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 LIBRARY OF 
 
 LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE 
 
 A,a,.A.M.. COLUMBIAN COLLEGE,* 71. -73 
 WASHINGTON. D. C 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MRS. MARY A. WYNNE 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN H. WYNNE 
 
 CORNELL '98 
 1922 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ACS .F73 
 
 Essays critical and narrative. 
 
 3 1924 031 043 114 
 
 olin 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031043114 
 
ESSAYS 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE COLLECTED in this volume some of the Articles 
 which at various times I have contributed to different 
 periodicals. It is, perhaps, pardonable in an author 
 to wish to rescue a few of his anonymous productions 
 from the wave of oblivion which so soon passes over 
 ephemeral literature. I have added one or two 
 Lectures, which I have delivered at several places. 
 Whether the Essays which I have here reprinted 
 deserve the attempt to secure for them a more per- 
 manent record must be determined by the judgment 
 of the public, from whose decision there is no appeal. 
 
 W. F. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Speeches of Lord Brougham ■ . , . i 
 
 Criminal Procedure in Scotland and England . 24 
 
 The Kingdom of Italy . . . . .61 
 
 The Judges OF England . . ", .110 
 
 Literary Style , . . . . .162 
 
 Progress of Legal Reform .... 204 
 
 An Election in France . ' ; , . .221 
 
 A Journey to Ashango Land .... 247 
 
 Eugenie de GufiRiN . , . . . .273 
 
 Tunnel through the Alps .... 203 
 
 The Hudson's Bay Company : its History . . .316 
 
 Visit to Russia and the Great Fair of Nijni Novogorod 346 
 Visit to Portland Prison .... 385 
 
 Three Days in Sark ...... 396 
 
 William Cobbett . .... 409 
 
 Historical Evidence , , . . 438 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 ' Edinburgh Review,' April, 1858. 
 
 Many are the claims of Lord Brougham upon the respect 
 and gratitude of his countrymen ; and many are the titles by 
 which he will be known to posterity. As a philanthropist 
 his name is imperishably associated with those of Clarkson 
 and Wilberforce in their efforts for the suppression of the 
 Slave Trade, and he has given the chief impulse to the great 
 cause of the Education of the people. As a statesman, he has 
 taken a leading part in counselling and carrj'ing some of the 
 most important political measures of the nineteenth century. 
 As an advocate whose zeal for his client scorned consideration 
 of personal advancement, he will be known, if for nothing 
 else, yet for his immortal defence of Queen Caroline. As a 
 lawyer, his name is inscribed in the list of Lord High Chan- 
 cellors of England, — and he bounded to that lofty dignity 
 from the ranks of the Bar, without having previously filled 
 one of the subordinate law offices of the Crown. As a legis- 
 lator, the country owes to his perseverance some of the most 
 important improvements in her civil laws, and we allude more 
 especially to the radical changes that have been effected in 
 the law of Evidence. He is not only a great speaker, but an 
 able writer; not only a politician, who has fought like a 
 
 ^ speeches on Social and Political Sub- 2 vols. l2mo. London and Glasgow : 
 jects, ■with Historical Introductions. By' 1857. 
 Henry Lord Brougham, F.R.S. 
 
 B 
 
2 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 gladiator for fifty years in the arena of party strife, but a man 
 of letters, and a mathematician of no mean attainments. We 
 remember when it was the fashion for those who cannot con- 
 ceive the possibility of excellence in more than one depart- 
 ment of knowledge, to sneer at Lord Brougham as 'no 
 lawyer.' But this is best answered by the fact, that in hardly 
 a single instance were his judgments in the Court of Chancery 
 reversed on appeal by the House of Lords ; and we will ven- 
 ture to say, that although there have been lawyers like 
 Buller, and Holroyd, and Bayley, and Littledale, more versed 
 in the technicalities of their craft and the mysteries of special 
 pleading — an abomination now well-nigh swept away— few 
 have been more profoundly imbued with the principles of the 
 Common Law. 
 
 Rare, indeed, have been the examples of an intellect so 
 vigorous and active. His energy throughout life has been 
 astounding ; and even now, at a period which in other men 
 would be called old age, it shows little sign of diminution or 
 decay. Mentally, his eye is not dim, nor his natural strength 
 abated ; for he still prosecutes the cause of Law Reform with 
 an ardour which might put to shame the efforts of younger 
 men ; and year after year he presses upon the Legislature 
 measures of which the object is to simplify the machinery, 
 and lessen to the suitor the cost of our courts of justice. 
 
 We do not intend to go over the wide field which a life so 
 spent presents ; but we propose in the present article to con- 
 fine our attention to Lord Brougham as an Orator. It is by 
 his speeches that his influence was most felt in the generation 
 now fading from amongst us, and by them, more than any- 
 thing else, his colossal reputation has been built. Although 
 there is, unhappily, something evanescent in those great efforts 
 of the human tongue which have so often roused and ruled 
 the passions and the intellect of the senate and the nation, 
 their results belong to history, and Lord Brougham will leave 
 no monument behind him more worthy to be held in lasting 
 remembrance than these Orations. For he has laboured to 
 become a master in his art, and we see in the arrangement of 
 his topics, the structure of his periods, and the choice of his 
 language, the skill, and in its proper sense, the artifice, of the 
 
 consummate rhetorician. 
 
 
 
THE SFEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 3 
 
 Upon the subject of Oratory a lamentable misapprehension 
 seems to prevail, and we are not sorry to have an opportunity 
 of saying a few words about it. No one can deny that elo- 
 quence at the Bar and in Parliament is just now at a low ebb. 
 It is often positively painful to enter a court of justice and 
 hear the addresses to which juries are condemned to listen, 
 from men who occupy the place where once stood an Erskine 
 and a Brougham. No doubt there have been of late years 
 brilliant exceptions, but we do not hesitate to say, that the 
 general character of forensic oratory at the present day is far 
 below what might be expected from the education, the oppor- 
 tunities, and the intellectual vigour of the age. 
 
 Nor is the state of things much better in the House of 
 Commons. We do not, of course, expect that a country gen- 
 tleman should be a good speaker because he has carried the 
 county ; nor that merchants or railway directors should study 
 Demosthenes in their counting-houses, and come forth as 
 orators as soon as they have been returned for a borough ; 
 but how few of the practised debaters of the House ever rise 
 to anything which approaches to the name of oratory, how few 
 are able to realise the idea of one whom Cicero describes : qui 
 jure non solum disertus sed etiam eloquens did possit ! It has 
 indeed been the custom of late to decry oratorical powers, as 
 tending rather to dazzle and mislead than instruct and edify ; 
 and to praise the dull dry harangue of the plodding man of 
 business, who crams down the throat of his audience a heap 
 of statistical facts, and then wonders to find them gaping or 
 asleep, rather than the brilliant speech of the accomplished 
 orator, who enlivens his subject with the sallies of wit, and 
 adorns it with the graces of imagery. But this kind of lan- 
 guage proceeds more from mortified incapacity than approving 
 judgment. Hobbes defined a republic to be an aristocracy of 
 orators, interrupted at times by the monarchy of a single 
 orator ; and in a country like this, where the very highest 
 rewards and the proudest position are the prizes open to suc- 
 cessful eloquence, it may well be matter of wonder that the 
 number of competitors is so small in the race where ' that im- 
 mortal garland is to be won, not without dust and heat' 
 
 And what is the reason of this .? It arises, we believe, 
 chiefly from the fact that men will not believe that Oratory is 
 
 B 2 *• 
 
4 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 an art, and that excellence m this, as in every other art, can 
 only be attained by labour and by the study of the best 
 models. To such an extent is this heresy carried, that it is 
 actually considered a disparagement— a thing almost to be 
 ashamed of— to be suspected of preparing a speech before- 
 hand ; and it is thought a recommendation of himself by an 
 honourable member when, on rising to address the House, he 
 declares that on entering it he had not the slightest intention 
 of doing so. As if a man ever will or can speak well who 
 takes no pains to make himself a proficient in the art, and 
 who fancies that, like Dogberry's reading and writing, oratory 
 comes by nature ! The speaker must learn his craft as much 
 as a painter or sculptor, or musician ; although, like them also, 
 he must have from nature some special aptitude for his voca- 
 tion. If common sense did not tell us this, the great examples 
 of antiquity would prove it. Every schoolboy knows the 
 enormous pains that Demosthenes and Cicero took to qualify 
 themselves for the task of addressing their fellow-citizens ; and 
 that some of the most celebrated orations that have come 
 down to us from Athens and Rome were written for delivery, 
 but actually never spoken at all. Very different from the 
 common practice has been, if we mistake not, Lord Brougham's 
 conception of the work of the future orator. He has furnished 
 abundant evidence of his familiarity with the classic models. 
 He has shown his veneration for Demosthenes by translating 
 the Chersonese Oration and the great Oration on the Crown ; 
 and on more than one occasion he is said to have committed 
 to writing beforehand the finest parts of his own speeches. 
 If this be true, we honour him the more for the homage he 
 has paid to the eternal rule, that without such 'improbus 
 labor,' excellence in any art is denied to man. And he has 
 had his reward. He stands confessedly in the front rank of 
 English orators, and he won his spurs at a time when the 
 conflict was with giants. 
 
 At the present moment it will hardly be contested that the 
 standard of oratory is far higher in the House of Lords than 
 in the other House of Parliament ; and if any one were asked 
 to point out the best speakers in that august body he would 
 name without hesitation. Lord Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, 
 the Earl of Derby, and the Earl of Ellenborough. We hope 
 
7 HE SPEECHES OF LOUD BROUGHAM. 5 
 
 that before long Lord Macaulay will be added to the list, but 
 he has not yet made a display of his great oratorical powers 
 in the assembly to which he has been elevated, and which by 
 his presence he adorns. Of Lord Lyndhurst's power as a 
 debater it is impossible to speak too highly. But although at 
 times, and in some passages, his speeches may be called elo- 
 quent, they want the rushing force — the declamatory vehe- 
 mence — which is an essential element of oratory. Admirable 
 in logic, comprehensive in statement, and faultless in diction, 
 Lord Lyndhurst commands the attention of all who listen to 
 him. But he appeals more to the reason than the feelings or 
 the passions of his audience, and seeks to convince rather 
 than to persuade. His discourse flows on like the waters of 
 some calm majestic river unruffled by the wind ; but we hear 
 nothing of the dash of the torrent or the roar of the cataract ; 
 — there are no startling apostrophes, nor soul-stirring appeals, 
 which, in the proud consciousness, of his argumentative power, 
 he seems almost to disdain. Certainly this cannot be said of 
 Lord Derby, who, with a command of language as perfect as 
 Lord Lyndhurst's, has a fire and a brilliancy peculiarly his 
 own. 
 
 But great as these men are in debate, none of them can 
 be said to rank as orators with Lord Brougham. If we were 
 obliged to characterise his oratory by a single word, it would 
 be Energy — the Ajti'OTijy of the Greeks. Cicero tells us that 
 often when he rose to speak he trembled in every limb. We 
 doubt whether this ever happened to Lord Brougham. But 
 the Roman orator had by nature a weak and nervous consti- 
 tution, and this may account for the timidity of a character 
 which, although on a memorable occasion he could thunder 
 forth — Contempsi Catilincs gladios, non pertimescam tuos — 
 caused him, in the strife of contending factions, painfully to 
 oscillate between his regard for Pompey and his fear of Caesar. 
 With an athletic frame Lord Brougham possesses a mental 
 organisation singularly robust ; and his style of speaking is 
 cast in a corresponding mould. It is the furthest possible re- 
 moved from the exercitatio domestica et umbratilis, and is rather 
 that which rushes medium in agmen, in pulverem, in clamorem, 
 in castra, atque in aciem forensem. The following passage 
 breathes not only the force of the orator, but the character of 
 
6 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the man. It is from his speech in the House of Lords in 1 838, 
 on the emancipation of Negro apprentices : — 
 
 I have read with astonishment, and I repel with scorn, the insinuation that 
 I had acted the part of an advocate, and that some of my statements were coloured 
 to serve a cause. How dares any man so to accuse me ? How dares any one, 
 skulking under a fictitious name, to launch his slanderous imputations from his 
 covert? I come forward in my own person. I make the charge in the face of 
 day. I drag the criminal to trial. I openly call down justice on his head. I 
 defy his attacks. I defy his defenders. I challenge investigation. How dares 
 any concealed adversary to charge me as an advocate speakmg from a bnef, and 
 misrepresenting the facts to serve a purpose? But the absurdity of this charge 
 even outstrips its malice. 
 
 Lord Brougham's voice is not musical ; at times, in its 
 higher tones, it is harsh and hoarse, and sounds like the scream 
 of the northern eagle swooping down upon its prey ; but he 
 possesses the art of modulating it with admirable effect, and 
 his elocution is not less cultivated than his diction. His power 
 over the English language is wonderful. It was said of him 
 on one occasion that he made it bend under him. We do 
 not assert that the word chosen is not sometimes too strong. 
 We will not affirm that he does not sometimes sin against a 
 fastidious taste. We cannot deny that in ransacking his 
 memory for epithets and synonyms — or perhaps we should 
 say polyonyms — he brings up some that are too vehement, 
 and that in his descriptions of persons and measures there is 
 too much tendency to exaggerate. But his vocabulary is in- 
 exhaustible, and his faults are those of amplitude of power. 
 He runs riot in the exuberance of strength. His periods are 
 often declamatory, but there are no platitudes ; and without 
 declamation, in its proper sense, there is no oratory. It would 
 be easy to point out in Demosthenes — still easier in Cicero^ 
 passages which, to the colder feelings of our western clime, 
 seem overstrained and hyperbolical. But the criterion is this : 
 How did they act upon the crowds that listened } Did they, 
 or did they not, stir up from its innermost depths the soul of 
 the auditory .? For it must never be forgotten that the great 
 end of oratory is to persuade, and by carrying captive the 
 passions, to attack through them the citadel of reason. It 
 will be found, on a careful study of Lord Brougham's speeches, 
 that the declamation almost always assists the argument ; 
 it advances, so to speak, the action of the drama, and never, 
 as is the case when it becomes mere tinsel or bombast in the 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 7 
 
 hands of inferior men, impedes and encumbers it. He is fond 
 of iterating an idea, and clothing it in every imaginable form 
 of words — piHng Ossa on Pelion — and making each sentence 
 rise in the scale of impressiveness. Some of his periods may- 
 be too long, and there is a danger lest the attention of the 
 hearer — or perhaps we ought now to say the reader — should 
 flag while pausing for the climax of the sentence ; but there is 
 no false grammar — no anacoluthon — no confusion of metaphor, 
 and out of the longest sentence or succession of sentences, he 
 winds himself with unerring accuracy. 
 
 He himself said in one of his speeches — that on the ad- 
 ministration of justice in Ireland in 1839, when defending 
 himself from the charge of violence and undue severity made 
 against him by Lord Melbourne — 'No man is a judge of the 
 exact force and weight of his own expressions.' Probably 
 Lord Brougham has at times been hardly conscious of the 
 force of the projectile he has launched from his lips in the 
 ardour of debate. He reminds us of Polyphemus hurling 
 rocks as if he were a boy flinging pebbles. Thus, speaking 
 in 1823 of the Notes of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, with 
 reference to the state of Spain in 1822-3, he said : — 
 
 I will venture to say that to produce anything more preposterous, more ab- 
 surd, more extravagant, better calculated to excite a mingled feeling of disgust 
 and derision, would baffle any chancery or state-paper office in Europe. 
 
 And again — 
 
 Monstrous and insolent and utterly unbearable as all of them are, I consider 
 that of Russia to be more monstrous, more insolent, and more prodigiously beyond 
 endurance than the rest. 
 
 So also, speaking of the conduct of the Whigs on the Bed- 
 chamber question in 1839 — 
 
 This is the novel, the uncouth, the portentous, the monstrous description of 
 our free and popular constitution, which the Whig Government of 1839 has given 
 to the Reformed Parliament of England. 
 
 That careful preparation of an elaborate speech does not 
 unfit an orator for unpremeditated and effective reply, has been 
 shown by Lord Brougham in some of his finest displays. We 
 will mention one remarkable example. It is the speech de- 
 livered by him on the instant without a moment's notice, in 
 answer to the charges brought by the late Sir Robert (then 
 Mr.) Peel, in 18 19, against the Education Committee, of which 
 
8 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Mr. Brougham had been chairman. It is a masterly effort, 
 full of the keenest scarcasm and most cutting point— and from 
 a note at the end we learn that its preservation is owmg to 
 the accident of a barrister who took an interest in the subject, 
 happening to be in the gallery of the House of Commons ; 
 for ' the newspapers, for some days before this debate took 
 place, had refrained from reporting Mr. Brougham's speeches 
 in consequence, as it is said, of some offence given by him to 
 a reporter in the form of words used in referring to him.' The 
 following passage from this reply is a good illustration of the 
 speaker's peculiar style — heaping sentence upon sentence, and 
 stretching his topic until the tension becomes almost too great 
 to be borne : — 
 
 But if I do not now satisfy all who hear me that the Committee were right, that 
 this House was right, and the Right Honourable Gentleman wrong — if I do not 
 succeed in proving to the heart's content of every one man of common candour 
 and ordinary imderstanding, that the Right Honourable Gentleman is utterly 
 wrong in all his charges — wrong from the beginning to the end of his laboured 
 oration — if I do not in a few minutes and by referring to a few plain matters strip 
 that performance of all claim to credit — if I do not show him to be mistaken in 
 his facts,, out in his dates, at fault in his law, ignorant of all parliamentary pre- 
 cedent and practice, grossly uninformed, perhaps misinformed, upon the whole 
 question which in an evil hour he has undertaken to handle, with no better help 
 than the practical knowledge and discretion of those who have urged him on to 
 the assault, while they showed only a vicarious prodigality of their own persons 
 — then I will consent to suffer — what shall I say ? — to endure whatever punish- 
 ment the Right Honourable Gentleman may think fit to inflict upon me and my 
 colleagues — even the weight of his censure — which will assuredly in his estimation 
 be fully equal to our demerits, how great soever they may be. But I venture to 
 hope that the House, mercifully regarding my situation while such a judgment is 
 suspending, will allov,' me, ere the awfiil decree goes forth, to avert, if it be 
 possible, from our devoted heads a fate so overwhelming. 
 
 Sarcastic irony, of which only a light touch appears in the 
 latter part of the above extract, is a favourite weapon of 
 Lord Brougham. Sometimes he has indulged in it even to 
 the verge of indiscretion ; as, for instance, in the following 
 passage, from his speech in defence of Queen Caroline, ad- 
 dressed, be it remembered, to the House of Lords, who were 
 sitting in judgment upon her fate. But he doubtless knew 
 how far he might venture to go in upbraiding while he affected 
 to praise. 
 
 This was when he was examined on the Tuesday. On the Friday, with the 
 interval of two days,— and your Lordships, for reasons best known to yourselves 
 but which must have been bottomed on justice g\iided by wisdom,— wisdom never 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 9 
 
 more seen or better evinced than in varying the course of conduct and adapting 
 to new circumstances the actions we perform— wisdom which will not, if it be 
 perfect in its kind and absolute in its degree, ever sustain any loss by the devia- 
 tion—for this reason alone, in order that injustice might not be done (for what in 
 one case may be injurious to a defendant, may be expected mainly to assist a 
 defendant in another,) — your Lordships, not with a view to injure the Queen — 
 your Lordships, with a view to farther not to frustrate the ends of justice — allowed 
 the evidence to be printed, which afforded to the witnesses, if they wished it, 
 means of mending and improving upon their testimony. 
 
 And this reminds us of another passage in the same speech, 
 where, flinging irony aside, he with unparalleled boldness 
 charged the Peers of England, before whom he stood as the 
 advocate of the Queen, with having themselves, by their own 
 conduct, forced her to associate abroad with persons beneath 
 her, and thus incur the degradation of which she was then 
 accused. 
 
 'But who,' he asked, 'are they that bring this charge, and above all before 
 whom do they urge it ? Others may accuse her — others may blame her for going 
 abroad — others may tell tales of the consequences of living among Italians, and 
 of not associating with the women of her country or of her adopted country ; but 
 it is not your Lordships that have any right to say so. It is not you, my Lords, 
 that can fling this stone at Her Majesty. You are the last persons in the world — 
 you who now presume to judge her, are the last persons in the world so to charge 
 her ; for you are the witnesses whom she must call to vindicate her from that 
 charge. You are the last persons who can so charge her ; for you being her wit- 
 nesses, have been the instigators of that only admitted crime. While she was 
 here she courteously opened the doors of her palace to the families of your Lord- 
 ships. She graciously condescended to mix herself in the habits of most familiar 
 
 life with those virtuous and distinguished persons But when changes 
 
 took place — when other views opened — when that power was to be retained which 
 she had been made the instrument of grasping — when the lust of power and place 
 was to be continued its gratification, to the first gratification of which she had been 
 made the victim, — then her doors were opened in vain ; then that society of the 
 Peeresses of England was withholden from her ; then she was reduced to the 
 
 alternative, humiliating indeed either to acknowledge that you had 
 
 deserted her or to leave the country and have recourse to other society 
 
 inferior to yours. ' 
 
 Our Hmits will not allow us to attempt an analysis of this 
 celebrated speech, and indeed, it is too' well known to need 
 that we should do so. All who have read it must have 
 stamped upon their memories the way in which Mr. Brougham 
 shattered the evidence in support of the bill, and the irresist- 
 able force with which he insisted upon its rejection, not only 
 on account of the worthlessness of the witnesses who were 
 called, but the absence of the witnesses who were not. In 
 anticipation of the taunt which might be expected from those 
 
10 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND narrative: 
 
 who would say that he might call the latter himself, he burst 
 forth :— 
 
 And if you do not call them-in the name of justice, what? Say i-Say ! 
 -For shame, in this temple-this highest temple of justice, o have her most 
 sacred rights so profaned, that I am to be condemned in the plenitude of proof, 
 if guilt is ; that I am to be condemned, unless I run counter to the presumption 
 which bears sway in all Courts of Justice, that I am innocent until I am proved 
 guilty ; and that my case is to be considered as utterly ruined, unless I call my 
 adversary's witnesses ! Oh most monstrous ! most incredible ! My Lords ! my 
 ■Lords ! if you mean ever to show the face of those symbols by which Justice is 
 known to your country, without making them stand an eternal condemnation of 
 yourselves, I call upon you instantly to dismiss this case, and for this single 
 reason ; and I will say not another word upon this subject. 
 
 It was in the same speech that he uttered his well-known 
 description of the duties of an advocate. 
 
 I once before took occasion to remind your Lordships — which was unnecessary, 
 but there are many whom it may be necessary to remind — that an advocate, by the 
 sacred duty which he owes to his client, knows in the discharging that office but 
 one person in the world, THAT CLIENT AND NONE other. To save that chent 
 by all expedient means — to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all 
 others, and among others to himself — is the highest and most unquestioned of his 
 duties ; and he must not regard the alarm — the suffering — the torment — the 
 destruction — which he may bring upon another. Nay, separating even the duties 
 of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the wind, 
 he must prove reckless of the consequences, if his fate should unhappily be to 
 involve his country in confusion for his client's protection ! 
 
 This, if considered as propounding an article in the code 
 of forensic ethics, is an exaggerated and erroneous view, 
 against which the right reason of every one instinctively 
 revolts ; but the speaker meant it to apply to and foreshadow 
 the necessity to which he might be driven of recriminating 
 upon the King, and impugning his title to the throne in con- 
 sequence of his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert. Although 
 Mr. Brougham did not go so far as this, yet he went far enough 
 in vindicating his claim to know in the discharge of his duty 
 to his client ' but one person in the world, that client and no 
 other,' when he called the King ' the ringleader of the band 
 of perjured witnesses ; ' and in quoting an affectionate letter 
 from George III. to his daughter-in-law, said, that he could 
 not read it ' without a feeling of sorrow, when we reflect upon 
 the reign that has passed, and compare it with the rule we 
 live under.' 
 
 It is needless to express any opinion upon the merits of 
 the case, or to revive a controversy, in every aspect most 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. n 
 
 unhappy, which has died away. We are deahng with the 
 Queen's trial merely as it afforded a great occasion for a great 
 advocate ; and no one can deny the matchless skill with 
 which the defence was conducted, and the power with which 
 the testimony of Majocchi, the 'non mi ricordo' Majocchi — 
 of Demont, ' the Machiavel of waiting maids ' — of Cucchi, 
 with ' that unmatched phsiognomy, those gloating eyes, that 
 snifiSng nose, that lecherous mouth ' — of Sacchi, and of Kress, 
 and indeed of all the witnesses for the bill, was sifted, anato- 
 mised, and destroyed. We will quote the peroration of the 
 speech, and chiefly for the purpose of calling attention to the 
 rising climax at the beginning. 
 
 Such, my Lords, is the case now before you ! Such is the evidence in support 
 of this measure — evidence inadequate to prove a debt — impotent to deprive of a 
 civil right — ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence — scandalous if brought 
 forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows — monstrous 
 to ruin the honour, to blast the name, of an English Queen ! What shall I say, 
 then, if this is the proof by which an act of legislation, a parliamentary sentence, 
 an ex post facia law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman ? My 
 Lords, I pray you to pause. I do earnestly beseech you to take heed ! You are 
 standing upon the brink of a precipice — then beware ! It will go forth your 
 judgment, if sentence shall go against the Queen. But it will be the only 
 judgment you ever pronounced, which, instead of reaching its object, will return 
 and bound back upon those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the 
 horrors of this catastrophe — save yourselves from this peril — rescue that country 
 of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer, when 
 severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the roots and stem 
 of the tree. Save that country that you may continue to adorn it — save the Crown 
 which is in jeopardy — the Aristocracy which is shaken — save the Altar which 
 must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred Throne ! You have said, my 
 Lords, you have willed — the Church and the King have willed — that the Queen 
 should be deprived of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, the 
 heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here 
 pour forth my humble supplications at the Throne of Mercy, that that mercy may 
 be poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits of their 
 rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice. 
 
 In connexion with the Queen's trial another opportunity 
 was afforded to Mr. Brougham for a great oratorical display. 
 When she died in August, 1821, the bells of most of the 
 churches throughout England were tolled, — but those of Dur- 
 ham remained silent. Neither church nor cathedral there paid 
 this tribute of respect to her memory ; and a Mr. Williams, 
 the editor of a local newspaper at Durham, commented with 
 some severity upon the omission. What he wrote would 
 now-a-days pass unheeded and disregarded, but those were 
 
12 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 times of ex-officio informations; and the late Lord Abinger, 
 then Mr. Scarlett, the Attorney-General of the County iala- 
 tine, obtained a rule, which was afterwards made absolute 
 for a criminal information against John Williams, the pub- 
 lisher of the paragraph, for a libel against ' the clergy residmg 
 in and near the city of Durham.' We more than doubt 
 whether such a body— having no corporate character or capa- 
 city—could, in point of law, be the possible subjects of a libel, 
 so as to enable them to be the relators in a criminal informa- 
 tion. But the rule was granted, and Williams was defended 
 before a Durham jury by Mr. Brougham. 
 
 In the alleged libel occurred the following passage:— 
 ' Yet these men profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, to 
 walk in his footsteps, to teach his precepts, to inculcate his 
 spirit, to promote harmony, charity, and Christian love ! Out 
 upon such hypocrisy ! ' — and Mr. Scarlett, who conducted the 
 prosecution, had suggested in his opening address to the jury 
 that the reason why the bells of Durham were silent was 
 because the clergy there too deeply sympathised with the 
 Queen's fate to give open expression to their sorrow. This 
 was indeed to expose an unguarded flank to the enemy and 
 invite a terrible attack, and thus did Mr. Brougham avail 
 himself of the opportunity. 
 
 The venerable the clergy of Durham, I am told now for the first time .... 
 did nevertheless, in reality, all the while, deeply sympathise with her suffering in 
 the bottom of their reverend hearts ! When all the resources of the most ingenious 
 cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel — if not so clamorous as others, they 
 did not feel the least of all the men»bers of the community— their grief was in 
 truth too deep for utterance — sorrow clung round their bosoms, weighed upon 
 their tongues, stifled every sound — and when all the rest of mankind, of all sects 
 and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, THEIR 
 silence, the contriist which they displayed to the rest of their species, proceeded 
 from the greater depth of their affliction ; they said the less because they felt the 
 more ! — Oh ! talk of hypocrisy after this ! most consummate of all the hypocrites ? 
 After instructing your chosen official advocate to stand forward with such a 
 defence — such an exposition of your motives— to dare to utter the word hypocrisy, 
 and complain of those who charged you with it ! This is indeed to insult common 
 sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race ! If you were hypocrites 
 before, you were downright frank honest hypocrites to what you have made your- 
 selves — and surely for all you have ever done or ever been charged with, your 
 worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement 
 and ample retribution ! 
 
 In the same speech occurs a passage which we must cite 
 as perfect in its kind. Mr. Scarlett had lamented in his 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 13 
 
 opening that the clergy had not the power of defending them- 
 selves through the public press. Mr. Brougham declared 
 that they had largely used it and ' scurrilously and foully 
 libelled ' the defendant. He then thus proceeded : — 
 
 Not that they wound deeply or injure much ; but that is no fault of theirs : 
 without hurting they give trouble and discomfort. The insect brought into life by 
 corruption, and nestled in filth, though its flight be lowly and its sting puny, can 
 swarm and buzz and irritate the skin and offend the nostril, and altogether give us 
 nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whose nobler nature it aspires to emulate. 
 These reverend slanderers — these pious backbiters — devoid of force to wield the 
 sword, snatch the dagger ; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it 
 rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch. 
 
 Nor was this the last occasion on which Lord Brougham 
 defended the memory of the Queen. No one can doubt 
 the sincerity of his conviction of her innocence, and he has 
 seized every opportunity of proclaiming it to the world. In 
 a debate in 1823, on the question of the Administration of 
 the Law in Ireland, brought forward by himself, Mr. Peel had 
 censured his reference to a letter which has been addressed 
 by the Irish Attorney-General, Mr. Saurin, to Lord Norbury, 
 then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, and in 
 which the writer had suggested that Lord Norbury should 
 make use of his position as a judge on circuit to influence those 
 with whom he came in contact against Catholic emancipation. 
 This letter was a private one, which had got into print by 
 some improper means, contrary to the wish and intention of 
 Mr. Saurin, and had been the subject of much pubhc remark. 
 On hearing the attack, Mr. Brougham turned to Mr. Denman 
 and Mr. Williams, who with Dr. Lushington had been his 
 colleagues on the Queen's trial, and, quoting Cromwell's 
 words at the battle of Dunbar, said, 'The Lord hath de- 
 livered them into our hands.' When he rose to reply he 
 thus dealt with the accusation, and thus retorted upon his 
 adversary : — 
 
 And why let me ask, am I to be blamed for simply referring to an extensively 
 published letter, as if I had first given it publicity? .... I entirely agree with 
 the Right Honourable Gentleman, in his condemnation of those who have been 
 concerned in obtaining the letter for the purpose of publishing it. Their conduct 
 may not be criminal by the enactments of the law, but it is morally dishonest, and 
 it L revolting to every honourable feeling. I go heartily along with him m 
 rewobatine all such odious practices ; I hold with him that it is shameful mdecent, 
 abominable to encourage them; I consider it truly detestable to hold out the 
 encouragement of bribes for the purpose of corrupting servants, and inducing them 
 
14 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 , , , • ^.ctpr ave, and of their 
 
 to violate their first duty, and betray the secrets of their tnaster y , ^^ ^ 
 
 mistress too !-I say of their mistress !-of the:r ™'=.t'^^^= •'^j'^^^" ^ut to produce 
 her secrets and to steal her papers, and to purlom her 1^"^J=' ^ j^ 
 
 them for the treacherous, the foul, the execrable P^-^ose of s^PP°rt^^^^^^^ 
 against her honour and her life, founded on the "^ =X pe^S" £! 
 by her servants and sold to her enemies ! the proofs °^-^'-'f''°l^., Grounded on 
 an'd larceny pe,T,etrated 1 and then to carry on a p.osecuti n J^^^^^^^ 
 matter drawn from sources so poU-te<^ as ^'-"Xminable, making the 
 degraded the nation— a prosecution so foul, so utterly ^u-^ , s 
 
 sun shroud himself in darkness, as if unwilling to lend the light of day to the per- 
 petration of such enormous wickedness ! > And by whom was this infamy enacted ? 
 By the Ministers of the Crown-by the very colleagues of the Right Honouiable 
 Gentleman who now pronounces so solemn a denunciation of all that tends 
 to encourage servants in betraying the confidence of their masters and their 
 mistresses ! 
 
 Lord Brougham is sparing in the use of metaphor, and 
 hardly ever resorts to a simile. But when he does employ 
 metaphor it is always apt and effective. We may give as a 
 specimen his description of the benefits conferred by the 
 Reform Bill, which occurs in a speech delivered by him in 
 1839, on what was called the Bedchamber Question, so fatal 
 to Sir Robert Peel's attempt to form an Administration in 
 the month of May in that year. 
 
 It is my clear and deliberate conviction (and if I had not so believed I never 
 would have consented to the change in 1 83 1 and 1832, much less promoted it) — 
 that if the altered Constitution is fit for the calm, it is j'et better suited to the 
 tempest ; if the vessel can ride the more safely in smooth water, since the repaire 
 she then underwent, they were still more necessary for enabling her to bear the 
 storm. Her being made more tight in her rigging, better trimmed, better 
 manned, and by a more contented crew, sounder in her timbers, more secure and 
 more seaworthy in all her fabric, far from rendering her less fit safely to ride 
 through the troubled waters, must make her more powerful to defy the strife of 
 the elements .... The vessel has undergone a thorough repair ; not unnecessary 
 for her security in the fairest weather, but in the stress of wind and wave 
 absolutely required to give her a chance of safety. 
 
 And, although it is not included in the collection we are 
 reviewing, we cannot resist the temptation of quoting an ex- 
 tract from his noble speech on the State of the Law, where a 
 fine metaphor is beautifully sustained. 
 
 The great stream of Time is perpetually flowing on ; all things around us are 
 in ceaseless motion ; and we vainly imagine to preserve our relative position 
 among them by getting out of the current and standing stock-still on the margin. 
 The stately vessel we belong to glides down ; our bark is attached to it ; we 
 might ' pursue the triumph and partake the gale ; ' but worse than the fool who 
 
 ' An eclipse of the sun happened to of the case for the Bill of Pains and 
 take place at the time of the opening Penalties against the Queen. 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 15 
 
 stares expecting the current to flow down and run out, we ebcclaim, ' Stop the 
 boat ! ' and would tear it away to strand it for the purpose of preserving its con- 
 nexion with the vessel. 
 
 It is, however, in the power of description that Lord 
 Brougham peculiarly excels. No one can paint with more 
 force a picture in words. Witness that tremendous passage 
 with which he appalled the House of Lords when, in his 
 speech on the Slave Trade in 1838, he described the horrors 
 of the Middle Passage and spoke of the shark that follows 
 in the wake of the slaveship ; ' and her course is literally to 
 be tracked through the ocean by the blood of the murdered, 
 with which her enormous crime stains its waters.' Our space 
 will not allow us to do more than give a fragment of the 
 picture in which are drawn scenes — 
 
 Scenes not exceeded in horror by the forms with which the great Tuscan poet 
 peopled the Hell of his fancy, nor by the dismal tints of his illustrious country- 
 man's pencil breathing its horrors over the vaults of the Sistine Chapel ! Mortua 
 quin etiam jungebat corpora vivis I On the deck and in the loathsome hold are to 
 be seen the living chained to the dead — the putrid carcase remaining to mock 
 the survivor with a spectacle that to him presents no terrors — to mock him with 
 the spectacle of a release that he envies ! Nay, women have been known to 
 bring forth the miserable fruit of the womb, surrounded by the dying and the 
 dead — the decayed corpses of their fellow victims. 
 
 After this, his affecting account of the sufferings of the 
 people in his speech against the Orders in Council in 18 12 
 seems almost tame. And yet his tale of starving penury and 
 silent woe in the manufacturing districts was told with infinite 
 skill — we fear with not more skill than truth — and touched 
 the hearts of all who heard it. Speaking of Birmingham he 
 asked : — 
 
 In what state do you find that once busy hive of men ? Silent, still, and 
 desolate during half the week ; during the rest of it, miserably toiling at reduced 
 wages, for a pittance scarcely sufficient to maintain animal life in the lowest state 
 of comfort, and at all times swarming with unhappy persons, willing, anxious to 
 work for their lives, but unable to find employment. He must have a stout heart 
 within him, who can view such a scene, and not shudder. But even this is not 
 
 all A third would say that he was afraid to see his people, because he 
 
 had no longer the means of giving them work, and he knew that they would 
 flock around him and implore to be employed at the lowest wages : for something 
 wholly insufficient to feed them. 'Indeed,' said one, 'our situation is greatly 
 to be pitied ; it is most distressing ; and God only knows what will become of us, 
 for it is most unhappy ! ' 
 
 He possesses also an unrivalled fertility in strong and ap- 
 posite illustration. This is one of the most effective ornaments 
 
16 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE- 
 
 of a speech, vividly condensing the argument and bringing it 
 home at once to the apprehension. We will give one or two 
 examples. Alluding to the pressure of misery caused by the 
 Orders in Council, and the wild ideas that were afloat of the 
 relief that was likely to flow from the proposed abolition of the 
 East India Company's trading monopoly— when one district, 
 which raised no earthly produce but black horned cattle, had 
 petitioned for a free exportation to the East Indies— and the 
 ancient and respectable city of Newcastle, which grows nothing 
 but pit coal, had earnestly entreated that it might be allowed 
 to ship that useful article to supply the stoves and hot-houses 
 of Calcutta, he said : — 
 
 They remind one of the accounts which have been handed down to us of 
 the great pestilence which once visited this city. Nothing in the story of that 
 awful time is more affecting than the picture which it presents of the vain 
 efforts made to seek rehef. Miserable men might be seen rushing forth into the 
 streets and wildly grasping the first passenger they met, to implore his help, as if 
 by communicating the poison to others they could restore health to their own 
 veins, or life to its victims whom they had left stretched before it. In that dismal 
 period there was no end of projects and nostrums for preventing or curing the 
 disease ; the numberless empirics every day started up with some new delusion, 
 rapidly made fortunes of the hopes and terrors of the multitude, and then as 
 speedily disappeared, or were themselves borne down by the general destroyer. 
 Meanwhile the malady raged until its force was spent ; the attempts to cure it 
 were doubtless all baffled ; but the eagerness with which men hailed each suc- 
 cessive contrivance, proved too plainly how vast was their terror and how uni- 
 versal the suffering that prevailed. 
 
 And again, in the same speech, in answer to the question, 
 what had the Orders in Council to do with the scarcity arising 
 from a deficient crop } — 
 
 Why, Sir, to deny that those measures affect the scarcity, is as absurd as it 
 would be to deny that our Jesuits' Bark Bill exasperated the misery of the French 
 hospitals, for that the wretches there died of the ague and not of the bill. True, 
 they died of the ague; but your murderous policy withheld firom them that 
 kindly herb which the Providence that mysteriously inflicted the disease, merci- 
 fully bestowed for the relief of suffering humanity. 
 
 Throughout these orations occur from time to time mag- 
 nificent bursts of the finest eloquence, and our only difficulty 
 is to make a selection. We might quote from his speech in 
 1 8 1 2, at the Liverpool Election, his invective against the poUcy 
 of Mr. Pitt. ' Immortal in the triumphs of our enemies and 
 the ruin of our allies, the costly purchase of so much blood 
 and treasure ! Immortal in the afflictions of England and the 
 humiliation of her friends, through the whole results of his 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 17 
 
 twenty years' reign, from the first rays of favour with which a 
 delighted Court gilded his early apostacy, to the deadly glare 
 which is at this instant cast upon his name by the burning 
 metropolis of our last ally ! ' ' We might also quote from his 
 speech on the Army Estimates in 18 16 — a speech which we 
 are told by himself had a greater success than any other made 
 by him in Parliament — his comparison of France in 1792, 
 when ' a prodigious revolution had unchained twenty-six mil- 
 lions of men in the heart of Europe,' with France at the time 
 he spoke, after 'Jacobinism, itself arrested by the Directory, 
 punished by the Consuls, reclaimed by the Emperor, has 
 become attached to the cause of good order, and made to 
 serve it with the zeal, the resources and the address of a 
 malefactor engaged by the police after the time of his sentence 
 had expired.' Or the peroration of his speech in 1823, on 
 abuses in the Administration of the Law in Ireland, which 
 Mr. Wilberforce in his ' Diary' (see his ' Life,' vol. v. p. 186) 
 called ' quite thundering — magnificent, but very unjust decla- 
 mation.' With the justice or injustice of the attack we are 
 not now concerned, but it is melancholy to think that such a 
 theme should have afforded materials for a long oration in 
 the House of Commons little more than thirty years ago, and 
 that it should have been possible to say there, as Mr. Brougham 
 did say, ' In England, justice is delayed, but, thank Heaven, 
 it can never be sold. In Ireland it is sold to the rich, refused 
 to the poor, delayed to all. It is in vain to disguise the fact ; 
 
 ■ it is in vain to shun the disclosure of the truth 
 
 We are driving six millions of people to despair, to mad- 
 ness ' 
 
 But at the risk of choosing a passage which some may 
 think eclipsed by others more rhetorical and brilliant, we will 
 give an extract from the close of his speech in the House of 
 Commons in 1830 on Negro Slavery, which we think remark- 
 ably fine : — 
 
 Tell me not of rights— talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. 
 I deny the right— I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings 
 of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the 
 understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain 
 
 ' The news of the burning of Moscow had arrived in Liverpool by that day's 
 post. 
 
 C 
 
i8 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 1 • . TViArp is a law above all the 
 you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim I There is ^^^ ^^^^ .^ ^^^ 
 enactments of human codes-the same throughout the wo , ^^^ ^^ 
 
 times— such as it was before the daring genius of ColumDus p j^j^^^iej g . j^ 
 ages, and opened to one world the sources of V^J^^'^^^''^^ ^^^ i^„ written in 
 another, all unutterable woes. Such it is at this day. J_^ J" unchangeable 
 
 the heart of man by the finger of his Maker; and by 'hat \w "n^ha'^X^ 
 and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine and abhor blood, _they 
 will reject the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold property in man . tn 
 vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations : the covenants of the 
 Almighty, whether of the old Covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pre- 
 tensions. 
 
 With this it is worth while to compare his grand and im- 
 passioned burst of indignant eloquence, when denouncing in . 
 the House of Lords, in 1838, the cruelties practised in our 
 West India Colonies, and calling upon the House to assent to 
 the immediate emancipation of the Negro apprentices. Eleven 
 female slaves had been severely flogged, and then forced by 
 torture to work on the treadmill, 'till their sufferings had 
 reached the pitch when life can no longer even glimmer in 
 the socket of the weary frame.' They died — and 
 
 ' Ask you, ' said the great champion of the cause of African freedom, ' ask you, 
 if crimes like these, murderous in their legal nature, as well as frightfiil in their 
 aspect, passed unnoticed ; if inquiry was neglected to be made respecting these 
 deaths in a prison ? No such thing ! The forms of justice were, on this head, 
 peremptory even in the West Indies ; and those forms, the handmaids of Justice, 
 were present, though their sacred mistress was far away. The coroner duly at- 
 tended ; his jury were regularly impannelled ; eleven inquisitions were made in 
 order, and eleven verdicts returned. Murder! manslaughter! misdemeanour! 
 misconduct ! No — but " Died by the Visitation of God ! " Died by the Visita- 
 tion of God ! A lie ! a perjury ! a blasphemy ! The Visitation of God ! Yes, 
 for it is amongst the most awful of those visitations by which the inscrutable pur- 
 poses of His will are mysteriously accomplished, that He sometimes arms the. 
 wicked with power to oppress the guiltless ; and if there be any visitation more 
 dreadful than another — any which more tries the faith and vexes the reason of 
 erring mortals, it is when Heaven showers down upon earth the plague — not of 
 scorpions, or pestilence, or famine, or war — but of unjust judges and perjured 
 jurors ; wretches who pervert the law to wreak their personal vengeance, or com- 
 pass their sordid ends, forswearing themselves upon the gospels of God, to the 
 end that injustice may prevail and the innocent be destroyed ! ' 
 
 Lord Brougham is also a great master of the art of ridi- 
 
 ' Some years ago, when a case, at was lawful ; upon which Lord Denman 
 which the author was present, was ar- said, ' I don't know that ; I should 
 gued before Lord Denman and several like to hear that point argued.' How- 
 other judges in Serjeants' Inn, involv- ever, it was soon shown that what the 
 ing incidentally the right of a Spanish laws of the principal nations of Europe 
 or Portuguese vessel to carry slaves, the had sanctioned, could not be contrary 
 counsel who argued that a certain cap- to the Law of Nations ; and indeed so 
 ture was unlawful, was assuming that, Lord Stowell had decided in the case of 
 by tlie Law of Nations, slave-trading the French vessel Z<r Zww in 181 7 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. ,g 
 
 cule, which becomes in his hands a formidable weapon. He 
 is obviously fond of it, and uses it often with marked effect. 
 Put we are bound to say that it is never ill-natured ; there is 
 no venom in the point The wound may pain for the mo- 
 ment, but it never festers. And there is often an hilarity in 
 the satirical attack which might make even the victim himself 
 join in the laughter of which he is the object. When the 
 Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon had sealed the Conti- 
 nent against the imports of British commerce, and we had 
 tried to retaliate by the Orders in Council, which had the 
 effect of stopping our American trade, and involving us in a 
 quarrel with the United States, the Ministers advanced the 
 argument that a substitute for our former market was found 
 in our increasing trade with the Spanish and Portuguese 
 .colonists of South America. In point of fact, our North 
 American trade had amounted to thirteen millions sterling a 
 year — while the Smtth American trade was only one million. 
 By way of illustrating the importance and magnitude of the 
 icommerce we had lost, Mr. Brougham drew an amusing 
 picture of the raptures of joy into which Ministers would be 
 thrown if they could command such a market anywhere on 
 ■the Continent. 
 
 Why, Sir, only conceive an event which should give an opening in the north 
 of Europe or the Mediterranean for but a small part of this vast bulk — some change 
 or accident, by which a thirteenth, aye, or a thirtieth, of the enormous value of 
 British goods could be thrown into the enemy's countries ! It what transports of 
 delight would the new President [of the Board of Trade, Mr. Rose] be flung ! I 
 verily believe he would make but one step from his mansion to his office — all 
 Downing Street, and all Duke's Place would be in an uproar of joy. Bless me, 
 what a scene of activity and business should we see ! what Cabinets — what 
 'Boards ! — What amazingcorferencesof Lords of Trade ! — What a drivingtogether 
 of Ministers ! — What a rustling of small clerks ! — What a mighty rushing of 
 brokers ! — Circulars to the manufacturing towns — harangues upon 'Change, per- 
 formed by eminent naval characters— triumphal processions of dollars and volun- 
 teers in St. James' Square ! — Hourly deputations from the merchants — courteous 
 and pleasing answers from the Board — a speedy importation into Whitehall, to a 
 large amount, of worthy knights representing the City — a quick return cargo of 
 licenses and hints for cargoes— the whole craft and mystery of that license trade 
 revived, with its appropriate perjuries and frauds — new -life given to the drooping 
 firms of dealers in forgery whom I formerly exposed to you — answered by corre- 
 sponding activity in the Board of Trade, and its clerks— slips of the pen worth 
 fifteen thousand pounds '—judicious mistakes— well considered oversights — 
 
 ' Mr. Baring (afterwards Lord Ash- time, licenses were rendered so valuable, 
 burton) had stated in the House of that he would have given that sum fnr 
 Commons, that by two mistakes at one . them. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 J • tVip Riffht Honourable 
 elaborate inadvertencies.— Why, so happily constituted is mc s^,^^^ ^^^^ ^^ 
 gentleman's understanding, that his ^^O- blunders are more ^^^^^^^.^._ 
 accuracies of other men ; and it is no metaphor, but a mera 
 tion, to say, that it is better worth our while to err with him than to thmk ngmiy 
 with the rest of mankind ! 
 
 In a review of Lord Brougham's speeches, it would be 
 unpardonable to omit mention of his great oration on Parlia- 
 mentary Reform -one of the most elaborate of all his efforts. 
 But it is too well known to. require more than a brief notice. 
 Nothing but the highly-wrought state of public feeling could 
 justify the scene at the close, when sinking on the ground 
 beside the woolsack, the Lord Chancellor exclaimed, ' By all 
 you hold most dear — by all the ties that bind every one of us 
 to our common order and our common country, I solemnly 
 adjure you — I warn you — I implore you — yea, on my bended 
 knees I supplicate you — reject not this bill' This is too thea- 
 trical for good taste. It reminds us of the exaggerated manner 
 of the Pere Lacordaire in the PVench pulpit, or of some of the 
 extravagant scenes which have occurred in the French revo- 
 lutionary assemblies. But the genius of French oratory is 
 essentially different from our own. Let us, however, not be 
 understood to depreciate the eloquence of our neighbours, 
 either in the pulpit or the tribune or at the bar. The country 
 which has produced a Bossuet and a Massillon — a D'Agues- 
 seau, a Berryer, and a Guizot, may well contend with others 
 for the palm of excellence in speech ; and it is one of the 
 most melancholy results of the suppression of liberty in 
 France, that her orators are dumb, and that the force of a 
 military despotism, or the restrictions of a jealous police, have 
 crushed into silence the tribune which has been the scene 
 of so many triumphs of eloquence and freedom. Quousque 
 tandetn ? ' 
 
 The speech on Parliamentary Reform has several fine pas- 
 sages, but it is not, throughout, so eloquent as many others 
 delivered by Lord Brougham. It is more in the nature of an 
 exhaustive reply to the arguments that had been advanced in 
 opposition to the bill by Lords Dudley, Winchelsea, Wharn- 
 cliffe, Harrowby, and Caernarvon, and these were met and 
 parried and retorted with admirable skill. The Earl of Caer- 
 narvon, in answer to the question, What Reform had the 
 
 ' It must be borne in mind that this was written in 1858. 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 21 
 
 Opposition to offer if the proposed measure was rejected ? 
 had compared the Ministry to some host, who, having set 
 before his guests an uneatable dinner with which they found 
 fault, should ask them, 'What dishes can you dress your 
 selves ?' — and thus Lord Brougham took up the illustration: — 
 
 My noble friend says that such an answer would be very unreasonable — for 
 he asks, ingeniously enough, ' how can the guests dress a dinner, especially when 
 they have not possession of the kitchen ? ' But did it never strike him that the 
 present is not the case of guests, called upon to eat a dinner— it is one of rival 
 cooks, who -want to get into our kitchen. We are here all on every side cooks 
 — a synod of cooks (to use Dr. Johnson's phrase) and nothing but cooks; for it is 
 the very condition of our being — the bond of our employment under a common 
 master — that none of us shall ever taste the dishes, we are now dressing. The 
 Commons may taste it ; but can the Lords ? We have nothing to do but pro- 
 pose the viands. It is therefore of primary importance, when the authority of 
 two classes of rival artists is the main question, to inquire what are our feat'; 
 severally in our common calling. 
 
 And in answer to the extreme and impossible case put by 
 the Earl of Harrowby, of the population of an enfranchised 
 borough of four thousand souls being all paupers, he said that 
 he had a right to put an extreme case on the other side, 
 to illustrate the nature of representation under the rotten 
 borough system ; and he instanced the case of the Nabob 
 Wallajah Cawn Bahadur, who ' had actually his eighteen or 
 twenty members bought with a price, and sent to look after 
 his pecuniary interests as honest and independent members of 
 Parliament.' 
 
 ' Behold,' he said, 'the sovereign of the Carnatic, who regards nor land, nor 
 rank, nor connection, nor open country, nor populous city ; but his eye fastens 
 on the time-honoured relics of departed greatness and extinct population — the 
 walls of Sarum and Gatton : he arms his right hand with venerable parchments, 
 and pointing with his left to a heap of star pagodas, too massive to be carried 
 along, lays siege to the citadel of the Constitution, the Commons' House of 
 Parliament, and its gates fly open to receive his well-disciplined band. ' 
 
 But our limits compel us to stop. We shall be glad if any- 
 thing we have said has the effect of making these speeches 
 more generally read. We advise all who wish to qualify 
 themselves as pubhc speakers to study the orations of Lord 
 Brougham. They will find them a storehouse of manly 
 thought, of vigorous argument, and lofty eloquence upon all 
 the great questions of his time. Few may hope to rival the 
 orator who defeated the bill of Pains and Penalties against 
 Queen Caroline, and snapped asunder the chain of Slavery ; 
 but none can fail to profit by the example. But above all 
 
2 3 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 things, let no one imagine, that without taking pains and be- 
 stowing labour, he can rise to eminence as an orator. e 
 may be a fluent speaker and an expert debater, but an orator 
 he will not be, if he refuses to copy the example and follow 
 the precepts of the great masters of the art. And ot all 
 auxiliaries to the tongue, the pen is the best. Cicero tells us, 
 that stilus optimns et prcestantissimus dicendi effector et magis- 
 ter ; and, to use his own beautiful simile, the habit of writing 
 passages in a speech will communicate aptness and force to 
 extempore expression, just as the vessel retains her onward way 
 from the impetus previously given, after the stroke of the oar 
 has ceased. Let us, however, not be misunderstood. We by 
 no means intend to advise a habit of writing out the whole of 
 a speech, and getting it off by heart before it is delivered. Not 
 only does this impose too great a load upon the memory, and 
 render the chance of a break-down almost inevitable, when, from 
 sudden nervousness or any other cause, some passage which 
 forms a necessary link in the chain is forgotten ; — but it pre- 
 vents a speaker from feeling, as it were, the pulse of his audience, 
 and varying his style and tone according to the impression 
 which he sees is made upon them. In most cases a written 
 speech is a failure from this cause. But the subject matter 
 should be beforehand well and thoroughly digested ; — there 
 should be the cogitatio ct commentatio insisted upon by Cicero; 
 and in addition to this, with respect to particular passages, 
 the assidua ac diligciis sci'iptura. By this means the speaker 
 \\ ill have, laid up in the arsenal of his memory, a supply of 
 weapons ready for any emergency that may arise ; and it is 
 almost a truism to say, that sentences considered beforehand 
 in the laboratory of thought, and submitted to criticism and 
 revision by being embodied in written composition, must be 
 more likely to be effective than those which are thrown off 
 hastily in the hurry of debate, when there is no time to pause 
 for the best and most appropriate expression. But, indeed, the 
 habit of composition will have the effect ofsuggesting to the 
 speaker, at all times, the best word and the best sentence; 
 and will thus assist him whenever the necessity occurs for un^ 
 premeditated reply. Cicero amongst the ancients, and Lord 
 Brougham amongst the moderns, have shown with what 
 
THE SPEECHES OF LORD BROUGHAM. 23 
 
 advantage familiarity with writing and practice in speaking 
 mutually act and react upon each other. 
 
 In conclusion, we may add, that the value of this collection 
 of Lord Brougham's speeches is enhanced by the historical 
 introductions written by himself, and prefixed to several of 
 them, explaining the occasions on which they were delivered, 
 and the subjects to which they refer. The style of these in- 
 troductions is excellent — clear, vigorous, and correct — and 
 they are in themselves a very useful contribution to the history 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
24 
 
 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN SCOTLAND AND 
 ENGLAND.'' 
 
 'Edinburgh Review,' October, 1858. 
 
 Differing as Scotland and England do in many national 
 characteristics, there is nothing in which these differences are 
 more conspicuously shown than in their respective systems of 
 Jurisprudence. By merely crossing a stream, or passing a 
 bleak range of hills, an Englishman will find himself in a part 
 of his native island where civil rights and social status, where 
 questions of liberty and life are determined by laws totally 
 different from his own. That which is mere concubinage in 
 England may amount to a legal marriage in Scotland. What 
 is bigamy in the one country, owing to the non-recognition by 
 the English Courts of a Scotch divorce in the case of an 
 English marriage, may be a lawful second marriage in the 
 other. A child who would be a bastard in England may be 
 legitimate in Scotland. Contracts which could not be enforced 
 south of the Tweed are binding north of that river. In Eng- 
 land it is impossible to perpetuate an entail by the mere force 
 of a deed of settlement : in Scotland there are entails which 
 cannot be broken except by Act of Parliament. If a crime 
 be committed, it must be detected, and proved, and punished 
 in a different manner. The verdict of an English jury is una- 
 nimous : in Scotland the verdict in criminal cases is decided 
 by a majority. In England, when a man is put upon his trial, 
 he is declared to be either Guilty or Not Guilty : in Scotland 
 the charge may be declared to be Not Proven. 
 
 These are a few only of the differences in the jurisprudence 
 of the two countries ; but they are sufficient to show how great 
 
 ' I. Report of the Trial of Madeleine Irvine, Advocate. Edinburgh: 1858. 
 
 ^7nith, before the High Court of fiisti- 2. Ref'rt from the Select Committee, 
 
 aaiy at Edinburgh, June loth to July of the Ilonsc of Commons on Public Pro- 
 
 ^th, 1857. By Alexander Forues secutors. May, 1856. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 25 
 
 a contrast exists between them, and it would be interesting to 
 compare them in a variety of details. This, however, would 
 require a volume ; and in the present article we propose to 
 confine our attention to some salient points of contrast in their 
 respective systems of criminal procedure ; and we shall avail 
 ourselves for this purpose of the report of a recent trial, which 
 must be fresh in the recollection of our readers, and in which 
 the difference between the two was conspicuously shown. 
 
 Such an inquiry may be not without use. For the object 
 of the forms of criminal procedure in both countries must be 
 the same, namely, the protection of the innocent, and the dis- 
 covery and punishment of crime. To these great ends all 
 rules and formulas ought to be subordinate. To exclude any 
 suspicion of partiality or unfairness, as little as possible should 
 be left to the discretion of those who administer the law. It 
 is therefore necessary that general rules should be laid down 
 and adhered to, however hard their operation may seem to be 
 in particular cases ; and it is also of the last importance that 
 these rules should be such as are likely to provide most effec- 
 tually for the ends in view. On a comparison between the 
 Scotch and English systems, it might perhaps be difficult to 
 decide which of the two, taken separately, is the best adapted 
 for the defence of innocence and the detection of guilt ; but 
 we think it is not at all difficult to show that in each there are 
 deficiencies that might be supplied, and faults that might be 
 corrected, by the example of the other ; and that from a 
 judicious amalgamation of the two might be formed a system 
 of procedure superior to either as it now stands. 
 
 The case to which, for the sake of illustration, we shall 
 chiefly make reference in the following pages is that of Made- 
 leine Hamilton Smith, who was tried at Edinburgh, in July, 
 1857, for the alleged murder, by poisoning, of Pierre Emile 
 L'Angelier. This has become one of the causes cdkhres of 
 Great Britain. The relations between the prisoner and the 
 deceased — her former passionate attachment to him — her age, 
 sex, and social position— her unparalleled letters— the dark 
 and impenetrable mystery in which his death is still shrouded, 
 after an investigation which exhausted _ every possible means 
 of arriving at the truth— the remarkable ability displayed both 
 on the side of the prosecution and the side of the defence— 
 
26 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 all these circumstances combine toinvest the casewith an ex- 
 traordinary degree of interest ; and it would be ditticult to 
 find in the criminal annals of any country a trial more likely 
 to stimulate, and yet baffle, curiosity. 
 
 We will state very shortly the leading facts. 
 
 L'Angelier was a native of Jersey, and in the year 1855, 
 while in the employment of a mercantile firm in Glasgow, 
 became acquainted with Madeleine Smith, the eldest daughter 
 of Mr. Smith, an architect, who resided in Blythwood Square, 
 in that city. An attachment sprung up between them ; and 
 as the young lady's parents were opposed to an engagement, 
 they corresponded secretly, and had several clandestine inter- 
 views. In the month of May, 1856, she surrendered herself 
 entirely to L'Angelier, and her letters to him were of the 
 most compromising character, breathing the warmest language 
 of passionate attachment, and addressing him constantly as 
 her darling husband. But in the course of the following winter 
 a Mr. Minnoch paid his addresses to her ; and in January, 
 1857, he made proposals of marriage, which she accepted; 
 and it was afterwards arranged that the wedding should take 
 place in the month of June following. She kept up, however, 
 a most affectionate correspondence with L'Angelier until the 
 beginning of February, 1857, when, becoming jealous of the 
 attentions of her new admirer, he returned one of her notes. 
 She then wrote and proposed that the engagement between 
 them should be broken off ; and became very urgent to have 
 all her letters returned. L'Angelier not only did not comply 
 \\ith her request, but seems to have threatened to show the 
 letters to her father. She wrote, on February 11, in the most 
 agonizing terms of entreaty to him, begging him not to make 
 Jier ' a public shame ; ' and then, two or three days afterwards, 
 resumed her correspondence with him in her former strain of 
 passionate love. Her bedroom was on the ground-floor, facing 
 the street ; and through the bars of the window she used to 
 ])ass notes to L'Angelier, and on one occasion, undoubtedly, 
 she received him into the house at night. On February 2 1 
 she purchased arsenic at a shop in Glasgow, and on March 6. 
 the same poison at another shop ; on each occasion signing 
 her name in the druggists' book, and on the last accompanied 
 by a female friend. She said at the time that she wanted the 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 27, 
 
 arsenic to kill rats ; but when judicially examined afterwards 
 before her trial, she declared that she made use of it as a cos- 
 metic. What really was done with it, there was no evidence 
 to show. As the attentions of Mr. Minnoch became more 
 marked, L'Angelier's suspicions were again roused, and early' 
 in March he wrote to her demanding an explanation. To this, 
 she sent an evasive reply, and soon afterwards left Glasgow 
 with her family to go to the Bridge of Allan, near Stirling. 
 From that place she wrote on the 13th to L'Angelier, and on. 
 the 1 6th, three days afterwards, to Mr. Minnoch, two letters, 
 which are, we hope, without a parallel in the annals of amatory 
 correspondence, for in each she pledged herself to the person 
 addressed, and left each under the impression that he was the 
 sole object of her love. She then returned to Glasgow, and 
 on March 1 8, accompanied by a young lady, she made a third 
 purchase of arsenic at the same shop where she had bought 
 the poison on the 6th previously. On the 19th L'Angelier 
 left Glasgow for the Bridge of Allan, and on the same day a 
 note came to his lodgings from Madeleine Smith, appointing 
 an interview for the following night, Thursday, the 20th, 
 which was forwarded to him at the Bridge of Allan. The next 
 day she wrote to him again, thinking he was still at his 
 lodgings in Glasgow, saying that she had waited for him, but 
 he did not come ; and adding, ' I will wait again to-morrow 
 night — same hour and arrangement.' She then earnestly 
 begged him to meet her at the time appointed.' This letter 
 was received by L'Angelier, at the Bridge of Allan, on the 
 morning of Sunday, the 22nd, and on the evening of that day 
 he arrived at his lodgings in Glasgow. He quitted them about 
 nine o'clock, and was not again seen by any one who could 
 give evidence of the fact at the trial, until he returned to his 
 lodgings, about half-past two in the morning, when he rang 
 the bell violently, and said he was very ill. He rapidly became 
 
 ' In this rapid sketch we of course bability is greatly in favour of the view 
 
 cannot attempt an analysis of the evi- contended for by the then Dean of 
 
 dence, but there was much controversy Faculty, now Lord Justice Clerk, who 
 
 at the trial about the date of this letter, was counsel for the prisoner ; namely, 
 
 which was a most important fact to as- that the letter was wntten on the tri- 
 
 certain. The post-mark was ' Glasgow, day, but posted, or at all events stamped 
 
 March '21, 1857,' and the prosecution on the Saturday, and that the appoint- 
 
 assumed that the 'to-morrow night,' ment made in it was for the Saturday 
 
 alluded to in it, was Sunday the 22nd. and not the Sunday night. The letter 
 
 But we think that the balance- at pro- itself was not dated. 
 
28 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE- 
 
 worse, and died in a few hours, his body, on ^post mortem 
 examination, showing unmistakably that his death was caused 
 by his having taken a large quantity of arsenic. 
 
 The question was, by whom was that arsenic administered ? 
 The jury, by a majority, found the charge against Madeleine 
 Smith, who was tried for the murder, Not Proven. The nature 
 of the proceedings in this remarkable case will exemplify the. 
 remarks we are anxious to make on the criminal jurisprudence 
 of this country. 
 
 The subject of criminal procedure naturally divides itself 
 into two parts : i. The preliminary steps taken where a crime 
 is alleged to have been committed, and before the accused 
 party is brought to trial : 2. The conduct of the trial itself 
 
 With respect to the first of these two divisions the Scotch 
 system has been so clearly and ably detailed by Mr. Mon- 
 creiff, while holding the office of Lord Advocate under Lord 
 Palmerston's Government, in his evidence given in 1855 before 
 the ' Select Committee of the House of Commons on Public 
 Prosecutors,' that we cannot do better than quote the passage 
 at length. He says : — 
 
 The system proceeds upon the principle that it is the duty of the State to detect 
 crime, iTpprchend offenders, and punish them, and that independently of the in- 
 terest of a private party. The Scotch system acknowledges the right of a private 
 person to prosecute ; but (he duty of the public prosecutor, is altogether irre- 
 spective of that. The staff, if I may so call it, of the public prosecutor is as 
 follows : the Lord Advocate is the head of the criminal department ; under him 
 he has four advocates-depute, and these do the business that a barrister properly 
 does in criminal cases ; their duty is to advise in the proceedings while they are 
 going on, in the collection of evidence in the country, and, when the evidence is 
 completed, to dr^w the indictment, and to attend the trial, and take the ordinary 
 part in procuring a conviction. 
 
 The means of detecting and punishing crime in the country consist, in the 
 first place, of the Procurator Fiscal ; there is a Piocurator Fiscal for each 
 county, and a Procurator Fiscal for some of the larger boroughs. In the 
 counties he is appointed by the sheriff, in the boroughs he is appointed by the 
 town council, but he is directly under the orders of the Lord Advocate and his 
 deputes. The mode in which the system operates is this. The Procurator Fiscal 
 receives information that a crime has been committed ; his duty is to make 
 immediate inquiry ; if any person is suspected, he applies to the sheriff for a 
 warrant to apprehend him ; he does apprehend him, and the paity is taken 
 before the sheriff for examination, and upon that occasion the declaration is taken ; 
 the party is cautioned that he need not speak unless he likes, and then he is asked 
 by the Procurator Fiscal, in the presence of the sheriff, any questions which seem 
 to be material ; and his answers are taken down and may be used against him in 
 evidence. Then, if there appears to be ground for an immediate waiTant tp 
 commit, he may be committed at once ; the usual course is to commit him for 
 further examination, and then the Procurator Fiscal takes what is called a pre- 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 
 
 cognition ; that is to say, he examines the witnesses whom he can discover, 
 publicly but privately ; they are not properly depositions, but they are statemi 
 taken down by the Fiscal and signed by the witnesses ; and if the case is a1 
 of importance to warrant it, he sends this precognition to the Crown agent. ' 
 ■witnesses may be examined on oath, but this is not usually done, unless the 
 ness is reluctant. The precognition is sent by the Crown agent to the advoc 
 depute of the district in which the crime has been committed ; it is his busines 
 read it over, and if he is satisfied, may order no further proceedings, or he ss 
 down to the Fiscal to have the party committed until liberated in due cours 
 law, if that has not been already done, and proceeds to indict. Then the q 
 tion is where the party is to be tried. He may be tried before the sherifi 
 before the circuit, or before the High Court of Justiciary. If it is a small offei 
 such as an ordinary theft, the general course is, to send the party to be tried 
 the sheriff, either with or without a jury, and then the Procurator Fiscal att( 
 and prosecutes. If, on the other hand, the party is an old offender, and h 
 indicted at the circuity the advocate-depute attends. If it is a serious offence 
 committed within the home circuit, he is tried before the High Court of Justici: 
 and in that way it appears to me that the machinery works remarkably v 
 How it would do upon a larger scale, I can hardly say ; but from Scotland bi 
 limited in extent, so far as my experience goes, I think it answers all the obj 
 of such an institution very well indeed. I can say, from my own experience, 
 it operates fully as much in the protection of innocent persons against unfour 
 accusations, as it does in the detection of crime ; and, for my own part, I tl 
 that the want of publicity in the first examinations, if you have, as we hav 
 sufficient check in the superintendence, such as I have described, tends very m 
 indeed to the detection of the guilty : and I do not believe that our Procura 
 Fiscal would think it any advantage to have the witnesses examined in pul 
 That is the system which we follow. 
 
 Mr. Moncreiff further stated, that the Procurator Fisca 
 usually a leading attorney in the county town ; that he 
 paid by salary in some cases, by fees in others ; the advocat 
 depute are four, besides one for the Sheriff's Court ; they 
 practising barristers, and reside in Edinburgh ; and in 
 event of the advocate-depute refusing to prosecute, the Li 
 Advocate may be applied to, and he frequently orders him 
 report upon the case. All cases of any importance are c^ 
 sidered personally, by the Lord Advocate or the Solicit 
 General. Sometimes also, but very rarely, prosecutions 
 private parties take place. 
 
 To this we may ourselves add that even where the Cro 
 counsef do not think fit to prosecute, and the accused per; 
 is discharged from commitment at their instance, the inju: 
 party has still the right to prosecute at his own instance, w 
 concourse of the Lord Advocate, as it is technically call 
 This concourse the Lord Advocate may be compelled by 
 High Court of Justiciary to grant, and in practice it is ne 
 refused. But the conduct of the case is then entirely un^ 
 
30 ESSAYS CRITICAL. AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the control of the private party! who is' liable for damages 
 and expenses if it turns out that there is no reasonable ground 
 for the prosecution. And he may be compelled to take an 
 'oath of calumny- that he has just reasons to prosecute, and 
 that the facts charged in the indictment are, so far as he 
 knows, true. In all cases the information or complaint to 
 the Procurator Fiscal, by the express direction of the Statute 
 of Anne in 1701, must be in writing, and signed by the 
 party making it, without which a suspected person cannot be 
 arrested ; and the party so signing his name becomes respon- 
 sible for the whole damages and expenses consequent on the 
 imprisonment, if it proves to be groundless and malicious. 
 But the Procurator Fiscal may be the informer by presenting 
 to the Sheriff, who issues the warrant, a petition describing 
 the offence and signed by himself. 
 
 In England the death of L'Angelier would immediately 
 have been the subject of a coroner's inquest ; but in Scotland 
 there is no coroner. The only process at all analogous to it 
 on that side of the Border is the investigation by the Procu- 
 rator Fiscal put in motion by information he receives, that 
 there are circumstances attending a decease such as to justify 
 the suspicion of foul play, and amounting generally to a 
 charge against some particular person. We think that the 
 absence of a coroner's jury is a decided defect in our Scotch 
 jurisprudence, although we are bound to add that some of the 
 highest legal authorities in Scotland are of a different opinion 
 and would object to its introduction. In England every death 
 which does not manifestly proceed from natural causes, includ- 
 ing all cases of sudden death by accident or otherwise, is in- 
 quired into publicly by the coroner. He is ex officio bound 
 to ascertain, as far as can be ascertained by evidence, what 
 was the cause of death ; and provided only he has notice of 
 it, his duty requires him to summon a jury without waiting 
 until he is called upon to do so by the friends or relatives of 
 the deceased. This is an immense safeguard to the public, as 
 it insures a searching investigation of the matter while the 
 facts are recent,— the recollection of every one interested in 
 the inquiry is fresh— and minute links in the chain of evidence 
 can be most easily supplied. It may be said, indeed, that 
 in Scot-land also a similar examination takes place when the 
 
• CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 31 
 
 -case is brought under the notice of the Procurator Fiscal, and 
 that in England the coroner can~only act when he knows that 
 a death has occurred under suspicious circumstances, and this 
 knowledge can only be obtained by information from others. 
 But there is a wide difference between the two cases. An 
 English coroner's inquest is primarily directed to investigate 
 \h& fact of death and the cause of it ; a Scotch precognition 
 is directed against a supposed criminal, and if there be no 
 suspected person, on whom does the precognition attach .'' 
 -The English form proceeds from the facts to the person of 
 the criminal ; the Scotch form proceeds from the suspected 
 .person to the facts. In Scotland the Procurator Fiscal does 
 not act ex mero motii-, like the coroner in England, whenever 
 he hears of a suspicious death. He waits until something 
 like a charge is made ; and we know how unwilling persons 
 often are to come forward and make such a charge, when the 
 circumstances amount to no more than a suspicion of guilt. 
 The consequence is that crimes must not unfrequently escape 
 punishment from the absence of inquiry into the cause of 
 death. It would be easy to adduce many cases in point 
 upon this subject, but we will instance only one, which, we be- 
 lieve, has not hitherto been published, and which will be suf- 
 ficient for our purpose. 
 
 Some time ago, in one of the southern counties of Scot- 
 land, a gentleman and his wife — both of them somewhat 
 advanced in years — resided on their own estate at a short 
 distance from a market town. One daughter of about thirty 
 years of age lived with her parents - the other children were 
 settled in different parts of the world. This young lady was 
 known for her bold and eccentric habits, and there was some- 
 thing coarse and repulsive about her. She had previously 
 inherited a small independent property from an aunt, who 
 died suddenly whilst she was staying in the house ; and she 
 was entitled to a share of her father's estate on his death, 
 which was then to be sold to pay off incumbrances and pro- 
 vide for the several children. 
 
 The father had long been an invalid, and it was therefore 
 without surprise that the neighbours heard that he was 
 attacked with a violent illness ; but his wife, who was pre- 
 viously in good health, suffered at the same time and in the 
 
32 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 same manner from vomiting and internal disorder. A medi- 
 cal man was called in, and he continued to attend daily for a 
 month at the house. The symptoms were those of poisoning 
 by arsenic, as he himself admitted when afterwards questioned 
 on the subject. He prescribed such remedies as he deemed 
 proper, and the symptoms were checked for a time. But 
 these remedies, and all the food which the patients took, 
 were administered to them by the daughter, who never 
 quitted the bedside of her parents. No second medical 
 adviser was called in, and after a life-and-death struggle 
 for about thirty days, both the father and mother expired 
 nearly at the same time, and lay side by side in the same 
 bed. The daughter exhibited the most violent and even 
 extravagant grief, and flung herself on the dead bodies of her 
 parents. No further inquiry whatever was instituted into the 
 cause of their illness and death, although the circumstances 
 were thought suspicious by all who knew them ; and there is 
 no doubt that the physician was in his own mind satisfied that 
 there had been foul play. These suspicions were strengthened 
 in a remarkable manner by the conduct of the young lady 
 herself after she became her own mistress. She hastily got 
 possession of her share of the property — flung herself into 
 the arms of a profligate apothecary, with whom she eloped to 
 France, — and after having spent the whole of her patrimony in 
 two or three years, she terminated her own existence by poison. 
 This was a case which demanded the most searching in- 
 vestigation. The suspicions of the neighbours were aroused, 
 and the medical attendant did not scruple in private to avow 
 that the symptoms of the illness of both the parents were 
 those of arsenical poisoning ; and yet no steps were taken to 
 clear up the mystery by a judicial inquiry. If such an event, 
 with all the attendant circumstances, had happened in England, 
 there would have been, beyond all doubt, a coroner's inquest 
 held on the remains. The rumour would have reached that 
 oflScer's ears even if, as is most likely, a direct communication 
 were not made to him on the subject : and it would have 
 been his duty immediately to summon a jury, and investigate 
 the case. To set the inquiry in motion it would not have 
 been necessary to make any accusation, but simply to state 
 that the deaths were suspicious ; and then the evidence ad- 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 33 
 
 duced would have pointed out the suspected party, who 
 would have been apprehended, and, if the verdict of the jury 
 justified it, would have been committed for trial. But in this 
 case the fact of death by poisoning was never proved or 
 legally investigated, and in the absence of that essential fact 
 no proceedings were instituted against persons whom it was 
 painful even to suspect of so horrible a crime. 
 
 But if the want of a coroner is a disadvantage, Scotland 
 has the superiority over England in this important respect 
 that she has a Public Prosecutor. Criminal trials there are 
 conducted either by the Lord Advocate, or one of his advo- 
 cates-depute, and he is thus directly responsible for the punish- 
 ment of offences and the due fulfilment of the ends of justice. 
 This duty he has discharged for nearly three centuries, if 
 not longer; for by the Act of 1587 it is declared that 'the 
 Thesaurer (Treasurer) and Advocate pursue slaughters, and 
 other crimes, although the parties be silent, or wald otherwise 
 agree.' The mode in which he acts has been already ex- 
 plained, and we will now proceed to consider some of its 
 advantages, as contrasted with the absence of such an officer 
 in England. 
 
 There the whole system,, or rather want of system, in the 
 conduct of prosecutions, is anomalous in the extreme. The 
 conclusion at which the Commissioners on Criminal Law, in 
 their Report of 1845, arrived, was, that 'The existing law is 
 by no means as effectual as it ought to be : the duty of pro- 
 secution is usually irksome, inconvenient, and burthensome ; 
 the injured party would often rather forego the prosecution 
 than incur expense of time, labour, and money. The en- 
 trusting the conduct of the prosecution to a private individual 
 opens a wide door to bribery, collusion, and illegal compro- 
 mises.' Lord Denman has recorded his opinion that 'our 
 own procedure for the purpose of preliminary inquiry is open 
 to great objection. The injured party may be helpless, igno- 
 rant, interested, corrupt ; he is altogether irresponsible, and 
 yet his dealing with the criminal may effectually defeat 
 justice. On general principles it would evidently be desirable 
 to appoint a public prosecutor.'' Lord Brougham stated 
 before the Committee on Public Prosecutors (1855) that he 
 
 ' Eighth Report of the Commissioners on Criminal Law, 1845. 
 D 
 
34 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 agreed in this view ; and Lord Campbell f^J^^^^'^^cT 
 sent there is this great evil from the want of a P^^^^^ P^^'^"^"" 
 tor in England, that the criminal law is often rnost shamefully 
 perverted to mere private purposes/ To this the present 
 Lord Chief Justice Cockbum, then Attorney-General, added, 
 that Lord Campbell had twice publicly from tiie bench ad- 
 dressed him in court as Attorney- General, and pomted out 
 the necessity of having a public prosecutor to prevent scandals 
 in the administration of justice. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise, consider- 
 ing the hap-hazard mode in which criminal prosecutions are 
 taken up and conducted in the English courts. It would be 
 difficult to make an intelligent foreigner believe that in ordi- 
 nary cases it is left very much to chance to determine, not 
 only who the prosecutor shall be, but whether there shall be 
 any prosecution at all. Except in cases of high treason or 
 sedition, or offences against the revenue, it is no part of the 
 official duty of the Attorney- General to institute a prosecu- 
 tion, although it frequently happens that he does so when a 
 crime of more than usual magnitude has been committed, or 
 when the offence is one in which the public take an unusual 
 degree of interest. Such, for instance, was the prosecution of 
 the surgeon Palmer for poisoning with strychnine, and the still 
 more recent cases of the delinquent bankers, the directors of 
 the Royal British Bank, and the Claimant in the Tichbome case.' 
 But in all other cases it is left to the committing magis- 
 trate to determine who the prosecutor shall be. Sometimes 
 it is the party injured, or, if he be dead, his friends or repre- 
 sentatives. Sometimes it is the policeman who has been 
 employed to investigate the case, and get up, as it is called, 
 the evidence. And often the prosecution is dropped alto- 
 gether because nobody feels sufficient interest to go on with 
 it. It must also be borne in mind that although the Crown 
 is always nominally the prosecutor, and the two parties at the 
 trial are the Queen and the prisoner, yet in reality where 
 there is a private prosecutor, the conduct of the case is left 
 entirely to him, and he employs his own attorney to.prepare 
 the evidence and retain counsel. 
 
 Moreover there is no settled rule applicable in all places 
 alike ; and in consequence there is no uniformity of system 
 
 ' I have added tlie last words in 1874. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 35 
 
 throughout England. Mr. Waddington, Under-Secretary of 
 State for the Home Department, stated in his evidence that 
 an uncertainty exists as to the mode in which a particular 
 prosecution may be followed out — it varies in every borough ; 
 the practice of the metropolitan districts is different from that 
 of the counties. It is, he says, irregular and anomalous, 
 although he was not prepared to state from facts within his 
 cognisance that there is any general failure of justice, but 
 from the irregularity of the system such might be expected. 
 
 Surely such a state of things as this is discreditable to 
 English jurisprudence. It may be alleged indeed of it, as has 
 been so often said of many of our institutions, that the practice 
 is better than the theory. And this is true ; for in theory it 
 seems utterly indefensible, and yet we know that prosecutions 
 are conducted with fairness, and convictions are obtained, and 
 crime is punished and repressed. But it is impossible, in the 
 face of such evidence as has been here adduced — the evidence 
 of men above all others competent to form an opinion upon 
 the merits and demerits of our system — to maintain that no 
 change is necessary, and to acquiesce in the conclusion that, 
 after all, it works well. It does not work well when it pro- 
 duces such results as have been shown to exist, and all that 
 can be said in its favour is, that much more evil might be ex- 
 pected to flow from it than experience tells us is actually the 
 case. There is a corrective in public opinion declaring itself 
 through the medium of the public press, which prevents many 
 abuses which would otherwise be the almost inevitable conse- 
 quence of such defects. 
 
 Now contrast the laxity of the English system with the 
 vigilance and precision of the Scotch. And it has this further 
 advantage, that it affords the strongest possible security against 
 persons who are not guilty having to undergo the pain and 
 disgrace of a criminal trial. A responsible public officer of 
 the highest legal attainments, has the case and the evidence 
 laid before him, and if he is of opinion that the facts do not 
 warrant an indictment, the accused person is at once set at 
 liberty. In England there is indeed the intervention of the 
 grand jury, but between the commitment of a prisoner for 
 trial by a magistrate and the preferring of the bill against 
 him before the grand jury^ a period of seven or eight months 
 
36 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND 
 
 NARRATIVE. 
 
 may elapse, during which he will be incarcerated, although 
 the grand jury may then determine that there is-not even a 
 , ■ \ J. ■ ■ ^T.- A „H it must be confessed that 
 
 prtmd facte case agamst him. Ana it hiusl ij ^ ^, ^ , , 
 
 an innocent man is not always safe in the hands of that body, 
 invaluable as the institution is on many accounts. A striking 
 instance of this was mentioned by Lord Brougham, in his 
 evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 
 i8S5 :— 
 
 Mr. Blundell, of Ince, a Roman Catholic gentleman of old family and con- 
 siderable estate in Lancashire, was put upon his trial at Lancaster for murder, 
 and held up his hand in the dock, as was then the practice. The murder which 
 the grand jury conceived to have been committed by him was this : There was a 
 road in repair upon his estate, and his bailiff had omitted, in throwing a rope 
 across the road in order to prevent access, to put a lantern, and an old woman 
 coming from market at night in a donkey cart, tripped over this rope, for want of 
 a light, and broke her neck, and unfortunately was killed. The grand jury con- 
 sidered, in the first place, that this was murder ; and in the next place, that it 
 was murder by Mr. Blundell, perpetrated by the negligence of his bailiff. The 
 case was opened before Mr. Baron Wood, who, after he had heard the facts, 
 immediately said, ' Are the grand jury discharged ? go and see.' The grand jury 
 were discharged, and could not be found. ' I am very sorry for it,' he said, 
 ' this is a most shameftil case. ' Mr. Blundell was, of course, acquitted ; but he 
 went down to the grave with the stigma of having held up his hand on a charge 
 of murder, in the dock, among felons at the Lancaster assizes. 
 
 Public attention has lately been directed to the question of 
 the expediency of an entire change of system in this respect, 
 and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was ap- 
 pointed in 1855, for the special purpose of considering the 
 subject. The plan which they propose in their report, is in 
 substance the following : — 
 
 They recommend that agents should be appointed, one to 
 each of a certain number of districts, for the purpose of pre- 
 paring and conducting prosecutions to the time of trial, and 
 that these districts should be as coextensive witli the juris- 
 diction of the existing County Courts as may be, regard being 
 had to the integrity of counties. The duty of these district 
 agents should be to prepare and conduct prosecutions through 
 the stages preliminary to trial. Where it comes to their know- 
 ledge that an offence has been committed, and that no steps 
 have been taken to bring the offender to justice, it will be their 
 duty to take the necessary steps for bringing the offender 
 before a magistrate ; or if the party have already been appre- 
 hended, and the case is one of any difficulty or importance, 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 37 
 
 they are to take upon themselves the further conduct of the 
 prosecution, and prepare the evidence. 
 
 The Committee propose that a counsel of not less than 
 ten years' standing shall be appointed for each circuit, to be 
 the advising counsel for that circuit ; and that to him the 
 agents for the districts within that circuit shall resort for 
 advice and directions in all cases of more than ordinary diffi- 
 culty. These advising counsel are to communicate with, and 
 act under the directions of, the Attorney-General, forming as 
 it were the staff of that officer in the administration of criminal 
 justice. 
 
 Individuals, however, instituting prosecutions are not to be 
 prohibited from employing their own attorneys and counsel, or 
 to be compelled to resort exclusively to the public prosecutor. 
 But with a view to prevent the compromises which are some- 
 times resorted to for purposes of private interest, and to ensure 
 the effective administration of justice, they recommend that it 
 should be compulsory on an attorney employed to conduct a 
 prosecution, to give notice to the district agent of his inten- 
 tion to prefer an indictment, and that the latter should have 
 authority to intervene. 
 
 In Scotland, as we have already shown, the Lord Advocate 
 discharges the functions of public prosecutor, and it does not 
 seem that any change in that respect is necessary or desirable. 
 But the population of England is immensely greater than that 
 of Scotland ; and the duties of the Attorney- and Solicitor- 
 General are so multifarious and heavy, that we much doubt 
 whether it would be expedient, or indeed possible, to impose 
 upon them the burden of such an office as that of Public 
 Prosecutor. Still less would it be possible for the Lord Chan- 
 cellor to undertake the duty. Our own opinion is, that some 
 great officer of state ought to be appointed to superintend the 
 whole department of Criminal Justice, with functions in some 
 degree analogous to those of the French Minister of Justice ; 
 and if it be not thought expedient to carry into effect the 
 resolution of the House of Commons which recommended the 
 creation of a new department of Government for this purpose, 
 we conceive that the same duties might be effectually per- 
 formed by some augmentation of the powers and staff of the 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department. 
 
38 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 r ^4-,Vf. in the Scotch and 
 The next point deserving of notice in w ^^^^. • „ 
 
 English systems is the difference in the mode of examining 
 
 the suspected party before he is finally committea. 
 
 At the trial of Madeleine Smith, the first witness called 
 
 was the sheriff-substitute of Lanarkshire, who gave the follow- 
 
 ing evidence : — 
 
 I know the panel. She was judicially examined before me and emitted a 
 declaration on the 31st March. She was examined on the charge of murder 
 before her declaration was emitted. The greater part of the questions at the ex- 
 amination were put by me. The statements made m the declarations were aU 
 given in answer to questions. The answers were given clearly and distmctly. 
 There was no appearance of hesitation or reserve. There was a great appear- 
 ance of frankness and candour. The declaration is of considerable length. 
 
 — and the declaration was read in Court as if it had been a 
 spontaneous and continuous narrative, without the questions 
 put by the sheriff, to which, in fact, it was a series of answers. 
 The law of Scotland requires that the declaration must be 
 taken in the presence of the magistrate and two other wit- 
 nesses, who subscribe with him the attestation at the end, 
 setting forth that it was freely and voluntarily emitted in the 
 sound and sober sense of the declarant. The precognition 
 of the witnesses is taken afterwards, z« the absence of the 
 accused, who is not allowed to be present himself, or to have 
 any one to attend on his behalf to cross-examine thein, it 
 being one of the directions of the Justiciary Court, in 1709, 
 for the taking of precognitions, that ' none be present with 
 J tlie clerk at the examination of the persons cited by the 
 sheriff to give up dittay! 
 
 It is urged in defence of this system that it has the ad- 
 vantage of preventing publicity to the injury of the accused, 
 in cases whore it turns out that the charge is unfounded, and 
 no further proceedings are taken. And we may freely admit 
 that this is true. But, on the other hand, there are grave 
 objections to such a mode of preliminary examination. It 
 is too much like putting the accused an secret under the old 
 French system before the Revolution. It is essential to the 
 purity of the administration of justice in all countries, and at 
 all times, that there should be no secret tribunal before which 
 an accused party can be called upon to appear to give evi- 
 dence against himself. Every step in the inquiry when he is 
 present should be taken openly and coram populo. And this 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 3^ 
 
 on two grounds : first, as giving him protection against the 
 possibiHty of any improper practices ; and next as affording 
 the best security that the judicial officer will perform his duty 
 not only with fairness, but efficiency. The Scotch law, in- 
 deed, requires the presence of two other witnesses besides the 
 sheriff or sheriff-substitute, for the purpose of proving that 
 the declaration was ' emitted ' freely and voluntarily, and as 
 a guarantee of its genuineness ; but this does not deprive the 
 proceeding of the air of privacy and mystery which hangs 
 over it. 
 
 It is difficult therefore for those who are accustomed to 
 the publicity that prevails in England to acquiesce in the 
 conclusions of a high authority on Scotch Criminal Law, that 
 ' the strict seclusion of the prisoner in the interval between 
 arrest and commitment to stand trial, and the ex parte nature 
 of all proceedings in precognition, is essential to the great 
 objects of Criminal Jurisprudence, the conviction of the guilty, 
 and the speedy liberation of the innocent prisoner.'' On the 
 contrary, we should be much more disposed to agree with 
 the opinion of Lord Brougham, who, in his evidence before 
 the Committee on Public Prosecutors, in 1855, said : — 
 
 There are great inconveniences, no doubt, in the publicity of the examination; 
 there is very great hardship to the party brought before the magistrate in its pub- 
 licity ; there is very great annoyance and hardship to the witnesses and to the 
 prosecutor, who are brought before the magistrate, no doubt ; but against all 
 that, one cannot h-elp setting the great advantage of the publicity of the proceed- 
 ing, both preventing any malpractices by placing the magistrate, who is then the 
 Court, in the eye of the public, and also by the great benefit which arises with a 
 view to police, from its tendency to discover evidence, and to enable the parties 
 prosecuting to be put upon the traces to find witnesses ; so that, upon the whole, 
 I have no doubt whatever that the benefits exceed the disadvantages of a public 
 examination. 
 
 Lord Campbell has graphically described the state of 
 things that existed in this country in the last century : — 
 ' Formerly the squire sat in his hall, and he had for his clerk 
 ' his gamekeeper, and they had in the poacher before them, 
 and they did with him what they liked.'^ And although we 
 perfectly well know that the privacy of the examination in 
 Scotland does not lead to abuse like this, it is very desirable 
 that so delicate a matter as the interrogatory of a party as a 
 
 ' Alison's Pract. Crim. Law, chap. ^ Evidence before the Committee 
 
 y J . on Public Prosecutors, 1855. 
 
40 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 witness against himself should be surrounded with all the 
 safeguards which publicity can alone supply. 
 
 The practice, however, is not peculiar to Scotland. It 
 prevails in France, and Germany, and Italy, and indeed is 
 common to all the countries of Continental Europe. In 
 France the interrogatory is conducted privately by the juge 
 d' instruction, and the accused is not confronted with the 
 witnesses, who are examined separately ; nor is he allowed 
 at this stage of the proceedings to be assisted by counsel. 
 And the old French law went so far as to require him to 
 take an oath that he would speak the truth when questioned 
 against himself. 
 
 In England nothing of the kind is known. An accused 
 person there is brought before a magistrate in open Court, 
 confronted with the witnesses, and asked whether he wishes 
 to say anything, while he is at the same time cautioned that 
 what he does say will be taken down in writing and hereafter 
 made use of against him.' In Scotland, also, he is told that 
 he need not .speak unless he likes, and he is warned that 
 his declaration will be used against him ; but the difference 
 between the two systems in this particular is not unimport- 
 ant. In England no questions are addressed to the prisoner. 
 If he makes any statement, it is not in answer to interroga- 
 tories, but is a spontaneous and voluntary act on his own part. 
 In Scotland we see that, after being cautioned that he need 
 not speak, he is asked by the Prosecutor Fiscal ' any questions 
 which seem to be material.' Either, therefore, he remains 
 silent altogether, or he answers the questions put to him, oi 
 he answers some of them and declines to answer others. It 
 will be found, we believe, in practice a rare thing for a 
 man charged with an offence to remain wholly silent when 
 pointedly interrogated, not as to its actual commission, bul 
 as to circumstances connected with it, the significance ol 
 which he may not immediately perceive. And if he doe; 
 answer, the law is in fact extracting from him evidence againsi 
 himself 
 
 It may, however, be doubted whether the law of Englanc 
 
 ' It is, however, right to notice, without their consent, ' if it appear b 
 
 that by a late statute (ii & 12 Vict. c. him or them that the ends of justic 
 
 42. § 19. ) the justices have the power to will be best answered by so doing.' 
 order that no person shall be present 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 41 
 
 does not carry tenderness towards a man accused of a crime 
 too far. Provided he is not betrayed into a confession by 
 holding out improper inducements, or coerced into it by prac- 
 tising upon his fears, there seems to be no reason why what- 
 ever he says against himself should not be put in evidence at 
 his trial, although he may have had no warning that it will 
 be made use of against him. It is only under an utterly 
 corrupt system of jurisprudence that an innocent person will 
 falsely criminate himself, thinking it perhaps safer to confess 
 an offence which he has not committed, and sue for mercy, than 
 to abide the result of a trial which he feels certain will termin- 
 ate in a conviction. The Greeks and Romans resorted, in the 
 examination oi slaves, to the use of torture, and in the Middle 
 Ages, and indeed in later times in Europe, this was the ap- 
 proved method of question in the case of all persons accused 
 of crime. It does, indeed, seem marvellous that it should 
 never have occurred to people in those days how utterly 
 fallacious torture must be as a test of truth. It becomes a 
 mere question of physical endurance, and under the pressure 
 of intolerable pain the most innocent person may confess 
 himself guilty, preferring speedy death to the prolonged 
 agony of the rack or the wheel. At the present day in 
 England the Courts of Law go to the contrary extreme, and 
 the slightest inducement either of fear or hope held out to 
 an accused party by any one whose position or authority may 
 be supposed to exercise an influence over his mind, renders a 
 confession inadmissible.' Every one who pays attention to 
 the reports of criminal trials in the London newspapers, must 
 be familiar with the way in which policemen who give evi- 
 dence of confessions made by prisoners are attacked by 
 counsel, and the severity with which they are handled when 
 they have put questions to the accused with a view to elicit 
 some statement from him ; so that we can hardly be surprised 
 at the answer which on one occasion a constable gave to the 
 Court when he was asked whether the prisoner had not, while 
 in his custody, made some admission of his guilt. He said, 
 ' Oh no ; he began to say something about it, but I knew my 
 
 ' One of the most astounding in- treason, in 1554, when Lord Chief 
 
 stances of inducement held out to a Justice Bromley thus addressed him : 
 
 prisoner to confess, occurred at the trial ' How say you, will you confess the 
 
 of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton for high matter, and it mil be best for you?' 
 
42 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 duty better, so I stopped him.' It is needless to add, that 
 the constable was reprimanded for his officiousness ; but his 
 mistake was excusable, for he had so often heard his brethren 
 assailed, and L;en so often assailed himself, for deposing to 
 confessions, that he was determined to be on the safe side for 
 once. We think that unless a confession, to whomsoever 
 made, has been extorted by threats, or induced by a distinct 
 promise to stay further proceedings, it ought to be received 
 in evidence at the trial. And we assert this on the broad and 
 intelligible ground that except in the cases already mentioned, 
 it is absurd to believe that any sane man in this country will 
 falsely accuse himself of a crime of which he is not guilty. 
 At all events, in all cases it should be a question for the 
 judge, at his discretion, to determine whether under the cir- 
 cumstances the statement ought to be submitted to the jury. 
 With respect, however, to the general question of the expe- 
 diency of judicially interrogating a person accused, it is diffi- 
 cult to see why, if this course of procedure is proper before 
 the sheriff in Scotland, it should not also be allowed at the 
 trial, as it is in France and other countries of Europe, where 
 the judge examines the prisoner, and uses all his dexterity 
 to make him convict himself of the crime with which he is 
 charged. It is impossible not to be struck with the severity 
 of the cross-examination which — not the witness but — the 
 prisoner there has to undergo from the presiding judge, and 
 the persevering ingenuity \\\\h which the latter tries to entrap 
 him into admissions fatal to himself. He adjures, he apostro- 
 phises, he scolds, and does everything in his power to make 
 him entangle himself in inconsistencies, and so betray his 
 guilt. 
 
 'Is it not scandalous,' says De Quincy, in one of his essays, the subject of 
 which is the trial and death of the Maid of Orleans, ' is it not humiliating to 
 civilisation, that even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges 
 examining the prisoner against himself ; seducing him by fraud into treacherous 
 conclusions against his own head ; using the terrors of their power for extorting 
 confessions from the frailty of hope ; nay, which is worse, using the blandish- 
 ments of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of 
 gratitude those whoni they had failed to freeze into terror ? Wicked judges ! 
 Barbarian jurisprudence ! that, sitting in your own conceit on the summits of 
 social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice : sit 
 ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from Donr^my, that tore your 
 webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. "Would you examine me as a witness 
 against myself?" was the question by which many times she defied their arts.' 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 43 
 
 It is, however, a mistake to suppose that the French law 
 enjoins the interrogatory of the accused as a duty which the 
 judge must perform. It on\y permits it, and reserves to him 
 the right of choosing the moment when he thinks fit to exercise 
 it. But inveterate usage has made it part and parcel of the 
 system of procedure, and it is almost universally the practice 
 to commence the trial by questioning the accused before the 
 witnesses are called. Counsel are expressly forbidden to 
 answer for him, or to suggest anything to him at this stage of 
 the proceedings ; but of course he is at liberty, if he likes, to 
 refuse to answer the questions put to him, and in that case 
 the evidence of the witnesses is taken at once.' 
 
 Having regard, then, to the universality of this practice 
 throughout the continent of Europe, it becomes a question 
 well worth considering, whether it is right or wrong, and if 
 right whether it ought to be introduced in Great Britain. Is 
 it prejudice or sound reason that regards the questioning of a 
 prisoner at his trial, as contrary to the principles of justice .'' 
 And if not contrary to justice, is it not an efficacious means of 
 arriving at the truth, and punishing the guilty .'' 
 
 It cannot be denied that the general impression is, that 
 such a mode of proceeding is unfair. It seems to take advan- 
 tage of a man who is no longer a free agent, to make, or 
 endeavour to make, him supply against himself proofs which 
 the law cannot otherwise obtain. We are apt to regard a 
 criminal trial as a sort of duel between two adversaries — the 
 law on the one side and the accused on the other — and it 
 would be preposterous to ask one of two combatants to furnish 
 weapons to the other to be used against himself. But is there 
 not a fallacy in this mode of viewing the question ? With 
 regard to crimes, can there be any such thing as a right of con- 
 cealment .■" The law may be powerless to force a confession — 
 or it may, as in the case of torture, produce one which will 
 be of no value, because it must always be uncertain whether 
 it has not been wrung by agony from the lips of innocence 
 — but ought it to refuse to interrogate the accused who, 
 perhaps, alone of all persons in the world can give the in- 
 formation requisite to determine whether he is or is not 
 guilty .■" We must of course assume, in the argument, that 
 
 ' Loi, 28 Mai, 1836 : art. 26. 
 
44 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the examination is so conducted as to exclude the possibility 
 
 of confounding innocence with guilt ; and it is difficult to 
 
 conceive how the answer given by an innocent party to 
 
 questions put to him, can be more dangerous to him than 
 
 silence— which is one of the strongest presumptions of guilt. 
 
 It is probable, indeed, that in some cases even when innocent, 
 
 he would be unable to give a satisfactory explanation of facts 
 
 •which wear a suspicious appearance against him, but this 
 
 would afford no greater presumption of guilt than exists 
 
 where, in the same state of facts, he is not questioned at all. 
 
 For the circumstantial evidence remaining the same, the 
 
 presumption of guilt is the same, whether the prisoner does 
 
 not voluntarily offer to explain the facts, or in direct answer to 
 
 a question says that he cannot explain them. It is, indeed, 
 
 possible to suppose cases where a person may be stupid 
 
 enough or frightened enough — although innocent — to give 
 
 answers which may strengthen the suspicions against him. 
 
 But this would generally happen only where the examination 
 
 was badly conducted — or in the confusion of mind created 
 
 by a sudden accusation — and is to the last degree unlikely 
 
 to be the case at a trial presided over by a humane and 
 
 enlightened judge, bent only on discovering the truth, and more 
 
 anxious that the innocent should escape than that the guilty 
 
 should suffer. 
 
 Even in France the theory of the system is, that the 
 examination should be conducted with the most scrupulous 
 fairness towards the accused. * Je n'ai pas besoin,' says M. 
 Berriat Saint-Prix, ' de parler de la loyaute qui doit presider 
 k I'interrogatoire ; ' and he quotes the rule laid down by an 
 old French jurist on the subject: — 'Les questions que le juge 
 fait k I'accus^ doivent etre claires, precises et sans equivoque; 
 il doit surtout ^viter de se servir de ruses et de discours 
 captieux pour surprendre I'accusd Outre que cette voie ne 
 convient point 4 la dignit6 d'un magistral, c'est qu'en usant 
 de ce moyen, il parait plut6t agir avec passion qu'anim^ 
 du z^le et du bien de la justice.' But it must be ad- 
 mitted that this rule is not always observed. French judges, 
 while rapidly interrogating the prisoner, are apt to be carried 
 away by their feelings, which are excited by the sort of 
 altercation that goes on between them, and questions are often 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 45 
 
 put which, to English notions at all events, seem to the last 
 degree unfair. 
 
 In his evidence before the Committee on Public Prosecutors, 
 already referred to. Lord Brougham said that the worst of all 
 the practice in the French procedure is ' the torture and 
 question which the prisoner is put to upon his trial by the 
 judge.' Upon which the Attorney-General (Sir A. E. Cock- 
 burn) strongly and truly remarked, that the judge constantly 
 converts himself, in the sort of intellectual contest which goes 
 on between them, into an advocate. But both these high 
 authorities confined their objection to the conduct of the 
 examination by \h^ judge. The Attorney-General asked Lord 
 Brougham whether the interrogation of the prisoner might not 
 be the very best means of ascertaining the true state of the 
 case — not allowing the judge to interrogate the prisoner — 
 whereby he forgets his judicial impartiality — but allowing the 
 advocate, the public prosecutor, to put the questions } To 
 which Lord Brougham answered, ' / am perfectly clear that 
 some change in ottr law upon this subject, some relaxation, 
 is absohitely necessary! And he added that his objection to 
 the French procedure was that it was the worst possible mode 
 of doing it. 
 
 The next point of difference between the Scotch and 
 English systems to which we will advert, is the notice required 
 to be given to the accused, of the indictment on which he is 
 to be tried, and the names of the witnesses who will appear 
 against him. In Scotland a prisoner must be served with a 
 copy of the indictment, a list of the witnesses, and the assize 
 or jury which is to try him, fifteen days before the trial. 
 
 With respect to the list of witnesses, we think that the rule 
 of notice ought to be limited by an important exception. It 
 seems to be unwise and inexpedient to preclude a prosecutor 
 from availing himself of testimony which may not be discovered 
 until after the notice has been given. This must, in the nature 
 of things, often occur ; and it is difficult to see why it should 
 not be made use of Neino tenetur ad impossibile — and it is 
 impossible to give notice of that which is not yet known ; but 
 it is holding out a premium to guilt to refuse to admit 
 evidence which, by the mysterious providence of God, may 
 not be disclosed until the eleventh hour. The rule might 
 
46 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 well be that a list of all witnesses known to the prosecutor at 
 the time should be furnished to the prisoner beforehand, 
 under pain of having their evidence excluded — but it should 
 always be open to him to avail himself of testimony which is 
 not discovered until afterwards, and even while the trial is 
 going on. 
 
 By the English law, in all criminal cases except high 
 treason, witnesses may come forward at any moment before 
 the case for the prosecution has closed. Some remarkable 
 examples have occurred of the detection of guilt by this 
 means, but it will be sufficient to mention one. We allude 
 to the trial of Courvoisier for the murder of Lord William 
 Russell, in 1840, who was convicted mainly by the evi- 
 dence of a witness whose attention had been attracted to 
 the report of the trial in a newspaper as it was going on, and 
 who produced a parcel which had been left at her house by 
 the prisoner, and which contained articles that were identified 
 as the property of the deceased. In Scotland, her testimony 
 could not have been received ; and very possibly the prisoner 
 would have escaped.' 
 
 In point of fact, in England, except in the case of witnesses 
 whose evidence is not known to the prosecution before the 
 trial, and who unexpectedly then appear, the prisoner almost 
 always knows not only the names of the witnesses who will 
 appear against him, but the evidence they will give. This is 
 owing to the practice which has sprung up of late years, of 
 producing and taking the depositions before the magistrate or 
 coroner of every known witness who can possibly give 
 
 ' There is only one case in which that in all cases of prosecutions for 
 
 by the English law an accused party is 7iusdcmeanonrs, instituted by the 
 
 entitled to a list of the witnesses be- Attorney- or Solicitor-Generi, the 
 
 forehand. Under the statute 7 Anne, Court shall, if required, order a copy 
 
 c. 21, a person indicted for high trea- of the information or indictment, free 
 
 son has a right to have a copy of the of expense, to be given to the party ac- 
 
 indictment and a list of the witnesses cused, after appearance, 
 
 for the Crown, and of the jurymen who With respect to witnesses, althougl 
 
 are to be returned on the panel, ten no list of those for the prosecution is 
 
 days before his arraignment. But in furnished to a prisoner, except in cases 
 
 cases oi felony, a prisoner, in England, of high treason, yet, practically, the 
 
 has no right to see the indictment until same result is obtained by virtue ^ of 
 
 after he has pleaded not guilty, and is tlie statute II & 12 Vict. c. 42, which 
 
 put upon his trial ; nor, in point of fact, enacts that a prisoner may have, before 
 
 does he see it beforehand. In some his trial, copies of the depositions on 
 
 trials for misdemeanour it is different. which he has been committed, on pay- 
 
 For by stat. Geo. 4. c. 4. it is enacted ment of a reasonable sum for the same. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 47 
 
 :nce in the case, before the party accused of the offence 
 mmitted for trial. We cannot help thinking that this 
 m has arisen from a misapprehension of what the English 
 requires. All that is necessary for the committing 
 istrate to ascertain is, whether there are fair and reason- 
 grounds for sending the case before a jury ; and he steps 
 'nd the boundary of his office when he does more than 
 by going into all the minutiae of evidence, and sifting 
 case as closely as if he were called upon to decide the 
 tion of innocence or guilt. He has only to satisfy himself 
 there is sufficient presumption against the accused to 
 fy the putting him upon his trial. The proof is afterwards 
 estion for the jury. 
 
 [t is said, indeed, that the course now always pursued is 
 r towards the prisoner, as it prevents him from being 
 n by surprise at his trial, and gives him notice of the 
 ence which he will be called upon to meet. The reason 
 ) doubt valid as far as it goes, and the Scotch system is 
 d upon it. But there is an important difference in the 
 iminary proceedings in the two countries, which, in our 
 ion, renders the practice more objectionable in England. 
 Scotland, the examination of the witnesses for the prose- 
 Dn beforehand, or their precognition, as it is called, takes 
 e before the sheriff or Procurator Fiscal privately, the 
 ised is not permitted to see it, and the public know 
 ling, except by rumour, of the particular facts to which 
 witnesses have deposed. In England, however, every 
 d that is uttered by a witness in an important case before 
 magistrate or coroner is spoken in open Court, and is 
 lediately reported in the newspapers. To such an extent 
 lis now carried, that if we were to compare the evidence 
 :n before the committing magistrate in one or two noto- 
 s cases of late, with that afterwards given at the trials, we 
 lid find that the latter was nothing more than a repetition 
 he former, varied perhaps in some slight degree by the 
 ;t of a more searching and skilful cross-examination. One 
 sequence of this is, that the public are called upon to ' sup 
 of horrors' twice instead of once, and the public mind is 
 ;e poisoned by the same details of crime. The subject is 
 ved after it has been well nigh forgotten, and all the 
 
48 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 hideousness of vice is a second time laid bare. Another con- 
 sequence of this extreme publicity is, that an opportunity is 
 thus offered to the accomplices or friends of the accused to 
 fabricate false evidence to meet the allegations which they 
 know will be made against him, or to tamper with the wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution. And this is no doubt the reason 
 why the giving to a prisoner a list of witnesses before the 
 trial has been called ' a mischievous invention, calculated to 
 defeat the ends of justice." But we are bound to admit, that 
 experience has not shown that there is in the disclosure of 
 evidence before trial any danger which need excite serious 
 apprehension, for it is remarkable how seldom in this country 
 a prisoner ventures to adduce evidence in his defence — a strong 
 proof that in the great majority of committals, we believe an 
 overwhelming majority, the presumption is that the accused is 
 guilty.' 
 
 In France notice must be given twenty-four hours at least 
 before the trial, both by the Proaireur GMral to the prisoner 
 and by the prisoner to the Proaireur General, of the names, 
 occupations, and residences of the witnesses whom they re- 
 spectively intend to call. But although this is the general 
 rule, the French law takes care to provide for unexpected 
 emergencies, and, by an express provision of the Code Criminel 
 (art. 269), the president at the trial has the power to call for 
 any evidence, although not notified beforehand, which he 
 thinks likely to be of use in throwing light upon the case. 
 This is what seems to be required in the Scotch system, to 
 prevent the failure of justice, which must necessarily some- 
 times happen, when witnesses against the prisoner come 
 forward too late, and their testimony cannot be heard because 
 their names have not been signified to him fifteen days before- 
 hand. For clearly there ought to be in every system of juris- 
 prudence the power of relaxing a rule with respect to the 
 notification of witnesses beforehand, which, if rigidly observed, 
 must often paralyse the arm of justice, and allow great crimes 
 to escape punishment. We happen to know that, in the case 
 
 ' In the Report of the Select Com- And yet in Scotland the list of witnesses 
 
 mittee on Public Prosecutors (May, for the prosecution is always given to 
 
 1856) it is stated, that the proportion the prisoner fifteen days before the 
 
 of convictions to acquittals is much trial, 
 greater in Scotland than in England. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 49 
 
 deleine Smith, an important witness was thus excluded, 
 se the nature of his evidence was not known early enough 
 e legal notice to be given. 
 
 I England the indictment (we are not now speaking of 
 lal informations by the Attorney-General) must be found 
 Grand Jury ; but in Scotland there is no such body. In 
 md the charge goes before the grand jury engrossed on 
 ment, which in that stage is called a bill ; and it is not 
 they find a true bill that it is called an indictment. And 
 ies of murder or manslaughter, where there has been a 
 er's inquest and verdict against the prisoner, notwith- 
 ing the grand jury have not found the bill, it is com- 
 t to the prosecutor still to proceed upon the coroner's 
 sition, and have the prisoner tried upon that. But this 
 
 no means the usual course, and in most cases the 
 ice is to take a verdict of acquittal on the coroner's in- 
 ion, where the grand jury have not found a bill against 
 risoner. 
 
 I the course of the trial of Madeleine Smith, her counsel, 
 )ean of Faculty, having applied for the warrant which 
 Deen issued for recovery of the documents which were 
 n evidence on the part of the prosecution, the Lord 
 cate said that he had been anxious that every facility 
 d be given for the defence, but the prisoner had chosen 
 I her letters, and the case had to be prepared in a very 
 time. The expression ' running her letters' is probably 
 y unknown to our English readers, and it may be useful 
 'e some explanation of it. 
 
 ^hen an accused person in Scotland is committed for trial, 
 s, under the statute of Anne, before referred to, the right 
 ce out letters of intimation against the party on whose 
 ;atiori he was imprisoned, and against the Lord Advo- 
 
 By these letters he requires that he shall be brought to 
 vithin sixty days (the period prescribed by the Act), and 
 if that be not done, he shall be set at liberty. When 
 letters have been served upon the Lord Advocate, he is 
 i not only to execute an indictment against the prisoner 
 1 sixty days from the date of the service, but by a pro- 
 i of the same statute, to bring the trial to a conclusion 
 1 forty' days afterwards. If the indictment is not served 
 
 E 
 
so ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 upoa the prisoner before the expiration of the sixty days, or 
 the trial is not finished at the expiration of the hundred, he 
 must be instantly set at liberty. The penalties for keeping 
 him in prison after the expiration of either of these periods 
 are fixed by the statute at certain sums for each day of the 
 detention, and a large sum is given by way of damages; 
 neither of which, as the statute expressly declares, can be 
 modified by any power or authority whatsoever. The power 
 of ' running letters' therefore, under the Act of 1701, insures 
 a prisoner being brought to trial, if he so wishes it, within a 
 fixed period after his commitment. 
 
 In England there is no limit to the time within which a 
 crime may be prosecuted after its perpetration, the maxim 
 being that nullum tempus occurrit regi. In 1759 Home was 
 hanged for a murder committed in 1724, and in our own 
 recollection a trial for murder took place twenty-four years 
 after the .murder was alleged to have been committed. But 
 in Scotland it is held that the lapse of twenty years from the 
 commission of an offence is a complete bar to criminal pro- 
 ceedings.' It would seem more reasonable to make the period 
 of limitation run, not from the perpetration of the deed but 
 from its discovery, for it is hardly possible to say that crime 
 ought to go unpunished because for a certain length of time 
 it has been successfully concealed. In the second case to 
 which we have just alluded, and which was a very remarkable 
 one, being the trial of the alleged murderer of a murderer, the 
 trial took place in 1830, and the double murder had been 
 . committed in 1806, but the remains of the deceased were not 
 discovered until the end of 1829. 
 
 Another material point of difference in the procedure of 
 the two countries lies in the indictment. We are not here 
 alluding to mere difference in its form, and to what may 
 be called its technical incidents, but to the substance of the 
 matters that may be charged in it. The indictment against 
 Madeleine Smith contained three distinct capital charges, on 
 all of which she was tried at one and the same time. The first 
 
 ' The case which is generally cited tence of fugitation (or outlawry) passed 
 
 as an authority for this is that of against him.' It seems, however, to 
 
 M'Gregor, in August, 1773; but there be settled law in Scotland that a lapse 
 
 the prisoner's discharge was directed, ' in of twenty years is a bar to a prosecu- 
 
 respect it does not appear that any sen- tion. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 51 
 
 ed to an administration of poison with intent to murder 
 deceased on February 19 or 20 ; the second to a similar 
 Tfipt on the 22nd or 23rd of the same month; the third to 
 ictual murder of the deceased on March 22 or 23 follow- 
 By the English law the prisoner could not have been 
 I on more than one of these charges in the same indict- 
 t. They referred to separate offences alleged indeed to 
 I been committed against the same person, but differing in 
 ; and place and circumstance ; and they could not, ac- 
 ling to the English practice, have been included together 
 le same indictment. But practically there is less difference 
 veen the two systems in this respect than may at first 
 t appear. By the English law it would have been per- 
 [y competent to give evideiice of the alleged prior attempts 
 the life of the deceased, on an indictment charging the 
 oner with his murder on March 22, in order to show the 
 Dability that at that date the attempt was successfully re- 
 ed. Where the conduct of an accused party is ambiguous, 
 previous acts may be resorted to in order to explain it. 
 ts, where a man is indicted for the murder of another by 
 jting him with a gun, and the defence set up is that the 
 
 went off by accident, it may be proved that on a former 
 ision, or on former occasions, the prisoner attempted to 
 the deceased. But this is allowed merely to throw light 
 vhat is dark or equivocal, and is only relevant to prove 
 ice on the part of the accused, and thus to supply a link 
 he chain of proof which might otherwise be wanting to 
 N the intent. In Scotland, however, a prisoner may be 
 i at one and the same time on several charges if they are 
 lected together by one continuous crime, as a charge of 
 der with robbery, or theft with forgery. Indeed, accord- 
 to the theory of Scotch law, as laid down by the best 
 lorities, a prosecutor is allowed to include in the same in- 
 ment a number of offences which have no connection with 
 1 other ; as for instance treason, cursing of parents, and 
 icide ; and the objection of cumulatio criminum is hardly 
 ible. In one case, that of Dickenson and others, in 1726, 
 prisoners were charged with a murder committed in 1724, 
 )bbery in 1726, and also with being 'sorners, Egyptians, 
 
 masterful beggars.' In another, murder, houghing of oxen 
 
52 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and theft ; and in another, fornication and theft have been 
 included in the same indictment.^ The same is the_ case in 
 France, and any number of charges of the most dissimilar kind 
 may be included in the same acte d' accusation. Thus, in the 
 memorable case of Madame Laffarge, she was tried not only 
 for the murder of her husband, but also on the same indict- 
 ment for the robbery of some jewels. It is impossible to 
 defend such a mode of procedure. It is a monstrous perver- 
 sion of justice to mix up incongruous charges, and call upon a 
 prisoner to defend himself against them all at the same 
 moment. For it is obvious how unfair an effect the minor 
 accusation may have upon the major, by prejudicing the minds 
 of the jury, and inducing them to come to the illogical con- 
 clusion that because a woman may have stolen diamonds she 
 is therefore likely to have committed murder ! 
 
 Another difference between the Scotch and English Courts 
 in the conduct of a trial, is the order in which the speeches 
 and evidence are interchanged. 
 
 In England the evidence is always preceded by an open- 
 ing speech of counsel, who, by custom, except in cases where 
 the Crown itself is not only nominally but actually the prose- 
 cutor (as where one of the law officers of the Crown officially 
 conducts the prosecution), is not entitled to a reply unless the 
 counsel for the prisoner calls witnesses or puts in evidence for 
 the defence. In Scotland the evidence for the prosecution is 
 given first, and this is followed by the evidence for the defence. 
 The counsel for the Crown then for the first time makes a 
 speech, summing up the evidence on both sides, and the 
 prisoner's counsel replies, so as to have always the last word 
 with the jury.^ This is no doubt a great advantage to the 
 accused, and perhaps is right, but it seems a mistake not to 
 open the case with a statement. The jury are left to gather 
 the facts solely from the indictment, and this affords really 
 no information as to the history of the case, which may be of 
 the most complex character. They must therefore be often 
 lost in the labyrinth of details, without the clue which they 
 
 ' The Court, however, has the prisoner in his defence, 
 power to divide the indictment or libel, " The counsel on either side may 
 and try at one time only such charges open by n speech if they choose, al- 
 as it thinks will not embarrass the though in practice it is rarely done. 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. ' 53 
 
 lid have held if they had been instructed by the opening 
 ;ch of counsel. 
 
 Every reader of Demosthenes and the other Greek orators 
 ws that it was the custom of Athens to mingle the speech 
 :he prosecutor and evidence together ; and the speaker 
 stantly paused in his oration to direct the officer of the 
 rt to read such and such a document in evidence, or to 
 
 for the testimony of witnesses. 
 
 It can hardly be objected that by the English system 
 :e is more chance of a jury being misled than by the 
 tch ; for there is in reality as much scope for mis-state- 
 it or exaggeration in summing up evidence as in stating 
 beforehand. And in nothing perhaps is a prosecuting 
 nsel in England more cautious than in not making any 
 ements to the jury the truth of which he thinks may pos- 
 Y not be established. Indeed, the humane spirit in which 
 ;Hsh trials are conducted, is remarkably shown in the fair- 
 I and moderation with which the counsel for the prosecu- 
 
 opens the case against the prisoner. The tone of his 
 ;ch is almost judicial ; avoiding all exaggeration, caution- 
 the jury against being influenced by anything except the 
 ence before them, and impressing upon them the duty of 
 ig the prisoner the benefit of any reasonable doubt. The 
 ■se adopted in France presents an amazing contrast to 
 ; and we can only wonder, when we read the speech of a 
 :ureur du Rot, or de la Republiqiie, or Imperial against the 
 ised, full of impassioned oratory, and inflaming the charge 
 nst him with all the artifice of rhetoric. 
 But the French lawyers may plead illustrious precedents 
 his. They may appeal to the great orators of antiquity, 
 indulged in bitter invective when they conducted, as we 
 Id call it, a prosecution ; and of this the speech of Cicero 
 nst Piso is a conspicuous example. Nor could anything 
 ed the vehemence of attack with which Burke and Sheri- 
 as managers of the impeachment against Warren Hast- 
 
 assailed him in Westminster Hall. But they were not 
 ers, and the whole proceeding had more the character of 
 litical and party struggle than a judicial inquiry. 
 But a much more important difference exists between the 
 ;ms of Scotland and England- in the application of the 
 
54 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 law of, evidence. On the trial of Madeleine Smith, declara- 
 tions made by the deceased at two different periods m Feb- 
 ruary, when he was suffering from illness from which he 
 recovered, to the effect that his illness was consequent on his 
 taking something which the prisoner had given him to drink, 
 were admitted in evidence against her without any opposition 
 on the part of her counsel.^ These statements, if understood 
 in the sense intended by the prosecutor, were of tremendous sig- 
 nificance, and must have weighed heavily against the prisoner. 
 If they had been excluded, it is hardly too much to say that 
 the verdict must have been Not Guilty, for without them the 
 case against her would have resolved itself into this : — She 
 was proved to have purchased arsenic on three occasions, and 
 on the hypothesis of the exclusion of L'Angelier's declara- 
 tions in February, there would have been no evidence what- 
 ever to connect him in any way with the use made of the 
 poison on either of the first two of these. Two days after 
 the third purchase, she made an appointment to meet the 
 deceased, which, owing to an accident, he failed to keep. 
 The appointment was renewed for another night (Saturday, 
 the 2 1st of March), and this again, owing to his absence from 
 Glasgow, he failed to keep. On the following night he is 
 proved to have gone from home as if to obtain an interview 
 with the prisoner, but there was an utter absence of proof 
 that they did meet on that occasion ; and at two A.M. of that 
 night he was found at the door of his lodgings suffering from 
 the effects of arsenic, of which he died in the course of the 
 day, without hinting in the remotest manner that he had seen 
 the prisoner or received anything whatever from her. In this 
 state of facts, the links which could connect the prisoner with 
 his death would have been too glaringly wanting to justify 
 even a verdict of Not Proven. The case, however, assumed 
 a different aspect when evidence was given, the object of 
 which was to show that on two previous occasions she had 
 made attempts by poison on her lover's life. If the jury 
 were satisfied of that, their minds would inevitably be pre- 
 
 ' It must, however, be borne in fore the murder, and could not have 
 
 mind that this evidence was admitted been included in an indictment charg- 
 
 on an indictment which charged the ing the murder according to the English 
 
 altcmft as well as the actual murder. law. 
 But the attempt was at a time long be- 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 
 
 55 
 
 osed to think that she would not scruple to make a third 
 mpt, provided only she had the opportunity, and the only 
 5tions then would be — was the opportunity given ? and 
 2 the attending circumstances such as to lead to a reason- 
 I- belief that she availed herself of it for that purpose? 
 By the English law, the above evidence was wholly inad- 
 sible, and no lawyer would have attempted to tender 
 1 a court of justice. True it is, that the declaration of a 
 eased person having reference to the cause of his death, and 
 ;red under a consciousness or apprehension of approaching 
 ■olution, is received in evidence. But in the case in 
 stion, both these requisites of admissibility were wanting, 
 i statements had reference to two alleged attempts upon 
 life from which he had recovered. They were in no sense 
 cause of his death, and they were separated by an inter- 
 of at least a month from that event. But what is of still 
 ■e importance, they were made at times when the deceased 
 under no apprehension of death, and there was nothing 
 listinguish them from any other declaration he might have 
 le affecting the prisoner at any period of his life. 
 The admission of dying declarations at all as evidence, 
 relaxation of the rule that no hearsay evidence can be 
 :ived. For such a statement is made in the absence of 
 accused behind his back, and there is no opportunity at 
 trial of cross-examining the party who has made it, inas- 
 ;h as by the hypothesis he is then dead. But the Scotch 
 goes further than the English, and where a person who 
 been injured by a crime is dead, it allows evidence to be 
 ;n by third parties of what he has said with regard to the 
 iect-matter of the trial, although the statement may have 
 1 made at a time when he was in perfect health, and in no 
 of death. We confess we are unable to see how this can 
 ustified on any principle which would not equally admit 
 lence of statements made by anybody who happens to die 
 )re the trial, although not the party injured. And yet 
 1 statements are by the law of Scotland equally, as by the 
 of England, excluded. 
 
 There is perhaps no part of the Criminal Law of Scot- 
 1 which has attracted more attention in England than the 
 lict of Not Proven, corresponding to the Non Liquet of 
 
S6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the Roman law. And there are not wanting those who advo- 
 cate the introduction of it into the English Courts ; ror are 
 they without plausible arguments in its favour. We will 
 therefore say a few words on the subject, and endeavour to 
 show that such a verdict is on several grounds objectionable. 
 But first as to its origin. 
 
