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 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 I8S4-I919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4639.D3S6 1878 
 
 The splendid advantages of being a woman 
 
 3 1924 013 343 870 
 
THE 
 
 SPLENDID ADVANTAGES 
 
 OP 
 
 BEING A WOMAN. 
 
 AND OTHER ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 CHARLES J. DUN 
 
 " No matter in the world is so proper to write with as wildfire." — Addison, 
 ** Miflce stultitiam consiliis breTem." — Horace. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 R. WORTHINGTON, 750 BROADWAY. 
 
 1878. 
 
-^::-p^-^ 
 
 A'<3oQ 3 <o A^ 
 
 Hew ToTk: J. 3. Iiittle & Co., frinten, 
 10 to 20 Aetor Place. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN S. CLARKE. 
 
 IN SINCERE THOUGir INADEQUATE TESTIMONY 
 
 OP 
 
 MY AKPECTION FOR HIM AS A FRIEND 
 
 AND 
 
 MY ADMIRATION KOR IIIM AS AN ARTIST 
 
 I INSCRIDF, THIS VOLUME, 
 
 WITH THE WAKMHSr FEELINGS OF REGARD AND A 
 
 PLEASURE ALLOYED ONLY WITH REGRET 
 
 THAT THE OFFERING IS NOT LESS UNWORTHY 
 
 OF 
 
 HIS ACCEPTANCE. 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 The following Essays having been originally published 
 under a nom de plume, the Reader is courteously en- 
 treated to attribute the egotism of which they may bear 
 too frequent traces, not to the Author, but to the ideal 
 personage whom he represented. 
 
 It may not be inexpedient to state that though some 
 of the Essays affect a thoughtful or critical tone, and 
 are therefore meant to be read in a serious spirit, many 
 more of them begin where Common Sense leaves off. In- 
 credible as it may appear on perusal, it is not the less 
 true that the articles of this latter class were intended 
 to be amusing ; that they should have been so designed, 
 seeing how they have eventuated, is, perhaps, the drollest 
 thing about them. They were written upon the Ilora- 
 tian principle, duke est desipere in loco ; and Addison's 
 maxim, " No matter in the world is so proper to write 
 with as wildfire," was adopted throughout, though 
 probably in a sense, as with a result, hardly within the 
 contemplation of that celebrated author. 
 
 It now and then happened to the present writer that 
 his pen ran away with him. He meekly suggests that 
 on such occasions Messrs. Gillott, of Birmingham, who 
 created the unmanageable implement, should be held 
 responsible for its escapades. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 rAGB. 
 
 The Splendid Advantages of being a Woman i 
 
 The Advantages of being Ugly 8 
 
 The Incommunicability of Sorrow i6 
 
 The Dignity and Delight of Ignorance 22 
 
 The Delights of Deception 29 
 
 Sunshine and Shadow 37 
 
 The Decay of the Picturesque 43 
 
 Proud Young Porters 51 
 
 The Absurdity of Going out of Town 59 
 
 The Pleasure of Lying in Bed 64 
 
 Fops and Foppery 71 
 
 The Pleasures of Silence 79 
 
 Vis Comica 87 
 
 The Art of Walking 96 
 
 The Misery of being Respectable 104 
 
 A Wet Day at Llangollen Iii 
 
 Town Trees and Country Trees 119 
 
 "Cheek" 127 
 
 The Pleasures of being Mad 132 
 
 Ramsgate on her Good Behavior 140 
 
 The Art of Talking 149 
 
 Hard Weather Long Ago. In four parts 160 
 
 The Delight of Getting into the Country 201 
 
 Castles in the Air 208 
 
 The Miseries of Music 215 
 
 The Witchery of Manner ' 223 
 
 Whistling 229 
 
 Saucy Doubts and Fears 236 
 
Viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAC.B. 
 
 An Island of Tranquil Delights. In two parts 241 
 
 Weddings 257 
 
 The Delight of Early Rising 265 
 
 The Reign of Rain 271 
 
 The London Row 279 
 
 Post Yule-Tide Meditations 28S 
 
 The Uses of Sympathy 297 
 
 The Delights of Music 305 
 
 Cock-a-doodle-doo 313 
 
 The Comfort of being Down in Your Luck ....;. 319 
 
 The Thistles of Literature 325 
 
 Things that have Gone Out 338 
 
 Rinking 346 
 
 The Poetry of Sleep 353 
 
ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 THE SPLENDID ADVANTAGES OF BEING 
 A WOMAN. 
 
 TT has been said that lookers-on know more about a 
 battle than do the soldiers engaged in the strife. 
 With parity of reasoning, it may be argued that in very 
 right of his manhood, a man is better qualified than a 
 woman to pronounce an opinion upon the advantages 
 specially appertainmg to the female sex. Being a man, 
 I deem myself ipso facto qualified to discourse authori- 
 tatively upon the gain and glory of being a woman. 
 Before doing so, however, I must say a word in explana- 
 tion of my motive, lest, peradventure, it should be mis- 
 understood by those of whose good report in my regard 
 I would on no account be unmindful. Let it not be sup- 
 posed that I am envious of the splendid privileges en- 
 joyed by the ladies, or would abridge their priceless 
 prerogatives. Perish the ignoble thought ! I would 
 enlarge those privileges and multiply those prerogatives 
 one hundred-fold, were it possible to do so. All I pro- 
 pose is, to show how much more enviable than the lot 
 of man is that of woman, and in one emphatic word, to 
 prove that the next dearest blessing that can befall a 
 human being, after not having been born at all, is to 
 have been born a woman. 
 
2 THE SPLENDID ADVANTAGES 
 
 The physical advantages of being a woman are many 
 and various. The gift of Beauty, with all its concomi- 
 tant delights, belongs to woman, and to her alone. There 
 never was, and it may be safely predicted that there 
 never will be, on earth any such creature as an ugly 
 woman. Nobody ever heard of such a phenomenon. 
 To be a woman is to be beautiful, and so far is she fiom 
 diminishing in personal attraction, that we are every 
 day assured upon the most disinterested authority that 
 " loveliness is on the increase." It stands to reason that 
 it must be so, for women are on the increase ; and wo- 
 man and loveliness are convertible terms. How sweet- 
 ly and how truly sings Otway ! — 
 
 " Oh woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thee 
 To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. 
 Angels are painted fair, to look like you ; 
 There's in you' all that we believe of heaven,— 
 Amazing brightness, purity, and truth. 
 Eternal joy, and everlasting love." 
 
 These are my sentiments, if not exactly my words. I 
 have travelled in many lands and mingled with all 
 classes, but I have never yet seen either an ugly woman 
 or a handsome man. One man may possibly be a shade 
 — ^just a shade — less hideous than another, but no man 
 makes a nearer approach to beauty than that. All men 
 are of necessity ill-shaped and ill-favored, whereas all 
 women are, by a law no less inflexible, symmetrical in 
 form and fair to look upon. Some of them, doubtless, 
 are more symmetrical and fairer than others, but all are 
 symmetrical and fair. When a sword is put into a man's 
 hand, and he is told to go forth and fly at some other 
 man's throat, for the dear sake of " England, home, and 
 beauty;' no one is such a fool as to imagine that he is 
 
OF BEING A woman: 3 
 
 thereby enjoined to do battle for his own miserable sex. 
 Nothing of the kind. England is a lady. Look at her 
 figure on our coins. Who ever saw Britannia in trow- 
 sers and a chimney-pot ? " Home," there is none 
 without a woman. "Beauty" merely means the sex 
 female. Not alone are women beautiful themselves, but 
 they have an instinctive love of the beautiful wherever it 
 is to be found. " Women," observes a lady, " have a 
 much nicer sense of the beautiful than men. They are 
 by far the safer umpires in the matters of propriety and 
 grace. A mere school-girl will be thinking and writing 
 about the beauty of birds and flowers, while her brother 
 is robbing the nests and destroying the roses." Then, 
 again, consider the physical bother and irritation you 
 escape by the simple expedient of being a woman. A 
 man either wears a beard, in which case he must brush, 
 comb, and oil it, at a great cost of time and trouble 
 daily, or he wears none, in which event he has to submit 
 himself once every four-and-twenty hours to the horri- 
 ble operation of shaving. No woman has to suffer 
 either of these vile alternatives. A lady may sip soup 
 with a dainty grace, whereas a gentleman, do what he 
 may, is compromised in the most distressing manner 
 by his mustache. Furthermore, Nature, who has given 
 to woman the prize of Beauty, and withheld from her 
 the penalty of a beard, has also bestowed upon her 
 length of days. It is notorious that, all the world over, 
 women as a sex live longer than men similarly classed. 
 Extreme old age is rarely, very rarely attained by men, 
 whereas you can hardly take up a newspaper without 
 finding mention of some one lady who is well on for 
 her hundredth year, or some other lady who has just died 
 at that mature age. Moreover, in this country, at all 
 
4 THE SPLENDID ADVANTAGES 
 
 events, women are numerically immensely in excess of 
 men, and so have all the power and prestige of major- 
 ity. So that, view it as we may, whether with reference 
 to beauty of feature, grace of form, length of life, or 
 numerical ascendancy, the advantage is still with wo- 
 men. 
 
 But if the physical advantages of being a woman are 
 great, who can estimate the social at their due value ? 
 Pas aux dames I make way for the ladies I is the law of 
 civilized society, from the equator to either pole. " Will 
 any gentleman oblige a lady ? " asks the omnibus-con- 
 ductor, in his blandest of tones ; and no sooner said 
 than done. Out rushes a gentleman in soaking rain 
 and cutting blasts, to oblige a lady (that is to say, to 
 save her the expense of a sixpenny cab), whom he had 
 never seen before, and will probably never see again. 
 Who ever yet heard of a lady getting out to oblige a 
 gentleman ? The notion is monstrous. The man who 
 •would suggest such a thing would deserve to he hanged 
 on the nearest lamp-post. Every man who has received 
 a salute from a lady takes off his hat to her. Who takes 
 off his hat to a man } Men glare or scowl, the one at 
 the other, or at best exchange contemptuous nods, but 
 as for lifting their hats — unless indeed one of the par- 
 ties should happen to be the Speaker of the House of 
 Commons — such a thing is unheard of among equals. 
 If a man were to take off his hat to me, I should feel 
 disposed to punch his head, concluding that he meant 
 mockery, as naughty street-boys sometimes " talce a 
 sight " at one another. But men were only made to do 
 homage to women. Everywhere and always the same 
 golden rule obtains. For whom are the tit-bits reserved 
 at every feast ? — who gets sugar and spice and all things 
 
OF BEING A WOMAN. ^ 
 
 nice ? — ^who is served first, and has the best seat at 
 breakfast, dinner and supper ? — who polishes off the 
 Neapolitan ices at opera and play ? — woman, woman 
 lovely woman ! Who pays for them ? Man, the wretch ! 
 Who stands by patiently while they are being con- 
 sumed ? — man, hollow-eyed, famine-stricken man ? Who 
 comes in for all the kisses of fortune ? — woman ; and 
 who for all her kicks ? Man, man, ugly man, the most 
 unfortunate of created beings ! " The lapse of ages 
 changes all tliings,^time, language, the earth, the 
 bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and everything 
 about, around and underneath man, except man him- 
 self, who has always been and always will be an unlucky 
 rascal." So spake Lord Byron, and words of truer 
 wisdom were never spoken. But as for Woman, she is 
 the empress of creation, the world is her garden, and 
 man her menial, — nothing more. Falling an easy vic- 
 tim to her enchantments, man indulges in a little inno- 
 cent flirtation. He loves and he rides away. Woman 
 brings her action for breach of promise, and gets swinge- 
 ing damages. Woman loves and she rides away. Man 
 brings his action for breach of promise. He is hooted 
 out of court. Woman is privileged to dress in the cost- 
 liest and most fanciful fashion. Silks, satins, velvets, 
 the most curious fabrics of the loom, feathers, furs, 
 laces, whatsoever things are beauteous, whatsoever 
 things are rare and splendid, are at her disposal, to 
 equip herself out withal, and make her irresistible. Even 
 the innocent little dicky-birds are impressed into her 
 service, and surrender their lives that woman's hat may 
 look the sprucer for their plumage. In her cause the 
 robin red-breast lays down his melodious life ; and 
 justly so, since a bird in her hat is worth two in the 
 
6 THE SPLEA'DID ADVANTAGES. 
 
 bush. The little bow-wow dogs give up their brass col- 
 lars that they may shine upon her snowy neck. She 
 goeth forth conquering and to conquer. Man— poor 
 devil 1 — is restricted to the same cut of clothes from 
 generation to generation. What with his odious chim- 
 ney-pot hat, and his horrid trowsers, and his never- 
 changing coats — always made of the same material, the 
 wool of the congenial sheep — he is a mere collection of 
 cylinders, and his garments seem to be contrived for the 
 express purpose of enhancing his native ugliness and 
 making him still more ridiculous. In all particulars, 
 both ceremonial and sumptuary, he therefore is doomed 
 to ignominious inferiority, and must not dare to emulate 
 the splendor of the angelic sex. 
 
 So much for what may be termed " externals," but 
 in afEairs of graver import, splendid, indeed, are the 
 advantages of being a woman. Who toils? who suffers 
 all hardships ? who endures all inclemencies of weather ? 
 who bears the burden and the heat of the day ? who the 
 rigor and the darkness of the night? Man, — the un- 
 lucky rascal, man. Who is the last to leave the blazing 
 house ? Man. Who stands upon the bridge of the 
 sinking ship and goes down with her into the abysses 
 of the ocean, never, never to be seen again ? Man ; 
 still man. And when war breaks forth, who fights ? 
 who bleeds ? who dies ? Who should it be, but man, 
 the unluckiest of rascals? Meanwhile, woman, bless 
 her sweet heart 1 remains at her cozy fireside, safe, 
 warm, and comfortable. Thus let it ever be, for our 
 arms should be her protection, and her arms our reward. 
 Only, I want to show what a grand and blessed thing it 
 is .to be a woman, and what cause for gratitude that 
 human being has who is thus sublimely privileged. Nor 
 
OF BEING A WOMAN. y 
 
 is it in times of danger alone that she has the advan- 
 tage. Whether in war or peace, she has still, as the 
 homely phrase goes, "the longer end of the stick." 
 What can be more irksome, duller, more monotonous 
 than the life of a man ? What gayer, brighter, more 
 delightful than that of a woman ? A man goes out in 
 the morning, and it may be for six, eight, or ten hours 
 afterwards, he is immured within four walls. It signifies 
 nothing by what name you may dignify his prison, 
 whether as study, studio, shop, office, law-chamber, 
 library or counting-house, it is still to all intents and 
 purposes a prison, and his jailer's name is "Business." 
 There he toils and moils all day long, in inexorable cap- 
 tivity. But no sooner has he left his house after break- 
 fast than his wife is at liberty to wander whejr e she . 
 pleases. She gives with a sweet smile an order or two 
 to her servants, and for the rest of the day she is queen 
 of herself, that heritage of joy. She sallies forth on her 
 butterfly career to see the shops, to spend her husband's 
 money, to run about upon castors like a table, to visit 
 her friends, and "each change of many-colored life " to 
 view. Moreover, she may let her hair grow to the 
 length of her waist. We must have ours cut once a 
 month. Oh ! who would not be a woman. 
 
 Yet another privilege belongs to the sex, and to them 
 alone, the priceless privilege of Weeping. When any 
 trial, real or imaginary, arises to warp their temper, they 
 can have " a good cry," and all is over. This celestial 
 solace is denied to man. His heart may be bleeding 
 at every pore. There let it ! He must not dare to shed 
 a tear. If he do, the finger of derision is pointed at 
 him, and he never more may call himself a man. 
 " Women,'' says Saville, " have more strength in their 
 
8 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 looks than we have in our laws, and more power by 
 their tears than we have by our arguments." Let the 
 tears but rise to woman's eye, and all is over with " that 
 other animal, man." Be his cause however righteous, 
 he has nothing for it but to lick the dust : — 
 
 " Oh I too convincing, — dangerously dear. 
 In woman's eye tlie unanswerable tear I 
 That weapon of her weakness, she can wield 
 To save, subdue, — at once her spear and shield. 
 Avoid it ! — Virtue ebbs, and wisdom errs. 
 Too fondly gazing on that grief of hers ! 
 What lost a world, and made a hero fly f 
 The timid tear in Cleopatra's eye. 
 
 These are but a few of the splendid advantages of 
 being' a Woman. The best of everything; their own 
 way ; and the last word in every argument, such are the 
 rights of Woman. For my own poor part, I have never 
 ceased to regret that I am not one, and the mother of 
 nine children, to boot. 
 
 THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. 
 
 TT would largely conduce to the greater comfort of the 
 world that men and women should be brought to 
 understand how preferable is Ugliness to Beauty. The 
 practical and universal recognition of this great fact 
 would destroy self-conceit and its concomitant evils, and 
 disenchant us all of a thousand illusions injurious to our 
 peace of mind. It is quite time that Beauty should be 
 brought to task for her manifold offences against the 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. g 
 
 welfare of society, and that the claims of Ugliness on 
 the admiration of mankind should be fearlessly set 
 forth. Trace back the history of that unfortunate being 
 Man, from the earliest period to the present hour, and 
 you shall find that in all ages and in all climes he has 
 been tormented and be-fooled by Beauty, In that most 
 perfidious of sirens he has invariably found a pitiless 
 despot, a remorseless enslaver. For Beauty men have 
 again and again disregarded the bonds of kindred, vio- 
 lated the fondest obligations of friendship, and set at 
 naught all laws divine and human. At her bidding they 
 have committed heinous crimes, cherished deadly ani- 
 mosities, and plunged into the most unrighteous wars. 
 In fact, as all geometry may be reduced to a point, even 
 so may all the miseries of life be reduced to Beauty as 
 to their first principle. "What a delightful life we 
 should all have had in the garden of Eden if we had 
 never been born 1 " exclaimed the O'Finnigan the other 
 day in a transport of philosophy and punch. And so 
 we should. When Adam was a bachelor he had a pleas- 
 ant time enough of it in the asphodel bowers of Para- 
 dise, till in an evil hour he became enamored of Beauty 
 in the form of Eve. So he laid him down to rest — ^poor 
 wight — and, as has been said all too truly, his first sleep 
 became his last repose. Solomon, reputedly the wisest 
 man the world ever saw, grew infatuate of Beauty, and 
 all his wisdom was of no avail against her enchant- 
 ments. We know full well how Samson fared at the 
 hands of Dalilah. Troy, the very site whereof has 
 utterly disappeared, might now be a flourishing city, and 
 Greeks and Trojans might be living to this hour in per- 
 fect amity had it not been that they all went mad for 
 love of a fair-haired girl named Helen. Orlando lost 
 
I o JSRUA TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 his senses for the sake of Angelica ; Antony for Cleo- 
 patra. Herod, the Tetrarch, went clean out of his wits 
 for a pretty dancing-girl, and the King of Bavaria did 
 the like for Lola Montes. King Richard might possibly 
 have been a prosperous gentleman, though not as 
 straight as a poplar, but that he, too, went daft about 
 Beauty, as he pathetically assured the object of his 
 idolatry — 
 
 " Your beauty was the cause of that effect, 
 Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep." 
 
 The ancient philosophers were at great pains to warn 
 their disciples against the cozening devices of Beauty. 
 Aristotle declares that a graceful person is a more 
 powerful recommendation than the best letter that can 
 be written in your favor ; so that it comes to this, that 
 an elegant form supersedes the necessity for a good 
 character. Plato desires the possessor of Beauty to 
 consider it as a mere gift of nature and not any perfec- 
 tion of his own j but, inasmuch as no handsome human 
 being of either sex ever so accounted it, Plato might as 
 well have kept his breath to cool his porridge. Socrates 
 calls Beauty " a short-lived tyranny," which it unques- 
 tionably is : and Theophrastus denominates it " a silent 
 fraud," because it imposes on us without the help of 
 language. " Beauty," says Lord Bacon, " is as summer 
 fruits which are easy to corrupt and cannot last ; and 
 for the most part it makes a dissolute youth and an age 
 a little out of countenance." To understand the utter 
 worthlessness of Beauty we must bear in mind first its 
 capricious and fantastic organ, and secondly the ridic- 
 ulous brevity of its existence. " Every eye makes its 
 own beauty," says the proverb. This being so it follows 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. n 
 
 that Beauty is after all no positive entity, no gift or 
 quality capable of demonstration, and easy of reference 
 to the " sensible and tried avouch " of universal vision, 
 but the merest matter of fantasy depending upon the 
 ardor of a man's imagination or possibly the condition 
 of his digestion. So it, doubtless, is in the majority of 
 cases ; but even in those instances where it may be ad- 
 mitted to be patent to all beholders, what is its value ? 
 To say tliat Beauty is here to-day and gone to-morrow, 
 were to exaggerate the term of its duration. It is here 
 to-day and gone to-day — " the perfume and suppliance 
 of a minute.'' 
 
 " Fair is the lily, fair 
 
 The rose, of flowers the eye ; 
 Both wither in the air — 
 
 Their beauteous colors die." 
 
 So it fares with Beauty ever — of all creatures under 
 the sun assuredly the most fallacious and evanescent. 
 And the mischief of it is that, not content with being a 
 sham herself. Beauty has a fatal tendency to make a 
 sham of everybody who has anything to do with her. 
 What women have we not met who would be delightful, 
 but that they are beautiful and know it I What men have 
 we not had the misfortune at times to converse with 
 who have been transformed from good fellows into intol- 
 erable coxcombs by reason of the adulation which, in 
 consideration of their beauty, they receive at the hands 
 of women ! Of all the despicable counterfeits who 
 ever libelled humanity the most despicable is assuredly 
 a ladies' man. Belonging to neither sex, it is the pest 
 and reproach of both. And all because of its beauty. 
 A man has a privilege to be ugly, and though it be true 
 
1 2 EXRA TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 enough, as Madame de Stael wittily observed to Cuiran, 
 that "he should not abuse his privilege" — as Curran 
 did most outrageously, — it were better that a man should 
 be ugly as Thersites than that being beautiful as Narcis- 
 sus he should also be as big a fool. For my own part I 
 am " free to confess '' — as they used to say in parliament 
 long ago, — that I am never comfortable in the same 
 room witli a Beautiful man. I always feel inclined to 
 punch his head. Such is the demoralizing influence of 
 Beauty, a sorceress who living but for an hour manages 
 to concentrate within that tiny span sins enough for 
 centuries — inveigling all hearts, bamboozling all intel- 
 lects, and turning all brains " the seamy side without," 
 like the wit of honest lago. 
 
 So much for Beauty ; and now for Ugliness. There 
 are two qualities about Ugliness which compel my pro- 
 found respect. The one is her downright honesty ; the 
 other is her adamantine durability. There is no hum- 
 bug about Ugliness. No ! there are no two ways about 
 Ugliness. She provokes no controversy. She is not a 
 matter of taste but of fact. Taste is out of court. 
 Ugliness stands confessed for what she is, and all men 
 are of accord in her regard. Her sheer integrity brooks 
 no equivocation. Ugliness is ugly, and there an end. 
 She wears no mask ; she sails under no false colors j 
 she presents herself for what she is, and as the jugglers 
 say, " there is no deception." Ugliness is thoroughly 
 respectable, and however she may be disliked she can- 
 not be despised. "Beauty is only skin deep," as all the 
 world knows ; but Ugliness goes to the bone. " Hand- 
 some is that handsome does " is the consolatory maxim 
 of the ill-favored all the world over, but the Beauty of 
 the beautiful dwells only in fancy. Then, again', look at 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. 13 
 
 the permanence of Ugliness. See how it wears. Part 
 from a beautiful man and go abroad for eight or ten 
 years. Come back at the end of that period, and j'ou 
 will look in vain for his beauty. It has vanished like 
 snow before the sun. But bid an Ugly man good-bye 
 and return to him after the lapse of a like period, and, 
 by the Lord Harry, you'll find him ten times Uglier 
 than you had left him. And so it is with ladies. How 
 often does one hear that most melancholy of all reflec- 
 tions e\-oked by the sight of a woman once lovely, but 
 whose loveliness is gone never to return : " How pretty 
 she must have been when she was young ! " "What a 
 sorrowful thought ! If she had been ugly ab initio nobody 
 would now mourn over the ruin of her beauty. People 
 would say " Bless her heart ! she improves in ugliness. 
 I remember her a girl, and she was ordinary enough in 
 all conscience, but now she is a Gorgon." Beauty goes 
 off with youth like the bloom of a plum ; but Ugliness 
 endures like the stone. Truest of friends, it abides 
 with its votaries all the days of their lives. There is no 
 need of an unguent to make you ugly for ever. Once 
 Ugly, you grow Uglier and more Ugly to the end of the 
 chapter. And then consider the mental serenity of the 
 Ugly. Of tlie many happy privileges enjoyed by the" 
 plain sisterhood, one of the happiest is the thought that 
 they, at all events, are not responsible for the horrid 
 feuds and execrable conflicts by which the peace of the 
 world has been from time to time disturbed. Let the 
 blue-eyed and the golden-tressed look to it ; the Ugly 
 have free souls, without fear and witliout reproach. At 
 their doors lies no .blood-guiltiness. Who ever yet 
 heard of two friends fighting a duel, much more of two 
 nations going to war, on account of an ugly woman ? 
 
I ^ ERRA TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 The very notion is preposterous. Nor can it be charged 
 against the ill-favored that they are in any degree ac- 
 countable for the sorrows and solicitudes which are 
 incidental to matrimony. " Une femme laide est un 
 homme pour mai" — an ugly woman is a man for me — 
 says Th6ophile Gautier, and I am altogether of his way of 
 thinking. I had as soon marry the Lord High Chancel- 
 lor or the Commander of the Forces as an Ugly woman. 
 It is too bad that men should have this prejudice ; but 
 they have, and there is no arguing against it. Yet some 
 of the pleasantest people I have ever known, both men 
 and women, have been and are as Ugly as if they had 
 been bespoken. They know no change. It is a thing 
 of Ugliness, not of Beauty, that is a joy forever. The 
 very imputation of Ugliness has in it a charm which 
 enthralls the imagination. Thus Lord Byron tells us 
 that the only way to bring an exorbitant hackney- 
 coachman to his senses is to look at him steadily be- 
 tween the eyes, and after carefully perusing his features 
 to say, " Well 1 you are the Ugliest man that ever trod 
 the earth." Cabby appreciates the compliment, owns 
 the soft impeachment, and is content with his fare. 
 Depend upon it to kalon is the one thing wrong in the 
 world. The Ugly alone deserve admiration. One may 
 admire an Ugly woman with such intensity of admira- 
 tion that one would not dare to marry her. You, dear 
 reader, are beautiful — I know you arej you will acquit 
 me, therefore, of any intention to flatter you when I ask 
 you whether some of the nicest, dearest, best persons 
 you have ever met are not downright ugly ? Of course 
 they are I True, I know a man who is as Ugly as sin 
 and not half as pleasant ; but then he suffers from bun- 
 ions, poor fellow, and in any case he is but the excep- 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. 15 
 
 tion that proves the rule. It may be egotistical to say 
 so, doubtless it is ; but I have ever loved, and ever shall 
 love, ugly people. Apart from the charms of their con- 
 versation, which has nothing of the frivolity that so often 
 disgraces the talk of the Beautiful, I find a strange de- 
 light in perusing the features of the Ugly. There is 
 intolerable monotony in a finely chiselled face. Its 
 regularity is irksome to behold. The Ugly — and they 
 alone — are picturesque. Irregularity is to their linea- 
 ments what undulation is to a landscape, the key to that 
 variety of outline which is all-essential to artistic effect. 
 A fellow on whom Nature has graciously bestowed a 
 turn-up nose bears about him the physical emblem of 
 disdain, and always seems to be treating the world with 
 tlie scorn and contempt of which the world is richly 
 deserving. Beetle eyebrows call to mind a glossy, amia- 
 ble insect ; high cheek bones have a bold, majestic, cliff- 
 like look ; a low forehead bespeaks the gentle virtue of 
 humility ; and a mouth that is like unto an oven resem- 
 bles a very good thing. And then for eyes — why should 
 eyes be fellows ? Surely it is much more useful as well 
 as ornamental that one eye should look to the west, the 
 other to the east. I love a man with a squint — 
 
 " If ancient poets Argus prize, 
 Who boasted of a hundred eyes ; 
 Sure, greater praise to him is due 
 AVho sees a hundred ways with two." 
 
 As for figure, why should the human form be straight. 
 Any poker may be straight. The line of beauty is a 
 curve. Moreover, a friend in-kneed is a friend indeed ! 
 Taking into consideration this and many kindred facts, 
 I am clearly of opinion that the time is come for reviv- 
 
J Q ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 ing Sir Richard Steel's "Ugly Club "—that famous 
 fraternity which was founded upon the principle that no 
 one sliould be admitted to membership, "without a 
 visible queerity in his aspect, or a peculiar cast of coun- 
 tenance, or some personal eccentricity set forth in a table 
 entitled ' The Act of Deformity.' " Such an institution 
 would be of great use in bringing the world to under- 
 stand the many and admirable advantages of being 
 ugly. 
 
 THE INCOMMUNIC ABILITY OF SORROW. 
 
 OORROW is incommunicable. There is something 
 ^^ ineffably sorrowful in the thought. The simple fact 
 that we are in sorrow is, of course, easy of communica- 
 tion, but the personal import of that fact is not to be 
 told. No man can make another understand the nature, 
 character, and extent of the sorrow by which he is him- 
 self desolated. That is what I mean by the 'incommuni- 
 cability of sorrow. You may be grieved to the soul to 
 learn that your friend is in affliction. You may be ready 
 to go through fire and water, so to speak, to rescue him, 
 but as for comprehending the quality of his grief, fathom- 
 ing its depths, or measuring its poignancy, you might as 
 well undertake to count the stars. Nor is he in any 
 better case towards you. He can no more enter into 
 your tribulation than you into his. Each may see but 
 too plainly that the other suffers, each may sympathize 
 most cordially with the other, but neither can appreciate 
 at the true value of its anguish the grief that wrings the 
 
THE INCOMMUNICABILITY OF SORROW. 17 
 
 Other's heart. An old French proverb puts the question 
 in the clearest possible light, — " Si vous voulez pleurer 
 mcs malhcurs, pnncz ;«« jr«x .• " " If you would weep 
 my sorrows, you must take my eyes." Just so. It will 
 not do for you to put yourself in my place. You must 
 discard your own identity and assume mine. To enter 
 into my feelings, you must take upon you my being. 
 Nothing short of an interchange of natures can qualify 
 you to understand my sorrows, or me to understand 
 yours ; and any such interchange being impossible, our 
 sorrows are incommunicable. " The heart knoweth his 
 own bitterness," wrote Solomon, the son of David ; and 
 what man or woman is there whose own experience does 
 not bear witness to the truth of the assertion ? " One 
 can never be the judge of another's grief," says 
 Ch&teaubriand, " for that which is a sorrow to one, to 
 another is joy. Let us not dispute with any one con- 
 cerning the reality of his suffering ; it is with sorrows 
 as with countries, — each man has his own." 
 
 Sorrow is of general prevalence, but of particular 
 operation. Every man's griefs are so interwoven with 
 his personal history as to have become part of himself. 
 He and they may not be sundered. Take, for example, 
 the supremest of all sorrows, that which we endure in 
 the loss of those we love. Let me put the cruel hypoth- 
 esis that you have lost a child. Your friend to whom 
 you impart the fact may have passed through the same 
 ordeal. He, too, may have wept over the grave of a son 
 or of a daughter. His heart bleeds for you, because of 
 your common calamit)', yet is he unable to understand 
 the special force and peculiar poignancy of your bereave- 
 ment. That is known to you, and to you alone of all 
 the world. The very name of your Beloved strikes 
 
1 8 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 chords of feeling to him unknown, evokes memories to 
 which he is a stranger, elicits associations which to him 
 are mysteries. A trick of feature, a tone of the voice> 
 a resemblance in manner, a song, \yhich your Loved 
 one delighted to sing, a place which he or she was 
 wont to visit, the merest trifle of every-day life, will 
 recall vanished scenes to you alone intelligible, and 
 awaken in your heart emotions which no other heart 
 than yours can share or comprehend. " You are as fond 
 of grief as of your child," says King Philip to Queen 
 Constance, bewailing her pretty Arthur. How eloquent 
 is the reply of the broken-hearted mother ! — 
 
 " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
 Then have I reason to be fond of grief. 
 Fare you well 1 " 
 
 And so it is with all kinds of sorrow. They appeal 
 to reminiscences with which we alone are familiar ; they 
 have darkened prospects which we alone delighted to 
 contemplate ; they have killed hopes which we alone 
 cherished ; they have cast shadows upon a path which 
 we alone must traverse. Therefore is our sorrow in- 
 communicable : " Si voiis voulez pleurer mes malheiirs, 
 prenez mes yeux." 
 
 In her charming little book, the Life of Isaac Hopper^ 
 Maria Childs makes some reflections which will come 
 home to all who have ever suffered. " Who does not 
 know that all the sternest conflicts of life can never be 
 recorded ? Every human soul must walk alone through 
 the darkest and most dangerous paths of its pilgrimage 
 
THE nXCOMMUXICABALITY OF SORRO W. 19 
 
 —absolutely alone with God. Much from which we 
 suffer most acutely could never be revealed to others ; 
 still more could never be understood, if it were revealed ; 
 and still more ought never to be repeated, if it could be 
 understood." Somewhat similar in sentiment are the 
 meditations of a thoughtful German writer, whose words 
 may be translated thus : — " It is not that which is 
 apparent, not that which may be known and told, which 
 makes up the bitterest portion of human suffering, which 
 plants the deepest furrow on the brow and sprinkles 
 the hair widi its earliest grey ! They are the griefs which 
 lie fathom-deep in the soul, and never pass the lip ; 
 tliose which devour the heart in secret, and which send 
 their victim into public with the wild laugh and troubled 
 eye ; those which spring from crushed affections and 
 annihilated hopes ; from remembrance, and remorse, 
 and despair ; from the misconduct or neglect of those 
 we love ; from changes in others ; from changes in our- 
 selves." Nor is it alone the guilty, haunted by the 
 visions of their misdeeds, like Orestes by tlie Furies, or 
 Richard by the Phantoms, who have cause for dejection. 
 An incommunicable sorrow may have been generated 
 by folly or obduracy as surely as by sin. The man who 
 has found out too late that he married the wi'bng woman ; 
 the woman who has made the like discovery in the case 
 oiE a man ; the men and women who have missed their 
 paths in life, or lost their chances, or abused their 
 privileges, or, to use a homely phrase, " played their 
 cards badly," — all these people have occasions of dis- 
 tress beyond the ken of the outer world. So true is it, 
 that " our acts our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal 
 shadows that walk by us still." And the saddest thought 
 of all is, that the most trivial circumstances will suffice 
 to awaken the most tragical reminiscences : — 
 
20 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 " For ever and anon of griefs subdued, 
 There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, 
 Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued, 
 And slight withal may be the things which bring 
 Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 
 Aside for ever : it may be a souiid — 
 A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring— 
 A flower — the wind — ^the ocean — which shall wound. 
 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly 
 bound." 
 
 Then, again, there is the man who, though he works 
 hard and does his best, can never give satisfaction to 
 those whom he loves and in whose cause he toils. "Who 
 shall fathom the sorrow of such a wretch ? Who shall 
 express his sense of humiliation ? 
 
 How tender, how melodious, how full of melancholy 
 eloquence are these familiar lines ! — 
 
 " I have a silent sorrow here, 
 Which never will depart ; 
 It heaves no sigh, it sheds no tear, 
 But — ^it consumes my heart." 
 
 All forms of tribulation incidental to humanity, 
 whether caused by the death of those whose life is 
 essential to our happiness,'or by illness, or by the loss 
 of fortune, or by the darkening of fair fame, or by the 
 overflow of cherished projects, or by whatsoever other 
 malign influence, bring with them a certain incommuni- 
 cable anguish which is, in fact, the cross that every man 
 and woman is appointed to carry, and which can be laid 
 down only at the grave. In the estrangement of old 
 friends there lurks a sorrow which, being incapable of 
 impartment, is past all surgery. A friend for whom 
 you would willingly lay down your life may not have 
 
THE INCOMMUNICABJLITY OF SORROW. 21 
 
 done you any deliberate wrong or wilful injury ; he would 
 probably shrink with horror from the very thought of 
 such a thing ; but he may none the less have destroyed 
 your peace and ruined your happiness by his perverse 
 conduct, his maddening inconsistency, or his ill-advised 
 interference in your affairs. To make him comprehend 
 the mischief he has wrought is out of the question. 
 Conscious of the purity of his motives, he forgets what 
 tragedies have .sprung from good intentions, and he 
 ignores the disastrous consequences of his actions. He 
 cannot, for the life of him, weep over the misery he has 
 caused, because he cannot take your eyes. You love 
 him dearly, but you and he cannot get on together. 
 The plague of Babel is upon you both, and neither can 
 understand the other. In no case more poignantly 
 than in this do we feel the incomrimnicability of sorrow : 
 " Sivous voulez pleurer mes malheurs, prenez mes yeux." 
 Alas, my heart ! It is not to "be done. 
 
 Though a thousand friends were grouped around the 
 bed of a dying man, still must he die alone. Unaccom- 
 panied by any one of those who view with anguish the 
 ebbing of the tide of life must he descend into the 
 valley of the shadow of death. And as it will be in 
 death, so also is it in life. Through the most moment- 
 ous eras of our earthly career, every man and woman of 
 us nmst walk, not, it may be, uncared for, nor unloved, 
 but alone, all alone. The sense of solitude inspired by 
 this thought is indeed saddening ; yet it may be turned 
 to profitable account. Of what avail is it to attempt to 
 explain that which is in its very nature inexplicable? 
 What good end is to be attained by harassing our friends 
 with the recital of griefs which, however they may com- 
 miserate, they cannot comprehend ? The selfishness of 
 
2 2 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 such a proceeding is apparent at a glance. There is 
 no patent of affliction. Every man has sorrows enough 
 of his own, without being saddled with those of liis 
 friends as well. Every man must carry his own cross. 
 To seek to shift it upon other shoulders were as futile 
 as unmanly. " Bear ye one another's burdens.'' Yes, 
 by all means, in the sense of giving our help and sym- 
 pathy to all who are in affliction, but not in the hopeless 
 sense of torturing others with a tale of woe intelligible 
 only to ourselves. " We must instruct our sorrows to 
 be proud.'' Let us cull comfort, if not from the sub- 
 lime precepts of Christianity, at all events from the be- 
 nign philosophy of the Ancients. Come what may, 
 never forget this august maxim, " Qid silenter patitur 
 nulla ilk spernitur deo ; " " He who suffers in silence is 
 not disdained by any god." 
 
 TJI£ DIGNITY AND DELIGHT OF IGNO- 
 RANCE. 
 
 pOETS and speakers, more or less melodious and 
 eloquent, have not been wanting to sound the 
 praises of Imagination, of Memory, and of Hope. How 
 strange it is — how very strange — that no one should 
 ever have attempted to celebrate the dignity and delight 
 of Ignorance ! What nobler theme than this could 
 possibly inspire the harp of the lyrist, the pen of the 
 essayist, or the tongue of the orator ? Distrustful of my 
 own ability, however richly endowed with Ignorance, to 
 rise to the grandeur of the " topic," I should hesitate 
 
DIGNITY AND DELIGHT OF IGNORANCE. 23 
 
 to approach it, but that a strong sense of duty impels 
 me to do my best to supply what must be universally 
 regarded as a desideratum in literature. I propose, 
 therefore, to devote this essay to a consideration of the 
 claims of Ignorance upon the admiration and gratitude 
 of mankind. I have already unmasked Beauty, expos- 
 ing her to the world in her true colors as the basest of 
 sirens, the most perfidious of sorceresses. Come for a 
 ramble with me to-day, dear reader mine, and I hope to 
 conduct you safely to a happy destination — the profound 
 conviction that Knowledge ranks next after Beauty in the 
 order of mischief, sharing with her the bad distinction 
 of pre-eftiinent hostility to the peace and happiness of 
 the human race. Bear with me for a while and you 
 shall be proud to acknowledge that the amount of man's 
 ignorance is the measure of his felicity. " Non meus 
 hie sermo." While disclaiming any intention to ven- 
 ture upon the shoreless sea of dogmatic theology, I may 
 be permitted to remind you of what all Christians are 
 of accord in admitting, let their differences on other 
 points be what they may — namely, that we should all be 
 now leading Joyous and sinless lives in the amaranthine 
 groves of Paradise had it not been that Adam, at the 
 instigation of his wife, ate in an evil hour of the tree of 
 knowledge. Conscious of this fact and pathetically ob- 
 servant of its influence on the destiny of man, Solomon, 
 the son of David, set his hand to this memorable declar- 
 ation, " In the multitude of wisdom is grief, and he that 
 increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow." On this immor- 
 tal maxim I take my stand as on a rock, defying con- 
 tradiction and laughing my assailants to scorn. It was 
 quite in the spirit of Solomon's benignant philosophy 
 that Matthew Prior penned his verse, witty as musical : — 
 
24 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 " I£ we see right we see our woes, 
 
 Then what .ivails it to have eyes ? 
 From ignorance our comfort flows, 
 
 The only wretched are the wise." 
 
 Yes. Solomon was right ; so was Prior ; so, not to 
 speak it profanely, am I. Don't be run away with by 
 your feelings. View the question dispassionately, and 
 regarding it honestly from what point you may, you will 
 still be driven in candor to the conclusion that Beauty 
 and Knowledge are man's direst foes, Ugliness and 
 Ignorance his truest friends. The next best thing to 
 being ugly is to be ignorant. Ee both if you can ; but 
 that were more easily said than done. The man who is 
 at once ugly and ignorant — and such a man have I met 
 ere now — may be said to have reached the very acme of 
 human felicity ; but such a combination of good luck is 
 rare, indeed. He who possesses it may account himself 
 the prime favorite of fortune. " Is dels, is superis, prox- 
 imus est." Ugliness js a gift — a special blessing inher- 
 ited from Nature, not to be acquired by art. The 
 beauty of ignorance is that it is within the reach of 
 every one. Not everybody can be ugly, but any one 
 can be ignorant. What a blessed thought 1 Then let 
 us be ignorant ; as we value our happiness, let us be 
 ignorant I Is it not written, " in the multitude of wis- 
 dom is grief, and he that increaseth wisdom increaseth 
 sorrow ? " and does not every day's experience attest 
 the truth of the saying, " Utinam ne scirem litcras i " 
 " Oh 1 that I had never known my letters," exclaimed 
 the unhappy Abbd Lamennais ; and what man of sense 
 is there who would not echo that sentiment ? Forgery 
 would have been unknown, and Dr. Dodd, instead of 
 being hanged at Newgate, would have died in his bed 
 
DIGNITY AND DELIGHT OF IGNORANCE. 25 
 
 had he not learned to write. " Where ignorance is 
 bliss 'tis folly to be wise," sang Gray, the poet ; and 
 where in this weary world is ignorance not bliss ? where 
 is it not folly to be wise ? One of the happiest men 1 
 have ever known is one solid mass of ignorance. He 
 doesn't know a wheel-barrow from an act of parliament ; 
 yet is he the luckiest, jolliest man on earth, as rich as 
 the sea, and the very picture of fat, contented ignorance. 
 His round rosy face, his witless laugh, everything about 
 him bespeaks utter vacuity of mind. " Thought would 
 destroy his paradise." Educate a man and you make 
 him critical ; being critical he will become fastidious : 
 and once fastidious, farewell forever to enjoyment ! To 
 an ignorant man the world is full of surprises ; and sur- 
 prise is, according to Burke, one of the primary elements 
 of happiness. A lettered man is surprised at nothing. 
 " Nil admirari " is the maxim of his joyless life" ; but 
 your ignoramus is ever in a transport of sudden delight. 
 Explain things to him, and you destroy interest and 
 curiosity at a blow. It is mystery that gives zest and 
 piquancy to existence. Who would find the slightest 
 satisfaction in the marvellous exhibition of a conjurer if 
 the secret of his magic were divulged ? Why should 
 any man be taught algebra, that " execrable joke," as 
 the old gentleman calls it in the play ? Tom Sheridan 
 was one of the pleasantest, brightest-hearted of men, 
 yet he lived and died in the belief that algebra was one 
 of the learned languages. Your scholar, roving by the 
 sea-side, sets his poor brains on the rack thinking about 
 conchology, the current of the tides, the law of storms, 
 and all the rest of it. Your ignoramus doesn't care a 
 fig-stalk for any of these things : and what the worse is 
 he ? He enjoys his walk, and goes home with the appe- 
 
2 6 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 tite of a hunter. No knotty points of science spoil his 
 digestion at tlue dinner-table or chase sleep from his pil- 
 low at night. He rises fresh and vigorous in the morn- 
 ing, and goes for a ramble through the woods. ■ Here 
 no questions either of botany or philosophy disturb his 
 repose : — 
 
 " A primrose by the river's brim, 
 A yellow primrose is to him, 
 And it is nothing more." 
 
 Certainly not. What more should it be, Mr. William 
 Wordsworth ? Surely you don't mean to say that it is 
 an artichoke ? No ; a primrose is a primrose, and noth- 
 ing else on earth. " Fleas are not lobsters, d their 
 
 eyes ! " said Peter Pindar with equal truth and elegance, 
 Then again for astronomy. What's the use of it ? what 
 good . purpose can it possibly serve ? Mr. William 
 Shakespeare was a man of no small intellect, and mark 
 what he says about astronomers : — 
 
 These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, 
 
 That give a name to every fixed star. 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 
 Than those that walk and wot not what they are." 
 
 Not a jot ! Who ever heard of the moon shining 
 more brightly, or of the stars winking more waggishly, 
 at an astronomer than at any other man ? It is more 
 than they would dare to do. Moreover, it is worthy of 
 remark, that learning takes the pluck out of a man. 
 The learned are ever cautious and circumspect ; the 
 illiterate are intrepid and adventurous. Fools rush in 
 where angels dare not tread, so that you see the fools 
 have by far the best of it. They go in and win while the 
 angels stand outside shivering in the cold. Learning 
 
DIGiXITY AND DELIGHT OF IG.VORANCE. 2 7 
 
 destroys a man's faith in his own work. An ignorant 
 man may quarrel with all the world besides, but he is 
 invariabl)- on the best of terms with himself. He is in 
 love with himself, and — as the French epigram phrases 
 it, '' n' a point de rival " — has no rival. Give him mental 
 culture, and his self-esteem vanishes in an instant. His 
 arrogance and presumption will disappear, taking with 
 tiiem his peace of mind. Teach him music, and the 
 barrel-organs and brass bands to which he now listens 
 with rapture will jar upon his ear with intolerable dis- 
 cord. The vilest chromo is now to his eyes even as the 
 lovliest Claude. Give him an idea of color and form, 
 and he will no longer sit in the same room with the 
 daubs that once gladdened his eyes. You will have de- 
 prived him of innumerable sources of delight. He will 
 fall into a wretched habit of forming unfavorable com- 
 parisons, and instead of enjoying the sublime spectacles 
 presented to his vision, he will bethink him of others 
 yet more delightful which he may not behold. When 
 he sees Mr. Lowe upon his bycicle, instead of being 
 thankful to fortune for the noble sight, he will hark back 
 in imagination to classic times and picture to his mind's 
 eye Alexander mounted upon Bucephalus. When some- 
 body reads to him a page of Mr. Tupper, instead of 
 clapping his hands in transport, he will groan inwardly 
 and shout for Mr. Tennyson. He has eaten of the tree 
 of knowledge and the fruit has disagreed with him. 
 And so it is all the world over. We sit through a play, 
 and read through a book, deriving amusement from 
 each, because we are as yet unaware of the denouement 
 of either. Think you that tlie crowds swarming eagerly 
 through the streets of London in the prosecution of 
 business, or the holiday-makers who, frantic with en- 
 
2g ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 thusiasm, throng the banks of the Thames to witness 
 the Boat Race, would be thus zealous in the pursuit, 
 either of profit or of pleasure, could they but gaze into 
 futurity and see with what sorrows and solicitudes the 
 coming years may be fraught for them ? No ; they are 
 happy because they are ignorant — happy, too, in the 
 precise proportion of their ignorance. The veil that 
 hides the future from their view was woven by the hand 
 of Mercy. And as with the future, so also with the 
 past ; the less we know of either the better for our 
 mental tranquility. Othello found not Cassio's kisses 
 on the lips of Desdemona till lago told him they were 
 there, so true is it that, 
 
 " He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, 
 Let him not know it and he's not robbed at all." 
 
 How much more comfortable would this world be, 
 and how much more smoothly should we all jog along 
 together in it, were it not that some restless, inquisitive 
 busybodies are eternally enlightening us on a matter in 
 respect of which ignorance were indeed bliss. Spoon- 
 fed from earliest infancy upon the London fog, I would 
 now swallow it like jelly, and deem it an atmospheric 
 delicacy, but that I was bullied to visit Italy, the Medi- 
 terranean, and the South of France. Ever since I 
 have sickened at the thought of my native fog, and 
 shuddered at the sight of the mustard-poultice in which 
 the English sun is picturesquely bandaged. Those 
 wretched analysts, too, what misery they cause me I 
 Why will they not let me eat my food and drink my 
 liquor in peace ? I am willing enough to take things 
 for what they profess to be, and to enjoy them accord- 
 ingly. I don't want to be told that my butter is lard, 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF DECEPTION. 29 
 
 my bread alum, my milk chalk and dogs' brains, my 
 port log-wood and sloes, my sausages dead cats, or my 
 vinegar muriatic acid. Devil take it ! Can't you leave 
 me alone and let me be poisoned in peace ? What is 
 it to you ? only that you are poor and busy. Prejudice 
 they say is the daughter of Ignorance. What then? 
 An illustrious lineage for a most respectable progeny. 
 Nothing can be more respectable than honest prejudice, 
 and the more pig-headed it is the better. Of all things 
 in the world it is the most convenient, seeing that it 
 supersedes the necessity for reasoning and argument. 
 I am proud to say that I am a man of the most accom- 
 plished ignorance and the most inveterate prejudice, 
 and I would not exchange my ignorance and prejudice 
 for the wisdom of Minerva and her Owl. Not content 
 with unsexing our women and destroying the supply of 
 domestic servants, those pestilential school boards — 
 but hark ! What's that ? The clock ! And gone 
 twelve ! I had no idea it was so late. " To bed . — to 
 bed ! " as Lady Macbeth beautifully remarks. I can 
 write no more for the money ; but I hope I have written 
 enough to prove that Ignorance is man's best friend, 
 and that high indeed is her dignity and matchless her 
 delight. 
 
 THE DELIGHTS OF DECEPTION. 
 
 /~* RANTED that a lie in morals is a turpitude un- 
 ^■"^ worthy of a gentleman, the fact remains that a lie 
 is the very soul of art, and that without it there were no 
 art worthy of the name. In fact, a lie stands in pretty 
 
3 o ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 much the same relation to art as grapes to wine or hops 
 to beer. It is wonderful to think how subtle and in- 
 soluble is the connection between deceit and intellec- 
 tual enjoyment. Take what province of mental effort 
 you may, whether the dramatic, the artistic, or the 
 literary, and you will find that deceit is the warp from 
 which has been woven the web of the spell that en- 
 chants you. When Butler wrote his immortal maxim — 
 " The pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," 
 he gave expression to one of the truest, profoundest 
 thoughts that ever fell from the pen or lips of man. 
 The more we dwell upon it the more vivid becomes our 
 sense of the wealth of philosophy hived within the 
 homely saying, like honey in the bag of the bee. " Qui 
 vult decipi decipiatiir " — let him be deceived who de- 
 sires to be deceived, says the Latin proverb, and what 
 man is there, or woman either, who does not cherish 
 such a desire ? — 
 
 " What man so wise, what earthly wit so rare 
 
 As to descry the crafty cunning train 
 By which deceit doth mask in visor fair 
 
 And seem like Truth whose shape she well can feign ? " 
 
 There is no such man, good old Edmund Spenser, 
 and if there were he would be the most unhappy wretch 
 on earth. This disenchanted world would lose all its 
 lustre for him who could no longer find joy either in 
 being cheated or to cheat. For what do we go to the 
 play, inspect a picture, or read a story, if not for the 
 luxury of being befooled for a season into a belief in 
 that which we know to be untrue ? If it were humanly 
 possible for Mr. Sothern to be really Lord Dundreary, 
 for Mr. J. S. Clarke to be truly Dr. Pangloss, for Mr. 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF DECEPTION. 31 
 
 Toole to be actually Paul Pry, or for Mr. Irving to be 
 veritably Hamlet, Prince o£ Denmark, we should derive 
 •but little satisfaction from seeing any one of these 
 artists. We are profoundly convinced that it is physi- 
 cally impossible for any actor to be in reality the person- 
 age whom he pretends to be, and that conviction is the 
 main-spring of all the enjoyment that we experience in 
 the contemplation of acting. We are lost in wonder and 
 delight to think with what consummate craft a man can 
 put off the semblance of himself and assume that of 
 somebody else who may have lived hundreds of years 
 ago, or, stranger still, who may never have lived at all, 
 being merely an ideal creation made incarnate by the 
 magic of genius. In each case the artist is employed 
 upon the exquisite elaboration of a lie, which he has 
 brought at last to such perfection that truth seems false- 
 hood to it. Hence the gratification we find in witness- 
 ing their work. We know that we are being imposed 
 upon ; but we willingly surrender our judgment to the 
 masterly impostors, and our pleasure is in the precise 
 proportion of the skill with which we are bamboo- 
 zled. And as in playing, so in painting. What is it that 
 awakens our admiration in viewing a finely-executed 
 landscape ? It is assuredly the marvellous hypocrisy 
 with which the painter conveys the sense of space, imi- 
 tates the hues of vegetation, the form and movement of 
 the clouds, the action and expression of seas and rivers, 
 and by means of a speck or two of color upon an inch 
 or two of canvas realizes to the vision of the spectator 
 the amazing mystery of perspective. These be no true 
 skies, no real rivers ; these trees that seem lo wave are 
 in fact motionless ; there is not a drop of water in that 
 foaming sea; not a gleam of light in the sunbeams, 
 
3 2 JlRRA riC ESS A YS. 
 
 dancing upon its radiant surface ; of course not. It is 
 all deception — rank deception ; it is but a painted lie, 
 and for that very reason we love it and would beg, buy, 
 or steal it if we had the chance. We plume ourselves 
 upon our sagacity, but we are fooled to the top of our 
 bent and glory in the fact. We are in no better case 
 than the silly cock of true Yankee breed who crows to 
 wake the morn with his shrill clarion, it matters not at 
 what hour of the day he may behold Mr. Church's pic- 
 ture of " Sunrise in the Andes." In the perusal of 
 some great work of fiction, such, for example, as Tom 
 Jones, Ivanhoe, or Fickwick, we are equally, though in a 
 different sense, the willing victims of deception, giving 
 loose rein to our fancies, and gladly suffering the author 
 to lure us out of this work-a-day world into what im- 
 aginary realms he listeth. We are but puppets in his 
 hands, and dance to what music he may be pleased to 
 play. It is all humbug, sheer humbug ; but we like to 
 be humbugged, and but for that precious privilege life 
 would be intolerably monotonous. Nor is it only in the 
 ideal realms of literature and art that deceit bears su 
 preme sway, or that man finds pleasure in deluding or 
 being deluded. The same rule holds good in every 
 section of society and in all the operations of every-day 
 life. Dryden tells the tale with his customary vigor of 
 illustration : — 
 
 " For the dull world most homage pay to those 
 Who on their understanding most impose. 
 First man creates, and then he fears the el£ ; 
 Thus others cheat him not, but he himself. 
 He hates realities, and hugs the cheat, 
 And still the only pleasure's the deceit; 
 So meteors flatter with a dazzling dye, 
 Which no existence has but in the eye. 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF DECEPTION. 33 
 
 At distance prospects please us, but when near, 
 We find but desert rocks and fleeting air ; 
 From stratagem to stratagem we run, 
 And he knows most who latest is undone." 
 
 What would become of quackery, in all its multitu- 
 dinous forms of cozenage, but for that inveterate love of 
 being cheated, which is one of the most mystical endow- 
 ments of our nature ? Were it not for that unaccount- 
 able and irrepressible attribute of ours, where would the 
 projectors of bubble companies be? how would law and 
 physic thrive ? where would Messrs. Maskelyne and 
 Cooke and the whole college of conjurers be ? and 
 whither should the countless army of " chevaliers d'in- 
 dustrie," who now batten upon the credulity of the 
 public, turn for a dinner ? It stands to reason that both 
 in cheating and in being cheated there must be what 
 Lord Bacon styles " a constant quick sense of felicity 
 and a noble satisfaction.'' And this accounts for a 
 great deal of what would otherwise be inexplicable in 
 much that is passing around us. It was but the other 
 day that a parson was taken up by the police for having 
 stolen an eightpenny book from one of the stalls at a 
 provincial railway station. The reverend gentleman 
 was in excellent circumstances, and could have well 
 afforded to pay for the book ; but no ; if he had done 
 so he would have missed the intellectual gratification of 
 knowing that he had eluded the vigilance of the boy 
 who had charge of the stall. He succeeded in so doing, 
 and must have felt proud of the achievement. Unhap- 
 pily, however, he did not escape the lynx eye of 198 Z, 
 at whose righteous hands he came to grief. Then again 
 it is an every-day occurrence for well-dressed men 
 occupying a reputable position in society to be detected 
 
 3 
 
3 4 ERR A T/C ESS A VS. 
 
 in the fraud of travelling in a first-class carriage, tliough 
 they had only purchased a third-class ticket. Do you 
 suppose that these men run the risk of a ruinous expo- 
 sure for the sake of saving a few shillings, or it may be 
 a few pence ? It is inconceivable. Tliey run the risk, 
 and think it well worth running for the glory of thinking 
 that they have " done " tiie company. Stolen kisses 
 are sweet ; so too are stolen rides. To overreach in a 
 bargain is with some traders the highest art of com- 
 merce, and it is more than probable that this sentiment, 
 quite as much as the desire of unjust gain, is at the root 
 of the adulteration system. It has been said that your 
 true-born Yorkshireman would go through fire and water 
 for his father, but could not withstand the temptation 
 of " Jockeying" him in a transaction of horse-flesh. Be 
 this as it may, there is no denying that, not in Yorkshire 
 alone, but all the world over, the delights of deceit are 
 often too fascinating to be resisted. This is no new 
 thing. Centuries have elapsed since Sir T. Wyatt wrote 
 this quaint verse — not less true than quaint : — 
 
 " Soonest he speeds that most can lie and feign, 
 True-meaning heart is had in high disdain ; 
 Against deceit and cloaked doubleness, 
 What 'vaileth truth or perfect steadfastness ? " 
 
 But of all forms of deception, the most amusing to 
 the spectators, and the most disastrous to the parties 
 mutually deceiving and being deceived, are those fre- 
 quently practised in the art and mystery of love-making. 
 It too often happens that each of the lovers wears a 
 mask, and that both are equally intent upon the same 
 design of throwing dust in tlie other's eyes. They wear 
 tlie most seductive of smiles, tone their voices to the 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF DECEPTION. 35 
 
 most melodious of keys", assume an air of the most gra- 
 cious courtesy, and leave nothing undone to make it 
 appear that they are infinitely sweeter, nicer, and better 
 than they really are. To use the terrific metaphor of 
 Lady Macbeth, " they look like the innocent flower and 
 are the serpent under it." This perfidious game goes 
 on through the whole course of courtship, the gentleman 
 passing for a very Bayard of fearless and irreproachable 
 chivalry, the lady simply for a seraph whose wings have 
 moulted. With marriage comes the " desilliisionTie- 
 meiit." Both the high contracting parties then drop 
 their masks, and each stands confessed for what he or 
 she really is, a common place person enough, and not a 
 jot better than the ordinary run of humanit3^ I^ they 
 would have the sense to accept the situation, and good- 
 humoredly to say the one to the other, " Well, we have 
 both been acting : the play is over ; let us resume our 
 true nature and get on comfortably together," all might 
 be well ; but the mischief of it is that insliead of pursuing 
 that sensible course, each inveighs against the other for 
 an hypocrisy of which both were equally guilty. The 
 same sort of thing goes on in society in quarters where 
 youth, inexperience, and the entrancement of passion 
 can no longer be pleaded in extenuation. There is such 
 a thing as " company-manners," of all things in the world 
 the most hollow and deceptive. A witty French essayist 
 has divided our friends into three classes, " Ceux qui 
 nous aiment ; ceux qui ne nous aiment pas ; et ceux qui 
 nous d'ctestent" — "Those who love us, those who love 
 us not, and those who hate us." Under the rigime of 
 company-manners all these three classes are treated 
 with the like cordiality. The people who deal the most 
 abundantly in frowns and sneers at home are not unfre- 
 
3 6 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 quently the most prodigal of smiles abroad. They are 
 not amiable, but they desire to' be thought so. They go 
 about in a mask, which if not very attractive has at least 
 the merit of concealing their true features. But let us 
 not be too severe upon mankind either in the abstract 
 or the concrete. Something is due to the exigencies 
 and "convenances" of society. It would never do to 
 tell everybody what you think of him, nor would it at 
 all conduce to your own comfort that everybody should 
 treat you with the like candor. The sun of social favor 
 shines with equal splendor, if not upon the just and 
 the unjust, at least upon the genial and the ungenial. 
 So that there be nothing against a man's moral charac- 
 ter, he is not to be cold-shouldered for an ungainly 
 presence which he cannot help, or a perverse temper 
 which may perhaps be the result of a weak digestion. 
 We must take the world as we find it. The sternest of 
 moralists glancing inwardly will have some compassion 
 for the innocent deceits of human bodies, if he would 
 not shut the gates of mercy on himself. And, after all, 
 man is not more wicked in this regard than Nature 
 herself, who is everlastingly befooling him. Nothing 
 endures ; everything passes away, the brightest still the 
 fleetest. Where is the rose of yesterday? Indeed, in 
 some respects. Art has the " pull " of Nature, for artifi- 
 cial flowers are well-nigh as beautiful as the flowers 
 of the garden, and last much longer, to say nothing 
 of their never wanting to be watered. The azure 
 sky that gets suddenly overclouded, the gorgeous rain- 
 bow vanishing as we gaze, the treacherous ice crashi^ig 
 beneath our feet, the sea now smooth and placid, anon 
 rough and frantic, the mirage of the desert luring but to 
 betray, and the dead-sea fruit which tempts the eye, but , 
 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 37 
 
 turns to ashes on the lip — these are ilhisti'ations of .the 
 delight that Nature takes in deceiving ; and Man, 
 regarded simply as the Son of Nature, is not much worse 
 than his Mother. 
 
 SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 
 
 TT nia)"^, perhaps, tend to our consolation in seasons of 
 trial and depression to remember that a fleet alter- 
 nation of sunshine and shadow is the inevitable law as 
 well of the moral as of the physical world. Nor should 
 we fail to observe how beneficial is the operation of that 
 law in either sphere. The gracious rains beautify and 
 fertilize the earth. We discern their delightful and salu- 
 tary influence in the freshness and brilliancy of the 
 landscape, in the verdure and lustre of the foliage, in 
 the goldenness and affluence of the corn-field, in the 
 fragrance and effulgence of the garden. The scenery of 
 the firmament is due altogether to the clouds. The 
 violet arch of an Italian sky is lovely to look upon for a 
 time ; but wanting the magnificent drapery of clouds 
 with their marvellous refinement of texture, their endless 
 diversity of hue and tone, and their infinite variety of 
 form, action, and grouping, it soon becomes wearisome 
 and monotonous. There is no emotion — no picturesque 
 passion in a cloudless sky. It lacks spirit and character. 
 To rain as well as light we owe the radiant bow that 
 spans the vault of heaven; and we may thank the clouds 
 for those gorgeous effects of- light, shade, and color 
 
g ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 which suffuse the mountain crests with splendor inef- 
 fable, and gives to sunset a dazzling grandeur— a mystic 
 glory which is the despair of painters. There is not in 
 the whole range of literature any more sublime thought 
 than that of Sir Walter Raleigh, that sun, moon, and 
 stars, resplendently luminous though they seem to our 
 eyes, are but shadows of the Omnipotent :—" In the 
 glorious light of heaven we perceive the shadows of His 
 divine countenance." Descending from such celestial 
 contemplations to the consideration of our sublunary 
 home, we shall find that whatsoever things are majestic, 
 whatsoever things are beautiful in the external world, 
 are due in no small degree to the fleet alternation and 
 poetic contrast of sunshine and shadow. What can be 
 more exquisite than the tremulous network of lights and 
 shades cast upon the green sward by the leaves and 
 branches of a tree swaying .in the breeze ? What can 
 be more . graceful than the coursing of shadows over 
 bending corn or athwart the sparkling surface of a sum- 
 mer sea ? Thunder clears and purifies the atmosphere, 
 which for a while it had troubled so alarmingly ; and 
 the oak strikes deeper root for its wrestling with the- 
 storm. 
 
 How wayward soever a man's destiny may be, it will 
 not fail to present analogies expressly correspondent 
 with Nature, as well in her gladsome as in her pathetic 
 aspects. No one who loves manly truth better than 
 morbid prejudice will hesitate to admit that if there 
 is much to endure, there is also not a little to enjoy in 
 our earthly pilgrimage. If life were indeed the dark 
 dismal bondage that it is sometimes pictured, who would 
 care to live ? Who would not welcome death as the most 
 precious of boons ? But we are unfair to Providence and 
 
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 35 
 
 ourselves. In the intelligent contemplation of the 
 manifold beauties that surround us, in the zealous 
 exploration of the fair domain of knowledge, in the con- 
 verse of loyal friends, in the enchanting mystery called 
 love — here, here we have, indeed, abundant sources of 
 delight. Nor is this all. A thousand things around us 
 administer to our physical and intellectual enjoyment. 
 The ear is ravished with the melodious strains of music ; 
 the eye is gladdened with the cunning creations of art; 
 eloquence and poetry exalt the imagination ; wit and 
 humor rejoice the fancy. As steel brighteneth steel, so 
 doth the countenance of a man his friend. There is a 
 solace beyond all price in the interchange of genial 
 thoughts, and a comfort not to be told in the communion 
 of sympathetic spirits. Go where they may, little chil- 
 dren are ever the harbingers of innocent delight. Joy 
 lurks in their rosy smile, glows on their cloudless brows, 
 mantles in their damask cheeks, and no rhetoric is com- 
 parable to their lisping accents. " To press the velvet 
 lip of infancy," as Thomson charmingly phrases it, is 
 among our happiest privileges. We recall the days of our 
 own childhood, and are lost in wonder to think what can 
 have become of the children that we ourselves once were. 
 Ah ! what indeed ? In the very sense of physical exist- 
 ence, when coupled with perfect health, there is an 
 exhilaration to which no words can do justice. Who has 
 not felt this the more particularly when engaged in any 
 manly exercise, in the hunting-field, or on the cricket- 
 ground, or while travelling on foot through a new and 
 picturesque country ? There is yet another and a higher 
 view of the question. Let no one complain of the want 
 of sunshine, that brightest and most beneficial of all — tlie 
 sunshine of the heart — who has not treated himself to 
 thepriceless luxury of doing good ! 
 
40 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 Ah ! there were no lack of sunshine, moral or natural, 
 if it would but last. My only fault with all that is bright 
 is that it fades too surely. What is truly tragic in human 
 life is not, as some absurdly maintain that it is, destitute 
 of joys — on the contrary, it abounds in them, but rather 
 that they and' we are of such brief duration. The wind 
 passeth over us and we are gone ! 
 
 King James I., whom historians and dramatists delight 
 to depict as a witless inelegant pedant, wrote a couplet 
 of admirable melody and truth, which is more than can 
 be said for any other monarch who ever sat upon 
 the throne of England : — 
 
 " Crowns have their compass, length o£ days their date, 
 Triumph her tombs, felicity her fate." 
 
 In the sad thoughts thus eloquently expressed, dwells 
 all that the human imagination can conceive of poignant 
 and disheartening. They are but too true, these tragic 
 thoughts, and our personal experiences of their truth are 
 the shadows with which our sunbeams are continually 
 interlaced. " Life is but a walking shadow," says 
 Shakespeare, and who that calls to mind his own 
 shattered projects, his blighted hopes, his vanished 
 youth, his broken strength, and, saddest of all, the 
 friends he has seen around him fall like leaves in wintry 
 weather, can doubt the justice of the saying ? — " Pulvis 
 et umbra sumus 1 " " We are dust and shadow I " Our 
 joys are but " the perfume and suppliance of a minute ; " 
 our life itself, what is it ? A castle of frost-work confront- 
 ing the sun. Faith points to happier spheres of everlasting 
 duration, and bleak and dark, indeed, were life with all 
 its sunshine but for that hope ; yet am I fain to avow that 
 
SUNSmNE AND SHADOW. 
 
 41 
 
 in the knowledge that all things lovely hasten.to decay, 
 that the lustre fades from beauty's eyes, the lily from her 
 cheek, tliat the hand we clasp grows throbless in the 
 clasping J that no two lovers can wed and no two friends 
 weave their bond of amity on other condition than this, 
 that at no distant day one shall weep over the grave 
 of die other ; in the knowledge, I say, of all this 
 there is, to my thinking, a certain ' unspeakable sad- 
 ness for which the most confident hope of immor- 
 tality is powerless wholly to atone. Who has not 
 felt tliat the death of a friend is a sorrow not to be 
 surmounted by faith the most fervid and unclouded ? 
 Who does not know that the loss of a child is an arrow 
 in the heart, which the parent takes down to the grave ? 
 We are born into shadow as well as sunshine, and, 
 though not mourning as those without hope, we must still 
 mourn. Never since the Mosaic era has there been any 
 such creature on earth as an old man or an old woman. 
 Eagles, ravens, and oak trees attain antiquity ; but human 
 beings never. We have not time to grow old. We do 
 not live long enough. " To look around us and to die," 
 as Alexander Pope expresses it, is our utmost achieve- 
 ment. " What shadows we are ! What shadows we pur- 
 sue ! " exclaimed Edmund Burke. " Ave et Vale ! " is 
 our covenant of life. Dwelling on these sad fancies one 
 autumn evening at the sea-side, as I bethought me of an 
 immedicable sorrow, thus spake my melancholy muse in 
 her own rude, untutored strain : — 
 
 Hail ! and Farewell ! Such is the fleet condition 
 Of earthly intercourse ; we meet to part 
 Joy perisheth in rapture of fruition. 
 
 Alas, my heart! 
 
42 EKKA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 The flowers we gather wither in the grasping; 
 On Beauty's cheek no fadeless lilies dwell ; 
 The hand we clasp grows throbless in the clasping. 
 Hail ! and Farewell I 
 
 Hail ! and Farewell ! The smile of welcome beameth 
 
 Brief as effulgent upon lovers' lips. 
 
 In hope exultant, Youth but little dreameth 
 
 Of hope's eclipse. 
 
 Nor cares to think that Time, who looks so radian^ 
 Is disenchanting Fancy's magic spell, 
 To dust dissolving all her fairy pageant. 
 
 Hail ! and Farewell 1 
 
 Hail ! and Farewell ! 'Tis thus each short-lived pleasure 
 Fades from our vision like a phantom wan ; 
 We turn to gaze upon our new-found treasure, 
 
 And lo I 'tis gone. 
 
 Mid the delights that we most keenly covet, 
 Still are we startled by fond Memory's knell. 
 Ave ! et Vale I Oh ! my Heart's Beloved, 
 
 Hail ! and Farewell ! 
 
 Let US cull comfort from the knowledge that we are 
 in better Hands than our own, and that as the rains 
 of heaven beautify and fertilize the earth, as the clouds 
 give grandeur to the firmament and splendor to the sun- 
 set, as the storm invigorates the tiees and the thunder 
 purifies the air, even so does sorrow adorn, exalt, and 
 refine the human heart. I remember to have met some- 
 where — whether in conversation or in reading I cannot 
 say — this charming thought, that as the leaves are gently 
 detached from the trees by the abundant rains of 
 autumn, so are our hearts insensibly sundered from this 
 fleeting world by the soft pressure of recorded sorrows. 
 Not in identity of worldly interests, as the selfish tell 
 us, nor yet in the conviviality of the festive board, con- 
 
THE DECAY OF THE PICTURESQUE. 43 
 
 sists, as the sons of pleasure would have us believe, 
 the true league of brotherhood among men. It 
 dwells, believe me, in community of suffering — in a 
 common liability to grief. That man will- be at 
 no great pains to help a friend in adversity who 
 has never felt adversity himself. The heart of such 
 a man is barren and arid as the sands beneath the 
 scorching suns of the equator. Familiarity with the 
 shadows of life is essential to sympathy. In him who 
 has drunk deeply of this cup of anguish, and in him 
 alone, will you find a brother in the hour of danger and 
 distress ; for of this rest confidently assured, that all the 
 world over there is a bond of sorrow as of blood, and 
 that they who mourn are everywhere akin. 
 
 THE DECAY OF THE PICTURESQUE. 
 
