m ■ X* v ■ v ;cj ■ ■ ■ <0° c o W X ^. ^ . 17 XV. MISTS AND FOGS - 19 XVI. THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS ... . ... 21 XVII. MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES ... 22 XVIII. FAR COUNTRIES . 24 XIX. A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER 26 XX. THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN . . 30 XXI. A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP l^\ ** XXII. THE FAIR REVENGE .... . • . . 44 iv CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOK XXIII. SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY .... 47 XXIV. GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS . . . . 49 XXV. THE OLD GENTLEMAN 50 XXVI. DOLPHINS 52 XXVII. RONALD OP THE PERFECT HAND . . ,?>. XXVIII. A CHAPTER ON HATS ... 56 XXIX. SEAMEN ON SHORE 59 XXX. ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION 62 XXXI. DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN 66 XXXII. POETICAL ANOMALIES OF SHAPE 67 XXXIII. SPRING AND DAISIES 68 XXXIV. MAY-DAY 71 XXXV. SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY 74 XXXVI. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY 75 XXXVII. OF STICKS ...... . .... 76 XXXVIH. OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS 79 XXXIX. A NEARER VIEW OF SOME OF THE SHOPS . . 81 THE INDICATOR. There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem to belong to the interior of Fairy-land : but they have been well authenticated. It indicates to honey-hunters, where the nests of wild bees are to be found. It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer ; and on finding itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, where he observes all that passes ; and the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. — This is the Cuculus Indicator of Linnaeus, otherwise called the Moroc, Bee Cuckoo, or Honey Bird. There he, arriving, round about doth flie, And takes survey with busie, curious eye : Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly^— Spenser. I.— DIFFICULTY OF FINDING A NAME FOR A WORK OF THIS KIND. Never did gossips, when assembled to deter- mine the name of a new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, experi- ence a difficulty half so great, as that which an author undergoes in settling the title for a periodical work. In the former case, there is generally some paramount uncle, or prodi- gious third cousin, who is understood to have the chief claims, and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the brain have no godfather at hand : and yet their single appellation is bound to comprise as many public interests, as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest : it is to be expressive : it is to be new : it is to be striking : it is to have something in it equally intelligible to the man of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagination : — in a word, it is to be impossible. How far we have succeeded in the attain- ment of this happy nonentity, we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realise ; — a great deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do anything for a book but give it a title ; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chair- shaking merriment which he himself might have joined in, fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that exquisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare : — One rubbed his elbow, thus ; and fleered, and swore, A better speech was never spoke before : Another, with his finger and his thumb, Cried " Via ! We will do't, come what will come !" The third he capered, and cried " All goes well I" The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous, appears, To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears. Love's Labour's Lost. Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as the Adviser, or Helps for Composing ; — the Cheap Reflector, or Every Man His Own Looking-Glass ; — the Retailer, or Every Man His Own Other Man's Wit ; — Nonsense, To be continued. Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion ; — Chaos, or the Agreeable Miscellany ; — the Fugitive Guide ; — the Foot Soldier, or Flowers of Wit ; — Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor ; — the Polite Repository of Abuse ; — Blood, being a Collection of Light Essays. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the Pleas- ing Ancestor ; the Silent Companion ; the Tart ; the Leg of Beef, by a Layman ; the Ingenious Hatband ; the Boots of Bliss ; the Occasional Diner ; the Tooth-ache ; Recollec- tions of a Very Unpleasant Nature ; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of Snuffers ; Thoughts on a Barouche-box ; Thoughts on a Hill of Con- siderable Eminence ; Meditations on a Pleas- ing Idea ; Materials for Drinking ; the Knocker, No. I. ; — the Hippopotamus entered at Sta- THE INDICATOR. tioners' Hall ; the Piano-forte of Paulus JEmilius ; the Seven Sleepers at Cards ; the Arabian Nights on Horseback : — with an infinite number of other mortal murders of common sense, which rose to " push us from our stools," and which none but the wise or good-natured would think of enjoying. II.— A WORD ON TRANSLATION FROM THE POETS. Intelligent men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theocritus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have often wondered how those writers obtained their glory. And they well might. The transla- tions are no more like the original, than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same with the versions of Euripides, of iEschylus, of Sophocles, of Petrarch, of Boileau, &c. &c, and in many respects of Homer. Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than by selecting a well-known passage from Shaks- peare, and turning it into the common-place kind of poetry that flourished so widely among us till of late years. Take the passage, for instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat themselves on a bank by moon- light :- How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this hank ! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears ; soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Now a foreign translator, of the ordinary kind, would dilute and take all taste and fresh- ness out of this draught of poetry, in a style somewhat like the following : — With what a charm, the moon, serene and bright, Lends on the bank its soft reflected light ! Sit we, I pray ; and let us sweetly hear The strains melodious with a raptured ear ; For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour, To harmony impart divinest power. ni.— AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES— MANTEL-PIECES— APARTMENTS FOR STUDY. How pleasant it is to have fires again ! We have not time to regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the necessity of a new kind of warmth ; — a warmth not so fine as sunshine, but, as manners go, more sociable. The English get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer-shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought ; our climate seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, when it really becomes so : but for the same reason, we make as much of our winter, as the anti-social habits that have grown upon us from other causes will allow. And for a similar reason, the southern Euro- pean is unprepared for a cold day. The houses in many parts of Italy are summer-houses, unprepared for winter ; so that when a fit of cold weather comes, the dismayed inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a little brazier in his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and perplexity. A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of everything out of doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses drip like rain, would ad- monish him to get warm in good earnest. If "the web of our life" is always to be "of a mingled yarn," a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture. Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books on each side. What shall we do ? Shall we take out a Life of somebody, or a Theocritus, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Montaigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Moliere, or Shakspeare who includes them all ? Or shall we read an engraving from Poussin or Raphael ? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our wrists upon our knees, and toast- ing the up-turned palms of our hands, while we discourse of manners and of man's heart and hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and good-nature, that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-in- tentioned, and the good-natured ? Ah — take care. You see what that old- looking saucer is, with a handle to it ? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, which may have been worth, to an Athenian, about two- pence ; but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could — deny for it. And yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his imagination more than ever it fetched potter or penny-maker. Its little shallow circle over- flows for him with the milk and honey of a thousand pleasant associations. This is one of the uses of having mantel-pieces. You may often see on no very rich mantel-piece a representative body of all the elements phy- sical and intellectual — a shell for the sea, a stuffed bird or some feathers for the air, a curious piece of mineral for the earth, a glass of water with some flowers in it for the visible process of creation, — a cast from sculpture for the mind of man ; — and underneath all, is the bright and ever-springing fire, running up through them heavenwards, like hope through materiality. We like to have any little curiosity of the mantel-piece kind within our reach and inspection. For the same reason, we like a small study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like to feel them about us ; — to be in the arms of our mistress Philosophy, rather than see her at a distance. To have a huge apartment for a study is like lying in the great bed at Ware, or being snug on a mile-stone upon Hounslow Heath. It is space and physical activity, not repose and concentration. It is fit only for grandeur and ACONTIUS'S APPLE. ostentation, — for those who have secretaries, and are to be approached like gods in a temple. The Archbishop of Toledo, no doubt, wrote his homilies in a room ninety feet long. The Marquis Marialva must have been ap- proached by Gil Bias through whole ranks of glittering authors, standing at due distance. But Ariosto, whose mind could fly out of its nest over all nature, wrote over the house he built, and that one of them was a suggester of good thoughts, and the other of evil. It seems, however, that the Genius was a personification of the conscience, or rather of the prevailing impulses of the mind, or the other self of a man ; and it was in this sense most likely that Socrates condescended to speak of his well- known Daemon, Genius, or Familiar Spirit, who, as he was a good man, always advised him to a good end. The Genius was thought to paint ideas upon the mind in as lively a manner as if in a looking-glass ; upon which we chose which of them to adopt. Spenser, a deeply-learned as well as imaginative poet, describes it in one of his most comprehensive though not most poetical stanzas, as - — That celestial Powre, to whom the care Of life, and generation of all That lives, pertaine in charge particulare ; Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, And straunge phantomes doth lett us ofte foresee, And ofte of secret ills bids us beware : That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see, Yet each doth in himselfe it well perceive to bee. Therefore a God him sage antiquity Did wisely make.— Faerie Queene, book ii. st. 47. Of the belief in an Evil Genius, a celebrated example is furnished in Plutarch's account of Brutus's vision, of which Shakspeare has given so fine a version (Julius Ccesar, Act 4, Sc. 3). Beliefs of this kind seem traceable from one superstition to another, and in some instances are immediately so. But fear, and ignorance, and even the humility of know- ledge, are at hand to furnish them, where pre- cedent is wanting. There is no doubt, how- ever, that the Romans, who copied and in general vulgarized the Greek mythology, took their Genius from the Greek Daimon : and as the Greek word has survived and taken shape in the common word Daemon, which by scornful reference to the Heathen religion, came at last to signify a Devil, so the Latin word Genius, not having been used by the translators of the Greek Testament, has sur- vived with a better meaning, and is employed to express our most genial and intellectual faculties. Such and such a man is said to in- dulge his genius : — he has a genius for this and that art :— he has a noble genius, a fine genius, an original and peculiar genius. And as the Romans, from attributing a genius to every man at his birth, came to attribute one to places and to soils, and other more com- prehensive peculiarities, so we have adopted THE HOUSEHOLD GODS OF THE ANCIENTS. 11 the same use of the term into our poetical phraseology. "We speak also of the genius or idiomatic peculiarity of a language. One of the most curious and edifying uses of the word Genius took place in the English trans- lation of the French Arabian Nights, which speaks of our old friends the Genie and the Genies. This is nothing more than the French word retained from the original translator, who applied the Roman word Genius to the Arabian Dive or Elf. One of the stories with which Pausanias has enlivened his description of Greece, is relative to a Genius. He says, that one of the compa- nions of Ulysses having been killed by the people of Temesa, they were fated to sacrifice a beautiful virgin every year to his manes. They were about to immolate one as usual, when Euthymus, a conqueror in the Olympic Games, touched with pity at her fate and ad- miration of her beauty, fell in love with her, and resolved to try if he could not put an end to so terrible a custom. He accordingly got permission from the state to marry her, pro- vided he could rescue her from her dreadful expectant. He armed himself, waited in the temple, and the genius appeared. It was said to have been of an appalling presence. Its shape was every way formidable, its colour of an intense black, and it was girded about with a wolf-skin. But Euthymus fought and con- quered it ; upon which it fled madly, not only beyond the walls, but the utmost bounds of Temesa, and rushed into the sea. The Penates were Gods of the house and family. Collectively speaking, they also pre- sided over cities, public roads, and at last over all places with which men were conversant. Their chief government however was sup- posed to be over the most inner and secret part of the house, and the subsistence and welfare of its inmates. They were chosen at will out of the number of the gods, as the Roman in modern times chose his favourite saint. In fact they were only the higher gods themselves, descending into a kind of house- hold familiarity. They were the personifica- tion of a particular Providence. The most striking mention of the Penates which we can call to mind is in one of Virgil's most poetical passages. It is where they appear to iEneas, to warn him from Crete, and an- nounce his destined empire in Italy. (Lib. III. v. 147.) Nox erat, et terris animalia somnus habebat : Effigies sacra? divum, Phrygiique Penates, Quos mecum a Troja, mediisque ex ignibus urbia Extulerarn, visi ante oculos adstare jacentis In somnis, multo manifesti lumine, qua se Plena per insertas fundebat luna fenestras. 'Twas night ; and sleep was on all living things. I lay, and saw before my very eyes Dread shapes of gods, and Phrygian deities, The great Penates ; whom with reverent joy I bore from out the heart of burning Troy. Plainly I saw them, standing in the light Which the moon poured into the room that night. And again, after they had addressed him — Nee sopor illud erat ; sed coram agnoscere vultus, Velatasque comas, prassentiaque ora videbar : Tumjgelidus toto manabat corpore sudor. It was no dream : I saw them face to face, Their hooded hair ; and felt them so before My being, that I burst at every pore. The Lares, or Lars, were the lesser and most familiar Household Gods, and though their offices were afterwards extended a good deal, in the same way as those of the Penates, with whom they are often confounded, their principal sphere was the fire-place. This was in the middle of the room ; and the statues of the Lares generally stood about it in little niches. They are said to have been in the shape of monkeys ; more likely mannikins, or rude little human images. Some were made of wax, some of stone, and others doubtless of any ma- terial for sculpture. They were represented with good-natured grinning countenances, were clothed in skins, and had little dogs at their feet. Some writers make them the offspring of the goddess Mania, who presided over the spirits of the dead ; and suppose that origi- nally they were the same as those spirits ; which is a very probable as well as agreeable superstition, the old nations of Italy having been accustomed to bury their dead in their houses. Upon this supposition, the good or benevolent spirits were called Familiar Lares, and the evil or malignant ones Larvss and Lemures. Thus Milton, in his awful Hymn on the Nativity : — In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint. In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint ; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each Peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat. But Ovid tells a story of a gossiping nymph Lara, who having told Juno of her husband's amour with Juturna, was " sent to Hell " by him, and courted by Mercury on the road ; the consequence of which was the birth of the Lares. This seems to have a natural reference enough to the gossiping over fire-places. It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between these lesser Household Gods and some of the offices of our old English elves and fairies. Dacier, in a note upon Horace (Lib. I., Od. 12) informs us, that in some parts of Languedoc, in his time, the fire-place was still called the Lar ; and that the name was also given to houses. Herrick, a poet of the Anacreontic order in the time of Elizabeth, who was visited, perhaps more than any other, except Spenser, with a sense of the pleasantest parts of the 12 THE INDICATOR. ancient mythology, has written some of his lively little odesupon the Lares. We have not them by us at this moment, but we remember one beginning, — It was, and still my care is To worship you, the Lares. We take the opportunity of the Lar's being mentioned in it, to indulge ourselves in a little poem of Martial's, very charming for its sim- plicity. It is an Epitaph on a child of the name of Erotion. Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli, Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. Sic Lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua. THE EPITAPH OF EROTION. Underneath this greedy stone Lies little sweet Erotion ; Whom the fates, with hearts as cold, Nipt away at six years old. Thou, whoever thou may'st be, That hast this small field after me, Let the yearly rites be paid To her little slender shade ; So shall no disease or jar Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar ; But this tomb here be alone, The only melancholy stone. X.— SOCIAL GENEALOGY. It is a curious and pleasant thing to con- sider, that a link of personal acquaintance can be traced up from the authors of our own times to those of Shakspeare, and to Shak- speare himself. Ovid, in recording his inti- macy with Propertius and Horace, regrets that he had only seen Virgil. (Trist. Lib. IV., v. 51.) But still he thinks the sight of him worth remembering. And Pope, when a child, pre- vailed on some friends to take him to a coffee- house which Dryden frequented, merely to look at him ; which he did, with great satis- faction. Now such of us as have shaken hands with a living poet, might be able to reckon up a series of connecting shakes, to the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, and of Fal- staff, and of Desdemona. With some living poets, it is certain. There is Thomas Moore, for instance, who knew Sheridan. Sheridan knew Johnson, who was the friend of Savage, who knew Steele, who knew Pope. Pope was intimate with Con- greve, and Congreve with Dryden. Dryden is said to have visited Milton. Milton is said to have known Davenant ; and to have been saved by him from the revenge of the restored court, in return for having saved Davenant from the revenge of the Commonwealth. But if the link between Dryden and Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is somewhat apocryphal, or rather dependent on tradition (for Richardson the painter tells us the story from Pope, who had it from Betterton the actor, one of Dave- nant's company), it may be carried at once from Dryden to Davenant, with whom he was unquestionably intimate. Davenant then knew Hobbes, who knew Bacon, who knew Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Donne, Drayton, Camden, Selden, Clarendon, Sydney, Raleigh, and per- haps all the great men of Elizabeth's and James's time, the greatest of them all undoubt- edly. Thus have we a link of " beamy hands" from our own times up to Shakspeare. In this friendly genealogy we have omitted the numerous side-branches or common friend- ships. It may be mentioned, however, in order not to omit Spenser, that Davenant re- sided some time in the family of Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. Spenser's intimacy with Sidney is mentioned by himself in a letter, still extant, to Gabriel Harvey. We will now give the authorities for our in- tellectual pedigree. Sheridan is mentioned in Boswell as being admitted to the celebrated club of which Johnson, Goldsmith, and others were members. He had just written the School for Scandal, which made him the more welcome. Of Johnson's friendship with Savage (we cannot help beginning the sentence with his favourite leading preposition), the well- known Life is an interesting record. It is said that in the commencement of their friendship, they sometimes wandered together about London for want of a lodging — more likely for Savage's want of it, and Johnson's fear of offending him by offering a share of his own. But we do not remember how this circumstance is related by Boswell. Savage's intimacy with Steele is recorded in a pleasant anecdote, which he told Johnson. Sir Richard once desired him, * with an air of the utmost importance," says his biographer, "to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had pro- mised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for him and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to inquire, but immediately seated himself with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertain- ment, and after some hesitation, ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then ANGLING. 13 finished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the after- noon. "Mr. Savage then imagined that his task was over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and return home ; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production for sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his cre- ditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning." Steele's acquaintance with Pope, who wrote some papers for his Guardian, appears in the letters and other works of the wits of that time . Johnson supposes that it was his friendly interference, which attempted to bring Pope and Addison together after a jealous separa- tion. Pope's friendship with Congreve appears also in his letters. He also dedicated the Iliad to Congreve, over the heads of peers and patrons. The dramatist, whose conversation most likely partook of the elegance and wit of his writings, and whose manners appear to have rendered him a universal favourite, had the honour, in his youth, of attracting the respect and regard of Dry den. He was pub- licly hailed by him as his successor, and affec- tionately bequeathed the care of his laurels. Dryden did not know who had been looking at him in the coffee-house. Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage ; Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, I live a rent-charge on his providence. But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains ; and O defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend ! Let not th* insulting foe my fame pursue, But shade those laurels which descend to you. Congreve did so, with great tenderness. Dryden is reported to have asked Milton's permission to turn his Paradise Lost into a rhyming tragedy, which he called the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man; a work, such as might be expected from such a mode of alter- ation. The venerable poet is said to have answered, " Ay, young man, you may tag my verses, if you will." Be the connexion, however, of Dryden with Milton, or of Milton with Davenant, as it may, Dryden wrote the alteration of Shakspeare's Tempest, as it is now perpetrated, in conjunction with Davenant. They were great hands, but they should not have touched the pure grandeur of Shakspeare. The intimacy of Davenant with Hobbes is to be seen by their correspondence prefixed to Gondibert. Hobbes was at one time secretary to Lord Bacon, a singularly illustrious instance of servant and master. Bacon also had Ben Jonson for a retainer in a similar capacity ; and Jonson's link with the preceding writers could be easily supplied through the medium of Greville and Sidney, and indeed of many others of his contemporaries. Here then we arrive at Shakspeare, and feel the electric virtue of his hand. Their intimacy, dashed a little, perhaps, with jealousy on the part of Jonson, but maintained to the last by dint of the nobler part of him, and of Shakspeare's irresistible fineness of nature, is a thing as notorious as their fame. Fuller says : " Many were the wit-combates betwixt (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of- war : master JoDson (like the former) was built far higher in learning : solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sail- ing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." This is a happy simile, with the exception of what is insinuated about Jonson's greater solidity. But let Jonson show for himself the affection with which he regarded one, who did not irritate or trample down rivalry, but rose above it like the sun, and turned emulation to worship. Soul of the age ! Th' applause ! delight ! the wonder of out stage ! My Shakspeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room ; Thou art a monument without a tomb ; And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give. ***** He was not of an age, but for all time. XL—ANGLING. The anglers are a race of men who puzzle us. "We do not mean for their patience, which is laudable, nor for the infinite non-success of some of them, which is desirable. Neither do we agree with the good old joke attributed to Swift, that angling is always to be considered as " a stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other." Nay, if he had books with him, and a pleasant day, we can account for the joyousness of that prince of punters, who, having been seen in the same spot one morning and evening, and asked whether he had had any success, said No, but in the course of the day he had had " a glorious nibble." But the anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime ; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties ; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought. It is this that puzzles us. Old Isaac Walton, their patriarch, speak- ing of his inquisitorial abstractions on the banks of a river, says, Here we may Think and pray, u THE INDICATOR. Before death Stops our breath. Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented. So saying, he "stops the breath" of a trout, by plucking him up into an element too thin to respire, with a hook and a tortured worm in his jaws — Other joys Are but toys. If you ride, walk, or skate, or play at cricket, or at rackets, or enjoy a ball or a concert, it is " to be lamented." To put pleasure into the faces of half a dozen agreeable women, is a toy unworthy of the manliness of a worm- sticker. But to put a hook into the gills of a carp — there you attain the end of a reasonable being ; there you show yourself truly a lord of the creation. To plant your feet occasionally in the mud, is also a pleasing step. So is cutting your ancles with weeds and stones — Other joys Are but toys. The book of Isaac Walton upon angling is a delightful performance in some respects. It smells of the country air, and of the flowers in cottage windows. Its pictures of rural scenery, its simplicity, its snatches of old songs, are all good and refreshing ; and his prodigious relish of a dressed fish would not be grudged him, if he had killed it a little more decently. He really seems to have a respect for a piece of salmon ; to approach it, like the grace, with his hat off. But what are we to think of a man, who in the midst of his tortures of other animals, is always valuing himself on his harm- lessness ; and who actually follows up one of his most complacent passages of this kind, with an injunction to impale a certain worm twice upon the hook, because it is lively, and might get off ! All that can be said of such an extraordinary inconsistency is, that having been bred up in an opinion of the innocence of his amusement, and possessing a healthy power of exercising voluntary thoughts (as far as he had any), he must have dozed over the opposite side of the question, so as to become almost, perhaps quite, insensible to it. And angling does indeed seem the next thing to dreaming. It dispenses with locomotion, reconciles contradictions, and renders the very countenance null and void. A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish. It is hard, angular, and of no expression. It seems to have been "subdued to what it worked in;" to have become native to the watery element. One might have said to Walton, " Oh flesh, how art thou fishified !" He looks like a pike, dressed in broadcloth instead of butter. The face of his pupil and follower, or, as he fondly called himself, son, Charles Cotton, a poet and a man of wit, is more good-natured and uneasy.* Cotton's pleasures had not been confined to fishing. His sympathies indeed had been a little superabundant, and left him, perhaps, not so great a power of thinking as he pleased. Accordingly, we find in his writ- ings more symptoms of scrupulousness upon the subject, than in those of his father. Walton says, that an angler does no hurt but to fish ; and this he counts as nothing. Cotton argues, that the slaughter of them is not to be "repented;" and he says to his father (which looks as if the old gentleman sometimes thought upon the subject too) There whilst behind some bush we wait The scaly people to betray, We'll pro ve it just, with treacherous bait, To make the preying trout our prey. This argument, and another about fish's being made for " man's pleasure and diet," are all that anglers have to say for the innocence of their sport. But they are both as rank sophistications as can be ; sheer beggings of the question. To kill fish outright is a different matter. Death is common to all ; and a trout, speedily killed by a man, may suffer no worse fate than from the jaws of a pike. It is the mode, the lingering cat-like cruelty of the angler's sport, that renders it unworthy. If fish were made to be so treated, then men were also made to be racked and throttled by inquisitors. Indeed among other advantages of angling, Cotton reckons up a tame, fishlike acquiescence to whatever the powerful choose to inflict. We scratch not our pates, Nor repine at the rates Our superiors impose on our living ; But do frankly submit, Knowing they have more wit In demanding, than we have in giving. Whilst quiet we sit, We conclude all things fit, Acquiescing with hearty submission, &c. And this was no pastoral fiction. The anglers of those times, whose skill became famous from the celebrity of their names, chiefly in divinity, were great fallers-in with passive obedience. They seemed to think (whatever they found it necessary to say now and then upon that point) that the great had as much right to prey upon men, as the small had upon fishes ; only the men luckily had not hooks put into their jaws, and the sides of their cheeks torn to pieces. The two most famous anglers in history are Antony and Cleopatra. These extremes of the angling character are very edifying. We should like to know what these grave divines would have said to the heavenly maxim of "Do as you would be done by." Let us imagine ourselves, for instance, a sort of * The reader may see both the portraits in the late editions of Walton. LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION. 15 human fish. Air is but a rarer fluid ; and at present, in this November weather, a super- natural being who should look down upon us from a higher atmosphere, would have some reason to regard us as a kind of pedestrian carp. Now fancy a Genius fishing for us. Fancy him baiting a great hook with pickled salmon, and twitching up old Isaac "Walton from the banks of the river Lee, with the hook through his ear. How he would go up, roaring and screaming, and thinking the devil had got him ! Other joys Are but toys. We repeat, that if fish were made to be so treated, then we were just as much made to be racked and suffocated ; and a footpad might have argued that old Isaac was made to have his pocket picked, and be tumbled into the river. There is no end of these idle and selfish beggings of the question, which at last argue quite as much against us as for us. And granting them, for the sake of argument, it is still obvious, on the very same ground, that men were also made to be taught better. We do not say, that all anglers are of a cruel nature ; many of them, doubtless, are amiable men in other matters. They have only never thought perhaps on that side of the question, or been accustomed from childhood to blink it. But once thinking, their amiableness and their practice become incompatible ; and if they should wish, on that account, never to have thought upon the subject, they would only show, that they cared for their own exemption from suffering, and not for its diminution in general.* XII.— LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION. Men of wit sometimes like to pamper a joke into exaggeration ; into a certain corpulence of facetiousness. Their relish of the thing makes them wish it as large as possible ; and the enjoyment of it is doubled by its becoming more visible to the eyes of others. It is for this reason that jests in company are some- times built up by one hand after another, — "threepiled hyperboles," — till the over-done Babel topples and tumbles down amidst a merry confusion of tongues. Falstaff was a great master of this art : he loved a joke as large as himself; witness his famous account of the men in buckram. Thus he tells the Lord Chief Justice, that he had lost his voice "with singing of anthems ;" and he calls Bardolph's red nose " a perpetual * Perhaps the best thing to be said finally about angling is. that not being able to determine whether fish feel it very sensibly or otherwise, we ought to give them the benefit rather than the disadvantage of the doubt, where we can help it ; and our feelings the benefit, where we cannot. triumph, an everlasting bonfire light ;" and says it has saved him " a thousand marks in links and torches," walking with it "in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern." See how he goes heightening the account of his recruits at every step : — " You would think I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. — A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me, I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies — No eye hath seen such scarecrows. — I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat. — Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on ; for indeed I had most of them out of prison. — There's but a shirt and a-half in all my company ;— and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves." An old schoolfellow of ours (who, by the way, was more fond of quoting Falstaff than any other of Shakspeare's characters) used to be called upon for a story, with a view to a joke of this sort ; it being an understood thing, that he had a privilege of exaggeration, with- out committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows the old blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. Some- body had been applauded in company for advising his cook to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, " because that was the way to Turn'em Green ;" upon which Gold- smith is said to have gone and repeated the pun at another table in this fashion : — " John should take those peas, I think, to Hammer- smith." "Why so, Doctor?" "Because that is the way to make 'em green." Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional dressing : " At sight of the dishes of vegetables, Goldsmith, who was at his own house, took off the covers, one after another, with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them ; upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and prospective satisfaction. 'You are fond of peas, Sir?' said one of the company. ( Yes, Sir,' said Goldsmith, * particularly so : — I eat them all the year round ; — I mean, Sir, every day in the season. I do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I am.' £ Is there any par- ticular reason, Doctor,' asked a gentleman present, ' why you like peas so much, beyond the usual one of their agreeable taste V — 'No, Sir, none whatsoever: — none, I assure you' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress this fact on his guests) : ' 1 never heard any particular encomium or speech about them from any one else : but they carry their own eloquence with them : they are things, Sir, of infinite taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional spirits.) But, bless me !' he exclaimed, looking narrowly into the peas :— c I fear they are very ill-done : 16 THE INDICATOR. they are absolutely yellow instead of green'' (here he put a strong emphasis on green) ; ' and you know, peas should be emphatically green : — greenness in a pea is a quality as essential, as whiteness in a lily The cook has quite spoilt them : — but I'll give the rogue a lecture, gentlemen, with your permission.' Goldsmith then rose and rang the bell violently for the cook, who came in ready booted and spurred. 'Ha!' exclaimed Goldsmith, ' those boots and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know, Sir, what you have done V — e No, Sir.' — c Why, you have made the peas yellow, Sir. Go instantly, and take 'em to Hammer- smith.' ' To Hammersmith, Sir?' cried the man, all in astonishment, the guests being no less so : — ' please Sir, why am I to take 'em to Ham- mersmith ?' — 'Because, Sir,' (and here Gold- smith looked round with triumphant antici- pation) ' that is the way to render those peas green.' " There is a very humorous piece of exaggera- tion in Butler's Remains, — a collection, by the bye, well worthy of Hudibras, and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is defrauded of his fame with readers of taste who happen to be no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage. The piece we allude to is a short description of Hol- land : — A country that draws fifty foot of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature ; And when the sea does in upon them hreak, And drowns a province, does but spring a leak. ***** That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes, And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes. A land that rides at anchor, and is moored, In which they do not live, but go aboard. We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to discover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the great patriot Andrew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to have been known earlier as an author. He was certainly known publicly before him. But in the political poems of Marvell, there is a ludicrous character of Hol- land, which might be pronounced to be either the copy or the original of Butler's, if in those anti-Batavian times the Hollander had not been baited by all the wits ; and were it not probable, that the unwieldy monotony of his character gave rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in many of their fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of Butler's, not in learn- ing or multiplicity of contrasts (for nobody ever beat him there), but in a greater variety of them, and in being able,from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring graver and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity. He thus opens the battery upon our amphi- bious neighbour : Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but the off-scouring of the British sand ; And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots, when they heaved the lead ; Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell, Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell. * * * * * Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, They, with mad labour,* fished the land to shore ; And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece ; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away ; Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl, Transfusing into them their dunghill soul. He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyper- bole : — How did they rivet with gigantic piles Thorough the centre their new-catched miles ; And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground ; Building their wat'ry Babel far more high To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky. Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed, And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played ; As if on purpose it on land had come To shew them what's their Mare Liberumf : A dayly deluge over them does boil ; The earth and water play at level-coyl ; The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, And sat, not as at meat, but as a guest : And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau. Or, as they over the new level ranged, For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed. Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck and drake : Therefore necessity, that first made kings, Something like government among them brings : For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane, Among the hungry he that treasures grain, Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns, So rules among the drowned he that drains. Not who first sees the rising sun, commands ; But who could first discern the rising lands ; Who best could know to pump an earth so leak, Him they their lord and country's father speak ; To make a bank was a great plot of state ; — Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate. We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter. XIII.— GILBERT ! GILBERT ! The sole idea generally conveyed to us by historians of Thomas a Becket is that of a haughty priest, who tried to elevate the reli- gious power above the civil. But in looking more narrowly into the accounts of him, it appears that for a considerable part of his life he was a merry layman, was a great falconer, feaster, and patron, as well as man of business ; and he wore all characters with such unaffected pleasantness, that he was called the Delight of the Western World. On a sudden, to every body's surprise, his friend the king (Henry II.), from chancellor * Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come, if you dare^- " The Gods from above the mad labour behold." t A Free Ocean. NERVOUS DISORDERS. 17 made him archbishop ; and with equal sudden- ness, though retaining his affability, the new- head of the English church put off all his worldly graces and pleasures (save and except a rich gown over his sackcloth), and in the midst of a gay court, became the most mortified of ascetics. Instead of hunting and hawking, he paced a solitary cloister ; instead of his wine, he drank fennel-water ; and in lieu of soft clothing, he indulged his back in stripes. This phenomenon has divided the opinions of the moral critics. Some insist, that Becket was religiously in earnest, and think the change natural to a man of the world, whose heart had been struck with reflection. Others see in his conduct nothing but ambition. We suspect that three parts of the truth are with the latter ; and that Becket, suddenly enabled to dispute a kind of sovereignty with his prince and friend, gave way to the new tempt- ation, just as he had done to his falconry and fine living. But the complete alteration of his way of life, — the enthusiasm which enabled him to set up so different a greatness against his former one — shows, that his character partook at least of as much sincerity, as would enable him to delude himself in good taste. In proportion as his very egotism was con- cerned, it was likely that such a man would exalt the gravity and importance of his new calling. He had flourished at an earthly court : he now wished to be as great a man in the eyes of another ; and worldly power, which was at once to be enjoyed and despised by virtue of his office, had a zest given to its pos- session, of which the incredulousness of mere insincerity could know nothing. Thomas a Becket may have inherited a romantic turn of mind from his mother, whose story is a singular one. His father, Gilbert Becket, a flourishing citizen, had been in his youth a soldier in the crusades ; and being taken prisoner, became slave to an Emir, or Baracen prince. By degrees he obtained the confidence of his master, and was admitted to his company, where he met a personage who became more attached to him. This was the Emir's daughter. Whether by her means or not does not appear, but after some time he contrived to escape. The lady with her loving heart followed him. She knew, they say, but two words of his language, — London and Gilbert ; and by repeating the former she obtained a passage in a vessel, arrived in England, and found her trusting way to the metropolis. She then took to her other talis- man, and went from street to street pronounc- ing " Gilbert !" A crowd collected about her wherever she went, asking of course a thou- sand questions, and to all she had but one answer — Gilbert ! Gilbert ! — She found her faith in it sufficient. Chance, or her determi- nation to go through every street, brought her at last to the one, in which he who had won her heart in slavery, was living in good con- dition. The crowd drew the family to the window ; his servant recognised her ; and Gilbert Becket took to his arms and his bridal bed, his far-come princess, with her solitary fond word. XIV. FATAL MISTAKE OF NERVOUS DISORDERS FOR MADNESS. Some affecting catastrophes in the public papers induce us to say a few words on the mistaken notions which are so often, in our opinion, the cause of their appearance. It is much to be wished that some physician, truly so called, and philosophically competent to the task, would write a work on this subject. We have plenty of books on symptoms and other alarming matters, very useful for in- creasing the harm already existing. We believe also there are . some works of a dif- ferent kind, if not written in direct counter- action ; but the learned authors are apt to be so grand and etymological in their title-pages, that they must frighten the general under- standing with their very advertisements. '' There is this great difference between what is generally understood by the word madness, and the nervous or melancholy disorders, the excess of which is so often confounded with it. Madness is a consequence of malformation of the brain, and is by no means of necessity attended with melancholy or even ill-health. The patient, in the very midst of it, is often strong, healthy, and even cheerful. On the other hand, nervous disorders, or even melan- choly in its most aggravated state, is nothing but the excess of a state of stomach and blood, extremely common. The mind no doubt will act upon that state and exasperate it ; but there is great re-action between mind and body : and as it is a common thing for a man I in an ordinary fever, or fit of the bile, to be | melancholy, and even to do or feel inclined to i do an extravagant thing, so it is as common \ for him to get well and be quite cheerful again. J Thus it is among witless people that the true ! madness will be found. It is the more intelli- gent that are subject to the other disorders ; j and a proper use of their intelligence will show them what the disorders are. But weak treatment may frighten the intel- ligent. A kind person, for instance, in a fit of melancholy, may confess that he feels an incli- nation to do some desperate or even cruel thing. This is often treated at once as mad- ness, instead of an excess of the kind just mentioned ; and the person seeing he is thought out of his wits, begins to think himself so, and at last acts as if he were. This is a lament- able evil ; but it does not stop here. The children or other relatives of the person may become victims to the mistake. They think IS THE INDICATOR. there is madness, as the phrase is, "in the family ;" and so whenever they feel ilh or meet with a misfortune, the thought will prey upon their minds ; and this may lead to catastrophes, with which they have really no more to do than any other sick or unfortunate people. How many persons have committed an extravagance in a brain fever, or undergone hallucinations of mind in consequence of getting an ague, or taking opium, or fifty other causes ; and yet the moment the least wandering of mind is observed in them, others become frightened ; their fright is manifested beyond all necessity ; and the patients and their family must suffer for it. They seem to think, that no disorder can properly be held a true Christian sickness, and fit for charitable inter- pretation, but where the patient has gone regularly to bed, and had curtains, and caudle- cups, and nurses about him, like a well-behaved respectable sick gentleman. But this state of things implies muscular weakness, or weak- ness of that sort which renders the bodily action feeble. Now, in nervous disorders, the muscular action may be as strong as ever ; and people may reasonably be allowed a world of illness, sitting in their chairs, or even walk- ing or running. These mistaken pronoun cers upon disease ought to be told, that when they are thus unwarrantably frightened, they are partaking of the very essence of what they misappre- hend ; for it is fear, in ail its various degrees and modifications, which is at the bottom of nervousness and melancholy ; not fear in its ordinary sense, as opposed to cowardice (for a man who would shudder at a bat or a vague idea, may be bold as a lion against an enemy), but imaginative fear ; — fear either of something known or of the patient knows not what ; — a vague sense of terror, — an impulse, — an appre- hension of ill, — dwelling upon some painful and worrying thought. Now this suffering is in- variably connected with a weak state of the body in some respects, particularly of the stomach. Hundreds will be found to have felt it, if patients inquire ; but the mind is sometimes afraid of acknowledging its appre- hensions, even to itself ; and thus fear broods over and hatches fear. These disorders, generally speaking, are greater or less in their effects according to the exercise of reason. But do not let the word be misunderstood : we should rather say, according to the extent of the knowledge. A very imaginative man will indeed be likely to suffer more than others ; but if his knowledge is at all in proportion, he will also get through his evil better than an uninformed man suffer- ing great terrors. And the reason is, that he knows how much bodily unhealthiness has to do with it. The very words that frighten the unknowing might teach them better, if under- stood. Thus insanity itself properly means nothing but unhealthiness or unsoundness. Derangement explains itself, and may surely mean very harmless things. Melancholy is compounded of two words which signify black bile. Hypochondria is the name of one of the regions of the stomach, a very instructive etymology. And lunacy refers to effects, real or imaginary, of particular states of the moon ; which if anything after all, are nothing more than what every delicate constitution feels in its degree from particular states of the weather ; for weather, like the tides, is apt to be in such and such a condition, when the moon presents such and such a face. It has been said, Great wits to madness nearly are allied. It is curious that he who wrote the saying (Dryden) was a very sound wit to the end of his life ; while his wife, who was of a weak understanding, became insane. An excellent writer (Wordsworth) has written an idle couplet about the insanity of poets : We poets enter on our path with gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. If he did not mean madness in the ordinary sense, he should not have written this line ; if he did, he ought not to have fallen, in the teeth of his better knowledge, into so vulgar an error. There are very few instances of insane poets, or of insane great understandings of any sort. Bacon, Milton, Newton, Shakspeare, Cervantes, &c. were all of minds as sound as they were great. So it has been with the infi- nite majority of literary men of all countries. If Tasso and a few others were exceptions, they were but exceptions ; and the derange- ment in these eminent men has very doubtful characters about it, and is sometimes made a question. It may be pretty safely affirmed, at least, upon an examination of it, that had they not been the clever men they were, it would have been much worse and less equivocal. Collins, whose case was after all one of inani- tion rather than insanity, had been a free liver ; and seems to have been hurt by having a fortune left him. Cowper was weak-bodied, and beset by Methodists. Swift's body was full of bad humours. He himself attributed his disordered system to the effects of a surfeit of fruit on his stomach ; and in his last illness he used to break out in enormous boils and blisters. This was a violent effort of nature to help and purify the current of his blood, — the main object in all such cases. Dr. John- son, who was subject to mists of melancholy, used to fancy he should go mad ; but he never did. Exercise, conversation, cheerful society, amusements of all sorts, or a kind, patient, and gradual helping of the bodily health, till the mind be capable of amusement (for it should never foolishly be told " not to think" MISTS AND FOGS. 19 of melancholy things, without having some- thing done for it to mend the bodily health), — these are the cures, the only cures, and in our opinion the almost infallible cures of nervous disorders, however excessive. Above all, the patient should be told, that there has often been an end to that torment of one haunting idea, which is indeed a great and venerable suffering. Many persons have got over it in a week, a few weeks, or a month, some in a few months, some not for years, but they have got over it at last. There is a remarkable instance of this in the life of our great king Alfred. He was seized, says his contemporary biogra- pher, with such a strange illness while sitting at table, in the twenty-fifth year (we think) of his age, that he shrieked aloud ; and for twenty years afterwards this illness so preyed upon him, that the relief of one hour was embittered by what he dreaded would come the next. His disorder is conjectured by some to have been an internal cancer ; by others, with more probability, the black bile, or melancholy. The physicians of those times knew nothing about it ; and the people showed at once their ignorance, and their admiration of the king, by saying that the devil had caused it out of jealousy. It was probably produced by anxiety for the state of his country ; but the same thing which wounded him may have helped to keep him up ; for he had plenty of business to attend to, and fought with his own hand in fifty-six pitched battles. Now exactly twenty years after, in the forty-fifth year of his age (if our former recollection is right) this disorder totally left him ; and his great heart was where it ought to be, in a heaven of health and calm- XV.— MISTS AND FOGS. Fogs and mists, being nothing but vapours which the cold air will not suffer to evaporate, must sometimes present a gorgeous aspect 1 next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other eyes there may be to look down upon them, they may appear like masses j of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds unrisen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk through the same airy heaps which at other times float over their heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting sun. We do not say, that any one can u hold a fire in his hand," by thinking on a fine sunset ; or that sheer imagination of any sort can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were wrapped round with cold wet paper ; much less to flounder through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often help itself with agreeable images against dis- agreeable ones ; or pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck as it were, in the thick foggy atmosphere ; the moon just win- ning her way through it, into beams ; nay, the very candles and gas-lights in the shop windows of a misty evening, — all have, in our eyes, their agreeable varieties of contrast to the surround- ing haze. We have even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of the Strand by St. Clement's, and seen the church, which is a poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly grandeur from the dark atmosphere ; looking like a tall white mass, mounting up interminably into the night over- head. The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the intercourse between nature and humanity, have in numberless passages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of the most striking. When Thetis, in the Iliad (lib. i., v. 359) rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist ; like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to suppose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water ; and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore. When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the death of his friend Patro- clus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to render his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire. (Lib. xviii., v. 205.) He shouts aloud under this preternatural diadem ; Mi- nerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry ; at which the horses of the Trojan warriors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush. A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended to earth ; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the court of Antinous, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes JEneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Milton, — but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is "like a black mist low creep- ing." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapours :' c 2 20 THE INDICATOR. On the ground Gliding meteorous, as evening mist Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel Homeward returning.— (Par. Lost, B. xn. v. G28.) Now behold one of his greatest imagina- tions. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandsemonium, waiting the return of their " great adventurer " from his u search of worlds : " He throTigh the midst unmarked, In show plebeian angel militant Of lowest order, passed ; and from the door Of that Plutonian hall, invisible, Ascended his high throne ; which, under state Of richest texture spread, at the upper end Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile He sat, and round about him saw unseen. At last — as from a cloud, his fulgent head And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter ; clad With what permissive glory since his fall Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng Bent their aspect ; and whom they wished, beheld, Their mighty chief returned. There is a piece of imagination in Apollo- nius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad daylight, are sud- denly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo ; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island. Spenser in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book n.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey ; but like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the peril- ous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens : but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him : When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred With his dull vapour all that desert has, And heaven's chearefull face enveloped, That all things one, and one as nothing was, And this great universe seemed one confused mass. Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist How to direct theyr way in darkness wide, But feared to wander in that wastefull mist For tombling into mischiefe unespyde : Worse is the daunger hidden then descride. Suddeinly an innumerable flight Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride, And with theyr wicked wings them oft did smight, And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night. Even all the nation of unfortunate And fatail birds about them flocked were, Such as by nature men abhorre and hate ; The ill-faced owle, deaths dreadful messengere : The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefull drere : The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy : The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the here : The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy ; The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny : All these, and all that else does horror breed, About them flew, and fild their sayles with fear ; Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed, Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare. Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Correggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance ; the head of the father of gods and men com- ing placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very benignity of crea- tion. The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following are as many specimens of his uses of mist, as we have room for. The first is very grand ; the second as happy in its analogy ; the third is ghastly, but of more doubtful merit : Two Chiefs parted by their King. — They sunk from the king on either side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them on his glittering rocks. Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards its reedy pool. A great Enemy. — I love a foe like Cathmor : his soul is great ; his arm is strong ; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapour, that hovers roimd the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds meet it there. A terrible Omen. — A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the figure of an aged man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps ; for a ghost sup- ported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood. We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minute- ness of detail with the most grand and sove- reign effect. It is in a lofty comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapours; the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. u. v. 10). Dante and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory ; which reminds us of that still and far-thoughted Lone sitting by the shores cf old romance. But to our English-like Italian. Noi eravam lungh' esso '1 mare ancora, &c. That solitary shore we still kept on, Like men, who musing on their journey, stay At rest in body, yet in heart are gone ; When lo ! as at the early dawn of day, Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat, Down in the west, far o'er the watery way ; So did mine eyes behold (so may they yet) A light, which came so swiftly o'er the sea, That never wing with such a fervour beat. I did but turn to ask what it might be Of my sage leader, when its orb had got More large meanwhile, and came more gloriously : THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS. 21 And by degrees, I saw I knew not what Of white about it ; and beneath the white Another. My great master uttered not One word, till those first issuing candours bright Fanned into wings ; but soon as he had found Who was the mighty voyager now in sight, He cried aloud, " Down, down, upon the ground, It is God's Angel." XVI.— THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS, A PORTUGUESE TRADITION. In the time of the old kings of Portugal, Don John, a natural son of the reigning prince, was governor of the town of Veyros, in the province of Alentejo. The town was situate (perhaps is there still) upon a mountain, at the foot of which runs a river ; and at a little distance there was a ford over it, under another eminence. The hed of the river thereabouts was so high as to form a shallow sandy place ; and in that clear spot of water, the maidens of Veyros, both of high rank and humble, used to wash their clothes. It happened one day, that Don John, riding out with a company, came to the spot at the time the young women were so employed : and being, says our author, " a young and lusty gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to their work. He passed along the river ; and all his com- pany had not yet gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it up, showed her legs somewhat high ; and clapping her hand on her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders, " Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis *." These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado, upon the strength of the go- vernor's having gone by, were repeated to him when he got home, together with the action that accompanied them : upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of the speech so deeply, that he contrived to have the fair speaker brought to him in private ; and the conse- quence was, that, our lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another natural son. Ines (for that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a shoemaker in Veyros ; a man of very good account, and wealthy. Hearing how his daughter had been sent for to the young governor's house, and that it was her own light behaviour that subjected her to what he was assured she willingly consented to, he took it so to heart, that at her return home, she was driven by him from the house, with every species of contumely and spurning. After this, he never saw her more. And to prove to the world and to himself, that his severity was a matter of principle, and not a mere indulgence of his own passions, he never * An order of knighthood, of which Dod John was Master. afterwards lay in a bed, nor ate at a table, nor changed his linen, nor cut his hair, nails, or beard ; which latter grew to such a length, reaching below his knees, that the people used to call him Barbadon, or Old Beardy. In the meantime, his grandson, called Don Alphonso, not only grew to be a man, but was created Duke of Braganza, his father Don John having been elected to the crown of Portugal ; which he wore after such noble fashion, to the great good of his country, as to be surnamed the Memorable. Now the town of Veyros stood in the middle of seven or eight others, all belonging to the young Duke, from whose palace at Villa Viciosa it was but four leagues distant. He therefore had good intelligence of the shoemaker his grandfather ; and being of a humane and truly generous spirit, the accounts he received of the old man's way of life made him extremely desirous of paying him a visit. He accordingly went with a retinue to Veyros ; and meeting Bar- badon in the streets, he alighted from his horse, bareheaded, and in the presence of that stately company and the people, asked the old man his blessing. The shoemaker, astonished at this sudden spectacle, and at the strange contrast which it furnished to his humble rank, stared in a bewildered manner upon the unknown personage, who thus knelt to him in the public way; and said, "Sir, do you mock me?" — " No," answered the Duke ; " may God so help me, as I do not : but in earnest I crave I may kiss your hand and receive your blessing, for I am your grandson, and son to Ines your daughter, conceived by the king, my lord and father." No sooner had the shoemaker heard these words, than he clapped his hands before his eyes, and said, " God bless me from ever beholding the son of so wicked a daughter as mine was ! And yet, forasmuch as you are not guilty of her offence, hold ; take my hand and my blessing, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So saying, he laid one of his old hands upon the young man's head, blessing him ; but neither the Duke nor his followers could persuade him to take the other away from his eyes ; neither would he talk with him a word more. In tins spirit, shortly after, he died ; and just before his death he directed a tomb to be made for him, on which were sculptured the tools be- longing to his trade, with this epitaph : — " This sepulchre Barbadon caused to be made, (Being of Veyros, a shoemaker by his trade) For himself and the rest of his race, Excepting his daughter Ines in any case." The author says, that he has "heard it reported by the ancientest persons, that the fourth Duke of Braganza, Don James, son to Donna Isabel, sister to the King Don Emanuel, caused that tomb to be defaced, being the sepulchre of his fourth grandfather *." * It appears by this, that tho T^on John of the tradition 22 THE INDICATOR. As for the daughter, the conclusion of whose story comes lagging in like a penitent, " she continued," says the writer, " after she was delivered of that son, a very chaste and vir- tuous woman ; and the king made her com- mandress of Santos, a most honourable place, and very plentiful ; to the which none but princesses were admitted, living, as it were, abbesses and princesses of a monastery built without the walls of Lisbon, called Santos, that is Saints, founded by reason of some martyrs that were martyred there. And the religious women of that place have liberty to marry with the knights of their order, before they enter into that holy profession." The rest of our author's remarks are in too curious a spirit to be omitted. " In this mo- nastery," he says, " the same Donna Ines died, leaving behind her a glorious reputation for her virtue and holiness. Observe, gentle reader, the constancy that this Portuguese, a shoemaker, continued in, loathing to behold the honourable estate of his grandchild, nor would any more acknowledge his daughter, having been a lewd woman, for purchasing advancement with dishonour. This consider- j ed, you will not wonder at the Count Julian, that plagued Spain, and executed the king Roderigo for forcing his daughter La Cava. The example of this shoemaker is especially worthy the noting, and deeply to be consi- dered : for, besides, that it makes good our assertion, it teaches the higher not to disdain ! the lower, as long as they be virtuous and 1 lovers of honour. It may be that this old man, for his integrity, rising from a virtuous zeal, merited that a daughter coming by des- cent from his grandchild, should be made Queen of Castile, and the mother of great Isabel, grandmother to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Ferdinando." Alas ! a pretty posterity our shoemaker had, in Philip the 2nd and his successors, — a race more suitable to his severity against his child, than his blessing upon his grandchild. Old Barbadon was a fine fellow too, after his fashion. We do not know how he reconciled his unforgiving conduct with his Christianity ; but he had enough precedents on that point. "What we admire in him is, his showing that lie acted out of principle, and did not mistake passion for it. His crepidarian sculptures indeed are not so well ; but a little vanity may be allowed to mingle with and soften such edge-tools of self-denial, as he chose to handle. His treatment of his daughter was ignorant, and in wiser times would have been brutal ; especially when it is considered how much the conduct of children is modified by educa- tion and other circumstances : but then a is John the First, who was elected king of Portugal, and became famous for his great qualities ; and that his son by the alleged shoemaker's daughter was his successor, Alphonso the Fifth. brutal man would not have accompanied it with such voluntary suffering of his own. Neither did Barbadon leave his daughter to take her chance in the wide world, thinking of the evils she might be enduring, only to give a greater zest of fancied pity to the contentedness of his cruelty. He knew she was well taken care of; and if she was not to have the enjoyment of his society, he was determined that it should be a very uncom- fortable one to himself. He knew that she lay on a princely bed, while he would have none at all. He knew that she was served upon gold and silver, while he renounced his old chestnut table, — the table at which she used to sit. He knew while he sat looking at his old beard, and the wilful sordidness of his hands, that her locks and her fair limbs were objects of worship to the gallant and the great. And so he set off his destitutions against her over-possession ; and took out the punishment he gave her, in revenge upon himself. This was the instinct of a man who loved a prin- ciple, but hated nobody : — of a man who, in a wiser time, would have felt the wisdom of kindness. Thus his blessing upon his grand- child becomes consistent with his cruelty to his child : and his living stock was a fine one in spite of him. His daughter showed a sense of the wound she had given such a father, by relinquishing the sympathies she loved, because they had hurt him : and her son, worthy of such a grandfather and such a daughter, and refined into a gracefulness of knowledge by education, thought it no mean thing or vulgar to kneel to the grey-headed artisan in the street, and beg the blessing of his honest hand. XVII.— MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. Talking the other day with a friend* about Dante, he observed, that whenever so great a poet told us anything in addition or continua- tion of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses in one of the books of his Inferno, we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for. We thought this a happy remark, and in- stantly turned with him to the passage in question. The last account of Ulysses in the ancient poets, is his sudden re-appearance before the suitors at Ithaca. There is some- thing more told of him, it is true, before the Odyssey concludes ; but with the exception of his visit to his aged father, our memory scarcely wishes to retain it ; nor does it con- trovert the general impression left upon us, that the wandering hero is victorious over his * The late Mr. Keats. MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 23 domestic enemies ; and reposes at last, and for life, in the bosom of his family. The lesser poets, however, could not let him alone. Homer leaves the general impression upon one's mind, as to the close of his life ; but there are plenty of obscurer fables about it still. We have specimens in modern times of this propensity never to have done with a good story ; which is natural enough, though not very wise ; nor are the best writers likely to meddle with it. Thus Cervantes was plagued with a spurious Quixote ; and our circulating libraries have the adventures of Tom Jones in his Married State. The ancient writers on the present subject, availing them- selves of an obscure prophecy of Tiresias, who tells Ulysses on his visit to hell, that his old enemy the sea would be the death of him at last, bring over the sea Telegonus, his son by the goddess Circe, who gets into a scuffle with the Ithacans, and kills his father unknowingly. It is added, that Telegonus afterwards return- ed to his mother's island, taking Penelope and his half-brother Telemachus with him ; and here a singular arrangement takes place, more after the fashion of a modern Catholic dynasty, than an ancient heathen one : for while QEdipus was fated to undergo such dreadful misfortunes for marrying his mother without the knowledge of either party, Minerva herself comes down from heaven, on the pre- sent occasion, to order Telegonus, the son of Ulysses, to marry his father's wife ; the other son at the same time making a suitable match with his father's mistress, Circe. Telemachus seems to have had the best of this extraordinary bargain, for Circe was a goddess, consequently always young ; and yet to perplex these wind- ings-up still more, Telemachus is represented by some as marrying Circe's daughter, and killing his immortal mother-in-law. Nor does the character of the chaste and enduring Penelope escape in the confusion. Instead of waiting her husband's return in that patient manner, she is reported to have been over- hospitable to all the suitors ; the consequence of which was a son called Pan, being no less a personage than the god Pan himself, or Nature ; a fiction, as Bacon says, " applied very absurdly and indiscreetly." There are different stories respecting her lovers ; but it is reported that when Ulysses returned from Troy, he divorced her for incontinence ; and that she fled, and passed her latter days in Mantinea. Some even go so far as to say, that her father Icarius had attempted to destroy her when young, because the oracle had told him that she would be the most dissolute of the family. This was probably invented by the comic writers out of a buffoon malignity ; for there are men, so foolishly incredulous with regard to principle, that the reputation of it, even in a fiction, makes them impatient. Now it is impossible to say, whether Dante would have left Ulysses quietly with Penelope after all his sufferings, had he known them as described in Homer. The old Florentine, though wilful enough when he wanted to dis- pose of a modern's fate, had great veneration for his predecessors. At all events, he was not acquainted with Homer's works. They did not make their way back into Italy till a little later. But there were Latin writers extant, who might have informed him of the other stories relative to Ulysses ; and he saw nothing in them, to hinder him from giving the great wanderer a death of his own. He has accordingly, with great attention to nature, made him impatient of staying at home, after a life of such adventure and excitement. But we will relate the story in his own order. He begins it with one of his most romantic pieces of wildness. The poet and his guide Virgil are making the best of their difficult path along a ridge of the craggy rock that overhangs the eighth gulf of hell ; when Dante, looking down, sees the abyss before him full of flickering lights, as numerous, he says, as the fire-flies which a peasant, reposing on a hill, sees filling the valley, of a hot even- ing. Every flame shot about separately ; and he knew that some terrible mystery or other accompanied it. As he leaned down from the rock, grasping one of the crags, in order to look closer, his guide, who perceived his ear- nestness, said, " Within those fires are spirits ; every one swathed in what is burning him." Dante told him, that he had already guessed as much : and pointing to one of them in par- ticular, asked who was in that fire which was divided at top, as though it had ascended from the funeral-pile of the hating Theban brothers. " Within that," answered Virgil, " are Diomed and Ulysses, who speed together now to their own misery, as they used to do to that of others." They were suffering the penalty of the various frauds they had perpetrated in concert ; such as the contrivance of the Trojan horse, and the theft of the Palladium. Dante entreats, that if those who are within the sparkling horror can speak, it may be made to come near. Virgil says it shall ; but begs the Florentine not to question it himself, as the spirits, being Greek, might be shy of holding discourse with him. When the flame has come near enough to be spoken to, Virgil addresses the " two within one fire ; " and requests them, if he ever deserved anything of them as a poet, great or little, that they would not go away, till one of them had told him how he came into that extremity. At this, says Dante, the greater horn of the old fire began to lap hither and thither, mur- muring ; like a flame struggling with the wind. The top then, yearning to and fro, like a tongue trying to speak, threw out a voice, and said ; " When I departed from Circe, who withdrew me to her for more than a year in the neigh- 24 THE INDICATOR. bourhood of Gaieta, before iEneas had so named it, neither the sweet company of my son, nor pious affection of my old father, nor the long-owed love with which I ought to have gladdened Penelope, could conquer the ardour that was in me to become wise in knowledge of the world, of man's vices and his virtue. I put forth into the great open deep with only one bark, and the small remaining crew by whom I had not been left. I saw the two shores on either side, as far as Spain and Morocco ; and the island of Sardinia, and the other isles which the sea there bathes round about. Slowly we went, my companions and I, for we were old ; till at last we came to that narrow outlet, where Hercules set up his pillars, that no man might go further. I left Seville on the right hand : on the other I had left Ceuta. O brothers, said I, who through a hundred thousand perils are at length arrived at the west, deny not to the short waking day that yet remains to our senses, an insight into the unpeopled world, setting your backs upon the sun. Consider the stock from which ye sprang : ye were not made to live like the brute beasts, but to follow virtue and know- ledge. I so sharpened my companions with this little speech on our way, that it would have been difficult for me to have withheld them, if I would. We left the morning right in our stern, and made wings of our oars for the idle flight, always gaining upon the left. The night now beheld all the stars of the other pole ; while our own was so low, that it arose not out of the ocean-floor. Five times the light had risen underneath the moon, and five times fallen, since we put forth upon the great deep ; when we descried a dim mountain in the distance, which appeared higher to me than ever I had seen any before. We rejoiced, and as soon mourned : for there sprung a whirlwind from the new land, and struck the foremost frame of our vessel. Three times, with all the waters, it whirled us round ; at the fourth it dashed the stern up in air, and the prow downwards ; till, as seemed fit to others, the ocean, closed above our heads." Tre volte il f e girar con tutte i' acque : A la quarta levar la poppa in suso, E la prora ive in giu, come altrui piacque, Infin ch '1 mar fu sopra noi richiuso. Why poor Ulysses should find himself in hell after his immersion, and be condemned to a swathing of eternal fire, while St. Dominic, who deluged Christianity with fire and blood, is called a Cherubic Light, the Papist, not the poet, must explain. He puts all the Pagans in hell, because, however good some of them may have been, they lived before Christ, and could not worship God properly — (debitamente). But he laments their state, and represents them as suffering a mitigated punishment : they only live in a state of perpetual desire without hope (sol di tanto offesi) ! A sufficing misery, it must be allowed ; but compared with the horrors he fancies for heretics and others, undoubtedly a great relief. Dante, throughout his extraordi- nary work, gives many evidences of great natural sensibility ; and his countenance, as handed down to us, as well as the shade-struck gravity of his poetry, shows the cuts and dis- quietudes of heart he must have endured. But unless the occasional hell of his own troubles, and his consciousness of the muta- bility of all things, helped him to discover the brevity of individual suffering as a particular, and the lastingness of nature's benevolence as a universal, and thus gave his poem an inten- tion beyond what appears upon the surface, we must conclude, that a bigoted education, and the fierce party politics in which he was a leader and sufferer, obscured the greatness of his spirit. It is always to be recollected, how- ever, as Mr. Coleridge has observed somewhere in other words, that when men consign each other to eternal punishment and such-like horrors, their belief is rather a venting of present impatience and dislike, than anything which they take it for. The fiercest Papist or Calvinist only flatters himself (a strange flat- tery, too !) that he could behold a fellow- creature tumbling and shrieking about in eternal fire. He would begin shrieking himself in a few minutes ; and think that he and all heaven ought to pass away, rather than that one such agony should continue. Tertullian himself, when he longed to behold the enemies of his faith burning and liquefying, only meant, without knowing it, that he was in an excessive rage at not convincing everybody that read him. XVIII.