the voices of those whom we formerly sent as representatives. Their answer and vindication lies in the fact of their Parliamentary majority. Why Parliament should thus be placed in direct antagonism to the country, is a very different question. We need not go far in search of the reason. It is the direct consequence of that policy which Sir Robert Peel thought fit to adopt, not with regard to the abstract measures of Free Trade, but for the carrying of these measures into effect, without an appeal to the country, and by means which proved how closely deceit is allied to tyranny. Upon his head, if not the whole, at least the primary responsibility rests. He has accepted it, and let it abide with him. And let no man affirm that, in saying this, we are prolonging any rancorous feeling, or seeking to rub a sore which by this time should be wellnigh healed. The time for indignation and anger, if injury coupled with perfidy can ever provoke such sentiments, is not yet past; it is now in its fullest force. Had Sir Robert Peel acted as he ought to have done--had he played the part of a British statesman, sincerely desirous that in a matter of such magnitude the will of the country should be respected--the present Parliament, whatever might have been its decision as to Free Trade or Protection, would at least have represented the wishes of the electoral body; and if subsequent events had shown that these wishes were more sanguine than wise, the error would have been a national one, and no weight of individual responsibility would have been incurred. As it is, we are not only justified, but we are performing our duty, in indicating the real and sole originator of our present difficulties; and without wishing in any degree to trench upon his secret sources of consolation, we can hardly imagine that he will derive much comfort from the knowledge, that his tortuous policy has deprived the people in the hour of need of their best constitutional privilege and shield--the sympathy and co-operation of that House which is emphatically their own, and which, to the great detriment of the state, must lose its moral power the moment that it ceases to represent the will, and to protect the interests of the Commons.

We are well aware that such reflections as these can bring but sorry comfort to the farmers. Their situation is one of unparalleled hardship, unrelieved by any consideration which can make the case of other sufferers more tolerable. We fully admit the vast extent of the powers which, since the Great Revolution, are held to be vested in Parliaments. We cannot gainsay the doctrine that these powers may, on occasion, be exerted to the uttermost; but we say, after the most careful and thoughtful deliberation, that the proceedings of the legislature with regard to the farmers of Great Britain are irreconcilable with the principles of justice, with the sacred laws of morality, which no legislative resolutions can abrogate or annul. The farmers are entitled to maintain that, in so far as regards them, the public faith has been broken. Such of them as hold leases had a distinct and unqualified guarantee given to them by the protective laws; and the allegation that the substitution of the sliding-scale for a fixed duty acted as a release for all former Parliamentary engagements, is a quibble so mean and wretched that the basest attorney would be ashamed to use it as a plea. The whole of the farmers' fixed and floating capital, estimated at the enormous sum of five hundred millions sterling, has been laid out on the faith of Protection; and yet when that Protection was furtively and treacherously withdrawn, no measure was introduced for the purpose of relieving them from engagements contracted under the older system, which were obviously incompatible with the lowered prices established by the formidable change. The public, we are afraid, are not aware of the extent of that depreciation which is still going on, _and which already exceeds the whole annual value of the manufacturing productions of Great Britain_. We borrow the following table from a late pamphlet by Mr Macqueen entitled, "Statistics of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce, drawn up from Official and Authentic Documents;" and having tested it by every means in our power, we have no hesitation in adopting it. It is, in truth, a fearful commentary on the rashness and folly of our rulers.

COMPARATIVE VALUES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE.

Protective Depreciation. Value 1850. value. Grains, potatoes, &c., £237,543,750 £80,764,875 £156,778,875 Straw, 100,700,000 30,210,000 70,490,000 Green crops, pasture, &c., 222,404,786 66,721,435 155,683,351 Sundries, 8,500,000 2,125,000 6,375,000 Wool, British, 15,400,000 1,540,000 13,860,000 ------------ ------------ ------------ £584,518,536 £181,361,310 £403,187,226

But this is not all. We have still to deal with the depreciation or diminished value of the farmers' fixed capital, invested in live stock, &c., which at the rate of 25 per cent, (a most moderate calculation, and below the mark in so far as Scotland is concerned,) shows a loss on £504,833,730 of £126,208,432 _additional_!

