Haif-Lek(i-th portraits: OJarncU InioBcattg Ctbrarg 3tt)ara, New Hork LIBRARY OF LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE A.B.A.M.. COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, -Tl, 73 WASHINGTON. D. C. THE GIFT OF MRS. MARY A. WYNNE AND JOHN H. WYNNE CORNELL '98 1922 Cornell University Library arV1535 Half-length portraits. 3 1924 031 193 505 olln.anx Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031193505 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. BY GIBSON CRAIG. " Ilcnvfenv there tire Ihnt are both great and goody Drypkn, EonDon : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, i88, FLEET STREET. 1876. {All rights reseniedi\ &3 LONDON : GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL, Bart., LL.D. (OF KEIR), AUTHOR OF THE ''CLOISTER LIFE OF CHARLES V.," ETC., ^is f olnntJ nf ^l^ort ^lubbs IS DEDICATED IN SINCERE ADMIRATION OF HIM, AS A STUDENT, SCHOLAR, AND SCOTSMAN. CONTENTS. PAGE Light in Darnkess i Chapters I. and II. More than a Prophet 23 Chapters III. and IV. An Early Explorer 44 Chapter V. Fighting for the Faith 54 Chapters VI., VII., and VIII. A Cross but no Crown 87 Chapters IX. and X. A Faithful Servant . . . . . in Chapters XI. and XII. A Dreamer of Dreams 134 Chapters XIII. and XIV. Preaching to the People i6i Chapters XV., XVI., and XVII. ■ FORCEFITL BUT FAITHLESS I94 Chapters XVIII. and XIX. VI CONTENTS. PAGE A Speaker of Truth 217 Chapters XX. and XXI. Working for the World 241 Chapter XXII. Impulse and Zeal ... . . 253 Chapters XXIII. and XXIV. A Model Life 274 Chapters XXV. and XXVI. A Lesson of Love . 293 Chapter XXVII. PREFACE. Crossing the border, a friend who is, what I do not pretend to be, a man of letters and no tyro, remarked that in these brief studies I had not inserted any "brither Scots," of whom he opined that from a small nation there were many to be cited who were both great and good. My long absence from the " land of the mountain and the flood " certainly has not tamed nor daunted my love for her, nor my belief in the virtues of her sons and daughters. But of these I dare say little, lest I should say too much : this Imay add, that I yield to none in my love and admiration of her. And I may add my reason for the omission which my friend noted. Burns has a WfeU-known verse, so well known that it were an insult to quote it, anent the " 'Prentice hand of Nature." That which she loved best, and most fondly endowed she essayed last. And— the inference is palpable — my 'prentice hand having been tried herein, I may, if I succeed, yet say something more worthily of my countrymen. HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Chapter I. LIGHT IN DARKNESS. ;T is somewhat difficult for an ordinary Englishman to picture to himself what a Roman Emperor was in the age when the power of the Caesars was at its best — when it had reached its height and not given a sign of decadence. A few middle-class workmen in a country town had, the other day, the bad taste and impertinence to style themselves " Republicans," and — here lay the gravamen of their folly — to give notice that on the Queen's death they should " con- test the succession of the Prince of Wales to the throne." No sensible person takes any serious notice of the rudeness and insult thus offered to the excel- lent lady who is our Queen, of the singular bad taste of the Republicans, of the mixture of braggardism and folly of a number of apprentices giving themselves airs — Simon Tappertits turned into the " three tailors " of Tooley Street, who signed themselves "we, the B 2 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. people of England" — nor of the ridiculous form of their assertion that they " would . contest the succes- sion." How? If by law, then by law the Prince is heir; if not bylaw, then by force of arms — and where is their army ? We cite this, not to blame Repub- licanism — ideally we lean strongly to that form of go- vernment, and the British Constitution affords per- haps the nearest possible approach to it — but to con- trast the behaviour of these not very wise or highly educated young men with the conduct of a great Roman Senator, a Stoic philosopher, a highly-placed nobleman and very rich and educated man, in the days of Marcus Aurelius. Overcome with ill-health, age, and disease, he humbly petitioned the Emperor to be allowed to kill himself ! Now let us contrast these two immense variations of thought, and realize, if we can, the flood of liberty which ha>s caused the difference. Aurelius, Emperor of the East and West, that is, of the known world — Greece, the provinces of the Danube, Asia Minor, Judaea, Persia, the farthest India, Egypt, the north of Africa, and all our present kingdoms of Europe, of all for which Napoleon fought, or Gustavus or Frederick struggled, and of which England is but a small comer — grants to one of his great men the right to die. A few mechanics, who, under Aurelius would have been slaves, give a long and thoroughly unasked for and most traitorous notice to a Queen of more subjects than even Aurelius reigned over, that they will con- test her son's succession. What has wrought this dif- ference? What has raised these mechanics to the level of an Emperor ? By what happy process — for the result is an expansion of spirit which must do LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 3 good — have succeeding ages so lifted up the serf that, if a British or an American citizen, he is ready to " Shake hands with a king upon his throne, And think it honour to his majesty ! " Simply that Faith which the great Aurelius, one of the wisest and best human kings that ever lived, tried with all his power to crush out ; for be it noted that China, existing in a parallel state to Rome, and at that period quite as enlightened and just as subservient — indeed through all centuries since that time China has presented just the same slavery of the wise and good — has until lately suffered no material revolution and no interruption of religious thought. Her philosophy — that of Confucius — is at its best just about as good as that of Marcus Aurelius ; and there, to this day, a great mandarin, who must be educated and wise, and have ' passed through many examinations, petitions like the Roman Senator for the right to die, holds his soul but at the Emperor's nod; whereas the Christian me- chanic exercises the right to live just as he pleases, with or without his king. Is not this a proof of the leaven which leaveneth the whole mass ? The Heathen remains through nearly eighteen centuries without growth — the Christian is raised, as the Gospel pro- mises, in more senses than one, to the level of priests and kings. There is no other cause but Faith. But, beyond this contrast — which an Englishman, to realize his own happy position, should work out — there are other considerations. Marcus Aurelius was, as we have stated, although at the most giddy eleva- tion, one of the simplest, wisest, and best of men. He stands on th'C same level with Socrates. Although an B 2 4 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS, Emperor, he saw through the splendour of his situa- tion and the glamour of life. He was a Heathen saint. He is one of those who, although he perse- cuted Christians, was so wise and good that Christians hope to meet him in heaven, when his sight will be purged, and he will know how he has wandered. It will be good, therefore, to speak of such a man; first endeavouring to realize and understand his times and surroundings. The Roman Republic — ^perhaps the most splendid specimen of a vigorous, and aggressive state which ever existed — must not be mistaken by demagogues, who are too apt to talk about that which they do not understand, for a modern Republic such as America or Great Britain, where the governing power really rests with the great body of the people. The govern- ing power of Rome was held by the great families — which, from their having furnished the Consuls, we are accustomed to call Consular faniilies; all the working and trading classes were looked upon as base mechanics ; many of the chief industries, even to that of the physician, the schoolmaster, the painter, and the author, were carried on by slaves, or mere freed- men, who were to be flattered, coerced, or amused with the circus and a dole, if at all discontented, but who otherwise were governed without any reference to their wishes. These great Consular families had, in little more than 700 years — B.C. 753 to B.C. 31 — worn themselves out, and, corrupted by continual con- quests, and by having no further antagonists, the Roman State fell before the ambition of Caesar, who was declared perpetual dictator in the year B.C. 48, and assassinated in the last flickering effort of liberty. LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 5 B.C. 44. Octavianus received the new title of Augustus and Imperator — literally commander-in-chief, whence our word "emperor" — B.C. 27; and from him until the assassination of Domitian, for one hundred and twenty-three years, the ruling power was held by the Twelve Caesars, who, with very few exceptions, exhi- bited, especially in such men as Tiberius — in whose reign Christ was crucifi.ed — Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian, a depth of corruption, cruelty, and wickedness almost impossible to parallel. The Roman Empire — then, indeed, synonymous with the world — represented a very close original to its picture in the Revelation of St. John, when the rider on the blood-red horse dashes forward, slaying and to slay. From the year 96 to that of 180, if we omit a few persecutions of the Christians, whose young Church had been made to grow fertilely by the blood of its martyrs, there was a period of peace, lasting through the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Titus, sumamed Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, the philosophic Emperor, of whom we write. The storms of cruelty which shook the Empire had ceased ; but the worm was at the foot of the huge tree — the rot was in root, stem, and branch — and corruption, mining all within, afflicted unseen. Sir Walter Raleigh, in his " History of the World," describes, with an eloquence not to be surpassed, the fate of this mighty State. He describes it as a " great tree flourishing in the middle of a field, having rooted up or cut down all that kept her from the admiration of the world. But, after some con- tinuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had ; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another ; her leaves shall fall off, 6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut her down." " Oh, eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! " cries Raleigh, as he surveys all the cruelty, tyranny, and bloodshed of this forceful and mighty Republic — all the wars and tears of blood and cries of widows and orphans that Rome had caused — "whom none could advise, thou hast per- suaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered all over with these two narrow words — Hicjacet." But this end was not yet to come. Before the dis- ruption of great and cruel States there is a breathing space, a last rally of the vital forces, and, instead of tyrants, good men often hold the throne and try to ad- minister justice and to live in peace. Thus it happened with Rome in her decline. The Empire was not neces- sarily hereditary. If the Republic differed from the modem Republic, not less so did the autocracy of Rome from a modern empire. The Emperor, who was, if powerful, sure to be followed by his obedient Senate, selected some favourite to follow him, wanting a son ; and the wise Hadrian, having fixed upon Marcus Aurelius, adopted, as the child was too young, Anto- ninus Pius, on the condition that he in his turn should adopt Aurelius. This was done ; and hence Rome breathed freely, and lived, or rather gently continued to die in peace, during the age of the Antonines. Aurelius himself, even without the imperial purple, was remarkable alike as boy and man. At the age of twelve he assumed the mantle of the Stoic philosopher. LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 7 and, brought up by his grandfather, Amicus Verus, was educated in every accomplishment and branch of learning, and seems to have been formed by Provi- dence to give peace to Rome, and to shed a lustre on the soiled imperial purple and the dying or dead Pagan philosophy. If we count St. Peter,' who pro- bably never was at Rome, there had been, up to the reign of Aurehus, eleven Papas or Bishops of Rome, of whom eight had been martyred. In 139 a.d. Hyginus the Bishop was the first to assume the title of Pope, though it was not confined to the Bishop of Rome till the homicide Emperor Phocas, in the year 606, con^ceded that privilege to Boniface III. ; arid Marcus Aurelius was himself to add a ninth martyr to the list of bishops in the person of Soterus, executed in 168 a.d. Christianity must therefore have been very well known, and was regarded, as can be seen from the satires then written, as the religion of a number of low, common, obstinate, and terma- gant people, who would not sacrifice to the gods, and who, by their superior virtues, poverty, self-sacrifice, and pure life, must have been a severe sore and trouble in the side of Roman pride, luxury, and love of life. Marcus Aurelius could have been no stranger to the pretensions and existence of such people in his chief city, and seems to have determined to present from his great elevation a proof that Paganism could also furnish something admirable and virtuous. There is a cold and haughty pride in his very con- fessions of gratitude. In the " Meditations" which he has left us, and upoh which his fame chiefly rests, he says : — " From my grandfather I learned good morals and the government of my temper ; from the remem- 8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. brance of my father, modesty and a manly character ; from my mother piety, beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts — simplicity in living far removed from the luxury of the rich; from my governor [tutor], endurance of labour to work with my own hands, to want little, not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander." The great Emperor gives every one his due, but with a proud air, as if he demanded admiration for himself. " From Diognetus I learned not to be busy with trifles, not to credit miracle-mongers, jugglers about incantations, and the drivers away of daemons and such things." This is evidently a side-blow at the despised sect of Christians ; and he adds, as on a par with this hardness of belief, " not to breed fighting-cocks [quails which both the Athenians and the Romans made to fight], to endure freedom of speech, to love philosophy, to write dialogues in my youth, and to desire a plank bed and a skin such as belongs to the Grecian dis- cipline." He had educated himself and held himself proudly above the follies of the world. " From Rus- ticus," he continues, mentioning another Stoic, " I learned to own that my character required improve- ment and discipline ; not to emulate sophistically ; not to show myself off as a man who practises much disci- pline, or who does benevolent acts for the sake of dis- play; to abstain from rhetoric, poetry, and fine writing, and not to walk about the house in my fine out-door dress. From him also I learned and received the idea of the polity in which there is the same law for all, to be administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 9 government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed." These indeed are imperial qualities ; but is it not curious that they were not promulgated by any Emperor till one hundred and sixty-nine years after the preaching of Christianity ? From the same phi- losopher Aurelius tells us he learnt to be consistent in his love for philosophy, to cherish a disposition to do good, to give to others readily and easily, to cherish good hopes, and — here is indeed a deeply philosophic touch — " to believe I am loved by my friends." And then with a noble humility the philosopher con- tinues ; " To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends — nearly everything good." With such views Antoninus admits that the universe is governed by the foreknowledge or providence of the gods (•jrpoi/oia), and therefore that all things are wisely ordered. We can but enter on the life of this great man, and leave our readers to follow it out either under Mr. Long's, or the guidance of the " learned Gattaker :" they must grasp the really unique character of the man — a Stoic philosopher, on a throne ; despising man, yet the first of living men ; hating riches, yet the richest ; doubting the good of power, yet the most powerful ; desiring to be alone, yet always surrounded by a court, and frequently at war ; the last great upholder of the old worldly philosophy, soon to be swept away before that which gives us really a new heaven and a new earth. No man was like him, perhaps no one so profoundly melancholy, so lonely, and so great. "The providence of the gods existed," he wrote. 10 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. but it was of little use to man since he did not under- stand it. Man should boldly take his life and the world in his hand ; such were the dietetics of the soul as prescribed by him. He believed in advice, and so we do now ; " a word spoken in due season how good is it !" So the sorrowful Aurelius says, " Come, be thine own master, and be thine own helper, so that you ar^ of good heart in good as well as in evil days" (i. 15). And again he gives us this consolation : " There is no real evil ; if one man is evilly entreated of another he can easily escape." This of course hints at suicide. If a man is wronged, the wrong is the evil-doer's. In Book xi. 18 he gives some practical and excellent precepts as to bearing offences. We are to bear them, however, chiefly by throwing ourselves back on our pride. " Consider," he says, " what men are — what they are at bed, table, at home, how foolish they are and unthinking." If men do rightly, then we are not hurt ; if they do not right, it is plain that they are ignorant. And, if you are vexed, consider how short life is — it is but for a moment ; moreover your good dis- position ought to be invincible and real, not an affected business, not acting a part. Life, however, is not much ; if you are tired of it, retire as you would get up from table when you have had enough. Life is not even incomplete if fate overtakes a man, as one may. say of an actor who leaves the stage before finishing his part. Death is no evil ; if it be so, then change is an evil, for it is but change. Living beings suffer pain, man suffers most of all, and yet after all the universe is so vast and we so little and ignorant that we do not even know if we suffer." There is to be no looking for reward. Man has, it may be, some chance of a future, LIGH2 IN DARKNESS. ii though of this the Emperor seems by no means cer- tain. His doctrine of the change of things and of necessity would seem to imply that man does not utterly perish; "being a portion of 'the Divinity, his soul cannot perish, and, if it does, the gods will do what is best." This is but cold comfort opposed to the warm life of true Faith — a proudly human and stoical indifference, but the best humanity can give. We must admire and love this Emperor, so good, so just, so tender, driving back the barbarians who invaded the territories of Rome, dying in arms for the good of his country, wearied, toil-worn, and yet spent when not yet sixty, and, like a. setting sun, casting a ray of glory upon the world from which he was soon to vanish. Chapter II. LIGHT IN DARKNESS (Contintiei{). Marcus AURELIUS has so many pre- cepts not altogether unHke those of Christ that some antagonists to Chris- tianity have not scrupled to prefer his teaching to that of the Gospel. But on a calm and unbiassed reflection the judicious reader will find no cause to do so. The book which the Roman Emperor has left us is essentially cold and dry. It is very hard reading ; it does nCit touch the heart ; it is inferior as a literary composition to the Gospels or the Epistles ; it is full of repetitions ; it has no light and shade, no pathos, no episodes, and no condemnation of sin, and therefore really no spiritual life. It gives perhaps the best counsel that this world can give, but it is of this world. In the picture of a Stoic which Shakspere has left us — a remarkable and truthful one — the poet pictures the cynical side of the character by far too boldly for us to imagine 'that the Cynic-Stoic Ape- mantus could resemble or have much in common with such a philosopher as Marcus Aurelius, but at the LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 13 bottom there is a likeness. When Apemantus prays thus : — " Immortal gods, I crave no pelf; I pray for no man but myself: Grant I may never prove so fond To trust man on his oath or bond : Or a harlot for her weeping, Or a dog that seems a-sleeping, &c." — there is the same kind of cold caution about him that there is about Marcus Aurelius. The Emperor, however, is on a much higher plane than the other, but it forms part of the same sterile mountain of human pride. " Care not," says AureHus, " for what others say ; remember it is but opinion. Mind how you act ; ask yourself when you employ your soul, Whose soul have I now — that of a child, a young man, or of a . feeble woman ? . . . . Live with the gods. Art angry with him who smells badly or whose breath is foul ? What good will this anger do ? He has such a mouth and such a breath : it is necessary that such an emanation must come from such things." But all he writes is not pitched in so high a chord of scorn. At the beginning of. this paragraph is a reference to the parallel between his teachings and those of our faith ; and here are some very beautiful maxims : — " A man cannot be really injured by his brethren, for no act of theirs can make him' bad ; he must not be angry with them nor hate them. ' We are all made for co-operation, as feet, hands, eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of teeth. To act against another, then, is to act against nature." And again ; — " Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, passing from one act of companionship to another, thinking of God." " Love 14 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. mankind. Follow God." " It is a part of the cha- racter of the reasonable soul in a man to love his companion '' (neighbour). We do not quite find the Divine precept of " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and perse- cute you," but Antoninus says, with excelling wisdom, " The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrong-doer." With all deference to so able a scholar as Mr. George Long, whose treatise on the " Philosophy of Antoninus " is admirable, we cannot agree with him that he writes in the " spirit of the sublime prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Here are the Emperor's words : — " When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For, when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry." This may be stoical philosophy, but to us it is neither sufficing nor convincing. If a man struck out one of our eyes, we should need something more than the reflection that he was a stupid fool, whose idea of right or wrong was not particularly clear. Aurelius is perhaps better when he thus tells us not to brood over a wrong: — "Wipe out the imagination. Stop the pulling of the wires. Confine your thoughts to the present. Understand well what happens to thee or to another. Think, of thy last hour ; let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done." On the whole, therefore, most people will be dis- posed to think that Marcus Aurelius has plagiarised from Christianity, or that what he says is equal to or LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 15 superior to its precepts. During the reign of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Antoninus, there appeared several "Apologies" or expositions of Christianity, one by Justinus, another by Melito, Bishop of Sardis, and one by Apollinarius. Indeed, the apology of Justinus was addressed to T. Antoninus Pius and his two adopted sons, Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus ; but it was one thing for an obscure Christian, in danger of being thrown to the lions, to address an Imperial heir, and another thing for the Imperial personage to read the address. As the undergraduate said of St. Paul, it was " true he addressed an epistle to the Romans, but history did not tell us whether he got any answer." So we may as well confess at once that there is no proof that Marcus Antoninus read the apology, though there is evidence that Justinus, under the preefecture of Rusticus, and during the joint empire of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, was whipped severely, and, after such fustigation, led with others — amongst them a woman, Charito — to the deathbecauge hewould not sacrifice to the gods. Being asked whether " he expected to ascend to heaven," he answered that he did not expect io go there even- tually, but was quite certain of it ; and he and the other martyrs went joyfully and knelt before the executioner and had their heads struck off. It was also under Marcus Antoninus that Polycarp suffered at Smyrna, and that many another martyr was added to that noble army which has died for the faith. But Antoninus must not be wholly blamed for this. He was the slave of his time and of its prejudices, and as much bound to the " opinions " he condemned as any other. His very philosophy and stoical pride would i6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. continue to blind him. His method of dealing with objectionally obstinate Christians would be that of a. civilized Roman gentleman, who sought to uphold the laws. He burnt some, crucified many, and threw others to the lions. That was the method of the time, and there is no proof that he was specially cruel. Like the learned Pliny in the time of Trajan, no doubt the philosophic Emperor found the Christians poor, and, in his opinion, very stupid. To the Greek what St. Paul preached was foolishness ; so was it to the educated Roman. Pliny simply wonders at it. He tells Trajan that they indulge in a religion which seems to him to be a depraved and extravagant super- stition, but they might be given time to recant. If they were fools enough to persevere, they ought, he said, to be punished.' Trajan was more kind' and wiUing to shut his eyes than Marcus Aurelius in his treatment of the Christians, and ordered that no search . must be -made after them, but that if a man would not sacrifice to the gods, he must be executed. This was the custom of the time and country ; even those who attempted to seduce the Jews to follow a new religion were punished with death, as Mr. Long does not forget to tell us in a note, although the case with Roman and Jew was not parallel. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that one who 1 Once only Antoninus condescends to mention the Christians (book xi. sec. 3), and then it is with a sneer. " Be ready to die, either to be dismissed (i. e. to end for ever), or to continue to exist, but let this readiness come from a man's own judgment, and not from mere obstinacy as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity, and in a way to persuade another without tragic show." No doubt the exaltation and great eagerness of the early martyrs gave a certain theatrical method to their death. All these little touches are undesigned proofs of historical truth. LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 17 could write such beautiful precepts could permit himself so to act. " How much trouble he avoids," Aurelius says (iv. 18), "who does not look to see what his neighbour says, or does, or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure." This is wise and excellent. So also- is this : " Look not round at the depraved morals of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it." Again — these words should have some weight in this world of hurry and worry — " Do not be whirled about, but in every action have respect to justice, in, every movement and every impression maintain the faculty of comprehension" (keep clear the understanding). Sometimes he writes in a strain which resembles that of Sir Thomas Browne. " Willingly give thyself up to Clotho " (the Fate who spun the thread of mortal existence), "allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases. ' Thou wilt soon die, and art not yet simple and free from disquiet ; how is it so? Make ready betimes. Think how many doctors are dead after puckering their brows over the pulses of the sick, how many soothsayers after predicting the deaths of others, how many philosophers after dis- coursing on immortality, how many heroes after killing thousands, how many kings and tyrants who used their power over life as if they were immortal ; how many cities are dead, not counting Helice, Pompeii, and Herculalieum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning- all whom thou hast known one after the other.' One man dies after putting another in the grave, and another as he weeps over him. To con- clude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. What was yesterday a little mucus, c i8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this space of time in a natural, honest way, and finish off thy journey in content, just as the fruit drops when it is ripe, blessing nature which produced it, and being grateful to the tree on, which it grew." The above is indeed a noble and eloquent passage, imperial and kingly in its stoicism; admirable also are these two mottoes, which we hope our readers will carry with them : " Live with the gods " — that is, with the best thoughts and people — and always "Run the short way." Gibbon, who has seized the opportunity, as one might guess he would do, in anything that would tell against Christianity, of eulogizing the Emperor, does not forget, to add that he shows his weakness in ignoring the crimes of his wife Faustina. The name of this Empress is now a synonym for a bad and a wan- ton woman, and yet the good Emperor thanked the gods that they had given him a wife celebrated for her goodness, faithfulness, her affection and her sim- plicity. "The Cupid of the Ancients,'' says Gibbon, " was in general a very sensual deity ; and the amours of an Empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the Empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregu- larities of Faustina." The caustic historian adds in a note, " The world has laughed at the credulity of Marcus ; but Madame Dacier assures us — and we may credit a lady — that the husband will always be ■ deceived, if the wife condescends to dissemble.'' Lampridius (" Historia Augustse") is the authority that Gibbon relies on for the assertion that Faustina chose LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 19 her lovers from boatmen and prizefighters {nauticos gladiatores elegisse). Yet, when this woman died, the philosophic and stoic Marcus requested the obse- quious Senate to place her among the gods ! It sounds likea satire — it is indeed the deepest of satires — that this shameless woman, whose name Mr. Swin- burne has chosen for that of the heroine of one of his cleverest poems, was worshipped as a goddess, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Geres, by the young, the chaste, and the happy on the day of their nuptials. Gibbon tells us that Aurelius was generally despised for his blindness to the vices of Faustina, but we must in justice remember that he was many years away from Rome, fighting the barbarians, and was not likely perhaps to hear of her excesses. Had he heard, he would doubtless have pardoned them as he pardoned his enemies, and perhaps indeed stoically have overlooked them. One is inclined to think that this blindness and kindness set a seal to his virtue, and was indeed part of his profession. But Marcus, with all his virtues, seems to have been unable to bring up a good son. Perhaps the bestowal on the world of strong virtuous children is at once the most difficult and the most valuable gift of which any- one is capable, and certainly some of the best men have failed in so doing. The good high- priest Eli furnishes no uncommon instance of a saint being the parent of reprobates ; and in our own time there may perhaps be some reason to believe the com- mon scandal which attaches to clergymen's sons. So this heathen saint, this pagan King Arthur, with his knights changed into moralists and philosophers, was the father, the indulgent father, of one of the greatest c 2 20 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. tyrants, one of the most contemptible and obscene creatures that ever disgraced the form of humanity — the Emperor Commodus. And one could laugh bit- terly at things human if we took no higher view than that of the sceptic, when we consider what a fate was reserved for this mere animal, this miserable slave to his passions and appetites, this worst of all men. We see that in the case of Socrates the world put the best possible man to death ; in the case of Commodus, his father raised him to be a partner on the world's throne, and his own equal at the age of sixteen, and he lived four years afterwards to repent his foolish indulgence. We know that from the birth of Confucius, one of the wisest of men, of our Saviour and of Mahomet, the Chinese, Christians,, and Turks have dated their years. The Egyptians, in an excess of flattery, struck coins on which Commodus appeared as even one of these, and the commencement of the world was reckoned from the . years of his reign ! Such was the flattery bestowed upon this prince — such the reward of a fulL blown wickedness, or the gratitude of flatterers vividly expecting favours to come. Pope has called into his verses some degree of bitterness when he satirizes all that the world can give in the lines — " See how the world its favourites rewards — A youth of pleasure, an old age of cards. " But he could have drawn a much bitterer satire on the works of the world, the flesh, and the devil If he had pointed to Christ crucified, and Commodus crowned and seated on the throne of the world ; to the cry of " The Christians to the lions — Commodus to the purple ! " to the ingenuity of the Empire racked to add a new torture to a saint, or to find some fresh, and LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 21 probably bestial, pleasure for the Emperor; to the world shouting after a feeble Bishop-martyr or some pallid virgin, torn, beaten, and bleeding, " To the fire ! " or " To the boiling oil ! " but after the stupid and Imperial youth, fat and staggering in the long purple gown that made his bloated figure look like that of a woman, with dazed eyes, debauched face, and hair dropping liquid odours and crowned with roses, " Caesar hath spoken ; let us build altars, for he is a god ! " Although, if we are to believe Eusebius, the wise Emperor Aurelius was helped in his battles by a miracle performed to aid a legion of Christian soldiers, known thenceafter as the " Thundering Legion," he was to the very last a bitter foe and persecutor of those despised sectaries. Gifted with every human virtue, upright, chaste, magnanimous, humane, po- lished, learned, thoroughly master of himself, he was too sincere a Stoic, and perhaps too proud of his philosophy, to dream of inquiring into the truth of that which had sprung up in a far distant part of his wide dominions, and which seemed to him to be a curious compound of stupidity and obstinacy. The indwelling Spirit that the Christians claimed, the relationship to the All-Mover — if sons, then heirs, heirs of the king- dom of God — must have seemed to him mere bab- blement, and the new teaching one easily to be stamped out. What, to him, was the new kingdom of which they preached ? His reward he made and had ; it was his own virtuoug life — " For virtue only, of all human things, Takes her reward not from the hands of others : Virtue herself rewards the toils of Virtue." 22 HALF-LENGTH PORLRALTS. And so he passes from the stage — mocked by his wife, who prefers to wisdom and virtue the companion- ship of the boatman and the gladiator, and set in a satiric light by his son and successor, upon whose education he had bestowed such pains — who himself fought in the arena, and dyed his purple with the blood of more than six hundred victims slain by his own hand, who revelled in the society of the worst of women, and died, after an atrocious tyranny of thirteen years , by the poison of a mistress whom he had himself marked down for slaughter ! But, in spite of his own j)erse- cutions, and of his surroundings in Faustina and Commodus, the life of a second Antonine teaches noble things. It was a proud attempt of man to live nobly and perfectly unassisted by reward in this world or a hope in the next ; it was an endeavour to elevate nature, or the flesh as distinct from the spirit, into the belief that it was in itself strong enough. to combat the spiritual evil which, unacknowledged by this Imperial philosopher, lies ever around us and about us. Man fought alone ; if he failed miserably, yet he fought nobly. The whole wide Empire, as well it might, mourned the death of this good monarch, and with one voice raised him to the gods. Chapter III. MORE THAN A PROPHET. i N English mother nursing an English boy, — oval-faced, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, with a high forehead, — a large, round, capable head, — short, curly, flaxen hair, — an innocent, soft, yet bold and merry expression, — not without self and petulance, but full of good- nature, — a high type of a dominant yet merciful race, — cries out to him, half in terror, half in threat, when she watches his dangerous tricks, " Oh you young Turk ! " It is ten to one whether she knows that she is repeating a saying as old as the Crusades, when Turkish mothers used to frighten their babes with the name of Richard, and by telling them that the "Franks" were coming, — that terrible horde which, none knew why, wasted the lands and threw themselves against the faith of Islam. The abusive appellation of a Turk and the sign of the " Saracen's Head " are perhaps all that remain among the people of the memory of the great struggle of Christianity to crush out of existence its most potent rival, Maho- metanism. 24 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. And who was Mahomet? Was he an impostor, a fanatic, an anti-Christ, a devil, a false mahound ? or a prophet, — a man raised up by God, and an agent of His ? We shall' endeavour to answer this in our present essay and its sequel. Take down a map of the world upon Mercator's Projection, and what will you see? Very nearly half of it may be marked out as following the religion of Mahomet. Upon the whole, not above a fifth of it can be said to hold to the faith of Christ. This is only in geographical space, ^n force, not in nose counting — " But I count the grey barbarian lower than the Christian child. " Christianity has by far the best of it, and is gaining every day, while other faiths are growing pale beside it. The work of the world is done by Christians, or is the result of Christian thought and scholarship. We owe little to Buddha or to Mahomet. Their systems have a terrible tendency to develope into nothing; our system grows. The very men who dispute with and oppose Christianity owe to its divine armoury the choicest of their weapons, and take their best impulses from its spirit. By taking the Democratic view of Mr. Jeremy Bentham, that " everybody should count for one, and nobody should count for more than one," presuming that the great and good Pascal and Newton, the wise Wellington and forcible Napoleon are only one each, the Mahometans for years outnumbered the Chris- tians. M. Bayle was the first to do justice to Maho- met, and in his excellent dictionary, two hundred years ago, he wrote as follo\^rs : — " We may say that, MORE THAN A PROPHET. 25 if we divide the known countries of the earth into thirty equal parts, five of them are Christian, six Mahometan, and nineteen Pagan. Tlius," he adds, " the Mahometan religion is of much larger extent than the Christian ; for it exceeds it by one-thirtieth part of the world, which is a very considerable part." And a very serious reflection this gives rise to. Take Mr. Bright's or Mr. Bentham's view of appealing to the many, with that profound folly which rogues try to believe in, vox populi, vox Dei (when the people speaks, God speaks), and what will be the result ? Six and five make eleven ; and the two purest faiths which the world has ever seen, the two most largely human and most kind, would be voted out of exist- ence ! Nineteen Pagans to eleven of the two purer faiths ! Or take Christianity as against a human, not a divine faith, — that of the Turks, — and it would be extinguished by six to five, — a large majority in thousands or millions. No, we will not hold always with big numbers. Wisdom, goodness, experience, abihty, and age are weighty and full of worth. Again, would we be governed by babes ? Are our thoughts, deeds, and years nothing, now the greater part of the world, is young, not young only in ideal, but made up of the young and untaught ? Since Bayle's time, the settlement of America, the wonderful increase in British and other Christian States, the decrease caused by tyranny and ignorance in Pagan and Mahometan States, the planting of Austraha, New Zealand, and the winning to a pro- spective Christianity of all the islands in the South Sea, the almost universal but slow advance of the piuch-abused missionary, and the weight of mind 26 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. and — to Pagans and else — the ardent favour of God towards Christianity, in spite of its troubles and divisions (if indeed they are not proofs of His favour), have redressed the balance; but still the faith of Mahomet is that of millions ; and of all creeds it is, next to our own, and that of the Jews, the most vital and important. And he who preached it was a most extraordinary man. " Of all the revolutions which have had a per- manent influence on the civil history of mankind," says Hallam, " none could so little be anticipated by human prudence as that effected by the religion of the Arabs." For, look at Arabia, a corner piece of earth, a gusset between two continents, out of the way of the traffic of mankind, a robe of common coarse frieze with golden fringe, say fanciful geo- graphers, — for all its edges are fertile, while its inner parts are full of horrid deserts, — Arabia the stony, Arabia the deserted, are fit names for this curious land, which has yet been the nurse of religions. Here, for forty years, saving his countrymen from the horrid t)T:anny of the Pharaohs, and the worse lust and luxury of the Egyptians, Moses led the tribes of Israel, and while he matured his plansj murmured at the Lord. For him, therefore, there was but a Pisgah view of that beautiful land his people were to possess ; and dying, the prophet stretched forth his hands, and strained his failing vision to look at that place of rest he never should entet. He gave his soul to God ; and the devil contended for his body, from which obscure passage we gather deviously that his body was consumed, or his place of sepulture hidden, lest his relics should afterwards be worshipped. The MORE THAN A PROPHET. 27 Jews entered the land and possessed it, drove out multifold idolatries, and sat down for many years, until the given time when a greater than Moses arose, and planted the Universal Faith which is destined to occupy the world. Many years elapsed — a third of the age of the world, two thousand one hundred years — before the same Arabia witnessed another prophet, equal in many points to Moses, and having a far greater immediate effect : this was Mahomet. This man, born 570 years after Christ, promulgated a religion which grew faster than his, and which, though now declining, still holds one hundred mil- lions in its thrall. It has given a moral life to millions, and in judging it we must use all charity, and not place ourselves on the moral and intellectual eminence which we undoubtedly possess. In fact, we must not judge Mahomet by our standard arid our time, but by his standard and his time ; we shall see then that he proceeded not from bad to worse, but from good to better. Arabia at the time of the prophet's birth was divided into many small States, "looking up perhaps to Mecca,'' says Hallam, " as the capital of their nation and the chief place of their religious worship." Christianity, which had not been preserved pure by the discovery of printing, had beconie corrupt enough in Egypt, Abyssinia, and in Asia Minor. What Paganism, meaning thereby the remains of Grecian and Roman mythology, there was, was clouded and gross. Judaism, still extant, was full of superstitions, and could make no headway against the prevalent fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, idolaters, believers in Baal and Moloch, sacrifiers of children, and generally blind image-worshippers. This 28 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. man, poor, a camel-driver or tender, was of great per- sonal beauty, and of a sweet temper and religious soul. He was not ignorant of Christ or of His doctrines ; but he seems, says an acute historian, never to have read any of the New Testament, but rather to have heard Christianity preached from apocryphal and childish imitations of the Gospels. He found what Christians he knew tending towards the worship of Mary, and he admits the miraculous conception, but not the pre- existence and divine nature of Christ. He seems to have gone as far as those Pharisees of whom Jesus asked, " What think ye of Christ ? whose son is he ? They say unto him, The son of David ; " to which come the crushing answer and quotation, " How then doth David in spirit (i. e. by the inspiration of God) call him Lord, saying. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool ? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son ? " Beyond this, the young Arabian had undoubtedly heard the Old Testament, had loved and venerated the characters of Moses, of Abraham, and of David, and had thought out in some fashion the universal brother- hood of man. He was devout, and always under an awful sense of the power, might, and majesty of God ; and to this he added a wide and deep love of the poor and suffering. He found Arabia weak and poor, torn to pieces, unable to cohere ; the people as separate from each other as the sands of their own deserts. They were true sons of Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him. Lust and impurity, superstition, drunkenness, and gluttony reigned everywhere ; but Mahomet, like MORE THAN A PROPHET. 29 Moses, held his peace, while he felt his heart burn within him. He did not speak until he was past forty years of age, therein again resembling Moses. He had, when he was twenty-five, abandoned his camel-driving, and married a yvealthy widow, Kadi- chah, or Kadija, who seems to have had great ascend- ancy over him, and to have directed him in his studies. Much of his time about his fortieth year was spent in meditation and prayer at a cave near Mecca, with two or three companions, a Jew, a Jacobite, and a Nes- torian Christian, by whose aid it is said he composed the Koran, called amongst us for ages the Alcoran {al-koran, the book), and arranged a religion to which he gave the name of Islam, as indicating sub- mission to God, including also the meaning of sal- vation. When this scheme was ready he declared his mission ; and it is upon the simplicity of the scheme that we are inclined, with Bayle, to acquit him of rogueiy. " A deceiver," says Bayle, speaking of the Koran, "would have arranged his doctrines better; his book is a chaos of disjointed thoughts ; a comedian would have been more polite. And," adds Bayle, with his peculiar sneer, " let none say that the devil would never have persuaded him to oppose idolatry, nor to have recommended so much the love of God and of virtue, for this proves too much, since thence we might conclude that the devil was not his in- strument." He was facetus moribus^ voce suavi, of a pleasant disposition, a sweet voice, receiving and paying visits regularly, bestowing gifts on the poor, honouring the great, conversing with young men, never sending away a petitioner repulsed, but always re- ceiving him courteously. And yet he won few. ~ At 30 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. the age of forty he publicly called himself the Prophet and Apostle of God, and proclaimed war against idolatry. " There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet ;" that was his text, and it was listened to but by eight followers, including his wife Kadichah ! , This small number, and the danger he was in among a superstitious people, whose faiths he had violently attacked, made him betake himself to the usual ma- chinery of priestcraft. He had visions. He passed in one night, he said, to the highest heavens, upon the back of a beautiful ass — al-borak. There he saw the angel Gabriel, and the succession of God's greater prophets, rising one above the other in dignity, — Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus ; and all these acknowledged his superiority. Still people kept aloof, and a powerful party was raised against him ; to crush which Ali, his devoted servant, gave him a hint, afterwards acted upon. " O Prophet," cried Ali, when from among his little band he sought a help- mate and a lieutenant, " I am the man. Wlioever rises against me, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his beUy. O Prophet, I will be thy vizier !" Here is, then, the keystone of the early history of this faith. The mild and loving Jesus had rebuked Peter, — " Put up thy sword;" the self-appointed prophet resorted to it. Henceforth those people who had refused to accept the faith for which Christ and His Apostles had died in love and meekness, were to. accept a far inferior creed, dashed into their very teeth with the sword-hilt, promulgated by fire and by torture, and which, like fire or the plague, was to overrun the world, a wonder and a sign of ear, to overset the golden candlesticks of Asia, to MORE THAN A PROPHET. 31 wipe out the faith of the Cross from the top of Africa, Egypt, and part of Asia; to drive it up into the moun- tains in the only hold it had taken north of its birth- place ; to break down two mighty empires ; to absorb that of the Romans, great even in its decay ; to turn the cathedral of Holy Wisdom, Saint Sophia, into a mosque ; and to build castles and mosques upon the yery birthplace of Christ, where even now the Chris- tian worships on sufferance, and the " dog of a Turk" spreads his carpet and cries his mournful prayer. In the days of political economy, this is very wonderful indeed. When, however, Ali cried out in true Turkish spirit, his prophet was in bad case. All were against him save a little band, ready enough to turn to ; he was forced to quit Mecca and fly to Medina, and this Hegira, flight, or persecution, was henceforth the era of the Mahometan time. Thence they date ; July i6th, 622 A.D., is the beginning of their year One. Hence- forward the race between the true and false faith was to be a rapid one. Mahomet is behind by six hun- dred years, but he runs fast. " No longer," cried the prophet, " will I preach by the Word, but by the Sword;!' and the most potent of his neighbours, the rich and influential Jews, first felt his wrath in shocking cruelties. Their towns were sacked, and their women, money, and houses given to the prophet. When Ali wanted force, the prophet had visions, and gave out the disjointed chapters of his Koran ; hundreds flocked to his standard for reward and wealth. They who died in his cause went straight to heaven, where they were tended by houris, perpetually beautiful, for ever virgins, though their wives. In the midst of this 32 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. sensual paradise, surrounded by cooling rivers which sparkled in the softened light, wines which were the very nectar of the gods, fruits which were luscious, juicy, and refreshing, music which called the soul to higher life, the parched and dried Arab, whose very skin was cracked with the burning sun, whose eyes ached with the hot sand, and whose soul had withered within him as he longed for the distant and brackish desert well, was to pass an eternity of reward in the midst of brides beautiful beyond conception. But this reward was only to be gained by devotion to the Prophet. What wonder then that the paradise of Christians — absorption in obedience to God — paled before such promises ? Crowds came around the victorious pro- phet, and the whole of Arabia fell before him. His wife Kadichah, by whom he had six children, — all of whom, except Fatima, the wife of his suc- cessor, Ali, died before him, — had died, and he him- self, whilst preaching continence, quite unusual with Eastern nations, married Ayesha (and indeed on the whole took to himself about sixteen wives), and became coarser and more cruel. By the aid of his son-in-law, lieutenant, and successor, Ali, by far the ablest of his followers, he extended his victories into Syria, and, after many, successes, was there slain by poison by a Jewish woman, after taking the city of Chaibar. This woman, either to revenge her country- women, or to try whether the prophet was really a holy man, poisoned a lamb, which, by the way, though roasted whole, warned the prophet of the poison. Not taking this warning, he died in the sixty-second year of his age, and the ninth after his celebrated flight and the year of salvation, 632. Nine years ! MORE THAN A PROPHET. 33 and what a deal had been done ; what had been planted ; what fruit was to be borne. So great was the belief in the impostor — for such he had become — that his followers were frantic, believing that he never could die. The great and wise Abubeker reproached them. "Fools!" he cried, "is it Mahomet or the God of Mahomet that ye worship ? The apostle was but a man like ourselves, and hath died like a man ; but the God of Mahomet liveth for ever, and his years shall not fail." This address recalled faith and fanaticism ; and the successors of Mahomet, younger and more fierce than he, did what he could not have done. The Roman and the Persian empires, engaged in war, were viewed as fair game by the ambitious warriors. In the very first year they were attacked. Seven years (632 — 639) sufficed to bring the whole of Syria to the feet of Omar ; and while he returned thanks to God for his victories, his lieutenant announced to him the conquest of Egypt. From 647 to 698 the Saracens fought their way all along Africa, and penetrated into Persia and India. They ruled over the then feeble north of Africa, and sat down opposite the Gothic king- dom of Spain, still owning a shadow of fealty to the Roman emperor. , In 7 10 the Standard of the Crescent was carried into Spain. The Moors overran it ; and the name of the prophet was invoked, as Hallam has it, under the very shadow of the Pyrenees. Well might Christian bishops tremble and weep over their fallen altars and slain flocks ! Well might they pray, and call aloud " To arms ! " The Crescent of a false prophet was gaining the mastery over the Cross of Christ ! Chapter IV. MORE THAN A PROPHET (Continued). i WO hundred years ago there must have been those who feared proselytizing from Turkeydom, for a grave did scholar published a book called "A Caveat against Reading the Koran ;" although we confess that we are ignorant enough to suppose there, was little cause for the warning. Yet, if we believe the Turks, the Koran is the most delightful book in the world. Its very words are music; its verses are sweetness itself; its wisdom is ineffable; and its language is so excellent, that no one can ever hope to equal, much less surpass it. So far as we can gather, Eastern scholars are not disinclined to believe much of this. There is a force, a mastery of words, a music, and an earnestness about the sacred book, which render it enchanting to the student. There is little doubt that Mahomet was a dreamer, an enthusiast, and a poet. Whoso knows no other language than his own must needs be a master of that, if he wishes to make others MORE THAN A PROPHET. 35 listen to him. There are verses and chapters of the Koran to which pious Mahometans are never tired of Hstening ; and Mahomet, ignorant of all tongues save ■ the Arabic, bent that to his will with a musical cadence, a power, a pathos, and a poetry, which make its words winged words, and its mystic sentences full of a won- derful and philosophical hidden meaning. But here its merit ends. If you read it only once, said Goethe, you are disgusted with its nonsense ; if you pursue your study you get enchapted. But it did not enchant Voltaire, who very truly describes the book as a farrago of nonsense without a beginning or ' an end, and with no cohesion. The commands of Mahomet were issued as he wanted them, and his chapters are of all lengths, some long and dreary, some as short as one verse of the Bible. What good there is in the book is chiefly from the old Testa- ment ; for Christianity is not more to be traced through its forerunner, Judaism, than is Mahometan- ism. When reading it, the Christian sees that the saying of the learned Lenormant is quite true, — that all ancient history is but a preparation for Christ, all modem history but the result and consequence, either affirmatory or opponent, of His rule and coming. If we compare the silly mixture of really eloquent' reli- gious feeling and weak and selfish assertion in the Koran with the Old or New Testament, then indeed the difference between manufacture and revelation is sufficiently apparent. But Mahomet had much less to do with his book as it stands than the Apostles with theirs ; his utterances on parchment, thin pieces of wood, leaves of old books, &c., were read out to his followers and gathered up at haphazard. It is doubt- D 2 36 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. ful whether the middle chapters are not the beginning of the work ; but that matters little. It is full of repeti- tion and reiteration ; its pith, the law and command- ments, could be compressed into one chapter ; and yet the veneration in which the work is held equals if not surpasses that of our most zealous Christians for the Bible. Its sentences are inscribed on lintels and doorways, on the sword of the soldier and the phylac- tery of the priest, on the seal of the Sultan and the mark of the merchant. The dogmatic utterance of its texts will stop a dis- pute and heal a quarrel, will convince an infidel, and calm the dying moments of the Moslem. The Mahometans know not only how many chapters, but how many words there are in the book, what is the centre verse and the centre letter, how many times each letter is repeated and so on. Many weary lives have been spent over this book, many wise brains and good hearts have been worn out in studying its precepts, never dreaming that the awful denunciation of those who go astray had come even upon them, and that God had given them a strong delusion, so that they should believe a lie. On the whole, the Koran may be roughly stated to be as large as our " Biblia," both old and new. Sale's translation of the Koran is reprinted in a volume of royal 8vo, as large as the " Quarterly Review," of 470 pages, part of which is taken up by notes. It contains 114 chapters, the smallest of which, entitled " Assistance," (ex.,) contains three verses ; and the longest, chap, ii., entitled " The Cow," 286 verses. The first chapter is called the Preface or Introduction ; but is, in reality, a prayer. MORE THAN A PROPHET. 