— FAR COUNTRIES. Imagination, though no mean thing, is not a proud one. If it looks down from its wings upon common-places, it only the more perceives the vastness of the region about it. The infinity into which its flight carries it, might indeed throw back upon it a too great sense of insignificance, did not Beauty or Moral Justice, with its equal eye, look through that blank aspect of power, and re-assure it ; showing it that there is a power as much above power itself, as the thought that reaches to all, is to the hand that can touch only thus far. But we do not wish to get into this tempting region of speculation j u st n o w . We only intend to show the particular instance, in which imagination instinctively displays its natural humility : we mean, the fondness which ima- ginative times and people have shown for what is personally remote from them ; for what is opposed to their own individual conscious- ness, even in range of space, in farness of situ- ation. FAR COUNTRIES. 25 There is no surer mark of a vain people than their treating other nations with contempt, especially those of whom they know least. It is better to verify the proverb, and take every thing unknown for magnificent, than predeter- mine it to be worthless. The gain is greater. The instinct is more judicious. When we mention the French as an instance, we do not mean to be invidious. Most nations have their good as well as bad features. In Vanity Fair there are many booths. The French, not long ago, praised one of their neighbours so highly, that the latter is suspected to have lost as much modesty, as the former gained by it. But they did this as a set-off against their own despots and bigots. "When they again became the greatest power in Europe, they had a relapse of their old egotism. The French, though an amiable and intelligent people, are not an imaginative one. The greatest height they go is in a balloon. They get no farther than France, let them go where they will. They " run the great circle and are still at home," like the squirrel in his rolling cage. Instead of going to Nature in their poetry, they would make her come to them, and dress herself at their last new toilet. In philosophy and metaphysics, they divest themselves of gross prejudices, and then think they are in as graceful a state of nakedness as Adam and Eve. At the time when the French had this fit upon them of praising the English (which was nevertheless the honester one of the two), they took to praising the Chinese for number- less unknown qualities. This seems a contra- diction to the near-sightedness we speak of : but the reason they praised them was, that the Chinese had the merit of religious toleration : a great and extraordinary one certainly, and not the less so for having been, to all appear- ance, the work of one man. All the romance of China, such as it was, — anything in which they differed from the French, — their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great Wall, — was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the philosophers. It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contemptuous of others ; or at least more self-satisfied and unimaginative. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious ; and have a great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit them. But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their general character, that they should pay strangers even this equivocal compliment ; for under a prodigious mask of politeness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations, whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in us most is that of gun-making, and of the East- [ndian passage. When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they inquired foi China ; and on finding that it only made a little piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They thought that it was the main territory in the middle, the apple of the world's eye. On the other hand, the most imaginative nations, in their highest times, have had a respect for remote countries. It is a mistake to suppose that the ancient term barbarian, applied to foreigners, suggested the meaning we are apt to give it. It gathered some such insolence with it in the course of time ; but the more intellectual Greeks venerated the countriesfrom which they brought the elements of their mythology and philosophy. The philosopher travelled into Egypt, like a son to see his father. The merchant heard in Phoe- nicia the far-brought stories of other realms, which he told to his delighted countrymen. It is supposed, that the mortal part of Mentor in the Odyssey was drawn from one of these voyagers. When Anacharsis the Scythian was reproached with his native place by an unworthy Greek, he said, " My country may be a shame to me, but you are a shame to your country." Greece had a lofty notion of the Persians and the Great King, till Xerxes came over to teach it better, and betrayed the soft- ness of their skulls. It was the same with the Arabians, at the time when they had the accomplishments of the world to themselves ; as we see by their delightful tales. Everything shines with them in the distance, like a sunset. W^hat an ami- able people are their Persians ! What a wonderful place is the island of Serendib ! You would think nothing could be finer than the Caliph's city of Bagdat, till you hear of " Grand Cairo ;" and how has that epithet and that name towered in the imagination of all those, who have not had the misfortune to see the modern city ? Sindbad was respected, like Ulysses, because he had seen so many adventures and nations. So was Aboulfaouris the Great Voyager, in the Persian Tales. His very name sounds like a wonder. With many a tempest had his beard been shaken. It was one of the workings of the great Alfred's mind, to know about far-distant coun- tries. There is a translation by him of a book of geography ; and he even employed people to travel : a great stretch of intellectual muni- ficence for those times. About the same period, Haroun al Raschid (whom our manhood is startled to find almost a less real person than we thought him, for his very reality) wrote a letter to the Emperor of the West, Charlemagne. Here is Arabian and Italian romance, shaking hands in person. The Crusades pierced into a new world of remoteness. We do not know whether those were much benefited, who took part in them ; 2G THE INDICATOR. but for the imaginative persons remaining at home, the idea of going to Palestine must have been like travelling into a supernatural world. When the campaign itself had a good effect, it must have been of a very fine and highly-tempered description. Chaucer's Knight had been Sometime with the lord of Palatie Agen another hethen in Turkie : And evermore he had a sovereign price : And though that he was worthy, he was wise, And of his port as meek as is a mayde. How like a return from the moon must have been the re-appearance of such travellers as Sir John Mandevile, Marco Polo, and "William de Rubruquis, with their news of Prester John, the Great Mogul, and the Great Cham of Tartary ! The long-lost voyager must have been like a person consecrated in all the quarters of heaven. His staff and his beard must have looked like relics of his former self. The Venetians, who were some of the earliest European travellers, have been re- marked, among their other amiable qualities, for their great respect for strangers. The peculiarity of their position, and the absence of so many things which are common-places to other countries, such as streets, horses, and coaches, add, no doubt, to this feeling. But a foolish or vain people would only feel a con- tempt for what they did not possess. Milton, in one of those favourite passages of his, in which he turns a nomenclature into such grand meaning and music, shows us whose old footing he had delighted to follow. How he enjoys the distance ; emphatically using the words far, farthest, and utmost! — Embassies from regions far remote, In various habits, on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian ; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotick Isle ; and more to west, The realm of Boechus to the Black-moor sea ; From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these ; From India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle Taprobane. — Parad. Reg. b. iv. One of the main helps to our love of remote- ness in general, is the associations we connect with it of peace and quietness. Whatever there may be at a distance, people feel as if they should escape from the worry of their local cares. " O that I had wings like a dove ! then would I fly away and be at rest." The word far is often used wilfully in poetry, to render distance still more distant. An old English song begins — In Irelande farre over the sea There dwelt a bonny king. Thomson, a Scotchman, speaking of the western isles of his own country, has that delicious line, full of a dreary yet lulling pleasure ; — As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main. In childhood, the total ignorance of the world, especially when we are brought up in some confined spot, renders everything beyond the bounds of our dwelling a distance and a romance. Mr. Lamb, in his Recollections of Christ's Hospital, says that he remembers when some half-dozen of his school-fellows set off, " without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out Philip Quarll's Island." We once encountered a set of boys as romantic. It was at no greater distance than at the foot of a hill near Hampstead ; yet the spot was so perfectly Cisalpine to them, that two of them came up to us with looks of hushing eager- ness, and asked " whether, on the other side of that hill, there were not robbers ;" to which, the minor adventurer of the two added, " and some say serpents." They had all got bows and arrows, and were evidently hovering about the place, betwixt daring and apprehen- sion, as on the borders of some wild region. We smiled to think which it was that hus- banded their suburb wonders to more advan- tage, they or we : for while they peopled the place with robbers and serpents, we were peopling it with sy Ivans and fairies. " So was it when my life began ; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die ! The child is father to the man ; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." XIX.— A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. A man who does not contribute his quota of grim story now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters. He is bound to wear a death's-head, as part of his insignia. If he does not frighten everybody, he is nobody. If he does not shock the ladies, what can be expected of him ? We confess we think very cheaply of these stories in general. A story, merely horrible or even awful, which contains no sentiment elevating to the human heart and its hopes, is a mere appeal to the least judicious, least healthy, and least masculine of our passions, — fear. They whose attention can be gravely arrested by it, are in a fit state to receive any absurdity with respect ; and this is the reason, why less talents are required to enforce it, than in any other species of composition. With this opinion of such things, we may be allowed to say, that we would undertake to write a dozen horrible stories in a day, all of which should make the common worshippers of power, who were not in the very healthiest condition, turn pale. We would tell of Haunting Old Women, and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean Hands, and Empusas on One Leg, and Ladies growing Longer and Longer, and Horrid A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 27 Eyes meeting us through Key-holes, and Plaintive Heads, and Shrieking Statues, and Shocking Anomalies of Shape, and Things which when seen drove people mad ; and In- digestion knows what besides. But who would measure talents with a leg of veal, or a German sausage ? Mere grimness is as easy as grinning ; but it requires something to put a handsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offences, particularly of blood and wounds. A child has a reasonable respect for a Raw-head- and-bloody-bones, because all images whatso- ever of pain and terror are new and fearful to his inexperienced age : but sufferings merely physical (unless sublimated like those of Phi- loctetes) are common-places to a grown man. Images, to become awful to him, must be removed from the grossness of the shambles. A death's-head was a respectable thing in the hands of a poring monk, or of a nun compelled to avoid the idea of life and society, or of a hermit already buried in the desert. Holbein's Dance of Death, in which every grinning skeleton leads along a man of rank, from the pope to the gentleman, is a good Memento Mori ; but there the skeletons have an air of the ludicrous and satirical. If we were threatened with them in a grave way, as spec- tres, we should have a right to ask how they could walk about without muscles. Thus many of the tales written by such authors as the late Mr. Lewis, who wanted sentiment to give him the heart of truth, are quite puerile. "When his spectral nuns go about bleeding, we think they ought in decency to have applied to some ghost of a surgeon. His Little Grey Men, who sit munching hearts, are of a piece with fellows that eat cats for a wager. Stories that give mental pain to no purpose, or to very little purpose compared with the unpleasant ideas they excite of human nature, are as gross mistakes, in their way, as these, and twenty times as pernicious : for the latter become ludicrous to grown people. They ori- ginate also in the same extremes, of callous- ness, or of morbid want of excitement, as the others. But more of these hereafter. Our business at present is with things ghastly and ghostly. A ghost story, to be a good one, should unite, as much as possible, objects such as they are in life, with a preternatural spirit. And to be a perfect one, — at least to add to the other utility of excitement a moral utility, — they should imply some great sentiment, — some- thing that comes out of the next world to remind us of our duties in this ; or something that helps to carry on the idea of our humanity into after-life, even when we least think we shall take it with us. When " the buried ma- jesty of Denmark " revisits earth to speak to his son Hamlet, he comes armed, as he used to be, in his complete steel. His visor is raised ; and the same fine face is there ; only, in spite of his punishing errand and his own sufferings, with A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. When Donne the poet, in his thoughtful eagerness to reconcile life and death, had a figure of himself painted in a shroud, and laid by his bedside in a coffin, he did a higher thing than the monks and hermits with their skulls. It was taking his humanity with him into the other world, not affecting to lower the sense of it by regarding it piecemeal or in the frame- work. Burns, in his Tarn O'&hanter, shows the dead in their coffins after the same fashion. He does not lay bare to us their skeletons or refuse, things with which we can connect no sympathy or spiritual wonder. They still are flesh and body to retain the one ; yet so look and behave, inconsistent in their very consis- tency, as to excite the other. Coffins stood round like open presses, Which showed the dead in their last dresses : And by some devilish cantrip sleight, Each, in his cauld hand, held a light. Re-animation is perhaps the most ghastly of all ghastly things, uniting as it does an appear- ance of natural interdiction from the next world, with a supernatural experience of it. Our human consciousness is jarred out of its self-possession. The extremes of habit and newness, of common-place and astonishment, meet suddenly, without the kindly introduc- tion of death and change ; and the stranger appals us in proportion. When the account appeared the other day in the newspapers of the galvanized dead body, whose features as well as limbs underwent such contortions, that it seemed as if it were about to rise up, one almost expected to hear, for the first time, news of the other world. Perhaps the most appalling figure in Spenser is that of Maleger : {Fairy Queen, b. n. c. xi.) Upon a tygre swift and fierce he rode, That as the winde ran underneath his lode, Whiles his long legs nigh raught unto the ground : Full large he was of limbe, and shoulders brode, But of such subtile substance and unsound, That like a ghost he seemed, whose grave-clothes were unbound. Mr. Coleridge, in that voyage of his to the brink of all unutterable things, the Ancient Mariner (which works out however a fine sen- timent), does not set mere ghosts or hobgoblins to man the ship again, when its crew are dead ; but re-animates, for a while, the crew them- selves. There is a striking fiction of this sort in Sale's notes upon the Koran. Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains leaning on a staff and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive ; till a worm gnawing through the prop, he falls down. — The contrast .of the appearance of humanity with 28 THE INDICATOR. something mortal or supernatural, is always the more terrible in proportion as it is complete. In the pictures of the temptations of saints and hermits, where the holy person is sur- rounded, teazed, and enticed, with devils and fantastic shapes, the most shocking phantasm is that of the beautiful woman. To return also to the poem above-mentioned. The most appalling personage in Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner is the Spectre-woman, who is called Life-in- Death. He renders the most hideous abstrac- tion more terrible than it could otherwise have been, by embodying it in its own reverse. K Death " not only « lives " in it ; but the " un- utterable " becomes uttered. To see such an unearthly passage end in such earthliness, seems to turn common-place itself into a sort of spectral doubt. The Mariner, after describ- ing the horrible calm, and the rotting sea in which the ship was stuck, is speaking of a strange sail which he descried in the distance : The western wave was all a-flame, The day was well-nigh done ! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright sun ; When that strange ship drove suddenly Betwixt us and the sun. And straight the sun was necked with bara (Heaven's Mother send us grace !) As if through a dungeon-grate he peer'd, With broad and burning face. Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she neers and neers ! Are those her sails that glance in the sun Like restless gossameres ? Are those her ribs, through which the sun Did peer as through a grate ? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a death ? and are there two ? Is Death that Woman's mate ? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-Mare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. But we must come to Mr. Coleridge's story with our subtlest imaginations upon us. Now let us put our knees a little nearer the fire, and tell a homelier one about Life in Death. The groundwork of it is in Sandys' Commen- tary upon Ovid, and quoted from Sabinus*. A gentleman of Bavaria, of a noble family, was so afflicted at the death of his wife, that unable to bear the company of any other per- son, he gave himself up to a solitary way Of living. This was the more remarkable in him, as he had been a man of jovial habits, fond of his wine and visitors, and impatient of having his numerous indulgences contradicted. But in the same temper perhaps might be found the cause of his sorrow ; for though he would be impatient with his wife, as with others, yet * The Saxon Latin poet, we presume, professor of belles- lettres at Frankfort. We know nothing of him except from a biographical dictionary. his love for her was one of the gentlest wills he had ; and the sweet and unaffected face which she always turned upon his anger, might have been a thing more easy for him to trespass upon while living, than to forget, when dead and gone. His very anger towards her, compared with that towards others, was a relief to him. It was rather a wish to refresh himself in the balmy feeling of her patience, than to make her unhappy herself, or to punish her, as some would have done, for that virtuous contrast to his own vice. But whether he bethought himself, after her death, that this was a very selfish mode of loving ; or whether as some thought, he had wearied out her life with habits so contrary to her own ; or whether, as others reported, he had put it to a fatal risk by some lordly piece of self-will, in consequence of which she had caught a fever on the cold river during a night of festivity ; he surprised even those who thought that he loved her, by the extreme bitterness of his grief. The very mention of festivity, though he was patient for the first day or two, afterwards threw him into a pas- sion of rage ; but by degrees even his rage followed his other old habits. He was gentle, but ever silent. He ate and drank but suffi- cient to keep him alive ; and used to spend the greater part of the day in the spot where his wife was buried. He was going there one evening, in a very melancholy manner, with his eyes turned towards the earth, and had just entered the rails of the burial-ground, when he was ac- costed by the mild voice of somebody coining to meet him. " It is a blessed evening, Sir," said the voice. The gentleman looked up. Nobody but himself was allowed to be in the place at that hour ; and yet he saw, with as- tonishment, a young chorister approaching him. He was going to express some wonder, when, he said, the modest though assured look of the boy, and the extreme beauty of his countenance, which glowed in the setting sun before him, made an irresistible addition to the singular sweetness of his voice ; and he asked him with an involuntary calmness, and a gesture of respect, not what he did there, but what he wished. " Only to wish you all good things," answered the stranger, who had now come up, " and to give you this letter." The gentleman took the letter, and saw upon it, with a beating yet scarcely bewildered heart, the handwriting of his wife. He raised his eyes again to speak to the boy, but he was gone. He cast them far and near round the place, but there were no traces of a passenger. He then opened the letter ; and by the divine light of the setting sun, read these words : " To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife : " Otto, my husband, the soul you regret so A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 29 is returned. You will know the truth of this, and be prepared with calmness to see it, by the divineness of the messenger, who has passed you. You will find me sitting in the public walk, praying for you ; praying, that you may never more give way to those gusts of passion, and those curses against others, which divided us. " This, with a warm hand, from the living Bertha." Otto (for such, it seems, was the gentleman's name) went instantly, calmly, quickly, yet with a sort of benumbed being, to the public walk. He felt, but with only a half-consciousness, as if he glided without a body. But all his spirit was awake, eager, intensely conscious. It seemed to him as if there had been but two things in the world — Life and Death ; and that Death was dead. All else appeared to have been a dream. He had awaked from a waking state, and found himself all eye, and spirit, and locomotion. He said to himself, once, as he went : " This is not a dream. I will ask my great ancestors to-morrow to my new bridal feast, for they are alive." Otto had been calm at first, but something of old and triumphant feelings seemed again to come over him. Was he again too proud and con- fident ? Did his earthly humours prevail again, when he thought them least upon him ? We shall see. The Bavarian arrived at the public walk. It was full of people with their wives and children, enjoying the beauty of the evening. Something like common fear came over him, as he went in and out among them, looking at the benches on each side. It happened that there was only one person, a lady, sitting upon them. She had her veil down ; and his being underwent a fierce but short convulsion as he went near her. Something had a little bafiled the calmer inspiration of the angel that had accosted him : for fear prevailed at the in- stant, and Otto passed on. He returned before he had reached the end of the walk, and ap- proached the lady again. She was still sitting in the same quiet posture, only he thought she looked at him. Again he passed her. On his second return, a grave and sweet courage came upon him, and in an under but firm tone of in- quiry, he said "Bertha?" — "I thought you had forgotten me," said that well-known and mellow voice, which he had seemed as far from ever hearing again as earth is from heaven. He took her hand, which grasped his in turn ; and they walked home in silence together, the arm, which was wound within his, giving warmth for warmth. The neighbours seemed to have a miracu- lous want of wonder at the lady's re-appear- ance. Something was said about a mock- funeral, and her having withdrawn from his company for awhile; but visitors came as before, and his wife returned to her house- hold affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before ; and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great internal thought, than of unhappi- For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper which he acquired. His for- tunes flourished beyond his earliest ambi- tion ; the most amiable as well as noble persons of the district were frequent visitors ; and people said, that to be at Otto's house, must be the next thing to being in heaven. But by degrees his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented impatience on his wife ; but he again began to show, that the disquietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary thing, in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, so he held himself secure if he treated her well ; or whether he was at all times rather proud of her, than fond ; or whatever was the cause Avhich again set his antipathies above his sympathies, certain it was, that his old habits returned upon him ; not so often indeed, but with greater violence and pride when they did. These were the only times, at which his wife was observed to show any ordinary symptoms of uneasiness. At length, one day, some strong rebuff" which he had received from an alienated neighbour threw him into such a transport of rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying with a loud voice — " This treatment to •me too! Tome! To me, who if the world knew all " At these words, his wife, who had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary earnestness in the face, sud- denly glided from the room. He and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly ; but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He made a movement of despair ; but they went. There was a short passage, which turned to the right into her fa- vourite room. They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no answer. At last, one of them gently opened it ; and looking in, they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather to be in the middle of the room ; only the face was towards the fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but re- ceived no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still received none. The figure stood dumb and unmoved. At last, one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of a face. 30 THE INDICATOR. The clothes were standing upright by them- selves. That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might be so, to moulder away. It was called the Room of the Lady's Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long uninhabited, and at length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since ; and nobody would ven- ture to go near him, but a man who had the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who would accept them ; for most of the neighbours held them in horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it ; and the matter was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, said one day that he would have a child of his own on purpose. His employer, however, died in a day or two. They did not believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, looking upon the latter as a sort of Ogre, and upon his agent as little better, though a good-natured-looking earnest kind of person. It was said many years after, that this man had been a friend of the Bavarian's when young, and had been de- serted by him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might do. XX— THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. Having met in the Harleian Miscellany with an account of a pet thief of ours, the famous Du Vail, who flourished in the time of Charles the Second, and wishing to introduce him worthily to the readers, it has brought to mind such a number of the light-fingered gentry, his predecessors, that we almost feel hustled by the thoughts of them. Our subject, we may truly fear, will run away with us. We feel beset, like poor Tasso in his dungeon ; and are not sure that our paper will not suddenly be conveyed away from under our pen. Already we miss some excellent remarks, which we should have made in this place. If the reader should meet with any of that kind hereafter, upon the like subject,in another man's writings, twenty to one they are stolen from us, and ought to have enriched this our plundered exordium. He that steals an author's purse, may emphatically be said to steal trash ; but he that filches from him his good things Alas, we thought our subject would be running away with us. We must keep firm. We must put something heavier in our remarks, as the little thin Grecian philosopher used to put lead in his pockets, lest the wind should steal him. The more ruffianly crowd of thieves should go first, as pioneers ; but they can hardly be looked upon as progenitors of our gentle Du Vail ; and besides, with all their ferocity, some of them assume a grandeur, from stand- ing in the remote shadows of antiquity. There was the famous son, for instance, of Vulcan and Medusa, whom Virgil calls the dire aspect of half-human Cacus— Semihominis Caci facies dira. (iEneid, b. viii. v. 194.) He was the raw-head-and-bloody-bones of ancient fable. He lived in a cave by Mount Aventine, breath- ing out fiery smoke, and haunting king Evan- der's highway like the Apollyon of Pilgrim's Progress. Semper que recenti Ca?de tepebat humus ; foribusque adfixa superbis Ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo. The place about was ever in a plash Of steaming blood ; and o'er the insulting door Hung pallid human heads, defaced with dreary gore. He stole some of the cows of Hercules, and dragged them backwards into his cave to pre- vent discovery ; but the oxen happening to low, the cows answered them ; and the demi- god, detecting the miscreant in his cave, strangled him after a hard encounter. This is one of the earliest sharping tricks upon record. Autolycus, the son of Mercury (after Avhom Shakspeare christened his merry rogue in the Winter's Tale) was a thief suitable to the greater airiness of his origin. He is said to have per- formed tricks which must awake the envy even of horse-dealers ; for in pretending to return a capital horse which he had stolen, he palmed upon the owners a sorry jade of an ass ; which was gravely received by those flats of antiquity. Another time he went still farther ; for having conveyed away a hand- some bride, he sent in exchange an old lady elaborately hideous ; yet the husband did not find out the trick till he had got off. Autolycus himself, however, was outwitted by Sisyphus, the son of iEolus. Autolycus was in the habit of stealing his neighbours' cattle, and altering the marks upon them. } Among others he stole some from Sisyphus ; but notwithstanding his usual precautions, he j was astonished to find the latter come and j pick out his oxen, as if nothing had happened, i He had marked them under the hoof. Auto- J lycus, it seems, had the usual generosity of genius ; and was so pleased with this evidence of superior cunning, that some say he gave him in marriage his daughter Anticlea, who was afterwards the wife of Laertes, the father of Ulysses. According to others, however, he only favoured him with his daughter's com- pany for a time, a fashion not yet extinct in THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. SI some primitive countries ; and it was a re- proach made against Ulysses, that Laertes was only his pretended, and Sisyphus his real, father. Sisyphus has the credit of being the greatest knave of antiquity. His famous punishment in hell, of being compelled to roll a stone up a hill to all eternity, and seeing it always go down again, is attributed by some to a characteristic trait, which he could not help playing off upon Pluto. It was supposed by the ancients, that a man's ghost wandered in a melancholy manner upon the banks of the Styx, as long as his corpse remained without burial. Sisyphus on his death-bed purposely charged his wife to leave him unburied ; and then begged Pluto's permission to go back to earth, on his parole, merely to punish her for so scandalous a neglect. Like the lawyer, however, who contrived to let his hat fall inside the door of heaven, and got St. Peter's per- mission to step in for it, Sisyphus would not return ; and so when Pluto had him again, he paid him for the trick with setting him upon this everlasting job. The exploits of Mercury himself, the god of cunning, may be easily imagined to surpass everything achieved byprofaner hands. Homer, in the hymn to his honour, has given a delight- ful account of his prematurity in swindling. He had not been born many hours before he stole Vulcan's tools, Mars' sword, and Jupiter's sceptre. He beat Cupid in a wrestling bout on the same day ; and Venus caressing him for his conquest, he returned the embrace by filching away her girdle. He would also have stolen Jupiter's thunderbolts, but was afraid of burning his fingers. On the evening of his birth-day, he drove off the cattle of Admetus, which Apollo was tending. The good-humoured god of wit endeavoured to frighten him into restoring them ; but could not help laughing when, in the midst of his threatenings, he found himself without his quiver. The history of thieves is to be found either in that of romance, or in the details of the history of cities. The latter have not come down to us from the ancient world, with some exceptions in the comic writers, immaterial to our present purpose, and in the loathsome rhetoric of Petronius. The finest thief in old history is the pirate who made that famous answer to Alexander, in which he said that the conqueror was only the mightier thief of the two. The story of the thieving architect in Herodotus we will tell another time. We can call to mind no other thieves in the Greek and Latin writers (always excepting political ones) except some paltry fellows who stole napkins at dinner ; and the robbers in Apuleius, the precursors of those in Gil Bias. When we come, however, to the times of the Arabians and of chivalry, they abound in all their glory, both great and small. Who among us does not know by heart the story of the never-to-be- forgotten Forty Thieves, with their treasure in the green wood, their anxious observer, their magical opening of the door, their captain, their concealment in the jars, and the scalding oil, that, as it were, extinguished them groan- ing, one by one ? Have we not all ridden backwards and forwards with them to the wood a hundred times ? — watched them, with fear and trembling, from the tree ? — sewn up, blindfolded, the four quarters of the dead body ? — and said, a Open Sesame," to every door at school? May we ride with them again and again ; or we shall lose our appetite for some of the best things in the world. We pass over those interlopers in our English family, the Danes ; as well as Rollo the Norman, and other freebooters, who only wanted less need of robbery, to become respectable con- querors. In fact, they did so, as they got on. We have also no particular worthy to select from among that host of petty chieftains, who availed themselves of their knightly castles and privileges, to commit all sorts of unchival- rous outrages. These are the giants of modern romance ; and the Veglios, Malengins, and Pinabellos, of Pulci, Spenser, and Ariosto. They survived in the petty states of Italy a long while ; gradually took a less solitary, though hardly less ferocious shape, among the fierce political partisans recorded by Dante ; and at length became represented by the men of desperate fortunes, who make such a figure, between the gloomy and the gallant, in Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho. The breaking up of the late kingdom of Italy, with its depend- encies, has again revived them in some degree ; but not, we believe, in any shape above common robbery. The regular modern thief seems to make his appearance for the first time in the imaginary character of Brunello, as described by Boiardo and Ariosto. He is a fellow that steals every valuable that comes in his way. The way in which he robs Sacripant, king of Circassia, of his horse, has been ridiculed by Cervantes ; if indeed he did not rather repeat it with great zest : for his use of the theft is really not such a caricature as in Boiardo and his great follower. While Sancho is sitting lumpishly asleep upon the back of his friend Dapple, Gines de Passamonte, the famous thief, comes and gently withdraws the donkey from under him, leaving the somniculous squire propped upon the saddle with four sticks. His consternation on waking may be guessed. But. in the Italian poets, the Circassian prince has only fallen into a deep meditation, when Bru- nello draws away his steed. Ariosto appears to have thought this extravagance a hazardous one, though he could not deny himself the pleasure of repeating it ; for he has made Sacripant blush, when called upon to testify how the horse was stolen from him. (Orlando Furio. lib. xxvu. st. 84.) In the Italian Novels and the old French 32 THE 1NDICAT0B, Tales, are a variety of extremely amusing stories of thieves, all most probably founded on fact. We will give a specimen as we go, by way of making this article the completer. A doctor of laws in Bologna had become rich enough, by scraping money together, to indulge himself in a grand silver cup, which he sent home one day to his wife from the goldsmith's. There were two sharping fellows prowling about that day for a particular object ; and getting scent of the cup, they laid their heads together, to contrive how they might indulge themselves in it instead. One of them accord- ingly goes to a fishmonger's, and buys a fine lamprey, which he takes to the doctor's wife, with her husband's compliments, and he would bring a company of his brother doctors with him to dinner, requesting in the meantime that she would send back the cup by the bearer, as he had forgotten to have his arms engraved upon it. The good lady, happy to obey all these pleasing impulses on the part of master doctor, takes in the fish, and sends out the cup, with equal satisfaction ; and sets about getting the dinner ready. The doctor comes home at his usual hour, and finding his dinner so much better than ordinary, asks with an air of wonder, where was the necessity of going to that expense : upon which the wife, putting on an air of wonder in her turn, and proud of possessing the new cup, asks him where are all those brother doctors, whom he said he should bring with him. "What does the fool mean ?" said the testy old gentleman. "Mean !" rejoined the wife — " what does this mean ?" pointing to the fish. The doctor looked down with his old eyes at the lamprey. " God knows," said he, " Avhat it means. I am sure I don't know what it means more than any j other fish, except that I shall have to pay a , pretty sum for every mouthful you eat of it." — " Why, it was your own doing, husband," said the wife ; " and you will remember it, \ perhaps, when you recollect that the same man that brought me the fish, was to take away the cup to have your name engraved upon it." At this the doctor started back, with his eyes as wide open as the fish's, exclaiming, " And you gave it him, did you ?" — "To be sure I did," returned the good housewife. The old doctor here began a passionate speech, which he sud- denly broke off ; and after stamping up and down the room, and crying out that he was an undone advocate, ran quivering out into the street like one frantic, asking everybody if he had seen a man with a lamprey. The two rogues were walking all this time in the neigh- bourhood ; and seeing the doctor set off, in his frantic fit, to the goldsmith's, and knowing that he who brought the lamprey had been well disguised, they began to ask one another, in the jollity of their triumph, what need there was for losing a good lamprey, because they had gained a cup. The other therefore went to the doctor's house, and putting on a face of good news, told the wife that the cup was found. " Master doctor," said he, " bade me come and tell you that it was but a joke of your old friend What's-his name." — "Castel- lani, I warrant me," said the wife, with a face broad with delight. "The same," returned he : — " master doctor says that Signor Castellani, and the other gentlemen he spoke of, are wait- ing for you at the Signor's house, where they purpose to laugh away the choler they so merrily raised, with a good dinner and wine, and to that end they have sent me for the lamprey." — " Take it in God's name," said the good woman ; " I am heartily glad to see it go out of the house, and shall follow it myself speedily." So saying, she gave him the fine hot fish, with some sauce, between two dishes ; and the knave, who felt already round the corner with glee, slid it under his cloak, and made the best of his way to his companion, who lifted up his hands and eyes at sight of