CHAPTER V.

On the evening succeeding to the day at the _chacra_, a small evening party--or tertulia, as it is called--was held at the town residence of Luis Mendoza. Our friends Thorne and Griffin were there, two midshipmen belonging to an English man-of-war lying in the roads, with such a sprinkling of young ladies and gentlemen as could be called on such a short notice. Mendoza and Le Brun were closeted hard at work by themselves in an adjoining room. The daughters of the former strove to keep up an appearance of gaiety which they could not feel; even Thorne himself was more silent than was his wont, and it seemed as if the gloomy prospect of the times had its effect in diffusing a shade of sadness over the countenances of those who had met to be gay.

The midshipmen were the only parties who appeared really to enjoy themselves. They feared their first-lieutenant more than Rosas, and him they had left on board: they had come on shore in quest of amusement, and like birds free from the cage, they fluttered about in the full hey-day of enjoyment. Happy themselves, they conceived all around them to be the same, and at last diffused a little of their light-heartedness to others.

“Come, Mr Thorne, we have had plenty of singing and music,” said Anita Mendoza, forcing herself to exertion: “I make you the ‘bastonero.’ What say you to dancing now?”

“A fair challenge! Gentlemen, choose your partners for a quadrille. Miss Anita, will you favour me with your hand. Gentlemen, please hand round refreshments to the ladies to give them a little life before we begin. Griffin, the pleasure of a glass of champagne with you. Here, my young captains, you come and wet your mustaches. _Vive la bagatelle._ Now, then, gentlemen.” Thus rattled on Tom Thorne, seeking to rouse up the flagging spirits of the company; but he himself had seldom been in worse spirits--he scarce knew how.

“I have strange forebodings this night,” said Mr Thorne to Anita Mendoza, as he stood beside her during an interval in the dance. “I see both you and your sisters are dull, too; your father and Le Brun are as busy as if this were to be the last night of their existence. Anita, I suspect that man--I wish to God your father would trust some foreigner--one native is not better than another, that is, not more secure.”

“_Por dios_, tell me, Mr Thorne, what do you suspect in Mr Le Brun? Tell me at once; tell me without reserve--it may not be too late yet?”

“I suspect him of being more intimate with the authorities than an honest man can be.”

“He allows he has influence with them, Mr Thorne; my father has the utmost confidence in him--their interests are bound up together; may he not honestly exert what influence he has for my father’s safety?”

“How can he have influence with them except he lends himself to their schemes and plots? Even were he honest in his intentions to secure Mendoza’s interests--and God forbid that he be not!--who can say that his influence will outweigh the value of Mendoza’s doubloons and lands?”

“Mr Thorne,” said Anita, during another interval in the dance, “I know that Señor Le Brun will _now_ use every effort in his power to secure my father and his interests. Have you--I beg you--I beg you most earnestly to answer me distinctly and at once, for we have not one moment to spare--have you any _positive_ knowledge of Le Brun’s acting a dishonourable part, of his being a spy in fact?”

“I have not.”

“Is he suspected of being so in the town?”

“As far as I know, he is not.”

“What are your reasons for suspecting him in respect to my father?”

“I met him in close and secret communication with the notorious ----.”

“My dear Mr Thorne, excuse me, I have heard all that explained by my father. His confidence must go further with me than the suspicion of another, even if that other be----Oh, Mr Thorne, you can scarcely fancy how much I am relieved, how much I am indebted to you for your frankness; but I _must_ trust Le Brun. And now, as the dance is finished--which, by the way,” said she with a smile, “you appear to have forgotten--I shall feel obliged to you for a glass of wine, for indeed I feel very faint.”

In spite of every exertion of our hero, the small party went off very stiffly, and at an early hour the whole company had disappeared except the two midshipmen, Thorne, and Griffin; when Mendoza and Le Brun entered the _sala_ with the air of men who had just escaped from a long, troublesome, and anxious job, and who rub their hands with delight at having finished it.

“Come, Le Brun,” said Mendoza, “after our long _sederunt_, let us have a glass of the best the girls can give us. Ha! Thorne, how are you? wherever you are there is sure to be champagne--so champagne be it.” But Le Brun declined, and bidding an affectionate adieu to the ladies, and making a formal bow to Thorne, he withdrew.

“Hang me if I like that man!” said Thorne.

“I never knew a man who flinched from his liquor stand by his friend; and I shall make a point of telling him so,” said Griffin, following up Thomas’s resentment.

“That may be the case in Ireland, friend, but cannot apply here,” said Mendoza. “But come, we can finish a bottle of champagne without any assistance. I leave you to-morrow, Thorne,” he said in a whisper: “the blood-hounds are on the _qui vive_, but you will see me double them.”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when a rap was heard at the door. A servant entered pale and trembling, to inform his master that two of the “friends of liberty” were at the door, and wished to speak to the Patron.

Had a thunderbolt fallen at their feet, the whole party could not have stood more aghast. Of the object of their visit at twelve o’clock at night, there could be no mistake. The ladies threw themselves upon their father and wept aloud; protesting with tears and sobs that they should never tear him from them. “Thorne, Griffin, young gentlemen, you will defend my father, will you not? They shall tear us in pieces before they separate us,” sobbed Anita, franticly. The midshipmen, in their enthusiasm, drew their swords. Thorne produced two small pistols from a great-coat pocket; but Griffin,--he was the most collected of the whole.

“Be cool, ladies; I will save your father. Thorne, give me your pistols. Servant, go to the door--say Mr Mendoza will be there in a moment--say he is putting on his cloak. Now, Mendoza, be a man--no time for acting the father or crying now. Ladies, one of you get me your father’s cloak and hat. Now, Mendoza, are you listening to me?”

“I am.”

“Well, then, come to the door with me--ask the gentlemen very politely what they want; of course they will invite you to accompany them to prison or somewhere or other--answer without hesitation you will be with them in one moment. This you will do with your cloak and hat on: give me then your cloak and hat--bid them advance;--I follow, with your cloak and hat on, as Don Luis Mendoza, and damn all consequences--pistols _versus_ knives,--hurrah!”

“But, sir,” commenced Mendoza.

“Not a word, sir, I have no family, and I would die to serve an honest man or bonny lassie: and, Thorne, you look after the ladies--never mind me, I have two pistols for their two knives.”

The thing was arranged as quickly as this has been told. And away went Griffin followed by the “friends of liberty.”

“Now, Mendoza, you must out at once,--it’s all Le Brun’s doings,--cut for your life,--cut,” said Thorne, “and run for my house. Ladies, this is no safe place for you--excuse me, will you honour my house. There is no time for ceremony, rather on with your cloaks. Young gentlemen, you’re escort--servant, your master’s pistols--Now then, ladies, are you ready?--Anita, my arm--friend, give Mariquita yours--you for the look-out, now heave a-head.” “Patricio,” cried Anita, “secure my father’s papers, and then look out for yourselves.” And the whole house was clear in less than ten minutes from the first rap at the door.

Mr Thorne and his interesting convoy arrived safe at the Calle Derecho without any interruption; but great was their dismay as time passed on and no Mendoza made his appearance. Early next morning Thorne was on foot to make his inquiries, but not a word could he hear of his whereabouts. The only consolation he could hold out to his fair and trembling guests was the probability that he might be concealed in some friend’s house, or might find his way on board of some vessel. “But cheer up, ladies, you at least are safe, both from Rosas and Le Brun; and what a comfort that would be to your old father if he knew it! Ladies, you are the mistresses of the house. I must send for a female servant to attend you, and you may send for some lady friend to keep you in countenance, if you can find one, or think it proper.--You will see the propriety of not moving out of doors for a few days. The only restriction I impose upon both of you is, that you never drive me away from your presence by even whispering a word about thanks. And now, ladies, excuse me--I am going to sally out on another voyage of inquiry,” and, before a word could be said in reply, he hurried from the room.

After running about till he was almost exhausted, Thorne repaired to the Sala de los Estrangeros residentes, or club-room of resident foreigners, for a little refreshment; and scarcely had he entered when Le Brun stood before him, pale, breathless, and wo-begone.

“Le Brun,” cried Thorne, “you are a spy, a traitor;--you are worse than I even conceived you to be. Leave me--fly this moment, or you meet your deserts from my hands and in this very place.”

“Thorne,” cried Le Brun with the most abject air, “I am the most miserable man in existence. I swear to you, by every thing that binds man to man, I was not the cause of Mendoza’s capture last night;--my life, sir, is in more peril than his. At this moment the emissaries of the police are at my heels, and ere sunset, I shall be in prison,--ere sunrise probably a corpse;--where is Mendoza?”

“He is not in prison?” demanded Thorne.

“No, no--he is not.”

“Then thank God he is in safer hands than yours or _your_ friends,--he is safe. Confess, Le Brun, that you seek him to save yourself?”

“He is safe, you say;--did you say he was safe?”

“I did,” said Thorne, who had no idea of Mendoza running any risk, except that of his falling into the hands of Rosas. “But begone, sir. I see your object;--you would now sell his life to save your own little miserable existence.”

“Mr Thorne,” said Le Brun, “I am too abject now to resent insults or injuries. Thanks be to Heaven! Mendoza is now safe;--my course is _now_ clear. I can prove to you now that, however base you may think me, I have his interest at heart.”

“Yes, after your own weak truckling schemes have failed. Go on, sir.”

“Thorne, my steps were tracked out to Mendoza’s _chacra_; my steps were watched to Mendoza’s house last night, he was seized, but, Thorne, not by my information--no, thank God! not by mine. After this confession, I ask you if I am not more to be pitied than despised. I may be upbraided as a spy and traitor, but I have always struggled to befriend Mendoza.”

“And why, Le Brun, are you so anxious to know of Mendoza?”

“If I find him not by sunset, I myself suffer the punishment intended for him.”

“I foresaw that, wretch.”

“Press me not too hard, Thorne; I thank Heaven that I alone shall be the victim; and yet, how I shudder at the thought, with all my sins upon me--no, I cannot bear to dream of it. Save me, Thorne!--save me! save me! I throw myself on my knees before you. I never wronged you--I have admired your firmness when I have cursed my own weakness. Save me! save me!”

“Confess, then, did you not mean to sell Mendoza to save yourself?”

“I know not my own motives, Thorne. I am entirely unmanned--ask me not to what lengths despair might have driven a guilty man. Believe me, I laboured anxiously and keenly for his safety to the neglect and danger of my own; for then my thoughts were ennobled by my aspirations for his daughter. I am too mean and degraded now to dream of matching myself with such purity; and I have sunk into mean grovelling selfishness. Thank God! he has escaped. I would not--no, it is impossible I could have betrayed Mendoza, the father of Anita, to have saved my own worthless self. The first sight of that old man’s honest self must have driven such demon thoughts from my mind. I sought Mendoza, Thorne, to give him these papers. Nay, do not frown so upon me: they are papers signed by himself last night disposing of the half of his property to me in the anticipation of my being his son-in-law; if he escapes his property may be disembargoed--mine never can be. Some papers of my own are there too; some of these claims of mine, Thorne, will be recoverable. I have not a relative in the world; pray give them when--oh, I shudder to think of it--give them to the family of Mendoza, give them to Anita.”

“Silence, wretched pettifogger! think not that Anita Mendoza can ever stoop to accept the wages of treachery. I may, I will try to save your own mean life. Sit down there, take advantage of the short time yet spared you to arrange your affairs. I am off to see what may be done to save you from Rosas, whom I despise more than I pity you!” and he rushed out of the room before the trembling Le Brun could thank him for his offered assistance.

Thorne was the creature of impulse. Possessed of a generous heart and warm temperament, he often conferred favours at the same time that he showered reproaches. He had known Le Brun as a respected and honoured member of society: he had never liked him--he was too prim, sober, and methodical, for his errant and jovial disposition. Le Brun’s steady, plodding business habits Tom Thorne had sometimes considered a kind of reproach to his own careless, hap-hazard way of conducting his affairs; and though he had never made regular approaches to gain the favour of Anita Mendoza, his vanity was offended to see the advances that the quiet, easy, insinuating address of Le Brun made, in gaining the affections of the only woman who ever interested him. For all these reasons he had ever disliked Le Brun, and now he despised him: but still, however dangerous it might be, he resolved, if possible, to save him; and while in this state of mind he fell in with the captain of an English man-of-war. It was usual for the English and French vessels-of-war in those dismal times to receive all fugitives who claimed their protection; and the Frenchmen even went so far as to walk through the streets in armed bodies, and receive among their number those whom persecution induced to claim their assistance. Thorne had little difficulty in persuading the captain to lend his assistance in carrying off an intended victim. His vessel was to sail that evening; many of his boats were on shore; and it was arranged that at four o’clock, when they were ready to start, a number of the seamen should find their way to the Sala by different routes; and as the Sala was not far from the beach, they anticipated no difficulty in carrying off Le Brun.

This being arranged, Thorne hurried to inform and prepare the fugitive. Le Brun was still there, and another was there also, heaping every term of opprobrium that could be fancied on that hapless and miserable individual.

“You scum of the sea, you! Will nothing I can say to you persuade you to be a gentleman? By the powers of Moll Kelly! I’ll bring in the marker to dust your hair with chalk powder--the only powder you know any thing about, you black-faced sheep! Faith! a sheep is innocent, and a ram will stand to its own defence: so the only resemblance you have to a sheep is the chance you have of----”

“Hallo there, Griffin!” cried Thorne, “don’t abuse Le Brun now: our friends with the lanterns are after him, and here we come to the rescue. Le Brun, there is not one moment to spare. English seamen are now at the door--they will take you safe to their ship in spite of the friends who are dodging you outside--and so good-bye. God forgive you!”

“Oh, Thorne, how can I?”

“Come, come, no blarney!” cried Griffin interrupting Le Brun. “By St Patrick, if he go, I go too--this place has become too hot for me--Thorne, I did not know the poor devil was in such trouble. There is my address, Thorne, please forward my luggage. Let us have a bottle of champagne before we start. I will recommend Le Brun to a warm half-deck passage to the captain; and when we land, wherever it may be, if he do not give me satisfaction, by the powers! I’ll take it. What say you, Thorne?”

“Now, Le Brun, all ready?” demanded Thorne.

“All ready, sir.”

“Here’s to you then, Griffin,” as Le Brun crept cautiously out of the room. “Spare his life, Griffin--he is not worth the risk of your exposing yourself for him: spare his life for the sake of the black-eyed girl; but don’t forget that he spoiled a merry evening for us out at the _chacra_. By the way, your hurried departure must be rather inconvenient to you; please take this, (offering him some money)--nay, friend, take it; your intended caning match may cost you as much for damages. Now hurry off, for I must not appear in this affair.” And so Le Brun the spy was hurried down to the beach amid a party of English seamen, to the great disappointment of two gentlemen with long cloaks, who were waiting to attend upon him until sunset, and who followed them still, with the view, probably of seeing him safely embarked, in spite of repeated adieus bowed to them by our friend Griffin, who begged of them not to trouble themselves any further.

All hands arrived safely on board; but whether Griffin had to refund any of Tom Thorne’s money for damages, or whether he pinked his friend, or was pinked himself, we have never heard.

Return we to Tom Thorne and his fair guests. Their rage at Le Brun’s treachery was modified by the news that their father had escaped--for that he was not in prison was an escape; and to all parties it appeared best, that they should wait in their present quarters until they should hear from him.

In the mean time, Tom Thorne’s position was a most singular one. A bachelor, we may say, by profession, he was harbouring two lovely girls--one of whom had often roused feelings in his breast that he could not easily account for: he was, moreover, their protector, he had been partly the cause of their misfortunes; they were, it might be said, fatherless and portionless; they interested every best feeling of his heart. Need we work out the progress of results? Tom found more attractions in their mild, subdued, but lively conversation than in the loud rolicsome sports in which he had hitherto been a leader; smiles banished or supplanted cigars, and the sparkle of fair eyes were more often in Tom’s thoughts than the sparkles of champagne. During this state of transmutation, Tom received a message that a friend wished to see him: the messenger was none to be relied on, but he brought a password--_ipso facto_. Tom went, and it was Mendoza he found. The old man had concealed himself in the house of a friend, until he thought all danger past. With prudent care he had concealed his retreat, even from his best friends; and well it was he had done so, for Thorne’s house was watched for several days.

“I have heard,” said the old man, “the care you have taken of my daughters: God reward you for it, I never can.”

“Excuse me, sir, you may,” said Thorne. “Give me the hand of Anita, and I shall be more than repaid. We will smuggle you off to Rio, or Monte Video; this storm will blow over--your political back-holdings will soon be forgotten in the greater criminality of others: your estates will yet be restored to you; and if they be not, I have sufficient to maintain you and your family, without even missing the resources of the _chacra_ or mourning over the ruined speculations of Don Felipe Le Brun.”

“Thorne, you are a man after my own heart. I have ever given you credit for stainless honesty of purpose: if my daughter accepts of you as her protector you shall have my blessing.”

Mendoza, with his daughters, sought temporary exile, the embargo was soon taken off their property, and Tom Thorne afterwards sought, in the sweet smiles and flashing eye of Anita Mendoza, an exchange for the idle luxuries of cigars and champagne. Let us hope that he found them.

A. M.

LETTER FROM A RAILWAY WITNESS IN LONDON.

MY DEAR BOGLE,--In the words of the venerable Joe Grimaldi,--“Here I am again!” swearing away before the committees at no allowance. The trade is not quite so good a one as it was two years ago, when any intelligent and thorough-going calculator of traffic commanded his own price, and therefore invariably stood at an exorbitant premium. Still it would be very wrong in me to grumble. Though there is a woful defalcation of new lines, there is still a good deal to be done in the way of Extensions and Amalgamations; and I am happy to tell you that I am presently in the pay of no less than three companies, who are driving branch lines through the pleasure-grounds of different proprietors. I recollect the day when, in the exuberance of my greenness, I used to feel a sort of idiotical compassion for the situation of the men of land. I used to picture to myself the hardship of having your nice green policy cut into shreds by the forks of some confounded Junction--of seeing your ancestral trees go down like ninepins, before the axe of a callous engineer--of having sleep banished from your eyes by the roar of the engine, which sweeps past night and day, with disgusting punctuality, within fifty paces of your threshold--and of beholding some fine forenoon your first-born son conveyed a mangled corpse from the rail, because the company, out of sheer parsimony, have neglected to fence in their line, which goes slick through the centre of your garden; and the poor little innocent, in the absence of Girzy, then flirting among the gooseberries with the gardener, has been tempted to stray upon the irons in pursuit of an occasional butterfly! But I am thankful to say that I have now got rid of all such visionary scruples. Thanks to Sir Robert Peel, I have learned a new lesson in political economy. I have become a convert to the doctrine, that land is nothing else than manufactures; and I snap my fingers in derision at protection in all its shapes. Would you believe it, Bogle? I was giving evidence yesterday on behalf of the Clachandean railway--part of which, I am sorry to observe, has sunk into the centre of a bog--against a thick-headed proprietor, who has absolutely been insane enough to oppose, for three successive sessions, a branch line, which is to run through his estate for the purpose of communicating with some bathing-machines. The property has been in his family for some four or five hundred years. The mansion-house is an ordinary kind of tumble-down old affair, with turrets like pepper-boxes on the corners, and the fragment of an abbey behind it. There is no timber worth speaking of in the policy, except half-a-dozen great useless yew-trees, beneath which they show you a carved stone, that covers the dust of stout old Lord Alexander, whose body was brought home from the bloody field of Flodden;--and yet this absurd agriculturist has the coolness to propose to the company that they shall make a deviation of nearly half-a-mile, for the sake of avoiding this remnant of the darker ages! Three times, Bogle, has that man come up to London, at a most enormous expense, for the purpose of defending his property. The first time he was successful in his opposition before the committee of the House of Commons, because the chairman happened to be a person imbued with the same ridiculous prejudices as the proprietor, and was what these foolish Protectionists call a man of birth and connexion. He had on his own grounds a mausoleum with some rubbishy remains of his ancestors, who had been out with Harry Hotspur; and the moment he heard of the old tomb-stone and the yew-trees, he began to rave about desecration, and made such a row that the projectors were fain to give it up. That job cost the Protectionist proprietor at least a cool thousand; however, he was pleased to say, that he did not mind the expense, since he had succeeded in saving the mansion of his fathers. But we did not by any means intend to let him off so easily. My friend Switches, the engineer, laid out two new branches--if possible more annoying than the first, for they were to intersect one another at the yew-trees. We tipped the parliamentary notices; and, though the venerable Cincinnatus came with tears in his eyes to our directors, and offered them the land for nothing if they would only consent to a very slight and practicable deviation, we determined to make him pay for his whistle. Accordingly, next year we had him up again, all right and tight, before a fresh committee. Lord! what fun it was to hear him cross-examined by Sergeant Squashers! That’s the counsel for my money!--no feeling, or delicacy, or nonsense of that kind about him. I wish you had seen the rage of the proprietor when he was asked about his buried ancestor; whether his name was Sawney, or Sandy--and whether he was embalmed with sulphur! We all roared with laughter. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir!” said the Sergeant,--for the red spot began to glow upon the old man’s cheek, and I believe that at that moment, if he had a weapon, he could have driven it hilt-deep into the body of the facetious barrister. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir! thank Heaven, we are in a civilised country, where people wear breeches, and live under the protection of the law. Answer me, sir--and try to do it in something like intelligible English--was that fellow, Lord Saunders or Sawney, or whatever you call him, pickled up in brimstone or in pitch?” Squaretoes could not stand this; so he gathered himself up, I must say rather grandly--muttered something about scorn, and Squashers being a disgrace to the gown he wore, and marched out of the committee room amidst the guffaws of a group of us who were brought up to testify that the house was falling to pieces, and that no Christian, of ordinary intellect, would trust his carcass beneath its roof.

That time we had a capital chairman--a regular man of calico, who never professed to have a grandfather, hated the agriculturists like the pestilence, and had made a large fortune by the railways. He was perfectly delighted at the way in which our friend the Sergeant had put down Sir Pertinax M’Sycophant--a nickname suggested by our solicitor, and employed in the learned counsel’s reply with very considerable effect; and as there were two other members of the League on the committee, we had it all our own way. The preamble was declared to be proven, and no clauses of compensation were allowed. But, if we were obstinate in our purpose, so was Pertinax. He fought us in the House of Lords, and there, to be sure, he got what he termed justice--that is, our bill was thrown out, and some rather harsh expressions used with respect to the company’s behaviour. We were ten days before each committee--for Squashers is rather fond of spinning out a case, and none of us who are paid for attendance by the day, are in the habit of objecting to the same--so that Pertinax must have been out of pocket at least two thousand pounds by this second silly opposition. And considering that the fortunes of the family are not so flourishing as they once were, and that the old fellow can barely afford to give his son a university education, you will admit that this must have been a tolerable pull at his purse-strings. However we were determined to keep it up. The wisdom of the legislature in refusing, under any circumstances whatever, to give costs against the railways, has put it in the power of a company to drive any individual, by unremitting perseverance, to the wall. We set Switches to work again, and this time we propose to metamorphose the mansion into a station-house. I don’t know how the thing will go. Old Pertinax is fighting like a Trojan; and I rather fear that he made a little impression on the committee yesterday, by telling them that he has been obliged to borrow money upon his estate at a ruinous rate of interest, and to endanger the portions of his three pretty and motherless daughters solely to defend his patrimony from the wanton aggressions of the company. But--as Sergeant Squashers well observed, when he saw a tear stealing down the furrowed cheek of the Protectionist--this is not the age nor the place for such imbecile snivelling. We have been taught a new lesson with regard to the sacredness of rights and of property; and the sooner those antiquated hereditary notions are kicked out of the minds of the landowners, the better.

When I said, in the commencement of this letter, that I was swearing before the committees, I made use of a wrong term. We are not sworn--not even examined on soul, or on conscience, or on honour; and I must say that the recollection of that circumstance is sometimes a great comfort when I lie in bed awake of nights. What is technically termed at Westminster, engineering evidence, would, I am afraid, were an oath to be interposed, become very like the thing called perjury; which, not to mention its effect on a future state of existence, is popularly supposed in Scotland to bring one under the unpleasant but especial attention of the High Court of Justiciary. The beauty of the present system is, that it gives ample scope and rein to the imagination without imposing any restrictive fetters upon the conscience. It allows a fair latitude for that difference of opinion which always must prevail amongst professional gentlemen, and relieves them from whatever qualms they might otherwise have left in replying without any hesitation--the leading quality of a witness--to questions upon subjects of which they are utterly and entirely ignorant. I have found this advantage in my own case. I am positive that I could not, had I been on oath, have given any satisfactory evidence as to the amount of the bathing traffic on the line; though I certainly admit that I have sometimes of a Saturday afternoon sauntered along the shore with a cigar, to enjoy the _posés plastiques_ of our northern aquatic Nereids. But as all such formality was dispensed with, I had no hesitation in stating the numbers of the amphibious animals, male and female, at eight hundred per hour during seven months of the year; which, on an average of nine hours a day, and at the rate of sixpence a head, would increase the income of the company by about £37,800 per annum. Such was one item of my evidence yesterday, for the clearness and accuracy of which I was politely complimented by the chairman. I must say, however, that I think Switches went rather too far when he valued poor Pertinax’s garden land at less than half-a-crown per acre. I can make every allowance for enthusiasm; but surely, surely this was pushing the principle a little to the extreme. One ought always to preserve, even for the sake of our employers and paymasters, some little semblance of probability. I do not object to an engineer stating in evidence that he is ready to tunnel Ben Nevis, throw a suspension bridge, over the Queensferry, or convert Lochlomond into a green and fertile meadow. All these--as Switches once observed with consummate coolness when badgered about the draining of a quicksand--are mere matters of estimate; but I like facts when we can have them; and had I been questioned on the subject, I think I should have been inclined to have allowed an additional shilling for the land.