We put forward the case of the farmers thus prominently, because, in addition to the great public wrong which has been done to them, they have serious reason to complain of the general apathy of the landlords. We do not allude to the part which the landowners took in 1846. We believe that the majority of them were sincerely disgusted by the conduct of the men who had climbed into office on their shoulders; and that they loathed and despised in their hearts the treachery of which they were made the tools. We know, moreover, that a great many of them abstained from taking part in the election of 1847, not being able to see their way through the political chaos in which we were then involved, and having, naturally enough, lost confidence in the probity of public men, and despairing of the remodelment of a strong constitutional party. Such things were, perhaps, inevitable; and it may be argued with much show of reason, that no better line of conduct was open to the landlords, and that they did wisely in reserving themselves for a more favourable opportunity, when experience, that stern and unfailing monitor, should have exposed to the Free-traders the falsity of their wild expectations. But it is impossible for them now to plead that the opportunity has not arrived. The experiment has been made, and has failed--failed utterly and entirely, if the practical refutation of the views advanced by all its leading advocates is to be considered as equivalent to failure. The current of reaction has set in strong and steady, not only in the counties, but in the towns; not only among those who, from their position, must be the earliest sufferers, but among those who are connected with the trade and general commerce of Britain. The disorganised party has rallied and is reformed under leaders of great talent, tried skill, and most assured loyalty and honour. How is it that, in this posture of affairs, any considerable section of the landlords is still hanging back? Why is it that they do not place themselves, as is their duty, at the head of their tenantry, and enforce and encourage those appeals to public justice, and to public policy, which are now making themselves heard in every quarter of the kingdom? We confess that we are at a loss to know why any apathy should be shown. The conduct of the tenantry towards the landlords has been generous and considerate in the extreme. They were invited, in no equivocal terms, to join their cause with that of the Free-traders and financial reformers; and they were promised, in that event, the cordial assistance of the latter towards the adjustment of their rents, and the equalisation of their public burdens. We venture not an opinion whether such promise was ever intended to be kept. Still it was made; and no effort was left untried to convince the farmers that their cause was separate and apart from that of the owners of the land. Their refusal to enter into that unholy alliance was most honourable to the body of the tenantry, and entitles them, at the hands of the proprietors, to look not only for consideration and sympathy, but for the most active and energetic support. Very ill indeed shall we augur of the spirit and patriotism of the gentlemen of England, if they longer abstain from identifying themselves universally with a movement which is not only a national one, in the strictest sense of the word, but upon which depends the maintenance of their own interests and order. Surely they cannot have been so dull or so deaf to what is passing around them, as not to be aware that they were especially marked out as the victims of the Manchester confederacy! These are not times in which any man can afford to be apathetic, nor will any trivial excuse for languor or indifference be accepted. Exalted position, high character, the reputation for princely generosity, and the best of private reputations, will be no apology for inactivity in a crisis so momentous as this. Organisation, union, and energy are at all times the chief means for insuring success; and we trust that, henceforward, there may be less timidity shown by those who ought to take the foremost rank in a contest of such importance, and who cannot abstain longer from doing so without forfeiting their claim to that regard which has hitherto been readily accorded them.

It will be observed that, as yet, we have put the case for Protection upon very narrow grounds. We have shown that, so far as the agricultural body is concerned, Free Trade has proved most injurious, and that it cannot be persisted in without bringing downright ruin to that section of the community. If we had nothing more to advance than this, still we should be entitled to maintain that enough has been adduced to show the necessity of retracing our steps. The annihilation of such an important body as the agriculturists of Britain, implies of itself a revolution as great as ever was effected in the world; and to that, assuredly, if the agriculturists stood alone, they would not tamely submit. When Mr Cobden or his satellites addressed the people of Manchester, through their League circulars, to the following effect, "If the Americans will only put down their monopolising manufacturers, and we put down our monopolising landowners here, when our election time comes, we will lay the Mississippi valley alongside of Manchester, and we will have a glorious trade then!"--and again, "Our doctrine is, let the working man ply his hammer, or his spindle, or his shuttle, and let the Kentucky or the Illinois farmer, by driving his plough in the richest land on the surface of the earth, feed this mechanic or this weaver, and let him send home his produce in exchange for the products of our operatives and artisans"--they seem to have forgotten the temper and mould of the men with whom they proposed to deal so summarily. It is not quite so easy to expatriate three millions of able-bodied men; nor do we opine that a power morally or physically adequate to the task of such removal exists in the manufacturing districts. But, in reality, of all idle talk that ever issued from the lips or the pen of an inflated demagogue, this is the silliest and the worst. It presupposes an amount of ignorance on the part of his audience anything but flattering to the calibre of the Manchester intellect: indeed we hardly know which is most to be admired--its intense and transparent folly or its astounding audacity. The home trade is a thing altogether kept out of account in the foregoing splendid vision of a calico millennium. Mr Cobden, it will be seen, contemplates no home consumption, except in so far as the operative may provide himself with his own shirtings. The whole production of Britain is to be limited to manufactures; the whole supplies are to be derived from the hands of the reciprocating foreigner!