 ' I ■'HE decay of the picturesque is such a sign of the 
 times as the most stoical of philosophers still retain- 
 ing one touch of poetic sentiment can hardly contem- 
 plate without a sigh. It is, I suppose, quite right and 
 proper, and in strict accordance with the eternal fitness 
 of things, that the ornamental shall give way to the 
 practical, and that the graceful and the beautiful shall ' 
 go down before the advancing tide of corhmercial inno- 
 vation ; yet these changes, all inevitable though they be, 
 leave the world less lovely, and, in a certain sense, less 
 enjoyable than they found it. In these " costermonger- 
 ing days " the " dulce " counts for little ; the " utile " 
 
44 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 alone is regarded. To money-considerations all other 
 arguments are subordinated.; and wli^tsoever things 
 are comely and of good repute are 'So esteemed in 
 the precise proportion that they may be turned to pe: 
 cuniary advantage. There be men who could find it 
 in their conscience to " utilize " the Apollo Belvidere 
 into a tailor's dummy, and to boil potatoes in the Port- 
 land Vase. Mr. Batty's niggers are doubtless grinning 
 and gloating over their pickles upon the summit of the 
 Dolomites. Mr. Mechi's knives haunt you, " the han- 
 dles towards your hand," like Macbeth's dagger, in the 
 holy places of Palestine ; and you visit the Pyramids 
 only to be told that if you want to have your furniture 
 removed, Mr. Taylor, of Pimlico, is the man for the job. 
 Omnia Romce cum pretio. The poet and the prophet 
 are the same ; and when Hamlet speculated upon 
 the grim contingency that even as he was speaking the 
 dust of Csesar might peradventure be patching a wall to 
 expel the winter's flaw, he did but foreshadow the day 
 when the Midland Railway Company would convert a 
 churchyard, rich in historic memories, into a luggage 
 station. 
 
 A few years ago a ship in full sail was no unfrequent 
 spectacle, and the sun rarely shone on a finer. It was, 
 in fact, according to the old proverb, the third loveliest 
 sight in the world, the other two being a girl in the first 
 bloom of her beauty, and a field of golden corn waving 
 in the wind. Its lithe, symmetrical structure ; its in- 
 genious complications of lines and draperies, its subtle 
 play of light and shadows, and the stately, swan-like 
 grace of its movements, as it walked the waters like a 
 thing of life, all combined to give to a sailing ship a 
 majestic Charm which gladdened the eye and delighted 
 
THE DECAY OF T//E PICTURESQUE. 45 
 
 the fancy of any spectator not insensible to the enchant- 
 ments of form, eolor, and motion. I never saw such a 
 ship that I did not break off' my ordinary discourse and 
 exclaim in the language of Milton — to the no small be- 
 wilderment of the bystanders — 
 
 " But who is this ? What thing of sea or land ? 
 Female of sex it seems that so bedecked, 
 Ornate and gay, comes this way sailing. 
 Like a stately ship of Tarsus bound for th' isles 
 Of Javan'or Gadire with all her bravery on, 
 Sails filled and streamers waving, 
 Courted by all the winds that hold them play ! " 
 
 Compare with that superb picture a modem steam- 
 boat, panting and groaning like some asthmatic mon- 
 ster, tearing the crystal waves with its ■ vile paws of 
 paddles, flinging its unwieldy hulk " anyhow " upon the 
 tide, and polluting the azure sky and the silver sea with 
 volumes of abominable smoke disgorged from its filthy 
 funnel. The change, regarded from an eesthetic point 
 of view, is not for the better. In the good old days of 
 the wooden walls of England, maritime warfare, and 
 commerce as well, had their poetic aspects ; but those 
 aspects have vanished, or survive only upon the walls 
 of the Painted Hall in Greenwich Hospital. Nor is the 
 decay of the picturesque in all that relates to locomotion 
 less remarkable on land than on sea. What with tlie 
 gaily-colored and sprucely-appointed vehicle itself, with 
 its polished doors and emblazoned panels, the team of 
 spanking roadsters, swift of foot and glossy of hide, 
 champing their bits and tossing their heads daintily in 
 the air, as though they were vain of their eflfulgent har- 
 ness, the coachman and the guard both in crimson, the 
 one weilding his whip in gallant style, the other making 
 
46 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 the welkin resound with his trumpet, the mail-coach of 
 the olden times, bowling along a level country road at 
 the rate of twelve or thirteen miles an hour, was a right 
 joyous and exhilarating sight. The dogs barked, the 
 children shouted for delight, the middle-aged waved 
 their hats and kerchiefs in the air, and even the old 
 folks looked brighter for the vision as it sped merrily 
 along. You may see it to this day in the window of my 
 friend Mr. Fores' Fine Arts Repository, at the corner 
 of Sackville Street, Piccadilly, and, so seeing it, you may 
 if you please (for there is no compulsion), heave a sen- 
 timental sigh, and quote George Canning's famous 
 couplet : — 
 
 " So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides 
 The Derby dilly with its three insides." 
 
 Do me the kindness, sweet reader mine, to contrast 
 with that joyous mode of travelling, so favorable to so- 
 cial intercourse and romantic adventure, that ghastly 
 street upon wheels, our modern railway train, with its 
 frantic engine, snorting, screaming, shrieking, pufifing, 
 panting, blazing away at the rate of a mile a minute, 
 while the passengers are rocked to and fro, as though 
 they were at sea, and the surrounding landscape rushes 
 past like a flash of greased lightning. 
 
 The art of dancing properly so-called is extinct, as 
 much so as are the mediaeval arts of illumination and 
 glass-staining. In agricultural operations the decay of 
 the picturesque is everywhere discernible. The days of 
 our Daphnes and Chloes, our Strephons and Corydons, 
 are gone, never to return. Time was when poets and 
 painters made great capital out of the plough, more 
 particularly if it were drawn by oxen, and when rakes 
 
THE DEC A y OF THE PICTURESQUE. 47 
 
 flails, scythes, and reaping-hooks, as used by human 
 hands, were turned to excellent account, both in songs 
 and pictures ; but that time is vanished, and we shall 
 never see it more. Virgil himself could make nothing 
 of a steam plough ; nor could even Robert Burns or Mr. 
 John Linnell find themes for melodious utterance or 
 pictorial illustration in mowing, reaping, raking, or 
 threshing, as tliese operations are now conducted by 
 means of machinery. Hay-making was once a charm- 
 ing proceeding, and few sounds fell on a poetic ear with 
 more harmonious cadence than did the whetting of his 
 sickle by a harvestman in a corn-field what time the 
 autumnal breeze coursed briskly over the golden crops, 
 and the sunbeams painted the meadows with delight. 
 But the picturesqueness of husbandry is no more. Bug- 
 gins, the builder, has killed it. His tall gaunt chim- 
 neys, eternally emitting coils of black smoke, and his 
 paltry gim-crack villas of latli and plaster, desecrate the 
 fairest landscapes, so that there really seems some rea- 
 son to fear that " the country " will soon disappear alto- 
 gether, and that at no distant date the grim old proph- 
 ecy will be fulfilled of all England being reduced to 
 London and market-gardens. The treatment to which 
 trees are now subjected, more particularly in the suburbs, 
 may well awaken the indignation of any man whose 
 heart is not as hard as the nether mill-stone, and whose 
 head is not full of mutton kidneys. Greenwich Park 
 was one of my favorite haunts in boyhood. In ages yet 
 unborn, and probably never to be bom, pilgrims will re- 
 sort thither with reverential awe to ramble where I was 
 wont to ramble. I was there last Sunday, in company 
 ■with a dear friend, and oh ! the pity of it, to think what 
 a change has come over the scene ! Glen and glade 
 
48 EkRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 are still there, and verdant nooks and stately avenues ; 
 these are as yet inviolate, but the deer who used to troop 
 about in dappled herds are gone all but two or three of 
 no very attractive type ; gone, too, forever gone, are the 
 old pensioners, who, clad in their quaint old uniforms, 
 with three-cornered hats and bright-buttoned long- 
 flowing coats, used to cram my youthful mind with lies 
 to that degree that one lie more would have made it 
 burst ; and, saddest tale of all to tell, the majestic 
 walnut trees, "those green-robed senators of mighty 
 woods," dating from the reign of King Charles II., and 
 which had been for generations the pride and glory of 
 the park, have been cut across their tops, and are now 
 so maimed and mutilated that they have lost all their 
 grace and grandeur of form, all their litheness and elas- 
 ticity of movement, and, in many instances, look less like 
 trees than huge monkey-perches or the climbing poles of 
 captive bears. I am not, I grieve to say, so skilled in 
 arboriculture as to be able to pronounce authoritatively 
 on the question of this horrible mutilation. I cannot say 
 whether it is such a proceeding as professional foresters 
 would approve ; but this I do know, that it is utterly 
 ruinous of the beauty of the trees ; and that it is most 
 injurious to their vigor and vitality is a conclusion from 
 which the attentive observer cannot escape, for in many 
 instances the trees look very sickly, and not a few of 
 them are withering at the top. In no park that I have 
 ever visited have I seen trees subjected to such treat- 
 ment as the walnuts in Greenwich Park. I don't pro- 
 fess to be a judge, but, speaking according to my dim 
 lights, and according to the testimony of people as ig- 
 norant as myself, I should have said that to cut a tree's 
 head off was about as wise a proceeding as to cut a 
 man's head off, and equally conducive to life. My ex- 
 
THE DECA Y OF THE PICTURESQUE. 49 
 
 cellent friend Dr. Bennett, the poet, dwells in tliis neigli- 
 borhood — to its honor be it spoken ; liow comes it, I 
 should like to know, that his melodious muse, usually so 
 observant of romantic wrongs, is silent on the sorrows 
 of the deer, the pensioners, and the walnuts ? Passing 
 with easy transition from external nature to rural sports, 
 the marks of degeneracy are neither few nor unimpor- 
 tant. Fox-hunting, though not now so picturesque as 
 in the days so happily illustrated by the pencil of Mr. 
 Frederick Taylor, is still a graceful and intrepid pastime. 
 The meet itself is a pretty sight, a still prettier is the 
 run, especially when the men are in pink and well 
 mounted, but fox-hunting is not now in such favor as it 
 once was : and as for shooting, it is now seldom known 
 in any sense honorable to the manhood of the nation. 
 How rarely now we meet with a sportsman who thinks 
 of rising at cock-crow and tramping in search of birds 
 over meadow and mountain, moss, and moor, with a dog 
 at his heels ! In lieu of that adventurous and manly 
 Sport we have battue-shooting and such poulterers' busi- 
 ness as the slaughter of pigeons. Why don't those 
 Hurlingham heroes come into the city and have a " go 
 in " at the Lord Mayor's pigeons in Guildhall .' But if 
 our sports are no longer very becoming, what shall be 
 said of our clothes ? Here, indeed, the decay of the 
 picturesque is deplorably apparent. What more pitiful 
 contrast can there be than that between the costume of 
 the cavalier, as it is depicted, for example, in the pic- 
 tures of Sir John Gilbert and Mr. Charles Cattermole, 
 and the morning attire of a gentleman of the nineteenth 
 century with his chimney-pot hat, his hideous coat, and 
 his execrable trousers ? From top to toe he is, as already 
 observed, a collection of cylinders. 
 
 4 
 
so 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 The costume of the British army was once very hand- 
 some ; but they are constantly changing it and always 
 for the worse. Epaulettes were brilliant and beautiful, 
 but epaulettes have long since been abandoned, and the 
 blue frock, which was very elegant and soldierly, has 
 been discarded for a shell jacket which is neither the 
 one nor the other. As for the loose tunic recently in- 
 troduced, it is beyond comparison the ugliest garment 
 ever invented to make the human form unsightly and 
 ridiculous. The Highland costume, as it is somewhat 
 inaccurately styled, is, to my thinking, the most pic- 
 turesque dress in the English army ; but of the many 
 regiments which once used it, only three still wear it, 
 and the day is probably not remote when sartorial reform 
 will abolish the kilt altogether and substitute the trews. 
 I confess I am old-fashioned enough to like to see ser- 
 vants in livery. Thus clad, they give to a nobleman's 
 or gentleman's equipage a certain air of courtly observ- 
 ance and attendant pomp which has an imposing effect ; 
 yet the fashion is passing rapidly away, and each suc- 
 ceeding season one sees fewer liveried servants in the 
 park. I, at all events, will not deviate from the old 
 usage. Nobody has ever seen nor shall anybody ever 
 see my coachman without a wig, my footmen without 
 powder, or my page without scores of buttons. The 
 time of Queen Anne and the elder Georges may or may 
 not have been less comfortable than our own ; but most 
 assuredly it was more picturesque. The Upper Ten 
 were then magnificently apparelled and wore powder 
 and patches and feathers and swords. It must have 
 been a gallant sight to see them going to play, opera, or 
 ball in their grand old coaches and four, with two or. 
 three footmen behind, each holding a blazing link : — 
 
PROUD YOUNG PORTERS. 5 1 
 
 " The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign 
 Here richly decked admits the gorgeous train ; 
 Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 
 The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare." 
 
 ' Hansoms " were unheard of in those days, and 
 tram-cars, of all vehicles the most abominable, were 
 beyond the dreams of the wildest maniac who ever raved 
 in Bedlam. On the other hand there is less likelihood 
 of a man's being hanged nowadays than there was in 
 those more romantic times. 
 
 PROUD YOUNG PORTERS. 
 
 CTUDENTS of the " Loving Ballad of Lord Bate- 
 *~^ man " will not fail to bear in comic remembrance 
 the " Proud Young Porter," as not the least amusing 
 personage of that delectable romance. His portrait 
 has been drawn by Mr. George Cruikshank, and a very 
 laughable picture, indeed, it is. How pompous is that 
 Proud Young Porter in air, aspect, and expression ! 
 How haughty is his mien ! How fantastic is his every 
 attitude ! He is altogether a most ridiculous fellow, 
 though he has not the slightest suspicion of the fact. 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that the Proud 
 Young Porter exists only in poetic fiction. Bless your 
 dear heart ! he is of constant recurrence in every-day 
 life, and go where he may, he is more free than wel- 
 come. The world is infested with Proud Young Por- 
 ters, but for whom this planet of ours would be far 
 pleasanter and more comfortable than it really is. Be 
 
5 2 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 it remembered that the word "young" has no necessary 
 application to the age of the Proud Porter, but should 
 rather be taken to relate to the unfading verdancy of 
 his folly and the amaranthine vigor of his vanity. In 
 that sarcastic sense, the word "j'eune" is often used by 
 the French. " O papa! que vous etes j'eune/" — "Well, 
 papa, how young you are ! " as much as to say, " What 
 a fool you are ! " — observes a brat of seven summers to 
 his father, aged sixty, in the comedy of La Famille 
 Benoiton. And so it is with your Proud Young Porter. 
 A man may be well on for ninety, and yet be a Proud 
 Young Porter all the same. Nor is it essential that the 
 Proud Young Porter should be a veritable carrier of 
 burdens, or an actual opener of hall-doors. The phrase 
 " Porter '' must be understood to express, not the lowly 
 occupation, but the ignoble nature of the man who, for 
 all his pride, has only the sotil of a shoe. Proud Young 
 Porters belong to all classes and conditions, all ranks 
 and professions of men. You may find them in the 
 Church, the Army, the Navy, and the Bar ; in art, liter- 
 ature, science and commerce. Wherever found, they 
 are snobs and duffers to a man. Your Proud Young 
 Porter, of whatever calling, disdains the poor, deeming 
 poverty and crime convertible terms. He is easily 
 pleased, for he is contented with himself. It invariably 
 happens that his disesteem of others is in the precise 
 proportion of his inordinate estimate of himself. You 
 would like to buy him at your price, and sell him at his 
 own, but it would be no such easy matter to procure a 
 purchaser. Blackberries cost nothing, and they are 
 filling at the price. As much maybe said of civility; 
 but though civility were as dear as ottar of roses, your 
 Proud Young Porter could not be more chary of it than 
 
PROUD YOUNG PORTERS. 53 
 
 he is. He cannot vouchsafe a smile or a courteous 
 word to any fellow-creature who is not exceedingly 
 " well-off," but to such a person he is as servile as he 
 is supercilious and offensive to people of smaller means. 
 The Proud Young Porter is afflicted with sudden 
 ophthalmia when he meets an old school-fellow in a 
 seedy coat. For the dear life of him, he cannot see 
 him. Friend he has none, that Proud Young Porter ; 
 no, not even himself, for though he knows it not, he is 
 his own worst enemy. To do him justice, he loves his 
 enemy. But proud men never have friends ; neither in 
 prosperity, because they know nobody, nor in adversity, 
 because then nobody knows them. Your Proud Young 
 Porter is alone^all alone in the world. It happens ■ 
 almost invariably that he is a bachelor ; for I know not 
 how it is, but a married man generally has the " cheek " 
 taken out of him. But married or single, your Proud 
 Young Porter is a nuisance. He has been starched 
 without being washed, and he is, in consequence, the 
 most unpleasant person in the world to have anything 
 to do with. 
 
 The Proud Young Porter in the Army puts on a lot 
 of "side;"' talks of his uniform as "livery," which he 
 affects to hold in utter contempt ; scorns civilians, and 
 hardly deigns to account Volunteers and Militiamen as 
 human beings at all. His speech is only of the " Ser- 
 vice," though he never smelt powder stronger than 
 tooth-powder, and perhaps not overmuch of that. He 
 refers to the Heir- Apparent as " Wales," and to the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief as " George." He would have you 
 believe that he is hand-and-glove with them both, and 
 that he knows all about the secrets of the Horse 
 Guards. Nothing could give him keener delight than 
 
^ 4 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 that England should go to war with all the nations of 
 the earth, for then promotion would go on so quickly ; 
 but he hates " Gib.," and has no great stomach for 
 India. The Proud Young Porter is not very common 
 in the Navy, but even there he sometimes crops up, and 
 very edifying, indeed, it is to hear him enlarging on the 
 errors of the Admiralty, and the unseaman-like manner 
 in which Captain Broadside handled his ship in the 
 Channel Fleet. I saw a Proud Young Porter in the 
 pulpit no later than last Sunday, and my word ! to 
 observe how superbly he tossed his nose in the air, how 
 daintily he turned over the leaves of his drowsy ser- 
 mon, how authoritatively he delivered himself upon dog- 
 .mas the most abstruse, and with what flippant famili- 
 arity he discoursed on the most solemn and sacred 
 themes as though he were in the special confidence of 
 Heaven — it was enough to make one shy a hassock at 
 his head. Oh! he was a Proud Young Porter, that 
 little exquisite ' of a parson, five feet one in his stock- 
 ings ; and it is to be hoped that his mother has not 
 many more like him. Of a very different type was 
 another preacher — one Bunyan by name — of whom 
 Southey narrates that " he had a great dread of spirit- 
 ual pride ; and once after he had preached a very fine 
 sermon and his friends crowded round him to shake him 
 by the hand, while they expressed the utmost admira- 
 tion of his eloquence, he interrupted them, saying,-^ 
 ' Ay ! you need not remind me of that, for the devil told 
 me of it before I was out of the pulpit ! ' " 
 
 But it is ever so. " I never yet found pride in a 
 noble nature, nor humility in an unworthy mind," writes 
 good old Owen Feltham. In a like strain discourses 
 another ancient worthy : — " I have observed many turn- 
 
IWOUD YOUNG PORTERS. 55 
 
 bles through life, but I have invariably noticed that it is 
 the man who mounts the high horse that receives the 
 least pity when he falls." Depend upon it, that Proud 
 Young Porter, ungracious as he is to the world at large, 
 could be obsequious enough where " thrift would follow 
 fawning." In such a case he would emulate the ser- 
 vile conduct of his prototype in the " Loving Bal- 
 lad " :— 
 
 " O avay and avay vent the Proud Young Porter 
 
 Oh, avay and avay and avay vent he, 
 Until he came to Lord Bateman's chamber, 
 
 Ven he vent dov^n on his bended knee." 
 
 That is just what your Proud Young Porter invariably, 
 does, when anything is to be gained by sycophancy. 
 Another and very odious sort of the Porter is himself a 
 journalist, who not only cannot find merit in any work 
 of art, be it play, poem, or picture, submitted to his 
 judgment, but holds in the most insolent scorn anybody 
 else who does. For the members of his own profession 
 he cherishes sentiments of the most rancorous con- 
 tempt, fiilecting to regard them one and all as dunces. 
 He is great upon the decay of critics, little dreaming 
 that he furnishes in his own person the most egregious 
 example of the truth of his theory. The Proud Young 
 Porter of commerce is never to be looked for in the 
 ranks of the Prince Merchants who have contributed so 
 largely to the greatness and glory of England. He is 
 the veriest mushroom. " A self-made man " is he, as 
 he delights to tell you with a conceited chuckle, though 
 goodness knows he has but scant cause to be vain of 
 the manufacture. With him the amount of a man's 
 money is the measure of his moral wofth, and to be 
 
5 6 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 respectable simply means to be rich. He has no end 
 of cash, but he is badly off for h's, poor fellow, and the 
 flocks that graze the plain know quite as much as he 
 about the works of William Shakespeare. In fact, a 
 book is about as interesting to this Proud Young Porter 
 as is a chronometer to a cow. I know a splendid speci- 
 men of this City Porter — a broker, who rose from nothing, 
 and cannot be said to have reached much higher, though 
 he is wallowing in money. But, oh ! what airs he takes 
 upon himself, and what a Proud Young Porter he is, to 
 be sure, as he loafs along the street, with his glossy hat 
 and a huge posy in his button-hole ! He is " dying of 
 dignity," as Dr. Arnold said of the Church of England ; 
 but you might put his wit, learning, and refinement in 
 your eye, and you would see none the worse for them. 
 Then, again, there is the Proud Young Porter of the 
 Bar, who talks about " the other branch of the profes- 
 sion," meaning the solicitors, pretty much in the tone 
 in which the Turks of old, after classing all living crea- 
 tures except swine in one category, alluded to the pig 
 as " that other animal." But this Proud Young Porter 
 changes his tune in the presence of a solicitor, and 
 invariably behaves towards him with elaborate polite- 
 ness. What can the reason be ? But of all the Proud 
 .Young Porters going, save, O save me from a saint ! 
 When your Proud Young Porter, stiff with the starch of 
 sanctity, emerges from his conventicle, look out for 
 snubs, ye unregenerate ! He is strong in faith, that 
 Plymouth Brother, or that most particular of Particular 
 Baptists, but he is weak in charity, so look out ! 
 
 These and all other varieties of the Proud Young 
 Porter are pests to society. Zounds ! Do they never 
 think of their own shortcomings, and the mortal condi- 
 
PROUD YOUNG PORTERS. 57 
 
 Hon of their earthly estate ? Who are they, that they 
 should presume to treat with disdain any human being 
 on earth ? They would do well to bear in mind the 
 words of an American satirist : — " Great men never 
 swell. It is only your three-cent individuals who are 
 salaried at the rate of $200 a-year, and dine on pota- 
 toes and fried herrings, who put on airs and flashy waist- 
 coats, swell, puff, blow, and endeavor to give themselves 
 a consequential appearance." No discriminating person 
 need mistake the spurious for the genuine article. The 
 difference between the two is as that between a barrel 
 of vinegar and a bottle of the pure juice of the grape. 
 And what a magnificent passage is this from the writ- 
 ings of Sydney Smith, in whose presence your Proud 
 Young Porter of whatever class would have been un- 
 worthy to stand ! — " Take some quiet, sober moment of 
 life, and add together the two ideas of pride and man ; 
 behold him, creature of a span high, stalking through 
 infinite space in all the grandeur of littleness. Perched 
 on a speck of the universe, every wind of heaven strikes 
 into his blood the coldness of death ; his soul floats 
 from his body like melody from the string ; day and 
 night, as dust on the wheel, he is rolled along the 
 heavens through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the 
 creations of God are flaming above and beneath. Is 
 this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to 
 deny his own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung from 
 that dust to which both will soon return ? Does the 
 proud man not err ? Does he not suffer ? Does he not 
 die ? When he reasons, is he never stopped by difficul- 
 ties ? When he acts, is he never tempted by pleasure ? 
 When he lives, is he free from pain ? When he dies, 
 can he escape the common grave ? Pride is not the 
 
58 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 heritage of man ; humility should dwell with frailty, 
 and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection." 
 Well said ! well said ! thou glorious philosopher ! 
 Whose cheek does not flush the crimsoner, whose eye 
 does not flash the brighter, whose heart does not beat 
 the quicker for thine inspired words ? There is one 
 man, and one only, who would not be touched by such 
 an appeal. And who is he ? The Proud Young 
 Porter. For him alone was the world created, for him 
 alone, poor booby of an hour, do sun, moon, and stars 
 shed their light upon this gorgeous world : — 
 
 " Ask for whose end the heavenly bodies shine ? 
 Earth, for whose use ? Pride answers, ' 'Tis for mine. 
 For me, kind Nature wakes her genial power, 
 Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower. 
 Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew, 
 The juice nectarious and the balmy dew ; 
 For me the mine a thousand treasures brings, 
 For me health gushes from a thousand springs ; 
 Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise. 
 My footstool earth, my canopy .the skies.' " 
 
 All, all for the Proud Young Porter ! Alas ! and 
 a-well-a-day, he is, for all his pride, the veriest gnat in 
 all creation ! How little knows he of true glory ! how 
 little of manhood worthy of the name ! We may safely 
 say that " always and everywhere true genius is ever 
 modest, real superiority is always generous, and genuine 
 science is at all times just." Of this, at all events, you 
 may rest confidently assured, that no Proud Young 
 Porter was ever yet a gentleman. 
 
THE ABSURDITY OF GOING OUT OF TOWN. 59 
 
 THE ABS URDITY OF GOING O UT OF TO WN. 
 
 nPHERE is but one thing more absurd than staying 
 in town, and that is going into the country. Man,. 
 to be sure, is everywhere, and always a ridiculous 
 object, and under whatsoever conditions of destiny, 
 whether civic or rural, cannot fail to afford matter of 
 derision to the animals whom he has the insolence to 
 call the " lower." But then there are degrees in absur- 
 dity, as in all other things ; and ludicrous though a man 
 may be in Marylebone, he is a hundred-fold more so 
 at Margate. In London, life is doubtless very nonsen- 
 sical, but in certain of its phases it is nevertheless very 
 enjoyable ; whereas in the country it is outrageously 
 preposterous, without being in any sense pleasant. 
 Indeed, the longer one lives the more one must admire 
 the philosophic reflection of Sir Charles Morgan, who, 
 having spent l\alf .an hour in a village, confessed his 
 inability to understand why people should live in the 
 country when they might die so much more cheaply in 
 London. It is lamentable to think what opportunities 
 of happiness are discarded and what occasions of dis- 
 comfort are invited by the people who, in compliance 
 with an idiotic fashion, fly out of London, as though it 
 were on fire, during the months of August and Septem- 
 ber. Inverting the order of the seasons as laid down 
 by Dr. Johnson, we may rest assured (but we won't) 
 that London is the best place in winter and the only 
 place in summer. Indeed, delightful as is the Village 
 
So ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 on the Thames in the former period, it is incalculably 
 more so in the latter. London in summer-time abounds 
 in sights and sounds the most gratifying and ennobling 
 that can be imagined. 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of human evil and of good. 
 
 Than all the sages can." 
 
 So spake William Wordsworth, but don't believe a 
 word of it. Say rather : — 
 
 " One impulse from a chimney-pot 
 
 Will teach you more of man, 
 Of what you've learned and what forgot, 
 
 Than all that Wordsworth can." 
 
 The affinity between a chimney and humanity is re- 
 markable. A good fellow is called in the slang of the 
 day, a "brick." A chimney is made of bricks. A 
 man's hat is commonly known as a " tile " and a 
 " chimney-pot ; " and as for the fumes that issue from 
 the flue, they teach the most truthful of all lessons, — 
 Gloria mundifumus, the glory of the world is smoke. 
 So passeth it away. How any person having the faint- 
 est pretensions to sanity, not to say taste, can prefer a 
 flower to a paving-stone, a river to a sewer, or a tree to 
 a chimney-pot, is one of those mysteries which deride 
 human comprehension, and demonstrate the contempti- 
 ble insignificance of mind. A tree is the most servile 
 of living things, meanly obsequious to every wind that 
 blows, the veriest creature of the climate, which withers 
 or smashes it according to the caprice of the moment ; 
 whereas a chimney-pot defies the elements, sways 
 neither to the right nor to the left, but maintains a posi- 
 
TtlE ABSURDITY OF GOIiVG OUT OF TOir.V. 6l 
 
 tion of majestic rigidity, like a good man in adversit}-, 
 and like that same individual, emits volmnes of beauti- 
 ful smoke, which, curling gracefully aloft, come into 
 picturesque contrast with the less lovely clouds that 
 drape the azure sky. Then, again, consider the pa\e- 
 ments you walk upon in London, how warm and com- 
 fortable they are to the feet, like stoved blankets or 
 baked bricks. How unlike the horrid footpaths in the 
 country, with their flinty knobs and rigid inequalities, 
 which knock your boots to pieces, torture your corns, 
 and make painful indentation in the soles of your feet ! 
 In London during the noon-tide of a summer-day, you 
 seem to be treading amid smouldering ashes or upon 
 the smooth, scorching surface of a subterranean oven ; 
 and what can be nicer ? If, at the same time that you 
 pursue your course thiis luxuriously, the fumes of hot 
 asphalte salute your nose, while the sunshine is blister- 
 ing the nape of your neck, your condition is ineffably 
 blissful. Indeed, the play of sunbeams upon various 
 objects in the great metropolis is something so magnif- 
 icent, as to be beyond all power of- description. One 
 loves to see them dancing upon the helmets of those 
 tlue-coated darlings, the policemen, glancing iipon their 
 brilliant buttons, and lighting up their heroic faces 
 with a beauty not of this world. In tlie full blaze of 
 . summer sunshine, the lovely red pillar boxes, erected 
 by the Post-Ofiice authorities for tlie express purpose 
 of frightening nervous horses, look redder and lovelier 
 than ever. But, oh ! what language can describe the 
 effulgence of the green putrid water tossed up by the 
 fountains in Trafalgar Square, when the golden rays 
 are reflected and refracted with dazzling splendor upon 
 the rotten flood ! Where can you see anything like 
 
62 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 that in the country? Ah! where, indeed? Wlien to 
 the fragrant perfumes exhaled from these matchless 
 fountains are added the refreshing odors from the sew- 
 ers, and from the excavations made in the streets by 
 the gas-fitters, the result is such a compound of ex- 
 quisite smells as is not to be paralleled upon the spicy 
 shores of India, or amid the aromatic mountains of 
 Araby the Blest. Then, again, what a charming place 
 is Euston Square ! and where else on earth could a 
 man fond of the picturesque and beautiful hope to 
 spend a summer day so delightfully ? But no ; I am 
 wrong. There is in London one lovelier place than 
 Euston Square — the Underground Railway. Talk of 
 scenery ! What scenery on earth is comparable to that 
 of the Underground Railway ? Oh ! lost to virtue, lost 
 to manly thought ! who would surrender such a pros- 
 pect for a heather-clad mountain in Scotland, or the 
 dash of foaming billows upon the yellow sands of 
 Tenby or Lowestoft ? Yet as surely as autumn comes 
 round, we find Londoners expressing their disgust of 
 their paradise, and longing for a " change." They want 
 to look at something green. What stuff ! Can they 
 not survey their own images in the glass, and rejoice in 
 the verdant prospect, without going to the trouble and 
 expense of a month in the Highlands, or upon the 
 shores of the melancholy main ? One of the happiest 
 men I ever knew used to spend his holiday upon 
 Waterloo Bridge. For my own part, I had solemnly re- 
 solved to retire this summer to Wapping for a fort- 
 night, by way of variety, and should infallibly have 
 done so had not the swimming mania set in with such 
 frenzy. To see ladies buffeted about in the filthy 
 waters of the River Thames, while " doing a swim '' for 
 
THE ABSURD I TY OF GOING UT OF TO WN. 63 
 
 a wager from London Bridge to Greenwich Pier, would 
 have been too much for my delicate nerves. The shock 
 to my sensibilities would have been so severe as to de- 
 stroy all the pleasure I should otherwise have derived 
 from a visit to a place for ever sacred and beloved. 
 Yes, Wapping is indeed a charming spot, and the man 
 who cannot make himself happy there would be un- 
 comfortable in Arcadia. Another delightful summer 
 place is Poplar. Its very name calls to mind an ex- 
 quisite jeu de mots. " My dear," said a bridegroom 
 once to his charmer, " this is Poplar, and when you 
 (' u ') are there it will be pop?^lar ; and if we both re- 
 side there long, it will be populous." A smile broke 
 over the lady's face like sunshine over a lake, and she 
 lieaved a pensive sigh. The gentleman simply winked. 
 His words have come true. How strange to think that 
 the pleasures of Poplar, the sweets of Shad,well, the 
 witcheries of Wapping, the ponips of Piccadilly and 
 Pall Mall, the charms of Charing Cross, and the blisses 
 of Belgravia should all alike be wantonly surrendered 
 in August and September, for the vulgar uproar and in- 
 tolerable ennui of some wretched watering-place or an- 
 other upon the coasts of Kent or Sussex ! Compare 
 the tedium of a sea-side resort with the glorious excite- 
 ment of running away from mad bulls on market-days 
 in the streets of London I But of all the losses sus- 
 tained by the infatuated lunatics who are content to ex- 
 change the intellectual pleasures and aesthetic delights 
 of London in summer for the stagnation and stupidity 
 of the country, the most grievous by far is the loss of 
 the Polytechnic Diving-Bell. That bell is voiceless, 
 yet doth it recall to memory all that is most tender and 
 romantic, most lovely and pathetic in human life. The 
 
64 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 number of male arms which have found their way 
 around female waists within the dome of that bell is a 
 matter which well deserves the attention of the Statis- 
 tical Society. It was while going down in that blessed 
 bell that Belinda Anne promised to be mine. It was 
 while coming up in that blessed bell that Belinda Anne, 
 fairest and most faithless of her sex, changed her mind, 
 and declared that she meant to be another's. I am not 
 sorry. To go up and down in the Polytechnic Diving- 
 Bell, the only true marriage-bell, is simply the most ec- 
 static delight of which human nature is capable, but 
 how may you hope to enjoy that delight when you are 
 pacing to and fro on that wretched pier at Margate, or 
 eating loose sand by the bushel upon the hideous sea- 
 board of Heme Bay ? It is not likely. 
 
 THE PLEASURE OF LYING IN BED. 
 
 TT is lamentable to think what mad enterprises people 
 will undertake, and what inhospitable regions they 
 will penetrate, in the wild-goose chase after happiness. 
 They will roam all the world over, from Polar Star to 
 Southern Cross ; they will freeze with the shivering 
 Laplanders, or pant with the sunburnt Moors ; they 
 will climb the loftiest mountains, or plunge into deep- 
 est abysses of the ocean ; they will encounter the dead- 
 liest perils, and endure the most horrible hardships, all 
 in pursuit of the same splendid phantom. For this do 
 men give themselves up, some to war, some to wine, 
 " other some " to women. Meanwhile, they one and all 
 
THE PLEASURE OF LYING IN BED. 65 
 
 neglect to seek happiness where alone it is to be 
 found — in bed. It is as though a man should look 
 around for his spectacles, while they are on his nose. 
 There is but one place beneath either sun or moon 
 where dwell perfect peace and genuine comfort, and 
 that place is bed. I have always thought so, and the 
 longer I live the more profound becomes my conviction 
 of the fact. I could not have been more than sixteen 
 years of age when I penned these delightful verses : — 
 
 « Never get up ! 'Tis the secret of glory, 
 
 Nothing so true can philosophy preach. 
 Think of the names that are famous in story, — 
 
 ' Never get up ' is the lesson they teach. 
 How have men compassed immortal achievements ? 
 
 How have they moulded the world to their will ? 
 ' Tis that mid sorrows, and threats, and bereavements, 
 
 ' Never get up ' was their principle still ! " 
 
 An old friend of mine caught hold of these lines before 
 I had time to publish them, and substituted •' Never 
 give up " for " Never get up," and in that ignoble form 
 they have been invariably printed, to the manifest in- 
 jury of common-sense and public morals. Be it under- 
 stood that I wrote "get," and that "give" is a false 
 reading. Why should you get up? You are much 
 warmer, much cosier, and much safer in bed. If you 
 get up, the chances are as a thousand to one you will 
 go out ; and then consider what risks you incur. You 
 may catch cold, meet a dun, hear a street preacher, see 
 Mr. Whalley, be run over by an omnibus if you walk, or 
 be run away with by your horse if you ride, or a chim- 
 ney-pot may fall on your head, or a young woman may 
 take a fancy to you and insist upon marrying you, and 
 what then is to become of you ? There is no knowing 
 
 S 
 
66 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 what misadventures may befall you if you get up ; 
 whereas you are perfectly secure, and out of all harm's 
 way as long as you remain in bed. Who ever heard of 
 a man catching a cold, or a black-eye, or of his having 
 his head punched, or of his being knocked down by a 
 Pickford van, or any other description of vehicle, while 
 he was in bed ? It is absurd, upon the face of it. 
 Depend upon it, bed is the head-quarters of human 
 felicity, the stronghold of security, the sole seat and 
 centre of tranquillity and delight,, and the man who 
 is not comfortable in bed — always assuming that he 
 is in good health — may as well surrender all hope of 
 comfort, for he has no prospect of it anywhere else on 
 earth. 
 
 The nonsense that has been written on the subject 
 of early rising might provoke the patience of a saint. 
 An old proverb assures us that " early to bed and early 
 to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." The 
 first half of the adage is true enough, the last is an utter 
 delusion. " Early to bed" will doubtless be of essential 
 service to you in mind, body, and estate ; but as for 
 " early to rise," it means, in three short words, all that 
 is most pernicious and most preposterous in the course 
 of your earthly career. The witty little schoolboy who, 
 on being reminded by his father that the early bird 
 gets thtf worm, replied that the fate of the worm was an 
 awful example of the folly of being up too soon, brained 
 a delusion at a blow, and in so doing established his 
 claim to be ranked among the benefactors of his race. 
 To He down with the lamb is enchanting, but to rise 
 with the lark is something too dreadful to think of. 
 What is the use of being a man, if you are to act- like a 
 lark ?— 
 
THE PLEASURE OF L YING IN BED, 67 
 
 " Rise before the sun 
 And maUc a breaUast of Ihe morning dew, 
 Served up by Nature on some grassy hiii, — 
 You'll find it nectar ! " 
 
 What rubbish ! Picture to yourself the lunacy of the 
 man who, instead of lingering luxuriously in the blank- 
 ets till the latest possible moment, and then feasting on 
 congou or mocha, new-laid eggs, cold partridge, and 
 buttered toast, would get up before daybreak, and, going 
 out into the cold raw air, take his stand upon the top 
 of a hill, beneath a sullen grey sky, with the bleak 
 winds blowing all around him, and, perhaps, the rain 
 coming down in torrents, there to breakfast on morning 
 dew served up by nature ! Such a fellow ought to be 
 locked up for a maniac, unfit to be at large. Not that 
 I " go in '' for breakfasting in bed. It is a lazy, ignoble 
 habit. A man ought to divide his life fairly between 
 bed and board, oscillating, between both, on the prin- 
 ciple of the old French maxim, " Du lit a la table^ de la 
 table au lit." This is a fair division of enjoyments. 
 When you are not at table you ought to be in bed, and 
 viceversS. No one with a particle of self-respect would 
 take his meals in bed. The proper plan is this. Re- 
 tire at a reasonable hour, say, nine o'clock, at the latest. 
 Read for three or four hours in bed, but be sure that 
 you do read. Don't nod, after the fashion of the great 
 Homer. Nothing can be so dangerous as not reading 
 in bed. As long as you can read in bed all will be 
 well.; but the moment you give up reading, and fall 
 asleep, you are in danger of setting the curtains, and 
 possibly. the house, on fire. I knew a fellow once who 
 did both through not reading in bed. Put out your 
 candle about twelve o'clock, and surrender yourself 
 
68 ERRA TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 body and soul to the empire of Morpheus. Sleep, and 
 that profoundly, until ten o'clock the next morning. 
 
 I need hardly say that you must not lie upon a feath- 
 er-bed. It is an abomination. No man worthy of the 
 name would recline upon a feather-bed. To do so were 
 to be guilty of unpardonable effeminacy. Moreover, of 
 all beds in the world, it is the most uncomfortable. It 
 is so full of hills and hollows that you never know 
 where you are. A hair mattrass is the only bed fit for a 
 human being. Very well, then ; as the clock strikes 
 ten, you spring from your mattrass- into your tub. And 
 mind that the water is cold. If there be ice on the 
 surface, what of that ? Smash it with'your heel. Scorn 
 the Sybarite who would put a drop of warm water into 
 the freezing flood. Having tubbed, adjourn to your 
 breakfast-room, and partake of a hearty meal. Then go 
 to bed again (it will have been " made " in the interim), 
 taking with you a song-book and a pipe. Spend the 
 day alternately in singing, at the top of your voice, 
 smoking like a chimney, and sleeping like a sea- 
 calf, until the clock strikes seven. At that precise 
 moment get up and dress for dinner. Having devoted 
 a couple of hours to dining and " desserting," light your 
 flat candlestick, and off with you to bed again, there to 
 tarry, waking or sleeping, for thirteen consecutive hours. 
 Thus will you lead a life as honorable to yourself as 
 serviceable to your fellow-creatures. It is just the 
 sort of existence I should pass, but that " Circumstance, 
 —that unspiritual god and mis-creator," — unfortunately 
 forbids. 
 
 It is humiliating and harrowing to read the story of 
 the miseries some men have endured through their 
 inability to appreciate the luxuries of bed. We are 
 
THE PLEASURE OF LYING IN BED. 69 
 
 assured that it was the dehghtof Burns to wander alone 
 upon the banks of the Ayr — whose stream, thanks to 
 him, is now immortal — and to listen to the song of the 
 blackbird at the close of the summer's day. But still 
 greater was his pleasure, as he himself informs us, in 
 walking on the sheltered side of a wood, on a cloudy 
 winter day, and hearing the storm rave among the 
 trees ; and more elevated still, his delight to ascend 
 some eminence during the agitations of nature, to stride 
 along its summit while the lightning flashed around 
 him, and amid the bowlings of the tempest to apostro- 
 phize the spirit of the storm. What stuff and nonsense, 
 to be sure ! Better by half for him to have been in 
 bed, poor fellow ! For my own part, I never see my 
 fellow-creatures intent on any pursuit, whether of busi- 
 ness or of pleasure, without thinking what a pity it is 
 that they are not all in bed. If people could only be 
 brought to understand the dignity and delight of hori- 
 zontal refreshment, they would not bother their heads 
 about dancing, rinking, cricketing, boating, fishing, 
 shooting, swimming, riding, or any other of those frivo- 
 lous " recreations " wherewith they are wont to exhaust 
 and debase their natures. See what mischief is done 
 when rivers leave their beds ! The consequences are 
 hardly less calamitous when men pursue the like course. 
 There was a time when I was passionately fond of rid- 
 ing. I think I . can say with a safe conscience that I 
 have been upon my head in as many hunting-fields as 
 Messrs. Moody and Sankey have fingers and toes, but 
 I have lived to see the absurdity of such pursuits. Any 
 one may have the pig-skin for me now. Give me a 
 warm, cosy bed, a hard mattrass, as before observed, a 
 spring paillasse, fleecy blankets, sno^vy sheets and a 
 
7° 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 down pillow ; and anybody who prefers the bleak cover- 
 side, '' southerly " winds, and a cloudy morning in De- 
 cember, is welcome to them for me. The merriest " view 
 halloo " that ever made the welkin ring, and struck 
 terror into the heart of Reynard, should not divorce 
 me from my pillow. And talking of pillows, what a 
 sweet, soothing sound there is in the very word, and 
 how suggestive it is of suavity and repose ! . No sooner 
 has he laid his head upon his pillow, than a good man 
 forgives his enemies, and consigns to soft oblivion the 
 sorrows and solicitudes of the day. " Once upon a 
 time," says Lord Bacon, in his own quaint, dry fashion, 
 " a merchant died that was very far in debt. His 
 goods and household stufE were set forth to sale. A 
 stranger would needs buy a pillow there, saying, ' This 
 pillow, sure, is good to sleep on, since he could sleep 
 on it that owed so many debts.' " Just so ; I protest I 
 don't care a jackstraw what I owe the instant I press 
 my pillow. Yet there are noodles who prate about the 
 advantages of early rising, and tell us how much we 
 lose by not getting up sooner ! Early rising involves 
 the loss of the dearest blessing that Heaven ever be- 
 stowed upon man, — " sleep that knits up the ravelled 
 sleeve of care ; the birth of each day's life, sore labor's 
 bath, balm of hurt minds ; great nature's second 
 course ; chief' nourisher in life's feast." That is what 
 sleep is, and that is what we are called upon to resign 
 for the privilege of mooning about at cock-crow, and 
 possibly knocking up against our creditors on their 
 way from their suburban villas to their shops. I don't 
 see it. , Then, again, there are people who would 
 resent any imputation upon their sanity, yet do not 
 hesitate to aver that they would rather be at the play 
 
FOPS AND FOPPERY. 71 
 
 tnan in bed. Alas, my heart ! I went to the theatre 
 the other night to see Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor, in 
 the character of Mr. * * * and I will do Macbeth 
 the justice to say that he played the part to perfection. 
 The assumed character shone through the actor's own 
 individuality, like a lamp through a lighted alabaster 
 vase. Yet am I fain to confess that I felt tired — oh ! 
 how tired — ere yet the play was half over ; and when 
 Lady Macbeth, coming on with a bedroom candlestick 
 in her hand, exclaimed, " To bed ! to bed ! " — " Sweetest 
 of ladies," quoth I, " I will e'en take you at your word ; " 
 and so saying, I snatched up my hat, walked out of 
 the house, and made for my bed with all possible ex- 
 pedition. 
 
 FOPS AND FOPPERY. 
 
 - TT is honorably significant of the progress of civiliza- 
 tion that foppery is everywhere disappearing. 
 Fops by whatever phrase designated, whether as 
 " fops " proper, " beaux," " macaronis," " sparks," 
 "dandies," "bucks," '' petits maifres," "Bond Street 
 loungers," " exquisites," or " Corinthians," have well- 
 nigh vanished from the world. Their very names 
 have become enigmatic. To trace from age to age 
 through all its phases of development the history of 
 these popinjays of fashion were a task not unworthy of 
 satirist or philosopher. It would be interesting to ob- 
 serve the grotesque inspirations of folly as illustrated 
 in the careers of her most fantastic votaries. If not 
 
72 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 more virtuous, we are certainly of graver deportment 
 than our fathers, and there is hardly a man of sense 
 among us who will not say with Shakespeare in The 
 Merchant of Venice, "Let not the sound of shallow fop- 
 pery enter my sober house." The fop of the Eliza- 
 bethan era is doubtless typified accurately in the 
 person of OSrick. How pungently does Hamlet satir- 
 ize the "waterfly," and how amusingly does he mimic 
 his mincing mode of speech ! " To divide him inven- 
 torially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet 
 but saw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in 
 the verity of' extolment, I take him to be a soul of 
 great article, and his infusion of such dearth and rare- 
 ness as to make true diction of him. His semblable is 
 his mirror, and, who else would trace him, his umbrage 
 nothing more." This crabbed English is a sarcastic 
 skit upon the affected phraseology of men who aped 
 ton in Shakespeare's time. In Hudibras we find men- 
 tion of a creature known as a "fopdoodle." "You- 
 have been roaming,'' says Butler, 
 
 " Where sturdy butchers broke your noddle, 
 And handled you like a fopdoodle." 
 
 The "fopdoodle " now exists only in the dictionary. 
 He is no great loss, for his name was sufficiently ex- 
 pressive of his silliness. The fop had a long reign, 
 and figures prominently in the literature of the last 
 two centuries. In the old play of The Magnetic Lady, 
 his qualities are summed up with delicate precision. He 
 is pictured as 
 
 " A courtier extraordinary, who by diet 
 Of meats and drinks, his temperate exercise. 
 Choice music, frequent bath, his horary shifts 
 
FOPS AND FOPPERY. y^ 
 
 Of shirts and waistcoats, means to immortalize 
 Mortality itself, and makes the essence 
 Of his whole happiness the trim of curls." 
 
 Swift, who seldom lost an opportunity of expressing 
 his contempt for the sex which he used so vilely, is 
 particularly severe upon women for their partiality for 
 fools, fops and rakes : — 
 
 " In a dull stream which moving slow, 
 You hardly see the current flow, 
 When a small breeze obstructs the course, 
 It whirls about for want of force ; 
 And in its narrow circle gathers 
 Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers. 
 The current of a female mind 
 Stops thus and turns with every wind. 
 Thus whirling round together draws 
 Fools, fops, and rakes for chaff and straws." 
 
 Covent Garden would appear to have been the favor- 
 ite place of rendezvous for fops in the time of Dryden, 
 who observes that " farce scribblers make use of the 
 noble invention of laughter to entertain citizens, country 
 gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops." 
 
 The " Sparks " were in great force even in the time of 
 Dr. Johnson, who describes them as " lively, sho\\'y, 
 splendid gay men." They were of respectable antiquity, 
 hailing probably from the days of the Restoration, when 
 the nation expressed in costume, as in all things else, 
 its wild delight at being emancipated from the grim 
 bondage of Puritanism. The " beau," whom Johnson 
 defined as " a man of dress — a man whose great care is 
 to deck his person," flourished most luxuriantly in the 
 last century. His was the sumptuous age of powder 
 
74 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 and patches. He was especially dainty in the matters 
 of sword-knots, shoe-buckles, and lace rufifles. He was 
 ablaze with jewelry, took snuff with an incomparable 
 air out of a box studded with diamonds, and excelled 
 in the " nice conduct of a clouded cane." Age brought 
 him no wisdom, but, on the contrary, rather served to 
 give to his folly a more poignant aroma. He culminat- 
 ed into some such personage as Lord Ogilby in The 
 Clandestine Marriage. It has been observed with some 
 touch of wit that a beau dressed out resembled the cinna- 
 mon tree, the bark being of greater value than the body. 
 The word " macaroni" as applied to a fop, is of curious 
 origin. In its primary signification it means a kind of 
 paste meat boiled in broth, and dressed with butter, 
 cheese, and spice. How it came to be used for the 
 designation of drolls and fools is explained by Addison 
 in the Spectator. " There is a set of merry drolls whom 
 the common people of all countries admire and seem to 
 love so well that they could eat them, according to the 
 old proverb ; I mean those circumforaneous wits whom 
 every nation calls by the name of that dish of meat 
 which it loves best. In Holland they are termed ' pick- 
 led herrings,' in France ' Jean Foiages,' in Italy ' mac- 
 aronis,' and in Great Britain 'Jack Puddings.'" The 
 transference of the word from fools and clowns to men 
 of fantastic refinement and exaggerated elegance is a 
 singular circumstance, of which philologists have not as 
 yet given a satisfactory explanation. That the phrase 
 did undergo that strange metamorphosis of meaning is 
 beyond all question. Sir Benjamin Backbite, in The 
 School for Scandal, applies the word to horses of a 
 good breed, as distinguished from those of inferior lin- 
 eage : — 
 
FOPS A,VD FOPPERY. 75 
 
 " Sure never were seen two such beautiful ponies, 
 Other horses are clowns, but these macaronis ; 
 To give them this title I'm sure can't be wrong. 
 Their legs are so slim and their tails are so long." 
 
 The human Macaronis had a pleasant time of it, but 
 they were eventually supplanted by the " Dandies," who 
 for several generations bore supreme sway in the realm 
 of fantastic fashion. " Dandy " is traced by etymologists 
 through " Jack-a-dandy," of which it is an abbreviation, 
 to the French word " datidin ; " but some grammarians 
 are of opinion that the English term is borrowed from a 
 very small coin of Henry VII. 's time, called a " dandi; 
 prat." Be this as it may, the '' dandies '' were for many 
 a long year potentates whose influence was far too great 
 to be measured by any coin, much less a dandiprat. 
 They were probably at their prime in the days of the 
 Regency, which epoch, however, they long survived. 
 Lord Byron confesses to a predilection for them. " I 
 like the dandies," he says, " they were always very civil 
 to me ; though in general they disliked literary people, 
 and persecuted and mystified Madame de Stael, Lewis, 
 Horace Twiss, and the like. The truth is that, though 
 I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of dandyism 
 in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to 
 conciliate the great ones at four-and-twenty." Lord 
 Glenbervie foreshadowed the fall of the dandies, and 
 luxuriated in the anticipation : — " The expressions 'blue- 
 stocking ' and ' dandy ' may furtiish matter for the learn- 
 ing of commentators at some future period. At this 
 moment every English reader will understand them. 
 Our present ephemeral dandy is akin to the Macaroni 
 of my earlier days. The first of those expressions has 
 become classical, by Mrs. Hannah More's poem of ' Bas 
 
7 6 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Bleu^ and the other by the use of it in one of Lord 
 Byron's poems. Though now become familiar and trite, 
 their day may not be long — Cadentqite qucs nunc sunt in, 
 honore vocabula." But the dandies saw Lord Glenbervie 
 down, and lived to come in for Mr. Carlyle's rugged 
 denunciations. "Touching Dandies," writes the Sartor 
 Resartus, " let us consider, with some scientific strict- 
 ness, what a dandy specially is. A dandy is a clothes-,_ 
 wearing man — a man whose trade, office, and existence 
 consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his 
 soul, spirit, purse, and person, is heroically consecrated 
 to this one object, — the wearing of clothes wisely and 
 well ; so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. 
 The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the in- 
 tellect of the dandy, without effort, like an instinct of 
 genius : he is inspired with cloth, a poet of cloth. A 
 divine idea of cloth is born "with him." Still more severe 
 is this epigram : — 
 
 " A Dandy is a thing that would 
 Be a young lady if it could, 
 But as it can't, does all it can 
 To show the world it's not a man." 
 
 To the Dandies succeeded the " Exquisites " and the 
 " Loungers ; " lady-killers all, who laid themselves out 
 ostentatiously for female conquest and broke women's 
 hearts like china-ware. They talked, walked, danced, 
 did everything in a style of their own ; and their motto 
 was " look and die ! " After these came fops of a ruder, 
 more adventurous type known as " Corinthians," the 
 " fastest " of " fast " men, who delighted in street broils, 
 and such riotous achievements as are depicted- in Tom 
 and yerry. They, too, have had their day. " Corin- 
 
FOPS AND FOPPERY. yy 
 
 thianism " and " Dandyism " are alike as-dead as a door- 
 nail. Practical joking is now but another name for 
 ruffianism, and your fast man is voted a " cad." No 
 one now-a-days apes excessive finery in dress, or seeks 
 to attract notice by' any startling peculiarity of mise or 
 carriage. Every one in decent circumstances, and hav- 
 ing any pretence to the conventional designation of " a 
 gentleman," dresses well but quietly. Anything outre 
 in his attire would provoke a sneer. Anything "' loud " 
 is in bad form. Thanks to the Jews, — not to the better 
 class of Hebrews, amongst whom may be found many 
 well-bred people, but to the lower order of Jews with 
 their pinchbeck chains, their flashy pins, and their 
 boisterous display of gimcrack rings upon unwashed 
 fingers, ^ Christians won't wear jewelry. A small 
 " Albert," and possibly one ring of the simplest design, 
 is, generally speaking, all the bijouterie that any man 
 who has been baptized ever cares to carry. A disdain- 
 ful tone in conversation, coupled with a certain affected 
 silliness of observation, was once deemed essential, but 
 it is so no longer. Sam Rogers met in his travels on 
 the Continent an English lord, with more money than 
 brains — Lord Maynard he was styled — who on some 
 casual allusion being made to the House of Commons, 
 stuck his glass in his eye and exclaimed haughtily, " The 
 House of Commons ! Ah, yes ; I remember. Is that 
 going on still ? " This stolid bit of patrician " hauteur" 
 passed for a fine flash of wit at the time, but the man 
 who would speak thus in our' time would be written 
 down an ass. Nor, indeed, is it to be wondered at, that 
 Lord Maynard's title is extinct. Of the whole tribe of 
 fops, tli^ "Lady's Man" is now the sole survivor, and 
 he becomes rarer every year. He will soon have utterly 
 
y8 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 disappeared, and the sooner the better, for of all the 
 caricatures on humanity that ever encumbered the earth, 
 the Lady's Man is assuredly the most contemptible. It 
 is worthy of remark that to Pierce Egan, one of the 
 trashiest of trashery writers, belongs the glory of 
 having coined a word which has obtained universar cur- 
 rency — the word '" swell." The phrase, however, is no 
 longer used in the sense in which Egan used it. It no 
 longer serves to designate a pompous, pretentious fel- 
 low, swelling into false consequence like the frog in the 
 fable. Any decently-clad man of reputable position may 
 now be called in slang phrase a "swell," which is simply 
 the opposite of a "rough." There is nothing in com- 
 mon between the swell and the fop. As for your " Snob,'' 
 he is simply an addle-headed creature, who meanly 
 makes court to people of higher rank than his own. 
 He reveres them and seeks to imitate them, not for their 
 virtue or their talents, but because a nod from a lord is 
 a breakfast for a fool. Of slaves and wretches such as 
 these, we have, heaven knows, enough and to spare. 
 Your " dandy " was bad enough, but your thorough-paced 
 " snob," is incomparably worse. Your dandy, for all 
 his fine airs and fantastic clothes, might be at heart a 
 gentleman, and often was so ; but as for your " snob," 
 he hardly deserves to be accounted a human being, 
 much less a gentleman. Dandyism was bound to fall, 
 for it was founded upon a fallacy — the fallacy that man- 
 ners should be artificial, not natural. The very reverse 
 is the fact. " Manners make the man." True, but 
 they must be the manners of nature. Those of art un- 
 make him. The heart is the fountain of courtesy, as of 
 honor. All forms of civility springing elsewhere than 
 from the heart are but shams — mean tricks of ceremony 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE. yg 
 
 put on and off, like mere matters of personal decoration. 
 He is truly courteous, and he alone, whose courtesy 
 is the outcome of a genial, generous nature. Such a 
 man may lack the requirements of etiquette, but never 
 that benevolence whose external manifestation is a deli- 
 cate regard for the feelings of others. Be his position 
 in society what it may, that man is a " gentleman ; " 
 than which there is no higher title. 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE. 
 
 OUPPOSE we all make a solemn determination to 
 hold our tongue ! Let us observe this rule as 
 rigidly as possible, and you may depend upon it that 
 such of us as shall live till this day twelve-month will 
 have no cause to rue the resolve. Mr. Carlyle enjoys 
 the credit which properly belongs to an old Eastern 
 proverb-monger of having been the first to remark that 
 speech is silver, but silence is gold. His queer idiom 
 to be sure substitutes " silvern " for " silver " and 
 " goldern " for " gold," but that is Carlylese, not 
 English, so let it not pass. Say we rather that speech 
 is silver, but silence is gold ; and let us lay the maxim 
 to heart with the most sedulous attention. In our 
 transactions with our fellow-creatures, let us one and all 
 make a vow to pay in the more precious currency as 
 often as circumstances will permit. . Beware of words ! 
 Use them as little as you can. Nod, wink, shake your 
 head, look wise, shrug your shoulders, make some 
 
go ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 significant gesture, but don't open your lips if you can 
 at all avoid doing so. Never open your mouth for any 
 other purpose than to put something in it. When you 
 have nothing to say, say it ; and be sure to be in that 
 condition as frequently as you can. The least said the 
 soonest mended, and that which is uttered not at all 
 will never need correction. What is the use of talking ? 
 Anybody can talk ; but a faculty for silence is one of the 
 rarest and most valuable of talents. " Much tongue 
 and much judgment seldom go together," writes Sir 
 Roger Lestrange, " for talking and thinking are two quite 
 different faculties." So they are. Sir Roger, and the 
 latter is by far the more estipiable. " Vir sapit qui 
 pauca loquitur," quoth the Eton Latin grammar — " he 
 is a wise man who speaks little " — but how few there are 
 who appear to be of that opinion ! Everj'body wants to 
 have his say, and when he has had it, it usually proves of 
 little worth. I knew a pretty girl once, " whom fair be- 
 . fall in heaven 'mongst happy souls ! " She was the 
 most taciturn of her sex. " My dear," said her mother 
 to her one day, " why don't you speak ? If you don't 
 talk, people will suspect you are a fool." " Mother," 
 replied the maiden, "it is surely much better that people 
 should merely suspect me to be a fool while I hold my 
 tongue, than that they should know it for certain when 
 I begin to talk." The old lady was, to speak in the 
 argot of the day, " Shut up," and her daughter passed 
 with all the hearers for what she was in truth^a damsel 
 wise as beautiful. We have it upon the authority of the 
 classic chroniclers that Ulysses was the most eloquent 
 and the most silent of men; "he knew that a word 
 spoken never wrought so much good as a word con- 
 cealed." Why are there so many wretched marriages 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE. 8 1 
 
 in the world ? Simply because, when the Bride and 
 Bridegroom were asked by the parson whether they 
 would have the one the other for husband and wife, re- 
 spectively, they -said " Yes." If they had only held their 
 peace and walked silently out of the church, there would 
 have been no marriage and no misery. Why, oh ! why 
 could they not have borne in mind tlie good old Scottish 
 precept — " Keep your breath to cool your porridge." 
 One brilliant flash of silence is worth all that Cicero or 
 Demosthenes ever uttered. Give me the man who, 
 while tongues are clacking all around him, looks straight 
 down his nose, quaffs his wine plenteously, never stops 
 the bottle, and utters not a word. He and he alone is 
 your true philosopher. Babblers are fools to a man — 
 
 " The coxcomb bird so talkative and grave 
 That from his cage calls cuckold, thief, and knave, 
 Though many a passenger he rightly call, 
 'You hold him no philosopher at all." 
 
 Certainly not. He is but a " tongue-pad," as our 
 forefathers were wont to say. It is my happiness to 
 know a man who, after he has had a dinner-party at his 
 house, and the guests are gone home, all except some 
 four or five who know their cue to stay, addresses these 
 choice spirits thus — "Come now, dear boys, let us enjoy 
 ourselves. . Light up ; draw your chairs round the fire ; 
 and hold your tongues." They quietly obey. And there 
 they sit in a dreamy delightful symposium, chewing the 
 cud of sweet and bitter fancies, and wrapped in luxurious 
 meditation till the clock chimes three, when each man 
 shakes the other by the hand as at a Quaker's meeting, 
 and putting on his hat hies homeward. Some of the 
 happiest hours of my life have been spent under that 
 
 6 
 
82 ERRA TIC ESS 4 VS. 
 
 friend's roof. Nor, indeed, is that half a bad story that 
 is told about a certain madman, who found himself at a 
 ball, and though he opened not his lips appeared to 
 enjoy himself amazingly. But nothing would induce 
 him to take his departure until he had seen every other 
 guest out of the house. When they had all gone, the 
 mistress of the feast ventured to ask him why he had 
 remained so long. "Well," said the lunatic, " I observed 
 that still as each batch of visitors took their leave, those 
 who remained behind had something ill-natured to say 
 about them ; so I resolved to be the last to go, that there 
 might be nobody left to backbite me." That witty maniac 
 knew the value of silence ; and truly he had his reward. 
 The ancients, who were in many particulars much wiser 
 than we, setgreatstore by silence, and deemeditso heaven- 
 ly a gift that they placed it under the special tutelage of 
 two of their most honored deities. Of all the Goddesses 
 in the Grecian mythology, I have the profoundest rev- 
 erence for Calypso, and of all the Gods for Harpo- 
 crates. They were the celestial Silentiaries of the classic 
 divinities, and were always represented with the fore- 
 finger of the right hand placed tranversely upon the 
 lips. Calypso, to be sure, if we may trust " Telemachus," 
 had a good deal to say for herself when she was jilted 
 by the King of Ithaca ; but Fenelon, methinks, has more 
 to answer for than she in the matter of her love-lorn 
 lamentations. It was a profound idea "that of making 
 Harpocrates equally the God of Silence and of Light. 
 " Not inaptly," writes the Epicurean, " doth the same 
 deity preside over Silence and Light, since it is only out 
 of the depths of contemplative silence that the great 
 light of the soul— truth— can arise." In a like spirit 
 speaks Emerson, " Let us be silent that we may hear 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE. 83 
 
 the whispers of the Gods." Euripides was wont to say 
 that " silence was an answer to a wise man ; but we 
 seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealings 
 with fools and unreasonable persons, for men of breed- 
 ing and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair 
 words." So thinks Plutarch, who is rarely in the wrong. 
 Tlie sarcasm so frequently directed against women on 
 account of their supposed loquacity, furnishes a striking 
 exemplification of the unfair treatment which the fair, 
 the only " fair " sex perpetually receive at the hands and 
 tongues of their hereditary foe, man. I have known 
 men by the score who could talk the hind-legs off an 
 elephant, and who nevertheless seldom utter anything 
 worth remembering, far better things going into their 
 mouths than ever come out. In France you not unfre- 
 quently meet witli signs over inn-doors representing a 
 woman without a head, and with the inscription beneath 
 A la botme femme ; as much as to say that when she has 
 no head, and then alone, will she keep her peace. This, 
 I dare say, is likewise the meaning of the " Silent 
 Woman " at Chelmsford. It is a slander of common 
 kin with that too true story about the young law-clerk 
 who, being ordered to engross a deed commencing with 
 the stereotyped words, " Know ye all men by these pre- 
 sents," wrote instead, " Know thou one woman by these 
 presents." His explanation was that it was all the 
 same, for that if one woman knew it, all men would 
 be sure to know it also. Was ever known such im- 
 pertinence ? And that boy lived to be the father 
 of a family ! I know him well. Ah ! woman, woman, 
 thou long-suffering martyr, when wilt thou turn upon 
 thine arch enemy, Man, and slay him as he deserves 
 to be slain ? It is worthy of remark that one of the 
 
84 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 most eloquent champions of silence was a woman^ 
 Madame Guyon, and it is, indeed, marvellous to think 
 what a lot she has to say on such a topic. " There 
 are," she observes, " three kinds of silence. Silence 
 from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends 
 to evil. Silence or rest from desires and passions, is 
 still better, because it promotes quietness of spirit. But 
 the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wander- 
 ing thoughts, because that is essential to internal rec- 
 ollection, and because it lays a foundation for a proper 
 regulation and silence in other respects." And then 
 she goes on to talk till all is blue about these different 
 descriptions of silence. I was greatly delighted with an 
 anecdote I read the other day in an American paper 
 about a sweet silent girl, who, having been worried by 
 her brother, uttered no word of complaint, heaved no 
 sigh, fell into no sentimental sickness, dying at mid- 
 summer when the flowers were in full bloom and all the 
 birds in full song, but who quietly seized a rolling-pin 
 and speechlessly dealt the naughty boy such a blow upon 
 the head that he was unable to put his hat on for a 
 month, so big was the lump she produced upon his skull. 
 " Silence is the perfectest Herald of joy," says Shakes-- 
 peare, and that darling girl must have felt the truth 
 of the sentiment as she noiselessly brandished her 
 rolling-pin above the devoted head of her offend- 
 ing brother. In the music of silence there are a 
 thousand varieties ; and not in the knowledge of 
 things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, 
 lies the true empire of man — and of woman as well. 
 Nor are the charms of silence confined to the moral 
 world. There is nothing in nature so eloquent, so im- 
 pressive, so romantic as silence. What is it that gives 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE. 85 
 
 to the sunset hour so magical an enchantment ? — what 
 is it that gives to night so mystical a spell ? — what should 
 it be but silence ? Milton's description of the first 
 evening in Paradise is, indeed, sublime : — 
 
 " Now is the pleasant time, 
 The cool, the silent, save when the silence yields 
 To the night-warbling bird." 
 
 And what a matchless picture is this : — 
 
 " Now came still evening on, and twilight grey 
 Had in her sober livery all things clad. 
 Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, 
 They to their grassy couch, these to their nests 
 Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ; 
 She all night long her amorous descant sung. 
 Silence was pleas'd ; now glow'd tlie firmament 
 With living sapphires ; Hesperus, that led 
 The starry host, rude brightest till the moon, 
 Rising in clouded majesty, at length 
 Apparent Queen, unveil'd her peerless light, 
 And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." 
 
 Silence is associated with all that is most touching 
 and profound in devotional feeling. " An instinctive 
 taste," says Coleridge, " teaches men to build their 
 churches in flat countries with spire steeples, which, as 
 they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with 
 silent finger to the sky and stars." 
 
 Moore has some lovely lines about. the river Moyle 
 gliding placidly along, and the zephyrs which he entreats 
 to " break not their chain of repose." Byron, too, is 
 very eloquent on a similar theme describing with tender 
 grace the gentle -landscape where — 
 
 " Not a breath crept through the rosy air, 
 And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred .with prayer." 
 
86 ■ ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 And as in the country, so too in the town, where the 
 effect is quite as impressive though the mode of manifes- 
 tation be dissimilar. To me there is a solemnity little 
 less than awful in the aspect of the streets of Lon- 
 don very late at night, when the myriad-tongued city is 
 hushed for awhile in profound sleep. There is some- 
 thing appalling in the imaginary contrast between the 
 death-like stillness reigning all around, and the tur- 
 bulence and confusion, the clash of vehicles, and the 
 roar of traffic which will resound right and left when the 
 streets shall swarm once more with busy denizens, and 
 the seething sea of commerce shall roll tumultuous from 
 Charing Cross to Tower Hill. I know of but one thing 
 in the external world yet more impressive, and that is the 
 contrast between the magnificent emotion of a tempest- 
 fraught sea where wind and wave are striving for 
 mastery, and the placid expression of the moon in the 
 sable sky above, sailing benignantiy through silvery 
 clouds, and looking so calm and gentle, while this little 
 planet of ours is in such terrific coil. If we would 
 be thought mild, meek and lovable, let us imitate the 
 example of the moon not, indeed, in her discreditable 
 practice of living upon borrowed silver, but rather in the 
 noiselessness and serenity of her behavior. In other 
 words let us hold our tongues. This much I do venture 
 to offer by way of friendly counsel. " The rest is 
 silence," quoth Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. 
 
VIS COMICA. 
 
 VJS COMICA. 
 
 87 
 
 (~\P all our mental attributes that known as Vis 
 ^^^ Comica is perhaps the most precious, because the 
 most comforting and consolatory. That element of 
 comedy, seldom wanting from the composition even of 
 the most tragic natures, which enables a man in hours of 
 depression to regard things from a ludicrous point 
 of view, and to extract matter of merriment from his very 
 misfortunes, is more valuable than the profoundest 
 teachings of philosophy in qualifying him to endure 
 with equanimity the troubles and tribulations of life. 
 Thomas Hobbes, of Salisbury, said many a wise thing 
 in his time, but never anything wiser or more beautiful 
 than this : " Laughter is a sudden glory.'' So assuredly 
 it is, and but for this glory, which, splendid as sudden, 
 bursts through our clouds of sorrow like sunshine in 
 a shady place, what would become of us ? Liberius will 
 have it that this privilege of laughter is of Olympian 
 origin, and alike distinctive of gods and men. " Risus 
 enim divum atque hominiLm est aterna voluptas." Laughter 
 is the everlasting delight of gods and men. To us sad 
 sojourners in a sphere which the poets are wont to 
 describe as a valley of tears, the right and the faculty to 
 laugh are simply our dearest prerogative, our most 
 indispensable possession. It is the fountain in our 
 desert, the manna in our wilderness. " I have nothing 
 for it," said Oliver Goldsmith, " but to sit down and 
 laugh at the world and at myself, the most ridicu- 
 lous object in it." Who cannot call to mind occasions 
 
88 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 of difficulty and dejection when the Vis Comica has 
 come triumphantly to his rescue? Some persons are far 
 more richly endowed than others with this happy gift, 
 and the method of its manifestation in themselves and 
 its effect upon others are among the most wonderful mys- 
 teries of our being. Such people may be accounted the 
 comedians of private life, and very pleasant and benef- 
 icent is the mission they have to fulfil. Go where they 
 may, they are ever welcome ; for, provided always that 
 their matchless talent is refined by good taste and temper- 
 ed by good feeling, they bring the summer with them and 
 make everybody the brighter for their presence. It is 
 marvellous to think what an atmosphere of fun seems to 
 surround some people, what an air of festivity they 
 throw around the dullest things, and what radiance of 
 expression they impart to the most commonplace 
 emotions. Like Ophelia, they turn " thought and afflic- 
 tion to favor and to prettiness," and still as they go they 
 "scatter smiles on the uneasy earth." We laugh at 
 them, and with them, but never ill-naturedly so, for the 
 mirth they awaken is ever genial and has no taint 
 of malice. Do what they may, they never fail to exhila- 
 rate and delight us. A wave of their hand, a glance of 
 their eye, the slightest inflection of their voice, nay their 
 very walk — though they should never open, their lips 
 — suffices to move our laughter. These are the people 
 who, in right of their Vis Comica, acquire enthusiastic ap- 
 plause for jests and stories of little intrinsic value. Told 
 by them, jokes of no great point and anecdotes of 
 no great interest will set the table in a roar. The worth- 
 less matter wins mystic value in the nan ation, and what 
 from other lips would be dull and cold as lead is " sun- 
 shine spoken " from theirs. Lord Bacon has gone to 
 
F/S COMICA. 8g 
 
 the trouble to transmit to remote posterity a motci King 
 Jamie's, than which nothing can be much more silly : 
 " King James, as he was a prince of great judgment, so 
 was he a prince of marvellous pleasant humor. As he was 
 going through Lusen by Greenwich he asked what town 
 it was. They said Lusen. He asked, a good while 
 after, ' What town is this we are now in ? ' They said 
 still it was Lusen. Then said the King, ' I will be King 
 of Lusen.' " The wif of that royal remark is rather 
 occult. The King may perhaps have intended to say 
 that the town being so long, he must needs be long 
 a king who should hold the sovereignty of it. This may 
 or may not be what Jamie meant ; but wit that requires 
 to be analyzed and explained, hardly deserves the name. 
 It should flash upon the fancy instantaneously as light 
 upon the eye, else it is no true wit. " The marvellous 
 pleasant humor " must have dwelt in the King's way of 
 uttering the words ; and that humor is, of course, incom- 
 municable by writing. Addison mentions his having 
 met a fellow in Italy whose talk was of the dullest, 
 " }'et was there something so comical in his voice and 
 gesture that a man could hardly forbear being pleased 
 with him." Foote had a Vis Coviica of his own, which 
 being, even as he was himself, utterly brutal, came upon 
 friend and foe like the kick of a dray-horse. Such, for 
 example, was his truculent reply to the inoffensive little 
 man who. mildly remarked that he had come up from 
 Essex — "The devil you have.! Who drove you 1 " Sheri- 
 dan's wit combined with the flash of the gem its solidity 
 too, and was invariably free from gratuitous rancor. It 
 was " more nearly allied to good-nature " than wit 
 always is. Dean Swift's wit was usually like forked 
 lightning, scathing and blasting what it touched ; but it 
 
go ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 was at times as mild as the moonbeams. It happened 
 one day that his cook, whom he invariably called 
 " Sweetheart," had greatly over-roasted the only joint he 
 . had for dinner. " Sweetheart,'' said the Dean in the 
 blandest possible tones, " this leg of mutton is overdone. 
 Take it back into the kitchen and do it less." The cook 
 replied, that the thing was impossible. " But," said the 
 Dean, " if it had been underdone you could have done 
 it more." The cook assented. " Well, then. Sweet- 
 heart,'' rejoined the master, " let this be a lesson to 
 you. If you needs must commit a fault, at least take 
 care it is one that will admit of a remedy." The 
 mingled wit and wisdom of this admonition are delight- 
 ful. The Vis Comica of Sydney Smith was magnificent. 
 It must have been glorious in his conversation, for 
 apart from the enchantment of delivery it is glorious in 
 his writings. It foams and flashes through his graphic 
 page like an exulting river through a picturesque 
 landscape. It now and then occurred that he fell in with 
 a dullard who failed to perceive at a glance the aim and 
 purport of the canon's humor. This is a " damper " to 
 most men, but Sydney Smith always turned it to good 
 account. How very funny is this : " A joke goes a great 
 way in the country. I have known one last pretty well for 
 seven years. I remember making a joke after a 
 meeting of the clergy in Yorkshire, where there was a 
 Rev. Mr. Buckle, who never spoke when I proposed 
 his health. I said he was a buckle without a tongue. 
 Most persons on hearing laughed, but my next neighbor 
 sat unmoved and sunk in thought. At last, a quarter of 
 an hour after we had done, he suddenly nudged me, 
 exclaiming, ' I see now what you meant, Mr. Smith ; you 
 meant a joke.' 'Yes,' I said, 'sir, I believe I did.' 
 