Between ourselves, Bogle, I begin to suspect that this kind of work is not altogether conducive to the growth of a healthy state of morality amongst us, I would not say it in the hearing of our chairman; but I really do suspect that we have stretched a point or two exorbitantly far in our attempts to bolster up the bill. I know a lad who was brought up here, two years ago, to speak to the amount of minerals in a district which at present shall be nameless. He was then a good green creature, fresh from the superintendence of his mother, who--poor old body--had done her best to train him up in the ways of truth, and to instil into his mind a sound moral and religious principle. And she had so far succeeded. I do not believe that, at that time, he would have told a lie or injured a human being for the world; but evil was the day on which lie was brought up to London in order to testify before a committee. He was delivered into the hands of a big-boned Aberdonian engineer, notorious for his pawkiness and the adroit manner in which he always contrived to evade a direct answer to any hostile question whatever. The training proceeded, and in less than a month the youth was pronounced to be tolerably perfect in his paces. But he broke down upon cross-examination. He could not point out upon the map the locality of certain coal-fields which he had averred to be in existence; and a rigid heckling elicited the fact that a seam of black-band, valued at some annual thousands, was neither more nor less than a dyke of ordinary whinstone. It was clear that Jock was not yet entirely qualified for his vocation. He stammered too much--got red in the face when closely pressed, and was apt to potter with the compasses, instead of boldly measuring out his quota of imaginary furlongs. So he was remitted to his studies, and underwent another fortnight’s purification at the Coalhole and the Cyder cellars. A natural propensity for drink which lurked in his constitution, was carefully fostered, until his thirst became absolutely unappeasable. He, was drunk from morning to night, or more strictly speaking, from night till morning. His face broke out in blotches; a dark rim gathered beneath his eyes; his nose gave token of the coming pimple, and his lips were baked and bulging. A more disgusting object you never saw; and I only hope that when he was sent down after the session to Scotland, he had the common humanity not to visit the mother that bore him, for the spectacle would have broken her heart. Jock, however, had now risen in value, for he was ready to testify to any thing. To swear that black is white was nothing: he had no hesitation to depone in favour of the whole colours of the rainbow. When questioned for his employers, he was as acute and active as an eel; when under cross, he took refuge either in a stolid dulness of apprehension, which was extremely aggravating to his inquisitor, or had recourse to the safe and convenient operation of the _non mi recordo_ system. In short, he was voted the prince of surveyor’s assistants, and his services were eagerly sought before every species of committee. Roads, canals, harbours, waterworks, or railways--nothing came amiss to Jock. Through habit he had become a quick study, and could satisfactorily master the details of the most intricate case in the course of a single evening, provided he was liberally, but not too exorbitantly, supplied with liquor. He is now a blackguard of the first water. I firmly believe that he has not spoken one word of truth for the last eighteen months, nor could he do so by any possibility even were you to pay him for it.

Such is the career of a true child of the railway committee system; nor can it well be otherwise, so long as witnesses are allowed to depone without reference to oath, and without the pains of perjury before their eyes. Don’t think me, my dear Bogle, unnecessarily strict in my censures. I make no pretence of having a conscience much less elastic than those of my fellow mortals; but I have a kind of indistinct feeling that it would be better for all of us if, somehow or another, we could be brought to speak the truth, or at least to make some sort of approximation towards it. The very first question which used to be asked of a witness in a court of law, was the remarkably suggestive one,--“Has any body paid you any thing, or promised you any thing, for giving your testimony?” And even yet, when a bribe can be established, it is held to disqualify, or at least to cast discredit upon a witness. Now, although I do not like to confess that we are bribed in the strictest acceptation of the term, we have, all of us, more or less interest in the success of the companies who are judicious enough to secure our services. The leading engineer has the prospect of a large and profitable job. The contractor expects a slice; the surveyor constant employment; and the capability-man and the calculator of traffic know very well that a break-down in evidence will effectually debar them from a future visit to London on the occasion of the next extension, which exclusion is equivalent to a loss of five guineas a-day with all expenses paid. So that, on the whole, I think it is abundantly clear, that we are not altogether patriots of the highest and most exalted breed. Why, then, should we be exempted from that species of purification to which even the peerage of the realm are subjected in a court of law? Of this I am certain, that larger interests are arbitrarily disposed of every session by committees of the House of Commons, than are painfully and laboriously adjudicated on, with all the formalities of law, by the judges of the Court of Session. And if the safeguard of an oath is deemed indispensable in the one case, I cannot for the life of me understand on what principle it should entirely be omitted in the other.

But perhaps you think that a good deal may safely be left to the discretion, discrimination, and prudence of those honourable members who are virtually the judges between the merits of the invading company and the rights of the invaded proprietor. You think that exaggerated or perverted testimony would be of no avail before a tribunal of such exalted intelligence; and that it would be as impossible to get up a fictitious case of traffic, as it would be to persuade a Birmingham trader that a metallic basis to the currency is the foundation of our national prosperity. Bless you, my dear friend! you know nothing at all about the matter. You have not the smallest idea of the extent of swallow of the Sassenach. In nine cases out of ten, they are as ignorant of the points at issue, as that unclean Whig Mr Gisborne is of the nation which he had the impudent audacity to revile. I shall put the case to you in a clear and intelligible point of view. Suppose that a company were proposing to run a line from Rutherglen across the Clyde, the Green of Glasgow, and, through the very heart of the city to the terminus near George Square. You will not deny that there are tolerably weighty interests involved in such a project as that, and I presume you would like to have the whole matter thoroughly expounded, before a locomotive train was permitted to shoot over a skew-bridge in the middle of the Trongate. Now, apart from evidence, who do you think would be the best judges of the expediency of such a measure? Are you not of opinion that the interests of Glasgow would be safer in the hands of the members for the West of Scotland, who have all some local knowledge of the place, than if intrusted to the tender mercies of five gentlemen, not one of whom has ever crossed the Border, and who, during, the whole period of their sitting, are impressed with a strong idea that Rutherglen is the same place as Rugby? Would you consider yourself, and our mutual friends Walter Sheddon, Steenie Provan, Tammy Gilkison, and Ephraim Cansh, a proper or a competent committee to try the merits of a line which was to intersect the heart of Bristol? Not one of you ever set foot in that respectable metropolis of spar; and it baffles my imagination to conceive how your aggregate wisdom could manage to detect and discriminate the truth amidst the conflicting evidence of a cloud of witnesses. Is it not a mere matter of toss-up, whether your decision would be right or wrong? Would you not be apt to abide by the testimony of the most plausible and practised witness, simply because you have no means of testing the accuracy of his deposition? But if the Rutherglen Junction were referred to the decision of you five, I warrant me we should have the business conducted in a very different kind of manner. I think I see Gilkison’s expression of face, at hearing a herring-curer brought up to speak to the value of the salmon fisheries at the Green; or the mute ire of Cansh at being told that the Trongate is a mere lane, and the buildings of no earthly value! I think I hear the obstreperous roar of Provan, consequent on the testimony of an intoxicated brass-founder, that the substratum of the Green is black band! Would not the oleaginous cheeks of Sheddon glisten with indignant dew, if he heard the Clyde described as a positive nuisance to the community?--and would not you, O Bogle, annihilate with a terrific frown, the ruffian who should aver that the finest square in Glasgow is evidently intended by nature for the purposes of a railway station? My life upon it, that you five would soon bring the witnesses to their senses. But, as the business is conducted at present, neither the judges--that is, the members of the committee--nor the counsel who are examining, know any thing at all about the localities. There is a complete monopoly in the business. Members of the English bar, who are necessarily strangers to the site of the proposed operations, are invariably employed by the solicitors in preference to our own advocates who were born and bred upon the spot. Friend Squashers, for example, was never in his life twenty miles north of the Old Bailey, and yet he is considered the fittest person to expatiate to the committee on the advantages of a Highland line. And I will say this for him, that he makes his mountains remarkably like Shooter’s Hill; and in point of bullying a witness, and insulting a landed proprietor, none of our native lads are fit to hold the candle to him.

The question, therefore, which I once put to you before, and which I certainly would put to that plucky little fellow Lord John Russell, if I happened to have the honour of his acquaintance, is simply this--Would it not be better that the evidence which is now taken before committees of the House of Commons on railway and other bills should be given in Scotland, Ireland, and the provinces, before a paid commission and on oath? Certain I am that the work would be far better done. Results would be more accurately brought out, the truth would be better sifted, and there would be an end to that profligate system of demoralisation which is doing no good to London, and is rapidly corrupting such of us as are necessarily drawn within its influence. Honourable members would be relieved from a harassing, tedious, and laborious duty; and their legislative functions need not be interfered with, as the printed evidence would fall to be leisurely and thoroughly sifted. At present a member of the House of Commons is far less a legislator than a mere railway machine. He has not time to study the merits of the vast public questions which ought above every thing to claim his attention; for his whole day is occupied with a dreary detail of curves, gradients, and sections; and by being compelled to do too much, he is crippled in the exercise and discharge of by far his most important functions. And further, the railway interest is already too widely spread in the House of Commons. Almost every member has an interest, direct or indirect, in some particular line or company; and it is impossible to expect that in every case there shall not be a particular sway or bias in the minds of some of the judges. This is not right nor decent. The leading quality which is required of a judge in every department is a strict and thorough impartiality, and an absolute renunciation of every interested motive;--and no sacrifice on the part of the public can be too great to attain so desirable an end. It would be well for us if, during the last and the preceding year, country members had been more occupied with watching the attitude and the proceedings of the ministry, and less with the conflicting statements of rival companies and engineers. Had they been attending to the Currency and the Corn Laws, we ought to have escaped from a commercial crisis, in which even the railway shareholder, as I imagine, has been tolerably severely pinched.

And really, Bogle, I do not think that we are compensated in the sight of Heaven, by our five guineas a-day, for the enormous immoralities which we contract in this overgrown and seductive city. There are some thousands of us here, all living like plethoric gamecocks; and, so far as I can gather, going, in plain language, as fast as possible to the devil. I wish you saw the scramble which takes place in the lobby of the committee-rooms at twelve. A perfect torrent of engineers, surveyors, solicitors, agents, and witnesses--in the middle of which, every here and there, appears the cauliflower head of a counsel--pours up the stairs. The refreshment table below is blocked up with thirsty demons, all clamorous for soda-water, their matutinal tea having failed to quench the old hereditary drought. You wrestle your way into the committee-room, and before the members meet, you become the edified auditor of such scraps of information as the following:--

“Whaur d’ye think Jimsey and me gaed tae last nicht after ‘The Judge and Jury?’”

“I’m sure I dinna ken: some deil’s buckie’s errand, I’se be bound.”

“Gosh, man! we gaed tae the Puckadully Saloon; and Jimsey there took twa turns wi’ an opera dancer at the Polka. Eh, man! she was a grand yin.”

“Was ye no feared, Jimsey?”

“Me feared? Deil a bit. She telt me I was unco like Count Dorsy.”

“And whaur did ye gang after?”

“I dinna mind: I was awfu’ fou.”

“Weel, I wasna muckle better mysel’. Me and Wattie Strowan gaed down to Greenitch, and we forgathered wi’ twa Paisley lads in the steamboat. But there’s Wattie. How d’ye find yoursel’ this morning, Wattie?”

“No richt ava. I woke at eleven with my boots on, and somebody has helped theirsel’ to my watch.”

“Man, that’s fearsome.”

“I dinna care muckle aboot it. It was an auld pinchbeck ane o’ my auntie’s.”

“What’s become o’ Geordie MacAuslan?”

“That’s mair nor ony body kens. Geordie hasna been seen thae twa days. He’s an awfa’ body when he gets upon the batter. He drinks waur nor a trout.”

“Hae ye been to hear Jeanie Lind yet?”

“No me. I dinna care for thae skirling foreigners, and it’s ower dear.”

“Ye should gang though. What’s keeping the committee?”

“The chairman o’t will hae been fon tae. Hech me, I’ve got a sair heid! Jimsey, quae down to the lobby, and we’ll hae a glass of soddy, wi’ a wee thing o’ brandy intil it.”

And so exeunt for a quarter of an hour my fine and faithful compatriots.

Do not think, Bogle, that I am unnecessarily severe, or that I have the slightest wish whatever to detract from the merits of my countrymen. On the contrary, I love them exceedingly; and it is only because I cannot bear to see them lowered in the eyes of the stranger, that I would have them speedily removed from the influences of such perilous temptation. Few of my young railway friends possess the continence or austere morality which were the creditable characteristics of Richie Moniplies. They have got more money than is good for them, and they are by no means particular how and where they spend it. Centralisation, which is now the favourite theory of our government, is unquestionably productive of great and serious evils. The system of transacting the whole business of the country, in so far as public works and improvements are concerned, in London, acts as a heavy drain upon the provinces, and is, I think, in many ways detrimental to the well-being of the country. It is very easy for ministers who are constantly resident here to forget the existence of the smaller and remote capitals; and therefore it is that Edinburgh has shared so little in the bounties and benefactions which are liberally heaped upon London. If you run your eye over the public estimates, you cannot fail to be struck with the prodigious sums which are annually expended by government upon the metropolitan improvements and institutions, the liberal state-patronage which is bestowed upon the fine arts, and the grants to hospitals and museums. This is wise and proper, and I do not grudge nor complain of it. All I contend for is, that some consideration should be shown to the other leading cities of the empire. We are all taxed for London: is it not but fair and reasonable that some portion of the public money should be appropriated for the encouragement of similar objects in the north? If London is to remain as now the only favoured city, the necessary consequence must be, that it will attract towards it all the intellect and excellence, which otherwise would be scattered through the kingdoms--that the smaller capitals must decay in proportion as the large plethoric central one augments. And such, indeed, is the true state of matters at the present period. The moment that a rising artist shows himself among us, he is instantly transported to London; because it is the only field where he can meet with proper encouragement, or where his talents will be adequately rewarded. In literature it is the same thing. The position of our Universities is lowered, simply because they are starved by the government, which ought to foster and protect them. Sir Robert Peel, yielding as usual to the Irish howl, had no objections whatever to found and endow most liberally the Papist colleges. The same statesman positively declined to do any thing for the University of Edinburgh, in which the government-salary of the best endowed professor is not equal to the emolument of a common mail-guard, or a postman! Under such circumstances the only marvel is, that men can be found to occupy the chairs. The present Premier is an alumnus of that university, and also an honorary graduate; but it is too much to hope that he will move one inch in support of his Alma Mater. It is clear that the Presbyterian has not the ghost of a chance in competition with the Papist. And although the Commissioners appointed in 1825 urgently represented to government the necessity of doing something to enable these unhappy professors to live, not one single step has been taken by the Treasury in consequence. The natural result is that the professors are being constantly drafted away to the manifest detriment of the university. Some take refuge at St Andrew’s and elsewhere, where the chairs are more liberally endowed. Others, sick at heart, throw up their commissions altogether. That noble institution, the Edinburgh Infirmary, is almost bankrupt, and never has received the slightest assistance from the public purse; and yet one of the city members is in the Cabinet! I wonder that it has not occurred to the somnolent citizens of Edinburgh, that some little advantage as well as glory might be derived from such distinguished representation. Honourable members are generally rather squeezable on the eve of an election; and were I a burgess of the good town, I think I should be disposed to require some little explanation on these points, and some assurance that the candidates would advocate in future the undoubted interests and rights of the electors, before I again came forward with my vote.

Dublin, with her vice-regal court, has something like the appearance of a capital; and I sincerely trust that it may be long before any government, yielding to the clamours of the parsimonious Joseph Hume, shall attempt to rob her of that privilege. Edinburgh has not a shadow of royalty left her, save the Commissioner to the General Assembly! The dreary halls of Holyrood, I fear, will never again be rendered gay by the presence even of a delegate of sovereignty; and were it not for the existence of the courts of law, now miserably contracted in their functions, Edinburgh would inevitably become a retrograding city. Notwithstanding the habitual jealousy with which we of the balmy west are wont to contemplate our beautiful rival, I really am, from the bottom of my soul, sincerely sorry for the capital of Scotland. Last year, after our parliamentary campaign, I treated myself to a run on the Continent, and I never was more struck in my life than with the remarkable similarity which exists between Edinburgh and Darmstadt. There are the same spacious streets, the same wide squares, the same imposing and substantial buildings; but, alas! there is also the same dearth of inhabitants, and the same remarkable absence of that traffic and bustle which is the surest index of the wealth and prosperity of a town. Huge plate-glass windows in the shops are not, I apprehend, unerring tokens of the thriving business of the tradesman; and it is quite possible that a city of palaces may be inhabited by those who rank in the monetary scale very far indeed below the point which their external appearance indicates.

Edinburgh is, in my mind, the best existing evidence of the baneful effects of centralisation. She never was, and in all probability never will become, a seat of commerce or manufacture; and perhaps it is better so, for I hardly think that her noble aspect would be beautified by the addition of some hundred chimney stacks, on the model of the St. Rollox column, vomiting out long streams of smoke across the surface of the clear blue sky. She is no longer a seat of government. Even had it been intended, as some still maintain, that, after the incorporating Union, a shadow of local government should be left to Scotland, subsequent events and mighty uncontemplated changes have arisen to render such a view untenable. But then, until some thirty years ago, Edinburgh had many privileges. The whole public business of the country was transacted by native functionaries residing within her walls. She had her boards of Custom and Excise. The high officers of the law all resided there, and she still was able to maintain something of the semblance of a metropolis. But the besom of reform, nowhere else so ruthlessly and cruelly wielded, swept every cranny and corner of her clean. Under the pretext of economy, all the local boards were suppressed and transferred to London, amidst the insane joy of our primitive native reformers, who do not seem for one moment to have reflected on the fatal consequences which were sure to follow. The courts of law, and all that remained to us of the ancient Scottish constitution were next assailed. In vain did Sir Walter Scott and others, who had not bowed the knee to Baal, demonstrate the impolicy of measures which must have the effect of degrading the status of the bar by narrowing its prospects, and of impoverishing the bulk of the citizens of Edinburgh by materially diminishing the income which had hitherto been expended amongst them. Such warnings were regarded as the drivellings of a senile intellect. Year after year the work of abolition went on. Some offices were suppressed, others grievously curtailed; and in several departments, where the fees of office were retained, these were ordered to be transmitted, and are so at the present moment, to the general account of the Treasury, in which they figure under the item of Miscellaneous Revenue;--so that the public purse of Great Britain is now augmented by the balance of the fees which were originally intended for the maintenance and support of the high officers of the Scottish crown.

Now, mark the consequence of all this. The bar, as a profession, has been very materially lowered; for it is impossible to expect that the same class of men as formerly will devote themselves assiduously to the law, when it no longer holds out to their ambition the reasonable prospect of an ultimate prize. No Scottish advocate now-a-days can hope to be comfortably shelved save on the Bench, and it is a long and weary toil to attain that coveted eminence. There are hardly any middle situations left, which a man of any talent or enterprise would accept. But a lower field has been opened, and the bar is now, to the detriment of the country practitioners, monopolising the inferior situations of sheriffs-substitute; and the holders of these places are still, notwithstanding a recent change for the better, but inadequately remunerated for the onerous duties which they perform. It is now quite notorious that the Scottish bar can hold out no inducement to young men of talent and distinguished abilities. It is therefore not surprising to find that many members of our oldest and most influential families have now qualified themselves for the English bar, which, with its colonial judgeships, commissionerships, and high offices, is in all probability the first profession in the world. The English, Bogle, are too wise a people to strip themselves naked, because at certain seasons their clothing may have been inconveniently warm.

I say, therefore, that the wholesale spoliation and reduction of offices in Scotland has had, in the first instance, the effect of removing from Edinburgh many of the ablest men, at least of the rising generation. And if that should be thought a light matter, let me remark, that not only the law but the literature of the country has suffered. The time has been, and is not long gone by, when, in a single turn of the Parliament House, you might encounter in their advocates’ gowns, such men as Scott, Wilson, Jeffrey, and Lockhart--it would now, I think, rather puzzle you to select from the children of the Scottish Themis, one single name equal in weight to the least of these. Edinburgh, I am afraid, has ceased to hold rank as a nursery of talent; and for that, as well as other deteriorations, she may thank the Reformers and the Whigs.

In the second place, I say that there is not a single tradesman in Edinburgh who has not suffered materially in purse on account of these insane reductions; and it would have been far better if some of them who set up for practical economists, had been minding their own balance-sheet instead of attending to the ledger of the nation. Is it not as clear as sunshine, that every penny which has been taken out of Edinburgh, has been ultimately abstracted from their pockets? Will any one of them venture to say, that trade has not declined since the work of spoliation began? I am told by those who are intimately acquainted with the place, that the contraction of general society, even in the winter session, is something positively remarkable--that there is less festivity, less social intercourse, fewer equipages, and fewer entertainments now, than were common thirty years ago, when the city had attractions not only for our own but even for the English nobility. At present, as I understand, not a single Scottish peer maintains a mansion in Edinburgh, and the more influential of the gentry are gradually withdrawing from it also. It is useless to say that this is owing to the superior attractions of London. A small capital, provided it be otherwise a pleasant residence, will always attract to it persons of moderate fortune; because they are certain to obtain a much higher position in proportion to their means, than they could possibly aspire to in the more plethoric metropolis. But then the fundamental charm of such a residence consists in an agreeable society. And where, as in Edinburgh, every thing has been done to impoverish the habitual residenters--where every possible inducement is held out to draw talent away from it, and where nothing is attempted to create a corresponding influx--where genius, however bright, must linger in obscurity and decay--is it, I ask, possible to expect that any such society can be found? You will find beauty there, no doubt; but, alas! that beauty can do but little for those who possess it. Go into an Edinburgh ballroom, and you will see groups of pretty young women, well educated, well principled, and with ancient blood in their veins, whose fate it is to be left withering on the stalk, because they have no portions of their own, and the men cannot afford to marry. And do you think that the poor fellows, bred up, through the mistaken pride of their parents, to a thankless and declining profession, are less legitimate objects of pity? Morning after morning, throughout the cold and dreary routine of the winter session, do they pace the barren boards of the Parliament House in a kind of dreamy languor, or laugh off with reckless witticism the disgust which is preying on their souls. No kind agent approaches them with a fee, for there is scarcely legal business left--thanks to the new-fangled Jurisdiction Acts which throw a triple burden on the sheriffs--to keep twenty or at most thirty elderly advocates in something like tolerable employment. They are afraid to try literature, for the common prejudice is against it; and so the best and most precious years of their lives are consumed in idle listlessness, and in dull and sickening expectation. Far better had it been for them, if, like their younger and more fortunate brothers, they had been shipped off from school to India, even though they had fallen with glory on the banks of the distant Sutlej, or gone to sleep, benumbed and frozen, amidst the snows of the Kyber Pass! For then they would have left behind them a brave and an honourable name, and have escaped the weary curse of a profitless and ignoble existence. If not one other word of old Belhaven’s prophecy were true, he spoke like a faithful seer, when he warned the Scottish gentry that ere long their daughters would be languishing for want of husbands, and their sons driven away to seek employment at the hand of the stranger.

All this is so perfectly conspicuous and self-apparent, that one cannot but be amazed at the apathy which has prevailed at the time when, and since, these miserable innovations were made. And I can hardly persuade myself that the citizens of Edinburgh--indeed the people of Scotland, for it is their common cause--will remain much longer quiescent, without making some effort for the restoration of their decaying capital. Let Edinburgh, in the first instance, have its due; and let the system of centralisation be so far relaxed, that the ordinary business of the nation may be conducted in its own capital. The loss to London would be nothing--the gain to Edinburgh would be immense; and I am sure no ministry whatever ought to grudge so reasonable a demand, more especially as the whole patronage would still be left in their power. As regards the legal and other official changes, I have every reason to believe that even the Whigs are now convinced of the fatal effects of their policy; and far be it from me in any way to impede their repentance. Indeed, neither party in the state are altogether blameless in this matter; and I hope that as both have sinned against their country, both will join cordially in the graceful act of reparation.

Let us, moreover, have a board of commissioners, sitting at the same time with the Court of Session, before whom all evidence relating to private bills may be laid, before these are submitted to the consideration of the Imperial Parliament. I cannot figure to myself any possible objection to this scheme. It would cost the country nothing, for the whole expense of the establishment should be defrayed by the companies who are demanding constitution; and considering the multiplicity of these projects, the quota of each would be a matter of absolute indifference. I maintain broadly, that justice will never be done, even to the companies themselves, until things are put upon such a footing. No man, or body of men, can properly perform the judicial function, unless they are directly responsible to the public. It is this principle which secures the due administration of justice, and it is universally acted upon throughout the civilised world.

In Committee practice, points are constantly occurring which involve legal questions of the subtlest and most delicate nature. Do five country squires, or five manufacturing cotton-lords, or five railway millionaires form a proper tribunal to hear or to decide upon these? The simpler points of form and of order, and the competency or incompetency of leading a certain line of evidence, are matters which few of these gentlemen have any pretension to understand. And the consequence is, that in some cases the inquiry is protracted to a ridiculous length, by the intervention of parties who have no right whatever to be heard, and in others, a fair and legitimate opposition is ruthlessly strangled in the bud. The wisdom of collective parliament is undoubtedly great, but I deny that such wisdom is equally divided among the members. One blockhead, through sheer obstinacy or stupidity, may throw out a bill on committee; and surely it is rather imprudent that the risk should be unnecessarily incurred. On all these considerations, therefore, I advocate the establishment of a local board for Scotland, to relieve honourable members of the most onerous and thankless duty which they are now called upon to perform. The public would be better and more economically served; and I need hardly point out the advantages which would accrue to Edinburgh. It is true, that under such an arrangement, my vocation and that of several thousands more would be at an end. We should no longer be brought up to London, at the cost of the unfortunate shareholders, to testify with Mandeville courage to the existence of imaginary mines, or the wealth of uncultivated districts. Our fictitious statistics would disappear beneath the operation of a sounder system than the present; but I cannot presume to maintain that the interests of the nation would thereby be exorbitantly damaged. The establishment of such a board would cause far less expense to all parties concerned, than the course which is now pursued; and surely it would be better if we were allowed to retain within ourselves that considerable portion of capital which is now either squandered in London, or quietly transferred to the pockets of the English lawyers. These gentlemen may well be satisfied with the product of their own country, without rapaciously absorbing the smaller item, which, if retained at home, is sufficient to resuscitate the poorer bar of Scotland.

I think it is very generally admitted, at least by the sufferers, that something should be done to counteract the baneful effects of that centralisation which has been gradually but surely on the increase. The members whom we send to parliament are infinitely too supine upon such really important points: they seem to forget altogether that they are intrusted with a national duty, and exhibit none of that watchfulness and spirit which characterise the zealous Irish. It is to be devoutly wished that some intelligent and patriotic nobleman--some true and generous Scotsman, such as we all know the Earl of Eglinton to be--would put himself at the head of a national movement, and force these subjects upon the attention of our drowsy governments. I am certain that he would not look around him in vain for sympathy and support. The feeling that our Scottish interests have been culpably and dangerously overlooked, is now far more prevalent than ever; more especially since the detrimental effects of Peel’s wanton aggression upon the Banking system of the nation have been felt by the commercial community. Every true Scotsman must feel that our present position is a degrading one; and we want but a vigorous effort to compel that justice which is our fair prerogative. But so long as our Peerage and members sit with folded hands, and allow every remnant of our native institutions to be uprooted and removed without a struggle and without remonstrance, we cannot expect any thing else than a continued drain upon our country, and a decline in the resources, the wealth, and the institutions of our capital city. Oh, for some spirit powerful enough to rouse those sluggards to their duty! Brave old Sir Walter sleeps in his honoured grave at Dryburgh, and as yet no one has arisen who is worthy to occupy his place.