37 which is held in great veneration by believers, who consider it to be the quintessence of the Koran. They repeat it as we do our Lord's Prayer; and indeed very beautiful it is. , " Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures, the Most Merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment, We do worship Thee, and of Thee do we beg our help. Oh guide us in the right way, — in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious ; and keep us from the paths of those with whom Thou art angry, and of those who go astray." The second chapter is, as above stated, called " The Cow," and was revealed at Mecca. It com- mences with the letters A. L. M., with which, indeed, many another sAra, or chapter, begins ; and these are presumed to mean a sacred invocation, " In the name of the Most Merciful God," as we say, " In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," and the Jews, " In the name of the Most High." This auspi- catory form is said to be of Divine origin, no less than the chapter itself. Twenty-nine chapters thus commence, or in a nearly similar manner ; but what the letters mean is doubtful. Some read A. L. M. Amar li Mohammed (at the command of Mahomet) ; others, Allah latif magid (God is gracious, and to be glorified). But the chief merit of all the chapters, and of the Koran itself, is its distinct declaration of Monotheism, which Mr. Deutsch, in his admirable article on " Islam," in the " Quarterly Review," re- cognizes as the chief point of proof that the whole of the Koran comes, coloured by the poetic mind of the prophet, from Judaism through the Talmud. This assertion of the Oneness of God was directed, not 38 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. only against the idolatrous Arabians, — though cer- tainly against them chiefly, — but against the corrupt Jews and the Eastern Christians, who had already debated the propriety of adding the Virgin Mary as a fourth person to the Trinity. " God is One^' says the prophet; " He doth not beget, nor is He begotten." Jesus he recognizes, and indeed ejnbodies some of His teaching ; but he allows Him only the rank of a prophet. Sin he abhors ; drunkenness, theft, adul- tery, murder, are all to be punished with death. Nor was the prophet guilty, as some think him, of putting an easy and luxurious faith before the people. He by no means led them from better to worse, but from worse to better. Woman was recognized and ho- noured, polygamy restrained ; no Mussulman might have more than four wives ; and each of these had her rights, her dowry, her proper allowance, if put away, and each must be equally and justly treated by the husband. Indeed, a just Mahometan must find that, instead of greater liberty, he has greater and mcirt constant duties than a monogamist ; and prac- tically, of course, the result is that the Turks have only one wife. There are not, even in polygamous countries, enough women for the unnatural and de- basing law, the effects of which the prophet tried to curtail, but which the head of the " Mormon " delu- sion in America promulgated. Whatever Mahomet was, he was an angel of light and wisdom compared with Brigham Young. Only very ignorant people would compare them, as we have seen some attempt to do. There is only one point upon which they touch, and upon this they essentially differ. In a poly- gamous or many-wived people Mahomet restrained MORE THAN A PROPHET. 39 the indulgence of his followers, and made them just to their wives ; in a one-wived Christian community, Young — for the followers of Joe Smith deny that that person ever held the doctrine— bid for popularity by appealing to the lusts of the men, and by degrading woman, whereas the Turk elevated her. Thus, in the Koran, there are several pages devoted to her rights; woman is to be respected. In chap, iv., entitled "Woman," and revealed at Mecca, the prophet cries out, — "In the name of our most mer- ciful God, listen, oh men, and fear your Lord, who created you out of one man, and out of him created his wife, and from them hath multiplied both men and women. Dread God, by whom ye beseech one another, and respect and venerate woman, who has brought you forth ; for lo, God beholds you ! " In the same chapter man is told that if he cannot act equitably and justly to two or three wives, to take one only ; that woman is to inherit with man, — that is, brother and sister are heirs ; and this abrogated an unjust law of the Arabs, by which man claimed all ; women are to be treated justly, and their property is . to be respected, nor are they to be wronged. " Whoso doeth this, God shall lead him into gardens with sweet flowing rivers ; but whoso doeth it not, and wrongs woman, God shall cast him into hell fire for ever, where he shall suffer a shameful punishment." Women are enjoined to be chaste. She who sells her love for money, is to be witnessed against by force, and to be shut up for life ; but if they repent, " let them alone, for God is of great kindness, and merciful." Women are to be protected, to be loved by their husbands, even as they are to love their husbands, but to be 40 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. subject to man, which is ordained of God. A man may not marry two sisters, his foster-sister, or his aunt ; indeed, the prohibited degrees are much the same as ours. If a wife is put away, she must be allowed, suf- ficient to live on ; and in all, man must endeavour to be just and merciful, for " God is knowing and wise ; He desireth to be merciful, and to make His religion light unto you ; for man was created weak, and subject to human appetites." This " illiterate prophet," as his own followers call him, who knew no language but his own, and had probably studied only the Old Testament of the Talmud, with a strong infusion of Christianity from some corrupt Eastern source, was indeed abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva — " Wise without rules, and without .learning learned." But he was a poet, heaven-gifted, if not inspired. Sometimes he sang, like Isaiah, of the glory and the greatness of God, in short sentences, commencing, according to Sale, with the word " Say " or " Declare," but which might more poetically be construed " Cry aloud." Thus to the idolatrous around him — and he reckoned the corrupt Christians, who bent their heads to pictures or rude statues, idolaters — he writes in one of his short chapters, which were wrung from him, as it were, prophetically, " Cry, cry aloud, oh unbelievers, and declare that I will not worship that which ye worship, nor will ye worship that which I worship. Neither do I bend down to that which ye bend to, nor do ye kneel to that which I kneel to. You have your religion, and truly I have my religion." The prophet stood alone at that time; for the powerful MORE THAN A PROPHET. 41 tribe of Koreish had ofifered him assistance if he would bend to their wooden deities, but he would not ; and ever, whether a helpless fugitive or in great power, he raised the cry of eternal truth against that stupid and degraded idolatry, which is at once the root and flower of untruth, which sooner or later saps true religion, be it ever so pure, which leads the heart from God, and takes it to the side of the Devil ; and which has destroyed more human souls than any other sin in the world. In the second chapter the prophet declares that a temptation to idolatry "is more grievous th^n to kill in the sacred months ;" which is actually, that idol worship is worse than, as we should say, " to slay a man on a Sunday." A slave who believes is better than the richest idolater ; if unrepented, the sin is unpardonable. The idolater " dishonours God the Mighty one, the All-seer, who ' is of infinite goodness /' and he shall be cast into hell fire for ever. There is nothing so apparent, open, and remarkable in the Koran as this intense and holy hatred of idolatry. It shines through the man as light shines through an alabaster lamp, and makes him pure, holy, and beautiful. And the call for prayer to Him who is above all, evidently comes not from feigning lips when he exalts his God, " who both heareth and knoweth, who spreadeth abroad His mercy, who has ordained the life to come, who sendeth down the rain when men have despaired thereof, and whose goodness is seen in His creation of heaven, and sea, and earth, and in the wondrous creatures with which He has filled them." Truly, we may say unto him, " Cry aloud, oh prophet, when you preach thus." ■ 42 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. The faith of this prophet— though he sorely tripped himself in the matter of wives — is essentially one of negation. He forbids wine entirely (chap, ii.), and under this name all intoxicants are included. Some would have it that what Mahomet forbids is abuse, not use, of these ; and others go so far as to say that wine includes coffee as well as other stimulants, tea, &c., and, prophetically, tobacco ; whUe the ordinary Turk sips his coffee and sherbet, and believes that tobacco and coffee will furnish a feast. The prophet forbids usury, enjoins industry, fasting and prayer, and, above all, personal cleanliness. The Turks are to worship towards the East (a custom forbidden, it seems to us, in the Psalms : " For promotion cometh neither from the East nor from the West, nor from the South, for God is the judge; he putteth down one, and setteth up another "), and are to pray at least five or seven times a day. As for charity towards the brotherhood, it is hardly enforced more in the Gospels than it is in the Koran, which, besides, breathes the Divine equality of man. In heaven, and before God, all are equal. The boatman who lives upon a scrap of fish and stale bread is, if virtuous, a better man than the Sultan; the slave of to-day may to-morrow command the armies of the faithful. This it was which elevated and inspired the smitten and degraded tribes and lifted them to' men ; this it was, with that grand hatred of idolatry, which took up the debased glutton who, drunk with wine and stuffed with meat offered to idols, bent before his painted doll, and lifted him out of. the mire of his lost life to worship God ; this it was which enabled the prophet's followers to overcome the armies of the greatest emperors, — to MORE THAN A PROPHET. 43 conquer and to elevate, while he conquered the people around, — and to contend on almost equal terms with Christianity itself for the sovereignty of the faiths of the world. The days of Mahometanism are now num- bered ; the dawn opens for a yet purer faith ; but for centuries — in the mercy and wisdom of God, who '• shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will "^- this faith has held its own. It has made many people upright, honest, pure, and simple ; it has repressed the greed of the rich, and made him listen to the cries of the poor ; it has carried about with it the concrete truths of the great Judaic faith, that faith which has yet its work to do in the chief of its descendants, the true sons of David ; and even by its opposition has urged the purer faith to become purer still. Surely the prophet raised up for the purpose of preaching this was a great man ; and in speaking of him for the last time, we may convey some trait of his character by repeating his prayer, the last chapter in his Koran, for help against the Devil, Eblis, — a per- sonal spirit, by the way, which this sceptical age will discredit : — " In the name of the Great God. Cry aloud and say I fly from men unto the Lord of Men, the King, the God of Men, that He may deHver my soul from the mischief of him who slyly withdraweth ; who is the whisperer of evil unto the hearts of men, yea unto devils and men." ^r^^ Chapter V. AN EARLY EXPLORER. i HEN Bruce came over from Africa, filling the ears of our grandmothers and great'' grandams with wonderful stories, some gentleman, ruder than the rest, led the conversation to the subject of the absence of musical instruments amongst the negroes, but added, that when Mr. Bruce was in the country " there was at least one liar (lyre) there." The story is worth remembering as an introduction to the book of one who is held to be the most unveracious of English travellers, our greatest " musical instrument," and to6 often held to be, like Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, a liar of the first magnitude ; but one who may not turn out, 40 have been the mendacious man he is represented,. As a study of language, of history, of the manners of a people, and a picture of the man, the curious old book is yroxth reading. But first it is but fair to say a few words about travellers — a most useful and much abused class. The less a man knows the more preju- diced he is J the less expanded his understanding, the more contracted his belief He who knows little has AN EARLY EXPLORER. 45 often a narrow mind, because he refuses to believe that which he cannot comprehend. What we fancy we knctw we readily believe ; hence all travellers in a nation's ignorant state are very ill-used. When we grow more learned we become more polite and credu- lous. Bruce, whose every word has proved true, has been called and was received as a universal liar. Dr. Livingstone, on the contrary, was believed; and even M. Du Chaillu, whom some would regard as an exaggerator, found the best and most learned amongst us were his friends and believers. Moreover, no doubt travellers do exaggerate ; often telling a story, they multiply and magnify. Exaggeration is the defect of all the world ; and in the East the imagi- nation seems to expand with the heat of the sun. Add to this, that travellers are not content, as every good and true man should be, with telling us just merely what they themselves saw, just observing with their own eyes and carefully noting, but they relate other stories that- they heard ; hence half or three- quarters of Sir John Maundeville's lies. Then, again, they only see novel and strange things partially, as an Indian might truly describe a steam-engine, a gun, or an electric machine, and irhpress his hearers as much as the relation of any of the Gospel miracles ; but, being understood, these wonders melt into thin air. The ship moves, it is true, without sails or oars ; but the motive power is greater, that is all, and so on. This false medium will account for one-fourth of Sir John's lies ; and for the other fourth, deception on the part of- his hosts, and a love of the marvellous on his own, may fairly be credited. What we may give the poor dead knight credit for, who ventured into the) 46 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. wildest of strange lands soon after the Crusades had wrought the Turks into a rage with the outer world, is extreme bravery, an evident desire to tell the truth — in spite of some unaccountably strange stories, a wide charity, and a constant piety and prayerful trust in God, which carried him safely through every danger. Maundeville was bom at St. Alban's, at the close of the thirteenth century, and it was in 1327 that he ventured into strange lands, and began a travel that has rendered him famous. His journeys were through France and Italy, and thence to Palestine, where he joined the army of the Infidels, and then for some time served in Egypt under the Soudan (Sultan) ; then he went to Persia, India, and Southern China, under the government of the Khan of Cathay, of whom we hear some wonderful stories. He resided for three years at the city of Cambalu, now called Peking, and wandered over a large part of Asia. After being absent from his native land for about thirty-three years he returned to England, and wrote a narrative of his travels, which he dedicated to Edward III. Not being able to remain in England, but being still pricked by roving desires, he again went abroad, and died at Lifege, on the 17th of November, 1372, and was there buried, as his epitaph attests ; although there is, or was, a mural tablet in St. Alban's Abbey, bearing, in bad rhyme, witness to his celebrity, and claiming the honour of marking his resting-place. Maundeville's book is so wonderful and entertaining, that it at once sprang into popularity; and there remain more manuscripts of it than of any other work known, save and except the Bible. A manuscript AN EARLY EXPLORER. 47 belonging to the age of the author is in the Cottonian Collection of the British Museum. The first English edition was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, the son-in- law of Caxton, at Westminster, in 1499 ; but before that it had been translated into French, German, and Italian : and the best printed copy of all is . that of Petro de Comeno, of Milan, in 1840, which entitles the travels as very marvellous things (Maravigliose cosse del Cavaler Johanne da Mandavilla). And now to the book itself. The author starts with the reason of his travels : — " For als moche as the londe beyond the seye, that is to saye, the Holy Lond, that men called the Lond of Promys, Sionn, or of Beheste, passynge alle othere londes, is the moste worthi lond, most excellent and lady and sovereyn of all othere londes, and is blessed and halewed of the precyous body and bloude of oure Lord Jesu Crist, &c. ; and there it lykede him to become man, and worcke manie myracles and preche and teche the faythe and lawe of Cristone men unto his children ; and there it lykede him to suffre many reprevinges and scornes for us ; He that was Kyng of Hevene, of erthe, of see, and of all things, that beyn conteyned in terre * * therefore I, John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthie, determined to go fourard beyond seas and to see this wonderful land and describe it to my countrymen.'' That is the knight's purpose ; but at the bottom of this is the notion that Christians should take away the land from the foul clutches of the Paynims ; a notion which all religious men in the world at that time entertained, and many hold still, and which will be held till the time comes, and it is not now far distant, when the Turk shall be 48 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. hurled from Europe back into Asia, and shall be driven away from the beautiful lands which he has so long encumbered, and which many years ago, by fouL cruelty and hard fighting, he took from the misguided and quarrelsome Christians. Sir John Maundeville therefore sets forth, crossing over to France, and performing a kind of overland passage through Hungary to Constantinople, where the Roman Emperor then sat, and proceeding to Egypt, where he engaged, like a fighting Englishman as he was, in the service of Melek Madason, Soudan (Sultan) of that country. Here he grew such a favourite, that the Sultan employed him against the Bedouyns (Bedouin Arabs), and " he woulde have maryed me fulle highely to a grete prince's doughter, gif that I would have forsaken my lawe and my beleve. But I thank God, that I had no wille to dou it, for nothing that he can behighten me." The Bedouin Arabs, restless children of the desert, were the same then as now; nearly six hundred years have not altered them ; but let us turn back to Constanti- nople and see how different things are. The successor to the Caesars sat upon the throne, appointing consuls, counting Scipios and Brutuses amongst his courtiers, but having built a church, not to Jupiter, but to " Se)Tite Sophia," and keeping in it their relics of idolatry, the true (?^ cross of Christ, His robe, crown of thorns, the nail, sponge, and reed, instruments of His passion. Soon the Turks were to come and sweep away this effete empire, and destroy this false relic and true idol worship. But our Englishman saw all these " merveylls," and thus describes them : " At Costantynoble is the cros of our Lord Jesu Crist, AN EARLY EXPLORER. 49 and the coate withouten semes, that is Tunica incon- sutilis, and the spounge and the rede, and on of the nayles, and some men trowen that halfe the cros be in Cipres." For the matter of that the people at Paris and at Rome laid claim to the true cross, and indeed there was enough wood to have built a three-decker, which, as Sir John says, is a "grete shame." As a curious narrative illustrating the legends concerning this gallows-tree, the accursed instrument of torture which Christians have so readily accepted as their symbol, we may extract Maundeville's account of that, of course spurious and forged, which St. Eleyne (Helen) placed at Constantinople. First, he says, that the men at Cypres (Cyprus) worshipped the cross of Dysinas, " the good thefe was honged on ; but alle men knoweth not that, and that is evylley don (wickedly done) for profyte of the ofFrynge, the priestes seye it is the cros of our Lorde." Naughty priests ! but how about this wonderful labarum which is the real article? " And yee (ye) schalle undirstonde that the cros of oure Lorde was made of 4 manere of trees a,s it is conteyned in this vers — ' In cruce fit Palma, Cedrus, Cypressus, Oliva. ' For that pece which went uprighte from the erthe to the Heved (Head) was of cypresse, and the pece which wente overthwart to the hondes was of palme, and the stocke whyche stode within the erthe, in the whyche was made the mortyse, was of cedre ; and the table above his hevede, whyche was a foote and a halfe long, was of olyve." So much for the priests' piece of manufacture, which should dispense at once with the festival of the Invention (in more senses than E 50 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. one) of the Holy Cross. One lie .being told — and this is undoubtedly the cross found by Helena, mother of Constantine — the priests have another to account for, the fourfold nature of a gallows, made of precious woods. The reader will find at once how contrary this is to Scripture. The priests said that the cross ivas thus made because the Jews thought that our Lord should have hanged upon the cross as long as the wood might last ! Therefore the foot was " of cedre, which may not in erthe or in watre rote." Therefore the centre was of cypress, " for thei trowed that the body of Crist should have stonken, and c)rpres is well smellynge.'' We need not go any further. But, however superstitious they were at Constantinople, they would have nothing to do with the Pope. Their patriarch was head of the Church with them; and when Pope John XXII., says Maunde- ville, sent to claim their obedience, they made this sensible answer, of which he gives the Latin, "We trowe wel thi power is grete upon thi owne subgettes. We may not suffre this highe Pryde : we ben not in purpos (we do not intend) to fuUfil this greyte covetyse (covetousness). Lord be with the : for oiire Lord is with us. Farewelle !" Could any answer have been more sensible ? After his departure from the Sultan of Egypt Sir John went to Jerusalem, thence to Surrye (Persia), and afterwards served, with four other knights, the Cham of Manci, either Birmah or China. He gives an ac- count of many wonders that he met with in his travels ; but it is very difficult to find where Maundeville exag- gerates, or )jil^ informants lie. Many of his moun- tainous exaggerations are to be traced to Pliny. Where AN EARLY EXPLORER. 51 he can, Sir John saves himself by a caveat, thus : " They seyn" (say), " or men tell me, but I have not seen." Yet even then there are some most alarming stories to be swallowed. Thus in cap. xix. he tells us of some marvels, all taken from Pliny and Strabo, of " men that hau but one eye, and that is in the mydylle of the front, and thei eaten no thing but raw flessche and raw fysshe." In another isle are those from whom Shakspere took his Anthropophagi, " folk of foul stature and of cursed kynde, that hau no hedes, and here eyen (eyes) ben in here scholderes." He tells also of men with horses' feet ; of pigmies ; of fellows who have such large feet that as they sleep in the sun they hold up one foot as a parasol ; of others that have such large upper lips, " that when thei slepen in the sonne thei keveren (cover) alle the face with that lippe ;" of fowls that have wool upon their backs and crowns on their heads ; of griphons that can carry away a knight and his horse to their nests, and feed on them; of the mountain of adamant (loadstone), which draws all the iron out of a ship so that it falls to pieces, or is drawn itself to the side of the moun- tain. It is very strange that Sir John adds that he passed this mountain and saw a forest of masts of ships, and an island of rotten old barks sticking to its side. So much has this stout Englishman impressed us with his fidelity, that we believe that he was here misled, and, passing at a distance, really fancied that he saw what he was told. Wild as were these stories, what he told and that which we now know to be true must have appeared just as strange to his ignorant countrymen. For in- stance, he tells of the burning of widows on the funeral 52 HALF-LENGTH PORTRATTS. piles of their husbands ; of the trees which bear wool (cotton), of which clothing is made ; of nuts as big as a man's head; of charmed serpents, of the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, and the rattle-snake. He tells us how the Egyptians keep their land full of fowls by artificially hatching thousands of eggs ; and how the Emperor of China used his gold for other pur- poses, and made money of paper, literally just our own bank-notes, against which, forty years ago, there was a violent prejudice, but which, according to Chevalier and Cobden, is the only philosophical currency. Greater credit is due to Maundeville for his dis- covery that the earth was round, not flat, which he boldly asserted ; and, curiously, his book was exa- mined by the Pope and allowed to pass, while, years afterwards, another Pope imprisoned Galileo for assert- ing the mere pendant to the story — the motion of this round ball round the sun. What Maundeville tells of the Holy Land is minutely correct ; and what he tells us of that wonderful monarch, Prester John, and his court, is to be believed, because it is borne out by Marco Polo. Here are Maundeville's reasons, and good ones too, for believing that the earth is round : — " As on the schip men goveme them by the lode stene, so dou schip men beyonde the parties be the stene, the which stene appereth not to us. And this stene, which is toward the northe, that we clepen the lode stene ne appereth not to them. For whiche cause men may well perceive that the londe and the see ben of rounde schapp and forme. For the partie of the firma- ment schewethe in o (one) contree that schewethe not in another contree. And men may well preven, be experience and sotyle (subtle) compassement of wytt, AN EARLY EXPLORER. 53 that if a man find passages be (by) schippes, that would go to serchen the world men mighte go be schippe alU about the world above and benethen." Our good English knight having satisfactorily proved the world to be spherical, and round like a ball, is rather puzzled to prove to his own satisfaction why the people beneath do not fall oif, because he knew nothing of attraction. But if his countrymen who have laughed at him had done nearly as much to diffuse knowledge as he has, we should not be so half-taught as we are. When Sir John returned to England he found his country, which he had left torn by civil war, united and powerful, under Edward III. ; and the same year in which he returned Englishmen gained unfading laurels at Cressy and Poictiers. He died, as we have said, in 1372, at Li^ge; and as he begged his readers to pray for him, so his epitaph begs those who pass over to pray for him who lies under. On the pillar in the fine old Abbey of St. Alban's was (we do not know if it be there now) an epitaph on this " brave-spirited man, whose tombe once stood in this roome," con- cluding with these quaint lines : — " His travailes being donne, he shines like the sun In Heavenly Canaan : To which blessed place, the Lord, of His grace, Bring us all, man after man. " What man will refuse his " Amen " to that pious and good wish ? Chapter VI. FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. [ARIOUS ages have, like various men, different opinions. When the Spartan taught his children to endure hardness, he helped to produce a race whereof a boy could, we are told, submit to the gnawing of a fox at his entrails without a groan ; while the result of education at Sybaris was that a soft and emasculate creature — a lower order of being rather than a man — complained that on his soft couch a rose leaf was doubled under him and hindered him from sleep. The age of Lycurgus, with its black broth and iron money, would not have been appreciated by the age of Pericles, with its voluptuous manners, its scents, and its tinseled Persian robes. Cato the censor would scarcely consort with Sporus — " Thot thing of silk, Sporus — that mere whipt curd of asses' milk." ChifEnchj of the back stairs, page to Charles II., would feel abashed if caught smuggling a singing boy and a French waiting-woman, into the palace where Cromwell had struggled and where Milton had prayed ; FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 55 and our own age, that of mock monks, chasubles, copes, croquet-playing curates, plaster-of-Paris churches, Madame Rachel, and private and illegitimate confes- sion, can hardly thoroughly understand that of Eras- mus and Hutten, of Melancthon and Luther. The last "world-cracking spirit" ( Weltfresser Geisi) we shall attempt to portray and to do justice to, if by any means we can. His was not an age of coloured photographs and French lithographs of the Virgin made to look like a mock-modest dame du comptoir; it was not an age of playing at anything, even at sham Templars, or sham Knights of St. John, or sham miracles, and sham pilgrimages to sham shrines undertaken in first-class carriages at so much per head. It is of a far different age, and of far different men, that we are about to write ; therefore, as contrast is pleasing, the reference may be more interesting. Christianity, which had been planted in Germany for nearly eight hundred years before Luther, found in the Germ.an mind and Teutonic imagination a ground which it well liked. Tacitus, in his " Germania," has told us of the German solidity, earnestness, charity, and of the freedom of the women, with the help they afforded the men. According to him, these somewhat sombre and slow but innocent natures had none of the gusts of passion or the wild hysterics of the Celts of Spain, France, and elsewhere. So, in after-times, their attachment to the Cross was not less deep because it did not flare and flicker. It remained in a solid glow, pure and fervent, long after Italian Chris- tianity had developed into Pope worship and Mario- latry, or had, at any rate amongst the leading men, brought out the germs of the cultus of either. S6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. The Bishops of Germany were, however, less learned and more warlike, and the priests and monks more simple and less knowing, when the poverty of ■the Papacy drove it to any and many expedients to get money. The luxury and debauchery of the Roman Court had made it poor. It had indulged not only in shows, mysteries, mistresses, and their hungry troops of relatives, but in expensive wars. It had long therefore, before Luther's time, in the days of Chaucer and other Catholic and unsuspected witnesses, re- sorted to drawing bills on futurity, framing a kind of moral post-obits, called indulgences, which were sold wholesale, the man who sold them having half the money, the Papal treasury pocketing the other half. It is but fair to explain that what the innocent and pure Catholic understands by an indulgence, and what the world believes such, to be, are very different. Still, the very name condemns indulgences, and their existence is based upon a lie. Christ has told us that, do all we can, we are unprofitable servants. The indulgence is based on the silly supposition that a man can do over and above his duty, and that such supererogatory works will, be credited to release him from purgatorial pains. Here, in fact, are two mat- ters with reference to which the Bible has not a word ; for purgatory is a fiction, for which there is no warrant. But what the world imagined an indul- gence was worse. Hodge and Jones could not be talked to about an indulgence for which they gave money, without immediately thinking that they could purchase immunity from sin and a right to sin. Granted that the Romish Church filled its treasury, under its infallible head, by such a sale, it did one of FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 57 two things : if it meant that the buyer of the indul- gence was to win the indulgence by prayer and good works, then it swindled him ; if it allowed him to sin for money paid down, then it blasphemously insulted God — and in either case it assumed an authority which no human being, or community of human beings, ever had — no, not even the Saviour when He walked this earth. These indulgences, often debated and always looked at askance by the logical Teutons and English, had brought the Germans, no less than ourselves, to a dangerous half-peace with Rome, when Martin Luther, Luder or Lother, as he sometimes signs himself, was born — A.D. 1483 — at Eisleben, in Saxony. His father was a poor miner, a worker of metals, his mother the daughter of a lawyer. The arms assumed, in imi- tation of the nobles, by the family, were a plain shield, with a hammer as cognizance, and no more. Luther was indeed to be the hammer which should strike at the palaces of popes, kings, and bishops. John Luther, pious and good, struggled on, often sending, in hard times, his children to beg bread. They cried, Fanem propter Deum — Bread, for God's sake — before their neighbours' houses. " I myself have been a poor mendicant, and have received bread at the doors of houses," says Luther ; but yet, when his father died, his property amounted to a house, two iron furnaces, and a thousand thalers in ready money. Luther's mother did not survive her husband a year, dying in 1531, and their son — who thanks God that he was "born of him by whose sweat and labour God has supported me and made me what I am, worm though I be" — has piously preserved their names for S8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. ever in the German marriage service — "Wilt thou, Hans (John), take GretM (Margaret) to be thy wedded wife," &c. Poor John and Margaret, pious, simple, and good people, loving and faithful to each other, could not educaite their children. Luther not only begged but sang in the streets for bread, until a widow, Dame Ursula Sweichard, took pity on the boy and sent him to school for four years. Then, in 1501, his father seems to have been able to support him, and he entered as a poor scholar, the University of Erfurt. Here somewhat of his generous nature and high soul came forth — poor lad, doomed to so hard a Ufe, so great a struggle, chosen by God for so high a destiny ! He absolutely essayed the arts, was a friend of Lucas Cranach the great artist, wore a dagger and sword, rode hunting, and in his chamber took to turning and learnt music, his chief consolation, next to the Bible, in life. " Music," he writes afterwards, " is the art of the Prophets — the only one which, like theology, can calm the soul and put the devil to flight." Altogether, the miner and iron-worker's son does not seem, when at his college, to have been very likely to overset the Pope, and to live in history, abused by one party as something wqrse than Judas Iscariot, and reverenced by another as next in apostolic influence— so the great Coleridge thinks him — to St. Paul. And it is a curious study to observe how thoroughly Luther studied and understood St. Paul, and how closely his earnest character resembled that of the great apostle of the Gentiles. Luther's gay or festive life did not last long, and certainly left no marks upon his severe, hard, and FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 59 somewhat heavy German face. There is no more warrant to say, as his enemies did and do, that he Mived viciously than there is to accuse Bunyan of wickedness because he was fond of playiiig at boys' games. Luther's chief dissipation, music, would not now shock a strict Wesleyan or a High Church curate. But the course of his life was to be suddenly changed. From an ordinary student he was to be- come an ascetic monk. In 1505 a fellow-student and he were walking in a forest, and a storm overtook them ; a flash of lightning struck the student dead. Luther cried out, amazed, and uttered a vow, not to God, but to St. Anne, to turn monk. The danger was soon over, but Luther, in spite of his father, who was opposed to monks, forgot not his vow, and on the 17th of July, 1505, after a pleasant party of music, entered a convent, taking with him only two worldly books, Plautus and Virgil. The young Frater Martinus was welcomed by the monks, as he had already some reputation for learning. He was be- wept by his mother and his relations. His old ' father, losing twenty florins' worth of work, came to see him and to beg him to forget his vow, but Luther persisted. He was a monk to the core — a thorough Papist J he loved the Church and her words, and looked on his confessor as a higher being. At first, unawakened, convent gloom made him cry out, " Oh, my sins, my sins t " " I don't understand thee," said Dr. Staupitz ; " thou art free from sins. Why art thou so sad, frater Martinel Temptation is good and ne- cessary for thee.'' Staupitz was right in his latter statement. Christ is the pardon for sin, and these very searchings of soul broke Luther's spiritual pride. 6o HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. The Holy Ghost, said Luther afterwards, referring to Staupitz, spoke in him. But at present there came no comfort. A young, despairing, hungry soul was crying out in the dark- ness, " My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?" when God was so near him ; and in the daylight, writing, " Ah, if dear St. Paul were now living, how I should like to hear from him what temptations he had !" ■ So ill was the young monk that they carried him to the infirmary, where he lay, alone and depressed in mind, "^while horrible spectres danced around me." His mind reverts to St. Paul, to his epistles, and to one phrase in that to the Romans — " therein is the righ- teousness 'of God revealed." " I hated that word," he says — justitia Dei. His heart rebelled against it, and he feared it ; it was at last to- be his comfort. A good study of Luther at this time, of his intense love of Romanism, of his sense of sin, of his struggles with a personal and very potential devil — to him almost visible — of his spiritual insight and weakness, his belief in witches, goblins, and night terrors, his desperate clinging to the Cross, his noble faith, his tears and weakness, will be found in his Tisckreden — Table-talk — admirably translated into English. It is to be found in Bohn's series, and is a curious book, worth thousands of books now issued. The reader will there see a simple monk, God's instrument to free the Bible for Germany at least — since we English had our reformers long before him — and to make modern life what it is. " To whom," writes the great Michelet of France, in 1835, " do I owe the Uberty of publishing what I am now inditing except to the liberator of modern thought? We cannot think, speak, or write FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 6r without being conscious of the immense benefit of this enfranchisement.'' We must own that in Germany- Romanism did still, in those days, produce good fruit. The monks jested at Luther's earnestness; still there were earnest and pious souls amongst them. Never- theless the system was wrong. The really sound believers formed the exception. To this struggling and earnest soul ensued many terrible days and nights of conflict. At last he deter- mined to journey into Italy, and to judge for himself at the fountain-head of faith. He took his journey at a critical period. Alexander VI., the Borgia who died by poison prepared by his own son for an eijemy, and who is accused of incest with his own daughter Lucretia — holding that chaste name by an irony of fate — was dead, but his works were abroad. " There was," says Michelet, " a characteristic of which the world has seldom or never presented another instance — a reasoning and scientific per- versity, a magnificent ostentation of crime — to sum up the whole, a priest-atheist, king, in his own belief, of the world." Julius II. succeeded Alexander. He was a warlike Pope, who would not enter the con- quered city Mirandola except through a breach made by his cannon in the walls. Luther found Italy full of luxury. He reproved the friars of one convent for eating meat on Fridays : the reproof nearly cost him his life. He found poisonings rife. "The Italians require you only to look into a glass to take away your life, and can deprive you of your senses by secret poisons," he wrote ; " the very air is deadly in Italy." And yet it was with an ecstatic joy that, a simple monk, he entered Rome, almost the only 62 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. one who believed the faith there professed. At the Porta del Popolo, he tells us, " I fell down on my knees as soon as I arrived, and raised my hands to heaven, and exclaimed, ' Hail, holy Rome, sanctified by holy martyrs and the blood they have shed here !'" Then he entered the convent of his order, saw all and believed all. But he saw too much. He saw the monks jeer at the altar, and the priests laugh at the people; he saw the officiating priests mock at the sacrament, and cry to the consecrated wafer, Pants es et pants manebis — Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain ; he saw lewdness and unchastity in holy places; and, after staying for a fortnight — too short a time — he fled again to his native Saxony, thoroughly disgusted. He afterwards said, repeating the words three times, " I would not have missed seeing Rome for a hundred thousand florins. I should else ever have been uneasy lest I might have done injustice to the Pope." But he returned as loyal a son of Rome as ever, eager only to reform her errors, and believing fully, as we shall see, in the wisdom and infallibility of the Pope — for he went even so far. He was to be driven into revolt by a new and scandalous sale of indul- gences ; and by other scenes which hurt his soul. Up to this time, and for a long time after the year 15 1 7, his allegiance was to Rome, be the numerous scandals against him in the Romanish lives of this great man what they may. But we know — all of us, at least, who have read and reflected — how bitter is the hatred of bigotry. When Philip Melancthon — a man of great learning, extreme gentleness and love, in fact the St. John of FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 63 the Reformation as regards love to his chief Luther — was d3ring, he thanked God chiefly for two things — (i) that he should sin no more, and that he (2) should escape the odium theologicum, the vexations and rage of divines. For forty years he had been, he said, pro- fessor of theology — Ego jam sum hie quadraginta annos — and yet he was never certain of not being kicked out in a week — per unam septimanam ! But if sweet, patient Melancthon — that dove of mildness — made the tnonks rage, what must Luther have done ? The lesson is valuable. To all our readers we say, Have the courage of your opinions ; say what you think ; you will strengthen others and abash hypo- crites, and you will not get one whit more hated than if a moderate and silent man. In fact, the opponents of any scheme hate the lukewarm more than the open enemy. Neither Erasmus, Hutten, nor Melanc- thon was beloved by the Papistical party, and neither escaped theologic hatred, but perhaps the scandals against them were somewhat milder than those against the great reformer. Thus it was asserted that . an incubus, sent by the devil, was Luther's father, and another scandal affirms that Luther was born of Megsera, one of the Furies sent from hell into Ger- many on purpose. It is but just to add that Father Mainbourg rejects this story. " He was not," says that writer, " born of an incubus, as some have written, to make him odious, but as other men are bom-^a thing never called in question till he became an heresiarch, which he might easily be without substi- tuting a devil in place of his father, John Luther, or disgracing his mother, Margaret Linderman, by so infamous a birth." But such are penalties of 64 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. those who desire to reform great and established abuses. We need scarcely follow him to his home ; readers who wish to study him will find in his " Table-talk " — a most interesting book, a picture of his mind. A few dates only will conclude our sketch. The princes of the German States never showed greater states- manship than in defending Luther and the reformers. The Landgrave of Hesse, for instance, caused Luther, Melancthon, Zwingle, and CEcolampadius to meet and settle something concerning the Real Presence, that stumbling-block of all who read and reflect upon Christ's plain and simple words; but the meeting came to nothing. In 1530 a Diet was convoked at Augsburg by Charles V., and there the Lutherans presented their Confession of Faith, drawn up by Melancthon, and approved by Luther. Protestantism — that is, the protests of Catholic Christians against the errors of Rome — was henceforth an accomplished fact. In r534 Luther completed his translation of the Bible, his greatest work, and the best gift ever given to Germany. Henceforward Luther lived at Wittembergj writing, preaching, gardening, until, 1546, he travelled to Eisleben to reconcile the Counts Mansfeld, whose subject he was. He restored peace, preached four times, drew up a bill of ecclesiastical discipline, and fell ill and died after he had written most fondly to his wife. Count Albrecht von Mans- feld, the Countess, and several friends were about his bed. " Reverend father," faltered his old friend, Dr. Justus Jonas, " do you die with a firm faith in the doctrine you have taught?" "Yes," said the bold, true voice, firmly and distinctly, and Luther fell asleep. Soon afterwards he became alarmingly pale, then cold. FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH 65 and then, drawing one long breath, he died. His last words were in Latin — " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth." So passed away one of the most important men of his own or any century. His labours not only touched Protestanism, but the Papacy itself; all reforms date from his great central reform. Ro- manism infinitely benefits from Luther's work — compare, for instance, English and German Romanism with that of Spain or Italy; he reformed without uprooting; he simply, as Sir Henry Wotton said, washed the face of religion, leaving it pure, beautiful, imd fair. He gave a free Bible to the Continent, and forced even Rome to imitate him in publishing a Bible for the people. He followed up his great work in spite of sickness, trial, fear of assassination, great poverty, hatred, scandal, and obloquy. That he complained and cried out is true ; but this was not more than a human being with a heart as brave, as tender, and as true as his might be excused for doing. He was a very great man, a true servant of God ; and whoso studies the times and the Gospel, and honours him not, must be indeed of a dull heart or of a preju- diced mind. Chapter VII. FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH { Continuea), • HEN the young Luther returned from Rome, as intensely Roman as before, owning Papal supremacy, and submitting to the Holy Father as to even an infallible guide, he was soon to test this infallibility. He was " a Romanist, if you please," to reverse Lord Denbigh's celebrated maxim, "but above all things a Christian." He had studied, read, and thought. He knew at this time Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew ; he had fed daily and nightly upon the New Testament, and had become inspired by the words of Christ, the philosopliy of St. John, the burning eloquence of St. Paul. No man could have had better literary masters ; hence his style is living, muscular, forcible, convincing. He had arrived at one conclusion — whatever was not in the Bible, or therefrom plainly to be deduced, was not of God. He submitted to the Papacy because he thought that the errors and sins then abounding in that Church were condemned by i^IGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 67 the head of it. He was to be rudely awakened, buL that such was his belief in 15 12 there is no doubt. Six years after this he wrote (in 1518) to Leo X., a superb pontiff immersed in patronizing literature and the arts, " I throw myself at your feet. Holy Father, prostrate ; call or recall me, approve or condemn me as you will : I acknowledgey our voice as the voice of Christ, who presides and speaks in your person." Had Rome had the intellect of which she boasts, she would have attached this simple and most earnest monk to her. In 1512 Luther's reputation was so great that he was made Doctor of Divinity, the Elector of Saxony bearing his expenses. His doctorate was granted with some splendour. In his own order — that of the Augustine or Austin Friars — he was raised to the rank of Provincial Vicar of Misnia and Thuringia, and entered on his office with zeal, cleansing the monastic houses, and everywhere upholding piety and discipline, and here he remained until 1517, when Leo X., to get money, authorized by a Papal- Bull the sale of indul- gences, of which we have spoken in our first article. Under the most dulcet charity alone could such a step have been defended. Granted that what " Infallibility" meant by such instruments was not what the buyers meant, still France, Poland, and Spain had borne witness, in the time of Pope Julius II., to the evils always brought about by such instruments ; and, as it happened, the Archbishop of Magdeburg appointed one of the worst possible agents for the sale of these papers — one Tetzel, probably an atheist, externally a low, humorous mountebank of a Dominican monk, who sold these cures for dishonest souls like so much F 2 68 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. butchers' meat in open market. " Come,'' he cried, " buy, buy, buy ! Directly your money rattles in my box the Pope will free your soul from sin ; or, if you buy it for your dead father and mother, their souls will be freed from purgatory, or hell itself, and fly at once to heaven." He mixed profane and inde- cent stories, gross buffoonery and quackery, with his • harangues. The peasants and burghers took their cue from him; some of Luther's penitents threw off all restraint. Was not the Pope the head? Had not they bought a free, commission for sin, and free pardon for past and prospective sin ? Sitting in his confes- sional, the earnest monk, Luther, saw the world sliding away from under his feet — saw the towns getting worse, the peasants ready to rise in open re- bellion, vice in the ascendant. Here again Luther acted well ; he at once appealed to the Bishop of Magdeburg, to his own superior, Staupitz, and to his people. The bishop was silent, but Staupitz helped him. The people were amazed when Dr. Luther drew up ninety-five theses, setting forth the true nature of indulgences. The chief of these were that they only relieved the penitent from the canonical penalties in- flicted by the Church ; that these were powerless over sin, and could not be applied to the dead ; that real penitence and contrition of heart would obtain pardon without any indulgences ; that the true treasures and power of the Church were to be found only in the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit ; finally, that, " if indulgences were of any avail, they should be given to the poor." Then he exposed the follies and avarice of the extortionate quaestors, and the corrup- tions such extortions led to. To us who have had FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 69 English liberty and the Bible for nearly four centuries, these great principles may seem stale and trite ; we can hardly conceive how any ever doubted them. But at that time the whole of Europe was in the dark. Victor Hugo points to the besotted and bloody French Convention— under whose rule almost every French- man in an agony of fear informed against his fellow, and by whose orders children were guillotined and whole herds of defenceless men and women shot down — as the most tremendous spectacle, the Hima- laya, , as he calls it, of human grandeur. To us Paul before Felix, or Luther, alone, poor, unfriended, nailing his theses to the church door of Wittemberg, is infinitely more grand. In Luther standing alone, affirming what he felt, but what the whole of the powers of Europe denied, we see indeed a true Titan, a Samson pulling down the pillars of the Philistines — ' ' The solitary monk that shook the world. " Then, too, mark Luther's faith. " If God be with me," he writes, "who shall be against me?" And again, brought before judges and princes, alone, be- friended he hardly knew how, he refuses to retract, and cries, " Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." The Truth that was in him leapt out and conquered. Tetzel and the Dominicans trembled with rage when they saw Luther's theses. The presses of Germany multiplied them by thousands, but Tetzel burnt whole heaps of thejm publicly, and consigned the writer to the infernal regions. Luther was summoned to recant, but refused ; he was then ordered to Rome, but was 70 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. prevented from going ; and cited to Worms to be tried by the Council, he was begged by his friends, who had risen round him, not to go. Pointing to the high-gabled roofs of the old German houses, the Reformer cried, "Were every tile on those roofs a separate devil, and stood in my way, I would go ! " He went, was jeered at, cajoled, flattered, but stood firm. He saw what the Papal party wanted, and that there could be no peace with Rome. But mysteriously God was with him, and "suffered no man to do him hurt ; " as he returned under a free pass at the hazard of his life, he was carried away by a party of armed horsemen in masks, who took him to the lonely castle of Wartburg, which frowned from a high mountain. The band and captain and the masked men were instruments of the Elector of Saxony to protect the solitary monk. It was in this friendly prison that Luther did much of his life work. He saw now clearly what that was. He broke away from the old bonds, and wrote against clerical celibacy, monastic vows, auricular confession, and absolution, also against 'prayers for the dead. To object to each of these was to strike at the most che- rished powers of the priests. Luther's writings spread like light over Germany; the religious disputed, con- futed, and still published them. Monks left their monas- teries, nuns their convents, and married. The Austin Friars of Wittemberg abolished the mass. There was to be a new light and life. Carlostadt, hot-headed personage, a disciple of Luther, broke the images in the churches, and fulminated against idolatry. Philip Melancthon would no longer be paid for his ministry, and worked in a baker's shop. Luther regretted and FIGHTING FOR THE FAI2H. 71 rebuked these extravagances, but issued, with Melanc- thon, the " Confession of Augsburg," the foundation of German or Lutheran Protestantism. Still the monk worked as few men of letters ever worked, studied his Hebrew and Greek, and in 1522 published his version of the New Testament in the mother tongue of his country, a version which has won the praise of all scholars, and as a translation, is only inferior — if in- ferior — to our English version. This, and his subse- quent translation of the Old Testament, are his greatest literary achievements, although his learned works, his defence of Protestantism and his own tenets, are multi- farious ; the latest edition of them is in twenty-six small octavo volumes (1826-33). In 1523 I.uther preached against the mass, and replied in a coarse, vigorous style — the style of those days and of later days, of Salmasius and of Milton — to the attacks against him of Henry VIII. and others. Our Henry, it is well known, won at that time from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith, and his attacks upon Luther were not more polite than the great reformer's responses. A general politeness and respect for the opinions of an adversary were no more then to be looked for than they are amidst the untaught persons who call themselves editors in the backwoods of America, and who, after exhausting a slang dictionary of abuse, fire at each other with revolvers. If Luther called Tetzel a son of perdition, Tetzel had previously called him the son of the Devil ; if Henry spoke of an insolent and ignorant monk, we do not wonder at Luther's assert- ing that his (Henry's) work showed not only " Royal ignorance," but a virulence and mendacity 'as well, ■ which was wholly Lees' (Doctor Lees, who is said to 72 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. have helped Henry in the composition). But Luther used nobler words. In answering Heniy, he writes — and we would especially call the attention of our readers to the passage — " To the words of fathers, men, angels, devils, I oppose not old usage, but the word alone of the Eternal Majesty on High — the Gospel, which they themselves are forced to recog- nize. On this I take my stand ; this is my glory, my triumph ; from this I mock at Popes, Thomists, Hen- ricists, Sophists, at the gates of Hell. I care little about the words of men. God's word is above all !" It is well here, perhaps, to give a portrait of Luther, as that later one, by Lucas Cranach, is not flattering, and his opponents have made him ugly as well as wicked. " Brother Martin," says an observer, " is of the middle size, sturdy and well built, but so ema- ciated by care and study that you can count every bone in his skin. He is still in the prime of life ; his voice is clear and penetrating, his look pleasant. Powerful in doctrine, admirably read in the Scriptures, almost every verse of which he has by heart, he has learnt Greek and Hebrew in order to be able to compare and judge. When he answers his opponents, he never has to stop, having a perfect forest of words and facts " (sylva ingetis — an immense wood — verborum et rerum). That does not look like a sham ; nor does the man who gave his life to such work look like the devil his enemies paint him. Luther's very successes were a source of trouble. So delightful was the gospel of freedom, the new light of law and conscience, to Germany, that men got drunk with it as with new wine. The whole country arose. Ulrich von Hutten, perhaps even more than FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 73 Erasmus, the leading reformer of thought and reason, with Ulrich's noble friend, Franz von Sickingen, shared Luther's hatred of Roman fraud and blasphemy. " Franz von Sickingen is with us,'' writes one ; " he burns with zeal ; he is saturated with Luther; he reads his pamphlets at meal-time ; he has sworn not to fail in the cause of liberty." The Suabian peasants, how- ever, thought that liberty consisted not in paying rents, and rose against the nobles, and especially against the abbots and priests. Of course Luther was accused of causing this rebellion. His conduct seems to us to have been most admirable, except towards the conclusion. He threw himself on the weaker side, and most violently attacked the nobles, princes, and bishops and landlords in favour of the poor. "Ye princes and lords, and, above all, blind bishops, in- sensate priests and monks, ye are the executioners and leeches of the poor. If you defeat these poor peasants, you will be no less conquered. God will raise up others." 