CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH I PLAY THE SPY.

The room to which Bedford conducted me I hold to be the very pleasantest chamber in all the mansion of Shrublands. To lie on that comfortable, cool bachelor’s bed there, and see the birds hopping about on the lawn; to peep out of the French window at early morning, inhale the sweet air, mark the dewy bloom on the grass, listen to the little warblers performing their chorus, step forth in your dressing-gown and slippers, pick a strawberry from the bed, or an apricot in its season; blow one, two, three, just half-a-dozen puffs of a cigarette, hear the venerable towers of Putney toll the hour of six (three hours from breakfast, by consequence), and pop back into bed again with a favourite novel, or review, to set you off (you see I am not malicious, or I could easily insert here the name of some twaddler against whom I have a grudgekin): to pop back into bed again, I say, with a book which sets you off into that dear invaluable second sleep, by which health, spirits, appetite are so prodigiously improved:—all these I hold to be most cheerful and harmless pleasures, and have partaken of them often at Shrublands with a grateful heart. That heart may have had its griefs, but is yet susceptible of enjoyment and consolation. That bosom may have been lacerated, but is not therefore and henceforward a stranger to comfort. After a certain affair in Dublin—nay, very soon after, three months after—I recollect remarking to myself: “Well, thank my stars, I still have a relish for 34 claret.” Once at Shrublands I heard steps pacing overhead at night, and the feeble but continued wail of an infant. I wakened from my sleep, was sulky, but turned and slept again. Biddlecombe the barrister I knew was the occupant of the upper chamber. He came down the next morning looking wretchedly yellow about the cheeks, and livid round the eyes. His teething infant had kept him on the march all night, and Mrs. Biddlecombe, I am told, scolds him frightfully besides. He munched a shred of toast, and was off by the omnibus to chambers. I chipped a second egg; I may have tried one or two other nice little things on the table (Strasbourg pâté I know I never can resist, and am convinced it is perfectly wholesome). I could see my own sweet face in the mirror opposite, and my gills were as rosy as any broiled salmon. “Well—well!” I thought, as the barrister disappeared on the roof of the coach, “he has _domus_ and _placens uxor_—but is she _placens_? _Placetne_ to walk about all night with a roaring baby? Is it pleasing to go to bed after a long hard day’s work, and have your wife nagnagging you because she has not been invited to the Lady Chancelloress’s _soirée_, or what not? Suppose the Glorvina whom you loved so had been yours? Her eyebrows looked as if they could scowl; her eyes as if they could flash with anger. Remember what a slap she gave the little knife-boy for upsetting the butter-boat over her tabinet. Suppose _parvulus aulâ_, a little Batchelor, your son, who had the toothache all night in your bedroom?” These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind as I helped myself to the comfortable meal before me. “I say, what a lot of muffins you’re eating!” cried innocent Master Lovel. Now the married, the wealthy, the prosperous Biddlecombe only took his wretched scrap of dry toast. “Aha!” you say, “this man is consoling himself after his misfortune.” O churl! and do you grudge me consolation? “Thank you, dear Miss Prior. Another cup, and plenty of cream, if you please.” Of course, Lady Baker was not at table when I said, “Dear Miss Prior,” at breakfast. Before her ladyship I was as mum as a mouse. Elizabeth found occasion to whisper to me during the day in her demure way: “This is a very rare occasion. Lady B. never allows me to breakfast alone with Mr. Lovel, but has taken her extra nap, I suppose, because you and Mr. and Mrs. Biddlecombe were here.”

Now it may be that one of the double doors of the room which I inhabited was occasionally open, and that Mr. Batchelor’s eyes and ears are uncommonly quick, and note a number of things which less observant persons would never regard or discover; but out of this room, which I occupied for some few days, now and subsequently, I looked out as from a little ambush upon the proceedings of the house, and got a queer little insight into the history and characters of the personages round about me. The two grandmothers of Lovel’s children were domineering over that easy gentleman, as women—not grandmothers merely, but sisters, wives, aunts, daughters, when the chance is given them—will domineer. Ah! Glorvina, what a grey mare you might have become had you chosen Mr. Batchelor for your consort! (But this I only remark with a parenthetic sigh.) The two children had taken each the side of a grandmamma, and whilst Master Pop was declared by his maternal grandmother to be a Baker all over, and taught to despise sugar-baking and trade, little Cecilia was Mrs. Bonnington’s favourite, repeated Watts’s hymns with fervent precocity, declared that she would marry none but a clergyman; preached infantine sermons to her brother and maid about worldliness; and somewhat wearied me, if the truth must be told, by the intense self-respect with which she regarded her own virtues. The old ladies had that love for each other, which one may imagine that their relative positions would engender. Over the bleeding and helpless bodies of Lovel and his worthy and kind stepfather, Mr. Bonnington, they skirmished, and fired shots at each other. Lady B. would give hints about second marriages, and second families, and so forth, which of course made Mrs. Bonnington wince. Mrs. B. had the better of Lady Baker, in consequence of the latter’s notorious pecuniary irregularities. _She_ had never had recourse to her son’s purse, she could thank Heaven. She was not afraid of meeting any tradesman in Putney or London: she had never been ordered out of the house in the late Cecilia’s lifetime: _she_ could go to Boulogne and enjoy the _fresh air_ there. This was the terrific whip she had over Baker. Lady B., I regret to say, in consequence of the failure of remittances, had been locked up in prison, just at a time when she was in a state of violent quarrel with her late daughter, and good Mr. Bonnington had helped her out of durance. How did I know this? Bedford, Lovel’s factotum, told me: and how the old ladies were fighting like two cats.

There was one point on which the two ladies agreed. A very wealthy widower, young still, good-looking and good-tempered, we know can sometimes find a dear woman to console his loneliness, and protect his motherless children. From the neighbouring Heath, from Wimbledon, Roehampton, Barnes, Mortlake, Richmond, Esher, Walton, Windsor, nay, Reading, Bath, Exeter, and Penzance itself, or from any other quarter of Britain, over which your fancy may please to travel, families would have come ready with dear young girls to take charge of that man’s future happiness: but it is a fact that these two dragons kept all women off from their ward. An unmarried woman, with decent good looks, was scarce ever allowed to enter Shrublands gate. If such an one appeared, Lovel’s two mothers sallied out, and crunched her hapless bones. Once or twice he dared to dine with his neighbours, but the ladies led him such a life that the poor creature gave up the practice, and faintly announced his preference for home. “My dear Batch,” says he, “what do I care for the dinners of the people round about? Has any one of them got a better cook or better wine than mine? When I come home from business, it is an intolerable nuisance to have to dress and go out seven or eight miles to cold _entrées_, and loaded claret, and sweet port. I can’t stand it, sir. I _won’t_ stand it” (and he stamps his foot in a resolute manner). “Give me an easy life, a wine-merchant I can trust, and my own friends, by my own fireside. Shall we have some more? We can manage another bottle between us three, Mr. Bonnington?”

“Well,” says Mr. Bonnington, winking at the ruby goblet, “I am sure I have no objection, Frederick, to another bo——”

“Coffee is served, sir,” cries Bedford, entering.

“Well—well, perhaps we have had enough,” says worthy Bonnington.

“We _have_ had enough; we all drink too much,” says Lovel, briskly. “Come into coffee?”

We go to the drawing-room. Fred and I, and the two ladies, sit down to a rubber, whilst Miss Prior plays a piece of Beethoven to a slight warbling accompaniment from Mr. Bonnington’s handsome nose, who has fallen asleep over the newspaper. During our play, Bessy glides out of the room—a grey shadow. Bonnington wakens up when the tray is brought in. Lady Baker likes that good old custom: it was always the fashion at the Castle, and she takes a good glass of negus too; and so do we all; and the conversation is pretty merry, and Fred Lovel hopes I shall sleep better to-night, and is very facetious about poor Biddlecombe, and the way in which that eminent Q.C. is henpecked by his wife.

From my bachelor’s room, then, on the ground floor; or from my solitary walks in the garden, whence I could oversee many things in the house; or from Bedford’s communications to me, which were very friendly, curious, and unreserved; or from my own observation, which I promise you can see as far into the mill-stones of life as most folks’, I grew to find the mysteries of Shrublands no longer mysterious to me; and like another _Diable Boiteux_, had the roofs of a pretty number of the Shrublands rooms taken off for me.

For instance, on that very first day of my stay, whilst the family were attiring themselves for dinner, I chanced to find two secret cupboards of the house unlocked, and the contents unveiled to me. Pinhorn, the children’s maid, a giddy little flirting thing in a pink ribbon, brought some articles of the toilette into my worship’s apartment, and as she retired did not shut the door behind her. I might have thought that pert little head had never been made to ache by any care; but ah! black care sits behind the horseman, as Horace remarks, and not only behind the horseman, but behind the footman; and not only on the footman, but on the buxom shoulders of the lady’s maid. So with Pinhorn. You surely have remarked respecting domestic servants that they address you in a tone utterly affected and unnatural—adopting, when they are amongst each other, voices and gestures entirely different to those which their employers see and hear. Now, this little Pinhorn, in her occasional intercourse with your humble servant, had a brisk, quick, fluttering toss of the head, and a frisky manner, no doubt capable of charming some persons. As for me, ancillary allurements have, I own, had but small temptations. If Venus brought me a bedroom candle, and a jug of hot-water—I should give her sixpence, and no more. Having, you see, given my all to one wom—— Psha! never mind _that_ old story.—Well, I daresay this little creature may have been a flirt, but I took no more notice of her than if she had been a coal-scuttle.

Now, suppose she _was_ a flirt. Suppose, under a mask of levity, she hid a profound sorrow. Do you suppose she was the first woman who ever has done so? Do you suppose because she has fifteen pounds a year, her tea, sugar, and beer, and told fibs to her masters and mistresses, she had not a heart? She went out of the room, absolutely coaxing and leering at me as she departed, with a great counterpane over her arm; but in the next apartment I heard her voice quite changed, and another changed voice too—though not so much altered—interrogating her. My friend Dick Bedford’s voice, in addressing those whom Fortune had pleased to make his superiors, was gruff and brief. He seemed to be anxious to deliver himself of his speech to you as quickly as possible; and his tone always seemed to hint, “There—there is my message, and I have delivered it; but you know perfectly well that I am as good as you.” And so he was, and so I always admitted: so even the trembling, believing, flustering, suspicious Lady Baker herself admitted, when she came into communication with this man. I have thought of this little Dick as of Swift at Sheen hard by, with Sir William Temple: or Spartacus when he was as yet the servant of the fortunate Roman gentleman who owned him. Now if Dick was intelligent, obedient, useful, only not rebellious, with his superiors, I should fancy that amongst his equals he was by no means pleasant company, and that most of them hated him for his arrogance, his honesty, and his scorn of them all.

But women do not always hate a man for scorning and despising them. Women do not revolt at the rudeness and arrogance of us their natural superiors. Women, if properly trained, come down to heel at the master’s bidding, and lick the hand that has been often raised to hit them. I do not say the brave little Dick Bedford ever raised an actual hand to this poor serving girl, but his tongue whipped her, his behaviour trampled on her, and she cried, and came to him whenever he lifted a finger. Psha! Don’t tell _me_. If you want a quiet, contented, orderly home, and things comfortable about you, that is the way you must manage your women.

Well, Bedford happens to be in the next room. It is the morning-room at Shrublands. You enter the dining-room from it, and they are in the habit of laying out the dessert there, before taking it in for dinner. Bedford is laying out his dessert as Pinhorn enters from my chamber, and he begins upon her with a sarcastic sort of grunt, and a “Ho! suppose you’ve been making up to B., have you?”

“Oh, Mr. Bedford, _you_ know very well who it is I cares for!” she says, with a sigh.

“Bother!” Mr. B. remarks.

“Well, Richard then!” (here she weeps.)

“Leave go my ’and!—leave go my a-hand, I say!” (What _could_ she have been doing to cause this exclamation?)

“Oh, Richard, it’s not your ’_and_ I want—it’s your ah-ah-art, Richard!”

“Mary Pinhorn,” exclaims the other, “what’s the use of going on with this game? You know we couldn’t be a-happy together—you know your ideers ain’t no good, Mary. It ain’t your fault. _I_ don’t blame you for it, my dear. Some people are born clever, some are born tall: I ain’t tall.”

“Oh, you’re tall enough for me, Richard!”

Here Richard again found occasion to cry out: “_Don’t_, I say! Suppose Baker was to come in and find you squeezing of my hand in this way? I say, some people are born with big brains, Miss Pinhorn, and some with big figures. Look at that ass Bulkeley, Lady B.’s man! He is as big as a Life-guardsman, and he has no more education, nor no more ideas, than the beef he feeds on.”

“La! Richard, whathever do you mean?”

“Pooh! How should _you_ know what I mean? Lay them books straight. Put the volumes together, stupid! and the papers, and get the table ready for nussery tea, and don’t go on there mopping your eyes and making a fool of yourself, Mary Pinhorn!”

“Oh, your heart is a stone—a stone—a stone!” cries Mary, in a burst of tears. “And I wish it was hung round my neck, and I was at the bottom of the well, and—there’s the hupstairs bell!” with which signal I suppose Mary disappeared, for I only heard a sort of grunt from Mr. Bedford; then the clatter of a dish or two, the wheeling of chairs and furniture, and then came a brief silence, which lasted until the entry of Dick’s subordinate Buttons, who laid the table for the children’s and Miss Prior’s tea.

So here was an old story told over again. Here was love unrequited, and a little passionate heart wounded and unhappy. My poor little Mary! As I am a sinner, I will give thee a crown when I go away, and not a couple of shillings, as my wont has been. Five shillings will not console thee much, but they will console thee a little. Thou wilt not imagine that I bribe thee with any privy thought of evil? Away! _Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück—ich habe—geliebt!_

At this juncture I suppose Mrs. Prior must have entered the apartment, for though I could not hear her noiseless step, her little cracked voice came pretty clearly to me with a “Good afternoon, Mr. Bedford! O dear me! what a many—many years we have been acquainted. To think of the pretty little printer’s boy who used to come to Mr. Batchelor, and see you grown such a fine man!”

_Bedford._ “How? I’m only five foot four.”

_Mrs. P._ “But such a fine figure, Bedford! You are—now indeed you are! Well, you are strong and I am weak. You are well, and I am weary and faint.”

_Bedford._ “The tea’s a-coming directly, Mrs. Prior.”

_Mrs. P._ “Could you give me a glass of water first—and perhaps a little sherry in it, please. Oh, thank you. How good it is! How it revives a poor old wretch!—And your cough, Bedford? How is your cough? I have brought you some lozenges for it—some of Sir Henry Halford’s own prescribing for my dear husband, and——”

_Bedford_ (abruptly). “I must go—never mind the cough now, Mrs. P.”

_Mrs. Prior._ “What’s here? almonds and raisins, macaroons, preserved apricots, biscuits for dessert—and—la bless the man! how you sta—artled me!”

_Bedford._ “DONT! Mrs. Prior: I beg and implore of you, keep your ’ands out of the dessert. I can’t stand it. I _must_ tell the governor if this game goes on.”

_Mrs. P._ “Ah! Mr. Bedford, it is for my poor—poor child at home: the doctor recommended her apricots. Ay, indeed, dear Bedford; he did, for her poor chest!”

_Bedford._ “And I’m blest if you haven’t been at the sherry-bottle again! Oh, Mrs. P., you drive me wild—you do. I can’t see Lovel put upon in this way. You know it’s only last week I whopped the boy for stealing the sherry, and ’twas you done it.”

_Mrs. Prior_ (passionately). “For a sick child, Bedford. What won’t a mother do for her sick child!”

_Bedford._ “Your children’s always sick. You’re always taking things for ’em. I tell you, by the laws, I won’t and mustn’t stand it, Mrs. P.”

_Mrs. Prior_ (with much spirit). “Go and tell your master, Bedford! Go and tell tales of me, sir. Go and have me dismissed out of this house. Go and have my daughter dismissed out of this house, and her poor mother brought to disgrace.”