But I must turn to some other theme; for I really can hardly keep myself within bounds when I reflect on this. What shall I tell you of now?--the theatres or Jenny Lind? You have no doubt heard of the great sensation which the long-deferred appearance of the Swedish warbler has excited in the metropolis, but you can scarcely form any adequate idea of its extent. The long delay which intervened between her first engagement and her actual visit,--the fuss, lighting, and controversy betwixt the two rival managers--and the reports of the unparalleled enthusiasm with which she was received at Vienna and elsewhere, all served to keep the expectation of the public screwed up to the highest pitch. And when it was at last ascertained that the actual Jenny was in London, and speedily to appear, the price of opera-boxes and of stall-tickets rose as rapidly in the market as railway scrips in the redoubted days of staging. Mr D’Israeli’s friends, the Caucasians, were too acute to let so glorious an opportunity escape them. They bought up on speculation every vacant place, and retailed them at exorbitant profits to the eager and impatient amateurs. The expenditure of coat-tails at the pit-door for the first two or three nights was, I understand, something prodigious. Fractured ribs were as plentiful as gooseberries in their season; and the triumph of the syren was complete. She retired amidst a shower of bouquets--one of them thrown by a royal hand; and next morning the journals, forgetting politics for a time, vied with each other in ecstatic rhapsody and high-flown panegyric of the fair and gifted stranger. All this was extremely stimulating to the curiosity; and though, as you are well aware, nature has not gifted me with extreme nicety of ear, and the exorbitant rate of admission was somewhat of a stumbling-block, I resolved to throw parsimony to the winds for once, and took a box upon joint speculation with our friend Mr Archy Chaffinch.

After all, Her Majesty’s Theatre upon a gala-night presents a very gorgeous spectacle, and I do not wonder that, apart from the music, it is a place of so much attraction. The mere sight of the company is enough to strike us poor provincials with astonishment--for I believe that in no other assemblage in the world will you see so much beauty, rank, and elegance congregated as here. The opera for the evening was the “Somnambula,” and after the curtain had risen, and the preliminary scene was over, a fair, fresh, innocent-looking girl, attired in peasant costume, tripped upon the stage, and the storm of applause which literally shook the house welcomed the appearance of the celebrated Swedish singer. I do not purpose, Bogle, to go through the performance in detail--for two reasons: first, because I am not a competent critic; and secondly, because even supposing that I were qualified to write the musical article for the _Morning Post_, I am well convinced that you could not understand me. But I will tell you generally, and in plain words, what I think of Jenny Lind. The great charm of her performances seems to be this--that she combines together in extraordinary perfection the leading qualities of the actress and the singer. Nothing could be more natural, more touching, or more beautiful than the manner in which she embodied the character of Amina, and I write this with the full memory of the exquisite Malibran before me. But Malibran, with all her grace and genius, was more artificial than Jenny Lind. She always made it visible to you that somewhat of her simplicity was assumed; and occasionally she rather imitated the archness of the grisette, than the soft, modest, and yet playful demeanour of the village maiden. Jenny, on the other hand, is faultless in the expression of her emotions. Whether she is giving way to a burst of confiding love, or chiding her betrothed for his jealousy, or repelling with vexed impatience the approaches of the libertine Count, she never for a moment is untrue to the proper nature of her character. I never saw any thing so perfect as the sleep-walking scene; Siddons could not have done it better: and if mesmerism had often such charming pupils, it would soon become a popular science. Her voice in singing is most charming, but I think it strikes one less with surprise at its compass, than with delight at the exquisite melody and birdlike clearness of its tones. Indeed, no more appropriate name could have been bestowed on her than that by which she is now familiar throughout Europe--the peerless Nightingale of Sweden.

It is to be wished, however, that the more ardent admirers of this delightful syren would preserve some little moderation in their encomium. For it is quite obvious to me that, in actual power of voice, she is exceeded by several singers at present on the London stage; and whenever much physical exertion is required, she fails to electrify the audience with such bursts of magnificent song as thrill from the throat of Grisi. Jenny Lind seems to be quite aware of her own capabilities; for she has not yet selected a vehement or stormy part, which may be said to embody the highest operatic tragedy. And she does wisely in confining herself to her own sphere, in which she has no equal. And I do most devoutly hope that all the adulation and applause which has been showered upon her, may not turn that sweet young innocent head; that when her period of probation is over, she may return to Sweden the same gentle and unassuming creature as when she left it; and in the quiet retreats of her native Scandinavian valley, find that happiness and calm content of soul which is better than all the plaudits of a changeable and fantastic world.

To tell you the truth, Bogle, I wish all this row was over. I am sick of hot committee-rooms, of gentlemen in horse-hair wigs, and of the whole paraphernalia of railway bills; and I long either to be throwing a fly on the breezy surface of Loch Awe, or enjoying a cool bowl of punch in your company at the open window of your marine villa which looks out upon the hills of Cowall. I no longer take pleasure in white-bait and those eternal courses of eels and diminutive flounder which constitute a fish-dinner at Greenwich, or in the equally unvarying repast which awaits one at Richmond of a Sunday. I get quite unhappy as I survey those gasping goldfish parboiling in the basin at Hampton Court: now that the horse-chestnuts have faded, Bushy Park appears to me but a seedy sort of place; and I have no inclination whatever to trust myself in the ring at Ascot. I am sighing for a wimpling burn or a green brae in the north, where I can lie down upon the gowans, look up into the clear deep sky, and listen to the pleasant sounds that in summer give glory to a Scottish glen. I cannot see any charm in the dusty Park, with its long strings of coronetted carriages--more than half of which, I am afraid, are justly challengeable at Heralds’ College--and the bold, broad, Semiramis-like beauty of the women who are reclining luxuriously within. Titmarsh is decidedly right. It is but a picture of Vanity Fair; and, I fear me, vanity displayed in its poorest and most contemptible form. All that rivalry of equipage--all that glitter and splendour--all that parade of lazy menials in crimson and orange attire, fail to impress me with any thing like admiration, and certainly do not excite within me the smallest thrill of envy. It is but the race of wealth, the competition of pomp, the exhibition of pitiful rivalry which now whirls along that smoking road: each is striving to outvie the other--not in greatness, nor in goodness, nor even in substantial comfort, but simply in the gew-gaws and trappings which are produced by the common artificer. I am not a “oneness-of-purpose” man, Bogle, nor do I set up for an “earnest spirit;” but all this sort of thing strikes me as incalculably mean and plebeian. There is, in fact, among the English people, especially the Londoners, a degree of toadyism, and worship of the externals of Mammon, which would be utterly ludicrous in any other part of Europe. In some countries a man is esteemed for his personal talents and pretensions; in others, the claim of noble blood and unalloyed descent reflects a borrowed splendour and consideration upon individuals; but nowhere, except here, as far as I know, are claims to rank put forward on the foundation of a lacquered equipage, and a couple of flaunting and pimpled dependants, for whose sake one is almost tempted to believe that a portion of the human race are created without the awful and immortal attribute of a soul! Aristocracy-hunting, indeed, is a passion which is carried in London to a most incredible extent. Much as the son of the soap-boiler values himself on his wealth, he is yet a discontented person if he cannot by some means attach himself to a scion of nobility, of whose acquaintance he may boast to his less fortunate compeers. He will even go so far as to pay hard money for such an adventitious distinction; and many are the thousands which annually find their way from ignoble to titled pockets for this meanest of earthly privileges. Nay, I believe that there is no possible form of imposture which will not be assumed by some, for the sake of constituting an imaginary link between themselves and the members of the class whom they look up to with a species of adoration. I shall give you a very pregnant proof of this. A hereditary tendency to corns, and a lingering regard for the ancient bond of alliance between Scotland and France, have caused me for many years to submit my toes to papooshes of the foreign manufacture. In former times, it is true, I might have undergone reproach as a discourager of the home market--but all such scruples have been removed by the policy of Sir Robert Peel. Accordingly I went, the other day, to a rather celebrated warehouse in Regent Street, where ready-made Parisian boots are vended; and after some trouble selected a couple of pairs, which I fondly hoped might enhance the native symmetry of my instep. When the parcel came home, I opened it, and the first pair which I extricated bore on the inside and on the sole, the name of the Hon. Augustus Bosh. I thought at first there might be some mistake, but on inspection I was convinced that they were the same boots which, that morning, I had fitted on unsullied and unmarked, and, as Bosh and I seemed to be of about the same calibre of pedestal, I felt no hesitation in perambulating London for a couple of days upon his soles. I then drew forth the other pair, which, to my great astonishment, I found were marked as the property of a certain Viscount St Vitus. Now, I had only experimented in the first instance with the right moiety of these boots, and on attempting the other, I was annoyed to find that my heel was at least twice as large as that of the noble peer. In consequence I went back to the warehouse, and this time selected a virgin pair without spot or blemish, in order that I might possess at least one unquestionable footing of my own. It would not do, Bogle. The boots were sent to me inscribed as the property of Lord Alfred Le Pitcher, and at this moment I am installed in that respectable nobleman’s leather. Now, mark the consequences. If I go down to the country, I shall inevitably be taken either for the Honourable Augustus, who is notorious for his defalcations in the ring, or for Le Pitcher, who is proverbially a _roué_ and a spendthrift. In the one case I run the risk of a horse-whipping, in the other I am perfectly certain to be subjected to an exorbitant bill. Or, supposing that my personal appearance does not justify the noble imputation, am I to run the hazard of being charged as an impostor, or possibly mistaken for a thief? Heaven knows, I have no earthly desire to represent those distinguished personages. I would much prefer to walk in unchallengeable boots of my own, but I am not permitted to do so. Now I hold this Frenchman to be quite a genius in his way. He sees the leading foible of the people with whom he has to deal, and humours them to the top of their bent. Many a cadaverous Cockney has he dismissed from his apartment exulting and frolicsome in spirit, and convinced in his inmost soul that he has now some tangible connexion with the aristocracy, and may possibly be able to persuade some country chambermaid that he is the scion of a noble house.

But I really must break off now, as it is almost time to go down to the committee. The period of the Session of Parliament seems as yet quite uncertain; but you may be sure I shall make as good use of my time as I can. Our people were thrown, the other day, into a terrible state of consternation by the rumour of a dissolution when the money market was just at its tightest; and for my own part I thought that the Whigs would be justified had they taken the easiest way of disposing of the Gordian knot. Peel’s Banking Restriction Act, like the car of Juggernaut, was in full operation, crushing under its wheels the small trader and every man who required credit throughout the country; and as the ministry had not the courage or the ability to stop it, they might with considerable grace have taken up their garments and fled. However, things are now looking somewhat better; shares, though not buoyant, are on the rise, and the hearts of the proprietors are being cheered by the prospect of a coming dividend. Farewell, Bogle. Give my compliments to Cansh, and tell him that the Powhead’s Junction was yesterday pitched into limbo.

SIR H. NICOLAS’S HISTORY OF THE NAVY.[11]

“Her ancient British name, _Clas merdin_, ‘the sea-defended green spot,’ indicated alike her fertility and natural protection,” writes Sir Harris Nicolas, in the commencement of his Naval History of Great Britain. _Clas merdin_ may she still and long deserve to be called--“the sea-defended green spot!” Long may she fight her battles on the waste of waters--on the untilled and untenanted plains of the ocean! Long may she carry forth, and offer up, upon the seas, her great sacrifices to the god of war!

It has been remarked that war, though it assumes a most terrible aspect when to its own proper dangers are added all the perils of the sea, is yet carried on with more humanity, and with a more generous spirit of hostility, between ships upon the ocean than between armies upon land. “Two armies,” says Mr James, in the preface to his Naval History, “meet and engage: the battle ends, but the slaughter continues; the pursuing cavalry trample upon and hew to pieces the dead, the wounded, and the flying. A fort is stormed, and after a stout resistance carried: the garrison for their brave defence are put to the sword--as for their tame surrender they would have been branded (and who can say unjustly?) with cowardice. Two ships meet and engage: the instant the flag of one falls, the fire of the other ceases; and the vanquished become the guests rather than the prisoners of the victors. In another case, boarding in all its fury succeeds the cannonade: still no cutlass is raised after possession is complete. Again: a vessel, instead of flying from or quietly yielding to, boldly engages an opponent of treble her strength. Her temerity is accepted as valour; and all the mischief she may have caused--all the blood she may have spilt--far from provoking the rage, does but ensure the respect of the captors. In a fourth case, a fatal broadside sinks one ship: out go the boats of the other, and the emulation then is, not who shall destroy, but who shall save the greatest number of the enemy.”

Perhaps it may not be altogether fanciful to deduce that love of _fair play_, or rather of fair fighting, and that generosity to the vanquished which refuses to strike an adversary when _down_--traits which confessedly distinguish the national character of the English--to these more liberal customs which prevail in naval combat, the form in which war is so well known and honoured amongst them. Their naval victories, and the spirit in which they have been won, fill the imagination from the earliest years, and animate and regulate the combative propensities of the boy. Only strike your colours--know me for your better,--exclaims the young hero, and his adversary may quit the field uninjured--nay, shall be protected from all other assailants. Our national character, some may be disposed to suggest, has given the tone to our naval combats, and not these the temper which distinguishes our national character; seeing there is nothing peculiarly mollifying in the circumstances themselves of a sea-fight. Perhaps not; but still the customs which prevail in maritime warfare have a less capricious, and what will be thought a less noble, cause than the national character of the people who have chiefly distinguished themselves in it. We suspect they must be traced to the vulgar, but the constant motive of cupidity. In a naval combat one great object of victory is to capture the vessel itself--a prize in which all are interested. If it were not the custom to spare the vanquished crew--if, on the contrary, it were the custom to put them to death, no enemy would surrender his ship; he would rather set fire to it, or sink it, and sink with it in the waves. Were not the conquered secure of their lives on the surrender of their vessel, they would have no motive whatever for suffering it to become the rich prize of their adversary. On this account it is, and not because men are a whit more disposed to spare their enemies on sea than on land, that by general consent the battle is supposed to be at an end the moment the flag is struck.

As to that “fourth case,” in which a fatal broadside sinks one of the combatants, we have no difficulty in believing that a quick revulsion of feeling may naturally take place, and that hostility may suddenly change into compassion on beholding their drowning enemy within the clutch of their great common adversary, the sea. But even this change of feeling has been facilitated by the previous habit of regarding the combat as definitively closed when a ship has been fought as long as possible.

That it should ever have been considered a law of war that the captain or governor of a fort should be put to death by the conqueror for having attempted to hold an untenable place, is only one of those many instances where tyranny and overbearing force loves to clothe itself in the form of law or custom. The pretence of diminishing bloodshed is shallow enough. A general at the head of a great army is impatient at being detained before some insignificant town or fortress, and revenges himself by a sort of military execution on the bold man who has ventured to oppose him with so contemptible a force. Wallenstein, one of the proudest of men, and the least scrupulous of shedding blood, is said to have adopted, more systematically than any other general, this so-called law of war. If the same custom has never been introduced into naval combats, it is because there is not even the shallowest pretext on which it can be founded. A ship, however inferior in force to its adversary, if it have no chance of victory, may yet have a chance of escape. The governor of a castle--he and his castle are rooted to the earth: the sea-captain gives his walls and his artillery to the winds; he and his guns, by some skilful manœuvre, by some obstruction or crippling of his foe, may, after a brief encounter, get out of reach and out of sight. Many are the turns and tides of fortune in a naval engagement; all the accidents of navigation are added to those of war. There is no shadow of reason, therefore, for treating with peculiar severity the captain of a vessel who refuses to obey the summons of his more powerful adversary, but resolves to take advantage of whatever chance his skill, his bravery, and the various incidents of a sea-fight may afford him.

We hold it, therefore, to be a fortunate circumstance, favourably influencing our national character, as well as preserving us from many of the calamities that attend on war, that we as a nation have been called upon chiefly to defend ourselves by means of “our wooden walls.”

A more national subject, or one on which there was more evidently a vacant space for a new book, Sir Harris Nicolas could hardly have selected, than this of a history of our Navy from the earliest times down to the period when the Naval History of Mr James commences. Yet the expectations of a reader who sits down to the perusal of such a work should not be too highly raised. Nothing is more glorious than the naval victories which our country has achieved; but few things are more monotonous and wearisome than the description of a series of naval engagements. There is the same repeated account of masts shot away or “badly wounded,” of rigging cut to pieces, sails rent and riddled, and shattered hulls; till the ships, not the men, seem the real combatants, and it appears to be a contest between oak timbers and cannon-balls, between the power of endurance in the wooden fabric and the explosive force of gunpowder. A naval battle is always split into details; if two hostile fleets encounter, no matter of what magnitude, it is still but a multitude of single combats between ship and ship. When we have gone through the incidents of one or two of these tremendous duels, it must require in the historian singular power of narration to induce us to proceed to the final destruction and capture of the rest of the fleet. If any thing could abate the enthusiasm of an Englishman in the naval heroes of his country, it would be the obligation to read a detailed account of the victories they had achieved. Very feeble is the cheer we give for Trafalgar, after reading all we can read of Mr James’s account of the battle.

Not by any means that naval warfare is destitute of its stirring annals, and of adventures which have all the colouring of romance. But the interest of the narrative does not rise with the importance and magnitude of the occasion. It is in the single combat of detached frigates--in the perils and fortunes of the light cruiser, probably some frigate’s tender--that the incident which stirs the blood is most frequently encountered. A little gun-brig, the Speedy, mounting its fourteen four-pounders, and manned by some forty men with a few boys, is cruising in the Mediterranean, cutting up the coasting trade of the Spaniard, who thereupon despatch, from several ports, armed vessels in pursuit of her. One of these, the Gamo, (we are abridging one of Mr James’s narratives) a thirty-two-gun zebec frigate, by means of hanging or closed ports, decoys the Speedy within hail, and then drawing these suddenly up, discovers her heavy battery. Against stratagem let stratagem be first tried. The English captain hoists Danish colours, and parades upon the gangway a man dressed in the costume of a Danish officer, who roars out something which with the Spaniard passes for the Danish language. The Gamo is, however, but half satisfied, and sends her boat with an officer to make more particular inquiries. Him they softly hail before he can well get alongside, and inform--in some other language, we presume, than their Danish--that their brig has lately quitted one of the Barbary ports; reminding him that a nearer visit will subject him and his ship to a long quarantine. This he knows well enough; so, after a few mutual salutations and wavings of the hand, the vessels part company, one glad at having escaped the plague, the other equally glad, one might suppose, at having escaped capture.

But not at all. The officers and men of the English brig had been all impatience to encounter their superior antagonist, and desired nothing better than to try their fourteen four-pounders and their forty men and some boys against the thirty-two long guns of their opponent, and their crew of some three hundred men. Lord Cochrane--for he it was who commanded the Speedy--on learning this disposition of his crew, promised them, if he again fell in with the Spaniard, to give full scope to their wishes. “On the 6th of May, at daylight, the Speedy being close off Barcelona, descried a sail, standing towards her. Chase was given, but owing to light winds it was nearly nine o’clock before the two vessels got within mutual gun-shot. The Speedy soon discovered that the armed zebec, approaching her was her old friend the Gamo. The former, then close under the latter’s lee, tacked and commenced action. After a forty-five minutes’ cannonade, in which the Speedy, with all her manœuvring, could not evade the heavy broadsides of the Gamo, and had sustained in consequence a loss of three seamen killed and five wounded, Lord Cochrane determined to board. With this intent the Speedy ran close along side the Gamo; and the crew of the British vessel, headed by their gallant commander, made a simultaneous rush from every part of her upon the deck of the Spaniard. For about ten minutes the combat was desperate, especially in the waist; but the impetuosity of the assault was irresistible; the Spanish colours were struck, and the Gamo became the prize of the Speedy!”

There is more to interest the imagination in a detail of this comparatively insignificant combat than in the manœuvres and engagement of a whole fleet. They are the episodes in the great war that supply the naval historian with his most stirring narratives. Even the frigate’s tender has a more romantic history than the frigate herself, combining in her solitary cruise all the charms of adventure with all the perils and enterprise of war. Few, we suspect, go steadily through Mr James’s history of the battle of the Nile; and there are few, perhaps, who do not retrace their steps to read a second time his account, succinct and unadorned as it is, of the tender of the Abergavenny. We will indulge our own readers with a portion of it.

“Amongst the many weary hours,” writes Mr James, “to which a naval life is subject, none surely can equal those passed on board a stationary flag-ship; especially in a port where there is a constant egress and regress of cruisers; some sailing forth to seek prizes, others returning with prizes already in their possession. During the whole of 1799 and a great part of 1800 the fifty-four-gun ship Abergavenny, as she lay moored in Port Royal harbour, Jamaica, daily exposed her officers and men to these Tantalusian torments. At length it was suggested that a small tender sent off the east end of the island might acquire for the parent ship some share of the honours that were reaping around her. A thirty-eight-gun frigate’s launch having been obtained, and armed with a swivel in the bow, the next difficulty was to find an officer who, to a willingness, would add the other requisites for so bold and hazardous an enterprise. It was not every man who would like to be cramped up night and day in an open boat, exposed to all kinds of weather, as well as to capture from some of the many pickaroons that infested the coast. An acting lieutenant of the Abergavenny, one on whom nature had conferred an ardent mind,--habit, an indifference about personal comfort,--and eighteen or twenty years of active service an experience in all the duties of his profession, consented to take charge of the cruiser-boat. Mr Michael Fitton soon gave proofs of his fitness for the task he had undertaken; and the crew of the Abergavenny could now and then greet a prize of their own among the many that dropped anchor near them.

“Late in December 1800, Lieutenant Fitton transferred himself and his crew to one of their prizes, a Spanish privateer, a felucca of about fifty tons, mounting one long twelve-pounder on a traversing carriage, with a screw to raise it from the hold when wanted for use. Having embarked on board of her, and stowed as well as he could his crew of forty-four men and officers, Lieutenant Fitton, early in January, sailed out to cruise on the Spanish main.”

After destroying many of the small craft of the enemy which had been committing vexatious depredations on the West Indian commerce, and having suffered much himself from a succession of storms, and refitted his now crazy vessel to the best of his power, “he bore up to Carthagena, intending to coast down the main to Portobello, in the hopes of being able to capture or cut out some vessel that might answer to carry his crew and himself to Jamaica. On the 23d of January, early in the morning, as the tender was hauling round Cape Rosario, a schooner was discovered, to which she immediately gave chase. The schooner, which was the Spanish guarda-costa Santa Maria of six (pierced for ten) long six-pounders, ten swivels, and sixty men, commanded by Don José Corei, a few hours only from Carthagena, bore down to reconnoitre the lugger. As the latter had her gun below, and as many of her men hid from view as the want of a barricade would permit, the former readily approached within gun-shot. Lieutenant Fitton could not resist the opportunity of showing how well his men could handle their twelve-pounder. It was soon raised up, and discharged repeatedly in quick succession, with evident effect.

“After about thirty minutes’ firing with cannon and musketry, the Santa Maria sheered off, and directed her course for the Isle of Varus, evidently with intent to run on shore. Her persevering opponent, with his one gun, stuck close to her, plying her well with shot great and small; but the tender was unable to grapple with the schooner because the latter had the wind. At length the Santa Maria grounded, and Lieutenant Fitton, aware that if the schooner landed her men in the bushes, no attempt of his people would avail, eased off the lugger’s sheets, and ran her also on shore about ten yards from the Santa Maria. The musketry of the latter, as she heeled over, greatly annoyed the tender’s men, who had no barricades to shelter them; but Lieutenant Fitton leaped overboard, and _with his sword in his mouth_, followed by the greater part of his crew, _similarly armed_, swam to, boarded, and, after a stout resistance, carried the schooner.

“Four or five that were on the sick list, heedless alike of the doctor’s injunctions and their own feeble state, sprang over the side with their comrades; and one or two of them nearly perished in consequence of their inability to struggle with the waves.

“The Spanish inhabitants having collected along, and opened a fire from, the shore, and the prize having grounded too fast to be got off, Lieutenant Fitton took out of her what was most wanted for his own vessel, landed the prisoners (for whom, being without a ’tween-decks, he had no room) and even the dead, and then set the vessel on fire. Having effectually destroyed this Spanish guarda-costa, the Abergavenny’s tender sailed back to Jamaica, and on the fourth day reached Black River with scarcely a gallon of water on board.”--(_James’s Naval History_, vol. ii. p. 563.) These sea-tigers, swimming with their swords in their mouths--climbing in this fashion the steep sides of a defended vessel--assailing, taking it--then landing safely the conquered and their very dead, before they set fire to it--here is war in all its pristine ferocity, while the fight is forward, and in its most humanised and generous mood when the victory is won.

How the present writer, Sir Harris Nicolas, will acquit himself in the description of naval engagements, we can hardly judge, as the first volume only of his work is yet published, and this does not bring him into the era of broadsides, and “tremendous cannonading.” This volume addresses itself rather to the naval antiquarian than to the professional seaman, or the enthusiast in naval exploits. It contains much interesting material; and it is rather our object to give some account of its contents, than to pass an elaborate criticism, which would be somewhat premature, upon a work of which we have merely the commencement before us.

In a manly, distinct, and well written preface, the author gives a statement of the sources of his details, and of the course which he has prescribed for himself in the treatment of his subject. Our old chroniclers have hitherto, it seems, been the sole source from which historians have derived their accounts of the naval transactions of the earlier reigns of the Kings of England. Sir Harris Nicolas has illustrated, corrected, and enlarged the scanty and often precarious information which these old chroniclers afford, by a variety of details extracted from the public records. These details cannot be supposed to be always of an interesting or popular character, but their utility will not be questioned, and the industry which is here displayed in collecting them will meet with its due acknowledgment and undisputed praise.

In the treatment of his subject our author has made two great divisions.

“I. The civil history--containing the formation, economy, and government of the navy.

“II. The military history.

“To the first division belong the construction, the size, rig, appearance, tonnage, armament, stores, equipment, and expense of the various classes of vessels; the manner in which ships and seamen were obtained by the crown, and the number and description of the officers and crews, their pay, provisions, prize-money, and discipline. Under this division, every thing else relating to the navy has been noticed; namely the Cinque Ports, dock-yards, lighthouses, pilotage, maritime laws, the law of wreck, taxes and other contributions for naval subsidies, the Court of Admiralty, the right of England to the sovereignty of the seas, the invention of the compass and of the modern rudder, the national flag, &c. To these statements are added biographical notices of the admirals, and other persons, who have been eminently distinguished for their talents or prowess at sea.

“The second division treats only of active naval proceedings; that is to say, the employment of ships in piratical acts, military expeditions, remarkable voyages, and, of course, all sea-fights.”