 The old form of Scotch verdict for ' guilty' was fyht, 
 culpable, or convict ; and for ' not guilty,' was clean, or free, 
 and sometimes innocent. And this verdict continued to be 
 given until the latter part of the seventeenth century. It 
 was, however, found that the jury sometimes took the law 
 into their own hands, and acquitted the prisoner, not because 
 the evidence was insufficient, but because they chose to con- 
 sider that the crime charged in the indictment did not amount , 
 to a legal offence. It became, therefore, the practice in draw- 
 ing the indictment to set out all the facts with circumstantial 
 minuteness, and the Court then, in the first instance, pro- 
 nounced an interlocutor as to its relevancy, that is, its suffi- 
 ciency in point of law, if proved in fact, to justify the con- 
 clusion that a legal offence had been committed. They 
 afterwards, if the relevancy was sustained, referred it to the 
 'knowledge of the judge,' to determine the facts, and find 
 them ' proven,' or ' not proven in the terms of the lords their 
 interlocutor.' And they soon went a step further; for not 
 content with allowing the jury to find as the result of the 
 whole evidence a verdict of ' proven,' or ' not proven,' — when 
 the Court suspected that the jury might scruple to find in 
 general terms the crime charged to he proven, it required them 
 to return a special verdict, finding proved a long chain of 
 circumstances, and leaving it to the judges to determine 
 whether, by inference, these did or did not establish the crime 
 charged in the indictment. It is needless to say, that this 
 was to usurp in a great measure the prerogative of the jury. 
 For in criminal cases it is its especial province to draw infer- 
 ences, not indeed of law, but of fact, from other facts ; and 
 very often the whole question of guilty or not guilty depends 
 upon the inference to be drawn from particular circumstances. 
 For instance, the inference of intention, which makes all the dif- 
 ference between murder or manslaughter, or accidental death. 
 To show to what a length this was carried, we may mention 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 57 
 
 ase of Marion Lawson, who was tried for child murder 
 62. The jury found her to be cleared and not guilty in 
 :t of no probation ; but in respect of the presumptions, 
 :ted the prisoner to the consideration of the Court, and 
 Court sentenced her to be whipped through the High 
 ;t of Edinburgh, and banished, for an offence of which, 
 le opinion and by the verdict of the jury, she was not 
 ed to be guilty ! Thus the verdict of ' proven ' and ' not 
 en,' took the place of the old forms, and they continued 
 the trial of Samuel Hales, in 1726, when the jury, for 
 irst time we believe since the coriimencement of the new 
 ;ice, returned a verdict of ' not guilty.' And two years 
 wards, the case of Carnegie .of Finhaven occurred, who 
 tried for the murder of the Earl of Strathmore, when, in 
 sition to the opinion of the Court, the jury thought that 
 panel was not guilty of murder, and they, ' therefore,' 
 Baron Hume, ' asserted their ancient and undoubted pri- 
 e of finding a general verdict of ' not guilty, which the 
 t could neither decline to receive, nor anywise question 
 the grounds and reasons on which it proceeded.' The 
 effect of a verdict of ' not proven,' is the same as that of 
 guilty ; ' for the accused cannot be tried a second time, 
 'he popular objection to the verdict of Not Guilty, as dis- 
 [ished from Not Proven, is that it seems sometimes to do 
 nee to the consciences of jurymen, who, as is alleged, 
 be not unfrequently morally satisfied of the prisoner's 
 or, at all events, not satisfied of his innocence ; and yet, 
 J to, a defect of legal evidence, or to some technical 
 )le, are compelled to declare that they do not believe he 
 ommitted the offence for which he is tried. But this is 
 ;take ; for by the verdict of Not Guilty, the jury do not 
 isarily assert that they believe the prisoner to be innocent 
 : crime imputed to him. It does not in itself imply more 
 that the legal evidence is not sufficient to produce that 
 :e of certainty which would ju.stify, or render safe, .a con- 
 n. And a proof of this is furnished by the fact that the 
 :t is returned in cases where the guilt of the accused is 
 lished, but owing to some technical difficulty or mistake, 
 iry are directed to acquit. They do not thereby say that 
 is not committed the crime, but merely that it is not 
 
S8 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 legally proved that he has. There is, therefore, nothing in the 
 verdict which need alarm the most scrupulous conscience ; for 
 it may be, and indeed ought to be, given whenever a juror is 
 not fully and beyond all reasonable doubt satisfied by legal 
 evidence of the guilt of the accused. And we must remember 
 that the law presumes every man to be innocent who is not 
 proved to be guilty ; so that the jury do no more than their 
 strict duty when they declare him to be not guilty whom the 
 evidence falls short of convicting, however dark and unfavour- 
 able may be their suspicions respecting him. 
 
 Such, then, being the case with respect to the verdict of 
 Not Guilty, it is not difficult to show that there are graver ob- 
 jections against that of Not Proven. It is in fact what Sir 
 Walter Scott called it, ' a bastard verdict.' It enables jurors 
 to effect a sort of compromise between their duty to give a 
 true verdict ' according to the evidence,' and their inclination 
 to escape the necessity of coming to a definite conclusion upon 
 doubtful facts. There must be always a strong temptation to 
 adopt it where there is much suspicion, but a deficiency of 
 legal proof But is this fair towards the accused 1 Surely if 
 the evidence does not establish the charge against him, he is 
 entitled to an absolute acquittal. But although the verdict of 
 Not Proven is so far tantamount to an acquittal, that the party 
 cannot be tried a second time, it falls very far short of it with 
 regard to the effect upon his reputation and character, He 
 goes away from the bar of the Court with an indelible stigma 
 upon his fame, when there stands recorded against him the 
 opinion of a jury, that the evidence respecting his guilt was so 
 strong that they did not dare to pronounce a verdict of 
 acquittal. But where the evidence falls short of/r^Jt?/ of guilt, 
 the prisoner is entitled to a verdict of Not Guilty ; for the law 
 has failed to prove him guilty, and by the law alone is he to 
 be acquitted or condemned. 
 
 We had intended to discuss at some length the question 
 of the unanimity of the jury, the requirement of which Mr. 
 Hallam calls a ' preposterous relic of barbarism ; ' but we have 
 only space for a few concluding remarks. 
 
 In Scotland the jury or assize in criminal trials consist of 
 fifteen, and decide by a majority. In England the verdict 
 must be unanimous. In France, between 1791, when the jury 
 
CRIMINAL PROCEDURE. 59 
 
 n was first introduced there, and 1 848, a period of fifty- 
 years, the law respecting verdicts by a majority in 
 lal cases was changed no less than twelve times ! At 
 D6cret 16 et 29 Sept. 1791, C. Brum, an 4. art. 403) ten 
 were required for a verdict of Guilty. Under the Re- 
 oriary Tribunal the number of the jury was reduced to 
 1, then to nine, and afterwards to seven, and it was 
 sary that there should be a majority for a verdict, either 
 lilty or Not Guilty. The Directory required the verdict 
 unanimous in either case. Other changes took place at 
 ent periods ; and under the Republic that followed the 
 tition of February, 1848, the majority was required to be 
 This, however, was found to lead to an alarming number 
 juittals, and finslly the law of the 9th of June, 1853, estab- 
 I the rule of a simple majority for a verdict of Guilty, 
 I continues up to the present time. 
 
 ''e must here content ourselves with expressing our 
 )n, that the rule of unanimity ought to be relaxed in 
 md retained in criminal cases. As regards the former, a 
 ^e was strongly recommended by the Commissioners ap- 
 ;d in 1830 to report upon the Courts of Common Law. 
 said, ' It is essential to the validity of a verdict that the 
 hould be unanimous ; and regularly they are not allowed 
 discharged (unless by consent of the parties) until such 
 mous verdict has been returned. It is difficult to defend 
 istice or wisdom of the latter principle. It seems absurd 
 he rights of a party on questions of a doubtful and com- 
 ed nature should depend upon his being able to satisfy 
 s persons that one particular state of facts is the true 
 . . . And the interests of justice seem manifestly to 
 ^e a change of law upon this subject'. 
 his was the declared opinion of the Commissioners, pub- 
 l many years ago, and yet no change has been made in 
 lie that requires twelve men all to agree upon a disputed 
 jr leaves the fact for ever judicially undecided. Surely 
 me has come when such an absurdity should no longer 
 ;rmitted to continue, and when the law of the majority, 
 . prevails in the House of Commons and the House of 
 ;, and in every other assemblage of men who meet to' de- 
 te and determine, should be allowed to prevail in the jury- 
 
6o ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 box in civil cases. But we do not wish to see the English rule 
 changed in criminal trials, for here different considerations 
 apply. We have not space to discuss the question here, but 
 we may shortly state that what chiefly weighs with us in adopt- 
 ing this conclusion, is, that the fact of a dissentient minority 
 in a verdict of Guilty must often tend to paralyse the arm of 
 justice, and produce a sort of compromise in the infliction of 
 punishment, which cannot be justified on any ground of prin- 
 ciple. We doubt whether in England it would be possible to 
 hang a prisoner for murder when the jury found him Guilty 
 only by a majority. And yet, on what principle could a lesser 
 punishment be inflicted ? If the Executive is satisfied that the 
 verdict is right, the law (except so far as mercy may intervene) 
 ought to take its course. If it doubts because the jury dif- 
 ferred in opinion, and therefore remits the penalty of death, 
 surely it has no right to consign a man to hopeless slavery for 
 life, when it did not dare to hang him because it doubted 
 whether he was guilty at all.. But however opinions may differ 
 as to the expediency of the rule which requires unanimity in 
 the jury, either in civil or criminal trials, there surely can be 
 none as to the absurdity of that which prohibits them from 
 receiving any kind of refreshment while they are considering 
 their verdict. They must agree or starve, not exactly to death, 
 but up to a considerable amount of endurance of physical ex- 
 haustion. This undoubtedly is a ' preposterous relic of bar- 
 barism ; ' and the only wonder is that it should have remained 
 to the present day, and be tolerated in times when mere anti- 
 quity is allowed to be a very insufficient plea for the continu- 
 ance of an abuse. 
 
6i 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF ITALY} 
 
 ' Quarterly Review,' January, 1861. 
 
 ,E did the French Emperor foresee or intend the re- 
 hat have followed from his armed interference in Italy, 
 did he know the direction the waters would take when 
 ermined to unsluice the stagnant lake, and fancied that 
 lid channel out the course in which the waters were to 
 Whatever he may have meant by his watchword of 
 free from the Alps to the Adriatic ;' whether it did or 
 it include, along with the expulsion of the Austrians 
 ^ombardy and Venice, a throne in Italy for his cousin 
 Napoleon, as well as the realization of the 'idea' for 
 while solemnly disavowing all thoughts of territorial 
 idisement, France made war, — namely,- that Savoy and 
 hould be torn from Italy and become incorporated with 
 2, — .it is plain that the policy of Napoleon III. has been 
 jreat extent disconcerted and baffled by the course of 
 . There is, however, another monarch who has known 
 ow to turn them to his own advantage, who has reaped 
 others have sown, and has himself known right well 
 ) sow unobserved, and who — aided by ministers whose 
 :ing sagacity we acknowledge, however much we must 
 nn the means they have employed — has from first to 
 lown that those events have not taken him by surprise, 
 lat he has led rather than followed in their path. 
 Dm the time when, without any imaginable cause of war, 
 
 Correspondence relating to the 3. The Congress and the Cabinet, 
 
 of Italy. Presented to both By the Marquis of Normanby, K.G. 
 
 of Parliament by Command of London, 1859. 
 
 jesty. i860. 4- Le Pape et le Congris. Paris, 
 
 'orrespondence relating to the 1859- 
 
 if Italy, Savoy, and Switzerland. 5. A Century of Despotism in 
 
 ;d to both Houses of Parlia- Naples and Sicily. By Susan Homer, 
 
 r Command of Her Majesty. Edinburgh, i860. 
 
62 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 King Victor Emmanuel engaged the little kingdom of Sardinia 
 
 by the side of the Western Powers in the struggle against 
 
 Russia in the Crimea, down to the present moment, when he 
 
 has added to his dominions the territory, or parts of the 
 
 territory, of six independent States, he has steadily worked 
 
 out one idea, and that has been, the Unity of Italy with the 
 
 House of Savoy upon the throne. And this, now that success 
 
 has so far crowned his efforts, he openly avows ; for in the 
 
 manifesto which he addressed from Ancona on the 9th of 
 
 October last to the people of Southern Italy, he declared, 
 
 ' I have thus been able to maintain in that part of Italy 
 
 which is united under my sceptre the idea of a national 
 
 hegemony, out of which was to arise the harmonious concord 
 
 of divided provinces united in one nation. Italy was put in 
 
 possession of my view when it beheld me sending my troops 
 
 to the Crimea by the side of the soldiers of the two great 
 
 Western Powers. I desired to obtain for Italy the right of 
 
 taking part in all transactions of European interest' 
 
 There are two views of the astounding drama that has been 
 acted in Italy ; each of which has its advocates, but in neither 
 of which can we wholly acquiesce. The one sees in the 
 dazzling series of events nothing but the triumph of liberty 
 over oppression ; and, on the principle that the end justifies 
 the means, exults with unalloyed delight in the idea of \ 
 national regeneration. The other sees in them nothing but 
 the reckless ambition of an unscrupulous sovereign, the 
 triumph of insurrection, and the daring contempt of interna- 
 tional law. In this country, as might be expected, the first or 
 the Italian view is, beyond all doubt or question, the popular 
 one. It has been adopted with remarkable unanimity by the 
 press ; and while all rejoice in the result, few have cared to 
 find fault with the acts that have been successful. Nor need 
 we be surprised at this : it is natural that Englishmen should 
 sympathize with a struggle for freedom, and rejoice in the 
 prospect of a strong constitutional government in Italy in the 
 place of effete despotism like that of Naples, or ecclesiastical 
 misrule like that of Rome. It is natural that the Protestant 
 feeling of the nation should view without displeasure the 
 humiliation of the Pope, and the diminution, if not the 
 destruction, of his temporal power. And there was something 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 63 
 
 character of Garibaldi, and in the nature of his enterprise, 
 
 seemed to realize the wonders of romance, and to justify 
 ero-worship which always has been and always will be 
 f the darling passions of the multitude. The feeling 
 lat which warmed the head and fired the imagination of 
 liavelli, when he almost prophesied the advent of such a 
 rer, and exclaimed, ' I cannot express with what love 
 >uld be received in all the provinces which have suffered 
 these foreign inundations ; with what a thirst for ven- 
 e, with what stedfast fidelity, with what affection, with 
 tears ! What gates would close themselves against him ? 
 
 people would refuse him their obedience ? What envy 
 I oppose itself to him ? What Italian would deny him 
 ge ? A ognuno puzza questo barbaro dominio! ' 
 taly for the Italians ' is a captivating cry. It seems to 
 ss the sentiment of liberty with the force of a truism ; 
 len forget that its true meaning is the expulsion of the 
 ner, that ' barbaro dominio ' of which Macchiavelli 
 5 ; and can be no argument to justify insurrection against 
 n governments, or the overthrow of Italian dynasties, 
 o not say that they cannot be justified ; but this is a 
 Afferent thing from admitting the right of one independent 
 to interfere and foment insurrection in the dominions of 
 sr, of which it intends to reap the fruits and carry off the 
 
 share of the spoil. The cry of ' Germany for the 
 ans' would hardly be allowed as a pretext for the 
 on of Saxony or Bavaria by Prussia, although we find it 
 yed as an apology for the attempts that are made to 
 'e Denmark of her provinces, the Duchies of Schleswig 
 [olstein, because they are said by community of origin 
 imeness of language to belong to the Great Fatherland, 
 brget also, that since the fall of the Roman Empire (if 
 sefore it) there never has been a time when Italy could 
 lied a nation, any more than a stack of timber can 
 led a ship. During the middle ages the little Republics 
 'hich it was split up fought like tiger-cats against each 
 
 and for the last three hundred years, with the exception 
 : period of the French Revolution, when all landmarks 
 effaced, the circumscription of territories, and the 
 ' II Piincipe, cap. 25. 
 
64 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 distinction of governments, have been as complete in Italy as' 
 in any other part of Europe. 
 
 By the Treaty of ViUafranca, wrhich was definitely signed 
 at Zurich on the nth of November, 1859, and to which 
 Sardinia was forced to become g. party, Lombardy was under 
 one instrument ceded to France, and, under another, by 
 France to Sardinia. Thus a blow was struck at the European 
 settlement of 1815, which France has so long desired to 
 subvert. France, too, in receiving directly from Austria the 
 cession of Lombardy, conceived herself to have acquired 
 as against Austria, the right to interfere at all times to protect 
 the Sardinian possession of that territory. It was also agreed 
 separately between France and Austria that they would make 
 every effort to encourage a Confederation amongst the Italian 
 States, to be placed under the honorary presidency of the 
 Pope. And the rights of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the 
 Duke of Modena, and the Duke of Parma were reserved, on 
 the alleged ground that the territorial delimitation of the in- 
 dependent States of Italy which took no part in the war could 
 be changed only by the Powers who presided at their 
 formation and recognized their existence. It 'was then pro- 
 posed by France and Austria that a Congress should assemble 
 to take into consideration the pacification of Central Italy; 
 but it never met. It was found impracticable to get the 
 Great Powers to agree on a common basis of action. Austria 
 insisted on the restoration of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and 
 the Duke of Modena. France could not oppose herself to 
 this ; and we have no reason to doubt that the French 
 Emperor, in all sincerity and good faith, made every effort to 
 give effect to the stipulation in favour of the dethroned 
 princes. But England steadily and firmly adhered to the 
 principle that the inhabitants of Tuscany and the .(Emilia' 
 were to be left entirely to themselves, to choose their own 
 form of Government, and settle, as they thought fit, the 
 question whether they would annex themselves to Piedmont, 
 or form an independent State. So early as the month of 
 
 ' The Emilia or Emilia is the It derives its name from the Vw 
 
 name given to the triangular tract of ALmilia, which ran from Piacenza 
 
 country, between the Po and the Apen- beyond the northern extremity of the 
 
 nines, which embraces the Duchies of Apennine range as far as Rimini, where 
 
 I'arma, Modena, and the Romagiia. it joined the Via Flaminia. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 65 
 
 it 1859, the Tuscan assembly at Florence had voted 
 nously, or we believe with only three exceptions, in 
 ■ of annexation to Piedmont ; and in September foUow- 
 le revolted province of the Roniagna, having convoked 
 ;ral assembly of representatives at Bologna, declared 
 the people of Romagna refuse to live any longer under 
 ;mporal sway of the Pontiff.' With regard to the 
 gna and the Legations, which had made common cause 
 Dwing off the allegiance of the Pope, and may be con- 
 d as one province, the French Emperor was under no 
 ement to Austria, and before the end of the year he had 
 ed himself that it was vain to dream of coercing them : 
 erefore strove to induce the Holy See to make a virtue 
 essity, and on the 31st of December wrote that remark- 
 Jtter to the Pope, in which he said, — 
 
 r a serious examination of the difficulties and the dangers wWch the 
 : combinations presented — I say it with sincere regret, and however 
 :he solution may be — what seems to me most in accordance with the true 
 of the Holy See would be to make a sacrifice of the revolted provinces, 
 loly Father, for the repose of Europe, were to renounce those provinces 
 )r the last fifty years, have caused so much embarrassment to his govem- 
 nd were in exchange to demand from the powers that they should guarantee 
 session of the remainder, I do not doubt of the immediate restoration of 
 Then the Holy Father would assure to grateful Italy peace during 
 ars, and to the Holy See the peaceful possession of the States of the 
 
 the meantime Central Italy remained without a Govern- 
 except such as it had extemporised for itself; and it is 
 air and just to say that the conduct of the people during 
 Y'vag period of hope deferred was admirable. With one 
 choly exception, the murder of Colonel Aviti at Parma, 
 ited for by local and peculiar causes, yet affording a 
 e proof of what might have been on a more frightful 
 -there was (thanks to the wise guidance of such men as 
 )li and Farini) neither disturbance nor disorder ; and 
 ;ople seemed determined to prove their fitness for self- 
 iment by the calmness of their attitude, the prudence of 
 ounsels, and the moderation of their demands. Not a 
 ;r was heard of a Republic, or, if heard, it was instantly 
 :ssed by the good sense of an overwhelming majority ; 
 e thin-k that Lord John Russell did not overstate the 
 F 
 
66 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 case when, writing to our Minister at Vienna, he declared :— 
 ' At the present time the people of Italy, in harmony with 
 public opinion throughout Europe, seek for order as well as 
 liberty beneath the dome of monarchy, supported by national 
 consent and equal laws.' And yet their patience was sorely 
 tried. When the vote for annexation to Piediuont, in August, 
 was communicated to King Victor Emmanuel, and he was 
 offered the homage of Tuscany and Emilia, the fear of France 
 compelled him to give an evasive reply ; and when, as a pro- 
 visional expedient, they wished to confer the Regency upon 
 the King's cousin. Prince de Carignan, he did not dare to 
 accept it ; but the Chevalier Buoncompagni was nominated in 
 his stead. Sardinia, held in check by France and Austria 
 hesitated to take possession of a territory the throne of which 
 was vacant, and which held out its arms to receive her ; for, 
 as Lord John Russell stated in March last year, in the House 
 of Commons, ' The Austrian Government declared that, if a 
 Sardinian soldier should go into Central Italy, they would at 
 once march their troops to oppose them. On the other hand, 
 the Emperor of France declared to the Austrian Ambassador 
 at Paris, that the moment a single Austrian soldier crossed 
 the Po the French army would be marched to oppose them.' 
 Lord John Russell also said, in the same speech, that 'it was 
 agreed by France, in communication with Austria, that the 
 Congress should be indefinitely postponed;' and it was 
 generally believed that the chief cause of this postpone- 
 ment was the appearance of the pamphlet ' Le Pape et le- 
 Congres,' bearing the name of M. de la Guernroniere, but 
 attributed to the French Emperor, which advocated the 
 restriction of the temporal government of the Pope to Rome 
 alone.' 
 
 However this may be, England now came forward with 
 four proposals for settling the difficulty, which were commu- 
 
 ' 'A pamphlet published in Paris, un- which the pamphlet is the advocate, 
 derthetitleofZf/Vr/i^rf/^row^/j, which nor to support them if brought forward 
 has created too much stir in the political by others. The French Government 
 world not to have attracted your Lord- hesitate at entering into any such en- 
 ship's attention, is the indirect cause gagement, and Austria in consequence 
 of the postponement. The Austrian declines appearing at the Congress.'— 
 Government, it appears, requires an Earl Cowley to Lord John Russell, 
 engagement, on the part of the French Jan. I, i860. Correspondence respect- , 
 Government, neither to bring before the ing the Affairs of Italy, i860. 
 Congress themselves the measures of 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 67 
 
 ;d by Lord John Russell to Earl Cowley, our Ambas- 
 at Paris, in a despatch dated January 1 5 : — 
 
 That France and Austria should agree not to interfere for the future by force 
 nternal affairs of Italy, unless called upon to do so by the unanimous assent 
 ftve Great Powers of Europe. 
 
 That in pursuance of this agreement the Emperor of the French should 
 : with his Holiness the Pope as to the evacuation of Rome by the troops of 
 
 The internal government of Venetia not to be in any way matter of negotia- 
 ;tween the European Powers. 
 
 Great Britain and France to invite the King of Sardinia to agree not to 
 ■oops into Central Italy until its several States and Provinces shall, by a 
 'te of their Assemblies, after a new election, have solemnly declared their 
 as to their future destiny. 
 
 he French Government at once professed its willingness 
 cept the first three of these propositions, observing, with 
 ct to the second, that the 'evacuation of Rome must 
 in subordinate to the certainty that no serious danger 
 d result therefrom to the safety of the Holy See.' As 
 ded the fourth, M. Thouvenel, the French Minister for 
 g'n Affairs, stated that the Emperor ' personally con- 
 ;d the principle laid down by Her Majesty's Government, 
 he future destinies of the States of Central Italy should 
 certained through the Assemblies, to be equitable and 
 cal. But before taking any steps in conjunction with 
 Vlajesty's Government in the sense desired by them. His 
 ;ty considered himself to be bound in honour to address 
 If to the Cabinet of Vienna, to expose what had taken 
 since the Peace of Villafranca, and to state the reasons 
 led him to the conclusion that no other solution was 
 lie than that suggested by Her Majesty's Government' 
 le Austrian Government, however, would not accede to 
 -nglish views, and France then proposed the following 
 
 'omplete annexation of the Duchies of Parma and Modena to Sardinia, 
 poral administration of the Legations of the Romagna, of Ferrara, and of 
 , under the form of a vicariat, exercised by his Sardinian Majesty, in the 
 the Holy See. 3. Re-establishment of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 
 cal and territorial independence. 
 
 it this did not meet the approval of either Austria or 
 lia. And we do not believe that any ministry could 
 
63 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 have stood in Sardinia which continued to oppose itself to the 
 demand for annexation, supported by the unanimous vote of 
 the revolted provinces. The result was that the French Go- 
 vernment, in face of the ' inexorable logic of facts,' no longer 
 insisted on maintaining the separate existence of Tuscany as 
 an independent state, but sullenly withdrew, and left Central 
 Italy to determine its own fate. 
 
 The question of annexation to Piedmont, or the erection 
 of a separate kingdom, was put to the vote in Tuscany and 
 the Emilia, and determined by an immense majority in favour 
 of annexation. Baron Ricasoli, who had succeeded Chevalier 
 Buoncompagni as Provisional Governor of Tuscany, presented 
 the result of this appeal to universal suffrage to the King on 
 March 22 ; and soon afterwards a bill was brought into the 
 Sardinian Chambers to authorise the annexation, and passed 
 into a law. 
 
 In the meantime Europe was startled by the announce- 
 ment that France required a 'rectification' of her frontiers on 
 the side of the Alps. In other words, the French Emperor 
 insisted upon the cession of territory which he had bargained 
 for as the price of assisting Sardinia in her contest with Aus- 
 tria, and obtaining for her a large accession of dominion. The 
 transaction was discreditable to all the parties concerned, and 
 it involved both Governments in duplicity and dissimulation, 
 if not positive falsehood. We can understand the reason why 
 the bargain was concealed, for it was of vital consequence to 
 Napoleon III. at the outbreak of the war that the Great 
 Powers of Europe should have no hint of a scheme which 
 revived awkward recollections of the policy of the First Em- 
 pire, and, more than anything else, was likely to rally them 
 on the side of Austria. But we do not understand how states- 
 men of character could bring themselves to deny peremp- 
 torily the existence of a scheme which they knew had at one 
 time been arranged, in the hope that a change of circum- 
 stances might prevent it from being carried into effect, and so 
 they might escape the odium of ever being known to have 
 entertained it. 
 
 We believe the following to be a true account of the facts 
 of the case, although our limits will not allow us to do more 
 than give the most rapid summaiy of them. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITAL Y. 69 
 
 [len the question of the intervention of France in Italy 
 riginally discussed between the French and Sardinian 
 nments ; or rather, if we are rightly informed, between 
 nperor and Count Cavour at a confidential interview, it 
 jreed or ' understood,' that if the result of the war should 
 free Lombardy and Venetia from the grasp of Austria, 
 nnex them to Piedmont, France was to receive Savoy 
 ice, or at all events Savoy, as the consideration for her 
 is. At that time there was no idea on the part of the 
 cting parties that Tuscany and the Emilia would 
 id to be incorporated with Sardinia. It was, as the 
 rs say, a casus omissus, and unprovided for in the agree- 
 But the event falsified the expectation. Austria re- 
 
 Venetia, and Central Italy resolved to join Piedmont. 
 French Emperor now claimed the fulfilment of the 
 ct, but Sardinia demurred. She took her stand on the 
 jf the bond : Savoy and Nice were to be the equivalent 
 ibardy and Venetia ; but Venetia still remained in the 
 of Austria, and her chains were riveted by the Peace of 
 anca. The terms of the bargain, therefore, not having 
 ept by France, were not binding upon Sardinia. The 
 L Emperor seems to have admitted the force of this 
 ing, or at all events he yielded to it, and did not insist 
 lis demand ; and thus it was that Count Walewski, on 
 
 1859, declared to Earl Cowley, the British Ambas- 
 at Paris, that, 'if at any time the idea of annexing 
 to France had been entertained, it had been entirely 
 >ned.' But when it became apparent that the whole of 
 nilian provinces, and in all probability Tuscany also, 
 become united to Piedmont, he revived the dormant 
 on the ground that the meaning of the agreement was, 
 
 Sardinia obtained by the aid of French arms a sub- 
 l increase of territory on one side of the Alps, she was 
 :e a cession to France on the other.^ And to this he 
 'ed himself entitled, even if Tuscany were excluded 
 le annexation.^ 
 ; Sardinian Government, however, conscious of the 
 
 Lord Cowley's speech in the Talleyrand, Feb. 24, i860. Corres- 
 Lords, April 23, i860. pondence on Affairs of Italy. 
 
 Thouvenel to Baron de 
 
70 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 extreme unpopularity it would incur by giving up provinces | 
 one of which was the most ancient inheritance— nay, the 
 very cradle of the House of Savoy— and too glad to find a 
 pretext for escaping from the fulfilment of the odious bargain, 1 
 resisted the claim. And now the machinery was put in motion 
 whereby the compulsion of authority is made to assume the 
 appearance of a voluntary act, and a fictitious majority ob- 
 tained by dexterous intrigue is called the national will, ex- 
 pressed under the imposing name of universal suffrage. 
 
 We will not waste words upon the impudence of the 
 attempt to make it appear that the agitation of the question 
 of annexation to France in Savoy and Nice was a spontaneous 
 movement ; but soon afterwards the question became the topic 
 of universal discussion, and Europe, although indignant at 
 being duped, laughed at the idea of danger to France because 
 Piedmont was likely to double her territory and population. 
 At this juncture the inhabitants of Chamb6ry adopted at a 
 public meeting an address to King Victor Emmanuel, declaring 
 their wish to remain under the dominion of the House of 
 Savoy, and the Governor of that province stated that, haying 
 asked instructions from Turin, he had received the following 
 reply : — 
 
 The policy of the Government of his Majesty is known ; it has not varied. 
 The GLyt'crnmcnt never entertained the idea of ceding Savoy to France. Questioned 
 aheady previously by the party who dared to moot the separation, the Govern- 
 ment did not even think it necessary to reply. 
 
 We never heard that the statement of the Governor was 
 disavowed by Count Cavour, and yet it seems distinctly at 
 variance with the facts. On the 4th of February M. Thou- 
 venel informed Lord Cowley, in Paris, that ' it was true that, 
 among the possible arrangements discussed between the two 
 Goveqiments when they found themselves likely to be en- 
 gaged side by side in war with Austria, was the cession to 
 France, under certain contingencies, of Savoy and the county 
 of Nice.'' And in a speech made by Count de Persigny in 
 the Council General of the Department of the Loire, at the 
 end of August, when he was the Ambassador of France at our 
 Court, he said : — ' Even before the beginning of the war we 
 
 ' Earl Cowley to Lord J. Russell, posed annexation of Savoy and Nice, 
 Feb. 5, i860. Correspondence on pro- i860. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 
 
 71 
 
 warned Sardinia that if events should bring about a great 
 dom in Italy, we should demand that the slopes of the 
 i should not remain in its hands.' Does any one believe 
 
 Count Cavour refused to listen to the ' possible arrange- 
 t,' or that he gave any hint to France that his Govern- 
 t would resist the ' demand ' ? It is indeed pitiable to see 
 way in which the Sardinian Government affected to make 
 Dpe believe that they yielded" at last to the popular will, 
 
 that in ceding Nice and Savoy they merely paid homage 
 le new principle of universal suffrage invoked to deter- 
 e the allegiance of- subjects. They might have said ' We 
 
 to a supreme necessity,' and the reason would at least 
 ; been understood. But what are we to think of the sin- 
 :y of the minister who could write as Count Cavour wrote 
 I. Thouvenel on the 2nd of March .' — ■ 
 
 ''e feel too deeply what Italy owes to the Emperor not to pay the most serious 
 ion to a demand based on the principle of respect for the wishes of the 
 itants. His Majesty's Government would never consent, with even the 
 ;st prospective advantages, to cede or exchange any one of the parts of 
 irritory which has formed for so many ages the glorious inheritance of the 
 e of Savoy. But the King's Government cannot refuse taking into considera- 
 he changes which passing events in Italy may have introduced into the situation 
 2 inhabitants of Savoy and Nice. At the moment when we are loudly 
 nding for the inhabitants of Central Italy the right of disposing of their 
 ly, we cannot, without incurring the charge of inconsistency and injustice, 
 to the King's subjects dwelling on the other side of the Alps the right of 
 manifesting their will. However poignant the regret we should feel, if the 
 ices, once the glorious cradle of the monarchy, could decide on demanding 
 separation from the rest of the King's dominions in order to join other 
 lies, we should not refuse to acknowledge the validity of this manifestation 
 red legally and conformably with the prescriptions of Parliament. 
 
 The farce accordingly was played out, the ballot-box was 
 led, and, by the conjuring process of universal suffrage 
 ;r the provident care of French emissaries and electioneer- 
 agents, the two provinces transferred themselves from 
 linia to France, and another blow was struck at the set- 
 ent of 1815. 
 
 \t the end of March then, last year, the state of things 
 aly was this : — Piedmont, Tuscany, Modena, Parma, the 
 lagna, and the Legations, formed one independent king- 
 under the constitutional monarchy of the House of Savoy, 
 5tia belonged to Austria, as has been her lot since the 
 .ty of Campo Formio, in 1797 ; and the rest of Italy, 
 
72 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 divided between the States of the Church and the^ Two 
 Sicilies, retained its old governments without modification or 
 change. The position of Sardinia was excellent. She had 
 added to her dominions some of the finest provinces of Italy, 
 rich in material wealth, and filled with an intelligent, docile, 
 and industrious population. It was her obvious policy now 
 to consolidate her new acquisitions, and to set an example 
 of good government to the rest of Italy, to husband her re- 
 sources, and to prepare herself for a struggle which might 
 be forced upon her, but which she ought not to seek or 
 precipitate. 
 
 Above all, it was her duty to abide loyally by the terms of 
 the Treaty of Peace to which she was a party, and not to 
 cause fresh complexities by ambitious projects or restless 
 intrigues. We find Count Rechberg in January last com- 
 plaining that ' no tranquillity or repose could exist, nor could 
 the security of peace be assured, so long as the Sardinian 
 Government continued to foment discord and insurrection 
 within the States of her neighbour.'' This was with reference 
 to alleged attempts on the part of Sardinia to incite the 
 populations of Venetia and Southern Tyrol to throw off their 
 allegiance to Austria.^ And soon afterwards M. Thouvenel 
 informed Lord Cowley 'that Prince Metternich had been 
 ordered to call the attention of the French Government to 
 the proceedings of Sardinian agents in Venetia. A despatch 
 containing a series of facts which, if true, were very regret- 
 table, had been communicated to him by the Austrian 
 Ambassador.'^ 
 
 With respect to Austria, we are bound to say that, having 
 accepted the principle of non-intervention, she has adhered 
 to it. Under the most irritating provocation, she has remained 
 purely on the defensive, and neither directly nor indirectly 
 since the peace of Villafranca has interfered in the affairs 
 
 ' See the letter from Lord A. Loftus plaints, and to explain the view which 
 
 to Lord J. Russell, Jan. 12, i860, in they take of the position of affairs in 
 
 the Further Correspondence relating to their country. Count Cavour declined 
 
 the Affairs of Italy. to enter into any discussion with them 
 
 ^ It is, however, right to quote the upon those points. ' Sir J. Hudson to 
 
 following: — 'A deputation from the Lord J. Russell, Feb. 3, i860. Further 
 
 [Southern ?] Tyrol waited upon Count Correspondence on Affairs of Italy. 
 
 Cavour a few days ago in order to urge ' Earl Cowley to Lord John Russell, 
 
 that minister to listen to their com- Jan. 30, i860. Ibid. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 73 
 
 7 beyond the limits of her own frontier. When the 
 s and Umbria were invaded by Piedmontese troops, 
 not send a soldier to the assistance of the Pope, 
 h, as a great Catholic power, she must have felt it 
 1 duty of religion to protect the Holy See from what 
 eved to be an act of sacrilegious spoliation. When 
 ig of Naples appealed to her for help, she declined to 
 e. 
 
 are not called upon to scrutinise the motives which 
 strained her, nor to decide how far she may have been 
 check by the fear of France or the exhaustion of her 
 r. We accept the fact, and we think that in all fair- 
 d justice Sardinia ought to accept it also. That her 
 Venetia has during the last year been harsh and stern, 
 not inclined to doubt. The whole province was turned 
 amp, martial law was proclaimed, and an overwhelm- 
 e was ready to crush the slightest symptom of popular 
 tion. But this was the cruel necessity of her position 
 vas to hold Venetia at all. The time had gone by 
 be could hope to conciliate the inhabitants of that 
 I by any concessions short of its absolute surrender, 
 corned, as a mockery, administrative reform, when 
 lole hearts were bent on revolution. A bold defiance 
 •led against Austria by the Italians, who swore that 
 should be free ; and she could only respond to that 
 : by arming her fortresses and strengthening her bat- 
 She must govern by the sword, or cease to govern 
 er. In short, that unhappy state of things existed 
 iurke described when he said ' Kings will be tyrants 
 licy, when subjects are rebels on principle.' 
 1 was — such, alas ! is — the state of Venetia. In the 
 tates, and especially the Marches, which are separated 
 jmagna by only an impalpable line, it was with the 
 difficulty that insurrection was kept down. A rising 
 ■ce in Perugia, on the western slope of the Apennines, 
 1859. Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed, and a Pro- 
 Government formed. But the town was attacked by 
 Dops, and Colonel Schmidt, their commander, made 
 infamous by the cruel massacre of many of the in- 
 s after the gates had been thrown open, and all 
 
74 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 resistance was at an end. When Romagna threw off the 
 Papal yoke, the excitement in the Marches became so great 
 that it seemed impossible to prevent a revolutionary outbreak, 
 especially as Garibaldi was on the frontier organising levies, 
 and ready at a moment's notice to pass the imaginary line, 
 invade the province, and raise the standard of revolt : even 
 the Papal troops were beginning to desert and cross over to 
 Romagna. We believe that at this period the efforts of the 
 Sardinian Government were sincere, at all events they were 
 successful in stopping the further progress of insurrection in 
 this part of the Papal States. Garibaldi was forced or per- 
 suaded by Farini to retire, and for the moment aggression 
 was prevented. 
 
 Let us now turn to the Two Sicilies, where the smoulder- 
 ing fire of discontent was about to burst into a flame. 
 
 Never had a dynasty more emphatic warnings that it was 
 pursuing a pohcy of self-destruction than the dynasty of the 
 infatuated Bourbons at Naples. We speak not now of the 
 warnings conveyed by attempts at insurrection, and by the 
 necessity of stifling in dungeons, and crushing by brute force, 
 the voices of many of the best and noblest of their subjects 
 to prevent the cry against their tyranny from being heard. 
 But v/e refer to the remonstrances from time to time addressed 
 to them by foreign Powers, who were shocked by the scandal 
 of such a government. Shortly after the revolution of July, 
 which took place three months before the accession of Fer- 
 dinand II. to the throne, Louis Philippe wrote to him a letter 
 He said, — 
 
 \A'e are in a period of transition, when often a little must be relinquished so 
 that all may not be lost, and it would give me real joy to learn that your Majesty 
 has given up a system of compression and of severity which caused many days of 
 intense agony to your late august father, and which often banished the smile from 
 the lips of the eiUightened King Ferdinand I. Let your Majesty imitate the 
 system in France ; you will be a gainer in every respect ; for, by sacrificing a 
 little authority, you will insure peace to your kingdom, and stability to your house. 
 The symptoms of agitation are so strongly pronounced and numerous in Italy, that 
 an outbreak may be expected sooner or later, accordingly as the stern measures oi 
 Prince Metternich may hasten or adjourn it. Your majesty mil be drawn into the 
 current if you are not prepared to stem the tide, and your house will be burst in 
 two either by the revolutionary stream or by the measures of repression the Vienna 
 Cabinet may think fit to adopt. 
 
 To this letter the King of Naples sent the following reply, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 75 
 
 : is difficult to believe could emanate from anything 
 insanity : — 
 
 itate France, if ever France can be imitated, I should have to precipitate 
 3 that policy of Jacobinism for which my people has proved feloniously 
 re than once against the house of its Kings. Liberty is fatal to the 
 Bourbon ; and, as regards myself, I am resolved to avoid, at all price, 
 F Louis XVL and of Charles X. My people obey force and bend their 
 t woe's me should they ever raise them under the impulse of those dreams 
 ind so fine in the sermons of philosophers, and which are impossible in 
 With God's blessing, I will give prosperity to my people, and a 
 mt as honest as they have a right to ; but I will be King, and always. 
 !ople do not want to think ; I take upon myself the care of their welfare 
 dignity. I have inherited many old grudges, many mad desires, arising 
 he faults and weaknesses of the past ; I must set this to rights, and I can 
 by drawing closer to Austria without subjecting myself to her will. We 
 f this century. The Bourbons are ancient, and, if they were to try to 
 :mselves according to the pattern of the new dynasties, they would be 
 ;. We will imitate the Hapsburgs. If fortune plays us false, we shall 
 e true to ourselves. 
 
 ■theless your Majesty may rely upon my lively sympathy and my warmest 
 at you may succeed in mastering that ungovernable people who make 
 le curse of Europe. Ferdinand. 
 
 course of misrule which Ferdinand pursued is strikingly 
 d by Miss Horner.' It became so bad that, in October 
 loth the English and French Governments took the 
 and unusual step of recalling their ambassadors, and 
 ig off diplomatic relations with the Court of Naples, 
 avowed ground of its vindictive and arbitrary conduct, 
 e cruel inhumanity with which it treated its political 
 rs. Ferdinand II. died in May, 1859, and was sue- 
 by his son, Francis II. The two Western Powers 
 d diplomatic intercourse with Naples in hopes that the 
 ment would be carried on in a different and wiser 
 But it soon became evident that change in the occupant 
 ihrone had made no change in the policy of the govern- 
 md the maxim of the young King seemed to be that, 
 ather had chastised his subjects with whips, he would 
 ; them with scorpions. Again the voice of warning 
 monstrance was heard. In July, 1859, Lord John 
 [ wrote to Mr. Elliot, the British Minister at Naples, 
 d:— 
 
 Century of Despotism in Naples Naples,' which Miss Horner has re- 
 
 y. ' The materials of this well- cently translated and brought down to 
 
 ttle book are derived from the the present time, 
 'ork, CoUetta's ' History of 
 
76 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 ' It may suit the purposes of those who have thriven on the past abuses to 
 encourage the King to follow in his father's footsteps, for a change of system would 
 probably lead to their ruin ; but it appears to her Majesty's Government that the 
 King has now to choose between the ruin of his evil counsellors and his own ; if 
 he supports and upholds them, and places himself under their guidance, it requires 
 not much foresight to predict that the Bourbon dynasty will cease to reign at 
 Naples, by whatever combination. Regal or Republican, it may be replaced.' 
 And he added that, ' neither the moral nor the material support of England is to 
 be looked for by the King, if, by a continual denial of justice, and the refiisal of 
 an improved form of internal administration, the Neapolitan people should be 
 driven into insurrection, and should succeed m expelling the present dynasty from 
 the throne.' 
 
 In January last year he informed Mr. Elliot that the 
 British Government could only lament the bhndness of the i 
 Neapolitan Council, and would ' neither accept any part of their I 
 responsibility, nor undertake to ward off the consequences of 
 a mis-government which has scarcely a parallel in Europe.' | 
 And finally, in March, Mr. Elliott told M. Carafa, the Neapo- 
 litan Minister for Foreign Affairs, that he ' felt that the de- 
 struction of his Majesty and of the dynasty is inevitable 
 unless wiser counsels are listened to.' When, therefore, not 
 long afterwards, the King, panic-stricken at the rapid pro- 
 gress of insurrection, applied to the Foreign Powers to 
 guarantee to him the possession of his throne, there was no 
 one in this country who did not rejoice to hear that they had 
 refused. 
 
 The danger of the King's position was so apparent that 
 even his uncle interposed. In a remarkable letter written to 
 Francis II. on the 3rd of April last year, the Count of Syra- 
 cuse pointed out what he called the ' blindness and madness' 
 of refusing to acknowledge the principle of Italian nationality, 
 which for centuries had remained in the field of ideas, but 
 had now descended vigorously into the field of action, and 
 he advised the King to shake off the influence of Austria, 
 and identify himself with the policy of Sardinia. 
 
 But it was then too late, even if the ears of the Monarch 
 and his advisers had not been deaf to sudi advice. At the 
 very moment when the Count of Syracuse was counseUing a 
 change of policy to avert insurrection, the revolution had 
 begun. Early in April the island of Sicily rose in revolt. It 
 seems to have begun at Palermo, where, on the 4th of April, 
 the Royal troops were attacked, and the town was placed in 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 77 
 
 siege. But it soon spread like lightning over the . .^ ^ 
 
 ^lessina, Catania, and Agrigentum declared for the ■'■■X--^ 
 
 s ; a secret committee organised their movements, S 
 
 Ua bands multiplied so fast that in a short time it 
 )uted that there were not less than 200,000 Sicilians 
 
 For a month the insurrection raged in the island v 
 
 ,ny direct help from Italy. But it produced there a 
 sensation, and there was one man who determined 
 le what might, he would raise a body of volunteers, 
 part in the struggle on the side of liberty. This 
 baldi, who had already, as we have seen, been with 
 restrained from invading the Marches and provoking 
 t with the forces of the Pope. He now actively 
 i himself in organising an expedition to Sicily, and 
 i at Genoa on the night of the 5th of May with . »' 
 
 of 2,000 volunteers. An enthusiastic crowd was \ 
 
 d to witness their departure, and the only semblance 
 ilment of their purpose was that they did not march 
 uniforms, which had previously been put on board 
 imers which were lying outside the harbour. The 
 •s were conveyed to them from different points along . ../ 
 
 :. Before he reached the shores of Sicily Garibaldi ,■■;, 
 
 a proclamation, in which he called the Italians to •' ' 
 
 ;he name of ' Italy and Victor Emmanuel.' 
 )aldi landed in Sicily, at Marsala, on the nth of May, 
 the 14th, as ' Commander-in-Chief of the National 
 Sicily,' assumed the Dictatorship of the island in the 
 Victor Emmanuel. Bands of volunteers soon began 
 nto the island from Sardinia, and it was in vain for the 
 ent to deny (as it did for some time deny) that this 
 '-. with its connivance and consent. Every one knew 
 )rofessions were belied by its acts, for the undisguised 
 n which recruiting went on in Piedmont, Lombardy, 
 :any, and the collection of vessels at Genoa, of which '- - 
 
 nation was Sicily, made ignorance of the object an 
 le excuse. 
 
 ndeed afterwards, when the success of the enterprise 
 ired, and Sardinia was about to reap the fruits of 
 i's exploit, she took credit to herself for the under- 
 istance she had given. In his address from Ancona 
 
78 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to the people of Southern Italy on the 9th of October, Victor, 
 Emmanuel made it a matter of boast, and declared- 
 It was quite natural that the events which had taken place in Central Italy 
 should have more or less excited the minds of the people of South Italy. In Sicily 
 this disposition of the people found vent in open revolt. The people were fighting- 
 for liberty in Sicily, when a brave warrior, devoted to Italy and to me— Geneial 
 Garibaldi— sprang to their assistance. They were Italians ; I could not, I ought 
 not, to restrain them. 
 
 And what was the conduct of England ? If ever there was 
 a time when it behoved the English Government to keep 
 itself clear from all suspicion of complicity in insurrection, it 
 was now. Independently of the rules of international law 
 and the plain obligation of one State not to interfere in the 
 internal struggles of another, the Government had preached 
 to Austria and France the doctrine of non-intervention as the 
 one sole principle to be observed by the Great Powers in the 
 question of Italy. It was the attitude and moral influence of 
 England which more than anything else prevented Austria 
 from lending assistance to the Pope. On the one hand, her 
 duty as a Sovereign Power commanded her to respect the 
 obligations of treaties, and to observe the strictest good faith; 
 on the other, her sympathies with liberty forbade her to sup- 
 port Governments, whose misrule she detested, in a contest 
 with subjects driven by oppression into revolt. We shall see 
 by-and-by that, in the opinion of Lord John Russell, this 
 doctrine of non-intervention did not apply to Garibaldi or 
 Victor Emmanuel, and that Garibaldi was justified in interfer- 
 ing because he was an Italian patriot, and Victor Emmanuel 
 because he was an Italian king. But letting this pass, it 
 excluded all who were beyond the limits of that which was 
 once called a 'geographical expression'— Italy. If, however, 
 the unchecked supply of money and men from England, with 
 the knowledge of the Government that they were to be em- 
 ployed in aid of the Sicilian insurgents, constitutes complicity, 
 we do not see how the charge can be denied. Advertisements 
 appeared openly in the newspapers soliciting subscriptions for 
 Garibaldi in his enterprise — the word was afterwards, indeed, 
 softened down to ' testimonial '■ — and the names of the sub- 
 scribers were ostentatiously paraded. When the question was 
 asked in the House of Commons in May whether a person so 
 subscribing was liable to be indicted, it was admitted by the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITAL V. 79 
 
 1 Law-Officer of the Crown that, ' according to the 
 L law of England, any subject of the Queen who, either 
 7r indirectly, may supply mondy in aid of the revolting 
 of any nation or power with whom we are in alliance, 
 ; an offence at common law ; ' but at the same time 
 ted that there was a long interval between the enun- 
 )f that principle and the manner in which it is to be 
 into execution, and that there was no case in which 
 d been a decision of the general principle in the shape 
 iictment for that particular offence. In other words, 
 ernment were not prepared to enforce the law. And 
 i openly avowed by Lord John Russell in the same 
 in which, of course, he could not take part without 
 I in the Revolution of 1688. We doubt, however, the 
 e of the Minister who attempts to be facetious when 
 with such topics as filibustering and rebellion. He 
 
 iment such as that which Walker attempted in South America, when he 
 wade and to obtain possession of territory, with no higher object in 
 his own selfish interests, is one case ; but a patriot fighting for the 
 ce of his country is quite another case. We know that our sympathies 
 gment of history will distinguish between the cases of the filibuster and 
 :hat of the hero and the patriot. We had once a great filibuster who 
 England in 1688. He not only received considerable support, but all 
 of England flocked around him. That filibustering was successful. 
 ;ases in which it is not sufficient to say that Garibaldi is a man fighting 
 overeign whom he ought to respect, or that the Pope is endeavouring 
 I his authority by unlawful expedients. It is not enough to say these 
 glib and fluent manner. 
 
 ire not at present concerned with the question whether 
 of Orange was a filibuster or not ; but we cannot 
 at Garibaldi was ' a patriot fighting for the indepen- 
 his country,' unless we assume that there was no 
 e between a subject of Sardinia and a subject of 
 Decause both were Italians, and that the Bourbons, 
 ruled over the Two Sicilies for upwards of a century, 
 ;ign usurpers. Will Lord John Russell venture to 
 it community of language effaces distinction of coun- 
 at, according to the doctrine of natural boundaries, 
 y is to determine citizenship and allegiance .' If so, 
 ; difficult for him to deal with the pretensions of 
 rhen she claims the frontier of the Rhine ; and we 
 
8o £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 commend to his attention the following passage from a speech 
 of Lord Palmerson when the question before the House of 
 Commons was not the conduct of Garibaldi in the invasion of 
 Sicily, but the policy of Napoleon in the annexation of Savoy:-. 
 
 For, Sir, if you come to natural boundaries, and if the country which claims 
 them is to be the judge of where they are, it is very easy to see that Europe would 
 find it very difficult to decide where danger would begin and where resistance 
 upon a grand scale ought to be undertaken. If language were to be the measure 
 of aggrandizement, it is plain that it would be difficult for many countries to slioir 
 that ihey had a good title to possessions which they now hold. Therefore, these 
 two principles of natural boundaries and of community of language are principles 
 the establishment of which would be very dangerous to Europe, however small 
 comparatively speaking, might be the instance in which they were earned 
 into effect. 
 
 But sympathy with Garibaldi soon assumed a more active 
 form. He sent over to England an accredited agent to collect 
 not only money, but men ; and a considerable body of volun- 
 teers enrolled themselves and embarked for Italy to fight 
 against a government with which their Sovereign was at peace. 
 This was not only in defiance of international law, but in 
 direct contravention of the Foreign Enlistment Act. The 
 British Government were bound to put a stop to such a state 
 of things ; but they did nothing. We sa^ that it is a scandal 
 and disgrace, and a fatal and dangerous precedent, to allow 
 this kind of privateering in the service of insurrection. The 
 Sicilians may have had the holiest of causes ; but it was no 
 cause of ours. And we hold that, whether it be to suppoila 
 throne like that of Spain in 1835, when the Foreign Enlist- 
 ment Act in this country was suspended by an Order in 
 Council, or to upset a throne like that of Naples in i860, 
 Englishmen have no right to take up arms in a quarrel in 
 which their Government is not engaged and in which they 
 have no concern. And mark the consequences that may 
 follow from permitting such a course. At the very time when 
 volunteers were enlisting in England for Garibaldi, the emis- 
 saries of the Pope were raising recruits in Ireland for the 
 defence of the Holy See : so that it was quite within the 
 bounds of probability that these adventurers might meet in 
 hostile conflict on the same battle-field, and Englishmen and 
 Irishmen cut each other's throats, while the one side shouted 
 'Victor Emmanuel for ever!' and the other 'Long live the 
 Pope ! ' Besides, the honour of the English name is carried 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 
 
 B English flag, and it is exposed to all the obloquy 
 le misfortune or misconduct of those who bear it may 
 pon it' 
 
 have not space nor is it necessary to give details of the 
 ous success of Garibaldi — 
 
 Whose name in arms through Europe rings, 
 Filling each mouth with envy or with praise. 
 And all the jealous monarchs with amaze, 
 And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings. 
 
 an incredibly short time, and notwithstanding the re- 
 
 i of the royal troops, which with wanton cruelty bom- 
 Palermo, he reduced all the fortified places in Sicily, 
 the citadel of Messina. He landed at Melito on 
 
 : 19, and made his entry into Naples on September 8. 
 
 )w did he enter .■' Not at the head of victorious legions 
 
 n tourists should beware how 
 iport themselves when they 
 ing foreigners a little excite- 
 
 temporary importance. The 
 
 exploit of Mr. E. James, 
 ; upon any authority save his 
 ; communicated by himself to 
 .e daily journals. (It may be 
 
 that Mr. James had ventured, 
 t know in what capacity, but 
 I a ' half-milifary, half-navvy 
 It,' as the artist of the ' lUus- 
 ews ' calls it, a little too near 
 
 of hostilities. ) 
 
 cry arose that the "Cavalry 
 tning ! " and the panic seized 
 ps. In the melee I lost my 
 ; my servant had very indis- 
 iken shelter with some priests 
 p of a convent, and during his 
 the carriage disappeared. I 
 valk along the high road to 
 
 a little Swiss soldier who had 
 unded by a rifle-ball in the 
 id was going to the hospital 
 ;ompanied me. On our way 
 ven or eight soldiers, among 
 ere two officers— the Swiss 
 old me they belonged to a 
 egiment — seated on one of the 
 :ultural carts, which they had 
 n a field adjoining the road, 
 proceeding at a rapid pace to 
 
 As they met troops coming 
 
 town to relieve Santa Maria 
 ad the panic among them ; 
 
 out, " The cavalry are com- 
 
 ing ! " " The artillery are close on us ! " 
 "We shall all perish!" "Back to 
 Caserta, back ! " More than one regi- 
 ment wavered and turned. The officers 
 behaved firmly and well, drew their 
 swords, and urged their men on ; but 
 the alarm had spread, and the soldiers 
 refused to follow. I followed these 
 mischievous and cowardly fellows to 
 Caserta, asked for the colonel of a 
 regiment who spoke French, gave him 
 my name and address, pointed out the 
 fellows as they entered the square in 
 front of the Palace, and, although I did 
 not request it as a personal favour^ I 
 certainly suggested that they should be 
 marched out and shot ; they were at 
 once taken to the guard-house, and 
 were no more seen by me. It is only 
 just to say that several regiments passed 
 these dastardly renegades unnoticed, 
 and marched on to the relief of the 
 village.' 
 
 That is to say, a mere foreign spec- 
 tator (for notwithstanding the pistols 
 and ' half-military equipment,' we can- 
 not suppose that he belonged, even as 
 a volunteer, to the Garibaldian force), 
 being rather out of humour at ' having 
 to walk, ' suggested — all but requested — 
 that seven or eight soldiers, who were 
 coming along the road with himself, 
 but were more fortunate in obtaining 
 carriage, should — for conduct witnessed 
 and not animadverted upon by many 
 officers of their own army — be executed 
 without trial ! 
 
82 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 with all the pomp of war, but, accompanied by a few friends, 
 as a passenger in a railway-carriage ! He had conquered 
 by the mere sound of his name, as the walls of Jericho fell 
 down with a shout. The only place where anything like 
 resistance was attempted was Reggio, the fortress which 
 commands the Strait opposite Messina, and which was taken 
 in a few hours. At San Giovanni a body of Neapolitan 
 troops, two thousand strong, surrendered without a blow ; and 
 we are told that when Garibaldi went amongst them he was 
 almost torn to pieces ' by hugging and embracing.' At Mon- 
 teleone ten thousand more laid down their arms ; and, after 
 staying a few days at Salerno, the Dictator of the Two Sicilies 
 accompanied by his staff, proceeded by the railway-train to 
 the capital. 
 
 But what in the meantime had become of the King and 
 the main body of the Neapolitan army .? As the insurrection 
 in Sicily went on, and all hope of putting it down by force 
 was at an end, Francis II. endeavoured to avert ruin by con- 
 cession. He dared not trust himself in his capital, but from 
 Portici, at the end of June, he issued a decree proclaiming the 
 Constitution of February lo, 1848, a general amnesty of poli- 
 tical offences, and the liberty of the press. He also charged 
 Commander Spinelli with the formation of a liberal ministry, 
 which was to frame the articles of a Statute ' on the basis of 
 national and Italian institutions ; ' and he convoked an assem- 
 bly of the national Parliament for September 10. The 
 tricolor flag was hoisted at the castle of St. Elmo. Repre- 
 sentative institutions were decreed for Sicily, and one of the 
 royal princes was to act as viceroy of the island. But these 
 and other concessions came too late. Many towns revolted, 
 and the army showed that it could not be trusted. The King 
 had also sent ambassadors to Turin to propose a confederacy 
 with Sardinia upon Italian constitutional principles. But the 
 Sardinian Government rejected these overtures. Abandoned 
 by all, on the morning of September 6 he embarked on board 
 a Spanish steamer, and took refuge in the strong fortress of 
 Gaeta, which, with that of Capua, now alone of all his do- 
 minions remained in his hands. 
 
 Leaving Naples for a moment, let us turn to the Papal 
 States. The Pontifical Government did all in its power at the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITAL Y. 83 
 
 ing of last year to recruit its army by foreign mercena- 
 and early in April the well-known French General, 
 •ici^re, was appointed to the chief command. We do 
 pect historical accuracy from a soldier engaged to defend 
 erate cause, but it is startling to be told in a military 
 of the day that ' Revolution, like Islamism in bygone 
 
 now threatens Europe ; and now, as then, the cause of 
 ipacy is the cause of the civilisation and of the liberty 
 : world.' We pass over the period from April to Sep- 
 r, during which the new levies were drilled, and garri- 
 iccupied, and attempts at insurrection sternly put down, 
 s may well be supposed, the events that took place in 
 
 and Naples shook the States of the Church to their 
 :, and nothing but the strong hand of military repression 
 ited the people from rising both in Umbria and the 
 les, and throwing off the Papal yoke, 
 was at this juncture, and, unless we are mistaken, very 
 fter some of the principal persons of the Sardinian Court 
 ;rsonally communicated with the French Emperor at his 
 -acquired city of Chambery, that Count Cavour ad- 
 d to Cardinal Antonelli, the Cardinal Secretary of the 
 See, a letter which, in its bold contempt of the rules of 
 itional law, is without a parallel. It is dated Turin, 
 Tiber 7 : — 
 
 nence — The Government of H. M. the King of Sardinia could not with- 
 )us regret see the formation and existence of the bodies of foreign mercenary 
 1 the pay of the Pontifical Government. The organisation of such corps, 
 isting, as in all civilised governments, of citizens of the country, but of men 
 nguages, nations, and religions, deeply offends the public conscience of 
 i Europe. The want of discipline inherent to such troops, the incon- 
 conduct of their chiefs, the irritating menaces vi'ith which they pompously 
 
 proclamations, excite and maintain a highly dangerous ferment. The 
 ecoUection of the massacre and pillage of Perugia is still alive among the 
 its of the Marches and Umbria. This state of things, dangerous in itself, 
 itill more so after the facts which have taken place in Sicily and in the 
 
 of Naples. The presence of foreign troops, which insults the national 
 md prevents the manifestation of the wishes of the people, will infallibly 
 ; extension of the movement to the neighbouring provinces. The inti- 
 mection which exists between the inhabitants of the Marches and Umbria, 
 ; of the provinces annexed to the States of the King, and reasons of order 
 rity in his own territory, lay His Majesty's Government under the neces- 
 jplying, as far as is in its power, an immediate remedy to such evils, 
 tor Emmanuel's conscience does iiot permit him to remain a passive 
 
 of the bloody repression with which the arms of the foreign mercenaries 
 tinguish every manifestation of national feeling in Italian blood. No 
 G 2 
 
84 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 government has the right of abandoning to the will and pleasure of a horde of 
 soldiers of fortune, the property, the honour, and lives of the inhabitants of a 
 civilised country. For these reasons, after having applied to His Majesty the 
 King, my august Sovereign, for his orders, I have the honour of signifying to 
 your Eminence that the King's troops are charged to prevent, in the name -of the 
 rights of humanity, the Pontifical mercenary corps from repressing by violence 
 the expression of the sentiments of the people of the Marches and Umbria. I 
 have, moreover, the honour to invite your Eminence, for the reasons above ex- 
 plained, to give immediate orders for the disbanding and dissolving of those 
 corps, the existence of which is a menace to the peace of Italy. Trusting that 
 your Eminence will immediately communicate to me the measures taken by the 
 Government of his Holiness in the matter, I have the honour of renewing to your 
 Eminence the expression of my high consideration. Cavour. 
 
 In this letter we find an Europeanr statesman demanding, 
 in the name of his Government, under the threat of invasion, 
 that an independent Power shall dismiss its army on the 
 ground that it is composed of foreign mercenary troops, who 
 are engaged in the repression of the ' manifestations of national 
 feeling,' or, in other words, putting down a wide-spread insur- 
 rection. We have no sympathy with the Papal Government; 
 we believe it to be one of the very worst in existence, and we 
 rejoice in the defeat of General Lamoriciere and his polyglott 
 soldiers, collected from all corners of Europe. But we cannot 
 blind ourselves to the fact that the reasoning of Count Cavour 
 is false and dangerous. It is false, because every State has 
 the undoubted right to take mercenaries into its pay— we be- 
 lieve that there is no nation in Europe which has not, at some 
 time or another, employed them ; and it is dangerous, because 
 it sets a precedent for interference between a government and 
 its subjects which would lead to interminable war. It is 
 impossible to deny the force of Cardinal Antonelli's reply, 
 when he said : — 
 
 The new principles of public law which you lay do^im in your letter would be 
 indeed sufficient to dispense me from giving any answer at all, they being so con- 
 trary to those which have constantly been acknowledged by all governments and 
 
 nations Your Excellency concludes your painful despatch by inviting 
 
 me, in the name of your Sovereign, to immediately order the disamiing and dis- 
 banding of the said troops. This invitation was accompanied by a sort of menace 
 on the part of Piedmont, in case of refusal, to prevent the action of the said troops 
 by means of the Royal troops. This involves a quasi-injunction which I willingly 
 ftbstain from qualifying. The Holy See could only repel it with indignation, 
 strong in its legitimate rights, and appealing to the law of nations under the 8^s 
 of which Europe has hitherto lived 
 
 Whether the Sardinian minister could or could not have 
 put his interference on better grounds, we shall not now en- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 85 
 
 ; but we cannot admit that Sardinia alone, of all the 
 lean States, is, like ' a chartered libertine,' to be held 
 om the obligations of international law, or that she is to 
 •mitted, without a protest, to lay down new principles of 
 the logical consequence would be that the right of the 
 ;est is that alone which ought to be recognized in the re- 
 3 of two independent governments. For if Sardinia may 
 mpunity make demands which are contrary to the re- 
 l law of nations, and invade the territory of her neighbour 
 those demands are complied with, d, fortiori France, 
 Lustria, and Russia may do the same. And it would be 
 lit to justify waging war with Russia in the Crimea 
 se she had crossed the Danube for the purpose of holding 
 chia and Moldavia as a ' material guarantee.' We feel 
 ore bound to challenge the dangerous doctrine of Count 
 r, because it has received the high sanction of Lord John 
 11, the Foreign Minister of England, in a despatch which 
 sated no little sensation in Europe, and which we trust 
 Dt pass without comment when Parliament assembles, 
 ticipate for a moment our narrative of facts, we must 
 )n that, when the Papal States were invaded by the 
 ontese army under Generals Fanti and Cialdini in Sep- 
 r, the Emperor of the French (whatever may have been 
 il sentiments) recalled his Minister from Turin ; and 
 at a later period the same army crossed the Neapolitan 
 ;r, in October, the Emperor of Russia withdrew the 
 m Mission, there being no ambassador from that capital, 
 le Prince Regent of Prussia expressed his dissatisfaction 
 conduct of Sardinia, although he did not go so far as to 
 the Prussian Minister. It was after these diplomatic 
 at Lord John Russell felt himself called upon, by that 
 e which leads him to write letters more celebrated than 
 iful, to read to the Great Powers a lecture on interna- 
 law, and to establish the principle which, if true, is at 
 wel, that where subjects have ' good reasons ' for taking 
 IS against their governments, it is right in another State 
 der them assistance. In a despatch to Sir James 
 n, the British Minister at Turin, dated October 27, 
 ohn Russell said,— 
 arge questions which appear to them to be at issue are these i^Were the 
 
86 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 people of Italy justified in asking the assistance of the King of Sardinia to relieve 
 them from governments with which they were discontented? and was the King of 
 Sardinia justified in furnishing the assistance of his arms to the people of the 
 Roman and Neapolitan States ? There appear to have been two motives which 
 have induced the people of the Roman and Neapolitan States to join willingly in 
 the subversion of their governments. The first of these was, that the Govern- 
 ment of the Pope and the King of the Two Sicilies provided so ill for the admin- 
 istration of justice, the protection of personal liberty, and the general welfare of 
 their people, that their subjects looked forward to the overthrow of their raleis 
 as a necessary preliminary to all improvement in their condition. 
 
 The second motive was, that a conviction had spread since the year 1849 'hat 
 the only manner in which Italians could secure their independence of foreign con- 
 trol was by forming one strong government for the whole of Italy. The struggle 
 of Charles Albert in 1848, and the sympathy which the present King of Sardinia 
 has shown for the Italian cause, have naturally caused the association of the name 
 of Victor Emmanuel with the single authority under which the Italians aspire to 
 live. 
 
 Looking at the question in this view, Her Majesty's Government must admit 
 that the Italians themselves are the best judges of their own interests. 
 
 That eminent jurist Vattel, when discussing the lawfulness of the assistance 
 given by the United Provinces to the Prince of Orange when he invaded England 
 and overturned the throne of James II., says — 'The authority of the Prince of 
 Orange had doubtless an influence on the deliberations of the States-General, but 
 it did not lead them to the commission of an act of injustice, for when a people 
 for good reasons take up arms against an oppressor, it is but an act of justice and 
 generosity to assist brave men in the defence of their liberties.' 
 
 Therefore, according to Vattel, the question resolves itself into this— Did the 
 people of Naples and of the Roman States take up arms against their governments 
 for good reasons? 
 
 Upon this grave matter Her Majesty's Government hold that the people in 
 question are themselves the best judges of their own affairs. Her Majesty's Gavern- 
 meiii do not feel justified in declaring that the people of Southern Italy had mt good 
 reasons for throTi'ing off their allegiance to their former governments ; Her Majesty s 
 Gmerinncnt camiot, therefore, pretend to blame the King of Sardinia for assisting 
 them. 
 
 We need not quote the rest of the letter, for with it we 
 have no concern. We are not ' partizans of the fallen govern- 
 ments,' nor do we assert that the people of the Roman States 
 were attached to the Pope, and the people of the kingdom of 
 Naples to the dynasty of Francis II. But we pray attention 
 to the passage which we have marked in italics. Her Majesty's 
 Government cannot blame Sardinia for assisting a people 
 which has good reasons for throwing off their allegiance. Who 
 is to be the judge of those reasons .'' Was there ever yet a revolt 
 in which the insurgents did not believe themselves to be in the 
 right .'' and was there ever a government which did not believe 
 rebels against itself to be in the wrong } Lord John Russell 
 shelters himself behind the authority of Vattel, and, as* usual, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 87 
 
 lis illustration from his stock precedent — the Revolu- 
 1688. But, in the first place, Vattel is a very poor 
 ty ; as Chancellor Kent says of him, ' he is not suffi- 
 supported by the authority of precedents which consti- 
 e foundation of the positive law of nations.' ' And in 
 ct place Lord John Russell .ought to have continued 
 )tation. Vattel goes on to say, ' Whenever, therefore, a 
 ir is kindled in a State, foreign Powers may assist that 
 fhich appears to them to have justice on its side.' This, 
 bt, is the logical consequence of his previous proposi- 
 3ut it proves its falsity. It is, in fact, a licence for 
 sddling, which is wholly destructive of national inde- 
 ice. These doctrines, as we shall show a little later, 
 ;pudiated by the Sardinian Government, and they are 
 at variance with what has hitherto been the policy of 
 mtry in the affairs of Europe. We will cite a memor- 
 ample. When, in 182 1, revolution broke out in Spain, 
 : progress of the Liberals at length threatened destruc- 
 the monarchy, the Congress of Verona was assembled 
 bllowing year to consider the course to be adopted by 
 ;at Powers. Lord Londonderry was to have gone as 
 nipotentiary of England, but, on his sudden death, the 
 f Wellington was appointed in his stead, and in the 
 ions drawn up by the deceased statesman and trans- 
 :o the Duke, we find the following passage : ' With 
 to Spain there seems nothing to add to or vary in the 
 )f policy hitherto pursued. Solicitude for the safety of 
 il family, observance of our engagements with Portugal, 
 ■igid abstinence from any interference in the internal 
 of that country, must be considered as forming the 
 r his Majesty's policy.' Mr. Canning, who had suc- 
 is Foreign Secretary, was equally explicit in his in- 
 is to the Duke, and said, ' I am to instruct your Grace 
 frankly and peremptorily to declare that to any such 
 ;nce, come what may, his Majesty will not be a party.' 
 ke of Wellington refused to sign the proch verbal of 
 ference, because the opinions of the other Powers were 
 expressed in favour of intervention ; and in a separate 
 ich he addressed to the Plenipotentiaries of the Allies 
 
 ' Kent's Commentaries, i. 17. 
 
88 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 (Nov. 20, 1822) he vindicates the principle on which Great 
 Britain was resolved to act. He said, ' His Majesty's Govern^ 
 ment is of opinion that to animadvert upon the internal 
 transactions of an independent State, unless such transactions 
 afifect the essential interests of his Majesty's subjects, is incon- 
 sistent with those principles on which his Majesty has invari- 
 ably acted on all questions relating to the internal concerns 
 of other countries ; that such animadversions, if made, must 
 involve his Majesty in serious responsibility if they should 
 produce any effect, and must irritate if they do not ; and, if 
 addressed to the Spanish Government, are likely to be inju- 
 rious to the best interests of Spain, and to produce the worst 
 consequences upon the public discussions between that country 
 and France. The King's Government must therefore decline 
 to advise his Majesty to hold a common language with his 
 allies upon this occasion ; and it is so necessary for his Ma- 
 jesty not to be supposed to participate in a measure of this 
 description, and calculated to produce such consequences, that 
 his Government must equally refrain from advising his Majesty 
 to direct that any communication should be made to the 
 Spanish Government on the subject of its relations with 
 France.' 
 
 But, moreover, if it was right in Sardinia to help the op- 
 pressed subjects of the Pope, she was entitled to render aid to 
 the oppressed .subjects of Austria, and surely it would have 
 been as much an act of ' justice and generosity ' to assist the 
 Italians of Venetia as it was to assist the Italians of the Papal 
 States. Lord John Russell, at all events, is the last man who 
 could blame her for such an act ; and yet, strange to say, less 
 than two short months before his letter of October, Lord John 
 Russell had written another in which he denounced such a 
 scheme, and even went so far as to hint that if it werf 
 attempted Great Britain herself might take part in hostilitiei 
 against Sardinia. We will quote some passages from thii 
 despatch, which was addressed to Sir James Hudson, ant 
 dated August 31. The last sentence, in which the interests 
 England in the Adriatic are made the plea why Sardini; 
 should abstain from 'an act of justice and generosity in assist 
 ing brave men in the defence of their liberties ' — we are quotinj 
 the words of Vattel — gives a selfish and most ungraciou 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 89 
 
 3r the policy which the English Minister advises the 
 Sardinia to adopt : — 
 
 till, altliough Austria, France, and England have abstained from all 
 s in Sicily and Naples, there nevertheless exists a fear at Paris and at 
 it the annexation of the Roman and Neapolitan States may be followed 
 :k by the Italian forces upon the Venetian possessions of the Emperor 
 It is clear that such an attack could not take place without the assent 
 g of Sardinia. It is equally clear that, taking a legal view of the ques- 
 King of Sardinia has no excuse for breaking the Treaty of Zurich, 
 included and signed. The King of Sardinia was free not to accept the 
 •ies of Villafranca and the Treaty of Zurich ; but, having renounced a 
 on of the war, after having given his royal word to live in peace and 
 with Austria, he is no longer free to cast aside his obligations and direct 
 attack against a neighbouring Prince. 
 
 moreover, evident in the present case, that interests go hand-in-hand 
 jrescriptions of duty. An attack against the Austrian enemy encamped 
 iwei-ful fortresses is not an undertaking in which success may be reason- 
 ;cted. And if such an attack should fail, it would perhaps offer to 
 he desired opportunity of restoring the Romagna to the Pope, and 
 :o the Grand Duke. 
 
 is good reason to believe that neither of these acts would be considered 
 ! as irreconcileable with the Treaty of Zurich ; yet such act would cer- 
 most detrimental to_ the independence of Italy and to her fiiture tran- 
 The King of Sardinia in gaining Lombardy, Parma, and Modena, but 
 ray, Nice, and Tuscany, would no longer be able to resist Austria, who 
 fighting for a good cause — the preservation of her territory and the re- 
 of her military honour. The only hope left to Sardinia in such a conflict 
 to bring France into the battle-field, and excite an European war. We 
 nt Cavour will not give w^y to such dangerous illusions. The Great 
 re bent upon the maintenance of peace, and Great Britain has interests 
 Iriatic over which she keeps a most carefiil watch. 
 
 : imagine that this advice will not have much effect if 
 le comes when Victor Emmanuel believes that he can 
 Venetia with success, and that Lord John Russell will 
 nd his letter of October quoted against his letter of 
 :. Sardinia seems determined to care as little for the 
 s of international law as the Bey of Tunis regarded 
 n a certain memorable occasion when he rid himself of 
 ;nch consul. 
 
 return, however, to the order of events. At the be- 
 [ of September General Lamorici^re, commanding the 
 army, which was badly provided with artillery and 
 
 of transport, and of which grily a small portion had 
 nuskets, was assured by Cardinal Antonelli that the 
 )ntese troops would prevent an invasion of the Marches 
 lers, and would make no attack themselves. The 
 
90 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Piedmontese Generals, however, after a notification which can- 
 not be called a warning, entered the Papal States on the uthof 
 September, in two divisions. Lamoriciere was in want of 
 money and of bread, and, to keep open his communications 
 with Ancona, he attacked the Sardinian General, between 
 Crocetta and Castel Fidardo, on the i8th of September. The 
 battle was fierce and bloody, and the Papal troops were utterly 
 defeated. General Lamoriciere himself escaped with diffi- 
 culty, with a handful of horsemen, to Ancona. Amongst 
 those who fell on this disastrous day was General de Pimo- 
 dan, a young French officer connected with some of the 
 noblest families in France, who had offered his sword to the 
 Pope to defend what he believed to be the holy cause of 
 religion. Next day 4,000 of the Pontificial troops laid down 
 their arms at Loretto. They were allowed the honours of 
 war, and both officers and men were permitted to return to 
 their homes. Indeed, throughout the whole campaign the 
 conduct of the Piedmontese was marked by humanity and 
 forbearance. Spoleto, which was garrisoned by 500 men, 
 300 of whom were Irish, had surrendered on the 17th, and 
 after the battle of Castel Fidardo the Papal army outside the 
 walls of Ancona had ceased to exist. Ancona was imme- 
 diately invested by land and sea, and on the 29th of" Sep- 
 tember was forced to capitulate. 
 
 The result of these successes was that, except within the 
 charmed circle occupied by the French army at Rome, the 
 whole of the population declared for King Victor Emmanuel, 
 and the temporal government of the Pope was at an end. In 
 fact, that very state of things had come to pass which had, 
 with a kind of prophetic inspiration, been suggested at the 
 beginning of the year by the pamphlet ' Le Pape et le Con- 
 gr6s,' to which we have already alluded. And it is not 
 unreasonable to presume that, however much the French 
 Emperor may have thought it decent to censure openly the 
 conduct of Sardinia in the invasion of the States of the 
 Church, he did not secretly disapprove of a step by which 
 that result was brought about which he had indicated as the 
 best solution of the Papal difficulty. 
 
 Rome, and the territory immediately around Rome, were, 
 at all hazards, to be preserved to the Pope. Accordingly, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 91 
 
 he plot thickened, and the Sardinian army was press- 
 vards, and Umbria and the Marches were proclaiming 
 
 Emmanuel, fresh French troops were poured into 
 
 and General de Goyon, who had been recalled to 
 was ordered to resume his former command, ' to pro- 
 s he announced in his order of the day, ' the interests 
 holicism in the person of the Holy Father, who is its 
 egitimate and most high representative, and to guaran- 
 : safety of the Holy City, which is its seat' 
 ; need not repeat our emphatic condemnation of the 
 1 occupation of Rome. It began in a violent act of 
 ce towards a people which, copying the example of 
 ;, had chosen a Republic as their form of government, 
 e not informed what pledges Lord Palmerston obtained 
 ght as to its duration ; but it has been continued in 
 
 defiance of the principle of non-intervention which 
 ; insists that other nations shall observe in the affairs 
 y. It is not, however, difficult to assign reasons why 
 mch Emperor chooses to prolong such an anomalous 
 f things. First, it may be alleged that the honour of 
 
 is engaged not to abandon a government which she 
 held so long. Secondly, Napoleon III. hopes by such 
 t to conciliate towards his throne Roman Catholic sen- 
 , and to enlist on his side the clergy, who have much 
 ce in France. And, thirdly, by holding his position at 
 he secures a vantage-ground in Italy which admits of 
 ite extension. It is the end of the wedge, which at 
 Dment may be driven home. He gets, however, small 
 
 for his pains. He has done too much or too little. 
 ; gone too far not to be required by the Pope to go a 
 leal farther. He has been passive while sacrilegious 
 were spoiling the patrimony of the Church, when a 
 ■om him would have arrested the invader. He, like the 
 f Sardinia, has dared to draw distinctions between the 
 al Sovereign of the State and the spiritual Head of 
 urch, and has appealed to history to prove that, from 
 o time, ecclesiastical territories have been taken by 
 ic Powers from the Holy See, and that, in the negotia- 
 f 1815, the Romagna and the Legations were treated 
 inging to the allies by right of conquest, and were on 
 
92 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the point of being permanently separated from the Pontifical 
 States.' 
 
 These things are neither forgiven nor forgotten ; and it is 
 only in despair of other help that the Pope sullenly accepts 
 the protection of France, which alone saves the Government 
 of the Vatican from destruction. 
 
 But what in the meantime was the state of things at 
 Naples .' The King had abandoned his capital, but not his 
 kingdom, and behind the line of the Volturno had turned at 
 bay against the insurgents with an army which could not be 
 reckoned at less than 30,000 strong. To conquer this would 
 seem, to ordinary minds, the first and indispensable task whicli 
 Garibaldi had to perform. But it shows the character of the 
 man, and the idea which had taken possession of his soul, 
 that he was ready even then to precipitate a conflict with the 
 French at Rome and the Austrians in Venetia. ' Italians,' 
 he exclaimed in a proclamation, 'the moment is come! Our 
 brothers are already fighting the stranger in the heart of Italy. 
 Let us go and meet them in Rome, and thence march to- 
 gether towards the Venetian land.' We shall not attempt to 
 give anything like a detailed account of the feverish struggle 
 that ensued at Naples— a struggle not of arms, but of prin- 
 ciples, or rather factions — while the Dictator had to divide 
 his energies between the duties of civil government and those 
 of military command. But it must not be forgotten that 
 Garibaldi's political creed had always hitherto been that of 
 the Republicans. His political friends and associates were such 
 men as Mazzini, Saffi, Crispi, and Bertani, and it seems to 
 have been from personal admiration of Victor Emmanuel, ' il 
 Re Galantuomo ' as he is called in Italy, and of his gallant 
 bearing in the field of battle, rather than from any attach- 
 ment to monarchy, that he did not proclaim a Republic when 
 he first landed in Sicily. But for some time it was doubtful 
 whether Victor Emmanuel or Mazzini would carry the day at 
 Naples. One of the first acts of Garibaldi was to make over 
 the Neapolitan fleet to the Sardinian Admiral Persano, and 
 he headed his decrees ' Italy and Victor Emmanuel.' But he 
 appointed iVIordini and Sirtori — both men of extreme opinions 
 
 ' See the despatch of M. Thoiivenel Further Correspondence on Affairs of 
 to Count I'cr.signy, February 8, i860. Italy. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 93 
 
 — the one Pro-Dictator of Sicily and the other Pro-Dictator 
 of Naples. His Ministry also was of the same complexion, 
 and became, indeed, decidedly Republican when Libertini, 
 de Boni, Conforti, Anguissola, and Rainieri found themselves 
 in power. But the hopes of this party were suddenly dis- 
 appointed by the appearance of a decree in which Garibaldi 
 declared it indispensable to promulgate ' the fundamental law 
 of the Italian Monarchy] and proclaimed lo Statuto, the Sar- 
 dinian Charter, which had been granted by Charles Albert to 
 his subjects on the 4th of March, 1848. This seemed as if 
 he were in favour of annexation to Piedmont, but, to prove 
 the contrary, he paid a flying visit to Sicily, and at Palermo, 
 in a public address, thanked the people for their resistance to 
 the scheme, telling them, ' At Rome we will proclaim the 
 kingdom of Italy,' but not then, while there were ' brothers 
 beyond the Volturno with chains on their ankles.' The truth 
 is that, intoxicated with success, he thought that neither the 
 French nor the Austrians would be able to stop his victorious 
 career, but he well knew that, if annexation were proclaimed, 
 his mission was at end. He would no longer be master of 
 the helm, and more cautious pilots would avoid the rocks 
 against which, in his heated imagination, he was ready to dash 
 the ship. Some of the appointments were laughable from 
 their absurdity, such as that of the French novelist M. Dumas, 
 who was made Director of the National Museum, with a 
 special commission to present a project to the Dictator on the 
 excavations of Pompeii. But it was a more serious matter, 
 and one full of significance, when a decree appeared awarding 
 a pension to the family of Agesilao Milano, the Neapolitan 
 soldier who, in 1856, attempted to assassinate Ferdinand II. 
 with his bayonet, and was hanged for the crime. By another 
 decree, all the archiepiscopal and episcopal funds were de- 
 clared national property, but a provision was made for the 
 maintenance of the clergy. For some time the office of Sec- 
 retary to the Dictator was held by Bertani, a man about whose 
 republican principles there was little doubt, and during the 
 first two or three weeks of Garibaldi's ' reign ' it seemed as 
 if the end would be the proclamation of a republic at Naples. 
 He was surrounded by an atmosphere of plots and intrigues, 
 which thickened as time advanced. But his personal devotion 
 
9^ ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to King Victor Emmanuel, and his conviction that without 
 the help of Piedmont it would be impossible to work out the 
 idea of Italian unity, determined him to adhere to his original 
 plan of annexation' while he reserved to himself the right 
 of postponing the period of its accomplishment. Bertani was 
 dismissed from the secretaryship, and Sirtoriwas succeeded by 
 the Marquis Fallavicini, one of whose first acts was to address 
 a letter to Mazzini, calling upon him to retire from Naples, 
 on the ground that his presence as the representative of the 
 Republican principle created embarrassment to the govern- 
 ment and dangers to the nation. Mazzini, as might be ex- 
 pected, refused, saying that he was not prepared spontaneously 
 to make another sacrifice, having already made one when, 'in- 
 terrupting the apostolate of his faith, for the sake of unity 
 and concord, he declared that he accepted monarchy not out 
 of respect for ministers or monarchs, but for the satisfaction 
 of a blinded majority of the Italian people.' This led to a 
 ministerial crisis ; for Mazzini appealed to Garibaldi, and he 
 stood by his friend. Pallavicini and his colleagues in conse- 
 quence resigned. But the populace at Naples shouted 'Down 
 with Mazzini ! ' ' Down with Crispi ! ' and Pallavicini re- 
 sumed ofhce. And, besides the party of the Annexationists 
 and the party of the Republicans, there was a third party, 
 that of the ' Unitarians,' so called not in a theological but in 
 a political sense. Their creed was that Piedmont should 
 become Italian, and not Italy Piedmontese. They objected 
 to the charter and code of Sardinia becoming the charter and 
 the code of the rest of the Peninsula, unless and until in some 
 solemn conclave of the representatives of the nation such was 
 declared to be the will of the whole people. Pallavicini wished 
 to break up this association. The leaders appealed to Gari- 
 baldi, and declared that it should continue, being under his 
 special guarantee. And yet the next day he issued an ad- 
 dress to the people in which he announced that 'to-morrow 
 Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, the elect of the nation, will 
 break down the frontier which has hitherto divided us for so 
 many centuries from the rest of our country,' and he called 
 upon them to receive ' the sent of Providence,' when there 
 would be no more political colours, no more parties, no more 
 discords. At the same time he proclaimed that the Two 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 95 
 
 Sicilies form an integral part of one and indivisible Italy, 
 under her constitutional King, Victor Emmanuel, and his 
 descendants ; and that he would, on the arrival of that 
 monarch, depose in his hands the Dictatorship conferred 
 upon him by the nation. 
 
 The truth is, that the advent of the King of Sardinia had 
 become a political necessity, unless the revolution was to end 
 in anarchy or a restoration. The Neapolitan royal army still 
 held the line of the Volturno, and occupied the two fortresses 
 of Capua and Gaeta. On October i Francis II. in person led 
 a general attack against the insurgent forces at Santa Maria 
 and San Angelo, and a battle was fought which lasted the 
 whole day. Garibaldi was victorious ; but the obstinacy of 
 the struggle showed that the royalists were strong and deter- 
 mined ; and, if they had been successful, nothing would have 
 prevented the King's entry into his capital. Reactionary 
 symptoms were beginning to show themselves in the pro- 
 vinces ; and in Naples itself councils were divided, and chaotic 
 confusion seemed about to become the order of the day. It 
 was clear that Garibaldi could fight, but could not govern ; 
 and the only hope of the moderate Liberals was in the inter- 
 vention of Piedmont. Addresses were hastily got up and 
 despatched to Victor Emmanuel, praying him to take posses- 
 sion of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies ; and certainly, if ever 
 there was a case in which, if the act was to be done at all, 
 ' 'twere well it were done quickly,' it was now. But how could 
 this be 1 The King of Sardinia was at peace with the King 
 of Naples, and there was no cause or pretext for war. How, 
 then, could Victor Emmanuel invade the dominions of Francis 
 II., and give orders to his army to attack an ally in the agony 
 of conflict with insurrection t We have seen that Lord John 
 Russell solves the difficulty by quoting a passage from Vattel, 
 and saying that the insurrection was just. Count Cavour has 
 added other precedents to the solitary one which Lord John 
 Russell's industry had discovered in Vattel ; but he uses them 
 for the purpose of showing, not that the conduct of Sardinia 
 was consistent with international law, as Lord John Russell 
 would have us believe, but that she sinned in good company, 
 and could plead examples of its violation. In his letter to 
 Count de Launay, the Sardinian Minister at Berlin, dated 
 
96 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 November 9, in which he vindicates the poHcy of his Govern, 
 ment, he triumphantly asks : — 
 
 Did not France and England, when they lent aid to insurgent Flanders, 
 trample international law under foot? Was not this said law broken by Louis 
 XIV. when he assisted the Hungarian insurrection— by the States General wien 
 they supported William of Orange against James II.— by Louis XVI., who so 
 nobly contributed to the liberation of the United States of America— by Christian ':■ 
 Europe, who delivered Greece from the Ottoman domination ? 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, however, cared little for precedents or 
 the opinions of jurists ; but he cared much to be King of Italy, 
 Emboldened by the success of his invasion of the Papal 
 States, and relying upon the passive attitude of the Great 
 Powers, he avowed himself the leader of the national move- 
 ment, and assumed the responsibility of its guidance. In an 
 address from Ancona to the people of Southern Italy, on 
 October 9, he said : — 
 
 All Italy has feared that, under the shade of a glorious popularity, of a classic 
 probity, there was a faction clustering which was ready to sacrifice the immediate 
 triumph of the nation to the chimeras of its own ambitious fanaticism. All the 
 Italians have applied to me to avert this danger. It was my duty to do so, be- 
 cause in the existing state of things it would not be moderation, it would not be 
 wisdom, but weakness and imprudence, if I did not assume with a firm hand the 
 direction of the national movement for which I am responsible before Europe. 
 
 And he added, — ' In Europe my policy will not be without 
 its use, by reconciling the progress of peoples with the sta- 
 bility of monarchs.' It certainly did not reconcile the progress 
 of the people of the Two Sicilies with the stability of the 
 throne of the Bourbons ; nor if Hungary breaks out into 
 insurrection is it likely to reconcile the progress of the Hun- 
 garians with the stability of the Austrian monarchy. If, 
 indeed, it means that despotic governments are to take warn- 
 ing, and that their best chance of averting revolt is to give 
 their subjects a constitution, we are disposed to a certain ex- 
 tent to agree with the assertion. But bitter experience has 
 proved that constitutions cannot be safely extemporised, and 
 that when this is attempted the result too often is disastrous 
 failure. The rest may be soon told. Immediately after his 
 address from Ancona, King Victor Emmanuel, without any 
 declaration of war, and while the Neapolitan ambassador was 
 still at Turin, gave orders to his army to cross the frontier 
 into the Abruzzi, and it advanced in the direction of Capua, 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 97 
 
 The leading columns came into collision with the Royalist 
 troops on the heights of Macerone, near Isernia, and defeated 
 them, compelling them to retire upon Capua. Garibaldi 
 advanced with a body of volunteers to meet the King, and on 
 October 26 their first interview took place, between Teano and 
 Speranzano. 
 
 In the meantime the question of annexation to Piedmont 
 had been put to the vote, and the result was an overwhelming 
 majority in its favour.* The King entered Naples on Novem- 
 ber 7, amidst the clamorous applause of the populace, and 
 immediately visited the cathedral, where St. Januarius did not 
 refuse to recognise the successful monarch, and his blood 
 liquefied in the most orthodox manner. Two days afterwards 
 Garibaldi quitted Naples for his solitary home in the Island 
 of Caprera, having first issued a proclamation, in which he 
 called upon the Italians to be ready with a million of men in 
 arms in March, 1861. 
 
 Thus, then, the great drama has been accomplished ; and 
 Victor Emmanuel may be hailed in the words of Banquo : — 
 Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glammis, all. 
 
 We will not continue the quotation, for we have no wish to 
 use hard language, although we have felt bound to express 
 our opinion of the conduct of Sardinia in the ambitious game 
 that she has played. If the rules of international law — which 
 are the safeguard of the weak against the strong— are to be 
 set aside, and one State is to be allowed to act as Sardinia 
 has done, and to determine in what way the government of 
 another is to be carried on, we confess that we cannot see with- 
 out alarm the consequences to which such a doctrine must lead. 
 It is no answer to say that a government is bad, and there- 
 fore ought to be overthrown. The question, as we have already 
 said, is not as to the right of subjects to resist, but the right 
 of a stranger to interfere. But then it is alleged that Sardinia 
 is not a .stranger, because she is Italian ; and that this gives 
 her a title, which makes the case exceptional. We doubt, 
 however, whether even this principle is large enough to satisfy 
 those who are ready to defend interference in Italy. They 
 take the broader ground of sympathy with oppression, and 
 
 ' The numbers we believe were — Yes, 1,302,064 ; No, 10,312.. 
 H 
 
98 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the duty of freemen to assist those who are struggling to be 
 free. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, is their 
 political motto ; and this of course transcends all difference of 
 country and distinction of race. With such reasoners it is of 
 no use to argue. They may plead the authority of Vatteland 
 Lord John Russell, but they will be denounced by the great 
 majority of thinking men as the plagues and pests of king- 
 doms ; and when their enterprise fails, and they are captured, 
 they will be dealt with, not as prisoners of war, but as pirates 
 and buccaneers. But the doctrine of nationalities is more 
 plausible. The geographical position of Italy, cut off by the 
 sea and the Alps, the boundaries of nature, from the rest of 
 Europe, is apt to suggest the idea that its different territories 
 were rather the provinces of one kingdom than independent 
 states. History declares the contrary; and an attentive ex- 
 amination of the strongly marked natural boundaries between 
 many of the Italian States will tend to explain their history. 
 Unless we are prepared to ignore the past, and construct a 
 theory about Italy instead of accepting facts,- we must admit 
 that Italian unity is a thing which, except perhaps under the 
 pressure of Roman domination, the world has hitherto never 
 seen. If so, and if nationality is to be pressed as the argu- 
 ment to justify Sardinia, we ask where it is to stop.' The 
 Ionian Islands possibly, if left to themselves, would declare 
 for ' annexation' to Greece. Is England, however, prepared 
 to surrender them .'' Is she prepared to give up Gibraltar to 
 Spain, and Malta to Italy .'' Nay, foreign nations may ask 
 with what consistency she holds India in fee — that mighty 
 Peninsula of the East, with the Himalayas for its Alps, and 
 the Indian Ocean for its Mediterranean and Adriatic .' 
 
 But whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the 
 mode in which the new kingdom of Italy has been formed, 
 there can be amongst ourselves but one wish and hope for its 
 success. Constitutional government in place of tyranny, 
 temperate liberty in place of coercion, and freedom of con- 
 science in place of bigotry and intolerance, are blessings which 
 it must be the ardent desire of Englishmen to see extended 
 amongst the nations of Europe, and the best minds of Italy 
 have long yearned for the enjoyment of them. England has 
 no interest in the maintenance of despotism, and she never 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 99 
 
 was a party to any Holy Alliance against the liberties of 
 peoples. If it is found possible to form into one strong whole 
 the petty states into which Italy has been divided, and to 
 work out satisfactorily the problem of giving representative 
 institutions to the people without making the national parlia- 
 ment the arena of faction and intrigue, and endangering the 
 monarchy, we shall unfeignedly rejoice in the result. Within 
 Iter own limits, hitherto, Sardinia has done well. From the 
 time when, in 1848, Charles Albert gave his subjects a consti- 
 tution, and proclaimed lo Statuto as the charter of their 
 liberties, the Government has steadily pursued the path of 
 progress and improvement. We watched with interest the 
 struggle between the King and the Pope — so strangely like 
 that which seven centuries ago was fought in this country 
 between Henry II. and Becket, and which Canon Robert- 
 son has lately described with admirable impartiality' — and 
 we applauded the courage with which the pretensions of the 
 clergy were resisted and they were forced to yield to the 
 supremacy of the law. It was indeed a task of no ordinary 
 difficulty to break through the slavish traditions of the past, 
 and, in spite of the thunders of Rome, to establish indepen- 
 dence of the Vatican without ceasing to belong to the great 
 Catholic communion. The domestic policy of Count Cavour 
 has been chiefly modelled on the example of England, where 
 he long resided, and not only studied but wrote upon ques- 
 tions that interest ourselves.^ From England he learnt the 
 doctrines of free-trade, which have been applied in Piedmont 
 to a considerable extent ; and even in the conduct of business 
 in the Sardinian Chamber, when he wants a precedent or an 
 authority, he takes care to fortify himself with the example of 
 the British Parliament. It is impossible to travel in Piedmont 
 without being struck by the signs of material wealth and hap- 
 piness which are seen in the execution of public works, the 
 active industry of the population, their contented aspect, and 
 the manly yet respectful independence of their manner. There 
 are, however, many drawbacks, not the least of which are a 
 bigoted priest-party, and an impetuous democratic faction ; 
 
 ' 'Becket : a Biography.' London, Sur VEtat actuel de F Irlande et son 
 1859. Avenir. 
 
 " He -wrote, for instance, an essay, 
 
100 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and the success of the Government cannot be considered per- 
 fectly secure. Nevertheless it aims at being a good Govern- 
 ment, and we think that to some other parts of Italy, if not to 
 the whole, the extension of such a Government would be great 
 gain. Indeed we have heard that a change for the better has 
 already taken place in the Legations, and in other parts of 
 Central Italy annexed to Piedmont ; that railways are in 
 course of construction, commerce is springing up, and life and 
 activity are taking the place of apathy and misery. 
 
 We must not, however, shut our eyes to the fact that there 
 are immense difficulties in the way, and that many disturbing 
 forces will be at work to mar the success of the experiment 
 With the exception of England, the Great Powers of Europe 
 will look coldly on the new Italian kingdom. But, indepen- 
 dently of danger from without, the internal organisation of the 
 new territories will be no easy task. The first difficulty will 
 be Naples, that kingdom which Victor Emmanuel has so pre- 
 maturely grasped. Assuming that he is permitted to obtain 
 full possession of the country, it will be necessary to enforce 
 at Naples and throughout Calabria, with stem severity, 
 obedience to the law. In this process, according to the latest 
 accounts, not even a beginning has been made. For some 
 time Victor Emmanuel's possession of the Two Sicilies will be 
 little different from a military occupation ; for, to say nothing 
 of the work to be done at Gaeta, a large force, which Sardinia 
 can very ill spare, must be spread over the country, whether 
 in the shape of the regular army or the mobilised battalions of 
 the National Guards of Turin, Milan, Brescia, Genoa, and 
 Florence — to preserve order and put down 'reactionary' 
 attempts. The pressure of the tax-gatherer will be also felt, 
 and men will find out that the blessings of a constitutional 
 government are not to be enjoyed without paying for them. 
 It is doubtful whether the masses were desirous of the changes 
 which have taken place. We observe that Mr. Petre, in his 
 despatch,' says that the Neapolitan population at large was 
 tranquil, or, at least, apathetic, even when everything like free 
 speech or thought was instantly put down. But besides all 
 this, when the momentary and by no means universal feeling 
 in favour of Victor Emmanuel has passed away, there will 
 
 ' ' A Century of Despotism,' p. 220. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. loi 
 
 arise a jealous suspicion that Naples is treated as an appanage 
 of Sardinia, and does not obtain her fair share in the adminis- 
 tration of the government. The inhabitants of Calabria are 
 very different from the inhabitants of Tuscany and Piedmont. 
 They are a mixed race, consisting of descendants from Greeks, 
 Normans, Germans, French, and Spaniards, besides the ori- 
 ginal settlers, and, long accustomed to the rule of a corrupt 
 and despotic government, are little fitted to exercise the rights 
 of freemen or give fair play to the action of representative in- 
 stitutions. They will require for many years firm and ener- 
 getic control, and it is not difficult to see that many elements 
 of discontent will be rife amongst them. The soldiers of the 
 disbanded regiments of the Royalist army have also been, 
 turned adrift in the country, and will cause no little trouble, 
 both as brigands and conspirators. Nor can it be without a 
 sigh that the Neapolitans will see their unrivalled city sink 
 from the dignity of the capital of a kingdom to the position of 
 a provincial town. Moreover, Sicily has always shown the 
 utmost jealousy of being incorporated with Naples, and has in 
 former years struggled for independence. It remains to be 
 seen how far the island will be content to surrender this idea, 
 and to become a mere province of the Italian kingdom. We 
 mention these things not because we have any sympathy with 
 the Government which has fallen, but because they are difli- 
 culties which it is foolish to ignore. Our anxious hope is that 
 they may be overcome, and that the more than questionable 
 policy of Victor Emmanuel in the mode in which he has 
 hastened to add so largely to his dominions may not prove 
 hereafter a source of weakness and danger to himself. 
 
 But there are other more immediate perils to be met. The 
 King of Italy has to face the questions of Venetia and Rome. 
 When Garibaldi quitted Naples in November and retired to 
 his Patmos at Caprera, he left as a legacy to the new Govern- 
 ment the battle-cry of ' a million of men and muskets in 
 March.' The creed of the great mass of the Italians is, that 
 without Rome and Venice there is no Italy, and that to 
 abandon them to their present fate is to be guilty of the worst 
 treason to the cause of nationality. It is clear that no consi- 
 derations except those of prudence would deter Count Cavour 
 from attacking Venetia ; but he knows that if Sardinia is the 
 
102 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 first assailant of Austria, she need expect no assistance from 
 France ; and he is too sagacious a politician not to foresee 
 the tremendous risks that would be run in a single-handed 
 contest with a great military Power. Prudence, however, and 
 foresight are not qualities which find favour with the multitude 
 in respect of questions which are embraced by it with the 
 fervour of sentiment and passion ; nor is it likely that the 
 youth of Italy will listen to such counsels when what they 
 believe to be the fated moment has arrived, and Garibaldi calls 
 them to arms. How, then, will the Government be able to 
 restrain them after the example it has set and the encourage- 
 ment it has given ? The Mazzinian party is actively at work 
 and it will not be difficult to persuade a fickle and indolent 
 people that they have gained little by revolution but a change 
 of masters, and that the best use they can make of successful 
 insurrection is to establish a republic. But, above all, there is 
 a very great likelihood that Garibaldi himself, if he thinks the 
 King backward in the cause of Italian unity, will join with 
 Mazzini and set up a republic at Naples, when the lamentable 
 tragedy of 1848 is sure to be repeated. 
 
 Count Cavour seems to hope for a peaceful solution of the 
 difficulty as regards Venetia from the force and pressure of 
 public opinion. In the speech he delivered in the Chamber of 
 Deputies at Turin, in October, when the projet de loi was to 
 authorise the King to accept the annexation of those pro- 
 vinces of Central and Southern Italy in which the population, 
 by universal suffrage, manifested a wish to form part of the 
 constitutional monarchy of Sardinia, he said :^ 
 
 Wc are asked, how then will you solve the Venetian qtiestion? In a very 
 simple manner, by changing the opinion of Europe. But how ? The opinion of 
 Europe will change, because the opposition we now meet exists not only in the 
 Govemments, but, we must avow it, also in a gi'eat part of the population, even 
 liberal, of Europe. 
 
 Opinion alone, in the sense in which Count Cavour uses the 
 word, will not be sufficient. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that 
 a voluntary surrender will be made without an equivalent; and 
 which amongst the nations in Europe is entitled to ask Austria 
 to make the sacrifice .■' They have no right to call upon her to 
 give up Venetia, which she holds by the title of treaty and 
 the possession of more than sixty years ; but, if she chooses, 
 
 
THE KINGDOM Oh llALY. iq3 
 
 she may sell it ; and this is the scheme which finds favour 
 with many who have no wish to hurt her pride or cripple her 
 power. They say that the province imparts no real strength 
 to her empire under the conditions by which alone it can in 
 future be held, and that it is, in fact, a drain upon her re- 
 sources and a chronic ulcer in her side. What Austria wants 
 in her present impoverished condition is money, and here she 
 has an admirable opportunity of filling her exhausted coffers. 
 They say that to reconcile the inhabitants of Venice to the 
 yoke of Austria, after the events of the past year, is a moral 
 impossibility, and that nothing but the presence of an enor- 
 mous military force can prevent disaffection from bursting 
 into revolt. The time seems to have gone by when any 
 amount of concession or reform would be of the least avail ; 
 and so long as Venetia is politically separated from the rest 
 of Italy, it will be a constant source of expense, trouble, and 
 danger to the empire. Certainly, if this be so, no civilized 
 government can desire to hold part of its dominions on such a 
 tenure. On the other hand, it is urged that the possession of 
 Venetia is necessary for the defence of Austria as a German 
 Power, and that the Quadrilateral is that which protects her 
 southern frontier from invasion. To this it might perhaps be 
 replied, that on the south she will always have the mighty 
 barrier of the Rhsetian Alps, and that it is as easy to prevent 
 them from being turned by constructing a line of fortresses on 
 the north-east of Venice as it is by the existence of the Quad- 
 rilateral on the west. That Austria should be strong, and 
 should present a firm and massive bulwark against Russia on 
 one side and against France on the other, is very important 
 for the peace and safety of Europe, and, naturally, is not much 
 desired by France, who would be glad to see the dissolution 
 of the only Continental Power which can at present oppose 
 any effectual barrier to her encroachments. The value of 
 Austria is great, however moderate her merit .may be. She 
 has lately evinced a desire to conciliate the provinces north of 
 the Alps which own her sway, and we hope that she may yet 
 succeed in retrieving the affections of Hungary, which her 
 enemies are striving to rend from her, and in giving new life 
 and spirit to her German States. But her position is at this 
 moment highly precarious. 
 
104 ESSAYS CRITICAL AJSJJ i\jiiiJ^^J-^y-^- 
 
 We turn now to Rome. In the same speech which we have^ 
 last quoted of Count Cavour's he carried with him the rap-, 
 turous applause of the Chamber when he said : — 
 
 During the last twelve years the pole star of King Victor Emmanuel has been 
 the principle of national independence. What will this star be with respect to 
 Rome ? Our star, gentlemen, will direct us to look upon the Eternal City, upon 
 which five-and-twenty centuries have accumulated all glorious memories, as 
 destined to become the splendid capital of our Italian kingdom. 
 
 Very possibly Rome, notwithstanding many disadvantages, 
 may be deemed (as Turin is not) a desirable capital to com- 
 plete the decorations of the new Italian kingdom ; although 
 it may be doubted whether any capital, in the ordinary sense, 
 is desirable at present for a combination of States hitherto 
 very jealous of each other, and each of them accustomed to 
 regard its own capital as the centre of all that is desirable in 
 life. It has been suggested that Bologna, which is in a central 
 position, might be adopted as a sort of Italian Washington 
 for the meeting of the Parliament. But if Rome is indispens- 
 able, what is to become of the Pope and his Government? 
 We have seen that the view of the French Emperor was, and 
 perhaps still is, that there should be an ager Romanus conse- 
 crated to his dominion, within which he should preserve the 
 rights of a temporal prince. But we know that the patrimony 
 of St. Peter will submit to the Pope and the College of Cardi- 
 nals only so long as it is garrisoned by France. If the French 
 troops were withdrawn, the population of Rome would rise en 
 masse and proclaim their union with the rest of Italy. Victor 
 Emmanuel would neither wish nor dare to say to the Romans 
 that they alone of the Italians shall remain subject to a 
 government which they detest, and in the new state of things 
 that has arisen, we hold it to be impossible for Piedmont to 
 guarantee any kind of temporal sovereignty to the Pope, 
 The French Emperor, again, has no imaginable right to mark 
 out the limits within which the struggle for a national existence 
 is there to be confined. He has assumed the part of patron 
 and protector of the Pope — and, availing himself of this 
 character, he acts in Italy as if France were an Italian Power. 
 He says to the advancing wave of constitutional monarchy, 
 ' Hither shalt thou come, but no farther ;' and nothing can 
 be more irritating and humiliating to a people than the way 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 105 
 
 in which the inhabitants of the Roman territory are coerced 
 into obedience by the presence of the French. 
 
 In some places, where Piedmontese troops have marched 
 into a town, and been hailed with enthusiastic joy by the 
 inhabitants as their deliverers, they have been obliged to 
 retire to avoid a collision with the advancing French, who 
 have extended their occupation as far as Terracina on the 
 south. Indeed, there is no definite limit to which that 
 occupation is now confined, and at any moment French 
 soldiers may be poured into Umbria, or the Marches, for 
 the purpose of restoring them to the Pope, with as good 
 reason as the territory around Rome is now held by them 
 in subjection to him. But it is not only the Pope who is 
 patronised by the Emperor. The King of Naples confesses 
 his obligations to him. While professing absolute neutrality 
 in the struggle in Southern Italy, Napoleon III. continues to 
 make his presence there felt, and his wishes obeyed. French 
 men-of-war ride at anchor in the harbour of Gaeta, and 
 the Sardinian fleet is not permitted to bombard or even to 
 blockade the fortress by sea, which a Sardinian army has 
 invested, and is attacking by land. We are not therefore 
 surprised at the gratitude expressed by M. Casella, the 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs at Gaeta, in a note addressed by 
 bim on the 1 2th of November to the Neapolitan Ambassadors 
 it foreign Courts. While Russia, Austria, and England stand 
 iloof, France under a Napoleon shows sympathy and friend- . 
 ship to a dynasty of Bourbons ! Well might M. Casella 
 lender him thanks for so seasonable an intervention, which 
 stayed the downfall of the monarchy, and gave Francis II. 
 Dne chance more in the chapter of accidents. 
 
 'The Emperor of the French,' he said, 'alone (and it is for us a duty of 
 justice and gratitude to openly acknowledge it) set. the generous example of a dis- 
 position to put an end to this state of universal apathy. Loyal and monarchical 
 England ventured to reproach him bitterly for it, -while the other Cabinets merely 
 lUowed him to bear the whole risk of the magnanimous enterprise he contemplated. 
 The sending of the French squadron into the waters of Gaeta, and the fraternal 
 reception given by the soldiers of France to the faithful and valiant remn^nf pf 
 :he Royal troop on the Pontifical territory, are facts which will ever remain 
 graven on the heart of the King our Sovereign, and far exceed the protest^ions 
 3f friendship offered to His Majesty by the rest of Europe.' 
 
 The truth is, that France has never really favoured, and 
 never can favour, the rise of a great and independent Italian 
 
io6 ^^^■^KS' CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Kingdom, which should assume its due place in the councils i 
 
 Europe, and be a formidable rival to France itself, in thoi 
 
 waters which she would fain call her own. France has alwaj 
 
 striven with Spain and Austria for influence and dominion i 
 
 Italy : she hoped to play this game again in appropriatin 
 
 Tuscany ; and being disappointed in that quarter, she seem 
 
 to be prolonging the agony of Southern Italy with a view t 
 
 throw things into confusion and to prevent the new King fror 
 
 consolidating his power. Thereby, peradventure, Naples maj 
 
 in some way, pass into her hands, or come under a Frenc 
 
 ruler. She never wants a plausible pretext for interferenci 
 
 At Rome the excuse is the protection of the Pope ; in Syri; 
 
 the protection of the Christians. But in reality nobod 
 
 imagines that the motive of French intervention in Italy i 
 
 to uphold the temporal Government of the Holy See, or tha 
 
 the object of pouring troops into Syria is to protect th 
 
 Maronites and punish the Druses. Syria lies too close t 
 
 Turkey and to Egypt not to explain the readiness with whic 
 
 France seizes the opportunity of planting her foot there, an 
 
 the pertinacity with which she augments her army of occup; 
 
 tion. How long will it be before we hear of the revival ( 
 
 the plan of 1841, for placing Syria under the Pasha < 
 
 Egypt or some other nominee of France } What means th 
 
 persistence with which she clings to that which, as regard 
 
 her, we can only look at in a political aspect, the proja 
 
 of the Suez Canal .■' Is it in the interest of peaceful con 
 
 merce, or with a view to keep a force there under the guii 
 
 of engineers and workmen, to be employed when the oppo 
 
 tunity arises for the occupation of Egypt .-' Again, wh 
 
 should France, which has little or no commerce in the Re 
 
 Sea, or beyond it, be taking up a position within tl 
 
 Straits of Babelmandeb .' Algeria itself is a vast militai 
 
 establishment, scarcely to be called a colony ; costly and bu 
 
 densome to the nation, but a nursery of soldiers — a means 
 
 extending French influence to Tunis and Morocco, and n 
 
 likely to be relinquished while a dream exists of the posi 
 
 bility of converting the Mediterranean into a French lal 
 
 Spain, known to be so deeply influenced by France, has i 
 
 cently been suspected of designs on the Straits, wholly inco 
 
 sistent with her promise to England, made at the commenc 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 107 
 
 ment of the late war with Morocco. Already twice since 
 the cession of Savoy and the occupation of the neutralised 
 districts of Chablais and Faucigny, France has had quarrels 
 with Switzerland for real or imaginary affronts to her flag ; 
 and we know what uneasiness is felt throughout the Con- 
 federation at the proximity bf so ambitious and restless a 
 neighbour. Well might the Emperor say to Count Persigny, 
 in his letter of the 25th of July, that ' affairs appeared to him 
 to be complicated, thanks to the mistrust excited everywhere 
 since the war in Italy,' and it was not without reason that he 
 volunteered to attempt an apology for his policy with the 
 view of removing that mistrust. We are struck with the 
 applicability of a description given of France by a traveller 
 two centuries ago to France of the present day. He says, 
 ' It is manifest the chief designs of the King or France are 
 by a constant war, not only to keep the unquiet spirit of his 
 own people in action abroad, and, by being still armed, to 
 awe the commonalty and draw what treasures he pleases from 
 them, but to make conquests upon the House of Austria as 
 time and accidents afford best opportunities ; but it is con- 
 ceived his principal aim is at Flanders and some parts of 
 Germany.'' 
 
 No doubt the Emperor of the French is our ally, and has 
 lately given tokens of his friendship, not only in committing 
 his fair Empress to our gallantry, but in abolishing that pass- 
 port system which is so detested in England and so injurious 
 to French interests. No doubt also he is willing to be on 
 good terms with his own people, for he has initiated institu- 
 tions by which, if really carried into effect, he and they may 
 at least hear each other's voices, and have some chance of 
 understanding each other. But, nevertheless, the mistrust 
 which he complains of has not died away. We hear of re- 
 newed warlike preparations in France — more extensive, it is 
 said, than in 1859 — of a most formidable revolutionary com- 
 bination in Hungary — of Sardinian ships laden with muni- 
 tions of war for the Magyars stopped at the mouth of the 
 Danube, but not until supplies of arms and artillery had been 
 introduced into the countries lying on the banks of that river. 
 
 But to return to the Kingdom of Italy : will this great 
 ' Sir Thomas Hanmer's ' Account of France in 1648.' 
 
io8 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 name become a reality, and ' Insperata floruit ' be written ii 
 its history, or will the dismal saying be verified, that ' the dr 
 wood will not sprout ? ' What are the forces that have causa 
 its rise ? Has France made it, and can France undo i| 
 or is there, at length, after so tame and so protracted a sub 
 mission to foreign masters, a revival of the ancient hardihoot 
 that made Rome the mistress of Italy and of the world 
 We know that Piedmont is being drained of men, but we dc 
 not hear of any great levies in other parts of Italy. Anc 
 if the men of Italy have the right qualities, is there an) 
 common ground upon which they can meet, and, with all th( 
 wisdom and resolution of which they are capable, take counse 
 together for the whole of Italy ? Will that which has neve 
 existed as a really homogeneous and consentient nation be 
 come such now ? Piedmont, we fear, will look down upor 
 Naples, and Naples consider the Piedmontese as foreign in 
 vaders : indeed, the Government of Naples (even if Francf 
 should cease to intervene at Gaeta) will be the great difficulty 
 Lombardy, again, will grudge the heavy taxes of Piedmont 
 and Tuscany may be disposed to look back upon the quie 
 days of the Grand Dukes. If all these states can be .per 
 manently connected as one nition, in that nation will man] 
 elements of greatness be combined. It will have the fini 
 genius of the Italians, endless physical advantages of climate 
 s oil, and situation, and the ennobling memory of great deeds 
 But the process of amalgamation, to be successful, must b 
 conducted in a cautious and conservative spirit ; not by insist 
 ing upon centralisation and uniformity in all things — whic 
 is opposed to the spirit and habits of the Italian people, am 
 hostile to true liberty everywhere — but by maintaining am 
 extending the admirable municipal institutions which most o 
 the Italian States already possess, and of which they ar 
 justly proud, and by taking care that the hand of the govern 
 ment shall not be too much felt in details. Everything the 
 is done by a government for a people which the people ar 
 ready and willing to do for themselves, hurts their self-low 
 injures their capacity for exertion, and tends to alienate ther 
 from the ruling power. There are certain functions whic 
 Piedmont can best perform for Italy. The army and th 
 diplomacy and the national policy of Italy must be governe 
 
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. 109 
 
 and conducted by the central authority, but all the domestic 
 institutions of the different States need not be mechanically 
 remodelled after the fashion of Piedmont. The more haste 
 that is made to effect a fusion, the less chance there is of a 
 firm and lasting combination. Such a combination of the 
 different Itahan States, if not wholly impossible, can only be 
 accomplished very gradually, and by the most patient and 
 skilful statesmanship. For the happiness of the human race 
 we wish that such statesmanship may be found. Our hopes 
 would be stronger than they are, if recent events would per- 
 mit us to attribute to the new rulers of Italy that high sense 
 of honour and of public morality, which affords a better 
 qualification for command than the most consummate adroit- 
 ness in council or courage in the field. Assuredly our hopes 
 will become faint indeed, if the new nation, instead of enter- 
 ing the circle of the European Powers in peace and goodwill, 
 shall employ itself in extending agitation and conspiracy, and 
 strive, in subservience to the ambition of France, to effect its 
 own immediate object to kindling a general war, from which, 
 whoever may be her new masters, Italy will certainly not 
 emerge independent. We earnestly trust that those to whom 
 the safety of England is committed will henceforth carefully 
 avoid compromising the name and credit of this country, by 
 giving a sanction to enterprises with which we have no con- 
 cern, and the ultimate results of which it is impossible to 
 forsee ; and that our course will be one of even and impartial 
 amity towards all who desire our friendship, but of firm and 
 vigilant defensive preparation against those who may seek to 
 injure us, either by direct attack or by breaking up the great 
 European system, which, while it was respected, secured so 
 many years of peace and prosperity to all.* 
 
 ' It will be observed that in this I can only express my joy that my fore- 
 article, written in 1861, I took in some bodings liave been gloriously falsified 
 respects too gloomy a view of the pros- by the event, 
 pects of Italian unity. Now, in 1874, 
 
110 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND} 
 
 'Quarterly Review,' 1866. 
 
 We congratulate Mr. Foss on the completion of his long am 
 arduous task, which he has performed with the accuracy c 
 an historian and the conscientious industry of an antiquarj 
 He has produced a work which is a biographical dictionary i: 
 itself, containing not less than 1589 lives. We confess tha 
 when we first saw the announcement of his intention to writ 
 the lives of all the Judges, we had some misgivings as to th 
 success of his plan. Lord Chancellors and Chief Justices ar 
 men who occupy so prominent a position that their caree 
 is often interwoven with the history of their country; am 
 some of them, like Glanville, Bacon, Coke, Clarendon, Half 
 Somers, Holt, Hardwicke, Mansfield, Erskine, Eldon, hav 
 left behind them an imperishable name. But of the puisne 
 the great mass were mere lawyers, whose lives, even if ther 
 were materials for writing them, must be as dull and uneven! 
 ful as those of town-clerks or aldermen. What could be saii 
 that would be worth the telling .■' Immersed in the routin 
 of their daily duties — oracles of the common law, but un 
 tinctured by scholarship and unilluminated by genius — the; 
 impressed no mark on their day and generation, and passei 
 noiselessly away ; with nothing to commemorate their ex 
 istence except perhaps a pompous epitaph in some villag 
 church, which attests how learned a lawyer and how forgotte 
 
 ' I. The Judges of England ; "with and Solicitor Generals of each reig 
 
 Miscellaneons Notices connected with the from the Institution of those Offices, 2 
 
 Courts at IVestminster, from the time of which is prefixed an Alphabetical List > 
 
 the Conquest to the Present Time. By all the Judges during t/te same perioi 
 
 Edward Foss, F.S.A., of the Inner distinguishing the Reigtu in which ih 
 
 Temple. 9 vols. 8vo. London, 1864. flourished, and the Courts in which th 
 
 2. Talmlcs Curiales; or. Tables of sat. By Edward Foss, F.S. A., Autb 
 
 the Superior Courts of Westminster Hall. of ' The Judges of England. ' Londoi 
 
 Showing the Judges who sat in them 1864, 
 from 1 066 to 1864; with the Attorney 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. m 
 
 an individual sleeps below. Still, however, there is a natural 
 
 curiosity to know all that can be told of our fellow men. It 
 
 has been said that no man's life is so insignificant as not to 
 
 be interesting in some degree to others ; and we agree with 
 
 Mr. Foss, when, speaking of the description given by For- 
 
 tescue, in the reign of Henry VI., of the mode of appointing 
 
 the Judges, he says : — 
 
 When we recollect that this is not the description of a new institution, but 
 one which at the time it was written had already existed more than two centuries ; 
 and when we see, after the lapse of an additional four hundred years, that the 
 old practice prevails at the present hour without any essential alteration ; it is im- 
 possible not to be interested in the account thus given by an eye-witness ; and the 
 reader can scarcely be chargeable with romantic feelings if he acknowledges a 
 degree of veneration towards a body with so ancient a pedigree, and the learning, 
 integrity, and firmness of which have been rendered even brighter and more 
 apparent by contrast with the failings of a few of its members, who at intervals 
 during the course of ages have disgraced their position. 
 
 But the difficulty was how to get the materials for an account 
 of these ordinary men, when the records even of the greatest 
 events that happened during the earlier reigns of the Norman 
 and Plantagenet Kings are so scanty. And a great number 
 of the old Judges no doubt must be and are dismissed with 
 the briefest and driest mention of their names and the ofiSces 
 they held, with the dates of their appointment. But even 
 with regard to these, it is interesting to see the mode in which 
 Mr. Foss has been able to fix and verify dates. Nearly one 
 hundred and fifty charters are collected in the Monasticon, to 
 which the names of Chancellors are attached. ' Some of these,' 
 says Mr. Foss, ' are dated ; and the dates of the others may 
 be discovered with sufficient nearness from the witnesses who 
 attest them ; so that a diligent inquirer, even without other 
 aid, may make a considerable advance in ascertaining the 
 order of their succession, and in connection with other known 
 facts, almost the date of their appointments.' 
 
 It must indeed have been a task of no ordinary difficulty 
 to obtain correct information as to the career of men so many 
 of whom are now utterly unknown. But we are bound to say 
 that Mr. Foss seems to have left no stone unturned in his 
 patient and exhaustive search. Every possible source of in- 
 formation has been laid under contribution. Charters and 
 deeds, and rolls and fines, family archives and monuments 
 and tombstones, have all been ransacked by him with as much 
 
112 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 diligence as if he were investigating great problems of history 
 and sometimes we are disposed to regret that such industr 
 and acuteness have been lavished upon subjects where th 
 value of the result bears so little proportion to the zeal of th 
 inquiry. But whatever is worth doing is worth doing well ; am 
 accuracy in small matters is a guarantee for accuracy in thing 
 of greater moment. The man who hunts out a date in th 
 nooks and corners of obscure records and mouldering parch 
 ments with as much eagerness as a Dutch burgomaster, ac 
 cording to Sydney Smith, hunts out a rat in a dyke lest i 
 should flood a province, is not likely to take facts on trusf 
 and make scissors and paste supply the place of a critica 
 examination of original authorities. 
 
 The plan adopted is, we think, judicious and convenient 
 Each reign is kept separate and distinct, and the lives of th 
 Judges who flourished under each monarch are arrange! 
 alphabetically ; but where Judges sat on the bench durinj 
 more than one reign, their lives are given in the last ; whil 
 the office they severally held, and the year of their appoint 
 ment, appear in due order in each reign of their career. T 
 the commencement of each reign there is prefixed a ' survey c 
 the reign,' containing a description of the nature and progres 
 of each court, and of the officers of the various department! 
 with short accounts of the Inns of Court and Chancery, an 
 their origin ; of the Serjeants and other advocates; and of th 
 reporters and legal writers ; ' adding whatever appeared ir 
 teresting in the history of the time as connected with th 
 judicature of the country, and collecting such illustrativ 
 anecdotes of Westminster Hall as seemed to demand a place 
 Mr. Foss modestly disclaims any attempt to record the hii 
 tory of the law itself, and pleads his incapacity for such 
 task : but we think he has underrated his powers. His wor 
 contains a great deal of valuable matter, which elucidates th 
 history of the law ; and he pursues the inquiries in such a 
 intelligent and searching spirit, with such a resolute determ 
 nation to spare no trouble in arriving at the truth, and wit 
 such a competent knowledge of the subject, that we belie\ 
 few writers are better qualified to trace the progress of Englis 
 law through all its mazy channels from the Norman Conque 
 to the present day. 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 113 
 
 Before we deal with the Lives, properly so called, we will 
 ;ay a few words, in no very definite order, upon some of what 
 nay be called the antiquarian questions of the law, which Mr. 
 Foss has discussed with great learning and acuteness. 
 
 He shows, with every appearance of probability, that 
 there were originally only three Law Terms — those of Hilary, 
 Easter, and Trinity ; and that which we now call Michaelmas 
 Term was altogether excluded as a distinct and separate 
 division, the whole of it being comprehended in the third or 
 Trinity term. Amongst other proofs we have this : that the 
 Curia Regis, as we know, followed the King's movements, 
 and was held when he happened to hold his Court, or, as it 
 waS called, ' wore his Crown.' Now, there were three special 
 periods of the year in which William the Conqueror and his 
 immediate successors 'wore their Crown,' namely, at Christ- 
 mas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and never at or about the time 
 of Michaelmas. No means now exist for determining the 
 precise period when the change took place ; but Mr. Foss 
 thinks that it was dictated by the nature of the agricultural 
 employments of the people : — 
 
 At some period between May 31 and November 28, it would be necessary to 
 relieve the people from- their attendance for the purpose of their collecting the hay 
 ind com harvests ; and there can be little doubt that there was a regular adjourn- 
 ment of the Court while they were thus employed in getting in the fruits of the 
 ;arth. Such an adjournment would be attended with little inconvenience to the 
 suitors, and it is not likely that there was in those times sufficient business to 
 jccupy so long a period as that which had been appropriated to legal affairs. 
 
 Another reason for adjourning to Michaelmas was that 
 ;he sheriffs of the several counties who were collectors of the 
 •oyal rents, and the other debtors of the Crown, were called 
 jpon to give in their accounts half-yearly, at Easter and 
 Michaelmas, in that branch of the Curia Regis called the 
 Scaccarium or Exchequer, where the same Judges and officers 
 ;at on these occasions of accounting as in the principal Court. 
 