'At the same time he wrote to the peasants, and urged sensible advice. In the end they did not take it. Their leader, Muntzer, a mad- brained fanatic, led them into awful excesses, and the nobles conquered and punished them severely. Here occurs a passage in Luther's life of which we greatly disapprove. He had defended the poor : he had urged the nobles as Christians, and the peasants as their brother Christians, not to cover Germany, his beloved Germany, with blood. They had not listened -to him, and, when conquered, Luther treated these same peasants with an almost savage severity. As for himself, he was as poor as any peasant, and worked twenty times more hard. Success brought 74 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. him enemies. Erasmus, who had aided him, and who was the clever subtle man of intellect of the Refor- mation, had left him, half terrified, half sceptic — "Erasmus, that amphibolous king," writes Luther, "who sits quietly on the throne of amphibology [double-meaning words], and mocks us. I would crush Erasmus as I would crush a bug. He uses fine words, but he is against Christ ; when he preaches, he rings false, like a cracked pot." To comfort him- self, and indeed more to set an example to the nuns and monks who had thrown off their religious vows, he determined to marry. He was quite right ; St. , Peter, whom the Papists claim as head, was a married man — ^the celibacy of priests was a miserable novelty, not fully imposed till twelve hundred years after Christ; nay, St. Paul makes marriage a test for bishops and deacons, for, asks he, unless they rule their family, wife and children, how can they rule the Church? Luther had again and again fulminated against this " incestuous, this beastly celibacy of the monks and priests," and at last married, at the age of forty-five, Catherine von Bora, a lady of noble birth, a nun who had discarded her convent, and was very beautiful. She was a most admirable wife to him ; to her he was a most tender husband. And yet the great man was poor as a church mouse, depending on his garden, " taking his degree in clock-making." While doing all he could for his fellow men, he would not even take any money for his writings, nothing save a copy or two of his works. " This is not exacting," he writes, " since other men, even translators, get a ducat a sheet for their labour." How he lived was a FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 75 wonder. There is a grim humour in this mean poverty of the greatest of men, to the dnlooker, but to Luther there was none. Sometimes a friend makes him a present of beer, sometimes we find him pledging his old family goblets, sometimes he threatens his associates with spoliation. " Gird thee," he says, " not with a sword and a cuirass, but with money in gold and silver, and a good purse, for I will not let thee off without a present." Yet in poverty or plague he could help others. " My house is turned into a hospital. The wife of the chaplain is dead ; I have taken the curate and his family into my house ; every one is terrified at the plague. Your little John, Luther's son, does not salute you, for he is ill, but begs your prayers. He has-not touched food these twelve days." In the meantime he himself is unwell through excessive work, his enemies still fulminating against him. " I have not read Erasmus's new work ; what should I read or what write, a sick servant of Jesus Christ, who am scarcely alive ? " Chapter VIII. FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. {Luther's Table-Talk.) RASMUS laid the eggs, and .Luther hatched them," say the Papists, when they lament, as they must do, from their point of view, the divided world and the crumbling fortunes of the Papacy, which is very surely but gradually giving way before progress, although now it seems to flare up with all the bril- liancy of a dying candle — a flare and flicker which is accompanied by a great rush of moths to the Roman luminary. What sort of man was this Luther who " hatched out," as Americans and our own provincial people say, such wondrous " eggs ? For, only consider, without Protestantism there would have been no Puritans, no Cromwell; without Puritanism, no Pilgrim Fathers and no Mayflower, no Boston, no Penn- sylvania, in fact America without its backbone — no great Revolution of 1688, and a freer England — no Germany of 1860-70, and no Franco-German War — no free Italy, and no " Prisoner of the Vatican." FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH 77 Surely such " eggs " are all-important. Erasmus had somewhat to do with them, but he did not habitually wear the girdle of truth, and died friendly with Rome and in enmity with Luther, who did not hesitate to call him, with Biblical plainness, " that old fox.'' But as to Luther. Now-a-days, when cowardice lies heavy as frost, and scepticism takes off the sharp out- lines and clouds everything as in a fog, this man, who broke with all that he had been taught to recognize as sacred, is quite a curiosity. He who dared so much was, as we have seen, a short and somewhat ungainly Saxon monk, who stood before Pope and King, when Pope and King were very devils as to power and torment. Who was he that wrestled with Greek and Hebrew, then but first becoming studies in the West, to give God's Word to His people — sat up night after night, wrought day after day, poorly fed, selling for a meal the bit of birth-right plate he was so proud of, and who walked unharmed through the flames of mar- tyrdom, so that his very garments smelt of fire, as one may say. " They burnt John Huss," writes M. Louis Veuillot of Paris, the journalist whom the Pope has thanked for his bitter words, " and it is a thousand pities they did not burn Martin Luther ; I am sorry for it, and had I been in power, I would have done it." We thank M. Veuillot for these honest words, and do not hesitate to say that, were we of his com- munion, we should logically think and truthfully ^ct with him. Let us clear away cant. From the French critic's point of view, Martin Luther was not only wrong in hatching the eggs of Protestant heresy, but was so guilty as to be worthy of death. Nay, heresy being assumed as a deadly crime which forfeits 78 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. heaven, it ought to have been a special duty to kill Luther, rather than to have let him live and corrupt others. In stamping out cattle-disease we must not grieve for the sacrifice of a portion of our stock. Happily we can judge of Luther as a man almost as well as we can of Doctor Johnson. His Table-talk has been taken down, and for us very curiously if not miraculously preserved. The story of the English translation is indeed almost as curious as the book itself. Here it is. Captain Henry Bell, an English soldier of fortune in the reigns of James 1. and Charles I., being, as he says, "beyond seas," heard great bewailing in Ger- many about the destruction of Luther's books by burning. For, as he says, after Luther had preached Christ and the simplicity of the Gospel, many kings, princes, states, and imperial cities which had followed Luther remained in his faith for some time j but then, as now, there was a reaction, and Gregory XI H., knowing the harm that Luther's Bible and his dis- courses did to the Papacy, stirred up Rudolph II. to publish an edict through the whole Empire, so that above fourscore thousand of his works were obtained and burnt Amongst other books almost destroyed was the " Tischreden," or Table-talk, of which no copy could be found ; and yet herein were the most lively discourses of the great Reformer, on Patriarchs, Pro- phets, Justification, the Lord's Supper, Prayer, the Jews, Temptation and Tribulation, Relative Duties of Parents, Children, &c., and indeed on all that can interest mankind. All this was seemingly for ever lost, when one Casper von Spahi, to whom Captain Bell became familiarly known while staying in Ger- FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 79 many upon King James's business, showed the Eng- hsh soldier a copy wrapped in a waxed cloth lying deep in an obscure hole, and preserved fair and with- out any blemish, though it had been hidden by Spahi's grandfather. This book he sent over to England, begging Bell, for Christ's glory and God's sake," to translate it into English. This Bell promised, but did not do. One night, lying in bed with his wife, she asleep, he wide awake, an ancient man, clad in white, with a long and broad beard, appeared to him, and, taking him by his ear, said, " Sirrah, will you not take time to translate that book ? I will shortly provide you both place and time." On this Bell fell into an extreme sweat, and his wife, awakened, asked him what he ailed, when he told her ; but, never " heeding nor regarding dreames and visions,'' he left the book untouched till he was "clapt into the Gatehouse Prison " without any just cause — the reason being that he had asked King Charles for his arrears of pay — arid there remained five years, where he translated the book, well recalling that " old man with a white beard flowing down to his girdle-stead" — girdle- fastening. Such is Bell's account ; and there seems no reason to doubt it. At any rate the order of the House of Commons dated the 24th of February, 1646, which allows Bell the sole disposal of his own trans- lation for fourteen years, speaks of the " late miracu- lous preservation of the book." Curiously Bell had nearly lost his book by foolishly entrusting it to the Papistical Laud, who kept it an unconscionably long time, but happily returned it shortly before he fell into his troubles and was beheaded, with many smooth promises, such as that he would get. the King to print 8o HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. it and disperse it through the whole kingdom — which of course he never did. The House of Commons, however, set aside certain members diligently to peruse the book, and they found it to be " an excel- lent divine work, worthy the light and publishing, especially since Luther did in it revoke his opinion which he formerly held touching consubstantiation in the Sacrament." And on the date above given the House of Commons " did give order for the printing thereof." The " Tischreden " has been always popular in Ger- many, as numerous editions testify, but here it does not seem to have that weight which it should have. This is perhaps to be well understood. There has been a great ignorance as to the origin of our Church, and some Dissenters, who venerate Luther, have gone so far as to think we are Lutherans. Yet their Eng- lish protesting revolts against Luther's rather pro- nounced belief in the Real Presence, against his strong notions of Church discipline, his coarse familiar say- ings, and other matters ; whilst English Churchmen, with more reverence for Luther, but yet more for their Church, hardly like the free way in which he handles sacred matters. In fact, Luther bears a closer resemblance to an earnest and not extreme Roman Catholic priest than he does to a modem and well- drilled Ritualist curate, with his love of man-millinery, pretty churches, flowers, and female devotees. What Luther is, is seen in his Table-talk ; he is a man of God, as was Isaiah or Elijah, very human, sinful, coarse, pettish, and irregular — and indeed in this he resembles Jonah — ^but he is full of life and without doubt a Christian. He is not wholly loveable, is some FIGHTING FOR THE FAITH. 8i times not very decorous, but he is a man. Dr. John Aurifaber (Goldsmidt) and Antony Lauterbach, who copied these sayings from his mouth, carried Kttle book.ares princeps, espe- cially to be noted as being the cleanest and most com- plete -victor in battle ever known ; and Cromwell came very near him. He routed and thoroughly beat his antagonist, and made a clean sweep when he caught him ; but yet, when the Protector was able, he ceased from strife, unlike Napoleon, or Alexander, or even Charles XII. Nor did he try to embroil his country in unnecessary and foreign wars so as to improve his own condition. We may put away therefore the sug- gestion of design, just as we may the assertion that he had no beauty of person nor powers of mind. Crom- well was not pretty ; but had Vandyck painted him as he so often painted Charles I., we should have seen a much more noble face than that of the romantic, weak, and untruthful Stuart. He had a manly, intel- lectual head, inexpressibly touching. It resembles in veneration and in feeling, though more bulbous and coarser, that of Milton, who, in his youth, was one of A CROSS BUT NO CROWN. loi the handsomest men who ever lived. Nor did Crom- well try to be pretty. " Paint me," he said to the painter Cooper, "paint me with my warts." And on a copy of that very picture Milton wrote a fine sonnet in Latin, sent with the portrait to Queen Christina : — " You see what wrinkles I have earn'd, and how The iron casque still chafes my weary brow." (This has been beautifully translated by Cowper), and the weary worn look, the hair rubbed away by hat and helmet, the troubled and yet stout-hearted humour in the face, may be spelt out by the observant in any fine print of Cromwell ; in his old age the face grew really beautiful from suffering and thought. As to Cowley's next assertion, that he had no powers of mind, the character given him afterwards defeats it. A man who does what Cromwell did, and has as well the credit of far-reaching designs, must have had the strong force of mind as well as of body. Cowley tells us how Cromwell was feared ; what we want to know is how he was loved. The old stories about his never smiling after reading " Killing no Murder,'' about his fear of his countrymen, &c., we simply refuse to believe, because we find that the stories were not rife in his lifetime, and when he died the whole nation was stupefied, and that for a whole week the Court ob- served a solemn fast, appointing — for Cromwell can hardly be said to have done it — his good, quiet, and utterly unambitious son Richard, Protector in his place. Let us also remember that during his illness, August, 1658, prayer and fastings took place over the whole kingdom, and that fanatics even comforted the nation by the assertion that God would not permit I02 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. him to die ; that, when dead, his funeral was the grandest ever known, although he had desired to be buried without ceremony ; and that the very fear of his name, and of the love the people bore him, and that only, kept cunning George Monk, the dissolute king, and the traitors and plotters who surrounded Richard Cromwell, back from their prey from Sep- tember, 1658, to the 29th of May, 1660 — no short time. We may presume, therefore, that the old Pro- tector was loved and honoured as much as he was feared. Moreover, Milton's estimate of him has been singularly set aside, overlooked, and neglected. We hear nothing of ambition from Milton. He is ap- pealed to as the very incarnation of justice. He is addressed as — "Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To Peace and Truth thy glorious way hast plough'd. And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud Hast rear'd God's trophies and His work pursued. " In this noble sonnet he is said to be covered by detraction, as indeed he was, but guided by faith and strength, seeking peace and truth, and pursuing God's work. You find no hint of hypocrisy there. Indeed, Milton expressly calls upon him to stay the hypocrites, the canters, and fanatics. After reciting the crowning victories of Dunbar and Worcester, with its " laureate wreath," he tells Cromwell — " Yet much remains To conquer still ; Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than War ; new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." A CROSS BUT NO CROWN. 103 There is nothing about cant or hypocrisy there ; in fact, Cromwell is appealed to, to cure and purge away the canting wolves who made money by the Gospel and interfered with the free conscience of others. It seems to us that unless Cromwell is taken as a whole and a sound man, permeated with one idea, we must constantly misunderstand him. Carlyle's " Letters " give a clue to this one idea^ — of duty towards God performed by serving his fellow country- men. What were kings to him who was pos- sessed with this idea ? Heath and others tell a story of the General smearing Harry Martin's face with ink as he signed Charles's death-warrant; this is most likely a lie ; but, if he did so, the act would be incon- sistent with a man of grave ambition and solemn hypocrisy, but consistent with one who, believing that he was carrying out his duty, played at his work. Heath again says, that " When the king's body was removed and coffin'd, Cro7nwd, to satisfie himselfe of the full and certain consummation of all his practices against his sacred life, would needs see himselfe, and upen his returne thence he was heard to say, that if he had not been a king he might have lived longer." Here is probably a true anecdote, but tinged with a false colour and conclusion. Delaroche has painted the scene beautifully. Cromwell knew very well that the king was dead, and probably looked on him as calmly as he did upon any of those dead soldiers whom Charles's folly had sacrificed, and the observa- tion sometimes reported, as "that the king was a healthy man and born for a long life," was neither heartless nor extraordinary. Most likely if Charles I. had loved truth, and kept his word, he would not only 104 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. have lived longer, but would never have got his king- dom into trouble at all. Whatever the world and the Church, and posterity — even ourselves — thought and think of killing the king, Cromwell and his friends thought little of it ; it was a political necessity, and Milton's sharp translation of Seneca's sentence had been passed all over England, and most of the people thought with it : — " There can be slain No sacrifice to God more accptable Than an unjust and wicked king." Arrived at the summit of the Protectorship, Cromwell seems to have sat still, endeavouring to hold the balance as firmly and as evenly as he could. At no time, no, not even until this very day, was religious toleration, or rather the equality of religious rights, so maintained as by him. Hence the fury of the Epis- copalians, Nonconformists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, and some dozens of sects of fanatics — they were plentiful in those days — against him. He would • not let one sect be above the other. As for Cromwell's judges, they were the ablest, and most fearless, and most independent the nation had ever seen. In the times of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I., the judges were often but mere creatures of the Crown, cruel tjnrants who browbeat jury and pri- soner ; what they were after Cromwell's reign let Judge Jeiferies witness ; but in his days they first were what they are now, and have been for some time, men giving forth righteous judgments, not fearing the Crown and not fearing the people, fearing God only, as Cromwell told his judges. To his Parliament the Protector recom- mends the widest tolerance. " You are," he said, " I A CROSS BUT NO CROWN. 105 beseech you, to have a care of the whole flock. LoVe all, tender (serve) all, cherish and countenance all in things that are good ; and if the poorest Christian, the most mistaken Christian, shall desire to live peace- ably and quietly under you, let him be protected." A noble sentence, upon which we have not improved in two hundred years. The ambition of Cromwell has surely been very much exaggerated ; indeed, as far as worldly ambition is concerned, it may be doubted whether he had any at all. He was no fine dresser, nor desirer of crowns and gewgaws. Compare him with Napoleon in this, and how he gains by the comparison ! When plots and paid assassins were found about him, he, like President Johnson, instituted a company of guards, " clad in sad lavender-coloured clothes, guarded or laced with black," and this although he first dressed many of his troops in our present scarlet uniform. He ate sparingly, and if we are to believe Heath, was such a jester, or so jocund, that he now and then threw a pillow at a friend's head, or slyly put a- cinder into the top of a courtier's boot. After he had purged the army and shut up the Long Parliament, he might with very little trouble, or indeed none, have been king. Yet he seized not the crown ; was this like ambition ? Perhaps the true solution of all the many insinuations and speculations concerning his non- assumption of the crown is that he did not care, even in the most distant way, to wear it. Like the mace, it was to him a bauble. When talking with Whitelocke and others concerning settling the succession, as plots within and without in favour of the three children of Charles disturbed the Commonwealth, he pointed io6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. plainly to a chief magistrate, a President, as it were, wfth supreme power, chosen from amongst them. " It will be a business," said he, " of more than ordinary difficulty; but really, I think it may be done. with safety, and the preservation of our rights both as Eng- lishmen and Christians, that a settlement with some- what of a monarchical government in it would be very effectual." Still he was, as Cowley says, " content to be hired " as the director of the nation, and held all others to their duty, doing nothing but when he felt an inner impulse, "the Spirit of God strong upon him," as he so often asserted. Ambitious men, moreover, are generally desirous of settling their children and relations well. We know what Napoleon Bonaparte did in this way ; we know what others have done who were companions and equals to kings ; we know what our own Chancellors have done ; — what then did Cromwell do ? Contrary to all ambitious rule^ he married but one of his daughters — who might have been princesses and queens — to a man with a title. His favourite daugh- ter Elizabeth wedded Mr. Claypole ; his daughter Frances had the honour of a proposal, through Lord Brdghill, from Charles II., and it is said consented readily to the match ; but Oliver refused. " No," he said, " the king would not forgive his father's death, and besides, he is such a debauched and dissipated rascal that he is not to be trusted with her.'' This does not look like ambition. Fleetwood and Ireton, plain and sensible gentlemen and soldiers, were his sons-in-law, and it is even said that most of his family were royalists, unreproved by Oliver, who loved them tenderly. It is probable that for many years yet to come the A CROSS BUT NO CROWN. 107 character of the Protector will be misunderstood; gay clothes, handsome faces, rich velvets, feathers, and a picturesque dress have much more to do with casting the vote in favour of the Cavaliers than many think. Moreover the Church, by his puritan faith and even- handedness, Oliver had offended '; the nobility by his acquiescence in the abolition of the House of Lords, and the manufacture of a spurious Upper House (a life peerage as it were for men of merit) ; the lawyers he offended by acquiescing in that wise decision of the Barebones Parliament, which abolished the Court of Chancery, which at that time had 5000 cases before it, which had lasted from two to thirty years ! Alas ! had we only kept to that decision, what heart-burnings had we missed, how had our madhouses been emptied, and the hearts of hundreds unbroken — of hundreds robbed by the lawyers and maddened by their igno- rant jargon. Moreover, poets and the penmen hate him, for he suppressed plays, and listened only to the Book of Psalms and the Canticles. So direct, straightforward, and earnest had Cromwell been, " seeking God " and listening to His voice so as to guide this poor demented nation, and to stand between the oppressor and oppressed ; yea, so true, that Man's judgment and Historian's judgment cannot understand him, and have built up a players' puppet, full of tricks, wiles, cunning, deep hypocrisy, and terrible buffoonery. Never was the nation so well governed, and by one too of an unkingly race — not brought up to the trade, d'ye see ! Should not everybody hail him who, not being a king, could do more and better than a king ? It would really seem as if people had acted upon this perverse rule. io8 HALF-LMNGTH PORTRAITS. If hypocrisy be a ruling passion, it will be strong ia death ; if earnestness be true, that will also last. We have heard Milton's assertion that Cromwell was dis- tinguished from his fellows when an unknown man, by his deeper faith and earnest religion. Those who believe in his hypocrisy may find a good deal in his death scene, of which we have a full report. Those who believe that he was a great, good, and earnest man, will find it as pregnant of faith as any in all history. The Lord Protector's mother, who had lived with him, treated with a tender love, died at the age ot ninety-four — died bidding him a tender farewell, as if she would see him again shortly : — " The Lord cause His face to shine on you, and comfort you in all your adversities, and enable you to do great things for the glory of your Most High God, and to be a relief unto His people ! My dear son, I leave my heart with thee. A good night." And so she sank to sleep. Can words be more touching? Will any other speech convey the trust that this woman had in her hero son ? "A good night"— the next morning that they met would be that of the Resurrection. " The royalties of Whitehall," says Ludlow, quoted by Carlyle, "were of small moment to her." We may well believe him. The time, too, came when Cromwell too should die. The death of his daughter Elizabeth, Lady Claypole, whom he so fondly loved, broke that heart which the weight of years, and the troubles of his chair, had not touched. On the 6th of August, 1658, his daughter died ; on the 20th Oliver rode out for the last time at Hampton Court, his favourite place of residence ; on the 24th he quitted it for Whitehall, where he was to die. His A CHOSS BUT NO CROWN. 109 time had come ; and, says a witness, " We could not be more desirous for him to stay than he was to be gone." Prayers were made for him all over the country, and Oliver prayed too. Secretary Thurloe, hearing these ejaculations, copied down some for Henry Cromwell ; and thus we have them : — " I think I am the poorest wretch in this world ; but I love God, or rather, am beloved of God. I am a con- queror, ' and more than a conqueror, through Christ that strengthened me.' Children, live like Christians. I leave you the covenant to feed on. I say unto you, it is not good that you should love the world. Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched sinner. Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instru- ment to do Thy people some good." And then he prayed for the people of England, that God would lead them on in truth ; and then for his enemies — '^' Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Even so, Amen ! " Let us take these as his last words. Others there were like to them, speaking of judging and annihilating himself; divers holy expressions, as Thurloe says. On the night of the 2nd of September there was a great storm all over England ; on the 3rd, his fortu- nate day, the anniversary of the victories of Worcester and Dunbar, the Protector breathed his last. There was consternation, if not sorrow, all over England. The great drama had been played ; a great man was dead ; another phase of English Kfe, another lesson for Eng- lish people was to be taught. no HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Man's judgments are not God's. Heath and others wish us almost to believe that the Devil raised the storm, as old plays write he did when Faustus died, and that his soul was then taken away by Mephis- topheles. Even Cromwell's body was worse than any other carrion, and his " midriff stank.'' Buried in splendour, Charles and the Royalists took up his corpse from Westminster, and hanged it upon Tyburn Tree, with that of the noble Ireton and the staunch and thorough Bradshaw. His fame belongs to England. It is time that she understood one of her greatest men. Was he a fanatic, a hypocrite, or a pious, humble hero? Here have been pl3.ced some few indications of his character : let the readers judge. Chapter XI. A FAITHFUL SERVANT. J T is perhaps of no small importance, in writing historical biography, as well as .in reading it, -that the subjects of such should, if possible, be both great and good. The epigraph on our title is one which will bear pondering — "How few there are at once both great and good ! " And we have the more often cited this line because we want to impress it upon our readers, for them to make it a standard. Dryden, its author, was a very great poet, and a great and generous man, but he was not a good man, and he knew it. Impulsive, liberal, full of a longing and unquiet faith, he went over to Rome, and, one of his biographers relates, then, repenting of his change of faith, came back, and drank, it is said— as has also been said of Ben Jonson — the whole chalice at his first Communion, to testify his earnestness ; but the act merely testified his vivid impulse. We do not blame him for either change — he died in the Romish faith, and was a sincere, true 112 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Christian — but we do blame him for not being, in his plays and writings, virtuous and good, and for hand- ling his pen alike as Protestant and Romanist, in a way that scandalized all religion. Yet, as we have said, he was a great man, and the more one knows of his gifts the more one must admire them. But we shall endeavour to put before our readers other men besides glorious John Dryden, much as we love him ; the poet, like his own panther, a splendid creature, is but spotted. We want men, when we can get them, free from such base stains as those referred to above ; we do not pretend, as our readers will readily admit, that man can be perfect, but we main- tain that he is a noble being, full of the finest im- pulses, and one capable of the highest achievements. But you must pick your heroes, we would warn the reader. It will not do for you to exalt the lust-spotted Mirabeau, or the sea-green Robespierre, blood-spotted and mad with envy; nor must you worship — rather be it that you should bow down to Mirabeau and Napoleon — the miser Elwes, who dies worth a million. Again, you must not worship, to borrow one of Car- lyle's names, " Bobus Higgins, sausage-maker," just because he has been successful and trade has run in his way ; for, to quote our author, " What is it you admire ? Speak now : is it the bare Bobus stript of his very name and shirt, and turned loose upon Society, that you admire and thank Heaven for, or Bobus with his cash accounts and larders dropping fatiTess, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony-chaise, admirable in some measure to certain of the flunkey species ? " And, if you do not take, care who your hero is, you may be a flunkey too. Admire J FAITHFUL SERVANT. 113 mere success and money, and the noisy heroes of this day and all days, and you blind yourselves ; take care that he whom you love is good, not a mere popular clap-trap hero. Why, in certain circles, the " White- chapel Chicken " is a greater favourite than the Duke of Wellington, and " Deaf Burke " is infinitely better known than John Milton. As your hero is, so will you be hereafter. You will resemble your hero — it will be in not so large a way — your canvas may be so small that you can only paint a miniature on it ; but, whatever the original is, like unto that the copy will be. Do not therefore be in a hurry in your choice, and above all take God's men, rather than the Devil's men, in ever so slight a way. Because it is of impor- tance how you develope, it is your business to be good, to do your work truly ; and it will be a burning shame to you if you are not good. You ought to be good ; you come, even if of low degree, of noble stock. Shakspere, that king of men, speaks of " noblest English,'' ' ' Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, . Fathers that, like so many Alexanders — •" Like ? Better : for our forefathers fought generally in far nobler causes than that of greedy ambition. Your hero being taken (be sure you have a hero — he whose heart does not throb at some name, and who does not wish to emulate some great man, will never himself be great — it does not matter much what post he has filled— seaman, soldier, or shoemaker — and we have heroes of each — poet, painter, or policeman — and here again we may say the same — what care we for the part, sa that it has been nobly filled ?), learn I 114 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. what you can about him, but above all mark his good- ness. Great men, in spite of Dryden's paradox — truly great men — are generally good men ; they may break down in some especial point, they may be irritable or self-indulgent because they have many great trials, but how sweetly tender and noble their hearts are ! The woman's heart — and every really great man has a woman's heart — beats strong within them in the hour of trial, victory, or death. Crom- well, before Dunbar fight, full of anxieties, and with a tough Scotch enemy before him, yet wrote the ten- derest notes of a father's thoughtful love to his sick daughter, and in the hour of death recalled God's hard blow, " Lord, Thou didst nearly crush my heart when my Oliver died." Yet that son had died honourably in fight. Wellington, sitting up in his camp-bed after his few hours' sleep, unwashed and wearied, with his battle-stained face channelled with hot silent tears as Dr. Hume read to him the roll-call of the dead — here is a spectacle not to be forgotten — here are evidences which prove a hero's heart. Look again at the con slant courage of Sir Henry Sidney, who, when in revolted Ireland he guarded the English pale, early in Queen Elizabeth's reign, with a handful of men, sur- rounded by the daring O'Neill and enemies enough to crush him, yet showed every morning, as things grew worse, cheerful constant looks and punctilious pohte- ness — "Good morrow, gentlemen" — to his officers, and words of comfort to his men ; the great courtesy of Outram, letting another general march in first to a re- lieved city; the firm religion of Gustavus and his Swedes praying before battle, each regiment with its chaplain at its head ; the cool determination of Nelson and his A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 115 unwavering faith in his men, in God's help, in victory to his country ; the unswerving truth of Napier and many another English officer in all their engagements — like the centurion of old, whatever they promised, either by themselves or another, was done. In all these exemplars there was no doubt in themselves or their servants, no shirking the command or the respon- sibility, as we have seen in modern political leaders. It is with them lalways, " I am a man in authority, and I say unto this man. Do this, and he doeth it." They are not of them that waver. Such men, then, are heroes ; and because in Robert Blake, Admiral of England in troublous times, when perhaps the pattern of our English admirals was to be laid down, such points all meet, it seems good that his should be told, simply and truly. Robert Blake, born in 1598, was, like many of our naval heroes, a Somersetshire man, son of a gentle- man, perhaps obscure, but of good family. Educated at Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. in 161 7, he was of a thoughtful, prayerful disposition, and full of a love of liberty, so that, when Charles I. carried matters with a foolish high hand, Blake, with others of the best thinkers in the kingdom, was with the Parlia- ment and people. He was then— in 1640 — repre- senting Bridgewater in Parliament, and, being of mature age, went into the army, and served under Colonel Frances when Bristol was taken by Prince Rupert and the Parliamentarians were badly beaten. Blake — we pass over the early part of a life which, like that of Cromwell, came late to maturity — is next found among the Commons' army at the taking of Taunton, acting so well that he is made governor of ii6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. that town ; and so skilful a soldier was he, that in 1645 he defended Taunton, afterwards to be made wet with innocent blood by Judge Jefferies and Charles II., during two fierce sieges by Lord Goring, whose cavaliers were the very terror of the country round. Goring beaten off. Colonel Blake— soon to be admiral and general of Cromwell — is publicly thanked by Parliament. He is already a great man, one of the great men standing round the central figure of the Protector, whom Milton truly calls our " Man of Men." Hard indeed would it have gone with Pro- testantism and the Commons of England had it not been for such men. Yet Blake was moderate. Cla- rendon, whose critical judgment of him is almost generous, does not otherwise appreciate the man ; he should have been more lenient towards him, for it is said that Blake did not approve of the death of the King by the axe ; and he was, it is reported, even heard to say that " he would as freely have ventured his life to save the King's as he would to save the Parliament." Blake's life, as an admiral, begun so late— when indeed, he was fifty-one years old, February, 1649 — dates frbm the time when he, a colonel, with Colonels Deane and Popham, was appointed to command the fleet. This was, as our readers may most likely know, an old fashion, which still lingers in the names of captain of the ship and sailing-master or master ; formerly the rule used to be to put soldiers on board to do the fighting, while sailors worked the ship. Blake, however, a scholar — as he had stood for a fellowship of his college — " proved that science may be attained in less time than may be imagined. A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 117 He left the old track,'' says Clarendon, " and despised those rules which had long been in practice, to keep his ship and men out of danger" — Robert Blake's principle being always in battle to run his ship into the very jaws of danger. He proved, also, that castles on shore were no match for wooden walls — ■. " were fit to make a noise only, and fright those who could not be hurt by them." So far Clarendon of this man, who, he says, was of "a melanchoUc and sullen disposition and nature, who spent most of his time with good fellows (?), who liked his moroseness and a freedom he had in inveighing against the licence of the time and the power of the Court, so that those who knew him inwardly knew he had an anti-mo- narchical spirit when few men thought the Government in any danger." Truly the Court was blind to the signs of the times ! Serving the Parliament right well, Blake soon showed that he was a master-spirit at sea, and after the King's death was sent in pursuit of the fiery Rupert, who had turned sea-rover, and preyed chiefly on English merchantmen, Rupert's " dash '' being generally, either on sea or land, against the weakest point. Driving this piratical Prince before him through the Irish Seas, he blockaded him in Kinsale harbour, but, Blake's force being insufficient, Rupert squeezed through, pressed by hunger and danger, and succeeded, with the loss of three ships, in gaining Portugal, and burning and destroying other small EngHsh ships in the Portuguese port. The King of Portugal — a friend to the King, and not to the Parlia-, ment of England — refused to permit Blake to enter the Tagus ; and Blake thereon attacked certain Por- ii8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. tuguese treasure-ships outside, and sent twenty of them home laden with money, to console the London merchants for their losses. Finally he did attack, in spite of the King, and destroyed Rupert's piratical fleet in the harbour of Malaga, in January 7, 1651. For these services he was thanked by Parliament, made an "Admiral and General of the Fleet," and presented with the noble old office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In the same year he attacked and took the last strongholds of the Cavaliers, the Scilly Isles, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, and was again thanked by the House, and made a member of Parliament. Why the Dutch and English, both naval and Pro- testant powers — both. Heaven knows, with scars and wounds enough of priestly persecution, both with their graves full of martyrs, and both having suffered, Holland enormously, from the religious wars of Spain — should have fallen out may be a puzzle to some who do not take into account the plots of bigots, which in Evelyn's time were noticeable enough, arid which grievously fomented the jealousy of trade. Holland then was not only our rival at sea but our superior, and, as such, had sharp eyes to our naval power. In 1652 Blake, in expectation of a Dutch war, was made sole Admiral of the Fleet for nine months. He was of mature age and in poor health ; the sea he loved, but sea-fare did not agree with him, and he suffered from dysentery and scurvy. Yet when the great Dutch Admiral Van Tromp, a fine sailor, and as brave a man as ever trod a deck, came over to our shores with a fleet of forty-two ships, and publicly insulted our flag, Blake sailed out of Rye A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 119 Harbour with only fifteen vessels, reinforced by eight others during the fight, and fell on him, meeting him vaunting his courage, of which he and his men had plenty, in Dover Straits. These two sea-dogs fought till night parted them, when Van Tromp found that he had better beat a retreat, leaving the bare honour of the day to the English and the red-cross flag he had insulted ; but it was honour alone — we had taken only one ship and sunk another. The States disgraced Van Tromp and apologized, but Cromwell would not settle the matter in that way. Blake brought the difference home to the Dutch merchants, took their East India ships as they came up Channel, emptied it of Dutch men-of-war, and then dragged after his victorious keel twelve Dutch men-of-war and a fleet of one hundred herring-busses (a large sort of ship with wide hull and broad prow), which they had been sent to protect. Two great Dutch commanders took Van Tromp's place — De Ruyter and Cornelius de Witt — brave men, skilful and true ; and on the 28th of September these caught Blake in the Downs, and again cannon roared, and the ships' scuppers ran blood. Night put once more an end to the fight, but the • Dutch rear- admiral's ship was taken, with three others ; and, although Blake pursued for two days, the uncertainty of the wind gave him no more. The States, then put upon their metal, set the old Dutch sea-lion Van Tromp afloat ; and he with eighty sail, good men-of- war, came out to attack Blake, whose ships had been drafted away to different services. The admiral, with forty English ships, some indifferent, faced his foe, too proud to retire before even such true sailors at the I20 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. odds of two to one. He paid dearly for his courage. The Dutch had approached near our shores, and hostile cannon, with reverberate thumping against the casements of the fair towns of Kent and Essex, were heard in dreadful repetition all that November day. The battle was fought off the Goodwin Sands, and the shattered English ships were glad to beat back up the Thames, leaving two' in the hands of the Dutch, and four sunken ; while Van Tromp, full of bravado, sailed through the Channel with a broom at the mast- head, to show that he had swept the English from the seas. But the brave Protector seems to have thought, with Thackeray — and we hope the old spirit still lives amongst us — " Cheer up ! 'tis no use to be glum, boys — 'Tis written since fighting begun, That sometimes we fight and we conquer, And sometimes we fight and we run. " Blake's defeat was as glorious as most victories ; the Parliament and nation used all diligence, and in February, 1653, Blake put to sea with sixty men-of- war, and on the i8th of that month fell in with his old enemy. Van Tromp, with seventy sail, bringing a rich fleet of three hundred merchantmen up Channel. The engagement lasted three days. The Dutch lost eleven men-of-war, and thirty merchant vessels, whilst Blake lost one ship only. With this great feat we must part company for the present with this fearless and devoted servant of the Commonwealth of England. Chapter XII. A FAITHFUL SERVANT (Continued). [HERE had been triumph and jubilation in Holland, and gross caricatures and ribald broadsides told the Dutch popu- lace of the discomfiture of John Bull — a man, by the way, not then known. Fat Dutch vrows laughed at pictures of the Englishman on his knees and of the Dutch sailors carrying off his best ships, the Garland and the Bonaventure. Holland was then the home of caricature, and these pictures, brought into England, did much to stir up the administration. It says much for our forefathers that in a few months our naval power of forty ships, less those taken and shattered, grew to eighty, well equipped; but these were the days of the Commonwealth. Merchants who heard of- Van Tromp's boast of a descent on English shores, readily furnished ships, and Blake was aided by Vjce-Admiral Penn and Rear-Admiral Lawson and twelve thousand of Cromwell's soldiers. So, with his eighty ships, mostly merchantmen turned into 122 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. men-of-war, and with these Blake stood across channel, a wooden wall, to stop Van Tromp's way as he con- voyed the riches of the world to the markets of Holland. This was on the i8th of February, 1653. Blake had been badly beaten in the end of the previous November, so no time was lost, and Van Tromp was no doubt surprised to find his old enemy out again. The three admirals with a few ships stood right in his way, but Monk, the general, with the main body, was miles astern, and Van Tromp might have escaped with his convoy had he loved ease more tlian glory. He dashed against Blake's Triumph with his big ship . the Brederode, pouring a murderous broadside as he came on. Blake's ship was filled with dead and dying, but Penn with The Speaker came to his aid, and about noon Monk came up with fresh ships, and the outnumbered English fought on equal terms. The Dutch fought like lions. De Ruyter laid himself alongside the Porpous merchantman, newly pierced for forty guns, and boarded her. Captain Barker, with pistol and cutlass at the head of his men, drives him back, and tries to board the admiral. " At them again, my lads,'' cries De Ruyter, and this time Barker and his men are literally borne and pressed down and the ship taken, to be rescued by the Triumph. When night came Blake found that he had taken or destroyed eight men-of-war, the decks and guns of the ships so spattered with blood that the very sailors were sickened. Blake himself was wounded, but all that night he employed in sending away his wounded, sw^abbing his bloody decks and stopping leaks. In the morning food was served and prayers read, and A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 123 seven miles off Weymouth the enemy was found drawn up in a crescent, but standing up Channel with a favourable wind. Blake follows them and comes up to them off Dungeness ; and Van Tromp, compelled to fight, ordered his merchantmen to make off if possible, and then, turning on his pursuer, again fought till night. De Ruyter was nearly taken, but Tromp sent and brought him out of the fight. When night closed five more Dutch men-of-war were taken ; some Dutch captains so sick of fight that Tromp sent them away. But when the third day dawned, Blake seeing fugitives sent his swift sailers to intercept them, and bore down on Van Tromp. The latter sent away his treasure-ships but still kept his face to the foe, and ordered some of his less valuable merchant-ships to surrender to and thus hamper the English. Blake saw this and gave the order to fight not to prey, and so mauled Van Tromp that at night the old hero ran away to the French coast, whence, in a dark night, he slipped away to Dunkirk. The English were now masters of the seas, and, a gale rising, Blake carried his prizes into Stokes Bay, and wrote humbly to V inform the Commons of their victory. In the glorious three days' fight — glorious to those who lost as well as won — the Dutch had lost eleven men-of-war, and thirty richly-laden merchant vessels. Three Dutch captains were prisoners, seven slain, two thousand Dutch sailors killed, four thousand wounded, and near fifteen hundred taken prisoners, while we had one captain killed, one ship sunken ; but our loss in men was heavy. One hundred brave fellows fell on board the Triumph in the first day's fight alone. 124 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Thus God is seen to act in history. If we look to tha petty and mean triumphs of the day and the hour, the mushroom successes of the day ; if we mark that sometimes the fool surpasses the wise man, and the bad man has the riches while the good man is poor and in misery, we may be inclined to think that He stands afar off and does not regard the world He has created. But we may in history remark certain turning-points, where a strong man, raised up for the purpose, rolls back the increasing tide of oppression, as the waters of the Red Sea were rolled, so that civilization passes on. In the successes of Cromwell and Blake we see the commencement of the end, in which, after many successes and many reverses in the unfaithful and apostate days of Charles II., when the Dutch again made head and burnt our fleet, capturing at the mouth of the Medway the very Naseby, then called the Royal Charles, in which Blake had often led the way to victory. God placed in the hands of the English the sovereignty of the seas, of commerce, and of colonization. Between the Dutch and the English (Dryden calls the Hollanders Belgians) there was a struggle for the survival of the fittest. And it is no disparagement to the brave antagonists we con- quered to point out that in trade, and especially in opening foreign ports to all the world, in colonization, in which no people has ever equalled, much less sur- passed, England, and in planting everywhere a free Bible, a free house of assembly, and a free press, England .was by far the fitter to lead. The gratitude, not only of England, but of America, Australia, and, indeed, of all the world, is due to these stout sailors A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 125 who fought so well for the country they so much loved. The student may trace in the History of England, or in that book of deeds of noble daring, James's " Naval History," the obstinate struggle still carried on between the states of Holland and the English. At present it is settled for a while ; Dutch captains salute the vessels of the Commonwealth, and in far-off seas strike their topsails to the ships carrying the red cross of St. George. Blake, still suffering, and, in fact, dying by inches, has yet other work to do. Cromwell had, in the meanwhile, dismissed the rump of the Long Parliament, and had put an end to the endless palaver of parties, each too weak to govern the rest. He was now Lord Protector, a king all but in name, and the stern Republicans on board Blake's ships no doubt resented this. But Blake's way was made clear to him. " Gentlemen,'' he said to his captains, " it is not for us to meddle with politics at home, but to keep the enemy from fooling us on the seas." This wise moderation luckily prevailed, and it was well, for while Blake, leaving the Hollanders shut up in their fortified harbours, cruised to protect our Eastern coast, the Dutch admirals, with one hundred and twenty sail, bore down on Dover roads, captured a few merchantmen, and fired into the town, knocking the old houses to pieces with their cannon. On this Blake, Deane, and Monk, with a hundred and five sail and three thousand eight hundred and eighteen guns, bore down, and on the 2nd of June sighted the Dutch off the Gable ; the English came up with 126 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. ninety-five ships and five fireships ; the Dutch ha.d ninety-eight men-of-war and six fireships ; Van Tromp held the chief command, with De Ruyter and Be Witt as vice-admirals, and the result of two days' fight was the flight of Van Tromp to Ostend, with the loss of six men-of-war captured, a rear-admiral, and two vice-admirals, eleven men-of-war sunk, two blown up, one burnt ; one thousand three hundred and fifty captains, officers, and men taken prisoners, and a long list of dead, the number of which was never ascer- tained. On our side we lost not one ship, only one hundred and twenty-six men were slain, including the brave Admiral and General Deane, and two hundred and thirty-six only wounded. Seldom had a victory been so complete. In the following July, on the last day of the month, whilst Blake lay ill on shore. Monk and Penn fought the last and seventh of these cele- brated battles, in which the Dutch lost thirty men-of- war. " In the very midst of the battle the brave Van Tromp," says a journal of the day, the Perfect Poli- tician, " fighting in the midst of the English fleet, had a passport sent to him from the other world, being shot with a musket bullet in the left breast near the Jieart. And no sooner was his life spent, but the hearts of his men were broken, so that the seamen had more mind to carry home the news of their renowned admiral's death, than to take vengeance on the English for killing him." This tremendous battle put an end to the war, and allowed the great Protector time to attend to business at home. After this we find Blake fighting the Spanish, always successfully, keeping the sea with his great ships even in winter storms, blockading Cadiz, shutting up the A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 127 Straits of Gibraltar, which were then — the worse for the commerce of the world — not in our hands,' and checking the depredations of the Barbary Rovers,' striking the Spaniards of Cadiz with absolute terror, burning the fleet of the pirates of Algiers, relieving the Christians of Tangiers from the beleaguerin Moors. The Spaniards . had, since the Armada, and the bloody persecutions of the I^ow Countries and the burnings of Protestants by the Inquisition, been regarded as the natural enemies of England. They were alike averse in mind and in faith. England, free and a Commonwealth, had executed its king as having acted against the law. Spain regarded her king as above the law. The most gorgeous ritualism, and the most abject devotion to his saints and the Virgin, distinguished the religion of the Spaniard from the intense Puritanical devotion of the English Re- publican, who venerated no king but " King Jesus," and who looked to his reward in a millennium of glory upon earth, in which some delight would be experienced by living saints treading on the necks of writhing idolaters. The Spanish Papist was, to the English Puritan, very little better than a savage idolator ; the Puritan was, to the Spanish gentleman, — a brave and high-spirited, if priest-ridden person — something to be hated and killed in battle, if at war, or burnt as an act of faith — auto da fi — pleasing to God. ' Happily, for this one result only, the dreadful anarchy in the "most Catholic country," Spain seems to have shut the mouths of those sugar-candy politicians who have lately cried, " Shall we not give up Gibraltar?" As well might we ask. Shall we not provide blunderbusses for burglars ? 