There does not exist in this great and populous country any one class the labour of which can be restricted, or the profits curtailed, without an injurious result to the interests of the whole community. This is not simply a maxim of political economy; it is a distinct physical fact, which no ingenuity can controvert. Yet, strange to say, our rulers have acted, and are acting, with regard to by far the most important class of the country, as if no such fact were known; and they now profess to be amazed at its speedy and inevitable consequence. That agricultural distress must react upon the manufacturer, the trader, shopkeeper, and artisan, is as necessary a consequence as is a failure in the supply of water after a long-continued drought. If our taxation is artificial, and our national establishments costly, it must not be forgotten that our private expenditure is generally on the same scale. We consume within the country a far greater amount of manufactures than we can ever hope to export, and the only limit to that consumption is the power of purchase. The profits of the landowner, which depend upon the value of produce, do not constitute a fund which is removed from public circulation. On the contrary, these profits furnish the means of labour and employment to the greater portion of the industrious classes, who otherwise would have no resource; and if they are violently curtailed, it must needs follow that a large amount of employment is withdrawn. That is precisely our case at the present moment. By the admission of foreign produce, which is in fact foreign labour, the value of agricultural production in this country has fallen very nearly thirty per cent, and the consequence is a greatly diminished expenditure, and a slackening of employment grievously felt by those who are supported by manual labour. How, indeed, is it possible that it can be otherwise? A very little thought must convince every one that all incomes in Britain must depend upon the amount and value of the national production, and that, by reducing and lowering that, a direct attack is made upon the profits of every kind of labour. It is singular that consequence so plain should ever have been overlooked; still more singular that statesmen should have been found to maintain an opposite theory. The only explanation we can suggest as to this singular departure from the leading principles of economical science is, that of late years Ministers have habitually consulted the interests of the capitalists rather than those of the people. Sir Robert Peel has invariably shown himself a capitalist legislator. At the outset of his career, and while under the Israelitish guidance of Ricardo, he succeeded in carrying those Currency measures which increased by nearly one-third the weight of the national obligations. Later in life we find him engaged in measures of arbitrary bank restriction, thereby occasioning commercial panics, and securing another rich harvest for the moneyed class. His tariffs and Free-trade measures exhibit precisely the same tendency. They are all constructed with a view to cheapness, or, what is the same thing, to the diminution of the value of labour, so that the fortune of the capitalist or fundholder is now virtually doubled: while the industrious classes, with a lowered rate of wage, are compelled to undergo the additional evil of unrestricted foreign competition.

Let us now, for a brief space, proceed to consider the internal adjustment of the strength and industry of Britain. It is a subject well worthy of study, especially at the present moment, when a general feeling of perplexity prevails, and when those who unfortunately gave ear to the specious representations of the Free-traders are convinced of their error, but are yet in doubt whether it be possible to retrace our steps. It is a subject, moreover, upon which we are bound to enter, seeing that official cunning has been used to conceal the real posture of affairs in this country, and, by undervaluing the magnitude of some interests, to give a factitious and altogether imaginary importance to others. We trust that we shall be able to show, to the satisfaction of our readers, the gross extent to which this kind of delusion and imposture has been carried.

Upon no subject whatever are more erroneous impressions entertained, than upon the relative importance and strength of the two great classes of the country. Of late it has been quietly assumed that the manufacturers are infinitely superior to the agriculturists, not only in point of numbers, but in respect of capital employed or available; and many people have been puzzled to understand why, if this should be the case, such vehement opposition should be made to any proposal for readjusting the direct and local taxation, which confessedly weighs most heavily upon the proprietors and occupiers of the land. We have been told, in as many words, that henceforward the voice of the towns is to dictate the policy of Britain--that the agriculturists are a worn-out class, scarce worth preserving--and the most influential of the Free-trade journals has not hesitated to recommend a wholesale emigration to the Antipodes, or any portion of the surface of the globe where corn can be cultivated cheaper than in England. We have been not only taunted, but threatened, whenever we presumed to expostulate. Reference was made to certain "masses," who were ready to rise in defence of perennial cheapness; and Mr Cobden has warned us not to provoke the exercise of that power which is vested in himself, as dictator of the democracy. In short, we have been given to understand that, if protection to native industry, in any shape, should be re-introduced--which only can be done by the will and legitimate sanction of Parliament--physical force shall not be wanting on the other side.