VIS COMIC A. gi 
 
 Upon which he began laughing so heartily that I thought 
 he would choke, and was obliged to pat him on the 
 back." This ex post facto apprehension of fun, stealing 
 sluggishly over a Boeotian intellect, but at last flaming out 
 in uproarious mirth, has in it something exceedingly 
 ridiculous. Equally comic is the canon's method of 
 dealing with such witlings as take pleasure in charades. 
 " I can say nothing of charades and such sort of unpar- 
 donable trumpery. If charades are made at all, they 
 should be made without benefit of clergy ; the offender 
 should instantly be hurried off to execution, and be cut 
 off in the middle of his dullness, despite his attempts to 
 explain to his executioner why his first is like his second, 
 or what is the resemblance between his fourth and his 
 fifth." Who can forbear a smile at the notion of 
 thus summarily ejecting the " funny man " of a party, 
 who even while he is being extruded desires to explain 
 why his first is like his second, and what relation 
 his fourth bears to his fifth ? Lord Palmerston had a 
 racy and benignant Vis Comica which stood him in 
 excellent stead on countless occasions, enabling him to 
 turn the laugh against his adversaries, and to avert an 
 awkward argument by means of a joke. Men will differ 
 as to his qualifications as a statesman, but there can be 
 no second opinion about his bonhomie, or about his right 
 to rank with those 
 
 " Whose happy alchemy of mind 
 Can .turn to pleasure all they find." 
 
 Vis Comica no longer survives in its pristine vigor and 
 brilliancy- among the majority of comedians upon the 
 British stage. We have a bright minority of good 
 actors. Mr. Buckstone is an admirable comedian of a 
 
g2 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 good old school. Mr. Phelps, weak in tragedy, is strong 
 in a comedy, which, though not unctuous, is life-like and 
 of high finish. Mr. Sothern, one of the most brilliant 
 and gentlemanlike of actors, has a vein of eccentric 
 humor all his own. Mr. C. Mathews' acting in his palmy 
 days was bright, fluent, effervescent — the very cham- 
 pagne of dramatic mirth. Mr. Toole deservedly enjoys 
 universal popularity. Mr. Hare is a true artist. Mr. 
 Compton, Mr. Lionel Brough, and Mr. J. W. Hill all 
 merit honorable mention ; but these and a few others are 
 the 'elite. The generality of our comedians lack comedy. 
 They aim for the most part at little more than a spirited 
 recitation of the text ; they saunter through their parts, 
 it may be, with a certain grace and gayety, speaking what 
 is set down for them with propriety, if not with splendor 
 of declamation ; but their humor is fitful and occasional, 
 and their fun flashes with uncertain and intermittent 
 gleams. It comes and goes like Acres' courage. They 
 are fragmentary in their style ; they do not understand 
 the enduring of themselves with a dramatic individuality 
 as with a garment. They are at times pleasant and en- 
 joyable enough, but they step in and out of their charac- 
 ters, reverting every now and then to their own personal 
 selves,- which crop up irrepressibly and will not be sub- 
 merged. They have around them no continuous spell of 
 illusion. They want the inventive power to imagine a 
 distinct ideal, and the executive skill to give to that 
 ideal a living embodiment, even as a sculptor having first 
 bethought him of a figure might call it into mimic 
 existence, awakening to radiant semblance of life the 
 dormant block of marble. Above all, they want that 
 Vis Comica which gives to the personages of comedy sus- 
 tained energy and brilliant vitality, making each of them 
 
VIS COMIC A. 93 
 
 a complete and ■well-defined creation iofus teres atque 
 rotimdus. Of bygone actors not yet far distant from our 
 own day, Dodd, Edwin, Liston, Jack Reeve, Munden, and 
 Tyrone Power would appear to have been preeminently 
 endowed with this precious gift. They are gone, for 
 ever gone, those matchless players, but the laughter they 
 evoked is historic, and the echoes of its peals still ring in 
 the ears of posterity. Mr. Wright was full of Vis Comica, 
 but Wright is lost to us for evermore. There is no actor 
 now upon the stage who possesses the Vis Comica in such 
 perfection as Mr. J. S. Clarke. If the amount of merri- 
 ment he creates maybe taken as the measure of a come- 
 dian's skill, this actor assuredly stands in the van of his 
 profession. He- is a very master of his art. He is 
 instinct with the spirit of comedy. Everything he says 
 and does, smacks of it. There is comedy in his every 
 look and action ; it flashes in his eye, beams upon his 
 brow, plays around his mouth, throbs through his voice, 
 and gives irresistible drollery to his minutest gestures. 
 The charm of this, as of all true acting, is that it is per- 
 fectly easy and spontaneous. " My invention," says 
 lago, " comes from my pate as bird-lime does from f rize 
 — it plucks out brain and all." Invention such as that 
 never yet made either poet or player. The quality of 
 humor as of mercy is not strained. It must come from 
 the actor affluent and unbidden, like the fragrance from 
 a flower. So it is with Mr. Clarke. He blossoms into 
 fun like a rose-tree into roses. No other comedian upon 
 the stage creates such ■&, furore of fun. His empire over 
 his hearers is absolute. " Many comedians may amuse," 
 says the Times, "but Mr. Clarke can command an 
 audience." It is worth any money to see and hear the 
 people laughing at him — to observe them swaying to and 
 
g4 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 fro in the storm of his merriment, and to hearken to their 
 joyous volleys. He scatters mirth broadcast among his 
 audience, and mirth too of so poignant a flavor that the 
 aroma of it dwells ever after in the memory. Having 
 once seen him is to associate his name thenceforward 
 with all that the fancy can conceive of the most humor- 
 ous and diverting. " I am acquainted," said Lord 
 Byron, " with no immaterial sensuality so delightful 
 as good acting." To realize the truth of this remark, we 
 have but to recall to remembrance the dramatic crea- 
 tions of any genuine actor, and to renew in imagination 
 the enjoyment they afforded us when we viewed them for 
 the first time. What pleasures of memory are evoked, 
 for example, by the very thought of the more important 
 personages in Mr. Clarke's gallery of characters !• In 
 what strong and luminous relief do they stand out 
 against the dull cold background of our work-a-day 
 world, and how keen is the sense of intellectual gladness 
 that comes over us as they pass before the mind's eye in 
 comic array — Pangloss, Acres, Ollapod, Paul Pry, 
 Toodles, Babbington Jones, Young Gosling, Wellington 
 de Boots, Waddilove, the eccentric lawyer Red Tape, 
 and the rest of them ! It is in the representation of such 
 muddy-mettled rascals as Acres, Gosling, Paul Pry, Tony 
 Lumpkin, and De Boots that this artist's powers of 
 facial comedy are displayed to the greatest advantage. 
 We are irresistibly reminded of Charles Lamb's match- 
 less criticism upon Dodd : " In expressing slowness of 
 apprehension this actor surpasses all others. You could 
 see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over 
 his countenance, climbing up by little and little with 
 a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness 
 of a twilight conception — its highest meridian. He 
 
VIS C0M/C4. 95 
 
 seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had the 
 power to retard their.pulsation. The balloon takes less 
 time in filling than it took to cover the expansion of his 
 moony face over all its quarters with expression. A 
 glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of 
 his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of 
 his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a 
 long time in communicating it to the remainder." Though 
 this criticism had been written expressly for Mr. Clarke 
 in the characters of Gosling, Paul Pry, and De Boots, it 
 could not have fitted him to a greater nicety. Talking 
 of his acting in the last-named part, the Times observes : 
 " Mr. Clarke remains permanently as Major Wellington 
 de Boots, who, as he at present stands, is purely a crea- 
 tion of his own. Naturally a poltroon, but too good- 
 natured to be utterly contemptible, De Boots is impelled 
 by his name to serve in the militia, and affects a soldier- 
 like air for which he is wholly unfitted. The obvious aim 
 of the actor would be to treat him as a mere Bobadil, but 
 he is nothing of the kind in the hands of Mr. 
 Clarke. The smallness of the swagger, the feeble pomp 
 of manner and voice, the propensity to gallantry that 
 now and then lights up the face so as almost to change 
 the features, and a curious sort of fortitude under 
 degradation that supplies the place of courage, belong 
 to De Boots alone, and his sole ownership is confessed 
 ' by a thousand minute touches, which cannot possibly be 
 described, but which bears witness to the inexhaustible 
 invention of the actor." Here we have in fullest per- 
 fection that Vis Comica which is to its possessor a foun- 
 tain of. joy, and which makes .every one the happier 
 who comes within its range. 
 
 For complete refutation of the hackneyed charge 
 
gC ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 against modern playgoers of insensibility to the charms 
 of good acting, it is pleasant to cite the amount of public 
 favor accorded in London to the most celebrated of Mr. 
 J. S. Clarke's impersonations. The number of consecu- 
 tive nights that he has played Ollapod, Bob Acres, and 
 Dr. Pangloss, were sixty in the first case, one hundred 
 and twenty-seven in the second, and two hundred and 
 fifty in the third. In fact " The Heir at Law," and 
 " The Poor Gentleman," with Mr. J. S. Clarke in the 
 principal comic characters, were the first of the great 
 runs of revived old comedies upon the London stage. 
 
 THE ART OF WALKING. 
 
 T RECEIVED a letter the other day from a gentle- 
 ■*• man whose name I had never before heard, politely 
 requesting me to " oblige the world," as he prettily 
 phrased it, with an Essay on " Walking." On referring 
 to Johnson's Dictionary — as is my habit in all emer- 
 gencies — for the meaning of the verb to " walk," I found 
 it thus defined — " To move by leisurely steps, so that 
 one foot is set down before the other is taken up." Said 
 I to myself, and myself said the very same thing to me, 
 " Of a verity this unknown friend of mine must be pok-' 
 ing his fun at me in imposing this task upon me, for 
 what man is there on earth of imagination so bril- 
 liant, or fancy so afifluent, as to, be able to pen a treatise 
 upon any such subject as this .? " So saying, I inconti- 
 nently resolved to think no more of the matter, but 
 rather to go to bed, for I had caught a cold, and longed 
 
THE ART OF WALKING. ^-j 
 
 for sleep. But second thoughts are proverbially best ; 
 and when I came to read my correspondent's letter over 
 again, and observed in what terms of eulogy he alluded 
 to my writings, and how high was his estirnate of my tal- 
 ents and accomplishments, " Odsbodikins ! " said I to 
 myself, and myself said the self-same thing to me, " this 
 fellow is no such fool after all. On the contrary, he is 
 a man of taste and discernment ; so I will take the topic 
 in hand, and seriously consider what is to be done with 
 it." Moreover, I have invariably made it a point to do 
 whatever I am told, and to turn my back upon no duty 
 whatsoever, that any fellow-creature maty choose to as- 
 sign to me. In this blessed frame of mind I folded my 
 arms, closed my eyes, and, lolling back in my arm-chair, 
 began to extract from the storehouse of my memory 
 ancient reminiscences of all that I had ever seen, heard, 
 or read on the subject of walking ; and, strange to 
 sa}', the theme grew upon me in- magnitude and glory 
 the more thought I bestowed upon it, till at last I ar- 
 rived at the conviction that, whether regarded from a 
 poetic or a purely pedestrian point of view, there is no 
 other question of greater importance or more profound 
 interest. 
 
 When we pause to think that walking is the most ob- 
 vious and natural mode of progression for a human 
 being, we cannot choose but wonder how few people 
 there are who know how to do it. One might have sup- 
 posed that walking would have come as easy to a man 
 as swimming to a fish or flying to a bird ; but it is not 
 so. In early babyhood we are not able to stand, much 
 less to walk. To " toddle '' is our first achievement in 
 the art of locomotion ; and there are individuals who, 
 though they may cease to toddle, can hardly be said to 
 
 7 
 
g8 ERR A TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 ever arrive at a more dignified or more graceful use of 
 their legs. They." shuffle," or " shamble," or " bounce," 
 or " trot," or " amble," or move along in a mincing gait, 
 or " loaf about," or " waddle ; " but they cannot walk 
 in any fashion worthy of the name. There is a vast 
 deal of character in the way a man walks, and his tem- 
 per has more to do with the " 'havior " of his limbs than 
 is commonly credited. " By that shambling in his walk 
 it should be my rich banker, Gomez, whom I knew at 
 Barcelona ; " says Dryden, in the Spanish Friar; and 
 the remark " smacks of observation," for lich men have 
 often, sure enough, a shamble in their walk, and drag 
 their legs along in a slow, ungainly manner, as though 
 they would pull the ground after them in the hope of 
 wringing money out of it. Have you ever observed 
 what a peculiar walk good people have ; how carefully 
 they pick their steps, and how sanctimoniously they look 
 down their noses ? The Puritanical gait still tradition- 
 ally assigned to Quakers (upon the stage), has been 
 adopted in real life by Christian Workers, and those in- 
 estimable Moody-and-Sankeyites who, with sheafs of 
 tracts in their hands, sally forth upon their house-to- 
 house visitation, and sing the praises of the " Evange- 
 lists " wherever they go. They are precious pots of 
 ointment and blessed vessels of election, these same 
 Christian Workers ; only one could wish that they would 
 walk more briskly, talk more pleasantly, and not look 
 as though they had swallowed live eels, and found them 
 difficult of digestion. Some people there" are of whom 
 we may say in Shakespearean phrase, that theirs is " the 
 forced gait of a shuffling nag." They are vain enough 
 to believe that everybody is looking at them, so they 
 become artificial in their movements, and cannot for the 
 
THE ART OF WALKING. gg 
 
 lives of them be natural. The " bouncers," to whom Al- 
 bert Smith has, if I am not mistaken, devoted an amus- 
 ing essay, are, generally speaking, ladies of a certain 
 age. They come towards you with a springy, elastic 
 step, as much as to say, " See how young I am ! " They 
 remind you of the wild gazelle on Judah's hill, who " ex- 
 ulting yet may bound," though ruin and desolation 
 meet the gaze on every side. The number of women 
 of whatever age who can walk well is very small, though, 
 of course, much larger than that of men similarly ac- 
 complished. Indeed, you may take it for granted that 
 for one man who can do anything well, be it what it may, 
 there are at the very least fifty women who can do it 
 better. And this holds good in walking, as in all things 
 else. It is a saying of Pope's that " they move easiest 
 who have learned to dance ; " and as more women than 
 men learn to dance, that may be one reason out of 
 many, why women as a sex walk so much better. The 
 main cause is, of course, to be found in their superior 
 integrity of purpose, and that inner rectitude which 
 gives to the movement of the body a correspondent 
 grace and propriety. Nevertheless, it now and then 
 happens that we meet with ladies very much embonpoint, 
 who, eschewing all attempts at walking, properly so 
 called, prefer to waddle. Of this type was the famous 
 Mrs. Gill, who, whenever she felt "poorly," longed to 
 be off to Paris : — 
 
 " Mrs. Gill is very ill, 
 
 And nothing will improve her,. 
 Except to see the Tuileries, 
 
 And waddle through the Louvre." 
 
 Bless her heart ! How well I remember tlie day I 
 first met her there with her guide-book and Bradshaw's, 
 
100 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 her gingham, her fan, and her shawls, and all her othex 
 belongings, waddling through the picture-galleries like a 
 dear old goose as she was, and shedding her cockney 
 " H's " all over the glossy floor. Gill told me on the 
 sly that she preferred a pigeon-pie to the finest picture 
 ever painted by Paul Veronese or Claude Lorraine ; but 
 I dare say he was a slanderer. Husbands are such to a 
 man. I know a lady the very reverse of Mrs. Gill ; 
 and, oh ! what a lady she is — 
 
 " She walks in beauty like the night 
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies, 
 
 And all that's best of dark and bright 
 Meet in her aspect and her eyes." 
 
 Spenser, the poet, tells us of a lady whose tongue 
 kept pace with her feet, and who was well skilled in the 
 wifely duty of upbraiding her lord — 
 
 " As she went her tongue did walk 
 
 In foul reproach and terms of vile despight, 
 Provoking him by her outrageous talk." 
 
 We occasionally find that-^g&ople have two kinds of 
 walks, — one for the street^^^*he?'for indoors. I have 
 seen fellows move along'^klOT^Mly enough in the Park, 
 who hardly knew what tQ dc/with their legs in the 
 gilded -saloons of fashion. In the days of our fathers, 
 ere the foot-pavements were as cleanly and secure as 
 they now are, there was a mighty ado among walkers 
 every now and then about the right to the wall, and 
 many a duel was fought on the point. " I never give 
 the wall to fools," said a drunken young spark one night 
 in Pall Mall to a sedate old gentleman, who was going 
 home inofEensively. "I always do," was the gentle- 
 
THE ART OF WALKING. 101 
 
 man's reply, as he stepped into the street ; and the 
 braggart was left in undisturbed possession of the en- 
 vied place. The days for such broils have, happily, 
 vanished ; but though there is no longer any dispute 
 about the wall, your temper is at times sorely tried by 
 vascillating wayfarers, who cannot make up their minds 
 which way to go. You move to the right — so do they ; 
 you take the left — they follow your example ; till at last 
 you rub noses together in the middle of the footpath, 
 and look like a pair of idiots. There was a time when 
 I used to take off my hat to such waverers, and it was 
 as good as a play to see us both bowing, pirouetting, 
 and gyrating on the pavement for some minutes con- 
 secutively, till at last my indecisive friend would make 
 some " cursory " remark and bolt into the middle of the 
 street. But I have no heart for fun now ; so I adopt a 
 masterly policy of inaction, coming instantaneously to a 
 ■ standstill, and leaving my tormentor to dance around 
 me as though I were a statue. This is a capital plan. 
 Try it. The art of walking in the streets is so essential 
 to general comfort that one cannot but wonder that it 
 does not command more serious attention. A man 
 should pursue smoothly and circumspectly the noiseless 
 tenor of his way, not throwing his arms about like the 
 shafts of a windmill, not digging his elbows in the ribs 
 of his fellow-passengers, nor thrusting his shoulders for- 
 ward so as to " cannon" people who have done him no 
 wrong, but " using all gently," and so regulating his 
 deportment as to consult for the ease of his fellow- 
 creatures as well as for liis own. In fact, you may know 
 a gentleman by his walking nearly as well as by his 
 talking, a nice regard for the feelings of others being 
 indicative of good-breeding in each case. For the rest, 
 
1 02 £J!J!A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 to walk with grace a man should be drilled. What is it 
 that makes military men look so much taller than civil- 
 ians of the same stature ? Simply that the former have 
 been drilled. The drilled man looks not only taller but 
 manlier, and handsomer than the undrilled, and there- 
 fore enjoys much higher favor with the ladies — a fact of 
 greater weight than a thousand arguments to show the 
 value of good walking. Nor should we overlook the 
 rare worth of that art upon the stage, to walk well being 
 one of the most essential accomplishments for an actor 
 who would make a figure in his profession. 
 
 So much for " walking " in the purely physical sense 
 of the term. But the word has also a figurative inter- 
 pretation which the poets have turned to romantic ac- 
 count. To walk means " to appear as a spectre," and 
 in that signification Shakespeare uses it with solemn 
 effect. Thus is it employed, for example, in The Win- 
 ter's Tale — " The spirits of the dead may walk again ; if 
 such things be, thy mother appeared to me last night." 
 In the awful picture of Lady Macbeth in her walking 
 dream, the word " walked " gives the key to the whole 
 composition, and tones the mind to terror. It gives you 
 it once the idea of that unrest which comes of mental 
 anguish. " When was it she last walked ? " "I have 
 seen her rise from her bed, unlock her closet, take forth 
 paper, write upon it, read it, and return to bed, yet all 
 this while in a most fast sleep." But apart from this 
 metaphysical sense, the word " wa,lk," though apparently 
 one of the most common-place in the language, is sus- 
 ceptible of the most poetic treatment. Nothing can be 
 much lovelier than its import in the description of day- 
 break, as given in Hamlet : — 
 
THE ART OF WALKING. 
 
 " The Mom, in russet mantle clad, 
 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." 
 
 103 
 
 So, too, Byron employs the phrase with the happiest 
 effect in his description of a sailing ship : — 
 
 " She walks the waters like a thing of life, 
 And seems to dare the elements to strife." 
 
 So, also, Wordsworth, in his mournful meditations on 
 the most ill-starred of poets : — 
 
 " I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy. 
 The sleepless soul that perished in his pride 
 Of him who walked in glory and in pride." 
 
 Milton waxes eloquent about " the happy walks and 
 shades of Paradise," and makes Adam address his en- 
 chantress in these love-lorn words : — " Nor walk by 
 moon, nor glittering star-light without thee is sweet." 
 And what beauty ineffable dwells in these verses of 
 Henry Vaughan (A. D. 1621), suggested by the thought 
 of his dead friends f — 
 
 " I see them walking in an air of glory, 
 Whose light doth trample on my days. 
 My days, which are at best but dull and hoary. 
 Mere glimmerings and decays.". 
 
 Of similar grace and tenderness are Andrich's verses 
 on the loss "of his daughter — ^verses to be read without 
 emotion by those whose hearts have been wrung by no 
 kindred misery and by them alone : — 
 
 " Her sufferings ended with the day. 
 Yet lived she at its close, 
 And breathed the long, long night away 
 In statue-like repose. 
 
X04 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 But when the sky in all his state 
 Illumed the eastern skies, 
 She passed through Glory's morning gate 
 And walked in Paradise." 
 
 But of all uses of the word the most pathetic is that 
 given to it by Mapbeth, to illustrate the visionary quality 
 of human existence. " Life is but a walking shadow ! " 
 The shadow of a cloud, the Arabs call it, but the figure 
 is too aerial. A walking shadow better describes its ter- 
 rene condition and its spectral affinity to death, whose 
 pestilence walketh in darkness. Yes j " Life is but a 
 walking shadow." 
 
 THE MISERY OF BEING RESPECTABLE. 
 
 T WAS born in a " respectable " station of society. It 
 is a melancholy fact and one which I have never 
 ceased to deplore. Had I been consulted in the mat- 
 ter, I should have much preferred not to be born at all. 
 In that case the loss to my readers would have been 
 enormous ; but the gain to me would have been beyond 
 the power of language to express. Here I am, how- 
 ever, and I must make the best of it, but how to do that 
 is a task of no small difficulty. It would not have been 
 half so difficult if I had not had the ill-luck to be born 
 in that rank of life known conventionally as " respect- 
 able." Next to having been born at all, the greatest 
 misfortune that can befall a human being is to have 
 been born into what the world calls " respectability." 
 Now let me not be mistaken ; I protest against being 
 misunderstood. Why should any body presume to mis- 
 
THE MISER Y OF BEING RESPECTABLE. 105 
 
 understand me ? Hear me out ! " Strike, but hear ! " 
 as the Greek slave said of old. Suffer me to explain. 
 Do hold your peace for a minute or two. Do be quiet. 
 Keep your hair on ! Zounds, man ! Am I not to be 
 master in my own column, even as St. Simon Stilites 
 was on his ? You must not run away with the idea that 
 because I wince beneath the bondage of " respectabil- 
 ity," I am therefore a plebeian, of coarse tastes and 
 vulgar sympathies. No such thing. I am a Tory of 
 the grand old school. I go in for Church and State ; 
 and good old port whenever I can get it. I abhor Re- 
 publicanism, despise demagogues, and have not, I am 
 proud to say, one thought or opinion in common with 
 Mr. Odger. My tastes are graceful ; my sympathies 
 are refined ; I am altogether delightful. I should not 
 care to possess more political liberty than I already en- 
 joy. What I sigh for, what I weep for, what I pine for, 
 what I would give my mustache and front teeth for, is 
 social freedom. I want to be free and easy — to be lord 
 of myself in my goings out and comings in — to live as I 
 like, to eat and drink as I like, to dress as I like, to say 
 and do whatsoever things may be most pleasing to me, 
 without let or hindrance from any man. All these 
 glorious privileges would be mine if I were either a 
 peer or a peasant. I will do myself the justice to be- 
 lieve that if I had been born into the purple of the 
 peerage I should have done no dishonor to my noble 
 lineage. A lofty title and a fine estate are impregnable 
 fortresses against the assaults of prejudice. Thus 
 powerfully protected I should have snapped my fingers 
 at Mrs. Grundy, and struck out for myself a bold and 
 original course. I should have worn my parliamentary 
 robes in the streets, and gone about in my coronet. 
 
1 o6 £/?J!A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Had I come into the world a peasant baby, fated in 
 after life to dig or mow, to harrow or plough, I should 
 have enjoyed equal, if not still greater liberty. Secure 
 in my insignificance, I should have provoked no inter- 
 ference. I should have been left to follow my own 
 vagary. No one would have thought it worth his while 
 to meddle with me. My grievance is that I was born 
 neither a peer nor a peasant, but simply "' respectable." 
 I was born into Schedule D, and so created I am a 
 slave ; I must move in a prescribed groove ; live in" 
 stated style ; comply rigidly with certain conventional 
 rules ; and, above all things, keep up appearances. If I 
 were not " respectable," I should be the happiest of 
 men ; but my respectability clings to me like the poi- 
 soned tunic of Dejanira. There are a thousand delight- 
 ful and perfectly innocent things which I should be re- 
 joiced to do ; but " respectability " forbids me. My 
 present desolate and disconsolate condition — for I am 
 lonely as the sparrow on the house-top — is due alto- 
 gether to my " respectability." Every man forms his 
 own ideal of happiness. Mine is a very modest one. I 
 want to get married; Where, how, when, or to whom is 
 of no great consequence. All I desire is to get mar- 
 ried. Oh ! to have a blazing fire, and a singing kettle, 
 and a purring cat, and a plate of buttered muffins. Oh ! 
 to knock at my hall-door with a bold unfaltering hand 
 after a hard day's work, and instantaneously to find 
 myself clasped in the snowy arms of a lovely being 
 who, covering me with kisses, would exclaim, "Wei-' 
 come home, my beautiful ! my own ! " And then what 
 Elysian delight after dinner to puff my pipe placidly by 
 the fire-side— -by the " ingle," my Scotch friend Mul- 
 feather calls it — and silently to watch the clouds of 
 
THE MISER y OF BEING RESPECTABLE, 107 
 
 smoke curling gracefully towards the ceiling like man's 
 vain glories and his vainer troubles, while the wife of 
 my bosom — seraphic creature ! — would " nag " at me 
 all night long for some imaginary offence, or blow me 
 up as high as the moon for something or another which 
 I could no more have helped than I could have gov- 
 erned the currents of the ocean. To be nagged at and 
 blown up by a beautiful being of your own, who loves 
 3'ou all the while like apple-pie, and whom you love like 
 plum-pudding, is, to my idea, the' happiest privilege of 
 matrimony. Married men have assured me that the 
 sensation is something ecstatic ; but from these, and 
 all the other exquisite felicities of the married state, I 
 am debarred by my " respectability.'' Why should 
 there not be a wife of mine sitting in the seat of the 
 scorner ? Why should not little children of mine be 
 running all over the house ? I'll tell you why. Because 
 I am " respectable." If I had been either a peer or a 
 peasant, I could have afforded to marry ; but, being 
 simply " respectable," I cannot do it for the money. It 
 is not on the cards. A woman in a passion with her 
 husband is, to my thinking, the sublimest spectacle un- 
 der either sun or moon. I know a parson who calls his 
 wife " Circumstances " over whom he has no control, 
 and he assures me that it is a sight for the gods to see 
 " Circumstances " pacing up and down the drawing- 
 room, her lovely form expanding with rage, her damask 
 cheeks crimsoned to the Tyrian die, her marble brow 
 clouded with thunder, her matchless bosom heaving 
 with internal tempest, her starry eyes flashing light- 
 ning, and all for nothing ; for what is a husband but 
 nothing ? Alas, alas ! a thousand times alas ! that 
 glorious spectacle can never gladden my eyes. " I have 
 
1 o8 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 no wife," said Otliello. No more have I, my sable 
 Moor. I cannot afford the priceless luxury. -Being 
 myself " respectable,'' Society, inexorable tyrant, would 
 insist upon my keeping my wife, if I had one, in a 
 " respectable " style, and I have not the cash to do it. 
 Thus is my "respectability" the rock a-head that for- 
 bids a pleasant cruise through life, and dooms me to 
 the shoals and shallows of a bachelor's ignoble destiny. 
 Oh ! why am I not either a duke or a plowman ? Were 
 I the former I could easily manage to keep my wife in 
 splendor ; were I the latter it would not matter three- 
 halfpence how I might keep her ; but, being merely 
 " respectable," the female sex exists in vain for me. I 
 am rich enough to live respectably as a bachelor, but 
 what is an elegant sufficiency for a bachelor would be 
 beggary for a married man. Look at the price of coals ; 
 look at the price of everything. What business should 
 I have to marry when a bonnet costs £'i 3^., a silk 
 gown £% 8j., a dress-improver a guinea ; while peram- 
 bulators are sold at £2)^ a dozen? And so it is in 
 every affair of life. Turn where I may, do what I will, 
 I am bowled out of happiness by my "respectability." 
 I hate a chimney-pot hat. I should dearly love to walk 
 down Regent Street either hatless like a Bluecoat boy, 
 or with a soft brown felt of the old " wide-awake " 
 fashion ; but it is 'more than I would dare to do. 
 Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to go 
 about in the Highland costume, my head surmounted 
 with the aforesaid " wide-awake " and carrying a naked 
 claymore in my right hand — I should look so pictur- 
 esque and impressive ! — ^but here also I am confronted 
 by that plague and pest of my life — " respectability." 
 People would account me mad. I have a certain 
 
THE MISER y OF BEING RESPECTABLE. i og 
 
 position to maintain, and maintain it I must, or else 
 be ostracized for a maniac. Tlien, again, I love to 
 smoke a clay pipe — a nose-warmer — about two inches 
 long, and as black as your shoe ; but if a man of my 
 " respectability " were to be seen in the Row with such 
 a thing in his mouth, no decent person would ever care 
 to be seen speaking to him. He might as well pack up 
 his traps and be off to the Antipodes. I never pass 
 through Trafalgar Square without longing to mount the 
 empty pedestal which now looks so lob-sided and inele- 
 gant, and to stand upon it with folded arms in an ora- 
 torical attitude instinct with statuesque grace, that the 
 B. P. might admire " the glass of fashion and the mould 
 of form ; " but, bless you ! it were as much as my life 
 is worth to attempt such a thing. Blackguard little boys 
 would deiide me for a "guy." Bobbies would brandish 
 their truncheons around my devoted head ; and next 
 morning the newspaper placards would be emblazoned 
 with the sensational announcement, " Extraordinary 
 Conduct of a Respectable Man in Trafalgar Square." 
 And yet, when one comes to think of it, it does seem 
 hard — does it not? — that "respectability'' should be at 
 such a discount. If one of the pedestals is to be as- 
 signed to George IV., surely they might allow the other 
 to be occupied by a respectable man, if only for the 
 variety of the thing. But no ; " respectability " is of 
 little worth unless it be accompanied with money, with- 
 out which, not to speak it profanely, there is, indeed, no 
 true "respectability." "Respectability" cuts down 
 my pleasures and exacts from me circumspect conduct 
 and a rigid demeanor ; yet it is an every-day occurrence 
 to find at the bar of justice either some man " of most 
 respectable appearance," who, as the reporters assure 
 
1 1 o ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 US, " appears to feel his position acutely," or else some 
 case-hardened person who does not seem to care a fig- 
 stalk about it. Meanwhile I am obliged to look de- 
 murely down my nose and dare not so much as wink at 
 a pretty girl. If I do, the Society for- the Protection, 
 etc., etc., etc., will be down upon me. A donkey-ride 
 at Hampstead, a gallop upon a spavined hack at 
 Blackheath, a halfpenny ice at London Wall, a shy at 
 Aunt Sally anywhere — these are pleasures worthy of the 
 name, but I must not enjoy them. In fact, I am, sex 
 excepted, a respectable Peri mourning at the gates of a 
 Paradise I may not enter. I am fond of my species. 
 I love the human race, especially men, women, and 
 children ; and next to children what I most admire in 
 the world is music. It gladdens my heart ^nd makes 
 my blood^ tingle for joy to see the children of the poor, 
 waltzing around an Italian organ-grinder or some other 
 noble troubadour who has come here from far distant 
 lands to administer to our delight. I often feel inclined 
 to throw off my coat and dance merrily with these tiny 
 elves ; but I must not think of it unless I would lose 
 caste JEor ever. What ! a " respectable " man dancing 
 in an alley with ragged, unwashed children. Who ever 
 heard of such a thing ? I should very much like to ride 
 upon the knife-board of an omnibus, but it is not 
 " comme il faut." It is bad " form." You remember 
 Leech's droll little picture of the powdered footman 
 giving his mistress warning. " What is your griev- 
 ance ? Why do you wish to leave ? " asks the mistress. 
 " Oh ! mum," replies the flunkey, " master was seen 
 yesterday on the houtside of a homnibus, and I can't 
 think of remaining longer in his service after that no- 
 how." For my own part I would go to the pit of a 
 
^ WET DAY AT LLANGOLLEN. 1 1 1 
 
 theatre if I dared ; but it is out of the question. A 
 man with downwards of ;£'iooo a-year go to the pit ! 
 Impossible ! So I have nothing for it but to go to the 
 orchestra-stalls at three times the expense, and sit all 
 night within six inches of a fellow who splits my ears 
 with a trombone. Baked potatoes are, to my thinking, 
 some of tlie few things worth living for ; they tantalize 
 my nose at every street-corner on a winter night ; but 
 to me they are forbidden fruit. " Respectable " people 
 don't eat potatoes in the street. Of course not. There 
 is only one man in the world whom I ' really envy, and 
 that is the man who thwacks the big drum in a huge 
 van drawn by four hgrses and crowded with little chil- 
 dren who are going on a picnic to Epping Forest. I 
 ■would gladly give a ;^5 note (of the Bank of Elegance) 
 to take that drummer's post and thwack that big drum 
 all day long ; but here again " Respectability " steps in 
 and wrenches the drum sticks out of my hands. In a 
 word, " Respectability " is the bane and bother of my 
 life. I should be twice as happy if I were not half so 
 respectable. 
 
 A WET DAY AT LLANGOLLEN. 
 
 T WAS still in the cradle when my nurse, a Welsh- 
 woman, with a melodious voice and an inexhausti- 
 ble store of romantic legends, made me acquainted with 
 three personages whom I have ever since regarded with 
 peculiar veneration. They were all country-people of 
 her own — the first being a thief named Taffy, who, as 
 she assured me, came to our house and stole a shin of 
 
1 1 2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 beef ; the second, a philosophic miller, who dwelt on 
 the banks of the Dee, and whose noble boast it was 
 that he cared for nobody; no, not he, and tliat nobody 
 cared for him ; and the third, a pretty girl called Jenny 
 Jones, who lived in the vale of Llangollen. Every one 
 has his special favorites, whether in the region of verit- 
 able history, or in that of poetic fiction ; and this match- 
 less trio have been from earliest childhood to the pre- 
 sent hour the darlings of my imagination. For their 
 dear sake have I been rambling about the Cambrian 
 mountains for the last three weeks ; but I grieve to say 
 that though I have made inquiries in all directions I 
 have not as yet succeeded in finding the idols of my in- 
 fantine fancy. Standing on Thursday last upon the 
 Bridge of Llangollen, which, permit me to observe, for 
 the information of architects, is a plain Gothic structure, 
 consisting of four irregularly pointed arches of various 
 dimensions with projecting angular buttresses — my 
 thoughts took a melancholy hue, and a wave of solemn 
 sentiment swept over my soul. (What a lot of S's to be 
 sure !) " Talk of the everlasting hills and the imperish- 
 able firmament," quoth I to myself, " and set them in 
 contrast with that fleeting shadow called Man ! We 
 need no such potent comparisons. Measure man with 
 the works of his own hands ! What is the life that dwells 
 in flesh and blood to the life that dwells in brick and 
 mortar ? What is the life of a man compared to the life 
 of a bridge ? This bridge upon which I now stand, the 
 admired of all admirers, was built by Anica, Bishop of 
 St. Asaph, in the year of grace, 1350, which, according 
 to Cocker, was 526 years ago. Across this immemorial 
 structure have doubtless passed full many a time and 
 oft Jenny Jones, loveliest of the maids of Llangollen ; 
 
A WET DAY AT LLANGOLLEN. 113 
 
 Taffy, who was afflicted with kleptomania in bovine 
 matters ; and that most stoical of millers who did not 
 care three-halfpence for any human being, and for who'm 
 no human being cherished feelings of warmer interest. 
 Where are they now — the village belle, the crafty shin- 
 stealer, and the pococurante mill-owner ? Where are 
 they all ? They are gone — gone, never to return ; but 
 the bridge survives in all the pride and glory of inde- 
 structible masonry." So spake I to myself, and so speak- 
 ing, I wiped away a tear. Suddenly it occurred to me 
 that though these worthy people have vanished like the 
 snow that fell last year, I might, at least, have the satis- 
 faction of visiting their places of burial. At that mo- 
 ment came up a policeman, drest in a little blue author- 
 ity and looking uncommonly nice in his neat uniform. 
 " Sir," said I, touching my hat, as you know is my wont 
 in such an august presence, and assuming that tone of 
 deference which I never fail to adopt in addressing one 
 of " the force," " will you have the kindness to direct 
 me to the graves of Jenny Jones, Taffy the thief, and 
 the Miller, whose name I do not know, but who is cele- 
 brated for having turned up his nose at everybody, and 
 at whom everybody turned up his nose.'' Pity is it you 
 did not see the expression of the constable's face. He 
 frowned at me so sternly that I verily believed he was 
 going to run_me in there and then. " As sure as fate," 
 thought I, " this fellow means to lock me up in Mold 
 jail." I was in a dreadful fright, and had some 
 thoughts of jumping into the Dee ; but a happy idea 
 flashed upon my distracted brain. I will try what virtue 
 there is in baccy. " Let me offer you a weed, sir," I 
 observed in the blandest accents. The sun was a fool 
 to the smile that broke over his noble countenance. He 
 
 8 
 
1 14 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 took the weed — indeed, he took two — and, in the twink- 
 ling of an eye, we were as intimate as though we had 
 known one another for seven years. He expressed pro- 
 found regret at being unable to give me any information 
 respecting the final resting-places either of the Beef- 
 eater or the' Miller, but he assured me that " Jenny 
 Jones " was a road-side public-house not many yards 
 distant, where I might rely on getting a good glass of 
 ale. I asked him whether he had ever read Chateau- 
 briand, and I was amazed to find that he had not. I 
 reminded him that this was the most pathetic season of 
 the year, and directing his attention to the fading glories 
 of the foliage and the desolate aspect of the landscape, 
 I quoted some passages from my favorite French essay- 
 ist. " Sir," said I, " I adjure you by your brilliant but- 
 tons and the numbers flashing so radiantly from your 
 collar, never to forget that a moral character is attached 
 to autumnal scenes, the leaves falling like our years, 
 the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting 
 like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelli- 
 gence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the 
 river becoming frozen like our lives — all bear secret re- 
 lations to our destinies." In reply to these meditations 
 the policeman made a succession of unearthly noises 
 the most appalling I had ever heard. He seemed to 
 be suddenly bereft of humanity. I thought he must be 
 very ill indeed, and I was about to run for a doctor 
 when I was assured by a by-stander that there was no- 
 thing the matter with the man, and that he was only 
 talking Welsh. " Ah ! well," said I, " if that is all that 
 ails him, I won't let him off so easily. I will improve 
 the occasion still further." I asked him whether he had 
 ever read Alison'g History of Europe. He replied in the 
 
A rVET DAY AT LLANGOLLEN. nj 
 
 negative, adding tliat " he didn't want to ! " All this 
 time, mind you, we were standing upon the Bridge of 
 Llangollen. " Seven-and-twenty years," said I, " have 
 elapsed since Alison the historian visited your charming 
 little town. He stood upon this very spot and surveyed 
 the romantic scene with wonder and delight. It was 
 exactly at this time of the year. Returning to the 
 Hand Hotel, where he found, even as I have found, 
 excellent accommodation at a moderate charge, he re- 
 corded his sensations in the following language : — 
 " The impression we feel from the scenery of autumn is 
 accompanied with much exercise of thought j the leaves 
 then begin to fade from the trees ; the flowers and 
 shrubs, with which the fields are adorned in the summer 
 months, decay; the woods and groves are silent ; the 
 sun hinlself seems gradually to withdraw his light, or to 
 become enfeebled in his power. Who is there, who at 
 this season does not feel his mind impressed with a sen- 
 timent of melancholy ; or who is able to resist that cur- 
 rent of thought which, from such appearances of decay, 
 so naturally leads him to the solemn imagination of that 
 inevitable fate which is to bring on alike the decay of 
 life, of empire, and of nature itself?" " Friend of my 
 soul! what think you oithat?" " Well, sir," said the 
 policeman, " to be honest with you, I think it is uncom- 
 mon dry, and not meaning you an ill answer, I don't 
 care to listen to any more of it, so I'll bid you good 
 morning." " Away ! away to the mountain's brow ! " I 
 replied ; and taking me at my word, off he went at a 
 pace so rapid that two minutes had hardly passed ere 
 his manly form was lost to my longing gaze. I don't 
 suppose I shall ever lay eyes upon him again, and I'm 
 sure I don't care a fig-stalk whether or no. No sooner 
 
Il6 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 had the constable disappeared than, by the most tragi- - 
 cal of all coincidences, many things occurred to make 
 me feel most acutely the solitariness and discomfort of 
 my situation. The sky scowled ominously, the clouds 
 mustered in dismal battalions heavy as lead and black 
 as pitch, the wind sprang up fiercely from the south- 
 west, and the rain came down in torrents. The river 
 raced away at headlong speed, and the trees upon its 
 banks wrestled wildly with the storm. Next to seeing a 
 woman in a passion, which I hold to be the most mag- 
 nificent spectacle in the world, I delight to contemplate 
 the emotion of external nature : — 
 
 " In winter when the dismal rain 
 Comes down in slanting lines, 
 And Wind that grand old harper smites 
 His thunder -harp of pines," 
 
 then am I supremely happy. I love to see the ocean 
 flashing and foaming, the rivers rushing in vehement 
 tide, and the oaks writhing in the tempest. Look 
 where I might, as I stood majestic and alone upon 
 Llangollen Bridge, nature was in sublime disarray, and 
 I enjoyed the sight amazingly. The spirit of mischief 
 was a-foot ; the Dee looked as if it was mad ; even the 
 Ellesmere and Chester canal partook of the grand sen- 
 sation of the hour, and quickened its sluggish pace. 
 I verily believe that since that remarkable rainy period, 
 the Flood, there never was a deluge more overwhelm- 
 ing. It seemed to fall by the ton-weight, and the earth 
 smoked beneath the drenching vibration. There I 
 stood, the only human being out of doors at Llangollen. 
 Yes, there I stood, heroic and devoted, the martyr of 
 duty in thy cause, dear reader. I tried to put up my 
 
A WET JDAY A7^ LLA NGOLLEN. i j 7 
 
 umbrella. The wind wrung it out of my hands with no 
 more ceremony than if it had been the last rose of 
 summer. (It was a capital umbrella, allow lAe to ob- 
 serve, and I paid four-and-twenty shillings for it at Mr. 
 Truefit's, in Burlington Arcade.) It fell into the dark- 
 ling water beneath, and I doubt not that, at the rate 
 those waters were running, it was at Chester in half an 
 hour. For a moment I was alarmed — not for the sake 
 of my gingham, which is lost as irretrievably as if I had 
 lent it— but because, on glancing towards the summits 
 of Barber's Hill, Eglwyseg Rocks, and Dinas Bran 
 Castle, once the residence of — (how the devil shall I 
 ever spell it ?) — Madog ap Gruffyd Maclor, I saw that 
 those lofty eminences were enshrouded with dense 
 rolling vapors, of very peculiar color and formation. 
 " Gracious Goodness ! " I exclaimed in an agony of 
 terror, " can it be that my old friend the London Fog 
 has found me out, and pursued me to the fastnesses of 
 Cambria ! Wretch that I am ! Whither shall I fly 
 from that pest and bother of my life ? I will return to 
 mine inn and go to bed." This inglorious design I 
 should probably have carried into effect, though it was 
 only half -past two in the afternoon, but that, on looking 
 up again, I s.iw that the mists were being rapidly dis- 
 persed, and that the mountain-tops stood out once 
 more in well-defined relief against the storm-fraught 
 sky. Soon the blast blew more fiercely than ever, and 
 the rain came down in pattering torrents ; but I was 
 nothing moved. So that the London Fog comes not 
 near me I care not. "Blow, winds, and crack your 
 cheeks ! Rage ! blow ! I tax not you, you elements, 
 with unkindness.". Certainly not, so that ye bring not 
 with ye "the London particular." Wet as a fish, I 
 
1 1 8 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 sallied forth, all umbrellaless as I was, in search of the 
 picturesque and beautiful. Pennant, the eminent anti- 
 quarian and tourist, writing about Llangollen eighty- 
 years ago, remarked that he knew of no place in North 
 Wales " where the refined lover of picturesque scenes, 
 the sentimental, or the romantic, can give fuller indul- 
 gence to his inclination. No place abounds more with 
 various rides or solemn walks. From this central spot, 
 he may, as I have done, visit the seat of Owen Glyndwr, 
 the fine valleys of the Dee, proceed to the source of 
 the river beyond the great Llyn Tegid, or pass the 
 mountains to the fertile vale of Clwyd, and on to the 
 sea.'' I have followed sedulously in the footsteps of 
 old Pennant. I have seen everything he saw, and a gresCt 
 deal more besides ; but if you suppose that I am going 
 . to describe it all to you, you are deucedly mistaken., I 
 rambled about the Geraunt, the Pont Cyssylltan Aque- 
 duct, the Du Viaduct, Crow Castle, Wynnstay, Glyn 
 Ceiriog, and Cherk Castle. I sentimentalized in the 
 Cottage of Plass Newydd, where formerly dwelt in 
 inviolate friendship Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss 
 Ponsonby, known as " the Ladies of Llangollen," and 
 I trudged wearily along the Canal amid soaking rains 
 all the way to Valle Crucis Abbey, where, after I had 
 been kept ringing in the wet at the western entrance 
 for the best part of half an hour, the door was at last 
 opened to me by an elderly gentlewoman, whom I 
 should very' much like to marry, and who told me that 
 in her opinion it was not at all unlikely that the Abbey 
 would one day pass again into the hands of the Catho- 
 lics. " Look ! " said she, " at what has already hap- 
 pened in the Principality. The Earl of Denbigh, the 
 Marquis of Bute, and the Marquis of Ripon have all 
 
TOWN TREES AND COUNTRY TREES. ug 
 
 become Catholics ! " " So, indeed, they have, madam," 
 I replied, " and permit me to remark that I am cold 
 and hungry, and as wet as the sea ; so I'll bid you good- 
 bye, and if you should ever meet anybody who asks you 
 for me, be sure to give him half-a-crown." Miss Lloyd 
 promised to do so — bless her dear heart — and we 
 parted. Returning to Llangollen, I had tea at the 
 house of a charming family, to whom I was introduced 
 by an old friend. One member of that happy house- 
 hold, a diamond-eyed little girl of some six or seven 
 summers, lent me a kiss, and nothing that I remem- 
 ber of Llangollen pleases me better than the memory 
 of that kiss. I hope to return it to the lender before 
 long. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say that the net result of m)- 
 experience of this place is that I should dearl)' love to 
 live here. I have, as the tourists say, " done " Llan- 
 gollen completely. I know it as well as I know Tra- 
 falgar Square, but I like it far better ; and if my readers 
 would wish to see me happily settled here for the re- 
 mainder of my days, they have only to subscribe a 
 sufficient sum for the purchase of a freehold cottage and 
 a competency as modest as myself. 
 
 TOWN TREES AND COUNTRY TREES. ■ 
 
 TT is of vegetation that we who dwell in a great city 
 most grievously feel the want. Seas, lakes, moun- 
 tains, towering cliffs, sparkling cascades, and foaming 
 cataracts are no doubt magnificent achievements of 
 
120 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 nature, but like all other sublimities they are of rare 
 occurrence ; and even though you should live in the 
 country, you may have to travel many miles before you 
 look on them. But the silent, brilliant blossoming of 
 vegetation — its refreshing verdure, and the abundance, 
 variety, and loveliness of its forms, are free alike to all 
 who le.ad a rural life. To enjoy them, all that is neces- 
 sary is that you should be remote from cities. It is for 
 the green fields and the waving trees that the heart longs 
 with a filial yearning ; for, as a German writer has well 
 observed,. " Nothing more clearly expresses the mater- 
 nal character of nature than vegetation." Wonderful 
 are the works of man — mighty the mutations that his 
 genius can accomplish on the face of the material 
 world — and sad, alas ! the havoc that his cunning hand 
 can spread over a smiling landscajje. Look at the 
 characteristic life of the age — its vast material develop- 
 ment — its irresistible and crushing growth of mechanism 
 — its swarming towns — its distracting mills — its noisy 
 agitation — its chaos of beliefs and unbeliefs. All these 
 things betoken the vascularity of the national heart, and 
 the vigorous vitality of the national mind — but they are 
 not without their alloy. The turbulent cares of com- 
 merce alienate us from the tender sympathies of nature ; 
 we renounce her gentle sway for an inexorable tyranny, 
 and forsake her fair domains, her warbling woodlands, 
 her shady valleys, and her sunny hills that we may sur- 
 round ourselves with the heartless conventionalities of 
 an artificial existence. But 
 
 " Man, though he may build a town, 
 Could never make a thistle-down." 
 
 And if the city proclaims what he can do, the country, 
 with equal significance, prescribes the limits of his 
 
TOWN TREES AND COUNTRY TREES. 121 
 
 power. " It is pleasant," says Burnet, " to look upon 
 trees in summer covered with green leaves, decked with 
 blossoms, or laden with fruit, and casting a pleasant 
 shade ; but to consider how this tree sprang from a little 
 seed, how nature shaped and fed it till it came to this 
 greatness is a more rational pleasure." Here, indeed, 
 is a theme for philosophic inquiry, but it is somewhat 
 beyond the mastery of " a mere molecular accident" 
 like man. The affinity between the destiny of that same 
 " accident " and the doom of trees did not escape the 
 notice of Homer, whose brief meditation on the matter 
 was Englished thus by Alexander Pope : — 
 " The sons of men like leaves of trees are found 
 Now green in youth, now withering on the ground ; " 
 
 It is a comfortable thought for poor men to think 
 that there are things which money may not create, and 
 that among them are esteem and love and — venerable 
 trees. Old trees in their living state are beyond the 
 command of cash. Rivers leave their beds, run into 
 cities, and traverse mountains for cash. Obelisks and 
 arches, railways and viaducts, palaces and temples, 
 amphitheatres and pyramids, rise up like exhalations at 
 its bidding. Even the free spirit of man, the only great 
 thing on earth, crouches -and cowers in its presence. It 
 passes away and vanishes before venerable trees. It is 
 in the swarming streets, aye, amid the turbulence and 
 confusion of " roaring Temple Bar" itself, that the fancy 
 dwells most fondly upon forest scenery. Then and 
 there it is that you realize in imagination, though not, 
 alas ! in vision, the exquisite aspirations of the poet : — 
 
 " In the leafy forest, 
 
 By the murmuring stream, 
 
 Xet me lay my weary head and 
 
 Dream ! dream ! dream ! 
 
1 2 2 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 Gentle Bard, thou child of nature, 
 
 With thy heart's full glow, 
 ' Wert thou made in life to struggle ? ' 
 
 Ah I no ! no ! 
 
 Sordid thoughts o'er Mammon brooding 
 
 Bidding honor cease ; •- 
 
 Malice fell and loud contention I 
 Peace ! peace ! peace ! 
 
 Hollow fraud and deep designing 
 
 Dead to Brother's woe, 
 Cruel rank, more cruel riches I 
 
 Go ! go ! go ! 
 
 Gently in the leafy forest, 
 
 By the murmuring streams, 
 Let me lull my weary heart in 
 
 Dreams 1 dreams 1 dreams I " 
 
 How delightful ! How pleasant — how passing pleas- 
 ant it would be to have nothing else than this to do and 
 to be well paid for doing it ! A strange thought it is 
 when gazing on a great city, to revert, if not in memory at 
 least in fancy, to the tirae when that mighty aggregation 
 of human dwellings was a forest primeval. His Royal 
 Highness, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, plunges us in a 
 sea of mystic reveries when he stands upon the stage 
 like a melancholy human cypress, and calls upon us to 
 trace in imagination the noble dust of Alexander till we 
 find it stopping a bung-hole ! A wild conceit, truly, and 
 full of mournful meditation ; but would it be less a 
 romantic effort of intellect to remount the river of time 
 and recall the days when Ludgate Hill was as desolate 
 as Dartmoor? Yet such days there once were. When 
 the postman, with his smart double-knock, was as yet 
 undreamt of — ^when the express-train, that consummate 
 triumph of science, was still deep in the womb of time 
 
TOWN TREES AND COUNTRY TREES. 123 
 
 — when sunbeams, busy with painting roses, had not as 
 yet been impressed into the service of painting portraits 
 — and when the electric telegraph had not even struck a 
 poet's fancy as the creation of imagination picturing the 
 impossible, that was the time when Ludgate Hill was in 
 the country,and they who climbed its peaceful breast were 
 free of mountain solitude ! That was the time when 
 deep and solemn masses of foliage crowned the summit 
 of the eminence and the trees were resonant with their 
 melodious denizens ; that was the time when silver dew 
 still sparkled on the grassy carpet — when the fox glove 
 set up its tapers from the cleft of the stone — when the 
 blue dragon-fl,y rocked -itself on the long blades of grass 
 — ^when the butterfly w^inged its golden flight from daisy 
 to honeysuckle, and the bee hummed her busy paeans in 
 the blossoms of the linden. Ah ! well may we say it, 
 " nous avons changi tout cela.'' Lindon and London go 
 well in sound, but very ill in sense. Ludgate Hill is 
 now in the city, and sad is the change that has come 
 over its destiny. For shepherd's crooks we have now 
 the whips of cabmen and omnibus drivers ; we have 
 exchanged the song of the nightingale. for the insolent 
 chirps of the sparrow; forisees, we have beetles; for 
 butterflies, we have " blacks ; " and for silver dew we 
 have a filthy yellow fog. But our human sympathies 
 are not to be thus summarily dealt with. " The feelings 
 can't be Smothered like royal children in the Tower," 
 as one of Dickens' heroes has profoundly observed, and 
 like the man in Xenophon who had two souls — a soul 
 for right and a soul for riot, even amid the tumult of 
 traffic and the ceaseless din of cominerce our hearts are 
 touched to think of the placid joys of external nature, 
 and our ears are still finely attuned to die harmonies of 
 
1 2 4 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 wood and wave. There is something pathetically ludi- 
 crous in the fondness with which we still cling to the . 
 word " garden," as applied to the filthiest and most dis- 
 gusting purlieus in London. That phrase is associated 
 in our fancy with all that is most radiant in color, and 
 freshest and most delicious in perfume ; but how are 
 these expectations realized in such parterres as Hatton 
 Garden, Covent Garden, Savile Garden, or Baldwin's 
 Gardens, where tulips are represented by paving-stones, 
 lamp-posts supply the place of geraniums, chimney-j)ots 
 do duty for roses, and the exhalations from the sewers 
 are substitutes for the south wind " breathing o'er a bed 
 of violets ? " To give the name of " garden " to such 
 unlovely localities is, indeed, a bitter mockery. But the 
 saddest satire of all is a tree in the streets of London. 
 The destinies of country and of city trees are strikingly 
 dissimilar ; and as there is something happy beyond 
 expression in the former, so is there something unspeak- 
 ably mournful in the latter. It is scarcely possible 'to 
 imagine anything in nature more joyous than a country 
 tree. Planted in a spot where sun and zephyr are alike 
 of easy access to it, tossing its tassels in the air and 
 flinging its green flags to the breeze, it is as beautiful 
 an embodiment of life, joy, and happiness as vision can 
 realize or fancy depict. From the roots to the tips of 
 its very leaves there is such a singular interleaving and 
 budding — such a peculiar transition of colors and shapes, 
 as can with difficulty be described by pen or pencil. 
 The waving outline of a tree is in itself one of the love- 
 liest objects in nature ; and when the breeze rushes like 
 a spirit of life through the branches, and the light of the 
 sun streams through the delicate curling leaves, rising 
 and sinking like a finely-woven net of azure — language 
 
TOWN TREES AND COUNTRY TREES. 125 
 
 is powerless to mark the never-ending, ever-changing 
 play of lines and lights with which nature enchants and 
 ever surprises us anew. " Masses of cypress in long 
 avenues have an imposing effect," says Dr. Hermann 
 Masius ; " they likewise, whether isolated or in clumps, 
 form a magnificent ornament for the front of palaces, 
 where they gain in real artistic importance in proportion 
 to the boldness and' breadth of the horizontal lines of 
 the architecture. In the neighborhood of fountains they 
 possess a peculiar beauty. The rising and falling sheaf 
 of water, the magic play of colors in the myriad drops 
 glittering with sunbeams — tlie luxuriant green of moss 
 and lily present here a joyous, inexhaustible fulness of 
 life beside the sublime melancholy of death, silent and 
 solitary. But the abrupt contrast is softened by the 
 gushing murmur of the spring, which in its perfect 
 rhythm of coming and going lulls the soul into a state 
 of dreamy yearning." A liawthorn sparkling with blos- 
 soms of white and pink, and aromatizing the winds that 
 dally with it, is also a beautiful object. And, oh ! what 
 a faiiy picture when the hoar-frost hangs its diamonds 
 on the dusky crown of the fir I But this must be in the 
 country. Fir and hawthorn have the same heart-broken 
 aspect in the society of lamp-posts j and a cypress in a 
 city churchyard looks like a vegetable sweep. There is 
 a tree in Cheapside whose destiny is sufficiently misera- 
 ble to engage in its behalf the sympathies of the civil- 
 ized world. It stands and has stood for years — unhap- 
 py vegetable ! — at the corner of Wood Street, where it 
 has witnessed in its lifetime more of row and bother 
 than would suffice for the experience of a whole forest. 
 Its branches are gaunt and haggard, its leaves are 
 crumpled and begrimmed with soot, its trunk is lean 
 
126 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 and scraggy, and the smoke of ten thousand chimneys 
 has made its baric as black as your shoe. Little with 
 ered twigs are continually falling from it, and its leaves 
 resemble the papillotes of a slatternly maid of all work. 
 Sooty sparrows perch about its creaking branches, and 
 rascally town-bred crows were for years accustomed to 
 build their nests upon its topmost boughs. But. the 
 crows have had at last the good, taste to move into 
 country quarters. Humboldt says of trees that " there 
 is in them an expression of longing beyond belief when 
 they stand so firmly planted and with so circumscribed 
 a sphere of action, while with their tops they move as 
 far as they are able beyond the boundary of their roots. 
 I know nothing in nature so formed to be a symbol of 
 longing ? " If this be so, how tragic is the destiny of th'at 
 vmlucky tree in Cheapside ! for though its aspirations 
 be with the stars, its conversation is with the chimney- 
 pots. There is not a day I see that tree that I do not 
 feel inclined to address it in the words of Lear to the 
 Earl of Kent in the stocks : " What's he that hath so 
 much thy place mistook to set thee here ? " And indeed 
 it is to be wished that the lot of this unhappy vegetable 
 could attract the sympathy of public writers. Poets, 
 who scruple not to sacrifice common sense to the ex- 
 igencies of their rhetoric when singing the sorrows of 
 "An Old Arm Chair," might surely spare a tear for a 
 living creature, and the most hapless of all living crea- 
 tures — the tree in Cheapside. 
 
" cheek:' 
 
 " CHEEK.'' 
 
 127 
 
 " /^HEEK— The side of the face below the eye." 
 ^^ Such is Doctor Johnson's arid definition of one of 
 the most delightful and suggestive words in the English 
 language. Taken in a merely physical sense woman's 
 cheek is enchanting to behold, yet more so to kiss ; 
 taken in a metaphorical sense, woman's " cheek " is 
 simply the most marvellous thing in creation. It is 
 lofty as the sky, profound as the sea, boundless and 
 illimitable as space. It is worthy of remark that the 
 word " Cheek " has a talismanic influence on poets, 
 invariably awakening them to strains of sweeter melody 
 and more exalted eloquence. The immortal aspiration 
 of Romeo, that he were a glove upon Juliet's hand, 
 that he might touch her cheek, is a pretty and fanciful ■ 
 thought which will everywhere find ready acceptance 
 with lovers and glovers, but its splendor pales in com- 
 parison with the magnificent exclamation of the Monta- 
 gue on viewing the senseless body of his mistress : — 
 
 " Thou art not conquered ! Beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there." 
 
 Very sublime, too, and altogether worthy of Shakspeare 
 is the famous simile : — "Her beauty hangs upon the 
 cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear." 
 Indeed, when we come to analyze that idea, and to think 
 of the greater effulgence which even a diamond of the 
 first water would acquire from contrast with the dusky 
 ear of an Ethiopian woman, we are compelled to admit 
 
128 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 that no finer or more expressive metaphor can possibly 
 be found in the whole range of poetry, whether ancient 
 or modern. There are four lines of verse whose parent- 
 age I have never been able to trace, but which I would 
 rather have written than dine with the Lord Mayor : — 
 
 " Daughter of the rose, whose cheeks unite 
 The differing titles of the red and white, 
 Which heaven's alternate beauty well display 
 The blush of morning and the milky way." 
 
 I have never yet had enough of pancakes, nor do I 
 suppose that I ever shall ; but I do declare in all sin- 
 cerity ajid truth that if I could conscientiously affirm 
 that I am the author of those lines I would not surrender 
 the glory of such a boast for all the pancakes ever fried. 
 The very thought of a lady's cheeks sufficed to inspire 
 Dr. John Donne, but an indiilerent bard on ordinary 
 occasions, to such flights of fancy as would have done 
 no dishonor to the most illustrious poet. Take for ex- 
 ample, these noble verses on Mrs. Drury : — 
 
 " We understood 
 Her by her sight ; her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
 Every one fonns his own ideal of supreme beauty. 
 Mine is a woman with cheeks plump and red as a pair 
 of pulpit cushions. Such cheeks look uncommonly well 
 upon the male face also. My Apollo is a man of whom 
 it may be said, in the words of the old song, that 
 
 " He's tall and he's straight as the pop«lar tree, 
 
 And his cheeks are as red as the rose; 
 And he looks like a squire of high degree 
 When dressed in his Sunday clothes."- 
 
''CHEEK." 129 
 
 The " damask cheek " of the young woman who never 
 told her love, but let concealment prey upon it " like a 
 worm i' the bud," must have been beautiful to behold ; 
 but such youHg women are rare to find now-a-days. I 
 know a girl — But there ! the least said is the soonest 
 mended. But most assuredly she is a damsel of whom 
 we may sing in the words of Gray — 
 
 " O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move 
 The bloom o£ young desire — the purple light of love." 
 
 She loves, sweet pet, and cares not who knows it; nor 
 need she, for she is as good as gold. " Bold in her face 
 and fayre and red of hew," — to quote the words of 
 Chaucer, and there is no more blameless girl within the 
 four seas of England. She is too good for me, so a 
 better man may have her and welcome. 
 
 " Who can curiously behold 
 ' The splendor and the sheen of beauty's cheek, 
 Nor feel the heait can never all grow old ? ' " 
 
 asks a poet, once in great renown. And, indeed, beauty's 
 " cheek " is wonderful in more senses than one. A 
 friend of mine — a parson — labors under a strange in- 
 firmity of vision and memorj', which incapacitates him 
 from distinguishing between any two women. To him 
 they are all alike. In this distressing state of circum- 
 stances his wife hit on the ingenious expedient of stick- 
 ing a wafer on one of her cheeks in the hope that he 
 might thus be enabled to know her from any other 
 member of her sex. It may hardly be believed, but it is 
 none the less true, that even this precaution has not 
 prevented her husband from falling into the mistake of 
 occasionally kissing the wrong woman, an error which 
 
 9 
 
130 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 he seems rather to relish. " My dear," he said to his 
 wife the other day, " I have no words to express my ad- 
 miration of your cheelc." " My cheek, indeed ! " ex- 
 postulated the indignant lady, "your own is past 
 endurance." But this anecdote is a digression. Having 
 discoursed thus eloquently upon " cheek " in its physical 
 fi.p'nification, let us now consider it in its figurative 
 meaning. How the word ever came to be used as a 
 synonym for impudence, audacit}^ or effrontery is a mys- 
 tery for philologists to solve. Suffice it to say that it 
 is notoriously susceptible in popular parlance of that 
 interpretation ; and that so interpreted it is probably 
 the most precious gift ever bestowed by Nature upon a 
 human being, be that being man or woman. The man 
 who has not " cheek " will never get on. He hardly 
 deserves to be accounted a man at all. He is no better 
 than a mouse. The woman who has not " cheek " — But 
 Where's the use of talking ! there is happily no such 
 woman. I have written upwards of 700 sonnets on my 
 Belinda's cheek, in the material import of the phrase ; 
 but if I were to take to writing sonnets on her " cheek " 
 in the symbolical sense, I might do nothing else all the 
 days of my life, though I should live to the age of 
 Methusaleh. I have not the slightest doubt that a lady 
 I know could find it in her conscience to knock at Buck- 
 ingham Palace or Windsor Castle and ask our Sovereign 
 lady the Queen for the loan of the crown, ball, and 
 sceptre. Having got them — supposing such a thing 
 possible — a sudden access of bashfulness would prob- 
 ably supervene and she would be ashamed to return 
 them. 
 
 I never yet met a woman who could tell even a fib. 
 They don't know how, bless their veracious hearts ! — 
 
"" CHEEK." 131 
 
 they would not understand-how to set>aboutit. Byron 
 is no longer read. So at least the critics tell us, and I 
 ardently hope they are right. He does not deserve to 
 be^read. His works ought to be burnt in the market- 
 place if only on account of this infamous triplet in Don 
 Juan : — 
 
 " Now what I love in women is they won't 
 Or can't do otherwise than lie, and do it 
 With sucli a grace that truth seems falsehood to it." 
 
 A more scandalous libel upon the sex was never 
 penned since pens were first invented. My experience 
 of women is that they are incomparably more truthful 
 than men. But if more truthful, they are also more 
 cheeky. Man's cheek is at best but a poor pitiful thing 
 in comparison with woman's. I do believe that there 
 are women who could wheedle the whisky out of your 
 punch, or " steal the shoe off a racing horse," as Petro- 
 nius Arbiter ingeniously suggests. And yet men have 
 done some cheeky things before now. There is no 
 denying that cheek is indispensable for prosperity in the 
 world. Without it, be your worth what it may, you have 
 not a chance of getting on. Modest merit seeks the 
 shade, and, as surely as it does, it is left there. " Fortune 
 favors the brave," which means the cheeky, and no as- 
 piration is more essential to success in life than that of 
 the Scotchman in the play, " May Heaven grant us a 
 gude conceit 0' oursels 1 " 
 
132 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING MAD. 
 
 "\ ^ THAT a pleasant thing it must be to be mad ! 
 From this rapturous reflection melancholy mad- 
 ness must, of course, be excluded. Insanity of that 
 kind is indeed a deplorable affliction, and may Heaven 
 in its mercy avert it from all whom we love ! Nor is 
 there much enjoyment to be derived from that sort of 
 madness which, blowing from the " Nor'-nor'-East," 
 leaves a man wise enough to know '' a hawk from a 
 handsaw," when the wind is southerly. Such was Ham- 
 let's lunacy, and a pretty kettle of fish he made of it. 
 " Insaniunt omnes." We are all of us mad in a certain 
 sense ; but madness of that partial type tends rather to 
 discomfort than felicity. The man who, having in his 
 pocket twopence to buy a broom withal, and in his arm 
 strength enough to use it, is yet so crazy in his aspira- 
 tions after royalty that he would rather be King of 
 Spain than a crossing-sweeper in Pall Mall, is a lunatic 
 who goes about with his life in his hand, and whose 
 hand will be found empty one of these fine days — " 
 
 " Oh! silly, silly Don Alphonso, 
 I really wonder how you can go on so ! " 
 
 Then, again, there are people in private life who, 
 though sane enough on all other points, are yet per- 
 petually prompted to go mad upon some one particular 
 question, in respect of which they act in a manner alike 
 injurious to their own happiness and that of their neigh- 
 bors. Persons of this semi-delirious class are everlast- 
 
ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING MAD. 133 
 
 • 
 
 ingly getting into some dismal dilemma. They will 
 sing, though they have neither voice nor ear ; ride, 
 though they hardly know a horse from a cow ; row, 
 though they scarcely know a boat from a washing-tub ; 
 spend their money like water, though when their cash is 
 gone, they will have no other refuge than the work- 
 house ; drink Vienna beer or South African sherry ; 
 and undertake the management of other folks' business, 
 though they lack the wit to keep their own straight. 
 To this nondescript 'class belonged the lady of whom 
 Pope has sung — 
 
 " But some strange graces and od'd flights she had, 
 Was just not ugly and was just not mad." 
 
 Such people are to be pitied, not envied. No. As 
 in learning, so in lunacy, you must drink deep or taste 
 not the Pierian spring. When Dryden uttered the im- 
 mortal saying, " There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, 
 which none but madmen know," he had in view not 
 your poor half-and-half lunatic, of whom all that can 
 be said is that he has " a tile loose," or that he 
 hasn't got " all his change," or that he hasn't " all 
 his buttons on," or that there is " a bee in his bonnet," 
 but your out-and-out Bedlamite, who is stark, staring 
 mad, as mad as a March hare, or as mad as that match- 
 less type of insanity, " in excelsis" a hatter. I am cred- 
 ibly assured, having made special inquiry on the sub- 
 ject, that Messrs. Lincoln and Bennett and Mr. Christy 
 are simply the three happiest men in London ; and as 
 for our four-legged fellow-creatures, what being that ever 
 trod the earth can be half so happy as a hare in the 
 month of March ? Whether a hare chews the cud or 
 not is little to the purpose. No doubt he cud (could) 
 
134 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 if he chose, as the old joke goes. Anyhow, chewing or 
 not chewing, he is the gayest, nimblest, jolliest little 
 creature under the sun ; and never is he so gay as when 
 hopelessly bereft of reason, intelligence, or instinct (call 
 it what you will) in the delightful month of March. 
 " There are," says Locke, " degrees of madness as of 
 folly — the disorderly jumbling of ideas together in some 
 more, in some less." In a March hare it is " more," 
 not less, and the result is glorious. The vernal fresh- 
 ness of the air, its pure, bluff, pungent quality, has an 
 ecstatic effect upon the hare, exhilarating his spirits in 
 a marvellous manner, and so "jumbling" his ideas that 
 he attains the very zenith of joyous and irresponsible 
 insanity. How he speeds along to be sure ! The wind 
 is hardly so swift. And how picturesque is the scud of 
 his tail as he races with dazzling celerity over meadow 
 and mountain, moss and moor ! People who hanker 
 after humanity, and think it a fine thing to be a man, 
 would probably prefer to be a hatter rather than a 
 March hare, but I am not of the number. True, there 
 are people who have tried before now to make a " hare " 
 of me, but they have not gone about it in the right way. 
 There is no use in their trying to make a January or 
 February hare of me. Let them make a March hare 
 of me, and they will do me the greatest service imagin- 
 able. The next pleasantest thing to being a hare of 
 that epoch, or a hatter all the year round, is assuredly 
 to be a poet, for your true poets are the wildest of mad 
 men — 
 
 " The dog-star rages ; nay, 'tis past a doubt 
 All Bedlam or Parnassus is let outj 
 Fire in each eye and papers in each hand, 
 They rave, recite, and madden round the land." 
 
ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING MAD. 135 
 
 I don't remember to have ever met a man more ec- 
 statically happy than the poet in whose company I had 
 the good fortune to travel from London to Lowestoft 
 on Saturday last. What nonsense he did talk to be 
 sure, and what delight he took in talking it !■ His 
 verses, which he repeated to me with the fluency of a 
 mountain river after heavy floods, were the veriest rub- 
 bish, the arrant " rot," that it ever entered into 
 the most disordered brain of moon-struck humanity to 
 concoct. But what of that ? To him they were sub- 
 lime as the most inspired utterances of Homer or Shake- 
 speare ; nay, much more so, for he assured me with the 
 utmost solemnity that both these immortal " bards" were 
 " duffers " — that was his very phrase — and that he alone 
 of all men, living or dead, had ever written a line of 
 genuine poetry. Furthermore, he assured me that he 
 was both the King of England and the Pope of Rome, — 
 a strange combination of dignities ; that he owned the 
 sun, the sea, and the moon, and the Great Eastern 
 Railway ; that he had only to say the word and the 
 train in which we were travelling would be transformed 
 into a baboon ; and that he was the Queen's mother 
 and the Prince of Wales' uncle. I could not quite 
 understand how he made out this marvellous relation- 
 ship, but he established it to his own complete satis- 
 faction, and evidently derived supreme pleasure from 
 the thought of his illustrious and eccentric lineage. 
 There was no cloud of sorrow or solicitude upon his 
 brow. Who he was or what was his social position, I 
 have not the least idea, but he looked and dressed like 
 a gentleman, had plenty of money — as he proved to me 
 by the frequent exhibition of his well-filled pocket-book 
 — and was to all appearance without a care in the 
 
136 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 world. He sang very well indeed ; danced about the 
 carriage on the lightest and most fantastic of toes ; and 
 continually made remarks which forcibly reminded one 
 of Polonius's criticism upon Hamlet's conversation — 
 " How pregnant sometimes his replies are ! a happiness 
 that often madness hits on which reason and sanity 
 could not so prosperously be delivered of." For ex- 
 ample, he laughed uproariously at the notion of Mr. 
 Gladstone, tired of politics, taking to polemics by way 
 of recreation in his old age, and observed that that 
 highly-gifted personage would be much better employed 
 in his favorite pastime of cutting down trees than in 
 setting Christians of various denominations by the ears. 
 He told me that he meant to write to the People's Wil- 
 liam on the subject, and that he would turn that splen- 
 didly-gifted individual into a grass-hopper if he did not 
 mend his ways. Altogether, my strange fellow-traveller 
 reminded me not unfrequently of that witty Bedlamite 
 who, being asked by Tom Brown, of The London Spy, 
 why he had not married the woman for whom he had 
 gone mad, replied, with a waggish wink, " Ah 1 no ; I 
 am mad enough in all conscience, but not quite so mad 
 as that comes to." There is a good story, too, about 
 a merry little maniac who was asked to explain how it 
 was he had come to be imprisoned. " Well," said he, 
 "it happened thus: I am the only sane man in the 
 world. Everybody else is mad ; but as they make the 
 majority, and I am in a glorious minority of- one, they 
 have taken a mean advantage of me and locked me up ; 
 but I am happier than all the rest put together. I de- 
 spise them." How pleasant — ^how passing pleasant — it 
 must be to eat of the " insane root," which, as Banquo 
 assures us, " takes the reason prisoner," and to find that 
 
OJV THE PLEASURES OF BEING MAD. 
 
 m 
 
 It transports one into an imaginary world, unvexed by 
 the worries of our work-a-day existence. If you would 
 see true happiness visit a lunatic asylum. There will 
 you find monarchs who have the splendors of royalty 
 without its cares ; heroes who have the pomp and cir- 
 cumstance of glorious war without its perils ; dunces 
 who are wits, scholars and orators without the fatigue 
 of mental culture ; and paupers who, without a shilling 
 in tlie world, deem themselves, and so deeming, are, to 
 all intents and purposes, richer than the Rothschilds 
 and the Barings. 
 
 " They jest : their words are loose 
 As heaps of sand, and scattered wide from Sense, 
 So high they're mounted on their airy thrones." 
 
 Never shall I forget the millionaire with whom I had 
 financial negotiations in a county asylum one day that 
 I visited that noble institution some few years ago. 
 He was a droll little fellow, as round as a water-butt, 
 with very curly hair and piercing grey eyes as sharp as 
 gimlets. Coming up to me with the blandest imagin- 
 able smile, he shook me by the hand with as much cor- 
 diality 'as though he had known me from my birth. He 
 asked me my name and profession. I told him both. 
 You should have seen the look of mingled pity and 
 contempt with which he surveyed me from head to 
 heels. "A literary man, indeed ! Then you must be 
 as poor as Lazarus. I dare say you haven't three 
 halfpence in the world." I replied that I believed I 
 could manage to muster that number of coins, but that 
 he was right enough in supposing that I was not a rich 
 man. " I should think not, indeed. Why, you look as 
 if you hadn't half enough to eat. But I dare say you 
 
138 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 have a wife and nineteen children ? " I answered em- 
 phatically in the negative. " Ah ! well," he rejoined, 
 '' it is all the better for the wife and the children that 
 you have neither ; but you're as poor as a rat, that's 
 very certain, for I never knew a literary man who 
 wasn't ; but, never mind, conft along with me and I 
 will get you out of the cold." I followed him to a desk 
 near the window. He took pen and paper, and there 
 and then wrote me out a check for ;£'5, 000,000 sterling 
 upon the Governor and Company of the Bank of Eng- 
 land. " Take that, old boy," he said, " and be sure 
 that you make them pay you in gold, for their ' flimsies ' 
 are only fit to light your pipe with. Good-bye ! When 
 you want a million or two drop me a line.'' I thanked 
 him heartily and off he went. But mark the craft of 
 the man. I was in eager conversation with the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, the Emperor of all the Russias 
 and King Nebuchadnezzar, when I felt a gentle tap 
 upon my shoulder. Turning round I saw my bene- 
 factor. He winked slyly, and with finger on his lip 
 beckoned me mysteriously into a corner. " Look here," 
 he said, when I had followed him to his retreat ; " the 
 richest men in the world may be in temporary want of 
 cash. That is my case. I think I understood you to 
 say you had a matter of three halfpence about you. 
 Lend it to me, and you shall have interest at the rate of 
 10 per cent, per annum." Dazzled by the prospect of 
 so profitable an investment, I lent him the money. 
 Beaming and blooming all over with happiness, my 
 little friend bounded off like an antelope (fat,) and 
 from that day to this I have never laid eyes upon him. 
 Nor have I heard anything about either my principal 
 or my interest " Ah ! " thought I to myself, " how 
 
ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING MAD. 133 
 
 many men there be 'in full possession of their senses 
 who are not half so happy as that hair-brained but 
 sunny-hearted financier ! " No wonder that confirmed 
 madmen live to great ages. " They dwell," observed 
 to me the physician of a celebrated asylum, " in an 
 ideal world of their own. Take them out of it ; restore 
 them to reason ; let them see life as it really is and the 
 sight would kill them. They would die in four and 
 twenty hours." It is worthy of remark that — except, 
 perhaps, in the case of poor Ophelia and one or two 
 others who are the martyrs of melancholia — people 
 who go mad upon the stage are always the merrier for 
 their madness. It is " de rigueur " that a demented 
 woman shall come on in a garland of straw, and tear it 
 to pieces before she goes off. She invariably laughs 
 and dances, and looks as radiant as a sunbeam. 
 " There," exclaims Mr. Puff in The Critic, when Tilbur- 
 ina has thus demeaned herself to the infinite enjoyment 
 of the audience, " could you ever wish to see anybody 
 madder than that." A white dress is also essential to 
 lunacy, and with reference to the more or less haughty 
 airs that the insane assume, whether upon the stage or 
 in real life, it has been observed, drolly enough, that 
 some people go mad in white muslin, others in white 
 satin. But whether in muslin or satin their happiness 
 appears to increase according as — to quote the tall 
 language of Mr. Gladstone — " they rise higher into the 
 regions of transcendental obscurantism." The reason 
 why the mad must of necessity be happier than the sane 
 is, that the latter are subject to those sad vicissitudes of 
 fate of which the former know nothing. Bankruptcy, 
 whether national or personal, and the long train of sor- 
 rows consequent on the loss of friends, the perfidy of 
 
I40 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 foes, and the malignant freaks of destiny are powerless 
 to sadden the soul of him who has made unto himself 
 a fantastic empire, where he rules with undisputed 
 sway. It is the sane who are hurt by the slings and, 
 arrows of outrageous fortune. Your intrenchant lunatic 
 laughs at these things, so true is it, as already quoted, 
 that, " there is a pleasure, sure, in being mad which none 
 but madmen know." The reader is at liberty to draw 
 what inferences he pleases respecting the mental con- 
 dition of the writer. 
 
 RAMSGATE ON HER GOOD BEHA VIOR. 
 
 (~\^ ! solitude, where are the charms that sages 
 have found in thy face ? " In Ramsgate. 
 " What ? Ramsgate, in the Isle of Thanet ? " " Yes, 
 to be sure." " You never mean it ? " " Ay, but I do." 
 " What ! " you again exclaim in amazement, " Rams- 
 gate, the roaring, the rollicking, the rampant ! Rams- 
 gate, swarming with excursionists, nigger melodists, 
 brass bands, street preachers, showmen, tumblers, 
 tramps, pick-pockets and tract distributors ! Rams- 
 gate, whose streets are crowded with flies and omni- 
 buses, whose sea is cut up into lanes and alleys of 
 bathing machines, and whose sands are all alive with 
 children and nurses ! You don't mean to tell me that 
 that is the Ramsgate where the charms of solitude are 
 to be found ? " " No ; I do not. I never said so. You 
 take me up before I have fallen. The Ramsgate you 
 depict is hateful to me as the gates of Orcus. You are 
 
RAMSGATE ON HER GOOD BEHAVIOR. 141 
 
 talking of Ramsgate in August; I of Ramsgate in 
 February. The season makes all the difference. In 
 the one case Ramsgate is on the rampage, in the other 
 she is on her good behavior. Tlie difference between 
 Ramsgate in August and Ramsgate in February is as 
 nearly as possible that between Philip drunk and 
 Philip sober. Having said thus much in self-defence 
 in the most angelic spirit, I hope you will allow me to 
 proceed upon my way without further interruption." 
 The dialogue being at an end, suppose we glide with 
 equal grace and celerity into the narrative style. For 
 visitors who, loving to escape from the toil and turmoil 
 of London, find enjoyment in tranquillity, there are few 
 more enjoyable places than Ramsgate in winter. In 
 summer it is about as odious a spot as any within the 
 four seas of England ; in winter it is delightful. The 
 air, always fine, is now peculiarly delicate. There is not 
 a bathing-machine to be seen, nor yet a " fly " " ne musca 
 quidem!' There are no donkeys (four-legged) ; no 
 Punches and Judies ; no organ-grinders j no blatant 
 blackguards, with ballooned cheeks, blowing their pest- 
 iferous breath into bugles and trombones ; no howlers, 
 with blackened faces ; no jugglers ; no cheap trains ; 
 no husbands' boats ; and not many husbands. At nine 
 o'clock at night you might fire a cannon down the High 
 Street without hitting anybody. As for the sands — 
 which Mr. Frith has celebrated in effulgent colors as the 
 busiest and most turbulent scene imaginable — why you 
 might walk over them for hours — even as Robinson 
 Crusoe wandered along the shore of his sea-girt isle — ■ 
 and deem yourself fortunate if, like him, you should 
 discern the track of one human foot. The landlords 
 would seem to have the hotels all to themselves ; and 
 
1 42 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 as for the lodging-houses, all that need be said is, that 
 if you would learn how to spell the word "Apart- 
 ments," here you may be sure to acquire the knowledge. 
 This is just the place after my heart. If you, want a 
 row stay in London, there you may have the finest row 
 on earth. If you want peace come to Ramsgate in the 
 month of February. All is propriety and repose. A 
 Quaker settlement could not be meeker or more de- 
 mure. In February Ramsgate is a lamb ; in August, 
 she is Mr. Powell's lion fed upon balm of aniseed, and 
 looking so fierce that one shudders to think of her. 
 Everything around you now bespeaks calm comfort. 
 There is nothing to shock your nerves, nothing to dis- 
 turb your equanimity. The Marquis of Hertford, to be 
 sure, who inherits a title redolent of virtue, would do 
 well not to walk through Queen Street, lest he should 
 faint at the sight of a waxen young woman a-lacing of 
 her stays in the window of a milliner's shop known as 
 Granville House ; but everybody is not so fastidious as 
 the noble marquis. The lady in question is a very fas- 
 cinating personage, and the only pity is that she is not 
 flesh and blood instead of wax. But let not the Lord 
 Chamberlain come near her lest she should melt in the 
 fire of his righteous indignation. D'ailleurs respecta- 
 bility reigns supreme in Ramsgate, and everything 
 is precisely as it should be. Upon the western cliff is 
 a notification, welcome as the flowers of May, to the 
 effect that, "for the safety of children and the comfort 
 of persons " (children, it is to be presumed, are not 
 persons) " using the promenade, any one riding upon a 
 bycicle will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the 
 law." There is no danger, therefore, of your being 
 run over by Mr. Lowe, M. P., or of your even being 
 
RAMSGATE O.V BEJi GOOD BEHAVIOR. 143 
 
 obliged to gaze at the awful spectacle of that eccentric 
 statesman mounted upon his iron steed. Happiness is 
 negative as well as positive, and the mere conscious- 
 ness that you are anywhere on earth when there is no 
 chance of seeing Mr. Lowe is in itself an abundant 
 source of felicity. 
 
 What gladdens the heart not a little in revisiting a 
 country place, and more particularly a seaside resort, 
 after an absence of a year or two, is to observe how 
 well the people look. Unlike us poor Londoners, who 
 change month by month, country people seem only to 
 grow mellower and more mature after the lapse of a 
 few years. They are still hale and hearty, and seem 
 little, if anything, the worse for the wear. There is my 
 friend Mr. Watson, the riding-master — (I call him my 
 friend, because I have never spoken to the man in my 
 life ; and if I were to speak to him, it is like enough we 
 might not be friends ;) but there, I repeat, is my friend 
 Mr. Watson, the riding-master, whom I have known by 
 sight since I was the height of a bee's knee — or higher ; 
 and he still looks as fresh as a two-year old. He is as 
 straight as a steeple, and has as good a seat as ever. 
 The Town Crier has a cold in his nose. He has never 
 been without one, as far as my experience of him goes, 
 and it is more than probable he never will be. His con- 
 fidential communications with himself, uttered in tones 
 of the softest soliloquy, as he stands, bell in hand, 
 at the corner of the streets still, as of old, appear 
 to cause him the keenest internal satisfaction. I should 
 so like to be a bell-man ! Then, again, there is the 
 Harbor Master. How pleasant and genial he looks ! 
 as well indeed he may, being the Master of so beauti- 
 ful a harbor. He grows stouter, decidedly stouter. I 
 
144 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 should think that he is now like one of the morning 
 papers, " permanently enlarged, " and, to judge from 
 his cheery expression, and bright, florid complexion, I 
 should not wonder if, like a brilliant journal of ubiqui- 
 tous renown, he had "the largest circulation in the 
 world." Anyhow, he looks uncommonly well, which is 
 the more to be wondered at, " like seeing that right in 
 front of his house is a pillar which a big bully lifts its 
 head and lies." Morning, noon and night the Harbor 
 Master is doomed to gaze upon the obelisk erected by 
 the inhabitants and visitors of Ramsgate, " as a grate- 
 ful record (so runs the inscription) of the gracious con- 
 descension of his Majesty, George IV., in selecting that 
 as his port of debarkation," when he was going to visit 
 his kingdom of Hanover. One can easily understand 
 why any port should be grateful to George IV., for hav- 
 ing gone away from it, but when we proceed to read 
 that the people of Ramsgate also reared the pillar in 
 testimony of their thankfulness for " his happy return," 
 we are lost in amazement and indignation. It is to be 
 hoped that our friend the Harbor Master was not taught 
 Latin at school, or that if he were he has forgotten all 
 about it ; for, bad as the English inscription on the 
 Obelisk is, the Latin which is upon the side nearest to 
 the Master's dwelling, is still worse. Fancy an honest 
 man being unable to walk out of his hall-door without 
 finding these words staring him in the face : — Regi illus- 
 trissimi Georgia quarto, quern sui unice colunt venerantur 
 alieni, or, in the vernacular, " In honor of the most il- 
 lustrious monarch George IV., whom his own subjects 
 regard with peculiar love, and foreigners with venera- 
 tion ! " And this of one of the worst and most despi- 
 cable men who ever disgraced humanity — a man of 
 whom Moore wrote in verse true as scathing : — 
 
RAMSGATE ON HER GOOD BEHAVIOR. 145 
 
 " But go ! 'twere vain to curse, 
 'Twere weakness to upbraid tliee, 
 Hate couldn't wish thee worse 
 Tlian guilt and shame have made thee." 
 
 If obelisks, teeming witli eulogy, are to be raised to 
 Vice, what are to be the rewards of Virtue ? I beg leave 
 most respectfully to suggest that the present inscriptions 
 be forthwith erased, and that in their place be substi- 
 tuted a modest statement to the effect that the purpose 
 of the obelisk is to testify the gratitude of the inhabi- 
 tants arid visitors of Rarasgate to the Town Crier for 
 having kept the secrets of the town so honorably for so 
 many years. If this proposal be not carried out, the 
 next best thing would be to take the pillar down alto- 
 gether, and cut it up into mile-stones. With its present 
 mean and mendacious utterances, it is a disgrace to the 
 town. The basin is full of shipping, but the harbor it- 
 self is but thinly tenanted with vessels. The process 
 of dredging would seem to have been discontinued foi 
 the present, and at low water it is but too evident tha 
 the policy of the people -in authority may be comprised 
 in the invitation, parodied from Mr. Tennyson, " Come 
 into the harbor. Mud ! " At full tide the scene is as 
 bright and delightful as ever, and still, as of yore, the 
 west side of the pier is the favorite promenade. Bevies 
 of beautiful girls are to be seen walking there, and it 
 would astonish you to observe how many of them wear 
 their hair in a fringe across their foreheads. I am hap- 
 py to say that I have at last discovered the meaning of 
 this strange fashion. It has been explained to me by 
 one of the loveliest women on earth — " a form of life 
 and light, who seen becomes a part of sight." This 
 matchless being has assured me that it is an understood 
 
146 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 thing among her sex, and ought to be as generally known 
 among ours, that a lady who wears her hair in this man- 
 ner desires thereby to signify that she means to take' 
 time by the forelock, and to close with the very first 
 offer she gets. Such is the meaning of the frontal 
 fringe, and bachelors and widowers will regulate their pro- 
 ceedings accordingly. When next you go to the play ob- 
 serve how many fringed ladies there are in the -audience. 
 Procure an introduction wherever your fancy is most 
 fascinated — it is no difi&cult matter ; and, relying on the 
 forelock, be sure of success. And, d, propos of plays, 
 you must not suppose that the people of Ramsgate are 
 without dramatic entertainment in winter. True, they 
 have no theatres of their own, but, thanks to the enter- 
 prise of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway 
 Company, they are provided with ample means of access 
 to the London play-houses. It may seem incredible, 
 but it is none the less — but rather all the more — true 
 on that account, that there are what are termed " theatre 
 excursion trains " between Ramsgate and the metropo- 
 lis. One of these started at 8.45 a.m., the other day, 
 arriving in town about noon. The enthusiastic play- 
 goers travelling by this conveyance might have seen the 
 pantomime at the Crystal Palace in the afternoon, and 
 that at Drury Lane in the evening, and leaving Ludgate 
 Hill Station about midnight, might have hoped to be 
 home at Ramsgate, say 3 o'clock in the morning. This 
 was assuredly a smart stroke of business, and as remark- 
 able an example of the pursuit of pleasure under diffi- 
 culties as any on record. And be it borne in mind, to 
 the credit of the railway company, that, not unmindful 
 of the dear price of coal, and everything else as well, 
 they have fixed the tariff at a scale so low as 7J. dd. for 
 
RAMSCATE ON HEK GOOD BEHAVIOR. 147 
 
 the first-class return ticket, and 3^-. dd. for the second- 
 class, so that people who, though on pleasure bent, have 
 " still a frugal mind," like the worthy Mrs. Gilpin, will 
 find that they can combine economy with enjoyment. 
 What would our forefathers have said had they been 
 told that the day would come when playgoers would be 
 carried from Ramsgate to the London play-houses, and 
 back again — some 160 miles in all — for 3^. dd., and 
 that they would be drawing their own bed-curtains cosi- 
 ly around them in three hours after the curtain had fall- 
 en at the theatre ? They would have regarded the man 
 uttering such a prophecy as a maniac, and would possi- 
 bly have sent him to the nearest mad-house, with direc- 
 tions that his head should be shaved with all possible 
 expedition. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that the residents of 
 Ramsgate are compelled to go so far as London, how- 
 ever cheaply or however quickly, in search of recreation. 
 Though the place is placid, it is not stagnant. Lonely 
 it is in mid-winter, but by no means desolate. There 
 are gentle excitements worthy ot refined minds. To see 
 Mr. Pearce, the poet, flying a kite upon the sands is so 
 touching a spectacle of the combination of child-like 
 simplicity with exalted genius that it were well worth 
 while to come down here from London, though for no 
 other purpose than to behold the bard thus innocently 
 employed. We are irresistibly reminded of Sir Isaac 
 Newton gathering pebbles on the sea-shore. Then, 
 again, the Vicar illustrates his continental travels by 
 means of dissolving views so artistically contrived that 
 one longs for their dissolution. There are " Readings " 
 for those who, not knowing how to read themselves, like 
 to hear others do so, and there are " Singings " fof 
 
1 48 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 those similarly situated in regard to vocal melody. The 
 Aquarium is closed, much to the relief no doubt of the 
 octopus and the sea-horse, who must have been worried 
 to distraction by the frequent intrusions of Lord and 
 Lady Whitechapel last autumn ; but students of zoology 
 are not without subjects that will well repay their curi- 
 ous examination. Live . soles are to be inspected and 
 even purchased every morning. I caught a cockle at 
 Broadstairs yesterday. I saw a crab walking after the 
 peculiar fashion of his species upon the wet sands near 
 Kingsgate on Sunday morning, and on the following 
 evening I bought a pot of shrimps at Mr. Banger's, in 
 Pegwell Bay. No sooner had I made this purchase 
 than my thoughts took a meditative turn and I began to 
 philosophize. What man is there who has not wished 
 to be some other creature than a man ? "I would I 
 were a bird ! " says the old song. Have you ever 
 " would-ed " you were a bird, sweet reader mine ? I 
 know a man who is a goose, but, ungratefully oblivious 
 of the fact, he still keeps " woulding " he were a bird. 
 It is as though a fellow should keep shouting for his 
 spectacles while they are upon his nose. Professor 
 Wilson longed to be a deer of the desert, some other 
 poet sighed to be an eagle on the mountain top, and one 
 of Shakespeare's gentlemen talks about exchanging his 
 humanity with a baboon; but all these people shoot 
 wide of the mark. They all miss the trae type of 
 felicity — a potted shrimp. When one looks around one 
 and sees how full of sorrow and tribulation is human 
 life, who would care to be a nian ? Who would not 
 rather be a potted shrimp. A sweeter, gender, nobler, 
 more dignified destiny, it is not in fancy to imagine, nor 
 in words to express. To be a potted shrimp under any 
 
THE ART OF TALKING. 145 
 
 circumstances must be exceedingly nice ; but to be a 
 shrimp, potted in one of Mr. Banger's gorgeous pots, 
 witli a flaming picture of Ramsgate Harbor or Pegwell 
 Bay upon tlie lid, were simply such a fate as Mausolus 
 himself might envy. But, not to digress further upon 
 this enchanting topic, it may suffice to say that the 
 zoologist will find much to delight him at Ramsgate. 
 Finally, Ramsgate has this pleasant peculiarity, that the 
 piers of its harbor are respectively adapted to the comic 
 and the tragic temperaments. If you feel happy, walk 
 upon the east pier and rejoice in the society of the 
 beautiful young women occasionally to be found there ; 
 if you are moody and disconsolate, betake you to the 
 west pier, where the significant words ''■ Perfugium 
 Miseris — Refuge for the Unfortunate " — are inscribed 
 upon the light-house, and where the chance is as a 
 thousand to one that your shadow will be your only 
 companion — a companion, by the way, who, like the 
 rest of the world, will be sure to forsake you when your 
 dark hour comes on. Thus you will perceive that, be 
 your mood of mind what it may, you can go to no better 
 place than Ramsgate when, as at the present moment, 
 Ramsgate is on her good behavior. 
 
 THE ART OF TALKING. 
 
 ' I "HAT the art of conversation — an art intimately 
 associated with the dignity and comfort of social 
 life — should be so little studied is one of a thousand 
 unaccountable things in an inexplicable world. It is 
 not simply that men and women frequently speak with- 
 
15° 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 out reflecting, but that even in cases where they may 
 have reflected and adjudged rightly enougli as to the 
 wisdom of the,v.'ords about to be uttered by them, tlaey 
 too often neglect to consider the time, place, and man- 
 ner of utterance. The absolute truthfulness of a re- 
 mark is no sufficient justification for it if it had been 
 spoken in a harsh, ungracious tone, at an'inexpedient 
 moment, oi: under circumstances calculated to need- 
 lessly hurt the feelings of the hearers. " It is ill talking 
 o' hemp to one whose faither was hanged," says one of 
 the personages in Sir Walter Scott's story of Rob Roy, 
 and there is as much philosophy as humanity in the 
 observation. Yet how often do we find that people will 
 hazard the most audacious assertions, in accents the 
 most galling, without ever pausing to consider how they 
 may be wounding the sensibilities or shocking the preju- 
 dices of their neighbors ? One man will ' say that he 
 abhors Protestants, a second that he hates Catholics, a 
 third that he execrates Jews (amongst whom, by the 
 way, may be found some of the best of Christians), a 
 fourth that he cannot abide the sight of a Dissenter ; 
 and all these virulent persons who give free expression 
 to their respective antipathies, knowing little and caring 
 less, though the very person with whom they may be in 
 conversation should belong to the ca|egory thus fiercely 
 denounced. Prejudice is the bane of goodfellowship, 
 and the greatest possible hindrance to the flow of free 
 and friendly conversation. There are, of course, occa- 
 sions when a man of earnest nature and righteous pur- 
 pose will at all hazards make fearless profession of his 
 faith, and endure any extremity of persecution rather - 
 than abjure it ; but such occasions are rare in these 
 days of religious liberty, and most assuredly they do not 
 
THE ART OF TALKING. 151 
 
 arise at the dinner-table. A man may be honest to the 
 heart's core without being rude, and people with views 
 the most antagonistic may, without any violence to con- 
 science, merge their differences in genial oblivion while 
 eating turtle soup or sipping " beeswing '' together. 
 Candor and courtesy are strictly compatible, and "Virtue 
 is no such tyrant as to exact from her votaries the sacri- 
 fice of good manners. Here in England the tide of talk 
 usually flows in a sullen, sluggish current, in places of 
 public resort — railway-trains, steamboats, omnibuses, 
 taverns, etc., — for the representative Saxon is chary of 
 his speech before strangers, whom he generally regards 
 as enemies. Reversing Shylock's policy, who had no 
 objection to converse with Christians, and only refused 
 to eat, drink, or pray with them, your true-born Briton 
 may address his neighbor thus — " I will buy with you, 
 sell with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will 
 not talk with you." It is only the tocsin of the soul — 
 the dinner-bell that makes men brightly loquacious. 
 " An excellent and well-arranged dinner," observes one 
 of the most brilliant of modern essayists, " is a most 
 pleasing occurrence and a great triumph of civilized life. 
 It is not only the descending morsel and the enveloping 
 sauce, but the rank, wealth, wit, and beauty which sur- 
 round the meats, the learned management of light and 
 heat, the silent and rapid services of the attendants, the 
 smiling and sedulous host proffering gusts and relishes, 
 the exotic bottles, the embossed plate, the pleasant re- 
 marks, the handsome dresses, the cunning artifices of 
 fruit and farina ! The hour of dinner, in short, includes 
 everything of sensual and intellectual gratification which 
 a great nation glories in producing." How very true ! 
 and what a charming picture ! But among the many 
 
1 5 2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 elements of pleasure thus eloquently enumerated, not 
 the least important are " the pleasant remarks." Table- 
 talk, bright, genial, witty, good-natured, good-humored, 
 is all-essential to the enjoyment of a good dinner, for 
 civilized beings meet at the festive board not simply to 
 eat but also to converse. In the costly viands set be- 
 fore them there is exquisite provision for the palate, but 
 in the conversation of the guests dwell the feast of 
 reason and the flow of soul. Sectarian prejudice, party 
 spirit, personal and national animosities, are fatal to 
 comfortable conversation ; and the man who has not 
 the grace to perceive this, or who, perceiving it, is yet 
 so ill-tempered as to be unable to tone down his fierce 
 dislikes to the requirements of refined society, would do 
 well to stay at home and eat his dinner by himself in 
 the coal-hole. One thoroughly perverse and disputa- 
 tious man at a dinner-party is enough to damp the spir- 
 its and upset the nerves of the whole company. He is 
 sure to start an unwelcome topic, and to propound his 
 views with a pugnacity of manner which will ruffle every- 
 body's composure and play the mischief with every- 
 body's digestion. If you have a corn in the world, he 
 will find it out and trample upon it without remorse. 
 Then, again, there are people who, without any tinge of 
 malice, are yet so wedded to their own opinions that 
 they take a strange delight in contradiction. Say what 
 you will they differ from you. Sydney Smith gives ex- 
 cellent advice to persons thus unhappily afflicted. " The 
 habit of contradicting into which young men, and young 
 men of ability in particular, are apt to fall is a habit 
 extremely injurious to the powers of the understanding. 
 I would recommend to such young men an intellectual 
 regimen of which I myself in an earlier period of my life 
 
THE ART OF TALKING. 
 
 153 
 
 have felt the advantage, and that is to assent to the two 
 first propositions that tliey hear every day, and not only 
 to assent to them, but if they can, to improve and embel- 
 lish them, and to make the speaker a little more in love 
 with his own opinion than he was before. When they 
 have a little got over the bitterness of assenting, they 
 may then gradually increase the number of assents, and 
 so go on as their constitutions will bear it ; and I have 
 little doubt that in time this will effect a complete and 
 perfect cure." Some people there are who, never hav- 
 ing submitted to this salutary discipline, appear to take 
 a positive pleasure in challenging your every statement, 
 and dissenting from any proposition, however harmless, 
 that you may chance to lay down. If you venture to 
 remark that Signor Salvini is great as Othello, or that 
 Madame Adelina Patti was in good voice last night, 
 they will either traverse the assertion with a flat nega- 
 tion, or else intimate their disagreement from you in a 
 tone that conveys unmistakably how much they com- 
 passionate your intellect, or, rather, your want of it. If 
 you like a particular picture at the Water Color Insti- 
 tute, or anywhere else, they are amused to think what 
 you can find in it to admire. Sir John Gilbert is harsh 
 in color and slovenly in drawing ; Mr. Edwin Hayes 
 never can have seen the sea ; Mr. Hine knows nothing 
 about the Sussex Downs ; Mr. Wymperis is " Coxy," 
 nothing more ; Mr. Mogford can only paint Tantallan 
 Castle ; Mr. Tenniel has not a particle of dramatic 
 spirit ; and as for Mr. Charles Cattermole, he merely 
 follows servilely in the footsteps of his uncle. " Quels 
 grands homm.es I Rien ne pent leur plaire!" What 
 great men to be sure ! Nothing can please them. 
 Unlike Shakespeare's Polonius, and the " Grceculus 
 
tS4 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 esuriens " of the Roman satirist, who always agreed with 
 the last speaker, these carping critics dissent from 
 everj'body. Like the seal, who is only comfortable in a 
 storm, or the Irish tailor, whose fatigue began when he 
 sat down, they abhor quiet. They never seem to be at 
 ease unless when they are roughening and darkening 
 that current of friendly talk which it should be the am- 
 bition of every sensible and kind-hearted man to keep 
 as smooth and bright as possible. Deuce take it ! 
 Can't they let it pass ! The dinner table does not exact 
 such solemnity of utterance as does the pulpit; nor is 
 there any need to be as punctilious in our statements 
 over Burgundy or Moselle as though we were arguing a 
 demurrer before a Vice-Chancellor. People of this cap- 
 tious temper destroy the charm of conversation, and re- 
 mind you ever of those cross-grained persons whom you 
 now and then meet in the streets, and who take a queer 
 delight in crossing your path. You move to the right, 
 so do they ; you take the left, so do they ; you go right 
 in the middle only to find yourself nose to nose with 
 them ; till at last they bar your passage so effectually 
 that you have nothing for it but to give them your 
 blessing, and, springing into the gutter, leave them in 
 undisputed possession of the pavement which they will 
 not halve with you. 
 
 " That is the happiest conversation," observes Dr. 
 Johnson, " where there is no competition, no contradic- 
 tion, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of senti- 
 ment." Just so; but Dr. Johnson, like some other great 
 sages, found it easier to preach than to practice. He 
 was the veriest bear in conversation unless when he 
 found it to his interest to be otherwise. He would 
 brook no competition ; he gloried in contradiction ; and 
 
THE ART OF TALKING. j^^ 
 
 as for his vanity, there were no bounds to it. One in- 
 stance out of many wiH suffice, as recorded by Piozzi, 
 to show how the philosopher of Bolt Court behaved in 
 societ}', despite his benignant maxim: — "When his 
 friend Mr. Strahan, a native of Scotland, on his return 
 from the Hebrides, asked him, with a firm tone of voice, 
 ■what he thought of his country? 'That it is a very 
 vile country, to be sure, sir ! ' returned for answer Dr. 
 Johnson. ' Well, sir,' replies the other somewhat mor- 
 tified, 'God made it.' ' Certainly He did,' answers Dr. 
 Johnson again ; ' but we must always remember that He 
 made it for Scotchmen, and — comparisons are odious, 
 Mr. Strahan — but God made hell !'" Could the force 
 of ruffianism go further ? Yet that was the man who 
 presumed to guide his fellows in the path of courtesy, 
 and who meanwhile was allowed, in right of his arro- 
 gance and presumption, quite as much as out of con- 
 sideration for his learning and ability, to ride rough-shod 
 over society. In our days he would have been chucked 
 out of the window, ponderous as he might be. 
 
 Another, class of people who spoil the charm of con- 
 versation are they who, in their extreme eagerness for 
 display, take the good things out of your mouth, antici- 
 pate the bon mot they see coming, and cut you short in 
 the middle of a sentence. Such persons prefer mono- 
 logue to dialogue, and would fain have all the talk to 
 Ihemselves. They disregard Dean Swift's pithy verses 
 which contain the whole art and mystery of conversation : 
 
 " Conversation is but carving ; 
 Give no more to every guest 
 Than he's able to' digest; 
 Give him always of the prime, 
 • And but little at a time ; 
 
156 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 Carve to all but just enough 
 Let tliem neither starve nor stuff ; 
 And that you may have your due 
 Let your neighbors carve for you." 
 
 Your funny man, too, is a great nuisance, the more 
 particularly so, if his fun take the dismal direction of 
 riddles. It will never do to laugh at him ; to frown at 
 him were ill manners ; a dubious smile, a nod that may 
 be anything, or some atrocious conundrum worse than 
 his own is your only resource. It was my misfortune 
 to sit at a supper-table the other night next to an idiot 
 who, just as the lobster salad was being served around, 
 had the audacity to ask me where Moses was when he 
 blew out the candle. Now, that is the very first riddle 
 I ever heard in my life. Whether I was short-frocked 
 when first I heard it is more than I can undertake to 
 affirm ; but most assuredly I could hardly toddle before 
 my nurse confided that miserable conundrum to my 
 agonized ear. Nevertheless, I gave my neighbor to 
 understand — Heaven forgive me ! — that his riddle came 
 upon me with all the freshness of novelty, and that I 
 could not for the life of me make it out. Very great, 
 indeed, was his delight. " In the dark, sir ; in the 
 dark ! " he exclaimed with a jubilant chuckle. I make 
 no pretence to good breeding, but I plume myself upon 
 . my benevolence, and I make bold to assert that in thus 
 treating my importunate little friend, instead of pooh- 
 poohing him, or turning up my nose at him, as men of 
 inferior tact might have done, I displayed social philan- 
 throphy of the highest order. But there are bounds to 
 the most celestial charity, and finding that my tormen- 
 tor was preparing again for the charge, and that I was 
 likely enough to miss my chance of the salad once more 
 
TIJE ART OF TALKING. 157 
 
 through his confounded riddles, I resolved to choke him 
 off with one that was likely to stick in his throat for the 
 rest of the night. " Pardon me, sir," said I, "it is my 
 turn now. Allow me to ask you when is an elephant 
 like a cock robin ? Think over it well and don't give 
 it up in a hurry." " I won't," he replied ; and to do 
 him justice he didn't. For the remainder of the even- 
 ing he was lost in an abyss of thought. He sat at the 
 table with knitted brow and fixed eyes in a hopeless 
 reverie, and seemingly unconscious of all that was pass- 
 ing around. It was not until we had all risen to depart 
 that he came up to me and, in a tone of tender suppli- 
 cation, observed, " I cannot guess it. I must give it up. 
 Do tell me when is an elephant like a cock robin ? " 
 " Never, sir ; never," I replied in accents the most em- 
 phatic. You should have seen the scorn and disgust 
 depicted upon his face. " He cursed me with his eyes," 
 as Coleridge says. At last he found his tongue and 
 gave vent to his indignation thus : It's most unfair, sir ; 
 it's most unfair. It isn't a riddle at all ; it's a vulgar 
 sell. I bid you good-night, sir," and so saying he snatch- 
 ed up his hat and was gone. He had been a . sad hin- 
 drance to pleasant conversation for fully an hour, and 
 would have been so to the end, had I not thrown a tub 
 at the whale. An enchanting story is told of Mr. Car- 
 lyle. He lately went on a visit to a friend in Scotland, 
 and one day at dinner he happened to have for a neigh- 
 bor one of those unhappy persons who are afflicted with 
 " a plentiful lack of wit," together with a most intolerable 
 amount of what that genial old parson in Bulwer Lytton's 
 Caxtons calls "jabber." This inanity, who seems to 
 have goaded honest Thomas to the verge of madness, 
 innocently records his opinion of the philosopher, as 
 
158 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 follows : — " Mr. Carlyle is an extraordinary man ; he is 
 a perfect nobody in society ; he has no conversation ; he 
 takes an interest in nothing. For half an hour I en- 
 deavored to draw him out on art ; no use. Then I tried 
 him on his own subjects, on "literature, history, biogra- 
 phy ; all to no purpose. The man has no power of 
 conversation whatever. At the end of dinner, after 
 being silent the whole time, he suddenly said to his host, 
 ' For Heaven's sake, put me in a room by myself, and 
 give me a pipe ! ' " This is delicious. It is to be hoped 
 that the story is true ; but if not, the man who invented 
 it ought to go on inventing others like it all the days of 
 his life. 
 
 The days are gone when, as in the time of Pope, — 
 
 " Snuif or the fan supplied each pause of chat. 
 With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that." 
 
 Snuff is gone out or nearly so ; the fan finds but little 
 favor with the modern fair ; and though singing and 
 laughing happily survive, the man or woman who would 
 now "ogle" in good society would be accounted a Bed- 
 lamite and treated accordingly. Debarred from the 
 fantastic resources to which our ancestors had access, 
 there still remains to us , one inexhaustible topic of con- 
 versation — the weather, and as that becomes more varied 
 and uncertain every year, it still supplies matter for 
 endless diversity of discourse. So true is this that a 
 witty essayist has described the dialogue in English 
 company to consist of " a series of meteorological obser- 
 vations." But, be the subject of our conversation what 
 it may — the weather, politics, art, literature, or science, 
 — whether we indulge in " that abominable tittle-tattle 
 which is the cud that's chewed by human cattle," or 
 
THE ART OF TALKING. 
 
 IS9 
 
 soaring to tragic themes discuss the sorrows and suffer- 
 ings of " the unfortunate nobleman now languishing in 
 prison at Dartmoor," let us bear in mind these two 
 golden precepts — first to pitch our voices to a conver- 
 sational key, and secondly to talk in such a spirit of 
 mutual forbearance that every one may have his or her 
 say. Neglect these maxims, and we shall return to the 
 clamorous and chaotic days described by Spenser, — 
 
 " Thus chatten the people in their steads, 
 Ylike a monster of many heads." 
 
 The skilful management of the voice is indispensable 
 to the true enjoyment of discourse, for where every 
 speaker tries to over-talk the other, conversation de- 
 generates into a mere clatter of tongues. There should 
 be a rule of the road in talking as driving, and nobody 
 should be permitted to pass any other body on the near 
 side. Fancy what the condition of Fleet Street or the 
 Strand would be if there were no such law for the regu- 
 lation of vehicular traffic. In the absence of a like ordi- 
 nance, the vocal disorder at a dinner-table would be 
 quite as terrific. Finally, but though last by no means 
 least, never forget that the art of talking is that of listen- 
 ing also. Indeed, there is no more flattering or more 
 refined form of courtesy than that implied by a polite 
 and gentle method of giving ear when others talk. 
 Assume an air of interested attention, more particularly 
 when it is a lady who speaks, and you will one day be 
 surprised to find yourself more popular in society than 
 if you were the most brilliant talker in the world. 
 
1 60 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 No. I. ' 
 
 "Xlt HTH (or without) your kind permission, dear 
 reader, I purpose to rarnble back to by-gone 
 times, and devote a few essays to hard weatlier long, 
 long ago, a theme not without a certain romantic fas- 
 cination. Livy, in his Fifth Book, tells of a winter 
 so severe that the river Tiber was frozen over — a very 
 singular occurrence in such a climate as that with 
 which Italy is blessed. Ovid, who was contemporane- 
 ous with the historian, and to whose magnificent de- 
 cription of the weather in the Crimea, I shall have 
 occasion hereafter to refer, assures us that while he was 
 in banishment at Tomni, a town in Pontus, it happened 
 one year that all the rivers were locked in fetters of 
 frost, and the Black Sea looked like a boundless ex- 
 panse of solid marble. He saw it himself, and walked 
 upon it without wetting his feet. What a magnificent 
 spec.tacle it must have been, especially at sunrise and 
 sunset! Not that the living ocean, withits stupendous 
 voices ; its foaming billows its waving shadow, its feast of 
 color and its flow of light may not be equally beautiful, or 
 perhaps more so, but there is something which approach- 
 es the sublime in the idea of traversing the face of the 
 deep, while it is in this state of repose and tranquility — 
 something that awes the imagination to find its mighty 
 hushed, and its exuberant currents mysteriously arrested 
 by that invisible power which, at another season, bids the 
 winds to blow and the waves to roll and swell in uncontrol- 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. i6i 
 
 led majesty. In the year 1234 the Adriatic was so frozen 
 that the Venetians went over the ice in carts, and we 
 have the authority of Zonoras for tlie statement that in 
 the reign of the Emperor Constantine the Pontic Sea 
 was so congealed that people for many miles travelled 
 it on foot, and horses and wagons passed over the 
 /return or narrow part of it. " But withal," he adds, 
 " the summer following was so excessive hot and dry 
 that great rivers and most fountains were wholly dried 
 up, and people and cattle perished for want of water." 
 In the year 821, the Rhone, the Danube, the Elbe, the 
 Seine, were so solidly frozen that for thirty days those 
 rivers were the great highways of their respective na- 
 tions, and carriages passed as freely over them as on 
 dry land. But not to carry the reader to scenes too 
 distant or eras too remote, let us confine our attention 
 for the present to such winters of historic severity as 
 have occurred in our own country. I propose to pass in 
 shivering review the most famous frosts that have 
 happened in England during the last eight centuries 
 — to depict the aspect of London at those periods, and 
 more particularly to describe the conduct of our old 
 friend " ye River of Thames " under such trying circum- 
 stances. The earliest frost of which we can discover 
 any mention in the old English writers as being of 
 peculiar rigor, occurred in 11 16, In the spring of 
 that year there was, as the chroniclers assure us, " an 
 eager and a nipping frost." The cold of February was 
 more than compensated by the warmth of August, 
 when " the river Thames was so low for the space of a 
 day and a night that horses, men, and children passed 
 over it betwixt London Bridge and the Tower, and also 
 under the bridge, the water not reaching above theii 
 
 II 
 
1 62 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 knees ! " The same thing happened in Queen Elizabeth's 
 time ; and though on each occasion the bed of the 
 river was crossed by " horses, men, and children," it is 
 to be recorded to the honor of the sex (the only sex 
 worth talking about) that there is not in any historian 
 the faintest allusion to justify the suspicion that any 
 lady ever had the ill-taste to make the experiment. 
 From 1 1 16 to 1151 there does not ajjpear to have been 
 any frost of sufficient intensity to justify, historic allu- 
 sion ; but Hollinshed has recorded for the benefit of a 
 shuddering posterity that " in the winter of 1152 about 
 the tenth day of December it began to freese extream- 
 lie, and so continued till the nineteenth of Februarie, 
 whereby the river of Thames was so frosen, that men 
 might pass over it both on foot and horsse-back." But 
 this was not the only strange thing that happened in 
 that portentous year, for we are assured on the vener- 
 able authority of the same Hollinshed already alluded to, 
 that at Christmas " a fish like unto a man was caught 
 on ye coast of Suflolke." The reader shall have the 
 story in the historian's own antique language : — " At 
 Oreford, in Suffolke, a fish was taken up by fishers in 
 their nets as they were at sea, resembling in shape a wild 
 or savage man whom they presented to. Sir Bartholomew 
 de Glanville that had the keeping of the castell of Ore- 
 ford in Suffolke. He was naked in all his lims resembl- 
 ing the right proportion of a man and albeit the crowne 
 of his head was bald his beard was long and ragged. 
 The knight caused him to be kept certain dales and 
 nights from the sea; meat set afore him he greedilie 
 devoured. He did eat fish both raw and sod. He 
 would not or could not utter any speech, although to 
 try him they hung him up by the heeles and miserably 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 163 
 
 tormented him ! He would get him to his couche at ye 
 settine of ye sunne and rise again at ye rising of ye 
 sunne." The ancient chroniclers tlien go on to narrate 
 how he was kept for some months at "ye castell " of 
 Oreford but how at last "being negligently looked to" 
 and " not seeming to be regarded, he fled secretly to ye 
 sea, and was never after seane nor hearde of ! " This we 
 may readily believe. He was evidently " a very correct 
 young person," as pious people say ; and even at this 
 distance of time one cannot but commend the proprie- 
 ty of his proceedings. In the year 1435, '"^ ^^ \xa\s. 
 of the sixth Henry, " the frost was so extream — begin- 
 ning about the five and twentieth day of November and 
 continuing till the tenth of Februarie — that the ships 
 with merchandise arriving at the Thames its mouth, 
 could not come up the river ; so their lading then faine 
 to be discharged was brought to the city up land." 
 Such and so cold was the weather that our mediaeval 
 ancestors had to encounter. " First it blew and then it 
 snew ; and then it driz and then lifriz," as some poetical 
 meteorologist phrases it. Henry VHI. did not bring 
 the summet with him, for in his days also the weather 
 was hard, as well as the times. In 1523, " after great 
 windes -and raines which chanced in that season there 
 followed a sore frost which was so intense that manie 
 died for cold and some lost fingers, some lost toes 
 and manie lost nailes besides their fingers so extreme 
 was the rigour of thatfrost." Nor was his daughter Eliza,- 
 beth fortunate in matters meteorological. Hollinshed 
 has left us a brief but graphic account of the dreadful 
 winter of 1565. " The one and twentyth of December 
 began a frost which continued so extreamlie, that on 
 the New Year's -day even, people went over and 
 
1 64 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 alongst the Thames on the ise from London Bridge 
 to Westminster. Some plaied at the foot-ball as bold- 
 lie there as if it had been on the drie land ; diverse 
 of ye court shot daily at pricks set upon the Thames 
 and ye people both men and women went on ye 
 Thames in greater numbers than in anie street 
 of ye citie of Londoii. On ye 31st day of Januarie at 
 night it begun to thaw and on ye fift dale was no ise 
 to be seen between London Bridge and Lambeth ; which 
 sudden thaw caused great floods and high waters that 
 bare downe bridges and houses, and drowned manie 
 people in England, especiallie in Yorkshire ; Owes 
 Bridge was borne away with others." In 1579 there 
 was a felonious frost, followed by a phenomenon very 
 startling in these northern latitudes, yet top authorita- 
 tively attested to admit of a doubt as to its actual occur- 
 rence. " The Thames over-flowed its banks and not only 
 were boats rowed but fishes were caught in Westminster 
 Hall." " It snowed," writes an historian who witnessed 
 what he described," till the eight daie of Febuarie, and 
 frised till the tenth and then followed a thaw with 
 continual rain which a long time after caused such high 
 waters and great floods that the marshes and low 
 grounds being drowned for the time, the water of the 
 Thames rose so high in Westminster Hall that after 
 the fall loads of fishes were found in the said hall." 
 Unlucky fishes. Woe worth the tide that landed them 
 in such a place ! It is to be hoped, however that they 
 kept clear of The Court of Chancery. Better for them 
 to have made at once for Billingsgate then have ven- 
 tured into so perilous a region. Among the " Philoso- 
 phic Transactions " of the Royal Society during that 
 memorable year may be found a letter from a gentleman 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 165 
 
 in Bristol giving an interesting account of as 
 strange a spell of weather as any on record. 
 " Not exactly a frost, but a freezing rain fell about 
 Bristol on the 9th, loth, and nth of December, and 
 made such destruction of trees in all the villages and 
 highways from Bristol towards Wells, and towards 
 Shepton Mallet, and towards Bath and Bruton, and 
 other places of the west that both for the manner and 
 matter it may seem incredible. Orchards exposed to 
 the N.E. were devastated. I weighed the sprigg of an 
 ash tree of just three-quarters of a pound, which was 
 brought to my table ; the ice on it weighed sixteen 
 pounds, besides what was melted off by the hands of 
 them that brought it ! Yet all this while, when trees 
 and hedges were laden with ice, there was no ice to be 
 seen on our rivers', nor so much as on our standing 
 pools." He then goes on to say that some travellers 
 were " almost lost " by the coldness of the freezing air 
 and freezing rain. " All the trees, young and old, 
 in the highway from Bristol to Shepton were so torn 
 and thrown down on both sides of the way that they 
 were impassable. By the like obstructions the car- 
 riers of Bruton were forced to return back. Some 
 were affrighted with the noise in the air till they dis- 
 covered that it was the clatter of icy boughs, dashed 
 one against the other by the wind. Some told me that 
 riding on the snowy downs they saw this freezing rain 
 fall upon the snow and immediately freeze to ice with- 
 out sinking at all into the snow, so that the snow was 
 covered with ice all along, and had been dangerous if 
 the ice had been strong enough to bear them. Others 
 were on their journey when the ice was able to bear them 
 in some places, and they were in great distress." 
 
1 66 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 The frost which occurred in 1683-4 appears to- have 
 been, to the ruin of all comparison, the keenest and 
 most intense that has ever been known in England. 
 The frost of 1435 was of longer duration, but it does 
 not seem to have approached in severity to that of 1683. 
 Rapin says that during the long frost of 1683-4, which 
 began about the middle of December, and lasted till the 
 middle of February, " the Thames was so frozen that 
 there was another city as it were on -the ice by the great 
 number of booths erected between the Temple and 
 Southwark, in which place was held an absolute fair of 
 all sorts of trades. An ox was likewise roasted whole, 
 bulls baited, and the like." A correspondent of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, writing to Mr. Urban, a century 
 later, communicates the following memorandum, which 
 he found in his great-grandfather's pocket-book : — " 20th 
 Dec, 1683, a very violent frost began, which lasted till 
 6th of Februarie, in soe great extremitie that the pooles 
 were frozen 18 inches thick at least, and the Thames 
 was soe frozen that a great sheet from the Temple to 
 Southwark was built with shops, and all manner of 
 things sold ; hackney coaches plyed there as in the 
 street ; there was also bull-baiting, and a great many 
 other shows and tricks to be seen. This day the frost 
 broke ; in the morning I saw a coach and six horses 
 driven from Whitehall almost to the bridge (London 
 bridge), yet by three o'clock that day, next to South- 
 wark, the ice was gone so as boats did. row to and fro ; 
 and the day after, all the frost was gone. On Candle- 
 mas-day (2d Feb.), I went to Croydon market and led 
 my horse over the ice at the ferry to Lambeth ; as I 
 came back I led him from Lambeth upon the middle of 
 the Thames to Whitefriars Stairs and we led him up 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 167 
 
 them ; and this day an ox was roasted whole over 
 against Whitehall — King Charles II. with the Queene 
 eat part of it." Another writer who obliged the town 
 with a pamphlet entitled " Modest Observations on the 
 Present Extraordinary Frost," has left some very curious 
 details. " On the 23rd Januar}', being the first day of 
 term, coaches plyed at the Temple Stairs, and carried 
 the lawyers to Westminster on the yce, and thencefor- 
 wards the same continued, and whole streets of sheds 
 everywhere built on the Thames, thousands passing, 
 buying, selling, drinking, and revelling (I wish I could 
 not say on the Lord's Day too), and most sorts of trades' 
 shops on the yce (and amongst the rest a printing-house 
 there erected), bulls baited and thousands of spectators. 
 Nay, below the bridge hundreds daily pass. The river 
 Humber (as I am cVedibly informed), where it is several 
 miles broad, is frozen over, and vast flakes of yce are 
 seen floating on the Downs of diverse miles in length 
 and proportionable breadth." But by far the best de- 
 scription of this singular event may be found in a scarce 
 little book printed that same year by John Waltho at 
 the Black Lyon in Chancery Lane over against Lincoln's 
 Inn, entitled " An Historical Account of the late great 
 Frost, in which are discovered in several comical rela- 
 tions, the various humors, loves, cheats, and intrigues of 
 the town as the same were managed upon the river of 
 Thames during that season." Unfortunately it is writ- 
 ten with too little regard to delicacy to admit of its re- 
 publication in our days, but to the philosophic mind it 
 is valuable as a record of manners, customs, and opin- 
 ions in an age which, though not very distant from our 
 own, according to the measurement of time, was yet as 
 unlike our own as any two epochs the most remote. 
 
1 68 ^ ^^^ TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Imaginable could possibly be. Our business, however, 
 is less with the morality of the volume than with its 
 " yce," and on this subject its information is exceedingly 
 graphic. "Ye frost began about ye i6th Deer., and so 
 
 - sharply set in that in a fortnight's time or thereabouts 
 ye river of Thames, though one might think by the daily 
 flux and re-flux of her twice returning tide in the space 
 of 24 hours and the native course of her own rapid 
 streams was secured against the fbrce of the hardest 
 weather, yet this river beyond ye Bridge of London up- 
 wards was all frozen over and people began to walk 
 thereon and booths were built in many places where the 
 poor watermen whose boats were lockt up and could not 
 work thereon for their usual livelyhood made a virtue of 
 necessity and therein retailed wine brandy ale and 
 other liquors which for the novelty of the same very few 
 but were in a short time their customers, and their 
 trades increasing their booths began to increase and be 
 enlarged for the reception of multitudes of people who 
 
 ■ daily resorted thereunto, insomuch that in a short time 
 roadways were made from place to place, and without 
 any fear or apprehension the same was trod by men 
 women and children ; nor were the same only foot-paths 
 but soon after hackney coaches began to ply upon the 
 river and found better custom than if they had con- 
 tinued in the streets which were never in the midst of 
 business half so crowded so that the same became the 
 only scene of pleasure in or about London ; the fields 
 were deserted and the river full, and in Hillary Term 
 which soon after ensued it was as usual for the lawyers 
 to take coach by water to Westminster as through the 
 Strand and so public was the river that in a short time 
 it obtained the names of Frost Fair and the Blanket 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. i6g 
 
 Fair. A whole street of booths contiguous each to other 
 was built from the Temple Stairs to the Barge House in 
 Southwark which were inhabited by traders of all sorts 
 whicli usually frequent fairs and markets as those who 
 deal in earthenware brass copper tin iron toys and 
 trifles ; and besides these printers bakers cooks butchers 
 barbers coffee-men and others who were so frequented 
 by the innumerable concourse of all degrees and quali- 
 ties that by their own confession they never met else- 
 where the like advantages every one being willing to say 
 they did lay out such and such moneys on the river of 
 Thames ; nor was the trade only amongst such as were 
 fixt in booths, but also all sorts of cries which usually 
 are heard in London streets were there. The hawkers 
 with their news— the costermonger with his fruit — the 
 wives with their oysters pies gingerbread and such like. 
 Nor was there any recreation in season which could not 
 be found there with more advantage than on land such 
 as foot-ball play nine- pins cudgels bull and bear-baiting 
 and others which on the occasion was more ordinary as 
 sliding in skates chairs and other devizes such as were 
 made of sailing-boats chariots and carrow-whimbles so 
 that at one view you might behold the thriving trader 
 at his shop the sporters at their recreations the labourers 
 with their burdens at theii backs and every one with as 
 little concern or fear as if they had trod the surface of 
 the more centred element. And in all places smoking 
 fires on the solid waters, roasting boyling and preparing 
 food for ye hungary and liquors for ye thirsty j eating 
 drinking and rejoicing in great crowds, as Smithfield in 
 Bartholemew Fare could ever boast.'' Those were mad- 
 cap times when wit took the boisterous form of practi- 
 cal joke, and the public humor displayed itself in the 
 
lyo 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 most grotesque evolutions. Of the dare-devil proceed; 
 ings of the " Sparks," as young men of fashion were 
 then called, our author has left us a description which 
 if not edifying is, at least, amusing. Thus he tells us 
 how they caught a sturdy oldbfeggar-man at Temple Bar, 
 and having plied him with strong waters, compelled him 
 to personate Neptune, and to ride upon the frost in a 
 sledge with a tin pot on his head, and in his hand a 
 pitchfork to typify the imperial trident. Old women 
 who sold dumplings were obliged to stow themselves 
 with their savory wares in wooden bowls, which were 
 pulled along the ice at the rate of ten miles an hour, 
 while country cousins were lured to spots where the ice 
 had been cut away for their especial accommodation. 
 Another " drollery " which the writer narrates with man- 
 ifest relish, was originated by a certain scrivener, who, 
 being blessed with a scolding wife, enticed her into a 
 booth near the Savoy, to partake of " neats' tongue and 
 a bottle ; " but no sooner had the dear unsuspecting 
 soul seated herself at the table than her chair sank into 
 a hole prepared for her reception, and there she was 
 kept up to the chin in water until she had promised re- 
 formation — a promise which, I rejoice to say, she after- 
 wards violated on the incontestable pretext that it had 
 been extorted from her by fraud and terror. On the 
 1 2 th February, 1684, " the ice gave as it were a univer- 
 sal groan and crackt into little pieces^ and was in one 
 tide conveyed away and carried with itself the joyful 
 news of its own dissolution to our rnerchant ships which 
 had been for two months before detained in j'e Downs." 
 So ended the great frost of 1684. Let us hope that we 
 shall soon have another like it ! 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 171 
 
 The Long Frost of 1683-4 was indeed a frost with a 
 vengeance — a frost of such matchless asperity that we 
 can find no analogy for it, except in the celestial attri- 
 bute of charity. The witty and popular phrase, " cold 
 as charity," expresses the only metaphor that can do 
 justice to a season of such heartless rigor. Mrs. Com- 
 modore Trunnion in Smollett's immortal romance per- 
 formed her religious duties " with rancorous severity." 
 Now image to yourself the expression of that worthy 
 lady's face as she doled out her bounties to the poor ; 
 or, to take a more modern instance, fancy the icy smile 
 that stole over the parochial features of Mr. Bumble, 
 when, after threatening to " call out the millingtary " on 
 Oliver Twist for. asking for an additional slice of bread, 
 he at last consented to let the. famished urchin have the 
 boon he craved ; and then you may have some idea of 
 the wan and spectrar effect which a stray sunbeam must 
 have produced as it played oyer the frozen bosom of 
 "■ye river of ye Thames." Those were indeed days, 
 
 " When icicles hung by the wall, 
 And Dick tlie shepherd blew his nail ; 
 
 And Tom bore logs into the hall, 
 .And milk came frozen home in pail. 
 
 When blood was nipp'd and ways were foul, 
 . And nightly sung the staring owl, 
 ' To-Who ! ' 
 
 ' To-whit ! to who ! ' a merry note, 
 
 While-greasy Joan doth keel the pot." 
 
 Assuredly, those were cold days — cold, cold, " even 
 as thy chastity," — thou lovely lady wedded to the Moor ; 
 
I J 2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 and yet one delights to read of them. It is like skating 
 in imagination. One lingers lovingly on the antique 
 records of that Siberian winter, and it is no easy matter 
 to pass to other and less trying epochs. There lieth on 
 my table an old broad-sheet, the color of Arabic saffron. 
 It is entitled " A Strange and Wonderful Relation of the 
 Many Remarkable Damages sustained by Sea and Land 
 from the present Unparalleled Frost." Oh, delightful ! 
 " By this," says our author — and blessings on his frosty 
 pole ! — " may be apprehended ye extremity of ye season ; 
 a certain sexton in ye citie of London having a grave to 
 make, and finding ye obdurate impenetrable earth as it 
 had been a rock of soiled marble reverberate his forsible 
 stroakes was therefore constrained to have two strong 
 and able working men, giving each two shillings a day, 
 to undertake the same, who with pickaxes, twibills, 
 beetles, and wedges, and two days' hard labour did with 
 great difficulty make it deep enough ; so that ye labour of 
 digging only one grave did amount to eight shillings, and 
 the labourers worthy of their hire." Our author goes on 
 to tell what is still more remarkable, how, " solid cakes 
 of ice," of some miles in extent, breaking away from the 
 eastern countries of Flanders and Holland, were driven 
 on the sea-cost pf Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk ; — ^how 
 "it was also reported that certain skate-sliders upon one 
 of these large ice-plains were unawares driven to sea and 
 arrived alive upon their icy rafts at the sea-coast of 
 Essex ; '' — how ships in the offing had their canvas and 
 cordage congealed beyond our apprehensions to imagine 
 or chronologies to parallel ; " — how great cables of ships 
 on the shore of Lancashire were sawed asunder by the 
 sharpness of the " yce " ; — how the sea was frozen for a 
 whole mile from the shore at Deal ; and finally how the 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 173 
 
 " yce cut away most of the buoys as well in the south as 
 in the north channel." " Boys will be boys,'' says the 
 proverb ; but here was a remarkable refutation of it. 
 The same writer assures us that the weather was, if pos- 
 sible, still more ferocious in Scotland. " No water was 
 to be had for cattel in many miles, which general com- 
 plaint will need no other confirmation than from the 
 tongues of ye cattel themselves, who with pitty have been 
 observed to lick ye yce to abate their thirst for want of 
 their fill of refreshing water." 
 
 In the north of France the season was equally severe, 
 and sixty persons are said to have died upon the road 
 between Paris and Calais. It is worthy of remark that 
 in the year following (1685) there were copious rains 
 and terrible tempests all over England. On one night 
 in particular there was a paroxysm of storm " on ye 
 river of ye Thames," and contemporaneous writers 
 assure us that for two hours — from two o'clock in the 
 morning till four — " the waves were as high as in the Bay 
 of Biscay." There was immense damage of property. 
 During the remainder of the seventeenth century there 
 does not appear to have been any weather of sufficient 
 severity to justify particular allusion ; but the continent 
 of Europe was less favorably circumstanced. In 1691 
 the cold was intolerable throughout Germany, and the 
 wolves, driven for shelter from the woods and forests, 
 entered the streets of Vienna and attacked the passen- 
 gers ! Passing over the terrific tempest of 1703 as being 
 rather beside the benevolent purpose ,of the present 
 essay, which is not so much to blow the reader's head 
 off as to freeze the blood in his veins, we come to a year 
 which deseryes to be distinguished as " mirabilis," the 
 year 1708-9, when the continent and the city of Paris 
 
1 7 ^ ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 more particularly were visited by a winter as severe as 
 was felt in England during our darling frost of 1683-4. 
 Even in some parts of the British Isles the cold war. 
 intense. Dr. Derham assures us that though during 
 this frost of 1708-9 several people crossed the Thames 
 at some distance above the bridge, it v/as only towards 
 low water, when the great flakes of ice which came down 
 stopped one another at the bridge till they made one 
 continued bed of ice from thence almost to the Temple ; 
 but when the flood came the ice broke, and. was all car- 
 ried with the current up the river. He further states 
 that though this frost was extremely rigorous in the 
 southern parts of the island, yet the northern felt little 
 of it ; and he quotes a letter from the then Bishop of 
 Carlisle dated " Rosa," who says " none of our rivers or 
 lakes were frozen over;" and a letter from a gentle- 
 man at Edinburgh, who writes " we had not much frost 
 to speak of, and it lasted not long." It was not until 
 Christmas Day, 1708, that the cold was felt in London 
 with anything like unusual rigor, and no sooner were 
 cakes of ice seen floating on the Thames than a certain 
 Dr. Partridge sa.w in his mind's eye the whole river as 
 hard as stone, with coaches and six rattling over it at 
 the rate of thirteen miles an hour, and an ox being 
 roasted as in the halcyon days some twenty years agone, 
 over against Whitehall : — 
 
 " Methinks I see the Thames as hard as stone, 
 And beaux and ladies safely walk thereon. 
 Methinks I see a lawyer in his gown 
 A picking up of damsels who fall down. 
 Methinks I see the tents and booths of sin 
 Too full of fools^no wise men can get in ; 
 While Dumpy Dutchmen with their clumsy niates 
 Teach English madmen how to slide with skates. 
 
HARD WEATHER LOAG AGO. 17- 
 
 Methinks I see so much of knavish vice 
 
 As i£ May Fair vi-as kept upon the ice. 
 
 Bulls, cows, and sheep are brought to please the crowd, 
 
 And worser beasts by far are there allowed." 
 
 It is clear that our Doctor was somewhat censorious, 
 and deemed his fellow creatures no better than they 
 should be. His allusion to men as "worser beasts" 
 than the so-called " lower animals," calls to mind Mr. 
 Planchd's charming old burlesque of Beauty and the 
 Beast. The Beast solicits the hand of Beauty ; Beauty 
 rejects his suit ; and the Beast replies with bitter irony — 
 
 " I know I look a beast my dear, 
 
 But still my hopes are high ; 
 There's many a girl has wed, my dear, 
 
 A greater beast than I," 
 
 which is like enough. But to return to our Partridge. 
 He was one of those worthy folk who see more than lies 
 before them. The Thames presented no such aspect as 
 he predicted, but what is very remarkable and well de- 
 serves the notice of the philosophic reader, is that this 
 frost of 1708-g though less potent for the congelation of 
 wat-er than many other frosts, both before and since, 
 was yet more fatal both to animal and vegetable life 
 than any that has ever been known in this country. An 
 old and anonymous poet who wrote a poem to show that 
 " All things some time feel ease," has observed, that be 
 the weather inclement as it may, still 
 
 " The owle with feeble sight 
 
 Lyes lurking in the leaves, 
 The sparrow in the frosty night 
 
 May shroud her in the eaves." 
 
 But it was not so in the frost of 1708-9. Never was 
 there such mortality, especially amongst birds and in- 
 
176 ERR A TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 sects, as during that winter. In many of the southern 
 counties of England " it would have given you as much 
 as your hands could do to pick up the dead bodies of 
 birds ; '' while the Essex Marshes were for miles- be- 
 strewn with swans, brent, geese, seagulls, sandpipers, 
 red-shanks and curlews — all dead ! A country gentle- 
 man writing from Sevenoaks the year after to the Royal 
 Society, observes — " Robin-redbreasts, which before the 
 frost were numerous, are since that very scarce about us, 
 only here and there one to be seen. Nay, notwithstand- 
 ing the recruits in the following summer, yet even still 
 in this succeeding winter their scarcity remains. Larks, 
 also, both wood and sky larks, which used plentifully to 
 entertain us with their melody, became in a manner 
 rarities in our country the following spring and summer ; 
 only one here and another half a mile or a mile off. I 
 have lately inquired of the London poulterers, and they 
 tell me they have larks from all parts of England and 
 have not this following year received a quarter, nay, 
 scarce a tenth part of the larks they used to have by 
 ' reason the frost killed them,' as the bird-catchers say." 
 Nor was the havoc less among the insect tribes. The . 
 greatest sufferer was the pediculus piilsatorius, or death- 
 watch. " Few of them appeared," says the same writer 
 (but who ever heard of their appearing), " the following 
 summer ; and in places where they used in July to be 
 very sonorous with their ticking noise, only now and 
 then one was heard, a manifest sign of their being either 
 killed or less fertile." But all this was nothing com- 
 pared to what happened on the Continent. In Italy, 
 whole shoals of fresh-water fish were found lifeless ; 
 birds as they flew along fell down dead in Germany ; 
 cows in Portugal were frozen to death in their stalls. 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 177 
 
 Human life was sacrificed in many countries, and men 
 grew stiff and starlc and throbless wlien the spirit of the 
 snow-storm breathed in their faces with his icy breath. 
 Of 120 French soldiers who were marching from Paris 
 to Namur, 80 were found dead upon the road. 
 
 It has been stated that the reason of this frost's 
 fatality to the animal and vegetable kingdoms was that 
 temporary thaws, succeeded by intense cold were of 
 continual recurrence ; but the precise amount of credence 
 to be attached to this explanation is a question for pro- 
 fessional readers to determine. The next frost of any 
 importance that happened in England was in 1715-16, 
 when the glories of Frost Fair were renewed upon the 
 •Thames. The river was frozen over for several miles ; 
 booths and stalls were erected on the "yce," and an ox 
 was once again effulgently roasted " over against White- 
 hall." Dr. Derham observes that " the true cause of 
 the freezing of the, Thames that year was not barely the 
 excess of the cold, but the long continuance of it '' — an 
 opinion not unworthy of the. crystal-headed philosopher 
 from whom it emanated. But be the cause what it may, 
 it is very certain that the effect was delightful to the 
 Cockneys. The river was as usual the head-quarters of 
 popular diversion ; and fun and festivity were of uni- 
 versal prevalence upon its congested waters. Gay has 
 celebrated the event in spirite.d and melodious verse :^ 
 " O, roving muse I recall that wondrous year 
 
 When winter reigned in bleak Britannia's air. 
 
 When hoary Thames, with frosted oziers crowned, 
 
 Was three long moons in icy fetters bound : 
 
 The waterman, forlorn, along the shore 
 
 Pensive reclines upon his useless oar ; 
 
 See harnessed steeds desert the stony town 
 
 And wander roads unstable, not their own. 
 12 
 
1 7 8 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 Wheels o'er the harden'd waters smoothly glide, 
 
 And graze with whitened track the slipperytide. 
 
 Here the fat cook piles high the blazing fire, 
 
 And scarce the spit can turn the steer entire. 
 
 Booths sudden hide the Thames, long streets appear. 
 
 And numerous games proclaim the crowded fair. 
 
 So when a general bids the martial train 
 
 Spread their encampment o'er the spacious plain, 
 
 Thick rising tents, a canvas city build. 
 
 And the loud dice resound through all the field." 
 
 But fairs even on terra firma await tlie fiat of de- 
 struction, and how shall there be permanence for a fair 
 that's holden on the " yce ? " Forbid it all the laws 
 that govern this changeful and perishable planet 1 — 
 
 " See now the western gale the flood unbinds. 
 And blackening clouds move on with warmer winds; 
 The wooden town its frail foundation leaves 
 And Thames' full urn rolls down his plenteous waves ; 
 From every pent-house streams the fleeting snow. 
 And with dissolving frost the pavement flow." 
 
 A thaw is a wretched spectacle. It looks as though 
 Nature were in process of dissolution, and the whole 
 world coming to pieces. From so dismal a scene we 
 turn with pleasure to 1739-40, when there was "a re- 
 markable long and severe frost," which appears to have 
 extended over the Continent. The lowest degree of 
 the thermometer observed by Lord Charles Cavendish, 
 in Marlborough Street, was thirteen degrees on the 5th 
 of January, on which day, says the Gentleman's Magazine, 
 it was observed to be ten at Stoke Newington. " Ye 
 river of ye Thames " was " at its old lunes " again. The 
 frost, which began on the 24th December, lasted nine 
 weeks, and " a multitude of people," says Smollett, 
 "dwelt on the Thames, and a great number of booths 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 179 
 
 were erected on it." During that winter there was, 
 near Leicester, a column of ice ten feet long and three 
 in diameter, " the several natural fiutings and cavities 
 whereof were very surprising." In the parish of Ipstones, 
 near Cheadle, in Staffordshire, there was another pillar 
 of ice ten yards and three-quarters high and twelve in 
 breadth, occasioned by the dripping of a rivulet down a 
 rock. During that merciless season there was publish- 
 ed in the magazines a " Petition from the River Thames 
 to the Lawyers at Westminster," which is so droll in 
 conception, and so 'cleverly sustained throughout, that 
 even at this distance of time it may be read with ad- 
 vantage. It runs thus : — 
 
 " To the Venerable Sages of Westminster Hall. 
 " The Humble Petition of the River Thames, 
 " Sheweth, 
 
 " That your petitioner was last Xmas, to the great 
 surprise of all in his neighbourhood, arrested in his bed 
 by a couple of boisterous and mischievous bailiffs whose 
 names are North and East, Those unmerciful creature's 
 seized upon all his goods and movables ; have, in strict 
 durance ever since, closely confined him, and at the 
 same tirne kept him exposed all this rigorous season to 
 the cold, so that he fears he shall lose the use of his 
 limbs. 
 
 " That those unrelenting ministers of punishment 
 have also treated him with the utmost contempt and 
 yiolence ; have even made a public show of him ; have 
 called in heaps of ragamuffins to trample upon him ; 
 and, what is worst of all, have forced a numerous family 
 which he used to provide for to beg in the streets. 
 