_Bedford._ “Mrs. Prior—Mrs. Prior! you _have_ been a-taking the sherry. A glass I don’t mind: but you’ve been a-bringing that bottle again.”

_Mrs. P._ (whimpering). “It’s for Charlotte, Bedford! my poor delicate angel of a Shatty! she’s ordered it, indeed she is!”

_Bedford._ “Confound your Shatty! I can’t stand it, I mustn’t, and won’t, Mrs. P!”

Here a noise and clatter of other persons arriving interrupted the conversation between Lovel’s major-domo and the mother of the children’s governess, and I presently heard master Pop’s voice saying, “You’re going to tea with us, Mrs. Prior?”

_Mrs. P._ “Your kind dear grandmammas have asked me, dear Master Popham.”

_Pop._ “But you’d like to go to dinner best, wouldn’t you? I daresay you have doocid bad dinners at your house. Haven’t you, Mrs. Prior?”

_Cissy._ “Don’t say doocid. Its a naughty word, Popham!”

_Pop._ “I _will_ say doocid. Doo-oo-oocid! There! And I’ll say worse words too, if I please, and you hold _your_ tongue. What’s there for tea? jam for tea? strawberries for tea? muffins for tea? That’s it: strawberries and muffins for tea! And we’ll go into dessert besides: that’s prime. I say, Miss Prior?”

_Miss Prior._ “What do you say, Popham?”

_Pop._ “Shouldn’t you like to go into dessert?—there’s lots of good things there,—and have wine? Only when grandmamma tells her story about—about my grandfather and King George the what-d’ye-call-’em: King George the Fourth——”

_Cis._ “Ascended the throne 1820; died at Windsor 1830.”

_Pop._ “Bother Windsor! Well, when she tells that story, I can tell you _that_ ain’t very good fun.”

_Cis._ “And it’s rude of you to speak in that way of your grandmamma, Pop!”

_Pop._ “And you’ll hold _your_ tongue, Miss! And I shall speak as I like. And I’m a man, and I don’t want any of your stuff and nonsense. I say, Mary, give us the marmalade!”

_Cis._ “You have had plenty to eat, and boys oughtn’t to have so much.”

_Pop._ “Boys may have what they like. Boys can eat twice as much as women. There, I don’t want any more. Anybody may have the rest.”

_Mrs. Prior._ “What nice marmalade! I know some children, my dears, who——”

_Miss P._ (imploringly). “Mamma, I beseech you——”

_Mrs. P._ “I know three dear children who very—very seldom have nice marmalade and delicious cake.”

_Pop._ “I know whom you mean: you mean Augustus, and Frederick, and Fanny—your children? Well, they shall have marmalade and cake.”

_Cis._ “Oh, yes, I will give them all mine.”

_Pop._ (who speaks, I think, as if his mouth was full). “I won’t give ’em mine: but they can have another pot, you know. You have always got a basket with you; you know you have, Mrs. Prior. You had it the day you took the cold fowl.”

_Mrs. P._ “For the poor blind black man! Oh, how thankful he was to his dear young benefactors! He is a man and a brother, and to help him was most kind of you, dear Master Popham!”

_Pop._ “That black beggar my brother? He ain’t my brother!”

_Mrs. P._ “No, dears, you have both the most lovely complexions in the world.”

_Pop._ “Bother complexions! I say, Mary, another pot of marmalade.”

_Mary._ “I don’t know, Master Pop——”

_Pop._ “I _will_ have it, I say. If you don’t, I’ll smash everything, I will.”

_Cis._ “Oh, you naughty, rude boy!”

_Pop._ “Hold your tongue, stupid! I will have it, I say.”

_Mrs. P._ “Do humour him, Mary, please. And I’m sure my dear children at home will be better for it.”

_Pop._ “There’s your basket. Now put this cake in, and this bit of butter, and this sugar on the top of the butter. Hurray! hurray! Oh, what jolly fun! Here’s some cake—no, I think I’ll keep that; and, Mrs. Prior, tell Gus, and Fanny, and Fred, I sent it to ’em, and they shall never want for anything, as long as Frederick Popham Baker Lovel, Esquire, can give it them. Did Gus like my gray greatcoat that I didn’t want?”

_Miss P._ “You did not give him your new greatcoat?”

_Pop._ “It was beastly ugly, and I did give it him; and I’ll give him this if I choose. And don’t you speak to me; I’m going to school, and I ain’t going to have no governesses soon.”

_Mrs. Prior._ “Ah, dear child! what a nice coat it is; and how well my poor boy looks in it!”

_Miss Prior._ “Mother, mother! I implore you—mother!”

_Mr. Lovel enters._ “So the children at high tea! How d’ye do, Mrs. Prior? I think we shall be able to manage that little matter for your second boy, Mrs. Prior.”

_Mrs. Prior._ “Heaven bless you,—bless you, my dear, kind benefactor! Don’t prevent me, Elizabeth: I _must_ kiss his hand. There!”

And here the second bell rings, and I enter the morning-room, and can see Mrs. Prior’s great basket popped cunningly under the table-cloth. Her basket?—her _porte-manteau_, her _porte-bouteille_, her _porte-gâteau_, her _porte-pantalon_, her _porte-butin_ in general. Thus I could see that every day Mrs. Prior visited Shrublands she gleaned greedily of the harvest. Well, Boaz was rich, and this ruthless Ruth was hungry and poor.

At the welcome summons of the second bell, Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington also made their appearance; the latter in the new cap which Mrs. Prior had admired, and which she saluted with a nod of smiling recognition: “Dear madam, it _is_ lovely—I told you it was,” whispers Mrs. P., and the wearer of the blue ribbons turned her bonny, good-natured face towards the looking-glass, and I hope saw no reason to doubt Mrs. Prior’s sincerity. As for Bonnington, I could perceive that he had been taking a little nap before dinner,—a practice by which the appetite is improved, I think, and the intellect prepared for the bland prandial conversation.

“Have the children been quite good?” asks papa, of the governess.

“There are worse children, sir,” says Miss Prior, meekly.

“Make haste and have your dinner; we are coming into dessert!” cries Pop.

“You would not have us go to dine without your grandmother?” papa asks. Dine without Lady Baker, indeed! I should have liked to see him go to dinner without Lady Baker.

Pending her ladyship’s arrival, papa and Mr. Bonnington walk to the open window, and gaze on the lawn and the towers of Putney rising over the wall.

“Ah, my good Mrs. Prior,” cries Mrs. Bonnington, “those grandchildren of mine are sadly spoiled.”

“Not by _you_, dear madam,” says Mrs. Prior, with a look of commiseration. “Your dear children at home are, I am sure, perfect models of goodness. Is Master Edward well, ma’am? and Master Robert, and Master Richard, and dear, funny little Master William? Ah, what blessings those children are to you! If a certain wilful little nephew of theirs took after them!”

“The little naughty wretch!” cried Mrs. Bonnington; “do you know, Prior, my grandson Frederick—(I don’t know why they call him Popham in this house, or why he should be ashamed of his father’s name)—do you know that Popham spilt the ink over my dear husband’s bands, which he keeps in his great dictionary, and fought with my Richard, who is three years older than Popham, and actually beat his own uncle!”

“Gracious goodness!” I cried; “you don’t mean to say, ma’am, that Pop has been laying violent hands upon his venerable relative?” I feel ever so gentle a pull at my coat. Was it Miss Prior who warned me not to indulge in the sarcastic method with good Mrs. Bonnington?

“I don’t know why you call my poor child a venerable relative,” Mrs. B. remarks. “I know that Popham was very rude to him; and then Robert came to his brother, and that graceless little Popham took a stick, and my husband came out, and do you know Popham Lovel actually kicked Mr. Bonnington on the shins, and butted him like a little naughty ram; and if you think such conduct is a subject for ridicule—I _don’t_, Mr. Batchelor!”

“My dear—dear lady!” I cried, seizing her hand; for she was going to cry, and in woman’s eye the unanswerable tear always raises a deuce of a commotion in my mind. “I would not for the world say a word that should willingly vex you; and as for Popham, I give you my honour, I think nothing would do that child so much good as a good whipping.”

“He is spoiled, madam; we know by _whom_,” says Mrs. Prior. “Dear Lady Baker! how that red does become your ladyship.” In fact, Lady B. sailed in at this juncture, arrayed in ribbons of scarlet; with many brooches, bangles, and other gimcracks ornamenting her plenteous person. And now her ladyship having arrived, Bedford announced that dinner was served, and Lovel gave his mother-in-law an arm, whilst I offered mine to Mrs. Bonnington to lead her to the adjoining dining-room. And the pacable kind soul speedily made peace with me. And we ate and drank of Lovel’s best. And Lady Baker told us her celebrated anecdote of George the Fourth’s compliment to her late dear husband, Sir George, when his Majesty visited Ireland. Mrs. Prior and her basket were gone when we repaired to the drawing-room: having been hunting all day, the hungry mother had returned with her prey to her wide-mouthed birdikins. Elizabeth looked very pale and handsome, reading at her lamp. And whist and the little tray finished the second day at Shrublands.

I paced the moonlit walk alone when the family had gone to rest; and smoked my cigar under the tranquil stars. I had been some thirty hours in the house, and what a queer little drama was unfolding itself before me! What struggles and passions were going on here—what _certamina_ and _motus animorum_! Here was Lovel, this willing horse; and what a crowd of relations, what a heap of luggage had the honest fellow to carry! How that little Mrs. Prior was working, and scheming, and tacking, and flattering, and fawning, and plundering, to be sure! And that serene Elizabeth, with what consummate skill, art, and prudence, had she to act, to keep her place with two such rivals reigning over her. And Elizabeth not only kept her place, but she actually was liked by those two women! Why, Elizabeth Prior, my wonder and respect for thee increase with every hour during which I contemplate thy character! How is it that you live with those lionesses, and are not torn to pieces? What sops of flattery do you cast to them to appease them? Perhaps I do not think my Elizabeth brings up her two children very well, and, indeed, have seldom become acquainted with young people more odious. But is the fault hers, or is it Fortune’s spite? How, with these two grandmothers spoiling the children alternately, can the governess do better than she does? How has she managed to lull their natural jealousy? I will work out that intricate problem, that I will, ere many days are over. And there are other mysteries which I perceive. There is poor Mary breaking her heart for the butler. That butler, why does he connive at the rogueries of Mrs. Prior? Ha! herein lies a mystery, too; and I vow I will penetrate it ere long. So saying, I fling away the butt-end of the fragrant companion of my solitude, and enter into my room by the open French window just as Bedford walks in at the door. I had heard the voice of that worthy domestic warbling a grave melody from his pantry window as I paced the lawn. When the family goes to rest, Bedford passes a couple of hours in study in his pantry, perusing the newspapers and the new works, and forming his opinion on books and politics. Indeed I have reason to believe that the letters in the _Putney Herald_ and _Mortlake Monitor_, signed “A Voice from the Basement,” were Mr. Bedford’s composition.

“Come to see all safe for the night, sir, and the windows closed before you turn in,” Mr. Dick remarks. “Best not leave ’em open, even if you are asleep inside—catch cold—many bad people about. Remember Bromley murder!—Enter at French windows—you cry out—cut your throat—and there’s a fine paragraph for papers next morning!”

“What a good voice you have, Bedford,” I say; “I heard you warbling just now—a famous bass, on my word!”

“Always fond of music—sing when I’m cleaning my plate—learned in Old Beak Street. _She_ used to teach me,” and he points towards the upper floors.

“What a little chap you were then!—when you came for my proofs for the _Museum_,” I remark.

“I ain’t a very big one now, sir; but it ain’t the big ones that do the best work,” remarks the butler.

“I remember Miss Prior saying that you were as old as she was.”

“Hm! and I scarce came up to her—eh—elbow.” (Bedford had constantly to do battle with the aspirates. He conquered them, but you could see there was a struggle.)

“And it was Miss Prior taught you to sing?” I say, looking him full in the face.

He dropped his eyes—he could not bear my scrutiny. I knew the whole story now.

“When Mrs. Lovel died at Naples, Miss Prior brought home the children, and you acted as courier to the whole party?”

“Yes, sir,” says Bedford. “We had the carriage, and of course poor Mrs. L. was sent home by sea, and I brought home the young ones, and—and the rest of the family. I could say, _Avanti! avanti!_ to the Italian postilions, and ask for _des chevaux_ when we crossed the Halps—the Alps,—I beg your pardon, sir.”

“And you used to see the party to their rooms at the inns, and call them up in the morning, and you had a blunderbuss in the rumble to shoot the robbers?”

“Yes,” says Bedford.

“And it was a pleasant time?”

“Yes,” says Bedford, groaning, and hanging down his miserable head. “Oh, yes, it was a pleasant time.”

He turned away; he stamped his foot; he gave a sort of imprecation; he pretended to look at some books, and dust them with a napkin which he carried. I saw the matter at once. “Poor Dick!” says I.

“It’s the old—old story,” says Dick. “It’s you and the Hirish girl over again, sir. I’m only a servant, I know; but I’m a——. Confound it!” And here he stuck his fists into his eyes.

“And this is the reason you allow old Mrs. Prior to steal the sherry and the sugar?” I ask.

“How do you know that?—you remember how she prigged in Beak Street?” asks Bedford, fiercely.

“I overheard you and her just before dinner,” I said.

“You had better go and tell Lovel—have me turned out of the house. That’s the best thing that can be done,” cries Bedford again, fiercely, stamping his feet.

“It is always my custom to do as much mischief as I possibly can, Dick Bedford,” I say, with fine irony.

He seizes my hand. “No, you’re a trump—everybody knows that; beg pardon, sir; but you see I’m so—so—dash!—miserable, that I hardly know whether I’m walking on my head or my heels.”

“You haven’t succeeded in touching her heart, then, my poor Dick?” I said.

Dick shook his head. “She has no heart,” he said. “If she ever had any, that fellar in India took it away with him. She don’t care for anybody alive. She likes me as well as any one. I think she appreciates me, you see, sir; she can’t ’elp it—I’m blest if she can. She knows I am a better man than most of the chaps that come down here,—I am, if I wasn’t a servant. If I were only an apothecary—like that grinning jackass who comes here from Barnes in his gig, and wants to marry her—she’d have me. She keeps him on, and encourages him—she can do that cleverly enough. And the old dragon fancies she is fond of him. Psha! Why am I making a fool of myself?—I am only a servant. Mary’s good enough for me; _she’ll_ have me fast enough. I beg your pardon, sir; I am making a fool of myself; I ain’t the first, sir. Good-night, sir; hope you’ll sleep well.” And Dick departs to his pantry and his private cares, and I think, “Here is another victim who is writhing under the merciless arrows of the universal torturer.”

“He is a very singular person,” Miss Prior remarked to me, as, next day, I happened to be walking on Putney Heath by her side, while her young charges trotted on and quarrelled in the distance. “I wonder where the world will stop next, dear Mr. Batchelor, and how far the march of intellect will proceed! Any one so free, and easy, and cool, as this Mr. Bedford I never saw. When we were abroad with poor Mrs. Lovel, he picked up French and Italian in quite a surprising way. He takes books down from the library now: the most abstruse works—works that _I_ couldn’t pretend to read, I’m sure. Mr. Bonnington says he has taught himself history, and Horace in Latin, and algebra, and I don’t know what besides. He talked to the servants and tradespeople at Naples much better than _I_ could, I assure you.” And Elizabeth tosses up her head heavenwards, as if she would ask of yonder skies how such a man could possibly be as good as herself.

She stepped along the Heath—slim, stately, healthy, tall—her firm, neat foot treading swiftly over the grass. She wore her blue spectacles, but I think she could have looked at the sun without the glasses and without wincing. That sun was playing with her tawny, wavy ringlets, and scattering gold-dust over them.

“It is wonderful,” said I, admiring her, “how these people give themselves airs, and try to imitate their betters!”

“Most extraordinary!” says Bessy. She had not one particle of humour in all her composition. I think Dick Bedford was right; and she had no heart. Well, she had famous lungs, health, appetite, and with these one may get through life not uncomfortably.