 The three Courts of King's Bench, Exchequer, and Com- 
 non Pleas, had been formed out of the old Curia Regis 
 aefore the end of the reign of Henry lU., but for some time 
 ifterwards the precise duties of each were not clearly defined. 
 A.nd even under the reign of Edward I. it is not in all cases 
 30ssible to distinguish to which Court the diff"erent Judges 
 selong. There is clear evidence that common pleas still con- 
 
 I 
 
114 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 tinued to be heard in the Exchequer, notwithstanding re- 
 peated prohibitions by statutes and by royal ordinances. Tlie 
 title of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas was, according to 
 Dugdale, first used in the reign of Henry III. when Gilbert 
 de Preston filled the office ; and Walter de Norwich who was 
 appointed a Baron of the Exchequer in 1 311, in the reign of 
 Edward II., seems to have been the first who was styled 
 Chief Baron, although Dugdale apphes the term to William 
 de Carlton in the 31st year of Edward I., .and some authors 
 so designate Adam de Stratton, who was disgraced and fined 
 a few years earlier. Mr. Foss, however, shows that these are 
 mistakes. 
 
 The time when the division of the Courts of Common 
 Law first took place, a subject on which legal antiquaries 
 have long differed, is discussed by Mr. Foss with great care 
 and ability ; but we have not space for his arguments, and 
 can only state the conclusions at which he arrives. He dis- 
 sents from the opinion of Sir Edward Coke, that the Common 
 Pleas, as a separate Court, was erected before Magna Carta, 
 and holds, with Lord Bacon, that the Court of Common Pleas 
 was not divided from the principal Court until after the Charter 
 of John. 
 
 The progress with regard to civil suits seems to have been this. At the time 
 of the Conquest the ordinary and regular place for their trial was the Sherift's 
 Court. They were there allowed, on the payment of a fine, to be removed into 
 the Curia Regis x but this was a privilege which at first could only be claimed by 
 a few. Gradually, however, the advantages of having Judges who had no local 
 prejudices was felt, and the practice became common. The business of the Curia 
 Regis consequently increased so much that in the first place itinera or circuits 
 were appointed to relieve it, to try common pleas, as well as pleas of the Crown 
 in the counties where the differences arose ; and next, it was found necessary to 
 nominate legally-educated men to take those duties at the principal Court, which, 
 from other occupations and the increased complexity of the proceedings, the barons, 
 who were the original administrators of the law in the Curia Regis, were no 
 longer competent to perform. 
 
 Up to the 36th year of Edward III. the pleadings in the 
 Courts were carried on in Norman-French. But die people 
 naturally complained of this. They said that their rights and 
 liberties and lives were subject to laws which they could not 
 understand ; and they knew not what was said either for or 
 against them ' by their Serjeants or other pleaders.' A statute 
 was therefore passed, in 1362, which enacted that all pleas 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 115 
 
 should be pleaded, defended, debated, and judged in the 
 English tongue, but that they should be entered and enrolled 
 in Latin. Nothing, indeed, could be more barbarous than the 
 language used in the Courts of Law. In the preface to the 
 ' Year Books ' ' of Edward I , which have been ably edited by 
 Mr. Horwood as part of th^ series published under the direc- 
 tion of the Master of the Rolls, the editor says : ' That the 
 Norman-French was not the mother tongue of the pleaders 
 will (it is thought) be the conclusion of the reader. An ex- 
 amination of their phrases seems to show that they thought 
 in English, and clothed English ideas and sentences with 
 foreign words.' And the practice of jumbling together French, 
 Latin, and English, in pleadings and indictments, continued 
 until a comparatively recent period. During the Protectorate 
 of Cromwell an Act was passed for the introduction of the 
 English language into the pleadings, but at the Restoration, 
 although all proceedings in private causes which had been 
 commenced since the death of Charles L were legalised, that 
 Act was limited in duration to August i, 1660. After that 
 period, as Mr. Foss observes, ' the absurd use of " an unknown 
 tongue" was renewed, and continued to be employed for 
 seventy years longer, till in the reign of George IL English 
 was again substituted by an Act of the Legislature, and liti- 
 gants were permitted to understand the allegations for and 
 against them.' To give an idea of the jargon of legal lan- 
 guage in old times we will quote the following from the mar- 
 ginal notes of Chief Justice Treby to ' Dyer's Reports :' — 
 
 Richardson C. B. de C. B. at Assizes at Salisbury in summer 1631 fuit assault 
 per Prisoner la condemne pur Felony ; — que puis son condemnation ject un 
 Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit Indict- 
 ment drawn pur Noy envers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute et fixe al 
 Gibbet sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court. 
 
 The Chief Justiciary, or Justiciarius Angliae, was the chief 
 officer next the King in the Curia Regis, ' In the Sovereign's 
 absence,' says Mr. Foss, ' he presided there in all criminal and 
 civil causes, and also in the Exchequer, having by virtue of 
 his office the principal management of the royal revenue ; and 
 
 ' We are glad to see that the evil a new and better series of them estab- 
 of the multifarious contemporaneous re- lished, under the auspices of the Coun- 
 ports with which law and lawyers were cil of Law Reporting, 
 tormented is likely to be got rid of, and 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 ^^^'^KS' CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 in addition to this, the entire government of the State wai 
 entrusted to him, as Regent, when the King was absent froir 
 the realm. After a period of two hundred years, this officei 
 was discontinued in the reign of Henry III., when his prin- 
 cipal judicial duties were transferred to the Chief Justice ol 
 the King's Bench.' The title of Chief Justice of the King's 
 Bench was not given to the head of the King's Court until 
 1268, in the 52nd year of Henry HI., when a salary of one 
 hundred marks was assigned to the oiifice, although a yearly 
 allowance of one thousand marks had been formerly granted 
 to the Chief Justiciaries. 
 
 All who have attended the Courts at Westminster must 
 have observed the massive gold chain worn round the neck by 
 each of the chiefs of those Courts, and perhaps remarked the 
 letters S.S., which form its distinctive ornament. The mean- 
 ing and origin of these letters are lost in obscurity, and anti- 
 quaries have puzzled their brains in vain to give a satisfactory 
 explanation. Indeed it has been doubted whether they are 
 letters at all, or merely links of the chain accidentally formed 
 in that shape. We will not go through the various conjec- 
 tures which have been hazarded on the subject, but conteni 
 ourselves with saying that we are by no means satisfied with 
 that of Mr. Foss, who is inclined to adopt the opinion that 
 the S. stands for Soiivcncz, and has come down to us from 
 the old days of romance when emblems were placed or 
 collars to express some sentiment, or as the abbreviation of a 
 motto. Mr. Foss declares that no authentic trace of the S.S 
 chain has been found on the monument of any Chief Justice 
 until the reign of Edward VI. That of the present learned 
 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas is said to have been worr 
 by Sir Edward Coke. Lord Ellenborough had the one which 
 adorned the neck of Sir Matthew Hale, but kept it on hi; 
 retirement in 18 18. Lord Denman gave his to the Corpora- 
 tion of Derby, ' whose Mayors will thus in future be decoratec 
 with the livery collar of the Earl who took his title from thai 
 town, and who as Henry IV. first attached it as a mark 0: 
 honour to the members of the royal household.' Lord Camp 
 bell bought and kept his chain ; and the present Lord Chie 
 Justice of England wears a new one purchased by himself. 
 
 The Chancellor, Cancellarius Regis, was another officer 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 117 
 
 the Curia Regis, but at first his rank was very inferior to that 
 which he afterwards attained. He probably acted as a kind 
 of secretary, and this rendered it almost necessary that he 
 should be an ecclesiastic, for few except the clergy in those 
 days could read or write. The Barons of the realm were like 
 the children of the Black Douglas : 
 
 Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine, 
 Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line. 
 
 It was his province to prepare the various writs and precepts 
 that issued out of the Curia Regis, and to supervise the royal 
 charters and grants to which the King's seal was attached. 
 The seal itself was kept in his custody, or at least under his 
 direction. The earliest example of this was thought to be a 
 ' Charter of Confirmation to the Abbey of Westminster, 
 quoted by Dugdale, and preserved in the British Museum 
 with the seal of the Conqueror, and the words, Mauritius 
 Regis Canccllaritis relegit et sigillavit attached. But Mr. Foss 
 says that this charter is now declared to be a forgery. The 
 allowance to the Chancellor was originally five shillings a day ; 
 a simnel (a sort of sweet bread or cake) and two seasoned 
 simnels ; one sextary of clear wine, and one sextary of house- 
 hold wine ; one large candle, and forty pieces of candle. 
 
 We have no information as to the mode in which a mere 
 clerk or secretarj'^ began to exercise judicial functions until at 
 last he became a High OflScer of State, but most probably 
 questions would arise before him as tq the form of the writs 
 which he was called upon to issue, and the grants and charters 
 he had to prepare, so that he gradually assumed the functions 
 of a judge. In the prologue to ' The Life of Saint Thomas 
 (Becket), Archbishop and Martyr,' by William Fitz-Stephen, 
 the biographer informs us that ' he was one of Becket 's clerks 
 and an inmate in his family, and as by express invitation I 
 was called to his service, I became a remembrancer in his 
 Chancery, a sub-deacon in his chapel whenever he celebrated, 
 and when he sat to hear and determine causes, a reader of the 
 bills and petitions ; and sometimes when he was pleased to 
 order it, I even performed the office of an advocate.' But it 
 would not be right to infer from this that the Chancellor had 
 at that time any separate jurisdiction. The place of business 
 
ii8 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 which is styled cancellaria was not a court, but an office or 
 bureau; and the description of Becket as a judge relates to 
 the time of his archiepiscopate. This appears from the pre- 
 vious mention of Fitz-Stephen's assisting at his celebration of 
 mass (for the points of connexion with his master are men- 
 tioned in the order of time, and it was only on the day before 
 his consecration as archbishop that Becket received the 
 priestly ordination which qualified Lm to celebrate); and 
 also from the biographer's speaking of himself as pleading 
 causes, which clergymen were forbidden to do in any other 
 than ecclesiastical courts. On the other hand, the statement 
 of some writers that Becket was much employed ' in causis 
 perorandis et decidendis' (Roger, in Migne, cxc. 6i ; Joh. 
 Sarisb. ib. 147 ; Wendover, ii. 293) belongs to a time before 
 his appointment to the chancellorship — while he was yet a 
 member of Theobald's household, and took part in the pro- 
 ceedings of the archiepiscopal court. (And see Lord Camp- 
 bell's ' Lives of Chancellors,' ed. 3, i. 4 ; Foss, i. 14.) The 
 title of Lord Chancellor seems to have been first introduced 
 in the reign of Edward II., he having been previously called 
 Cancellarius Regis : and on two occasions he is styled Angliae 
 Cancellarius. But he still remained the head of the King'; 
 Chapel, ' Chef de la Chapele nostre Seignour le Roy.' 
 
 When the King went abroad, as was so often the casf 
 while the English Crown had dominions in France, he usee 
 to take the Great Seal with him, and another seal was givei 
 to the Chancellor to use until the King's return. Thus, whei 
 Edward I. went to Flanders, in 1297, the Chancellor deliverec 
 to him the Great Seal at Winchelsea, in a ship called tb 
 'Cog' Edward,' and Prince Edward, who acted as Regen 
 during his father's absence, gave the ChancfeUor another sea 
 which was restored to the King ' at his bedside ' on his returr 
 When the office of Chancellor was vacant, it seems to hav 
 been the custom to deposit the seal in the custody of person 
 selected by the King. In 1302, in the reign of Edward I., ; 
 was delivered to three officers, to be kept under their seal 
 until the King should provide himself with a Chancello 
 One of these was Adam de Osgodby, the Master or Keep( 
 of the Rolls, which is the first time that that officer was < 
 
 ' Cockboat. 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 119 
 
 nomine appointed to act in such a capacity.' Former writers 
 have assumed that the persons with whom the seal was thus 
 deposited were what are technically called Keepers of the Great 
 Seal. But Mr. Foss satisfactorily proves that some of them 
 were merely keepers or other officers of the Wardrobe, the 
 usual place of custody for the seal, and that they had no power 
 to use it in any way. The others were clerks in the Chancery, 
 who were on most of these occasions entrusted with the minis- 
 terial duties of the office. 
 
 In the reign of Edward IV., there were tzvo Chancellors 
 acting at the same time — -Alcock, Bishop of Rochester, and 
 Rotheram, Bishop of Lincoln — which Mr. Foss accounts for 
 by the preparations the King was making for the invasion of 
 France, where he wished a Chancellor to accompany him. 
 The custom had been on such occasions to appoint a tem- 
 porary Keeper of the Seal, ' but now, perhaps because Bishop 
 Alcock was a favourite, whom the King wished to honour 
 with a higher designation, the unusual course was adopted of 
 appointing him Chancellor, without superseding Bishop Ro- 
 theram, and several bills are addressed to him with that title 
 in the Rolls of Court.' 
 
 Mr. Foss revels in the various descriptions of the Great 
 Seal at different times, and the increasing splendour of the 
 bag in which it was carried, until it culminated in its present 
 costly embroidery, which, it seems, was due to the ' ostenta- 
 tious magnificence ' of Cardinal Wolsey. He hints, however, 
 a doubt whether the gilt mace carried before the Chancellor 
 — the origin of which he is inclined to attribute to the proud 
 churchman's love of processional pagea.ntry — was carried 
 before him as chancellor, or solely as legate and cardinal, and 
 we confess we are unable to solve the important problem. 
 We may here mention that the Great Seal is not in truth 
 carried about in these days in the bag or purse in which it is 
 theoretically supposed to be kept. In fact, it is never put 
 into the purse except on two occasions, viz. when it is re- 
 
 ' The title of ' CustQS Rotuloram person who held that office. As in the 
 
 Cancellarije domini Regis ' is attached appointment of Adam de Osgodby, in 
 
 for the first time to the name of John 1295, the custody of the Rolls was given 
 
 de Langton, in an entry in the Patent to him in the same manner, ' Quo alii 
 
 Roll of 14 Edward I., 1286; but Mr. custodes eam habere consueverunt tem- 
 
 Foss shows that he was not the first poribus retroactis. ' 
 
I20 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 ceived from the Queen, and when it is delivered up to her. 
 At other times the Great Seal reposes in a small plain green 
 leather box, the key of which the Lord Chancellor alone 
 has, and the Great Seal should always be where he is. The 
 quantity of wax now required for one year's consumption in 
 sealing Patents for inventions alone is upwards of i ton 
 
 2 Cwts. 
 
 Although the term Baron of the Exchequer was used as 
 early as the reign of Henry I., it was then applied solely to 
 the barons of the realm, who also performed the functions of 
 judges. It was not until the eighteenth year of Henry III. 
 that this title was given to private individuals selected for that 
 special duty. But it seems that even at a later period, the 
 Chief Baron was not necessarily a lawyer, for the statute of 
 Nisi Prius, 14 Edward III., c. i6, enacts 'that if it happen 
 that none of the Justices of the one Bench nor the other come 
 into the country, then the Nisi Prius shall be granted before 
 the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, if he be a man of the law'. 
 
 In the fifth year of Richard II., the Commons petitioned the 
 Crown that in future no one should be made a Baron of the 
 Exchequer unless he were a man well, learned in the common 
 law, or otherwise in the legal courses and usuages of the Ex- 
 chequer. But this prayer seems to have been disregarded. 
 At all events, the position of the puisne barons was greatly 
 inferior to that of the other judges. Even up to the reign of 
 Elizabeth, they were not previously made Serjeants ; they 
 were not included in the summonses to Parliament, nor were 
 they privileged like the judges to have chaplains. Robert 
 Shute, who was made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1579, was 
 the first Serjeant who was raised to the Bench as a puisne 
 baron, and in his patent it is ordered that ' he shall be reputed 
 to be of the same order, rank, estimation, dignity, and pre- 
 eminence, to all intents and purposes, as any puisne judge of 
 cither of the two other Courts.' 
 
 As the proceedings in the Curia Regis were carried on in 
 a foreign tongue, either Norman, French, or Latin, the parties 
 engaged in causes were obliged to employ persons who were 
 familiar with the language of the court. These were called 
 contcurs, or in Latin narratorcs, and none others were allowed 
 to be heard. Their office was a ' Serjeanty ' and they were 
 
■'^iJ$;amai9^at inw i i 
 
 THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 121 
 
 appointed by a royal mandate, or writ, the form of which was 
 continued when the Court of Common Pleas was established, 
 and has remained substantially the same to the present day 
 in the case of all barristers who are called to the degree of the 
 coif The origin of this professional badge Mr. Foss states to 
 be as follows : — 
 
 Few men in those ages were learned in the laws except the clergy, who were 
 bound by their order to shave their heads. The serjeant-counters being originally 
 part of this, body were, of course, obliged to follow the rule: but for 'decency 
 and comeliness,' or rather perhaps, for warmth, were by degrees allowed to 
 cover their baldness with a wig. This was at iirst a thin hair cover, gathered 
 together in the form of a skull or helmet, the material being afterwards changed 
 into white silk, and the form eventually into the black patch at the top of the 
 forensic wig, which is the distinguishing mark of the degree. 
 
 Some of these ancient barristers seem to have set a bad 
 example, if we may judge from the following anecdotes. In 
 the fifty-second year of Henry III., as Robert de Fulham, 
 ' Justice of the Jews, was going to Westminster Hall, Robert 
 de Colevill, " narrator de Banco," laid violent hands on him, 
 taking him by the breast. The contumacious barrister was 
 brought before the Barons of the Exchequer and " Justices of 
 the Bench then sitting in the Exchequer," with his tunic 
 ungirt, and his head uncovered, and making a lowly submis- 
 sion to the pleasure of the court, his offence was pardoned, 
 and he was admitted ad osailmn, " the kiss of peace." ' 
 
 In 34 Edward I. , Roger de Hegham, a Baron of the Exchequer, complained 
 that, having pronounced a judgment against William de Brewes, the said William 
 contemptuously mounted the bar, and, with gross and bitter words, called in 
 question the said judgment, and afterwards insulted the Judge as he was passing 
 from the Court. Whereupon the King, after alluding to his having dismissed his 
 son, Edward Prince of Wales, from his house for nearly half a year for some out- 
 rage towards the King's oiBcers, ordered that William de Brewes, with his body 
 ungirt, his head uncovered, and his coif laid aside, should go from the King's 
 Bench at Westminster through the middle of the Hall, when the Court was full, 
 to the Exchequer, and there ask Roger de Hegham's pardon and apologise for his 
 offence to him ; and that for the contempt done to the King and his Court, he 
 should be committted to the Tower, there to remain at the will of the King. 
 
 The clergy, of course, were the persons most likely to 
 possess the qualifications for this office, and some of them were 
 noted for their knowledge of the law. In the great cause in 
 the reign of the Conqueror between Lanfranc, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and the King's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, 
 respecting some manors, belonging to the Archbishopric which 
 Odo had seized, and which was tried before Geoffrey, Bishop 
 
122 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 of Coustances, at a shiremote on Penendon Heath, Agelrii 
 the venerable Bishop of Chichester, was by the King's con 
 mand brought to the Heath in a chariot to instruct the judge 
 in the ancient laws and customs of the realm. 
 
 Towards the end of the reign of Edward I. another itinera: 
 Court was erected, the judges of which were called Justices ( 
 Trailbaston, for the origin of which term various explanatior 
 have been offered. Nicolas Trivet in his 'Annals' says, th; 
 the name was given them by the people, because it mear 
 trahc baculiim, which Holinshed translates ' traile or draw th 
 staff.' Hence it has been supposed that these justices wer 
 so styled _/>-•(?;« trailing the staff of justice. Sir Edward Coki 
 who was about the worst etymologist in the world, declare 
 that they were so called from the rapidity of their proceeding; 
 which equalled that of a blow with a baton — a singular ex 
 ception to the tardy course of English law. Mr. Foss discards a 
 these explanations, and says that there is_ little doubt that th 
 word trailbaston applies originally to the offence or the offer 
 ders, and not to the judges — although the latter bein 
 assigned to try them were subsequently so denominated. ] 
 appears that in Edward's reign, to quote the words of th 
 Commission appointing Justices of Trailbaston, 'many ma 
 factors and disturbers of the -peace, perpetrating homicide 
 depredations, fires, and other wrongs, both by day and nigh 
 wander about in woods, parks, and divers other places, in th 
 counties named ; and these are harboured, to the great dai 
 ger of those travelling through those parts and resident i 
 them, and in the King's contempt, and the manifest breach ( 
 his peace.' No allusion is made to the arms these sturd 
 rogues bore, but they ^re said to ' beat, wound, ill-treat, an 
 kill ; ' and it has been conjectured that they carried no othf 
 weapon than a cudgel or club, and thus obtained their nam 
 In an extract quoted by Mr. Foss from Langloft's ' Chronick 
 they are thus mentioned : — 
 
 Traylbastons sunt nommez de eel retenaimce ; 
 
 Jin fayres et marchez se proferent fere convenaunce. 
 
 Par tves sous ou iiii ; ou par la valiaunce, 
 
 Batre un prodhomme ke unk fist nosaunce 
 
 A cors cristicne, par null temoygnaunce. ' 
 
 ' Mr, Wright, in his ' Political of the passage : — ' This Company a 
 Songs,' gives the following translation called trailebastons ; they offer to ma 
 
''■«,-y,i,-.-»>?-:a-iiw» iMi«Hi''M» i n» i 
 
 THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 123 
 
 And in an old contemporary song, which professes to be 
 written by an outlaw who had fled to the woods to escape the 
 cruelty of the judges, and which the late Mr. Lockhart 
 modernized, the author attacks two of the justices in the fol- 
 lowing savage lines : — 
 
 I'd teach them well this noble game of trailbaston to know, 
 On every chine I'd stamp the same, and every nape also ; 
 On every inch in all their frames I'd make my cudgel go ; 
 
 To lop their tongue I'd think no shame, not yet their lips to sew. 
 
 There is a curious petition to the Parliament of 35 Edward 
 I. alleging that persons who had been convicted before the 
 Justices of Trailbaston for conspiracies and other misdemean- 
 ours, and had paid their fines for. them, got themselves after- 
 wards placed on inquisitions and juries to confound those who 
 had honestly indicted them. An order was therefore given for- 
 bidding this in future. One clause of the oath taken by each 
 of the Justices of Trailbaston was that 'he shall take no gift 
 of any one for pleading, or other thing which he may have to 
 do before him, except it be to eat and drink a lajornee.' 
 
 It appears, then, that ' writs of Trailbaston ' were in the 
 nature of special commissions issued for a temporary purpose 
 — as in the case of the Rebecca riots in Wales within our own 
 memory — and they continued to be issued at intervals until 
 the middle of the reign of Richard II., when they finally 
 ceased. The appointment in fact, of Justices Itinerant, as dis- 
 tinct from the regular judges, fell into disuse after the passing 
 of the statutes of Nisi Prius in 13 Edward I. and those of gaol 
 delivery, and persons appealed in 27 and 28 Edward I. 
 Stow, whom Mr. Foss quotes, tells us that in the year 1294, 
 and at other times, the Justices Itinerant sat outside of Lon- 
 don at the stone cross in the High Street near the Strand, 
 over against the Bishop of Coventry's house, and sometimes 
 within the house itself 
 
 When was the custom with which we are so familiar, of 
 Judges going circuit, first introduced 1 Mr. Foss says that 
 there is a reasonable presumption for fixing the first appoint- 
 ment of itinerant justices in the reign of Henry I., although 
 the precise year cannot be ascertained. An ancient roll in the 
 
 conventions at fairs and markets for who never did hurt to any Christian 
 three or four shillings; or, merely to body by the testimony of no one.' 
 show their courage, to beat a good man 
 
124 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Exchequer, of the date 31 Henry I. (A.D. 1130), shows that 
 they had previously to that period been appointed, and had 
 travelled their circuits. During thejawless reign of Stephen 
 they appear to have been discontinued,/as might naturally be 
 expected in such a time of strife and disorder. Hallam says 
 (' Const. Hist.,' ii. 337, i860), 'Because few, comparatively 
 speaking, could have recourse to so distant a tribunal as that 
 of the King's Court, and perhaps also on account of the attach- 
 ment which the English felt to their ancient right of trial by 
 the neighbouring freeholders, Henry H. established itinerant 
 justices to decide civil and criminal pleas within each county.' 
 This excellent institution is referred by some to the 22nd 
 year of that prince, but Maddox traces it several years higher. 
 But long after the separation of the three Courts, the King's 
 Bench was an itinerant Court and followed the royal move- 
 ments, and in the 38th year of Edward HI. the Commons 
 presented a petition to the King complaining that, as the 
 Bench is wandering from county to county, the people are 
 made to come before the justices in each county, to their 
 great distraction and cost, and that many are defeated for 
 want of wise council, whereof they can find none because of 
 the uncertainty of the place. They pray, therefore, that the 
 Bench, may be established in Westminster or York. The 
 King, however, refused to give up his prerogative to order his 
 Bench to meet wherever he pleased. And even the Common 
 Picas, in direct violation of Magna Carta, was not held in 
 one fixed locality, for we find in the ' Year-Book ' of 8 
 Edward HI. a Counsel saying, 'The Common Bench is not 
 in a certain place, but sometimes here (in York), and at other 
 times in London, changed according to the King's will.' But 
 it seems from a petition of the Commons a few years later, 
 that the changes were confined to Westminster and York. 
 
 It is not quite clear when a Law Officer of the Crown first 
 assumed or \vas called by the title of Attorney-General. 
 Before the sixth year of Edward L two instances occur where 
 the designation ' Attornatus Regis ' is employed without any 
 name being given. The ordinary mode, however, of describ- 
 ing the officer ^vas qui sequitiir pro rcgc. But Mr. Foss says 
 that in most years, regularly under the reign of Edward I., 
 two were regularly employed ' wl^o may perhaps be supposed 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND 125 
 
 to answer to our modern officers the Attorney- and Solicitor- 
 General.' That there was an established advocate on the 
 part of the King appears probable from the fact that, in the 
 last year of Edward's reign, John de Mutford was called 
 before the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer to inform 
 them of the King's right in the matter of a petition then pre- 
 sented. The first name to which the title of 'Attornatus 
 Regis ' is attached is that of William Boneville in 1 277, but 
 a few years before several cases are recorded in which Law- 
 rence de Broke is described as one who ' sequitur pro rege,' 
 and he may, perhaps, be considered as the first known legal 
 progenitor of the long line of distinguished men who have 
 filled the office of Attorney-General. 
 
 It has often been said that the Judges owe their appoint- 
 ments ' quamdiu se bene gesserint,' instead of ' durante bene 
 placito,' to George III. ; but this is quite a mistake.' So 
 early as the reign of Charles I., if not earlier, the patent was 
 often made out in the form of ' good behaviour.' Thus when 
 the King wished to deprive Chief Baron Walter of his office 
 for some unknown cause of displeasure, the spirited Judge 
 refused to submit, alleging that by his patent he held his 
 post ' quamdiu se bene gesserit,' and he demanded a scire 
 facias to show whether he did ' bene se gerere ' or not ; and 
 the King did not insist on his dismissal, but contented himself 
 with forbidding him to sit in court. But a few years after- 
 wards Sir Humphrey Davenport was appointed in his place, 
 and in that case the patent was made out in the form 
 ' durante bene placito.' And in the reign of Charles II. these 
 words were, we believe almost universally introduced to make 
 the Judges subservient to the Crown. At the time of the 
 Revolution, in the debates previous to the Declaration of 
 Rights, several speakers insisted on making the commissions 
 of the Judges run quamdiu se bene gesserint. 'But,' says Mr. 
 Hallam, ' this was omitted in the hasty and imperfect Bill of 
 Rights. The commissions, however, of William's Judges ran 
 qtiamdiu se bene gesserint. But the King gave an unfortunate 
 instance of his very injudicious tenacity of bad prerogatives 
 
 ' An attempt was made in the reign assent to the proposal, declaring that 
 
 of Edward IV. to transfer the power of ' it is necessary that they be truly paid, 
 
 paying the salaries of the Judges to the but that it be at the King's pleasure.' 
 Parliament ; but the King refused to 
 
126 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 in refusing his assent, in 1692, to a Bill that passed both 
 Houses for establishing the independence of the Judges by 
 law and confirming their salaries. We owe this important 
 provision to the Act of Settlement, not, as ignorance and 
 adulation have perpetually asserted, to his late Majesty 
 George III.' 
 
 The fees paid to Council in old times were not large, even 
 when allowance is made for the change in the value of money. 
 In 1500 three Counsel in Serjeant's Inn received y. id. each 
 from the Mayor and Aldermen of Canterbury, for their advice 
 on the affairs of that city. They were sometimes treated by 
 their clients. Thus the following items occur in a bill of costs 
 in the reign of Edward III : — 
 
 s. d. 
 For a breakfast at Westminster, spent on our Counsel . . .16 
 To another time for boat-hire in and out and a breakfast for two days, i 6 
 
 When counsel were retained for the Assizes, a regular in- 
 denture was sometimes executed. 
 
 Mr. Foss does not mention the fact, but it was the custom 
 for the Sheriff of Northumberland to send an escort with the 
 Judges when they rode from Newcastle to Carlisle across 
 the wild border country, and a regular receipt was given by 
 the Sheriff of Cumberland when their bodies were safely de- 
 livered to him. To pay the expenses of this the Mayor and 
 Aldermen of Newcastle used to make the Judges a present of 
 a sum of money, and this custom was kept up until a very 
 recent period. We believe that Lord Denman was the last who 
 received it in the shape of a gold jacobus. We have seen 
 several of those coins which that learned and estimable Chief 
 Justice kept and employed as counters at whist. 
 
 Before the time of Mary, the Judges rode to Westminster 
 Hall on mules ; and Mr. Justice Whyddon, who was appointed 
 a Judge of the King's Bench in the first year of her reign, is 
 said to have been the first who bestrode a horse in the solemn 
 procession. 
 
 The ' forum litibus orbum ' has never been a good sign in 
 modern times, and accordingly the lawyers seem to have had 
 a poor time of it in the reign of bloody Mary. Heylin tells 
 us that in the year before her death there was at the King's 
 Bench bar only one inan of law and but one Serjeant in the 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND 127 
 
 Common Pleas, ' both having little more to do than to look 
 about them, and the Judges not much more to do than the 
 lawyers had.' 
 
 The expenses of the Judges on circuit were, previously to 
 the reign of Elizabeth, borne by the Sheriffs ; but this was 
 found so burdensome, that an Order in Council was made, in 
 1574, that the 'Justices shall have of Her Majesty several 
 sums of money out of her coffers for their daily diet.' 
 
 In writing the ' Lives of the Judges,' Mr. Foss has found 
 it impossible not to notice the remarkable volumes of Lord 
 Campbell, which contain those of the Chancellors and Chief 
 Justices. Those works, which contain evidence of much 
 labour, are written in a lively and popular — if somewhat 
 jaunty — style. But they were written too fast, and Lord 
 Campbell did not take sufficient pains to insure accuracy in 
 his statements, which he too often accepted at secondhand, 
 without giving himself the trouble to examine the original 
 authorities. We will mention a few of Lord Campbell's 
 blunders, some of which show that he contented himself with 
 carelessly borrowing from preceding writers ; and, in more than 
 one case, without any acknowledgment. He copies Old- 
 mixon's mistake in calling Arfastus, the first officer under 
 William the Conqueror to whose name the title of Chancellor 
 is added in the charters contained in the ' Monasticon,' Bishop 
 of Helmstadt in Germany, although Spelman, the only autho- 
 rity whom Lord Campbell cites, describes him as Bishop of 
 Thetford. The fact is, he was previously Bishop of Elmham 
 in Norfolk, the original seat of the bishopric, which was re- 
 moved by him to Thetford and by one of his successors to 
 Norwich, which may account for Oldmixon's error. Lord 
 Campbell places Baldric amongst the Chancellors under 
 . William L, and speaks of the charter in the ' Monasticon,' to 
 which his name is attached, as granted ' to the monks of St. 
 Florentius of Andover.' He then quotes some lines from 
 Spenser and Pope, which he found in Johnson's Dictionary, 
 as furnishing the etymology of the name, declaring that ' it is 
 said that the poetical name for a belt or girdle was taken from 
 the Chancellor, who is supposed to have worn one of uncom- 
 mon magnificence.' Unluckily, the real name was Waldric, 
 the initial G and B being various ways of Latinizing the W. 
 
128 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Mr. Foss makes the mistake of saying that this Chancellor be- 
 came Bishop of Landaff — having been misled by Lingard, who 
 was misled by the reading Landavensis in Duchesne's edition 
 of Orderic. But the true reading is Laudunensis, i.e. Bishop of 
 Laon, and a full account of him may be found in Gilbert of 
 Nogent, ' De Vita Sua,' iii. 4. The name appeared, however, 
 in Dugdale's ' Chronica Series ' as Baldricus ; and Lord Camp- 
 bell could not deny himself the pleasure of indulging in a joke. 
 Moreover, the charter was a grant of the Church of Andover 
 to the monks of St. Florentius at Saumur ; and Mr. Foss 
 shows that it was granted not by William I., but William II., 
 as is proved by the fact that the first attesting witness imme- 
 diately preceding the Chancellor is Robertus Episcopus de 
 Nicola (Lincoln), of which see there was no Bishop of that 
 name in the reign of William I. ; but under that of William 
 II. Robert Bloet was elected in the year 1093. 
 
 We should like to know on what authority Lord Camp- 
 bell calls Robert de Sadington, who was Chancellor in 1343, 
 'a bad Equity Judge.' He refers to Coke; but Coke is 
 simply silent as to his merits, and this by no means justifies 
 the inference that Sadington was a bad Judge. There is an 
 entry in his time of the seizure by the Mayor and Bailiffs of 
 Sandwich of nine Papal bulls and numerous processes and 
 letters from the Court of Rome, ' enclosed in a waxed linen 
 cloth,' which were delivered by the Chancellor in full Chancery 
 at Westminster to the Chamberlain of the Exchequer, to be 
 kept in the Treasury. 
 
 The same noble author has amused his readers by a life 
 of ' Lady Keeper Queen Eleanor,' and he tells us that the 
 sittings in the Aula Regis ' were interrupted by the accouche- 
 ment of the Judge ! ' Now, what are the facts according to 
 Mr. Foss.' Henry III., on going into Gascony, confided the 
 government of the kingdom to his wife Queen Eleanor as 
 Regent, and ordered her to deliver the Seal of the Exchequer 
 to William de Kilkenny, to be kept by him in the place of the 
 great seal, which he had directed to be locked up until his 
 return from abroad. ' She could,' says Mr. Foss, ' no more be 
 keeper of the seal during his absence, than he himself could 
 be his own Chancellor if he were present ; and the pleas he 
 refers to in the Curia Regis were not held before Her Majesty 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 129 
 
 as Custos Sigilli, but as Custos Regni, in the same manner as 
 the King himself sometimes presided.' 
 
 One of the most curious things in Lord Campbell's book 
 is the extraordinary onslaught he makes, without a particle 
 of authority, on the character of Chief Justice Billing, who 
 presided in the King's Bench in the reign of Edward IV. It 
 seems to be, in truth, a biography for which no foundation 
 can be assigned, though we are loth to pronounce any of 
 Lord Campbell's narratives to be wholly fictitious ; and it is 
 difficult to understand by what freak of fancy or temper Lord 
 Campbell conceived such remarkable spite against his prede- 
 cessor, who had lain for nearly four centuries in his tomb. 
 Coke speaks of Billing as one of ' other excellent men ' who' 
 flourished in his time. Of his birth and parentage, and early 
 years, nothing is known ; but he was a Member or Fellow, as 
 it is called, of Gray's Inn ; M.P. for the City of London, and 
 Recorder of the same place ; afterwards one of the Judges, 
 and finally Chief Justice of the King's Bench. And yet Lord 
 Campbell styles him ' an unprincipled adventurer,' and gra- 
 tuitously conjectures that he was ' the clerk of an attorney.' 
 Because Fuller is silent as to his ancestors and descendants, 
 his Lordship asserts that Fuller ' is evidently ashamed of in- 
 troducing such a character among worthies,' a ridiculous 
 reason, which would prove a great deal too much, and justify 
 similar attacks upon many others of that quaint old writer's 
 worthies. 
 
 To show his servility. Lord Campbell quotes from a trea- 
 tise, which he attributes to him, on the subject of the rival 
 claims of Henry VI. and Edward IV. to the Crown ; but Mr. 
 Foss quietly observes that he has never seen nor heard of it. 
 After mentioning that 'we have no materials which could 
 justify us in ascribing to Billing the private suggestions of 
 which Lord Campbell makes him the author, or in judging of 
 the correctness of the motives assigned for his elevation to the 
 Bench,' he proceeds : — 
 
 Lord Campbell, quoting from Baker's ' Chronicle ' and Hale's ' Pleas of the 
 Crown,' mentions Billing as the Judge who tried Walter Walker for saying he 
 would make his son 'heir to the Crown,' meaning his inn so called ; and he gives 
 the Judge's ruling on the case, with the conviction and execution of the unfortu- 
 nate prisoner. It is curious, however, that his Lordship, when five pages before 
 he cites Sir Nicholas Throgmorton's address to Chief Justice Bromley, omits there 
 
 K 
 
130 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the Chief Justice's answer referring to this very ' Crown ' case, though he does 
 not name the prisoner ; by which it appears that Markham was the Judge, and 
 that an acquittal was the consequence of his honest ruling. 
 
 Again, Lord Campbell saddles the unfortunate Chief 
 Justrce with the trial and conviction of Mr. Thomas Burdet 
 for wishing a favourite buck of his, which the King had killed 
 in hunting, horns and all, in the King's belly. But what says 
 Mr. Foss .? 
 
 We cannot discover whence Lord Campbell has eixtracted the ruling of Billing 
 in this or in Walker's case, which he has printed with inverted commas as quo- 
 tations : but we are surprised that, with his Lordship's known experience and 
 great knowledge of his profession, he was not aware that Burdet's case had been 
 lately referred to in Westminster Hall ; that the record of his attainder was 
 searched for, and found in the Baga de Secretis ; and that this labour might have 
 been spared by looking into Croke's ' Charles, ' p. 1 20, where the proceedings 
 against him are published. The result of all this would have proved that the 
 whole story of the buck and the belly was a figment, and that the charge against 
 Burdet was for conspiring to kill the King and the Prince by casting their 
 nativity, foretelling the speedy death of both, and scattering papers containing 
 the prophecy among the people. 
 
 Another instance of reckless romancing on the part of 
 Lord Campbell occurs in the life of Fitzjames, who was Chief 
 Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of the King's 
 Bench in the reign of Henry VIIL It is really amusing to 
 see the way in which Mr. Foss demolishes statements which 
 were made by Lord Campbell as if they contained nothing 
 but certain unquestionable fact. When Lord Campbell tells 
 us that ' it is said that Fitzjames, who was a Somersetshire 
 man, kept u.p an intimacy with Wolsey, when the latter had 
 become a village parson in that county; and that he was 
 actually in the brawl at the fair, when his Reverence, having 
 got drunk, was set in the stocks by Sir Amyas Paulet ;' — that 
 at his Inn of Court ' he chiefly distinguished himself on gaudy 
 days by dancing before the Judges, playing the part of the 
 Abbot of Misrule, and swearing strange oaths;' we cannot 
 positively confute these statements, but in the absence of all 
 authority for them, we attribute them solely to his Lordship's 
 desire to be lively and smart. When, however, he adds that 
 
 Wolsey, Fitz James's ' former chum was able to 
 
 throw some business in his way in the Court of Wards and 
 Liveries,' he unfortunately forgets that the Court of Wards and 
 Liveries was not established until ten years after Fitzjames s 
 death. He accuses him of being the adviser and dictator of 
 the articles against Wolsey his benefactor, for no other appa- 
 
-^■"■if^«?sff«w!#ft^^;«*s'^ mm"' \»KMWimt' Mill ■■ 
 
 Tff£ JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 131 
 
 rent reason than that his name appears as the last of the 
 seventeen persons, induding Sir Thomas More, who sub- 
 scribed them. At the trial of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 
 he attributes to him, in inverted commas, the remarks which, 
 in the 'State Trials/ are assigned to 'the Judges' generally. 
 In the case of the conviction of Queen Anne Boleyn, he 
 pursues the same unfair course. The ' State Trials,' say that 
 ' The jftidges complained' that the sentence in the disjunctive 
 that she should be burnt or beheaded was a thing unheard 
 of ; but Lord Campbell changes ' the Judges ' into ' Fitz- 
 James, C. J.,' and adds, within inverted commas, an argument 
 as delivered by him on the occasion, for which there is no 
 authority whatever. Surely this is enough to show how un- 
 trustworthy such a biography must be. ' But,' says Mr. 
 Foss, ' the most curious part of the story remains to be told. 
 The whole of the proceedings against the unfortunate Queen 
 are preserved in the Baga de Secretis, and from them it is 
 manifest that Fitzjames was not present at all. His name 
 does not occur in any of the writs ; and Baldwin, the Chief 
 Justice of the Common Pleas, was the principal Judge in all 
 of them 1 ' 
 
 Of course Lord Campbell revels in the opportunity which 
 the life of Sir Christopher Hatton affords him of imaginmg a 
 great many things of which he absolutely knew nothing. 
 ' Of his conduct at the University,' says Mr. Foss, ' or at his 
 Inn of Court, or what studies he pursued at either, there is 
 no account, except that given by Lord Campbell, which as he 
 quotes no authority, it is presumed is intended rather as an 
 exercise of fancy than as a detail of facts.' But when he 
 relates of a Lord Chancellor that ' while holding the Great 
 Seal, his greatest distinction continued to be his skill in 
 dancing,' he ought to have some better grounds for his asser- 
 tion than the statement in a contemporary letter that on one 
 occasion Hatton, when Chancellor, joined in a dance. V/e 
 have no doubt that Lord Campbell thought he was safe in fol- 
 lowing the poet Gray, and relied on the amusing lines in the 
 ' Long Story ' : — 
 
 Full oft within the spacious walls, 
 
 When he had fifty winters o'er him, 
 My grave Lord Keeper led the brawls, 
 
 The seal and maces danced before him, 
 K 3 
 
132 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 But, unluckily, even this fails him ; for Mr.- Foss tells us that 
 Gray was mistaken in supposing that Hatton occupied the 
 house at Stoke Pogeis the locus in quo of the imaginary 
 revels. The truth is, that, notwithstanding his want of pro- 
 fessional training for the Bench (although he had been a law 
 student in his youth), he acquitted himself with considerable 
 credit ; and having before us the testimony of David Lloyd 
 in his ' State Worthies,' who, writing in the next century, says 
 that 'the Chancellorship was above his law, but not \^\°, parts; 
 so pregnant and comprehensive that he could command other 
 men's knowledge to as good purpose as his own Sel- 
 dom were his decrees reversed in Chancery, and seldomer his 
 advice opposed in Council. So just he was, that his sentence 
 was law with the subject ; so wise, that his opinion was oracle 
 with his Sovereign' — ^we need not stop to confute Lord 
 Campbell's sneering remark that his greatest distinction was 
 skill in dancing. 
 
 If Lord Campbell's long and laborious life had been still 
 furthur protracted, and he had submitted his works to a 
 thorough and careful revision, the volumes would have been 
 considerably improved, and might not only be read for amuse- 
 ment, but what we believe is seldom the case now, be referred 
 to as authorities. 
 
 Let us now glance at the lives of some of the earliest 
 Judges, who of course vrere generally ecclesiastics. But they 
 were not only men of the gown, but men of the sword — as 
 ready to fight in the field as decide knotty points of law in 
 the Courts. Thus Hugh de Cressingham, who was at the 
 head of the Justices Itinerant during four years of the reign 
 of Edward I., and at the same time Rector of Chalk in Kent, 
 was appointed Treasurer of Scotland when Baliol renounced 
 the throne in 1 296 ; and on the rising of Wallace in the fol- 
 lowing year he threw aside his legal robes and cassock, and 
 fell in battle on the banks of the Forth. He was detested by 
 the Scotch for his oppression, and it is said that Wallace 
 ordered as much skin to be taken off his dead body as would 
 make a sword-belt. William le Vavasour, a Justice Itinerant 
 in 1304, served the King in his expedition into Gascony, and 
 in his wars in Scotland. In Nicolas's ' Siege of Carlaverock ' 
 in 1300 his prowess is thus celebrated : — 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 133 
 
 E de celle mesme part 
 
 Fu Guillaum li Vavasours 
 
 Ke d'armes n'est rauit ne sours. 
 
 He was afterwards appointed one of the Justices of Trailbas- 
 ton for York. William de Vesey, while filling the office of 
 Chief Justice in Ireland, was charged by John FitzThomas 
 with confederating against the King, and challenged his 
 accuser to meet him in mortal combat;. so that LordNorbury 
 might have quoted a precedent if he wanted one, when he told 
 a barrister who affronted him on the Bench that he was ready 
 to fight a duel with him when he had thrown off his gown. 
 De Vesey came ready armed into the field, but FitzThomas 
 showed the white feather and kept away. John de Delves, 
 before he was made a Judge in the Common Pleas in 1364, 
 fought at the battle of Poictiers as Squire to the gallant Lord 
 Audley, who ' went to the foremost front of all the battayle, 
 all onely accompanyed with fowr squyers, who promised not 
 to fayle him, and these dyd marvels in armes.' Geoffrey le 
 Scrope, who was Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the 
 reign of Edward III., accompanied the King in the invasion 
 of Scotland, and displayed his banner and pennon at the 
 aff"air of Stannow Park. He also served at the Siege of 
 Tournay in 1340. But Mr. Foss has shown that at that time 
 he had ceased to be Chief Justice. 
 
 Richard le Scrope, who was Chancellor in the reign of 
 Richard II., had been a distinguished soldier, and fought at 
 the battles of Crecy and Nevil's Cross in the same year, 1346. 
 So bravely did he bear himself against the Scotch, that he 
 was made a Knight Banneret in the field. After he had re- 
 signed, or rather, been deprived of the Great Seal, he resumed 
 the profession of arms, and accompanied King Richard in an 
 expedition against Scotland in 1385. 
 
 The way in which trained lawyers came to supply the 
 place of belted earls and warlike barons on the Bench is easy 
 to conjecture. No doubt Mr. Foss is right when he says : — 
 
 The members of the. Curia Regis consisted of various officers of the palace and 
 the prelates and barons of the realm. Of the latter, some from their avocations 
 would be unable to attend, and others, from their ignorance, would be incom- 
 petent to assist in the judicial duties of the Court. These functions were gradually 
 left to the management of a few of the barons, who were expressly selected on 
 account of their superior judgments or attainments, until, by the advance of legal 
 
134 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 science and the increase of legal intricacies, it became necessary at first to asso- 
 ciate with them, and eventually to substitute for them, persons whose lives had 
 been devoted to judicial studies. 
 
 As might be expected, there are very few personal anec- 
 dotes to be gleaned from the lives of the Judges for the first 
 three or four hundred years after the Conquest, except in the 
 case of such men as Becket and William af Wykeham. It is 
 difficult, therefore, to realize these ancient sages of the law as 
 men of like passions as ourselves : eating, drinking, and jest- 
 ing ; marrying and giving in marriage ; and sometimes, we 
 fear, swearing on the Bench. At least so we may conjecture 
 from the language used by John de Mowbray in 44 Edward 
 III. as reported in the Year-Book, who called out to the 
 Bishop of Chester, a defendant in an action tried before him, 
 ' allez au grand diable! And Hill, who was a Judge of the 
 Common Pleas in the reign of Henry V. when an action was 
 brought against a dyer who had bound himself not to use his 
 craft for half a year, not only held that the bond was void as 
 in restraint of trade, but added, according to the report in the 
 Year-Book, ' And by God, if the plaintiff was here he should 
 go to prison till he paid a fine to the King.' 
 
 We read of FitzOsberne, Justiciary of England in 1067, 
 escaping a blow which the irascible Conqueror aimed at him 
 because, in his capacity of Steward of the Household, he had 
 set on the royal table the flesh of a crane which was scarcely 
 half-roasted ; an affront that made him resign his office of 
 Dapifer. 
 
 Adam de Gernemue (/. e. of Yarmouth), who was one of 
 the Justices Itinerant in the reign of Henry IL, had previously 
 been Clerk to the Signet under Henry I., and was summoned 
 before that monarch by Thurstan le Despencer, or Steward, 
 for refusing to sign a bill without a fee, as was customary 
 among officers of the court. But Adam answered that he 
 merely asked for two spice-cakes made for the King's own 
 mouth, on which Henry ordered Thurstan to put off his cloak 
 and go and bring the two cakes on a white napkin and with a 
 low curtsey to offer them to Adam, observing, that ' Officers 
 of the Court must gratifie and show cast of their office, not 
 only to one another, but also to strangers, whenever need 
 shall require.' 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 135 
 
 John de Cavendish, who was one of the Judges in the 
 latter part of the reign of Edward III., seems to have had a 
 spice of dry humour in him. A case occurred before him in 
 which a question arose as to a lady's age, and her Counsel urged 
 the Court to call her before them and decide for themselves 
 ' on the view' whether she was within age or not. But women 
 are the same in all time, and the Judge showed that he knew 
 them when he observed, ' II n' ad nul home en Engleterre 
 que puy adjudge a droit deins age ou de plein age ; car ascun 
 femes que sont de age de xxx ans voilent apperer d'age de 
 xviii ans.' 
 
 In wandering over the names of these old black-letter 
 lawyers, it is refreshing to meet with one who, even in those 
 early days, dallied with the Muses. Such was Walter Map, 
 or, as he is sometimes erroneously called, Mapes, Precentor of 
 Lincoln, Archdeacon of Oxford, and Justice Itinerant in the 
 reign of Henry II. He was a jovial and satirical poet, and his 
 rhyming verses were very popular among his contemporaries. 
 A drinking song has been ascribed to him, beginning with the 
 line — 
 
 Meum est propositum in tabema mori. . 
 My purpose it is in an alehouse to die. 
 
 But it belongs to a later period. He hated the Jews and the 
 White Monks, and when he took the usual oath as a Judge, 
 to administer right to every one, insisted on excepting them 
 both. This perhaps accounts for the occurrence of his name 
 only once in the lists of justices, for it is not likely that even 
 in those times he would be permitted to scandalise the Bench 
 by an avowed determination to do injustice.' There were 
 special Justices of Jews, who seemed always to have sat with 
 the Barons of the Exchequer, and perhaps existed only for 
 the purpose of taxation, but their duties terminated after the 
 expulsion of that unhappy people from the realm, in the reign 
 of Edward I. 
 
 Another learned Judge, in the full sense of the term, was 
 Richard de Bury, who was made Chancellor in 1334. He was 
 an ecclesiastic, and Bishop of Durham, and seems fully to 
 
 ' His poems and his treatise ' De pieces which appeared under the name 
 
 Nugis Curialium ' have been published of ' Golias Episcopus,' were written by 
 
 by the Camden Society, and Mr. him. 
 Wright shows that several of those 
 
136 JSSSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 deserve the eulogium of Mr. Foss, who says that the memory 
 of few names, and none in that age, is more endeared than 
 that of Richard de Bury. He was the author of the ' Philo- 
 biblon,' a work in which he gives instructions for the manage- 
 ment of the first public hbrary founded at Oxford, and 
 endeavours to excite a love of literature, and a taste for the 
 fine arts. Like D' Aguesseau, the great Chancellor of France, 
 he turned every moment to account, and neither his meals nor 
 his travels were spent idly. ' During the former he was read 
 to by his chaplains, among whom were numbered some of the 
 most celebrated men of the day, and afterwards he discussed 
 with them the various subjects suggested by the reading. 
 During the latter, he occupied himself in forming what became 
 the largest library in Europe, the possession of which was one 
 of his greatest glories, as its accumulation formed his chief 
 delight. He spared no pains in securing the most curious 
 and valuable manuscripts, and speaks with evident glee of the 
 motives which influenced the donors of some, and of the diffi- 
 culties he had to overcome in obtaining others.' Let us add 
 that he was as benevolent and bountiful to the poor as he was 
 devoted to learning. 
 
 We can hardly place Judge Markham, in the reign of 
 Richard H., amongst the number of literary Judges, although 
 when the wife of one who was in exile, brought an action in her 
 own name alone, and it was decided that she could do so 
 because her husband was attainted in law, and she was the 
 king's tenant, he extemporised from the Bench the following 
 doggrel Latin lines — faits a loisir : — 
 
 Ecce modo minim, quod foemina fert breve Regis 
 Non nominando virum conjunctum robore legis. 
 
 Bryan, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the 
 reign of Henry VH., was a scholar and a poet. Drayton thus 
 sings of him : — 
 
 And sweettongiied Bryan, whom the Muses kept, 
 And in his cradle rocked him while he slept. 
 
 But as a general rule the Judges of ancient times were proba- 
 bly not unjustly described by Cecil, Earl of Shaftesbury, in 
 1610: ' Most of our lawyers and judges though learned in 
 their profession, yet not having other learning, they, upon a 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. \ 137 
 
 question demanded, bluntly answer it, and can go no further, 
 having no vehiculum to carry it by discourse or insinuation to 
 the understanding of others.' 
 
 It was by no means uncommon for Judges, when they 
 were removed from the Bench, to resume their practice at the 
 Bar, and in some cases they seem to have acted as advocates, 
 even while they held the office of Judge. Thus, William Inge 
 in the reign of Edward II., appears as an advocate in the 
 Year-Book when he was a Justice of Assize, and he was 
 regularly summoned amongst the Judges to Parliament. He 
 was afterwards elevated to the Chief Justiceship of the King's 
 Bench. But perhaps in acting as Justice of Assize, he was 
 only in the same position as Queen's Counsel and Serjeants 
 at the present day whose names are put in the Commission, 
 and who frequently assist the Judges by trying causes and 
 prisoners in the civil and criminal courts. If, however, we 
 may credit a passage in the ' Paston Letters ' (vol. i. 149), 
 so late as the time of Edward IV., Yelverton, who was a judge 
 of the King's Bench during the trial that arose out of Sir John 
 Fastolf's will, ' came down from the Bench and plete (pleaded) 
 the matter.' When Pemberton, a Judge in the reign of 
 Charles II., was dismissed from the Bench, he returned to his 
 practice at the Bar. He was afterwards made Chief Justice, 
 first of the King's Bench, and then of the Common Pleas, and 
 being again dismissed, he a second time returned to the Bar, 
 and was one of the leading Counsel in the defence of the seven 
 Bishops in 1688. 
 
 In reading the accounts of these old Judges, one remarks 
 the success which they seem to have had in feathering their 
 nests, and it is difficult to believe that they could have left 
 such large property out of the profits of their office or their 
 previous practice. But it must be borne in mind that many 
 of them were ecclesiastics, and had Church preferment, and 
 others were military knights and landed gentry, whose posi- 
 tion on the Bench was more like that of county magistrates 
 than professional judges. As at the present day, the gains of 
 successful barristers were often greater than their salaries as 
 judges ; and we find Aysgoghe, in the reign of Henry VI., 
 complaining, in a petition to the King, that he was called to 
 the Bench and made Justice before he had been fully two years 
 
138 . ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 in the office of Serjeant, ' by which makyng Justice, all his 
 winnings that he sholde have made in the said office of Ser- 
 jeant, and alle the fees that he had in England, weere and be 
 cessed and expired to his grete empovrysshyng, for they were 
 the grete substance of his lyvelode.' He therefore prayed, as 
 he was ' the porest of alle your Justices,' that the King would 
 grant him certain tenements of the value of 25/. \2s. lod. a 
 year. This must be m.ultiplied by fifteen to make it repre- 
 sent the present value of money, so that what the Judge asked 
 for was equivalent to an estate yielding 385/. a year. 
 
 As an example of the careful accuracy with which Mr. 
 Foss has investigated facts, we may adduce the case of Chief 
 Justice Gascoigne. This was Henry IV.'s Chief Justice, and 
 in reading of him in Shakespeare's pages we hardly know 
 whether to admire most the dignified and high-spirited Judge 
 who did not fear to commit to prison the heir apparent to the 
 throne, or the prince who, when he was king, forgot the affront, 
 and bade the Chief Justice ' still bear the balance and the 
 sword.' But was Gascoigne Chief Justice to Henry V. at all ? 
 Lord Campbell, indeed, asserts that he can ' prove to demon- 
 stration that Sir William Gascoigne actually filled the office 
 of Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry V.' But it 
 turns out that the only evidence on which his lordship could 
 rely, is the fact that in the summons to Parliament, dated the 
 day after the accession of Henry V., Gascoigne is styled 
 ' Chief Justice of our Lord the King.' This might be suffi- 
 cient if there were not strong proofs to the contrary. Amongst 
 these are the following : — i. We find Sir William Hankford 
 filling Gascoigne's place as one of the triers of petitions in the 
 first parliament of the new reign, and presiding in the King's 
 Bench in the same year. 2. In the Issue Roll of July, 1413; 
 just after the death of Henry IV., he is called 'late Chief 
 Justice of the Bench of Lord Henry, father of the present 
 King.' 3. In the inscription on his monument in Harewood 
 Church, in Yorkshire, dated 1419, he is described as 'nuper 
 capit. justic. de banco. Hen. nuper regis Angliae qtiarti! We 
 consider the last argument conclusive, for if he had been re- 
 appointed Chief Justice by Henry V., his epitaph would have 
 not stopped short with the mention of having been ' late Chief 
 Justice of the late King Henry IV.' A difficulty remains 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 139 
 
 owing to the date given by Dugdale of Sir William Hank- 
 ford's elevation to the Chief Justiceship, which he places in 
 January, 1414. Now Henry V. ascended the throne in March 
 141 3, and who was Chief Justice in the interval? Lord 
 Campbell would naturally say, in accordance with the lan- 
 guage of the summons to Parliament already quoted. Who 
 but Sir William Gascoigne ? But Mr. Foss has referred to 
 the Roll itself, containing Hankford's appointment, and it 
 turns out that the date, instead of being January 29, 1414, as 
 stated by Dugdale, is March 29, 1413, just eight days after 
 Henry's succession to the Crown. The inference, therefore, 
 is irresistible, that so far from the King addressing the upright 
 magistrate in the magnanimous words which Shakespeare puts 
 into his mouth — 
 
 You did commit me : 
 For which I do commit into your hand 
 The unstained sword that you have used to bear — 
 
 he showed his resentment by depriving the Chief Justice of 
 his office. There is a curious story told of Hankford, who 
 was Gascoigne's successor on the Bench, that, having become 
 weary of his life, he gave strict orders to his keeper to shoot 
 any person found at night in his park who would not stand 
 when challenged, and then throwing himself in the keeper's 
 way, he was shot dead, in accordance with his own commands. 
 But Mr. Foss thinks that this account of judicial suicide is 
 very improbable, and shows that at all events Holinshed repre- 
 sents it as happening nearly fifty years after the death of the 
 Chief Justice. 
 
 In the same way he disposes of the tradition that Chief 
 Justice Hody, in the reign of Henry VI., whom Coke calls 
 one of the ' famous and expert sages of the law,' pronounced 
 sentence of death upon his son Thomas — who was tried before 
 him at the assizes, and found guilty of a capital crime — by 
 showing that Thomas was a younger son, and that the eldest 
 son of the Judge could not have been more than six or seven 
 years old at his father's death. 
 
 As another instance of the conscientious labour Mr. Foss 
 has bestowed upon his work, we may mention the trouble he 
 has taken to clear up the pedigree of 9fr Thomas More. All 
 former biographies of the illustrious and unfortunate Chan- 
 
140 ESS A YS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 cellor, including that by his own son-in-law, Roper, are almost 
 entirely silent as to the family from which he sprang. His 
 great grandson, Cresacre More, wrote his life, and mistrans- 
 lated his epitaph, written by himself, ' Thomas Morus famili^ 
 non celebri, sed honesta ortus,' by the words ' Thomas More, 
 born of no noble family, but of an honest stock.' No one had 
 hitherto discovered who his grandfather was, and the way in 
 which Mr. Foss ferrets out the conclusion that he was first 
 the butler, afterwards the steward, and finally the reader of 
 Lincoln's Inn, and that his father was also at one time butler 
 of the same Inn, is an instructive example of patient research 
 and exhaustive reasoning. Mr. Foss half apologises for the 
 space he has devoted to the inquiry, but we think he vindi- 
 cates himself successfully when he says, ' There is a natural 
 and universal desire to know from what stock a great man 
 has descended ; and who is there, whether he be lawyer, 
 philosopher, or historian, who will deny that title to Sir 
 Thomas More.'' And yet, curiously enough, in his life of 
 Wolsey, when alluding to the tradition that his father was a 
 butcher, Mr. Foss says, ' Some of his biographers have given 
 no credit to the story, and the question is too immaterial to 
 discuss.' 
 
 We pride ourselves, and justly, on the purity of our Judges, 
 and perhaps no body of men, whose corporate existence ex- 
 tends over eight centuries, would upon the whole come more 
 unstained out of the ordeal of a searching inquiry into their 
 characters. But there are startling exceptions, and we can 
 only congratulate ourselves that they are things of the past, 
 and are impossibilities now. A story is told of the great 
 warrior-judge and learned author, Ranulph de GlanviUe, 
 which, with Mr. Foss, we would willingly believe to be untrue, 
 although he gives no sufficient reason for doubting it. He is 
 said to have unjustly condemned Sir Gilbert de Plumpton, in 
 1 1 84, on a charge of rape, for the purpose of enabling the 
 knight's widow, who was a wealthy heiress, to be married to a 
 friend of his own. Sentence of death was passed and imme- 
 diate execution ordered, but the Bishop of Worcester humanely 
 interfered, and on the case being referred to the King, Sir 
 Gilbert's life was spared, although he was kept in imprison- 
 ment for the rest of the reign, 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 141 
 
 There seems to be no doubt that the Judges were in the 
 habit of taking money from others besides the King. The 
 Knights Hospitallers Survey, made in 1328, mentions pen- 
 sions to the amount of 440/., of which 60/. were paid to the 
 Judges and their clerks, the Chief Baron receiving 40 marks ; 
 and a further sum of 200 marks a year is stated to be spent 
 in presents made in the Courts of the King and the nobles, 
 'pro favore hahendo et pro placitis defendendis, et expensis 
 parliamentorum.' 
 
 In the reign of Edward I. wholesale corruption disgraced 
 the Bench. On his return from France, in 1289, he was met 
 with heavy complaints that his Judges took bribes and gave 
 false judgments. The King immediately instituted enquiries, 
 and the result was that almost all the Judges were dismissed 
 from their office, and some of them only redeemed themselves 
 from imprisonment by the payment of considerable fines. 
 Against one of them, Thomas de Weyland, a more terrible 
 charge was brought. He was accused of having instigated 
 his servants to commit a murder, and then screened them from 
 punishment. He was arrested, but contrived to escape, and 
 fled to the Sanctuary of the Friars Minors, at St. Edmonds- 
 bury, where he remained for forty days. Here, however, he 
 was starved into surrender, but was allowed to adjure the 
 realm without standing a trial, and all his property, as if he 
 were a convicted felon, was confiscated to the King's use. 
 Ralph de Hengham, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, is 
 said to have been fined 7,000 marks, or, according to another 
 account, only 800, which, if we may believe tradition, was im- 
 posed upon him for altering a record by reducing, out of pity, 
 a penalty inflicted upon a poor man from 13J. 4^. to 6s. ?,d. 
 Judge Southcote, in the reign of Elizabeth, refused, on a 
 similar occasion, to tamper with the record, saying that ' he 
 meant not to build a clock-house ;' and he added in explana- 
 tion, ' that with Hengham's fine the clock-house at West- 
 minster was built, and furnished with a clock to be used in 
 the hall;' and Mr. Foss shows that the objection to its pro- 
 bability, on the ground that clocks did not come into use until 
 a hundred years afterwards, is unfounded, for with his usual 
 antiquarian accuracy, he points out that a great clock was 
 put up about the same period in Canterbury Cathedral. That 
 
142 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the offence of Ralph de Hengham was not of a very heinous 
 kind seems to be proved by the fact that ten years afterwards 
 he was restored to the Bench ; but we find his name then 
 placed nearly at the bottom of the list of Judges and other 
 officers who were summoned to the Parliament of 28 Edward 
 I., as if amongst the Justices Itinerant. He was afterwards 
 appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and on his 
 death was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, with an epitaph over 
 his remains, in which he was called ' vir benedictus,' and ' Flos 
 Anglorum.' Against John de Lovetoft, another of these dis- 
 graced Judges, one of the charges was that he had taken a 
 verdict from eleven jurors although the twelfth disagreed with 
 them ; and Adam de Stratton, a Baron of the Exchequer, is 
 more than once styled ' felo,' although the precise nature of 
 his crime is not specified. 
 
 In the 6th year of Edward II., John de Bosco, one of the 
 Judges of Assize, was convicted of abstracting a King's writ 
 and substituting a false one in its place. In 1350, William de 
 Thorpe, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was convicted, 
 on his own confession, of receiving bribes to stay justice ; and 
 a few years afterwards another Chief Justice, and the Chief 
 Baron, were imprisoned by King Edward III., on account of 
 many notorious enormities 'which he understood they had 
 committed against law and justice.' 
 
 When the Bench was so corrupt, we can hardly suppose 
 that the Bar was pure. The Statute of Westminster, 3 Ed- 
 ward I., enacts that if ' Serjeant-countors do any manner of 
 
 deceit or collusion in the King's Court he shall be 
 
 imprisoned for a year and a day, and from thenceforth shall 
 not be heard to plead in the Court for any one.' What was 
 known to the Roman law as the base offence of prmvaricatio, 
 to which Cicero more than once alludes, existed also in Eng- 
 land : for one of the petitions to Parliament, in the i8th year 
 of Edward I., complains of a counsellor of one party having 
 received a bribe from the other, for whom he procured a 
 verdict. In the same reign, William de Thorpe, Chief Jus- 
 tice of the King's Bench, was tried by a Special Commission 
 for corruption, and confessed that he had received bribes 
 from several persons who had been indicted before him at 
 Lincoln. For this he was committed prisoner to the Tower, 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 143 
 
 all his property was confiscated, and he narrowly escaped 
 hanging. , 
 
 In one of the political songs published by Mr. Wright, 
 amongst the volumes of the Camden Society, there is one 
 belonging to the reign of Edward I., or Edward II., which 
 shows how unfavourable popular opinion was to the character 
 of the Judges. Mr. Foss has given a free translation of the 
 poem, and we will quote two of the stanzas : — 
 
 Judges there are whom gifts seduce and favourites control, 
 
 Content to serve the devil alone, or take him for a toll : 
 
 If nature's law forbid the judge from selling his decree, 
 
 How dread to those who finger bribes the punishment shall be ! 
 
 If comes some noble lady, in beauty and in pride. 
 
 With golden horns upon her head, her suit he'll soon decide ; 
 
 But she who has no charms nor friends, and is for gifts too poor. 
 
 Her business all neglected, she's, weeping, shown the door. 
 
 It was not every Judge who could gracefully decline a 
 gift like Sir Thomas More. When a rich widow who had 
 obtained from him a decree against Lord Arundel presented 
 him on New Year's-day with a pair of gloves and forty pounds 
 in angels enclosed in them, he emptied the money in her lap 
 and told her that it was ' against good manners to forsake a 
 gentlewoman's New Year's gift ; he would take her gloves 
 but refuse the lining.' When Sir Christopher Hatton sus- 
 pended his secretary for taking fees to obtain the Chancellor's 
 influence with the Queen, that officer addressed to him a 
 letter, in which he says : ' There liveth not so grave nor so 
 severe a Judge in England, but he alloweth his poor clerk 
 under him, even in expedition of matters of greatest justice, 
 to take any reasonable consideration that should be offered 
 him by any man for his pains and travail' 
 
 In Sir Thomas le Strange's household accounts for 1537, 
 we find an entry which shows that money was paid to Lord 
 Chancellor Audley's servant 'to be a meane to my said Lord' 
 in a suit then before the Court of Chancery. 
 
 Whether the Judges sometimes bought their places is not 
 altogether clear ; but their is a most suspicious entry in the 
 accounts of Sir Edmund Dudley, in the reign of Henry VII., 
 where Robert Reed, formerly a Judge of the King's Bench, 
 is stated to have paid, ' for the King's favour to him in the 
 office of Chief lustice of the Common Pleas, 4000 marks.' 
 
144 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Mr. Foss is not one of those who think it possible to defend 
 Lord Bacon against the charge of gross corruption while 
 filling the office of Chancellor. All that can fairly be urged 
 on his behalf, so far as we see at present, is that he followed 
 a bad custom, and that other Judges had done the same. 
 Fuller makes it a subject of special praise, in his character of 
 Mr. Justice Nichols, that he was of ' exemplary integrity 
 even to the rejection of gratuities after judgment g:iven.' But 
 Bacon knew that the custom was wrong, and he acted in 
 direct violation of the principle which he laid down as the 
 duty of a Judge when he addressed Mr. Justice Hutton, and 
 warned him to remember ' That your hands and the hands of 
 your hands, I mean those about you, be clean and uncorrupted 
 from gifts.' 
 
 An entry in the archives of the borough of Lyme Regis 
 leaves it ' to the Mayor's discretion what gratuity he will give 
 to the Lord Chief Baron and his men,' at the assizes in 1620, 
 when the charter of the corporation was in question. 
 
 It was in the weak reign of Richard II. that the unconsti- 
 tutional practice began of extra-judicial opinions being de- 
 manded of the Judges by the Crown. But they paid dearly 
 for their compliance in the first instance ; and it is strange 
 that so terrible an example was lost upon their successors. It 
 is of course needless to point out the evils of such a course, 
 by which the Judges judged cases before they tried them, and 
 became the accomplices of acts of tyranny and illegality. In 
 1386 the Parliament impeached De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, 
 the Chancellor, and appointed commissioners, by whom the 
 functions of Government were to be performed, and the whole 
 expenditure of the kingdom was to be regulated. The ordin- 
 ance enacting this was confirmed by the King's letters patent 
 Next year, however, the Chancellor and other fallen courtiers 
 advised the King to resume his authority, and the opinions of 
 the Judges were taken as to the illegality of the ordinance:. 
 Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King's Benchj pre- 
 pared a series of questions with answers written beforehand, 
 condemning the ordinance, and laid them before the Judges, 
 who were specially summoned for the purpose. The Judges 
 attached their seals to the answers ; but they afterwards 
 asserted in their defence that the answers were forced upon 
 
THE yUDGES OF ENGLAND. 145 
 
 them under threats and fears of violence. The Parliament was 
 enraged, and took energetic measures to avenge the affront. 
 Tresilian and the courtiers were appealed of treason, one of 
 the charges against them being that they constrained the 
 Judges to subscribe the answers to the questions. Tresilian 
 fled for his life, but was found guilty in his absence, and sen- 
 tenced to die the death of a traitor. He might have escaped 
 had it not been for his folly in venturing back to London, at 
 the instance of the King, who was then at Bristol, to find out 
 what further proceedings were contemplated by the Dukes of 
 York and Gloucester, who had then virtually the government 
 of the realm. He disguised himself as a farmer, and took up 
 his lodging at an alehouse, or, according to another account, 
 an apothecary's, opposite the palace gate at Westminster ; 
 but here he was recognised, and immediately arrested. Being 
 asked what he had to say why execution should not be done 
 according to the judgment pronounced, he was struck dumb 
 by terror, and making no answer, was led away to die. 
 Froissart says he was beheaded, and afterwards hanged on a 
 gibbet ; but, according to the Parliament Roll, he was taken 
 to the Tower, and thence drawn through the city and hanged 
 at Tyburn. The other Judges who had signed the obnoxious 
 document were impeached by the Commons, convicted, and 
 sentenced to death. Their lives were, however, spared, and 
 they were all banished to different parts of Ireland, with a 
 prohibition from practising as lawyers. After the death of 
 the Duke of Gloucester the sentence was reversed by Parlia- 
 ment ; and, as Mr. Foss observes, ' the subserviency of the 
 lawyers to the ruling power was again exhibited by the Chief 
 Justices Walter de Clapton and William Thuring, and Judge 
 Rickhill, confirming on that occasion the opinion for which 
 their predecessors had suffered.' 
 
 This ' auricular taking of opinions,' as Coke called it, con- 
 tinued more or less until the Revolution. King James repri- 
 manded the Judges for disobeying his order not to proceed in 
 a private cause until they had first consulted him ; and the 
 servile Bacon disgraced himself by advising the Crown ' to 
 make some example against the presumption of a Judge, 
 whereby the whole body of the magistrates may be contained 
 in better awe,' We may forgive Coke much of the unfeeling 
 
 L 
 
146 jESSAVS critical and NARRATIVE. 
 
 coarseness with which he conducted state prosecutions, for the 
 noble stand he made in asserting the independence of the 
 Bench. He twice resolutely opposed the King in his attempts 
 to interfere with it ; and when he and the other Judges were 
 summoned before the Council to account for a judgment they 
 had given, he said to the Lords, ' We hope that where [as] 
 the Judges of this realm have been more often called before 
 your Lordships than in former times they have been, which 
 is much observed, and gives much emboldening to the vulgar, 
 that after this day we shall not be so often, upon such com- 
 plaints, your Lordships being truly informed of our proceed- 
 ings, called before you.' On another occasion he boldly told 
 the King, 'Your Majesty is not learned in the laws of the 
 realm of England.' 
 
 A curious story is given by Dugdale in his 'Baronage,' which 
 Mr. Foss quotes, of a dinner given in the same reign by one 
 Beauchamp, a litigant of certain lands, to his counsel, inclu- 
 ding Charlton, one of the Judges, when, 'after dinner, coming 
 out of his chappel in an angry mood, he threw to each of 
 them a piece of gold, and said, " Sirs, I desire you forthwith 
 to tell me whether I have any right or title to Hastings lord- 
 ship and lands .' " ' The lawyers, however, would not pro- 
 phesy deceits, for they told Beauchamp plainly that his claim 
 was bad. 
 
 The Judges seem to have been employed in old times in 
 drawing Acts of Parliament ; and we are not sure that much 
 of the confusion, and many of the mistakes which occur in 
 modern statutes might not be avoided if they performed the 
 same function now. At all events, the Bills in Parliament 
 might usefully be submitted to them for revision before they 
 are finally passed. But we fear that the judicial staff is, un- 
 der present arrangements, too much overworked to admit of 
 this. Li the reign of Henry L Chief Justice Hengham said 
 to a counsel who was putting his construction on the statute 
 13 Edw. I., Westm. 2, ' Ne glosez point le statut : nous le 
 Savons meuz de vous, car nous les feimes.' 
 
 The reigns of Henry VH. and his three immediate suc- 
 cessors are with a few exceptions undistinguished by any 
 great judicial names. Of course those of Archbishop Morton 
 and Cardinal Wolsey — who are, however, better known a 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 147 
 
 prelates than as judges — and Cromwell and Sir Thomas 
 More, will readily occur to the reader ; but we do not think 
 that a single puisne of that time has left behind him a trace 
 of his existence which posterity will care to remember. We 
 do not, however, doubt that many of them deserved the same 
 eulogium that Sir Edward Coke passed upon Mr. Justice 
 Gawdy, who he says, ' was a most reverend judge and sage of 
 the law, of ready and profound judgment and venerable 
 purity, prudence, and integrity ; ' but we know lit;tle of them 
 more interesting than is contained in the epitaph on Baron 
 Birch, who died in 1581 : — 
 
 Ihterr'd the corps of Baron Birch lies here, 
 Of Greyes Inn, sometime, by degree esquire ; 
 In Chequer eighteen years a Judge he was, 
 Till soule from aged body his did passe. 
 
 It is impossible to add anything to the testimony which 
 all writers have given to the spotless character of Sir Thomas 
 More. He is one whom all men delight to honour ; and his 
 judicial murder was one of the foulest blots upon the reign of 
 his detestable master. Lord Audley, who succeeded him as 
 Lord Chancellor," was a mean and rapacious lawyer, the ready 
 minister and tool of the King's caprice, who kept the Great 
 Seal for twelve years, on the same principle as that by which 
 Lord Keeper Paulet, in the reign of Edward VI., explained 
 his prosperity ; — 
 
 I am a willow not an oak ; 
 
 I chide, but never hurt with stroke. ' 
 
 He fattened on Church plunder, ' carving for himself,' as 
 Fuller quaintly remarks, ' on the feast of the abbey lands, the 
 first cut, and that a dainty morsel.' Mr. Foss says of him 
 with perfect truth : ' His interpretations of the law in the 
 various criminal trials at which he presided are a disgrace not 
 only to him, but to every member of the Bench associated 
 with him ; while both branches of the Legislature are equally 
 chargeable with the ignominy of passing the Acts he intro- 
 duced, perilling every man's life by the new treasons they 
 invented, and every man's conscience by the extraordinary 
 oaths they imposed.'. 
 
148 £SSAys CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 The life and character of Coke, the oracle of the commoa 
 
 law, are so well known that it is needless to dwell on them. 
 
 He was a proud and arrogant man, and a harsh advocate • 
 
 but he was a fearless and upright judge at a time when 
 
 corruption was rife in almost every department of the state. 
 
 Judge Whitelock says of him, ' Never was a man so just, so 
 
 upright, so free from corrupt solicitations of great men and 
 
 friends as he was ; never put Counsellors that practised before 
 
 him to annual pensions of money or plate to have his favour. 
 
 In all causes before him the Counsel might assure his client 
 
 from the danger of bribery.' But it would be unfair to omit 
 
 mention of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who held the Great 
 
 Seal for seven years under Elizabeth, and for nearly fourteen 
 
 years under James I., amidst the universal applause of his 
 
 contemporaries. Bishop Racket describes him as one 'qui 
 
 nihil in vita nisi laudandum aut fecit aut dixit aut sensit;' 
 
 and the very exaggeration of this praise shows the estimation 
 
 in which he was held. 
 
 The strange and improbable story that Chief Justice 
 Popham, in the same reign, became the owner of Littlecote, 
 in Wiltshire, as his reward for allowing Darrell, the former 
 proprietor, to escape on his trial for an atrocious murder, 
 which forms the subject of Scott's ballad in 'Rokeby,' 'The 
 Friar of Orders Grey,' is entirely discredited by Mr. Foss ; and 
 we agree with him that it would be curious to trace the 
 circumstances to which such a tradition owes its origin, but 
 we fear that this is now impossible. Does any record or 
 document exist to show that a man, named Darrell, was tried 
 at that period for such a crime.' Mr. Foss suggests that 'if 
 the petition, which Sir Francis Bacon in his argument against 
 Hollis and others for traducing public justice, states was 
 presented to Queen Elizabeth against Chief Justice Popham, 
 and which, after investigation by four Privy Councillors, was 
 dismissed as slanderous, could be found, it might possibly 
 turn out that this story was the slander ; and the Chief 
 Justice's subsequent enjoyment of his high office would be a 
 sufficient proof of its utter falsehood.' 
 
 It is certain that, notwithstanding the high eulogium 
 passed upon Popham by Lord Ellesmere and Sir Edward 
 Coke, an evil tradition clings to his name ; for he is said in 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 149 
 
 his wild youth to have gone on the highway and taken purses 
 as a common robber. 
 
 We wish that Mr. Foss had been a little more explicit- in 
 informing us how the business of the courts of justice, both at 
 Westminster and in the provinces, was carried on during the 
 great RebeUion. We beheve that the Judges went circuit as 
 usual, and it is a remarkable proof of what we may call the 
 stable equilibrium of the English nation and its reverence for 
 law, that in the midst of contending armies causes should be 
 decided and the gaols be delivered, as in a time of profound 
 peace. In the confusion that followed after the King's murder 
 it was different : — 
 
 ' The expulsion of the Parliament,' says Mr. Foss, ' put a stop for a time to 
 legal business, and in the following October the hearing of causes in Chancery 
 was suspended for a month while the Bill for the suppression of the Court was 
 under discussion. In the summer of 1654 the Assizes were delayed by an Ordi- 
 nance of Council that none of the Judges should go out of town till further order ; 
 and in the disordered state of the nation, after the return of the Long Parliament, 
 there were no less than three terms lost, all writs, fines, and assurances were 
 stopped, and there was danger of having no Assizes. ' 
 
 With respect to the Protectorate, he says : — 
 
 Whatever opinion may be entertained of the general merits or demerits of the 
 actors in the great Rebellion, all parties must allow that, judging from most of the 
 legal appointments, it was the desire and endeavour of the usurping powers to 
 keep the course of justice uncontarainated, and to preserve respect for the admin- 
 istration of the laws. With few exceptions the Judges of the interregnum were 
 men capable and respectable, and in some instances of high character and attain- 
 ments. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury, in the reign of Charles II., was the last 
 Judge who was not previously a regularly trained lawyer. 
 He, however, like Sir Christopher Hatton, had studied law in 
 his youth, and was a member of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. 
 We need not give the details of his versatile career as Member 
 of Parliament, soldier, courtier, and statesman. A Royalist 
 at the commencement of the Civil War, he soon deserted the 
 cause of the King and commanded the army of the parlia- 
 ment in Dorsetshire, where he took Wareham, Blandford and 
 Abbotsbury. During the Protectorate he sat in the Barebones 
 Parliament, and 
 
 Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 
 He cast himself into the saint-like mould : 
 Groan'd, sighed, and prayed while godliness was gain. 
 The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. 
 
ISO ^^.S'^KS' CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 He joined General Monk when he saw that the restoration of 
 the King was probable, and was one of the deputation sent 
 by the two Houses of Parliament to the Hague to invite 
 Charles H. to return. He was afterwards created a peer, 
 When the Great Seal was taken from Lord Keeper Bridgman 
 it was given to him, and the new Lord Chancellor astonished 
 the lawyers by the dress he wore while occupying the marble 
 chair. ' He sat on the bench in an ash-coloured gown, silver- 
 laced, and full-ribboned pantaloons displayed, without any 
 black at all in his garb.' But he surprised them still more by 
 the excellence of his decisions, which extorted from Dryden 
 his well-known and noble eulogium ; and King Charles is 
 said to have declared he had a Chancellor ' that was master 
 of more law than all his Judges, and was possessed of more 
 divinity than all his Bishops.' He did not, however, hold his 
 high office long, for in less than a year he was compelled to 
 resign the Great Seal, and became for the rest of his life a 
 turbulent and factious opponent of the Court until he died a 
 fugitive at Amsterdam in 1683. 
 
 He was succeeded by Lord Nottingham, 'the English 
 Cicero,' ' the smooth-tongued solicitor,' and 'father of equity,' 
 one of the ablest Chancellors and purest Judges who have 
 ever adorned the Bench. To him we owe the Statute of 
 Frauds, every line of which, Lord Campbell somewhere declares 
 ' deserves a subsidy.' Roger North, whose mind was as little 
 as his style is detestable, does his best to depreciate him, calling 
 him a formalist, ' supposing that if he split the hair, and with 
 bis gold scales determined reasonably on one side of the 
 motion, justice was nicely done.' Lord Campbell says that 
 he ' fully deserves all the praise that has been bestowed upon 
 him as a consummate lawyer,' and only takes exception to 
 his character as a politician. But those were times that tried 
 men's souls, and we need not be surprised that the lawyers 
 were skilled in the art of tergiversation. Sir Harbottle Grim- 
 ston had been looked upon as one of the most active amongst 
 the party of the Parliament, and was one of the Commission- 
 ers selected to negociate with Charles L in the Isle of Wight. 
 But he did not go so far as others. He wished the monarchy 
 to be preserved, and was in consequence of his opinions ex- 
 cluded from the House of Commons On the King's return 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 151 
 
 he was elected Speaker of the Convention Parliament, and 
 his style of oratory may be appreciated by the following spe- 
 cimen, taken from his speech previous to the dissolution :■ 
 ' We must needs be a happy parliament, a healing parliament, 
 a reconciling and peaceful parliament, a parliament propter 
 excellentiam, that may be truly called parlianicntissimum par- 
 liamenitcm.' He was afterwards made Master of the Rolls, 
 and held the office for twenty-six years, dying at the advanced 
 age of eighty-nine. He owed his success as a lawyer ori- 
 ginally to love ; for having formed an attachment to a 
 daughter of Sir George Cfoke, the Judge told him that he 
 should not have her unless he resumed the profession that he 
 had abandoned. 
 
 One great object of Lord Campbell's hatred is Lord 
 Keeper Guilford, of whose life we know the m.inutest details 
 from the gossiping biography of his brother Roger North. 
 Lord Campbell calls him ' one of the most odious men who 
 ever held the Great Seal of England — selfish, cunning, sneak- 
 ing, and unprincipled,' and says that ' throughout his whole 
 life he sought and obtained advancement by the meanest 
 acts.' We have no great admiration for Lord Guilford ; but 
 the character here given is grossly overcharged. We think 
 that a much fairer estimate of the Judge has been made by 
 Mr. Roscoe, in his ' Lives of Eminent British Lawyers,' who 
 says, ' He was unstained by that loose prostitution in politics 
 and by that abandoned corruption which darkened the char- 
 acters of Sunderland and Jeffreys. Honest in his opinions 
 and in the expression of them, he refused on more than one 
 occasion to sacrifice them to his interests. But his character 
 was altogether destitute of elevation. He was thus led into 
 meannesses, and sometimes into compliances, which men of 
 loftier principles would have despised.' 
 
 Amongst all the Judges in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, and indeed in the whole list from the time of 
 the Conqueror to the present day, there is no one whose name 
 stands higher than that of Sir Matthew Hale. Great as a 
 lawyer and excellent as a man, his reputation shines brighter 
 as time goes on, and there is no Judge upon whose character 
 we dwell more fondly than that of this pious and upright 
 magistrate. He was raised to the Bench by Cromwell, but on 
 
IS2 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the death of the Protector refused to accept a new commission 
 
 from the feeble Richard. At the Restoration he was made 
 
 Chief Baron, and eleven years afterwards Chief Justice of the 
 
 King's Bench, which office he resigned in 1676, when ill-health 
 
 and increasing infirmities made him feel that he could not 
 
 discharge it efficiently. His resignation was looked upon as a 
 
 national loss, and when Lord Chancellor Finch addressed his 
 
 successor, Sir Richard Rainsford, he spoke of the 'deplorable 
 
 cause ' which occasioned it, and said that ' the infirmity of 
 
 that body, which began to forsake the ablest mind that ever 
 
 presided there, hath filled the kingdom with lamentations, 
 
 and given the King many and pensive thoughts how to supply 
 
 that vacancy again.' It has been made matter of reproach to 
 
 his memory that he condemned to death two wretched 
 
 women convicted before him of the crime of witchcraft ; but 
 
 if he believed in witches, so also did Bacon and Sir Thomas 
 
 Browne, and all he had to do was to administer the law, and 
 
 witchcraft was then a capital crime. Mr. Foss takes the right 
 
 view when he says : — 
 
 The censurers forget that, as a Judge, he was bound to administer the law as 
 it stood, without regard either to its severity or even its absurdity ; that the evi- 
 dence, though in these enlightened days it might be deemed puerile and uncon- 
 vincing, being cumulatively circumstantial and entirely uncontradicted, Mly 
 satisfied the jury, whose verdict left the Judge no choice but to pronounce the 
 sentence enjoined by the statute, and that they might as justly condemn every 
 Judge who, contrary to his own private feeling, has doomed a prisoner to capital 
 punishment under an Act that has been since repealed. In censuring him for his 
 belief in witchcraft, they should remember that it was the almost universal per- 
 suasion of the time, in which he had for his associates some of the most eminent 
 men of all ages, and which even now is not wholly abandoned. 
 
 And yet one cannot but heartily wish that he had had the 
 good sense in this matter of Judge Powell, in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, who, when a woman was tried before him for 
 witchcraft, and charged with being able to fly, asked her 
 whether she could fly, and on her confessing the crime, said, 
 ' well, then, you may ; there is no law against flying.' 
 
 But in the same reign the judicial Bench was disgraced by 
 the appointment of such men as Scroggs, Jefireys, and Wright. 
 Of Scroggs and Jeffreys it is needless to speak. Their names 
 have become a by-word for savage cruelty and brutal perver- 
 sion of justice. Wright was made a Baron of the Exchequer 
 in 1684, and succeeded Herbert as Chief Justice of the King's 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 153 
 
 Bench under James 11. Lord Keeper North, who was pressed 
 by Jeffreys to raise him to the Bench, told the King that ' he 
 was a dunce and no lawyer, of no truth or honesty, guilty of 
 perjury, and not worth a groat, having spent all his estate in 
 debauched living.' He died a prisoner in Newgate imme- 
 diately after the Revolution. Saunders, who was one of the 
 Chief Justices made by Charles II., was a coarse and vulgar 
 beast, but an acute lawyer and upright Judge. In the graphic 
 portrait of him by Roger North, who called him ' a mere 
 lump of morbid flesh,' he says : ' As to his ordinary dealing, 
 he was as honest as the driven snow was white ; and why not, 
 having no regard for money, or desire to be rich.' 
 
 ' As for the Judges, they are most of them rogues,' was the 
 opinion expressed by Jeiifreys to Lord Clarendon when he 
 spoke of the Bench in the reign of James II. ; and as he was 
 the Chancellor who had appointed most of them, we need not 
 dispute his authority. They were in truth a miserable set. 
 Perhaps we ought to except Chief Baron Atkyns, Mr. Justice 
 Charleton, Chief Justice Herbert, Mr. Justice HoUoway — who 
 was one of the first passengers in the 'flying coach .... 
 having a boot on each side,' that started from Oxford to Lon- 
 don in May, 1669, and performed the journey in thirteen 
 hours — and Sir Cresswell Levintz. When Baron Heath was 
 asked how he had the conscience to declare the petition of 
 the Seven Bishops a factious libel, he answered, ' You need 
 not trouble yourself with what I said on the Bench ; I have 
 instructions for what I said, and I had lost my place if I had 
 not said it.' And of course we must except Mr. Justice 
 Powell, the bold defender on the Bench of law and justice, at 
 the trial of the Seven Bishops, of whom we regret to find that 
 Mr. Foss can give us only the most meagre information. 
 
 Amongst the immense benefits conferred by the Revolu- 
 tion, not the least has been that of the increased independence 
 and higher character of the Judges. ' It is,' says Mr. Foss, 
 ' one of the glories of the Revolution that it forms a new era 
 in our judicial history. Great was the immediate change in 
 the administration of justice. The Bench was no longer 
 disgraced by coarse and savage brutality, or by servile and 
 courtly obsequiousness ; the principles of law were more 
 strictly defined, and its practice more decently conducted ; 
 
154 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 there were no longer any violent dismissals or convenient 
 political resignations ; and the Judges succeeded each other 
 in quiet independence, scarcely ever leaving the seats they 
 occupied till incapacitated by infirmity, or removed by 
 death.' 
 
 The name of Somers towers above them all ; but we 
 ought not to forget Sir Robert Atkyns, Chief Baron of the 
 Exchequer, who at an earlier period boldly resisted King 
 James's attempt to dispense by his prerogative with penal 
 statutes, and who had a high reputation as a lawyer. Lord 
 Somers was the son of an attorney, and born at Worcester 
 in 1650. While toiling laboriously in his profession, he found 
 time for literature, translating Ovid, and publishing pamphlets, 
 or, as they were then called, tracts. The story is well known 
 that when Pollexfen was offered a retainer to defend the 
 Seven Bishops, he refused to accept it unless a brief was also 
 given to Somers, and the objection taken to his being em- 
 ployed was that he was too young and obscure. y/And yet he 
 was then thirty-seven years old, and must have had consider- 
 able business in the Courts, as is proved by the compliment 
 paid to him by Lord Chancellor Nottingham some years 
 before, who, when Somers modestly dechned to take up the 
 time of the Court going over the same ground as had been 
 occupied by his leaders, said, ' Pray go on, sir ; I sit in this 
 place to hear everybody ; you never repeat, nor will you take 
 up any time, and, therefore, I shall listen to you with 
 pleasure,' ] He was one of the managers of the Conference 
 with the Lords on the question of retaining the word ' abdi- 
 cated ' with reference to James's abandonment of the throne, 
 and was appointed Lord Keeper in 1693, and afterwards 
 received the title of Lord Chancellor with a peerage in 1697. 
 When the Tories came into power at the latter end of 
 William's reign, Lord Somers was forced to resign ; and next 
 year he was impeached by the House of Commons on various 
 charges, one of which was that he had advised the Treaty of 
 Partition of the Spanish Monarchy, ' whereby large territories 
 were to be given up to France ; ' another, that he obtained 
 extraordinary grants for his own benefit ; another, that he 
 had granted a commission to the sea rover, William Kidd, on 
 the understanding that he was to share in the profits. of his 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 155 
 
 piracy ; and, lastly, that he was guilty of maladministration 
 in his Court by delays and illegal orders. He gave in full 
 and satisfactory answers to all these charges, and the pro- 
 ceedings against him were ultimately stopped by the dissolu- 
 tion of the Parliament, in December, 1701. Under Queen 
 Anne, he became Lord President of the Council, and held the 
 office for two years. He survived the queen two years, and 
 held a place in the Cabinet without office under George I., 
 dying at last, at the age of sixty-six, of a paralytic affection, 
 which reduced him to a state of imbecility. Few men have 
 had the good fortune to be 07nni laude cumulati, like Lord 
 Somers. Swift, indeed, when he turned Tory, abused him ; 
 but Swift, while a Whig, had extolled him as the Aristides of 
 his country. A great lawyer, a ripe scholar, a pure-minded 
 patriot, and a statesman, he descended to the grave, beloved 
 and lamented by his country, and its verdict of applause has 
 been ratified by posterity. 
 
 By far the most conspicuous figure on the Common Law 
 Bench in William's reign is Chief Justice Holt, whose patent 
 was dated April, 1689. He presided over the King's Bench 
 for twenty-one years,, that is, during the whole of the reign of 
 King William, and two-thirds of the reign of Queen Anne, 
 ' during which period,' says Mr. Foss, ' the administration of 
 justice was distinguished by learning, sagacity, and integrity, 
 and freed from the suspicion of private bias or courtly 
 dictation ; most effectually securing the confidence and com- 
 manding the applause of all parties, whether Whigs or Tories, 
 from the contrast it presented to the experience of the pre- 
 ceding thirteen years.' He seems to have been the model 
 of a great and upright magistrate, whom neither fear nor 
 favour could move a hair's breadth from the path of duty. 
 In one instance his regard for strict law has, we think, justly 
 exposed him to the charge of inhumanity. On the trials of 
 Charnock and others for high treason, the prisoners applied 
 to have counsel allowed to speak for them, under the pro- 
 visions of an Act then recently passed, which was to come 
 into operation the very next day. But the Chief Justice 
 refused, on the ground that he was bound by the law as it 
 then stood ; and he also refused to put off the trial. It is 
 impossible not to censure such conduct in the strongest terms, 
 
156 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and it remains an indelible blot upon the otherwise stainless 
 character of Holt. Perhaps by nothing is he more popularly 
 known than the story of his famous answer in the Aylesbury 
 case, when he is said to have told the Speaker of the House 
 of Commons, who came to the Court of Queen's Bench with 
 a posse comitatiis of members to summon the Chief Justice to 
 the bar of the House, ' I sit here as an interpreter of the laws 
 and a distributor of justice, and if the whole House of Com- 
 mons were in your belly I would not stir one foot.' 
 
 But, alas ! for the veracity of anecdotes. It is extra- 
 ordinary how few of them that are current in the world will 
 stand the test of investigation. Lord Campbell, in his ' Lives 
 of the Chief Justices,' has shown that the story cannot be 
 true, and that no such proceeding ever took place. It is, we 
 believe, impossible now to ascertain the cause and origin of 
 such a remarkable apostrophe being attributed to the Chief 
 Justice, which has been handed down with a circumstantiality 
 that has all the appearance of truth. On the removal of Lord 
 Somers, Holt was pressed to accept the Great Seal, but he 
 dechned the honour, excusing himself by saying 'that he 
 never had but one Chancery cause in his life, which he lost ; 
 and, consequently, could not think himself fitly qualified for 
 so great a trust' 
 
 The eighteenth century is not distinguished by many 
 great judicial names. Lords Talbot, Hardwicke, and Camden, 
 in Equity, and Lord Mansfield in Common Law, are splendid 
 exceptions to what we must consider upon the whole the 
 respectable mediocrity of the Bench. But we ought not to 
 forget Mr. Justice Blackstone, whose ' Commentaries on the 
 Laws of England,' written with the profound learning of a 
 lawyer and the grace of an accomplished scholar, entitle him 
 to the lasting gratitude of the profession and the public, and 
 who was also a most distinguished judge ; nor Mr. Justice 
 BuUer, whose reputation for legal knowledge, although some- 
 what of the narrowest kind, has never been surpassed, and 
 whose character for impartiality and acuteness was such, that 
 it was said of him that no person if guilty would choose to be 
 tried by him, but all persons if innocent would prefer him for 
 their judge. The beginning of the century opened gloomily 
 for the law. A Lord Chancellor was impeached and found 
 
THE JUDGED OP ENGLAND. 15 
 
 guilty of corruption. We are not going to defend Lor( 
 Macclesfield, who made a vicious system worse by the sordii 
 and extortionate way in which he profited by it, but ii 
 fairness it must be remembered that the crime of sellinj 
 offices in his Court, of which he was convicted, was 
 gangrene of long standing, and had been practised time ou 
 of mind by his predecessors. Mr. Foss says with perfec 
 truth, 'The sale of the lucrative offices of the Court 
 Chancery was a subject of notoriety, and was considered a 
 part of the legitimate profit of its heads, and had even bee 
 in some sort recognised by Parliament' Nor was the practic 
 confined to the Courts of Chancery even after the Revolutioi 
 Luttrell mentions in his Diary that a philazer's place ha 
 fallen to Chief Justice Treby in 1695, and another in idgl 
 ' worth 1,000/.' Lord Chancellor Harcourt and Lord Char 
 cellor Cowper both received considerable sums for th 
 appointments of Masters in Chancery, and it was only i 
 consequence of the insolvency of one of such Masters wh 
 had ruined himself in the South Sea Bubble, that the iniquit 
 of the system was brought to light and Lord Macclesfiel 
 was condemned. The articles of impeachment charged hii 
 with selling offices contrary to law, and with taking exto; 
 tionate sums for them, knowing that the payment we 
 defrayed out of the suitors' money. The gist of the offenc 
 in his case was the extortion. He had increased the price 
 of offices in his gift so enormously that it was almost impo: 
 sible for the holders to reimburse themselves, or even pay th 
 amount, without making an improper use of the money ( 
 which they were the depositees. ' That he employed a 
 agent,' says Mr. Foss, 'to bargain for him and to higg! 
 about the price, there is no doubt ; and that he was aware c 
 the improper use made of the suitors' money, and took mear 
 to conceal the losses that occasionally occurred, there is tc 
 much evidence.' He was found guilty by the Lords, an 
 sentenced to pay the enormous fine of 30,000/. As a proc 
 however, that the prices paid by the Masters for their plac( 
 was considered a legitimate part of a Chancellor's profits, 
 deserves mention that Lord Macclesfield's immediate sui 
 cessor, Lord King, had a considerable addition made to h 
 
iS8 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 salary, as a compensation for the loss occasioned by the stop 
 put to the practice by the result of the trial. 
 
 The same century saw the strange spectacle of a Judge 
 upon the Bench who had been formerly tried for murder 
 Spencer Cowper, a younger brother of the Chancellor, who 
 was appointed a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1727, had as 
 a young man, gone the Home Circuit, and at Hertford made 
 the acquaintance of a girl named Sarah Stout. At the Spring 
 Assizes of 1699 he dined at her mother's house in her com- 
 pany. After the dinner they both left the house, but there 
 was no evidence to show that they both left it too-ether 
 Stout's body was afterwards found in the neighbouring river 
 and Cowper and three others were indicted for murder. There 
 really was no evidence incriminating them worth a straw, and 
 it is clear that the girl drowned herself from disappointed 
 love ; but owing to the feebleness and stupidity of Baron 
 Hatsell, who tried the case, they ran some risk of being 
 hanged, for the jury were out half an hour considering their 
 verdict. Nothing could be more deplorably weak than the 
 Judge's summing up, who actually on a trial for life and 
 death concluded by saying to the Jury, ' I am sensible I have 
 omitted many things, but I am a little faint, and cannot re- 
 peat any more of the evidence.' 
 
 We know, unfortunately, too little of Lord Chancellor 
 Talbot to be able to appreciate the high estimation in which 
 he was held by his contemporaries.^ But the universal regret 
 felt at his death, at the comparatively early age of fifty-three, is 
 his best eulogium. Mr. Foss says, ' no man ever occupied the 
 high position he had attained with more unmixed admiration; 
 nor did the death of any great judicial dignitary ever cause so 
 much general lamentation. . . . The purity of his life, his 
 unblemished integrity, his humanity to the distressed, his 
 liberality to all, his gentleness of manners, his urbanity, cheer- 
 
 ' Lord Campbell says of the late of his ancestor I make this 
 
 Lord Dynevor, a descendant of Lord complaint only as an apology for not 
 
 Chancellor Talbot, ' This venerable being able to tell more of the private 
 
 nobleman is in possession of all the history of Lord Chancellor Talbot, 
 
 Chancellor's papers, but declines to which, perhaps, might have been as 
 
 allow any use to be made of them, full and as interesting as that of Lord 
 
 which seems to me very strange, as I Chancellor Cowper. — ' Lives of the 
 
 am sure that nothing can appear among Chancellors,' vol, iv. p. 687. 
 them that would not be for the honour 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 
 
 fulness an'd wit, gained him so many friends, and were 
 
 universally recognised, that he not only escaped the vitupe 
 
 tion of political writers during his life, but both parties a1 
 
 his death vied with each other, both in prose and verse, 
 
 unqualified encomium on his character.' Lord Campbell s; 
 
 of him, ' As an Equity Judge, Lord Talbot exceeded all 
 
 high expectations which had been formed of him. In my 1< 
 
 journey from the reign of Ethelred to that of George IV 
 
 find this Chancellor alone without an accuser, without 
 
 enemy, without a detractor, without any one from malice 
 
 mistake to cavil at any part of his character, conduct, 
 
 demeanour. ... He never even incurred a suspicion of ( 
 
 ruption in the disposal of offices, or of undue influence in 
 
 decrees.' 
 
 If, however, we have reason to regret the want of details 
 the complete life of such a man, it is with him that ourre^ 
 ceases. Succeeding Chancellors and Chief Justices and Jud 
 of whom we care to know anything have so often sat for tl 
 portraits, that we confess when we see or hear of a new 1 
 graphy of any of them, we feel something like Sir Wa 
 Scott's dog, which used to run away with a growl when he s 
 . a painter enter his master's room with an easel and a brusl 
 his hand. 
 
 To say nothing of Lord Campbell's ' Lives,' and L 
 Brougham's vigorous sketches, Roscoe, and Welsby, ; 
 Harris, and Twiss, and Townshend, have made us fami 
 with the characters in their strength and in their weakness 
 Hardwicke, and Camden, and Mansfield, and Thurlow, ; 
 Wedderburn, and Erskine, and Eldon, and Ellenboroui 
 and we seem to know all about them, almost as well a 
 they were our contemporaries. — Hardwicke, who held 
 Great Seal longer than any of the Lord Chancellors exc 
 three, who was one of the most eloquent orators of his c 
 and of whom it was said that, ' when he pronounced his 
 crees. Wisdom herself might be supposed to speak.' — Came 
 the friend and colleague of Chatham — the popular juc 
 whose portrait was placed in the Guildhall, with a Latin 
 scription by Dr. Johnson, designating him as the zeal 
 supporter of English liberty by law. — Mansfield, the four 
 of our commercial law, who tempered with the good sens 
 
i5o ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 equity many of the harsh and crabbed principles of the com- 
 mon law, and of whom Lord Thurlow used to say that ' ninety- 
 nine times out of a hundred he was right in his opinions and 
 decisions, and when once in a hundred times he was wron?, 
 ninety-nine men out of a hundred would not discover it. He 
 was a wonderful man.' — Thurlow, with his Jupiter Tonans 
 look, and an intellect that put Johnson on his mettle. ' I honour 
 Thurlow, Sir,' said he ; ' Thurlow is a fine fellow ; he fairly 
 puts his mind to yours.' — Wedderburn — the ingenious rea- 
 soner and brilliant speaker,' who attained the highest prizes 
 of the legal and political career, yet died a mere despised 
 and disappointed courtier, because he had no real dignity of 
 character. — Erskine, the great orator of the EngUsh Bar, but 
 a very poor judge and politician. — Eldon, the most profound 
 in his knowledge of Equity, and the most involved and ob- 
 scure in his utterance of it, of all the Chancellors who have 
 occupied the Woolsack. — And last of all, EUenborough, with 
 his rough manners, his masculine intellect, and his bigoted 
 opposition to law reforms, who, when a Bill was brought in 
 for abolishing the punishment of death in cases of stealing 
 above the value of five shillings, said, ' My Lords, if we suffer 
 this Bill to pass we shall not know where to stand ; we shall 
 not know whether we are upon our heads or our feet.' 
 
 Space fails us, or we should like to speak of Grant and 
 of Stowell (whom, however, as a civilian, Mr. Foss does 
 not include in his list), and of Lyndhurst, and of others 
 who have more recently passed away from amongst us, 
 or have left the Bench. We doubt whether Mr. Foss 
 has done wisely in introducing the present occupants of the 
 Bench. He says that he resolved to limit his account of 
 them to little more than the formal mention of the facts 
 already publicly given in the peerages and other periodical 
 lists, and to avoid offering any opinion on their respective 
 judicial merits, which it would be presumptuous in him 
 to criticise. But such skeletons of lives are really value- 
 
 ' His fierce attack upon Benjamin immense effect in exasperating tlie 
 Franklin before the Privy Council had Americans against Eagland. 
 Sarcastic Sawney, full of spite and hate, 
 On modest Franklin poured his venal prate ; 
 The calm philosopher, without reply. 
 Withdrew — and gave his country liberty. 
 
THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND. i6i 
 
 less, and Mr. Foss might without any loss have reduced his 
 nine volumes to eight. 
 
 There is no body of men in this country whom their 
 fellow-citizens are disposed to treat with more respect and 
 deference than the Judges, and great must be the falling off 
 on their part before they can forfeit the homage which all are 
 willing to pay. It is no part of our duty to instruct any Lord 
 Chancellor in the mode of his appointments ; but when we 
 remember that he is responsible for the choice of men to fill 
 up vacancies on the Bench, we may, in common with all who 
 feel the importance of the reputation of those high magistrates 
 of the commonwealth, express an earnest hope that he will 
 take care that the character of the Bench is not lowered. 
 It must not be forgotten that a knowledge of law, although 
 indispensable, is not the sole qualification of a judge. Twice 
 every year at least each county is visited by two of the com- 
 mon law Judges, who, representing the Crown in its noblest 
 office of dispenser of justice, take precedence of the highest 
 peers, and are looked up to with reverence and awe by the 
 populace. In them are expected not only legal learning and 
 acuteness, but also the manners of gentlemen, and something 
 of the accomplishments of scholars. Whether those expecta- 
 tions are not sometimes disappointed it is not for us to say. 
 For integrity of conduct and absolute impartiality on the 
 Bench the Judges of England may challenge comparison with 
 the world. 
 
 M 
 
i62 JiSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 LITERARY STYLE} 
 
 ' Fraser's Magazine,' March, 1857. 
 
 Although we have placed Archbishop Whately's work on 
 Rhetoric at the head of this article, and we propose to say 
 something on the subject of literary style, which occupies a 
 considerable portion of his book, it is not our intention to 
 analyse or discuss the rules of composition, so much as to 
 exhibit some peculiarities of it amongst the writers of the 
 present day, and call attention to some faults which, if allowed 
 to pass unnoticed, are likely to produce mischievous effects 
 on the future literature of England. And as the best kind of 
 instruction is that which teaches by examples, we think we 
 shall be doing good service to the republic of letters if we 
 devote a few pages to the task of pointing out specimens of 
 good, and exposing what we believe to be false and vicious, 
 modes of style. 
 
 It cannot-: be said that this is either inopportune or un- 
 necessary. We live in an age of book-making, and authors 
 multiply so fast that it is almost a distinction not to have 
 published. Men and women rush now-a-days into print with 
 an alacrity which has become alarming. Nobody of the 
 slightest note dies without entailing upon the public a 
 biography of half-a-dozen volumes ; and every tourist to 
 Switzerland or the Rhine considers himself entitled laisscr 
 trotter sa plume, and send an account of his travels to the 
 publishers. Few, however, ask themselves whether they have 
 anything to communicate which, as regards either matter or 
 manner, is worth imparting to the world ; and our shelves 
 groan under the weight of books which will soon be as utterly 
 forgotten as if they had never existed. But in the meantime, 
 
 ^ I. Elemmis of Rhetoric. Viy'Kx'^axi. 2. English, Past and Present. By 
 
 Whately, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. Richard Chevenix Trencli, B.D. Lon- 
 London : 1851. don: 1855. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 163 
 
 some wretched varieties of style are springing up which 
 threaten to infect our whole literature, and unless the growth 
 is vigorously checked, posterity, may suffer from the preva- 
 lence of a corrupt taste in composition, and permanent injury 
 may be done to the noble inheritance of language we have 
 received from our ancestors. We propose therefore to deal 
 with the question as its importance deserves, and we shall en- 
 deavour to write with perfect fairness, although it may be in 
 some cases with severity. 
 
 It has been well said that style is the incarnation of 
 thought, and that le style est rJiomme ; but we will use a more 
 homely illustration. Style is to the subject matter very much 
 what cookery is to food ; and the parallel might be carried 
 into considerable detail without ceasing to be appropriate. 
 Thus, raw meat will support life, and the culinary art is not 
 for that purpose absolutely necessary. So mental nutriment 
 may be extracted from heaps of undigested facts, however 
 repulsive the manner in which they are flung together. Again, 
 good cookery will render palatable the most uninviting food. 
 Excellent soup is made from bones ; and we believe that M. 
 Soyer can, at the cost of a farthing, produce a capital dish 
 out of almost nothing. And an attractive style will throw a 
 charm over the most unpromising subject, and rivet the atten- 
 tion of the reader when, without that attraction, he would 
 turn away in weariness or disgust. But there are bad as well 
 as good cooks ; not only cooks that give a piquant relish to 
 ordinary food, but, as we all know to our cost, cooks who can 
 and do spoil the choicest viands. Need we say that the best 
 story may be spoiled in the telling, and that there are writers 
 who possess a fatal facility for rendering whatever subject 
 they discuss both tiresome and repulsive ? 
 
 Or, to vary the metaphor, we may compare literary to 
 architectural style, and as the same stones in the hands of the 
 builder will form the most beautiful or the most unsightly 
 edifice — the Parthenon of the Acropolis or the National Gal- 
 lery of Trafalgar Square— so from the same subject-matter 
 the pen may produce the dullest or the most interesting book. 
 
 So great is the success and so brilliant the reward of an 
 attractive style, that it is to us a matter of astonishment that 
 more earnest endeavours to acquire it are not made by those 
 
1 64 £SSAyS CRI7ICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 who aspire to the dignity of authorship. A good style will 
 secure to a work a favourable reception with the pubhc, much 
 more than in proportion to what its merits in other respects 
 deserve. There are some books — few indeed in number, we 
 admit— which have been kept afloat on the stream of time, 
 almost solely by the buoyancy of their style. And by this 
 we do not mean merely the grammatical and proper arrange- 
 ment of words in each sentence, but the due relation of sen- 
 tences to each other. A rhythmical structure ought to exist, 
 not only in the separate but in the collective periods ; and 
 the warp and woof of the entire texture should be so woven 
 as to preserve continuity of pattern, and produce the effect of 
 an harmonious whole. It is the charm of his easy, natural, 
 unaffected manner, which still maintains Hume at the head of 
 English historians, nor do we think he is likely to be displaced. 
 We may accuse him of unfairness and partiality, and convict 
 him of inaccuracy, but the verdict will be, as the French say, 
 guilty under extenuating circumstances, and the extenuating 
 circumstance in the case of Hume is his style. The shallow 
 morality of Paley may be, and we hope is, exploded as the 
 philosophy which is to train up the youth of England in the 
 ways of virtue and truth ; but his works are models of com- 
 position, and will be read with delight by those who disap- 
 prove his doctrines but are fascinated by the clear transparency 
 of his style. In his 'Aids to Reflection,' Coleridge expresses 
 in enthusiastic terms his admiration of the manner, while 
 dissenting from the matter, of Paley. ' How gladly,' he says, 
 ' would I surrender all hope of contemporary praise, could I 
 even approach to the incomparable grace, propriety, and per- 
 suasive facility of his -writings.' Cobbett, again, is an author 
 whose style will alwaj's secure for him a distinguished place 
 amongst English writers. Those who dissent most from his 
 political views, and care nothing for the opinions of the arch- 
 radical, may read with delight, and derive instruction from, 
 the works of one who was perhaps the most vigorous writer 
 of Saxon English that can be found in the whole range of our 
 literature. He knew how to put forth the utmost strength of 
 his native tongue, and whatever he wrote is distinguished by 
 a racy, sinewy, and idiomatic style. But it has one conspi- 
 cuous blemish. It is defaced by an immoderate use of italics. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 165 
 
 This is a great and frequent fault They are intended to 
 
 supply the place of emphasis in speaking, but the whole force 
 
 is lost when they are employed too constantly and without 
 
 necessity. 
 
 Men doubt because they stand so thick i' the sky, 
 If they be stars that paint the galaxy. 
 
 In Cobbett's pages they are as thickly strewn as leaves in 
 Vallombrosa, and appear like ugly finger-posts telling the 
 reader what path he must pursue and to what objects he must 
 pay attention. A writer ought to trust to the collocation of 
 his words to mark the emphatic parts of his statement, and 
 not perpetually put up notices to point out his meaning : and 
 it is curious that Archbishop Whately should so often fall 
 into the same mistake ; for no author with whom we are 
 acquainted less requires such factitious aid. His style is pel- 
 lucid to a remarkable degree, and none but those who are 
 wilfully blind or hopelessly stupid can misunderstand what he 
 says. He has a wonderful power of apt and happy illustra- 
 tion, drawn chiefly from images of external nature. And this 
 gives a liveliness and force to his style which make every sub- 
 ject which he discusses not only interesting but clear to the 
 dullest comprehension. 
 
 We may instance also the Letters of Cowper, and the 
 works of Southey and Washington Imng, as examples of 
 what may be effected by charm of manner. And as we have 
 mentioned the best of American writers, we are tempted to 
 quote a single passage as a specimen of his style. It is, we 
 think, exquisitely beautiful, and we know not where we can 
 find a more affecting image of that most sorrowful of all 
 sorrowful things, a Broken Heart : — 
 
 She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove, graceful in its 
 form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it 
 suddenly withering when it should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it droop- 
 ing its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf until, wasted and perished 
 away, it falls, even in the stillness of the forest ; and as we muse over the beauti- 
 ful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or the thunderbolt that could have 
 smitten it with decay. 
 
 Style, in fact, is an alchemy which can transmute the 
 basest metal into gold. It is to the writer what manner is to 
 the individual— that by which we are at once either attracted 
 
1 66 JISSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 or repelled ; and the most interesting subject may be so 
 handled as to inspire the reader with nothing but disgust. 
 
 We may illustrate this by an example on a large scale. 
 
 No one who is at all competent to form a judgment on the 
 
 question, can doubt that in point of calibre— dind as destined 
 
 to influence the speculations and opinions of men on the most 
 
 important subjects that can occupy the human mind — the 
 
 prose literature of Germany is superior to that of France. 
 
 But its momentum is impeded, and the number of its readers 
 
 sensibly narrowed, by the astounding heaviness and desperate 
 
 clumsiness of its style. And, we may remark in passing, 
 
 there seems in this to be almost a providential safeguard, if we 
 
 consider the nature and tendency of much that is published 
 
 in that vast hive of busy thinkers and laborious writers. Mr. 
 
 De Quinccy, in one of his delightful Essays, which have within 
 
 the last few years been collected and published in America, 
 
 and are now at last in the course of publication in England,' 
 
 thus speaks of German composition : — 
 
 Whatever is bad in our 0%^'n ideal of prose style, whatever is repulsive in our 
 own practice, we see there carried to the most outrageous excess. Herod is out- 
 Ileroded, Stemhold is out-Stemholded, with a zealotry of extravagance that really 
 seems like wilful burlesque. 
 
 Its chief characteristics are involution and prolixity. The 
 sentences are of suffocating length, and they are coiled, to- 
 gether, parenthesis within parenthesis, like the folds of a 
 monstrous snake, so as to bewilder and confound the reader. 
 Instead of breaking up his matter into small and manageable 
 pieces, in the shape of short and readable paragraphs, a 
 German writer thinks it enough to quarry it out in an un- 
 wieldy mass, and gives himself no trouble about its form, 
 structure, or polish. Indeed, we doubt if he ever bestows a 
 thought upon the manner of saving anything that comes up- 
 ]x-rmost in his mind. But what man of woman born, not a 
 ( '.crman, can digest a book made up of passages, each vaiying 
 in IciiL^lh from twchc to twenty or thirty lines (we have 
 counted so many)— unrelieved b}- a single break, even so 
 much as a semicolon— so that long before the end of the para- 
 graph is reached, the memory lias forgotten the introductory 
 part, which can alone render the meaning intelligible > Of 
 ' Tliis was written in 1S57. 
 
LITERARY STYLE. '67 
 
 Kant it i, said, that ^ -^::2^'S^:^.^- 
 
 a subiect, before he has time to form an idea ot it, ^^lllcn, 
 vithoit those quaUfications, hmitations, and excep.o-^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 in the writer's judgment, be erroneous. Hence follows tha 
 discompounding of words-that tearing ^"^^^^7^ P^' 
 tions from their verbs, and that aggregation of subsidiary 
 sentences, which make a Chinese puzzle of a large part of the 
 prose literature of Germany. _ 
 
 It is this careless disregard, or rather positive contempt 
 of composition, which renders it so repulsive to foreigners, and 
 deters even those who are accurately acquainted with the lan- 
 guage from reading works which would othenvise invite, and 
 in many instances well repay, perusal, 
 
 In direct opposition and contrast to the heavy lumber- 
 wagon of German, is the light, quick post-chariot of French 
 style. This corresponds also with, and is partly the effect of, 
 certain well-known traits of the national character. No people 
 have carried the art of conversation to such perfection as the 
 French, and with none is it felt to be so much a social neces- 
 sity. Conversation, as distinct from monologue, is more 
 practised and better understood in France than in any other 
 country in Europe. But this, of itself, requires and produces 
 brevity of expression. It rests on the give-and-take principle, 
 and is absolutely opposed to long-winded monopoly of talk. 
 And that happy faculty of dexterous arrangement which dis- 
 tinguishes the nation, and which is so remarkably exhibited 
 by French soldiers in a campaign, appears also in the neat- 
 ness and accuracy of French style.' We will not go so far as 
 Mr. De Quincey, who asserts that ' such a thing as a long or 
 an involved sentence could not be produced from French 
 literature, though a Sultan were to offer his daughter in mar- 
 riage to the man who should find it;' but certainly the oc- 
 
 ' We remember visiting the citadel at the extremity of a covered sap 
 
 of Antwerp shortly after its siege and through which the storming party was 
 
 capture by the French in 1832, and we to have rushed, if the place had not 
 
 ■were struck by the tastefiil way in which surrendered immediately before the in- 
 
 a little wicker gate had been arranged ' tended assault. 
 
1 68 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 currence is so rare as almost to justify the reward proposed 
 for the discovery. 
 
 In English Literature, on the contrary, there would be no 
 difficulty in finding such sentences in abundance. Careless- 
 ness about style has been a national failing of a very old date ; 
 and it has its origin in one of the most marked features of 
 our character. We pride ourselves upon being a practical 
 people ; and, provided that a given end of utility is attained, 
 we are too apt to disregard the means by which it is accom- 
 plished. This is strikingly shown in the architecture which 
 prevailed in England until the last few years, when happily 
 we may date the commencement of a better taste. The main 
 object of houses is to provide shelter and comfort, and of 
 churches to furnish accommodation. And what could be more 
 miserable than the style of the houses and churches which 
 were built during the last two hundred years .■" To say that 
 they were ugly, but faintly expresses the utter ignorance or 
 contempt of all the laws of architecture which they ostenta- 
 tiously displayed. Beauty and grace, and harmony and pro- 
 portion, were things almost unknown to our builders ; and the 
 consequence has been such an array of unsightly structures 
 as gives positive pain to the eye that has been instructed in a 
 better school. 
 
 To revert to our Literature. It would be difficult to name 
 an English writer of the seventeenth century who in point of 
 correctness will bear comparison with the prosateurs Fran^ais 
 of the same period. We are not now speaking of eloquence, 
 for in this we can boast of a proud pre-eminence. Neither 
 Bossuet nor Massillon nor Bordaloue can be put in compe- 
 tition with our own Jeremy Taylor. And many passages of 
 Milton's ' Areopagitica,' or his ' Reformation in England,' 
 and some also of the ' Hydriotaphia,' or ' Urn Burial ' of Sir 
 Thomas Browne, are loftier in thought and grander in expres- 
 sion than anything that can be found in the whole literature 
 of France. But as regards harmony of construction, attention 
 to grammar and grace, and polish and accuracy, and all that 
 betokens finish in composition, the French writers of that age 
 are far superior to the English. There is hardly a sentence 
 in Bossuet or Pascal which is not perfectly good French even 
 at the present day. A word or two may have become obso- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 169 
 
 lete or changed in meaning ; but there are no solecisms in 
 grammar, and there is no slovenliness of construction. Tlic 
 case, however, is very different with our own authors ; and avc 
 are perhaps hardly aware how often they offend in both these 
 respects, until our attention is specially directed to the sub- 
 ject. In truth, the great English writers of the seventeenth 
 century seem to have despised composition as an art, and 
 they sometimes remind us of the story of the proud old Ger- 
 man emperor who, when corrected at the council-board for a 
 lapsus lingtice which he had just committed in defiance of 
 Priscian, struck his hand fiercely on the table and exclaimed, 
 'Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticam !' Giants 
 indeed they were in intellectual strength, but they poured out 
 the fulness of their thoughts without troubling themselves as 
 to the form in which they were expressed. And it must be 
 borne in mind that the English language was in an unfixed 
 and transitionary state for a long period after the revival of 
 letters had taken place under the united influence of the 
 printing-press and the Reformation. It was uncertain whether 
 the Latin or the Saxon element, which were struggling for 
 the mastery, would predominate ; and every writer thought 
 himself at liberty to coin ' long-tailed words in 'osity and 
 »^>'ok)g.j{,' without reference to the genius of the language, or 
 their fitness to be adopted as members of the Anglo-Saxon 
 family. In his epistle dedicatory to his ' Rival Ladies,' ad- 
 dressed to Lord Orrery, Dryden says, ' I have endeavoured to 
 write English as near as I could distinguish it from the tongue 
 of pedants and that of affected travellers ; only I am sorry 
 that, speaking so noble a language as we do, we have not a 
 more certain measure of it as they have in France, where they 
 have an Academy erected for that purpose, and endowed with 
 large privileges by the present King.' Nothing shows more 
 plainly the little attention that was paid to style, than the 
 way in which the finest passages are often marred by the in- 
 troduction of common colloquial and even vulgar expressions. 
 And here we would carefully distinguish between terms which 
 have become degraded by lapse of time, and those which never 
 had an elevated use. We stumble upon them, in reading the 
 old English classics, as unexpectedly, and regard them as much 
 out of place, as boulders which have been torn from their 
 
170 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 native and naked rocks, and transported by an unknown 
 agency into the midst of fields smiling with flowers and teeming 
 with luxuriant vegetation. Thus Barrow talks of a 'pat allu- 
 sion to a known story ;' and we not unfrequently find in his 
 noble sermons, so full of heart-stirring eloquence, such pas- 
 sages as the following :— ' It may also be expedient to put the 
 world out of conceit that all sober and good men are a sort of 
 such lumpish or sour people that they utter nothing but flat 
 and drowsy stuff.' 
 
 Nor indeed was it until a comparatively late period that 
 some of the commonest and most elementary rules of grammar, 
 as now observed, found general acceptance with even the best 
 authors. For instance, far down into the last century, the 
 auxiliary verb was joined to the preterite, instead of the past 
 participle ; and in fact the distinction between the two was 
 almost disregarded. 
 
 It is, however, folly to imagine that exellence in literaiy 
 composition can be attained without care and labour. Cobbett 
 indeed has laid down the rule — ' Never think of mending what 
 you write : let it go : no patching. As your pen moves, bear 
 constantly in mind that it is making strokes which are to 
 remain for ever.' But independently of the fact that the 
 latter part of this advice seems to nullify the former — for 
 surely nothing that is destined for immortality can be pro- 
 duced by man without the hnprchns labor which is one of the 
 conditions of human excellence — what Cobbett here says 
 must be taken with an important qualification. It is quite 
 true that when a good style is once formed, it may be best to 
 write without thinking much about it, lest the rule \k\z.\. ars est 
 cclarc arteiii should be violated ; but until that is the case, too 
 much attention can hardly be paid to the choice of words and 
 collocation of sentences. An expert swimmer enjoys the 
 exercise without bestowing a thought upon the mechanical 
 action of his limbs ; but he who plunges into deep water 
 without having first learned how to swim, makes a few awkward 
 struggles, and then finds his way to the mud at the bottom. 
 Nor do \\c think that in any case it is safe to dismiss altogether 
 care about the manner of composition. And the example of 
 great writers proves the truth of what we assert. It is said 
 that the beginning of Plato's ' Republic' was found written in 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 171 
 
 his tablets in a great variety of ways ; and yet Plato is an 
 author who has never been surpassed in the beauty and 
 transparency of his style. Nicole tells us that Pascal fre- 
 quently spent twenty days in the composition of a single 
 Provincial Letter, and sometimes commenced the same letter 
 seven or eight times before he satisfied himself with the re- 
 sult. And Voltaire used to keep before him on his table, 
 when engaged in the task of writing, the ' Petit Car^me ' of 
 Massillon and the tragedies of Racine. 
 