The use of such language argues great ignorance of the national temper. We have heard a good deal lately of what is termed the dogged Anglo-Saxon spirit, the main characteristic of which we take to be its decided antagonism to bullying, and its inveterate hatred of coercion. It is too much to expect that a controversy such as this should be conducted without some asperity of language, and therefore we make no clamorous complaint when Mr Cobden, or his friends, think proper to designate the British agriculturists as "ignorant clodpoles" and "horse-shoe idiots," or the landed proprietors as "a selfish and degraded faction," or the Protectionist press as the "hireling tools of oppression." These are very old and very harmless terms of rhetoric, and we are not sure that we can claim entire vindication from the charge of having retorted with tolerable energy. The real danger begins when men step beyond constitutional limits, and advocate resistance to the legislature by appealing to the passions, as they have pandered to the prejudices, of the mob.

Having premised so much, we think no one can misinterpret our motives, if we set ourselves seriously to the task of refuting a great fallacy which has been hatched and propagated by the Free-traders. It is one so monstrous in itself that we hardly could have supposed that any man, who had reflected for a moment on the subject, could have yielded to the delusion: nevertheless, we believe it to be most common, and it has been over and over again repeated at public meetings, until it has lost its quality as an assertion, and been treated as a recognised fact. It is within the recollection of all of us, that, both within the walls of Parliament and at the great outward gatherings of the League, the superiority of the manufacturing over the agricultural interest of Great Britain was broadly asserted, and assumed as the basis of the leading argument of the Free-traders. Sir Robert Peel expressly adopted this view in 1846, while advocating the repeal of the policy, which he had hitherto professed to support; we say, _professed_, because no man now doubts--indeed, it is fairly admitted by himself, with something like a sneer of triumph--that for many years he had been practising a deliberate imposture on the public. This view necessarily must have had some foundation on authority, if not on fact; and we can trace that authority to a statistical writer, Mr Porter, on whose accuracy, and method of dealing with figures, far too much reliance has been placed by statesmen high in office.

In dealing with the census of 1841, and compiling his tables with a view to show the relative occupations of the people, Mr Porter has adopted the ingenious plan of massing commerce, trade, and manufactures together, and exhibiting the aggregate of these in contradistinction to the purely agricultural interest! At page 55 of the last edition of his _Progress of the Nation_ we find this statement--"The following more elaborate table of the occupations of the population of Great Britain, as ascertained in 1841, his been compiled from the Reports of the Census Commissioners. _It affords the best abstract_ that has hitherto been attainable upon this important branch of political arithmetic."

We turn to the table indicated in this modest passage, and we find the following results for Great Britain alone:--

Persons engaged in commerce,} trade, and manufacture, } 3,092,787

Agriculture, 1,490,785

Labour not agricultural, 758,495

This, of course, is exclusive of the army, navy, learned professions, domestic servants, and various other employments, besides women and children. In another table, Mr Porter, estimating the male population of Great Britain, (excluding Ireland,) who were then upwards of twenty years of age, at 4,761,091, divides them thus:--

Agriculture, 1,198,156 Trade, manufactures, &c., 2,125,496 Other classes, 1,437,439 --------- 4,761,091

If, as Mr Spackman most properly observes in his excellent work, the _Analysis of the Occupations of the People_, one of the principal objects of taking the census is to trace the relative degree of dependence of one class upon another, how can this be done if all the trade and commerce of the country is to be mixed up with manufactures? "Mr Porter would have us to consider trade and commerce, _and manufactures_ as synonymous terms, and that together they only form one class; and he seems to be so thoroughly haunted with the numerical weakness of the manufacturing interest, that his fear of its being discovered peeps out in every paragraph; and, by mixing them up in every table in which they are mentioned in his book, with those engaged in trade and commerce, he has effectually succeeded in his object."