“You and Saint Cecilia got on pretty well, Bessy?” I ask.

“Saint who?”

“The late Mrs. L.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lovel:—yes. What an odd person you are! I did not understand whom you meant,” says Elizabeth the downright.

“Not a good temper, I should think? She and Fred fought?”

“_He_ never fought.”

“I think a little bird has told me that she was not averse to the admiration of our sex?”

“I don’t speak ill of my friends, Mr. Batchelor!” replies Elizabeth the prudent.

“You must have difficult work with the two old ladies at Shrublands?”

Bessy shrugs her shoulders. “A little management is necessary in all families,” she says. “The ladies are naturally a little jealous one of the other; but they are both of them not unkind to me in the main; and I have to bear no more than other women in my situation. It was not all pleasure at Saint Boniface, Mr. Batchelor, with my uncle and aunt. I suppose all governesses have their difficulties; and I must get over mine as best I can, and be thankful for the liberal salary which your kindness procured for me, and which enables me to help my poor mother and my brothers and sisters.”

“I suppose you give all your money to her?”

“Nearly all. They must have it; poor mamma has so many mouths to feed.”

“And _notre petit cœur_, Bessy?” I ask, looking in her fresh face. “Have we replaced the Indian officer?”

Another shrug of the shoulder. “I suppose we all get over those follies, Mr. Batchelor. I remember somebody else was in a sad way too,”—and she looks askance at the victim of Glorvina. “_My_ folly is dead and buried long ago. I have to work so hard for mamma, and my brothers and sisters, that I have no time for such nonsense.”

Here a gentleman in a natty gig, with a high-trotting horse, came spanking towards us over the common, and with my profound knowledge of human nature, I saw at once that the servant by the driver’s side was a little doctor’s boy, and the gentleman himself was a neat and trim general practitioner.

He stared at me grimly, as he made a bow to Miss Bessy. I saw jealousy and suspicion in his aspect.

“Thank you, dear Mr. Drencher,” says Bessy, “for your kindness to mamma and our children. You are going to call at Shrublands? Lady Baker was indisposed this morning. She says when she can’t have Dr. Piper, there’s nobody like you.” And this artful one smiles blandly on Mr. Drencher.

“I have got the workhouse, and a case at Roehampton, and I shall be at Shrublands _about two_, Miss Prior,” says that young doctor, whom Bedford had called a grinning jackass. He laid an eager emphasis on the _two_. Go to! I know what two and two mean as well as most people, Mr. Drencher! Glances of rage, he shot at me from out his gig. The serpents of that miserable Æsculapius unwound themselves from his rod, and were gnawing at his swollen heart!

“He has a good practice, Mr. Drencher?” I ask, sly rogue as I am.

“He is very good to mamma and our children. His practice with _them_ does not profit him much,” says Bessy.

“And I suppose our walk will be over before two o’clock?” remarks that slyboots who is walking with Miss Prior.

“I hope so. Why, it is our dinner-time; and this walk on the Heath does make one so hungry!” cries the governess.

“Bessy Prior,” I said, “it is my belief that you no more want spectacles than a cat in the twilight.” To which she replied, that I was such a strange, odd man, she really could not understand me.

We were back at Shrublands at two. Of course we must not keep the children’s dinner waiting: and of course Mr. Drencher drove up at five minutes past two, with his gig-horse all in a lather. I who knew the secrets of the house was amused to see the furious glances which Bedford darted from the sideboard, or as he served the doctor with cutlets. Drencher, for his part, scowled at me. I, for my part, was easy, witty, pleasant, and I trust profoundly wicked and malicious. I bragged about my aristocratic friends to Lady Baker. I trumped her old-world stories about George the Fourth at Dublin with the latest dandified intelligence I had learned at the club. That the young doctor should be dazzled and disgusted was, I own, my wish; and I enjoyed his rage as I saw him choking with jealousy over his victuals.

But why was Lady Baker sulky with me? How came it, my fashionable stories had no effect upon that polite matron? Yesterday at dinner she had been gracious enough: and turning her back upon those poor simple Bonningtons, who knew nothing of the _beau monde_ at all, had condescended to address herself specially to me several times with an “I need not tell _you_, Mr. Batchelor, that the Duchess of Dorsetshire’s maiden name was De Bobus;” or, “You know very well that the etiquette at the Lord Lieutenant’s balls, at Dublin Castle, is for the wives of baronets to—” &c. &c.

Now whence, I say, did it arise that Lady Baker, who had been kind and familiar with me on Sunday, should on Monday turn me a shoulder as cold as that lamb which I offered to carve for the family, and which remained from yesterday’s quarter? I had thought of staying but two days at Shrublands. I generally am bored at country-houses. I was going away on the Monday morning, but Lovel, when he and I and the children and Miss Prior breakfasted together before he went to business, pressed me to stay so heartily and sincerely that I agreed, gladly enough, to remain. I could finish a scene or two of my tragedy at my leisure; besides, there were one or two little comedies going on in the house which inspired me with no little curiosity.

Lady Baker growled at me, then, during lunch-time. She addressed herself in whispers and hints to Mr. Drencher. She had in her own man Bulkeley, and bullied him. She desired to know whether she was to have the barouche or not: and when informed that it was at her ladyship’s service, said it was a great deal too cold for the open carriage, and that she would have the brougham. When she was told that Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington had impounded the brougham, she said she had no idea of people taking other people’s carriages: and when Mr. Bedford remarked that her ladyship had her choice that morning, and had chosen the barouche, she said, “I didn’t speak to you, sir; and I will thank you not to address me until you are spoken to!” She made the place so hot that I began to wish I had quitted it.

“And pray, Miss Prior, where is Captain Baker to sleep,” she asked, “now that the ground-floor room is engaged?”

Miss Prior meekly said, “Captain Baker would have the pink room.”

“The room on my landing-place, without double doors? Impossible! Clarence is always smoking. Clarence will fill the whole house with his smoke. He shall _not_ sleep in the pink room. I expected the ground-floor room for him, which—a—this gentleman persists in not vacating.” And the dear creature looked me full in the face.

“This gentleman smokes, too, and is so comfortable where he is, that he proposes to remain there,” I say, with a bland smile.

“Haspic of plovers’ eggs, sir,” says Bedford, handing a dish over my back. And he actually gave me a little dig, and growled, “Go it—give it her.”

“There is a capital inn on the Heath,” I continue, peeling one of my opal favourites. “If Captain Baker must smoke, he may have a room there.”

“Sir! my son does not live at inns,” cries Lady Baker.

“Oh, grandma! Don’t he though? And wasn’t there a row at the Star and Garter; and didn’t Pa pay uncle Clarence’s bill there, though?”

“Silence, Popham. Little boys should be seen and not heard,” says Cissy. “Shouldn’t little boys be seen and not heard, Miss Prior?”

“They shouldn’t insult their grandmothers. O my Cecilia—my Cecilia!” cries Lady Baker, lifting her hand.

“You shan’t hit me! I say, you shan’t hit me!” roars Pop, starting back, and beginning to square at his enraged ancestress. The scene was growing painful. And there was that rascal of a Bedford choking with suppressed laughter at the sideboard. Bulkeley, her ladyship’s man, stood calm as fate; but young Buttons burst out in a guffaw; on which, I assure you, Lady Baker looked as savage as Lady Macbeth.

“Am I to be insulted by my daughter’s servants?” cries Lady Baker. “I will leave the house this instant.”

“At what hour will your ladyship have the barouche?” says Bedford, with perfect gravity.

If Mr. Drencher had whipped out a lancet and bled Lady B. on the spot, he would have done her good. I shall draw the curtain over this sad—this humiliating scene. Drop, little curtain! on this absurd little act.

The National Gallery Difficulty Solved.

Just half a century ago, the pictures now in the Dulwich Gallery were offered to the Government as the commencement of a National Gallery, by Sir Francis Bourgeois, who had been a soldier, but became a painter, and was subsequently elected Royal Academician. He inherited these pictures, which Stanislaus, king of Poland, had purposed to form the nucleus of a national collection in that country. But the Government refused the proffered gift. The thoughts of England were then turned not to pictures, but in very different directions. The little four-paged broad-sheets of _The Times_ brought their morning news of the victories of Wellington in Spain and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia; of war declared against England by America; of the Prime Minister’s assassination in the House of Commons; of bread riots, when corn was not to be bought until landlords had secured their eighty shillings a quarter; of the insanity of George the Third and the regency of his unpopular son. There was no inclination in such times to think of National Galleries of Art.

After ten years of peace, with Napoleon at St. Helena, Peterloo riots suppressed, and Thistlewood hanged, George the Fourth was making his investments in Dutch paintings, Goutier cabinets and Sèvres porcelain, and the government (Sir Charles Long says), prompted by the king, induced the House of Commons, in 1824, to vote fifty-seven thousand pounds for the purchase of thirty-eight pictures collected by Mr. Angerstein, the banker. Thus began our National Collection of Pictures. These were shown to the public in a small, dingy, ill-lighted house on the south side of Pall Mall, until 1833, when it was proposed to erect a special building for them. The site chosen was in Trafalgar Square, on which had stood the “King’s Mews,” where, from the days of the Plantagenets, the royal falcons had been kept and “mewed” or moulted their feathers. In our own time, Mr. Cross’s lions and wild beasts from Exeter ’Change have been lodged there; there, also, the first exhibitions of machinery were held, and the public records were eaten by rats in these “Mews,” which were pulled down to make way for the present National Gallery.

From its first conception to the present time, no building has ever been a more lively subject for public criticism than this unlucky National Gallery. Poor Mr. Wilkins, the architect, was sorely perplexed with conditions. The building was not to intercept the view of St. Martin’s portico; it must not infringe on the barrack space in the rear; the public must have one right of way through it, and the Guards another; the old columns of Carlton House were to be used up; and true faith in architecture insisted on having porticos, dome, and cupolas; moreover, the building, by no means too large for a National Gallery, was to be shared with the Royal Academy. With such instructions, Mr. Wilkins prepared his plans and estimates. The building was to cost 50,000_l._, but no architect is to be bound by his estimate; and judging from late instances, the public got well out of this job in having to pay only 76,867_l._

The structure was scarcely occupied before it was discovered to be much too small. The National Gallery had no space to display its additional purchases and bequests, and the Royal Academy found itself obliged to close its schools of art whenever its annual exhibition was open. For these inconveniences parliaments and governments have been for nearly twenty years trying to find a remedy. In 1848, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Hume, and others, forming _one_ House of Commons Committee, “after careful deliberation, unanimously concurred in the opinion” that the present National Gallery should be enlarged and improved. In 1850, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Hume, and others, constituting _another_ Commons Committee, reported that they could not “recommend that any expenditure should be at present incurred for the purpose of increasing the accommodation of a National Gallery on the present site,” and “were not prepared to state that the preservation of the pictures and convenient access for the purpose of study and improvement of taste would not be better secured in a gallery farther removed from the smoke and dust of London.”

The result of this recommendation was to instigate architects and _dilettanti_ to bore an ungrateful public, year after year, with different solutions of the vexed question. A few specimens of them may be amusing. One suggestion was to put a third story on the top of the Greek porticos and columns of the British Museum, and invite the public to climb a hundred stairs to get to the picture gallery; another was to pull down Burlington House, which Sir William Chambers characterizes as “one of the finest pieces of architecture in Europe,” and turn out the Royal Society. The “ring” in Hyde Park, and the inner circle of the Regent’s Park, were in turn recommended as eligible sites for a picture gallery; it was proposed to convert Marlborough House and St James’s Palace into a great National Gallery; also to pull down Kensington Palace—a favourite idea with _The Times_ and “H. B.” My Lord Elcho proposed to build on the site of the Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, and the Duke of Somerset, when First Commissioner of Works, caused one plan to be prepared for appropriating a part of Kensington Gardens in the Bayswater Road, and a second for erecting a building opposite the Kensington Road. Finally, the House of Commons voted 167,000_l._, and the Prince Consort added to that sum the surplus of the Exhibition of 1851, with which was bought the land opposite and outside Hyde Park, at Kensington Gore,—a site the government had previously commenced negotiations for with the same object, and failed to secure. The House of Commons, however, rejected the plan for removing the National Gallery to this site; and the present conclusion seems to be that the pictures will remain where they are.

Is it possible to render the structure in Trafalgar Square suitable for a National Picture Gallery? And, if so, how is this desirable object to be effected? We submit, for the consideration of our readers, a very practical answer to these questions.

But first, let us take a view of the extent of the national possessions in pictures. Since the nation acquired the thirty-eight pictures of Mr. Angerstein, its possessions have increased above twenty-five fold: and they would probably have been even much larger, had suitable arrangements been made to exhibit them. To Sir George Beaumont, the Rev. Holwell Carr, Mr. Coningham, and others, the nation is indebted for many fine pictures of the older masters; whilst to Sir John Soane, Mr. Vernon, Mr. Jacob Bell, and Mr. Sheepshanks the country owes its numerous and choice selection of the works of British artists. The collection of his own paintings and drawings bequeathed by the great landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, would fill a gallery of itself; and in a few years, Chantrey’s bequest of 2,000_l._ a year to buy modern works will come into operation.

It would be a misappropriation of these artistic treasures to accumulate them all in one gallery, fatiguing the visitor with acres of painted canvas. As national possessions, it would be out of all reason that the metropolis alone should monopolize the enjoyment of them. Since the formation of the National Gallery, the State has aided in the erection of picture-galleries in Dublin and Edinburgh. Even if the principle of centralization were admitted, it would be impossible to find any centre of London equally accessible to its three millions of inhabitants. In the abstract, _the_ central spot would be Smithfield; but no one would be bold enough to say that the public would frequent that spot in greater numbers than they do Trafalgar Square.

The wise and liberal course of dealing with the national pictures would be to render them as useful as possible _to the whole of the United Kingdom_; to retain in the metropolis a selection, and to circulate the others wherever localities shall provide suitable accommodation for the reception and exhibition of pictures. It would be more useful and interesting that there should be a change of pictures in the provincial localities than fixed collections.[25] The idea of circulation is not new. The public, of its own accord, brings together exhibitions of modern pictures every year in the large towns; and choice works of the old masters, lent by their possessors, and sent from mansions in all parts of the kingdom, are every year entrusted to the managers of the British Institution in Pall Mall. There could be no real administrative difficulties in the State’s dealing with the national pictures in the same way. Of course, legislative powers to remove antiquated obstructions must be obtained, and a proper authority, directly responsible to Parliament, instead of being screened through different Boards of Trustees, would have to be created.

In the metropolis, the head-quarters for the old masters should be at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The British School might remain where it is now well displayed, at South Kensington. On the South of London, there is already the Dulwich Gallery; whilst on the north side in Finsbury or Islington, and on the east in Victoria Park, suitable suburban galleries, with accommodation for schools of Art, might be erected at a cost not exceeding 3,000_l._ each. Besides the two metropolitan galleries of Dublin and Edinburgh, excellent accommodation for exhibiting and receiving pictures is provided in connection with the Schools of Art at Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol, Wolverhampton, &c. And in all future buildings for schools of Art, towards the cost of which the State is asked to contribute, such aid will only be given upon the condition that provision is made for a suitable exhibiting room.

With these views, the first practical point is to decide what shall be done to supply the present deficiencies of the building in Trafalgar Square. Although Parliament and various administrations have often changed their minds about the locality of the National Gallery, it may be assumed that the present decision is to retain it in Trafalgar Square. Proposals have been discussed for gaining more space by turning out the Royal Academy;[26] which, from its creation, has been housed at the public expense:—not a very large contribution towards its gratuitous teaching of young artists. Last year Mr. Disraeli invited the Royal Academy to transport itself to Burlington House; but it is said that the present government have not renewed the offer of that site. If it can be shown that much better as well as increased accommodation, can be found for the National Pictures, without displacing the Royal Academy, and without necessitating the expenditure of 200,000_l._ for the purchase of ground and St. Martin’s workhouse, or incurring the cost of removing the barracks, it would seem to be a waste of public money to adopt such measures. Besides, it would not be very convenient for art-students to attend the schools of the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, nor for the public to visit its exhibitions there. Nor should the advantage to the students of their contiguity to the pictures of the old masters be overlooked.