 We wish, therefore, that more pains were taken than has 
 been the custom in our schools and colleges to teach habits of 
 correct and graceful English composition. It is indeed won- 
 derful how much this has been neglected, and to what a 
 disproportionate extent the time and" attention of the young 
 have been devoted to the acquisition of a minute and critical 
 knowledge of two dead languages, without help or instruction 
 in the study of their own. Not that we mean for a moment to 
 undervalue the advantages of accuracy in classical scholarship, 
 which is nothing unless it is accurate ; but we may say to 
 those charged with the responsible office of education, ' This 
 ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.' 
 And indeed the two are not only not opposed, but the one is 
 perhaps the best mode of acquiring the other. Translations 
 from the classic authors are of admirable use in forming habits 
 of correct composition, if what ought to be considered good 
 translation is properly understood. By this term we do not 
 mean a bald, stiff" rendering of the original — literally 'upsetting 
 it' iiibersctsimg) as the Germans call it— but choosing"always 
 the most appropriate and equivalent word, giving idiom for 
 idiom, and clothing the sentences in an English, and not in a 
 Greek or Latin dress. Another useful method is to require 
 students to write letters or narratives on easy familiar sub- 
 jects—not themes or formal essays on Virtue or Happiness, 
 or the Summum Bonum, which invariably produce a weak 
 stilted, and inflated style. They should always bear in mind 
 the well-known answer said to have been given by an eminent 
 prelate to a young clergyman who asked him for advice as to 
 the composition of a sermon — ' Read over what you have 
 written, and whenever you come to any passage which you 
 think particularly fine — strike it out.' 
 
 
172 
 
 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Nor need there be any apprehension lest attention to rules 
 and imitation of good models in learning the art of compo- 
 sition, should produce a monotonous uniformity of style. 
 Characteristic differences will insensibly arise, having their 
 origin in the separate constitution of each writer's mind, the 
 individuality of which will be preserved in the expression of 
 his thoughts, just as differences in handwriting exist amongst 
 those who have been taught by the same master. 
 
 Indeed, every author who has any originality of thought, 
 and whose works are worth reading or remembering, has a 
 mode of expression peculiar to himself. He paints, so to speak, 
 after his own manner. The style of Isaiah is not the style of 
 Ezekiel or Jeremiah ; and St. Paul differs in the character 
 of his writings from the other apostles, as much as — to use his 
 own beautiful simile — one star differeth from another star in 
 glory. His abrupt transitions, his long parentheses, his 
 vehement adjurations, have no counterpart in the Epistles of 
 St. Peter or St. John. Those two magnificent chapters, the 
 fifteenth of the ist Corinthians, and the eleventh of Hebrews, 
 the one on the Resurrection and the other on Faith, could only 
 have been written by the great Apostle of the Gentiles. 
 
 It has been so in all ages of the world. If we turn to the 
 two earliest historians of Greece whose works have come down 
 to us, Herodotus and Thucydides, separated in point of time 
 by less than a single generation, we see a difference in style 
 which can only be explained by a difference in the mental 
 idiosyncrasy of the writers. The gossipping, conversational 
 narrative of the one, is the exact reflex of a mind which 
 looked with almost childish wonder upon whatever was strange 
 in nature or in art, and devoured with credulous avidjty the 
 tales which were sometimes palmed off upon the Halicarnassian 
 traveller. In Thucydides we see thoughts struggling to ex- 
 press themselves in a language whose wondrous strength and 
 flexibility were not yet known, and which was not sufficiently 
 developed to respond fully to the call of the deep-thinking and 
 serious historian. But independently of this, it cannot be 
 denied that Thucydides violates the rules of grammar in a 
 way which admits of no excuse, and which can only be explained 
 on the supposition that he was too intently occupied with the 
 importance of his subject— that great war in which he had 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 173 
 
 himself been an actor and a sufferer — to bestow much care 
 upon the manner of his narrative. Plato, again, and Aristotle, 
 stood to each other in the relation of master and pupil, and 
 yet what an immense difference there is- between them in 
 style ! The luxuriant fulness of the one is as much contrasted 
 with the elliptic brevity of the other, as the two kinds of 
 philosophy which, under the names of Platonic and Aris- 
 totelian, formed separate schools, and divided the allegiance 
 of the ancient world. 
 
 In the Latin writers we have dissimilarities quite as striking. 
 The style of Livy is as unlike the style of Tacitus as a picture 
 of Watteau is unlike a picture of Rembrandt or Salvator Rosa. 
 And different from and transcending both is that of the great 
 master of the Latin language, Cicero. But in this respect the 
 Roman orator stands amongst his countrymen peerless and 
 alone. Nothing can exceed the exquisite music of his periods, 
 and the collocation of his words is so perfect, that not one of 
 them can be changed without impairing the beauty of the sen- 
 tence. If Coleridge's test of a good style is correct — namely, 'its 
 untranslateableness in words of the same language without in- 
 jury to themeaning,'- — the condition is exactly fulfilled byCicero. 
 To say nothing of his eloquence, his language is always that 
 of the urbanus vir — the polished Roman gentleman ; and the 
 only objection that we can make to it is, that a habit of perusing 
 his works almost unfits us for the appreciation of any other 
 Latin prose author. 
 
 We might illustrate what we have said about the indi- 
 viduality of a writer's manner by going through the list of our 
 great English authors, and pointing out the characteristics of 
 the Divines of the seventeenth century, and of Fuller, Bacon, 
 Milton, Clarendon, Dryden (who wrote excellent prose), 
 Sir Thomas Browne, Burnett, Bolingbroke, Swift, Addison, 
 De Foe, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many others, but for this we 
 have not space. We will proceed at once to Gibbon, whose 
 style is in many respects remarkable, and corresponds closely 
 with the character of his mind. 
 
 Gibbon was a timid infidel, one who had not the courage 
 openly to attack Christianity, but did all in his power to 
 undermine it by dark insinuations feebly masked under the 
 show of candour and impartiality. He is the great master 
 
174 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 of the art of sneering. This is in fact the key-note of his 
 style. His peculiar manner enables him to be unfair and 
 disingenuous in the highest degree, if not without detection, at 
 least without direct conviction. He never openly advances an 
 opinion which he might find it difficult or inconvenient to 
 defend. Instead of asserting, he insinuates, and instead of 
 distinctly saying what he thinks, he takes refuge in some am- 
 biguous proposition which, however, does not fail to imply his 
 real sentiments. As Archbishop Whately has well described 
 it, ' His way of writing reminds one of those persons who never 
 dare look you full in the face.' Instead of taking the reader 
 straight up to an object, he leads him to it by a circuitous and 
 not very discernible path. The artfulness of his attack on the 
 Christian religion consists in his apparent candour. Through 
 the pages of his two famous chapters on that subject an insi- 
 dious poison is distilled, and yet so skilfully is it mixed, that it 
 would be difficult to select a single passage which the historian 
 could not defend as consistent with the faith of the most 
 orthodox believer. But the impression left, and .intended to 
 be left, on the mind of the reader is unmistakable, and it is 
 adverse to the idea of the divine origin of Christianity. 
 
 What can be more unfair — we had almost said malignant — 
 than the words in parenthesis in the f&Uowing passage from a 
 note at the foot of one of his pages .' The italics are our own : — 
 
 ApoUonius of Tyana was born about the same time as Jesus Christ. His life 
 (that of the former) is related in so fabulous a manner by his disciples, that we are 
 at a loss to discover whether he was a sage, an impostor, or a fanatic. 
 
 So far wc have been speaking of what may be called the 
 dishonest artifices of Gibbon's style, but its general character 
 is that of lofty magnificence. The march of his narrative is as 
 measured and stately as that of one of the heroes in a tragedy 
 of Corneille. He was constantly impressed with the idea of 
 sustaining the dignity of history. He hardly ever unbends 
 to an anecdote, or condescends to an incident which is not in 
 perfect keeping with the grandeur of his subject — The Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire. We do not, however, mean 
 to say that Gibbon nozvlicrc relaxes from this lofty reserve. He 
 relegates to his notes many a story, ' veiled ' generally, as he 
 expresses it, ' in the obscurity of a learned language,' but hot 
 the less intended to attract attention and stimulate a prurient 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 175 
 
 curiosity. We miss, however, in the text, traits of character 
 and points of detail. We feel a want of sympathy with the 
 actors in the drama, who are so stiff and magniiicent that we 
 can hardly think of them as men and women of the same flesh 
 and blood and like passions as ourselves. 
 
 Gibbon would never have ventured to introduce into his 
 History such a passage as the following, in which Mr. Macaulay 
 relates the joy of the populace at the downfall and approaching 
 end of the infamous Jeffreys : — 
 
 The street poets portioned out all his joints with cannibal ferocity, and com- 
 puted how many pounds of steak might be cut from his well-fattened carcass. 
 Nay, the vage of his enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in England, 
 they proclaimed their wish that he might go to the place of wailing and gnashing 
 of teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the fire that is never quenched. They 
 exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, and to cut his throat with his razor. 
 
 But we know no writer whose mode of expressing himselt 
 is more characteristic of the individual than the Duke of Wel- 
 lington, who, since the publication of his Despatches, may 
 fairly be ranked amongst authors. They are a model of 
 soldierly simphcity. The Duke goes straight to his point, 
 with the precision and sometimes the force of a cannon-ball. 
 He not only always means what he says, but says what he 
 means with a plainness and brevity which show that in more 
 senses than one he deserves his title of the English Csesar. 
 We confess that when we first read the Despatches, we were 
 not prepared to find them so correct in grammar and expres- 
 sion, and with so few faults which even a fastidious criticism 
 can correct. 
 
 To show, however, how great are the varieties of style even 
 in those who might be expected, from near relationship, and as 
 the result of a common education, to exhibit less of difference 
 than similarity, we can hardly cite a stronger example than 
 that of the two brothers. Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon, than 
 whom no two men were ever more contrasted in their modes of 
 expression. We have no right to place either of them in the 
 exact category of authors, but the judgments of each fill many 
 volumes, and many of them were carefully written before they 
 were delivered. Nothing can be more unlike than the «tyle of 
 the one is to the style of the other. It would be difficult to 
 imagine sentences more obscure, clumsy, and involved than 
 those of Lord Eldon; more clear and fastidiously ■ correct 
 
176 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 than those of Lord Stowell. If any one doubts the fact as to 
 the great Lord Chancellor, let him turn to the volumes of 
 Vesey, where he will find marvellous examples of confused 
 intricacy of expression, which repels from perusal all but those 
 whom professional duty compels to study them. 
 
 Lord Stowell, on the contrary, is distmguished by the 
 mriosa felicitas of his expression. In the arrangement of his 
 periods and choice of his diction he was scrupulously exact, 
 and this sometimes gives an air of quaintness to his style, as 
 for instance in the following passages : — 
 
 They (the seamen) are threatened by the captain, who is certainly a person 
 of lofty prerogative notions, who claims the right to carry them, and says that he 
 can and will carry them, wherever he pleases, even to hell itself, —a very favourite 
 place of consignment in his judgment. 
 
 I think if Mr. Tarbutt chooses to lead up an irregular dance, he cannot expect 
 to be paid for the steps he chooses to take in it. 
 
 That is gross perversion of a very useful practice, and instead of nipping suits 
 in the bud can only make them branch out into a new and inordinate extent of 
 legislation. 
 
 But we turn now to the more immediate object of the 
 present article, which is to review some of the peculiarities of 
 style that distinguish English literature at the present period, 
 and point out some faults which have perhaps too long been 
 allowed to escape notice, or at all events have not received 
 the notice they deserve. And we should naturally begin 
 with the most voluminous author of the day, of whom 
 and of whose great work it is wittily and tersely said in 
 ' Coningsby,' that ' Mr. Wordy wrote the history of the late 
 war in twenty octavo volumes, to prove that Providence was 
 on the side of the Tories.' Need we say that we allude to Sir 
 Archibald Alison .' It is our deliberate opinion that he 
 furnishes the most signal example of what we may charac- 
 terise as imposture of stj-le. And yet he may well laugh at 
 criticism when he looks at the sale of his volumes. We know 
 not how many editions of his ' History ' have passed tlirough 
 the press, and ' the zry is still, they come.' He has no cause 
 to complain that 
 
 populus me sibilat, 
 
 but he may certainly complete the quotation, and say — 
 
 at mihi plaudo 
 Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in area.' 
 
 ' We cannot say we are surprised, inriccurate a scholar. He seems to be 
 but ^^c regret to find Sir A. Al.son so quite ignorant of the rules of Latiu 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 177 
 
 As one of the laws of the association of ideas is contrast, 
 the name of Alison suggests that of Macaulay. He is in 
 some respects the most remarkable writer of his time in 
 England, and beyond all doubt a consummate master of the 
 art of composition. We do not think that in the whole of 
 the volumes of his History which have yet appeared, there is 
 a single carelessly constructed sentence. In the power of 
 painting with words he is almost without a rival. From 
 musty pamphlets, forgotten letters, and mouldy records, he 
 picks out some striking or picturesque incident — a grain of 
 gold in a heap of rubbish — and blends it in the most telling 
 and effective manner with his description or narrative. Some 
 of his passages are such as could only have been written by 
 one who had the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet. We 
 need not quote examples which are familiar to all, such as his 
 description of the Pass of Glencoe and his tale of the horrible 
 massacre there, but we may point out one or two passages 
 which are more likely to escape attention, but in which the 
 careful hand of the artist is equally visible. With what an 
 exquisite touch is the picture of Queen Mary's funeral 
 drawn : — 
 
 The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled, 
 and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on the black plumes of the funeral car. 
 
 In defending the provisions of the Toleration Act as having 
 put an end to religious persecution, an ordinary writer might 
 have mentioned that that persecution had driven thousands 
 beyond the sea. But let us see how Mr. Macaulay expresses 
 the same thought : — 
 
 They put an end at once and for ever to a persecution 
 
 prosody, and frequently misquotes the didicisse, is also a mistake. Again, at 
 
 commonest passages of the best known p. i6i of the same volume we find the 
 
 authors. In vol. i. p. 45 of his recent following :—' Virgil never showed his 
 
 History we find the following laughable knowledge of the human heart more 
 
 mstance !— The poet has said— than when he wrote the line— 
 
 Dalicisse fideliter artes Gnarus, furens quid femina possit.' 
 
 EmoUit mores nee sinit esse feros. ,,. ., 
 
 Virgil wrote no such line, for he was 
 And that is undoubtedly true. Butob- not in the habit of making false quanti- 
 serve he has not said 'nee sinit esse ties. What he did write was— 
 
 Fnraldtf *verf gJ^dlTontJ^ ^°'^-^-' ^-^ 1-^ femina possit. 
 known to Sir Archibald. If the poet Sir A. Alison also misquotes German 
 had said pravos he would have been and even English, to say nothin"- of 
 guilty of a false quantity. Dedicisse for some extraordinary mistakes in French. 
 
 N 
 
178 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent, and God-fearing yeomen 
 and artizans who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the 
 Ocean among the wigwams of Red Indians and the lairs of panthers. 
 
 With what dramatic effect he tells the death of John 
 Temple, Secretary-at-War, the eldest son of Sir William 
 Temple, who persuaded William III. to entrust Hamilton 
 with the negotiation which was to secure the submission of 
 Tyrconnel in Ireland. It is like a scene in a novel. While 
 the coffee-houses were wondering how the King could have 
 been duped by Hamilton and Tyrconnel — 
 
 A gentleman went down to the Temple Stairs, called a boat, and desired to 
 be pulled to Greenwich. He took the cover of a letter from his pocket, scratched 
 a few lines with a pencil, and laid the paper on the seat, with some silver for his 
 fare. As the boat passed under the dark central arch of London Bridge, he sprang 
 
 into the water and disappeared. It was found he had written these words 
 
 There was no signature, but the body was soon found, and proved to be that of 
 John Temple. 
 
 But as the great reviewer must submit to be himself re- 
 viewed, we must express our conviction that the very brilliancy 
 of Mr. Macaulay's style is in some respects its defect. The 
 temptation to write effectively sometimes gets the better of 
 his judgment. His epithets are so strong that they are apt 
 to give an exaggerated idea of an incident or a character. He 
 is too vehement and intense to be safe. His pictures want 
 repose. The light flashes on every point ; and we would 
 willingly sacrifice the most marked antithesis and the most 
 epigrammatic point, for the sake of descriptions which, if less 
 striking, might be more fair and just. If for a moment we 
 might venture to imitate his style, we should say that Mr. 
 Macaulay loves Dutch \\'illiam with a love passing the love 
 of woman, and he hates Marlborough with a hate rivalling 
 the hate of a personal enemy. This inevitably leads to ex- 
 aggeration, and exaggeration in drawing the features of a 
 character produces simply distortion. The power of his style 
 is, however, beyond question admirable. He can make the 
 most prosaic fact subservient to the production of the most 
 powerful effect. He startles the reader, who remembers that 
 the historian is speaking of Luxemburg and William III. of 
 England, by telling him that 
 
 It is probable that, among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were 
 marsh ailed round Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe the 
 
LITERARY STYLE. i79 
 
 two feeblest in h^i^y ^^x^ the hunch-hachd «'..«/ who urged forward the fiery 
 onset of Fmnce, ^x.^ the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 There are two marked peculiarities of Mr. Macaulay's 
 style which we must notice before we leave him. The first is 
 the brevity of his paragraphs. His short, quick periods fall 
 upon the ear like the rapid firing of a well-served battery. 
 The second is his habit, if we may keep up the metaphor, of 
 double-shotting his sentences. By this we mean his fondness 
 for repeating the principal or emphatic word of the period, 
 and avoiding as much as possible a substitute or an equivalent. 
 We know no writer who has so little affection for the pronoun, 
 or who so seldom makes it do duty for the noun. This pecu- 
 liarity often gives force and spirit to a passage, but it is used 
 so constantly that it becomes at last a mannerism. A few 
 examples will give a better idea of this habit than any defini- 
 tion or explanation can do. 
 
 Speaking of Marlborough's position as regards William, 
 
 he says — 
 
 It might therefore have been expected that he would serve his new master with 
 fidelity ; not indeed with ihs fidelity of Nottingham, which was 'Cos. fidelity of con- 
 scientiousness ; not with 'Cos fidelity of Portland, which was the fidelity of affec- 
 tion ; but with the not less stubbomyf(/i;;/()' of despair. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 For all our jurists regarded Ireland as a mere colony — more important indeed 
 than Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, or 
 yamaica, dependent on the mother country. 
 
 Of Madame de Maintenon we are told that she had ' a 
 tact which surpassed the tact of her sex, as much as the tact 
 of her sex surpasses the iact of ours.' The Court of Avaux 
 'pined for nobility with z. pining Z-t once pitiable and ludicrous.' 
 At the siege of Mons, 
 
 All the implements of war had been largely provided by Louvois, the first 
 of living administrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, tlu 
 first of living generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, 
 the first of living engineers. 
 
 If Mr. Macaulay wished to say that Mr. but not Mrs. 
 Smith went to Kensington in an omnibus, he would express 
 it thus : ' Mr. Smith rode to Kensington in an omnibus ; Mrs. 
 Smith did not ride to Kensington in an omnibus.' 
 
 Great as is his power of composition, not even Mr, Macaulay 
 
 M 2 
 
i8o £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 can compete with the historian of the Peninsular War in the 
 description of a battle. In this, Sir William Napier is with- 
 out a rival. We believe he is the first writer, in this country 
 at least, who made the story of a campaign really interesting. 
 And this arises from the individuality of his style. Instead 
 of cold generic statements of military operations in the mass, 
 which perplex and confuse the reader, he gives us life-like 
 details, and makes us in part sharers in the excitement of the 
 strife. We have the whole scene like a picture before us. As 
 we read his vivid narrative we seem to hear the tramp of the 
 charging squadrons, the sharp rattle of the musketry, and the 
 booming thunder of the artillery. 
 
 Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum 
 Perstringis aures : jam litui strepunt : 
 
 Et fulgor armorum fugaces 
 
 Terret equos equitumque vultus. 
 
 One great cause of his success as a writer is that his des- 
 criptions are drawn from personal experience. He has seen 
 what he relates. In the great events which his pen records 
 he has been himself no insignificant an actor ; he has wit- 
 nessed the collision of hostile armies ; he has known 
 
 The triumph and the agony, 
 The rapture of the strife ; 
 
 and has heard ' the earthquake voice of victory ' mingle 
 with the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the 
 dying. 
 
 What can be more animated than the following account of 
 the battle of Albuera : — 
 
 Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke, and rapidly separat- 
 ing itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's masses, 
 then augmenting and pressing onwards as to an assured victory ; they wavered, 
 hesitated, and vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their 
 front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through 
 the British ranks. Myers was killed. Cole, the three colonels— Ellis, Blakeney, 
 and Hawkshawe — fell wounded ; and the Fusilier battalions, struck by the iron 
 tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships ; but suddenly and sternly re- 
 covering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a 
 strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult with voice 
 and gesture animate his Frenchmen ; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking 
 from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open 
 out on such a fair field ; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, 
 fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the horeemen, hovering on the 
 flank, threatened to charge tlie advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonish- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. i8i 
 
 ir.g infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm 
 weakened the stability of their order ; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark 
 columns on their front, their measured tread shook the ground; their dreadful 
 volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts over- 
 powered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as, 
 slowly and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the 
 attack to the farthest edge of the height. Then the French reserve, mixing with 
 the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the flight, but only augmented 
 the irremediable disorder, and the mighty mass giving away, like a loosened cliff, 
 went headlong dovra the steep : the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with 
 blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand un- 
 conquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill. 
 
 And how terribly real is the whole description of the 
 siege and storming of Badajos — a description which, as con- 
 veying to the mind's eye a perfect picture of the scene it 
 intends to represent, stands unrivalled in the history of war. 
 We can only afford space for a single extract : — 
 
 The rampants crowded with dark figures and glittering anns were on one side, 
 on the other the red columns of the British, deep and broad, coming on like 
 streams of burning lava : it was the touch of the magician's wand, a crash of 
 thunder followed, and the storming parties were dashed to pieces by the explosion 
 of hundreds of shells and powder-barrels. For an instant the Light Division 
 soldiers stood on the brink of the ditch amazed at the terrific sight, but then, 
 with a shout that matched even the explosion, they flew down the ladders, or dis- 
 daining their aid, leaped, reckless of the depth, into the gulf below ; and nearly 
 at the same moment, amidst a blaze of musketry that dazzled the eyes, the Fourth 
 Division came running in to descend with a like fury. 
 
 It is curious how few great speakers have been also good 
 writers. It would not however be difficult to assign reasons 
 for this, if oiir limits permitted us to discuss the subject, but 
 it would require a larger space than \\& can at present occupy. 
 Cicero and Burke are splendid exceptions ; the latter is not 
 only the most eloquent of English orators, but, with the 
 exception of Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent of Enghsh 
 authors. But Fox would never have succeeded as an historian. 
 All the fire of his genius seems to have been extinguished 
 when he took up his pen, and we can hardly believe that the 
 fervid orator who delivered the speech on the Westminster 
 Scrutiny, is the same man who wrote the History of the 
 Reign of James II. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is certainly no exception to the rule. He is 
 beyond question the greatest orator in the House of Commons 
 at the present time. Although he is perhaps too subtle a 
 thinker, and we will add, has too conscientious a mind to 
 
1 82 £SSAys CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 attain the highest kind of oratory, the great object of which is 
 to persuade, by carrying as it were by storm the feelings and 
 passions of the audience,— no one can accuse him of not being 
 clear, pointed, and vigorous in debate ; but, on the other hand, 
 no one can deny that he is an obscure and intricate writer. He 
 swims graceful as a swan on the waters of parliamentary strife, 
 but when he takes up his pen he is like the same bird when 
 it leaves its native element and waddles awkwardly on the 
 ground. 
 
 We will quote two passages from his ' State in its Relations 
 with the Church,' either of which, from its involved style and 
 almost studied obscurity, might puzzle an CEdipus. 
 
 For how, as long as the mass of men are in juxtaposition inth evil as a body, 
 should they fail to be tainted by it ; and how should its elasticity and self-propa- 
 gation prove among such materials less powerful over a kindred nature, than the 
 operation of a kindred nature over an adverse one ? 
 
 The meaning of this question, we suppose, is, How should 
 evil, which is congenial to the nature of man, be less powerful 
 than good, which is opposed to that nature .' But we think 
 that even Mr. Gladstone will admit that if we are mistaken, 
 we are not without excuse. 
 
 Again, in the next page, after saying that the inclinations 
 of individuals are variable, and some prevail at one period 
 and others at another, he proceeds as follows : — 
 
 But when in some general practice or law which stands for an expression of 
 sovereign will, corroborated by the testimony of public concurrence, there is 
 embodied some influence which favours the one and obstructs the other of these 
 drifting tides ; this, while it secures for the sym.pathetic principle free scope and 
 action under its own shelter, likewise stands as a fixed barrier against the anta- 
 gonistic principle of its alternate predominance ; so that, for the most part, it is 
 fully able, between two conflicting tendencies, to cast the balance ultimately and 
 permanently in favour of that which harmonizes with itself 
 
 We must leave this passage to explain itself, for we really 
 do not understand it. 
 
 We turn next to the most popular and also the most pro- 
 lific author of the day — Mr. Dickens — whose style, we suppose, 
 is nearly as familiar to our readers as the alphabet. We think 
 he writes too much and too fast ; and unless he takes more 
 care than he seems to think it worth while to do so long as 
 the shilling numbers of any new novel from his pen are sold by 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 183 
 
 thousands, we predict that he will be the destroyer of his own 
 reputation. He has fallen into the habit of repeating himself 
 to a degree which becomes wearisome, and his latter works 
 have proceeded in a descending scale. That which is now 
 issuing from the press, ' Little Dorrit,' is decidedly the worst. 
 His tone is melodramatic throughout ; and by this we do not 
 mean the melodrame of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, whose 
 favourite heroes are highwaymen, and who makes robbery 
 and house-breaking romantic ; but we have in his works 
 neither tragedy nor what used to be called genteel comedy, 
 which really meant ordinary social and domestic life. Mr. 
 Dickens delights in the sayings and doings of strange, 
 grotesque, out-of-the-way people, of whom we hardly ever 
 meet the prototypes in flesh and blood ; and in every one of 
 his tales he fastens some distinctive oddities upon two or three 
 of his characters, and never allows them to speak without 
 bringing out the peculiarity in the most marked and pfominent 
 manner. His portraits are in fact caricatures. He daguerreo- 
 types, so to speak, a particular grimace, and presents it every 
 time that the features come into view. Thus Pecksniff is 
 always sententious and hypocritical ; Micawber is always full 
 of maudlin sentiment and emphatic nonsense ; Gradgrind is 
 always practical, to a degree that ceases to be human ; 
 Mrs. Nickleby is always parenthetical and incoherent ; Mark 
 Tapley is never tired of telling us that he is 'jolly;' Boythorn 
 never opens his hps without being intensely and boisterously 
 energetic ; Major Bagstock always speaks of himself in the 
 third person, as ' J. B.', ' tough old Joe,' ' Joe is rough and 
 tough, sir ! — blunt, sir, blunt, is Joe ;' Uriah Heap is always 
 ' 'umble,' ' very 'umble ; ' and Mrs. Gamp everlastingly quotes 
 as her authority Mrs. Harris. Mr. Dickens has also a passion 
 for personification, and for giving to inanimate objects all the 
 attributes of life. We may take as an instance a passage at 
 the beginning of ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' where he describes a 
 gusty evening : — 
 
 It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on 
 such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with 
 a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so 
 disperse and scatter them, that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, 
 roUing over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking 
 frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the 
 
i84 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury : for, not 
 content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted 
 them into the wheelwright's sawpit, and below the planks and timbers in the 
 yard ; and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and 
 when it did meet with any, whew ! how it drove them on and followed at theit 
 heels ! 
 
 Take, again, the following extravaganza from ' Little 
 Dorrit :' — 
 
 Mr. Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn-road, which had set off from that 
 thoroughfare with the intention of running at one heat down into the valley, and 
 up again to the top of Pent onville -hill ; but which had run itself out of breath in 
 twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. There is no such place in that part 
 now ; but it remained there for many years, looking with a baulked countenance 
 at the wilderness patched with unfruitful gardens, and pimpled with eruptive 
 summer-houses, that it had meant to run over in no time. 
 
 The two opposite poles between which Mr. Dickens con- 
 stantly oscillates, are comic humour pushed to buffoonery, 
 and sentiment carried to maudlin excess. He seems to have 
 little conception of a well-constructed plot, and the interest in 
 his novels is kept up by a succession of detached and shifting 
 scenes, and the introduction of an endless variety of funny 
 persons, while the story is left to drift on without much 
 guidance, and take care of itself as best as it may. His 
 characters are all exaggerations. We doubt if there is one 
 which, as he has drawn it, occurs in real life. The substratum, 
 so to speak, may indeed exist there, but on this he erects a 
 superstructure so fanciful and fantastic that nature disowns 
 the resemblance. Our readers have no doubt seen in the shop 
 windows little grotesque figures in terra cotta of celebrated 
 actors, singers, and musicians, where the head is made mon- 
 strously large in proportion to the rest of the body, and the 
 features are ridiculously exaggerated. These forcibly remind 
 us of Mr. Dickens's characters. He has also a marvellous 
 talent for minute description. No Dutch painter ever depicted 
 an interior with more servile fidelity than Mr. Dickens draws 
 still life with his pen. His marine storeshops, his frouzy 
 dwellings, his dull November streets, his Jews' alleys, and 
 Jacob's islands, rival the pictures of Teniers and Ostade. 
 But while we admire the painter we are apt to grow weary of 
 the writer. The eye of the spectator can take in the whole of a 
 picture at a glance, but the mind of the reader must go through 
 the successive points of a description until it becomes fatigued 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 185 
 
 by the multiplicity of details. A favourite form or rather 
 trick of expression with this author is circumlocution, whereby 
 he gives an air of comic originality to the commonest incidents 
 and most hackneyed sayings. He uses, indeed, a circuitous 
 phraseology as frequently as any of the Barnacle family in 
 his own Circumlocution Office. His satire is keen, but so far 
 as we remember, is never ill-natured. He delights in showing 
 up a foible, whether of character or manners ; and the instru- 
 ment he employs for this purpose is good-humoured irony, in 
 which he playfully says the very opposite of his real meaning. 
 But we are now criticising the genius rather than the style of 
 this remarkable writer ; and yet they are so intimately con- 
 nected that it is difficult to separate them. 
 
 One other fault we must mention before we quit the sub- 
 ject, and that is his habit of pushing an idea to the extreme 
 4^e never lightly touches a subject, and then leaves it to the 
 imagination of the reader to fill up the outline. He hugs the 
 child of his fancy in his arms, fondles it, caresses it, forces it on 
 our attention, and asks us to examine it until we grow tired 
 of the display, and refuse to admire what is so perseveringly 
 obtruded on our notice. No man ever rode a metaphor 
 harder than Mr. Dickens. We will give one example from 
 ' Little Dorrit.' 
 
 It occurs to him to liken an old gentleman who is a good 
 deal under the dominion of his clerk, named Pancks, to ' an 
 unwieldy ship in the Thames .... when all of a sudden a 
 little coaly steam-tug will bear down upon it, take it in tow, 
 and bustle off with it.' After a considerable interval, we are 
 told that the Patriarch 
 
 rose and went to the door by which Pancks had worked out, haiUng that tug by 
 name. He received an answer from some little dock beyond, and was towed out 
 of sight directly. 
 
 Again, three pages further on, we have : — 
 
 Pancks dined with them. Pancks steamed out of his little dock at a quarter 
 
 before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch Pancks instantly 
 
 made fast to him, and hauled him out Pancks took in his victuals as if 
 
 he were coaling ; with a good deal of noise, a good deal of drooping about, and 
 a puff and a snort occasionally, as if he were nearly ready to steam away. 
 
 A page or two still further — 
 
 ' Good night ! ' said Clennam. But the Tug suddenly lightened, and un- 
 trammelled by having any weight, he too was already puffing away into the 
 distance. 
 
1 86 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 And so it goes on chapter after chapter. We have the Tug 
 puffing and snorting and coaling and pulling and hauling ; 
 until we really forget that all the time it is the description of 
 a person and not of a steamboat. 
 
 The rival of Mr. Dickens with the public is Mr. Thackeray— 
 a very different, and in our opinion a very superior, workman 
 in the same craft as a novelist. He belongs, however, specially 
 to the Humourists, — that small but chosen band of writers 
 who, from Rabelais downwards, at rare intervals have thrown 
 out their sportive sallies to delight those who can understand 
 and appreciate the deep meaning which may be veiled under the 
 form of irony. After Rabelais — Swift, Sterne, and Charles Lamb 
 have been the chief leaders of this school ; and of them all we 
 prefer the charming author of the ' Essays of Elia.' His style 
 often reminds us of the sweetest music produced by the lightest 
 touch. His fine-toned irony, his subtle wit and exquisite 
 criticism, have never been surpassed. The nicest shades and 
 glimpses of thought are pencilled off with unrivalled delicacy 
 of touch. His style is the perfect reflex of his own gentle 
 and affectionate nature, which clung so warmly to and yet 
 sported so playfully with the objects of his attachment. Well 
 might he ask — 
 
 Sun and sky and breeze, and solitary walks and summer holidays, and the 
 greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society 
 and candlelight, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities and jests, and 
 irony itself, — do these things go out with life ? 
 
 Can a ghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides when you are pleasant with him ? 
 
 And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part with the intense 
 delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embrace ? Must knowledge come to 
 me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by 
 the familiar process of reading ? 
 
 Southey's ' Doctor ' is also a delightful book of the same 
 class. But it requires ' audience fit though few,' and had 
 better not be approached by those who have no Pantagruelism 
 in their nature, and who are like Charles Lamb's Caledonian, 
 with whom you ' must speak on the square, and clap an 
 extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with 
 a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath.' 
 
 Mr. Thackeray, however, is not always a humourist, and 
 he can write without being satirical. Witness his ' Esmond,' 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 187 
 
 the most carefully written of all his works, and the one in 
 which he has most conspicuously shown that he is a complete 
 master of style. Much as we dislike the stoiy, it is impossible 
 not to admire the consummate skill with which he has there 
 imitated the best writers of the time of Queen Anne, and we 
 can but regret that it is at best only an imitation, a spurious 
 antique, and that the author devoted his powers to the repro- 
 duction of a style which has passed away, and to the composi- 
 tion of a work which must be regarded rather as a literary 
 curiosity than a book of enduring reputation. And we may 
 say the same of those deceptive little books of the class of 
 ' Lady Willoughby's Diary,' ' Cherry and Violet,' and ' Mary 
 Powell,' whose authoresses attempt to realise in prose what 
 Chatterton tried in poetry, and palm off a style 
 
 All deftly masked as hoar antiquity, 
 
 to play tricks upon the public. But although with the aid of 
 antique type and binding, and by means of a broad imitation 
 of the style of the seventeenth century, these books might 
 possibly pass with a careless reader as genuine productions of 
 that period, they betray themselves by the absence of any 
 distinctive peculiarities of style proper to the particular times 
 and persons at which and by whom they profess to be written. 
 They are in fact about as correct as a dress would be made up 
 out of the wardrobes of a courtier of the reign of Elizabeth, 
 and a courtier of the reign of Charles II.' 
 
 In his last two novels, ' The Caxtons ' and ' My Novel,' 
 Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has also striven for a place 
 amongst the humourists, but we think with indifferent success. 
 Humour is certainly not his forte, and no writer who was 
 blest with the vein would have condescended to appear as the 
 servile copyist of the manner of another. To use a nautical 
 metaphor suggested by Mr. Dickens's steam-tug, 'The Caxtons' 
 was laid down on the lines of ' Tristram Shandy,' and the new 
 ship has neither the trim nor the sailing qualities of her model. 
 But we willingly admit that, in point of simplicity and ease of 
 style, there is in his last two works a great improvement. The 
 style of his former novels is too stilted and high-flown, and 
 the author, haunted with the idea of the necessity of keeping 
 up the dignity of his subject, adopted a phraseology too 
 
i88 ^SSJVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 affected for the natural language of ordinary life. Take, for 
 instance, the following passages from ' Rienzi ' : — 
 
 And with scarce less eagerness he laved his enfeebled form and haggard face 
 with the water that stood at hand. He now felt refreshed and invigorated, and 
 began to indue his garments, which he found thrown in a heap beside the bed. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 He glanced over the slain, as the melancholy Hesperus played upon the 
 bloody pool and the gory corslet. 
 
 Even in ' The Caxtons,' Sir Edward cannot condescend to 
 speak of a ' hackney-coachman,' but calls him ' a ministrant 
 of Trivia.' This may be called fine writing, but we think it is 
 ridiculous Euphemism. 
 
 We now come to a school of writers of which the great 
 Hierophant is Mr. Carlyle. He is, we believe, the first who 
 introduced it into this country, having imported it — or, at all 
 events, many of its characteristics — from Germany. We have 
 already attempted to describe some of the features of German 
 prose ; and with respect to the metaphysical writers in that 
 language, we will only add what is wittily said by the Brothers 
 Hare, in their ' Guesses at Truth,' that 'when the dry rot gets 
 into the house of a German philosopher, his disciples pick up 
 handfuls of the dust, and fancy it will serve instead of timber.' 
 
 In Mr. Carlyle's later style, the whole structure of his lan- 
 guage is often in a state of contortion — 
 
 The fire in the caverns of ^Etna conceal'd 
 
 Still mantles unseen in its secret recess ; 
 At length in a volume terrific reveal'd, — 
 
 No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress. 
 
 But it is not his natural manner. His ' Life of Schiller', 
 one of his earliest works, is a well-written biography, composed 
 in an easy, unaffected style, and entirely free from the peculiar 
 mannerism of his subsequent works. 
 
 We will, without comment, give a few specimens of his 
 present style, that our readers may judge of its merits for 
 themselves. 
 
 In his ' Latter-day Pamphlets,' .speaking of the necessity 
 of reform in the administrative establishments in Downing 
 Street, Mr. Carlyle says, ' that to clean out the dead pedan- 
 tries, unrealities, indolent, somnolent impotencies, and accu- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 189 
 
 mulated dung-mountains there, is the beginning of all practical 
 good whatsoever ; and that 
 
 such mountains of pedant exuviae and obscene o\yI-droppings have accumulated in 
 those regioES, long the habitation of doleful creatures ; the old pavements, the 
 natural facts and real essential functions of those establishments, have not been 
 seen for these two hundred years past! Herculean men acquainted with the 
 virtues of running water, and with the divine necessity of getting down to the clear 
 pavements and old veracities ; who tremble before no amount of pedant exuviae, 
 no loudest shrieking of doleful creatures ; who tremble only to live, themselves, 
 like inane phantasms, and to leave their life as a. paltry contribution to the guano 
 mountains, and not as a divine eteriJal protest against them ! 
 
 The career by which Members of Parliament become 
 Prime Ministers is thus described in ' The New Downing 
 Street': — 
 
 Poor wretches, their industry is mob-worship, place-worship, parliamentary in- 
 trigue, and the mutiple x art of tongue-fence ; flung into that bad element, there 
 they swim for decades long, throttling and wrestling one another according to 
 their strength, — and the toughest or luckiest gets to land and becomes Premier. 
 A more entirely linbeautiful class of Premiers was never raked out of the ooze and 
 set on high places, by any ingenuity of man. 
 
 Huge inorganic England, nigh choked under the exuvis of a thousand years, 
 and blindly sprawling amid Chartisms, ballot-boxes, prevenient graces, and bis- 
 hops' nightmares, must, as the preliminary and commencement of organisation, 
 learn to breathe again, — get ' lungs ' for herself again, as we defined it. 
 
 The literature of the present day is defined thus : — 
 
 Canaille of all the loud-sounding levities, and general winnowings of Chaos, 
 marching through the world in a. most ominous manner ; proclaiming, audibly if 
 you have ears : ' Twelfth hour of the Night ; ancient graves yawning ; pale 
 clammy Puseyisms screeching in their winding-sheets ; owls busy in the City 
 regions ; many goblins abroad ! Awake ye living ; dream no more ; arise to 
 judgement ! Chaos and Gehenna are broken loose ; the Devil with his Bedlams 
 must be flung in chains again, and the Last of the Days is about to dawn ! ' Such 
 is literature to the reflective soul at this moment. 
 
 Of the spasmodic style, with certain modifications peculiar 
 to himself, Mr. Emerson, the American author, affords a con- 
 spicuous example. His constant effort is to be smart, telling 
 and epigrammatic, and he will rather talk nonsense than not 
 appear to be witty and original. Thus, in his ' English Traits' 
 he tells the world that in Great Britain ' a manufacturer sits 
 down to dinner in a suit of clothes which was wool on a sheep's 
 back at sunrise ;' that ' the influence of Plato tinges the British 
 genius. Their minds loved analogy ; were cognizant of re- 
 semblances, and climbers on the staircase of unity ;' and that 
 ' it was a curious result in which the civility and religion of 
 
190 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 England for a thousand years ends, in denying morals and 
 reducing the intellect to a saucepan.' As might be expected, 
 such a strainer after originality of expression does not always 
 condescend to be intelligible, as for instance in the following 
 passage :— 
 
 The necessities of mental structure force all minds into a few categories, and 
 where impatience of the tricks of men makes Nemesis amiable, and builds altars 
 to the negative deity, the inevitable recoil is to heroism or the gallantry of the 
 private heart, which decks its immolation with glory, in the unequal combat of 
 will against fate. 
 
 It would be unpardonable, in an article which discusses 
 the question of literary style, not to make mention of Mr. De 
 Quincey, whom Dean Trench, in that admirable little book, 
 ' English, Past and Present,' which we have prefixed to this 
 article, calls ' the greatest living master of our English tongue.' 
 In this we entirely agree with him, and it is difficult for us to 
 express how highly we think of Mr. De Quincey's essays, 
 whether as regards the subtlety of the thoughts or the charm 
 of the composition. But the style is a peculiar one. One of 
 its chief characteristics is discursiveness. It reminds us some- 
 times of an old-fashioned rambling building, full of winding 
 passages and out-of-the-way rooms. Or we may compare it 
 to a piece of music, in which the original air is almost lost in 
 the multiplicity of the variations. If you take a walk with 
 Mr. De Quincey, you must not expect to be carried along a 
 straight and beaten highway, but to wander through thickets 
 and along by-lanes, and to be brought to your destination by 
 circuitous and seldom-trodden paths. Metaphor may be 
 allowed in describing a writer who is himself so largely and 
 often so quaintly metaphorical. Thus, speaking of the exple- 
 tives of a Westmoreland farmer, as an illustration of the ex- 
 pletives of Plato (curious juxtaposition !), he says : — 
 
 It is the balustrade which enables him to descend the stairs of conversation 
 without falling overboard. 
 
 With reference to M. Michelet's work, ' Du Pretre,' he tells 
 
 us : — 
 
 That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his ' History of France ' is quite 
 another thing. A man, in whatever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of 
 sight, when he is linked to the windings of the shore by the towing-ropes of 
 history. 
 
 Adverting to the necessity, according to the popular notion 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 19 
 
 in France, that Charles VI. should be crowned at Rheimj 
 before his English competitor, to give him a lawful title to thi 
 throne, he says : — 
 
 Now that was to be a race for a coronation ; he that should win that rac 
 carried the superstition of France along with him ; he that should first be draw 
 from the ovens of Rheims was under that superstition baked into a king. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 Up and down the writings of a philosopher will be detected hooks and eye; 
 lurking more or less obscurely, that were fitted to infibulate (or perhaps meant t 
 infibulate him) into the gi-eat draperies and arras of the philosophical speculation 
 hanging down to coming generations. 
 
 Oh Cicero ! my poor thoughtless Cicero ! in all your shallow metaphysics, ni 
 once did you give utterance to such a bounce as when you asserted that never di 
 
 human reason say one thing and nature say another Did the reader evt 
 
 study the .i4)z//«o/«;Vj of Kant ? If not, he has read nothing. Now M«?v he wi 
 have the pleasure of seeing a set of quadrilles or reels in which Old Mother Re; 
 son amuses herself by dancing to the right and left two variations of blank coi 
 tradiction to old Mother Truth, both variations being irrefragable, each variatic 
 contradicting the other, each contradicting the equatorial reality, and each alii 
 (though past all denial) being a lie. 
 
 St. Austin in his confessions, and whenever he becomes peculiarly interestrnj 
 is apt to be impassioned and fervent to a degree which makes him break out ( 
 the proper pace of rhetoric. He is matched to trot, and is continually breakin 
 into a gallop. 
 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose that Mr. D 
 Quincey makes use of metaphor only, or even chiefly, in sue' 
 semi-ludicrous fashion as the above quotations might seem t 
 indicate. No writer knows better how to employ it apprc 
 priately to present to the mind's eye a beautiful image, whil 
 at the same time it furnishes a perfect illustration of the sul 
 ject. Take, for instance, the following exquisite passagi 
 which is thrown carelessly into a note, as if the writer wei 
 wealthy enough to cast away his jewels. Speaking of th 
 almost incredible popularity of the ' De Imitatione Christi 
 he says : — 
 
 At that time the Bible itself was a fountain of inspired truth everywhere seah 
 up ; but a whisper ran through the western nations of Europe that the work 
 Thomas a Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth, silently stealing awi 
 into light, from that interdicted fountain. 
 
 But to appreciate the merits in point of style of this di 
 lightful writer, he must be read, not in extracts, but contini 
 ously ; and we would refer those who wish to know how f; 
 the flexibility and power of the English language can I 
 carried, to the edition of his collected works now issuing fro 
 the press. 
 
192 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of Mr. Ruskin's theories about 
 painting and architecture, and whether he is right or wrong 
 in his worship of Turner, and his contempt of the Five Orders, 
 it cannot be denied that he is the master of a rich and re- 
 dundant style. We remember seeing it described as ' terse, 
 vigorous, and sparkling;' but we think that epithets could 
 hardly have been worse chosen. Such criticism reminds us of 
 an anecdote told by Coleridge of himself He was one day 
 gazing in rapture at some waterfall in Scotland — we think it 
 was the Fall of Foyers — and at a loss how to express his ad- 
 miration, when he heard somebody behind him exclaim — 
 ' How majestic !' ' Thank you. Sir !' said Coleridge, ' that is 
 just the word I wanted.' 'Yes,' replied the stranger, all un- 
 conscious of the happy propriety of his former epithet, ' yes, 
 it is very pretty !' 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is vigorous, no doubt, as a man must be who 
 thinks so strongly, and expresses himself so forcibly ; but we 
 might as well talk of the terseness and sparkle of Jeremy 
 Taylor or Edmund Burke, as apply those terms to the style 
 of the author of ' Modern Painters.' Instead of being terse, 
 it is remarkably diffuse ; and if we were to describe it by a 
 metaphor, we should speak of it as a vegetation that some- 
 times runs riot in its wild luxuriance. Indeed Mr. Ruskin's 
 fault is too great exuberance of imagery, and too lavish a pro- 
 fusion of epithets. He indulges too much in rhetorical pomp, 
 and now and then, but not often, is betrayed into a conceit 
 which seems to be borrowed from Mr. Dickens. Thus he 
 describes streamlets amongst the Alps, finding their way down 
 to the turf, 
 
 with quiet depth of cleav water, furrowing among the grass blaJes, and looking 
 only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and 
 laugliing hurries, as i/t/iey liad remembered suddenly that the day was loo short for 
 them to ^v/ do~,oit the hill. 
 
 And he speaks of trees as if they were persons or cattle 
 
 crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand 
 among tlie difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, 
 gliding in grave procession over the heavenward ridges. 
 
 But he often rises into a strain of noble eloquence — the 
 eloquence of a man who is enthusiastic in his love for truth 
 and beauty, both in nature and in art, and grand in his scorn 
 
LITER AR Y STYLE. i g 
 
 of whatever is false, grovelling, or base. In reading his work 
 you always feel that you have to do with a man who is full c 
 his subject and thoroughly in earnest. Every reader of Mi 
 Ruskin knows his passion for. the clouds and the mountain; 
 They are the objects of his heart's idolatry, and on them h 
 lavishes the full power of his imagination. He understand 
 by the making of the firmament, in the first chapter of Gcnesu 
 the ordinance of the clouds, and he describes them as 
 
 going forth at their pleasure Uke the armies of the angels, and choosing thai 
 encampments upon the heights of the hills ; no longer hurried downwards fo 
 ever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, bu 
 covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloor 
 of the farther infinite with a vesture of divers colours, of which the threads ar 
 
 purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame And all those passings t 
 
 and fro of fruitful shower and gratefid shade, and all those visions of moanin 
 winds and threatening thunders and glories of coloured robes and cloven ray, ar 
 but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and clearness of th 
 simple words, ' Our Father, which art in heaven ! ' 
 
 In the following passage how he pictures in their sublimit; 
 the awful character of some of the precipices of the Alps : — 
 
 Dark in colour, robed with everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a grea 
 fortress shaken by war, fearful as much in their weakness as in their strength, an( 
 yet gathered after every fall into darker frowns and unhumiliating threatening 
 for ever incapable of comfort or healing from herb or flower, nourishing no roo 
 in their crevices, touched by no hue of life on buttress or ledge, but to the utmos 
 desolate ; knowing no shaking of leaves in the wind nor of grass beside th 
 stream,— no other motion but their own mortal shivering, the dreadful crumblin 
 of atom from atom in their corrupting stones ; knowing no sound of living voic 
 or living tread, cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry ; hauntei 
 only by uninterrupted echoes from afar off, wandering hither and tliither amoni 
 their walls, unable to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes th 
 shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back froii 
 under their shadow into the gulf of air ; and sometimes, when the echo has fainted 
 and the wind has carried the sound of the torrent away, and the bird has vanished 
 and the mouldering stones are still for a little time— a brown moth, opening anc 
 shutting its wings upon a grain of dust, may be the only thing that moves or feel 
 in all the waste of weary precipice darkening five thousand feet of the blue deptl 
 of heaven. 
 
 Nor do we think that Turner could have more vividb 
 drawn with his pencil than Mr. Ruskin has described with hi 
 pen the ruined old tower of Calais Church, which, he says, h 
 always contemplates with peculiar affection : — 
 
 The large neglect, the noble unsightlincss of it ; the record of its years writte 
 so visibly yet without sign of weakness or decay ; its stem wasteness and gloon 
 eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses • i 
 slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling ; its desert of brickworl 
 
 O 
 
194 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 full of bolts and holes and ugly fissures, and yet strong like a bare brown rock; 
 its carelessness of what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim 
 having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride nor grace ; yet neither asking for pity 
 not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days, 
 but'useful still, going through its own daily work— as some old fisherman, beaten 
 grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets ; so it stands, with no complaint about 
 its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering 
 human souls together underneath it ; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling 
 through its rents ; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the 
 three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore— the lighthouse 
 for life, and the belfry for labour, and this for patience and praise. 
 
 But sometimes Mr. Ruskin in trying to soar sinks into 
 bombast. Alluding to the Crimean war, he says : — 
 
 The scarlet of the blood that has sealed this covenant will be poured along the 
 clouds of a new Aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven ; for every sob of wreck- 
 fed breaker round those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their hands between 
 the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the spirits of those lost multitudes, 
 crowned with the olive and rose among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the 
 willowy brooks and peaceful vales of England, and glide triumphant by the poplar 
 groves and sunned coteaux of Seine. 
 
 The sentence here marked in italics is much too fine for 
 our comprehension ; nor is it at all obvious why the spirits of 
 the dead warriors should be only ' satisfied ' when they haunt 
 the vales of England, but ' triumphant ' when they glide by 
 the ' coteaux of Seine.' The truth is, that the whole passage 
 seems to us little more than a piece of glittering nonsense, 
 and quite unworthy of an author of Mr. Ruskin's power and 
 reputation. 
 
 No writer of the present day is in our opinion equal to Mr. 
 Newman in point of style as a controversialist. We say nothing 
 of the weakness of his arguments, his prodigious assumptions, 
 and his transparent sophistries : but the liveliness of his man- 
 ner has an irresistible attraction. A topic is never dull in his 
 hands, however uninviting it may at first sight appear. He 
 has nothing of the dry, stiff, formal character of a theological 
 disputant. He can make polemics almost as interesting as 
 a novel. Something of course is due to the fact that he has 
 thrown his later writings into the popular form of lectures. 
 But it is very observable how his style has changed since he 
 left the English Church. Formerly, while struggling to recon- 
 cile the so-called Church principles of the party of which he 
 was the most eminent leader with the stubborn facts and real 
 character of the Church of England, he, like all the other 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 195 
 
 writers of the 'Tracts for the Times/ as if conscious of occu- 
 pying a false position, threw a misty haze over the subjects he 
 handled ; and in place of plain avowal and positive assertion, 
 he used language, as he himself tells us, ' purposely guarded,' 
 and full of shadowy hints and ambiguous phraseology. Noiv 
 we have no longer the cautious tone of ' so to speak,' and ' as 
 it were,' and ' it may be,' and ' in a manner,' by which propo- 
 sitions were conveniently qualified which were thought to be 
 too startHng for acceptance by those to whom they were ad- 
 dressed ; but flinging off all such disguises, he speaks out 
 boldly and dogmatically, as becomes the advocate of a 
 Church which claims to be infallible. He is certainly one of 
 the least squeamish writers who ever employed the pen of reli- 
 gious controversy. Nothing comes amiss which can enliven 
 or enforce his argument : joke, anecdote, sarcasm, and pathos, 
 are alike employed by turns ; but the transition from grave to 
 gay is generally managed with such art that the contrast 
 which in less skilful hands would be offensive serves only to 
 heighten the general effect. The versatility of his powers is 
 shown by the varieties of style- which he has at his command. 
 Compai'e the biting sarcasm of some of his attacks upon his 
 old friends, with the pathetic eloquence of the language in 
 which, when it suits his purpose, he tries to allure them. In 
 one passage he talks of the authors of the High-Church move- 
 ment of 1833 as men who, having set their fortunes on a cast, 
 and lost, had nothing else left for them but to shut up their 
 school and retire into the country, ' unless they vindicated the 
 right of private judgment, took up some fancy religion, re- 
 tailed the Fathers, and jobbed theology.' He says the idea 
 of the Anglo-Catholic divines was 
 
 simply and absolutely submission to external authority ; to it they appealed, to it 
 they betook themselves ; there they found a haven of rest ; thence they looked out 
 upon the troubled surge of human opinion, and upon the crazy vessels vifhich were 
 labouring without chart or compass upon it. Judge then of their dismay when, 
 according to the Arabian tale, on their striking their anchors into the supposed 
 soil, lighting their fires on it, and fixing in it the poles of their tents, suddenly their 
 island began to move, to heave, to splash, to frisk to and fro, to dive, and at last 
 to swim away, spouting out inhospitable jets of water upon the credulous mariners 
 who had made it their home. And such I suppose was the undeniable fact. 
 
 And how he mocks them in the following sentences : — 
 
 You have a mission to teach the National Church, which is to teach the 
 British empire, which is to teach the world ; you are more learned than Greece ; 
 
 02 
 
196 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 you are purer than Rome ; you know better than St. Bernard ; you judge how 
 far St. Thomas was right, and where he is to be read with caution or held up to 
 blame. You can bring to light juster views of grace, or of penance, or of invoca. 
 tion of saints than St. Gregory or St. Augustine. 
 
 Qualia vincant 
 Pythagoren Anytique reum doctumque Platonem. 
 
 This is what you can do ; yes, and when you have done all, to what have you 
 attained ? to do just what heretics have done before you, and have thereby in- 
 curred the anathema of Holy Church. 
 
 And yet he can address the same persons in the following 
 strain of yearning affection : — 
 
 O, is it possible that there is a resurrection even upon earth ? O, wonderful 
 grace, that there should be u joyful meeting, after parting, before we get to 
 heaven ! It was a weary time, that long suspense, when with aching hearts we 
 stood on the brink of a change, and it was like death to -svitness and to undergo, 
 when first one and then another disappeared from the eyes of their fellows. And 
 then friends stood on different sides of a gulf, and for years knew nothing of each 
 other, or their welfare. And then they fancied of each other what was not, and 
 there were misunderstandings and jealousies ; and each saw the other as his ghost 
 only in imagination and in memory ; and all was suspense, and anxiety, and hope 
 delayed, and ill-requited care. But now it is all over : the morning is come; the 
 separate shall unite. I see them, as if in sight of me. Look at us, my brethren, 
 from our glorious land ; look on us, radiant with the light cast on us by the saints 
 and angels who stand over us ; gaze on us as you approach, and kindle as you 
 gaze. We died, you thought us dead ; we live ; we cannot return to you, you 
 must come to us, — and you are coming. Do not your hearts beat as you approach 
 us ? Do you not long for the hour which makes us one ? Do not tears come into\ 
 your eyes at the th,ought of the superabundant mercy of your God ? 
 
 Our space fails us, or we might quote specimens of 
 excellent English composition from the writings of the late 
 Archdeacon Hare, Mr. Helps, Mr. Kingsley, and others ; but 
 we have to perform a much less agreeable task, and we turn 
 to a class of authors who are, we think, the pests of literature 
 at the present day : we mean those who belong to the jocose 
 and funny school. Far be it from us to depreciate wit. It is 
 the nectar of the gods when it is genuine — but worse than 
 ditch-water when it is not. The attempts at wit and humour 
 of those to whom we now allude are as unlike real wit and 
 humour as the smell of an apothecary's shop is to the rich 
 odour of a flower-garden. Instead of gems from the mine, 
 they palm off upon us mock jewels, which serve only to show 
 the poverty and vanity of the wearer. They forget that it is 
 true of wit as of poetry, that nasciinr, non fit ; and we would 
 address each of them in the words of Mr. Carlyle : — ' Witty ; 
 
LITERARY STYLE. ' 197 
 
 above all, oh, be not witty ; none of us is bound to be witty 
 under penalties.' If God has not bestowed on you the gift, 
 be content without it, and do not make yourself ridiculous by 
 assuming its counterfeit. Let the cow beware how she imitates 
 the gambols of the kitten. Sydney Smith was witty because 
 he could not help being so. Wit was the natural element of 
 his intellectual life, and his whole soul was steeped in it. It 
 came forth strong and impetuous, as a river which bursts its 
 banks bears down all opposition, and spreads abroad an inun- 
 dation. As a joker he was the king of men. And his broad, 
 vigorous style as a writer was the counterpart of his sound 
 good sense and masculine understanding. But it is not for 
 feeble hands to attempt to bend the bow of Ulysses. 
 
 Happily, however, in some cases we have fair warning 
 given us by the authors themselves as to what we may expect, 
 and it is our own fault if we condemn ourselves to a perusal 
 of their productions. They hang out an alliterative title as a 
 sign-post, which sufficiently indicates the kind of entertain- 
 ment provided within. 'From Piccadilly to Pera,' 'From 
 Marylebone to Marathon,' 'The Bridal and the Bridle,' 
 ' Knights and their Days,' are all names of books which we 
 think we have seen advertised during the last few years, and 
 they have been quite enough to prevent us from attempting 
 to cultivate a further acquaintance with any of them — -fanum 
 habet in cornu, longefuge. 
 
 The name of these writers is Legion, and every week adds 
 to their number. The nuisance, in fact, has become intoler- 
 able, and ought to be put down. When such things as a 
 ' Comic Blackstone ' and ' Comic History of England ' are 
 written, to fill the minds of the young with ludicrous images 
 on the most grave and important subjects, and, so far as is 
 possible, sap the foundations of all reverence and respect for 
 the traditions of the past, it is time to speak out. 
 
 We have not, however, space to do justice to the subject, 
 and can at present notice only one — and this not by any 
 means the worst — of these would-be-witty books, which has 
 had, we believe, an extensive circulation, and which may be 
 taken as a type of its class. We allude to Colonel Mundy's 
 ' Our Antipodes.' 
 
 This work is intended to be extremely smart and dashing 
 
196 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 you are purer than Rome ; you know better than St. Bernard ; you judge how 
 far St. Thomas was right, and where he is to he read with caution or held up to 
 blame. You can bring to light juster views of grace, or of penance, or of mvoca. 
 tion of saints than St. Gregory or St. Augvistine. 
 
 Qualia vincant 
 Pythagoren Anytique reum doctumque Platonem. 
 
 This is what you can do ; yes, and when you have done all, to what have you 
 attained ? to do just what heretics have done before you, and have thereby in- 
 curred the anathema of Holy Church. 
 
 And yet he can address the same persons in the following 
 strain of yearning affection : — 
 
 O, is it possible that there is a resurrection even upon earth ? O, wonderful 
 grace, that there should be a joyful meeting, after parting, before we get to 
 heaven ! It was a weary time, that long suspense, when with aching hearts we 
 stood on the brink of a change, and it was like death to witness and to undergo, 
 when first one and then another disappeared from the eyes of then: fellows. And 
 then friends stood on different sides of a gulf, and for years knew nothing of each 
 other, or their welfare. And then they fancied of each other what was not, and 
 there were misunderstandings and jealousies ; and each saw the other as his ghost 
 only in imagination and in memory ; and all was suspense, and anxiety, and hope 
 delayed, and ill-requited care. But now it is all over : the morning is come ; the 
 separate shall unite. I see them, as if in sight of me. Look at us, my brethren, 
 from our glorious land ; look on us, radiant with the light cast on us by the saints 
 and angels who stand over us ; gaze on us as you approach, and kindle as you 
 gaze. We died, you thought us dead ; we live ; we cannot return to you, you 
 must come to us, — and you are coming. Do not your hearts beat as you approach 
 us ? Do you not long for the hour which makes us one ? Do not tears come into ^ 
 your eyes at the th,ought of the superabundant mercy of your God ? 
 
 Our space fails us, or we might quote specimens of 
 excellent English composition from the writings of the late 
 Archdeacon Hare, Mr. Helps, Mr. Kingsley, and others ; but 
 we have to perform a much less agreeable task, and we turn 
 to a class of authors ^^'ho are, we think, the pests of literature 
 at the present day : we mean those who belong to the jocose 
 and funny school. Far be it from us to depreciate wit. It is 
 the nectar of the gods when it is genuine — but worse than 
 ditch-water when it is not. The attempts at wit and humour 
 of those to whom -we now allude are as unlike real wit and 
 humour as the smell of an apothecary's shop is to the rich 
 odour of a flower-garden. Instead of gems from the mine, 
 they palm off upon us mock jewels, which serve only to show 
 the poverty and vanity of the wearer. They forget that it is 
 true of wit as of poetry, that nascitiir, non fit ; and we would 
 address each of them in the words of Mr. Carlyle : — 'Witty ; 
 
LITERARY STYLE. ' 197 
 
 above all, oh, be not witty ; none of us is bound to be witty 
 under penalties.' If God has not bestowed on you the gift, 
 be content without it, and do not make yourself ridiculous by 
 assuming its counterfeit. Let the cow beware how she imitates 
 the gambols of the kitten. Sydney Smith was witty because 
 he could not help being so. Wit was the natural element of 
 his intellectual life, and his whole soul was steeped in it. It 
 came forth strong and impetuous, as a river which bursts its 
 banks bears down all opposition, and spreads abroad an inun- 
 dation. As a joker he was the king of men. And his broad, 
 vigorous style as a writer was the counterpart of his sound 
 good sense and masculine understanding. But it is not for 
 feeble hands to attempt to bend the bow of Ulysses. 
 
 Happily, however, in some cases we have fair warning 
 given us by the authors themselves as to what we may expect, 
 and it is our own fault if we condemn ourselves to a perusal 
 of their productions. They hang out an alliterative title as a 
 sign-post, which sufficiently indicates the kind of entertain- 
 ment provided within. 'From Piccadilly to Pera,' 'From 
 Marylebone to Marathon,' 'The Bridal and the Bridle,' 
 ' Knights arid their Days,' are all names of books which we 
 think we have seen advertised during the last few years, and 
 they have been quite enough to prevent us from attempting 
 to cultivate a further acquaintance with any of them — fanum 
 habet in cornu, longe fuge. 
 
 The name of these writers is Legion, and every week adds 
 to their number. The nuisance, in fact, has become intoler- 
 able, and ought to be put down. When such things as a 
 ' Comic Blackstone ' and ' Comic History of England ' are 
 written, to fill the minds of the young with ludicrous images 
 on the most grave and important subjects, and, so far as is 
 possible, sap the foundations of all reverence and respect for 
 the traditions of the past, it is time to speak out. 
 
 We have not, however, space to do justice to the subject, 
 and can at present notice only one — and this not by any 
 means the worst — of these would-be-witty books, which has 
 had, we believe, an extensive circulation, and which may be 
 taken as a type of its class. We allude to Colonel Mundy's 
 ' Our Antipodes.' 
 
 This work is intended to be extremely smart and dashing 
 
198 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 m style, with a good deal of rollicking fun suited to the 
 character of an old campaigner. We are sorry, however, to 
 be obliged to say that the success is not equal to the endea- 
 vour. We hardly ever read a work where the attempt at wit 
 more uniformly breaks down. It consists in introducing, in 
 inverted commas, the commonest quotations from 'Shak- 
 speare,' the ' Eton Latin Grammar,' and such-like recondite 
 books, and applying them to whatever subject is on hand ; in 
 metamorphosing Saxon into Latinized words ; and in making 
 copious use of a slang dictionary. 
 
 Apropos to a story about an auction, he says, ' I have a 
 little article " to submit to public notice," unique in its way, 
 and " a genuine article." ' 
 
 On the ErroU Plains are large quartz boulders — 'pebbles 
 such as Goliah might have slung at David, had their duel been 
 conducted with " slings for two." ' 
 
 At the Botanic Gardens at Sydney, on a Sunday, 'the 
 shopocracy — a wealthy and comfortable class — resort in con- 
 siderable numbers to catch a puff " of the briny." ' 
 
 When ' the Southerly Burster ' blows, ' you must religiously 
 shut up shop until the " chartered libertine," having scavenged 
 the streets of every particle of dust, has moderated his 
 wrath.' 
 
 The pic-nic basket ' was unpacked, the lunch spread " sub 
 tcgviine gum-tree;"' and the shepherd 'sits all day ^' siih 
 tcgmine gum-tree." ' 
 
 Colonel Mundy saw some men trying to catch and milk a 
 M'ild cow, and he tells us that ' it was the most flagitious case 
 of " violence, with intent " to milk I had ever met with.' 
 
 But there is hardly a page in the three volumes of ' Our 
 Antipodes,' which does not bristle with these inverted commas, 
 to mark what is intended for some witty quotation ; and we 
 dare say our readers are content with the specimens we have 
 given. 
 
 We should be soriy to include in the same category with 
 such writers Lord Campbell as an author ; and yet his ' Lives 
 of the Lord Chancellors ' and ' Lives of the Chief Justices ' are 
 disfigured by witticisms which injure the effect of his agreeable 
 volumes. They give a jaunty and almost flippant air to works 
 which, dealing as they do with grave personages and impor- 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 199 
 
 tant questions, would be much improved by a judicious ex- 
 purgation. 
 
 For some reason which it is not very easy to explain, the 
 smart and witty style seems to be that which is most in vogue 
 with Eastern travellers ; and they write such weary trash, that 
 we are constrained to believe that although the Wise Men 
 came originally from the East, very few wise men or women 
 now go there. The slang of the metropolis is carried into the 
 streets of the Holy City, and the solitude of the desert is 
 enlivened (.') by pert jokes and 'fast' opinions. Nothing can 
 be more out of place — nothing in point of style more detest- 
 able, than this. We pity the man who can visit Jerusalem 
 and the Dead Sea, and then sit down to write about them 
 in the same spirit and tone that he would adopt if he were 
 preparing an article for ' Punch.' We think he had much 
 better stay at home, and endeavour — if he has wit enough, 
 which we greatly doubt— to enrol himself among the con- 
 tributors to that facetious periodical. But let him not, in the 
 vain hope of acquiring a reputation as 'that clever young 
 man,' profane a subject which, from its time-hallowed associa- 
 tions, should be treated, if not with reverence, at least with 
 respect. While, however, we deprecate such a style as is too 
 often adopted, we are far from wishing to encourage the idea 
 that it is safe to indulge in the opposite extreme of too much 
 sentiment. We have no desire to see Eastern travellers 
 writing in the fashion of Mr. Scott, who in ' The Baltic, the 
 Black Sea, and the Crimea,' favours us with passages like, 
 the following : — 
 
 The soft melody of the rippling waters and the whispering of the breeze lulled 
 us to that sweet dreamy state, when imagination in her fitful play skips from 
 radiant scenes of present bliss to joyous days of youthful years, and clothes each 
 thought infancy's brightest hues. 
 
 There are, however, happily, exceptions to the usual class 
 of authors who write about the East. One of these is Lord 
 Lindsay, whose ' Letters from the Holy Land,' are as interest- 
 ing in matter as they are agreeable in manner. And we may 
 now add to the small number of books of Eastern travel 
 which can be read not only with instruction but with 
 pleasure, the Rev. Arthur Stanley's ' Sinai and Palestine ' — a 
 work in every' way worthy of the subject, and, we will add, in 
 
200 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 every way worthy of the reputation of its accomphshed author. 
 The rhetoric of EHot Warburton's ' Crescent and the Cross' 
 is too flowery, and the brilliancy of ' Eothen ' is disfigured by 
 the tone oi persiflage which pervades the work. 
 
 In conclusion, we venture to offer a few words of advice 
 and warning to those who meditate authorship. Those who 
 have already adopted a vicious style, are, we fear, incorrigible ; 
 but there are writers in embryo to whom our suggestions may 
 not be addressed in vain. The first object of every author 
 ought to be to write correctly ; the second, to write naturally 
 and unaffectedly ; and the third, if indeed it is not combined 
 in the other two, to write gracefully and attractively. We 
 entirely agree with Dugald Stewart, that 
 
 the works which continue to please from age to age are written with perfect sim- 
 plicity, while those which captivate the multitude by a display of meretricious 
 ornaments, if by chance they should survive the fashions to which they are accom- 
 modated, remain only to furnish a subject of ridicule to posterity. 
 
 And this explains the remark of Pascal, that les meilleurs 
 livres sotit cenx que chaque lecteur croit quHl aiiroit pii faire. 
 Let every writer bear in mind, that the foundation and basis 
 of the English language is Anglo-Saxon. Dean Trench, who 
 is himself the master of an excellent style, in his ' English, 
 Past and Present,' says, as in fact had been substantially 
 said by Sir Thomas Browne more than a century and a half 
 ago :— 
 
 All its joints, its whole ariiculnlion, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body 
 of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all 
 smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences ; 
 these, not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language, are exclusively 
 Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished 
 hewn stones, to the spiritual building ; but the mortar, with all tliat holds'and 
 binds the different parts of it together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon 
 throughout. 
 
 And we may add that its most forcible and expressive 
 words are also Saxon. So completely does that element 
 pervade it, that it would be almost impossible to compose a 
 sentence of moderate length consisting solely of words of 
 Latin derivation. But there are many which can be rendered 
 wholly in Anglo-Saxon. It would be easy to make the 
 Lord's Prayer entirely, as it is in present use almost entirely, 
 Anglo-Saxon. It consists of sixty words, and six of these 
 
LITER AR V STYLE. 20 1 
 
 only have a Latin root. But for each of them, except one, 
 we have an exact Saxon equivalent. For ' trespasses,' we may- 
 substitute ' sins ; ' for ' temptation,' ' trials ; ' for ' deliver,' 
 ' free ; ' and for ' power,' ' might.' Dr. Trench proposes for 
 ' glory,' ' brightness ; ' but this we think is not a good sub- 
 stitute, although we are unable to suggest a better. No writer 
 was fonder of Latinized forms of words than Sir Thomas 
 Browne, and yet he could construct paragraphs wholly out of 
 Anglo-Saxon, as, for instance, the following, quoted by Dean 
 Trench out of several which the knight of Norwich has given 
 as examples : — 
 
 The first and foremost step to all good works is the dread and fear of the Lord 
 of heaven and earth, which, through the Holy Ghost, enlighteneth the blindness 
 of our simple hearts to tread the ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land 
 of blessing. 
 
 The great lesson to be drawn from the fact that Anglo- 
 Saxon underlies, like original granite, all the strata of the 
 English language, is, that to write in it is to write for the 
 hearts of the people. It is ihei}- mother-tongue, strong, sinewy, 
 and expressive ; and they cling to it with a fondness which 
 no change of usage can uproot, and no caprice of fashion can 
 destroy. Just compare, in point of force and . significance, a 
 ' sanguinary action,' with a ' bloody deed ; ' ' eternal felicity,' 
 with ' everlasting happiness ; ' and ' the exemplar of the 
 celestials,' in the Rhemish version of the Scriptures, with ' the 
 pattern of things in the heavens,' in our own ; and you will 
 feel at once how the language is weakened by such attempted 
 equivalents. 
 
 It would, however, be a ridiculous kind of pedantry to 
 insist that all words of Greek or Latin origin should be 
 avoided. This would indeed be as impossible as the converse 
 case. The necessities of science, philosophy, and the arts, 
 and the wants of an advanced civilisation, absolutely require 
 the admixture of these elements, which contribute so much to 
 the wealth and beauty of the language. Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh has pointed out, in his ' History of England,' that if you 
 wished to express 'the penetrability of matter' in Anglo- 
 Saxon, you would be compelled to say 'the thoroughfare- 
 someness of stuff.' But there is a rule which applies to the 
 selection of all words, whether Greek, Latin, or Anglo-Saxon ; 
 
202 jESsays critical and narrative. 
 
 and it is that which is laid down by the authors of ' Guesses 
 at Truth; and is supposed to be addressed to a lady :— 
 
 When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the 
 most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge ; love simple ones as you 
 would native roses on your cheeks. 
 
 Above all things, avoid the habit of going out of your way 
 to introduce long words or periphrastic expressions, to show 
 off either your learning or your wit. In one of his early 
 letters, Coleridge playfully asks a friend to look out for him 
 a maid-servant ' scientific in vaccimulgence,' and says, ' That 
 last word is a new one, but soft in sound and full of expres- 
 sion. Vaccimulgence ! I am pleased with the word.' But 
 this was only in joke. Chaucer says, in praise of his Virginia, 
 
 that 
 
 No contrefeted termes hadde she 
 To semen wise ; 
 
 and if you wish to write well, your English must be genuine, 
 and not counterfeit. The simplest style is generally the 
 safest. Not that we intend to proscribe the use of metaphor 
 or image when it is appropriate to the subject ; and we should 
 be sorry to act as sternly as Coleridge's schoolmaster, the Rev. 
 James Bowyer, who thus addressed his trembling pupil: — 
 ' Muse, boy, muse ? Your nurse's daughter you mean ! Pierian 
 spring .' Oh, ay ! the cloister-pump, I suppose ! ' 
 
 Do not pollute the pure well of English undefiled, with 
 the rubbish of affectation and conceit ; nor imagine for a 
 moment that liveliness of style consists in a running fire of 
 jokes, nor that the want of wit can be redeemed by vul- 
 garity. Remember what a noble heritage you possess in the 
 English language, and strive to be, in the words of Dean 
 Trench, ' guardians of its purity, and not corruptors of it' 
 He cites, in proof of the estimation in which it is held by 
 those who are competent to appreciate it, one of the greatest 
 philologers of modern times, Jacob Grimm, who ascribes to it 
 ' a veritable power of expression, such as perhaps never stood 
 at the command of any other language of men,' and says — 
 
 In truth, the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and 
 upborne the greatest and most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished 
 from the ancient classical poetry (I can of course only mean Shakspeare), may with 
 all right be called a world-langn.age, and, like the English people, appeare destined 
 
LITERARY STYLE. 203 
 
 hereafter to prevail with a sway, more extensive even than its present, over all the 
 portions of the globe ; for in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure, no 
 other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be compared with it — not 
 even our German, which is torn even as we are torn, and must firet rid itself of 
 many defects before it can enter boldly into the lists as a competitor with the 
 English. 
 
 Surely this is a language which is worth preserving in its 
 purity, which is worth weaving into textures of beauty, and 
 which ought not to be employed in the manufacture of 
 literary slang. 
 
204 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 PROGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM} 
 
 'Edinburgh Review,' January, i860. 
 
 Upon October 26, 1859, the citizens of Edinburgh received 
 Lord Brougham at a public banquet in the music-hall of this 
 city, where every man most eminent at the present time on 
 the Bench and at the Bar of Scotland — every man most dis- 
 tinguished in science, in literature, or by public services — had 
 spontaneously assembled to pay a mark of respect to one 
 whose long life and varied labours have embraced almost all 
 the objects which other men have, in their several vocations, 
 pursued, and whose glory it has been to surpass the efforts of 
 most of his contemporaries. Two days later the Academic 
 Body of the University of Edinburgh, convened for the first 
 time £b exercise its powers under the new statute, displayed 
 its high sense of the importance of this trust, and its sound 
 judgment of the real interests of the University, by conferring 
 upon Lord Brougham, by a large majority, the office and 
 dignity of Chancellor of this learned foundation. Fortunately 
 for Edinburgh, a man was to be found for this post, high in 
 rank and in fame — the rewards of his own genius — who was 
 born in St. Andrew's Square ; who had sat on the benches of 
 the High School ; who had followed the courses of this very 
 University ; who had been admitted, some sixty years ago, an 
 Advocate of the Bar of Scotland ; who was one of the founders 
 of the ' Edinburgh Review ; ' who has been one of the leading 
 contributors to that journal during no inconsiderable portion 
 
 ' Lord Brougham's Acts and Bills the Amendment of the Law. By Sir 
 
 from \i\\ to the present time, now first JOHN EARnLEY-NVlLMOT, Bart. Lon- 
 
 collected and arranged, "oith aft .-Inaly- don : 1857. 
 tical Reviiiv, shewing their results nfon 
 
FHOGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 205 
 
 of its existence ; and who still retains in an advanced age, 
 the power and the will to promote those reforms in the higher 
 studies of Scotland, which are of such vital importance to the 
 people of this part of Great Britain. We cannot deny our- 
 selves the pleasure of putting on record these remarkable occur- 
 rences, because they are true indications of the veneration and 
 regard of the men of Edinburgh, and the graduates of her 
 University for Lord Brougham. The ' Edinburgh Review ' was 
 commenced by Henry Brougham and his contemporaries, 
 now somewhat more than fifty-seven years ago ; it has adhered 
 to its principles with unabated fidelity ; and though many of 
 those who were once foremost in the struggle have done their 
 work and are at rest. Lord Brougham has happily lived to 
 witness the general acceptance and ascendancy of those 
 liberal opinions and enlarged views as to Law Reform for 
 which half a century ago it was almost hopeless to 
 contend. 
 
 It was observed by an eminent Judge at the Edinburgh 
 banquet, that whatever may be Lord Brougham's other claims 
 to distinction, none will be more lasting than those which he 
 has rendered to his own profession and to the country by his 
 judicial decisions and by his successful exertions for the reform 
 of the law. To that object especially one of his greatest 
 orations was directed, and, unlike many of the brilliant 
 displays of Parliamentary oratory, that speech has fulfilled 
 much of its promise. It has been followed by constant 
 efforts in every branch of the law to effect improvements, 
 to cut away what was antiquated and onerous, and to give 
 greater efficiency, cheapness, and despatch to the administra- 
 tion of justice. 
 
 The result of this sleepless activity has been the enactment 
 by the Legislature of a great number of statutes ; which 
 together with many Bills proposed by Lord Brougham, but 
 not assented to by Parliament, have been collected in a volume 
 consisting of nearly nine hundred pages, by Sir John Eardley- 
 Wilmot, and form a noble monument of the unwearied energy 
 and patriotic devotion of one man to the cause of Law Reform. 
 The work before us must have been, as indeed the able ana- 
 lytical review at the beginning shows that it was, a labour of 
 love ; for no hope of pecuniary remuneration could have 
 
2o6 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 induced any editor to incur the trouble and expense of pre- 
 paring and publishing a volume so little likely to attract 
 ordinary readers. And yet we hardly know a more instructive 
 work. There is an old maxim, plurimce leges pessima respuhlica, 
 and in these Acts and Bills we shall find the most cogent 
 proof of the existence and nature of the mischiefs deeply im- 
 bedded in our legal system, which they were intended to 
 remedy. 
 
 But in order to estimate at their true value the results, we 
 must know something of the evils that had to be overcome. It 
 is often difficult to realise a past state of things, even where 
 the change has taken pli.ce in our own recollection. When a 
 nest of ugly old houses has been pulled down, and replaced by 
 a stately mansion, or a wide and commodious street, it is not 
 easy to picture to oneself the nuisance as it formerly existed. 
 Few remember the Rookery of St. Giles', the site of which is 
 now occupied by lofty buildings and spacious shops, and yet it 
 stood there, in all its squalidness and filth, only a few years 
 ago. In like manner, we can hardly imagine ourselves living 
 at a time when the Lord Chief Justice of England could rise 
 in his place in the House of Lords, and oppose a Bill for 
 abolishing the punishment of death in cases of stealing above 
 the value of five shillings, in the following words ; — 
 
 My Lords, if we suffer this Bill to pass, we shall not know where to stand, 
 we shall not know M'hcther we are on our heads or our feet. If you repeal the 
 Act, which inflicts the penalty of death for stealing to the value of five shillings in 
 a shop, you will be called upon next year to repeal a law which prescribes the 
 penalty of death for stealing five sliillings in a dwelling-house, there being no 
 person therein,. — a law, your lordships must know, on the severity of which and 
 the application of it, stands the security of every poor cottager who goes out to his 
 daily labour. 
 
 And yet this was the language of Lord Ellenborough in 
 1 8 10. Still less can wc bring ourselves to believe, that within 
 the recollection of many persons now ali\-e, a wretched woman, 
 whose children were starving, and who entered a shop in Lud- 
 gate Hill, and secreted under her dress a piece of silk, which 
 she dropped on the ground before she reached the door, was 
 tried for the offence and hanged ! We have seen one of the 
 greatest statesmen of the present day shed tears when this 
 anecdote was told him. If however wc wish to place ourselves 
 in the right point of view for appreciating thelaboursof such a 
 
FEOGHESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 207 
 
 pioneer as Lord Brougham, we must transport ourselves in 
 imagination back a few years, and wc will take a familiar case 
 to illustrate the state of the law as it then stood. 
 
 Suppose an action brought against a man upon a demand 
 which he has satisfied by payment, but of this fact, owing to 
 the loss of the receipt or otherwise, he has no other evidence 
 than the testimony of himself and one other witness. In the 
 first place, the debt being sworn against him, he has to find 
 bail, and being unable to do this, he is thrown into prison 
 upon what is called mesne process. This is not very likely to 
 facilitate his means of defence, but let that pass. Written 
 pleadings are prepared, in which his counsel makes a slip, 
 undiscovered at the time, and the cause comes on for trial. 
 He is not permitted to go into the witness box and state upon 
 his oath that he has discharged the claim by payment. And 
 it happens that his witness has become security for him, and is 
 thus interested in the result of the trial ; he therefore cannot 
 be examined. By some miraculous chance, however, the case 
 of the plaintiff breaks down, and the verdict is for the defen- 
 dant. By this time, however, the slip of the pleader has been 
 discovered, and the plaintiff goes into Court with the modest 
 demand, that the verdict for his opponent shall be set aside, 
 and that he shall be permitted to sign judgment against him 
 non obstante veredicto. To this the Court, after some edifying 
 remarks to the effect that in law technicalities must be upheld, 
 and that ' hard cases make bad law,' accedes, and the unfor- 
 tunate debtor is now taken in execution, and remains in prison 
 at the suit of his creditor, until, if the debt exceeds 300/., he 
 either discharges it by payment, or dies. 
 
 Or let us suppose the same person charged with a felony 
 and put upon his trial. He employs counsel to defend him, 
 and we will assume that the case is one that requires a skilful 
 analysis of complicated facts, and a careful review of conflict- 
 ing evidence. But his counsel cannot open his lips except to 
 argue a point of law, and the miserable spectacle is exhibited 
 of a man, who is perhaps innocent, convicted, because he has 
 not ability to grapple with the case for the prosecution ; while 
 beside him sits one, who in mockery is called his advocate, 
 and who could demonstrate the insufficiency of the evidence 
 against him, but who cannot address the jury on his behalf 
 
2o8 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and must confine himself to an attempt to pick some legal 
 flaw in the prosecution on which to rest his hopes of an ac- 
 quittal' Is it not wonderful that such an anomaly — rather 
 let us say such a crying injustice — should have endured so 
 long ? and yet we know that men of the most humane minds 
 and gifted intellects were opposed to a change of the law in 
 this respect ; and we well remember the strong terms of repro- 
 bation in which a learned and most amiable judge, now no 
 more, spoke to us of the Prisoner's Counsel Bill, which he 
 regarded as a dangerous innovation. 
 
 On February 7, 1828, Lord (then Mr.) Brougham made his 
 great speech on Law Reform. It is one of the most remarkable 
 on record— not merely for the giant grasp he took of his com- 
 plicated and difficult subject, but still more for the prophetic 
 prescience with which he denounced abuses which have since 
 been corrected, and suggested remedies which have since been 
 applied. To few men has been granted so vast a success, and 
 so ample a reward in the field of legal improvement. He 
 has not only stood on the top of Pisgah and surveyed the 
 promised land, but he has been permitted to live until those 
 for whom he laboured have entered in and taken possession. 
 It is not too much to say, that in that speech Lord Brougham 
 was in advance of his age by a quarter of a century, and 
 awakened the mind of his hearers to the existence of a state 
 of things which would now be deemed intolerable, but which 
 was then clung to with deep-rooted prejudice on the part of 
 lawyers, and regarded with timid acquiescence by the public. 
 But to show what he accomplished, we cannot do better than 
 quote a passage from another speech delivered in 1849, when, 
 with pardonable pride, he thus referred to his achievements in 
 the great cause to which he had devoted so large a portion 
 of his life. 
 
 Of above seventy defects whereof I complained on that occasion, about sixty 
 have since been removed ; nor were those sUght defects, or those changes small 
 innovations. I complained that party prevailed over the selection of judges; and 
 of late years, both while I held the Great Seal, and in the time of my noble and 
 
 ' It has been stated that the con- the trial of Patch for murder, which 
 
 version of Lord Lyndhurst from being convinced him how hopeless must be 
 
 the opponent to becoming the suppor- the position of a prisoner who had to 
 
 ter of the Prisoner's Counsel Bill, was reply himself to such an address. — See 
 
 owing to his having perused the masterly 'Quarterly Review' for April, 1859, 
 
 opening speech of Sir W. Garrow, in p. 515. 
 
, PHOGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 209 
 
 learned friend (Lord Lyndhurst) who succeeded me, as well as while my noble 
 friend on the woolsack (Lord Cottenham) has held office, no party considerations 
 have been allowed to influence the selection of those high functionaries, any more 
 than Sir Robert Peel had, previously to 1828, been swayed by party considera- 
 tions in naming the judges of Scotland. I complained of the Welsh judicature ; 
 this has since been abolished, and the Principality subjected, as Ij recommended, 
 to the same tribunals with the rest of the realm. I complained of the Court of 
 Delegates ; it was abolished by my Act of 1833 : of the judicial system prevailing 
 in the Privy Council ; it was reformed by the same statute, and the Judicial Com- 
 mittee substituted for the trial of all appeals, both from the Consistorial Courts, the 
 Court of Admiralty, and all our various and extensive foreign possessions. I com- 
 plained of real actions, including fines and recoveries. Real actions, with the 
 single exception of Quare Impedit, are swept away, and fines and recoveries alto- 
 gether. I complained of many defects and anomalies in the Law of Evidence ; 
 these defects have been almost entirely removed by the admirable Act of Lord 
 Denman (6 & 7 Vict. c. 85), though one important step in the same direction yet 
 remains to be taken [taken in 1851 by the Act 14 & 15 Vict. u. 99] by examining 
 parties themselves. I complained of the period of Limitation, especially of the 
 suffering of it to be interrupted by the Duration of Estates Tail, and of the 
 immunity from all limitation enjoyed by Church Rights. The Acts of Lord 
 Tenterden in 1829 and 1832 (2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 71 ; and 2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 
 ICG), and those to which my noble friend (Lord Lyndhurst) and I obtained the 
 concurrence of Parliament in 1833, have removed those defects, so that now the 
 opprobrium of the law exists no longer, by which rights might formerly have been 
 enjoyed, as against the Church for centuries, without the least security to the pos- 
 sessor, and by which in one case a large estate in the north, after being possessed 
 for above a century and a half, and being made the subject of settlement, and sale, 
 and mortgage over and over again, was found to be the property of a mere stranger, 
 in consequence of estates tail not having been determined, and no adverse posses- 
 sion having been had as against the reversioner. I complained that the Statute 
 of Frauds had not been united with that of Limitations, and now writing is requi- 
 site to prevent the time from running. I had complained loudly of the impedi- 
 ments to settlement by arbitration ; this defect has been removed by the Act of 
 1833, as well as many other anomalies in our system of pleading, on which I had 
 dwelt particularly in 1828. The cruel and unjust, as well as impolitic Law of 
 Arrest for Debt, of which I had also complained, has been entirely changed. 
 Arrest on Mesne Process was abolished by my noble friend on the woolsack (Lord 
 
 Cottenham) in 1837, and my Acts of 1844, 1845, have abolished arrest altogether; 
 
 Acts framed upon the principle which I propounded in 1828, that debtors should 
 only be imprisoned for the crime of fraud, or gross extravagance, or for refusing to 
 give up their property to their creditors. 
 
 This was in 1848 ; but since then a long list must be added 
 of Acts which acknowledge Lord Brougham as their author. 
 We may mention the Bankruptcy Consolidation Act, passed 
 in 1849, containing upwards of 270 sections, and codifying 
 that complicated branch of law ; the Trustee Act in 1850, by 
 which the Court of Chancery is empowered to deal with the 
 property of lunatic trustees and mortgagees, and to make 
 orders in various cases of trust estates ; and, in the same year, 
 the Acts of Parliament Abbreviation Bill. The utility of this 
 
 P 
 
210 
 
 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 last measure can only be appreciated by those whose dreary 
 duty it is to wade through the mass of useless verbiage which 
 used to disfigure previous Acts ; and the number of these may 
 be imagined by the fact that, in the year 1836 alone, 191 
 Private Acts passed the Legislature, comprising about 9,000 
 folios. But we willingly spare our readers the infliction of 
 specimens of the repetitions, and involutions, and complica- 
 tions which flourish there in full luxuriance. In 1851 three 
 of Lord Brougham's Acts were passed — two for improving 
 the Patent Law, and one for making parties to suits admissible 
 as witnesses. Next year, 1852, he carried the Extension of 
 Copyhold Enfranchisement Act and the Act to shorten the 
 time for assembling Parliament after a dissolution, although, 
 perhaps, this last can hardly be classed amongst legal reforms. 
 In 1852 we may mention an Act to abolish Masters in Chan- 
 cery, and in 1853 an Act whereby the husbands and wives of 
 parties to a cause were rendered admissible as witnesses, 
 except in criminal proceedings or cases of adultery. Neither 
 husband nor wife, however, was to be compelled to disclose 
 any communications made by the one to the other during the 
 marriage. In 1854 he carried an Act providing an appeal in 
 cases tried before the County Courts; and in 1855 an Act 
 for the summary trial of offenders, which was compounded of 
 two Bills introduced into the House of Lords in that session, 
 the one by Lord Brougham and the other by Lord Chan- 
 cellor Cranworth. By this salutary measure a prisoner charged 
 with simple larceny or stealing from the person may, if he 
 chooses to plead guilty before two magistrates, be summarily 
 convicted by them, and thus escape the hardship of a long 
 imprisonment beforehand, which, in most cases, would be his 
 lot if he were committed for trial at the sessions or assizes. 
 
 In the above review m'c have omitted to mention the Cen- 
 tral Criminal Court Act, which was carried without opposition 
 by Lord Brougham when he was Lord Chancellor, in 1834; 
 and in the enumeration we have only included those Acts that 
 directly owe their parentage to him, but have not noticed 
 such as were carried by others, although the suggestion and 
 previous advocacy of them were due to him. Amongst these 
 was the Local Courts Act (9 & 10 Vict. c. 95) in 1846, the 
 subject of which was brought by him before the House of 
 
PROGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 211 
 
 Commons in an elaborate speech in April, 1830, when he ob- 
 tained leave to introduce a Bill for their establishment. The 
 Act, as passed, however, omitted some portions of Lord 
 Brougham's Bill — namely, those which gave to the local courts 
 jurisdiction in equity and bankruptcy, and constituted them 
 courts of reconcilement, while it reduced the amount to be 
 sued for from 100/. to 20/. in the ordinary jurisdiction. And 
 we ought not to pass over in silence the Common Law Pro- 
 cedure Acts of 1852 and 1854, two of the most useful in the 
 Statute Book, which swept away the iniquities of special plead- 
 ing and other absurd technicalities that were the disgrace of 
 the English law. Many of the amendments introduced by 
 these two Acts had been foreshadowed by Lord Brougham in 
 his speech in 1828. 
 
 But to show that, while he struck with an unsparing hand 
 at the abuses of the law, he was actuated by no wish to injure 
 in the slightest degree the profession of which he was a bril- 
 liant ornament, we will quote a passage from that speech, 
 which deserves to be written in letters of gold, and which at 
 the present day has peculiar import and significancy, as is too 
 well known at the Bar. We especially commend it to the 
 attention of those upon whom rests the responsibility of ap- 
 pointing to high places in the law. Amongst other incon- 
 veniences of the October sittings which then existed, he 
 alluded to the fact of which perhaps little account would now 
 be taken, that the barristers who went the Northern Circuit 
 were thereby greatly curtailed of their vacation, and he said — 
 
 It is the most foolish of vulgarisms to suppose that by how much the more you 
 vex and harass the professors of the law, by so much the more you benefit the 
 country. The fact is quite the reverse ; for by these means you make inferior 
 men, both in rank and feelings and accomplishments, alone follow that profession 
 out of which the Judges of the Court must be appointed. I should rather say that 
 by how much the more you surround this reno^vned profession with difficulties and 
 impediments calculated only to make it eligible to persons of mere ordinary educa- 
 tion and mere habits of drudgery, who otherwise would find their way to employ- 
 ment in tradesmen's shops or at best in merchants' counting-houses, by so much the 
 more you close it upon men of talent and respectability, and prevent it from being 
 the resort of genius and liberal accomplishments. 
 
 We of course cannot, within the brief limits of an article 
 like this, attempt to analyse the mass of legislation embraced 
 by the Acts we have enumerated, but we will say a few words 
 on the subject of the Law of Evidence ; for no part .of the 
 
 p? 
 
213 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 administration of justice is more important, or requires more 
 watchful attention than this. It would be difficult to exag- 
 gerate the mischiefs that must ensue if that law is based on 
 erroneous principles or is defective in its application. We 
 need only look across the Channel and take as an example 
 the trial of the Lemoines, mother and daughter, for infanti- 
 cide, to see the pitiable result of allowing a judge to interro- 
 gate a prisoner for the purpose of extorting evidence of guilt, 
 by which means he is converted into an advocate, and the 
 equilibrium of justice is destroyed. But what avails it if the 
 judge is impartial and upright, the jury honest and intelli- 
 gent, and the cause good, if it cannot be legally proved } The 
 rights of parties are in danger of being shipwrecked if evidence 
 is too loosely admitted or too rigidly excluded. But of the 
 first of these two evils the boldest accuser of our system of 
 jurisprudence will readily allow that it stands clear. It has 
 always been a distinctive characteristic of the English law that 
 it requires a greater degree of strictness of proof than is known 
 in the procedure of any other civilised nation in the world. 
 And of the reason of some of its rules in this respect it is 
 difficult to give an explanation, and still more to justify them 
 to a non-professional mind. We have often thought how 
 bewildered the audience in our Courts must be, at hearing 
 questions objected to and disallowed which seem the most 
 natural and obvious to ask ; and at seeing documents rejected 
 which, as both sides admit, contain the most important evi- 
 dence bearing upon the fact in dispute, but which, owing to 
 some mysterious and (to them) unintelligible technicality, 
 neither the judge nor the jury is allowed to look at. We are 
 far from saying that sound and logical reasons cannot be given 
 for this, but it would be foreign to our purpose to discuss the 
 question here. We will confine ourselves to a canon of the 
 law of evidence which existed until a very few years back in 
 England, and which we verily believe did more to produce 
 wrong verdicts and defeat the rights of parties than any rule 
 — except perhaps that of the civil law, which required two 
 witnesses at least to prove a fact — in the jurisprudence of any 
 other nation ; and we say this with a full consciousness of the 
 extreme laxity of the rules of evidence in France and Ger- 
 many, and a full knowledge of the danger of mistake to which 
 
PROGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 213 
 
 such laxity leads. We allude to the rule which prevented a 
 person from giving evidence at a trial, who had the smallest 
 pecuniary interest in the subject matter in dispute. The kind 
 of interest which excluded testimony was defined by Chief 
 Baron Gilbert to be ' where there is a certain benefit or ad- 
 vantage to the witness attending the consequence of the cause 
 either way.' No matter how unimpeachable his character and 
 respectable his station, if it could be shown that he had an 
 interest to the extent of sixpence in the issue of the trial, his 
 lips were closed and his evidence was inadmissible. On one 
 occasion Lord Mansfield said, ' The old cases on the compe- 
 tency of witnesses have gone upon very subtle ground. But of 
 late years the Courts have endeavoured, as far as possible, 
 consistently with the authorities, to let the objection go to the 
 credit rather than to the competency of a witness.' This was 
 in 1786 ; but the endeavour of the Courts was not very suc- 
 cessful, and the ' authorities ' — those sons of Zeruiah — were 
 too strong for them.' It would be endless, and happily now 
 it is useless, to multiply examples, but we may mention that 
 after this dictum of Lord Mansfield it was decided that, in an 
 action against a master for the negligence of his servant, the 
 servant was not a competent witness to disprove his own 
 negligence, on the ground that the verdict might be given in 
 evidence in a subsequent action by the master against the 
 servant, to show the amount of damages he had been com- 
 pelled to pay in the former action. So a person in any degree 
 liable to the costs of a cause was held not to be a competent 
 witness. The mode of taking the objection was by what was 
 called examining the witness on the voire dire, that is, asking 
 him on his oath, in which he swore to speak the truth, whether 
 he was interested or not. 
 
 But the law on the subject was illogical and inconsistent. 
 For it professed to exclude the evidence because the party 
 tendering it might be supposed to be under a bias towards the 
 side for which he appeared, but it took no account of the in- 
 
 ' Even now attesting witnesses to will. Perhaps, however, this is rather 
 
 a will are by express statute not allowed an Irish way of putting it — for if the 
 
 to take an interest under the will. This evidence were excluded the will could 
 
 is certainly better than to permit them not be proved, and therefore they must 
 
 to retain their legacies and exclude their lose their legacies which depend upon 
 
 testimony in an attempt to prove the the will. 
 
214 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 terest arising from close relationship, except in the single case 
 of husband and wife. A father might give evidence for a son, 
 or a son for a father, but if the one had incurred the slightest 
 pecuniary obligation for the other which could in any way be 
 affected by the verdict, he could not be heard, except, indeed, 
 in the unlikely case where his evidence would tend to fix his 
 own liability.' 
 
 Of course, as a direct consequence of this rule — and indeed 
 A fortiori, — the parties to a cause could not give evidence on 
 their own behalf, and, therefore, when the transaction was 
 such as could not be proved by a third person or by some 
 document, a party who had nothing but his own testimony to 
 rely upon necessarily failed. We remember hearing a story 
 of an eminent advocate who employed a chimney sweeper to 
 rectify a particular chimney that smoked, and afterwards 
 asked him for what sum he would undertake to put right all 
 the 'chimneys in the house. The sweep answered that his 
 charge would be a guinea a chimney, on which the lawyer 
 told him, no one else being present, that he might do it for 
 that sum. Soon afterwards a bill was sent in claiming seventy 
 guineas for the work done, and as the barrister had no means 
 of proving what the contract was except by his own state- 
 ment, which as the law then stood was inadmissible, and he 
 knew that Sooty would bring a host of sweeps to swear that 
 the bill was a reasonable one, he thought that the wisest 
 course was to submit at once, and he paid the demand. 
 
 It must, however, in candour be admitted that those who 
 argued against the proposed change and upheld the old maxim 
 of our law, that iicvio debet testari in proprid causa, made a 
 very plausible case. They said that the interest was here too 
 great and the temptation to perjuiy too strong. But we think 
 it might be fairly replied that a rule of law, whereby honest 
 men are defrauded of their rights, ought not to be permitted 
 to continue because dishonest men may avail themselves of 
 its abrogation for the purpose of perjury. And it may be 
 doubted whether the fear of this consequence which influenced 
 so many in their opposition to a change in the law has been 
 justified by the event. Lord Brougham of course did not 
 
 Under the Civil Law the mle was, se itec volottes ad testimonium admitttndi 
 that Parentes et liberi invicem adversiis mnt. Cod. iv. tit. 20. s, 6. 
 
PROGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 215 
 
 overlook the obvious objection that would be urged against 
 the admission of parties to give evidence when he proposed 
 it in his speech in 1828 ; but he thus replied to it by antici- 
 pation : — 
 
 Speaking from my own observation, I sliould say that there is more risk of 
 rash swearing than of actual perjury ; of the party becoming jealous and obstinate, 
 and seeing things in false colours, or shutting his eyes to the truth, and recol- 
 lecting imperfectly, or not at all, when the passions are roused by litigation. 
 
 And in this opinion Sir J. Eardley-Wilmot agrees, who, 
 being himself a County Court Judge of several years' standing, 
 is entitled to speak with some confidence. He says that ' ex- 
 perience of the modern practice, tested daily in the County 
 Courts, confirms the truth and soundness of the above obser- 
 vation. Perjury doubtless is increased, but very often testi- 
 mony entirely contradictory may be accounted for in the way 
 pointed out by Mr. Brougham, without necessarily arriving at 
 the conclusion that parties are intentionally violating the 
 sanctity of an oath.' To this we may add that the cases 
 where the Judges of the Superior Courts feel themselves 
 called upon to commit parties to a cause for perjury in their 
 evidence are very rare. 
 
 But we cannot pursue the subject of Law Reform further 
 at present. Much has been accomplished, but much still 
 remains to be done. We cannot believe that the absurdity of 
 shutting up a jury 'without meat, drink, or fire, candle light 
 excepted,' until they are agreed upon a verdict, will be 
 any longer tolerated ; and we have in a previous article 
 already expressed our opinion that the requirement of 
 unanimity of juries, ought, in civil trials, to be done away 
 with, and the decision of a majority, which to conciliate our 
 opponents we are willing to fix at two-thirds, accepted in its 
 stead. We can only regret that the attempt of the present 
 Lord Chancellor during the last session to effect a change in 
 this respect was unsuccessful. The great argument with which 
 he wasmet, was the infrequency of the occurrence of juries 
 being discharged without a verdict, on account of their not 
 being able to agree. But we attach little value to this circum- 
 stance even supposing it to be true to the extent stated— 
 which we doubt,--for it is impossible not to feel persuaded 
 that m a vast number of cases the unanimity is a sham and 
 
2i6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 not a reality ; and the verdict represents not the deliberate 
 opinion of the whole jury, but that of a majority to whom 
 two or three out of the twelve surrender their convictions for 
 the sake of conformity, forgetting that they are bound by 
 their oath ' to give a true verdict according to the evidence! 
 We do not know whether Lord Brougham's opinion on this 
 question has undergone any change, but it certainly was 
 adverse to that here advocated. In his speech on Local 
 Courts in 1830, after saying that he would have a jury to 
 decide all cases of conflicting testimony, he added, ' but I 
 would not have that verdict the verdict of the majority, for, 
 paradoxical as it may seem, I would have a forced unanimity 
 among the jury. Were it otherwise, there would never be 
 that patient investigation which is necessary to come at the 
 truth. There would be cries of " Question " such as are some- 
 times heard in larger and Jess judicial assemblies.' 
 
 There is also the important question of our Bankruptcy Law, 
 the present state of which excites such deep dissatisfaction in 
 the mercantile and trading community ; and no wonder when 
 we consider the large proportion of every insolvent estate 
 which is swallowed up in costs and percentages, not to mention 
 the untenable distinction that exists between traders and non- 
 traders as to the operation of the law. And a late notorious 
 trial has furnished a strong argument in favour of those who 
 insist that there ought to be a criminal Court of Appeal on 
 questions of fact, which we incline to think might be safely 
 established, if due care were taken to prevent the abuse of an 
 absolute right of appeal, the effect of which would be that 
 every capital case would be tried t\\ice over. But we are free 
 to confess that we see great difficulties in the way of such a 
 measure, which we may, perhaps, take another opportunity of 
 fully discussing. It is to be hoped also, that next session will 
 see Bills brought in to regulate the transfer of land, and for 
 quieting of titles, for the purpose of putting an end to the 
 costly and cumbrous machinery of conve)-ancing as it now 
 exists, and of making land a more marketable commodity. 
 On one of the ancient bricks discovered at Nineveh, the 
 cuneiform inscription is believed to be an Assyrian form of 
 conveyance, and although wo can hardly hope to reduce our 
 forms to such narrow dimensions^ we may beyond doubt effect 
 
'■i^^^0>^K 
 
 PROGRESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 217 
 
 a wonderful improvement in them both as regards simpHcity 
 and brevity. Then again, the important question of the mode 
 of preparing Acts of Parliament must be dealt with ; for it is 
 a scandal and a disgrace that the following description of 
 the process given by Lord Brougham in his speech on Law 
 Reform in 1848, should still be the language not of satire 
 but truth. 
 
 No system whatever, nothing approaching to systematic, is to be seen ; all is 
 random, all haphazard, all blind chance, all acting in the dark, without rule or 
 guide, or compass or concert. The bills propounded have a twofold origin ; they 
 come from Boards or departments of the State, or they come from private indi- 
 viduals, whom, without any disrespect, I may term amateurs in legislation. But 
 the Boards, independent and separate, act without any concert or any communica- 
 tion whatever, are entirely ignorant of what the other is doing ; each proceeding 
 upon principles of its own, if principle any of them ever think of; each taking its 
 own views, of the same subject matter on which the other is composing law ; each 
 employing a phraseology of its own ; all generally in collision, and often in con- 
 flict. . . • . . The result of this habitual carelessness and want of system in 
 the preparation of our laws might easily be foreseen. A mass has been engen- 
 dered, in which the obscurity of darkness alternates with the glare of cross light, 
 meagre explanation with inexcusable prolixity, repetition with omission, repug- 
 nancy with truism, a mass which, if it be not termed nonsense and contradiction, 
 only escapes those epithets from the respect due to the venerable name of a Statu- 
 tory Record. 
 
 We could amuse our readers with many proofs of this, and 
 with instances where even 'the venerable name of a Statutory 
 Record ' has not deterred Judges on the Bench from declaring 
 provisions of Acts, which they were bound to interpret, 
 nonsensical and contradictory. But we have not space to 
 spare, and we must pass on to the remedy, which, we are inclined 
 to agree with Lord Brougham in thinking, can only be found 
 in the establishment of a Board formed of skilful professional 
 men, 'not to supersede, but to aid both Houses of Parliament 
 in the preparation of Public Bills.' At all events it would be 
 impossible to controvert the canons he lays down as essential 
 to be observed in the framing of statutes, i. A statute should 
 never be made without a careful regard to former statutes, in 
 pari materid. 2. One part of a statute should ever have 
 regard to all its other parts. 3, Alterations made in passing 
 a Bill should carefully be made, having reference to the parts 
 that are left unchanged. 
 
 And, in respect of the language in which they should be 
 conveyed, it would be difficult to discover rules more apt and 
 useful than the following, which will be found in the same 
 
2i8 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 speech, and some of which ought to be kept in view in every 
 species of composition. 
 
 1. Always use the least equivocal and the plainest terms. 
 
 2. Never use a word which has two senses, without defining in which it 
 is used. 
 
 3. Never use the same word in two senses. 
 
 4. Never use different words in the same sense. 
 
 5. Never assume as known what has not been expoimded. 
 
 6. Never, if possible, enact by reference to another statute. 
 
 7. If, to avoid greater prolixity, you must import another statute, regard care- 
 fully the text of the Act referred to. 
 
 Closely connected with this subject are the questions of a 
 Consolidation of the Statutes and a Code. With regard to the 
 necessity of the first there really can hardly be any difference 
 of opinion. It is a work urgently required, and ought not to 
 be any longer delayed. Our Statute Book is a tangled forest 
 of legislation, in which, according to the old proverb, one cannot 
 see the trees for the wood. None but the most experienced 
 pioneer can hope to thread his way through the intricate laby- 
 rinth ; and even he will be often lost in the brushwood of 
 contradictory clauses, inconsistent provisions, and redundant 
 and superfluous matter. What is wanted is a condensation of all 
 statutes relating to the same subject into one or, if necessary, 
 two Acts, framed upon the principles and in the language 
 indicated by Lord Brougham, and a repeal of the previous 
 legislation relating to it. This will be the starting point, and 
 future alterations or additions can easily be made in separate 
 Acts, until they become sufficiently numerous to justify a 
 second total repeal, and the enactment of a fresh statute, framed 
 upon the model of the former one. As to a Code, we have 
 some doubts as to both its practicability and its expediency, 
 for reasons which are generally lost sight of by those who advo- 
 cate its adoption in this country. They forget that the English 
 Courts never venture beyond the letter of an enactment. They 
 expound the law, but never (at least in theory) extend it. We 
 are not now speaking of the principles of the common law, 
 which are elastic enough to admit of expansion without draw- 
 ing upon the judges what they would consider the reproach of 
 making law instead of declaring it, but of statute law : and no 
 one at all conversant with the administration of justice in 
 England, can fail to be struck with the jealous care with 
 
PJiOGEESS OF LEGAL REFORM. 219 
 
 which our Courts confine themselves within the limits of 
 written law. Their maxim is, jus dicere et non jus dare, and 
 they do not stir a hairbreadth beyond what the legislature 
 has enacted. If, then, we had a .Code,— that is, a written 
 statutory record of the whole law,— we should find the Courts 
 trammelled by definitions and directions to which they would 
 adhere with the most rigid exactness, but which would lead 
 to many absurdities, and in not a few cases to a miscarriage of 
 justice. For, in discussing this subject, it must never be for- 
 gotten that both the Roman and the French Codes admit a 
 latitude of interpretation, and have in some points an indefinite- 
 ness, which would never be tolerated in England, if a Code were 
 introduced here. Thus it is one of the provisions of the ' Code 
 Napoleon,' even in criminal cases, that ' the President is in- 
 vested with a discretionary power, in virtue of which he will 
 be able to take upon himself all that he shall believe to be 
 useful for discovering the truth.' In strong contrast with 
 which we may quote the dictum of Lord Camden, that ' the 
 discretion of a judge is the law of tyrants.' And as to the 
 great work of Justinian, which is so often appealed to as the 
 model of what is wanted in England, we do not hesitate to say 
 that it is loose and vague to a degree of which those who have 
 not studied it can have no conception. It is admirable in the 
 enunciation of certain principles founded in equity and good 
 sense ; but as a code of written and positive law it is utterly 
 deficient in the qualities of precision and accuracy, such as we 
 are accustomed to look for in any legal exposition of a subject. 
 The ' Digest ' is in fact an undigested mass of extracts from 
 text writers ; the 'Juris Prudentes of the Roman Law,' and 
 the ' Code ' (properly so called) is a collection of rescripts or 
 answers sent by the Emperors to particular questions submitted 
 to them by individuals. It is in the Institutes alone that we 
 find anything like scientific or systematic arrangement, and 
 we believe that they were the last great work of Justinian's 
 reign. 
 
 ^ But supposing the difficulty to which we have alluded not to 
 exist, there are other objections which we think deserve con- 
 siderable weight. A Code must at all events be interpreted 
 and applied to the facts of each case as it arises ; and the 
 English law abounds in the nicest and most subtle distinctions, 
 
220 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 some of them so shadowy that it is almost impossible to 
 abstract them from the special circumstances which gave rise 
 to them, and embody them in a general rule. Hence occurs 
 the necessity of voluminous reports of cases, in order that the 
 practising lawyer may see whether or not they can be distin- 
 guished from, or whether they have the authority of precedents 
 for, the particular case on which he is called upon to advise. 
 There must, therefore, necessarily spring up as an excrescence 
 from the Code a body of commentaries and reports without 
 which the Code itself would be sure to mislead, but with which 
 the public would be no better off than they are at present. 
 And, besides all this, the active work of legislation would be 
 constantly going on, adding to, and altering or modifying the 
 provisions of the Code, so that in a few years it would be im- 
 possible to rely upon it as an exposition of the existing law. 
 We might multiply objections further, but we cannot at pre- 
 sent pursue this interesting subject, and we shall conclude 
 by quoting a passage from Lord Brougham's speech on law 
 reform in 1848, in which he said, on referring to the con- 
 vulsions which in that year were shaking other States to their 
 foundations : — 
 
 I have the most entire and undoubting confidence in the powers of our Con- 
 stitution, and the loyalty, the virtue, and the courage of my fellow-subjects to 
 sustain it. But the better the law is under which they live, the cheaper its admin- 
 istration to them, the closer its remedies are brought to their own doors, the plainer 
 it is written for them to read, and the simpler to comprehend as digested, the 
 more secure property becomes in the enjoyment, the easier to exck-inge and trans- 
 fer, making it, as Blackstone says, answer more perfectly the purposes of civil 
 life, — removing, as Locke hath it, the shoals and quicksands which beset the 
 course of those who deal with it, — the better will our system deserve the people's 
 love, with the more fervent loyalty will it be by them upheld, the more firmly 
 nerved in its -defence will be their gallant arms, the more inaccessible their honest 
 hearts to the arts of all its enemies. 
 
 These are eloquent words, but not more eloquent than true ; 
 and the effect of the legal reforms which have been accom- 
 plished within the memory of the present generation, has 
 unquestionably been to perfect the noblest institutions of this 
 country, and to strengthen the attachment of the people to 
 the laws by which they are governed. 
 
321 
 
 AN ELECTION IN FRANCE} 
 
 ' Blackwood's Magazine,' July, i860. 
 
 Haudfadli Ubtrtas d domini miscentur. — Tacitus. 
 
 An article has very recently appeared in which a narrative 
 was given of the mode in which the provinces of Savoy and 
 Nice were torn from Italy and annexed to France, under the 
 pretence of an appeal to the populations by means of univer- 
 sal suffrage. It was there shown, by the evidence of facts 
 which came under the cognisance of an eyewitness, that the 
 whole process was a gigantic swindle, and that the result ob- 
 tained by the ballot-box no more represented the real opinions 
 and wishes of the inhabitants, than if they had been marched 
 up to the poll under an escort of military, and compelled to 
 vote at the point of the bayonet, according to the dictates of 
 the French Emperor, whose subjects they have now become. 
 The lesson was an instructive one, and it has, we hope, opened 
 the eyes of all who are not too blind to see, to the intense 
 mockery of universal suffrage as a test of the national will, 
 under circumstances of pressure such as was exercised in the 
 case of Nice and Savoy. We propose now to show the way 
 in which the same instrument is worked in France, and to put 
 our readers in possession of some facts which will enable 
 them to judge of the worth, or rather worthlessness, of an 
 appeal to the people under such conditions. 
 
 At present we see in France a state of things which it is 
 difficult to comprehend. We can understand the existence of 
 simple despotism, like that of Russia ; or limited monarchy, 
 like that of England ; or pure democracy, like that of America • 
 or any of these, with certain modifications not destructive of 
 
 ' Although the Empire has passed interest as showing how popular dec 
 away and a Republic now (1874) exis.ts in tions were managed under the Imneri^i 
 France, this article may be not without regime. i^='iai 
 
222 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the main idea and central principle of the particular form of 
 government. But despotism and democracy are contradictory 
 opposites, which seem to be no more capable of amalgamating 
 than fire and water. Each is, in theory at least, the absolute 
 negative of the other. And yet France exhibits the spectacle 
 of a despotic Government based on the most democratic of 
 all principles — universal suffrage. Under it the Republic was 
 set aside, and a single hereditary ruler was voluntarily chosen 
 by the people, by an overwhelming majority of votes ; and 
 under it the Emperor has to deal with a representative Cham- 
 ber periodically chosen by the masses of the people, who, it 
 seems to be paradoxical to assert, are perpetually conspiring 
 against their own liberties. However carefully, in the consti- 
 tution framed for France by the Emperor, are traced the limits 
 within ^hich the Chamber must confine itself, it is impossible 
 to deny that, unless the Imperial Government were popular in 
 France, unmistakable symptoms of general disaffection would 
 show themselves within its walls under a system of universal 
 suffrage, provided the suffrages were fairly taken, and the 
 members chosen truly represented the opinions of their con- 
 stituents. We see no answer but one to such an argument as 
 the following, which might be used by Napoleon III. in defence 
 of his government : — 
 
 You complain that France is despotically ruled, and that her liberties are 
 crashed by military force ; that she has no free press ; and servilely obeys the 
 dictates of the head of the State. But observe, she does all this with her own 
 free will. She herself, after a solemn appeal made by me to the whole popula- 
 tion, chose me as her i-uler ; and she possesses in the Corps UgislatifaiL organ 
 through which her voice may be heard ^^^th less chance of being mistaken than 
 even the public voice in the Parliament of England ; for there the right of suf- 
 frage is restricted to a few, whereas in France it belongs to the whole adult male 
 population. If, then, you admit that the voice of the nation is fairly represented 
 l3y the deputies elected by universal suffrage, and admit also, as you cannot deny, 
 that opposition to Government in the Chamber is feeble and insignificant, I ask 
 you, in logical fairness and consistency, to admit that France and 1 are perfectly 
 at one, and that in the policy which I pursue I act merely as the interpreter of her 
 will. You tell me that my power rests on the bayonet, but I appeal to the testi- 
 mony of the ballot-box. 
 
 To this we would reply by asking the question, ' Is the 
 ballot-box a true witness } Is the testimony it gives a reality 
 or a sham V Certain facts have come to our knowledge 
 which make us doubt the integrity of the appeal ; and we 
 believe that the solution of the enigma of the existence of so- 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 223 
 
 called free institutions in France, side by side with a military 
 despotism, is to be found in tlie influence which the French 
 executive is able to exercise over the elections, and thus from 
 the dangerous nettle of liberty to pluck the flower of safety 
 for itself. We dare say our readers have seen the ingenious 
 trick of legerdemain called ' forcing a card,' which consists in 
 offering to a bystander his choice out of all the cards of the 
 pack as they are rapidly shuffled before his eyes, but in reality 
 compelling him to take the particular card the conjuror wishes. 
 This is in fact very much like the 7nodus operandi of the great 
 French Conjuror. He makes the people believe that they are 
 exercising a free choice in voting by ballot for a representa- 
 tive, but he takes very good care to secure as far as possible 
 the return of a candidate nominated by himself. 
 
 It is not easy for us in this country to realise the extent 
 to which Government action is carried in France. The 
 distinctive feature of the freedom which is the boast of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race is self-government. Parish vestries, boards 
 of health, boards of guardians, municipal corporations, and 
 local committees, manage a vast number of public affairs 
 amongst us, with as little interference on the part of the 
 executive as if that executive did not exist. But in France 
 the very reverse of this is the fact. To quote the words of 
 a writer which seem apposite to our purpose : — 
 
 The Government there, itnder whatever form, -whether that of Directory, Con- 
 sulship, Empire, Restoration, Monarchy of the Barricades, Republic, or the Army, 
 which is its present phase, has always been essentially despotic in its character. 
 It has ruled by a system of paid employSs in immediate dependence upon itself. 
 The provincial functionaries, such as prefects and sub-prefects, and mayors of 
 arrondissements, are mere puppets, whose strings are pulled by the executive in 
 Paris. In no country is the system of police surveillance and espionage more 
 thoroughly understood or constantly practised. No public meetings are convened, 
 as in England, to take into consideration the measures of Government, and, if 
 necessary, organise a peaceful opposition to them. The people are not, except 
 in the solitary instance of dropping their individual votes into the ballot-box when 
 the period of an election comes round, made parties to the management of their 
 own interests. Hence there is, properly speaking, no public opinion in France 
 the influence of which can be felt by statesmen, and enable them to forecast the 
 measures which will be best suited for the wants, and most in accordance with 
 the real wishes of the nation. Hence also results the startling paradox, that the 
 French, of all people in the world, are the most impatient of constitutional con- 
 trol, and the most servilely subnaissive to despotic power. ' 
 
 Forsyth's History of Trial by Jury, pp. 421, 422. 
 
2 24 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 We will now, by way of example, give the history of a 
 French election, which took place in the electoral district of 
 Foug^res and Vitrd, in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine in 
 Brittany, on December i8 and 19, 1859. It will serve as a 
 good illustration of the mode in which universal suffrage works 
 ■ — or rather is worked — across the Channel, and may throw 
 some light upon the machinery by which the existence of a 
 representative Chamber is made compatible with that of a 
 despotic Empire. And the lesson it affords will not be with- 
 out its use at a time when the process is applied not merely 
 to determine the result of particular elections, but to annex 
 whole provinces, and reconstruct nationalities, under the pre- 
 tence of an appeal to the people. 
 
 We take the facts from a Protestation, or, as we should 
 say. Election Petition, presented by M. le Beschu de Champ- 
 savin, one of the defeated candidates,- to the Corps Legislatif, 
 praying that a commission of inquiry might issue to verify his 
 allegations, and that the election might be declared null and 
 void, on account of the illegal practices of which he com- 
 plained. 
 
 M. le Beschu is a gentleman of high position and unim- 
 peachable honour. He is Conseillcr-^\!a-a.t is, one of the judges 
 of the Coiir hnpt'riale at Rennes in Brittany — a chevalier of 
 the Legion of Honour, and possesses considerable estates, one 
 of which, Champsavin, is situated in the commune of Louvignd, 
 and gives its name to his family. The rest of his property 
 lies within the electoral district of Ille-et-Vilaine, which was 
 the scene of the contest we are about to narrate. He there- 
 fore had strong local claims upon the inhabitants — at all 
 events, as compared with a stranger — and had been frequently 
 returned by them as member of the Conscil General of the 
 department. A general election being about to take place in 
 the month of December last year, M. le Beschu determined to 
 present himself as a candidate to the electors of the arron- 
 dissements of Foug^res and Vitr6, and solicit their votes for the 
 honour of a seat in the Corps Legislatif. His first step, in 
 conformity with the provisions of the law of July 16, 1850, 
 was to send, on November 26, to the procurcurs imp&iaux of 
 Foug^res and Vitr6 a declaration of his intention to be a can- 
 didate, and also a copy of the card or ticket which he pro- 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 225 
 
 posed to distribute in the two arrondissements. He next took 
 the oath required by the Senatus Consultum of December 25, 
 1852 and sent the announcement of his intention to stand to 
 the three newspapers which are published at Rennes. One of 
 these was used by the prefect as his official organ, and the 
 appearance of M. le Beschu's address in its columns was headed 
 by a sort of cautious apology on the part of the editor :— 
 
 We have received from the Honourable M. le Beschu the following letter, the 
 insertion of which, we believe, we have not the power to refase. 
 
 ' Have not the power to refuse,' Mr. Editor ? what does 
 that mean ? What possible objection could you have to in- 
 serting the letter, even if you were at liberty to decline to do 
 so ? The fact was, that the prefect, or rather the Government, 
 had already a candidate of its own in the field, in the person 
 of a certain M. de Dalmas, who filled the high and important 
 office of Sous-chef du Cabinet de VEmpereur; and the prefect, 
 in obedience to orders from head-quarters, had previously, on 
 November 22, addressed a circular to the mayors of the 
 different communes of the two arrondissements, strongly in- 
 sisting upon the duty of "electing M. de Dalmas. We ought 
 to state that several other candidates besides M. le Beschu, 
 locally known to the electors, had declared themselves ; but 
 it is only necessary to mention the name of one of them, M. 
 Dr6o, who alone of the others went to the poll, and of whom 
 we shall have something to say by-and-by. 
 
 M. le Pr^fet said in his circular that the government of 
 the Emperor had charged him to recommend, in its name, to 
 the electors as the candidate of its choice, M. de Dalmas, 
 Sous-chef du Cabinet de V Empereur ; and he expressed his 
 hope that the electors would receive with favour the name 
 ' of one of the first functionaries of the household of the Em- 
 peror,' and thus secure for their interests a patron in a better 
 position than any of the other candidates ' to assist us in the 
 accomplishment of works of public utility which we have 
 commenced, or which we propose to undertake, in the interest 
 of the population of lUe-et-Vilaine.' And he added, that the 
 motives which had determined the Government to recommend 
 M. de Dalmas to the electors were, first, the necessity of pre- 
 venting unhappy divisions which would take place if the con- 
 
 Q 
 
226 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 test were confined to local candidates; and, secondly, the 
 advantage of confiding important interests to an eminent per- 
 son (tme notability), in a position to defend them. 
 
 We do not stop to criticise this production of M. le Pr^fet, 
 otherwise we might ask why ' the Government' should be 
 anxious to have the interests of Ille-et-Vilaine entrusted to so 
 puissant an advocate as one of its own creatures was thus re- 
 presented to be ; for as all public favours must emanate from 
 the Government, it surely could confer them, if it pleased, 
 without the intervention of the Sous-CHEF du Cabinet de 
 VEmpereur. 
 
 With reference to the remark, that the adoption of a 
 Government candidate was proposed to prevent jealousies and 
 heart-burnings, M. le Beschu makes an admission which shows 
 how fully he recognises the right of the executive to interfere 
 within limits which we should have thought wide enough to 
 satisfy even Imperial ideas on the subject of freedom of elec- 
 tion. He says, ' If the Administration had made its choice 
 amongst the inhabitants of the district who appeared to be 
 most popular with the electors, all the other rival candidates 
 would have instantly retired from the contest.' The primary 
 grievance complained of, therefore, seems to be, not Govern- 
 ment interference as such, but its interference on behalf of a 
 stranger. 
 
 In order fully to understand the allusions in ]\I. le Prefets 
 circular to the probable benefits which M. de Dalmas might 
 be able to confer upon the district if he were elected, we ought 
 to mention that it was preceded by notices in some of the 
 local newspapers, that the Emperor, ' at the instance of the 
 prefect,' had decided upon creating a domaine impirialc in the 
 department of Ille-et-Vilaine ; and in order to puff M. le 
 Prifet, it was added that 'the execution of this plan could 
 not be entrusted to better hands than those of the enlightened 
 magistrate, who, with such loftiness of view, seconds, in our 
 country, the intelligent policy of the Emperor.' 
 
 The prefect's next step was to send a circular to all the 
 mayors, telling them to address to every elector within his 
 jurisdiction a ticket, containing the name of M. de Dalmas, 
 ' candidate of the Government of the Emperor,' and they were 
 ordered to give every publicity to an official proclamation. 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 227 
 
 copies of which accompanied the letter. This was an address 
 to the electors, signed Le Pr^fet d Ille-et-Vilaine, P. Feart ; 
 and as we are not in the habit of seeing such documents in 
 this country issued by Government officials, even in the case 
 of dockyard constituencies, we will give it entire as an elec- 
 tioneering curiosity : — 
 
 ELECTION FOR THE ARRONDISSEMENTS OF FOUG^RES AND VITRfi UNITED. 
 