As we propose to lay before our readers the results of Mr Spackman, it may be proper shortly to state the principles which have guided him in his classification of the official returns. He recognises but two great classes of the community engaged in the production of wealth, and upon these he justly considers the whole of the remainder to be dependent. The following extract from his preface will sufficiently explain his view:--

"Of the number of persons actually employed by the agriculturists and manufacturers, no difference of opinion can exist, as we have adopted the Government classification in every instance, and copied the figures given in the returns. We believe this classification to be correct in principle, and but slightly erroneous in details.

"Political economists may exercise their ingenuity by calling in question this classification, but we believe it is the only one that accurately traces the dependence of an individual on the one or the other interest; and, as this is the primary object of all such matters, if it attains this end, it is sufficient for all purposes. By the landed interest we mean not only the proprietors of the soil, but all that are engaged in its cultivation, and all the interests that are dependent on and supported by both landlord and tenant. An agriculturist is one who grows the raw material. The manufacturer changes the fabric from cotton into calico, flax into linen, wool into cloth, raw into manufactured silk, mineral ores into various combinations of metals, and the skin of an animal into leather.

"All besides the agriculturists and the manufacturers are auxiliaries, not principals. Thus the handicraftsman alters the form, but not the substance, and adapts the article to the use of the consumer,--so the miller, baker, and butcher; the tailor, milliner, and shoemaker.

"There is also a very numerous class, who neither produce, manufacture, nor alter the shape or substance of an article, and these are called merchants, if they buy and sell in a wholesale manner, or shopkeepers and retail dealers if they sell by retail. The business of these is to distribute all articles imported from abroad or produced at home, through every city, town, and village, in the United Kingdom; and the Government definition of all these auxiliaries is 'engaged in trade and commerce.'

"The dependence of any particular class engaged in trade and commerce, or in handicraft, is not upon the party who produces, alters, or supplies the article, but on the individual who consumes it; and if there is any tax whatever on the raw material, or on anything used in its manufacture, adaptation, or distribution, it is on him that all and every item of such tax, together with all profits and charges, must ultimately fall.

"Inasmuch, however, as there is no wealth in this country of any amount, but what has been derived either from agriculture or manufactures, nor any of which the value is not determined by the success of these, so again this consumer, whatever his rank or position in society may be, is mainly dependent on them. The rental of land, the income from houses, or investments in the public funds, are merely the representatives of so much labour; and the means necessary to pay them are principally drawn from either agriculture or manufactures.

"Our annual creation of wealth may be thus stated:--

Agriculture, £250,000,000

Manufactures, deducting the } value of the raw material, } 127,000,000

Money interest, 37,000,000

Colonial interest, 18,000,000

Foreign commerce, (including } shipping interest,) 10 per } 15,000,000 cent on amount of exports } and imports,}

Fisheries, 3,000,000 ------------ £450,000,000" ------------

_And from one or other of these does every individual in the land derive his income or means of support._ The Peer of the realm, the landed proprietor, the Government annuitant, the clergyman, the medical and the legal adviser, with the banker, merchant, dealer, and handicraftsman of every class and kind,--derive what is necessary to support their state and condition, and their daily sustenance, from these spring-heads of national wealth. This is the substance of the nation, and what we call money consists merely of the counters we use to denote and measure the value of this substance as it passes from one to another.

"To do equal justice to all classes, the legislation of a country ought, therefore, to keep steadily in view their relative importance, not only as regards numbers, but also their powers of production, and the proportion which they severally bear of the national burdens. Unless this is the governing principle, it strikes at the root of their prosperity, and the injury inflicted on a class is evinced in the gradual decay of the whole community."

Acting upon these distinct, and, we submit, perfectly sound principles, Mr Spackman has compiled his tables in the following manner. The Government returns are quite explicit as to the number of those engaged directly in agriculture and in manufactures. Mr Spackman takes each county separately; and having set down the relative numbers of each class, he divides the remainder of the population between these according to their proportion. For example, let us instance his table of the county of Lanark, which is the great seat of Scottish manufactures. We find, from the official returns, that the following numbers are directly engaged:--

In Agriculture, 13,169 In Manufactures of all kinds, 61,378

The residue of the population being 352,425, he divides in the same proportion, and thus gives us as a result:--