Our proposal, therefore, is to keep both National Gallery and Royal Academy where they now are, and to demonstrate, with the aid of the ingenious constructor of the new Gallery at South Kensington—which for its lighting both by day and night may fairly challenge any other gallery in Europe—how this may be done. The reader, if sufficiently curious, may find on the votes of the House of Commons of last year, in the month of March, a notice as follows:—“22º die Martis 1859:—9. Mr. Adderley. National Gallery. Address for copies of plans and estimates for the alteration of the National Gallery, prepared by Captain Fowke, R.E., and submitted to the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education.”

Owing to a change of Ministry, or some other cause, these plans were not published, but only talked about. The _Cornhill Magazine_, in laying them before the public, invites discussion and consideration of their merits.

The defects of the present building are many, and are thus summed up by Captain Fowke: “The first object of the building ought to be the proper exhibition of pictures, but by its present arrangements the valuable top-lighted space (_the_ picture space _par excellence_) to the extent of 8,000 square feet, out of the entire area of 22,000 square feet, is thrown away upon the central hall and passages. The tinted portion on the plan (Fig. 2) shows at a glance the wasted space. The interior of the building is not worthy of the purposes to which it is applied, the entrance-hall being large and unimposing, whilst the approach to the galleries, up a dark stair enclosed between two walls, is singularly wanting in dignity. The communications from room to room are small, and unfitted for the reception of great crowds. There is no space of sufficient dimensions for the proper exhibition of the largest class of pictures. Another point, which must strike every one who has visited continental galleries, is the want of any _tribune_, or great central point for the reception of the choicest works. The absence of this gives the National Gallery the air of a mere set of rooms, which seem to require to be in some way connected with one another, and with one grand focussing point to give them the unity of a great gallery.”

PROPOSED PLAN OF THE FIRST OR PRINCIPAL FLOOR OF THE GALLERY. Fig. 1.

PRESENT PLAN OF GALLERY. Fig. 2]

The two accompanying plans of the first-floors show how the existing building may, at a comparatively small cost, be altered so as to remove the objections stated, while at the same time its accommodation will be largely increased (Figs. 1 and 2). To begin with the entrance. It will be seen from the section (Fig. 3), that the floor of the present picture galleries is 23 feet 6 inches above the foot pavement of the street. If the floor of the central hall then be _raised_ to this level, there will be sufficient height for an entrance-hall under the additional gallery; that is, keeping the floor of the entrance-hall three inches above the pavement, and allowing one foot for the thickness of the floor of the gallery above, there will be a clear height of 22 feet 3 inches for a noble entrance-hall. By removing the present external steps, the entrance from the street will be at each side under the present portico floor, the flagging of which will be replaced by a light glass and iron ceiling, so constructed as not to be seen from the square in front; the space under the portico will then form a well-lighted vestibule to the hall. The hall will be carried back into the present Royal Academy sculpture-room, from the enlarged skylight of which, and from a series of windows over the floor of the portico in front, it would be amply lighted. The apsidal end under the skylight would afford a good position for the few pieces of sculpture belonging to the National Collection. By this arrangement the visitor may at once step from a carriage across the pavement into a warm hall, instead of having to ascend a flight of steps, and in rainy weather get wet _before_ he reaches even the portico.

Four staircases, each stair eight feet wide, will lead from either side of this hall to the galleries above; of which the central one would consist of a tribune, or _salon carré_, of nobler proportions than that at the Louvre. From a deep recess at the sides of this tribune, openings would lead each way into an uninterrupted series of rooms, and by bringing the doorways of these rooms into one line, and increasing them to twelve feet in width, an effective vista the entire length of the building (450 feet) would be obtained, which might be decorated with columns and arches, as in similar openings in the galleries of the Vatican. (See Fig. 5.)

By bringing the retired portion of the wings forward to the line of their projecting front, and throwing each wing into two good rooms in line with those above named, it will then be seen that the entire top-lighted area of the building is made available, with the exception of the small spaces actually occupied by the stairs. The saving in space, in square feet, will be apparent from the following table of the floor areas of the top-lighted part of the building as it is at present, and as now proposed:—

Total Picture space Space area. top-lighted. lost.

As at present (including Royal Academy) 22,540 14,090 8,450 As proposed 23,560 22,488 1,071

From which it appears that while at present the lost space is three-fifths of that reserved for exhibition, in the proposed plan the loss would be reduced to one twenty-second part of the available space; the exhibition area being increased by more than one-half its present quantity.

In measuring the superficial contents of wall space for hanging pictures in the present and proposed galleries, the same proportion holds good. The hanging space in the present National Gallery is 10,000 square feet, which would be increased to 20,000 square feet, whilst the 10,000 square feet of the Royal Academy would be increased 10,194 square feet.

On the lower floor, the only room now available for exhibition is that in which the Turner drawings are stored away—a room containing 900 square feet of floor area; and from the unfortunate circumstance, not to say absurd arrangement of the entrance _being down a descending_ and dark stair, the public impression has been that the lower rooms were merely a superior kind of cellars. The public will recollect the dismal impression which the Vernon pictures made in these rooms.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH CENTRAL HALL. Fig. 3.

*PRESENT LEVEL OF FLOOR OF CENTRAL HALL.

REVISED ELEVATION. Fig. 4.]

By the arrangement proposed, a space of 3,300 square feet will be available for exhibiting drawings of the old masters; and these rooms will be entered at once from the entrance-hall, by an _ascending_ staircase, by which the disagreeable impression above alluded to would be avoided.

The proposed changes would also greatly benefit both the exhibitions and the schools of the Royal Academy. They would increase and improve the exhibiting space; giving five large rooms, instead of seven small ones, as at present: two large rooms being obtained by the suppression of four small ones. (See Figs. 1 and 2.) The Royal Academy, at present, has a room appropriated to sculpture, which has long been designated “the Cellar,” and in which works are deposited, rather than exhibited: the loss of such a room is almost a gain. Next, it would lose the dark little octagon room; which, after many efforts to make it a room for exhibition, has lapsed into the condition of an ante-room, containing a few prints. The other two rooms suppressed by the new plan are the two small side rooms at present appropriated to the architectural drawings and the miniatures; though they are confessedly far too small for their purpose.

The distribution of the increased space available for the exhibitions of the Royal Academy might be as follows:—The first great room at the top of the new staircase might be devoted to the sculptors; visitors would then pass through it, and examine the works of sculpture, instead of having to diverge to a “cellar,” as at present, or quitting the Exhibition without seeing the sculpture, as many do. As the entrance would be in the centre of the building, and lighted from the top, the sculpture might be arranged in two noble semicircles, forming a grand art entrance into the collections, and giving that importance to the sculpture which it deserves. The sculptors would thus at least double the number of their visitors. From this room the visitors would proceed into the next, where the space on the left might be devoted to architectural drawings, and that on the right to miniatures and water-colour paintings. These works, especially the architectural, would be appropriately placed, and the miniatures and pictures in water-colours would gain in richness by being viewed after the colourless marbles, and before the eye had become accustomed to the fuller richness of the paintings in oil. After thus greatly improving the exhibitions of sculpture, architecture, and water-colour paintings, there would still remain the same amount of exhibiting space as at present for oil pictures. Thus far the change is clearly a great gain to all the exhibitors.

The advantages that would accrue to the students of the Royal Academy have now to be considered, and are, perhaps, even still more important. It is hardly known to the world outside that in the schools of the Royal Academy almost all the rising artists of the country receive a _free_ education in art. At present, however, the schools are subject to the disadvantage of being closed during the months when the exhibition is open. This has long been deplored, equally by the students and academicians, but it was unavoidable, since the rooms used for exhibition are those also used as schools of art. By the new arrangements of the plan of the lower story, three excellent rooms may be provided which could be used _throughout the year_ without interruption: the first as an antique school, the second as a life school, the third as a painting school; and thus there would be no necessity to close these schools during nearly five months in the year. In order to give the schools the advantage of an uninterrupted north light, it would be desirable that the Royal Academy should occupy the west end of the building, and the National Gallery the east. The National Gallery would not be prejudiced in the least by this change, as all the galleries are lighted from the top. The rooms below, if used for the exhibition of the drawings of the old masters, as proposed, would be lighted quite sufficiently from windows at the side, as the best authorities prescribe a light not too glaring, since drawings are liable to fade, if exposed to too much light.

As will be seen from the elevation (Fig. 4), the alterations of the exterior of the building are of no great extent, the principal being (in addition to that already described in the wings) the removal of the central and two secondary domes, and the substitution of an attic story, carried over the central portion of the building; the general effect of which would be improved by the removal of the small secondary four-column porticos. If any one will stand in the front of the building, which is only 450 feet in length, he will be able to count no less than thirteen different fronts, none of them differing much in extent; the composition is thus broken up, the unity and mass of the building are lost, and the repose and dignity which should characterize an important public edifice are entirely wanting. By the proposed arrangement, the whole façade would be thrown into an imposing centre, with two massive wings connected with it by unbroken curtains. That impression of meanness and want of height, produced by the puny and meagre dome and insignificant cupolas, would be removed by the substitution of the attic, which would have the effect of elevating the entire mass of the building.

In the proposed alterations it is presumed that there would be no difficulty in closing up the two passages which lead from the square to Duke’s Court and to the barracks; though if it were thought desirable, one or both of these could be retained. The entrance to these passages is now effected by an ascending flight of ten steps; by simply reversing this arrangement and substituting a descending flight, the passages could be carried through the building below the floor of the present lower rooms.

The estimated cost of the entire alteration is under 34,000_l._, which has been verified by a responsible builder; but to provide for additional decorations and contingencies a sum of (say) 50,000_l._ might be allowed; and even this, to accomplish the objects proposed, would be a moderate and justifiable outlay, which the public would scarcely grudge for such results; and the Royal Academy might not object to share the expense, as they would participate in the advantages of the improvements.

These alterations and improvements, moreover, could be effected without closing the Gallery for a day.

By using the entrance under the western side portico as a temporary entrance for the public, the centre part could be finished without interfering with the National Gallery, and by moving the pictures into the portion completed (a work of a few hours) the wing might be in like manner finished, the public being then admitted through the new entrance-hall.

* * * * *

Briefly to sum up, the advantages to be gained are—

1. The whole of the top-lighted space will be utilized.

2. The lower floors will also be made available for exhibition and schools.

3. The means of access and of internal communication will be improved.

4. The picture space for the National Gallery will be doubled, without disturbing the Royal Academy.

5. The space available for exhibiting drawings, &c. will be increased about fourfold.

6. The appearance of the building both externally and internally will be improved.

7. The whole alteration can be completed within six months, and without moving a single picture out of the building, or closing the National Gallery to the public for a single day.

8. The cost of the entire work would not exceed 50,000_l._

* * * * *

Any other plan than the above will delay the settlement of this vexed question interminably, and will lead to an expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds; whereas the adoption of the present proposal, coupled with the principle of local circulation rather than metropolitan centralization, will promote a taste for art throughout the United Kingdom, and enlist the sympathies and assistance of all in the conservation and extension of a National Collection of Pictures, thus rendered accessible to the population of the most remote districts.

FOOTNOTES

[25] Mr. T. Fairbairn is usefully striving to establish a public Gallery of Art at Manchester; but however rich it may become in local resources, specimens of Beato Angelicos, Raffaelles, and the like, successively introduced, for a season, from time to time, would have a very beneficial influence on the tastes of the visitors.

[26] So much doubt and ignorance exists on the subject of the tenure by which the Royal Academy holds its premises, that the official answer of Henry Howard, the Keeper, has been exhumed from parliamentary records to remove them. Mr. Howard says:—

“There are no expressed conditions on which the apartments at Somerset House were originally bestowed on the Royal Academy. The Royal Academy of Arts took possession of the apartments which they occupy in Somerset House, in April 1780, by virtue of a letter from the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury to the Surveyor General, directing him to deliver over to the Treasurer of the Royal Academy, all the apartments allotted to his Majesty’s said Academy in the new buildings at Somerset House, which are to be appropriated to the uses specified in the several plans of the same heretofore settled.”

“The Royal Academy received these apartments as a gift from their munificent founder, George the Third; and it has always been understood by the members that his Majesty, when he gave up to the government his palace of old Somerset House (where the Royal Academy was originally established), stipulated that apartments should be erected for that establishment in the new building. The Royal Academy remained in the old palace till those rooms were completed which had been destined for their occupation; plans of which had been submitted to their approval, and signed by the president, council, and officers.”

A Winter Wedding-Party in the Wilds.

“I’m sorry for the lasses’ disappointment, wife, but they _can’t_ go. It would be madness to think of it. The phaeton would be broken to bits, if the grey mare could do the distance, in such weather, which she couldn’t; and if we were to send into Winton to ask, there’s not one of the inns would let a chaise go out of the yard after last night’s fall of snow.”

For two or three minutes there was a blank silence round the breakfast table; Anne’s eyes grew tearfully bright, Sophy looked rebellious, and I began to experience a painful difficulty in swallowing as I stared out of the window at the hopeless prospect of a great drift, which levelled the garden hedge with the fields beyond, and went sloping up in a snowy undulation to the brow of the Langhill.

“If a phaeton can’t pull through the snow, how will Cousin Mary get to church to be married?” proposed Sophy.

“She’ll ride as your father and mother did on the same occasion, Miss.”

“I wore a plum-coloured cloth habit, faced with velvet, and sugar-loaf buttons, and a hat with a gold band on it,” said Mrs. Preston. “I believe, father, it was a morning to the full as bad as this, was our wedding; and yet didn’t all the folks come over from Appley Moor? To be sure they did, every one of them!”

“And the road from Appley Moor to Rookwood Grange is worse than the road we should have to go, isn’t it, mother?” insinuated Sophy.

“Couldn’t be worse than Binks’ Wold,” replied her father; and to spare himself any further aggravation from our faces of reproach and mortification, he marched away, after his ample breakfast, out of the room, and out of the house. Mrs. Preston disappeared also, and we three young ones were left alone to bewail our disappointment.

And a cruel disappointment it was; perhaps more cruel to me than to my school-friends, for I was a town-bred girl, only staying my Christmas holidays at Ripstone Farm, and never in my life had I been to any entertainment more exciting than a breaking-up dance all of girls. The wedding at the Grange was known of before I came, and so I had been sent from home provided with crisp white muslin, tucked ever so high, with rose-coloured bows and sash; and only the Saturday previous, Anne’s and Sophy’s new frocks had come from the dressmaker’s, by the Winton carrier, and had been pronounced, with their sky-blue trimmings, so pretty, so _sweetly_ pretty! When Mr. Preston had said we could not go to the wedding-party, my first thought had been of my frock, and when we came to compare notes, Anne’s and Sophy’s regrets proved to have taken the same direction. With one consent we adjourned up-stairs, to indulge the luxury of woe over our sacrificed finery, but that mournful exercise palling upon us fast, Sophy and I found our way, by a swept foot-path, into the garden, where the two boys of the family were constructing a snow-man of grand proportions. Shovels were proposed to us to help, and we were cavalierly dismissed to find them in the tool-house for ourselves, when we unexpectedly met the foreman at the door. Sophia told him how that, on account of the snow, we could not go to the wedding-party at the Grange, and appealed to him if it were really and truly out of the question to attempt it.

“Unpossible, Miss Sophy, quite unpossible for the pheyton an’ grey mear, but _I_ could get yo there,” replied foreman, with a confidential wag of his head.

“How, John, how?”

“Why, Miss, I’ll tell ’ee. I’ th’ broad-wheeled wagon wi’ fower hosses, an’ a tilt ower-head. Put a mattruss an’ plenty o’ rugs iv’ th’ insoide, an’ yo’d goa as cosy as cosy could be. Long Tom to lead, an’ me to foller.”

“I’ll ask father if we mayn’t?” cried Sophy, and away she flew in search of him.