 PROCLAMATION. 
 The Prefect of Ille-et- Vilaine to the Electors of the arrondissements of Fougires ana 
 Vitri. 
 
 Electors ! 
 
 The Government proposes to you to choose as deputy M. de Dalmas, sous-chef 
 of the Cabinet of his Majesty the Emperor. 
 
 M. de Dalmas belongs to Brittany. 
 
 He knows your interests. 
 
 He appreciates the full extent of your wants. 
 
 He is in a position, as well from sympathy as duty, to fulfil faithfully the 
 trust reposed in hun, and to devote himself usefully to the prosperity of your 
 country. 
 
 M. de Dalmas, besides, is not only able to make the Government appreciate 
 all your claims to its good-will — 
 
 He affords to us, by the very fact of his becoming a candidate, the means of 
 proving that the Government, now to-day as at the time of the visit to Brittany, 
 can reckon upon your support. 
 Electors ! 
 
 You have up to this day availed yourselves of all occasions that have been offered 
 to you to manifest your sympathies for the Government of the Emperor, and your 
 devotion to your country. 
 
 No other candidate would be able, in the same degree as M. de Dalmas, to 
 give satisfaction to your sentiments of gratitude, and to your interests. 
 
 We have the confident hope that you will, by your votes in favour of M. de 
 Dalmas, ratify the choice of the Government of the Empire. 
 
 Done at the Hotel of the Prefecture, at Rennes, the 9th of December, 1859. 
 
 The Prefect of Illc-et- Vilaine 
 (Signed) P. FeaRT. 
 
 The prefect also addressed a significant notice to the 
 mayors, directing them to inform him of the names of the 
 inhabitants of their communes who showed themselves fa- 
 vourable to the canvass of M. le Beschu ; and "Cazjuge de paix 
 of one of the cantons also officially requested the different 
 mayors.to give- him immediate notice of any steps taken in 
 favour of any candidate in opposition to that of the Govern- 
 ment. Whatever may have been the object of this request 
 
 Q3 ' 
 
2 28 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 it certainly came with a bad grace from t\\^juge de paix,V{h.os,& 
 position required the most absolute impartiality, for he dis- 
 charges functions analogous to those of the revising barristers 
 in England, and determines as a court of appeal upon claims 
 to vote, and thus forms, in effect, the electoral lists. 
 
 It may well be supposed that, with such an example set 
 them by M. le Prdfet, the underlings in office were not behind- 
 hand in zeal. On Saturday, December 17— the day before 
 the ballot, which was to open on Sunday morning after mass 
 — the sous-prdfet of Fougeres, M. Thil, addressed a private 
 circular to the mayors of the communes, which we will quote 
 at length, as it is a remarkable document, and shows the sort 
 of pressure put upon the country mayors to make them do 
 their duty, by insuring as far as possible the return of the 
 Government candidate : — 
 
 FoUGfeRES, xith December, 1859. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, — The ballot opens to-morrow. I have the honour to remind 
 you that it is your duty to open it immediately after the first mass ; that you will 
 have on the table {pir le bureau) a certain number of tickets bearing the name of 
 M. de Dalmas, and no other ; that it is important that persons of intelligence, 
 and who can be relied upon (personnes intclUgentes et sHres), furnished with tickets 
 bearing the name of M. de Dalmas, should occupy the approaches to the town- 
 hall, and protect the electors of your commune, who are so well-intentioned, 
 against error and falsehood. 
 
 A cantounier (road-labourer) will be placed, subject to your orders, during the 
 two days of the ballot. 
 
 Three candidates are in presence : — M. de Dalmas, secretarial sous-chef a{ the 
 Cabinet of the Emperor, candidate of the Government ; M. le Beschu de Champ- 
 savin ; M. Dreo, son-in-law of Garnier-Pages, founder of the Republic in 1848, 
 one of those who decreed the forty-five centimes, of which you will have preserved 
 the recollection. 
 
 M. de Dalmas represents the principle of devotion to the Government, to 
 authority, to order, and he alone is able by his position to favoui' the develop- 
 ment of the numerous interests of the arrondissement. 
 
 M. Dreo represents the Republic, Socialism, Destitution. 
 
 Between these two candidates in opposition, the claims of the Hon. M. le 
 Beschu upon your suffrages ought to be obliterated before the interests of order 
 and society, which are menaced. 
 
 Make the electors, Mr. Mayor, vote in a mass (faites voter en masse) for M. 
 Dalmas, candidate of the Government, and by your enlightened and patriotic 
 conduct you will sei-ve at once the Government of the Emperor and the general 
 interests of the country. 
 
 The Sub-f refect of Fougires, 
 
 (Signed) Thil. 
 
 It is only fair to mention that this circular of M. Thil 
 drew down upon him a reprimand from the Minister of the 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 229 
 
 Interior when it was brought under his notice, and he was told 
 that the instructions contained in it exceeded the limit of 
 ' administrative action.' We have no fault to find with the 
 tone or manner of the rebuke ; but the sub-prefect might 
 fairly urge in his defence that he had done little more than 
 copy the example set him by his superior officer, the prefect, 
 who was not reprimanded. 
 
 It is amusing to see the terms in which poor M. Dr^o, 
 'son-in-law of Garnier-Pag6s, founder of the Republic in 
 1848,' is here spoken of ' M. Dr6o represents the Republic, 
 Socialism, Destitution {la mishe) ! ' and this flattering descrip- 
 tion is given of him by a gentleman who most probably was 
 sous-pr^fet under the Republic, and perhaps owed his office 
 originally to the very Government of which he now speaks in 
 such contemptuous language. Mais nous avons cliangd tout 
 cela, and a sneer at the Republic comes well from official lips 
 under the Empire. The Imperial Government, however, did 
 not run much risk as to M. Dreo's chances of success, for in 
 fifty-eight communes he did not get a single vote, and in 
 thirty-six others he only polled 141 votes altogether. The 
 contest, if contest, under the circumstances we are about to 
 detail, it can be called — si rixa est uhi tu pulsus, ego vapulo 
 tantum—\z.Y between M. de Dalmas and M. le Beschu. Before, 
 however, we come to the actual ballot, and what took place 
 there, let us see the mode in which official bribery and cor- 
 ruption were brought to bear upon the election. 
 
 In order to understand this, we must bear in mind the 
 great influence and power of a French prefect, who is a func- 
 tionary very different from any we are familiar with in this 
 country; and it is difficult to institute a comparison where 
 little or no resemblance really exists. It used to be said that 
 the three most despotic beings in the world were a Turkish 
 pacha, a captain of a man-of-war, and a Winchester prefect 
 We will not assert that the French prefect is absolutely de- 
 spotic, but he is the direct organ of the supreme executive in 
 his department ; he is the channel of Government patronage 
 and favour, and is altogether, in the eyes of the inhabitants a 
 very awful personage. We may imagine therefore the effect 
 of his personal interference at an election upon the ignorant 
 community of the rural districts of France, where he is re 
 
230 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 garded not merely as the direct representative of Governnn 
 but is in some measure the impersonation of the Governm 
 itself Government places are only to be obtained thro 
 him. He is the dispenser of Government patronage— 
 redresser of public grievances in his district— the interpr 
 of the wants and wishes of the inhabitants to the ministe 
 Paris. He is, in short, the great man of the department, 
 his visit to a small provincial town or village is an epoch ir 
 history. To be noticed by M. le Pr^fet is there an event 
 man's life ; and the fact is treasured amongst the family 
 collections, as in Beranger's well-known song, Les Souve 
 du Peuple, the old lady tells her admiring grandchildren ■ 
 she was once spoken to by the first Napoleon — 
 
 II me dit, ' Bonjour, ma chere, 
 
 Bonjour, ma chire.' 
 II vous a parte, grand'mere, 
 
 II vous a parte ! 
 
 Fancy, then, the flutter produced amongst the rustic 
 Brittany by M. le Pr^fet accompanying M. de Dalmas in 
 canvass, and personally introducing him to the electors. . 
 having once embarked in the contest, M. Feartwas determ 
 not to mince matters, but to make all the use possible of 
 name of the Emperor himself He delivered speeche; 
 which he said (the oily flatterer !), alluding to a visit pai( 
 the Emperor to Brittany the previous year — 
 
 The Emperor has not forgotten the reception he met with here last year, 
 has asked himself what he could do for your excellent population. A va 
 having occurred in your representative, the idea has occurred to the Emperor ' 
 might be filled up by one of the first functionaries of his household — a mai 
 his own person — who will be able to give him information about your distric 
 spealc to him daily about your wants ! M. de Dalmas, then, is as gc 
 the Emperor for you (est done V Empereiir pour '^'ous), and you ought to 
 him in giatitude to the Emperor, for all that he has done and will still 
 Brittany. 
 
 The prefect took care also to introduce M. de Dalm 
 the cures, who have naturally and properly no inconside 
 influence over the rural population in France ; and signif 
 hints were thrown out as to the advantages that would r 
 to the sacred edifices under their care if he were elected 
 the parish church wanted repair, M. de Dalmas was the 
 who had interest enough to find funds for the purpose, 
 told them, ' If I am elected, I hope to obtain from Go 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 231 
 
 ment a grant for the restoration of your church.' One old 
 gentleman, who was not inclined to be caught by the bait, 
 rather disconcerted the canvasser by his matter-of-fact answer. 
 When he was asked, 'Don't you think of rebuilding your 
 church .'—it seems very old,' he replied, 'Ah ! sir, I am too 
 old to handle the trowel— I must leave that business to my 
 successor.' But others were more alive to their own interests, 
 and it is no wonder, therefore, that in his Sunday sermon in 
 one of the churchesTvhich was too small for the congregation, 
 a priest called upon his hearers to vote for M. de Dalmas, 
 exclaiming, ' Vote for him, and you will vote for the enlarge- 
 ment of our church.' Large sums were also promised for 
 making and repairing roads ; and at Bazouges, where a good 
 deal of interest was felt in the construction of a new bridge, 
 the prefect openly told the municipality, that if they voted 
 right {sHls votaient bien), he would allot fifteen thousand francs 
 for the purpose. At St. Aubin he declared that the question 
 of establishing an imperial domain in that locality depended 
 on the result of the election. 
 
 But hints and promises were not enough. M. le Prifet 
 availed himself of his official position to bribe the communes 
 by a rather lavish distribution of the moneys voted by the 
 conseil-giniral of Ille-et-Vilaine, the application of which, in 
 certain proportions, depended very much upon his discretion, 
 but of which not one farthing om.^^. to have been appropriated 
 to electioneering objects. Part of these funds had been voted 
 for the relief of the poor — or what we should call a poor-rate ; 
 part for the purchasing of fire-engines ; part for the building 
 and furnishing of school-houses and residences of the mayors ; 
 part for infirmaries and hospitals : and the proper proportion 
 which the arrondissement of Fougeres and Vitrd was entitled 
 to receive out of this was one-fourth, but in reality it received 
 considerably more ; and the only reason was, that a Government 
 candidate was on the field, strenuously supported by the prefect, 
 who had the disbursement of the money. We need not mention 
 the images of Christ, and busts of the Emperor and Empress, 
 
 which he was generous enough to give to the village schools 
 
 but all out of the public purse, and just before the election. 
 
 But this was not all. A road was in the course of construc- 
 tion from Vitr6 to St. Malo, and the question was whether it 
 
232 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 should go through the town of St. Aubin, the streets of which 
 were narrow and crooked, or pass outside the town. The 
 engineers wished to give the go-by to the town, but the inha- 
 bitants were strongly opposed to this, as they thought they 
 would lose in some degree the benefit of the road. The prefect 
 adroitly availed himself of the dispute, and told the inhabitants 
 that if they elected M. de Dalmas, he was just the man to get 
 the road made through the town, for a word from him to the 
 Emperor would be sufficient. 
 
 At Saint Brice, the caharetiers, or, as we should call them, 
 keepers of beer-houses and wine-shops, told the prefect while 
 he was openly canvassing for M. de Dalmas, that they would 
 vote to a man for him, and do all they could to induce their 
 customers to vote also, if he would allow them to keep their 
 houses open until ten o'clock, instead of closing them at nine, 
 as the law required. M. le Prefect immediately gave them 
 the permission, and of course secured their votes. In a par- 
 ticular canton of the department, several of the communes 
 had petitioned for the withdrawal of a commissary of police, 
 not on the ground of any personal objection to that office, but 
 on account of the expense. Nothing, however, was done until 
 M. de Dalmas came into the field, when the commissary was 
 withdrawn, and it was publicly announced that the suppression 
 of the office was due to his influence at headquarters. 
 
 The rural postman also, who holds his place at the pleasure 
 of the prefect, was converted into an electioneering agent. He 
 was furnished with a quantity of M. de Dalmas's tickets, and 
 when, after giving his well-known knock at a cottage door, he 
 found a voter in possession of one of M. le Beschu's cards, he 
 begged him to exchange it for one of the right sort — that is, one 
 of M. de Dalmas's — sajing, ' You may get into a scrape ({oous 
 pouvez vous compromettre). Take this ticket ; I bring it by the 
 order of M. le Pr^fet, who wishes no other card to be put into 
 the ballot-box.' And as the electors might naturally imagine 
 that, the essence of vote by ballot being secrecy, they might 
 drop into the box any ticket they pleased without betraying 
 themselves, they were told that the paper of M. le Beschu's 
 tickets was different from that of M. de Dalmas, and not so 
 transparent ; so that the mayor who presided at the table on 
 which the ballot-box was placed, would not fail to recognise 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. ^7,^ 
 
 the ticket, and he would take care to remember the names of 
 those who voted for M. leBeschu. What a practical commentary 
 upon the protection the ballot offers to the voter in France ! 
 
 Public-house keepers were also warned that if they sup- 
 ported M. le Beschu their licences would be withdrawn ; and 
 one of them, whose opposition sympathies were known, was 
 openly told that he was the first who should suffer. So much 
 for the regard paid to Article 39 of the Organic Decree of 
 February 2, 1852, which provides as follows : — 
 
 Those who, by acts, violence, or threats against an elector, whether by making 
 him fear the loss of his employment, or the exposure to risk of his person, his 
 family, or his fortune, shall have determined him to abstain from voting, or shall 
 have influenced his vote, shall be punished with imprisonment, varying from one 
 month to one year, and a fine varying from a hundred to a thousand francs. The 
 penalty shall be double if the guilty person is a public functionary. 
 
 But to show the lengths to which intimidation was prac- 
 tised, we cannot do better than tell the story of a poor post- 
 man, which M. le Beschu offered to prove upon oath, if an 
 inquiry were granted him by the Corps Ligislatif, and which 
 may be taken as a type of the sort of petty tyranny that goes 
 on at elections in France, where Government officials have 
 such overweening power. 
 
 At Saint-Ouen-de-la-Rouerie, a M. B , an old friend 
 
 of M. le Beschu, had a country house, where he kept up an 
 establishment, consisting, amongst others, of a gamekeeper, 
 a gardener, and a bailiff. The bailiff was named Dussuel, 
 and he also acted as rural postman for the neighbourhood, 
 filling thereby two oflJces which would not be thought' very 
 
 compatible in this country. M. B sent a packet of 
 
 M. le Beschu's tickets to his gamekeeper and gardener for dis- 
 tribution, but expressly told Dussuel to have nothing to do 
 with them on account of his connection with the post-office. 
 Dussuel faithfully observed this injunction, and was therefore 
 not a little surprised and alarmed at being summoned by the 
 sous-prifet before the juge de paix, and charged with having 
 distributed M. le Beschu's tickets, and engaged in opposition to 
 the Government ! The bailiff postman stoutly denied the 
 accusation, which was utterly false ; but the only answer he 
 got from the sous-prifet, who seems to have cared little for 
 the presence or opinion of the juge de paix, was, «I tell you 
 
234 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 you are suspended, and I shall apply for your dismissal.' 
 Dussuel, who was a widower with five small children depen-^ 
 
 dent upon him, implored the aid of M. B , who immediately 
 
 went to the prefect and told him the facts of the case ; upon 
 which an investigation took place, and it was proved that 
 Dussuel had not carried a single ticket of M. le Beschu, but 
 several belonging to M. de Dalmas. Still the sub-prefect 
 was not satisfied, and he was allowed to institute a fresh in- 
 quiry, in the course of which Dussuel, to confirm his assertion 
 of his innocence, was incautious enough to put into the hands 
 of the sub-prefect the letter of M. B , in which he had ex- 
 pressly forbidden him to distribute M. le Beschu's cards. Mark 
 now the perverse ingenuity of the soiis-prifet, worthy of the 
 astuteness of a Turkish Cadi. He declared that the letter itself 
 was Dussuel's condemnation ; ' for,' said he, ' this postman has 
 
 not distributed opposition cards because M. B told him 
 
 not to do it : it is plain, tlicn, that he\NOV'LT) HAVE DISTRIBUTED 
 
 them if M. B — had not told him tiot to do so: in consequence, 
 
 I demand his dismissal.' This, however, was going a little too 
 far for even M. lePrifet and he contented himself with ordering 
 Dussuel to act as postman in a different part of the country. 
 The Postmaster-General {le directeiir ghthal des pastes) was 
 then appealed to, and the result was that Dussuel was allowed 
 to retain his former district, but on the express condition that 
 
 he was to give up his employment as bailiff to M. B , and 
 
 not to act as postman to the town of St. Ouen. 
 
 In another part of the electoral district, a poor fellow, who 
 filled the offices of grave-digger and bill-sticker, was deprived 
 of both places by the mayor, on the ground that he had dis- 
 tributed M. le Beschu's tickets ; and when he had cleared 
 himself from this heinous charge, he was restored only on 
 condition that he would distribute M. de Dalmas's tickets, and 
 vote right. 
 
 After this it is needless to say that the whole body of 
 Government employi's, from the prcfct to the canionnier, in- 
 cluding soiis-prcfcts, maires, gendarmerie, institiiteiirs primaires, 
 and faeteurs, was arrayed against M. le Beschu, and left no 
 stone unturned to throw difficulties in his way, and secure the 
 return of M. de Dalmas, 'candidal du Gouvernement,' and 
 ' ;/;/ dcs premiers fniictionnaires de la inaison de F Emperenr' 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 235 
 
 Threats, promises, intimidation, flattery, espionage, all were 
 resorted to, lest in an obscure part of Brittany the inhabitants 
 might be blind enough to choose as their representative a 
 gentleman of excellent character and high position, who 
 resided amongst them, and was well known to them personally, 
 in preference to an utter stranger, whose only recommendation 
 was that he was Sous-chef du Cabinet de VEmpereur. 
 
 We come now to Sunday December 18, the day when 
 the ballot commenced ; and we will fix our attention upon 
 a single commune, that of Louvignd-du-D^sert, in which the 
 estate of Champsavin, belonging to M. le Beschu, is situated, 
 and where, he frankly tells us, the eiforts of the prefect and 
 sub-prefect had been most active against him, as they not 
 unreasonably supposed that he would there be most likely 
 to obtain a majority of votes. It will, however, serve as a 
 specimen of the modus operandi in the other communes of 
 the district. 
 
 The scene opens at the town-hall, or mairie— time just 
 after morning mass. A body of functionaries, all in the employ 
 of Government, were stationed in two rows between the church 
 and the hall, forming a sort of lane along which the voters had 
 to pass on their way to the ballot-box. Like the touters who 
 surround the traveller on his arrival by the steamboat at 
 Calais or Boulogne armed with the cards of their different 
 hotels, these functionaries thrust the tickets of M. de Dalmas 
 into the hands of the countrymen, and did all in their power 
 to make them throw away those of M. le Beschu. After thus 
 running the gauntlet outside, the electors entered the town- 
 hall, where they found the mayor seated at the table with the 
 ballot-box before him, and a heap of M. de Dalmas's tickets 
 ready for use, but not a single ticket of M. le Beschu. The law 
 requires that the tickets shall be folded {fermh), and it is 
 usual to double them twice, in order, of course, to conceal as 
 much as possible the name of the candidate for whom the 
 elector votes ; but on this occasion the mayor took care to 
 half unfold the paper after it was put into his hands, and feel 
 it with his fingers (pray do not forget the hint about the 
 difference in the quality of the paper of the two set of tickets), 
 on the pretence that there might be two tickets folded toge- 
 ther ; and when, by this process of palmistry, he discovered 
 
236 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 that the vote was intended for M. le Beschu, he had the effron- 
 tery to tell the elector that he was voting against ' the pump 
 and the market,' both which, it seems, wanted funds for com- 
 pletion, and stood in need of the powerful assistance of M. 
 de Dalmas, de la maison de VEmpereur. And to prove the 
 utter worthlessness of the ballot as a protection in such a 
 place as Louvign^-du-D6sert (and of course there are a vast 
 number of such places in France), M. le Beschu declares that, 
 when a pauper who received parish relief in the shape of a 
 few loaves of bread weekly, and who had voted on this occasion 
 for him, went, after the ballot, to get his usual pittance of food, 
 the mayor would not let him have any, but sent him away, 
 exclaiming, ' Va trouver M. le Beschu ! ' 
 
 In one of his circulars the prefect had directed the mayors 
 to inform him of the number who voted on the Sunday before 
 the next day's voting began, and M. le Beschu asserts that in 
 several of the communes they carried their zeal so far as to 
 o/ien the ballot-box on the Sunday evening, and sent the results 
 to the prefect. The boxes were then closed for the operations 
 of the morrow. Well may he ask, ' Devant qui et par qui cette 
 operation a-t-elle ete faite ? ' and affirm that it is in direct defi- 
 ance of the provisions of the law of February 2nd, 1852. 
 
 What shall we say, however, of the following incident, 
 which also M. le Beschu offered to prove by witnesses before 
 the Corps L^islatif .' 
 
 In one of the communes the persons present at the final 
 opening of the ballot-box were the mayor, an officer called 
 adjoint, the secretary, and a spectator. Who this spectator 
 was does not appear ; we simply give the fact as M. le Beschu 
 records it. In the list of the electors the names of those who 
 had actually voted were marked with a cross, and the mayor 
 observed that the number of these was small. He took up 
 the list, and as he perused the names, he said, ' So-and so did 
 not come ; but his intention was to vote for M. de Dalmas.' 
 Thereupon the mayor made a cross beside the name, and put 
 a ticket into the box. This operation he repeated several times. 
 While he was thus employed, a woman came into the room, 
 and said, ' Here is my husband's vote, which he has sent me 
 to bring, as he cannot come himself ' All right,' answered 
 the mayor, and dropped the paper into the box, making the 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 237 
 
 cross at the same time beside the absentee's name. This sort 
 of proceeding, however, rather alarmed one of the assistants, 
 who appears to have had a dim suspicion that it was not ' all 
 right ; ' and he said, ' But, Mr. Mayor ! what you are doing 
 seems to be rather serious.' On which the Mayor replied, 
 'I have received orders to act thus ; ' and of course the objector 
 was silent. 
 
 It seems, in truth, to be one of the incidents of the ballot 
 to manufacture votes. Thus, in a case which came before the 
 Tribunal Correctioml of Blanc, a town in the department de 
 I'lndre, in the month of August 1858, the mayor of Blanc 
 and several other persons were charged with various illegal 
 acts in the election of a member of the Conseil gMral, which 
 had recently taken place ; and the mayor in particular (who, 
 it will be remembered, presides over the voting, and has the 
 custody of the ballot-box), with having opened the tickets 
 which were handed to him folded up ; with having put into 
 the box tickets for electors who never came to vote at all ; 
 and with having made one elector vote twice over, and 
 allowed another to put in a ticket for a voter who was absent. 
 
 And lest it should be supposed that this is an extreme 
 case, we will mention another of a still more flagrant character. 
 In a commune in the neighbourhood of Troyes, where a M. 
 Leopold Javal was the candidate in opposition to the Govern- 
 ment, when the ballot-box was opened, only three votes were 
 found in it for him. This caused considerable surprise amongst 
 the electors, as on comparing notes they discovered that more 
 than eighty had in reality given their votes for him ; and so 
 much was said about the fraud that had been practised, that 
 the mayor felt himself compelled to accuse some of the most 
 prominent of the grumblers before the procureur imp^{(4 of 
 defamation. The case came before the Tribunal Correctionel, 
 and more than forty witnesses were examined on oath, who 
 all swore that they had given their votes for M. Javal.' At 
 this stage of the proceedings the president of the court ad- 
 dressed the advocate of the accused, and asked him whether 
 it was necessary to carry the case further. He replied that he 
 had by no means exhausted his list of witnesses, but if the 
 court was satisfied, he was ; upon which a judgment of acquittal 
 was immediately pronounced. We admire the boldness or 
 
238 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 rather the effrontery of the mayor in challenging this inquiry ; 
 but we suppose that he hoped that the electors would be afraid 
 to come forward and convict him of the fraud. 
 
 By way of commentary upon such proceedings as we have 
 here detailed, and to contrast the practice of universal suffrage 
 in France with the pompous theory of the law on the subject, 
 we will now quote one or two passages from a judgment 
 delivered by the Cour de Cassation in January 1857, in which 
 the court said : — 
 
 It is especially under the empire of universal suffrage that it is of importance 
 to take care that the exercise of the electoral right does not degenerate into an 
 abuse ; that one of the most momentous duties of civil life be accomplished loyally, 
 without surprise, without fraud, and that the election be the (result of) will of all 
 those who take part in it, and not the work of individuals without commission and 
 without responsibility. In thus explaining the law, the right of the elector and 
 the candidate remains independent of the Administration, and he may exercise it 
 in complete liberty. 
 
 Brave words these — but quid prosunt leges sine moribus ? 
 What is the use of a written election law to secure the inde- 
 pendence of the voter, if it is constantly violated in practice 
 by a whole army of Government officials .' The liberties of 
 France would have a better chance if the Emperor had the 
 legal right to nominate directly a simple majority in the 
 Chamber, and he were to leave the minority to the free choice 
 of the electors, without the slightest interference on the part of 
 the prefect and his subordinates. As matters stand at present, 
 he returns his own creatures, under the mask of deputies 
 freely chosen by the people. 
 
 When the ballot-box was opened at Louvigne-du-D^sert, 
 although only yy i persons had votes, it was found that there 
 were 780 tickets in the box, and in almost every commune 
 similar discrepancies occurred. This shows that there was 
 fraud somewhere ; and after the narrative of facts we have 
 given we think it will not be difficult to decide whether it was 
 on the part of the voters or the officials. It reminds us of a 
 passage in the speech of the facetious deputy Guerrazzi in the 
 Sardinian Parliament a short time ago, who said, 'At Lavenzo 
 the number of voters registered was 402, and out of the urn 
 came 476 votes. Talk of the miracle of the loaves and fishes ! ' 
 The final result of the contest was that M. de Dalmas was 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 239 
 
 urned by an immense majority over M. le Beschu, the 
 mbers being — 
 
 For M. de Dalmas 25. 59° 
 
 For M. le Beschu 2,821 
 
 For M. Dreo 99^ 
 
 le total number of electors in the list was 39,404> so that 
 97 abstained from voting. 
 Upon these facts M. le Beschu addressed a Protestation to 
 
 I Corps L^gislatif against the return of M. de Dalmas, and 
 lyed the Chamber to annul the election of a representative 
 the united arrondissements of Foug^res and Vitrd that took 
 Lce on December 18 and 19, 1859. He offered to prove by 
 ;nesses on oath, before commissioners to be appointed, the 
 ;ts which he had averred in his protest, in case the Chamber 
 3uld not consider the circulars of the prefect and his sub- 
 iinates, and the matters of public notoriety mentioned in 
 ; protest, sufficient to induce the Chamber to declare the 
 iction null and void. 
 
 M. le Beschu's petition was referred to a committee of the 
 lamber, and a sort of preliminary inquiry was held by them, 
 which M. le Beschu and several other persons were present, 
 d statements were made both on behalf of the petitioner 
 d also of the authorities implicated. The result was that 
 e committee, by a majority of 19 to 12, agreed to report 
 
 the Chamber that the commission of inquiry prayed for_ 
 ght not to be granted, and that M. de Dalmas should be 
 clared duly elected to serve 'for the third electoral circum- 
 •iption of the department of the Ille-et-Vilaine.' This gave 
 e to a spirited debate, which will be found reported in the 
 )urnal des D^bats ' of the 24th of March last, and which is 
 
 II worthy a perusal. The report of the committee went at 
 isiderable length into the allegations contained in M. 
 Beschu's protest, and declared that the circular of M. Thil, 
 : sub-prefect of Foug^res, which we have quoted at length, 
 3 regrettable, and evinced a degree of zeal which nobody 
 lid approve of That it was, however, the isolated act of a 
 dHc functionary, without authority from his superiors ; and 
 ing to the late period at which it appeared, it could have 
 1 no influence on the result of the election. That the facts 
 ;ged by M. le Beschu were not within his own personal 
 
240 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 knowledge, but rested on the information given him by others. 
 'And what danger there was to truth in the passage from 
 mouth to mouth of such statements, and how many alterations 
 they might have undergone before they reached him ! ' (The 
 committee here seems to have forgotten that M. le Beschu's 
 application was to have these very statements verified upon 
 oath by persons who could speak from personal knowledge.) 
 That besides, in one particular affecting the Archbishop of 
 Rennes, M. le Beschu had, in the opinion of a majority of the 
 committee, been shown to be inaccurate, and therefore his 
 other statements ought to be received with great caution, as 
 founded on misapprehension and mistake. Finally, that the 
 immense majority of M. de Dalmas over his opponent was 
 decisive of the question. They said — 
 
 A majority so imposing cannot be obtained on the ground of abuse of authority 
 and influence. Individuals disappear in the infinite ramifications of universal 
 suffrage. [We are translating literally. ] There remain only the masses, whom 
 it would be in vain to attempt to turn aside from the different currents that draw 
 them in ; and if, speaking strictly, one could comprehend a system of intimida- 
 tion capable of making them abstain from voting, it is impossible to imagine an 
 intimidation capable of making them vote contrary to their wishes. 
 
 The above was the substance of the report, in which not a 
 word was said of the promises made, and the inducements 
 held out, by the prefect and his subordinates, to the ' masses ' 
 in the different communes, provided only they voted right 
 {sils votaient bieii), and which, considering the enormous 
 amount of Government interference in France with matters 
 which with us are left in the hands of parish vestries and local 
 boards, were nothing short of bribery on the most extensive 
 scale. The conclusion, however, at which the committee had 
 arrived was vigorously attacked in the Corps Ligislatif by 
 M. Plichon, M. Picard, and others ; and M. Picard, who was 
 himself a member of the committee, said that the Count 
 de la Riboisi^re, a senator and president of the Cojiseil general 
 of Ille-et-Vilaine, had declared before them that, during the 
 election, terror prevailed in the district of Vitre and Fougeres, 
 and had mentioned facts that proved that intimidation, fraud, 
 and bribery {seduction) had been resorted to. But the most 
 interesting part of the debate was a speech inade by M. Baroche, 
 President of the Council of State, U^ho enunciated certain prin- 
 ciples which go far to explain the conduct of the officials in the 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 241 
 
 particular case complained of, and also to explain the majorities 
 which the French Government is able to obtain at elections. 
 After declaring that France was as honoured and as free now 
 as she had ever been, he said — 
 
 While I proclaim the advantages of universal suffrage, I think there would be 
 danger in abandoning it to itself, as one of the previous speakers has seemed to 
 wish. During the continuance of restricted suffrage, certain electoral colleges did 
 not contain more than 150 voters, and sometimes 76 or 80 votes were enough to 
 return a deputy. One can understand that in presence of so small a number of 
 electors, all occupying a certain social position, there was no room for the inter - 
 vention of the Government. But we must not forget that on the 1 8th and 19th 
 of December last, 39,000 electors were convoked in the department of Ille-et- 
 Vilaine to choose a deputy ; and were they to be abando7ied to themselves — that is to 
 say, to all their local passions ? The duty of the Government was to enlighten them, 
 and it had the right to recommend publicly the Government candidate. As a general 
 proposition, I admit tha,t it is a good thing that places should be represented by 
 men locally known there ; but all systems of electoral legislation have allowed 
 that strangers may also be chosen. This is especially necessary in the case of 
 local quarrels and dissensions ; and the best mode of putting a stop to them is the 
 introduction of a candidate who is a stranger. If the Government did not indi- 
 cate its candidate — if it did not recommend him to the electors — if it did not try 
 and insure his success by all honourable means, it would be wanting to its own 
 rights, and would fail in its duty. Universal suffrage which declares itself with 
 such an imposing appearance (avec un ensemble si admirable), when he who is to 
 be elected is placed so high that all feel and know the interest they have in the cho ice 
 they are about to make — [Oh, M. Baroche ! we know well to whose election by 
 seven millions you are now alluding.] — universal suffrage, I say, becomes less en- 
 lightened in p7'oportioji as the person to be elected is nearer to the electors. If, in that 
 case, local passions were left without direction, universal suffrage might become, 
 not, as some one has improperly called it, an universal mystification, but a great 
 danger. The Administration has its candidate. Again I say, it is right and its 
 duty. I, the organ of the Government, declare it without hesitation. 
 
 The question was put to the vote (by ballot) whether the 
 report and recommendation of the committee should be 
 adopted, and there appeared 123 in favour of it, and 109 
 against it' So M. de Dalmas was declared duly elected, 
 and the Sous-chef du Cabinet de l' Empereur now sits in the 
 French chamber as representative of the third circumscription 
 of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine. 
 
 Although we have selected the case of M. le Beschu for 
 the purpose of giving a detailed account of the proceedings 
 at the election at which he was a candidate, it must not be 
 supposed that it is an isolated or exceptional instance. We 
 have before us documents which prove that the interference 
 
 ' This was a large minority, but it was a flagrant one — so flagrant that even 
 must be remembered that the vote was a submissive Chamber could hardly 
 taken by ballot. It shows that the case suffer it to pass. 
 
 R 
 
242 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 at elections of the employes of Government in France, and the 
 unscrupulous use by them of all the influence which their 
 position gives them, is the constant and habitual practice. In 
 a m^moire or 'case,' drawn up in June 1857 by M. Jules Brame, 
 who was a candidate at a general election in the Department 
 du Nord, and whose opponent was M. Descat, the former 
 deputy for the district, we find the prefect, M. Besson, ad- 
 dressing the mayors of the electoral district in a circular, in 
 which he said — 
 
 The Government of the Emperor, to whom the country owes its grandeur and 
 prosperity, recommends (dhigne) M. Descat to the choice of the electors. 
 
 And in another circular he said that to vote for M. Brame 
 would be — 
 
 ■ An unjustifiable act, unworthy of the loyalty of the population. Let us not ' 
 he continued, ' accustom the country to ingratitude. It is a pernicious example, 
 which can only compromise the future. The Government of the Emperor, in its 
 sense of justice for sei-vices rendered, recommends to you M. Descat. You will 
 M. le Maire, I am sure, exert youi-self to the utmost extent of your power to do 
 
 all that is necessary to insure the success of his election It must be made 
 
 generally knman that opposition candidates have not the power- to realise tlie promises 
 they make. It must be made known that, in rejecting M. Descat, the electors are 
 voting against a Government which has done ever)'thing for their prosperity, and 
 which they would attempt to enfeeble by giving votes which would be an act of 
 hostility towards it .... To vote for M. Brame is to give support to the 
 enemies of the countiy, who are not afraid to raise up their heads. ' 
 
 In this contest it was curious to see the eagerness with 
 which both the candidates asserted themselves to be Protec- 
 tionists, and the indignation with which each repelled the 
 calumny that he was -favourable to Free Trade. Thus M. 
 Descat, in an address to the electors, said — 
 
 I am well known to you ; nevertheless, malevolence hawks about (colporte) 
 calumnies against me \\ith such unwearied pertinacity that I owe you an explana- 
 tion. It is said that I am a Free-trader. It is an enormity, against which my 
 past life and all my interests alike protest. 
 
 On the eve of the election, M. Brame was attacked in an 
 article of a local newspaper, and charged with having forged 
 a document for electioneering purposes. M. Brame naturally 
 wished to give an instant denial to so odious an accusation, but 
 he was actually told by the Prociircur Iiiipi'rial that he was too 
 late, and that as the twenty days allowed by law, during which 
 time alone a candidate is permitted to issue placards and 
 notices relative to his election, had just expired, he could 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 243 
 
 neither placard his denial on the walls, nor insert a paragraph 
 in the newspapers, declaring that the charge was false. So 
 that, according to this, a man who ventures to oppose a Govern- 
 ment candidate in France may, at the most critical moment, 
 just before the election, be made the object of the most 
 calumnious attacks— carefully reserved until the twenty days 
 in which he is permitted to address the electors have elapsed 
 —and he is not to be allowed even the liberty of denying 
 
 them. 
 
 Another ingenious mode of stifling opposition at elections 
 is to prevent as far as possible the cards of the obnoxious 
 candidate from getting into the hands of the electors. This 
 is done by attempting to put in force the law relating to 
 colportage, and declaring that all who distribute the cards or 
 tickets are acting as unlicensed hawkers, and so are guilty of a 
 misdemeanour. 
 
 The colportage law is part of the Loi du 27-29 jfzdlletii^g, 
 SUV la Presse, and is in the following terms : ' All distributors 
 or hawkers of books, writings, pamphlets, engravings, and 
 lithographs, shall be obliged to be furnished with an authority 
 (or licence), which shall be delivered to them for the depart- 
 ment of the Seine by the prefect of police, and for the other 
 departments by the prefects.' And the penalty of contra- 
 vention is fine and imprisonment. We cannot state that any 
 French court of justice has actually held the distribution of 
 electoral cards to be within scope of this law, but we know 
 that individuals have been brought before Juges de paix, and 
 charged with it as a penal offence. And in one case a candi- 
 date was himself arrested for handing about his own cards in 
 a market-place ! At a late election which took place for the 
 arrondissement of Pont de I'Eveque, which embraces part of 
 the coast of Normandy, the report was carefully spread that 
 if the Government candidate did not obtain an imposing ma- 
 jority, there would be a general impressment of seamen, and 
 that those who were known to exert themselves for the oppo- 
 sition candidate, would be compelled to sail in the expedition 
 to China. And to such an extent was the system of Govern- 
 ment interference carried, that none of the licensed victuallers' 
 {debiteurs de boissons) dared to receive the addresses and cards 
 of the opposition candidate, and they positively refused them, 
 
2 44 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 knowing well that they were at the mercy of the prefect, who 
 could, if he pleased, make them close their houses. In one 
 of the communes of the arrondissement of Lisieux, the com- 
 missary of police threatened a distributor of some opposition 
 tickets on the eve of an election, that if he did not desist, his 
 son, who was away from his regiment on furlough on account 
 of health, should be immediately recalled to active service, 
 and of course the threat was effectual. Sometimes opposition 
 placards are torn down by or in presence of the authorities, 
 whose zeal, although sometimes, as in the case of M. Thil, it 
 overshoots the mark, is quickened by the hope of thereby re- 
 commending them to the favour of Government, the absolute 
 dispenser of every kind of patronage in France. 
 
 We might go on multiplying such instances to an indefi- 
 nite extent, but we think we have said enough to illustrate 
 the way in which M. Baroche's maxim as to the necessity of 
 not abandoning electors to themselves, and of enlightening 
 them with respect to the performance of their duties, is prac- 
 tically understood and carried out by the authorities ; and 
 how universal suffrage may and does become universal ' mys- 
 tification.' We have seen the enormous amount of influence, 
 both direct and indirect, which the Imperial Government 
 brings to bear upon elections— the promises, the threats, the 
 frauds, which are employed to secure the return of tlie Govern- 
 ment candidates ; and how, then, can we accept the results as 
 a fair test of the political opinions of a majority of the popu- 
 lation } When the masses are told by their prefects, who have 
 the power of verifying their own predictions, that unless they 
 return a particular deputy the roads of the commune will not 
 be repaired, and the bridges not rebuilt, that the parish church 
 will be allowed to fall into decay, and no public money will 
 be spent on the district — how can we wonder that they vote as 
 they are bid, and become passive instruments in the hands of 
 Government. To us, we confess it seems to be little short of a 
 miracle that any opposition should succeed, and we admire the 
 moral courage of the men who venture to confront the serried 
 phalanx of officials, with all their machinery of power, patron- 
 age, and means of annoyance at command. They run in a race 
 where the competitors are so unfairly weighted as to make the 
 chance of victory on the side of opposition almost impossible. 
 
AN ELECTION IN FRANCE. 245 
 
 But it may be said that opposition members do sit in the 
 Corps Ugislatif—sxidi how did they get there if the system at 
 elections is such as we have described ? We answer first, that 
 it would not serve the purpose of the Imperial Government 
 not to have even the show of an opposition in the Chamber- 
 that would be too transparent a mockery ; and, secondly, public 
 opinion is not so utterly powerless and dead in France as to 
 make it safe to attempt such practices in the larger towns. 
 It is therefore quite consistent with all we have here stated, 
 that M. Emile OUivier should be elected in Paris, and M. le 
 Beschu de Champsavin rejected in Brittany. 
 
 We will, in conclusion, quote one or two passages from the 
 writings of the present French Emperor, which deserve to be 
 carefully studied, as containing the opinions of a man who, more 
 than any other in Europe, has the power to convert his ideas 
 into facts. In a short essay on the electoral system which he 
 published in 1840, in 'L'ld^e Napoleonienne,' intended to be 
 a monthly periodical, but of which only one number ever ap- 
 peared, after proposing a system of electoral colleges based 
 on universal suffrage, he says : — 
 
 In a -well-organised body two contrary currents must always be perceptible ; 
 one rising from the base to the summit, the other descending from the summit to 
 the base. 
 
 This influence of the Government, which must be felt in the lowest classes of 
 the people, and the authority of popular will, which even the head of the State 
 must acknowledge, must act and react by mutual degrees in the ascending as in 
 the descending current. 
 
 When the people vote in a body in the public street, and give their suffrage 
 directly, it is as if all the blood of the body rose to the head, and the consequence 
 is discomfort, congestion, giddiness. 
 
 Even the interests of the people are inadequately represented, because reflec- 
 tion and judgment have no influence over the elections ; only passion and excite- 
 ment of the moment direct the vote. 
 
 A striking example of this truth presents itself in the democracy of the Swiss 
 cantons. The people assemble in a body on the public place to choose their 
 representatives ; yet, though they enjoy the plentitude of power, the retrogressive 
 spirit is firmly implanted in the minds of the people in their Swiss cantons. There 
 is no ancient prejudice which they do not sanction in their popular assemblies, 
 and no improvement which they do not reject. 
 
 In France just the contrary takes place. In our election system, founded on 
 fear and privilege, the influence of the Government acts directly on the people, and this 
 influence, which might nevertheless he enlightened and protective, acts by corruptin" 
 the consciences of the people, by deceitful promises, by making a real political traffic 
 of the votes of the citlnens. 
 
 Such is the character given by Prince Louis Napoleon of 
 
248 £SSJYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 England had been purchased by him from natives on the 
 coast. Several naturalists declared that the habits he ascribed 
 to the strange brute— such as that of beating its breast vio- 
 lently when enraged— .were contrary to all experience of the 
 ape tribe, and incredible. Mr. Du Chaillu was the first to 
 make known to geographers the existence of the Fans, a 
 cannibal tribe, who in recent times, have rapidly made their 
 way from the interior, urged by the thirst for trade and 
 European commodities, and have now actually reached the 
 coast. But their very existence was denied ; and the state- 
 ment that some of the native African harps had strings made 
 of vegetable fibre was declared to be false. 
 
 Under such imputations Mr. Du Chaillu was unwilling to 
 rest, and he resolved to confute his opponents by the logic of 
 facts, that is, by undertaking another journey into the interior 
 of Africa and furnishing himself with materials to prove con- 
 clusively the substantial truth of his former narrative. It is 
 impossible not to admire the courage and enterprise he has 
 shown, and we think also that he deserves the highest credit 
 for the forgiving and generous tone in which he speaks of his 
 assailants. He says in his Preface to the new work which we 
 propose to review, — 
 
 Although hurt to the quick by these unfair and ungenerous criticisms, I 
 cherished no malice towards my detractors, for I knew the time would come when 
 the truth of all that was essential in the statements which had been disputed 
 w ould be made clear ; I was consoled besides by the support of many eminent 
 m en, who refused to believe that my narrative and obser\'ations were deliberate 
 falsehoods. Making no pretensions to infallibility, any more than other travellers, 
 I w as ready to acknowledge any mistake that I might have fallen into, in the 
 c ourse of compiling my book from my rough notes. The only revenge I cherished 
 was that of better preparing myself for another journey into tlie same region, pro- 
 viding myself with instruments and apparatus which I did not possess on my first 
 exploration, and thus being enabled to vindicate my former account by facts not 
 to be controverted. 
 
 The result, as regards the establishment of Mr. Du Chaillu's 
 ch aracter for veracity, has been most satisfactory ; and we set 
 so high a value on the character of every man who labours to 
 enlighten the world, as to deem this one gain not dearly pur- 
 chased by tlie heavy losses and bitter disappointments in 
 which Mr. Du Chaillu's second expedition has ended. 
 
 Meanwhile Dr. Petermann had made the amende honorable 
 with regard to the position of the places which Mr. Du Chaillu 
 
A JOURNEY to ASHANGO LAND. 249 
 
 had formerly visited ; for, in 1862, a French Government expe- 
 dition, under Messrs. Serval and Griffon Du Bellay, explored the 
 Ogobai river, and not only proved the truth of the travellers 
 general account of it, but showed that the Ashira Country was 
 not far from the longitude which he had assigned to it. Ur. 
 Petermann, on receiving the French map, reconstructed his 
 own as Mr. Du Chaillu had originally laid it down. As to the 
 Fans, Captain Burton confirmed his statement, after having 
 actually travelled amongst them ; and the French officers 
 proclaim that their cannibal appetites are only too well 
 authenticated, adding the fact of their recent apparition and 
 migration towards the sea-coast. In his second expedition, 
 Mr. Du Chaillu was not only able to observe the gorilla in the 
 woods, but he obtained several fine specimens from the natives, 
 and one of them he shipped for England alive, but unfor- 
 tunately it died on the passage. He sent to England harps 
 with vegetable strings, and they of course speak for themselves. 
 In his former travels he had described -a new kind of otter-like 
 animal to which the name of Potamogale veloxv^as given ; and 
 he brought home with him its skin, which was all that he was 
 then able to procure. It was asserted that the animal which 
 owned the skin did not belong to the order under which otters 
 are classed, and was a rodent ; but Mr. Du Chaillu was for- 
 tunate enough to have his conjecture entirely established by 
 the Professor of Natural History in the University of Edin- 
 burgh: moreover, he obtained in his last journey several 
 specimens of the Potamogale, and they entirely confirm his 
 opinion. He has answered the doubts and insinuations 
 which were so unscrupulously thrown upon his claims as a 
 discoverer in Natural History, by adding to the Fauna of 
 Africa at least eighty new species. But the best vindication 
 of all is the series of carefully-made solar and lunar observa- 
 tions — amounting to several hundreds — which he has brought 
 home, and committed to the officers of Greenwich Observatory, 
 by whom they have been reduced and tested with the most 
 satisfactory results ; so that the principal points of his journey 
 
 ' In an article on Le Gabon in ' Le c'est que son livre contient beaucoup de 
 
 Tour du Monde' (1865), p. 278, Dr. details d'une parfaite exactitude, et plus 
 
 Griifon Du Bellay says of Mr. Du d'une peinture de mceurs reellement 
 
 Chaillu, ' Ce que je puis affirmer, prises sur le vif. ' 
 
2SO ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 are now laid down on the map with unerring accuracy. Here 
 is enough, and more than enough, to justify the countenance 
 and encouragement which Mr. Du Chaillu received at first 
 from such a geographer as Murchison, and such a naturalist 
 as Owen. As in all similar cases, the stones wantonly, if not 
 maliciously, thrown at an unknown man, have helped to raise 
 the pedestal of his subsequent fame ; and were Mr. Du 
 Chaillu less generous than he is, he could afford to forgive 
 the detractors who have goaded him to new efforts, and made 
 him as accurate as he v/as already earnest in his work. 
 
 These feelings may be traced in Mr. Du Chaillu's state- 
 ment of his objects in this second journey: — 
 
 I had also a strong desire to fix with scientific accuracy the geographical 
 position of the places I had already discovered, and to vindicate by fresh observa- 
 tions, and the acquisition of farther specimens, the truth of the remarks I had 
 published on the ethnology and natural history of the country. Beyond this there 
 was the vague hope of being able to reach in the far interior some unknown 
 western tributary of the Nile, and to descend by it to the great river, and thence 
 to the Mediterranean. 
 
 He took great pains to qualify himself for the successful 
 prosecution of his task. Owing to the absence of all scien- 
 tific instruments on his former journey, he had laid down the 
 positions of places by compass bearings only, and this made 
 it the more difficult to defend himself against attacks on his 
 accuracy. But he now prepared himself by going through a 
 course of instruction in the use of instruments, and the mode 
 of taking astronomical observations. He also took lessons in 
 the art of photography, providing himself with an ample store 
 of materials in order to bring back faithful sun-pictures of the 
 scenery, natives, and animals of the unknown regions he in- 
 tended to explore — all of which, as -we shall see in the sequel, 
 were unfortunately lost. 
 
 He freighted a small schooner called the 'Mentor,' and 
 
 sailed in her from England for the coast of Africa on August 
 
 6, 1863. He reached the mouth of the Fernand Vaz river 
 
 on October 10, and it is interesting to see how warmly he was 
 
 welcomed by the African chiefs whom he had formerly 
 
 Icnown. One of them who came on board hugged him in his 
 
 greasy arms and exclaimed— 
 
 "Are you Chaillie, or are you his spirit? Have you come from the dead? Tell 
 me quick, for I don't know whether I am to believe my ovm eyes ; perhaps I am 
 getting a fool." 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 251 
 
 But now came the first of a series of misfortunes which 
 Mr Du Chaillu had to endure, and which brought his expe- 
 dition at last to a disastrous end. One of the causes which 
 have shut out explorers from this part of the African coast is 
 the want of harbours, and ,the savage surf that fringes the 
 shore. The whole breadth of the mouth of the river was one 
 uninterrupted line of breakers, through which it was necessary 
 to land the cargo in native boats. In one of them he placed 
 all his scientific instruments and many other valuable articles, 
 and, accompanied by the Captain, embarked himself in the 
 canoe, which was soon swamped by the waves. It was with 
 some difficulty that their lives were saved by the negroes, 
 who, as Mr. Du Chaillu says, ' swam under me and buoyed 
 me up with their own bodies.' But all the astronomical in- 
 struments were spoilt by the salt-water, and with them went 
 the power of effecting the principal object of the journey. We 
 can hardly imagine a more bitter disappointment than this. 
 However, there was no help for it, and all that he could do 
 was to send to England for a second set of instruments, and 
 to wait patiently until it arrived. 
 
 The region which Mr. Du Chaillu was about to explore 
 lies between the first and second degrees of south latitude, and 
 he intended to proceed eastward across the continent in almost 
 a straight line from the coast. He says : — 
 
 Equatorial Africa from the western coast, as far as I have been, is covered 
 with an almost impenetrable jungle. The jungle begins where the sea ceases to 
 beat its continual waves, and how much further this woody belt extends further 
 explorations alone will be able to show. From my furthest point it extended 
 eastward as far as my eyes could reach. I may say, however, that near tlie banks 
 of a large river ninning from a north-east direction towards the south-west 
 prairie lands were to be seen according to the accounts the Ashangos had received. 
 
 The difficulties which beset the traveller who tries to pene- 
 trate into the interior are almost insuperable. Independently 
 of the harbourless and serf-bound coast, the deadly climate, and 
 the hostility of savage tribes, there is the supposed necessity 
 of carrying an immense quantity of presents to propitiate the 
 different African chiefs. A white man must literally buy his 
 way with goods as he proceeds, and he becomes, of course, 
 poorer, as he advances, so that it seems as if he must at last 
 necessarily stop when he is farthest from the coast, and when 
 it is most essential to satisfy the rapacity of the natives. 
 
252 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Perhaps the most prudent course would be not to carry pre- 
 sents at all, as they only excite the cupidity of the negroes. 
 And Mr. Du Chaillu was kindly treated by the natives on 
 his return when he had lost everything. For the transport of 
 goods there are no beasts of burden ; neither horses nor camels 
 nor asses nor oxen. The only domesticated animals are goats 
 and fowls, and the only carriers of loads are the blacks them- 
 selves. They use for this purpose long narrow baskets called 
 otaitais, which rest on the back, and are secured to the head 
 and arm of the bearer by straps made of strong plaited rushes. 
 Mr. Du Chaillu's baggage required at starting not fewer than 
 a hundred porters, and infinite was the trouble and difficulty 
 he had with the various relays which succeeded each other in 
 his march. But he was fortunate in his body-guard of ten 
 negroes, of the Commi tribe on the coast, who behaved ad- 
 mirably throughout, and to whom his return in safety was 
 entirely owing. He says : — 
 
 I chose for my body-guard ten faithful negroes, some of whom had accom- 
 panied me on my former journey. It was on these men that my own safety 
 among the savage and unfriendly tribes we might expect to meet with in the far 
 interior depended. I knew I could thoroughly rely upon them, and that come 
 what might they would never hurt a hair of my head. 
 
 While waiting for the arrival of fresh instruments from 
 England, Mr. Du Chaillu made several excursions in the 
 neighbourhood of the coast. The most important of these 
 were to the wooded country which lies to the south-east of 
 Cape St. Catherine, and which he believes is ' the head-quar- 
 ters of the gorilla or the district in which he exists in the 
 greatest number, but where he is wildest and most difficult to 
 get near.' Here suddenly one morning he came upon a party 
 of four of these brutes. 
 
 They were all busily engaged in tearing down the larger trees. One of the 
 females had a young one foUowing her. I had an excellent opportunity of watcli- 
 ing the movements of the impish-looking band. The shaggy hides, the protuberant 
 abdomens, the hideous features of these strange creatures, whose forms so nearly 
 resemble man, made up a picture like a vision in some morbid dream. In destroy- 
 ing a tree they first grasped the base of the stem with one of their feet, and then 
 with their powerful arms pulled it down, a matter of not much difficulty with so 
 loosely formed a stem as that of the plaintain. They then set upon the juicy 
 heart of the tree at the bases of the leaves and devoured it with great voracity. 
 While eating they made a kind of clucking noise expressive of contentment. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, when Mr. Du Chaillu had returned to 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 253 
 
 mouth of the Fernand Vaz river, three live gorillas were Ti 
 
 ured by the natives and brought to him. One of these 
 a large full-grown female, another her baby, the third a 
 rous young male. The first two soon died, for the mother 
 been severely wounded, and her young one only survived 
 three days. But the male gorilla was christened Tom, and 
 
 on board ship, consigned to Messrs. Baring in London, 
 iied, however, on the passage, most probably of a broken 
 t, for the species seems to be untameable, and captivity 
 them with uncontrollable rage. At a later period of his 
 ley Mr. Du Chaillu came suddenly in the forest upon a 
 [e group of gorillas disporting themselves amongst the 
 5, but he did not happen to have his rifle in his hand, and 
 ■ escaped unharmed. Before quitting the subject, we may 
 tion that he is now of opinion that gorillas and not chim- 
 :ees, as he was formerly inclined to think, were the animals 
 
 and captured by the Carthaginians under Hanno, as re- 
 i in the ' Periplus.' ' Even, the name " gorilla," given to 
 animal in the " Periplus," is not very greatly different from 
 lative name at the present day, " ngina " or " ngilla," 
 icially in the indistinct way in which it is sometimes pro- 
 iced.' In one of his preliminary excursions he discovered 
 caught two specimens of a new species of animal called 
 Ipi or scaly Ant-eater, belonging to the pangolin genus 
 inis of zoologists), which lives in burrows in the earth, or 
 etimes in the large hollows of colossal trunks of trees that 
 ; fallen on the ground. One of their skeletons is now in 
 collection of the British Museum.' 
 
 ^t last, in September, 1864, Mr. Du Chaillu had received 
 lew supply of instruments from England, and at the end 
 lat month he started on his exploration into the interior, 
 ill give some idea of the difficulty he had to encounter in 
 
 rhe skeleton of another animal, founds his measurement, and the skull 
 similar to the Ipi of Mr. Du of which he figured, I have ascertained, 
 u, was brought afterwards to Eng- by my own examination in the British 
 md was said to have been found Museum, is not the one said to be re- 
 neighbourhood of the river Niger, ceived from the Niger, but the specimen 
 s described by Dr. Gray in the which I sent. The Niger specimen is 
 eedings of the Zoological Society, ' very much smaller. I mention this 
 1865, under the name of Pholi- because Dr. Gray, doubtless through 
 Africanus. Mr. Du Chaillu says inadvertency, has omitted to mention 
 specimen of Pholidotus Africanus, my name at all in connection with the 
 lich the describer of the species species.' 
 
 I 
 
2 54 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the transport of his goods, when we mention that he had no 
 less than forty-seven large chests filled with them, besides ten 
 boxes containing his photographic apparatus and chemicals, 
 and fifty voluminous bundles of miscellaneous articles : in fact, 
 a load for a hundred men. He dressed his body- guard of ten 
 Commi negroes in thick canvas trousers, blue woollen shirts, 
 and worsted caps, and each man had a blanket to keep him 
 warm at night.- 
 
 He had, however, been nearly prevented from setting out 
 on his expedition at all. During his absence in Europe, the 
 chiefs of the clans on the coast had met and passed a law that 
 no Mpongwd (the trading tribe of the Gaboon), or white man, 
 should be allowed to ascend the river Fernand Vaz or the 
 Ogobai. 
 
 It is the universal rule amongst the coast tribes of West Africa, to prevent if 
 possible, all strangers from penetrating into the interior, even if it be only to the 
 next tribe, through fear that they should lose the exclusive privilege of trading 
 with these tribes. Indeed, eveiy tribe tries to prevent all strangers from com- 
 municating mth the tribe next in advance of them. 
 
 It was necessary to get this law repealed, and in Novem- 
 ber, 1863, a grand palaver was held on the subject in the 
 village where Mr. Du Chaillu was staying. One of the most 
 important chiefs, called Olenga-Yombi, a notorious drunkard, 
 who presided at the meeting, had been propitiated by the 
 present of a very long blue coat, the tails of which dangled 
 about his ancles when he \\'alked, and a light yellow waistcoat 
 with gilt buttons. The debate took place in the Council- 
 house of the village, a large open shed, where chairs were 
 placed for the principal speakers. The result was that Mr. 
 Du Chaillu was made free of the river, while the Mpongwe 
 trader was still rigorously excluded. The speakers argued 
 that the white man did not go into the interior to trade, but 
 to shoot animals and bring away the skins and bones. 
 ' Truly,' they said, ' we do not know what Chaillie has in his 
 stomach to want such things, but we must let him go.' 
 
 In the beginning of October, 1S64, Mr. Du Chaillu started 
 on his journey. He first proceeded in two canoes up the 
 Fernand Vaz river, and then up the Rembo and Ovenga 
 rivers as far as the \-illage of Obindji, where his overland route 
 was to commence. Here the porters assembled who had been 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 255 
 
 sent from the Ashira country by king Olenda to carry the 
 baggage ; but instead of a hundred porters, which was the 
 least number required, there were only fifty. He was there- 
 fore obliged to send only half of the loads forward, and to 
 wait for the return of the men to carry the other half. A 
 friendly old chief, named Quengueza, who accompanied him 
 from the coast, addressed the body-guard of Commi negroes 
 before leaving Obindji, and gave them some excellent advice. 
 He told them to look up to ' Chaillie,' as their chief, and obey 
 him. He warned them riot to touch plantains or ground nuts 
 lying on the road, or in the street of a village, for this showed 
 that it was a ' tricky village,' and the temptation was intended 
 as a trap. 
 
 When a house is given to you in any village keep to that house and go into 
 no other : and if you see a seat do not sit upon it, for these are seats which none 
 but the owners can sit upon. But above all beware of the women. 
 
 After marching across a wild, hilly, and wooded country, 
 the party emerged on the undiilating grass land of Ashira, 
 which Mr. Du Chaillu has described in his former volume,' 
 and arrived at the village of Olenda on the 19th of November. 
 Here he determined to try and visit the Falls of Samba 
 Nagoshi, which are in the Ngouyai river, north of Olenda, and 
 which he had in vain attempted to reach on his previous 
 journey. His route lay parallel to the Ovigui ' river, which 
 flows into the Ngouyai, and after two or three days' march 
 through forest and swamp, he embarked in a leaky rotten 
 canoe, not far from the point of confluence of the two rivers. 
 The Ngouyai is a fine large river flowing northwards, which 
 Mr. Du Chaillu discovered on his former journey, and when 
 he now entered it he was, he says, up to this time the only 
 white man who had ever embarked on its waters. 
 
 The Ovigui, at its junction with the Ngouyai, is about thirty-five yards broad, 
 and is at this time of the year {the rainy season) a deep stream. The banks are 
 clothed vrith uninterrupted forest, leaving only little entrances here and there at 
 the ports of the villages which lie backwards from the river. Silence and 
 monotony reign over the landscape, unenlivened by the flight and song of birds or 
 the mcivement of animals. 
 
 On approaching the rapids below the falls, the party left 
 the canoe, and scrambled along the bank. A rocky island in 
 
 ' 'Adventures in Equatorial Africa,' chap. xxiv. 
 
2S6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the middle of the river breaks the rush of the water into two 
 unequal parts, and the height of the cataract is only about 
 fifteen feet. Mr. Du Chaillu says : — 
 
 The sight was wild, grand, and beautiful ; but it did not quite impress me 
 with the awe that the rapids below inspired. We see here the river Ngouyai 
 after flowing through the Apingi valley in the interior, and receiving the waters 
 of the Ovigui and many other streams, bursting through the barrier of the hilly 
 range which separates the interior of Africa from the coast land. The high 
 ridges which have been broken through by the river rise on each side, covered 
 with varied forest, and the shattered fragments encumber the bed of the stream 
 for miles. 
 
 On his return to Olenda, Mr. Du Chaillu found trouble 
 awaiting hini. One of the chiefs of the Apingi tribe, whose 
 villages lay in the line of his intended route, had died during 
 his absence, and the cry arose that the stranger was the cause 
 of his death through witchcraft. The result was that, after a 
 grand palaver it was decided that Mr. Du Chaillu should pass 
 through the Otando country, which lies to the south of the 
 Apingi, and a message was sent to the Otando chief apprising 
 him of the proposed visit, and requesting him to send a party 
 of men to Olenda to assist in carrying the baggage. In the 
 meantime, however, a terrible calamity occurred. The small- 
 pox broke out with fearful violence among the people of 
 Olenda, and they declared that the white man was an evil 
 spirit, who had brought the plague, or eviva, as they called it, 
 amongst them. Old king Quengueza stood gallantly by his 
 friend, and asked them whether he, the king, who held the 
 passage of the Rembo river, had come with his white man 
 into the bush amongst these pigs of Asliira to be cursed .■" 
 He was urged by Mr. Du Chaillu to return to his own coun- 
 try, but he refused to leave him in the hour of difficulty and 
 danger, saying, ' Chaillie I cannot go back. I came to see 
 you through this country, and I should feel shame to leave 
 you in your troubles. What would the Commi people say ? 
 They would laugh at me, and say, Quengueza had no power 
 to help Chaillie on his way. No, I shall not leave you ! ' At 
 last, however, Mr. Du Chaillu persuaded him to go, and he 
 was left alone with his little band of Commi negroes. They were 
 soon attacked by the disease, which spread like a destroying 
 angel through the villages, and at last king Olenda himself 
 sickened and died. Famine followed in its train, and the 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 257 
 
 atives cursed the traveller as the author of their misfor- 
 mes. 
 
 ' The once cheerful prairie of Ashira, ' he says, ' had now become a gloomy 
 lley of Ae dead ; each village was a charnel house— wherever I walked the 
 ost heartrending sights met my view. The poor victims of the loathsome 
 sease in all its worst stages lay about in sheds and huts ; there Were hideous 
 res filled with maggots, and swarms of carrion flies buzzed about the living but 
 itrid carcases. The stench in the neighbourhood of the huts was insupportable. 
 )me of the sick were raving and others, emaciated, with sunken eyes, victims of 
 mger as well as of disease. Many wretched creatures from other villages were 
 landoned to die in the bush.' 
 
 And yet the poor negroes behaved with a kindness which 
 light have been looked for in vain amongst a more civilised 
 eople. 
 
 ' And now, ' says Mr. Du Chaillu, ' I was indeed alone, with no one to help 
 e. I had to fetch water, to search for firewood, and to cook for myself, as well 
 ; for all my poor stricken followers. The villagers exerted themselves to pro- 
 ire food for me. Those who were now well enough crept towards the planta- 
 on to get plaintains for me ; and even the invalids, men and women, sent me 
 Terings of food, saying " We do not want our stranger to be hungry." ' 
 
 At last, after many months of heart-sickening delay, he 
 ^as able to leave Ashira-land and march forward to Otando. 
 [e had to traverse a dense primaeval forest, which bounds the 
 astern side of the prairie, and clothes the hills and valleys of 
 le mountain-ridges, which extend in a north and south direc- 
 ^on between the Ashira and Otando territories. One charac- 
 ^ristic of this gloomy region is the great scarcity of animal 
 fe. ' Scarcely once,' he says, ' did we hear the voice of birds, 
 nd at night, as we lay round the fires of the bivouac, all was 
 till as death in the black shades of the forest.' He was 
 lundered by his black porters, and some of them ran away 
 fter robbing him of the contents of the boxes they carried. 
 Lmongst the missing articles was his photographic apparatus, 
 'hich was never recovered. At times the party was reduced 
 ) extremity for food, and this gave an opportunity for the 
 isplay of a touching trait of the African character. Greedy 
 id rapacious and thieving as he is, the negro of the Equator 
 ;ems to be naturally humane and kind. On one occasion, 
 hen they were starving, his porters succeeded in killing two 
 lonkeys. Instead of devouring the food themselves they 
 rought it to Mr. Du Chaillu, and gave up the whole of it to 
 im. And when he told them that they were entitled to it, 
 
 s 
 
2S8 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 they insisted upon giving him the largest share, and then 
 divided the residue amongst themselves. Here, by the way, 
 we may mention that Mr. Du ChaiUu speaks in raptures of 
 roast monkey as an article of food. Of course it would be 
 deemed excellent by a starving man ; but his opinion was 
 formed at a time when he had abundance to eat. He says 
 that in the month of March, April, and May the flesh of 
 monkeys is exquisite. ' I know of no game better or more 
 refreshing ; the joints must be either roasted or grilled to bring 
 out the flavour of the meat to perfection.' 
 
 The principal village of Otando is called Mayolo, situated 
 in an open tract of undulating grass-land, diversified by 
 groups of trees and patches of forest. Here is a description 
 of the scene : — 
 
 A wide stretch of undulating country lay open before us, the foreground of 
 which was formed by prairie, the rest appearing as a continuous expanse of forest, 
 with long wooded ridges in the distance one behind the other, the last and highest 
 fading into blue mist in the far distance. From the margins of the forest the land 
 gradually sloped, and signs of population were apparent in sheds and patches of 
 plantation. 
 
 Mr. Du ChaiUu stayed about two months at Mayolo, and 
 his arrival was followed by the fatal small-pox. The chiefs 
 favourite wife and one of his nephews was taken ill, and, as 
 usual, the sickness was attributed to witchcraft. Suspicion 
 fell upon three of the chief's nephews, and they were com- 
 pelled to go through the poison ordeal, which is an exact 
 counterpart of the ordeal of the Middle Ages in Europe. A 
 bowl of vegetable poison was prepared, out of which each of 
 the victims had to drink in the presence of the assembled 
 population, who were armed with knives and axes and spears 
 to hack to pieces the bodies of any of the three who should 
 sink under the ordeal. But they all escaped with their lives. 
 They drank the poison, and yet were able to resist its effects 
 ' The struggle was a severe one ; the eyes of the young men 
 became bloodshot, their limbs trembled convulsively, and 
 every muscle in their bodies was visibly working under the 
 potent irritation.' An analysis made of the roots of the plant 
 shows, according to Mr. Du Chaillu, that it is ' a most violent 
 poison.' But we can hardly understand how it so often fails, 
 for the ' doctor ' who had been consulted as to the bewitch- 
 ment of the village afterwards himself drank an enormous 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 259 
 
 quantity of the poison, which passed off with no other effect 
 :han that of intoxicating him. Strychnine, or arsenic, or 
 prussic acid, would have been a very different affair. Although 
 Mr. Du Chaillu does not seem to have tasted this poison 
 [limself, he unconsciously swallowed homoeopathic doses of 
 another kind ; for, as the time approached for his departure 
 From Mayolo, he each day received delicate attentions from 
 the chief in the shape of eatables sent from his hut ; and he 
 then found out that it was an African custom to mix in dishes 
 given to a guest powder from the skull of a deceased ancestor, 
 with a view to soften his heart and dispose him to be generous 
 in the matter of parting gifts. 
 
 Little or nothing of interest occurred during his stay in 
 Otando land. He amused the people with pictures in the 
 ' Illustrated London News ' and ' Punch.' ' " Punch," the 
 traveller's friend, excited their wonder greatly. They all 
 exclaimed, " What a fine cap he wears ! " and asked me if I 
 had any like it. They were quite disappointed when I told 
 them I had not.' But a musical box set down on a stool in 
 the village-street and playing by itself fairly frightened them, 
 as they thought that a devil was inside the box ; and they 
 were still more astonished when they received some shocks 
 from a galvanic battery. But they seemed to have a dim 
 notion of the cause, for they cried out ' Eninda ! ' which is the 
 name of a species of electric fish found in the neighbouring 
 streams. Their wonder, however, passed all bounds when a 
 large magnet was brought out, and they saw knives and 
 swords sticking to it. The idea of the traveller's wealth over- 
 powered them, and the chief of the village declared that, if he 
 was not a king, he must be next to a king in his own 
 country. Some of the greatest pests in this part of Africa 
 are the ants. There are ants that build hives or houses on 
 the ground shaped like gigantic mushrooms, and scattered by 
 tens of thousands over the Otando prairie. There are tree- 
 ants, that make their nests between the ribs of the trunks of 
 trees, and others of a much larger size, of a light yellow 
 colour, which rear what may be called huts in the forest, 
 upwards of four feet high. But the most troublesome seem 
 to be the Bashikouay ants, whose bite, although not venomous, 
 is extremely painful, and they travel in swarming myriadg 
 
26o £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 along the ground. Mr. Du Chaillu says, ' There can be no 
 doubt that if a man were firmly tied to a bed so that he could 
 not escape, he would be entirely eaten up by these ants in a 
 short space of time.' Once they got possession of his room 
 and drove him out of it, until he was able to stop the 
 advance of the invading host by kindling a fire outside the 
 house on their line of march, and destroying them by thou- 
 sands. He says : — 
 
 The armies of the Bashikouays seem for ever on the march, clearing the ground 
 of every fragment of animal substance, dead or alive, which they can obtain or 
 overpower ; and so furious are their onslaughts on the person of any one who steps 
 near their armies that it is difficult or impossible to trace the columns to their 
 nests, if, indeed, they have any. 
 
 Leaving Mayolo at the end of May he proceeded east- 
 ward towards Apono land. He had to cross a high hill, part 
 of an elevated ridge, from the summit of which were seen in 
 the distance the still higher ranges of mountains, amongst 
 which dwell the Ishogo, the Ashango, and other tribes, and 
 the sides were covered with the same eternal forest. He was 
 now on wholly new ground, and was the first white man who 
 had been seen in that part of Africa. The people when they 
 .caught sight of him and his paity began to fly. The women 
 snatched up their infants and cried out as they ran away, 
 ' The Oguizi ! (spirit) the Oguizi ! He has come, and we 
 shall die.' They associated his arrival with the scourge of 
 small-pox which had already swept over that part of the 
 country. He crossed the Upper Ngouyai river on a large 
 flat-bottomed canoe which carried the party and baggage 
 over in seven trips. The Ngouyai here is a fine stream,, 
 nearly as wide as the Thames at London Bridge, and from 
 ten to fifteen feet deep. It flows from the SS.W. He was 
 now in the Apony country, part of which is occupied by 
 isolated portions of the Ishogo tribe — and he found the 
 people terrified at his approach, and most unwilling to allow 
 him to proceed, as the report that he had brought the cviva 
 or plague along with him had been spread far into the 
 interior. He reached, however, a large village called Mokaba, 
 where he met with a more friendly reception, and was 
 only annoyed by the excessive curiosity of the inhabitants. 
 He says. 
 
 The place swarms with people, and I have been haunted at my encampment 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 261 
 
 by numbers of sight-seers. The way they come upon me is sometimes quite 
 startling ; they sidle up behind trees' or crawl up amongst the long grass until 
 they are near enough, and then, from behind the tree-trunks or above the herbage, 
 a number of soot-black faces suddenly bob out, staring at me with eyes and 
 mouth wide open. The least thing I do elicits shouts of wonder ; but if I look 
 directly at them, they take to their legs, and run as if for their lives. 
 
 The Aponos are distinguished by their sprightliness of 
 character, and are clean and well-looking. 
 
 Their villages are larger, better arranged, and prettier than those of the Otando 
 and Ashira Ngozai. Each house is built separate from its neighbours, and they 
 attend to cleanliness in their domestic arrangements. Their country is an undu- 
 lating plain, varied with open grassy places, covered with a pebbly soil and rich 
 and extensive patches of woodland, well adapted for agriculture, in which they 
 make their plantations. 
 
 Iron ore exists in considerable quantity in their prairies, 
 and they melt it in little thick earthenware pots, using 
 charcoal to temper the metal. But the tribes situated further 
 to the east are the most expert workers in iron, and all the 
 anvils which Mr. Du Chaillu saw in Apono land came from 
 them. Like the Ashiras they are dexterous weavers of grass 
 cloth, which forms their clothing. We have seen some of the 
 Ashira mats, and in neatness of pattern and finish of work- 
 manship, they are equal to anything of the kind manufactured 
 in Europe. Mr. Du Chaillu calls them a ' merry people,' thaf 
 is, they make a regular practice of getting drunk every day 
 as long as they can procure palm wine. They hang cala- 
 bashes to the trees, and climb them in the morning to drink 
 deep draughts of their favourite beverage. It was the height 
 of the drunken season when he was at Mokaba, and dancing, 
 tam-tamming, and wild uproar, with as much quarrelling 
 as goes on at an Irish fair, were kept up day and night. 
 
 From Mokaba the route lay a little to the north of east. 
 The ground began to rise, and Mr. Du Chaillu entered on a 
 richly-wooded hilly country in which were numerous planta- 
 tions and villages of slaves belonging to the head men of 
 Mokaba. He was now amongst the Ishogos, a fine tribe of 
 strong well-made negroes, differing in many respects from 
 those he had hitherto met. Both sexes ornament themselves 
 by rubbing their bodies with red powder, but the most 
 curious part of a woman's toilette is her chignon, the shapes 
 and sizes of which might excite the envy of an European 
 belle. It is much more magnificent, and hardly more ugly 
 
262 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 than the bunches with which EngUsh ladies at the present 
 day disfigure their heads. There are three pictures in 
 Mr. Du Chaillu's book of the Ishogo fashions in this respect, 
 and we are not sure that they may not be adopted before 
 long amongst ourselves. One may be called the chignon 
 horizontal, the other the chignon oblique, and the third the 
 chignon vertical. Chronologically, it would appear that the 
 African had the start of the Parisian belle, and that the inven- 
 tion is due to our black sisters. 
 
 We are so apt to associate with the idea of Africa sand 
 and desert and jungle, that it is difficult to realize • to the 
 mind's eye the beauty of much of the scenery, and we are 
 hardly prepared for such a description as that which Mr. Du 
 Chaillu gives of the village of Mokenga, where he stayed for 
 a short time during his journey through the country of the 
 Ishogos : — 
 
 The village was surrounded by a dense grove of plantain-trees, many of which 
 had to be supported by poles, on account of the weight of the enormous branches 
 of plantains they bore. Little groves of lime-trees were scattered everywhere, 
 and the limes, like so much golden fniit, looked beautiful amidst the dark foliage 
 that surrounded them. Tall, towering palm-trees were scattered here and there. 
 
 Above and behind this village was the dark green forest The spring 
 
 from which the villagers draw their water is situated in a most charming 
 spot. A rill of water, clear and cold, leaps from the lower part of a pre- 
 cipitous hill; with a fall of about nine feet into a crystal basin, whence a rivulet 
 brawls down towards the lower land through luxuriant woodlands. The hill 
 itself and the neighbourhood of the spring are clothed with forest, as, in fact, is 
 the ^^■hole country, and the path leads under shade to the cool fountain. I used 
 to go there in the morning whilst I was at the village, to take a douche bath. In 
 such places the vegetation of the tropics always shows itself to the best advantage ; 
 favoured by the moisture, the glossy and elegant foliage of many strange trees and 
 plants assumes its full development, whilst gi^aceful creeper's hang from the 
 branches, and ferns and lilaceous plants grow Ufxuriantly about the moist margins 
 of the spring. 
 
 A stream called the Odiganga, one of tributaries of the 
 Ngouyai river, divides the Ishogo from the Ashango terri- 
 tor)'. When Mr. Du Chaillu crossed it, his Ishogo porters 
 mutinied and laid down their loads, declaring that if he did 
 not give them more beads they Avould return to their homes. 
 He, however, told his Commi men to arm, and they stepped 
 forward and levelled their guns at the heads of the Ishogos, 
 who immediately gave in, holding out their hands and 
 begging to be forgiven. It was a little attempt at extortion, 
 the failure of which did not in the least disconcert them, for 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 263 
 
 ' in a short time they had again taken up their loads, and we 
 marched off at a quick pace ; the porters becoming quite 
 cheerful, laughing and chattering as they trudged along.' It 
 is curious to notice the contempt which the negroes of the 
 coast feel for the negroes of the interior. They were con- 
 stantly tempted to insult them, and no arguments could 
 induce them to believe that the Commi tribe were the same 
 race as the Ashangos. ' How is it possible,' they said, 
 ' that ChaiUie can think us to be of the same blood as these 
 slaves ? ' 
 
 In most of the Ashango villages the people were very 
 anxious to get gunpowder, and the porters wished to be paid 
 partly in that article. They were asked why they wanted 
 powder, as they had no guns, and were even afraid of hand- 
 ling one. They replied that a tribe called Ashangui, to the 
 east, bought gunpowder and gave them iron for it, that there 
 was a good deal of iron there, and that all their swords, 
 spears, and arrow-heads were made of iron bought from that 
 country. The iron sold by the traders on the West Coast 
 does not reach so far inland as Ashango. 
 
 At Niembouai, one of the principal Ashango villages, 
 there was a grand palaver whether the white man should be 
 allowed to proceed, but the question was carried unanimously 
 in the affirmative. While waiting there Mr. Du Chaillu took 
 the opportunity of visiting the settlement of the Obongos, 
 one of whose villages was in the neighbourhood. These are 
 a curious race of dwarf negroes covered with tufts of hair on 
 their bodies. They seem to be as distinct from the surround- 
 ing population as gipsies are amongst ourselves, and to be 
 almost as low in the scale of humanity as the tree Dyaks of 
 Borneo. They neither plant nor sow, but are expert trappers 
 and fishermen, and feed on roots, berries, and nuts which 
 they find in the forest, while they sell the game they catch to 
 the settled inhabitants. The Ashangos despise them, but 
 treat them with kindness, and often give their old worn grass- 
 cloths to the Obongos. Their huts are filthily dirty, swarm- 
 ing with fleas, so that it was impossible to stay in them. 
 They fled at the approach of the strangers, and in the course 
 of several visits Mr. Du Chaillu could only succeed in finding 
 ' at home ' five or six women and a youth, whom he took the 
 
264 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 trouble to measure, and found their average height to be 
 about four feet eight inches : — 
 
 ' One of the women,' he says, ' in the course of a short time, lost all her shy- 
 ness, and began to ridicule the men for having run from us. She said they were 
 as timid as the nchende (squirrel), who cried "que que," and in speaking she 
 twisted her little body into odd contortions, with such droll effect that we all 
 laughed. When I brought out my tape to measure her, her fears returned ; 
 thinking perhaps that it was a kind of snake I was uncoiling out of its case, she 
 trembled all over. I told her I was not going to kill her, but it required another 
 present to quiet her again. I accomplished my task at last.' 
 
 After leaving Niembouai, the Ashango porters repeated 
 the experiment which had been formerly tried by the Ishogos. 
 They laid down their loads and demanded more pay. Again 
 the Commi negroes took up their guns and pointed them at 
 the heads of the offenders, who instantly yielded, and said 
 laughing, ' Let us stop awhile and have a smoke. Do you 
 think we would leave you in the woods .' People may be left 
 in a village, but not in the forest.' The Ashangos seem to 
 be more civilised than the other tribes nearer the coast. One 
 proof of this is the extent of their dress, which is made of the 
 palm-leaves of the country. Even the children do not go 
 naked, and the robes of the chiefs are of unusually large size, 
 worn gracefully on their bodies. All of the inhabitants, both 
 male and female, shave off their eyebrows and pluck out their 
 eyelashes, and, like the Ishogos, smear themselves with a red 
 powder. They are not drunkards like the Aponos, though 
 palm-trees are abundant in the countr}-, and they drink the 
 palm wine, but in moderation. Mr. Du Chaillu was now on 
 his way to the territory of the Njavi tribe, who live to the 
 east of Ashango land, and as he approached the village of 
 Mobana through the forest he was again robbed by his 
 porters, three of whom ran away with their loads. The boxes, 
 however, u'cre recovered, with the articles they contained, 
 iniji?is the contents of some medicine bottles, which, amongst 
 other things, held arsenic ; and there was afterwards a report 
 that some of the natives had died mysteriously after touching 
 the A\hite man's goods. Next day two more boxes were 
 stolen in Mobana, and the chief was summoned, and he and 
 his people were accused of the theft. Many were the palavers, 
 and in vain were the detectives set to work. A novel kind 
 of ' distress ' \\as proposed by the natives to recover the goods, 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 265 
 
 for they said that if they only knew the village to which the 
 things had been taken, they would go and seize some of their 
 women ! 
 
 Mobana is situated on the top of a high hill, and the land 
 slopes down gradually towards the east. Here Mr. Du 
 Chaillu heard again of a large river flowing further to the 
 eastward, which he supposes to be the Congo ; but, as we shall 
 see, he was unable to reach it, for an unexpected disaster 
 awaited him, which brought his expedition to an untimely 
 end. The same kind of country through which he had already 
 travelled seemed to extend onwards to the east : hilly ranges 
 clothed with forest and interspersed with open prairies, in 
 which lie the villages of the negroes. At last, on July 21, he 
 reached the village of Mouaou Kombo, which was fated to be 
 the limit of his journey. The natives became more and more 
 unwilling to allow him to proceed, and a deputation from some 
 villages further ahead arrived at Mouaou to threaten the in- 
 habitants with war if they came with him through their coun- 
 try. Of course there was a palaver, and in the meantime Mr. 
 Du Chaillu was obliged to stay at Mouaou. But he did not 
 like to remain in the village, and formed an encampment at 
 some little distance in the woods on the borders of one of the 
 beautiful clear streams which he says are so frequent in this 
 mountainous region. 
 
 The place was a. very pleasant one, under the shade of magnificent trees 
 whose closely-interwoven arms would protect us from the night mist which dis- 
 solves in a soaking drizzle almost every night in this humid country. 
 
 But this distrust of the hospitality of the villagers dis- 
 pleased them, and they came and entreated him to come back. 
 He at last complied with the request, and entered Mouaou 
 with all his baggage in a sort of triumphal procession. The 
 chief came out in state with his countenance painted and his 
 royal bell ringing : and his head-wife told them that she was 
 cooking a large pot of vegetables to refresh the travellers. 
 
 ' Alas ! ' says Mr. Du Chaillu, ' the joy was soon turned into terror ! Four 
 men from the hostile village, arrayed in warrior's attire, and brandishing plaintain 
 leaves over their heads, came in. They said they had held their palaver this 
 morning, and had decided not to let the Oguizi pass ; there would be war if the 
 Mouaou people attempted to bring me. 
 
 ' Korabo, who was seated by my side, told me to hide myself in my hut so 
 as not to give the strangers the pleasure of seeing me ; he then ordered my men 
 
2 66 . £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to make a demonstration with their guns to intimidate these vapouring warriors. 
 I laughed as I saw the men taking to their heels as soon as Igala advanced to- 
 words them, firing his gun in the air. But my men got excited, and hurrymg 
 forward into the open space to fire their gims in the air, one of the weapons loaded 
 with ball went off before the muzzle was elevated. I did not see the act, but 
 immediately after the report of the guns, I was startled to see the Mouaou vil- 
 lagers, with affrighted looks and shouts of alarm, running in all directions. The 
 king and his konde, who were both near me, fled along with the rest.' 
 
 A negro had been killed not far from the hut, and at first 
 it was thought that he was the only victim. This accident 
 might have been got over, for the natives seemed willing to 
 take payment in beads and cloth as the price of the life that 
 had been lost. The war drums had ceased beating, and they 
 were going to hold a palaver, when suddenly a woman came 
 rushing out of a hut, wailing and tearing her hair, to announce 
 that the head-wife of the chief had been killed by the bullet, 
 which, after passing through the body of the negro, had 
 pierced the thin wall of her hut. There was now a general 
 shout of ' War ! ' and Mr. Du Chaillu and his little party were 
 compelled to retreat. 
 
 Away we went ; Igala took the best of our remaining dogs, and led the van, I 
 bringing up the rear. It was not an instant too soon. Before we were well on the 
 forest-path leading from the village, a number of arrows were discharged at us ; 
 Igala was hit in the leg, and one of the missiles struck me on the hand, cutting 
 through one of my fingers to the bone. Macondi and Rebouka, in leaving the 
 village, narrowly escaped being transfixed with spears, and only succeeded in re- 
 pelling their assailants by pointing their guns at them. If I had not stopped them 
 from firing they would have shot a number of them. ^Yild shouts and the tramp 
 of scores of infuriated savages close behind us put us on our mettle. I shouted 
 to my men not to fire for we were in the wrong, and I told the villagers we 
 
 should not shoot them if they did not pursue us to the forest, but that if they' 
 followed us we should certainly kill them. My Commi boys behaved exceedingly 
 
 well ; they were cool and steady, and keeping a firm line, we marched away 
 through the street of the village. 
 
 After running four or five miles pursued by the infuriated 
 blacks, Mr. Du Chaillu ordered his men to make a stand, 
 and, firing his rifle, shot two of the leading negroes. This 
 made them keep at a more respectful distance, but they still 
 followed the retreating party, and Mr. Du Chaillu was again 
 struck by a barbed arrow in his side. He says : — 
 
 The unfeigned sorrow and devotion of my men at this juncture were most 
 gratifying to me. I was getting weak from loss of blood, and a burning thii-st 
 was tormenting me. They asked what was to become of them if I should die? 
 I told them to keep together, come what might ; and if they escaped, to deliver 
 a 11 my journals and papers to the white men. 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 267 
 
 Twice again the Commi negroes fired upon their pursuers, 
 and each time with effect. This effectually frightened them, 
 and although they followed at a distance for some time through 
 the forest, they did not venture to show themselves, and at 
 last were heard no longer. One of Mr. Du Chaillu's men was 
 badly wounded, and he himself suffered acute pain from the 
 poisoned arrows which had struck him. But the poison is not 
 very virulent, and if the wound is an external one, it is seldom 
 fatal. 
 
 We need not give details of the rest of Mr. Du Chaillu's 
 retreat. It was over the same ground which he had formerly 
 traversed, and he met with no opposition from the natives. 
 On the contrary, they welcomed him in the most friendly 
 manner, and often pressed him to stay with them. The Isho- 
 gos especially, whom he calls the kindest-hearted and gentlest 
 negroes he ever met with, received the fugitives with enthu- 
 siasm, and as he passed through their villages followed him 
 with shouts, ' Go on well, go on well ; nothing bad shall hap- 
 pen to you.' Perhaps the boasting of his Commi body-guard 
 had something to do with this, by inspiring admiration of 
 their valour ; for as they increased the distance between 
 themselves and the Ashangos, they magnified their own 
 prowess, and told wonderful stories of the numbers of the 
 enemy they had slain. In a short time the three or four who 
 had fallen by their guns were multiplied to a hundred and 
 fifty, and, like Falstaff about his men in buckram, each told a 
 tale of the numbers he had killed with his own hand. We 
 need not wonder at the awe which such deeds of prowess in- 
 spired, nor that the audience clapped their hands, and cried 
 out, ' You are men ! You are men ! ' As he passed along he 
 saw fearful evidences of the violence of the small-pox which 
 had raged in the district. In many places the ground was 
 strewed with human skulls and bones, and some villages had 
 been entirely deserted. Goumbi, on the Rembo, one of the 
 chief towns of king Quengueza, had become a ruin, and one 
 clan of the Commi tribe was almost wholly destroyed. The 
 old man himself was broken-hearted, but he refused to listen 
 to his people, who wished human victims to be sacrificed as 
 the authors of the witchcraft which had caused the plague. 
 ' No,' he said, ' it is no witchcraft, but a wind sent by God. 
 
268 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Enough people have died, and we must kill no more.' He en- 
 treated Mr. Du Chaillu to return again to Africa. ' Come again,' 
 he exclaimed, ' and go no more into the bush ; and when you 
 come bring me a big bell, a sword with a silver handle that will 
 not rust, and two chests, one of brass, and another of ebony, 
 for I want to see how you work the wood that we send to you.' 
 
 At last, on September 21, 1865, Mr. Du Chaillu reached 
 the mouth of the Fernand Vaz river, and found a vessel there 
 loading for London. He had lost everything but his journals, 
 and had neither money nor property with him, but he was 
 taken on board as a passenger, and soon after arrived safely 
 in England. Thus ended this second most adventurous 
 journey, of which some may think that the results have been 
 meagre, if we compare them with the danger and the cost. 
 It is the narrative of brave adventure, dogged by misfortune, 
 and ending in disappointment. But this was not Mr. Du 
 Chaillu's fault. 
 
 Though his advance from the coast has not exceeded 240 
 miles in a direct line, he has made many important additions 
 to natural history, and thrown a new and interesting light on 
 the nature of the country, and the manners and conditions of 
 its inhabitants. The region is almost impenetrable from the 
 want of harbours on the surf-beaten coast, the deadliness of 
 the climate, the rains which last for ten months of the year, 
 the intricacy of the jungle which covers nearly the entire surface, 
 and the jealous suspicions of the natives. The narrative affords 
 abundant proof that, if any one could overcome these obstacles 
 it was Mr. Du Chaillu — the man who, in the first instance, 
 had been the victim of a calumny to make him out an im- 
 postor, to den}' him all merit as a discoverer, and to suppress 
 his name from the very specimens he had sent home. This 
 second journey places him above the reach of cavil ; and if he 
 has failed, he has shown all future travellers the qualities 
 needed for success. 
 
 Almost acclimatised by residence on the coast ; endued 
 with rare energy, courage, and perseverance ; personally popu- 
 lar with the nati\'es for that kindly disposition which we see 
 in the management of his guides, speaking their dialects with 
 fluency, and showing masterly tact in his ' palavers' with 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 269 
 
 them, thoroughly acquainted with their habits, he seems to 
 possess all the qualifications of an African traveller. But he 
 was able to advance only a few hundred miles inland, and 
 then barely escaped the fate which has befallen so many brave 
 and distinguished men, from Mungo Park down to — we can 
 scarcely bring ourselves to abandon hope, as, with deepest 
 sorrow, we add the last most honoured name — Livingstone. 
 It may be well worth while seriously to consider whether it is 
 wise or light to expose valuable lives to such risks in such 
 expeditions. To solve the great problem of the sources of 
 the Nile, to dispel the darkness which has shrouded the cradle 
 of the mysterious river for so many ages, and to set at rest a 
 question which from the time of Herodotus had vexed geogra- 
 phers, historians, and philosophers, is a feat to immortalise the 
 name of the discoverer. We can quite understand, therefore, 
 why travellers persevered in the attempt, and will persevere 
 all the more for the success which crowned the enterprise of 
 Speke, and Grant, and Baker, when they gazed upon the 
 waters of the great African lakes which form the head reser- 
 voirs, if we may not strictly call them the sources, of the 
 Nile. But we more than doubt whether anything is to be 
 gained by an attempt to cross the continent of Africa in the 
 region of the equator. Indignantly protesting at that want 
 of sympathy with the worth of science and the dignity of 
 manly adventure, which sneers at the desire to enlarge the 
 bounds of geographical knowledge as mere curiosity, we must 
 still recognise that the chief objects of such an enterprise 
 should be trade and civilisation. But the isolated journeys of 
 a few travellers carrying their lives in their hands — after the 
 first indispensable work of laying open the regions which it 
 requires unselfish devotion such as theirs to think of pene- 
 trating — can do little or nothing to effect these objects. They 
 might be better advanced, in the second stage, by settlements 
 and factories on the coast, or on the banks of navigable rivers 
 as far inland as the climate or other natural obstacles will 
 allow. The path of the white man through the tribes of the 
 interior is like the path of a ship through the waters. The 
 waves close on the track, and all trace pf it is lost, till the march 
 of civilisation, directed in the same track by more effective if 
 
2 70 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 less unselfish motives, takes the chart of the almost forgotten 
 traveller for its guide. 
 
 If we do not actually know, we can tolerably well guess, 
 thanks to Mr. Du Chaillu, what is the nature of the country, 
 and what is the character of its inhabitants. Forest and 
 prairie alternate ; and elevated ridges, which sometimes rise 
 to the dignity of mountain.?, with jungle covering their sides, 
 run in parallel lines from north to south. The kings of the 
 forest seem to be the gorilla and the chimpanzee, for there 
 are only a few carnivorous animals found there, and the 
 elephant, the rhinoceros, and the lion are unknown. Mr. Du 
 Chaillu saw no zebras, giraffes, elands, or antelopes, and 
 indeed, the absence of animal life of any kind was remarkable. 
 He says that miles after miles were travelled over without 
 hearing the sound of a bird, the chatter of a monkey, or 
 the footstep of a gazelle. Reptiles, of course, abound, and 
 most of the snakes are poisonous. As to the people, he was 
 struck with the scantiness of their numbers, and the varieties of 
 languages and dialects spoken by the different tribes. The 
 patriarchal form of government evcrj'where prevails, each 
 village being ruled by a chief or by elders. The power of 
 a chief is not despotic, but subject, in cases of life and 
 death at all events, to a council of elders. Polygamy and 
 slavery exist, but the slaves always belong to a different 
 tribe from that of their owner. 
 
 It is, however, of little interest to know what are the laws 
 and customs of half-naked savages, who since the first peopling 
 of the A-\'astcs of Africa, have been unable to raise themselves 
 higher in the scale of intelligence than we now find them. 
 Indeed, it is most probable that they have degraded from the 
 old stock, whatever that stock may originally have been. 
 It is sad to think of generations that have passed, and of those 
 that will pass away, of men ' born for immortality,' whose 
 religion is the lowest form of superstition, and who seem des- 
 tined to continue as long as they exist in a state of primaeval 
 barbarism. Wc confess that we have no faith in the opinion 
 that they can civilise themselves or that civilisation can be 
 imported amongst them. The individual negro may now and 
 then show a remarkable aptitude for this, and hereby he 
 proves the folly of the theory which would make him the 
 
A JOURNEY TO ASHANGO LAND. 271 
 
 congener of the ape ; and negroes who dwell amidst a supe- 
 rior race, like those in the United States and in the West 
 Indies, may be capable of improvement ; but so long as they 
 inhabit Africa, with its climate, their habits, and their tradi- 
 tions, we believe that neither the efforts of missionaries nor 
 the enterprise of travellers, nor the energy of traders, will be 
 able to raise them materially in the scale of humanity. We 
 agree with Mr. Du Chaillu that ' though a people may be 
 taught the arts and sciences known by more gifted nations, 
 unless they have the power of progression in themselves, 
 they must inevitably relapse in the course of time into their 
 former state.' 
 
 He says that the population in the region of the equator 
 is steadily decreasing. The negroes themselves acknowledge 
 it, and he attributes it to the slave trade, polygamy, barren- 
 ness of w6men, death among children, plagues, and witchcraft, 
 ' the latter taking away more lives than any slave trade ever did.' 
 But all these causes have been in operation for ages. The 
 slave trade, indeed, was infinitely more active formerly than 
 now, and yet it is only lately that the diminution has become 
 so apparent. In the lifetime of old men clans have entirely 
 disappeared, and of others only a few individuals remain. 
 Nor is it only in Central Africa that this occurs. We are told 
 that in every other part of the continent travellers who, after 
 the lapse of a few years, have returned a second time to the 
 same country, have noticed a decrease of population. 
 
 We are unable to account for this ; but, whatever be the 
 cause, we cannot affect to be sorry for the result. ' We feel too 
 profoundly for the degradation of the negro, and the miseries 
 he endures, and we have too httle faith in the probability of 
 his amelioration, to desire the continuance of his race. It 
 may be that, like that of the Red Indian in America, or the 
 Maori in New Zealand, or the Black Man in Australia, it is 
 destined to disappear ; but in those cases it dies away before 
 the march of advancing civilisation. The hunting-grounds of 
 the wilderness are covered with cattle and with corn, and the 
 wigwam of the savage gives place to opulent towns. But 
 the climate of Africa seems to forbid the possibility of this, 
 and if the negro were to vanish from the earth, we know not 
 who from amongst the family of man would be likely or able 
 
2 72 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to occupy his seat. Nor need we now speculate on the future, 
 for that day is far distant. In the meantime our duty is 
 clear ; we must treat him with kindness, but also with firm- 
 ness, when we come in contact with him ; we must deal with 
 him fairly, and do our best to educate and elevate him as far 
 as his nature will permit him to rise, leaving the issue of the 
 question of his destiny in the hands of Providence. 
 
273 
 
 EUGENIE DE GUERIN} 
 
 • Edinburgh Review,' 1864. 
 
 It is a remarkable proof of the impression made in France by 
 this book that the prize given by the French Academy was 
 awarded to it, and that it has gone through ten editions in 
 less than two years. Perhaps it owes these distinctions, in 
 part, to the contrast it affords to the prevailing spirit of the 
 French nation and the present age ; but its own merits are 
 undeniable, and we have never read a more touching record 
 of devoted piety, sisterly affection, and love ' strong as death.' 
 Eugdnie de Guerin is an Antigone of France sublimed and 
 ennobled by the Christian faith. Her Journal is the out- 
 pouring of one of the purest and most saintly minds that 
 ever existed upon earth. The style is exquisitely beautiful, 
 and it lingers in the memory like the dying tones of an .iEolian 
 harp, full of ineffable sweetness. Amidst the impurity which 
 has so long flooded French literature, it is delightful to come 
 upon the streams of thought that flowed in limpid clearness 
 from the fountain of her mind, and to find in a young French 
 girl a combination of piety and genius with so much felicity 
 and force of expression, that her countrymen have not scrupled 
 to compare her style to that of Pascal himself 
 
 Religion was with her not a thing to be resorted to at 
 certain times and on particular occasions, but it was part and 
 parcel of her existence. She breathed its atmosphere, and it 
 was the essential element of her life. She was one of those 
 rare beings who seem to belong less to earth than to heaven, 
 whose temperament, so to speak, is theopathic, and whose faith 
 enables them to regard this world as a world of shadows and 
 
 ^Eugenie de Guerin : Journal el Ouvrage couronne par I'Academie 
 Lettres publies avec V assmtiment de sa Franjaise. Paris: 1863. 
 Famille. Par G, S. Trebutien. 
 
 T 
 
274 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the unseen life as the only reality. To many even of those 
 who think deeply on religious subjects this is a state of mind 
 which is unattainable, perhaps hardly intelligible. The piety 
 seems too seraphic for the wants of daily life ; the armour too 
 ethereal for the combat and struggle which are the ordinary 
 lot of man ; and they look upon it as a beautiful flower which 
 may flourish in a cloistered solitude, but which would droop 
 and wither in the wilderness of the world. This temperament, 
 however, beyond all doubt, does exist, and such a journal as 
 that of Eugenie de Guerin will find a responsive echo in many 
 hearts, both Protestant and Catholic ; for there is in it a depth 
 of piety which transcends mere difference of creed, and swal- 
 lows up, as it were, that difference in the intensity of Christian 
 faith and a large-hearted love of God. 
 
 No doubt there are also many to whom this ecstatic view 
 of religion is sickly and sentimental, and who are disposed to 
 attribute the highly-wrought expressions of pious enthusiasm 
 to weak health, habitual solitude, and an excitable imagination. 
 The character of Eugenie de Guerin belonged rather to the 
 cloister than the world : and it is remarkable that, in an age 
 like the present these journals and letters of a recluse, breathing 
 no passion but that of the tenderest affection to God and to 
 her brother, should have been read \\'ith extreme avidity. 
 They owe their success to their entire moral sincerity and their 
 great intellectual refinement. There is not a trace of cant or 
 affectation in these pages, which, indeed, were never intended 
 to be seen by any human eye but that of her brother Maurice ; 
 and their purity of intention is equalled by a purity of style 
 and felicity of diction so remarkable, that this unknown pro- 
 vincial maiden is raised by the French Academy itself to the 
 rank of one of the best writers of the language. 
 
 Before \\'& notice the work in detail, \\& will say a few 
 words of the De Gu6rin family, and of the brother who may, 
 without exaggeration, be said to have absorbed the whole of 
 Eugenie's existence. This is necessary to justify, and even 
 render intelligible, the devotion with which she clung to him 
 while living, and cherished his memory when dead. Maurice 
 and Eugenie de Gu6rin were born at the old family chateau 
 of Le Cayla, in Languedoc, near the town or village of Ar- 
 dillac, and not very far from Toulouse. They were of ancient 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 275 
 
 and, indeed, noble lineage, and their ancestors had fought in 
 the Crusades. A Gu^rin, or Guarini, was, at the beginning of 
 the ninth century, Count of Auvergne, and members of the 
 family became lords of the domains of 01s in Quercy, Rhin- 
 hodes in Rouergue, Apchier in Gevaudan, and Laval, Saigne, 
 and Cayla in Languedoc. It could boast of a cardinal, who 
 was also a troubadour at the court of Adelaide of Toulouse ; 
 and of a chancellor of France, the Bishop of Senlis, in the 
 reign of Queen Blanche, who animated by his example the 
 courage of the troops at the battle of Bovines. By various in- 
 termarriages, also, it mingled its blood with some of the 
 noblest families in France — the S^guiers, the Dulacs, the 
 Bernis, and the Rochefoucaulds. The chateau itself is situated 
 in a solitary spot overlooking a valley shaded by woods, and 
 with broad cornfields to the north. Eugenie says in her 
 Journal that the surrounding country is 'a great empty 
 desert, or peopled almost as the earth was before man ap- 
 peared on it, where one passes whole days without seeing 
 anything but sheep, or hearing anything but birds.' A little 
 rivulet gurgles close under a terrace in front of the windows. 
 The house was furnished in the simplest style, for the family 
 was not affluent. She thus describes it : — 
 
 Our rooms are all white, without mirrors or a trace of luxury ; the dining-room 
 has a sideboard and chairs, with two windows that look out upon the wood at the 
 north ; the other saloon at the side has a sofa, in the centre a round table, some 
 straw-bottomed chairs, an old arm-chair worked in tapestry, where Maurice used 
 to sit (a sacred piece of furniture), two glass doors on the terrace, the terrace 
 overlooking a green valley where a rivulet flows ; and in the saloon a beautiful 
 Madonna with her infant Jesus, a gift by the Queen — such is our abode. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame de Gudrin had four children, of 
 whom Eugenie was the second. She was born in 1805, five 
 years before her youngest brother Maurice, to whom she may 
 be said to have devoted her whole existence. The difference 
 in their ages made her feel towards him, as she expressed it, 
 more like a mother than a sister. The other children were, a 
 sister, Marie, or Mimi, as she was called, and a brother, the 
 eldest of the family, named Erembert. They lost their mother 
 at a comparatively early age, when Eug6nie was thirteen 
 years old. 
 
 This was Eugenie's first sorrow, and it made a profound 
 impression upon her mind. She was religious from her cradle, 
 

 276 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and the loss of her mother deepened her convictions and sanc- 
 tified her faith. She says, in her Journal, Dec. 31, 1839, with 
 reference to it : — -^ ill 
 
 From being a merry and laughing girl I became pensive and reserved ; my 
 life suddenly changed : there was a flower drooping and broken in a coffin. From 
 that epoch dates a development in my faith, a religious impulse, a love of God, 
 which carried me away from all earthly things, and which left me that which sus- 
 tains me now, a hope in God which early consoled me. 
 
 Both she and Maurice were gifted with a rare intelligence. 
 Both were born poets in the true sense of the word. Both 
 clothed their thoughts spontaneously in verse which gushed 
 from them like a fountain, and the prose of both was poetry. 
 Wandering in the solitary woods hand in hand, they passed 
 their childhood together, ' like twin cherries on one stalk,' 
 clinging to each other v/ith inexpressible fondness ; and each 
 might say to the other : — 
 
 For sure our souls were near allied, and thine 
 Cast in the same poetic mould as mine. 
 
 Eugenie showered upon the little Maurice the treasures of her 
 love, and he returned it with all the warmth of his young 
 heart. One of his teachers said to his father, ' You have there 
 a transcendent child.' From his earliest infancy, his delight 
 — or, rather, his passion — was the contemplation of Nature. 
 His sister says, in a few brief memoranda she drew up for a 
 notice that was to be prefixed to an edition of his works after 
 his death, — 
 
 Maurice was, as a child, imaginative and a dreamer. He passed long periods ' 
 of time in gazing on the horizon, under the shadow of the trees. He had a 
 peculiar affection for an almond tree, beneath which he used to take refuge when 
 he felt the slightest emotion. I have seen him stand there whole hours. 
 
 He used, as a boy, to declaim in the open air, and made a 
 rustic pulpit of a grotto in the woods, where he preached to 
 his sisters — his only audience. They called it the pulpit of 
 Chrysostom. He quitted home to attend a school at Tou- 
 louse, and at the age of thirteen he went to the Stanislaus 
 College, in Paris, where he remained five years and brilliantly 
 distinguished himself During all that period he never visited 
 his home, for Cayla was far distant and travellirtg was expen- 
 sive. When he came back, his sister remarked in him an in- 
 crease of melancholy, which was the habitual feature of hi? 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 277 
 
 character. In a letter written in 1828, apparently in a fit of 
 deep dejection, to the Abb^ Briquet, one of the professors 
 at the college, he attributes this to early sorrows. He 
 says : — 
 
 You know my birth : it is honourable — that is all ; for poverty and misfortune 
 are hereditary in my family, and the majority of my relatives have died in trouble. I 
 tell you this, because I believe that it may have had an influence upon my character. 
 
 The first years of my life were extremely sad. At the age of six I had 
 
 no longer a mother. An eyewitness of the prolonged grief of my father, and often 
 surrounded by scenes of mourning, I perhaps then contracted the habit of sadness. 
 Living a life of retirement in the country with my family, my childhood was 
 soUtary. I never knew those games nor that noisy joy which accompany early 
 years. 
 
 He goes on to say that he had the image of death con- 
 stantly before his eyes, and his dreams were of the tomb. 
 Clearly his mind was then in a very morbid state. He told 
 his sister that the sentiment in which they resembled each 
 other was melancholy — ' an affection of the soul which had 
 been often turned into ridicule owing to its abuse, but which, 
 when natural, ennobled the heart and became even sublime.' 
 
 At the end of 1832, at his own earnest request, Maurice 
 was allowed to join the little society at La Ch^naie, in 
 Brittany, half Benedictine, half secular, of which the Abbe 
 de la Mennais — that lost star in the firmament of the Roman 
 Catholic Church — was the head. But he had not then thrown 
 off his allegiance to the Pope, nor startled the world with the 
 publication of his ' Paroles d'un Croyant' Lacordaire and 
 Montalembert were still amongst his disciples. The com- 
 munity consisted of the Abb6 de La Mennais, Abb6 Gerbet, 
 and six or seven young men who pursued their studies chiefly 
 with a view to a monastic life. La Chenaie was a kind of Port 
 Royal of the nineteenth century. It stood solitary amongst 
 boundless woods, ' an oasis,' as Maurice de Guerin called it, 
 ' amidst the steppes of Britanny.' In front of the house was 
 a large garden, divided into two by a terrace planted with 
 limes, and at the extremity was a chapel in which they off"ered 
 up their daily devotions. In the following passage in a letter 
 to his sister Maurice describes the famous Abb6, the Pytha- 
 goras of the establishment : — 
 
 The great man is little, frail, pale, with grey eyes, oblong head, a ilose large 
 and long, his forehead deeply fijrrowed with wrinkles which descend between the 
 eyebrows to the commencement of the nose : dressed in a complete suit of coarse 
 
2 78 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 grey cloth from head to foot ; running about his room in a way that would tire my 
 young limbs, and when we go out for a walk marching always at the head of us, 
 covered with a straw hat as old and worn as that of Charles de Bayne. 
 
 Maurice stayed at La Chenaie until the society was 
 broken up, in September 1833, by the pressure of ecclesias- 
 tical authority. While there, he nourished his native melan- 
 choly with the tender reminiscences of an early and lost love. 
 We know no more of the circumstances than that the name 
 of the object of his attachment was Louise. He wrote poetry 
 in secret, and confided the outpourings of his muse to one 
 intimate friend, M. de Marzan, with whom he used to roam in 
 the solitude of the woods. Of course he kept up a correspon- 
 dence with Eugdnie, and some of the letters have been pre- 
 served and published, as also a journal, now well known as the 
 ' Cahier Vert,' in which he noted down his impressions and 
 feelings just as they occurred. The last entry in it is the 
 following : — 
 
 I have travelled. I know not what movement of my destiny has carried me 
 along the banks of a river to the sea. I have seen on the banks of that river 
 plains where nature is puissant and gay — royal and ancient dwellings marked with 
 memories which keep their place in tlie sad legends of humanity — numerous cities, 
 
 and the ocean rumbling in the far distance The course of travel is 
 
 delightful. Oh ! who will set me afloat on the Nile ? 
 
 Wordsworth himself was not a more ardent admirer nor a 
 closer observer of natural scenery than Maurice de Guerin. 
 His love of Nature was a worship and a passion, and her ever- 
 changing forms were to him little less than beings endowed 
 with life. 
 
 ' Still snow,' he writes, in the month of March, ' torrents of rain, gusts of 
 wind, cold. Poor Brittany ! you have need of a little verdure to cheer your 
 sombre physiognomy. Oh ! cast off quick your winter cloak, and take your 
 mantle of spring — a tissue of leaves and flowers. When shall I see the folds of 
 your robes floating in the air, the sport of the mnds ? ' 
 
 Again : — 
 
 I have paid a visit to the primroses. Each bore its little burden of snow, and 
 bent its head beneath the weight. Those pretty flowers, so richly coloured, pro- 
 duced a charming effect under tlieir white head-dresses. I have seen whole tufts 
 of them crowned wilh a single block of snow. All those smiling flowers thus 
 veiled and leaning their heads towards each other were like a group of young 
 girls surprised by a wave and sheltering themselves under a white sheet. 
 
 Describing a mist which, as it curled upwards, unveiled 
 the mountain tops : — 
 
 One would have believed he saw old darkness fleeing away, and God like 
 
 I 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 279 
 
 a statuary removing with his hand the' drapery which covered his work, — and 
 the earth exposed, in all the purity of its primitive forms, to the rays of the hrst 
 sun. 
 
 Again, in a different strain : — 
 
 The winter is passing away with a smile It is another step of Time 
 
 that is gained. Oh ! why can it not, like the coursers of the Inmvortals, reach at 
 a bound the limits of its duration. 
 
 But he did not pass all his time in poetic reveries. He 
 was a diligent student, and made himself master of Greek, 
 Latin, English, and German. In a letter to his sister, written 
 a little later, he mentions his partiality for Byron and Scott 
 — le bon homme Walter Scott — and says he was then reading 
 ' Faust,' which he describes as a work that ' might have been 
 written by an angel under the dictation of the Devil' 
 
 When the Abbe de La Mennais was compelled to dismiss 
 his little band of students, they migrated to the monastic 
 establishment of Ploermel, which was under the direction of a 
 brother of their former chief, himself also an Abbd Maurice 
 quitted La Ch^naie with profound regret ; but he said, ' Al- 
 though my grief is very bitter, I will not hang my harp -on the 
 willows by the water-courses, because the Christian, unlike the 
 Israelite, ought to sing the Lord's song, and the song of the 
 servant of the Lord, in a strange land.' At Ploermel he was 
 not happy ; he felt oppressed by the monotony of his daily 
 life, and revolted against the narrow strictness of the disci- 
 pline. He pined for a more active sphere, and in one of his 
 letters thus expressed himself : ' I would rather run the risks 
 of an adventurous life than allow myself to be thus strangled 
 by rule.' He was then a warm champion of the cause of his 
 former teacher ; and speaking of his quarrel with the Pope, 
 said, ' Even if the Pope condemned him, is there not in 
 Heaven a court of appeal .-' ' At this period of his life he 
 suffered intense agony from a strange and miserable feeling 
 of utter incapacity. He humbled himself to the dust under 
 an exaggerated idea of the intellect of others, and a sense of 
 his own inferiority. His depreciation of his own powers was 
 absurdly wrong ; but the distress he endured in consequence 
 was indescribable. This morbid feeling increased upon him 
 as the period drew near when, according to his own resolve, 
 he was about to exchange the monastic solitudes of Britanny 
 
28o ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 for the bustle of the metropolis and the stern realities of 
 active life— La Ch^naie and Ploermel for Paris. His delicate 
 organisation, where disease was already at work, made him 
 shrink from the rough tumults of the world ; and he thought 
 himself wholly unfit to contend for ' the immortal garland,' 
 which, to use the words of Milton, ' is to be won not without 
 dust and heat' But a sense of duty nerved him for the 
 struggle. He said, ' I toil simply and solely for my father 
 and my friends : all my forces are in them ; and it is not I 
 who work, but they who work in me.' 
 
 Before, however, he started for Paris he paid a visit to his 
 friend M. Hyppolyte de la Morvonnais, who, with his young 
 wife and an only daughter, had a charming residence in Bri- 
 tanny called Le Val, on the banks of the river Arguenon, not 
 far from St. Malo, on the coast. From the Val d' Arguenon 
 he went to Paris, where he hired a chamber at twenty francs 
 a month, and struggled manfully to maintain himself by 
 writing essays for the newspapers, and afterwards by giving 
 instruction as a tutor to young men attending or preparing 
 for the University. He was at first astonished to find his 
 articles accepted. With unaffected humility he speaks of them 
 in language which, now that his genius is recognised, can 
 hardly be read without a smile : — 
 
 ' I %vrite boldly,' he says, 'a quantity of articles, which are received, I know 
 not by what miracle, in a little newspaper. I know not, in truth, which I ought 
 most to wonder at, the excess of goodness in men who accept such poor essays, or 
 my incredible assurance in launching such stupidities into the world.' 
 
 But in the meantime his intercourse with the Abb^ de La 
 Mennais had borne its natural fruit, and he had become un- 
 settled in his faith, even if he was not quite an unbeliever. 
 This caused great distress to his sister Eugenie, who perhaps 
 exaggerated the extent of the mischief At all events she 
 feared that her brother had ceased to pray, and her Journal 
 at this period contains several allusions to the subject. On 
 August 4, 1835, she writes : — 
 
 O ! my friend, if you knew how the soul in afBiction finds sweet consolation 
 in God ! what force it derives from the Divine power. 
 
 And on January 26, 1838, when he had returned to Paris, 
 after paying a short visit to home : — 
 
 Maurice, my dear Maurice, oh ! what need I have of you and God 1 There- 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 281 
 
 fore, in taking leave of you, I went to church, where one can pray and weep at 
 ease. What do you do, who do not pray, when you are sad, when you have your 
 heart broken ? For myself, I feel that I have need of superhuman consolation— 
 that I must have God for my friend, when that which I love causes me to sufifer. 
 
 This was until the latter end of her brother's life the one 
 drop of bitterness in her cup of joy as regarded him. No 
 pride in his intellectual powers, no conviction, comforting as it 
 was, that in the midst of temptation his morals were pure, 
 could make her forget that he had ceased to be a follower of 
 the Cross. Her passionate prayer to Heaven was that he s 
 might return like a wandering sheep to the fold of his 
 Saviour, and be a partaker in the glorious hope of a blessed 
 immortality, which was the support and consolation of her 
 life. And her prayers, as we shall see in the sequel, were not 
 in vain. 
 
 During his residence in Paris Maurice met with Caroline 
 de Gervais, a young lady who was born at Calcutta, and had 
 only lately come to France, having lost her father. An attach- 
 ment sprang up between them, and she became his affianced 
 bride. Eugenie calls her ' a charming Eve come from the 
 Orient for a paradise of a few da.ys.' But in the meantime 
 seeds of consumption had already been sown in his delicate 
 frame, and the state of his health caused serious alarm to his 
 affectionate family and above all to his devoted sister. Her 
 letters addressed to him have by some mischance been lost ; 
 but she was in the habit of keeping a private Journal for his 
 eye alone. In this she noted down her thoughts as they 
 occurred, and the little occurrences of her daily life, in the 
 pious hope that as he from time to time perused it he might, 
 though absent, be as it were present amongst them, and might 
 feel himself surrounded in the midst of the dangers of Paris 
 and the world by the sweet and holy influences of home. She 
 did this at his especial request, and no more welcome packet 
 ever reached him than that which contained his sister's diary. 
 It is to this Journal that we purpose to introduce our readers. 
 She, however, little thought that it would meet the public eye. 
 In one of the entries, dated August 24, 1835, she says, ' This 
 is not for the public, it belongs to my inmost feelings, to my 
 soul: IT IS FOR ONE.' It was written on separate paper- 
 books or cahiers, as she calls them, for the convenience of 
 
282 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 transmission to her brother by the post, and some of them are 
 unfortunately lost. Of those which remain the first is dated 
 Cayla, November 15, 1834. 
 
 Before his marriage took place Maurice, after five years' 
 absence, returned home, and spent six happy months at Cayla. 
 Speaking of this period his sister says : — 
 
 Those six months mth us, when he was ill, and so much beloved, had again 
 strongly attached him to this place. Five years without seeing us had made him 
 perhaps a little lose sight of our tenderness ; but having found it again he had re- 
 turned it with all his own— he had so completely renewed all his relations with 
 the family that when he left us death alone could have broken them. He had so 
 assured me. His errors were past — his illusions of heart had vanished ; from a 
 feeling of need, and by his primitive tastes, he embraced sentiments of a good 
 kind. I knew all. I followed his steps ; from the fiery circle of the passions 
 (very brief for him) I have seen him pass into that of the Christian life. Beautifiil 
 soul ! soul of Maurice ! God had withdrawn it from the world to shelter it in 
 Heaven. 
 
 It was so arranged that Eugenie should accompany the 
 rest of the family to Paris, and be present at the marriage. 
 This was a great event in her life, for she had never before 
 undertaken so long a journey. A visit to the neighbouring 
 towns of Gaillac or Alby had been the utmost limit of her 
 wanderings. But although her diffidence in herself made her 
 fancy that she was unfitted for society, we are assured that in 
 the capital of France her conversation made a deep impression 
 upon those who met her ; and owing to her tact and the native 
 grace and dignity of her manner, she was in reality as much 
 at home in the glittering salons of Paris as in the quiet and 
 rustic retirement of Le Cayla. She was, however, little known, 
 and it was not till long after her death that her name reached 
 the ears of those who would most cordially have welcomed 
 and received her. 
 
 Maurice returned to Le Cayla on July 8, 1839; but his 
 disease had already made great progress, and he was within 
 sight of the bourne of rest which he had so ardently longed 
 for. Ten days afterwards his sister notes in her Journal the 
 end of his melancholy existence. He was buried in the 
 cemetery at Ardillac, and it is a curious trait of the state of 
 feeling in France at this time, even before the Revolution of 
 1848 had inaugurated the reign of Liberty and Equality, that 
 when the De Guerin family placed a stone crucifix in the 
 churchyard to mark the resting-place of their beloved Maurice, 
 
 i 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 2S3 
 
 there was a strong opposition on the part of the peasantry, 
 who thought it a violation of the equality of death. It even 
 became necessary to guard the tomb during the night to 
 prevent its spoliation. Eugenie says in her Journal : — 
 
 Poor sovereign people ! This is what we must suffer from it ; this is the fruit 
 of their knowledge. In times past all would have crossed themselves before that 
 crucifix which to-day they talk of throwing down in the enlightened times in which 
 we Uve. Unhappy times, when respect for holy things is lost, when the lowest 
 pride themselves in revolting against the mournful elevation of a tomb ! 
 
 As Eugenie had devoted the chief part of her existence to 
 her brother while he lived, so she now consecrated the re- 
 mainder of her days almost exclusively to his memory. It 
 cannot be denied that there was something morbid in this. 
 She hugged her sorrow to her heart, and, like Rachel weeping 
 for her children, refused to be comforted. But she mourned 
 not as those who have no hope. Across the dark cloud of 
 her sorrow there darted a ray of light, and that was the 
 ineffable comfort she found in the conviction that Maurice had 
 died a sincere Christian. And she knew that his life had been 
 in a singular degree innocent and pure, so that she might say 
 of him what was said by Cowley on the death of his friend 
 
 Hervey : — 
 
 He, like the stars, to which he now is gone. 
 
 That shine with beams like flame. 
 
 Yet burn not with the same, 
 Had all the light of youth, of the fire none. 
 
 Her great anxiety was that his manuscripts should be 
 published, in order that the world might know his worth, and 
 estimate the treasure it had lost. An eulogistic notice of her 
 brother from the pen of Madame .Sand appeared in the 
 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' of May 15, 1840. This first 
 brought Maurice's name before the public, and it contained a 
 sort of prose poem called ' Centaure,' which was found amongst 
 his papers. The idea of the subject, as well as of another 
 short piece called ' Bacchante,' included in the recent edition 
 of his works, was formed in the course of several visits he 
 paid to the Museum of Antiquities in the Louvre in company 
 with M. Trebutien, a distinguished antiquary, and Conservator 
 of the Library of Caen. He is also the friend who has devoted 
 himself with affectionate zeal to the task of publishing the 
 remains of both brother and sister — ' his mission,' as he 
 
284 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 calls it, ' here below.' The ' Centaure ' is supposed to relate to 
 Melampus the story of his birth and early life in the dark 
 caverns of the mountains. We will quote the concluding 
 passage by way of specimen of the style : — 
 
 For myself, O Melampus, I decline into old age tranquil as the setting of the 
 constellations. I preserve still sufficient daring to scale tlie lofty top of the rocks, 
 where I linger, engaged either in watching the wild and restless clouds, or in 
 viewing the watery Hyades, the Pleiades or the great Orion come up from the 
 horizon. But I am conscious that I am sinking, and fail rapidly, like a snow- 
 ilake floating on the waters, and that soon I shall pass away to mingle with the 
 rivers that flow on the vast bosom of the earth. 
 
 Unforeseen difficulties occurred to prevent the publication 
 in a collected form of what Maurice had written. Eugenie 
 was profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of publication, and 
 confided entirely to others the fulfilment of the wish which 
 was now dearest to her heart. But she occupied herself dili- 
 gently in gathering manuscripts and letters, adding, as it were, 
 stone to stone for the cairn which was to be raised to her 
 brother's memory. And in the meantime, with a broken 
 heart, at different intervals, _she continued her Journal, and 
 still addressed it to him with the touching inscription : — 
 
 Still to him, to Mau'ice dead ; to Maurice in Heaven. He was the glor)' and 
 the joy of my heart. Oh ! how sweet and full of affection is the name of Brother ! 
 Friday, 19 July, at ii^ o'clock. Eternal date ! 
 
 At last the book appeared.' It was published at the end 
 of i860, and has already passed through several editions. It 
 was preceded by a biographical and critical notice written by 
 M. Sainte-Beuve, one of the first of French critics. He calls 
 the ' Centaure ' ' a magnificent and singular composition . . . 
 . . a colossal fragment of antique marble,' and speaks of ' the 
 youth of a select school, a scattered generation of admirers, 
 who repeated to each other the name of Gu^rin, who rallied 
 round that young memory, honoured it in secret with rapture, 
 and looked forward to the moment -when the complete work 
 would be delivered to them, and when the whole soul would 
 be discovered to them.' This strain of eulogy appears to us 
 to be extremely exaggerated ; but the romantic narrative of 
 the lives of these young persons has excited an unusual in- 
 terest in their literary efibrts. The same writer also speaks of 
 
 ' The work was entitled ' Maurice The new edition is entitled ' Maurice de 
 de Gu(5rin. Jieliyiiia, 2 vols, in 16.' Guerin. Journal, Lettres et Poemes.' 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIX. 28^ 
 
 
 
 Eugenie as ' his equal, if not his superior, in talent and in 
 soul' She did not live to see the wish of her heart gratified 
 by the publication of her brotlier's works, for, on tlie 13th of 
 May, 1848, she herself died, and rejoined him in heaven. She 
 lived, after her brother's death, ver}- much the life of a reli- 
 gious recluse, devoted to works of charit}- in tlie neighbour- 
 hood. Her father survived her only six months, and Erembert 
 died two years afterwards, leaving a widow and one daughter. 
 Caroline returned to India, and, marrj'ing again, died young ; 
 and now of the whole family there remain, we believe, onl}- 
 Madlle. Marie de Guerin, and the daughter of Erembert, who 
 still inhabit the old chateau of Le Cayla. 
 