 " That the afflictions and distresses of your petitioner 
 
i8o 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 were by means aforesaid so affecting and moving as in 
 one niglit to have turned him as grey as a cat. 
 
 " That the grief of your petitioner who has ever distin- 
 guished himself for being serviceable to his country, is 
 greatly increased upon reflecting he is so far from being 
 as usual useful to the public, that he is become a burden 
 and nuisance to it. 
 
 " That your petitioner intends as soon as he can ob- 
 tain his liberty to go to sea along with a squadron of 
 observation which is to guard the Channel, where he is 
 resolved to signalise himself and show his public spirit 
 by serving without pay or recompense. 
 
 " That your petitioner is not conscious of having ever 
 been guilty of a crime that deserved so severe a punish- 
 ment ; but acknowledges that he did some time ago, 
 out of curiosity, in a very rude and abrupt manner, 
 whilst the courts were sitting, enter Westminister Hall, 
 and by so doing, did, though with no malicious design, 
 spread a general panic and threw matters into a great 
 confusion. For this misdemeanour your petitioner 
 humbly apprehends that, as the cause was not cognisable 
 by any of the courts, their application has been made 
 to the supreme court of judicature, and this severe pro- 
 cess has thereupon issued and been served in manner 
 aforesaid. 
 
 " Your petitioner therefore humbly prays in considera- 
 tion of his past services, and of those he may do in 
 future, that application may be at once again made for 
 a stop to be put to these rigorous proceedings and that, 
 he may recover his liberty." 
 
 This pretty and fanciful squib will not suffer by con- 
 trast with the sallies of modern humorists. 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. i8i 
 
 No. III. 
 
 The winter of 1739-40 was one of the keenest 
 that history takes note of. " It was full of frost, of 
 storm, and cloudiness," as Shakespeare phrases it. 
 Cold blew the wind, and ill betided the wretch who 
 was in a condition to say with Canning's knife-grinder, 
 " My hat has got a hole in it." Those were days when 
 the integrity of a man's hat, and of his shoes, and of all 
 his other raiment should have been, even as Caesar's 
 everlasting wife, " beyond suspicion." Aye, of a verity, 
 those were days not for hats only, but for wigs as well, 
 and eke for " comforters " as our grandmothers, whom 
 we do love though we may not marry, delight to call 
 them. But though that winter was very severe in Eng- 
 land, as was evidenced by the fact that ye river of ye 
 Thames was " arrested in his bed," as he himself most 
 piteously complained, the cold was felt much more 
 acutely in other countries. In more northerly latitudes 
 it was little less than homicidal. Not to multiply in- 
 stances of its singular austerity, it will suffice to glance 
 at the state of things in Lapland during that unmerciful 
 winter. An English gentleman who resided at that 
 time in the town of Torneo, and corresponded with the 
 Gentleman' s Magazine, has left us a graphic picture of 
 the sufferings of the Lapps. If they opened the door 
 of a warm room, the external air instantly converted 
 the vapor of it into snow, whirling it around in white 
 vortices ! If they went abroad, they felt " as if the air 
 were tearing their breast asunder.'' The solitude of 
 the streets was not less than if the inhabitants had all 
 
l82 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 been dead ; " and you might often see people who had 
 a leg or arm frt)zen off." Sometimes the cold, which 
 was always intense, increased by sudden and violent 
 fits, which were often fatal to those who were exposed 
 to them. Sometimes there rose sudden tempests of 
 snow still more terrible. " The wind seemed to blow 
 from all quarters of the compass at once, and drove 
 along the snow with such fury that in a moment all the 
 roads were lost." The roaring of the night-wind, as it 
 swept on invisible wings over the face of the snow- 
 prairie, had a tone of unearthly sadness, and sounded 
 like voices from the unseen world. It is scarcely con 
 ceivable that such scenes must not have appealed pow- 
 erfully to the fancy, or that the general dejection of 
 nature must not have found a sympathetic response in 
 the heart even of the least imaginative spectator. How 
 forcibly are we reminded of Ossian's fine description : — 
 " Sad Brag^la calls in vain. The heathcock's head is 
 beneath his wing. The hind sleeps with the hart of the 
 desert. They shall rise with the morning's light, and 
 wander through the sparkling fields. But my tears re- 
 turn with the sun, my sighs come on with the night." 
 Yet the gloom of the outer world was not for long ; for 
 " as soon as night had fairly set in," observes our author, 
 " fires of a thousand colours and figures lit up the sky as 
 if designed in a country accustomed to such brief dura- 
 tions of day to supply the absence of the sun in this 
 manner." And then he goes on to describe the glories 
 of the aurora borealis, and the motion of the northern 
 meteors which, with the elegant fancy of a poet, he 
 compares to the waving of a pair of colors in the air. 
 On such nights the mercury had usually fallen in the 
 thermometer to forty degree's below freezing-point, so 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 183 
 
 the reader may imagine at what a cost of physical com- 
 fort the admirer of nature must have ^quitted his fire- 
 side to gaze upon the splendors of the be-jewelled 
 sky ! 
 
 The next year that possesses any meteorological pecu- 
 liarity of sufficient interest to invite attention was 1749. 
 The winter of that year does not seem to have been 
 marked by peculiar rigor, but summer indeed " set in 
 with its usual severity." On the i6th of June ice was 
 taken up in large pieces ; peas in the gardens were 
 blasted, and even ferns on Hampstead Heath were 
 slwivelled up. " The like was not remembered by the 
 longest-lived man," says a contemporaneous writer, 
 who here gives us the first glance we have yet obtained 
 of that oblivious veteran " the oldest inhabitant." The 
 walnut trees in Hyde Park were almost killed by the 
 frost ; and at Stockport, in Cheshire, there was ice 
 upon the river, " so that people skated on the same." 
 Moore tells us, in ' Lalla Rookh,' of a young man so 
 very valiant that 
 
 " He knew no more of fear than he who dwells 
 Beneath the tropics knows of icicles ; " 
 
 a couplet, by the way, for which Luttrell proposed to 
 substitute 
 
 " He knew no more of fear than he who dwells 
 In Scotland's mountains knows of knee-buC/6«/s ;" 
 
 Yet a summer such as that of 1794 might have dis- 
 mayed the most dauntless of travellers. Eurus and 
 Boreas seemed to have been upon their good behavior 
 during the next three years, but the " Transactions of the 
 Royal Society " record a remarkable frost in the winter 
 
184 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 of 1753-4. The thermometer varied forty or fifty de- 
 grees in twenty-four hours, "the cold coming, as it 
 were, by fits in an unusual manner." On the last night 
 of that year the glass fell at Bath to thirty degrees be- 
 low freezing-point, a thing unprecedented in England. 
 The frost lasted from December 30th to February 6th, 
 exactly five weeks, and nowhere was it felt with such 
 severity as at Norwich. 
 
 Mr. William Ardeton, an inhabitant of that ancient 
 city, has bequeathed to posterity some observations which 
 may be read with interest by those who are curious in 
 weather-lore. He assures us that the " watery parts ojE a 
 glass of ale " froze in thin flakes, and the spirituous 
 part remained unfrozen between them ; upon being 
 drained off this part was to the taste nearly as strong as 
 brandy, and had a high flavor of the hop. " The finger 
 being spat upon, and pressed upon a flat piece of iron 
 in the open air, was immediately frozen to it so firmly 
 that if it had been hastily plucked away the skin would 
 have been left behind ; and to fill the cup of our won- 
 der, "the ice was sometimes the eighth of an inch 
 thick for several days together on the inside of windows 
 in rooms where a blazing fire was kept." That was 
 what young gentlemen with blue lips and vermilion 
 noses, who affect to like cold, would in our day call 
 " seasonable weather." The winter of 1760 was mild, 
 or comparatively so, in England, but dreadful in many 
 parts of the Continent. At Bareith the cold was as 
 great as in 1709 ; birds dropped down dead as they 
 were flying in the air ; sentinels at Leipzic were frozen 
 to death on their watch; and trees were hardened to the 
 obduracy of rock! In 1762-3 there was a month of 
 very hard weather in England, and the Thames was 
 
HARD WEATHER LOXG AGO. 185 
 
 frozen over so as to bear carriages, but there is no 
 record of a frost-fair. In 1766 the barometer played all 
 manner of unaccountable vagaries, alternately freezing 
 and scorching people, and trifling in the most heartless 
 manner with the noblest feelings of their nature, as the 
 sentimental novelists say. The summer was warm and 
 serene, almost beyond precedent, but the winter would 
 have done honor to Greenland, ^^'e find it narrated in the 
 Annual Register, for the bewilderment of all succeeding 
 ages, that at eight o'clock in the evening of a Saturday 
 in July, " the man who laid a wager to cross the Thames 
 in a butcher's tray set out in the same from Somerset 
 Stairs, and reached the Surrey side with great ease, 
 using nothing but his hands; he had on a cork jacket 
 in case of any accident" Upwards of seventy boat- 
 fals of spectators were present on the occasion, and it 
 is said that ;^i,4oo was staked in wagers on the success- 
 ful achievement of this wonderful feat. Well, to be 
 sure ! in what perilous and ridiculous positions will men 
 be content to place themselves rather than undergo the 
 drudgery of an honest calling ! One man goes up in a 
 balloon, and comes down more rapidly than is consist- 
 ent with dignity j another puts his head into a lion's 
 mouth, the law of probability being that he noil leave 
 it there ; a third walks on the ceiling • like a fly, and 
 occasionally descends like a man, thereby illustrating 
 the truth of the old gentleman's saying in Petronius 
 Arbiter — minores quam muscce sumus — -we are less than 
 flies ; a fourth crosses the river in a butcher's tray ! 
 — and all to avoid the monotony which waits upon 
 every-day pursuits. Now, in all human probability, the 
 man who crossed the river in a tray, was a married man 
 and the father of a family, and think what a humiliating 
 
1 86 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 position was this for one wlio had given hostages to 
 fortune ! But it is greatly to be deplored that contem- 
 poraneous writers should not have hscd a clearer appre- 
 hension of their duty than to have left us such imperfect 
 particulars respecting this adventurous hero who set his 
 Jife upon a tray. " Who was his father, who was his 
 mother, who was his sister, who was his brother ? " — as 
 the song asks, but fails to answer — and under what cir- 
 cumstances did he perform his singular achievement ? 
 Was he a long man or a short one ? — ^and in what man- 
 ner did he navigate his craft ? From the fact that the 
 tray is distinctly described as a butcher's tray, we infer 
 that it cannot have exceeded the ordinary size of such 
 articles, else would it have been unfit^for a flesher's 
 purpose ; but how did our wooden Leander stow himself 
 away in it ? Did he stand on it after the manner of a 
 tree, or sit in it after the manner of a man, or lie in it 
 after the passive fashion of a leg of mutton, or coil him- 
 self up in it after the example of a cat ? How strange, 
 how sad that historians should have left us without one 
 iota of information upon any of these all-important 
 points ! But since it is vain to speculate where there 
 are no data for conjecture, let us bid farewell to the 
 butcher, and say a few words about the winter of the 
 same year. Of all the winters ever known it was prob- 
 ably the most eccentric. Its strange variety of temper- 
 ature and the wild vicissitudes of its weatherj seem to 
 place it beyond the range of precedent. There seemed 
 to be a disposition in the elements to do all manner of 
 inconsistent things at one and the same moment. Thus 
 it was thundering in one place while it was freezing in 
 another. On the 2d of January the tide rose so high 
 in the River Thames that the damage done by it was 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 187 
 
 estimated at ;^s°i°°°- ^ ^^'^ '^'••ys after, the river was 
 frozen, and the snow in the valley of the Thames was so 
 deep as, of course, to exceed the mnemonics of the 
 oldest inhabitant. On the night of that same 2d of 
 January, there was a prodigious fall of snow in Edin- 
 burgh, and on the night following came thunder, light- 
 ning and tempest. On the Cotswold Hills " there was a 
 disposition in the air to rain and freeze simultaneously." 
 " At Birdlip on Thursday night a peacock, belonging to 
 Mr. Biggs, was frozen on the branch when it was at roost ; 
 the branch broke, and in the morning the bird was 
 found dead with the cold, and the ice congealed to its 
 tail weighed 100 lbs." " People on the other side of the 
 hills, towards Herefordshire, inform us," -wrote a coun- 
 try gentleman from Cotswold, " that it was shocking to 
 hear the clashing of the trees and to behold the devas- 
 tation that it made." Mr. Bainbridge, of Bolton, at- 
 tempting to cross the Ulverston Sands on horseback, on 
 the 29th of January, was caught in the frost-fog, and 
 wandered about till ' the flood tide came in and sur- 
 rounded him. He killed his horse in galloping back- 
 wards and forwards in hopes to escape the tide, but he 
 still kept his saddle, and after floating for five hours on 
 the surface of the water, he was at last descried by two 
 youths belonging to the sloop Providence, from Miln- 
 thorpe. Motionless and benumbed with cold, he was 
 still seated on the dead horse. The sailor boys went 
 out to his rescue in a boat, towed him to the side of the 
 vessel, hoisted him with a tackle on board, stripped 
 him of his wet garments, clad him with their own 
 clothes, poured brandy down his throat and, perceiving 
 signs of returning animation, put out in their boat 
 again, though the sea was running " mountains high," 
 
1 88 EJiJiA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 and rowed him on shore, after which they carried him 
 in their arms, for half a mile, to the nearest public- 
 house ! Noble, gallant boys ! — would that we knew 
 your names. But it is of little consequence. You have 
 gone to your eternal rest, and He who "' causeth the 
 wind to blow and the waters to flow " — He who " giyeth 
 the snow like wool and the hoar-frost like ashes," but 
 in whose smile there is perennial sunshine, has given 
 you a reward compared with which the honors and dig- 
 nities of this world are less than worthless. 
 
 It was a woeful winter that of 1766-7, and the suf- 
 ferings of the poor are terrible to read of. Postillions 
 were frozen in their saddles ; wagons and stage- 
 coaches were " snowed in" on all the great roads ; the 
 post-boy who carried the mail from Bradford to Roch- 
 dale was with his horse frozen to death. At Horsham, 
 in Sussex, a great flock of larks settled in the market- 
 place so frost-starved that many of them were taken up 
 by hand; inundations in Scotland were so. great that 
 they are talked of to this day. "In profound darkness 
 in the midst of the water, husbands were carrying their 
 wives in their arms, others threw children to the first 
 house or bed to which they were admitted." " To a 
 bystander free from danger, says a writer in the Scofs 
 Magazine, " perhaps never was there revealed a more 
 awful or more stupendous sight. The waves were pro- 
 digious and the noise truly dreadful. The appearance 
 of the Old Fort, to the south-east of Gun's Green, 
 which forms the entrance to the harbor, seemed only 
 one continued cataract of great extent, and in appear- 
 ance a hundred fathoms high." A farmer near Suner- 
 dale, going after some sheep that were missing during 
 the sno*, took with him a bottle of rum and a small 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 189 
 
 glass. When he found them, some seemed just dying 
 with the cold, to every one of which he gave a little of 
 the rum. To those that seemed least affected he' gave 
 none. What is most remarkable, and what we would 
 especially recommend to the notice of Sir Wilfrid Law- 
 son is, that " he got all that had taken the rum safe 
 home, but some of the rest died by the way." The 
 weather was equally severe on the Continent, but the 
 limits of this article will not allow me to mention any 
 other event connected with the weather in foreign 
 countries, but these very memorable ones — that the 
 Danube was frozen over at Coblentz, a thing that had 
 not happened since 1670, and that the Sound was so 
 completely congealed that the communication was 
 open with Sweden on the ice. In 1776, ten years later, 
 there was a winter of extraordinary rigor in various 
 parts of Europe, but there does not appear to have 
 been any cold of exceptional severity in England until 
 1789, on the 12th January, in which year, "ye river of 
 ye Thames was again frozen over, and a young bear 
 was baited on the ice opposite Radcliif, which drew 
 multitudes together, and fortunately, no accident ha!p- 
 pened to interrupt the sport." During the same month, 
 as I find recorded in Mr. Urban's venerable volumes, 
 thirteen men brought a wagon with a ton of coal from 
 Loughborough, in Leicestershire, to Carlton House, as 
 a present to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. As soon 
 as the coal was emptied into the cellar Mr. Waltje, 
 clerk of the cellar, gave the men four guineas, but 
 when the Prince was inforined of it, " His Highness 
 sent them twenty guineas more, and ordered them a 
 pot of beer each man." " They performed their jour- 
 
igo ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 ney, which is 1 1 1 miles, in eleven days, and drew the 
 wagon all the way without relief." But the poor crea- 
 tures did not make much by their movement after all, 
 fcr when the cost of the coal and of their shoe-leather, 
 and of their keep on the road was deducted from the 
 twenty-four guineas, there was not much to divide 
 among the thirteen. Another occurrence of that memo- 
 rable winter seems sufficiently absurd to deserve a passing 
 allusion. One dismal dreary morning of December, 
 when the snow was at its snowiest and the ice was at 
 its iciest, two footmen, who had a quarrel about a well- 
 made, straight-made, plum.p-made, stout-made house- 
 maid, met in a iield near Haverstock Hill, on the Road 
 of Hampstead, for purposes of mortal conflict ! They 
 were armed with pistols, and changed shots without the 
 slightest injury to either party. At length they agreed " to 
 make it up," and walked off the field as sound as they 
 had entered it. No harm would have been done were it 
 not that their respective masters unfortunately got wind 
 of the matter, and discharged them, " telling them that 
 they had made fools of themselves, and that it was 
 only people of quality who were privileged to murder 
 one another." There were other severe winters in 
 Engla,nd during the eighteenth century, but none of 
 sufficient asperity to require a detailed notice. The 
 most remarkable were those of 1796 and 1797, which 
 are celebrated, not for their continous rigor, but rather 
 for the occasional occurrence of days which it makes 
 one shiver to think of. Thus we learn that on Christ- 
 mas Day, 1796, the cold in the New Road was twenty- 
 one degrees below freezing-point, and the frost remained 
 for hours upon the windows of rooms in which fires 
 
HARD WEATHER LOXG AGO. 191 
 
 ■were constantly burning. But let us pause. This is 
 frigid reading, but let the reader keep up his spirit, re- 
 membering the melodious maxim of the poet — 
 
 " What ! though the frost 
 Reign everlastingly, and ice and snow 
 Thaw not but gather ! — there is that within 
 Which, where it comes, makes summer." 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 It is a striking illustration of the progress of edu- 
 cation in recent times, and of the more ample dif- 
 fusion of useful knowledge by means of the printing 
 press, that whereas it was only at the cost of great labor 
 and extraordinary research that I could obtain the his- 
 torical materials from which to construct a narrative of 
 the famous frosts that occurred in England from the 
 tenth to the eighteenth centuries, no sooner have I ar- 
 rived at those which happened in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury than materials accumulate upon my hands with 
 such rapidity and copiousness that my embarrassment 
 is that of a child at a feast, who can with difficulty 
 make up his mind to which of the many dainties that 
 surround him he shall first address himself. Mine, in 
 fact, is what our Gallic friends call Vembarras ties rich- 
 esses. So many historians throng around me that it is 
 not easy to decide to which of them I should give the 
 preference ; but on the whole it is perhaps as well to 
 select William Hone as my guide, philosopher and 
 friend on the present occasion. The reader will under- 
 
ig2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Stand, therefore, that it is on the authority of the state- 
 ments made by that laborious and conscientious author 
 that the following account of the great frost of 1814 
 may be said rnainly to depend. 
 
 It would appear then that the celebrated frost of 1814 
 was preceded by a fog which fell on London like a huge 
 pall, on the 22d of December, 1813. It is described 
 by Mr. Hone as " darkness that might be felt." Cabinet 
 business of great importance had been transacted, and 
 Lord Castlereagh left " the village," as Cobbett used to 
 call this mighty Babylon, two hours before, to embark 
 for the Continent. The Prince Regent, proceeding to- 
 wards Hatfield on a visit to the Marquis of Salisbury, 
 was obliged to return to Carlton House, after being ab- 
 sent several hours, during which period the carriages 
 had not proceeded beyond Kentish Town,. " and one of 
 the outriders fell into a ditch." Mr. Wilson Croker, 
 Secretary of the Admiralty, on a visit northward, wan- 
 dered likewise several hours in making a progress of 
 not more than three miles, and was likewise compelled 
 to put back. On most of the roads, excepting on the 
 high North Road, travelling was attended with the ut- 
 most danger, and mail and stage coaches were every- 
 where brought to a dead lock. On the 28th, the 
 Maidenhead coach, coming to London, missed the road 
 near Stratford Bridge, and was overturned. Lord Ha- 
 warden was among the passengers, and was severely 
 injured. On the 29th similar accidents occurred to 
 public vehicles in all parts of England ; and the Bir- 
 mingham mail took six horses and twelve hours to get 
 as far as Uxbridge, where it had to give up the journey 
 as a bad job. The short " stages," — as coaches were 
 then called — in the neighborhood of London, had two 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 193 
 
 men with links, running by the horses' heads. Pedes- 
 trians carried lanterns and flambeaux, yet frequently 
 lost themselves in the most frequented and best known 
 streets. Hackney-coachmen mistook the pathway for 
 the road, and often did not discover their mistake until 
 the crash of broken glass apprised them that they were 
 half-way through the window of a shop. On New Year's 
 Eve the fog was worse than ever. " In some districts of 
 the town the lamps were utterly invisible ; in others 
 they looked like farthing rush-lights." Coachmen led 
 their horses by the head, while boys went before with 
 blazing torches. There was no such thing as driving 
 from the box. " The shouting of male foot-passengeis, 
 who were afraid of being run over, and the screaming 
 of women, who in their bewilderment usually took the 
 very course that was most likely to ensure that end, 
 were terrible to hear." At last the fog, which had con- 
 tinued day and night for a week, cleared off ; then came 
 a snow-storm which lasted for forty-eight hours ; and 
 then came the famous frost. And now locomotion on 
 other legs than your own was brought to a violent ter- 
 mination. You might slide, you might skate, you might 
 roll about as you pleased, but there was no such thing 
 as being conveyed in a carriage, or riding on horseback ! 
 Not a vehicle to be seen in the streets of London ! 
 From many buildings icicles a yard and a half long 
 were seen suspended. The water pipes to the houses , 
 were all frozen, and it was with difficulty that a supply 
 of water could be had even by means of plugs in the 
 streets. Skating was pursued with great avidity on the 
 canal in St. James' Park, and the Basin, as it was then 
 called, in the Green Park. The sweep, the dustman, 
 the drummer, the beau, gave evidence of their skill in 
 13 
 
ig4 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 skimming over the icy lake, and claimed the approving 
 smiles of the belles who viewed their movements. 
 
 " Nimbly, swiftly off they go. 
 With sport above and death below." 
 
 In Hyde Park a more distinguished order of visit- 
 ors crowded the banks of the Serpentine. Ladies, in 
 dresses of rich fur, bade defiance to the wintry winds, 
 and ventured on a surface frail and brilliant as " the glass 
 wherein they viewed themselves." Skaters in great 
 numbers executed some of the most difficult movements 
 of the art, to universal admiration. "A lady and two 
 officers, who, to the music of a fine band, performed a 
 reel with a precision scarcely conceivable, received ap 
 plause so boisterous as to terrify the fair cause of the 
 general expression, and occasion her to forego the pleas- 
 ure she received from the amusement." 
 
 " The Hyde Park river — which no river is — 
 The Serpentine — ^which is not serpentine — 
 When frozen every skater claims as his 
 In right of common, there to entertwine 
 With countless crowds, and glide upon the ice. 
 Lining the banks, the timid and unwilling 
 Stand and look on, while some the fair entice 
 By telling ' Yonder skaters are quadrilling, 
 And here the skaters hire the best skates for a shilling. " 
 
 On the 2oth of January the snow came down — to use 
 a sublime and beautiful simile — " like everlasting hokey 
 pokey." On Finchley Common, by the fall of one 
 night, it lay to a depth of sixteen feet, and the road was 
 impassable, even to oxen. At Maidenhead Lane the 
 snow was still deeper, and between Twyford and Read- 
 ing it was mountainous. Accounts say that on parts of 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 195 
 
 Bagshot Heath description would fail to convey an ade- 
 quate idea of its situation. Tlie Middle North Road 
 was hopelessly impassable at Highgate Hill. The ac- 
 counts from the provinces read now like what travellers 
 tell us they have seen in Siberia and Lapland. The Cam- 
 bridge mail-coach, coming to London, sank into a hollow 
 of the road, and remained with the snow drifting over it 
 from twelve o'clock at night till nine o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, when it was dragged out by fourteen wagon horses. 
 The passengers, who were in the coach the whole of the 
 time, were nearly frozen to death ; that they were not 
 altogether so is little less than a miracle. In Scotland 
 the frost was still more severe ; but what is very remark- 
 able in the history of this extraordinary event, is, that 
 the cold, which at its height was probably as great as had 
 ever been experienced in any part of the world, was 
 preceded by a period of singular warmth. The mildness 
 of the weather during the greater part of December was 
 almost unprecedented. Bees were abroad on the lytli 
 and i8th, flying about the hive " as busily as they com- 
 monly are in spring." " The rooks in Dumfriesshire,'' 
 says the Scofs Magazine, " were fighting about their 
 nests in the manner they usually do at the time of pair- 
 ing, previous to their beginning to build. On Christ- 
 mas Eve great numbers of trout were rising at the fly, 
 and some were caught with minnows.. The thrush was 
 heard singing on the 21st, and the blackbird on the 23d, 
 a very uncommon circumstance." B:it all this was only 
 "the current's smoothness ere it dash beneath," as the 
 poet says ; for the frost set in with ferocity on the 28th, 
 and continued for many weeks. At Kelso, the Tweed was 
 completely frozen over, and " an excellent and hot din- 
 ner was served in a tent on the ice to a numerous and 
 
ig6 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 respectable comiSany." Among the toasts, as we find 
 them recorded in the Scottish periodicals of the time, 
 were the following : — "General Frost, who so signally 
 fought last year for the deliverance of Europe, and who 
 now supports the present company." " Both sides of 
 the Tweed, and God preserve us in the middle." 
 Among the guests was an old man who was present at 
 the last entertainment given under similar circumstances 
 that took place in the winter of 1740, when an ox was 
 roasted on the ice. The honest veteran declared his 
 delight in finding that, after a lapse of seventy -three 
 years, " the present generation had by no means de- 
 generated from their ancestors in the essentials of good 
 cheer, good fellowship and hospitality." But if the frost 
 was severe in England and in Scotland, it was still more 
 so in Ireland. So completely suspended was the inter- 
 course between Dublin and different parts of the inte- 
 rior that on the 17th of January no fewer than 1500 
 country mails were due in the metropolis. " It is like 
 a blockaded town,'' writes a gentleman who resided at 
 that time in Dublin, " and begins already to experience 
 in the midst of a profound peace the miseries and dis- 
 tresses of a besieged city." The number of deaths 
 from cold and want was greater than at any other peri- 
 od, unless at the time of the plague. But to return to 
 London, " the best place in summer, and the only place 
 in winter," as Dr. Johnson was accustomed to call it — 
 we find that our old friend " ye river of ye Thames " 
 was meanwhile hardening his heart, to the infinite de- 
 light of the Cockneys, who, as usual, congregated in 
 merry groups upon his frozen bosom. On Wednesday, 
 2d of February, "the whole world looked as if it were 
 petrified," to use the words of a contemporaneous wri- 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. igy 
 
 ter. The Serpentine and the New River were alike, as 
 hard as iron, and icicles hung from every tree. Then 
 were the glories of Frost Fair renewed, in all their pris- 
 tine splendor. The grand " Mall," or walk, extended 
 from Blackfriars Bridge to London Bridge ; this was 
 named the City Road, and was lined on each side by 
 persons of all classes. The Fair continued for a whole 
 week, and pleasant is the memory of its revels. Kitchen 
 fires were blazing in all directions, and all manner of 
 edible animals, from an ox to a rabbit, and a goose to 
 a lark, were turning on numberless spits. Sheep were 
 also roasted whole, and the meat was sold at a shilling 
 a slice, and called " Lapland Mutton." The inscrip- 
 tions upon several booths and lighters were humorous 
 and whimsical. One of them ran thus : 
 
 " This shop to let. N, B. It is charged with no land tax or even 
 ground rent." 
 
 Eight or ten printing-presses were erected, and numer- 
 ous pieces commemorative of the frost were printed on 
 the ice. Among the effusions issued were the follow- 
 ing:— 
 
 Frost Fair, 1814. 
 
 " You that walk here and do design to tell 
 Your children's children what this year bef el, 
 Come, buy this print and it will then be seen 
 That such a year as this has seldom been." 
 
 Liberty of the Press. 
 
 " Friends, now is your time to support the freedom of the press. 
 Can the press have greater liberty ? Here you find it working in 
 the middle of the Thames, and if you encourage us by buying our 
 impressions we will keep it going in the true spirit of liberty during 
 the frost." 
 
igS ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 Upon another booth built upon the ice was written 
 this droll advertisement : — 
 
 " Notice. — The proprietor of these premises would be happy to 
 let them on a building lease. Apply to Mr. Frost." 
 
 On Thursday, February 3, the number of adventurers 
 had enormously increased. Swings, Merry-go-rounds, 
 booths, tents, dancing-rooms, skittles, ninepins, and even 
 ^onkey races were among the scenes and appliances of 
 diversion which everywhere met the eye. Thousands 
 flocked to this singular spectacle of sports and pastimes. 
 The ice was " like a plane of solid rock," and presented 
 a most picturesque appearance ; the view of St. Paul's 
 and of the City, with a white foreground and misty per- 
 spective, had a very singular effect, and " in many direc- 
 tions mountains of ice upheaved presented the rude in- 
 terior of a stone quarry." The watermen profited ex- 
 ceedingly, for they demanded of each person a toll of 
 twopence before admitting him to "feast his eyes upon 
 the radiant attractions of Frost Fair. Ah ! it was fine 
 fun while it lasted, but it was too good to last long, and, 
 like everything else that is pleasant in this fleeting world, 
 it was over too soon. In the matter of freezing and 
 thawing the ancient and ever-to-be-venerated river of ye 
 Thames has physiological peculiarities precisely similar 
 to those which distinguished the respectable old tailor of 
 whom we were wont to sing in our nursery days : — 
 
 " Take an old tailor and squeeze him, 
 
 And rub him over with cheese, 
 And put him out on a frosty night, 
 
 And 'tis ten to one that he'll freeze." 
 
HARD WEATHER LONG AGO. 
 
 199 
 
 So far so good ; nothing can be pleasanter ; but alas ! 
 and a-well-a-day ! look at the sad reverse of the pic- 
 ture — 
 
 " Bring him in in the morning, 
 
 And rub him over with straw, 
 And set him before a blazing fire. 
 
 And 'tis ten to one that he'll thaw." 
 
 Like enough, and so it happened to ye river of ye 
 Thames on Monday, 7th February, 1814. The wind, 
 which had been veering towards the south for some hours 
 past, at last set fairly in for that point, and the sun shin- 
 ing forth at mid-day in unclouded splendor made it soon 
 painfully evident that it was all over with the frost. 
 Thousands of disappointed spectators ~ thronged the 
 banks ; the watermen looked forlorn and dejected ; and 
 many a 'prentice on fun intent went home with a heavy 
 heart as he observed that nothing now remained of the' 
 famous Frost Fair but its memory— its blessed memory 
 which to the end of time will smell sweet and blossom 
 in the dust. 
 
 " Diffugere nives, redeunt jam gramina campis, 
 Arboribusque comas ; 
 Mutat terra vices ; et decrescentia ripas 
 Flumina praetereunt." 
 
 It was probably on the night of the thaw that the fol- 
 lowing woeful apparition, the like of which had not been 
 known since the days of Captain Smith and the unfor- 
 tunate Miss Bailey, revealed itself to the tortured imag- 
 ination of a sleepless poet : — 
 
 " Twas silence all ! The rising moon 
 With clouds had veiled her light ; 
 The clock struck twelve, when lo ! I saw 
 A very chilling sight. 
 
200 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 Pale as a snow-ball was its face. 
 Like icicles its hair, 
 For mantle it appeared to me 
 A sheet of ice to wear. 
 
 Though seldom given to alarm, 
 I' faith I'll not dissemble, 
 My teeth all chattered in my head, 
 And every joint did tremble. 
 
 At last I cried, ' Pray, who are you ? 
 And whither do you go ? ' — 
 Methought the phantom thus replied, 
 ' My name is Sally Snow; 
 
 My father is the Northern Wind, 
 My Mother's name was Water, 
 Old Parson Winter married them, 
 And I'm their hopeful daughter. 
 
 I have a lover, Jacky Frost, 
 My dad the match condemns ; 
 I've run from home to-night, to meet 
 My love upon the Thames.' 
 
 I stopped Miss Snow in her discourse^ 
 This answer just to cast in ; 
 ' I hope if John and you unite 
 Your union won't be lasting. 
 
 Besides, if you should marry him 
 You cannot prosper well O, 
 For surely Jacky Frost must be 
 A very slipp'ry fellow.' 
 
 She sat her down before the fire, 
 My wonder now increases. 
 For she I took to be a maid 
 Then tumbled into pieces 
 
DELIGHT OF GETTING INTO THE COUNTRY. 201 
 
 For air, thin air, did Hamlet's ghost 
 His foremost cock-prow barter ; 
 But what I saw, and now describe, 
 Resolved itself to water." 
 
 So ended the great frost of 181 4, with which concludes 
 this record of " Hard Weather Long Ago." 
 
 THE DELIGHT OF GETTING INTO THE 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 ' I ■'HERE is one thing, and one only, that can recon- 
 -^ cile a sensible man to a residence in London, the 
 same thing that reconciles a prisoner to his dungeon, the 
 blessed hope of getting out of it. In these days of rapid 
 locomotion, when change of scene is a blessing within the 
 reach of almost everybody, and places once deemed to 
 be at an impracticable distance are made easy of access, 
 even to people in humble circumstances, it is painful as 
 difficult to realize to the imagination the sufferings of 
 our forefathers, who, with very rare exception, were 
 doomed to dwell all the year round in this immense 
 city. The proportion of citizens who could spare either 
 the time or the money to travel into the country by mail 
 or stage coach was numerically insignificant. Pleasure 
 trips were out of the question, or nearly so. Few dreamt 
 of going out of town on other occasions than those of in- 
 exorable business ; and then, if the journey were of any 
 great extent, it was no unusual practice for the traveller 
 to make his will before he set out. The vast majority 
 of Londoners were immured within brick and mortar 
 
202 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 from January to December. They were in the same 
 sad predicament as Tom Hood, who complained that 
 his black-bird was a sweep, and that day after day he 
 saw the sun sink behind a chimney-pot instead of a pur- 
 ple hill. Our ancestors whose cruel destiny it was to 
 dwell in the metropolis were outcasts from Nature. In 
 vain, all in vain, for them did the rivers glide, the seas 
 flash and foam, the trees wave in the breeze, and the 
 flowers bloom in the sunshine. They were forbidden 
 
 " To see the country, far diffused around, 
 One boundless blush, one white impurpled shower 
 Of mingled blossoms ; where the raptured eye 
 Hurries from joy to joy.'' 
 
 That was a spectacle for rustics alone. Your trueborn 
 , Cockney knew nothing about it. We live in happier 
 times, and have abundant reason to be grateful that the 
 modern appliances of science have brought within our 
 reach opportunities of pleasure and sources of enjoy 
 ment denied to all preceding generations. 
 
 B,ut man is a graceless, thankless, inconsistent crea 
 ture, that is the fact of it. The discontent prevalent on 
 all hands proves him to be such. Towns-people affect a 
 noble scorn of the country, and country-folk pretend to 
 hold green fields in supreme contempt. We are fre- 
 quently reminded of the man whom Smollett met at the 
 dinner of authors, and who had contracted such an an- 
 tipathy to the country, that he insisted upon sitting with 
 his back towards the window that looked into the gar-, 
 den, and when a dish of cauliflowers was set upon the 
 table, he sniffed up volatile salts to keep him from 
 fainting. "Yet this delicate person was the son of a 
 cottager, born under a hedge, and had many years 
 run wild among asses on a common." How vast the 
 
DELIGHT OF GETTING INTO THE COUNTRY. 
 
 203 
 
 difference between an '' exquisite " of that fantastic type 
 and honest Squire Bramble in Hu7nphrey Clinker, who, 
 after spending a day or two in London, exclaimed, with 
 virtuous indignation, " Everything I see and hear and 
 feel in this great reservoir of folly, knavery, and sophis- 
 tication contributes to enhance the value of a country 
 life in my estimation." Miss Winny Jenkins, in the 
 same incomparable story, expressed with equal heart- 
 iness her distaste for the -dissipations of the great 
 metropolis, declaring that " for her part, she regarded 
 the pleasures of London as no better than sour whey 
 and stale cider, -when compared to the joys of the New 
 Jerusalem." It may be that both the squire and the 
 spinster regarded the question in a somewhat fanatical 
 spirit, and that their opinions are therefore to be re- 
 ceived with a caution essential for the qualification of 
 excessive zeal. There is no denying that great towns 
 have done good service before now to the causes of 
 liberty, learning, and civilization. " Yes, I bless God for 
 cities," writes Dr. Guthrie ; " I recognize a wise and 
 gracious Providence in their existence. The world had 
 not been what it is without them. The disciples were 
 commanded to 'begin at Jerusalem,' and Paul threw 
 himself into the cities of the ancient world, as offering 
 the most commanding positions of influence. Cities 
 have been as lamps of light along the pathway of pro- 
 gress and religion ; within them science has given birth 
 to her noblest discoveries ; behind their walls freedom 
 has fought her noblest battles ; they have stood on the 
 surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back 
 or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression ; cities, 
 indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty ; they 
 have been the radiating active centres of almost all 
 
204 
 
 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 Church and State reformation. Having, therefore, no 
 sympathy with those who, regarding them as the excres- 
 cences of a tree or the tumors of disease, would raze 
 them to the ground, I bless heaven for cities." This is 
 very eloquent, and, in a certain sense, very true ; but 
 the fact remains that " God made the country, and man 
 made the town," and admitting to the fullest the great 
 services rendered to the human race in the aggregate by 
 the assembling together of vast masses in common 
 centres of population, it still stands to reason that the 
 country must be more salubrious and more delightful 
 than the town, and that if you would strengthen your 
 health, exhilarate your spirits, refine your fancy, and 
 exalt your imagination, you must repair not to streets 
 lanes, and alleys, but to verdant valleys, majestic moun- 
 tains, and luxuriant woodlands. " Cela va sans dire." 
 " That goes without to say," as our lively friends on the 
 other side of the Channel are wont to phrase it : — 
 
 " Blest silent groves ! O may ye be 
 For ever mirth's best nursery ! 
 May pure contents 
 For ever pitch their tents 
 
 Upon the downs, the meads, the rocks, the mountains, 
 And peace still slumber by the purling fountains." 
 
 Such was the gentle aspiration of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 and what man of sense is there who will not say " Amen " 
 to that sweet prayer ? 
 
 What exasperates one beyond all patience in this age, 
 when there are so many facilities for men and women 
 becoming familiar with the delights of the country, is to 
 observe how prone people are to run down those de- 
 lights, and to express their preference for the artificial 
 joys of the town. It is the commonest thing in the 
 
DELIGHT OF GETTIiVG INTO THE COUNTRY. 205 
 
 world to hear it said how dull and monotonous the pur- 
 suits and pastimes of the country must be in comparison 
 with the gay careers and brilliant excitement of London. 
 What nonsense ! In Nature, and in her alone, is there 
 infinite variety. The aspects of seas, rivers, and land- 
 scapes, of groves and glades, of hills and dales, is ever- 
 lastingly changing. The scenery of the sky, which is ■ 
 even more picturesque than that of the earth, and which 
 can be effectively contemplated only in the country, 
 is subject to ceaseless and instantaneous mutations. 
 Cloudland is a series of veritable dissolving views, 
 ■revealed under such marvellous conditions of lights and 
 shadows as the pen of no poet, the pencil of no painter, 
 however inspired, have ever adequately depicted. No 
 two flowers in a garden, nay, more, no two leaves upon 
 a tree, no two blades of grass in a field, are precisely 
 alike. Then consider the number and diversity of rural 
 sports,— hunting, shooting, fishing, deer-stalking, cours- 
 ing, racing, rowing, cricketing, skating, and a hundred 
 manly diversions besides. Yet they talk about the 
 sameness of the country 1 What can be more irksome, 
 what more monotonous than a great city ? From rosy 
 morn till dewy eve, — but nb, it will not do to paint the 
 London day in such colors, for in London the morn is 
 not rosy, nor is there the faintest semblance of dew in 
 the eve. Say, rather, from clammy dawn till foggy 
 night, what do we hear and see ? The same never- 
 ending, still-beginning uproar of traffic. Interminable 
 lines of houses, every brick alike j myriads of chimney- 
 pots, all of the same hideous shape ; lamp-posts by the 
 thousand, all of one identical form ; policemen clad in 
 coats so absolutely similar that every man-jack in the 
 force looks like the twin-brother of his comrade.^onff. 
 
2o6 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 lanky Guardsmen hardly distinguishable the one from 
 the other; omnibuses, "hansoms," and "growlers," 
 each of a rigidly-uniform type ; barrel-organs, and bra- 
 zen bands, half-a-dozen of them together, playing the 
 same confounded tunes in half-a-dozen adjoining streets, 
 these are the objects that horrify the senses of vision 
 and hearing in the modern Babylon. All this is. bad 
 enough in the winter, but in summer it is intolerable. 
 The summer sunshine which glorifies and beautifies the 
 country, giving splendor to the flowers, scattering mol- 
 ten gold over the cornfields, and painting the meadows 
 with delight, only serves to intensify the ugliness of the 
 streets of London, and to make them more uncomely 
 and more uncomfortable than ever. Everything around 
 you Ipoks hot and arid. The various statues with which 
 the mighty city is disfigured, but notably George III., 
 with his pig-tail ; George IV.,- in his blanket ; the Duke 
 of Wellington, in his drawers ; Mr. Peabody sitting 
 cross-legged in his arm-chair, and all the busts at which 
 the world grows pale, assume an air of positive repul- 
 siveness when the sunbeams play upon them, lighting 
 up their hideous features, and ungainly forms with a 
 distinctness which makes one envy the blind. You 
 take a ticket to ride from the City to any West-End 
 station, — say, to that most unsightly and inelegant of 
 places, Westbourne Park, — ^by the Underground Rail- 
 way, on a lovely summer day. Suppose, just for argu- 
 ment's sake, that you arrive safely at your destination, 
 and have escaped the dreadful fate of being wedged 
 between the footboard and the platform in the wild 
 Jiurry of the porters, what are your sensations when you 
 get out of the train ? Why, you feel as though you had 
 been breathing all the most pestiferous odors in the 
 
DELIGHT OF GETTING INTO THE COUNTRY. 207 
 
 world, and chewing lucifer-matches ever since you left 
 Bishopsgate. You walk from the Bank to Charing 
 Cross, and what are your experiences ? The pitchy 
 stuff they put upon the wooden pavement sticks to the 
 soles of your boots like glue ; the hell broth from the 
 asphalt-pots well-nigh suffocate you ; Temple Bar looks 
 as if it would come toppling about your ears before you 
 can get through it ; and you reach Trafalgar Square, 
 only to be poisoned by the fumes from the rotten water 
 in the fountains, or to fall headlong into the pits which 
 the gas-men are digging for their own destruction and 
 that of all the world besides. Such is the condition of 
 London in the golden month of September. Yet there 
 are creatures who, claiming to be human, prefer London 
 to all other places. Oh ! for the country, the fresh, 
 pure, fragrant country, rich in delicious perfumes, and 
 resonant with delightful melodies. 
 
 " How bright and beautiful tlie sun goes down 
 O'er the autumnal forests ! The wide sky, 
 Cloudless, is flush'd with that purpureal dye 
 Which gave the Tyrian loom such old renown. 
 The radiance, falling on the distant town, 
 Bathes all in mellowing light ; and softened, come 
 Through the luU'd air, the song of birds, the hum 
 Of bees, and twitter of the martins brown ; 
 All things call back the bosom to the beat 
 Of childhood, and to youth's enchanted maze ; 
 And hark, the rail, amid the golden wheat, 
 With its craik — craik I Oh ! sad it is, yet sweet,- 
 To look through Memory's mirror on the days 
 Which shone like gold, yet melted down like haze ! " 
 
 These are my sentiments — would they were my words ; 
 and being, as I am, of like opinion with the poet, I 
 have no feeling but pity for the man who, having 
 
2 o8 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 it in his power to go into the country, would prefer to 
 remain in town. He who lives all the year round in 
 London has good reason to regret that he is a man, and 
 to wish that he could be any more reasonable animal. 
 Such an unlucky wight is in a condition to sympathize 
 with the aspirations of Robert Burns, " There are just 
 two creatures that I would envy — a horse in his wild 
 state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on 
 some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not 
 a wish without enjoyment ; the other has neither wish 
 nor fear." Contrast the fate of either being with that 
 of a man who would live in London in preference to 
 the country, and blush for your species. 
 
 CASTLES IN THE AIR. 
 
 OTARTING suddenly the other day from a deep 
 reverie, into which he had fallen after dinner at a 
 roadside inn far away from town, the O'Finnigan O 
 sprang to his feet and exclaimed in tones of thunder, 
 " Ireland her own, or the world in a blaze ! ! " So say- 
 ing, he dealt the unoffending table a terrific thwack 
 with his clenched fist. I bethought me of the disputa- 
 tious churchman who shouted out in'his dreams, " Con- 
 clusum est contra Mafiichceos I " — " It is decided against 
 the Manichaeans ; " I also recalled to mind the anec- 
 dote about the brilliant historian who smashed a de- 
 canter into sparkling fragments while he was in a brown 
 study at the Star and Garter in Richmond. I was 
 dreadfully alarmed. That Ireland should have "her 
 
CASTLES IN THE AIR. 209 
 
 own," whatever that may be, I have not the slightest 
 objection ; but the appalling alternative of the universe 
 in flames filled me with dismay. " What can be the 
 matter now, my O'Finnigan, with you and your coun- 
 try ? " I ventured to inquire, in accents as soothing as I 
 could command. "You have got a Duke of Con- 
 naught ; cannot you be quiet ? " My gentle joke only 
 served to deepen his despondency. " Ah ! '' he replied, 
 " you may laugh. They laugh who win ; but neither I 
 nor my native land ever wins. I was at my old game 
 again — building a castle in the air. That castle was 
 the freedom and independence of old Ireland. It was 
 a goodly structure and fair to behold, but, as usual, it 
 has come toppling about my ears. My bleeding coun- 
 try is doomed to Saxon bondage ; she is a lovely white- 
 robed angel, quivering upon the spear of despotism.'' 
 In vain did I remind him of the praise and pudding 
 bestowed with equal liberality upon a countryman of 
 his, Sir Garnet Wolseley ; in vain did I call attention 
 to the large space taken up by the harp in the national 
 ensign, and to the enormous size of the shamrock in 
 the recent illuminations. He was not to be comforted. 
 So, finding him inconsolable, I retreated, as is my 
 wont, in perfect order upon myself, and lighting my 
 pipe, set about building aerial castles of my own, for 
 which I fondly expected a better fate than had attend- 
 ed those of my sorrow-stricken Hibernian. And a 
 very pleasant time I had of it ; for, more fortunate than 
 my friend, I am bound in candor to confess that some 
 of the most blissful hours of my life have been spent 
 in operations of atmospheric architecture. The experi- 
 ence of most men would, I imagine, lead to a similar, 
 result. The realities of life are too often cold, hard 
 14 
 
2 1 o ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 and stern ; but there is no limit to the joys of a sump- 
 tuous imagination. Fancy has a feahn of her own, to 
 which the weary and disappointed may at all times re 
 sort in happy assurance of finding their pleasures be 
 yond the reach of cruel fortune. How delightful to 
 escape from the toil and turmoil of every-day existence, 
 from its ignoble cares and sickening solicitudes, its 
 odious fogs and filthy fray, into that Canaan overflow- 
 ing with' milk and honey, the fairy-land of poetic 
 thought ! — 
 
 " A pleasing land of drowsyshed it is, 
 Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
 And of gay castles in the clouds that pass. 
 For ever flushing round a summer sky." 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, affects to pooh-pooh 
 such.unsubstantial structures. " These be but castles 
 in the air," he says, " and in men's fancies vainly imag- 
 ined ; " yet I cannot help thinking that he would have 
 found more comfortable accommodation even in edi- 
 fices of that visionary description than in the more 
 massive masonry of London's .Tower. But all men 
 should speak of the world, whether in its actual or in 
 its ideal phases, as they have found it. " Every one is 
 as God made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse," 
 is the philosophic remark of Sancho Panza ; and in 
 whichsoever of these two conditions he may be, let him, 
 at all events, report honestly of that which he may have 
 seen, heard of felt. So reporting, I should say that the 
 building of castles in the air is of all occupations 
 at once the most innocent and the most delightful. 
 '• Crede experto." I speak from' experience ; for, though 
 I have never nieddled with material brick and mortar, I 
 
CASTLES IN THE AIR. 2 1 1 
 
 doubt whether there be in all England another man 
 who has been so largely engaged in the erecting of 
 aerial mansions. Such edifices are inexpensive ; and 
 they have this additional advantage that you may build 
 them after what plans and designs you please, and fur- 
 nish them in the most superb or voluptuous fashion ac- 
 cording to your taste. You need have no apprehension 
 that your architect will send in a drawing too costly 
 and elaborate for your means, that your builder will 
 exceed his estimate, or your upholsterer ruin you with 
 an exorbitant bill. Independent of them all you are 
 free to construct your castle where and how you please, 
 and to deck it out with such appointments of drapery 
 and decoration as may be most suitable to your con- 
 venience or enjo3'ment. 
 
 Who .shall presume to set bounds to your luxurious 
 imagination ? It is nothing to the purpose to say that 
 your castles in the air " come toppling about your ears," 
 as the O'Pinnigan O would phrase it. Of course they 
 do. Such is the fate of every castle, whether material 
 or immaterial. Everything comes toppling about our 
 ears sooner or later, till at last we topple ourselves. It 
 is but a question of time ; but it is not in Fate, malig' 
 nant though she be — to rob us of the dear delight we 
 enjoy while employed in the construction of our Chat- 
 eaux en Espagne. What though they go down with a 
 rush at the slightest whiff of adverse wind, the sweet 
 memory of the pleasure we tasted while building them 
 survives their fall, and is a joy for ever. Whether 
 life would be worth having if we were deprived of 
 the privilege of castle building, is a question on which 
 I have not as yet finally made up my mind ; but, as at 
 present advised, I am inclined to decide the proposition 
 
2 1 2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 in the negative. Everything palls in fruition j nothing 
 comes up to one's conception of its charms ; felicity 
 dwells in anticipation, and in that alone. Oh ! the 
 bliss ineffable of casting aside the bonds of illness and 
 the trammels of a mean estate, and soaring at a bound 
 into the blue empyrean of poetic fancy, there to revel 
 in such affluent delights as the combination of health 
 and wealth can bestow. At my little rural lodgings I 
 had a fine spell of such rapture. Methought that I had 
 succeeded to a noble fortune and was strong as Her- 
 cules and as healthy as a German Spa. I was lord of 
 myself — that heritage of fun. I had nothing to do, 
 and was well paid for doing it ; I was free to roam 
 whithersoever I might please ; to go a fly-fishing to 
 Norway, or a pig-sticking to India, or a fox-hunting to 
 Hampshire. There was no mountain from Primrose 
 Hill to the Himalayas that I was not at liberty to as- 
 cend. I had books and pictures beyond all counting, 
 and my fellow-creatures, so far from snubbing me, or 
 turning up their saucy noses at me, as is their custom- 
 ary practice, treated me with the utmost distinction, and 
 seemed only to live to administer to my pleasure. I called 
 the Heir Apparent " Wales," I chucked the royal chil- 
 dren under their royal chins, and they seemed to like 
 it ; nay, more, my Sovereign Lady the Queen regarded 
 me with peculiar favor, and styled me the most illustri- 
 ous of her subjects. Brown was nowhere. Mine was 
 the most brilliant equipage in the Row, mine the most 
 spacious box at the opera, mine the brightest and best 
 ojf everything. I had two shirts and as many pairs of 
 stockings. Beautiful damsels waited upon me ; they 
 sang to me and danced to me, and read my poems 
 aloud, and assured me that they perfectly understood 
 
CASTLES IN THE AIR. 213 
 
 them, which is more than I would dare to affirm my 
 self. To quote the magnificent language of an Ameri- 
 can journalist, in describing the wedding of Miss Grant 
 and Mr. Sartoris : " A delightful inurmur of conver- 
 sation was maintained by the ladies, occasionally 
 broken by a zephyr of laughter that only served to rip- 
 ple the murmuring waves and melt out with a musical 
 echo." And talking of weddings, I had my pick and 
 choice of the most magnificent girls in England, which 
 means the most magnificent in the world ; and I was 
 at liberty to wed any one I pleased of them — or any 
 number of them I might fancy, for the matter of that. 
 I got peerages for my friends. I ran over my enemies 
 as though they were mice ; and, in a word, I did just 
 as I chose, which is freedom worthy of the name. I 
 bullied all my editors, and behaved with supreme 
 insolence to everyone who is now in authority over 
 me, for I had reached the high top-gallant of my joy, 
 and I belonged to that lucky fraternity of whom 
 old Owen Feltham has written that " their paths are 
 washt with butter and the rosebud crowns them." Such 
 and so prosperous was the condition of my fortunes be 
 tween the hours of six and eight on Thursday last, while 
 I was employed in the noble occupation of building 
 castles in the air — I built a whole town of them. True, 
 the inevitable hour of disenchantment chimed with an 
 ominous dirge, and when my landlady informed me 
 that Mr. Chalk, my milkman (to whom I owe eighteen- 
 pence — and am well able to owe it), was waiting down 
 stairs and had become importunate, I sighed to think 
 that I resembled Caligula, who raised a mighty army, 
 and then led it to gather cockle-shells— but what of 
 that ? I had had two hours of intense enjoyment, and 
 
2 1 4 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 that is more than can be said by every muddy-mettled 
 rascal who lords it in the Park or swaggers through 
 Lombard Street, but who, for all his wealth, knows no 
 more about the art and mystery of building castles in 
 the air than a cow knows of playing the flute. . Youth, 
 the season made for joy, is not- less certainly the age 
 most favorable for castle-building. Who that ever was 
 a boy or girl does not hark back with fond delight, not 
 unmixed with a tender touch of melancholy, to the days 
 when he or she mapped out a future of unclouded joy, 
 and filled it with palaces of pleasure. To hear chil- 
 dren talk of what they will do " when they are big " — 
 that golden goal never to be reached soon enough, and 
 then to think of what it will all end in, vanity and vexa- 
 tion of spirit, are matters that may well awaken in the 
 mature observer a mournful reflection ; for 
 
 " O, ye tiny elves who sport 
 
 Like linnets in a bush, 
 You little know what grief you court 
 
 When manhood is your wish." 
 
 All too true ; and yet the very longing for that time, 
 the very effort of the youthful imagination to invest 
 it with ideal charms, the very attempt to paint it in 
 the prismatic hues of fancy, are in themselves joys as 
 genuine as any that the world can supply. Last Sun- 
 day morning a friend of mine, an artist of eminence, 
 gave his eldest daughter a gold watch — a birthday gift 
 on the completion of her fourteenth year. " How I 
 wish that I was fourteen instead of six and a half, and 
 then I should have a present!" exclamed her little 
 sister. " Ah ! my child," rejoined the father, " how I 
 wish that I was fourteen and then I should have a 
 
CASTLES IN THE AJR. 
 
 21S 
 
 future." " Tout le monde a son Canasonne.'' Every 
 one pictures to himself some condition of being more 
 blissful and congenial than that which fortune has 
 assigned to him. Handel fancied himself born to com- 
 mand a troop of horse, and Liston, whom nobody 
 could look at without laughing in his face, lived and 
 died in the belief that tragedy was his -fort. Even M. 
 Gambetta, who carries his affection for Republican 
 institutions to such a pitch that he will go up in a bal- 
 loon to serve their interests, sighs for the appearance of 
 " that flower of elegance and good-breeding " which is 
 to make the French Republic what the Athenian once 
 was. May his head never ache till he gets it. Speaking 
 of the romantic 'exaggerations of poesy, Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney says that " Nature never set forth the earth in so 
 rich tapestry as diverse poets have done : neither 
 with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling 
 flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much- 
 loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen ; the 
 poets deliver a golden." This holds good not alone of 
 poets but also of lovers. For painting the meadows with 
 delight, and filling the firmament with picturesque cas- 
 tles, I will back you hair-brained sweethearts against 
 all creation. 
 
 THE MISERIES OF MUSIC. 
 
 " T AM never merrj' when I hear sweet music," says 
 
 Shakespeare. No' more am I, my divine Williaih. 
 
 I am downright miserable. Indeed, the more I think of 
 
 it, the more firmly am I convinced that music is at the 
 
2 1 6 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 bottom of fully one-half the miseries of human rife. 
 Who can be comfortable, who can hope to enjoy one 
 hour of mental serenity, whose peace is everlastingly 
 being invaded by the blowing of horns, the beating of 
 drums, the droning of bag-pipes, the scraping of fiddles, 
 the grinding of organs, and the various vocal noises 
 that pass under the name of " singing ? " Who, indeed ? 
 The row that goes on in the streets of London from 
 foggy morn to " gassy " eve, owing to the uproar created 
 on all hands by the blatant blackguards who are per- 
 petually performing upon one instrument of torture or 
 another, is enough to drive a man out of his senses. It 
 shatters his nerves, disquiets his brain, spoils his temper, 
 ruins his digestion, and plays the mischief with his 
 liver. And the agony of it is that you never kn'ow what 
 you have done with it. The evil is Hydra-headed, and 
 is perpetually assuming new forms of horror and dismay. 
 Barrel organs and brass bands were bad enough, in all 
 conscience, but superadded to these we have now many 
 contrivances still more exasperating. The most recent 
 invention is an infernal machine upon wheels — a sort of 
 mitrailleuse pianoforte, which being set in motion by 
 the felonious arm of some unwashed scoundrel from be- 
 yond the Alps — would they were on the top of him ! — 
 discharges volley upon volley of the most maddening 
 sounds into your ears, destro) ing all conversation, dis- 
 tracting all thought, forbidding all study, turning the 
 blessed sense of hearing into a curse, and making you 
 envy the deaf. There is no nation on earth besides 
 ourselves who would endure such a persecution for four- 
 and-twenty hours. They would turn as one man upon 
 their torturers, and fling them and their hideous instru- 
 ments into the sea. A half-naked Highlander prowling 
 
THE MISERIES OF MUSIC. 
 
 217 
 
 under your windows, and plajing upon that detestable 
 thing called the bag-pipe, is a spectacle sufficiently 
 humiliating to our civilization ; but the stalwart savage 
 is tall, massive, and sinewy, a good-looking, well-propor- 
 tioned fellow, lazy vagabond though he be, and after all 
 he is our countryman. But what is to be said for those 
 ugly, undersized Italian or Swiss miscreants in steeple 
 hats, ragged cloaks, and filthy buskins, who under the 
 pretence of dancing, caper about like galvanized jack- 
 asses, braj'ing the while at the top of their villainous 
 voices, and squeezing out of huge bags of air, which they 
 carry beneath their right arms, noises compared to which 
 the filing of saws is heavenly melody. Talk of the 
 drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe forsooth ! Why it is 
 the song, of St. Cecilia in comparison. I declare that I 
 would rather listen to the famous porcine piano in- 
 vented by Louis XIII., and composed of living pigs of 
 all ages and sizes, into whose bodies needles were 
 driven successively so that the gruntings of the victims 
 were modulated to a perfect gamut. Yes, I would rather 
 — a thousand times rather — listen to such music as that, 
 than to the bowlings and dronings of these make-believe 
 shepherds and cow-herds. Avaunt. you discordant 
 scoundrels ! Out of sight, you soapless, hirsute vagrants ! 
 Away with you ! 
 
 Cedite Tibicines Itali vos cedite Galli ! 
 Dico iterum vobis cedite Tibicines ! 
 Cedite Tibicines, vobis ter dico quaterqne 
 Iterum vobis. dico Cedite Tibicines ! " 
 
 But no. They won't stir. Not an inch will they 
 budge ; they know better, the scamps. You flee from 
 London to the sea-side in the hope of avoiding their 
 
2 1 8 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 persecution. Yain hope ! Out of the frying-pan into 
 the fire ! Go where you may, they pursue you remorse- 
 lessly. You take a quiet lodging, far from the terraces 
 and squares, only to find that the " musicians " — ^bless the 
 mark — come in front of your house in successive batches, 
 relieving one another with the regularity of sentries. 
 You venture upon the pier, but there they are before you. 
 The town is swarming with hordes of inharmonious min- 
 strels vying to make day and night alike — hideous. Turn 
 where you may they shock your gaze and horrify your 
 ears. There are three or four distinct troupes of sham 
 niggers with their bones, fiddles, and tambourines, their 
 slang songs and idiotic jokes. The atmosphere resounds 
 with their ribald jests and gimcrack ballads, and their 
 outlandish dress is in perfect keeping with their barbar- 
 ous clangor. Perhaps you are discoursing with your 
 sweetheart on the blessed tranquillity of a country life, 
 when " Fireworks on the brain ! " bursts upon you with 
 a mocking, agonizing distinctness ; or it may be that you 
 are in a tender, sentimental vein, and on the very verge 
 of a proposal, when " First she would and then she 
 wouldn't " comes ringing through the air with a derisive 
 cadence that makes you regard your Beloved as a heart- 
 less little flirt, unworthy of your choice. Presently the. 
 squeak of " Mr. Punch " turns your teeth on edge ; and 
 hardly have you recovered from the unpleasant sensa- 
 tion when you find yourself confronted by a piper, a 
 fiddler, an organ-grinder, or, worse still, an artist who 
 performs upon the spout of a coiiEee-pot. Every man 
 Jack of them is playing the same air — the tune the old 
 cow died of ; and many besides that aged animal have 
 perished of that tune. By-and-bye you are doomed to 
 hearken to the squalling of a ballad-singer far dearer to 
 
THE MISERIES OF MUSIC. 219 
 
 Bacchus than to Apollo. Oh ! my good woman, do, for 
 pity's sake, hold your tongue. 
 
 " Swans sing before they die ; 'twere no bad thing 
 Did certain persons die before they sing." 
 
 So said Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; but what care you 
 for Samuel Taylor Coleridge ? Not a potato. As well 
 might one whistle jigs to a mile-stone in the hope of 
 setting it a-dancing, as quote poetry to you in the hope 
 of moving you to mercy. Your calling is to make 
 people miserable, and all too well do you fulfil }^our 
 mission. Then, again, there are oratorios, than which 
 nothing under the sun can be much more absurd. 
 " What," asks Sydney Smith, " can be more ridiculous 
 than to see four or five hundred fiddlers scraping away 
 for their dear lives all about Moses and tlie children of 
 Israel in the Red Sea ? " The most enthusiastic vota- 
 ries of Paganini's art have never yet been able to give a 
 satisfactory answer to that question. So much for the 
 miseries of music in public. In private they are neither 
 less numerous nor less poignant. When Music, heaven- 
 ly maid, was young, who could have supposed that she 
 would turn out to be such a nuisance in her old age ? 
 You go to a friend's house hoping to spend a pleasant 
 evening ; but it is out of the question. No sooner have 
 you warmed to your cosy little chat than up stands 
 some unfortunate man or still more unfortunate woman, 
 who fancies that he or she can sing, and who, under 
 that hallucination, makes for the piano and proceeds to 
 utter a horrid clamor fatal alike to sensible discourse 
 and social enjoyment. Farewell now to friendly con- 
 verse, a long farewell to all the joys of convivial inter- 
 course. " If music be the food of love, play on ! " 
 
2 2 o ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Just SO ; but it isn't. The food of love, indeed ! It is 
 the food of hatred. Consider what happens upon the 
 field of battle. Do you really suppose that thousands 
 upon thousands of men who owe one another no grudge, 
 who, so far from having any personal quarrel, have 
 never before been face to face, and do not so much as 
 know one another's names, would fly at one another's 
 throats and shed one another's blood like water if they 
 were not driven to distraction, brutalized, infuriated, 
 and bereft of humanity by music ? Yes, I say by music. 
 It is the spirit-stirring drum, and the ear-piercing fife, 
 which makes them raving maniacs, insensible to pity, 
 insensible to love. 
 
 " Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, 
 To soften rocks or bend a knotted oak." 
 
 So sings Congreve ; but don't believe a word of it. 
 If music hath chatms to soothe the savage breast, how 
 comes it that so many ferocious crimes are every day 
 committed in the very lanes and. alleys where the organ- 
 grinders are grinding, the German bands braying, and 
 the ballad-singers bleating all day long? If music 
 hath charms to soften rocks and bend the knotted oaks, 
 how comes it that the rocks in Scotland, where the bag- 
 pipes are eternally droning, are still as hard as adamant, 
 and that the oaks in Greenwich Park, where people are 
 continually singing, are still as knotty as Mr. Browning's 
 poetry ? Answer me that if you please, or evermore 
 hold your peace. The practice of having music played 
 during dinner is highly objectionable, not to say danger- 
 ous. If a man has a good ear, he will measure his 
 mastication by the music, and the consequences may be 
 very serious. If the band plays the " Dead March " in 
 
THE MISERIES OF MUSIC. 221 
 
 Saul, he may be an hour over an omelette ; if they play 
 " Pop goes the \\'easel " or an Irish jig, his teeth will 
 keep time with the rollicking air, and he will run the 
 risk of being choked. Thus you see that, go where we 
 may or do what we will. Music is still an endless source 
 of worry and annoyance. It is all very fine for you to 
 throw in my teeth what Shakespeare has written about 
 the iniquity of tlie man who hath no music in himself, 
 and the inferential excellence of the man who hath. It 
 is all stuff and nonsense. Some of the very best men I 
 have ever known could not hum " The Bay of Biscay," 
 or anything else, though their lives depended upon it ; 
 and some of the most disagreeable, good-for-nothing 
 people I have ever met were caterwauling morning, 
 noon, and nights. Why, bless my heart, I have the 
 happy privilege of knowing a man who, though he has 
 not a note of music in his voice, and could not for the 
 dear life of him tell " Ye Banks and Braes " from 
 " Yankee Doodle," is everlastingly endeavoring to sing. 
 I had as soon listen to the cats on the tiles, or the owls 
 in the ivy-bushes. Yet, you may take my word of honor 
 for it, that man, all unmusical though he be, is a paragon 
 of men. He is as near perfection as any human being 
 can ever hope to approach. Let the poets say what 
 they may. Music has a demoralizing, infuriating effect, 
 and the less you have to do with it the better for your 
 neighbors and yourself. Did it ever happen to you to 
 live next door to a man who was learning to play the 
 flute ? If so, was there ever a day in the year that you 
 did not thirst for his blood ? Of course there was not. 
 Sicilian tyrants never invented any such torture as to 
 dwell within earshot of a fellow who is learning the 
 flute. For my own part I can conscientiously affirm 
 
233 ERRA TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 that the only enjoyment I ever got out of music of any 
 sort was the indirect fun I derived from reading that 
 splendid little story about the Primitive Methodists, 
 somewhere in Cornwall, who, not having among them 
 any one who had the requisite skill to play the organ, 
 purchased a mechanical self-playing instrument. At a 
 stated period in the service on the first Sunday after the 
 arrival of the machine from London, a venerable Metho- 
 dist wound it up very solemnly. Imagine the horror 
 and consternation of the congregation on finding their 
 ears saluted, not with the " Old Hundredth," but with 
 "The Pretty Little Ratcatcher's Daughter." In vain 
 did they subject the organ to all manner of practical 
 remonstrances, in vain did they attempt to induce it 
 either to change its tune or hold its peace. Finding it 
 irreclaimable, a couple of able-bodied Methodists lifted 
 it on their shoulders and carried it out of the chapel. 
 But matters were not to be thus easily arranged. True, 
 the organ was turned out and placed ignominiously in a 
 garden hard by ; but, having been once wound up, the 
 scampish instrument was bound to go through the whole 
 category of its airs, and for fully half an. hour the con- 
 gregation was doomed to hear it shouting out of doors 
 that Champagne Charlie was its name. The explana- 
 tion of this marvellous proceeding was that the organ- 
 builders had made the mistake of sending to the Primi 
 tives in Cornwall an organ which was intended for the 
 Hall-by-the-Sea at Margate. The Methodists, who are 
 most worthy and virtuous people, were scandalized be- 
 yond expression ; but their sad mishap only serves to 
 illustrate the truth of my proposition, that music is at 
 the bottom of half the miseries of human life. 
 
THE WITCHERY OF MANNER. 223 
 
 THE WITCHERY OF MANNER. 
 
 TV /TANNER is beyond question one of the most mar- 
 vellous mysteries of our nature. I now allude 
 more particularly to personal manner, and the favor, in- 
 fluence, and pre-eminence which some people enjoy 
 among their fellows by reason of that magic endow- 
 ment. Who can explain the witchery of a gracious, 
 genial manner } Whence does it come ? In what does 
 it consist ? What is the source and secret of its enchant- 
 ing spell ? There are men and women who attract our 
 confidence at a ' glance. You have not been in their 
 company more than a minute or two, nor have you and 
 they exchanged more than half-a-dozen words, before 
 you feel at home with them. They have a gentle, un- 
 affected courtesy, a frankness of look, a suavity of tone, 
 as natural to them as is its lustre to a jewel or its fra- 
 grance to a flower. There is a nameless something — a 
 "y^ ne sais quoi" as the French phrase it, in their air 
 and demeanor, in the expression of their eyes, in the 
 ladiance of their brows, in the smile that plays sweetly 
 around their lips, in the very sound of their voices, 
 which bespeaks sympathy with you and wins its way 
 irresistibly to your heart. They have about them that 
 touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. 
 From the snow-fields and icebergs of the Arctic Circle 
 to the golden orange gardens and silver olive groves of 
 southern Italy, is not a change pleasanter or more com- 
 plete than from the cold, inhospitable company and the 
 barren arid talk of commonplace persons to the delight- 
 
224 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 ful conversation and benignant companionship of such 
 people as these. It is manner that makes all the differ- 
 ence. " Manner maketh man," 'says the old proverb, 
 nor man alone, but woman also. This it is that ineffably 
 enhances the charms of the loveliest face and causes 
 one to forget the plainness of the least comely. " Where 
 is it ? " asks Mr. Thackeray. " What is it — the secret 
 which makes one little hand the dearest of all ? " Is it 
 not manner ? After depicting with masterly skill the 
 personal perfections of Haidee, her fine features and 
 matchless form, Byron illustrates her crowning glory by 
 one of the simplest, but, at the same time, one of the 
 happiest similes in the whole range of English poetry :— 
 
 "and her manner 
 Shed hovering graces round her,' like a banner." 
 
 To realize the poetic value of this image, picture to 
 yourself what wonderful beauty there is, in a banner of 
 any 'kind, whether in the standard of battle or in the 
 trembling pennant of a ship cleaving her foamy track 
 through the waters, or in the flag waving in the wind 
 from the battlements of some grand old castle. What 
 a grace for example does the flag floating from Windsor 
 Castle give to that superb structure, and to the wood- 
 land landscape that surrounds it ! What an air of refine- 
 ment that radiant ensign imparts to the whole scene! 
 Just such is the effect of manner. I have present to 
 my memory, as I write, a woman now in Paradise, whom 
 to have known was indeed to have loved. She was not 
 beautiful, but she was delightful. Go where she might 
 she brought sunshine with her. Her friends were ever 
 the happier for her coming, ever the sadder for her 
 going. She had a tear for every sorrow, a smile for 
 
THE WITCHERY OF MAXXER. 225 
 
 every joy. Her sjinpathetic manner soothed and 
 brightened eveiy one. Never have I seen a woaian 
 who verified so accurately Young's melodious verses : — ■ 
 
 " What's female beaut)' but an air divine, 
 Through which the soul's more gentle graces shine ; 
 They, like the sun, irradiate all between. 
 The body charms because the mind is seen." 
 
 There is the whole pith of the question. Nothing so 
 tries my patience as to be told by tlie apologists of a 
 brutal man that I must excuse his brutality on account 
 of his manner. " Oh ! never mind ; it is only his man- 
 ner." This is begging the whole question. In his 
 odious manner dwells his whole offence. It is of his 
 manner that I complain. Let him mend it Alas ! as 
 well might you ask him to fiy to the moon. Whether in 
 man or woman, manner is the out-come of the inner 
 nature. So it was regarded by the ancient Romans, 
 who used tlie same word — " mores " — to signify both 
 manners and morals. It is a vulgar error, and worthy 
 of the \Tilgar, since nothing can be more absurd, to re- 
 gard rude, disagreeable people, as good-hearted. What 
 fudge ! Humanity even in its best types is but frail, and 
 I can entirely understand that a man of sound and sweet 
 nature may occasionally indulge in outbursts of p.assion. 
 The warmth of his heart finds its way into his temper ; 
 but the remorse of such a man is generally in excess of 
 his offence, and the true manliness of his disposition 
 ever prompts him to make all tlie atonement in his 
 power for the annoyance he may have caused to his 
 neighbors. But to tell me tliat that man can have a good 
 heart who is systematically perverse, cross-grained, 
 morose, impolite, and regardless of the feelings of 
 
 IS 
 
226 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Others, is W insult my understanding. You might as 
 well tell me that that is a good apple-tree which invari- 
 ably produces sour apples. Those sullen scoundrels, 
 whose general deportment, bleak, dismal, and dreary, re- 
 minds one of that lake in the Helvetian Alps, to which 
 tradition tells us the spirit of Pontius Pilate has been 
 banished, can be civil enough when they please ; but that 
 is only when their own private interests are to be served 
 -by civility. From such men I always part with joy, ever 
 longing to address them in the language of Jacques to 
 Orlando, " God be with you ! Let us meet as little as 
 we can." The charms of manner are hopelessly beyond 
 the reach of such men ; and for this obvious reason, 
 that they want the inner and spiritual grace of which 
 manner is but the outward and visible sign. 
 