In a few minutes she came speeding back, clapping her hands, and announcing that he would see about it; so in we ran to tell Anne.

“When father says he’ll see about anything he means it shall be done,” replied Anne; “let us go and begin packing our frocks!”

And so it was decided that we should go to the wedding-party after all! We were in exuberant spirits at our early dinner, for at two o’clock we were to start. John and Tom were fixing the tilt upon the wagon then, and the horses were eating double feeds of corn in preparation for the work that was before them. We had full ten miles to go, and Mr. Preston thought it might be done by six o’clock, when we should have plenty of time to get warmed, and make ourselves grand before tea, at seven.

“And I expect you’ll bring us word you’ve each found a beau; you too, Miss Poppy,” said the farmer, addressing me.

“I think Cousin Joseph will just suit her,” cried Sophy.

“As you lasses always go by the rule of contraries, perhaps he will. He’s as tall as a house-end, and as thin as a whipping-post, Miss Poppy. Do you think you’ll match?”

I did not like the allusion to my own brevity of stature, and determined to hate the lanky Joseph on the spot.

Dinner was a mere fiction for us that day, and when we were free to quit the table, away we scampered to be swathed up. About Sophy and Anne I cannot undertake to speak; but for myself, I know I could not stir a limb for weight of cloaks, skirts, boots, and comforters, when I was finished off in the hall, and yet I was in a breathless state of eagerness to be in the wagon, and experiencing the delicious sensations of actually setting off. There were, of course, twenty little things to be done at the last—the lanterns to be fitted with fresh candles, the great wooden mallets to be found, to stop the wheels from slipping down hill when the horses had to rest going up, and a bottle of rum-and-water, to be mixed for the refreshment of John and Long Tom on the way.

The wagon looked quite pictorial, as I remember it, standing in the slanting, winterly sunshine, with the team of ponderous black horses which no other farmer in the district could match, and the water-proof tilt used to cover the loads of corn when they were carried to the miller at Winton, set upon an arched framework, and closed like curtains, back and front. Inside, the wagon was made comfortable with a mattress and a supply of pillows and blankets, amongst which we were charged to go to sleep as we were returning home in the morning. Sophy was the first to set foot on the step, but her father stopt her.

“Let’s have you in dry-shod, at all events—lift them in at the back, John;” and accordingly, like three bundles of hay, we were hoisted under the tilt, received our final messages, cautions, and counsels; after which all was made secure in the rear, to shut out the wind, only a peep-hole being allowed us in front, over the horses’ broad backs. Then wagoner cracked his long whip, uttered a hoarse gee-whoa, and the heavy procession moved slowly off across the home-pastures.

What a merry trio we were under the tilt; how we laughed, and chattered, and sang! and only a dozen years ago! Lord! what a change a dozen years can make amongst the liveliest of us!

It was, I cannot deny it, a cold and tedious journey. Before one-half of it was accomplished the pale sunshine had faded from the snow, and the gray twilight was coming down upon the hills under a leaden vault of sky which promised another storm before the morning. Long Tom plodded patiently on at the leader’s head, now cracking his whip, now cheering his horses forward with a gruff encouragement, but never vouchsafing a word to anybody else. Foreman was more sociably disposed; he took brief rides on the shafts and the front of the wagon, and from time to time put his broad brown face in at the opening of the tilt, and inquired how we were getting on. Before it grew dark, there was a pretty long stoppage for a consultation, and Anne and Sophy were taken into council. John was spokesman, and addressed himself to Sophy, who was the imperative mood of the Preston family, and ruled many things both in-doors and out at Ripstone Farm, though she was only the younger daughter.

“We’ve split, Long Tom and me, Miss Sophy, and I want to know what you says, and Miss Anne. There’s two ways to Rookwood, and Tom’s for going by t’ Scaur, but I votes for Binks’ Wold:—it’s a stiffish pull, but it’s safest. Now, if we goes by t’ Scaur, an’ we finds a drift across t’ hollow, as most likelings we should, turn back we must; we couldn’t haul through it nohow—an’ there’s Dimple Quarries—I never likes passing them quarries after dark.”

“Binks’ Wold, John,” pronounced Sophy, imperially; “we’ll have nothing to say to the Scaur or the Quarries after daylight. We should not be worth picking up, Tom, if you drove us over the cliff.”

Long Tom did not attempt to argue the point, but cracked his whip sharply, and again the horses moved on; more slowly now than before, for the road, such as it was, wound circuitously up-hill for nearly half a mile. Four times during the ascent we stopped to breathe the horses, but at last John, looking in on us, announced in mysterious terms that “we had brokken t’ neck o’ t’ journey, an’ should be at the Grange i’ no time.” I could not resist the temptation to crawl to the opening, and look out; Anne and Sophy joining me. There we were on the crest of Binks’ Wold: far as eye could see, one undulation of snow; the black horses, with their heads a little turned from the road, smoking in the frosty air, like four masked furnaces. Long Tom, with his lantern, stood at the leader’s head, throwing a grotesque shadow across the whitened road, and John clumped up and down, with his pipe in his mouth, to warm his nose, as he said.

Foreman’s “no time” proved to be full an hour and a half; and in that dusky interval, spite of our excited anticipations, we all began to feel drowsy. At last, Sophy declared, yawning, that we must be nearly there; and, looking out, she announced the tower of Rookwood Church, where Cousin Mary was married in the morning; upon which, we all brisked up, and became excessively wide-awake. The Grange was only a mile and a quarter further, and as Sophy held the tilt open, by-and-by we could see it; three long ruddy shining windows on the ground floor, and two in the chamber story, peeping out from amongst the great white trees. Another ten minutes, and we stopped at the gate; but before we stopped, we saw the house door opened, and, against the bright glow within, half a dozen or more dark figures appeared coming out to meet us.

“Capital, lasses! we were beginning to think Uncle Preston wouldn’t let you come!” cried a jolly voice.

“He would have had hard work to keep some of us, Cousin David,” responded Sophy, and, having extricated her limbs from some of her most cumbrous swathements, she proffered herself to be lifted out first.

I thought I was going to be forgotten, and carted away to the stables, for when Sophy and Anne were gone, the noisy group marched back to the house in double quick time, and the door was just being shut when Sophy shrieked out, “Cousin David, you’ve not brought in Poppy!” and the young giant tore down the path, pulled me out of the wagon, much bedazed and on the verge of tears, carried me roughly off, and plumped me down on my feet in the midst of the sonorous gathering, crying, in a voice enough to blow a house-roof off, “Who’s this little body?”

The Babel that ensued for the next ten minutes, when everybody spoke at once to everybody else, each in a voice big enough for ten, united to the pricking sensation which I now began to experience in coming out of the frost into a thoroughly heated house, finished the prostration of my faculties, and I remember nothing more until I found myself with Anne, Sophy, and two strangers in a large bedroom, where a fire of logs blazed in the grate, and a wide-mouthed damsel was unpacking our white frocks. “Well, Cousin Mary, good luck to you!” cried Sophy, kissing the taller of the two strangers very heartily; “and you got all safely married this morning, I suppose?”

I looked, and beheld the bride. Never, to my recollection, had I seen a bride before, and I romantically anticipated a glorified vision, quite distinct in appearance from all other womankind; but I only beheld a large young person, plump, fair, and ruddy, with eyes of a soft expression as she stood on the hearth with the light shining up into them, and a quantity of very wavy dark hair, which the wind in the hall had blown all off her face: an uncommonly pretty, attractive, loveable face it was; but it was only a woman’s after all, and she talked something about tea-cakes! I believe I was disappointed.

The bride’s sister was Kate; younger and livelier, at present, than Mary, though not so handsome. She was Sophy’s peculiar friend amongst the cousins, and the pair now betook themselves for private conversation and the decorative process to Kate’s room. Mary and Anne had some low-voiced chat apart, to which I was carefully deaf; but, when their secrets were told, Mary, chancing to look round, saw me fumbling, with benumbed fingers, at buttons and hooks and eyes, and took me under hand immediately, hugging me up in her warm arms, with the exclamation, that the little mite was half frozen. I found her very nice and comfortable then; better by far than anything more angelic and exalted.

We were not long in arranging ourselves, and then Sophy and Kate being routed out from their retreat, we formed a procession downstairs; Mary and Anne arm-in-arm, and I under Mary’s other wing, and Sophy and Kate in an affectionate feminine entanglement behind. All the cousins got up and roared at us again, in those big voices of theirs, chorussed by various guests, and put us into the warmest seats; mine being a footstool by Mary at one side of the fire-place, where I felt most cosily arranged for getting toasted, and seeing everybody. And there were plenty of people to see. It was a very long room in which we were, having on one side the three windows which we had seen shining from the road, and seats in them where the girls had stowed themselves in knots, the red curtains making a background for their figures, which was as pictorial as need be. The men folk were mostly young, and mostly sons of Anak, like the cousins, but there were a few elders, contemporaries of Mary’s father, who was a white-haired, handsome old man; and there were also several matronly women, mothers of the occupants of the window-seats, and of the young men their brothers. Everybody called everybody else by his or her Christian name in the most friendly way, and it was not until the evening was half over that I began to find out who was who, for such a ceremony as introduction seemed quite unheard of. To be sure, Sophy brought up a long rail of a boy to me who seemed to have a difficulty with his arms, and said significantly, “Poppy, this is Cousin Joseph; now, Joseph, you are to be polite to Miss Poppy;” but no civilities ensued, and my attention was called away by hearing Mary say in a soft, half-laughing tone, “George, look at your boots.” She must have meant something else, for glancing at the person whom she addressed, I saw that he had turned his trousers up to come out into the snow when we arrived, and that he was now sitting with them stretched out before him in that inappropriate arrangement. He coolly stooped and put them right, and then looked at Mary, and smiled.

“Who is it?” whispered I.

“It’s George!” said she, and blushed a little, from which I guessed George must be the bridegroom—George Standish, whose name and description Sophy had given me before we came; and given very accurately. He was tall, but not so tall as the cousins, and broad-shouldered, but he would never carry anything like their weight. Then he had blue-black hair, beard, and brows, and a clever-looking face; very broad and white as to the forehead, and very brown as to all below it. I had heard him praised as a most kind and skilful country surgeon, and the best rider ’cross country in that or any ten parishes of the Wolds, and he looked as if both encomiums must be true. It was quite a love-match, everybody said. Mary might have married more money, but she preferred George, like a wise woman. Two of her ancient aspirants were present and pointed out to me by Sophy: old Mr. Jewson, of Harghill Farm, who was rich enough to have kept her a carriage if she would have taken him for that; and young Philip Murgatroyd, a man with a fierce face, who might have been a melodramatic villain, but was not—only a young farmer with innovating ideas.

The unsuppressed noise did not cease for a moment, and I saw the wide-mouthed damsel at the door thrice announce tea as ready before she made herself heard by her mistress; but once heard, a simultaneous hungry movement took place, and Cousin David came and roared at me, “Now, little Miss Poppy, we will go in together, and you shall sit by me.” So I rose up, proposing to stiffen my back and lay my hand lightly on the young giant’s arm, as we had been laboriously taught to do at dancing-school, when I felt that powerful masculine member encircling me behind, and I saw the biggest boots that had ever met my eyes break into an uncouth step to which I was perforce compelled to keep a measure with my own toes in the air; they only alighted once, and that was on one of the boots aforesaid, which they would have delighted to crush into mummy if they had been able.

Finally I was landed breathless and shaken, like a kitten that a terrier has had in its mouth for frolic rather than mischief, in a chair very broad in the beam, which I was expected to share in part with my big cavalier, for, long as was the table, each individual of the company took up so much room that hardly was there found accommodation for all. But at last everybody was shaken into place, and the business of the hour began. And a most weighty business it was. My eyes have never since beheld such a tea; a cold sirloin of beef, ham boiled and ham frizzled, game pie and game roast, and every kind of tart and cake that the ingenuity of cook with unlimited materials could devise. Cousin David swiftly supplied me with provisions for a week, and then Cousin Joseph, who happened to be on the other side of me, hospitably wished to add more, on which Cousin David leant across and said, “No poaching on my manor, Master Joseph; attend you to your left-hand neighbour. Now, Miss Poppy, I am going to give you a pretty little wing of this partridge,”—which he did, and then took the rest of the bird to his own share.

It vanished quickly, as did an extensive miscellaneous collection of the other good things, and notwithstanding continuous relays from the kitchen, the table presently showed signs of devastation. The bride and bridegroom, Anne, and Sophy, were out of my sight, but directly opposite, with Cousin Kate dividing them, were two young men, one fair, florid, and with curly pate, called Dick, the other dark, with long, straight, black hair, and a most lugubrious countenance, called Bob Link. Yet if that lugubrious countenance had not much signs of mirth in itself, it was the cause of mirth in others, for he never opened his lips but all those within hearing of him laughed. Bob Link was a medical student with Mr. Standish, and, as Cousin David explained, a regular wag.

Tea was a prolonged ceremony, and was only ended by the shrill sound of a violin, when somebody cried, “Come!” and again Cousin David executed his _pas de terrier_, with me in his hand, down the broad stone passage until we came to the Grange kitchen, which was a vast place with an open raftered roof, now hidden under garlands of Christmas green, and a white flagged floor which was cleared for a dance. It looked so bright and gay! Such a mighty fire of logs roared in the chimney, wide as an ordinary room, with cushioned settles in its arched recess; the great dresser glittered with metal trenchers and tankards, glinting back sparkles of light from the little oil lamps which had been ingeniously mixed amongst the evergreens where they shone like glowworms.

My young toes tingled to begin, and when the fiddles and other instruments of music tuned up in a frolicsome country dance, the swains began to pick out favourite partners. The bride and bridegroom stood top couple, and I don’t know who came next, for while I was hoping and fearing whether anybody would ask me, Cousin David arrived and spun me up to the end of a long rank of girls. The fiddles started, and Sophy shrieked out franticly, “Now, Poppy, Poppy, be ready! It’s hands across and back again, down the middle and up again—Cousin Mary and David, and you and George Standish!” and then away we went!

We shall never dance a country dance like that again! Cousin David emulated his royal Hebrew namesake, and I should have thought him a delightful partner if he would not quite so often have made me do my steps on nothing. That was glorious exercise for a frosty winter’s evening, and made all our cheeks rosy and all our eyes bright.

When that set was finished, curly Mr. Dick came and asked me to dance the next with him, which I did, and then to the tune of “Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife, and merrily danced the Quaker,” Bob Link was my partner. That medical youth had missed his vocation in not going as clown to a circus, for the grotesquerie of his actions, and the inimitable solemnity of his visage, kept everybody in roars of laughter all through his performance, and we never had to meet and take hold of hands that he did not address me with some absurd speech that made me peal out just like the rest. I never sat out once. It was great fun. We had the “Lancers,” in which everybody was perfect, and common quadrilles, and sarabandes, and one or two tried a waltz, but country dances were the favourites, and there the elders joined in. Uncle and Aunt Preston danced, and old Mr. Jewson, who chose me for his partner, and took snuff at intervals, through the set, and nodded his wig at me, but never spoke.

Just before supper somebody called out for a game of forfeits, and “My Lady’s Toilet” was fixed upon. Do you know how to play “Lady’s Toilet?” It is an old-fashioned game that all our revered grandmothers played at, though exploded in polite society now, but I daresay it still survives at wold weddings. And this is the way of it. Each person in the company chooses the name of some article of a lady’s dress, and all sit round the room in order except one, who stands in the middle with a trencher which he begins to spin on the floor, singing out monotonously—

“My lady went to her toilet, In her chamber so pretty and neat, And said to her damsel Oyclet, ‘Bring me my _bracelet_, sweet.’”

And then the person called Bracelet must dash in and catch the trencher before it ceases to spin, on the penalty of a forfeit, which may be glove, handkerchief or what not. All the forfeits are kept until the close of the game, and then the penalties are exacted.