Here, it will be observed, is a wide range of subjects on which information is promised, and so far as the work has advanced, the performance by no means belies the promise: on almost all these topics something is added, of more or less importance, to the stock of our knowledge. The classification, however, here adopted has this great inconvenience, it obliges the author to travel twice over the same epoch, first for his civil, and then for his military history of the navy. As the same public events are necessarily alluded to in both departments, an air of repetition is thrown over the book, and the reader finds himself on two or three occasions brought back to the commencement of some king’s reign,--an Alfred or a Richard Cœur-de-Lion,--whom he thought he had left long ago behind him. This repetition Sir Harris Nicolas is not unconscious of, but thinks it “inevitable;” we cannot help thinking that a little more pains bestowed on the arrangement of his materials might have obviated this disagreeable effect, produced by the retracing of his steps. With a little more labour of the _artistic_ kind, with a little more attention to the subordinate toils of composition, he might, we imagine, have so kept his materials together as to have come down the stream of time in one voyage, with both civil and military equipage on board. This ascending again and descending a second time, with a cargo which to all appearance might have been stowed away on the first voyage, gives an unusual tediousness to our mode of progression. This want of a skilful arrangement, and dexterous blending of his materials, together with the dryness of some of the details--which many readers will think should have been relegated to an appendix--will operate against the popularity of the work. But a popular work it was not the ambition of Sir Harris Nicolas to produce: he has compiled one which will be highly useful to the laborious student of history. We must add, too, lest we should be creating a false impression, that the idlest of readers, allowing for a little _skipping_, may peruse it with interest. And in point of style, the work has one invariable charm: it is free from all affectation--simple, manly, straightforward--a charm which, next to that of the highest order of eloquence, is the greatest and the rarest.

Our history of the navy begins, as may be supposed, from the invasion of Cæsar, and with the scanty notices he has recorded of the maritime skill of these barbarian islanders whom he both discovered and conquered. From these notices it would appear that our British ancestors, at the time of the invasion of Cæsar, were more advanced in naval architecture than were the Anglo-Saxons, who, at the decline of the Roman Empire, took possession of the island. But the British navy, whatever it might have been, seemed to pass away with the Roman name and the Roman protection, and our history may be said to have its true commencement with the shipping of our northern invaders and settlers. There is no line of _filiation_ between the Saxon and the British navy; it is the northmen we must regard as our direct naval ancestors. We open the work of Sir Harris at the description he gives of the Anglo-Saxon shipping.

“However much the vessels Anglo-Saxons may have differed from each other in length, it may be safely concluded that though described as ‘ships’ or ‘long ships,’ these vessels were, in fact, only large, deep, open, undecked boats, and that none of them exceeded fifty tons in burden. Their prows and sterns were considerably elevated; and one or both were usually ornamented with effigies of men, birds, lions, or other animals, which were sometimes gilded. To a single mast, supported by a few shrouds, or rather stays, a large square sail was suspended, which could only have been useful when going large, or before the wind; hence their main dependence in contrary winds and calms was upon their oars. The modern rudder being unknown for many centuries after this period, they were steered by paddles fixed to the quarter. While the steersman, who was also the captain or master, and perhaps, too, the pilot, held the paddle in one hand, he kept the sheet of the sail in the other, thus guiding and providing for the safety of his vessel at the same time. It is doubtful if for any purpose these vessels ever carried more than fifty or sixty men; and when not employed they were drawn up on the sea-shore....

“A very interesting account is given by northern historians of the Danish fleets which so frequently harassed this country. The crews obeyed a single chief, whom they styled their ‘King,’ and who also commanded them on land; who was always the bravest of the brave, who never slept beneath a raftered roof, nor ever drained the bowl by a sheltered hearth--a glowing picture of their wild and predatory habits. To these qualities a celebrated sea-chieftain, called Olaf, added extraordinary eloquence, and great personal strength and agility. He was second to none as a swimmer, could walk upon the oars of his vessel while they were in motion, could throw three darts into the air at the same time, and catch two of them alternately, and could moreover hurl a lance with each hand; but he was impetuous, cruel, and revengeful, and ‘prompt to dare and do.’”--(P. 9.)

To enter more minutely into the naval antiquities of this period would appear to be a hopeless enterprise. There were a class of vessels, we are told, called “ceols,” probably longer, narrower, and of less burden than others, but which Sir Harris will not venture to describe more accurately. “In a later document,” he adds, “they are classed with ‘hulks,’ but there is as much uncertainty about an ancient ‘hulk,’ as about an ancient ‘ceol.’”

Alfred, our first admiral, as he has been justly called, was also the best shipwright of his day; he not only led the way to naval victory, but he also built ships of an improved structure, and of a greater magnitude than had over been seen before. “They were full-nigh twice as long as the others;” says the chronicler, “some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were shapen neither like the Frisian nor the Danish; but so as it seemed to him that they would be most efficient.” Evidently a man of original genius, this Alfred. Taking himself the command of his “long ships,” he conquered the Danes in several battles, and in particular repelled a certain invasion of one Hasting who had made a camp at _Boulogne_! where he had collected his infantry and cavalry and a fleet of two hundred and fifty sail.

In the reign of Edgar, if our ships were still small, they were numerous enough. If we are to believe the monkish historians of this reign, his fleet consisted of three thousand six hundred sail, “all very stout ones;” some say four thousand, and others four thousand eight hundred. But these monkish historians were not only tempted, in gratitude to their munificent patron, to extol his power to their utmost; they were probably quite ignorant of nautical affairs. They were not likely to be much better informed on the shipping of their own country than they were of the geography of the island on which they were living; and of the singular notions on this subject sometimes entertained by these recluses, we have authentic testimony. _Here_ their ignorance can be convicted. Edgar’s fleet, “all stout ones,” as they were, have passed away, and none can tell what their number may have been; but the hills, and seas, and rivers, which they misdescribed in their maps, still remain to speak for themselves. “In some of these maps of the twelfth century,” (discovered in the monasteries at the time of their suppression by Henry VIII.,) “Scotland is represented as an island separated from England by an arm of the sea. Ireland is also divided in two by the river Boyne, which is represented as a canal connecting the Irish Channel with the Atlantic. The towns are drawn in them of a disproportionate size, and the _abbeys_, with the walls, gates, and belfreys, occupy so great a space as to leave little room for the rivers,” &c.[12]

If the Anglo-Saxons had been capable of manning such a fleet as is here described, they must have been sad poltroons to have succumbed as they did to the Danes under Swain and Canute--the naval heroes who next appear in review before us. This Canute, after all his victories, is remembered chiefly, and remembered by every man, woman, and child amongst us, by the singular dialogue he is said once to have held with the sea. We must quote the story again for the sake of the commentary which is here attached to it. We are glad to find, by the way, that the story has escaped--it is a very narrow escape--from the clutches of historical criticism.

“The anecdote by which the name of Canute is best known to posterity, though unnoticed by the Saxon annalist, stands on the authority of an early historian. ‘Besides many splendid warlike deeds,’ says Henry of Huntingdon, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, ‘Canute did three elegant and celebrated things, of which the following was the most memorable: Being at Southampton in all regal pomp, he placed himself on a seat on the sea-shore, and addressing the flowing tide with an air of authority, said, ‘Thou, O sea! art subject to me, as is the land on which I sit; nor is there any one therein who dare resist my commands; now I enjoin thee neither to approach my land, nor presume to wet the feet or garments of thy sovereign.’ But the tide rising, as usual, soon wetted his feet and legs, and the king, retreating, exclaimed,--‘Let every inhabitant of the world know that the power of kings is a vain and trifling thing, nor is there any one worthy of the name of king but He at whose nod the heavens, and earth, and sea, and all that in them are, obey his eternal laws.’ From this time Canute never wore the crown, but placing it upon the head of an image of the crucifixion, set a great example of humility to future kings.

“The world,” adds our author, “has always seen, in this beautiful anecdote, a striking lesson to courtly sycophants; but it was reserved for two profound lawyers to discover in it an important political fact, they having gravely insisted that the king thereby most expressly asserted the sea to be a part of his dominions.”--(P. 18.)

How far the two profound lawyers in their argument for England’s dominion of the seas, could strengthen their case from the title which Canute the Dane chose to bear, we stop not to inquire; but it gives its full meaning and point to the popular anecdote to understand of Canute, that he claimed a dominion over the sea as well as the land, and that his title proclaimed him to be lord of the ocean. Otherwise, his refusal to wear the crown after the contumacious rising of the waters, and his suspending it on the holy image, would be devoid of any peculiar significance. It was as monarch of the sea that he declared himself dethroned by the rebellious waves.

However numerous the fleets which our Anglo-Saxon kings were capable of occasionally collecting--as, for instance, Edward the Confessor when threatened by an invasion from Norway--it is evident but little progress had been made towards establishing a permanent naval force. For when William the Conqueror invaded England, although his great preparations were matter of notoriety, and he had taken no pains whatever to conceal his design, the attempt was not made to encounter him at sea; all was left to the issue of the battle upon land. And William himself had so little appreciation of any naval power attached to the possession of the island, that he burned his ships as soon as he had landed, merely to give his men an additional motive for their courage.

Sir Harris Nicolas has given us here an engraving of the vessel in which William himself set sail from Normandy--a copy from the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and on several other occasions we are presented with etchings taken from some antique representation. These are well to have, and curious to look at; but it is very difficult to extract any information whatever from such designs, it being impossible to know what is to be attributed to the rude state of the pictorial art, and what to the rude condition of naval architecture. It would be almost as safe to take our notion of a Chinese _junk_ from the ships we see sailing in the sky upon their porcelain ware, as to derive our ideas of William the Conqueror’s ship from the tapestry of the Empress Matilda and her ladies. Though needle-work was in such repute and perfection, that we are told by Miss Strickland, quoting Malmsbury, how “the proficiency of the four sisters of King Athelstane in weaving and embroidery procured these royal spinsters the addresses of the greatest princes of Europe,” we must still take leave to think that the fidelity of representation was often somewhat sacrificed to the exigencies of the worsted work. In this engraving, the unhappy pilot or steersman, while he is working his paddle-rudder with one hand, holds the sail in the other, holds it bodily by the sheet in his extended hand, without the assistance of any belaying pin, or even of a rope. Are we to infer from this, that the simple expedient of turning a rope round a pin to hold the sail the firmer and the easier, with capability of slackening it at pleasure, was unknown in these times, or that the fair artist had but slender knowledge of the management of sailing craft? We are informed that the original exhibits a tri-coloured sail of three broad stripes, brown, yellow, and red: who can tell us whether these gay colours had any other origin than the taste of the needle-woman, and the claims of the worsted work? Sir Harris Nicolas has gravely observed that there are more shields hung round the outside of the vessel than there are men within it--which might have been anticipated without counting them, as it was much easier to work a round shield than even such figures as are here intended to pass for men. We must plainly be content with as many men as she of the needle can manage.

The accession of William the Conqueror, owing to the contempt which the Norman had of commerce, and the little care he took to protect or honour the merchant--(little would he have dreamed of ennobling, as did the Saxon, the man who had made three voyages!)--must have retarded the progress of England as a naval power. Land and castles, forests and hunting-fields, were all the Normans thought of. But though chivalry was no friend to commerce or to navigation, the crusading spirit which seized upon all the knights of Europe, gave fresh employment and a new impetus to our marine. It is thus that the reign of Richard Cœur-de-Lion came to be an important epoch in our naval history. His expedition to the Holy Land incurred the necessity of building many and large vessels; voyages were to be performed to the Mediterranean; and the British navy made its first conquest in distant seas--the isle of Cyprus.

“The English navy at this time seems to have consisted chiefly, if not entirely, of large galleys, afterwards called galliasses and galiones, small and light galleys for war, and of _busses_, which were large ships of burden, with a bluff bow and bulging sides, chiefly used for the conveyance of troops, stores, provisions, and merchandise. No drawing or description of English ships before the reign of King Edward II. justifies the idea that they had ever more than one mast; but some of the busses in the fleet which accompanied King Richard I. from Messina to Cyprus, are said to have had ‘a three-fold expansion of sails’--an ambiguous expression, which may mean that they had three sails on one mast, or that the sails were affixed to two or more masts.”--(P. 75.)

These small craft, so gaily decorated, sailing and rowing together in even lines, and in such close order that each ship was within hail of its neighbour, with the armour of the knights, their spears and their pennons, seen glittering within them, and their shields ranged on the outside, must have presented a very picturesque appearance, especially when spread out in the calm blue waters of the Mediterranean. “As soon as the people heard of the arrival of Richard at the port of Messina,” says a contemporary writer, Vinesauf, “they rushed in crowds to the shore to behold the glorious King of England, and at a distance saw the sea covered with innumerable galleys; and the sounds of trumpets from afar, with the sharper and shriller blasts of clarions, resounded in their ears; and they beheld the galleys rowing in order nearer to the land, adorned and furnished with all manner of arms, countless pennons floating in the winds, ensigns at the ends of the lances, the beaks of the galleys distinguished by various paintings, and glittering shields suspended to the prows. The sea appeared to boil with the multitude of the rowers; the clangour of their trumpets was deafening; the greatest joy was testified at the arrival of the various multitudes: when thus our magnificent King, attended by crowds of those who navigated the galleys--as if to see what was unknown to him, or to be beheld by those to whom he was unknown,--stood on a prow more ornamented and higher than the others; and landing, displayed himself elegantly adorned, to all who pressed to the shore to see him.”

Richard was as much distinguished for bravery on sea as on land, and during his expedition to Palestine he zealously performed the duties of admiral of his fleet. He sailed in the rear--which in him must have been a remarkable self-denial--for the better protection of the convoy. During a tempest which overtook them and threatened their destruction, he remained cool and collected, encouraging all around him by his speeches and his example. And when the gale abated, the King’s ship, which was indicated during the night by a light at the mast-head, brought to, that the scattered vessels might gather round her. “In truth,” says Vinesauf, “the King watched and looked after his fleet as a hen doth after her chickens.”

These, his “chickens,” however, he was by no means disposed to spare, if any thing like battle was going forward. Sailing along the coast of Syria, an immense ship was discovered a-head. It proved a Turk. It was the largest vessel the English had ever seen, and excited great wonder and admiration. Some chroniclers, call her a “dromon,” others a “buss,” while one of them exclaims, “A marvellous ship! a ship than which, except Noah’s ship, none greater was ever read of!--the queen of ships!” It had three masts, and was reported, though it is incredible, to have had on board fifteen hundred men. It was on its way to Acre to assist in the defence of that place, and was laden with bows, arrows, and other weapons, an abundance of Greek fire in jars, and “two hundred most deadly serpents prepared for the destruction of Christians.”

Lingard has, in his severe classical manner, described the contest of Richard’s fleet with this gigantic Turk. But the account which our present author gives of it, being in great part immediately translated from the original of Vinesauf, is so highly graphic, and withal so characteristic of our _Cœur-de-Lion_, that we must find room for a portion of it.

“The moment the galley (which had been sent to reconnoitre the strange vessel) came alongside of the ship, the Saracens threw arrows and Greek fire into her. Richard instantly ordered the enemy to be attacked, saying, ‘Follow, and take them! for if they escape ye lose my love forever; and if ye capture them, all their goods shall be yours.’ Himself foremost in the fight, and summoning his galleys to the royal vessel, he animated all around by his characteristic valour. Showers of missiles flew on both sides, and the Turkish ship slackened her way; but though the galleys rowed round and about her in all directions, her great height and the number of her crew, whose arrows fell with deadly effect from her decks, rendered it extremely difficult to board her. The English consequently became discouraged, if not dismayed; when the King cried out, ‘Will ye now suffer that ship to get off untouched and uninjured? Oh, shame! after so many triumphs do ye now give way to sloth and fear? Know that if this ship escape, every one of ye shall be hung upon the cross or put to extreme torture.’ The galley-men making, says the candid historian, a virtue of necessity, jumped overboard, and diving under the enemy’s vessel, fastened ropes to her rudder, steering her as they pleased; and then, catching hold of ropes and climbing up her sides, they succeeded at last in boarding her. A desperate conflict ensued; the Turks were forced forward, but being joined by those from below, they rallied and drove their assailants back to their galleys. Only one resource remained, and it instantly presented itself to the King’s mind. He ordered his galleys to pierce the sides of the enemy with the iron spurs affixed to their prows. These directions were executed with great skill and success. The galleys, receding a little, formed a line; and then, giving full effect to their oars, struck the Turkish ship with such violence that her sides were stove in many places, and the sea immediately rushing in, she soon foundered.”--(P. 120.)

Of the Greek fire, which is here incidentally mentioned, Sir Harris Nicolas gives us a terrible description. He thinks it an instrument of war more dreadful than gunpowder, or than any other discovery of modern chemistry. “It was propelled in a fluid state through brazen tubes from the prows of vessels and fortifications with as much precision as water is now thrown from a fire-engine. The moment it was exposed to the air it ignited, and became a continuous stream of fire, bringing with it excruciating torture and inevitable destruction. Unlike any other combustible, water increased its properties, and it could only be extinguished by vinegar, or stifled with sand;[13] while to its other horrors were added a thick smoke, loud noise, and disgusting stench.”

A stream of fire playing upon a vessel presents a terrible enough picture to the imagination; but we doubt very much if this Greek fire would have ever been replaced by gunpowder, if there had not been very good reasons for the preference. To have your instruments of destruction under complete control is one of the first requisites of war; and it is probable that this continuous stream of fire, which might be avoided by a slight movement to the right or left, was often utterly wasted, and that its preparation and employment was almost as perilous to those who used it, as to those against whom it was directed. The sagacity of man is rarely at fault in the work of destruction, and we have perfect confidence that he would in this matter make choice of the most effective means at his disposal.

If the impression on the imagination, or the terror excited in a spectator, were any test of the efficacy of these terrible contrivances, many of the earliest and rudest would claim our preference. We might look with respect upon that expedient which an old traveller, Carpini, attributes to the fabulous hero and monarch, Prester John. “This Prester John (whom he places somewhere in India) caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. At the first onset of the battle these mounted figures were set forward to the charge; the men who rode behind them set fire to the combustibles, and then blew strongly with the bellows. Immediately the Mongul men and horses were burned with wildfire, and the air was darkened with smoke. Then the Indians fell upon the Monguls, who were thrown into confusion by this new mode of warfare, and routed them with great slaughter.”--(_Maritime and Inland Discovery_, vol. i. p. 258.)

These fiery cavaliers must have been fearful enough to look upon, darting flames from eyes and mouth like so many Apollyons; but it must also have been a fearful business to act as faithful squire to one of these combustible knights; and, after all, a single piece of artillery, one long black cylinder of iron with its sooty charge, were worth a whole regiment of them.

It is worthy of remark how few of these schemes for the wholesale destruction of an enemy, or his fleet, have ever succeeded. They have raised great expectations on one side, and great alarm on the other, but have generally ended in some very paltry result. Even in modern times, when the use of explosive materials is so much better understood, fire-ships, and the like inventions, have proved of little efficacy. The means of destruction are great, but they are not sufficiently under the control of those who would use them. In the late war, in order to destroy the flotilla at Boulogne, we despatched four fire-ships in succession--“catamarans” as they were called, horribly stuffed with gunpowder and all sorts of inflammable matter. They exploded one after the other with a terrible noise, but effected nothing. Those who have read Cooper’s History of the American Navy, will remember the disastrous issue of that “floating mine” which was to destroy the fleet and arsenal at Tripoli. This “infernal,” as it was called, was filled with a hundred barrels of gunpowder, a hundred and fifty shells, a large quantity of shot, great and small, and all manner of fragments of iron. In the dead of night it was to sail unperceived into the harbour of Tripoli, and the officer and men who had the charge of it, after having lit the fuse, were to return in their boats to the frigate Nautilus from which they had proceeded. The men on board the frigate, watched the “Infernal” till its dim sail was lost in a pitch-dark night. Then came a fierce and sudden blaze--a torrent of fire like the great eruption of Vesuvius, and a concussion that made the vessel tremble from its keel to its topmost spar. Tenfold night succeeded--and silence; and every eye was vigilant to discover the returning boats. Some leaned over the sides of the vessel, holding lights to guide them; others placed their ears near the water, to detect the sound of their oars. They never reappeared; not a single man of them returned. By some unexplained accident, all had perished in the explosion; and the morning dawned, and the enemy was untouched and uninjured.

Amongst the many subjects which Sir Harris Nicolas has occasion to treat in the course of his naval history, none is more curious than that of the _law of wreck_. A rude and barbarous people concluded that what was thrown by the tempest on their coast was a sort of god-send, and the property of the first finder. The king, as general finder of all lost treasure, was not long before he put in his paramount claim; and the common law sanctioned it, proceeding, we are told, upon the principle, that by the loss of the ship all property had passed away from the original owner. With equal gravity it might have sanctioned any species of theft or spoliation, by promulgating the principle, that when a man can no longer keep possession of his goods, “all property has passed away from the original owner.” This was indeed “adding sorrow to sorrow, and injustice to misfortune. Henry I. has the merit of having first mitigated this cruelty of the common law. “He ordained that if any person escaped alive from the ship, it should not be considered a wreck:” on the principle, we suppose--for the law loves what it calls a principle, and if it partakes of the nature of a fiction loves it the more--that the person who escaped might be considered as an agent for the merchant or proprietor, retaining in his name a possession of the goods and the ship. But the next step in this humane course of legislation was still more singular. A statute of Edward I. enacts--“Concerning wrecks of the sea, it is agreed that when a man, _a dog_, _or a cat_, escape quick out of the ship, that neither such ship or barge, nor any thing within them, shall be adjudged wreck.” Here the dog or the cat, which was so fortunate as to escape, must, in the eye of the law, we presume, have been clothed with the character of an agent, and looked upon, for the time being, as the servant of the hapless merchant. Such, we suppose, must have been the legal reasoning; but perhaps some prejudice of an ignorant people, which we cannot now follow or define, was in reality taken advantage of by the legislation of those days; and a rude selfishness, which would have been deaf to reason or humanity, was assailed by the aid of some superstition as rude as itself. However, after such a law, we hope no ship set sail without having a supply of dogs and cats on board.

The extent to which piratical habits, and indeed all manner of robbing and violence, prevailed in these early periods, is very well known; but the reader will find some curious and startling instances in the work before us. Between foreign countries there was generally a species of private war being carried on; for it was an understood custom, that when a native of one country was injured by a native of another, and could get no redress, he was justified in obtaining what compensation or revenge he could from the fellow-countrymen of the person who had injured him. In such cases, his government granted him letters of marque--“license to _mark_, retain, and appropriate,” the men and goods of such foreign nation. Even on land the creditor of one foreigner, who could not get paid, might attach the goods of any other foreigner--of the same nation, we presume. It had to be enacted by Statute i. West. c. 23., that “no stranger who is of this realm shall be distrained in any town or market for a debt wherein he is neither principal nor security.”[14] Sir Harris Nicolas mentions a curious case at p. 235, which shows how rooted this idea must have been in the general mind, that the goods of all foreigners were liable for the debt of any one of them. One Richard de Canne had captured a ship in Brittany, and Helen, widow of Richard Clark, had lost a ship in Brittany; whereupon widow Helen laid claim to Richard’s ship, and got possession of it. But the king reversed the sentence of the justiciary of Ireland--“forasmuch that it does not appear to us to be just that the said Richard should lose the aforesaid ship, which he acquired in a land at war with us, on account of a ship which the said Helen afterwards lost in the same hostile land.”

The present volume of Sir H. Nicolas’s history carries us no further than the reign of Edward II. We shall watch its future progress with interest. Hitherto we have to familiarise the imagination with ships or boats of very small dimensions, and their very limited exploits. And it is singular what an effort of the imagination it requires here to reduce sufficiently the scale of things. How complete is the contrast of that Saxon ship, with its one sail held by the hand, its few oars, its paddle at the quarter, and its sea-captain showing his dexterity in walking upon the oars while in motion, and throwing, like a conjuror, three darts in the air at once--with the stately man-of-war, and its calm and intelligent commander! Nothing can exhibit more strikingly than this contrast the gradual improvements which age after age may make and transmit. Mast has been added to mast, and sail to sail, and rope to rope; and in the hull, tier after tier of guns have been raised, till the ship has become the hugest and most complicated piece of mechanism the world has ever seen.

Who has not in his time gazed with wonder on those floating castles which the citizen of England from time to time sees hovering on his coast, the watchful and moving fortresses of his island home? You are a dweller in cities--you are lying, in some holiday and summer month, listlessly upon the beach--the great ocean is spread before you, illimitable--and it almost terrifies the imagination to think of men passing _out there_, in that wild waste of waters, given up to the two unthinking and gigantic powers of wind and wave, that have no more respect for man or his structures than if they were still in the liberty of chaos. That men _do_ go forth to the uttermost ends of the world seems a thing almost fabulous--incredible. You have eaten of the lotus leaf: why _should_ they go?--go from the firm and sheltering earth, to lay their lives upon the winds? But now comes in sight a sail; the extended wing floats unfluttered; the tall tapering masts are visible; it moves imperturbable, like a god upon the waters. And look at that tongue of flame drawn back with a serpent’s swiftness, and that wreath of whitest vapour that steals out from its side so soft and graceful!--is that the deadly shot that levels stoutest walls, and puts to silence the bastion and the fort? So beautiful--so strong!--it walks the waves, how fearless!--and nothing on the sea can harm it, and nothing on the shore resist.

Where now are the great waters that swallowed up all enterprise, and smote the heart with despair? The sea is ours!--we live, we revel, we fight, we conquer on it.

The ship casts anchor, and you rush with many others upon the shore, and you enter a skiff, which will take you off to a nearer survey of this great visitor. You approach, and mount the sides of this floating arsenal. Is this the thing you saw moving light as a bird upon the horizon? You look down as from a house-top. That yacht which bore its pennon so gallantly in the air, and which is now moored under the stern, can just lay its fluttering flag on the solid deck you are walking. Look down--you are giddy with the height; look up--and you are again level with the waters; for there rises the enormous mast, piercing the sky, laying its steady spars against the blue ether, bearing its acre-broad canvass, that makes the vast hull with all its iron stores, bound over the surface of the wave. O _Clas merdin_!--thou “sea-defended green spot,”--such, and so great, is the sacrifice thou art called to offer up upon the deep to the god of war! May it avail to keep thy homes for ever untouched by the invader!

EVENINGS AT SEA.

It has often been a matter of surprise that we should owe so little of the contents of our treasury of literature to officers of the navy while actually employed at sea. The abundant leisure at their disposal, the endless variety of places visited, of events witnessed, of perils shared in, which their noble and important profession forces upon them, would appear to give every facility to those who are gifted with descriptive or imaginative powers, and to be almost capable of creating such where they do not originally exist.

But any one who has himself been for a long time on the desert of waters can no longer regard this with astonishment; he will have felt the difficulty of bringing the mind into active and continued exertion in pursuits unconnected with passing events. Though the physical functions may be stimulated into unusual vigour by the bracing air and healthful life on board, the power and energy of the mind are far from being proportionately increased.

Having just landed from a long and tedious voyage, I feel in my own experience a reproachful confirmation of this accusation of idleness against a life at sea. All the admirable resolutions of study and self-improvement, formed with the firmness of a Brutus on the shore, melted away with the weakness of an Antony when I trusted myself to the faithless bosom of the deep.