 Politeness has been well described as benevolence in 
 trifles; and if this definition is true, it is out of the 
 question that they can be truly polite in whose nature 
 there is no principle of benevolence. A winning man- 
 ner is wholly unattainable by those who, always studi- 
 ous of their own profit and convenience, have no thought 
 for the happiness of others. " We talk of human life as 
 a journey," says a brilliant writer, "but how variously is 
 that journey performed ! There are some who come 
 forth, girt and shod and mantled, to walk on velvet 
 lawns and smooth terraces, where every gale is arrested 
 and every beam is tempered. There are others who 
 walk on the Alpine paths of life against driving misery, 
 through stormy sorrows, over sharp afiflictions with bare 
 feet and naked breast, jaded, mangled, -and chilled." 
 Marvellous, indeed, are the contrasts of destiny ; but if 
 travellers wending their way along the same road would 
 but ^practice the small sweet courtesies of life and culti- 
 
THE WITCHERY OF MANNER. 227 
 
 vate the charms that dwell in manner, Irow much 
 smoother and pleasanter the journey would be ! Instead 
 of pursuing such a course, it too often happens that the 
 pilgrims view one another with mutual distrust and 
 aversion, regarding their own comfort alone, and dis- 
 playing at periods of common danger a sullen inflexi- 
 bility which circumstances cannot influence, pity soften 
 reason subdue. The little-minded and pretentious are 
 blind to the virtues of their neighbors, and thus fail to 
 find either pleasure or advantage in their society. Of 
 this rest confidently assured, that modesty is the com- 
 panion of worth, and that a generous appreciation of 
 others is the head-spring of a noble and endearing man- 
 ner. I never yet knew a man of real power who was 
 nt)f diffident of his own ability, and fondly appreciative 
 of ability in his friends. The good and gifted make to 
 themselves lofty ideals, and finding them difficult of 
 attainment, are modest. Let not their modesty be set 
 down to want either of merit or spirit. 
 
 " Ah ! they speak best who best express 
 Then- inability to speak ; 
 And none are strong but who confess 
 With happy skill that they are weak." 
 
 " Manner," says Lord Chesterfield, " must adorn 
 knowledge and smooth its way through the world." 
 
 But care must be taken to distinguish between the 
 true thing and its base counterfeit. A gracious, genial 
 manner has nothing in common with that detestable 
 form of insincere courtesy known as " blarney." It 
 were much better that a man should be as rough as a 
 polar bear than that his politeness should develop into 
 the rank luxuriance of " blarney," which is but another 
 name for humbug. True nobility of demeanor comes 
 
228 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 from " high thoughts throned on a heart of courtesy." 
 Any politeness not so originating is worthless. Being, 
 as it is, the effluence of inner worth, manner is indepen- 
 dent of courtly etiquette and ceremonious observance, 
 and wholly irrespective of conventional distinctions. It 
 abounds wherever nature's gentlemen are found, whether 
 in court, camp, or cottage. You may read it in the cheery 
 smile and frank bearing of the sailor ; in the cordial 
 " bonhomie " of the soldier, gentle as brave ; in the bluff, 
 genial pleasantry of the ploughman whistling at the 
 plough ; in the hearty untutored courtesy of the honest 
 mechanic. It is equally the heritage of prince and. 
 peasant, and, emanating in each from common goodness 
 of heart, constitutes a bond of fellowship between them, 
 which no difference of rank or fortune can destroy. So 
 much for manner in its purely personal aspects ; but 
 manner has an artistic as well as a social significance. 
 It gives character to a man's work, " Le style c'est de 
 I'komme," says Buffon, with perfect truth. It is not so 
 much what a man does, as the way he does it ; not so 
 much what he says as the way he says it, that creates 
 effect and produces pleasure. " Nil dictum quod non 
 prills dictum methodus solus artificem ostendit." " Nothing 
 can be said that has not been said already, the style of 
 saying it alone bespeaks the artist," was the astute re- 
 mark of Petronius Arbiter. The same song or story 
 which from some lips comes as heavily as lead, drop.« 
 from others like a shower of pearls. One actor will put 
 you to sleep with a recitation, which, spoken by another, 
 would set your blood dancing. TJie finest sermon in 
 the world, delivered by a preacher who has no knowledge 
 of manner, falls on the most devout congregation even 
 as the sound of the trumpet on a dead charger's ear. 
 
WHISTLING. 22g 
 
 Let the same discourse be spoken by a true orator, and 
 mark how thrilling will be the effect 1 See with what 
 breathless delisht the hearers will watch 
 
 ..51. 
 
 " The expressive glance whose subtle comment draws. 
 Entranced attention and a mute applause ; 
 Gesture that marks, with force and feeling fraught, 
 A sense in silence and a will in thought." 
 
 Such is the witchery of manner, and happy indeed are 
 they who possess the priceless gift. 
 
 WHISTLING. 
 
 IVr EVERTHELESS, I am decidedly of opinion. That 
 will do. Well begun is half done. We are now 
 under weigh. We have made a good commencement ; 
 having said, " nevertheless, I am decidedly of opinion," 
 I have rushed in medias res, and, to vary the metaphor, 
 am sailing in the eye of the wind, as mariners are wont 
 strangely to phrp.se it. Had my first word been " not- 
 withstanding," I should have come to a dead-lock, and 
 should not have been able, for the life of me, to budge 
 an inch farther ; but having set out with " nevertheless," 
 all is well. In the composition of these essays there 
 are only three things which I find a difficulty in man- 
 aging. One is the beginning, another is the middle, a 
 third is the end. But for these three little matters, I 
 should get on like a house on fire, as a body may say, 
 and these treatises of mine would be productive of as 
 little trouble to me as they are of pleasure to you. It is 
 
220 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 in writing as in all other affairs. There are many ob- 
 stacles to be surmounted, but the most arduous of all is 
 the commencement. Blessed be Minerva and the Muses 
 .nine, I have hit upon a happy phrase to begin with, and 
 tacking back to it, I read it now, " to mine great re- 
 freshment," as poor Robinson Crusoe said of his glass 
 of rum. Cavillers may perhaps object that when a man 
 opens either a book or an essay with " nevertheless," it 
 is not altogether as clear as the sun in midsummer what 
 reservation he means to cover by the word, there being 
 no foregoing statement ; but people who would take ex- 
 ception so captiously are past arguing with. " D 
 
 you, sir, where is your religion ? " says an irascible old 
 gentleman in one of Cumberland's comedies to his scape- 
 grace of a son. I dislike strong language ; but under 
 the bitter provocation of the present moment I can't 
 help exclaiming, " Bless your dear heart, where is your 
 imagination ? if you cannot picture to yourself what I 
 was thinking of before I said ' nevertheless.' " I hate 
 to be bullied. If you will only keep your temper, I will 
 admit you into my confidence. My thoughts were wend- 
 ing their way thus : — I am passionately fond of music, 
 nevertheless I am decidedly of oiDinion that whistling is 
 a highly objectionable practice. And so, indeed, it is. 
 Have you ever observed with what a mania for whistling 
 the street-boys of London are possessed? Go where 
 they may, do what they will ; in sunshine as in shadow ; 
 in business as in pleasure ; morning, noon, and night, 
 they are everlastingly whistling. An old proverb bids 
 us beware of a crowing hen and a whistling woman, but 
 the caution, in so far as it relates to woman — lovely 
 woman ! — is wholly uncalled for. I don't see why a 
 woman should not whistle, and crow, too, for the mat- 
 
WHISTLING 
 
 231 
 
 ter of that, if so disposed. Man, to be sure, forbids her 
 to whistle, just as he forbids her to smoke, to wear a 
 glass in- one eye, to play the drum, and to do many 
 other things that he takes delight in himself ; but that 
 only shows what a brutal tyrant he is. Why does he 
 not command the boys to desist from whistling ? Be- 
 cause he is a coward. He is afraid of the boys, and 
 knows they will defy him ; but if a woman presumes to 
 whistle, he instantly reproves her or compels her to de- 
 sist — poor thing ! Is that fair ? Certainly not. It is 
 intolerable. If women were permitted to whistle, they 
 would do so with good taste and good feeling, as they 
 do everything j they would whistle melodiously, and 
 only within doors and suitable seasons ; whereas these 
 plaguy boys, who infest the streets of London, whistle 
 without regard to rhyme or reason, in-doors and out-of- 
 doors, in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and, in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, most discordantly, 
 and without the slightest respect for tune. Their favor- 
 ite air is the air the old cow died of, and this they per- 
 form with merciless pertinacity, little caring what havoc 
 they may spread, either among cows or men. It is 
 enough to drive one mad to hear these urchins whistling 
 all over London till they are well-nigh black in the face. 
 It is, upon my honor. If they whistle as they go, " for 
 want of thought," it is a thousand pities they have not 
 something to think of. Thought might " destroy their 
 paradise," but what of that ? It would at least save 
 from torture men who are old enough to be their fathers, 
 and some of whom by the way are their fatfiers. 
 
 Italian organ-grinders are bad enough, Swiss pipers 
 are still worse, but I am by no means sure that our own 
 whistling boys are not the worst of all. The grinders 
 
232 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 and pipers are horrid nuisances, to be sure ; but, after 
 all is said and done, they are periodic not- perpetual; 
 they may be " run in " by the police if they won't move 
 on ; and villanous as are their noises, they bear some 
 faint resemblance to airs ; but the boys are eternally 
 whistling ; they defy not the police alone, but horse, 
 foot, and artillery, and their noises, generally speaking, 
 bear about as much resemblance to a tune as does the 
 filing of a saw to one of Beethoven's Sonatas. What 
 pleasure they can possibly find in the utterance of such 
 sounds, is a mystery past human comprehension. I was 
 riding one day in a carriage and pair from Queen's 
 Elm, Brompton, to Piccadilly Circus. Presently there 
 came into the omnibus a very small boy, who had prob- 
 ably seen some thirteen summers, and peradventure as 
 many winters — a diminutive child for his age, and sit- 
 ting right in front of me and looking me steadily be- 
 tween the eyes, he began to whistle something having a 
 sickly resemblance to " Tommy, make room for your 
 uncle ! " I tried to enter into conversation with the 
 boy, in the hope that being lured into talk, he would 
 find it impossible to talk as well. But no, he was not 
 to be caught. I then told him the story about Quin, the 
 actor, whose habit it was to play Othello regularly once 
 a year for a charitable object, until at last he lost liis 
 front teeth, whereupon he observed, " I played Othello 
 as long as I was able, but I'll be hanged if I will whistle \t 
 for any one." " P'rom this remark you may infer, my 
 boy, what an ignoble noise whistling must be, and how 
 unworthy of refined lips." He simply winked at me, 
 and kept on at his ear-piercing performance as lustily 
 as ever. When we had arrived at Constitution Hill, I 
 pulled out a brand-new sixpence, and addressed him in 
 
WHISTLING. 
 
 ^Zi 
 
 these words : " Robert Walpole has averred that every 
 man has his price. I suppose that as much may be 
 said of every boy. Here's sixpence for yo\i,young man, 
 on condition that you won't whistle any more as long as 
 I am in the omnibus." " All right, Guv'nor," was the 
 urchin's ready reply, and thenceforward he was as mute 
 as an oyster — not the whistling oyster, fortunately, for 
 that " native " would have been a " settler " for me, — 
 but as any ordinary, well-behaved mollusc. For the 
 rest of my little journey I enjoyed perfect tranquillity. 
 But what a stigma it is upon our civilization, in this 
 much-vaunted nineteenth century, to have to say that 
 that blessing would have been denied to me if I had not 
 gratified a child's vanity by calling him a young man, 
 and his avarice by giving him sixpence ! But peace is 
 above all price, and I willingly admit that I did not pay 
 him too dearly for his whistle, or, rather, for the silenc- 
 ing of it. 
 
 Boys are not the only offenders. There are men — to 
 their confusion be it spoken ! — who, being old enough 
 to know better, yet whistle, and that incessantly, with 
 the twofold result of bringing ridicule upon themselves 
 and discomfort on others. Addison tells us of a com- 
 petition at a village festival, where " the prize was a 
 guinea, to be conferred upon the ablest whistler, who 
 could whistle clearest, and go through his tune without 
 laughing." A match of that sort is all well enough, pro- 
 vided always the competitors have ears as well as lips 
 for music. Even in London, one happens once in a 
 blue-moon upon a professional whistler whose perform- 
 ance is exceedingly musical. Such a fellow did I hear 
 whistle to a harp accompaniment, in an alley near the 
 Bank of England, a few days before Christmas, and 
 
234 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 admirably he did it. No thrush or robin was ever half 
 so melodious ; but whistlers of that kiad are almost as 
 rare as fish beneath the plough-share. Indeed, you 
 may take it for granted that whatever music there is in 
 the streets worth listening to is to be found in the City, 
 the liberal habits of City men attracting thither min- 
 strels with some little pretence to musical skill. I have 
 heard a fellow whistle upon the spout of a tea-pot in 
 Basinghall Street, and though one may have no par- 
 ticular desire to drink mocha out of the instrument on 
 which he performs, one cannot help recognizing the 
 ability he displays. But what no living creature, with 
 any pretension to be regarded as a human being, can 
 hear without indignant scorn, is the perpetual noise of 
 whistling kept up in the streets, mostly by boys, but not 
 unfrequently by men also, alike so ill-qualified for the 
 task that they could not turn a tune though their lives 
 depended on it. 
 
 But grievous as are the social abuses of whistling, it 
 is not without its poetic uses. The boatswain's whistle 
 piping all hands to quarters has done good service 
 before now in nautical ballads, as Dibdin and Bennet 
 can attest. Even the shrill whistle of the locomotive, 
 as it darts at night with lightning speed over meadow 
 and mountain, moss and moor, is not without a certain 
 mystical and weird charm. Still more, romantic is the 
 sound of the wind whistling through a pine-forest or 
 over the darkling sea. When ploughing was still a 
 picturesque operation, ere yet horses and oxen had been 
 supplanted by steam-pots in the task of traction, it was 
 an understood thing that the man who drove the team 
 should whistle at the plough's tail. Thus Milton talks 
 of the hour 
 
WHISTLING. 23s 
 
 " When the ploughman near at hand 
 Whistles o'er the furrowed land." 
 
 And Gray would have him indulge in his favorite pas- 
 time when no longer on duty : — 
 
 " The ploughman leaves the task of day, 
 And trudging homeward, whistles on the way." 
 
 In France to whistle after a person means a down- 
 right insult, but in Scotland the same practice would 
 seem to have a complimentary significance, as we may 
 infer from the fact that there is mention in Caledonian 
 song of a young woman who, so far as from taking of- 
 fence, said to her lover one fine day, " Whistle, and I'll 
 come to you, my lad." Tradition says that the gentle- 
 man did as he was told ; that the lady was no worse 
 than her word ; that they were married, and had a very 
 large family. Othello, on the other hand, treated the 
 matter in a very different light, and threatened to dis- 
 pose of Desdemona in a whistling fashion suggestive of 
 sensations the reverse of comfortable : — 
 
 " If I do prove her haggard. 
 Though that her jesses were my dear heart's strings, 
 I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind 
 To prey at fortune." 
 
 Alas! poor Desdemona. But there! an obstinate 
 man will have his way, and it's of no use to talk to him. 
 But revenons a nos moutons — the mutton-headed boys 
 who whistle in our streets. They are a worry and a 
 distraction — a bore and a bother. A whistling bull- 
 finch may be tolerated, but a whistling boy-finch is a 
 nuisance. The rhetorical, poetical, nautical, agricul- 
 tural, and amatory uses of whistling are commendable 
 
236 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 enough, and may liot be interfered with ; but street- 
 whistling is an abomination, and cannot be any longer 
 permitted. That's the long and the short of the 
 matter. 
 
 "SAUCY DOUBTS AND FEARS." 
 
 " A SOLDIER and afeared." Such was the taunt 
 ■^*- addressed by Lady Macbeth to her trembling 
 lord, and never did wife aim at her husband's heart a 
 shaft of more poignant sarcasm. Yet the contrast of 
 ideas, however ignoble in fancy, is by no means without 
 warrant in fact. There are well- attested cases, not a 
 few, of soldiers having turned and fled when first they 
 went into action, who, after their ears had grown " more 
 Irish and less nice" to the report of firearms, walked 
 without blenching to the cannon's mouth and performed 
 prodigies of valor. " Who's afraid ? " is a familiar in- 
 . terrogatory, to which the honest answer is " everybody." 
 " Fear," says Dr. Johnson, " is one of the passions of 
 human nature of which it is impossible to divest it." 
 You remember that the Emperor Charles V., when he 
 read upon the tombstone of a Spanish nobleman, " Here 
 lies one who never knew fear," replied, with sly humor, 
 " Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers." 
 The fact is that we are all " bound in to saucy doubts 
 and fears " of some sort or another, and the very man 
 who is as brave as a lion in great emergencies may be 
 as timid as a dove on occasions so trivial as to provoke 
 the laughter of spectators. This is doubtless what is 
 meant by the homely old proverb, " There is a skeleton 
 
"SAUCY DOUBTS AND FEARS." 
 
 237 
 
 in every cupboard." I know a man six-foot-two in his 
 stockings, wlio won the Victoria Cross for exceeding 
 great valor on the field of battle, but who would run 
 into a rat hole from a wife who hardly reaches his 
 elbow. Another man know I who has done heroic 
 th,ings in his time, such as plunging into angry seas 
 and houses on fire for the rescue of a fellow creature, 
 and who, I do verily believe, would face the Devil in 
 brass for any good cause, yet has he such a horror of a 
 dog that he would not stay in the same room with one 
 for any earthly consideration. Men who would scorn 
 to turn their backs upon a foe of flesh and blood have 
 grown pale before now at the thought of a ghost. We 
 have the authority of Augustus Caesar for the statement 
 that Suetonius was afraid to be in the dark without a 
 companion. Every one's experience will supply him, 
 either from his own knowledge of himself, or from his 
 observation of his neighbors, with instances of timidity 
 equally irrational, though in both quarters there may 
 be no lack of true courage in the presence of real 
 danger. 
 
 Nor is it alone the possibility of our own little candle 
 of a life being swiftly blown out that creates uneasiness 
 even in the hearts of the valiant. We fear more for 
 others than for ourselves, and are often at a loss to 
 account for our apprehensions. Like meteoric stones 
 falling, we know not wherefore, out of the azure sky, 
 are the thoughts of coming sorrow with which the heart 
 is suddenly darkened and oppressed, at the moment, it 
 may be, when the horizon of our destiny looks cloud- 
 less. We pause for the footfall of fate on our ear 
 " Nescio quid mihi animus frcesagit mali." What lover 
 is there, or husband or wife, or father or mother, or 
 
238 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 friend, endowed with any gift of sensibility, who, gazing 
 on the object of fond affection, has not at times been 
 haunted by the thought, the dark, disheartening: thought, 
 that the Beloved may die. In our own case, " the 
 readiness is all," as Hamlet says, but it is no such easy 
 matter to give up those who are dearer to us than life. 
 There is no anguish more bitter than that which we ex- 
 perience in the very contemplation of sucH a contin- 
 gency. But apart and distinct from these tragical 
 imaginings of supreme woe are the gloomy forebodings 
 of minor disasters, wherewith our fancies are occasion- 
 ally affrighted. You cannot, for the life of you, under- 
 stand the depression with which your spirit is at times 
 overcast. You may ascribe it to the weather, or to 
 some familiar physiological cause ; but the true origin 
 of it belongs to our immortal being, and like it baffles 
 comprehension. A sudden sense of incapacity seizes 
 the most gifted minds. The pencil of the finest painter 
 sheds no color ; the pen of the noblest writer refuses 
 its office ; the orator is dumb ; the musician knows no 
 touch of melody ; the greatest of actors surrenders his 
 inspiration to stage-fright. " Our sensibilities are so 
 acute, the fear of being silent makes us mute.'' And it 
 is worthy of remark, and may be stated for the refuta- 
 tion of the vulgar and supercilious, that the bravest 
 and best natures are precisely those which suffer most 
 acutely from the visitation of these " saucy doubts and 
 fears." A dullard is easily pleased, so cold is his imag- 
 ination, and so tenantless is his mind ; but the truly 
 gifted and highly cultured make to themselves lofty 
 ideals of merit, and however they may delight others, 
 rarely succeed " in satisfying themselves. They are 
 modest, not because they may not fulfil your concep- 
 
" SAUCY DOUBTS AND FEARS. 239 
 
 tions of excellence, but because they cannot realize 
 their own. It continually happens that men of this 
 poetic temperament mistrust themselves, and are haunted 
 with a certain indefinable presentment of coming calam- 
 ity. So it was in varj'ing senses and degrees with Pope, 
 Gray, Cowper, Byron, Moore, and Mangan. 
 
 D'ailleurs there is much comfort in the thought 
 that our doubts are frequently but shadows, and that 
 Heaven disappoints our fears oftener, far oftener, than 
 our hopes. 
 
 Mental superiority has its penalties as well as its 
 privileges, and among those penalties is unquestionably 
 to be classed a degree of sensitiveness to which meaner 
 natures are strangers. The higher the organization, 
 the keener will be the susceptibility to disheartening 
 influences. It is with men as with the animals whom 
 we are pleased to designate as the " lower." A race- 
 horse, a true "blood," is the most nervous of living 
 creatures. On the slightest excitement he quivers in 
 every nerve and fibre, while a dull Flemish cart-horse 
 plods sluggishly along,- uncaring for an earthquake. I 
 have known many men of many ranks and races, but I 
 never knew a man worth his salt who was not in some 
 sense " nervous." The' most heroic are oftentimes the 
 most nervous. A man of brilliant imagination will 
 doubtless invest an alarming occasion with terrors 
 more than real, but it by no means follows that he will 
 be less ready than your muddy-mettled rascal to con- 
 front true danger ; on the contrary, that very rapidity 
 and brightness of intellect which exaggerated the perils 
 will probably supply resources of deliverance. Bravery 
 consists not in being insensible to fear, but rather in 
 retaining such seK-possession in danger as will enable 
 
240 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 you to meet the emergency, and . present a valiant front 
 to adverse fortune. But the fancy is easily distressed, 
 and very wonderful is it to think what trivial matters 
 will suffice to alarm it. To some people, celerity of motion 
 is very disquieting ; and for my own poor part, I am 
 fain to confess that I do not feel particularly comfort- 
 able when travelling by express at the rate of a mile a 
 minute. A much lower rate of speed alarmed a timid 
 passenger by the York Mail in the good old coaching 
 days. " Oh ! Mr. Coachman," she inquired, " is there 
 any fear .' " " Plenty of fear, ma'am," replied the Jehu, 
 " but no danger ; " which was reassuring. There are 
 people of a highly imaginative type who, whether at 
 home or abroad, and on whatsoever pursuit intent, 
 would seem to be in constant communication with some 
 other world than this : — 
 
 " They hear a voice you cannot hear, 
 
 Which says they must not stay ; 
 They see a hand you cannot see, 
 
 Which beckons them away." 
 
 Certain hours of the day are more promotive than 
 others of uneasy sensations. In the dead waste and 
 middle of the night ghosts are wont to walk. At early 
 dawn, the fancy sometimes plays strange freaks, and in 
 the " du6ia lux " of twilight the dim outlines of things 
 assume fantastic shapes. Night, too, has her fears, and 
 the least imaginative of us, musing alone in a dark gal- 
 lery of a country-house, may have tremulous thoughts, 
 not unlike those that disquieted tlie mind of Don Juan 
 under like circumstances : — 
 
 " As Juan mused on mutability, 
 Or on his mistress — terms synonymous — 
 No sound except the echo of his sigh 
 Or step ran sadly through that antique house ; 
 
AN ISLA.VD OF TRAXQUIL DELIGHTS. 241 
 
 \\"hen suddenly he heard, or thought so, nigh, 
 A supernatural agent, or a mouse, 
 ^Yhose little nibbling rustle will embarrass 
 Most people as it plays along the arras." 
 
 For some minds fear has a strange fascination, and 
 scenes such as Llanberis or the pass of Glencoe grow 
 singularly attractive at nightfall, more particularly when 
 the tliunder rolls, and the lightning flashes, and the rain 
 comes down in torrents. I remember your taxing said, 
 in one of your essays' last summer, dear reader, ihat you 
 regarded a thunderstorm, a raging sea, and a lady in a 
 passion with her husband, as the three most sublime 
 spectacles in nature, and I am altogether of your opinion. 
 Probably in each case the sublimity is enhanced by the 
 sensation of terror which each inspires. 
 
 AN ISLAND OF TRAy^QUIL DELIGHTS. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 T CAUGHT the London, Brighton, and South-Coast 
 train in the very nick of time, and after a swift, 
 smooth ride of about two hours, turned up at Havant, 
 whence there is a branch line to HayUng Island. Ar- 
 rived at Havant, you find }'ourself seized with an irresis- 
 tible inclination to indulge in the verbal turpitude of a 
 pun. You turn to your fellow-traveller, whoever he may 
 be, and ask him whether he has been at Havant before. 
 He answers, in the innocence of his soul, " I havnt" 
 whereupon you express your indignation that he should 
 
 16 
 
242 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 indulge in so petty a joke. " I am surprised, sir, that 
 you should make a jest of a civil question." " I pro- 
 test, sir, I havn!t" he replies. " There you go again ! " 
 you say, in a towering passion. And so the angry re- 
 crimination continues, till the whistle from the engine 
 of the local train warns you to give up such foolery. 
 " 'Avant avaunt ! " you exclaim to yourself, as you plunge 
 into your carriage, and, " lighting up,'' surrender your- 
 self to the gentle reveries induced by nicotine. The 
 little railway from Havant to the island is the funniest 
 little railway in the world. It is a single line, — I do 
 not mean thereby that it is unmarried, but simply that 
 it has no double set of iron trams. It is a serpentine 
 sort of line, and, winding its way circuitously over a long 
 wooden bridge and through a marshy district, indulges 
 in such a series of tortuous escapades that I have called 
 it the " Colly-Wobble " Railway, by which name I desire 
 it to be known to posterity. The engine-driver is a 
 stately, elderly gentleman, to whom one feels instinc- 
 tively disposed to raise one's hat. The guard, a fair- 
 haired man, with a straw-colored beard, is a clever, civil 
 fellow, who has " all his work cut out for him," as the 
 saying goes, seeing that he has to act not only as guard, 
 but also as ticket-collector and porter. Nay, more, he 
 has to officiate as station-master as well at Langston 
 and North Hayling, the stations at both those places 
 resembling sentry-boxes, wherein dwelleth no sentry 
 nor any human being to look after the arrivals and 
 departures of the train. All is done by the many-hand- 
 ed guard, who is an army of officials in himself. On 
 reaching the terminus at Hayling, I was greeted with a 
 huge smile from the portrait of Mr. Perry Davis, the 
 Pain-killer, and I was informed of what I knew before I 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS. 243 
 
 left town, to wit, that Mr. Taylor, of Pimlico, is provid- 
 ed with wagons and horses for the removal of my fur- 
 niture. Let the Sheriif of Middlesex take note of it. 
 But strange to say, I was left hopelessly in the dark 
 respecting the name of the newspaper which has the 
 largest circulation in the world. Nay, more, though I 
 have spent several days in the island since then, I have 
 never once laid eyes upon an advertisement giving any 
 such information, a fact to which I invite the particular 
 attention of the brilliant, and, as I had fondly imagined, 
 ubiquitous journal whose head-quarters are in Fleet 
 Street. If the railway from Havant to Hayling Island 
 is the funniest little railway in the world, the omnibus 
 which conveys you from the station at South Hayling 
 to the Royal Hotel is, beyond question, the funniest 
 little conveyance of the sort to be found in any country 
 from the Equator to either Pole. This I say in full re- 
 membrance of the New Forest omnibus, which, until I 
 visited Hayling, I had imagined to be the strangest vehicle 
 of the kind on earth. But the Hayling omnibus beats 
 it hollow. It is as round as a pumpkin and as red as 
 blood, and so low in the roof that a man of average sta- 
 ture sitting inside must bend his head in the most 
 obsequious manner. I have ridden in all manner of 
 vehicles, from a wheelbarrow, in which I was once roll- 
 ed — oh, how luxuriously ! — for half a mile along a coun- 
 try road by a being of boundless goodness and beauty 
 ineffable, to a Lapland sledge drawn by dogs and pur- 
 sued by wolves, and thence to a tea-colored brougham 
 in the Park, but never shall I forget my ride in the little 
 HayUng omnibus, stooping, as I was, all the way. Right 
 glad was I to get out of it, for " I<rangi, nonflecti," is the 
 motto of my house. • 
 
244 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 Hayling is a charming place, its charm consisting in 
 its peacefulness. It is the very home of peace — a 
 veritable island of tranquil delights, the delights dwell- 
 ing altogether in the tranquillity. I do not remember 
 to have ever before set foot in so quiet a spot having 
 any pretensions to civilization. There may be, and 
 doubtless there are, other islands utterly uninhabited, 
 and therefore still quieter, but for an inhabited and even 
 populous island within humanity's reach, it is the seren- 
 est, most noiseless, most throbless region that fancy can 
 conceive of or language depict. From Holborn to 
 Hayling ! What a transition ! It is a change akin to 
 that from the lion to the lamb, or from a roaring sea to 
 a calm, sequestered lake, or from a London lodging- 
 house to a hermit's cave, or from wedded life to cham- 
 bers in the Albany. Hayling is a " tight " little island, 
 not, I should imagine, in the slang sense of intoxication 
 — ^for ale-houses are few and far between, and I found, 
 to my bitter mortification, that at the " Royal " and only 
 hotel they were out of bottled beer — but rather in the 
 signification of tidiness and trimness. It is richly 
 cultivated, not a rood of soil being left untilled, and it is 
 studded with comfortable farm-houses and cosy little 
 homesteads. There is no trace of poverty anywhere ; 
 everybody seems well off, and " take it easy " appears 
 to be the rule of conduct with the islanders. How 
 slowly they walk and talk, and what a blessed air of 
 repose is around them one and all ! Nobody seems to 
 be in a hurry. Nobody seems to Jiave any business on 
 hand that needs the slightest anxiety or activity. No- 
 body puts himself out. Everybody takes it easy, and 
 it does him good. Compare this with the uproar and 
 turbulence of town, — the hurry-scurry of the Strand, the 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQIJIL DELIGHTS. 245 
 
 toil and turmoil of Ludgate Hill, the tearing to and fro 
 in the City, the clamorous confusion of Charing Cross, 
 the roar of Temple Bar ! Give me Hayling Island, 
 where not a mouse is stirring, where the people seem to 
 be moving about in a delicious dream, where every 
 living creature is bound in a spell of repose, where the 
 robins sing cheerily from every leafless branch, and 
 where, save their voices, no other sound salutes your 
 ear than that of the waves breaking in picturesque 
 disarray upon the velvet sands. Yes ! give me Hayling 
 Island, and you may have High Holborn and welcome,, 
 if you list. It is a depraved taste and very wicked, I 
 dare say, but the longer I live the fonder I get of the 
 country. I can't help it, but, say what you will, I must 
 prefer a flower to a paving-stone, a tree to a chimney- 
 pot, the sea to a sewer. 
 
 The Island of Hayling is divided into two parishes. 
 North Hayling and South Hayling ; and as in the great 
 continent across the Atlantic; so likewise upon the coast 
 of Hampshire, the Northerners and Southerners are 
 not without their mutual little jealousies. How the 
 Island came to be called " Hayling " is a mystery which 
 the learned in local etymology may possibly have 
 fathomed, but which passes the comprehension of the 
 illiterate like you and me, dear reader. Can it be that 
 it is always " hailing " there ? or that the people when 
 they meet are " hailing " one another ? or that they are 
 " ailing ? " or that they are " ale-ing ? " or that hay and 
 ling are both to be found in the place ? I know not, I 
 care not. All I know is that it is a right pleasant little 
 island, and if you don't think so, you would do well not 
 to go there. What care I ? Both in the North and 
 South the Haylingers are an honest, hospitable race all 
 
246 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 the same, and a stranger (with money in his pocket) is 
 sure of a hearty welcome. If an arrangement could be 
 made with Nature for such a change in the currents of 
 the ocean as would admit of the tide being always " in," 
 Hayling Island would look brilliant and beautiful at all 
 times j but truth compels the admission that, though 
 the southern coast of the island, which is washed by the 
 English Channel, is always lovely to look upon, the 
 other shores are dismal and marshy enough at low water. 
 But there ! you cannot have it every way in this bother- 
 ing world. Think yourself lucky that you have it any 
 way, and be thankful; What is the use of grumbling ? 
 There are one or two things — no more — which detract 
 somewhat from the comfort of a residence in this Island 
 of Tranquil Delights. Of these, the first is the extreme 
 difficulty of getting anything to eat ; the second is the 
 still more serious difficulty of getting anything to drink ; 
 the third is the greatest difficulty of all, that of finding 
 a place where to lay your head. Were it not for these 
 deficiencies, there would be ample accommodation for 
 all comers. There are but very few houses where 
 lodgings can be had, either for love or money, and if 
 you have not taken th6 precaution of bringing down a 
 leg of mutton, or some trifle of that kind, in your port- 
 manteau or your pocket — a matter which wholly escaped 
 my forethought — you are likely enough to go without a 
 dinner. After a while, you fall into the ways of the 
 people, and taking thought for to-morrow, order your 
 provisions in good time ; but new comers would do well 
 to bring some creature-comforts with thera, to begin 
 with. Another matter which causes some little un- 
 easiness to a stranger is to observe how frequently he 
 is threatened with being prosecuted with the utmost 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS. 247 
 
 rigor of the law. Placards bearing this frightful menace 
 stare at him from fields and gardens, and meet his 
 terrified gaze in every direction. Notices that " no 
 shooting nor dogs are allowed " are of continual re- 
 currence. But the most appalling intimation of all is 
 one to be read upon a white gate near the railway- 
 station. It runs thus : — " Whoever does not shut this 
 gate will be prosecuted." It was wide open the first 
 time I saw it. What was I to do ? My teeth chattered 
 in my head, my hair stood on end. I was " distilled to 
 jelly with the act of fear." Oh, dear me ! what was I 
 to do ? It was not I who had left the gate open — deuce 
 take it! Then, why the dickens should I be compelled 
 to shut it ? Answer me that. And yet if I left it open, 
 I was to be prosecuted ! Tell it not in Chelsea, let it 
 not be heard in St. John's Wood — I did leave it open ! 
 As a free-born Briton, I scorned to be bullied. So I walk- 
 ed away, leaving the gate as I had found it. Don't you 
 think I was right ? Would not you have done the same ? 
 How should any man dare to threaten me with prosecu- 
 tion for not shutting his trumpery gate ? Let hira shut 
 it himself — ^freckle him ! 
 
 Hayling is a very paradise for Sabbatarians ! If lit- 
 tle is doing on week-days, nothing is doing on Sundays. 
 The whole island seems asleep. Speak low ! " Break 
 not, ye zephyrs, your chain of repose ! " You cannot get 
 out of the island on a Sunday, unless indeed j'ou choose 
 to take the ferry across to Cumberland Fort, or to walk 
 over that interminable bridge near Langston, and all 
 the way into Havant. The Colly-V/obble Railway is 
 locked up ; so, too, is the station ; no train runs ; the 
 stately old engine-driver is puffing his pipe majesti- 
 cally in front of his cottage ; the many-handed guard — 
 
2 48 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 he of the blue eyes and the straw-colored beard — is 
 enjoying well-earned sleep either by his iireside or in 
 the parish church, while the parson preacheth. And 
 talking of churches, there are two — one, a comely, spa- 
 cious edifice in South Hayling, the other a much smaller 
 building of immemorial antiquity in the north. Among 
 the monuments in the latter is one to Sarah Rogers, 
 who many years ago died in her youth. It bears this 
 inscription : — 
 
 " Ye virgins fair, your fleeting charms survey, 
 She once was all your tender hearts can say ; 
 Let opening rose and drooping lilies tell, 
 Like them she bloomed, and, ah ! like them she felL" 
 
 This epitaph, written, as they tell you, by a young farm- 
 er, is surely very beautiful, for its sweet, simple imagery, 
 and gentle, unaffected pathos. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 The charm of a circle is its roundness ; of a woman, 
 her temper ; of the tranquil island its tranquillity. It is 
 only a man whose sad fate it is to dwell, for the great- 
 er part of the year, in a city full of discordant clamor, 
 who can appreciate at its true worth the delightful taci- 
 turnity of the country. Arrived at some serene place 
 where few other sounds salute his ear than the tinkling 
 song of the brook, the warbling of the birds, or the sigh- 
 ing of the zephyrs through the trees, peace falls upon 
 his spirit like a delicious trance, and it is not without a 
 shudder that his thoughts revert to the thousand-tongued 
 
A.VISLA-VD OF TRAXQUIL DELIGHTS. 249 
 
 Babylon from whicli he has escaped, where, not content 
 with tlie uproar of myriads of wheels, men allow their 
 nen-es to be agonized, their health to be destroyed, and 
 their peace of mind to be ruined by a variety of prevent- 
 able and wholl)' unnecessary noises. Cock-crowing, 
 dog-barking, and all the abominable discords of street 
 music for example, are nuisances which might easily be 
 prohibited. They are permitted, and even encouraged, 
 to the misery of thousands and the discomfort of all. 
 There is in die tragedy of Othello an exquisite bit of 
 comedy between a clown and a couple of musicians. It 
 is always omitted on the stage, and the more is the pity, 
 for the fun, though brief, is verj' pungent. A couple of 
 pipers are playingin front of the Moor's casdein Cyprus. 
 Out comes the Clown, who accosts them thus : " Masters, 
 here's money for you ; and the General so likes vour 
 music that he desires you, of all love, to make no more 
 noise with it." To which the first musician raplies, 
 " Well, sir, we will not." " If," rejoins the Clovra, 'you 
 have any music that may not be heard, to it again ! but, 
 as they say, to hear music the General does not greatly 
 care." We have none such, sir," makes answer the 
 musician. " Then," returns the Clown in a tone of high 
 command, " put your pipes in j-our bag : go 1 Vanish 
 into air ; away ! " and the musicians depart accordingly. 
 Now that is just the way in which \-agabond minstrels, 
 whether in town or country, ought to be treated ; only 
 that there is no reason why they should be paid for not 
 torturing us. They should be compelled to " vanish " 
 no richer than they had come. In Hayling there is no 
 street-music ; nor, indeed, any street, for the matter of 
 that The oldest inhabitant cannot remember to have 
 ever seen or heard either an organ-fiend or a hurdj'-<iur- 
 
2^0 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 dy-demon on the island ; but then, to be sure, the oldest 
 inhabitant is celebrated all the world over for never re- 
 membering anything, so that his evidence does not go 
 for much. For my own part, I can conscientiously de- 
 clare that the only music I have heard during my resi- 
 dence here has been the lowing of a cow and the sweet 
 pipe of the robin redbreast. The place seems to be 
 swarming with robins, and they sing with all their might 
 and main from every other branch. But you must not 
 run away with the idea that .lo noise whatever besides 
 this is to be heard in the island. Of course you may 
 think so if you please ; I don't mind ; but it is not the 
 fact. Great guns are being fired so continuously for 
 hours together from the batteries at Portsmouth and 
 Portsea, and the report of the artillery comes booming 
 across the ocean with an effect so alarmingly suggestive 
 of maritime warfare, that a visitor of lively imagination 
 and ^eak intellect might easily fancy that a succession 
 of sea fights between the English and French was go- 
 ing on every day in the week. 
 
 The primitive habits of the Haylingers are delightful 
 to behold. Theirs is a sweet, lovely, dead-alive — ^yea, 
 much more dead than alive — old-world sort of island, 
 where customs and practices which have long since dis- 
 appeared from busier regions still flourish in primeval 
 luxuriance. Spade-husbandry is said to be still in great 
 favor with the farmers, though ploughing also is prac- 
 tised on every farm, and nobody who knows anything 
 about agriculture (which I do not) can fail to be struck 
 with the admirable skill of the ploughmen in their call- 
 ing, their furrows being as straight as arrows. The fur- 
 rows on their brows are semi-circular. It is a " harrow- 
 ing " sight to see the peasants harrowing, for they don't 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS. 251 
 
 seem to care three halfpence what discomfort they may 
 cause to the snails and earthworms. (The price of this 
 pun is ;^s. Post Office orders payable to me at the 
 office of the publishers.) Not having any authentic in- 
 formation upon the matter, either one way or the other* 
 I am justified in asserting with the peremptory positive- 
 ness of ignorance that there is no such thing as a steam- 
 plough in the whole island. Most assuredly I have 
 never seen one. Thrashing is still done in most places 
 ■with the flail, though I know to my cost that there is a 
 winnowing machine in North Hayling, for I was riding 
 on the outside of a horse who, taking fright at its con- 
 founded whizzing and rolling, bolted, and' would infal- 
 libly have thrown me had I not given him his head and 
 let him have his own way. The sea was the saving of 
 me, for when he came face to face with it his heart failed 
 him, the cowardly brute, and rather than plunge into the 
 briny he came to a dead stop, and it needed no little 
 persuasion to induce him to jog home at a sling trot. 
 
 That the Island of Tranquil Delights is indeed an 
 abode of Arcadian simplicity, where even the ladies 
 cling fondly to the fashions of the olden time, when 
 every one was good, may be inferred from the fact, or 
 rather the facts, that since my arrival here I have seen 
 one woman in a bonnet and another with pattens on. 
 Ah, me ! how the memory of my salad days came back, 
 upon me as I gazed upon both gentlewomen ! I was a 
 very young man indeed when last I saw a bonnet. I 
 was a child — a mere " ch-ee-i-1-d," like a dear friend of 
 mine in Pembridge Square — when last I saw a pair of 
 pattens. But it is not the ladies alone who are conserva- 
 tive of old habits in the Tranquil Island. I have met 
 one man with straps to his trousers, another walking 
 
2^2 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 about in a blue swallow-tailed coat with brass-buttons I 
 Old-fashioned signs still swing in front of the wayside 
 inns. Thus, for example, the " Olive Leaf Inn," kept 
 by Mr. W. Goldring, coxswain of the Lifeboat, is signal- 
 ized by a fairly-executed painting of a gammon of bacon, 
 which the artist must have evolved from his inner con- 
 sciousness, even as the German did his famous camel, 
 for no such article of food is to be found in the island. 
 The sign called to mind Oliver Goldsmith's well-known 
 couplet — 
 
 " As in some Irish houses, where things are so-so, 
 A gammon of bacon hangs up for a show." 
 
 A gentleman named Romeo Coombs keeps the " May 
 Pole Inn," which has the look of a comfortable hostelry ; 
 and hard-by is the shop of Mr. Barber, who advertises 
 himself as a vendor of coffee, tea, tobacco, snuff, and 
 pepper. His customers consume all these five articles 
 simultaneously, and the effect upon their digestion is 
 something surprising. But I grieve to say that greed of 
 gain is not wholly unknown to the Haylingers. Of this 
 sad fact we have a proof in the wanton destruction, a 
 few months ago, of a magnificent yew tree, which once 
 stood in front of the " Yew Tree Inn." The tree in 
 question is believed to have been 700 years old. It was 
 cut down in the bloom of its vevdant tree-hood, while 
 the village children were sporting beneath its immemo- 
 rial branches. I was very indignant indeed when I was 
 told of this act of Vandalism. I asked whether Mr. 
 Gladstone, hatchet in hand, had been seen in these 
 parts of late ? No ; he had not. I will do him the jus- 
 tice to say that in this case, at all events, his conscience 
 is clear. The tree was killed by order of a lady ; and 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS. 253 
 
 right glad was I to hear that she only realized some- 
 thing like 4/. from the sale of its noble corse. 
 
 Whenever I visit a strange place I make a point of 
 acquiring all particulars respecting the constabulary. You 
 are, of course, at liberty to draw what uncharitable infer- 
 ence you please from this avowal. " My withers are un- 
 wrung ; " so I can afford to disregard your insinuations. 
 The Island of Tranquil Delights boasts of but one police- 
 man, a fact which speaks volumes, nay libraries, for the 
 good conduct of the inhabitants. That population must 
 indeed be virtuous which can be kept in order by one 
 solitary " Bobby." He is an admirable person — indeed 
 quite a superior person — estimable as a man, inesti- 
 mable as a policeman. If you would hear more about 
 him, know that he is a thick-set, sinewy, right-honest- 
 looking fellow, hard as nails, with hair the color of the 
 red, red rose which sweetly blooms in June, cheeks like 
 pulpit cushions, and — alas ! that I should say so — 
 women's eyes. 
 
 I don't object to women's eyes in women's heads ; by 
 no means : there they are the right eyes in the right 
 heads ; but I confess I do not like to see the starry orbs 
 of the angelic sex beneath a male brow. In all other 
 respects the policeman of Hayling is a delightful being, 
 strong as a lion and intellectual as a lady. His uniform 
 fits him as tightly as a suit of sticking-plaster. How he 
 ever gets into it exceeds my comprehension, for he is 
 full of habit, though by no means scant o' breath. But 
 he looks beautiful in his coat of office, let me tell you ; 
 and I believe there is not " a more desartless man to be 
 constable " than he on the face of the habitable globe. 
 You should see him tearing through a turnip field at the 
 rate of five miles an hour on no business whatever, for 
 
254 
 
 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 it is inconceivable that he can have anything to do. A 
 policeman without prisoners is like a doctor without 
 patients ; and as nobody in Hayling ever does anything 
 to warrant his or her being taken up, it stands to reason 
 that the policeman can have nothing upon his hands 
 except his gloves. There is no one to " run in," and 
 even though there were, it would be out of the question 
 for the policeman to treat him so, for there is nowhere 
 to " run " him into unless it be the sea. Jails there are 
 none in Hayling, and nobody is ever punished for any- 
 thing. You are at perfect liberty to do or say what you 
 please ; so the policeman, lucky wight ! has nothing to 
 do, and is well paid for doing it. I had a pleasant chat 
 with him yesterday evening. He assured me that the 
 Haylingers are simply the most honorable people in the 
 whole world. Touch their honor, touch their life. He 
 illustrated the fact by an amusing story, the truthfulness 
 of >vhich he personally avouched. It seems that there 
 are two chimney-sweeps in the island ; the one in the 
 north parish, the other in the south. They have their 
 professional jealousies, but otherwise they were good 
 friends enough until one day last week, when Jim the 
 Northern accused Bill the Southern of having stolen his 
 knife. Bill's rage and indignation knew no bounds. A 
 perfect hive of capital " B's " came swarming from his 
 lips. His language was vascular and imprecatory in the 
 extreme. He had not stolen the knife ; not he ; he 
 would scorn the action. " Look here, Jim," he said, in 
 an ecstasy of virtuous wrath, " I never see'd your knife 
 in my born days ; I never knowed you had a knife." 
 And so saying he went on to unsphere the stars with 
 swearing. He swore like any trooper, heaped oath upon 
 oath, and wound up by invoking upon his eyes and other 
 
AN ISLAND OF TRANQUIL DELIGHTS. 255 
 
 portions of his person the most appalling curses if he 
 had ever even beheld the knife, much more stolen it. 
 Jim heard him out witli patient attention and then quietly 
 asked, " Will you say upon your honor, Bill ? " " Ah ! 
 well," replied Bill, in tones of heroic resignation, " if 
 you put it that way — there's the knife!" and as he spoke 
 he drew the article solemnly out of his pocket and 
 placed it in the hands of his brother sweep. " What do 
 you think of that, sir ? " asked my friend the policeman. 
 " Ain't tliat touching ? Ain't we a honorable people ? 
 Catch a London sweep behaving so ! He couldn't do 
 it no how.'' 
 
 Besides the policeman, there is at least one other 
 local celebrity whose acquaintance the visitor will do 
 well to make. I mean Mr. Evens, the ferryman, whose 
 mission it is to row travellers in an open boat across the 
 arm of the sea which sunders Hayling from Cumber- 
 land Fort. Mr. Evens is an elderly and highly-respect- 
 able person, with a face like a brick-bat. Tlie color 
 and expression of his countenance reminds you of the 
 red lamp affixed at night to the last carriage of a rail- 
 way train. He is a very nice man, but he is somewhat 
 hard of hearing. Oh, 'eavens ! Evens ! how long I did 
 keep shouting for you the other day before I could 
 attract your attention. When you came at last you told 
 me you had been "up the dock in search of coal," 
 whereupon a pretty little Hayling girl in the boat 
 laughed slily and winked at me. What she meant I 
 know not — shall never know ; but upon my word of 
 honor, Mr. Evens, she both laughed and winked. 
 Moreover, she told me that she sometimes , spends the 
 best part of an hour in hailing you over the sea, where- 
 upon a very bright boy, whose name I discovered — ^let 
 
2^6 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 posterity take note of it ! — to be Alfred Kuckky, ex- 
 claimed, with a smile like a sunbeam, " I suppose that's 
 the reason it is called Hayling Island." That boy will 
 get on. I have already procured a commission for him 
 from Mr. Arthur Swanborough to write the next bur- 
 lesque for the Strand Theatre. 
 
 Ah, me ! My paper is well nigh covered. My ink 
 runs low. My candle flickers in the socket. My eyes 
 grow dim. My head throbs painfully. I am very 
 tired. Oh ! my friends and friendesses, you little know 
 what I go through for your sake or how hard I work in 
 your service. Hark ! What's that .' The clock as I 
 live, chiming half-past one o'clock in the morning ! And 
 here am I toiling away for the B.P. instead of taking 
 mine ease in this Island of Tranquil Delights. Alas ! 
 and a-well-a-day ! forgive the sins of these erratic essays 
 and pity the afflicted being who pens them for your sake. 
 Tranquil Delights, quotha ! Marry, come up ! Go to ! 
 Tranquil Delights ! Where be they ? Not in the soul 
 of the weekly essayist, wherever else they be. I am 
 very, very tired. Oh ! for a week of sleep — sleep placid 
 and profound — sleep balmy and delicious — sleep such 
 as I knew when I was a boy and shall never know 
 again ! But a truce to sad thoughts. The night wears 
 on a-pace. The charming verses of Mr. Planchd fall 
 upon my memory like delightful music. Oh, reader 
 mine, lay them to heart : — 
 
 " One word for the author whom often 
 
 You've hailed as your holiday bard. 
 There really is something to soften 
 
 The heart of the critic most hard. 
 The mind of the man who must measure 
 
 The taste of the town as he writes, 
 Is not quite a Palace of Pleasure 
 
 In an Island of Tranquil Delights." 
 
WEDDINGS. 257 
 
 WEDDINGS. 
 
 A S I was sauntering through Northumberland Avenue 
 last Thursday, and bethinking me of the strange 
 remark of my friend, the O'Finnigan O, that the removal 
 of Northumberland House is " a great addition to Lon- 
 don," who, think you, should knock up against me but 
 Beebumble? The clock of St. Martin's- in-the-Fields — 
 where be those fields now? — was chiming three, and 
 Beebumble was running for his dear life to catch a train 
 a few yards distant, which was not to start till a quarter 
 to four. " Do take it easy, my dear friend," I expostu- 
 lated, " and let us have a stroll together along the Em- 
 bankment. You may take my word for it that you are 
 long before your time." So we loafed o£E together, 
 though not without much reluctance at first on his part, 
 for he was in an agony of terror lest Mrs. Beebumble 
 should be waiting for him at the station. I promised 
 to accompany him to the train with strict punctuality, 
 and to receive upon my own devoted head the vials of 
 matrimonial wrath designed for him, in the event of Mrs. 
 Beebumble " cutting up rusty," as he profanely phrased 
 it. His alarm thereupon subsided, and after he had 
 made me cry, as you know is his invariable habit, by the 
 vice-like cordiality with which he wrenches my hand, we 
 launched into conversation and had a cosy chat. Ob- 
 serving that he looked even more unhappy than usual, 
 I asked him what was the matter with him. A smile 
 like a spasm broke bitterly over his face, as he replied 
 that he had been at a wedding the day before, and had 
 
 17 
 
258 ERRA TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 never since been able to get up his spirits. " A wed- 
 ding," said I, " iMi is usually regarded as a joyous 
 occasion." " It depends upon circumstances," .rejoined 
 my friend, " and circumstances alter cases, as the cat 
 said when she jumped upon the printers' frames ; " and 
 once more the comic spasm stole over his melancholy 
 features. " The wedding has made you witty," quoth I, 
 " and you are talking diamonds." " Alas ! alas ! " he 
 answered, " my wit is of the dullest, for my heart is as 
 heavy as lead. Ah, me ! how well I remember my own 
 wedding. It was an awful affair ; yet this I will say, — 
 Mrs. Beebumble looked magnificent in her bridal dress, 
 f/iai she did." " I can quite believe it. She looks 
 magnificent to this day." " Ah ! " he replied, with a 
 sigli, " you would say so if you could see her in a pas- 
 sion ; you only see her in repose ; she is beautiful in 
 repose, but in a passion she is sublime. The battle of 
 Waterloo was a Quakers' meeting compared to the row 
 she kicks up when she is angry with me." " You are 
 indeed a fortunate man," I rejoined. " Well," quoth he, 
 " perhaps I am, for there is no denying that she is a 
 monstrous fine woman." " There can be no question 
 about it, Beebumble ; I should imagine that Mrs. Bee- 
 bumble weighs sixteen stone, if she weighs an ounce." 
 "Sixteen stone seven ounces, sir, by Read's weighing- 
 machine, which she broke in being weighed at the Cam- 
 den Road Station on Saturday last," said the little man, 
 drawing himself up majestically ; " but between you and 
 me, she leads me the life of a skinned eel on a red hot 
 frying-pan, and I am mortally afraid of her." " Mrs. 
 Beebumble is to be envied," I made answer ; " the 
 woman who succeeds in making her husband afraid of 
 her has good cause to be proud. She is an ornament to 
 
WEDDINGS. 259 
 
 her sex." " That may be," returned Beebumble — and 
 as he spoke, his voice sank to a whisper, and he looked 
 timidly around, as though he feared to be overlieard — 
 " but she is a scourge to ours. Mrs. Beebumble is, 
 indeed, as you say, a monstrous fine woman, but the 
 thought of a wedding gives me the heart-quake. She 
 won't catch me marrying her again in a hurry," and 
 once more the spasm-like smile half-illumined, half- 
 distorted his sorrowful face, ^^'e went on discoursing 
 in this reckless, frivolous st}'le, to the utter ruin of com- 
 mon-sense, and the great delight of our enemies — could 
 they but have heard us, which, thank Heaven ! they did 
 not — till tlie sad hour for parting arrived. At the 
 appointed moment I delivered him into the many-dim- 
 pled hands of that armful of joy, Mrs. Beebumble. She 
 rewarded me with a smile, of which, not wishing to 
 speak h\-perbolically, I will simply say that the sun was 
 a fool to it. But somehow I can't help thinking that 
 Beebumble " caught it," for not having been at Charing 
 Cross an hour before the arrival of his fair Philistine, 
 for as he leant out of the carriage Avindow to wave me a 
 last farewell while the train steamed asthmatically out 
 of the station, he looked very miserable. Poor fellow ! 
 Never since then have I been able to get matters 
 matrimonial out of my head. By day and by night I 
 still keep thinking of or dreaming about weddings. 
 What wonderful things they are, to be sure, and how 
 marvellous is the interest they inspire in women of all 
 ranks and ages — maids, wives, and widows alike ! When 
 a lady of any position in society is to be married, the 
 female parishioners one and all seem to get wind of it 
 by some mystical means beyond male apprehension, and 
 on the morning of her wedding-day the church is found 
 
26o erRa tic essa ys. 
 
 to be crammed from the communion-table to the porch, 
 with a congregation in which there are probably twenty 
 women for one man. What delight and curiosity, what 
 impatience of delay, what eagerness of attention are 
 depicted on every female countenance ! Their faces are 
 alive with excitement. And all for what ? Can it be 
 that the wives and widows renew in imagination the 
 triumphs of the past, while the spinsters luxuriate in a 
 fanciful foretaste of the glories which they fondly believe 
 to be in store for themselves ? Or is the sex's pride of 
 conquest at the bottom of all this brilliant emotion, and 
 are the feelings of the lovely spectators, as they see one 
 of their sisters walking victoriously down the aisle, while 
 she leans upoh the arm of her " groom," akin to those 
 of the anglers who watch a brother of the gentle craft en- 
 gaged in the act of " landing " his fish ? It is impossible 
 to say, at least it is impossible for a man to say, though of 
 course the ladies know all about it, and could enlighten 
 us, if they pleased, but they don't. To the masculine 
 mind — if creatures of the sex masculine can be said to 
 have a mind — the whole affair is an impenetrable mys- 
 tery, and the man most hopelessly in the dark is prob- 
 ably the bridegroom. In ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred, he does not want to be trotted out as a raree- 
 show ; he finds no pleasure in being gazed at by a thou- 
 sand eyes, though those eyes be as bright as the stars 
 of the firmament ; he cannot, for the life of him, make 
 out what it is all about ; he fails to perceive what matter 
 of interest it can be to all these people that he, whom 
 they never saw before, and may never again see, thinks 
 fit to take to wife a lady of whom they are equally igno- 
 rant ; he grows as white as a sheet, and hardly knows 
 whether he is standing upon his head or his heels ; he 
 
WEDDINGS. 261 
 
 is dragged an insensate victim at the chariot-wheels of 
 fashion, and cannot lielp himself. Wlien he has arrived 
 at the matrimonial block, out marches the executioner, 
 looking so solemn and starchy in his surplice, that what- 
 ever faint vestige of courage may have survived in the 
 bridegroom vanishes at the sight of him, and he gets so 
 bewildered that he has scarcely voice enough left to 
 give a faltering answer in the affirmative to the momen- 
 tous question whether he will take for his wife the 
 beautiful enchantress who has brought him to this pass. 
 Meanwhile, glance at the bride ! How bright and blest 
 she looks, how radiant and benign, how serenely happy 
 and self-possessed ! To the Parson's inquiry whether 
 she will accept the bridegroom for her husband, she 
 replies, with calm confidence, intones as clear as a silver 
 bell, " I will ; " and she means it. Her courage is as 
 great as her joy. She is as intrepid as lovely, and though 
 she is the cynosure of all. eyes, she never flinches. Her 
 sweet composure, and tranquil, lady-like grace enhance 
 beyond expression the charms of her beauty, and when 
 the ceremony is over, she is still as " fresh as morning 
 roses newly washed with dew," to quote the words of 
 William tlie Divine. All this is very, very wonderful, 
 and may well engage the speculations of philosophers 
 to get at the true cause and meaning of it. Oh ! how I 
 should like to be a bride. But I never shall be one : I 
 begin to despair. The newly-wedded couple, with their 
 train attendant of gleeful relatives, and their fair pre- 
 cursors, shedding flowers upon their path, having walked 
 out of the church, amid the clashing of joy bells and the 
 inspiriting strains of Mendelssohn's " Wedding March," 
 played thunderingly upon the organ, repair to the house 
 of the bride's parents, there to partake of an entertain- 
 
262 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 ment sumptuous as incomprehensible. This proceeding, 
 however irrational, would appfear to be of venerable 
 antiquity, seeing that Ben Johnson, in one of his come- 
 dies, enjoins the wedding guests, the wedding being over, 
 to hie them to the father's dwelling, there to take part 
 in the brilliant festivities : — 
 
 " With the phant'sies o£ hey-troU 
 Troll about the bridal bowl, 
 And divide the broad bride-cake 
 Round about the bride's stake." 
 
 The cake in question, wherein, as some unamiable 
 curmudgeons have been wont to assert, dwell all the 
 sweets of matrimony, is one of these curious " institu- 
 tions " which survive th.e lapse of time and the vicissi- 
 tudes of fashion. Empires fall, crowns totter, dynasties 
 decay, but the wedding-cake still maintains its ground. 
 Its magical properties, however, are sadly on the wane, 
 and the day is gone when people care to follow the 
 example of the gentleman mentioned in the Spectator, 
 who, " being resolved to try his fortune, and that he 
 might be sure of dreaming pleasantly upon something 
 at night, procured a handsome slice of bride-cake, which 
 he placed very conveniently under his pillow.'' It is to 
 be hoped that he left it there till morning, for his dreams 
 would not have been of the pleasantest had he awaken- 
 ed in the middle of the night and eaten it. Surgit semper, 
 etc., and the demon of indigestion' has masked himself 
 ere now even in so fascinating a shape as " a handsome 
 slice of bride-cake." The learned in material and moral 
 analogies might find a theme for erudite inquiry even 
 in this matter, and trace some manner of resemblance 
 between the gorgeous piece of unwholesome confection- 
 
WEDDINGS. 263 
 
 ery which makes one's lips water and one's stomach 
 ache, and the delusive visions of those lovers who, as 
 Mr. H. J. Byron wittily expresses it, are " spoons before 
 marriage and knives and forks after." But everything 
 about a wedding breakfast is contradictory and incon- 
 sistent. It is a matter of course, and in fact quite de 
 rigueur, that somebody must cry, though why or where- 
 fore nobody could ever understand. There is but one 
 thing better than keeping your daughter, and that is to 
 give her away — not to throw her away, to be sure, but 
 to give her away to an honest man ; and as every bride- 
 groom is believed to be such a person until his villany 
 is revealed, like that of other criminals, the occasion is, 
 for the present at all events, one rather for smiles than 
 tears. On the other hand, a vast deal of twaddle in 
 the way of felicitation is undoubtedly spoken on these 
 bridal occasions. The speeches at a wedding-breakfast 
 usually begin where common sense ends. From all lips 
 come words of jocose congratulation, mingled with fervid 
 aspirations for long life and happiness to the bride and 
 bridegroom ; but inasmuch as long life is an event of . 
 very rare occurrence, and nobody ever yet was happy, 
 these wishes, however friendly, are a trifle foolish. 
 " Nothing," observes the wicked Lord Lyttelton, " is so 
 absurd as the tide of felicitations which flows in upon a 
 poor newly married man, before he himself can determine 
 — and much less the complimenting world — upon the 
 propriety of them. Marriage is the grand lottery of 
 life, and it is as great a folly to exult upon entering into 
 ■it as on the purchase of a ticket in the State Wheel of 
 Fortune. It is when the ticket has drawn a prize that we 
 can answer to congratulations." This is every bit as 
 true of the bride as of the bridegroom, and there is a 
 
264 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 touch of grim agony in the thought that, at the very 
 time when the bridesmaids are scattering rosy smiles 
 around, and the " funny man " at the table is cracking 
 his vapid jokes, the heroine of the occasion may possibly 
 be haunted by the suspicion that, after all, she has 
 married the wrong man ; while he, poor wretch ! may 
 not be without misgivings that he, too, has wedded the 
 wrong woman. Matrimony is, as the old pun goes, too 
 often a mere matter of money. An American essayist 
 has defined it most ungallantly as originating in an in- 
 sane desire on the part of a young man to pay for the 
 board and lodging of a young woman. It sometimes 
 happens, to be sure, that it is the young woman who 
 pays for the board and lodging of the young man ; but, 
 however that may be, this, at least, is certain, that a 
 mariage de convenance gives little promise of felicity, and 
 that the compliments and good-wishes of the wedding 
 guests on such an occasion, however kindly meant and 
 gracefully expressed, are the merest moonshine. It 
 matters not how rich the bride-cake may be, or how 
 beautiful the trousseau, or how large the dowry, or how 
 sumptuous the breakfast, or how numerous the old slip- 
 pers, or how thick the shower of rice wherewith .the 
 newly-wedded couple may be pelted into their carriage, a 
 wedding is a sham, and there is not the faintest chance of 
 comfort in the marriage state, unless the bride, standing 
 defiantly upon the rights of her sex, have made up her 
 mind that man and wife are one, and that one is the 
 Wife. 
 
THE DELIGHT OF EARL Y RISING. 265 
 
 THE DELIGHT OF EARLY RISING. 
 
 "T^HERE is one way, and one only, of enjoying life, 
 -^ and that is to rise early. " Dilliciilo surgere salu- 
 berrimum est," says the classic proverb, and no truer 
 words were ever either written or uttered. All good 
 and wise men are of accord in denouncing the absurd- 
 ity, not to say the sinfulness, of lying late in bed. " I 
 would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed and 
 the walls of your chamber — if 3'ou do not rise early, 
 you can make progress in nothing. If you do not set 
 apart your hours of reading, if you sirffer yourself, or 
 any one else, to break in upon them, your days will slip 
 through your hands unprofitable and frivolous, and un- 
 enjoyed by yourself." So spake the great Lord Chat- 
 ham. " The difference," says Dr. Doddridge, " between 
 rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning for the 
 space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at 
 the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the ad- 
 dition of ten years to a man's life." In the year 1784, 
 Dr. Franklin published an ingenious essay on the ad- 
 vantages of early rising as a mere piece of economy. 
 He estimated the saving that might be made in Paris 
 alone by using sunshine instead of candles at ninety- 
 six millions of French livres, or four millions sterling 
 per annum. Dr. Todd is dogmatic and peremptory in 
 inculcating the necessity of being up with the lark, or, 
 if possible, before him. " Few," quoth he, " ever lived 
 to a great age, and fewer still ever became distinguish- 
 ed, who were not in the habit of early rising. You 
 
266 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 rise late, and of course commence your business at a 
 late hour, and everything goes wrong all day." " He 
 who rises late," remarks an old writer, " may trot all 
 day, and not have overtaken his business at night." 
 Dean Swift avers that he never knew any man come to 
 greatness and eminence who lay abed of a morning. 
 Boswell tells us that Lord Monboddo used to awake 
 every morning at four, and then for his health walk in 
 his room naked, with the window open, which he called 
 taking an air-bath ; after which he would go to bed 
 again and sleep two hours more. Johnson, who was 
 always ready to beat down anything that seemed to be 
 exhibited with disproportionate importance, observed, 
 " I suppose, sir, there is no more in it than this : he 
 wakes at four and cannot sleep till he chills himself, 
 and makes the warmth of the bed a grateful sensa- 
 tion." This gruff commentary is worthy of the Bear of 
 Bolt Court, who, unable to emulate the virtue of the 
 Scottish peer, found a surly pleasure in depreciating it. 
 In his more genial moments, when envy did not em- 
 bitter his heart, nor prejudice warp his judgment, John- 
 son would wax eloquent upon the benefits of early ris- 
 ing, and deplore the degeneracy of his own nature 
 which usually kept him in bed till two o'clock in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 Great as is the injury to a man's business from the 
 habit of late rising, the detriment to his health and 
 happiness from the same inglorious cause is still more 
 grievous. The morning' air out of doors is at no other 
 period so pure, pungent and exhilarating as at day- 
 break. It is a fact conclusively established by univer- 
 sal observation, and physiologists have not failed to call 
 attention to it, that the hair of an early riser defies the 
 
7'HE DELIGHT OF EARL Y RISING. 267 
 
 snow-storms of age, and retains its natural color to the 
 last. When I mentioned this amazing circumstance the 
 other day to my friend Penthorn, who never gets up 
 before noon, what do you suppose was his reply? 
 " That only bears out the old French proverb, ' La tete 
 d'lmfou ne blanchit Jamais,' which, translated into Eng- 
 lish meaneth, ' A fool's head never grows grey.' " 
 Now, bearing in mind that my hair is as brown as a 
 berry, and that I am up at cock-crow every day of my 
 life, I cannot help thinking that this remark of Pen- 
 thorn's was uncalled for, to say the least of it. I will 
 tell Mrs. Penthorn of it the next time I see her, and if 
 she do not put Penthorn on a short allowance of kisses 
 for a month to come I shall be indeed surprised. The 
 man who is doomed to the ignoble bondage of bed 
 at the very hour when nature is most glorious and glad- 
 some, and when, bathed in brilliant sunshine, the world 
 itself looks newly-made, is indeed an object for com- 
 passion. I verily believe that Penthorn has never seen 
 the sun rise, and that he will pass into Paradise with- 
 out having once witnessed it. Yet what a sublime spec- 
 tacle it is ! Crede experto. I saw it this very day from 
 the middle of Hampstead Heath ; nor I alone, but my 
 bull-dog as well, bless him ! — 
 
 " Yes, 'tis no doubt a sight to see when breaks 
 Bright Phcebus, while the mountains still are wet 
 With mist, and every bird with him awakes, 
 And Night is flung off, like a mourning suit 
 Worn for a husband — or some other brute." 
 
 Just SO ! What can be more delightful than to sally 
 forth, with a short pipe in your mouth and a bull-dog at 
 your heels, for a long walk through a picturesque coun- 
 try at daybreak on a summer's day ! How fresh and 
 
268 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 fragrant is the air ! How joyous is " the breezy call of 
 incense-breathing morn ! " The sky is a luminous 
 dome of azure, curtained with silver clouds, the foliage 
 looks as green as an emerald, and the dewdrops sparkle 
 like liquid diamonds upon every spray. You tread the 
 earth with a light, elastic step, aromatizing the zephyrs 
 as they sigh past you with the fumes of Bristol Bird's- 
 eye. All this is pleasant enough, under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, but it is still more enjoyable if there have 
 been a frost over-night, for then the landscape wins new 
 charms from the state of the atmosphere, and the dry, 
 bracing air qualifies you to enjoy them with the keen- 
 est zest. The whole landscape is suffused in new-bom 
 light, and glitters with icicles, and nothing that the 
 most poetic imagination can picture to itself of fanciful 
 and effulgent can surpass the radiant reality of the 
 beams dancing upon the crystallized rime with which 
 trees and hedge-rows are begemmed: — 
 
 " Falsely luxurious, will not man awake ; 
 And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy 
 The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour. 
 To meditation due and sacred song ? 
 For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise ? 
 To lie in dead oblivion, losing half 
 The fleeting moments of too short a life, 
 Total extinction of the enlighten'd soul ! 
 Or else to feverish vanity alive, 
 Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams ? 
 Who would in such a gloomy state remain 
 Longer than nature craves, when every muse 
 And every blooming pleasure waits without. 
 To bless the wildly-devious morning walk ? " 
 
 So sings the Poet of the Seasons. But if the morning 
 walk is so delightful, what shall be said in praise of the 
 
THE DELIGHT OF EARL Y RISIlv G. 269 
 
 morning ride ? To spring out of your bed into your 
 bath, and thence into your saddle (as is the invariable 
 practice of that king of good fellows, my friend Dick 
 Bel ward) for a gallop royal over the crisp breezy downs, 
 or along the yellow sands of the sea which foams and 
 flashes in the orient light, is to partake of one of the 
 manliest, noblest enjoyments of which human nature is 
 capable. The people who may see you tearing away in 
 this wild fashion will probably conclude that you are out 
 of your mind, and the beauty of it is they will not be far 
 wrong ; but what of that ? Surely you have a right to be 
 happy after your own lunatic fashion. 
 
 It is a common error to suppose that to enjoy the 
 pleasures and advantages incidental to early rising you 
 must of necessity, live in the country. No such thing. 
 Those pleasures and advantages are within the reach of 
 Londoners as well, though, of course, under circumstan- 
 ces altogether unlike those with which country folk are 
 familiar. A stroll through the streets of London, or along 
 the Thames Embankment, at daybreak, is suggestive of 
 " thoughts that do lie too deep for words." The silence 
 of the myriad-tongued city is singularly impressive. So 
 also is its solitude. There is no one about but the drowsy 
 policemen, the workmen trudging to the scenes of their 
 daily toil, or the votaries of pleasure fulfilling their 
 bacchanalian resolve not to go home till morning — till 
 daylight does appear. But even these apparitions are 
 of but rare occurrence. You may roam through many 
 streets without meeting a human being. The architec- 
 ture stands out in clear bold relief against the cold 
 cloudless sky, and it is wonderful to observe how much 
 taller the houses look at dawn than at noontide. They 
 seem to gain in height,, owing to the absence of way- 
 
270 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 farers, the average standard of human stature. All this, 
 and many things besides, are curious and interesting to 
 observe. In the depth of winter, when the east wind 
 is blowing razors, and the cold, clammy fog is so dense 
 that it might be kicked, as well, indeed, it deserves to 
 be, you will do essential service to your health by leav- 
 ing your cosy, warm bed at daybreak, and strolling 
 pensively along the banks of the Regent's Canal, or 
 through the lanes and alleys of the Isle of Dogs. Even 
 though you should renounce such al fresco delights, 
 tempting though they be, you will still find ample re- 
 ward for the trouble of turning out of the blankets at 
 dawn in mooning from one room to another of your 
 house — they all look so bright, cheerful and tidy in the 
 dim twilight, before the housemaids are astir. But 
 these, and all kindred joys, are lost to the sluggard — 
 pitiful drone ! For my own part, I have not quite 
 made up my mind whether I would call that man 
 " friend " who is not out and about at 5 o'clock in the 
 summer or 6 in winter. I hardly think I should do so, 
 unless he were very rich, and had remembered me hand- 
 somely in his will. To conclude, you may (if you like) 
 take, my word for it, that of all habits, that of early 
 rising is the most sensible and salubrious, for sleep is 
 mere waste of time, and nothing in bed becomes us like 
 the leaving it. 
 
THE REIGN OF RAIN. 2 7 1 
 
 THE REIGN OF RAIN. 
 