 We will now proceed to quote some extracts from the 
 Journal, taken almost at random, conscious as we are how 
 difficult it is to choose where all is so beautiful, and conscious 
 also, alas ! how much of their beauty will be lost in a trans- 
 lation. Almost the whole of them were written by Eugenie 
 in her solitary chainbrctte at Cayla, very often while the. 
 nightingale was pouring out its song beneath her window, and 
 the glorious canopy of a Southern sky was studded with stars 
 before her view. It was there that she most loved to be — ' an 
 anchorite,' as she expressed it, ' in her cell.' ' Like the dove,' 
 she said, ' I love to return every evening to my nest ; I covet 
 no other place : — 
 
 Je n'aime que les fleurs que nos ruisseaux arrosent. 
 Que les pres dont mes pas ont fonle le gazon ; 
 Je n'aime que les bois oil nos oiseaux se posent, 
 Mon del de tous les jours et son meme horizon. 
 
 Nothing could be more simple or more uneventful than her 
 daily hfe. In her little room, with her distaff by her side, she 
 span and read, and thought and wrote ; now caressing a pet 
 pigeon, or linnet, or goldfinch, now putting aside her Journal 
 or her work to kneel down and pray, now rising like Eve, 'on 
 hospitable thoughts intent,' to descend into the kitchen and 
 preside over the mysteries of the oven, or to go out and carry 
 alms to some poor cripple in the village. 
 
 She describes her favourite room thus : — 
 
 The air this morning is mild, the birds sing as in spring, and a little sun pavs 
 a visit to my chamber. I love it thus, and am as much pleased w-ith it as with 
 the most beautiful place in the world, lonely as it is. The reason is that I make 
 of it what I please, a saloon, a church, an academy. I am there, when I like 
 in company with Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Fenelon : a crowd of men of genius 
 surrounds me ; anon there are saints. 
 
286 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 On the chimney-piece was an image of the Virgin, above 
 that a print of Christ, above that again a portrait of Saint 
 Theresa, and, surmounting all, a picture of the Annunciation ; 
 ' so that,' she says, ' the eye follows a celestial line as it gazes 
 and travels upwards. It is a ladder which leads to heaven.' 
 
 Under the date November i8, 1834, she writes :— 
 
 I am furious against Ae grey cat. That naughty animal has just carried off a 
 little frozen pigeon which I was warming at the comer of the fire. It began to 
 revive, poor creature ! I wished to tame it ; it would have loved me ; and all 
 that crunched by a cat ! What mishaps in life ! This event, and all those of to- 
 day, have passed in the kitchen ; it is there that I stay all the morning and part 
 of the evening since I have been without Mimi. It is necessary to superintend 
 the cook, and papa sometimes comes down, and I read to him near the oven, or 
 at the comer of the fire, some morsels of the antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church. This big book astonished Pierril (a servant lad) . ' AVhat a lot of words 
 are in it ! ' he said, in his patois. He is a droll creature. One evening he asked 
 me if the soul was immortal, and, afterwards, what a philosopher was. AVe dis- 
 cussed grand questions, as you see. Upon my answering that it was a person of 
 wisdom and knowledge, he remarked, ' Then, Mademoiselle, you are a philo- 
 sopher.' This was said with an air of naivete and sincerity which might have 
 flattered Socrates, but which made me laugh so that all my seriousness as a catechist 
 was put to flight for the evening. There he is, with his little pig searching for 
 truffles. If he comes this way, 1 will go and join him, and ask him if he still finds 
 me with the air of a philosopher. 
 
 With whom would you believe I have been this morning at the comer of the 
 kitchen fire ! With Plato. I hardly ventured to say so, but my eyes lighted 
 upon him and I wished to make his acquaintance. I am only at the first pages. 
 He seems to me admirable, this Plato, but I think it a singular idea of his to place 
 health before beauty in the catalogue of blessings which God has given us. If he 
 had consulted a woman, Plato would not have written that ; do you think he 
 would ? I think not ; and yet, remembering that I am a ' philosopher,' I am a 
 
 little of his opinion When I was a child I should have wished to be 
 
 pretty. I dreamed only of beauty because I said to myself, mamma would have 
 loved me more. Thank God ! that childishness is past, and I desire no other 
 beauty than that of the soul. Perhaps even in that respect I am a child, as here- 
 tofore. I should like to resemble the angels. 
 
 24//; April, 1835. — I know not why it has become necessary for me to write, 
 if it were only two words. To write is my sign of life, as it is of the fountains to 
 flow. I would not say it to others ; it would appear folly. Who knows what 
 this outpouring of my soul is, this unfolding itself before God and before some 
 one ? I say some one, for it seems to me that you are here, and that this paper 
 is you. God, methinks, hears me : He even answers me in a way which the soul 
 understands, and which one cannot express. When I am alone, seated here, or 
 on my knees before my crucifix, I fancy myself Mary, listening tranquilly to the 
 words of Jesus. 
 
 There is one passage twice repeated, in which, after 
 quoting an extract from the works of Leibnitz, where he speaks 
 of ' a pious, grave, and discreet confessor, as a great instrument 
 of God for the salvation of souls/ she bursts out into a strain 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 287 
 
 of fervent rapture on the subject, in language which, however 
 
 exaggerated, shows how deep and sincere was her conviction 
 
 of the benefit she derived from the Confessional. Under date 
 
 April 28, 183s, she writes : — 
 
 The world knows not what a confessor is— that friend of the soul, its most in- 
 timate confidant, its physician, its master, its light ; the man who binds us and 
 unbinds us, who gives us peace, who opens to us heaven, to whom we speak on our 
 knees, calling him like God our Father. Faith makes him truly God and Father. 
 When I am at his feet I see in him nothing else but Jesus listening to Magdalene, 
 and forgiving her much because she has loved much. Confession is only an over- 
 flow of repentance in love. 
 
 We will give two or three more extracts from her Journal 
 of the same year : — 
 
 I August, 1835. — This evening my turtle-dove has died ; I know not from what 
 cause, for it continued to coo up to to-day. Poor little creature ! what regret it 
 causes me ! I lov^d it ; it was white ; and every morning it was the first voice 
 I heard imder my window, in winter as well as in summer. Was it mourning or 
 joy? I know not, but its songs gave me pleasure. Now I have a pleasure the 
 less. Thus each day we lose some enjoyment. I mean to put my dove under a 
 rosebush on the terrace ; it seems to me that it will be well there, and that its 
 soul (if soul there be) will repose there sweetly in that nest beneath the flowers. 
 I have a tolerably strong belief in the souls of animals, and I should even like 
 there to be a little paradise for the good and the gentle, like turtle-doves, dogs, 
 and Iambs. But what to do with wolves and other wicked minds ? To damn 
 them ? That embarrasses me 
 
 2^h. —How quickly it passed, my dear, the night passed in thinking of you ! 
 The day dawned when I fancied it was midnight ! it was, however, three o'clock, 
 and I had seen many stars pass, for from my table I see the sky, and from time to 
 time I regard it and consult it, and it seem, that an angel dictates to me. From 
 what source except from on high can there occur to me so many ideas, tender, 
 elevated, sweet, true and pure, with which my heart is filled when I commune 
 with you ? Yes, God gives them to me, and I send them to you. 
 
 When her brother's friend, Hyppolyte de la Morvonnais, 
 had lost his wife, a correspondence was kept up between him 
 and Eugenie, and he thanked her in one of his letters for her 
 ' ineffably tender' thoughts. Upon this she says in her Journal, 
 August 27, 183s :— 
 
 I feel my own aridity, but I feel also that God, when He pleases, 
 
 makes an ocean flow over this bed of sand. It is thus with so many simple souls 
 from which proceed admirable things, because they are in direct relation with 
 God, without science and without pride. So I lose my taste for books ; I say to 
 myself, ' What can they teach me which I shall not know one day in Heaven ? 
 Let God be my master and my study ! ' I do thus, and I find myself benefited 
 by it. I read little, I go out little, I bury myself in my own thoughts. There 
 many things are said, and felt, and happen. O ! if you saw them ! but what good 
 is it to show them ? God alone can penetrate the sanctuary of the soul. Mine 
 to-day abounds in prayer and poetry. It is a wonder to me how those two foun- 
 tains flow together in me and in others. 
 
288 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Her ir.ind was too sensitive, and her feelings were too 
 finely strung for her own happiness. Not quarrelling with 
 the tastes of others, she herself cared nothing for the gaieties 
 of life, and a certain degree of restlessness and dissatisfaction 
 is visible both in her Journal and her Correspondence. Indeed, 
 she more than once complains oi ennui as her besetting enemy: 
 but her sure refuge was religion, and she was rewarded by the 
 gift of that peace which passeth all understanding. Thus we 
 find her saying in her entry dated March 20, 1836:— 
 
 To-day, and for a tolerably long time, I have felt calm, with peace of head 
 and heart, u state of grace for which I bless God. My window is open ; how 
 calm it is ! all the little sounds from without reach me ; I love that of the rivulet. 
 Adieu ! I hear at this moment a church-clock, and a house-clock that answers to 
 it. This striking of hours in the distance and in the hall assumes in the night 
 something of a mysterious character. I think of the Trappists, who awake to 
 pray ; of the sick, who count in suffering aU their hours ; of the afflicted, who 
 weep ; of the dead, who sleep frozen in their bed. Oh ! how the night makes 
 serious thoughts occur ! I do not believe that the wicked, the impious, the un- 
 believer, are as perverse in the night as in the day. A gentleman who doubts many 
 things has often said to me that at night he always believed in hell. The reason 
 apparently is that in the daytime external objects dissipate our thoughts and dis- 
 tract our soul from trath. But wliat am I going to say ? I had to speak of such 
 sweet things. I have received your ribbon this evening, the net, the little box 
 with the beautiful pen and the pretty little billet. All this I have touched, tried, 
 examined, and put to my heart. A thousand thanks ! 
 
 We will now quote two or three passages which exhibit 
 her in different moods : — 
 
 5 Dec, 1834. — Papa is gone this morning to Gaillac, and here we are, Mimi 
 and I, sole cMtdaines and absolute mistresses. This regency is not amiss, and 
 pleases me well enough for a day, but not longer. Long reigns are wearisome. 
 It is enough for me to rule over Trilby (a favourite dog), and get her to come to 
 me when I call her, or when I ask her to give me a paw 
 
 g Dfc, 1834. — I have just been warming myself at all the fire-places in the 
 hamlet. It is a round which I make from time to time with Mimi, and which 
 has its agrciiicns. To-day it was a visit to the sick, so we talked of remedies and 
 drinks — ' Take this, do that ; ' and we are listened to with as much attention as 
 any doctor. We prescribed for a little child who was ill from walking bare- 
 footed — to wear wooden shoes ; for his brother who was lying flat with a bad 
 headache— to put a pillow under his head ; that has relieved him, but it will not 
 cure him, I fancy 
 
 19 May, 1835. — Here I am at the window listening to a choir of nightingales 
 which sing in the Moulinasse wood in a ravishing style. Oh ! what a beautiful 
 scene ! Oh ! what a beautiful concert ! which I leave in order to cany alms to 
 poor lame Annette. 
 
 II Jllanh, 1836. — I have great joy in my heart to-day; Evan (her other 
 brother) is gone to confess. I hope ifluch from this confession with our gentle 
 cure, who knows how to speak so well of the compassion of God. It is, besides, 
 Papa's birthday. 
 
 I May, 1837. — Vou are right in saying that I employ a little artifice 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 2S9 
 
 to conceal my Journal. I have, however, read some of it to Papa, but not all. My 
 good father would, perhaps, be somewhat concerned at what I say, and at what 
 now and then occurs to me in my souL An air of sorrow would seem to him a 
 real distress. Let us hide from him these little clouds ; it is not good that he 
 should see them, and know anything else of me except the calm and serene side. 
 A daughter out to be so sweet and gentle to her father ! We ought to be to tiem 
 almost what the angels are to God. Between brothers and sisters the case is 
 different ; there is less restraint and more abandon. To you, then, the course of 
 my life and of my heart, just as it comes. 
 
 9 May, 1837. — A day passed in hanging out linen to dry leaves little to say. 
 It is, however, pretty enough to stretch white linen on the grass, or to see it float- 
 ing on ropes. One is, on those occasions, if so pleased, the Nausicaa of Homer, 
 or one of those princesses in the Bible who •i^'ashed the tunics of their brothers. 
 
 29 May, 1837. — Life is like a road bordered with flowers, trees, bushes, 
 herbs, a thousand things which would fix without end the eye of the traveller ; 
 but he passes on. Oh ! yes, let us pass on without lingering too much on what 
 one sees on earth, where everything fades and dies. Let us look on high, let us 
 fix our eyes on the skies and the stars ; let us pass firom them to the heavens 
 which will not pass away. The contemplation of Nature leads there ; from 
 objects of sense the soul mounts to the r^ons of faith, and sees the creation from 
 on high, and the world appears then quite different. 
 
 14 Feb., 1838. — If I had a child to bring up, how gently and gaily would I do 
 it, with all the care that one bestows on a delicate little flower ! Afterwards, I 
 would speak to it of the good God in words of love ; I would tell it that He loves 
 it better than I do ; that He gives me all that I give it, and, besides, the air, the 
 sun, the flowers ; that He has made the sky and so many beautiful stars. Those 
 stars, I remember how they gave me a beautiful idea of God, as I often rose, when 
 I was put to bed, to gaze upon them through the little window at the foot of my 
 bed. 
 
 At times Eugenie felt an almost irresistible longing to 
 enter a convent, but was deterred by the thought of her home 
 duties, and also by the clinging love she bore to her father 
 and all her family. Her good sense and acute judgment were 
 hardly less remarkable than her piety. After expressing how 
 much she enjoyed reading the lives of hermits and recluses — 
 ' at least such as are not inimitable ; — as to the others, one 
 admires them like the pyramids ' — she goes on to say : — ■ 
 
 In spite of this, for many persons the ' Lives of the Saints ' seems to me a 
 dangerous book. I would not recommend them to a young girl, nor even to 
 others who are not young. The reading has such an effect on the heart, which 
 
 thus loses itself sometimes, even for God How one ought to watch over 
 
 a young woman ! — over her books, her correspondence, her companions, her 
 devotion, everything which demands the tender attention of a mother. If I had 
 had mine, I remember things which I did at fourteen years of age which she 
 
 would not have allowed me to do So Frangois de Sales once said to 
 
 some nuns who begged him to allow them to go barefoot, ' Change your brains, 
 and keep your shoes.' 
 
 Like her brother Maurice, she was an accurate and imagi- 
 
 u 
 
290 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 native observer of external nature, and very prettily could she 
 describe the objects that caught her attention. Thus :— 
 
 I love the snow : that white aspect has something heavenly in it. Mud and 
 bare earth displease and sadden me. To-day I perceive only the traces of roads, 
 and the feet of little birds. However softly they alight, they leave their little 
 tracks, which make a thousand figures in the snow. It is pretty to see those small 
 red claws, Uke pencils of coral, that make the drawings. 
 
 Or, when writing in the wooded country of the Nivernois : — 
 
 It is in the sweet air of May, as the sun rises on a day radiant and fragrant, 
 that pen travels over the paper. It does one good to rove in this enchanting 
 scenery amongst flowers, and birds, and verdure, under the ample blue sky of the 
 Nivernois. I like much its graceful goblet-shape, and those little white clouds 
 here and there, like cushions of cotton hanging to give repose to the eye in that 
 immensity. 
 
 We know not whether Eugenie was ever in love ; but she 
 alludes to the early death of a cousin Victor in a way that 
 makes it probable that she cherished for him a tenderer feel- 
 ing than that of friendship. She certainly had no prejudice 
 against marriage, and in one passage showed that she had 
 formed visions of 'love in a cottage' for herself which were 
 not destined to be realised. On February 9, 1838, she writes, 
 half seriously and half in jest : — 
 
 I have never dreamed of grandeur or of fortune, but how often of a small 
 house away from a town, very clean, with its -wooden furniture, its bright earthen- 
 ware, its lattice-work at the entrance — some chickens, and myself there with — I 
 known not whom — for I should not fancy a peasant like one of ours, who are 
 boorish, and beat their wives ! 
 
 After her brother's death she — as we have mentioned — 
 continued her Journal, and still addressed it to him, or some- 
 times to one of his surviving friends, a M. d'Aurevilly, whom 
 she calls her ' brother by adoption.' The tone of it now be- 
 comes inexpressibly mournful, although the thoughts are as 
 beautiful as ever. 
 
 It begins with the date July 21, 1839 : — 
 
 No, my beloved one, death shall not separate us, it shall not remove you from 
 my'thoughts. Death separates only the body ; the soul, in place of being there, 
 is in Heaven, and this change of dwelling takes away nothing from its affections. 
 O ! my friend Maurice, Maurice, are you far from me ? Do you hear me ? ^Vhat 
 are those regions where you now are ? What is God, so beautiful, so good, who 
 makes you happy by His ineffable presence, unveiling for you eternity ? You 
 see what I wait for, you possess what I hope for, you know what I believe. 
 Mysteries of the other world, how profound you are, how terrible you are, but 
 how sweet you sometimes are I yes, very sweet, when I think that Heaven is the 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 291 
 
 place of happiness All my life will be a life of mourning, with a 
 
 widowed heart, without intimate union. I love Marie, and my surviving brother 
 much, but it is not with our sympathy. 
 
 On August 17, 1839, she writes : — 
 
 Began to read the ' Saints desirs de la Mort,' a book much to my taste. My 
 soul lives in a coffin. Oh ! yes entombed, sepulchred in thee my friend ; just as I 
 lived in thy life I am dead in thy death. Dead to all happiness, to all hope here 
 below. I had placed all in thee like a mother on her son ; I was less of a sister 
 than a mother. 
 
 She expresses the same idea in some unpublished verseg 
 addressed to her brother, which we have seen, and in which, 
 alluding to the death of her mother, the following lines 
 occur : — 
 
 Elle me dit : 'A ton amour. 
 Ma fille, je confie un frere ; 
 Dans les soins d'une soeur qu'il retrouve sa mire :' — 
 Et je devins ta mire dis ce jour. 
 
 We are glad to learn that M. Trebutien has been able to 
 collect a sufficient number of Eugenie's letters to justify 
 their appearance in a separate volume, which will shortly be 
 published, together with a few fragments of other parts of her 
 Journal which have not yet appeared.' But he has been 
 unable to recover the two missing cahiers which she wrote, 
 and which probably no longer exist. M. Trebutien has kindly 
 favoured us with a sight of part of his forthcoming publication, 
 and we will give a last extract from it. 
 
 The following is from a letter written to a sick friend in 
 Paris, the date of which is May 5, 1838 : — 
 
 I resume my pen to the song of the nightingale which is singing beneath my 
 window. It is delightful to hear it, and write, as it were, under its dictation. 
 Sweet musician ! I wish it were in your room at Paris ; it would give you plea- 
 sures, but these bards of solitude do not like to leave us. Besides we, hermits 
 that we are, require our concerts — God does not wish that we should be without 
 pleastires. The fields are full of them : flowers, verdure, beautiful plants at every 
 step, birds everywhere — and then the air — the embalmed air. What a charm there 
 is in a walk — and to wander like the partridges ! Yesterday we went to see the 
 invalid, a poor man, one of our friends, who was suddenly seized with a brain - 
 stroke. It was distressing to hear him delirious, and to hear his poor wife and 
 little children who wept. Ah ! my God, it was heart-rending ; but there is a 
 way to comfort these poor people. It is to speak to them of God, who afflicts in 
 this world to render happy in the next 
 
 ' The volume was published in 1865. It is entitled Lettres d' Eugenie de 
 Guiriii, par G. S. Trebutien. 
 
292 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Our chief object in making these selections has been to 
 bring under the notice of our readers the character and writ- 
 ings of a person of whom perhaps not many of them have 
 heard, but with whom those who share her sentiments may 
 wish to become better acquainted. We have no doubt that 
 the new volume will be received with the same interest that has 
 been shown in the case of Eugenie's other writings, and that it 
 will disclose more of the same beauty of style, purity of thought, 
 and fervour of religion, which are her characteristics and her 
 charm. 
 
293 
 
 THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS} 
 
 ' Edinburgh Review,' 1865. 
 
 Amongst the ' imperial works and worthy kings ' which this 
 age, prolific in triumphs of engineering skill, has produced, 
 there is none which— whether we regard the difficulty of the 
 undertaking or the importance of the object — more conspicu- 
 ously challenges attention and deserves admiration than the 
 great tunnel through the Alps, now steadily advancing, of 
 which we propose, in the following article, to give a short 
 account. 
 
 Although the most frequented in modem times, the Mont 
 Cenis is by no means the oldest of the passes of the Alps. It 
 seems not to have been known to the ancient Romans, nor 
 to have been used as a highway, or at all events not as a 
 military road, until the Middle Ages. Recent researches have 
 established the fact, almost beyond a doubt, that Hannibal 
 led his army into Italy by the pass of the Little St. Bernard. 
 To reach the north of Italy and the plains of Lombardy from 
 France, however, the shortest route is by way of Chambery 
 and the valley of the Arc. The railway, which leaves the 
 Paris and Lyons line at Amberieux and passes by Culoz and 
 Chambery, has been pushed forward to St. Michel in that 
 valley, and from this point the traveller proceeds in a dili- 
 gence as far as the village of Lans-le-bourg — a distance of 
 about sixteen miles — where the ascent of the Mont Cenis 
 begins. About one-fourth of the distance between St. Michel 
 and Lans-le-bourg, in a romantic part of the deep valley 
 through which the rapid torrent of the Arc forces its way — 
 
 ' I. Traforo delle Alpi tra Bardon- Cenis. ParM. Noblemaine. Neuilly : 
 
 niche c Modane: Relazione della Dire- 1861. 
 
 %iont Tecnica alia Direzione Generale 3. Notice Historique sur la Pet cee du 
 
 delle Strode Ferrate dello Stato. Torino : Mont Cenis et les Nouvelles Machines 
 
 1863. ^ _ de MM. Sommeiller, Grandis et Grat- 
 
 2. Rapport adrcsse hlaCompagniedes toni. Par M. BONJEAN. Chambery: 
 
 Chemins de Fer du Nord de FEspagne 1863. 
 sur les Travaux de Percemeni du Mont 
 
294 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE, 
 
 shut in by lofty snow-covered mountains— lies the poor little 
 hamlet of Fourneaux, and about a mile beyond it the larger 
 but still insignificant village of Modane. On the right of the 
 road, close to Fourneaux, the attention of the traveller is 
 arrested by numerous white buildings which have the appear- 
 ance of barracks ; behind them a steep inclined plane, with 
 two lines of iron tramway, ascends to a considerable height, 
 and stops at two square-framed doors placed against the side 
 of the mountain, near which are perched a few cottages and 
 workshops. On the same line with the top of the incline, 
 and a few paces to the east or left, may be distinguished a 
 semicircular hole, out of which the spectator may perhaps, at 
 the moment when he gazes, see a wagon or wagons issuing 
 loaded with broken stones, and tilting their contents down 
 the steep side of the mountain. Those buildings are the 
 dwellings and workshops of the men employed in piercing the 
 Alps, and that hole is the mouth of the great tunnel itself on 
 the Savoy or northern side. 
 
 Hopeless indeed must have appeared even a few years 
 ago the idea of carrying a railway through the mighty 
 barrier with which Nature has girdled Italy, and which, while 
 it has too often failed as a defence against invasion, has had 
 the effect of isolating her in a great degree from the rest of 
 Europe, and has impeded her material prosperity. The genius 
 of Napoleon did much when under his auspices the Simplon 
 road was made, and the traveller could climb the lofty 
 summit of the Alps comfortably seated in his carriage. 
 M. C6ard of Geneva, to whom that noble work is due, the 
 more remarkable as it was the first of its kind, relates in his 
 account of it that the Emperor Napoleon frequently sum- 
 moned him to his presence to ask the same question : ' EJp 
 bicn ! le canon, qiiand passera-t-il le Simplon ? ' This was 
 followed by similar roads across the St. Gothard, the Splugen, 
 and the Stelvio ; and when these magnificent roads were 
 completed, it seemed as if all had been done that engineering 
 skill could accomplish to make a highway into Italy. Nor is 
 it likely that more would have been attempted if steam had 
 not entirely changed the nature of the case. The delay 
 occasioned on a long journey by the ascent and descent of 
 these mountain-passes was little felt when the greatest rate of 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 295 
 
 speed on level roads did not exceed eight or nine miles 
 an hour. But when railways began to spread their multitu- 
 dinous arms on both sides of the Alps — when they crept up 
 the valleys, and the course of the locomotive was suddenly 
 arrested by the frowning masses of rock which seemed to 
 say, ' Thus far shalt thou come and no farther ' — when the 
 traveller had to exchange the luxurious saloon in which he 
 was whirled along like an arrow through the air for the 
 uncomfortable seat of a slow and jolting diligence — the 
 question irresistibly occurred, ' Is it possible for a locomotive 
 to scale that lofty wall ? or, if not, is it impossible to carry 
 on the railway through the Alps ? ' The Austrian engineers, 
 who have shown the greatest boldness and skill in the con- 
 struction of Apine roads, were the first to deal with this 
 difficult problem. The railroad from Vienna to Trieste 
 crosses the Noric chain of the Alps at Semmering. The line 
 ascends in gradients varying from i in 40 to I in 100 for 
 25 miles from Gloggnitz station to the summit of the pass, 
 and then crosses the watershed in a tunnel 4,000 yards in 
 length at an elevation of 2,893 English feet above the sea. 
 This colossal work was accomplished for the Austrian 
 Government by the engineer Carlo Chega, between 1848 and 
 1854. Another line of railway is also far advanced across 
 the Brenner, between Botzen and Inspruck, which will open a 
 very easy and direct mode of communication between Central 
 Europe and Northern Italy. But the Italian Government 
 was naturally anxious that these important Alpine passes 
 for steam-carriages should not be exclusively in the hands 
 of Austria ; and they therefore applied themselves with great 
 energy to open a similar connexion between the Italian king- 
 dom and the French provinces both of Savoy and of Nice. 
 
 At first the favourite idea was that a practicable railway 
 could be so constructed as to climb the mountain, and many 
 were the ingenious schemes devised for the purpose. • Perhaps 
 in nothing has engineering science made more rapid progress 
 than in the power of overcoming steep gradients. We well 
 remember when the man would have been thought a visionary 
 who should have proposed to make a locomotive line with a 
 gradient of one in fifty ; even one in a hundred was thought 
 a formidable obstacle. Now, however, gradients are faced of 
 
296 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 one in thirty, or even one in twenty-seven, of which an 
 example exists in England, and a ruling gradient of one m 
 fifty is only considered objectionable, inasmuch as it limits 
 the carrying power of the engine, and so increases the ratio of 
 the working expenses to the gross returns. It is, in fact, a 
 mere question of expense. But the gradient of the Alps ! 
 That was a gradient which transcended all experience. Still, 
 engineers did not despair. The possibility of a railway across 
 the Simplon was seriously discussed, and we believe that the 
 late lamented Mr. Robert Stephenson was employed by a 
 company to survey the pass, but his report was unfavourable. 
 We remember, ten years ago, meeting in a small chalet near 
 the summit of the mountain a foreign gentleman surrounded 
 by maps, and plans, and sections, who told us that he was 
 bent upon the same errand. Stationary engines, cog-wheels, 
 pneumatic tubes — every kind of mechanical apparatus, were 
 proposed to meet the difficulty, but hitherto without result' 
 
 A tunnel was thought of and talked of, but it seemed the 
 dream of enthusiasts. The difficulties in the way were indeed 
 tremendous, and might well appal the boldest engineer. In 
 the first place, the length would be much greater than had 
 ever been before attempted, and how was a sufficient quantity 
 of air to be obtained in the gloomy heart of the mountain to 
 enable the passengers to avoid suffiacation >. How, in the 
 progress of the excavation, were the workmen to breathe ? 
 At the distance of miles in the interior what might not be 
 
 ' An experimental line is at this line. They have also a lateral move- 
 moment in operation on the Mont ment which acts as a powerful break 
 Cenis, on the plan invented by Mr. and enables the train to be almost 
 Fell, an American, for the application instantaneously stopped, even when 
 of steam traction to ordinary carriage going at full speed. It is calculated 
 roads across mountains. The spot that by means of this system, when 
 selected for the trial is on the zigzag completed, the distance between St. 
 road that ascends the mountain on the Michel and Susa could be traversed in 
 Savoy side, and the line is two miles four hours and a half. We saw the 
 and a quartet in length. The inclines locomotive at work a few months ago, 
 vary from i m 23 to I in 12, and the and the effect at a distance was very 
 smallest radius of the curves is one-fifth curious. It seemed with its train like 
 of a furlong. There are three sets of an avalanche descending the mountain, 
 rails, of which the middle one is placed and the illusion was increased by the 
 on an elevation, and it is used to secure long line of steam which floated above 
 the adhesion of four horizontal wheels the snow and was hardly distinguishable 
 attached two to each side of the loco- from it. 
 
 motive. The lower rim of each of [The above was my original note in 
 
 these wheels has a catch that firmly 1865. Since then the Fell Railway has 
 
 clasps the middle rail, so as to prevent been completed, used, and finally aban- 
 
 the engine from being thrown off the dpn ed. 1874.] 
 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 297 
 
 found ? Perhaps some yawning chasm and dark unfathomable 
 abyss — or, still worse, some subterranean lake which, bursting 
 through the aperture, would drown the workmen and sweep 
 in a resistless torrent through the gallery. The materials of 
 the rock might be harder than granite or the hardest whin- 
 stone yet encountered, which so often in Scotland has tired 
 the patience and exhausted the purse of the contractor. To 
 put down bores, the ordinary mode of ascertaining the nature 
 of the ground to be excavated, was of course out of the 
 question, and the imagination ran riot as it depicted the 
 character of the unknown region of the interior. The quickest 
 and cheapest mode of making ordinary tunnels is by sinking 
 vertical shafts at intervals from the summit, but this would 
 be plainly impossible in the Alps. It has been calculated 
 that it would take forty years to make one of these shafts so 
 as to strike the line of the axis of the Alpine tunnel ; and if, 
 owing to the almost insuperable difficulty of sinking a vertical 
 one, it were made oblique, it would be as long as the actual 
 tunnel itself. The gallery, therefore, must be excavated by 
 horizontal cutting from end to end, although, of course, the 
 cutting might begin at each extremity at the same time, and 
 go on simultaneously until the two sections met half-way in 
 the middle of the mountain. But here a fresh difficulty 
 occurred. Suppose that the lines did not meet 1 It is obvious 
 that, unless the axis of each half of the tunnel was mathema- 
 tically in the same straight line, the result would be either 
 that the one line would cross the other at an angel impracti- 
 cable for a locomotive, or that they would be in parallel lines 
 and so miss each other, causing thus the expense to be incurred 
 of two tunnels instead of one. In fact, a more serious mistake 
 would be committed than that which is said to have happened 
 in Ireland, where a line of railway was begun at the two ends 
 with different guages, and it was not until each half of the 
 work was completed that it was discovered that the one 
 would not fit into the other. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, all objections and all obstacles, 
 the minds of thinking men were haunted with the idea of the 
 practicability of a tunnel, and it was even made the subject 
 of poetry. In 185 1 the Academy of Sciences in Savoy 
 offered a prize for the best poem on la Percde du Mont Cents, 
 
298 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and the successful competitor was a lady, Mdlle. Chevron, of 
 Barberaz, of whose verses, however, we are not able to speak 
 in very high terms. She represents the Mont Cenis as angry 
 at the affront it was about to suffer at the hands of unromantic 
 engineers : — 
 
 Le Mont Cenis pourtant leve un front courrouce, 
 S'indignant de I'afifront dont il est menace. 
 
 And the injured mountain exclaims : — 
 
 Et Ton viendrait tenter de me reduire en poudre, 
 Quand depuis six mille ans je resiste i la foudre. 
 
 Happily, however, as we shall see, Mont Cenis has been spared 
 this humiliation. 
 
 The first question was to determine the spot which pre- 
 sented the conditions most favourable for the solution of the 
 problem. These obviously were : i, the least thickness in the 
 intervening barrier, or, in other words, the shortest passage 
 through the mountains ; 2, the most penetrable kind of rock ; 
 and 3, the most convenient points on each side for connecting 
 the tunnel with the existing railways in Savoy and Piedmont. 
 The honour of first hitting upon the exact place on the 
 Italian side, which subsequent researches have confirmed as 
 that which is most suitable for the line of the tunnel, is due to 
 an inhabitant of the village of Bardonneche in the valley of 
 RochemoUes, which runs parallel in Piedmont to the valley of 
 the Arc in Savoy. His name was Joseph Medail, and he was 
 a contractor for public works in the neighbourhood. In 1832 
 he drew up a report to the King, Charles Albert, in which he 
 indicated the point afterwards chosen for the commencement 
 of the work. But M^dail's idea of the direction which the 
 tunnel ought to take was different from that which was 
 finally selected. After ten years of laborious investigation 
 and solitary wanderings amongst the mountains, he, in 1842, 
 communicated to the Chamber of Agriculture and Com- 
 merce, at Chambery, a project for carrying the tunnel in a 
 north-westerly direction so as to communicate with the French 
 railways running towards Lyons. King Charles Albert now 
 summoned to his councils a Belgian engineer named Maus, 
 who was favourably known for the skill with which he had 
 overcome the difficulty of carrying a practicable railway down 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 299 
 
 the steep descent that leads to the city of Li^ge. Assisted 
 by M. Sismonda, the naturalist, he devoted four years to the 
 study of the problem, and at last determined upon the line 
 for the tunnel which has ultimately been adopted. Accord- 
 ing to his plan the extremity of the tunnel at Bardonn^che 
 would have been considerably higher than the extremity on 
 the opposite side, so that there would have been a contin- 
 uously ascending gradient from the entrance in Savoy to the 
 exit in Piedmont. It is obvious that by this arrangement, as 
 the work commenced on the Bardonn^che side must have 
 proceeded, so to speak, downhill, there would have been 
 considerable difficulty in getting rid of the water in what may 
 be called the Italian section of the tunnel. This difficulty has 
 been obviated by making an ascending and a descending 
 gradient. The tunnel rises from the Savoy side with an easy 
 gradient until it reaches the middle of the mountain, and it 
 then falls almost insensibly towards Bardonneche. When we 
 remember that in the fens of Lincolnshire the drainage of 
 large districts is effected by means of a fall not more than an 
 inch in a mile, we see at once how extremely slight the 
 inclination need be which will carry off the water from the 
 works of the tunnel. 
 
 After the disastrous campaign of 1 848, and the battle of 
 Novara, which laid Piedmont prostrate at the foot of Austria, 
 the question of the Alpine tunnel slept for a time. There 
 was neither money nor spirit for such an enterprise. A com- 
 mission was appointed, and this reported unfavourably on an 
 apparatus which had been invented by M. Maus for per- 
 forating the rock. But when Count Cavour became the head 
 of the Government, his energetic intellect revived the scheme 
 of the tunnel and gave it a practical development. A con- 
 cession was made to a French company of a line connecting 
 the Mont Cenis with the railways of France by the valley of 
 the Arc. In Piedmont the Italian Government undertook 
 the construction of a line along the valley of Dora Riparia as 
 far as Susa on the other side of the mountain, and for some 
 time the idea was entertained of the possibility of carrying a 
 tramway across the Alps, and so connecting the two systems 
 of railway. Independently, however, of all other difficulties, 
 there was one which, in an economic point of view, rendered 
 
300 £SSAyS CRITICAL. AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 ■ .; (S ^r 
 
 such a scheme objectionable. ITo overcome a given height a 
 locomotive must expend as inuch force as is required for 
 travelling a given length ; and it was found, on calculation, 
 that to climb to the top of the^Mont Cenis was equivalent to 
 adding more than ninety-two miles to the length of the 
 journey which the train would have to perform. 
 
 The next step was to consolidate the two lines of railway 
 on each side of the Alps in the hands of the same company ; 
 and the distance between Culoz in France and the extremity 
 of Lombardy, with the exception of the interruption caused 
 by the pass of the Mont Cenis, was traversed by a railway to 
 the whole of which the name of the Victor Emmanuel line 
 was given. This stimulated the desire to drive a tunnel 
 through the wall of rock which broke the chain of communi- 
 cation, and the aid of the science of geology was invoked to 
 examine the structure of the mountain range, and by inference 
 and analogy declare what was the secret of its interior. It 
 was found that the rock might be divided into two classes, 
 anthracite and oolite, and subdivided into groups, of which 
 mica, talc, limestone, and quartz were the distinguishing ingre- 
 dients. So far as the excavation has yet gone, the result has 
 corresponded with the theory, and on the Savoy side may be 
 seen the constantly increasing heap of anthracite stone which 
 is dug out of the bowels of the mountain and thrown down its 
 side so as to form an artificial platform like the works of a 
 slate quarry. 
 
 In the meantime, an English engineer, named Bartlett, 
 had patented, in 1855, a machine for perforating the rock. 
 The principle of this engine was a combination of steam and 
 compressed air, by which an iron bar was darted out like the 
 tongue of an adder against the opposing rock with wonderful 
 velocity and force. It worked admirably under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances — that is, in open cuttings and short tunnellings. 
 But it was useless for a project in which the chief desideratum 
 was to keep up a supply of fresh air. Steam could only be 
 produced by fire, and fire is the great devourer of air, so that 
 to introduce it into the Alpine tunnel would have been a kind 
 of suicide. The glory of inventing a method by which steam 
 should be superseded, and compressed air alone employed as 
 a motive power, was reserved for three Italian engineers 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS, 301 
 
 acting together in amicable concert, MM. Sommeiller, Grandis, 
 and Grattoni. They had been sent, when young men fresh 
 from the University of Turin, by the Sardinian Government 
 in 1846, to Belgium and England to study railway engineer- 
 ing ; and on their return to Italy, in 1850, their attention was 
 directed almost accidentally to the question of compressed air 
 as a moving force. They agreed to work out the idea in com- 
 mon, and endeavour by joint studies and experiments to give 
 a practical application of the principle. We are not able to 
 apportion the degree of merit which belongs to each in the 
 course of this remarkable partnership of inventive ingenuity, 
 nor is it necessary that we should do so. They were content 
 to throw their ideas into a common stock, and they are all 
 equally entitled to share in the honour of the product, which 
 is the machine now so successfully employed in piercing a 
 tunnel through the Alps, and which acts simply by the force 
 of air reduced to one-sixth of its ordinary volume or bulk by 
 means of the pressure of water. 
 
 The advantages of employing such a principle, if it could 
 be practically made to work, were immense. Air costs 
 nothing, nor does water in a country where it abounds. Its 
 supply was unlimited in the neighbourhood of the two sides of 
 the mountain where the tunnel was likely to be attempted ; 
 and as no fuel — that costly elernent in the generation of steam 
 — would be required, the only expense of any moment would 
 be the machinery by which the water could be brought to act 
 upon the air by way of permanent pressure, so as to reduce it 
 to a given fraction of its volume, and thereby increase its force 
 in a corresponding ratio. 
 
 But it was not to the object of making a tunnel through 
 the Alps that the labours of M. Sommeiller and his colleagues 
 were first directed. They were in hopes of inventing a 
 machine which, by means of the agency of compressed air, 
 would be able to work the steep and dangerous inclines of the 
 railway between Turin and Genoa, where it issues from the 
 long tunnel of Giovi in the Apennines. And they did pro- 
 duce a machine, the principle of which found such favour in 
 the eyes of the Sardinian Government, led on by Count 
 Cavour in 1854, that the right was granted to the three 
 engineers of applying it within a limited period to the pro- 
 
302 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 pelling of trains up those inclines. It was, however, destined 
 to achieve a nobler work; for the idea now occurred to M. 
 Sommeiller and his friends that if a combination could be 
 effected between Bartlett's perforating apparatus and the new 
 compressing engine, the result would be just the kmd of 
 machine required for piercing the Alps. In 1856 a bill 
 was carried through the Chambers which authorised the 
 Government to undertake the necessary experiments under 
 the direction of MM. Sommeiller, Grandis, and Grattoni. But 
 some idea of the cost and difficulty of these experiments 
 may be formed when we mention that the whole of the 
 machinery had to be made in Belgium, at the foundry of 
 Messrs. Cockerell, near Li^ge, and transported to Piedmont. 
 The place chosen for these experiments was La Coscia, near 
 San Pier d' Arena, and here at last the problem was practically 
 solved. The report of a Government Commission appointed 
 to examine the question in 1857 was favourable, and a machine, 
 or rather a series of machines, was produced, of which M. 
 Sommeiller, then himself a member of the Sardinian Parlia- 
 ment, could proudly say from the tribune, ' The discovery of 
 the means of applying compressed air has now been made. 
 The torrents of the Alps are our slaves ; they will do our 
 work for us. The machines are erected and work regularly. 
 When once they are established at the Mont Cenis, they will 
 go on not for four months only, but for seven, ay, ten years, 
 and will be always new ; for machinery which is only in con- 
 tact with water does not easily wear out.' The enthusiasm 
 with which these words were received was immense. The 
 Giovi inclines were henceforth forgotten, and the whole 
 power and resources of the Government were concentrated 
 upon the establishment of works at Bardonneche and Four- 
 -neaux, where the two ends of the great tunnel were to be 
 commenced. 
 
 Bardonneche is a poor Alpine village in the valley of 
 RochemoUes, about 4,255 feet above the level of tlie sea, with 
 a population, in 1857, of a thousand souls, all simple moun- 
 taineers ; and here workshops and dwelling-houses had to be 
 built for the workmen collected to receive instruction in the 
 difficult task before them. In the valley of the Arc they were 
 obliged to lodge for some time at Modane, distant fully a mile 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 303 
 
 from Fourneaux which could not furnish a cottage fit to live 
 in, and there was not a shop in the place. Well might M. 
 Sommeiller say, ' The difficulties that were encountered at the 
 beginning of the enterprise can be little understood by those 
 who had not visited Bardonn^che and Fourneaux before the 
 transformation they underwent in consequence of the works 
 of the tunnel.' The reason why these two places were selected 
 for the site of the two extremities of the intended tunnel was 
 owing to the configuration of the mountain range. The two 
 valleys, of the Arc on the Savoy side and of RochemoUes on 
 the Piedmont side, here approach most closely to each other, 
 and therefore the intervening barrier of rock has the least thick- 
 ness, so that a hole can be bored in the wall, so to speak, at 
 the least cost and with the least difficulty. The name of the 
 mountain actually attacked is the Grand Vallon, although, 
 perhaps, we ought to include that which is called Frejus, and 
 they are both in the immediate vicinity of Mont Thabor. To 
 speak, therefore, of the tunnel as the Mont Cenis tunnel, is a 
 misnomer, for that mountain is fully eighteen miles distant 
 from the scene of operations ; and yet this name is constantly 
 given to it, and it seems as if it were destined to carry off 
 the honour, or, as Mdlle. Chevron styles it, the affront, of the 
 title, just as Amerigo Vespucci, instead of Columbus, carried 
 off the honour of bestowing his name upon the Western Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 The tunnel at each extremity was commenced and exca- 
 vated for a short distance in the ordinary manner. The new 
 principle and mechanism were first applied at Bardonn^che, 
 and the iron frame and its perforators, which we shall ex- 
 plain hereafter, entered the gallery there on June 12, 1861. 
 
 As France had an interest in the scheme second only to 
 the interest of Italy, a convention was soon afterwards made 
 with the French Government to the following effect. The 
 Italian Government was to execute the work, and on its com- 
 pletion France was to pay 760,000/. for that portion of the 
 tunnel situated in its territory — one-half of the entire length 
 — together with a premium of 20,000/. for each year, by which 
 a term of twenty -five years, dating from January i, 1862, was 
 reduced. This premium was to be increased to 24,000/. for 
 each year, by which a term of fifteen years was reduced 
 
304 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 counting from the same time. In addition, the French Go 
 vernment were to pay interest at five per cent, per annum oi 
 such portion of the tunnel as was finished. If, however, th 
 ItaUan Government did not complete the work withii 
 twenty-five years from the date of the convention, or if thej 
 renounced its prosecution before that time, the French Govern 
 ment were absolved from farther payment. If the tunnel wa: 
 completed in ten years from June 30, 1863, the Frencl 
 Government were to pay 1,287,000/. for the construction o 
 one-half of the tunnel — being at the rate of 210/. per metre o; 
 I '09 yards. 
 
 We will now proceed to describe the plan of operations 
 the means employed, and the progress of the work. It wa; 
 necessary first of all to determine the position of the axis 0: 
 the tunnel, and this was done by marking at proper interval; 
 on the summit certain points through which a vertical plane 
 containing- the imaginary axis would pass. This was, how- 
 ever, a task of no ordinary difficulty, and we have seldon 
 perused a more interesting document than the modest reporl 
 drawn up by Signor Copello, who, with another engineei 
 named Borelli, executed this part of the work. They anc 
 their assistants had to scale the snowy barrier of the Alp; 
 and plant flagstaff's or build signal-towers— no fewer than nine 
 teen in number — above the line of the axis of the intendec 
 gallery. But how were they to determine what this line 
 really would be between the valley of the Arc and the vallej 
 of Rochemolles .' 
 
 The culminating point of the intermediate range is the toj 
 of the Grand Vallon mountain, nearly 1 1,000 feet above the 
 level of the sea, and almost equidistant from the two extremi- 
 ties of the proposed tunnel. Here a signal-tower was placed 
 and from it the eye of the spectator commanded both the 
 slopes of the mountain on the opposite sides. On the soutl 
 between it and the valley of Rochemolles is the subsidiary 
 range of Bauda, on which was placed another signal-tower, ir 
 such a position that an imaginary line drawn from a point or 
 the mountain side of the valley of Rochemolles opposite tc 
 the southern mouth of the tunnel, would pass through the 
 two points at Bauda, and the Grand Vallon. Owing to the 
 great depth of the valley of the Arc, it was impossible to se« 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 305 
 
 the signal-tower on the Grand Vallon from the point of the 
 mountain horizontally opposite the spot where the northern 
 extremity of the tunnel was to be, and it was therefore neces- 
 sary to select a point much higher up the mountain from 
 which that signal-tower was visible. This point was called 
 Pietra Bianca. It was comparatively easy now to determine 
 by means of the theodolite the vertical plane which, passing 
 through the Grand Vallon, and cutting in two the valley of 
 the Arc and the valley of RochemoUes, would contain the 
 axis of the tunnel, and its two mouths would of course lie in 
 that plane on the opposite sides of the mountain. 
 
 The distance between the two points fixed for the mouths, 
 or, in other words, the length of the gallery, was determined 
 by triangulation, and it was found to be 7"S932 miles. The 
 importance of ascertaining this was with reference not only to 
 the expense, but also the gradient, for it is intended that 
 the tunnel shall rise from the north to the middle with an 
 incline of i in 45^, and then drop insensibly towards the 
 southern extremity with an incHne of i in 2,000 ; and unless 
 the length was known beforehand, it would be impossible to 
 get the proper gradient in driving the excavation forward into 
 the heart of the mountain. Independently of what we may 
 call the intellectual difficulty in accomplishing this, there were 
 physical obstacles of no ordinary kind. Signor Copello says 
 in his report : — 
 
 Cloud and snow and storm succeed each other in these lofty regions with rapid 
 vicissitudes, and frequently render any operation impossible. To this must be 
 added the necessity of ascending and descending from 800 to 1,000 mitres of 
 height over rocks and by the most wretched paths. For this purpose it will be 
 sufficient to mention the fact that, for the measurement of seven particular angles 
 (which Signor Copello specifies), we were obliged, for seven consecutive days, to 
 reconstruct the steep path which leads from the point called Pelouse to the chalets 
 of Rionda, situated about 2,000 mitres above the sea, it rarely happening, on 
 account of the inclemency of the weather, that we were able to observe more than 
 two angles in a day, whilst it frequently occurred that we were not able to 
 measure one. 
 
 On reaching the village of Fourneaux, the traveller ob- 
 serves on the left of the road an oblong building, behind 
 which rise some twenty iron cylindrical pipes, on which rests 
 a large tank or reservoir of water. From beneath the wall of 
 this building issues a pipe rather less than a foot in diameter, 
 which, divided into lengths of three or four yards each, and 
 
 X 
 
3o6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 jointed together by strong rivets, crosses under the road, and 
 is carried on the right-hand side upon a series of rectangular 
 pillars of masonry distant a few yards from each other, until 
 it reaches the large workshop at the foot of the inclined plane 
 of which we have already spoken. It then turns sharp round 
 to the right, and is carried up the side of the incline like a 
 monstrous serpent, until it buries itself in the side of the 
 mountain at the spot where the two square -framed doors are 
 placed. The building with the vertical pipes and tank con- 
 tains the apparatus for the manufacture, so to speak, of the 
 compressed air, and that long white painted pipe that crawls 
 along the side of the road and climbs the steep face of the 
 mountain is the conduit which conveys the compressed air 
 into the mountain for the purpose of performing its marvellous 
 work there. 
 
 It is not our intention to go into technical details in de- 
 scribing the different machines, which indeed could hardly be 
 made completely intelligible without the aid of diagrams ; 
 but we think we can give a sufficiently clear account of them 
 to enable the reader to understand their principle and mode 
 of operation. And we will first speak of the compressing 
 machine employed at Bardonneche, where the work was first 
 commenced, and where the conditions are different from those 
 at Fourneaux as regards the supply of water power. 
 
 We have already said that the principle of the modus 
 operandi is the compression of the atmosphere by means of 
 water, so as to reduce its volume and thereby increase its 
 elastic pressure. If a body of air is reduced to one-sixth of 
 its ordinary bulk, it acquires an expansive force equal to that 
 of six atmospheres, and this has been found amply sufficient 
 for all the purposes required. The problem was how to get a 
 constant equable supply of air at this pressure, just as a 
 supply of steam at a given pressure is generated by means of 
 fire constantly kept up at a certain degree of heat. It was, 
 of course, easy to ascertain what weight of water was sufficient 
 to compress a given quantity of air to one-sixth part of its 
 volume, and enable the opposing forces — namely, the elasticity 
 of the air and the pressure of the water — to exactly balance 
 each other and maintain a state of equihbrium. But the 
 practical difficulty was so to arrange the machinery as to have 
 
THR TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 307 
 
 always at command a reseivoir of compressed air, like steam, 
 ready for constant and immediate use. And here it was that 
 the ingenuity of the three Italian engineers was called into 
 play. 
 
 At Bardonneche, at an elevation above the mouth of the 
 tunnel, there is a mountain torrent called Melezet, which is 
 never frozen in the coldest winter. If a canal were traced from 
 this at a height of 160 feet above the works, it would be able 
 to convey a mass of water with a moving force per second 
 equal to 900 horse-power. But this is more than was required, 
 and a reservoir has been constructed at a height of 85 '2 feet, 
 which gives a moving force of 208 horse-power. It must be 
 borne in mind that the great object was to fill a receptacle or 
 reservoir of the proper strength and solidity with compressed 
 air, and keep it there stored for use. Let us call this reservoir 
 A. The water confined in pipes is admitted into the com- 
 pressing machine, which is like a huge inverted syphon, by 
 opening a valve' B. The door, so to speak, of the reservoir to 
 be filled is a valve c, which opens inwards, that is, in the 
 direction in which the water flows. When the valve B is 
 opened, the water, obeying the hydrostatic law which makes 
 it rise to the level of its origin, rushes forward and ascends a 
 vertical cylinder which communicates with the reservoir A by 
 means of the valve B, forcing back the air as with the blow of a 
 battering-ram, until (the required amount of pressure having 
 been duly calculated and provided for) it is compressed to one- 
 sixth of its volume, or, in other words, acquires an amount of 
 pressure equal to six atmospheres. At this point the resistance 
 of the valve B (which has been kept closed by an internal pres- 
 sure equal to five atmospheres) is overcome, and the air escapes 
 through the opening into the reservoir. The admission valve 
 A is then closed, an escape valve D is opened, the water flows 
 out of the pipe, and the valve C being forced back by the 
 compressed air in the reservoir, keeps it there a close prisoner. 
 The position of the valve C in the vertical cylinder has been 
 determined by experiment, and it has been so placed as to 
 secure that the advancing column of water shall exactly reach 
 it, and drive into the reservoir the whole of the compressed air. 
 Sometimes a little of the water, in what we might almost call 
 the eagerness of the chase, gets into the reservoir, just as part 
 
528 USSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 "rom the opinion of the late Lord Campbell, who says (Life 
 )f Lord Jefferies, ' Lives of the Lord Chancellors,' vol. iii. p. 
 ;8i) that the doctrine is 'contrary to our notions on the 
 iubject.' I will not argue the question here, and it is really of 
 10 practical importance, for the proprietary rights and powers 
 )f government conferred by the charter on the Company are 
 inassailable, and it is not Hkely that a case will occur in 
 vhich they will think it desirable to challenge the opinion of 
 1 court of law upon the subject.' As owners of the territory 
 ind lords of the soil, they are entitled to treat all intruders as 
 trespassers. 
 
 The Company adopted the appropriate motto Pro pelle 
 :utem, ' Skin for skin,' which happily and wittily expresses the 
 nature of their trade. 
 
 The Canadians assert that the territory thus granted by 
 King Charles, in 1670, actually then belonged to the Crown 
 of France, and had been previously granted by charter in 
 1623, by Louis XIII., to a company called La Campagniede 
 Nonvelle France, ' New France ' being one of the names by 
 which Canada was then known. This charter is said to exist 
 in the archives of the Canadian government, but I have not 
 seen a copy of it, nor am I aware that it has ever been 
 published. 
 
 It has been also asserted that by the Treaty of Utrecht in 
 
 1713, a portion only of the shores of the Hudson's Bay was 
 
 ceded to England, and that stipulations were made for the 
 
 protection of the Company of New France. But on referring 
 
 to the treaty, it will be found that this is a mistake, and that 
 
 there is in it the fullest recognition of the title of the Crown 
 
 of England to the whole of the territoiy in question. As the 
 
 matter is of some importance, I will quote the words of the 
 
 treaty in the original Latin : — 
 
 Dictus Rex Christianissimus sinum et fretum de Hudson una cum omnibus 
 terris, maribiis, oris maritimis, fluviis, locisque, in dicto sinu et freto sitis, et ad 
 eadcm spcctantibus, nullis sive terrje sive maris spatiis exceptis, qu£e subditis Gallic 
 in prcesenli possessa sunt, regno et reginje Magna; Britaunice, pleno jure in per- 
 petuum possidenda, icslituct, 
 
 ' In his evidence before the com- fair opinion upon this subject, since 1 
 
 mittee of the House of Commons, in have taken the opinion of eveiy lawyer 
 
 1857, Mr. ElUcesaid: ' I conceive that against the Company when I was 
 
 charter to give the rights expressed in opposed to them, and for the Company 
 
 :t ; some of them may be doubtful. I since I have been connected with them. 
 Dught to be a1)le to express a tolerably 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 329 
 
 And it was provided that the Company of New France, or 
 Societas Quebecensis, as it was called, should evacuate the 
 territory with all their property. Moreover, the king of 
 France agreed to indemnify the Hudson's Bay Company for 
 all damages they had sustained from hostile incursions and 
 depredations of the French — vigente pace — before the war. 
 So that there could not be a clearer acknowledgment that 
 France had no claim except that which recent conquest had 
 given her, for she undertook to ' restore ' whatever part of the 
 territory she had seized, and to make good all losses sustained 
 by the Company at the hands of French subjects while the two 
 were at peace.' 
 
 As might naturally be expected, the Company at first 
 confined their operations to the shores of Hudson's Bay and 
 the northern parts of the territory ; and it seems that they did 
 not actually occupy the valley of the Saskatchewan until the 
 latter end of the last century, nor the valley of the Assiniboine 
 and the Red River until the beginning of the present. In the 
 meantime, they gradually pushed their forts up the rivers — ■ 
 such as the Churchill, the Nelson, the Albany, and the Moose 
 — that flow into Hudson's Bay. But in the middle of the 
 last century they possessed only five or six forts altogether. 
 In 1748 a petition was presented to a committee of the Privy 
 Council, complaining that the Hudson's Bay Company had 
 not effectually or in earnest searched for a new passage into 
 the South Sea, and had obstructed its discovery by others ; 
 and that since the date of their charter, they had not 
 taken possession of, nor occupied any of, the lands granted to 
 them, nor made any plantation or settlement except four 
 factories and one small trading-house. The petitioners prayed, 
 therefore, that they might be incorporated ' for finding out the 
 .said passage,' and that they might have a grant of all the 
 lands they should discover and settle not already occupied 
 
 ' By the Treaty Commissioners were but the Act was to be in force only for 
 
 to be appointed to determine the limits seven years, and thence to tire end of 
 
 inter dictum sinum de Hudson ct loca ad the next session of Parliament ; and it 
 
 Gallos spectantia : but if they \Vere ap- has been contended, therefore, that 
 
 pointed, I do not find that any boundary when the Act expired the privileges of 
 
 was ever settled. In 1690 an Act (2 the Company ceased. But at all events 
 
 William, and Mary c. 15) was passed they have been expressly recognised by 
 
 for confirming to the Hudson's Bay several subsequent statutes. 
 Company all their rights and privileges ; 
 
3IO jEssays critical and narrative. 
 
 The arch of the tunnel is nearly a semicircle. It is 2,5 feet 
 3^ inches wide at the base, 26 feet 2| inches wide at tte 
 broadest part, and 24 feet 7 inches high. At Bardonnkhe^ 
 however, the height has been increased i if inches. So much; 
 of the northern end as is finished is cased throughout with 
 stone, but at the southern end the sides only are of stone and 
 the vaulting is brick. Two lines of rails are laid down, and 
 lead to the advance gallery where the excavation is going on 
 in the manner we will now describe. 
 
 An iron frame containing the perforating needles moves 
 along the rails and confronts the rock which is to be attacked 
 in the gallery, which is not so large as the actual tunnel when 
 finished, for it is found more convenient to enlarge by ordinary 
 tools the space after the holes have been bored and the 
 blasting with gunpowder has taken place. So that, in fact, 
 as the excavation advances, the tunnel may be compared to 
 a reversed telescope, of which the narrow end is the gallery 
 in which the perforating machines operate. The advanced 
 galleries in the two sections of the tunnel are, however, 
 worked at different levels. That on the Bardonneche side is 
 on a level with the floor, while that on the Modane side is 
 at the top, close to the roof. We are not aware of the reason 
 of this difference, but it may be that, as the Bardonnkhe end 
 was begun first, it has been there so continued, while subse- 
 quent experience may have shown that, on the Modane side 
 at all events, it was more convenient to adopt the higher level 
 The entrance to each gallery is closed by two large moveable 
 gates or doors which turn on pivots, and behind which the 
 workmen take refuge from the shower of stones that follows 
 the explosion of the mines. The iron frame called Faffusto is 
 armed with nine or ten perforating machines, like the bow of 
 an ancient trireme from which the rostra projected, and they 
 are arranged in a circular form, but so that the greatest number 
 of holes can be bored in the centre of the opposing mass of 
 rock. To each of these are attached flexible tubes, the one 
 containing the compressed air which impels forward the 
 striking rods or needles, and the other water, which is injected 
 into the holes as they are bored. The machines consist of two 
 parts ; the one a cylinder for propelling, by means of a piston, 
 the boring needle against the rock, and the other a rotary 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. gii 
 
 engine for working the valve of the striliing cylinder and 
 turning tlie needle on its axis at each successive stroke. It is 
 impossible to describe these machines in detail without re- 
 ference to a diagram, for, as may well be supposed, their 
 mechanism is exceedingly complex. And owing to the severe 
 work they have to perform, they are constantly getting out of 
 order, and require repair. M. Sommeiller says in his report 
 that ' there is not in any manufactory a self-acting machine 
 composed of such multiplied and delicate organs with so 
 many continuous and intermittent movements, placed in con- 
 ditions so difficult, and which is subject to so many causes of 
 destruction as these perforators.' It is calculated that before 
 the tunnel is finished two thousand of them will have been 
 used up. The great object was to make them light and por- 
 table, and this, of course, increased their fragility. To bore 
 eight holes of the requisite depth, the piston rod gives 5 7,600 
 blows, and the cylinder performs the same number of revo- 
 lutions ! The action of each machine is independent of the 
 others, so that if one of them is broken or gets out of order, 
 the action of the rest is not delayed ; and it often happens 
 that where the face of the rock opposite to some of them is 
 softer than that which is opposite the others, or they are in a 
 better condition for working, they Will drill double the number 
 of holes in the same time. The rock on the south or Italian 
 side, ' so far as the perforator is interested,' says M. Sommeiller, 
 ' is very refractory i^nolto ribelle).' The stratification there is 
 extremely irregular, and the surface of the front of the ad- 
 vanced gallery at the point of attack is all streaked with veins 
 of quartz in every possible direction, which frequently turn 
 aside the boring needle and disable them. On the north side, 
 the rock is even still harder, but it is more homogeneous and 
 is more easily worked. The perforators act at difi"erent angles, 
 so as to pierce the rock in all directions, and when the proper 
 number of holes have been bored, the iron frame is pushed 
 back, and the large centre holes are charged with gunpowder, 
 and the mine is fired. This makes a large cavity in the rock, 
 which is called the breach, and the smaller surrounding holes 
 are then charged and fired in a similar manner. At the same 
 time a strong jet of compressed air is thrown into the advanced 
 gallery, which scatters the smoke and supplies air for respi- 
 
2 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 tion. Wagons are next pushed forward and filled with the 
 igments of rock and broken stone, which are conveyed to 
 le mouth of the tunnel and tilted down the side of the 
 ountain. 
 
 After each attack a fresh relay of workmen is brought in, 
 id the same operation is repeated night and day. We were 
 lid on the spot that the only holiday in the year is Easter 
 unday. And so the siege of the rock goes on continually, at 
 varying rate of progress, which on the northern side at the 
 resent time is a daily advance of about two mktres or 2'i8 
 ards. After the gallery has been cleared of the dSris, it is 
 nlaj-ged to the proper size of the tunnel by workmen using 
 leir ordinary tools, and then the sides and roof are cased with 
 lasonry, and the tunnel is up to that point complete. 
 
 One of the objections urged against the use of compressed 
 ir as^ a motive force was, that, as the elasticity of a given 
 olume varies inversely as the space it occupies, if it were con- • 
 eyed a long distance it would lose so much of its tension or 
 lasticity as to be unavailable for any practical purpose. But 
 ere, as so often has been the case, theory was confuted by 
 ict. It will be remembered that the same kind of objection 
 ^as urged against the project of submarine telegraphs, and it 
 /as said that the electric current would lose its force and die 
 long the road. It has been found that the loss of pressure 
 ,t the ends of the conduit pipe where the air is applied, as 
 ompared with the pressure in the reservoir, is only one-sixtieth 
 if the whole ; and M. Sommeiller calculates that at the centre 
 f the tunnel, a distance of 3 7966 miles from the reservoir, he 
 /ill be able easily to apply a pressure or force of six atmo- 
 pheres. Again, another objection. By compression caloric 
 ; disengaged, and it was thought that the air discharged in 
 le gallery for the purpose of ventilation would be too hot to 
 reathe. But as the air when it is emitted from the pipe 
 nmediately expands, it absorbs the same quantity of caloric 
 ^hich it had discharged at the moment of emission, so that the 
 ne effect neutralises the other ; and M. Sommeiller refers 
 'ith pardonable pride to the visits of ladies, ' delicatissime 
 ignore,' and amongst others the Princess Mary of Savoy, who 
 tood at the extremity of the gallery while the perforators 
 ere at work, and did not suffer the slightest inconvenience 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGfl THE ALPS. 373 
 
 from the state of the air. The whole of the works are lighted 
 with gas conducted in iron pipes along the ground, and in the 
 advanced gallery thirty or forty lights are kept constantly 
 burning, some of gas and some of oil : so that which was pro- 
 phesied as one of the greatest difficulties of the undertaking, 
 an abundant supply of fresh air, is shown to be the easiest 
 part of it. 
 
 In the middle of the tunnel line beneath the rails there is 
 made contemporaneously with the excavation a covered way like 
 a drain or sewer, in which are laid the pipes for gas and water, 
 and it serves also as a passage by which the workmen employed 
 at the advanced gallery could effect their escape in case of a 
 fall of rock from the roof, or any other accident which might 
 block up the tunnel itself. And by it the drainage is effected 
 of the water that filters from the rock, which must be consi- 
 able, if we may judge by the quantity of large stalactites 
 which may be seen hanging from the roof. 
 
 One of the m.ost important points to attend to is the 
 accurate direction of the axis of the gallery, which is indis- 
 pensable to prevent the two simultaneous excavations not 
 meeting at last in the centre. This is accomplished by means 
 of an observatory at each end perched aloft on the opposite 
 side of the valley, not unlike a summer-house, to which a 
 steep zigzag path ascends, and from which the spectator looks 
 into the cavity of the tunnel, where lights ar€ always kept 
 burning to guide the eye in the right direction. It is easy by 
 proper instruments to determine whether or not any deflection 
 from a straight line has occurred, and the tests are applied 
 about once in every three months ; but hitherto no error has 
 been detected. 
 
 We have frequently spoken of the two mouths of the 
 tunnel, such as they appear on the mountain sides at Fourneaux 
 and Bardonneche. But It is not intended, as might at first be 
 supposed, that the railway from the two valleys shall enter 
 either of these mouths. Indeed, a moment's reflection will 
 show that this is impossible. For the direction of the railway 
 as it approaches the tunnel will be at right angles with its 
 axis, and it would therefore require a large space by the side 
 and in front of the mouth to give room for a curve sufficiently 
 flat for safety. Two subsidiary tunnels will be formed at 
 
314 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 each extremity, which will enter the great tunnel on a curve 
 at some little distance from the actual mouth. The valley of 
 the Arc widens considerably above Modane, and the railway 
 will describe a majestic sweep as it curves with an ascending 
 gradient towards the mountain which is to engulf it. It is 
 obvious that much expense of construction might be saved if 
 instead of making this grand curve across the valley, the line 
 were to shunt ; by which means the train would be brought 
 to a stand-still at a point beyond Modane, and the locomo- 
 tive with its train would take a fresh start in a line diagonally 
 crossing the valley. But a shunt is always awkward and 
 involves delay, and we have not heard that it was ever 
 seriously contemplated. 
 
 The length of the tunnel already finished is a little more 
 than two miles and a half This leaves about five miles and 
 eight chains yet to be excavated, and at the rate of progress 
 which the work is now making, it ought, unless some unex- 
 'pccted accident occur, to be completed in four years and 
 seven months from the present time."7^It would be too much 
 to predict with certainty that this expectation will be realised. 
 It may be, indeed, that unknown difficulties will mar the 
 enterprise, for it cannot be denied that these will increase in 
 a certain ratio as the work advances. But it must be bome 
 in mind that, as each section of the tunnel embraces only 
 half of the entire length, the question is not whether the 
 mechanical apparatus is fitted to deal with seven miles and a 
 half of the interior of the mountain, but with just half of that 
 distance. Now, subtracting 2,000 mitres (which is something 
 less than the advance made at each extremity) from 6,110 
 viHrcs, which is half of the entire length, there are left only 
 4,1 10 inctres, or 2 miles 983 yards, to test the powers of the 
 compressed air and the perforating machines. This does not 
 seem a very formidable distance, and, judging from the 
 experience of the past, we think that M. Sommeiller and his 
 colleagues are well justified in looking forward hopefully to 
 the result. At all events absit omen ; — we will not dwell on 
 the possibilities of failure. Let us rather fancy the moment 
 arrived when each section of the tunnel has been pushed 
 forward so far that the blows of the perforating rods on the 
 opposite sides of the last interval of rock can be heard 
 
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE ALPS. 315 
 
 together, as if each were the echo of the other ; one of them 
 darts forward into the empty space formed by the excava- 
 tion of the meeting gallery — the holes are filled with powder 
 — the mine is fired — and when the explosion has taken 
 place, and the smoke has cleared away, there is no longer a 
 barrier to overcome, but the passage from France to Italy is 
 open without obstruction from end to end ! Then will have 
 been accomplished an enterprise which, to use the words of 
 M. Menabrea, when addressing the Italian Chamber on the 
 4th of March, 1863, 'will be for the glory of Italy and the 
 greatest benefit to all her population.' And not Italy alone. 
 The whole of Europe has an interest in the success of the 
 tunnel through which will flow the stream of traffic from 
 Germany and France. A few years ago the pass of the 
 Mont Cenis glittered with the bayonets and resounded with 
 the tramp of a French army marching on its way to rescue 
 fair Italy from the grasp of the foreigner. Now a more 
 peaceful conquest is going on over the obstacles which 
 Nature has imposed, and the Alps themselves are yielding 
 to the potent spell which science and art together are able 
 to evoke. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance 
 of the result ; and if it is achieved, the Alpine tunnel will 
 be one of the blessings of humanity, and exist for ages 
 an imperishable monument of patient industry and engineer- 
 ing skill. 
 
!i6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 
 
 'Good Words,' May, 1869. 
 
 A TERRITORY half as large as Europe stretches to the north 
 and west of Canada, from the coast of Labrador, on the east, 
 to the Rocky Mountains, on the south-west, and touching the t] 
 Arctic circle on the north, reaches as far as the boundary line 
 in the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude between British 
 North America and the United States on the south. It 
 embraces within its sweep Hudson's Strait, Hudson's Bay, 
 and James's Bay — an expanse of waters equal to the area of 
 the Mediterranean. From the south-west extremity, an irre- 
 gular line, trending towards the north-east, divides it from 
 that part of the British dominions which is generally known 
 as the Indian territory. This contains the Great Bear Lake, 
 the Great Slave Lake, and Athabasca Lake ; the Coppermine, 
 the Mackenzie, and the Great Fish rivers ; and through it, on 
 the western side, runs the mighty range of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, which extend from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of 
 Mexico, and divide the Indian territory from British Columbia. 
 A ridge of table-land nlnning south-west from the coast of 
 Labrador to the source of the Ottawa River, and forming 
 the watershed of the rivers which on the one side fall into 
 the St. Lawrence, and on the other into the Hudson's Bay, 
 may be considered as the south-eastern limit of the territory, 
 although neither on the west nor on the south-east has its 
 boundary been ever accurately traced or defined. The whole . 
 of this vast region— by a very indefinite description, but under 
 the name of Rupert's Land — was granted, by Royal Charter 
 in 1670, by Charles II., to 'the Governor and Company of 
 Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay,' familiarly 
 :alled the Hudson's Bay Company, of whose history and policy 
 [ purpose to give some account in the following pages. But I 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BA Y COMPANY. 317 
 
 will first endeavour to describe the natural features of the 
 country itself, of which little more is generally known in 
 England than that it produces the furs which are so largely 
 used as articles of clothing, luxury, and ornament. 
 
 It is only on the southern part of the territory that cultiva- 
 tion is possible. This is owing to the rigour of the climate 
 and the nature of the soil. The country to the north of the 
 Saskatchewan Rivfr, Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Superior, 
 has been described as a region of rivers, swamps, treeless 
 prairies, and barren hills and hollows, ' tossed together in a 
 wave-like form, as if the ocean had been suddenly petrified 
 while heaving its huge billows in a tumultuous swell.' In the 
 winter season almost the only means of subsistence in this 
 dreary region is frozen fish. By far the greatest portion seems 
 destined for ever to remain a sterile wilderness, tenanted by 
 animals whose thick furs enable them to resist the cold, and 
 roamed over by hunters, who, with guns and traps in their 
 hands, pursue the bear, the beaver, the wolf, the fox, the 
 martin, and the mink, and 
 
 Kill them up 
 In their assigned and native dwelling-place. 
 
 Hudson's Bay — which was discovered by John Hudson, in 
 1610 — may be considered as the great basin into which the 
 rivers of Rupert's Land flow. The largest of the inland waters 
 is Lake Winnipeg, on the south. It is 300 miles long, and in 
 some parts 50 miles broad, distant about 50 miles from the 
 boundary line that divides Rupert's Land from the United 
 States, and 500 miles from Lake Superior. The next two 
 largest lakes are Lake Manitobah (the ' Evil Spirit ' lake) and 
 Lake Winnipegosis, to the west of Lake Superior, and toge- 
 ther nearly of the same length. The Red River, which rises 
 in the Otter-tail lake, in Minnesota, flows northwards into 
 Lake Winnipeg ; and to the north-east of it is the Winnipeg 
 River, another affluent of the lake, which connects it with the 
 Lake of the Woods, and this again is connected by Rainy 
 River, with Rainy Lake, through which runs the boundary 
 line of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude. The country lying 
 between Lake Winnipeg and the Red River on the east — the 
 south branch of the Saskatchewan on the west — the main 
 
3 '8 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE, 
 
 stream of that river on the north — and the boundary line on 
 the south — forms an irregular parallelogram, which is computed 
 to contain 80,000 square miles — an area equal to that of 
 Great Britain. And within this area there are upwards of 
 1 1,000,000 acres of arable land, and an equal quantity fit for 
 pasture. 
 
 It is on the banks of the Red River that the Red River or 
 Selkirk Settlement, of which I shall speak hereafter, was 
 formed. The soil is alluvial, and produces crops of wheat 
 but in the immediate neighbourhood most of the forests that 
 formerly existed have been destroyed by fire, but there is 
 still a large quantity of wood, especially on the east side. The 
 timber, however, is nowhere of great size. It has been said 
 indeed, that there is not a tree of any description five feet in 
 diameter in the Company's territory east of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, and the largest pines there seldom exceed three feet in 
 diameter. But yet, on the other hand, one of the witnesses 
 who was examined before a Committee of the House of 
 Commons, in 1857, declared that in the vast area between the 
 north branch of the Saskatchewan River and the Athabasca 
 Lake, in the north, there are trees, ' vast and splendid in their 
 growth,' which would bear comparison with ' the magnificent 
 trees round Kensington Park.' There are, however, very few 
 trees if any in the plains, and the buffalo hunters are obliged 
 to carry wood with them for lighting fires. Between the Red 
 River and Rainy Lake, to the east, there is an impracticable 
 country full of deep mora.sses, of which it has been asserted 
 that they never thaw, for below the moist surface there is a 
 stratum of everlasting ground ice. But this, I think, must be 
 a mistake, for the so-called permanent ' frozen district ' begins 
 at a higher latitude. Along the banks of the Red River for 
 about the width of a mile there is a belt of land which has 
 more or less been brought into cultivation, but beyond this 
 the soil is extremely thin, and some idea of the nature of the 
 country may be formed from the evidence of Sir George 
 Simpson, who was for many years Governor of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, and who stated before the Committee of the 
 House of Commons that he had paddled over some of the 
 roofs of the houses there in his canoe. These were certainly 
 ' lacustrine ' habitations of a modern period. 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON S BAY COMPANY. 319 
 
 Owing to the difficulties of the country the territory has 
 not yet been fully explored, and actual knowledge of its 
 features has been chiefly confined to the region that lies to 
 the west of Red River and south of. the northern fork of the 
 Saskatchewan River ; the two forks meeting at a place called 
 Nepowewin or Fort a la Come, and thence flowing in a united 
 stream to Lake Winnipeg, which they enter near its head on 
 the north-west side. An expedition to explore the country 
 watered by the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan was sent 
 out by the Canadian Government in 1857, and its very inte- 
 resting reports are to be found in a Blue Book published by 
 order of the House of Commons in i860. 
 
 The Assiniboine River flowing from the north, turns to the 
 east five miles above Fort EUice, about 360 miles from Fort 
 Garry. Fort Felly lies upon it to the north. For the first 
 fifteen miles of its course the land of the valley is light and 
 sandy clay, in many places pure sand covered with a low 
 growing creeper. The grass is very short and scanty, and 
 the aspens, which are the only trees, are small. Farther on 
 the country improves for about sixty miles, but it abounds 
 with marshes, swamps, and ponds, round which grow willow 
 and aspen trees. From thence to Fort Pelly the country is 
 densely covered with aspens and willows, but there are open 
 spaces here and there, where, says Mr. Dickinson, one of the 
 officers employed on the Canadian expedition, ' the wonderful 
 luxuriance of the vegetation is beyond description. Lakes 
 and ponds are very numerous throughout, encircled with large 
 aspens and balsam poplars.' To the east of Fort Pelly lies 
 the Swan River, which flows in a north-easterlj^ course into 
 Lake Winnipegosis. The valley through which it runs is 
 described as containing all the requirements necessary for a 
 settlement, and the timber is plentiful and of a good size. 
 The land for the most part is sandy loam, and is traversed by 
 numerous creeks. 
 
 The Qu'Appelle, or Calling River, flows from the west, 
 and joins the Assiniboine, five miles above Fort Ellice. It 
 rises near the south branch of the Saskatchewan, at a place 
 called the Elbow ; and in the long, deep, and narrow valley 
 through which it runs towards the east, there are eight lakes, 
 of an aggregate length of seventy miles, A scheme has been 
 
320 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRA7IVE. 
 
 proposed to send the waters of the south branch of the Saskat- 
 chewan down the valley into the Assiniboine, and thence into 
 the Red River, and past Fort Gany into Lake Winnipeg. 
 This would be effected by constructing a dam across the deep 
 and narrow ravine through which the south branch flows, just 
 below the point where the Qu'Appelle valley joins it. The 
 waters of the Saskatchewan would thus be turned into the 
 valley, and enable steamers to navigate them for a distance 
 exceeding 6oo miles between the Elbow and Fort Garry. And 
 the Indians who hunt in that district assured Professor Hind 
 who had charge of the Canadian exploring expedition, that 
 between the Elbow and the western extremity of the south 
 branch, near the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where the Bow 
 River flows into it, there are no rapids or impediments of any 
 description, except shifting mud and sand bars. I can give no 
 opinion as to the feasibility of this plan, the object of which is 
 of course to facilitate the formation of a highway between 
 Canada and the Pacific ; but it is right to state that Mr. Dawson, 
 in his report dated Toronto, Feb. 22, 1859, mentions one 
 objection to it, which, if well founded, is conclusive. He says, 
 ' The plains of Red River would be converted into a sea, and 
 the settlement swept into Lake Winnipeg.' Professor Hind 
 combats this idea as chimerical ; but I am unable to decide 
 which of the two disputants is right. The possibihty of such a 
 catastrophe is perhaps sufficient to prevent the scheme from 
 being attempted. 
 
 The immediate banks of the Saskatchewan are of a poor, 
 sandy, and gravelly soil ; but on the prairie plateau, three 
 miles from the river, the rich soil commences, and in some 
 places extends for a breadth of sixty miles. The Touchwood 
 range of hills lies to the east of the Elbow and north of the 
 Qu'Appelle River, and embraces an area of more than a 
 million acres. ' For beauty of scenery,' says Professor Hind, 
 ' richness of soil, and adaptation for settlement, this is by far 
 the most attractive area west of the Assiniboine.' 
 
 Fort Garry, the head-quarters of the settlement, lies a short 
 distance to the south of Lake Winnipeg, at the point where 
 the Assiniboine falls into the Red River. The Assiniboine 
 valley on the north side, and south of a range of hills called 
 the Big Ridge, comprises an area exceeding half a million ot 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 321 
 
 acres, with a soil which has been described as of ' remarkable 
 excellence.' The south side of the Assiniboine is covered by 
 a vast forest, varying in width from three to twenty-five miles, 
 and below this there are wide open prairies, where herds of 
 buffaloes range. 
 
 The grasshoppers are the pest of the region. Professor 
 Hind says, 'At times they would cast a shadow over the 
 prairie ; and for several hours one day the sky, from the 
 horizon to an altitude of thirty degrees, acquired an inde- 
 scribably brilliant ash -white tint, and seemed faintly luminous- 
 as the semi-transparent wings of countless millions of grass- 
 hoppers, towards the north and north-east, reflected the light 
 of the sun.' Another traveller says, ' Lying on my back and 
 looking upwards as near to the sun as the light would permit, 
 I saw the sky continually changing colour from blue to silver 
 white, ash-grey,, and lead colour, according to the numbers in 
 the passing clouds of insects. Opposite to the sun, the pre- 
 vailing hue was a silver white, perceptibly flashing. On one 
 occasion the whole heavens, towards the south, east, and west, 
 appeared to radiate a soft, grey, tinted light, with a quivering 
 motion ; and the day being calm, the hum produced by the 
 vibrations of so many millions of wings was quite indescrib- 
 able, and more resembled the noise popularly termed "a 
 ringing in one's ears," than any other sound. The aspect of 
 the heavens during the greatest flight we observed was singu- 
 larly striking. It produced a feeling of uneasiness, amaze- 
 ment, and awe in our minds, as if some terrible unforeseen 
 calamity were about to happen. It recalled more vividly 
 than words could express the devastating ravages of the 
 Egyptian scourges, as it seemed to bring us face to face with 
 one of the most striking and wonderful exhibitions of Almighty 
 power in the creation and sustenance of this infinite army of 
 insects.' 
 
 The distance between Canada and the Red River Settle- 
 ment by the canoe route is more than 500 miles, and 300 in 
 an air line. When I say Canada, I mean starting from Lake 
 Superior, which is generally assumed to be its south-west 
 frontier. Bat it is only fair to state that the Canadians do 
 not admit this, and lay claim to territory indefinitely to the 
 west of the lake. The fact is, that the Western boundary of 
 
 Y 
 
322 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Canada has never been accurately defined.' It was cedf 
 Great Britain by France in 1763, but the exact extent oi 
 territory was not determined ; and there is a certain po: 
 of ■ debatable land,' between Lake Superior and the po 
 sions of the Hudson's Bay Company, which, as I shall s 
 hereafter, has caused disputes and some tragical episodt 
 the history of the Company. 
 
 There are two routes between Lake Superior and the 
 River Settlement. The lower one, from the western sid 
 the lake, proceeds up the Pigeon River, along which runs 
 boundary line between British America and the United St; 
 and then through a long series of swamps and ponds 
 lakes connected by intervening rivers, to Rainy Lake, 
 many of the rapids are so furious that canoes cannot liv 
 them, and they must therefore be dragged or carried a) 
 the banks for considerable distances, which are known by 
 name of Portages. Rainy Lake is connected by Rainy R 
 with the Lake of the Woods, and the latter lake by the V 
 nipeg River with Lake Winnipeg, into which the Red R 
 flows, as I have already mentioned. It would be shortei 
 cross direct by land from the Lake of the Woods to I 
 Garry ; but it is a most difficult, if not impracticable coun 
 which has never yet, I believe, been fully explored. Profe: 
 Hind, writing in 1859, says, ' Up to the da'te of my depart 
 from Red River last year, no communication had been effec 
 in summer time between the settlements and the Lakf 
 the Woods, except in canoes, although every effort was m 
 to pass through the formidable bogs and swamps which in 
 vene. This important link in the proposed line of rout 
 still a terra incognita for a short distance.' 
 
 The other, called the Kaministiquia route, is sixty-tl 
 miles longer than that by the Pigeon River, and lies men 
 the north. It starts from Fort William on Lake Super 
 and proceeds up the Dog River to Dog Lake ; then up 
 Kaministiquia River to the Mille Lacs, or Lake of the Th 
 sand Isles, after crossing which, it traverses a rocky coun 
 tlirough a series of winding waters and grassy swamps, u 
 
 ' In a trial for murder at Quebec, on the meridian 88° 50' west of Lom 
 in 1818, the court held that the western This would pass through Lake Supi 
 boundary of Upper Canada was a line to the east of Fort William. 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 323; 
 
 reaches the Riviere la Seine, which flows into the Rainy 
 
 ike. 
 
 It is difficult to ascertain accurately the number of the 
 dian population in Rupert's Land.. It has been estimated 
 about 43,000 souls ; but this is said to be one-fourth too 
 rge. Perhaps we may assume them to be between 30,000 
 id 40,000. They consist of different tribes — the Ojibways, 
 e Crees, the Blackfeet, the Sioux (pronounced Soos), and 
 e Assiniboines. The animals which are most valuable to 
 em are the buffalo, the horse, and the dog. The Great 
 ave Lake is the northern limit of the buffaloes : vast herds 
 ' them occupy certain well-known and determined ranges, 
 ong which they emigrate at different seasons in search of 
 od. It is said that the sound of their approach can be re- 
 ignised, ' by applying the ear to a badger hole,' fully twenty 
 lies before they arrive, if the weather be calm. Amongst 
 em are often found blind buffaloes, whose eyes have been 
 ;stroyed by prairie fires ; but they are more wary and diffi- 
 ilt to approach than those possessing sight. The Indians 
 ibsist on the flesh of the buffalo, and from its skin and 
 news they make their tents, clothing, saddles, bow-strings, 
 id dog-harness. Tea with them is becoming a luxury, and 
 le taste for it ought; by every means, to be encouraged as a 
 ibstitute for spirits. Their Heaven is the Happy Hunting 
 rounds, 'where buffaloes range as thick as rain drops in 
 immer.' 
 
 The Church Missionaiy Society undertook a mission to 
 upert's Land in 1822, and in 1857 they had there thirteen 
 ations. The number of clergymen, including the bishop 
 id the chaplain (whose salaries are partly paid by the Com- 
 iny), in that year amounted to seventy ; and it was estimated 
 lat 8,000 or 10,000 Indians were under Christian instruction. 
 . free passage is given by the Company to the missionaries ; 
 id, to use the expression of the secretary of the society, 
 hey have countenanced the labours of the missionaries so 
 r as they have not interfered with their trading occupations.' 
 he bishop. Dr. Anderson, in his evidence before the House 
 " Commons, in 1857, said that the missionaries were very 
 ;voted and faithful men, and were doing a vast amount of 
 Dod. Besides these, there were two native Indian clergymen 
 
324 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and Roman Catholic priests. Sir George Back stated in h 
 evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, 
 1857, that when he was in the territory, he saw nothing bi 
 the utmost kindness to the Indians and fairness in dealing 
 he never knew an Indian turned away without his wan 
 being supplied, whether he had furs to give in return or nol 
 and he saw strong instances of great benevolence on the pa: 
 of the Hudson's Bay officers. One fact is very creditable 1 
 the poor Indians. I have been assured on the best authorit 
 that in courts of justice they may always be relied upon t 
 speak the truth. Perhaps this arises not so much from cor 
 scientious motives — for the moral principle must be very wea 
 in untutored savages — as from the awe inspired by an ide 
 of the superior intelligence of the white man, and the fee 
 that as he knows everything, he will be able to confound thai 
 if they venture to tell a lie. Many of the Christianise 
 Indians have family worship night and morning, and ai 
 quick in learning to read and write. The efforts of the Con 
 pany to . prevent the introduction of that fatal curse whic 
 generally follows in the wake of Europeans — I mean the us 
 of spirits — deserves every praise. One of the rules of the fi 
 trade is ' that the Indians be treated with kindness and indu 
 gence, and mild and conciliatory means resorted to, to ei 
 courage industry, repress vice, and inculcate morality; an 
 that the use of spirituous liquors be gradually discountenance 
 in those very few districts in which it is yet indispensabk 
 It is stated in a letter, addressed by Sir John Pelly, the the 
 governor of the Company, to Earl Grey, the Colonial Seen 
 taiy, in 1850, that the average quantity of spirits annuall 
 imported by the Company into the whole of the territories ; 
 that time under their control, to the east and west of tl 
 Rocky Mountains — if distributed equally amongst the persoi 
 employed in their service — would amount to less than tw 
 table-spoonfuls daily to each man, and this included tl 
 supply furnished to the troops stationed at Red River, 
 need hardly add that the use of spirits as an article of bart 
 for furs is most strictly forbidden. 
 
 But it is of course very difficult along such a line of fro: 
 tier, divided from the United States by only an imagina; 
 boundary, to prevent altogether the introduction of spiril 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BA Y COMPANY. 3^5 
 
 n illicit traffic in furs is carried on between the Red River 
 sttlement and Pembina, which is within the American ter- 
 tory ; and the article of exchange chiefly used is spirits, of 
 hich the Indians, like all savages, are passionately fond.^ 
 here can be little doubt that if the trade in furs were thrown 
 Den the fire-water, like a destroying angel, Avould extermi- 
 ite the race of the Red Man. 
 
 Such is the territory which was granted in the year of 
 race, 1670, by Charles II. to the Hudson's Bay Company. 
 
 The charter of incorporation recites, that whereas 'our 
 ear and entirely beloved cousin ' Prince Rupert, Count Pala- 
 ne of the Rhine, Christopher Duke of Albemarle, and other 
 ersons therein named, had at their own great costs and 
 aarges undertaken an expedition for Hudson's Bay, in the 
 orth-west part of America, for the discovery of a new pas- 
 ige into the South Sea, and for the finding some trade for 
 Furs, minerals, and other considerable commodities,' the king 
 ranted that they should be a body corporate and politic, by 
 le name of ' the Governor and Company of Adventurers of 
 England trading into Hudson's Bay,' and have a common 
 :al. It then made provision for the government of the Com- 
 any, and gave and granted to it ' the sole trade and com- 
 lerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and 
 ounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the 
 ntrance of the straits commonly called Hudson's Straits, 
 Dgether with all the lands and territories upon the countries, 
 oasts, and confines of the seas, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and 
 ounds aforesaid, that are not actually possessed or granted 
 3 any of our subjects, or possessed by the subjects of any 
 ther Christian prince or state, with the fishing of all sorts of 
 sh, whales, sturgeons, and all other royal fishes,' within the 
 aid limits, ' and all mines royal, as well discovered as not 
 iscovered, of gold, silver, gems, and precious stones.' It 
 ext declared that the said land should thenceforth be reckoned 
 nd computed as one of our plantations or colonies in America, 
 ailed ' Rupert's Land,' and constituted the governor and 
 Company and their successors ' the true and absolute lords 
 
 ' It is a curious circumstance, how- not to drink spirits, and they always re- 
 ver, that tlie numerous tribe of the fuse them when offered, 
 ^hipeway Indiairs in the noi'th are said 
 
326 jESSAYS critical AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and proprietors of the same territory,^ saving always the fai 
 allegiance, and sovereign dominion due to us, our heirs a 
 successors, as of our manor of East Greenwich, in our cour 
 
 of Kent, in free and common socage yielding a 
 
 paying to us, our heirs and successors for the same two el 
 and two black beavers, wheresoever, and as often as we, c 
 heirs and successors, shall happen to enter into the said coi 
 tries, territories, and regions hereby granted.' Hitherto t 
 condition has not been found onerous, for no part of t 
 territory has yet been honoured by a royal visit, nor is 
 likely to be so ; which is perhaps fortunate, for possibly t 
 elks might not be forthcoming. The king then empower 
 the governor and Company to make laws and ordinances 1 
 good government, to impose pains and penalties and punis 
 ments for the breach of them, ' so always as the said la\ 
 constitutions, orders and ordinances, fines and amerciamer 
 be reasonable, and not contrary or repugnant, but as near 
 may be agreeable to the laws, statutes, or customs of this o 
 realm.' The charter next granted that the Company shou 
 have 'the whole, entire, and only trade' to and from t 
 territory, and to and from ' all havens, bays, creeks, rive 
 lakes, and seas into which they shall find entrance or passa 
 by water or land ' out of it ; and that no part of it should 
 visited, frequented, or haunted by any of the other subjee 
 of the Crown ' contrary to the true meaning of these presen 
 and by virtue of our prerogative royal, whiek we loill not ha 
 in that behalf argued or brought in question' 
 
 The king then prohibited his other subjects from visit!: 
 or trading with the territory, unless by licence from t 
 governor and Company in writing under their common se 
 under pain of his royal indignation, and forfeiture of su 
 goods and merchandise brought into England or a: 
 dominions of the Crown, and the ships conveying them. T 
 charter also empowered the governor and company to appoi 
 governors and councils of the plantations, forts, facton 
 
 ' On a case submitted in 1814 to waters of which flow into Hudsc 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. Scarlett, Mr. Bay.' It is, however, not altoget 
 
 Ilolroyd, Mr. Cruise, and Mr. Bell, easy to detennine which waters in tl 
 
 those eminent lawyers said : ' We are course flow towards Hudson's Bay i 
 
 of opinion that the grant of the soil con- which towards the Arctic Sea, as sev{ 
 
 tained in the charter is good, and that of the lakes communicate with ei 
 
 it will include all the countries the other, and have different outlets. 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 327 
 
 colonies, and places of trade within the territory, who were to 
 have power 'to judge all persons belonging to the said 
 governor and Company, or that shall live under them, in all 
 causes, whether civil or criminal, according to the laws of 
 this kingdom, and to execute justice accordingly.' And in 
 case any crime should be committed in places ' where judica- 
 ture cannot be executed for want of a governor and councils 
 there,' then the offenders were to be sent to such other 
 plantation, factory, or fort where there should be a governor 
 and council, or into England, ' as shall be thought most 
 convenient.' The governor and Company were also empowered 
 to make peace or war with any prince or people whatsoever 
 'that are not Christians,' to erect castles, forts, garrisons, 
 colonies, or plantations within the limits of their territory, 
 and to seize and send to England any of the king's subjects 
 who might sail to Hudson's Bay or inhabit any of the 
 countries thereby granted without the leave of the Company. 
 And in case any person convicted of an offence by a president 
 and council in the territory should appeal from the sentence, 
 it was to be lawful for the president and council to seize him 
 and carry him home prisoner to England to the said governor 
 and Company, 'thei;e to receive such condign punishment 
 as his cause shall require, and the law of the nation shall 
 allow of 
 
 Notwithstanding the stern command of King Charles, 
 that he would not have his prerogative to grant the right 
 of exclusive trade to the Company 'argued or brought in 
 question,' the impertinent curiosity of lawyers has scanned 
 the charter, and grave doubts have been expressed whether 
 the Crown had the power to confer on any of its subjects a 
 monopoly of trade. The same thing had been done in the 
 case of the East India Company, which was incorporated in 
 the year 1600 by a charter of Queen Elizabeth, and when the 
 question was raised at the end of the reign of Charles II., in 
 the case of the East India Company v. Sandys, in the Court 
 af Queen's Bench, it was held that the grant was good in 
 [aw. But the reasoning of the judges, headed by Chief 
 Justice Jefferies, who, according to Roger North, ' espoused 
 ;he matter with great fury,' is more ingenious than sound ; 
 md few lawyers at the present day would be likely to dissent 
 
328 SSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 from the opinion of the late Lord Campbell, who says (Li 
 of Lord Jefferies, ' Lives of the Lord Chancellors,' vol. iil. 
 581) that the doctrine is 'contrary to our notions on tl 
 subject.' I will not argue the question here, and it is really 
 no practical importance, for the proprietary rights and powe 
 of government conferred by the charter on the Company ai 
 unassailable, and it is not likely that a case will occur 
 which they will think it desirable to challenge the opinion 
 a court of law upon the subject.' As owners of the territoi 
 and lords of the soil, they are entitled to treat all intruders 1 
 trespassers. 
 
 The Company adopted the appropriate motto Pro pet 
 cutem, 'Skin for skin,' which happily and wittily expresses tl 
 nature of their trade. 
 
 The Canadians assert that the territory thus granted I 
 King Charles, in 1670, actually then belonged to the Cro\^ 
 of France, and had been previously granted by charter 
 1623, by Louis XIII., to a company called La Campagnie^ 
 Noiivelle France, ' New France ' being one of the names 1 
 which Canada was then known. This charter is said to exi 
 in the archives of the Canadian government, but I have n 
 seen a copy of it, nor am I aware that it has ever bei 
 published. 
 
 It has been also asserted that by the Treaty of Utrecht 
 
 1713, a portion only of the shores of the Hudson's Bay w 
 
 ceded to England, and that stipulations were made for t 
 
 protection of the Company of New France. But on referrii 
 
 to the treaty, it will be found that this is a mistake, and tli 
 
 there is in it the fullest recognition of the title of the Cro\ 
 
 of England to the whole of the territoiy in question. As t 
 
 matter is of some importance, I will quote the words of t 
 
 treaty in the original Latin : — 
 
 Diet us Rex Christianissimus sinum et fretum de Hudson una cum omnil 
 terris, maribus, oris maritimis, fluviis, locisque, in dicto sinu et freto sitis, et 
 eadcin spcctantibtis, nullis sive terrce sive maris spatiis exceptis, qufe subditis Gal 
 in prresenti possessa sunt, regno et regin^e Magnse Britannite, pleno jure in p 
 petuum possidenda, icstitiict, 
 
 ' In his evidence before the com- fair opinion upon this subject, sine 
 
 miltee of the House of Commons, in have taken the opinion of every law 
 
 1857, Mr. Ellice said : ' I conceive that against the Company when I i 
 
 charter to give the rights expressed in opposed to them, and for the Compi 
 
 it : some of them may be doubtful. I since I have been connected with the 
 ought to be al)Ie to express a tolerably 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 329 
 
 And it was provided that the Company of New France, or 
 <cietas Quebecetisis, as it was called, should evacuate the 
 ■ritory with all their property. Moreover, the king of 
 ance agreed to indemnify the Hudson's Bay Company for 
 
 damages they had sustained from hostile incursions and 
 predations of the French — vigente pace — before the war. 
 I that there could not be a clearer acknowledgment that 
 ance had no claim except that which recent conquest had 
 ;en her, for she undertook to ' restore ' whatever part of the 
 •ritory she had seized, and to make good all losses sustained 
 ■ the Company at the hands of French subjects while the two 
 ;re at peace.' 
 
 As might naturally be expected, the Company at first 
 nfined their operations to the shores of Hudson's Bay and 
 e northern parts of the territory ; and it seems that they did 
 it actually occupy the valley of the Saskatchewan until the 
 ;ter end of the last century, nor the valley of the Assiniboine 
 d the Red River until the beginning of the present. In the 
 2antime, they gradually pushed their forts up the rivers — 
 ch as the Churchill, the Nelson, the Albany, and the Moose 
 that flow into Hudson's Bay. But in the middle of the 
 it century they possessed only five or six forts altogether. 
 
 1748 a petition was presented to a committee of the Privy 
 mncil, complaining that the Hudson's Bay Company had 
 t effectually or in earnest searched for a new passage into 
 s South Sea, and had obstructed its discovery by others ; 
 d that since the date of their charter, they had not 
 cen possession of, nor occupied any of, the lands granted to 
 sm, nor made any plantation or settlement except four 
 ;tories and one small trading-house. The petitioners prayed, 
 irefore, that they might be incorporated ' for finding out the 
 :d passage,' and that they might have a grant of all the 
 ids they should discover and settle not already occupied 
 
 ' By the Treaty Commissioners were but the Act was to be in force only for 
 
 be appointed to determine the limits seven years, and thence to the end of 
 
 '.r dictum sinum de Hudson et loca ad the next session of Parliament ; and it 
 
 Uos sfectantia : but if they were ap- has been contended, therefore, that 
 
 nted, I do not find tlrat any boundary when the Act expired the privileges of 
 
 ; ever settled. In 1690 an Act (2 the Company ceased. But at all events 
 
 lliam, and Mary c. i5)-was passed they have been expressly recognised by 
 
 confirming to the Hudson's Bay several subsequent statutes, 
 npanyall their rights and privileges ; 
 
330 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and settled by the Hudson's Bay Company, with the right of 
 exclusive trade therein. The petition was referred by the 
 Privy Council to the Attorney-General, Sir Dudley Ryder, 
 and the Solicitor-General, Sir William Murray, afterwards 
 Lord Mansfield, who, having heard counsel on both sides, 
 reported that the charges were ' either not sufficiently sup- 
 ported in point of fact, or in a great measure accounted for 
 from the nature or circumstances of the case.' 
 
 In 1749, a committee of the House of Commons was 
 appointed to inquire into the state and condition of the 
 countries adjoining Hudson's Bay, and the trade carried on 
 there ; and their report contains some curious matter. It 
 appears from it that the servants of the Company in Rupert's 
 Land were not allowed to converse with the Indians, on pain 
 of being whipped and forfeiting their wages ; and one of the 
 witnesses stated that the governor there forbade him to teach 
 an Indian boy, adding that he had a general order 'from the 
 Company that none of the natives should be instructed. He 
 said that there was no clergyman nor divine worship of any 
 
 *> kind in the territory. Lake Winnipeg , at this time was called 
 
 ^ Lake Ouinigkju^e, and the Red River, the Little Ouinipique ; 
 
 " and the country there was described as full of beavers. The 
 Indians were said to use no milk from the time they were 
 weaned, and to hate cheese, ' having taken up an opinion that 
 it is dead men's fat.' The Company must have been doing a 
 good trade at this time, for I find that the average value of 
 their exports during the preceding ten years, was about 
 5,000/. a-year, and their yearly sales during the same period 
 averaged 29,000/. 
 
 But to go on with the histoiy of the Company. At the 
 end of the last century Earl Selkirk, a benevolent young 
 Scotch nobleman, visited the Highlands, which were then a 
 terra incognita to tourists, and finding that emigration to the 
 United States was going on to a considerable extent, he 
 
 • thought that it would be desirable to turn the tide into our 
 own colonies. Having matured his plans, he headed a body 
 of settlers, who sailed for Prince Edward's Island, and estab- 
 lished themselves there in 1803. The success of the experi- 
 ment induced him to make a bolder venture, and in 181 1 he 
 obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company a grant by deed 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BA Y COMPANY. 3, 
 
 of a portion of their territory in the vicinity of the Red Riv£ 
 Here he planted a Settlement of Scotch emigrants, ar 
 became a sort of patriarchal governor. 
 
 In 1817 he made a treaty with the Chippeway and Cn 
 Indians, in order to extinguish any rights they might clai 
 over the land occupied by the Settlement. The instrumei 
 was signed, or rather marked, by four chiefs of the tribes, wl 
 each scrawled under it the rude figure of an animal ; and the 
 thereby ceded to ' our Sovereign Lord the King ' a certa: 
 tract of country in the Red River, on condition that Loi 
 Selkirk, his heirs and successors, should pay annually to tl 
 chiefs and warriors of the two tribes ' one hundred pounc 
 weight of good merchantable tobacco.' 
 
 The geological nature of the land of the Settlement is tl 
 limestone formation, and the soil is composed of the debris 1 
 granite and limestone, with a large proportion of decaye 
 vegetable matter. It is extremely fertile, and when we 
 cultivated yields large crops of the finest wheat But tl 
 colony did not prosper. It was too far removed from tl 
 operations of commerce, and had no means of market ( 
 export except by the difficult and at certain seasons impracti( 
 able route of the Nelson River to York Fort on Hudson 
 Bay. Half of the original settlers abandoned the Red Rive 
 as they found that they had no market for their produc 
 They were scorched by the heat in summer and frozen in tl 
 winter, and they more than once took refuge in Pembin 
 The late Mr. Edward Ellice said in his evidence before tl 
 Committee of the House of Commons, ' It was an unwis 
 speculation settling people in a country where they coul 
 send no produce to market, where they could be in commun 
 cation with no neighbouring settlement, and accordingly 
 has failed.' The Settlement was purchased back from Lor 
 Selkirk or his heirs by the Company in 1834, and since thj 
 time it has remained in their possession. It now occupies i 
 a straggling manner about fifty miles of the course of th 
 Assiniboine, and twenty miles of the course of the Red Rive 
 and the population may be estimated at about 12,000 soul 
 Fort Garry is the principal station, or rather there are tw 
 forts — an upper and a lower one. The lower fort occupie 
 three or four acres, but the upper one is not quite so larg( 
 
332 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and they are both surrounded by stone walls, flanked by 
 towers. In their interesting book, called ' The North- West 
 Passage by Land,' Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle say :— 
 
 From Red River to the Rocky Mountains, along the banks of the Assiniboine 
 and the fertile hills of the Saskatchewan, at least sixty millions of acres of the 
 richest soil lie ready for the farmer when he shall be allowed to enter in and 
 possess it. This glorious counti-y, capable of sustaining an enormous population, 
 lies utterly useless, except for the support of a few Indians, and the enrichment of 
 the shareholders of the Last Great Monopoly. 
 
 This last remark is not quite fair, for that part of the territory 
 contributes little or nothing to the exchequer of the Company, 
 as the fur-bearing animals hardly exist there, and no trade 
 is carried on in that region from which the Company derives 
 benefit. 
 
 I have mentioned that the Western frontier of Canada has 
 never been authoritatively defined, and on one occasion, in 
 1818, when a question of jurisdiction was raised in a criminal 
 trial at Toronto, under a commission from Lower Canada, the 
 court directed the jury to return a special verdict, stating that 
 ' they could not see from any evidence before them what were 
 the limits of Upper Canada.' The Chief Justice said, ' I do 
 not know whether from 90° to 100° or 150° forms the western 
 limit of Upper Canada.' 
 
 Soon after the cession of Canada by France to England 
 in 1763, traders from Montreal began to push their way 
 towards the west in search of furs. They followed the Pigeon 
 River route from Lake Superior, and in spite of King 
 Charles's charter encroached not only upon the territory but 
 the privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1784 these 
 traders formed themselves into a Company, and for many 
 years a civil war raged in Rupert's Land between the two 
 rival companies, in which sanguinary battles were fought and 
 many lives were lost. Before long a second Canadian com- 
 pany, called the X. Y. Company, came into the field, and the 
 confusion was worse confounded. 
 
 All readers of Washington Irving's ' Astoria ' must 
 remember the account which that delightful writer gives of 
 the North- West Company, which, as he says, ' for a time held 
 a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of 
 the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company 
 over the voluptuous climes and maenificent realms of the 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 33, 
 
 Orient' They had in their employ two thousand person; 
 and the principal partners resided in Montreal, where, a; 
 Washington Irving says, they formed a kind of commercia 
 aristocracy living in lordly and hospitable style. Two o 
 three of them used to meet every year at Fort William th( 
 superintendents of the trading posts in the wilderness, wh( 
 came there with a body of retainers, like chieftains of th( 
 Highland clans. 
 
 The councils were held in great state, for evei-y member felt as if sitting ii 
 Parliament, and every retainer and dependent looked up to the assemblage witl 
 awe as to the House of Lords. There was a vast deal of solemn deliberation anc 
 hard Scottish reasoning, v.-ith an occasional swell of pompous declamation. Thesi 
 great and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts and revels, like som: 
 of the old feasts described in Highland castles. The tables in the great banqueting 
 room gi-oaned under the weight of game of all kinds, of venison from the wood, 
 and fish from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffaloes' tongues anc 
 beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal, all served up by experiencec 
 cooks brought for the purpose. There was no stint of generous wine, for it wa 
 a hard-drinking period, a time of loyal toasts and bacchanalian songs, and brim 
 ming bumpers. 
 
 Such was the company of the 'mighty North-Westers,' ai 
 whose board the youthful Washington Irving often sat, anc 
 who for many years were a thorn in the side of the Hudson'; 
 Bay Company. 
 
 The effects of the contest have been described as ' the 
 demoralisation of the Indians ; liquor was introduced as £ 
 medium of trade throughout ; there were riots and breache; 
 of the peace continually taking place, and the country was ir 
 a state of great disorganization.' 
 
 Sir John Richardson made the following statement to the 
 Committee of the House of Commons in 1857 of what he saw 
 in 1 8 19, when he accompanied Sir John Frankhn on his firsi 
 expedition : — 
 
 Landing at York Factory, we found several of the members of the North 
 West Company prisoners in the foit ; they had been captured shortly before Wf 
 arrived there. One of them, a Mr. Frobisher, escaped with some men anc 
 
 perished ; he died for want of food in att^empting to make his escape W< 
 
 found both parties supplying the Indians liberally with spirits. The Indians werf 
 spending days in drunkenness at the different posts, and a contest altogether shock 
 ing to humanity was carried on. , 
 
 Lord Selkirk naturally took the side of the Hudson's Ba> 
 Company in its contest with the Canadian interlopers, anc 
 he became a very active partizan. He treated the North- 
 
334 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 West Company as poachers, and warned them by proclama- 
 tion that they had no right to kill any animals on his land. 
 Scenes of bloodshed were frequent, and in June, i8i6, a 
 battle was fought on the Frog Plains, near the Red River, 
 when a wild body of 'North-Westers,' consisting of half- 
 breeds and Indians, attacked the Settlement, and the governor 
 and twenty of his followers were killed. The whole colony 
 were driven from their homes, and took refuge at Norway 
 House, on the north of Lake Winnipeg. Earl Selkirk was 
 at this time on his way from Montreal, at the head of a 
 motley body of disbanded soldiers — chiefly foreigners — and 
 in retaliation he seized on Fort William, at Lake Superior, 
 which was then the head-quarters of the North- West Com- 
 pany, and arrested the principal partner, Mr. McGillivray, 
 taking possession of all the property. Actions of trespass 
 were brought against him in the Canadian courts by different 
 parties, and verdicts for heavy damages were given. Criminal 
 proceedings were also instituted, and a bill of indictment was 
 preferred against him and his associates. The colony was 
 brought back to the Red River, and soon afterwards Lord 
 Selkirk left the settlement and did not return to it. 
 
 Earl Bathurst was at this time (1820) the Colonial 
 Secretary, and being at his wits' end to know how to deal 
 with the belligerents, he availed himself of the shrewd 
 sagacity of the late Mr. Ellice, who had been one of the most 
 influential members of the North-West Company. Under his 
 able management, a union of the two companies was affected 
 on the basis of equality, so far as possible, amongst the 
 respective shareholders. 
 
 In 1 82 1, an Act (i and 2 Geo. IV. c. 66) was passed, 
 authorising the Crown to grant a licence for the exclusive 
 privilege of trading with the Indians in such parts of North 
 America as were not part of the territory granted to the 
 Hudson's Bay Company, or of any of the British ' provinces' 
 in North America, or ' of any lands or territories belonging to 
 the United States of America ; ' but the licence was not to be 
 given for more than twenty-one years. Under this Act, the 
 Crown, at the end of 1821, granted to the Hudson's Bay 
 Company, and to William and Simon McGillivray and 
 Edward Ellice, who represented the North-West Company, a 
 
HISTOR Y OF THE HUDSON'S BA Y COMPANY. 335 
 
 licence for the sole exclusive privilege of trading with the 
 Indians for twenty-one years within the above-named limits ; 
 and it provided that they should give security in the penal 
 sum of S.ooo/., for ensuring the due execution of criminal 
 process and civil process, where the matter in dispute 
 exceeded 200/., ' by the officers and persons legally em- 
 powered to execute such processes' within the territories 
 included in the licence. They were also required to submit, 
 for the royal approval, such rules as might appear to the 
 Crown to be effectual for gradually diminishing, or ultimately 
 preventing, the sale of spirits to the Indians, and for pro- 
 moting their moral and religious improvement. 
 
 The Hudson's Bay Company acquired, by agreement, all 
 the rights and interest of the North-West Company in 1824 ; 
 and it was therefore unnecessary to continue the trading part- 
 nership with the Messrs. McGillivray and Mr. Ellice ; but the 
 licence remained in force until 1838, when it was surrendered to 
 the Crown, and a new one was granted to the Hudson's Bay 
 Company alone, for another period of twenty-one years, on 
 similar terms as before. 
 
 There was, however, an important proviso added to the 
 new licence, which shows that the Government had in view 
 the possible creation of a colony or colonies in the licensed 
 territory. It was, that nothing therein contained should 
 prevent the establishment, ' within the territories aforesaid, or 
 any of them,' of any colony or province, or annexing any 
 part of them to any existing colony. The proviso, also, for 
 ensuring due execution of civil process was extended to all 
 suits, whatever might be the amount in dispute. This last 
 licence expired in 1859, and has not since been renewed, 
 There seems to have been a general impression that the 
 Company were bound by their licence to send civil and 
 criminal cases that arose in the licensed, as distinguished 
 from the chartered territory, to the courts of Canada for trial 
 But this is a mistake. There is nothing in either of the 
 licences about the Canadian courts ; and, according to them 
 process was to be executed by the officers and persons legallj 
 empowered within the licensed territories. But, by the Ad 
 43 Geo. III. c. 138, passed in 1803, it was enacted, that al 
 nffptirpc! rnmmitted within any of the Indian territories, 01 
 
336 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 parts of America not within the Hmits of Canada or the 
 United States, should be tried as if they had been committed 
 within the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada ; and 
 offenders were to be arrested and conveyed to Lower Canada, 
 to be tried there, or in certain circumstances in Upper 
 Canada. Further, by the Act i and 2 Geo. IV. c. 138, passed 
 in 1 82 1, civil and criminal jurisdiction over the same region 
 was given to the courts of Upper Canada; and the Crown 
 was empowered to appoint, by commission under the Great 
 Seal, justices of the peace, to hold their courts of record for 
 the trial of civil and criminal cases, ' anything in the charter 
 of the Governor and Company of Merchants and Adventurers 
 of England trading to Hudson's Bay to the contrary notwith- 
 standing.' It seems, therefore, that the Canadian courts, and 
 the Rupert's Land courts, if established by commission under 
 the Great Seal, have concurrent jurisdiction ; but I believe that 
 no such courts have been created. 
 
 In 1839, the Company took on lease from the Russian 
 Government a strip of coast, on the seaboard of the Pacific, 
 between Fort Simpson and Cross Sound, for which they 
 agreed to pay a rent of 2,000 otters a year ; but this was 
 afterwards commuted into a rent in money. Before the treaty 
 between Great Britain and the United States in 1 846, which 
 made the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude the boundary 
 between the territories of the two Governments, the Hudson's 
 Bay Company were in occupation of lands south of that line, 
 in what are now the States of Washington and Oregon ; and 
 it was expressly provided that their possessory right, as well 
 as that of ' all British subjects who may be already in the 
 occupation of land or other property lawfully acquired within 
 the said territory, shall be respected.' And the late well- 
 known American statesman and lawyer, Mr. Daniel Webster, 
 said, in an opinion he gave, that he entertained no doubt that 
 the Company had a vested proprietary right in the lands. 
 The matter was referred to arbitration before a commis- 
 sion, sitting at Washington, and has, I believe, not yet been 
 decided. 
 
 In 1 849, Vancouver's Island was granted to the Hudson's 
 Bay Company, under certain restrictions and conditions, 
 which I need not detail, but which, to use the lanornacrp nf 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 337 
 
 Mr. Ellice, ' ensured from the beginning an absolute failure 
 of the whole scheme.' The truth is, that a trading company 
 is wholly unfit to carry out a system of colonisation, and the 
 experiment is not likely to be again attempted. 
 
 In 1857, the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 
 to which I have so often referred, was appointed, ' to con- 
 sider the state of those British possessions in North America 
 which are under the administration of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company, or over which they possessed license to trade.' It 
 consisted of Mr. Labouchere, then Colonial Secretary, Sii 
 John Pakington, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, Lord 
 Stanley, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Lowe, and others ; and, after 
 examining a great number of witnesses, and obtaining much 
 valuable evidence, they made a short report, in which they 
 said that they considereci it essential to ' meet the just 
 and reasonable wishes of Canada, to be enabled to annex 
 such portion of the land in her neighbourhood as may be 
 available to her for the purposes of settlement, with which 
 lands she is willing to open and maintain communications, 
 and for which she will provide the means of local administra- 
 tion.' They recommended, also, that the connection between 
 the Hudson's Bay Company and Vancouver's Island should 
 cease : — 
 
 As to those extensive regions, whether in Rupert's Land or in the Indian 
 territory, in which, for the present at least, there can be no prospect of permanent 
 settlement, to any extent, by the European race for the purposes of colonisation, 
 the opinion at which your committee have an'ived is mainly founded on the follow- 
 ing considerations : The great importance to the more peopled portions of British 
 North America that law and order should, as far as possible, be maintained in 
 these territories ; the fatal effects which they believe would infallibly result to the 
 Indian population from a system of open competition in the fur trade, and the 
 consequent introduction of spirits in a far greater degree than is the case at pre- 
 sent ; and the probability of the indiscriminate destraction of the more valuable 
 fur-bearing animals in the course of a few years. For these reasons, your com- 
 mittee are of opinion that, whatever may be the validity or otherwise of the rights 
 claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company under the charter, it is desirable that 
 they should continue to enjoy the privilege of exclusive trade, which they now 
 possess. 
 
 Soon afterwards Vancouver's Island was wholly withdrawn 
 from the administration of the Company, and erected into a 
 colony ; and at the same time the colony of Columbia was 
 established on the mainland opposite, to the west of the Rocky 
 Mountains. 
 
338 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 In 1863 a change took place in the proprietary of the Com- 
 pany. Their capital was half-a-million ; and, by an arrange- 
 ment with the International Financial Society, 1,500,000/. 
 was paid by that society to the then existing shareholders, 
 and a new stock was created to the extent of two mil- 
 lions, which- was offered to the public in shares of '^. each. 
 By this means a new proprietary was created, which consti- 
 tutes the present Company ; but no change was made in the 
 charter, and all the rights and privileges which had been 
 granted by Charles II. remained unaffected. In their pro- 
 spectus the International Financial Society stated that the 
 landed territory of the Company comprised an area of more 
 than 1,400,000 square miles, or upwards of 896,000,000 acres; 
 and that the southern district (which is sometimes designated 
 the Fertile Belt) would be opened to European colonisation, 
 ' under a liberal and systematic system of land settlement' 
 It was shown that the average net annual profits of the Com- 
 pany (after setting aside 40 per cent, as remuneration to the 
 factors and servants at the posts and stations in Rupert's 
 Land) for the previous ten years had been 16 per cent, on the 
 old capital of half-a-million, and would, therefore, amount to 
 4 per cent, upon the new capital of two millions. 
 
 During the last few years a negotiation has been going 
 on between the Company and the Colonial Office, with refer- 
 ence to the surrender of their rights in the southern portion of 
 their territory, either to the Crown or to Canada, with a view 
 to colonisation. One important question was the amount of 
 compensation to which the Company would be entitled. 
 Canada, however, denied their legal title to a considerable part 
 of the territory. In a report of a Committee of the Executive 
 Council of Canada in June, 1 866, they say that ' they do not 
 admit that the Company have a legal title to that portion of 
 the North-Western territory which is fit for cultivation and 
 settlement. This fertile tract is a belt of land stretching 
 along the northern frontier of the United States to the base 
 of the Rocky Mountains, and Canada has always disputed 
 the title of the Company to it.' But notwithstanding this, the 
 Canadian Government were prepared to admit generally the 
 claims of the Company, and would themselves have opened 
 negotiations for the extinction of fliotip rlnimc if fViP Cnn. 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BA V COMPANY. 339 
 
 federation scheme had not been brought forward, when it was 
 thought that the question ought to be reserved for the con- 
 sideration of the Confederate Government. 
 
 In December, 1867, the Parliament of the Dominion of 
 Canada agreed to an address to Her Majesty, praying that 
 she would by Order in Council under the powers of the Act 
 by which the Confederation of the British North American 
 Colonies was established, unite Rupert's Land and the North- 
 Western territory to Canada. This would embrace British 
 Columbia, and make the new Dominion extend from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific. The address stated that in the event 
 of the transfer to Canada of the jurisdiction and control over 
 the region, the Government and Parliament of Canada would 
 be ready to provide that the legal rights of any corporation, 
 company, or individual within its limits should be respected 
 and placed under the protection of courts of competent juris- 
 diction. But the Hudson's Bay Company were not likely to 
 accede to this proposal. It would, if carried into effect, have 
 handed over to Canada their territory, and placed their rights 
 at the mercy of the tribunals of a Government which had 
 gone far to deny that they possessed any legal rights at all. 
 It was like conveying a property to a purchaser, and giving 
 him the absolute power of determining whether he should pay 
 anything for it or not. Sir John Macdonald, the present 
 Prime Minister of Canada, said in the course of his speech on 
 the subject in the Canadian Parliament : — 
 
 What would the title of the Company be worth when it was known that the 
 country belonged to Canada, and that the Canadian Government and Canadian 
 courts had jurisdiction there, and that the chief protection of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company, and the value of their property, namely, the exclusive right of trading 
 in those regions, were gone for ever? .... The value of the Company's interest 
 would be determined by the value of their stock, and what would that be worth 
 when the whole country belonged to Canada ? 
 
 The address from the Parliament of Canada was not acted 
 upon so far as it prayed for an annexation of the territory by 
 an Order of Council ; but an Act called ' The Rupert's Lane 
 Act, 1868,' was passed in that year for enabling Her Majesty 
 to accept a surrender, upon terms to be agreed upon, of the 
 lands, privileges, and rights of the Company, and for admit- 
 ting the same into the Dominion of Canada. And quite 
 recently the Colonial Secretary, Lord Granville, has proposec 
 
340 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 that the Company shall surrender to Her Majesty all their 
 rights of government and property in Rupert's Land and 
 other parts of British North America, which will be trans- 
 ferred to the Dominion of Canada upon Canada paying the 
 company 300,000/. as compensation. It is proposed that the 
 Company shall retain their rights of trade, their stations, and 
 blocks of land adjoining them ; and they shall, moreover, 
 be allowed to claim one-twentieth of the land in every town- 
 ship or district within the Fertile Belt as it is set out for 
 settlement. 
 
 Looking forward to the future, it was impossible not to 
 see that a change must take place in the destination of 
 Rupert's Land. It could not always remain merely a hunting- 
 ground for traders in furs. Indeed, the southern part no 
 longer affords to the same extent a supply of those articles ; 
 for the animals are decreasing in number, and the valuable 
 trade is in the northern portion. There the climate and 
 the soil are alike unfit for the habitation of civilised men, and 
 the land must for ages be the abode of the bear, the beaver, 
 and the fox, with a few wandering tribes of wretched Indians, 
 But the south is more or less suitable for colonisation, and 
 many considerations point to Canada as the country to which 
 it ought to be annexed. 
 
 In the report of a committee of the Executive Council of 
 Canada they say : — 
 
 The government looks forward with interest to the day when the valley of the 
 Saskatchewan will become the back country of Canada, and the land of hope for 
 the hardy youth of the province when they seek new homes in the forest ; and it 
 anticipates with confidence the day when Canada will become the highway of 
 immigration from Europe into those fertile valleys. 
 
 There are, no doubt, serious difiSculties to overcome in 
 making such a highway and efi'ecting a ready means of com- 
 munication between Lake Superior and the Red River. 
 Colonel Crofton, who commanded a body of troops that were 
 sent to Rupert's Land in 1846, stated before the committee 
 of the House of Commons that it would be utterly impossible 
 to make a road for wagons there on account of the swamps. 
 But the word ' impossible ' is said not to be found in the 
 dictionary of engineers, and the idea of a railway from Canada, 
 even as far as the Pacific, has long been seriously entertained. 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 341 
 
 It has indeed been asserted that a Canadian swamp is ' about 
 the best ground that nature ever made for a railway track,' 
 for what is called a ' swamp ' there, is a level tract, with a 
 thicket growing upon it, which keeps the ground damp by- 
 excluding the sun's rays, and there is generally a stiff clay 
 bottom.^ 
 
 A private trading company like that of the Hudson's Bay 
 has not authority or power to preserve order and good govern- 
 ment amongst a large population, composed as it undoubtedly 
 will be before long in a great measure of immigrants from 
 the United States, by no means disposed to submit patiently 
 to law, and least of all to the law of a foreign nation. They 
 would require the strong hand of a powerful Government, and 
 would set at nought the feeble authority of a council of factors 
 and traders. 
 
 The Indians sometimes give trouble enough. In a letter 
 from Mr. Mactavish, the Governor of Rupert's Land, dated 
 July 31, 1866, he says that a band of Salt Indians, from Red 
 Lake, in Minnesota, had murdered four Sioux within sight ol 
 Fort Garry, and then immediately retired within the Americar 
 boundary. And at Fort Pitt, on the Saskatchewan, a banc 
 of Blackfeet forced the inner gates of the fort and plunderec 
 it. They then met in their way a party of the Company's 
 servants returning from the plains, and after firing on them 
 took away their horses. 
 
 The close proximity of the United States makes it verj 
 desirable that a transfer of the territory should take place 
 with as little delay as possible. In the report of the Com 
 mittee of the Canadian Government, to which I have befon 
 referred, they say : — 
 
 The close relations springing up between the Red River settlers and thi 
 Americans of Pembina and St. Paul, and the removal of many Americans into th. 
 territory, render it doubly expedient that a settled government under the Britisl 
 Crown should be established in the country at an early date. 
 
 Next adjoining the southern frontier of Rupert's Land li( 
 the States of Minnesota, Dakota, and Montana, divided fron 
 it by only an imaginary line, across which the straggling 
 
 1 See the evidence of Mr. McDaw- printed in the Blue Book ; Report 
 son before a sefect committee of the Hudson's Bay Company, .857. 
 r„„„/i;,n House of Representatives, 
 
342 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 waves of the advancing tide of population will slowly but 
 surely flow. It may be said, and with truth, that these States 
 are as yet only partially occupied, and that many years must 
 elapse before they are filled with a population which would 
 require any expansion of space towards the north. But we 
 must bear in mind an important fact. It is quite true, as a 
 general rule, that population does not migrate to seek distant 
 lands for cultivation, so long as good land in sufficient quan- 
 tity can be had near at hand ; but there are numbers of rest- 
 less spirits in America whose vocation may be said to be to 
 act as the vanguard of material progress. They dislike a 
 settled life ; and when they have made a clearing in the wil- 
 derness, and begun to cultivate the soil, they throw down the 
 spade for the axe, and, seized with an irresistible impulse, 
 travel onwards. 
 
 I hear the tread of pioneers 
 
 Of nations yet to be ; 
 The first low wash of waves where soon 
 
 Shall roll a human sea. 
 
 It is thus that, before Iowa was settled, Minnesota was in- 
 vaded ; and, although that State is only scantily peopled, 
 Dakota and Montana have since been added to the United 
 States. 
 
 In 1864 the inhabitants of the Red River Settlement were 
 so alarmed by the threatening attitude of the Sioux, that they 
 strongly pressed Mr. Dallas, the Governor of Rupert's Land, 
 to invite American troops across the frontier ; and certainly, 
 to use the expression of the late Sir Edmund Head, who was 
 Governor of the Company in England, the fact of the Queen's 
 subjects ' looking for protection to the United States, was one 
 of grave importance with reference to the nationality of the 
 settlement and the territory.' 
 
 In 1867 Mr. Adams, the American Minister here, applied 
 on behalf of his Government to the Foreign Secretary, 
 Lord Stanley, to know whether arrangements could be 
 made for allowing the troops of the United States to follow 
 Indians who infested the emigrant road in Dakota, and 
 committed every kind of atrocity, into the British territory, 
 where they took refuge. It seems to be rather doubtful 
 whether this particular territory belongs to the Company or 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 3 
 
 the Crown, as there is a narrow belt of land running to t 
 north of the forty-ninth parallel — the boundary line — whi 
 is supposed to be watered by streams which do not find th 
 way into Hudson's Bay, and if so, this was not included 
 the grant made by the original charter to the Company. 
 