But there is no place where the stores of memory are more brought into use in the way of narration, than on board ship; perhaps it is that those who are at all inclined to garrulity find patient and idle listeners more readily than under any other circumstances.

My fellow-passengers, though not very numerous, were men of sundry countries, characters, and pursuits, and their manners and conversation made up in their odd and discordant variety, for what they lacked in refinement and intellectuality. It appears to me always the wisest plan for a traveller to join in the society of his fellow-passengers, whoever or whatever they may be. It is our own fault if we ever meet any one so dull as to be incapable of affording us some amusement, or so ignorant that we can derive no instruction from their conversation. The fact is, that we are sure to be thrown into communication with many men who have travelled much, who have seen many countries, and tried many pursuits, of which we have known but little, and of which it must be always desirable that our information should be increased.

During our voyage, we usually assembled, in the fine calm evenings of a southern latitude, on the poop of the vessel, guarded from the evils of the dewy air by a tent-like tarpaulin attached to the mizen-mast overhead, with the friendly glass and the pipe or cigar to aid our social chat. After a little time our conversation often lapsed into narrative. As the thread of our discourse twisted through the various textures of our different minds, a subject would at times strike on the strong point or favourite idea of some one of our party, and with a half passive, half interested attention, we would hear him to the end.

A few of these men had lived active and adventurous lives, and witnessed stirring scenes; indeed, there was hardly one of them who had not some experience of interest, wherewith to contribute to the armoury with which we waged war against time, that enemy whose strength becomes almost a tyranny on board ship. Frequently, on the following morning, I used to endeavour to record the most striking of these narratives in the best manner my memory permitted--but I fear in a way which will prove but a too strong evidence of the soundness of the assertion I commenced by putting forth, as to the difficulty of any literary effort while at sea. The first narrative which I find noted in my manuscript was related to us by the agent of an English mining company in Peru: he was then on his way to London on business connected with his calling, and seemed a man of quick intelligence, information, and kindly feelings. His description of the golden and beautiful region whence he had come, and the adventurous and prosperous labours of our own countrymen in that distant land, were highly interesting; but a simple story of the noble conduct of one of his miners--a rude and illiterate Cornish man--caught my attention far more than any thing else, and added another strong link to the chain of sympathy which binds my heart in love and kindly feeling to my fellow beings. I give you his tale as I best can.

EVENING FIRST.--THE MINER.

In the spring of the year 1838 a vessel sailed from Falmouth, with thirty-two Cornish miners and artisans on board, engaged by different companies for Peru. They were principally young and adventurous men, who were readily induced to change the certainty of hard work and indifferent remuneration at home for the chances of a strange land. Some of them took their families to share their fate, others left them behind, to await their return if unsuccessful, or to follow the next year if fortune should befriend the emigrants.

Among these latter was John Short, a man of about four-and-thirty years of age; his brother-in-law, William Wakeham, five or three years his junior, accompanied him: both were skilled and experienced miners. Mary Short, the, wife of the former, remained with old Wakeham, her father, who was a small farmer, living in the neighbourhood of Penzance. She had been married some twelve years before this separation from her husband, and had two surviving children, both of them young and helpless.

Her father had been much angered at her marriage; as in those days her young husband bore no very steady character, and was better known in the tap-room of the alehouse than at the labour-muster of the Captain of the mine. Indeed, the father had threatened to turn her out of doors for persisting in keeping acquaintance with the idle miner; and her brother, William Wakeham, a very robust and quick-tempered young man, had beaten her lover severely in a drunken quarrel, originating in the same cause. The injuries were so severe that John Short was carried to an hospital, where his kind-hearted but violent assailant paid him the most careful and anxious attention. A friendship was there formed which resulted in William Wakeham becoming a miner and John marrying his sister. The father was finally and with much difficulty reconciled to both these arrangements.

The young couple toiled on well enough through their hard life; the alehouse was abandoned, and but that poor John was sometimes weak and ailing and could not work, Polly had no reason to regret her choice. William, who lived with them, was not quite so steady as they could have wished: he often staid out all night, and they were not without suspicion that the employment of these hours of darkness was scarcely reconcileable with strict obedience to the very arbitrary game-laws. In short, he was “had up” several times, and more indebted to good luck, than either his innocence or any mild weakness of legislation, that he did not become one of those whom we have driven forth from among ourselves to be the founders of that great future empire, whose principal geographical feature is Botany Bay.

But whenever his brother was too ill to go down to the mines, he worked double tides; and neither the heathery moors nor shady coverts had charms enough to tempt him away, when his sister or her family wanted half the loaf his labour was to purchase. At length hard times came upon the neighbourhood: work was scarce and wages low; the consequence was that the game in the adjoining preserves suffered considerably, and the tap-room of the village alehouse echoed with the voice of sedition and discontent, instead of the coarse but good-humoured gossip and song which had formerly been wont to be heard within its walls. This proved an excellent opportunity for the mining agent to secure good workmen for some speculations then being entered upon in South America. Accordingly a flaming advertisement in huge red and blue letters was posted up all over the country,--“Speedy fortune to be realised--gold mines of Peru--wanted some steady and experienced miners--high wages--free passage and a bounty.”

Poor William Wakeham’s literary acquirements but just enabled him to make out the drift of the offer: Peru or Palestine, it was all the same to him; no change could make him much worse off than he already was. A picture at the top of the advertisement, of a man with a broad-brimmed hat, a pickaxe in one hand, and an enormously plethoric purse in the other, had great weight with him; and a strong hint from a neighbouring magistrate who preserved pheasants, quite determined his acceptance of the opportunity, if he could only persuade his brother-in-law to join the venture. After a good deal of argument and many consultations, John Short consented to go. He was threatened with ejectment from his cottage for arrears of rent, which the company’s promised bounty would be more than sufficient to discharge; but what overcame his greatest difficulty was, that he received a promise from the agent, that Polly and the little ones should follow them out next spring, for in this present voyage the number of women allowed to accompany the emigrants had been already completed. In the mean time she was to receive a portion of her husband’s and brother’s wages, which would make her comfortable and independent in her father’s house. Poor thing! she combated the scheme strenuously; and all the prospects of making their fortune, and their present dire necessity, could scarcely induce her to agree to so long a separation.

Her husband and brother embarked after a cheerful but affectionate parting. She went home to her father’s, who treated her kindly enough, and cried her eyes out for a week; but then the toils and anxieties of daily life distracted the sadness of her mind, and the strong hope of soon joining her husband again, and of their returning to England in a few years’ time, supported her through the tedious interval.

The brothers were astonished at all they saw on board. The ship itself--the rudder--the compass, every thing was new to them: they had scarcely ever been out of their own remote parish before, and the strangeness and novelty of what they saw diverted their simple minds for a time even from poor Polly and her parting sorrow. But when the vessel was once fairly under way, and the verdant slopes and woody hills of their fatherland had begun to grow dim in the distance, and the gloomy monotony of the great sea lay around instead, a dreary anxiety possessed their minds, and a vague feeling, almost of terror, sank into their stout hearts. They would then have gladly sacrificed all their gilded prospects, to be back once again in their little cottage, with poor Polly and their poverty. It was, however, too late; they could scarcely tell, in the fading light of evening, whether it were a cloud or a dim line of hills which stretched close along the horizon, in the direction where lay the home they had left behind, perhaps for ever.

Before them was the ocean; to them a confused and indistinct idea--unknown and uncertain as their future fate.

I am sorry to say William Wakeham’s education had been by no means elaborate. Perhaps he was not altogether to blame for this; for though the masters he had laboured under cared very closely for the development of his stout and vigorous limbs, his moral improvement by no means interested them. But, worse than all, his ideas on theological subjects were exceedingly indistinct--the only religious instruction he had ever received having been in a small chapel of the Ranting persuasion, which, as the only house of worship close at hand, he occasionally attended. Indeed his stock of knowledge on these subjects consisted in a vague notion that the Pope and the Devil were perpetually engaged in mining operations, with explosive intentions, under houses of parliament.

But there was an instinct of reverence in his rude mind, an impression of awe and love for that God of whom he had heard his mother often speak, many years ago when he was a little child, before her early death. Sometimes in the bright summer nights, when he was labouring in the bowels of the earth, he would rest awhile from his work, and gaze up through the shafts at the blue sky, till the dim but holy memories of the past crowded on his brain. He fancied then that the Great Being looked down from the high Heaven through a million starry eyes, into the deep mine--into his simple heart; and he felt that there was One far greater than the Captain of the workmen, or even than Squire Trebeck the neighbouring magistrate, and to whom the strength of his vigorous limbs was but the weakness of a child.

When in the summer Sunday afternoon, he rambled on the pleasant surface of the earth, in the fresh open air, with his brother and sister, and felt the warm sunshine, and saw the golden corn, and the lazy cattle, and the trout leaping in the pool; and heard little fidgety birds with very big voices, singing with all their might to tell how happy they were; he felt that He who is great is also good.--that He who has all power has boundless mercy too.

But ignorance and evil companions very often led poor William astray; and when temptations pulled one way and his good instincts another, it sometimes ended that he would poach, and drink, and fight as much as any of them, and prove very sore and penitent the next morning. John Short was what is called “a good kind of man,” with few of the faults or virtues of his brother-in-law. He was quiet, industrious, and a good husband, but of a weakly constitution, and not much character or peculiarity one way or the other. Ever since their first quarrel these two had continued in hearty favour and good-will one towards the other. And this friendship helped them through many a pinch, and cheered many a rough day.

It would be needless to follow the miners all through their voyage,--to tell at length how they wondered that the sea could be so wide and the world so large,--how the sun, as they went westward, seemed to travel so much faster--and that, in spite of all they could do, their great fat watches could not keep up with him;--and how a great storm arose, and blew for three whole days and nights in their teeth, and raised up monstrous waves to drive the vessel back;--then how the calm came, and the sails, wet with the heavy dews, hung idly on the spars, like Polly’s washing on the lines in the back-yard at home.

After many weeks they touched at Rio Janeiro, when they went ashore for a little while to stretch their limbs. They were astonished at all they saw--the vast fleet of ships, the busy quays, the crowds of strange-looking brown people, who were dressed like the man they had seen in the play long ago at Penzance fair, and the queer way they all talked, so that our friends could not understand a word they said; and the priests with loose robes and comical hats, who made them wonder if there were a parliament at Rio, for it would be surely blown up; mules larger than horses, with coats as smooth as satin; and above all, they were astonished at seeing a crowd of very ugly black people chained hand to hand in one of the squares, tethered for all the world like sheep on the market-green at home. They were fairly bewildered; and when they got on board again they agreed that they could not attend to digging, even for gold itself, if Peru were half so foreign a looking place as that.

They have left Rio, and steer along the Patagonian shore; the weather grows colder, the seas more stormy. They pass the gloomy mountains of the desolate and mysterious “Land of fire.” Sometimes in the dark and tempestuous nights they can distinguish, far away over the western sea, sudden bursts of volcanic flame issuing from these unknown solitudes, illuming the frowning sky above, and the rocky wilderness around. In a long-continued storm of wind, and sleet, and snow, they double Cape Horn; then in a short time more, as they tend again towards the delightful regions of the tropics, the soft breezes of the Pacific fill their sails, and the calm sea and gentle climate repay them for the storms and hardships they have struggled through.

They touch at Valparaiso for a few days, where their simple wonder is again renewed; and finally, early in August, disembark at Lima, having gone through their long voyage in health and strength. After a short time allowed them to recruit, the emigrants were divided into several parties, and pushed on to the different stations in the interior. The mine which our friends were destined to aid in working, was about ten days’ journey from the coast. At some remote period of time, it had been worked with great success by the Indians; but till its recent re-discovery by a singular accident, when it passed into the hands of a wealthy English company, it had remained unknown: the secret of its locality having died with the Indian chief, whose hatred of the rapacious Spaniards had caused him to fill up the shaft, and hide all traces by which it could be found. There was a continual ascent: for a few days they passed through comparatively peopled lands, and usually stopped at some village or hamlet by a river’s side, where provisions and refreshments could be obtained for themselves and their mules, without trenching on their stores. Indeed the abundant wild fruits, and rich and luxuriant grasses, would have stood them in good stead with but little other assistance.

But the last three days of their journey was through savage and sterile hills, by rocky gorges cut in the hard soil by streams now nearly dry; and the unbeaten track told them that travellers but rarely intruded on this lonely district. At length they reached their journey’s end, and set stoutly to work to erect huts, and establish themselves for the coming winter. Numbers of Indians and half-castes soon joined them to assist in the simpler labours of the mine, and supply the workmen with provisions and other necessaries of life. Twelve of the Cornish men were employed in this party. Their first labours were directed to sinking a shaft of considerable depth in the mountain’s side, at the place which the discoverer pointed out.

Some months elapsed before the miners arrived at any satisfactory indications of precious ores; but, confident in ultimate success, our friends had got the clerk to write for them to Polly to say “all’s well,” and that she must not fail to come, as they were now housed and ready to make her and the little ones comfortable in that strange country.

At the time of the expected arrival of the ship which was to bear her, the completion of the great shaft Was close at hand; the appearance of the veins of ore were such as to create the most sanguine expectations, and a day was fixed for finishing off the shaft previous to commencing to raise the precious object of their labours. They worked till late on the evening of the appointed day in boring and tamping for a large blast Which was to clear away the last ledge of rock lying between them and the vein of metal.

When the charge was completed, William Wakeham and John Short were left below to fire it. The other workmen were raised upon a stage by the windlass in the usual manner; and with most culpable carelessness hastened off to the spirit shop which had already cursed the little settlement with its presence, to make merry for having arrived at this stage of their labours, leaving only a weakly boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age at the windlass. There was some delay in fixing the match: and ere all was ready, the short twilight of those sultry regions had darkened into night, and William’s old friends, the stars, looked down on him again through the deep well, as they had often done of yore. Then he and John talked of the old times and the old country, and of Polly’s coming soon, and how the little ones would have grown, and how, in a few years, they would all go back home again over that terrible sea, and lay their bones to rest at last under the Cornish soil. They had no business to linger so long over their work; but once they began to talk over such things as these, it was hard to stop them.

“Now we have done with this weary blast,” said Wakeham, as he lighted the fuse, and stepped, with his brother, on to the stage. He then sounded the whistle, the signal for working the windlass to raise them. They rose very slowly--unpleasantly so, indeed, for the fuse would burn but for five minutes. “Hurry on, wind faster,” shouted William. Instead of that the stage stopped altogether, and a feeble childish voice from the top of the deep pit cried, “You are too heavy, I can only raise one at a time.” “Get help quickly or we’ll be blown up,” shouted William, now seeing the imminent peril. For some twenty feet below in the dark hole he saw the match burning rapidly down, fizzing and flashing as if running a race with them for life. “Get help,” again he shouted. But the feeble voice, now in a terrified tone, told them that all were gone away but that one weak boy. “But I think I can raise one.” There was but a moment to spare--perhaps not even that.

What passed through William Wakeham’s mind at that tremendous time no tongue can ever tell. He dearly loved life; his pulse beat in the full vigour of sturdy health; he had learned but little of that hope whose fulfilment “passeth all understanding;” he had never read how the Roman or the Greek sought death in a good cause, and gave their names to brighten history’s page, and gain what in our vain human talk is immortality. But that Great Being whose power and love had spoken to him in the bright stars and pleasant fields, had planted in the rude miner’s breast a good and gallant heart, and in that time of trial he did as brave a deed as ever poet sang. “Good-by, John--look to poor Polly!” One grasp of his brother’s hand, and he leaped from the stage down into the darksome pit.

Now the windlass winds freely up: there is hope for the one left; but the match burns quickly too, and writhes and flashes close down to the charge. Lay on stoutly! lay on!--strain every nerve, weak boy!--on every pull is the chance of a human life! John Short reaches the mouth of the shaft in safety; but before he springs out on the ground he turns one look below. His brother lay motionless on the bottom on one side of the rich vein of metal; at the other, the terrible match blazed up just as it reached the charge. Senseless with terror, he fell on his face at the pit’s mouth, and the next moment up burst the mine, shooting the rent rock and the heavy clay into the air above.

When John Short recovered himself from his stupor, he looked down the gloomy hole with hopeless agony, from whence the heavy sulphurous smoke of the powder still ascended; and as he wrung his hands he cried, “Oh! poor Bill, dear boy, would that I had been there instead of you!” But stop--surely that is a voice--listen closer--yes--God of mercy! he is alive still. Up from the bowels of the earth comes that cheery, hearty voice, not a tone the worse.

How my heart warms as I tell this tale! Would that words came now at my desire to stir up the spirit to love and admiration! Gallant William Wakeham--noble child of nature--chivalrous boor--hero unstained by slaughter! Were there in the sight of the Omnipotent aught of glory in any human action, surely your brave deed would shine before him in a brighter light than “the sun of Austerlitz” shed upon the bloody field where the power of an empire was trampled in the dust.

Down went the stage,--up came Bill, blackened and bruised a little to be sure, but not to signify a jot; he had struck his head in falling against the side of the shaft and was stunned by the blow. It so happened, by one of those wonderful contingencies which sometimes occur when, in human eyes, escape seems impossible, that he fell in a corner protected by the tough metallic vein which projected a little above the level of the bottom. The explosion bent this by its force, instead of shattering it like the surrounding rock, and turned the ledge over him. This in a great measure defended him from the stones which fell back again into the mine. The shock aroused him from the stunning effect of the blow which he had received in falling, and he shouted heartily, “All right, John! all right!”

His reward soon came--Polly and the children arrived safe and well. When she wept with joy and thanked him in her own simple way for having saved her husband for her, he was so happy in their happiness that he would readily have jumped into the bursting mine again, rather than they should be parted any more. When our narrator, the mining agent, left Peru, the brothers were preparing to return to England; they had got on well enough, and had saved sufficient money to enable them to stock a little farm, near the village in Cornwall where they were born.

By the time this long story was told, it was past the usual hour of going to our berths; but I am ashamed to say that several of our party had already taken a large instalment of their night’s rest, and knew no more about our friend William Wakeham than of the man in the moon.

THE DOG OF ALCIBIADES.

In Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades the following passage occurs:--

“Alcibiades had a dog of an uncommon size and beauty, which cost him seventy _minæ_, and yet his tail, which was his principal ornament, he caused to be cut off. Some of his acquaintance found great fault with his acting so strangely, and told him that all Athens rang with the story of his foolish treatment of the dog. At which he laughed, and said, ‘This is the very thing I wanted; for I would have the Athenians talk of this, lest they should find something worse to say of me.’”

This anecdote, move popularly known in France than in England, has there been the origin of a proverbial metaphor. When a minor vice, folly, or eccentricity is assumed as a cloak for a greater one, with a view to throw dust in the eyes of all inquisitive public, and to veil from its curiosity real motives, intentions, and inclinations, the pretext paraded is called the Dog of Alcibiades. The true application of the term may be better illustrated than exactly defined, and the former course has been adopted in a French book of no distant date, entitled _Le Chien d’Alcibiade_. A single volume, the only one its author has produced--its wit, elegance of style, and general good taste would do credit to the most experienced novelist; whilst the warm reception it met from the Parisian public, ought, one would imagine, to have encouraged a repetition of the attempt. On its title-page was found the assumed name of Major Fridolin, the same under which a noted Parisian _turfite_ enters his horses for the races at Chantilly and the Champ de Mars. The _gentleman-rider_ (_vide_ the Anglo-Gallic vocabulary patronised by the Paris _jochai-clubb_) who owns the fantastical pseudonyme, is more esteemed for wealth than wit, better known as a judge of horse-flesh than as a cultivator of literature, and generally held more likely to achieve renown by the strength of his racers’ legs than of his own head. So that when an ably-written novel appeared under his _nom-de-guerre_, people asked one another if he were possibly its author, and had previously kept his candle under a bushel, only to dazzle the more when the shade was withdrawn. There could be no doubt that the book was from the pen of a man of talent and refinement, accustomed to good society, and seizing with peculiar felicity its phases and foibles. The characters were so true to life, that it was impossible for those moving in the circles portrayed to avoid recognising the originals, not as individuals but as types of classes. The gay world of Paris was painted with a sharp and delicate pencil, without exaggeration or grotesque colouring. Some similarity might be traced to the manner of Charles de Bernard, but in one respect the new author had the advantage. His wit was as sparkling, his tone quite as gentlemanly and agreeable, but he eschewed the caricature into which De Bernard’s _verve_ not unfrequently seduces him. The name of the new aspirant for literary fame soon oozed out, and to Monsieur Valbezene was decerned the honour of having produced one of the most attractive novels of the day. It at once gave him a reputation for ability, and is even said to have conduced to his shortly afterwards receiving a government appointment. It brought him under the notice of the bestowers of loaves and fishes, as a man whose _finesse d’esprit_ and knowledge of the world might be rendered serviceable to the state. M. Valbezene is now consul of France at the Cape of Good Hope. It is to be desired that he may there find leisure to cultivate his literary talents, and add others to the favourable specimen of them he has already given. In Paris we should have had less expectation of his so doing, for his book denotes him, if a writer may her judged by his writings, to be a man of ease and pleasure, more disposed and likely to sink into _far niente_ and form the chief ornament of a brilliant circle, than to seclude himself in a study, and apply seriously to literature.

The opening scene of M. Valbezene’s book is a brilliant ball-room in the Faubourg St Honoré. At a whist-table sits the Count de Marsanne--a man of forty years of age, at most; of robust health and handsome person. His figure is stout without being corpulent; his ruddy countenance, tanned by exposure to the weather, is not without distinction and grace; his blue eyes are remarkably fine and intelligent; he wears his beard, and his thick strong hair is cropped short. His dress denotes the gentleman. His linen is exquisitely white, and the cut of his coat can only be attributed to the skilful hand of Blin or Chevreuil. The Count, who served previously to the July revolution in the hussars of the Guard, and who, since leaving the service, has sought in field-sports the peril, excitement, and activity essential to his ardent and impetuous character, drives his dowager partner to despair by his blunders at whist. He pays less attention to the game than to the facetious whispers of his cousin, De Kersent--a young man of five-and-twenty, short, fat, always happy and good-humoured, an eager sportsman, and much more at his ease at a battue than a ball. The rubber over, the Count leaves the heated card-room, to seek cooler air in an outer apartment. M. Valbezene shall speak for himself.

“Whilst posted at the entrance door, Marsanne was accosted by a young man of about eight-and-twenty, of elegant figure and most agreeable countenance. The exquisitely polished tone of this new personage, the tasteful simplicity of his costume, indicated a man of the best society, to whom the epithet of _lion_ might with propriety have been applied, were it not that, in these days of promiscuous lionism, the word has lost its primitive acceptation.

“‘Well! my dear Vassigny,’ said Marsanne, breathing with difficulty, ‘did you ever experience such a temperature? For my part, I was never so hot in my life, not even in Africa, when our soldiers blew out their brains to escape the scorching sun. Refreshments, too, are scarce at the whist-table; we did not see even a glass of water. Consequently, my friend, I was so inattentive to the game, that, through my fault, my very heinous fault, we lost the rub. The Baroness de Pibrac, my unlucky partner, was tragically indignant. Ah! she will not forgive me in a hurry! If heaven has any regard for her maledictions, I shall pay dearly for the fourteen francs I made her lose.’

“‘Madame de Marsanne is here?’ inquired the young man.

“‘Of course. You know me well enough to be sure I should not remain from choice in such a furnace. I am no great lover of balls, but this is the last of the season; so, one hour’s patience, and a year’s holiday is before me. Remember, we meet to-morrow morning at seven, sharp. Kersent accompanies us to Rambouillet. At last, then, I shall revisit my horses, my dogs, my forests; I shall have air--motion... _Tonton, tontaine, tonton_’ ... hummed the sportsman, whose face beamed with joy at thoughts of the chase.

“‘Certainly, I shall be exact.... But as you have been here some time, you will perhaps be so good as to show me Mr Robinson, the master of the house. None of my friends have been able to point him out, and I am rather curious to make my bow to him.’

“‘_Ma foi!_ my dear fellow,’ replied Marsanne, ‘your question is not easy to answer. I am inclined to think it is that crooked little gentleman in black--unless, indeed, it be yonder portly handsome man in the blue coat. Upon reflection, I vote for the latter. His wholesome corpulence tells of the substantial and judicious nourishment of the Anglo-Americans. In fact, I am as ignorant as yourself. On arriving, we were met at this door by the Marchioness de Presle, who, as you know, sent out the invitations for Mr Robinson; and as soon as we had paid our respects to the Marchioness, Madame de Marsanne dragged me forward to the third saloon, so that I know no more of our amphitryon than you do. But here is little Movillez. He will settle our doubts.’

“The new personage whose coming Marsanne announced, owed to his age alone the epithet applied to him, for he was above the ordinary height. He was apparently about one-and-twenty: his insignificant countenance, which in character bore some resemblance to that of a sheep, expressed perfect self-satisfaction. An embroidered shirt, and a white satin waistcoat, spangled with gold, might have made him suspected of a great leaning to the frivolities of dress, had not a white flower in his buttonhole revealed serious political predilections, and an unchangeable attachment to the fallen House of Bourbon.

“‘Movillez,’ said Marsanne, ‘show Vassigny the master of the house; he wishes to make his bow to him.’

“‘For what?’ inquired the youth, with adorable impertinence.

“‘For the sake of good breeding,’ replied Vassigny drily.

“‘Nonsense!’ cried Movillez, ‘you surely do not dream of such a thing: If you knew Mr Robinson he would bow to you in the street, and that would be very disagreeable.’

“‘There is pleasure in giving you parties; you are not even grateful for your entertainment.’

“‘Perfectly true; and what is more, I consider Mr Robinson under an obligation to me. Persons of his sort are too happy to get people like us to go to their routs and help them to devour their dollars. But we do not on that account become one of them; that, _parbleu_! would never do. Thank heaven! even in these days of equality we have not come to that. An unknown individual arrives at Paris, having made his fortune in India, Peru, or Chili, in the slave-trade, in cotton, or in tallow. All well and good; I have nothing to do with it. I go to his balls, I eat his suppers; but I do not know him the more for that.’

“‘You have your theory, I have mine,’ replied Vassigny; ‘each of us thinks his own the best, I suppose.’

“‘Come, come, confess candidly that you wish to do the eccentric,’ said Movillez. ‘Well, for your government, that little gentleman in the black coat, leaning against the chimney-piece, is the Robinson. He is very ugly. I am heartily sorry the Marchioness de Presle did not suggest to him to adopt the costume of his patron saint. The pointed hat and palm-leaf inexpressibles would become him admirably. As to the ball, it is tolerably brilliant: there is a good deal of faubourg St Germain and faubourg St Honoré. _Dame!_ there are other sorts too--a little finance, some beauties from the citizen-court, a few prudes from the Bal Rambuteau. The company is mixed, certainly, but still it is astonishing that this exotic has been able to collect so many people of fashion. You know the report about _il Signor_ Robinson, that he was ten years in prison at Philadelphia? Yes, he is an interesting victim of human injustice; I am assured he reasons most eloquently on the penitentiary system.’