 TT may be said of Rain as truly as of Fire, that it is a 
 good servant, but a bad master. For some weeks 
 past we have been under its relentless dominion, with 
 a result to ourselves anything rather than agreeable. 
 What we especially resent and feel to be a peculiar 
 hardship, is the wretched monotony of such a condition 
 of climate as has of late prevailed. When heavy rain 
 is -accompanied by high winds, the effect, if not com- 
 fortable, is at least picturesque. Nature in a passion is, 
 under all circumstances, a magnificent spectacle. No 
 man, not hopelessly insensible to the charms of the 
 sublime and beautiful, can view without admiration the 
 grand disarray of the ocean when wind and wave are in 
 desperate conflict, the ^ack of rain-charged clouds in a 
 tempestuous sky, the impetuous torrent of a mountain 
 stream, or the writhing of giant trees in the grasp of the 
 winter blast. These are splendid sights, only to be 
 surpassed by the matchless exhibition of a lady angry 
 with her husband. Storms of all descriptions are 
 delightful to hear and to behold. It is fine to listen 
 to the thunder rolling, finer still to see the lightning 
 flashing, the very sense of danger giving greater zest 
 to enjo)fment. The rattling of hail-stones upon the 
 roof of a green house is melodious to a refined ear ; so, 
 too, is the rustling of autumnal breezes through a forest ; 
 so, likewise is the clamor of a loving tongue when you 
 come home late at night. The toppling of a chimney- 
 pot about your head speaks eloquently of atmospheric 
 
2^2 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 disturbance, and has an enchanting sound. There are 
 few things lovelier to gaze upon than a snow-storm, 
 more particularly in a desolate landscape, say, for ex- 
 ample, upon Salisbury Plain ; and the general pictur- 
 esqueness of the scene is incalculably enhanced by the 
 presence of a sweep or a Methodist parson right in the 
 middle of the vast expanse, the dark costume of either 
 gentleman telling against the dazzling whiteness all 
 round with an exquisite contrast of color. In these 
 and all kindred spectacles there is a certain dramatic 
 sentiment which makes us oblivious of personal dis- 
 comfort, in our ardent recognition of the appeal to our 
 poetic s)niipathies. But there is nothing either dramatic 
 or picturesque, nothing either to interest or excite us, in 
 one unvarying down-pour of rain, falling morning, noon, 
 anrd night for weeks together, out of leaden skies, upon the 
 soddened earth below. Not a zephyr blows : not a leaf 
 stirs : not a cloud is to be seen : the brave over-hanging 
 firmament is a dome of brown vapors : and down comes 
 the rain, the weary, dreary rain, in a dismal deluge, blot- 
 ting and blearing everything, and destroying all distinc- 
 tion between flood and field. The effect upon the spirits 
 is little less than heart-breaking. The only comfort is 
 to know that the most inveterate of grumblers can no 
 longer assert that the weather in England is " unset- 
 tled." Settled indeed it is, with a vengeance; and 
 unless it soon mend, it will " settle " us as well. 
 
 The poets have much to answer for in having be- 
 stowed such panegyrics upon Rain. It is all very well 
 for Shakespeare to sing the praises of Mercy, which 
 droppeth like the gentle rain from Heaven upon the 
 place beneath, but Mercy coming in inundations com- 
 parable to the torrents with which we have been of late 
 
7'HE REIGN OF RAIN. 
 
 273 
 
 afflicted would be a very - questionable favor. IMilton 
 talks of ladies whose eyes "rain influence/' but that 
 " influence " must be somewhat perilous which bears 
 resemblance to the rain of the present summer. Spencer 
 in his " Fate of the Butterflies," envies Jupiter his 
 prerogatives as " Pluvius," and seems to think that to 
 " rain in th' aire " is indeed a celestial privilege : — 
 
 " What more felicitie can fall to creature 
 Than to enjoy delight with libertie, 
 And to be Lord of all the Workes of Nature ; 
 To rain in th' aire from earth to lightest skie, 
 To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature ? " 
 
 " Delight with libertie " were indeed an enviable lot, 
 but what chance of " libertie " have we under the 
 reign of Rain ? Mr. Abraham Cowley was not without 
 warrant for his melodious utterances, when he declared 
 that, 
 
 " The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, 
 And drinks, and gapes for drink again ; 
 The plants suck in the earth, and are 
 With constant drinking fresh and fair." 
 
 The verse is charming, and the Bacchanalian inference 
 is not to be resisted, but beyond that point the analogy 
 may not be carried. Man is not a hollyhock, nor is 
 woman a geranium, and neither the one nor the other 
 is any the better for the drenching rains that give beauty 
 and brightness to either flower. A hollyhock need not 
 fear rheumatism; and geraniums, not having noses, do 
 not catch cold in them, as is the unhappy habit of 
 human beings. When sunshine has succeeded shower, 
 a garden looks all the gladder for copious rains ; but to 
 tell me that a street has a happier expression while 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 ERHA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 being deluged with rain for days, or it may be weeks 
 together, is to affront my understanding. The premon- 
 itory symptoms of rain are dolorous in the extreme, 
 and foretell all too truly the discomfort that is ap- 
 proaching : — 
 
 " Careful observers may foretell the hour 
 (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower ; 
 While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er 
 Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. 
 If you be wise, then go not far to dine. 
 You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine ; 
 A coming shower your shooting corns presage, 
 Old aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage." 
 
 Of the truth of these reflections we Londoners have had 
 ample experience during the present month. As for 
 London herself — " Imperial Augusta," as she was wont 
 to be designated — what could be more miserable, what 
 more rueful and disconsolate than her general aspect 
 and expression ?• Look where we might, we saw objects 
 equally provocative of pity and ridicule. It makes one's 
 heart bleed to think of the policemen. Those hard 
 helmets of theirs look like inverted colanders, and their 
 " skimpy " little capes seem fashioned for the express 
 purpose of conducting the rain in copious rivulets over 
 their dear knees and down the whole length of their 
 delightful legs. Why are not the " Bobbies " permitted 
 to wear " Ulsters," or why are they not decked out in 
 long-skirted dressing-gowns ? Soaking with rain, as 
 they are, how should these noble fellows be in a fitting 
 condition to carry on the war with itinerant " costers," 
 or to punch the heads of the public ? To require such 
 achievements from men drenched to the skin, and shiv- 
 ering all over like dogs in wet sacks, were to over-tax 
 the mettle of the most heroic natures. The omnibus 
 
THE REIGN OF RAIN. 
 
 I'll 
 
 conductors are in still more piteous plight, for whereas 
 the "Peeler" may stand up for awhile under a doorway, 
 or dive on the sly down an area or into a pot-house, the 
 conductor has no such resource. Mounted upon his 
 monkey-board, and often miserably clad, he must abide 
 as best as he may the pelting of the rain, and need not 
 hope for one shred of shelter. His case is all the more 
 dreadful to think of, that there is really no intelligible 
 reason why he should be exposed to any such hardship. 
 No rational cause has ever yet been assigned, or is, in- 
 deed capable of assignation, why the London conduc- 
 tors should not, like their colleagues of the Continental 
 and American cities, be provided with a canopy of some 
 sort to protect them from the weather. When dogs 
 shall have been furnished with an adequate number of 
 hospitals and asylums, and when cats shall have been 
 supplied with " homes " of sufficient luxury, it will per- 
 haps occur to the benevolent to bestow a thought upon 
 their fellow-creatures — the martyrs of the omnibuses 
 and tram-cars. Very woeful and full to overflowing 
 with sorrow and solicitude is the destiny of the London 
 postman, who, wearing a cape still " skimpier " than 
 that of the policeman, has to trudge through the streets 
 all day long till lo o'clock at night, amid torrents of 
 rain, distributing as he goes letters well-nigh as humid 
 as himself. He is in the main a civil, well-conducted 
 fellow, and deserves greater consideration than is usually 
 shown to him. But these are not the only sufferers 
 during the reign of rain. All classes of citizens sutler, 
 though of course in various ways and different degrees. 
 The visitation falls, as usual, with bitterest pressure 
 upon the poor, whose scanty raiment affords but inade- 
 quate defence against the inclemency of a British sum- 
 
2^6 :erra tic ess a ys. 
 
 men They get wetted through and through, and having 
 no change of clothes, fall easy victims to the catarrh 
 and other maladies that come in the train of hard 
 weather. Then, again, how sad it is to think what in- 
 nocent schemes of enjoyment are frustrated, and what 
 pleasant projects of holiday-making in the country lose 
 the name of action ! It is a sight to bring a cloud upon 
 the sunniest brow to see the rain pouring down in sheets 
 and tons of water upon the little children in the parish 
 vans, who for weeks past had thought all day and 
 dreamt all night about a merry " outing " in Epping For- 
 est, at Rye House, or on Buckhurst Hill, and whose 
 noses are as blue as indigo, and whose teeth chatter in 
 their heads even while they proclaim, amid diluvian 
 drenchings, their heroic determination not to go home till 
 morning. The " Upper Ten " partake the-disasters of the 
 million, for the glories of " Vanity Fair " have, vanished 
 from Rotten Row, and the splendor of the Park is 
 washed out. Never more this season will the Four-in- 
 Hand Club display their magnificent equipages to the 
 admiration of a dazzled populace ; nor, if this sort of 
 thing goes on, is it to be expected that the Butterfly 
 coaches to Brighton, High Wycombe, Seven Oaks, and 
 other delightful localities, will be left much longer upon 
 the road. It is no joke to send a splendid vehicle, a 
 team of spanking " bloods," and a coachman and guard 
 in dainty liveries from the White Horse Cellars in Picca- 
 dilly, on a journey of some forty or fifty miles, with no 
 happier result than to find coach, horses, and men all - 
 soddened with rain and bespattered with mud. Look 
 where we may, we see failure, disappointment, and vex- 
 ation of spirit. The Eton and Harrow match came to 
 grief at Lords j the " summer manoeuvres," as they are 
 
THE REIGN OF RAIN. 277 
 
 Styled with grim pleasantry, will probably eventuate in 
 rheumatism to all concerned ; Wimbledon Common has 
 been converted into a swamp, and picnics and floral 
 fetes., and garden parties of all kinds have but served 
 to illustrate in their downfall the absurdity of human 
 anticipations and the vanity of human desires. " Such 
 is life, which is the end of all things ! " as Mrs. Brown 
 beautifully remarks. Unless matters meteorological 
 mend, and that speedily, still graver calamities are in 
 store. What is to become of the excursion season, and 
 whither is that large section of the over-worked London 
 public to turn for comfort, who have heretofore been 
 accustomed to have recourse for the recruiting of their 
 health and spirits to trips down the river or to the sea- 
 side ? A more pitiable sight can hardly be imagined 
 than that .now presented by the Thames steamers on 
 their rainy way to Gravesend, Southend, and Sheerness. 
 Alas, for North Woolwich ! Alas, for Erith Gardens ! 
 Alas, and a-well-a-day for Rosherville, the place to spend 
 a happy day ! As for Ramsgate, Margate, and Broad- 
 stairs, the sooner their respective inhabitants throw up 
 the sponges which they so closely resemble, the better 
 for the Cockneys, who have enough to put up with 
 without being befooled as well as deluged. 
 
 The sights one is doomed to witness in the streets of 
 London during the Reign of Rain are derogatory to the 
 dignity of human nature. It is no uncommon thing to 
 see people of the humbler sort going about in tarpau- 
 lins, coal-sacks, horse-clothes, or blankets, " in the 
 alarm of fear caught up." I protest that no longer ago 
 than Wednesday last I saw a man in Bishopsgate 
 Street with a blanket swathed around him, and I will 
 do him the justice to say that Caesar could not have 
 
278 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 worn his toga with a finer air of grace and grandeur. 
 Still, one does not like to see men going about in 
 blankets, however elegantly they may be worn. A still 
 more harrowing spectacle was to be viewed in the 
 Strand on Tuesday, where — while it was raining cats 
 and dogs, and here and there a rat — I actually saw an 
 ironmonger's porter with an inverted coal-scuttle upon 
 his head. Fancy man, born for immortality, going 
 about the Strand with a coal-scuttle upon " the dome 
 of thought, the palace of the soul ! " Then, again, how 
 sad — how very sad — it is to see human bodies clad in 
 those clammy, glistening mackintoshes, which make a 
 man look like a turbot ! I always expect to find fins 
 and scales growing upon a man thus piscatorially ap- 
 parelled. But the most agonizing sight of all is to see 
 a cabman with two hats on. This is a practice which 
 ought to be put down by the strong arm of the law. 
 How should any man dare to wear two hats in a civil- 
 ized country ? No one should be permitted to sport 
 two hats unless a man with two heads. Suppose every- 
 body were to put two hats on, what a nation of lunatics 
 we should be accounted ! A law should be passed with- 
 out an hour's delay to disentitle a cabman wearing 
 more than one hat to recover his fare under any cir- 
 cumstances whatsoever. 
 
 When I was a very small boy, no bigger than a decan- 
 ter, it was customary for little children to sing this song 
 in rainy weather, — " Rain ! rain ! go to Spain, and 
 never come to us again ! " The latter part of this sup- 
 plication should be omitted, for the world may not do 
 without rain ; but the former ought now to be in com- 
 mon use from John o'Groat's to Land's End. Let us 
 hope that brighter days are coming, and that, for the 
 present, at all events, it is all over with the Reign of Rain. 
 
THE LONDON ROW. 
 
 THE L OND ON ROW. 
 
 279 
 
 /^N returning to town after a brief sojourn in some 
 ^"^ sequestered spot far from the maddening crowd, 
 nothing strikes you more forcibly than the contrast be- 
 tween the tranquillity of the country and the pother of 
 London. If you are, unluckily for yourself and your 
 friends, of a poetic temperament and prone to the folly 
 of writing original verse or parodying that of other peo- 
 ple, it is ten to one that as you stroll from Charing 
 'Cross to Fenchurch • Street you will pause pensively 
 every now and then, and, striking an attitude at a 
 crossing, burst forth into some such utterance a s this — 
 
 " What are the wild wheels saying, 
 
 Rumbling the streets along, 
 All my fine feelings flaying 
 
 With their uproarious song ? " 
 
 The row in the streets is something appalling, and 
 the most exasperating thought about it is that it might 
 be in a great measure prevented, or at all events as- 
 suaged, if we would but set about the task in a resolute 
 manner. But we won't. Fully one-half the noises of 
 London might be hushed ; and it is not in words to ex- 
 press how much more comfortable and enjoyable our 
 lives would be made in consequence. It is dreadful to 
 think what we suffer in the course of the year by reason 
 of the granite pavement alone. We had need to be 
 made of the like material to endure it with impunity. 
 The wear and tear of " tissue," as physiologists call it, 
 to us who have hourly experience of its thundering row 
 
28o ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 and its terrific jolting, niust be as injurious to health as 
 it is ruinous to peace. It splits our ears, it shakes our 
 bones in their sockets and our teeth in our heads, it 
 shatters our nervous systems, and it plays the mischief 
 with what sentimental novelists delight to call " the 
 noblest feelings of our nature." As for conversation, in 
 the civilized sense of the word, it is out of the question 
 >vhen you walk through a street paved with granite. 
 You must bellow like Stentor if you would shout down 
 the combined clatter of omnibuses, cabs, and vans, in 
 what Mr. Tennyson too truly describes as "roaring 
 Temple Bar." John Gay, apostrophizing London by 
 the fanciful title of " Augusta," one hundred years ago, 
 makes pointed allusion to the roughness and noisiness ' 
 of her thoroughfares — 
 
 " To pave thy streets and smooth thy broken ways, 
 Earth from her womb a flinty tribute pays, 
 For thee the sturdy paver thumps the ground, 
 Whilst every strolce his lab'ring lungs resound." 
 
 During the century that has elapsed since the penning 
 of those lines very little has been done to tranquillize 
 the great metropolis. True, a few streets have been 
 asjDhalted and a few'er still have been paved with wood ; 
 but stone is still the main material of pavement, and still 
 as of yore the dismal " Ogh ! " of the sturdy paver wield- 
 ing his ponderous hammer — an implement that would 
 have disgraced the middle ages — shocks our ears. 
 Walking one Friday evening not long ago through the 
 Strand, on my way from Trafalgar Square to Farring- 
 don Street, I was bothered, bewildered, and distracted 
 by such a conflict of inharmonious noises as has prob- 
 ably never been found upon earth elsewhere than in 
 London since the building of the Tower of Babel. S6rae 
 
THE LONDON ROW. 28t, 
 
 maniac who died years ago — alas ! that he should have 
 ever lived — left a leg of mutton and trimmings (so the 
 Cockneys are led to believe) to ensure the ringing of 
 the bells of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-fields at a 
 stated hour every Friday evening till the last syllable of 
 recorded time. The bells were, accordingly, swinging 
 uproarious from the church tower as I set out from 
 Morley's Hotel ; and what a fearful row they made to 
 be sure 1 At the Lowther Arcade a wretched woman 
 was grinding a barrel-organ for the torture, not only of 
 the passers-by, but still more for that of her own child, a 
 poor little animal about two years old, every nerve and 
 fibre of whose tiny frame must have vibrated, and whose 
 brain must have been well-nigh convulsed by the discord 
 emitted from the instrument upon which it lay, poor 
 infant, as upon a bed. At the corner of Agar Street a 
 fellow was playing upon that newest engine of agon,y, 
 the Mitrailleuse-Piano ; in front of the Adelphi Theatre, 
 three men standing in a row, were blowing brazen horns 
 of some sort, wherewith they made the hoarsest, most 
 discordant noise imaginable ; near Somerset House, but 
 on the opposite side of the road, a girl was playing on 
 the cornopean ; a few yards further on a fellow was 
 filing a saw ; in Essex Street there was a Punch-and- 
 Judy show ; and all this while countless vehicles were 
 rumbling uproariously over the granite pavement. Why, 
 it was enough to drive the Devil mad ! " Coaches roll, 
 carts shake the ground, and all the streets with passing 
 cries resound." Have you ever stood upon the Holborn 
 Viaduct hard by Dr. Parker his Temple of an afternoon ? 
 If not, don't. What with theroar of cab and ' bus ; the 
 heavy artillery of Pickford's and Railway vans, the 
 vibration of the bridge ; the tantalizing expression of 
 
282 - ERRA TIC ESSA YS:. 
 
 the figure of " Commerce," with her hands full of coins 
 which you may not touch ; and the ridiculous proceed- 
 ing of Prince Albert in taking ofif his hat to the Viaduct 
 as if it were a lady ; there is at that particular place 
 such a combination of horrors as you had better not 
 encounter if you have any regard for your bodily health 
 or your peace of mind. Nor do matters mend if you 
 strike out of the great city arteries into the tributaries. 
 In the City Road, the New North Road, and the whole 
 route from Westminster to Brixton the bells of the tram- 
 cars aggravate the noise-nuisance to an intolerable degree, 
 to say nothing of the injury which the cars in question 
 do to the roads, and to the " traps " of various kinds 
 other than tram-cars plying thereon. You fly for refuge 
 to the Railways — out of the frying-pan into the fire ! 
 The shriek of the locomotive runs through your spine 
 like a knife ; and the row the railway porters make in 
 slamming the doors of the carriages is simply inhuman. 
 The line being blocked, we came to a stand-still for a 
 few minutes one day at a station on the Underground 
 Railway. " Sir," said I, with a suavity all my own, to one 
 of the porters, a gentleman in corduroy, who had shut 
 the door with even more than ordinary fury, " I wish 
 you would do your spiriting a little more gently. You 
 frighten the life out of me. You might shut the door 
 quite as effectually with half that noise." " Oh ! my 
 eye and my elbow ! " replied that haughty young porter. 
 " Sir," said I, with unruffled dignity, " I made no re- 
 ference either to your eye or your elbow ; though I 
 should be well pleased if the former were more vigilant 
 and the latter less vigorous ; but permit me to assure 
 you that you are more noisy than the occasion warrants. 
 Why not imitate the motion of the spheres ? " "I know 
 
THE LONDO.y RO \V. 283 
 
 notliing about them," he rejoined. " Have you ever 
 read Bacon's Natural Philosophy ?" I \entured to in- 
 quire. No ! not he. He had never heard of it. " W'eW, 
 then," quotli I, " allow me to inform you of what Lord 
 Bacon says on the subject of a placid demeanor : 
 ' Great motions in nature pass without sound or noise. 
 The heavens turn about in a most rapid motion without 
 noise, to us perceived ; though in some dreams they 
 have been said to make an excellent music' Now, my 
 young friend, do let me implore you to emulate the gentle 
 and melodious example of nature, and to shut the doors 
 quietly for the future." What do you suppose was his 
 answer ? " Go ! put your head in a bag ! " Yes, thai 
 was what the haughty young porter made answer. I was 
 very angry ; and threatened to report him ; but on 
 second thoughts I won't. Instead of reporting him I 
 will take his advice. " Fas est et ab hoste doceri." The 
 next time I travel from Moorgate Street to Edgware 
 Road by rail, I -0)111 put my head in a bag, and I dare 
 say I shall not suffer half so severely from the shrieking 
 of the engine or the slamming of tlie door. The experi- 
 ment is at all events worth making j and in the interest 
 of humanity I will make it. 
 
 Many of tlie noises which were wont to invade the 
 repose of our forefathers have vanished, only, however, 
 to be succeeded in some cases by others of a more clam- 
 orous character. The guardians of the night no longer 
 cry out the hour. If you were to ask a Bobby to sing 
 forth tlie time o' night under your window he would 
 probably regard you as a lunatic, and treat you accord- 
 ingly. Anyhow he would not do it unless 3'ou were to 
 make it well wortli his while to comply with 5'our re- 
 quest. Most of the time-honored London cries have 
 
284 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 disappeared never to return but in their places we have' 
 noises most z^^zmusical, most melancholy. In summer 
 time we have the caterwauling of " Ornaments for your 
 fire-screen ! " and in winter the woeful wail of Irishmen 
 tearfully exclaiming " Oranges ! — Orang^« / " than 
 which a more execrable noise never fell upon the human 
 t3mipanum. The ballad-singers have all but departed, 
 but we are little the better for their departure, as in their 
 room come hordes of so-called "musicians," whose bla- 
 tant row is equally fatal to business and enjoyment. 
 The man who could derive satisfaction from the grinding 
 of an organ or the performances of a street band must 
 know as much of music as a cow knows of playing a 
 piano, and would probably derive pleasure from the 
 passing of his wet fingers over a pane of glass, or the 
 rolling of a wheel upon a dry axle, or the turning of a 
 door upon a rusty hinge. Our fathers were free from 
 the fell persecution of street music, but we are happily 
 exempt from what must have been a bitter annoyance to 
 them, the swinging to and fro of the sign-boards in 
 front of the shops, a clamor which used to be regarded 
 as an omen of ill weather — 
 
 " But when the swinging signs your ears offend 
 With creaking noise, then rainy floods impend, 
 Soon shall the kennel swell with rapid streams 
 And rush in muddy torrents to the Thames.'' 
 
 How dreadful must that noise of swinging signs have 
 been on stormy nights in mid-winter, more particularly 
 in cases where the shop-keeper had neglected to keep 
 the sign well oiled. It turns one's teeth of an edge to 
 think of it. But, " th' inaudible and noiseless foot of 
 Time," as Will Shakespeare happily phrases it, has kick- 
 
THE LONDON ROW. 285 
 
 ed both the signboards of tradesmen and the snoring- 
 boxes of watchmen into the waters of Lethe, and there 
 is little now left to disturb the dreams of slumbering 
 Cockneys, unless it be the mad career of the fire-engines 
 tearing along the street at a furious pace, the white 
 horses galloping for their dear lives, and the firemen in 
 their brazen helmets shouting to the passengers to 
 clear the way; a wild uproarious spectacle, yet not 
 without a dash of the picturesque. 
 
 But if we are rather more peaceful than our sires by 
 night, we are in no better case, but rather in much worse 
 by day, the traffic in the streets being now much greater 
 and far more sonorous than in their time. To say no 
 more about stone pavement or street-music, it is really 
 shocking to think how much noise there is that might be 
 prevented. Why will the London boys keep everlasting- 
 ly whistling ? There is no city in the world where the 
 boys in the street whistle so loudly and so badly as 
 London. I wish they wouldri't. If they only knew 
 what annoyance they cause me, I am sure they wouldn't. 
 They are eternally at it, and it is not one boy in a hun- 
 dred that has an ear or a lip for whistling. And the 
 worst of it is that they all have a run upon the same 
 tune, so that for weeks together, one hears nothing else 
 but a barbarous outrage upon the one air — the song of 
 the ' Gens d'armes ' in Genevieve de Brabant, or tlie 
 ' Marsellaise,' or the ' Conspirators' Chorus,' etc., as the 
 case may be. Again I say — and let it be conclusive of 
 the matter — I wish they wouldn't. People who deal in 
 the liquor that passes for " milk " should learn how to 
 pronounce the word if they won't sell the thing ; and the 
 vendors of cafs-meat, who now shout out something that 
 makes human beings shudder, however it may please 
 
2 86 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 the cats, should be made to mend their speech, and not 
 emulate the midnight utterances of the animals to whose 
 appetites they administer. In gentlemen's houses, con- 
 ducted as they should be, and in West-end clubs of the 
 first class, the servants tread noiselessly as though they 
 were walking upon velvet, and do your behests most 
 peacefully, but in private houses of inferior " ton," and 
 in the generality of taverns and coffee houses, the ser- 
 vants knock about the china and glass as though they 
 were skittles, and appear to think that work is insepa- 
 rable from row. Nor is it domestics only who offend 
 against the peace which should prevail in good society- 
 What can be more unbecoming than the strife of tongues 
 at a dinner table, as though each guest were seeking to 
 talk down the other. Table-talk should run in a bright, 
 smooth, silvery current, not in a foaming, boisterous tide. 
 Then, again, there are people who, whether in public or 
 in private, appear to regard their noses as trumpets, and 
 play upon them accordingly. This is intolerable. How 
 dare any man to pull out his pocket-handkerchief like 
 a banner, and use it with such uproar that I start af- 
 frighted from my seat, and fancy that Prince Bismarck 
 has landed with an invading army, and is summoning 
 me to surrender.' How dare any man, I repeat, thus 
 to terrify and torture me ? I was reading a day or two 
 ago in the British Museum. You might have heard a 
 feather drop, so profound was the silence, when sudden 
 ly the man next me played a solo upon his nose, which 
 rang through the clome for all the world like the flourish 
 of a bugle. " Sir," said I to the performer, "you appear 
 to be a military man. Is that the ' Assembly ? ' Or is 
 it the 'Retreat ? ' What are we to do ? " " Thunder 
 and turf, sir," quofh he " I suppose a man may blow hi» 
 
THE LONDON ROIV. 287 
 
 nose without asking )'Our permission." " Of a certain- 
 ty," I replied, " but no one has a right to make his nose 
 an instrument of torture to his fellow-creatures." He 
 seemed to be of a different opinion, so there the conver- 
 sation dropped, for I hate to argue with any man. Only 
 I thought to myself how very wise those Spanish inn- 
 keepers were who in the olden -time used to make 
 " ruido " an item in their bills, charging their guests for 
 the noise they made. How welcome, how blessedly 
 welcome is night when, to quote the words of a sublime 
 poet, 
 
 " Silence like a poultice comes 
 To heal the wounds of sound." 
 
 Revolving the matter in the innermost recesses of my 
 mind, and bringing to die consideration of it all the 
 thought and research at my command, I have arrived at 
 tlie conclusion that mothers are answerable for not a 
 little of the unnecessary noises which so fatally disturb 
 the repose and impair the dignity of human life. Long 
 before a child reaches that mysterious age when it be- 
 gins to "take notice," it is supplied with artificial and 
 altogether superfluous appliances for kicking up a row. 
 It has first a rattle, then a squeaking little trumpet, then 
 a drum, as though to teach it from the earliest dawn of 
 life that tlie end and aim of human existence is the 
 making a noise in the world. " I have seen a monkey," 
 says Dean Swift, " overtlirow all the dishes and plates 
 in a kitchen, merely for the pleasure of seeing them 
 tumble, and hearing the clatter they made in their fall." 
 That is all well enough for a monkey ; but, surely, man 
 bom of woman should know better. I protest that if I 
 were a mother I would as soon think of giving my baby 
 a loaded revolver as a coral and bells. When the streets 
 
288 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 are paved with wood, when no other than anthracite coal 
 consuming its own smoke, is burnt in the grates, when 
 nose-trumpets are forbidden by law, when whistling boys 
 are birched, when the Thames is embanked with silent 
 highways from Chelsea to Millwall, and from Battersea 
 to Greenwich, and when mothers perceive the wisdom 
 of inculcating in their offspring the grand lesson of 
 making as little noise as they possibly can in the course 
 of their earthly career, then, and not till then, will the 
 London Row disappear, and London become a pleasant 
 place to live in. 
 
 POST YULE-TIDE MEDITATIONS. 
 
 "\ ^ 7"ELL, Christmas is over ; the year is no longer 
 ** very new ; the yule-log is fairly burnt out ; the 
 sounds of festivity have died away ; we are tossed ho more 
 upon a sea of revelry ; we have got at last into quiet 
 waters. It is a pleasant thought. Christmas comes 
 but once a year ; and " a good job too." Life is at 
 best a sad experiment, clouded with care and full of 
 trouble, even under the most favorable conditions of for- 
 tune ; but only fancy what it would be if Christmas were 
 to come once a week ! To live in a perpetual whirl of 
 dissipation ; to be doomed to the perennial consumption 
 of roast turkeys and plum pudding ; to be compelled 
 all the year round to eat and drink three times as 
 much as is good for you ; to be trotted out from one 
 theatre to another ; to wear a cast-iron smile, it matters 
 not what sorrow may be rankling at your heart ; to kiss 
 
POST YULE-TIDE MEDITATIONS. 289 
 
 and be kissed everlastingly under the mistletoe ; and to 
 have to wish everybody you meet " the compliments of 
 the season," whatever on earth that may mean, to have to 
 do and suffer all these and many other things of kindred 
 absurdity without intermission, from one end of the j-ear 
 to the other, were such a destiny that life would not be 
 worth having upon the terms. It maddens one to think 
 of it. It is as though a man should be married anew 
 regularly every morning. For my own poor part I would 
 rather be Othello's toad, living upon the vapor of a dun- 
 geon, where at all events diere is peace, than a man 
 dwelling in perpetual commotion under a Yule-tide, 
 which, like the great Pontic sea, should know no retiring 
 ebb. Indeed, dear reader mine, I will take thee into 
 my confidence, and, borrowing a favorite phrase of Lord 
 Clarendon in his much be-praised and very heavy book 
 " The Histor>^ of the Great Rebellion," I will " let myself 
 loose to say " that, viewed only in its social aspects, and 
 without reference to its purely religious signification, 
 which, though undoubtedly most consolatory, is too often 
 eclipsed by the carnalities of the celebration, Christmas is 
 but a melancholy time for people who have any faculty 
 of thought, and have passed the age of five-und-twent)'. 
 Tnily for them its mirth is very tragical. It is all very 
 well for children who know not what care means, to 
 whom " to-morrow " is a Canaan flowing with milk and 
 honey ; whose spirits are unclouded by the shadows of 
 coming sorrows ; whose palates are unpalled ; and whose 
 digestion is unimpaired. Let them gather the rose-buds 
 while they ma)', which is not for long ; let them laugh 
 and gambol, be glad and rejoice. If they are not happy 
 now, when may they hope to be so ! Ah ! when indexed. 
 Who could find it in his heart to quell their delight, or 
 19 
 
ago 
 
 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 "to stop their tide of laughter with a sigh?" Leave 
 them at the high top-gallant of their mirth, and say not a 
 word to damp the ardor of their joy. But really when 
 we are arrived at that most irrational of all epochs, 
 " years of discretion ; " when we have lived to know 
 what life truly is, how mournful, how precarious ; when 
 our hearts are full of sad memories, and dark forebod: 
 ings, how dismal then is the very thought of jollity, and 
 with what a mocking echo do the sounds of conventional 
 merriment fall upon the ear ! Christmas comes round 
 again, and we are told to be jolly. The streets swarm 
 with elated citizens, laboriously intent on pleasure ; the 
 shops are decked out in finery ; the bells are ringing, 
 and the busy note of preparation resounds through the 
 land ; everywhere people are preparing to put on happi- 
 ness like clothes : but another year is gone, gone past 
 recall, and we sigh to think what havoc death has com- 
 mitted since this time twelvemonth ; what gaps he has 
 made in the circle of our friends ; what loved ones he 
 has slain ; what homes he has destroyed ; what hearts 
 he has made cold and desolate. How many were there 
 among us bright and joyous last Christmas, whom we 
 shall never, see again ? 
 
 " When I remember all 
 The friends so linked together, 
 I've seen around me fall 
 Like leaves in wintry weather, 
 I feel like one who treads alone 
 Some banquet hall deSferted, 
 Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, 
 And all save me departed." 
 
 Trite lines, but how true ! We are reminded of that 
 ghastly German story about the band of students who 
 
POST YULE-TIDE MEDITATIOXS. 291 
 
 swore to dine togetlier and drink one another's healths 
 every Christmas-eve ; how exuberant was their mirth 
 at first, but how it got clouded as years rolled on j how 
 every year saw a seat emptied and the company grow- 
 ing thinner, till tliere was but one old man left to drink 
 to his own health in a mirror ; and how he at last was 
 found Ipng cold and stark by the side of his chair. 
 But independently of the tragic vicissitudes to which, 
 from the very conditions of humanity we are all of us 
 subject, and which give a melancholy aspect to the re- 
 currence of any anniversar)', however festive in itself, 
 there are circumstances, botli social and climatic, which 
 makes Christmas here in London anything rather than 
 a season of enjoyment. It is a period fraught with 
 calamity. The papers teem with accidents and of- 
 fenses. " News " means the intelligence of shipwrecks, 
 colliery explosions, railway collisions, marriages and 
 other disasters, the mere recital whereof is almost 
 enough to make one's blood run cold. Winter is ever 
 rife with misfortunes — and with crime as well, ^^'it- 
 ness the awful record of misdeeds chronicled in every 
 journal. While plum-puddings are smoking upon every 
 board and the lo\'ing-cup goes round, garotters are be- 
 ing flogged and murderers are being hanged in batches 
 of three or four at a time. So much for the social as- 
 pect of Christmas in modern times. Nor are we more 
 fortunate in matters meteorological. 
 
 The Christmas season may now be divided into four 
 chapters, entitled respectively Fog, Fat, Frost and 
 Thaw. There was a time when November was supposed 
 to be, and was, in fact, the foggiest of all tlie months 
 in the year ; but to that proud distinction it may no 
 longer lay claim. November now-a-da3's is often a very 
 
202 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 enjoyable month — hardly less so than October, so dear 
 to artists for its cold, gray days. November is keen; 
 bluff, and stormy, but it is not unfrequently dry, clear 
 and bracing. The palm of fogginess in climate now 
 belongs as indisputably to December as does that of 
 fogginess in meaning to Mr. Browning. We all remem- 
 ber the dreadful fog in December, 1873, which was con- 
 tinued from day to day for the best part of a week, like 
 some appalling story in " The Penny Awful." The De- 
 cember fog, in fact, is the most ominous harbinger of 
 Christmas, and it is hardly possible to imagine anything 
 in the way of atmospheric visitations more horrible or 
 more depressing. Even Mr. Kingsley, who alone of 
 all men living or dead, has sung the praises of the 
 " East Wind," could hardly find it in his conscience to 
 say a word in favor of the December fog, which envel- 
 opes you as with a wet sheet, chokes you as with a filthy 
 duster, and bothers and bewilders you out of your seven 
 senses. It wraps up the sun in a mustard poultice, it 
 takes the azure out of the sky and substitutes pea-soup, 
 and enshrouds the world in clammy yellow vapors, 
 which not only forbid all enjoyment of nature, but do 
 the gravest injury to our health. Not to ours alone, 
 for even the prize cattle at Islington succumb to their 
 dreadful influence. Scarcely have we emerged from the 
 fogs when we find ourselves in " The Festival of Fat." 
 Of all celebrations ever witnessed in a civilized coun- 
 try assuredly this is the most astounding. Generations, 
 as yet unborn, will read with amazement the accounts 
 of their fathers' proceedings in the matter, " and won- 
 der what old world such sights could see." We sneer 
 at the ancient Egyptians for worshipping an ox, yet all 
 London, and all the country as well, throng in myriads 
 
POST YULE-TIDE MEDITATIONS. 
 
 293 
 
 to the Agricultural Hall to gaze in idolatrous admira- 
 tion upon a fat bull, or a still fatter pig. Why this 
 apotheosis of obese swine ? and whereof all this mighty 
 ado about an adiposity, which, as in man so in the 
 lower animals, simply betokens disease ? These greasy 
 quadrupeds who can hardly waddle, and who can with 
 difficulty see out of their eyes, so fat are they, are mere- 
 ly suffering under a degeneration of tissue which ren- 
 ders them as useless as uncomely. Not only are they 
 unfit for any farming or agricultural purpose during 
 their lifetime, but they will have no posthumous value 
 in the sense of food for the human beings, of intelli- 
 gence inferior to their own, who view them with wonder 
 and affection. Oxen and pigs who are mountains of 
 fat will never make good beef or pork. They are in 
 that sense worthless, as they are in all senses ugly, but 
 still, as Christmas approaches, people lose • their wits 
 about this pitiful exhibition, and multitudes of all 
 classes and conditions, as well princes of the blood as 
 " costers " from Whitechapel, all rush with equal eager- 
 ness to take part in the Festival of Fat. A prize-fight 
 was in reality a much nobler spectacle. But we are too 
 refined for pugilism, and the lower orders, discarding 
 the use of their fists, have taken to kicking like horses, 
 .though in a far more brutal fashion. To the Festival 
 of Fat succeeds a more brilliant and delightful celebra- 
 tion — the Festival of Frost. But that it causes such 
 suffering to the poor, and is so hurtful to the health of 
 invalids, Frost might be welcomed with universal satis- 
 faction, for it is marvellously beautiful and exceedingly 
 favorable to manly sports and pastimes. Of the beauty 
 and brilliancy of frost, they who dwell with trees around 
 them as I have the happiness to do, and they alone, can 
 
294 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 form the faintest idea. Those of my friends whose sad 
 fate it is to look through their upper windows, back and 
 front, upon a wilderness of chimney-pots vomiting forth 
 coils of filthy smoke, have about as much notion of the 
 grace and splendor of frost-work as a man blind from 
 birth has of the prismatic glories of the rainbow. It 
 is nothing to the purpose to say that at half-a-mile's dis- 
 tance there may be a park where the trees are glistening 
 in sunshine and rime. As well might a poor man seek to 
 cull comfort in his poverty from the thought that a rich 
 man may be living next door to him. If the park, how- 
 ever near, be not within view, it does no more good to 
 you while you are at home than if it were a hundred 
 miles away. It is just the difference between the town 
 and the country. I prefer the country, but " every man 
 to his taste," as the farmer touchingly remarked when 
 he kissed his cow instead of his wife. While I marvel 
 at the " taste " of those who would prefer a chimney- 
 pot to a tree, quite as much as at that farmer who 
 would rather kiss a cow than a woman, I freely admit 
 that every man's house is his castle, and far be it from 
 me to disenchant him with his dwelling. Yet my 
 friends who, as Tom Hood phrases, it delight to feast 
 upon an " endless meal of brick and mortar," and who, 
 therefore, know nothing about the effulgence of the 
 frost — ^for who ever heard of the play of sun-beams 
 through the frost-crystals of a chimney-pot ? — may take 
 my word for it that the most poetic imagination can 
 hardly picture to itself anything more magnificent than 
 the form and expression of the trees during the frosty 
 weather this Christmas. But the frosts in this island 
 are but sorry affairs compared with those recorded not 
 alone by Baron Munchausen, but by that still more 
 
POST YULE-TIDE MEDITATIONS. 
 
 29s 
 
 veracious historian Bisliop Wilkins, who gravely assures 
 us of the existence of " a cold country where discourse 
 doth freeze in the air all winter and may be heard in 
 the summer or at a great thaw." What a comfort it 
 would be to be sure, if some folk's words would hang 
 concreted midway in the air, even as they were being 
 uttered, and what a still greater blessing if Spring 
 revolving would but leave them there. The saddest 
 thing about a frost is that it must of necessity be fol- 
 lowed by a thaw, of all operations of external nature 
 assuredly the most dismal and disheartening. There 
 is no wittier simile in Shakespeare than that which he 
 puts into the mouth of the jester — " I was the prince's 
 jester, and duller than a great thaw ! " He must have 
 been dull, indeed. A thaw suggests to a fanciful mind 
 the idea that nature was drunk, or, as the slang phrase 
 goes, " tight," over-night, and is going through the 
 wretched discipline of getting sober. In a great city 
 the spectacle is unspeakably miserable. Everything is 
 so grira and slobbery. The street is like a turnip-field ; 
 the footpaths are slimy and full of slush ; the eaves of 
 the houses are " like Niobe, all tears ; " the sky resem- 
 bles a vast dome of wet sponge ; the earth is like wet 
 mortar ; it looks as though the whole world were falling 
 to pieces. It speaks well for the innate geniality a:nd 
 good-humor of Falstaff that he could preserve his good 
 spirits, pass his joke and quaff his sack, notwithstand- 
 ing that he was, as he himself assures us, " subject to 
 heat as butter, a man of continual dissolution and 
 thaw ;" but it is not easy to understand how a person 
 of Hamlet's refined taste and exalted imagination 
 could have desired that " his too, too solid flesh would 
 melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew." Had his as- 
 
296 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 pirations been realized he would probably have found 
 himself in no very comfortable condition. Yet a 
 " thaw,'' as taken to symbolize the softening of an ob- 
 durate nature, has a potent plenitude of meaning ; and 
 the song of the poor maniac to his mistress is not with- 
 out a certain touch of fantastic pathos — 
 
 " I'll weave thee a garland of straw, my love, 
 And I'll marry thee with a rush ring, 
 
 And thine icy heart shalt thaw, my love. 
 So merrily shall we sing." 
 
 If so she was no strong-minded woman. Caesar was 
 of sterner stuif — 
 
 " Think not that Caesar bears such rebel blood 
 That will be thawed from the true quality 
 With that which melteth fools." 
 
 And what a splendid metaphor is that of Dryden's, 
 ■where he describes one of his heroes as being clad in 
 
 " Burnished steel that cast a glare 
 From far, and seemed to thaw the freezing air." 
 
 But let the poets say what they may about a thaw, it 
 is, of all things under the sun, the dreariest and most 
 uticomfortable. It is bad enough in the streets, where 
 it soaks you through and through, and causes you to 
 tumble about in all directions ; but it is still worse when 
 it invades your home, and making your pipes to burst, 
 places you at the mercy of that most unconscionable of 
 tyrants, the plumber. When that dreadful man once 
 crosses your threshold with his infernal soldering pots, 
 and sets about pulling your house to pieces, shaking his 
 head oracularly, peering down your cistern, squinting 
 
THE USES OF SYMPATHY. 297 
 
 up your pipes, and telling you what a providential thing 
 it is he has come in the nick of time, for that otherwise 
 you would have been swept into the next parish by the 
 rising floods — farewell to warmth and cleanliness, a long 
 farewell to decency and comfort. The various phases 
 of Fog, Fat, Frost and Thaw have been distinctively 
 marked this Christmas. We who still survive have 
 passed through them all triumphantly. We have feasted 
 and made merry, we have quaffed our ale or wine as the 
 case may have been, we have cut deep into our plum- 
 puddings, we have given innumerable geese and turkeys 
 cause to regret that they ever were born, we have had 
 our fill of good old British roystering. The holidays 
 are over, and right glad am I to think that we have got 
 once more into quiet waters. 
 
 THE USES OF SYMPATHY. 
 
 O YMPATHY is precisely that one touch of nature 
 which, as Shakespeare matchlessly phrases it, " makes 
 the whole world kin." All that is most lovable and en- 
 dearing, most refined and exalted in humanity, owes its 
 origin to the impulses of that celestial instinct which 
 prompts us to feel for others' woe. It is the quintes- 
 sence of honor ; it is the soul of heroism. What leads 
 the forlorn hope in battle ? — what sends the hero of the 
 fire brigade up blazing piles and through sheets of 
 flame?— ^what mans the lifeboat amid, raging waves and 
 howling winds ? — what makes women, young, lovely, and 
 highborn, exchange the gilded saloons of fashion for 
 
298 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 the field of slaughter, " where rings the loud musket and 
 flashes the sword ? " — what urges men who, without re- 
 proach, might dwell at home at ease, to go forth with 
 their lives in their hands to the deserts of Africa and 
 the snow-fields of the Arctic regions in search of lost 
 explorers ? — what should it be but sympathy ? This it 
 is, and this alone that steels men and women of the 
 noblest types to look death fearlessly in the face so that 
 it may be said of them in aftertime that they died in a 
 good cause — the best of all causes, the rescue of their 
 fellow-creatures. "There never was any heart truly 
 great and generous," writes Dr. South, " that was not 
 also tender and compassionate. It is this noble quality 
 that makes all men to be of one kind ; for every man 
 would be a distinct species to himself were there no 
 sympathy among individuals." Truthful as potent is the 
 saying of Philip Massinger — 
 
 " The eye that will not weep another's sorrow 
 Should boast no gentler brightness than the glare 
 That reddens in the eye-balls of the wolf." 
 
 Softer and more melodious in expression, and equal- 
 ly true in sentiment, is Byron's verse — 
 
 " What gem hath dropped and sparkles o'er his chain ? 
 The tear, most sacred, shed for other's pain, 
 That starts at once bright pure from pity's mine 
 Already polished by the hand divine." 
 
 Very lovely too is Keats' definition of sympathy 
 — the exquisite faculty that teaches us to share " the 
 inward fragrance of each other's hearts." Indeed, it is 
 not too much to ^ay that a man is morally precious in 
 the exact proportion that he is discerningly sympathe- 
 tic. IVEeasured by this standard, some men who have 
 
THE USES OF SYMPATHY. 299 
 
 long passed for giants would be reduced to dwarfish 
 proportions. Take for example Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
 formerly of Bolt Court, Fleet Street, in the City of Lon- 
 don. Few men enjoy to this day a higher renown as a 
 moralist than he ; but what is that morality worth which 
 is not instinct with kindness ? Johnson made every 
 now and then a mighty parade of his good nature, and 
 there is no denying that he was occasionally capable of 
 deeds of ostenta'tious benevolence ; but the general 
 bearishness-of his conduct and his systematic disregard 
 of the feelings of others forbid the thought that he was, 
 aufond^ genuinely and thoroughly sympathetic. What 
 an insight into his hard insensate character do we ob- 
 tain from the following figment of a conversation be- 
 tween him and his idolatrous biographer whom he took 
 such delight in snubbing ! 
 
 " Boswell : Suppose, sir, that one of your intimate 
 friends were apprehended for an offence for which he 
 might be hanged. Johnson : I should do what I could 
 to bail him and give him any other assistance, but if he 
 were once fairly hanged I should not suifer. Boswell : 
 Would you eat your dinner that day, sir. Johnson : Yes, 
 sir, and eat it as if he were eating with me ! " 
 
 A Pagan philosopher in the darkest ages of Heathen- 
 ism would have been ashamed to say so. To under- 
 stand the height, depth and breadth of Johnson's selfish- 
 ness as revealed in his own confession, we must bear 
 in mind that he lived in an age when capital punishment 
 by no means implied,- as of necessity, heinous guilt in 
 the offender. It was not, as in our times, murderers 
 alone who were brought to the gallows. A man of many 
 good qualities, who would shudder at the thought of 
 blood, might be hanged, and as a matter of historic fact, 
 
300 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 was frequently so disposed of, who in the desperation 
 of povert)' had committed no worse offense than bur- 
 glary to the value of a shilling, or having ridden off 
 upon a neighbor's horse without that neighbor's leave. 
 Nay, there are cases in the books of men having been 
 delivered over to the executioner for offenses for which 
 a brief imprisonment would now be deemed sufficient 
 expiation. Such was the state of the law in the days of 
 Dr. Johnson, who, making high pretension to philan- 
 thropy, did not scruple to assert that if one of his inti- 
 mate friends were " once fairly hanged," he, the said 
 Johnson, would eat his dinner on the day of the execu- 
 tion as if he were eating it in company with the very 
 friend who had come to so horrible a death ! So much 
 for the sympathetic element in one whom posterity is 
 wont to regard with peculiar veneration ! But that sort 
 of talk was quite of a piece with Samuel's ordinary con- 
 versation. " Sir," said he, on another occasion, to his 
 Toady, " it is affectatipntg^J^end to feel the distress 
 of others as much as tl^^^^emselves. It is equally 
 so as if one should preten^^^el as much pain while 
 a friend's leg is cutting off as he does " — a remark of 
 which all that we need say i5~tKat its humanity is on a 
 par with its grammar. From the coarse cynicism of 
 Johnson to the joyous philosophy of Falstaff how de- 
 lightful is the transition ! It is as though one should be 
 magically wafted from the London tog to the sunny 
 orange-groves of Algeria. Sympathy, as interpreted by 
 the fat knight, meant fellow-feeling, whether in weal or 
 in woe — brotherhood of sentiment as well in joy as in 
 sorrow. What can be more eloquent than Jack's defi- 
 nition .' " You are not young ; no more am I. Go to, 
 then ! There's sympathy. You are merry, so am I. 
 
THE USES OF SYMPATHY. 30I 
 
 Ha ! ha ! Then there's more sympathy ; you love sack, 
 so do I ; would you desire better sympathy ? " Cer- 
 tainly not. Jack, my boy, thou art indeed the heart's- 
 blood of a good fellow, and the world is indebted to 
 thee for more happiness than it will ever derive from 
 Sam Johnson, for all his learning and pomposity. 
 
 And as sympathy is the highest endowment of Nature 
 so also is it the finest achievement of art. Orators, 
 poets, painters, sculptors, actors, are great in their re- 
 spective callings in the precise proportion of their ability 
 to touch the tender chord of sympathy in the human 
 heart. The amount of their success in this regard. is 
 the exact measure of their skill. There are speakers 
 ■who, as the French are wont felicitously to express it, 
 " ont lies larmes dans la voix" have tears in their voices ; 
 and magical indeed is the effect of their utterances. It 
 is not so much what they say, as their manner of saying 
 it, that awakens the sensibilities of their hearers. The 
 " sanctimonious rhetoric " of Mr. Gladstone, as Mr. 
 Disraeli once happily described it, falls mellifluously 
 upon the ear, but rarely reaches the heart ; nor indeed 
 is Mr. Disraeli himself much more fortunate in this re- 
 spect, for brilliant as he is in debate, and poignant in 
 repartee, he is singularly deficient in tender emotion. 
 There is but little of pathetic sentiment in anything 
 that usually falls from the lips of Mr. Bright. Yet is 
 his voice of a timbre so musical, manly, and sympa- 
 thetic, that the most commonplace matter spoken by him 
 would acquire a certain tragic significance in the de- 
 livery. His voice is in itself eloquence, and that too 
 of a very refined order, for he modulates it with the ut- 
 most delicacy. Among by-gone orators I should im- 
 agine that Burke, Erskine, and Curran, were probably 
 
202 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 the greatest masters of pathos. They belong to an era 
 which is not likely to be paralleled in coming time, for 
 our age is utilitarian and money-searching in a sense 
 hardly consistent with picturesque and impassioned 
 speech. Oratory, rare in the pulpit, has all but van- 
 ished from the bar, and is now seldom heard even in 
 what was once its peculiar domain — the legislative 
 councils of the nation. We have but few native painters 
 whose genius can be said to be sympathetic. Mr. Poole 
 and Mr. Faed have the gift, though in senses as differ- 
 ent as their styles are dissimilar. Madame Henrietta 
 Browne is richly endowed in this regard ; still more so 
 is Mr. Israels, who of all Continental artists is probably 
 the most powerful in his appeal to the sympathies of 
 the spectator. Two pictures of his I especially remem- 
 ber as works not to be viewed without emotion. The 
 one entitled "The Flitting," represents a poor widow 
 by whose side toddle her two fatherless little children, 
 while she is herself pushing before her, through a deso- 
 late landscape, a little cart containing her few " sticks " 
 of furniture, late on a cold autumnal evening, while the 
 trees shiver in the bleak blast, and the rain-fraught sky 
 looks dreary and disconsolate, and the dusk is quickly 
 thickening into dark. The other simply reveals the in- 
 terior of a peasant's cottage, where a mother and her 
 son are saying grace with a guileless expression of pro- 
 found devotion before partaking of their dinner, which 
 consists of a dish of potatoes and one solitary herring. 
 Their pious resignation in the midst of poverty, which 
 is not abject only because no adversity encountered in 
 such a spirit can be so described, is a sermon in colors, 
 and may well wring the hearts of the selfish and lux- 
 urious. The sympathetic element in poetry is its most 
 
THE USES OF SYMPATHY. 303 
 
 essential constituent. Without it there were no poetry 
 worthy of the name. The dying speech of Hamlet to 
 Horatio brings the tragedy to a tearful conclusion : — 
 " If ever thou didst hold me in thy heart, absent thee 
 from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy 
 breath in pain to tell my story." As uttered by a melo- 
 ~ dious and sympathetic voice there is nothing in Shake- 
 speare more touching than these -words. I remember to 
 have read in a country churchyard an epitaph which he 
 who has ever lost a child under the like circumstance 
 will probably appreciate in the plenitude of its pathetic 
 beauty. It ran thus : — 
 
 " Sacred to the sweet memory of Mary , who 
 
 died in her i8th year. 
 
 " Thine only fault, what travell'rs give the moon, 
 Thy light was lovely, but — it died too soon." 
 
 Shenstone's exquisite Latin epitaph on a young girl 
 who perished in her prime has never been surpassed, 
 perhaps never equalled, " Eheu ! quam minus est cum 
 aliis versari quam tut meminisse !" Gray's " Elegy,", and 
 Wolfe's " Burial of Sir John Moore," are alike immortal 
 in right of their resistless appeals to the sympathy of 
 the reader. Very sweet and tender, too, are these lines 
 of Gerald Griffin on the death of his sweetheart : — 
 
 " The tie is broke, my Irish girl. 
 Which bound me here to thee. 
 My heart has lost its only pearl, 
 And thine at last is free ! 
 Dead as the turf that v\fraps thy clay ! 
 Dead as the stone above thee ! 
 Cold as this heart which breaks to say 
 It never more can love thee ! 
 
304 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 The calm pure eloquence and sublime simplicity of 
 these lines are beyond all praise. But of all a.rtists the 
 actor exercises the most powerful sway over the sympa- 
 thies of humanity. True, his triumphs are short-lived as 
 instantaneous, but they are superb, enchanting. Mr. 
 Justice Talfourd has a charming passage upon this sub- 
 ject : — 
 
 " Surely no career is more apparently joyous, more 
 crowded with pleasure, and more abundant in rewards 
 than that of a successful actor. Nor is his art, when 
 honorably pursued, wanting in dignity. He is not a 
 mere reciter of the poet's language, for his greatest 
 successes often occur when the words are few and un- 
 important, and when he has no prompter inferior to 
 nature. It is nothing to detect shades of tenderness 
 and thought — streaks and veins of fancy, as a painter 
 discovers graces in the landscape unheeded by others ? 
 Is it nothing to bid a crowded theatre feel those touches 
 of nature which make the whole world kin ; to break 
 the crust of self-love which encircles the worldling's 
 heart and compel it to feel for others ; to afford some 
 hint to the rude clown of the heroism and the suffering 
 of which his nature is capable, and to impart the first 
 mild touch of sympathy and thought to the child ? These 
 surely are triumphs worth achieving ; if they are short 
 in duration they are proportionately intense, and are in 
 truth the more genial as they partake of the fragility 
 which belongs to all the pride and glory of human life." 
 
 Happily for the world, sympathy is of no particular 
 class, creed, or country, — it is common to them all. 
 Who has not some times missed it where he had the 
 best right to expect it ? Who has not sometimes found 
 it where he had the least reason to look for it ? I have 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF MUSIC. 305 
 
 received it with equal liberality from foreigners and my 
 own countrymen — plenteously at the hands of Christians, 
 and quite as abundantly at those of a Hebrew family 
 accomplished as benevolent. It is the sweetest solace 
 of life, and without it life were little worth. 
 
 THE DELIGHTS OF MUSIC. 
 
 TF there is in this turbulent little planet of ours one 
 "*■ thing thoroughly delightful, altogether enjoyable, if 
 is assuredly music. Talk of the world without the sun ! 
 The world without the gamut were quite as intolerable. 
 The alliance between the heart of man and the concord 
 of sweet sounds is mystical as subtle. For every 
 phase of human feeling, for every mode of human 
 thought, there is a correspondent symphony. If a man 
 be in a merry mood, music will enhance the brilliancy 
 and effervescence of his mirth ; if he be sorrowful, 
 music wUl either dispel his anguish or shed around him 
 a sentiment of luxurious sadness more acceptable than 
 the most uproarious merriment ; if he would taste the 
 pleasures of the festive board, music will make him 
 Anacreontic ; if he would be devout, music will develop 
 all that is reverential in his nature and waft him to the 
 seventh heaven. "The meaning of song goes deep," 
 says Mr. Carlyle. " Who is there that in logical words 
 can express the effect music has on us? — a kind of 
 inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to 
 the edge of the infinite and lets us for moments gaze 
 into that " — 
 
 20 
 
3o6 ERR A TIC ESSA VS. 
 
 " Music ! oh, how faint, how weak. 
 Language fades before thy spell ; 
 Why should feeling ever speak, 
 When thou canst breathe her soul so well ? 
 Friendship's balmy words may feign — 
 Love's are even more false than they ; 
 Oh ! 'tis only music's strain 
 Can sweetly soothe and not betray." 
 
 A germ of profound philosophy lurks in each conceit 
 of the Hellenic mythology ; and the surrender of Eury- 
 dice by the Powers of Darkness, who were unable to 
 resist the melodies of Orpheus, is an illustration potent 
 as picturesque of the dominion of music even oyer 
 natures the most rugged and rancorous. The most 
 brilliant of essayists is thoughtful, and witty as usual, 
 in descanting on this subject. " It cost Timotheus, I 
 dare say, a great deal of fine playing to throw the soul 
 of Alexander into a tumult of feeling ; but that once 
 accomplished the bard harped him into any passion he 
 pleased. However this be true of Timotheus and 
 Alexander, it is certainly true of music in general. If 
 we are stupid or indolent we resist its powers for some 
 time ; but when the twangings and the beatings and the 
 breathings once reach the heart and set it moving with 
 all its streams of life, the mind bounds from grief to joy, 
 from joy to grief, without effort or pang, but seems 
 rather to derive its keenest pleasures from the quick 
 vicissitudes of passion to which it is exposed. It is the 
 same with acting. It is difficult to rouse the mind from 
 an ordinary state to a dramatic state ; but that once 
 done we glide with ease from any passion to its opposite. 
 See the effect of a long piece of music at a public concert. 
 The orchestra are breathless with attention, jumping 
 into major and minor keys, executing fugues, and fiddling 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF MUSIC. 
 
 307 
 
 with the most ecstatic precision. In the midst of all 
 this wonderful science the audience are gaping, lolling, 
 talking, staring about, and half devoured with ennui. 
 On a sudden there springs up a liveh- little air, expres- 
 sive of some natural feeling, though in j)oint of science 
 not worth a halfpenny, — the audience all spring up, 
 every head nods, every foot beats time, and every heart 
 also ; a universal smile breaks out on every face, the 
 carriage is not ordered, and everj- one agrees that music 
 is the most delightful rational entertainment that the 
 human mind can possibly enjoy." 
 
 In discoursing upon the genius and works of Mendels- 
 sohn, a learned critic observes that the ' Songs Without 
 Words,' which are amongst the most popular parlor-mu- 
 sic in the world, " had their origin in the habitual ne- 
 cessity for musical expression in place of verbal. The 
 apparent anomal)' involved in their title ceases when it 
 is remembered that these charming wordless lyrics were 
 really the native language of the composer, and that he 
 is in them as trul\- descriptive, thoughtful, impassioned, 
 or even satirical, as if he had held the pen of Barry 
 Cornwall or Heinrich Heine." For my own part, I 
 have as little s\Tnpathy as admiration for the man who 
 is insensible to the charms of music, and unable to in- 
 terpret its utterances. I would not make a friend of 
 such a man. I would not trust him with change for 
 half-a-crown. I believe that such a man could find it in 
 his heart to rob a mouse of the bit of toasted cheese in 
 its trap. As for marrying a woman without musical taste 
 and talent, I declare to you I had as soon go about with 
 a hedgehog under my waistcoat. Such persons are 
 flinty-hearted, insensate, and hardly deserve to be ac- 
 counted human. No man nor woman either who did 
 
3o8 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 not admire music and respond to its eloquent appeals 
 was ever yet in love. " How silver sweet sound lovers' 
 tongues by night, like softened music to attending 
 ears ! " If you doubt it go down to Rosherville one of 
 these lovely autumnal nights. What time the south 
 wind sighs aromatically over the gardens, and the lady 
 moon sails queen-like through the sable sky, hearken to 
 the echoes of tinkling laughter and romantic vows issu- 
 ing from the myrtle-groves ; and placing your hand upon 
 your heart, while you raise your hat reverentially, deny, 
 if you dare, that any such delightful melody ever before 
 fell upon your ravished ears ! and as music is the de- 
 light of courtship, so also it is the happiest privilege of 
 matrimony. It is charming in every sense of the word 
 to see married couples get on " harmoniously " together. 
 I am not myself a husband, but I know a man who is, 
 and he assures me that on returning to his villa at Nor- 
 wood, after a hard day's work in the City, it is sufficient 
 compensation for all his toil and trouble to find the be. 
 loved partner of his joys and sorrows seated at a piano 
 (purchased on the three years' system) and singing 
 " Home, Sweet Home," in accents so sonorous that they 
 are distinctly audible on the other side of the road. One 
 evening last week he was so entranced with the dear old 
 ballad that he could not for the life of him summon cour- 
 age to knock at his own door, so he sat down upon a 
 grassy bank opposite, exclaiming with Shakespeare :— < 
 
 "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank 1 
 Here will I sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in my ears ; soft stillness and the night 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony." 
 
 It was not until his wife had given over singing 
 that he could be induced to cross his own threshold 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF MUSIC. 309 
 
 and clasp her in his arms. Have you ever observed 
 what an atmosphere of melody seems to dwell around 
 some people ! how musically they speak as well as sing ; 
 what a " sweet " smile plays around their lips, and what 
 music breathes from their faces ? There is a tender ca- 
 dence to every word they speak or write. It has a dying 
 fall. Their pens are as melodious as their tongues. 
 They are, generally speaking, very good people who 
 write and talk thus. 
 
 Variety in music, as in most things else, is desirable ; 
 but variety must not be carried too far. One of the 
 officials in the Bethnal Green Workhouse is a very zeal- 
 ot, and did a wonderful thing the other day. He en- 
 couraged three blind fiddlers to play as many distinct 
 tunes at the same time, while he sang a song which, was 
 unconnected with any one of them. This proceeding, 
 though not in strict accordance with the rules of harmony, 
 had at least the merit of originality, and I cannot help 
 thinking that the guardians acted rather harshly in dis- 
 missing from his place an officer guilty of no worse of- 
 fence. On the other hand there is no denying tliat music 
 should be both taught and practised upon sound princi- 
 ples. In this, as in many other respects, we owe a vast 
 deal to our street musicians — dear fellows ! Indeed it 
 may well be doubted whether there is any class of men to 
 whom the British public are so largely indebted for the 
 means of intellectual enjoyment, furnished, be it remem- 
 bered under circumstances of peculiar danger and diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 These gallant troubadours, who, coming here foot-sore 
 and travel-stained from far-distant lands, take up their 
 positions in our most swarming thoroughfares, and 
 there, heedless of the multitudinous noises and defiant 
 
3 1 o ERR A TTC ESS A YS. 
 
 of the roaring traffic around them, play " The Last Rose 
 of Summer," " My Jane, my Jane, my Pretty Jane," to 
 the accompaniment of myriads of wheels, are very Pal- 
 ladins of their art and deserve to be ranked among the 
 greatest benefactors of the human race. To see a trou- 
 badour of this class lugging about an organ almost as 
 heavy as a mangle on a burning day in mid-summer, 
 limping from one door to another, and grinding and 
 grinning simultaneously, sweet pet, as he limps ; to see 
 such a sight as that is to witness as heroic a spectacle 
 as the ages of chivalry could exhibit. And what, both 
 at home and abroad, is the reward of these devoted min- 
 strels ? In the streets of Rome I have seen an ungrate- 
 ful populace turn upon them with wolfish rage and fling 
 their organs into the Tiber ; in the streets of London I 
 have seen them — alas the day ! — " run in " by remorse- 
 less bobbies at the point of the truncheon and treated 
 with the utmost contumely. Yet these and such as these 
 are the men who come here to humanize and refine us J 
 to indoctrinate us in an exquisite art ; to shed melody 
 upon our fog, and to enliven and diversify the clamor- 
 ous operations of our commerce with such strains of 
 music as never entered into the contemplation of Mozart 
 or Beethoven. Nor is this devotion in our cause limited 
 to the ruder sex. How often do we see a lovely woman 
 playing the trombone or cornopean on the kerb-stone 
 in Oxford Street, Holbom, or the Strand. A more 
 touching or more beautiful sight is not to be imagined. 
 The performance is such as may be best relished by a 
 blind man with wool in his ears. It is very certain that 
 the education of the British Public is sadly defective in 
 all that relates to the delights of music. In this regard 
 we are badly off, though by no means so badly as were 
 
THE DELIGHTS OF MUSIC. 
 
 3" 
 
 our ancestors. Sir John Hawkins gives a melancholy 
 view of the opportunities furnished to the middle and 
 lower classes of society in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century for the study and enjoyment of music. 
 The nobility, of course, had private concerts of paid 
 performers, as, to a certain extent, they had probably 
 always been accustomed to. Then for classes lower in 
 position we find a kind of public concert gradually 
 growing into use, of which the chief manager was Mr. 
 John Banister, but as to the people generally, it seems 
 the major part of them were satisfied with entertain- 
 ments given at public-houses and by performers hired 
 by the landlords. He says, " There was no variety of 
 parts, no commixture of different instruments ; balf-a- 
 dozen fiddlers would scrape " St. Leger's Round," or 
 "John, come kiss me,'' or " Old Simon, the King,'' with 
 divisions, till themselves or their audience were tired ; 
 after which, as many players on the hautboy would, in 
 most harsh and discordant tones, grate forth " Green 
 Sleeves," "Yellow Stockings," "Gillian of Croydon," 
 pr some such common dance tune, and people thought 
 it fair music; but a great reformation was at hand, 
 though everybody was astonished at the quarter from 
 which it came.'' Mr. Charles Knight tells us all about 
 it. " There was then to be seen walking through the 
 streets of London a man distinguished from his rivals 
 in the same trade — that of selling small coal from a bag 
 carried over his shoulder — ^by his peculiar musical cry, 
 by his habit of stopping at every book-stall that lay in 
 his way, where, if there happened to be a treasure, it 
 was sure to be caught up and purchased ; and by his 
 acquaintances, many of whom as they paused to speak 
 to him in the street, were evidently members of a very 
 
312 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 different rank of society to his own. Ask any bystander 
 you see ^zzvci^ upon him with a look of mingled wonder 
 and respect, who or what he is, and you are answered 
 ' that he is the small coal-man who is a lover of learn- 
 ing, a performer of music, and a companion for gentle- 
 men any day of his life. It was, indeed, Thomas Brit- 
 ton, the founder of popular concerts. Let us follow him 
 home to his little coal-shed and house cheerily as he 
 goes, where all traces of the business of the day soon 
 disappear. An hour or two elapses, and he is in the 
 midst of a delightful circle of friends and fellow ama- 
 teurs exchanging sincere congratulations, paying his re- 
 spects to new visitors, opening music books, and tuning 
 his violin. These harmonious meetings, which began 
 in 1678, appear to have continued until the death of 
 Britton, which, it is painful to add, occurred through 
 them. A certain Justice Robe was among the mem- 
 bers, one of the vilest of social nuisances — a practical 
 joker. This man introduced into Britton's company a 
 ventriloquist named Honeyman, who, making his voice 
 descend apparently from on high, announced to Britton 
 his approaching decease, and bade him on his knees 
 repeat the Lord's Prayer by way of preparation. The 
 command was obeyed, and a few days afterwards the 
 subject of it was lying a corpse, overcome by the terrors 
 of the imagination thus recklessly and basely worked 
 upon." Yet cruel as was his end, he has left behind 
 him a name that " smells sweet and blossoms in the 
 dust," for he was the pioneer of a great movement, and 
 posterity must ever be his debtor for his noble though 
 simple efforts to bring the delights of music within the 
 reach of the people. 
 
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO. 313 
 
 COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO. 
 
 'TPHE immortal maxim of the ancient naturalists^ 
 "Omne vivum ex ovo," everything living sprang first 
 from an egg — has its parallel precept in the moral 
 world, and that precept may be thus defined — all 
 sociable and political ethics are referable to the same 
 grand source — Cock-a-doodle-doo. As surely as you 
 may trace the lineage of the oak to the acorn, so surely 
 may you trace the fine springs of action in all depart- 
 ments of human enterprise to the same origin — Cock-a- 
 doodle-doo. Resolve philosophy to its elements ; ana- 
 lyze heroism ; reduce to their constituents the most 
 romantic feats of chivalry and the most intrepid exploits 
 of adventure, and what do they all come to ? Cock-a- 
 doodle-doo. Whether among communities or individu- 
 als the same assertion holds good. The mystical and 
 irrepressible delight that we find' in crowing over one 
 another was at the bottom of every war that has deso- 
 lated the earth, and of everj' quarrel that has set friends 
 by tlie ears from the dawn of creation to this day. Men 
 and women have been described as " unfeathered and 
 biped." Yet have they wings, which to flap defiantly in 
 one another's faces, to the jubilant chorus of " Cock-a- 
 doodle-doo," is simply the sweetest pleasure and the 
 loftiest pride of which humanity is capable. Nations go 
 to war for an idea — and what is that idea? Cock-a- 
 doodle-doo. France wanted to have the crow over Ger- 
 many, and to that end plunged into a conflict the most 
 fatally disastrous in the W'hole history of the Gallic race. 
 
3 1 4 ERR A TIC ESS A YS 
 
 There was a mighty " crow " over Saarbriick, but a still 
 mightier over Sedan, only there the wrong bird was 
 singing ; the tables were turned and the Teutonic cock 
 had the crowing all to himself. Well, Germany com- 
 pelled her foe to bite the dust, in fact took all the 
 " crow " out of her, and, not content with such bitter 
 terms, seems resolved never again to allow her to wake 
 the welkin with her clarion note. Poor France ! What 
 is to become of her .' A " crow " is the dear delight of 
 her heart, yet never again must she presume to indulge 
 in the priceless luxury. Let her not attempt it, for 
 no sooner shall she have expanded her wings and opened 
 her beak than Prince Bismarck and General Von Moltke 
 will be down upon her in fell swoop and compel her to 
 " shut up " or " hold her row," as Mr. Brown is wont 
 ungallantly to phrase it when attempting to reduce Mrs. 
 Brown to silence. There was a time when we English 
 were as good " crowers " as any on earth. Those were 
 the good old days of pri^e-fighting and eke cock-fighting, 
 when three bottles of old port was the regulation allow- 
 ance for each guest at a dinner party ; when it was an 
 article of popular belief never to be called in question 
 that one Englishman could lick any three foreigners, 
 and when Lord Nelson laid it down as an indisputable 
 maxim of logic that the only way for a Briton to argue 
 with a Frenchman was to knock him down. It was a 
 sweet thing in " crows," then, to boast that the sun 
 never sets upon our empire — and, indeed, considering 
 how seldom he rises upon our metropolis, the least he 
 can do is to give us some compensation in the matter of 
 setting, or rather of not doing so. Alas ! the pity of it, 
 but those also were the days when Britannia ruled the 
 waves (though not very straightly), and when Britons 
 
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO. 3 1 5 
 
 swove a deep oath never to be slaves. The bondsman 
 setting foot upon our shores found his limbs growing 
 mysteriously too large for his gyves, which, accordinglj', 
 were wont to burst asunder, leaving him as free as 
 mountain-breezes. We no longer talk in that exalted 
 strain. We brag no more about our national glory; 
 but, intent on money-making, and on that alone, leave 
 the game of " crowing" to poorer nations. 
 
 A wedding is a " crow " — a splendid " crow " — for the 
 bride. As for the bridegroom, the less he says about it 
 the better. His days of jubilation are over, unless, in- 
 deed, he be like Mr. Selby in Sir Charles Grandison, 
 who, though vanquished every day by his wife, " still 
 went on crowing with undaunted vigor." But the triumph 
 of the bride is great, indeed, and greater now than at 
 any former period of our history ; for, if it is true, as 
 statisticians assure us, that there are at present in Eng- 
 land many hundred thousands of women, who, though 
 marriageable, are unappropriated, how delightful must 
 be the sensations of the woman who secures a husband 
 while such myriads of her sisters fail to get one for love 
 or money ! That is indeed, a " crow " worthy of the 
 name. So, too, is a birth j for Smollett observes with 
 happy wit that when that event occurs in a family, there 
 is not a woman in the house who does not look three 
 inches taller in consequence. Here, again, the advan- 
 tage is, as usual, with the ladies. It is all very well for 
 the mother. She is entitled, sweet pet, to her maternal 
 " crow," and much good may it do her ! — ^but the father 
 is simply an object of ridicule, in everybody's way, and 
 a nuisance to the household. The whist-table is a fine 
 arena for crowing. Unless, indeed, the regular gam-' 
 biers who play " high," and go in for large stakes, no one 
 
3i6 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 would care to join in a rubber but for the crow of it. It 
 is such a glorious thing to throw the ace of trumps upon 
 your adversary's king, or to win the odd trick by any 
 means just as the opposite party were gloating over the 
 thought that the prize was theirs. Depend ' upon it the 
 charm of the game dwells not in the winnings, which are 
 a matter of trivial consideration, but rather in the crow- 
 ing which brings with it a delightful sensation. And so, 
 indeed, it is in every kind of 'competition. What is it that 
 gives zest and true enjoyment to the Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge Boat Race ; to the Derby and the Ascot ; to the 
 cricket-matches between Eton and Harrow ; to the 
 lunatic proceedings of the " Spelling Bee " ? It is no- 
 thing more nor less than Cock-a-doodle-doo. The 
 country is far more favorable than the town to the com- 
 fortable and frequent enjoyment of " crowing ; " for 
 Mrs. Grundy lives almost exclusively in the country, 
 there inculcating that meddlesome interference with 
 other people's affairs which supplies perpetual oppor- 
 tunities for a " Crow." In a village every new bonnet is 
 a " crow " for the wearer ; but no great mischief is done,, 
 for the girl who is crowed at to-day knows that next 
 Sunday it will be her turn to crow. 
 