him, and asked twenty questions in a breath, and chuckled, and slapped his thigh, and snapped his fingers for joy, to think what a pair of fools two rogues had to do with. Little did the poor despairing doctor, on his return home, guess what they were saying of him as he passed the wall of the house in which they were feasting. "Heyday!" cried the wife, smiling all abroad, as she saw him entering, "what, art thou come to fetch me then, bone of my bone ? Well ; if this isn't the gallantest day I have seen many a year ! It puts me in mind — it puts me in mind" Here the chirp- ing old lady was about to remind the doctor of the days of his youth, holding out her arms and raising her quivering voice, when {we shudder to relate) she received a considerable cuff on the left cheek. " You make me mad," cried the doctor, " with your eternal idiotical non- sense. What do you mean by coming to fetch you, and the gallantest day of your life ? May the devil fetch you, and me, and that invisible fiend that stole the cup." — " What ! " exclaimed the wife, suddenly changing her tone from a vociferous complaint which she had unthink- ingly set up, " did you send nobody then for the lamprey ? " Here the doctor cast his eyes upon the bereaved table; and unable to bear the shame of this additional loss, however trivial, began tearing his hair and beard, and hopping about the room, giving his wife a new and scandalous epithet at every step, as if he was dancing to a catalogue of her imperfections. The story shook all the shoulders in Bologna for a month after. As we find, by the length to which this article has already reached, that we should otherwise be obliged to compress our recollec- tions of Spanish, French, and English thieves, into a compass that would squeeze them into the merest dry notices, we will postpone them at once to our next number: and relate THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 33 another story from the same Italian novelist that supplied our last*. Our author is Mas- succio of Salerno, a novelist who disputes with Bandello the rank next in popularity to Boc- caccio. We have not the original by us, and must be obliged to an English work for the groundwork of our story, as we have been to Paynter's Palace of Pleasure for the one just related. But we take the liberty usual with the repeaters of these stories ; we retain the incidents, but tell them in our own way, and imagine what might happen in the intervals. Two Neapolitan sharpers, having robbed a Genoese merchant of his purse, make the best of their way to Sienna, where they arrive during the preaching of St. Bernardin. One of them attends a sermon with an air of con- spicuous modesty and devotion, and afterwards waits upon the preacher, and addresses him thus : a Reverend father, you see before you a man, poor indeed, but honest. I do not mean to boast ; God knows, I have no reason. Who upon earth has reason, unless it be one who will be the last to boast, like yourself, holy father?" Here the saintly orator shook his head. "I do not mean," resumed the stranger, " to speak even of the reverend and illustrious Bernardin, but as of a man among men. For my part, I am, as it were, a creep- ing thing among them ; and yet I am honest. If I have any virtue, it is that. I crawl right onward in my path, looking neither to the right nor to the left ; and yet I have my temptations. Reverend father, I have found this purse. I will not deny, that being often in want of the common necessaries of life, and having been obliged last night, in particular, to sit down faint at the city gates, for want of my ordinary crust and onion, which I had given to one (God help him) still worse off than myself, I did cast some looks— I did, I say, just open the purse, and cast a wistful eye at one of those shining pieces, that lay one over the other inside, with something like a wish that I could procure myself a meal with it, unknown to the lawful proprietor. But my conscience, thank Heaven, prevailed. I have to make two requests to you, reverend father. First, that you will absolve me for this my offence; and second, that you will be pleased to mention in one of your dis- courses, that a poor sinner from Milan, on his road to hear them, has found a purse, and would willingly restore it to the right owner. I would fain give double the contents of it to find him out ; but then, what can I do ? All the wealth I have consists in my honesty. Be pleased, most illustrious father, to mention * In the original edition of the Indicator this article was divided into three numbers. Perhaps it would have been better had the division been retained : but per- plexities occur in hastily correcting a work for a new edition, which the reader will have the goodness to excuse. this in your discourse, as modestly as becomes my nothingness; and to add especially, that the purse was found on the road from Milan, lying, miraculously as it were, upon a sunny bank, open to the view of all, under an olive- tree, not far from a little fountain, the plea- sant noise of which peradventure had invited the owner to sleep." The good father, at hearing this detail, smiled at the anxious sincerity of the poor pilgrim, and, giving him the required absolution, promised to do his utmost to bring forth the proprietor. In his next sermon, he accordingly dwelt with such eloquence on the opportunities thrown in the way of the rich who lose purses to behave nobly, that his congregation several times half rose from their seats out of enthusiasm, and longed for some convenient loss of property, that might enable them to show their dis- interestedness. At the conclusion of it, how- ever, a man stepped forward, and said, that anxious as he was to do justice to the finder of the purse, which he knew to be his the moment he saw it (only he was loth to inter- rupt the reverend father), he had claims upon him at home, in the person of his wife and thirteen children, — fourteen perhaps, he might now say, — which, to his great sorrow, pre- vented him from giving the finder more than a quarter of a piece ; this however he offered him with the less scruple, since he saw the seraphic disposition of the reverend preacher and his congregation, who he had no doubt would make ample amends for this involuntary deficiency on the part of a poor family man, the whole portion of whose wife and children might be said to be wrapped up in that purse. His sleep under the olive-tree had been his last for these six nights (here the other man said, with a tremulous joy of acknowledgment, that it was indeed just six nights since he had found it); and Heaven only knew when he should have had another, if his children's bread, so to speak, had not been found again." With these words, the sharper (for such, of course, he was) presented the quarter of a piece to his companion, who made all but a prostration for it ; and hastened with the purse out of the church. The other man's circum- stances were then inquired into, and as he was found to have almost as many children as the purse-owner, and no possessions at all, as he said, but his honesty, — all his children being equally poor and pious, — a considerable subscription was raised for him ; so large indeed, that on the appearance of a new claimant next day, the pockets of the good people were found empty. This was no other than the Genoese merchant, who having turned back on his road when he missed his purse, did not stop till he came to Sienna, and heard the news of the day before. Imagine the feelings of . the deceived people ! Saint Ber- nardin was convinced that the two cheats 34 THE INDICATOR. y some as an additional offence (which it may be thought to be by some very delicate as well as dishonest people), we must recollect, that it was the ob- 40 THE INDICATOR. ject of his book to give a plain unsophisticated account of a human being's experiences ; and that many persons of excellent repute would have been found to have committed actions as bad, had they given accounts of themselves as candid. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that all children were thieves and liars : and somebody, we believe a Scotchman, answered a fond speech about human nature, by exclaiming that " human nature was a rogue and a vaga- bond, or so many laws would not have been necessary to restrain it." We venture to differ, on this occasio. with both Englishman and Scotchman. Laws in particular, taking the bad with the good, are quite as likely to have made rogues, as restrained them. But Ave see, at any rate, what has been suspected of more orthodox persons than Rousseau ; to say no- thing of less charitable advantages which might be taken of such opinions. Rousseau committed a petty theft ; and miserably did his false shame, the parent of so many crimes, make him act. But he won back to their in- fants' lips the bosoms of thousands of mothers. He restored to their bereaved and helpless owners thousands of those fountains of health and joy : and before he is abused, even for worse tilings than the theft, let those whose virtue consists in custom, think of this. As we have mixed fictitious with real thieves in this article, in a manner, we fear, somewhat uncritical (and yet the fictions are most likely founded on fact ; and the life of a real thief is a kind of dream and romance), we will despatch our fictitious English thieves before we come to the others. And we must make shorter work of them than we intended, or we shall never come to our friend Du Vail. The length to which this article has stretched out, will be a warning to us how we render our paper liable to be run away with in future. There is a very fine story of Three Thieves in Chaucer, which we must tell at large an- other time. The most prominent of the fabu- lous thieves in England is that bellipotent and immeasurable wag, Falstaff. If for a momen- tary freak, he thought it villanous to steal, at the next moment he thought it villanous not to steal. " Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street, about you, Sir ; but I marked him not. And yet he talked very wisely ; but I regarded him not. And yet he talked wisely ; and in the streets, too. " P. Henry. Thou didst well ; for * Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.' "Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration ; and art, indeed, able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal ; God for- give thee for it ! Before I knew thee, Hal, 1 knew nothing ; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over : by the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain : I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christendom. "P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack ? "Falstaff. Where thou wilt, lad ; I'll make one : an I do not, call me villain, and baffle me." We must take care how we speak of Mac- heath, or we shall be getting political again. Fielding's Jonathan Wild the G-reat is also, in this sense, " caviare to the multitude." But we would say more if we had room. Count Fathom, a deliberate scoundrel, compounded of the Jonathan Wilds and the more equivocal Cagliostros and other adventurers, is a thief not at all to our taste. We are continually obliged to call his mother to our recollection, in order to bear him. The only instance in which the character of an absolute profligate pickpocket was ever made comparatively wel- come to our graver feelings, is in the extraor- dinary story of " Manon VEscaut" by the Abbe Prevost. It is the story of a young man, so passionately in love with a profligate female, that he follows her through every species of vice and misery, even when she is sent as a convict to New Orleans. His love, indeed, is re- turned. He is obliged to subsist upon her vices, and, in return, is induced to help her with his own, becoming a cheat and a swindler to supply her outrageous extravagances. On board the convict-ship (if we recollect) he waits on her through every species of squalidness, the con- vict-dress and her shaved head only redoubling his love by the help of pity. This seems a shocking and very immoral book ; yet multi- tudes of very reputable people have found a charm in it. The fact is, not only that Manon is beautiful, sprightly, really fond of her lover, and after all, becomes reformed ; but that it is delightful, and ought to be so, to the human heart, to see a vein of sentiment and real good- ness looking out through all this callous sur- face of guilt. It is like meeting with a tree in a squalid hole of a city ; a flower or a frank face in a reprobate purlieu. The capabilities of human nature are not compromised. The virtue alone seems natural ; the guilt, as it so often is, seems artificial, and the result of some bad education or other circumstance. Nor is anybody injured. It is one of the shallowest of all shallow notions to talk of the harm of such works. Do we think no- body is to be harmed but the virtuous ; or that there are not privileged harms and vices to be got rid of, as well as unprivileged ? No good-hearted person will be injured by read- ing " Manon l'Escaut." There is the belief in goodness in it ; a faith, the want of which does so much harm, both to the vicious and the over-righteous. THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 41 The prince of all robbers, English or foreign, is undoubtedly Robin Hood. There is a wor- thy Scottish namesake of his, Rob Roy, who has lately had justice done to all his injuries by a countryman ; and the author, it seems, has now come down from the borders to see the Rob of the elder times well treated. We were obliged to tear ourselves away from his first volume *, to go to this ill-repaying article. But Robin Hood will still remain the chief and "gentlest of thieves." He acted upon a larger scale, or in opposition to a larger injustice, to a whole political system. He " shook the superflux " to the poor, and " showed the heavens more just." However, what we have to say of him, we must keep till the trees are in leaf again, and the green- wood shade delightful. We dismiss, in one rabble-like heap, the real Jonathan Wilds, Avershaws, and other heroes of the Newgate Calendar, who have no redemption in their rascality ; and after them, for gentlemen- valets, may go the Barringtons, Major Semples, and other sneaking rogues, who held on a tremulous career of iniquity, betwixt pilfering and repenting. Yet Jack Sheppard must not be forgotten, with his ingenious and daring breaks-out of prison ; nor Turpin, who is said to have ridden his horse with such swiftness from York to London, that he was enabled to set up an alibi. We have omitted to notice the cele- brated Bucaniers of America ; but these are fellows, with regard to whom we are willing to take Dogberry's advice, and "steal out of their company." Their history disappoints us with its dryness. All hail ! thou most attractive of scape- graces ! thou most accomplished of gentlemen of the road ! thou, worthy to be called one of "the minions of the moon," Monsieur Claude Du Vail, whom we have come such a long and dangerous journey to see I Claude Du Vail, according to a pleasant account of him in the Harleian Miscellany, was born at Domfront, in Normandy, in the year 1643, of Pierre Du Vail, miller, and Marguerite de la Roche, the fair daughter of a tailor. Being a sprightly boy, he did not remain in the country, but became servant to a person of quality at Paris, and with this gentleman he came over to England at the time of the Restoration. It is difficult to say, which came over to pick the most pockets and hearts, Charles the Second or Claude du Vail. Be this as it may, his " courses " of life (" for," says the contemporary historian, " I dare not call them vices,") soon reduced him to the necessity of going upon the road ; and here " he quickly became so famous, that in a proclamation for the taking several notorious highwaymen, he had the honour to be named first." " He took," says his biographer, " the * Of Ivanhoe. generous way of padding ; " that is to say, he behaved with exemplary politeness to all coaches, especially those in which there were ladies, making a point of frightening them as amiably as possible, and insisting upon returning any favourite trinkets or keepsakes, for which they chose to appeal to him with " their most sweet voices." It was in this character that he performed an exploit, which is the eternal feather in the cap of highway gentility. We will relate it in the words of our informer. Riding out with some of his confederates, " he overtakes a coach, which they had set over night, having intelligence of a booty of four hundred pounds in it. In the coach was a knight, his lady, and only one serving-maid, who, perceiving five horsemen making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset ; and they were confirmed in this apprehension by seeing them whisper to one another and ride backwards and forwards. The lady, to show she was not afraid, takes a flageolet out of her pocket, and plays ; Du Vail takes the hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a flageolet of his own, and in this posture he rides up to the coach side. ' Sir,' says he to the person in the coach, 'your lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but that she dances as well ; will you please to walk out of the coach, and let me have the honour to dance one coranto with her upon the heath ? ' ' Sir,' said the person in the coach, ' I dare not deny anything to one of your quality and good mind ; you seem a gentleman, and your request is very reasonable:' which said, the lacquey opens the boot, out comes the knight, Du Vail leaps lightly off his horse, and hands the lady out of the coach. They danced, and here it was that Du Vail performed marvels ; the best master in London, except those that are French, not being able to show such foot- ing as he did in his great riding French boots. The dancing being over, he waits on the lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vail to him, ' Sir, you have forgot to pay the music.' ' No, I have not,' replies the knight, and putting his hand under the seat of the coach, pulls out a hundred pounds in a bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vail took with a very good grace, and courte- ously answered, ' Sir, you are liberal, and shall have no cause to repent your being so ; this liberality of yours shall excuse you the other three hundred pounds : ' and giving him the word, that if he met with any more of the crew he might pass undisturbed, he civilly takes his leave of him. " This story, I confess, justifies the great kindness the ladies had for Du Vail ; for in this, as in an epitome, are contained all things that set a man off advantageously, and make him appear, as the phrase is, much a gentleman First, here was valour, that he and but fou> 42 THE INDICATOR. more durst assault a knight, a lady, a waiting- gentlewoman, a lacquey, a groom that rid by to open the gates, and the coachman, they being six to five, odds at football ; and besides, Du Vail had much the worst cause, and reason to believe, that whoever should arrive, would range themselves on the enemy's party. Then he showed his invention and sagacity, that he could, sur le champ, and, with- out studying, make that advantage on the lady's playing on the flageolet. He evinced his skill in instrumental music, by playing on his flageolet ; in vocal, by his singing ; for (as I should have told you before) there being no violins, Du Vail sung the coranto himself. He manifested his agility of body, by lightly dismounting off his horse, and with ease and freedom getting up again, when he took his leave ; his excellent deportment, by his incomparable dancing, and his graceful man- ner of taking the hundred pounds ; his gene- rosity, in taking no more ; his wit and elo- quence, and readiness at repartees, in the whole discourse with the knight and lady, the greatest part of which I have been forced to omit." The noise of the proclamation made Du Vail return to Paris ; but he came back in a short time for want of money. His reign however did not last long after his restoration. He made an unlucky attack, not upon some ill- bred passengers, but upon several bottles of wine, and was taken in consequence at the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos-street. His life was interceded for in vain : he was arraigned and committed to Newgate ; and executed at Tyburn in the 27th year of his age ; showers of tears from fair eyes bedewing his fate, both while alive in prison, and when dead at the fatal tree. Du ValPs success with the ladies of those days, whose amatory taste was of a turn more extensive than delicate, seems to have made some well-dressed English gentlemen jealous. The writer of Du Vall's life, who is a man of wit, evidently has something of bitterness in his railleries upon this point ; but he manages them very pleasantly. He pretends that he is an old bachelor, and has never been able to make his way with his fair countrywomen, on account of the French valets that have stood in his way. He says he had two objects in writing the book. " One is, that the next Frenchman that is hanged may not cause an uproar in this imperial city ; which I doubt not but I have effected. The other is a much harder task : to set my countrymen on even terms with the French, as to the English ladies' affections. If I should bring this about, I should esteem myself to have contributed much to the good of this kingdom. " One remedy there is, which, possibly, may conduce something towards it. * I have heard, that there is a new invention of transfusing the blood of one animal into another, and that it has been experimented by putting the blood of a sheep into an English- man. I am against that way of experiments ; for, should we make all Englishmen sheep, we should soon be a prey to the louve. "I think I can propose the making that experiment a more advantageous way. I would have all gentlemen, who have been a full year or more out of France, be let blood weekly, or oftener, if they can bear it. Mark how much they bleed ; transfuse so much French lacquey's blood into them ; replenish these last out of the English footmen, for it is no matter what becomes of them. Repeat this operation toties quotics, and in process of time you will find this event : either the English gentlemen will be as much beloved as the French lacqueys, or the French lacqueys as little esteemed as the English gentlemen." Butler has left an Ode, sprinkled with his usual wit, " To the happy Memory of the Most Renowned Du Vail" who —Like a pious man, some years beforo Th' arrival of his fatal hour, Made every day he had to live To his last minute a preparative ; Taught the wild Arabs on the road To act in a more gentle mode ; Take prizes more obligingly from those, Who never had been bredjilous ; And how to hang in a more graceful fashion Than e'er was known before to the dull English nation. As it may be thought proper that we should end this lawless article with a good moral, we will give it two or three sentences from Shak- speare worth a whole volume of sermons against thieving. The boy who belongs to FalstafPs companions, and who begins to see through the shallowness of their cunning and way of life, says that Bardolph stole a lute- case, carried it twelve miles, and sold it for three halfpence. XXI.— A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. This is an article for the reader to think of, when he or she is warm in bed, a little before he goes to sleep, the clothes at his ear, and the wind moaning in some distant crevice. " Blessings," exclaimed Sancho, a on him that first invented sleep ! It wraps a man all round like a cloak." It is a delicious moment certainly, — that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past : the limbs have been just tired enough to render the remain- ing in one posture delightful : the labour of the day is done. A gentle failure of the per- ceptions comes creeping over one : — the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of her A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. 43 sleeping child ; — the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye ; — 'tis closing ; — 'tis more closing ; — 'tis closed. The mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds. It is said that sleep is best before midnight : and Nature herself, with her darkness and chilling dews, informs us so. There is another reason for going to bed betimes : for it is uni- versally acknowledged that lying late in the morning is a great shortener of life. At least, it is never found in company with longevity. It also tends to make people corpulent. But these matters belong rather to the subject of early rising, than of sleep. Sleep at a late hour in the morning is not half so pleasant as the more timely one. It is sometimes however excusable, especially to a watchful or overworked head ; neither can we deny the seducing merits of " t' other doze," — the pleasing wilfulness of nestling in a new posture, when you know you ought to be up, like the rest of the house. But then you cut up the day, and your sleep the next night. In the course of the day, few people think of sleeping, except after dinner ; and then it is often rather a hovering and nodding on the borders of sleep, than sleep itself. This is a privilege allowable, we think, to none but the old, or the sickly, or the very tired and care- worn ; and it should be well understood, before it is exercised in company. To escape into slumber from an argument ; or to take it as an affair of course, only between you and your biliary duct ; or to assent with involuntary nods to all that you have just been disputing, is not so well : much less, to sit nodding and tottering beside a lady ; or to be in danger of dropping your head into the fruit-plate or your host's face ; or of waking up, and saying, " Just so," to the bark of a dog ; or " Yes, Madam," to the black at your elbow. Care-worn people, however, might refresh themselves oftener with day-sleep than they do ; if their bodily state is such as to dispose them to it. It is a mistake to suppose that all care is wakeful. People sometimes sleep, as well as wake, by reason of their sorrow. The difference seems to depend upon the nature of their temperament ; though in the most exces- sive cases, sleep is perhaps Nature's never- failing relief, as swooning is upon the rack. ! A person with jaundice in his blood shall lie J down and go to sleep at noon-day, when < another of a different complexion shall find : his eyes as uncloseable as a statue's, though he | has had no sleep for nights together. With- j out meaning to lessen the dignity of suffering, j which has quite enough to do with its waking hours, it is this that may often account for the profound sleeps enjoyed the night before hazardous battles, executions, and other demands upon an over-excited spirit. The most complete and healthy sleep that can be taken in the day, is in summer-time, out in a field. There is perhaps no solitary sensation so exquisite as that of slumbering on the grass or hay, shaded from the hot sun by a tree, with the consciousness of a fresh but light air running through the wide atmo- sphere, and the sky stretching far overhead upon all sides. Earth, and heaven, and a placid humanity, seem to have the creation to themselves. There is nothing between the slumberer and the naked and glad innocence of nature. Next to this, but at a long interval, the most relishing snatch of slumber out of bed, is the one which a tired person takes, before he retires for the night, while lingering in his sitting-room. The consciousness of being very sleepy and of having the power to go to bed immediately, gives great zest to the unwilling- ness to move. Sometimes he sits nodding in his chair ; but the sudden and leaden jerks of the head to which a state of great sleepiness renders him liable, are generally too painful for so luxurious a moment ; and he gets into a more legitimate posture, sitting sideways with his head on the chair-back, or throwing his legs up at once on another chair, and half reclining. It is curious, however, to find how long an inconvenient posture will be borne for the sake of this foretaste of repose. The worst of it is, that on going to bed, the charm some- times vanishes ; perhaps from the colder temperature of the chamber ; for a fireside is a great opiate. Speaking of the painful positions into which a sleepy lounger will get himself, it is amusing to think of the more fantastic attitudes that so often take place in bed. If we could add any- thing to the numberless things that have been said about sleep by the poets, it would be upon this point. Sleep never shows himself a greater leveller. A man in his waking mo- ments may look as proud and self-possessed as he pleases. He may walk proudly, he may sit proudly, he may eat his dinner proudly ; he may shave himself with an air of infinite superiority ; in a word, he may show himself grand and absurd upon the most trifling occa- sions. But Sleep plays the petrifying magician. He arrests the proudest lord as well as the humblest clown in the most ridiculous pos- tures : so that if you could draw a grandee from his bed without waking him, no limb- twisting fool in a pantomime should create wilder laughter. The toy with the string between its legs, is hardly a posture-master more extravagant. Imagine a despot lifted up to the gaze of his valets, with his eyes shut, his mouth open, his left hand under his right ear, his other twisted and hanging helplessly before him like an idiot's, one knee lifted up, and the other leg stretched out, or both knees huddled up together ; — what a scarecrow to lodge majestic power in ! But Sleep is kindly, even in his tricks ; and 44 THE INDICATOR. the poets have treated him with proper rever- ence. According to the ancient mythologists, he had even one of the Graces to wife. He had a thousand sons, of whom the chief were Morpheus, or the Shaper ; Icelos, or the Likely ; Phantasus, the Fancy ; and Phobetor, the Terror. His dwelling some writers place in a dull and darkling part of the earth ; others, withgreater compliment, in heaven ; and others, with another kind of propriety, by the sea- shore. There is a good description of it in Ovid ; but in these abstracted tasks of poetry, the moderns outvie the ancients ; and there is nobody who has built his bower for him so finely as Spenser. Archimago in the first book of the Faerie Queene (Canto I. st. 39), sends a little spirit down to Morpheus to fetch him a Dream : He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, And through the world of waters, wide and deepe, To Morpheus' house doth hastily repaire. Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe And low, where dawning day doth never peepe, His dwelling is. There, Tethys his wet bed Doth ever wash ; and Cynthia still doth steepe In silver dew his ever-drouping head, Whiles 6ad Night over him her mantle black doth spred. And more to lull him in his slumber soft A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe, And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, Mixed with a murmuring winde, much like the soune Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune. No other noise, nor people's troublous cryes, As still are wont to annoy the walled towne, Might there be heard ; but carelesse Quiet lyes, Wrapt in eternall silence, far from enimyes. Chaucer has drawn the cave of the same god with greater simplicity ; but nothing can have a more deep and sullen effect than his cliffs and cold running waters. It seems as real as an actual solitude, or some quaint old picture in a book of travels in Tartary. He is telling the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in the poem called his Dream. Juno tells a messen- ger to go to Morpheus and "bid him creep into the body" of the drowned king, to let his wife know the fatal event by his appa- rition. This messenger tooke leave, and went Upon his way ; and never he stent Till he came to the dark valley, That stant betweene rockes twey. There never yet grew corne, ne gras, Ne tree, ne nought that aught was, Beast, ne man, ne naught else ; Save that there were a few wells Came running fro the cliffs adowne, That made a deadly sleeping soune, And runnen downe right by a cave, That was under a rocky grave, Amid the valley, wonder-deepe. There these goddis lay asleepe, Morpheus and Eclympasteire, That was the god of Sleepis heire, That slept and did none other worke. Where the credentials of this new son and heir Eclympasteire, are to be found, we know not ,• but he acts very much, it must be allowed, like an heir presumptive, in sleeping, and doing "none other work." We dare not trust ourselves with many quo- tations upon sleep from the poets ; they are so numerous as well as beautiful. We must content ourselves with mentioning that our two most favourite passages are one in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, admirable for its contrast to a scene of terrible agony, which it closes ; and the other the following address in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy of Valentinian, the hero of which is also a sufferer under bodily tor- ment. He is in a chair, slumbering ; and these most exquisite lines are gently sung with music. Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose On this afflicted prince. Fall like a cloud In gentle showers : give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers : easy, sweet, And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, Pass by his troubled senses ; sing his pain. Like hollow murmuring wind, or silver rain : Into this prince, gently, oh gently slide, And kiss him into slumbers, like a bride. How earnest and prayer-like are these pauses! How lightly sprinkled, and yet how deeply settling, like rain, the fancy ! How quiet, affectionate, and perfect the conclusion ! Sleep is most graceful in an infant ; soundest, in one who has been tired in the open air ; completest, to the seaman after a hard voyage ; most welcome, to the mind haunted with one idea ; most touching to look at, in the parent that has wept ; lightest, in the playful child ; proudest, in the bride adored. XXII.— THE FAIR REVENGE. The elements of this story are to be found in the old poem called Albion's England, to which we referred in the article on Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France. Aganippus, king of Argos, dying without heirs male, bequeathed his throne to his only daughter, the beautiful and beloved Daphles. This female succession was displeasing to a nobleman who held large possessions on the frontiers ; and he came for the first time to- wards the court, not to pay his respects to the new queen, but to give her battle. Doracles (for that was his name) was not, much known by the people. He had distinguished himself for as jealous an independence as a subject could well assume ; and though he had been of use in repelling invasion during the latter years of the king, he had never made his appearance to receive his master's thanks personally. A correspondence, however, was understood to have gone on between him and several noblemen about the court ; and there were those who, in spite of his inattention to popularity, suspected that it would go hard THE FAIR REVENGE. 45 with the young queen, when the two armies came face to face. But neither these subtle statesmen, nor the ambitious young soldier Doracles, were aware of the effects to be produced by a strong per- sonal attachment. The young queen, amiable as she was beautiful, had involuntarily baffled his expectations from her courtiers, by excit- ing in the minds of some a real disinterested regard, while others nourished a hope of sharing her throne instead. At least they speculated upon becoming each the favourite minister, and held it a better thing to reign under that title and a charming mistress, than be the servants of a master, wilful and domi- neering. By the people she was adored ; and when she came riding out of her palace on the morning of the fight, with an unaccustomed spear standing up in its rest by her side, her diademed hair flowing a little off into the wind, her face paler than usual, but still tinted withits roses, and alookin which confidence in the love of her subjects, and tenderness for the wounds they were going to encounter, seemed to contend for the expression, the shout which they sent up would have told a stouter heart than a traitor's, that the royal- charmer was secure. The queen, during the conflict, remained in a tent upon an eminence, to which the younger leaders vied who should best spur up their smoking horses, to bring her good news from time to time. The battle was short and bloody. Doracles soon found that he had miscalculated his point ; and all skill and resolution could not set the error to rights. It was allowed, that if either courage or military talent could entitle him to the throne, he would have a right to it ; but the popu- larity of Daphles supplied her cause with all the ardour which a lax state of subjection on the part of the more powerful nobles might have denied it. When her troops charged, or made any other voluntary movement, they put all their hearts into their blows ; and when they were compelled to await the enemy, they stood as inflexible as walls of iron. It was like hammering upon metal statuary ; or stak- ing the fated horses upon spears riveted in stone. Doracles was taken prisoner. The queen, re-issuing from her tent, crowned with laurel, came riding down the eminence, and remained at the foot with her generals, while the prisoners were taken by. Her pale face kept as royal a countenance of composed pity as she could manage, while the commoner rebels passed along, aching with their wounded arms fastened behind, and shaking back their bloody and blinding locks for want of a hand to part them. But the blood mounted to her cheeks, when the proud and handsome Dora- cles, whom she now saw for the first time, blushed deeply as he cast a glance at his female conqueror, and then stepped haughtily along, handling his gilded chains as if they were an indifferent ornament. " I have con- quered him," thought she ; " it is a heavy blow to so proud a head ; and as he looks not unamiable, it might be politic, as well as courteous and kind in me, to turn his sub- mission into a more willing one." Alas ! pity was helping admiration to a kinder set of offices than the generous-hearted queen sus- pected. The captive went to his prison a con- queror after all, for Daphles loved him. The second night, after having exhibited in her manners a strange mixture of joy and seriousness, and signified to her counsellors her intention of setting the prisoner free, she released him with her own hands. Many a step did she hesitate as she went down the stairs ; and when she came to the door, she shed a full, but soft, and, as it seemed to her, a wilful and refreshing flood of tears, humbling herself for her approaching task. When she had entered, she blushed deeply, and then txirning as pale, stood for a minute silent and without motion. She then said, " Thy queen, Doracles, has come to show thee how kindly she can treat a great and gallant subject, who did not know her ;" and with these words, and almost before she was aware, the prisoner was released, and preparing to go. He appeared surprised, but not off his guard, nor in any temper to be over grateful. " Name," said he, a O queen, the conditions on which I depart, and they will be faithfully kept." Daphles moved her lips, but they spoke not. She waved her head and hand with a deadly smile, as if freeing him from all conditions, and he was turning to go, when she fell senseless on the floor. The haughty warrior raised her with more impatience than good-will. He could guess at love in a woman ; but he had but a mean opinion both of it and her sex ; and the deadly struggle in the heart of Daphles did not help him to distinguish the romantic passion which had induced her to put all her past and virgin notions of love into his person, from the commonest liking that might flatter his soldierly vanity. The queen, on awaking from her swoon, found herself compelled, in very justice to the intensity of a true passion, to explain how pity had brought it upon her. " I might ask it," said she, " Doracles, in return," and here she resumed something of her queen-like dig- nity ; " but I feel that my modesty will be sufficiently saved by the name of your wife ; and a substantial throne, with a return that shall nothing perplex or interfere with thee, I do now accordingly offer thee, not as the con- dition of thy freedom, but as a diversion of men's eyes and thoughts from what they will think ill in me, if they find me rejected." And in getting out that hard word, her voice faltered a little, and her eyes filled with tears. Doracles, with the best grace his lately 4fi THE INDICATOR. defeated spirit could assume, spoke in willing terms of accepting her offer. They left the prison, and his full pardon having been pro- claimed, the courtiers, with feasts and enter- tainments, vied who should seem best to approve their mistress's choice, for so they were quick to understand it. The late captive, who was really as graceful and accomplished as a proud spirit would let him be, received and returned all their attention in princely sort, and Daphles was beginning to hope that he might turn a glad eye upon her some day, when news was brought her that he had gone from court, nobody knew whither. The next intelligence was too certain. He had passed the frontiers, and was leaguing with her enemies for another struggle. From that day gladness, though not kindness, went out of the face of Daphles. She wrote him a letter, without a word of reproach in it, enough to bring back the remotest heart that had the least spark of sympathy ; but he only answered it in a spirit which showed that he regarded the deepest love but as a wanton trifle. That letter touched her kind wits. She had had a paper drawn up, leaving him her throne in case she should die ; but some of her ministers, availing themselves of her enfeebled spirit, had summoned a meeting of the nobles, at which she was to preside in the dress she wore on the day of victory, the sight of which, it was thought, with the arguments which they meant to use, would prevail upon the assembly to urge her to a revocation of the bequest. Her women dressed her whilst she was almost unconscious of what they were doing, for she had now begun to fade quickly, body as well as mind. They put on her the white garments edged with silver waves, in remembrance of the stream of Inachus, the founder of the Argive monarchy; the spear was brought out, to be stuck by the side of the throne, instead of the sceptre ; and their hands prepared to put the same laurel on her head which bound its healthy white temples when she sat on horseback and saw the prisoner go by. But at sight of its twisted and withered green, she took it in her hand, and looking about her in her chair with an air of momen- tary recollection, began picking it, and letting the leaves fall upon the floor. She went on thus, leaf after leaf, looking vacantly down- wards, and when she had stripped the circle half round, she leaned her cheek against the side of her sick chair, and shutting her eyes quietly, so died. The envoys from Argos went to the court of Calydon, where Doraclesthen was, and bringing him the diadem upon a black cushion, informed him at once of the death of the queen, and her nomination of him to the throne. He showed little more than a ceremonious gravity at the former ne^vs; but could ill contain his joy at the latter, and set off instantly to take pos- session. Among the other nobles who feasted him, was one who, having been the companion of the late king, had become like a second father to his unhappy daughter. The new prince observing the melancholy which he scarcely affected to repress, and seeing him look up occasionally at a picture which had a veil over it, asked him what the picture was that seemed to disturb him so, and why it was veiled. " If it be the portrait of the late king," said Doracles, " pray think me worthy of doing honour to it, for he was a noble prince. Unveil it, pray. I insist upon it. What ! am I not worthy to look upon my predecessors, Phorbas?" And at these words he frowned impatiently. Phorbas, with a trembling hand, but not for want of courage, withdrew the black covering ; and the portrait of Daphles, in all her youth and beauty, flashed upon the eyes of Doracles. It was not a melancholy face. It was drawn before misfortune had touched it, and sparkled with a blooming beauty, in which animal spirits and good-nature contended for predominance. Doracles paused and seemed struck. " The possessor of that face," said he, inquiringly, " could never have been so sorrowful as I have heard ? " " Pardon me, Sir," answered Phorbas, " I was as another father to her, and knew all." " It cannot be," returned the prince. The old man begged his other guests to withdraw a while, and then told Doracles how many fond and despairing things the queen had said of him, both before her wits began to fail and after. "Her wits to fail!" murmured the king ; " I have known what it is to feel almost a mad impatience of the will; but I knew not that these gentle creatures, women, could so feel for such a trifle." Phorbas brought out the laurel-crown, and told him how the half of it became bare. The impatient blood of Dora- cles mounted, but not in anger, to his face ; and, breaking up the party, he requested that the picture might be removed to his own chamber, promising to return it. A whole year, however, did he keep it ; and as he had no foreign enemies to occupy his time, nor was disposed to enter into the common sports of peace, it was understood that he spent the greatest part of his time, when he was not in council, in the room where the picture hung. In truth, the image of the once smiling Daphles haunted him wherever he went ; and to ease himself of the yearning | of wishing her alive again and seeing her face, he was in the habit of being with it as much as possible. His self-will turned upon him, even in that gentle shape. Millions of times did he wish back the loving author of his for- tunes, whom he had treated with so clownish j an ingratitude ; and millions of times did the J sense of the impotence of his wish run up in | red hurry to his cheeks, and help to pull them j into a gaunt melancholy. But this is not a j repaying sorrow to dwell upon. He was one | SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 47 day, after being in vain expected at council, found lying madly on the floor of the room, dead. He had torn the portrait from the wall. His dagger was in his heart, and his cheek lay upon that blooming and smiling face, which had it been living, would never have looked so at being revenged. XXIII.