“These silly and slanderous jokes seemed any thing but agreeable to the two persons to whom they were addressed.

“‘Is your father’s counting-house still in the Rue Lepelletier?’ said Vassigny, with freezing _sang froid_. ‘I want some bills on London, and shall give him my custom in preference to any other banker.’

“These words brought a vivid flush to the cheek of the young dandy; he replied only by an affirmative sign, left the two friends, and entered the dancing-room.

“‘Do you know, Gaston,’ said Marsanne, ‘little Movillez was any thing but well pleased by your promising his father your custom?’

“‘I both know and am delighted at it. The little puppy forgot, when he sneered at the beauties of the citizen-court, that my sister belongs to the household of the Duchess of.... I was very glad to remind him that his father is neither more nor less than a banker, and that it takes something more than a white rose in the buttonhole to make a Montmorency or a Biron. But I must leave you.’

“So saying, Vassigny pressed his friend’s hand, addressed a few polite words to the master of the house, who seemed touched and surprised at this unusual piece of courtesy, and passed into the adjoining saloon. The ball was at the gayest; the elegant costumes had lost nothing of their freshness, the faces of the women, animated by pleasure, as yet showed no traces of fatigue. The orchestra, conducted by Tolbecque, was remarkable for its spirit and harmony. Every thing in this charming fête was calculated to excite the indignation of those narrow-minded reformers who cannot understand that the luxury of the rich gives bread to the poor. Vassigny sauntered for some time through the crowd, shaking hands with friends and bowing to ladies; but it was easy to judge from his irregular movements and wandering glances, that he had not undertaken this peregrination without an object. At last he reached the door of a little boudoir--a delightful and mysterious asylum, hung with silk and perfumed with flowers. A chosen few had taken refuge in this sanctuary, where the murmur of the ball and the crash of the orchestra arrived faint and subdued. Here Vassigny seemed to have attained the goal he had proposed himself, as his eyes rested upon a lady gracefully sunk in an arm-chair, and chatting familiarly with M. de Kersent. It were necessary to borrow the swan-quill of Dorat, of gallant memory, faithfully to trace a portrait of this young woman, then in the flower of her age and beauty. Priding ourselves, unfortunately, on being of our century, and consequently very ungallant, we shall merely say, that it is impossible to imagine a sweeter or more charming countenance: without having the regularity of a classic model, the features were replete with fascination. Her eyelids, fringed with long curved lashes, protected eyes whose liquid and languishing expression was exchanged at intervals for bright and brilliant glances, indicative of a passionate and powerful organisation. The arch of her eyebrows was accurately and delicately pencilled; so affable was her smile, so white and regular her teeth, that one dared not call her mouth large, or tax it with extending--according to Bussy Rabutin’s expression--from ear to ear. Her neck and shoulders, perfectly moulded and of dazzling whiteness, would have enchanted a sculptor. Her dress, extremely plain, was of white lace; a wreath of fresh-gathered corn-flowers decked her head--the humble field-blossom seeming proud of its place in the midst of a magnificent forest of golden hair, worthy to support a diadem. A bunch of the same flowers in her hand, completed a costume whose simplicity was equalled by its elegance.”

Thus, at setting off, M. Valbezene sketches the five principal actors in his domestic drama; and we have little further to read before discovering their virtues and vices, and the relation in which they stand to each other. The Count de Marsanne is a man of strict honour, and warm heart; generous instincts, and much delicacy of feeling. Sincerely attached to his wife, he has, nevertheless, from a very early period of their wedded life, greatly neglected her, leaving her to pine in solitude, whilst he indulged his violent passion for field-sports. The affection Amélie de Marsanne originally felt for her husband has yielded to the neglect of years, and been replaced by a violent passion for Vassigny, which he ardently reciprocates. So guarded, however, has been their conduct, that none suspect the intrigue. Marsanne has perfect confidence in his wife’s virtue; and the gay, good-humoured Kersent, who is warmly attached to his beautiful cousin, and on terms of great intimacy with Vassigny, has not the remotest idea of the good understanding between the two persons he best loves. Movillez, an admirable specimen of the pretensions young Frenchman just escaped from college, and aping the vices and follies of more mature Parisian _roués_, affords many comic scenes, which agreeably relieve the grave and thrilling interest of the book. He also, unknown to himself, plays an important part in the plot, and by his indiscretion, is the cause of a world of unhappiness to the four persons already described. Francine, a fifth-rate actress at a Paris theatre, vulgar, profligate, and mercenary; and Major d’Havrecourt, a good-hearted old officer, punctilious on the point of honour, and fancying himself a man of most pacific dispositions, whilst in reality he is ever ready for a duel,--complete the _dramatis personæ_. Although D’Havrecourt has attained the ripe age of fifty, he still knows how to sympathise with youth, to understand its tastes and excuse its follies; and Movillez is one of the hopefuls whom he not unfrequently favours with his society and benefits by his advice.

The day after the ball, Marsanne’s hunting-party takes place. A wild-boar is killed, and poor Movillez, who has joined the chase in hopes of distinguishing himself before the eyes of a fair English amazon, meets with numerous disasters, principally occasioned by his bad horsemanship, but which his indomitable conceit prevents his taking much to heart. A week later we find him dining at the Café de Paris, in company with D’Havrecourt, and listening to sundry narratives of remarkable single combats which the old fire-eater had witnessed, heard of, or shared in. Dessert is on table, when these bellicose reminiscences are interrupted by the arrival of Kersent.

“‘Allow me to enjoy your society,’ said the new comer, until the arrival of Marsanne, who is behind his time, as usual.’

“‘With great pleasure,’ replied the Major cordially. ‘What will you take?’

“‘Nothing: I should spoil my dinner. Well! young man,’ continued Kersent, addressing himself to Movillez, ‘so we are getting on in the world, conquering a position, becoming a lion of the very first water. The _Journal des Chasses_ talks of nothing but your exploits at the Rambouillet hunt.’

“‘How so?’ cried Movillez, greatly surprised.

“‘Yes, in the account of the day’s sport it cites the elegant, the courageous, the dauntless Movillez as first in at the death. Two pages about you, neither more nor less, in the style of the passage of the Rhine by defunct Boileau.’

“‘I did not deserve such praise. Henceforward, I will take the paper.’

“‘You cannot do less.’

“‘Read the article twice,’ said D’Havrecourt, who had listened attentively to Kersent’s words. ‘You know me for a man of peaceable temper and disposition, an enemy, both by nature and habit, of all violence. Well, I read that article to-day, and it seemed to me that under the form of praise it concealed a tendency to satire. I hesitated to tell you of it, but since another has started the hare, you shall have my candid opinion on the subject. We must not allow the press to take liberties with us; a man of the world should be extremely severe with those who dare to turn his private life into ridicule. Read the article attentively, and if you are of opinion the affair should be followed up, which in my conscience I think it ought to be, why, then,’ concluded the Major martially, ‘you may reckon on my services.’

“‘_Parbleu!_ D’Havrecourt,’ cried Kersent gaily, ‘you won’t succeed in setting us by the ears.’

“‘What! the article is yours?’ exclaimed the two diners.

“‘Mine. Your astonishment does not indicate a very flattering estimate of my literary capacity. Yes, my friends! I mean to make myself a position, I aspire to become a legislator, and by way of getting my hand in, I write for the _Journal des Chasses_. Electors like to find in their candidate a man of letters, rich in the honours of pica and long-primer. So I flatter the elective weakness; I sacrifice to the parliamentary calf. Ah! only let me get into the Chamber,’ continued Kersent, in the tone of a future tribune, ‘and you shall see me take up a solid position. My plans are formed. Once in the Chamber, I defend the partridge, I plead for the rabbit, I declare myself the champion of fur and feather. Find a college of electors intelligent enough to return me, and you shall have a game-law worthy of Solon. It is already framed in my head. Death for the poacher, death for the snare-setter: the philanthropical system of the Committee of Public Salvation! With such a law, you would soon see prodigious results.... But I arrived only this morning from Plessy, with Marsanne, and we set out again to-morrow for the forest of Orleans. His hunting equipage has preceded us. Any fresh scandal here? Are you successful with Lady Emilia? _Sapristie!_ if she does not look favourably on you after your exploits of last week, her heart must be granite.’

“‘Perhaps!’ muttered Movillez with an air of consummate coxcombry.

“‘The _perhaps_ is very significant; but I know your discretion, and will question you no further. And Vassigny, how is he? what is he doing? where is he?’

“‘I know a thing or two about him; and bye the bye, I will tell you what I know. You may be able to help me in my researches.’

“‘I am all ears,’ said Kersent. ‘Ah! there you are, Marsanne! three quarters of an hour late, that’s all: if I have an indigestion, I shall know whom to thank. But hush! Movillez is about to unfold the mysteries of Vassigny.’”

Marsanne, who had just arrived, nodded to his friends, and lent his attention to Movillez, who began as follows:

“‘I have given up the new system of horsemanship, and devote myself entirely to the equitation of the race-course; I am resolved to make a brilliant appearance next spring upon the turf of Versailles. Every day I take a sweating in the Bois de Boulogne, under the guidance of Flatman the jockey, who meets me at nine in the morning at the corner of the Allée de Marigny. I leave my house, therefore, at half-past eight, and proceed to my appointment by the Rue de la Pépinière and the Rue de Miromesnil. Several days together I met Vassigny at that unusual hour, in that out-of-the-way quarter, and saw him enter a small house, No. 17, in the Rue de Miromesnil, where it is impossible any acquaintance of his can live. This very morning I saw him again, and I determined to solve the riddle. I sauntered up and down the street, and, thank heaven! my patience was not put to a very severe trial. A little blue hackney coach, of mysterious aspect, with the blinds down, turned out of the Rue Verte, and stopped at No 17. The coach-door opened, a lady tripped down the steps with the rapidity of a frightened doe and darted into the house. Impossible to say who it was. Her figure was elegant, she wore a dark-coloured morning dress; an odious black veil, impenetrable to the eye, fell from her velvet hat. But there was such an aristocratic air about her, such a high-bred atmosphere environed her, that I would wager my head it was some duchess or marchioness. The driver had resumed his seat, and I was venting execrations on black veils, when the god of scandal came to my aid. I perceived, on the pavement at my feet, a little purse which the lady had dropped. In a second, I had picked it up, thrust it in my pocket, and run away like a thief with the police at his heels. As to the purse,’ continued Movillez, producing a small purse of plain green silk network, ‘here it is. Let us see if you can guess its owner; for my part I have not even a suspicion.’

“The purse, curiously examined by Kersent and D’Havrecourt, at last came into the hands of Marsanne. He looked at it for a few moments, and then with a severe expression of countenance, addressed Movillez:

“‘You are young, Monsieur de Movillez,’ he said; ‘allow me to tell you how a well-bred man, a man of delicacy, would have acted under such circumstances. He would have given the money to the poor and thrown the purse into the fire. I will do for you what you should have done yourself.’

“And approaching the fireplace, Marsanne dropped the purse upon the glowing embers, which instantly consumed it. There was something noble and solemn in the action of the Count’s; the blood of the French chevaliers, those loyal subjects of beauty, had been stirred in the veins of their descendant by the recital of this blamable act of curiosity. Marsanne continued:

“‘Allow me to tell you, sir, that the men of your generation, accustomed to live with courtezans, and to seek venal and ready-made loves, are ignorant of what is due to women because they are women. None make more allowance than I do for the levities of youth. But what I blame is, that in utter wantonness, and for the gratification of an idle curiosity, you lift the curtain shrouding a secret, and pour out misery and desolation upon a poor woman, more deserving, perhaps, of censure than of utter condemnation. Be not more severe than a husband,--you, a young man, liable to profit by such errors; and remember that a true gentleman will respect women even in their weaknesses. Weigh my words, M. de Movillez; you will not be offended at my frankness.’”

A few hours after this scene, the Countess do Marsanne, alone in her boudoir, and busy with her embroidering frame, receives a visit from her husband. Just returned from one hunting-party, and about to start upon another, the incorrigible sportsman is seized with remorse at the solitude to which his wife is condemned, and, touched by her resignation to a lonely and cheerless existence, he generously resolves to sacrifice his own pleasures to her happiness. He proposes that they should go to Italy, and pass the winter at Florence or Naples, where he trusts to wean himself from the chase and acquire a taste for domestic enjoyments. The Countess refuses to take advantage of the generous impulse, professes her sincere friendship for her husband, but avows that her love for him has fled, driven from her heart by suffering and neglect.

“At this moment Madame de Marsanne’s maid came to tell her that her bedroom was ready for her reception. Then she added:

“‘I have looked every where for the purse of Madame la Comtesse, but it is no where to be found.’

“At these words, Marsanne’s countenance assumed a singular paleness, and it was all he could do to master his emotion and say to his wife:

“‘You have lost your purse?’

“‘Yes,’ replied the Countess, unobservant of her husband’s agitation; ‘or, rather, I have mislaid it in some corner.’

“‘It was doubtless of value?’

“‘Oh! by no means. A little green silk purse, my own work, and nearly empty.’

“The Count remained motionless, like a man struck by a thunderbolt.

“‘You have no commissions for Plessy?’ he at last articulated, breathing short and quick, and not knowing what he asked.

“‘I thought you just said you were going to Orleans,’ replied the Countess.

“‘I shall visit Plessy on my return.’

“‘Then kiss my little godson Henriot. Much pleasure to you; and return as soon as possible.’

“Marsanne raised the Countess’s hand to his lips, and left the boudoir; but he staggered like a drunken man, and was obliged to support himself by the bannister in order to reach his room.

“Towards the middle of that night, a belated passenger through the Rue d’Anjou would have witnessed a curious spectacle. Although the cold was intense, a window was wide open, and by the light of a lamp a man was to be seen leaning upon the balustrade. From time to time, deep-drawn sobs of rage and despair burst from his breast, and he violently pressed his head between his hands, as if to prevent it from splitting. This man was the Count de Marsanne.

“The following morning a hackney coach, containing a lady closely veiled, had scarcely turned from the Rue Miromesnil into the Rue Verte, when a man, who for some time previously had paced to and fro, muffled in a large cloak, paused at No. 17 in the former street, dropped the folds of his mantle, and took off a pair of huge green spectacles that had previously concealed his face. The Count de Marsanne, for he it was, remained motionless beside the door whence the coach had driven. From his extreme paleness, and the gloomy immobility of his features, he might have been taken for a statue of stone.

“The hackney-coach was scarcely out of sight, when Vassigny appeared at the door of No. 17. On beholding him, the Count’s eyes sparkled; he extended his hand and seized Vassigny by the arm.

“‘Will M. de Vassigny,’ he said, ‘honour me with a moment’s interview?’

“Don Juan, dragged towards the abyss by the statue of the Commanditore, cannot have experienced such a feeling of terror as at that moment took possession of Vassigny.

“‘Sir,’ ... he stammered, ‘I know not....’

“‘I ask an interview, sir,’ said the Count, with sinister calmness; "I have grave matters to discuss with you; we should not be at our ease in the street; will you be good enough to conduct me to your house.’

“‘Really I know not what you mean.’

“‘I repeat, M. de Vassigny, that I have things to say which none but you must hear. Be so kind as to lead the way.’

“‘My house, as you know, is in the Rue de Provence,’ said Vassigny, with a constrained air. ‘I shall be happy to receive you there.’

“‘Let us go,’ said the Count.

“They walked in the direction of the Rue de Provence. By the time he arrived there, Vassigny’s emotion had attained the highest pitch, and his legs bent under him as he ascended the stairs.

“A servant introduced the two men into an elegant drawing-room.

“There was a moment of terrible silence: Marsanne seemed to have shaken off his gloomy despair: inflexible resolution was legible in his eyes. Vassigny, on the contrary, appeared exhausted and overcome, a criminal awaiting sentence of death.

“‘You have seen Madame de Marsanne this morning,’ said the husband, with strange solemnity.

“‘Madame de Marsanne!... In Heaven’s name, you are mistaken!’ cried Vassigny. But his tone of voice, and the wild expression of his features, fully confirmed the Count’s words.

“‘You have seen Madame de Marsanne this morning,’ repeated the Count. ‘I know, sir, that as a man of honour, you are incapable of betraying a lady’s secret; but I prefer the evidence of my eyes even to your word.’

“‘Well, sir, my life is yours--take it!’ cried Vassigny, casting towards heaven a glance of rage and despair. Marsanne gazed at the young man for a brief space, and then resumed.

“‘Listen to me, M. de Vassigny, The law authorised me to assassinate you, but that is not a gentleman’s revenge. The law further authorised me to have my dishonour certified by a commissary of police, and to drag you before the tribunals for condemnation--to six months’ imprisonment and a few thousand francs’ damages!--Mockery!! My instinct of honour rejected such an alternative. An honourable man revenges himself of an outrage by meeting his offender bare-breasted, and with equal weapons. You think as I do, sir?’

“‘Your seconds, your time, your arms?’ cried Vassigny, all his courage revived by this appeal to the point of honour.

“‘Patience, sir--patience. The time will come when we shall meet face to face; but the hour of that mortal combat has not yet tolled.’

“‘I wait your orders; from this day forward I am ready.’

“‘I expected no less, sir, from your courage.’

“There was a pause, and then Marsanne continued.

“‘Whatever be the issue of our duel,’ he said, ‘you have poisoned my life, heaped misery and bitterness upon the rest of my days. I believe you capable of appreciating what I am about to demand. Yesterday, sir, when I became aware of my dishonour, my first thought was a thought of blood. Then I examined my own conscience--a cruel and painful examination, for I was compelled to own that if Madame de Marsanne had betrayed me she was not alone to blame. I searched the innermost recesses of my heart, and I felt that this woman, abandoned by her husband, had at least the excuses of unhappiness and neglect. I thought of my poor child, whose mother’s name I should tarnish, and my thirst of vengeance yielded to these all-powerful considerations. Honour requires, sir, that I should take your life, or you mine: but it demands still more imperatively that the cause of the duel should remain unknown.’

“‘A pretext is easily found: a quarrel at the theatre or club will suffice.’

“‘What, sir’ replied Marsanne, ‘you, who know the world and its greedy curiosity as well as I do, can you think that it will be satisfied with a frivolous pretext, and will not strive, by cruel investigation, to penetrate our secret? No, sir! to-day a duel would leave too large a field for conjecture; our meeting must be prepared long before-hand. In this night of agony I have calculated every thing the interests of my vengeance, the interests of my honour, the interests of a woman whom I still love.’

“The Count’s voice quivered as he pronounced these last words, and a scalding tear coursed down his cheek.

“‘Your wishes are orders for me,’ said Vassigny.

“‘You shall give me your word of honour,’ continued the Count, ‘that from this moment you will see Madame de Marsanne no more. Then, resuming a gay life, you shall make a parade of some intrigue, either in society or behind the scenes of a theatre, which, by misleading suspicion, will enable us to have the meeting you must desire as much as myself.’

“Vassigny reflected for a few moments, and replied in a firm tone-

“‘Monsieur le Comte,’ he said, ‘I have long known you for one of those men with whom honour stands before every thing; and from the very first day I made, as now, the sacrifice of my life. But I am not bound to do more; and if I subscribe to your demand, I have a right also to stipulate a condition.’

“‘You!’ exclaimed Marsanne, with repressed fury.

“‘Yes, I!’ repeated Vassigny, with indescribable energy: ‘my honour and my heart render it my imperious duty. Pledge me your word as a gentleman, that for every one, even for Madame de Marsanne, the real cause of our duel shall remain an impenetrable secret, and I at once adhere to all your conditions.’

“‘You love her, then, very dearly,’ ... said the Count, with a bitter laugh.

“‘Enough to sacrifice my life, my honour, even my love, to her repose.’

“After a few instants of silence, the Count again spoke in a grave voice:

“‘You do your duty as a man of honour, sir, as I have done mine; and I now pledge you my word that for every one, even for Madame de Marsanne, the cause of our duel shall remain a profound secret.’

“‘On your day, at your hour, I am ready,’ said Vassigny.

“‘I thank you, sir; depend on my word, as I depend on yours.’ And with a dignified wave of the hand to his adversary, Marsanne left the room.”

This violent scene had exhausted Vassigny’s fortitude; the Count gone, he, sank into an arm-chair, covered his face with-his hands, and wept like a child.

Some weeks have elapsed and the characters of the tale are assembled at a theatre: Marsanne, his wife, and Kersent in a box--Movillez and D’Havrecourt in stalls--Mademoiselle Francine on the stage. Vassigny, in one of the proscenium boxes, has no eyes or ears but for the actress. He has kept his word to Marsanne, and Paris rings with the scandal of his attachment to Francine. She is the _Chien d’Alcibiade_. Strictly honourable in the observance of his promise, he has neither seen nor written to Madame de Marsanne since the day of his terrible interview with her husband. Such self-denial has not been exercised with impunity. In a few weeks, ten years have passed over the head of the unhappy Gaston de Vassigny. His brow is furrowed, his temper soured, and his amazed friends attribute these sad changes to his insane passion for the worthless Francine. He plays high; it is to supply the wants of his extravagant mistress. At the club, Marsanne is his usual antagonist, and always wins. Vassigny loses his temper with his money, and says harsh things to the Count, who bears them with exemplary patience, for the hour of his revenge is not yet come. But if Vassigny is supremely wretched, Amélie de Marsanne is not less so. She too, within a few weeks, has changed so as to be scarcely recognisable; and on her wan and pallid countenance the outward and visible signs of a breaking heart are unmistakably stamped. In vain has she striven to learn the reason of Vassigny’s sudden and unaccountable estrangement. He steadily avoids her. She sees him in public, ostentatiously displaying his disgraceful _liaison_ with a low actress, constant in his attendance at her performances, galloping on the Champs Elysées beside the carriage he has given her. She catches the innuendos of his acquaintance, sneering at or pitying his infatuation. At the theatre, on the night in question, she is agonised by the malicious jests of little Movillez, who pitilessly ridicules Vassigny’s absurd and ignoble passion. Early the next morning Vassigny receives one of Kersent’s cards, with a request written upon it for an immediate visit. Supposing his friend to have had a quarrel, and to need his services, he hurries to his house. Kersent, who is soundly sleeping, abuses his visitor for arousing him, declares he has sent no message, and disavows the handwriting on the card. Just then the servant enters and announces the arrival of a veiled lady, who waits in an adjoining apartment to speak to the Viscount de Vassigny.

With pensive and care-laden brow, Gaston left his friend’s room, and entered that in which the lady waited. But on the threshold he paused, and a deep flush overspread his countenance. He beheld Madame de Marsanne.

It was indeed the Countess, who, in contempt of propriety, and half-crazed with suffering, had resolved to hear her sentence from Vassigny’s own lips. In vain she had written to him--her letters remained unanswered; in vain she had neglected no means of seeing him--her endeavours had invariably been fruitless. Her heart torn by such ingratitude, and by the scandalous passion Vassigny paraded for Mademoiselle Francine, she had not hesitated to seek an interview in the house of her husband’s cousin. In the sad conversation that ensued, the most touching appeal that tenderness and suffering could inspire was addressed by the Countess de Marsanne to Vassigny. But he was able to impose silence on the passion that devoured him.

Divided between his love and the respect due to his plighted word, the two most violent sentiments that find place in man’s bosom, Gaston’s heart bled cruelly; but he triumphed over himself. Words full of the coldest reason issued from his lips; he had sufficient strength to break for ever the tie that bound him to the Countess. These cruel words did not fail of their effect: Madame de Marsanne believed that she had honoured with her tenderness one unable to appreciate its value, and incapable of a generous sacrifice.

“‘M. de Vassigny’ she said, ‘you are a heartless man!’”

Such was the phrase that terminated this melancholy interview. The heart of Madame de Marsanne was broken, but a guilty love had for ever left it.

Some moments after the close of this scene, Vassigny re-entered Kersent’s chamber; but his face was livid, and he could scarcely drag himself along. Without a word, he sank upon a chair and remained plunged in the most gloomy despair. Kersent’s countenance, usually so joyous, had assumed an expression of anguish. He had examined the writing on the card, and he could not conceal from himself that he knew the hand. The scene at the theatre the previous evening came back to his memory: he remembered the strange melancholy of his cousin, her confusion when she returned him the card-ease she had asked to look at; and from all these things combined, he concluded that a fatal secret weighed upon two beings whom he cherished with equal tenderness. On beholding Vassigny’s profound consternation, the sportsman heaved a sigh of deep distress.

“‘My dear friend,’ he said to Gaston, ‘a misfortune threatens you: open your heart to me, I conjure you, in the name of our old friendship.’

“Vassigny made no reply.

“‘Hear me, Gaston; you know me well enough to be certain that no idle curiosity impels me. Perhaps I can serve you. If I may believe the sad presentiment that fills my heart, you suffer not alone, and the poor woman that suffers with you has a right to all my sympathy. For she who has just left this house, is----’

“Vassigny sprang to his feet, and placed his hand over his friend’s mouth. ‘No, no!’ he exclaimed, ‘the fatal secret shall die with me.’ Then, without another word, he sat down at a table, and with a trembling hand traced the following lines:

“‘Monsieur le Comte, there are tortures which human strength cannot endure. For mercy’s sake, let us terminate this sad affair as soon as may be, or I will not answer for keeping my promise. I shall pass the night at the club.’

“This letter was addressed: ‘_Monsieur le Comte de Marsanne_.’”

At the club, the husband and the lover meet and play high. Vassigny loses, as usual; affects anger, shuffles the cards offensively, and hints suspicions of foul play. A challenge is the natural result. Late upon the following night, we find Kersent pacing the Boulevard in despondent mood, accompanied by D’Havrecourt, who has acted as one of Marsanne’s seconds in the inevitable duel. They discuss the melancholy event of Vassigny’s death, which has occurred that evening, a few hours after his adversary’s ball had pierced his breast. Vassigny had fired in the air.

“‘The more I reflect on it,’ said D’Havrecourt, ‘the more convinced I am that the unworthy affection of which Vassigny made a parade, was only a feigned sentiment, a mock passion thrown as a blind to the indiscreet curiosity of the world, to mask a devoted, although, perhaps, a guilty love. To you, who loved him as a brother, and to you alone, I may divulge an episode of this fatal drama. This it is. Vassigny was still stretched upon the grass; the surgeon, after vainly endeavouring to extract the bullet, put up his instruments, with a countenance that left me no hope. Tinguy had led away Marsanne; Navailles and Lord Howley had gone off in all haste, one to have every thing prepared at Vassigny’s house, the other to summon the first physicians. I was alone with the wounded man. His senses returned; he opened his eyes, and I saw by the expression of his agonised features that he wished to speak to me. I knelt beside him. He raised his left hand, and in a feeble voice asked me to unfasten his shirt-sleeve. I obeyed. His wrist was encircled by a small bracelet of hair, so tightly fastened to the arm, that, to get it off, I had to cut the tress. ‘D’Havrecourt,’ said he faintly, ‘that bracelet was only to quit me with life; I confide it to your honour; swear to annihilate it the instant you get home.’ I made the required vow, and from that moment he spoke not a word. On reaching home, my first care was to fulfil my promise, by burning the bracelet. It was composed of a tress of fair hair, and the hair of that Francine is black. And it was secured by a gold plate, upon which were engraved an A and a G intertwined, with the words ‘14 October 1840.’’