Engaged in Agriculture, 13,169 Dependent on, 62,257 ------ 75,426 Engaged in Manufactures, 61,378 Dependent on, 290,168 ------- 351,546 ------- Total of county, 426,972

In the same way, by estimating the population of Perthshire directly employed in agriculture and manufactures, Mr Spackman forms his table thus,--

Engaged in Agriculture, 16,302 Dependent on, 64,233 ------ 80,535 Engaged in Manufactures, 11,509 Dependent on, 45,346 ------ 56,855 ------ Total of County, 137,390

The grand result for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is as follows:--

Engaged in, and dependent on agriculture, 18,734,468 Engaged in, and dependent on manufactures, 8,091,621 ---------- Population, exclusive of those travelling on night of census, 26,826,089

Lest it should be said that Mr Spackman has acted upon any wrong principle in framing these tables--for we know by experience that a certain class of political economists can see no virtue in any figures which are not of their own construction--let us turn to the Government reports, and extract from them the number of males _directly_ employed in the two great branches of production.

AGRICULTURE.

Farmers and Graziers, 737,206 Agricultural Labourers, 2,312,388 Gardeners, Nurserymen, &c. 60,767 All others, 9,196 --------- Total Males, 3,118,557

MANUFACTURES.

Above 20, 717,780 Under 20, 168,964 -------- Total Males, 886,744

"It will thus be seen," says Mr Spackman, "that the farmers and graziers alone, as a body, are more in number than all the males above twenty years of age employed in manufactures, and only 150,000 short of the whole number of males of all ages so employed. If we add the two and a quarter millions of labourers which these farmers and graziers give employment to, the _male_ population employed in agriculture are nearly as four to one compared with those employed in manufactures. The same remark will also apply as to age: those above twenty are four to one; those under twenty are nearly two to one."

We put forward these statements with no other view than to exhibit to our readers the national importance of that agricultural interest which has been so bitterly assailed, and which is threatened still by a heavier accession of calamity. If the bastard system of Free Trade is to be considered according to its influence on the welfare of the majority of the people of Britain, there can be no doubt to which side the vast preponderance belongs. The "horse-shoe idiots," though dull in intellect, are numerous in the flesh to an extent of which, perhaps, even Mr Cobden was little aware. It is quite true that the extended area over which they are disposed does not afford them the same means of combination which are within the reach of the inhabitants of the factories. The agriculturalists have no wish to interfere with their neighbours' livelihood, and little inclination to move at the bidding of mercenary demagogues. They seldom speak until suffering or a sense of injustice compels them to appeal to the legislature: and their unwillingness to join in agitation has, ere now, been made subject of taunt against them. Were it otherwise, we should not attach one half the importance which we do to the movement which is visible all over the face of agricultural England--a movement which the advocates of Free Trade may affect to despise, but which, in reality, has struck them with consternation. And no wonder that the movement should have been made. Let us pass from the mere numerical consideration, and look to the extent of property which is embarked on the one side and on the other.

We have already stated the annual value of the agricultural production of these kingdoms to be £250,000,000, whilst that of manufactures is little more than £127,000,000. To this latter sum we must add about £50,000,000, being the estimated cost of the raw material, if we wish to calculate from the exports the importance of the home market compared with that which is to be found abroad. For example, if the declared value of the exports shall amount to 69 millions, we are entitled to assume that about 117 millions are consumed at home in a year of ordinary prosperity. This, of course, is no more than an approximation to the truth, but it is the nearest which can be made from such documents, reports, and returns, as are accessible to the statist. Let us take Mr Spackman's estimate of the capital employed, referring our readers for the details to his exceedingly interesting work.

AGRICULTURAL CAPITAL.

Value of the Land, at 25 years' purchase of the annual rental of Great Britain and Ireland, amounting, to £58,753,615 £1,500,000,000

Farmers' capital, employed in the cultivation of the soil, independent of the stock on hand, at all times, of cattle, grain, &c., £5 to £6 per acre on 46,522,970 acres, about 250,000,000

Stock in hand-- About 7,500,000 head of cattle, } " 31,000,000 sheep and lambs, } " 1,500,000 horses, } 250,000,000 " £50,000,000 value of timber, } } On an average, three months stock of grain, seeds, hay, and other produce always on hand, } ------------- Estimated agricultural capital £2,000,000,000 -------------

MANUFACTURING CAPITAL.