- -SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. From having a different creed of our own, and always encountering the heathen mythology in a poetical and fabulous shape, we are apt to have a false idea of the religious feeling of the ancients. We are in the habit of supposing, whatever we allow when we come to reason upon the point, that they regarded their fables in the same poetical light as ourselves ; that they could not possibly put faith in Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto ; in the sacrifice of in- nocent turtle-doves, the libation of wine, and the notions about Tartarus and Ixion. Undoubtedly there were multitudes of free- thinkers in the ancient world. Most of the Greek poets and philosophers appear to have differed with the literal notions of the many*. A system of refined theism is understood to have been taught to the initiated in the cele- brated Mysteries. The doctrines of Epicurus were so prevalent in the most intellectual age of Rome, that Lucretius wrote a poem upon them, in which he treats their founder as a divinity ; and Virgil, in a well-known passage of the Georgics : " Felix qui potuit," &c, exalts either Epicurus or Lucretius as a blessed being, who put hell and terror under his feet. A sickly temperament appears to have made him wish, rather than be able, to carry his own scepticism so far ; yet he insinuates his dis- belief in Tartarus, in the sixth book of his epic poem, where iEneas and the Sibyl, after the description of the lower world, go out through the ivory gate, which was the passage of false visions +. Caesar, according to a speech of his in Sallust, derided the same notions in open senate ; and Cicero, in other parts of his writings, as well as in a public pleading, speaks of them as fables and impertinence, — " ineptiis ac fabulis." But however this plain-dealing may look on the part of the men of letters, there is reason * It is remarkable that JEschylus and Euripides, the two dramatists whose faith in the national religion was most doubted, are said to have met with strange and violent deaths. The latter was torn to pieces by dogs, and the former killed by a tortoise which an eagle let fall upon his bald head, in mistake for a stone. These exits from the scene look very like the retributive death-beds which the bigots of all religions are so fond of ascribing to one another. t Did Dante forget this, when he took Virgil for his guide through the Inferno ? to believe, that even in those times, the people, in general, were strong upon points of faith. The extension of the Greek philosophy may have insensibly rendered them familiar with latitudes of interpretation on the part of others. They would not think it impious in Cicero and Cato to have notions of the Supreme Being more consistent with the elevation of their minds. But for themselves, they adhered, from habit, to the literal creed of their an- cestors, as the Greek populace had done before them. The jealous enemies of Socrates con- trived to have him put to death on a charge of irreverence for the gods. A frolic of the libertine Alcibiades, which, to say the least of it, was in bad taste — the defacing the statues of Mercury — was followed with important con- sequences. The history of Socrates had the effect, in after times, at least in the ancient world, of saving philosophical speculators from the vindictive egotism of opinion. But even in the days of Augustus, Ovid wrote a popular work full of mythological fables ; and Virgil himself, whose creed perhaps only rejected what was unkindly, gave the hero of his in- tended popular epic the particular appellation of pious. That Augustus should pique himself on the same attribute proves little ; for he was a cold-blooded man of the world, and could play the hypocrite for the worst and most despotic purposes. Did he now and then lecture his poetical friends upon this point, respecting their own appearances with the world? There is a curious ode of Horace (Book I. Ode xxxiv.), in which he says, that he finds himself compelled to give up his sceptical notions, and to attend more to public worship, because it had thundered one day when the sky was cloudless. The critics are divided in their opinion of his object in this ode. Some think him in earnest, others in jest. It is the only thing of the sort in his works, and is, at all events, of an equivocal character, that would serve his purpose on either side of the question. The opinions of the ancients upon religion may be divided into three general classes. The great multitude believed anything ; the very few disbelieved everything ; the philo- sophers and poets entertained a refined natural religion, which, while it pronounced upon nothing, rejected what was evidently unworthy of the spirit of the creation, and regarded the popular deities as personifications of its various workings. All these classes had their extra- vagances, in proportion to their ignorance, or viciousness, or metaphysical perplexity. The multitude, whose notions were founded on ignorance, habit, and fear, admitted many absurd, and some cruel imaginations. The mere man of the world measured everything by his own vain and petty standard, and thought the whole goods of the universe a scramble for the cunning and hypocritical. The over refining, followers of Plato, endeavouring to 48 THE INDICATOR. pierce into the nature of things by the mere effort of the will, arrived at conclusions visible to none but their own yearning and impatient eyes, and lost themselves in the ethereal dog- matisms of Plotinus and Porphyry. The greatest pleasure arising to a modern imagination from the ancient mythology, is in a mingled sense of the old popular belief and of the philosophical refinements upon it. We take Apollo, and Mercury, and Venus, as shapes that existed in popular credulity, as the greater fairies of the ancient world : and we regard them, at the same time, as personi- fications of all that is beautiful and genial in the forms and tendencies of creation. But the result, coming as it does, too, through avenues of beautiful poetry, both ancient and modern, is so entirely cheerful, that we are apt to think it must have wanted gravity to more believing eyes. "We fancy that the old world saw nothing in religion but lively and graceful shapes, as remote from the more obscure and awful hintings of the world unknown, as physics appear to be from the metaphysical ; as the eye of a beautiful woman is from the inward speculations of a Brahmin ; or a lily at noon- day from the wide obscurity of night-time. This supposition appears to be carried a great deal too far. We will not inquire, in this place, how far the mass of mankind, when these shapes were done away, did or did not escape from a despotic anthropomorphitism ; nor how far they were driven by the vaguer fears, and the opening of a more visible eternity, into avoiding the whole subject, rather than court- ing it; nor how it is, that the nobler practical re- ligion which was afforded them, has been unable to bring back their frightened theology from the angry and avaricious pursuits into which they fled for refuge. But, setting aside the portion of terror, of which heathenism partook in common with all faiths originating in uncul- tivated times, the ordinary run of pagans were perhaps more impressed with a sense of the invisible world, in consequence of the very visions presented to their imagination, than the same description of men under a more shadowy system. There is the same difference between the two things, as between a populace believing in fairies, and a populace not believ- ing. The latter is in the high road to some- thing better, if not drawn aside into new terrors on the one hand or mere worldliness on the other. But the former is led to look out of the mere worldly common-places about it, twenty times to the other's once. It has a sense of a supernatural state of things, how- ever gross. It has a link with another world, from which something like gravity is sure to strike into the most cheerful heart. Every forest, to the mind's eye of a Greek, was haunted with superior intelligences. Every stream had its presiding nymph, who was thanked for the draught of water. Every house had itsprotecting gods, whichhad blessed the inmate's ancestors, and which would bless him also, if he cultivated the social affections : for the same word which expressed piety towards the Gods expressed love towards relations and friends. If in all this there was nothing but the worship of a more graceful humanity, there may be worships much worse as well as much better. And the divinest spirit that ever ap- peared on earth has told us that the extension of human sympathy embraces all that is re- quired of us, either to do or to foresee. Imagine the feelings with which an ancient believer must have gone by the oracular oaks of Dodona ; or the calm groves of the Eume- nides ; or the fountain where Proserpine vanished under ground with Pluto ; or the Great Temple of the mysteries at Eleusis ; or the laurelled mountain Parnassus, on the side of which was the temple of Delphi, where Apollo was supposed to be present in person. Imagine Plutarch, a devout and yet a liberal believer, when he went to study theology and philosophy at Delphi : with what feelings must he not have passed along the woody paths of the hill, approaching nearer every in- stant to the divinity, and not sure that a glance of light through the trees was not the lustre of the god himself going by ! This is mere poetry to us, and very fine it is ; but to him it was poetry, and religion, and beauty, and gravity, and hushing awe, and a path as from one world to another. With similar feelings he would cross the ocean, an element that naturally detaches the mind from earth, and which the ancients regarded as especially doing so. He had been in the Carpathian sea, the favourite haunt of Proteus, who was supposed to be gifted above every other deity with a knowledge of the causes of things. Towards evening, when the winds were rising, and the sailors had made their vows to Neptune, he would think of the old " shepherd of the seas of yore," and believe it possible that he might become visible to his eyesight, driving through the darkling waters, and turning the sacred wildness of his face to- wards the blessed ship. In all this, there is a deeper sense of another world, than in the habit of contenting oneself with a few vague terms and embodying nothing but Mammon. There is a deeper sense of another world, precisely because there is a deeper sense of the present ; of its varieties, its benignities, its mystery. It was a strong sense of this, which made a living poet, who is accounted very orthodox in his religious opinions, give vent, in that fine sonnet, to his impatience at seeing the beautiful planet we live upon, with all its starry wonders about it, so little thought of, compared with what is ridiculously called the world. He seems to have dreaded the symptom, as an evidence of materialism, and of the planets being dry self- GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS. 49 existing things, peopled with mere successive mortalities, and unconnected with any super- intendence or consciousness in the universe about them. It is abhorrent from all we think and feel, that they should be so : and yet Love might make heavens of them, if they ; The world is too much with us. Late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers : Little we see in Nature that is ours : We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The Winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers ; For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." XXIV.— GETTIN&" UP ON COLD MORNINj^a^ An Italian author — Giu4*e-66rdara, a Jesuit — has written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insisting, that those troublesome and abominable little animals ^were Created for our annoyance, and that they Were certainly not inhabitants of Paradise. We of the north may dispute this piece of theology ; but on the other hand, it is as clear as the ^now on the house-tops, that Adam was -not under the necessity of shaving ; and that when Eve walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon ice three inches thick. Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the resolution ; and the thing is done. This may be very true ; just as a boy at school has only to take a flogging, and the thing is over. But we have not at all made up our minds upon it ; and we find it a very pleasant exercise to discuss the matter, candidly, before we get up. This at least is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords an excellent answer to those, who ask how lying in bed can be indulged in by a reasoning being, — a rational creature. How ? "Why with the argument calmly at work in one's head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh —it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. If these people would be more charitable, they would get on with their argument better. But they are apt to reason so ill, and to assert so dogmatically, that one could wish to have them stand round one's bed of a bitter morn- ing, and lie before their faces. They ought to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in proportion to his ability of keeping early hours, the work given his facul- ties, &c. will at least concede their due merits to such representations as the following. In the first place, says the injured but calm appealer, I have been warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly suitable to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature, that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold, — from fire to ice. They are " haled" out of their "beds," says Milton, by "harpy-footed furies," — fellows who come to call them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster, as are exposed to the air of the room, are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if in the open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this symp- tom. Then I turn my eyes sideways and see the window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. " It is very cold this morning, is it not ?" — " Very cold, Sir." — "Very cold indeed, isn't it ?" — "Very cold in- deed, Sir." — "More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather ?" (Here the servant's wit and good-nature are put to a considerable test, and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) " Why, Sir I think it is" (Good creature ! There is not a better, or more truth-telling servant going.) "I must rise, however — get me some warm water." — Here comes a fine interval between the depar- ture of the servant and the arrival of the hot water ; during which, of course, it is of " no use ?" to get up. The hot water comes. " Is it quite hot ? "— « Yes, Sir."—" Perhaps too hot for shaving : I must wait a little ?" — " No Sir ; it will just do." (There is an over-nice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal of virtue, a little troublesome.) " Oh — the shirt — you must air my clean shirt ; — linen gets very damp this weather." — "Yes, Sir." Here an- other delicious five minutes. A knock at the door. " Oh, the shirt — very well. My stock- ings — I think the stockings had better be aired too." — " Very well, Sir." — Here another inter- val. At length everything is ready, except myself. I now, continues our incumbent (a happy word, by the bye, for a country vicar) — I now cannot help thinking a good deal — who can ? — upon the unnecessary and villan- ous custom of shaving : it is a thing so unmanly (here I nestle closer) — so effeminate (here I recoil from an unlucky step into the colder part of the bed.) — No wonder that the Queen of France took part with the rebels against 50 THE INDICATOR. that degenerate King, her husband, who first affronted her smooth visage with a face like her own. The Emperor Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius to better advan- tage than in reviving the flowing beard. Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture — at Michael Angelo's — at Titian's — at Shakspeare's — at Fletcher's — at Spenser's — at Chaucer's — at Alfred's— at Plato's — I could name a great man for every tick of my watch. — Look at the Turks, a grave and otiose people. — Think of Haroun Al Raschid and Bed-ridden Hassan. — Think of Wortley Montague, the worthy son of his mother, above the prejudice of his time — Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress and appearance are so much finer than our own — Lastly, think of the razor itself — how totally opposed to every sensation of bed — how cold, how edgy, how hard ! how utterly different from anything like the warm and circling amplitude, which Sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to cut yourself, a quivering body, a fro- zen towel, and a ewer full of ice ; and he that says there is nothing to oppose in all this, only shows, that he has no merit in opposing it. Thomson the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons — Falsely luxurious ! Will not man awake ? used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of rising ; but then he could also imagine the good of lying still ; and his ex- clamation, it must be allowed, was made upon summer-time, not winter. We must propor- tion the argument to the individual character. A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four pence ; but this will not suf- fice for a student. A proud man may say, " What shall I think of myself, if I don't get up ? " but the more humble one will be content to waive this prodigious notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly bed. The mechanical man shall get up without any ado at all ; and so shall the barometer. An ingenious lier in bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold weather ; and so- phisticate much on the advantages of an even temperature of body; of the natural propensity (pretty universal) to have one's way ; and of the animals that roll themselves up, and sleep all the winter. As to longevity, he will ask whether the longest is of necessity the best ; and whether Holborn is the handsomest street in London. XXV.— THE OLD GENTLEMAN. Our Old Gentleman, in order to be exclu- sively himself, must be either a widower or a bachelor. Suppose the former. We do not mention his precise age, which would be invi- dious : — nor whether he wears his own hair or a wig ; which would be wanting in universality. If a wig, it is a compromise between the more modern scratch and the departed glory of the toupee. If his own hair, it is white, in spite of his favourite grandson, who used to get on the chair behind him, and pull the silver hairs out, ten years ago. If he is bald at top, the hair- dresser, hovering and breathing about him like a second youth, takes care to give the bald place as much powder as the covered ; in order that he may convey to the sensorium within a pleasing indistinctness of idea respecting the exact limits of skin and hair. He is very clean and neat ; and, in warm weather, is proud of opening his waistcoat half-way down, and letting so much of his frill be seen, in order to show his hardiness as well as taste. His watch and shirt-buttons are of the best ; and he does not care if he has two rings on a finger. If his watch ever failed him at the club or coffee- house, he would take a walk every day to the nearest clock of good character, purely to keep it right. He has a cane at home, but seldom uses it, on finding it out of fashion with his elderly juniors. He has a small cocked hat for gala days, which he lifts higher from his head than the round one, when bowed to. In his pockets are two handkerchiefs (one for the neck at night-time), his spectacles, and his pocket-book. The pocket-book, among other things, contains a receipt for a cough, and some verses cut out of an odd sheet of an old magazine, on the lovely Duchess of A., begin- ning— When beauteous Mira walks the^plain. He intends this for a common-place book which he keeps, consisting of passages in verse and proSe, cut out of newspapers and magazines, and pasted in columns ; some of them rather gay. His principal other books are Shakspeare's Plays and Milton's Paradise Lost ; the Spec- tator, the History of England, the Works of Lady M. W. Montague, Pope and Churchill ; Middleton's Geography ; the Gentleman's Ma- gazine ; Sir John Sinclair on Longevity ; several plays with portraits in character ; Account of Elizabeth Canning, Memoirs of George Ann Bellamy, Poetical Amusements at Bath-Easton, Blair's Works, Elegant Extracts ; Junius as originally published ; a few pamph- lets on the American War and Lord George Gordon, &c. and one on the French Revolution. In his sitting-rooms are some engravings from Hogarth and Sir Joshua ; an engraved portrait of the Marquis of Granby ; ditto of M. le Comte de Grasse surrendering to Admiral Rodney ; THE OLD GENTLEMAN. 51 a humorous piece after Penny ; and a portrait of himself, painted by Sir Joshua. His wife's portrait is in his chamber, looking upon his bed. She is a little girl, stepping forward with a smile, and a pointed toe, as if going to dance. He lost her when she was sixty. The Old Gentleman is an early riser, because he intends to live at least twenty years longer. He continues to take tea for breakfast, in spite of what is said against its nervous effects ; having been satisfied on that point some years ago by Dr. Johnson's criticism on Hanway, and a great liking for tea previously. His china cups and saucers have been broken since his wife's death, all but one, which is religiously kept for his use. He passes his morning in walking or riding, looking in at auctions, looking after his India bonds or some such money securities, furthering some subscription set on foot by his excellent friend Sir John, or cheapening a new old print for his portfolio. He also hears of the newspapers ; not caring to see them till after dinner at the coffee-house. He may also cheapen a fish or so ; the fishmonger soliciting his doubting eye as he passes, with a profound bow of recognition. He eats a pear before dinner. His dinner at the coffee-house is served up to him at the accustomed hour, in the old accustomed way, and by the accustomed waiter. If William did not bring it, the fish would be sure to be stale, and the flesh new. He eats no tart ; or if he ventures on a little, takes cheese with it. You might as soon attempt to persuade him out of his senses, as that cheese is not good for digestion. He takes port ; and if he has drunk more than usual, and in a more private place, may be induced by some respectful in- quiries respecting the old style of music, to sing a song composed by Mr. Oswald or Mr. Lampe, such as — Chloe, by that borrowed kiss, or Come, gentle god of soft repose, or his wife's favourite ballad, beginning — At Upton on the hill, There lived a happy pair. Of course, no such exploit can take place in the coffee-room : but he will canvass the theory of that matter there with yon, or discuss the weather, or the markets, or the theatres, or the merits of " my lord North" or " my lord Rock- ingham ;" for he rarely says simply, lord ; it is generally " my lord," trippingly and genteelly off the tongue. If alone after dinner, his great delight is the newspaper ; which he prepares to read by wiping his spectacles, carefully ad- justing them on his eyes, and drawing the can- dle close to him, so as to stand sideways betwixt his ocular aim and the small type. He then holds the paper at arm's length, and dropping his eyelids half down and his mouth half open, takes cognizance of the day's information. If he leaves off, it is only when the door is opened by a new-comer, or when he suspects some- body is over -anxious to get the paper out of his hand. On these occasions he gives an impor- tant hem ! or so ; and resumes. In the evening, our Old Gentleman is fond of going to the theatre, or of having a game of cards. If he enjoys the latter at his own house or lodgings, he likes to play with some friends whom he has known for many years ; but an elderly stranger may be introduced, if quiet and scientific ; and the privilege is extended to younger men of letters ; who, if ill players, are good losers. Not that he is a miser, but to win money at cards is like proving his victory by getting the baggage ; and to win of a younger man is a substitute for his not being able to beat him at rackets. He breaks up early, whether at home or abroad. At the theatre, he likes a front row in the pit. He comes early, if he can do so without getting into a squeeze, and sits patiently waiting for the drawing up of the curtain, with his hands placidly lying one over the other on the top of his stick. He generously admires some of the best performers, but thinks them far inferior to Garrick, Woodward, and Clive. During splendid scenes, he is anxious that the little boy should see. He has been induced to look in at Vauxhali again, but likes it still less than he did years back, and cannot bear it in comparison with Ranelagh. He thinks everything looks poor, flaring, and jaded. " Ah ! " says he, with a sort of triumphant sigh, "Ranelagh was a noble place ! Such taste, such elegance, such beauty ! There was the Duchess of A., the finest woman in England, Sir ; and Mrs. L., a mighty fine creature ; and Lady Susan what's her name, that had that unfortunate affair with Sir Charles. Sir, they came swimming by you like the swans." The Old Gentleman is very particular in having his slippers ready for him at the fire, when he comes home. He is also extremely choice in his snuff, and delights to get a fresh box-full in Tavistock-street, in his way to the theatre. His box is a curiosity from India. He calls favourite young ladies by their Chris- tian names, however slightly acquainted with them ; and has a privilege of saluting all brides, mothers, and indeed every species of lady, on the least holiday occasion. If the husband for instance has met with a piece of luck, he instantly moves forward, and gravely kisses the wife on the cheek. The wife then says, " My niece, Sir, from the country ;" and he kisses the niece. The niece, seeing her cousin biting her lips at the joke, says, "My cousin Harriet, Sir ;" and he kisses the cousin. He " never recollects such weather," except during the "Great Frost," or when he rode down with " Jack Skrimshire to Newmarket." He grows E 2 52 THE INDICATOR. young again in his little grand-children, espe- cially the one which he thinks most like him- self ; which is the handsomest. Yet he likes best perhaps the one most resembling his wife ; and will sit with him on his lap, holding his hand in silence, for a quarter of an hour together. He plays most tricks with the former, and makes him sneeze. He asks little boys in general who was the father of Zebedee's children. If his grandsons are at school, he often goes to see them ; and makes them blush by telling the master or the upper-scholars, that they are fine boys, and of a precocious genius. He is much struck when an old ac- quaintance dies, but adds that he lived too fast ; and that poor Bob was a sad dog in his youth ; " a very sad dog, Sir ; mightily set upon a short life and a merry one.'' When he gets very old indeed, he will sit for whole evenings, and say little or nothing ; but informs you, that there is Mrs. Jones (the housekeeper) — "She'll talk." XXVI. DOLPHINS. Our old book-friend, the Dolphin, used to be confounded with the porpus ; but modern writers seem to concur in making a distinction between them. "We remember being much mortified at this separation ; for having, in our childhood, been shown something dimly rolling in the sea, while standing on the coast at twi- light, and told with much whispering solemnity that it was a porpus, we had afterwards learnt to identify it with the Dolphin, and thought we had seen the romantic fish on whom Arion rode playing his harp. Spenser introduces Arion most beautifully, in all his lyrical pomp, in the marriage of the Thames and Medway. He goes before the bride, smoothing onwards with the sound of his harp, like the very progress of the water. Then there was heard a most celestiall sound Of dainty musicke, which did next ensue Before the Spouse. That was Avion crowned : Who, playing on his harp, unto him drew The eares and hearts of all that goodly crew ; That even yet the Dolphin, which him bore Through the iEgean seas from pirates' view, Stood still by him astonished at his lore ; And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar. So went he> playing on the watery plain. Perhaps in no one particular thing or image, have some great poets shown the different characters of their genius more than in the use of the Dolphin. Spenser, who of all his tribe lived in a poetical world, and saw things as clearly there as in a real one, has never shown this nicety of realisation more than in the following passage. He speaks of his Dolphins with as familiar a detail, as if they were horses waiting at a door with an equipage. A team of Dolphins ranged in array Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent. They were all taught by Triton to obey To the long reins at her commandement : As swift as swallows on the waves they went, That their broad flaggy finnes no foam did reare, Ne bubbling roundell they behind them sent. The rest of other fishes drawen were, Which with their finny oares the swelling sea did sheare. Soon as they been arrived upon the brim Of the Rich Strand, their charets they forlore ; And let then- teamed fishes softly swim Along the margent of the foamy shore, Lest they their finnes should bruise, and surbeat sore Their tender feete upon the stony ground. There are a couple of Dolphins like these, in Raphael's Galatea. Dante, with his tendency to see things in a dreary point of view, has given an illustration of the agonies of some of the damned in his Inferno, at once new, fine, and horrible. It is in the 22d book, " Come i del- fini" &c. He says that some wretches, swimming in one of the gulfs of hell, shot out their backs occasionally, like Dolphins, a.bove the pitchy liquid, in order to snatch a respite from torment ; but darted them back again like lightning. The devils would prong them as they rose. Strange fancies these for main- taining the character of religion ! Hear Shakspeare, always the noble and the good-natured. We forget of what great cha- racter he is speaking ; but never was an image that more singularly yet completely united superiority and playfulness. His delights Were dolphin-like ; and showed themselves above The element he lived in. XXVII.— RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. [The following tale is founded on a Scottish tradition. It was intended to be written in verse ; which will account for its present appearance.] The stern old shepherd of the air, The spirit of the whistling hair, The wind, has risen drearily In the Northern evening sea, And is piping long and loud To many a heavy upcoming cloud, — Upcoming heavy in many a row, Like the unwieldy droves below Of seals and horses of the sea, That gather up as drearily, And watch with solemn-visaged eyes Those mightier movers in the skies. 'Tis evening quick ; — 'tis night :— the rain Is sowing wide the fruitless main, Thick, thick ; — no sight remains the while From the farthest Orkney isle, No sight to sea-horse, or to seer, But of a little pallid sail, That seems as if 'twould struggle near, And then as if its pinion pale Gave up the battle to the gale. Four chiefs there are of special note, Labouring in that earnest boat ; RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 53 Four Orkney chiefs, that yesterday Coming in their pride away Prom there smote Norwegian king, Led their war boats triumphing Straight along the golden line Made by morning's eye divine. Stately came they, one by one, Every sail beneath the sun, As if he their admiral were Looking down from the lofty air, Stately, stately through the gold. — But before that day was done, Lo, his eye grew vexed and cold ; And every boat, except that one, A tempest trampled in its roar ; And every man, except those four, Was drenched, and driving far from home, Dead and swift, through the Northern foam. Four are they, who wearily Have drunk of toil two days at sea ; Duth Maruno, steady and dark, Cormar, Soul of the Winged Bark ; And bright Clan Alpin, who could leap Like a torrent from steep to steep ; And he, the greatest of that great band, Ronald of the Perfect Hand. Dumbly strain they for the shore, Foot to board, and grasp on oar. The billows, panting in the wind, Seem instinct with ghastly mind, And climb like crowding savages At the boat that dares their seas. Dumbly strain they through and through, Dumbly, and half blindly too, Drenched, and buffeted, and bending Up and down without an ending, Like ghostly things that could not cease To row among those savages. Ronald of the Perfect Hand Has rowed the most of all that band ; And now he's resting for a space At the helm, and turns his face Round and round on every side To see what cannot be descried, Shore, nor sky, nor light, nor even Hope, whose feet are last in heaven. Ronald thought him of the roar Of the fight the day before, And of the young Norwegian prince Whom in all the worryings And hot vexations of the fray, He had sent with life away, Because he told him of a bride That if she lost him, would have died ; And Ronald then, in bitter case, Thought of his own sweet lady's face, Which upon this very night Should have blushed with bridal light, And of her downward eyelids meek, And of her voice, just heard to speak, As at the altar, hand in hand, On ceasing of the organ grand, 'Twould have bound her for weal or woe, With delicious answers low : And more he thought of, grave and sweet, That made the thin tears start, and meet The wetting of the insolent wave ; And Ronald, who though all so brave, Had often that hard day before Wished himself well housed on shore, Felt a sharp impatient start Of home-sick wilfulness at heart, And steering with still firmer hand, As if the boat could feel command, Thrill'd with a fierce and forward motion, As though 'twould shoot it through the ocean. " Some spirit," exclaimed Duth Maruno, " must pursue us, and stubbornly urge the boat out of its way, or we must have arrived by this time at Inistore."