“‘Oh! say no more, my dear friend,’ cried Kersent, interrupting the Major, ‘Alas! I have too much reason to believe that there are now upon this earth two beings infinitely more to be pitied than Vassigny. He, at least, has found in death oblivion of his sorrows; but they survive for misery and tears.’”

None, save Kersent and D’Havrecourt, suspect the true cause of the duel; they are men of honour, and the secret is safe with them. For once, the inquisitive and scandal-loving Parisian world has been put upon a wrong scent. The Count’s precautions and Vassigny’s sufferings have not been thrown away. The Countess’s reputation is saved--the honour of the De Marsannes remains unblemished. It is not without success that the ignoble Francine has been made unwittingly to play the part of the Dog of Alcibiades.

An epilogue, in the shape of a letter from Kersent, dated a year later, from the bivouac of Bab-el-Oued, closes this tragical and well-told tale. It informs D’Havrecourt and the reader of the death of the Count de Marsanne and his erring and unhappy wife. The latter had died some months previously, of a malady brought on by grief. The Count met his fate by a Bedouin bullet in the deserts of Algeria. Kersent, whom affection and compassion had prompted to accompany his cousin in his last campaign, found upon the breast of the dead officer a locket enclosing a fragment of paper, the legacy of Madame de Marsanne to her husband. It contained the avowal of a fault and a prayer for pardon.

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND THE CURRENCY.

“De Mortuis nil nisi bonum” is, when applied to individuals, a generous, if not a just rule for our ordinary guidance. But to whatever extent it may be carried in judging of men and their motives, we apprehend that it would be the height of Quixotism to admit a defunct cabinet or an ejected minister to the benefit of any such act of indemnity. The evils which statesmen may commit, either through mistaken policy or egotistical arrogance of opinion, are too serious in their results to be easily or readily forgotten: and no lapse of time whatever can screen from censure those men who have wilfully tampered with the well-being and prosperity of the nation.

It will, we think, be admitted on all hands, that the present ministry, however well disposed, are most wofully infirm of purpose. We make every allowance for the situation in which they found themselves when called to office. However sanguine may have been the dreams of the Whig partisan, he could not, some eighteen months ago, have entertained the slightest idea of that extraordinary combination of chances which led to his return to office; neither do we believe that the leaders of that party ever expected to obtain even a temporary ascendency during the existence of the present parliament. When Lord John Russell and his confederates threw down the gauntlet of Free Trade, they could not have calculated upon the possibility of its being picked up and appropriated by their old antagonist of Tamworth. Well as they may have known, from former experience, the nature of that “tricksy spirit,” they never could have been prepared for that crowning denouement to a drama of political apostasy; and we are certain that no section of her Majesty’s subjects were more amazed than the Whigs when they found themselves again in possession of their coveted quarters in Downing Street. Without plan, and without preparation, we freely admit that they were entitled to a large share of public indulgence. In ordinary times, their administration might even have been productive of good. Schooled by adversity, and instructed by previous failure, they this time put forward in the van no opinions of a revolutionary tendency. They promised to apply themselves in the first instance to the mental and physical amelioration of the people--they offered to become the patrons of educational seminaries, directors of public baths, and inspectors of extended sewerage; and no one could gainsay in these respects the purity of their projected measures. But, unfortunately for them, the necessities of the time required more than sanatory legislation. The prodigious increase of national wealth which was prophesied as the immediate result of the change in our commercial policy and the repeal of agricultural protection, did not arise, like Aladdin’s palace, in one night from the liberated ground. The various and complex questions of Irish policy became all at once merged and confounded in the cry of common famine. The staple food of an unenterprising and improvident people had failed; and the Celts of the western islands, desisting from their absurd denunciation of the Saxon, were fain to supplicate Great Britain, herself by no means exempt from the calamity, for the means of absolute existence.

We do not intend to criticise in detail the means which were adopted by government for the relief of the suffering districts. We believe that they were actuated throughout by a liberal and a kindly spirit; and upon such an occasion as this, it was truly difficult to steer between parsimony on the one side, and reckless extravagance on the other. At the same time it is very evident that they were utterly unprepared for the crisis. They neither adopted an intelligible principle, nor laid down an extensive plan for their guidance. They vacillated every week between one method of relief and another. At one time they were for the promotion of useless works, which could tend to no profitable result, but which were a mere excuse for opening the public coffers to the relief of the starving Irish; at another, they rejected the proposal of Lord George Bentinck for extended railway employment--a scheme which, however objectionable from its magnitude, at least held out a feasible prospect of ultimate reimbursement of the loan. It is right to observe that in this refusal they were strengthened by the co-operation of Sir Robert Peel, their former opponent, but now their confidential adviser; and that the only ministerial measure of which the late autocrat has been pleased to disapprove, was a subsequent veering towards the principle recommended by Lord George, and the concession of a restricted loan towards the promotion of the Irish railways. But, as we have said before, the question of Irish relief was attended with much difficulty. The most experienced and sagacious statesman of the world might have gone astray in providing for a calamity so extended and so new; and, upon the whole, we are not inclined to find much fault with the Whigs in this respect, beyond what is implied by our decided conviction of their weakness, or rather want of purpose.

But, unfortunately for us all--most unfortunately, we fear, for the great bulk of the community--there are other questions not only impending but absolutely pressing upon us at this moment, of even greater vital importance than either Irish famine or British scarcity. It may be that, through the mercy of Divine Providence, these scourges maybe speedily removed. The soil may again be restored to its former fertility; and if such should prove to be the case, we trust that this calamitous lesson against idleness and improvidence will not be forgotten in those quarters where the visitation has been most severely felt. We trust that, in Ireland especially, and in some parts of our own country, both landlord and tenant will be roused to a more active sense of their respective liabilities and duties; and that, notwithstanding the tendencies which are too likely to follow from our late pernicious course of legislation, they will become alive to the conviction that no nation whatever can hope to maintain its independence if it neglects the paramount duty of cultivating and rearing within itself that supply of food upon which its inhabitants must depend for their support. It is not much more than a year ago, since we pointed out the miserable consequences which, in the event of a war or a famine, must ensue from a decrease of the cultivation of the soil, such as was not only contemplated, but openly recommended by some leading partisans of the League. Since then, we have had an opportunity of testing the strength of our actual position under one of those terrible emergencies. Scarcity has come, though not famine in its most gaunt and hideous shape; and not only are our own supplies deficient, but the greatest difficulty has been found in procuring a substitute from elsewhere. Had this occurred in the time of war, not in the season of unbroken peace, when the highway of the ocean is free, it is hardly within the power of man to exaggerate the horror of the consequences.

But, though the heavens may again smile upon us, there are evils of man’s creation which may not be so speedily removed, unless the nation can be brought to a clear sense of the predicament in which they have been placed by the insensate obstinacy and insatiable conceit of one minister, who, though ejected from office, is yet powerful in the councils of the empire. We cannot explain, because we do not understand, the nature of that mysterious and undefinable power which Sir Robert Peel seems to exercise over the proceedings of the present cabinet. We do not know the secret composition of the philtre, or love-potion, which he appears to have given to the Whigs; but we have seen quite enough in the recent discussions in parliament with regard to the monetary pressure which is now in the act of crushing and grinding to dust many thousands of the commercial and industrious classes, to be aware that the Russell ministry are entirely at one with Sir Robert in the maintenance of his favourite crotchet, and that they are prepared to abide by his delusion with regard to the currency, be the consequences to the country what they may.

This question of the currency is at once so vast, and so vital to the interests of every man who has any stake at all in the community--it presents itself at this moment in so alarming, and yet so palpable a shape--that we would be inexcusable were we to remain silent at a crisis when the evils of circumscribed credit and bank restriction are driving the honest trader into the Gazette. Long before the late premier had absolved us, by his unprincipled tergiversation, from all ties of party and support, we sedulously and earnestly protested against his perpetual meddling and tampering with the circulation of the country. In particular we were amongst the first to oppose his wanton, because uncalled for interference with the Scottish Banking System, under the operation of which the country had advanced, without risk or injury, at a ratio which probably never was equalled, and which certainly never was exceeded. We then warned, not only the bankers, but our national representatives, and the public, that if they permitted one single wedge to be driven into the fabric, the stability of the whole was endangered; and we showed that the retention of our one-pound note circulation was, though an important item of profit to the bankers, and of convenience to the public, of little consequence compared with the results which must ensue, if the circulation of the banks was arbitrarily limited, and all extension of credit made to depend upon the possession, or rather the purchase, of a large sum of useless and unprofitable bullion, which, so far from increasing the wealth of the country, must inevitably render it powerless in the event of a commercial panic. We believed then, and we believe now, that history does not afford a parallel instance of so reckless and shameful a disregard of public feeling and opinion on the part of any statesman; and the confidence and perseverance with which Sir Robert Peel proceeded to thrust his measure down the throats of the Scottish bankers, was, in our opinion, little less than a deliberate insult to the country,--because we never can forget this great and pregnant fact, that no grounds for tangible accusation could be drawn, or were attempted to be established, from the practical working of the system. That system was created by a somewhat neglected people for their own convenience, and without any legislative interference at all. It had supplied all the necessities of the country, and had been found perfect in its operation during periods of more than common exigency and distress. It had stood the test of experience successfully at times when the monetary system of England had been proved insufficient for the pressure. It possessed the full confidence of the nation; and yet--we can hardly write the sentence without a blush--it was surrendered after a faint opposition, merely because Sir Robert Peel considered himself an accomplished currency doctor, and was desirous to try the effects of his _aurum potabile_ upon a sound as well as a sickly subject.

The one-pound notes, however, were spared, and the bankers in some degree reconciled to the change by the promise of a future monopoly. Had not that bait been thrown out to them, we can hardly believe it possible that so unnecessary and unpopular a measure could have been carried at all, but, the wedge being once inserted, it has since been driven home to the quick. We appeal now with confidence to the merchants and manufacturers of Glasgow, Paisley, and Greenock--to the landed gentry, who are suffering under the tightening of the screw--to the enterprising tenant, who, under a long lease, is seeking to improve his land--to the trader, dealer, and shopkeeper of every kind throughout Scotland--whether they ever experienced such a monetary pressure as the present. And we ask them further to consider for themselves, and that very seriously indeed--for an evil too long submitted to may grow beyond the reach of a remedy--what is the real cause of this distress, and unparalleled scarcity of money? How is it that, with property of the most undeniable value on their hands, which they are ready to tender in security, they cannot by any means whatever obtain their accustomed credit? And then we ask them to compare the present state of matters with the past, and point out, if they can, any one period or crisis, before Sir Robert Peel was pleased of his own accord to substitute his banking system for that established by the progressive intelligence of the nation, when money could not be obtained and credit given, at fair but not exorbitant rates, for good and sufficient security?

We crave the pardon of our English readers if, in the first instance, we place this point more exclusively in a national view. It is quite true, and we are fully alive to the fact, that, thanks to the crotchet of Sir Robert Peel, England and Scotland are now placed in exactly the same monetary difficulties, and we are not without hope that, on that account, our united efforts to get rid of the nightmare which is stifling us both, may prove more effectual than if either country were struggling singly for liberation. But it must not be forgotten that with us the experiment has been recently made. We are still most vividly alive to the advantages of a system which we ourselves founded, upon principles of mutual support among all classes of the community--under which we have risen and thriven--and which has not been sacrificed on account of any alleged fault or deficiency in its working, or from any intelligible motives of public policy, but simply to gratify the whim and feed the vanity of a minister who considers himself wiser than a nation, and who never can be happy without change. A monetary crisis and a panic are new things to us; for we have hitherto been accustomed to associate public distress with low wages, low prices, and a want of demand for products. But we find ourselves now for the first time in this position, that with higher wages than are the average, more demand for labour than can well be supplied, and more orders on the hands of our manufacturers than can well be executed, we are yet brought to an absolute stand-still for want of money. We go to our bankers with security which is both unquestioned and unquestionable, and we proffer it in security for that which, according to our old ideas, we think that we are absolutely entitled to have on such terms--for money, the life-blood of a commercial community; and we are told that it cannot be given to us! And when we inquire the reasons for such refusal, we are told that the banks cannot afford to increase their circulation; since, under the new system, they are compelled to stock their own coffers with gold for every single note which they issue beyond a given point--and gold to be had must be paid for.

Had we a Pactolus among ourselves, this state of things might possibly be endurable; but, unfortunately, we are not rich in that kind of bullion, and our Mint--somewhat needlessly secured by the Treaty of Union--has since very coolly been abolished. But we have iron and other sorts of produce in abundance, and land tolerably valuable, and stocks of various kinds, upon all or any of which we were wont, in former times, to raise money without any difficulty, and so to make our capital available in the prosecution of our different works. These are now rendered absolutely and practically useless. We cannot raise money upon them, because the bankers cannot afford to buy an exorbitant amount of golden counters to remain in their cellars profitless and unseen; and thus trade is brought to a stand-still, public enterprise is checked, and the market is disappearing from our grasp.

In short, the present system under which the whole of us are groaning, and which, if not speedily abandoned, must land us in irretrievable difficulties, is neither more nor less than a most culpable interference with credit, by restricting the ordinary circulation of the country to a point far below that which is absolutely necessary for its exigencies, and by making any further issue of paper dependent upon the purchase and the hoarding of gold.

It may sound paradoxical when we say that we are almost glad when a crisis like the present has arisen, because we are convinced that nothing short of actual and painful experience will open the eyes of the community to the miserable fallacies upon which the views of their former and their present rulers are founded. Of all questions which can be agitated we are quite aware that that of the currency is the least palatable to the general reader, and the one which he most gladly escapes from in a kind of mazed bewilderment, and generally with a confession that its intricacies are beyond his comprehension. It is now full time that this state of general apathy should be ended. If we hope to preserve much longer our course of national prosperity, we must face the question manfully, and not shrink even from the array of figures which quacks in currency invariably adduce for the purpose of mystifying their audience; just as their medical brethren contrive to render themselves unintelligible by the use of a peculiar jargon. There is, after all, no great mystery in the matter, if men would take the trouble of reflecting for themselves. The laws which ought to regulate the currency of a country should have reference to the real property of that country as its basis, and not an artificial substitute like gold, which, in addition to its scarcity and its liability to fluctuation, is incomparably the dearest circulating medium which has ever yet been adopted. In the words of the authors of the Gemini Letters--a publication, by the way, which is well worthy the attention of every man who seeks to make himself master of the details of the currency question--“we must not expect to be relieved from the distress, and difficulties, and dangers which overshadow the land, so long as we are determined that the value of the produce of our lands, mines, and manufactures, and the amount of the wages of labour, shall be dependant upon the possession of a few millions more or less of gold coin. Will some stickler for a high metallic standard tell us what proportion the value of the whole of the gold generally to be had in the United Kingdom at one time, bears to the value of all the other property of the country? If this question were satisfactorily answered, it is probable that we should not much longer be

“Resolved, Like sugar-loaf turn’d upside down, To stand upon the smaller end,”

but rather be disposed to treat this particular metal in the way that we treat all other marketable commodities--namely, suffer it to find its proper level.”

It is edifying to remark the different interpretations which are given, by different supporters of the bullion representative system, of the present acknowledged distress and unparalleled tightness in the money markets of Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel--the apostle of the system, upon whose shoulders, we maintain, the primary burden of this enormous responsibility must rest--cannot but admit the fact of the gloomy deficiency; but he falls back upon the ultimate causes. These are, according to his view, over-speculation in railways, joined with a scarcity of food and an increase in the price of cotton. Granting all this to be true, what has that to do with the great question at issue? We are perfectly ready to admit that at the present moment there is an immense demand for money, and that the demand may be owing, in a great measure, to these and similar causes. We know perfectly well that if there exists a drain upon this country for gold, in order to purchase from abroad the supply of food which is deficient in consequence of the scarcity at home, the currency must necessarily be contracted, so long as a five-pound note of the Bank of England, or of any other bank, is held to be, in the eye of the law, not the representative of so much real property--be it land, or stock, or iron--but the eidolon or shadow of five golden coins of a certain weight and fineness, which cannot escape from the empire without annihilating the existence of the subsidiary paper. What we complain of in effect is this, that the whole enormous property of the three kingdoms should be represented merely by the insignificant and insufficient issue of thirty-two millions in bank-notes, and that the whole remainder of the currency is entirely metallic. For although there may certainly at times be a larger amount of paper in circulation, that paper, beyond the thirty-two millions, must be represented by bullion in the bank, and if the latter be withdrawn, the representative issue must be recalled. So that, by a large drain of gold, we may be reduced, and are at this moment becoming so, to so contracted a circulation, that trade must necessarily stand still for the sheer want of a common representative of property.

Why, and on what principles, the amount of our paper circulation was fixed at so low a point, we are utterly unable to conceive, unless it was for the purpose of compelling a large portion of our trading capital to remain fruitless and withdrawn from use in the form of unprofitable gold. Thirty-two millions, even in ordinary times, is not above one-half of what is required for the needful circulation of the country. In 1810 the currency of the paper for the three kingdoms was not less than sixty millions; and during the thirty-seven years which have elapsed since that time, not only has our population increased at an enormous ratio, but our trade and enterprise augmented in a more than corresponding degree. The tendency, however, of our improved system of banking has been to reduce the circulation within the lowest possible limit; but that limit was necessarily variable, and adjusted itself to meet the occurring contingencies of the country. Now it is fixed by the legislature at a point so low, that we are absolutely dependent upon the amount of gold which we can retain in the country, for the means of commercial interchange. We are obliged at present, it seems, to transport a large portion of our gold to America for the purchase of food. For every sovereign which leaves our shores a note is taken out of circulation, and no means whatever are permitted to individuals or to banking companies to supply the deficiency. In ordinary times, it might be expected that the gold would again find its way to Britain; at present, however, it is absorbed and scattered for the purpose of enabling America to prosecute her aggressive war against Mexico. And of what use, we ask, to the nation at large, are some ten or twelve millions converted into specie and stored up in the vaults beneath the Bank of England? Sir Robert Peel tells us, with a smile of peculiar complacency, that the hoarding up of so much bullion is a safeguard against a panic, because it renders any run upon the banks for gold a matter of absolute impossibility. With only thirty-two millions of paper extant for the common circulation of the nation, we shrewdly suspect that any apprehensions of a run upon the banks are as visionary as the dreams of El Dorado. No one knows better than Sir Robert Peel that the paper currency of a country must be sorely depreciated indeed before any such event can take place; and surely there are many means of preventing an over-issue, without bringing us to such a pass that in every season of scarcity or of war we must be reduced to an absolute halt--which, in a commercial country like ours, is a word equivalent to the impoverishment and the ruin of thousands.

We presume that Sir Robert Peel, when he carried through the Banking Restriction Act, intended that measure to be a permanent one. We cannot suppose that he meant it merely to apply to the present situation and necessities of the country, or that it was left to be repealed and altered every session of parliament, to suit the state of the money market, and the fluctuations of the national prosperity. If so, we think it must at once become apparent to every reasonable man, that a gross and palpable absurdity was involved in the very principle of the measure. For to limit the supply of the ordinary circulation in a commercial country like ours, liable as it is to expansion and contraction, to periods of peculiar activity and of occasional serious depression, is quite as preposterous an idea as it would be to declare by statute what amount of food or what extent of water should in all time coming be used by the inhabitants of the British Islands. To interfere with the operation of credit, which is the object of Sir Robert Peel, is practically the greatest blow that can be given to the enterprise and the advancement of the country; for it just amounts to this, that not having a sufficiency of straw wherewith to manufacture our bricks, we are even denied the privilege of going out into the fields to collect the subsidiary stubble. The Pharaoh of Tamworth is a heavier taskmaster than the Egyptian. He demands our daily rate of taxes, but will neither furnish us with the material, nor permit us to gather it for ourselves.

If permanent, it is incumbent upon the supporters of the Banking Restriction Act, who are the very parties at present refusing to relax one iota of our bondage, to show that their measure is well adapted for every political contingency. That, we apprehend, would require greater hardihood, and certainly more ingenuity, than they have yet enlisted on their side. There are many things besides a scarcity or a famine which may occasion a drain of gold. That metal has a peculiar facility of finding its own level; it is liable to sudden demands, and its price is variable accordingly. Were this country to be again engaged in a European contest like the last, we should have a recurrence of the drain of 1814, when gold was at the rate of £5, 8s. per ounce, or upwards of one pound ten shillings and two-pence above its present value. No political foresight, no legislative enactment whatever, can guard us against such a state of things; and the consequence would be an entire disappearance of bullion. According to our present system, the loss of bullion would necessarily produce such a contraction as would lay the credit of the country prostrate. All our extra circulation, founded on the metallic basis, would immediately be called in; taxes could no longer be paid, and the result would be a revolution or the sponge. Are the capitalists of the kingdom, who, we were told some time ago, were the chief supporters of Sir Robert Peel, anxious that the experiment should be made? We can assure them that if it is intended to maintain the circulation of the country permanently upon its present basis, they stand in imminent danger, not only of occasional panics, but of that repudiation which in America was the consequence of a similar tampering with the banks, and the like metallic delusion. At best they must make up their minds for the recurrence of many seasons as hard and as cruel as the present; and it will be well if many of their class are not involved in the ruin which is impending at this moment over the heads of the minor traders.

But, say some of the bullionists, this measure is not intended to be permanent. It is, like all other legislative enactments, subject to modification; and we are prepared, when occasion presses, to alter it accordingly. Why, then, in the name of common sense--nay, in that of common humanity--has not the alteration been made? Is it intended that the public shall sink beneath the pressure of this law before the smallest portion of its burden shall be removed? Is it wise to delay all relief until the Gazette is full, and to keep credit suspended at the very moment when it is most urgently and clamantly required? And what kind of law, we ask, is that which in prosperous times--that is, whenever gold is abundant--confessedly puts no check whatever upon speculation, but which, at the least turn of the tide, is an absolute engine of destruction? Look at it in any view, and we maintain that a more miserable instance of legislation upon false and contracted principles was never yet invented by the brain of a political economist.

The host of pamphlets which has recently issued from the press, upon this momentous and interesting topic, sufficiently demonstrates the pressing nature of the crisis. Whatever difference of opinion may be found amongst so many writers, with regard to the intermediate basis and proper representative of property, they are almost to a man combined in denouncing the impolicy of the late restrictions. Lord Ashburton, the advocate and apologist of the Bank of England, is at one with Mr Enderby, the able opponent of the gold standard, as to this particular point. They are all agreed that the system which professes to rectify an inevitable drain of gold, by crippling the trade of the country, and forcing down the value of its property, is nothing short of absolute infatuation, and that, considered by itself, it admits of no intelligible defence. It would be well, therefore, if an effort were made, in the first instance, to get rid of the odious and absurd restrictions, or at least to substitute for the present miserable driblet, a much larger amount of paper currency, which may be based upon government securities. There is but one opinion prevalent throughout the country with regard to the present insufficiency of the currency, so long at least as the Bank is compelled by statute to deprive us of the means of fair and legitimate accommodation. Sir Robert Peel has placed the directors in this anomalous and invidious position, that they _must_ put on the screw whenever there is a prospect of adverse exchanges; and the immediate effect of that measure is a stoppage of trade, and at the same time a depression in the value of every kind of merchandise and product. Taken singly, this is an evil of the very worst description--in fact nothing worse could be expected from the most formidable combination of natural and political causes. Taken in connexion with the late tariffs, which, without securing reciprocity, have opened the home market to the competition of the foreigner, who is less taxed and cheaper fed than our own redundant population, each recurrence of it is a blow to our commercial prosperity, which if often repeated would bring us to the verge of ruin. The first measure, therefore, which ought to be taken--and we entreat the serious attention of every man who understands the currency question to this--is to emancipate the Directors of the Bank of England from their present false position, by removing the restriction of their paper issues, or at least by fixing these at a point which will enable them to supply the ordinary wants of the community, without reference to an accidental or inevitable drain of bullion, so that the internal trade and production may never be checked so long as there is a remunerative demand. A similar regulation must of course be made with regard to the country bankers; and were this done, we have very little fear indeed that any crisis at all equal to the present one could arise. But we must not be left in absolute dependence for our circulation upon the state of the harvest, or cripple labour at the very season when employment is most urgently required.

We do not say that the repeal of the Act of 1844, or the increase of the paper issues to a larger fixed point, can set the question of the currency at rest. No thinking man who has devoted his time and energies to the study of our monetary history, would be bold enough to make so rash and confident an assertion: on the contrary, we think that the time is not far distant, when the leading theories of the bullionists must be thoroughly probed, and the consideration of the expediency of a fixed gold standard most seriously and deliberately resumed. The experience of some thirty years of peace has furnished data to us which were not known to the older political economists, and we are now far better enabled to explain the phenomena of commercial fluctuation. But it would be extremely unwise at the present moment, when a palpable and tangible evil is before us, to attempt too wide a reformation, and so to peril the chance of a present amendment, on the necessity of which we are all most thoroughly agreed.

From some quarters we have heard an expression of extreme surprise that the late Premier, who cannot but be awake to the mischief which he has so wantonly caused, should have been so obstinate and inflexible in his adherence to the restrictive system. Very little consideration indeed is requisite to discover the reason. Upon this question of the currency the whole character and repute of Sir Robert Peel as a financial minister are staked, and he dare not abandon his measure of 1844, without tacitly admitting that he has committed a most serious and unpardonable blunder. Accident has intervened to postpone any actual test of the efficiency of his other measures. We do not yet know what effect the alteration of the corn laws may produce upon the welfare of the nation in an ordinary year, or whether any of the blessings so abundantly promised may be realized to the poor without a more than corresponding depression. The tariffs abroad continue still hostile and unrelaxed, and although the smaller manufacturer, artisan, and workman, are already beginning to feel the baneful effects of foreign competition in the home market, their cry is not yet loud enough to excite a large share of the popular commiseration. Two great events stand prominently forward in the aspect of the present year--the scarcity and high price of food, and the want of commercial accommodation among ourselves.