128 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. When, therefore, Blake received news of the sailing of the Peru treasure-fleet, with six royal galleons and sixteen other great ships, laden with gold wrung from the Peruvians by blood and sweat and horrid deaths, and a devilish t3Tanny, which finally killed some three millions of a highly-gifted and gentle race, there was rough joy in the English fleet; and, gathering together a scattered force of some twenty-five English ships, Blake sailed to the Canaries, where the galleons had taken refuge, and there, on the 20th of April, 1657, was before the harbour of Santa Cruz, which was justly boasted of as being one of the strongest harbours in the world. It was shaped like a horse- shoe, defended at one corner side by an immense castle, mounted with very heavy cannon — the heaviest of the time — and well manned. Along the inner bend of the horse-shoe seven powerful forts had been built, and these were well served ; and, connecting these, was an earthwork, mounted with guns, and covering gimners and musketeers. In the bay were the galleons, well-armed too ; the precious metals and pearls were carried, however, into the town; and, having armed his forts, and turned the broadside of his ships to the sea-front of the bay, Don Diego Diagues, the Spanish admiral, waited for his enemy, in full confidence that he dare not attack. An old Dutch captain, well knowing what Blake was, begged permission of the admiral to withdraw with his ship out of the fray. " I am very sure," cried the Dutch- man, " that Blake will be among you." The Spaniard pointed to his forts and guns, and cried, " Go, if thou wilt, and let Blake come, if he dare." Meanwhile the English came surely on, and the A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 129 admiral, rising from his sick-bed, called a council of war, and proposed, as the breeze blew on to the land, to tackle the galleons in the harbour since they would not come out. Many hesitated, but the chief ap- proved, and at half-past six prayers were publicly read on board the fleet, and afterwards a good breakfast duly served, and then Rear-Admiral Stayner rode into port to attack the galleons singly and alone, while Blake lay alongside the castle and poured his broadsides, wood against stone — and his other ships fought the earthworks, the forts, and the land defences. Bold even unto madness as some deemed this plan, it was wondrously successful. In two hours the Swiftsure had made the castle a heap of ruins, and could help the gallant Stayner, who, in The Speaker, had borne a most unequal contest But the combat was virtually at an end, the forts — occupied and some nearly destroyed — could not help the ships, two galleons with all their rich cargoes of skins and spices, had sunk in the bay, every otlier vessel in the harbour was on fire, for miles and miles the very sea was alight with burning wrecks and charred bottoms of ships that floated out. The Spaniards, with new gunners and newly mounted guns, turned all their energy to Blake's beleaguered fleet now in the harbour, when the wind suddenly veered round and bore the English fleet safely out, with only fifty killed and one hundred and fifty wounded ! No wonder that the Protector Cromwell, writing to thank Blake, said the " mercy therein to us and to this Commonwealth is very signal, indeed very wonderful ; and according to the goodness and loving-kindness of the Lord wherewith His people have been followed in K 130 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. all these revolutions, and call upon us the more that we should fear before Him and still hope in His mercy." He sent him from the Parliament a small jewel, and hearty thanks to the whole of the officers of the fleet and seamen ; and " beseeching the Lord to continue His presence with you," remained " your very affectionate friend, Oliver P." "The whole action," wrote Clarendon the Royalist, " was so mira- culous that all men who knew the place concluded that no sober man with whatever courage endued would ever undertake it, and the Spaniards comforted themselves that they were devils and not men who had thus destroyed them. The slaughter on shore and on board the Spanish ships was incredible." Blake sailed towards home, paying off the Barbary pirates as he went, although he was sick unt'o death. And very neatly he did it, in the old way, again proving that stone castles were of little use before good stout oaken ships. In vaim the Dey brags, as he does quaintly in Ledyard's " Naval History :" — "Here are our castles of Goletta and Porta Ferino : do your worst, you Englishman, and don't brave us and think to frighten us with the sight of your great fleet" And, after due preparation, Blake does his worst or his best, with his fleet abounding in good old English names with a smack of the merchant service in them. There was the Newcastle, the Taunton, the Foresight, the Amity, the Merlin, and the Mermaid ; the bigger ships were the St. Andrew and the St. George. The little English ships sailed right into the port, in the midst of the accursed Barbary pirates, of whose tyranny whoso likes may read, and coolly took position within a musket shot of the castles. But in the hellish A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 131 storm of shot which fell upon them and around them God was also with us. The wind blew the smoke into the faces of the Turks, and Captain John Stokes, of the St. George, under cover of this smoke sent forth his Jack-tars in boats, who burnt the pirate fleet — nine large ships of war, rowed by Christian slaves mostly ; these were soon wrapped in flames, and the Turks soon fled from their two big castles, which Blake had knocked with his guns into a heap of ruins. He retired from the fight with only twenty-five men killed and forty-eight wounded. The Dey of Tripoli on hearing of this news released his prisoners, saluted our flag, and promised good behaviour for the future. We have not told how Algerine pirates, to appease Blake, would meet his vessels with a body of English prisoners on board, picked out of other Christian cap- tives ; nor how the Duke of Tuscany, a proud person, eminently Catholic, having aided the piratical princes, Maurice and Rupert, to prey on English merchants — and indeed, having sold English vessels lying in his ports — was fined by Cromwell sixty thousand pounds' compensation. The Pope, in solemn procession, ex- posed the Host for forty hours to avert the anger of God and the threatened cannon of the EngUsh ; while the Grand Duke^ paying the money in trepidation, owns too that Rupert had also sold some few good English ships in Roman ports. Upon this the gallant Blake makes a demand upon the Pope for twenty thousand pistoles, the receiver being as bad as the thief : and Alexander VII., the then infallible head of the Church, after many prayers and anathemata, paid the gold, about a third of what was really due to the Protestant admiral. We agree with Mr. Dixon, K 2 132 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. the biographer of Blake, that from the time of Caesar to these very days, while countless sums of money have been sent from England to Rome, the sum of twenty thousand pistoles was probably the only money ever -brought from Roman coffers to enrich the public treasury of England — that is, if Mr. Dixon be right in his hasty generalization, and Oliver did not rather pay it to the English losers. But the thought is valuable : — wondrous, yes, three times wonderful indeed is the fact that for so many hundred years the riches of the world should have been poured into Rome, either as robber and conqueror, or sitting clothed as the Babylon of the Apocalypse in scarlet, demanding tribute of the kings and the merchants of the earth ! Blake's life-work was done. Hoistingi his flag in the St. George, the stout, good, kindly man — Blake's portrait, preserved in Wadham College, shows a face that one could love, tender, full of feeling, and trial and trouble, too— sailed for the home he loved so well, and which he had so well kept the enemy from "fooling." As the battle-broken ship rolled and creaked through the trough of the sea the dying ad- miral, consumed with a dropsy and scurvy, asked often if the white cliffs of Old England were in sight. To him the deck of his ship was as Mount Pisgah, and his officers on the look-out strained their eyes to see the promised land. As the hills of Cornwall came in sight the hero sank, and sent for his officers to his cabin to bid them adieu. As he came into Pl3Tnouth Sound, into the good old town of his own home country, to which he had given back many English prisoners, Blake gave his soul to God. His work was done, and he stayed not to be thanked. And the eager voices A FAITHFUL SERVANT. 133 that from every jutting headland and wharf or " coign of 'vantage," cried triumph upon the conqueror of the jBarbary pirates, and the queller of the proud castles of the king of Spain, fell upon ears deafened for ever to human praise or blame. " Home they brought her warrior dead," is a line very often made very real in this our Eng- land. The true hearts of the nation welcomed this dead hero more sacredly than, if he lived to hear their joyous and triumphant shouts. The heart and intestines of our noble dead seaman who had kept the foreigners from fooling us, were taken out of the body and buried in the great church at Plymouth in an urn, where we hope they yet rest. The body, embalmed, lay in state at Greenwich, and was then buried by the desire of great Oliver the Protector in due state in Henry VII.'s Chapel, a fitting shrine, whence it was carted out like common carrion in the highly-spiced days of Charles II., with his crawl- ing people and flattering counsellors, and buried with other clay of Commonwealth heroes in St. Margaret's churchyard close by. It could not rest, let us sup- pose, in its kingly and gorgeous sepulchre while Eng- land was a pensioner of France both for money and mistresses, and the Hollanders we had so often beaten rode in triumph in the Thames. Chapter XIII. A DREAMER OF DREAMS. [ HE erection of a statue to John Bunyan, one of those many original geniuses of which England should be proud above all her possessions, since their fame will last when Canada and Australia and New Zealand have followed the example of America, and have cast oflf allegiance — nay, indeed, when perhaps England herself has been absorbed and is no more ; gives us hope that a still greater genius — Shakspere— ^may be thus honoured. Moreover, it makes us meditate on the varied fates of men. Shakspere, greatest of all, lacks anything much more considerable than the Stratford monument ; the theatrical posture-maker by Roubiliac being merely admitted as an ornament to the Abbey, while Prince Albert, a German gentleman of some taste in art and of exceeding good fortune, has at least sixteen, some say twenty, more or less costly statues cropping up all over the land, and one of the most gorgeous of canopies, the very details of which require an explanatory volume, in Hyde Park. Bunyan, in one respect a greater, in all others an infi- A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 135 nitely lower genius than Shakspere, is favoured with two statues, tenderly placed and fitly commemorative one in the Dissenters' grave-yard in Bunhill Fields, and the other at Bedford, not far from the gaol wherein he was imprisoned. The very antithesis of Banyan, the spiritualist-dreamer, George IV., the sensual wide-awake worldling, has three, also fitly placed — one at Windsor, with a " wiggy '' wig, at the grand staircase, another at Trafalgar Square, where everybody can jeer at him riding without stirrups and in a wig and blanket, and another at Brighton, where the king seems to have turned green with envy at the modem fops and belles who pass him by. Talk about sermons in stones ! Two or three sermons might be made out of these statues at large. The eternal fitness of things asserts itself. The dis- senting dreamer, dissenting he knew hardly why, with his sermon in a written book preached once and for ever, thrown into prison that he might make that book-sermon, direfully plagued, his life-work ground by necessity out of him, and then let go to die some- what in peace and honour, looms in stone at the prison and at the grave ; the sensual Prince Hard- heart, fop, fool, and materialist, a dandy at sixty, a roue and rake at sixty-five, " who was as false to his mistress as he was to his wife," lives in stone in the palace, the city square, and the fashionable lounge. Verily we see what kind of fame is best suited to the good and great. Few men combine goodness and greatness, and one of these was John Bunyan. Any talk about John Bunyan's life must have inte- rest ; it is a worthy one, affording many a lesson. Not the least of these lessons is in that which makes his life 136 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. notable, the history of his book. Now it would, be a confession of folly to speak against it. As a man's taste for music may be measured by his admiration for Beethoven's symphonies or Handel's oratorios, so a man's critical taste may be tested hy his love for Bunyan. Yet to critics, for more than one hundred years, the book lay dormant, doing much good silently, but looked at merely as a child's story. Not • until Doctor Johnson had ranked it as one of the three books which every reader wishes longer, not until William Cowper had praised the pilgrim who leads the soul to God, not until Robert Southey and the Quarterly Review, followed by Lord Macaulay, had taught the English what a treasure they had, did they appreciate Christian at his value. And even now Buhyan's masterpiece is unknown, as it ought to be, as a storehouse of Biblical learning. No man knew the English Bible, that great inheritance of the English people, so well as Bunyan. He was a man of one book, and that book was the Bible; his English — when he began to write he could hardly spell — was derived from it, and what he derived is about the very best homespun English in the world, " a well of English undefiled." Much like Chaucer in his poems, his humour and comedy came from the language that he used, and his characters are more purely life-like thaii those of Dickens ; his satire and scorn, his pathos and his power of moving sorrow, were all drawn thence, and they are superb. Yet this author was, during and just after life, unknown ; Dryden, Pope, the critics of his own and after days do not mention him. His people followed him as a preacher, his books were sold as chap-books — the A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 137 first edition of his principal work, printed in 1678, a book of extreme rarity, and now worth fifty guineas, was printed on cheap paper, in a small and insignifi- cent shape, and sold at but few pence. The London booksellers, sharp men, recognized his value suffi- ciently to steal from him, and that was all. But in the meantime the hearts of England were ■silently absorbing him. The "Pilgrim" was trans- lated into every language ; he was un-Protestantized by the Romanists, and circulated amongst their people- Bunyan's book is said to have been the most popular with English-speaking people of any since the transla- tion of the Bible ; he is more read than A Kempis, he teaches in a better and more subtle way, he dog- matizes not, he instils, he even wraps his Calvinism in sugar, and we are wedded to his opinions before we question what they are. The author, an hereditary tinker — for the business of travelling tinmen descended in those days from father to son, and was not disreputable— was bom at Elstow,' near Bedford, in the year 1628, five years after the first folio edition of Shakspere had been published. With these travelling tinkers, in those days of bad roads and large commons, the gipsies were often mixed and confounded ; but there is reason to suppose that Bunyan, whose name may be Norman, had none of that Eastern breed in him. His some- ' The present Vicar of Klstow, we observe, advertLses a "Life and Discourse upon Bunyan." The times are changed. Let us add, since writing the above, that a Ritualistic paper has the bad taste to write : " A monument to a sectarian of some natural ability and no small literary power and popularity, was unveiled by Lady Augusta Stanley last week," &c. Let "sectarians" take a note of that. 138 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. what tall, compact, large-boned, and broad figure, his round, capable head and manly face, his features generally, all speak of the good old Anglo-Norman stock— his humour, his reticence, and silence, do so too. His father was, moreover, a Puritan, and there is no instance at that time, we believe, of Christian gipsies. When he was bom, the Puritan spirit, touched upon more than once by Shakspere, was alive all over England ; it was a necessity of this spirit that the conscience should be quickened in a way that we now hardly dream of Religious revivals are religious storms ; the soul is shaken, and the great deep moved; the spirit is lashed and tor- mented with a belief in its absence from God and its perdurable sin. It falls trembling like the gaoler before Paul, smitten with a sense of guilt, and cries out, "What shall I do to be saved?" When the calm love of Christ stills this storm with the words, " Trust in the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass," the Puritan spirit cries out in terror, "Flee from the wrath to come.'' The little boy Bunyan, listening to these wild and fanatic preachers — godly men, no doubt, but as angular as a wedge which splits rocks — was plagued with ghostly terrors ; at ten years old he groaned in his sleep, and dreamt of fiends flying away with him and bearing him to torment. He had his soul-questionings, and believed that he was irredeem- ably lost. Part of Puritanism fled backwards to the Old Testament and the law ; and upon the terrors of the law the boy dwelt. He had a natural inclination, as all boys have, to rebellion ; he desired to tempt God, and, to try his own faith, wished to command the A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 139 puddles in the lane to dry up. Bunyan does not spare himself ; he tells us that he excelled all others in wickedness, as St. Paul declares that he was the chief of sinners. " It was my delight," he insists, " to be taken captive by the devil at his will, being filled with all unrighteousness, so that I had few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blas- pheming the name of God." He even selected his portion in hell, wishing to be a devil, " supposing them only to be tormentors, that, if it must needs be that I went thither, I might rather be a tormentor than tormented myself." This, from his very powerful and wondrous work, " Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," illustrates Bunyan's madness, as it were, developing into extreme selfishness, which breaks forth in braggart assertions as to the monstrosity of his own crimes, and fixes its chief hope on the salva- tion of himself. The same feeling, thoroughly foreign to the spirit of Paul and of his Master — the disciple praying for eternal condemnation, if by that means others could be saved, and the Master dying even for His enemies — caused Bunyan to draw his pilgrim fleeing selfishly from the wrath to come, and leaving his wife and children as he trod the way of salvation alone. This is a blot which has caused the book to be condemned as selfish, but a beauty as to the truth of the result of a conviction of the fear, unrelieved by the love, of God. Bunyan's self-depreciation has also fixed upon un- reflecting minds a notion of his wickedness. Mr. Ryland, who some years ago was a great light amongst Dissenters, says that " no man of common sense can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a 140 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. worthless, contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common profligate ! a soul-despising ! ! a soul-murdering ! ! ! a soul-damning ! ! ! ! thoughtless wretch as could exist on the face of the earth." No ; but a man of uncommon sense will at once see through the matter. Mr. Ryland piles up his epithets with the bad taste of a bad writer, to bring in his exclamations of wonder— "Now be astonished, O heavens to eternity, and wonder ! O earth and hell ! while time endures, this man becomes a miracle of mercy,'' &c. What nonsense ! God is working just in the same way in each of oiir souls ; He is no re- specter of persons. He forbids us to talk like Mr. Ryland, eminent Dissenter and editor, of " a worth- less, contemptible infidel ;" He touches each soul, and calls each heart, and waits. "We say amiss This or that is — Thy word is all if we could spell." Bunyan had contracted the bad habit of inordinate self-depreciation ; if Mr. Ryland had dared to say half that he has said to Bunyan's face, Bunyan would pro- bably have belaboured him soundly. When once ac- cused, John defended himself. He had never been drunk in his life ; no woman could charge him with aught that was wrong; he certainly used profane language, but one reproof cured him. He played at tip-cat, however, loved to ring the bells of the parish church, and to read the " Romance of Sir Bevis of Southampton " (a model, by the way, for his book, and of immense help to him)— these were his sins ; and so strongly did they plague him that, as he was A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 141 about to strike the " cat," a bit of wood as harmless as a child's ball — the game is a good one for teaching quickness and sharpness of eye — a voice from Heaven cried out within him, " Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?" This was a very intense question, which had no rela- tion to the game, and might have been put to any one in church. If the boy Bunyan was guilty as re- gards tip-cat, what are our curates. Dissenting ministers, and young ladies guilty of when they play croquet ? Also, when he went once to ring bells, he asked, " How if one of the bells was to fall on me ? " So he went outside, and the same voice said to him, " Thou wicked wretch, how if the steeple should fall ? " Very interesting is all this. Here is Bunyan in the normal, chaotic, selfish state of soul-salvation, without much love, faith, or truth, always asking about himself. Times grew worse — Puritanism was in a state of rebellion against foolish Charles and equally foolish Laud. The tyranny of the State produced Hampden and Cromwell ; the tyranny of the Church, Baxter, Milton, Howe, Bunyan. It was in a Puritan regi- ment that the young enthusiast carried arms, and his experience was of the utmost value to him : Captain Credence and Captain Boanerges, and the good soldier Faithful, are derived from it, while the Holy War itself not only is drawn from, but furnished with " those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army.'' One day, being set on guard at Leicester, a comrade volunteered to take his place, and that comrade Bunyan found, when he went to relieve guard, shot dead. Here was a special intervention, here again were made heavy searchings of conscience. 142 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. In a few months Bunyan left the army and married — very rashly and unwisely, according to modern notions ; but he holds it as mercy that the father and mother were "counted godly." "This woman and I," he writes, " though we came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both, yet this she had for her part " — the " Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven " and the " Prac- tice of Piety ;" and these he read. He notices that they did not reach his heart ; but they gave him an outward impulse to rehgion — he went to church often, sang with the others, and had so great a love for the priest (clergyman), that he felt his spirit " fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him," which was just the beau idtcU oiHas. feeling of a pious Romanist. "Nay," again writes the rebellious Puritan, " I could have laid down at their [his spiritual teachers'] feet, and been trampled by them ; their name, their garb and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me." This feeling, which he reckons amongst his sins, he brackets with asking in his thought, " Whether we were of the Israelites or no ? " a proof that there was either a doubt of his gipsy blood, or else that the question of the Israelitish origin of the English people had been then ventilated. But note that this thought is in Bunyan entirely selfish. He was as self-righteous in inclination as a Pharisee, for, says he, finding that the Jews " were once a people peculiar to God, thought I, if I were one of this race, my soul must needs be happy." His father settled the question with a " No, we are not ;"' and then Bunyan was tempted to try his faith ' But not to the satisfaction of Notes and Queries, wherein ingenious contributors will continue asking, was " Bunyan a A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 143 on drying up puddles, next began to think it was too late to pray, and then to believe that the Turks were right and the Christians wrong. A very restive, un- pleasant, discontented disciple this, walking in his' o\vn shadow of the valley of death, ever ready to halt, seldom ready to believe. He was ever prompt to catch at burrs and blocks for stumbling in his way. Amongst the small chap-books that he bought was one, a copy of the very edition of which we have before us, containing a narrative of Francis Spira, a pretended convert from Protestantism, who died in great agony, believing that he had sinned the un- pardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Bunyan opened this trouble to an ancient friend of his, and the silly old fellow acquiesced in the dreadful notion. " I am afraid I have committed it,'' cried the penitent Bunyan, who probably did not even know what it was. " Indeed," rejoined his doltish companion, " I am sorely afraid that you have." What wonder that the clergy of England objected to such fanatical and unlearned teaching ? When Bunyan first took the sacrament at a Baptist society in Bedford, tending of course towards the all- important step of preaching himself, he was direfuUy tempted to dash down the cup and curse all his brethren. He was in continual mental agony ; none knew of it, he says, or will know of iti but himself. His wife aided him in her way, but the terrors of the Old Testament were on him. When he began to preach he powerfully affected all who heard him. He gipsy?" The question, if his father's opinion be set aside, is best settled by his facial and cranial development, which, judging from h(^ portraits, are thoroughly unlike the gipsy race. 144 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. preached as a dying man to dying men ; he was illite- rate, but so were they ; and even while he spake the devil tempted him to utter strange blasphemies in the pulpit. One day he told his hearers, in a barn, that hardly, one of them could be saved ; whereat a gen- tleman listening told him not to treat Christians thus, for his could not logically be a message of mercy which condemned most of his hearers. Hereupon Master Bunyan proved that Christ in His parable of the Sower damned three out of the four classes of hearers — those at the wayside, those on the rock, those in the thorns and thistles, and saved only one. " Therefore," cried Bunyan, constructing by his native sense a syllogism, " if I want charity, the Lord wanted charity, and was not fit to preach. Horrid blasphemy ! Away with your hellish logic and speak Scripture." - Alas ! had he been more logical, he would have seen that reason requires us to own that in the prepared field, sown with the Word of God, if the similitude is to be followed out, few indeed would fall on the path or the rock or the thorny hedge, and that, as in oar own fields, the huge mass, without perceptible exception, would bring forth a hundredfold. So Cbjrist, the Conqueror, Prince and Ruler, intends to reap all. " Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition." Those condemned must in this parable be only the excepted few. But it must be remembered that the inspired dreamer Bunyan himself held the narrowest views of salvation. We should not like to recommend to the young to read his sermon, a prodigiously long one, by the way, on the " Strait Gate." He there proves, by a won. drously skilful manipulation of texts, that those who A DREAMER OR DREAMS. 145 will be saved will be so few that he compares them to the eight souls who were saved in the Deluge. With a narrow logic which would have driven such men as Kingsley, Maurice, and Archbishop Whately to de- spair, he shows that many run, but only one receives the prize ; therefore as one is to many, as the winner is to the field, to use a sporting phrase, so those who are admitted to heaven will be to those who are for ever- lastingly condemned to the flames that are miracu- lously renewed, the torments, that are miraculously fresh and painful, and the worm that never dies. And there is no compromise in John Bunyan. What would W. R. G. (Mr. Gregg), who denies that the per- petuity of torment was known to Christ, say to that awful sermon ? It is perhaps on the theory of a necessary counter- irritant that Providence threw Bunyan into Bedford gaol. He had been five years a preacher, and had possibly done a good deal of harm, as well as good, with all his spirit-stirring preachings, when the red-hot Cavaliers and Churchmen of the Restoration, who had suffered much from Puritan Dissenters, determined to persecute them in their turn. Of all Dissenters perhaps Bunyan was worst used. He was told not to preach, not being ordained ; he persisted, and was thrown into Bedford gaol, wherein, with curiously sweet intervals of liberty, and with many examinations to extort from him a promise not to itinerate, he remained twelve years, from November, 1660, to November, 1672. During that time he had learned the Bible thoroughly, and had written his great book : that gaol was his college; it was a place of retreat, a hermitage. The very gaoler was his friend, and let L 146 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. him out, trusting to his word, even to take long journeys; but, disguise it as we will, it was a prison after all, wherein he dreamed his divine dream. With all his dislike of " hellish logic '' when it was against him, he had a shrewd, logical way in his rejoinders. One day in this gaol a sanctimonious Quaker came with his " Friend Bunyan, the Lord sent me to seek thee, and I have been in many counties, and at last I have found thee." " Friend," said stout John, " the Lord well knows that I have been in this gaol several years, and if He had sent thee," he added with cruel logic, ," He would have sent thee here direct" But, in spite of all solacements, Bedford gaol was a direful place, the one which it is well to remember first moved Howard to his prison reform ; Bunyan evidently felt it to be so, for the first sentence of his book, translated into more tongues than even Shakspere's masterpiece, begins solemnly : " As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep ; and as I slept I dreamed a dream." Chapter XIV. A DREAMER OF DREAMS (Continued), ' HEN Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the head of the Dean in the High Church of Edinburgh, calling out the ever-memorable " Out, thou foul thief ! Wilt thou say mass at my lug ?" she settled for a con- siderable time the question not only of Popery but of Episcopacy in Scotland. From so small an action of an irate Scotswoman great events arose. When John Bunyan was admonished that, as an unlearned and non-ordained man, he had no right to preach, he answered the Justice : " Yea, by God's grace, if I were out of prison to-day, I would preach again to- morrow ; '' and so he was cast into Bedford gaol, a den, a place of poverty and squalor, yet not without comfort and solacement — and from this circumstance one of the world's great books arose. After twelve years Bunyan had learnt much by suffering and more by reading. In these less heroic days we find it quite right that one man should suffer for the people — nay, L 2 148 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. for the matter of that, there are many ardent young souls of the best sort who would suffer the tinker's imprisonment to be enabled to write his book. A visionary and a seer, Bunyan became a poet, but in prose, though he wrote things not to be despised in rhjrme of the best sort. He " learnt in suffering what he taught in song," for his book is a hymn magnifying God's mercies to the sinner. Here then, too, God teaches us in history. We find it right, as we said before, that Bunyan should have been imprisoned. How he found that imprisonment he has told us. It was grievous enough, but it is astonishing how plain the experiment becomes when it is tried on others and not on ourselves. John's prayers, for the most part not selfish, except that continuous and ardent one for salvation, may be sup- posed to have been now and then directed to some worldly mercies and comforts for his wife and children. God's answer seems to have been greater perturbation, with a few gleams of comfort from talk with godly women — such as poor lace-ftiakers working at their cottage doors, and holy Mr. Gifford, an old Puritan captain and preacher, whosfe portrait we recognize as Evangelist — and then, after five years' preaching, a " mittimus," as he puts it, to Bedford gaol, signed by . Mr. Francis Wingate, Justice of the Peace, and that old enemy to the truth. Doctor Linley, who with one Forster, " a right Judas," as John puts it, argued with the accused to persuade him to give up preaching. In the graphic pictures that Bunyan draws of these -trials and interviews, it is but fair to set down that he seldom says anything bitter, except of Mr. Forster, and that, in respect of any especial tyranny having A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 149 been used, always excepting the fact that a law was passed which savoured more of Romanism than of Protestantism, there was really none. Even the "right Judas " merely pleads for Bunyan, and with him, so that he may be persuaded to attend to his trade and not to go preaching. His interrogators knew not, of course, that there was before them an inspired genius ; it was enough for them that he who ought to have been taught would take to teaching. The judges acted, like English judges, even " Justice Keelin ;" and, as for " Judge Hales," our own celebrated Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice, disguised under that name — ' common people being fond of adding an " s '' — his answers to Bunyan's wife bespeak tender pity. Bunyan would not give up preaching, and the justices had nothing to do but to carry out the law. The good days of the Protector, of perfect toleration, and of Milton's liberty of " prophesying " without a licence,, were past. Bunyan must go to gaol or be silent ; and to gaol he went, to be more heard than ever. Two great books were his companions, the Bible — the authorized translation of that very Church which he kicked against, and against whose Prayer-book and litur- gies generally he wrote with a good deal of rough bitter- ness — and " Foxe's Book of Martyrs." The latter might have made him more tender to the Churchmen whom he condemned, seeing how large a number suffered for the cause. Upon the margin of his copy of this book, which is now in the Bedford town library, there are some rough verses, expressing his love for the martyrs and his hatred to Babylon, which he firmly believed to be Rome. From his Bible he learnt more precious things. He could no longer be called illite- ISO HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. rate. He had the best learning and preparation for a Christian teacher. " The fears, the hopes, the re- membrances, the anticipations, the inward and outward experience, the behef and faith of a Christian, form of themselves a philosophy and a sum of knowledge which a life spent in the grove of Academus, or the painted porch, could not have attained or collected." When persons talk of an illiterate tinker, it is well to remember this sentence of a pearl of poets and pro- found scholar. We may here also add Coleridge's assertion that he read Bunyan's great creation three times — once as a theologian, once with devotional feelings, and once as a poet. " I know of no book,'' he remarks, "the Bible excepted, that will teach and enforce the whole of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus as the 'Progress.' It is, in my conviction, the best Summa Theologice Evangelicce ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." The gaol is not a paradise ; it is by a bridge, damp and unwholesome. Bunyan, with his wife attending him and his four small children, one of whom was his dear blind daughter, reads and talks while he makes tagged stay and boot laces for his wife to sell. He is without neither friends nor comfort ; he has that peace of God which passeth understanding. " I never had," he writes, " in all my life, so great an inlet into the Word of God as now. Those Scriptures I saw nothing in before now shine upon me. I have been able to laugh at destruction. I have had sweet sights in this place — I have seen that here which I am persuaded I shall never in this world be able to express. 'In whom, though now ye see Him not, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.' " A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 151 So in this way the prayer is answered. Here little, and hereafter bliss. Here a prison, with a foretaste of glory. Bunyan must open this secret, and he writes his book. He is a pilgrim, imprisoned in a den, but progressing from Doubting Castle to the land of Beulah and the Delectable Mountains. The only copy of the first edition that is known is now in the possession of Mr. Robert Holford, of Park Lane. It is a neatly-printed pocket volume, and is in beau- tiful preservation. How silently the work progressed Bunyan tells us himself. " It was almost done," he says, in rough verses, " before I was aware I this begun." Nor did he it to please his neighbour : " I did it mine own self to gratify.'' Local critics, the gaoler, the wife, and friends were divided about it. He " put his ends together " — he is talking as if he had made a bunch of laces — and showed them to his audience : — " And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die; Some said, John, print it ; others said, Not so ; Some said, It might do good; others said, No." Happily Bunyan believes in his book, and sends it forth. It contains, he adds, nothing but sound and honest gospel strains ; and he concludes, in verses which have the ring of old Burton's preface in his " Anatomy of Melancholy :" — " Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what, And yet know whether thou art blest or not, By reading the same lines ? Oh, then come hither, And lay my book, thy head and heart together ! " The " Progress " is a wonderful book. It treats of the work of God in the soul in such a way that a 152 HALF-LENGTH- PORTRALTS. child reads it as a fairy tale, and gets insensibly learned in the Word. It cannot be gainsaid. As one reads it, one believes and sees, or one throws it away and goes no farther with it. Let any one once enter into the spirit of it, and he will become ena- moured of Christian and Hopeful, of Mr. Greatheart and Captain Boanerges and Evangelist, no less than of Prudence and Piety and Charity and the female graces of the story. And, while we follow the adven- tures of Christian, we meet with old friends, sketched merely by a name, but living to-day as yesterday. There are Mr. Pliable and Master Obstinate, Mr. Facing-both-ways and By-ends, with Messrs. Anything and Two-Tongues. There are Mr. Money-love, Mr. Gripeman and Greedy, Mr. Save-all, Lady Feigning and her daughters, and Mrs. Love-it, with Mrs. Filth, who think that Lord Lechery is such a pretty gentleman, and who hint of talk which might have been written by Congreve himself; then there are Messrs. Pick-thank, High-mind, and Enmity, and the whftle population of that " lusty " place of amuse- ment. Vanity Fair, in itself an immortal name. The whole picture is drawn with the gravest humour and immense force of satire, reaching ever and again into great earnestness — as when we hear of Sir Having Greedy and "my old Lord Lechery," with Lord Desire, of Vain Glory, and read in a side-note, " Sins are all lords and great ones ;" or when the author notes that the schoolmaster in Vanity Fair taught his pupils " the whole art of getting, either by violence, cheating, cozenage, or lying ; and these four gentlemen had attained much of the art of their master, so that they could have kept school themselves." A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 153 How marvellously and with what abundant genius this great writer could treat of a- little incident may- be seen in the following extract, where Christian and Hopeful go " out of the way." Was there ever a better, or a shorter sermon ? How the trouble increases till they put that awful question, "Where are we now ? " How the lightning illuminates, and the thunder of its reverberations illustrates the dire- some scene. Not even that of the witches in Macbeth is more truly dramatic and theatrical. " Now, 1 beheld in my dream that they had not journeyed far, but the river and the way for a time parted ; at which they were not a little sorry ; yet they durst not go out of the way. " Now the way from the river was rough, and their feet tender, by reason of their travels ; so the souls of the pilgrims were much discouraged because of the way (Num. xxi. 4). Wherefore, still as they went ou, they wished for a better way. Now a little before them there was on the left hand of the road a meadow, and a stile to go over into it, and that meadow is called By-path Meadow. Then said Christian to his fellow, ' If this meadow lieth along by our wayside, let us go over into it.' Then he went to the stile to see, and behold, a path lay along by the way, on the other side of the fence. ' It is according to my wish,' said Christian. ' Here is the easiest going ; come, good Hopeful, and let us go over.' " Hopeful. — ' But how if this path should lead us out of the way ? ' " Christian. — 'That is not like,' said the other. 'Look, doth it not go along by the wayside?' So Hopeful, being persuaded by his fellow, went after 154 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. him over the stile. When they were gone over, and were got into the path, they found it very easy for their feet; and withal they, looking before them, espied a man walking as they did (and his name was Vain Confidence). So they called after him, and asked him whither that way led. He said, ' To the Celestial Gate.' ' Look,' said Christian, ' did I not tell you so? By this you may see we are right.' So they followed, and he went before them. But, behold, the night came on, and it grew very dark, so that they that were behind lost the sight of him that went before. He, therefore, that went before (Vain Confi- dence by name), not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit (Isa. ix. i6), which was on purpose there made by the prince of those grounds to catch vain-glorious fools withal, and was dashed in pieces with his fall. Now, Christian and his fellow heard him fall, so they called to know the matter, but there was none to answer, only they heard a groaning. ' Then,' said Hopeful, ' Where are we now ? ' Then was his fellow silent, as mistrusting that he had led him out of the way; and now it began to rain, and thunder, and lighten in a very dreadful manner, and the water rose amain." That Bunyan did not, in his fine knowledge of the Bible, find out that he was perhaps wrong to object to infant baptism, or to claim total immersion, when the same word that we use for " baptism " is used to show that we are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, and that he did not find in Timothy and other epistles some argument for proper ordination and Church government, is not to be wondered at. He saw only one side. He was a sectarian, and a narrow one. A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 155 His intensity of belief equalled his intensity of fear ; and perhaps the most awful religious picture ever drawn is that of the fall of Ignorance, just as the death of Christian and the passage by him of the dark river, upheld by Hopeful, are the most piously pathetic. Ignorance, who 'passes by the river, aided by one Vain-hope, a ferryman, ascends the hill, and comes to the gates of Heaven — " only he came alone with no one to encourage him." And the guardian angels look over the top of the gate, and ask him for his certificate, "that they might go in and show it the king ;" so he fumbled in his bosom for one, but found none. .Then said they, "Have you none?" But the man answered never a word. And the king commanded the two shining ones to bind Ignorance hand and foot, and to have him away to the door that I saw at the side of the hill, and put him in there. Then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of Destruction." Alas for poor Ignorance, " ferried over by one Vain-hope!" Alas for the fools and their teachers ! We would rather dwell, however, on Christ's own words, " Knock, and it shall be opened ; ask, and ye shall receive," than upon Bunyan's picture. Giant Pope, whom Bunyan hated, is more charitable, since he allows invincible ignorance to be saved. Take again the ever-memorable scene of the man with a muck-rake, raking in filth for straws and dross and dirt, whilst a glorious angel holds an immortal crown over him; and the dreadful question to and answer of the man in the iron cage — " And Christian said, 'Is there no hope?' And the man said, 'None.'" One of the most popular pictures, by the 156 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. way, was that of Giant Pope and Giant Pagan, both decrepit and old, with martyrs' bones, the marks of their cruelties, before their caves, but with few near them, and both evidently dying out and harmless. Bunyan would be astonished now to find that both are recovered from their wounds, that Giant Pope's pretences are more extravagant than ever, that thousands hurry to his cave, that he positively denies all the little transactions about the bones,' and that Giant Pagan, under the name of Evolution, and with the aliases of Positivism, Darwinism, or the Higher Pantheism, has been so furbished up that he is quite strong and on his legs again. The continuation of the " Progress " is perhaps the exception to the hard rule which declares that every second part of a work is worse than the first. It is very touching, gentle, and more Christian ; and the author does justice to poor Christiana and , her children, who have been so cruelly deserted. During the period that he was writing these books, he was in gaol, making his livelihood by working at tagging laces — perhaps, indeed, he invented the " tag," or tin tip, which, as a tinker, he could well put on, for his tagged laces sold largely as new things. Now-a-days it would be impossible perhaps to write such a book as the " Progress," and John Bunyan would have patented his new tag — "Bunyan's patent tag — no more trouble with boots, stays, or gaiters" — and would have thrown away his admirable literary gift. ' Lord Robert Montagu, M.P., a recent pervert, declares that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was (l) right, and (2) none of the Pope's ; (3) that the Auto-da-fe did not punish ; (4) that persecution is a duty; and (5) that, if the Church tells him to believe that black is white, he will so believe it. A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 157 ^any a man has made a huge fortune with less foundation. But Bunyan was above getting on in worldly fashion, and would not turn for mere money like Demas, whom he sketches. It is a happy thing for us that he was so. These clear souls above the smoke and din of this dull sphere which men call earth lift us to the empyrean, and make us hopeful of a better world. " His life has flow'd From its mysterious urn a sacred stream, In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure Alone are mirror'd ; which, though shapes of ill May hover round its surface, glides in light, And takes no shadow from them. " To a foolish act of a careless worldling king and a silly priesthood Bunyan owed his imprisonment. The best part of the clergy were driven to Nonconformity, and a rod was preparing for the back of the Church. But for that which materialists call luck, and which we believe is the hand of God in history, England would have then exhibited " How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd When vengeance listens to the fool's request ;" but it was not to be, and to a religious Act — " one of the worst Acts of one of the worst governments the world has ever seen,'' says the Whig Macaulay — Bunyan owed his liberation. Charles II., at heart a Papist, wished to annul all the penal statutes against the Roman Catholics. To do this, and to hide his ,real intent, Charles annulled the penal statutes against the Protestant Nonconformists also ; so Bunyan was set at liberty, and forthwith pubUshed a tract com- iS8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. paring Charles with the Persian monarch who, although not in the light himself allowed the chosen people to exercise their true religion and to rebuild their temple. We need not wonder at the grateful blindness of one who was not practised in the guiles of a Court. While in prison Bunyan had been an industrious writer ; he wrote against the Church of England, not under- standing the form of prayer as conveying the spirit of prayer, although our Saviour Himself dictated a form. He sharply attacked the Quakers, and issued a num- ber of tracts, eagerly read by his people, but long since perished. Banyan's literary labours might well be narrowed to the " Progress," Parts i and 2, " The Holy War," " Grace Abounding," and possibly the " Career of Mr. Badman," a curious little work. The public, to whom all authors must bow, has done well to forget most of his books. The second part of the " Progress " was published in 1684, the tenth edition of the first part in 1685, ia which year the author had nearly been put again in Bedford gaol, having, it is said, had to visit his people at Bedford in the guise of a carter. He was accepted as a father amongst his people — good Bishop Bunyan, indeed, he was — episcopos — in reality overlooking various meeting- houses, his visitations being annual. When James II., in 1687, gave a wider indulgence to all dissenters — of course with an eye to the chief dissenters, the Roman Catholics — Bunyan was not deceived, but warned his people to look beyond. He even refused to speak to the minion of the court who came down to tune the corporation of Bedford, and who would doubtlessly have oflfered some place to so noteworthy a man. But the inspired teacher did not live A DREAMER OF DREAMS. 159 to see the glorious Revolution of 1688. In the summer of that year he rode to London to reconcile a son with an angry father and to visit a sick man, and, riding through heavy rain, he sat in his wet clothes, caught a cold and fever, and so died at his lodgings on Snow Hill. The very hill has now dis- appeared, but Bunyan's fame lives, and will live, when the viaduct that covers his death-place will have fallen into decay. But this fame was of tardy growth. He seems to have been regarded as a story-book writer. Dr. Young, a man greatly below him in genius, couples his prose with Tom D'Urfey's poetry. "And," says Macaulay, writing in 1854, "it is a signi- ficant circumstance that until very recently all the numerous editions of the " Pilgrim's Progress " were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall. The paper, the printing, the plates, were all of the meanest description.'' This is noteworthy. The good man was buried in Bunhill Fields — and it is pleasing to observe the love the Nonconformists have for the place — but his fellow-believers neglected the grave till some time ago, when they raised a monumental tomb over which Bishop Bunyan lies in an attitude of repose. Years before, Maginn, a learned scholar and genius, had knelt upon the humble grave and had said in rapture, "Sleep on, thou prince of dreamers." Prince indeed, and well he sleeps as we may picture his Pilgrim slept in the House Beautiful, with Piety and Prudence and Charity to watch him and to lead him when he wakes into the Morning Land, where there shall be no more sleep and no more sorrow. And his is a peculiar grace and a lovely honour, a fame built in the kindly memories i6o HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. of the young, enshrined like a pure statue in a marble niche, first appreciated by the untaught, the simple, and the lowly, and read as a pleasure by the child who by his work was led gently to the shrine which scoffers dread and fools avoid ; and next, after the business of life, and the noise and bustle and turmoil of Vanity Fair, resorted to by the middle-aged and weary, who remember the enchanter of their youth, and who ' ' E'en in transitory Life's late day, That mingles all their brown with sober gray, Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road, And guides the Progress of the soul to God." Chapter XV. PREACHING TO THE PEQPLE. I HE bane and the antidote, the poison and its cure, the storm and the cahn, are, by the goodness of God, successive to each other, or exist almost simultaneously ; so that man has not long to wait for the removal of any evil. Just at the very time that Voltaire was doing as much mischief as any man well could to the Christian religion in France, this favoured country was blessed with the presence of a mightier and yet gentler spirit in the person of John Wesley, who did as much good as he could to the faith of Christ. " Spirits,'' says Shakspere, " are not finely touched but to fine issues." In the cases of Voltaire and Wesley one may see the different way in which two dis- tinguished minds so act out their way of life. Both are very thin, worn men, living minds rather than, bodies ; both are restless, energetic, .wondrous workers; both have keen, vivid faces, looks that would cut you ; each has his perpetual smile — one a cruel sneer, the other a smile of ineifable peace and goodness — and M i62 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. their lives are almost parallel. One writes letters untold, pamphlets, books ; intrigues with kings, ruins a monarchy, makes and spends the fortune of a prince, gets crowned by a grateful nation, and dies in his triimiph in an ef&uence of gratified vanity. The. other preaches thousands of sermons — more than a thousand discourses in one year — travels thousands of miles, and from his youth to his old age gives away in charity, out of modest earnings, more than thiity thousand pounds, and dies, regretted even by his enemies, a poor parson, a faithful and zealous servant of Christ, with his gown, his bands, and his Master of Arts hood upon his worn body. Each of these notable characters lived to a very great age. Voltaire, bom in 1694, died in 1778 ; Wesley, bom in 1703, died in 1791. The two men were older than most, being respectively in their eighty-fourth and eighty- eighth year. If we were to count by hard work and heart- beats, they were half as old again as their years. " The works of Voltaire," says Robert Southey, who first drew attention to the parallel, " have found their way wherever the French language is read, the dis- ciples of Wesley wherever the English language is spoken.'' And Southey, loyalist and conservative though he was in his later years, yet estimates the greatness of such men as beyond that of kings. " These men were not in all things contrasted," he hastens to say ; " one was not all darkness, neither was the other all light ;" and he adds, " The Emperor Charles V. and his rival of France appear at this day infinitely insignificant if we compare them with Luther and Loyola ; and there may come a time when the name of Wesley will be more generally known than PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 163 that of Frederick or Catherine. For the works of such men survive them, and continue to operate when nothing remains of worldly ambition but the memory of its vanity and its guilt." John Wesley was descended from a good, ancient family, respectable, learned, full of culture, but poor and of the middle class. His great-grandfather Bar- tholomew Wesley, who was bom about 1600, studied physic as well as divinity at the University, and in the time of the Commonwealth became minister of Char- mouth and Catherston (two adjoining villages near Lyme Regis). From the first of these livings he was ejected immediately after the Restoration, and from the second on the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662. He continued to reside at Charmouth, prac tising physic, until he was driven, with other Noncon- formists, to another part of the country. There was a strain of hardy puritanic nonconformity in the blood of the family, and also a love of medicine ; we see both peep out in the great-grandson. Bartholomew's son John married the niece of Thomas Fuller, D.D., the wise and witty Church historian. Disgusted at the execution of Charles I. and at the Calfs Head Club of the political Puritans, John joined the Church, and became through life a zealous Churchman. His son Samuel, father of the John Wesley, a most admi- rable man, married a good and worthy woman, daughter of a Nonconformist. The lady was not only conscientious, but learned enough to examine rigidly the tenets of both Church and Dissent — hence her deliberate choice of the former. She wrote to one of her sons that she desired nothing more, " having brought her children into the world, than to M 2 i64 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. do something, if it please God, ' towards being an instrument of doing good to their souls." To her son Jack, when at Oxford ("Thank God, wherever I am," said the father, "my Jack is a Fellow of Lincoln!" is a sentence of the good, triumphant father's, glad of his son's success), she wrote a piece of advice which we commend to all young men : "Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule.- Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off a relish of spiritual things^in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however -innocent it may be in itself" The father was even more severe. " Mor- tification," he said, "is still an indispensable Christian duty ; if a young man will rejoice in his youth, let him take care that all his joys be innocent." With such a father and mother to consult, so pure and valuable a soul as John Wesley's was safe. Mrs. Wesley understood Greek, Latin, and theology, was a good housewife, a merry, cheerful mother, and had enough to do at that rectory at Epworth in which she bore her husband nineteen children, whereof few survived. John was the second son who reached manhood. That the mother and father could difiei is- proved by the fact that the Reverend Samuel Wesley wrote in favour of the glorious Revolution of 1688, while Mrs. Wesley, though sprung from .the Nonconformists, stuck to the old race , but, being a wise, obedient wife, she never said a word in open opposition to her husband, deferring to his opinions, until within a year of Ring William's death, when he PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 165 discovered that his wife at family . prayer never said "Amen" to the prayers for the King's Majesty. Instead of being as forbearing as his good wife, Samuel Wesley had a quarrel with her, when she told him that she did not believe that the Prince of Orange was king; whereupon the husband vowed that he would never live with her till she did believe so, and, mounting his horse, rode away. The king's death absolved him from his rash vow, or rather he thought that it did. He gave up his engagement, which Southey truly says was both " rash and criminal," and came back to his wife. John was the first child after this reconciliation. We may trace in his high-handed opinions, and his method of dealing with his own faulty and foolish wife some of the Epwortli parson's notions as to the duty of women. Here then we have an excellent, earnest, zealous, religious couple, fearing God, honouring the king — even if they did not agree who was king — pure and holy, but necessarily imperfect. One cannot but love them. John was born to them in 1703, June 17th (Old Style) ; and the parson, in lax times, did about those days so admonish and belabour with strong words his parishioners— flax-spinners in a Lincolnshire town, and by no means very chaste or pure — that some of them set fire to his house, " to singe him." Bidding his wife rise and save the two elder girls, Mr. Wesley burst open the nursery door, roused the maid and five children,. and snatched some of them from her. John, six years old, was forgotten, and, though his mother rushed through the fire, she could not reach him ; the father ran up the stairs, but they cracked in the fire beneath him, and he fell on his i65 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. knees in the hall, praying God to save his son from so dreadful a death. Luckily, his neighbours, hoisting each other on their shoulders, saved the child by the window. When he was carried out, the father cried, " Neighbours, let us kneel down and give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children ; let the house go !" In this slight incident the godly resigna- tion of the man was admirably illustrated. Samuel, John's elder brother, nine years his senior, taught him Hebrew before he went to Oxford. Arrived there, he found his fellow-students both " well-natured and well-bred men," wisely disposed to preserve peace and good-neighbourhood among themselves and to promote it where they had any acquaintance. We may be sure that John was a diligent student, but the strictness of his religious discipline — he set aside moreover half his allowance for acts of charity — brought ridicule upon him. As the winds and rain root the oaka and try their strength, so do satire and ridicule try our purposes. " It is a weak virtue,'' wrote his mother, " that cannot bear being laughed at. .... Many people, though well inclined, have yet made a shipwreck of faith and conscience because they could not bear raillery." Of course John kept a diary and parcelled out his time: Mondays and Tuesdays were devoted to the Classics, Wednesdays to Logic and Ethics, Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic, Fridays to Metaphysics and Natural Philo- sophy, Saturday to Oratory and to Poetry, and chiefly to composition in those arts; Sunday he gave to Divinity. Here was no idleness. Here was no con- ceited reliance upon natural talent and uninstructed wisdom. "God," said a Dissenting brother with a PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 167 sneer to a learned clergyman, " does not want your learning." " No, my friend," was the answer, " neither does He require your ignorance." No one thought less of mere human endeavour than John Wesley ; but he well knew that it is our duty to improve by study the talents which God gives us. John Wesley's father had two livings, and con- scientiously did duty for both. When he sent his son more money out of his income, John set aside a still greater part for the poor, and afterwards -he con- sulted a "serious man" as to what he was to do. " You want," said the serious man, " to serve God and get to heaven. Well, you must have companions ; He does not think much of solitary religion." These words were sufficient to set John and his young col- lege friends towards a parallel movement to that of our young High Churchmen. He and his friends lived by rule or method (hence the term Methodist) ; they took the Sacrament weekly, and were so well- ordered that in such an age they could not escape ridicule. They were called Bible Bigots, Sacramen- tarians, Bible Moths, the Godly Club, and Methodists. " It is no new name," wrote the Rev. John Chapman to Wesley ; " Dr. Calamy, in one of his volumes of the ejected ministers, observes, they called those who stood up for God Methodists." Calamy was born in 1600, and died in 1666 ; the name, therefore, was no new thing ; but it was appropriately given to Wesley, for during his whole life he, according to his lights, " stood up for God." Wesley, who had served for some time as his father's curate at Wroote, in Lincolnshire, came to the deter- mination, with some other of his companions, to sail i68 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS: to America, in order to convert the Indians: He went thither in 1735, and remained in the country two years. Before going he had translated or adapted an older translation of Thomas k Kempis — a book which every one should read — and had written many treatises and hymns. Let us here dismiss his literary works in a few lines. They consisted of the book above men- tioned, political and controversial tracts, some bitter writings against the Calvinists and the Moravians, in which we arc inclined to think he has far the best of the argument, being grounded far deeper in learning and theology ; and a tract upon medicine, in which he falls into many gross and extremely dangerous errors. Very few ignorant quacks would now give such recipes as Wesley's for all kinds of diseases ; but such is the power of his name that we are sorry to note that the book was but lately reprinted and circu- lated widely. In conjunction with hi s brother Charles, he wrote a book of hymns, many of them very beau- tiful, and these are still popular ; Charles, however, is esteemed the better sacred poet. A complete list of Wesle)f's writings would be a long one. His collected works have been published in two editions, the first consisting of thirty-two, the second of sixteen volumes. His biography has repeatedly been written ; the best accounts of him are by Coke, More, and Southey. It would be difficult for us to say how highly we esteem the work by the last-named author, which was a great favourite with S. T. Coleridge. An annotated edition by that fine poet and theologian was left at his death to Southey, and the book, enriched by these notes, is published (1864, two volumes in one) by Messrs. Longmans and Co. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 169 It was while at Savannah, working away at the con- version of the Indians, supporting himself meanwhile on the salary he received from his fellowship, that Miss Sophia Causton, niece of the chief magistrate there, either fixed her eyes on him or was led by her rela- tions to pay marked attentions to the young enthusiast. Religion is itself a thing so set apart from, the world, and marriage, as then and now conducted, is so often a worldly matter, that perhaps nothing is more offen- sive to a true heart and a man of real Christian or even, sober tastes than what is called a religious court- ship. The young lady plainly " made up to " John Wesley ; and this says much for her judgment. But that she was introduced to him as one suffering from a wounded spirit and inquiring after the way of eternal life is to us disgusting. She dressed in white, and observed the utmost simplicity in her behaviour. Wesley, who drank nothing but water and ate no animal food — a very wise thing in the West Indies — found that she followed him in this abstinence. He therefore commenced eating meat and drinking wine, to prove to the lady that he did not go so far as to deem the use of either unlawful. Owing to this change of diet, Wesley fell into a fever, and was attended night and day by Miss Causton with continued and, let us hope, sincere solicitude. The heart of the young preacher had been hitherto by no means softened towards women ; but this attention captivated him, and he wrote warmly and tenderly of her to his brother Charles. The lady was indeed most anxious to do all that she could to captivate him, and pro- bably, had she persevered, might have made him a docile and good wife. But Wesley became alarmed. 170 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. He wrote certainly at the Savannah in 1736, and pro- bably referring to this passion, in the verse addressed to the Deity, — " Is there a thing beneath the sun That strives with Thee my heart to share ? Ah, tear it thence, and reign alone. The Lord of every motion there." He was much troubled at the time with the notion of Christian perfection. He thought that the most diffi- cult command ever given was that given to Ezekiel concerning his wife ; and he went so far as to consult — he himself being learned in theology — a Bishop of the Moravians as to the lawfulness of marriage. " Marriage," said the Bishop, " is lawful to all men ; whether it is expedient to you at this time, and whether the lady will make you a fit wife, are the subjects for your most earnest consideration." While Wesley considered, however, the lady, naturally offended at his delay, married another. Upon the 12 th of March, the day which completed the year of Wesley's acquaintanceship with her, Sophia Causton married Mr. WiUiamson. " My heart," wrote Wesley, " on that day was not wholly resigned to God's will ; therefore I durst not depend on my own judgment ; and for this very reason I cried unto Him the more earnestly to supply what was wanting in me. And I know and am assured that He heard my voice, and did send forth His light and His truth." But there was bitterness in the cry of Wesley's heart. " What Thou doest; O God, I know not now, but I shall know hereafter." A fine heart and a true heart was John Wesley's, but wilful ; he had gone against the PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 171 Church, rightly, as he thought, in open preaching, and had separated from dear friends. For this love, affair he underwent much scandal, and had, in fact, re- peatedly to defend himself. Finally, he quarrelled with Mr. Causton, and even talked about repelling him and his wife from the Holy Communion because of this very marriage. Afterwards he married a wife who was for years a thorn in his side. And yet in all this he saw but the finger of God — the trials which he was to endure. Of his after-life, perhaps to many the most important hfe of the eighteenth century, we will next speak. Chapter XVI. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE ( Continued). ' HEN Sophia Causton married Mr. Wil- liamson, Wesley, whose conduct towards the young lady had not been free from the reproach of " shilly-shallying," re- buked her, and did not forgive her. He repelled her from taking the Holy Communion ; and for this Williamson prosecuted him. At this time perhaps he had not felt immediate conversion, or the New Birth, a doctrine which for a long time he subscribed to, and which, carried to extremes, is, and was, just as hurtful to Christians as is the rigid Calvinism of Whitefield and his followers, over which Wesley triumphed, and with which he had so many combats. Let it be quite understood that both doctrines may be and indeed are true to a certain extent. Instances of both are found in the New Testament — arguments for both can be adduced. Instantaneous conversion and predesti- nation do not contradict each other ; a belief in either PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 173 may be a weapon of God for subduing sin and saving the soul. God has many and various weapons in His armoury ; and Truth has many shades and aspects, just as the Lord had twelve apostles, men of different minds, and each with varying manners, yet preaching the same salvation. The error of the over-zealous is to depend upon the manner and not on the matter. Hundreds of paths lead into the same road or way. Leaving Wesley troubled at Savannah, and soon to embark for England (1737), let us approach for a short time a very remarkable man, whose life and labours have had a great effect upon England, espe- cially upon the humbler and more untaught classes — George Whitefield or Whitfield. This man was so closely connected with the rise of Methodism in Eng- land that his name cannot be separated from that of Wesley. It has long been the custom to represent — contrary to history, and especially to the history of literature — religion as dead in England at this time, the clergy as hunting parsons, sleeping drones, or worse, inclined to indulge at table, if indeed to do nothing worse. There have been such instances; but it is unphilo- sophical, untrue, and unfaithful to look upon these instances as a rule. Swift, in his bitter self-satire, has been very savage in his pictures of poor parsons. Fielding has drawn us Parson TruUiber feeding his pigs, a coarse boor of a farmer, not a priest of God, but he has also given us Parson Adams ; and about the same period Goldsmith depicted his Vicar of Wakefield from his own brother. From plays, novels, historiettes, and pamphlets Macaulay has constructed his young Levite, the man ordained to minister a rite 174 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. in which his superiors did not believe, occupying a place which was despised because poorly paid. But this was not the rule. It cannot be so ; Faith never dies. " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Puritanism had worked its way, and had disgusted the lighter minds ; the struggle between that and the world had ended in the defeat of severe religion and the exhaustion of both religious and irreligious. The outward signs of faith had died down ; but in the universities, on the bench of Bishops, and in hundreds of quiet livings there were holy men, and much help was given to the poor. Hence George Whitefield, a drawer or barman of an inn, born' at Gloucester, in 17 14, " froward from my mother's womb, and having nothing in me but a fitness to be damned," yet reading aloud to his brothers Bishop Ken's Manual, and finding it of immense " benefit to his soul," was educated freely at St. Mary de Crypt's school, and, as a resource to free his poor mother from expense, was admitted as a servitor in Pembroke College, Oxford, where he soon joined the young men who lived by line and rule and were called Methodists. Whitefield's was a tempestuous soul. He was always having terrible temptations and experiences. He hated and scorned himself because his good old master at school, finding him eloquent, had taught him to declaim, and had allowed his boys to act a piece written by himself before the worshipful Corporation. Whitefield acted a girl's part, " the remembrance of which covereth me with confusion of face, yea, and I hope it will do so to the end of my days." At sixteen he fasted thirty-six hours twice a week, and nearly killed himself in Lent; moreover, although he took PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 175 the Sacrament every Sunday, he still had an impulse to be a player. " I will be a player, I thought, to act my part for the Devil as well as anybody j but, blessed be God, He stopped me in the journey." Such a young man, ardent, zealous, religious, and ambitious, must have caught fire at hearing of Wesley, a man of superior position and education, essentially a gentle- man, who was leading a faithful and holy life. We refer to Wesley as a gentleman, not to aid pride, but to point out the difference between the two men, who both continued through life God's true servants and the agents of blessing to many. Whitefield was the coarser nature, the rougher tool ; both were equally ambitious — for what greater, what higher ambition could there be than to found a Christian sect and to have churches called after them, holding their doc- trine and preaching their views ? — both equally zealous, and each justly fitted for his work. Whitefield, in some work of good, got acquainted with Charles Wesley, who put into his hand a book — " The Life of God in the Soul of Man " — " Whereby God showed me," he said, "that I must be born again or be damned." One would have thought that a young fellow who had so prayed and fasted, and who had been duly baptized, and week by week had taken the Sacrament, had been bom again and was a child of God. But Whitefield had no such faith. Like St. Thomas, he must have visible signs, and probe and handle the wounds of Christ. He was a proud Chris- tian ; psychologically studied, in both John Wesley and George Whitefield we see pride, a great sin, made by God's grace of immense use and advantage to the world. 176 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. The Methodists had stirred up the ridicule and hatred of their fellow-students. That followed natu- rally. Constant fasting, banding together, holding aloof from others, and a too open profession of goodjaess — always condemiied by our great Master and chief Exemplar — made them obnoxious. Wesley bowed before this, and, on a project of visiting the prisoners, wrote and asked his father's advice. " Valde probo" (I much approve), said the good old man, whose " conversion " John Wesley had in after-years the bad taste and want of charity to doubt ; " I bless God that I have two sons at Oxford to whom tie has given grace and courage to turn the war against the world and the Devil." He also said that, when he was an undergraduate, he had performed that work, and had reflected on it with great comfort in his latter days. " But be not high-minded, and consult 5'our Bishop." The Bishop gladly consented; so that, after all, the Universities were not the loose seats of learning which some people represent them to have been. Wesley at that time also visited Law, a power- ful visionary writer — afterwards given over to the dreams of Jacob Boehmen — and author of " The Serious Call." Wesley opened up to him his view of Christianity ; and the good man said truly, " You have founded a philosophical and painful religion. There can be no such thing. Religion is the most simple thing in the world. We are to love God, because He first loved us." This would not exactly do for an ambitious young man; he complained — and wounded vanity was speaking in him, even if he knew It not- — that he " was dejected because he saw so little fruit from his labours." That was one way of PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 177 proclaiming that his labours were great. " You reverse the order of things," said Law. " You follow the Divine Light, that's all ; it is for God to give the blessing. I pray you, sir, mind your own work, and go on with cheerfulness, and, you may depend on it, God will take care of His." This was rather a damper for the zealous Wesley, and he winced under it. " I perceive, sir," said Law, " that you would fain convert the world ; but you must wait God's own time. Nay, if He will that you be a hewer of wood and drawer of water, you should be thankful to Him that you are honoured so far." Words of wisdom were these, of immense value to Wesley, and much needed. The ambitious young man, eager to serve, but desirous of rising, was in his right place ; so was the old and worn-with-experience Law ; no doubt God gave him such sentences to check these two young zealots, also His true servants, who had walked from Oxford nearly to London to see Law, giving the money saved thereby to the poor. Were there no other religious worthies in these days, here are two, St. John and St. Charles, walking their five-and-twenty miles a day, talking in Latin to keep up their learning (a practice of much use to them after- wards with the Moravians), and reading religious books when walking, so that they were neither faint nor wearied. Truly here is the unchangeable story of God's prophets and servants; the young visiting the old, and having refreshing "talks by the way." Let us now return to where we left Wesley, on his homeward voyage from America. Hard study had, some time before, made him break a blood-vessel ; N 178 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. his residence in Georgia and the West Indies did him much good ; his treatment by Sophia Causton yet more — but in a spiritual sense ; and yet his ever- active, restless intellect was not satisfied. He still wanted — nay, demanded — some open mark, some seal to be put by God upon him. "In 1738," he writes, " I went to America to convert the Indians ; but who shall convert me ? I think, if the Gospel be true, that I am safe. I now believe tlie Gospel is true. I show my faith by my works — by staking my whole on it. My ways are not like other men's ways." Doubting words these ! Pride and ambition v/ere yet to struggle in him as in all of us ; his walk forward was like that of a child, merely a succession of falls. Whitefield had sailed for Georgia, in which country the " Town and Country Magazine " impudently laid the scene of a scandalous and utterly lying story of his falling in love with a beautiful squaw, giving his portrait and that of his innamorata, and calling him Dr. Squintem,' — a few hours only before Wesley's ship cast anchor in the Downs. Whitefield could not fancy that religion could be a matter of simple, calm life as to many, really to most of us, it must be ; nor could he and Wesley as well as many others observe how, since the Apostles' time, the world has been subdued and is day by day more Christ-governed, although temp- tations exist still for all of us, and will, thank God, try men's souls to the end of the world. Keeping Lent ' We repeat this tale to show to our earnest young readers — we hope to have many-rthat however good men are they cannot escape calumny ; that their very excellence attracts it, as a clean white wall attracts the mud-splashings of mischievous boys. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 179 so strictly, with more than Romish austerity, living on coarse bread and sage tea, kneeling in Christ Church Walk in silent prayer till his knees grew stiff and the college bell summoned him to prayer, Whitefield nearly killed himself. He had been ordained by good Bishop Benson, who gave him money — "another five guineas," wrote the saintly George, ",a great supply for one who has not a guinea in the world ;" and he commenced life with that sum and one sermon. This too was a source of wealth, for he lent it to a brother parson, who divided it into two, preached one portion in the morning and the other in the evening, and then sent it back with a guinea. People were, after all, not so bad ; the world did not persecute the young saints so grievously ; for both Wesley and Whitefield were aided and loved in the Church till they defied the authority which ordained them. Whitefield preached his first sermon — the same guinea one — in the church of St. Mary de Crypt, where he had been baptized. But such a ''rousing sermon" was this, given in Whitefield'sextravagant manner, that the congregation complained to the Bishop " that fifteen people had been driven mad" by it. The Bishop read the sermon, and, like a good man, answered " that he only wished the madness would not be forgotten before the next Sunday." Whitefield returned to Oxford, took his degree, and still visited the prisoners and prayed and fasted. He v as welcomed by many, by Lady Betty Hastings and others, who got up small exhibitions to provide him with money. He also went to London, preached to the prisoners at Ludgate, to soldiers, to the sick, was everywhere popular, and everywhere proclaimed his doctrine of the New Birth, a " two- N 2 i8o . HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. edged sword," as he called it, " to pierce the hearts of his hearers." When this did not satisfy the ardent preacher, he determined, like Wesley, to go abroad and to convert the Indians, without knowing one word of their tongue, or considering whether the fulness of time was come as to those nations. Both Wesley and Whitefield therefore came away from Georgia and Savannah, disappointed and longing for the old sphere of excitement — England. They were both young, learned, far more learned in theology, and Wesley additionally so in classics and Hebrew, than nine- tenths of the clergy of their time; and, could they have waited, both would have risen in the Church. But neither would have satisfied his restless soul and his ardent and far-stretching ambition by such a jog-trot course of life. Wesley and Whitefield, the founders of sects, would be infinitely greater and more before the world than holy George Herbert as a country parson, or than Keble, refusing preferment, writing hymns and beautifying his church. Keble, a self-denying Christian, wrote most truly — " The trivial round,, the common task Will give us all we need to ask, Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us daily nearer God." But these " trivial rounds " — and there can be none more trying or more monotonous than that of a parson preaching daily and weekly to the same half-awakened congregation — were not for Wesley or for Whitefield. They asked God for a sign ; they wished to be " owned," to be at peace, to guage and test their salvation. Restless and dissatisfied, they could not PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. i8i serve, like old Zachariah or the aged Eli, in one place ; they flew, like the wonderfujl general Lord Peter- borough, from place to place. Taking into conside- ration the state of the roads, the number of miles, which is to be counted by thousands, travelled by each of these zealous spirits, is marvellous. As for the number of sermons preached, we can only say that one can hardly conceive their being each original. When Wesley was past eighty, he wrote, " I am determined now to preach no more than three times a day, as I get weaker" — the inference is overwhelming and bewildering. Whitefield soon got tired of America, which at that time was just the place for which he was not fitted ; on the other hand, had he lived till to-day, he would have rejoiced in his power and influence among its excitable inhabitants, who are much given to following eloquent preachers. He returned to England, to find Wesley lising in power, preaching with unction, and converting sinners from their ways of evil. But it was not among the Church people, nor even among the Puritans or Nonconformists, that either of these men worked ; they went among the colliers, the pit-men, the mobs upon Moorfields, and the ignorant sabbath- breakers and general outcasts of I/Ondon ; and their effect was great. Soon they were brought to an antagonism upon a vital point, and their opposition gave greater force to their endeavours. To these we must devote yet another chapter. Chapter XVII. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE (Continued). HEREVER the Christian soul finds a duty to be done, there it should work. Some find their duty at home, others abroad ; some would be quiescent, bear- ing all, suffering all ; others would be antagonistic and energetic. Both Wesley and Whitefield were of these last. Let our readers conceive of these two messengers, these two men sent forth by the inner impulse — as true as any that ever animated man. Neither of these messengers of later times can we look upon as a perfect man. Both were very ambitious, both schismatic ; they broke with a Church,White- field much more emphatically than Wesley, to the doctrines of which they added nothing, and from which they took nought away. The best epitome of Angli- can doctrine that we know is that by a Wesleyan divine, and on every page he cites Church of England bishops and doctors. Even the Athanasian Creed, now a subject of serious difficulty, he defends in its PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 183 entirety; and, as for orders in the Church, he con- ceives of the same offices, under different names. But undoubtedly the stir made in the Church and about religion did good; and Wesley and White- field, while they shocked the quiet, the delicate, and the sensible, and sent some even to the lunatic asylum or to swell the ranks of the infidels, .yet brought thousands into connexion with faith. It might be well for honest William Hogarth and good Henry Fielding to sneer at the ecstatic and canting preachers who stirred up their neighbours and sent women into shrieking hysterics ; but, as we can have no storms in rose-water, so we must have for some natures an immense cataclysm before we have conversion. Travelling generally on horseback, a peripatetic apostle, and often offending both parson and con- venticle preacher by encroaching on their grounds, Wesley, a thinner, lither, and much more energetic person than Whitefield, perhaps paid more tolls than any man in England. And we see how matters will strike even Christian apostles when the pocket is concerned : he always maintained that tolls were iniquitous taxes. Now if, abstractedly, any tax in the world can be defended, it is that which A, who passes over a bridge or a road, pays to B, who con- structed it. We do it now with the railways, which are turnpike roads, held in trust for the shareholders. And if A, the company, is able, by immense capital, to whisk B, C, and D off to Brighton and back for three-and-sixpence each, when walking or riding down there would cost them nearly double the money and require quadruple the time, they must be eccentric if 1 84 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. they choose to walk ; but, after paying the toll, they must be unjust if they object to it. It was much cheaper for Wesley to pay tolls for a good road than to have lost his horse in the mire, or his life in woods and by robbers. With this exception, Wesley travelled gladly on, a true servant of the Lord, preaching, persuading, weeping, striving, encountering many perils, hunger, poverty, disappointment, danger, and ingratitude. He whose heart is not touched by the noble narratives of this spiritual labourer and his preachers must be hard indeed ; that man who does not see that the Spirit of God was with him must be blind. Life would be a puzzle, God's purposes a chaos, existence mere madness, if a life of eighty years, a life of sorrow, trouble, denial, constant effort, could be thrown away or undertaken without the knowledge of that great King in the far country who will punish and reward at last. "Wind and hail, ice and snow, driving sleet and piercing cold " — these are Wesley's own words — did not keep him from preaching any more than the " vile imposition of turnpikes." But worse than this were the ingratitude and inhumanity of the people. In some of the districts he entered, a coach or chaise had never been seen. In Cornwall the people stared at him, heard him preach, and never gave him " bite or sup." As Wesley always travelled with one of his preachers, the two at times had to feed upon black- berries and haws. " Brother Nelson," said Wesley, "'tis good luck, and we ought to be thankful that there are many of these, for this is the best country I ever saw for getting a stomach, and the worst I ever PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 185 saw for getting anything to eat." Detained at St. Ives by the illness of one of their friends, " Mr. Wesley and I," says Nelson, " lay all that time on the floor ; he had my great-coat for his pillow ; and I had Burkitt's 'Notes on the New Testament ' for mine." Sleeping on that hard bed for three weeks at a stretch, we do not wonder when we hear that one morning, about three o'clock, after perhaps a restless night, Wesley cried out, " Be of good cheer, brother Nelson, I have one whole side left yet ; the skin is all off on one side only." The great Cardinal Xiraenes, when forced from his cell by the Pope's order to advise the King of Spain, discarded his splendid and golden- broidered bedstead, and slept upon the ground, with a block of wood for his pillow ; he did not lie on a harder bed than John Wesley, who, thank God, never went out of the way to punish himself, but accepted with a noble, manly, cheerful mind the troubles that came in his path. And many were the hearts that he touched — hearts that perhaps would never have felt the quiet, pathetic sermon of the parson, because it was in church, because he-was paid to preach, and because, as the Northern Farmer says, — " I heard him bummin' away, An' I thought he'd saad what he'd ought to a said ; an' I corned awaa. " But on a common or wild heath these dull country minds were struck. One hardened, ill-spoken listener once came to Wesley, and grasping his hands, cried, "Whether thou aart a good man or a bad 'un I dun't knaw ; but I knaw the words thou speakest are good. 1 86 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. O that God would set them home upon my poor soul ! " We see here the dull British nature, that first questions whether the man who offers diamonds and pearls as a gift be good or not, and' never, till the last, looks at the jewels. Let us leave the distressed sinner weeping and kneeling, torn with a sudden gush of tears, as he looks back on his poor wasted life, and hasten on. " I wor goin' over Gulvan Downs," said a Cornish man to Wesley, " and I saw a many people together. They told me there was a man goin' to preach. Sure, said I, 'tis some 'mazed man. But when I saw you, I said, Nay, 'tis no 'mazed man. And you preached on God's raising dead bones; 'tis twelve years ago." Here the man burst into tears. " And I could never rest till God was pleased to breathe on me, and raise my dead soul." Beautiful, too, worthy to be painted as a companion picture to that of Dr. Johnson bending over a poor exhausted woman of the street whom he took home upon his sturdy back, and fed and helped till she returned to health and to repentance, is the story of Wesley preaching in the rain till a " woman who was a sinner " found him a convenient place of shelter. He, not knowing who she was, preached of the poor penitent who washed the Lord's feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Whereas the whole of the congregation was moved, but the woman chiefly, who following Wesley home, cried, " What shall I do to be saved ? " " Escape for your life ! " said Wesley ; and his companion and he took her on their horses from the south to Northumberland. Not a word said the stricken one — not a smile was seen nor a murmur heard at the trials by the way. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 187 Her husband received her, and her reformation was sincere. She was, poor soul, drowned, in sailing, some years afterwards, to join her husband, and was last seen buoyed up by her clothes, and with her hands clasped till she sank — " I hope and trust," said Wesley, "in the ocean of God's mercy.'' Not one soul, however guilty, did the good man turn away. " How are you to escape from trial and trouble and sin ? Why, the way lies straight before you : what you want is the love of God. He will give it you shortly. Look for it just as you are — unfit, unworthy, unholy — by simple faith. Look for it every day and every hour." Blessed words are these. If Methodism had had none else but such as Wesley for its exponents, it would not have excited the bitter ridicule of good men. In the meantime Whitefield, a good man too, no doubt, but one of a much commoner mind and coarser fibre, was producing an immense effect upon his con- gregations. Wesley had not been free from spasmodic and hysterical Christians, who would shout out, " Glory ! glory ! " and faint or yell. These the good man had generally the courage to expose and check. When a young woman sent for him, and, on his coming, did nothing but scream, to testify her sense of salvation, Wesley walked away till she was silent. When another told him a long rigmarole story about the Devil's coming every night to her, Wesley very sen- sibly told her just how much he believed her. With so much common sense his sermons were more quiet, and in their after effect much more lasting than White- field's. He was incomparably the more sincere, enlightened, and greater man. There is, indeed, a i88 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. very fair excuse for a severe critic to think'Whitefield a "humbug — self-deceived perhaps, but still deceiving j" but there is none to think so of Wesley. As Whitefield preached to pitmen or on Moorfields, the fine gentle- men, who came out of curiosity, listened and sneered;' the mob yelled ancj. shouted blasphemous and coarse interruptions : the select many cried out, " Bravo, George! there's another soul saved," as some one shrieked and fell. The scenes during Whitefield's sermons were like those at a negro camp-meeting, or an American revival — comic, touching, ludicrous, dreadful, blasphemous, and yet no doubt sometimes thorough and sincere. At one time there would be twenty women in convulsions and fits, and above them Whitefield raving, shouting, and perspiring. Nor were his themes always the most enticing. A rigid Calvinist, he, as extremes meet, was too fond of enlarging upon hell fire. "Alas!" said Wesley, "I have had more trouble in undoing the evil of those damning clergy than I have in undoing that of the saving laity." This he said with reference both to Whitefield and to his own preachers, who were, many of them, illiterate laymen. Wesley had his view of " Christian perfection," or a state of grace, in which a true Christian will not only submit to any affliction, worldly sorrow, disgrace, pain or trouble, cheerfully, but do so with absolute joy. Perhaps, as regards man, a noble but yet an imperfect and sinful creature, the word " perfection " was unwisely used. Hence the phrase became bandied ' It is worthy of remark that it is said that, however coarse Whitefield was, still he nearly effected the conversion of that fine and/refined gentleman, Lord Chesterfield. PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 189 about, and the subject of ridicule, while there can be no doubt of the existence of such a state. It is well- known in Roman Catholic theology, and, in that mass of Roman Catholic literature which contains as many extraordinary as it does beautiful and touching stories, the Lives of the Saints, there are really thousands of instances of ascetic devotion and of intense love towards God and the Saviour to which " Christian perfection " might not inaptly be applied. Opposing this doctrine of Wesley's was Whitefield's blank, deplorable, and stark Calvinism, against which the gentle heart of John Wesley, as loving as that of a mother, as brave as is a mother's heart for- the child she loves, rose in rebellion. With him God was love, and he had good New Testament authority for it. With Whitefield God had called and predestined certain to be saved, and fore-doomed others to be damned. No wonder that at the gloomy picture men and women quailed and shrieked ; no wonder that the exaggerated hyperboles of Scripture were seized on as furnishing a powerful lever for the gloomy orator who thundered above the heads of the terrified worldlings. As the world now moves, the controversy would have been carried on differently. Advanced learning and critical exegesis would have told us whether the Scripture did or did not use such bare threats and naked promises. As it was, Wesley continued to affirm God's love, and Whitefield, or more properly his school, to abuse Wesley. " The sum of all this [your doctrine] is," wrote Wesley, "one in twenty, suppose, of mankind are elected, nineteen in twenty are reprobated ; the elect will be saved, do what they I90 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. will J the reprobated will be damned, do what they can. Reader, believe this, and be damned. Witness my hand, A T ." This condensation of the " memorable " Augustus Toplad/s doctrine of abso- lute predestination, translated chiefly from the Latin of Girolami Zanchi or Zanchius, an Italian theologian, so irritated that divine that he accused Wesley of forgery — " a similar forgery would ' conduct the criminal to Virginia [then a penal settlement] or Maryland, if not to Tyburn,'' and he wrote bitter tracts against him, such' as " More Work for Mr. John Wesley," "An Old Fox Tarred and Feathered." Wesley, he asserted, dealt chiefly in blunders and blasphemy, was " one of the most contemptible scrib- blers that ever put pen to paper," " the most rancorous hater of the Gospel system that ever appeared on this island," " dealing in gross Heathenism, Pelagianism, Mohamedanism, Popery, Manichaeism, Ranterism, and Antinomianism, culled, dried, pulverised, and mingled with as much palpable Atheism as you can scrape up." Wesley, as he had the true cause, did not descend to such folly and abuse. Of absolute predestination he wrote well, wisely, boldly. " It is," he said, " to represent the Most High God (he that hath ears to hear, let him hear) as more cruel, false, and unjust than the Devil. This is the blasphemy contained in the horrible doctrine of predestination. And here I fix my foot. You represent God as worse than the Devil — more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by Scripture ! It cannot be. Whatever Scripture proves, it never proves this. It cannot mean — wjiatever it means beside — that the PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 191 God of Truth is a liar. It cannot medn that the Judge of the whole world is unjust. No Scripture can mean that God is not love, or that His mercy is not over all His works ; that is, whatever it prove beside, it cannot prove predestination." Nevertheless, predestination, in a certain sense, is in the Scriptures, and perhaps the wisest solution of it is in the Articles of the Church of England, which, by the way, leave the matter unsolved. Let us leave these points, " the true sense of which," said Wesley, " perhaps neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory," and, in as short a way as we can, follow Wesley to the end. He lived like a saint ; what he preached he practised — ay, and more. He did more than he asked of his followers. His whole life is a marvel. Talk of hard work — and we work hard now-a-days — Wesley was like Tennyson's Sir Galahad; "his strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure.'' It may safely be affirmed that his life work equalled the life work of ten ordinary men. He was worn to a skeleton ; he spat blood from over-exertion ; he made up his epitaph, and prepared to die, leaving, as he thanked God, when " all his debts were paid, not ten pounds behind him." ' He had given away all his money during life, ajld had prayed God humbly for mercy on an unpro- fitable servant. This was when he was fifty-one. He was married ; and, to plague him, a woman much like 2 What a lesson for England of to-day ! On Nov. 15, 1874 the Spectator published a list of English millionaires (the word was Intended to signify those who left 250,000/. personality at their death), of whom we now have about ten a year. What good does the gold of the millionaire do in comparison with . the 30,000/. which Wesley gave away ! 192 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Job's wife for comfort was given him. We do not like the good man the less that he would not stand any of his wife's nonsense, and wrote true and very sharp things of woman's place in the marriage con- tract. Let us add, in justice to the lady, that his habits must have made him a very " uncomfortable " husband, and that, miich as we condemn that un- scriptural doctrine of clerical celibacy, we think that both for him and Whitefield single life was a duty. After Wesley's fifty-first year, when he prepared to die, God spared him for His work for thirty-seven more years ; and even then, the old lion found it hard to give in. In his eighty-sixth he said, " I now find I grow old ; I cannot read a small print unless in a strong light.'' He omitted his five o'clock in the morning sermons, and found it difficult to preach more than twice a day. " However," he said, " blessed be God, I do not slack my labours ; I can preach and write still." The aged saint did continue to preach, and, like St. John, still the Gospel of God's love. In February, 1791, he wrote his last letter to America. "See,'' he said to his fellow Methodists, "that you never give one thought of separating from your brothers in Europe." Alas, there is but little love now ! Taking cold after preaching at Lambeth, the aged Wesley struggled a little longer, and died in God's peace in the eighty-ninth year of his age, and in the sixty-sixth of his unwearied ministry. Here was a good man. Here was a witness (ixapTvpoi) to God in the world, as true as if he had been burned by a Roman emperor, or thrown to the lions. Dying, he turned to the old Church that he had loved, but from which he had, in his ardour for PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE. 193 new paths, separated, and was dressed when dead in his old clerical cap, gown, and bands, a Bible in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other. " Let there be no hearse, nor pomp, nor 'scutcheon, nor coach, except the tears of them that loved me, I solemnly adjure you." And the tears came. There is not, perhaps, in all pathetic fiction one story more truly touching than that of the hundreds of people who (many of them had waited through the long cold night) crowded round Wesley's grave at five o'clock in the morning — buried thus early to avoid accident — and whose silent tears dropped slowly on the ground as the solemn service was read. Many of these were but untaught and ignorant, whom he had brought to the knowledge of the truth ; many sinners turned from sin ; many women, such as that poor soul whom Wesley had taken to Newcastle. Mr. Richardson, who had preached for Wesley for thirty years, read the Church of England service stoutly and well, until he came to the words, " Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Him- self the soul of our dear brother here departed" — here his voice broke and changed, and he substituted the word "father" instead of brother; and all the people burst into loud weeping, " because he was not." John Wesley left no property behind him save his copyrights ; but he left seventy-seven thousand dis- ciples in Great Britain, and fifty-eight thousand in America, and the name of a good man, for whom, and for whose example and works, there is not a day now passes but that some grateful soul thanks God.^ ' See Appendix A. Chapter XVIII. FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. ITIZENS," said Sieyfes to the French Republican Deputies after the . first proof of energy of a young and un- known Lieutenant of Artillery — a proof exhibited in shooting down with grape-shot more than twelve hundred other Frenchmen who disagreed with him— "you have got your master. Bonaparte means to do everything, knows how to do everything, and has power to do everything." The speech was a prophecy. Perhaps Sieyfes only meant by it to over-awe the provisional Consuls at the Luxembourg ; but it was one of those lucky speeches that are resuscitated when their meaning has become self-evident and true. Here, then, is a curious little man, about five feet and a half in height, very thin, with a gaunt, haggard look, absolutely a picture of famine,"' but with a very ' In quelling the factions Bonaparte referred to this gauntness. A fish-wife, urging on her class, cried out, "Don't let these bloated aristocrats fatten on our labours ! " " Woman, " said the little officer, "do you call me bloated?" The crowd laughed and dispersed. FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 195 beautiful head, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin. His hair is thin, and in colour reddish, but made black by much pomatum; his hands fine; his "breed" undeniable. He is of an old race, but of thoroughly undistin- guished family ; speaks French with an Italian accent, writes it very badly, letting the spelling, as he said, look after itself, yet with a vigour of expression rare and direct; means what he says, if the matter relates to himself; utterly despises all mankind—" How base, wretched, cowardly, and contemptible are all men!'' such were his words ; despises as well as hates the French ; thinks their late King was too good for them — " The wretches ! He should have shot them down" — but flatters them, and talks grandly about liberty; can, if necessary, appeal to the miserable creatures of the hour as heroes — for, wishing to excite one Frenchman against another, he writes thus stiltedly and execrably : " O Lameth ! ■ O Robespierre ! O Pdtion ! O Volney ! O Mirabeau ! O Barnave ! O Lafayette ! this is the man who dares to take a seat by your side;" can, as we see, flatter; is ready to compete, as a literary man, for many prizes, and wishes to lead men especially to happiness and virtue ; continually reads Ossian and Plutarch ; studies Julius Caesar and Cromwell as characters ; -rails espe- cially against wealth and luxury, dresses plainly, almost squalidly, and, like lean and hungry Cassius, studies much in the night ; has no respect for love — thinks that it has done more harm than good to man— and, in his first passion, attaches himself to a young married woman, "to polish him, and intro- duce him to society." At any rate he will take care of himself; and now, as Sieyfes says, in 1799, o 2 196 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. before he is thirty, he, risen from nothing, is master of France. It is time that she had a master. The old regime has broken down, and the Revolution, imported by Lafayette from America, whereto part of it was taken by the French to spite the English, has broken out. The king, a virtuous man, reaps the seed which his father and grandfather had sown, and is guillotined. Then comes the cry of '' Kill all the aristocrats I" and they are killed in batches. The streets of Paris run with blood ; at sea-ports ladies and gentlemen are stripped, tied together, and carried in barge-loads out to sea in patent barges, the bottoms of which come out, such executions being called " Mariages." If a man is a priest, he is killed ; if a gentleman, if learned, or if unlearned, death must visit him. All men are equal ; so the guillotine cannot go fast enough. One is a barber, and once shaved a lord, and thought him a pleasant man — he must die ; one is a schoolmaster, and taught an aristocrat: — die ! die ! a thousand deaths for him. There is to be no law but that of the people ; there is to be no religion; there is no God — the Convention has pronounced that to be a truth ; there shall be no marriage — that is property, and there is no property. All that is old is bad; let us have ever3fthing new ; we will begin with a new year, the Year One — new months, new days. We worship the goddess Reason ; let us get an actress to personate Reason, and worship her. We love the " Rights of Man;" invite the author of that English book, Tom Paine. The thing is done; but Paine is a Deist, and absolutely believes in a God. Then let us shut him up and cut off his head. And so FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 197 he is shut up, but escapes, almost by a miracle, to America. It was time to put an end to all this ridiculous, mad, savage dance. The blood shed in torrents — over the heads of children, to "baptize them to liberty," over the pale faces of brides, " to wash them " with their husbands' blood — had caused the tiger's heart, which lives, it is said, in the breast of every Gaul, to supplant the natural, kindly heart of man. It was time. Humanity was sick of such cruelties ; Heaven was wearied with the cries of orphans and widows. Guilty as had been the " aristocrats,'' all the careless luxury of ages was surely paid for by an ocean of blood ; Europe, half maddened and wholly amazed, stood awaiting in dismay, and at last the man arose, and France ac- cepted her new master. This man was to plunge her into disastrous and many wars, load her with debt, destroy hundreds of thousands of her sons, and cover her with glory. His name was to live upon the tongues of men; he was to be declared "the 'best known man,' and the most popular person in the world;" to be execrated by thousands, and to be adored by thousands ; to find men ambitious of his casual glance, eager to put their bodies before his own in a storm' of shot ; he was to be a king-maker on a vast scale, and' to alter — several times indeed — the map of Europe ; to be crowned Emperor almost by an infallible Pope, and at last to die plain General Bonaparte, an exile, half pitied and half despised, with a forfeit life, spared only in mercy. After his death he was to be exalted to heaven by some, to be depressed to hell by others ; to have a statue as . a ipS HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. hero, an apotheosis as a god. It will be worth while studying the career of such a man. A little island, Corsica, in the Mediterranean, has a handful of inhabitants, lean, morose, revengeful ; if one kills another, the victim's family remembers it for two or three hundred years. " 'Tis a wild, rugged, and almost uninhabitable island," wrote Pliny, " and the people are like it, as ungovernable as wild beasts.'' So thought the Genoese ; for that Republic, owning the island, and having, tried to pacify it and failed, sold it to France. And just two inonths before Napoleon was born (isth August, 1769) that country had subdued it, and this much to the disgust of the English, who always have had, and have, cracked heads with regard to liberty and freedom. Boswell, Dr. Johnson's friend, went over to Corsica, and after- wards called himself " Corsica Boswell ; " and the English, who welcome everybody who calls himself a patriot — except an Irishman — welcomed Paoli, the Corsican rebel general, who was the hero of the war against the Genoese, and who had tried in vain to resist the French. Paoli was welcomed, and lived in England, leaving in Corsica, in distress, his friend, a poor, briefless advocate or attorney, Charles Bonaparte, married to Maria Lsetitia Ramolini, who, while enceinte with Napoleon, had been a fugitive with her patriot husband. Napoleon, therefore, was born a Frenchman against his will ; indeed, after a time, Corsica found that the Genoese were angels compared to the French, but that further struggle was useless. Charles Bonaparte made friends at Court, and the large family he had was put out to public French schools, and educated " at the expense of the king,'' FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 199 as they phrased it. " I shall never forgive my father for not following Paoli even in exile." Such were young Napoleon's words. Had the father done so, his son might have been sent to school at Westminster, and have talked with Dr. Johnson. Educated at Brienne while his great contemporary, Wellington, was at Eton, young Napoleon began life as a sub-lieutenant in the Regiment la Ffere, at sixteen years and a half old. Wellington did not enter the army till somewhat older ; but, although we have recently decried "purchase" and "beardless ensigns," it is as well to mark what excellent generals these fledglings turned out. Wolfe, who was put on the books of a regiment when at school, and who had no family influence, was colonel at twenty-one, fought splendidly at Fontenoy, and died a general, " in the arms of victory" — and a most masterly victory too — at thirty-three, having won our largest and best American province for us. Young Napoleon, laughed at for his poverty, hated for his domineering talent, despising learning except as an agent to keep his place in the world ; in his secret heart hating the French, yet with an eagle glance seeing that Corsica was too weak and too contemptible a stage for him, and must be abandoned, stood alone, watching his opportunity. When he was twenty-one he visited Ajaccio, his native place, gave vent to some fervid oratory against the French governor, and then aban- doned the man whom he first flattered, poor old Paoli, who kept on with his craze of patriotism. He turned his back on Corsica, this Corsican, and for ever after- wards his heart resembled Queen Anne's " entirely English heart,'' and was entirely French. 