In Cotton, £24,500,000 " Woollen, 16,500,000 " Linen, 7,000,000 " Silk, 4,000,000 " Lace, 2,000,000 " Hose, 1,000,000 All others, 23,000,000 ----------- Estimated manufacturing capital, £78,000,000 -----------

The first reflection which must come home to the mind of every one who considers these tables, is the astounding audacity of those who have characterised the landlords as a grasping and rapacious class. Singular, nay, almost incredible as it may appear, the annual value of the production of manufactures is nearly double the amount of the whole capital invested. This fact sufficiently explains the manner in which so many colossal fortunes have been realised, while it also suggests very painful reflections as to the condition of the operatives who are the creators of all this wealth. But what are we to think of the conduct of the men who, not content with such enormous returns, have leagued together to swell them to a greater amount, by demanding the free importation of foreign produce, under the pretext that the people were oppressed by the continuance of a system which gave remunerative prices, continuous employment, and the means of livelihood to two-thirds of their aggregate number? We acquit many of the leading and most respectable manufacturers from being participators in any such scheme. Those connected with the home trade have very generally been opposed to the application of the Free-trade doctrines, the leading advocates of which were comprised of men who manufactured solely for exportation, and whose goods were neither intended nor adapted for British consumption. It was for the exclusive benefit, as at the instigation of the latter, that the Corn Laws were repealed. Few can be sorry--we confess we are not--that even they have been disappointed in their expectations. No tariffs have been relaxed in consequence of the ill-omened surrender; on the contrary, the Continental states, as well as the Americans, are protecting their own manufactures with increased vigilance; whilst, on the other hand, they are availing themselves of our folly, by deluging our market with their agricultural produce, securing by these means the double advantage of promoting both branches of industry. Never was there a vainer notion than the chimera that other states would abandon their rising manufactures to reciprocate with Great Britain, when that haughty power had deliberately deprived herself of the means of enforcing reciprocity. _The countries from which we import the largest amount of grain are not the countries which take the largest amount of our manufactures._ Even if the case were otherwise, we maintain that we should be heavy losers, and in no way gainers, by the transaction. Nationally, this is so clear that we need not waste words by arguing the point; but we go further and say that, even had other states reciprocated, the manufacturers, as a body, could not have been gainers by Free Trade, unless the relative proportions between the amount of home and foreign consumption had been entirely changed. For, so long as two-thirds of our whole manufactures are annually consumed in Britain, the condition of the consumers there, and their power of purchase, must be a matter of greater importance to the manufacturer than that of consumers abroad. The interest of the shopkeepers and of the artisans is almost entirely bound up with the home trade; and nothing can be more suicidal to the traders than to give any countenance to a system which strikes at the amount of their profits, by crippling the means of their customers.

Were our object merely to show the glaring injustice which has been done to the landed interest, we could proceed much further in disentangling details from the confusion into which they have been purposely thrown, by such statistical writers as Mr Porter. But we apprehend that, in the present temper of the nation, there is little occasion for this. Men of all classes have had that opportunity which experience can alone give, of testing in their own individual case the advantages which were so confidently predicted by those who advocated the commercial change. Those who have benefited by it will, of course, remain Free traders. We are not unreasonable enough to expect that they will abandon that policy which is profitable to themselves, even though they should be convinced that it has proved the reverse of profitable to others. But we can conscientiously say, that we are acquainted with very few such persons. In the country they do not exist: in the towns, we hear of nothing except continued and weary depression. Almost every day fresh complaints of want of employment are thrust upon us. Establishments are reduced, because those who were considered wealthy, and those whose wealth depended upon produce, have no longer the means to support them as before: even professional incomes are declining: and no one ventures now to indulge in that expenditure which, four or five years ago, gave an impulse to the industry of the people. All this we believe to be acknowledged, and we have heard it from the lips of many whose political creed is quite at variance with our own.

Most important testimony to the same effect was borne, at the recent meeting in Liverpool, by gentlemen who, from profession and connection, belong to the mercantile and trading classes of the community. It is no vague apprehension of coming evil, no slight or ephemeral touch of distress, which has elicited declarations of opinion so strong as were there expressed. The urgency of the case is felt and acknowledged; and ere long we have not the slightest doubt that demonstrations of similar magnitude and importance will take place in other of the English towns.