 Besides, gold has been discovered in the Saskatchew 
 region ; and in a pamphlet published in America in 1866, a 
 addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury of the Unit 
 States, the following significant passage occurs : — 
 
 Rumours of gulches and ledges in the Saskatchewan district, yielding e 
 greater prizes to the prospector, are already rife, and will soon precipitate 
 strong, active, and enterprising people ' into the spacious void. What is ca! 
 the Americanisation of the Red River Settlement has been slow although si 
 since the era of steam navigation, but this Americanisation of Sasliatchewan 
 rush suddenly and soon from the camps of treasure-seekers in Montana. 
 
 I will now say a few words on the constitution and gove: 
 ment of the Company. In England it consists of a goven 
 — Prince Rupert's chair at present is occupied by Sir Staffc 
 Northcote — and a body of directors, who represent the sha 
 holders. In Rupert's Land there is an acting governor, w 
 is assisted by a council composed of the chief factors, sixte 
 in number, and sometimes of chief traders, and by a record 
 who was first appointed in 1839. The chief factors are i 
 paid by salaries, but are admitted into a sort of partners] 
 with the Company, on the following principle : the profits ; 
 divided into one hundred shares, of which forty are alloti 
 amongst the officers in the territory in certain specified p 
 portions. This forty per cent, is debited to the fur trade, a 
 is, of course, so much deducted from the fund available 
 dividend to the shareholders. It is, in fact, part of 1 
 working expenses of the concern, which must be paid befi 
 the net profits can be ascertained. Besides the chief facte 
 there are twenty-nine chief traders, and the number of s 
 vants in permanent employment is about 1,200. 
 
 The number of forts or posts in Rupert's Land is six 
 six. At the north end of Lake Winnipeg is the fort cal 
 Norway House, which is the central station of the up] 
 country. Here brigades of boats receive annually their st 
 plies for the different posts, and proceed on their windi 
 voyages along rivers and lakes, bringing back furs which 
 then conveyed to York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, and shipj 
 
344 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to England. At Norway House also there is annually a 
 meeting of the factors who have charge of the different posts, 
 and who there consult together on the interests of the trade. 
 
 The currency of the country is the beaver skin, as 
 tobacco used to be in Virginia. It is the unit of value accord- 
 ing to which all barter is computed. Thus, ten musk rats go 
 to one beaver, and a beaver is equal to a blanket. Four or 
 five beavers go to a silver fox, and a certain number of silver 
 fox-skins are given for a gun. The way in which the trade is 
 carried on is this. When an Indian hunter arrives at one of 
 the posts with a bundle of furs, he proceeds to a room, where 
 the superintendent separates the furs into lots, and, after 
 adding up the amount, delivers to him a number of little 
 pieces of wood, which indicate the number of beaver skins to 
 which his furs are equal in value. The Indian then goes to 
 the store-room, which contains the articles he wants, such as 
 blankets, coats, guns, powder-horns, and knives. Each of 
 these has a fixed and known value in beaver-skins, represented 
 by the pieces of wood, and the hunter pays them away just 
 as if they were cash for whatever article he fancies. At Red 
 River, however, the Hudson's Bay Company issue notes to 
 the extent of 9,000/. or 10,000/., which act as a circulating 
 medium in the colony. 
 
 When the furs arrive in England they are stored in the 
 Company's warehouses in Lime Street — part of the buildings 
 of the old East India Company — and they are sold in lots by 
 auction, in the spring of the year. There, in the different 
 rooms may be seen vast piles of skins of bears, foxes, wolves, 
 wolverines, martens, minks, otters, and even skunks — which 
 last are used on the Continent (where, I suppose, the olfactory 
 nerves are not so sensitive as ours), for the lining of cloaks. 
 A story is told of the late Prince Gortchakoff, that when he 
 was in England a short time before the Crimean war, he went 
 to see a fox-chase, and as the hounds approached they 
 suddenly made a rush at him and gave tongue loudly. They 
 were with difficulty whipped off by the huntsman, and it 
 turned out that the Prince was wearing a cloak lined with the 
 skins of foxes, so that the dogs naturally attacked him. If 
 they had pulled him down, the Russians might never have 
 
HISTORY OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 345 
 
 crossed the Pruth, and the world would not have heard of the 
 siege of Sebastopol ! 
 
 It seems paradoxical that the highest prices in proportion 
 to their value should be given for the inferior furs. But the 
 reason is this. If the Company were to pay for the finer furs 
 at the same rate as they pay for the less valuable ones, the 
 Indians would hunt up the animals that bear the best furs 
 and destroy the race, as has, in fact, been the case along the 
 southern frontier. The silver fox and the beaver would soon 
 disappear, and only musk rats, and raccoons, and martens be 
 left. Since the beginning of the present century, the collec- 
 tion of furs has much increased, but the Company pay the 
 Indians more for them, and thus there is a larger trade in 
 them than ever, but with less profit. The valuable trade is in 
 the remote and colder districts, where, there being no inter- 
 ference by the efforts of civilisation, the animals are preserved 
 Hke game in England, and the Indians are encouraged to 
 kill them only when the fur is in season, and to spare the 
 females when they are breeding. But if the trade were 
 thrown open, it is obvious that wanton destruction would 
 ensue, and the supply of furs would soon cease to exist, for it 
 would be the interest of every trader to secure as much in as 
 sjfort a time as possible, and, to use a homely phrase, the 
 goose would be killed to get the egg. 
 
 I have now endeavoured to give an account of the con- 
 stitution and history of the last of the great proprietary 
 companies of England, to whom a kind of delegated 
 sovereignty was granted by the Crown. It was by some of 
 these that distant colonies were founded, and one, the most 
 powerful of them all, established our empire in the East, and 
 held the sceptre of the Great Mogul. But they have passed 
 away — 
 
 fuit Ilium et ingens 
 Gloria Teucrorum — 
 
 and the Hudson's Bay Company will be no exception to the 
 rule. It may continue to exist as a Trading Company, but as 
 a Territorial Power it must make up its mind to fold its 
 (buffalo) robes around it, and die with dignity. 
 
346 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 A VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR 
 OF NIJNI NOVOGOROD. 
 
 I LEFT London, with my brother Douglas, on the 8th of 
 August, 1864, to visit Russia, intending to make Nijni Novo- 
 gorod, on the banks of the Volga, the limit of our journey. 
 
 We travelled by way of Calais, Cologne, Hanover, and 
 Magdeburg, to Berlin. Here we stayed one day, and left it 
 at night by the railway for Warsaw. 
 
 As the day dawned, we found ourselves in a really pretty 
 country — flat of course — but agreeably diversified with wood, 
 consisting chiefly of fir and birch trees, extending as far as 
 the eye could reach on both sides. But there was little mono- 
 tony, as the forests through which we rapidly passed were 
 every now and then broken by large patches of pasture or 
 arable land ; and in default of these there were far-stretching 
 glades, reminding one of an English park on a colossal scale. 
 
 I was impatient to find myself veritably in Russia, and 
 was speculating as to the kind of frontier town we should see, 
 with visions before my mind's eye of bastions and walls 
 bristling with cannon, when, soon after entering a fir forest, 
 the train began to slacken its speed, and, gliding into an en- 
 closure of about two acres in extent, which was surrounded 
 by a strong wooden palisade, we stopped at a very rustic- 
 looking station called Ocloczyn ; and a guard of Russian 
 soldiers, drawn up in stiff array on the platform, told us 
 unmistakably that we were at last in the land of the Czar. 
 Here, of course, we had to get out of our carriage to have our 
 luggage overhauled and passports examined. Nothing could 
 be more civil than the conduct of the officials. I had had 
 sundry misgivings as to the nature of the ordeal through 
 which we should have to pass — owing, perhaps, in part to what a 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 347 
 
 Russian nobleman had told me, before I left London, as to 
 what had once happened to himself on his return from England 
 to Russia. His valet had wrapped the boots of his master in 
 some old numbers of ' The Times ' ; and to prevent the surrep- 
 titious introduction in this fashion of such a revolutionary- 
 journal into Russia, the boots were carefully stripped of their 
 coverings, and the obnoxious paper was confiscated. 
 
 While we were waiting for our turn to have our passports 
 examined, a smart-looking Russian officer in uniform came 
 up to me, and said, ' Votre nom. Monsieur, s'il vous plait 1 ' 
 I told him, and he then said in French, ' I have expected you 
 for several days. You are rather late.' ' Indeed ! ' I an- 
 swered ; ' do you know me .? ' ' Oh, no ! ' he replied, ' but I 
 have had a letter about you.' 'From London?' I asked. 
 ' No,' he said, ' from Warsaw.' I found his only object was to 
 be of use to us ; and I certainly felt much indebted to the 
 person, whoever he was, who was kind enough to inform this 
 most courteous officer of our intended visit. He took care 
 that we should have no trouble with the examination of our 
 portmanteaus, which was only formal, and we got our pass- 
 ports handed to us almost immediately. Two of our travelling 
 companions were not so fortunate, for on stepping out of 
 their carriage they were immediately arrested and marched 
 off by the guard. The officer who effected the arrest was a 
 youth of eighteen, who spoke English tolerably well, having 
 learnt it, as he told us, from his sister's governess, although, 
 we were, I believe, the first English travellers with whom he 
 had had the opportunity of conversing. I asked him the 
 reason of the arrests, but he said he knew no more than that 
 he had received a telegram and obeyed its orders. He after- 
 wards travelled with us for a short distance, and told us that 
 the Emperor was expected soon at one of his summer palaces, 
 which we saw as we passed, when he was to receive his com- 
 mission as an ensign (he was then only in the ^mdar7mrze) 
 for a little exploit he had just performed. This consisted m 
 surprising a party of insurgent Poles at a country house m 
 the neighbourhood, who took to flight, but were fired upon 
 by the Russians under the boy's command, and several of 
 
 them were killed. , , ,• u ^ 
 
 We had to wait nearly two hours at this forest station, but 
 
348 I.SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the novelty of the scene made the time pass quickly. Here I 
 first saw the inevitable samovar, or Russian tea-urn, which 
 afterwards became so familiar to me, for I suppose there is 
 hardly a house in Russia — I am not speaking of the hovels and 
 huts — where it is not to be found. And here I first drank, 
 not a cup, but a glass of Russian tea, tchai, with a slice of 
 lemon in it, instead of milk — and beyond doubt it was excel- 
 lent. People tell you that the tea in Russia is better than in 
 England, because it is brought overland, and there is some- 
 thing injurious to its flavour in a sea voyage ; but I believe 
 that this is nonsense, and that the real reason is, that the best 
 kind of tea is grown on the western frontiers of China — that 
 is, on the side nearest to Russia — and so most readily finds 
 its way there. Some open third-class carriages were attached 
 to our train, and these were here filled by a crowd of some of 
 the most uncouth-looking peasa^nts it was ever my fate to 
 look upon. They were like a bad lot of low Irish minus their 
 rags, for I must do them the justice to say that their clothes, 
 though coarse in the extreme, had no solution of continuity. 
 Their hair fell over their faces just like thatch, which it resem- 
 bled not a little in colour ; and their high cheek-bones, 
 broad upper part of the face, low noses, and 'foreheads 
 villanous low,' make me fancy that they must be a party of 
 Kalmuck Tartars. 
 
 There is little worth mentioning as likely to interest the 
 reader in the journey between Ocloczyn and Warsaw. The 
 character of the country is much the same throughout, but it 
 was far prettier than I had expected or imagined. Alternate 
 forests of fir and birch, and birch and fir, broken by grassy 
 interludes, with here and there sheets of water and an undula- 
 ting swell in the ground, were the chief features of the scenery. 
 These forests, however, bore significant token of the Polish 
 insurrection. On eath side of the railway the trees had been 
 cleared away to the distance of a musket-shot, for trains had 
 frequently been fired upon where the thick forest afforded 
 shelter to the assailants. It was evident that the Polish pea- 
 santry had no Enfield or Whitworth rifles, as the breadth of 
 the space that was cleared was barely equal to the range of a 
 common smooth-bore musket. I was struck everywhere in 
 Russia by the slender shape of the trees. Timber, in our 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 349 
 
 sense of the word, I saw none ; but tall, slim, graceful stems, 
 with the remarkable peculiarity that no branches were thrown 
 out lower than half way up the trunk of the tree. 
 
 The first view of Warsaw from the south is very disap- 
 pointing. The city lies on the south or left bank of the 
 Vistula, and as that bank rises much higher than the other, 
 and the plateau extends at the same level far into the 
 interior, you lose the terrace view which meets the eye of the 
 spectator from the opposite bank. The immediate approach 
 is dull and dirty. The chief objects are a great number of 
 coal-yards ; but here and there were the ruins of fortifications, 
 the scene of the sanguinary struggle in 1832. On reaching 
 the station we were not allowed to leave our carriages until 
 we had handed out our passports, and after these had been 
 cursorily examined we were permitted to get out, and told to 
 go into a large room where they would be delivered to us 
 after our luggage had been overhauled. Never shall I forget 
 the scene of confusion in that room. It was filled to over- 
 flowing by a struggling crowd of people waiting to get their 
 passports, and I began to despair of ever seeing ours again. 
 At last the tedious ceremony was over, and, having secured a 
 wretched carriage, we drove to the H6tel d'Angleterre, or 
 /Lngliski, as it is called in Poland and Russia. We had been 
 advised by our Russian officer friend, who was so polite to us 
 at Ocloczyn, to go to the Hotel de I'Europe, but, in the 
 course of our journey, others had recommended the Hotel 
 d'Angleterre. And as it turned out, it was well that we so 
 decided, for, owing to a dastardly murder that had been 
 committed recently in the Hotel de TEurope, that hotel had 
 been closed for a time, and was now only just opened for the 
 exclusive reception of Russian officers. They must have been 
 very numerous to fill it, for it is of enormous size, and seemed 
 to occupy the whole side of a street. The Hotel d'Angleterre 
 is in the Novi Soyat, a dull street, and has a very forbidding 
 exterior. Nor was the inside inviting. However, there is a 
 tolerably good 'coffee-room,' and the bed-rooms, though 
 furnished in the plainest manner, were tolerably clean. And 
 here I may mention that not once during my stay in Russia 
 was I annoyed by any of those unmentionable insects which 
 contribute so much to the discomfort of the traveller. I have 
 
350 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 been far less fortunate in Italy and Germany, or even in 
 England. The hotels are perhaps the least in keeping with 
 the wealth and luxury which prevail amongst the upper 
 classes ; but, although shabby in appearance, I found them 
 generally clean and comfortable. I speak, however, of my 
 own experience only, for some of the friends whom I met 
 loudly complained that they had been almost devoured by 
 nocturnal marauders of the worst description. 
 
 We dined exceedingly well in the salle d mang-er, where at 
 the table next to us sat the fattest man I think I ever saw. 
 He was a mountain of flesh, and one upon whom Banting 
 would have yearned to operate. I mention ' our fat friend,' 
 however, merely as a remarkable contrast to the general 
 appearance of the people in Russia and Poland. The men 
 are tall and well made, with fresh complexions, and seldom 
 even stout. I wish I could say that the women are good- 
 looking, but truth compels me to state that the reverse is the 
 fact : of course I am not speaking of the aristocracy, amongst 
 whom many of the fair sex, I believe, may vie with the 
 fairest in any country of Europe ; but these I had little or no 
 opportunity of seeing, as the great towns of St. Petersburg 
 and Moscow are, in the autumn, like London, comparatively 
 deserted by the higher classes ; but, in the streets and the 
 shops, the women one meets with are, beyond controversy, 
 plain— not to use a stronger term. 
 
 On the evening of my arrival in Warsaw a laughable 
 adventure befel me, which may be worth mentioning as it 
 illustrates the present condition of that unfortunate city. 
 When it grew dark I sallied out of the hotel for a stroll, and 
 as I walked along the streets I observed that everybody I 
 met, whether man, woman, or child, carried in his or her 
 hand a lighted lantern. I began to have suspicions that I 
 was not en regie, when just as I reached the o'p&n.platz where 
 the theatre stands, and opposite to it the blackened walls of 
 the H6tel de Ville, burnt down in 1863 by an incendiary fire, 
 I was stopped by a Russian soldier, who, although speaking 
 in an unknown tongue, made me clearly understand that I 
 was guilty of the offence of not carrying a lantern. I thought 
 the best plan would be to treat the matter as a joke, and, 
 shaking him by the hand, I said, ' Sprechen sie Deutsch, 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 351 
 
 mein Freund ? ' — ' Nitt ! Nitt ! ' was the reply. ' Parlez-vous 
 Frangais?'— 'Nitt! Nitt!' 'Do you speak English?'— 
 ' Nitt ! Nitt ! ' I then told him in English that I was not a 
 Polish conspirator, but an Englishman, with a emphasis on 
 the word. He brightened up at this, and asked, ' Angliski } ' 
 I said, ' Da ! Da ! ' which means ' Yes ! yes ! ' — when the 
 good-humoured fellow, thinking no doubt that Englishmen 
 did not carry daggers or pistols to assassinate in the dark, 
 patted me on the shoulder, and let me go, saying something 
 like ' Brosch ! Brosch ! ' which I interpreted to mean ' Go 
 on ! ' and I immediately decamped. It was, however, out of 
 the frying-pan into the fire ; for almost immediately after- 
 wards I met two other soldiers, who had already under arrest 
 a lanternless individual like myself; and although I tried the 
 same manoeuvre with them, they were not to be so easily 
 cajoled. I was ordered to accompany one of them, who 
 made me march by his side for fully three quarters of a mile 
 until we came to a kind of courtyard at the bottom of which 
 was a Russian guard-house, where I was ushered into a 
 dimly lighted room, and ordered to give an account of myself 
 Luckily I found there an officer who spoke German, and to 
 him I explained how I had got into the scrape owing to my 
 ignorance of the law which prohibited anybody from appear- 
 in the streets of Warsaw after nightfall without a lighted 
 lantern in his hand. The reason of this was the numerous 
 assassinations that had occurred — for, as is well known, 
 murder was resorted to by the agents of the National Com- 
 mittee without scruple or remorse. It was, in fact, not safe to 
 traverse a dark spot, and women, or at all events men dressed 
 in women's clothes, were quite ready to use the poniard or 
 the pistol at the bidding of an invisible and mysterious 
 authorit}'. I showed the officer my letters of introduction to 
 the Governor of Warsaw, Comte de Berg, and this satisfied 
 him and the rest that I was neither a Pole nor a conspirator. 
 They made me write down my name and address, and then 
 told me I might go ; but I declined to do this unless they 
 would furnish me with a lantern, for I did not know my way 
 in the dark, and besides I should be infallibly again arrested 
 if I appeared in the streets without that safe-conduct. They 
 had, however, no lantern to spare, and, as J positively refused 
 
35 2 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to stir unless they provided me with one, my German- 
 speaking friend good-naturedly said that he would buckle on 
 his sword and accompany me to my hotel, which he did ; 
 and I had no further trouble or annoyance — Sic me servavit 
 Apollo. 
 
 There are few ' lions ' at Warsaw. The only buildings of 
 any great size are the Castle and the Citadel. The Castle is a 
 large, irregular, feudal-looking fortress situated on the slope of 
 the left bank of the Vistula. It is called Zamek, and here the 
 Governor or Viceroy of Poland resides. The chief interest is 
 in the appearance of Warsaw itself — a melancholy city — the 
 scene of so many sorrows and tremendous calamities. It is 
 still under martial law, and every access to it is so strictly 
 guarded that I do not think a mouse could creep into it unless 
 provided with a passport. The chief movement in the streets 
 was the tramp of soldiery, and at short intervals mounted 
 Cossacks on their small active horses kept watch and ward. 
 There was none of the life and bustle of a large town. The 
 shops are mean and poor, and we saw nothing to tempt the 
 purchaser. There was an inexpressible air of tristesse over 
 the whole place. Not long ago it was the mark of patriotism 
 for the Poles, both men and women, to wear black when they 
 appeared in public ; but this naturally gave offence to the 
 Russian authorities, and the sign of national mourning was 
 discontinued. It did not, however, require any external symbol 
 to show how profoundly depressed was the feeling of the 
 population. The only symptom of business-like activity that 
 I saw was in a quarter where the Jews ' most do congregate.' 
 It seemed like a Stock-exchange in the open air ; and here 
 there was a swarm of the sons of Israel, dressed in long dirty 
 cloth pelisses, with grizzly beards, uncombed hair, and un- 
 washed faces. We had occasion to go amongst them to get 
 some Polish notes exchanged for gold, as the banks happened 
 at the moment to be shut. 
 
 I had the good fortune to be previously acquainted with 
 Colonel Stanton, R.E., who is the British Consul at Warsaw, 
 and we called on him at his residence in the Ujazlov, a long 
 avenue bordered with lime and chesnut trees, in the suburbs 
 of the town, and the fashionable promenade at Warsaw. I 
 cannot thank him and Mrs. Stanton enough for all the atten- 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 353 
 
 tion and hospitality which they showed us during our stay. 
 Under his care we explored the city, and saw all that was 
 worth seeing, which was not much. He drove us in his 
 wagonette, drawn by two beautiful greys, with their ringing 
 bells, to the chateau of Count Potogki (pronounced Potoski), 
 which is situated about four miles from Warsaw, and is a 
 place of historical interest, having formerly belonged to the 
 Sobieski family. Here the great John Sobieski, the deliverer 
 of Vienna from the Turks, and one of the best kings and 
 greatest warriors whom Poland has produced, passed his 
 latter days in retirement, and died. The road leading to it 
 which we took (not the chaiiss^e or principal road, which is 
 more circuitous) was simply a sandy track which-in wet weather 
 must be almost impassable, and even now there were places 
 that would have horrified an English coachman, and severely 
 tested the strength of the springs of the carriage, which had been 
 built in England expressly for such excursions. The Villa 
 Potogki had a most deserted look. The gardens were overgrown 
 with weeds, the shrubs were unpruned, and the whole place 
 seemed to be running to seed. The Count and Countess were 
 absent in Paris, and the house was left to the care of a librarian 
 and a few domestics. The furniture is extremely beautiful, and 
 there are many valuable works of art ; but the pictures are 
 chiefly copies with a few poor originals. What interested me 
 most was the library, which amongst other treasures contains a 
 rich collection of works on the ancient history of Poland. 
 
 Close to the villa is a building used as a hospital, which 
 was made a place of concealment for the insurgents during 
 the revolt. There was a report that some of them had been 
 taken and hanged there the day before we visited it, but on 
 inquiry this turned out to be untrue. Some of the tenantry 
 of Count Potogki were implicated in the insurrecrion, and 
 since my return to England I have been informed by Colonel 
 Stanton that a fine of 49,000 rubles, equal to about 7,000/., 
 has been imposed upon the Count in consequence. One of 
 the most arbitrary measures of the Russian Government with 
 respect to Poland since the suppression of the revolt has been 
 the conversion of the tenancies of the peasants into freeholds 
 giving only a nominal compensation to the landlord. In other 
 words, it has confiscated their property, and made a present 
 
 AA 
 
354 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 of it to the labourers, with the view, no doubt, of enlisting the 
 popular feeling if possible in its favour. 
 
 And here it may be interesting to mention a few facts 
 relating to the secret history of the late insurrection. For a 
 long time its movements were under the control of an invisible 
 and mysterious body called the National Committee, which 
 defied the utmost efforts of the Russian police to discover its 
 place of meeting or the names of its members. It marked 
 out individuals for murder, and the assassin was employed to 
 execute its decrees. There can be no doubt that numbers 
 took part in the insurrection less from patriotism than terror, 
 for the Pole who hesitated to join the ranks of the insurgents 
 was as much exposed to the vengeance of the Committee as 
 the Russians themselves. And this terror was intensified by 
 the impenetrable darkness in which all its proceedings were 
 shrouded. Its edicts and proclamations came forth like the 
 handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast, and no one 
 could tell from whom they emanated. A trial, however, took 
 place last year which lifted the curtain and revealed the 
 names of some of the actors behind the scenes in the revo- 
 lutionary drama. And, strange to say, a great many of them 
 were women. The persons accused were Romnald Traugutt, 
 Ellen Kirkor, Emily and Barbara Guzowski, Alexandrine 
 Wroblewska, Krajewski, Toczyski, Zailinski, Jezuranski, and 
 others ; and the following facts were elicited, or at all events 
 said to be proved. 
 
 Traugutt was a landed proprietor of the district of Ko- 
 brynsk, in the government of Grodno, and formerly com- 
 manded a band of insurgents in Lithuania. He came to 
 Warsaw, under the assumed name of Czarnecki, as the agent 
 of a commercial house at Lemberg, and in the month of 
 October 1863, became the secret chief of the National 
 Government. He lodged in Smolna Street, in Warsaw, and 
 the emissaries whom he employed to carry papers and letters 
 were chiefly women, who concealed them in their clothes. The 
 place "where these women met was an apothecary's shop in 
 Marshal Street, and a gingerbread-baker's shop in Capitalna 
 Street. The leaders of the movement used to assemble in the 
 auditory of the chief school in Warsaw, by the connivance of 
 one of the teachers or lecturers named Dybowski. Ellen 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 355 
 
 Kirkor kept the lodgings where Traugutt stayed, and she was 
 accused of sending out and receiving revolutionary correspon- 
 dence. The other women were charged with a similar 
 offence. All were found guilty, and sentenced to death ; but 
 only five — Traugutt, Krajewski, Toczyski, Zailinski, and 
 Jezuranski — were hanged. The rest were sent to the mines 
 and fortresses of Siberia for various periods, and all were 
 deprived of their civil rights. Each of the women, including 
 the daughter of the gingerbread-baker, was styled ' noble ' in 
 the acte d' accusation. 
 
 Having letters of introduction to the Governor of Warsaw, 
 Comte de Berg, we called upon him, and were most cour- 
 teously received. He is more than seventy years of age, but 
 looks much younger. He is thin, and upright as a dart, with 
 all the politeness of the manners of the vieille cour. He asked 
 us to dine with him at the castle the next day, at the primi- 
 tive hour of half-past four, and on going there we found the 
 Count and Countess and a small party assembled, including 
 Prince Wittgenstein, Count Osten-Sacken, and others. The 
 room in which we were received opened out upon a terrace, 
 half of which was converted into a sort of divan, or tent, by 
 an awning of gaily-striped cloth put over it. It was prettily 
 ornamented with shrubs ; and here coffee and cigars were 
 handed after dinner. The other half of the terrace was open 
 to the sky, and commanded an excellent view of the Vistula 
 and country to the north in front, with Warsaw behind. 
 While I was standing here before dinner, and talking to one 
 of the guests, a servant came up and handed a tray contain- 
 ing liqueurs and sardines and other condiments, which it is 
 the universal custom in Russia to take immediately before 
 dinner on the same principle, I suppose, as that on which we 
 sometimes eat oysters — namely, to give an appetite; One of 
 the best things served in this way is caviare, which the Rus- 
 sians say we spoil by eating it at the end of dinner, instead 
 of before. It certainly gives a relish to the appetite, and is, 
 in all respects, worthy of commendation. This ante-prandial 
 goutte is called zakouski. 
 
 I sat next to the Comte de Berg at dinner, and he spoke 
 in the frankest manner about the Polish insurrection, telling 
 me things which showed evidently that there are two sides to 
 
356 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the story. The dinner and wines were excellent, and nothing 
 could be more agreeable than the demeanour and manner of 
 our host. He is, I believe, a German by birth, and when he 
 found that I understood that language, he immediately adopted 
 it, evidently preferring it to French. I had happened to say 
 before dinner that I had not seen the Cathedral ; and as there 
 is a private passage into it from the castle, the Count pro- 
 posed that we should visit it at the end of the repast. He 
 accordingly led the way, and we all followed, through long 
 corridors and vast empty rooms, access to which had been 
 blocked up while the insurrection was raging, to prevent a 
 surprise. At last we emerged into a gallery which overlooked 
 the interior of the Cathedral, and here we found service going 
 on, and a few worshippers at their devotions. Notwithstand- 
 ing all the pleasure of the evening, the stern reality of the 
 situation was painfully recalled to my mind by the fact that, 
 the week before, three of the Polish insurgents had been 
 hanged on the glacis of the citadel. The Countess de Berg, 
 who is a Roman Catholic, like the Poles, had in the mean- 
 time gone away to St. Petersburg, which the Count told 
 me was merely like a journey from London to Brighton, for- 
 getting the small difference between a journey of fifty and 
 one of eight hundred miles. 
 
 I looked with some interest on the Palace Zamoyski, 
 .^vhere an 9.ttempt was made a short time ago upon the life of 
 the Count by the explosion of a bomb as he and his suite rode 
 past. It is a plain and unpretending-looking hotel, with a 
 large building attached to it, which was let out in apartments, 
 find I believe shops, producing a large revenue to the pro- 
 prietor. Count Zamoyski, who resides in Paris. But the whole 
 had been confiscated by the Russian Government, and was 
 now occupied by soldiers like a barrack. In the destruction 
 of property that took place in the first outburst of the fury of 
 the soldiery, the chief and most irreparable loss was that of 
 some valuable manuscripts relating to the early history of 
 Poland. 
 
 I have spoken of the melancholy aspect of the city, and 
 this was rather enhanced than diminished by the fact, that a 
 great deal of painting and whitewashing was going on, owing 
 to the expected arrival of the Emperor, who was to open the 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 357 
 
 new suspension bridge across the Vistula, a handsome structure, 
 with open lattice work at the sides, then nearly finished! 
 Warsaw must of course show herself in holiday attire, and as 
 cheerful as possible, in the presence of the Czar ; but it seemed 
 a bitter mockery thus to put bright robes upon the discrowned 
 Queen, and force a smile from her face, while her heart was 
 devoured by sorrow. It reminded me of the story of what 
 once occurred in the time of the Empress Catherine, when 
 she was about to make a progress through her dominions, and, 
 in order that she might be pleased by the sight of the pros- 
 perity of her subjects, whole villages made of painted canvas 
 were ' got up ' for the occasion, and placed at intervals along 
 the road by which she was to travel. 
 
 We went to the theatre, where a French company was 
 performing ; and, as might be expected, the audience was 
 composed almost entirely of military. The pit was filled with 
 soldiers, the greatest part of whom must have been wholly 
 ignorant of the language spoken by the actors, and little able 
 to understand the meaning of the play, which was a comedy. 
 To show the excessive strictness with which all entrance 
 into the city is watched, I may mention that Colonel Stanton, 
 the British Consul, being provided with a pass, which he 
 imagined was an open sesame at all times, went one day with 
 a party of friends to a picnic, and, returning after nightfall, 
 was stopped at the barrier. He showed his paper, duly 
 signed by the authorities ; and, after being carefully examined, 
 it was returned to him, with the remark, that, although it gave 
 him permission to go out of the city at all times, it did not 
 give him permission to come in ; and the soldiers refused to 
 allow him to pass until a messenger was despatched to the 
 proper quarter, and an order was brought which enabled him 
 and his friends to get home to bed. Of course it was a mis- 
 take, and a more full and precise permit was given to Colonel 
 Stanton, of which, while we were in his company, we were 
 able to avail ourselves. 
 
 On the opposite side of the Vistula, which is about the 
 breadth of the Rhine at Coblenz, or perhaps a little broader, 
 is, or rather I ought to say was, a suburb of Warsaw called 
 the Praga. It formerly contained streets, houses, and several 
 churches, but it is now a scene of desolation ; and the only 
 
358 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 building of any size or importance there is the railway station, 
 the terminus of the line that connects Warsaw with St. Peters- 
 burg. The Praga was laid in ruins by Constantine in 1832. 
 By far the best view of Warsaw is from this spot. The city 
 crowns the opposite bank of the river in a long picturesque 
 line, flanked on the extreme west by the formidable citadel 
 which was built by the Emperor Nicholas ; and he told the 
 Poles that, if they were refractory, the guns of the fortress 
 would lay the city in ashes. 
 
 We left Warsaw for St. Petersburg by the railway early in 
 the morning. Very little luggage is allowed free on this line 
 (on that between St. Petersburg and Moscow, none), and we 
 had to pay rather heavily for our two modest portmanteaus. 
 The carriages are of different kinds, but all seemed to be 
 comfortable and well-arranged. Some of them are like ours ; 
 others like those on the Lombardo-Venetian line in Italy, 
 long saloons with open compartments at the sides, each hold- 
 ing four persons ; others are divided into several compartments 
 by partitions like screens which do not reach to the top of the 
 carriage. To the first-class carriages are annexed rooms for 
 the accommodation of domestics ; and if you like to take a 
 whole compartment for yourself and family, you may have 
 beds laid down, and sleep at your ease. One excellent 
 arrangement, which ought to exist on our own railways, is 
 that the platform of the station is always on a level with the 
 floor of the carriage, so that the passenger can get in and out 
 without the risk, as with us, of breaking his leg, or at all 
 events bruising it while trying to find the step. It renders 
 also accidents which happen from people trying to get in or 
 out of a carriage at a station, while the train is in motion, 
 almost impossible. The fuel with which the locomotives are 
 supplied is entirely wood, and the chimney of the engine is in 
 shape like an inverted bell. Upon the important question of 
 refreshments on a long journey, I can speak in terms of un- 
 qualified praise of the Russian railways. The best buffets no 
 doubt are those between Petersburg and Moscow, but every- 
 where they are good. The Russians like good living, and 
 have strong appetites ever r£ady to do justice to substantial 
 food. Soup, hot cutlets, and vegetables are always ready at 
 the refreshment rooms for the hungry traveller ; and there is 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 359 
 
 a delicious kind of rissole which I particularly liked. The 
 choice of wines, both French and German, with liqueurs, is 
 abundant, and they are in quart and pint bottles with the 
 price marked on each. It was impossible not to contrast all 
 this with the miserable arrangements at Rugby, Reading, 
 Swindon, and other English stations ; where stale buns, greasy 
 sandwiches, and choking pork pies form the chief staple of the 
 refreshments, and the only wine you can get is Marsala usurp- 
 ing the name of Sherry. 
 
 On our journey to St. Petersburg we crossed the Niemen 
 and the Dwina, and passed by Wilna and Dwinaberg or 
 Djiinaberg. The scenery in the neighbourhood of Wilna, to 
 the north, is really picturesque ; with wooded valleys enlivened 
 by streams, and very different from what I had expected to 
 find in Russia, which my imagination had depicted beforehand 
 as a vast dreary plain overspread by monotonous forests. 
 Wilna was the principal and central depdt for the magazines 
 of the French army during the invasion of Russia in 18 1 2. 
 It was here that Napoleon received a deputation of Poles 
 demanding from him the restoration of the kingdom of Poland. 
 His reply was evasive, but contained sufficient encouragement 
 to make them believe that such was his intention, and in a 
 transport of enthusiasm and joy the Polish nobles proclaimed 
 the event, and celebrated a solemn mass in the Cathedral. 
 Dwinaberg and the surrounding district is under the govern- 
 ment of General Mouravieff, who has the reputation of being 
 a stern and severe ruler. It is fortified on all sides, and the 
 bridge over the Dwina is defended by a newly-built tete du 
 pojit of great strength. At every station, until we quitted 
 Russian Poland, a guard of soldiers in grey great-coats was 
 drawn up on the platform, and each man looked uglier than 
 his comrade. 
 
 There is nothing farther that deserves notice on the route 
 to St. Petersburg until the traveller approaches the capital 
 itself The scenery then becomes tamer and flatter and 
 uglier than at any other part of the journey, and one can 
 readily believe the fact that the city occupies the site of what 
 was once nothing but a woody swamp. The distant domes 
 and spires seem to rise out of the ground like an exhalation, 
 or perhaps more like a mirage in the desert. We had written 
 
36o ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to Miss Benson, who keeps the well-known Benson's Hotel, 
 on the English Quay, to have a carriage ready for us at the 
 station ; and we were thus able to contemplate with calm in- 
 difference the scene of indescribable noise and confusion there, 
 arising from the vociferous importunities of the droshky- 
 drivers, who all but carried us off by force in their struggles 
 to get a ' fare.' We drove to the Hotel Benson, which- is, 
 however, not, properly speaking, an hotel, but a /^«i-;o«, where 
 you are charged so much a day for board, whether you take 
 your meals there or not. It is pleasantly situated on the left 
 bank of the Neva, but rather too far off from the shops. We 
 found it tolerably clean and tolerably comfortable. 
 
 I shall not attempt to give more than a very general 
 description of St. Petersburg, for, in the first place, it is too 
 well known, and most things relating to it can be found in 
 Murray's Handbook ; and in the next, I have always thought 
 that minute accounts of places or scenery are tedious and un- 
 interesting. 
 
 What struck me most was the colossal scale of everything 
 — buildings, streets, and squares. The Admiralty cannot be 
 much less than three-quarters of a mile in circuit, and it 
 stands with its back to the Neva, in an open platz of immense 
 size. Right opposite to it runs the magnificent street called 
 Nevskoi Prospekt, the widest, and one of the longest in 
 Europe. It is about twice as broad as Regent Street, and in 
 the middle are two lines of iron rails, along which the omni- 
 busses run, on the same principle that Mr. Train tried unsuc- 
 cessfully to introduce in London. As the rails are level with 
 the rest of the ground, not the slightest inconvenience is felt 
 by the other traffic, and they are crossed by the droshkies 
 without any jolting or interruption. The houses on each side 
 of the street look low, owing to its immense breadth, and they 
 are built without any attempt at regularity, either in height 
 or architecture. The shops are not to compare in gaiety of 
 appearance with the shops of Regent Street or the Rue de 
 Rivoli, and their contents are not nearly so attractive. In the 
 jewellers' shops most of the ornaments are made of malachite, 
 but I was assured, on good authority, that it is not fashion- 
 able, and the Russian ladies think very little of it, as, indeed, 
 might be expected in a country where massive pillars aud 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 361 
 
 doors are formed of the same material. It is by no means 
 cheap at St. Petersburg or Moscow, and the kind most prized 
 is a pale green stone, with as few veins or marks in it as 
 possible. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the liveliness of this street in the 
 middle of the day, with its innumerable carriages dashing 
 backwards and forwards, from the humble hired droshky, with 
 its (too often) wretched horse and uncomfortable seat, to the 
 gay private droshky, to which a side horse is attached, can- 
 tering along with its neck and head arched outwards, just as 
 we may suppose the 'Ittitos 'jrapfiopos of the Homeric chariot 
 did. The drivers, or istvostchicks, as they are called, are all 
 dressed alike in a long flowing pelisse, with an embroidered 
 girdle, generally very dingy, and a high four-cornered cloth 
 cap on their heads. I soon learnt the necessary words to use 
 when driving in one of these vehicles, and they were not diffi- 
 cult to remember by giving to each of them a fancied resem- 
 blance to English. Thus pashol, push on ! means ' get along ! ' 
 scorrei, hurry-scurry ! ' go faster ! ' stoi, stay, ' stop ! ' 
 
 One consequence of the size of the street and squares is 
 the apparent paucity of the population. All along the English 
 Quay, on the south bank of the Neva, and in the vast open 
 space that extends from it past the Admiralty to the Winter 
 Palace and the Hermitage, the number of passengers was so 
 small as to give St. Petersburg the appearance of a deserted 
 city. Indeed, the only street in which there was life and 
 bustle was the Nevskoi Prospekt. At the eastern extremity 
 of the English Quay, in the square, ox plats, opposite the Izak 
 Church, stands the famous granite monolith on which is placed 
 the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. I confess I was 
 disappointed in the size of this block of stone. I had heard 
 so much about it, that I expected to find it a good deal 
 larger. It was larger no doubt when first brought to St. 
 Petersburg, but it was chipped and pared down to give it the 
 shape it now bears, which is an inclined slope, up which the 
 horse of the Czar is supposed to have galloped, and he stands 
 at the top with his fore feet raised high in the air, almost in 
 the attitude of rearing. 
 
 The Izak Church, which I have just mentioned, is the 
 principal, or at all events the most richly ornamented and 
 
362 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 most costly church in St. Petersburg. It is in the form of a 
 Greek cross, and crowned with a cupola, which, though really- 
 lofty, looks low, owing to the massive breadth and size of the 
 building. The bronze gates are beautifully sculptured in 
 bas-relief representing Scripture subjects. We ascended to 
 the top, and had a splendid view of the whole city and neigh- 
 bourhood. The interior of the church is very sombre, and 
 completely realizes the idea of a ' dim religious light' But 
 the eiconostasis, or screen before the altar, is a gorgeous mass 
 of gold, through which at intervals appear the painted heads 
 and hands of different saints who are the objects of devout 
 reverence and worship in Russia. The custom is to kiss the 
 picture, and I was surprised to see the dexterous mode in 
 which the women prostrated themselves to the ground, 
 touching the stone floor with their foreheads, as they saluted 
 some favourite saint. It would have puzzled an English lady 
 to perform the same feat in the days of crinoline. Externally 
 the Russians appear to be the most devout people in Europe, 
 and they certainly have the organ of reverence developed in 
 an extraordinary degree. You may see at all hours of the 
 day soldiers, droshky-drivers, butcher-boys, and, in fact, 
 persons of every class and grade, pulling off their hats and 
 saying their prayers before a picture of the Virgin or a saint 
 in the street. Confession, I believe, is made once a year, and 
 the oiificers have a compendious form of going through the 
 ceremony ; for on entering the room where the priest is seated 
 they throw a piece of money on the table, and say, ' My sins 
 are just the same as last year, Father.' 
 
 At first sight, the buildings in St. Petersburg seem to be 
 of stone ; but a little examination shows that it is nothing 
 but stucco, and as this becomes decayed and broken it gives 
 the houses a dilapidated appearance. Even the huge Winter 
 Palace, which, when occupied by the Imperial family, is said 
 to hold 7,000 persons, is only brick covered with plaster. 
 St. Petersburg is, in fact, a veneered city ; but this is far 
 pleasanter to the eye than the dirty, unwashed nakedness of 
 London ; and where stone cannot be got, it is, I think, quite 
 right to make the best imitation of it. In the Hermitage, 
 which is next to, and continuous with, the Winter Palace, 
 there is a remarkably fine collection of pictures, particularly 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 363 
 
 some Rembrandts and other celebrated masters of the Dutch 
 school. I had the good fortune to explore them in company 
 with Mr. Savill Lumley, the British charg^ d'affaires while I 
 was at St. Petersburg, who is himself such an accomplished 
 artist that some of his copies might well be taken for 
 originals. 
 
 Amongst thd lions of the capital must not be forgotten 
 the mammoth elephant, the skeleton of which stands in the 
 Museum of Natural History on the north side of the Neva. 
 It was discovered in Siberia, with enough flesh on it, as they 
 say, to give the wolves a meal ; but they must have found it 
 a terribly tough morsel. It is no doubt a very respectable 
 monster ; but size is a mere question of comparison, and 
 beside the antediluvian has been placed a huge elephant of 
 modern times, which is very nearly, if not quite, as large as 
 his prehistoric ancestor. The tusks seem to have grown 
 almost at right angles with the jaw ; but this is merely the 
 result of a mistake in setting up the skeleton, and the brute 
 is in all respects a fac-simile of the elephant of the present 
 day. We were told that another fossil skeleton has lately 
 been found in Siberia, and it is expected that it will be disin- 
 terred and removed to St. Petersburg. 
 
 We went one evening to a place called in French les 
 Eatix, situated on one of the numerous small islands with 
 which the Neva, as it flows from the north-east, is studded. 
 Here we found a troop of Swiss girls, or girls dressed in 
 Swiss costumes, who sang national songs ; and an English 
 gymnast, whose body seemed to be made of India-rubber, so 
 extraordinary were the knots and contortions into which he 
 twisted himself As we drove home, the view of the long 
 array of gas-lamps on the south bank of the Neva, stretching 
 away as. far as the eye could reach, had a very beautiful 
 effect. The Neva is lined on both sides with granite quays ; 
 and when the water reaches a certain height, a gun is fired to 
 give warning to the inhabitants, that they may be prepared 
 for a possible inundation. While we were at St. Petersburg 
 the water was within a few inches of the dreaded mark. The 
 weather, however, was fine during our stay, with the exception 
 of one day, which was cold and wet, and gave us some idea 
 of what the icy breath of winter must be there. I observed 
 
364 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 that then a great many people put on their bashiliks, a high- 
 peaked covering for the head, of strong cloth, which com- 
 pletely shelters the head and shoulders from the rain, and 
 keeps the wearer comfortably warm. 
 
 One of the most interesting things in the cjty is the 
 P'oundling Hospital, with its curious internal arrangements. 
 Like everything else in Russia, it is on a vast scale. We 
 were conducted over it by one of the intelligent medical men 
 attached to it, and obtained from him a good deal of informa- 
 tion. There were then not more than six hundred infants in 
 the building, but the number is often very largely increased. 
 The long suites of rooms have rows of cradles or little bed- 
 steads against the wall, with babies in them, attended by 
 nurses in a costume, the colour of which is different for each 
 story, and there are baths and ovens, and all kinds of 
 apparatus for the comfort and cleanliness of babydom. In 
 one cradle we saw what looked like a pair of wax dolls. 
 These were twins just arrived. The room in which they are 
 received is on the ground-floor. They are generally brought 
 in by one of the women who hang about the building outside, 
 on the watch for some hapless mother with her burden, who 
 hands it over to her, and, in most cases, never sees or hears 
 more of her offspring. If the child is illegitimate, I believe 
 that she never does see it again. If legitimate, it can be 
 claimed within a certain period, and care is taken to keep 
 such a register of the children, and so distinguish them, that 
 they can be given up to the right parent. But the usual 
 course is, to put them out to nurse in the country, amongst 
 the peasantry. As they grow up they are sent to school, and 
 if of the male sex to college — at least, such of them as show 
 aptitude for learning ; and, at the age of twenty-one, the 
 responsibility of the institution, which is, in fact, the govern- 
 ment, ceases, and they shift for themselves. Many of them 
 become the agricultural servants of the farmers in whose 
 houses they have been reared. There can be no doubt as 
 to the extreme kindness and liberality with which these 
 young unfortunates are treated, and so far it does honour to 
 the humanity of the Russian government ; but whether it 
 conduces to social morality is another question. One good 
 effect, however, is, that the temptation to commit the crime 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 365 
 
 of infanticide hardly exists, and, it is, I believe, extremely 
 rare. 
 
 I had been led to believe that a knowledge of French was 
 quite sufficient for all practical purposes in the chief towns of 
 Russia, but I soon found that this is a mistake. In the 
 principal shops there is generally, but by no means always, 
 some one who understands the language ; or, failing this, 
 some one who can speak German. But in the great majority 
 of cases it is Russian or nothing, and 'Franziski, nitt,' 
 'Angliski, nitt,' is the usual response to the traveller who 
 wants to make a purchase. The only way, then, is to resort 
 to pantomime, and carry on the conversation (.') by signs, and 
 I thought the Russian shopkeepers rather clever in under- 
 standing this sort of dumb show. In bargaining as to price 
 the best plan is to write down on a piece of paper what you 
 intend to give, and walk out of the shop if it is not accepted. 
 You will generally find yourself called back, and see the 
 shopkeeper beginning to wrap up the article for you. Still it 
 is a great inconvenience to travel in Russia without knowing 
 the language of the country. One day when we were 
 engaged to dine at the house of Mr. Michele, the English 
 Consul at St. Petersburg, we got into a droshky at our hotel 
 a few minutes before the hour ; and after the istvostchick had 
 received instructions from one of the waiters where he was to 
 go, and had nodded assent, we set off. By and by we found 
 ourselves in a part of the town where I felt sure the consul 
 did not live, and our istvostchick was obviously driving at 
 random in utter ignorance of his destination. But how to 
 direct him was the question. The stock of our vocabulary 
 was comprised in the words, Pashol, go on ! scorrci, drive 
 faster ! stoi, stay ! na pravo, to the right ! na leva, to the left ! 
 and these were not enough to enable us to steer the ship to 
 the right harbour. We made him therefore drive on until I 
 saw a French milliner's shop, where I alighted, and asked the 
 way to the consul's house, but Je ne sais pas was the only 
 answer I could get. We then proceeded through a labyrmth 
 of dirty streets until we came to a German wme-store, with 
 the words Wein Handlung written outside. Here I agam 
 got out and asked the same question, but got the same 
 unsatisfactory reply, Ich weiss nicht. It had now begun to 
 
366 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 rain, we had no umbrellas, and the dinner-hour was long 
 past. We next drove to an English bookseller's, where an 
 Irish dame de comptoir gave us a wrong direction ; and in the 
 end we were obliged to go back to our hotel ; and after 
 getting another droshky and a less stupid Jehu, we arrived at 
 Mr. Michele's hospitable house more than an hour after the 
 time at which we had been invited. 
 
 Smoking is not allowed in the streets of the Russian 
 towns, and this is, I think, a very proper regulation. Those 
 who do not smoke generally abhor the smell of tobacco, and 
 the extent to which the habit is carried on in the streets of 
 London and Paris and the German towns is most annoying 
 to the non-smoking part of the community, including, of 
 course, a full half of the population — namely, the women. 
 
 We left Petersburg for Moscow, on Saturday, by the 
 night express train, which performs the journey once a week 
 in twelve hours ; the other trains take eighteen or twenty 
 hours. Not an ounce of luggage is allowed free on this line, 
 except what the traveller can take with him in the carriage ; 
 and of course therefore the size and quantity of carpet-bags 
 and portmanteaus which are thus taken would astonish the 
 guards of an English railway. The carriages themselves are 
 most commodious, and we had arranged ourselves comfort- 
 ably for the night, when, after getting out at the first station 
 for some refreshments, we found on our return, to our dismay, 
 our sleeping-places occupied by a lady and her daughter with 
 a mountain of furs, cloaks, and shawls. They had quitted 
 their own compartment, and established themselves in our 
 quarters, because there was more room to lie down. Seeing 
 our surprise, the young lady said, in broken English, ' Pray, 
 shentlemen, give place — my moder— she very ill' Of course 
 to this appeal there could be but one answer, and we were 
 obliged to make the best we could of the remaining space. 
 They were Poles, and bent on a melancholy journey ; for a 
 son of the elder lady was dying in a distant part of Russia, 
 and they were hastening to meet him. On our return from 
 St. Petersburg to Berlin they were again our fellow travellers, 
 and I learnt something of their history. They bore the 
 proudly historic name of Jagellon, and the mother told me 
 that sixteen of her near relatives had either lost their lives or 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 367 
 
 been sent into exile during the late insurrection in Poland. 
 Her sister's husband was then working in the mines at 
 Tobolsk. She was, I believe, a widow ; and she said that 
 they were greatly reduced in fortune. As she spoke of 
 her past happiness, and her present misery, the poor lady 
 wept— 7 
 
 Nessun maggior dolore 
 
 Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
 Nella miseria. 
 
 While I was conversing with her in one of the carriages 
 divided into compartments by screens, as I have before 
 mentioned, she suddenly stopped, and said, in a very low 
 voice, ' On nous ^pie! I looked up, and saw a man's head 
 peeping over the top of the screen, with his eyes fixed 
 intently on us. I said, ' Je suis Anglais, etje tiai pas peur ; ' 
 to which she replied, with a kind of shudder, ' Mais vioi, je 
 suis Polonaise.' I then said, 'Notts poiivons le ddjoucr en 
 parlant Anglais' And she tried to talk in English, but it 
 was as difficult to follow her as if she had been Mrs. Lirriper. 
 I cannot say that the listener was a spy, but he certainly 
 looked like it, and the two ladies were terrified by his 
 presence. I may add that her sick son had died either just 
 before or after they had accomplished their long journey to 
 see him, and his body accompanied us in the train, for burial, 
 I suppose, at the family chateau. 
 
 The stations on the Petersburg and Moscow line are first- 
 rate, and so are all the arrangements. The refreshments are 
 abundant and excellent, and there is plenty of time allowed 
 to enjoy them, and, when necessary, to wash comfortably ; 
 so that the traveller is not obliged, as in England, to scald 
 his throat while he hastily gulps down his cup of tea or basin 
 of soup, and hears the bell ring while he is helping himself to 
 a slice of mutton. The line is single, but opens out into an 
 oval form as it approaches each station, which is placed in the 
 centre between the two lines of rails. One of my fellow 
 travellers told me that he was once going from Moscow to 
 Nijni Novogorod (where the line is similarly arranged), and 
 he got out and went into a station just as a train came up in 
 an opposite direction, and stopped at the other side. He 
 happened to go round a table, and then by mistake got into 
 
368 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the wrong train, nor did he discover his error until he was 
 approaching Moscow. 
 
 The spires and cupolas of this most interesting city, some 
 coloured in pale green, and others flashing in gilded bronze, 
 first appeared when we were at no great distance from the 
 station. In Clarke's 'Travels' he thus describes his first 
 impressions of the city at the beginning of the century : — 
 
 ' Moscow is in everything extraordinary ; as well in dis- 
 appointing expectation as in surpassing it ; in causing wonder 
 and derision, pleasure and regret. Let me conduct the reader 
 back with me again to the gate by which we entered, and 
 thence through the streets. Numerous spires glittering with 
 gold, amidst burnished domes and painted palaces, appear in 
 the midst of an open plain, for several versts before you reach 
 the gate. Having passed, you look about, and wonder what is 
 become of the city, or where you are ; and are ready to ask 
 once more, " How far is it to Moscow .'' " They will tell you 
 " This is Moscow ! " and you behold nothing but a wide and 
 scattered suburb, huts, gardens, pigsties, brick walls, churches, 
 dunghills, palaces, timber-yards, warehouses, and a refuse as it 
 were of materials sufficient to stock an empire with miserable 
 towns and miserable villages. One might imagine all the 
 states of Europe and Asia had sent a building, by way of 
 representative, to Moscow ; and under this impression the eye 
 is presented with deputies from all countries holding congress : 
 timber huts from regions beyond the Arctic ; plastered palaces 
 from Sweden and Denmark, not whitewashed since their arrival; 
 painted walls from the Tyrol ; mosques from Constantinople ; 
 Tartar temples from Bucharia ; pagodas, pavilions, and 
 verandas from China; cabarets from Spain; dungeons, prisons, 
 and public offices from France ; architectural ruins from 
 Rome ; terraces and trellises from Naples ; and warehouses 
 from Wapping. . . . Nor is the costume less various than 
 the aspect of the buildings : Greeks, Turks, Tartars, Cossacks, 
 Chinese, Muscovites, English, French, Italians, Poles, Germans, 
 all parade in the habits of their respective countries.' 
 
 We drove to the H6tel Duseaux, opposite to the Kitai 
 Gorod, or Chinese city — a town within a town — surrounded 
 by a very old battlemented wall, which might afford a defence 
 against Tartar arrows, but could not stand a moment against 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 369 
 
 artillery. In front of our windows was a small postern in the 
 wall, through which people were passing and repassing, like 
 bees at the door of a bee-hive. It was Sunday morning, 
 and we went to the English church, which we had some 
 •difficulty in finding, as it is situated in an out-of-the-way 
 street, and has externally no appearance of a church. It is 
 unfortunate that most English churches abroad have the same 
 ugly unattractive appearance, and this, combined with the 
 poverty of our ritual, as compared with the gorgeous cere- 
 monial of the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, must do 
 much to give foreigners a mean opinion of our religion. After 
 service we proceeded to the Kremlin, a walled triangular 
 space, on an elevation hardly to be called a hill, within which 
 are contained the Palace, the Treasury, the Ivan Vdiki, or 
 Tower of John, and several churches and other buildings. It 
 was, in former times, the citadel or fortress of Moscow, but it 
 has long been disused as a fortification, and I do not think 
 it can boast of a single cannon : at all events, I saw none. 
 The moat by which it is surrounded has been converted into 
 pleasant gardens, which form a favourite promenade for the 
 inhabitants. We entered by the Spass Vorota, or Holy Gate, 
 in passing which every one is obliged to take off his hat, to do 
 honour to a picture of unknown antiquity which hangs high 
 up on the wall on the inside of the doorway. A sentry stands 
 here, who would promptly enforce obedience to the custom, if 
 a stranger were incautious enough to violate it. The first 
 thing to do after entering the enclosure is to ascend the Ivan 
 Tower, and enjoy the noble view which it commands. At the 
 foot of the tower, outside, stands the gigantic monster of a 
 bell called Tzar Kolokol, King of Bells, which fell crashing 
 to the ground when the tower was burnt in 1737, and buried 
 itself deep in the soil. A piece was ' chipped ' out some six 
 feet in length, and broad in proportion ; and as the bell is 
 nov/ supported on masonry sunk in the ground, it forms an 
 aperture hke a doorv/ay. It is difficult to exaggerate the 
 beauty of the view from the top of the tower. All Moscow 
 lies beneath the' eye, spread out in picturesque confusion. It 
 is just the opposite of St. Petersburg, where everything is 
 regular and rectangular. What has been said of Grecian and 
 Gothic architecture may be said of these two cities : the one is 
 
 B B 
 
370 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 horizontal, limited, definite ; the other vertical, aspiring, 
 infinite. Green roofs, and glittering domes, and sky-pointing 
 spires are scattered round in countless profusion, and the 
 Moskva winds in a graceful cui-ve through the city towards 
 the Sparrow Hills, on the south-west, where Napoleon stood 
 when he caught his first sight of Moscow in 1812. A friend 
 of mine remarked, that he had been at Constantinople and 
 Cairo, and that Moscow was both combined, and superior to 
 both. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, for there is no 
 Bosphorus to gaze upon, but it shows the impression which a 
 view of the city from the Ivan Tower, upon a glorious day 
 such as we enjoyed, makes upon the traveller. Holy Moscow, 
 as the Russians delight to call it, is veiy irregularly built on 
 undulating ground, and I never was in a town where I had 
 so much difficulty in remembering my way. The streets are 
 badly paved, with deep kennels, and often planks of wood 
 crossing them, over which the droshkies bump in a way which 
 almost throws the passenger out of his seat. The fact is, 
 that the chief traffic is in winter, when the frozen snow makes 
 a hard and smooth road. In the Kitai Gorod are the two 
 great bazaars, called Gostinoi Dhor ; the one where mer- 
 chandise is sold wholesale, and the other containing retail 
 shops. These shops are little dens, placed on each side of the 
 arcades, and the whole reminded me of the arrangements at 
 Berne or Chester, except that the shops do not, as in those 
 towns, face the street, but line a vaulted corridor. The doors 
 are fastened at night by a piece of string with a leaden seal, 
 which in Russia has a mysterious sanctity, being under the 
 protection of some saint, and I believe that burglaries are 
 extremely rare. In one of the streets just inside the wall 
 there is the most veritable Rag Fair I ever saw. I walked 
 along it one morning before breakfast, through lines of ' old 
 clo's ' heaped upon the pavement, and had some difficulty in 
 making my way, owing to the importunity of the Jew dealers. 
 Remembering the conflagration of 1812, I had expected 
 to find in Moscow much more of the appearance of a newly- 
 built town than is really the case. The Kitai Gorod in great 
 part escaped the flames, and the Due de Fezensac tells us, in his 
 most interesting ' Souvenirs Militaires,' that Marshal Mortier, 
 who remained behind when Napoleon quitted Moscow, with 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 371 
 
 orders to blow up the Kremlin and burn down everything- 
 that remained, took care not to carry out fully the barbarous 
 command, but softened it {adoucit) in a manner that did 
 honour to his heart and character. But the rest of the city, 
 which was laid in ruins and has been rebuilt, has already an 
 antiquated look. This may perhaps be due to the character 
 of the architecture, which is a mixture of medijevalism and 
 orientalism. As I have mentioned the Due de Fezensac's 
 Memoirs, I will quote a passage in which he describes the 
 appearance and state of Moscow after the conflagration. 
 
 ' I traversed,' he says, ' at the head of my regiment, the 
 ruins of Moscow for the first time. It was a spectacle at once 
 both horrible and fantastic. Some houses seemed to have 
 been razed to the ground ; others retained some patches of 
 wall blackened by smoke ; ddbris of all kinds encumbered the 
 streets ; a fi-ightful smell of burning was exhaled on all sides. 
 From time to time a cottage, a church, a palace, appeared 
 standing in the midst of the great disaster. The churches 
 especially, by their domes of a thousand colours, by the rich- 
 ness and the variety of their construction, recalled to mind 
 the ancient opulence of Moscow. The greater part of the 
 inhabitants, driven away by our soldiers from the houses 
 which the fire had spared, had taken refuge there. These 
 miserable creatures, wandering like spectres in the midst of 
 the ruins, and covered with rags, had recourse to the vilest 
 expedients to prolong their wretched existence. Sometimes 
 they devoured in the midst of the gardens some vegetables 
 which were still found there ; sometimes they tore off strips 
 of flesh from dead animals in the middle of the streets ; they 
 were seen even to plunge into the river, and drag out of it 
 the grain which the Russians had thrown into it, and which 
 was in a state of fermentation. During our march the rattle 
 of the drums, and the sound of military music, rendered 
 the spectacle still more sad, by recalling the idea of a tri- 
 umph in the midst of the image of destruction, misery, and 
 death.' 
 
 Prince Gortchacow (not Gortshakoff, as the name is gene- 
 rally spelt in England)' had been kind enough to give us 
 letters of introduction to the civil and military governors of 
 Moscow ; and, after we had left our cards upon them, the 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 military governor called on us at our hotel, glittering in stars 
 and orders, and most courteously expressed his anxious desire 
 to be of use, saying that he placed himself ' a notre disposition! 
 Through his kindness we got access to the palace in the 
 Kremlin when the Emperor was there, and saw the interest- 
 ing ceremony of the Czar going to the Church of the As- 
 sumption, and saluting the relics there, as I shall afterwards 
 relate. We had joined a party of Englishmen whom we met 
 on our way from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and one of them, 
 Mr. Michell, attache 2X St. Petersburg, spoke Russian fluently, 
 and was of the greatest use to us. Thanks to him, we wit- 
 nessed a very amusing and curious sight. The head of the police 
 at Moscow, Count Somebody, whose name I have forgotten, 
 offered to exhibit the fire brigade equipped for immediate ser- 
 vice ; and we were very glad to have the opportunity of seeing 
 it, as the Russian fire-brigades are the most perfect establish- 
 ments of the kind in Europe. We all drove to the principal 
 station, where what are called the reserve engines and horses 
 are kept. We went into the stables, where there were about 
 eighty fine-looking horses ; when suddenly, M'ithout any wam- 
 ing, a bell rang, and the effect was electrical. In an instant 
 the horses snorted, sprang forward in their stalls, and trem- 
 bled with excitement. The courtyard swarmed with men 
 dressed in the costume of the fire brigade — grey suits and 
 helmets — who rushed, some to the horses, and some to the 
 engines. We hurried out of the stables, and, in exactly three , 
 minutes from the moment that the bell rang, fourteen or 
 fifteen fire-engines Avere out in the street, with the horses all 
 harnessed, and ready to start wherever the imaginary fire 
 might be indicated to be. They then set off in long proces- 
 sion, and came back at a rattling pace like a park of artilleiy, 
 which at a distance they very much resembled. I observed 
 that the last engine had upon it the words, in English So- 
 and-so's 'Sheffield Patent Engine ;' and I was told that the 
 Russians by no means liked this importation, as it seemed to 
 betoken a superiority in the foreign intruder. A telegraphic 
 message was then sent to two other stations ordering their 
 fire brigades to meet at a certain point, and we drove hastily 
 towards it. Here the sight was extremely interesting. We had 
 hardly reached the spot ^\■hen we saw, descending at a gallop 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 373 
 
 a long hill in the distance, two companies of the brigade one 
 
 with horses all of a grey, and the other with horses all of a 
 bay colour — and rapidly approaching us. At the same time 
 a third company came up from a different direction ; and the 
 three waited at the point where we stood, and then executed 
 several evolutions with the precision of cavalry. The horses 
 were remarkably fine and spirited animals, and this is easily 
 accounted for if the same law prevails at Moscow that prevails 
 at St. Petersburg. There, if any carriage upsets, or injures 
 another carriage, in the street, or if any passenger is knocked 
 down, the horses of the offending vehicle are seized and con- 
 fiscated to the use of the fire brigade. This had happened, a 
 few days before we reached St. Petersburg, with the carriage 
 of the Saxon Minister, in which his wife was driving. The 
 horses were laid hold of, and she was ordered to alight. This, 
 however, she refused to do, and the result was that she was 
 allowed to drive home, but the horses were claimed neverthe- 
 less. The affair was still pending when we left Russia. I 
 once saw a bodjj of the brigade dashing down the Nevskoi 
 Prospekt in the case of a real fire. It was preceded by a man 
 on horseback holding a flag to give warning to the passengers, 
 and clear the way. 
 
 One day I hired a droshky and drove some two miles to 
 the outskirts of the city on the south-west, as far as the 
 Devictchi Convent. Here I dismissed the carriage, and pro- 
 ceeded on foot through some low-lying alluvial ground along 
 a muddy road to the banks of the Moskva, where there was a 
 ferry-boat. I crossed the river, and ascended the bushy and 
 rather steep side of the Sparrow Hills, beneath which the 
 Moskva flows in a winding stream. When I got to the top I 
 found a sort of summer-house, with a balcony, and near it a 
 small cabaret, where I was able to procure some tea, and eggs, 
 and bread, but no butter or milk. I sat in the balcony and 
 enjoyed one of the most picturesque views I ever beheld. 
 Before and beneath me lay Moscow, 
 
 Hanging in the shadowy air. 
 Like a picture rich and rare. 
 
 The sun was shining brightly, and my eyes were quite dazzled 
 with the golden effulgence of gilded cupolas and spires, espe- 
 
374 jESSAFS critical AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 cially that of the new church (I forget the name) which has 
 been in the course of construction for years, as a memorial of the 
 deliverance of Russia from the French invasion in 1812, and 
 is not yet finished. I thought the sight more beautiful than 
 even that of Rome as seen across the Campagna from the 
 site of ancient Tusculum. Close to me were a pretty little 
 church and churchyard, where Napoleon stood when he sent 
 to demand the keys of the Kremlin, and received for answer 
 that General Kutusoff, at the head of the Russian army, had 
 got them in his pocket. The French blew up the church, but 
 it has been rebuilt. To the left, in the distance, lay the Im- 
 perial Palace, called Petrovski, and on the plain before it 
 shone the white tents of a large body of soldiers, not less I 
 believe than 80,000, who were encamped there. Far off on 
 each side stretched the immeasurable steppes, until they were 
 lost in the horizon. My only companion in the balcony was 
 a young Caucasian, who had been for \.\\o years a student at 
 the University of Moscow, and spoke French tolerably well. 
 He sighed for his native mountains, and seemed to like nothing 
 in Russia. In the course of conversation I asked him if the 
 women of the Caucasus were not very beautiful, and his answer 
 much amused me. ^ Mais oui,' he said ; ' 7inc fcvime Caucase 
 battrait cinq fcmmcs Riisscs ;' and he showed by the action of 
 his arms that he meant not that a single Caucasian lady would 
 carry off the palm of beauty, but would be more than a match 
 with her fists for five Russians of the same sex. In returning 
 to the town I stopped at the Devictchi Convent, and entered 
 by the great gate, not without some misgivings that I was a 
 trespasser, and might be summarily ejected. It is a vast en- 
 closure, surrounded by a high battlemented wall of red brick, 
 and the interior is something like one of the large colleges at 
 Cambridge or Oxford, with a church and dormitories, and 
 various other buildings, interspersed with gardens. There 
 were a few nuns in black dresses flitting about, and I met 
 some of them as they were returning from the town ; so that 
 it is clear they are not recluses. 
 
 One is struck in Russia with the immense number of 
 pigeons which are seen everywhere in the towns, and which 
 show no signs of fear. They are never eaten, being considered 
 a sacred bird, and symbols of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 We dined one evening at a restaurant called the Tritskoi, 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 375 
 
 or some such name, which has the reputation of being the best 
 in Moscow, and where Prince Alfred was entertained when he 
 visited the city. The exterior of the house is most forbidding 
 — hardly better than that of a pot-house — and the inside is 
 very different indeed from the restaurants and cafes of Paris. 
 We were a party of ten, all English, and under the guidance 
 of Mr. Michell we had ordered a dinner at which every dish 
 was to be Russian, and all the wines were to be Russian also. 
 The room into which we were ushered was shabby enough, 
 with a dirty carpet, and had an intolerably close smell until 
 we threw open the windows, and let in some fresh air. Before 
 dinner we had the usual zagoiiski of cheese, sardines, caviare, 
 and other things, assisted by liqueurs of which no less than 
 eleven bottles of different kinCs stood upon the sideboard, and 
 in the midst of them, proudly pre-eminent, was a bottle of 
 Old Tom. The waiters were all dressed in what looked like 
 long white chemises reaching down to their feet, with girdles 
 round their waists. I cannot pretend to recollect the various 
 dishes ; but we began with cold soup which would have been 
 excellent if it had been hot. Some of the party had proposed 
 that we should have sterlet, a. fish from the Volga, and the 
 most expensive in Russia ; but, on inquiry, we found that a 
 tureen of sterlet soup would cost us three rubles or nine shil- 
 lings a head extra, which would make the price of the soup 
 four pounds ten shillings ; and, as we were all going to Nijni 
 Novogorod, where we could get sterlet cheap, we agreed to 
 postpone the experiment. The wines were all from the Crimea, 
 and were called Champagne, Sauterne, and Claret. I cannot 
 say that they were equal to their French namesakes ; but 
 much better than I expected. 
 
 We went one night to the Hermitage, the Moscow 
 Cremorne, to hear gipsies sing, and see them dance. These 
 gipsies have good voices, and the melody of their song is wild 
 and sweet. It is mentioned in Murray's Handbook that 
 Catalani was so charmed with one of them that she took off a 
 costly shawl that had been given to her by some King or 
 Emperor, and threw it over the dark Bohemian's shoulders, 
 saying that site was the Queen of song. Certainly that gipsy 
 was not amongst the band that we heard. Their dances are 
 strange enough, accompanied with a shuddering of the whole 
 body, as if in a state of uncontrollable excitement. 
 
376 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 An incident occurred to me while I was watching them, 
 which I suppose could only have happened in Russia. I was 
 in a chair in front of the orchestra, when an attendant came 
 up to me and made signs that I must leave it. I demurred to 
 this, for there was no other seat vacant. He then tried to 
 force me from the chair, and I resisted, determined not to give 
 up my place, and wondering what he could mean. A friend 
 then told me that the man was saying that a Russian general 
 wanted a seat, and that I must give up mine to him. I still 
 refused, and I do not know what Vy-ould have been the result,- 
 if my friend, who spoke Russian, had not interfered and 
 pointed out a place where the general could find a seat, so 
 that I was allowed to remain without further molestation. I 
 am not sure that, if it had not been for this, I might not have 
 been again arrested, and taken to a Russian guard-house. 
 
 I shall not attempt to give a catalogue raisonne of the 
 sights of Moscow, but it may be interesting to mention our 
 visit to the Kremlin when the Emperor, who had arrived the 
 night before, was in the palace, and we accompanied him to 
 the Church of the Assumption to see him salute the relics 
 there — some of the holiest in Russia. Owing to the good 
 offices of the Chamberlain of the Palace, we were admitted 
 inside the building, which contains three of the finest and 
 most beautiful halls in the world. They are called respectively 
 the Halls of St. George, St. Michael, and St. Andrew. The 
 crowd outside waiting to see the Czar pass into the church 
 was immense. He had, however, first to go through the 
 ceremony of receiving a deputation of the citizens of Moscow, 
 who, according to ancient usage, invite him to eat bread with 
 them, and are, I believe, graciously asked to partake of a 
 banquet in return. We were placed in a gallery opposite the 
 long stairs down which the Emperor was to descend, and here 
 I had some conversation with a Russian lady to whom I was 
 introduced, and she told me that she had just returned from 
 a place some thousands of vcrsts to the south-east of Moscow, 
 where she had gone to drink mare's milk for an affection of 
 the chest, living there in the chateau of a Tartar chief. She 
 declared that the milk had completely cured her. When the 
 Emperor appeared at the head of the stairs there was a loud 
 Imrra, which we must remember was the genuine cty of the 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 377 
 
 Huns in their terrible onsets, and imported amongst ourselves 
 from the East. We descended as fast as we could to secure 
 an entrance into the church, but the crush was terrific. I never 
 was in such a jam. A lady who had hold of my arm was 
 carried away from me, and I was forced bodily into the 
 church, the doors of which were immediately afterwards shut. 
 It was crowded to excess. The Emperor and his sons stood 
 beside a pillar close to the great altar, and then began a ser- 
 vice which lasted for more than an hour, and was, to those, 
 like myself, who did not understand it, sufficiently tedious. Of 
 course, there was the usual bowing and genuflexion and fling- 
 ing of incense, but what struck me as most curious was the 
 constant dressing and undressing of a venerable sightless old 
 man, upon whom the most gorgeous vestments were put from 
 time to time. This was blind old Philaret, the Archbishop of 
 Moscow, upwards of eighty years of age, and said to be one 
 of the most learned men in Russia. It seemed almost a 
 mockerj'to array him in robes of dazzling gold, with a jewelled 
 tiara upon his head. When he gave the benediction. 
 
 Raising his sightless balls to Heaven, 
 
 it reminded me of the scene of the Abbot in ' Marmion.' 
 
 As soon as the mass was over, the Emperor and his sons 
 walked to the diff'erent chapels where the relics are kept, and 
 reverently knelt down before them. He is a stoutly built 
 man, and the lower part of his face is too thick, but his blue 
 eye is clear and intelligent. Afterwards there was a review, 
 which almost everybody but myself hurried off to see, but I 
 was too tired to care to go, and the heat was excessive. 
 
 When we were exploring the Church of the Assumption, a 
 few days before, there was nobody in it except a tall, fine- 
 looking priest, who was saying mass, and an attendant, who 
 seemed to act as a kind of clerk. Our Russian-speaking 
 friend said he wondered whether he would stop his prayers, and 
 show us the curiosities of his sacristy, where the paraphernalia 
 of the priests, and some very old missals thickly studded with 
 precious stones, are kept. I said, ' Certainly not ; ' but I was 
 mistaken. A few words were whispered into his ear, when he 
 closed the book, and led the way into the vestry, where, after 
 he had exhibited everything that was to be seen, we felt some 
 
378 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 difficulty about offering him a gratuity. However, on consult- 
 ing the attendant, whom I have called the clerk, he assured 
 us that it was quite en regie, and the venerable gentleman, 
 who had a magnificent flowing beard, pocketed the rubles. 
 
 Moscow is the town from which the exiles destined for 
 Siberia often set out on foot, upon their long and miserable 
 journey. Numbers of Poles implicated in the late insur- 
 rection were passing every week, and the English consul, 
 Mr. Roberts, told me tljat he lately saw a party of Polish 
 ladies driving droshkies through the streets of Moscow, on 
 their way to Siberia, and apparently very merry. He said, 
 
 also, that he had seen the Princess G , a daughter of one 
 
 of the noblest houses in Russia, walking on foot, with other 
 prisoners, on the same dreary journey. But her offence was 
 not political ; she was a convicted felon. It seems that there 
 was a shrine in Moscow ornamented with rich jewels, and 
 amongst others a very valuable diamond. The Princess was 
 observed to be constantly kissing the picture (I need not say 
 that there are no images in the Greek Church), and at last 
 she was detected in sucking out the diamond, which she got 
 into her mouth and stole. For this she was sentenced to 
 banishment in Siberia, where she now is. I met five or six 
 prisoners walking along in chains, and guarded \yy gendarmes: 
 several times people went up to them and put money into 
 their hands, which is, I suppose, allowed. At Genoa I have 
 seen convicts, whose red-striped caps showed that they had 
 committed murder, working in chains and smoking cigars ! 
 
 The shops at Moscow are inferior to those of St. Petersburg, 
 and make a very poor show. The best place to purchase 
 ornaments, and gilt salt-cellars, and spoons, which are very 
 pretty, is the Gostinoi Dhor, ^x-here also now and then may be 
 picked up cheap old silver drinking-cups ; but I cannot say 
 that any great bargains are to be got. Furs are xtxy dear 
 in Moscow, I suppose from the great demand. One that I 
 purchased, made of Siberian squirrel-skins, called Siberiski 
 Bielka, cost within a pound or ten shillings of what it would 
 have cost in London. The best hotels are those of Duseaux 
 and Billet and Billow. The last two are in the same street, 
 nearly opposite to each other ; but, notwithstanding tlie 
 similarity of name, which often causes mistakes, neither had 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 
 
 379 
 
 ' any connexion with the shop over the way.' On our return 
 to Moscow from Nijni Novogorod, we stayed at the Hotel 
 Billet, which is a pension, and kept by Madame Billet and her 
 sister, both of whom speak English perfectly. We found it 
 very clean and comfortable, but not so smart as the Hotel 
 Duseaux, where there is a most excellent restaurant. Amongst 
 the guests was a fiery-faced old Scotch Professor, who spoke 
 in the broadest accent, and amused us by the dry caustic 
 severity of his remarks. He had travelled far and wide over 
 Europe, and the result of his experience seemed to be that, 
 ' from Dan even to Beersheba, all is barren ! ' 
 
 The terminus of the railway that goes from Moscow to 
 Nijni Novogorod is in the outskirts of the city, and fully two 
 miles from the Hotel Duseaux. As we left the paved streets, 
 the road became very like a swamp, caused, I suppose, by the 
 amount of traffic upon it before it had been properly ' metalled.' 
 We left Moscow by the express train at night, and reached 
 Novogorod next morning at nine o'clock. Of course I could 
 only on this occasion see so much of the country as was visible 
 at the latter end of our journey after daybreak, but, in return- 
 ing, the view was reversed, for we left Novogorod at night 
 and had daylight for the Moscow end, so that I could form a 
 tolerable idea of the scenery through which we passed. It is 
 very much like that between St. Petersburg and Moscow — 
 forests of birch and fir, but with more of open country, 
 stretching away for immense distances, and most inviting for 
 a gallop. We passed several wooden villages, mere collec- 
 tions of log huts, which looked very miserable. Nijni Novo- 
 gorod stands at the point of confluence of the Oka and the 
 Volga, and the stream of the Oka was visible on our right 
 for a considerable distance before we reached our destination. 
 The ground is as flat as a billiard-table, and the line of railway 
 is almost mathematically straight, but the monotony of the 
 landscape is relieved by some high ground on the right bank 
 of the Oka, which rises to the dignity of a range of hills until 
 it is stopped by the Volga at the point where the Oka meets 
 that river ; and here, on the bluff or promontory that over- 
 looks the ' meeting of the waters,' the old Novogorod, or old 
 new town, is situated. Nijni means 'low,' and is properly 
 applied to a straggling suburb on the other or left bank of 
 
38o £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the Oka. It occupies part of the triangular space between the 
 two rivers— a dead sandy flat which is constantly overflowed 
 in winter. 
 
 When we reached the station, the first news we heard 
 from some friends who had preceded us the day before was 
 that there was not a bed to be got at Nijni Novogorod or the. 
 Fair. The officials employed at the station had very cour- 
 teously given up their rooms to our party ; and we found' 
 that six or seven of us could occupy a large chamber, perfectly 
 clean, but of which the whole furniture consisted in a single 
 table, without any sign of a bed. However, we were thankful 
 to get this, and the first thing I did was to jump into a 
 droshky, and drive with two friends along a deep sandy road 
 to the left bank of the Oka, where there was a wooden 
 bathing-house in the river belonging to the officers of the 
 railway, and where we had a most refreshing swim. After 
 breakfast we set out under the guidance of a Russian officer, 
 who had some duty connected with the Fair, to explore the 
 strange scene around us. 
 
 We had heard much beforehand of the devastation caused 
 by a fire amongst the wooden huts a short time previously, 
 and had been told that we should find half of the place burnt 
 down ; but this was a mistake. There had been a destructive 
 fire, but hardly a trace of it remained, for the huts had been 
 rapidly rebuilt, and business was going on everywhere as 
 briskly as usual. It is difficult to give a correct idea of the 
 extraordinary scene. In the middle of the Fair, reaching 
 down to the sandy bed of the Oka, the buildings are of brick, 
 and remain standing all the year ; but on both sides of these, 
 and behind them, is extemporised for two months a vast 
 wooden town where the East and the West commingle in 
 traffic, and property is bought and sold to the amount of 
 many millions sterling. The plain on which it stands is, as I 
 have said, a sandy level, and the streets, or rather roads, are 
 only such as nature affiDrds between the long i-ows of wooden 
 huts. In wet weather the mud must be like that which our 
 army had to encounter in the Crimea between Balaclava and 
 Sebastopol, but, as it was fine and dry when we were there, 
 the great enemy was the dust. Here is the most motley 
 crowd that congregates on the face of the earth. ' Parthians, 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 381 
 
 and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotam ia 
 and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia 
 and Pannphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about 
 Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes ; ' be- 
 sides Turks, and Tartars, and Persians, and Bokharans, and 
 Russians, and Frenchmen, and Germans, in every variety of 
 costume, with hats, and caps, and caftans, and turbans, and 
 fezzes — are busy buying and selling. The dress of the 
 Russians is thus described by George Tuberville, who accom- 
 panied Randolph, Ambassador to Muscovy, in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth : — 
 
 Tlieir garments be not gay, nor handsome to the eye ; 
 A cap aloft their heads they have, that standeth very hie, 
 Which Colpack they do term. They weare no raffles at all : 
 The best have collars set with perle, which they Rnbasco call. 
 Their shirts in Russie long, they worhe them do'VA-ne before. 
 And on the sleeves, with colour'd silks, tvro inches good and more. 
 
 There is a perfect Babel of languages, where, however, English 
 has the worst chance of being understood by any one you 
 may happen to meet. The shops greatly disappointed me. 
 There was hardly an article to be seen which one would care 
 to buy as a souvenir of the visit. Amongst the retail wares, 
 ironmongery was decidedly most in vogue, and one might 
 almost have fancied that Birmingham was transplanted to the 
 banks of the Volga, so great was the profusion of pots and 
 pans and kitchen utensils that everywhere met the eye. But 
 the samovar, the Russian tea-urn, was the favourite article. 
 It is sold in immense numbers to the Asiatics, and finds its 
 way all over the East. There was abundance of trumpery^ 
 such as one sees at a fair in England ; and a few pounds 
 would have been dearly spent in buying up the whole of many 
 of the stores. I made one purchase, which I Avas glad soon 
 to get rid of. I happened to be alone, and walked into a 
 fur-shop, thinking that I might possibly meet with a bargain. 
 The owners could speak nothing but ' Ruski,' of which I knew 
 nothing. However, by means of signs and gesticulations, I 
 explained what I wanted, and I made an investment in a 
 double-folded fur of dazzling whiteness— the skin of some 
 polar animal as I supposed— but certainly not of a bear, for it 
 was far too light to have been the covering of such a brute. 
 
382 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 In fact, I was puzzled to know what I had got, and only 
 hoped that I had drawn a prize. I threw the purchase over my 
 shoulder, and was nearly covered with it, exciting some 
 surprise and laughter as I walked along, even amongst the 
 oddly-dressed denizens of the Fair. When I reached the 
 railway station and threw down my extempore cloak, which 
 had almost smothered me, I found that my clothes were as 
 white as a miller's from the powder that had come off from the 
 fur ; and it turned oiit to have been made up of rabbit-skins, 
 neatly sewed together ! I need hardly say that I did not 
 bring it with me to England. 
 
 The wholesale merchandise is stored on the outskirts of the 
 Fair, along the right bank of the Volga. The most interest- 
 ing part of it is that where the tea is tested and sold. It is 
 all brought overland from China, partly by inland water-car- 
 riage, but for the greater part of the way on the backs of 
 horses. It is packed in bullock-skins, and each packet is 
 about the size of a third of a bale of American cotton. It 
 was curious to see the way in which the quality of the tea is 
 ascertained. A t&3.-smeller, who is a thorough expert in the 
 trade, sits on a bale, and before him a package is brought, 
 into which a man darts a long sharp iron instrument with a 
 hollow groove, and he draws out with it a sample of tea, just 
 as cheese is tasted in England. The tea-smeller then puts it 
 to his nose, and, if it is not approved of, it is put on one side 
 as unsaleable in the market. Of course a great deal of tea is 
 spilt in the process, but this is afterwards carefully swept 
 together and put into packages. I M'ent into one of the huts 
 where the tea-accounts are kept, and where the people con- 
 nected with the trade live during the Fair. It was most care- 
 fully matted, and dreadfully close. I never saw a place more 
 favourable for fleas, but, somehow or other, I escaped an 
 attack. 
 
 Next to the tea came the cotton from Bokhara and other 
 parts, and after that the iron, of ^\'hich there was an immense 
 quantity, and I was weary of walking along the warehouses 
 where it was stored. I observed some Tartars eating re- 
 markably white nice-looking bread, just like the fancy bread 
 of Paris ; and taking a piece from one of them, I ate it, and 
 found it most excellent, The right bank of the Volga, along 
 
VISIT TO RUSSIA AND THE GREAT FAIR. 383 
 
 which we were then strolh'ng, was crowded with vessels load- 
 ing and unloading their cargoes, and there were one or two 
 steamers which ply between Nijni Novogorod and Kazan and 
 Astrachan. Some of our party were very busy in acquiring 
 useful knowledge and filling their note-books with statistics of 
 the trade of the Fair. I confess that I was content with fill - 
 ing my eye with the strange scene around me, and I am afraid 
 that I showed a reprehensible indifference to figures, facts, and 
 calculations. But I hold with Wordsworth : — 
 
 Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
 
 AYhich of themselves oxir minds impress, — ■ 
 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness. 
 
 One of the most characteristic parts of the Fair is the long 
 wooden bridge across the Oka, which connects the alluvial 
 plain with Novogorod, perched aloft on the hill that overlooks 
 it. It is a scene of indescribable confusion. A swarm of 
 passengers is constantly traversing it w'l'Ca. carts, and waggons^ 
 and droshkies, and horses, and donkeys ; and men are flog- 
 ging, and swearing, and crowding, and jostling along it all 
 the day. A steep road leads up from the other side to Novo- 
 gorod, and near the top is an old lofty tower, which we 
 ascended, and had a magnificent view. We could not see to 
 the south-east, as the hill rises behind the tower and shuts 
 out the view in that direction ; but to the north-east and west 
 the eye wanders over an immense space perfectly flat, with. 
 the Volga winding on the right and the Oka on the left, each 
 hastening to meet the other beneath the walls of Novogorod. 
 Below, the Fair was spread out like a map, gay Avith flags 
 and teeming with life. It is a sight not to be forgotten, and 
 it will be long before I shall ' gaze upon its like again.' 
 
 We dined at the railway station in a private room — a party 
 of twelve — and here we tasted the famous sterlet, served up 
 in soup. I must say I thought the merits of this fish by no 
 means equal to its reputation. It is about the size of a large 
 trout, but not equal to it, me judicc, in flavour. Incredible 
 prices are given for it at St. Petersburg at those periods of 
 the year when It is difficult to obtain. 
 
 Not liking the idea of sleeping on the boards of the room 
 given up to us at the railway station, and as all idea of beds 
 
3S4 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE 
 
 anywhere at Nijni Novogorod was out of the question, we 
 determined to leave the Fair on the night of the day we 
 arrived there, and, short as our stay was, I do not think that 
 if we had spent a week there we should have been any the 
 wiser, or seen anything which would have repaid us for the 
 discomfort Ave must have put up with. In fact, I am bound 
 to confess, that upon the whole the Fair was disappointing, 
 and that by going farther we fared worse. 
 
 In conclusion I may say, that I know no countiy. where 
 the traveller finds more courtesy and civility or less annoy- 
 ance than in Russia. Thanks to our letters of introduc- 
 tion, we received every attention, and I can only speak of 
 it in terms of grateful acknowledgment. It would be ridi- 
 culous to attempt, after such a hasty visit as ours, to generalise 
 on the subject of customs and manners, for the chances are 
 that one might make the same kind of mistake as the English- 
 man who, on his first arrival in France, being waited upon by 
 a flaming chambermaid, put down in his pocket-book — ' Mem., 
 all the women in France have red hair.' But one must .speak 
 as one finds, and the result of my short experience is, that 
 there is no pleasanter country in which to make an autumn 
 tour than Russland. 
 
58s 
 
 A VISIT TO PORTLAND PRISON. 
 
 ' Good Words,' October, 1873. 
 
 We have visited many prisons at home and abroad. We 
 have been admitted by an order of the Prefect of the Seine 
 into the interior of La Force, in the Rue de la Roquette, in 
 Paris, where the worst malefactors are confined, and on the 
 outside of which the guillotine is erected when capital punish- 
 ment takes place. It was there that the atrocious criminal 
 Tropmann, after being sentenced to death for the murder of 
 the Kinck family, spent his last days. It seems to be well 
 conducted, and the convicts are all employed in some trade ; 
 but we were surprised to see a gang of them walking round 
 one of the yards, and smoking cigars. This they are allowed 
 to do for an hour in the afternoon. At Genoa, also, we saw 
 convicts in chains smoking cigars, and were told that all those 
 — and they were numerous — who wore red caps had com- 
 mitted murders. They were chiefly from Sardinia. We have 
 seen convicts at Moscow chained together, on their way to 
 Siberia ; and we have visited the well-known prison at Phila- 
 delphia, in the United States, where the separate and silent 
 system is enforced. The cells are there arranged in corridors, 
 which radiate from a common centre, so that a turnkey placed 
 in it can see the whole of them at once. We went into several' 
 of the cells, and were allowed to converse with the inmates, 
 who never leave them by day or night, and occupy themselves 
 with such work as they have taste or aptitude for. In one of 
 these cells there was a pretty little murderess, who had killed 
 her husband and her paramour, and had been sentenced to 
 twenty-three years' imprisonment. Of these, five only had 
 expired. She seemed to be very cheerful, and made no com- 
 plaint. Being a Roman Catholic, she had ornamented her 
 cell with a variety of religious pictures cut out of blue paper, 
 
 c c 
 
386 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and really had made it look quite gay. We asked her if she 
 was not wearying to get out, but she declared that she was 
 perfectly content to remain where she was. In another prison 
 in America we saw a late member of Congress, who was con- 
 victed of some fraud or other. But we do not intend to relate 
 in this article our experience of prisons in general, but to 
 confine our attention to the one we have last visited— the 
 well-known Government prison at Portland, which receives 
 able-bodied criminals who are strong enough to work in the 
 stone quarries, and have been sentenced to long periods of 
 penal servitude. 
 
 Armed with an order of admission from the Secretary of 
 State, we left Weymouth by the short railway which runs to 
 Portland, a distance of about four miles, passing along the 
 east side of that curious ridge of rounded pebbles called Chesil 
 Beach, which forms a natural breakwater against the sea that 
 rolls into West Bay, and is the western side of the narrow 
 isthmus that connects the bold promontory of Portland with 
 the main land. This beach runs westward for nine miles, and 
 varies in breadth from a half to a quarter of a mile. The 
 stones decrease gradually in size from east to west, until they 
 become, towards the western extremity, mere pebbles and 
 broken shingle. The village of Portland begins at the termi- 
 nus of the railway, and is a long, straggling collection of stone 
 houses, which creep up the steep ascent, crowned by the 
 fortress and the prison. We had to wind up and round the 
 promontory, keeping for some time to the right ; and, when 
 we reached the top, had still to walk for about a mile, until 
 we came to the gate of the great prison. Just outside is the 
 Governor's house, on the other side of the road — a well-built 
 residence of stone, with a pretty flower-garden. Under the 
 walls of the prison, and on the left side of the road as you 
 approach, are the houses of the Deputy-Governor, the clergy- 
 man, the Roman Catholic priest, and others — all built of 
 the stone which constitutes the whole promontoiy. 
 
 At the gate we presented our order of admission, and were 
 most courteously received by the warders, who told us to wait 
 until they took it to the Governor inside the gaol. Here we 
 were joined by Captain S., the Deputy-Governor, who kindly 
 consented to accompany us over the prison, and to whose 
 
VISIT TO PORTLAND PRISON. 387 
 
 attentions we feel much indebted. We may mention that 
 before we reached the gate, passing by a long stone wall on 
 the left, we saw a warder or sentry standing perched above 
 us, and tempted by curiosity we contrived to climb and peep 
 over the wall, when we saw below a large body of convicts at 
 work in one of the quarries. But we believe that in doing this 
 we transgressed rules, and had a significant warning from the 
 sentry that we must get down. On entering the prison, we 
 saw two petrified trees resting against the wall of a block of 
 buildings. These had been found in the quarries, and bore 
 testimony to the existence of pre-historic vegetation in the 
 now barren and desolate spot. The first building we explored, 
 containing numerous cells in two stories which communicate 
 by an open iron staircase, was of wood. It was erected many 
 years ago, and was intended to be only temporary ; but it has 
 not yet been replaced by stone, and we should think that 
 there must be some danger of fire. We need not, however, 
 say, that admirable precautions are taken, and no light is 
 allowed in any of the cells even at night, but they are lighted 
 by means of a little glass window looking into the corridor, 
 outside of which a jet of gas is kept burning for an hour after 
 it becomes dark. By means of this the inmate of the cell 
 is able to read until it is extinguished. We thought the cells 
 inconveniently small and narrow ; in fact, they are the smallest 
 we have ever seen, and we have no doubt that when this 
 wooden building is pulled down, more roomy accommodation 
 will be given to the wretched prisoners. The only books 
 allowed to be read are those of a religious character. We 
 think that this is a mistake, and may tend to defeat the object 
 which we suppose is in view, namely, the reformation of the 
 prisoner ; for the mind requires variety of food as much as the 
 body, and we fear that the toujours perdrix of even such a 
 subject as religion will in the end cause weariness and disgust. 
 In the French prison, to which we have alluded, there is a 
 good library of miscellaneous literature, and we found on 
 inquiry that the books most in request amongst the convicts 
 were French translations of the works of Sir Walter Scott. 
 The prisoners get meat only twice a week, on other days bread 
 and tea or chocolate, and we think gruel, but we are not sure. 
 They ajre entitled to a fixed weight of bread at each meal ; 
 
388 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and, to ensure fairness of supply, the loaves are weighed by 
 convicts, whose duty it is when any loaf is of insufficient weight 
 to stick on to it a small piece of bread by means of a wooden 
 skewer, and the scales then show whether it is of the right 
 weight. We saw convicts doing this and getting through the 
 task with remarkable rapidity. Formerly the allowance of 
 food was larger, and the prisoners had several unnecessary 
 indulgences, the consequence of which was, that many of them 
 reappeared after their discharge, sentenced for fresh crimes, 
 and they seemed to like to return to their old quarters. At 
 all events we were assured, that since the quantity of food has 
 been reduced, there have been fewer returns of old 'gaol- 
 birds ' to the dreary precincts of Portland Prison. There can 
 be little doubt that with the hard labour at the quarries and 
 the keen air of the lofty height, the appetite of the convicts is 
 great, and they could eat a good deal more than is provided 
 for them. We have read of plum-puddings and feasting and 
 theatricals in former days at Norfolk Island, but no such folly 
 is perm.itted at Portland. There is enough of wholesome food 
 to keep a man in health, and that is all. We visited the 
 kitchen when the evening tea was being prepared, and we 
 never saw anything more beautifully clean than the large and 
 lofty room. The copper boilers shone like burnished gold ; 
 one of them was full of tea, another of chocolate, getting ready 
 for next morning's breakfast, and the smell was most savoury 
 and inviting. 
 
 We passed the punishment cells, all of which were full. In 
 these cells those convicts are placed who are refractory and 
 break the rules of the prison by refusing to work, or committing 
 minor offences. They are shut up all day and night, except 
 for one hour, when each separately is allowed to walk round a 
 small gravelled court -yard for the sake of exercise. We believe 
 that the longest period of this kind of punishment is three 
 weeks. But besides these there are penal cells for a worse 
 class of offenders. Three prison directors come from London 
 and try the graver cases, and award the punishment. They 
 have the power to order a certain number of lashes to be 
 inflicted, and we saw the bright steel triangles to which the 
 prisoner is tied while undergoing the sentence. They were in 
 what is called the ' punishment room,' and it remindedusof a 
 
VISIT TO PORTLAND PRISON. 389 
 
 beautifully-kept harness-room. The convicts had arranged 
 the handcuffs and other instruments of coercion in symmetrical 
 order along the wall, and had formed with them the figure of 
 a crown and the letters V.R. in honour of Her Majesty. We 
 should have hardly expected to find the feeling of loyalty 
 displayed in such a place, but we suppose they consider 
 themselves emphatically the servants of the Crown — at all 
 events they are its slaves. When a man is flogged only a few 
 convicts, and those the worst disposed, are present, that they 
 may see what they have to expect if they offend in like 
 manner. Of course when any deadly crime has been committed 
 in the prison, such as murder or attempt at murder, the culprit 
 is tried at the assizes in the ordinary way, and may be sen- 
 tenced to be hanged or to be kept in penal servitude for such 
 time beyond the period of his original sentence as the judge 
 may after conviction order. 
 
 The great majority of the convicts work in the quarries, 
 and are literally ' hewers of stones,' if not ' drawers of water ; ' 
 and they not only hew the stone, but build with it. The great 
 breakwater which protects Weymouth Bay from the westerly 
 winds and waves is the work of their hands ; and they are 
 now employed in finishing the wonderfully strong fortress 
 called the Verne Fort, immediately contiguous to the prison, 
 which we believe will occupy convict labour for fully eight 
 years to come. But as everything that is necessary for this 
 kind of work is made within the walls of the gaol, many of 
 them are employed in the foundry or carpenter's shop. We 
 saw them hammering the red-hot iron and casting moulds, 
 and in fact distinguished from ordinary workmen only by the 
 prison dress of grey cloth marked by the broad arrow, red 
 caps and knickerbockers, and by their striped stockings, which 
 latter, as we shall see, have more than once been fatal to their 
 escape. We may mention that the prison is more than self- 
 supporting, and last year there was a net balance in its favour 
 of 3,000/., after all expenses were paid. No speaking is allowed 
 beyond such as is absolutely necessary, and while we were in 
 the prison we did not hear a convict utter a word. Knowing 
 what desperate characters were there, we felt perhaps slightly 
 uncomfortable as we passed amongst them, while they wielded 
 in their hands implements of which a single blow would cause 
 
390 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 instant death. The whole number of prisoners at Portland at 
 present is sixteen hundred, and there are two hundred warders 
 — that is, one warder to eight convicts. But there is close at 
 hand a garrison of four hundred soldiers ; and riflemen, with 
 loaded pieces, stand here and there on the upper ground that 
 looks down upon the yards and quarries ; so that resistance is 
 hopeless. We wished to see Roupell, whom we had last met 
 when he was a member of the House of Commons, and who is 
 now employed as a dresser in the hospital at Portland. But 
 the building was under repair, and we were told that a visit to 
 it would not be convenient ; so that we did not get a sight of 
 this remarkable criminal. The chapel is very large, and divided 
 into separate compartments by wooden divisions, in each of 
 which, during the service, sit one or two warders, on high 
 stools, so as to have the convicts immediately under their eye. 
 Formerly, the wives and families of the officers sat in the 
 gallery; but there has lately been built, outside the walls, a 
 very handsome church of stone, for the use of these and others. 
 The Government gave the stone and supplied the labour, the 
 cost of fitting up of the interior being defrayed by voluntary 
 subscriptions. Besides the large chapel we have described, 
 there is a Roman Catholic one, which is much smaller, but 
 large enough for the number of Roman Catholic prisoners, at 
 present about three hundred. It is served by a priest, of whom 
 we heard a most excellent account. We believe that his in- 
 fluence with one of the worst classes of convicts, namely, the 
 Irish who have migrated to England, is very great. 
 
 The Governor of the prison is Mr. Clifton, who held some 
 post of a similar kind formerly in Australia ; and, if we may 
 judge from his manner and conversation, we should consider 
 him admirably qualified for his office. He has a business 
 room in the centre of the gaol, and there he received us and 
 showed us several objects of interest. Amongst them are a 
 large handsomely bound Bible and Prayer-Book, presented by 
 the late Prince Consort as a memorial of a visit he paid to the 
 prison. He wrote his name in one of the volumes, with an 
 inscription in which he expressed the interest he felt in the 
 convicts, ' with hopes of their amendment.' The Governor 
 also showed us some little things that had been made sur- 
 reptitiously by prisoners. One was a small statuette of Samuel 
 
VISIT TO PORTLAND PRISON. 391 
 
 praying, executed with a common nail out of a piece of 
 granite, and exceedingly well done. Another prisoner had 
 picked up some pieces of metal, fused them together so as to 
 make a kind of as Corinthiuni, which looked just like gold, 
 and with this he had made some very neat breast-pins, with 
 horse-shoe tops, and a massive finger-ring. When they were 
 discovered and taken from him he said that he had intended, 
 when his term of sentence had expired, to sell them and 
 endeavour to obtain a livelihood by making similar articles. 
 We thought it a pity not to encourage such tasteful industry ; 
 but the rules of the prison are inflexibly strict, and no convict 
 is allowed to employ himself on any work that is not imposed 
 by the authorities of the gaol, and this is, as we have already 
 mentioned, the hard labour of hewing stones and building for- 
 tresses, walls, and houses. We saw also some excellent drawings 
 on slates, done by convicts. One of them was a very remark- 
 able head of an old prisoner, which artists have highly praised. 
 But omnis effusus labor — these slates were confiscated to the 
 State like the statuette and breast-pins. Some other objects 
 shown to us were of a different nature. These were deadly 
 weapons which had been used by convicts in attempting the 
 lives of the warders and officers, and they hung upon nails 
 by the side of a cupboard. One of them was a large heavy 
 flint stone wrapped in a pocket-handkerchief, which had been 
 twisted and knotted so as to form a long flexible handle, and a 
 more formidable, death-dealing instrument we never saw. It 
 had been found on a convict, and happily taken from him 
 before he had an opportunity of using it. But there were 
 heads and handles of pickaxes which had been flung at warders, 
 and one of them had narrowly missed the head of an officer 
 who told us the story, passing between him and a warder, as 
 they stood near a gang of convicts at work in the quarries. 
 Sometimes, of course, the motive for these deadly attacks is 
 revenge, but sometimes they are prompted by mere wish for 
 change from the dreadful monotony of prison life. A trial at 
 the assizes, with the certainty of increased punishment, is 
 welcomed 'as a relief. Not long ago a convict whose term of 
 sentence was just expiring, and who, therefore, would very 
 soon be a free man, attempted to kill one of the warders ; but 
 we forget what the consequences were to himself Another 
 
392 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 man lately flung the head of a pickaxe at an officer whom he 
 had never seen before, and, on being asked what possible ill- 
 will he could bear against a stranger, he replied that he did 
 not care who he was, but being tired of his life he was deter- 
 mined to kill somebody. This shows the dangers to which 
 the prison officials are exposed ; but they do their duty as 
 fearlessly and calmly as if they were in perfect security. When a 
 man has been convicted of any of these violent offences in pri- 
 son, and is sentenced to a longer period of servitude, he is not 
 sent back to Portland, but removed to a different gaol, which 
 is a wise and necessary precaution. Several Roman coins and 
 bits of pottery have been dug up in the quarries and were 
 shown to us by the Governor — proving that Portland in 
 ancient times had been occupied as a military station by the 
 conquerors of the world. 
 
 Taking leave of the Governor, we passed through a large 
 stone quarry, and met a gang of six hundred convicts 
 returning from the Verne Fort after the labours of the day 
 were over, who were going to their evening tea. They 
 marched in detachments, each of which was headed by a 
 warder carrying a truncheon in his hand, and as he passed 
 Captain S. he touched his hat and called out, ' All right ! 
 number 20 ' — ' All right ! number 26 ' — or whatever the 
 number might be of the men under his particular charge. 
 We watched the countenances of the convicts, and are bound 
 to say that by far the most of them were of a very repulsive 
 type and cast, just such as one sees in the dock at the 
 assizes, and obviously belonging to the criminal and dangerous 
 classes of society. And yet we believe that there were 
 amongst them at least one clergyman and one who had been 
 a lawyer. But very properly they were not pointed out to 
 us, and indeed not a word was spoken to or by any of us as 
 the mournful procession stalked past. Some of the men were 
 dressed in clothes one half of which was black and the other 
 half grey, and this costume betokened that they had been 
 guilty of assaults upon their warders. The proportion of the 
 convicts to the warders here was about twenty to one. and we 
 were thinking how soon the latter might be overpowered, 
 when on looking up we saw riflemen posted on platforms of 
 rock, who completely commanded the movements of the 
 
\ \ 
 
 VISIT TO PORTLAND PHISON. 393 
 
 party. And besides, it is almost impossible that there should 
 be any combination or conspiracy, as conversation is not 
 allowed, and it is certain that if a sudden assault were made 
 by a few desperate characters the majority would side with 
 the authorities from considerations of self-interest, if not a 
 higher motive. For every convict, even those who are 
 sentenced to penal servitude for life, may earn a remission of 
 the period of his imprisonment, by getting marks for good 
 conduct. Whatever the term may be, short of life-servitude, 
 he can get a fourth of his time remitted by a certain number 
 of marks, which are of course taken from him in a pro- 
 portionate rate for every offence he commits in prison. In 
 the case of life-servitude, we believe that he can work out his 
 pardon in twenty years, but we are not quite sure about this. 
 This is an admirable provision, and indeed without it we 
 were assured that it would be impossible to manage the 
 prison. To no man who enters these gloomy portals is the 
 terrible line of Dante applicable — 
 
 Voi cli' entrate lasciate ogni speranza. 
 
 Without hope such an existence would be simply intolerable, 
 and any kind of crimes would be committed, for death by the 
 hangman would by many be felt to be preferable to hopeless 
 misery. The great object is to hold out an inducement to 
 good conduct, and nothing serves this so effectually as the 
 consciousness that by behaving well the period of imprison- 
 ment will be shortened. 
 
 We believe that there have been very few cases of success- 
 ful escape, by which we mean escape without recapture. But 
 convicts have more than once contrived to get beyond the 
 walls of the gaol. Some years ago, before the railway that 
 connects Portland with Weymouth was in existence, the 
 communication with the main land was by means of a ferry. 
 A convict had got beyond the walls and managed to change 
 his dress, but when he presented himself at the ferry he had 
 not a farthing to pay his passage, and he therefore plunged 
 into the water to swim across. But his stockings betrayed 
 him. The ferryman saw them, and knew that he was an 
 escaped prisoner. He raised a hue and cry, and the man 
 was soon caught and taken back to his old quarters. Not 
 
394 T^SSJYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 very long ago another convict contrived to make a hole in the 
 floor of his cell, and found that there was beneath a disused 
 air-hole which communicated with an outer court. He 
 followed this, and eluding the observation of the warders, 
 climbed somehow over the wall and got clear oiif. He then 
 broke" into a dwelling-house and stole some food, and a 
 bottle of brandy, and cigars, and for a fortnight nothing was 
 heard of him. But all the time he remained in Portland, and 
 chose for his place of concealment, of all places in the world, 
 the crypt or vault beneath the high altar of a Roman Catholic 
 chapel, where he drank and smoked at night. He remained 
 there, lying perdti in the daytime, and when it grew dark, 
 prowled about for food. In the meantime, people remarked 
 the offensive odour that issued from the altar, but nobody 
 thought of examining the spot. At last, when the convict 
 had made all his preparations for his final escape, he deter- 
 mined to try and leave the promontory before daybreak in 
 the morning. But unfortunately he drank too much brandy, 
 and overslept himself It was just dawn when he started, 
 and as he was passing down the hill a boy who was digging 
 potatoes observed him pull up his trousers, and saw his 
 stockings. He gave the alarm, and the telegraph was set to 
 work. The man was taken in the course of the day as 
 he was walking on the road between Weymouth and Dor- 
 chester. 
 
 Leaving the quarry where we met the gang of convicts 
 returning from their work, we passed into the Verne Fort, 
 which, when finished, will be one of the largest and strongest 
 fortresses in Britain, with bomb-proof casements and covered 
 galleries, along which soldiers can march from one point to 
 another without being exposed to the fire of the enemy. It 
 has been built entirely by convict labour, and will require 
 some years yet to complete. The Royal arms over the 
 principal gateway, however, were executed by military 
 engineers, and it is a subject of some merriment that it is the 
 only part of the work that seems to have been badly done ; 
 for the hind feet of the lion and the unicorn rest upon 
 nothing, and the unhappy animals cling to the shield by 
 their tails ! 
 
 We wish that any one meditating a crime could first be 
 
VISIT TO PORTLAND PRISON. 395 
 
 taken to Portland and see the kind of life that is before him 
 there, if he enters it as a prisoner. Without companionship 
 in that host of felons — in silence and in misery — he must go 
 forth to do his daily toil with the pickaxe in his hand. The 
 dull monotonous sound of iron hammering against stone will 
 fall upon his ear day after day, week after week, month after 
 month, and year after year. He must labour like a brute 
 under the eye of his master from morn till eve, and when 
 darkness begins to fall he must march back to his lonely 
 cell — bare, and cold, and comfortless — tortured by the 
 thought of the crime he has committed, and the liberty he 
 has lost. How wearily the days must pass ! How he must 
 realise the bitterness of the curse, ' In the morning thou shalt 
 say, Would God it were even ! and at even thou shalt say, 
 Would God it were morning ! for the fear of thine heart 
 wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes 
 which thou shalt see.' 
 
 Quam vellent asthere in alto 
 
 Pauperiemque pati, et duros perferre labores ! 
 
 Here, as convicted felons, have clerygmen, and lawyers, 
 and- bankers, and merchants herded with burglars and 
 murderers, and men whose whole existence has been a life 
 of crime. No difference is made amongst them — all distinc- 
 tion of previous rank and station is as much lost as in the 
 grave ; the convicts are known by their numbers and not by 
 their names, and when the gates close upon them, their past 
 lives are buried in oblivion. They have outraged society, and 
 society has exacted a terrible retribution. 
 
 In conclusion, we will only say that we never visited a 
 prison more exquisitely clean and orderly than Portland, nor 
 one where the necessary discipline seems to be more strictly 
 kept with as much kindness as is compatible with the stern 
 demands of duty. 
 
396 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 THREE DA YS IN SARK. 
 
 'Fraser's Magazine,' January, 1874. 
 
 Amongst the Channel Islands by far the most interesting to 
 our mind is Sark. No one who looks from the sea on its 
 rock-bound coast, and sees before him only a lofty and 
 apparently a desolate platform, with a solitary windmill on 
 the highest point of the island, can form any idea of its hidden 
 beauties, its retired dells, its exquisite coves and bays, its 
 caves, its tunnels, and its creux. A flying visit in an excursion 
 steamer, with a crowd of tourists, when the traveller goes and 
 returns on the same day, and devotes part of it to the necessary 
 demands of lunch or dinner, is not the way to see Sark. She 
 conceals her charms like a coy beauty, and reveals them only 
 to those who will take the trouble to explore them. We had 
 often heard of the wonders of her caves, and the treasures of 
 marine zoology to be found in their deep recesses ; and being 
 at Guernsey we determined to avail ourselves of the oppor- 
 tunity of quietly and leisurely devoting two or three days to 
 a ramble over the little islet. 
 
 Sark lies opposite to St. Peter's Port, the capital of Guern- 
 sey, due east, and is distant about six miles. Midway between 
 them are the two islands of Herm and Jethou, divided by a 
 dangerous channel, which it is only safe to take in fine 
 weather and with a flowing tide. Herm is a mile and a half 
 in length, and half a mile in breadth, abounding in rabbits, 
 and famous for its beach of shells on the north side, which 
 might rival the shelly shore of Ascension Island in the Atlan- 
 tic. We saw before we left London an advertisement that 
 Herm was to be sold by public auction, but we believe that it 
 was bought in, and has since been disposed of by private 
 contract. The owner will have a good house there, and live 
 the lord of a population amounting to twenty or thirty souls. 
 
THREE DA YS IN SARK. 357 
 
 Jethou is still smaller — a mere molehill of an island— in which 
 we think there is only one house ; and there is neither pier 
 nor harbour, so that landing is always difficult, and sometimes 
 dangerous. Like Herm, -Jethou swarms with rabbits. A 
 boatman told us that last year he made a contract with the 
 owner of Herm for rabbits at \od. each, and took 7,000 over 
 to Guernsey, where he sold them for \\d. 2. piece, so that he 
 cleared about 30/. by the bargain. 
 
 We crossed from Guernsey to Sark in an open two-masted 
 boat, belonging to William Purday, whose name we gladly re- 
 commend as that of an excellent seaman and thoroughly good 
 fellow. We had a fair breeze, but hardly enough of it, and 
 taking the channel between Herm and Jethou made the 
 passage to Sark in an hour and a half We had to give a 
 wide berth to the ugly rocks that guard the north end of the 
 island, opposite those wonderful caves called Les Boutiques, 
 of which we shall say more by-and-by. We landed at a place 
 called Eperqueries, on the north-east side, having to get into 
 a cockle-shell of a boat, for our two-masted lugger was too 
 large to venture amongst the hidden rocks. Here a rough 
 path leads winding up the cliff, and we reached a heathy 
 summit, which reminded us of many parts of the west coast of 
 Scotland, and then struck into the main road, which runs in a 
 straight line on the top from north to south, the length of the 
 whole island being little more than three miles, and the 
 average breadth about a mile. There is not much to attract 
 the eye on the surface. The fields and hedges and trees are 
 very like those in Guernsey and Jersey, and there are the 
 same peculiarities, namely that the fields have no gates, but only 
 trunks of trees or logs of wood to bar the passage ; and the 
 cattle are always tethered by a rope fastened to a wooden or 
 iron pin, which is driven into the ground by a mallet, and 
 forms quite an occupation for some of the maidens of the 
 island. We may mention in passing that the breed of cows 
 is the same as in Alderney and Jersey, and they are invariably 
 distinguished from those of Guernsey by their black noses, 
 while those of Guernsey are white. There is a penalty of 
 SOO/. for bringing any foreign breed into Jersey, and we sup- 
 pose the same prohibition exists in Alderney ; but we did 
 not visit that island, which it is not very easy to get away 
 
398 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 from if the weather becomes rough. We followed the Sark 
 road, and went past the church and gate of the Seigneurie, of 
 which we will speak hereafter. We then turned to the left 
 and descended into a wooded dell, where lies snugly ensconced 
 amongst the trees a most comfortable little inn, called by the 
 more ambitious name of ' Gavey's Dixcart Hotel' There 
 we took up our quarters and lived in clean rooms and on ex- 
 cellent fare. The charges were very moderate, including bed, 
 breakfast, luncheon, and a table d'hote dinner at 6 o'clock. 
 There is one other inn in the island, called Bel Air, kept by 
 Vaudin, which looked very clean, and is well spoken of, but it 
 is not so prettily situated as the Dixcart Hotel. A post office 
 lugger-boat sails every morning early for Guernsey, and 
 brings the letters in the afternoon, together with supplies of 
 provisions, so that there is always plenty to be had ; and we 
 need not say that there is abundance of fish. We saw 
 amongst the books on the table in the sitting-room a Greek 
 Odyssey, with an English prose translation, from which we 
 correctly inferred that some collegians had chosen this place 
 for their vacation reading-party to study in. There is 
 a charming walk down Baker's Valley to Dixcart Bay, with 
 its stony beach walled in by lofty rocks. A large rock jutting 
 into the sea, at high water shuts out the view on the right ; 
 but through this rock there is a tunnel formed by nature, and 
 passing through it we come to another little cove, which is 
 quite inaccessible from above, as the cliffs tower up almost 
 perpendicularly. We have sat on the pebbly beach of Dix- 
 cart Bay by moonlight, and, had we been poetical, we know 
 no scene more likely to have inspired our muse. Happily, 
 however, the only afflatus we felt was the soft breeze from the 
 sea, and we were almost lulled to sleep by the sound of the 
 waves rolling lazily along the shore — 
 
 Raking the rounded flints which ages past 
 Rolled by their rage, and shall for ages last. 
 
 Sark is divided into two parts. Great and Little Sark, and 
 the connecting link between them is one of the wonders of 
 the Island. It is called La Couple, and is a curious freak of 
 nature. The sea on the eastern and western sides has here 
 eaten into the land, so as to leave only a mere wall of earth 
 
THREE DAYS IN SARK. 399 
 
 and rock between the two divisions of the island, and this 
 wall, which is broader at the base, narrows towards the top 
 until there is a space left to walk upon which is just broad 
 enough to admit a country cart, with no wall or balustrade to 
 protect the traveller ; and on each side there is a precipitous 
 descent of rock for more than 100 feet, with the sea roaring 
 like a hungry tiger for its prey. Not long ago the passage 
 was still narrower, and not more than three or four feet broad ; 
 but the top has either been cut down or has crumbled away, 
 so as to leave the width we have mentioned. Even now we 
 should not like to cross it in a gale of wind ; and a traveller 
 we met at Sark told us that when he did so he crawled on his 
 hands and knees. It is about 450 feet long. A story is told 
 of a man who lived in Little Sark, and used, when he visited 
 his friends in the northern or larger division of the island, to 
 •indulge in drinking until his legs became rather shaky. 
 Knowing that he must pass along the Coupee, and fearful of 
 his equilibrium, he was in the habit of trying first the experi- 
 ment of walking backwards and forwards along a rusty old 
 cannon which lay on the ground, and if he found himself 
 steady enough to accomplish this feat without falling, he 
 ventured to set off on his passage across the Coupee. Not 
 very long ago another man, who was carrying a load of straw 
 over it on a windy night, was blown away, and of course 
 dashed to pieces. Even with its present increased breadth, 
 we think it requires some little nerve to cross this natural 
 bridge where there is no parapet, and hear the sea thunder- 
 ing below. In Little Sark, at the southern extremity, on a 
 declivity sloping down to the rocky shore, are Ics Mines, the 
 monument of a mining failure some years ago. A vein^ of 
 silver had been discovered in the rocks by a man shooting 
 rabbits, and a company was formed to work it ; but, what with 
 the difficulty of drainage and other causes, the speculation was 
 abandoned after a gallery had been driven three hundred feet 
 under the sea, and ' Sark's Hope' has since been considered 
 hopeless It was melancholy to see the roofless huts and 
 ruined walls that had sheltered the miners, and one shuddered 
 to look down a great yawning chasm which we suppose had 
 been a shaft, although it was almost too irregular m shape to 
 be the work of man. Not far off there is a curious shaft of 
 
400 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Nature's own forming called lePot, which is by no means easy 
 of access. You come to the side of the cliff and see what 
 by courtesy is called a path, descending in zig-zag windings 
 through heath and bracken and brushwood until it dwindles 
 to a mere thread, where a slip would be fatal. But the worst 
 is to follow. The path suddenly becomes exceedingly steep, 
 and we had some difficulty in getting down until we came to 
 a vast round hole, separated from the shore by walls of rock, 
 , at the bottom of which is an arched tunnel, through which 
 the sea rushes at high water, and fills a great part of the hole. 
 When a storm is raging, it must be a grand sight to see the 
 water seething and boiling in this gigantic pot. At low water 
 it is possible to scramble down to the bottom ; but we did 
 not venture, for we thought we had sufficiently risked life and 
 limb in getting to the edge and looking down. But this is 
 nothing of a pot compared with another called Lc Creux 
 Terrible, which seems to be fitly named ; but we believe its 
 proper appellation is Le Crciix Derrible—derrible being an 
 old French word for a fallen mass of rock, which has very 
 naturally been corrupted into terrible. This creux is in a field 
 on the east side of Sark close to the shore, and absolutely 
 without any kind of fence or barrier. It is a huge natural 
 shaft, or chimney, of immense size, and perfectly round, open- 
 ing out on a sloping declivity, with sides of vertical naked 
 rock, and from the most elevated part of the rim fully 150 feet 
 deep. It made one feel giddy to look down. At the bottom 
 there are two tunnels communicatingwiththe shore, and through 
 them the sea rushes when the tide flows. No power on earth 
 could save any one who was caught there at such a time. The 
 spray is tossed up almost to the surface when the wind is high, 
 and we can hardly conceive a more frightful sight than to 
 watch the water boiling and roaring in the black crater. 
 Instead of the fury of fire, there is the fury of water ; and 
 instead of jets of flame, white foam and spray. It is not very 
 easy to understand how it has been formed, but most probably 
 there has been some sinking at the surface, and the sea, 
 breaking in through the tunnels below, has gradually under- 
 mined the earth, and at last swept it away, leaving only the 
 rocky sides that enclosed it. 
 
 On the west side of the island, facing Guernsey, there is 
 
THREE DAYS IN SAUK. 401 
 
 some grand scenery, or rather we should say that the whole 
 of it is grand. There is the little island of Brechou or Isle des 
 Marchands, separated from the main land of Sark by a narrow 
 strait about eighty yards wide, called les Goidiots, where the 
 tide runs furiously. The beetling rocks on each side frown 
 upon each other, and at a little distance seem to close, and 
 yet an English frigate in the French Revolutionary War, once 
 when chased by two French ships of superior strength, passed 
 safely through it. Her yards are said to have grazed the rocks 
 on each side. The captain had got hold of a fisherman, and 
 told him he would drown him if he did not pilot the vessel 
 through. Here also a large East-Indiaman was dashed to 
 pieces some years ago ; but indeed the name Isle des Mar- 
 chands is supposed to have been given to the rock from the 
 number of merchantmen that have been wrecked there. Oppo- 
 site to it are the Gouliot caves, consisting of two vaulted 
 chambers, out of which a number of fissures open : through 
 these the sea flows when the tide rises, and they can be only 
 visited at low water. In one cave where we took shelter from 
 the rain the walls were covered with sea-anemones, black, 
 green, and blue ; they cling to the rock with wonderful tenacity, 
 soft and pulpy to the touch, and were just like half-marbles or 
 breast-pins studding the sides of the cave in countless profu- 
 sion. We never before were in such a perfect abode of the 
 Nereids, and for aught we know those sea-nymphs use the 
 anemones as jewels for their hair. 
 
 To the south of these caves is the lovely Havre de Gosselin, 
 a deeply indented cove, with no semblance of a beach, where 
 the fishermen dry their nets and place their lobster baskets on 
 the rocks. To get down to it is not difficult nor dangerous 
 by means of a zig-zag path, and the exquisite view well repays 
 the trouble of the descent and the fatigue of the ascent. On the 
 heights above stands an obelisk of granite v/hich commemorates 
 a sad catastrophe. One evening in October, 1S68, a party, 
 consisting of Mr. Jeremiah Pilcher, two brothers named 
 Giffard, and Dr. Gatehouse, accompanied by a boatman named 
 Renouf, set oft'" in an open boat to cross to Guernsey. They 
 were v/'arned that it was too late to start, and the sea was 
 dangerous, but they determined to venture. None of them 
 were afterwards seen alive, nor was it known for some days 
 
 v> D 
 
402 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 that they had perished, for it was supposed that they had 
 reached Guernsey in safety. The boat was found on the 
 coast of France, and the body of Mr. Pilcher at the Isle of 
 Wight ; another body was cast ashore at Herm, but the three 
 others were never found. The obeUsk was erected by the 
 widow of Mr. Pilcher, and it bears a touching inscription, 
 with the names of the sufferers. In March, 1839, the then 
 Seigneur of Sark, Mr. Le Pelley, a Jurat of the Court of Guern- 
 sey, was drowned, with his boat's crew, in sight of the in- 
 habitants off the shore, just after he had embarked for 
 Guernsey, being caught by a gale of wind. The present 
 clergyman of the island witnessed the catastrophe, and we 
 were assured that he has never ventured on the water since. 
 
 A little to the north of the Havre de Gosselin is the Moie 
 de Mouton, boldly jutting out into the sea, and separated 
 from the main land by a narrow fissure, cleft as it were by a 
 hatchet. The remains of a wall on each side of the abyss 
 show that this mass of rock once formed part of the island, 
 but by some convulsion of nature it has been torn off, and the 
 sea rages between. There is a cave in it which is only accessible 
 by a boat, and we did not visit it. On this rock, as there is 
 some scanty herbage at the top, a few sheep are landed, and 
 when the owner wants mutton he goes out in a boat and fires 
 at one of the sheep, which if killed, rolls down the cliff into 
 the sea and is picked up by the boat. Still farther to the 
 north stand les Autelcts, the Altars, two grand fantastic rocks, 
 fit shrines for the worship of Neptune or ^olus, or whoever 
 may be the King of Storms. A guide-book assures us that 
 ' at their base in chaotic confusion lie gigantic blocks of every 
 shape and hue, their surface rounded by the action of the 
 waves ; and between them are pools tinged with red, green, 
 and purple algoe, and alive with mollusca and Crustacea.' They 
 are the favourite haunts of the sea-gulls, more so than the 
 ' Sea-GuU Chapel,' on the east coast, which has the exact ap- 
 pearance of a low gable roof It is hollow and can be visited 
 at low water, but when the tide rises the water fills its dark 
 recess, and no tourist or traveller can pay his orisons there. 
 
 We are now going to speak of Ics Boutiques, of which, as 
 we carefully explored them, we shall give a more detailed 
 description. Our party consisted of five — ourselves, Mr. and 
 
THREE DA YS IN SARK. 403 
 
 Mrs. B., their youthful son, and a capital guide named De 
 Carteret, an historical name in the Channel Islands, and a man 
 whom we can most conscientiously recommend to any one who 
 wants a cicerone in Sark. The caves called the Boutiques lie 
 at the extreme north-west point of the island, and to get to 
 them, to say nothing of getting through them, is a work of no 
 small difficulty. After walking over a barren upland at the 
 top of the cliffs we came suddenly to a turn on the left, where 
 we were told we must descend. But where, and how .-' All we 
 could see before us was an almost perpendicular descent with 
 the sea at the bottom. However, there was the sign of a path, 
 but the weather had been wet and the stones were slippery, 
 and altogether it seemed to be a very mauvais pas. When 
 half way down, Mrs. B., although one of the most dauntless 
 climbers we ever knew, had enough of it and declined to go 
 farther ; we therefore left her to await our return, and, carefully 
 picking our way, at last reached the bottom with the sea at 
 our feet and lofty cliffs rising perpendicularly above us on each 
 side. It seemed to be a complete trap — and where were the 
 caves .' On looking up towards the right we saw some twenty 
 feet above us a large dark hole, and this was the entrance. To 
 scramble up was no easy task, and when we reached the 
 mouth we looked down into a dark abyss, in which were 
 
 Crags, rocks, and knolls confusedly hurled, 
 Like fragments of an earlier world. 
 