200 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. How, being an artillery officer, he won his first advancement by that arm ; how he turned his guns against his own employers; how he was first the servant of, and then the despot over, the Ancients and the Five Hundred, and the general Republican dramatis personm who played at being governors ; how he saw that he must make an army, and so led his ragged and shoeless followers to plunder defence- less Italy ; and how he rose to be First Consul, every history attests. Throughout all this career, wonderful as it is, we see this little compact man attacking the weakest part, as he said, \rith the strongest force, never speaking a noble sentence but as a lure, pro- mising his men^ plunder, money, and glory, mostly appealing to low passions and motives, stealing, where he could, pictures, statues, gold, works of art, making an agreement one day and breaking it the next, and, in short, acting only for himself Yet he was appa- rently unconscious of wrong, because wrong was his right. " They accuse me," he said, " of committing crimes. Why should I ? Men of my sort do not commit crimes." We see him also sparing of his person to please his soldiers, yet, when the time comes, rushing in front of the guns, as at Lodi; generous in praising others when the reflected praise shone upon himself, as when he said Lannes was first in the charge at Lodi ; yet full of activity in destroying the reputations of others if they interfered with his own ; lying and slandering with regard to Kellermann, Dessaix, and others. He is always en evidence — always " posing," as does an actor. He seizes a fine picture from the duke of Parina as a robber would seize a wa.tch; the poor duke offers its value in money. FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 201 " No," cries Napoleon, money is not seen and is soon spent ; this picture will produce artists, and will educate the people of Paris.'' In the end he gets his money too. He is the wolf to many Italian lambs, and eats them up and sends their skins to adorn Paris. He fills Paris with the spoil of nations, and then, leaving his fame time to grow, is filled with the dream of wresting India from England, and suddenly pro- jects himself upon Egypt. " It is always the greater number that defeats the less," said Napoleon; "I must attack weak points." Having beaten the Mame- lukes, he promised every French soldier six acres of ground and a fortune. He is not without religion of a sort, and in crossing over to Egypt retorts upon the learned' men, Denon and others, whom he took with him, their materialist views, and the assertion that the world had been made of conscious atoms, by pointing to the stars : — " Gentlemen, it is all very well for you to talk, but who made all those ? " Coming to Egypt, he says, " The religion of Mahomet is a promise ; that of Jesus is a threat;" respects the mosques, and even professes to be a Mohammedan. In Egypt he wins battles and makes grand speeches, thoroughly under- standing the vainglory of the army he commands. " Soldiers, from yonder pyramids the spirits of forty centuries look upon you." He gains glory ; but England, alive to her own interests, destroys his fleet, and Sir Sidney Smith throws himself, with a handful of English sailors and soldiers, into the fort of Acre, right in the very road to the East, to aid Djezzar, the butcher, a man almost aS extraordinary as Bonaparte himself, who had kept the Corsican at bay. Against this small fort the power of the great Napoleon is 202 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. broken to pieces. Yet he flatters the Turks, calls Mahomet "our prophet," and boasts that he has inflicted upon England the deadliest blow she can receive before her death-blow. " I have razed the palace of the Djezzarand the ramparts of Acre ; there stands not one stone upon another." Bourrienne says it was difficult not to hazard an observation on this. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are a ninny, and don't understand one word about the matter.'' Clearly Napoleon believed in lies, if, as he said, they had time to circulate. But the defence of Acre, and the destruction of the French fleet, as well as despatches from France, told the young General that it was time for him to return. It is useless to speak of the murder of prisoners, or the poisoning of his own wounded at Joppa. These crimes some considered proven, others not proven. The probability is that, if Napoleon had seen a neces- sity for either, he would not have hesitated. It is certain that, towards the end of 1799, he left his army in a. bad condition in Egypt, and, narrowly escaping the English cruisers, appeared in Paris, overthrew the Directory, and, declaring France wanted a master, proclaimed himself First Consul, 9th November, 1799. In 1800 he again invaded Italy; was helped by Dessaix to win Marengo ; signed a peace with Austria in 1801, and in 1802 the Peace of Amiens with England, thus concluding the second war of the Revolution. In the same year he was proclaimed First Consul for life, and, had he had anything but an insatiable ambition, might have consolidated a Repub- lican power, and have become the Washington of France. FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 203 That unhappy country was in need of peace ; she was full of spoils and sated with glory. Her enemies' had been checked, her soldiers were acknowledged the best in the world, but she was full of domestic troubles. She had cast off all authority ; her youth were turbulent and ambitious, her citizens averse to quiet industry and trade. " France must be allured back to religion," said the First Consul; ''what she needs for her regeneration is good mothers. As for me," he said, in his superb and splendid fiction, "life is only dear to me so long as I can render myself of use to this my dear country ; death will have no bit- terness to me if I can see the happiness of the Re- public as firmly secured as its glory." These were fine words ; they would have been perhaps finer if they had been true. Liberty and Equality had been proclaimed if not established, kings were at an end, nobles had been abolished, the first magistrate of France was a citizen, his wife Josephine a citizeness, every common soldier might rise to be a general, and rewards were to be given not only for military but for civil excellence. The Kings of Europe stood at a respectful distance, and, if they did not greet the First Consul as a brother, were afraid of offending him. In the meantime he had a brilliant Court, learned to receive ambassadors and to walk with the most exqui- site dignity, consolidated his army, looked to his artillery, and was careful to manage his newspapers. Three editors against a Government, he said, are more dangerous than an army. Europe in the inter- val looked on with a mixed feeling. It had learned to distrust this newest Power. England had rejoiced at the Peace of Amiens, and had set herself to work 204 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. again, but was very uneasy at the taxes upon her pro- duce, and at the existence of a certain suspected coalition against her. The sovereigns of Europe, too, were uneasy at certain coquettings of Napoleon with the Pope, upon whom every pressure was put by Na- poleon. At length, in 1804, Pope Pius VII. went to Paris, was received at Fontainebleau by the conqueror in a hunting costume, and made — the incident is sig- nificant — to step out of his coach, with his white satin slipper in the mud, to greet his host ! The First Consul, indeed, found himself unequal to cope with kings without being one himself, and had forced the Pope to come and crown him. When in Notre Dame, however, either by design or impatience — we believe by design — the successful soldier snatched the crown out of the hands of the Holy Father and placed it on his own head, as did our first William ; then, amidst the blare of trumpets and the feeble cheers of his friends — for the ceremony was significantly mourn- ful, grand, and wanting in heartiness — ^he proceeded to crown his wife as the Empress Josephine. He had reached the summit of his ambition, crowned virtually if not actually by the Pope, without deposing any one. " The crown," he said, " was in the dirt, and I picked it up.'' He was the equal of the highest monarch in Europe. " If the oldest monarch does not recognize me," he said, " I will dethrone them all, and then I shall be the oldest in Europe." But, after all, this was to this wonderful man but an empty farce. Hur- rying home, he tore off gorgeous mantle, robe, and crown, threw them from him, and, almost repeating the words of Lear, said, " Off with these confounded trappings ! I never passed such tedious hours before." Chapter XIX. FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS {Continued), I HE high ambition of Napoleon might have been satisfied with the title and the power of Emperor. We left him crowned at Notre Dame by his -own hand on the 2nd of December, 1804. On the 26th of the May following he went to Italy, and at Milan again crowned himself, this time with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. As he did so he uttered the words of the old kings, " God hath given it to me — beware who touches it ! " He was now, therefore, in style, "Emperor of the French and King of Italy.'' Being a young man (thirty-five years old), so grand an accom- plishment might well have satisfied the cravings of his ambition. But it was not his destiny ; nor was it in his character. " Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised ; and, I fear, Thou play'dst most foully for't : yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity." 2o6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. The Putter-up and Setter-down of princes, who " exalteth the poor man out of the mire," had done wonders for this son of a Corsicaii attorney. With some exceptions, he had ever shown himself a great and successful warrior, brave in necessity, cautious where desired, magnificent in attack, and full of re- source. That he was cruel and revengeful must be set down to his Corsican nature, but he also was im- placable, spiteful, and jealous even of the applause gained by women, and this we may attribute to his narrow island breeding. That he was coarse and vulgarly familiar was strange in one who sought to surround himself with- all the elegance and brilliance of an Imperial Court, but natural in a poor soldier bred in the camp. He had a natural sense of religion, of the greatness of God, and of the divine origin of our faith ; but he could not believe in the " mum- meries of the priests," as he said, amongst whom be had lived, and who were as superstitious as the islanders they taught. Rejecting, save as a policy, the Romish faith, without faith himself, he was driven to the egotism of his own special star and destiny — " I am the Man of Destiny." The Pope he would occasionally cajole and insult; the priests he would use or control. Patriotism he did not believe in ; he had abandoned Paoli, who was pure, to follow Robes- pierre, Danton, Marat, and the French Republican patriots, the majority of whom lived in palaces, re- velled in luxury and ostentatious power, were profli- gate, and indulged in all the vices of the old nobility they had slaughtered. He could not care much for human life who was the child of a revolution which kept the guillotine going all day, beheading even FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 207 children. He could not respect the bravery of the French, who slew their king to submit to such tyrants, nor the tyrants who bent down to him when he slew some thousands of them with grape-shot. The man was made for his time ; had he been wiser and more generous, he might have founded a dynasty. " Men of my stamp," to repeat his saying, " do not commit crimes." " No, they commit more," said Fouche, " they commit blunders." To slay his enemies in fair fight, to struggle for a falling crown, was well, nay commendable on the part of Napoleon, but other and infamous acts have to be recorded of him. When England and the Powers of the Conti- nent were at peace with him, and just before he crowned himself, he carried off and murdered in cold blood the Due d'Enghien, the heir of Condd, because that young Prince was a favourite with the French. All Europe stood aghast. Even Mr. Fox, with his Bonapartist proclivities, did not defend the act, done in peace, suddenly, and when the young duke was in honourable exile. So, afterwards, Bonaparte seized, carried off, and murdered the bookseller Palm, a free German citizen, because he had published a pamphlet in which Napoleon was proved to be ambitious ! Again, he seldom or never kept a treaty. ^England had concluded a peace of which, said a statesman, " every one was glad, though none could be proud," and yet a French army menaced our shores, boats were built to carry over soldiers, and the conquest of Great Britain openly planned. In the presence of ambassadors he strutted like Talma the actor, and at the same time conducted himself like a bully. " Your master is a rogue; he plots against me. Beware!" 2o8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Such words, shouted in an angry tone, did not suit English or Prussian noblemen, who were courtesy itself. It was even rumoured that he struck our ambassador, Lord Whitworth. " He did not do that,'' said Whitworth, " he stormed at nie like a bargeman. But if he had struck me, in the presence of all his Marshals, I would have drawn my sword and run him through the body." Napoleon was essentially no gentleman ; he pinched the cheeks of the ladies of his Court, and openly used coarse words and expressions. It seems to us that he did this arrogantly and wantonly, to break the pride of kings, whom he often called liars and assassins. "Your king wanted to murder me ; Pitt and your Govern- ment paid assassins to dog my steps," he said to his friend Fox. But Fox, bitterly as he was opposed to Pitt, felt the insult to his king and country, and said, as roughly as the Emperor himself, " Clear your mind of that nonsense !" With this disrespect to others, no one was so tetchy if he was not addressed as Emperor, as " my brother," after the style of kings. Perhaps the bitterest humiliation this extraordinary man ever underwent was occasioned by his not being addressed as Emperor, but as " General Bonaparte," when at St. Helena. This humiliation he might well have been spared ; but to have acknowledged it marks the littleness of the man's character. At the time of his elevation, it must be remem- bered, all England distrusted the "First Consul." " Bonaparte," said Mr. Wyndham, one of our great statesmen, " is the Hannibal who has sworn to devote his life to the destruction of England. War cannot be far off ; and I beheve that it would be better to FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 209 anticipate the blow than to await it." Again, the eloquent and witty Richard Brinsley Sheridan said, in a fervid speech, " The destruction of this country is the first vision that breaks on the French Consul through the gleam of the morning; this is his last prayer at night to whatever deity he may address, whether to Jupiter or Mahomet, to the Goddess of Battles or the Goddess of Reason. Look at the map of Europe ; you now see nothing but France.'' Nothing but France ! Well might Europe be alarmed. England entered into a treaty with Russia ; and, in answer to a letter from the Emperor Napoleon, suggesting an alliance, she answered that she could do nothing without Russia. The new monarch hastened his preparations, and forced Spain into an alliance ; but in 1805 the glorious victory of Trafalgar, the result of which was the destruction of the allied Spanish and French fleets by Nelson, completely awoke Napoleon, and overturned any hopes he may have had of successfully invading England. His ex- clamation, when the news was brought him, was curious and characteristic. " Mon Dieu ! " he cried, "I can't be everywhere!" As if his presence in a naval battle, of which he knew nothing, could have defeated the genius of Nelson and the solid bull-dog courage of English seamen ! England, Russia, and Austria then entered into a coalition to preserve their territories and to keep the balance of power in Europe. This balance of power was a protective scheme which we cannot too much admire, but which modern wise men sneer at. It may not be possible to achieve it, but the idea is excellent. It was that all Powers should combine p 210 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. against any one Power becoming too powerful, so as to dominate the rest A, B, C, and D, having defined their own territories, and by convention and treaty those of smaller Powers, agree to combine against any single member, if such member tries to overturn the balance. Lord Palmerston and the Duke of Wel- lington both believed in the wisdom of this pact, and to a certain extent kept it. Take away political balance, and the whole European system is one of lawlessness, in which good and honest Powers must be hurt. Russia will prey upon Sweden, France swallow up Austria, Prussia Denmark, and so on, until one nation, grown to be the most powerful, " Like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest. " Austria, the weakest and nearest, with a somewhat foolish monarch and inefficient generals, was the first of the allies that felt Bonaparte's power; and at Austerlitz, a day of great glory, he so completely broke, beat, and disheartened her, that he ever after- wards talked of the brilliant sunshine of that day — " The sun of Austerlitz.'' Of course, as Austria was quite humiliated by this victory. Napoleon took a very- large slice of her territory, and what France already possessed was confirmed to her by the Treaty of Presburg. We have lately heard of the sin of taking provinces and of the meanness of holding a material guarantee. But who breaks pays ; and while France reaped glory by her arms, she took lands, castles, territories, with pictures, and other masterpieces of art, as the price of her labours in war. Warring in Italy, Napoleon placed, in 1806, his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples; Louis, FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 211 another brother, became King of Holland ; and the Emperor himself acted as the Dictator of Germany, breaking up the glorious fabric of a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire, with a sentence, " The Holy Roman Empire is no more." It was time. So far, even in tradition, had Rome lasted ; for some fragment of the power of the Caesars was supposed to be attachea to the Emperors of Germany. Russia pressed forward to help Austria with troops and generals ; and an admirable fight the Russians made of it. Meanwhile Napoleon had appealed to the Poles, obtained the alliance of Kosciuszko, and recruited his army with that hero's countrymen ; but at Preuss-Eylau, when he met the Russians, he had but a barren victory. The victory of Jena, however, gave heart to the French Friedland, though a drawn battle, begot results equal to a victory to France ; and at Tilsit Alexander was compelled to embrace the Emperor. Our little islands were left without allies. One by one Bona- parte had conquered his foes, and in 1808 he showed the world how he could conquer his friends. Spain had been his faithful ally, and had lost a fleet or so in his cause. But, in the case of conquerors, one may well say, "Save me from my friends." Without a word, or rather one just or true word, Murat was sent into Spain with 80,000 men. Charles IV. and his family retired to French territory, and became pri- soners of Napoleon; while Joseph Bonaparte was made, much to his own disgust, King of Spain, and, as a parallel move on the chess-board, Murat, le beau sabreur, an innkeeper's son, became King of Naples. Here were fine times for a conqueror. It argues much against French political morality that these unprin- «i2 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. cipled invasions were always applauded if successful. Spain, however, rose against her conquerors ; Wel- lington and a small array were sent over, and general after general, Souchet, Soult, Massena, &c., were beaten right through Spain into France. Nearly half a million of her best soldiers were lost to France in this five years' (1808-1813) fight in Spain, foolishly begun and obstinately kept up. It is impossible to say what money it cost. Spain, as to palace, cottage, church, altar, and convent, was mercilessly pillaged and robbed. The king himself — Joseph Bonaparte — as he fled from the British army, left his carriages in the hands of his pursuers, stuffed with pictures and church plate, which he had stolen from his much- suffering subjects. In the meantime Napoleon showed his true character and intention of founding a dynasty. His first mar- riage had produced no heir; he therefore divorced Josephine and married Marie-Louise, daughter of his old enemy, the Emperor of Austria. His son, with little deference to the feelings of the Pope, was styled the King of Rome. Unable to beat England, he introduced the prohibitive system — that is, he posi- tively forbade all Europe, so far as he could, to take any of England's manufactures. This system created an enormous number of enemies, ruined France, which could not exchange her goods with ours, and embit- tered England without seriously hurting her. Russia drew towards England, Napoleon^s friends grew cool ; France, drained of her treasure, cursed the tyranny of the conqueror ; Fouchd and Talleyrand predicted his fall, and Pope Pius VII., whom he had stripped of his temporal dominions, excommunicated the man at FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 213 whose coronation he had assisted. When a house is falling rats leave it. Desperate, and with an ambition as raging as ever, Napoleon by conscription emptied France of her youth, and with an army of five hundred thousand men — a vast force indeed — madly dreamt of penetrating to the centre of Russia, and from the centre of a wilderness of snows dictating terms to a prostrate and a trembling world. Half of this he accomplished. He got as far as Moscow. He beat the Russians in many battles ; he struck and spared not. "What are you. doing.?" he exclaimed atone battle. " Those men will escape on the ice ! Depress those guns. Fire ! " His artillery officers obeyed him, and thousands sank to a frozen death. It was not likely that his enemies would pity or condole with such a man. Defeated by Generals Frost and Snow, ably seconded by the self-sacrificing devotion of the Russians, who burnt their city rather than that he should hold it, Napoleon stayed a month in Moscow, vainly hoping for a proclamation of peace ; and then began his retreat and the dread revenge of the Cossacks in the massacre of the French and the burying of half of an army in the icy waters of the Beresina. No words can depict the horrors of the Russian campaign. Few survived it ; thousands fell and died in misery, committed suicide, or went mad. Hunger and cold made men but frightened idiots ; half a regiment would run from half-a-dozen Cossacks, and in their agony officers slew their horses and lay in- side their carcases for warmth. Napoleon fled and left his men. We can scarcely blame him ; he could not help them with stories of sham victories and false reports in the Moniteur, such as he had sent to Paris. 214 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. He returned to France, gathered up yet another array, attacked Germany, gained the battles of Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, and was defeated at Leipzig with a loss of 50,000 men. On the 4th of April, 1 8 14, the Allies — Russia, Prussia, and Austria — having entered France, the Emperor abdicated, and was sent to honourable banishment at Elba. Perhaps a less ambitious man might here have rested. We have sufficient examples of retired kings ; but the restless Napoleon was not of them. France for a time had her king reinstated ; Europe, at peace, gave way to universal rejoicing; and England, in the person of her merchants, hoped now to reap a harvest. But Napoleon still plotted ; and in less than a year he returned to France. The army revolted to him, the king .fled, the AlHes again gathered. Napoleon dashed himself against Germany, this time to the north, while England hastily disembarked an army under Wellington; The Prussians met Napoleon at Ligny, and were repulsed ; and the English, at Quatre Bras and again at Waterloo — the story of which is too often told — flinched not. Brave old Blucher, gathering his army together again, appeared in time to make the French retreat a disastrous wreck; and four days after Waterloo, after three battles and a reign of a hundred days, Napoleon again abdicated, endeavoured to escape to America, but, not being able to avoid the English cruisers, claimed the hospitality of England, and surrendered to Captain Maitland of the " Belle- rophon." The words uttered by the'Duke of Wellington, with tears in his eyes, in the very hour of victory, " My heart is broken by the terrible loss of my old friends and companions, and of my brave soldiers; FORCEFUL BUT FAITHLESS. 215 and I shall not be satisfied with this victory if it does not put an end to Bonaparte," found an echo everywhere; so the English Cabinet declared itself bound by its allies, and after some debate the Emperor was not allowed to settle in England, whence he would perhaps in time have managed to escape, but was confined at St. Helena, a distant island on the coast of Africa, healthy but solitary, and only touched at by ships going round the Cape. After six years of imprisonment, watched by English guards and English cruisers, Napoleon died of his father's disease — cancer in the stomach. For six years he bitterly declaimed against English perfidy and tyranny, dictating memoirs coloured according to his peculiar fancy, full of exaggeration and want of truth, but remarkable for force and spirit. He died and was buried at St. Helena in 1821 ; in 1840 his remains were given to France by England, and brought to Paris, where they rest in a splendid tomb under the dome of the Invalides. A parallel between Wellington and Napoleon might well be drawn, but not at the end of a chapter. One was an exponent of simple duty, of ambition sub- ordinated, curbed, and restrained to a loyal service, of a constant worship of Truth and of Justice, so far as he could see. The other was a conqueror who let nothing stand in his way, without affection, without love, almost without conscience. It is not without due thought and reason that Emerson calls him " the man of the world.'' He never seems to have dreamed of conscience, or of another world. He gloried in and justified his crimes; of the murder of D'Enghien he merely said, "After all, my blood is not puddle 2i6 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. blood, and kings must be taught thus ;" therefore he slew one of a royal race. " He put out all his strength, all his might. He risked everything,'' says Emerson, " and spared nothing, neither men, nor ammunition, nor money, nor his troops, nor himself He was a pattern Democrat; but," he adds, "men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to other men. This exorbitant egotism narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power and existence of all who served him ; and the universal cry of France and of Europe in 1814 was, Enough of him — assez de Bona- parte." The words of Juvenal upon another conqueror, with but two slight alterations, will apply as truly to Napoleon as to Hannibal — ' ' This frame of adamant, this soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire ; No joys to him pacific sceptres yield, He sounds the trump, and rushes to the field;'' " And," asks the Roma:n satirist, "what, after all, was the end of it ? Alas ! for glory, this very man is routed, and flies headlong from the field into banish- ment, and there the great and wonderful commander sits, a poor suppliant, at the door of a king. That life which had disturbed all human affairs was brought to an end, not* by swords, nor stones, nor darts, but by that redresser of wrong and avenger of blood — a common disease." (To Hannibal death accrued by poison, which the great Carthaginian carried in a ring.) " Go, madman ; hurry o'er the savage Alps — to please the boys and be a theme at school !" Chapter XX. A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. I PON mention of the Duke ofWellington's name there at once occur two reflections which are very humiliating to human pride. The first is, that it is not rightly known where he was born ; the second, that a great number of English people, for whom he had fought and won a hundred pitched battles, whose name he had placed foremost in the world, and whom he had gifted with forty years' peace and a long prosperity, did not know who he was when he died. " We have had a great loss," said Mr. Roebuck to his gardener, in a conversation which has become historical ; "the Duke of Wellington is dead." " 'Deed, sir," aijswered the horticulturist ; " and who was he ? I never heard tell of him." What a comment is that answer on the value of fame ' John Leech, though anticipated byGilray in a picture of George III., made a caricature for Punch which was and is full of meaning. It was published at the time when Tom Thumb the dwarf dressed up and strutted in the costume of Napoleon. The Queen sent for the showman for her children, and the Duke of Wei- 2i8 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. lington, being at the palace, saw Tom Thumb. The caricature is called " The Giant and the Dwarf." The old Duke, peering through his eyeglasses, inspects the miniature Napoleon as he struts upon a table. As time passes on. History may gradually take a like course. Napoleon, the associate of Robespierre, the friend of t)rrants whom he betrayed, the flatterer of the people whom he ruined, died after having lost for his adopted France all her youth, her fair name, one million or more of soldiers on the field of battle, and two provinces, and having added some three hundred millions to her national debt. To him, after a time, succeeded his nephew, who, after seventeen years' reign, leaves France again defeated, with three armies — eight hundred thousand men — emerging from captivity, two hundred thousand soldiers dead or in hospital, a national debt increased by at least eight hundred millions sterling, and a loss of many fortresses and her two best provinces. It may well be asked. What has France gained by the domination of such men ? By the loyal subservience of another man, however, a loyalty shown even to a Regent who was vicious and foolish, and whom he more than once rebuked,' and to Ministries which but little aided him in the accomplishment of his plans, Great Britain was saved subversion, had h^r liberties protected, secured peace and plenty, and, if she incurred debt in paying half 1 George IV., as Regent, was led away by vicious bragga- docio to assert that he was at Waterloo. He once appealed to Wellington in support of the fact. " Was I not there, Duke ?" " I have heard your Royal Highness very often say so," was the stem rebuke as the hero walked gravely away. A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 219 Europe and sustaining an enormous struggle, was so benefited by the victorious struggle that the gain pro- portionally is incalculable. So rich are we now that the duty upon property left at death in 1871 — one small item of our revenue — amounts to nearly 2,000,000/., or more than the whole income of the kingdom under Charles II. ; so firmly fixed are we in the world's esteem that even all the enormous blun- ders, stupidity, and ill-luck of an unthinking Ministry cannot shake us ; so populous have we become that since Waterloo great colonies have sprung from us larger than many Old World kingdoms, and the sub- jects of our Indian Empire, which Wellington did much to win for us, have been quadrupled. So popu- lous indeed are we that while France is stationary, our hive sends out 150,000 emigrants every year to colonize the world ! ' And all this has been effected with constant preservation of modesty, honour, and the quiet virtues. It has been said that the greatest glory of WelUngton is that he won a hundred victories and never lost an English gun. Great as this is, he did more ; he never won a victory that could cause an English blush. He never said a word that was not true, so far as he knew. The greatest accusation against him is that he did not save the life of Ney, executed deservedly by the French for being a traitor. The truth is, Ney was three times a traitor, and all that could be truly said in his favour was that greater traitors were spared ; moreover, the Duke did try to save him, but was snubbed and played with by the very king who owed, his throne to English arms and valour. "Whatever record leap to light, he never shall be shamed," says the Laureate. This is 220 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. not only true, but within the truth ; two or three records have since leaped to light, and the Duke comes out not only without blame, but with a good deal of praise. There are other records, now in pos- session of the present Duke of Wellington, which in a few years will see the light, and it is expected that in certain points in which the Duke bore blame for others the truth will come out and prove how good he was — how noble and self-denying. An Irishman by birth, of an English family — of so pure an English strain that the great John Wesley has been claimed as his distant cousin, though that can hardly be — Arthur Wesley was born either at Dangan Castle or in Dublin, the third son of the Earl of Momington, celebrated for his music and certain psalm tunes which still survive. His mother was Anne, daughter of Viscount Dungannon. The Duke's paternal grandfather was a Mr. Richard Colley, to whom Garrett Wesley, an Irishman, left, by bequest, estates and Dangan Castle, Co. Meath. Colley then assumed the name of Wesley, and as Lieutenant Wesley the young soldier was known till his eldest brother, the great Marquis, Governor-General of India, altered the name to Wellesley. Educated at Eton, then a soldier in the French Military School at Angier, afterwards under the Avocat Dagourde in Brussels, the boy, silent and reflective, was treated by his mother as somewhat a fool. He seldom spoke of his youth, which did not yield him many delights ; and there is little known of him save that at Eton he fought and thrashed Bobus Smith, a most brilliant scholar, and brother of the celebrated Sydney Smith. Both boys were equally unknown, A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 221 and, though Bobus commenced the attack, young Wesley, in fun, was the aggressor. He accepted Bobus's oflfer to " punch his head," and punched his in return. Studious as an ensign and lieutenant, he was shunned rather than courted, and at a ball at Lady Alborough's found no lady to dance with ; so he quietly stayed and talked with the musicians, and was taken home by them, while the more noisy officers had a " lift " in the carriages of the grand folk. " Ah ! " said Lady Alborough to him, when Sir Arthur Wel- lesley, the victor of India, " I should not leave you to go home with the fiddlers notii." " I found them very good company and very entertaining," returned the modest hero. When a captain of foot, he was so disgusted with the service that he wanted to leave and serve as a clerk in Parliament ; he exchanged into the 1 8th Light Dragoons, and when appointed to active service as lieutenant-colonel, his first care was for his soldiers. Always a student, he weighed one of his men, then his accoutrements and arms, and, in the midst of blunderers and martinets, always held that a soldier depended upon two things — his stomach and his shoes. " Feed your men well, and look to their shoes," said he, " and ■ then the British infantry will do anything." Wellington was without much influence in the army; but his rise was rapid, and in 1798, when he went to India, he went under very favourable auspices. He had seen his first active service in 1 793, in the ill-fated expedition under the Duke of York ; in 1798, when he was about to fight Tippoo Saib, one year after his landing in India, his elder brother was made Governor-General. We need not linger over our hero's Indian exploits. As colonel or com- 222 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. mandant, whatever he did was well done, and his reputation was always rising. He defeated Tippoo, took Seringapatam, was appointedGovernor of Mysore, and in i8oo fought with 8000 men the bloody field of Assaye against Scindia, whose army numbered 30,000, and gained one of the most splendid victories. For this and other services he was knighted, and received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. In 1805 he set sail for England. His letters during this period are very interesting. Everywhere he pleads for the natives, demands fair treatment, relies upon British honour and the sacred- ness of the British word, always looks to his soldiers, intercedes for officers, never speaks against an enemy, and is surprised at the bitterness with which one- sided newspaper attacks are written against him. We see him planting a creeper to make the house which he is to leave look nice and pretty for the officer who succeeds him; always treating the native havildars (sergeants) with respect ; refusing to use his influence for a relative or a friend, as his weight would unfairly go against an opponent ; careful to repair a road or a watercourse ; ever looking to small things, utterly careless of working himself, and always sparing his men till the time came for action, but then inflexible. A supremely just man, and withal one of a grim humour and good-natured, he was evidently feared as well as loved ; the first by his enemies, the last by his men. Returning to England, he marries, leads or par- ticipates in a Continental expedition — the German expedition under Lord Cathcart — comes again to England, thinks of quitting the service, is made A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 223 Secretary for Ireland (1807), and in 1808 is created Lieutenant-General, commanding a miserable expe- dition to Spain, the Ministry having some idea of helping that people, who were pillaged by the French. For the French, so long thought to be but Johnny Crapauds, mere frog-eating " parlez-voo's," the sort of men whom Marlborough had drubbed and Hogarth had caricatured, had become a terror to Europe. It was time indeed for John Bull to wake up and help what allies he had. Revolution had succeeded in making heroes or devils of the French ; the king and nobility had been swept away in a torrent of blood ; but the wild people had a new master, a conqueror who promised to conquer all Europe. Naples — the whole of Italy was conquered ; one of Napoleon's ■ brothers had been made King of Spain (July, 1808), one of his generals King of Naples ; his son was King of Rome, and his brother King of Holland ; Prussia was beaten ; Austria alarmed, defeated, and an ally of France ; Denmark appeared terrified and disgusted ; America, afar off, was settling down after her struggle, and in supreme ill-will with England ; Russia alone seemed more independent than the others, but at one time was an ally of the great one, the Man of Destiny confiding in his star, and the great king-maker. The French infantry, with its tlan, its dash, lightness, and gaiety, its rapidity of movement, the best in the world, remained unbeaten. The generals. Marshals of France, ardent soldiers risen from the ranks, were a set of knights worthy of Arthur's table. One was the Beau Sabreur, the fine swordsman, never repulsed ; another, the invincible ; a third, the bravest of the brave-. And to meet these and beat these was sent 2.24 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. poor Sir Arthur Wellesley with a handful of English troops, boys raw from the Militia, dying before the foe with the words " East Sussex " on their coarse knapsacks, and officered " by the worst set of officers I ever met in my life," Jack o' dandies, boys from Eton, poor fellows, glad to get from their creditors, and knocked up after a town life. Add to these — which Wellington made the best army in the world — allies not to be relied on, men ready to run away, no commissariat, and above all no shoes; in the back- ground an English Ministry dominated by enemies, or simply powerless officials who 'would hardly answer Sir Arthur's letters, much more carry out his wishes, and officers to help him, brave enough, but not of his school, jealous and combining against him. At times he was superseded in the command, once by Sir Hew Dalrymple, then by Sir Harry Burrard — incomjketent both, and ready to let Marshal Junot, the great French General, beat them at Vimiera but for Wellington, or drive them into the sea, as he did brave Sir John Moore at Corufia. Sir Arthur fought against all this, made his army somewhat less of an undrilled mass, and then, dis- gusted, sailed for England. In 1809, however, the nation would have Wellesley; for Napoleon had marched into Spain, and, that gone — the great con- queror had a shrewd way of tackling England by closing the ports of the world against her merchandise — where had we ports? Without an outlet for our industry, our fifteen millions must starve. John Bull was quick enough to see this, and had solid reason to talk about the " Corsican ogre." Philandering philan- thropists used to spout (they always will talk) of John A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 225 Bull "ill-using" Napoleon, of Bull's alliance with kings, of his being deceived and " led on " by Tory prints to abuse that great man. A scrap-bookful of Gilray's caricatures and of the elder and the present Cruikshank's pictures of the period points out, how- ever, that it was the people who, with a sure instinct, found out what the first Napoleon was, and who hated him. Gilray's caricatures and those of others were quite as popular as those of our Punch, and were drawn to sell. John Bull knew what starvation meant, and what sort of justice was done to the cottages and palaces which the French occupied. He had heard of the mercies of French prisons, and of the method of maintaining itself in an enemy's country adopted by a French army. Great Britain was itself anti- Gallican, and Bonaparte was hated by the common people as a monstrous birth of the Revolution and la Sainte Guillotine. Throughout the whole of England, almost the entire people looked askance at the doings of France ; e.g. — ' ' Let France in savage accents sing Her bloody Revolution ! We prize our country, love our King, Adore our Constitution. For these we'll every danger face, And quit our rustic labours ; Our ploughs to firelocks shall give place, Our scythes be changed to sabres ; And, clad in arms, our song shall be Oh, give us death — or victory ! " Sir Arthur Wellesley had his work before him. He landed in Portugal with a small body of less than twenty thousand men, inefficiently officered, to oppose a victorious army of eighty thousand French, com- Q 226 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. manded by the most cautious of French Marshals, Spult, appointed by the Emperor himself. It is true that the English had allies, but they were not to be depended on, and often threw our men into confusion. Sir Arthur's troops, too, were raw soldiers ; and, as he said, one old soldier who has seen a campaign is worth two or three recruits, because he is cool, and knows what to do. But, with everything against him but his plain, firm honesty and love of duty, Sir Arthur at once conciliated the Portuguese. His men were firmly kept in hand. There was to be no plun- dering, even when in the country of an enemy ; the people were to be fairly paid for service, provisions, horses, waggons. Any one who oppressed the inha- bitants, oflScer or man, even the General's own kith and kin, if he had any, was to be peremptorily punished. His men were to be fed; if a commis- sariat officer did not find provisions, he was at once punished— "if a soldier is not fed, he dannot fight." He had no Crimea starvations, no blunders like Bala- clava, with " brilliant " charges for nothing. Wellesley '' went in to win," not to gain glory. He lamented a barren victory. Seldom does he talk about glory ; once, when, having beaten the French, he has not cavalry or men enough to follow them up, " All we have gained," he says, " is glory — which, to be sure, is something to the men." And even of Waterloo he could say, " The glory resulting from such actions is dearly bought by the loss of our friends; it is no consolation to me.'' The result of his carefully carried out programme in Portugal was that the army soon became efficient, was always held in honour; and, even when Spain A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 227 Was freed, and the victors crossed the Pyrenees into France, the country people flocked to camp, and the English soldiers were better fed than the French by their own countrymen. The first thing Wellesley did was to drive the French out of Portugal, which he did on the Douro, with a river three hundred yards wide to cross, and fifty thousand veterans opposing his twenty-five thousand raw soldiers and alhes. When he got into Spain, he rested, concentrated his strength, retired behind enor- mous lines when too weak, only came out when he had a chance, and finally beat the "French in surprise, night march, skirmish, siege, pitched battle, till he drove them before him over the Pyrenees, fighting as they went. For this he was created Baron Douro of Wellesley, Viscount Wellington of Talavera ; yet while his praise was in everybody's mouth, he was the same simple soldier, neat, ruddy, frock-coated, his trousers brought down over his Hessian boots so as to save extra cleaning — hence our Wellingtons — his face cheery and clean shaved, his diet simple, his work earnest and hard. To please his officers, and to keep heart in them while the French pressed him hard, he still retained his English fox-hounds, and pretended to amuse himself with hunting. He always was true to his word, and amusingly said that he often led astray the French Marshals by telling them the truth — which they from their nature imagined to be lies, and acted accordingly. In Spain Wellington did not meet with his great adversary, born in the same year, and but six months his senior; but he had the advantage of beat- ing in detail all his great marshals. Marshal Soult he beat everywhere — in Portugal, Spain, France, and Q 2 228 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Flanders, from the Douro to Waterloo ; Junot he defeated at Roliga and Vimiera ; Victor, a brave and admirable leader, at Talavera; Massena at Busaco and Fuentes d'Onore; Marmont at Salamanca, and Jourdan at the bloody battle of Vittoria. What was most extraordinary, as he said himself — and the Lau- reate has versified it — " I took somewhat about three thousand of the enemies' guns, and I don't think I ever lost a gun in the field." ' ' He that gain'd a hundred fights Nor ever lost an English gun ! " After the battle of Salamanca, he went on to say — so scrupulous was he of truth — " three of my guns attached to some Portuguese cavalry were captured in a trifling affair near Madrid, but they were recovered the next day.'' Nor is Wellington's success to be attri- buted, as some demagogues have tried to attribute it, solely to the British soldiers. They no doubt were excellent, as Wellington was the first to assert; but under Moore, Lord Hill, under Hew Dalrymple or General Burrard, they were defeated or repulsed. All true soldiers — the better man will be the more earnest — will admit that it is the general who is really the head and soul of all great and efficient victories; truly such was Wellington. Chapter XXI. A SPEAKER OF TRUTH {Coniimied). • E shall not here need to fight Waterloo over again ; it was fought sixty - one years ago, on both sides most bravely ; and to the soldiers of either nation it gave equal honour. It was, said the Duke, a hard pounding match. " The enemy pounds hard, gentle- men ; we must see who can pound hardest." It was a day of fair, honest, noble fighting, the men well knowing what they were at, and on each side equally trusting their commander ; the Duke, anxious for his men, with few or no reserves, throwing his English into squares, and "the enemy's cavalry walking among our squares as if they were our own men," trying to break through — in fact, some braves leaping the squares and dying on their opponents' bayonets. Add to this, artillery galloping up hidden in the midst of infantry at the double, then opening out and blow- ing the formation before them to pieces. " Hot work, gentlemen,'' says the Duke. " For God's sake, 230 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. send us relief! We cannot hold out any longer!" cries one regiment, its officers almost all dead, its sergeants acting as captains. " Gentlemen, you must hold on. Would to God night or Bliicher would come I " Such is the Duke's answer. That day, as Napoleon well knew, was his last chance. It was a day of onsets of despair ; never did cavalry fight better than the French, and " I never saw the British infantry behave so well," said our truthful Duke. Napoleon, he added, did not manoeuvre at all ; he merely " moved forward in the old style in columns, and was driven off in the old style. The only diffe- rence was that he mixed cavalry with his infantry, and supported both with an enormous quantity of artil- lery." Difference enough, as the Duke found, but at last he forced the French to withdraw, and then gave the word to charge along his whole line. It was hardly strong enough to make the work complete ; and when at nightfall Bliicher came up, Wellington gladly left the pursuit to the Prussians, and galloped back to head-quarters, getting off his horse at twelve o'clock at night. His charger, Copenhagen, kicked out as it entered the stable, and was — for the Duke went to see him fed before he sat down to dinner — " quite fresh," although he had been ridden for seven- teen hours. The Duke's dinner was served ; he ate heartily, and, throwing himself on his bed half un- dressed, slept soundly, unkempt and unwashed. The story of Waterloo has been told by many pens, by none better than by Thackeray in " Vanity Fair ;" others whom we may name are Gleig, Brialmont (perhaps the most authentic writer), Thiers, Victor Hugo, MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, and W. H. Maxwell. A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 231 Still, there is wanted the pen of a Macaulay to com- bine in one glowing picture all the truth scattered in so many. The Duke would never talk much about the battle. What you hear, he would say, is quite untrue; nobody can see much of a battle except the commander, yet each man forms his own opinion. We may here, however, set down a few truths, to put a stop in some quarters to the enormous lies and fables current about the great contest. (i) The English were not surprised at Brussels nor at Waterloo. The Duke went over the ground and chose the field of battle months before the day. " Here," said he, " we must fight, if Napoleon should escape." The spot in dispute lay in Napoleon's natural course to overawe Denmark, Belgium, and afterwards Germany, and Wellington knew his oppo- nent's move as a chess-player knows the scientific advances of an adversary. (2) The ball at Brussels was a well-contemplated matter, like the Duke's fox- hunting in Spain. "The sound of revelry by night," put heart into our alhes, quieted apprehensions, gave the troops peace of mind and rest by assuring them that danger was afar off. (3) All the officers had their due notice quietly given, and left the ball-room coolly ; there was no " flurry," no hurried embracings, as Byron has it. An old lady who was at the ball has recorded that when the ladies assembled upstairs after supper, the thinning down of the male partners and at last entire absence of the men gradually grew on their notice. Then the ladies began to be aware that something might be " on hand." (4) The Prussians did not help us to win Waterloo. One who has gone very carefully over the statistics gives us these num- 232 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. bers : — The French were 80,000, with 250 guns, great and small. They were opposed by 67,000 English, Hanoverians, Belgians, and allies, with 156 guns ; to which, after the day was decided, were added certain large bodies of Prussians, who came in time to make the rout effectual. Of British troops — for English, Irish, and Scotch fought equally well — we had strictly only 22,000, of whom were killed 141 7, wounded 4923. The total loss of the allied forces on that day was 22,378 ; so that, deducting reserves, medical men, drummers, &c., nearly i-| out of 3, or i of 2, was wounded or killed. Of the casualties nearly one- fifth were killed on the field of battle, but a very large proportion died afterwards. (5) As the Duke espe- cially said, " It is not true that the British army was unprepared," so he always denied, the early appearance of Bliicher on the field. " They said we met at La Belle Alliance, and some have gone so far as to have seen the chair on which I sat in that farm-house. It happened that the meeting took place at Genappe after ten at night, and anybody who follows with truth the operations of the two armies will find that it could not be otherwise. I was not off my horse till I returned to Waterloo, between eleven and twelve at night." • We have said that after his very late dinner the Duke hurried to bed and slept. He had, in common with Napoleon and Lord Brougham, the faculty of sleeping almost at will. He was still a young man, and in fullest vigour. The morning after, he was awakened early by Dr. Hume, Surgeon-General of the Army, with the report of the killed and wounded. Unwashed and unshaven, the Duke sat up in bed to A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 233 hear the report. The hst was a long one; the re- marks of the doctor short, but fairly full ; and after he had read for nearly an hour, the doctor looked up. " He saw Wellington with his hands convulsively clasped together, and the tears making long furrows on his battle-soiled face. At first the Duke did not notice that the doctor had ceased to speak, but in about a minute he .cried, 'Go on, sir,' and till the reading closed he never once moved from his attitude of profound grief." In after life, through some news- paper scribe having " mixed up " a compliment to the Uuke with the name of an iron steam-boat built at Liverpool, the epithet the " Iron Duke " got fixed to him, just as Jerrold's high-flown words the " Crystal Palace" were for ever affixed to Paxton's resplendent glass edifice, built for the Exhibition. Of course, the Duke's enemies, of whom he had many, used the words to signify hardness of heart. Never was an epithet more untruthful. The hero's tears, which welled up irrepressibly, and coursed down his manly face, were but a small proof of his tenderness. Going over the death-roll at Waterloo; he remarked that nothing in the world could compensate for the loss of those true friends, and he often urged that everything short of actual disgrace was to be preferred to war. We want, he said, peace between France and Eng- land ; all wise men will make every reasonable sacri- fice to avoid war. " Don't talk of little wars," he said ; " this country never can afford a little war." It was significant that, after Waterloo, the Duke, when at Brussels, stopped at the door of his old tutor, and had him called out, saluted him as respectfully as if he were still a boy, and assured him of his protec- 234 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. tion. Throughout the dreadful day — for the battle began very e^jty — Brussels was filled with rumours and cowardly fugitives, who reported a dozen times the death of the Duke and the flight of the Engli^ and their allies. The Duke's cook, however, kept to his post, and kept his master's dinner hot. He had been, he said, in his service in many battles and for many years ; and when he said he would come back to dinner, he always did. The cook's name was Thornton. After victory comes boasting : most men are ad- dicted to it, and some very brave men too. Not so the Duke; he and the army had merely done their duty. " Good God, gentlemen," he wrote, after read- ing a variety of accounts, " you talk and write as if there had never been a battle before ! " " It was a good stand-up fight, that was all," he said. Yet he honoured all his generals, and spoke warmly of all of them, especially of the dead. He refused, so far as he could, emoluments and honours — notably one hundred thousand pounds, to be presented by the City Companies. The Duke did not see why the City Companies should reward him. He had fought for all, and had done his duty just as the private or the drummer did. The country, however, insisted upon being grateful ; and the City no doubt felt that, as Berlin had been plundered, Moscow burnt, Rome, Madrid, Milan, Venice, Saragossa, and a few dozen other cities sacked and pillaged, or made to contri- bute, the English metropolis owed, next to God, to her soldiers and sailors the safety she enjoyed. Strathfieldsaye, the thanks of both Houses of Parlia- ment, heavy gifts of plate, a town house, &c., and A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 235 every kind of honour, were showered on the Duke. The honours he was most proud of were his Star of the Bath and his Waterloo medal. With the news of the victory of Waterloo the soldiers of Great Britain rose in favour; and Jack Tar, who had had a hundred years of glory culminating at the battle of Trafalgar, for the moment faded into the background. Every heiress almost was engaged to a red-coat; Waterloo men were the heroes of the day. We had Waterloo bridges and banquets, and the Duke heard a great deal too much of his achievement. All. this proves, as proved the list of bankrupts and the miserable finances of the kingdom, the straits ' into which the struggle had brought us, and the rebound of joy the kingdom felt. Years afterwards, when Charles Lever wrote his stories, there remained a certain flavour of intoxication about the Peninsula and Waterloo. The Duke alone kept his head clear. Even Southey, editor of the Quarterly, grew almost braggart in his description of the battle. Says Thackeray, — ' Take Dr. Southey from the shelf, An LL.D. , a peaceful man, — Good Lord, how he doth plume himself Because we beat the Corsican ! " But it should be remembered that the Duke abso- lutely declined to give Southey help in his work, and uniformly refused any panegyric, though many were profifered him. "Too much smoke, gentlemen," he said to the artists who would paint the battle over and over again. Led on, as a '' patron of Art," to buy Sir William Allan's picture— in which, by the way, he said there was not too much smoke — he satirized 236 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. himself as he paid the artist. He counted a large sum out in gold and notes. " Your Grace need not trouble yourself — you can give me a cheque." This Allan twice repeated. " Do you think," said the Duke drily, " that I should like to let Coutt's people " (he banked at Coutt's) "know what a fool I have been?" The immense amount of applause, which Wellington acknowledged as gracefully and as honestly as he did the flowers and the kisses of the. Spanish ladies in the beleagured cities he had relieved, stirred up many enemies against him. There is no doubt that Hazlitt, for instance, detested him; that Cobbett, William Hone, and George Cruikshank opposed and caricatured him; that Coleridge thought him too much of a soldier, loving to govern the people as he did the army, and that B)rron was delighted to satirize him — " O Wellington, or Villain-ton ! thy pensions Are the very heaviest our History mentions. The Duke, from force of circumstances, became a politician, then Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief, leader of the Tories. He lived for thirty-seven years after his last great victory, in the midst of great pros- perity, some hatred, and much love. He naturally was a Protectionist; he believed in England and in English justice and industry; his ideas were perhaps settled and old-fashioned. He opposed " Reform," and did not think that every untaught man should have a vote ; he opposed Roman Catholic Emancipa- tion, thought that the Protestant Church in Ireland should be protected, warned us in 1825, and again in 1829, against allowing the priest to dominate in A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 237 Ireland, and " to govern us by a Church opposed heart and soul to our State.'' He also objected to trade- unionism ; he said that it was a system of tyranny, that the workman under that system was not free, and that " no person in this country who is dependent on his labour for his subsistence, and hardly any one who employs him, but has reason to complain of those combinations." {Speeches, 1838.) Time will prove whether these words are wise or foolish, true or false ; suffice it to say that the Duke believed them, that he never " ratted," that he always faced his foe. He has been seen to get out of his carriage when the mob was pelting him, so that they might have a good mark; but he put up iron shutters when the mob broke his windows, " as he did not like his property destroyed." In private life he was calm, methodical, and yet loveable. All his old servants loved him. His bed, his room, his personal service was simplicity itself — an iron bedstead good enough for a hospital, no better ; his "mule box" (a deal desk which he had tied on to a mule all through the Peninsula) to write on, a table, and a few maps. Every letter he received was promptly answered ; thousands of pounds he gave away; indeed he was a fine object for begging-letter writers — " officers' widows," old soldiers, and the like. He was never applied to by an old Waterloo man but he gave him a guinea; he never was bowed to by a noble or a beggar but he returned his sharp, neat, military salute. A workman, in a sudden impulse, stopped and said, " Duke, I should like to shake hands with you." • " Very happy, my friend," said the Duke, looking up, and smiling into the man's honest face; " I am proud to shake hands with an honest 238 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. man." He was quietly and unostentatiously religious. He bowed his white head at the Lord's name, and said his prayers as reverently, said Haydon, as the simplest peasant. The Lord's Prayer, he affirmed, was the "epitome of religion and wisdom. He said that life was really not worth much : " there is little or nothing in this life worth living for, but we can all go straightforward and do our duty." This Wellington did, dying as Warden of the Cinque Ports, at Walmer Castle, almost, as it were, " on the look out " for England. " He died," said the Queen, in her book on the Highlands, " after a few hours' illness and no suffering. God's will be done ! The day must have come ; the Duke was eighty-three — but what a loss ! One cannot think of this country without ' the Duke ' — our immortal hero ! In him centred almost every earthly honour a subject can possess. His position was the highest a subject ever had — above party, looked up to by all, revered by the whole nation, the friend of the Sovereign ; and how simply he carried these honours ! With what single- ness of purpose, what straightforwardness, what courage were all the motives of his actions guided ! The Crown never possessed— and I fear never will — so devoted J loyal and faithful a subject, so staunch a supporter. To us (who, alas ! have lost now so many of our valued, experienced friends) his loss is irre- parable, for his readiness to aid and advise, if it could be of use to us, and to overcome any and every difficulty, wais unequalled. His experience and his knowledge were so great, too ; he" was a link which connected us with bygone times^ with the last century. Not an eye will be dry in the whole country." A SPEAKER OF TRUTH. 