From what we have already said, it will be gathered that we recommend no hasty or precipitate movement. Our strength lies in the justice of our cause, and in the palpable failure of the measures against which we have emphatically protested. This is not a question of mere sentiment, regarding which men can long continue to maintain divided opinions. It is a practical question, affecting not only the general welfare of the kingdom, but the property and means of every man who lives and thrives through his industry. It is essentially a labour question, and, as such, it cannot long remain without receiving a distinct solution. In the mean time, however, it is our duty to make preparation for the change which may arrive at no distant period. The various Protection societies which are everywhere organised, offer to those who condemn the present line of policy the best opportunity of concentrating their efforts, and of contributing to the ultimate triumph of the cause. These societies must be supported, for, under existing circumstances, they are of the utmost value. They present a ready channel through which the wishes and situation of the people can be communicated to the legislature or the throne; they establish and preserve communication between neighbouring districts; and they supply useful information, and disseminate sound principles, in quarters where good political knowledge is most especially required. We trust that no one who entertains opinions similar to our own, and who is deeply impressed with the necessity of a return to the just system of Protection, will be backward in lending his aid to these institutions. From the peculiar position of the agricultural party, such combinations are absolutely necessary, in order to arrive at a just estimate of our strength, and the true sentiments of the nation. Private efforts, however energetically made, are ineffectual in compassion with this system of union and of order; and although we know that agitation is in itself a thing distasteful to many, the emergency of the case is such that we are imperatively bound to adopt all legitimate means for the furtherance of our object. It may be that under no circumstances whatever can redress be obtained from the present Parliament. We have already adverted to the peculiar causes which would seem to render such an expectation at best a forlorn hope; yet still that furnishes no reason for relaxing in our efforts. The Whig Ministry--by the confession of men of all parties--has a most precarious tenure of office. Already the House of Peers has passed its gravest censure upon the course of foreign policy which has been pursued--a course of which it is difficult to say whether its most prominent feature is culpable recklessness or glaring dishonesty. We do not know what may be the decision of the House of Commons upon a point of such importance, or whether unscrupulous influence, and the dread of a dissolution, may not overcome the dictates of honour and the force of private judgement in the more popular assembly. But, whatever may be the fiat of the Commons, this at least is clear, that a severe blow has been given to the stability of the Whig Government. Beyond the walls of Parliament they have hardly any support upon a question which threatens to involve us in direct hostility with France; and nothing could have more effectually damaged them, even in this wretched business, than the acerbity of the tone assumed by Lord John Russell with regard to the European powers, who are most justly incensed at the paltering and bad faith of the political incendiary who, to the misfortune of this country, has been intrusted with the management of foreign affairs. Neither the honour nor the interests of Britain are safe in such hands. Therefore we say to the men of the Country Party--Be prepared to act, for no one can tell how soon the moment for action may arrive. Ours is a great cause, and it must not be imperilled by slothfulness or inactivity at a crisis which requires the exertion of all our energies, and the combination of all our powers. Let us but be true to ourselves, and ultimate success is certain. Delusions may for a time have taken hold of the public mind; but the endurance of all delusions is short, and the mist is rapidly dissipating. Let any man compare the state of public feeling as it exists now, with what it was but twelve months ago, and he cannot fail to be impressed with the amazing rapidity of the change. And yet, why should he wonder at it? The industry of the nation is at stake, and what marvel that the people should demand their own?

That cheapness of itself is no blessing, even our opponents admit in the arguments which they try to direct against us. Read their accounts of the squalidness and poverty which prevail in the larger towns--the testimony which has been laboriously collected as to the lamentable fall of wages, and the diminished profits of thousands employed in the lower kinds of handicraft. Undoubtedly competition among themselves has contributed to this state of matters; but in no degree at all commensurate to the great decline which has taken place since we commenced the ruinous system of reducing customs duties. Mr Joseph Hume once ventured to maintain, in the House of Commons, "that England might exist and prosper as a purely manufacturing and commercial country, if it did not grow a single bushel of corn,--if, in exchange for its manufactures and minerals, it imported from the cheap corn-producing countries every quarter of wheat required in this country!" How far that statement is compatible with the ascertained sources of the national wealth, we leave our readers to decide. This much, however, we shall say, that England, so situated, would be a very different country from that which we have known; and that the wildernesses of the West would offer a place of abode infinitely preferable to that which we could enjoy here under the gentle sway of the Millocrats, and the enlightened legislation of the Economists.

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.