 " Crowing," therefore, is not without its pleasant uses. 
 While kept strictly within the bounds of good taste and 
 good feeling, it is in truth one of the means and appli- 
 ances of happiness. It is only when it is suffered to 
 transgress those limits that it degenerates into Ul-nature 
 and becomes odious. There is a kind of " crow " which 
 is little less than fiendish in its malignity — that com- 
 prised in the reproachful and triumphant exclamation, 
 "I told you so I" 
 
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO. 317 
 
 " Of all the horrid hideous notes of woe, • 
 
 Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, 
 Is that portentous phrase, ' I told you so,' 
 
 Uttered by friends, those prophets of the past 
 Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do, 
 
 Own they foresaw that you would fall at last, 
 And solace your slight lapse 'gainst bonos mores 
 
 With a long memorandum of old stories." 
 
 Of this, rest confidently assured that the man who, in 
 the hour of your defeat and mortification, would taunt 
 you with the good advice he gave, and you discarded, 
 chuckles in his sleeve at your disaster and finds in a 
 spiteful " crow " at your expense ample compensation 
 for any inconvenience your misfortune may have caused 
 him. It was a lad of that ungracious type, take my word 
 for it, who, when trouble had befallen his father and 
 mother, instead of sympathizing with them as a good 
 son would have done, crowed after this insolent 
 fashion : — 
 
 " Cock-a-doodle-doo ! 
 Mother's lost her shoe, 
 Father's lost his fiddle-stick 
 And doesn't know what to do, . 
 
 Sing Cock-a-doodle doo ! 
 
 The boy who could express himself thus unfeelingly 
 had in all probability purloined both the shoe and the 
 fiddlestick, and did not care a straw what inconvenience 
 his parents might be put to in consequence. And to 
 think what a vile ignoble creature man is ! and what a 
 seraphic being is woman ! It is an every-day occurrence 
 to hear husbands say to their wives, " I told you so ; " 
 but who in this world ever yet heard a wife address her 
 husband in any such terms? There is not one solitary 
 
31 8 ERKA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 instance upon' record of a wife having ever spoken these 
 words or any similar ones to her spouse. And yet 
 there are brutes who would not give women votes ! 
 Why, it is only women who should be allowed to vote. 
 Then, again, there are dunces whose joy knows no 
 bounds if they can only catch you tripping in a quotation. 
 True, they are themselves the merest smatterers. You 
 may have read, from cover to cover, more books than 
 they ever heard the names of ; and it is like enough 
 that the particular passage in which you are at fault is 
 the only one in the language that they know correctly. 
 They may have picked it out of a dictionary of quota- 
 tions, or it may have served them in childhood for a 
 copy-slip. These considerations might teach them 
 modesty. If they were really erudite they would be 
 generous, remembering that " what is obvious is not 
 always known, and what is known is not always present ; 
 that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, 
 slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual 
 eclipses of the mind will darken learning : and that the 
 writer shall often in pain trace his memory at the mo- 
 ment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with 
 intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into 
 his thoughts to-morrow." But considerations such as 
 these are beyond the appreciation of the shallow. They 
 cannot afford to be generous. So, by all means let them 
 have their little " crow." Compliment them on their 
 erudition, and express your profound admiration of the 
 splendor and variety of their genius. That is the only 
 way to be even with such small deer. 
 
DOWN IN YOUR LUCK. 313 
 
 THE COMFORT OF BEING DO WN IN YOUR 
 LUCK. 
 
 TT is no uncommon habit with men who, as the 
 ■^ phrase goes, " have not succeeded in life " to cherish 
 a morbid sentiment of pitU de sot, as though tliey were 
 the martyrs of a destiny exceptionally severe. This 
 opinion involves a delusion egotistical as irreverent. It 
 is egotistical as arrogating for the man who holds it 
 undue importance in the economy of nature that he 
 should be deemed worthy of such penal distinction ; it 
 is irreverent as ascribing to Providence the cruelty and 
 injustice of marking out particular individuals of the 
 human race for a rigor of treatment amounting to per- 
 secution. A fallacy lies at the bottom of the whole 
 conception, the fallacy of supposing that no penalties, 
 but privileges and prerogatives alone are attached to 
 greatness. The heathen philosophers fell into no such 
 error. They reminded the world that the Angel of 
 death knocks with impartial foot at the palaces of kings 
 and the cottages of poor men ; and they depicted the 
 warrior in the proudest hour of his triumph as riding 
 jubilantly along, with Care seated behind his saddle. 
 A dispassionate view of mundane affairs must conduct 
 us to the conclusion that while the opportunities of hap- 
 piness are distributed equably throughout all classes of 
 the community, they are but a handful of people to 
 whose lot fall the gifts of Fortune. Here too the 
 Ancients were wiser than are many of our Christian 
 sages. It was a proverbial saying among the Romans — 
 
320 THE COMFORT OP BEING 
 
 "Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum " — it is not every 
 one who can get to Corinth ; and the liability of the 
 good and patient to have their wealth and honor wrested 
 from them by others has been nowhere illustrated more 
 ingeniously than in the melodious verses of Virgil, " Sic 
 vos non vobis," etc. Felicity is independent of rank and 
 affluence, and is often found in highest perfection where 
 these are not ; but " success " in the worldly sense of 
 the word is rare indeed : — 
 
 " Order was Heaven's first law, and, this confest, 
 Some are and must be greater than the rest. 
 More rich, more wise, but who infers from hence 
 That such are happier shocks all common sense." 
 
 He who, overlooking this great truth, broods darkly 
 over his own disasters, while men of inferior worth are 
 wealthy and eminent, will do well to bear in mind that 
 failure to attain not alone fame and fortune, but even a 
 competency is the inevitable lot of the overwhelming 
 majority of mankind. No man — ^being nothing more 
 than man — ever concentrated in his own person the. 
 sorrows and disappointments of the human race. 
 Myriads of the noblest men and women who ever 
 adorned humanity have had to struggle hopelessly with 
 misfortune from the cradle to the grave, and have 
 passed away leaving no more memorial than if they had 
 never existed. They were good and gifted — ^rich in 
 mental as in moral attributes of choicest excellence,^ 
 but though their friends may dwell lovingly on their 
 memories, the world knows them not and never knew 
 them. Men and women of much smaller desert are 
 remembered ; but they are never named. To make the 
 amount of a man's success the measure of his merit is a 
 
DOWN IN YOUR LUCK. 321 
 
 vulgar error, and worthy of the vulgar, since nothing 
 can be more irrational. " A great battle is gained," 
 writes a thoughtful author, " the plan and dispositions 
 of which are admirable ; the general who conducted the 
 army is considered as a consummate master of the 
 military art, and arrives at the very summit of reputation 
 as an accomplished officer ; but this plan of the battle 
 was drawn out for him the evening before by one of his 
 aides-de-camp, whose original conception it was, and to 
 whom the merit is really due." Which is the more envi- 
 able situation ? His who is praised without being 
 worthy, or his who is praiseworthy without being 
 praised ? Nobody, surely, can entertain a moment's 
 doubt about the matter that the praiseworthiness is pre- 
 ferable to the praise. In this sense spake Addison in 
 that oft-quoted but little heeded passage, " 'Tis not in 
 mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sem- 
 pronius, we'll deserve it." Byron, in a vein of bitter 
 irony, changed the reading thus, " But do you more, 
 Sempronius, don't deserve it ; and never fear that you 
 will have the less." Very possibly you may have all 
 the more ; for who does not know that here below the 
 " race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong." 
 One Cfflsar lives, a thousand are forgotten. It is in the 
 very nature of things that it should be so. Some needs 
 must lose that some may win the race. Hamlet had a 
 pathetic visitation of this thought when in the plenitude 
 of his anguish and distraction he exclaimed — 
 
 " Why, let the stricken deer go weep, 
 
 The heart ungalled play ; 
 For some must watch while some must sleep, 
 
 So runs the world away ! " 
 21 
 
322 THE COMFORT OF BEING 
 
 Yet we continually hear some man or another say in 
 despairing accents, " Ah ! it is just like my luck." True, 
 it may be just like his luck, but it is also every bit as 
 like the luck of countless millions of the human family ; 
 for failure is the rule, success the exception all the world 
 over. Indeed nothing can more distinctly proclaim a 
 degenerate nature than the propensity to value a man, 
 not by his intrinsic qualities, but rather by the glittering 
 accidents of fortune which often befall the most worth- 
 less, leaving the truly meritorious without, guerdon or 
 reward. 
 
 " A knave's a knave to me in every state, 
 
 Alike my scorn if he succeed or fail, 
 
 Sporus at court or Japhet in a jail." 
 
 " If we should fail ! " suggested the conscience- 
 stricken Macbeth. " We fail ! " echoed tauntingly his 
 remorseless wife. " But screw your courage to the 
 sticking-point, and we'll not fail ! " Just so ; but cour- 
 age in a bad cause is villany ; and success won by such 
 means, what is it else than infamy ? It happens not 
 unfrequently that good men prosper, and their prosperity 
 gives joy to the generous and right-minded, be their own 
 condition what it may ; but really, when we look around 
 us and see how often it occurs that men of little worth 
 flourish luxuriantly, while the virtuous are doomed to 
 perpetual penury, we may well pause ere we envy the 
 successful or contemn the unfortunate. " I confess,'' 
 says an excellent writer, "that increasing years bring 
 with them an increasing respect for men who do not 
 succeed in life, as those words are commonly used. Ill 
 success sometimes arises from a conscience too sensi- 
 tive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too 
 romantic, a modesty too retiring. I will not go so far 
 
DOWN IN YOUR LUCK. 
 
 323 
 
 as to say with a living poet that the world knows noth- 
 ing of its greatest men, but there are forms of greatness, 
 or at least of excellence, which die and make no sign ; 
 there are martyrs that miss the palm but not the stake, 
 heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the 
 triumph." This fine thought may well give spirit to 
 the afflicted and comfort to the unlucky. What can be 
 more consolatory to such people than to know that 
 many of the best and most brilliant fellows who ever 
 existed were doomed to vexation and disappointment 
 all the days of their lives. Nothing can be more absurd 
 than that a man should be miserable merely because he 
 is down in his luck. That, on the contrary, is the very 
 reason why he should be light-hearted, for any change 
 in his destiny must be for the better. If he were in 
 prosperous circumstances he might well dread the mor- 
 row, not knowing what calamitous vicissitudes it might 
 bring with it ; but being in adversity, he may cherish 
 the hope that the next revolution of the wheel of Fortune 
 may whisk him out of the sandy desert into a land over- 
 flowing with milk and honey. " Qui sedet i7i terra non 
 habet unde cadat" — " he who is content to sit upon the 
 ground need not fear a fall." Consider, moreover, the 
 mental serenity enjoyed by a fellow who is perennially 
 down in his luck. " What is glory ? what is gain ? 
 Heavier toil ; superior pain." But this toil and this 
 pain touch not the man who is systematically unlucky. 
 He has missed the splendors of success, but with the 
 splendors the solicitudes also. Stocks may rise and 
 fall ; banks may fail ; the rate of discount may be raised 
 to aruinous figure ; the markets maybe at famine prices 
 — what need he care ? He has known the worst, and . 
 may laugh in the face of Fortune. He need never dread 
 
324 ^^^-^ COMFORT OF BEING 
 
 bad news, nor tremble at the knock of a dun. Where's 
 the use of dunning a fellow who is down in his luck ? 
 Samson was a strong man, and Solomon was a wise 
 man, but neither the strength of Samson nor the wisdom 
 of Solomon could get money out of a man who has none. 
 Such a man may sing before a highwayman, and, should 
 he be visited by burglars, he may break a jest with them 
 on the folly of their seeking in his house at night for the 
 property he himself cannot find there in the daytime. 
 It is only the man down in his luck who can taste the 
 ineffable pleasure of Hope. It is when our fortunes are 
 at their very lowest ebb that Hope speaks in most 
 seraphic accents. Nothing in the conduct of Madame 
 Bazaine was more worthy of admiration than her reply 
 to Marshal MacMahon, when, being supplicated for a 
 remission of Bazaine's sentence, he said he could give 
 no hope. " I do not ask you, sir, for hope," said the 
 dauntless wife. " It is not yours to give or to deny. 
 Hope is in the gift of God alone, and He gives it to all 
 His creatures." The man who has been down in his 
 luck, and he alone, can estimate this noble utterance at 
 its true value. Moreover, the man who is down in his 
 luck may defy the shafts of envy. Nobody ever envied 
 a fellow who is down in his luck, and that I hold to be 
 an immense advantage, for envy is composed of hatred 
 in the proportion of nine parts out of ten, and who can 
 endure the thought of being bated ? Better to be loved 
 in a shabby hat and threadbare coat than hated in 
 purple and fine linen. A certain air of ridicule sur- 
 rounds the man who is down in his luck, and that is in 
 itself an element of happiness. I know of nothing more 
 exquisitely enjoyable than that a man should find in 
 himself a never-failing source of derision. I do not 
 
DOWN IX YOUR LUCfC. 325 
 
 mean to say that my lot has been exceptionally severe, 
 or severe beyond my demerits ; but this I do say — 1 
 have had my share of sorrow. Enough said ! It may 
 be that these perishing lines shall find their way into 
 the hands of some other fellow who is down in his luck. 
 If so, I would say to him, " Be of good heart, brother ! 
 Never give up ! It will be all the same in a hundred 
 years. Take counsel with thyself, thy Maker, and the 
 Angel Death. Cometh the day and cometh it quickly 
 when sorrow and solicitude, malice and ingratitude, shall 
 have no more power to wring our hearts. Soundly shall 
 we sleep where the willows are waving." '■'^ Hie vera 
 quies, hie meta laboris." 
 
 THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE^ 
 
 TT occurred to me the other day to make a cruise 
 *■ among my books in search of what Dryden calls 
 " the sweet civilities of life," that I might filch some .of 
 them for presentation to my friends. • The result was a 
 deplorable failure. I am like the sheep who went for 
 wool and came home shorn. Heaven forefend that I 
 should address any friend of mine or even foe in the 
 language of the great ! The laurel of immortality is 
 after all in the gift of the unlettered million. They it 
 is who assign to every man the measure of his renown, 
 and award to each the precise position in the temple of 
 fame to which his merits entitle him. It is well that it 
 should be so, for if the world's magnates were allowed 
 to write each other's epitaphs, tombstones would tell 
 
326 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 anything rather than flattering tales. Your great men 
 have spoken all manner of unhandsome things one of 
 the other ; and if it were but possible to collect in one 
 volume all that they have said in each other's defama- 
 tion, it would be as strange a book as ever was printed. 
 This internecine hostility among the great is not a thing- 
 of yesterday. It has been so in all ages, and it will 
 probably so continue till the last syllable of recorded 
 time. In the classic days of yore Homer had his Zoilus, 
 Philip his Demades, Cffisar his Catullus, and the Gods 
 themselves their Momus. • Scaliger called Lucian the 
 " Cerberus of the Muses," and Lactantius and Theo- 
 doret denounced Socrates as a " fool." But this is 
 going too far into the shadowy realms of antiquity. 
 Let us come nearer home and see whether we cannot 
 cull a choice bouquet from the mutual compliments 
 of men who have lived within the range of modern his- 
 tory. 
 
 Bishop Warburton was undoubtedly a man of bold, 
 fertile, and vigorous genius. His powers of application 
 were marvellous ; and, like a true Hannibal, there was 
 no mountain of toil that he could not soften and disin- 
 tegrate with the vinegar of his perseverance. But he 
 was haughty, passionate, and vindictive ; prejudice had 
 narrowed his extensive views, acrimony had soured his 
 temper, and party spirit had repressed his imagination. 
 His fame is associated most intimately in the estimation 
 of posterity with his " Divine Legation " — a masterly 
 work, through every page of which his genius shines 
 (to use the words of an eloquent critic) " like the rich 
 sunshine of an Italian landscape." His object was to 
 trace the mission of Moses to a divine origin, and thus, 
 of course, to vindicate the elementary principles of. the 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 327 
 
 great Christian system. It was a noble task, and had he 
 displayed a Christian spirit while engaged in it, our ad- 
 miration would have been complete. But, alas ! he did 
 not. He was insolent, overbearing, despotic, and pre- 
 sented to the world as humiliating a spectacle as can 
 be well imagined — that of a man, who, while professing 
 to act as the champion of Christianity, was prepared 
 upon any or no provocation to assail his fellow-creatures 
 with a ferocity of invective that would have disgraced a 
 Pagan. Mallet called him "the most impudent man 
 living " (which he never could have been during Mallet's 
 lifetime), and Churchill has denounced his arrogance in 
 lines written rather with vitriol than ink : — 
 
 " He is so proud that should he meet 
 The twelve Apostles in the street. 
 He'd turn his nose up at them all 
 And shove St. Peter from the wall." 
 
 Bishop Lowth was a profound and elegant scholar 
 and a discriminative critic. He had no unkind feeling 
 towards any human being, but in his " Prelections " he 
 advanced a doctrine respecting the Book of Job, which 
 Warburton considered as aimed at his own peculiar 
 opinions. In vain did Lowth disclaim any such appli- 
 cation. Warburton's wTath was unappeasable, and mark 
 how he speaks of that critic, who, perhaps, of all then 
 alive, had the most sensitive literary palate. " Lowth," 
 he says, " can't distinguish partridge from horse-flesh — 
 I shall hang him and his fellows as they do vermin in 
 a warren, and leave them to posterity to stink and 
 blacken in the wind." Lowth was as gentle as he was 
 gifted, but this was a little too much for his philosophy, 
 30 he took up his pen and in a manly and spirited letter 
 
328 ERR A TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 denounced Warburton " as a quack in commentatorship 
 and a mountebank in criticism." Like Cato to Carthage, 
 the Bishop of Gloucester returned to the charge, and 
 poisoned his pen with such verdigris as this : " Though 
 your teeth are short, what you want in length you have 
 in venom, and know as all other creatures do where 
 your strength lies." And so the battle waxed fiercer and 
 fiercer, Lowth protesting with earnest dignity against 
 the treatment he was receiving, and Warburton repelling 
 his protestations with contempt and insolence. It was 
 thus that he treated all who presumed to differ from him 
 on any point, however trivial. "The Divine Legation" 
 concluded, he applied himself to an edition of Shake- 
 speare, which remains to our time an astonishing monu- 
 ment of perverted ingenuity and abused erudition. Plain 
 words are subtilized to the most remote conceits, and 
 the simplest and most natural allusions of the great 
 dramatist are made the vehicles of the most unheard of 
 allegories. Such a work of course provoked criticism, 
 and Dr. Johnson among others ventured to express dis- 
 approval ; but the bishop pooh-poohed all objections, 
 and consigned to infamy all objectors. " Of this John- 
 son," he said contemptuously, in writing to Dr. Hurd, 
 " you and I, I believe, think alike." Dr. Gray's preface 
 to Hudibras, a clever and scholarly production, he de- 
 scribed as " an execrable heap of nonsense." Rousseau 
 he stigmatized as a "^ madman," qualifying the phrase, 
 however, by the strange prefix " seraphic," and Hyde 
 he dismissed as a fellow who was " at the head of a 
 rabble of lying orientalists." But the most fiery phial of 
 his indignation was reserved for the learned and pious 
 Dr. Stubbing, whom he politely designated as one — 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 " Ungrateful to the generous man he grew by, 
 A brazen, brainless, bloodless, bankrupt booby." 
 
 329 
 
 Pope and Warburton were intimate friends, and it is 
 to be feared that the poet's temper gained nothing in 
 sweetness from the connection. Cumberland has said 
 that " an author must not be thin-skinned, but shelled 
 like a rhinoceros ; " — a fine sentiment truly for one 
 whose own exquisite sensitiveness, as portrayed by 
 Sheridan in " Sir Fretful Plagiary," now constitutes his 
 chief claim to immortality. Pope had certainly but lit- 
 tle of the rhinoceros about him. He always had as many 
 quarrels on his hands as with all his fertility of invective 
 he could conveniently manage. And, indeed, it must 
 be admitted that he received no ordinary provocation. 
 Even Warburton, who was afterwards his constant asso- 
 ciate, ridiculed him at first for the " poverty of his 
 genius ! " and " every hound," says the elder Disraeli, 
 " yelped in the halloo against his ' Homer.' " The 
 mutual proximity of men of genius seems to produce a 
 familiarity which excites hatred or contempt, while he 
 who is affected with disordered passions imagines that 
 he is establishing his own claims to genius by denying 
 those of others. Lord Hervey, of Ickleworth, has been 
 celebrated by Middleton as one who was remarkable 
 for his good sense, his rigid temperance, his sterling 
 patriotism, and his consummate politeness. But Pope fell 
 foul of him — ^probably for no better reason than that he 
 was the supporter of Sir Rotert Walpole — and, oh ! 
 what a portrait of him has he transmitted to posterity. 
 
 Never was there distilled such venom from the Eng- 
 lish language as in drawing the chalracter of Sporus. It 
 is the concentrated essence of sublimated spite : — 
 
33° 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 " Let Sporus tremble ! What I that thing of silk, 
 Sporus, that mere white curds of ass's milk. 
 Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings — 
 This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings." 
 
 But it is unnecessary to quote the whole passage, for 
 no doubt it is burnt with a pen of caustic into the 
 memory of the reader. Colley Gibber was another 
 writer of that day whose shadow had the misfortune to 
 cross the path of Pope, who accordingly denounced him 
 as a creature " with less human genius than God gives 
 an ape." This was a savage sarcasm, but it had one 
 defect — it was not true. Gibber was a man of brilliant 
 talents, and we cannot but admire the calm dignity of 
 his manly reply : — " Sir, satire without truth recoils upon 
 its author, and must at other times render him suspected 
 of prejudice even when he may be just." Had he said 
 everything with equal temper, he would have deserved 
 our utmost sympathy ; but his philosophy was not proof 
 against such sore temptations, and he grew at last as 
 vituperative as his assailant. We may imagine how the 
 poet must have writhed in his arm-chair when his old 
 servant, John Searl, entered the breakfast-room at 
 Twickenham, and handed him a letter from Gibber, 
 commencing thus : — " Everybody tells nve that for a 
 twelvemonth together I have made you feel as uneasy 
 as a rat in a hot kettle." But Pope was the quarry of 
 mightier hunters than Golley Gibber. Addison was the 
 most illustrious of his enemies — Addison, whom Pope 
 has held up to posterity as one who could 
 
 " Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
 And without sneering teach the rest to sneer ; 
 Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike. 
 Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike. 
 * * * * 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 331 
 
 Alike reserved to blame or to commend 
 A timorous foe and a suspicious friend." 
 
 All that is mean, unmanly, and contemptible is com- 
 prised ih such a character, and of the two it would, per- 
 haps, be better for a man to be Sporus than Atticus. 
 Addison was the aggressor, for he had talked of the 
 "Homer "as an "ill-executed thing,'' and had calum- 
 niated Pope to Lady Stuart Wortley Montague. But it 
 sometimes happened that the poet gave the first offense. 
 He certainly did so in the case of Leonard Walsted. 
 Walsted was a man of elegant manners, fine fancy, and 
 patrician family, and it is probable that his most familiar 
 beverage was burgundy or tokay. But he wrote a poem, 
 " Aqunippa," which Pope " misliked ; " and mark how 
 he invokes him : — " Flow, Walsted, flow, like thine 
 inspirer, ter." Towards the close of his life defamers 
 crowded round the bard. The great Mr. Dennis de- 
 nounced his " Rape of the Lock " as " a mass of clotted 
 nonsense." Mallet being asked if anything new had 
 happened, replied that he had "looked over a thing 
 called an ' Essay on Man,' but discovering an utter 
 want of skill and knowledge in the author, he had 
 thrown it aside ; " and to fill to overflowing the cup of 
 his bitterness, the contemptible little bookseller, Mr. 
 Curll, had the effrontery to assert at the bar of the House 
 of Lords, that though Mr. Pope had " a knack of versi- 
 fying, he (Mr. Curll) thought himself more than a match 
 for him in prose." It would have been well had Pope's 
 quarrels ended with his life ; but alas ! it was not so. 
 His foes dishonored him even in his grave, and there is 
 nothinjg in the history of literature more melancholy or 
 more humiliating than Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous 
 quarrel with the man who had celebrated him in immor- 
 
332 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 tal verse as his "guide, philosopher and friend." It 
 seems as though Genius, which awakens the admiration 
 of men in the aggregate, has in it something that evokes 
 in an inveterate degree the hostility of the individual 
 man. Of -this we have — to quote one case from a mul- 
 titude — a striking illustration in. the torrent of abuse 
 that was poured upon the scholars and philosophers 
 who founded the Royal Society. Charles II. laughed in 
 their faces even when he handed them their charter ; and 
 their telescopes and optical instruments were ridiculed 
 as engines of Popery. The Mud-fog Association was 
 not more unmercifully quizzed. Stubbs denounced it 
 as a " Hospital of Fools," and, admitting that he was no 
 great scholar himself, addressed its members as St. 
 Francis saluted his only companions in the wilderness : 
 " Salvete fratres asini, salvete fratres lupi " — " Hail, 
 brother jackasses, hail brother wolves." At a later 
 period a still more implacable enemy arose in the per- 
 son of Sir John Hill, who, having been rejected because 
 of his waspish temper by all the learned societies in 
 succession, ridiculed them all with equal asperity. The 
 Antiquarians were " medal scrapers " and " antediluvian 
 knife-grinders ; " the Conchologists were " cockle-shell 
 merchants ; " the Naturalists were " pedlars of prickle- 
 backs and cock-chafers." Hill was a man of varied 
 talents — there is no denying it-^— and of miraculous 
 industry. His " Vegetable System," extending.to twenty- 
 six folios, and containing 16,000 plates, representing 
 26,000 different figures from nature, is in itself a pyra- 
 mid of his industry ; yet it does not comprise one- 
 twentieth part of his labors. He wrote travels and his- 
 tories, romances, sermons, pamphlets, plays, and poems ; 
 in fact, he put his pen to every kind of writing, though 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 7,2,1, 
 
 it is not quite so certain that he beautified all that he 
 touched. His temper was intolerable, his vanity egre- 
 gious, and in every fellow-creature he seems to have 
 found an enemy. " Friendship passed him like a ship 
 at sea." Fielding, punning on his name, called him " a 
 paltry dung-hill ; " and Smart, whom he had called an 
 " ass," devoted a long poem to him, " The Hilliard," in 
 which he denounced him as 
 
 " A wretch devoid of use of sense and grace, 
 The insolvent tenant of encumbered space." 
 
 Garrick's happy lines on his double faculty of phy- 
 sician and playwright are well known : — 
 
 " For physic and farces his equal there scarce is, 
 His farce is a physic, his physic a farce is." 
 
 Some other wit, whom he had stigmatized as " a 
 wooden-headed booby" assailed him in a similar 
 manner : — 
 
 " The worse that we wish thee for all thy vile crimes 
 Is to take thine own physic and read thine own rhymes." 
 
 Nor did it end here. Malice, like echo, caught up 
 the perishing strain, and the last epigram was the best 
 of the three — ■ 
 
 " No ! let the order be reversed. 
 
 Or he'll not rue his crimes, 
 For if he takes his physic first 
 
 He'll never read his rhymes." 
 
 A neat epigram, and poignant as any in the language I 
 The famous controversy between Boyle and Bentley 
 about iEsop's fables and the epistles of Phalaris illus- 
 trates very remarkably the willingness of great men to 
 
334 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 defame one another. To hear them talk you would 
 really imagine that, instead of being scholars and gen- 
 tlemen, they were idiots and cut-throats. We find Boyle 
 calling Bentley " a dunce and a jackass," while Bentley 
 compares Boyle with his new readings to '' a bungling 
 tinker mending old kettles." Then came the conflict 
 between Bentley and Bishop Hare respecting the metre 
 of Terence, a dispute which gave rise to the severe re- 
 buke of Sir Isaac Newton that " two dignified divines, 
 instead of minding their duties, had fallen out about a 
 play-book." Yet Newton was no such philosopher 
 when there was question of his own feelings, for so in- 
 tolerant was he of criticism that Whiston assures us that 
 the reason why he did not publish his commentary on 
 the ' Chronology ' during the lifetime of Sir Isaac was 
 that " I knew his temper so well that I should have ex- 
 pected a hostile review would have killed him." And 
 so, perhaps, it would if it had been written in the fero- 
 cious strain in which great men are wont to speak one 
 of another. Parnassus, when the Parnassians fall out, 
 is your true Billingsgate. Parker, Bishop of Oxford, 
 described MarvelJ, the friend and associate of Milton, 
 as "a vagabond, ragged, hungry poetaster, beaten in 
 every tavern — a drunken merry-andrew." Milton him- 
 self did not come off much better, for Waller, the poet, 
 sneered at him as a " blind old school-master " whose 
 ' Paradise Lost ' had no merit " unless its extraordinary 
 length be accounted as such." And Spratt, Bishop of 
 Rochester, had such an antipathy to him that he or- 
 dered his name to be erased from Phillips' epitaph " as 
 a pollution to a Christian church." Davenant was 
 hunted into his grave by the wits of his time. Burnet 
 called Dryden " a monster of immodesty and impurity." 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 3^5 
 
 Anthony Wood described the great John Locke as a 
 man " who could only distinguish himself by prating 
 and being troublesome." Luther called Henry VIII. a 
 " pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basi- 
 lisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, and a 
 mad fool with a frothy mouth ! " and even said to him, 
 " you lie, you stupid and sacreligious king." Madame 
 de Stael said of the famous Thomas Hobbes that he 
 was " a slave and an atheist." Bishop Fell described 
 the same philosopher as " that most vain and waspish 
 animal of Malmesbury," and Dr. Wallis could afford 
 him no more complimentary designation than that of a 
 man who was " always writing what was answered be- 
 fore he had written." Lord Chesterfield called Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson a " Hottentot." Dr. Adam Smith de-_ 
 scribed the same Dr. Samuel Johnson as " a brute." 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson replied that Dr. Adam Smith was 
 " a liar," and Dr. Adam Smith rejoined by tracing Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson's genealogy to Hecuba — as the Queen 
 of Troy is known to us subsequently to her transforma- 
 tion. And there are the idols of posterity — the heirs of 
 immortality, " the lamps, the stars, the magnets of our 
 lives." Smollett paid a delicate compliment to Admiral 
 Knowles. " He is an admiral without conduct, an en- 
 gineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, 
 and a man without veracity." Swift talks of Walpole 
 as " a contemptible boor," and hints with unmistakable 
 distinctness that the Duke of Marlborough was a 
 coward. Voltaire, in his letters from England, testifies 
 to the prevalence of a similar opinion. " So violent 
 did I find parties in London that I was assured by sev- 
 eral that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and 
 Mr. Pope a fool." Some sweet compliments passed 
 
356 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 between Dennis and Sir Richard Steele. After taunt- 
 ing him with the atrocious offence of being an Irish- 
 man, Dennis says of Steele that he is marked "like 
 Cain,'' and that his Hibernian origin is "stamped upon 
 his face, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, 
 above all, his vanity." Steele replied that his assailant 
 had an " ugly vinegar face " and " duck-legs made for 
 carrying burdens," and that " he never let the sun into 
 his garret for fear he should bring a bailiff along with 
 him." Macklin called Garrick a " sheer impostor," 
 and Quin, who could not endure that such a wrong 
 should be done even to a rival, retorted that " villain " 
 was written on every feature of Macklin's face. George 
 III. had the meanest possible opinion of Chatham and 
 Temple, and did not hesitate to express his aversion. 
 " I cannot get rid of the scoundrels," he exclaimed ; 
 ■' and I do not consider myself a King while I am in 
 their hands." Very touching and affectionate was what 
 Queen Caroline said of her own child, the Prince of 
 Wales. " I regard him," observed this exemplary 
 mother, " as the greatest ass, the greatest liar, the 
 greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the world, 
 and I heartily wish he was out of it." Poor wretch, he 
 did not long encumber the earth, for he took an eternal 
 adieu of it in 1751. Chesterfield would not allow that 
 Fox had " the least notion of or -regard for the public 
 good." Posterity is not altogether of the same opinion, 
 but one " great " man must have his fling at another. 
 Sir William Temple sneered at Harvey's doctrine of 
 the circulation of the blood as " a thing which sense 
 can hardly allow." Lord Bacon rejected Galileo's dis- 
 coveries with scorn. Dr. Kenrick said of Goldsmith's 
 ' Traveller ' that it was a "flimsy poem," and of ' The 
 
THE THISTLES OF LITERATURE. 337 
 
 Deserted Village ' that it had " neither fancy, dignity, 
 genius, nor fire.'' The same spirit has survived to 
 modern times. Mr. Carlyle politely assures us that 
 Ignatius Loyola was " a ferocious human pig." Mr. 
 Thackeray, who had an amiable weakness for digging 
 people out of their graves and hanging them in chains, 
 and who should have had few frailties of his own, so 
 merciless was he to those of his fellow-creatures whether 
 they were alive or dead, described Pope as '' a pert, 
 prurient little bard," and Swift " as a wretched worn- 
 out scamp — a poor stricken wretch." Nor was he more 
 gracious to John Wilkes. Dr. Alexander Chalmers as- 
 sures us that Mr. Wilkes was " a gentleman of elegant 
 manners, of fine tastes, and of pleasing conversation." 
 Mr. Thackeray described him as a " blasphemous cock- 
 eyed demagogue." Dr. Gilbert Stuart hallooed Dr. 
 Henry through the world as "an ass and an' idiot" 
 (what would your great men do when talking of one an- 
 other but for that word " ass " ?), and Southey could 
 not afford to designate Napoleon otherwise than as the 
 " bloody Corsican." Nor was the French Cassar more 
 just, for he sneered at Wellington as " a Sepoy Cap- 
 tain." Byron called Landor " a gander," Southey " an 
 incarnate lie," Wordsworth " a footman," and Shake- 
 speare himself " a humbug." But in this last instance, 
 he did but steal the thunder of Voltaire, who character- 
 ized the King of dramatists as " a buffoon and a bar- 
 barian." 
 
 Such is the tone in which great men have spoken of 
 one another, and well, indeed, may we exclaim " Tanta 
 ne animis cmlestibus irce ! " — " Can heavenly minds such 
 high resentment show ? " 
 
338 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 THINGS THAT HAVE GONE OUT. 
 
 TIJ'ASHION is the veriest chamelon, exercising over 
 our " habits," both sartorial and social, a sway so 
 arbitrary and capricious as to defy all calculation. In 
 customs, as in costumes, her empire is absolute, and the 
 wisest among us have no alternative but to submit. So 
 true is the old saying that one may as well be out of the 
 world as out of the fashion. It is wonderful to think 
 how rapidly the kaleidoscope of public taste changes. 
 Things come in only to go out. We have- ourselves our 
 exits and our entrances, so also have our " institutions " 
 and observances theirs. That which is " ton " to-day 
 may be " bad form " to-morrow, and every new-fangled 
 device, whether of dress or ceremony, which now be- 
 guiles our fancy, to the exclusion of momentous matters, 
 is but, " the perfume and suppliance of a minute." The 
 wind passeth over it, and it is gone. We need not go 
 back to remote days for illustrations of the mutability 
 of manners and the evanescence of practices which were 
 once held in the highest esteem. Everything has its 
 day of bright glory, succeeded by a night of dark obliv- 
 ion. This being so, it may not be uninteresting to 
 take a retrospective glance, whether actual or ideal, at a 
 few of those fashions which, though they enjoy great 
 popularity at a date within easy range of memory, have 
 either already disappeared, or are passing rapidly into 
 disuse. 
 
 What has become of the Snuff-takers ? Like the 
 
TfflXGS THAT HAVE GONE OUT. 335 
 
 Quakers, they grow fewer and fewer each succeeding 
 year, and the day ma}- not be distant when both the 
 Friends and the Snuffers shall have altogether vanished. 
 Horace Smith is very severe on the subject of pulverized 
 tobacco. " Snuff," he says, " is dirt thrust up the nos- 
 trils with a pig-like snort, as at a sternutatory which 
 is not to be sneezed at. The moment he has thus 
 defeated his own object, the snuff-taker becomes tlie 
 slave of a habit which literally brings his nose to the 
 grindstone ; his Ormskirk has seized him as St. Dun- 
 stan did the Devil, and if the red-hot pincers could 
 occasionally start up from the midst of the rappee, few 
 persons would regret their embracing the proboscis of 
 the offender." Lord Stanhope has calculated very ex- 
 actly that in forty years, two entire years of the snuff- 
 taker's life will have been devoted to tickling his nose 
 and two more to the delightful process of blowing it, 
 with other incidental circumstances. "Well would it 
 be," he adds philosophically, "if we bestow half the 
 time in making ourselves agreeable that we waste in 
 rendering ourselves offensive to our friends. Society 
 takes its revenge by deciding that no man would thrust 
 dirt into his head, if he had got an^-thing else in it." 
 This is ver\^ savagely said, and the sarcasm is, as the 
 French would phrase it, sanglant, but the satire wants 
 the poignancy of truth, seeing that many men of high 
 intellect and profound scholarship have been addicted 
 to the ungraceful habit which the satirist denounces 
 with such severity. The reign of snuff was long and 
 brilliant. It was probably at its zenith in the pictures- 
 que days of powder and patches, when every fop m 
 Covent Garden was, like Sir Plume, "of amber snuff-bo.x 
 justly vain, and the nice conduct of a clouded cane." 
 
340 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 Amber snuff-boxes and clouded canes in our age would 
 be regarded as archseological curiosities, for which vir- 
 tuosos would vie emulously at Christie and Hanson's. 
 The style of costume had, no doubt, a sensible influence 
 upon the personal habits of the wearers ; and a snuff- 
 box, whether of amber or studded with brilliants, " went 
 well," as the ladies say, with the general tenue of a man 
 of fashion, a-blaze with jewelry, and clad in satin 
 small-clothes, a coat of embroidered velvet, and rufHes 
 of Mechlin lace. All his chattels and accessories were" 
 objects of watchful observation to his attendants, and 
 Dean Swift, in his Advice to Servants,' did not fail to 
 give sage counsel, which was doubtless occasionally 
 turned to good account: — "If a gentleman leaveth a 
 snuff-box on the table and goeth away, lock it up at 
 once as part of your vails." Gorgeous '■'■ tabdtieres" 
 went out with effulgent apparel ; and when men took to 
 broad-cloth, their snuff-boxes partook the sombre hues 
 of their garments. Now and then, indeed, a man of 
 costly tastes would sport a gold or silver box, and prof- 
 fer it courteously for a " pinch," to a stranger, a practice 
 which broke the ice between them, and was an easy 
 prelude to familiar discourse. Napoleon was an invet- 
 erate snuffer, and the habit had another royal votary in 
 the person of Queen Charlotte, who was won't to use a 
 tiny golden bellows wherewith to blow the snuff up the 
 nostrils, — a contrivance less graceful than ingenious. 
 It is to be regretted that her snuffy majesty had not 
 sufficient interest in fairyland to have secured the ser- 
 vices of those dainty sprites whose achievements have 
 been celebrated so melodiously by Pope, in The Rape 
 of the Lock : — 
 
THINGS THAT HAVE GONE OUT. 341 
 
 " Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, 
 A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw 
 The gnomes direct, to every atom just. 
 The pungent grains of titillating dust." 
 
 It is worthy of remark that in proportion as the use 
 of tobacco in the form of smpking has increased with 
 us, it appears to have diminished in the shape of snuff- 
 ing. The few snuifers who remain carefully eschew the 
 sorts of " dust " which were in general favor some 
 years ago, such as Scotch rappee and Irish "black- 
 guard," going in only for those moist " messy" powders 
 which have at least the negative advantage of not set- 
 ting the people in the vicinity of the snuffer a-sneezing, 
 as was customary when the dry snuffs were in vogue. 
 But the days of snuffers, whether dry or moist, are num- 
 bered. Even the Scotch Highlander, with snuff-horn in 
 hand, now seldom stand in mimic guard at the shops of 
 tobacconists ; and at no distant date a snuff-box will 
 probably be as great a rarity as a pair of snuffers. And 
 by the way that calls to mind that there is another kind 
 of snuffing which has quite gone out — candle-snuffing. 
 Its disappearance is to be regretted only because it has 
 put an end to a venerable old riddle, — ^What snuff is 
 that of which the more you take the more will be left in 
 the box ? Candle-snuff to be sure. 
 
 How seldom now-a-days one meets a man with a wig ! 
 There was a time within the memory of people not yet 
 old, when men in affluent circumstances no sooner found 
 their hair getting thin on the top than they hied them as 
 a matter of course to the perruquier and ordered a wig, 
 or if not that, a scalp. The practice was one of respec- 
 table antiquity, and was favored in bygone ages by can- 
 ine as well as human heads, as appears clearly enough 
 
3^2 ERR A TIC ESS A VS. 
 
 from the sublime poem commemorative of the affection- 
 ate proceedings of Old Mother Hubbard in respect of 
 her dog. Do we not read that 
 
 " She went to the barber's to buy him a wig, 
 And when she came back he was dancing a jig ? " 
 
 Whether he put the wig on or not is a matter on 
 which the poet has not vouchsafed to enlighten us, but 
 in all probability he did. Be that as it may, wigs have 
 now fallen into utter disesteera, both with dogs and 
 their masters. The habit of wearing false hair appears 
 to have grown odious to men, though not so to women, 
 who never before used it to such an extent as at present 
 You might walk from Putney to Poplar and back again 
 without seeing a male head surmounted with an artificial 
 coiffure. In fact, we men are now in pretty much the 
 same condition as the wigless pig whom an anonymous 
 traveller famed in nursery legend encountered on his 
 way to Stonor, — 
 
 " Upon my word of honor. 
 As I was going to Stonor, 
 I met a pig without a wig, — 
 Upon my word of honor I " 
 
 One cannot help wondering that a gentleman, doubtless 
 of unsullied reputation, should have deemed it neces- 
 sary to pledge his honor twice so vehemently in authen- 
 tication of so exceedingly credible a statement. Were 
 he now alive, he would find as many unwigged men as 
 pigs at Stonor, and indeed anywhere else in England, 
 for the matter of that. Official wigs survive now upon 
 the Bench and at the Bar, and there alone, unless, in- 
 deed, we take into account the wigged coachmen whom 
 
TIII.VGS THAT HAVE GOXR OUT. 3^3 
 
 one comes across now and then in Hyde Park or 
 Regent Street during the' London season. 
 
 Formerl)-, the Bishops used to wear wigs, and a pleas- 
 ant joke upon tlie subject is preserved in the amber of 
 Curran's wit. ■' Is there anything strange in tliis wig 
 of mine, Mr. Curran ?" asked a conceited prelate. 
 " Notliing but the head, my lord," replied the brilliant 
 orator. It is sad to think that fashions cannot go out 
 without taking with tliem the pleasant sayings they 
 suggested. The wigs of barristers were formerly manu- 
 factured of human hair profusely powdered, and it was 
 an old reproach against a briefless advocate tliat he 
 did not earn enough to powder his wig witlial. The 
 legal perruque is now unpowdered, and made not only 
 of tow and horsehair, but also in some degree of pigs' 
 bristles, so tliat a barrister who stands out obstinately 
 for his client maj' be said to be pig-headed in more 
 senses than one. (Attorneys using tliis pun without 
 the author's permission will be prosecuted.) 
 
 It is satisfactory^ to obsene that though ladies still 
 affect tlie tilings called "pads," and wear other wo- 
 men's hair in unprecedented abundance, the hideous 
 " chignon " has gone out. Let us hope that neither it 
 nor the still more horrible " crinoline " will ever again ' 
 be permitted to disfigure Englishwomen, by the consent 
 of all nations under the sun the most beautiful women 
 in the world. It is also a matter of felicitation that the 
 mustard-headed ladies one used to meet so frequently 
 a year or two ago are becoming much rarer. We might 
 well dispense with tliem altogether, for surely it can- 
 not be supposed that tlie flesh-tints, whether of a 
 " blonde " or of a brunette, were ever meant by Nature 
 to be associated with the yellow plumage of a canary. 
 
344 ERRA TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Male attire undergoes but little improvement. Men 
 seemed doomed to wear for ever the same cut of clothes, 
 and the chimney-pot hat will probably disappear with 
 the male head, but not before. That consummation, 
 however, may come at no distant date, for men are 
 among the things that are going out, while women, 
 heaven be thanked ! grow more numerous every day. 
 Still we have the benefit of some minor modifications 
 of costume, which contribute to our comfort, and for 
 which we are therefore bound to be grateful. Fore 
 most among these small reforms must be ranked the 
 abolition of straps, stocks, and those villanous stand- 
 up shirt collars, with which in by-gone times our ears 
 were in continual danger of being sawed off. I was 
 shocked to see a man with strapped trousers in Hayling 
 Island some weeks ago, as I told you at the time ; and 
 once in a blue moon one encounters a gentleman with 
 a-stock, precisely similar to that still to be seen round 
 the throat of a waxen figure in a shop opposite Day & 
 Martin's blacking manufactory in Holborn ; but the 
 stand-up collar is still patronized by Mr. Gladstone 
 and, in all probability, by him alone of living English- 
 men. Surely, if a deputation from the wives and 
 daughters of his Greenwich constituents were to wait 
 upoh himj and with tears in their eyes to entreat him to 
 discard an article so injurious to his good-looks, he 
 could not find it in his heart to refuse. One Quaker in a 
 drab suit and a broad-brim, which neither Fox nor Bar- 
 clay need have disdained to wear, may still be seen 
 sauntering about Lothbury and Lombard Street ; and a 
 hatter on Tower Hill assured me the other day that 
 there is a wealthy old merchant in Tower street who to 
 this day wears a beaver hat, a blue body-coat, with 
 brass buttons, and a buff waistcoat. 
 
THIiXCS THAT HAVE GONE OUT. 345 
 
 Shaving is going out gradually. The sooner it goes 
 out altogether the better, for no more nonsensical or 
 more injurious practice ever prevailed in a civilized 
 country. " Zelim," says Lord Bacon, " was the first of 
 the Ottomans that did shave his beard. 'A Bashaw 
 asked him why he had altered the custom of his prede- 
 cessors. He answered, ' Because you Bashaws may not 
 lead me by the beard, as you did them.' " Zelim was some 
 thing of a philosopher, and a trifle of a wag, but his logic, 
 however pertinent in Turkey, has no force in England, 
 where men would never suffer themselves to be led by 
 their beards, though these beards were to grow to their 
 waists. The da}' will assuredly come when postericy will 
 stand aghast at the thought that their male ancestors 
 could ever have been such simpletons as to take a sharp 
 knife in their hands once every four-and-twenty hours 
 and submit themselves to a tedious and painful opera- 
 tion, and all for what ? — to make their faces look like 
 the faces of women. A beard was given to a man at 
 once for an ornament and a protection, — decus atqjie tu- 
 tamen. To take it off were about as reasonable as to 
 cut the mane off a lion, — a profitless and perilous experi- 
 ment. But shaving is the last lingering remnant of the 
 old cropping system, once prevalent from one end of 
 the country to the other. Horses' tails, dogs' ears, and 
 men's beards were alike remorselessly cropped, with- 
 the effect of disfiguring all three animals in a manner 
 horrible to contemplate. 
 
 From horses to husbands the transition is possibly 
 not very honorable to the former. The bearing-rein is 
 going out, a fact which calls to mind my encounter with 
 Mr. Beebumble the other day. I met him in Richmond 
 Park, with a face as long as a fiddle. " Bless my heart, 
 
346 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 Beebumble," I exclaimed, " what is the matter ? " 
 " Ah ! " he replied, and so replying he made me cry, as 
 you know he always does, by the force with which he 
 wrings my hand, " Mrs. Beebumble has abolished the 
 horse's bearing-rein. " And a good thing, too," I rejoin- 
 ed ; "give the poor brute his head." "Ah lyes, my 
 boy," he sighed, "that's all* right enough, but when will 
 she abolish my bearing-rein ? When is a husband to 
 have his head ? " I was unable to answer. 
 
 RINKING. 
 
 'T^HE fascination which wheels possess for the human 
 imagination is assuredly one of the most wonder- 
 ful mysteries of our nature ; yet strange to say, it would 
 seem to have escaped the notice of philosophers, ancient 
 and modern. Neither Tacitus nor Tupper has made 
 the faintest allusion to it; Mill, Carlyle, and Darwin, 
 are alike silent upon the subject, but not so the poets. 
 Poetry abounds in metaphorical references to this most 
 marvellous affinity. We are all familiar with the wheel 
 of fortune, and everybody knows that our life is 3, curi- 
 ous contrivance of wheels within wheels. We are, to 
 speak figuratively, dragged at the chariot-wheels of 
 Fashion, Love, or Beauty, as the case may be ; and full 
 many an ambitious man is, to use Dryden's simile, crush- 
 ed "like the gasping charioteer beneath the wheel of 
 his own car." " In the contemplation of our destinies," 
 writes Lord Bacon, " look not too long upon the turning 
 wheels of Vicissitude, lest we become giddy." Very 
 pretty, too, is Pope's description of the flight of Mer- 
 cury : — 
 
RINKING^ 
 
 " Then, wheeling down the steep of heaven he flies, 
 And draws a radiant circle o'er the Skies." 
 
 347 
 
 MiUon also turns the wheel to good poetical purpose 
 in many a melodious verse, and to quote his own words, 
 " He throws his flight in many an airy wheel." Very 
 potent and dictatorial is the phrase as used by Shake- 
 speare, — " And you, my myrmidons, mark what I say ! 
 Attend me where I wheel," an adjuration which would 
 serve well for a motto upon a skating-rink. Now and 
 then the moralist presses the metaphor into his service, 
 as in Dr. South's consolatory meditation : — " According 
 to the common vicissitude and wheel of things, the 
 proud and the insolent, after long trampling upon others, 
 come at length to be trampled upon themselves," which, 
 by the way, is very right and proper, and altogether 
 consonant with that law of compensation or retribution 
 which one loves to observe, as well in the moral as in 
 the material world. 
 
 These purely metaphorical uses of wheels do but give 
 fanciful illustration to the physical sensd of joy which 
 wheels, and whatsoever runneth upon them, appear to 
 create within us. Who has not remarked with satisfac- 
 tion the radiant glee of the poor man's little child who 
 may be trundled along the -street in a wagon extempor- 
 ized out of an old box, and with wheels of thrice the 
 diameter of a crown-piece ? Analyze in a "philosophic 
 spirit that child's delight, and you shall find that it- is 
 identical in its origin, though not in its concomitants, 
 with the pleasure which a .lady derives from riding 
 through Hyde Park or along Regent Street in her sump- 
 tuous brougham. 
 
 " Through the proud street' she moves, the public gaze ; 
 The turning wheel before the palace stays." 
 
348 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 Cowley paints a pleasant picture of a lady in her car- 
 riage : — 
 
 " Where never yet did pry 
 The busy morning's curious eye, 
 The wheels of tliy bold coach pass quick and free, 
 And all's an open road to thee." 
 
 There is manifestly, for young and old, for gentle and 
 simple, something exhiliarating and delightful in rotary 
 movement. Hence the pleasure one finds not only in 
 riding on, but even in gazing at, the spruce equipages of 
 the Four-in-hand Club in Rotten Row, and the splendid 
 coaches which dash off in such gallant style from the 
 White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly. Hence, too, in a 
 great measure is drawn the satisfaction one experiences 
 in travelling by exjpress train. For lookers-on also there 
 is a strange fascination in the very sight of the wheels 
 whirling round upon the axles with dazzling celerity. 
 It is nice to be rolled even in a wheelbarrow ; how much 
 nicer must it be to take your ease in a Pullman car, 
 while you speed along at the rate of a mile a minute or 
 so ! To the same wonderful predilection for wheels and 
 wheeling, or being wheeled, is to be ascribed the joy that 
 some people find in gliding swiftly upon a bycicle, at 
 the imminent risk of breaking their n&ck.s,-^-imMciles d 
 deux roues I 
 
 The rink mania is the newest and certainly not the 
 least singular development of that rage for wheels which 
 is unquestionably one of the strangest and strongest 
 passions of the human heart. A superficial visitor, un- 
 versed in the ways of philosophy, and unobservant of 
 the curious springs of action animating human heads 
 and heels, might, on entering a rink for the first time, 
 
RINKING. 345 
 
 find it no easy matter to understand why so many of 
 his fellow-creatures, mercifully qualified by nature to 
 move safely and pleasantly upon the soles of their feet, 
 should prefer to run about upon castors, like tables and 
 chairs. Such a reflection, however, could only redound 
 to the discredit of the shallow brain from which it ema- 
 nated, the connection between wheels and humanity 
 being, as already shown, as old as the hills, or, indeed, 
 as the valleys either, for the matter of that. Rinking is 
 a graceful and brilliant accomplishment, which, based 
 upon an irresistible instinct of our being, tends to ele- 
 vate and refine all who do not lose either life or limb 
 while engaged in the acquisition of it. Moreover, it 
 may be said of it with perfect propriety that it gives 
 softness and tenderness to the manners, making the 
 votaries of the art benignly considerate of the comfort 
 and convenience of their fellow-creatures. A Rink is 
 the very palace of courtesy, and it is as wonderful as edi- 
 fying to observe how polite people are to one another 
 within the precincts of its magical circle. KmoUit mores. 
 That spiteful satisfaction at the disasters of their neigh- 
 bors from which the best-conducted persons are not 
 wholly free, in other places, appears to be quite un- 
 known to the habitues of the Rink. Companionship in 
 danger teaches mutual forbearance, an<l quells so effec- 
 tually the dictates of ill-nature, that not a sneer distorts 
 the faces of any of his or her associates, nor does one 
 word of inhuman jubilation escape from their lips when 
 a Rinker comes to grief. Nobody laughs, nobody jeers, 
 everybody runs to his or her assistance, and everybody 
 seems sorry for him or her, as the case may be. I saw 
 a very fat gentleman come a fearful " cropper" the other 
 day. Swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, 1 
 
35^ 
 
 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 sped to his aid, and I have no doubt that I should have 
 rendered him essential service, had it not been that in try- 
 ing to get at him, I tumbled heels over head myself, and 
 have never been to say altogether right in my mind since. 
 Some delightful writer has remarked that so evanes- 
 cent are the conditions of our earthly pilgrimage, that 
 " a smile and a clasp of the hand as we pass," is the 
 most we can hope to have of one another here below. 
 Nowhere are these sad words truer than at a Skating- 
 rink. It is touch-and-go with every one. If you mean 
 to propose for a young lady in a rink, you would do well 
 to come to the point as expeditiously as possible, while 
 you and she are still able to maintain a perpendicular 
 attitude. " Before I am run away with by my feelings, 
 allow me to inquire, my dear young lady, what is your 
 fortune ? " So speaks a very prudent and pious parson 
 in one of Miss Austen's novels. For " feelings " read 
 " castors,'' and the question may be recommended for 
 the use of sentimental swains, making love in Mr. 
 Plimpton's skates. It is delightful to observe what 
 flirtation goes on in these places, and how successful 
 young people seem to be in rinking into one another's 
 affections. Very touching, too, is it to remark how 
 gallantly solicitous are the young men for the safety of 
 the young women, even when both are moving at a quiet 
 pace, and with an ease and confidence which forbids the 
 thought of peril. On such occasions it is no uncom- 
 mon thing to see a male arm encircling a female 
 waist, with an air of anxiety and a tenacity of pressure 
 apparently in excess of the necessity, but still enchant- 
 ing to behold. We sometimes witness the same sort 
 of thing upon real ice, when it may be said with perfect 
 trutli of the skaters, 
 
RINKJNG. ■ 351 
 
 " Nimbly, gayly, off they go, 
 With sport above and deat h below ; " 
 
 but I really do think that all that is noble,, generous, 
 and intrepid in the male heart corties out in still more 
 captivating colors in the Rink, the devotion of the male 
 to the female sex being there worthy of the best 
 days of chivalry. There is another consideration 
 which ought to recommend rinking to the cordial ap- 
 proval of all thoughtful and benevolent persons, — I 
 mean the service it cannot fail to render to surgical art. 
 This is in itself a matter of primaty importance. When 
 rinkers, familiar with danger, and therefore contemptu- 
 ous of it, shall grow even more reckless in their proceed- 
 ings than they are at present, the number of sprained 
 wrists, dislocated ankles, broken legs and arms, and 
 smashed heads will become so great, that a staff of , 
 surgeons will have to be in constant attendance at every 
 Rink. The profession will thus gain very considerably, 
 not alone in a pecuniary sense, but also in opportunities 
 of practice, for it stands to reason that if people did not 
 break their limbs, surgeons would never know how to 
 set them. For one good male rinker there at least forty 
 female. The men are often as awkward as they are 
 inelegant, and so come frequently to confusion ; where- 
 as the women are, generally speaking, so prudent and 
 skilful, as well as graceful, that they rarely give occasion 
 for the doctor's intervention. Thus in this, as in all 
 other matters, the advantage is where it ought to be, — 
 with the better and more beautiful section of humanity. 
 Another admirable thing about rinking is that it 
 quickens the pulses of poetic inspiration. I was at a 
 rink the other day, and all of a sudden 5uch an afflatus, 
 direct from the sunniest eminences of Parnassus, .came 
 
352 
 
 ■ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 over me, that I asked Mr. Hayes, the courteous pro- 
 prietor, to oblige me with writing materials. He did so, 
 with characteristic politeness. Nay, more, he spread 
 a round table for me right in the middle of the rink, 
 whereat he placed a chair. I sat me down, and while 
 the skaters were spinning around me on all sides in 
 frantic mazes, 1 produced the following sublime 
 
 Song of the Rinkers. 
 
 Hearken to the Rinkers rolling round the rink ; 
 
 How their axles clatter ! how their castors clink ! 
 
 Wheeling in a giddy maze, darting in and out, 
 
 They're "circular" and "fugitive " beyond the range of doubt 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Sing a song of Rinkers, how merrily they skim ! 
 Birds were made for flying, and fish were made to swim ; 
 Now we've found the motion fit for human kind, — 
 Man to roll on castors only was designed. 
 
 Here and there and everywhere, in and out they dash, 
 Rinking's most delightful when there comes a crash; 
 Sympathy is catching : when Fanny's boot's unlaced, 
 Willie's arm encircles his Arabella's waist. 
 
 Chorus. — Sing a song of Rinkers, etc 
 
 III. 
 
 Gliding o'er the asphalte at a furious rate, 
 Taking it for ice, too, fancying they skate ! 
 With each other flirting, waggishly they wink ; 
 Oh, the rosy rinkers rolling round the rink ! 
 
 Chorus. — Sing a song of Rinkers, etc 
 
THE POETRY OF SLEEP. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the day of danger, when the clouds arise, 
 Darkening all your sunshine, shrouding all your skies, 
 Never take to weeping, never pause to think, 
 Buckle on your castors, and begin to rink. 
 
 Chorus. — Sing a song of Rinkers, etc. 
 
 3S3 
 
 THE POETRY OF SLEEP. 
 
 T WOULD go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a 
 horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that 
 man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his 
 imagination into his author hands — ^be pleased he knows 
 not why and cares not wherefore." So spake Lawrence 
 Sterne ; and knowing thee, reader, to be just such a 
 man as he thus eloquently depicts, I kiss thy dear hand, 
 and taking it in mine, propose that we shall have an 
 " out and about " in dreamland, chatting cosily as we 
 go, on a subject the most attractive in the world — Sleep. 
 All that the human fancy can conceive of refreshing 
 and delightful is assuredly comprised in that gentle 
 monosyllable. Dr. Johnson's definition is sufficiently 
 seductive. " To Sleep — to take rest by the suspension 
 of the mental and corporal powers." What can be more 
 delicious ? Poets in all ages have sung the praises of 
 sleep ; but of all panegyrics ever uttered on the en- 
 chanting theme, the most truthful and striking is pro- 
 bably that which fell from the inspired lips of Sancho 
 Janza : — " Now blessings light on him who first in- 
 vented sleep !" It covers a man all over, thoughts and 
 23 
 
354 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 all, like a cloak. It is meat for the hungry, drink for 
 the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." 
 So, indeed, it is ; and he who possesses it to the fullest 
 in the night is to be envied, however bleak and rough 
 his journey may have been in the day. And if that 
 man be worthy of universal benediction, as unquestion- 
 ably he is, who " invented " sleep, surely he who gives 
 to that exquisite discovery the utmost possible develop- 
 ment is also to be esteemed a benefactor of his race. 
 He may not, indeed, lay claim to the honors of origin- 
 ality, but he deserves such secondary praise as fairly 
 belongs to those ingenious and philanthropic minds 
 which are modestly content to elaborate to finer perfec- 
 tion and make more easy of operation the projects of 
 inventive genius. In that happy thought I find supreme 
 comfort. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to 
 know that these essays of mine are soporific in their 
 effect — that they have an irresistible tendency to pro- 
 duce sleep, and so to procure for the reader the very 
 highest form of enjo)Tiient of which human nature is 
 capable. Some pens there are which stir the spirit of 
 man like trumpets ; some pens may be compared to 
 swords, slaying right and left and flashing dazzlingly in 
 the sunshine ; others may be likened to reeds which 
 shed music ; mine has but one parallel — the sleep- 
 compelling word of Somnus. What is the use of excit- 
 ing people ? what possible good can come of writing in 
 such a strain and style that men's cheeks flush to a 
 more, crimson dye, and their hearts beat more rapidly, 
 and their pulses throb more wildly as they read ? As 
 though there were not enough to distract and worry 
 them in their experiences of every-day life ! Be it mine 
 to soothe them into serene repose, and gently to beguile 
 
THE POETRY OF SLEEP. ^ ^ 5 
 
 them into such sweet oblivion of sorrow as it is in the 
 power of sleep, and of sleep alone, to bestow. The proud- 
 est and happiest moment of my life is when I see a man 
 take up a book of mine and set himself down to a 
 perusal of it. Full well I know that " not poppy nor 
 mandragora rior all the drowsy syrups of the world " 
 can ever medicine him to such sweet sleep as is now in 
 store for him. Being of a benevolent disposition, to 
 administer to the felicity of my fellow creature is ever 
 my chief delight. And what a glorious opportunity now 
 presents itself ! Placing myself in a position where I 
 may see witliout being seen, it is my practice to mark 
 with breathless attention the working of my spell -upon 
 my unsuspecting reader ; to observe how " the exposi- 
 tion of sleep," as Bottom phrases it, comes gradually 
 over him \ to see his muscles insensibly relaxing, his 
 eyelids drooping, his head nodding as he reads, till at 
 last he sinks back unconsciously in his chair, the volume 
 drops from his hands, and the voice or rather the nose 
 of the snorer resounds jubilantly through the room. The 
 delightful thought that I have made a hiunan being 
 supremely blest, banished his cares, and transported him 
 by the magic of my writing to an ideal world, where he 
 may smile to think of the grief in this, fills me with tri- 
 umphant joy. All the way home I keep repeating these 
 lines of Ovid to the unspeakable amazement of the 
 passers-by, who little dream what noble transport swells 
 my breast : — 
 
 " Somne quies rennn, pladdissime somne deoniin. 
 Pax animi, quem cnra fngit, qui corpora diumis 
 Fessa ministeriis mulces, reparasque labori." 
 
 Sleepless myself, I write that you may sleep, and so, 
 dear reader, I acquire an undeniable title to your grat- 
 
356 ERR A TIC ESS A YS. 
 
 itude and admiration. I have always been of opinion 
 that there are in poetic literature two personages who 
 receive at the hands of society treatment the very reverse 
 of that to which they are justly entitled. They were 
 both called into creation by Dr. Isaac Watts. The one 
 is the little busy bee, whom we are exhorted from earli- 
 est infancy to admire, forgetful of his horrid buzz and 
 his bitter sting, and his felonious conduct in perpetually 
 stealing the honey from the flowers ; the other is the 
 sluggard, who, if he do no good, at all events does no 
 harm, but who, nevertheless, is invariably held up as an 
 object of hatred and derision. 
 
 " Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain 
 You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again." 
 
 Certainly ! By all means ? Why not ? Why should 
 he not slumber again ? Why was he waked too soon ? 
 Why should any man be waked too soon ? or waked at 
 all for the matter of that ! Every man is entitled to 
 his due measure of sleep, and nothing can be more 
 unfair than to bully a fellow out of this delicious heri- 
 tage. To rob a poor man of his beer is bad enough ; 
 to rob him of his sleep is still worse ; and to. turn him 
 into ridicule because he " complains " of such treatment 
 is to add insult to injury. Of all the inhuman contrivan- 
 ces ever invented by the wicked ingenuity of man for 
 his own discomfort and that of his fellow-creatures, the 
 most inhuman was that horrid bed exhibited some years 
 ag6 at the first great bazaar in Hyde Park, and which 
 was so constructed that at five o'clock in the morning 
 it chucked the sleeper out of the mattrass right into the 
 middle of the floor. The only parallel for this atrocious 
 invention was perhaps that designed by the learned 
 
THE POETRY OF SLEEP. 
 
 357 
 
 Mrs. Carter, which was so adjusted in its devilish me- 
 chanism that at a certain hour it set light to a string to 
 which a heavy weight was suspended, which then fell 
 with a strong sudden noise. " This," said Dr. Johnson, 
 " roused her from her sleep, and then she had no diffi- 
 culty in getting up." The woman who could manufac- 
 ture such an instrument would eat her own children like 
 Saturn. Sleep is in truth our most precious right, our 
 sweetest prerogative, and it is precious and sweet in the 
 precise proportion that life is charged with sorrows and 
 solicitudes, which would be intolerable but for the soft 
 repose and mild nepenthe of periodic slumber. The 
 most blissful reminiscence of youth is the memory of 
 its sleep — sleep not fragmentary or uneasy, subject to no 
 painful vision or distressing dream, but sleep worthy of 
 the name, hearty, continuous, profound, and chequered 
 only by such sweet and gentle revelations of some bet- 
 ter world as give to slumber a divine zest, a tranquil 
 holy joy unknown in after years, even to the most blame- 
 less lives. The sleep of infancy is a heavenly trance, 
 delightful to behold. What serenity is there on the brow 
 of a sleeping infant ! what suavity of expression is there 
 about the mouth ! and how peaceful and regular is the 
 heaving of the tiny breast. In the world of external 
 nature the most exact analogies for the ecstatic repose 
 of childhood are, perhaps, the throbless tide of a sum- 
 mer sea in southern latitudes, the stillness of an autum- 
 nal wood when the winds are hushed and the aspens 
 cease to quiver, or the meek waveless glow of moon- 
 light on a bank. " How sweet the moonlight sleeps 
 upon this bank ! " says Shakespeare with matchless grace 
 of diction. There is high poetic beauty in the notion — . 
 let us not call it superstitioii — ^that the smile of a sleep- 
 
358 ERRA TIC ESSA YS. 
 
 ing infant is the child's response to the whispering of an 
 angel. Boys and girls go in for sleep with a will and 
 enjoy it keenly. Oh ! for the glorious, days, or rather 
 nights, when to go to bed meant of necessity to go to sleep, 
 and when no sooner had the golden-tressed head touch- 
 ed the pillow than the little votary of Morpheus was 
 wrapped in Elysian repose. Sleep such as this is the 
 special privilege of youth, and rarely comes to us in our 
 mature years. One of many arguments in favor of a 
 country life is that it is eminently conducive to good 
 sleep. Open air exercise, whether obtained through 
 the instrumentality of manual toil or in pursuit of field 
 sports, produces sleep sounder and more genuine than 
 usually falls to the lot of the harassed denizens of great 
 towns. What with hard labor and hard pleasure, worry 
 everlasting and endless anxiety, and all the bother, poth- 
 er, uproar and annoyance that the fiend "Business" 
 brings in his train, to say nothing of the row in the streets 
 and the tumult and turbulence raging on all hands, the 
 wonder is that the majority of Londoners are able to sleep 
 at all. For six days in the week the world jogs along at 
 a drowsy pace in the country, and on the seventh day 
 the village parson — ^purveyor-general of sleep for the 
 whole parish — gets into his pulpit and scatters sleep 
 right and left throughout his rural flock. Very pungent, 
 indeed, was the remark of the old Scotchwoman, who, 
 when advised by her minister to take snuff with her to 
 keep her awake in kirk while he was preaching, replied 
 " Why dinna you put the snuff in the sermon, mon ? " 
 Happily for his congregation he had no " snuff," to put 
 in, so he followed his own hum-drum course and still as 
 ever sent his hearers away invigorated with a more de- 
 lightful form of refreshment than it is in the power of 
 
THE POE TR Y OF SLEEP. 359 
 
 the most impassioned orator to bestow. One of the 
 most poetic accompaniments of sleep is snoring, a 
 graceful and melodious art of which, strange to say, 
 most people are ashamed. I know a man who snores 
 much better than he sings, yet he is much prouder of 
 the latter than of the former accomplishment. His wife 
 has invented an exquisite little apparatus for his special 
 use. At the base of each nostril is fastened a perfor- 
 ated ivory plate to which is affixed an India-rubber tube 
 terminating in an ivory pipe. This pipe is placed in 
 the mouth of the snorer, who thus consumes his own 
 snores. 
 
 It is interesting to observe what a potent effect the 
 theme " Sleep " has in brightening and accelerating po- 
 etic thought. The moment a poet begins to write upon 
 this drowsy matter he waxes eloquent. Edward Young, 
 a very unequal writer on general subjects, is uniformly 
 sublime when he treats of sleep. No sooner does he 
 touch on this ambrosial topic than he reaches at a bound 
 something like Shakespearian splendor of imagination. 
 His thoughts acquire new brilliancy, and his language 
 grows prismatic. How fine in fancy and how exquisite 
 in expression are these lines : — 
 
 " Night, sable goddess, from her ebon throne. 
 In rayless majesty now stretches forth 
 Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world." 
 
 Shakespeare himself is never more magnificent than in 
 speaking on this question. Some of his grandest pas- 
 sages relate to it. What can be more touching than 
 the lamentation of Macbeth that, in having committed 
 a dread crime, he had forfeited for evermore his right 
 to sleep :— 
 
360 ERRA TIC ESSA VS.- 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry ' Sleep no more , 
 Macbeth does murder sleep ' — the innocent sleep, 
 Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath ; 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast." 
 
 In Striking contrast with this mournful meditation 
 upon his own lot, is the murderer's allusion to the peace 
 enjoyed by his victim, Duncan, in the grave. " After 
 life's fitful fever he sleeps well." Not less tender is 
 King Henry's famous adjuration to sleep. Never 
 surely, was reproach couched in language more poig 
 nantly pathetic : — 
 
 " Sleep, gentle sleep. 
 Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 
 That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
 And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
 O, thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile 
 In loathsome beds ; and leavest the kingly concb. 
 A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell ? 
 Wilt thou upon.the hi^ and giddy mast 
 Seal up the ship boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge ; 
 And in the visitation of tlie winds. 
 Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 
 Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
 With deafening clamours in the slippery cloud. 
 That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 
 Canst thou, O partial sleep ! give thy repose 
 To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; 
 And in the calmest and most stillest night 
 Deny it to a king ? " 
 
 The marvellous similitude of life itself to a vision 
 and of death to sleep, is a thought which appears to 
 have possessed a peculiar fascination for all poets, but 
 
THE POETRY OF SLEEP. 361 
 
 more particularly for Shakespere, whom it always prompts 
 to utterances of more than ordinary sublimity. With 
 this sublimity is mingled a touch of simple pathos which 
 strikes home to every heart ; as, for example, in the 
 saying, " Tired we sleep, and life's poor play is o'er ! " 
 And in that saddest, most tragic^ of all reflections, " We 
 are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life 
 is rounded with a sleep.'' Coleridge rises to a strain of 
 antique eloquence in discoursing about sleep, and of all 
 stanzas in " The Ancient Mariner," probably the most 
 melodious is this : — 
 
 " Oh, sleep it is a gentle thing, 
 Beloved from pole to pole ; 
 To Mary Queen the praisejje given, 
 She sent the blessed sleep from heaven 
 That slid into my soul." 
 
 What quaint significance there is in that old preterite 
 "slid," and how happily does the word express the soft 
 and noiseless access of slumber! Among contempo- 
 raneous bards Longfellow excels in allusions to sleep. 
 There are few passages prettier or more pathetic than 
 the following : — 
 
 " Oh, holy Sleep, from thee I learn to bear 
 What men have borne before ; 
 Thou layst thy finger on the lips of care 
 And they complain no more I " 
 
 Against this placid, comfortable meditation may be 
 set Young's passionate complaint, that Sleep, 
 
 " Like the virorld her ready visit pays 
 Where Fortune smiles ; the wretched she forsakes. 
 Swift on her downy pinion flies from care 
 And lights on lids unsullied by a tear." 
 
362 ERRATIC ESSAYS. 
 
 It is to be feared that the experience of the grief- 
 stricken is in favor of this view of the case, and that 
 Sleep and Sorrow are but rarely found in the same bed. 
 Anyhow, there is a placid charm in Longfellow's theory, 
 and but that allegory is dead and realism has well-nigh 
 killed the poetic and imaginative in art, his verse might 
 serve for the text of a fine picture. In classic litera- 
 ture, rich as it is in tender sentiments respecting death 
 and its counterfeit — sleep — I do not remember to have 
 found anything more beautiful than this saying of a 
 Greek poet : " Wrapped in a heavenly slumber, O say 
 not the good can die ! " A great volume might be filled 
 with the sayings of bards — ancient and modern — about 
 sleep ; but of all words ever penned on the subject, the 
 most sublime are assuredly those of King David — " He ' 
 giveth His beloved sleep,'' a thought of such ineffable 
 beauty and eloquence, so rich in celestial significance and 
 consolatory assurance, that there is no going beyond it. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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