239 This is high praise from the Sovereign, but it was painfully earned and richly deserved. Wellington's last years had been spent — "since old experience doth attain to- something of prophetic strain" — in warning the country against its enemies, of its unpro- tected state, of the danger it lay in through its riches, and the envy it excited, combined with its single devotion to making money, and its neglect of the military spirit. His words and warning and the vapouring of "the French colonels" — the invasion of England having been openly canvassed in France — gave rise to the Volunteer movement, which has been of incalculabe benefit to all. The danger may have passed over as regards ourselves — though as we write, we may read in journals articles proving how easily we may now be invaded, surprised, and conquered ; but since the Duke's death we have seen Denmark invaded and shorn of her best provinces, almost without a pretext ; Austria humiliated and begging for peace, after a very brief contest ; Hanover blotted out and its king an exile j Germany threat- ened for the purpose of keeping the French quiet ; and France herself conquered and subjected to such humiliation, spoiling, loss of provinces, and so heavy a fine in money that her national debt is doubled, and it is doubtful whether half a century's peaceful prosperity will restore her. Hence the counsels of the great Duke, always in the truest interests of peace, should never be neglected. All history attests that nations more or less love aggrandizement by war, and will, upon slight pretext, attack an unprepared and weaker neighbour. " I labour for peace," wrote David, King of Israel, nearly three thousand years 240 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. ago, "but when I speak unto them thereof they make them ready to battle." The rule is much the same now, and hence the warnings of the Duke of Wellington are still valuable to the nation he so much loved. " His -voice is silent in your council-hall For ever ; and, whatever tempest lour, For ever silent ; even if they broke In thunder, silent ; yet, remember all He spoke among you, and the man who spoke, Who never sold the trudi to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with eternal God for power — Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life — Who never spoke against a foe. * • * Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named, Truth-lover was our English Duke : Whatever record leap to light, He never shall be shamed." We cannot say that the Duke's was a perfect or an ideal life — hardly was any man's ever such — but there was much in it to make it almost such. We are at best but weak creatures and unprofitable servants ; but this man gave us the picture of one earnest in doing his duty, in his sense of honour, in his loyalty, in his repression of self. He was indeed a most noble and loyal gentleman. Chapter XXII. WORKING FOR THE WORLD. [LL the glory of the world happily does not pertain to kings, soldiers, or poets ; there are yet humbler heroes ; one such is next to be spoken of. At a ripe age, having won, if a silent, a true honour, Charles Knight left this world, which for years he endeavoured to make better. It was a pleasant fancy of the early Christians to place on the tombs of their dear ones not the word " died," but truer words, " began to live ;" so we will say that, after eighty-two years on this troubled globe, Charles Knight began to live at his death. He had been born into our condition in the eventful year 1791 — two years before the execution of King Louis XVI. of France, shortly before the career of Napoleon the Great, and very shortly after the American Revolution and the establishment of that great Republic across the Atlantic. The man's life, therefore, if only that of an eating and drinking being, of one who vegetated in a country town and read the local papers, would cover so large a space that the diary of it must be interesting. R 242 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. But the life of Charles Knight was widely different Why do we comment on his career ? Because he was a working man of the true sort, since he, whilst labouring for himself, laboured for others ; because he was of the first who interested himself in teaching the people and in spreading far and wide the light of knowledge ; and we have seen and felt how worthy such labours are when truly directed, however small the fruit may be ; lastly, because a review of such a life will place before the modem reader some comparison between the old times, now apparenly so long passed away, and the times, in many instances so much better, in which we are now living. Charles Knight was the son of a bookseller at Windsor, a worthy man, fairly born of the English middle class, and not without some culture. The father had published the " Microcosm,'' a small maga- zine, filled with essays after the style of Addison, by George Canning, Hookham Frere, and other Etonians, whose names are well known ; and, imitative as these juvenile essays were, they are so clever that they can even now be read with pleasure. George III. was king ; and that monarch has been so universally abused that it is worth while to contrast the picture that Knight gives of the monarch, and our own pre- sent progressive notions. He was a gentleman who had been king for forty years, who loved a plain wife and a plain dinner, and who delighted in being called " Fanner George." He walked on the terrace of his old castle at Windsor, surrounded by his people, talking in his plain, good, kindly way to everybody. "What, what " — his Majfesty had a trick of repetition of the word, which Peter Pindar and Gilray have put WORKING FOR THE WORLD. 243 into the mouths of their caricatures — " is that you, Doctor Burney? Why, you grow fat — fatter than Doctor Lind." And Doctor Lind was perhaps just behind him. The Queen and the Princesses, mixing with the courtiers and the people, were there, smiling graciously, with a good word for everybody. Noble lords came to beg a place, clergymen a living, even plain farmers to make a complaint about their landlords. The patronage of the Crown was immense, and George III. really wished to be a father and a friend to all. No doubt, in attempting to do good, he often did wrong, but the attempt was made. Windsor Castle, by no means so grand as it is' now, was full of servants with " perquisites " — Windsor town itself full of tradesmen who Jived on the Court. Followed by a long string of children, and with his wife by his side, the King walked to church with a big prayer-book, and joined audibly in the prayers and responses. In the dark evenings, as soon as the King and Queen, who went first, were out of the Chapel Royal, the choris- ters and vergers blew out the wax candles, and let the people who followed scramble out in the dark. The reason was, the wax candles were their per- quisites ! The King himself, anxious that the people should not be taxed, was parsimonious. One day a page was awakened by his Majesty in a dark ante- chamber with " What, what, you should look after your perquisites ! I blew out the candles." The King and Queen went amongst their tradesmen and talked to them as to friends. George III. sat in Knight's father's shop and laughed at Gilra/s caricatures of himself; in like manner he praised, as he rode in R 2 244 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Windsor Great Park, the pony of his butcher as he dared to trot by his Majesty's side. He was known familiarly as " Old Baggs." " Old Baggs is down," said a Windsor butcher in high glee, " and has sent for some fine calves' livers ; .he don't care for your foreign kickshaws." All this is recited to show what a plain, paternal, homely Court it was. , The King, a great worker, attended to his duties with an earnest regularity; lived at St. James's, Windsor, or Kew; went in the summer, attended by his guards, to Wey- bridge ; signed death-warrants and granted pardons himself, and was entirely English. Loving Ms people, he was himself beloved by them. At the same time those were days of great corruption and many jobs, from which we are not yet free. In spite of — perhaps because of — saving " perquisites " and candle-ends, the' lighting of Windsor cost 10,000/. a year in wax candles, says Knight ; and no doubt both servants and tradesmen retired. with fortunes. Very few people comparatively could read, taxes ate up the poor, and knowledge was, although we had some shining literary lights, very much confined. The English were in perpetual dread of the invasion of Bonaparte ; and during Mr. Knight's youth Wellington, the great opponent of Napoleon, fought and overcame as great difficulties with the Ministry at home and an ill-suppUed army as he did in Spain and at Waterloo. The people were in a chronic state of political disturbance, and William Cobbett, to whom Knight gives the character of being half a knave, was bidding for popularity by hot-headed appeals to the people. Space will not allow us to say much about the WORKING FOR THE WORLD. 245 youth of our subject. He learnt little Latin, and less Greek, at a good school, and helped his father in preparing catalogues — thus insensibly acquiring just the education he should have. But it must be con- fessed that he never achieved a good style. He was a fair poet, writing pleasing and correct rhymes ; but his prose, it seems to us, was always confused, as well as too diffuse and exceedingly hard to read, his biography of Shakspeare being perhaps, even to a devourer of books, as hard a book to peruse as any in the English language. It was not, however, as ar: author that he was destined to shine. England was in a transition state. The population was soon rapidly to be doubled, and the paternal times of King George to be succeeded by bustling demands for more light and knowledge, by wider education, the introduction of the steam printing-press, and the results of machinery, from which the people were to gain so much, and to which "William Cobbett and the dema- gogues were to make so long and so virulent an opposition. In Wiltshire the farm labourers destroyed even the chums, all the machinery of the farms, and at last the common drills ; and the bookbinders of London, so late as 1830, to the number of five hundred, struck to make their masters give up the use of a machine that superseded the beating-stone and hand-labour for the beating of books. " The schoolmaster was abroad," said Brougham ; but, alas ! the working men blindly refused to listen to him. In the meantime young Knight, wandering about Windsor Great Park and Datchett fields, looking at Heme's Oak, and reading old poetry and Shak- 246 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. speare, grew to man's estate. He did a catalogue so well that the gentleman who employed him gave him an old imperfect folio (1623) of the first edition of Shakspeare ; and in working to set up some old type to complete the broken leaves of this folio, Charles Knight began a study of the peculiarities of Eliza- bethan phrase and the nature of early printers' mis- prints which served him in good stead when he be- came editor of his own excellent edition. In 18 II Knight and his father commenced the Windsor and Eton Express, a paper which he edited until 1827 ; and he seems to have had a very con- scientious view of the duties of a newspaper editor. During 1820-22 he edited, in conjunction with another, the "Plain Englishman," which was the first attempt, it is said, to produce cheap literature of an improving kind. In 1822 he removed to Pall Mall, London, where he had taken premises, and published some excellent moral works. But during his youth he had many severe trials in matters of faith, swerving more than once towards Unitarianism or Quakerism, from reasons which our young men would not now meet with — a general bad taste in worship, and an irreverence in church matters, which clearer judgment has since completely banished. When he was con- firmed, he saw the young probationers for the holy rite driven in by beadles towards the bishop, and so lost all reverence for the privilege, as when, a little younger, full of antiquarian lore, he went to see an installation of Knights of the Garter, and found that the good old King and his stalwart sons were the only proper-looking men amongst a set of gouty old hob- bling Peers. Altogether, Knight's mind must have WORKING FOR THE WORLD. '247 been somewhat sensitive, very active, delicate, and romantic, but not very robust or strong. As he had printed at Windsor the Etonian, with original con- tributions by Mackworth Praed and others, it is not to be wondered at that some of the Etonians gathered round him in Pall Mall; and in 182a he issued Knight's Quarterly Magazine, in which appeared several of Macaulay's early and stirring ballads and his " Conversations of Milton.'' In 1827 the turn of fortune which comes to most men came to Charles Knight, in his being chosen as the publisher of the " Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge ;" and as his whole education had just fitted him for the place, the Society could not have had a better servant. It was one of those societies in which the rich combine to do good for the poor, and of which, as a rule, the poor are culpably ignorant, and towards which they are often ungrateful. Such so- cieties in France, Italy, and Spain, had the Papacy allowed them to exist, would have been the salvation of society. Not only have the poor of England and her Colonies had the Gospel preached to them by such means, by the cheap distribution of millions of copies, but sound, excellent works are brought within the reach of poor scholars— and poor scholars in their turn are employed as authors by the same Society. Their Works were the " Library of Useful Knowledge,'' the " Library of Entertaining Knowledge," the " Bri- tish Almanac and Companion," and others ; and one is glad to learn that efforts are being made to give the Society new life and vitality. In 1832, in fur- therance of the plan of bringing good knowledge home to the poor, Charles Knight projected the pub- 248 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. lication ' of the Penny Magazine, of which he was editor for eleven years, during which period he suc- cessfully continued it Of the Penny Magazine, as a whole, Doctor Arnold said very truly that it was all " scrimble- scramble stuff." The phrase described it; It had no cohesion, no wholeness about it, but many of its articles were excellent ; and, if it is found dry reading now, it was interesting then to thousands of men seeking for intellectual food of the dry sort. Of one article, written by Knight himself. Doctor Arnold thus spoke in a letter to a third party : " It is excellent : its conclusion admirable. That article is exactly a spe- cimen of what I wished to see, but done far better than I could have done it. I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as articles on com- mon subjects, written with a decidedly Christian tone. History and biography are far better vehicles of good, I think, than any direct comments on Scrip- ture, or essays on Evidence." This is an admirable exposition of what popular writing should be. But the Penny Magazine was a " proprietary " magazine ; and a body of proprietors cannot well manage such a property. Hence the reason that it is not now alive; yet at the end of 1832 the Penny Magazine circulated two hundred thousand copies by weekly and monthly issues. Edmund Burke had forty years before this estimated the readers of England at eighty thousand only ! Calculating each single impression as being read by five persons, Knight, in a leading article, claimed to have at least a million readers. It must be remembered that the magazine was taken in in families, lent to friends, pored over in inns, WORKING FOR THE WORLD. 249/ mechanics' institutions, and societies, and read in ships, stage coaches, and clubs. Encouraged by success — which, by the way, was not wholly commercial — Knight, in 1838, projected and commenced the " Penny Cyclopaedia," still under the auspices of the before-named Society. This was a gigantic and an admirable undertaking. The ablest savants, the cleverest mechanicians, the freshest scholars, brought up their researches to the latest times, and issued them at the price of one penny. Finding, however, that neither the price nor the issue was sufficient— in the penny sheet the work would have taken thirty-seven years to complete ! — the rate of issue was doubled, and the penny became two- pence, and after three years the price was again doubled and became fourpence. Of course sub- scribers at that period naturally fell off; in fact — tell it not in Gath ! — the very word " Penny" was a bar to the success of the publication. " Can you have," cried our British Philistine, " true knowledge issued at a penny a week ? " We take this " Cyclopaedia " to have been Knight's great work. " The committee,'' he says, " had the honour of the work in its extended form, but without incurring any of the risk, or con- tributing one shilling to the cost. Its literature alone cost 40,000/. ! On the completion of the "Cyclo- paedia" the balance of loss was 30,788/. ! " Amongst the best contributors of this great work, not reckoning Lord Brougham, were the editor. Sir George Airy, Astronomer-Royal, Mr. Long, and the late Professor De Morgan. The taxes upon paper, which had helped to land Mr. Knight in such a pecuniary loss, he determined to fight. Hence the origin of a num- 2SO HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. ber of pamphlets setting forth the struggles of a book against excessive taxation, and the case of authors as regards paper duty. To him undoubtedly the country is mainly indebted for the formation of that opinion which Mr. Milner Gibson so successfully utilized, and under the influence of which literature was relieved from a heavy load, and it became possible to put the book, the magazine, and the newspaper within the reach of all. Now that all are revelling in the pos- session of the boon, let not those be forgotten at whose hands it was received. We have but little space left, so we must hasten onwards. Perhaps we had better summarize what Mr. Knight did for the people in the words of a con- temporary : — " Mr. Knight was among those honour- able men who always published good books, fre- quently to his own loss. He devoted himself to tl^e encouragement and advancement of learning. His- tory, manners, customs, fiction of a pure kind, poetry of the rarest kind, politics, social economy in the works of Harriet Martineau and Southwood Smith, the highest poetry in the works of Shakspeare, and an edition of Fairfax's "Tasso," antiquities of his own country, of Pompeii, of France, and a general issue of Biblical and profane knowledge in the ' Cyclopaedia ' — all were included in his comprehensive plans." This is unquestionably true. His " Pictorial History of England" was the widest, wisest, and best — and is so still — complete history of the country ever published ; it was written by Messrs. George L. Craik, George Macfarlane, and Mr. Planchd. Knight's " Pictorial Shakspeare '' is one worthy to be quoted ; the best and most reverential, if not the most learned of variorum WORKING FOR THE WORLD. 251 editions, his " Student's Shakspeare," is admirable. His weekly volumes and " Pictorial Bible and Pra:yer Book" were excellent. His " Popular History of England," " Half-Hours with the Best Authors," " Old England," "Animated Nature," "Half-Hours of History," " Pic- torial Gallery of the Fine Arts," " Once upon a Time," and his autobiography, " Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century," are all books that have done good work, and have served to educate thousands. And yet, with immense industry, with great friends^ Lord Brougham, Earl Russell (then Lord John), and Mr. Grote, the projectors of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge " — Knight was not to be called a successful man in the usual acceptation of the term, and we are unaware that his merit has ever been sufficiently recognized by the general public. It is for this reason that all must regret the all but failure of a movement which was started to raise a modest testimonial to the memory of a man who did so much for the "land we live in"— the title of one of his own literary productions which is devoted to the antiquities and the records of England — and for whom that land did so little. He was a very modest, kindly, good man, sq much loved that even Douglas Jerrold called him in a proposed epitaph " Good (K)night." Knight worked conscien- tiously, for he had spread about a love and knowledge of our great authors and great history throughout the land, and many who read this will own indebted- ness for their first impulse to good literature to him. And what a working life was his ! Well may we conclude in the words of a writer before quoted, " Mr. Knight was, as far as we know, unrewarded and 252 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. passed over by the Liberal Government, although he had done more to educate the working-man than any one. This only shows what a great country we are. If some of our young publishers were to place all Mr. Knight's publications in one room, they would be great indeed even in bulk. Were we to reckon their importance as to the increase of knowledge, wisdom, morality, industry, manliness, and the virtue of the citizen, they would appear enormous. With the Germans Tauchnitz is a Baron ; M. Thiers, an author, was President of France ; the Americans desired to make a President of a newspaper publisher whose work, weight, and merit would not form a thousandth part of Charles Knight's. The greater and nobler English nation can afford to let such a man, after a long life, fade out unrewarded and unnoticed ! " Chapter XXIII. IMPULSE AND ZEAL. )0T Mahomet, nor Alexander the Great, nor Caesar, nor Napoleon the First — all conquerors, leaders of men, who have turned the rivers of history, making them run in new channels, founding dynasties, and^ leaving vast empires — can compare in importance with a fisherman of Galilee, in the effect produced on the mind of the world, but with this distinction : Mahomet, Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon accom- plished all that they did from themselves and for themselves. Simon Peter did nothing from himself; and although no doubt an egotist and ambitious, he did little in this world for himself. We know but the place of his birth, not that of his death ; we dispute even as to the scene of his labours. Such traces as we might have recognized have all disappeared. The strangers, Jewish Christians, he addressed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bith3rnia have had their churches erased, stamped out — their very place is hardly known — and for centuries the creed of Mahomet has reigned supreme in their bishoprics; 2S4 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. while St. Peter's name still lives dominant in the diocese of St. Paul, and it is claimed that from the (so-called) chair of St. Peter the Pope issues thunderings and pronounces dogmas which in some measure astonish the world. For instance, we may now be on the eve of another religious struggle — and it is certain that Rome is gathering her forces and that the Papal curse is pro- mulgated from every church and chapel Rome holds in this land upon, those who do not believe in the two most novel dogmas of a Church which is itself founded on novelty. " It is certain," say in effect both Car- dinal and Monsignor, " that they who do not be- lieve in the Immaculate Conception, and that the Pope is infallible in everything which concerns faith and morals, have themselves made a ship-, wreck of their faith, and cannot confess or take the sacrament without sacrilege, to their own greater damnation." This raises a question, important not only to us but to all Romanists, On what is this infallibility based ; and what gives these priests the right thus to condemn all Protestants, and thousands of their co-religionists ? Then comes the answer; and this leads us at once to St. Peter. We learn that this authority is derived from the Pope, who claims to be the suc- cessor of Peter, and, as such, " shepherd of shepherds, father of fathers, universal prince of pastors, bishop of bishops, vicar and vicegerent of God— God in the world — he who judges all, and is judged of none— he whom no mortal can restrain, in whom is no defect of power — he who can do all things, IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 255 and of whose power to doubt is crime and sacri- lege."' These are very lofty titles ; if they be true of any man, it were not only folly but sin to oppose him. He may well say to those who allow his authority that to doubt him is crime and sacrilege. Much as we admire the learned Lord Acton and the old and true CathoHcs of England, who are ' so much more generous and Christian than those recently turned, we must logically own that, if the Pope rightly claims his titles, nothing but abject and absolute obedience can suffice him or us. Who was St. Peter ? To learn this we shall have to go to other sources — the New Testament and tradition; but we can trust only one — the other is simply worthless ; still we may borrow from it the picturesque description of the man. Simon (the hearer) was the son of one Jonas or Jonah, a well-to- do fisherman on the Sea of Galilee or Tiberias, a freshwater lake formed by the river Jordan, in a small but populous country of about the size of Wales. It retains curiously, in the language of its Turkish governors, not its Judaean but its Roman name, Bcihr- Tabaryeh. The lake, much below the level of the sea, and surrounded by barren rocks, is " about the hottest place on earth," says a traveller. It is midway between the source of the Jordan and its outfall into the Dead Sea, a dense salt-water lake, in the Plain of Jericho. So hot is it that the fishermen work naked, with a short rough overcoat for the night. Jonas, ' From the "True Catholic," citing "Praxis recentior de ordine procedendi in judiciis in Roma Curia," part i., preface, sec. 28 — 41. We have not verified this, but have seen such titles elsewhere. 256 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. a partner of Zebedee, employed other men than his sons, and the boats were fair-sized luggers — of course utterly unlike Raphael's tea-saucers, since the painter has subordinated, truth to Rome and to Art;" the men were fairly educated Judgeans, since they were disciples of John Baptist, and more than one — James and John may be especially mentioned — were pro- bably dreamers of a restoration of the Jews after the call of King Jesus of Israel, upon whose right and left hand they were each to sit, all Easterns being very jealous of pre-eminence in that way — indeed we see such intriguing, like that of Zebedee's wife, at this very moment in India for position at the Viceroy's Durbar or State Assembly. It is significant, as settling in some measure the question of St. Peter's pre-eminence, that our Saviour refused to appoint any to the first place on the memorable occasion on which He was questioned. Bold, irritable, intractable, firm, apparently un- flinching and yet unstable, forty years of age, if not nearly fifty — Cave says, " ten years older, some say seventeen years, than Christ" — Peter and his elder brother, Andrew, a quiet man, credulous and yet a doubter, forsook all and followed the Lord, not * " Take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy, Raphael's cartoon of the charge to Peter. Note first the bold fallacy, the putting all the apostles there — a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy. . . . Note the handsomely- curled hair and neatly-tied sandals of men who had been out all night in the sea mists and on the stormy decks. Note their con- venient dresses for going a fishing, with trains that lie a yard on the ground. . . . Note how Peter especially, whose chief glory was his wet coat girt about him, and naked limbs, is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys with grace. . . . We feel our belief in the whole thing taken away." — Ruskin's "Modern Painters," vol. iii. p. 53. IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 257 knowing whither He was going, nor what was His purpose. It was enough for them that He was a worker of miracles. The times were out of joint ; under the yoke of the Romans and of Herod the taxation was felt as an insult and a wrong, and the tax-gatherers were hated. The four disciples from this Sea of Galilee — Peter and Andrew, James and John — who were to be henceforth fishers of men, were each representative persons, and each makes his distinct mark on the faith of the world. A man then past middle life, stout, robust, bald, but with hair fringing his temples as in the traditionary pictures, Mas the apostle Peter. Nicephorus, quoted by M rs. Jameson, says that he was tall, thin, bald, and almost white. Impulsive, he cries out when he witnesses the miracle of Christ — " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord ;" but the Saviour tells him that he shall henceforth be a fisher of men, and, instead of the hearer, he shall be called Cephas, the rock, or, in Greek, Peter — not ■n-erpa, a rock, say some, but Trerpo% a stone — for our Lord, speaking Chaldee, used the same word, keepho, a stone. Soon afterwards this word was to be used in a memorable sentence. Christ asks His disciples what the world says of Him, and what they say ; and Simon Peter, with his usual vehemence, cries out, "Thou art the Christ" (the promised Messiah) ; whereupon comes this memorable rejoinder, " Thou art Peter, upon this rock I will build my Church." This sentence includes a play upon words understood in Greek and Latin, as well as in Chaldee, but not translateable into English, though perfect in French — " Tu es Pierre, et sur cetie pierre.^' But in German, again, the sound-resemblance s 2S8 HALF-LENGTH iPOHTEAITS. is lost ; Luther translates the words, " Du hist Petrus, und auf diesem Felsen." There can be little doubt that St. Peter assumed the lead of the apostles during the life of Christ, and for some time after His death, save when St. James was chief at Jerusalem — that he was primus inter pares — first amongst equals — but our Lord had for- bidden any princedom or rulership. Was He then (a) to build only on Peter, or was He {V) to build on Peter's declaration ? Was Peter a foundation rock, or one of the stones of the Church of which Christ is the rock? This question has grown to be one of vast significance. Bengel declares that the word must be stone {peiros), not rock {petrd) ; because it would not do to give a man a woman's name, petra having a feminine termination ; but this is beside the case, though true. In the language Christ spake, one word signifies both a stone and a rock. Then comes the after declaration — which probably St. Peter did not understand at all — " And I will give unto thee the keys," and this we think was spoken to the whole of the apostles, and to them alone — just as the power of working miracles was given to them, and a calm study of the Gospels will show this. In Rev. xxi. 14, the apostles are spoken of as twelve foundation stones, and in Ephes. ii. zo, the Church is said to be built upon the foundation of the apostles. There was no chief appointed ; he who was to be chief was to serve the rest, and Peter, from his vanity, was not one of these. And, indeed, hardly are the weirds out of the Lord's mouth than Peter, mistaking worldly for heavenly grandeur, flatters Christ with earthly great- ness, says that it is far from Him to suffer such things, IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 259 and is immediately rebuked — " Get thee behind Me, Satan " (tempter, entangler, beguiler), " for thou savourest " (regardest only, or lustest after) " not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." Verily, the prince of the apostles soon abdicates his throne if he ever had it. The same character of eagerness to push forward, without ability to stay on the place that he had reached, clings to this worthy man all through his hfe. He exhibits rare virtues and cowardly weaknesses. He vehemently protests, and abjectly abandons. He sees the Saviour walking on the waters, and essays to come to Him, but sinks through want of faith. He declares that though all men abandoned Him, still will not he ; and yet, the same day, thrusting himself where he has no business, is taxed with being His disciple, and, cursing and swearing, he protests he knows Him not. He is foremost to ask questions, and he does not quite comprehend the answers. He provides jiimself with two swords, dreaming that at last the time is come when the mysterious power will declare itself, and the Jewish throne shall be re- established : and he strikes one blow for Christ — not at a soldier, but at a civilian, a slave or house-servant, whose ear (is this symbolical of his asserted suc- cessors ?) he cuts of. After his shameful denial and his bitter tears, his deep love and his thwarted ambi- tion, what glimmer of true faith he has — and it is but little — leaves him ; . but he runs with St. John, be- lieving that the body of the Lord is stolen, so little does he comprehend of the central and essential' doc- trine of Christ, the resurrection, although it has been taught him again and again. While John stands s 2 26o HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. witliout, having outrun Peter, Peter enters into the rock-cut grave, and examines the grave-clothes left behind, and wonders what manner of thief it can be to steal a body and not these clothes. No word of Christ's promise comes to him, nor to any one of the women or men who had followed Him. Lonely and deserted He lived, and alone He died, with His for- lorn cry. The very soul who loved Him most — because from her He had lifted the greatest burden of sin — Mary Magdalene — sees the risen Saviour, and, weeping, calls Him the gardener, the man who attended to the place of tombs, and asks, " Where have they laid Him ? " that she may weep over and anoint the body. No unfriendly hand writes this down ; it is all to be gathered from the words of the Evangelists themselves. Yet, after all this, after His talk with the two disciples on the Emmaus road, no glimpse of the resurrection entered Peter's thoughts. Dully glim- mering, the old affection came back to him, and quietly he returned to his old business.. " I go a-fishing," he says; and then it is that the Saviour appears to him and his fellows, proves that He is risen in the body by eating some of the fish caught by a re-enacted miracle, and asks Peter thrice, earnestly, "Simon Peter, lovest thou Me?" Thrice Peter declares that he does, the third time with an acknow- ledgment of the Saviour's power, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love Thee." The rejoinder is the behest, " Feed My sheep," and a declaration that, in Peter's old age, he who was strong enough now, and had leapt from the boat naked, and girded his sea-coat about him, should have another who would bind him, and lead him whither he IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 261 would not, signifying what death he should die. For the last time that we hear of him with his Master, pushing Peter thrusts forward with a new question, " What shall this man do ? " referring to the beloved disciple, and meets with a rebuff. " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? " And again the same blundering hinders the disciples from re- ceiving the clear sense of the Lord's words. This is very characteristic. If an enemy had written this narrative, we had said that the saint's delineation is out of keeping. But the Scriptures witness truth and conceal nothihg — a proof that they are no literary forgeries. The Saviour had before told the disciples that it was necessary that He should go, to their great consternation, by the way, as they never dreamt of the kingdom He aspired to being in heaven, and they ask Him whither, as if it were to a distant country. But this paltering and intermittent belief in the case of St. Peter, to whom Heaven had revealed the Saviour, changes, after His crucifixion and death and the consequent and necessary descent of the Holy Ghost, into a firm belief, and into a boldness which is at once noble and touching. Peter " stands up and is bold," and throughout the Acts, what we are told of him shows that he was the leader of the apostles. He performs miracles, sees visions, preaches, and is divinely aided, and in only two cases acts un- worthily, but yet consistently, with Peter of the Gos- pels. The first is when he is commanded by a vision, which shows him all manner of meats and living crea- tures, to go and preach to the Gentiles, and he, not verbally but in effect, refuses. The second is at Antioch, and is entirely of a piece with the first. It 262 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. is important also to showing that Peter himself claimed no leadership over his fellows. The old dispute about circumcision, which Peter, as commanded to preach to the Gentiles, should have opposed, had been so handled by St. Paul that Peter sat at meat and consorted with his fellow-Christians, who were Gentiles, until some Jewish Christians arrived from St. James, the brother of our Lord and Bishop of Jem-' salem, when Peter abandoned Paul and the Gentiles, and would, pharisaically, consort only with the Jews. On this, St. Paul had very hot words, and withstood him to his face, and apparently parted from him in anger. It was plain, then, that St. Peter neither regarded himself nor was regarded by the others as chief. There was no chief in fact, no governing head, nor prince. But there evidently was a dux ox primus, just as there is a top boy at the head of a class at school, to whom the master addresses his observa- tions ; and this Peter took to be St. James, though others may have assigned it to Cephas himself, pro- bably because he was the eldest and gravest, and because he was the most impulsive in his belief. Hence what applies to him as the dux applies fully to all the others ; and this we shall see hereafter. His life divides itself into the Peter of the Gospels, of the Acts, and of tradition ; of the two first we have spoken, of the last we shall presently treat. Chapter XXIV. IMPULSE AND ZEAL {Continued). ' HE life of Peter divides itself into three parts — the first, that which is devoted to the following our Lord ; the second, to the deeds chronicled in the Acts ; and the third, to the traditionary and very doubtful records spoken of by the Fathers. We say doubtful, because the early Church saw fit at once to reject various epistles and books written by St. Peter save two, and the second epistle now admitted into the canon is just the one book which is considered the most doubtful of all within the covers of our New Testament. The first period of St. Peter's life does not offer us much to admire, except the transparent egotism and honesty of the man, a simple, untaught Galilean peasant, but true — no hypocrite, no mere professor. Had we any record of Judas, we should perhaps find by his utterances that he spoke much more like a Pharisee, or the Reverend and tract-dispersing Mr. Chadband, than did St. Peter. But at the same time there is little proof of any living or enduring faith of 264 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. the true sort in the apwstle during the earthly career of his Lord. After Christ's death he is changed. The record of the Acts, which, in a curious way, indicative of the relative prominence and power of the two men, first records the doings of Peter, and then follows those of Paul, exhibits him as taking the lead of the apostles, as standing forth and being exceeding bold, as meeting and consulting with others, but certainly never being more than a chair- man of the debaters, hardly so much as the Primate or Archbishop among the bishops, and by no means ever as the infallible Pope. Our readers, who have each their Bibles, may study this for them- selves in that most plainly written book, the Acts of the Apostles — written, it is supposed, by St. Luke, partly from the dictation or information of St. Peter. In the ordaining of deacons, the most important act of the new Church, he does not seem to have been present, although the first deacon, Stephen, was the proto-martyr, and crowned the Church with the glory of his blood. In the tenth chapter we hear of St. Peter, after working miracles, characteristically disputing with a voice from heaven. " Rise, Peter ; kill, and eat,'' a symbolical command for him to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, is met with — " Not so. Lord ; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." In the eleventh chapter, far from being listened to as the head of the flock, we find that the men of " the circumcision contended with him," and that he expounds his vision as a direct message to preach to the Gentiles. Yet, so far as history tells us, he hardly fulfilled that behest. In chapter twelve we hear of the martyrdom of St. IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 265 James, the bishop of Jerusalem, and we find that, after the manner of the apostles of being in pairs, St. Peter was with him, and him Herod took also, seeing that it pleased the Jews to root out the remains of the sect of Nazarenes. Peter is, however, miracu- lously delivered from prison and Herod smitten with death, and the narrative then concerns another pair of disciples — unless we reckon Barnabas as the fourteenth apostle — Barnabas and Saul, who was also called Paulus. Peter then gradually fades out of the record, except when he comes forward again in an important matter. Certain Jews, probably forgetful of baptism, and regarding Christianity not for the world, but for their own petty sect, taught the Gentile Christians, " Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved" (Acts xv. i). From which Paul and Barnabas dissenting, they determine to appeal to the Church at Jerusalem, and with others go up to the apostles and elders in council thereat. " And the apostles and elders," says our quaint version, " came together for to consider of this matter.'' Peter here acts nobly as an apostle, of whom we may well say — "God did anoint thee with His odorous oil To wreslle, not to reign. " He pleads for the salvation of all, that God " put no difference between us and them," that (so far from adding any new dogma) we have no right to tempt God by putting " a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear." After him — all this is very important as bearing on after-times — Paul and Barnabas speak and give their views, and — wonder of wonders to the Romanist — 266 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. lastly St. James, not St. Peter, gives sentence — " wherefore my sentence is " — which the meeting adopts, and a general short epistle is written em- bodying his words. In this not one, but the whole Church — apostles and elders and brethren — greets the Gentiles, and urges that it seems good to it and to the Holy Ghost to lay on them — " no greater burden than these necessary things" — that they "abstain from rneats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication." Clearly they were to be cleanly and decent ; and, if here we could give a picture from Apuleius, Juvenal, or Persius, of the Pagan world, we should see how wisely and with how gentle a yoke the apostles ruled the early Chris- tians. The fifteenth chapter of the Acts, nineteenth verse, with the whole context, puts an end for ever to the Biblically founded supremacy of St. Peter. Clearly at last St James — probably the Less, and the successor of the first apostolic martyr — was chief of the whole Church in Jerusalem, while Peter looks on himself as a missionary bishop. Where he was so, we do not clearly know. The third portion of his life is of a shadowy kind. It is said that he went into Spain, and some assert that he went even into Britain, where from his mouth our rude forefathers first learnt Christianity ; but, as Cave says, there is such uncertainty about this honour that we had best be without it. The truth is, we know nothing of what the apostle did. Eusebius reports matters but doubtfully. Peter was accompanied by his wife — a curious appanage for the head of a celibate Church — and she often upheld him, whilst he upheld her in her martyrdom. Led to execution, says the IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 267 tradition, Peter encouraged her, saying, "My own one, remember the Lord." He most probably went eastward — certainly this was the case if we interpret literally his own words, perhaps referring to his wife, "The Church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you." But they who admit Rome's supremacy, as a link in their forged chain, declare that Babylon is Rome ; while the more learned, with others, take the view that Mark, having sought Peter out among the Jews settled round the Babylonian district, brought to the churches in Asia Minor this undoubted epistle of Peter. Rome is here in a dilemma, as well as Doctor Gumming and the ultra- Protestants. If Rome be Babylon, then the Scarlet Woman certainly sits there ; if it be not Babylon, then there is no New Testament and authentic record of St. Peter's ever having been at Rome. Again, if Babylon be Rome, certainly St. Peter founded the church there. Whether, because of that, the Pope is the head of the Church, is another question, which we think we have answered by showing that Peter never claimed the supremacy which his successors — if really successors — claim on his part.' Rome, however, abounds with mementoes of his visit, such as they are. There is a round hole in the wall of the Mamertine dungeon, where the jailer struck his head, and thus proved that he was bodily a rock ; there is a little spring in the dungeon, which bubbled forth at his command, to furnish water to baptize his fellow-prisoner — aproof thathe " sprinkled," as Mr. Spurgeon hath it, and did not immerse ; and there is his tomb, under the dome of the Vatican, ' See Appendix B; 268 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. around which eighty lamps for ever burn, and above which are read, in letters of gold, the words, Tu es Petrus. No wonder worldlings and unlearned Pro- testants who wander to Rome in search of sights and cameos have their heads turned. Here are substantial proofs ! And a short mile from Rome is a little church, which is built on the spot rendered sacred by the last characteristic legend told of the Saint. So vraisemblable is it that we wish it were true. Certain Jew converts of the city of Rome, on account of circumcision, jealousy, or quarrels, had betrayed Peter to the tormentors, and he fled. He was an old man, and his time was come, but he was, as usual, unwilling. Where this church stands it is said the Lord met him, and St. Peter cried, " Whither goest thou, O Lord ?" — Domine quo vadis ? Then, with consternation, he heard the solemn, sad voice cry, " I go to Rome, there to be crucified afresh,'' and, stamping with shame and renewed strength — there is the print of his foot there to this day, say the priests — St. Peter returned to Rome and was there crucified, with his head downwards, saying he was unworthy to sufier in the same position as did his Lord. The dangerous equality on which the Saviour and His servant are placed by this need not be dwelt upon. So is ended in the cloud-land of legend the life of the good and great St. Peter, so very weak and so very strong — in all so very human. His epistle, a noble and bright one, concerns the home more than the Church, of which he speaks tenderly and simply : " The elders which are among you I exhort, who am ^Iso an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ." And he especially warns them against tem- IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 269 poral power (i Peter v. 3) : " Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock." And he closes — it is the last time we hear of or from him historically — ^with his usual customary- doubt. St. Paul, wide-hearted as the expanse of heaven, commends all his friends at the end of his epistle. Peter, after the doxology, adds that he has written briefly by " Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose." The most legitimate claim of St. Peter to the reverence of the disciples, including ourselves, is the mysterious sentence spoken by our Lord to him and bis companions in delivering to him the symbolical keys of heaven. The whole is an allegory. No Christian can be so materiahstic as to suppose that heaven has a door and a key, or two keys — one to open and the other to lock up. But we cannot deny that a power of receiving into the Church, or excluding from it, was rightly given to all the apostles, and primarily to St. Peter. This even so staunch and learned a Protestant as Milton acknowledges. Thus in " Lycidas " he writes, — " Last came and last did go The pilot of the Galilean lake ; Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain — The golden opes, the iron shuts amain " — "pilot" instead of "fisherman,"' perhaps to suggest guidance. In " Paradise Lost " he also shows Peter with his keys of heaven : — " And now St. Peter at heaven's wicket seems To wait them with his keys." The keys are borne in the shield and coat armour of the Popes, and the power of the keys, of shutting and opening heaven, is claimed by them. No sword or 270 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. mace was ever deadlier in war than the power of that old man's crossed keys ! Where is the foundation of this power? Simply in the mistake of symbol. Speaking to His little band of followers, the Lord asks, not one, but all (see Matt. xvi. 15, et seq.) — " Whom say ye that I am ? " and Peter hurries to be first to answer — " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And there is the rejoinder — " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock " (the truth you have just said) " I will build My Church ; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." That is, it will burst the gates of hell and save from death. And (ver. 19), " I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." " Then," adds St. Matthew, without a pause, "charged He His disciples that they should tell no man that He was Jesus the Christ ;" and this sentence is the most important of all, because it construes all that goes before. The rock on which He was to build was His Messiahship — upon that alone, in fact, any and. every Church is b\iilt. To those who study the New Testa- ment, it would seem that only the strangest ignorance or perversion can imagine Peter to be the foundation rock. St. Paul explains it all — " Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. . . . Whether Paul, or ApoUos, or Cephas [Peter] ... ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's " ( i Cor. iii. II, 22). And the keys of the heaven to be attained was faith in Him, which He " delivered to the saints :" of this they were to tell no man. We have twice italicized " they " because it shows Christ as speaking. IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 271 not to one, but to all, though Peter was the first to acknowledge Him -as the Messias, it being revealed to him. Yet but A, little later Christ reproves Peter, and calls him a devil. " Get thee behind Me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto Me." The fact is, the universal consent of the apostles and of mankind may be cited to show that not Peter's Churches only — which do not remain — but all Churches were spoken of as sharing the power of the keys, and that no one dreamt of the Church having been founded on Peter until, some hundreds of years after Christ, an ambitious bishop of Rome claimed the supremacy. The next facts are, that, owing to Peter's obstinacy and inherent ambitious presumption, which made him rebuke his Lord — " then Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him" (Matt. xvi. 22) — he in all probability never went to Rome, and cer- tainly never was the apostle to the Gentiles, and that another apostle had to be called to do his work. These are startling assertions, but they are not with- out proof. The last question, before we leave this most inte- resting study, is. Was St. Peter ever at Rome ? Doctor Dollinger, years ago, before he severed himself from the Papal communion, wrote, "Two questions are involved in deciding St. Peter's relations to the Church of Rome. Did he found it? Did he die there? (i) The Roman Church must have been founded by an apostle, and that apostle can only have been Peter." Doctor Dollinger is a very learned man; but the above — from his "First Age of the Church" — is merely a specimen of reckless assertion. Neither " must " nor " can " is true. Any Christian 2 72 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. may have first preached at Rome ; and, if St. Peter had founded the Church, why was St. Paul, by a series of miraculous acts, sent thither? They who met St. Paul — ^his fellow Jews — on his coming to Rome, had only heard "this sect" everywhere spoken against" (Acts xxviii. 