The first is the act of Providence. No human foresight, no political skill, could have prevented it, and the scourge has mercifully fallen at a time when the demand for labour has materially lessened its severity in Great Britain. But that same scarcity, by leading to an exportation of the precious metal, has been undoubtedly the means of testing the soundness of our monetary system. As the prosperity of these islands, and our wonderful ascendency in the great markets of the world, depend upon the state of our trade and our manufactures at home, it was obviously the duty of a minister, who, more than any other, professed his intimacy with commercial principles, to take care that the evil of a scarcity should not at the same time be combined with the still greater one of a monetary crisis. If gold must be paid away in order to purchase the necessary supply of food for our population--if in addition to our own wants we are compelled to ward off starvation from the thoughtless and unenterprising Irish--we were doubly bound to take care that our great staple resources, our trade and our manufactures, should not suffer from any cause over which we had the evident control. And yet, how do we stand at the present moment? No sooner does the drain of bullion begin, than the Directors of the Bank of England, placed by this odious and uncalled-for measure of Peel’s in sudden jeopardy of their charter, begin to put on the screw. The country bankers, who must take their cue from, because they are rendered entirely subordinate to the great establishment in London, are compelled to follow the example. First of all the rates of discount are raised, and then credit is peremptorily refused. This, be it remarked, is at a time when the solvency of individuals is unsuspected,--were it otherwise, the crash must have been tremendous ere now. The enormous bulk of the _real_ circulation of the country, which is represented by bills of exchange, and which never can be estimated with any thing like an approximation to its amount, is thus instantaneously checked. The Banks cannot discount--the bills become useless, and the property on which they are based, can not now command its representative. Fifty thousand pounds of silver bullion could not command five thousand pounds of money in the public market of London. The manufacturer saw his credit stopped, his bills unnegociable, but he had still to pay the weekly rate of wages, or suspend labour, as indeed in many instances has been done. And all this, because Sir Robert Peel has forced the fountain of our currency to run dry. And then comes a depreciation of the value of property, the extent of which would be almost incredible, were not every one of us, except the Capitalist and the Annuitant, aware of it by melancholy experience. According to Lord Ashburton--“It would not be easy to estimate this depreciation, extending over all merchandise, stocks, railway shares, &c.; it would probably not be overstated at FROM TEN TO TWENTY PER CENT.; but what is worse, it has paralysed this property in the hands of the possessors, rendered it unavailable towards meeting their engagements, and thus produced in many cases pecuniary sacrifices much beyond the mere depreciation of the property itself. It has further occasioned the suspension of the execution of orders from our customers in every quarter, thus distressing manufacturers, and impeding those very operations which would have corrected the tendency to an unfavourable balance of trade, and given safety to the circulation of the Bank.”

Now whatever we may think of the extreme candour of the Right Honourable Baronet, it is perhaps rather too much to expect from human nature that an individual who has been the cause of all this monstrous mischief, should stand forward at once, and manfully plead guilty to the charge. Sir Robert Peel has not yet played out his full hand of political cards; and he is perfectly well aware that after such an admission, very few persons indeed would be inclined to cut in with him for a partner. In short, were he now to acknowledge himself in the wrong, it would be at the sacrifice of his sole remaining qualification as a statesman--the _prestige_ of his financial sagacity. If he loses this, faint though the recommendation be compared with the far higher qualities of consistency and open dealing, he is indeed a bankrupt in his fame! Need we wonder then that he clings to his darling measure, with a tenacity absolutely startling when we reflect on his former degrading versatility? Need we wonder that he eagerly attempts to fasten the blame of the monetary pressure upon the railroad speculators, the Bank Directors, or any other body of men who can at all be brought into question? As to the Bank Directors, we quite agree with Lord Ashburton that it is most unfair to make them the scape-goats in this matter. Had they not been bound down by stringent statutory fetters--had they been allowed to use the common caution of every commercial dealer by measuring the amount of their accommodation by the known responsibility of their customers, there would have been no financial crisis. But Sir Robert, in his infinite wisdom, would not suffer them to retain the prerogative of thinking and rational beings. He made them mere machines for contracting the circulation, and prohibited them from supporting credit: and surely they are not blameable if they shaped their conduct according to the clear letter and distinct direction of the law. In dealing with the railway shareholders Sir Robert Peel cuts even a sorrier figure. He talks about absorption of capital and over-trading, as if these things had in reality any thing to do with an arbitrary restriction of the currency. Now we do not require to be told that there is a certain limit at which accommodation must stop; but we maintain that it is the function of the banker to decide when that limit has arrived in the case of each particular customer. If a man has embarked the whole of his available capital in undertakings which are not yet profitable, or which do not speedily promise to become so, it is unquestionably in the option of the banker at his own risk to refuse or to increase his credit. But, as matters presently stand, not only has the banker no such option, but he cannot afford the required accommodation even to parties whose capital and property are undoubted, for the very simple reason that the law, as amended by Peel, deprives him of the means of doing so. If gold goes out of the country, from whatever cause, the issues must be correspondingly contracted. And is it expected that the whole ordinary business of the country can be conducted with something like one half of its usual amount of circulation? It will not, we presume, be denied by Sir Robert Peel and his Whig financial adherents that the increase of internal railway enterprise, and the vast additional labour which it may be said to have created, require a larger amount of ordinary circulation than in the year when the Bank Restriction Act was passed. And yet, not only have no means been taken to provide for such an expansion, but when the scarcity and drain arise, and the issues are arbitrarily contracted, our candid economists, instead of acknowledging their own normal error, have the coolness to attribute the pressure to the employment of labour at home! Had it not been for that labour and the expenditure of capital among ourselves, the situation of the working classes during the past winter, when the prices of provisions were so high, would have been lamentable indeed.

However, since the currency debate in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel seems to have changed his ground a little. It is curious to remark that, in all these financial discussions, the members of the present administration appear as absolute ciphers. They hardly profess to understand the question, but give their absolute faith to the doctrines of Sir Robert, who, with some two or three of his remaining adherents, is put forward to do battle, with the Protectionists and the mercantile party. The member for Tamworth is now desirous of falling back upon his old bullionist theories; and, with the utmost gravity, has invited a serious discussion upon the following subject of debate, “What is a pound?”

The object of this question is sufficiently clear. The astute ex-minister, finding himself so vigorously assailed on all quarters, for the absolute failure of his model banking act, and being unable to defend it upon any intelligible principles, would fain rake up a point upon which the opinions of his opponents differ, and so escape from the dilemma under a cloud of contradictory theories. It is an old device, and not a very creditable one; but we trust that, on the present occasion, it may prove utterly unavailing. The question is not now of the convertibility or inconvertibility of paper; for, if it were absolutely this, there are materials enough in Sir Robert Peel’s own banking measures to refute the notions which he professes to maintain as a principle. His own currency is not altogether based upon gold. _Fourteen millions of the Bank of England’s paper is unrepresented by the precious metals_; and yet every one of these notes is an actual engagement to pay the bearer of it in gold! Notwithstanding all the arguments of the bullionists, the plain matter of fact is just this, that the Bank of England, like every other institution of the country, is substantially based upon credit, _and that it never had, at any one time, the means of liquidating its engagements by payments in specie_. The issue, therefore, of paper, as it cannot be made to depend entirely upon the amount of hoarded gold, ought to have reference simply to the absolute wants of the community--wants which are, as all experience has shown, remarkably but inevitably variable, and which must be supplied in order that trade, and manufactures, and agriculture may go on, and that our internal products may adapt themselves, with out any difficulty, to the demand.

The question as to the real nature of a pound is useless at the present time. We are not now discussing the older banking acts, but the wretched abortion of 1844, which has led to this unnatural crisis. It is, in fact, a question which ought not to be mixed up with the others, because if, as Sir Robert Peel maintains, a pound is neither more nor less than a piece of metal of a certain weight and fineness, to which he, in opposition to the practice and experience of the whole world beside, has attempted to give a fixed unvarying price. He should in the first instance be prepared to defend it as the sole basis for every kind of representative circulation. In short, if his theory be correct, no banker should be permitted to issue a note, unless he has within his coffers a “pound,”--that is, a sovereign, to redeem it. Were the bullionists consistent, such indeed would be the proper result of their arguments, and the consequence would be, that at the present moment the legal circulation of England would have been something under ten millions. We shall not pause to demonstrate the absurdity of such a position, because it carries distinctly upon its face its own triumphant refutation. It follows therefore, and is admitted, that the basis of our circulation is mixed--part of it, which fluctuates, being the representative of these precious “pounds,” and the larger portion being based on credit, or inconvertible government securities.

What is the use then of arguing about a “pound,” when our paper, if called in, could not by any possibility realise it? We do not in the slightest degree deprecate the discussion at a future time; on the contrary, we most earnestly hope that the whole subject may engage the early attention of the next Parliament, for we are thoroughly convinced that the more it is sifted, the more clear and palpable will become the fallacies of our financial empiric. But we frankly avow our anxiety that he may not be permitted through such a begging of the question, to escape from his present difficulties. Let him show, if he can, that his Act of 1844 was the natural and inevitable result of his previous measures, and then we may be in a situation to condemn the whole of them together. But if it is not so, but a mere device of his own to show his admirable mechanical skill, let him defend it on its own merits. That it has acted banefully on the currency, no man can deny. It is quite clear that it has led to an enormous depreciation of property; and the very fact, that, notwithstanding the unprecedented pressure, the general credit has been maintained, is above all others the strongest proof that the pressure was utterly uncalled for. The point for immediate consideration simply resolves itself into this: are we to leave untouched upon the statute-book, a law which can at any time expose us to the inevitable hardship of a monetary crisis like the present?--Are we to continue and approve of an Act, the operation of which is, in certain circumstances, to drain dry the fountain of our currency, and that at the very time when an expansion of the currency is required? We do not want to hear from Sir Robert Peel, any more than from an itinerant lecturer, his definition of the nature of a “pound.” What we want is a fair current representative for our property, without an adequate supply of which, that property becomes stationary and is depreciated. The depreciation of the last few months has, upon the most moderate calculation, swallowed up at least two years of the surplus capital of the country, and yet we are told that such a state of things is not only necessary but wholesome! We are quite aware that it is in vain to look for any remedy at the hands of the Whigs. They are at present in a state of most hopeless bewilderment on the subject; trusting in the first instance to Sir Robert Peel, and in the next to the chapter of accidents. A good harvest they think will be sufficient to remove all immediate difficulty; prices will again revive, and the monetary distress be forgotten. We pray most earnestly that the first part of their anticipations may prove correct, but we shall not on that account relax in our exertions to overturn a system which may at any moment expose us to the recurrence of a similar calamity.

With very few exceptions the whole of the public press is with us, and we can hardly believe that the intelligence of the nation is not adequate to work out its own relief. In fact, out of the House of Commons there is hardly a single man who does not reprobate the continual tampering with the currency, which, next to his marvellous power of tergiversation, is the leading characteristic of Peel: nor would his measure of 1844 have been carried but for his confident puffing of the merits of his own machinery, and the almost universal belief in his talents as a financial minister. The bankers, and all those--who were familiar with monetary matters, and who, from long experience, were gifted with foresight and sagacity, not only entertained but expressed the most serious doubts as to the permanent working of the act. But all warning was rejected with scorn by our political dictator, who was resolved to have his own way; and at the present moment we are reaping the delectable harvest of our confidence.

We have already spoken, quite fully enough, of the manner in which the unanimous remonstrance of the Scottish bankers was received. The fact that their representation was backed by the unanimous voice of the public, beseeching that they might be left alone without any legislative interference, went for nothing in the eyes of Sir Robert. He had, to say the truth, too much power, and he never was chary in abusing it. He dealt with Scotland as if she were an insignificant colony, too ignorant to regulate her own monetary affairs, and too weak to resist any show of forcible aggression. In the plenitude of his rashness, however, he displayed the same disregard to public opinion in regulating the currency of England; and we shall now proceed to detail a very few of the several warnings which he has received.

In 1844 the following document was laid before him; and we surely do not exaggerate its importance when we say, that it proceeded from a body of men whose opinions, upon monetary subjects, were entitled to be listened to with the utmost respect and deference:--“We, the undersigned bankers of London, are induced, by the importance of the measure and our interest in its success, to address you upon the subject of the Bank Charter Bill, now before parliament. We were led to believe, when the measure was first brought forward, and we feel confident it was generally understood throughout the country, that although it was the intention of her Majesty’s government that the paper Circulation of the Bank of England, in their issue department, should be limited to an amount not exceeding £14,000,000, upon securities, yet, that in the event of any particular crisis arising, a power was to be reserved by the bill enabling the Bank of England, with the consent of the first Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Master of the Mint, to extend their issue upon securities beyond that amount. It is with considerable surprise that we find that the bill now before the House of Commons does not contain any provision for an extension of the issue beyond £14,000,000, upon securities, excepting under the special circumstances named in the fifth clause of the bill now before parliament. We are apprehensive that the absolute limitation of the issue to £14,000,000, without any power of expansion reserved, whether that amount be in itself a proper amount or not, will create a general feeling of uneasiness throughout the country, and, by preventing the satisfactory reception of the measure, will deprive the scheme of many of the advantages it possesses, and interfere with its success. We respectfully submit that the effect of such an absolute limitation _will be to restrict the business of the country by leading to a general withdrawal of legitimate accommodation_, unless some power be reserved by the bill for extending the issue with the sanction of the authorities above alluded to in cases of emergency, to be made apparent to such authorities.”

This memorial, to which were adhibited the signatures of every eminent banking firm in London, was treated by Sir Robert Peel with the most calm and imperturbable indifference. The warning and the danger so distinctly described and foretold had no effect in altering the resolution of the intrepid baronet. He had made up his mind to place the country permanently in commercial fetters, and no representation of the consequences would cause him to swerve from his purpose. It would have been well if at that time he had reflected with a little respect upon the opinions entertained and expressed by his own venerated father--a man of that sound sagacity and peculiar clearness of conception which are incomparably more valuable than talents of an adroit and plausible description. We wish that those few of his old supporters and adherents who are in the daily habit of diluting the monetary notions of their idol, would refer to the views which were enunciated by the elder Peel in his remarkable letter of 1826, addressed to the members of both houses of parliament. It is surely not unfair to recall the words of the father as powerful evidence against the destructive theories of the son.

Sir Robert Peel, senior, writes thus:--"In the enlarged scale of business carried on by this country, embracing a great variety of pursuits, a reliance on a metallic circulation alone ever did, and ever will fail us. Gold, though in itself massy, often disappears in consequence of war or speculation--nay, the breath of rumour itself is sufficient to disperse it. Our domestic concerns are interrupted, and confidence lost, for want of an ample and approved medium of traffic.

"I am no friend to an unrestrained issue of paper money, and saw with concern, in the absence of a due quantity of specie, bills admitted into circulation issued by persons of respectability, possessing property, but evidently unable to meet a sudden and large demand upon them. More than two years ago, I mentioned to a friend, high in his Majesty’s councils, my fears of the mischief likely to ensue if the practice were not discontinued; accompanied with a suggestion to confine future issues of paper money or tokens to the Bank of England and other competent bodies of men, _who would give security in land, the public funds, canals, buildings, or other tangible property_, amounting at least to one-half of the value of their bills or tokens in circulation. My proposition was not favoured with any notice; yet, had it been adopted, I am of opinion that most of the panic and distress now so severely felt in the nation would have been avoided. If such an improvement in the banking system could be made available, gold would become less requisite, and the country be supplied with a stationary medium of exchange originating with ourselves.

"The present panic and distress in the country have been declared by high authority to proceed from ‘overtrading’ and ‘wild speculation.’ Infant nations and establishments are liable to miscarry from want of experience and solidity. TRADING and SPECULATION, being natives of this island, and parents of our wealth and independence, are surely exempt from such an imputation. The same authority has declared, that ‘gold and paper money are incompatible with each other, and cannot exist together.’ _The population and trade of the empire having been much increased, a proportionate increase in the medium of circulation is called for_; and when gold is found insufficient, recourse must be had to paper, which if improved on the principle already suggested, the two substances would be found in the same pocket without disunion.

“Anxious to see our situation ameliorated, I trust the currency may be mended without changing or impairing the national commercial character--which measure, if resorted to, would resemble the policy of diverting from its course a powerful river that had long given fertility and happiness to a large district, merely because, from excessive rains, it had sometimes exceeded its natural limits, and produced partial injury.”

A sounder and a clearer view of the sole legitimate control which government is entitled, for security of the public, to exercise over the issues of the bankers, cannot be found than this. The elder baronet was fully alive to the gross absurdity of the bullionists who literally make toys of their coin. He recognised to its fullest extent the salutary principle that REAL PROPERTY is, after all, the only proper basis of circulation: and he would have laughed to scorn the idea of an arbitrary restricted issue, as the certain means of inflicting a paralytic stroke upon the energies and the enterprise of the nation. The total neglect of this view is the capital error of the son. He depreciates the value of real property, by depriving its possessor of the power to command at any time its cheap and commodious representative; and he forces us, under the most adverse circumstances to hunt for gold, and not improbably to humiliate ourselves in time of need, by an application to the hoarding Russian.

We entreat the public attention to the fact, that the banking system and mode of circulation suggested by the elder Sir Robert Peel, is in fact precisely that which was followed out by the Scottish banks, without failure, without complaint, and with incalculable advantage to the country, before the late premier commenced his wanton interference with our institutions. Heaven only knows what amount of suffering we must undergo until the public mind is thoroughly roused to the evils which have resulted from a weak and imbecile confidence in the nostrums of a theoretical minister, and until the money trade is freed from its present most odious restrictions. But we cannot, and we think we ought not, to conceal our conviction that the present monetary crisis is directly owing to the Restriction Act, and that the whole empire, and Scotland in particular, has reason to curse the hour when Sir Robert Peel thought fit to embark on his financial crusade.

We are glad to see such men as Mr Baring and Mr Newdegate protesting in the lower House, against the iniquity of the present system, and exposing its operations in detail. It is in vain that the Chancellor of the Exchequer--whose deference to the opinions of Sir Robert Peel is so ludicrously displayed--attempts to raise his voice in defence of restriction, and to attribute to other causes the deficiency which he cannot deny. Even Peel himself, as we have already remarked, is fain to blink the question, and to escape from the attacks of his antagonists, by the stale artifice of confounding and contrasting their opinions. The memorable debate in the House of Commons on the 10th of May, has, if we are not widely mistaken, established a principle which must lead to important party results; and we would earnestly beseech those who have the welfare of their country at heart, to make this matter of the currency a leading consideration in the use of their electoral franchise.

We have already shown the manner in which Sir Robert Peel was pleased to treat the respectful remonstrance of the English bankers, and the total variance of his financial views from those which were entertained by his excellent and honoured parent. We now take leave to draw the attention of our readers to a rather remarkable passage in Mr Alison’s late pamphlet, entitled “_England in 1815 and 1845_.”

We need hardly state our reasons for declining to criticise that work. We agree entirely with the views entertained by that eminent writer; and we should be happy indeed, could we state our own arguments with a force and a precision at all commensurate with his. Sir Robert Peel, however, in the course of the year 1845, thought proper to make this pamphlet the subject of his remarks, and concluded, _more suo_, with a sneer at Mr Alison, which, apart from its propriety, does not strike us as particularly clever. The point at issue was rather a trivial one; for Sir Robert, as usual, did not apply himself to the main body of the argument: he neither impeached the facts nor the conclusions of Mr Alison, but fastened upon an incidental point of no great value or importance. The attack, however, had this good effect, that it elicited a reply from Mr Alison, in which he points out so distinctly the results of the restrictive measure, that we cannot do better than transfer an extract from his Postscript to our pages. It is proper to observe, that this Postscript was published _two years ago_, and we leave the public to judge of the accuracy of M. Alison’s observations:--

“Whoever,” says he, referring to the Banking Act of the preceding year--"whoever considers these provisions with attention, will see that they practically introduce two things: 1st, A limitation of the issue of Bank of England notes to £14,000,000 on securities, with the addition of the specie and bullion transferred to the issue department:--2d, A limitation of any further issue to the amount of such securities, bullion and specie. It is the avowed object of the Act to base the circulation of the bank on these three things. And the opinion of its supporters has been repeatedly expressed that they constitute the only safe foundation of banking operations. If, therefore, the specie is drawn out by the holders of notes who are declared entitled by the Act to have their notes paid at £3, 17s. 10½d. an ounce of gold, it follows, of course, that the notes in circulation must be diminished in the same proportion. They cannot issue notes beyond the £14,000,000, _except in exchange for specie or bullion_--the most effectual of all ways for limiting the issue to their amount.

"_Now, suppose a bad harvest, such as we have narrowly escaped, occurs, when undertakings of a gigantic nature are on foot, and a large quantity of specie is drawn from the bank to purchase foreign grain or other subsistence, what, under the existing law, must be the consequence?_ Must it not be that the paper circulation of the Bank of England and of course of every other bank, will be simultaneously and rapidly contracted? Their own notes pour in to be exchanged for specie to buy foreign grain, or make the necessary remittances to foreign undertakings. They cannot issue new ones beyond the £14,000,000, except in exchange for specie or bullion, which is the very thing they are every day losing, and which is bought up in all parts of the country for foreign exportation. The result is inevitable, that their notes must be called in as rapidly as the sovereigns go out. The screw must be put on; the circulation must, at all hazards, be contracted. If £10,000,000 of sovereigns are _drawn out_ to buy foreign grain, or to meet a demand for gold in foreign states, £10,000,000 worth of notes must be _drawn in_ to equalise the paper with the stock of gold and silver above the £14,000,000 authorised to be issued on paper securities. _The circulation will thus be diminished by £20,000,000, or nearly a third of its amount_, and that at the very time when the public interests most loudly call for its extension.

“That may occur, too, at a time when speculations the most weighty are on foot, and the currency previously in circulation is most required for the wants of the community! The evil will not thereby be doubled: it will be quadrupled. Like all mischievous panics, its effects will go on as the squares. Is it possible to contemplate such a state of things without the most serious apprehensions: without deep regret that it should be established and perpetuated by acts of parliament? Does it not annul the best effects of a paper currency, that of having an elastic quality which causes it to expand when the metallic currency is contracted, and so obviate the ruinous and lasting effects of such temporary diminution on general credit? Is it surprising, when such is the law, that the mercantile classes watch the sky; that rain for a month in autumn gives a serious shock to credit, and that stock of all kinds rises or falls with the changes of the barometer? The Banker’s Act of 1844 should be styled--‘An Act for the more effectual transferring of panics from agriculture to commerce, and for perpetuating commercial catastrophes in Great Britain.’”

When we compare the events predicted in this remarkable passage with those which have actually taken place--when we reflect that a bad harvest _has_ occurred, that our gold _has_ been drained, our paper circulation contracted, and the screw put on--we think there are few commercial men in the country who will not agree with us in wishing that Sir Robert Peel had really accepted Mr Alison “as the philosopher who is to instruct us on the currency.” For, most assuredly, there is no kind of philosophy which we can discover in the scheme that is now being tested at the expense of the merchants and manufacturers of the three kingdoms; unless it should be held philosophic that the whole commercial machinery of the country shall be exposed to annual dislocation, and that credit shall hereafter be liable to the present alarming point of contraction. Parliament, as we understand, is about to separate, without doing any thing whatever to remedy this monster grievance. Let the Whigs look to it. They are now to all intents and purposes the aiders and abettors of Sir Robert Peel. They hang upon his words, adopt his principles, and applaud his maxims to the skies. They hear from every quarter of the country the cry of unparalleled distress. An evil much greater than the scarcity is pressing upon the industrious classes, interfering with labour, checking trade, and depreciating the value of every kind of property. Manchester has been nearly at a stand-still, not from want of orders but from absolute want of accommodation; and yet the present ministry have neither the courage nor the capacity to step forward and afford that relief which is in their power, and which the nation is demanding at their hands. If, during the recess, and before a new parliament shall meet, the present lamentable state of matters is to continue, we say deliberately that no British ministry ever exposed themselves to such a frightful load of responsibility. Let them share it with their new ally and master. It may be that he intends, at some future time, to make a second push for popularity by throwing them overboard, and repealing his own most mischievous statute. But we trust that the electors throughout the country will take care that the new representative body shall not be constructed of the same malleable materials as its predecessor, and that no more experiments, involving the national prosperity and fortunes, shall be permitted, for the mere sake of gratifying the caprice and augmenting the vanity of an individual who has already brought the whole of us so close upon the verge of ruin.

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _History of the Conquest of Peru; with a Preliminary View of the Civilisation of the Incas._ By WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. London: 1847.

[2] El Kebir, or the Great, is a term by which Mohammed Ali is usually designated among the fellahs of Egypt, to distinguish him from the mob of Pashas and the crowds of Mohammed Alis. Napoleon was called also El Kebir, as the greatest among the Ferenk dogs of the West.

[3] _The Life of Jean Paul Frederick Richter._ London: Chapman, 1845.

[4] _Allemagne._ English translation. London: 1813. Vol. ii. p. 339.

[5] A work on the Immortality of the Soul--a favourite theme with Richter.

[6] “Unitarian,” in the Political Dictionary of South America, is opposed to “Federal.” Rosas pretends to govern on “Federal” principles--that is, the separate legislative independence of each province of the “Confederation;” but, in fact, he has made himself a Unitarian, since he _unites_ in himself (by “extraordinary powers,” given to him only for a season, but retained ever since) a supremacy over the other provinces, and over the law and constitution.

[7] Maza, the president of the Sala of Representatives, and a high officer in one of the courts of justice, was murdered in (or close to) the senate house; his son was murdered the same evening; and no judicial inquiries ever took place in consequence. Why?--Because, of course, it was done by authority.

[8] Dollars in Buenos Ayres mean small notes manufactured in London!! they used to be made payable at a national bank, in metallic dollars, and then they represented a silver dollar. This bank has been abolished, thanks to the “Great Restorer of Laws,” and these paper dollars now vary from 1½d. to 4d. The arrival or departure of a vessel of war, with important despatches, will, in one day, cause a doubloon (about £3, 8s.) to be worth, say three hundred dollars, and next day worth four hundred, much to the embarrassment of trade--metallic dollars not being current money.

[9] “Let the Federals live--let the savage, dirty, ruthless Unitarians die!”--or, Up with the Federals--down with the----Unitarians!

[10] Ladies in South America are more passive to parental authority, than in England, in respect to the momentous question of selecting a husband.

[11] _A History of the Royal Navy from the Earliest Times to the French Revolution._ By Sir NICHOLAS HARRIS NICOLAS, G.C.M.G.

[12] _Maritime and Inland Discovery_, Vol. i. p. 230.

[13] If Sir H. Nicolas has no other authority for this fact of its being extinguished by vinegar than the extract which he afterwards gives from Vinesauf,--it does not stand on a very secure basis. “This fire, with a deadly stench and livid flames, _consumes flint and iron_! and unquenchable by water, can only be extinguished by sand or _vinegar_.” The story about the vinegar comes, we see, in very suspicious company.

[14] _Hallam’s Middle Ages_, vol. iii. p. 397.

[Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious printer errors corrected silently.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]