This part of the game is generally considered the most amusing, for the penalties, as at Rookwood Grange, are generally the most whimsical and ridiculous that can be devised. Bob Link was elected to the office of sentencer on this occasion, and when I saw what he inflicted, I began to quake for myself, as I remembered the one white glove of mine that lay in the confiscated heap before him. He took up a silk handkerchief and began—“Here is a thing, and a very pretty thing, whose, let me know, is this pretty thing?” Curly Mr. Dick acknowledged it, whereupon he was ordered to lie flat on the floor and repeat the following absurd lines:—

“Here lies the length of a long, lazy lubber, And here must he lie Till the lass he loves best comes and kisses him.”

There seemed every chance of his continuing to decorate the floor all night, for in spite of his touching and laughable appeals, of course no one went near him; so, at last, up he sprang, and catching Cousin Kate, he kissed her; Kate not testifying any reliable signs of wrath, but only knitting her brows, while her eyes and lips laughed. Then lanky Cousin Joseph was ordered to “bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the lass _he_ loved best,” all of which ceremonies he performed before one and the same person—namely, Cousin Sophy, who was unfeignedly indignant thereat—Cousin Joseph always testified for her a loutish but most sincere and humble admiration. Another young man had to sing a song, which he did in the dolefulest manner, ending each verse with an unsupported chorus of “If we fall, we’ll get up again, we always did yet!” which was every word of the ditty that I could distinguish. Then I saw my own poor little glove drawn out, and Mr. Bob Link repeated his incantation—“Here is a thing, and a very pretty thing, whose, let me know, is this pretty thing?” and when I quivered out that it was mine, he said, “Oh! little Miss Poppy, it is yours, is it? Well, then, you must stand in the middle of the kitchen, under that green bush you see hanging down, and spell _opportunity_ with Mr. David——” I thought I could do _that_, being well up in dictation-class at school, so when Cousin David laughing took me off to the public station, where the penalty was to be performed, I began breathlessly—“O-p op, p-o-r por;” when he cried, “No, no, that’s wrong; I must teach you,” and bending down his face, he was actually proposing to kiss me between each syllable, when I flung up one of my little paws and clutched his hair, ducked my own head down, finished the word, broke loose, and scurried back to my place in much less time than it has taken me to record the feat, while Cousin David, in the midst of a shout of laughter, cried out: “You little vixen!” while I asseverated vehemently, “I spelt it, I spelt it, I spelt it!” in answer to an outcry, that it would not do, and I must go back again. I would not do that, however, and Cousin David came and sat down by me feeling his nose reproachfully, and saying, “She _scratches_!” and I had scratched him, and I was glad of it; but Curly Dick said it was all for love, and that he had seen me hide the handful of hair I had torn off David’s pate, that I might carry it off home to have it made into a locket.

Before the forfeits were well paid, supper was ready, and in spite of my ill-usage, Cousin David would be my cavalier again; he was a good-humoured young giant, very like his sister Mary, and I began to feel a little triumphant over him, in spite of his size, after my recent exploit, and when he talked, I talked again in my little way, except when I was listening to the healths being drunk, and thanks returned, after the country fashion at marriage festivities. Cousin Mary was in her place, with George Standish beside her, and I saw her give a little start and blush when “Mr. and Mrs. George Standish” were coupled together, but of all the fun to me old Mr. Jewson was now the greatest. He never raised his glass to his lips, which he did pretty frequently, without giving utterance to a _sentiment_: “May the man never grow fat who wears two faces under one hat!” or something of a similar character, and on the name of an individual, who was not popular in the district, being mentioned, he drunk again, prefacing it with, “Here’s a porcupine saddle and a high trotting horse to that fellow!” to which several responded with gruff “Amens!”

Supper did not last so long as tea, and when it was over, some one said Cousin Mary and George Standish were going home, and when most of us returned to the kitchen and parlour, they disappeared; Mary going upstairs with her mother, sister, and cousins to make ready. But we watched the start from one of the windows, where we had drawn the curtains back. The moon was up, and the wind had broken and scattered the clouds, so we saw them mount their horses, for they had three miles to ride, and David and Joseph were to set them part of the way. In the midst of a chorus of “good-byes,” and “God bless you, Marys,” they rode away, Mary never looking up, that I could see, from the moment her husband had lifted her into the saddle; but I don’t think she was crying. Her mother cried, though, but not long; the duties of hostess soon dried her tears, and she was busy trying to set us all dancing again, while Curly Dick marched up and down the room, trolling out a love-song in the mellowest voice I ever remember to have heard.

There were more dances, and more games, and then the cousins returned frosty-faced and livelier than ever to join us, and so we went on and on, the hours slipping by uncounted, until a message came from Long Tom that our time was up, and he was wanting to take his horses home.

So there was the re-swathing against the cold to be done, and then our grand team came creaking to the gate, and the dark figures poured out into the snow again; our hands were shaken, and the cousins all kissed in a cousinly way, as good-nights were said. Then Cousin Joseph lifted Sophy into the wagon, and somebody else, who had been very constant all night at Anne’s elbow, did the same kindness for her, and Cousin David, before I was aware, had hold of me.

“Now, Miss Poppy, you’re going to give me a kiss, I know,” said he persuasively, to which I responded, “No, I was not.” “Then I shan’t let you go without;” and immediately he took unfair advantage of his strength to the extortion of half-a-dozen, and then put me carefully into the wagon.

“Are you cross, Poppy? If you don’t like to keep Cousin David’s kisses, give him them back again,” said Sophy, and then foreman looked to see that all was right, Long Tom cracked his whip, and away we went through the dark and frosty morning. Three struck by Rookwood church clock just as we passed it.

After a little gossip over the events of the evening, we began to be drowsy, and dropt off, one by one, into the sound sleep of youth and health, waking no more until Mr. Preston’s jolly voice greeted us from his bedroom window, with “All safe and sound, lasses?” Then we were bundled in-doors, and set down to hot coffee, and an early breakfast by the kitchen fire, after which we pronounced ourselves as fresh as daisies; had a good ducking, re-dressed, and were ready to help in finishing off the great snow-man, when the boys came down. Ah! we can’t dance six hours on end now, take a nap in a wagon, and make a snow-man after it with unwearied zest! That trio under the tilt, that merry trio, will never in this world meet again. Lively Sophy is under the sod, and quiet Anne with father and mother, brothers, and husband, is far away over the seas, leading a new life in a new country; and, as for Miss Poppy, in recalling the merry days when she was young, she sees so many shadows amongst the living figures, that if the winter wedding in the wolds could come again, half the dancers on the floor would be only dim and doleful ghosts,—’Tis a dozen years ago!

Student Life in Scotland.

I fear that this paper will sadly resemble the well-known chapter on the snakes of Iceland. There are no snakes in that ill-at-ease island, and there is little student life in Scotland. It may smack of the emerald phraseology of our Irish friends to say, that in a country abounding in students, and not backward in study, there is little of student life; but that is because, in common parlance, life is used to signify one of the forms of life—society. It shows clearly enough how thoughts run, when the name of student life is not given to the solitary turning of pages and wasting of midnight oil—to the mastering of Greek particles and the working of the differential calculus, but to the amusements of young men when they have thrown aside their books, to the alliances which they form, to the conversations they start, to their hunting, to their boating, to their fencing, to their drinking, to their love-making,—in a word, to their social ways. Read any account of student life in England, in Ireland, or in Germany, and tell me whether the studies of the young fellows are not the least part of what is regarded in a university education. It is very sad to hear of a pluck; and a novelist is a cruel-hearted wretch who will introduce that incident, after showing us to our content how debts should be incurred, how foxes are run down, how wine-parties are conducted, how Julia loses her heart, and how the proctor loses his temper; but it is only in this way—it is only by introducing the academical guillotine upon the stage, that we discover the university, as it appears in a novel, to be the sacred haunts of the Muses. Shall we go to Germany? It is not the subjective and the objective—it is not the identity of the identical and the non-identical—it is not lexicons and commentaries that we hear of. The song of the Burschen is in our ears; we move in a world that is made up of but two elements—beer and smoke; duels are fought for our edification; riots are raised for the express purpose of amusing us; the girl at the beerhouse is of more account than Herr Professor; and, on the whole, it seems as if the university were a glorious institution, to teach young men the true art of merrymaking. Nor are the novelists altogether wrong in declaring that these doings are a fair sample of university life. What is it that draws men to the university? The chance of a fellowship, and the other prizes of a successful university career, will no doubt attract some men; but we know that independently of prizes and honours, a university education has a very high value in this country. And why? Is it because of the knowledge of books acquired? Is it because a young man cannot coach for his degree in Manchester, or in the Isle of Wight, or in the Isle of Dogs, as well as in Oxford or Cambridge? Is there no balm save in Gilead? Are mathematics confined to the reeds of Cam, and classics to the willows of Isis? May we not read but in Balliol or Trinity? Doubtless, the education provided in these ancient seminaries is of the very highest quality; but learning may be obtained elsewhere than at college. For that matter, indeed, most men are self-educated. What they acquire from a teacher is as nothing to what they acquire from their own researches. What a university or a great public school gives, that cannot be obtained elsewhere, is society—the society of equal minds. A boy is taken from under the parental wing, is sent to school and thrown upon his own resources. He can no longer sing out when he is worsted—“I’ll tell mamma;” he has to hold his own in a little world that is made up entirely of boys; he must learn independence; he must fight his way: he must study the arts of society before he has well laid aside his petticoats. So at college—it is in the clash of wit and the pulling of rival oars, it is in the public life and the social habit, it is in the free-and-easy measuring of man with man, that the chief value of a residence in the university lies. The system no doubt has its drawbacks. We must take the bad with the good; and no man who has had experience of it will deny that almost nothing in after life can make up for the want of that early discipline, which is to be obtained only in the rough usage of a school and the wild play of a university. Society, in these haunts, may exist chiefly in its barbaric elements, but they are elements that bring out the man; and the great glory of our universities is not so much that they make us scholars (though they have this also to boast of), as that they make us men.

To Englishmen these are truisms, but in Scotland they are scarcely recognized even as truths. A great deal of nonsense has been talked on both sides of the Tweed about the defects of the Scottish universities. It has been said that they do not turn out scholars. One might as well blame the University of Oxford for not turning out mathematicians. Prominence is given in every university to certain branches of learning; and in Scotland there has always been a greater admiration of thinkers than either of scholars or mathematicians. We all value most what we ourselves have learnt; but where no line of study is absolutely neglected, probably it does not much matter which one receives the most attention. We are apt to overrate the importance of the thing acquired, and to underrate the most important point of all—the mental discipline. The real defect of the Scottish universities is that they have no student life. They have an immense number of students, and nowhere is the higher sort of education more valued; but just in proportion as it has been valued and rendered accessible to all classes, no matter how poor, it has lost its finer qualities—it has lost—and especially in the greater universities—the student life. Suppose a young man at Islington, another at St. John’s Wood, a third at Bayswater, a fourth in Pimlico, and a fifth at Brixton, studying at University College: what sort of feeling exists among them? what are the ties that bind them together? what society do they form? what student life can they enjoy? All the better for their studies, the genius of grinding and cramming will say; and it may be so; but the loosening of the social ties among students may also be an irreparable injury to qualities that are even more important than a thirst for knowledge. The college in Gower Street is in this respect a type of the Scottish university system. The students attend lectures every day in a certain venerable building, but they live in their own homes; they live where they choose; it may be several miles away from the college. Nobody knows in what strange out-of-the-way places some of them build their nests. One poor fellow who makes a very decent appearance in the class lives in a garret raised thirteen stories over the Cowgate, while the man who sits next to him comes out clean cut, and beautifully polished every day from a palace in the West End. When the lecture is over all these students disperse, and they have no more cohesion than the congregation of a favourite preacher after the sermon is finished. They go off into back streets, and into queer alleys; they are lost round the corner; they go a little way into the country; they rush to the seaside; they burst into pieces like a shell. Nor is it very long since this unsociable system superseded the old plan of living together and dining at a common table. Perhaps Lord Campbell could give a very pretty picture of college life in his days, when at the university of St. Andrew’s the students dined in common hall. He was a fellow student of Dr. Chalmers, and only a few years ago Tom Chalmers’ room within St. Salvator’s College was shown to visitors, while the janitor, with a peculiar chuckle, described the wild pranks in which the youthful divine employed his leisure moments, to the terror of the townspeople.

This state of things, although so recent, is almost forgotten in Scotland. There is no such thing as opposition between town and gown. In Edinburgh, indeed, there is no gown—no badge of studentship whatever. Worse than this, the student, after he has gone through his academical course, has nothing further to do with the university. Why should he take a degree? It is a bootless honour. It gives him no privileges. A.M. after a man’s name on a title-page may look very pretty, but who is going to write books? “Not I,” says the student; “and why should I run the chance of a pluck, besides going to the expense of the fees, when the certainty of success can bring me no advantage?”[27] Thus the bond between the student and the university, has been weakened to the utmost. What else are we to expect, when a great university, with all its venerable associations, is planned on the model of a day-school? In Scotland all schools are day-schools, from the very highest to the very lowest. The parental and domestic influence is esteemed so much, that no boy is allowed to escape from it, and the young man is kept under it as long as possible. The boy who is at school all day returns home in the evening to be kissed by his mamma and to be questioned by his papa. The student who has all the morning been dissecting dead bodies or devouring dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, returns to dine with his sisters and to kneel down at evening prayer with his grey-haired sire. The system has its advantages (filial reverence, for example, being much stronger in Scotland than it is in England, just as in England it is much stronger than in America, where early independence is the ideal of life)—but the advantages are purchased at the cost of the student life, and ultimately at the cost of the university. Alas! for the university which does not make its students feel that they are sons, which does not nurse the corporate feeling, which loses its hold on the students after they have gone into the world! It is mainly through neglect of this kind that the Scottish universities have drooped in public esteem. The education afforded is not poor, and the examinations are not easy, as some imagine, going quite off the scent, in their endeavour to account for such a falling-off. The real reason is, that men leaving the university are cut adrift; they are not associated with it in any way; they forget it; they are in no way called upon to support it. Not so in England. In Pall Mall we have two clubs, which clearly enough illustrate the abiding influence of Oxford and Cambridge upon their graduates, an influence that reacts upon the universities, building up and continually enhancing the reputation of Alma Mater. A Scottish university club in Pall Mall would be almost an impossibility, and the reputation of Alma Mater languishes because she sends forth into the world no bands of men who cherish her memory, and by right of living membership have a vested interest in her good name.

Lord Stanhope tells a story of a Scotchman who, in the good old days of gambling and hard drinking, was heard to say,—“I tell you what, sir, I just think that conversation is the bane of society.” The story is intended as a commentary on the supposed jollity of wine-bibbing. It shows how little the social arts were understood by the honest gentleman who spoke it. Perhaps, even in the present day the arts of society are not much better understood. With all their warmth of heart, Scotchmen have an astonishing reserve, which, if not fatal, is at least injurious to society. They pride themselves on their firmness in friendship; and, it is wonderful to see how they stick to each other. But has not this tenacity its weak side as well as its strong? Is not the adhesion to old alliances accompanied with disinclination or inability to form new ones? And is not this a social defect? The Germans and the French speak of Englishmen as reserved, but the Scotch are worse than the English—they are the most reserved people in Europe. And this brings me to the point at which I have been driving. The most reserved people in Europe, the people that of all others require most to cultivate the social habit, are singular in refusing to give their youth the opportunity of learning the arts of society. The student life is as much as possible repressed, in order that the family life may be sustained. The family is a very noble institution—but it is not everything, and certainly it is not society. The young man longs to leave his home and to be his own master in a little world peopled only with young men like himself. Even the small boy who has but newly attained the honour of breeches-pockets, longs to be free; he runs up to another boy, as dogs run to nose each other; he sneers at “these girls,” as he calls his sisters; he will quit father, mother, and all for the dear delights of school. In a country where the puritan feeling predominates, it is feared that these social instincts may lead to harm; and for the better preservation of his morals the youth is not allowed that free mingling with his fellows, and with them alone, which he most ardently desires. He is systematically taught to be chary of his companions, whether at school or college. There are men sitting daily on the same benches who would not think of speaking to each other without a formal introduction. And I suppose it is owing to these social distances by which they are separated that they _Mister_ each other as they do. A little urchin of fifteen is called _Mr._ Milligan; and when Jack wants Sandy to lend him a penknife, he says, “Will you lend me your knife, Mr. Ramsay?” Sandy replying, “There it is, Mr. Frazer; but I have blunted it with cutting a portrait of the Professor on the desk, which the old boy has painted with a solution of sand for the express purpose of blunting knives and discouraging art.” To hear young men who are in the wood-carving stage of existence, some of them mere boys, addressing each other in this formal way, reminds one strangely of Sir Harry and My Lord Duke in the servants’ hall.