22); and St. Paul, during his whole ministry, never once mentions St. Peter as at Rome, while he carefully mentions all others, even the most insignificant. His being at Rome seems inconsistent with the time of the synod at Jerusalem ; and the writers of the Romish Church differ in their account. As for his being twenty-five years — the Anni Petri, which the present Pope has exceeded — bishop of Rome, that is plain nonsense. In a dispute at Rome a year or so ago, between Signors Gavazzi and Sciacelli and the Romanists Fabiani and Guidi, the latter gave up the Anni Petri, and declared it sufficient if they could show that " Peter had been there [in Rome] for a single day.'' The general testimony of the Roman press — and not only their own triumphant reports — show that the Protestants had the better of the argument. Never- theless, we say with Cave that " it is not my purpose to swim against the stream of history and current of antiquity in denying St. Peter to have been at Rome, an assertion easier perplexed and entangled than con- futed and disproved." But we may put it to our readers as to whether he ever founded that Church, or was Bishop of Rome, which was especially Paul's care, or cure, and to which Paul certainly was sent by the Spirit The Romanists themselves are obliged to join St. Paul with them — the Church, they say, of "St. Peter and St. Paul;" and probably in all IMPULSE AND ZEAL. 273 the world of living souls no one so grieves at the misuse of his name to that bishopric as St. Peter himself. , Well may we imagine his spirit, if now conscious, to exclaim, as did Madame Roland to the statue of Justice, " O Peter, what crimes have been committed in thy name ! " Sadly, too, may we recall what a torrent of curses have been fulminated from the chair of Peter by his so-called successors since Peter himself denied his Lord, and "began to curse and to swear." The irony of events can go no further, nor convey a deeper lesson. Chapter XXV. A MODEL LIFE. [HE advice of the author of the "Night Thoughts" to the gay young advocate of free-thinking and unfettered living in his day, to " Renounce St. Evremond and read St. Paul, is not likely to be repeated. There is a pretty anti- thesis in the line, but it does by far too much honour to the man of the world who pleased the ladies in King Charles's day, and who corresponded with Mr. Cowley and M. de Gramont. Few living readers know St. Evremond, and fewer still recall his good-natured face. Such easy-going sceptics suffer the sad fate of all other similar writers — they write, fume, point out difficulties, suggest doubts, and are forgotten. Happy is it for them that the evil they do does not live after them as regards their works, for certainly there are so few students of St. Evremond that half those who come across Doctor Young's high-sounding line will ask who the Frenchman was, whereas the students A MODEL LIFE. 275 and admirers of St. Paul, even those who do not accept his teachings, will increase every day. This little great man, this saint of Heaven and champion of all that is noble, outspoken, great, wide, and true, was like a precious scimitar egraven with golden sentences in a poor scabbard. It is proposed here to try to bring him and his noble soul closer to us — to treat him as a man and a hero, not as a saint. He was of the small ones of the earth— and they are many — and yet so great that in question of mental supremacy the sons of Anak may well tremble. Socrates, Alexander, Julius Cffisar, Cicero, Marl- borough, Turenne, burly Luther, Pope, Wellington, Napoleon I., and Nelson are names of great little men which at once occur. There are others, possibly David, certainly St. Paul, who readily prove the force and energy of those under the middle size. Hardly one of them, if perhaps we except David, has had so wide an influence for good as he who claimed the proud title of the Apostle of the Gentiles. During part of his life St. Paul was certainly afflicted with many troubles, some cruel weakness of the eyes, as well as the effects of an outworn body taxed above its strength. That he was a deep student, precise and correct, a favourite disciple of the learned Gamaliel — that he spoke with great fervour and a persuasive eloquence, breaking through the ordinary rules of the orators of the schools, and " stretching forth the whole of his hand" as he spoke — we gather from the minute touches of those who have reported his speeches, or have written to his dictation. These little matters are the undesigned proofs of the reality and truth of 276 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. the narratives that happily have come down to us. But it is impossible to' include a full life in the short space of an essay; for St. Paul is a world's man, more closely known almost than any other, having a subtle and even an unrecognized power — one who has, when studied, drawn and brought to himself almost all great hearts and minds. Take, for instance, Augustine, Massillon, St. Pierre, Luther, Coleridge, Doctor Johnson, Bunyan, Wesley, and Southey, and add to them the cold, precise, and reasoning Paley, or the warm-hearted author of the " Imitatio Christi ;" supplement these with -the downright fervour of Charles Kingsley, and the more delicate and piercing intellect of Doctor Newman, the Oratorian — you will find that each and all love this great man. " There never was any man," says Luther, "that understood the Old Testament so well as St. Paul, except John the Baptist and John the Divine." "Whoso reads Paul may with a safe conscience build upon his words." With a discriminating force certain Roman Catholic divines call Protestants Paulinists, and speak of the greater liberty of conscience that we claim as not Petrine but Pauline. Coleridge often refers to the Apostle of the Gentiles and to Luther as cognate minds, and accepts the former's teaching humbly, with " I am persuaded this was in the mind of dear St. Paul when he said," &c. The apostle deserves all this affection. In his intense love for man, his perfect truth, his desire that his brothers should gain the un- searchable riches, he was all things to all men ; he spared not himself; he reaches the height of pathos when he desires to perish, so that others be saved. He is always for the greatest freedom, but always, too, A MODEL LIFE. 277 on the side of order and subordination ; he evinces the warmest generosity, but is constant and true to his Master, and ever seeking the greatest good of man. Versatile in action, he is steadfast in purpose, never to be offended if a soul can be gained, never to be turned away if led on by the Spirit. His heart is tender as a woman's, his mind firm as a man's ; he is wax to receive, and marble to retain ; he is " stiff in opinions, but always in the '' right : if he is everything by turns but nothing long, it is for the sake of gaining men over to his cause. He rebukes, threatens, pleads and conquers, and then he tells of the anguish. " Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears." " I had no rest in my spirit." " Our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side." And he adds again, with unsurpassed pathos, from the heart of one who had the care of churches and advised others, "without were fight- ings,' within were fears." There is no ideal, nor indeed historic hero, who can be compared with this man. Such a man was necessary ; and it is worth minute study to see how he was raised up, and to watch how he projected himself upon the world, conquered it, and altered it. The battle he had to fight — speaking of course as we profess to speak, without reference to spiritual assistance — was a battle against the world. This to him was chiefly Jewish ; in reality almost wholly Pagan. Rome, Pagan, and lately Imperial, had conquered the known globe, had stretched forth its branches until all birds and beasts took refuge in it or under it. Force had subdued mind, the intellect of Greece had gone down before the arms of Rome. 278 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Philosophy and literature were at a discount; as Chancellor Bismarck said in 1862, so was it then — " The great question of the age will not be solved by parliamentary harangues and resolutions, but by blood and iron." The Judaean religion, firmly beUeved in, but split into various factions, and the prey of intellect not the stay of the heart, the gabble of doctors and lawyers, who counted every letter, not the creed of the lowly and the true, was about to be swept away. A new Teacher had arisen, who taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes ; He had gathered a few mean persons about Him, and had had some spasmodic success, but so transient as not to be officially recorded. He had been crushed out, not by Roman law, but by Jewish law giving up to Rome the supreme power by the act of appealing to her and confessing subjection with the cry, " We have no king but Csesar." The abnegation was complete ; the deluge had come, henceforth the Ark was again to float on strange waters. The shght variation of Judaism having to all appearance been nearly swept away, the few who still adhered to it were persecuted by Saul of Tarsus, a Jew by blood, of the tribe of Benjamin, and yet claiming to be a Roman. Here was the man. He has pride. " I was free-born." " I am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city " — a member of a great university rivalling Athens itself, of a free corporation of the Romans. He afterwards makes use of these facts, especially of that that he was " bom free," while others hastened by gifts to affiliate themselves to Rome and to pur- chase their freedom. When afterwards imprisoned and treated wrongly, he frightens the magistrates, A MODEL LIFE. 279 probably quoting Cicero against Verres — Civem Ro- manum scdus verberari — where the law against flogging a citizen is cited, and says, " Now do they thrust us put privily ? Nay, verily ; but let them come them- selves and fetch us out." It is plain that Paul was no " saint " in the mean and fawning sense of the word, but manly, essentially brave, standing, when need was, on his own dignity. But it is observable that this pride is centred in his Roman, not Jewish, rights. A Jew in blood then, a Roman in spirit, this hero, bom at Tarsus and brought up in Jerusalem, and, with the wise ciistom of the Jews, which even the Rabbins had to follow, to a trade, that of a tent-maker or preparer of felt for the covering of tents — although entirely what the Romans called generosus, and we a gentleman — ^was placed, when about fifteen, under the most learned doctor of the law, Gamaliel, whose name has descended to us in Jewish, as well as Christian records, and who is even now an authority. He was one of the last of a long series of most learned pundits or expounders, a kind of biblical or one-book scholars, still known in the East, in Persia, India, and China. The young Saul, as was common in Sjrria at the time, spoke the language of Greece, was familiar with its philosophies, cited its poets, and yet sat at the feet of Gamaliel, and was "taught according to the per- fect manner of the law of the fathers." Could there have been a more thorough preparation for his after career? A Jew, a Roman, a Greek in learning, subtle, earnest, young, zealous. No fictionist would have brought together so many contrary circum- stances centred in one man. But we go on farther, and again we see the minute touches of the Great 28o HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Artist, showing us how true are the words of Shakspeare — "Heaven does with us as we with torches do — Not light them for themselves. " And again — " Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues. " Here was a touch indeed ; here was a spirit, and in every point guided. A noveUst now would make this Gamaliel a fiery, direct, and perhaps a narrow Jew, and Saul (called also Paulus — observe the Roman name) gathering fire fi-om his ardent teachings. Not so : Gamaliel, full of learning, verbal learning, true and exact to the letter, a Pharisee or a Puritan of the strictest or straitest kind, was yet a wide, gentle, and kindly man. He objected to persecution, and looked upon the new sect as Doctor Pusey might look upon a set of ranters, or Sir Henry Thompson, and Pro- fessors Huxley and T)mdal, on any of us poor crea- tures who believe in prayer, or as Carlyle might look on the Pope. Not like this did his pupil. He listened to the expounding and the teachings of the good old moderate man, and not to his example. If the law was true, and every point and letter, every tittle and jot was examined, there was but one faith — ^that of Jehovah. Judaism, about to die out — at any rate as a national faith — put forth, in the heart of Saul, its most vigorous shoot from the root. Away with the. timid counsels of the old man to let this fresh faith, with its followers, a few base fellows of the lewder sort, die out. Saul, yet a young man, would crush it. Again there is a marvellous and beautiful touch in the history. The young Church, broken, dispersed, A MO BEL LIFE. 281 and disheartened at the death of its leader, knew not what to do. Timidly they sought His tomb, dis- appointed and unbelieving ; the very women doubted ; they would find His body and wash it with their tears, and embalm some few of His sayings in their hearts, but their lost Leader they would see no more. The King of the Jews had but His empty crown of wayside thorns and His titles proclaimed in rftockery on the cross of the felon. The thrones His followers were to sit- on were the stocks or the shambles. " He should have been a light Shining to bless us, But proved a storm and blight Sent to distress us." Truly His kingdom was not of this world ! Some small light of faith there was. Earnest Peter ran for- ward to the tomb, to see whence they had stolen His body, never dreaming of the chief doctrine of his Lord and Master ; and Mary, weeping and broken- hearted for the Friend who had lifted her soul from the mire of sin and the " horrible pit," took Him, risen and breathing, not for Himself, but the village watcher, whom she called the gardener ! Truly, when He came again, did He find faith upon the earth ? But in the midst of this doubt there is an effusion of spirit, and Peter stands forth, the same spasmodic person as ever, and is exceeding bold. The Church gathers together, St. Peter in the front, and many people are added, Peter being indeed necessarily strengthened by " many infallible proofs " before he could believe, but, when believing, bold — a Jew to his inmost heart, to his moral backbone. It strikes us that it is he who asks that question, which no fictionist 282 HALF LENGTH PORTRAITS. could ha,ve imagined, when the Saviour from the grave first appeared to His disciples, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " Christ had been speaking of the kingdom of God. Pertinacious Peter still seeks a throne in the world, recognizing no doubt that the sceptre had departed, but knowing no more. Henceforward there must be another than Peter. Still, the apostles were not checked in their ardour, and were only told that it was not for them to know the times and the seasons. When the Saviour had ascended, and the apostles had returned to Jerusalem, they remained praying in an upper room. Doubtless their prayer was heard and acceded to ; for within a brief while by a great effusion of the Spirit the Church is so increased that the apostles can no longer " serve tables," charity or almsgiving being one of the inducements which brought disciples to them, and deacons are appointed. One of these is Stephen, who has the honour of being the first martyr, while the chief person, a learned col- legian as it were, fresh from the study of divinity, giving countenance to the rougher actors who threw the stones, who takes part in this cruel execution, this exhibition of Jewish lynch-law, is Saul of Tarsus. He had procured authority, and had begun to persecute the Church, quickly, suddenly, and very efficaciously — ^was full of zeal and learning, and knew the letter of the law, and could at once turn the arguments of the unlearned. But Stephen had other teachers, and he dared to dispute with the doctors, some of whom — Saul of Tarsus no doubt — were " of them of Cilicia," and hence the executioners, who drew Stephen out of the city, and picked up the granite to crush out his A MODEL LIFE. 283 life, laid their garments at " a young man's feet, whose name was Saul " — and, says the writer afterwards, that man's companion and friend, " Saul was consenting unto his death." A novelist or forger of a narrative would have here converted Saul. Looking up into heaven, with a prayer for his foes, Stephen seemed transfigured. As Tennyson puts it, " God's glory smote him on his face," and in the frenzy of death, as unbelievers would have it, he cried out that he saw the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God, and so died, as hundreds of martyrs have since died, converting others by their death. But the learning of the Pharisees, and pride and knowledge, were the possessors of Saul's soul, and the scholar of Gamaliel and the Roman-Jew of Tarsus, again went forth, rage in his heart, zeal in his soul ; and "he made havoc of the Church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison " — for the faith. Chapter XXVI. A MODEL LIFE [HE zealot still breathing out vengeance on the perverts from Judaism, which he had so deeply studied and so loved, might have reflected that even by per- secution he was spreading the faith. The little band in one city dispersed, fled, and became apostles and preachers in many cities. The Jews, as a people, had multiplied exceedingly, and although never forgetting Jerusalem, to which they went once a year, lived out in strange cities, buying and selling, and becoming rich. The narrow and exclusive nature of their faith, which is now indeed ours by participation, made these alien Jews live together in one quarter, stand aloof from the other citizens, whether at Damascus or Rome, and yet warmly welcome the brethren and keep to a Jew's quarter, a " Juden-strasse or Ghetto," which in our own times, and perhaps in all days since the Babylonish captivity, assumed a look of intense poverty and misery, though the inhabitants of such places might be rich. Towards foreigners these A MODEL LIFE. 285 people assumed a shrinking timidity, which seems to have been transmitted from their father Abraham when he denied to Pharaoh that Sara was his wife ; but to their brethren from the old country — from " home " — they were hospitable and kindly; thus they, it will be seen, went out soon after this time to meet Paul on the Appian Way on his approach to Rome, though they had neither heard of him nor of the Christus of whom he taught, and thus no doubt they received the fugi- tives whom he drove out. These cities also, in a time of profound peace, Rome having conquered and kept down the world as the universal policeman, were not engaged in preparations for war, and not much in the busy soul-crushing and mind-absorbing commerce of these days, but were enjoying their life in civilization, literature, public games,- and the newest aspects of philosophy. The different views of life taught by the different geniuses who enlightened Greece were easily welcomed in her subsidiary cities, founded and colonized by her. The religion, the cultiis of Diana, " Madre Natura," Astarte, or the Earth Mother, was pleasant, and certainly not embittered in its feelings, because not attacked. The people were easily called together, desirous of hearing any new thing, and speaking in provincial Greek, with new words taken from Persian or Hebrew to fit Eastern ideas, they reasoned upon pleasure, life, virtue, and the world to come. Any fresh religious doctrines were therefore readily received, it was the fulness of time ; the grand poets of Greece had made them acquainted with fate, free-will, the rebellion of man, the fire-bringer, the power of Jupiter, and the powerless, and therefore hard-hearted or rather heartless, gods of Greece ; to 286 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. them therefore the father-God of the Jews, and even the tender, loving God to be revealed, would be a strange and welcome novelty. The seed was scattered, and sprang up To Damascus Paul hurried ; here was the head- quarters of the new faith ; and on his way, as the eastern cavalcade, with Jews in fluttering robes and turbans, and the hardy and bronzed Roman soldiers, wondering at the persecuting eagerness of these Jews, as our Indian soldiers might at the ceremonies of the Hindoos or Parsees, passed along, a great light shone on him, he fell to the ground, smitten as it might be with sunstroke, and a light shone round him, and a voice spake, crying out from the depth of Heaven, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" It was not the first time that the truth had been thus proclaimed — that he who strikes the surface jars the very centre ; " he who dofes it to the least of these does it unto Me," and here from Heaven it is reiterated ; You hale, and strike, and kill men and women, and you in doing so again crucify Me ; and all this while it is not obscurely hinted that in Saul's heart there was a, latent stinging faith pricking his conscience^" it is hard for thee to kick against the goads," and the voice declared itself, while, dazed and blinded, the persecutor fell to the ground, and the soldiers stood round, seeing the light, but hearing not the voice, save as the murmur of a distant thunder. Three times St. Luke, who wrote the Acts, relates this story from the mouth of Paul, each time with a variation which bears the stamp of truth ; often also Paul goes over the old story of the Jews and their grand trials and noble history, how the God of their Fathers had A MODEL LIFE. .287 planted that vine, and had brought them forward with an outstretched arm. In these fervid epitomes the orator now and then varies, and such straws and flaws have been caught up and urged against the genuineness of the narrative; on the contrary, they seem to us to be the very veins and marks of truth. After conversion we must leave Saul to be baptized and received by the trembling Christians, who dared hardly approach their former persecutor, then to be called Paulus, to be associated with Barnabas as a second, soon to reverse the order of names— Barnabas and Saul, Paul and Barnabas ; to be hated and accursed as a pervert and turncoat by the Jews ; to have a band of forty Jewish youths so hate him that they vow neither to eat nor drink till they have slain him ; to be mistrusted at home, loathed abroad ; to be weak in the flesh, and sore, and weary, and per- plexed ; and still to work more abundantly than all, yet, as he says, '' not I, but the Lord that is in me.'' Here it is that learning, and vigour, and good humour, and good sense, derived from a wide educa- tion, begin to serve this chief of all the apostles. His approach to the Church is gradual but curious. The very chiefs of the new sect naturally hang back at first, but afterwards warmly welcome this energizing man, who infuses a new spirit into them. Sometimes he preaches, being eloquent and learned, with great success ; and at others he is hindered by " certain lewd fellows of the baser sort;" mostly he suffers from his own people of the various cities, to whom his heart turns faithfully, and he notes how he is often in perils by the brethren. When a city will not hear him and his companion — for these missionary priests 288 HALF-LENG2H PORTRAITS. travel in pairs, now it is Silas, now Timotheus, now Barnabas or Luke, "the beloved physician," who watches over Paul in his weakness and illness — ^they shake off the dust from their shoes as a symbol, testi- fying against the city, and still going forward. It is evident they do not waste time and hfe as we do on the uncivilized people who are far behind the fulness of time ; but when the citizens are willing to hear Paul tarries with them, working at his trade, and on the Sabbath day opening to them the Scriptures. As in these synagogues strangers — especially learned strangers from Jerusalem, such as Paul, a scribe and a Pharisee — were eagerly welcomed, and begged to preach, a great opportunity was given for the spread of Christianity. It was as if St. Peter at Rome or Notre Dame of Paris were opened to one of our most eloquent Protestant preachers, and frequently with as adverse an effect ; the whole city is stirred, the Jews rise up against him as a pestilent fellow, who is turning the city upside down, and preaching that which is contrary to the law. Now and then we get glimpses of very modern life, the host of the apostle is bound over to keep the peace as regards Paul, not to let him speak in fact ; and again he departs, and again in another city stretches forth his hands to speak, always addressing the " Men of Israel, ye that fear God, give audience." Again they are expelled, the Jews appealing to their wives, and stirring up the devout and honourable women ; for did not Paul declare that God was no respecter of persons, and had called not one chosen nation, but all. Then the reproof comes. " It was necessary," cries Paul, " that the word of God should A MODEL LIFE. 289 have been spoken first, to you ; but since ye put it from you, and judge yourselves not worthy of ever- lastipg life, lo ! we turn to the Gentiles." Here again is a turning-point in life. St. Peter, who has been told to preach to the Gentiles, and who has been warned in a vision, seems yet with that touching, but obstinate and intense love for his own people, whom he could not forget, to have gone again into Judaea, and to have laboured in Jerusalem, or even so far east as Babylon. Paul preaching in Iconium to the Gentiles is gladly received, but still followed and driven out, and then preaches in the cities of Lycaonia, where the simple inhabitants, seeing his miracles, call him Mercury on account of his eloquence, and Barnabas Jupiter ; they run out, and bring animals to sacrifice to them ; but the mis- sionaries are horrified, and, rending their clothes in the Jewish way when sacrilege is committed, cry out, " Sirs ! we also are men of like passions with you, and preach that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things therein." So, restraining them with difficulty, they preach until Jews from Antioch again trace them, and the fickle people turn, and, drawing Paul out of the city, stone him, and leave him for dead. It is one of many evils that he suffers ; he is, however, again brought to life, and goes over his former labours, confirming the churches, ordaining elders, praying and fasting with them, and planting what we now call churches wherever possible. At this time the faith increases ; but the old leaven of Judaic ceremony is not yet worked out. Certain other missionary Jew Christians coming from Jeru- u 290 HALF-LENGTH PORTRALTS. salem declare that not only baptism, but circumcision is, necessary. There is still a lingering feeling that Judaism is to be adhered to, and that the old law of personal righteousness is to be kept, and personal salvation, a mere rotten reed in fact to lean upon, is to be achieved. Works again antagonize faith : egotism is opposed to altruism, the merit of self out- weighs the merits of another, man will not yield himself to God. Upon this there is the first council held in the Church. The history of the Church comes out very plainly and simply ; the first men, deacons and over- seers, or priests and bishops, the Apostoloi and Pres- buieroi, or, as our version puts it, quaintly and perfectly correctly, " the apostles and elders came together for to consider this matter." St. Peter stands up and tells them that God which knoweth the heart — the Greek has a closer word, very dear to us — the heart-know- ing God, or God the heart — has opened to all men the Gate of Life, and has made choice of the Gentiles also, putting no distinction or difference between them and us, purifying their hearts through faith. Here, then, is Luther's doctrine, Salvation per solam fidem — through faith alone, out of the mouth of Peter. And it being so, he asks, "Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke on the necks of these brothers, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?" (Acts XV. lo). Here is the meaning of the stumbling- block : Our liberty is not so, but our rules and regu- lations, our foolish vows. Then comes the first creed, after Paul and Barnabas and St. James have spoken in this Christian parliament, and then godly men are sent forth with the first creed, the shortest in the A MODEL LIFE. 291 world ; since " it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary- things," that "ye keep pure, ab- staining from eating meats offered to idols, and the accompanying revel and fornication in those Grecian cities, and that of course "ye should believe in God and in His Son Jesus Christ " — literally, be good and think good, and so fare well. So forth went St. Jude, and Silas, and Paul, and Barnabas, and St. Mark, reading this epistle general, and confirming the churches in Asia Minor, all of which have long been stamped out by the hoof of the false prophet. We mayhenceforth trace the labours and travels of St. Paul on the map. He works chiefly in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece. At Athens he meets with the vain philosophers of two sorts, the Epicureans and the Stoics, with their varied theories of life. These ask, " What will this babbler ' say ? He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods." And indeed all the Athenians, we are told, like ourselves of to- day, " spent their time in nothing else " but telling or hearing something new. Taking as his text the Altar raised, it may be, by some follower of Socrates, to the Unknown God, as Hegel and Kant speak of the Unconditioned, the Unknowable, &c., he tells them that they are too much' given to spirit-worship, or the worship of daemons (Scto-iSat/ioi/eo-Tcpovs is the word), which we have translated " too superstitious/' for he says, "I have been noting what you worship, but I ' ff'!Tipixo\6-/os : literally, seed-picker. ' ' This fellow picks up ■wit as pigeons peas " (Shakspeare). The Greeks sneered at Paul as a lecturer, and a fellow of no learning, who crammed for his knowledge, and then pushed it down others' throats, or as a black and cawing crow. The term was applied to crows. U 2 292 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. declare unto you, 'O 5«6s o iroi^tras, God the Maker, God that made the world and all things therein, Lord of Heaven and of earth, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands," and he quotes their own Greek poet — either Aratus' or Cleanthes' " Hymn to Jupiter" — " for in Him we live, and move, and have our being, for we also are His children." And so in this grand way he shatters their pantheism, and proclaims the one God, and strikes down their idolatry, the things of gold and silver or stone graven by art and of man's device, and as these vain gods crumble. Heaven opens to all men, and the daemons disappear. The gods of Hellas, the beautiful fictions of the poets which in old times God winked at, are to be aban- doned — there is to be a new heaven and a new earth — and man Is no longer to be a servant but a child of God, a fellow-worker with Christ. A glorious message, good tidings indeed. The misery of this world of trial is counted as nothing for the foreshadowed glory which is to come. Chapter XXVII. A LESSON OF LOVE. HE three good teachers of Christianity, as separated and distinguished from her historians, are St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. The three men are singularly- various in character and gifts, and, while we wonder at the silence of others, they afford a large percentage of results out of the thirteen, or indeed fourteen, persons selected and called by the Saviour ; and they leave still one historian — Matthew, supplemented by Mark and Luke — to give us the sacred narrative. St. Peter, if chief, appears, like some other chiefs, to have done little, and by no means to have justified the position chosen for him by his own forwardness or by the Lord. It is a singular history, more singular from the sceptical than from the faithful point of view. Here is a small band of twelve men, one of whom is a traitor, chosen especially for the duty of evangelization — a dull word to most ears, but which signifies the spreading of good, glad tidings. To supplement the eleven afterwards left, one man is chosen by lot, and another by a direct call from Heaven, We have 294 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. therefore, in all, fourteen chosen ones, one of whom — St. Matthew — gives us the earliest record of the life of Jesus, written, according to Eusebius, within eight years of Christ's Ascension ; one — St. Paul, as born after the time — sets himself to address the churches, and to act as universal bishop ; three — St. Peter, St. Judas, and St. James — write small and (not to speak it profanely) most inadequate epistles ; and one — St. John — gives us three important, though small epistles, a supplementary gospel, and a won- drous unveiling of the after-purpose of God, which is a mystery to all, and most of all to those who study it most. St. Luke, who wrote a gospel of the Lord and the Acts of the Apostles, was, as we learn from himself, though some of the ancients considered him to have been one of the two going to Emmaus, not a disciple of our Lord (Luke i. 2). There can be no doubt that, although the arrange- ment is of the rudest, and the dates fall in haphazard, the narrative gospels are wonderful relations, full of characteristic traits which could not be forged — who, as John Stuart Mill says, was there to forge them ? — full of a delineation of character and purpose which the highest geniuses, after long education, have not surpassed, and of a delicate literary finish which it is impossible to imitate. Let anybody try to forge a gospel, or let any one read a forged gospel, and compare it with the original — with the critical spirit shown towards those we have — and he will have small difficulty in detecting the imposture. It is quite right that such criticism should have been dis- played. The works of these men are not as the works of others. The men assume to tell a marvel- A LESSON OF' LOVE. 295 lous history of God's doings, and of His dealings with men, of His threats and promises. If untrue, then indeed are we deceived ; if true, then are they to be received as the very oracles of God. For our own part we shall assume the truth of the fourth gospel, which has been greatly attacked, from intrinsic evidence, just as we assume the truth and \dentity of Shakspeare's playf. Thus the John of the synoptic gospels, and the writer of the epistles and gospel under that name, are plainly one and the same man. The line of thought, the retiring manner, the mystic- loving heart, the philosophic and searching mind, are the same. A forger of the gospels must have had superhuman powers, such as no writer in the degrada- tion of that age, when the ability to create and to imagine and sustain character had been long lost, had, to create such identity. Three greatly creative geniuses, after long ages, could alone have preserved such — they are Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Dickens. The third, for grasp of intellect, would have been totally unfit, but he has managed to resuscitate some of his characters, and to preserve their identity. The second has given us a second Falstaff, lower than and yet identical with the first. The first brought his Quixote a second time on to the stage, and clothed him with the same heroic attributes, the same noble feelings as before. But these men, whose genius was supreme, are confessed creators, and took ages to produce. They differ from our gospel writers, who assume to be nothing but narrators, or at most simple historians, and yet whose characters, whole, living, and compact, rise before us — once known, never to be forgotten. It is because of this intrinsic truth that 296 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. the fourth gospel — that of love — withstands the many attacks of the historical or philological sceptic — and that gospel is indeed the chief basis of the Christian's hope. The literary character of the Revelation, or Un- veiling, so far removes it in our judgment from any comparison with St. John's Gospel and Epistles that we say nothing about it, except that we wish, with Luther — if we may wish any alteration — that it had never been included in the canon. It is impossible for our Northern mind to grasp two or three chapters, or. for any two critics to agree about the meaning of any one date or any two images. It purports to be a vision of what is plainly beyond the comprehension of man — the purpose of God — and it is so far con- sistent that it is itself beyond the comprehension of our acutest intellects. Faithful critic and strong- willed sceptic alike fail before it. And this perhaps is its chief beauty. Saint and sinner equally fail in fully understanding God's dealings in this world — ^why he gives to A and withholds from B, why the wicked prosper and the good perish. The beloved disciple, who supplements and in some measure corrects the relations of the synoptic gospels, speaks as one full of the importance of his message, and no less full of love and the Spirit of God. He at least makes no mistake as to the character of the New Testament faith, which was to drive Jupiter and Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Venus, and all the fictions of the poets, all the dog-headed gods of Egypt and the fire-gods of Persia, the worship of nature, and the grand culture of a secret force which Democritus embodied and our modem philosophers (?) accept, all the searchings of Plato and the heavenly A LESSON OF LOVE. 297 dreams of Socrates, away to chaos, and which was to give light not only to the few — the rich and the edu- cated — but which was to lift the poor out of the mire, and to set them amongst princes. Like a solemn organ tone begin the preliminary verses of St. John's General Epistle — " That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it) . . . the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."- That does not sound like a lie. It is explicit enough. There is no vagueness of meaning, no beating about the bush there. Compare the first words of the gospel of the same writer. "In the beginning,'' he says ; and, again, mark the assertion of life arising from Him : " In Him was life ; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" — i.e. could not hold or withhold — not grasp or understand it. The two passages are from the same mind, and that mind the most gentle, comprehensive, sublime, and loving — that of the disciple whom Jesus loved. If we are dissatisfied with the emptiness of this world, the follies of philosophy, the selfishness and impurity ofjthose around us, and if we are terrified by the hard sayings of the Lord — and there are many— we may find refuge in the loving sentences of John. Both he and St. Paul are fuller, nobler men than St. Peter ; the mystery remains still why the Church should have been led away into fancying that apostle its vice- gerent, or head. 298 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. Art has always represented St. John as " young, or in the prime of life, with little 'or no beard, flowing or curling hair of a pale brown or golden hue, to express the delicacy of his nature," says Mrs. Jameson ("Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 159). He was younger than his brother St. James, than St. Peter, and probably than the Master. He was the son of a fisherman, the owner of vesseis, and probably well-to- do. As in Yorkshire and Lancashire they .speak of Tarn's Sara, or Sarah's Jane, the simple inhabitants continually referred to James and John as Zebedee's children. They were not without ambition when called ; and John, who to us is so full of love and knowledge of God, knew at first no more than the rest. But he had the heart of a woman, and treasured the Lord's words. He listened when He put a little child amongst His disputing . disciples, and stilled them by reference to the child's heart demanded of them and us ; and yet, unconvinced and full of zeal — always a doubtful, often a dangerous bosom-guest — he cried out — and it is his first word to us — " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name: and we forbad him, because he foUoweth not with us." Hap- pily for all time, he elicited that soothing and divine sentence of the Lord, which shows Him centuries in advance — if we speak by the results of His own teaching — of Moses, or Isaiah, or David, whose curses jar strangely with the music of these words, " Forbid him not ; for he that is not against us is for us." How many Churches have fully learnt that truth even now ? We hear little else of him till the last. In his own gospel he speaks of himself in the third person. He was not one to thrust himself forward, yet he was A LESSON OF LOVE. 299 honoured even in the Roman fashion, which had passed over to Judsea. He had nearly the chief seat of the triclinium, that next to the Lord. He knew that Christ loved him, and probably that Peter was jealous of him, as evidenced by the testy question,, " Lord, what shall this man do ? " and the answer which pro- duced the legend of the wandering Jew, " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" This credulous supposition — a lingering and human desire of the apostles for something wonderful to happen to themselves — St. John himself corrects. At the Last Supper it is John who takes the fullest notes, and who lingers over the words of the Lord, and who gives so full a narrative that we can tell the hours of the night of His betrayal ; it is he who watches with the women at the foot of the cross, and marks the intense agony of the wrenched muscles and dislocated joints ; it is he who hears, " Woman, behold thy son," and who is given to the weeping Mary as a son ; it is he who takes her to his own house, and who, if there was any truth in the dreadful heresy of her adoration, should have left us at least some directions as to her worship, and some few specimens of her faith and sanctity, of her guidance and wisdom ; it is he who is as silent as to that as he is full and copious in the details of his gospel ; it is John who outruns Peter and enters the tomb of Christ and marks the exact position of the linen clothes as they had fallen (these little points are of especial value) ; it is he who tells of the softer and sweeter touches of the Saviour's love, as in His treat- ment of the woman taken in adultery ; it is he who witnesses with other apostles the transfiguration of Christ, when Peter draws from heaven those words 300 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. which for ever shut out the remotest notion of a prayer to any angel or saint or virgin, or to any mediator save One. The great saints of God, whom none surpass — Moses and Elias — are transfigured with the Saviour, and talk with Him, not of His glory, but of His awful punishment; and blundering Peter, hardly knowing what he says, cries out, " Lord, it is good for us to be here : if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles ; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias," to which the correcting reply of the Voice in the cloud is, " This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye Him," and — one cannot escape the inference — none other. Lastly, it is St. John who survives all the apostles, escapes martyrdom, and lives to write a gospel at the age of ninety, after his release from Patmos, and his return to Ephesus, where he took upon himself the care of that Church, filling the vacancy caused by the mar tyrdom of Timothy. This gospel is written at least thirty years after the others are circulated ; then St. John dies at his post, an old man of ninety-nine, full of love and holiness, the saint of God, the companion and teacher of Polycarp, Irenseus, and Papias, and the close as it were of the first act of the wonderful drama, while he connects the companions of our Lord with those upon whose histories'the Church can rely. Last of all, he is the John of the wonderful vision written during his exile in the Isle of Patmos, who, as the Latin hymn of Adam de St. Victor has it, " flew through the heavens and gazed on the sun, and there, a spiritual onlooker, saw, even as from beneath the wings of a seraph, the face of the Almighty." Of the legendary John there is nothing worthy, but A LESSON OF LOVE. 301 something curious and characteristic, to record. We find him connected with St. Peter or St. James as the " consuls of the infant community,'' as Mr. Reed has well remarked. He is on an equality with them, and is cast into prison and works miracles. His brother James is martyred by Herod in the first century ; he lives on till its close. Before John died the anti- Christian doubters whom he had foreseen were already come, and he was labouring against them after his brother had been fifty years in the grave and at rest. With him, a silent witness, lived the Virgin till her death, and till her death — of which we hear nothing — he probably remained at Jerusalem. Then he went northward, to Ephesus, where he continued for a long time, founding many Churches, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and others, of which he has written, and which are now blotted out as completely as if the vision of Death and his White Horse had passed over them, slaying and oppressing. Indeed the overflow of the hordes of Mahomet, the accursed prophet, who has recog- nized Jesus to patronize Him, and who slew all who opposed, and converted by sword, blood, violation, and fire, is no doubt predicted in the Apocalypse, could we agree as to the figure under which it is typified. John, no less than Peter, refused to — or at least did not in fact— preach to the Gentiles ; that was left to Paul. Yet, as Dean Stanley says, " each of the three has his place in the formation of the early Church. Peter the Founder [this we query], Paul the Propagator, John the Finisher ; Peter the apostle of the rising dawn, Paul of the noon and its clearness, John of the sunset." 302 HALF-LENGTH PORTRAITS. No mention is made of St. John on the last visit of St. Paul to Jerusalem, a.d. 58. He had then gone probably to Ephesus, if he was not already there. In twelve years the eagles were to be gathered about Jerusalem, and the fall of that city, foreseen and be- wept, was soon to follow. Hundreds on hundreds of the sons of those who witnessed Christ's crucifixion were to be crucified by the Romans — so many that wood should grow scarce. In ten years — a.d. 68 — Paul the aged was to die on the cross ; in the year 70, Jerusalem fell; in the year 80, according to Ewald, St. John's Gospel was written. In the year 95, Domitian imprisons John — plunges him into a caldron, says the legend, of burning oil, from which he escapes unhurt, and is banished to Patmos, " a disconsolate island in the Archipelago." Upon the accession of Nerva, in 96, within two years of his banishment, he is set free and returns to Ephesus, where he dies and is buried in the beginning of the reign of Trajan. The story is told — and it seems to us true — that this dear friend of God and man, worn and old, led into church by his pupils and disciples, gazed around and could preach no sermon but this one sentence, "Little children, love one another," and this he repeated till his flock cried out, " Master, why so often ? " " Because it is God's word," he answered ; " and, if that alone be obeyed, all is done." It is even so. The story begins in love and ends in love. That is the Logos, and the divine light ; that is the Spirit and the Son and the Father; that is the end and the be- ginning, the law and the glad tidings, since " liOve is the fulfilling of the law." APPENDIX A. Horace Walpole's Picture of Wesley. I HAVE been at one opera of Mr. Wesley's. They have boys and girls with charming voices, that sing hymns, in parts, to Scotch ballad tunes; but indeed so long, that one would think they were already in eternity, and knew how much time they had before them. The chapel is ver)' neat, with true Gothic windows (yet I am not con- verted) ; but I am glad to see that luxury is creeping in upon them before persecution ; they have very neat mahogany stands for branches, and brackets of the same in taste. At the upper end is a broad haut-pas of four steps, advancing in the middle ; at each end of the broadest part are two of my eagles, with red cushions for the parson and clerk. Behind them rise three more steps, in the midst of which is a third eagle for pulpit. Scarlet armed chairs to all three. On either hand a balcony for elect ladies. The rest of the congregation sit on forms. Behind the pit, in a dark niche, is a plain table within rails ; so you see the throne is for the apostle. Wesley is a lean elderly man, fresh-coloured, his hair smoothly combed, but with a souppon of curl at the ends. Wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his sermon, but so fast, and with so little accent, that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it ; but towards the end he exalted his voice arid acted very vulgar enthusiasm ; decried learning, and told stories, like Latimer of the fool of his college, who said, " Ithanhs God for everything." Except a few from curiosity, and some honourable women, the congregation was very mean. There was a Scotch Countess of B , who is carrying a pure rosy vulgar face to heaven, and who asked Miss Rich, if that was the author of the Poets. I beheve she meant me and the Noble Authors. (Private Correspondence of Horace Walpole, page 191.) 304 APPENDIX B. St. Peter at Rome. (From the speech of Pius IX., Feb. 4, 1875, in which Rome is asserted to be Babylon. ) " He, St. Peter, wrote from Rome whatever the heretics may say, and called it Babylon : ' Salutat vos Ecdesia qua est in Baby lone;' on account of the great disorders and the confusion which showed itself, and was recognized in the streets, in the houses, in the temples of the false gods and everywhere ; I also write from Rome, and putting without difficulty the same date (?) and the same designation say, ' Salutat vos Ecdesia Babylonis' We do not certainly see in Rome the temples consecrated to the idols which St. Peter found, but idols are not wanting against which it is your duty to combat. There is no temple dedicated to Jove, but there is a Jove of unbelief that with his lightnings will annihilate the Divinity itself; as he has despoiled the Church of Jesus Christ, so also would he cause it to disappear from the surface of the earth ; there is no temple dedicated to Mercury, but who can tell how horribly the thieves, his worshippers, have multiplied ; there is no temple dedicated to Venus, but there are hundreds on hundreds of Houses of sin, where numbers of souls precipitate themselves to eternal damnation. But this is not all, there are Protestant churches, which, if it may be said they are less perilous, constitute also a cause of great sadness, in Rome chosen by God as the Capitol of the great Catholic family ; in Rome rendered precious by the blood of the martyrs ; in Rome justly decorated with the title of mistress of the truth — it cannot do other than cause grief to see erected by the side of the majestic temples of the Christian religion, which rise within the circuit of her walls, con- venticles and halls, where they pretend to worship God with Heresy, which is rebellion against God Himself." GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. Catalogues of American and Foreign Books Published or Imported by Messrs. S. Low & Co. can be had on application. Crown Buildings, i88, Fleet Street, London, January, 1876. 9 List Of TBoofeS PUBLISHING BY SAMPSON LOWj MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, ALPHABETICAL LIST. CLASSIFIED Educational Catalogue of Works Published in Great Britain. 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In order as much as possible to counteract this unmerited dis- paragement of works of real value, so well calculated to elevate art by popularizing the works of its gi-eatest masters, in a form at once cheap and yet most faithful in colour and drawing, Messrs. Sampson Low (specially-appointed Agents of the best Con- tinental producers) have prepared a very carefully-selected list of the best subjects only, which will be forwarded post free to any address. ALL THE OLEOGRAPHS CAN BE SUPPLIED EITHER FRAMED OR UNFRAMED. The Trade supplied^on special terms. LONDON: SAMPSOM LOW, MARSTON, SEABIE, AND RIYINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 1 88, FLEET STREET. " Likely to popularise English art more than anything hitherto attempted .... A valuable repertory of great works of the English school." — The Spectator. New and Enlarged Series of THE PICTURE GALLERY. \ NCOURAGED by the success which has attended the publication of The Picture Gallery for the past three years, the Proprietors have resolved to issue a New Series, with Lives of the Great English Artists, illustrated with selections from their most important works. Each part to contain eight pages of Biography and four per^ manent Photographs. The Parts already published contain : — Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Strawberry Girl; The Hon. Mrs. Lloyd j The Holy Family ; Kitty Fisher (with the Doves). Thomas Gainsborough. The Blue Boy ; The Market Cart ; Mrs. Siddons ; The Harvest Waggon. William Hogarth. His Portrait by Himself; The Rake's Progress — plate I. ; The Enraged Musician ; Strolling Actresses in a Bam. Benjamin West. The Battle of La Hogue ; The Death of Nelson; Cromwell Dissolving Parliament; The Landing of King Charles II. Sir Thomas Lawrence. Pope Pius VII.; Cardinal Gon- salvi'; Miss Murray; Miss Selina Meade. John Constable. The River Stour; Salisbury Cathedral ; the Com-Field ; The Valley Farm. Sir David Wilkie. Village Politicians ; The Blind Fiddler ; The Parish Beadle; The Highlander's Home. Gilbert Stuart Newton. Captain Macheath; Shylock and Jessica ; Lear and Cordelia ; Mrs. Lister. Etty and Collins. The Combat ; Joan of Arc ; The Sale of the Pet Lamb ; Rustic Civility. Sir Augustus Wall Callcott. Anne Page and Slender ; Returning from Market ; Rotterdam ; Trent, in the Tyrol. Charles Robert Leslie. Taming the Shrew; Florlzel and Perdita ; Who can this be ? Who can this be from ? Joseph William Mallard Turner. The Picture Gallery is puhlished moJiihly, price One Shilling;, and may he had at all Booksellers, and at the principal Railway Bookstalls, LONDON: , SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON, crown buildings, i88, fleet street. "Sure to sjtcceed.'* — AthencS7iin, Commenced January, 1876. In Monthly Parts, price Eighteenpence. MEN OF MARK. A Trustworthy Biography of the Distinguished Men of the Day, with Portraits in Permanent Photography {medallion cabinet size), specially taken for this work. Parts I. and II. contain Portraits and Memoirs of— The Right Hon. the Earl of Dufferin, Governor-General of Canada. Sir Edward Creasy, Professor' of Jurisprudence in the four Inns of Court, late Chief Justice of Ceylon. The Right Hon. Sir Richard Baggallay, Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal, late Attorney-General. Capt. Burton, the Great African traveller. The Right Hon. Spencer Walpole, M.P. for the University of Cam- bridge, formerly Secretary of State for the Home Department. The Right Hon. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M. P., Chief Secretary for Ireland. The portraits of the following amongst other distinguished men will appear in early succeeding numbers. Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India. The Lord Bishop of London. The Duke of Abercorn, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Sir Garnet Wolseley, K.C.B. Cardinal Manning. The Right Hon. the Speaker. The Rt. Hon. John Bright, M.P. Vice-Chancellor Malins. J. A. Froude. J. E. Millais, R.A. F. Leighton, A.R.A. Sir W. Fergusson, Bart. Samuel Plimsoll, M.P. Archdeacon Denison. The portraits are all taken expressly for this work, and cannot be obtained in any other form. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. " The miniatures now before us retain the personal characteristics, the expression peculiar to each face, and the air of the sitter, with great good foriufie. The book is sure to succeed as a serious companion to ' Vanity Fair.' " — A thensunt. " It contains three splendid photographs, rendered permanent by the Wood- bury process, and is got up in faultless style." — Globe. " The portraits are excellently done, and the same may be said of the memoirs." — Scotsman. " We have seen no more beautiful examples of the photographic art than the portraits which commence the series. . . . Theplanof the Gallery of Con- temporary Portraits is an excellent one." — Sheffield Daily Telegraph. "The specimens in the part are excellent; they present admirable por- traiture combined with definiteness absolutely microscopical and a balance of light and shade which bespeak them the work of a genuine artist." — Brighton Gazette. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MA.RSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, l88, FLEET STREET. "Messrs. Sampson Low and Co. send us an analysis of the nuviier of books issued during the year 1875, as chronicled in the fort- nightly list of -the 'Publishers' Circular,' in which may be found the full titles of aver ^,i/ao piblications issued during the past year." — The Times, January 4, 1876 ; see also leading article in The Times of January 5, 1876. Established 1837. "(HE PUBLISHERS' CIRCULAR, and General Record of British and Foreign Literature, is Published by Sampson Low and Co., 188, Fleet Street, London, on the 1st and 15th of each Month. 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