 To get up, we have said, was no easy task, but it was almost 
 as difficult to get down. And then we had to pick our way 
 amongst the rocks and boulders in a state of twilight darkness, 
 until we came to a mere fissure, which our guide told us led to 
 the cave ! So that we were only in the vestibule of the rock- 
 hewn temple which we had come to visit. We ought to mention 
 that in addition to ourselves we had with us a dog from the 
 inn— half spaniel, half retriever, who answered to the name of 
 Coie, and who obviously had never entered such an infernal 
 place before, and by his howls and perplexity caused us con- 
 siderable amusement. On we went, blundering through the 
 dark fissure until we came to a cross tunnel communicatmg 
 on the left hand with the sea, and by means of this we gamed 
 a little more light. Right before us yawned a lofty cavern, 
 
404 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 which Is fully more than a hundred yards long, and at the 
 extremity we could see the glimmering of day. This was 
 the cavern — the veritable shop which gives Ics Boutiques their 
 name, and if the pun may be excused we never intend to go 
 ' shopping ' there again. Our guide struck a light, and held a 
 tallow candle in his hand ; but the wind soon extinguished it, 
 and we had to prowl forward in the darkness. Huge stones, 
 or rather rocks, constantly blocked the road, and round or 
 over these we were obliged to grope our way, sometimes 
 splashing into water left by the tide over shoe tops, or half way 
 up to the knees, and expecting every moment to fall headlong 
 into some deep pool or nasty hole. In the meantim.e Coie 
 was howling piteously in our rear, and more than once our 
 guide had to go back to lift the poor brute over some opposing 
 obstacle which he had vainly endeavoured to climb. At last 
 we reached the extremity of the tunnel through which we had 
 been floundering, and had the open sea before us, with appa- 
 rently no possible means of climbing up from the mouth of 
 our prison, for the cliffs rose almost vertically on each side, 
 and the distance between them was only a few feet. Here was 
 a dilemma ! If we waited for the rising of the tide we should 
 infallibly be drowned, for the sea rushes like a race-horse 
 through the cave we had just traversed, and we had no in- 
 clination to turn back and encounter the same difficulties 
 again. Our guide told us that we coidd get up the cliff, and 
 he went forward to try and find the least perilous ascent, com- 
 forting us with the assurance that if we did fall, in the way he 
 was about to show us, v.e should not be so much injured as if 
 we tried to climb by what seemed to be a shorter scramble. 
 He disappeared for a short time behind a rock, and then called 
 upon us to follow him. We then began to cling to ledges of 
 rock, and put our feet on projecting knobs, and sometimes 
 lying flat on the shelving surface, wriggled forward like toads 
 in a slanting direction upwards, until with infinite difficulty we 
 clambered to some sloping ground which led gradually to the 
 summit. We think a cat might have been proud of the feat, 
 and poor Coie would certainly have failed if he had not been 
 pulled and hauled and shoved, piteously howling all the while. 
 We sliall never forget liow, as we emerged from the ca^•e, and 
 
THREE DA YS IN SAUK. 405 
 
 he came following us, his eyes glared like demon lights in the 
 darkness, as if they belonged to the Evil One hi'.nself. 
 
 A vei-y different scene is the Seigneurie in the middle of ' 
 the Island, the residence of the Rev. Mr. Collings, the Lord 
 of Sark. We walked through the grounds on our way from 
 the Gouliot caves, and were charmed with their beauty. It 
 is quite a little Paradise, lying like an oasis amidst flowers 
 and plants and trees, which grow there in luxuriant profusion. 
 The house is substantially built of stone in the Tudor style 
 and covered with creepers. We never saw lovelier nor better 
 kept gardens. The walls were loaded with fruit, peaches and 
 nectarines and plums, and the parterres were blazing with 
 geraniums and myrtles and fuchsias. There is an old fish- 
 pond which once belonged to an ancient monastery, and shady 
 walks lead down to the coast on the west. On a lawn near 
 the house there is a miniature battery of guns, and amongst 
 the r a smiall brass cannon which bears the inscription Don dc 
 la Reyne Elizabeth an Seigneur dc Sercq, A.D. 1573. Certainly, 
 whoever wished for a retreat from the world's noise and tur- 
 moil could not choose a more delightful spot. We heard 
 that it may be bought, together with the whole island, but 
 cannot vouch for the truth of this. 
 
 Although we landed at the Eperqueries, which means 
 ' Harvest of dried fish,' this is not the place where the excur- 
 sion steamer disembarks her passengers. That is at a fairy 
 little harbour which has recently been constructed farther 
 south, and is called the Creux. To get to it from the land 
 side you have the choice of two tunnels through the rock, one 
 of which is as old as the seventeenth century, but the other 
 was made a few years ago to give a more convenient access 
 to the pier. In the tiny basin, completely sheltered from the 
 wind, lie the boats which take off the passengers to and from 
 the steamer, that is fastened to a buoy outside. Were it not 
 for the tunnels it would be impossible to pass from the shore 
 into the interior, as the lofty cliffs completely enclose the bay 
 on all sides. Sark in fact is only accessible at one or two 
 points, and it may be said of her as truly as of Britannia 
 that she ^ 1 1 
 
 . — needs no buhvark, 
 
 She wants no guarded steep ; 
 
4o6 JiSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 for Nature has thrown around her an impregnable barrier of 
 rocks. A few years ago the Lords of the Admiralty intend- 
 ing to visit Sark were unable to find the landing-place, and 
 actually sailed past it, without seeing the tunnel— then only 
 one — which indicated the passage from the shore. 
 
 We do not profess to be naturalists nor versed in marine 
 zoology, but even a traveller ignorant like ourselves of such 
 matters must be struck with the wealth of life — half vegetable 
 and half animal — which he finds in the caves and fissures 
 roofed with luxuriant ferns. There are sea-anemones, and 
 madrepores, and limpets, and carbuncles, and barnacles in 
 profusion, and such seaweed as for size and beauty we never 
 saw before. The colour of the sea is of the loveliest blue, now 
 and then shading into green. As we waded through the pools 
 of water in the dark recesses of les Boutiques we had an un- 
 comfortable feeling that our leg might be seized by an Octopus 
 or Devil-fish, such as is described by Victor Hugo in his 
 'Toilers of the Sea;' but no such adventure happened, and 
 we cannot honestly say that we have ever seen an Octopus 
 anywhere except in the Aquarium at the Crystal Palace. 
 
 Opposite, the east side of the coast of France is plainly 
 visible, and on a clear day you can see the tops of houses and 
 the towers of Coutances Cathedral. Between lies the long 
 low ridge of black rocks called the Paternosters, in which there 
 are two fishermen's huts — a dreary storm-tossed abode. The 
 navigation of the Channel is so dangerous that few vessels 
 attempt it unless driven there by stress of weather. 
 
 The Channel Islands are said to owe the introduction of 
 the Christian religion to a holy man named Maglorius, after- 
 wards known as St. Magloire, who took up his abode in Sark, 
 and first preached the Gospel to the Pagan inhabitants. 
 
 One peculiarity in Sark, and indeed all the Channel 
 Islands, is, that there are no field paths. But this is easily 
 explained. There are no large proprietors, and the lands are 
 held in small lots by a great variety of owners. This, of 
 course, is fatal to a right of way; for if leave were given to 
 cross one field, the traveller would be stopped at the next by 
 a different owner, and the law against trespass is severe. While 
 we were in Sark, an amusing illustration of this occurred. A 
 party of tourists, four gentlemen, and two young ladies, the 
 
THREE DAYS IN SARK. 407 
 
 daughters of a Church dignitary, unwittingly crossed a hedge, 
 and each was called upon by a bailiff in the evening and 
 asked to pay a fine of three livres toiirnois — equal, we believe, 
 to fourpence. This polite request was disregarded, and the 
 parties were cited to appear next day in the school-house 
 before the court. The court consisted of three farmers, one 
 . of whom was the very man who owned the field where the 
 trespass had been committed ! and who thus sat as judge in 
 his own cause. The proceedings were in Norman-French, 
 and commenced with a prayer, after which the court was de- 
 clared to be constituted. One of the accused took a legal 
 exception to the jurisdiction, but a blue document called an 
 azur (we believe the summons) was read, and the plea was 
 overruled. The two young ladies, being under age, were let 
 off, and the bailiff was censured for summoning minors for 
 trespass, but the rest were fined in some small sum each, 
 which they never paid, threatening to appeal to the Royal 
 Court of Guernsey ; and one of them crossed from Sark after- 
 wards in the same steamer as ourselves, a fugitive from justice. 
 The Court of Sark consists of the Seneschal or his deputy, 
 the Prevot, and the Greffier, who are all appointed by the 
 Seigneur, and sworn in before the Royal Court of Guernsey. 
 But besides this, there is another court, called the Court of 
 Chefs Plaids, which makes ordinances for roads, rates, and 
 police ; and it is composed of the same officers as the Court 
 of Sark, together with the holders of the forty tenements into 
 which the island has been immemorially divided. We saw 
 more than one painted board on which it was stated that 
 ' the constables of Sark give notice, that ahy person damaging 
 la Coupee, or any of the walls of Sark, will be liable to pay a 
 penalty of 2/.' 
 
 The language of the Sarkois is a patois, but more than 
 half of the inhabitants speak English, and all of them under- 
 stand French. In Little Sark we were obliged to speak 
 French The men are better looking than the women, and 
 are really a handsome race. There is one church, one Wes- 
 leyan chapel, and one windmill in the island _ 
 
 The Sunday is very strictly observed, and no one is allowed 
 even to fish on that day under pain of a fine. We believe 
 that there is such a thing as a prison, but it is so seldom used 
 
4o8 £SSJVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 that vv'hen it was last wanted to lock up an offender, it was 
 necessary to send for a blacksmith to break open the lock, as 
 the key could not be found. 
 
 O ! fortunati nimium sua si bona noriut. 
 
 In conclusion we will quote one or two passages from a 
 letter in the ' Harleian Miscellany,' written in April, 1673, 
 ' from a gentleman inhabiting the Isle of Serke, to his friend 
 and kinsman in London,' and cited in 'Tupper's History.' 
 He says of Sark : — 
 
 Yet Nature, as if she had here stored up some extraordinary treasure, seems to 
 have been very solicitous to render it impregnable ; being on every side surrounded 
 witli vast rocks and mighty cliffs, whose craggy tops, braving the clouds with their 
 stupendous height, bid defiance to all that shall dream of forcing an entrance. 
 Two only ascents or passages there are into it ; the first, where all goods and 
 
 commodities are received, called La Soguien the other is La Fricheree 
 
 (Eperqueries), where only passengers can land, climbing up u rock by certain 
 steps or stairs cut therein, to a vast height, and somewhat dangerously ; nor is it 
 
 jiossible for above one person to come up at once For belly timber our 
 
 three staple commodities are fish, fowl, and rabbits If all this rich fare 
 
 will not content you, we. have a most excellent pottage make of milk, bacon, cole- 
 worts, mackerel, and gooseberries ! boiled together all to pieces, which our mode 
 is to eat, not with the ceremony of a spoon, but the more beastly way of a great 
 piece of bread furiously plying between your mouth and the kettle. Both sexes 
 on festivals wear large ruffs, and the women, instead of hats or hoods, truss up 
 their hair, the more genteel sort in a kind of cabbage-net [anticipation of the 
 chignon .?] ; those of meaner fortunes in a piece of linen, perhaps an old dishclout 
 turned out of service, or the fag-end of a table cloth that has escaped the persecu- 
 tion of washing ever since the Reformation All this, though you read it 
 
 not till Michaelmas, was told you at Serke, this first day of April, O. S., 167-3. 
 
 We will only add that when we left Sark and crossed over 
 to Guernsey, we met floating on the waves the dead body of 
 a seainan or fisherman, with the head downwards ; and it was 
 suggestive of the perils of the navigation amidst those rocks, 
 and tides, and currents, which guard Sark in its lonely solitude 
 upon the deep. 
 
^09 
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT} 
 
 I PROPOSE this evening to give you a sketch of the life, 
 character, and writings of a remarkable man. Yet such is 
 the vanity of human reputation that beyond the mere name 
 httle is known by the men of the present time of William 
 Cobbett. They have heard of him as the great Radical of 
 bygone days, and, remember that he wrote a grammar and 
 edited the ' Weekly Register.' But the other books of which he 
 was the author are almost forgotten, and few are familiar with 
 the incidents of his active and turbulent life. In his recollec- 
 tions of a ' past life,' the late Sir Henry Holland speaks of 
 the name and works of Cobbett as ' now nearly stranded on 
 the stream of time, but they long exercised a powerful 
 influence on the public mind in England,' and he says he 
 well recollects the eagerness with which the ' Register ' was 
 looked for and read in the days of its publication. And yet 
 Cobbett was a man whom in his early years Lord North 
 regarded as the greatest political reasoner of his time, with 
 whose genius Mr. Windham was in raptures, and who was so 
 formidable a tribune of the people as to become — while he 
 lived — something like one of the popular institutions of the 
 country. As a writer he was one of the ablest in the whole 
 range of the English language. Paradoxical as he was in 
 many of his opinions and the slave of violent prejudice, he 
 was, notwithstanding, full of vigorous common sense, and the 
 master of a style which for sinewy strength and raciness has 
 never been surpassed. In a series of 'Historical Charac- 
 ters,' published by the late Lord Balling, better known by 
 his 'former name of Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, he includes 
 Cobbett under the head of ' The Contentious Man ; ' and the 
 
 1 A Lecture delivered before the Bath Literary and Philosophical Institution, 
 December, 1873. 
 
410 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 title is happily chosen, for no one ever had the organ of com- 
 bativeness more strongly developed. No Irishman at Donny- 
 brook Fair ever trailed his coat on the ground to provoke a 
 fight with more eagerness than Cobbett sought to pick a 
 quarrel with his pen. There was scarcely a single man of 
 note in the political world whom he did not in the course of 
 his life assail, and he sometimes contrived to fasten upon his 
 opponent an epithet or nickname, which caught the popular 
 fancy and stuck to him for life. 
 
 William Cobbett was born near Farnham, in Surrey, on the 
 9th of March, 1766. His grandfather and father were both 
 labourers originally, but his father, by his industry and ability, 
 had raised himself to the position of a small farmer or yeoman. 
 He could read and write, accomplishments by no means com- 
 mon in those days. He had a smattering of mathematics and 
 some knowledge of land surveying. Young William began life 
 as a farmer's boy, and as such laid in that remarkable stock of 
 knowledge he possessed of all that relates to agriculture, and 
 also imbibed his passionate fondness for a rural life. At the age 
 of sixteen, however, he was smitten by a desire to go to sea, but 
 failed to engage a captain to take him. Next year he quitted 
 home clandestinely and went on the top of a coach to London, 
 where he became clerk to an attorney in Gray's Inn Lane. I 
 suppose it was his experience in this office that caused his 
 bitter hatred in after-life of law and lawyers, whom he some- 
 times calls, on account of their wigs, ' grey mare's tails,' 
 although curiously enough two of his sons afterwards entered 
 the profession, the one as an attorney, the other as a barrister. 
 He soon, however, left what he designated 'an earthly hell,' 
 and in 1784, like Coleridge at a later period, enlisted as a 
 common soldier in a regiment intended to serve in Nova 
 Scotia. During the period of three months, which he spent 
 at Chatham while the regiment was waiting to embark, he 
 made good use of a circulating library, and fell in love with 
 the librarian's daughter. Unflinching industry and dogged 
 perseverance ^^'ere the characteristics of his nature, and at 
 whatever he did work he worked like a horse. It is to this 
 period and the voyage that followed it that we must refer his 
 first study of grammar. ' I learned grammar,' he says ' when 
 I was a private soldier on sixpence a day. The edge of my 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 411 
 
 berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study on ; my 
 knapsack was my book-case, a bit of board lying on my lap 
 was my table, and the task did not demand anything like a 
 year of my life.' We shall see by-and-by that he not only 
 learnt grammar, but wrote a grammar, of which he says, ' For 
 me not to say that I deem my " English Grammar " the best 
 book for teaching this science, would be affectation and 
 neglect of duty besides, because I know that it is the best' 
 Cobbett remained a soldier in British America for nearly 
 eight years, and attained the position of Sergeant-Major. 
 When he applied for his discharge on the return of his 
 regiment to Portsmouth in 1791, he was publicly compli- 
 mented by General Frederick upon his behaviour and conduct 
 during the time of his being in the regiment, and Major Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald added 'his most hearty thanks.' While 
 in New Brunswick he met and fell in love with his future 
 wife. She was the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, and the 
 way in which his passion was kindled is characteristic and 
 curious. She was engaged in an occupation something like 
 that of Nausicaa, in the ' Odyssey,' with a difference. ' It 
 was,' he says, in his 'Advice to Young Men,' ' hardly light, but 
 she was out on the snow scrubbing out a washing-tub. " That's 
 the girl for me," said I, when we had got out of her hearing.' 
 And I may mention that never did husband bestow more 
 hearty praise upon a wife than he does upon Mrs. Cobbett in 
 many parts of his works, and she seems to have deserved his 
 praise. He was obliged to leave America before he could 
 marry, but his future wife had returned to England before 
 him, and he sent her 150 guineas— the whole of his hard- 
 earned savings — begging her to make use of it by lodging with 
 respectable people until his arrival. But the girl preferred to 
 earn her own livelihood as a servant of all work, and when 
 Cobbett came home at the end of four years and claimed his 
 bride, she put the whole sum into his hands untouched. Well 
 might he be proud of such a wife. But in the meantime a 
 little episode had occurred which he tells with praiseworthy 
 candour, as a warning to young men. During the absence of 
 his betrothed, a colonial beauty led him astray, and we have 
 to look at Cobbett, for the first time in his life, m the novel 
 character of a gay Lothario. His description of the scenery 
 
412 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 ill New Brunswick where he met the bewitching charmer, is 
 in his very best style. He says, ' If Nature in her most 
 amiable humour had made a spot for the express purpose of 
 captivating me, she could not have exceeded the efforts 
 which she had there made.' It was in a log-hut by the side 
 of a creek that the young woman lived, with her father and 
 mother. ' On the sides of the creeks the land is in places 
 clear of rocks ; it is in these places generally good and pro- 
 ductive. The trees that grow here, the birch, the maple, and 
 others of the deciduous class ; natural meadows here and 
 there present themselves, and some of these spots far surpass 
 in rural beauty any others that my eyes ever beheld : the 
 creeks abounding towards their sources in waterfalls, in end- 
 less variety, as well in form as in magnitude, and always 
 teeming with life, waterfowl enliven their surface, and Vvild 
 pigeons of the gayest plumage flutter, in thousands upon 
 thousands, amongst the branches of the beautiful trees which 
 sometimes for miles together form an arch over the creeks.' 
 The Naiad of the scene was a lovely girl of nineteen, who, to 
 quote Cobbett again, ' had her long light brovv'n hair nicely 
 twisted up and fastened on top of her head, in which head 
 were a pair of lively blue eyes, associated with features of 
 which that softness and that sweetness so characteristic of 
 American girls were the predominant expression.' Here then 
 was eveiything to lead Cobbett captive : ' Here was the spot 
 of all spots in the world, and here also were the life and the 
 manners, the habits and pursuits that I delighted in ; here 
 was everything that imagination can conceive, united in a 
 conspiracy against the poor little brunette in England. What 
 then, did I fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and 
 roses .' Oh, by no means ! ' But he lingered and dallied and 
 paddled his canoe to meet her, and although he never ex- 
 pressly told her that he loved her and never talked of 
 marriage, yet he had a thousand times done these things by 
 implication, ' although,' he says, ' the previous engagement 
 \\as perfectly well known to her and her family.' In fact, 
 Cobbett was in a strait betwixt two, and he admits tliat if 
 he had received a cool letter from his intended wife, ' if she 
 had but let go one of the hundred strings by which she held 
 my heart, never would the world have heard of me on the 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 4,3 
 
 lovely banks of this branch-covered creek, which contained 
 (she out of the question) everything congenial to my taste 
 and dear to my heart. I, unapplauded, unfeared, unenvied, 
 and uncalumniated, should have lived and died.' But a very 
 different fate was in store for him. The regiment was ordered 
 home, the last parting came, and with it, says Cobbett, my 
 just ' punishment' As the vessel descended ' she passed the 
 mouth of that creek which I had so often entered with delight, 
 and, though England and all that England contained were 
 before me, I lost sight of this creek with an aching heart.' 
 
 Cobbett married in 1 792, and, having in the course of that 
 year made a charge against some of the officers of his 
 regiment, which at the court-martial he did not appear to 
 support, he was obliged to quit England for France, where he re- 
 mained for a few months, and then sailed for the United States 
 and settled in Philadelphia. Why Cobbett did not appear at 
 the court-martial has never been satisfactorily explained, 
 but there is good reason to believe that pecuniary motives 
 influenced him ; in other v/ords, that he was bought off. He 
 supported himself at first in America by giving English 
 lessons to French emigrants, and amongst the pupils was said 
 to have been no less a person than Talleyrand. It would be 
 difficult to conceive a greater contrast than these two men, thus 
 strangely thrown together ; the one the incarnation oi finesse, the 
 other the personification of outspoken bluntness,if not sincerity. 
 According, however, to Cobbett's own statement, Talleyrand 
 came to him and wished to become his pupil in English, but 
 he refused to take him on any terms. He calls him ' the 
 modern Judas,' and says that, in answer to his flattery, T gave 
 him to understand that I was no trout, and consequently was 
 not to be caught by tickling.' 
 
 I hold no brief as counsel for Cobbett, and against the charge 
 of inconsistency his warmest advocate would find it difficult 
 to defend him. Those who remember only how, when he was 
 soured by what he considered neglect and ill-usage in England, 
 he lauded to the skies the blessings of America, will be surprised 
 to learn that during, and for some time after, his first visit to the 
 States he abused the country and its institutions as heartily as 
 he subsequently praised them. He was now an enthusiastic 
 Royalist and ready to do battle with Democrats like Priestley 
 
414 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and Paine. When Priestley came over to America, and was re- 
 ceived there with enthusiasm, Cobbett, under the name of Peter 
 Porcupine, attacked him in a pamphlet called ' Observations on 
 Priestley's Emigration,' which made a noise at the time, and 
 may be considered as the first of his famous onslaughts on 
 political opponents. He set up a bookseller's shop in Phila- 
 delphia, and filled its windows with prints of George III. and 
 the British aristocracy, the like of which had never been 
 publicly exhibited in the United States since the beginning 
 of the American war. This was like trailing red cloth before 
 a wild bull, and the Republican newspapers were full of 
 articles, and the Republican shops teemed with pamphlets, 
 headed, 'A Blue Pill for Peter Porcupine;' 'A Roaster for 
 Peter Porcupine;' 'A Picture of Peter Porcupine.' Cobbett 
 was just in his element. ' Dear father,' he wrote home, ' when 
 you used to set me off to work in the morning, dressed in my 
 blue smock-frock and woollen spatterdashes, with a bag of 
 bread and cheese and a bottle of small beer over my shoulder, 
 little did you imagine that I should one day become so great 
 a man.' He engaged in a squabble with a rival editor named 
 Bailie, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, and meeting him one 
 day in the street and being abused by him, retorted by a blow, 
 which laid his opponent sprawling in the gutter. He published 
 a pamphlet, called ' The Trial of Republicanism,' in which he 
 exposed the evils of Republican Government, and assailed it 
 with some of his choicest terms of abuse. The following 
 passage will give an idea of its tone and spirit : — ' Men of 
 sense know that the people can, in reality, exercise power 
 which will not tend to their own injury. Hence it is that in 
 states, when the popular voice is unchecked by royal or other 
 hereditary control, that voice, in nine times out of ten, is 
 given in favour of those fawning parasites who rule the poor 
 sovereign, who has chosen them, with a rod of scorpions, 
 affecting, while the miserable wretch is -writhing under their 
 stripes, to call themselves " his representatives." ' He called 
 Wilkes ' a miserable adventurer, without ancestry, without 
 fortune, without anything but impudence, obscurity, and blas- 
 phemy to recommend him.' Having as he thought demolished 
 Priestley, Cobbett next turned upon Paine who had landed in 
 America, and, avowing Republican principles, was then wor- 
 
XVILLIAM COBBETT. 415 
 
 shipped as a popular idol. This of course made Cobbett 
 himself unpopular, for which he little cared ; but an attempt 
 was made to crush him by instituting a prosecution against 
 him on a charge of wholesale libel, founded upon the general 
 character of his writings, and he was obliged to enter into a 
 recognisance fee for his good behaviour, to the amount of 4,000 
 dollars. He narrowly escaped prosecution for a libel against 
 the Spanish minister at Washington, the bill being ignored 
 by the grand jury by a majority of one, and he was only 
 saved by the opinions of the Attorney-General from being 
 turned out of the United States, under the 'Alien Act' At 
 last, however, he was caught. A doctor Rush had come into 
 public notice by prescribing a system of purging and bleeding 
 as a remedy for the yellow fever, and Cobbett assailed him 
 with his usual violence. He asked, ' Can the Rush grow up 
 without mire, or the flag without water .''' and the way he 
 answered the question led to a prosecution for libel, in which he 
 was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 dollars. 
 
 Cobbett now thought it prudent to leave this land of liberty 
 for England, and on June i, 1800, he decamped from America, 
 which he called 'that infamous land where judges become felons, 
 and felons judges.' We shall soon see how he changed his note 
 afterwards. Cobbett returned to this country disgusted with 
 the United States, and, if he had met with a different recep- 
 tion, he might and indeed certainly would have been a powerful 
 auxiliary on the side of the Government. I quite agree with 
 Lord Bailing that the ministry made a great mistake in not 
 enlisting so sturdy a champion in the ranks of its supporters, 
 but he was left in the cold shade and obliged to shift for 
 himself without any aid from patronage or power. Mr. Pitt is 
 said to have treated Cobbett with coolness one day when he 
 met him at Mr. Windham's, and thus a private grievance was 
 added to what he thought a public wrong, but I am bound to 
 add that there is some doubt as to the truth of the meeting 
 at all. One version is that the haughty minister refused an 
 invitation to dinner at Mr. Windham's because Cobbett was 
 to be one of the guests, but he distinctly asserts the contrary 
 in different parts of his works. For instance, he says in his 
 ' Year's Residence in America,' ' I had dined the day before 
 at the Secretary cf State's in company with Mr. Pitt, and had 
 
4i6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 been waited upon by men in gaudy liveries.' He did not, 
 however, at once go into opposition. He started a paper 
 called the ' Porcupine,' and his programme was one to which 
 the Tories could not object. ' The subjects of a British King,' 
 he says, ' like the sons of every provident and tender father, 
 never know his value till they feel the want of his protection. 
 In the days of youth and ignorance I was led to believe that 
 comfort, freedom, and virtue were exclusively the lot of Re- 
 publicans. A very short time convinced me of my error, 
 admonished me to repent of my folly, and urged me to com- 
 pensate for the injustice of the opinion v/hich I had conceived. 
 Once more returned, once more under the safeguard of that 
 Sovereign who watched over me in my infancy, and the want 
 of whose protecting arm I have so long had reason to lament, 
 I feel an irresistible desire to communicate to my countrj'men 
 the fruit of my experience, to show them the injurious and 
 degrading consequences of discontent, disloyalty, and inno- 
 vation ; to convince them that they are the first as well as 
 happiest of the human race, and above all to warn them 
 against the arts of those perfidious and ambitious demagogues 
 who would willingly reduce them to a level ^vith the cheated 
 slaves in the bearing of whose yoke I had the mortification to 
 share.' Surely this was a writer whom it was worth while 
 to conciliate, especially at a time when discontent was so rife 
 and when, I will add, there was both in the social and political 
 world of England so much to justify discontent. But of this I 
 will speak afterwards. I will here only remark in passing that 
 however Cobbett might in later years attack the Government 
 of the day, and pour forth a flood of abuse, such as he alone 
 could command, upon individual ministers, he never swerved 
 from his monarchical faith, and to the last was utterly opposed 
 to the idea of a Republic in England. He says, in his 'Rural 
 Ideas,' written in the years 1831-1832, 'I repeat, and with 
 perfect sincerity, that it would give me as much pain as it 
 would to any man in England to see a change in the form of 
 government. With King, Lords, and Commons this nation 
 has enjoyed many ages of happiness and of glory ;' and again, 
 in his 'History of the Protestant Reformation,' 'I must (though 
 it has nothing really to do with the question before us) repeat 
 my opinion, many times expressed, that we should lose more 
 
WILLIAM COBBBTT. 417 
 
 than we should gain by getting rid of our aristocracy. The 
 basest and most corrupt Government I ever knew or heard 
 anything of is the RepubHcan Government of Pennsylvania, 
 and withal the most truly tyrannical, base, and corrupt from 
 bottom to top, from the root to the topmost twig, from the 
 trunk to the extreme point of every branch.' Hear this, Odger, 
 Bradlaugh, and Sir Charles Dilke ! ' I am not, therefore,' he 
 adds, ' for Republican Government, and then it follows that 
 I am for an aristocracy, for without it there can be no limit 
 to a kingly Government' 
 
 In 1 80 1 Cobbett opened a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, 
 in partnership with a person named Morgan, and adopted as its 
 sign ' The Crown, Bible, and Mitre,' to indicate the principles 
 which they intended to maintain. When Pitt in that year re- 
 signed office, because the king refused to consent to a measure of 
 Catholic emancipation, Cobbett rushed into print, and avowed 
 his difference of opinion with a minister ' whose character and 
 conduct,' he said, 'he had voluntarily defended at the expense of 
 his peace and property, and not unfrequently at the hazard of 
 his life.' This alluded to his experience in America. He pub- 
 lished a life of Tom Paine, and a collection of the works of Peter 
 Porcupine, in twelve octavo volumes, stigmatising in his preface 
 Washington as a rebel and the American revolutions as rebel- 
 Hon against the most just of sovereigns. Rather than illumi- 
 nate for the Peace of Amiens, Cobbett allowed his windows to 
 be smashed by the mob, and when three persons were in conse- 
 quence convicted of a riot, and the jury recommended them to 
 mercy, on their counsel asking Cobbett to join in the recom- 
 mendation, he bluntly answered, ' Certainly not, sir ; I came 
 here to ask for justice and not mercy.' Giving up the ' Porcu- 
 pine ' he brought out a new paper, called the ' Weekly Political 
 Register,' which soon became famous for the vigour of its articles 
 and its violent and indiscriminate abuse. Miiller, the German 
 historian, called his letters to Hawkesbury and Addington 
 'the most eloquent writing since the time of the two great 
 professors of PhiHppic oratory.' But though many of its 
 attacks, especially at a later period of its existence, would be 
 thought violent even now, the worst of them were hardly such 
 as deserved the notice of His Majesty's Attorney-General, 
 and those which were selected for the disagreeable compliment 
 ■ ' " E E 
 
41 8 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 would now be thought as mild as milk and harmless as water. 
 Some letters, under the signature of ' Juverna,' which appeared 
 in the ' Register' in November and December, 1803, discussed 
 the question of the Government of Ireland, of which the Earl 
 of Hardwicke was Lord Lieutenant. The writer compared 
 the L-ish Administration to the Wooden Horse of Troy, which 
 contained within its womb all the elements of mischief, and 
 spoke of Lord Hardwicke in terms which I should have 
 thought no perverted ingenuity could twist into a libel. ' But 
 who,' he asked, ' is Lord Hardwicke .' I have discovered 
 him to be in rank an earl, in manners a gentleman, in morals 
 a good father and a kind husband ; and that, moreover, he 
 has a good library in St. James's Square. From Mr. Lindsay 
 I further learned that Lord Hardwicke was celebrated for 
 understanding the mode and method of fattening sheep as well 
 as any man in Cambridgeshire.' And for this most innocent 
 kind of joke, if joke it can be called, or sarcastnn, to use the 
 expression of Artemus Ward, Cobbett was found by the verdict 
 of a jury ' guilty of having attempted to subvert the king's 
 authority.' Another letter, signed 'Juverna,' applied the term 
 ' viper ' to Plunkett, who was the Solicitor-General for Ireland, 
 with reference to his speech on the prosecution of Emmett, 
 and the writer said that ' Lord Kenyon would have turned 
 with horror from such a scene, in which, if guilt were in 
 one part punished, justice in the whole drama was confounded, 
 humanity outraged, and loyalty insulted.' This brought 
 down another prosecution, and the result was another verdict 
 against Cobbett. But he was not the writer of the letters ; 
 the real author was a Mr. Johnson, who afterwards became 
 a judge ; and, a:s his name was discovered, Cobbett was not 
 further molested. When the Whig Ministry of All the Talents 
 in 1806 proposed an increase of allowance to the king's 
 younger sons, Cobbett opposed it in his paper, and declared 
 himself against the ' cheese parings and candle ends ' of 
 Royalty. ' I am,' he said, ' against these things, not because I 
 am a Republican, but because I am for Monarchical Govern- 
 ment, and consequently adverse to all that gives Republicans 
 occasion for sneering at it.' At the same time he commenced 
 the laborious undertaking of his ' Parliamentary Register,' 
 which contains the proceedings of Parliament from the earliest 
 time, and is a most useful book of reference. 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 419 
 
 But evil days were before him, and the whole complexion 
 of his life was about to be changed by an act of the Govern- 
 ment, invoking the terrible powers of the law, of which, in these 
 times of free discussion and liberty of the press, it is difficult to 
 speak with ordinary patience. I am certainly not going to de- 
 fend Cobbett against the charge of being a reckless assailant 
 of persons, and I admit he was the greatest master of abusive 
 language, not even excepting Cleon and O'Connell, that ever 
 appeared amongst the sons of men. But we must, in common 
 fairness and justice to him, remember that the England of his 
 day was very different from the England of our own. It is 
 difficult to realise how great this difTerence is. Old Sarum, 
 Gatton, Wootton Bassett, and a host of miserable villages, were 
 the pocket boroughs of rich proprietors, while Manchester and 
 Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds were unrepresented in Par- 
 liament. So wretched and ruinous were some of these places 
 that we can scarcely wonder at Cobbett exclaiming in his rural 
 rides, ' God's curse seems to be upon most of these rotten 
 boroughs.' I do not know that Calne, which still returns a 
 member to the House of Commons, has much improved since 
 his time, when he thus speaks of it : 'I could not come through 
 that villanous hole, Calne, without cursing corruption at every 
 step, and when I was coming by an ill-looking place, called 
 the town-hall, I suppose I poured a double dose of execration 
 upon it' The state of our criminal law was simply infamous. 
 It was a capital offence to pick a pocket, steal a sheep, or cut 
 down a young apple tree. Non-residence and plurality of 
 livings amongst the clergy were rather the rule than the ex- 
 ception. 'There is a parliamentary return,' says Cobbett, 
 writing in 1826, 'to prove that nearly a third of the parsonage 
 houses in Wiltshire have become beggarly holes or have dis- 
 appeared.' The poor law was so badly administered by a 
 weekly system of out-door relief and by being made a kind of 
 supplement to low wages, that it proved a curse, and the law 
 of settlement was so worked as to become an engme of torture 
 to the poor The pension list was loaded with the names of 
 titled sinecurists, and the case of Mrs. Clark, at a later period, 
 reveakd the corruption which was festering m high places. 
 It was dangerous for a writer, who wished for reform of these 
 things, to meddle with them unless he was ready to face fine 
 
 ° E E 2 
 
420 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 and imprisonment. The law of seditious libel was no rusty 
 weapon, but a sharp-cutting sword in the hands of the At- 
 torney-General of the day, and so Cobbett found to his cost. 
 A paragraph appeared on July I, 1809, in the ' Courier News- 
 paper,' stating that ' the mutiny amongst the local militia, 
 which broke out at Ely, was fortunately suppressed on Wed- 
 nesday by the arrival of four legions of the German Cavalry 
 from Bury, under the command of General Auckland. Five 
 of the ringleaders were tried by a court-martial, and sentenced 
 to receive 500 lashes each, part of which punishment they re- 
 ceived on Wednesday and part was remitted. A stoppage of 
 their knapsacks was the ground of complaint which excited 
 the mutinous spirit and occasioned the men to surround their 
 officers and demand what they deemed their arrears.' On 
 this Cobbett wrote and published the following remarks in 
 the ' Register' : — ' Summary of politics, local militia, and Ger- 
 man Legion. See the motto, English reader, see the motto, 
 and then do pray recollect all that has been said about the 
 way in which Bonaparte raises his soldiers. Well done, Lord 
 Castlereagh ! This is just what it was thought your plan 
 would produce. Well said, Mr. Huskisson ! It was really 
 not without reason you dwelt with so much earnestness upon 
 the great utility of the foreign troops, whom Mr. Wardle ap- 
 peared to think of no utility at all. Poor gentleman, he little 
 thought how great a genius might find employment for such 
 troops ; he little imagined they might be well the means of com- 
 pelling Englishmen to submit to that sort of discipline which is 
 so conducive to producing in them a disposition to defend the 
 country at the risk of their lives. Let Mr. Wardle look at my 
 motto and then say whether soldiers are of no use. Five hun- 
 dred lashes each ! Aye, that is right ! flog them ! flog them ! 
 flog them ! they deserve it, and a great deal more ! They 
 deserve a flogging at every meal time — Lash them daily ! 
 lash them daily ! What ! shall the rascals dare to mutiny, 
 and that, too, when the German Legion is so near at hand ! 
 Lash them ! they deserve it ! — Oh yes ! they deserve a double- 
 tailed cat ! Base dogs ! what, mutiny for the sake of the price 
 of a knapsack ! Lash them ! Flog them ! Base rascals ! 
 Mutiny for the price of a goat-skin, and then upon the ap- 
 pearance of the German soldiers they take a flogging as 
 
WILLIAM COBB^TT. 421 
 
 quietly as the trunks of trees !' For this article Cobbett was 
 prosecuted by the Attorney-General, Sir Vicary Gibbs. I will 
 give his own account of the trial, and its results, as told by 
 himself in his ' Advice toJiToimgJMen.' ' The Attorney-Gene- 
 ral, Gibbs, was set upon me; he harassed me for nearly a 
 year, then brought me to trial, and I was by Ellenborough, 
 Le Blanc, and Bailey sentenced to two years' imprisonment 
 in Newgate, to pay a fine to the king of 1,000/., and to be 
 held in heavy bail for seven years after the expiration of the 
 imprisonment : every one regarded it as a sentence of death. 
 I lived in the country seventy miles from London. I had a 
 farm on my hands ; I had a family of small children, amongst 
 whom I had constantly lived ; I had a most anxious and de- 
 voted wife, who was, too, in that state which rendered the 
 separation more painful tenfold. I was put into a place 
 among felons, from which I had to rescue myself at the price 
 of twelve guineas a week for the whole of the two years.' The 
 farm of which Cobbett here speaks was at Botley, near South- 
 ampton, and he elsewhere describes how when ' the news 
 arrived at Botley, the three boys, one eleven, one nine, and 
 the other seven years old, were hoeing cabbages in that garden 
 which had been the source of so much delight.' But he bore 
 it manfully ; his wife and children from time to time visited 
 him in prison ; a hamper was sent once a week or oftener from 
 Botley bringing ' fruits and all sorts of country fare, and always 
 every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers, the earliest 
 violets and primroses and cowslips, the earliest twigs of trees, 
 and in short, everything that they thought calculated to de- 
 light me.' But what he prized most in the hamper were his 
 children's ' little spudding letters,' to each of which he always 
 made a point of returning a punctual answer. He also, by 
 means of a journal written by his sons, was kept au courant as 
 to all that was going on at Botley, and was able to carry 
 on his farm and give his orders— from his gaol in Newgate— 
 almost as well as if he were roaming amongst his own corn- 
 fields. 
 
 Cobbett emerged from prison a changed man. He was 
 become a political Ishmael, whose hand was against every 
 man if every man's hand was not against him. Chanty 
 and forgiveness of injuries were no part of his creed, and he 
 
 > 
 
42 2 £SSAyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 turned fiercely upon his foes ' without,' as he says, ' caring a 
 straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my 
 own family were safe, because, say what any one might, the 
 community, taken as a whole, had suffered this thing to be 
 done unto me.' In his ' Rural Rides' he exclaims, ' Let the 
 reptiles perish ; it would be injustice, it would be to fly in the 
 face of morality and religion, to express sorrow for their ruin.' 
 And in his ' Advice to Young Men,' ' Oh ! how I despise the 
 wretches who talk of my vindictiveness, of my exultation at 
 the confusion of those who inflicted those sufierings. How I 
 despise the base creatures, the crawling slaves, the callous and 
 cowardly hypocrites who affect to be shocked (tender souls) 
 at my expressions of joy at the death of Gibbs, EUenborough, 
 Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, and the rest of the tribe that I 
 have already seen out, and at the fated workings of that sys- 
 tem for endeavouring to check which I was thus punished ! 
 How I despise these wretches, and how I above all things 
 enjoy their ruin and anticipate their utter beggary ! What ! 
 I am to forgive, am I, injuries like this, and that, too, without 
 any atonement .' Oh, no ! I have not so read the Holy Scrip- 
 tures ; I have not from them learned that I am not to rejoice 
 at the fall of unjust foes, and it makes part of my happiness 
 to be able to tell ten millions of men that I do thus rejoice, 
 and that I have the means of calling on so many just and 
 merciful men to rejoice along with me.' And yet it would be 
 \\'rong to consider Cobbett an ill-natured man. No one 
 cherished more warmly the affections of home and family, 
 and no one could speak of babies as he did who had not in 
 him much of the milk of human kindness. It was said of 
 Paley, who was rough and coarse in manner, that the way in 
 which he writes of little children proves the kindness of his 
 heart ; and Paley never expressed himself about them with 
 half the warmth of Cobbett. He says, ' The man, the woman, 
 ■H'ho is not fond of babies is not worthy of the name ; but 
 where is the man who does not feel his heart soften, who does 
 not feel himself become gentler, who does not lose all the 
 hardness of his temper, when in any way, for any purpose, or 
 by anybody, an appeal is made to him on behalf of those so 
 perfectly helpless and so perfectly innocent little creatures .■* ' 
 C obbett's release from prison was celebrated by a dinner, at 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 423 
 
 which Sir Francis Burdett, ■ Old Glory,' as in derision he after- 
 wards christened him, was in the chair. He pubhshed at un- 
 equal intervals, to escape the stamp duty, a series of papers 
 called ' Twopenny Trash,' and became so formidable a writer 
 that he was able to boast with perhaps some truth that the 
 suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the passing of the 
 Six Acts in 1 8 17, were more directed against himself than 
 against all the other political enemies of the Government put 
 together. But he had got heavily into debt, caused chiefly by 
 the reckless way in which he printed and published books and 
 pamphlets. This sufficiently accounts for his hasty flight to 
 America, but he pretended that it was owing to the suspen- 
 sion of the Habeas Corpiis Act and his dread of Sidmouth 
 and Castlereagh. He had borrowed large sums of money 
 from friends, among whom was Sir Francis Burdett. These 
 he had no means of paying, and as he had had enough of im- 
 prisonment, and the law against insolvent debtors was then 
 terribly severe, he suddenly left England in 18 17 and took 
 refuge in the United States, coolly telling his creditors that, 
 as they had not resisted the persecutions from which his losses 
 had arisen, they were in no small degree responsible for 
 them, and must be prepared to share the consequences. We 
 have seen in what contemptuous terms he had spoken of 
 Republican America during and after his first visit there. 
 But now he was sick of England, and saw everything in the 
 land of his adoption with totally different eyes. Throughout 
 his later writings he is never weary of contrasting the two 
 countries, and always to the disadvantage of the latter. While 
 living at a farm he had taken on Hampstead Plains, Long 
 Island, Cobbett wrote his ' English Grammar,' that ' famous 
 Grammar,' as he calls it, which is certainly the clearest and 
 cleverest and most amusing book on the subject. He of 
 course was not afflicted with any false modesty, and he 
 especially prides himself upon his knowledge of the subject. 
 ' How many false pretenders,' he says, ' to erudition have I 
 exposed to shame by my knowledge of grammar ! How 
 many of the insolent and ignorant great have I pulled down 
 and made despicable ! and with what ease have I conveyed 
 upon numerous important subjects, information and instruc- 
 tion to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for 
 
424 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 millions yet unborn!' But for a man to whom strife and 
 contention were alike the breath of life, and who above all 
 things courted notoriety, he was in a false position. As Lord 
 Balling says, ' He was not even taken up as " a lion," for his 
 sudden preference for Republican institutions created no sen- 
 sation amongst men who were now all heart and soul Repub- 
 licans. He was not a hero, and he could not consistently 
 with his present doctrines attempt to become a martyr.' He 
 began to sigh for England, and, in order to return there with 
 some eclat, he actually had the bones of Tom Paine disin- 
 terred, intending to carry them across the Atlantic. He had 
 formerly stigmatised Paine as ' the greatest disgrace of man- 
 kind, an infamous and atrocious miscreant,' but he was now 
 'the great enlightener of the human race, and the boldest 
 champion of popular rights.' At last, to quote the words of 
 Lord Bailing, ' After vainly offering locks of hair or any 
 particle of the exhumed Atheist and Republican at a low 
 price, considering the value of the relics, he let the matter 
 
 drop and the inestimable fragments of the 
 
 disinterred Quaker suddenly disappeared, and were never 
 heard of more.' 
 
 Cobbett returned to England and tried to get into the House 
 of Commons. He stood first for Coventry, and then for Pres- 
 ton, but was on both occasions unsuccessful. We ought, how- 
 ever, to mention that he made a previous attempt in June, 1806, 
 when he offered himself for Honiton, but did not go to the poll 
 as Lord Cochrane arrived and became the popular candidate. 
 I need not say that his failure was not due to any difficulties 
 on his part, or want of self-appreciation. Addressing his sup- 
 porters when Parliament was dissolved, at the demise of George 
 HI., he said, ' To you I do and must look for support in my 
 public efforts. As far as the press can go I want no assist- 
 ance ; aided by my sons I have already made the ferocious 
 cowards of the London press sneak into silence. But there is 
 a larger range, a more advantageous ground to stand on, and 
 that is the House of Commons. A great effect on the public 
 mind I have already produced, but that is nothing to what I 
 should produce in only the next session in June in the House 
 of Commons. Yet there I cannot be without your assistance.' 
 He had to wait for the days of the Reform Bill, when he was 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. ^^^ 
 
 returned to Parliament for the borough of Oldham, and thus 
 Cobbett represented one of those manufacturing towns of 
 which he had always previously spoken with abhorrence and 
 contempt. But in the meantime his pen was as active as ever, 
 and besides the ' Register ' he wrote his ' Cottage Economy,' 
 ' Sermons,' ' Rural Rides,' and the ' History of the Protestant 
 Reformation,' of which I will speak hereafter. Frequent 
 allusion is made in Cobbett's works to the gjddiron, and an 
 engraving of this useful culinary instrument was placed at 
 the head of the later numbers of the ' Register.' The origin of 
 it was this. When he was resident in Long Island in 1819, he 
 pubhshed a letter to Lord Folkestone in which he attacked 
 the Currency Bill of the first Sir Robert Peel, and with 
 respect to his prophecy that the Bank of England would be 
 able, without any reduction of the debt, to pay in specie, he 
 declared, ' If she does, I will give my poor body up to be 
 broiled on one of Castlereagh's widest-ribbed gridirons.' And 
 _ again, ' I will give Castlereagh leave to lay me on a gridiron 
 - and broil me alive, whilst Sidmouth may stir the coals, and 
 Canning stand by and laugh at my groans.' Not satisfied 
 with being farmer, author, editor, and pamphleteer, he opened 
 a butcher's shop at Kensington, and soon after closed it by an 
 act of bankruptcy. During the incendiary ' swing fires ' an 
 article appeared in the ' Register,' which again attracted to 
 Cobbett the notice of the Attorney-General. He was prose- 
 cuted for a seditious libel, but, as the jury were unable to 
 agree, the result this time was an acquittal, and shortly after- 
 wards he was able to write M.P. after his name. I have 
 myself, when a very young man, seen him in the House of 
 Commons, but I prefer to borrow the description given of 
 him by Lord Bailing, who sat in the same Parliament with 
 him. He calls him ' an elderly, respectable-looking, red-faced 
 gentleman, in a dust- coloured coat and drab breeches, with 
 gaiters, tall and strongly built, but stooping, with sharp eyes, 
 a round and ruddy countenance, smallish features, and a 
 peculiarly cynical mouth. He realised pretty nearly the idea 
 that might have been formed about him.' He did not pretend 
 to eloquence, and his style of speaking was ' colloquial, bitter, 
 with a dry caustic and rather drawling delivery.' Still no 
 Other instance exists, and perhaps no other instance will ever 
 
42 6 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 exist, of a man entering the House of Commons at seventy- 
 six years of age and immediately taking his place as one of 
 the best debaters in it. His most noteworthy exploit was his 
 motion praying the king to strike the first Sir Robert Peel's 
 name out of the list of members of the Privy Council, on account 
 of his Currency Bill of 1819, which motion was rejected by a 
 majority of 298 to 4. In 1834 he was again elected member 
 for Oldham, but his career was now drawing to a close. On the 
 night of the nth of June, 1835, he was seized, while in the 
 country, with a violent attack of water on the chest, and died a 
 few days afterwards, peacefully shutting his eyes as if to sleep. 
 Such was the life of William Cobbett, the ' contentious 
 man,' as Lord Bailing calls him. But it is worth while to 
 quote his own epitome of that life which he gives in the 
 introduction to his ' Advice to Young Men,' to show how well 
 qualified he was for the task he then undertook. ' Thrown 
 (by my own will indeed) on the wide world at a very early 
 age, not more than eleven or twelve years, without money to 
 support, without friends to advise, and without book-learning 
 to assist me, passing a few years dependent solely on my own 
 labour for my subsistence, then becoming a common soldier 
 and leading a military life chiefly in foreign parts for eight 
 years, quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, 
 and with, for me, a large sum of money, marrying at an 
 early age, going at once to France to acquire the French 
 language, thence over to America, passing eight years there, 
 becoming bookseller and author, and taking a prominent part 
 in all the important discussions of the interesting period from 
 1793 to 1799, during which there was in that country a con- 
 tinued struggle carried on between the English and the French 
 parties, conducting myself in the ever, active part which I 
 took in that struggle in such a way as to call forth marks of 
 unequivocal approbation from the Government at home, re- 
 turned to England in 1800, resuming my labours here, suf- 
 fering during these twenty-nine years two years of imprison- 
 ment, heavy fines, three years self-banishment to the other 
 side of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of fortune so as to 
 be left without a bed to lie on ; and, during these twenty-nine 
 years of trouble and punishment, writing and publishing every 
 week of my life — whether in exile or not, eleven weeks only 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 427 
 
 excepted— a periodical paper containing more or less of matter 
 worthy of public attention ; writing and publishing during 
 the same twenty-nine years a " Grammar " of the French and 
 another of the English language, a work on the " Economy of 
 the Cottage," a work on " Forest Trees and Wood Lands," a 
 work on " Gardening," and an " Account of America," a book 
 of " Sermons," a work on the " Corn Plant," a " History of the 
 Protestant Reformation," all books of great and continuous 
 sale, and the last unquestionably the book of greatest circula- 
 tion in the whole world, the Bible only excepted, having 
 during these same twenty-nine years of troubles and embar- 
 rassments without number, introduced into England the manu- 
 facture of straw-plait, also several valuable trees, having 
 introduced during the same twenty-nine years the cultivation 
 of the corn plant, so manifestly valuable as a source of food, 
 having during the same period, always, whether in exile or 
 not, sustained a shop of some size in London, having during 
 the whole of the same period never employed less on an 
 average than ten persons in some capacity or other, exclusive 
 of printers, bookbinders, and others connected with papers 
 and books, and having during these twenty-nine years of 
 trouble, embarrassments, prisons, fines, and banishments, bred 
 up a family of seven children to man's and woman's state.' 
 
 Cobbett's opinion of himself and his own powers soared far 
 beyond ordinary vanity, and his works are full of the most 
 downright assertions of self-importance and conceit. Thus, to 
 quote only one. In describing a particular sand-hill in Surrey 
 or Hampshire, down which he used to roll in a smock-frock 
 when a boy, and where he received the rudiments of his 
 education, he says, ' I am perfectly satisfied that if I had not 
 received such an education or something very much hke it, 
 that if I had been brought up a milksop, with a nursery-maid 
 everlastingly at my heels, I should at this day have been as 
 great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous 
 idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster 
 Schools, or from any of those dens of dunces called colleges 
 and universities. It is impossible to say how much I owe to 
 that sand-hill, and I went to return it my thanks for the 
 ability which it probably gave me to be one of the greatest 
 terrors to one of the greatest and most powerful bodies of 
 
428 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 knaves and fools that ever were permitted to afflict this or any- 
 other country.' The next quotation I shall give can hardly 
 be called a proof of vanity, but it is an amusing indication of 
 the character of his mind. Speaking of American fire-places 
 he had introduced into England, he says, ' This is another of 
 what the malignant persons call " Cobbett's quackeries "... 
 but, really, coming to conscience, no man ought to sit by 
 one of these fire-places that does not go the full length with 
 me in politics and religion. It is not for them to enjoy the 
 warmth without subscribing to the opinions of the giver of 
 the warmth.' One characteristic of Cobbett's style, and I 
 think a faulty one, is the constant use of italics to emphasise 
 his meaning. This is also the case with Archbishop Whately, 
 than whom no writer ever expressed himself more clearly. 
 But I think that italics, except in rare cases, are mistakes. 
 The collocation of a sentence ought to be such as to point out 
 the proper emphasis of the word which the writer intends, 
 and ought not to require the aid of finger-posts to direct the 
 reader in the right path. Besides, the page is disfigured by 
 the frequent change of type. Nothing corresponding to the 
 use of italics was known to the authors of Greece and Rome, 
 and I feel certain that Cicero never would have thought it 
 necessary to underline a word if he had written in English. 
 But for examples of homely vigorous Saxon English I hardly 
 know any Avriter who can be compared with Cobbett, and he 
 hits with the force of a sledge-hammer, or, to vary the 
 simile, I may liken his style to that of an Indian swinging 
 his tomahawk in the air and scalping his victims while he 
 dances round them in an ecstacy of rage. I need not say that 
 Cobbett was a hearty hater. I remember Hartley Coleridge 
 once saying to me that he wished some one would write a 
 poem on ' The Pleasures of Hate ;' and nobody could have 
 done this like Cobbett, if he had possessed enough poetic 
 skill to manage the metre and the rhyme. His ' grammar ' is 
 not only a practical but a very amusing book. He contrives 
 ably to drag in his political opinions, and makes his exam- 
 ples and illustrations subservient to his likes and dislikes. 
 Thus we have as an example of the time of an action 
 expressed by a verb, ' The Queen {i.e. Queen Caroline) defies 
 the tyrants, the Queen defied the tyrants, the Queen zvill defy 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 429 
 
 the tyrants.' To illustrate the hyphen, we have ' the never- 
 to-be-forgotten cruelty of the borough tyrants.' Under the 
 possessive case, 'Oliver the spy's evidence, Edwards the 
 government's spy.' Nouns of number and multitude are thus 
 grouped together : ' Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Com- 
 mons, Regiment, Court of Queen's Bench, den of thieves, and 
 the like.' ' We may, for instance, say of the House of Com- 
 mons, they refused to hear evidence against Castlereagh when 
 Mr. Maddox accused him of having sold a seat ; or, it refused 
 to hear evidence.' As a specimen of faulty syntax, ' The 
 Attorney-General Gibbs, whose malignity induced him to be 
 extremely violent, and was listened to by the judges ; ' and to 
 illustrate mistakes of grammar, we have a chapter headed 
 ' Errors and Nonsense in a King's Speech,' and a series of 
 lessons 'intended to prevent statesmen from using false 
 grammar, and from writing in an awkward manner.' The 
 book abounds in such sarcastic hits. Of his ' Advice to Young 
 Men ' I can speak in terms of unqualified praise. It is full 
 of sound sense, and is an admirable manual of duty for the 
 class to which it is addressed. One great charm of the book 
 is the knowledge we thereby get of the personal history and 
 character of the man, for his confessions are almost as candid 
 as those of Rousseau. We see him as he was ; as the lover, 
 the husband, and the father of a family ; and it is in these 
 relations that we have a view of the amiable side of his 
 character, and forget the fierce and unscrupulous politician. 
 ' Music, indeed,' he says ; ' give me a mother singing to her 
 clean, fat, and rosy baby, and making her home ring with her 
 extravagant and hyperbolical encomiums upon it. That is 
 the music which is the " food of love." ' The man who wrote 
 that must have had a warm and tender heart, and the next 
 quotation may be given as a companion picture. ' A labourer's 
 cottage on a Sunday, the husband or wife having a baby in 
 arms, looking at two or three other ones playing between the 
 flower borders, going from the wicket to the door, is according 
 to my taste the most interesting object that eyes ever beheld, ■ 
 and it is an object to be beheld in no country upon earth but 
 in England.' In choosing a wife Cobbett recommends rather 
 a novel test : ' Get to see her at work on a mutton chop, or a 
 bit of bread and cheese, and, if she deals quickly with these, 
 
43° £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 you have a pretty good security for that activity, that stirring 
 industry, without which a wife is a burden, instead of being a 
 help. Another mark of industry is a quick step, and a some- 
 what heavy tread, showing that the foot comes down with a 
 hearty good will.' My space prevents me from quoting even 
 a few of the admirable rules and maxims contained in the 
 book which range from lessons of morality to the advantage 
 of learning to shave with cold water ; but I would especially 
 recommend the words of advice which the Ultra-Radical Cob- 
 bett gives as a remedy against discontent : ' It has pleased 
 God to make an unequal distribution of talent and industry, 
 of perseverance, of a capacity to labour, of all the qualities 
 that give men distinction. We have not been our own 
 makers ; it is no fault in you that nature has placed him above 
 you, and would you punish him on account, and only on 
 account, of his pre-eminence .-' ' Of all Cobbett's writings I 
 like best his ' Rural Rides ; ' they describe his excursions on 
 horseback, accompanied by his sons, chiefly through the 
 southern counties of England, between the years 1821 and 
 1832, with economical and political observations relative to 
 matters applicable to and illustrated by the state of those 
 counties. And these observations form the most amusing, if 
 not the most instructive, part of the book. They exhibit all 
 the strength and prejudice and bitterness of Cobbett's dislikes. 
 But its real charm is the thorough knowledge it displays of 
 the pursuits of rural life, and the eye he had for the cultivated 
 beauty of English scenery, ' smooth and verdant downs, in 
 hills and valleys of endless variety as to height and depth and 
 shape ; rich corn-land, unencumbered by fences ; meadows in 
 due proportion, and those watered at pleasure ; and lastly, 
 the homesteads sheltered in winter and shaded in summer by 
 lofty and beautiful trees.' Sometimes he would ride forty 
 miles in a day, with no other refreshment than a piece of 
 bread and cheese or a rasher of bacon and a little milk and 
 water. It is delightful to accompany him past corn-fields and 
 woodlands, and see pictures before us by the hand of a mas- 
 ter ; the snug farms and homesteads of England. ' The 
 opening of the birch leaves is the signal for the pheasant to 
 begin to crow, for the blackbird to whistle, and the thrush to 
 sing ; and just when the oak buds begin to look reddish, and 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 431 
 
 not a day before, the whole tribe of finches burst forth hi song 
 from every bough, while the lark, imitating them all, carries 
 the joyous sound to the sky. These are amongst the means 
 which Providence has benignantly appointed to sweeten the 
 toils by which food and raiment are produced.' And now 
 comes one of the observations — 'the English ploughman could 
 once hear without the sorrowful reflection that he himself was 
 a pauper, and that the beauties of Nature had for him been 
 
 scattered in vain O ! accursed paper money. 
 
 Has Hell a torment surpassing the wickedness of thy inven- 
 tor } ' Paper money and the Bank of England were the two 
 things which next to borough-mongers and Quakers he held 
 most in abomination. Near Whitchurch he passed by the 
 mill where paper still is made for the Bank, and he thus 
 anathematised it : — ' I hope the time will come when a monu- 
 ment will be erected- where the mill stands, and when on that 
 monument will be inscribed T/ie Curse of England. This 
 spot ought to be held accursed in all times henceforth and for 
 evermore.' And again, when describing the beautiful valley 
 of Chillworth, its meadows, its hop gardens, and its ponds, he 
 bursts forth — ' This valley, which seems to have been created 
 by a bountiful Providence, as one of the choicest retreats of 
 man, which seems formed for a scene of innocence and happi- 
 ness, has been by ungrateful man so perverted as to make it 
 instrumental in effecting two of the most damnable of purposes, 
 in carrying into execution two of the most damnable inven- 
 tions that ever sprang from the minds of men under the 
 influence of the devil, namely, the making of gunpowder and 
 of bank-notes.' I will give one more quotation : ' This vile! 
 paper money and funding system, this system of Dutch 
 descent, begotten by Bishop Burnet, and born in hell ; this , 
 system has turned everything into a gamble.' In his ' Rural 
 Rides' Cobbett almost invariably calls London the 'wen,'_ 
 and more than once applies to it the complementary terms 1. 
 ' smoking and infernal.' He wonders why, with all his love 
 for the country, his fate should have been to live part of his 
 life in a town. ' While I was writing the last sentence of the 
 foregoing paragraph, thought took me up at the time when 
 I used to wear a smock-frock and to carry a wooden bottle 
 like that shepherd's boy, and in an instant it hurried me 
 
432 jESSAVS critical AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 along through my no very short life of adventure, of toil, of 
 peril, of ardent friendship, and not less ardent enmity ; and 
 after filling me with wonder that a heart and mind so wrapped 
 up in every thing belonging to the gardens and the woods, 
 should have been condemned to waste themselves away 
 amidst the stench, the noises, and the strife of cities, it 
 brought me back to the present moment, and sent my mind 
 back to what I had yet to perform about Nicholas Grimshaw 
 and his ditches.' And again, after describing Sir Thomas 
 Winnington's seat in Worcestershire, where he was hospitably 
 received, he imagines himself addressed by ' the devil of lazi- 
 ness,' and tempted to give up work and politics and live 
 peacefully in such a spot. ' And such a pretty place for 
 coursing, for hare-hunting, and woodcock-shooting, I dare 
 say ; and then those pretty wild ducks in the water, and the 
 flowers, and the grass, and the trees, and all the birds in the 
 spring, and the fresh air, and never, never again, to be stifled with 
 the smoke that from the infernal wen ascendeth for evermore, 
 and that every easterly wind brings to choke me at Kensing- 
 ton. The last word of this soliloquy carried me back slap to 
 my own study (very much unlike that which I am in), and 
 
 bade me think of the gridiron 
 
 Ah ! but the hares and the pheasants, and the wild ducks. 
 Yes, but the delight of seeing prosperity Robinson hang 
 
 down his head for shame ' He was fond of 
 
 coursing and enjoying a gallop with the harriers as much as 
 the keenest sportsman in England. He laughed ^t the idea 
 of cruelty to the hare, and, ' as to the expense, a pack, even a 
 full pack of harriers costs less than two bottles of wine a day 
 with their inseparable concomitants.' He was delighted with 
 a farmer's wife who, to escape the carriage duty and avoid 
 'feeding those cormorants who gorge on the taxes,' drove 
 about in an ass cart. But he hoped that her husband was 
 equally self-denying, and did not use wine and spirits, because 
 ' for a husband to indulge himself in the guzzling of expensive, 
 unnecessary, and really injurious drinks, to the tune perhaps 
 of fifty or a hundred pounds a J^ear, while he preaches 
 economy to his wife, and with a face as long as my arm talks 
 of the low price of corn, and wheedles her out of a curricle 
 into a jack-ass cart, is not only unjust, but unmanly' He 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 433 
 
 admired the market at Norwich. ' It resembles one of the 
 French markets, only there the vendors are all standing and 
 gobbling like parrots, and the meat is lean and bloody and 
 nasty, and the people snuffy and grimy in hands and face ; 
 the contrary, precisely the contrary, of all which is the case 
 in this beautiful market of Norwich, where the women have a 
 sort of uniform like brown great-coats, with white aprons and 
 bibs (I think they call them), going from the apron up to the 
 bosom.' ' Warminster is a very nice town ; everything belong- 
 ing to it is solid and good. There are no villanous ginger- 
 bread houses running up, and no shabby-genteel people ; no 
 women trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks ; 
 no Jew-looking fellows with dandy coats, dirty shirts, and 
 half-heels to their boots.' Perhaps no better proof of the 
 perversity of his mind on some subjects can be given than by 
 quoting what he says about the education of the poor. He 
 affected 'to believe that the cry of want of education was 
 intended to excuse neglect of their bodily wants, and to make 
 reading and writing supply the place of food and clothing.' 
 In this view it was like giving them a 'stone for bread.' 
 ' The education canters,' he says, ' are the most curious 
 fellows of all. They have seen education, as they call it, and 
 crimes go on increasing together till the gaols, though six 
 times their former dimensions, will hardly suffice, and yet 
 the canting creatures still cry that crimes arise from want 
 of what they call " education" ! They see the felon better 
 fed and better clad than the honest labourer. They see 
 this, and yet they continually cry that the crimes arise from 
 want of education ! What can be the cause of this perversg- 
 ness .? It is not perverseness ; it is roguery, corruption, and 
 tyranny. But who is to expect morality from a half-starved 
 man who is whipped if he do not work, though he has not for 
 his whole day's food so much as I and my little boy snapped 
 up in six or seven minutes upon Stoke-Chants Down .? ' 
 
 But the strangest book of all is his ' History of the Pro- V 
 testant Reformation,' which was inspired by his hatred of /" 
 pauperism and the poor laws, both of which he attributed 
 to the change of religion that took place m the reign of 
 Henry VIII It is an elaborate acte d' accusation agamst the 
 authors of the Reformation, and their characters and conduct 
 
 r F 
 
434 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 are assailed with all the ferocity of a personal enemy. Not 
 X that he himself had any leaning to the Roman Catholic faith : 
 
 he professed to be influenced solely by a regard to justice and 
 truth. ' Born and bred,' he says, ' a Protestant of the Church 
 of England, having a wife and a numerous family professing 
 the same faith, having the remains of most dearly-loved 
 parents lying in a Protestant churchyard, and trusting to 
 conjugal or filial piety to place mine by their side ; I have 
 in this undertaking had no motive, I can have had no motive, 
 but a sincere and disinterested love of truth and justice.' He 
 tells his readers at the outset that he intends to show ' that 
 the Reformation was engendered in beastly lust, brought 
 forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by 
 plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and 
 Irish blood; and that, as to its more remote consequences, 
 there are some of them now before us in that misery, that 
 beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrang- 
 ling and spite which now stare us in the face and stun our 
 ears at every turn, and which the Reformation has given us in 
 exchange for the ease and happiness, harmony and Christian 
 charity, enjoyed so abundantly and for so many ages by our 
 Catholic forefathers.' Of course such a work, coming from a 
 ■j^ Protestant author, was welcomed by the Roman Catholic 
 
 Church, and the book was translated into Italian at Rome, 
 under the title 'Storia della Reforma Protestanta in Inghilterra 
 ed in Irlanda, la quale dimostra come un tal'avvenimento ha 
 impoverito, e degradato il governo del popolo in quel paesi.' 
 To say that the account it gives is unjust and unfair is to 
 /^ state what is far short of the truth. It is. in many parts a mere 
 
 caricature, and would be best described as history read back- 
 wards. In fact, the nature of Cobbett's mind utterly unfitted 
 him for the office of historian of a period which, above all other 
 periods, requires sound judgment and freedom from prejudice. 
 ""^ He did not affect to be impartial, and he gloried in prejudice. 
 
 The consequence is that he sees nothing but good in the cause he 
 maintains, and nothing but evil in the cause that he condemns. 
 His favourite theory is that England was wealthy and happy 
 and populous while she adhered to her ancestral faith, and 
 became poor and miserable and decayed when she renounced 
 the obedience to the Pope, and lost her monasteries and 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 435 
 
 abbeys. Against the abuses of Peter's pence and alien 
 priories he sets off the payments made to foreign princes and 
 foreign troops. ' How we Protestants,' he exclaims, ' strain at 
 a gnat while we swallow camels by whole caravans ! Mr. 
 Perceval gave more to foreigners in one single year than the 
 Pope ever received from our ancestors in four centuries.' Papal 
 supremacy was • a most salutary thing,' the only check then 
 existing for despotic power ; and as to the celibacy of the 
 clergy ' we find,' he says, ' whether we look at this rule in a 
 moral, in a civil, or in a political point of view, that it was 
 founded in wisdom, that it was a great blessing to the people 
 at large, and that its abolition is a thing to be deeply deplored.' 
 ' As to Luther,' he goes on to say, ' all accounts agree that 
 Luther was a most profligate man !' and Cobbett attributes 
 one of the motives of his opposition to the Pope to the fact 
 that the grant of Indulgences had been entrusted to the Order 
 of Dominicans, and not to the Order to which Luther belonged. 
 ' Perhaps,' he says, 'the world has never in any age seen a nest 
 of such atrocious miscreants as Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, 
 Beza, and the rest of the distinguished Reformers of the 
 Catholic religion.' Every one of them was ' notorious for 
 the most scandalous vices, even according to the full confession 
 of his own followers ! ' He speaks of Cranmer as ' a name 
 which deserves to be held in everlasting execration ; a name 
 which we could not pronounce without almost doubting of the 
 justice of God, were it not for the knowledge of the fact that 
 the cold-blooded, most impious, most blasphemous caitiff 
 expired at last amidst those flames which he himself had 
 been the chief cause of kindling.' He asserts his belief, on 
 the authority of Dr. Bayley's 'Life of Bishop Fisher," that 
 Anne Boleynwas the daughter aswell as the wifeof Henry VHI, 
 and assumes that she was guilty of adultery with four gentlemen 
 of the King's household, and of incest with her own brother. 
 Lord Rochfort. I need only say that no proof exists of the 
 truth of any one of these charges ; and even Mr. Froude, who 
 has taken such pains to whitewash the character of Henry, 
 and who has gone with great minuteness into the case of 
 Anne Boleyn, is not able to urge more than the probability 
 of her guilt, devised from the so-called confession of Smeton, 
 and her own admissions of professions of love- made to her by 
 
436 £SSAVS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 Norris and Weston. I must, however, say in justice to 
 Mr. Froude, with whose estimate of Henry VIII. I wholly 
 disagree, that he has in this instance stated the case on both 
 sides with much fairness and impartiality, and in this, as in 
 other respects, he is as unHke as possible to Cobbett. Of 
 course Queen Elizabeth comes in for a good share of abuse. 
 She is ' the racking and ripping-up Betsey, the worst woman 
 that ever existed in England or in the whole world, Jezebel 
 herself not excepted ; while Queen Mary is an example of 
 fidelity, sincerity, patience, resignation, generosity, gratitude, 
 and purity in thought, word, and deed.' But, to show Cobbett's 
 fitness to be the historian of the Reformation, it will be sufficient 
 to quote only one other passage in which he seeks to excuse, if 
 not justify, the murders of the Protestant martyrs, on the 
 ground that they ' were generally a set of most wicked wretches 
 who sought to destroy the Queen and her Government, and 
 under the pretence of conscience and superior piety to obtain 
 the means of again preying upon the people.' The following 
 is a good specimen of his picturesque style and the way in 
 which he mingles description and abuse. ' Go into my county 
 and survey even at this day the ruins of its perhaps twenty 
 abbeys and priories, and then ask yourself, " What have we in 
 exchange for these .'" Go to the site of some once opulent 
 convent. Look at the cloister, now become in the hands of 
 some rack-renter the receptacle for dung, fodder, and faggot 
 wood. See the hall where for ages the widow, the orphan, the 
 aged, and the stranger found a table ready spread. See a bit 
 of its wall now helping to make a cattle shed, the rest having 
 been hauled away to build a warehouse. Recognise in the 
 side of a barn a part of the once magnificent chapel ; and if, 
 chained to the spot by your melancholy musings, you be 
 admonished of the approach of night by the voice of the 
 screech-owl from those arches, which once at the same hour 
 resounded with the vespers of the monk, and which have for 
 700 years been assailed by storms and tempests in vain ; if 
 thus admonished of the necessity of seeking food, shelter, and 
 a bed, lift up your eyes, and look at the white-washed and dry- 
 rotten shed on the hill called the " Gentleman's House ; " and 
 apprised of the " board \\ages " and " spring guns," which are 
 the signs of his hospitality, turn your head, jog away from 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT, 437 
 
 the scene of former comfort and grandeur ; and with old 
 English welcoming in your mind, reach the nearest inn, and 1 
 then in a room, half warmed and half lighted, with a re- \ 
 ception precisely proportioned to the presumed length of ' 
 your purse, sit down and listen to an account of the hypocritical 
 pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody means, \ 
 under which, from which, and by which the ruin you have been i 
 witnessing was effected, and the hospitality you have lost was i 
 for ever banished from the land !' But I must now stop. I 
 will only add one quotation, which will, I think, give a better 
 idea than any other of the character and temperament of the 
 man. In one of his works he says that he would desire no 
 better epitaph upon his grave than this : — ' Here lies William 
 Cobbett, who was hanged because he would not allow the 
 English labourer to live upon the d d root called the po- 
 tato.' And I may add that there hangs behind me an engraving 
 of Cobbett, which has been kindly lent to me by Mr. Roberts of 
 Bath. His father was a correspondent of Cobbett's, and 
 several letters written by the latter are in his possession. In 
 one. of these Cobbett says, ' I want a wench to milk cows, but 
 she musn't drink tea or curl her hair.' Mr. Roberts wrote 
 back that he had found a girl likely to suit him, who would 
 give up curling her hair, but must have her cup of tea. To 
 this Cobbett wrote in reply, ' Dear Roberts, Your tea-drinking 
 
 wench be d d ! Yours truly, W. COBBETT.' 
 
 I hope that this sketch I have given of Cobbett's life and 
 the quotations I have made from his works will enable you to 
 form a tolerably correct opinion of the character of the man. 
 With all his faults of prejudice and violence, we must remem- 
 ber that he had to cope with flagrant abuses in Church and 
 State, which have only yielded to the slow growth of public 
 opinion, and that if the forest of such abuses has been cut 
 down some thanks are due to the rough pioneer who assailed ; 
 them with his axe. But whatever may be thought of the,' 
 politician there can be no doubt as to the writer. If any one \^ 
 wishes to form a clear, manly, vigorous style, and strengthen | \ 
 that style with the strength of Saxon English, let him study,-' \ 
 the pages of William Cobbett. 
 
438 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 THE RULES OF EVIDENCE AS APPLICABLE 
 TO THE CREDIBILITY OF HISTORY} 
 
 To believe without any evidence at all is irrational ; but to 
 disbelieve against sufficient evidence is equally irrational. 
 
 By sufficient evidence I mean such an amount of proof as 
 satisfies an unprejudiced mind beyond all reasonable doubt. 
 Mathematical truth alone admits of demonstration. All other 
 kinds of truth can only be proved by probabilities, which vary 
 in an almost infinite degree, from the faintest kind of pre- 
 sumption to what is called moral certainty, which is accepted 
 as practically equivalent to demonstration. 
 
 Upon evidence depends all our knowledge of past events ; 
 and it is astonishing how little is often sufficient to satisfy us. 
 The mere fact of its being written in a book is enough to 
 make no inconsiderable number of readers believe in the 
 truth of a statement, without reflecting whether the author 
 had or had not the means of ascertaining the truth — for if he 
 had, we may be justified in putting faith in his honesty; but 
 if he had not, his own assertion is worth nothing. 
 
 By proof, I mean anything that serves, either mediately or 
 immediately, to convince the mind of the truth or falsehood 
 of a fact or proposition ; and proofs differ according to the 
 subject-matter of the thing to be proved. 
 
 One of the most common, and, at the same time, most 
 satisfactory modes of proof as to things which do not fall 
 within the experience of the senses is Induction, by which is 
 meant the inference drawn from proved or admitted facts. It 
 is for instance by induction that the general facts of Natural 
 History are proved. When we say that all ruminant animals 
 are cloven-footed, we cannot show any necessary connection 
 between these physical phenomena ; but, having ascertained 
 by a very large number of instances that they co-exist, and 
 
 ' A Lecture delivered before the Victoria Institute or Philosophical Society of 
 Great Britain, March, 1S74. 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 439 
 
 that in no single case that has come under the observation of 
 naturalists they fail, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion 
 that the proposition is universally true, and we should pre- 
 dicate with confidence if a new race of animals were dis- 
 covered in some hitherto unknown region, that if they are 
 ruminants they are also cloven-footed. The underlying ground 
 of belief in this case is our innate conviction of the prevalence 
 of uniformity in Nature in things of the same kind. This 
 uniformity we call a Law. 
 
 One test of the probability of a fact is its consistency with 
 other facts previously known or admitted to be true — such as 
 the constitution qf human nature, the ordinary course of 
 events, or some well-established truth. But it must be borne 
 in mind, as Laplace has said, although perhaps in a different 
 sense, that ' Probability has reference partly to our ignorance, 
 partly to our knowledge.' We must be tolerably sure we do 
 know the other facts, and that they are not really incon- 
 sistent with the fact in dispute. Otherwise we shall be 
 following the example of the King of Siam, who rejected as 
 incredible the statement of the Dutch Ambassador, that water 
 could become a solid mass. This was simply because he had 
 never seen or heard of it before ; and it was contrary to his 
 limited experience, or what he thought a law of nature. 
 Hume' felt the difficulty of this instance in the way of his 
 argument against miracles, and attempts to get over it by 
 saying that though the fact was not contrary to the king's 
 experience, it was not conformable to it. But this is not a 
 fair .way of putting it. Frost was contrary to the king's 
 experience as much as walking on the water without support 
 is contrary to ours. And it cannot be denied that when by 
 universal experience certain laws of nature are known to 
 exist, it requires the strongest possible evidence to make us 
 believe in any deviation from them. Hume's famous argument 
 against miracles is, that no testimony is sufficient to establish 
 a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kmd that its 
 falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact ; and that 
 no human testimony can have such force as to prove a 
 miracle because it is always more likely that the testimony 
 should iDe false than that the miracle should be true. 
 
 The late John Stuart Mill has dealt with this argument 
 
440 ASSAYS CRITTCAL AND NARRATB'E. 
 
 in his ' Logic,' and, I think, conclusively. He says that Hume's 
 celebrated doctrine, that nothing is credible which is contrary 
 to experience, or at variance with the laws of nature, is merely 
 the very plain and harmless proposition that whatever is con- 
 trary to a complete induction is incredible. And he goes on 
 to show that any alleged fact is only contradictory to a law 
 of causation when it is said to happen without an adequate 
 counteracting cause. ' Now,' says Mill, ' in the case of an 
 alleged miracle the assertion is the exact opposite of this .... 
 A miracle is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect ; 
 it is a new effect supposed to be produced by the introduction 
 of a new cause.' He adds, truly enough, ' that if we do not 
 already believe in supernatural agencies no miracle can prove 
 to us their existence.' And we may freely admit, with himi 
 that ' there is an antecedent improbability in every miracle, 
 which, in order to outweigh it, requires an extraordinary 
 strength of antecedent probability derived from the special cir- 
 cumstances of the case.' I shall have occasion to allude to the 
 subject of miracles again hereafter. 
 
 History, from the Greek 'Icrropia, properly signifies ' investi- 
 gation' or 'research,' and implies, therefore, etymologically, a 
 narrative based upon inquiry about facts. 
 
 Few persons consider what the evidence is of the genuine- 
 ness of books attributed to authors who lived before the in- 
 vention of printing, most of which are derived from manu- 
 scripts which themselves were only copies, the originals having 
 been utterly destroyed or lost. This includes all the histories 
 of Greece and Rome written by classic authors. I have dealt 
 with this subject in a lecture I delivered in 1872, in the Hall 
 of the Inner Temple, which has since been published under 
 the title of ' History of Ancient Manuscripts.' I have not 
 time to enter upon it here, but it is a very interesting subject 
 of inquiry. I will only mention what Tischendorf, the great 
 German Biblical scholar says, about the manuscripts of the 
 New Testament : ' Providence has ordained for the New 
 Testament more sources of the greatest antiquity than are 
 possessed by all the old Greek literature put together.' 
 
 In one of his essays Lord Macaulay says of History : — 
 ' Perfectly and absolutely true it cannot be : for to be per- 
 fectly and absolutely true, it ought to record a/l the slightest 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 441 
 
 particulars of the slightest transactions— all the things done 
 and all the words uttered during the time of which it treats. 
 The omission of any circumstances, however insignificant, 
 would be a defect. If history were written thus, the Bodleian 
 Library would not contain the occurrences of a week.' And 
 Lord Macaulay might have added that no one would care to 
 have such a mass of useless verbiage in existence. He is 
 surely wrong in saying that history is not absolutely true 
 simply because it does not give us all the particulars of the 
 slightest transactions. Even in a court of justice we do not 
 think that a witness is not telling the absolute truth because 
 he does not relate every particular, however insignificant, of 
 the fact or conversation to which he deposes. And this leads 
 me to consider the difference between historical and judicial 
 evidence. The late Sir George Cornewall Lewis says in that 
 most valuable and learned work, ' The Credibility of the Early 
 Roman History' (Preface, p. 16), 'Historical evidence, like 
 judicial evidence, is founded on the testimony of credible 
 witnesses. Unless those witnesses had personal and imme- 
 diate perception of the facts which they report, unless they 
 said and heard what they undertake to relate as having 
 happened, their evidence is not entitled to credit. As all 
 original witnesses must be contemporary with the events 
 which they attest, it is a necessary condition for the credi- 
 bility of a witness that he be a contemporary, though a con- 
 temporary is not necessarily a credible witness. Unless, 
 therefore, a historical account can be traced by probable proof 
 to the testimony of contemporaries, the first condition of 
 credibility fails.' If, however, it is meant to be asserted that 
 the same degree of certainty ought to be required in historical 
 that is required in judicial evidence, it would be exacting too 
 much, and carrying scepticism too far. In the first place, 
 the thing is an impossibility, and the consequence would be, 
 that we should be logically compelled to withhold our belief 
 from nine-tenths of so-called historical facts about which we 
 have really no doubt at all. But, secondly, the circumstances 
 are wholly different. Judicial inquiries relate to minute and 
 special facts in dispute, where two parties are opposed to 
 e?ch other and it is the duty and interest of both to adduce 
 the best evidence of which the thing to be proved is suscep- 
 
442 £SSAyS CRITICAL AI\D NARRATIVE. 
 
 tible. And in all civilised communities their systems of 
 jurisprudence lay down technical rules of evidence — in some 
 countries much more strict than in others— which circum- 
 scribe the range of proofs. For instance, in France, hearsay 
 evidence is always admitted ; in England it is always excluded. 
 In some parts of Germany a sort of arithmetical scale is 
 applied to the testimony of witnesses. Different countries 
 apply different rules of legal presumption, which are really 
 not instruments of truth, but technical and positive modes of 
 quieting controversy. But, to quote the words of an eminent 
 writer on the law of evidence, ' However widely different codes 
 may vary from each other in matters of arbitrary positive 
 institution, and of mere artificial creation, the general means 
 of investigating the truth of contested facts must be common 
 to all. Every rational system which provides the means of 
 proof must be founded on experience and reason, on a well- 
 grounded knowledge of human nature and conduct, on a con- 
 sideration of the value of testimony, and on the weight due 
 to coincident circumstances.' — Starkie, ' On the Law of Evi- 
 dence ' (Preface). 
 
 But History deals with general rather than particular facts 
 — with results rather than details — and from the nature and 
 necesssity of the case must be content with looser modes of 
 proof than is necessary or expedient in judicial trials. All 
 that we are entitled to ask from her is such an amount of 
 evidence for the truth of the facts which she records as would 
 satisfy the understanding of a reasonable man in the ordinary 
 affairs of life. Every day we act upon evidence which, if 
 offered in a court of justice, would be rejected. Too often we 
 act upon very slight and insufficient evidence, especially in 
 cases affecting the character of others, but in so far as we do 
 this we act wrongly ; and in the same manner we act wrongly 
 when we accept as true the mere statement of a historian on 
 any question where truth is of importance, when we have it in 
 our power to examine his authorities and judge of their value 
 for ourselves. 
 
 It is part of the constitution of human nature to confide 
 in the veracity of others. If this were not so a man's belief 
 would be limited to matters within his own personal experi- 
 ence, and no progress could be made in knowledge, nor would 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 443 
 
 improvement be possible. There is a tacit assumption wlien 
 we yield to the force of oral evidence of what I may call the 
 major premiss of our syllogism, viz., that men will generally 
 speak the truth. Experience teaches us, if indeed it is not an 
 intuitive impulse, to put faith in human testimony. 
 
 How beautiful is the trusting simplicity of childhood, and 
 the absolute reliance which a child places in the word of its 
 parents ! But as we grow older this confidence is shaken, 
 and experience compels us to acquiesce in the truth of the 
 melancholy maxim of Lord Chatham, that ' confidence is a 
 plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.' That stern monitor 
 experience tells us that it by no means follows that because 
 we have contemporary testimony to a fact the fact is true. 
 Witnesses are often mistaken, and their evidence is not unfre- 
 quently false. We must, therefore, so far as is possible, apply 
 certain rules by which to test the probabihty of its truth. I 
 have already alluded to one test of probability, and that is 
 the agreement of the fact with other facts known or admitted 
 to be true. Another test is the concurrence of the testimony 
 of independent witnesses, always supposing that each of them 
 has had the means of knowing the fact or facts to be ascer- 
 tained. Of course I exclude all copying from the same 
 original, and this, perhaps, is implied in the word indepen- 
 dent. As Archbishop Whately has observed, ' For though in 
 such a case each of the witnesses should be considered as 
 unworthy of credit, and even much more likely to speak 
 falsehood than truth, still the chances might be infinite 
 against their all agreeing in the same falsehood ' (' Rhetoric,' pt. 
 i. ch. ii. sec. 4). And in his ' Philosophy of Rhetoric,' Dr. 
 Campbell says, 'It deserves likewise to be attended to on 
 this subject, that in a number of concurrent testimonies (in 
 cases wherein there could have been no previous concert) 
 there is a probability distinct from that which may be termed 
 the sum of the probabilities resulting from the testimonies of 
 the witnesses, a probability which would remain even though 
 the witnesses were of such a character as to merit no faith at 
 all This probability arises purely from the concurrence 
 itself That such a concurrence should spring from chance is 
 as one to infinite ; that is, in other words, morally impossible.' 
 Lord Mansfield once said, with reference to the credit to be 
 
444 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. ' 
 
 given to certain reporters, ' It is objected that these are books 
 of no authority ; but if both the reporters were the worst that 
 ever reported, if substantially they report a case in the same 
 way, it is demonstration of the truth of what they report, or 
 they could not agree ' (R. v. George, i Cowp. l6). 
 
 Generally speaking, the silence of contemporary writers as 
 to a fact throws strong suspicion on its genuineness. But this 
 test is not conclusive, for we may have overpowering evidence 
 aliunde of its truth. Lord Macaulay says, 'We have read 
 books called histories of England under the reign of George II. 
 in which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned.' And 
 Varnhagen von Ense mentions in his Diary that Humboldt 
 had adduced ' three important and perfectly undeniable 
 matters of fact as to which no evidence is to be found where 
 it would be most anticipated. In the archives of Barcelona 
 no trace of the triumphal entry of Columbus into that city ; 
 in Marco Polo no allusion to the Chinese Wall ; in the 
 archives of Portugal nothing about the voyages of Amerigo 
 Vespucci in the service of that crown.' But notwithstanding 
 this, the silence of contemporary authority is one of the notes 
 of falsehood with respect to an alleged historical fact. How 
 do we know that the story of William Tell and his shooting 
 an arrow at an apple on his son's head is untrue } Because we 
 do not find it in contemporary history ; and the first mention 
 of it as a Swiss legend occurs in the chronicle of Melchior 
 Russ, registrar at Lucerne, some two hundred years later. 
 But, in addition, we find that the same story is told in Saxo 
 Grammaticus, who wrote in the twelfth century, of a Danish 
 hero ; a similar tale was current in Ireland ; and in the 
 Bilkinsaga it is told of the mythical Eigil, the brother of 
 Wieland, the smith. It also occurs in the legendary fables of 
 Holstein, Norway, and other countries ; and although it is 
 impossible to trace the origin of the story, it is certain that 
 no such occurrence happened in Switzerland. It is one of 
 the enfants trouvc's of historical literature, which can lay no 
 claim to legitimate paternity. 
 
 Why do we reject the story of the blind Belisarius begging 
 his bread in the streets of Constantinople 1 Because Proco- 
 pius, who was a contemporary historian, and accompanied 
 Belisarius in his Eastern wars, in Africa, and in Italy, says 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 445 
 
 nothing, in his account of the Hfe and misfortunes of Justinian's 
 famous general, of his blindness or beggary ; because no other 
 contemporary writer mentions them ; and because the first 
 hint of them occurs in some Greek verses written by John 
 Tzetes, a grammarian, about six hundred years after the 
 death of Belisarius. Why do we not believe the fable of Pope 
 Joan, whose accouchement is said to have taken place in the 
 midst of a procession at Rome ? Because no contemporary 
 author makes mention of such an astounding occurrence, and 
 we find the first allusion to it in the Chronicon of Marianus 
 Scotus, who lived two hundred years afterwards. And even 
 the passage there is said to be an interpolation. I believe 
 that the first writer who really tells the story, is Stephen de 
 Bourbon, in the thirteenth century. A not improbable ex- 
 planation of it is that one of the Popes, who led an immoral 
 life, had a mistress named Joan, who had such influence over 
 him that she was called Papesse, and from this the story had 
 its origin. 
 
 Why do intelligent and well-educated men accept as true 
 the miracles of the New Testament, and reject as untrue the 
 legends of the Saints .■' This is not the place, nor would it be 
 possible within the limits to which I must confine myself, to 
 go into the proofs of the miracles related in the Gospels and 
 the Acts. But briefly and summarily it may be said that we 
 beheve them, — l. Because they are recorded by eye-witnesses, 
 who must either have been the dupes of an imposture or the 
 fabricators of a falsehood. 2. They were done openly in the 
 face of enemies who, so far as we know, never denied them. 
 
 3. They were done with an adequate motive and cause. 
 
 4. They serve to explain the origin of a religion which has 
 lasted for eighteen centuries and won its way in spite of the 
 fiercest opposition. Now, applying these tests to the legends 
 of the Saints, we find that they fail in almost every particular ! 
 Hardly any of them rest on the testimony of eye-witnesses. 
 They are almost always isolated acts done in a corner, and 
 not coram populo. And the most famous of them, which is an 
 exception to the rule, I mean the cutting out of the roots of 
 the tongues of a number of Christians at Tipasa, who after- 
 wards spoke articulately and distinctly, has been shown by 
 Mr Twistleton in his able work, ' The Tongue not essential 
 
446 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 to Speech,' to be no miracle at all, but the effect of natural 
 causes as appears from many recorded parallel cases. More- 
 over, the mediaeval miracles are for the most part silly, un- 
 meaning, and childish, and they are often recorded by writers 
 who lived long after they are said to have occurred, who 
 breathed an atmosphere of credulity and were utterly destitute 
 of the critical faculty. Such considerations are quite sufficient 
 to justify our unbelief If it is objected that intelligent Roman 
 Catholics believe them, we answer that they are the disciples 
 of a system which forbids the right of private judgment on 
 questions determined by the authority of the Church ; and we 
 may well think it easy for men who believe in the doctrines of 
 the Immaculate Conception and the Infallibility of the Pope, 
 to believe also in the winking of an image of the Virgin, the 
 liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and the transporta- 
 tion, through the air, of a house of the Virgin from Palestine 
 to Loretto. Thus we find a man of the intelligence of Dr. 
 Newman saying, 'Crucifixes have bowed the head to the sup- 
 pliant, and Madonnas have bent their eyes on assembled 
 crowds. St. Januarius's blood liquefies periodically at Naples, 
 and St. Winifred's well is the source of wonders even in an un- 
 believing country .... St. Francis Xavier turned salt 
 water into fresh for five hundred travellers ; St. Raymond 
 was transported over the sea on his cloak ; St. Andrew shone 
 
 brightly in the dark I need not continue the 
 
 catalogue. It is agreed on both sides ; the two parties join 
 issue over a fact — that fact is the claim of miracles on the 
 part of the Catholic Church. It is the Protestant's charge, 
 and it is our glory.' 
 
 I may here in passing allude to the monstrous theory of 
 Strauss that the simple narratives in the four Gospels are 
 mere myths, which grew out of a body of belief which, some- 
 how or other, had taken possession of men's minds in the 
 second century of our era, and are no more real than the 
 legends of Theseus and Hercules. Our common sense revolts 
 against such an absurdity ; and, if Strauss himself really 
 believed it, it only shows that no credulity can be greater or 
 more childish than the credulity of an infidel. 
 
 Why do we believe Thucydidcs and disbelieve Livy } I 
 shall speak of both of these writers more fully hereafter, but 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE 
 
 447 
 
 here I may say that we believe Thucydides because he was 
 a contemporary of the events which he relates • he was 
 himself an actor in some of them ; he had access to'authentic 
 mformation, both oral and monumental, and we have no 
 reason to distrust his veracity. Of course I do not include 
 the long speeches he puts into the mouths of the characters 
 he introduces, for they are obviously manufactured, or, at all 
 events, dressed up for the occasion, according to a practice 
 very common in antiquity. We disbelieve a great part of the 
 narrative of Ijvy for the following reasons :— We know that he 
 could have had no trustworthy authority for many of his 
 statements respecting the early history of Rome : some of 
 those statements are intrinsically improbable, if not incredible : 
 he lived centuries later than many of the events which he 
 records, and he had not the critical faculty which enables an 
 historian of the past, by a kind of instinct, to separate the 
 true from the false. To this I must add the essentially 
 Roman prejudice in favour of everything that would tell 
 in favour of the greatness and glory of Rome. Hence his 
 unfair account of the early wars of the Republic, and the 
 injustice with which he has treated Hannibal. 
 
 We believe the story of the Anabasis and Retreat of the 
 Ten Thousand, because the historian was the general who 
 commanded the Greeks in that famous expedition ; but we 
 reject his fables about dreams, omens, and prophecies, because 
 we know that he was credulous about such things, and they 
 were not matters which came within the scope of his own 
 personal observation. 
 
 Our own early historians were as careless as their readers 
 were credulous. King Lear, the son of Bladud, was accepted 
 as an historical personage ; and even Milton, in his 'History 
 of England,' admits the fable ' of Brutus and his line with the 
 whole progeny of Kings to Julius CsEsar,' although it is im- 
 possible not to see that he has little faith in it. But he says, 
 ' certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom 
 I must follow ; so far as keeps aloof from impossible and 
 absurd attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, 
 I refuse not as the due and proper subject of story.' Now, 
 why do we refuse to believe the narrative .' Simply because, 
 although it may contain nothing ' impossible or absurd,' which 
 
448 £SSJyS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 is Milton's sole rule of exception, we know that the authors 
 could not possibly have had any authentic information about 
 the facts which they record. A child is as competent to write 
 history as a grown-up man, if the statements of preceding 
 authors are merely servilely copied, and no critical examina- 
 tion is made of the sources of their authority and the means 
 they had of ascertaining the truth. 
 
 Dates are often of the utmost importance in verifying 
 historical facts, but the dates themselves are sometimes uncer- 
 tain. In Grecian history the general custom was to reckon 
 by the year of the Olympiad, and therefore it is essential to 
 know the date of the first year of the first Olympiad. Now, 
 how do we ascertain this .-' If you will look into Clinton's 
 Fasti Hellenici, p. 1 50, you will see that it is taken to corre- 
 spond with "jjQ B.C., and this is proved by a curious consensus 
 of authorities. The games were celebrated at intervals of 
 four years ; and if we know independently the exact date of 
 an event, and find it placed in the particular year of a parti- 
 cular Olympiad, we can, by reckoning backwards, ascertain 
 accurately the date of the first. For instance, we know, from 
 contemporaiy or other evidence, that the consulships of C. 
 Pompeius Gallus and Q. Verannius at Rome coincided with 
 the first year of the 207th Olympiad, and we know the year 
 of the Christian era of those consulships : this was the }-ear 
 A.D. 49. Now, 206 Olympiads or 824 years had elapsed 
 since the beginning of the first, and this gives the year B.C. 
 '/yG as its date. 
 
 It is no doubt difficult to invent wholly so-called historical 
 facts, which, if closely compared with known contemporaneous 
 occurrences and ascertained dates, may not be shown to be 
 false. But it is often still more difficult to find the material 
 for such criticism. Oblivion may have swallowed up the 
 records of the past, and then the only tests we can apply are 
 the inherent probability or improbability of the alleged facts, 
 their consistency or inconsistency with themselves, and our 
 knowledge of the means which the writer possessed of being 
 acquainted with their truth. I have already pointed out the 
 untrustworthiness of historical statements first made by 
 authors who lived long after the events which they record. 
 And I have also shown that it is by no means altogether safe 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 449 
 
 to gauge the credibility of a fact by its agreement or disagree- 
 ment with probability ; but as regards the test supplied by 
 the means of comparing historical allegations with other 
 historical facts which have been sufficiently proved, some of 
 the most brilliant triumphs of criticism have been won by 
 applying it. My time is too limited to allow me to adduce 
 more than one or two specimens of this, and I think I cannot 
 do better than cite that splendid example of scholarship and 
 criticism, Bentley's ' Dissertation on the Genuineness of the 
 Epistles of Phalaris.' The history of its authorship is this : 
 About the year 1690, Sir William Temple published an essay 
 upon Ancient and Modern Learning, in which he maintained 
 the superiority of the ancients. And in support of his posi- 
 tion, ' that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the 
 best,' he adduced the ' Fables of .(Esop ' and the ' Epistles of 
 Phalaris.' This attracted attention to the epistles, and a new 
 edition of them was given to the world by the Hon. Charles 
 Boyle ; and then Bentley published his ' Dissertation on the 
 Epistles of Phalaris,' the object being to prove that they 
 were spurious. I may mention, in passing, that an amusing 
 parody of the original controversy between the respective 
 champions of ancient and modern learning was written by 
 Swift, called ' The Battle of the Books.' It may be interesting 
 to point out some of the proofs by which Bentley for ever 
 destroyed the credit which had been given to these epistles : — 
 
 (i.) He shows that in them Phalaris speaks of borrowing 
 money from the inhabitants of a town in Sicily nearly three 
 centuries before that town was built. 
 
 (2.) Phalaris is represented as giving to a physician a 
 present of cups, called by the name of a Corinthian potter 
 who lived more than a hundred years after Phalaris' death. 
 
 (3.) Phalaris speaks of Zancle and Messene as distinct 
 towns, whereas, in truth, Zancle was merely the ancient name 
 
 of Messene. 
 
 (4.) In one of his letters, Phalaris addresses Pythagoras as 
 a philosopher, and speaks of his system of philosophy ; whereas 
 we know that Pythagoras first called himself a philo-sophos, 
 or lover of wisdom, when Leon of Sicyon asked him what he 
 was. And it is impossible to believe that the term was in 
 
 G G 
 
450 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 vogue, or even known to Phalaris, who, when he wrote the 
 letter, had never seen Pythagoras. 
 
 (5.) Phalaris is very angry with Aristolochus for writing 
 tragedies against him at a time when the word tragedy was 
 utterly unknown. 
 
 (6.) Phalaris writes in Attic Greek, whereas, as a Sicilian, 
 his dialect would have been Doric. 
 
 Let me illustrate this kind of criticism by a different ex- 
 ample. On the Monte Cavallo— the old Quirinal Hill, at 
 Rome — stand two colossal statues of horses, called ' I Colossi 
 di Monte Cavallo.' Under one pedestal are, or were, inscribed 
 the words Opus Phidics ; under the other Opus Praxitelis. But 
 formerly there were two more elaborate inscriptions, one to 
 the effect that Phidias had here sculptured Bucephalus, the 
 horse of Alexander the Great ; and the other that Praxiteles, 
 in competition with Phidias, had sculptured another figure of 
 the same horse, Bucephalus. Now Phidias died somewhere 
 about 432 B.C. Praxiteles flourished in 364 B.C., nearly a 
 century later, and Alexander the Great was not born until 
 356 B.C. This was too much for even the credulity of a bygone 
 generation, and Pope Urban VIII. effaced the inscriptions, 
 and substituted for them the simple words Opus Phidm and 
 Opus Praxitelis, which had at all events the merit of not being 
 guilty of a palpable anachronism, although each is most pro- 
 bably absolutely untrue. But such an anachronism is not 
 quite so bad as that of the writer in a feuilleton of the ' Con- 
 stitutionnel ' (supposed to have been Lamartine), who says, 
 ' The tombs of great poets inspire great passions. It was at 
 Tasso's tomb that Petrarch nourished his respectful remem- 
 brance of Laura r Now, Petrarch died in 1374, and Tasso 
 published his ' Gerusalemme Liberata' in 15 81 ! 
 
 This is very different from any argument against the 
 genuineness of a fact founded merely on discrepancies of 
 statement. A curious instance of this occurs in the accounts 
 given of the execution of the Earl of Argyle in 1661. Claren- 
 don says that he was condemned to be hanged, and executed. 
 Burnet and Ecliard say that he was beheaded. This has been 
 made use of by Paley, in his ' Evidences of the Christian 
 Religion,' with reference to the variance in the statements of 
 the Evangelists as to the circumstances of the Crucifixion. 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 451 
 
 No one doubts that Argyle was executed, which is the impor- 
 tant fact ; and there would be still less reason to doubt the 
 fact of the Crucifixion, however the Evangelists may differ in 
 minute details. It is, of course, a difficulty in the way of 
 those who assert the literal and verbal inspiration of the 
 Scriptures ; but that is a subject foreign to my purpose, and 
 too large to be dealt with by a passing notice in such an ad- 
 dress as this. 
 
 It is a strange paradox that the belief of some writers and 
 many readers seems to increase in the inverse ratio of the 
 probabilities of the case. How else can we account for the 
 fact that the more history recedes into the darkness of the 
 past, bold statements are received with unquestioning credu- 
 lity .'' Thus Dr. Hales in his work on Chronology assures us 
 that the thirty reigns of the Athenian kings and archons from 
 Cecrops to Creon, form ' one of the most authentic and correct 
 documents to be found in the whole range of profane chrono- 
 logy/ — the truth being that the reigns of the kings are little 
 better than fabulous ; and :@Gnsen, in his ' Egypt's Place in /j 
 Universal History,' undertakes to reconstruct the authentic 
 chronology of Egypt for a period of nearly 4,000 years before 
 Christ, and ' to restore to the ancient history of the world the 
 vital energy of which it has been so long deprived,' although 
 his chief authorities, independently of some monumental 
 inscriptions, are Eratosthenes and Manetho, writers who lived 
 more than 3,000 years after the period which they are sup- 
 posed to authenticate. Now Manetho composed his history 
 from two sources, temple registers and popular legends. I 
 need say nothing about the latter, but what possible ground 
 have we for believing that their priest-kept registers con- 
 tained true accounts of events that happened thirty or forty 
 centuries before the historian inspected them .? Eratosthenes, 
 at the request of Ptolemy, drew up a list of thirty-eight 
 Theban kings, occupying a period of more than a thousand 
 years • and it is sufficient to say with Mr. Grote that he 
 'delivered positive opinions upon a point on which no suffi- 
 cient data were accessible, and therefore was not a guide 
 to be followed. History thus written is nothing but clever 
 euess-work, and amounts to no more than plausible conjecture, 
 fn which the chances are almost infinite that the narrative 
 
 -- " ■ G G 3 
 
452 £SSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 is, if not wholly, at least materially wrong. As the specula- 
 tion of an ingenious mind it may be interesting, but as a 
 record of facts it is worthless.' 
 
 In his Essay on the uncertainty of the history of the first 
 four centuries of Rome, in the ' Memoirs of the Academy of 
 Inscriptions,' tome vi. p. 71, M. de Pouilly says, 'History is 
 the narrative of a fact which we derive from those whom we 
 know to have been witnesses of it. It results from this defi- 
 nition that for a history to be authentic its author, or at all 
 events the person on whose narrative it is based, must have 
 lived at the time when the events happened.' And the same 
 writer adds, 'Tradition is a popular rumour of which the 
 source is not known. It is a chain of which we hold one end, 
 but the other is lost in the abysmal depths of the past' 
 
 To show the danger of trusting to tradition, I may take 
 as an illustration the amusing game called ' Russian Scandal,' 
 where, a party being seated together in a row, a person at one 
 end whispers some story into the ear of his neighbour, who 
 repeats it in the same manner to the one next to him, and so 
 on until it comes to the last, who tells aloud what he has 
 heard. It will be generally found that the story thus trans- 
 mitted varies essentially from the story as originally told, and 
 the experience of every one as to the gossip of society teaches 
 the same lesson. Laplace, in his ' Essai Philosophique sur les 
 Probabilites,' has made this the subject of a mathematical 
 calculation. He says, ' Suppose a fact to be transmitted 
 through twenty persons ; the first communicating it to the 
 second, the second to the third, &c., and let the probability of 
 each testimony be expressed by nine-tenths (that is, suppose 
 that of ten reports made by each witness nine only are true), 
 then at every time the story passes from one witness to an- 
 other the evidence is reduced to nine-tenths of what it was 
 before. Thus, after it has passed through the whole twenty, 
 the evidence will be found to be less than one-eighth.' 
 
 But belief by no means depends upon actual testimony. 
 We believe in the results of mathematical inquiry by reason- 
 ing. We believe in the existence of a Creator by arguments 
 drawn from design and other considerations. We may or 
 may not believe that the planets are inhabited from arguments 
 drawn from analogy. We believe many other facts from their 
 
tllSTORlCAL nVlDEhTC£. 453 
 
 inherent probability, and so on. But in many such cases it 
 would be more proper to speak of our persuasion than our 
 belief, by which I mean, that our minds stop short of full con- 
 viction ; but on weighing the evidence or arguments on both 
 sides in opposite scales, we see that the balance inclines one 
 way more than the other, and therefore we are disposed to 
 think that such and such a proposition is true. This applies 
 to many of the disputed facts of History. In his ' Grammar 
 of Assent,' in order to show that certitude is the result of 
 arguments which, taken in the letter, and not in their full im- 
 plicit sense, are but probabilities, Newman takes the case of 
 the following propositions : — - 
 
 (i.) That we are absolutely certain that Great Britain is 
 an island. But how do we know this } Those who have 
 actually circumnavigated the country have a right to be cer- 
 tain ; but which of us has done this, and which of us has even 
 met with any one who tells us that he has done it .' Newman 
 shows by the common arguments that there would be a mani- 
 fest reductio ad absurdum attached to the notion that we can 
 be deceived on such a point as this, but at the same time that 
 we are satisfied with proof which is not of the highest kind 
 possible. 
 
 (2.) He takes the question of the authorship of the '^neid,' 
 the plays attributed to Terence, and the so-called histories of 
 Livy and of Tacitus, which the Abb^ Hardouin maintained 
 were the forgeries of the monks of the thirteenth century. 
 We must not forget that our knowledge of the ancient classics 
 comes entirely from mediaeval copies of them made by monks 
 from manuscripts which now no longer exist. How do we 
 know that some of these so-called copies were not actual 
 forgeries .? ' The strongest argument against such a suppo- 
 sition is our disbelief in the ability of mediaeval monks to pro- 
 duce such works : and Newman says, justly enough, that an 
 instinctive sense of this and a faith in testimony are the suffi- 
 cient and undeveloped argument on which to ground our 
 certitude. To faith in testimony we must add the absence of 
 dissentient claims, and this will be found to be one of the 
 most cogent reasons for our belief. 
 
 ' 'To forge and counterfeit books been a practice almost as old as letters.' 
 and father them upon great names has -Bentley's Dissertation on Phalans. 
 
454 JSSSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 (3.) Newman asks, What are my grounds for thinking 
 that I, in my particular case, shall die ? What is the distinct 
 evidence on which I allow myself to be certain ? Death to 
 me is a future event. How do I know that, because all past 
 generations have died, the same law must hold with regard 
 to myself or others ? He says, that the strongest proof I have 
 for my inevitable mortality is the reductio ad absurdum ; but 
 I think that here he is mistaken that there is reductio ad ab- 
 surdmn, in the proper sense of the term, in the belief that I 
 shall never die, although we may admit, with Newman, that 
 there is a surplusage of belief over proof when I determine 
 that I individually must die. 
 
 In that very clever and amusing j'eii d' esprit by Archbishop 
 Whately, ' Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte,' 
 he has shown that logically we are not justified in believing 
 that such a person as the first Emperor of the French ever 
 existed. To state such a proposition seems to carry with it 
 its own refutation, but the mock-serious argument of the Arch- 
 bishop is sustained with wonderful skill and ability. His 
 object, of course, was to show that the kind of reasoning by 
 which infidels attempt to shake our faith in the narrative of 
 Scripture ought equally to shake our belief in the existence 
 of the first Napoleon. 
 
 I will now say a few words about the father of History, 
 Herodotus, and briefly compare him with Thucydides. 
 
 In his 'Literature of Greece,' Colonel Mure calls Herodotus 
 ' an essentially honest and veracious historian,' and says that, 
 ' rigid, in fact, as has been the scrutiny to which his text has 
 been subjected, no distinct case of wilful misstatement or per- 
 version of fact has been substantiated against him.' Now 
 what were the materials which Herodotus had for composing 
 his history.? They were (i.) previous histories; (2.) monu- 
 mental records preserved in national repositories and religious 
 sanctuaries or places of public resort. He himself quotes only 
 one older historian, Hecataeus of Miletus, but several others 
 had written before him, such as CEgeon of Samos, Bion, 
 De'iochus of Proconnesus, Endemus of Paros, Charon of Lamp- 
 sacus, and Pherecydes of Leros. We do not, however, know 
 that Herodotus really had access to copies of their manuscripts, 
 which would have been written on papyri, and must have 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 455 
 
 been few and costly. He was a great traveller and a diligent 
 inquirer, and obtained a considerable part of his information 
 from what he saw with his own eyes, and heard from persons 
 acquainted with the facts. He tells us that he sifted and 
 compared conflicting statements, and he often rejected stories 
 which he did not think he had warrant for believing. But it 
 is curious that in some cases his scepticism is now known to 
 have been wrong. Thus he disbelieves the story of the circum- 
 navigation of Africa by the Phoenicians in the seventh century 
 before our era, on account of the marvel related by the voyagers, 
 that as they sailed ' they had the sun on their right,' which is 
 the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the account. 
 He cautiously doubts the existence of an amber-yielding 
 district on the Northern Sea, and of any islands called 
 Cassiterides, from which tin was said to be brought. But we 
 know that amber is found on the shores of the Baltic, and 
 that the Cassiterides were our own Scilly Islands. Some of 
 his statements, which were formerly regarded as impossible 
 or incredible marvels, have, by the progress of later discovery, 
 been proved to be true. Such are his accounts of a race of 
 men dwelling upon scaffoldings in Lake Prasias and living 
 upon fish (v. 16), in fact, Lacustrians ; of a breed of sheep in 
 Arabia with such long tails that they were supported on 
 trucks to preserve them from injury (iii. 13), as is the case 
 in North Africa, and, I believe, in some parts of Spain at the 
 present day. And to show that he is by no means the 
 gobemoiiche that he is sometimes represented, I may instance 
 what he says of the Arimaspians, a one-eyed race, who stole 
 gold from the griffins, whom Milton thus mentions :— 
 
 As when a gryfon in the wilderness, 
 With winged course o'er hill or moory dale, 
 Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth, 
 And from his wakeful custody purloined 
 The guarded gold.. 
 
 Herodotus says that he cannot persuade himself to believe the 
 story giving the sensible reason that there cannot be a race of 
 men with one eye, who in all things else resemble the rest of 
 
 "^^ The value of Thucydides as a historian depends first on 
 our faith in his honesty ; and, secondly, on the fact that he had 
 
456 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 access to contemporary testimony both oral and monumental. 
 He was born about twenty- five years before the outbreak of the 
 Peloponnesian war, and he took part in some of its events ; 
 but he chiefly relied for information on the statements of 
 others who had themselves been actors in the scenes that 
 they described. He sometimes quotes inscriptions on monu- 
 ments (i. 132-134) and letters and despatches (iv. 50 ; vii. 8 ; 
 viii. 50), of which he had no doubt seen the originals or copies. 
 He clearly was a man of sound judgment and great intelli- 
 gence. Upon the whole we have as good reason for believing 
 the history of Thucydides as we have for believing any other 
 profane author ; but, as I have before observed, we are not to 
 suppose that the long speeches which he puts into the mouths 
 of Pericles and others were spoken as he reports them. They 
 are rather forms of stating the arguments on both sides, such 
 as Thucydides understood them. 
 
 Until a comparatively recent period the history of Rome, 
 as told by Livy, was implicitly believed ; and as much credit 
 was given to his account of the regal government of Rome as 
 to the annals of the empire by Tacitus, a contemporary writer. 
 Machiavel, in his ' Discourses on the First Decade of Livy,' 
 accepts the story of the Kings as not less real than the story 
 of the lives of the twelve Caesars. 
 
 The first scholar \\\\o seems to have questioned the truth 
 of the old narrative about Rome was Cluverius (a Latinised 
 name for Philip Cluver, who was born in Dantzic in 1 580). He 
 published, in 1624, a book called ' Italia Antiqua,' in which he 
 expressed his opinion that Roman history before the capture 
 of the city by the Gauls was all uncertain ; and he rejected the 
 account of Trojan settlement in Latium, the Alban dynasty, 
 and the story of the foundation of Rome by Romulus. Others 
 followed in the same track ; I may mention Bochart, and 
 Perizonius, and Pouilly, until at last the subject received an 
 exhaustive examination in the remarkable work of Beaufort, 
 a l-'rencli Protestant refugee, who published at Utrecht, in 
 1738, his ' Dissertation sur 1' Incertitude des Cinq Premiers 
 Si^cles de I'Histoire Romaine.' 
 
 Beaufort is entitled to the honour of ranking as the pioneer 
 of a new school of criticism ■; but it was not until the publica- 
 tion of Niebuhr's 'History of Rome,' in 1811-12, that the 
 
"^ 
 
 HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 457 
 
 subject attracted the attention it deserved. This work may 
 be said to have revolutionised the world of thought in relation 
 to Roman history. Its destructive power is irresistible, but its 
 constructive power is very different. I will not say that 
 Wiebuhr endeavoured to evolve a history of Rome out of his 
 own consciousness— like the famous story of the camel evolved 
 by one of his countrymen— but he certainly trusted a great 
 deal too much to sagacity of conjecture, which he dignified by 
 the title of ' discovery.' He even goes so far as to liken his 
 faculty in that respect to the power of divination— the ^avriia 
 of the Greeks (vol. iii. p. 318). But it is one thing for a Cuvier 
 or an Owen to build up the form of an animal from a single 
 bone, and another for a historian to presume to construct a 
 narrative of the distant past from a few isolated hints, or even 
 isolated facts. In the animal form there is a correlation of 
 parts, and a law of typical conformity, which enables the 
 anatomist to ascend with almost unerring certainty from bone 
 to limb, and from limb to body, and to clothe the body with its 
 proper integuments, until we can see by the eye of imagination 
 the very form that has ceased to exist upon the earth for 
 perhaps millions of years. But such an induction is not 
 possible in the case of human affairs and human actions ; 
 variuin et mtitabile semper would be their appropriate motto, 
 and the events that actually happen often verify the saying 
 that truth is stranger than fiction. 
 
 There is an old Scotch proverb, ' Give a romancer a hair 
 and he will make a tether of it,' and this applies to a certain 
 school of writers of history. Out of a scrap of prose, or a line 
 of verse, or a broken fragment of an inscription, they will, by 
 the aid of an active imagination, construct whole pages of nar- 
 rative. The character of a people and the state of its society 
 will be inferred from a few lines which may, when they were 
 written, have been quite untrue, or mere satire, or a gross 
 exaggeration. The historian in modern times who has been 
 most conspicuous for the use of such materials is Lord Macaulay. 
 The result is, that not consciously but inevitably truth is- sacri- 
 ficed to effect. I will mention two instances of this — his 
 account of the Highlands, and his account of the state of the 
 English clergy in the seventeenth century. 
 
 It is not pleasant to detract from the merit of a work of such 
 
458 ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 brilliancy as Lord Macaulay's ' History,' but it is impossible 
 not to see that he has been misled into many great mistakes. 
 I speak not now of his almost bitter hatred of the Duke of 
 Marlborough, which induces him to paint his character in the 
 blackest colours; and his almost -idolatrous admiration of 
 William III., which induces him to palliate all his faults, even 
 that of faithlessness to his wife ; but I allude to specific facts, 
 in which the historian has been shown to be utterly wrong ; and 
 I would recommend those who doubt it to read the ' New 
 Examen,' by Mr. Paget (London, 1861), in which the author 
 has, with admirable acumen, instituted ' an inquiry into the 
 evidence relating to certain passages in Lord Macaulay's 
 ' History.' He has shown, I think satisfactorily, that Lord 
 Macaulay has been inaccurate and unjust in his account of the 
 execution by Claverhouse, of Brown, the so-called Christian 
 carrier ; that he has confounded William Penn, the founder of 
 Pennsylvania, with a George Penn, in describing a disreputable 
 transaction relative to the maids of Taunton ; and that he is 
 mistaken in several other matters of fact. 
 
 I have often thought how strangely History would have to 
 be rewritten, if we could summon from the world of spirits 
 those who were the chief actors in many of the events which it 
 records, and obtain from them a true version of such events. 
 How many motives would then be disclosed of which we now 
 know nothing ! How many inferences would be shown to be 
 erroneous ! How many facts would be altered in their com- 
 plexion ! And yet, in fairness, I ought to mention how seldom 
 it has happened that popular verdicts, with respect to the 
 character and events of history, have been proved to be wrong 
 by subsequent researches. I may instance the attempts that 
 have been made of late years to whitewash the characters of 
 Tiberius, Henry VHI., and Robespierre, all of which seem to 
 have signally failed. 
 
 Amongst other questions we should like to be able to put 
 to satisfy our curiosity, I may select almost at random the 
 following : — 
 
 Who were the Pelasgians, and whence came the Etrurians .? 
 
 Was there a real war of Troy, and what were the facts } l4-l* , 
 
 Did Demosthenes receive any part of the money given up y 
 by Harpalus when he was arrested at Athens .' - -"" 
 
 r^^" 
 
 ' ■ ''-Vl\>.-l4C\ 
 
"■^ 
 
 HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 459 
 
 Who was the real founder of Rome ? 
 
 What was the origin of the story that the Laws of the 
 Twelve Tables were the result of a mission sent from Rome 
 into Greece in the fifth century before Christ ? 
 
 What authority had Suetonius for nine-tenths of the 
 gossiping anecdotes contained in his ' Lives ' of the Twelve 
 Caesars ? ' 
 
 Was St. Peter ever Bishop of Rome ? Beyond mere ( 
 tradition there is no evidence that the Apostle ever even I 
 visited that city, much less that he was Bishop of it. Let ) 
 those who assert the contrary refute, if they can, the facts 
 and arguments of Barrow, in his 'Treatise on the Pope's 
 Supremacy.' And yet, how much of the teaching of the 
 Roman Catholic Church depends upon the assumption that 
 St. Peter was the first Bishop of^Rome, and that the Popes are 
 his legitimate successors ! 
 
 Was Petrarch's Laura a living creature of flesh and blood, 
 or a mere poetical myth 1 
 
 What was the real character of Richard III., and is it true 
 that he was accessory to the murder of the Princes in the 
 Tower, if murdered they were .■' 
 
 Horace Walpole concludes his ingenious essay called 
 ' Historic Doubts in the Life and Reign of King Richard IH.,' 
 in the following words : — ' We must leave this whole story 
 dark, though not near so dark as we found it ; and it is, 
 perhaps, as wise to be uncertain in one portion of our history 
 as to believe so much as is believed in all histories, though 
 very probably as falsely delivered to us as the period which 
 we have here been examining.' 
 
 What were the real facts of the Gowrie conspiracy in 
 Scotland .' 
 
 Did Mary Queen of Scots really write the letters to 
 Bothwell which were produced from a silver casket before 
 the Commissioners at Westminster, and which, if genuine, 
 establish the fact of her being accessory to the murder of 
 
 Darnley .' 
 
 Was Anne Boleyn guilty of the charges brought against 
 her by Henry VHI. .? Mr. Froude has laboured to prove that 
 she was, but his arguments are very far from convincing. 
 
 What was the real cause why James L spared the life of 
 
46o ASSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the Earl of Southampton, after his conviction of the murder of 
 Sir Thomas Overbury ? 
 
 Who was the Man in the Iron Mask ? Who wrote the 
 Letters of Junius ? 
 
 It is extraordinary how few of the anecdotes which pass 
 current in hterature will bear the test of critical inquiry, and 
 the result of a careful investigation of the evidence is apt to 
 dispose the mind to general scepticism on such subjects. Let 
 me mention a few instances which will serve to enliven what 
 otherwise, I fear, will be thought rather a dull discourse. 
 
 The first I shall mention is not an anecdote, but a so- 
 called historical fact. 
 
 We find it stated in Lempriere's ' Classical Dictionary ' that 
 the army which Xerxes led into Greece consisted of upwards 
 of five million souls, and he says that ' the multitude which 
 the fidelity of historians has not exaggerated was stopped at 
 Thermopylae by 300 Spartans under King Leonidas.' The 
 thing is simply impossible, and therefore incredible, unless 
 we adopt the maxim of TertuUian, and say, Credo quia im- 
 possibile est. 
 
 The story of Canute commanding the waves to advance 
 no farther first appears in Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote 
 a century after the Danish king. The legend of Fair Rosa- 
 mond is treated by Hume as fabulous ; and the greatest 
 suspicion rests on the account of St. Pierre and his com- 
 panions delivering up the keys of Calais to Edward III., with 
 halters round their necks, and having their lives spared at the 
 intercession of the queen. The popular story of the origin 
 of the Order of the Garter, as o\\'ing to the accident that hap- 
 pened to the Countess of Salisbury ^\■hen dancing at the 
 court of Edward III., is first mentioned by Polydore Virgil, 
 who wrote 200 years later. In his ' Lives of the Judges,' Mr. 
 Foss has shown that the story of the reappointment of Sir 
 William Gascoigne as Chief Justice, by Henry V., who, when 
 Prince of Wales, had been committed by him to prison for an 
 assault, is the reverse of true, for it seems that Henry V. 
 actually deprived him of the office of Chief Justice a few days 
 after his accession to the throne. The interesting story that 
 Cromwell, Hampden, and Hazelrig had actually embarked for 
 New England in 1638, prepared to abandon the country for 
 
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. 461 
 
 ever, when they were stopped by an Order in Council, has 
 been proved to have no foundation in fact. 
 
 The celebrated phrase attributed to Francis I. after the 
 battle of Pavia, Tout est perdu fors Vhonneur, turns out to 
 have been riionneiir ct la vie qui est saulve, which deprives it 
 of all its point. As to the story of the chivalrous interchange 
 of courtesies between the English and French guards at the 
 battle of Fontenoy, ' Monsieur, bid your men fire.' ' No, sir ; 
 we never fire first,' — Carlyle says, in his ' Life of Frederick 
 the Great' (vol. iv. p. 119), 'It is almost a pity to disturb an 
 elegant historical passage of this kind circulating round' the 
 world in some glory for a century past ; but there has a small 
 irrefragable document come to me which modifies it a good 
 deal, and reduces matters to the business form.' This docu- 
 ment is a letter from Lord Charles Hay, lieutenant-colonel of 
 the Guards, written or dictated about three weeks after the 
 battle, and giving an account of what happened. In this no 
 mention is made of the occurrence, and we may confidently 
 beHeve with Carlyle, that ' the French mess-rooms (with their 
 eloquent talent that way) had rounded off the thing into the 
 current epigrammatic redaction.' 
 
 We all know how French historians, including M. Thiers, 
 repeat the story of ' Le Vengeur' refusing to strike her flag in 
 the action of June i, 1794, and going down into the depths 
 of the ocean while her crew shouted Vive la Ripubliqice ! 
 This has been shown by Admiral Grifiiths, who-was living in 
 1838, one of the few survivors of the engagement, and who 
 wrote a letter on the subject, to be as he calls it 'a ridiculous 
 piece of nonsense.' When the 'Vengeur' sank the action had 
 ceased for some time. She had been taken possession of by 
 the boats of the ' Culloden;' and, as to the crew. Admiral 
 Griffiths says, ' never were men in distress more ready to save 
 themselves.' There was ' not one shout beyond that of horror 
 and despair.' And yet the lie will live in the annals of French 
 heroism, and will perhaps be believed to the end of time.- 
 See ' Carlyle's Essays,' vol. v. p. 356-359. And the same 
 believe, may be said of the story of Casabianca and h.s son at 
 
 the battle of the Nile. cnerial 
 
 Before I conclude I will, with reference to the special 
 
 objects of this Institute, state in as terse a form as possible 
 
462 ESSAYS CRITICAL AND NARRATIVE. 
 
 the reasons why we are justified in believing on historical 
 grounds the truth of the narratives in the New Testament, 
 excluding all consideration of its doctrines : — 
 
 (i.) The contemporary nature of the testimony. 
 
 (2.) The artlessness and apparent truthfulness of the 
 writers. 
 
 (3.) The substantial agreement, together with the circum- 
 stantial variety of statements, of four different contemporary 
 eye-witnesses. 
 
 (4.) The undesigned coincidences which exist between 
 the Gospels and Acts on the one hand and the Epistles on 
 the other. 
 
 (5.) The absence of any conceivable motive for fraud or 
 falsehood. 
 
 (6.) The difficulty, if not the absurdity, of supposing that 
 the teachers of the purest morality should be engaged m the 
 immoral work of propagating an imposture and forging docu- 
 ments. 
 
 (7.) The utter absence of any contradiction to their state- 
 ments during the first four centuries. 
 
 (8.) The frequent reference to the words of the four Evan- 
 gelists by writers who lived in the first two centuries, showing 
 that their narratives were then current and well known. 
 
 (9.) The adequacy of the cause for miraculous interpo- 
 sition, if we believe in a benevolent Creator and in the immor- 
 tality of the soul. 
 
 (10.) The sufficiency of the accounts to explain the phseno- 
 menon of Christianity as a religion which now exists in the 
 world, whereas no other theory has explained or can explain it. 
 
 If these are not sufficient grounds for believing the truth 
 of the accounts that have come down to us, I know not any 
 historical fact which we are justified in believing. 
 
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