* Ronald took him at his word, and turning hastily round, thought he saw an armed figure behind the stern. His anger rose with his despair ; and with all his strength he dashed his arm at the moveless and airy shape. At that instant a fierce blast of wind half turned the boat round. The chieftains called out to Ronald to set his whole heart at the rudder ; but the wind beat back their voices, like young birds into the nest, and no answer followed it. The boat seemed less and less manageable, and at last to be totally left to themselves. In the intervals of the wind they again called out to Ronald, but still received no answer. One of them crept forward, and felt for him through the blinding wet and darkness. His place was void. " It was a ghost," said they, " which came to fetch him to the spirits of his fathers. Ronald of the Perfect Hand is gone, and we shall follow him as we did in the fight. Hark ! the wind is louder and louder : it is louder and many- voiced. Is it bis voice which has roused up the others ? Is he calling upv,n us, as he did in the battle, when his followers shouted after his call?" It was the rocks of an isle beyond Inistore, which made that multitudinous roaring cf the wind. The chieftains found that they were not destined to perish in the mid-ccean ; but it was fortunate for them that the wind did not set in directly upon the island, or they would have been dashed to pieces upon the rocks. With great difficulty they stemmed their way obliquely ; and at length were thrown violently to shore, bruised, wounded, and half inanimate. They remained on this desolate island two days, during the first of which the storm subsided. On the third, they were taken away by a boat of seal-hunters. The chiefs, on their arrival at home, related how Ronald of the Perfect Hand had been summoned away by a loud-voiced spirit, and disappeared. Great was the mourning in Inistore for the Perfect Hand ; for the Hand that with equal skill could throw the javelin and traverse the harp ; could build the sudden hut of the hunter ; and. bind up the glad locks of the maiden tired in the dance. Therefore was he called the Perfect Hand ; and therefore with great mourning was he mourned : yet with none half as great as by his love, his betrothed bride Moilena ; by her of the Beau- tiful Voice ; who had latterly begun to be called the Perfect Voice, because she was to be matched with him of the Perfect Hand. Perfect Hand and Perfect Voice were they called ; but the Hand was now gone, and the Voice sang brokenly for tears. A dreary winter was it though a victorious. *" The old name for the Orkneys, 54 THE INDICATOR. to the people of Inistore. Their swords had conquered in Lochlin ; but most of the hands that wielded them had never come back. Their warm pressure was felt no more. The last which they had given their friends was now to serve them all their lives. " Never, with all my yearning," said Moilena, " shall I look upon his again, as I have looked upon it a hundred times, when nobody suspected. Never." And she turned from the sight of the destructive ocean, which seemed as inter- minable as her thoughts. But winter had now passed away. The tears of the sky at least were dried up. The sun looked out kindly again ; and the spring had scarcely re-appeared, when Inistore had a proud and gladder day, from the arrival of the young prince of Lochlin with his bride. It was a bitter one to Moilena, for the prince came to thank Ronald for sparing his life in the war, and had brought his lady to thank him too. They thanked Moilena instead ; and, proud in the midst of her unhappiness, of being the representative of the Perfect Hand, j she lavished hundreds of smiles upon them from her pale face. But she wept in secret. She could not bear this new addition to the I store of noble and kind memories respecting her Ronald. He had spared the bridegroom for his bride. He had hoped to come back to his own. She looked over to the north ; and thought that her home was as much there as in Inistore. Meantime, Ronald was not drowned. A Scandinavian boat, bound for an island called the Island of the Circle, had picked him up. The crew, which consisted chiefly of priests, were going thither to propitiate the deities, on account of the late defeat of their country- men. They recognised the victorious chieftain, who on coming to his senses freely confessed who he was. Instantly they raised a chorus, which rose sternly through the tempest. " We carry," said they, " an acceptable present to the gods. Odin, stay thy hand from the slaughter of the obscure. Thor, put down the mallet with which thou beatest, like red hail, on the skulls of thine enemies. Ye other feasters in Valhalla, set down the skulls full of mead, and pledge a health out of a new and noble one to the King of Gods and Men, that the twilight of heaven may come late. We bring an acceptable present : we bring Ronal'd of the Perfect Hand." Thus they sang in the boat, labouring all the while with the winds and waves, but surer now than ever of reach- ing the shore. And they did so by the first light of the morning. When they came to the circie of sacred stones, from which the island took its name, they placed their late conqueror by the largest, and kindled a fire in the middle. The warm smoke rose thickly against the cold white morning. " Let me be offered up to your gods," said Ronald, " like a man, by the sword ; and not like food, by the fire." " We know all," answered the priests : " be thou silent." " Treat not him," said Ronald, " who spared your prince, unworthily. If he must be sacrificed, let him die as your prince would have died by this hand." Still they answered nothing but " We know all : be thou silent." Ronald could not help witnessing these pre- parations for a new and unexpected death with an emotion of terror ; but disdain and despair were uppermost. Once, and but once, his cheek turned deadly pale in thinking of Moilena. He shifted his posture resolutely, and thought of the spirits of the dead whom he was about to join. The priests then encir- cled the fire and the stone at which he stood, with another devoting song ; and Ronald looked earnestly at the ruddy flames, which gave to his body, as in mockery, a kindly warmth. The priests, however, did not lay hands on him. They respected the sparer of their prince so far as not to touch him them- selves ; they left him to be despatched by the supernatural beings, whom they confidently expected to come down for that purpose as soon as they had retired. Ronald, whose faith was of another descrip- tion, saw their departure with joy ; but it was damped the next minute. What was he to do in winter-time on an island, inhabited only by the fowls and other creatures of the northern sea, and never touched at but for a purpose hostile to his hopes ? For he now recollected, that this was the island he had so often heard of, as the chief seat of the Scandinavian religion ; whose traditions had so influenced countries of a different faith, that it was be- lieved in Scotland as well as the continent, that no human being could live there many hours. Spirits, it was thought appeared in terrible superhuman shapes, like the bloody idols which the priests worshipped, and car- ried the stranger off. The warrior of Inistore had soon too much reason to know the extent of this belief. He was not without fear himself, but dis- dained to yield to any circumstances with- out a struggle. He refreshed himself with some snow-water ; and after climbing the highest part of the island to look for a boat in vain (nothing was to be seen but the waves tumbling on all sides after the storm), he set about preparing a habitation. He saw at a little distance, on a slope, the mouth of a rocky cave. This he destined for his shelter at night ; and looking round for a defence for the door, as he knew not whether bears might not be among the inhabitants, he cast his eyes upon the thinnest of the stones which stood upright about the fire. The heart of the war- rior, though of a different faith, misgave him as he thought of appropriating this mystical stone, carved full of strange figures ; but half in courage, and half in the despair of fear, he sud- RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 55 denly twisted it from its place. No one ap- peared. The fire altered not. The noise of the fowl and other creatures was no louder on the shore. Ronald smiled at his fears, and knew the undiminished vigour of the Perfect Hand. He found the cavern already fitted for shel- ter ; doubtless by the Scandinavian priests. He had bitter reason to know how well it sheltered him ; for day after day he hoped in vain that some boat from Inistore would venture upon the island. He beheld sails at a distance, but they never came. He piled stone upon stone, joined old pieces of boats together, and made flags of the sea-weed ; but all in vain. The vessels, he thought, came nearer, but none so near as to be of use ; and a new and sickly kind of impatience cut across the stout heart of Ronald, and set it beating. He knew not whether it was with the cold or with misery, but his frame would shake for an hour together, when he lay down on his dried weeds and feathers to rest. He re- membered the happy sleeps that used to fol- low upon toil ; and he looked with double activity for the eggs and shell-fish on which he sustained himself, and smote double the num- ber of seals, half in the very exercise of his anger : and then he would fall dead asleep with fatigue. In this way he bore up agamstthe violences of the winter season, which had now passed. The sun looked out with a melancholy smile upon the moss and the poor grass, chequered here and there with flowers almost as poor. There was the buttercup, struggling from a dirty white into a yellow ; and a faint-coloured poppy, neither the good nor the ill of which was then known ; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrinking violet. The lark alone seemed cheerful, and startled the ear of the desolate chieftain with its climbing triumph in the air. Ronald looked up. His fancy had been made wild and wilful by strange habits and sickened blood ; and he thought impatiently, that if he were up there like the lark, he might see his friends and his love in Inistore. Being naturally, however, of a gentle as well as courageous disposition, the Perfect Hand found the advantage as well as the necessity of turning his violent impulses into noble matter for patience. He had heard of the dreadful bodily sufferings which the Scandinavian heroes underwent from their enemies with triumphant songs. He knew that no such sufferings which were fugitive, could equal the agonies of a daily martyrdom of mind ; and he cultivated a certain humane pride of patience, in order to bear them. His only hope of being delivered from the island now depended on the Scandinavian priests ; but it was a moot point whether they would respect him for surviving, or kill him on that very account, out of a mixture of personal and superstitious resentment. He thought his death the more likely ; but this, at least, was a termination to the dreary prospect of a solitude for life ; and partly out of that hope, and partly from a courageous patience, he cultivated as many pleasant thoughts and objects about him as he could. He adorned his cavern with shells and feathers ; he made himself a cap and cloak of the latter, and boots and a vest of seal-skin, girding it about with the glossy sea- weed ; he cleared away a circle before the cavern, planted it with the best grass, and heaped about it the mossiest stones : he strung some bones of a fish with sinews, and fitting a shell beneath it, the Perfect Hand drew forth the first gentle music that had been heard in that wild island. He touched it one day in the midst of a flock of seals, who were basking in the sun ; they turned their heads towards the sound ; he thought he saw in their mild faces a human expression ; and from that day forth no seal was ever slain by the Perfect Hand. He spared even the huge and cloudy visaged-walrusses, in whose societies he beheld a dull resemblance to the gentler affections ; and his new intimacy with these possessors of the place was com- pleted by one of the former animals, who having been rescued by him from a contest with a larger one, followed him about, as well as its half-formed and dragging legs would allow, with the officious attachment of a dog. But the summer was gone, and no one had appeared. The new thoughts and deeper in- sight into things, which solitude and sorrowful necessity had produced, together with a dimi- nution of his activity, had not tended to strengthen him against the approach of winter : and autumn came upon him like the melancholy twilight of the year. He had now no hope of seeing even the finishers of his existence before the spring. The rising winds among the rocks, and the noise of the whales blowing up their spouts of water, till the caverns thundered with their echoes, seemed to be like heralds of the stern season which was to close him in against approach. He had tried one day to move the stone at the mouth of his habitation a little further in, and found his strength fail him. He laid himself half reclining on the ground, full of such melancholy thoughts as half bewildered him. Things, by turns, ap- peared a fierce dream, and a fiercer reality. He was leaning and looking on the ground, and idly twisting his long hair, when his eyes fell upon the hand that held it. It was livid and emaciated. He opened and shut it, opened and shut it again, turned it round, and looked at its ribbed thinness and laid-open machinery ; many thoughts came upon him, some which he understood not, and some which he recognised but too well ; and a turbid violence seemed rising at his heart, when the seal, his companion, drew nigh, and began licking that weak memo- rial of the Perfect Hand. A shower of self- THE INDICATOR. pitying tears fell upon the seal's face and the hand together. On a sudden he heard a voice. It was a deep and loud one, and distinctly called out " Ronald ! " He looked up, gasping with wonder. Three times it called out, as if with peremptory command, and three times the rocks and caverns echoed the word with a dim sullenness. Recollecting himself, he would have risen and answered ; but the sudden change of sen- sations had done what all his sufferings had not been able to do, and he found himself unable either to rise or to speak. The voice called again and again ; but it was now more distant, and Ronald's heart sickened as he heard it re- treating. His strength seemed to fail him in proportion as it became necessary. Suddenly the voice came back again. It advances. Other voices are heard, all advancing. In a short time, figures come hastily down the slope by the side of his cavern, looking over into the area before it as they descend. They enter. They are before him and about him. Some of them, in a Scandinavian habit, prostrate them- selves at his feet, and address him in an un- known language. But these are sent away by another, who remains with none but two youths. Ronald has risen a little, and leans his back against the rock. One of the youths puts his arm between his neck and the rock, and half kneels beside him, turning his face away and weeping. " I am no god, nor a favourite of gods, as these people supposed me," said Ronald, looking up at the chief who was speaking to the other youth : " if thou wilt despatch me then, do so. I only pray thee to let the death be fit for a warrior, such as I once was." The chief appeared agitated. "Speak not ill of the gods, Ronald," said he, " although thou wert blindly brought up. A warrior like thee must be a favourite of heaven. I come to prove it to thee. Dost thou not know me ? I come to give thee life for life." Ronald looked more steadfastly. It was the Scandinavian prince whom he had spared, because of his bride, in battle. He smiled, and lifted up his hand to him, which was intercepted and kissed by the youth who held his arm round his neck. " Who are these fair youths ? " said Ronald, half turning his head to look in his supporter's face. " This is the bride I spoke of," answered the prince, " who insisted on sharing this voyage with me, and put on this dress to be the bolder in it." "And who is the other ?" The other, with dried eyes, looked smiling into his, and intercepted the answer also. "Who," said the sweetest voice in the world, " can it be, but one ?" With a quick and almost fierce tone, Ronald cried out aloud, " I know the voice ;" and he would have fallen flat on the earth, if they had not all three supported him. It was a mild return to Inistore, Ronald gathering strength all the way, at the eyes and voice of Moilena, and the hands of all three. Their discovery of him was easily explained. The crews of the vessels, who had been afraid to come nearer, had repeatedly seen a figure on the island making signs. The Scandinavian priests related how they had left Ronald there ; but insisted that no human being conld live upon it, and that some god wished to manifest himself to his faithful worshippers. The heart of Moilena was quick to guess the truth. The prince proposed to accompany the priests. His bride and the destined bride of his saviour went with him, and returned as you heard ; and from that day forth many were the songs in Inistore, upon the fortunes of the Perfect Hand and the kindness of the Perfect Voice. Nor were those forgotten who forgot not others. XXVIII.— A CHAPTER ON HATS. We know not what will be thought of our taste in so important a matter, but we must confess we are not fond of a new hat. There is a certain insolence about it : it seems to value itself upon its finished appearance, and to presume upon our liking before we are acquainted with it. In the first place, it comes home more like a marmot or some other living creature, than a manufacture. It is boxed up, and wrapt in silver paper, and brought deli- cately. It is as sleek as a lap-dog. Then we are to take it out as nicely, and people are to wonder how we shall look in it. Maria twitches one this way, and Sophia that, and Caroline that, and Catharine t'other. We have the difficult task, all the while, of looking easy, till the approving votes are pronounced ; our only resource (which is also difficult) being to say good things to all four ; or to clap the hat upon each of their heads, and see what pretty milk- women they make. At last the approving votes are pronounced ; and (provided it is fine) we may go forth. But how uneasy the sen- sation about the head ! How unlike the old hat, to which we had become used, and which must now make way for this fop of a stranger ! We might do what we liked with the former. Dust, rain, a gale of wind, a fall, a squeeze, — nothing affected it. It was a true friend, a friend for all weathers. Its appearance only was against it : in everything else it was the better for wear. But if the roads or the streets are too dry, the new hat is afraid of getting dusty : if there is wind, and it is not tight, it may be blown off into the dirt : we may have to scramble after it through dust or mud ; just reaching it with our fingers, only to see it blown away again. And if rain comes on ! Oh ye gallant apprentices, who have issued forth on a Sunday morning, with Jane or Susan, careless either of storms at night-fall, or toils and scoldings next day! Ye, who have re- A CHAPTER ON HATS. 57 ceived your new hat and boots but an hour before ye set out ; and then issue forth triumph- antly, the charmer by your side ! She, with arm in yours, and handkerchief in hand, blushing, or eating gingerbread, trips on : ye, admiring, trudge : we ask ye, whether love itself has prevented ye from feeling a certain fearful consciousness of that crowning glory, the new and glossy hat, when the first drops of rain announce the coming of a shower ? Ah, hasten, while yet it is of use to haste ; ere yet the spotty horror fixes on the nap ! Out with the protecting handkerchief, which, tied round the hat, and flowing off in a corner behind, shall gleam through the thickening night like a suburb comet ! Trust not the tempting yawn of stable-yard or gate-way, or the impossible notion of a coach ! The rain will continue ; and alas ! ye are not so rich as in the morning. Hasten ! or think of a new hat's becoming a rain-spout ! Think of its well-built crown, its graceful and well-measured fit, the curved-up elegance of its rim, its shadowing gentility when seen in front, its arching grace over the ear when beheld sideways ! Think of it also the next day ! How altered, how dejected ! How changed from him, That life of measure and that soul of rim ! Think of the paper-like change of its consist- ence ; of its limp sadness — its confused and flattened nap, and of that polished and perfect circle ; which neither brush nor hot iron shall restore ! We have here spoken of the beauties of a new hat ; but abstractedly considered, they are very problematical. Fashion makes beauty for a time. Our ancestors found a grace in the cocked hats now confined to beadles, Chelsea pensioners, and coachmen. They would have laughed at our chimney-tops with a border : though upon the whole we do think them the more graceful of the two. The best modern covering for the head was the imita- tion of the broad Spanish hat in use about thirty years back, when Mr. Stothard made his designs for the Novelists Magazine. But in proportion as society has been put into a bustle, our hats seem to have narrowed their dimensions : the flaps were clipped off more and more till they became a rim ; and now the rim has contracted to a mere nothing ; so that what with our close heads and our tight succinct mode of dress, we look as if we were intended for nothing but to dart backwards and forwards on matters of business, with as little hindrance to each other as possible. This may give us a greater distaste to the hat than it desenves ; but good-looking or not, we know of no situation in which a new one can be said to be useful. "We have seen how the case is during bad weather : but if the weather is in the finest condition possible, with neither rain nor dust, there may be a hot sunshine ; and then the hat is too narrow to shade us : no great evil, it is true ! but we must have our pique out against the knave, and turn him to the only account in our power : — we must write upon him. For every other purpose, we hold him as naught. The only place a new hat can be carried into with safety, is a church ; for there is plenty of room there. There also takes place its only union of the ornamental with the useful, if so it is to be called : we allude to the preparatory ejacu- lation whispered into it by the genteel wor- shipper, before he turns round and makes a bow to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and the Miss Thompsons. There is a formula for this occa- sion ; and doubtless it is often used, to say nothing of extempore effusions : but there are wicked imaginations, who suspect that instead of devouter whisperings, the communer with his lining sometimes ejaculates no more than Swallow, St. James's-street ; or, Augarde and Spain, Hatters, No. 51, Oxford-street, London : — after which he draws up his head with infinite gravity and preparation, and makes the gentle recognitions aforesaid. But wherever there is a crowd, the new hat is worse than useless. It is a pity that the general retrenchment of people's finances did away with the flat opera hat, which was a very sensible thing. The round one is only in the way. The matting over the floor of the Opera does not hinder it from getting dusty ; not to mention its chance of a kick from the incon- siderate. But from the pit of the other theatres, you may bring it away covered with sawdust, or rubbed up all the wrong way of the nap, or monstrously squeezed into a shapeless lump. The least thing to be expected in a pressure, is a great poke in its side like a sunken cheek. Boating is a mortal enemy to new hats. A shower has you fast in a common boat ; or a sail-line, or an inexperienced oar, may knock the hat off ; and then fancy it tilting over the water with the tide, soaked all the while beyond redemption, and escaping from the tips of your outstretched fingers, while you ought all to be pulling the contrary way home. But of all wrong boxes for a new hat, avoid a mail-coach. If you keep it on, you will begin nodding perhaps at midnight, and then it goes jamming against the side of the coach, to the equal misery of its nap and your own. If you take it off, where is its refuge ? Will the clergyman take the least heed of it, who is snoring comfortably in one corner in his night- cap ? Or will the farmer, jolting about inex- orably ? Or the regular traveller, who in his fur-cap and infinite knowledge of highway conveniences, has already beheld it with con- tempt ? Or the old market-woman, whom it is in vain to request to be tender ? Or the young damsel, who wonders how you can think of sleeping in such a thing ? In the morning you suddenly miss your hat, and ask after it 58 THE INDICATOR. with trepidation. The traveller smiles. They all move their legs, but know nothing of it ; till the market-woman exclaims, " Deary me ! Well— lord, only think ! A hat is it, Sir ? Why I do believe, — but I'm sure I never thought o' such a thing more than the child unborn, — that it must be a hat then which I took for a pan I've been a buying ; and so I've had my warm foot in it, Lord help us, ever since five o'clock this blessed morning !" It is but fair to add, that we happen to have an educated antipathy to the hat. At our school no hats were worn, and the cap is too small to be a substitute. Its only use is to astonish the old ladies in the street, who wonder how so small a thing can be kept on ; and to this end, we used to rub it into the back or side of the head, where it hung like a worsted wonder. It is after the fashion of Catharine's cap in the play : it seems as if Moulded on a porringer ; "Why, 'tis a cockle, or a walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap ; A custard coffin, a bauble. But we may not add I love thee well, in that thou likest it not ; 111 befall us, if we ever dislike anything about thee, old nurse of our childhood ! How inde- pendent of the weather used we to feel in our old friar's dress, — our thick shoes, yellow worsted stockings, and coarse long coat or gown ! Our cap was oftener in our hand than on our head, let the weather be what it would. We felt a pride as well as pleasure, when every body else was hurrying through the streets, in receiving the full summer showers with un- covered poll, sleekiDg our glad hair bike the feathers of a bird. It must be said for hats in general, that they are a very ancient part of dress, perhaps the most ancient ; for a negro, who has nothing else upon him, sometimes finds it necessary to guard off" the sun with a hat of leaves or straw. The Chinese, who carry their records farther back than any other people, are a hatted race, both narrow-brimmed and broad. We are apt to think of the Greeks as a bare-headed people ; and they liked to be so ; but they had hats for journeying in, such as may be seen on the statues of Mercury, who was the god of tra- vellers. They were large and flapped, and were sometimes fastened round under the chin like a lady's bonnet. The Eastern nations generally wore turbans, and do still, with the exception of the Persians, who have exchanged them for large conical caps of felt. The Romans copied the Greeks in their dress, as in everything else ; but the poorer orders wore a cap like their boasted Phrygian ancestors, resembling the one which the reader may see about the streets upon the bust of Ca- n ova's Paris. The others would put their robes about their heads upon occasion, — after the fashion of the hoods of the middle ages, and of the cloth head-dresses which we see in the portraits of Dante and Petrarch. Of a similar mode are the draperies on the heads of our old Plantagenet kings and of Chaucer. The velvet cap which succeeded, appears to have come from Italy, as seen in the portraits of Raphael and Titian ; and it would probably have continued till the French times of Charles the Second, for our ancestors up to that period were great admirers of Italy, had not Philip the Second of Spain come over to marry our Queen Mary. The extreme heats of Spain had forced the natives upon taking to that in- genious compound of the hat and umbrella, still known by the name of the Spanish hat. We know not whether Philip himself wore it. His father, Charles the Fifth, who was at the top of the world, is represented as delighting in a little humble-looking cap. But we con- ceive it was either from Philip, or some gen- tleman in his train, that the hat and feather succeeded among us to the cap and jewels of Henry the Eighth. The ascendancy of Spain in those times carried it into other parts of Europe. The French, not requiring so much shade from the sun, and always playing with and altering their dress, as a child does his toy, first covered the brim with feathers, then gave them a pinch in front ; then came pinches up at the side ; and at last appeared the fierce and triple-daring cocked hat. This disappeared in our childhood, or only survived among the military, the old, and the reverend, who could not willingly part with their habitual dignity. An old beau or so would also retain it, in memory of its victories when young. We remember its going away from the heads of the foot-guards. The heavy dragoons retained it till lately. It is now almost sunk into the mock-heroic, and confined, as we before ob- served, to beadles and coachmen, &c. The modern clerical beaver, agreeably to the deli- beration with which our establishments depart from all custom, is a cocked hat with the front flap let down, and only a slight pinch remaining behind. This is worn also by the judges, the lawyers being of clerical extraction. Still however the true cocked-hat lingers here and there with a solitary old gentleman ; and wherever it appears in such company, begets a certain retrospective reverence. There was a something in its connexion with the high- bred drawing-room times of the seventeenth century ; in the gallant though quaint ardour of its look ; and in its being lifted up in salu- tations with that deliberate loftiness, the arm arching up in front and the hand slowly raising it by the front angle with finger and thumb, — that could not easily die. We remember, when our steward at school, remarkable for his inflexible air of precision and dignity, left off his cocked-hat for a round one ; there SEAMEN ON SHORE. 59 was, undoubtedly, though we dared only half confess it to our minds, a sort of diminished majesty about him. His infinite self-possession began to look remotely finite. His Crown Imperial was a little blighted. It was like divesting a column of its capital. But the native stateliness was there, informing the new hat. He Had not yet lost All his original beaver ; nor appeared Less than arch-steward ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured. The late Emperor Paul had conceived such a sense of the dignity of the cocked hat, aggra- vated by its having been deposed by the round one of the French republicans, that he ordered all persons in his dominions never to dare be seen in public with round hats, upon pain of being knouted and sent to Siberia. Hats being the easiest part of the European dress to be taken off, are doffed among us out of reverence. The Orientals, on the same account, put off their slippers instead of tur- bans, which is the reason why the Jews still keep their heads covered during worship. The Spanish grandees have the privilege of wearing their hats in the royal presence, probably in commemoration of the free spirit in which the Cortes used to crown the sovereign ; telling him (we suppose in their corporate capacity) that they were better men than he, but chose him of their own free will for their master. The grandees only claim to be as good men, unless their families are older. There is a well- known story of a picture, in which the Virgin Mary is represented with a label coming out of her mouth, saying to a Spanish gentleman who has politely taken off his hat, "Cousin, be covered." But the most interesting anecdote connected with a hat belongs to the family of the De Courcys, Lord Kinsale. One of their ancestors, at an old period of our history, having overthrown a huge and insolent cham- pion, who had challenged the whole court, was desired by the king to ask him some favour. He requested that his descendants should have the privilege of keeping their heads covered in the royal presence, and they do so to this day. The new lord, we believe, always comes to court on purpose to vindicate his right. We have heard, that on the last occasion, probably after a long interval, some of the courtiers thought it might as well have been dispensed with ; which was a foolish as well as a jealous thing, for these exceptions only prove the royal rule. The Spanish grandees originally took their privi- lege instead of receiving it ; but when the spirit of it had gone, their covered heads were only so many intense recognitions of the king's dignity, which it was thought such a mighty thing to resemble. A Quaker's hat is a more formidable thing than a grandee's. XXIX.— SEAMEN ON SHORE. The sole business of a seaman on shore, who has to go to sea again, is to take as much pleasure as he can. The moment he sets his foot on dry ground, he turns his back on all salt beef and other salt-water restrictions. His long absence, and the impossibility of get- ting land pleasures at sea, put him upon a sort of desperate appetite. He lands, like a con- queror taking possession. He has been debarred so long, that he is resolved to have that matter out with the inhabitants. They must render an account to him of their treasures, their women, their victualling-stores, their enter- tain ments, their everything ; and in return he will behave like a gentleman, and scatter his gold. His first sensation on landing, is the strange firmness of the earth, which he goes treading in a sort of heavy light way, half waggoner and half dancing-master, his shoulders rolling, and his feet touching and going ; the same way, in short, in which he keeps himself prepared for all the chances of the vessel, when on deck. There is always this appearance of lightness of foot and heavy strength of upper works, in a sailor. And he feels it himself. He lets his jacket fly open, and his shoulders slouch, and his hair grow long, to be gathered into a heavy pigtail j but when full dressed, he prides himself on a certain gentility of toe, on a white stocking and a natty shoe, issuing lightly out of the flow- ing blue trowser. His arms are neutral, hang- ing and swinging in a curve aloof ; his hands half open, as if they had just been handling ropes, and had no object in life but to handle them again. He is proud of appearing in a new hat and slops, with a Belcher handkerchief flow- ing loosely round his neck, and the corner of another out of his pocket. Thus equipped, with pinchbeck buckles in his shoes (which he bought for gold), he puts some tobacco in his mouth, not as if he were going to use it directly, but as if he stuffed it in a pouch on one side, as a peli- can does fish, to employ it hereafter ; and so, with Bet Monson at his side, and perhaps a cane or whanghee twisted under his other arm, sallies forth to take possession of all Lubber- land. He buys everything that he comes athwart — nuts, gingerbread,apples, shoe-strings, beer, brandy, gin, buckles, knives, a watch (two, if he has money enough), gowns and handkerchiefs for Bet and his mother and sisters, dozens of " Superfine Best Men's Cotton Stock- ings," dozens of "Superfine Best "Women's Cotton Ditto," best good Check for Shirts (though he has too much already), infinite needles and thread (to sew his trowsers with some day), a footman's laced hat, Bear's Grease, to make his hair grow (by way of joke), several sticks, all sorts of Jew articles, a flute (which he can't .play, and never intends), a leg of KO THE INDICATOR. mutton, which he carries somewhere to roast, and for a piece of which the landlord of the Ship makes him pay twice what he gave for the whole ; in short, all that money can be spent upon, which is everything bat medicine gratis, and this he would insist on paying for. He wouldbuyall the painted parrots on an Italian's head, on purpose to break them, rather than not spend his money. He has fiddles and a dance at the Sliip, with oceans of flip and grog ; and gives the blind fiddler tobacco for sweet- meats, and half-a-crown for treading on his toe. He asks the landlady, with a sigh, after her daughter Nanse, who first fired his heart with her silk stockings ; and finding that she is married and in trouble, leaves five crowns for her, which the old lady appropriates as part payment for a shilling in advance. He goes to the Port playhouse with Bet Monson, and a great red handkerchief full of apples, ginger- bread nuts, and fresh beef ; calls out for the fiddlers and Rule Britannia; pelts Tom Sikes in the pit ; and compares Othello to the black shij^s cook in his white nightcap. "When he comes to London, he and some messmates take a hackney-coach, full of Bet Monsons and tobacco-pipes, and go through the streets smoking and lolling out of window. He has ever been cautious of venturing on horseback, and among his other sights in foreign parts, relates with unfeigned astonishment how he has seen the Turks ride : " Only," says he, guarding against the hearer's incredulity, " they have saddle-boxes to hold 'em in, fore and aft, and shovels like for stirrups." He will tell you how the Chinese drink, and the Negurs dance, and the monkeys pelt you with cocoa- nuts ; and how King Domy would have built him a mud hut and made him a peer of the realm, if he would have stopped with him, and taught him to make trowsers. He has a sister at a " School for Young Ladies," who blushes with a mixture of pleasure and shame at his appearance ; and whose confusion he completes by slipping fourpence into her hand, and say- ing out loud that he has " no more copper " about him. His mother and elder sisters at home doat on all he says and does ; telling him however, that he is a great sea fellow, and was always wild ever since he was a hop-o'-my- thumb, no higher than the window locker. He tells his mother that she would be a duchess in Paranaboo ; at which the good old portly dame laughs and looks proud. When his sisters complain of his romping, he says that they are only sorry it is not the baker. He frightens them with a mask made after the New Zealand fashion, and is forgiven for his learning. Their mantel-piece is filled by him with shells and shark's teeth ; and when he goes to sea again, there is no end of tears, and " God bless you's ! " and home-made gingerbread. His Officer on shore does much of all this, only, generally speaking, in a higher taste. The moment he lands, he buys quantities of jewellery and other valuables, for all the females of his acquaintance ; and is taken in for every article. He sends in a cart-load of fresh meat to the ship, though he is going to town next day ; and calling in at a chandler's for some candles, is persuaded to buy a dozen of green wax, with which he lights up the ship at evening ; regretting that the fine moonlight hinders the effect of the colour. A man, with a bundle beneath his arm, accosts him in an under-tone ; and, with a look in which respect for his knowledge is mixed with an avowed zeal for his own interest, asks if his Honour will just step under the gangway here, and inspect some real India shawls. The gallant Lieutenant says to himself, " This fel- low knows what's what, by his face ; " and so he proves it, by being taken in on the spot. When he brings the shawls home, he says to his sister with an air of triumph, " There, Poll, there's something for you ; only cost me twelve, and is worth twenty if it 's worth a dollar." She turns pale — " Twenty what, my dear George ? Why, you haven't given twelve dol- lars for it, I hope ? " " Not I, by the Lord." — "That's lucky ; because you see, my dear, George, that all together is not worth more than fourteen or fifteen shillings " " Fourteen or fifteen what ! Why its real India, en't it ? Why the fellow told me so ; or I'm sure I'd as soon " — (here he tries to hide his blushes with a bluster) — I'd as soon have given him twelve douses on the chaps as twelve guineas." — " Twelve guineas ! " exclaims the sister ; and then drawling forth, " Why — my — dear — George," is proceeding to show him what the articles would have cost at Condell's, when he interrupts her by requesting her to go and choose for herself a tea-table service. He then makes his escape to some messmates at a coffee- house, and drowns his recollection of the shawls in the best wine, and a discussion on the com- parative merits of the English and West-Indian beauties and tables. At the theatre afterwards, where he has never been before, he takes a lady at the back of one of the boxes for a woman of quality ; and when, after returning his long respectful gaze with a smile, she turns aside and puts her handkerchief to her mouth, he thinks it is in derision, till his friend unde- ceives him. He is introduced to the lady ; and ever afterwards, at first sight of a woman of quality (without any disparagement either to those charming personages), expects her to give him a smile. He thinks the other ladies much better creatures than they are taken for ; and for their parts, they tell him, that if all men were like himself, they would trust the sex again : — which, for aught we know, is the truth. He has, indeed, what he thinks a very liberal opinion of ladies in general ; judging them all, in a manner, with the eye of a seaman's ex- perience. Yet he will believe nevertheless in SEAMEN ON SHORE. 61 the * true-love " of any given damsel whom he seeks in the way of marriage, let him roam as much, or remain as long at a distance, as he may. It is not that he wants feeling ; but that he has read of it, time out of mind, in songs ; and he looks upon constancy as a sort of exploit, answering to those which he per- forms at sea. He is nice in his watches and linen. He makes you presents of cornelians, antique seals, cocoa-nuts set in silver, and other valuables. When he shakes hands with you, it is like being caught in a windlass. He would not swagger about the streets in his uniform, for the world. He is generally modest in com- pany, though liable to be irritated by what he thinks ungentlemanly behaviour. He is also liable to be rendered irritable by sickness ; partly because he has been used to command others, and to be served with all possible de- ference and alacrity ; and partly, because the idea of suffering pain, without any honour or profit to get by it, is unprofessional, and he is not accustomed to it. He treats talents unlike his own with great respect. He often per- ceives his own so little felt, that it teaches him this feeling for that of others. Besides, he admires the quantity of information which people can get, without travelling like himself; especially when he sees how interesting his own becomes, to them as well as to everybody else. "When he tells a story, particularly if full of wonders, he takes care to maintain his charac- ter for truth and simplicity, by qualifying it with all possible reservations, concessions, and anticipations of objection ; such as, " in case, at such times as, so to speak, as it were, at least, at any rate." He seldom uses sea-terms but when jocosely provoked by something con- trary to his habits of life ; as for instance, if he is always meeting you on horseback, he asks if you never mean to walk the deck again; or if he finds you studying day after day, he says you are always overhauling your log-book. He makes more new acquaintances, and forgets his old ones less, than any other man in the busy world ; for he is so compelled to make his home everywhere, remembers his native one as such a place of enjoyment, has all his friendly recollections so fixed upon his mind at sea, and has so much to tell and to hear when he returns, that change and separation lose with him the most heartless part of their nature. He also sees such a variety of cus- toms and manners, that he becomes charitable in his opinions altogether ; and charity, while it diffuses the affections, cannot let the old ones go. Half the secret of human intercourse is to make allowance for each other. When the Officer is superannuated or retires, he becomes, if intelligent and inquiring, one of the most agreeable old men in the world, equally welcome to the silent for his card- playingj and to the conversational for his re- collections. He is fond of astronomy and books of voyages, and is immortal with all who know him for having been round the world, or seen the transit of Venus, or had one of his fingers carried off by a New Zealand hatchet, or a present of feathers from an Otaheitan beauty. If not elevated by his acquirements above some of his humbler tastes, he delights in a corner-cupboard holding his cocoa-nuts and punch-bowl ; has his summer-house cas- tellated and planted with wooden cannon ; and sets up the figure of his old ship, the Britannia or the Lovely Nancy, for a statue in the gar- den ; where it stares eternally with red cheeks and round black eyes, as if in astonishment at its situation. Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Tales about four hundred and thirty years ago, has among his other characters in that work a Ship man, who is exactly of the same cast as the modern sailor, — the same robustness, courage, and rough-drawn virtue, doing its duty, without being very nice in helping itself to its recreations. There is the very dirk, the complexion, the jollity, the experience, and the bad horsemanship. The plain unaffected end- ing of the description has the air of a sailor's own speech ; while the line about the beard is exceedingly picturesque, poetical, and compre- hensive. In copying it out, we shall merely alter the old spelling, where the words are still modern. A shipman was there, wonned far by west ; For aught I wot, he was of Dartemouth. He rode opon a rouncie, as he couth *, All in a gown of falding to the knee. A dagger hanging by a lace had he, About his neck, under his arm adown : The hot summer had made his hew all brown : And certainly he was a good felaw. Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw From Bourdeaux ward, while that the chapman slep. Of nice conscience took he no keep. If that he fought and had the higher hand, By water he sent 'em home to every land. But of his craft, to reckon well his tides, His streames and his strandes him besides, His harborough, his moon, and his lode manage, There was not such from Hull unto Carthage. Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake ; With many a tempest had his beard been shake. He knew well all the havens, as they were, From Gothland to the Cape de Finisterre, And every creek in Briton and in Spain. His barge ycleped was the Magdelain. When about to tell his Tale, he tells his fellow- travellers that he shall clink them so merry a bell, That it shall waken all this company : But it shall not be of philosophy, Nor of physick, nor of terms quaint of law ; There is but little Latin in my maw. The story he tells is a well-known one in the Italian novels, of a monk who made love to a merchant's wife, and borrowed a hundred francs of the husband to give her. She accord- * He rode upon a hack-horse, as well as he could. THE INDICATOR. ingly admits his addresses during the absence of her good man on a journey. When the latter returns, he applies to the cunning monk for repayment, and is referred to the lady ; who thus finds her mercenary behaviour out- witted. XXX.— ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGI- NATION. There is not a more unthinking way of talking, than to say such and such pains and pleasures are only imaginary, and therefore to be got rid of or undervalued accordingly. There is nothing imaginary, in the common acceptation of the word. The logic of Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield is good argument here : — " Whatever is, is." Whatever touches us, whatever moves us, does touch and does move us. We recognise the reality of it, as we do that of a hand in the dark. We might as well say that a sight which makes us laugh, or a blow which brings tears into our eyes, is imaginary, as that anything else is imaginary which makes us laugh or weep. We can only judge of things by their effects. Our percep- tion constantly deceives us, in things with which we suppose ourselves perfectly conver- sant ; but our reception of their effect is a different matter. Whether we are material- ists or immaterialists, whether things be about us or within us, whether we think the sun is a substance, or only the image of a divine thought, an idea, a thing imaginary, we are equally agreed as to the notion of its warmth. But on the other hand, as this warmth is felt differently by different temperaments, so what we call imaginary things affect different minds. What we have to do is not to deny their effect, because we do not feel in the same proportion, or whether we even feel it at all ; but to see whether our neighbours may not be moved. If they are, there is, to all intents and purposes, a moving cause. But we do not see it ? No ; — neither perhaps do they. They only feel it ; they are only sentient, — a word which implies the sight given to the imagination by the feel- ings. But what do you mean, we may ask in return, by seeing? Some rays of light come in contact with the eye ; they bring a sensa- tion to it ; in a word, they touch it ; and the impression left by this touch we call sight. How far does this differ in effect from the impression left by any other touch, however mysterious ? An ox knocked down by a butcher, and a man knocked down by a fit of apoplexy, equally feel themselves compelled to drop. The tickling of a straw and of a comedy, equally move the muscles about the mouth. The look of a beloved eye will so thrill the frame, that old philosophers have had recourse to a doctrine of beams and radiant particles flying from one sight to another. In fine, what is contact itself, and why does it affect us ? There is no one cause more mysterious than another, if we look into it. Nor does the question concern us like moral causes. We may be content to know the earth by its fruits ; but how to increase and improve them is a more attractive study. If instead of saying that the causes which moved in us this or that pain or pleasure were imaginary, people were to say that the causes themselves were removeable, they would be nearer the truth. When a stone trips us up, we do not fall to disputing its existence : we put it out of the way. In like manner, when we suffer from what is called an imaginary pain, our business is not to canvass the reality of it. Whether there is any cause or not in that or any other perception, or whether everything consist not in what is called effect, it is sufficient for us that the effect is real. Our sole business is to remove those second causes, which always accompany the original idea. As in deliriums, for instance, it would be idle to go about per- suading the patient that he did not behold the figures he says he does. He might reasonably ask us, if he could, how we know anything about the matter ; or how we can be sure, that in the infinite wonders of the universe, certain realities may not become apparent to certain eyes, whether diseased or not. Our business would be to put him into that state of health, in which human beings are not diverted from their offices and comforts by a liability to such imaginations. The best reply to his question would be, that such a morbidity is clearly no more a fit state for a human being, than a disarranged or incomplete state of works is for a watch ; and that seeing the general tendency of nature to this completeness or state of com- fort, we naturally conclude, that the imagi- nations in question, whether substantial or not, are at least not of the same lasting or prevailing description. We do not profess metaphysics. We are indeed so little conversant with the masters of that art, that we are never sure whether we are using even its proper terms. All that we may know on the subject comes to us from some reflection and some experience ; and this all may be so little as to make a metaphysician smile ; which, if he be a true one, he will do good-naturedly. The pretender will take oc- casion, from our very confession, to say that we know nothing. Our faculty, such as it is, is rather instinctive than reasoning ; rather physical than metaphysical; rather sentient because it loves much, than because it knows much ; rather calculated by a certain retention of boyhood, and by its wanderings in the green places of thought, to light upon a piece of the old golden world, than to tire ourselves, and conclude it unattainable, by too wide and scientific a search. We pretend to see farther than none but the worldly and the malignant. THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 63 And yet those who see farther, may not all see so well. We do not blind our eyes with look- ing upon the sun in the heavens. We believe it to be there, but we find its light upon earth also ; and we would lead humanity, if we could, out of misery and coldness into the shine of it. Pain might still be there ; must be so, as long as we are mortal ; For oft we still must weep, since we are human : but it should be pain for the sake of others, which is noble ; not unnecessary pain inflicted by or upon them, which it is absurd not to remove. The very pains of mankind struggle towards pleasures ; and such pains as are proper for them have this inevitable accom- paniment of true humanity, — that they cannot but realise a certain gentleness of enjoyment. Thus the true bearer of pain would come round to us ; and he would not grudge us a share of his burden, though in taking from his trouble it might diminish his pride. Pride is but a bad pleasure at the expense of others. The great object of humanity is to enrich every- body. If it is a task destined not to succeed, it is a good one from its very nature ; and fulfils at least a glad destiny of its own. To look upon it austerely is in reality the reverse of austerity. It is only such an impatience of the want of pleasure as leads us to grudge it in others ; and this impatience itself, if the sufferer knew how to use it, is but another impulse, in the general yearning, towards an equal wealth of enjoyment. But we shall be getting into other discussions. — The ground- work of all happiness is health. Take care of this ground ; and the doleful imaginations that come to warn us against its abuse, will avoid it. Take care of this ground, and let as many glad imaginations throng to it as possible. Read the magical works of the poets, and they will come. If you doubt their existence, ask yourself whether you feel plea- sure at the idea of them ; whether you are moved into delicious smiles, or tears as delicious. If you are, the result is the same to you, whether they exist or not. It is not mere words to say, that he who goes through a rich man's park, and sees things in it which never bless the mental eyesight of the possessor, is richer than he. He is richer. More results of pleasure come home to him. The ground is actually more fertile to him : the place haunted with finer shapes. He has more servants to come at his call, and administer to him with full hands. Knowledge, sympathy, imagina- tion, are all divining-rods, with which he dis- covers treasure. Let a painter go through the grounds, and he will see not only the general colours of green and brown, but their com- binations and contrasts, and the modes in which they might again be combined and con- trasted. t He will also put figures in the land- scape if there are none there, flocks and herds, or a solitary spectator, or Venus lying with her white body among the violets and primroses. Let a musician go through, and he will hear " differences discreet " in the notes of the birds and the lapsing of the water-fall. He will fancy a serenade of wind instruments in the open air at a lady's window, with a voice rising through it ; or the horn of the hunter ; or the musical cry of the hounds, Matched in mouth like bells, Each under each ; or a solitary voice in a bower, singing for an expected lover ; or the chapel organ, waking up like the fountain of the winds. Let a poet go through the grounds, and he will heighten and increase all these sounds and images. He will bring the colours from heaven, and put an unearthly meaning into the voice. He will have stories of the sylvan inhabitants ; will shift the population through infinite varieties ; will put a sentiment upon every sight and sound ; will be human, romantic, supernatural ; will make all nature send tribute into that spot. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures While the landskip round it measures ; Russet lawns, and fallows grey, Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; Mountains, on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest ; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. Towers and battlements it sees, Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some Beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. But not to go on quoting lines which are ever in people's mouths like a popular tune, take a passage from the same poet less familiar to one's every-day recollections. It is in his Ar- cadian Masque, which was performed by some of the Derby family at their seat at Harefield near Uxbridge. The Genius of the place, meeting the noble shepherds and shepherdesses, accosts them : — Stay, gentle swains, for though in this disguise, I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes ; Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung Of that renowned flood, so often sung, Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse ; And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, Fair silver-buskin'd Nymphs, as great and good ; I know this quest of yours, and free intent, Was all in honour and devotion meant To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, Whom with low reverence I adore as mine ; And with all helpful service will comply To further this night's glad solemnity ; And lead ye where ye may more near behold What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold ; Which I, full oft, amidst these shades alone, Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon : For know, by lot from Jove I am the Power Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove In ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove : 64 THE INDICATOR. And all my plants I save from nightly ill Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill ; And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, And heal the arms of thwarting thunder blue, Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, Or hurtful worm with canker 'd venom bites. When evening grey doth rise, I fetch my round Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground ; And early, ere the odorous breath of morn Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tassel'd horn Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, Number my ranks, and visit every sprout With puissant words and murmurs made to bless. But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Syrens' harmony. That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measured motion draw. After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear. " Milton's Genius of the Grove," says War- ton, " being a spirit sent from Jove, and com- missioned from heaven to exercise a preterna- tural guardianship over the ' saplings tall,' to avert every noxious influence, and 'to visit every sprout with puissant words, and mur- murs made to bless/ had the privilege, not indulged to gross mortals, of hearing the celestial syrens' harmony. This enjoyment," continues the critic, in the spirit of a true reader, luxuriating over a beautiful thought, "this enjoyment, which is highly imagined, was a relaxation from the duties of his peculiar charge, in the depth of midnight, when the world is locked up in sleep and silence."* The music of the spheres is the old Platonic or Pythagorean doctrine ; but it remained for Milton to render it a particular midnight re- creation to "purged ears," after the earthly toils of the day. And we partake of it with the Genius. We may say of the love of nature, what Shakspeare says of another love, that it Adds a precious seeing to the eye. And we may say also, upon the like principle, that it adds a precious hearing to the ear. This and imagination, which ever follows upon it, are the two purifiers of our sense, which rescue us from the deafening babble of common cares, and enable us to hear all the affectionate voices of earth and heaven. The starry orbs, lapsing about in their smooth and sparkling dance, sing to us. The brooks talk to us of solitude. The birds are the animal spirits * If the reader wishes to indulge himself in a volume full of sheer poetry with a pleasant companion, familiar with the finest haunts of the Muses, he cannot do better than get Warton's Edition of the Minor Poems of Milton. The principal notes have been transferred by Mr. Todd to the sixth volume of his own valuable edition of Milton's Poetical Works ,- but it is better to have a good thing entire. of nature, carolling in the air, like a careless lass. The gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dippense Native perfumes ; and whisper whence they stole Those balmy spoils — Paradise Lost, book iv. The poets are called creators (Uoi-qral^ Makers) because with their magical words they bring forth to our eyesight the abundant images and beauties of creation. They put them there, if the reader pleases ; and so are literally creators. But whether put there or discovered, whether created or invented (for invention means nothing but finding out), there they are. If they touch us, they exist to as much purpose as anything else which touches us. If a passage in King Lear brings the tears into our eyes, it is real as the touch of a sorrowful hand. If the flow of a song of Anacreon's intoxicates us, it is as true to a pulse within us as the wine he drank. We hear not their sounds with ears, nor see their sights with eyes ; but we hear and see both so truly, that we are moved with pleasure ; and the advantage, nay even the test, of seeing and hearing, at any time, is not in the seeing and hearing, but in the ideas we realise, and the pleasure we derive. Intel- lectual objects, therefore, inasmuch as they come home to us, are as true a part of the stock of nature, as visible ones ; and they are infi- nitely more abundant. Between the tree of a country clown and the tree of a Milton or Spenser, what a difference in point of produc- tiveness ! Between the plodding of a sexton through a church-yard, and the walk of a Gray, what a difference ! What a difference between the Bermudas of a ship-builder and the Ber- moothes of Shakspeare ! the isle Full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not ; the isle of elves and fairies, that chased the tide to and fro on the sea-shore ; of coral-bones and the knell of sea-nymphs : of spirits dancing on the sands, and singing amidst the hushes of the wind ; of Caliban, whose brute nature en- chantment had made poetical; of Ariel, who lay in cowslip bells, and rode upon the bat ; of Miranda, who wept when she saw Ferdinand work so hard, and begged him to let her help ; telling him, I am your wife, if you will marry me ; If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellow You may deny me ; but 111 be your servant, Whether you will or no. Such are the discoveries which the poets make for us ; worlds, to which that of Columbus was but a handful of brute matter. America began to be richer for us the other day, when Hum- boldt came back and told us of its luxuriant and gigantic vegetation ; of the myriads of shooting lights, which revel at evening in the southern sky ; and of that grand constellation, at which Dante seems to have made so remark- DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN. able a guess (Purgatorio, cant, i., v. 22). The natural warmth of the Mexican and Peruvian genius, set free from despotism, will soon do all the rest for it ; awaken the sleeping riches of its eye-sight, and call forth the glad music of its affections. To return to our parks or landscapes, and what the poets can make of them. It is not improbable that Milton, by his Genius of the Grove at Harefield, covertly intended himself. He had been applied to by the Derbys to write some holiday poetry for them. He puts his consent in the mouth of the Genius, whose hand, he says, curls the ringlets of the grove, and who refreshes himself at midnight with listening to the music of the spheres ; that is to say, whose hand confers new beauty on it by its touch, and who has pleasures in solitude far richer and loftier than those of mere patri- cian mortal. See how finely Ben Jonson enlivens his description of Penshurst, the family-seat of the Sydneys ; now with the creations of classical mythology, and now with the rural manners of the time. Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Or touch, of marble ; nor canst boast a row Of polished pillows, or a roof of gold ; Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told ; Or stairs, or courts ; but stand'st an ancient pile : And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while. Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water : therein thou art fair. Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport ; Thy mount, to which the Dryads do resort ; Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made, Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade ; That taller tree, which of a nut was set At his great birth, where all the Muses met*. There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names Of many a Sylvan, taken with his flames : And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke The lighter fawns to reach thy lady's oak. Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer, When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends. The lower land, that to the river bends, Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed ; The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed : Each bank doth yield thee conies ; and thy tops Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydney copse, To crown,— thy open table doth provide The purple pheasant with the speckled side. Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come : The blushing apricot, and woolly peach, Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach ; And though thy walls be of the country stone, They're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan ; There's none that dwell about them wish them down ; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they make Sir Philip Sydney. The better cheeses, bring 'em ; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands ; and whose baskets bear An emblem of themselves in plum or pear. Imagination enriches everything. A great library contains not only books, but The assembled souls of all that men held wise. Bavenant. The moon is Homer's and Shakspeare's moon, as well as the one we look at. The sun comes out of his chamber in the east, with a sparkling eye, " rejoicing like a bridegroom." The com- monest thing becomes like Aaron's rod, that budded. Pope called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of hair, and justly gave it the honours of a constellation ; for he has hung it, sparkling for ever, in the eyes of posterity. A common meadow is a sorry thing to a ditcher or a coxcomb ; but by the help of its dues from imagination and the love of nature, the grass brightens for us, the air soothes us, we feel as we did in the daisied hours of childhood. Its verdures, its sheep, its hedge-row elms, — all these, and all else which sight, and sound, and associations can give it, are made to furnish a treasure of pleasant thoughts. Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of old, at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer a mere collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the grandeur of its history, and its literature ; its towers, and rivers ; its art, and jewellery, and foreign wealth ; its multitude of human beings all in- tent upon excitement, wise or yet to learn ; the huge and sullen dignity of its canopy of smoke by day ; the wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre at night-time ; and the noise of its many chariots, heard at the same hour, when the wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb. XXXII.— DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN. A Grecian philosopher being asked why he wept for the death of his son, since the sorrow was in vain, replied, " I weep on that account." And his answer became his wisdom. It is only for sophists to contend, that we, whose eyes contain the fountains of tears, need never give way to them. It would be unwise not to do so on some occasions. Sorrow unlocks them in her balmy moods. The first bursts may be bitter and overwhelming ; but the soil on which they pour, would be worse without them. They refresh the fever of the soul — the dry misery which parches the countenance into furrows, and renders us liable to our most terrible " flesh-quakes." There are sorrows, it is true, so great, that to give them some of the ordinary vents is to run a hazard of being overthrown. These we must rather strengthen ourselves to resist, or 66 THE INDICATOR. bow quietly and drily down, in order to let them pass over us, as the traveller does the wind of the desert. But where we feel that tears would relieve us, it is false philosophy to deny ourselves at least that first refreshment ; and it is always false consolation to tell people that because they cannot help a thing, they are not to mind it. The true way is, to let them grapple with the unavoidable sorrow, and try to win it into gentleness by a reasonable yield- ing. There are griefs so gentle in their very nature, that it would be worse than false hero- ism to refuse them a tear. Of this kind are the deaths of infants. Particular circum- stances may render it more or less advisable to | indulge in grief for the loss of a little child ; but, 1 in general, parents should be no more advised to repress their first tears on such an occasion, than to repress their smiles towards a child surviving, or to indulge in any other sympathy. It is an appeal to the same gentle tenderness ; and such appeals are never made in vain. The end of them is an acquittal from the harsher bonds of affliction — from the tying down of the spirit to one melancholy idea. It is the nature of tears of this kind, how- ever strongly they may gush forth, to run into quiet waters at last. We cannot easily, for the whole course of our lives, think with pain of any good and kind person whom we have lost. It is the divine nature of their qualities to conquer pain and death itself ; to turn the memory of them into pleasure ; to survive with a placid aspect in our imaginations. We are writing at this moment just opposite a spot which contains the grave of one inexpressibly dear to us. We see from our window the trees about it, and the church spire. The green fields lie around. The clouds are travelling over-head, alternately taking away the sun- shine and restoring it. The vernal winds, piping of the flowery summer-time, are never- theless calling to mind the far-distant and dangerous ocean, which the heart that lies in that grave had many reasons to think of. And yet the sight of this spot does not give us pain. So far from it, it is the existence of that grave which doubles every charm of the spot ; which links the pleasures of our childhood and man- hood together ; which puts a hushing tender- ness in the winds, and a patient joy upon the landscape ; which seems to unite heaven and earth, mortality and immortality, the grass of the tomb and the grass of the green field ; and gives a more maternal aspect to the whole kindness of nature. It does not hinder gaiety itself. Happiness was what its tenant, through all her troubles, would have diffused. To diffuse happiness and to enjoy it, is not only carrying on her wishes, but realising her hopes ; and gaiety, freed from its only pollutions, malig- nity and want of sympathy, is but a child play- ing about the knees of its mother. The remembered innocence and endearments of a child stand us instead of virtues that have died older. Children have not exercised the voluntary offices of friendship ; they have not chosen to be kind and good to us ; nor stood by us, from conscious will, in the hour of adversity. But they have shared their plea- sures and pains with us as well as they could ; the interchange of good offices between us has, of necessity,beenless mingled with the troubles of the world ; the sorrow arising from their death is the only one which we can associate with their memories. These are happy thoughts that cannot die. Our loss may always render them pensive ; but they will not always be painful. It is a part of the benignity of Nature that pain does not survive like pleasure, at any time, much less where the cause of it is an in- nocent one. The smile will remain reflected by memory, as the moon reflects the light upon us when the sun has gone into heaven. When writers like ourselves quarrel with earthly pain (we mean writers of the same in- tentions, without implying, of course, anything about abilities or otherwise), they are mis- understood if they are supposed to quarrel with pains of every sort. This would be idle and effeminate. They do not pretend, indeed, that humanity might not wish, if it could, to be entirely free from pain ; for it endeavours, at all times, to turn pain into pleasure : or at least to set off the one with the other, to make the former a zest and the latter a refreshment. The most unaffected dignity of suffering does this,and,if wise, acknowledges it. The greatest benevolence towards others, the most unselfish relish of their pleasures, even at its own ex- pense, does but look to increasing the general stock of happiness, though content, if it could, to have its identity swallowed up in that splendid contemplation. We are far from meaning that this is to be called selfishness. We are far, indeed, from thinking so, or of so confounding words. But neither is it to be called pain when most unselfish, if disinterest- edness be truly understood. The pain that is in it softens into pleasure, as the darker hue of the rainbow melts into the brighter. Yet even if a harsher line is to be drawn between the pain and pleasure of the most unselfish mind (and ill-health, for instance, may draw it), we should not quarrel with it if it contributed to the general mass of comfort, and were of a nature which general kindliness could not avoid. Made as we are, there are certain pains with- out which it would be difficult to conceive certain great and overbalancing pleasures. We may conceive it possible for beings to be made entirely happy ; but in our composition something of pain seems to be a necessary in- gredient, in order that the materials may turn to as fine account as possible, though our clay, in the course of ages and experience, may be refined more and more. We may get rid of the worst earth, though not of earth itself. POETICAL ANOMALIES OF SHAPE. 67 Now the liability to the loss of children — or rather what renders us sensible of it, the occasional loss itself — seems to be one of these necessary bitters thrown into the cup of humanity. "We do not mean that every one must lose one of his children in order to enjoy the rest ; or that every individual loss afflicts us in the same proportion. We allude to the deaths of infants in general. These might be as few as we could render them. But if none at all ever took place, we should regard every little child as a man or woman secured ; and it will easily be conceived what a world of endearing cares and hopes this security would endanger. The very idea of infancy would lose its continuity with us. Girls and boys would be future men and women, not present children. They would have attained their full growth in our imaginations, and might as well have been men and women at once. On the other hand, those who have lost an infant, are never, as it were, without an infant child. They are the only persons who, in one sense, retain it always, and they furnish their neigh- bours with the same idea*. The other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality. This one alone is rendered an immortal child. Death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence. Of such as these are the pleasantest shapes that visit our fancy and our hopes. They are the ever-smiling emblems of joy ; the prettiest pages that wait upon imagination. Lastly, " Of these are the kingdom of heaven ." Where- ever there is a province of that benevolent and all-accessible empire, whether on earth or else- where, such are the gentle spirits that must inhabit it. To such simplicity, or the resem- blance of it, must they come. Such must be the ready confidence of their hearts, and creativeness of their fancy. And so ignorant must they be of the " knowledge of good and eviL" losing their discernment of that self- created trouble, by enjoying the garden before them, and not being ashamed of what is kind! and innocent. XXXIII.—POETICAL ANOMALIES OF SHAPE. It is not one of the least instances of the force of habit to see how poetry and mythology can reconcile us to shapes, or rather combi- nations of shape, unlike anything in nature. The dog-headed deities of the Egyptians were doubtless not so monstrous in their eyes as in * " I sighed," says old Captain Dal ton, " when I envied you the two bonnie children ; but I sigh not now to call either the monk or the soldier mine own ["—Monastery, vol. iii., p. 341. ours. The Centaurs of the Greeks, as Ovid has shown us, could be imagined possessing beauty enough for a human love story ; and our imaginations find nothing at all monstrous in the idea of an angel, though it partakes of the nature of the bird. The angel, it is true, is the least departure from humanity. Its wings are not an alteration of the human shape, but an addition to it. Yet, leaving a more awful wonder out of the question, we should be startled to find pinions growing out of the shoulder-blades of a child ; and we should wait with anxiety to see of what nature the pinions were, till we became reconciled to them. If they turned out to be ribbed and webbed, like those of the imaginary dragon, conceive the horror ! If, on the other hand, they became feathers, and tapered off, like those of a gigantic bird, comprising also grace and splendour, as well as the power of flight, we can easily fancy ourselves reconciled to them. And yet again, on the other hand, the flying women, described in the Adventures of Peter Wilkins, do not shock us, though their wings partake of the ribbed and webbed nature, and not at all of the feathered. We admire Peter's gentle and beautiful bride, notwith- standing the phenomenon of the graundee, its light whalebone-like intersections, and its power of dropping about her like drapery. It even becomes a matter of pleasant curiosity. We find it not at all in the way. We can readily apprehend the delight he felt at possess- ing a creature so kind and sensitive ; and can sympathise with him in the happiness of that bridal evening, equally removed from prudery and grossness, which he describes with a mix- ture of sentiment and voluptuousness beyond all the bridals we ever read. To imagine anything like a sympathy of this kind, it is of course necessary that the differ- ence of form should consist in addition, and not in alteration. But the un-angel-like texture of the flying apparatus of fair Youwarkee (such, if we remember, is her name) helps to show us the main reason why we are able to receive pleasure from the histories of creatures only half-human. The habit of reading pre- vents the first shock ; but we are reconciled in proportion to their possession of what we are pleased to call human qualities. Kindness is the great elevator. The Centaurs may have killed all the Lapithse, and shown considerable generalship to boot, without reconciling us to the brute part of them ; but the brutality melts j away before the story of their two lovers in J Ovid. Drunkenness and rapine made beasts of them; — sentiment makes human beings. Polyphemus in Homer is a shocking monster, not because he has only one eye, but because he murders and eats our fellow-creatures. But in Theocritus, where he is Galatea's lover, and sits hopelessly lamenting his passion, we only pity him. . His deformity even increases our F 2 08 THE INDICATOR. pity. We blink the question of beauty, and become one-eyed for his sake. Nature seems to do him an injustice in gifting him with sympathies so human, and at the same time preventing them from being answered ; and we feel impatient with the all-beautiful Galatea, if we think she ever showed him scorn as well as unwillingness. We insist upon her avoiding him with the greatest possible respect. These fictions of the poets, therefore, besides the mere excitement which they give the imagi- nation, assist remotely to break the averseness and uncharitableness of human pride. And they may blunt the point of some fancies that are apt to come upon melancholy minds. When Sir Thomas Brown, in the infinite range of his metaphysical optics, turned his glass, as he no doubt often did, towards the inhabitants of other worlds, the stories of angels and Cen- taurs would help his imaginative good-nature to a more willing conception of creatures in other planets unlike those on earth ; to other "lords of creation;" and other, and perhaps nobler humanities, noble in spirit, though differ- ing in form. If indeed there can be anything in the starry endlessness of existence, nobler than what we can conceive of love and gene- rosity. XXXIV.— SPRING AND DAISIES. Spring, while we are writing, is complete. The winds have done their work. The shaken air, well tempered and equalised, has subsided ; the genial rains, however thickly they may come, do not saturate the ground, beyond the power of the sun to dry it up again. There are clear crystal mornings ; noons of blue sky and white cloud ; nights, in which the growing moon seems to lie looking at the stars, like a young shepherdess at her flock. A few days ago she lay gazing in this manner at the soli- tary evening star, like Diana, on the slope of a valley, looking up at Endymion. His young eye seemed to sparkle out upon the world ; while she, bending inwards, her hands behind her head, watched him with an enamoured dumbness. But this is the quiet of Spring. Its voices and swift movements have come back also. The swallow shoots by us, like an embodied ardour of the season. The glowing bee has his will of the honied flowers, grappling with them as they tremble. We have not yet heard the nightingale or the cuckoo ; but we can hear them with our imagination, and enjoy them through the content of those who have. Then the young green. This is the most apt and perfect mark of the season, — the true issu- ing forth of the Spring. The trees and bushes are putting forth their crisp fans ; the lilac is loaded with bud ; the meadows are thick with the bright young grass, running into sweeps of white and gold with the daisies and butter- cups. The orchards announce their riches, in a shower of silver blossoms. The earth in fertile woods is spread with yellow and blue carpets of primroses, violets, and hyacinths, over which the birch-trees, like stooping nymphs, hang with their thickening hair. Lilies-of-the-valley, stocks, columbines, lady- smocks, and the intensely red piony which seems to anticipate the full glow of summer- time, all come out to wait upon the season, like fairies from their subterraneous palaces. Who is to wonder that the idea of love mingles itself with that of this cheerful and kind time of the year, setting aside even common associations ? It is not only its youth, and beauty, and budding life, and " the passion of the groves," that exclaim with the poet, Let those love now, who never loved before ; And those who always loved, now love the more *. All our kindly impulses are apt to have more sentiment in them, than the world suspect; and it is by fetching out this sentiment, and making it the ruling association, that we exalt the impulse into generosity and refinement, instead of degrading it, as is too much the case, into what is selfish, and coarse, and pollutes all our systems. One of the greatest inspirers of love is gratitude, — not merely on its common grounds, but gratitude for pleasures, whether consciously or unconsciously conferred. Thus we are thankful for the delight given us by a kind and sincere face ; and if we fall in love with it, one great reason is, that we long to return what we have received. The same feeling has a considerable influence in the love that has been felt for men of talents, whose persons or address have not been much calcu- lated to inspire it. In spring-time, joy awakens the heart : with joy, awakes gratitude and nature ; and in our gratitude, we return, on its own principle of participation, the love that has been shown us. This association of ideas renders solitude in spring, and solitude in winter, two very differ- ent things. In the latter, we are better content to bear the feelings of the season by ourselves : in the former they are so sweet as well as so overflowing, that we long to share them. Shakspeare, in one of his sonnets, describes himself as so identifying the beauties of the Spring with the thought of his absent mistress, that he says he forgot them in their own character, and played with them only as with her shadow. See how exquisitely he turns a common-place into this fancy ; and what a noble brief portrait of April he gives us at the begin- ning. There is indeed a wonderful mixture of softness and strength in almost every one of the lines. * Pervigilium Veneris.— Parnell's translation. SPRING AND DAISIES. 6G From you have I been absent in the spring, "When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ; That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew : Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose : They were but sweet, but patterns of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still ; and, you away, As with your shadow, I with these did play. Shakspeare was fond of alluding to April. He did not allow May to have all his regard, be- cause she was richer. Perdita, crowned with flowers, in the Winter's Tale, is beautifully- compared to Flora, Peering in April's front. There is a line in one of his sonnets, which, agreeably to the image he had in his mind, seems to strike up in one's face, hot and odorous, like perfume in a censer. In process of the seasons have I seen Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned. His allusions to Spring are numerous in pro- portion. We all know the song, containing that fine line, fresh from the most brilliant of pallets : — When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight. We owe a long debt of gratitude to the daisy; and we take this opportunity of dis- charging a millionth part of it. If we undertook to pay it all, we should have had to write such a book, as is never very likely to be written, — a journal of numberless happy hours in child- hood, kept with the feelings of an infant and the pen of a man. For it would take, we suspect, a depth of delight and a subtlety of words, to express even the vague joy of infancy, such as our learned departures from natural wisdom would find it more difiicult to put together, than criticism and comfort, or an old palate and a young relish. — But knowledge is the widening and the brightening road that must conduct us back to the joys from which it led us ; and which it is destined perhaps to secure and extend. We must not quarrel with its asperities, when we can help. We do not know the Greek name of the daisy, nor do the dictionaries inform us ; and we are not at present in the way of consulting books that might. We always like to see what the Greeks say to these things, because they had a sentiment in their enjoyments. The Latins called the daisy Bellis or Bellus, as much as to say Nice One. With the French and Italians it has the same name as a Pearl, — Marguerite, Margarita, or, by way of endear- ment, Margheretina*. The same word was the name of a woman, and occasioned infinite intermixtures of compliment about pearls, daisies, and fair mistresses. Chaucer, in his beautiful poem of the Flower and the Leaf, which is evidently imitated from some French poetess, says, And at the laste there began anon A lady for to sing right womanly A bargaretf in praising the daisie, For as me thought among her notes sweet, She said " Si douset est la Margarete." " The Margaret is so sweet." Our Margaret, however, in this allegorical poem, is under- valued in comparison with the laurel ; yet Chaucer perhaps was partly induced to trans- late it on account of its making the figure that it does ; for he has informed us more than once, in a very particular manner, that it was his favourite flower. There is an interesting passage to this effect in his Legend of Good Women ; where he says, that nothing but the daisied fields in spring could take him from his books. And as for me, though that I can % but lite? On bookes for to read I me delight, And to hem give I faith and full credence, And in my heart have hem in reverence, So heartily, that there is game none, That from my bookes maketh me to gone, But it be seldom, on the holy day ; Save certainly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing, And that the flowers ginnen for to spring, Farewell my booke, and my devotion. Now have I then eke this condition, That, of all the flowers in the mead, Then love I most those flowers white and red, Such that men callen daisies in our town. To hem I have so great affection, As I said erst, when comen is the May, That in the bed there daweth § me no day, That I nam up and walking in the mead, To seen this flower agenst the sunne spread, When it upriseth early by the morrow, That blissful sight sof teneth all my sorrow. So glad am I, when that I have presence Of it, to done it all reverence, As she that is of all flowers the flower. He says that he finds it ever new, and that he shall love it till his " heart dies :" and after- wards, with a natural picture of his resting on the grass, Adown full softeley I gan to sink, And leaning on my elbow and my side, The long day I shope || me for to abide For nothing else, and I shall not lie, But for to look upon the daisie ; That well by reason men it call may The daisia, or else the eye of day. This etymology, which we have no doubt is the real one, is repeated by Ben Jonson, who * This word is originally Greek,— Margarites ; and as the Franks probably brought it from Constantinople, per- haps they brought its association with the daisy also. t Bargaret, Bergerette, a little pastoral. X Know but little. § Dawneth. || Shaped. 