Which is cause and which effect? Is it from natural reserve and deficient sociability that the Scotch came to undervalue the student life and to abolish it? or is it the want of the student life and school life, such as it exists in England, that has produced reserve? There is something in both views; but if we are looking for causes, there are others that could be given for the decay of student life. One of these I have already indicated in speaking of the puritanic distrust of society, or, as it is called, “the world.” A worthy elder of the Kirk has got a son, who is the greatest little rascal of his age, the admiration of the parish dogs, the terror of the parish cats, curiously acquainted with the nature of the fruit in all the gardens and orchards around, impudent as a monkey, and idle as a fly, but who, in consequence of sundry floggings, carries himself so demurely in the presence of his fond parent, that he is supposed to be a chosen vessel—not far from the kingdom of heaven—a child of grace. The pious Mr. Alister Macalister feels that in sending forth his gracious young sinner into a mixed society of boys at a public school, or young men at college—he is sending his precious one into a den of thieves who will rob him of his innocence, is ushering him into the world and the things of the world, is imperilling his immortal interests. And while the puritanic tendencies of the Scotch have gone thus far to undermine the student life by degrading it in public esteem, another influence, even more important, has been at work in the same direction—poverty. Nowhere, I have said, has a good education been so highly prized as in Scotland; but in the attempt to place a good education within reach of every man, however poor, it has been necessary to cheapen it. The cheapness of it has not lowered the character of the education as far as mere learning goes, but has effectually stript it of the social life which ought to accompany it. “_Tenui musam meditamur avenâ_,” the Scottish student may say with Jeffrey and Sydney Smith. But if it is possible to cultivate letters on a little oatmeal, it is not possible to cultivate society on such attenuated resources. Society, even when it is laid out on the most thrifty principles, costs a good deal more than some men can afford. How would it be possible for the poor fellow who hopes to get through his terms for 30_l._ a year to dine at the same table with the student who could afford four or five times the sum? The college year generally consists of about five months, and I have known men cover all the expenses of this period with 22_l._ It is true that this was in St. Andrew’s, where a hundred fresh herrings used to go for sixpence, and a splendid dinner of fish might be purchased for a penny; but if it is remembered that the sum I have mentioned covered the fees for the various classes, amounting to about 10_l._, and that it was upon the balance of 12_l._ that the student continued to subsist for these dreary five months, the feat will appear sufficiently marvellous. It is the students who live in this sort of way that are the most interesting characters in the Scottish universities, and it is their necessities that have gone to extinguish the student life. This will be evident if we consider their position a little minutely.

I suppose that fully one-third of the Scottish students are steeped in poverty. The struggle of some of these men upwards, in the face of terrific odds, is almost sublime. When we look at the struggle in cold blood, we say that it is a mistake, that these men ought never to have dreamt of the university, that theirs is a false ambition, and that it would have been better if they had never left the plough or the smithy, if they had gone into the grocery line, or had taken kindly to confectionery. But has not every form of ambition its weak side?—and are we to stop sympathizing in a man’s honest endeavours when we discover that he might be doing much better in a different fashion? Are we not to admire the man wrestling with the waves, because he has no business to be in the water? One of the 22-pounders I have mentioned was a very humble individual; but he fought like a hero, and his life was a constant marvel. He was so poor, indeed, that before one came near the question—How on earth does this man keep soul and body together, besides paying his college fees, with so small a sum?—the previous question presented itself as even more difficult—Where did he get his 22_l._? He had been a carpenter; he had curtailed his hours in order to devote them to study; he got the cast-off clothes of the parish minister, and somebody else made him the present of an old gown, St. Andrew’s delighting in red gowns. At the commencement of his first session, several small exhibitions, or, as they are called, bursaries, the value of each being only 10_l._, were to be competed for, and he had the skill to obtain one. It was a little fortune to him—an annuity of 10_l._ for four years to come. When he saw his name on the list of winners, he made such queer faces to conceal his emotions that all eyes were turned upon him, and it was ever afterwards a joke against him. For the remaining 12_l._ he managed in this way: He worked four hours a day in a carpenter’s shop, at 3_d._ an hour, and thus earned from 6_l._ to 7_l._ during his residence at the university, to which he was able to add 5_l._ from previous savings. He got friends to lend him books; and I have an idea that he earned something on Sundays by acting as precentor in one of the city churches. I happened to call upon him one day. It was his dinner hour, and his landlady came in to him with something on an old black rusty tray. “Not just yet, Mrs. Todd,” he said, in great embarrassment, and that lady forthwith departed. “Don’t go away,” he then said to me; “now, don’t; my dinner is never done enough, and, if you stay a little, I’ll get it properly done to-day.” I left him three minutes afterwards, and outside his door there was his dinner getting cold—a herring and three potatoes. He lived in a box of a room, his bed being in one corner of it; and this accommodation he shared with another man, who worked even harder than he. This man earned a few shillings by teaching. He went out to assist boys in learning their lessons for the following day at school; and the price which he and all such teachers charged was half-a-guinea a month for an hour every night. As the pay was at the rate of about 5_d._ an hour, it would seem that the teacher had an advantage over our friend the carpenter; but it must be remembered that the pay of the latter was obtained by physical labour,—therefore, by a healthy relief from mental toil,—while that of the former was earned by the continued and unhealthy strain of the mind. In Edinburgh there are men who work at bookbinding or printing, who make pills and potions in druggists’ shops, who are copying-clerks in lawyers’ offices, who report for the newspapers, who keep the butterman’s books,—in order to maintain themselves at college.

Men in these narrow circumstances go naturally in pairs—divide the same potato, and share the same bed. They unite without ever having previously known each other, and, for the sake of a small saving, are chained together while the session lasts. In the desperate struggle of existence and pinch of poverty, these necessitated marriages are often embittered with rivalry and hatred. There are cases in which a nail has been driven into the middle of the chimney-piece, a string tied to it, drawn across the room, and attached to the middle of the opposite wall, so as to divide the chamber into two equal parts. “This is my territory—that shall be yours. _Nemo me impune lacessit_—that’s what I say.” “And I say, _Noli me tangere_—that’s all.” The fellows sit on opposite aides of their diminutive fire, “glowering” at each other over their books—the one smoking and the other snuffing the strongest tobacco procurable, to keep their hunger down while forcing the brain through the weary night-watches. The professors make a point of inviting them to breakfast or supper as often as they can, and give them a great feed. It is their only chance of a hearty meal during the whole of the session. And yet, in spite of all that they have to contend with, they make a very creditable appearance in the class, even by the side of men who have been well coached the night before by competent tutors. The odds, however, are dead against them, and they suffer for it in the end. They have very seldom been regularly educated, and when they go to college they devote much of that energy which ought to be given to their studies to earning their daily bread by teaching or by manual labour. Overworked and underfed, many of them go home, at the end of the session, shadows of their former selves, and death written in their faces—almost all of them have made acquaintance with disease. The number of men at the Scottish universities who run the course of Henry Kirke White is prodigious. Friends write their biographies; their college essays and school poems are published; their fellow-students are told to beware, and everybody takes an interest in their fate, about which a certain air of romance hangs. Year after year, however, one hears of so many cases that, at last, one becomes callous and feels inclined to ask—Why did not this young Kirke White remain in the butcher’s shop? It would have been better for him to have slaughtered oxen, sold mutton-chops, and ridden the little pony all his life, giving such leisure as he could really afford to books, than die in the vain endeavour to take the position of a gentleman and a clergyman. Most of these men, if they survive their period of study, go into the Church, and the result is that the Scottish clergy are notorious for their ill-health. How can it be otherwise? The fearful struggle which they have to maintain at college has to be kept up for eight long years before a licence to preach the Gospel can be obtained. Eight years of the university is an exorbitant demand, and it would be impossible to satisfy it, save, in the first place, by cheapening the course of study as much as possible, and secondly, by permitting the students to enter at a comparatively early age. The average age of students in Scotland is not less than in England; but if in the one country the ordinary course of study is extended over four years, while in the other it is limited to three, the freshmen must evidently in the former be a year younger than in the latter, in order to be of the same age at the time of graduating. If after graduating, another four years must be devoted to the Divinity Hall before one can have the chance of a living, it is clear that the student destined for the Church must begin his studies even earlier. He must, therefore, at the most critical period of his life, when most he requires physical strength, enter upon his suicidal course, and keep it up without intermission for eight long years. His only relief occurs in the vacation which fortunately for him lasts seven months. Then he recruits a little, while the student who went up to College better prepared both by previous education, and with the means of living, chafes at the delay, and longs for the introduction of a system, which, by the expedient of a summer session, would reduce the compulsory period of study, as in the English universities, to three years.

The effect of these arrangements on the student life may easily be conceived. A society formed on these conditions must evidently be a very mixed society; therefore, a society extremely suspicious of its members; therefore, also a society which has little cohesion and tends to destroy itself. What becomes of student life, where so many men must toil like slaves to keep the wolf from the door—must sit up half the night poring over their books, and plunging their heads every hour into cold water to keep away sleep? These give the tone to the university till it is no longer regarded as the centre of certain social influences, and becomes a mere mill for grinding gerunds and chopping logic. It is because Englishmen have criticized chiefly the art of gerund-grinding and the method of logic-chopping pursued in the Scottish universities, that hitherto their criticisms have fallen flat. It is not so much the educational as the social element of the universities that is at fault. To all the statistics of competitive examinations, and to all the sneers about their having produced no great scholar, the Scotch have a ready answer. It is thought more than scholarship; it is the power of reasoning, more than that of acquiring facts, that the Scottish universities foster; and English candidates, passing before Scotch examiners, would be as certainly floored as Scottish candidates now are before English examiners. This is what the Scotch reply to an attack upon their educational system; but they will confess at once the social deficiencies of their universities. It is a bad system, defensible only by disparaging the importance of the student life and overlooking the advantages of society.

Bad though the system be, it has its compensations. Among these may be reckoned the fact that a university education is within reach of all classes, and covers a much larger area of the population in Scotland than it does in England. This is the poor man’s view of the case. Those who are in good circumstances think little of such an advantage. They are more impressed with the disadvantages of making a university education too cheap. They are alarmed, in the first place, by the influx of the humbler classes, which of itself must tend to lower the tone of society, and to disintegrate the student life. Then it appears that in order to favour these humbler classes, the time given in each year to the university is shortened as much as possible, and the curriculum of study is unnaturally lengthened. From this it follows, that if a house were started in Edinburgh, attached to the university, on the model of one of the English colleges, for the benefit of those students who can afford it, the scheme would be unprofitable. The house would be vacant seven months of the year, and would have to be maintained for the twelve months on the proceeds of the five during which the yearly session lasts. The thing would be impossible unless such an extravagant rate were charged for these five months as would effectually deter the undergraduates from residence. This is the rich man’s view of the case; and admitting it fully, there is still this to be said, that if the Scottish universities are too cheap, the English universities are too dear. If Scottish students do not get much congenial society, it is possible for almost any man to be a student. Whether a university is intended for the peasantry I do not pretend to say; but, at all events, there is the fact, which may be taken for whatever it is worth, that a Scottish university education is open to the peasant not less than to the peer, and that both peasant and peer take advantage of it. The benefits of a good education thus penetrate to a much lower class in Scotland than in England. There is not a small tradesman, or farmer, or gamekeeper in Scotland who, if his son displays any symptoms of “book-learning,” does not think of the university as the proper field for the lad, and does not look forward to the day when he shall call his son “Doctor,” or see him in a pulpit thumping the gospel out of the Bible.

It is another redeeming point of the system, that it does not crush the individuality of the student by too much contact with his fellows; only, as this advantage is so negative that it might be still better secured by not going to the university at all, it would be absurd to make too much of it. Rather let us dwell on whatever social good is to be found in the system. When 1,500 young men are congregated together with a common object, they will break up into knots and clusters, and form themselves as they can into something that may pass for society, although it more strongly resembles the town life of young men than what is understood by student life. It is less as students than as young men with time upon their hands, with no prospect of chapel in the morning, and with no fear of being shut out at night, that these herd together: and if I were to describe their doings it would be the description of what youths generally are who live in lodgings by themselves—with this only difference, that the talk would be rather argumentative and the anecdotes rather erudite. A certain amount of social intercourse is organized in this way for those who wish it or can afford it; but that species of society which we call public life is scarcely possible save in the debating clubs. These are legion. There are speculative societies, and diagnostic societies, and critical societies, and dialectic societies, and historical societies; and if with these I class innumerable missionary societies and prayer unions, it is because they are all more or less calculated for rhetorical display. It is in these associations, to which a student may belong or not just as he pleases, that the public life and the best student life of the Scottish universities are to be found. The society meets weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, as the case may be. An essay is read by some one appointed to do so, and the members of the society criticize it freely. Or a debate is started, the two men who are to lead in the affirmative and the negative having previously been named; the members take part in it as they please; the speaker who commenced has the right of reply; the chairman sums up, and the question is put to the vote. Any one who consults a certain quarto volume in the British Museum, devoted to the transactions of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, will find it recorded, that on the evening on which Lord Lansdowne, then Lord Henry Petty, attained to the dignity of honorary membership, the youthful debaters decreed, by a majority of eleven over eight, that suicide is not justifiable! This was in 1798, when Brougham, Jeffrey, and Walter Scott, were among the leading members; and one would like to have some statistics of the eight who voted suicide to be justifiable. The Archbishop of Dublin, some years ago, wrote a letter to W. Cooke Taylor, in which he criticized very severely the habits of such societies, condemning them in the most emphatic manner, as fostering an absurd spirit of pride and dogmatism in youthful minds. If his views are sound, and if that vote of the Speculative Society may be taken as a specimen of the rest, then it must be confessed that the Scottish students are in a very bad way, for they work in these societies more perhaps than the students of any other country. Through the want of society they form societies, and sedulously set themselves to cultivate the great social faculties of speaking and writing. Perhaps Dr. Whately overrates the amount of dogmatism and precipitancy which come of these youthful debates, while he most certainly undervalues the mental stimulus and the advantage of early training in the art of expression. His remarks, moreover, had no special reference to Scotland; and even he would probably admit, that considering the unsatisfied craving of the Scottish undergraduate for student life, these debating societies render an important service which may well cover a multitude of faults.

In the educational system itself, however, there will be found compensations for the defects of the social system. Here I refer to the study of the human mind, which is pursued with great ardour in the Scottish universities. It is supposed in England, that Scotch students are fed on metaphysics, and the mistake receives a colour from the fact that there are so many professors of metaphysics. The title is a misnomer. The whole of Scotch philosophy is a protest against metaphysics as an impossible, or at least a useless study. What a professor, in the chair of metaphysics, teaches, is simply psychology—that is to say, the natural history of the human mind, the delineation of human character. All the processes of thought, all the motives to action are examined in turn. Ideas are traced to their origin, feelings are carefully scrutinized, words are weighed, character is dissected, and in its theory the whole of human life and of the human heart is laid bare to the student. Call this philosophy, if you please—just as a discussion on guano is called the philosophy of manure—but what is it in reality? It is generalized biography. It is a means of supplying in theory what the Scottish students have, at their time of life, few opportunities of acquiring in practice—a knowledge of men. Not enjoying the social advantages of English students, they have, as a compensation, educational advantages which are not to be found in the English universities. It is useless to inquire which is better—a knowledge of men obtained in the contact of society, or a knowledge of men obtained in the scientific analysis of the class-room. Neither the one nor the other is complete in itself; but the great advantage of studying character systematically in early life is this—that it is putting a key into a young man’s hand by which afterwards, when he mixes with men, he will more easily understand them, and unlock the secrets of their hearts. Without that key, he will long knock about amongst his fellows, mistaking motives, misinterpreting acts, confounding affections, and failing to form a correct estimate of the persons he meets—until, at last, after much experience and many errors, he learns to hit the mark without knowing how he does it. The study of the human mind, as pursued in the Scottish universities, has such an effect, that in after life it is an object of incessant interest to all Scotchmen. The average Scotchman will give a shrewder guess than the average Englishman as to a man’s character, and a better description of it. He has studied the anatomy of character so minutely that he delights in portraiture and excels in biography. The proper study of mankind is man—everybody admits. Whether the best way of prosecuting that study is in reading through the classics, and piling up algebraic formulas, I do not know; but, at all events, the Scottish universities have something to say for themselves, not if they neglect the classics and the mathematics, but if they simply elevate above these branches of knowledge a direct acquaintance with the mysteries of human nature, in thought and in feeling, in expression and in act. Apart from all comparison between English and Scottish university life, the psychology and moral philosophy of the North are at least worthy of the highest praise, as an antidote and recompence for the evil that is felt in the absence of student life.

Yet another compensation for the defects of the social system will be found in the professorial method of teaching, when it is conducted with spirit. The common idea of a professor is, that of a man wearing a gown, and reading dull lectures every day for an hour to students, some of whom are taking notes, while the rest are dozing. Professor Blackie, Professor Aytoun, Professor Ferrier, and the late Sir William Hamilton would give to any one entering their class-rooms a very different idea of what a professor ought to be. Sir William Hamilton’s class was perhaps the most marvellously conducted class in any university. About 150 students were ranged on seats before the professor, who lectured three days in the week, and on two days held a sort of open conference with his pupils, which was conducted in this wise:—Sir William dipped his hand into an urn and took out a letter of the alphabet—say M. Any student whose name began with M was then at liberty to stand up and comment on the professor’s lectures—attack them—illustrate them—report them—say almost anything, however far-fetched, which had any relation to them. A couple of Macs get up at once. The first merely raises a laugh by topping one of his William’s philosophical anecdotes with another which he fancies to be still better. The second gets up, and has a regular tussle with his master about the action of the mind in sleep, and in a state of semi-consciousness. It is all over in five minutes, the student at length sitting down in a state of profuse perspiration, highly complimented by Sir William for his ingenuity, and feeling that he has done a plucky thing which thoroughly deserves the cheers of 149 fellow-students. These exhibitions are quite voluntary, and it appears that among the M’s there is no more heart to get up and speak. The letter C is therefore next taken out of the urn, but the C’s give no response to the call. The next letter that turns up is R, and hereupon Mr. Rowan, who has been fidgeting from the commencement of the hour, rises up to give a quotation from Bishop Berkeley, illustrating a passage in one of Sir William’s lectures. The sly fellow fancies that he has detected the professor in a plagiarism, but quotes the passage ostensibly as confirming the lecture. When he has sat down, Sir W. Hamilton, who sees distinctly through the youngster’s game, directs his attention to a dozen passages in a dozen different authors, where he will find statements to the same effect, which he might equally have quoted. So the hour passes, each letter of the alphabet being presented in turn, and all the students who desire it, having a chance of speaking. Sometimes the exercise was varied by essays being read, or by Sir William Hamilton suddenly propounding a difficult question as to the use of a term—say the term dialectic, among the Platonists,—or as to some definition of Aristotle’s in the Posterior Analytics. Anybody might answer that knew. No written account was taken of these answers and other displays, but gradually a public opinion was formed as to the best man in the class, and at the end of the sessions the honours went by vote, the professor voting in perfect equality with his students, and almost always finding that the general voice coincided with his own opinions as to the order in which the ten best men should stand. The system perfectly succeeded. Never was there a class in which so much enthusiasm manifested itself. An immense interest was excited in the lectures, but the chief thing to be observed here is, that by turning his class two days a week into a sort of authoritative debating club, he established a public life, which, if it is not society, is at least the scaffolding of society. So it is more or less in all the classes that are conducted with spirit. It was not so much felt in the class-room of Professor Wilson, who kept all the talk to himself; and surely it was quite enough to hear such a man discourse on human life in his own way. What Christopher North knew of human nature he told to his pupils in the most glowing terms; but literally the students sat down before him day after day without knowing each other’s names, and without having an idea as to the amount of work performed by each in prospect of a place in the class list. He was a splendid lecturer—but he was only a lecturer; and lecturing is little more than half the work of a professorship. To succeed in that work requires peculiar tact and knowledge of men who are in what Mr. Disraeli has described as the “curly” period of life. Very soon “the curled darlings of our nation” find out the weak places of the professor. He may implore silence, but the more noise prevails. If he threatens, revenge follows the next day, for suddenly and unaccountably half the students in the class turn lame, and hobble into the lecture-room leaning on bludgeons, with which, knocked against the seats, they interrupt the speaker until his voice is drowned in the uproar. One poor old professor (who, by the way, lived in continual terror of a very painful disease) had so completely lost the control of his students, that he had to sit before them in mute despair, and had the pleasure of hearing one of them invite him by his Christian name, “Sandy,” to lay himself upon the table, in order that he—the curled darling—might attempt a little lithotomy. Generally, however, these uproars are got up good-humouredly to bring out the professor, who perfectly understands what the students want. They are tired of the hypothenuse, the sine and the cosine, and they want a little fun. There never was a better hand at this sort of work than the late Dr. Thomas Gillespie, a brother-in-law of Lord Campbell. He was not only professor of Latin, but a devotee of the fishing-rod, a poet of much pathos, a minister of much eloquence, and a talker boiling over with jest and anecdote. He would lay down his Horace, which he knew by heart, and joke with the students till the tears rolled down their cheeks. Regularly every year he told the same pet anecdotes, and they knew what was coming; but his manner was always irresistible. One of his anecdotes was about a dial. He had a dial in his garden which required mending. He got a mason to do the job, and the bill of charge ran as follows: “For mending the deil—1_s._” The old fellow enjoyed it more and more every time he told the story, and after five minutes of this kind of play he would return to his Latin sapphics, and stand over the stream of poetry with all the patient gravity of an angler.

How long the present system will last, nobody knows. The Scotch are not satisfied with their universities, but scarcely know what it is that is in fault. In the view of some, their chief fault is, that they are not faulty enough; and in this view it is supposed that if there were less of study and more of scandal in them, they would be greatly improved. That is an ugly way of stating the case, which we desire to avoid, though probably it means nothing more than this—that scandal is one of the necessary evils of society, and that it would be well if there were more of society in the Scottish universities, even at the expense of occasional excesses. It is boasted that the Scottish students are very good—almost irreproachable in their lives. This may be only seeming, and if they led a more public life perhaps their good conduct would be more frequently called in question. But granting that such praise is thoroughly deserved, is it not possible that it may signify the stagnation of life even more than a victory over Apollyon? Heaven forbid that we in Cornhill should glorify wild-oats! they are an unprofitable kind of grain, which are not admitted into our granary. Strange to say, however, people don’t dislike to see a little innocent crop of wild-oats sown by young men, as showing that the social life is fully enjoyed; and it is worth considering whether the Scottish students might not do well if in this sense they found a new reading in the motto suggested by Sydney Smith,—“_Tenui musam meditamur avenâ_.” With Lord Brougham and Mr. Gladstone at the head of the University of Edinburgh, it is hoped that a good deal may be compassed in the way of University Reform. It ought to be remembered, however, that the arts of reading and lecturing, cramming and examining, are not the only things to be comprised in a University Reform: but that the art of living requires just as much regulation as the art of learning.

FOOTNOTES

[27] There are about 1,500 students at the Edinburgh University; of these only about eleven take the Bachelor’s degree every year, about nine take the Master’s degree, and about sixty are capped as medical doctors. It is expected, however, that the new regulations will increase the number of graduates.

Roundabout Papers.—No. II.

ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK.

Montaigne and Howel’s Letters are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don’t weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don’t heed them. It was the custom of their time, as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part of dress which we all wear in cities. But people can’t afford to be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the _Arabian Nights_ was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a “family edition.” Well, _qui s’excuse_.... Who, pray, has accused me as yet? Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy’s objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarce ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles’s Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend’s corn, his outcry is genuine,—he confounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself, and expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by somebody, as far back as the year 1838: whenever I think of it, and have had a couple glasses of wine, I _cannot_ help telling it. The toe is stamped upon: the pain is just as keen as ever: I cry out, and perhaps utter imprecatory language. I told the story only last Wednesday at dinner:—

“Mr. Roundabout,” says a lady sitting by me, “how comes it that in your books there is a certain class (it may be of men, or it may be of women, but that is not the question in point)—how comes it, dear sir, there is a certain class of persons whom you always attack in your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on?”

I couldn’t help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. I told her the whole story, between the entrées and the roast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus, that crack across my heart can never be cured. There are wrongs and griefs that _can’t_ be mended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget at will? How forgive? I can forgive the occasional waiter, who broke my beautiful old decanter at that very dinner. I am not going to do him any injury. But all the powers on earth can’t make that claretjug whole.

So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I was egotistical. I was selfish, no doubt; but I was natural, and was telling the truth. You say you are angry with a man for talking about himself. It is because you yourself are selfish, that that other person’s Self does not interest you. Be interested by other people and with their affairs. Let them prattle and talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just mentioned. When you have had enough of them, and sudden hazes come over your eyes, lay down the volume; pop out the candle, and _dormez bien_. I should like to write a nightcap book—a book that you can muse over, that you can smile over, that you can yawn over—a book of which you can say, “Well, this man is so and so and so and so; but he has a friendly heart (although some wiseacres have painted him as black as Bogey), and you may trust what he says.” I should like to touch you sometimes with a reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make you say, _Io anche_ have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. Now, how is this to be done except by egotism? _Linea recta brevissima._ That right line “I” is the very shortest, simplest, straightforwardest means of communication between us, and stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes authors say, “The present writer has often remarked;” or, “The undersigned has observed;” or, “Mr. Roundabout presents his compliments to the gentle reader, and begs to state,” &c.: but “I” is better and straighter than all these grimaces of modesty: and although these are Roundabout Papers, and may wander who knows whither, I shall ask leave to maintain the upright and simple perpendicular. When this bundle of egotisms is bound up together, as they may be one day, if no accident prevents this tongue from wagging, or this ink from running, they will bore you very likely; so it would to read through Howel’s Letters from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a ham: but a slice on occasion may have a relish: a dip into the volume at random and so on for a page or two: and now and then a smile; and presently a gape; and the book drops out of your hand; and so, _bon soir_, and pleasant dreams to you. I have frequently seen men at clubs asleep over their humble servant’s works, and am always pleased. Even at a lecture I don’t mind, if they don’t snore. Only the other day when my friend A. said, “You’ve left off that Roundabout business, I see; very glad you have,” I joined in the general roar of laughter at the table. I don’t care a fig whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don’t like partridge, Archilochus, or porridge, or what not? Try some other dish. I am not going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with you if you refuse it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said to me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting beside her, “Mr. Roundabout, I was told I should not like you; and I don’t.” “Well, ma’am,” says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, “I don’t care.” And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed each other ever after.

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say, “Fudge!” and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least mortified. If you say, “What does he mean by calling this paper _On Two Children in Black_, when there’s nothing about people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women. What is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I’s!” My dear fellow, if you read Montaigne’s Essays, you must own that he might call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Discoursing, or Experience, or what you will. Besides, if I _have_ a subject (and I have), I claim to approach it in a roundabout manner.

You remember Balzac’s tale of the _Peau de Chagrin_, and how every time the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the fairy _Peau_ shrank a little and the owner’s life correspondingly shortened? I have such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving up my favourite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can’t tell my story of the children in black after this; after printing it, and sending it through the country. On the first of March next, these little things become public property. I take their hands. I bless them. I say, “Good-bye, my little dears.” I am quite sorry to part with them: but the fact is, I have told all my friends about them already, and don’t dare to take them about with me any more.

Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit that there lies in it a most curious and exciting little mystery. I am like a man who gives you the last bottle of his 25 claret. It is the pride of his cellar; he knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the bottle, fashioned so slenderly—takes it up tenderly, cants it with care, places it before his friends, declares how good it is, with honest pride, and wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine in his cellar. _Si quid novisti_, &c., I shall be very glad to hear from you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have.

Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never probably know to my dying day. They were very pretty little men, with pale faces, and large, melancholy eyes; and they had beautiful little hands, and little boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots lined with the richest silk; and they had picture-books in several languages, English, and French, and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little men I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very handsome, pale lady in mourning, and a maid-servant dressed in black, too; and on the lady’s face there was the deepest grief. The little boys clambered and played about the carriage, and she sate watching. It was a railway-carriage from Frankfort to Heidelberg.

I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and going to part from them. Perhaps I have tried parting with my own, and not found the business very pleasant. Perhaps I recollect driving down (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited—only a few minutes—until the whirring wheels of that “Defiance” coach were heard rolling towards us as certain as death. Twang goes the horn; up goes the trunk; down come the steps. Bah! I see the autumn evening: I hear the wheels now: I smart the cruel smart again: and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of people parting from their children.

I thought these little men might be going to school for the first time in their lives; and mamma might be taking them to the doctor, and would leave them with many fond charges, and little wistful secrets of love, bidding the elder to protect his younger brother, and the younger to be gentle, and to remember to pray God always for his mother, who would pray for her boy too. Our party made friends with these young ones during the little journey; but the poor lady was too sad to talk except to the boys now and again, and sate in her corner, pale, and silently looking at them.

The next day, we saw the lady and her maid driving in the direction of the railway station, _without the boys_. The parting had taken place, then. That night they would sleep among strangers. The little beds at home were vacant, and poor mother might go and look at them. Well, tears flow, and friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the world. I daresay we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the vast shattered walls, and quaint gables; and the Neckar running its bright course through that charming scene of peace and beauty; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with relish. The poor mother would eat but little _Abendessen_ that night; and, as for the children—that first night at school—hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merriment—as for the first night at a strange school, we most of us remember what _that_ is. And the first is not the _worst_, my boys, there’s the rub. But each man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must have yours.

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden: and I daresay, saw Madame de Schlangenbad and Madame dela Cruchecassée, and Count Punter, and honest Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the evening, but our two little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded man! We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled back one of the little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see the children now looking rather frightened away from us and up into the father’s face, or the cruel uncle’s—which was he? I think he was the father. So this was the end of them. Not School as I at first had imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty silken clothes, and the tender—tender cares; and they were handed to this scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. Ah! this is worse than school. Poor little men! poor mother sitting by the vacant little beds! We saw the children once or twice after, always in Scowler’s company; but we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition.

From Baden we went to Bale, and thence to Lucerne, and so over the St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to Venice; and now comes the singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name: but there is an apothecary’s shop there, whither I went to buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary’s with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really _does_ do the bites a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my little Heidelberg-Baden boys!

I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as they were with their mother. When I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were _without shoe or stocking_. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the city.

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent Semmering Pass was not quite completed). At a station between Laybach and Graetz, one of my companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to the carriage saying:—

“There’s that horrible man from Baden, with the two little boys.”

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb. My companion said they were pale, wretched-looking, and _dressed quite shabbily_.

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. I could not see my little men. From that day to this I have never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were they? What could they be? How can you explain that mystery of the mother giving them up; of the remarkable splendour and elegance of their appearance while under her care; or their bare-footed squalor in Venice, a month afterwards; of their shabby habiliments at Laybach? Had the father gambled away his money, and sold their clothes? How came they to have passed out of the hands of a refined lady (as she evidently was, with whom I first saw them) into the charge of quite a common woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys at Venice? Here is but one chapter of the story. Can any man write the next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened to light? Who knows: the mystery may have some quite simple solution. I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them bare-footed and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two Children in Black?