70 THE INDICATOR. takes occasion to spell the word " days-eyes ;" adding, with his usual tendency to overdo a matter of learning, Days-eyes, and the lippes of cows ; videlicet, cowslips : which is a disentanglement of compounds, in the style of our pleasant parodists : • Puddings of the plum, And fingers of the lady. Mr. Wordsworth introduces his homage to the daisy with a passage from George Wither ; which, as it is an old favourite of ours, and extremely applicable both to this article and our whole work, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of repeating. It is the more interest- ing, inasmuch as it was written in prison, where the freedom of the author's opinions had thrown him*. He is speaking of his Muse, or Imagination. Her divine skill taught me this ; That from every thing I saw I could some instruction draw, And raise pleasure to the height From the meanest object's sight. By the murmur of a spring, Or the least bough's rustelling ; By a daisy, whose leaves spread Shut, when Titan goes to bed ; Or a shady bush or tree ; She could more infuse in me, Than all Nature's beauties can In some other wiser man. Mr. Wordsworth undertakes to patronise the Celandine, because nobody else will notice it ; which is a good reason. But though he tells us, in a startling piece of information, that Poets, vain men in their mood, Travel with the multitude, yet he falls in with his old brethren of England and Normandy, and becomes loyal to the daisy. Be violets in their secret mews The flowers the wanton Zephyrs chuse ; Proud be the rose, with rains and dews Her head impearling ; Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame ; Thou art indeed, by many a claim, The poet's darling. ***** A nun demure, of lowly port ; Or sprightly maiden of Love's court, In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations ; A queen in crown of rubies drest ; A starveling in a scanty vest ; Are all, as seem to suit thee best, Thy appellations. A little Cyclops, with one eye Staring to threaten or defy, — That thought comes next, and instantly * It is not generally known, that Chaucer was four years in prison, in his old age, on the same account. He was a Wickliflfite,— one of the precursors of the Reforma- tion. His prison, doubtless, was no diminisher of his love of the daisy. The freak is over ; The freak will vanish, and behold ! A silver shield with boss of gold, That spreads itself, some fairy bold In fight to cover. I see thee glittering from afar ; And then thou art a pretty star, Not quite so fair as many are In heaven above thee ! Yet like a star, with glittering crest, Self-poised in air, thou seem'st to rest ; — May peace come never to his nest, Who shall reprove thee. Sweet flower ! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast ; Sweet silent creature ! That breath 'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature. Mr. Wordsworth calls the daisy " an unas- suming common-place of Nature," which it is ; and he praises it very becomingly for dis- charging its duties so cheerfully, in that uni- versal character. But we cannot agree with him in thinking that it has a " homely face." Not that we should care, if it had ; for home- liness does not make ugliness ; but we appeal to everybody, whether it is proper to say this of la belle Marguerite. In the first place, its shape is very pretty and slender, but not too much so. Then it has a boss of gold, set round and irradiated with silver points. Its yellow and fair white are in so high a taste of contrast, that Spenser has chosen the same colours for a picture of Leda reposing : Oh wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man ! That her in daffodillies sleeping laid, From scorching heat her dainty limbs to shade. It is for the same reason, that the daisy, being chiefly white, makes such a beautiful show in company with the buttercup. But this is not all ; for look at the back, and you find its fair petals blushing with a most delight- ful red. And how compactly and delicately is the neck set in green ! Belle et douce Marguerite, aimable sosur du roi Kingcup, we would tilt for thee with a hundred pens, against the stoutest poet that did not find perfection in thy cheek. But here somebody may remind us of the spring showers, and what drawbacks they are upon going into the fields. — Not at all so, when the spring is really confirmed, and the showers but April-like and at intervals. Let us turn our imaginations to the bright side of spring, and we shall forget the showers. You see they have been forgotten just this moment. Besides, we are not likely to stray too far into the fields ; and if we should, are there not hats, bonnets, barns, cottages, elm-trees, and good wills ? We may make these things zests, if we please, instead of drawbacks. MAY-DAY. 71 XXXV.— MAY-DAY. May-day is a word, which used to awaken in the minds of our ancestors all the ideas of youth, and verdure, and blossoming, and love ; and hilarity ; in short, the union of the two best things in the world, the love of nature, and the love of each other. It was the day, on which the arrival of the year at maturity was kept, like that of a blooming heiress. They caught her eye as she was coming, and sent up hundreds of songs of joy. Now the bright Morning-Star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire : Woods and groves are of thy dressing ; Hill and dale, doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. These songs were stopped by Milton's friends the Puritans, whom in his old age he differed with, most likely on these points among others. But till then, they appear to have been as old, all over Europe, as the existence of society. The Druids are said to have had festivals in honour of May. Our Teutonic ancestors had, undoubtedly ; and in the countries which had constituted the Western Roman Empire, Flora still saw thanks paid for her flowers, though her worship had gone away*. The homage which was paid to the Month of Love and flowers, may be divided into two sorts, the general and the individual. The first consisted in going with others to gather May, and in joining in sports and games after- wards. On the first of the month, " the juve- nile part of both sexes," says Bourne, in his Popular Antiquities, " were wont to rise a little after midnight and walk to some neighbouring wood, where they broke down branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. When this was done, they returned with their booty about the rising of the sun, and made their doors and windows to triumph in the flowery spoil. The after part of the day was chiefly spent in dancing round a May-pole, which being placed in a convenient part of the village, stood there, as it were, consecrated to the Goddess of Flowers, without the least violation offered to it, in the whole circle of the year." Spenser, in his Shepherd's Calendar, has detailed the circum- stances, in a style like a rustic dance. * The great May holiday observed over the West of Europe was known for centuries, up to a late period, under the name of the Belte, or Beltane. Such a number of etymologies, all perplexingly probable, have been found for this word, that we have been surprised to miss among them that of Bel-temps, the Fine Time or Season. Thus Printemps, the First Time, or Prime Season, is the Spring. Younge folke now flocken in — every where To gather May-buskets *— and swelling brere ; And home they hasten — the postes to dight, And all the kirk-pilours — eare day-light, With hawthorne buds— and sweet eglantine, And girlonds of roses— and soppes in wine. ******* Sicker this morowe, no longer agoe, I saw a shole of shepherds outgoe With singing, and shouting, and jolly chere ; Before them yode t a lustie tabrere % That to the many a hornpipe played, Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd. To see these folks make such jovisaunce, Made my heart after the pipe to daunce. Tho § to the greene wood they speeden hem all, To fetchen home May with their musicall ; And home they bringen, in a royall throne, Crowned as king ; and his queen attone || Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend A fayre flocke of faeries, and a fresh bend Of lovely nymphs. O that I were there To helpen the ladies their May-bush beare. The day was passed in sociality and manly sports ; — in archery, and running, and pitching the bar, — in dancing, singing, playing music, acting Robin Hood and his company, and making a well-earned feast upon all the country dainties in season. It closed with an award of prizes. As I have seen the Lady of the May, Set in an arbour (on a holiday) Built by the Maypole, where the jocund swains Dance with the maidens to the bag-pipe's strains, When envious night commands them to be gone, Call for the merry youngsters one by one, And for their well performance soon disposes, To this a garland interwove with roses, To that a carved hook, or well-wrought scrip, Gracing another with her cherry lip ; To one her garter, to another then A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again ; And none returneth empty, that hath spent His pains to fill their rural merriment^ . Among the gentry and at court the spirit of the same enjoyments took place, modified ac- cording to the taste or rank of the entertainers. The most universal amusement, agreeably to the general current in the veins, and the com- mon participation of flesh and blood (for rank knows no distinction of legs and knee-pans), was dancing. Contests of chivalry supplied the place of more rural gymnastics. But the most poetical and elaborate entertainment was the Mask. A certain flowery grace was sprinkled over all ; and the finest spirits of the * Buskets — Boskets — Bushes — from Boschetti, Ital. t Yode, Went. % Tabrere, a Tabourer. § Tho, Then. H Attone, At once— With him. % Britannia's Pastorals, by William Browne. Song the 4th. Browne, like his friend Wither, from whom we quoted a passage last week, wanted strength and the power of selection ; though not to such an extent. He is however well worth reading by those who can expatiate over a pastoral subject, like a meadowy tract of country ; finding out the beautiful spots, and gratified, if not much delighted, with the rest. His genius, which was by no means destitute of the social part of passion, seems to have been turned almost wholly to description, by the beauties of his native county Devonshire. 72 THE INDICATOR. time thought they showed both their manliness and wisdom, in knowing how to raise the plea- sures of the season to their height. Sir Philip Sydney, the idea of whom has come down to us as a personification of all the refinement of that age, is fondly recollected by Spenser in this character. His sports were faire, his joyance innocent, Sweet without soure, and honey without gall : And he himself seemed made for merriment, Merrily masking both in bowre and hall. There was no pleasure nor delightfull play, "When Astrophel soever was away. For he could pipe, and daunce, and caroll sweet, Amongst the shepheards in their shearing feast ; As somer's larke that with her song doth greet The dawning day forth comming from the East. And layes of love he also could compose ; Thrice happie she, whom he to praise did choose. Astrophel, st. 5. Individual homage to the month of May consisted in paying respect to it though alone, and in plucking flowers and flowering boughs to adorn apartments with. This maiden, in a morn betime, Went forth when May was in the prime To get sweet setywall, The honey-suckle, the harlock, The lily, and the lady-smock, To deck her summer-hall. Drayton's Pastorals, Eclog. 4. But when morning pleasures are to be spoken of, the lovers of poetry who do not know Chaucer, are like those who do not know what it is to be up in the morning. He has left us two exquisite pictures of the solitary observance of May, in his Palamon and Arcite. They are the more curious, inasmuch as the actor in one is a lady, and in the other a knight. How far they owe any of their beauty to his original, the Theseide of Boccaccio, we cannot say ; for we never had the happiness of meet- ing with that rare work. The Italians have so neglected it, that they have not only never given it a rifacimento or re-modelling, as in the instance of Boiardo's poem, but are almost as much unacquainted with it, we believe, as foreign nations. Chaucer thought it worth his while to be both acquainted with it, and to make others so ; and we may venture to say, that we know of no Italian after Boccaccio's age who was so likely to understand him to the core, as his English admirer, Ariosto not excepted. Still, from what we have seen of Boccaccio's poetry, we can imagine the Theseide to have been too lax and long. If Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite be all that he thought pro- per to distil from it, it must have been greatly so ; for it was an epic. But at all events the essence is an exquisite one. The tree must have been a fine old enormity, from which such honey could be drawn. To begin, as in duty bound, with the lady. How she sparkles through the antiquity of the language, like a young beauty in an old hood ! Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, Till it felle ones in a morowe of May, That Emelie— But we will alter the spelling where we can, as in a former instance, merely to let the reader see what a notion is in his way, if he suffers the look of Chaucer's words to prevent his enjoying him. Thus passeth year by year, and day by day, Till it fell once, in a morrow of May, That Emily, that fairer was to seen , Than is the lily upon his stalk green, And fresher than the May with flowers new, (For with the rosy colour strove her hue ; I n'ot which was the finer of them two) Ere it was day, as she was wont to do, She was arisen and all ready dight, For May will have no sluggardy a-night : The season pricketh every gentle heart, And maketh him out of his sleep to start, And saith " Arise, and do thine observance." This maketh Emily have remembrance To do honour to May, and for to rise. Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise : Her yellow hair was braided in a tress, Behind her back, a yarde * long I guess : And in the garden, at the sun uprist, She walketh up and down where as her list ; She gathereth flowers, party white and red To make a subtle garland for her head ; And as an angel, heavenly she sung. The great tower, that was so thick and strong, Which of the castle was the chief dongeon, (Where as these knightes weren in prison, Of which I tolde you, and tellen shall) Was even joinant to the garden wall, There as this Emily had her playing. Bright was the sun, and clear that morwening— [How finely, to our ears at least, the second line of the couplet always rises up from this full stop at the first !] Bright was the sun, and clear that morwening And Palamon, this woeful prisoner, As was his wont, by leave of his jailer, Was risen, and roamed in a chamber on high, In which he all the noble city sigh t, And eke the garden, full of branches green, There as this fresh Emilia the sheen t Was in her walk, and roamed up and down. Sir "Walter Scott, in his edition of Dryden, says upon the passage before us, and Dryden's ver- sion of it, that " the modern must yield the palm to the ancient, in spite of the beauty of his versification." "We quote from memory, but this is the substance of his words. For our parts, we agree with them, as to the con- signment of the palm, but not as to the ex- ception about the versification. "With some allowance as to our present mode of accentua- tion, it appears to us to be touched with a finer sense of music even than Dryden's. It is more delicate, without any inferiority in strength, and still more various. But to our other portrait. It is as sparkling with young manhood, as the former is with a * These additional syllables are to be read slightly, like the e in French verse. t Saw. t The shining. MAY-DAY. 73 gentler freshness. What a burst of radiant joy is in the second couplet ; what a vital quickness in the comparison of the horse, " starting as the fire ; " and what a native and happy ease in the conclusion ! The busy lark, the messenger of day, Saleweth * in her song the morrow gray ; And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient laugheth of the sight ; And with his stremes drieth in the greves t The silver droppes hanging in the leaves ; And Arcite, that is in the court real t With Theseus the squier principal, Is risen, and looketh on the merry day ; And for to do his observance to May, Rememb'ring on the point of his desire, He on the courser, starting as the fire, Is ridden to the fieldes him to play, Out of the court, were it a mile or tway : And to the grove, of which that I you told, By aventure his way 'gan to hold, To maken him a garland of the greves, Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leaves, And loud he sung against the sunny sheen : " O May, with all thy flowers and thy green, Right welcome be thou, faire freshe May : I hope that I some green here getten may." And from his courser, with a lusty heart, Into the grove full hastily he start, And in the path he roamed up and down. The versification of this is not so striking as the other, but Dryden again falls short in the freshness and feeling of the sentiment. His lines are beautiful ; but they do not come home to us with so happy and cordial a face. Here they are. The word morning in the first line, as it is repeated in the second, we are bound to consider as a slip of the pen ; per- haps for mounting. The morning-lark, the messenger of day, Saluteth in her song the morning gray ; And soon the sun arose with beams so bright, That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight : He with his tepid rays the rose renews, And licks the drooping leaves and dries the dews ; When Arcite left his bed, resolv'd to pay Observance to the month of merry May : Forth on his fiery steed betimes he rode, That scarcely prints the turf on which he trod : At ease he seemed, and prancing o'er the plains, Turned only to the grove his horse's reins, The grove I named before ; and, lighted there, A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair ; Then turned his face against the rising day, And raised his voice to welcome in the May : " For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear, If not the first, the fairest of the year : For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours, And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers : When thy short reign is past, the feverish Sun The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on. So may thy tender blossoms fear no blijht, Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite, As thou shalt guide my wandering steps to find The fragrant greens I seek, my brows to bind." His vows address'd, within the grove he stray'd. How poor is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser " with a lusty heart !" How inferior the common-place of the " fiery steed," which need not involve any actual notion in the writer's * Saluteth. \ Groves. $ Royal. mind, to the courser " starting as the fire ; " — how inferior the turning his face to " the rising day " and raising his voice to the singing t( loud against the sunny sheen ; " and lastly, the whole learned invocation and adjuration of May, about guiding his " wandering steps " and " so may thy tender blossoms " &c. to the call upon the " fair fresh May," ending with that simple, quick-hearted line, in which he hopes he shall get " some green here ; " a touch in the happiest vivacity ! Dryden's genius, for the most part, wanted faith in nature. It was too gross and sophisticate. There was as much difference between him and his original, as be- tween a hot noon in perukes at St. James's, and one of Chaucer's lounges on the grass, of a May -morning. All this worship of May is over now. There is no issuing forth, in glad companies, to gather boughs ; no adorning of houses with " the flowery spoil ;" no songs, no dances, no village sports and coronations, no courtly poetries, no sense and acknowledgment of the quiet pre- sence of nature, in grove or glade. O dolce primavera, o fior novelli, O aure, o arboscelli, o fresche erbette, O piagge benedette ; o colli, o monti, O valli, o fiumi, o fonti, o verdi rivi, Palme lauri, ed olive, edere e mirti ; O gloriosi spiriti de gli boschi ; O Eco, o antri foschi, o chiare linfe, O faretrate ninfe, o agresti Pani, O Satiri e Silvani, o Fauni e Driadi, Naiadi ed Amadriadi, o Semidee, Oreadi e Napee, — or siete sole. — Sannazzaro. O thou delicious spring, O ye new flowers, O airs, O youngling bowers ; fresh thickening grass, And plains beneath heaven's face ; hills and mountains, Valleys, and streams, and fountains ; banks of green, Myrtles, and palms serene, ivies, and bays ; And ye who warmed old lays, spirits o' the woods, Echoes, and solitudes, and lakes of light ; O quivered virgins bright, Pans rustical, Satyrs and Sy Ivans all, Dryads, and ye That up the mountains be ; and ye beneath In meadow or flowery heath, — ye are alone. Two hundred years ago, our ancestors used to delight in anticipating their May holidays. Bigotry came in, and frowned them away; then Debauchery, and identified all pleasures with the town ; then Avarice, and we have ever since been mistaking the means for the end. Fortunately, it does not follow that we shall continue to do so. Commerce, while it thinks it is only exchanging commodities, is helping to diffuse knowledge. All other gains, — all selfish and extravagant systems of acquisition, • — tend to over-do themselves, and to topple down by their own undiffused magnitude. The world, as it learns other things, may learn not to confound the means with the end, or at least (to speak more philosophically), a really poor means with a really richer. The veriest cricket-player on a green has as sufficient a quantity of excitement as a fundholder or a 74 THE INDICATOR. partisan ; and health, and spirits, and manliness to boot. Knowledge may go on ; must do so, from necessity ; and should do so, for the ends we speak of ; but knowledge, so far from being incompatible with simplicity of pleasures, is the quickest to perceive its wealth. Chaucer would lie for hours, looking at the daisies. Scipio and Lselius could amuse themselves with making ducks and drakes on the water. Epa- minondas, the greatest of all the active spirits of Greece, was a flute-player and dancer. Alfred the Great could act the whole part of a minstrel. Epicurus taught the riches of tem- perance and intellectual pleasure in a garden. The other philosophers of his country walked between heaven and earth in the colloquial bowers of Academus ; and " the wisest heart of Solomon," who found everything vain be- cause he was a king, has left us panegyrics on the Spring and the "voice of the turtle," because he was a poet, a lover, and a wise man. XXXVI.— SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY. The fifth of May, making the due allowance of twelve days from the twenty-third of April, according to the change of the Style, is the birth- day of Shakspeare. Pleasant thoughts must be associated with him in everything. If he is not to be born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have him with her on her blithest holidays, like her favourite lover. O thou divine human creature — greater name than even divine poet or divine philoso- pher — and yet thou wast all three — a very spring and vernal abundance of all fair and noble things is to be found in thy productions ! They are truly a second nature. "We walk in them, with whatever society we please ; either with men, or fair women, or circling spirits, or with none but the whispering airs and leaves. Thou makest worlds of green trees and gentle natures for us, in thy forests of Arden, and thy courtly retirements of Navarre. Thou bringest us among the holiday lasses on the green sward ; layest us to sleep among fairies in the bowers of midsummer ; wakest us with the song of the lark and the silver-sweet voices of lovers : bringest more music to our ears, both from earth and from the planets ; anon settest us upon enchanted islands, where it welcomes us again, from the touching of invisible instru- ments ; and after all, restorest us to our still desired haven, the arms of humanity. Whe- ther grieving us or making us glad, thou makest us kinder and happier. The tears which thou fetchest down, are like the rains of April, softening the times that come after them. Thy smiles are those of the month of love, the more blessed and universal for the tears. The birth-days of such men as Shakspeare ought to be kept, in common gratitude and affection, like those of relations whom we love. He has said, in a line full of him, that One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. How near does he become to us with his thou- sand touches ! The lustre and utility of intel- lectual power is so increasing in the eyes of the world, that we do not despair of seeing the time when his birthday will be a subject of public rejoicing ; when the regular feast will be served up in tavern and dwelling-house, the bust crowned with laurel, and the theatres sparkle with illuminations. In the mean time, it is in the power of every admirer of Shakspeare to honour the day privately. Rich or poor, busy or at leisure, all may do it. The busiest finds time to eat his dinner, and may pitch one considerate glass of wine down his throat. The poorest may call him to mind, and drink his memory in honest water. We had mechanically written health, as if he were alive. So he is in spirit ;— and the spirit of such a writer is so constantly with us, that it would be a good thing, a judicious ex- travagance, a contemplative piece of jollity, to drink his health instead of his memory. But this, we fear, should be an impulse. We must content ourselves with having felt it here, and drinking it in imagination. To act upon it, as a proposal of the day before yesterday, might be too much like getting up an extem- pore gesture, or practising an unspeakable satisfaction. An outline, however, may be drawn of the manner in which such a birth-day might be spent. The tone and colouring would be filled up, of course, according to the taste of the parties. — If any of our readers, then, have leisure as well as inclination to devote a day to the memory of Shakspeare, we would advise them, in the first place, to walk out, whether alone or in company, and enjoy during the morning as much as possible of those beauties of nature, of which he has left us such exquisite pictures. They would take a volume of him in their hands the most suitable to the occasion ; not to hold themselves bound to sit down and read it, nor even to refer to it, if the original work of nature should occupy them too much ; but to read it, if they read anything ; and to feel that Shakspeare was with them substan- tially as well as spiritually ; — that they had him with them under their arm. There is another thought connected with his presence, which may render the Londoner's walk the more interesting. Shakspeare had neither the vanity which induces a man to be disgusted with what everybody can enjoy ; nor, on the other hand, the involuntary self-degradation which renders us incapable of enjoying what is abased by our own familiarity of acquaintance- ship. About the metropolis, therefore, there is perhaps not a single rural spot, any more than about Stratford-upon-Avon, which he has not LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. 75 himself enjoyed. The south side of London was the one nearest his theatre. Hyde Park was then, as it is now, one of the fashionable promenades. Richmond also was in high pride of estimation. At Greenwich Elizabeth held her court, and walked abroad amid the gallant service of the Sydneys and Raleighs. And Hampstead and Highgate, with the country about them, were, as they have been ever since, the favourite resort of the lovers of natural productions. Nay, without repeating what we said in a former number about the Mermaid in Cornhill, the Devil Tavern in Fleet-street, the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, and other town associations with Shakspeare, the reader who cannot get out of London on his birth-day, and who has the luck to be hard at work in Chancery-lane or the Borough, may be pretty certain that Shakspeare has admired the fields and the May flowers there ; for the fields were close to the latter, perhaps came up to the very walls of the theatre ; and the suburban mansion and gardens of his friend Lord Southampton occupied the spot now called Southampton- buildings. It was really a country neighbour- hood. The Old Bourne (Holborn) ran by with a bridge over it ; and Gray's Inn was an Aca- demic bower in the fields. The dinner does not much signify. The sparest or the most abundant will suit the various fortunes of the great poet ; only it will be as well for those who can afford wine, to pledge Falstaff in a cup of "sherris sack," which seems to have been a sort of sherry negus. After dinner Shakspeare's volumes will come well on the table ; lying among the dessert like laurels, where there is one, and sup- plying it where there is not. Instead of songs, the persons present may be called upon for scenes. But no stress need be laid on this proposition, if they do not like to read out aloud. The pleasure of the day should be as much at liberty as possible ; and if the com- pany prefer conversation, it will not be very easy for them to touch upon any subject which Shakspeare shall not have touched upon also. If the enthusiasm is in high taste, the ladies should be crowned with violets, which (next to the roses of their lips) seem to have been his favourite flower. After tea should come singing and music, especially the songs which Arne set from his plays, and the ballad of Tliou soft-flowing Awn. If an engraving or bust of him could occupy the principal place in the room, it would look like the " present deity" of the occasion ; and we have known a very pleasant effect produced by everybody's bringing some quotation applicable to him from his works, and laying it before his image, to be read in the course of the evening. XXXVII.— LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. Among the pieces printed at the end of Chaucer's works, and attributed to him, is a translation, under this title, of a poem of the celebrated Alain Chartier, secretary to Charles the Sixth and Seventh. It was the title which suggested to a friend the verses at the end of our present Number*. "We wish Alain could have seen them. He would have found a Troubadour air for them, and sung them to La Belle Dame Agnes Sorel, who was, however, not Sans Mercy. The union of the imaginative and the real is very striking throughout, parti- cularly in the dream. The wild gentleness of the rest of the thoughts and of the music are alike old, and they are also alike young ; for love and imagination are always young, let them bring with them what times and accom- paniments they may. If we take real flesh and blood with us, we may throw ourselves, on the facile wings of our sympathy, into what age we please. It is only by trying to feel, as well as to fancy, through the medium of a costume, that writers become fleshless masks and cloaks — things like the trophies of the ancients, when they hung up the empty armour of an enemy. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering ? The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing. Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, So haggard and so woe-begone ? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest 's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever dew ; And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a fairy's child ; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long ; For sideways would she lean and sing A fairy's song. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew ; And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true. She took me to her elfin grot, And there she gazed and sighed deep, And there I shut her wild sad eyes — So kiss'd to sleep. * The late Mr. Keats. This beautiful little effusion is reprinted in the Indicator, where it originally appeared, because it is not to be found in the collected works of that delightful poet. 76 THE INDICATOR. And there we slumber'd on the moss, And there I dream 'd, ah woe betide The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death -pale were they all; Who cried, " La Belle Dame Sans Mercy Hath thee in thrall ! " I saw their starved lips in the gloom With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here. On the cold hill side. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the laic e, And no birds sing. Caviar b.* XXXVIII. OF STICKS. Among other comparative injuries which we are accustomed to do to the characters of things animate and inanimate, in order to gratify our human vanity, such as calling a rascal a dog (which is a great compliment), and saying that a tyrant makes a beast of himself (which it would be a very good thing, and a lift in the world, if he could), is a habit in which some persons indulge themselves, of calling insipid things and persons sticks. Such and such a one is said to write a stick ; and such another is himself called a stick ; — a poor stick, a mere stick, a stick of a fellow. "We protest against this injustice done to those useful and once flourishing sons of a good old stock. Take, for instance, a common cherry stick, which is one of the favourite sort. In the first place, it is a very pleasant substance to look at, the grain running round it in glossy and shadowy rings. Then it is of primaeval antiquity, handed down from scion to scion through the most flourishing of genealogical trees. In the third place, it is of Eastern origin ; of a stock, which it is possible may have furnished Haroun Al Raschid with a djereed, or Mahomet with a camel-stick, or Xenophon in his famous retreat with fences, or Xerxes with tent-pins, or Alexander with a javelin, or Sardanapalus with tarts, or Solomon with a simile for his mistress' lips, or Jacob with a crook, or Methusalem with shadow, or Zoroaster with mathematical instruments, or the builders of Babel with scaffolding. Lastly, how do you know but that you may have eaten cherries off this very stick ? for it was once alive with sap, and rustling with foliage, and powdered with blossoms, and red and laughing with fruit. "Where the leathern tassel now hangs, may have dangled a bunch of berries ; and instead of the brass ferule poking in the * " Caviare to the multitude." — Hamlet. The signature was of Mr. Keats's own putting ; a touching circumstance, when we call to mind the treatment he met with, and consider how hiB memory has triumphed over it. mud, the tip was growing into the air with its youngest green. The use of sticks in general is of the very greatest antiquity. It is impossible to conceive a state of society in which boughs should not be plucked from trees for some purpose of utility or amusement. Savages use clubs, hunters require lances, and shepherds their crooks. Then came the sceptre, which is ori- ginally nothing but a staff, or a lance, or a crook, distinguished from others. The Greek word for sceptre signifies also a walking-stick. A mace, however plumped up and disguised with gilding and a heavy crown, is only the same thing in the hands of an inferior ruler ; and so are all other sticks used in office, from the baton of the Grand Constable of France down to the tipstaff of a constable in Bow-street. As the shepherd's dog is the origin of the gen- tlest whelp that lies on a hearth-cushion, and of the most pompous barker that jumps about a pair of greys, so the merest stick used by a modern Arcadian, when he is driving his flock to Leadenhall-market with a piece of candle in his hat, and No. 554 on his arm, is the first great parent and original of all authoritative staves, from the beadle's cane wherewith he terrifies charity-boys who eat bull's-eyes in church-time, up to the silver mace of the ver- ger, to the wands of parishes and governors, — the tasselled staff, wherewith the Band-Major so loftily picks out his measured way before the musicians, and which he holds up when they are to cease ; to the White Staff of the Lord Treasurer ; the court- officer emphatically called the Lord Gold Stick ; the Bishop's Crosier (Pedum Episcopale), whereby he is supposed to pull back the feet of his straying flock ; and the royal and imperial sceptre aforesaid, whose holders, formerly called Shep- herds of the people (noijueVes Aa£>i>), were sedi- tiously said to fleece more than to protect. The Vaulting-Staff, a luxurious instrument of exercise, must have been used in times imme- morial for passing streams and rough ground with. It is the ancestor of the staff with which Pilgrims travelled. The Staff and Quarter-Staff of the country Robin Hoods is a remnant of the war-club. So is the Irish Shilelah, which a friend has well defined to be " a stick with two butt-ends." The originals of all these, that are not extant in our own coun- try, may still be seen wherever there are nations uncivilised. The Negro Prince, who asked our countrymen what was said of him in Europe, was surrounded in state with a parcel of ragged fellows with shilelahs over their shoulders — Lord Old Sticks. But sticks have been great favourites with civilised as well as uncivilised nations ; only the former have used them more for help and ornament. The Greeks were a sceptropherous people. Homer probably used a walking-stick because he was blind : but we have it on au- OF STICKS. 77 thority that Socrates did. On his first meeting with Xenophon, which was in a narrow passage, he barred up the way with his stick, and asked him, in his good-natured manner, where provi- sions were to be had. Xenophon having told him, he asked again, if he knew where virtue and wisdom were to be had ; and this reducing the young man to a nonplus, he said, " Follow me, and learn ;" which Xenophon did, and be- came the great man we have all heard of. The fatherly story of Agesilaus, who was caught amusing his little boy with riding on a stick, and asked his visitor whether he was a father, is too well known for repetition. There is an illustrious anecdote connected with our subject in Roman history. The highest compliment which his countrymen thought they could pay to the first Scipio, was to call him a walking-stick ; for such is the signifi- cation of his name. It was given him for the filial zeal with which he used to help his old father about, serving his decrepit age instead of a staff. But the Romans were not remark- able for sentiment. What we hear in general of their sticks, is the thumpings which servants get in their plays ; and above all, the famous rods which the lictors carried, and which being actual sticks, must have inflicted horrible dull bruises and malignant stripes. They were pretty things, it must be confessed, to carry before the chief magistrate ! just as if the King or the Lord Chancellor were to be pre- ceded by a cat-o' -nine-tails. Sticks are not at all in such request with mo- dern times as they were. Formerly, we suspect, most of the poorer rank's in England used to carry them, both on account of the prevalence of manly sports, and for security in travelling ; for before the invention of posts and mail- coaches, a trip to Scotland or Northumberland was a thing to make a man write his will. As they came to be ornamented, fashion adopted them. The Cavaliers of Charles the First's time were a sticked race, as well as the apo- stolic divines and puritans, who appear to have carried staves, because they read of them among the patriarchs. Charles the First, when at his trial, held out his stick to forbid the Attorney-General's proceeding. There is an interesting little story connected with a stick, which is related of Andrew Marvell's father, (worthy of such a son,) and which, as it is little known, we will repeat ; though it re- spects the man more than the machine. He had been visited by a young lady, who in spite of a stormy evening persisted in returning across the Humber, because her family would be alarmed at her absence. The old gentle- man, high-hearted and cheerful, after vainly trying to dissuade her from perils which he understood better than she, resolved in his gallantry to bear her company. He accordingly walked with her down to the shore, and getting into the boat, threw his stick to a friend, with a request, in a lively tone of voice, that he would preserve it for a keepsake. He then cried out merrily